“Just the American Hero stuff,” Ana said. John was looking on, interested. DB and Kate were fidgeting, their patience stretching thin. DB pattered a riff on his torso that made people up and down the block look over. Why any of them had thought they could do this without drawing attention …
The stall owner pulled DVD cases out of the box and laid them out on his table. They were just as awful as Ana could have imagined, with all seasons of American Hero represented, most of the covers featuring particularly photogenic female contestants in various states of undress. And those were probably the least prurient covers of the bunch, because as promised he was selling a bunch of outright porn as well as other reality-based sensationalism.
“What’s that?” DB said, grabbing a pair of cases out of the guy’s hand. They all leaned in to get a better look.
Large, yellow capital letters, in a bullet-ridden font spelled JOKER FIGHT CLUB VOL. III. The image behind the words was murky, showing poorly lit figures moving in a blur. Two men—jokers, large ones, with abnormal muscles and bison-like bulk, one with horns growing from his shoulders, one with claws on his arms, beat on each other. The one who faced the camera had blood covering half his misshapen face. This didn’t look staged. It didn’t look like special effects.
“Where’d you get this?” Ana said.
“I don’t know, they just turn up.” He looked scared now, his hands shaking as he tried to grab the cases out of their hands.
She raised a brow at him, skeptical.
DB picked three or four more of the Joker Fight Club videos out of the batch. “How can you even sell this crap?” he said, disgusted.
“I gotta pay rent, just like everybody else. Those guys in the fights—they’re paying rent, too, wanna bet? You’re a joker, you know how it is.”
“And what?” Ana said. “These just magically show up in a cardboard box so you can pay your rent? Where do you get them? Who sells them to you?”
He cringed away, but Ana didn’t have any illusions that she was the one intimidating him. DB was looming, fury in his gaze.
The guy’s vestigial wings flopped weakly against his back. “These ones, the fight club ones, they come from a couple of hombres in a white van. They drop ’em off every week or so. They just dropped these off this evening.”
“Here?” Kate said. “They were here?” The ace turned to Ana. “You think maybe it’s the same people doing the American Hero DVDs?”
Ana shrugged. “Worth finding out. Where’d they go?” She glared at the joker, who pointed down the street.
“East. Turned on Houston.” Straight into Jokertown. Ana could think of a dozen scenarios where some lowlife gangsters in Jokertown had decided to go into video production and managed to snag the American Hero outtakes. Not to mention the other stuff. God, if there was a porn studio in Jokertown she didn’t want to know about it. Who was she kidding, there probably was. Never mind.
“How long ago?”
“Hour, maybe?”
DB started shoving DVDs into his coat pockets with two hands. A third threw a couple of tens down on the table. “I’m buying the whole fucking mess,” DB said. “Hand ’em over to my lawyers and let them have a crack.”
“Wait, what—” The stall owner pawed at the money. “Who do you think you are?”
DB snarled at him in answer and stalked off. Ana, Kate, and John followed.
Ana thought the guy was lucky DB’d given him anything at all and not called the cops. The joker at the stall must have realized that because he didn’t argue further. Not that anyone would argue with DB when he got into a mood like this.
Except for John, who should have known better. “So what, we’re going to search Jokertown for a white delivery van? How does that make sense?”
“What do you suggest?”
“Exactly what you said, hand it over to the lawyers and let them sort it out.”
“Because that’s worked so well for you so far.”
Ana walked with Kate, leaving the boys arguing in front of them. “Some party, huh?” she said, by way of apology.
Wonder of wonders, Kate smiled. “I’m hanging out with my friends. That was the point, right?”
“I wasn’t sure wandering Jokertown at midnight was what you had in mind.”
“We always joked about doing it when I was living down here but never got around to it. So, why not?”
“I think you wouldn’t be saying this if we weren’t quite as drunk as we are.”
Kate giggled.
