Inside Straight

by George R. R. Martin

  “No. My dad.… my step-dad, I mean. Josh. He’s out of town all month. But—”

  “It’s perfect,” Jonathan said. “Come on. Let’s go take a look!”

  “Guys,” Fortune said. “Look, I really appreciate that you want to help out, but… but…”

  “You must find your destiny,” Lohengrin intoned, his hand on Fortune’s shoulder. “If God has need of you, and this is the path your honor demands, you must go. You cannot do less. And I will aid you, if I can.”

  It should have sounded cheesy, but the fucker really pulled that Arthurian shit off. Jonathan felt genuinely moved.

  “Yeah. What he said,” Jonathan said. “Let’s get the check.”

  Through one set of noncompound eyes, Peregrine’s house looked more impressive. The Beverly Hills address matched with the mission-style architecture and the Spanish tile roof. The lawn was lush and green. He half expected to see Marilyn Monroe slink out of the house with a martini glass in her hand. Which was, he supposed, exactly the effect the architect was shooting for.

  Jonathan pulled the car carefully into the driveway, stopping well before the garage door. That was the trick of driving intoxicated; allow lots of room for error.

  “It is beautiful,” Lohengrin said, leaning forward until his forehead almost touched the windshield. Maybe the crazed German bastard was a sentimental drunk too. It was endearing. Jonathan tried to turn off the engine and discovered he already had.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” Fortune said from the back seat.

  Jonathan found the button.

  All four doors unlocked simultaneously. The sound was like a prison door slamming closed. Jonathan grinned and got out of the car. The others followed him. Lohengrin was humming something martial as they went up the sculpted concrete path to the door. Fortune started behind them both, but hurried to catch up, as if he wanted to protect the house from them.

  “This is just… okay, be careful in here, okay? This is my mom’s house. I don’t want you to—”

  “John,” Jonathan said. “We aren’t high school kids sneaking into the liquor cabinet and downloading porn. We’re grown men searching for a pariicuiar answer to a specific question.”

  Fortune hesitated.

  “We will do you no dishonor,” Lohengrin intoned. “I swear it.”

  That was apparently the trick, because Fortune took a key out of his pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped in. While he disarmed the alarm system, Jonathan took in the house. A black stone fountain burbled to itself in the entryway. The decor in the main rooms was chic and clean, with high ceilings and open spaces. He could almost see Peregrine rising from the couch and stretching out her wings. A glass wall led out to the deck he’d seen before, through other eyes.

  “Come on,” Fortune said, heading down a hallway to their left. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Jonathan walked after him. The art that hung tastefully from the wall was beautiful, one piece commenting subtly on the next. The air smelled like his grandmother’s house in Virginia, the air conditioning doing something arcane that reminded him of cucumbers. The architecture itself made him think of television sets—everything a little too spacious and a little too clean, and everything, everything, in place. Jonathan tried to imagine what it would have been like growing up in a world like this, a climate-controlled childhood. And nothing anywhere that referenced Peregrine’s past as sex symbol and lover of the half-black, half-Asian pimp-turned-ace-turned-monk-turned-martyr Fortunato.

  Lohengrin paused in the entryway, swaying slightly. His brow was furrowed in intense concentration.

  “What’s up, big guy?” Jonathan asked.

  “John’s powers. His old powers,” Lohengrin said. “He almost destroys the world, ja?”

  “Yeah,” Jonathan agreed. “Time magazine did a whole thing on it. Bunch of people thought he was the messiah or the antichrist, or whatever. If Fortunato hadn’t come in, it would have been ugly.”

  “Ja,” the German agreed. “And we are helping to get his powers back?”

  Jonathan blinked. “But,” he said. “That stuff. Back at the bar. His destiny…”

  Lohengrin nodded in agreement but still frowning. “I may have been wrong,” he said.

  “Huh,” Jonathan said. And then, “Hey, Fortune?”

