Jokers Wild

"What are you using? A knitting needle?"

"Where's all this Takisian stoicism? To bear pain without flinching, to laugh in the face of vicissitude."

"You have a terrible bedside ma

"I see you found him," the doctor said, ignoring Tachyon. Roulette felt a stab of anxiety. "Was he in a bar?"

Tachyon, rightly reading an insult, seized upon the remark without realizing its import. "I am not always in a bar. I wish you would stop telling people that."

There was the sound of growing confusion from beyond the cubicle. "Stay here!" ordered Queen, and twitched aside the curtain.

Tachyon tugged his bangs down over the half-opened gash, the needle still thrust through the white skin, and slid off the gurney. Roulette put out a hand.

"Where are you going?"

"To help."

"You're hurt, you're a patient."

"It's still my hospital."

She was too tired, and too obsessed with the images passing behind her eyes to argue. She followed him into the emergency room of the Blythe van Renssaeler Memorial Clinic.

Every available chair and sofa was taken. Jokers of every description huddled, and hacked, and moaned, and mewed, and followed the overworked doctors with pleading eyes.

A three-legged joker was waddling after Dr. Queen. "I've been waitin' here for three fucking hours!"

"Tough!"

"Cunt!"

"You've got a broken wrist. There are others here with worse problems. We'll take you when we can. And I have no sympathy. Personally, I think Elmo should have broken your fucking neck."

Tachyon was examining a comatose old man on one of the gurneys, seemingly oblivious to the shouting match behind him. But when the joker took a swing at the woman doctor, the haymaker continued so he hit himself in the face, and then collapsed snoring on the floor.

"Nice work, Doc," called a huge scaly joker in a security guard's uniform. "Hey, you look like shit."

"Thank you, Troll."

"What do you want me to do with him?" He nudged the sleeping troublemaker with a toe.

"Have Delia set his wrist while he's sleeping." A quick smile. "Saves on anesthetic."

Another wailing ambulance disgorged its load. A gurney squeaked past, carrying a nightmare figure. Seven feet tall, head blunt like the head of a hammer. One ferocious red eye, and one bright blue eye glaring from beneath a heavy ridge of bone. Boils dotted his scalp in place of hair. Some had broken open and were oozing pus. The man looked as if someone had danced on his face with a jackhammer.

Roulette wrapped her arms about her stomach, trying to shut out the pain, the smells, the sounds. Queen discovered Tachyon administering a shot to a snuffling five-year-old, and chivied him back into the cubicle. When they reemerged, she was leading the tiny doctor by the wrist like an outraged school mistress with a recalcitrant student.

"Take him home." A sharp shove between the shoulder blades. "Give him these. Make him sleep."

"I'm all right. I'll stay."

"You're never here on Wild Card Day. Usually because you're face down in a puddle of cognac. Why break with tradition?"

Queen didn't seem to notice, or perhaps she didn't care, that Tachyon had been well and truly hurt by the remark. Roulette took his arm, and led him out the side door of the old brick building.

"I'm going after Fortunato," he abruptly a

"Help him search for the Astronomer." His lips were pressed into a thin line.

"Tachyon, he must know after attacking the restaurant that every ace in Manhattan is after him. He'd be a fool to stay in New York."

"He's a madman. He won't care."

He shrugged off her hand, and closed his eyes. A great struggle seemed to be taking place, though it showed itself only through the increasingly haggard expression on his nar row face, the sweat that matted in the whorls of his sideburns, and the bright white points studding each knuckle. Suddenly he whirled, and slammed his fists against the wall of the hospital.

"He's blocking me!"

"Who?"

"Fortunato. Damn him. Damn him. Damn him." Head thrown back, he screamed to the sky. "You've held me in contempt for years, you arrogant son of a bitch. Faggots from space. Well, fine! Handle it yourself, then, and be damned to you."

"Why worry? Maybe the Astronomer will come after you, and then you can handle it."

But he was already walking, head hunched forward, hands thrust deep into his pockets, and so missed the bitter irony in her words.

Chapter Nineteen

12:00 Midnight

"Damn," Bre

"Still?"

"Yes. And she's still out."

"Who's Chrysalis, anyway."

"She runs a bar called the Crystal Palace," Bre

"There isn't much more we can do," Je

Bre

Je

It was no wonder Demise had had trouble getting a cab. He'd been shot a dozen times. The bullets had left holes in the front of his cheap gray suit, and his shirt was covered with powder burns and blood. He smelled of garbage, and his trousers had been soiled. As he opened the taxi door, a shudder ran all along the length of that scrawny body. Demise put one foot on the ground, supported himself on the rear door, pulled the other foot out after him. It was a twisted little thing, shoeless, sockless, pale under the streetlamp, soft and small like the foot of a child, growing from a ragged stump that was crusty with dried blood.

Hiram swallowed and looked away.

The cabbie was upset. "You motherfucker," he screamed. "I pick you up looking like that, and you stiff' me!"

Demise gri

"Motherfucker!" the cabbie yelled. He peeled out so fast the force of his acceleration swung the rear door closed, and it caught Demise on the hip. He went sprawling in the gutter, and screamed. Something fell out of his pocket.

Books, Hiram saw.

They were in a plastic bag. Demise scrabbled for them, hugged them to his chest, got unsteadily to his feet. Then he hobbled toward the building, half-limping, half-hopping, trying to keep his weight of his new foot. His eyes were turned inward, on his own pain. The precious books were clutched tight, both hands wrapped around the bag. He didn't seem to wonder why the doorman was wearing a tuxedo. Hiram opened the door, almost feeling sorry for the wretch.

Jay stepped out of the bushes, finger pointed, thumb cocked. "Yo," he said loudly.

Demise looked back.

Hiram made a fist. Suddenly the books weighed something on the order of two hundred pounds. They slipped from Spector's fingers, crashed down on top of his foot. Hiram heard the tiny half-formed bones crack, saw the soft white skin split. Demise opened his mouth to scream.

And suddenly he was gone.

Hiram stooped, returned the book bag to its normal weight, gathered it up. He was drenched with sweat. "We could have died just then," he said to Popinjay.

"My mother could have been a nun," Ackroyd said. "Let's get out of here fast."