George Martin - Dead Mans Hand

Hiram came forward with the cloak. It was heavy purple felt, the inside lined with black satin. He helped Blaise into it, fussing with the drape the way he sometimes fussed with Jay's suits. The cloak was too long for Blaise; the end of it trailed in the dirt. Hiram made adjustments. Then he lifted the voluminous hood, pulling it forward over the boy's head, concealing the bright red hair and the thing riding on his back. With the ties knotted around his throat, his face shadowed, Blaise looked like a hunchback.

"I will ride this mount into the world," Ti Malice announced through Blaise. "Ezili, you will accompany me. Dress."

Ezili rose from the mattress, sleek and lazy as a cat. Her smooth, coffee-colored skin was still spattered with blood. She saw Jay watching her, smiled, and ran a tongue across her lips as she bent to pick up her dress.

"Hiram," Jay said, begging, "please." The thought of Blaise wandering through the streets of Atlanta, with his awesome mind-control powers at the disposal of Ti Malice, frightened him witless. "You don't realize how powerful Blaise is. You don't know what you're turning loose."

Ezili laughed as she slipped into her dress, pulled it down around her breasts. "Are you sure of that, little one?" Hiram didn't hear a word. "When will you return?"

"When I grow bored with the new mount," Ti Malice replied in the boy's familiar voice. Blaise reached up, touched Hiram's beard, gently stroked his cheek. "You shall not want for my kiss," he promised. Hiram smiled.

"What about Ackroyd, master?" Sascha asked.

Blaise turned his body. The boy's violet eyes stared at Jay, and he could almost feel the other eyes on him, the ones hidden in the blackness beneath the hood. "I will try the other mount when I return," Blaise said. "Keep it safe for me."

Jay tried once more. "Hiram!" he yelled.

Hiram opened the cellar door. Blaise swirled his cloak around him as he turned, and climbed up into the Atlanta night.

Monday July 25, 1988

The nightmare came again. The woods, the steps, the cone-faced thing turning, turning…

Jay woke in darkness, screaming.

"Jay?" a deep voice asked. "Are you all right?"

Dimly, through the dark of the cellar, he could see Hiram looming above him, a vast shadow. Jay struggled against his bonds, gave it up, slumped back with a groan.

"No," he said in a hoarse whisper. Ti Malice had been gone for hours. "I'm not all right. I'm tied up in this stinking cellar, I had to watch some poor bastard rip himself apart with his bare hands, Blaise is out doing God knows what, and in a little while a giant maggot is going to fasten itself to my neck and suck my blood, so I'm not all right."

Somewhere in the middle of that Jay's whisper had turned into a scream. He heard Charm stir, woken from sleep. Then the joker began to sing "The House of the Rising Sun." It was just what Jay needed.

Hiram sat on a corner of the old sofa, shoulders slumped. "I'm sorry," he said weakly. "If there's anything I can do…"

"You can untie me," Jay said quickly.

"Sascha would know the moment I began," Hiram said helplessly.

"So?" Jay said. "What's Sascha going to do? Charm's strong, but you're an ace, dammit. You can handle him. This is the best chance we're going to get. Once my hands are free-"

"I can't, Jay," Hiram said, cutting him off in a voice thick with despair. " I would if I could, but… Jay, I'm sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen, you have to believe that."

"I believe it," Jay said gently. Hiram sounded weary, and heartsick, and full of pain. There was a long silence. "How long?" Jay finally asked.

"A year and a half," Hiram replied. "It happened on the tour. In Haiti. Ezili was his lure. I deluded myself into thinking I was seducing her, but of course it was the other way around. Afterward, when I'd dozed o$; she opened the door, and the master took me in my sleep. Once I was his, he used me to smuggle him into the United States. I had money, influence. It wasn't difficult at all."

"This is your chance to break free," Jay urged. "Use it." "It's been the ruin of many a poor boy,'Charm sang softly. "And me, by God, I'm one."'

Hiram could not look at him. He shook his head. "Untie me," Jay whispered. "That's all you need to do. Simple. I'll handle the rest, just get my hands free. You don't even have to watch. I'll pop you to the Jokertown Clinic, you can get treatment for… for whatever he's done to you. Do it now, Hiram. We don't know how much time we have left."

"You'd hurt him," Hiram said. His voice broke. "You don't understand… his kiss, it's like… words can't describe it, Jay. When you're part of him, it's as though you're alive, for the first time in your life. You feel such intense pleasure. Food, drink, sex, even the simple act of breathing, it all becomes intoxicating… but when he leaves you, when he moves to another mount… that's like dying, Jay. The world turns gray, and after a week or so, the physical withdrawal sets in. You can't imagine the pain. You crave him. It's a hunger, and if it's not fed…" He looked up, his eyes imploring understanding. "Besides, he's not evil, not the way you and I understand it. Without his mounts, he'd die. He needs us, just as we need him. It's just that his morality is… different than ours."

"In New York," Jay said, "after Sascha had run to Atlanta with your little pal, I found a torture chamber in his apartment. Not to mention a body in his bathroom."

"Yes," Hiram said. He looked away again. "A mount. One of the jokers." His voice was so low that Jay could barely hear it over Charm's singing. "Sometimes… pain is different from pleasure, he says, but just as… as interesting. The sensations of death are… especially… especially…"

"I got it. He tortures his more expendable mounts to death to get a few jollies, right? But he's not bad, just misunderstood." He snorted. "Hiram, that thing defines evil."

For a long time, Hiram Worchester said nothing. There was only Charm's guttural singing from the next room. But finally Hiram's lips moved, so weakly that Jay did not catch the words.

"What?" he whispered.

Hiram turned his head. "Foul… oh God, Jay, you don't know what it's been like… so many times, I just wished for it to be over… that he'd kill me the next time… but I'm too powerful, you see. I'm an ace. He wants aces… wants the powers… I'll never be free. And you… it'll be the same…"

"No way," Jay said. "Hiram, don't let him take me."

"I can't hurt him! I told you."

"Then hurt me," Jay said. "Kill me, if it comes to that. But don't let him take me." He never thought he'd hear himself beg for death, but his flesh was crawling at the very thought of Ti Malice. It would be like his nightmare, but this time he would never wake, this time it would go on and on forever.

Hiram Worchester stared at him with sudden wonder on his broad face. "Kill you," he murmured. His fingers flexed, closing slowly into a fist, then opening again. "He would be angry, Jay… so very angry, you can't imagine. Perhaps… perhaps then he might… free me."

Jay knew what he meant by "free."

They waited at the airport all night for the first available flight to Atlanta. Jennifer fell asleep around midnight, but Brennan could not. He sat up all night meditating on a playing card, an ace of spades, left him in a will.

When it was time to board the flight, he slipped it into the breast pocket of his denim jacket where it would be close at hand.

When the door opened, Jay caught a brief glimpse of pale, thin sunlight filtering down from above. Blaise stepped into the cellar, stumbling on the last step, almost tripping over the end of his cloak. The boy looked dead on his feet, his face drawn and pale. He'd been ridden to exhaustion, and beyond.