George Martin - Aces High

The Astronomer chuckled and Jane thought it was the most evil sound she'd ever heard. "Now, now. We all know she's capable of much greater feats. Aren't you. Yes. For instance, you could conceivably remove all the water from a body, leaving-well, not much." He gestured at the rest of the people and chuckled again at the look on her face. "No, I thought not. The only one you might care to use it on right now is myself, and I'm immune." He nodded to Red, who vanished under one of the brick arches. A few moments later, he reappeared, guiding two men who were pushing a cage on wheels into the middle of the room. Jane blinked several times, unable to believe her eyes in the bad light.

There was a dinosaur in the cage. A Tyrannosaurus rex, all of three feet high.

As she watched, it bared its ferocious-looking teeth and ran back and forth behind the bars' its little forearms cuddled up close to its scaly body. One dark reptilian eye regarded Jane with a glitter of intelligence.

"Vicious creature," said the Astronomer. "If I were to let it out, it could snap your leg off in one bite. Kill it. Withdraw all the water from its body."

Jane lowered her arms, her hands still curled into fists. "Oh, come now." Another of those evil chuckles. "Don't tell me your heart is touched by every stray dinosaur that comes along."

"There's someone in there," she said. "You want a sample of my power? Here's a close-up!"

Something almost happened. She had focused on an area just in front of the Astronomer's face, intending to dash a gallon of water into his eyes. The air blurred momentarily and then cleared. The old man threw back his head and roared with laughter. "You were right, Roman, she breaks out with bravado at the oddest moments! I told you, my excellent dear, that your power won't work if I don't want it to. No matter how much power you have, I have more. Isn't that right, Demise?"

The skinny man stepped forward, ready to obey some order. The Astronomer shook his head. "There's another waiting for us, much more receptive. She won't try to throw a bucket of water in our faces."

Jane wiped her own face without effect. Water was beginning to pool around her feet. The Astronomer watched her, unmoved. "To have real power is to be able to use it, to be able to do certain things, no matter how awful you may find them. There is more power than you can imagine in being able to do such things, or in being able to make someone do them." He gestured at the cage. Jane followed the movement and then had to clap both hands over her mouth to keep from crying out.

The tyrannosaur had been replaced by a boy no more than twelve or thirteen years old, with sandy brown hair, gray-blue eyes, and a small pink birthmark on his forehead. He would have been startling enough, except that he was also completely naked. He crouched at the bars, doing his best to cover himself.

"There is no more time to try to court you, my dear," said the Astronomer, and all pretense of kindliness was gone from his voice. "TIAMAT is very close now and I cannot waste even a moment trying to lure you in with us. It's too bad; your killing a child even in the guise of a dangerous dinosaur would have bound you over to us, traumatically but completely. If I had but a few more weeks, you would have been ours painlessly. Now it's a matter of choosing between your life and your brave little ethics. You have as much time to decide as it takes for me to cross this room. I have no doubt which you'll choose. May your ethics sustain you in the next life. If there is one." He gestured at the skinny man. "Demise-"

Several things happened at once. The cockroach-man stepped forward with a loud rustling sound and shouted "No!" just as water splashed into Demise's face forcefully enough to knock him over and then another voice, incredibly loud, bellowed, "THIS IS THE GREAT AND

SURROUNDED AND NO ONE NEEDS TO GET HURT!" And then, impossibly, Jane thought she heard something that sounded like the old theme from the Mighty Mouse cartoons: Here I come to save the daaaaaaaay! This was followed by an ungodly caterwauling that went from extreme bass to an earsplitting high, shaking the entire building. There was a crash as the cage topped to the floor, spilling the boy out. Jane fought to keep her balance and reach the boy in the general chaos of people trying to run in every direction. He turned into another dinosaur barely two feet high, this one very slender and agile-looking, with slim, clawed fingers. She forced herself to grab the fingers as it scuttled over to her.

"We've got to get out of here!" she said breathlessly and more than a little unnecessarily, and looked around. Demise and the Astronomer had vanished. The little dinosaur pulled her across the room and into a shadowy gallery under the archways. Holding hands with a dinosaur, she thought as they fled down the gallery. Only in New York.

She didn't notice Kafka struggling after them.

It was really a hell of a beautiful sight, the Great and Powerful Turtle said later. Aces of every variety rising up out of the trees around the Cloisters, swooping down on the Masons that spilled out of the building onto the brick paths and into the ruined gardens. He had seen just about everything during the battle. One of the things he missed, however, was Jane and the boy-dinosaur creeping along part of a columned arcade surrounding an outdoor area now overgrown with weeds. They saw the Turtle sailing overhead with several colorfully costumed aces clinging to his shell. One of the aces pointed down at something; in the next moment, he was floating gently to earth, lowered by the Turtle's power. Jane heard the little dinosaur hiss alarmingly. When she turned to see what was the matter, he had changed back into a boy, his nudity covered by shadows.

"That's the Turtle!" he whispered to Jane. "If we could just get his attention, he could get you out of here!"

"What about you?"

For answer, he reverted to dinosaur again, this one wellmuscled and almost as ferocious-looking as the tyrannosaur. It looked vaguely familiar to Jane, who couldn't tell a crocodile from an alligator. She tried to remember the name. An Alicesomething-or-other. Alice or perhaps alas, for as mean-looking as it was, it was also no bigger than a German shepherd. It growled and pushed her along with its three-clawed hands, hustling her onto the stone path surrounding the weed-choked garden. There was another one of those grotesque howls; Jane felt it shudder clear through her and the little dinosaurallosaurus, she remembered suddenly, for no reason-roared in response, clawing at its head painfully. She bent, meaning to embrace it or comfort it, when there was a flurry of feathers, a glint of metal, and then an extraordinarily beautiful woman lit on a low marble wall.

"Peregrine!" Jane breathed.

The allosaurus made a small, excited sound, looking the winged woman over with wild eyes.

"Better get out," Peregrine said good-naturedly. "The Howler is going to shout this place down. Can you manage, you and your, uh, pet lizard there?"

"It's a boy. I mean, he's really a little boy, an ace-" The allosaurus bellowed, either in agreement or in protest at being called a little boy.

"Vicious, really vicious." Peregrine smiled at Jane as she launched herself upward, her great wings beating the air.

"Best you get out now. I mean it," she called and soared away, the famed titanium talons up and ready.

Jane and the allosaurus ran around the ruined garden and tore down another arcade. She heard the little dinosaur fall behind, and paused, squinting in the darkness. "What's wrong?"

She could just make out a human silhouette. "Gotta change. Need a fast runner, I'm getting tired. Hypsilophodon's better than an allosaurus for running."