Jokers Wild

"Where's the book?" the archer said.

Hiram stared at the arrow. He ought to have been cold with dread, but curiously, he felt nothing but a

The eyes behind the mask looked absolutely astonished as Hiram strode forward. The archer hesitated, but only for a second. Then the bow came up again, Hiram tensed as the string was pulled back smoothly, pulleys turning, and Hiram clenched his fist as the gravity waves shimmered around the arrow, invisible to all but him, the moment of truth almost at hand, and-

– -there was a pop, and the archer was gone.

Hiram heard Wraith gasp, and then Wyrm screamed in sibilant triumph. The lizard-man shoved at the table that trapped him inside the booth, and it came out of the floor with a metallic ripping sound. Wyrm hurtled over it toward the woman, who back-stepped away from him. "Leave her alone!" Hiram yelled.

Wyrm ignored him. He lunged, hissing, clawed hands grasping to embrace her, and passed right through her body, smashing hard up against a barstool. Popinjay laughed.

Wraith spun around wildly, wide eyes searching for her ally for a moment before she gave up and ran. She dashed through the bar again and vanished back into the mirror, its silvered surface closing over her like a pool of mercury.

"Nice of you to drop in," Popinjay called after her. He turned back to the others. "I don't suppose anyone got her phone number'?" He sighed. "Oh, well…"

Wyrm climbed back to his feet, screeching in dismay. "I'll kill her! I'll kill them both!"

"Later," Loophole suggested. The lawyer folded his hands as if the little interruption had never happened. "Do we still have an understanding?"

"I don't want the damnable books," Hiram said. "If you'll honor my terms, they're yours."

"Fine. Where are they?"

"We hid them," Hiram told him, "in Jetboy's Tomb. In the cockpit of the JB-1 replica."

"If they're there, our agreement will be honored."

"If hot," Wyrm added, "you'll all be very sssorry." Chrysalis crossed to the bar and took down a bottle.

"Perhaps we should have a little toast, to the successful conclusion of a difficult transaction."

"I'm afraid we don't have the time," Latham said, closing his briefcase. Hiram wasn't listening. He was staring past Chrysalis, staring at the silvered surface of the long mirror where-for just an instant-he thought he had seen something move.

She watched him struggle against the current, his stickthin arms flailing wearily at the dark water. A dying water spider skimming hopelessly toward shore. Roulette had waited for him to die in the sky over Manhattan. Instead he had fallen like a tiny fleshy meteor, and her imperative continued. Now, watching his battle against the water, she again waited for him to die. The small dark knob of his head vanished, but she forced herself to wait. The Astronomer had cheated death before.

His head broke the water, and the violence of his thrashings shattered an oil slick into a hundred rainbow drops. Die, Roulette prayed, but the black, oily waters of the East River were carrying him to the refuse-strewn shore.

The Astronomer came crawling out, the vomit of the river. His naked body, pink flesh showing between the cracking flame-seared skin, lay like a rotting animal among the rusted cans and soggy hamburger wrappings like tiny disintegrating paper hillocks on the muddy shore. His left hand gripped his glasses, and slowly, skin flaking and cascading from him with every move, he tried to replace them.

Roulette, the heels of her dainty strap sandals sucking at the ooze, ran to him. Her kick caught him in the back of the hand. Fingers jerked open like scattered twigs, the glasses flying free to lie glinting on the mud. Roulette fell on them as if they contained the essence of the Astronomer, the soul of Tachyon. Drove down with a heel only to have it slide harmlessly off the thick lens and bury itself in the mud. The muck released her with a sad, repellent sound. Sobbing, she scooped up the glasses.

"Cunt! Filthy whoring pussy! My glasses, give me my glasses!" His voice spiraled to a frenzied shriek.

A splintered plank offered support. Pulling off her shoe she knelt in the mud, and hammered at the glasses with the sharp heel. The rhinestone studs cut into her hand, drawing blood. She tightened her grip on the blood-slick leather.

"Kill you! Kill you!" howled the Astronomer, groping about on his belly, hands outstretched, touching and recoiling from the various bits of detritus.

One lens broke with a sharp crystal sound. "No!"

The second.

"Kill me? You can't even see me. Where will you run to this time? They're hunting you. Who will you kill to find the power? Tachyon's coming. Then only one of you will be left. For me. Better crawl."

His face, nose burned away, mouth a pale slit, eyes red from rupturing capillaries, was turned to her. "Over, all over," he quavered. His hands dug deep into the mud, fingers squeezing shut on the noisome ooze as if remembering other, more glorious, moments.

Finally he began to crawl, and Roulette followed. Bare feet slapping on the slick mud, hem trailing, chain of her evening bag cutting deep into her shoulder from the weight of the Magnum.

Chapter Twenty-four

5:00 a.m.

The streets were finally emptying. Only the hardiest revelers were left to cry up the dawn, or the least hardiest who had passed out-or worse-and were lying like abandoned rag dolls in the street.

The Crystal Palace was about a mile from Jetboy's Tomb. Je

Bre

Big talk, she thought. Already she was missing Bre

The great edifice that was Jetboy's Tomb was a looming black silhouette before the quiet waters of the Hudson River. It looked deserted, but there was a long limousine, brother to the one Je

There was no one in or around the limo. Wyrm and the others, Je

She went quietly up the marble steps, as silent as the namesake she had chosen for herself, stripped off the cloak Bre

It's been a long day, she told herself. But soon it's going to be over. One way or another.

The tomb was vast. A full-sized replica of Jetboy's plane, the JB-I, hung from the ceiling, bathed in muted light shining from hidden lamps also hanging from the inside of the dome.

The light filtered to the floor of the tomb where it vaguely illuminated three men staring up at the plane hanging from the ceiling. She recognized Wyrm, of course, and the man called Loophole. The third was a stranger, of average size and build, his features unrecognizable in the gloom.