Emergence (36 page)

To burn out the reek of Elton Ormond’s cologne, which he hadn’t smelled since he was a kid.

Because it turned out he
had
met Elton Ormond before.

He
had.

The Emperor of Pop.

More like the grand high wizard of Bernie’s pedo set.

That high voice. How had he never made the connection before?

It made him want to retch. He was still in a cold sweat. He had been a zombie on set. His true big break, and he had blown it because his stomach was roiling, trying to reject a poison that was ingrained in his blood like a vampire virus.

A poison Bernie had put there.

But who was the real poisoner? Bernie was just a lackey.

Who was the head vampire?

He had to tell Jimmy.

He had to tell Pan.

He stared at the mound of white.

Snort first, and then the phone? Could he possibly do this with a clear head?

Then something bright caught his eye in the skylight.

Something heavy landed on the roof.

Then the roof was gone, and so was the cocaine mound, blown away by the sudden rush of outside air as the heavy, bright something dropped through the ceiling in a rain of debris, smashing the tiles with its weight, gripping him in its cold metal grasp.

Then the kitchen filled with fire and Nico Tinkham was truly flying for the first time in his life, soaring straight up into the orange sky at something like 70 kmph, cradled in cold arms of silver and gold.

He couldn’t even scream against the rush of wind.

ELEVEN

Back to Tink’s.

Jim landed in the dark hills on the other side of the freeway about an hour after leaving Cassidy’s. He had dared to soar up the coast to try and clear his head until he had spied a pair of helicopters in the distance and driven inland. He waited a good half hour under a bridge through the canyon before he took the long walk through the dark past the gas station and over the overpass to Canfield, only a timid coyote along the road laying eyes on him.

He was in his socks and bareheaded. It was a chilly night. He looked like a homeless kid, and hoped the cops wouldn’t pull to the curb and try to question him.

But when he got within a block of Tink’s he knew there was no chance of that. Every sheriff’s deputy in Mogera Hills seemed to be parked on their street, and with a sinking feeling, he saw a squad in their driveway, splashing the house with red and blue lights.

Had TCA tracked him to Tink’s somehow? But how, when he had been at Cassidy’s the past day? Maybe they’d been investigating the house for a while. Maybe he’d been seen somehow, or maybe one of their unobservant neighbors had proven to be sharper than they’d thought.

He made a beeline for a neighbor’s house and when he was out of sight, floated up to their roof and crept on his belly. He crouched behind a chimney until he had a vantage of the house.

He could see the deputies walking through the place. They took a special interest in the kitchen, and Jim quickly saw why. There was a massive hole in the roof as if something too large for the skylight had dropped into the kitchen and taken most of the ceiling.

What the hell had happened here?

And then he thought.

Had Tantrum gotten free? He’d been out of circulation for a whole day. Hadn’t watched the news.

What Father Eladio had told him came back, that somebody had deliberately caused Tantrum to change. What if that person had gotten to him in the courtroom, or during a transfer to the prison bus or whatever they were carting Lattimer around in between public appearances?

But no, that didn’t make sense. Even if it Tantrum wanted revenge against him, how would he know to come here?

He couldn’t go to Tink’s. Couldn’t bring any more heat on Father Eladio, and surely couldn’t go back to Cassidy’s.

What to do?

Where to go?

As he crouched in the shadows, mulling it over, one of the deputies leaned out of his car and shouted something.

A minute later his partner jumped into the car and their siren was blaring, soon to be taken up by every squad crowding Canfield.

The deputies charged into their cars almost in unison and went tearing south down the street for the freeway ramp, leaving a single patrol car and an unmarked at Tink’s house.

The two plainclothes and the deputy watched their comrades depart, looked at each other, and rushed back into the house.

Jim knew what they were doing.

He flitted over to Tink’s roof and lay on his belly near the rim of the ragged hole. Peered down at the ruins of the kitchen. The floor, counter, island, and fridge were all badly scorched. God, had a bomb gone off? No, the damage wasn’t quite that total. It looked like some kind of fire had gone up but somehow not consumed everything. Like a flash or…

He ducked down as the three policemen got to the living room, shoes crunching on the broken glass and rubble.

