Gods of Manhattan (16 page)

For the sake of New York, he couldn't fail now. "I want to save you. I want to help you. If you come with me, we can...
I
can work with you. I can get to the bottom of your anti-social tendencies." The words set off warning bells in his own ears. They sounded fake - ridiculous and fake - and all of a sudden he knew that he'd lost this one. He couldn't pull it back.

Now he needed to get to Anton Venger before he dropped the fluid.

Anton shook his head, terror in his eyes. The West boy was still fumbling with the Blue Ghost's ropes, trying to free him without putting too much pressure on his ribs. Venger began to step back towards the edge, keeping his eyes on Thunder, holding the bottle of blue ooze protectively against his chest.

Doc Thunder knew that if he made a sudden move, Venger would hurl that bottle into the harbour. "Anton!" he breathed, trying to freeze him with his voice. It didn't work. Venger took another step back. Then another. Then another. Then -

- the Blue Ghost stuck his good leg out.

Venger gave a little scream, like a child, as he toppled backwards. But there was nothing little about the scream he let out as the blue liquid splashed out of the bottle and over his face, coating it, then eating into it, seeming to merge with it...

"Dear God..." breathed the Ghost, as Easton West buried his face in the powder-blue suit jacket, hiding from the terrible sight.

"None of it went in the water. We're safe." Doc Thunder breathed out. He hadn't even been aware he'd been holding his breath. "But... I don't know if he'll live through that."

The Ghost looked at the shriveled, withered skin, once tanned, now a terrible bluish-white. The face which seemed to be melting, distorting as he watched. The agonised look in the man's grey eyes.

"I don't know if he'll want to."

"He didn't."

That was then, and this was now, and Doc Thunder and Maya were racing in a hansom carriage towards Saint Albert's Hospital. "He blamed me, of course. Oh, he hated the Ghost, and he hated N.I.G.H.T.M.A.R.E., I'm sure he hated himself. But most of all, he hated me. If I hadn't turned up when I did, he'd still have a face. All this was before your time..."

Maya smiled. "Very little is before my time. But I take your meaning. What on earth did you do for fun in that big lonely brownstone before Monk and I came along?"

Doc smiled, despite himself. "I played a lot of chess. Miles would come around for a game occasionally." He grew pensive again, shaking his head. "Miles. I can't believe I never saw it."

"You couldn't have-" Maya began, but Doc cut her off.

"Don't tell me I couldn't have known. I could have, I
should
have known, Maya. You might not have known how he got that way, but you knew what he could do.
I
knew what he could do." He shook his head, his face contorted in self-recrimination. "And when my oldest friend's personality changed, and he started favouring his left hand, and his face stopped registering emotion... I thought he'd grown cold. I thought he'd just stopped being a good guy. I thought that instinctive, gut-level dislike I felt whenever I met him... was
him.
And all the time..."

Anton Venger.

The Face Of Fear.

That blueish-white visage, once handsome, was now slack, shapeless, drooping like unfired clay. And like clay, it could be shaped. Molded. Given time, and a little makeup, it could be made to look like anyone in the world. Anton Venger was a skilled impersonator, and the madness that had claimed him after his terrible accident only increased his ability to take on the personalities of others, albeit as a dark reflection, with all of their weaknesses and insecurities given full life within this strange, twisted doppelganger.

As a member of N.I.G.H.T.M.A.R.E. he would have been invaluable, but his madness had led him to reject them, to strike out on his own, to make war against all of civilization, against a species he no longer felt any part of. When Anton Venger gazed upon the world, he saw no beauty, no joy, no hope, no love. All he saw was the chemical taint of his never ending hatred; a hatred that burned a cold white-blue.

A natural outsider, he'd found himself drawn over time to another outsider - to Lars Lomax, the most dangerous man in the world. The Lomax-Venger Team, as Lars had dubbed them in a moment of bonhomie, had almost been the end of everything a dozen times, but eventually, all things must pass.

"You weren't there when Venger died, were you?" as Doc Thunder spoke the words, he realised he hadn't spoken for several minutes, lost in his thoughts. "Not that he did die, as it turns out..."

