John Wright - Titans of Chaos

Vanity said, "Amelia, that is the dumbest question since the question mark was invented in 500

a.d. Every man here is looking at us, comparing us to his date, and every date is sizing us up, too.

And the boys are staring, wishing they were men. So, yes, a lot of people are looking." She turned and waved at several tall men in tuxedoes, who were smiling toward her. Over her shoulder, she said, "If there is a sniper on the roof, I can't tell, not in a crowd."

Then we were at the front of the line. The doorman was dressed in Lincoln green, with a peaked cap on his head and a clipboard in his hand. The Merry Man effect was jarred by his sunglasses and hearing aid, which made him look like a Secret Service agent from a movie.

"Names?"

"Amelia Windrose, how do you do?" "Vanity Fair." "Victor Invictus Triumph, sir." "Call me Nemo." "Randy Johnson Willie Joystick, but friends call me Dick."

He looked up. "Vanity Fair? Like the magazine?"

Vanity smiled brightly. "They named a magazine after me? This is a wonderful country!"

The expression in his eyes was hidden. "You kids make those names up?"

Quentin said, "Actually, we did. The North Wind sent us. We're here to see Archer."

The guy looked back down at his checklist. "I'm sorry, your names, made up or not, are not on my list. The Bull's-Eye Club is invitation only. Next!"

Vanity said, "But we have an invitation! Boreas said he sent word ahead."

"Next!"

I said in my best Headmaster Boggin voice, "See here, young man! We are here to see Mr. Archer, and we have no intention of leaving without seeing him!"

The two guys behind us (one of whom had a ring both in his nostril and in his lip) started to shoulder forward, but Victor stood in the way. They made the mistake of deciding to manhandle him, grabbing at his shoulder and elbow. There was a loud snap of noise and a smell of ozone, and the two men jumped back, yowling and swearing.

Colin turned toward them, gritting his teeth, and his hair started to stand up, and his face to grow dark. Quentin tapped his walking stick on the ground, and a dark shadow began to stream from his feet and swell across the sidewalk and up the building.

"Troops!" I said sharply. "Stand down! The Dark Mistress has not given the word yet!"

This drew some hoots and murmurs from the crowd around us. We were suddenly the center of attention.

The guy with the rings in his nose and lip said, "Hey! He's got a stun gun! He shocked us! I'm calling the cops!"

A voice from the crowd called out, "The cops'll just kick your ass, man. This is L. A."

I did not see the fast-moving molecular packages leave Victor's body and enter the nervous systems of the two men behind us, but I noticed the sudden snarl of moral forces in the area as the angry young men behind us suddenly looked sleepy and forgetful.

To Victor I hissed, "I said stand down! Or you'll see a court-martial, I swear to you, Victor Triumph!"

"Yes, Leader," said Victor.

The Merry Man with the clipboard asked me carefully, "Did he just call you 'Leader' ?"

At that moment, another man came over, stepping briskly. I assume from the way the Merry Man wordlessly deferred to him that he was a member of the staff, or maybe he just got out of the way because the guy was huge and heavily armed.

Could be a basketball player, if he wasn't already a linebacker. Heavy black boots, heavy black denim pants, heavy black leather jacket. Black on black on black. You get the picture. Every inch of the black leather jacket had a shining metal ring sewn to it, so he rang and glittered as he walked. Clipped among his rings were Japanese throwing stars, looking like harmless ornaments, lost in the glitter. The handle of a Bowie knife protruded from a sheath in his boot, a second was at his hip, a third up his sleeve. In his hand he carried not a spear (as I first had thought) but a harpoon with a sharpened steel togglehead and, incredibly, a loop of cable running through it, with the other end of the cord wrapping his spear hand.

He might have been a member of a biker gang. A really, really nasty biker gang. A biker gang of Eskimos, I should say, who harpooned seals between riots.

Oh, and he was handsome, in a rough way. Very rough. His face looked like something carved by rough hatchet blows out of a pine stump. His hair was done up in short gelled spikes, a look that went out of fashion in England after the defeat of the Rets. He had wide, high cheeks, blunt jaw, his mouth a single cruel slash beneath a proud nose, eyes like a wolf's eye beneath a wide overhanging brow, the forehead of a king or a philosopher: a warrior-king, though, or a Nietzschean philosopher. A scar ran from the corner of his eye across the muscles of his cheek, to where the deep lines formed brackets around his stern mouth. It was a big, ugly scar, but, somehow, it made his face look more striking, not less. I was sure he had gotten it at Heidelberg.

The crowd quieted down when he strode up. "May I help you?" he said in a tone that left no question that no help could possibly be forthcoming.

I said, "We are here to see Mr. Archer on a matter of very important, um, importance." (Boy, I could have said that better.)

Colin helped me. Sort of. Not. He chimed in, "Tell your boss that the world could be destroyed if he dicks around with us."

Tall, Dark, Scarred, and Handsome gave him a thoughtful look. "So... you can, um, destroy the world, issat right? Cute trick."

Colin grinned like an idiot. "Yeah, but we can only do it once."

He said, "Listen, kids. You know what my job here is?"

Vanity looked at his huge harpoon. She said gaily, "Let me guess. You seek the White Whale?"

She was doing that Vanity-thing she does with her eyelashes and bestowing the sweetest smile on him, so even his grim face softened, and he smiled back. "No, miss. I'm Mr. Nice Guy. I am here to see that the people who are invited into the club here have a nice time. Now you are blocking the line, and all of Mr. Archer's guests behind you might not have a nice time because of it. So I gotta make it right, okay?"

I thought this meant he was going to burn us to cinders with laser beams shooting from his eyes or something, but no. Instead, he led us a few steps to one side, and the Merry Man proceeded with the glittering people in line behind us. We were standing beside the doors, and long thin leaves from potted plants were poking me in the back.

"Now, your names are not on the list, are they?" said the huge man.

Quentin said quietly, "May we have your name, sir? Mr. Archer will be displeased if we are hindered, I assure you."

"I am Terro- ah, Terrance. Terrance, um, Miles. And Mr. Archer is my brother."

Quentin said, "If he's your brother, why isn't your last name-?"

"Stage name."

I said, "Listen. This is important. Do you know the world is run by pagan gods?"

"I know L.A. is, that's for sure. And one of the gods of L.A. says that no one gets in the Bull's-Eye Club unless they're properly dressed. We have a dress code."