High Stakes: A Wild Cards Novel, Page 4

  Baba Yaga’s mouth was working, the wrinkled cheeks becoming even more sunken. Vaporlock looked terrified and he whirled and ran. A gob of spit hit the floor behind his heels, but he was through the door and slammed it shut.

  Franny started to move toward the door. He was still clutching the icon. Baba Yaga’s command cut the air.

  “Stop!”

  “I want to arrest that asshole.”

  “Always the noble hero,” the old woman said and gave a nod toward the icon. Franny looked down and for the first time noticed the figures. It was St. George slaying a dragon. “Well, I want to kill him,” Baba Yaga said in a prosaic tone. “But I think we’re both doomed to disappointment.”

  There were male voices in the hall outside the living quarters. Franny couldn’t distinguish what they were saying, but Vaporlock’s voice came through shrill and angry. “Yeah, the bitch is in there.” More murmuring. “Two. I took down one guy. Oh and a hurt cop. Don’t worry. I heard about him back in New York. He’s a pussy.”

  Franny pushed aside his irritation and focused on the more immediate problem. “Who are they? Do you know?” Franny asked.

  “Crows come to pick at the corpse,” she answered. She was placing a stack of old-style cassette tapes into the satchel.

  “Very poetic, but that doesn’t tell me much.”

  “Competitors who see their opportunity. Well, they’ll be ruling in hell very soon.” She said something to Stache and B.O., who were still on their feet, and they took up positions to either side of the door.

  “I’m going to be very disappointed in you if you don’t have an alternate way out of this joint,” Franny snapped at her.

  She gave him that cold, secretive smile again. “We cannot simply run before them. They must be forced to pull back and lick their wounds.”

  “You give me a gun and maybe I can help.”

  “I give you a gun and maybe you use it on me.”

  “As I recall I just saved you from a bullet. Also you’re my ticket out of here.”

  Hand signals were being exchanged by the guards. One of them snapped off a shot and someone screamed. A hail of bullets came at the defenders. B.O. went down. The day was just getting better and better, Franny reflected.

  Baba Yaga frowned, scuttled forward, and grabbed the pistol that Vaporlock had dropped. She returned to Franny’s side, and slapped the gun into his hand. She shoved him toward the door. It hurt because it was his wounded shoulder.

  “Make them regret the effort.”

  Franny duck-walked to the door. It pulled the stitches in his side and hurt like hell. He shook his head trying to concentrate. He risked a quick glance around the doorjamb. Big men in cheap suits with guns. A lot like Baba Yaga’s big men in cheap suits with guns.

  Franny’s brief look had drawn another volley. He and Stache exchanged glances, then leaned out and shot down the hall, then jerked back into cover. The kick from the pistol hurt his wounds, and Franny had to take a few seconds to just breathe.

  “Not sure I hit anything,” he said aloud. “Not sure I want to.” Killing the joker El Monstro was a fresh and horrifying memory. Stache gave him an amused look. “Okay, so you do speak English. Asshole,” he added, but he said that under his breath.

  There was a quick conversation between Stache and Baba Yaga. Stache started blasting down the hall. Franny joined in. He had a brief glimpse of Vaporlock at the back of the pack. The slide ratcheted back; he was out of ammo. He crawled to the body of B.O., and patted at the pockets looking for a reload. The gunfire slowed. Baba Yaga swung open a panel in the wall.

  She snapped out something in Russian and Stache fell back. He grabbed Baldy off the floor, threw Baldy over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and darted to the opening through which Baba Yaga had already vanished. Franny realized that whether he followed or not was going to be entirely up to him. He dropped the useless pistol, gritted his teeth against the pain, got to his feet, and sprinted after them.

  His ears were ringing from the gunfire so he had no idea if their attackers were entering the room. Begrudging even the small second a glance behind might cost him, Franny leaned forward, and was through the panel. It was dark so he missed the steep staircase. He lost his footing and went tumbling headlong down the steps.

  Playing hockey through grade school and high school had taught him how to fall, and Stache, acting more out of self-preservation than any kindness, grabbed him by the waistband and stopped the headlong plunge. Yanked to his feet Franny felt a warm trickle running down his side. Fortunately fear and adrenaline masked any pain from his torn stitches.

