Standing next to them was a tiny perfect doll of a girl. She was beautiful enough to catch the breath in a man’s chest, a golden blonde with dark blue eyes glittering with unshed tears … and maybe eighteen inches tall if she stretched. How the hell did they ever? Franny cut off that line of thought with a mental knife.
“Are you the police officer who was with our son in … in Kazakhstan?” the woman asked.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m Francis Black.”
“Could we talk with you? We’d like to hear…” Her voice faded away.
The jokers, displaying that uncanny sensitivity that seemed to be a hallmark of all of them, moved away.
Franny led the couple and the tiny girl over to a corner near the wrought-iron stand of prayer candles. The flickering flames brought sections of their faces into momentary sharp relief, a jigsaw puzzle picture of grief.
“Did he die a good death?” Bill Norwood’s voice grated like metal dragged across rock.
The question would have taken Franny aback if during conversations with Jamal while they had waited for a suspect to show up he hadn’t learned that Big Bill Norwood had been a football coach. In fact his son’s coach. It was the kind of tough, show-no-pain response Franny would have gotten from his maternal uncle who coached his hockey team up in Saratoga.
“I don’t know that any death is good, sir,” Franny replied. “He died brave, if that’s what you mean. His actions saved a lot of people.” He gestured toward the nave of the church. “A lot of them are here tonight. Reunited with their families because of your son.”
Maxine Norwood and the tiny joker girl Julia were quietly crying. Julia fluttered over to him, her feet scarcely seeming to touch the ground. “Jamal was sick. Why the heck did he go?”
“Jamal was a law enforcement officer. He knew his duty and he did it.” Franny swallowed hard. “I am sorry for your loss,” he said formally. The recommended course for grief calls was to leave it at that, but he felt he couldn’t. This death had been personal for him, too. “I didn’t know Jamal long, but we became friends. I’m grieving for him, too.”
Maxine gave him a quick hug, and Bill gave him a buffet on the shoulder. Julia hugged him around the waist. He accepted the comfort offered by this physical contact. He needed it after what he’d heard in Baba Yaga’s hospital room.
Franny headed for the door. Bill called after him, “Don’t know what you two did over there, but you seem to have unleashed hell.”
Franny hunched his shoulders, dug his hands into his pockets, and fled.
FRIDAY
IT WAS A LONG and restless night, ending at first light. The Angel had slept fitfully, and was stiff, sore, and hungry when she awoke.
The fog glowed phosphorescent green, eerily energized by its unknown source, but it was shot through with other colors as well. Brief bursts of colors, acinetic white like a burst of fireworks, arterial red like a burst of blood from a severed jugular, pops of green like the lures of the fish who live so deep under the sea that the phosphorescence they themselves generate are the only light they ever see. Once during the night she’d awoken to what she thought was a rumble of thunder and saw a long, sinuous beast, a snake or maybe an eel, with fantastic mouth feelers twitching before its wide-opened jaws, swimming through the night, its lolling tongue lifting a human-sized and -shaped object. She thought she heard a feeble but terrified scream but she was tired and her eyes still smarted from the touch of the fog on the previous day and after she’d blinked both the shape and its perhaps imagined victim were gone.
“Hey, guys,” a feeble voice came from the back, “I gotta pee.”
“Well, go pee,” the Angel managed.
“Can you give me a hand?” Bugsy asked. “I’m kind of tired. Really tired.”
“I’m not?” the Angel said, but she got out of the SUV and went around to the back door and half helped, half dragged Bugsy from the vehicle.
“Why am I so tired?” Bugsy complained. “I didn’t lose that many wasps.”
He leaned on the Angel as they shuffled a few feet away.
“You can’t afford to lose what little muscle you’ve got.” Her face screwed up “You better not be peeing on my leg—”
“Sorry,” Bugsy mumbled.
“It’s this place,” the Angel said quietly, looking around at the desolation. “It’s sucking the life out of everything. Zip up.”
“I gotta have something to eat,” Bugsy croaked.
