Dead Mans Hand wc-7 Read online

  "Now!" Ti Malice said in Blaise's voice. The boy's body jerked in orgasm. Ezili's legs tightened around him, and she laughed.

  5:00 P.M.

  Jennifer was awake when Brennan returned to Father Squid's. She and the priest were playing chess. When she saw him, she stood and threw her arms around him and kissed him, then held him at arms' length. "Why did you let me sleep through all the excitement? You almost got yourself killed without me!"

  "Almost," Brennan agreed. He threw himself down on the sofa and sighed deeply.

  "What's the matter?" Jennifer asked.

  Brennan shook his head. "It's all gone. I've used up all the possible clues. There's nothing left to investigate. Bludgeon, Oddity, Wyrm, Morkle, Quasiman. None of them did it. Her journal was no help. Her… files… have been burned. Everything and everyone else has vanished into thin air. Sascha, Ezili, her master…"

  Jennifer sat down beside him and laid her hand on his cheek.

  "Is there no one else to question?" Father Squid asked. Brennan shook his head wearily. "I don't think so, Father."

  "There's me," a small voice peeped.

  Everyone turned to see one of the homunculi come out shyly from behind the couch.

  "How long have you been there?" Father Squid asked. "Awhile. I was watching. There is nothing else I can do."

  "Can you help?" Brennan asked, desperate for any information. "Have you heard of any of those names?"

  "Ezili," the homunculus said. "I've heard that name."

  "Yeah," Brennan said. "A lot of people have. Only no one knows where she is."

  "Perhaps she's at the loft."

  "Loft?" Brennan said, suddenly sitting upright on the sofa.

  "Yes. When Sascha started acting strange, the Lady wanted to know about this woman he was seen with. We followed her to a loft near the East River. Two of my brothers went there, but they never came back."

  "Do you remember this address?" Brennan asked in a low voice.

  "I think so," the homunculus said.

  Jennifer looked at Brennan. "You're not going alone this time," she said.

  Brennan nodded. It was only a few hours until dark.

  "I'll make it get up and do a little dance," Blaise had said when he'd first seen Charm in Piedmont Park. The memory had still been there, in the back of the boy's mind, and his master had found it and been amused.

  Charm had been dancing for almost forty minutes now. One of the pairs of legs, attached to the female body in the middle, had stopped moving twenty minutes ago, but the rest of the joker continued its grotesque shuffle.

  When Charm finally collapsed in exhaustion, the huge body slumped against the couch, jolting it sideways almost a foot. The silence that followed was profound and frightening.

  Sascha and the centipede man entered the room. "Does it please you?" Sascha asked.

  "Very much," Ti Malice replied through Blaise. "It feels intensely, and when its mind takes hold of another's, it feels the other's emotions as well as the physical sensations… so much to savor, all at once… flavors, colors… the textures of two or three bodies… exquisite…"

  "A treasure," Ezili said. She sat on the mattress, one arm coiled around the boy's skinny leg. Both of them were still naked.

  "His powers will be useful, master," Sascha pointed out. "Any mount you might desire is yours now, even the most powerful of aces. The boy can bring them to you, and hold them still, helpless, while you take them."

  "Yes," the creature had Blaise say. "You've done well. You shall have the kiss soon, my dear one."

  Sascha looked like a dog who'd just been thrown a SlimJim.

  "This mount has known death in a way I have never tasted," Blaise said for his master. "It has joined with the minds of the dying… tasted the sweet with the bitter, the killing with the dying… sipped at the darkness itself… yes… " Blaise turned slowly, studying the others in the basement. The thing that rode him opened its own pale, weak eyes.

  "Him," the centipede man said eagerly. He pointed at Jay with half a dozen knives. "Kill him. He sent all your other mounts away, master. He's dangerous."

  Eyes fixed on Jay; Blaise's violet and strangely wide, his master's vague and frightening. Jay stared right back at him. Until Hiram stepped in the way. "No," he said. "Not Jay. He's an ace."

  "Ackroyd is powerful," Sascha agreed. "A projecting teleport. When he is yours, you can never be threatened again. He can point a finger and move you to safety whenever an enemy threatens."

  "That is good." The eyes began to move again.

