Wild Cards: Death Draws Five (23 page)

“I come from good stock. My Pa was a strong man, as was his before him, and his before him. So was my Ma’s family. I made it to 1946, but barely.” He looked Cameo in the eye. “You know what happened then.”

She nodded.

“I was dying in a charity hospital full of sad old cases like me. Full of old men and women worn down by age, young men and women, worn down by drink. By injury. By disease. Just by life. When the virus came it was like nothing you could imagine. Like Hell, I guess. We must have been hit by a good dose of it ‘cause most everyone on the ward caught it all at the same time. The docs just ran away. Those that could, that is. They left us all to die, and most of us did. I saw people just melt away to puddles. Saw them turn hard like rocks, screaming for breath. Saw them turn all funny like they was inside out, and flop and twist before they huddled down on their dirty sheets to die. A couple just walked away changed some, but still living. One just rose out of his bed and flew out through a window. Never saw him again.”

Nighthawk fell silent. He couldn’t help the sudden tears that traced twisting paths down his cheeks, but neither was he ashamed of them. He wiped them away with his thumbs.

“What about you?” Cameo asked quietly.

“Me?”

“Yes. What happened to you?”

Nighthawk sighed. “I was a dying old man. I was frightened. I didn’t want to die. I felt sure that I would go to Hell for some of the things I’d done over the years. I surely didn’t want to turn into a pile of goo, or grow extra legs, or turn inside out. I just kind of reached out, crying for help. I needed strength to live. I took it from the man in the bed next to me. Old Robert Nash.”

“Took it?”

“Drained it right away from him. Took it right out of his body and old Robert died looking at me, knowing what I did. I felt bad because we were friends. We talked all the time. He played music on his mouth harp. He was a blues man, nicknamed Lightning. When I knew I killed him I was even more scared. I reached out and took more from others. I felt stronger. More powerful. In the end, I didn’t even know what I was doing. How many I killed. I just know that I walked out of that hospital when I’d been days, maybe hours from death. Walked away with a spring in my step, black hair on my head, and juice in my lemon, if you know what I mean. It was like I was fifty years younger.”

“You turned over an ace,” Cameo said. “You tapped into their life force. Somehow converted it for your own use.”

“Which I’ve been doing ever since,” Nighthawk admitted. “But usually carefully, taking the energy mostly from those about to die a violent death, drawn to them by my other power—visions, unclear and uncertain, of the future.”

Cameo pursed her lips. “Awesome,” she said.

Nighthawk nodded. “Yes. So you see. I have to find the answer to my question. You can tell me.”

“Your question?”

His eyes were pleading, even tortured. “Have I been stealing their souls? Have I been using them up, condemning them to limbo, or worse?”

They looked at each other in silence for a long moment before Cameo spoke. “How can I know that?” she asked quietly.

Nighthawk reached into his jacket pocket and held up an old mouth organ. “I took it from Robert’s bedside before I left the hospital,” he said. “I’ve carried it with me for almost fifty-seven years.”

Cameo stared into space, fingering the jewelry around her neck, and her eyes changed again. As did her voice when she spoke. “What’s in it for me?” she asked.

Nighthawk smiled. “Fair enough,” he said. He got out of his comfy chair, and moved it aside as Cameo looked on curiously. There were seams in the carpet under the chair. Nighthawk removed a square of pile, and flipped up the trap door that was revealed underneath. He took a metal box from the small cavity under the flooring. From the metal box he took half a dozen bundles of hundred dollar bills and put them on the coffee table. They were thick bundles. “How about,” Nighthawk asked, “sixty thousand dollars?”

Cameo laughed out loud, uproariously. “Don’t you trust banks?” she asked.

“They keep inconvenient hours, “ Nighthawk said.

Cameo grew quiet. She looked serious. “I think I should get out of town for awhile.”

“That’d be real smart,” Nighthawk said, but he said it flatly, without emotion or hope.

“For that,” she said thoughtfully, “I’ll need money.”

