“Brian is gone,” a voice said.
It was Cameo, coming out from behind the cover of a large stalagmite that rose from the floor just inside the dragon’s lair.
“What do you mean?” Battle demanded.
Cameo held up her hand. “The ring slipped off my finger when we dove to cover.”
“Where the hell is it?” Battle demanded.
Cameo shook her head. “I’m not sure. I think it flew toward Crypt Kicker and the Dragon.”
“Let’s look for it —” Ray began, but Battle cut him off with a curt shake of his head.
“It’s too late,” he said. “Bloat must know we’re here. The only thing we can do now is keep moving, keep Bloat off-stride and confused.”
“What about Puckett?” Ray asked, looked down at the unmoving ace. “Is he really dead?”
Battle approached his erstwhile bodyguard and nudged him with his toe. Puckett didn’t respond.
“Who knows?” Battle said after a moment. “He can take a lot of damage, but that goddamned dragon really fried him. Maybe he can regenerate.”
“We’ll take him with us” Danny began, but Battle cut her off too.
“No way,” he said curtly. “The only way we’ll get out of this alive is to move fast. We can’t be lugging a body with us. Besides” he nudged Crypt Kicker again like a prospective buyer checking the tires on a used Buick — “he’s probably dead.”
“How” Danny began angrily, but Ray took her arm and stopped her.
“I don’t think there’s anything we can do for him,” Ray said. “If he regenerates it’ll be because of his ace, not because of anything we can do. But we’ll come back for him. If we can. I promise that.”
Danny nodded after a moment, and Cameo did too.
“Well, at last,” Battle said sarcastically. “Shall we move on, or should we just sit here and wait for Bloat’s minions to come get us?”
“Minions,” a choked voice said. Everyone started and looked up at the dragon. It had one eye half open. “Minions. That’s a good one. You’d better all watch your asses from now on. The penguin knows you’re here, and it’s pissed.”
“Penguin?” Ray asked.
But the dragon’s eye closed and it said no more.
The owl battered insistently against the moonlit window of Teddy’s bedroom as he watched from his bed. A thud, a rustling of angry wings, the round, tufted face glaring in at him, and the talons stretched out like grasping hands. It screeched in frustration, backed away, and launched itself at the window once more. Glass rattled in the wood frame.
“Daddy!” Teddy yelled. “Mommy! There’s an owl!”
A muffled answer came from the bedroom across the hall. “Listen to your dreams, son.” His uncle Alan’s voice.
“Where’s my daddy?”
“Listen to them. .
Teddy watched with the covers pulled up to his chin as the owl swooped out and then back once more. This time the glass bowed and shattered, and the creature fluttered into his bedroom, heading straight for him…
Whooooo?
With the query, an image came to Bloat: a squad of military types, the caverns, a recognizable patchwork face.
Jesus, no, don’t shoot —
Silence.
“Hey, fat boy, sounds like company down below.” The penguin was skating placidly in front of him — and he was Bloat.
“Shut up,” he told the penguin wearily. Listening… another voice…
Carnifex? Can’t be…
Silence again. “Kafka!” Bloat hollered, his adolescent wail breaking in mid-syllable.
“Calling for Daddy?” the penguin asked.
“Quiet!” Bloatblack pattered onto the floor; an icy dread settled somewhere deep in his vast body. He had visions of a tactical nuke, some sort of chemical weapon or something else just as nasty, set off below Ellis … Omigod, this is what they’ve been after all along.
Kafka came skittering into the hail. Dylan, bodysnatcher, Shroud, and Travnicek followed the joker. They all glanced at the penguin, who favored them with an elegant bow and doffing of its funnel hat. “Governor?” Kafka asked.
“We have intruders in the caverns,” Bloat told him. “Five of them in one group, maybe more. At least one of them’s an ace — Carnifex.”
“Where in the caverns?” bodysnatcher asked eagerly. He seemed to like Pulse’s body now; he visibly trembled with the thought of more destruction.
“The dragon’s lair,” Bloat admitted. “I don’t know how long they’ve been here. Kafka, they have to be here for a reason. The outside attacks could have been just a huge diversion, so that I — we — wouldn’t be looking underneath the Rox.”