DB stalked ahead like a predator on the hunt; Ana hung back, looking down side streets and alleys. At one point DB stopped somebody—a round, rubbery walrus of a joker selling newspapers out of a cart. The guy looked half amused, half worried when DB demanded to know if he’d seen a van. Amazingly, the guy pointed a direction, turning them down another street off Houston and deeper into Jokertown. Probably just to get rid of the angry seven-foot-tall man in front of him.
Ana had paused to look down another side street when she saw it: a white van if not the white van. She could just make it out in the light from a streetlamp bleeding into the alley. The back doors were open, and two jokers were hauling a third into the back. The third guy, a huge, lumbering man with muscles layered on muscles, covered with ropy, elephantine skin, seemed to be sick. He wasn’t standing on his own, and his head lolled to his shoulder. His friends were probably taking him to the hospital. She wondered if they needed help.
“Hey,” Ana said. “Everything okay?”
The first two jokers—one of them slick-skinned with fishy eyes, the other with a second set of arms that were actually tentacles, or vegetative tendrils, or something green and sinewy—looked at her with round, shocky eyes. Instead of answering, they rushed, shoving their charge into the van and slamming the doors.
That was when she noticed the elephantine joker’s hands were tied behind his back.
“Hey!” she yelled, while thinking that this was all about to go very wrong in a minute. “Hey, stop!”
DB and the others hand turned back to look at her. She shouted, “Somebody call the police!” She patted her pockets—she usually had her phone in her pocket, where was it?
Tires squealed, filling the alley with smoke and the stink of burning rubber, and the van roared backward, out of the alley, toward Ana. All she could do was stare.
Then she fell, yanked out of the way by three powerful arms, and she crashed against DB’s bulk as he pulled her in to the brick wall of the adjacent building.
“Ana, Jesus, you okay?” he asked, propping her up while she regained her feet.
Meanwhile, the van screeched into the street and made an awkward turn before racing down Suffolk. A couple of other cars slammed on brakes and wrenched out of the way. Nobody crashed, but car horns blared.
“The van, those guys in the van, they grabbed someone, it’s a kidnapping!”
Kate threw something. She must have had a whole handful of something, because half a dozen projectiles zipped past Anna, crashing into the retreating van with the pings of bullets. Something popped. The van kept moving, rocking on a blown tire.
DB ran after the van. Ana called for him to stop, but he didn’t listen.
“Who are those guys?” John asked, joining her along with Kate.
Ana said, “I don’t know, they just bundled some guy into the back of the van.”
“Well, looks like a party,” Kate said, and ran to follow DB.
John had his phone in hand, and Ana sighed with relief. “You call the cops?”
“On the way,” he said. “Not sure what else I can do.”
“You can help me keep Kate and DB from getting themselves killed.”
She thought he might argue, but he snorted and took off running after the others.
Somehow, the van was still going, throwing off sparks from its naked rim; smoke poured out the exhaust. A couple of taxis swerved, tires screeching, but DB and Kate ignored the chaos. Kate cocked her arm back, threw another m
arble, but the projectile fell short and blew a crater in the street. DB’s chest swelled, six hands beating a tangled rhythm along his torso, building, speeding, until he arched his back and let out a wave of sound, a sonic sledgehammer. Ana ducked and covered her ears.
The shock wave caught the van, which lifted off its back wheels, tipped, and tumbled to its side. There were screams, more screeching tires and confused taxis. People running, and Ana wondered how bad this was going to get, and what she could do about mitigating the collateral damage. Her instinct was to get to ground and build a wall—raise enough earth to cordon off the street, isolate the van, keep the kidnappers from escaping. And perpetrate a couple million dollars of damage to the city’s infrastructure in the process. She could already hear the press conference after that. So, no. She felt suddenly useless.
