George Martin - Ace In The Hole

Her legs would not move. Ricky was pummeling the boy with stump and inexpert fist. It looked like the worst of playground bullying; Ricky was- a head taller, with a good six inches' reach-

That sound came again. She knew she would hear it every time she closed her eyes for the rest of her life. She smelled something like burned hair.

Ricky's arm fell off at the shoulder. His blood vomited over the wall, white with a mosaic sprinkling of blue and green and yellow.

He turned a martvr's face to her. "Rosie," he said, and his gums were shocks of blood, "Please run, for god's sake run-" The hand passed playfully. His lower jaw was sheared away with the rest of his words. His tongue flopped at her unmoored, a ghastly parody of lust.

She turned and fled, the charnel-house sound pursuing. As she rounded the corner the heel of her left shoe snapped. She went to her knee with an impact like a gunshot. She skidded twenty feet, bounced off a wall. She tried to struggle up. Her leg would not carry her; she fell heavily against the tile.

"Oh, Ricky," she sobbed. "I'm sorry." Sorry for blowing the escape he had bought her with his life; sorry for the strange guilty surge of relief down underneath the terror that she would not have to face the question that another night in his room would bring between them.

She began to push herself along with her hands, knees up, scooting sideways on her rump. He came around the corner, looking twelve-feet tall. Blood splashed his leather and his skin, unnaturally bright in the fluorescent light. He was smiling around teeth like a collapsing fence.

"Der Mann sends his regards."

Single-mindedly she sculled away from him. There was nothing in the world but the motions of a losing race.

– And voices, down the corridor, welling up from where the passage from the Hyatt dipped under Center Avenue. A party of delegates in Jackson buttons appeared, black, middle-aged, well dressed, talking happily amongst themselves about their candidate's last-minute upsurge at day's end.

The killer in leather raised his head. A brief pigeon of a woman in a salmon dress with a bow beneath capacious breasts looked up, saw him with the blood upon him and his victim strewn into the corridor bend behind. She jammed fists beneath her eyes and screamed like hell.

The boy's eyes blazed at Sara. "Remember Jenny Towler," he snarled. And walked through the wall.

Mine!

Puppetman felt the searing, twisted menace approaching. Gregg turned as Mackie ghosted through the wall of his bedroom, a crooked smile set above his crooked shoulders.

There was a splotchy brown red stain on his right hand up to the elbow that could only be one thing.

Mine!

"All the fucking hotel rooms look the same," Mackie said. "Get the hell out of here," Gregg snapped.

Mackie's grin slid from his punched face. "I wanted to tell you," he said, the German accent broader than usual. "I offed the nigger. but the woman-"

Mine! He's mine!

Gregg was surprised that he was able to hear Mackie's voice over Puppetman at all. The power slammed relentlessly against Gregg's hold, again and again and again. Mackie's raw, violent insanity radiated wildly, leaking from the boy's pores with an odor of decomposing meat, and spreading out in front of Puppetman like a rotting banquet.

Gregg had to get Mackie away quickly or the tenuous hold he had on himself would be entirely gone.

"Out," Gregg repeated desperately. "Ellen's here." Mackie's mouth twisted, a sneer. He fidgeted, restlessly shifting his weight from foot to foot. "Yeah. I know. In the other room watching goddamn TV. They were showing Chrysalis's funeral. I saw her but she didn't see me. I could've buzzed her easy." He licked his lips. His nervous stare flicked across Gregg's body like a whip as Puppetman hammered again at the bars. "I don't know where Morgenstern is," he said at last.

"Then go find her."

"I wanted to see you." Mackie whispered it like a lover, a voice of velvet sandpaper. The lust was honeyed syrup, golden and rich and sweet.

Puppetman screeched in need. The bars in Gregg's mind started to crumble. "Get out of here," he hissed between clenched teeth. "You didn't get Downs, now you tell me you can't find Sara. What the hell good are you to me? You're just a useless punk, with or without your ace."

He'd always been easy with Mackie, placating the kid, feeding his ego. Even with Puppetman controlling the hunchback's emotions, he'd been afraid of Mackie; using him was like juggling nitroglycerine: it looked easy, but he was aware that he would only get one mistake. Gregg thought he might have made it now. Mackie's face had gone grim and cold. The lust did a quicksilver change to something simpler and more dangerous. Mackie's right hand was beginning to vibrate unconsciously as a threatening whine shivered the air.

"No," Mackie said, shaking his head. "You don't know. You're the Man. I love-"

Gregg cut him off. If there was going to be an explosion, it might as well be a big one. "I told you to take out two people who are a danger to us. They're both walking around now while you're telling me how good you are and how much I mean to you."

Mackie blinked. Twitched. "You're not listening-"

"No, I'm not. And I won't listen until all the loose ends are taken care of. You understand that?"

Mackie took a halting step toward Gregg, his hand up. The fingers were a dangerous blur.

Gregg stared him down. It was absolutely the hardest thing he'd ever done. Puppetman was a berserk thing behind his eyes, gibbering and frothing with the closeness of Mackie and the emotional backwash spilling around him. Gregg knew that he had only seconds before Puppetman surfaced entirely, before the mental bonds reversed and he would be the one underneath. Yet while he held Puppetman, there were no controls on Mackie and no way to dampen the madness. If the ace took another step, if he swiped at Gregg with that hand…

Gregg shuddered with effort.

"Come to me afterward, Mackie," he whispered. "After it's all done, not before."

Mackie lowered his hand, his eyes. The red violence around him faded slightly.

"All right," he said softly. "You're the Man. Yes." He reached out with his hand, safely quiet now, and Gregg fought the impulse to back away and run. He concentrated on holding Puppetman for just a moment longer.

Mackie's dry fingertips traced Gregg's cheek with a strange tenderness, dragging across stubble.

Gregg closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, Mackie was already gone.

Drawing his fingers down the strings, Tachyon pulled a sigh of music from the violin. The Secret Service agent swung his head in that heavy slow way of a bull confronting an irritant. Tach nodded politely to him. The man brightened considerably, cast a furtive glance over his shoulder, and quickstepped to where the alien was sitting cross-legged on the floor outside Fleur's room. Sounds of revelry drifted down the hall from a nearby room party.

"Hi."

"Hello."

"My daughter's crazy about you, and she'll kill me if she finds out I met you and hadn't gotten your autograph. Would you mind?"

"No, I'd be delighted." Tach pulled a notebook from his pocket. "Her name?"

"Trina. "

For Trina with love. He signed his name with a flourish. "Uh, excuse me, but what are you doing out here?"

"I'm going to play the violin for the lady in that room."

"Oh, a little romance, huh?"

"I hope. I won't make any trouble, sir. May I stay?" The agent shrugged. "Yeah, what the hell. But if people complain-"

"Not to worry."

Tach lifted his bow, tucked the violin beneath his chin. A few years ago he had arranged Chopin's Etude in A flat for solo violin. The notes fell from the strings like crystal beads, like water chuckling over stones. But beneath the joy was a strain of sadness.