Ace in the Hole

  Spector nodded stiffly and didn’t breathe until the door closed. They knew about Baird. Not that it mattered now, with him leaving town. Still, the sooner he got the fuck out of here, the happier he’d be. He sat on the bed and flipped open the briefcase. Little computer and compact disc player, plenty of other crap, just like Tony’d said. He snapped it shut and headed to the bathroom for a drink of water. The city was baking again today, with no relief in sight. He set the briefcase down next to the toilet and was reaching for the tap when he heard the voices.

  Whoever they were, neither one of them sounded very happy. Spector put his ear to the wall. His stomach turned over when he figured out who was arguing. Tachyon. He’d recognize that fucker’s prissy little voice anywhere. And he was chewing on Hartmann. Spector sat down on the toilet and hoped no one came into the room while he was listening in.

  The dizzying drop to the Marriott lobby lay before him. Tach noticed in a detached and clinical sort of way that his hands were gripping the balustrade so tightly that his knuckles had gone white.

  Just climb out there. Past the safety wires. Let go. A long fall into peace. A chance to finally rest. To not be responsible.

  Tears burned his already aching eyes, but the despair passed quickly. He was a prince of the House Ilkazam, and his line did not breed cowards.

  Squaring his shoulders he faced the door of Hartmann’s suite. Perhaps as Hiram believes there is some logical explanation.

  But Digger Jay claimed he witnessed Hartmann watching with pleasure as a hunchback ace with hands like buzz saws eviscerated Kahina in the office of the Crystal Palace.

  And last night that same hunchback had attempted to kill Sara and Jack.

  He killed Andi, he killed Chrysalis, and now he’s going to kill me … me … me … ME.

  The rap of his knuckles on the door sounded loud in the hall. From below the sound of merrymaking drifted upward. Gregg was going over the top, top, top!

  And I’m out of time, time, time.

  Carnifex opened the door. He seemed shrunken somehow. Misery lurked in his green eyes.

  “I need to see the senator, Billy.”

  The ace indicated with his free hand. Tachyon entered the suite. Gregg was seated in a chair by the window, rolling a drink between his palms.

  “Celebrating?”

  The senator glanced up in surprise. “Well, not just yet, but soon I expect. Where have you been? I sent Jack to look for you. I wanted you to visit Ellen with me.”

  Tachyon stared at that smooth face. The laugh lines about the eyes. The sensitive mouth that had tightened in anger as the senator had been confronted with barbarism in Syria and South Africa. Tachyon’s power quivered like a live thing, but he held it in check, terrified to penetrate the mind behind that familiar, friendly face.

  Tachyon stirred slightly. His continued silence seemed to be angering Hartmann.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? I’m about to get the nomination.”

  “Send Ray away.”

  “What?”

  “Send him away.”

  Hartmann rolled expressive eyes toward the ace. Clearly a humor him expression. The agent nodded and left.

  “Now Tachy, what’s this all about? Drink?” He hefted the bottle.

  “You are an ace.”

  Gregg barked out a laugh. “Really, Doctor, you’ve been working too hard—”

  “I tested the blood on the jacket you wore in Syria.”

  For a brief instant the man went rigid. But the face he presented to Tachyon was bland.

  “I deny it. Categorically.”

  “It is written in your blood.”

  “The wrong jacket. The wrong blood. A plot by my enemies.”

  “The wrong blood.” Tachyon rolled the words about his mouth, tasting them. “Yes, you did deal in the wrong blood when you had Chrysalis killed.”

  “I had nothing to do with Chrysalis’s death.”

  “You left too many loose ends, Senator. Digger, Sara. It’s unraveling, all of it.”

  “No one will ever believe them. Or you.”

  “I have the blood test.”

  “And you’ll never publish it.” Hartmann grinned, reading the answer in Tachyon’s face. “Even assuming it were true, which it’s not.” He refilled his glass, and lounged back on the sofa exuding confidence.

  “A touch of my power, and you’ll lie naked before me,” warned Tachyon. “I can see you. Read the truth of what you are.”