She ran toward the van along with John, Kate, and DB. Sirens sounded in the distance. The driver’s door was open, the fish-eyed joker driver hauling himself out with impossibly muscular arms. His whole body slithered, powerful and agile, springing to the side—now top—of the van. His huge mouth bared to show needle teeth. Bulging, lidless eyes rolled over his shoulder to look at his pursuers, then he jumped to the far side of the van and out of sight. Kate reached to the ground for a piece of debris and threw. Ana didn’t see it land, but heard an explosion. A puff of smoke rose up from the next block. Kate and DB kept running. Ana and John stopped at the van.
“The other guy’s unconscious,” John said, looking in through the shattered windshield.
The back doors, crumpled and warped, had swung open. Ana looked inside to find two jokers, the elephantine guy and one other, equally muscular and tough-looking, hands and feet and tentacles tied up, mouths gagged. They’d flopped to the side of the van—now the bottom—unconscious. She hoped they were only unconscious.
The blaring sirens rounded the corner—two patrol cars fishtailing onto Suffolk. “Freeze! Everybody freeze!” one of the cops yelled through a loudspeaker.
The guy in the passenger seat of the van, the joker with vines for an extra set of arms, had woken up. Bleeding from a gash in his head, he managed to crawl to the back of the van and wrestle Ana for the door. Shoving, he knocked her back. He was holding a gun.
“John!” Ana called, dodging to the front of the van to take cover. “Cops are here! Where are Kate and DB?”
John pointed down the street, around the next corner. They’d gone after the driver. Great.
The order came again. “You two! Freeze!”
A shot fired from the back of the van. Cursing came over the loudspeaker behind them, the gunman fired again, and the orders to freeze turned into orders to put the gun down. Ana figured the police had better things to do than go after her and her friends.
“Go!” Ana yelled at John, and they took off, turning onto the next street.
The desk job hadn’t been kind to her stamina. Not that she’d ever been in great shape, but she used to do better than this. Two blocks of running and she was heaving. John was ahead of her and pulling away.
Ahead, he hesitated. Rounding the corner in her turn, Ana stumbled up against him in time to see DB go down, screaming. He’d grabbed the fish-eyed joker—who was tall, it turned out. DB only had a few inches on him. The six arms should have given him an advantage, but the joker had done something, let loose some crackling bolt of energy, sparking like a Van de Graaff generator. DB went limp and fell, and the joker fled.
Ana’s heart skipped a few beats and she had to concentrate to get her legs moving again. She was afraid of what she’d find when she reached him. “Michael!” she called when she did get moving again, and dropped to the ground beside him. The big joker groaned. Alive, at least.
John yelled down the street, “Kate, stop!”
“I can catch him!”
“He’ll kill you!”
“What do you care?”
A pause, and he yelled, “What do you mean, what do I care?”
“Find me something to throw, damn it!”
“Michael?” Ana asked, hand on his uppermost shoulder.
“Wha … happen…” An arm went to his forehead, and the other five flailed as if attempting to tread water.
“The guy zapped you. You okay?”
“Ung…” He rolled over and vomited.
Now that she had time to use her own phone, she fished it out of her jeans pocket. “I’ll call an ambulance.”
“No, no, I’m … shit, I feel like a truck hit me. Don’t call an ambulance. Where’s the fucker?” He slowly rolled over, propping himself on one hand, wiping his mouth with another. Ana tried to help him up when it looked like he was going to fall over, and grunted with the effort. Guy was big.
“You sure you’re okay?”
Something blew up down the next street. An explosion, followed by a pattering of debris. “The hell?” DB asked. Leaning on Ana, he managed to climb to his feet. He was trembling, and the tympanic membranes on his torso hummed with a sympathetic vibration.
“I don’t think you should go running after them.”
“Bullshit, I’ve been through worse than this.” He took off, limping.
Another explosion sounded. “Was that one of Kate’s?” DB asked.
“Yeah,” Ana said, sighing.
“Should I be worried about her or the other guy?”
Good question. “John’s looking out for her.”