Nighthawk’s face suddenly shone. “We best be careful,” he said. “If Contarini catches us we’d both be consigned to the pits of St. Dympna.”

“I’ll leave it up to you,” Cameo said, “to keep us out of there.”

Nighthawk nodded. He gave the old mouth organ a last loving glance and put it away in his jacket pocket. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in a hundred and fifty years, it’s caution.”

Cameo laughed again. “I see. That’s why you cross men like Contarini. Don’t they ever go after you?”

Nighthawk smiled. “Not more’n once,” he said.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Las Vegas

The cell in the city lock-up was totally wrecked. Its bars were broken and steel door burst asunder like a herd of buffalo had run through cardboard toilet paper rolls. The bodies had been removed from the corridor, but bloodstains still splattered the floor and half way up the walls to the ceiling. Ray had seen worse, but not often.

“How many cops were killed?” Ray asked.

“Seven,” Captain Martinez said through clenched teeth.

Ray looked up at the sharpness of the tone in her voice. “Hey, don’t blame me. I warned you.”

She sighed. Her dark, short hair was plastered to her skull with sweat which ran in runnels down her full cheeks. Her eyes were big, soft, and brown. They were not cop eyes. She herself was big, soft, and brown. She looked as if she were out of her depth. Ray actually felt somewhat sorry for her. Clearly she was not used to dealing with killer aces.

“You got any aces on the roll call?” Ray asked.

“Quite a few,” she said. “Mostly telepaths and a few precogs who work out of bunco. Assigned mostly to casino duty trying to keep scumbag wild carders from ripping the casinos blind.”

Ray just looked at her.

“Sorry,” she said after a moment, her eyes avoiding his.

“That’s all right,” Ray said flatly. “I’ve dealt with a few scumbag wild carders in my day. A few scumbag nats, too. I suggest you take your best telepaths and precogs off keeping the casinos safe from losing a couple of bucks to rogue gamblers and put them on scouring the city to keep your citizens safe from a homicidal maniac.”

“Of course.” Martinez turned to a group of horrified-looking assistants who were clustered around her. “You heard the man.”

One of them nodded, and ran off.

Ray looked into the cell. Butcher Dagon’s one-piece orange jumpsuit lay shredded among the twisted metal that was once his bunk. Fortunately, he hadn’t had a roommate, or else what was left of him would have been lying on the floor in pieces as well.

“Were all the bodies fully dressed?” he asked.

“What?” the Captain asked.

Ray looked at her coldly. “I’m beginning to think that you’re out of your depth here, Captain. Dagon loses his clothes when he transforms into his fighting form. I was wondering if he’d managed to dress after waltzing out of your cell here, or if we’re still dealing with a naked homicidal maniac. If that’s the case, he should be a little easier to spot, and we’re going to need all the help we can get with this one.”

Martinez looked at another one of her assistants, a tall, thin man with a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed nervously every time he swallowed.

“Well.” Swallow. “I don’t know.” Swallow. “Some of the bodies.” Long swallow. “Were pretty... damaged.” Swallow.

“Find out,” Martinez said between clenched teeth.

He nodded, swallowing, and ran off as well.

Ray shook his head. “Not much we can do until he’s spotted.”

Martinez nodded. “I was afraid you were going to say that. I was hoping...”

Ray shrugged as her voice trailed off.

“I’m a fighter,” he said. “Not a finder. Our best hope is the telepaths and precogs. Our second best is the ordinary citizen. If this burg has any ordinary citizens. You’ve got to put the word out, publicize his escape like Hell. Let everyone know he’s dangerous. Someone has to have seen the hairy little bastard.”

Martinez frowned. “That’ll only cause a panic. Plus, we’ll look bad.”

“You’ll look worse,” Ray pointed out, “as the body count mounts. Now you’ve got a cop killer running around. The citizens are sympathetic. But when—not if, but when—Dagon adds a couple of ordinary citizens to his score, all Hell will break out. You’ve got to let the public know what’s going on.”