  Through another door and he found himself back in the gladiator quarters where this nightmare had begun only the day before. He had a sudden memory of the handcuff swinging loose on his wrist, Mollie Steunenberg’s mocking smile and upthrust middle finger. The bitch had abandoned him. Maybe if he’d treated her better? Or scared her more? He pushed aside the regrets and second thoughts. He’d find some way to get home and when he did Ms. Steunenberg was going to face a judge.

  The bodies of Stuntman and El Monstro lay on the floor. There was a sweetish scent of flesh starting to decompose. Added to that was the stench of the rotting food on the buffet. The smell of death and corruption. It seemed the perfect analogy for what had formed the foundation of Baba Yaga’s kingdom. Franny choked back bile.

  Baba Yaga grabbed a napkin off the buffet table and wiped Vaporlock’s ooze off Baldy’s face. She then threw a pitcher of water in his face and started slapping him. The heavy jeweled rings cut his face. Baldy groaned and came around. There was a tense conversation in Russian. Baldy nodded and dabbed at his bleeding cheeks with his tie. He clambered to his feet and they were back in motion again.

  Franny forced himself to look at Stuntman’s face as he passed. One side was unmarred. On the other his eye hung grotesquely on his shattered cheek and his skull was depressed.

  I’ll see you home. I promise.

  He fought down the urge to kick El Monstro’s body. If not for the joker he and Jamal would be back in New York safe, drinking, and maybe not fired by the NYPD and SCARE.

  Franny followed the old woman and her two guards down a hallway to a heavy metal door. She unlocked it and they stepped out into a garage. There was a van with New York plates parked in the docking area.

  There were also four thugs waiting for them. Gunfire echoed off the concrete. Baba Yaga’s guards were controlled and icy as they double-tapped, firing at the mob competitors, but there was enough lead flying that some of it found its mark. Baldy went down again and this time it didn’t look like he was going to get up.

  Franny was hugging the concrete. Baba Yaga’s slippered feet went past his face. He looked up in time to see Stache shoot one of the two remaining attackers. The other received a spray of spit from Baba Yaga right in the face. He began to scream, clawing at his eyes. Then his head stretched, widening and elongating. His eyeballs popped from their sockets and burst, blood and intraocular fluid running down his deformed face. His arms jerked behind his head, and fused together while his legs did the same. His screams were punctuated by the sharp crack of breaking bones. His body stretched and widened until he was a tall rectangle. The blood and fluid from the burst eyeballs now stained the face of a clock.

  Franny scrambled back toward the door. This was a fucking nightmare—Jamal’s death, the violence at the hospital, and now this. Could he really stay in the company of this murderous old bitch? Baba Yaga and Stache walked past the dying man. He must have still had vocal chords because inhuman cries were emanating from the cutout moon that decorated the face of the clock. As she passed she put a hand against the deformed and suffering figure and shoved. He went over with a crash as the transformation concluded.

  She looked back at Franny, who was huddled against the door to the casino. “Hurry up! And pick up some of these guns. You need to be useful now.”

  He wanted to refuse, but he was afraid how the old monster would react. She h
ad decided she needed him. Better not to antagonize her. Franny darted past the transformed man. He didn’t want to look but couldn’t help himself. Please God, let the poor bastard be dead, he thought, then the long cabinet gave one final jerk, violent enough that it rolled onto its side.

  He gathered up a couple of pistols and a small submachine gun. Stache was doing the same. They all piled into the van. Franny was surprised when Baba Yaga took the wheel. She threw the van into reverse and they went roaring up the ramp and out onto the street just as more mobsters erupted through the doors of the casino. Bullets wangled off the hood of the van. The guard leaned out and returned fire. Franny followed suit. The old lady hit the brake and spun the wheel, sending them into a violent spin. She righted the van, and accelerated away from the casino. As they roared past the limo he saw the windows were shot out, and the Otter had half his head missing. He was suddenly glad he hadn’t been left in the car.