  They stopped on the centipede man.

  It took the joker a long moment to realize what was happening. "No, master," he said. "Not me. I'm… I'm useful, too…"

  "Only a joker," Ezili said. "He wanted to kill them both. Your new treasures."

  "I was afraid," the centipede said. "They were aces, dangerous, I didn't want you hurt. No, please… I just didn't want you hurt, master."

  "He wanted to keep your kiss for himself," Ezili said. "In a moment he's going to attack you with his knives," Sascha reported matter-of-factly.

  Blaise's eyes narrowed slightly; the knives clattered against the stone floor as they fell from limp fingers.

  "Hiram, do something," Jay said. Hiram turned away.

  The human centipede stood immobile, his body frozen by the power of Blaise's mind. But the boy must have left him his mouth, because he was still begging. "No, please, take one of the others," he cried in that high, sharp voice. "Take the woman… or the girl. Yes, take her. Or Charm, take Charm, he can't even talk, he's stupid, take him. Please don't hurt me, master. I love you."

  "Blaise!" Jay screamed. "Let him go!" The boy didn't even turn his head.

  The centipede man reached over with a half dozen of his right hands and seized the uppermost of his left arms. " I love you, master," he whimpered. " I love you, I love you." Then the words turned into a high, thin shriek of pain as he ripped the arm right off his body. Blood spurted.

  "He loves you," Ezili said, smiling, as the man's bloodsoaked hands dropped the severed arm to the floor and seized the one below it. The second arm didn't come off quite so cleanly. The man began to use his fingernails, tearing at his own flesh with all the strength left in him.

  Hiram walked to a corner of the cellar and threw up. Jay couldn't watch. He looked at Blaise. There was a look in those dark eyes that Jay had never seen on a human face before. The boy's penis stirred slightly and began to rise, until a monstrous erection was growing from the tangle of coppery red pubic hair. Ezili noticed it, too, and covered it with her mouth.

  But when the joker's second arm came off, she took her lips away from him just long enough to say, "He loves you not."

  9:00 P.M.

  Someone had broken in here before.

  Brennan glanced at Jennifer, who was waiting below him on the rickety fire escape while he considered the bedroom window. One of its panes had been partially removed by a glass cutter. He took a deep breath and rested for a moment. His right arm, covered from wrist to elbow in a hard plastic cast, throbbed like hell. He'd been careful while climbing the fire escape, but he couldn't keep from banging it around a little.

  Brennan tried the window that opened into the secondstory loft above a closed-down printing company. It was unlocked. He took a deep breath, lifted the window, and entered the bedroom.

  It was dark and quiet. He motioned Jennifer to stay behind. She nodded and Brennan went through the bedroom into a part of the loft that had been subdivided into a number of small rooms. He moved through the darkness, peering into them. They were mostly bedrooms, but one had been soundproofed and turned into a torture chamber. They were all empty.

  A lavish kitchen was opposite the warren of rooms. A huge living area with white carpeting formed the other half of the loft. Brennan crept down the hallway and peered into the living area. It, too, seemed empty. He flicked on the light switch. The walls were covered with weird, painted designs. Brennan approached one to look at
it more closely, and a hideous, flat flap of flesh rose into the air from where it had been resting out of sight on the sofa, and swooped at him with the speed of a diving falcon. The joker's face, located on its underside, was almost human, except for the male genitalia that hung below its pale green eyes.

  Brennan ducked, instinctively throwing his arm up to protect his face, and the joker rammed it, sending a wave of agony lancing through his system. He fell and lost his gun.

  The thing made a tight turn and came back at Brennan again, its skin pale and pimpled, an erect spine from its underside pointing at Brennan like a lance.

  There was a loud explosion, reverberating endlessly in the living room, and the thing jerked away, keening a loud cry of anger and pain. Brennan glanced up the corridor at Jennifer, who was standing braced, her pistol out and smoking. The manta-ray joker swooped at her like a spinning, rolling airplane, and she ghosted. It cut right through her and darted into the bedroom from which they'd entered. There was a crash of shattering glass as it broke through a window and escaped.

  "What was that?" Jennifer demanded in a shaking voice. "I don't know," Brennan said. "A guard?"