Outside the walls of the castle, the fog was only a thin ghost of itself — another indication of his exhaustion. Through the mist, he thought he saw an owl swoop low over the island. “Send a squad of jokers down after them. I’ll send demons, but I don’t know if they’ll be enough.”
“And you’re just too damn tired to do it yourself, right, fat boy?” the penguin interjected. It spread its flippers wide at Bloat’s glare. “Hey, just an observation, Your Rotundity. Y’know, you’re losing your sense of humor.” Bloat ignored the penguin. “Tell them to be careful I don’t want anyone from the Rox hurt.”
Travnicek’s flowered, viny torso swiveled toward Bloat. “Send the toaster, then.”
“I sent him to Manhattan,” Bloat admitted. “For fresh weapons.”
Travnicek laughed. “More fool you, slug boy.”
“I’ll go,” Zelda said.
Bloat shook his head. “As much as I’d like to, I need you up here in case they start shelling again…” He stopped.
Teddy (or was he Bloat? The Outcast? He was confused) had caught the thought from Dylan, even though the man didn’t speak.
Herne could do it…
“Herne —” Bloat echoed. Softly.
“Y’know, Your Corpulence, I don’t want to mention this while you’re making all these quick, incisive policy decisions and all, but a whole shitload of innocent people died the last time Herne rode off, and he didn’t get the one guy he was after.” The penguin opened its wide mouth to grin at Dylan. “Just an observation.”
Bloat said nothing. He closed his eyes.
“So far you’re the only one who’s taking mostly defensive moves,” the penguin continued. “Seems like all the rest of these people do things like blow up destroyers and take down national landmarks. Y’know — the spectacular stuff with nice pyrotechnics. I’ll bet the nats in the caves have stuff for all kinds of pretty fireworks. What happens if they decide to nuke the Gabriel Hounds?”
When there was still no reply, the penguin skated to a dead stop below the tiny head and shoulders of Bloat, standing atop the moraine of bloatblack. “Hello? Anyone home?”
“Leave me alone.” Teddy’s voice. A cracking, adolescent rasp.
“I’d love to, but you conjured me up and now I’m part of you. I’m made, and once you make a thing, you can’t unmake it easily. It’s a burden I have to bear.”
Bloat sighed. "No,” Bloat said, looking at the jokers below him. “Not the Hunt.”
“Wait, I think sending the Hunt’s a good idea, Governor,” Kafka said. “It’ll be dark soon. We’ll send Herne after these creeps.”
Dylan shrugged, and the Manchesterian voice in his head echoed the cultured British accent that came from his mouth. “The hounds will find them, no matter where they are.”
“Send him, Governor,” bodysnatcher said. “Give him a chance after the last fiasco. I hate to agree with the roach, but that sounds like the best plan.”
“No.” Bloat sighed. So many jokers dead because of all this. Because of me “I’ll do it myself.”
“Oh, that’s a great idea,” bodysnatcher howled. “You’re a worse fuckup than Herne. You had us dig out Detroit Steel and Snotman when the mothers were buried and out of it. Now the Iron Keep’s a shell and they’re gone; Mistral too. Another gre
at decision.”
“Shut up,” Bloat said. “I know all that. You can send the Hunt if you haven’t heard from me by sundown. Until then, wait. I’ll deal with it. I can take care of them.”
He hoped he was right.
Somewhere over Staten Island, surrounded by fog, Tom realized he was never going to make it back to Manhattan.
Two more screens had gone dead. The air in the cabin was still and hot. Circuits overheating somewhere in the walls. Any moment now, he could have a full-fledged fire on his hands. He was flying half-blind as it was, and his headache was a chain saw in his skull. He’d never felt this bad before.
And Danny was in worse shape. Once the adrenaline rush had worn off, the pain from her broken leg had hit hard. The aspirin Tom gave her wasn’t nearly enough. She was hanging on gamely, but he could see her fighting not to scream.
She had to get medical help, but the Jokertown Clinic was a long way off. Bayonne was much closer. He altered course. “I’m taking you to Bayonne Hospital,” he told her as he veered across Port Richmond. Danny forced a grin through the pain. “Von Herzenhagen will be pissed again.”
