Wyrm slammed into him, smashing him hard into the wall. The breath exploded from Cunningham's lungs as he turned and slashed with both daggers. But the weapons, centuries-old antiques, were no longer useful for anything but show. One glanced harmlessly off Wyrm's forearm, the other snapped on his rib cage.
Cunningham wanted to swear, but he couldn't catch his breath. Wyrm caught his face with one of his inhumanly strong hands, his clawed fingers raking furrows on Cunningham's cheeks. One of the joker's fingers found its way into Cunningham's mouth, and ace bit down hard.
He tasted blood in his mouth as Wyrm screamed and instinctively pulled away. His lungs laboring for air, Cunningham staggered back across the room to where he remembered seeing a viable weapon: the letter opener he'd put down next to the lamp on Kien's desk. He faded in his eyes just as he ran into the desk. Pain flashed through his knees as he bashed them against the edge of the desk, then he skidded across the stinking, sticky mixture of congealed blood and blue powder. He slid over and off the polished surface and landed on the desk chair and Kien's cooling corpse. Somehow he managed to grab the letter opener as he went sailing by.
Wyrm followed him, leaping over the desk with outstretched talons and dripping fangs. Cunningham thrust out his right hand, holding the letter opener, as Wyrm slammed into him, flipping the chair, Cunningham, and Kien's corpse all to the floor.
Cunningham was stunned by the double impact of colliding with Wyrm and smashing into the floor. It took him a moment to realize that he was still holding the letter opener and that something wet and sticky was running down his hand. The letter opener, he finally realized, had penetrated Wyrm's throat, angled upward through the joker's mouth and into his brain. The joker's blood was pulsing thick and warm on his hand.
Cunningham lay there for a moment breathing in the cloud of swirling blue powder.
It tasted so good to be alive.
Kien's chair felt comfortable against Cunningham's body. It was soft and plush and swiveled silently on well-oiled casters. Cunningham spun around in it idly, knowing that he should get going, that Christian could return at any moment with a goon squad, but somehow he just couldn't help savoring the feeling of complete triumph over his onetime boss. He stopped twirling around in the chair and rested one foot on Kien's headless corpse, another on Wyrm's rapidly cooling body.
So this is what it felt like to be head of the Shadow Fists. It was a heady mixture of power and mastery flavored with the anticipation of sweet riches to come. Of course, Cunningham realized, some of this flight of fancy had been caused by the rapture he'd breathed. He had to get it in gear. He couldn't afford to get _caught napping now.
He reached out gingerly, careful not to disturb any more of the fine blue powder that had settled back down upon the desktop, and picked up the telephone hanging precariously on the desk's edge. He dialed.
"Fadeout," he said into the phone. "Put me through to Warlock."
He hummed as he waited for his co-conspirator, the head of the Werewolf street gang, to get on the line. Warlock was tall and strongly built; no one, not even Cunningham, knew what form his jokerhood took. He always wore a mask. The Werewolf custom of wearing a common mask originated with him, as his followers aped whatever celebrity mask he wore for however long he chose to wear it.
"This is Warlock." The head Werewolf s voice was deep and emotionless, though there was something of cold, dispassionate danger in it. The Werewolves were, in Cunningham's opinion, mainly just a bunch of jokers with delusions of toughness. Warlock, though, was authentically dangerous. Even his ace power, which Warlock called his death wish, was eerily perilous.
Warlock would simply wish a target dead, and within twenty-four hours he'd get his wish. Sometimes the victim's heart would give out, or a blood vessel would burst in his brain. Sometimes they'd be in the wrong place at the wrong time and a runaway taxi would do the job. Once one of Warlock's victims had had the cosmically bad luck to be drilled between the eyes by a micrometeorite. No one knew how he did it, but Warlock's death wish never failed. He was a man to be cautious around.
"New Day is on," Cunningham told him with raptureinduced exuberance in his voice. "Now"
"Already?" Warlock asked thoughtfully. "It wasn't scheduled until next week. No one's in place-"
"We have to move now," Cunningham interrupted, and told Warlock about Kien's death. "I don't know who did it or why, but Christian's got to be involved somehow," he finished. "He showed up here too damn conveniently, and left after sitting Wyrm on me."
"What's his motive for wanting Kien dead?" Warlock asked.
"I don't know," Cunningham admitted. "But we'll find out when we get ahold of him. Right now we've got to move. Fast. He's already tried to pin the killing on me once. I figure he might bring Sui Ma in next."
Warlock made a sound deep in his throat and Cunningham knew that he'd pushed the right button. Even though both gangs belonged to the Shadow Fist Society, there was no love lost between the Werewolves and the Immaculate Egrets. The Wolves were jokers. They had the smell of the street on them. The Egrets were nats, for the most part smug, snotty nats. Though they worked the streets like the Werewolves, somehow they thought themselves superior to their brothers in the Fists, an attitude actively encouraged by their leader Sui Ma, Kien's sister.
"Put the Wolves on alert," Cunningham said. "Find Chickenhawk. Contact the Whisperer. I have a feeling idea we may need him before this shakes out."
"Lazy Dragon?" Warlock asked.
"Still missing," Cunningham said. "Last time I checked his place his sister was living there, and she hadn't heard from him in months. I'm afraid that Christian-or whoever's behind Kien's killing-might have already taken him out."
"What about Loophole?"
Cunningham made a dismissive gesture. "Leave him for now. He probably knows where a lot of the bodies are buried, so he may be useful later. But I can't see how he can hurt us now. He's just a lawyer."
"All right," Warlock said. "You want me to send a few of the brothers along to keep an eye on you?"
"That's a good idea," Cunningham said. He looked at the box with the tiny joker body in it. "I'm going to head for the Lair, but first I have to find Deadhead. I've got a little something for him here."
Fortunately Cunningham knew just where to look.
Cunningham knew the rapture was still playing tricks with him when he had to fight down the urge to buy half a dozen sandwiches at the Horn and Hardart at Third Avenue and Forty-second Street. He walked firmly through the food line, reminding himself that he was there looking for someone and not to stuff himself with mystery-meat sandwiches.
Although the eatery was crowded, Cunningham spotted Deadhead sitting by himself in an otherwise deserted corner. It was as if the automat's patrons-not usually considered a finicky crowd-were instinctively avoiding the half-mad ace. Cunningham couldn't blame them. At the best of times Deadhead was a repellent figure. His clothing was one step up from a bum's, his hair hadn't been washed since the Reagan presidency, and his corpsewhite face was continually dancing with nervous twitches and tics that made him look like he was suffering through electroshock therapy.
"Hello, Glen," Cunningham said carefully as he approached Deadhead's table. He looked at the empty plate before Deadhead and sighed. The deranged ace was often difficult to handle after a meal. "What'd you have to eat, Glen?"