Avenging Fury

by John Farris

  Gwen was still staring aimlessly, but for the most part in his direction. Her eyes were devoid of recognition, although momentarily Marcus Woolwine had a sense of someone or something else lying beneath her drink-blurred surface, like a crocodile waiting on lunch in a stagnant lagoon. How curious. He smiled at her.

  “I don’t relish that drive back down the mountain at this late hour,” Devon said to Woolwine. The other girls nodded sleepily. “We will stay the night, then.” To Reese and Honeydew she said, “Right. Let’s get her off to B-E-D, darlings.”

  1:20 A.M.

  I’m really not in a hurry to see you again,” Harlee said coolly to Bronc Skarbeck on her cell phone.

  “I can understand that. After the—the way I talked to you. But—”

  “It was the gun that freaked me so bad, Bronc. Really, how could you?”

  “Stupid of me. Can’t explain why. Jealous, I guess. Knowing what I now know about you.”

  She sensed, although his voice didn’t exactly give him away—stumbling over a word here and there—that the General had been drinking. Hitting the Irish hard. Even so he couldn’t sleep. So there was an underlying emotional cause not entirely centered on her absence from his house.

  “I’m a real person. I have my ups and downs. My feelings get hurt. I need some space.” After a few moments she added in a warmer tone, “Daddy.”

  “I understand. But we’re a team, Harlee. All we have is each other right now. Let’s not lose sight of—” His voice broke unexpectedly. “I really need to be with you tonight. I have enemies. But that’s not the worst of it. Where are you?”

  “At Devon’s.” She said nothing about meeting Eden Waring, subsequently bonding with the Avatar. “Just hanging out. What is the worst?”

  “I have cancer.”

  “Oh, Bronc!” Part concern, part you’re shitting me.

  “True.”

  “Have you seen a specialist?”

  “I went to a lab. My PSA was eleven! I’ve got this burning sensation—”

  “Bronc, you’re going to a specialist tomorrow if I have to drag you myself.”

  “They’ll only tell me I’m going to die.”

  “You went to one of those freelance labs? They make mistakes all the time. Just calm down.”

  He began sobbing heavily. “It’s too late for specialists. You’re the only one who can help me. Please, Harlee. Get rid of my cancer.”

  She felt there was something not quite genuine in the fear he was trying to convey.

  “I’m no fucking faith healer!”

  “But you possess . . . secrets.”

  “Bronc, we are not going to get into that at this time, especially on the phone.”

  “All right. Whatever you say. Just be by my side tonight, that’s all I’m asking.”

  Harlee thought it over. Devon hadn’t checked in and wasn’t accessible on her cell. Harlee didn’t know when Dev might show at her own digs. And she was curious to explore, not the state of Bronc’s health, which had been problematic since they’d met, but his reference to “enemies.” With the Elite 88 sequestered at Snow Lake ranch for one of their rare conclaves, leaderless on this occasion, Harlee could well imagine the level of intrigue: the 88 were close enough to billions of dollars in gold to give each man’s greed a radioactive glow.

  Maybe she was making a mistake in staying aloof from Bronc at this critical time. Her counsel could be worthwhile. What she lacked in experience dealing with Mordaunt’s disciples, she made up in wits and daring. One reason why the Great One valued her so highly. Other than Mordaunt himself, only Harlee could access his great vault without bringing the rest of the mountain down in a further cataclysm, sealing the cache forever.

  Okay, then. Time to revert to Bronc Skarbeck’s “transition object”—as a clinical psychologist might view her in assessing the relationship. Transition to what, a second go at puberty?

  Harlee smiled.

  “Now, I don’t want you to take another drink,” she admonished the already-foundering Skarbeck. “And put a pot of coffee on, Daddy. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  THREE

  WHAT BEAST COULDST THOU BE, THAT

  WERE NOT SUBJECT TO A BEAST?

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, TIMON OF A THENS: IV, III

  LAS VEGAS • NOVEMBER 3 • 7:35 A.M.

