Wild Cards V (54 page)

She looked at the meter and pushed several bills through the slot in front of her. “Keep the change.” The door was stuck, but the driver showed no inclination to get out and help her. Disgusted, she kicked it open on the second try and got out. “Just for that, I won't bother telling you to have a nice day,” she muttered as the cab roared away from the curb, and then she turned to look at the building in front of her.

It had been renovated at least twice, but nothing had helped; it was just plain ugly and shabby though obviously solid. It wasn't going to fall down unless the Great Ape kicked it down, except, she remembered, the Great Ape didn't exist anymore. Five stories, and the place she wanted was on the top floor. She'd grown up in an apartment on the top floor of a seven-story tenement building, the kind with no elevators, and she'd sprinted up and down all seven flights without stopping several times every day of her young life. Five floors wouldn't give her any problem, she thought.

Her sprinting gave out in the middle of the second flight, but she did manage to keep going without pause, albeit more slowly, catching her breath on each landing. The darkness was relieved by the frosted skylight directly over the squared-off spiral of the stairs, but the light was anemic and depressing.

There was only one apartment on the top floor. Hiram might as well have had his name on it, she thought as she paused at the head of the stairs, panting a little. Instead of the drab, grayish door that all the other apartments had, there was a custom hardwood job with an ornate brass knocker and an old-fashioned handle instead of a doorknob. The lock above it was completely modern and secure but made to look just as refined.
Hiram
,
Hiram
, she thought sadly,
does it pay to advertise in a place like this?

What would he say when he opened the door and saw her? What would he think? It didn't matter. She had to make him see what was happening because then it would save him—save his
life.
It would be a bit different from the way he had saved hers, but Aces High was his life, and if she could save that for him, then she would have repaid him for her own life. The balance between them would be restored after all, whereas before she hadn't thought there'd be any way to do that.

No way but one, and she couldn't. The feeling wasn't there. She knew Hiram would have welcomed her regardless, that he would be considerate and tender and funny and loving and everything a woman could want in a lover. But ultimately it would be horribly unjust to him, and when it came to its inevitable end, it would be painful and scarring to both of them. Hiram deserved better. Such a good man deserved someone whose devotion would match his, someone who would enter fully into every part of his life and give him all the pleasures of attachment. He needed someone who could not live without him.

Instead of someone who would have died without him?
her mind whispered nastily, and she felt another hard pang of guilt.
All right, all right, I'm a bitch and an ingrate
, she scolded herself silently.
Maybe it's some fatal flaw in me that I don't love him, as good as he is. Maybe if gratitude could make me fall in love with him, I'd be a better person.

And maybe he wouldn't be holed up in a Jokertown apartment with poison like Ezili Rouge, either.

God
, Jane thought. She had to talk to Hiram. She couldn't believe he would really want to keep company with such a creature. She had to help him get away from her, find some way to bar her from Aces High. Whatever she had to do to help him, anything, anything at all, she would do it especially if saving Hiram meant she never had to see that woman again.

She forced herself to walk along the landing to the apartment and gave the brass knocker three sharp taps. To her dismay, it was Ezili who answered.

Ezili was dressed, if that was the word for it, in a whisper of transparent gold material over nothing. Jane looked steadily into Ezili's face, refusing to let her gaze fall below the woman's chin, and said in her driest, most controlled voice, “I've come for Hiram. I know that he's here, and it's imperative that I see him.”

A slow hot smile spread across Ezili's face as if Jane had said the one thing in the world she could possibly have wanted to hear. Swaying a little, as though dancing to some inner music she moved back and gestured gracefully for Jane to enter.

The apartment was a surprise. The living room had been carefully decorated in a completely Haitian motif that also reflected Hiram's high tastes. Jane found herself unable to look at anything except the deep brown carpet, exactly like the one in Hiram's office. The place was so
Hiram
, but Hiram changed, Hiram the stranger who had come back from the tour. With Ezili, who was moving leisurely around her like some sort of predatory creature whose favorite dinner had walked obligingly into its claws.

“Hiram's in the bedroom,” she said. “I guess if it's
imperative
that you see him, then you can see him there.” Standing in front of Jane, she lifted her arms to run her hands along the back of her own neck, practically thrusting her large breasts into Jane's face. Jane maintained her steady, even gaze, refusing to look. Something shiny flashed on Ezili's right hand as she brought it around.

Blood. Jane's severe composure almost broke.
Blood?
What in God's name could Hiram have gotten himself into?

Ezili's reddened hand undulated through the air in a pointing gesture. “That way. Just walk in and you'll see him. In bed.”

Jane marched past her to the shadowy doorway and stepped into the bedroom. She cleared her throat, started to speak, and then froze.

He was not in bed but kneeling on the floor next to it in an attitude of prayer. But he was definitely not praying.

At first she thought she had surprised him in the act of giving a piggyback ride to a small child, and it flashed through her mind that it was his child by Ezili, the pregnancy, birth, and growth drastically foreshortened by the wild card infection, which had also made the child a hideously deformed joker.

She took a step toward him, her eyes filling with tears of pity. “Oh, Hiram, I…”

The look on Hiram's face went from rage to agonized sorrow, and she saw what it really was on his back.

