George R.R. Martin - [Wild Cards 18] (33 page)

The lioness leapt and snapped, growled and screamed. Jonathan split himself, rolling and dodging every time the lioness shot at him.

Fire
, Jonathan thought as he fled out to the hallway,
why does it always have to be fire?

Lohengrin staggered out, victim of a lucky swipe of the lioness’s huge paw. The lioness followed, pressing her advantage. The screams from the beast’s throat were terrible.

Lohengrin seemed to be fighting a defensive battle, keeping the lioness at bay and trusting to his armor for protection from the flames. The lioness had no such compunction. Her lips were pulled back in a snarl that would have made Jonathan certain that he was about to die if he’d been back in his human form.

With a howl, the lioness leapt past Lohengrin and into the main room. The open architecture served her. There was no way to block her path, and she was able to leap from one end of the room to the other, claws digging into the walls and floor.

“Stop!” Lohengrin shouted. “You must stop!”

Fuck that
, Jonathan thought.
Go! Let it go!
But without the benefit of lungs or a throat, all he managed was a slightly louder buzzing.

An alarm blared. Jonathan felt a few of his wasps cook off and die. And then a few more. Either he was getting worse at dodging the lioness …

No, no—the house was on fire.

In the study, flames had taken the desk and the wall of awards. The hallway was also alight, tongues of blue-and-orange flame licking at the walls and ceiling. The lioness roared again, and flames belched out, breaking off Lohengrin’s armor and setting the curtains on fire.

Jonathan condensed back into human form at the front door. Another fire alarm went off, the high squeal like the house itself screaming in fear. The sound seemed to shock Lohengrin and the lioness both. Two heads—one armored the other leonine—turned toward Jonathan. He threw open the door. “Get out!
Now!
Out!”

For the first time, both the lioness and Lohengrin noticed the flames sheeting up the wall, the swaths of sword-slashed and burning furniture. To Jonathan’s profound relief, they bolted for the door.

The lioness paused on the lawn, her head shifting from Jonathan to Lohengrin and back.

“Ah. Good kitty?” Jonathan said. The lioness howled, turned, and sped away into the night. Lohengrin took two fast steps after her, and then stopped. The lioness was already half a block away, and still accelerating. Lohengrin’s sword and armor vanished.

Flames flickered inside the house. Smoke was billowing out of the movable skylight in Peregrine’s bedroom. Jonathan sat on the lawn. Lohengrin stepped over and squatted down beside him.

“The house,” Lohengrin said.

“Yeah,” Jonathan said. “We torched it.”

“Where are your clothes?” Lohengrin asked.

Jonathan sighed. “In the house,” he said.

“Und the key for the auto?”

“In the pocket,” Jonathan agreed. “With my wallet.”

In the distance, sirens were just starting to wail. Jonathan sucked his teeth, Lohengrin looked around, shamefaced.

“Well,” Jonathan said, “that could have gone better.”

Star Power

THE FRONT DOORS OF
the bank blew into sparkling shards. Even safety glass was no match for one of Curveball’s marbles. The robbers fired wildly with their paint-ball guns, and retreated as Curveball, Hardhat, and Wild Fox rushed through the doors. The paint-ball pellets bounced harmlessly off the web of glowing yellow girders that served as a shield for the advancing aces. The building gave a lurch and settled. There were screams of terror from the bank customers held hostage in the safety deposit vault.

Noel Matthews sat huddled among the bound and gagged bank customers. His henchmen were succumbing to Curveball’s Nerf balls and the touch of Hardhat’s girders. There was the sound of paint-ball guns firing wildly from the back of the bank. The last two of his men came stumbling into the lobby. Earth Witch pursued them, and soon had the floor cracking and dancing beneath their feet. They shouted with alarm and fell in a tumble of guns, arms, and legs. All six of his henchmen were now effectively dead or captured.

Hardhat moved to the door of the vault and gestured to the prisoners with a grandiose sweep of one brawny arm. “Okay folks, you’re safe now.”

Noel shook back the trailing curls of his long blond wig, and looked pleadingly up at the big ace. Hardhat’s chest swelled and he swaggered over to Noel, pulled a utility knife off his carpenter’s belt, and cut Noel’s bonds. Noel pulled the gag out of his lipsticked mouth. “Thank you,” he whispered huskily.

“No fuckin’ problem. It was my goddamn pleasure.”

Earth Witch had found Noel’s trademark black, snap-brimmed fedora in front of a wall of safety deposit boxes. She picked it up and frowned from the hat to the boxes. His reputation as a magician and a wild card had her wondering if he could have somehow crammed flesh and blood into a metal box.

Wild Fox and Curveball were moving to cut the ropes holding the extras who had played the bank customers. Noel flowed to his feet and stepped up behind Hardhat. With one hand, he pulled out the paint-ball gun and shot the big ace in the small of his back. With his other hand he threw a flash/bang, blinding everyone except himself, because he had closed his eyes.

Noel heard Hardhat’s bellow of “Son of a fucking bitch!”