“I’ve got some food in my duffel,” the Angel said. “Let’s hunt up Tinker.”
“Maybe we better get out of here. I mean, look at us, just three of us, here, and some Kazakhs—”
Tinker came striding from down the road and heard Bugsy. “Guess again.”
“The Kazakhs are gone?” Bugsy repeated numbly.
“That’s what I said, hoon.” Tinker didn’t look pleased. “I was up all night—couldn’t sleep if I tried.” The Angel thought he looked more haggard, more worried, and angrier than yesterday. “I didn’t hear them bugger off last night, but I heard … things moving around us in the buildings.”
“What kind of things?”
“Who the hell knows, sonny boy,” Tinker suddenly yelled. “Awful, horrible, slimy, choking, killing things. And they’re coming after us!”
“What about the others?” the Angel said quietly.
“The others?” They both turned to look at her.
“Bubbles, Earth Witch, Lohengrin, the rest … the ones who already went in.”
Tinker bit his lip.
“How’s the communications with Babel?”
“Not good,” Tinker said. “There’s plenty of interference. Static. Weird whistling sounds. Voices, almost, like someone else on the line…”
“Let’s give it a shot,” the Angel said. “Call Babel.”
Tinker nodded and got on the radio, but it was worse than he’d said. All they could hear was a steady stream of sharp, staccato static with momentary instants of lucidity that produced a stray word or short phrase. Some words were not in Babel’s voice; some were not even in English or any earthly language.
The occasional burst of insane laughter added a frission that crawled up the Angel’s spine like a spider with icy feet.
“SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSScomeSSSSSSSSSSLohehenSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.fghtagnmwalwltSSSSSSSSSSSSHAHAHAHASSSSSSSSSSpleaseSSSSSSSSSSSSwrckggugghh…”
Tinker shut the radio down with a savage, jerky motion.
“It won’t get better,” he muttered.
“It won’t,” the Angel agreed quietly. She knew what she had to do. She didn’t want to do it. She knew, in her heart, that Billy would never want her to go alone and unsupported back into that hell but she knew sure as hellfire and damnation that he, himself, would be the first one in. “I got out once. I can do it again.”
She went around the back of the SUV and took out her duffel bag. She dumped all its contents on the ground. She divided her food and water into two piles, one twice the size of the other.
“You don’t have to do this,” Tinker said as Bugsy shuffled forward, eyeing the cache of food.
The Angel shook her head. “We all came on this journey together. You remain loyal to those you come with. Billy taught me that simple fact. If we can’t stand for each other, how can we stand against the Adversary?”
“The Adversary?”
“The Foe. The Enemy. The Devil.”
“There ain’t no Devil.”
“There assuredly is. I have seen him and I have battled him many times in his many forms. I have known him for many years, as have we all. In our own ways we rage against the Night. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.”
Tinker nodded.
“Keep trying to raise Babel to let them know what kind of hell this place has become. But for God’s sake—get out if things get too dicey.”
“Don’t worry about us,” Tinker said
.
She remembered the spider pack from the day before. “Here’s something important to tell HQ if you can get through. Tell them that I’ve seen things in Talas that I saw when Billy, John Fortune, and I had taken our ride with the Highwayman. Can you remember that?”
Tinker nodded. The Angel glanced at Bugsy, who was eyeing the stack of food on the ground. “Bugsy?”
“Yeah. Got it.” He snagged a package from the bigger pile and Tinker reached down and smacked him in the head.
“Hey!”
“Don’t eat it all,” the Angel warned. “You don’t know how long that’ll have to last.”
The Angel packed the smaller portion of supplies into her belt pockets. It didn’t take long, because there wasn’t very much. She stood and hooked her last full water canteen on the belt next to the food. Food was one thing, but there had to be potable water somewhere out there in Talas. After all, millions of people inhabited the city only a couple of days previously.
“Take care, mate,” Tinker said.
She smiled, said her prayer, and her wings came upon her. She smiled her good-bye and rose slowly and majestically into the air and was gone, as if borne away on a gentle wind.