  Patrick O’Doul, the fifteen-year-old erstwhile time-traveler, awoke in the suite he shared with his uncle Mickey at the Venetian Hotel to find Mickey sprawled on a sofa in the sitting room below, staring at the television. The sound was off. He was vacantly watching a rerun of a NASCAR race on the Speed Channel. Both NASCAR and the tracks where they raced had come a long way in thirty years.

  Even in the dim light of the sitting room Pat could tell how red Mickey’s eyes were. He’d had little if any sleep; and he’d been crying again. But the sounds of grief he still made from time to time were lodged in his throat.

  Pat stretched, got out of bed, used the bathroom, went down the steps into the sitting room, and parted the drapes a couple of feet. The windows faced east and a low spine of gray-blue mountains, above which the sun turned a thin cloud cover incandescent.

  The boy cleared his throat and said, “How about I order some breakfast now, Unca Mickey?”

  Mickey wet his lips with a furry tongue. Otherwise he didn’t move or speak. He hadn’t shaved in a while. Patrick had had his hands full keeping Mickey halfway presentable during the last three days. And they’d had a lot of company. But no cops, thanks to the Sainted Mother plus a team of lawyers the Tustin twins had furnished to protect their interests. As for the incident on Halloween that remained unexplained, no one had been injured and no one had shown up to contradict the claim that the Franklin speedster belonged to Mickey and Patrick. To all questions about how they’d suddenly appeared in the Venetian’s casino the quick-witted Patrick said repeatedly, “It’s a trick. I can’t tell you any more.” Because magicians were stellar attractions at many hotels, and would-be magicians abounded in Vegas, the explanation was serviceable. The hotel’s lawyers had concluded that it was best to paper over (with cash) the inevitable nuisance claims and let the matter quietly go away. They suggested but didn’t insist that Mickey and Patrick go away too, and soon.

  Patrick was in no hurry. And he loved room service. Today he ordered french toast, crisp bacon, coffee, fruit. Then he sat on the sofa with the Mick, hands clenched between his knees. The night before he’d fallen asleep trying to think of the right words, the right approach to the subject of home—or what they had known as home in Paramus, New Jersey, circa 1973.

  He had been able to deal with Time’s dislocations more forthrightly than his uncle, even in the frustrating Mobius microregion that was Jubilation County. Patrick had a practical streak and wasn’t as sentimental as most Irishmen. As far as he was concerned, he and Mickey had hit it lucky just winding up in the same star system with planet earth, let alone only a third of a century in time and two thousand miles from where they’d inadvertently shoved off into a parallel continuum. All thanks to Gwen’s nearly dead reckoning and with some help, probably, from that amazing crystal skull.

  He’d dreamed about Gwen for the last couple of nights, sweaty anxious dreams. He wondered what had happened to her, and to the hitchhiking entity that had boldly pushed Gwen aside in her own body. Gwen shared some of the blame, Patrick acknowledged; the entity was the reason why she’d shown up in Jubilation County to begin with. But Delilah had turned out to be a lot more hell than Gwen could’ve anticipated.

  Delilah. Someone Patrick did not care to dream about or see in spectral aspect ever again. But it was lousy that Gwen should be so casually dispossessed. The hairs on his forearms stirred; the back of his neck was chilly. Nevertheless, he and Mickey were indebted to Gwen. They had an obligation to locate and try to help her.

  Patrick already had an idea of where to start.

  First, however, he had to snap Mickey out of his tragic stupor. Get him interested in li
ving again. See the possibilities.

  With an advance on the money they would be paid for the Franklin speedster by the Tustin twins (who also were picking up their tab at the Venetian for as long as they wanted to stay), Patrick had looked through the yellow pages and chosen a private eye. His intention was to get an idea of how things were in Paramus in the so-far astonishing (awesome) early years of the twenty-first century.

  In about three hours (one astonishment was the existence of something called the Internet, where you didn’t need detecting skills to learn practically everything about anyone), Patrick had a ten-page report (fax machines, jeez!) filling in the family history.