Maya shook her head. "No. I was in Venice, trying to deal with the war between N.I.G.H.T.M.A.R.E. and E.R.A.M.T.H.G.I.N. along with Monk and Jack Scorpio. Of course, we didn't know that was just a distraction engineered by Lomax. We thought it was the main event." She sighed. "'Am us not men?' Whatever happened to them?"

"Warhol's dreampunk ideas are the new thing in the art world. Détournment is out. The futureheads that are clinging on to the movement are being co-opted by extremist groups. Which means Untergang, of course. All roads of that nature eventually lead to Berlin." He shook his head. "E.R.A.M.T.H.G.I.N. will mutate into something else. Evolve. Or devolve. Pranksters and tricksters, nipping at the nose of culture - so long as there's a culture to nip at, we won't see the last of them. I hope we never do... I like the idea of a world where the worst thing I have to fight is somebody's joke."

Maya nodded. "Meanwhile, you were there for the final dissolution of the Lomax-Venger Team."

"I was." Doc gazed out of the window, remembering. "Paris. City of romance..."

"Mmmm... such a specimen. So very pretty-pretty-pretty..."

The voice seemed to melt, spilling over the tongue like rich liquid chocolate, as Doc Thunder found himself staring into eyes of brilliant gold, unblinking as a serpent's and possessed of a malevolent playfulness that sent a chill down his spine even as the long, perfectly painted fingernails brushed slowly over his naked chest.

He was bound, of course. Great steel anchor chains stretched from the ceiling of the ornate Parisian drawing-room to shackles that held his wrists, while his ankles were secured to the base of the strange contraption he'd been placed on - like a shaped metal saddle secured to a stout pole. It was an uncomfortable predicament, and more than a little humiliating, especially considering the Silken Dragon hadn't allowed him to keep his clothes.

She was like that.

She was the daughter of the Velvet Dragon, N.I.G.H.T.M.A.R.E.'s first leader, a cold, brilliant and debonair psychopath who had died attempting to hurl Jack Scorpio Senior from the top of the Eiffel Tower. He had raised her to think of the world as a plaything, a bauble to be toyed with and claimed as her own whenever she pleased, and all the creatures in it as her slaves. Anyone looking at her would only see the surface at first; a stunningly beautiful woman of mixed French and Oriental descent, possessed of a bountiful figure, which seemed always on the verge of spilling out of the shimmering golden corset she wore, and a luscious, oozing sexuality, a wickedly deviant mind that glittered in her golden eyes, a merciless confidence that revelled in breaking the strong and taming the weak. By the time they realised the true danger - the sheer, ruthless evil hidden beneath the perfume of her skin, an evil that thought nothing of taking the entire planet as a hostage - it was far too late.

"So pretty-pretty-pretty..." she purred, raking her nails once more down Thunder's sculpted abdominal muscles, brushing them lightly through the thicket of his-

"Stop right there." Maya frowned, irritated. "You were flirting with her, weren't you?"

"I wasn't
flirting,
she's an evil-"

"Oh, please! Like she's not your
type!
Chain you to a dungeon wall and you're anybody's, I should know. Let me guess - did you tell her that beneath her iridescent beauty her evil shone cold and hard as a diamond?"

"Well, I didn't say that
exactly
..."

- her tongue teased against his for a moment before their lips parted. "Am I not beautiful, my pretty-pretty-pretty? Am I not to be desired by all who look on me?"

"You're as beautiful and desirable as a diamond." Thunder breathed, eyes stern. "And like a diamond, you're cold, and hard... and flawed."

"You dare to call me flawed?" her voice grew icy as her teeth met at his earlobe, a serpentine hiss in his ear. "You will die for that, my pretty-pretty, inch by inch."

"Your evil is your flaw. And all of your beauty can't hide it." Thunder hissed, before another brutal, claiming kiss sealed his lips.

"Oh, good grief. You're incorrigible. I can't believe I fell for that line." Maya grew thoughtful for a moment. "She does sound interesting, though. It is a shame we couldn't have met her on a more informal -"

"It would have been harbouring an international fugitive. Sorry. Also, she was completely insane."