After they arrived at the UN, Agent Ray herded Mollie to an office with a view of lower Manhattan from many stories up. The window faced south; the East River flowed to her left. A misty night, but she could make out the spotlights on Jetboy’s Tomb in the far distance. The shingle on the office door read BARBARA BADEN.
Baden and Ray stepped out for a moment, so Mollie tried to rack out on Baden’s leather sofa while they went to round up whomever it was they wanted Mollie to meet. Nice couch, but the anxiety had her curled into such a tight fetal ball that her back and neck ached like somebody had tried to use her vertebrae for a xylophone.
Somebody’s executive assistant (“I’m Juliet, but call me Ink.”) poked her head in to ask Mollie if she needed anything. Nobody seemed to care or notice it was the middle of the night. Working at the UN must suck if it meant keeping such hours.
“I’d lick a spider for a decent cup of coffee.”
She expected it to come in a paper cup, like from a vending machine. But she got an actual ceramic mug. It even had a logo: THE UNITED NATIONS COMMITTEE ON EXTRAORDINARY INTERVENTIONS.
Two things went through her head at the same time. One: The Committee has its own coffee mugs? That seems a little douchey. Two: Shit, shit, shit. Crapsticks. Shit.
She should have realized the Committee would be involved. This was a problem. Noel Matthews had been working for, or maybe with, the Committee when he recruited her to help steal the Nshombos’ gold. Were people still angry about how that went down? Crap.
The coffee wasn’t terrible. Before she finished it, Agent Ray and Baden returned with a short man. The slightly tubby guy introduced himself as J. C. Jayewardene.
Baden said, “Thank you, Ms. Steunenberg, for agreeing to meet with the Secretary-General and me on such short notice. We appreciate it.”
Mollie’s mouth went dry. Bad enough that Ray had come all the way to Idaho just to put Mollie in a room with the de facto leader of the Committee. But the goddamned Secretary-General of the goddamned United Nations? Didn’t he have diplomats and world leaders to harass? For somebody like him to make time for a stupid hick from potato country, she figured the situation had to be pretty fucking grim.
Was it ever.
Because, while the sun rose and Ray stood in the corner with his arms crossed, Baden and Jayewardene sat down and proceeded to tell Mollie the worst story she’d ever heard. Worst not because it was unbelievable—oh, she believed it all right, because only something absolutely terrible could explain what happened in Talas and in the barn—but because it was so fucking hopeless. The end of the world and supernatural evil and aces going batshit like the baby eaters in Talas … Jesus. Mollie and her family had nearly killed each other after just a few minutes. How long had that team been stuck over there?
Compared to this, Mollie’s role rounding up jokers for the fight club was positively heroic. Sure, she’d been forced into it, and a lot of those people had died, but at least it had helped to keep the unstoppable world-consuming evil at bay, though she hadn’t known it at the time.
Nothing the UN guys said made her the least bit interested in participating or helping. Helping meant voluntarily getting exposed again to that … that … whatever it was. Horrorshow. Hellraiser. Those were the names they used. She’d rather kill herself before she experienced that again. She’d kill her loved ones, too, if she had loved ones, before the malignant madness had a chance to take them. And not in a psycho face-eating pitchfork-murdering sort of way. Gently. To save them from something worse.
Despite having received the full download from Baba Yaga, Agent Ray and the others still thought there was a way to fight this. What an idiot. They couldn’t understand. Not really. They hadn’t been inside it. Hadn’t embraced the madness as it took them. Hadn’t welcomed the veil of scarlet rage as it settled over their minds.
She stood and crossed to the window again. The view of Jetboy’s Tomb seemed fitting. A monument to failure. He at least had had a fighting chance. But against Horrorshow, nobody stood a fucking chance.
She tried to make them see. Pointing at the logo on her mug, she said, “Your team is dead.”
So fierce was the look flashing across Ray’s face that Mollie took a step back. He trembled as though tensing for a physical fight. “You don’t know that! You don’t know my wife! She could … Nobody knows what’s going on over there.”
