"Since when have I had to be frisked before seeing the old man?" Philip Cunningham asked Kien's loyal watch joker.
"Ssssince the General ordered it." Wyrm's stare was unrelenting.
Cunningham gave his best put-upon sigh. "All right," he said, good-naturedly raising his hands over his head as Wyrm patted him down.
But the easy smile and air of practiced indifference hid the sudden unease running through Cunningham's mind. He knows, Cunningham thought. Somehow the old bastard found out about New Day. That's why he called me in to see him.
Wyrm grunted, stood back. "Okay," he said almost grudgingly. "You can go in."
Cunningham hesitated. He was sure that an angry Kien was waiting for him beyond the closed door to his private office, an angry, vengeful Kien, ready to confront Cunningham with his knowledge of the scheme that would have put Cunningham in his place as head of the Shadow Fists. Cunningham wondered briefly who had betrayed him to Kien, but decided to worry about that later. Now he had something more basic on his mind. Survival.
He could try to make a break for it, or he could bull his way through by putting the blame for New Day on someone else. Loophole, maybe. Or Warlock. That might be his best bet.
He squared his shoulders and opened the door to Kien's inner office. Inside, it was quiet and dimly lit. The only illumination came from the shaded lamp on the edge of Kien's desk. The room's atmosphere was dark and sepulchral, with the glass cases housing the fabulously expensive antique Orientalia scattered around the room playing the part of the grave offerings.
"You wanted to see me?" Cunningham asked as he entered the room. He stopped, frowning. "Kien?"
The shadowy figure sitting behind the huge teakwood desk was only dimly lit by the small lamp. Cunningham stepped forward cautiously, then suddenly realized that the Shadow Fists would have a new master much earlier than even he'd anticipated.
Kien was dead.
If that indeed was Kien seated behind the desk. Cunningham approached slowly, disbelievingly, wondering if his boss was playing some kind of macabre gag. But it wasn't anywhere near April 1 and Kien wasn't the type to pull practical jokes. The body slumped behind the desk was headless, but Cunningham could tell it was Kien from the half hand flopped carelessly in the fine blue powder scattered on the desk surface. And Kien wasn't the only deader in the room. The watchdog joker that Kien normally kept in a jar on his desk was pinned to the desktop with Kien's platinum letter opener, horribly marring the wood's glossy finish.
Cunningham gingerly leaned over the desk, first shifting the lampshade to throw a little more light on the body. Carefully keeping clear of the blue powder sprinkled on the desktop that had mixed with a massive quantity of congealing blood, he reached out cautiously and laid two fingers on the back of Kien's whole hand. The flesh was still warm and pliable. Kien's fingertips were stained blue, and more of the powder clung to the front of his bloodsoaked shirt.
"Rapture," Cunningham said to himself, stepping back from the desk. The blue powder was manufactured in Kien's own Shadow Fist labs. It enhanced the pleasure of anything, turning food into ambrosia, a simple touch into an orgasm. It also had some unfortunate side effects. In a way, Cunningham thought, it was ironic justice rarely seen out of bad television shows that Kien had been using his own wares.
Cunningham didn't think of himself as a stuffed shirt, but he was old-fashioned in his choice of recreational vehicles. He stayed away from the pernicious new stuff, with the often correct notion that he wasn't going to fool around with any kind of chemical until it was proven relatively safe by countless others. He was too bright to be anyone's human guinea pig.
The thing of it was, though, Cunningham could have sworn that Kien had a more conservative attitude toward drugs. When Kien played Kubla Khan In His Pleasure Dome, he would occasionally indulge in a pipe of opium, which had a long history of acceptance in Chinese culture. But that was it. He used no other drugs and was only a light drinker. It was a surprise to discover that Kien was a rap head.
Or was he?
Cunningham carefully considered the death scene. Why would Kien kill his own watchdog joker? And if Kien hadn't killed the sorry little bastard, who had?
The person who had taken Kien's head as a souvenir. But why steal the head of a dead man?
To keep the memories locked in Kien's dead brain away from Deadhead.
Perhaps. If that were the case, then this was an inside job. Knowledge of Deadhead's unique ability to access the memories of dead brains wasn't exactly widespread outside the Shadow Fists.
Cunningham tugged the letter opener from the batrachian joker's chest, then set it aside. A small box stuffed with elegant wrapping paper sat on the edge of Kien's desk. The box was stamped with the name "Lin's Curio Emporium," an expensive antique store that was part of Kien's far-flung commercial empire. Besides importing costly Asian antiquities, Lin's was also a high-class drugstore where well-heeled clientele could pick up anything from marijuana to heroin. To rapture.
Cunningham put the jokers body in the box. The joker might be dead, but that didn't mean he couldn't be questioned. Not as long as Deadhead was available.
Cunningham took a long, careful look around the room. There were no windows and the room's only door led to the antechamber guarded by Wyrm. He sighed. It looked like a classic locked-room mystery. Too bad he never read Agatha Christie.
Only the door to the office wasn't locked. It suddenly opened and Wyrm stuck his head in, saying, "Excussss…" and stopped before he got the first word out.
Leslie Christian stood behind Wyrm. Cunningham didn't like the weathered-looking British ace who'd appeared from nowhere the previous year and had somehow stepped right into the Shadow Fist Society as Kien's personal confidant. He was a smug, supercilious bastard who stank of unsavory secrets.
The two in the doorway stared at the scene inside Kien's office, then Christian said laconically, "So, finally made your move, old boy?"
There was a moment of shocked silence, then Wyrm howled in anger as Christian's words finally penetrated his stunned brain. The joker rushed into the room, his foot long tongue whipping back and forth, his fangs bared and dripping poison.
Wyrm wasn't very bright, and he was intensely loyal to his master. When he got an idea through his skull, it tended to stay there. And now he had the notion, neatly planted by Christian, that Cunningham had killed Kien. Cunningham knew he wouldn't have the opportunity to talk things over with the insanely jealous joker.
He faded. Fading made Cunningham as blind as he was invisible, but his other senses had been sharply honed by continual practice. He called a picture of Kien's office onto the video screen of his mind, and moved around a freestanding glass case that contained a selection of delicately inlaid and enameled snuff bottles. He headed out of Wyrm's path and to the office door.
But Wyrm's angry screams got closer. Rapidly. Cunningham ducked and there was a loud crash as Wyrm hurled himself forward, barely missed, and smashed through the front of the display case. The angry joker floundered through shards of shattered glass and broken bits of priceless antiquities, hot on Cunningham's trail despite his total invisibility.
What the hell was going on? Cunningham thought, then felt on his face the wet caress of Wyrm's ultrasensitive tongue. The bastard can smell me, Cunningham realized. Then Wyrm was on him.
He twisted away as the, joker grabbed at him and one of his flailing hands caught in Cunningham's shirt. Wyrm pulled him close. Cunningham could picture the wide gaping mouth, sharp fangs running with saliva like the drool of a mad dog.
He was no match, Cunningham knew, for Wyrm's wild-card-enhanced strength.
He faded in his eyes to see Wyrm ferociously biting empty air and brought his right knee up hard between Wyrm 's legs.
Wyrm screamed and Cunningham pulled away, glancing quickly around the room. That bastard Christian had disappeared, pulling the office door shut behind him. Crossed on the wall near the door were a pair of antique ceremonial daggers, their hilts encrusted with pearls, rubies, and emeralds. Cunningham sprinted across the room, cursing Wyrm under his breath as the joker hobbled after him. He ripped the daggers from their wall mounts. Wyrm's hot breath was on the back of his neck as he faded again, taking the daggers with him to invisibility.