Wild Cards V (44 page)

Gray-white rags of torn cloth were wrapped around his forehead, and the grimy bandages were clotted and brown with old blood. His hair was stiff with it. His hands were similarly covered, and thick red drops oozed through the soaked wrappings to fall on the floor. The clothing he wore over his emaciated body bunched here and there with hidden knots, and she knew that there were other seeping, unclosing wounds on the rest of his body.

She'd seen him every day, staring at her, watching. He would be in the hallways outside her door, on the street outside the tenement, walking behind her. He'd never spoken, but his rancor was obvious. “Stigmata,” Gimli had told her when she'd confessed his fear of him the first day. “That's his name. Bleeds all the fucking time. Have some goddamn compassion. Stig's no trouble to anyone.”

Yet Stigmata's sallow, drawn stare frightened her. He was always there, always scowling when she met his gaze. He was a joker, that was enough. One of Satan's children, devil-marked by the wild card. “Get out,” Misha told him again.

“It's my room,” he insisted like a petulant child. He shuffled his feet nervously.

“You are mistaken. I paid for it.”

“It was mine first. I've always lived here, ever since—” His lips tightened. He drew his right hand into a fist; the sopping bandages rained scarlet as he brandished it before her. His voice was a thin screech. “Ever since this. Came here the night I got the wild card. Nine years ago, and they kick me out 'cause I don't pay the last couple months. I told 'em I was gonna pay, but they wouldn't wait. They'll take nat money instead.”

“The room's mine,” Misha repeated.

“You got my things. I left everything here.”

“The owner took them, not me—they're locked in the basement.”

Stigmata's face twisted. He spat out the words as if they burned his tongue, almost screaming them. “He's a nat. You're a nat. You're not wanted here. We hate you.”

His accusations caused Misha's masked frustrations to boil over. A cold fury claimed her, and she drew herself up, pointing at the joker. “You're the outcasts,” she shouted back at Stigmata, at Jokertown itself. She might have been back in Syria, lecturing the jokers begging at the gates of Damascus. “
God
hates you. Repent of your sins and maybe you'll be forgiven. But don't waste your poison on me.”

In the midst of her tirade there was suddenly a whirling, familiar disorientation. “No,” Misha cried against the onslaught of the vision, and then, because she knew there was no escape from
hikma
, divine wisdom:
“In sha'Allah.”
Allah would come as He wished, when He wished.

The room and Stigmata wavered in her sight. Allah's hand touched her. Her eyes became His. A waking nightmare burst upon her, melting away the gritty reality of Jokertown, her filthy room, and Stigmata's threats.

She was in Badiyat Ash-sham again, the desert. She stood in her brother's mosque.

The Nur al-Allah stood in front of her, the emerald glow of his skin lost beneath impossibly thick streams of blood that trailed down the front of his
djellaba.
His trembling hand pointed at her accusingly; his chin lifted to show the gaping, puckered, bone-white edges of the wound across his throat. He tried to speak, and his voice, which had once been compelling and resonant, was now all gravel and dust, choked. She could understand nothing but the hatred in his eyes.

Misha gasped under that baleful, accusing gaze.

“It wasn't me!” she sobbed, falling to her knees before him in supplication. “Satan's hand moved mine. He used my hatred and my jealousy. Please…”

She tried to explain her innocence to her brother, but when she looked up, it was no longer Nur al-Allah standing before her but Hartmann.

And he laughed.

“I'm the beast who rips away the veils of the mind,” he said. His hand lashed out, clawing for her as she recoiled belatedly. Like talons his nails dug into her eyesockets, slashed the soft skin of her face. Blinded, she screamed, her head arced back in torment, writhing but unable to get away from Hartmann as his fingers tore and gouged.

“We don't wear veils here. We don't wear masks. Let me show the truth underneath. Let me show you the color of the joker below.” He clenched harder, ripping and tearing. Ribbons of flesh peeled away as he clawed at her, and she felt hot blood pouring down her ruined features. She moaned, sobbing, her hands trying to beat him away as he raked again and again, shearing flesh from muscle and muscle from bone.

“Your face will be naked,” Hartmann said. “And they will run in horror from you. Look, look at the colors inside your head—you're just a joker, a sinner like the rest. I can see your mind, I can taste it. You're the same as the rest. You're the same.”

Through the streaming blood she looked up. Though the apparition was still Hartmann, he now had the face of a young man, and the whine of a thousand angry wasps seemed to surround him. Yet in the midst of her torment, Misha felt a comforting hand on her shoulder and turned to see Sara Morgenstern beside her. “I'm sorry,” Sara told her. “It's my fault. Let me send him away.”

And then Allah's vision withdrew, leaving her gasping on the floor. Trembling, sweating, she raised her hands to her face. Marveling, she touched the unbroken flesh there.

Stigmata stared at the woman sobbing on the splintery pine boards.

“You ain't no damn nat,” he said, and his voice was touched with a grudging sympathy. “You're just one of us.” He sighed. Slow droplets of blood welled, fell. “It's still my room and I want it,” he added, but the bitter edge was gone from his voice. “I'll wait. I'll wait.”

He walked softly to the door. “One of us,” he said again, shaking his gory, swaddled head, and went out.

Friday, 6:10
P.M
.

“So all the rumors are true. You
are
back again.”

The voice came from behind him, in the shadow of an overflowing trash container. Gimli whirled, scowling. His feet kicked up oil-filmed water pooled in the alleyway, the remnants of the afternoon's showers. “Who the fuck are you?” The dwarf's left hand was fisted at his side; his right stayed very close to the open flap of the windbreaker he wore despite the warm night, where the weight of a silenced .38 hung. “You've got about two seconds before you become gossip yourself.”