Maya sighed. "Well, you can tell me all about that part later. Skip to the relevant bit."

Doc frowned. "Lomax. And Venger."

"I hope I'm not interrupting..." Lomax smiled, walking into the drawing room with a Polish vodka-martini in one hand and a cigar in the other. "My God. You've actually wounded him. What is that?"

Silken Dragon smiled, twirling the barbed flogger in her hand lazily, before leaning to run her tongue along the bloody gashes she'd carved in Thunder's back. "My scientists developed it. An alloy that can actually pierce the good Doctor's skin. We call it inexorium. It makes torture so much more... enjoyable, when you can see the pretty pattern of scars form on the skin. So pretty-pretty-pretty..."

"Good Lord." His eyes widened, looking at the glittering metal as he took a long sip of the martini. "Tell me you've made a bullet with it. We can end this here and now."

"Where would the pleasure be in that? Anyway, inexorium is so very pricy, and so difficult to make. Just the barbs on the tips of this flogger cost me over a million dollars. And they're just tiny scraps of barbed metal... but so effective, aren't they? So wonderfully cruel." She pouted. "Am I very cruel, Lars?"

"You're as crazy as an outhouse rat is what you are, my dear, and quite frankly - I love it." Lomax grinned, puffing on the stogie before exhaling a cloud of smoke. "Tastes like victory, Thunder. You really should take up the habit."

Doc Thunder winced, testing his chains again. No weak link, but perhaps... "You don't need another bad habit, Lomax. You've got enough already -
aahh
!" He gritted his teeth, crying out as the barbed flogger struck across his back, criss-crossing the cuts it had already left.

"Bad pretty-pretty," the Silken Dragon hissed, her golden eyes dancing with a merciless delight. "Speaking is a privilege, not a right. Will I have to muzzle you, my new pet?"

Lomax waved his hand expansively. "Nonsense. It wouldn't be Thunder if he wasn't ready with a sanctimonious little quip, would it? Where's Maya, by the way? I was looking forward to a game of chess."

"Far away from you." Doc's eyes narrowed.

Lomax sighed. "You're still mad at me for kidnapping her the last time, aren't you? And you should be. I beat her five games to one. At one point she asked to switch to backgammon. Backgammon! Let me tell you, there was blood on the chessboard." He looked at Thunder's gaze for a moment. "Not literally. You know I'm never going to hurt her, Thunder. Never. She's off limits. Know why?"

Doc didn't say anything.

"I mean, I'm a sucker for the whole Lost City vibe, it's so... kitsch. And she's a great chess player. But the real reason I'd never lay a finger on her?" He smiled, blowing smoke in Doc's face. "One day she's going to hurt you, big man. She doesn't know it, but I can tell just by looking at her. She's got all the time in the world, and all the possibilities that gives her, and one day you're going to lie to her, or do something stupid, or just not be enough anymore, and she's going to go live her eternal life somewhere else. With somebody else. And that..." He grinned, knowing he'd struck home. "That's going to break your heart in two."

Doc scowled.

"You and Maya? Unsustainable. I'm going to love seeing her go back to her temple. That's going to crush you. I might send her a fruit basket after it happens with a little thank-you note. Neither of you know it, but she's on my team." He laughed, taking another long sip. "If I were you, I'd get ready for a fall, Thunder. But if I were you... well, I'd do a lot of things differently."

"You've got a poor opinion of love, Lomax -
aaahh
!" Another cruel blow to the flesh of his back. Silken Dragon laughed, softly.

Lomax smiled. "You think it's love. Cute. So where is she?"

"Busy dealing with the diversion you created in Venice."

"Ah, E.R.A.M.T.H.G.I.N.! Easily rooked and manipulated to help goad idiotic numbskulls... like Jack Scorpio and his collection of morons. Which reminds me, what does N.I.G.H.T.M.A.R.E. stand for?"

"Why, it stands for the total domination of the weak by the strong, of course. What else?" Silken Dragon flicked the whip against Thunder's hide again, making him jerk and the chains rattle.