  Peregrine’s bedroom. Extra-wide king-size-plus bed with raw silk sheets, a skylight on runners that could open to let someone in or out if they could fly, tasteful bedside table and lamp with the latest issue of Variety open to an article about American Hero. But no John Fortune.

  “Fortune?”

  “In here. Dressing room.”

  It was like a walk-in closet the size of an apartment. Dresses, coats, shoes, suits, sweats, a dresser devoted to undergarments. And a table with a jewelry case that would shame some department stores, complete with vanity mirror where John Fortune was sitting, hands flat on the table, jaw set, eyes focused and determined. He looked like the world’s most desperate drag queen getting ready to suit up.

  A steel safe door two feet square gazed out from the wall at shoulder height like high-security Dadaist art.

  “Fortune?” Jonathan said. “Hey, the Lone Grin here had a point that might be worth just kicking—”

  “All her jewelry is in there,” he said, nodding at the safe. “Necklaces, amulets, beads. Whatever.”

  “Yeah, but… you see, we were wondering if maybe getting back your powers… I mean the last time you had ’em—”

  “I know what happened. I was there.”

  “All we meant was, the stakes are a little—”

  “You just thought of that now?”

  Lohengrin raised a hand like a kid in school. “It was me,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Jonathan said. “I didn’t really think of it.”

  “Well, I did,” Fortune said. “It’s okay. I’m good with it.”

  “That’s great,” Jonathan said, “but I’m not sure—”

  “Step off, okay!” Fortune shouted. “You are the one who wanted to try this, right? I didn’t ask you to poke into my life. You took that on yourself. You’re the one who came up with the bright idea of hauling me up here and digging up this amulet. I’m just Captain Cruller, the guy who used to be famous for letting his own father fucking die! You hold up a chance for me to get that back, and then you want to talk about it? If you ladies are getting cold feet, go stick ’em in something hot!”

  Fortune’s face flushed red, and his breath sounded like a bull’s.

  “You are right,” Lohengrin said. “I gave my word to help in this. I will not fail you.”

  “Um, hello?” Jonathan said. “What about maybe destroying the world?”

  “I have given my word,” Lohengrin repeated. “Honor demands I do this.”

  “Honor demands what? How fucking drunk are you?”

  But Lohengrin had already put out his hand. The blade that appeared in it glowed with a soft, pure light. The German turned to the safe and with a flick of his wrist carved a hole in the steel door and part of the surrounding wall. John Fortune yelped and sprang forward.

  “What the fuck!” he shouted.

  “I opened the safe,” Lohengrin said, as if that wasn’t obvious. “Is what we came for, nein?”

  “You broke the safe,” Fortune yelled. “You didn’t tell me you were going to break it.”

  “But…” Lohengrin began. Fortune turned his back to them both, reaching into the darkness of the safe. The rant was going on under his breath. Jonathan caught the words “very clever” and “dickhead.”

  He was starting to think John Fortune might not be a sentimental drunk.

  Lohengrin started to pace, his wide, teutonic brow furrowed. Jonathan tried very hard to think, but there was still enough booze in his bloodstream to make things muzzy at the edges. There had been a plan when he’d started this, and he was pretty sure that this hadn’t been how it had gone.

  “Fuck,” Fortune said.

  “Didn
’t work?”

  “It’s not here,” Fortune said. “These… they aren’t…”

  His voice wasn’t angry anymore. More sad. Fortune hung his head, and Jonathan put a hand on the guy’s shoulder.

  “So here’s the thing,” Jonathan said. “I’m a real asshole sometimes. I didn’t mean to—”

  “I am asshole too,” Lohengrin said, putting his hand on Fortune’s other shoulder. Jonathan caught their reflection in the vanity mirror. With Fortune’s head low and the pair of them flanking the guy, it looked like an old print he’d seen of Lancelot and Merlin supporting King Arthur.

  Nice detail, he thought. He filed it away for when he wrote the book. Fortune’s head came back up.