  They went weaving through the traffic at speeds approaching seventy miles an hour. Franny wondered where she had learned to drive like this. Now that the immediate danger was past Franny felt that heat and trembling in his muscles that signaled the end of the adrenaline overload under which he’d been operating. Which meant he was suddenly very aware of his injuries. His shoulder was throbbing in time to his heartbeat and the wound in his side was a flare of agony.

  He also had time to reflect that he was riding in a van that had carried kidnapped jokers to Baba Yaga’s not-so-little-house-of-horrors. So why had she set up the fight club? Now that he had met the woman it was clear she was coldly practical. There couldn’t have been enough money in bets to make it worth the risk. So why do it? He decided to just ask her.

  She glanced over at him. “So now you think to ask. After you have come in and broken all the dishes. You’re a fool, boy. You think you’re a hero, but you may have destroyed the world. I hope it was worth it.”

  “What are you fucking talking about?”

  “You’ll see. Soon the whole world will see. Can it be stopped? Well, we’ll see about that, too.”

  They were passing through the center of the city. They crossed a plaza with an equestrian statue in its center. Off to the left Franny saw the outline of the hospital etched against the setting sun. Sirens were converging from all over the city. A couple of police cars, lights flashing, barreled past them. Down a side street Franny saw steel barricades being set across the street by Kazakh policemen.

  “So fast. I did not think it would start to happen this fast,” Baba Yaga said softly to herself. “I think we will take a longer, slower, safer route to the airport.”

  She took them in a tight U-turn that had other cars blaring their horns at them. A few more sudden turns took them away from the city center. Franny sat tensely erect, a pistol clutched tightly in his hand. Periodically he had to switch off hands so he could wipe the nervous sweat from his palms on the fabric of his pants. Stache was whistling tunelessly in the backseat. Baba Yaga’s lined face was expressionless, watching the road. Franny wondered what thoughts were whirling behind that wrinkled mask.

  Michelle and Adesina dashed into the graffiti-covered subway car just as the doors were closing. Michelle grabbed two empty seats and they sat down. The car didn’t smell like urine today—an improvement from yesterday’s trip—and the hard blue molded seats were actually clean.

  Michelle sighed with relief when she saw no one recognized her. Her baseball cap concealed her long platinum hair, and the oversized Ray•Bans had done the rest. Dressed down in jeans and a T, she looked like every other aspiring model in town.

  “Mom,” Adesina said, plucking Michelle’s T-shirt with her claw. Adesina was the size of a Jack Russell terrier. Her body looked like a butterfly, complete with iridescent wings. Her face was that of a little girl.

  “You said I could wear lip gloss to school.” She gave Michelle her very best big-brown-eyes momma-please look. Under normal circumstances, this ploy would have worked. But Michelle was working on setting boundaries.

  “You’re eight,” Michelle replied, shifting her Prada hobo bag on her lap. “You can’t wear makeup until you’re thirteen.” That sounded very mom-like to Michelle.

  “You wore makeup when you were my age,” Adesina said, using her trump card. Oh, you little stinker, Michelle thought.

  “When I was your age I wore makeup because modeling was my job,” Michelle replied tersely. “And it still is. Stop using that as an argument. It’s not going to work.”

  Adesina pouted. “You’re mean.”

  Michelle couldn’t help but smile. Even pouty, her daughter was adorable.

  They came to the next stop, and two men wearing Knicks T-shirts and jeans got into the car. Despite there being seats still open, they made a beeline to Michelle and Adesina. Great, Michelle thought. Just great.

  “That your freak?” one of them said, gesturing with his thumb at Adesina as the car started moving. A wave of crappy, overbearing cologne flowed off of him.

  Michelle didn’t have to look at Adesina to know she was tearing up. She reached over and touched Adesina’s hair to comfort her. They’d gone to the hairdresser and had it done up in cornrows. She looked beautiful. How could anyone look at Adesina and see anything other than a sweet little girl?

  “Hey, do I know you?” the other man said. He didn’t give off quite the full-blown asshole vibe his friend did, but he was obviously in training. “You seem really familiar. Did I ever fuck you?”

  Wow, dude, she thought. Big mistake.

