Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel (29 page)

“No, you won’t,” Asmodeus said. “Dmitri? Show Snake-boy why he’s gonna sit and be good.”

The bored man stopped chewing. He didn’t look at Marcus, but his features tensed with concentration.

Not impressed, Marcus leaned forward, fists balled to knock the grin off Asmodeus’s face. Before he could, he felt something crawl across the back of his neck. Tiny legs, sharp points that moved with the rhythm of a centipede. He tried to swat at it, but his hands wouldn’t move.

“That’s how it starts,” Asmodeus said. “Wait, it gets better.”

The creature cut into Marcus’s flesh. He felt it saw on his skull, cutting a slice through his cranium from ear to ear. Marcus’s whole being cried out to shout and writhe and fight, but he just stood, trembling. Something slipped fingers into the crease and wrenched the back of his skull away from his brain. Scorching breaths burned his skin as the lips of an unseen mouth pressed close, using the slit in his skull to speak into his head. It spoke a garbled language that made the air curdle. Marcus didn’t understand, and yet he knew the horrors the mouth spoke because he could see them before him. The world melted around him, went dark and sinister. The voice spoke of the unmaking of the world. It spoke of rot and disease and misery. Marcus felt the speaker moving around into his center of vision. He felt the enormous bulk of it, and he knew that whatever he was about to see was horrible beyond imagining. Just seeing it would kill him. Would stop his heart. But the worst part was knowing that even with his heart stopped he would go on, and the horror would use him like a cat plays with her mouse. It would never end.

And then it did. It stopped. The speaker vanished. The dark, formless world disappeared. Marcus slumped forward, gasping.

Asmodeus’s tongue played along the line of his teeth. “That’s some fucked-up shit, isn’t it? That little trip was courtesy of Dmitri.” He tilted his head to indicate the other guy, who had resumed working on his gum, eyes vacant again. “That’s what he does. He fucks with people’s heads. Now that he’s been in yours, he can visit you anytime he wants to. Doesn’t even have to be in the same room as you. You step out of line, Dmitri here steps into your cranium and escorts you to hell.”

Marcus slithered back onto his bed, leaned against the wall, eyes snapping between Asmodeus and Dmitri.

“Now, let’s try it again,” Asmodeus said. “Here’s what you need to know. Listen carefully because I’m not gonna say it twice. You may be wondering where you are, and how and why you’re here. The where part is irrelevant. You just are. Deal with it. Don’t worry about how you are either. The why is a bit more of a thing. You’re here because Baba Yaga wants you to be. This is all her baby. Because of her, you’ve been plucked from the streets of J-Town and offered a chance at fame and riches. All you have to do is beat the shit out of fuckers. That’s all this is about. It’s about tapping into that primal urge for violence. It’s about being a man and proving it in the arena. You’re gonna be a gladiator. Understand?”

“No,” Marcus said.

“Don’t worry,” Asmodeus said, moving toward the door, “understanding is coming at you fast. Come on. Take a look at the compound. You better get something to eat, too.” When Marcus glanced at the ace, he added, “Dmitri’s not gonna fuck with you. Unless you act up.”

As if dismissed by this, Dmitri stood, pulled out his iPhone, and began scrolling through his messages.

Leaving his room, Marcus’s gaze turned upwards to the arching dome above the open space. Daylight shone through the material, bathing the green, garden-like space so completely that it almost seemed like they were outside. Insects buzzed among the flowering vines that ran up the rafters. Birds flitted about. Birdsong blended with the low, sinuous pipe music that floated on the air, exotic, meant to tempt and entrance. The scent of incense hung in the air.

It was almost beautiful, until he lowered his eyes and took in the tables and chairs, couches and plush rugs that crowded the main room. Amongst them, a motley collection of jokers lounged. Burly men. Dangerous-looking. Some of them were bandaged and bruised. Some played cards. A few watched baseball on a large flat-screen. Several browsed tables laden with food. One met his gaze, snarled. Judging by the growths all over his face and arms, he answered to the name Wartcake. Father Squid had called him Simon Clarke. They’d wanted to find the vanishing jokers. Now they had.