“I know!” Mollie shouted. “I know. I’ve been inside it, okay? A rage-slave to mindless supernatural evil. You don’t know what it’s like! You have NO MOTHERFUCKING IDEA.” People in the outer office turned to stare. She ignored them. “You can’t imagine it. There’s no fighting it. I don’t care who you are. My dad and brothers put each other in the hospital in just a few seconds. At least two of them will never have normal lives, assuming they survive their injuries. Taking a crowbar to the face half a dozen times will do that to a person. And they’re just nats, all of them! Chew on that for a moment. You’re talking about trying to rescue aces who’ve been inside it for hours.”
Baden said, gently, “We have to try to save them.”
“And you’re the only person for the job,” said Jayewardene. He had a very gentle manner, quite welcome in contrast to Ray. “So will you please help us? You could save many lives.”
“I understand,” Baden said, “you have a rather, ahh, colorful record.” (Agent Ray snorted. “That’s one word for it.”) She ignored him, continuing, “In return for your help, we could arrange to wipe the slate clean.”
Wow. They really were desperate. But that meant Mollie had bargaining power. Leverage. Good. She could salvage something good out of this nightmare. Because she didn’t give a runny shit about her “record”—she wanted something else, and these guys had the power to make it happen. So if they wanted her help so badly, they’d have to earn it.
Mollie said, “Here’s my condition. I want to talk to Baba Yaga first.”
That shut them up. After a moment’s bewildered silence, Ray said, “A little while ago you looked ready to drop one in your pants when you thought she was at your farm.”
She glared at him. “You said you needed my help. I’ve listened to your story, but now it’s my turn. And I won’t lift a fucking finger until you put me in a room with Baba Yaga.” And maybe not even then. Not if it means returning to the psychopath cannibal hellhole. “But if that vodka-marinated cunt even thinks of hocking a loogie at me—”
“She won’t,” said Baden. “We’re all on the same side here, okay?”
“Okay,” Mollie said, not fully convinced. “Fine. Let’s go and see that withered old bitch. Where is she?”
In a hospital, it turned out. (Good.) Ray recited an address in Jokertown. Mollie thought for a moment, did some arithmetic with cross streets. She had dozens of portal sites i
n New York, and she’d memorized locations at various hospitals and medical clinics after Ffodor had harped on her about it, but the Jokertown Clinic wasn’t one of them.
Hospitals … She never could have gotten Dad and the boys to the doctors in time if not for Ffodor’s advice, she realized. She shook her head so hard it wrenched her neck. Yet still the regrets clung to her like cobwebs.
To keep from crying again, she said, “I can’t get us there in one shot. My closest site is about five blocks from there.”
Ray looked impressed. “That’s actually pretty close.” Mollie didn’t like the way his eyebrows hitched together, as though he were thinking through a puzzle. “How many sites do you have memorized in New York?”
“A lot.”
The SCARE agent was a lot sharper than he looked. He said, “Wow. Rounding up all those jokers must have been hard work. I feel for you.”
When Michelle woke, she was alone.
The fog curled around her like an obscene lover. It was misting again, but the cold had changed to a suffocating heat, just like the jungle in the PPA. She got up. It was difficult. The punch from Ana’s dirt wall had given her a surge of fat. It wasn’t as much as she’d handled before, but she hurt now. Really hurt. And that frightened her.
Looking around, she saw she was in the jungle. In the distance, she could hear Monster roaring. The last time she’d encountered him, she’d battled him to a standstill, but now she wouldn’t be able to. Not when something as minor as Earth Witch’s wall had thrown her for such a loop. She took a step and groaned.
No, no, no, she thought, a cold shiver running down her spine. This can’t be happening. How will I protect Adesina? Screw that freak. I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for that creature. She should have left her in that charnel pit with the rest of those monstrosities.
Nonononononono. I love Adesina. Michelle clung to the thought, but it only flickered in her mind for a moment.