If she could have smelled him, she never would have gotten close to me.
She leaned over the railing, her hair falling alongside her neck on either side, brushing the skin. Soft. Fragile. I could smell the blood underneath, hear her heartbeat. The pulse fluttered faster. Her pupils widened. Slowly, she unbuttoned the cuff of her raspberry-colored stretch cotton shirt and rolled the sleeve up, all the way to her bony biceps.
“My partner tells me you’re ready to deal,” she said, and smiled. “Don’t you think you deserve better than this, King?”
I turned my face away and whined. Why did it never occur to me before that
King
is a name you call your dog?
I knew what she expected, what they always expect—the Dracula thing, swooning rapture, better than sex. I breathed deep, mouth open, lips curled back from my fangs, nose wrinkled at the hot richness of her blood as she drew a razorblade lightly across her left wrist. She glanced over her shoulder. Ostentatiously, the assassin drew and checked his gun, and chambered a round. Jesse wasn’t talking to me.
I was just as glad.
And Angel turned and smiled at me, and drew a pistol into her right hand. “Play nice,” she said. She stepped up on the bottom rung of the railing and extended her wrist across the water. I heard her heartbeat, the assassin’s heartbeat—and another pulse entirely, the thunder of the Colorado like lifeblood through the veins of Hoover Dam, the great animal chained, the river itself—
The river itself, like blood.
Angel’s fingers touched the railing. I dragged myself up, almost as wobbly as I pretended to be, and reached for her with crabbed, leaking hands. She watched with avid eyes, enjoying her power, enjoying my need.
“Try any rough stuff,” she whispered, “and the assassin shoots you, if I don’t first. No teeth. Just what’s there. Be a good boy and we’ll get you a real meal shortly. Understand?”
“Yes, Angel,” I said, and she stretched a little farther, so I could take her hand.
My hand trembled. The skin was icy; she flinched from my touch.
“Ah,” she said, and I turned her hand over gently, and curled her fingers into a fist to make the veins and tendons stand out more, and let the tip of my tongue run along the thick line of blood that curved down the heel of her hand.
It was already cold, no life in it, no use to me outside the body like that. There was still a little trickle running from the razor slice. It smelled so good my mouth ached, my hands shook.
I was a nice kid. Good kid. God-fearing, respecting my mother. Angel’s luxurious little shiver when my cold mouth closed over her wound was enough to make my balls crawl right back up inside my body, even if I still had any use for ’em. Christ. The woman was sick. She watched avidly, breath quickening, eyelashes fluttering. I stared at her face while I nursed at her wrist.
Over her shoulder, the assassin smiled at me.
Easy, easy, easy. She couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and seven, and her weight was all leaned in my direction, the railing under her midsection as good as a fulcrum. She half-closed her eyes, purring, playing the scene as I began to suck.
And then shouted, panicked, when I surged to my feet and
yanked
.
She lost the gun in that first pull. I heard it hit the railing and then the water, clank and then splash. She shouted and threw her weight back, her free hand knotted on the railing, that sleek beautiful hair flying all around her as she struggled to keep herself out of the assassin’s line of fire. “Son of a—”
She didn’t know he wasn’t going to shoot.
One more hard pull. I felt her arm come out of the socket, felt the running water burn my hands as they strayed out over it, held on for dear life and hauled. Strong, strong as I’d ever been, strong and getting stronger when I tasted her blood, her fury, her fear. I swung her through the air like swinging a rag doll over your head, and knocked her down on the stones. She screamed, high and scared now, a scream like a gutshot rabbit, and then her throat was against my teeth and her hands were pushing at my face, gouging eyes, wrenching ears.
Our jaws change along with the teeth. My lips skinned back and my mouth went around her neck as easily as my hand. Her larynx vibrated against my tongue as she shrieked, believing finally, too late, this was really happening now.
Better I killed her than Stewart or Jackie had to. Sin gets spread out if you do enough of it. What I mean is, murders are like birthdays. When you only have a few, each one stands out. After the first fifty or so, they start to blur together.
One more wasn’t going to hurt me any.
I closed my mouth, and the salt filled it, and her screams stopped as she strained into me, shoving, strong for someone so tiny, strong for someone so dead. Flesh parted, meat sliced with a ragged knife, and the wet blood covered my face and cartilage crunched between my teeth like a plastic water bottle clenched in your fist. Her hands locked, fists, helpless knee in my groin and she bubbled, the air slurping past my teeth rather than out her mouth because I’d torn her windpipe through. Arterial spray soaked my face, my coat, my hair, my hands. Her heart spasmed.
