Jerry complied, swearing to himself under his breath. He’d been so damn close!
The two men were so focused on Jerry that they didn’t see the door to Cameo’s cell swing open silently. They didn’t see Cameo herself, witchfire dancing like fireflies around and between her hands as she held them up. They didn’t see her, until it was too late.
Sparks crackled between her hands like a Jacob’s ladder in the lab set in the old Frankenstein movies and then balls of electricity shot from her pointing fingers, striking the barrels of the men’s rifles, running up the metal and dancing over their bodies like sparkling aurora borealis. The men themselves danced a brief jitterbug, and when the sparks faded they fell silently to the floor. The air suddenly smelled of hot metal and burned flesh. In his kennel, Blood howled hopefully.
“Jesus,” John Fortune said in his cell.
Jerry agreed. He turned back to the door and fumbled through the rest of the keys before he was able to open it. It finally swung wide and John Fortune came out. “Am I glad to see you,” he said, hugging Jerry.
“Me too,” Jerry said, holding him tight for a brief second. “We’ve got to move.”
“That’s right,” a voice said from a pool of blackness where no light touched an area of the corridor. John Nighthawk stepped out into visibility, putting his glove back on his left hand.
“Jesus Christ,” Jerry said, “are you goddamned invisible?”
Nighthawk shook his head. “That’s not one of my powers.”
“Why were you hiding there?” Jerry asked, as Cameo joined them in the corridor. She still wore the hat. Jerry didn’t care to look into her eyes.
“I had a vision while you opening the door to the boy’s cell.”
“A vision,” Jerry asked.
“That is one of my powers.” He turned to look at John Fortune, and frowned. “He is very powerful. Much more powerful than even you know. But he is not the Anti-Christ.”
“What?” John Fortune asked.
“You will take him out of the city,” Nighthawk said to Jerry. “I saw that. Others will follow. Some will be your enemies. Some will be friends. Some will be strangers. Some will help you.”
“Could you be any more specific?” Jerry asked.
Nighthawk shrugged. “That is the nature of visions,” he said. “They’re always open to interpretation. All I know is that you will go north, out of the city, to a place of forests and fields and happy children—”
“Hey!” Jerry said suddenly.
“You know this place?” Nighthawk asked.
Jerry nodded. “I think I do.” He paused, and looked from Nighthawk to Cameo, who still looked a lot scarier than a beautiful, ethereal blonde had any right to look. “What about you two?”
“Our paths have crossed yours only briefly. We have other things to settle. But—” Nighthawk paused, frowning. “I don’t think I’m done with you all yet. I don’t...”
“We’ve got to go,” Cameo prompted as his voice ran down.
Nighthawk shook himself, as if trying to escape unpleasant memories of future events.
“Yes, we do. But first—the other cells—”
Jerry nodded. Anything to cover their tracks, anything to spread confusion, would be a good thing. It took only moments to free the other prisoners. There were five of them. A couple of them weren’t in very good shape, but their fellow escapees helped them up and out of their cells. Jerry was expecting trouble from the jailer in his little guardroom, but he’d heard the commotion in the corridor. He probably smelled the stench of burned flesh. For once his pea-sized brain processed the information correctly, and he decided to stay safe and snug in his little room.
The escapees went by the bodies of the two men at the foot of the stairs. John Fortune paused for a moment, looking at them, at their burned skin and smoke still rising off their cooling corpses. Jerry was glad that the light was dim.
“Should—should I try to help them?” the kid asked Jerry.
Jerry shook his head. “Remember what your mother said. You can’t help everybody. Some people are beyond your help. Some people don’t deserve it.” He glanced down at the bodies. “I’d say these guys fit into both those categories.”
John Fortune nodded and they went swiftly up the stairs hearing lonesome, hopeful keening coming from Blood’s cell.
Jerry and John Fortune crossed the Hudson at Tarrytown just as dawn was breaking in a car they’d taken from the parking lot at St. Dympna’s. It was a dark, late-model Mercedes. Not flashy, but nicely appointed with a comfortable, smooth ride and a powerful engine. Once they’d gotten safely away from the asylum, Jerry took the precaution of stopping to switch plates with a car parked on a dark, quiet street.
Cameo, of all people, had proved surprisingly adept at hot-wiring cars, utilizing some innocuous-looking tool she’d taken out of her capacious handbag. Even Nighthawk had looked surprised as she quickly started two cars, one for her and Nighthawk, the other for Jerry and John Fortune.
They had to leave the other freed prisoners to fend for themselves. Some had gone into the parking lot with them and scattered into the night. Some had opted to stay in the asylum walls, committing mischief that Jerry was afraid to contemplate.
Jerry last saw Nighthawk and Cameo get into a Cadillac Seville as he and John Fortune had roared out of the parking lot. He still had no idea who the Hell Nighthawk really was and what the Hell he was really up to. At that point, Jerry didn’t care. He’d rescued the kid, and they were heading off to safety. Jerry didn’t know if he could trust the old man, but he could conceive of no possible scenario in which Nighthawk would help them flee, only to connive at their recapture. That just made no sense. And using the camp as a sanctuary was a great idea. Once there they could take the time for a deep breath, and a long, refreshing sleep. Jerry could call the office for reinforcements. And they’d be safe. No one would ever find them because although it was located only sixty miles or so north of the city, that part of New York was essentially one big empty space.
Jerry had been there a couple of times when they were getting the camp up and running. It was a favorite charity funded to a large degree by him and Ackroyd, and administered by Father Squid and a committee drawn mainly from his parish. Located on a couple of dozen acres set in the middle of nowhere which were owned by a friend of the joker priest, Camp Xavier Desmond was a year round retreat whose purpose was to get poor joker and nat kids out of the city so they could hang out together and learn about each other. It was open all summer and on weekends when school was in session, just to give kids a breath of fresh air, to show them what a tree looked like and maybe help them realize that nats and jokers weren’t so different after all.
Once they’d crossed over the Hudson River on the Tappan Zee Bridge, Jerry avoided the Palisades Parkway feeder road, sticking to the thoroughfare leading to old Route 17. He could have taken the 87, also known as the Thruway, which was wider, straighter, and faster. But he didn’t want wide, straight, and fast. He wanted narrow, crooked, and obscure, and old 17 was that in spades.
The little traffic there was on 17 consisted of commuters heading south to New York City. Virtually nobody was traveling on his side of the road. He kept to the speed limit and drove conservatively, glancing every now and then at John Fortune, who had conked out in the front seat next to him well before they’d crossed the Hudson. The boy had been through a lot, and this was probably the first time he’d felt safe enough to get a good rest. Jerry himself was going on the last dregs of adrenaline his body had left. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept, and food was nearly a forgotten concept. He could have stopped at one of the diners that catered to travelers on the old road, but he had no wallet, no I.D., no money. Doggedly, he drove on.