******
New Hampton, New York
Jerry was in the administration office drinking coffee with the boys from the agency when Sascha Starfin, the blind telepath, suddenly put his mug down. There was just an unbroken expanse of skin where his eyes should have been.
“What is it?” Jerry asked.
“Men approaching,” he said. “Ten or so. They want the boy.”
Damn it, Jerry swore to himself. “How the Hell did they track us down so fast?”
Peter Pann, the immaculate Englishman, shook his head. “Damned if I know. But we can worry about that later. Get the boy. Vanish.”
“We’ll hold them,” Elmo Schaeffer said. He was about four feet tall and almost as wide. He was strong, even for a wild carder, but Jerry was not sanguine. A blind telepath, a strong dwarf, and a man who could call upon tiny little fairies that he called “tinks” to do his bidding.
Somehow it just didn’t seem like enough.
But Jerry didn’t waste time arguing. He slipped through the back door, keeping low to the ground and moving fast into a copse of trees. From there it was a short shot to the guest cabin where John Fortune was still resting after his ordeal of the past couple of days. He made the trees and looked out back toward the admin building. A squad of armed men had converged on it. Gunfire rattled the night and Jerry worried about the men inside, all of whom he’d worked with for years, all of whom were friends.
It was a tough business, Jerry thought, but the customer always had to come first.
And then he ran into a brick wall.
Fingers like steel cables grabbed him from behind, whirled him around. His eyes went wide with astonishment. His lips formed the word “Ray!” but before he could say anything a punch exploded like a sledgehammer in his gut and the only thing holding him up were the fingers from Ray’s left hand digging like claws into his shoulder.
His lips worked frantically but no sounds, other than a wheezing grunt, came from his mouth. Ray was winding up for another blow and all Jerry could do was shake his head feebly, his eyes wide and horrified as it descended like a thunderbolt.
Somehow, at the last instant, Ray pulled it. Most of it, anyway. It still rocked Jerry’s mid-section and he felt like puking. He held on grimly, because he knew that the last thing he wanted to do was throw up all over Billy Ray. It might, in fact, be the last thing he would ever do.
“What’s the matter, Dagon,” Ray sneered. “Can’t take it all of a sudden?”
Somehow Jerry sucked air into his laboring lungs. “Nuh-nuh Dag’n,” he wheezed.
Ray looked at him skeptically.
“Jer-jer-ry.”
Ray frowned.
Shit, Jerry thought. All those identities, all those names were really catching up to him. For a moment he couldn’t remember the name that Ray knew him by. It had blown out of his brain like the air from his lungs. He forced another shuddering breath down his trachea. It hurt like Hell. “Cray-ton,” he managed to gasp.
Ray’s eyebrows went up. “Creighton? The kid’s bodyguard?”
Jerry nodded weakly.
“Jesus, man,” Ray said, “it is you. That’s how you managed to get away with the kid. By mimicking Dagon.”
Jerry nodded again, relief in his eyes.
“Hey, man, I’m sorry.”
“All right,” Jerry wheezed. “Breath coming back. Can stand now.”
Ray let him go and he stood bent over, his hands on his knees. Sounds of commotion came to them from the cabin.
“What’s going on?”
“Cabin attacked by Dagon’s men,” Jerry said. “Our men trying to hold them off.”
“Where’s the boy?” Ray asked.
“I was going to him.”
“All right,” Ray said. “I’ll go help them hold off Dagon’s goons. Dagon himself is back, too, by the way. I saw him run off a few minutes ago. You vanish into the woods with the boy. We’ll find you, eventually.”
Jerry nodded.
“Can you walk?”
Jerry nodded again, and took a step, gingerly.
“All right,” Ray said. “Good luck.”
Jerry waved back as Ray ran toward the sounds of conflict. All right, Jerry thought. All right. All I have to do is walk. And breathe.
The first few steps were agony, but his breath soon came back and all he had to deal with was the rolling waves of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him with every step. Somehow he fought it down and made his way to the guest cabin where it was still and dark.
He entered quietly and went to John Fortune’s bunk. There was no need to turn on a light, because the kid’s face, arms, and hands were glowing softly like a beacon in the night as he slept fitfully.
John Fortune had had a quiet day, only getting up once to eat. Jerry didn’t want him to leave the cabin, and he was glad when the kid didn’t argue. It wasn’t surprising that he was feeling a little down after his long ordeal. He was also running a temperature. Maybe he’d picked something up in the Hellhole they’d imprisoned him in, but all in all he was in pretty good shape. He just needed a little rest. Which he wasn’t going to get tonight.
Jerry checked around the cabin before waking him, finding a hooded sweatshirt for him to wear. It would be a little warm on a night like this, but he didn’t want the kid shining like a lighthouse, revealing their presence to the world.
He shook John Fortune gently by the shoulder. The kid woke up immediately and only grumbled a little when Jerry told him that they had to get going.
“I don’t know how they found us so fast,” Jerry said, “but they did. Maybe they have some precogs or telepaths or whatever working for them. At any rate, we gotta move.”
“Where are we going?” the kid asked sleepily, putting on his jeans and his shoes and pulling the sweatshirt on over his head as Jerry directed.
“For now, the woods.”
“The woods?” He put the hood up over his head and drew the drawstrings tight, leaving only a bit of his face showing. It still glowed a little, but it was the best they could do. Jerry wished that he had a mask handy.
“It’s our best bet. If we’re lucky, Dagon’s men will never find us.”
“I hope someone will,” John Fortune muttered as they exited the cabin and plunged into the trees behind it.
“Don’t worry,” Jerry said with a confidence he didn’t entirely feel. “It’s not like we’re headed off into the Amazon, or anything. I mean, we’re only about an hour, hour and a half north of the city.”
He glanced back as the trees closed among them, hoping to God that they were doing the right thing.