  Naked panic twisted the politician’s face. He leaped up from the sofa, bourbon darkening the carpet as the glass fell from his hand. “This is insane, you’ve lost your mind. Ray. RAY!”

  Tachyon hit him. Hard. Two swift body blows to Hartmann’s gut. Anger gripped the alien like a physical force. He was trembling with rage and betrayal. Gregg tottered backward, clutching his stomach, mouth working as he gasped for breath.

  Tachyon’s power lanced out, gripped the human, brought him upright. He could see the terror in the human’s eyes as he stood helpless in the grip of the Takisian’s mental imperative.

  He stepped into a place of putrescence. Slitted eyes burning with rage and hatred regarded him. A thing beyond all imaginings. Puppetman. It howled and fought, twisting as Tachyon, with the precision of a surgeon, laid back the years like flaps of rotting skin. Read a tale of death and pain and terror.

  The frenzied greedy feeding as the baby and Gimli fell away into darkness. Sucking at Ellen’s pain and fear. Rising lust as a joker, freed of all restraint, fell upon a woman and brutally raped her. A blood feast in Berlin as the maddened and unpredictable puppet Mackie Messer shredded his former companions. Hot-wet and salty. Mackie’s emotions as he had sucked on Gregg’s cock. Bribing and then murdering the technician who had blood tested him. The crunch of bone as Roger Pellman slammed a rock into Andrea Whitman’s face. Tasty. Tasty. An orgasmic sensation. Bloated and distended the thing fed upon the helpless, the lonely, the afraid.

  So strong were the emotions and memories that Tachyon felt an answering heat in his own groin even while his stomach heaved with disgust. He screamed in fury that this thing, this monster could draw upon his own darkest nature.

  Puppetman laughed, a swirling, nauseous mass of violet and red. Tachyon formed himself into a silver and crystal blade. Flew at the monster. Beat it back into its den. Threw up bars of flame. It was the most terrifying and powerful construct the Takisian had ever encountered.

  Withdrawing into his own body Tachyon became aware of the stench of his own sweat, the violent trembling that shook his body. Hartmann sprawled on the sofa.

  “You will never be president. Never!”

  Gregg rose slowly, the action filled with menace. Loomed over the tiny alien. “You can’t stop me. How can you stop me … us, little man?”

  The Takisian retort rose without thought, but Tachyon suppressed it before it could pass his teeth, Kill you. No, the last thing he could do. Sudden death would lead to autopsy, and autopsy to … ruin.

  Spinning on his heel he left the room.

  Spector pushed his fist against the wall until he could hear his knuckles begin to crack. He gripped the knob to the adjoining door and tried to turn it. No luck. He took a deep breath, picked up the briefcase, and walked back into the bedroom. He set the briefcase down on the bed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

  Hartmann was playing them all for suckers. Tony had gotten the shit kicked out of him for nothing. The jokers in the park were supporting a fraud. The fucker was an ace, and a crazy one at that. He was a damned kingpin, just like the Astronomer, manipulating people into doing his dirty work while keeping his own hands clean. Spector gritted his teeth. He’d fallen for Hartmann’s line, too. And he didn’t like getting caught with his pants down. Rage boiled the pain up inside him. He had to do something, what he’d been hired to do in the first place.

  Tachyon would probably be useless. He was so choked on his own fucking sense of self-importance that he’d figure withdrawing his suppo
rt was enough. What a pathetic, little jerk. Treating the symptom instead of the disease, as usual, and leaving someone else to do the really hard work.

  Spector was too pissed off to tell how long it had been since Tachyon left the senator’s room, but he could still hear Hartmann moving around next door. Now was the time to nail him, before any more Secret Service showed up. He straightened the shoulders on his jacket, stepped out into the hall, and paced over to Hartmann’s door. His hand was on the knob when he heard someone call out.

  “Who are you?”

  Spector pulled his hand away from Hartmann’s door like he’d taken an electric shock and turned to the sound of the voice. It was Jack Braun, and the Golden Boy looked suspicious and unhappy. Spector didn’t think, he ran. He could hear heavy footfalls as Braun came after him.

