He must have heard, but he paid Ray no attention. The Allumbrados were dead in moments, all of them, and suddenly Dagon turned back into a naked tubby man.
“What the Hell are you doing?” Ray asked.
Dagon smiled. “Turning coats, right?”
“We’ve got to fight this out,” Ray said.
“Do we?” Dagon asked with raised eyebrows. “We tried that once before, and neither of us liked it very much.”
“I liked it enough to try it again.”
“Ah, but I don’t, dear boy.”
“I should kick your ass.”
“Don’t be a dolt,” Dagon chided him. “Don’t you have more important fish to fry? You shouldn’t even be wasting time talking to me.”
Ray ground his teeth in frustration. The bastard was right. “This isn’t over between us,” Ray flung over his shoulder as he rushed back into the Bower’s lobby.
“For now,” Dagon said smiling, “it is.”
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower
“No!”
Fortunato stepped in front of Nighthawk, blocking his path to the boy. The old man looked at him with sorrowful eyes.
“You know how dangerous he is,” Nighthawk said in a soft voice. “He’ll burn hotter and hotter, but he won’t die. He’ll eat up the world, maybe even ignite the atmosphere. He has to be stopped.”
A noise came from John Fortune, a squeak of fear that he couldn’t control.
“I know,” Fortunato said replied in equally low tones. “But you can’t do it.”
“I only have to touch him for a moment—”
“He’s too hot already. You’ll die before you can touch him. Your flesh will shrivel and burn.”
Nighthawk smiled. His eyes crinkled and Fortunato could see something of the true age that was in them. “I’ve had a long life,” he said. “Maybe it was my fate to live it this long so I’d be here today to stop him.” He paused and looked at Fortunato pityingly. “It’s quite painless, you know.”
“You’ll throw your life away for nothing. But maybe I can do something,” Fortunato said. “Besides. I’m his father.”
Nighthawk looked at him steadily for a long moment. Then he nodded.
Fortunato nodded back, then he looked at Jerry Strauss and Mushroom Daddy. “I want to be alone with my son.”
“You sure about this?” Jerry asked him.
Fortunato nodded again.
“Good luck, then,” Jerry said. He and Nighthawk exchanged glances, and Fortunato was aware of the surprise they felt about being on the same side of this conflict.
“Luck, John,” Jerry said.
“Luck, boy,” Nighthawk said.
“Thanks,” John Fortune said in a small voice that could barely be heard as they went out of the bathroom.
Mushroom Daddy paused on the thresh hold, turned and said, “God bless us, every one,” and closed the door as he left the room.
Fortunato turned to his son and smiled. “Are you frightened?”
John Fortune nodded. His halo danced like the rays of an agitated sun. “Yes.”
“I am too. That was why I went to Japan, you know.”
“You were afraid?” John Fortune asked, as if surprised at Fortunato’s admission.
“Yeah.” Fortunato sighed. “Afraid of losing more pieces of myself. More of the people around me. Afraid of being the most powerful ace in the world, yet in the end being alone.”
“You’re not alone now.”
“Neither are you.” He held out his arms. “Come to me, son.”
“I’ll hurt you.”
Fortunato shook his head. “I’m Fortunato. Nothing can stand before me. Not the Astronomer. Not the Swarm. Not even the wild card virus.”
John Fortune got out of the bathtub. Fortunato could feel his eyebrows curl and singe as his son stepped closer, but he didn’t flinch. There was a nanosecond of horrible pain as they almost touched. Then Fortunato stopped time.
His astral form fled his body, but maintained a thin thread, a tenuous link to draw energy through, for it would take tremendous amounts of energy to implement his plan. Fortunately, size was a meaningless concept on the astral plane. Fortunato went down into his son’s body. He propelled his consciousness through his son’s bloodstream, flashing like a corpuscle through his veins.
Searching, he found the changes wrought by the virus in John Fortune’s brain, nervous system, and all the cells throughout him. Fortunato wasn’t an expert, but he knew that it didn’t look good. The cells were twisted abnormally, blasted and sickened. This will be rough, he thought. The enemy was almost numberless, and he was only one man.
He broke himself into a million fragments and ordered them into battle against John’s body. He fought it cell by cell, shifting, rearranging, and cleansing, but never harming. He burned energy at a prodigious rate as he willed John Fortune’s cells to repair the damage the wild card virus had done. Thankfully, he didn’t have to guide them in the process, to tell them exactly what to do. They knew themselves, wired deep in the mysteries of their DNA, how to correct themselves. He just had to supply them with the energy they needed, and the time. He gave freely of both. He hoped he had enough.
He settled in for the longest, most difficult battle in his life.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower
Ray knew where he would find the Angel. He went to Barnett’s headquarters as quickly as he could. The corridor leading to Barnett’s office sanctum was empty. Ray rushed into the reception area to see Sally Lou sitting behind her desk and the two Secret Service agents crowded around the door leading into Barnett’s office, looking in but afraid to enter.
Ray brushed by them as if they were children, and they didn’t even protest. He took in the room with a single glance. Barnett was on his knees, praying loudly. Angel was standing by him with her hands on her hips and a frown on her face. He also noted that a hole had been punched through one of the sanctum’s walls. The Witness lay in the corridor beyond. He didn’t look too good.
Ray rushed up to Angel. “You had me worried there—” he began.
“Sometimes,” Angel said, “you think too much. Kiss me.”
He did, with enthusiasm. He could have kept it up for a long time, but he realized that things weren’t finished, by any means.
“John Fortune—” he said, somewhat breathlessly as he pulled away from her.
She nodded. “He’s in Fortunato’s suite. There—something’s wrong with him,” she said with a concerned expression. “His temperature is rising. The Hand—Barnett said that it was out of control.”
Ray glanced at Barnett, who was loudly praying for guidance and forgiveness. He nodded. “Let’s go.”
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower
Time was meaningless on the astral plane. Fortunato couldn’t tell how long he’d been fighting. It seemed like forever. He gave of himself with every single battle with every single recalcitrant cell of his son’s body. He knew that he didn’t have much left. He needed help, but there was no one to give it. If he’d had a physical body, he’d be exhausted. Even without one, he was still exhausted. That was a sign of the desperate state he was in.
But all throughout a hard life, Fortunato had never given up. Never once. Not even when he’d gone to Japan, he finally realized. It had been a step in his evolution that he’d had to take. A time to rest, reflect, and learn. It had not been a wasted sixteen years if it had enabled him to do this.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower
Ray and Angel barged into Fortunato’s suite. Inside it looked like the Jokertown Clinic’s emergency room on Saturday night, crowded with patients and worried on-lookers. Some of them seemed to be members of the other team, Ray realized, but nobody seemed to care, so he didn’t.
“John?” Angel asked, staring at a worried-looking figure standing near the doorway to one of the bedrooms.