John Miller - Death Draws Five

Ray smiled. It was not the simple grin the Angel had seen earlier. It was not a reassuring sight to the Angel’s eyes. “That,” Ray said, “I can promise.”

Osiris grinned back, while Thoth grimaced like a vulture.

“No need to disturb you further,” Ray said. “We can see ourselves out.” He made a gesture of farewell to the old men, who bowed as Ray grabbed the Angel’s hand and hustled her back into the house.

“What did he tell you?” the Angel demanded.

“Where the kid is,” Ray said, smiling.

“How’d he know?”

Ray shrugged. “He’s a prophet. He sees things.”

“He’s a pagan!” the Angel said.

Ray shrugged again. “So?”

They went through the house. The Angel shut the front door carefully behind them. “So where is he?” she asked, her concern and aggravation growing.

“Now?” Ray asked.

“OF COURSE NOW.”

Ray grinned. She felt like punching him. “Osiris isn’t sure. He thinks somewhere in New York City. Some kind of jail, or hospital, or something.”

“That’s helpful,” the Angel said as they slid into the front seat of the car.

Ray twisted around and looked at the Angel. “But soon,” he said with a smile that had a tinge of crazy, “he’s going to camp.”

“Camp?” she repeated, as Ray started the car, gunned the engine, and then took off at a sedate pace up the driveway, and the rutted desert road beyond.

New York City: St Dympna’s Home for the Mentally Deficient and Criminally Inclined

Since he had the rank accorded an ace and was also a perfecti in the Allumbrados, Nighthawk had a private room set aside for his use in St. Dympna’s, though he rarely took advantage of that dubious perk.

The place made his skin crawl. Back in the mid-nineteenth century up through the latter part of the twentieth, when Dympna’s was a going concern run by a nursing order of the Church, it had housed hundreds of patients within its grim stone walls. Most were kept in the large dormitory-like rooms on the first floor, segregated by sex, if not always by mental malady. The private rooms on the second floor had been reserved for more affluent patients, while the third floor was for the staff. No one ever said much about the basement and what went on in there, not even now.

Officially, Dympna’s had closed some time in the 1970s and stood empty for over two decades before coming to Contarini’s attention. Interested in strengthening his power base, the Cardinal had secretly activated the decrepit pile of stones for use as a training station for credenti, the lowest rank of the brotherhood. The basement rooms also made a fine storage place for those who angered or inconvenienced the Cardinal.

Cameo currently occupied one of those basement rooms. Or, perhaps more accurately, cells. Nighthawk had hoped to spirit her away almost immediately upon their arrival, but the old horror pit was alive with unexpected activity. Usually staffed by a few sleepy credenti and some new recruits in the dormitory-like rooms on the first floor, now it was swarming with gunmen babbling about the day’s events in Vegas.

No obsequenti were present, but Nighthawk had learned from a couple of credenti that Butcher Dagon and the Witness had actually succeeded in their mission of capturing the Anti-Christ and had bought him back, bound, from Las Vegas. The Witness had gone to the Waldorf to report to the Cardinal (At least Contarini would be somewhat mollified, Nighthawk thought, by the success of the second prong of his master plan.) and Dagon was in the third floor infirmary, along with several injured credenti, recovering from wounds sustained in the boy’s snatch and grab.

The purported Anti-Christ now occupied a cell in the oubliette, probably next to Cameo, under close guard. Security was at an unprecedented peak. The old asylum hadn’t been as tightly locked down since ‘57 when an ace-powered psychopath had escaped the oubliette and slaughtered thirty-seven patients in the dormitory before being over-powered by a mysterious patient from the second floor who’d been catatonic for almost a decade before suddenly waking and stopping the carnage by seemingly draining the psychopath’s mind. The cryptic ace/patient had then escaped St. Dympna’s in a manner unknown to the rumormongers who delighted in telling such horror stories about the history of the old sanitarium.

Nighthawk could well imagine the torments a sensitive like Cameo was suffering while being locked in a cell that had housed generations of drooling psychotics, but there was nothing he could do except bed down in his tiny room on the third floor, wait awhile, and hope that something would break for the better in the coming hours.

He needed the rest, anyway. He wasn’t as young as he once was, though he was younger than he used to be.

Las Vegas: The Mirage

It was late afternoon by the time Ray and Angel got back to Vegas and had dinner at an all you can eat buffet. At first he tried to keep up with her, plate for plate, but gave it up after the fourth helping. She could eat like a bastard. It was a good thing, he thought, that she was so frigging active, otherwise she’d look like a balloon.

After dinner they’d gone down to the police station and tried to get an interview with Dagon, but the local donut chokers went coy on them. They wanted an order from Ray’s superior, and since Ray didn’t particularly want them to know who his current superior actually was, they left the station saying they’d come back. But they didn’t.

They didn’t know where the kid would be for at least a day, so the only constructive thing Ray could think of was to try to get Angel into the sack, but it would have been easier to break into maximum security to interview Dagon.

Ray lay in his bed in the Mirage alone, trying hard not to think of Angel on the other side of the connecting door. It had been a long, not very productive couple of days. Sure, he’d gotten to kick some ass, but those frigging Allumbrados had managed to get away with the kid, Peregrine was laying in a hospital somewhere with tubes stuck into her arms, and as yet he hadn’t even managed to get a chuckle out of Angel, let alone a civil word.

That Witness, though...

Ray added his name to the list of jerks whose ass he’d like to kick. He didn’t like the way Angel had looked at him when they’d first come face to face. He especially didn’t like the way the pretty boy had treated her. It’s one thing to best someone in combat. It’s another thing to humiliate them. Ray hated bullies, and it was clear that this Witness was one.

But maybe Angel had learned a lesson. She’d done okay after initially putting herself in a hole by letting the Witness get the upper hand. Ray had thought about stepping in to even things up a bit, but he knew how he’d feel if someone had done that to him. It wouldn’t have made him happy.

And speaking of being not happy, Ray thought. He leaned over to the phone, suppressing a groan as his still unknit ribs scraped against each other, and got an outside line. He dialed a number he knew well, and it was picked up on the second ring.

“President Leo Barnett’s office.”

“Alejandro?” Ray asked. Of course it was the kid. Who else would answer in that irritatingly perky manner? “Gimme Barnett.”

There was a brief silence. “Uh, sorry, mis—uh, Billy. No can do. He’s in closed conference with Sally Lou.”

Ray was about to ask, At this time of night? but instead grinned sourly at the phone. “Is that what they’re calling it now?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” Ray said. “Listen, you been following events here?”

“Yes, sir,” the kid said. “President Barnett’s not real happy.”