Jokers Wild

"I'm not a judge," Latham said. "I can't guarantee who will and won't go to prison."

"If your client promises that Gills will not be harmed, then his testimony will do the job. If it doesn't, fine. I'll take that chance." He took a deep breath. "That: s it."

"I'll need to consult my client. Offhand, I think these terms might be the basis for an agreement. I'll get back to you. What's your number?"

"No way," Popinjay put in. "How dumb do you think we are? No, well do a meeting. The four of us, me and Hiram, you and your client."

"Where and when?" the attorney asked.

"The Crystal Palace," Ackroyd said. "After closing. Chrysalis will act as broker, for a fee. She's got a telepathic bartender who'll make sure no one is stacking the deck."

"Agreed," said Latham.

His hands played across her, caressing, almost worshiping. She was dimly aware that something had changed. Something had been added. His attention was almost obsessively focused upon her. It would have been disturbing had she been more aware. But he was competing with a Dantesque visionit's hidden away. Wish it would die. She keeps going to see it. It tries to nurse. And his murmured endearments could not be heard over the other voices. "You are obviously both latents. Unfortunately the virus chose to express in your child."

"That Thing has nothing to do with me! It is apparent that my wife has been less than faithful." Reproachful brown eyes, the face set in lines of heroic betrayal. "I could forgive almost anything else, Rou, but family is everything."

"Josiah, why are you doing this to me? When I need you so?"

No pity.

Tachyon entered her, and she tensed, closing her moist softness close around him. Cobweb fingers brushing at the shields. Her body seemed to be shrinking in on itself as she gathered her will, summoning death from every cell. For an instant she hesitated, and the indecision was a physical pain. This man, so… good. They had shared music, love, and fear. No other path to freedom from… monsters.

A conscious, willful choice, the release of death, it flowed softly, a gentle implacable love.

And her shields fell. They were an artificial construct. And as she released, her mind broke under the stress, and, with it, the shields.

Roulette felt his ecstasy as for one brief flicker of time they were one. Then horror replaced joy. She felt him touch it all. The child, Howler, Josiah, the Astronomer, Baby, DEATH!

He recoiled, falling from the bed in a tangle of bedding, and crawled to the far wall. He huddled, retching for several minutes, then the spasms gave way to sobs, and he rocked back and forth hugging himself as tears ran down his bruised face. Get out of here. For god's sake, run! But she couldn't force strength into her legs, so she curled against the pillows, and watched him cry. It was pointless anyway. They would run her down soon enough. And she wanted it to end. She couldn't go on living with the memories. Perhaps it was because she had failed to kill Tachyon that the nightmare kept replaying. She considered for a moment then rejected the notion. No, it was because the Astronomer had lied. And she realized she wasn't quite ready to die. First, there would have to be a reckoning.

Chapter Twenty-two

3:00 a.m.

Spector looked around before darting across the street. Cordelia and Veronica trotted after him.

"Slow down for god's sake," said Veronica. She was holding her lame dress bunched up above her knees. "That old man isn't going to bother us anymore. He looked pretty bad when we left. Might even be dead by now"

Spector shook his head and guided Cordelia toward the darkness between streetlights. "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about, lady. He's got power enough to waste all of us. All he has to do is pull someone off the street and finish what he started with your dead friend. What was her name? Caroline?"

Veronica stopped and grabbed Cordelia's shoulder. "That's right. And you killed her." Veronica snifled. Spector couldn't tell if Caroline's death had finally sunk in or if it was just the cold. "Let's dump this guy. He won't give us any trouble." Veronica pulled Cordelia close. "If he does, you let him have it. Same as that Imp guy."

"Fine," he said. "Get the fuck out of here. You're only slowing me down. Go help your pimp. He's going to need it." Cordelia turned slowly and let Veronica escort her away. He thought for a moment about following the women and killing them. It would be easy to blindside Cordelia before she could use her power. The other one was just a skirt. But he really didn't feel like it. All he wanted was to kill the Astronomer, or at least have him dead. What smarts Spector had told him Cordelia and Veronica alive could be trouble for him. They could finger him for Caroline's death. As Button-Man Tony had told him once, "It's not the people you kill you regret; it's the people you don't kill."

"Fuck it. I can't ice everybody." He walked down the street toward the subway stop at Seventy-Seventh. He could take the Number 5 train to Jokertown. From there, he just didn't know.

Fortunato lay with his head on Peregrine's naked stomach. She was spread-eagled in the chaos of sheets and shredded clothes and pinfeathers that had come loose in the heat of the last couple of hours. Just a few minutes before, Fortunato had used three of them to bring her to something like her fourteenth or fifteenth orgasm. He'd lost count long before, forgotten the minutes ticking away, even forgotten where he was.

"What in Cod's name did you do to me?" she moaned. "I feel like I just ran a marathon."

"Sorry," Fortunato said. "It kind of goes with the territory." He'd never had sex with another ace before. The fusion of their powers was beyond anything he'd ever experienced.

His energy body was too large to be contained in his flesh; it overflowed all around him in a bright white aura.

He'd come three times himself, each time blocking the flow and turning it back inside him. He'd lost a couple of drops in the process, enough to give Peregrine her own faint luminescence, though it didn't do much for her energy level.

She stroked his chest. "I've heard of afterglow, but this is ridiculous."

He rolled over and kissed her on the thigh. "I have to go, you know."

"The Astronomer."

"Something's supposed to happen in an hour. He's got some kind of escape set up, something that'll get him away from me for good and all. I can't let that happen."

"Why not? Just let him go. What good is killing him going to do?"

"I'm not out for justice, if that's what you're thinking. Making him pay for his crimes, or any of that shit. It's just that I'm not going to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, worrying about him showing up again."

"Bullshit. You want him dead, and you want to be the one to kill him."

"Yeah. Okay. I want the little ratfuck dead. I admit it. I want it enough I can taste it." He got up and into his pants. He rolled up the sleeves on his tux shirt and let it hang open rather than search the apartment for the missing studs.

She came to him and put her arms around his neck. "I'd offer to help, but I'm getting dizzy just standing."

"All I want you to do is come back to Aces High with me, and stay there till this is over. One way or another."

"Wait…"

"I can't wait. Time is ru

"No, I mean, listen. Do you hear something?"

His senses were overloaded from the glut of power. There seemed to be a low, electrical hum coming from all over his body. But beyond that he could hear something else, a sound like wet plates squeaking in dishwater. He glanced at the digital clock next to the bed. It was vibrating on its pedestal. "Oh shit," Fortunate said, just as the water bed exploded. The force of it knocked them across the room. The water was boiling at first, but cooled as it expanded. Fortunato landed against a gray earthenware pot full of bamboo. It shattered under him. Before, the air even came back into his lungs a dead, broken body hurtled through the wall of windows and he was surrounded by flying glass.