Martinez nodded reluctantly.

“Put me in a room with him,” Ray promised, “and I’ll take care of him. Until then, I’ve got to be patient and wait. Just like you.”

Martinez nodded again.

Ray had the feeling that this was going to be a long, difficult wait.

Staten Island: Nighthawk’s Nest

Cameo spread the comforter that Nighthawk had given her upon the living room sofa. It was new, right out of its plastic wrapping. She settled down on it and closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at Nighthawk.

“Ready?” she asked.

He nodded from the adjacent loveseat. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and took out the harmonica, turning it over in his hands for a moment. Then he tossed it to her.

Cameo caught it deftly and studied it herself. She put it to her lips and blew a tentative note that came out like a blaaaattt! from a whoopie cushion. She paused, then ran a simple scale, smiled, and a song came spilling out of it that Nighthawk hadn’t heard in a long time. It was Robert Johnson’s “Drunken-Hearted Man,” and before it ended Nighthawk was laughing and crying and clapping his hands in time all at once. He recognized the style in which it was played, and there was no doubt at all in his mind that it was Lightning Robert Nash blowing like he did back in ‘46 when they were both dying together in that charity hospital.

Cameo took the harmonica from her lips and smiled. “You looking good for such an old fart, Nighthawk. Too damn good.”

Choked up with emotion, Nighthawk couldn’t answer for a moment. “I… I got a disease that day. You remember.”

“Hard to forget the day I died, old boy.”

Nighthawk nodded. “I’ve never forgotten, either. This disease went way deep into me, deeper than my flesh, deeper than my bone. It changed me. It gave me powers, Lightning. I can take other peoples’ essence. I can take it from them and use it myself.”

Lightning Robert whistled through Cameo’s lips. “That sounds mighty powerful, John.”

Nighthawk nodded solemnly. “It is. I’ve tried to use it righteously over the years... but that first day... when it first came over me... I didn’t know how to control it.” He looked down, unable to look his old friend in Cameo’s eyes. “I took too much from you, Lightning. And I killed you. I’ve been living all these years afraid that I stole your soul—or part of it—to keep me alive. You, and others, that day.”

Lightning looked at him. “You may have took something from me, John, but it wasn’t my soul.” He laughed. “I seem to still have that. I sure do.”

“I’m glad of that, Lightning.”

“Maybe you killed me.” Cameo’s head shook. “I don’t know. I do know I was old and dying, anyway. The cancer was eating me alive. I hurt. Man, how I hurt. If you were able to take the pain away and by the way send me home, well, John, we was friends. I wouldn’t begrudge you that.”

“Thank you, Lightning.”

“My pleasure, John.” He looked around. “Where am I, anyway?”

“You’re in the body of a young lady named Cameo. She was able to call you back by holding your harmonica.”

Lightning looked down at it, held in her small white hands. “You live in a strange world, John Nighthawk.”

Nighthawk laughed. “You don’t know the half of it, Lightning. I’m a hundred and fifty years old now. In my time men have walked on the moon and visited the planets of another star. Men can fly. They can read your mind. They can turn invisible and disappear. They can do most anything except bring peace to the world.”

Lightning shook his head. “Then I’m glad I’m where I am and you’re here. You was always one for stirring things up, John. I was the quiet one.”

They sat in silence for a moment like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in decades enjoying an unexpected meeting.

Then Nighthawk asked, “What’s it like, Lightning, where you’re at now?”

Lightning looked at him and smiled. “I can’t rightly say, John. It’s like I don’t know anything past the time my heart stopped beating, but there’s dreams, like, I can almost remember. Dreams of a place that feels like home.”

“Is that all you can say?”

“That’s all I can say.”

Nighthawk nodded. It was enough. He knew now that he hadn’t destroyed his friend’s soul all those years ago. If he had, Cameo would never have been able to call it back from wherever it was now.

“You got to get back right away?” Nighthawk asked.