He flew without sensation, moving over the land without feeling motion on his unseen body. He discovered that he could judge distance, but not time. He did notice that once he’d reached the city line and found the concrete ribbon of the Thruway leading north that the sun had moved in the sky, so time must have passed. Before long—or so, anyway, it seemed—he was gliding over the fields and farms of rural Orange County where New Hampton lay. He knew that he was barely sixty miles north of the city, but he might as well have been in another world, a world of small villages, of dairy farms set among rolling hills, of green pastures, of rich land which grew a multitude of crops, of orchards and pocket forests that had been standing since before the Revolutionary War.
He was not on intimate terms with this part of the state. Like many urbanites he was a city boy through and through, but he was able to call to mind maps he’d seen in the past. He had also burned into his brain—more, burned into his spirit since his brain lay nearly comatose on a hospital bed far away—the image of his son.
He hoped that the boy’s image would lead him to him.
He came upon the camp in a rush while quartering the countryside, thankful that his astral form could see like a hawk. He rushed down, looking for the boy, but could not find him. He dipped into the mind of one of the camp administrators and discovered what had happened the night before, events which even McCoy and Peregrine were unaware of, and fled immediately before his sudden anger could do any damage to the brain he was scanning.
Fortunato burned hot with anger, yet cold with fear. He could feel the sensations run through his astral form because they weren’t physical manifestations, but mental. Fear and anger. Fear of loss. Anger at being afraid. Just what he had fled from, he realized, fifteen years ago. But he couldn’t flee now. His son was out there somewhere. Alone. Afraid. Maybe hurt. He had to find him.
I probably won’t be able to, Fortunato thought. There was too much territory to cover. Besides, the boy would have been spotted by now if he was moving about in the open. He was probably hiding, keeping undercover for fear of the kidnappers who had almost snatched him the night before.
If they haven’t gotten him in the meantime, Fortunato thought, then did his best to dismiss the idea. If they had, he was wasting his time. But he had nothing but time, and the need to fill it with something worthwhile.
Fortunato sank down to the ground and stood in the center of the camp, a ghost among the living. No one saw him. His astral form made no noise for them to hear. They were trying to go about their business as if everything was normal, but of course it wasn’t. There was still speculation as to what had happened the night before, and worries that the bad guys might attack again.
This is useless, he thought. Too much ground to cover. Too many places for the boy to hide. There had to be another way—
There was, Fortunato suddenly realized. If he could do it.
He rose up again into the sky and hung above the camp like an unseen specter. He simply had to try. There was no other recourse.
He had to move his astral body through time as he had through space. It was the only way he could hope to track the movements of John Fortune, and the killers who were after him.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
New Hampton: the woods
Ray batted annoyingly at a flight of gnats that descended upon them as they moved from shadow to sunlight, swarming like a tiny pack of famished wolves on fresh, undefended meat. Ackroyd stood next to him in a clearing in the woods. They had already been to the house where Creighton had spent the night, but his host had already gone out to search for the kid. They’d picked up a guide, a funny little fellow by the name of Kitty Cat, and he’d gone ahead on the trail to try to scope out Yeoman’s current position. That was the name Ackroyd had used when talking about their host.
“So, you know this Yeoman character?” Ray asked. He was a little irritated. It was mid-afternoon, and hot. It wasn’t so bad among the trees, though they tended to block the cooling wind. He’d already resigned himself to the fact that he was going to ruin his suit. He was sweating so profusely that no amount of dry cleaning would get out the perspiration stains, not to mention the various blobs of dirt, muck, and otherwise unidentifiable forest debris. He wished he’d had time to change to proper fighting attire, but even if he had, his clothes were now sitting in an unclaimed suitcase somewhere at Tomlin International.
Ackroyd tried to take a deep breath without sucking in some gnats, and didn’t succeed. “Jesus,” he said, gagging and spitting, “we may have bugs in the city but at least they’re decent-sized roaches that you can chase into a corner and step on. This is all way too, too natural, to be healthy.” He waved ineffectually at the undiminished horde of gnats and took another resigned breath. “But Yeoman—well, you couldn’t say that I actually know the murderous son of a bitch, but I worked with him on some stuff, back, Jesus, was it really thirteen years ago?”
Ray shrugged as Ackroyd’s mind wandered momentarily in the past. “If you mean Chrysalis’s murder, yeah it was that long ago.”
Ackroyd looked at him sharply. “What do you know about that?”
“I’ve read the dossier. If you remember, at the time I was occupied by other things.”
“Oh yeah,” Ackroyd said. “Mackie Messer ripped you from chest to balls on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. Live, on TV.”
“Yeah.” Recalling that still pissed Ray off. “My star turn on television. I had plenty of time to read when I was recovering in the hospital. A lot of stuff connected to that case is pretty unclear. At least officially. You were involved—somehow. So was this vigilante. This guy Yeoman, the papers called the ‘Bow and Arrow Killer.’”
Ackroyd shook his head. “My main interest was catching Chrysalis’s murderer.”
“And Yeoman’s main interest?”
“The same.” Ackroyd said.
From the look on Ackroyd’s face, it seemed to Ray that both men were involved in the case for personal rather than political or financial reasons. Chrysalis had been an important person about Jokertown. Ray had seen her in the flesh once or twice. Though “seen her in the flesh” was something of a misnomer, since her flesh was actually invisible. She was all bone and blood vessels and interior organs covered by ghostly muscle. Kinky. But not really his type. He liked it when they had some meat on them. And you could see it. Kind of like Angel, in fact—
Ray jerked his train of thought back to the present. “Is he an ace?” Ray asked. “The dossier wasn’t clear on that point. Like the compiler wasn’t sure.”
“I’ll tell you,” Ackroyd said, “I’m not sure myself. I’ve seen a lot of wacky powers over the years, but being real good with a bow an arrow just doesn’t seem... likely. And he got in plenty of situations where a little super-strength or super-speed or mind control or some damn thing would have been useful—only he never seemed to use anything like that.”
“What’s he like?”
Ackroyd looked at him. “I told you. He’s a murderous son of a bitch. As soon as put an arrow through your eye as look at you.” Ackroyd paused to hawk up another gnat. “You’ll like him.”
Ray swallowed his retort as a little creature about two feet tall came scurrying through the grass towards them. It was Kitty Cat, the guide they’d picked up at Yeoman’s house. He was completed covered with a calico pelt and had feline-irised eyes. Otherwise, he looked fairly human for a two-foot tall joker. He was talking quietly into a cell phone as he came out of the forest into the small meadow where he’d told Ray and Ackroyd to await his return.