"But I don't want to leave," Zoe said. "I want to talk to you." To you, Fist, and I don't want formal speeches that you've memorized from the how-to-deal-with-stray-nats handbook. Zoe took a step forward in spite of the objections of her belly button. It was trying to retreat toward her backbone. Terror was one hell of an ab exercise, it seemed.
"Stop!"
Zoe stopped. "But I only want to talk ..." The quaver in her voice was not faked.
Someone laughed, high above them on the gate, a terrible laugh.
"I want to see the Black Dog," Zoe said "I - I have information for him."
She felt the jokers behind her before she saw them. Two of them, silent and fast. She saw an outstretched arm, A solid blow to the back of her knees knocked her flat, sprawled on the caftan she'd dropped. One of its bangles cut into her cheek. Someone twisted her arms behind her and ground his knee into the small of her back. Hot pain drew diagrams of the joints in her shoulders.
"Nat," one of her attackers hissed. "Nat whore. Don't yell, pretty thing."
"Why are you looking for trouble, nat?" the tall joker said. "Tired of living?"
"Let me have her." The joker behind her twisted her arms a fraction more. "She'll talk. Shell scream. I like screams."
"Take her inside," the tall joker said. "She'll last long enough for all three of us."
Terror or sexual arousal, either of those activated Zoe's ace, her anima, her gift of the breath of life. Sometimes she had to force its appearance. Not now. She drew in a single breath and sighed into the caftan, a desperate breath that included memories of Needles' desolate face as he scrubbed blood from his hands, Turtle's gentle touch in a dark hotel room, the long black fingers of an animated mannequin locked into the flesh of a skinhead's throat.
The cloak twisted out from beneath her. It rose like a dervish, its gold coins razor-edged, a spinning terror of writhing fabric with a woman's shape and the speed of a whirlwind. The dervish whipped an arm toward the tall joker's eyes. He dropped his rifle and fell backward, screaming, his hands clutching at his torn eyelids. The dervish scattered drops of blood and spread into a whirling net. It dropped over the joker on Zoe's back and cocooned him in windings of steel-strong mesh. The cocoon flung itself against the third joker, slamming him against the wall. A pseudopod of twisted copper snaked around the third jokers thick neck and squeezed.
Zoe belly-flopped toward the rifle and grabbed it. She got to her feet, turned toward the faint light of the souk, and collided full tilt with the solid bulk of a man in a black cloak. He twisted the rifle from her grip and immobilized Zoe in a bear hug. A joker in a black robe took the rifle from him and aimed it toward Zoe, The barrel of the thing looked as big as a cannon. Zoe kicked at her captor's legs, but she couldn't get any leverage.
"Whoa, there! What the hell is going on?" The man who held her had a southern drawl. His eyes were huge and yellow, a devil's eyes.
"Those pricks tried to rape me!" Zoe yelled. "Let me go!"
The vendors in the souk continued to set up their wares for morning, pretending not to notice the commotion near the gate.
The joker with the captured rifle looked in at the mess in the cul-de-sac and whistled. "She tore 'em up good," he said.
"Deal with it," the yellow-eyed man said. He turned Zoe around so that she stood beside him. His fingers found a nerve just above her elbow and squeezed it.
"Ouch!"
"Hush," the man said. "Come over here."
He marched her to an enclosed space between the wall and the back of a striped booth that sold tea. He didn't let go of her arm.
"What happened?"
"I'm looking for the Fists. I need to talk to the Black Dog. Those bastards tried to kill me."
"All you wanted was to talk?"
"That's all."
"What's the message? If it has to do with danger for the quarter, you'd better tell me."
"No. I'll talk to the Black Dog, but not to anyone else."
"You just took out three good men," the joker said "Who are you?"
"Zoe. Zoe Harris." That wasn't the name on her paycheck, that wasn't the name on the checks she gave her landlord. "Uh, Sara Smith."
"Yeah. Sure."
"I want to speak to the Black Dog."
"He doesn't like aces. Neither do I."
"I'm not - " But she was. The evidence of her powers was smeared all over the walls of that cul-de-sac. "I don't - "
"Balthazar!" Needles bellowed as he skidded around the corner of the booth. "Let her go, man!"
Balthazar turned Zoe so that she was held tight against him, a human shield. She felt a cold circle of metal push against her ribs. Needles braked to a stop, his claws flashing, and dropped his hands to his sides.
"She's mine. She won't mess up again, I promise. Please, Balthazar?"
"Jesus, kid. You almost got her killed." Balthazar pushed Zoe toward Needles. "Take her home. Get her out of here."
Needles grabbed her waist. "We're going. We're going, okay?"
"Tell him!" Zoe yelled over her shoulder as Needles turned her toward the souk.
"Shut up," Needles hissed in her ear. "Please, Zoe."
There were tears in his eyes. He would die of embarrassment if she noticed them. She let the boy lead her home.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Forty-Second Street wasn't what it used to be. A couple of years back, the Deuce was solid porno theaters, adult bookstores and sleazeball hotels, teeming with hustlers, junkies, and midnight cowboys. These days ... well, you wouldn't call it respectable, but so much of the XXX action had moved over to video that half the porno theaters had been forced to convert to real films or go dark.
The Wet Pussycat used to be half a block down from Jay's office, a lifetime ago. Now Ackroyd and Creighton Investigations owned a whole building in the West Village, Jay's old office had been taken over by a Korean psychic, and the Wet Pussycat was the Cinefan, screening black-and-white classics twenty-four hours a day. It cost nine bucks to get in, which made the Cinefan either the most expensive movie house on the Deuce or the cheapest hotel, judging from the number of bag ladies, junkies, and teenage runaways nodded out in the sagging seats, Jay figured it was the latter.
It was still very dark, though.
Jay waited until his eyes had adjusted, and strolled slowly down the aisle, scanning the faces of his fellow cinefans. Only a few were paying any attention to the screen, where people in evening dress were throwing huge coins at a very large monkey with a piano on his head. The man Jay wanted wasn't hard to pick out. There he was in the sixth row, center, engrossed in the drama, a huge man, ugly as sin, eating popcorn with both hands. Jay sat down beside him. "Rondo Hatten, right?" he said.
Rondo looked at him, startled. He was uglier than half the people in Jokertown. "Jay? What are you doing here?"
"I got a sudden to urge to see King Kong at two in the morning, what else?" Jay said, helping himself to some popcorn. It was stale and tasted of hot grease. Golden Flavor, they called it at the concession stand. Some things never change.
"It's Mighty Joe Young," Rondo corrected him.
"Just so long as it isn't giving you any ideas," Jay said.
"How did you know I was here?"
"You weren't at home, you weren't at the office, and you weren't at Ezili's. Where else would you be?" On screen, the big monkey was tearing up the nightclub now and lots of people in evening dress were running and screaming. "Don't you have this on tape?"
"On laserdisc," Rondo corrected, "but there's nothing like seeing it on the big screen, the way it was meant to be seen."
"Right," Jay said. "I forgot, you're a purist, you want the whole filmic experience, the sticky floors, the rancid grease on the popcorn, the audience all around you ..."
"Hey, shut the fuck up," someone behind them shouted.