  Spector sprinted down the hallway and yanked open the door to the stairwell. Something grabbed his forearm as he stepped through. A tall, blond Secret Service agent tried to spin him against the wall. Spector knocked off the man’s glasses and locked eyes. Why wouldn’t these Hitler youth refugees let him alone? Golden Boy came through the doorway just as the dead agent hit the floor.

  Jack sat downstairs at Hartmann HQ and ate pizza, waiting for Tachyon to finish his meeting with Hartmann. The mood was generally jubilant. Hartmann was less than a hundred votes from the 2,082 necessary to win, and it looked as if all the efforts of a platoon of secret aces might not be able to stop his progress. Flying Ace Gliders soared across the room. Amy Sorenson was laughing as she chatted in the corner with Louis Manxman. Even Charles Devaughn was occasionally allowing moments of cheerfulness to break through his scowling self-involvement.

  Still, Jack worried. He needed to talk to Tachyon. Barnett was going to have to resort to desperate measures, and Hartmann’s guardians needed to be prepared. He finished his pizza and headed across the room to where Amy was talking to the journalist. “Excuse me,” he said, “but has the senator finished with Tachyon yet?”

  Amy looked up at him with a relaxed smile. “Tachyon? He might still be up there. Don’t know.”

  “Thanks.” Amy seemed surprised at his curtness. Jack turned and trotted toward the door, passing Billy Ray, who, napkin in hand, was trying to get tomato sauce and cheese off his white suit.

  Jack took the elevator up to Hartmann’s floor. An undistinguished-looking man with an acne-scarred face was trying the knob to Hartmann’s door. Alarms began going off in Jack’s mind. He started moving faster.

  “Hey,” Jack said. “Who are you?”

  The man looked up in surprise, then bolted.

  Jack’s own surprise nearly halted him in his tracks before he remembered he ought to chase. He dug his toes into the carpet and charged.

  This one, he thought, wasn’t going to get away. The man was heading for the only stairway on this corridor, and Alex James was posted there. Between Alex and Jack, this character was not about to make his escape.

  The intruder ran full tilt into the metal stairwell door, throwing it open with a booming crash that echoed even in the silent hallway. The door slammed shut. Over the whimper of wind in his ears, Jack heard the sounds of a scuffle.

  Then he heard a scream.

  The marrow-chilling wail, the ultimate sound of terror and despair, turned Jack’s nerves to fire.

  The scream bubbled away.

  Jack lunged forward like a base runner diving for second and hit the door bar with both hands. The door thundered open, then slammed to a stop: Jack bounced headfirst off the metal as it stopped his dive. He growled as he ripped the door off its hinges, his power bathing the hallway in lucid golden light.

  Alex James was lying on the landing, his face still set in a rictus of his final shriek, hand on the butt of his pistol. A chill danced up Jack’s spine as he saw the face, and for the first time he realized the assassin might be a wild card.

  Too bad for him, Jack thought.

  No playing with this one. He wasn’t letting this assassin get away like the hunchback.

  Footsteps rattled on the stairway as the assassin spun around the metal guardrail at the bottom of the first flight. Jack caught a glimpse of a pale, scarred face and wild hair as the intruder ran down steps four or five at a time. Jack didn’t bother to follow him down the stairs—instead he just vaulted the rail and dropped straight to the bottom of the second flight.

  The assassin was right under him as he dropped—Jack kicked out as he came down, and his lashing foot caught the assassin in the side, hurling him off a wall and down onto the landing. Jack dropped to an easy crouch and spun to face the assassin. The man, face drawn with shock and pain, was picking himself up off the stained concrete.

  Triumph roared like a hot wind through Jack’s heart. Jack jumped in front of the assassin, planted both feet, and shot out a punch.

  The man saw it coming and tried to jerk his head out of the way, but Jack’s punch caught him in the side of the jaw. A spray of blood spattered the rough concrete wall. The assassin bounced off two different walls and pitched full length down the third flight of stairs, landing on his side. Jack’s feet broke traction and shot backward. His upper body fell forward onto the palms of his hands.

  Jack picked himself up, heart hammering, and shook blood from his knuckles. The assassin wasn’t moving. Jack stepped cautiously toward the killer.