  "Well, it didn't do a very good job," she said, coming down the corridor and helping Brennan to his feet. Brennan recovered his gun and focused shakily on the designs painted on the walls of the living room. "What is that stuff?" he asked.

  "Veve," Jennifer said. "Haitian religious designs. Symbols of the loas, the voodoo gods."

  "I see," Brennan said, though he didn't. He especially couldn't understand what any of this had to do with Chrysalis's death. He moved almost aimlessly through the living room, tired and numb with pain and failure.

  "What should we look for?" Jennifer asked.

  "Anything," Brennan said in a voice with little hope. "Anything that might somehow shed light on these insane happenings. Anything that might lead us to Sascha."

  He opened a door and found himself staring in a hall closet that was jammed with clothing, mostly coats of all kinds for both sexes and all sizes. The Oddity, he remembered, had been looking through Chrysalis's bedroom closet, perhaps searching for the mysterious coat that had been mentioned in Chrysalis's will.

  "Give me a hand," he said over his shoulder to Jennifer. "Maybe there's something…"

  He was reaching for a mink coat when he noticed a lightweight linen jacket dangling from the hook on the inside of the closet door. He took the jacket down instead, frowning as he looked at it. It was pure white linen, clean and spotless, except for an almost unnoticeable spray of bloodstains near the bottom edge. He stared at it for a long moment and then reached into its pockets. The left one was empty. The right one contained a pack of antique playing cards. He shuffled through it. The ace of spades was missing.

  He looked at Jennifer. The pain, weariness, and frustration was gone from his face. His eyes were hard, his voice soft and dangerous.

  "Chrysalis's killer," he said quietly, "is in Atlanta."

  10:00 P.M.

  "Bring me my cloak," Blaise said.

  The boy's mouth still glistened from Ezili's juices. Ti Malice, his eyes alive and avid, clung to his neck, talking with his tongue. When it grew quiet, you could hear a faint sucking sound, like an infant nursing at its mother's tit.

  Hiram came forward with the cloak. It was heavy purple felt, the inside lined with black satin. He helped Blaise into it, fussing with the drape the way he sometimes fussed with Jay's suits. The cloak was too long for Blaise; the end of it trailed in the dirt. Hiram made adjustments. Then he lifted the voluminous hood, pulling it forward over the boy's head, concealing the bright red hair and the thing riding on his back. With the ties knotted around his throat, his face shadowed, Blaise looked like a hunchback.

  "I will ride this mount into the world," Ti Malice announced through Blaise. "Ezili, you will accompany me. Dress."

  Ezili rose from the mattress, sleek and lazy as a cat. Her smooth, coffee-colored skin was still spattered with blood. She saw Jay watching her, smiled, and ran a tongue across her lips as she bent to pick up her dress.

  "Hiram," Jay said, begging, "please." The thought of Blaise wandering through the streets of Atlanta, with his awesome mind-control powers at the disposal of Ti Malice, frightened him witless. "You don't realize how powerful Blaise is. You don't know what you're turning loose."

  Ezili laughed as she slipped into her dress, pulled it down around her breasts. "Are you sure of that, little one?" Hiram didn't hear a word. "When will you return?"

  "When I grow bored with the new mount," Ti Malice replied in the boy's familiar voice. Blaise reached up, touched Hiram's beard, gently stroked his cheek. "You shall not want for my kiss," he promised. Hiram smiled.

  "What about Ackroyd, master?" Sascha asked.

  Blaise turned his body. The boy's violet eyes stared at Jay, and he could almost feel the other eyes on him, the ones hidden in the blackness beneath the hood. "I will try the other mount when I return," Blaise said. "Keep it safe for me."

  Jay tried once more. "Hiram!" he yelled.

  Hiram opened the cellar door. Blaise swirled his cloak around him as he turned, and climbed up into the Atlanta night.

  Monday July 25, 1988

  4:00 A.M.

  The nightmare came again. The woods, the steps, the cone-faced thing turning, turning…

  Jay woke in darkness, screaming.

  "Jay?" a deep voice asked. "Are you all right?"

  Dimly, through the dark of the cellar, he could see Hiram looming above him, a vast shadow. Jay struggled against his bonds, gave it up, slumped back with a groan.