“Well, and as temperamental as ever, aren't we?” It was a young man's voice, Gimli decided. Streetlight flowed over a figure beside the trash. “It's me, Gimli,” the man said. “Croyd. Move that damn hand from the gun. I ain't no cop.”

“Croyd?” Gimli squinted. He relaxed slightly, though his squat, muscular body stayed low. “Your ace sure screwed up this time. I've never seen you look like that.”

The man chuckled without mirth. His face and arms were a shocking porcelain white, his pupils dull pink; the tousled dark brown hair only accentuated the pallor of the skin. “Shit, yeah. Gotta stay out of the sun, but then I've always been a night person. Dyed the hair and started wearing sunglasses, but I lost the shades. Still got the strength this time, though. It's a damn good thing too,” he added reflectively.

Gimli waited. If this guy
was
Croyd, fine; if he wasn't, Gimli didn't intend to give him a chance to do anything. Being in New York again made him edgy. Polyakov wouldn't meet with them until Monday, when Hartmann was rumored to be making his bid; the fucking Arab woman was a joker-hater who spouted religious nonsense half the time and had “visions” the other; his old JJS people had lost their fire while he'd been in Europe and Russia; and with the Shadow Fist/Mafia wars and Barnett's rabble-rousing, no one felt safe.

Yet staying cooped up in the warehouse made him edgy. He had told himself that taking a brief night walk would take some of the edge off.

Another fucking bad idea.

Gimli was seeing enemies in every shadow—that was the only way to stay alive and free. It was bad enough that Hartmann had the federal and state authorities digging up the old JJS network and hassling everyone. With the joker-nat underground skirmishes, it seemed like every fucking cop in New York was in Jokertown and Gimli was too recognizable to feel comfortable on the streets, no matter what precautions he took. He wasn't going to pretend that Hartmann wouldn't prefer Gimli was shot “resisting arrest” than jailed—he wasn't that damned stupid.

Better to be cautious. Better to be furtive. Better to make a mistake and leave someone else dead than to be noticed. “Look, Croyd, I'm just a little paranoid at the moment. I'm real uneasy about people I don't know seeing me…”

Croyd took a step closer. Crooked teeth snagged his lower lip—the albino's gums were a startling bright red. Gimli was reminded of a B-movie zombie. “You got any speed, Gimli? Your connections were always good.”

“I've been away. Things change.”

“No speed? Shit.”

Gimli shook his head. That, at least, sounded like Croyd. The man frowned, shuffling from foot to foot.

“So it goes,” he said. “I've got other sources, though they're drying up or dying on me. Listen, the talk on the streets is that the JJS is reforming. Let me give you some free advice. After Berlin, you should give up on Hartmann; he's a good guy, anyway, no matter what you think. Take out that s.o.b. Barnett instead. I might have considered it myself, if I'd woken up with the right power. Everyone in Jokertown'd thank you for it.”

“I'll think about it.”

The albino laughed again, the same dry cackle. “You don't believe it's me, do you?”

Gimli shrugged. His hand moved significantly back toward the windbreaker; he saw the man watching the movement carefully. “You're still alive, aren't you? That's something.”

The albino who might or might not be Croyd sidled closer until Gimli could smell his breath. “Yeah,” he said. “And maybe next time around I'll just pound you a lot closer to the pavement than you already are. Croyd remembers things, Miller.”

Croyd coughed, sniffed, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. With a bloodshot, overdone leer, he moved off. Gimli watched him, wondering if he was making a mistake. If he wasn't Croyd …

He let him go. Gimli waited in the alley until he'd turned the corner back onto the street and then headed off again, taking a few extra turns just to see if he was being followed.

In time he came to the back door of a dilapidated warehouse near the East River.

Gimli could see Video on the roof. He waved to her and nodded to Shroud, who materialized from the shadows of the entrance. Gimli grimaced. He could hear the argument inside the frame building—twined voices snarling like a rumbling thunderstorm heard just over the horizon. “Fuck, not again,” he muttered.

Shroud adjusted the strap of his machine pistol and shrugged. “We need some entertainment,” he said. “It's almost as good as Berlin.”

Gimli shoved open the door. Muffled words coalesced into intelligibility.

File was shouting at Misha, who stood with arms folded and a righteous expression on her face as Peanut tried to hold back the rasp-skinned joker. File waved a fist at Misha, shoving at Peanut. “… your self-centered, blind fanaticism! You and the Nur are just Barnetts in Arabian drag. You have the identical hatred in your pompous souls. Let me show you hatred, bitch! Let me show you what it feels like.”

As the rusty hinges of the door screeched, Peanut glanced over, his arms still wrapped around File. Peanut was scraped from the effort of holding the joker, his forearms scored with long, bloody scratches. A nat's skin would have been scoured entirely off, but Peanut's chitinous flesh was more durable. “Gimli,” he said pleadingly.

File spun in Peanut's grip, tearing a pained screech from Peanut. He pointed at Misha as he glanced at the dwarf. “Get
rid
of her!” he shouted. “I won't put up with this crap much longer.” Twisting, he tore himself away from Peanut, who let him go this time.

“Just what the fuck's going on?” Gimli slammed the door shut behind him and glared. “I could hear you people halfway down the alley.”

“I won't tolerate any more insults.” File stalked toward Misha threateningly, and Gimli planted himself between the two.

“She said Father Squid's going to hell when he dies,” Peanut added, dabbing at his cuts with a handkerchief. “I told File she just don't understand, but—”

“I told the truth.” Misha sounded bewildered, as if she failed to believe their lack of comprehension. Her head shook, her hands were spread wide as if to absolve herself of guilt. “God showed His displeasure with the priest when He made him a joker. Yes, this Father Squid might be sent to hell, but Allah is infinitely merciful.”

“See?” Peanut smiled at File tentatively. “It's okay, huh?”