One of them found the remote and turned on the big TV.

“Our top story tonight, Lance Lattimer has escaped police custody and the city of La Futura is once again under siege by the being known as Tantrum.”

Jesus Christ! There was no way Lattimer had escaped on his own. For weeks they’d been rolling him out in a total stupor.

And he thought about what Father Eladio had said about someone instigating the first attack.

That same somebody must have done it again. But why?

The news was showing aerial shots of the red infant blowing through buildings right in the heart of downtown.

Cops weren’t the only ones fighting him, though.

There was A-Frame in his blue wetsuit and hovering board, gesturing at the street below, causing geysers of sewage to burst from the streets to cover the evacuation of crowds of civilians.

And there was the P.O.N.E. squad in their police riot gear, the big guys flinging trucks and cars at the rampaging infant as their brother officers launched canister after canister of tear gas, until the whole scene was obscured by thick smoke.

Pecos was there too, looking like an oversized rodeo clown in his ten gallon hat, red and blue Expandex costume with a huge white lone star emblazoned across his face, his yellow kerchief, white leather gauntlets with embroidered red stars and ridiculous Holstein chapaderos. He managed to slip his steel coil lariat around Tantrum’s big head and fling him into a transformer, which exploded impressively and then knocked out half the lights in downtown, leaving the area lit only by the intermittent flashes of scores of emergency vehicles.

Down for a moment, but not out.

He had to do something. Had to lend a hand. He didn’t relish mixing it up with Tantrum again, but he couldn’t just sit here.

But what about Tink? Where was he? What had happened here?

The two cops below weren’t doing anything but staring at the TV, chafing as much as he was, wanting to chase after their comrades who had no doubt been rerouted to reinforce the dire situation.

He leapt off the roof.

In less than fifteen minutes he was at the old fire watch station where he’d stowed his costume weeks ago. He landed on the roof and found the duffle bag where he’d left it beneath the transmitting tower. It wasn’t until he had stripped off his clothes and gotten into his fighting greens that he realized his cowl was missing.

A dark shape moved high up on the tower scaffold, and his missing mask fell at his feet.

Jim stood frozen as the figure dropped from the tower and landed a few feet away from him in the pool of white from the exterior lighting.

That distinctive cowl, with its glowing yellow visor, the long, sweeping brown cape, the spotted white chest, and that solid chin, dappled with tightly curled black hair, flecked with distinguished white.

Amonson Spinks. The Brown Thrasher, one of the first and most formidable of TCA’s stable.

“This is a bit incriminating, isn’t it?” he said, in that easy Georgia drawl.

So he hadn’t gone back to Atlanta after all.

Jim looked down at his mask and clenched his fists. He was caught. There was little use in flying away now. Even if he could evade the TCA choppers that were no doubt inbound, the Thrasher had him. Had his face.

“Little late to be flyin’ around up here…little young, too,” said the Thrasher, cocking his head. “Or maybe not so young after all.”

Jim backed away warily.

“Don’t fly off, Jimmy. Let’s talk.”

That stopped him.

“Who’s Jimmy?” he said lamely.

“You are. James Michael Cutlass, born August 24th, 1993 in Crown Point, Indiana. Father Captain Michael Louis Cutlass, USMC pilot, killed in action. Mother Harmony Lorraine Purvis, also deceased. Sorry.”

Jim glanced over his shoulder, wondering where the choppers were.

“How do you know all that?”

“Not from reading
Tiger Beat
. Facial recognition software, tied into the DMV database.”

“So what happens now?”

“That depends on you. Like I said, I only want to talk.”

“The whole city’s coming apart and you wanna talk? Why aren’t you down there right now with Pecos and A-Frame and the P.O.N.E.s and all those cops?””

The Thrasher folded his arms.

“Out of my league.”

“How can you say that? You’re the Brown Thrasher.”

“That’s right. And I’ve stayed the Brown Thrasher by knowing my limitations. Just like you know yours. You’ve got flight, speed, a fair amount of strength, you can take some solid hits, and it seems you won’t grow up. You haven’t been entirely off TCA’s radar. We know you’ve fought chimerics before. Local characters, like that War God Bombero a few weeks ago behind the hospital. But nobody like Tantrum. How’d you wind up in the spotlight?”