  "No," he said in a hoarse whisper. Ti Malice had been gone for hours. "I'm not all right. I'm tied up in this stinking cellar, I had to watch some poor bastard rip himself apart with his bare hands, Blaise is out doing God knows what, and in a little while a giant maggot is going to fasten itself to my neck and suck my blood, so I'm not all right."

  Somewhere in the middle of that Jay's whisper had turned into a scream. He heard Charm stir, woken from sleep. Then the joker began to sing "The House of the Rising Sun." It was just what Jay needed.

  Hiram sat on a corner of the old sofa, shoulders slumped. "I'm sorry," he said weakly. "If there's anything I can do…"

  "You can untie me," Jay said quickly.

  "Sascha would know the moment I began," Hiram said helplessly.

  "So?" Jay said. "What's Sascha going to do? Charm's strong, but you're an ace, dammit. You can handle him. This is the best chance we're going to get. Once my hands are free-"

  "I can't, Jay," Hiram said, cutting him off in a voice thick with despair. " I would if I could, but… Jay, I'm sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen, you have to believe that."

  "I believe it," Jay said gently. Hiram sounded weary, and heartsick, and full of pain. There was a long silence. "How long?" Jay finally asked.

  "A year and a half," Hiram replied. "It happened on the tour. In Haiti. Ezili was his lure. I deluded myself into thinking I was seducing her, but of course it was the other way around. Afterward, when I'd dozed o$; she opened the door, and the master took me in my sleep. Once I was his, he used me to smuggle him into the United States. I had money, influence. It wasn't difficult at all."

  "This is your chance to break free," Jay urged. "Use it." "It's been the ruin of many a poor boy,'Charm sang softly. "And me, by God, I'm one."'

  Hiram could not look at him. He shook his head. "Untie me," Jay whispered. "That's all you need to do. Simple. I'll handle the rest, just get my hands free. You don't even have to watch. I'll pop you to the Jokertown Clinic, you can get treatment for… for whatever he's done to you. Do it now, Hiram. We don't know how much time we have left."

  "You'd hurt him," Hiram said. His voice broke. "You don't understand… his kiss, it's like… words can't describe it, Jay. When you're part of him, it's as though you're alive, for the first time in your life. You feel such intense pleasure. Food, drink, sex, even the simple act of breathing, it
all becomes intoxicating… but when he leaves you, when he moves to another mount… that's like dying, Jay. The world turns gray, and after a week or so, the physical withdrawal sets in. You can't imagine the pain. You crave him. It's a hunger, and if it's not fed…" He looked up, his eyes imploring understanding. "Besides, he's not evil, not the way you and I understand it. Without his mounts, he'd die. He needs us, just as we need him. It's just that his morality is… different than ours."

  "In New York," Jay said, "after Sascha had run to Atlanta with your little pal, I found a torture chamber in his apartment. Not to mention a body in his bathroom."

  "Yes," Hiram said. He looked away again. "A mount. One of the jokers." His voice was so low that Jay could barely hear it over Charm's singing. "Sometimes… pain is different from pleasure, he says, but just as… as interesting. The sensations of death are… especially… especially…"

  "I got it. He tortures his more expendable mounts to death to get a few jollies, right? But he's not bad, just misunderstood." He snorted. "Hiram, that thing defines evil."

  For a long time, Hiram Worchester said nothing. There was only Charm's guttural singing from the next room. But finally Hiram's lips moved, so weakly that Jay did not catch the words.

  "What?" he whispered.

  Hiram turned his head. "Foul… oh God, Jay, you don't know what it's been like… so many times, I just wished for it to be over… that he'd kill me the next time… but I'm too powerful, you see. I'm an ace. He wants aces… wants the powers… I'll never be free. And you… it'll be the same…"

  "No way," Jay said. "Hiram, don't let him take me."

  "I can't hurt him! I told you."

  "Then hurt me," Jay said. "Kill me, if it comes to that. But don't let him take me." He never thought he'd hear himself beg for death, but his flesh was crawling at the very thought of Ti Malice. It would be like his nightmare, but this time he would never wake, this time it would go on and on forever.