  Sad to say, Mickey’s wife, Annette, had passed away in a nursing home just before the stroke of midnight at the turn of the century. Mick’s oldest daughter had succumbed to kidney cancer in the prime of her life. The grandkids were all grown, married, scattered. His youngest daughter, who was now older than Mickey, still lived in Arizona. Mickey had perked up at that news and wanted to rush right down there but Patrick cautioned: How do you explain thirty years, no word, and here you are looking just the same? Mickey promptly resumed his funk.

  Patrick’s dad was living in a double-wide in Punta Gorda, Florida; bald, fat, retired. He looked meaner than ever in the photo supplied by the detective agency. Pat didn’t feel he owed his father a visit or much of anything else. As for his mom—maybe he missed her. But she’d had two coronaries and his showing up out of the blue probably would be good for an epic third.

  No, neither Patrick nor Mickey could go home again. Patrick had become a time-traveling orphan, which didn’t depress him. This was a new, exciting place and time in which to be, and he could resume growing older at the customary pace. He liked the idea of studying magic; becoming a headliner in Vegas. What if he could talk Gwen into joining the act?

  They already had magic, Patrick had enthused to himself, beyond the imaginations or talent of competing magicians: the power of the ruby skull that Gwen/Delilah had removed from the Franklin speedster. The skull had delivered them from the monotony of Jubilation County in about three heartbeats to the Venetian’s casino, and Patrick wouldn’t be surprised if with a lot less of a twinkle the skull could transform hoptoads into movie stars.

  Breakfast came. Patrick poured coffee for Mickey, bracingly black. Mickey accepted the cup while barely taking his eyes off the big-screen TV.

  “Val and Cleve are thinking about sponsoring a stock car,” Patrick said, referring to his new best friends, the Tustin twins. He drenched his french toast in maple syrup. “You could be their crew chief, what d’ya think about that? Those engines: man, they gotta be six hundred HORSEpower. Wouldn’t you love to get your hands on a mill like that?”

  “Huh,” Mickey said, beginning to sip his coffee.

  “Between them they already own forty-three classic cars. A 1912 Caddy. Tolerances to one one-thousandth of an inch, and no more hand-cranking. Wouldn’t you like to see one of those babies aGAIN?”

  “Yeah,” Mickey said, with a gleam in his eye that was a lot like love. All Cadillacs; Cord L-29s; the Marmon Wasp Indy Cars—those were his fantasy goddesses.

  “They’re planning to build a museum RIGHT here in Las Vegas! You could be a big help. Heck, nobody knows more about restoring classic cars than you do!” Pat heard his uncle’s stomach growl. “Want some of this french toast? More here than I can eat.”

  Mickey glanced at Patrick’s plate, and nodded.

  “I need to get dressed, get going,” Patrick said, reaching for the bacon. Which he ate with his fingers, brushing crumbs off his pajama top.

  “Go where?”

  “Gotta get started looking for Gwen.”

  Mickey glanced at his nephew. “But she—”

  “Yeah, WALKED away. Not a word to us. But we know she’s not in her right mind. I mean, Gwen is in there somewhere, except she’s not running things.” Patrick drank half of his orange juice, frowning. “I told everybody she was my SISter, okay? And that it was Gwen who designed the trick, I mean the illusion, that they all wanta know about.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Catch up, Unca MICKey! Anyway, I found out yesterday they have probably a thousand cameras in this hotel, what they call digital cameras. Don’t ask me how they work, all I know is they don’t use film? Everything each CAMera records—” Patrick paused to clear his throat, “is stored in a computer. And if somebody walked in or out of the hotel, say five months ago, the computer can, uh, ISOlate that moment, recall it, and maybe even identify the PERson with something called facial recognition software.”

  The Mick stared at his nephew until his left eyelid began twitching.

  “So the lawyers set it up for me, and the deputy chief of security here at the hotel is gonna help me find Gwen, see which way she went. See if she got into a taxi or somebody picked her up? After all, she does live here, in Las Vegas, which is the reason why we’re here too.”

  Mickey began to shake his head.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “Don’t do it, Patrick. Leave well enough alone. Don’t go near her again! Haven’t we had enough misery already?”