  “First,” she said calmly, and for anyone who knew her, too calmly. “Stop making ugly remarks about my daughter. Second, do you kiss your mother with that mouth? Third, you’re boring me and embarrassing yourself. Also, you really don’t want to make me mad.”

  Both of the creeps burst out laughing. “Ooooo, she’s so tough,” the overscented one said. He leaned in close, trying to intimidate her. It was adorably stupid. She smiled coldly. He looked confused.

  She glanced at his friend, who by now was staring at her as recognition dawned and he began backing away. “I think you’ll remember me in just a second,” she said as she stood up. Her purse fell to the floor.

  Then she let a bubble form and it floated above her hand. It wasn’t one that would explode, much as she wanted to let it. But it would hit him heavy and hard as a cannonball.

  Before he could react, she hip-checked too-much-cologne dude into the center of the aisle. At six feet tall, she had about four inches on him and was heavier than she looked. She let the bubble go. It caught him in the gut and threw him off his feet. He hit the floor hard and slid backward five or six feet. The other passengers lifted their feet as he slid by, then went back to their tablets and phones.

  She turned to his companion, her smile icy. “You remember me now?” she asked, another bubble forming in her hand. “Or do I need to remind you, too?”

  The man held up his hands. “I’m very sorry, Miss Bubbles,” he said. “We were just trying to have some fun.”

  The bubble was the size of a baseball and getting denser by the moment. She wanted to let it go. She fairly ached to do it. “It’s fun to be mean to children and say horrible things about them?” Michelle said, the anger making her voice more of a growl. “It’s fun to bully and threaten women on the subway? You have an interesting idea of fun.” She leaned toward him. “Do you know what I think is fun?” The bubble floated out of her hand, hovering there like a promise. And it itched and burned to be released. “Bubbling someone. Particularly punks. There’s nothing like it.” The second man paled, then staggered away from her. Michelle left the bubble floating between them. Until she decided what she wanted it to do, it was just a pretty ornament.

  The car slowed and stopped at Michelle’s exit. Adesina tugged on Michelle’s jeans and held up her front legs. Michelle retrieved her purse from the floor, then picked up Adesina and walked to the open doors. The other passengers stood, but waited as she walked by, leaving her a clear exit. She t
urned and let the bubble pop. “You boys knock this crap off,” she said. “You never know who you might run into. Also, manners.”

  She stood at the open doors and the rest of the passengers exited, flowing like a river around her.

  Michelle stepped out of the car, and Adesina stuck out her tongue at the men as the doors slid shut.

  The Midnight Angel hurried up the front steps of the Bleecker Towers, a Jokertown hotel that lately she’d become all too familiar with. She compressed her lips tightly in a peevish expression accentuated by a disapproving frown.

  The usual desk clerk stood behind the reception counter. He was neatly dressed as always and was rather handsome for a Cyclops. The hotel, with outdated but clean and well-cared-for carpets and furnishings, was located on the edge of Jokertown. Most employees and guests were jokers of middle-class means, and hotel management tried hard to project a friendly, safe, and stolidly respectable atmosphere. They mostly succeeded, but then, the Angel reflected, this was Jokertown, where things could turn in a second and often did.

  She caught his eye and he nodded deferentially.

  “Is he in?” she asked, making no attempt to keep the exasperation out of her voice.

  “I don’t know, ma’am.” The clerk knew she was talking about Jamal Norwood through previous interactions. “I haven’t seen Mr. Norwood go out today, but then I’ve been away from the desk several times.”

  She hurried past, heading for the staircase that led to upper-floor rooms, her exasperation tinged with worry. Maybe he’s too sick to make the appointment, she thought to herself. And too stubborn to call for help.

  Norwood was a member of the team of SCARE agents the Angel ran, but lately things hadn’t been going well for him. His power of invulnerability to damn near everything had been failing, making him weak and lethargic after physical encounters. It had gotten so bad that currently he was on medical leave and being treated at the Jokertown Clinic by Dr. Finn—so far to no avail. SCARE had arranged for several out-of-state specialists to consult on his case, and Jamal hadn’t shown up for that appointment.