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.
Ben stepped over a blood-red chunk of human flesh and felt a sudden gag in his throat. He stifled it, looking away. In the heat of the struggle, in dragon form, he had fought desperately, biting and slashing Demon Princes with abandon. He had felt different, somehow, at the time. The fight had been necessary, and as a dragon, he had fought the way a dragon must.
Now it was hard to believe he was the same person, inside, as the one who had slaughtered these people so quickly and easily.
It was you, all right, Vivian said with quiet anger. Ben had killed before in his animal forms and would do so again. In most cases he had never faced the remains in human form afterward. Now, however, the bloodshed sickened him. It just hadn't seemed the same a few moments ago.
He clenched his human jaws this time and forced himself to keep searching.
Ben couldn't be sure the package was here; one of the Demon Princes might have had it on him or they might have stashed it earlier this evening. It might have been carried by one who got away. As he looked around, gusts of cold wind blew through the restaurant, rattling dishes and debris and sending napkins flying. After a moment of picking pointlessly through the pieces of furniture and broken dishes, he turned to the torso of the grape-headed joker.
Ben winced and tried to look only at the shiny black leather jacket, adorned with fancy zippers and silver studs, not at the stumps of the joker's legs or the spray of blood all around him. Quickly he patted down the joker and felt a bulge in a large zippered pocket. Gagging from the smell of blood, he retched once.
You have no right to be sick at this, Vivian said accusingly. You caused it.
Ben called up enough saliva to spit and wiped his hand on his sleeve. Then he unzipped the pocket. Holding his breath against the bloody stench, he pulled out a small padded manila envelope.
A siren wailed in the distance, coming closer. That was fast for the Jokertown Precinct. Still, even Fort Freak had to respond when someone made a mess this loud and public.
Ben had to be sure. He pulled open the flap of the envelope and looked inside. The envelope was stretched to its limit by plastic bags jammed with blue powder, sealed by cellophane tape. It was rapture, a designer drug from the labs of Quinn the Eskimo-a Shadow Fist product that was sheer poison.
A drug runner, Vivian said, sneering with hatred and contempt.
He closed the flap, secured the envelope in one of the big patch pockets on his leather jacket, and walked briskly out of Hairy's Kitchen into the worsening storm.
Ben had forgotten about Sally Swenson until he was walking down the filthy hallway to his door. Hoping she had changed her mind and left, he unlocked the door and slipped inside the stifling heat of the room. By the slant of light from the door, he could see her blond hair still splayed out on the pillow much as it had been when he had left. In the heat, though, she had kicked off the sheet, which lay rumpled at the foot of the bed. She was breathing slowly and deeply.
"Sally." He reached down to wake her and then stopped. Overall, she had seemed harmless enough, and he expected to be back well before dawn. The last thing he needed now was a hassle with her.
He turned on the lamp and set the door carefully so that it was in the jamb but not latched. The door was warped and the irregular shape helped hold it in place.
Then he set the knob to lock. Tonight he would have to do without the dead bolt.
You can still get out of this, Vivian said quietly, hopelessly.
"Hope this works," he muttered to himself, ignoring her voice. He took the manila envelope out of his jacket and put it on the floor. Then he undressed, before he began to sweat in the warmth. When he was naked, he took out his Cub Scout knife and the bar of soap he had taken from the Twisted Dragon.
He paused. A cold-blooded creature like a dragon was too vulnerable on a winter night like this. He needed a creature that could tolerate the weather, cross the water to Ellis Island either by air or water, and still hang on to the package. It also had to be a creature that could intimidate the unknown persons he would meet; that was a given on a mission like this.