“H-H-Hiram…”

Her voice died away as a bizarrely alien expression of curiosity spread over Hiram's face. It was not the expression of a father interrupted while tending to his child, and no child would have been fastened to a father's neck by the mouth. The wizened creature on Hiram's back quivered in a way that reminded her of Ezili's movements. Even as she turned to bolt for the door, she knew it was too late.

She thought she must have weighed at least three hundred pounds when she hit the floor.

Later on, when she thought of it, when she could bring herself to think of it, she knew that it could have been at most half a minute before Hiram moved from the bed to where she was anchored to the floor on her stomach. It was completely silent in the apartment for what seemed to Jane like an excruciating stretch of time before Hiram finally rose and came to stand over her where she lay with water pouring off her, soaking her clothes and the carpet.

She tried to say something to him, but all the breath had been knocked out of her by the fall. In a minute, when she could talk, she would tell him he hadn't had to do that, that no matter what kind of trouble he was in, she wouldn't give him away to anyone, and she would try to help him in any way she could—

There was a quiet rustle as Hiram lay down on the carpet next to her, facing her with that same peculiar expression of curiosity.
He doesn't recognize me
, she thought with horrified amazement. The creature was still on his back, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the sight.

“In a few moments you won't find me so hard to look at,” Hiram said. His voice sounded strange, as if someone were doing a creditable imitation of him.

“Hi-Hiram,” she managed in a whisper. “I—I w-wouldn't—h-hurt—”

Small fingers touched her back, and she realized what was happening. She opened her eyes,

“No, Hiram,” she begged, her voice getting stronger, “don't let it—don't let it—”

Hiram's curious look had vanished. In its place was an expression so griefstricken, she automatically tried to reach out to him, but the weight barely let her move her hand. He looked into her eyes and she had the impression he was struggling with something.

The thing was fully on her back now, nestling in; she could feel something moving along her neck.

Suddenly the weight was gone. Tears glittered in Hiram's eyes, and she thought she heard him whisper,
Run.

And then something stabbed her neck.

She must have blacked out at the first contact; she felt as though she were swimming through the air, or being carried to and fro by air currents.
The weight's gone
, she thought,
Hiram's made me weightless and I'm floating through the room.
Then her vision cleared and she saw she was still lying on the floor. Hiram was reaching for her, intending to gather her to him in an embrace.

“
Stop.
” It was her voice, but she had no control over it. Something else was speaking through her. The panic that rose in her at the realization transmuted into a mild pleasure that began to grow more intense.

Hiram hesitated for a moment and then continued to pull her close.

“I said, stop!”
The command in her voice stopped Hiram cold. From the last tiny part of her that was still herself, Jane watched as her hand lifted and paused; a small waterfall congealed out of the air and splashed down on the carpet. A wave of pleasure swept through her, overruling that little bit of her that was horrified. It was as though she had been split into two people, one very large one full of irresistible pleasure and energetic appetites, and one very, very small Jane Dow confined in a cage and buried too deeply to surface and regain control, but able to observe—and feel—everything the large one did. The large one, she realized, was the creature on her back.

She got to her feet and stretched, feeling her muscles. Hiram sat up and watched her with hurt, suspicious eyes.

“You promised,” he said sulkily, as though he were a little boy deprived of a treat.

“I promised you pleasure beyond anything in your artificial, white world,” the creature said with her voice. “You have that. Please do not disturb me when I am getting the feel of a new mount.” The little tiny Jane gave a surge of outrage but was quickly subdued. Somewhere in her mind she felt the presence of humiliation and panic, but it was so far away, it might as well have been happening to someone else. The pure pleasure coursing through her body in ever-strengthening waves,
that
was the only thing really happening to her.

“Why not?” Hiram said, sounding almost whiny. “Haven't I been good to you? Don't I give you everything and everyone you ask for? I even gave you
her.
I wanted her all to myself, but I didn't hold out on you.”

The creature used Jane's laugh. There was another surge of outrage that turned to pleasure even more quickly than before. “You're in love with this little white flower?”

Hiram dropped his gaze for a moment and muttered something she couldn't hear. It might have been
yes.
There was a part of her that was important to, but the rising pleasure displaced everything. Nothing could be important next to that.

“Ah, but you love me more. Don't you.”

Hiram raised his head. “Yes,” he said tonelessly.

Jane felt the creature move her hand to touch Hiram's head with the benevolence of superiority, noblesse oblige, and every movement sent new waves of pleasure through her. She had not thought it possible that just simple movement could suffuse her with pure ecstasy. That was the only word for it: ecstasy. “And I love you, too, of course.” The creature was feeling around in her mind for all her thoughts of Hiram. She had a faint, distant sense of wanting to shut him off, evict him, how dare he—but the pleasure. No. He could take what he wanted, take anything he wanted, take it all if it meant that she could go on feeling like this. “How could I not love such tastes and appetites, such a capacity to enjoy life?” The creature probed more deeply, and Jane thought she must be ringing like a bell, vibrating with heaven. “I'm quite—
attached
to you. I couldn't live without you.”