“That loser can’t do jack shit.” He limped, winced, rotated a couple of sets of shoulders.
“Give him a break, Michael.”
“Why should I? He had it all. Kate—the most beautiful, most amazing girl in the world—she picked him and he threw it back in her face. He broke her heart.”
She’d done a pretty good job of breaking John’s, too, but DB wouldn’t listen to that. He might be okay with him and Kate not being together now. But he’d always regret the might-have-been that he’d lost.
That wasn’t why Ana winced and looked away, trying to turn the expression into a smile. “I suppose I can always go for runner-up.”
“What? Ana, hey, that’s not what I—”
“There they are.” Ana trotted ahead.
They found John and Kate standing on the next corner, peering around to an empty storefront on Orchard. Periodically, she hurled debris—broken glass, smashed soda cans—at the building. She’d just thrown a piece of brick, which landed with another blast, a shower of concrete. John handed her the next projectile. They argued.
“You really think I don’t care if you live or die?”
“John, no, that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean? Is that what you think about me?”
“You always make these arguments about you, you know that?”
“What arguments? We haven’t said a word to each other in over a year!”
Ana interrupted. “Where’d the fish guy go?”
“Kate’s got him pinned down there,” John said. Sure enough, the fish-eyed man lurked in the shadows of the shop’s interior, hanging back from Kate’s wall of destruction. Occasionally, he waved his gun and random shots fired, pinging off the brick wall above them. They ducked back behind the corner, except for Kate, who hurled another missile. Another chunk exploded out of the storefront across from them, but the joker was still there, moving back into the building, gun in hand.
“I’m calling the cops, telling them we’re here,” Ana said, punching the number into her phone.
DB huffed. “As long as you do all the talking when they get here. You’re the diplomat.”
She wasn’t, really. More like a bureaucrat. Pencil pusher, desk jockey. Babysitter?
The joker tried to make a break for it again, creeping up to a broken doorway. Kate threw, and the guy stumbled back in a panic. “I should just go in there and take him down,” DB grumbled. “Drum him out of there.”
“And have him blast you again?” Ana said. “No. We wait for the cops.”
“If he doesn’t s
hoot us all first,” Kate said. “I can’t get to him as long as he keeps hiding. Maybe if I bring the whole building down on top of him…”
She’d already gotten a good start on that.
“Sure hope they have insurance,” DB said. He was grinning.
“Are you actually enjoying this?” Ana said.
“Beats a press conference,” he said, and she couldn’t argue.
Kate glared. “Are you guys going to help or just stand there staring?”
“I thought I was helping,” John said.
“That’s not what I meant—”
“Kate—”
The gunfire from the storefront had stopped. The street had gone quiet; a car horn from a few blocks away echoed, and a distant police siren sounded. No fish-like movement flickered in the shadows of the broken glass and brick wall.
“Did you get him?” Ana asked.
“No,” Kate said. “He’s gone.” She growled and threw the piece of glass at the nearby wall; it popped like a firecracker and left a mark like a bullet hole. They ducked as debris pattered around them.
Kate pointed at John. “You made me lose him.”
“I made you—”
The siren rang out behind them now, and a squad car came through the intersection, barreled toward them, and screeched to a stop a few feet away. Ana’s first impulse was to run. Which said a lot about the situation, didn’t it?
“What the hell are you people doing?” The first cop who stepped out of the car might have been a joker, or a nat with an unfortunate set of features—bulging eyes, scraggly hair.
His partner was definitely a joker. Her shape was enough off the human norm to draw attention, though she ended up being more fascinating than ugly. She was barrel-chested, rib cage hinting at huge lung capacity and vast stamina. Below that she was wasp-waisted, and her legs were powerfully muscled. She was shaped like a greyhound, built for running. No getting away from her.
And she was pissed off. “No. Oh, no, not you guys. Goddamn ace vigilantes. I hate ace vigilantes.”