Noel opened his eyes. A mic on its boom swung wildly for a moment, as if Hardhat’s curse words had weight. The sound man grimaced and reasserted control of the long metal handle with one hand, while with the other he mopped at his streaming eyes. Everyone else in the small vault was also knuckling or covering their eyes.

Wild Fox had vanished, using his illusion power to transform into someone else. The floor began to vibrate beneath Noel’s feet. He aimed carefully and shot Earth Witch in the left tit. She gave a yelp of pain.

Her cry drew Curveball’s attention.
“Ana!”

Noel used Hardhat’s bulk and weight to spin the big ace and send him staggering into the gaggle of people, like a human cue ball. During the spin, Noel patted Hardhat down, located the cell phone in the ace’s pants pocket, and pulled it free. There were more cries of pain as Hardhat arrived. Noel thumbed the phone to camera and swept the lens across the milling crowd. A pretty girl was revealed as the Japanese-American ace.
Quite a lot of gender bending going on here
, Noel thought with a grim smile, as he tossed away the phone and threw a handful of smoke bombs, while simultaneously shooting Wild Fox.

Noel hit the floor in a sliding dive. His last glimpse of Curveball before the thick smoke filled the room had revealed
a furious frown between her golden brows. Nerf balls were going to start flying. People above him yelped and cursed as the balls struck. Even though they were soft, Curveball’s power was formidable.
The mixers are going to be busy bleeping out the profanities
. People were tripping over him, and he took a pointed toe in the ribs. Time to get up and face Curveball.

Noel sprang to his feet and pulled a long piece of fur out of the waistband of his leg-hugging black jeans. The smoke had him as blinded as the aces and extras, but as he came up against people he brushed the soft fur across exposed skin. It seemed to take hours before he heard a girl’s voice say, “Fox?”

“Wrong,” Noel said and shot Curveball.

He stripped off the blond wig, walked out of the vault, gathered up the duffel bag of fake money from behind the tellers’ counter, and shrugged into his trademark black leather jacket with the diamond lapel pin in the shape of a comet. It nicely covered the skimpy tank top, and the tight jeans would pass for a male’s attire. He paused briefly to pluck a Kleenex out of a box on a manager’s desk. He wiped away the eye shadow and lipstick. Pulling another fedora out of the jacket pocket, he set it at a jaunty angle over his sweat-soaked brown hair and walked out the sagging front doors.

Heat shimmers hung like the hint of ghosts in the air over the baking sidewalk of the Warner Brothers backlot. Sweating, red-faced studio employees had gathered to watch the fun. Noel reached into the duffel bag and flung Monopoly money into the air. He then pulled his conductor’s baton from another pocket, waved it in a complex arc around him, and took an elaborate bow to the cheering crowd.

The limo carried Noel from the Beverly Hills Hotel back to the Warners lot. He had dreaded leaving the rush of icy air and the chilled champagne that had waited in the room, but that was the price of celebrity. He had to go to the wrap party at the conclusion of the Rogue Ace challenges.

The sign for Mulholland Drive crawled past, and the limo crested the last big hill. The San Fernando Valley shimmered in the heat haze, and the setting sun sent flashes of brilliant light off millions of windows and acres of steel and chrome. It was as if a mad signaler were sending code on a global scale. But the code was a cacophony that no one could read.
Rather like Egypt right now
, Noel thought, and then forced his thoughts away from his real life.

The driver dropped him as close to the studio restaurant as possible. It didn’t help; by the time he trod up the stairs to the etched glass doors his clothes felt damp. A PA from the show was waiting to open the door. Despite the heat, the kid still had that stunned, loopy smile that said,
I’m in Hollywood. I’m working for a television show. I have five roommates, but it doesn’t matter
. Noel gave him one of his patented blazing smiles, and stepped into the marble-floored, blue lobby. There was a roar of conversation from the restaurant proper, and the blood-pulsing rhythms of a salsa band.

Nephi Callendar, the government ace who went under the
nom de guerre
Straight Arrow, was deep in conversation with Rustbelt, the Minnesota hick who looked like an ugly redesign of the Tin Woodsman for a proletarian remake of
The Wizard of Oz
. Noel shouldn’t have been surprised. It was only natural that the American federals would try to recruit new aces for their Special Committee for Ace Resources and Endeavors from among the contestants.

Still, there were times when Noel’s government found itself in less than perfect agreement with their American cousins. Despite his victory over the Hearts, Noel did not relish a matchup with some of the more formidable aces of
American Hero
, and Rustbelt was one of those aces. Any country with weapons made of steel, or bridges over strategic rivers, was vulnerable to Rustbelt’s power.

“… and we have a great medical plan,” Straight Arrow was saying.

“Are you going to tell him about the Old Spies Retirement Home, too?” Noel drawled as he strolled over. “Where’s the romance, Nephi?” Noel lowered his eyelashes suggestively. The Mormon ace shifted uncomfortably at the sultry look.
He knew what Noel was and he wasn’t comfortable with it.
Oh my, no
.

“He’s young and an ace with a
very
formidable power,” Noel continued. “The boy wants tuxedos, martinis shaken not stirred, and trysts with beautiful and dangerous women.” He gave Rustbelt a blazing smile. “You’d do much better joining the Order of the Silver Helix.”