Her life filled my mouth, and I swallowed it down. She shivered and twitched, feet and legs and spine, and I wondered if she was seeing a white light and a tunnel, hearing the voices of the friends of whoever she had been, back when she was a real girl. Before she was a killer. Before she was a marionette.
Poor, silly kid. I bet the assassin told he she’d get a Hollywood ending if she stuck with him, and so she did.
A Hollywood ending. Sure. Just like Marilyn’s.
Just like mine.
I stood up, when she’d stopped twitching, when the blood was all in me or on me. I stood up, healed and dripping scarlet, cold and sticky and itching on my face and hands, and I looked the assassin in the eye.
“My half of the bargain,” I said. “Now what about yours?”
One-Eyed Jack, À Main Gauche.
North Las Vegas. Summer, 2002.
We meant to sneak down to the dam in 1964, avoiding Homeland Security. Unfortunately, Stewart naming the spies had a few side effects we hadn’t anticipated.
I had an uneasy feeling we were going to miss the ability to time travel before we were done.
We parked high on the Arizona side. The lots were still closed for the night, but once you get up out of the canyon where the road is blasted, there are places to pull off. The hike back down is dangerous, especially if you’re almost all stupid enough to be wearing black, so we put Sebastian in the back where his light-gray suit would stand out a little. And we tried to stick as close to the canyon wall as possible, although it was unnerving as fuck when a good-sized vehicle roared past, echoing and rattling and shaking dust and grit down on our heads. Stewart tended to flinch from the big trucks, especially.
I couldn’t say I blamed him.
Still, we made it down to the dam without any fatalities. The long curved span was silent, and I was struck by the way the bathtub ring of calcification marking how Lake Mead’s water level had fallen gleamed in the moonlight, chalky against the rocks of Black Canyon. The angels stood sentinel on the far side, guarding the Promethean sigil etched on the terrazzo, waiting—a chain on my ankle as surely as the chain that nailed Tribute to the wall in a little room far below us, if he was still there.
The Colorado ran down toward California on my left. I stared at the low cement wall, the Plexiglass panels protecting only the not-very-serious jumpers, the silent threads of power lines looped like silver chains across the red-gray desert.
À main gauche.
On the left hand—
Left hand and right hand. Hand of cards. Hand of . . .
My fingers curled, as if I were reaching for something, almost touching it, as if I were crumpling dollar bills in my fist. And then Stewart slid the fingers of his right hand through my left one and squeezed it tight, and I glanced over at Sebastian leaning over Nikita’s shoulder as Nikita lifted a hand, fingers curled under, and pointed. James stood a little away from them, leaning on his umbrella the way John Henry leaned on his hammer, knuckles shining white in the moonlight.
Left hand and right hand. And one severed limb. “Stewart.”
“Jack-Jackie?” He squeezed my hand again, and leaned his warmth into my shoulder.
I nodded to the spies. “If that were a poker hand, what would we have?”
“Three of a kind,” he said, with a girly flip of his hand. “Which would tell me somebody’s cheating. Actually, I’d say it’s more like”—he eyed the spies speculatively—“we’ve got a two aces and two jacks, if we count you in: the knave of spades.”
“And the king of hearts.”
Stewart nodded and gave me one more squeeze. “Seven-card draw, obviously, and wasn’t it a bitch to discard?”
“I wish I could have held on to that third ace.” Which was precisely what was troubling me. “What about the other guys?”
He opened his mouth on something snarky and sharp and paused, hard. And closed his mouth, and thought for a minute, and swallowed. “Dueling metaphors. They’re playing with, I dunno, a Tarot deck. The Mage and the Hanged Man, and the Ace of Swords, I’d say. And a Queen, or maybe the Empress. And they’ve discarded another Queen.”
“And what’s Tribute then? King of—”
“Cups,” Stewart supplied.
“They’ve discarded both Queens,” Doc Holliday said, close by my elbow. “Tribute killed Angel long about sunset. The assassin helped him do it.”
“Well, shit.” Somehow, I didn’t think it was going to be to our advantage. Much as I wasn’t going to miss the little bitch.
