Torn was out of bed in an instant, moving toward her. Danny backed away, but she didn’t seem to see him. Her hands came up in front of her face. “No!” she shouted.
Something picked her up and flung her backward. She smashed up back against the bookshelves on the wall. The shelves collapsed; books fell like hail, bouncing off her. She never felt them. Her eyes were wide with terror. She screamed.
Tom ran to her, tried to cradle her in his arms. She fought him with hysterical strength, still screaming, clawing at him. “Danny, stop,” he said. “Its me, it’s Tom, what’s wrong? Danny!” She wasn’t hearing him, she wasn’t seeing him. She raked him with her nails, broke free, spun around. fighting desperately against the empty air.
Her calf ripped open in a flower of blood. Danny let out a shriek that knifed right through Tom’s soul. He watched in helpless horror as a wet gash opened beneath her chin, weeping blood. He pulled her to him, grabbed the sheet, tried to stanch the flow of blood.
When a chunk of her right forearm blossomed red and pulled itself loose from her flesh, fighting like a living thing, that was when Tom began to scream.
Ray released his hold on his foe’s throat, but in a final bit of anger and blood lust, he grabbed him by the hair and bounced his face off the floor. The ace cried out in pain and Ray leapt to his feet. looking back to where the others had been trying to hold off the hounds.
Battle had his back against the wall. His eyes were wild, his face covered with sweat, and he was pulling the trigger of his empty assault rifle again and again, aiming at nothing.
Cameo was slumped against the floor, the fedora perched crookedly on her head. She looked up when she felt Ray’s eyes on her and waved. She was all right.
And Danny. Ray took two steps toward her, then stopped, groaning. Miraculously, her face had been untouched, but that was about the only part of her unbloodied. Her throat had been ripped out, her right arm was gone. Her Kevlar armor had given the hounds pause, but only momentarily. She looked worse than he had after his meeting with Mackie Messer, but Danny couldn’t put herself back together again. He turned away and let out a mixed scream of pain and anger, whirling on the big ace who was kneeling slumped forward, one hand to his face, wiping away the blood that was streaming from his broken nose. He looked up at Ray. His eyes were no longer glowing. “I called them off,” he said sullenly, “but was only able to do it because they’d been blooded.”
“You shit bastard,” Ray said. He hurled himself at the ace, but somebody grabbed him around the waist and tried to pull him back.
“Back off, Ray.” It was Battle. “Don’t you see? He’s our ticket to Bloat’s throne room. Don’t kill him now!”
Ray stopped, suddenly icily calm. He reached down and took Battle’s wrist, and twisted it, peeling his arm away from his waist.
“Oww!” Battle said, going down to one knee.
“Get off me, asshole,” Ray ground out. “Don’t ever touch me again.”
“Okay, okay,” Battle said. “Just let me go.”
Ray tossed him aside and turned to look at the Fist ace, who was staring at him sullenly. Just as quickly as it had hit him, the blood lust left. He tried to get it back, but somehow couldn’t. “Bloat didn’t kill Danny, this bastard did.”
Battle stood, rubbing his wrist. “I’m willing to overlook this breach of discipline this once” he began, but Ray cut him off.
“Shut the fuck up,” Ray said. He took a deep breath. “All right. You’re right. This hairy bastard is our ticket to Bloat’s throne room.”
Battle’s eyes gleamed. “Yes, of course. I knew you’d understand.”
Ray stared at him without saying anything. But he was thinking, And there we’ll settle things once and for all, one way or the other.
One way or the other.
Now that he looked at the bodies and bits of bodies, Modular Man recognized a number of parts other than Patchwork’s eye. A jaw, part of the scalp with its brown hair still attached, a slim hand with its thin, knobby wrist
Modular Man took the hand. It didn’t seem cold, but neither did it respond to his touch.
A shell landed in the courtyard. The Rox trembled. The android unwrapped his gun again, detached the power cable, threw the tarpaulin out onto the ground, and began to throw parts into the tarp.
He wasn’t entirely certain whose parts they all were. He’d sort them out later.
More shells landed as he worked. Glasswork shattered, stones fell. Then there was a shriek overhead and a huge flame exploded through the sky toward Jersey, a fire seemed to suck the air from Travnicek’s tower. Shattered stonework was blasted from the ramparts.
Fuel-air bomb, the android thought. It had fallen a hundred yards short, otherwise it would have killed everyone.
Strange lights, bright fractal images, seemed to hang in the air. Part of Travnicek’s tower, the wall between it and the Crystal Keep, melted like a river. Bloat was inside, among a litter of corpses. The Statue of Liberty’s torch had fallen across him, and he was asleep or unconscious.
A whole host of Bosch creatures — pigs with butterfly wings. a witch on a broomstick, amid them Christ with a halo — materialized in midair, all singing the Yale fight song. “Boola boola boola boo!” they hooted, then passed through a door that hadn’t been there a moment before. The door slammed behind them.
There was a shout, and Shroud, coughing in the smoke, staggered to the hole in the keep. “Help!” he yelled. “We’ve got to rescue the governor!”
The android looked at him. “I don’t work for you anymore,” he said.
He threw some last parts on his pile and bundled the tarpaulin.
Carefully, so as not to spill anything, he rose into the sky.
Someone was screaming, a pitiful wailing like that of a lost child. It’s okay, he said to the voice, it’ll be okay. He opened his eyes to see who the child was.
It was him.
Bloat’s throat was sore, and the keening sorrow echoing in the silent Great Hall was his own voice. Around him, the Crystal Castle was a shambles. He had been thrown from his platform, his immense body ripping free of many of Kafka’s inlet pipes. Raw sewage spilled over huge open wounds. Liberty’s torch had been sheared from its supports the massive sculpture had fallen on top of him, slicing into the slug-white body. Bloat could feel its weight on him. Most of the roof was down, the girders and supports and broken glass littering him like confetti. A monstrous hole had been torn in the back wall.
He had crushed his phalanx of guards. They were underneath him, suffocated and dead, but the same accident of fate that had killed them had saved Kafka and Pulse: Bloat’s body had shielded them from the worst of the blast. Kafka was stirring, spinning like a roach on its back in the detritus of the hail. Pulse was brushing bright glass from his/her clothing and wiping away a spray of blood from a cut on the forehead.
Most strange of all, Wyungare was in the Great Hall, staring up at Teddy’s head as if he’d been expecting Bloat to awake at any moment. Teddy was beyond surprise; seeing Wyungare here, now, made him feel nothing. Bloat was shivering, his entire body trembling slightly. No one else seemed to notice, but Teddy could feel it, like a fever chill.
Outside, the fog lingered, but through ragged tendrils, he could see the bombed-out buildings left from the brutal shelling. Only a few listless mermen were stationed around the room. Their fish-mounts drooped so that their fins touched the floor, their scales were without luster and tattered. His jokers were dead or had fled.