  Something crunched under one foot. Jack lifted his heel and saw it was one of the assassin’s teeth.

  Streams of blood poured down the stairs from the killer’s mutilated face. The crushed jaw was hanging by a strip of skin.

  Jack winced. He really needed time to get used to the results of serious violence, and he hadn’t had it. He hadn’t been in a fight since the Stacked Deck put down in Paris.

  He knelt by the man and looked at the blood-spattered face. Maybe he’d seen the man before.

  The killer’s eyes opened and stared into Jack’s.

  Death reached out from the man’s eyes and seized Jack by the heart.

  There was blood everywhere, and all of it was his. Spector grabbed his dislocated jaw, took several deep breaths, and jammed it back up into the socket. He blinked away the tears, but not the searing pain. Spector stood slowly and leaned against the concrete wall.

  Golden Boy wasn’t moving and didn’t seem to be breathing either. Spector hadn’t really figured he could hurt Braun, much less kill him, but was happy to be wrong. This was no time to be impressed with himself. He had to move. The fight had been quick, but noisy, and more Secret Service would show up any minute.

  He slipped off his shoes with his free hand and started down the steps. One flight. Two flights. He wouldn’t be far enough away until he lost count. They could test the blood from the landing and find out he was an ace. A killer ace. He pressed the edges of his torn cheek together with his thumb and forefinger. The flesh began to knit itself together. Was it ten flights now? How many floors would that be?

  A door opened in the stairwell above him. Spector moved to the far wall and hugged it as he descended. He knew there was someone above him, looking up and down for a hand on the rail or someone looking back. He wasn’t going to make that mistake. But what was his next move? He still had the key to 1031. It was risky, but he couldn’t think of anything else.

  His sides were killing him. Golden Boy had broken a couple of his ribs, too. Spector was breathing okay, though; at least his lungs hadn’t been punctured.

  He stopped at the landing on the tenth floor and took off his coat. His jaw had stayed connected to his skull, that was something, but he wouldn’t be talking for a while. Spector used his coat lining to wipe the blood from his face and neck. Some of it was already crusting over and he had to scrape it off with his fingernails.

  There were voices and rapid footfalls from above. Spector couldn’t tell how far away they were or even if they were headed down. He was a dead duck here, though. That much was a sure thing. He spit into his palms and rubbed his hands over his face, trying to get any remai
ning bloodstains off. His jaw still felt like there was a circus strongman trying to pull it off.

  Spector slipped his shoes back on and opened the door, then stepped out into the hall and made sure it shut quietly behind him. He folded his coat over his arm so that no blood was showing and walked slowly toward the open-air atrium.

  The lobby area was more crowded than the hallway, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to him. He coughed as a bit of dried blood came loose in the back of his throat. A man at the railing turned and gave him a glance, then looked back up into the airshaft.

  “Golden Boy,” the man said, drunkenly, and pointed with an unsteady hand. Spector stared straight ahead and quickened his pace. He caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. A Golden Boy glider spiraled slowly toward the ground floor. Spector knew it would hurt to smile, so he didn’t try. He’d killed Braun and the Astronomer. Who else in the world could have done that? If he could get close enough to Hartmann it wouldn’t matter that the senator was an ace. Spector would take him out, too.

  He turned down his hallway and walked to the door of 1031. He’d gotten away again. It was almost like somebody was on his side. Maybe God was trying to make up for all those years of shit. Keep it up, Spector thought. He slipped his key into the slot, waited for the green light, and went in.

  “The airline ticket was made out in the name George Kerby.”

  Ackroyd’s voice went very shrill on the final two words. Tachyon pulled his computer key out of the door, and pocketed it. As he stepped in, he heard Hiram rumble, “Tickets in the name of a ghost.”

  From Ackroyd. “Yeah, a ghost. A specter.”

  “James Spector!” Hiram said.

  “And both George Kerbys came back from the dead,” Jay said. “She hired that son of a bitch Demise.”

  Their backs were to him. They hadn’t noticed his quiet entrance.

  “We have to let them know,” Hiram said. He crossed the room, picked up the phone, and punched for the operator. “Connect me to the Secret Service.”