And it all shattered.
The image of his face graven on the ceiling collapsed in a ruin of steel, glass, and plaster. Something dark and sinister streaked overhead, tearing through walls and into the room behind him. The world exploded. Fire rained back into the Great Hall, the concussion tore at the building with violent sound, and suddenly he could hear nothing but the thundering and see only the fire and the falling stone and brick and steel and glass and even his immense bulk was lifted up and thrown sideways and he — mercifully, he thought — lost himself again.
He had pretty much decided that she wasn’t coming when the dogs began to bark.
Tom went out to the porch to wait for her. He’d left the gate open and put the dogs on chains. As he watched her headlights come down Hook Road through the fog and turn into the junkyard, he asked himself for the hundredth time just what the fuck he thought he was doing. He still didn’t have an answer. He never told anyone his name. He never brought anyone to the junkyard. But this was a night for firsts.
She parked right in front of the shack. It was his Danny who got out of the car. The first one he’d met. But somewhere along the way, she’d combed out her hair and traded her blue jeans for a dress. She looked around at the junkyard, gave him a lopsided grin. “This isn’t the way it is in your comic book.”
“Tell me about it,” Tom forced himself to say. His mouth was dry. “Come on in.”
Danny took something out of the car. It looked like a baseball bat, wrapped in canvas. She carried it up to the house.
“What’s that?” Tom asked as she stepped into the shack. He felt incredibly awkward. His house was a mess, a rundown fifty-year-old shack in a junkyard. Why the hell had he let her come?
“The Coast Guard fished it out of the drink,” she said. “They thought it was part of a body.” She put the packet down on the table, opened it.
Inside was Modular Man’s leg.
“You must have pulled it off just when Mistral hit us.”
Except for the torn wires and burnt circuitry dangling from the upper thigh, it looked almost human. Tom stared at it with revulsion for a moment. Then he began to laugh. “Oh, great,” he said. “Just what I needed.” He gestured toward his television, where the head of the first Modular Man stared sightlessly across the room. “Pretty soon I’ll have enough parts to build my own.”
“Speaking of heads,” Danny said, “how is yours?”
“Better,” Tom said. He’d taken a long shower, changed into fresh clothes, and swallowed a couple of heavy-duty painkillers Dr. Tachyon had prescribed for him years ago. The headache was still there, but not like before.
“You should have let them x-ray you,” she said.
“I only reveal my secret identity to one person a day,” Tom said. “It’s a little rule I have.” He changed the subject. “How is your sister doing?”
“Fine. Sleeping. They anaesthetized her to set the leg. Just as well. The pain was bleeding through to the rest of us pretty bad. Now we don’t feel a thing.”
It had been so long since he had entertained a visitor, Tom had almost forgotten how. “I’m not much of a host,” he said, suddenly awkward. “You want a drink, or something?”
“No,” Danny said. She stepped close, looked up at him. “I want a kiss.”
Tom stood frozen. He didn’t know what to say. What to do. “Danny,” he finally managed. “I don’t think…”
“Don’t think,” she told him. “Don’t talk.” Her hand went around his head, and pulled his face down to hers. “Just feel,” she whispered, as their lips touched.
Ray held up his hand. What was left of the team stopped behind him. He glanced back. It was just him and Battle, Danny and Cameo. Him and a nat, an ace who could talk with her so-called sisters and an ace who could channel the dead if she had anything of theirs to channel through. He wished that Battle would give her Black Eagle’s jacket like he’d promised, but then wondered if that was just another of Battle’s lies. He wondered if the agent even had the jacket.
All and all they were a ragged, sorry-ass bunch. The rest of the muscle was gone. It was up to Ray to see them through.
But, Ray wondered, through what? Battle was still hot to kill Bloat, but assassination was never Ray’s style. Still, what could you do with the fat bastard?
The corridor through which the Outcast — was that really Bloat? Ray wondered — had disappeared suddenly opened up into a large chamber that was dimly lit by the internal phosphorescence of its walls. Ray hesitated on the threshold. It was bigger than any of the other rooms they’d come across so far and it was relatively open with few rock formations to provide cover.
There was something about it that made Ray uneasy. He moved into the room slowly, motioning the others to follow at a cautious distance. He was well into the chamber before he noticed the figure at its far end, still and gigantic, looking like a statue in a park in hell.
It was a big man sitting on a big horse. Only the man’s legs were shaped like those of a stag and he had eyes that glowed green and a rack of antlers that would do any stag proud. The horse, too, had eyes that glowed. Ray recognized them right away. He had run into them both yesterday morning on New York Bay.
“I’ll he a son of a bitch,” Ray murmured, and grinned his lopsided grin. Here was something clear-cut, something he didn’t have to worry about. Here was serious ass begging to be kicked and Ray knew he was just the one to do the kicking. Grinning, he stepped forward as the big joker on the big horse raised a battered gold horn to his lips and blew upon it. The notes echoed eerily inside the cavern, bouncing and rebounding off the rock walls, striking Ray’s ears and stopping him with an involuntary shiver.
A crackle of green lightning pulsed through the air, playing counterpoint to the joker’s tune and suddenly there was a spear in his free hand. Ray didn’t like that, but he liked the horn’s other effect even less.
It called dogs, goddamn ghost dogs slipping through the cavern ceiling, running on air like it was ground. As they neared the cavern’s floor their ghostly bodies became more solid. At first Ray could see through them, but once their paws touched the floor they were as real-looking as any pack of white dogs with blood-red ears who were four feet tall at the shoulder and had green fire burning in their eyes and dripping from their tongues could be. There was a shitload of them.
The joker took the horn from his lips and smiled savagely, his dogs howling in a whirling pack at his feet. He pointed his spear at Ray and the others and spurred his night-black stallion. As he charged the pack howled like a chorus of the damned.
“Shit!” Ray said to himself. He turned and sprinted back to the others.
“What the hell is that?” Battle shouted.
“Goddamn Twisted Fist ace,” Ray panted. “Start shooting before the fuckers get all over us!” It was good advice.
The hounds were faster than the stallion. They outstripped the horse and its rider, giving tongue to cries of ferocious blood lust that sparked an answering surge in Ray’s veins. He ripped his Ingram out of its holster and triggered a long burst that plowed into the front-running dogs like burning hail.
The others all fired after Ray’s initial burst, all except Cameo, who was now wearing an incongruous-looking fedora that she’d taken from her pack. She had apparently summoned another ace, one who was swearing Catholic oaths while hurling balls of electricity at the charging hounds.