“This is the common area. Canteen. Bar. Place to hang out and shoot the shit. We’re pretty much free to do whatever, until a bout.”

A short-armed bartender mixed drinks at a bar. A small crowd gathered around it, talking, smoking. A gorgeous, nearly naked young nat woman started dancing to the accompaniment of cheers, her body all moving curves and lean arms and legs. Another climbed onto the lap of a grinning joker.

“We get treated well,” Asmodeus said. “You could get some of that, too. Just bring it in the arena. Win, and get the crowd loving you and you’ll get rewards, too.”

Marcus caught sight of Father Squid. The priest moved slowly through cots of injured jokers, talking quietly with them as he checked their injuries. “This place can’t hold us,” he said, though his voice didn’t carry the conviction of his words. “We’re not staying long.”

“Jailbreak, huh?” Asmodeus asked. His voice dripped with sarcasm. “Gladiator uprising? Shit, you really are clueless. My first day here a joker named Giles made a fuss. He started ranting, trying to wind us up, saying our power was in our numbers and we could smash this place if we wanted to.”

“Sounds like the type of shit you used to spout,” Marcus said.

Asmodeus grinned. “He was all right, but didn’t quite have my gift for oratory. He got folks pumped. Dmitri could’ve taken him to hell, but this time Baba’s thugs appeared. They dropped out of the ceiling all of a sudden. Had Giles strung between three Tasers, jerking and twitching, before anybody knew what was happening. They took him away. When they brought him back he wasn’t Giles anymore. He wasn’t even a man.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He came back as that.” The joker leaned close to Marcus’s shoulder and stretched his slim arm out to point.

For a moment Marcus didn’t know what he meant. There was nothing where he was pointing but a weird-looking chair. He almost said as much, but the words caught in his throat. Something about the piece of furniture made his skin crawl. It was strangely organic, as if it were all made of one substance, stretched and morphed into shape.

“That chair is Giles. Don’t ask me to explain how. We all just knew. When it first came…” Asmodeus lowered his voice, speaking with hushed reverence. “… it even looked like him. You could see him in there. He was twisted, changed, but he was still alive. We could see him breathing. We could see his eyes move. Sometimes, at night, I heard him pleading. Not really words, but, just sounds of anguish. He’s dead now, but it was a long time in coming.”

Marcus tried to think of something flippant, but there was nothing in Asmodeus’s face to indicate he was joking. He looked at the empty chair. Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him, but he could almost see a kneeling man, tilted backwards, arms frozen in a rictus of agony.

“Baba Yaga’s into some serious shit,” Asmodeus said. “It’s not like what Dmitri does. Some of it’s for real. It’s why you’re gonna fight when she says fight.”

Once More, for Old Times’ Sake

by Carrie Vaughn

ANA CORTEZ WAS PLAYING
hooky from work. She called in sick—first time ever, not counting the couple of times she’d ended up hospitalized
because
of work. On the phone with her boss, she sounded as pathetic and self-sacrificing as she could, saying that she couldn’t possibly come in and risk infecting anybody else with whatever twenty-four-hour stomach bug was ravaging her system. She wasn’t sure Lohengrin believed her, but she’d earned enough status over the last few years, he didn’t question her. She
deserved
to play hooky.

What would she do with her day off? What any self-respecting New Yorker—transplanted, but still—would do: she went to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. Not that she particularly liked baseball, but Kate would be on the field today, and Ana wasn’t going to miss it for the world.

Except for the local favorites and the one or two who made the news in some scandal or other, Ana didn’t know who any of the players were, didn’t follow baseball at all, but she got caught up in the excitement anyway, cheering and shouting from her seat in the front row off third base.

The player who won the Home Run Derby, Yankee hitter Robinson Canó, was a local favorite, and the crowd stayed ramped up for the next event. The special charity exhibition was billed as a Pitching Derby—the major league’s top pitchers took to the field, facing home plate and a radar gun, and pitched their fastest. 100 miles per hour. 101. 99. 102. The crowd lost it when Aroldis Chapman pitched 105—it had broken some kind of record, apparently. But the show wasn’t over, and when the last pitcher in the lineup walked onto the field, an anticipatory hush fell.

