George Martin - Dead Mans Hand

Sascha looked like a dog who'd just been thrown a SlimJim.

"This mount has known death in a way I have never tasted," Blaise said for his master. "It has joined with the minds of the dying… tasted the sweet with the bitter, the killing with the dying… sipped at the darkness itself… yes… " Blaise turned slowly, studying the others in the basement. The thing that rode him opened its own pale, weak eyes.

"Him," the centipede man said eagerly. He pointed at Jay with half a dozen knives. "Kill him. He sent all your other mounts away, master. He's dangerous."

Eyes fixed on Jay; Blaise's violet and strangely wide, his master's vague and frightening. Jay stared right back at him. Until Hiram stepped in the way. "No," he said. "Not Jay. He's an ace."

"Ackroyd is powerful," Sascha agreed. "A projecting teleport. When he is yours, you can never be threatened again. He can point a finger and move you to safety whenever an enemy threatens."

"That is good." The eyes began to move again.

They stopped on the centipede man.

It took the joker a long moment to realize what was happening. "No, master," he said. "Not me. I'm… I'm useful, too…"

"Only a joker," Ezili said. "He wanted to kill them both. Your new treasures."

"I was afraid," the centipede said. "They were aces, dangerous, I didn't want you hurt. No, please… I just didn't want you hurt, master."

"He wanted to keep your kiss for himself," Ezili said. "In a moment he's going to attack you with his knives," Sascha reported matter-of-factly.

Blaise's eyes narrowed slightly; the knives clattered against the stone floor as they fell from limp fingers.

"Hiram, do something," Jay said. Hiram turned away.

The human centipede stood immobile, his body frozen by the power of Blaise's mind. But the boy must have left him his mouth, because he was still begging. "No, please, take one of the others," he cried in that high, sharp voice. "Take the woman… or the girl. Yes, take her. Or Charm, take Charm, he can't even talk, he's stupid, take him. Please don't hurt me, master. I love you."

"Blaise!" Jay screamed. "Let him go!" The boy didn't even turn his head.

The centipede man reached over with a half dozen of his right hands and seized the uppermost of his left arms. " I love you, master," he whimpered. " I love you, I love you." Then the words turned into a high, thin shriek of pain as he ripped the arm right off his body. Blood spurted.

"He loves you," Ezili said, smiling, as the man's bloodsoaked hands dropped the severed arm to the floor and seized the one below it. The second arm didn't come off quite so cleanly. The man began to use his fingernails, tearing at his own flesh with all the strength left in him.

Hiram walked to a corner of the cellar and threw up. Jay couldn't watch. He looked at Blaise. There was a look in those dark eyes that Jay had never seen on a human face before. The boy's penis stirred slightly and began to rise, until a monstrous erection was growing from the tangle of coppery red pubic hair. Ezili noticed it, too, and covered it with her mouth.

But when the joker's second arm came off, she took her lips away from him just long enough to say, "He loves you not."

Someone had broken in here before.

Brennan glanced at Jennifer, who was waiting below him on the rickety fire escape while he considered the bedroom window. One of its panes had been partially removed by a glass cutter. He took a deep breath and rested for a moment. His right arm, covered from wrist to elbow in a hard plastic cast, throbbed like hell. He'd been careful while climbing the fire escape, but he couldn't keep from banging it around a little.

Brennan tried the window that opened into the secondstory loft above a closed-down printing company. It was unlocked. He took a deep breath, lifted the window, and entered the bedroom.

It was dark and quiet. He motioned Jennifer to stay behind. She nodded and Brennan went through the bedroom into a part of the loft that had been subdivided into a number of small rooms. He moved through the darkness, peering into them. They were mostly bedrooms, but one had been soundproofed and turned into a torture chamber. They were all empty.

A lavish kitchen was opposite the warren of rooms. A huge living area with white carpeting formed the other half of the loft. Brennan crept down the hallway and peered into the living area. It, too, seemed empty. He flicked on the light switch. The walls were covered with weird, painted designs. Brennan approached one to look at it more closely, and a hideous, flat flap of flesh rose into the air from where it had been resting out of sight on the sofa, and swooped at him with the speed of a diving falcon. The joker's face, located on its underside, was almost human, except for the male genitalia that hung below its pale green eyes.

Brennan ducked, instinctively throwing his arm up to protect his face, and the joker rammed it, sending a wave of agony lancing through his system. He fell and lost his gun.

The thing made a tight turn and came back at Brennan again, its skin pale and pimpled, an erect spine from its underside pointing at Brennan like a lance.

There was a loud explosion, reverberating endlessly in the living room, and the thing jerked away, keening a loud cry of anger and pain. Brennan glanced up the corridor at Jennifer, who was standing braced, her pistol out and smoking. The manta-ray joker swooped at her like a spinning, rolling airplane, and she ghosted. It cut right through her and darted into the bedroom from which they'd entered. There was a crash of shattering glass as it broke through a window and escaped.

"What was that?" Jennifer demanded in a shaking voice. "I don't know," Brennan said. "A guard?"

"Well, it didn't do a very good job," she said, coming down the corridor and helping Brennan to his feet. Brennan recovered his gun and focused shakily on the designs painted on the walls of the living room. "What is that stuff?" he asked.

"Veve," Jennifer said. "Haitian religious designs. Symbols of the loas, the voodoo gods."

"I see," Brennan said, though he didn't. He especially couldn't understand what any of this had to do with Chrysalis's death. He moved almost aimlessly through the living room, tired and numb with pain and failure.

"What should we look for?" Jennifer asked.

"Anything," Brennan said in a voice with little hope. "Anything that might somehow shed light on these insane happenings. Anything that might lead us to Sascha."

He opened a door and found himself staring in a hall closet that was jammed with clothing, mostly coats of all kinds for both sexes and all sizes. The Oddity, he remembered, had been looking through Chrysalis's bedroom closet, perhaps searching for the mysterious coat that had been mentioned in Chrysalis's will.

"Give me a hand," he said over his shoulder to Jennifer. "Maybe there's something…"

He was reaching for a mink coat when he noticed a lightweight linen jacket dangling from the hook on the inside of the closet door. He took the jacket down instead, frowning as he looked at it. It was pure white linen, clean and spotless, except for an almost unnoticeable spray of bloodstains near the bottom edge. He stared at it for a long moment and then reached into its pockets. The left one was empty. The right one contained a pack of antique playing cards. He shuffled through it. The ace of spades was missing.

He looked at Jennifer. The pain, weariness, and frustration was gone from his face. His eyes were hard, his voice soft and dangerous.

"Chrysalis's killer," he said quietly, "is in Atlanta."

"Bring me my cloak," Blaise said.

The boy's mouth still glistened from Ezili's juices. Ti Malice, his eyes alive and avid, clung to his neck, talking with his tongue. When it grew quiet, you could hear a faint sucking sound, like an infant nursing at its mother's tit.