"You killed someone for revenge? You?"
"I had help."
"My God, Needles! Why have they done this to you?"
"This is Jerusalem, Zoe." He lifted his hand as if to grab something from the air. His razor-sharp claws caught the faint light and he stared at them as if they belonged to someone else.
"This is hell," Zoe said. Enough of this. Refuge or no refuge, this use of "her" kids had to stop.
"It's hell. I'm okay, Zoe. Don't worry about me. I gotta get some sleep, okay?" Needles leaned against the wall and gave a theatrical yawn.
Like hell he would sleep. But Zoe could understand that he didn't want to talk out the night's horrors.
"Go to bed, then. Rest, Needles. You did what you had to do. I'm going somewhere for a while. Lock up after me, would you?"
She could see Needles clench his jaw, could see him gather his defenses to protest. "Let me go with you," Needles said.
"No." She stared down the stairs.
"You're going to the Fists."
Zoe didn't answer.
"You won't find them. Don't get me in trouble, Zoe."
"That's not my plan." So what was her plan? Set up an interview with the Black Dog? Great plan. She ran down the narrow stairs, leaving Needles to fasten the three locks on the door. The task wouldn't keep him from following her, but it might slow him down a little.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
"I can't believe you told the goddamn Black Dog about the Trump, Dutton." Fury rouged the skin of Hannah's high cheekbones and penciled fine lines around her eyes. Gregg could nearly see the anger sparking electric blue in her eyes.
Spotlights illuminated a trio of Turtle shells suspended from the gallery ceiling, painting cavernous hollows in Dutton's death's-head face. Back in the darkness, there was the moist gleam of eyes. Gregg sniffed: Dutton smelled like the museum itself - dusty, ancient, a perfume of mold and rust. In the shadows to Gregg's left there was a rustling of cloth and a soft, polite moan: Oddity, writhing in the pain of their endless transformations.
"We need help," Dutton answered, aggravation riding in his sepulchral tones. "It seems to me that the Twisted Fists are one of the few allies we have."
"They're thugs and murderers. Their idea of a solution is to kill something, five for fucking one. That's asinine and stupid, Charles. I won't have it."
"You won't have it?" Dutton snapped. "When were you elected the head of our little cabal, Hannah?"
"I'm not the only one who feels that way. Father Squid - "
"Father Squid was one of them for a time."
"And he left them, didn't he? Damn it, we all want Rudo caught and the virus destroyed, but ..."
"But what, Hannah? You don't think that end justifies any means? You don't think that associating with thugs and murderers is worth saving countless joker lives? I'd rather see jokers live than worry about whether I'm associating with the right kind of people."
"Charles," Gregg interrupted, seeing the color deepen in Hannah's face. He tried to speak as soothingly as his high-pitched, whining joker's voice could manage, regretting once more the loss of his old voice and body. How can you be imposing when you're a four-foot-long yellow caterpillar who sounds like a 33 1/3 rpm record played at 45? "I agree with Hannah. I've had dealings with the Fists; I'm not convinced that bringing them into this is going to help." Gregg glanced at Hannah, who was standing with her hands fisted, glaring at Dutton. "And we have another problem. This press conference you've scheduled for tomorrow afternoon - "
"My people" - Dutton accented the possessive heavily, with a significant empty-eyed stare at Hannah. His voice woke sluggish echoes in the dead recesses and far galleries of the Dime Museum - "have a right to know the danger they're in. It's irresponsible of us not to warn them."
"It's going to cause panic and riots," Hannah insisted, cutting off Gregg's response. He wondered whether she'd even noticed he'd been about to speak. "If you tell them about the Black Trump, if you tell them that the Sharks are going to loose a plague that will only kill those infected by the wild card, then you'll have half the population of Jokertown looking to take some nats down with them. That's a great solution, Charles. That way, the jokers just manage to convince the few nats who can help that jokers don't deserve help. If getting the Fists involved isn't enough, that should just about finish it."
Dutton exhaled: a serpent's hiss. "I take it that you feel we should keep them in the dark so they die quietly."
"That's not what I'm saying....Damn!" Exasperation made Hannah's last word throaty and ragged. "I just know how important it is to find the vials quickly."
"You're a nat. It won't matter to you either way."
"Damn it, Dutton, that's not fair - "
"Listen, all of you. The first priority - the only priority - is finding the vials. Hannah's right about that." That was the Oddity - John. "Fuck anything else. We heard what Clara van Renssaeler and Dr. Finn have told us: the Sharks will try to cultivate enough of the Trump virus to guarantee a worldwide release. If that happens, we're dead. All of us. Hannah, Gregg, you two have been our spokespersons since we went public with this. What Charles is asking is for you to go into those roles again. As for the Fists, we're going to need all the help we can get to find the vials, and if the Black Dog can help ..." Oddity shrugged. "Seems like a plan to me."
"A plan, yes," Hannah said. "A smart one, no."
Dutton sniffed. "We can do without the sarcasm."
Hannah turned on the man, hands fisted on hips. "Look, Charles, I got involved in this involuntarily, but I am involved. Totally. Don't tell me that I have to behave nicely because I'm a nat. Don't you dare tell me that I don't care enough."
"Hannah - " Gregg began, but Dutton interrupted him, riding over Gregg's weak, thin voice.
"My sources tell me that Barnett's ordered another crackdown," Dutton said, "SCARE aces are involved, the FBI, the Justice Department, anyone who can be enlisted. I don't know what's going to happen, but I suspect that we need to make our moves soon, or we won't be able to move at all."
"We can find Rudo without the Fists," Hannah said.
"Considering that the authorities want everyone involved in the kidnapping of Dr. Van Renssaeler and Dr. Finn, I doubt that Rudo is even in the country anymore. That's another reason to bring in the Fists. We already know some of the Sharks overseas - " Dutton stopped. "Listen," he said.
Gregg heard it then: muffled shouting from the front of the museum, a few rooms away. "Break 'em down! C'mon, c'mon, let's GO!" Then, more clearly, strident and treble through a bullhorn: "This is Special Agent April Harvest! We have a warrant!" At the same time, there was a splintering ka-CHUNK as something heavy slammed against locked doors.
Quasiman was there in that moment, popping into existence in the middle of the gallery with his mouth open and panic in his eyes, words tumbling from his lips wrapped in a spray of spittle. "The clinic," he said breathlessly. "Dr. Finn, the other doctor woman - all under arrest. The parsonage: Father Squid, Troll.... Got to get - " Quasiman stopped. His right arm had vanished. He looked like a marionette whose strings had just been cut, frozen in mid-speech.
The doors must have held under the battering ram. Faintly, Harvest's voice shouted through the bullhorn: "Get back. BACK! Let him do it ..." There was a sustained, crashing thunder of falling brick, punctuated by beams splintering like twigs. Someone shouted in glee in the midst of the clamor, and Gregg recognized the voice with a cold shudder.