Now two ideas were simmering side by side. “He can control Gojiro?”
“If someone could turn off the TV and get his attention.”
“So why don’t you turn off the TV and get his attention?”
“I already told you, didn’t I? My hooves can’t work the remote.”
***
Heads turned and even the fops stopped their banter. The Duke of Windsor folded his hand despite the fact he was holding three sevens and had yet to make the change. It wasn’t so much the man as the aura that entered with him. Jim could only imagine that Dracula might have a made a similar entrance. The tall man in the powder blue, narrow-lapel sharkskin suit, goatee beard, and porkpie hat looked nothing like the legendary count. In fact, he was an almost perfect double for Ike Turner; although Jim knew immediately that it wasn’t Ike-Jim had played ballrooms with Ike and Tina and, although Ike could be mean, even he didn’t spread the kind of malignancy, like a sulfurous miasma, that was rapidly filling the salon privee. Lola was now noticeably nervous. “Go. Get out of here and stop being an idiot. You’re completely out of your depth here.”
Jim stubbornly shook his head. “I’m not running. I’m sick of having no flicking control over my destiny.”
Lola looked at him in way that made Jim glad he was already dead. “It’s not just your destiny, you moron. You could blow it for the rest of us.
Jim was going to continue to protest, but the Ike Turner doppelganger turned his head in Jim’s direction. The scotch had yet to slow Jim to the point of not being fast enough to avoid the evil eyes, but even the close pass he experienced was enough to send a glacial chill through his nervous system. In the instant, he knew that Lola was right. He had no clue what was going down in the private salon, and he certainly had no place there. “Okay, I’m going. But how will I hook up with Doc again?”
Lola fluttered her hands as though willing him away. She just wanted him gone. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll find each other.”
Jim moved as unobtrusively to the door as he could and quietly slipped through it. Out on the main staircase, he glanced at the nearest Napoleonic guard. “Some weird look-alike show back in that gold mine.”
The guard nodded stiffly. “It’s that time of the night, sir. Can I call you your Virgil?”
Jim shook his head. “No, thank you. I think I can find my own way.”
“Whatever you say, sir.”
Jim hurried on down the stairs, only to find himself confronted by yet another bizarre spectacle. Sid Vicious was coming through the casino’s revolving doors, swaying slightly, with a woman in a wedding dress who wasn’t Nancy on his arm. Just to make the picture a tad more off kilter, Vicious was wearing an outfit virtually identical to Jim’s-white tux, leather jeans, and engineer boots-except that Sid was lacking a shirt, and his trademark padlock and chain dangled on his scarred and scrawny chest. He immediately spotted Jim and his face twisted into a somnambulent sneer. “The Doctor’s looking for you. And he’s got some wicked gear.”
“Holliday or Hypodermic?”
“Which one do you think, you fucking hippie?”
***
Semple knew that she was trying Mr. Thomas’s patience, but she didn’t care. An awesome payback and an end to her adventure were almost within her grasp. “When Godz gets going, it’s usually bad news for the nearest city. Am I right?”
Mr. Thomas wagged his wisp of a tail uncomfortably. “He eats it.”
Semple hesitated, trying not to look too eager, but wholly failing. “So what would it take to get the Big Green to eat the a city like, say . . . Necropolis?”
“You want to see Necropolis eaten?”
“Just a hypothetical question.”
Mr. Thomas didn’t believe her. “You’ve got your reasons to see him eat Necropolis.”
“You have a problem with that?”
Jesus was still prone on the couch, but at least he’d stopped masturbating. Seemingly the Sistine Chapel didn’t turn him on. Mr. Thomas shook his head. “No problem at all. I’ve seen TV from Necropolis. The place would seem infinitely suited as a snack for the Big Green.”
“So what would get him to head in that direction?”
“Not much at all, if they’ve got the makings of nuclear weapons there.”
“He likes nuclear weapons?”
“He loves nuclear weapons.”
“The ones Anubis has are pretty small and pretty dirty.”
“He likes the small and dirty best of all. It was a nasty, dirty little bomb that thawed him out of the Arctic ice, don’t forget.”
“So it’s just a question of getting him started?”
On the screen, Michelangelo was complaining to the Pope about how he hadn’t been paid, but apparently doing little for Jesus, who jumped to an episode of The Newlywed Game. Mr. Thomas paused before he answered. “Only Jesus can do that.”
Semple looked hard at the goat. “The TV has to be turned off.”
“I really wouldn’t advise doing that.”
“It would be for his own good.”
The goat looked at her knowingly, calling her bluff. “You’re not interested in his good. You just want to see Godz eat Necropolis.”
“Okay, I admit it.”
“Turning off the TV just like that might traumatize him.”
Semple treated Mr. Thomas to her hardest stare of authority. “Are you going to stop me?”
Mr. Thomas seemed undecided. “I’ve a handy pair of horns, don’t I?”
“You want to spend the rest of your days shut up in a tumor with a terminal couch potato?”
Mr. Thomas thought about this. “You do have a point there.”
“So you won’t stop me?”
“I’m still not happy about you shutting down the telly.”
Semple knew she had the goat cornered. “But you won’t try and stop me?”
“I suppose not.”
Semple walked to the couch and took the remote from Jesus’ close-to-lifeless hand.
***
Jim was about to step into the revolving door when a worried-looking man pushed in front of him, elbowing him out of the way. Such rudeness hardly seemed in keeping with the ambience of the grand casino, but Jim could only suppose that the individual had his reasons. It took about forty seconds for those reasons to become abundantly clear. As Jim disengaged from the doors, the man had already reached the bottom of the steps. He halted and let out a soul-wrenching sob. “I’ve lost it all. She’ll never forgive me.”
With these words, he pulled a small chrome-plated revolver from his jacket, pointed it at his right temple, and pulled the trigger. The gun went off and a spurt of gray-pink brains was propelled almost to the other side of the wide flight of steps. Two Napoleonic guards hurried forward as the man’s body shimmered and vanished, taking its corporal leave for the pods of the Great Double Helix. The squirt of brain remained, though, and one of the guards quickly called for a cleaner.
“Brilliant. Blew his brains out just like that. Never thought I’d get to see it.” Jim turned. Sid Vicious was standing behind him. The punk had apparently followed him back out of the casino just in time to catch the incident.
Jim shrugged. “I guess it goes with the territory. This was once the section of Hell reserved for suicides.”
“You believe all that fucking bollocks?”
“A man has to believe something.”
“That’s the trouble with you fucking hippies. Always looking for shit to believe in.” Vicious laughed nastily and gestured to Jim with his right hand. “ ‘Ere, Morrison, catch.”
He tossed a small silver ball to Jim, a sphere with a circumference little larger than a quarter. Without thinking, Jim caught it one-handed. The sphere immediately started to glow and sparkle, an electric shock ran up his right arm, and his surroundings began to glow and distort. He tried to drop the sphere, but it clung to the palm of his hand. The experience wasn’t at all unpleasant, except that Jim instinctively knew the sphere’s intention. He was caught. The sphere was going to absorb him and take him someplace, he didn’t know where or how. About the only thing he knew for sure was that Sid Vicious had only been a pawn in this game. He had merely delivered the snare. The identity of the real hunter was something he didn’t want to think about.