Stewart shifted his weight. “Do you really think it comes down to poker hands?”
“I think in a war of symbols, every little symbol helps. But I also don’t want to play poker for Las Vegas.” He grinned at me. I shrugged. “It’s overdone.”
“You’d rather pull a slot handle?” Stewart was ever-so-dry. He wasn’t looking at me; he was watching the spies. But I caught the sideways flicker of his eyes under thick lashes.
Hey, it got a laugh. “Maybe an Elvis slot,” I said. “No, actually. I’ve been thinking I’d rather play twenty-one.”
Stewart leaned on me a little harder. He looked at the spies, lips moving as if he were counting under his breath. And then he looked at me and said, “There’s only four aces in a deck. You’re thinking you split, I take it?”
“Unfortunately, I have a feeling this one’s dealt from a five-deck shoe, and there’s a lot more face cards in play than we’d normally get. So I split and let him hit me.” I waved at the spies, at Doc, at Stewart. “I’ve got a face card for each ace. Both hands, twenty-one.”
“And as long as they’ve got Tribute and the assassin—a king and an ace—and they’re . . . dealing, to extend your metaphor a little, it’s a push, and nobody wins. Stalemate.”
“Fuck, let’s not take this into chess. Anyway, I’m not sure it really matters; it’s just a metaphor.”
“But with a Promethean around, metaphors are ammunition. We can’t let this stay in stasis, Jackie. The balance of power has got to shift, and shift our way.”
“You’re saying we can’t just drive them off.”
Doc cleared his ghostly throat. “You never can, son,” he said, and coughed into his handkerchief. “They’ll just return and shoot you in the back when your guard is down. You’ve gotta end this now if you want to be free. Cut the cord.”
“Right,” said. “Let’s get this over with. Have they taken Tribute out yet, Doc?”
“About an hour ago,” he said.
“You seen John Henry?”
“Right here, Jackie.” Apparently, the cliff walls weren’t good for keeping ghosts out. Not the way the dam was, anyway—he showed up carrying his hammer, and with a plank-and-rope sling hung over his shoulder.
“What’s that?”
“High-scaler’s chair,” he said. “The construction workers used them. I borrowed this one from the ghost of a man who fell building the dam. It’ll get me to where I start hammering.” He swung his hammer jauntily, lightly, a cheerleader twirling her baton. “Come on, Doc. Time for you to help lower me down.”
Doc nodded, coughed once more, and tucked his handkerchief away before following the big ghost down the dam. He glanced over his shoulder as he walked away, and said, “You boys go on ahead and get the King out safe. I’ll see John here off and catch up, if I can.”
I hesitated, a weird sick sort of feeling congealing my gut, but Doc was obviously done talking. He winked, and covered a cough, and turned away. And Stewart was tugging my arm.
“I thought they’d need us,” I said, finally, with a glance at the spies, who were shooting each other quizzical glances in between watching the John Henrys leave. “It’s my city. My problem. I shouldn’t just be leaving it to them—”
“They’re legends. Let them handle it. They’ll be okay.” He shifted his grip to my elbow and turned me bodily away. “Come on,” he said. “It’s not long to sunrise now. And it’s forty minutes, an hour to Saint Thomas. Let’s go.”
Tribute, Back On the Chain Gang.
Saint Thomas, Nevada. Summer, 2002.
When I woke up, it took me a moment to remember why I was asleep. Or unconscious. Then I lifted my hand and chains rattled and the memory of the assassin shooting me with a tranquilizer dart came back on a rush. Twenty-five years as a vampire, and I’ve never been knocked out. And now, twice in a row.
The union was going to hear about this, let me tell you.
“I apologize for that, Tribute,” the assassin said. “It was necessary to transport you. In safety, you understand.”
I didn’t open my eyes, because the texture of the air on my face told me it was still dark, and the sun was a little way off. And the assassin was standing over me, but if he meant to kill me, he would have done it while I was out. No immediate danger, and I wanted a sense of my more distant surroundings.
It took me only a moment to realize that I must be in a tamarisk forest. I got the feathery rustle of the branches, the heavy, composted scent of the plant. I got the smell of water from a little ways off, and the cracked hard-packed earth under my back smelled rich and organic, full of rot. Not desert earth. More like something that had been dredged up from the bottom of a lake—or left behind as the lake drew back in the drought, slid down its shores and revealed what had been submerged so many years ago.