  “But none of it was GWEN’S fault! And I’ve got plans, Unca Mickey!”

  CONCORDIA HOSPITAL • 8:20 A.M.

  Eight days after being hit three times by a would-be assassin’s bullets, Bertie Nkambe was off the ventilator for good and sitting up in her bed, eating solid food in spite of a sore throat. And sometimes talking, in a whisper, although she still relied mostly on subvocal communication with Eden.

  “So how is the self-healing coming along?” Eden asked her.

  —I had a stubborn infection to knock down. Both lungs feel good now. All wounds that don’t kill you are superficial, I guess. Doesn’t mean they don’t hurt like a bastard. They should be taking the drains out of my head in a couple of days. Damn, I need to get out of here! So give it to me straight, how’re things going with the cowboy?

  “Cody? I’ll bring him around later to meet you, if that’s okay.”

  —Looking forward to it.

  Bertie put down her fork, having finished most of a plate of scrambled eggs. Eden held a glass of juice for Bertie to sip through a straw. She studied Eden’s face. That momentary gleam at mention of Cody Olds had vanished from Eden’s eyes. She looked doom and gloom again.

  “You haven’t . . . heard anything from Tom?”

  “No.”

  —What do your dreams tell you?

  —Nothing about Tom. I just have a bad feeling I can’t shake.

  “Gwen?”

  Eden shook her head.

  —But you’re sure she’s around?

  “Yes. But I can’t—you know—get in touch. It was only for those few seconds Halloween night. And my neck was bleeding.”

  “So she’s . . .” Bertie massaged her throat. “In some kind of trouble?”

  “Knowing Gwen, that’s a cinch. Bertie, Cody’s people have a ranch down in Navaholand? Cody offered to drive us and we can stay around his home place as long as we like, until you’re fully recovered.”

  “Sounds . . . like a plan.” Bertie resumed subvocally: —You want to get out of Vegas, don’t you?

  —In the worst way. My skin has been crawling. There’s nothing but trouble here. They’ve had you under so you probably can’t sense it, but there’s such evil congregating. Worse than when the Magician was alive.

  —So why don’t you go on? I don’t want to hold you up, I’ll come later.

  —I won’t leave without you. That’s not open to discussion.

  There was a discreet knock at the door. “Come in,” Eden said. The door was opened. Flicka looked in from the sitting room.

  “Oh, you’re sitting up today!” Bertie smiled bravely. “I was just wondering, anything we can do?”

  Eden and Bertie saw another hospital volunteer behind Flicka, a mocha-toned black girl with big liquid eyes and great cheekbones, but a tight smile. She had a certain inward
watchfulness that bothered Eden. The kind of beauty who came with a big price on her head.

  “Is this a bad time?” Flicka asked.

  “No,” Bertie said.

  “I just wanted you to meet Nicole. We work together.”

  Nic’s smile became a little more generous. She didn’t say anything. After a few moments Flicka said cheerily, “We’ll be here all day, Miss Nkambe. If there’s anything at all, just ask for us.”

  “Thank you,” Bertie said.

  “Very nice meeting you,” Nic said. Her eyes were on the gold lion’s-head walking stick Eden had left across the arms of a chair close to Bertie’s bed.

  When the door closed, Eden looked around at Bertie.

  “Guess we’re . . . getting to be big buddies,” Bertie said of Flicka. “She comes around three or . . . four times a day. Wholesome as butter cookies in spite of . . . those exotic bloodlines.”

  “Uh-huh. What do you make of the other one?”

  “Doesn’t seem the . . . volunteer type.”

  “No,” Eden said, “she doesn’t. How’s your peeping ability?”

  “Don’t know. Haven’t tried. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing. I thought I saw—but I’m just jumpy, and out of sorts.” She leaned closer to the bed to kiss Bertie’s cheek. “I’ll be back with the cowboy, when he can spare the time for us.”

  —You’re in love, aren’t you?

  Eden drew back with a pretense of surprise. “How can you say that?”

  “Because,” Bertie said with smug good cheer, “I just peeped you.”