Without backup, negotiation was out of the question for Ben.
On missions for Fadeout, he had always had protection for his comatose body. Now he was on his own. Ben walked briskly around the corner into an alley and took the folded paper dragon out of his pants pocket.
In the alley, he stopped next to a dumpster with an open lid. There he unwrapped the dragon carefully; finding it in good condition, he dropped it to the layer of snow. Then he grabbed the top of the dumpster and jumped to get one leg over it. With a rolling motion, he fell gently into a foul-smelling pile of cardboard, newspaper, and garbage. Only the cold made the stench bearable. Be careful, at least, Vivian said reluctantly.
Ben wriggled around until he was lying on his back in a reasonably comfortable position. Then he closed his eyes and concentrated on the folded paper lying outside the dumpster.
In a second, he could feel himself growing.
As the folded paper became massive reptilian flesh and organs and scales, Ben looked out with the dragon's eyes at the mouth of the alley. Ben walked his forty-foot long, four-footed, wingless body forward on short legs. No one saw him cross the cold, broken pavement toward the sidewalk.
When he turned the corner of the building, pedestrians on the sidewalk suddenly scattered into the street. Even the most hardened denizens of Jokertown didn't want to cross him. Ben's clawed feet could not work a door latch, so he coiled himself outside the door.
Through the glass, he saw grapehead suddenly rise half out of his chair, pointing at him. Ben shot forward, smashing his massive head through the door; as he raced down the aisle inside the restaurant, the door snagged on the thickest part of his neck and ripped from the wall. In front of him, the Demon Princes grabbed their assault rifles and fired as they dove for cover.
Ben felt line after line of bullets tear into him, but the size and speed of his dragon body carried him forward, crashing into the table. The remains of the door hung around his neck like a collar. He snapped twice at the stunned jokers in a blood fury, biting one in half each time. More bullets ripped into him, but now the Demon Princes were running for the door, firing wildly.
He struck after them like a giant rattlesnake and bit the legs off grapehead, leaving stumps that spurted jets of blood over the smashed table. Then he darted forward again and snapped the fish head off that joker's neck. As he spat out the head, he heard heavy footsteps thumping through the doorway.
As pain dulled his vision, Ben saw the remaining Demon Princes scramble past a large figure cloaked in a black velvet cape and hood. The intruder, gigantic for a human but much smaller than Ben's dragon, wore a fencing mask under the black hood and marched forward angrily.
It was the joker known as the Oddity, in its winter attire.
Ben had never met it before, but he knew the approach of an enemy when he saw it. He clawed his body around to face his adversary. Pain shot throughout his long torso. His coordination was off and his body slow to respond. Though his cold-blooded reptilian constitution was tough, the bullets had torn flesh away from the bone up and down his body and he could no longer move properly.
"This is Jokertown," the Oddity intoned fiercely, in the harshest of its three voices. "You have no business here, ace. Not even with a street gang."
Ben could see the shapes moving and shifting underneath the black velvet cloak. The Oddity had once been three people who were now fused together and whose parts were forever mixing and matching in painful motion. He tried to talk back, but only hissed and growled in his dragon throat.
"Is that you, Lazy Dragon?" The Oddity lumbered toward Ben and reached out with one heavy, muscular white arm and one slender, feminine arm-both its hands were masculine but artistic and sensitive. "I've heard rumors about you on the street. But whoever you areyou need to learn to leave jokers alone."
Ben gathered himself and struck forward again, snapping his jaws. He missed the Oddity, who threw its arms around Ben's clamped jaws and squeezed like an alligator wrestler. The arm that had been soft and smooth was slowly gaining in weight and thickness; soon both its arms would be heavy and muscular. One hand had started to become feminine. Ben tried to wrench his jaws open again, but they were held fast.
Now Ben rolled, thrashing wildly; the tables and chairs shattered around him. What was left of the door broke and fell from his neck. Glasses, mugs, and dishes tinkled to shards. The Oddity was flung loose, its own great body adding to the destruction in a swirl of black velvet stained with the shiny blood of Demon Princes and Ben himself.
Anxiously, watching the Oddity, Ben struggled to untwist his long body. His short legs scrabbled helplessly for a moment on the debris as he tried to stand. To one side, the Oddity had lumbered to its feet and was clumsily advancing through the smashed furniture.
The Oddity reached out with its arms again just as Ben felt his claws gain some traction. He opened his jaws and darted downward to the Oddity's legs, but his failing neck muscles were slow and crooked. As Ben's teeth clacked hard on empty air, the Oddity again caught his mouth shut in an iron embrace.
Ben's dragon body was slowly dying. His vision was a blur as he squirmed and convulsed to buck the Oddity off his face, but his movements were even more painful now and less in control. The Oddity continued to ride him, even when they slammed into a wall, smashing the wallboard and splintering the support beams.
With a sudden searingly hurtful convulsion of his entire length, Ben flipped his long tail around and knocked the Oddity's ankles out from under it. The Oddity crashed onto its back, releasing Ben, and crunched broken dishes and glasses even further. Ben opened his jaws again and snapped wildly, getting no more than a mouthful of black velvet.
Shaking free of the cloth, Ben scratched again for a brace under his feet and tried one more time to slash the Oddity's torso with his fangs. He was slow and clumsy now, disoriented and frustrated by his inability to move his huge body the way he wanted. The Oddity again wrapped up his long snout in arms that were slick and shiny with sweat and blood. This time it was the Oddity who pushed off the floor with one massive leg, rolling to one side.
Ben felt a thrill of fear as he was flipped onto his back by brute strength; the lights spun above him in streaks. Suddenly the Oddity got new purchase against the floor and heaved to one side, the fencing mask an expressionless mock before one of Ben's eyes as the Oddity's arms twisted Ben's dragon neck. He heard a loud snap… and found himself lying in the cold dumpster outside, surrounded by trash and garbage.
Ben did not dare attract the Oddity's attention now. The bar of soap he had taken from the Twisted Dragon had not been carved; if the Oddity or anyone else came after him, he had no protection. He waited, listening.
The night had turned much colder. The snow fell heavily in fine white flakes that came swirling endlessly out of the night sky on a wind growing harsher as he lay there. Occasionally a car swished through the slush on the street, but the slush was hardening to ice. Everyone was quiet in the presence of slaughter.
From the sound of voices murmuring cautiously, he knew that a small crowd had gathered outside the door of Hairy's Kitchen. From the footsteps and the shift in the voices, he knew when the Oddity had made its way out of the wrecked establishment and wandered down the street to the depths of Jokertown. Ben climbed out of the dumpster, dropped to the ground, and peered around the corner.
The crowd was already breaking up. Now that Ben's dragon was again a scrap of paper and the Oddity gone, the spectacle had ended.
Glancing about alertly for Demon Princes, he slipped through the shattered doorway and hurried past the wreckage in the aisle to the remains of the table where they had been carousing. So far, Hairy and his staff were still holed up in the back or maybe off the premises completely. He could not help seeing some of the remains of the jokers he had so easily torn apart a few minutes before.