Add the men surrounding him were already dead.
Add were bloody. All had open wounds. Most had arrows sticking in chests, throats, backs, or eyes. Their faces, as Brennan watched them approach, were mostly familiar, and he realized that these were the men he had kidded since coming back to the city.
There were a dot of them.
Brennan was momentarily frozen, unable to decide upon a plan of action as the dead men approached. There was a sudden movement, a sudden flicker of motion that Brennan caught out of the corner of his eye. He whirled to face it head-on and, saw a ghastly-grinning man with a horribly tattooed face tanding within arm's length of him.
It was Scar, the teleporting ace and gang deader who Brennan had kidded when he'd first come to the city. Scar's face was tattooed with the scarlet and black whorls that were the mark of the Cannibal Headhunters. He was a sadistic ace who took vast delight in utilizing his power to help him slowly slice up his victims with a straight razor. "I'm back, asshole," he said in a ghastly whisper through the throat that Brennan had crushed with a bowstring. "And this time I've got help." He gestured at the company of dead men slowly surrounding them in the brutal heat.
"You'll need it," Brennan said with a confidence he didn't totally feed. "I already kidded you once."
Scar hissed in rage, disappeared, and reappeared right in Brennan's face. He slashed out with his straight razor. Brennan ducked and half blocked the blow, but not before the razor cut across his chest, slicing his sweat-soaked T-shirt and scoring the flesh underneath. Scar disappeared, then flicked back into existence half a dozen feet from Brennan.
"Time to play," the sadistic ace said.
Brennan felt blood mingle with the sweat running down his chest, and he suddenly realized that he could die in this place. He looked around quickly, spotted a narrow gap between two dead Egrets who were closing in on him, and sprinted for it. Brennan stiff-armed the Egret who moved to intercept him and pushed his way through.
"Run, you bastard, run!" Scar screamed with crazed delight. "You'll never get away, never! You're meat-dead, rotting meat!"
Brennan ran, the dead men on his trail, Scar watching and laughing horrible constricted daughter.
Rick and Mick held up the pickle jar and looked at it intently. Brutus stared back at them, his face forlornly pressed up against the glass, bruised and swollen. Blood trickled from his nose, and he tried, unsuccessfully, to cradle his broken right arm as Rick shook the jar and watched the joker bounce around.
"Why are we bringing the little geek with us?" he asked Kien.
Kien glanced down at him as he drove carefully through the flurry of fat damp snowflakes. "Ultimately, as a receptacle for Captain Brennan s soul. After we've captured them, I've decided to have our jumper allies transfer me to his body for a while and him to that thing."
"Cool," Rick said. He gave the bottle another shake. "Better take the did off and give the geek a little air," Mick said. "He's starting to turn blue."
Kien chuckled indulgently, then turned his attention back to the street. Kien didn't dike driving, and he liked driving in snowstorms even less, but he wanted privacy on this trip. Once it was over, he would have another body, another identity, one that no one would survive to know about. Not the jumpers who would effect the transference. Not even Rick and Mick. He glanced at the monsters torturing the helpless little joker. They were getting almost as much fun from that as they had when they manhandled the joker until it told where Jennifer was being kept in the clinic.
They had their crude uses, but Kien knew he wouldn't miss them. It was time to invest in a better grade of help.
Kien pulled into the clinic's parking lot, next to the van that had ARCHER LANDSCAPING AND GARDENING painted on its side. It had taken months of detective work to track down Brennan and his bitch, but nothing was beyond Kien's power. Nothing.
"All right. Wait here until I send for you, then bring your friend," Kien said, gesturing at the pickle jar.
Rick held it up, giving it another shake as Kien slipped out of the car. Kien would miss the thrill of being an ace when he gave up this body. He faded down to his eyes-it had taken a little practice to realize that when he faded out totally, he was also totally blind-and moved through the falling snow like an animated silhouette. He made his way to an unlocked service entrance at the back of the clinic and silently slipped inside. He paused for a moment, orienting himself, then went to the room on the top floor the pathetic joker had told him about.
It was easy to fade to nothing whenever he saw an approaching nurse or orderly, easy to fade his eyes back in when he heard them walk by. No one saw him. The door to the room was shut. Kien looked through the small window set high on the security door and saw Brennan's bitch lying in the bed, her forehead bandaged. The big joker priest, Father Squid, was standing next to the bed. Someone was sitting in a chair next to the priest, but the priest was in the way, and Kien couldn't identify him. Or her.
Everyone was intent on Brennan's bitch. Kien drew the gun he carried in his coat pocket and pushed open the door. "Be quiet," he said in his most commanding voice, "and I'll let you live awhile."
The priest turned and stared. Kien let his gun fade in until everyone could see it. "Don't be stupid," Kien said, and the priest held his ground, an unreadable expression on his ugly joker face. "Stand back, slowly. And remember, I'm not afraid to shoot."
"Listen to him," the joker priest said. "It's Fadeout, of the Shadow Fists. He means what he says."
"You're right," Kien said, laughing aloud, "but also wrong. Very, very wrong."
There seemed to be no reason to remain invisible any longer. Kien faded in as the priest stepped back from the bed, and the person sitting in the chair looked up at him. Kien stared. It was a small Asian man, white-haired, wrinkle-faced, with a long, sparse chin beard. He was dressed in shabby, patched clothes. It was his father.
Kien's gun shook as he pointed it at him.
"Such a son," his father said in the familiar hated tone of voice.
The old man shook his head sadly, and Kien started to lower the gun. It's a trick, he suddenly thought. It's got to be a trick. He raised the gun again, trembling fingers almost pulling the trigger unwillingly.
"Who are you?" Kien asked.
The image of his father shook his head again, sadly. "It is an evil child who doesn't recognize his own father, Hsiang Yu," the apparition said.
"What do you want from me?" Kien shouted, unnerved at the spectre's use of his real name.
His father shook his head. "Only the respect due me. For that," he continued, "I will give you a gift. Your greatest, fondest desire."
"What's that?" Kien asked in a shaken voice.
"Do you want the head of Daniel Brennan?" his father purred.
Kien's eyes grew wide. "You know I do."
"Then you shall have it," Kien's father told him. "If," he added in the voice of a devil, "you are man enough to take it."
His father pointed to the other side of the bed. Kien carefully leaned forward, looking over the bed, and saw Brennan lying asleep on the floor.
Kien smiled wolfishly. "This is a great gift, oh Father," he said, and pointed his gun at Brennan.
His father shook his head. "You were always one for taking the easy way, my son," he said.
Kien glanced at him, but before he could say anything, there was a sudden, terrifying wrenching. Kien felt his mind whirling into a mad vortex. He closed his eyes, but it wouldn't stop. He tried to vomit, but he couldn't. He swallowed hot bile, and when he opened his eyes again, he lurched forward to steady himself against the great teakwood desk that stood in the office of his apartment that overlooked Central Park.