The athletic young woman wore the tight-fitting white pants of a baseball uniform and a baby-doll T-shirt, navy blue, with “Curveball” printed on the back. No number, no team affiliation, which was Kate all over these days. Curveball, the famous ace who could blow up buildings with her pitches, who’d quit the first season of
American Hero
to be a real-life hero, who’d then quit the Committee, because she didn’t need anybody.

The crowd never got completely quiet as they murmured wondering observations and pointed at the newcomer. Ana leaned forward, trying to get a better look at her friend, who seemed small and alone as she crossed the diamond and reached the mound, tugging on her cap. She didn’t face home plate like the others, but turned outward, to the one-ton pile of concrete blocks that had been trucked to the outfield.

Kate looked nervous, stepping on one foot, then another, digging the toes of her shoes into the dirt, pressing the baseball into her glove. Her ponytail twitched when she moved. Some traditionalists hadn’t wanted her here—were appalled at the very idea of a woman on the pitcher’s mound at venerable Yankee Stadium. But this was raising money for charity so they couldn’t very well argue. Ana wondered how much harassment Kate had put up with behind the scenes. If she had, she’d channel her anger into her arm.

Ana’s stomach clenched in shared anxiety, and she gripped the railing in front of her until her fingers hurt. Why did this feel like a battle, that Ana should be out on the field with her, backing her up? Like they’d fought together so many times before. Here, all Ana could do was watch. This wasn’t a battle, this was supposed to be for fun. Gah. She touched the St. Barbara medallion she wore around her neck, tucked under her shirt. The action usually calmed her.

Finally, the ace pitcher settled, raised the ball and her glove to her chest, wound up, left leg drawn up, and let fly, her whole body stretching into the throw.

Sparks flared along her arm, and the ball vanished from her hand, followed by a crack of thunder, the
whump
of an explosion—and the pile of concrete was gone, just gone. Debris rained down over the field in a cloud of dust and gravel. The sound was like hail falling. The crowd sitting along the backfield screamed and ducked. Kate turned away, raising her arm to shelter her face.

Something weird had happened. Ana had seen Kate throw a thousand times, everything from a grain of rice to a bowling ball. She’d blown up cars and killed people with her projectiles. But she’d never erased a target like this.

Then the speed of the pitch flashed on the big board: 772 mph.

The announcer went crazy, his voice cracking as he screamed, “… that sound … the sonic boom of a
baseball
! Oh my God, I’ve never seen anything like it! Unbelievable!”

Kate had also put a sedan-sized crater in the outfield, but no one seemed to mind. The crowd’s collective roar matched the noise of a tidal wave, and the major league players rushed out on the field to swarm Curveball. A pair of them lifted her to their shoulders, so she sailed above them. Her face held an expression of stark wonder. The screen at the backfield focused on her, her vast smile and bright eyes.

Ana clapped and screamed along with the rest of the crowd.

It took two hours for the stadium to clear out. Ana lingered, making her way toward home plate, where Kate was entertaining fans leaning over the boards to talk to her. Signing baseballs, posing for pictures. Ana arrived in time to catch one exchange with a girl, maybe twelve, a redhead in braids and a baseball cap of her own.

“I play softball,” she said, handing Kate a ball to sign.

“You pitch?” Kate asked.

“Yeah, but not like you.”

“Chapman doesn’t pitch like me. I bet you’re good enough.”

The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. We didn’t win the season.”

“Keep practicing. That’s what it takes. Work hard. Okay?”

The girl left smiling.

Kate saw Ana hanging back as the last of her admirers left. Squealing, she pulled herself over the barrier and caught her up in a rib-squishing hug. Ana hugged back, laughing. They separated to get a better look at each other. Kate was still grinning, as well she should be, but Ana noticed the shadows under her eyes.