Energy to mass, as the equation went. This time around, he needed a lot less mass, so he siphoned off a lot less energy. Enough, probably, to blow most of the electric circuits in the auditorium, maybe in all of the Mirage. He welcomed the darkness. It made his task easier.
Jerry knew that he had to work fast. He added pounds of flab to his transformed frame. He didn’t have time to get his features exactly right, so he puffed them up into a pulpy mess. His hands were already bloody, so he smeared them on his face and torso, blurring more detail. He groaned realistically and threw himself down, huddling on his side, his hands over his still-changing face. Someone kneeled next to him.
“Dagon?” an unfamiliar voice asked.
Jerry squinted upwards.
“Wh—who?” he quavered.
“It’s the Witness,” said the handsome guy in a voice decidedly lacking pity. He leaned closer. “I’m surprised you’re already conscious. Man, you got your ass kicked.” The Witness looked up. “Juan—Sam—let the others grab the kid. Come over here and give Dagon a hand,” he said with open contempt. “And for God’s sake, get something to cover him up with. He’s fat and bloody and naked. Come on. Move. Move!”
The last was a general order shouted to everyone as the two men Witness singled out came to Jerry’s side.
“Here you are,” one of them said, slipping a cloak around Jerry with surprisingly gentle hands. “Up you go. Come on, before that asshole Ray finds us hanging around here on the stage.”
Jerry moaned convincingly. They hustled him away, right behind another pair of gunmen who were dragging a limp John Fortune into the wings.
“What about the others?” one of the men supporting Jerry asked as they passed Witness, who was waiting impatiently.
“They knew what they were getting into,” he said shortly. “Let’s get the Hell out of here.”
Jerry kept his face burrowed in the cloak as best he could. He was sure he hadn’t copied Dagon’s features perfectly, but the bruising and swelling and blood that he’d smeared on his face seemed to be an adequate disguise.
The kidnappers, with Jerry and John Fortune in tow, burst out into the sunny parking lot where a van was waiting for them. The two thugs hustled Jerry into the back with six or seven other gunmen, as well as John Fortune, who was only now starting to come around.
The Witness hustled to the front of the van. Its engine was already racing and it started to move before he could slam the passenger-side door shut. They pulled away from the Mirage quickly and immediately headed for the side streets off the strip.
Jerry couldn’t see out of the van’s windows. He didn’t know this part of Vegas —no tourist did—and he was immediately lost. The muscles joked and kidded with macho toughness now that the fight was over, except for the one who cradled his broken arm and endlessly cursed Ray.
They drove for perhaps twenty minutes. Jerry’s mind raced in high gear the entire time, but he was unable to construct a workable plan to escape from the gang. John Fortune groaned awake halfway through the trip. One of the gunmen told him to sit down and shut up, and the kid wisely took his advice. Jerry tried to catch his eye, but Fortune wouldn’t look at him.
Finally they stopped before an abandoned, boarded-up 7-11. The asphalt parking lot shimmered in the summer heat, drooping weeds poking up through the aimless cracks in its surface like dying flowers on the floor of Hell.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” Witness ordered.
This guy clearly, Jerry thought, lacked patience. Mystified, Jerry allowed himself to be half-dragged to the convenience store’s front door, which proved to be unlocked. Three men were waiting inside. One had a gun, another held a leash, and the third one wore it.
This last unfortunate was obviously a joker. His body was twisted so that his legs were thick hindquarters, his arms scrawny forelegs. His face had a vaguely canine look, with a snout underslung by a long jaw, no chin, and drooping ears that could have belonged to a hound dog. His skin was unfurred, but sallow, blotchy, and unhealthy-looking. His expression was not intelligent.
“Let’s go, Blood,” his handler said.
The joker looked at him, snuffling eagerly.
“Home, boy. Let’s go home. There’s a nice steak waiting for you. Nice and raw and dripping.”
Blood drooled, grinning idiotically, and walked on four limbs toward the store’s back wall, and then through it in a tunnel that suddenly appeared the instant before his nose would have touched the wall. They all followed him. Jerry was totally mystified, wondering what the Hell was going on.
It was cool and quiet on the other side of the tunnel, which opened into a small room built of naked stone. The room had no windows to the outside and was lit by a single unreachable bulb dangling from a naked fixture in the ceiling. The only door leading out of it was iron, with a tiny barred window. The small chamber smelled of ancient sickness that seemed to have soaked into the very stones of its walls and floor. Jerry didn’t know where they were, but suddenly he was afraid.
Blood howled for his meat.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
New York City: The Waldorf-Astoria
John Nighthawk watched Contarini stare at Cameo as if she’d just hooked a quarter from the collection plate, or done something equally unforgivable. Usher and Magda looked on with interest. Usher’s seemed mild. He really had no dog in this fight. Nighthawk knew that he was along just for the paycheck. But Magda’s expression was hurt compounded with fury.
If there’s trouble, Nighthawk thought, it’ll come from her.
Magda looked at Cameo as if she’d expected the Second Coming to occur right before her eyes and instead had been given a third rate vauDeville act. (Which, Nighthawk realized, was pretty much close to what had happened.) The nun looked from the transformed Cameo to Nighthawk, to Contarini, searching for a clue as how to react. Cameo posed no immediate threat to the Cardinal or anyone else. But, obviously, things hadn’t gone right. The Shroud should have produced Jesus Christ. Instead they’d gotten... someone else. It was clear that Magda had no idea who Cole Porter was, but Contarini, whom Nighthawk knew was a well-educated sophisticate, quickly showed that he labored under no such handicap.
“I don’t understand.” The Cardinal’s voice sounded like cracking ice on a frozen lake in the Italian Alps. “What... where is Our Lord? Why do we have this, this degenerate writer of, of degenerate popular songs instead of Our Lord?”
Nighthawk, who knew a little about music, couldn’t agree with Contarini’s assessment of Porter’s talents and was also more than a little amused that the Cardinal’s fury had made him almost tongue-tied. More importantly, he had an explanation regarding Porter’s unexpected appearance.
“It seems,” Nighthawk said quietly, “that we may have been a little impetuous in insisting that Cameo do her reading here instead of her usual room in Club Dead Nicholas.”
Everyone, even Cameo channeling Porter, looked at him with interest.
“What do you mean?” the Cardinal asked.
Nighthawk shrugged. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Look around. This is Porter’s apartment. When he was in New York he lived in the Waldorf-Astoria, since, when?”
“Nineteen thirty-four,” Porter said. “Though I did move once, from another room in the hotel to this very apartment. It’s so much more spacious than my old flat.“