One Eyed Jacks

She broke off and bit down on her lower lip. Tachyon tried to reschool his features. He sensed that he looked like a stricken deer.

"He hates you."

There it was-bald, ugly, stark, the truth. He had been hiding from it for over a year.

Her shoulder was close. He laid his head against it. Cody's arm went around his shoulder.

"What am I going to do?"

"I don't know"

Like a shadow's vomit. Children in the darkness. Following. Watching. Blaise whirled, lips drawn back in a snarl. They retreated. For an instant he considered reaching out with his power. Coercing one of them. Shredding his mind. Finding the answer. Who are you? What do you want? But one thing life with Tachyon had taught himcaution. There were too many of them. He might hold eight or even ten, but their sheer numbers would beat him down.

Blaise ducked into a Horn and Hardart. Bought a sandwich and coffee. Cody had kept his jewels, God damn her. But maybe that wasn't so bad. He had taken them for her. Let her keep them and consider what she had rejected. She'd pay soon enough.

And money was better than jewels anyway. He had mind-controlled a limousine driver and the elegantly attired passenger. That had netted him almost a thousand bucks. He could go a long time on a thousand bucks. But the jewels would have been better.

The turkey sandwich was dry, the bread forming a soggy expanding mass on the back of his tongue. Blaise choked it down and wondered again where the fat old joker news vendor had come by a fortune in precious gems. Maybe he should go back to Jube's apartment and make him tell?

A slim form slid onto the stool next to him. Blaise tensed. Studied her out of the corner of his eye. He didn't bother to slide a hand down to the. 38 tucked into the waistband of his pants. His mind powers could subdue her faster than a gun could fire.

The girl was young. Fifteen, sixteen with spiky multicolored hair, deliberately tattered blue jeans, unlaced high-top sneakers.

"We've been watchin' you."

"Yeah, I know. Any particular reason why?"

"You look like you need a place to go."

"I've got plenty of places to go," said Blaise.

The girl popped gum. "What are you go

"Take care of myself."

"Think you can?"

"Know I can." And there was something in his face that made the girl edge as far away as the stool would allow.

"I'm not sayin' you can't," she said. She thrust out a hand. Blaise noticed she had bitten the cuticles into the quick. "Molly Bolt."

Blaise ignored the outthrust hand. "What do you want?"

She pulled back her hand, thumb rubbing lightly across the tips of her other fingers as if she were startled to find the hand at the end of her arm.

"Just this. You need a place to go. You ever need a team… people to handle something;.. come to pier eleven on the East River. We'll find ya."

The cold coffee had a slick oily taste. "I'll keep it in mind."

"Fine."

She was gone as quickly as she had appeared. Suddenly the well-dressed businessman seated a table away stood up, unzipped, pulled out his cock, and pissed down his own leg.

Blaise left. The food wasn't very good. And he'd lost his appetite with the realization of just who or rather what he had been dealing with.

Jumpers.

Jumpers were after him.

"Would you stop worrying? Go already. Go to Washington, and bring back that grant. Mama needs a new laser surgery center."

The co

"You. How many times per second is your foot tapping?" "You are interrupting me."

"Take the time. I'm worth it."

A slight choke of laughter as he threw her words back at her.

"Prove it to me," Cody said. "Get down to Washington, and lobby like hell." She added, "It really is a shame about Senator Hartma

The missing hand flared in agony as Tachyon remembered the bite of the assassin's buzz-saw hand. An assassin sent by Senator Gregg Hartma

"Tach, are you still there?"

"Yes, yes, sorry. Take care of yourself. I'll see you Monday." He started to hang up, then hurriedly added, "Please, please, be cautious. Be careful."

A disco

The thought chilled him.

Troll was propping his nine-foot length against the front reception desk, chatting up the Chickenfoot Lady when Blaise entered. The joker straightened abruptly, his face twisting into an expression of surprise and concern. It looked like tectonic plates in motion.

"Blaise, your granddaddy's been worried sick. Where the hell have you been? I ought to whip your ass." Troll suddenly turned, lowered his head, and ran full tilt at the far wall. He struck with a sound like a ca

Blaise walked on, brows knitted in a frown of concentration, hands thrust deep into his pockets.

Cody wasn't in her office.

She wasn't in surgery. Fi

Cody was in the morgue. What appeared to be an enormous wasp was on the table. Blaise watched as she carefully cut open the joker's chest cavity and surveyed the lungs. Cody then leaned over a small tape recorder. Her voice was so low he couldn't distinguish the words, just the soft, husky timbre like a chuckling brook. The sound made him shiver, but whether with anger or desire he couldn't say.

Suddenly Cody looked up and stared directly at him through the tiny window in the morgue door. Blaise jumped, hating that she had thrown him off balance. He stiff-armed the heavy door, and it flew open. She didn't retreat before his furious entrance. And that, too, made him angry.

"Hello, Blaise. Had a good time for the past week?"

"I've come for two things. My stones and you."

Her smile was crooked and a little hateful. "Your problem, my son, is that you've always thought your stones were bigger than they are."

" I can make you love me!" Blaise cried.

"No, you can make me hate you. Love you have to earn."

Cody was standing stock still. A pillar of ice and darkness. Blaise ran his eyes down that slim tall form. Noted her hand tucked into the fold of her lab coat. The glint of the scalpel between her fingers. He smiled.

"Cody, you're so stupid," Blaise crooned. The scalpel fell from nerveless fingers. "I don't give a fuck how you feel."

The coat fell with a sigh to the linoleum floor.

"Because I can…"

The blouse joined the coat on the floor. ". make you…"

She stepped out of her skirt. "… love me."

Had it co

But Blaise's karate training gave him a split-second warning. The young man spun away from Tachyon's thrust kick and caught his grandfather by the ankle. Floor met chin with head-ringing force, and Tachyon tasted blood as his teeth snapped shut on his tongue. He rolled to the side. Blinked in consternation as the heel of Blaise's boot slammed into the floor where his head had rested only a second before. Tachyon got his legs beneath him and bounded to his feet. Blaise charged, and the older man fended him off with the artificial hand. The digits couldn't be bent to form a proper spear hand, but the hard plastic fingers still managed to sink a satisfying distance into the teenager's solar plexus.