By the Sword

    She laughed. "Okay. You win. You're more tired." She pushed her butt back against him. "See you in the morning."

    "Love ya."

    "Love ya too."

    "Like a zombie, you look," Abe said as Jack approached the rear counter.

    Which meant he looked lots better than he felt.

    Jack leaned the katana, wrapped now in one of Gia's paint-stained drop cloths, against the base of the counter and slumped onto a stool.

    "Coffeeeeeee… coffeeeeeeee."

    God, he needed sleep. Usually he could go days on a few hours, but he couldn't seem to shake the effects of the Kuroikaze. And every time he'd dozed off, images from the abattoir the Kakureta Kao temple had become would flash through his head, waking him.

    As Abe turned to fill a cup from his bottomless coffee pot, Jack glanced at the screaming headlines on the front pages of the morning papers. The Daily News:

    And the Post:

    Abe handed Jack a steaming cup. He took it and sipped. He'd already had four cups but they hadn't helped.

    "You've read?" Abe said, pointing to the Post.

    Jack shook his head.

    He held it up. "You want?"

    Another shake.

    He snorted. "You want I should read it to you?"

    "No, thanks."

    Abe's eyebrows rose, ridging his forehead and part of the infinity pool of his bare scalp.

    "I don't get it. You love stories like this. All the details, you want. You…" His voice trailed off as he looked down at the headline, then back at Jack. "They say almost fifty bodies were found by press time and probably more to come. That dwarfs even the number found in the Red Hook warehouse." His expression slackened. "Oy! You again?"

    Jack shrugged. "Mostly as a nonparticipant."

    Unlike Red Hook.

    "Mostly?"

    Jack shrugged. "Would've been completely non if someone had given me a choice at the end."

    Abe looked worried. "What set you off? Please tell me Gia and Vicky are—"

    Jack raised a hand to stop him. He didn't want to go there—didn't want even to consider the slightest possibility of anything happening to Gia and Vicky again.

    "They're fine. I told you: nonparticipant. I was simply the party pla

    Abe turned his hands palm up and waggled his pudgy, stubby fingers. "Give-give."

    Jack didn't feel like talking about it, so he pointed to the giant soft pretzel on the counter. From the amount of crumbs—Abe's parakeet Parabellum was swiftly diminishing their number—he figured Abe had started out with more than one.

    "Pretzels for breakfast?"

    "Breakfast was hours ago. This is lunch."

    "Oh. Right."

    He tore off a loop and bit into it. The salt tasted good. He was hungrier than he'd thought.

    "Last night?"

    "Okay, okay."

    Jack gave him a moderately detailed account of what went down up to the point where he regained the katana.

    "All this for a rotten old sword?" Abe said.

    "And a pregnant teenager. Everybody wants her baby. Damned if I know why."

    "Where is she now?"

    "That's another story."

    "There's more?" He rubbed his hands together. "Goody."

    So Jack gave him a rundown of the Kuroikaze and Rasalom ending up with Dawn.

    "A busy night you had." Abe opened the Post and began flipping pages. "So that's what happened downtown."

    Jack broke off another piece of pretzel.

    "What does it say?"

    "First page it would have made if not for your party. They're blaming some 'yet-to-be-identified toxin' that made people weak and sick. Might be related to a strange cloud a few folks saw, might not."

    "Any deaths?"

    "A couple. They don't know how many yet. They were still canvassing at press time. They say the dead folks were old, so it could have been natural."

    "Or accelerated by the Kuroikaze."

    "After what you say it was like, I shouldn't be surprised." He looked up. "What now?"

    Jack lifted the katana and hefted it.

    "In a little less than an hour I'm meeting with the guy who hired me to find it. I'm going to hand it to him and say, 'Sayonara.' If I knew how to say 'good riddance' in Japanese, I'd say that instead. This thing has been nothing but trouble."

    "There's a guy here says you want to meet with him."

    Rage bloomed in Hank as he looked up to see Darryl standing at the door to his room.

    "I want to meet him? Didn't I tell you I didn't want to see anyone? Any- one?"

    "Yeah, I know, but it's that weird Lodge guy and he won't take no for an answer. Says he can help us out of this mess."

    "Which one?" Hank could think of so many.

    Darryl pointed to the window. "That one."

    Hank didn't need the window to know what was out there, but he forced himself to his feet and made his way over to peek around the edge of the shade.

    Below, the near and far sidewalks were packed with reporters. They'd have been blocking the street if not for the cops there.

    He staggered back to the bed and sat, cradling his head in his hands. He just wanted to be alone, but he couldn't stiff the Septimus Order's point man—its "actuator." Couldn't risk getting kicked out of this place.

    "Send him up."

    "He's got someone with him."

    "Send them both up, but it turns out the other guy's a reporter, your ass is grass."

    As Darryl left, Hank closed his eyes and swallowed against a rising gorge. He felt like a warmed-over cow pie. Wanted to puke so bad, but had nothing left in his gut. What had happened last night? That wind, those feelings of hopelessness and helplessness… they went entirely against the take-control message of the Kicker Evolution.

    The only good thing was it was gone and it hadn't sucked all the life out of him. Just some.

    His thoughts drifted further back, to that insane building on Staten Island and all the men he'd led into it—well, not in to, but to—who wouldn't be coming back. They'd given as good as they'd got until those hit men showed up.

    Thirty men gone… and what had he to show for it? Not a goddamn thing. The hit men probably had the sword, and the guy with the infinity eyes had Dawn.

    Thirty dead Kickers, and the cops and the press wanted to know how and why. Hank hadn't the faintest idea what to tell them.

    A vaguely accented voice from the doorway: "Mister Thompson?"

    Hank looked up and saw a hawk-faced Ernst Drexler. The white of his suit in the morning light hurt his eyes. Hadn't Darryl said he had someone with him? Hank didn't see anyone else.

    "Come in, Mister Drexler. What can I do for you?"

    Drexler glided to the window and tapped it with the silver head of his black cane.

    "It's more a matter of what I can do for you."

    "In particular?"

    "We have people."

    When Drexler didn't go on, Hank said, "So do I."

    "Not the kind of people we have. Allow me to introduce Mr. Terrence McCabe."

    Hank turned as a true-blue, briefcase-toting suit came through the doorway. A gray business suit, black shoes, white shirt, and striped tie. The guy inside it all was short, with shiny black hair, a round face, and a rounder body. He reminded Hank of an actor he liked… from a movie about a giant alligator. Oliver somebody.