“Fuck him,” Tom said. “Is your sister still at Zappa’s headquarters? The pregnant one?”
She nodded. “I’m still there.”
“Good. Tell them I quit.”
“Again?”
“This time for keeps,” Tom said. “The shell’s a wreck. It’s going to take me weeks to repair all the damage.”
“You’re not in such great shape yourself. When we get to the hospital, you’d better have them take a look at you too.”
“I’m fine,” Tom said. “A little headache, that’s all.”
Danny reached up, touched his face, just above his mouth. Her finger came away red with blood. “You’re bleeding.”
“The glass,” Tom said. “When you crashed through the TV. I must have been cut.” He’d never even felt it.
“That’s not it,” Danny said. “You’re bleeding heavily from both nostrils.”
He glimpsed the green, choppy waters of the Kill Van Kull below them on one of the screens that was still functional. “We’re almost there,” he told her.
“Let them take some X rays,” Danny urged.
“For what? A fucking nosebleed? Leave me alone, okay?”
Danny smiled, touched his hair. “Never,” she said softly.
Tom stared down at her. “Excuse me?”
“You have a real name, Mr. Turtle Sir?” Danny asked.
“Tom,” he told her. He forced himself to look away from her, back at his screens. He was twice as old as she was, for chrissakes. They’d reached Bayonne. He sailed silently over Brady’s dock and the First Street projects where he had grown up.
“Where do you live?” Danny asked.
Tom looked at her again. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
He glanced at his screens just as another one went black. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said. His head was pounding. He looked back at Danny. “It doesn’t matter where I live. You’re in no condition to be making social calls.” "So?” she said lightly. “My… sister… is already on the way from New York. Where do you live, Tom?”
Tom looked at her for a long, long time.
Then he told her.
Bloat let himself sink into dreams.
For a moment Bloat drifted like an obscene Macy’s Parade balloon just above the waves in the middle of some sunlit, choppy bay. The unspoiled shoreline was covered by trees. The whole scene had a nagging sense of familiarity to it, but he couldn’t quite place what prompted the feeling. A woman clad in a multihued sari was walking across the water toward him, her feet not quite touching the tops of the waves. “Abomination!” she hissed, and raised her hands as if to strike.
Teddy fell. The Bloat-body hit the water in a world-class belly flop. He gulped briny foam and the coldness made him gasp even through the tonnage of Bloat. His tiny, useless arms flailed desperately toward the woman, but she watched his floundering with utter dispassion. “Die,” she told him “Die and let it end.”
“No!” Teddy howled.
Bloat did not float. Teddy was sinking down in frigid darkness, pulled down by the anchor of Bloat’s mass. He closed his mouth desperately, his lungs burning as he searched for the mind-threads of power, as he tried to shake off the weariness and bring back the Outcast.
He couldn’t hold his breath any longer. Reflex forced the inhalation. Teddy waited for salty water to flood his lungs.
He gasped air instead.
He was holding his staff. A guttering torch in a wall sconce illuminated earthen and limestone walls. A corridor stretched ahead of him.
“Rough transition, fat boy,” commented the penguin, skating in from a side corridor. “But then I can swim.”
“Where?” Teddy managed to grate out. He sagged down, kneeling on the ground in exhaustion. The Outcast’s cloak rippled around him; there were muscular thighs under the brown leggings he wore. The Outcast. "We’re under the Rox, maybe a hundred yards or so out from the shore. And our sneaky little friends are just down that way.” The penguin pointed to the corridor from which it’d come. “They don’t look real happy, either.”
There were whisperings in Teddy’s head, new voices that he’d never before heard in the chorus. “Four of them,” Teddy said. “Billy Ray, someone called Battle, Cameo. There’s someone else there, a woman. I hear Carnifex thinking about her but I can’t hear her…”
“Just one big happy family, huh?”
“They’re not happy,” Teddy said. “They don’t even like each other much. And they’re here to kill me.”
Teddy got to his feet with the staff’s help. The caverns were cool; that helped too. He could feel the tenuous connection to Bloat up in the castle, which meant that the drowning dream had been just that — another dream, a nightmare.