  “I know where it is,” he said. Before Jonathan could think through what the words really meant, Fortune was gone. Jonathan and Lohengrin fouled each other trying to get out of the dressing room door, so Fortune got to Peregrine’s study well before them.

  It was another beautiful room—soft light, teak furniture, soft carpet. One wall was dedicated to images and mementos of the life of one of the world’s more glamorous wild cards. Magazine covers, newspaper clippings, plaques with her name and the appreciation of President Barnett and Senator Hartmann. Three Emmy awards. A People’s Choice award. Trophies and plaques detailing her charity work and other random appreciations. Pictures of her floating above the New York skyline, flying past the Eiffel Tower. Standing, wings spread and eyebrows raised, before the pyramids. Jonathan was struck by how young she looked back then. 1987. He’d been six years old.

  Fortune sat on the corner of the wide, low, wooden desk. A simple loop of leather cord hung from his hand, a red bauble at its end. In the dim light, the setting looked brass. Jonathan and Lohengrin both stopped dead.

  “Fortune,” Jonathan said, and licked his lips. “You should maybe put that down. You know, just for a second.”

  Fortune looked up. He was smiling. He shook his head. If they hadn’t been drunk, Jonathan and Lohengrin might have found the right words to talk him back. They might have had the presence of mind to leap forward and snatch the thing from his hand. If they hadn’t been drunk, they wouldn’t have been there in the first place. John Fortune tossed the amulet in the air, caught it, and dropped the cord around his neck. The red stone bauble struck his chest with a low, heavy sound, and then hung there, innocuously.

  Jonathan Hive stared at the thing as it shifted slightly against Fortune’s shirt. After a moment, he remembered to breathe. Fortune laughed ruefully, touching the amulet with his fingertips. “Nothing,” he said. “Just another fairy tale that didn’t come true.”

  “Look, Fortune. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

  John Fortune started screaming. Lohengrin’s mystic armor appeared, a white luminous medieval knight. Jonathan hopped back a step and then forward again. The brass setting lay on the floor, two hollow half-rounds, like a walnut shell with the nut missing. The stone was gone. Fortune was ripping off his shirt, shrieking like a girl.

  “What!” Jonathan shouted. “What is it?”

  “It’s inside of me! Holy shit! Get it out!”

  A lump moved under Fortune’s dusky skin, something forcing its way through him, up his chest, over his collarbone.

  “Lohengrin!” Jonathan screamed. “Knife! The big knife! The sword! Get your sword! Cut it out!”

  “No!” Fortune cried, but whether he meant the thing crawling in his flesh or the plan to cut him open wasn’t clear.

  The knight shifted his attention from Fortune clawing at his own flesh, to Jonathan’s trembling finger. The lump passed under Fortune’s jaw, and then up through his cheek. As Lohengrin stepped forward, the sword glowing into being in his hand, the thing reached John Fortune’s forehead. Something like a detonation filled the room: light and heat and a kind of shockwave that Jonathan felt in his bones though it didn’t blow back his hair or his clothes. The air smelled of dust and overheated stone.

  “Mem Gott.”

  Where John Fortune had been, a huge she-lion crouched, light streaming from her like a small sun. She bared her teeth at Lohengrin, who stepped back, his sword held at the guard before him. The lioness howled.

  “What the fuck!“ Jonathan shouted.

  The lioness turned to him, startled by his voice. When she opened her mouth, he saw the billowing flame in her throat. He barely had time to expand out, wasps exploding in all directions, before the blast of fire passed through the space where he had been.

  The study descended into chaos. Lohengrin swung his sword, the tip cleaving pits of lathe and plaster out of the walls. Flames burst over him like water while the lioness leaped and roared. Jonathan, not sure whether to flee or try to save Lohengrin from Fortune, or maybe Fortune from Lohengrin, buzzed madly around the room.

  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

  Melinda M. Sno
dgrass

  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.