It was a dusty and dirty confusion of toppled shelves, of empty refrigerated drink banks, of merchandise racks tossed in untidy piles. And on the far wall was a door. It wasn’t a normal door. It was just a black-semi circle imposed upon the wall which once held shelves laden with motor oil and pet food and pork rinds. A couple of men were walking right through the blackness, disappearing as if they’d been cut in half, but seemingly unconcerned by what should be a discomfiting experience.
They looked back at Ray as he came through the door, and one of them shouted, “Jesus Christ! It’s that Ray fucker!” before he plunged further onward and disappeared.
A disconcertingly human-looking dog, or maybe a disconcerting canine-looking human, was standing next to the gateway. He was held by another man on a leash, and he was fawning over Butcher Dagon, who was in his human form. Dagon looked less jolly than usual. His clothes were tattered and bloodstained, and he was pushing disgustedly at what Ray now realized was a particularly unfortunate-looking joker, saying, “Down, Blood, down.”
He, too, turned to look at Ray. He didn’t look happy at Ray’s sudden appearance.
“Your ass is mine, Dagon,” Ray said happily. “Again.”
“Move it,” the man holding Blood’s leash said as Ray charged across the room, dodging empty merchandise racks, “you’ve got to go through first before Blood can close the gate.”
“Shit,” Dagon said, and plunged through the blackness, Blood and his handler on his heels.
If Ray had a clear shot across the room, he would have had him. He would have pounced on Dagon before he could disappear. As it was, he had to zigzag around and jump over half a dozen obstacles, and as he reached the far wall Blood’s handler had already dragged the joker through the blackness. Blood’s hindquarters were disappearing. The blackness was starting to dilate shut like the closing of a pupil in a bright flash of light.
Ray heard the SWAT team charging after him. He heard their cries of amazement. He didn’t hesitate. He hurled himself, diving arms outstretched at the shrinking pool of blackness. He went into it head first. The shouts from the SWAT team were cut off as if by a knife. He heard nothing. For a disconcerting moment that might have lasted hours for all he could tell, he saw nothing, neither darkness nor light. He felt nothing, neither coolness nor warmth. He wondered if this was what death was like. If this was the Big Nothing. The sensation, or lack of sensation, of a spirit plunging endlessly through limbo. He was suddenly afraid. This was something that could drive a man mad in little order. To be stuck inside his mind, feeling nothing, forever. He concentrated as hard as he could, questing outward with all his senses. Suddenly he felt a low thrumming throb, and he realized that it was a single beat of his heart, stretching out impossibly long, its reverberations filling up the universe.
Abruptly, it ended.
He fell on his face on grass and dirt. It was dark, nighttime, wherever he was. Air felt cool and soothing on his skin. His knee hurt a little from where he’d landed right on a sharp-edged pebble. He breathed a sigh of relief. He was back again, somehow, in the real universe.
He looked up at the circle of men who stared down at him with varying degrees of disbelief on their faces. Butcher Dagon. The man and his leashed joker. Three guys with guns.
All right! Ray thought joyously. And he got to work.
A quick-as-a-cat leg-sweep brought down two of the men. He swarmed over them, punching and kicking as Dagon ran off into the night. As the third jerked his rifle into line, Ray yanked it away from him and tossed it away over the small, rustic building that was at their back. The man tried to run, but Ray snagged his ankle before he could take a step, and pulled him down, kicking and screaming and clawing at the dirt. Ray bounced his head once off the ground and he shut up.
Ray got to his feet. The deformed joker cringed before him, huddled against the man holding his leash. “Don’t hurt Blood none, mister,” the handler said. “It ain’t none of his fault what went on.”
“What the Hell is he?” Ray asked.
“He’s an ace, Blood is,” the man said, nodding vigorously. “He can open gates, like, to connect places what are far away from each other. Bring them next door, like. Only,” the man shrugged helplessly, “he ain’t too smart. It ain’t his fault we fell in with bad men.”
“It’s your fault, then?” Ray asked. He stepped closer to the two and Blood whimpered piteously.
“It is,” the man said. “It is my fault.” He put his hand out in a gesture as piteous as Blood’s whimpering. “You don’t know these people, mister. Yeah, I got ourselves mixed up with them. I’m trying to look out for the boy. I’m his brother.” He put his hand down on his Blood’s head, protectively. “I got us working for them, which was a sure enough mistake. These people are mean, mister, I mean mean.”
“Yeah, well, so am I.”
The man nodded. “I know, mister. They’re afraid of you. They truly are.”
That made Ray feel at least a little better. “Well, where the Hell are we, anyway?” he asked.
“Some place called New Hampton,” the man said, and Ray almost did a double take at his revelation.
“The camp?” Ray asked. “The camp where John Fortune is hiding out?”
The man nodded vigorously.
“How they Hell did they discover that the kid was here?”
The man shook his head. Blood, sensing that the mood of the conversation was shifting, tried to smile. “I don’t know. They don’t tell me shit. Just, have Blood take us here, have Blood take us there. You’d think it was easy on the fellow for all they put us through—”
“We all got problems,” Ray said flatly. “Focus on mine.”
“Yessir.”
“The boy’s here?”
“Yessir.”
“They’ve come to get him again?”
“Yessir.”
“Why, for Christ’s sakes?”
“Well, that’s just it. The Allumbrados think he’s the Anti-Christ whom they have to bind in chains if the real Jesus Christ is to come to restore his Kingdom on Earth.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Yessir.”
Ray didn’t bother to explain that he was just exclaiming, not questioning. Though, in a way he was. This was no time, though, to sort through dubious theology. There’d be time for that later. Maybe.
“How many men have they got?” Ray asked.
“About twenty, counting me’n—”
“Aces?”
“Well, there’s Blood—”
“I know that,” Ray said impatiently.
“—And now Dagon, of course. The Younger Witness—”
“Younger Witness?” Ray repeated.
“Yeah, there’s two Witnessess to Revelations. They’re brothers—”
Ray nodded. “One’s big and blonde—”
“The other’s dark and skinny.”
“Right,” Ray said grimly. “I’ve seen the blonde one in action. He the younger one?”
The man nodded.
“Any more aces?”
The man shrugged. “Nighthawk and his team are supposed to be here, but the Cardinal couldn’t find Nighthawk. He was real peeved about that—”
A cascade of gunfire echoed through the still night, waking it up. Ray turned toward the rolling thunder of sound like a dog on point, practically quivering with eagerness. He turned back to Blood and his brother.
“All right,” he said. “Stay out of this. Get out if you can. But stay out of my way. You’re only getting one warning.”
Blood’s brother nodded. “Yessir. Thank you sir.”
“Don’t thank me,” Ray said, before he vanished into the night. “Just obey me.”
And then he was gone.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
New Hampton, New York
Jerry was in the administration office drinking coffee with the boys from the agency when Sascha Starfin, the blind telepath, suddenly put his mug down. There was just an unbroken expanse of skin where his eyes should have been.