Something scuttled past the crossing: it looked like a dog with a baboon’s face, and it was nothing that Teddy remembered putting here. The creature gave a barking hyena-like laugh and fled. “This place is getting very strange,” the penguin commented. “Or stranger than usual, I guess. Just what is it you’re planning to do, Great White Bloat?”
“I don’t know.” That was only the truth. “See if I can convince them to go back, I guess. Or take care of them myself. Whatever I have to do.”
“Excellent,” the penguin said, skating backward around him. “It’s always good to go into these things with a definite plan. of action. All the bases covered, all those nasty little contingencies plotted out”
“Shut up.”
The penguin went silent. The obedience almost startled him out of the Outcast.
He could hear them audibly now, moving down the side corridor toward the intersection. Teddy rapped his staff against the stones: the amethyst glowed once and he willed his body to go transparent. This was nothing he’d ever done before — he wasn’t sure that it would work.
It did, with mixed results. He found that the world went slowly dark as his eyes faded. Teddy cursed — or tried to — no sounds emerged from the nonexistent mouth. He brought his eyes back into corporeality and could see again. The penguin was talking but he could hear nothing, nor could he speak when he tried to speak. Teddy sighed and brought back his entire head.
“…coming toward us,” the penguin whispered.
“Come on out,” Teddy said loudly. He tried to walk — that didn’t work either. He materialized the Outcast entirely and moved toward the intersection. “This is Governor Bloat,” he called. “I can hear you. I know your names: Billy Ray, Battle, — you want me to go on?” Teddy thought about mermen; a half dozen of them, mounted on gigantic hovering fishes. They materialized in the middle of the intersection, their lances at ready. He put another half dozen of the fantasy warriors down the corridor directly in back of the startled group. They didn’t quite look as solid as usual. Teddy frowned and decided he couldn’t worry about that now.
You
aren’t Bloat, a voice thought defiantly from somewhere in the blackness of the corridor.
“I am. Did you think that I’d stay in that body if I had a choice?”
I hate this fucking place hate it…
Battle you asshole listen to him .
“My guardians in the caverns have asked you to go back,” Teddy said to the unseen intruders. “I really don’t want to kill anyone if! don’t have to. But if you insist on going on. I don’t have any choice anymore. I’ll send the Hunt.”
Teddy heard the confusion his words sowed in the group; Billy Ray’s thoughts were especially torn. Only the man’s intense loyalty toward authority figures held him. Battle was adamant, though, and his mindvoice was that of a fanatic.
Attrite the lousy bastards just get rid of them all…
Teddy could almost see them, vague shapes huddled against the rock wall twenty-five yards or so away. They’d doused the torches in the corridor; Teddy let his staff fade back into existence and trickled power through it, imaging the torches lit and guttering — they ignited with an audible whuff. “Fuck,” Billy Ray said, trying to press back against the cavern wall as the guttering light revealed them. Battle was more belligerent; he brought up his semiautomatic and sprayed Teddy’s end of the corridor.
Teddy had known that Battle was going to fire, of course. He brought power to his staff and thickened the air in front of him. Slugs whined past him and tore gory holes in the mermen and their mounts, but the bullets that would have done the same to Teddy hit gellid resistance. They slowed massively and quickly, falling like stricken bumblebees to the earth.
“I hate this goddamn place,” Battle said.
“Then leave it,” Teddy said. The crystal atop his staff blazed as he restored the mermen Battle had destroyed and bid them forward. They glided down the corridor in a wash of fishy odor and bristling spears. The intruders backed cautiously, then stopped because of the mermen behind. “Oops,” Teddy said. “Sorry,” and dismissed them. He herded Battle’s group with the advancing mermen: one step back, another.
“The fish-folk are looking kinda poorly, if I do say so,” the penguin commented at his side.
It was true; they were translucent. Teddy could see the cavern walls through them. Battle had noticed it also. He stopped, glaring at the nearest merman and spreading his chest like a baboon in heat. He flinched as the lance’s tip touched him, gritting his teeth — c’mon you bastard nightmare do your worst — and then actually smiled as the lance penetrated and came out the other side. As Teddy gaped, the merman continued its advance, walking right through Battle.