“It was an accident. I just happened to be in the neighborhood,” Jim said, squatting down to retrieve his mask and putting it on.

“No accident. I think you know that by now. Somebody drew you out. But why? Who?”

“You’re not the first to think that,” Jim muttered.

“Yeah, I’m sure Angelus came to a similar conclusion.”

Jim frowned deeply.

“You know about him?”

“He’s how we found you. I found this place first. Analyzed your flight trajectory after the stadium fight, found your suit. Figured you’d be back. We had you pegged as one of Father Eladio’s lost sheep. You gave Pecos and our agents the slip, but I was monitoring via Bird’s Eye UAV. We could’ve taken you on the roof of the Pantazis, but I called off the search.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to see who you were first. When Cassidy Hollis came and got you, it started to fit together. I didn’t think a kid could operate on these streets and not get caught. You survived the explosion at Perennial Pictures ten years ago. I guess that’s when your powers kicked in, stopped your clock. Has Hollis been helping you all this time?”

“No. Leave her out of it.”

“I intend to. But whoever engineered Tantrum’s attack to bring you out might not.”

Jim blinked. If the Thrasher had tracked him to Cassidy’s, maybe whoever was behind Tantrum’s breakout had, too. Maybe that’s what had happened to Tink.

“What is it?” said the Thrasher.

“Nothing.”

“Look, I’m not interested in you. I want whoever’s behind all this. They’re responsible for a lot of innocent lives. After tonight you’re welcome to go back to slugging pimps and pulling down stilt-houses…if you cooperate.”

Something on the Thrasher’s wrist emitted a shrill tweeting noise and flashed yellow.

He lifted his wrist, stared at it, and frowned.

“What’s that?”

“I’ve got the Bird monitoring the news for certain keywords. Hold on a second.”

He touched his wrist with his fingers, and something boomed loudly overhead and descended rapidly towards them from out of the cloud layer.

The Brown Bird. The Thrasher’s signature personal craft. Some kind of sleek, vaguely bird-shaped, high-tech two-man stealth wing.

It came to hover over the transmitter, and the Thrasher leapt nimbly onto the tower and climbed rapidly up.

Jim had heard a rumor that the Thrasher wasn’t even a real chimeric, that all his vaunted power was in the presentation. Amonson Spinks was Fortune 500. A self-made millionaire whose wealth came from success in establishing a wildly popular personal computer store chain that had started in the south and spread all the way to the West Coast. When TCA had recruited the mysterious Brown Thrasher, and he had revealed his own identity, some said it had more to do with his finances than any real power he had.

Father Eladio had set him straight.

“Don’t believe it, kid. Spinks ain’t just some wannabe in a suit. He’s got Power, alright. Perception. If you gain his attention, he can figure out what you had for breakfast just by looking at you. He’s probably smarter than anybody on TCA’s payroll. And something else. Once he’s on you, he doesn’t stop. Ever.”

Jim ascended along the tower and reached the side of the Brown Bird just as the Thrasher slid into the cockpit, hands racing over the controls.

“This began broadcasting forty-five seconds ago. DVR caught it from the beginning.”

A monitor swiveled out of some side compartment and the logo in the bottom right corner showed Vulpes News, but it was no anchorman.

It was Tink.

He looked more like hell than usual. He had sustained a beating. One eye was swollen shut and his lips were mashed and bleeding. The camera was tight on his face, and there was a fist entwined in his hair, holding his head up.

“Orale!” said a familiar voice.

The camera zoomed out, and there was Bombero, squatting next to Tink, who appeared to be tied to some kind of support column with telephone wire.

Bombero was shirtless, his Aztec tattoos sliding over his muscled torso. In his free hand he held a flickering open flame that was casting his downturned face in orange.

“The War Gods control Vulpes Plaza and every fool up in here,” said Bombero. “Show `em.”

The camera panned left in a nausea-inducing blur, and there was the Vulpes News studio. The desk was smashed and the body of some techie, dead or unconscious, lay in the rubble. Aisha Cordell was curled up against the backdrop on the floor, mascara running down her face.