by Various
That hook flashed always in the back of his mind.
Jimmy had told him of the baby rapers and pedos he’d taken down. Told him in detail of what he’d found in their dens. Maybe the relation of his deeds had been meant to give Nico comfort, or maybe it had been meant to salve the guilt he felt for everything that had happened. It was strange to think of it as survivor’s guilt, but there it was. Something like that drove Jimmy, drove Pan. But Jimmy had never found that bastard with the hook.
What had gotten him thinking about it?
The set?
He’d been overjoyed to be on a professional set again. They filmed Capes at Perennial, right across from the Lost Boys stage where he’d left fifty percent of his skin blackening on the walls all those years ago. He’d missed that bustle, that feeling of importance walking on a quality set in costume. Oh, he had always joshed with the crew, treated them like equals, but in his heart, there was that unmistakable lordliness of celebrity. Empty, he knew, but a pleasant illusion.
And Capes was professional. No one-man band, fly-by-night, one-camera setup Gutmunchers affair. Everything by the numbers, yes sir, no sir. Assembly line of makeup artists, real clappers, cameras more expensive than his house.
And there was Paul Thurbee AKA Nathan Renner AKA The Nightjar, beloved daytime soap star turned Person’s Sexiest Man Alive two years running, and his bubbly popstar girlfriend Jolene, chatting up the Emperor of Pop himself, Elton bloody Ormond, all in posh red velvet jacket and black silk shirt, leather pants and on every ring a diamond. He was holding on, was old Elt. He’d changed his look oh half a dozen times since he’d done Peter `N Wendy at the height of his record-breaking $125 million Malcontent tour. Now he favored wide dark shades, a pencil thin mustache, and long, perpetually wet black hair. He was pale as a bloody vampire and Nico had almost bowled over some poor PA to get to the craft table where the three of them were standing.
“Oy!” he’d gushed. “Smashing! Smashing to see you all.””
Paul Thurbee had done a double take at his approach, the prat. About to compliment the makeup department till he realized who he was, no doubt.
“Oh, hey. Nico Tinkburn!”
“Tinkham!”
Prat.
“Tinkham!” said Thurbee, turning to his girlfriend. “This is Nico Tinkham,” he said to Jolene, knowing it was him that needed the introducing and not her. “You know, from…”
She smiled and put out her hand.
He took it in his and gave it a light squeeze, still grinning.
“From…,” he repeated, flashing that glamour girl smile that hid her vapid.
“Ah, Gutmunchers?” he suggested.
“No no no,” said Thurbee snapping his fingers. “What’s the name? You know. The show! With the…”
“Peter `N Wendy,” said Elton Ormond in his unusually high voice. Some people said he took something to keep it that high, or had had something done.
He reached across the craft table and Jolene and Thurbee sort of faded away.
“No no no,” Thurbee said, still snapping his fingers.
“It’s nice to see you again, Nico,” Ormond squeaked, so quietly Nico had to lean in to hear him.
He noticed the plastic surgery scars up close, which the hair and the glasses were meant to hide. He was stretched thin, old Elton Ormond, desperately trying to stay young and dynamic in a business being overrun with vapid cunts like Jolene.
Nico had never met Elton Ormond before. The mega-star had visited the set of his self-proclaimed favorite show once when he hadn’t been there, and Elton Ormond had taken Jimmy and Cassidy out for ice cream and a movie or something, at his own private residence, Second Star Ranch, that half-mythical three-thousand acre wonderland of weirdness the general public loved to speculate about but almost nobody had ever seen.
Jimmy and Cassidy had told them it was like a private amusement park with a zoo, a roller coaster, carousel, even a bloody water park all in this secluded valley somewhere in San Bernardo.
His hand was slight, but burning somehow. Warm, like it had been in his pockets. Or maybe that was just Nico’s starstruck imagination. He had been a fan of Elton Ormond since he was a kid. His mum had played the old Ormond Boys records, and pointed out his soulful wailing over the synchronized voices of his older brothers. Elton Ormond had grown up in showbiz. He’d been a star at seven-years old. He was a legend.
“Mister Ormond! I…I’m a huge fan! This is so brilliant!”
Elton Ormond had said it was good to see him…again? But of course he meant Peter `N Wendy. Elton Ormond probably didn’t watch shite like Gutmunchers and reality TV.
To his surprise, Ormond’s free hand went up and touched the burned side of his face. “Oh, you were Slightly. I’m so sorry.””
That strange gesture had given him a chill.
Ormond must have seen the look on his face, because he excused himself and withdrew. Put his hands in his pockets and flitted off to his nearby security guards, who folded in on him, obscuring him from view.
“Fuckin’ weirdo,” muttered Jolene, reaching for a miniature wiener in a tiny croissant covered in little black poppy seeds.
“Watch your figure, babe,” Paul Thurbee urged as she stuffed the whole thing in her mouth.
Nico retained that strange feeling the rest of the work day. He’d floated on through rehearsal, been cued several times during shooting, visibly annoying the director and the other actors. Somebody whispered he was still on drugs.
He wasn’t, but he’d stopped for some on the way home.
Now he was staring at this little ski slope of oblivion, and smelling his hand.
The hand that had shook Elton Ormond’s.
The smell of Elton Ormond was still there, even after an eleven-hour shoot, a lunch break, and a furious scrubbing.
It wouldn’t come off.
He put the flats of his hands on the counter and stared hard at the cocaine. It was white as the chalk cliffs at Dover where his mum had taken him once on holiday. It was pure as his first snow. He wanted to bury his face in it, to fill his nostrils with that pleasant, heady burn.
To burn out the reek of Elton Ormond’s cologne, which he hadn’t smelled since he was a kid.
Because it turned out he had met Elton Ormond before.
He had.
The Emperor of Pop.
More like the grand high wizard of Bernie’s pedo set.
That high voice. How had he never made the connection before?
It made him want to retch. He was still in a cold sweat. He had been a zombie on set. His true big break, and he had blown it because his stomach was roiling, trying to reject a poison that was ingrained in his blood like a vampire virus.
A poison Bernie had put there.
But who was the real poisoner? Bernie was just a lackey.
Who was the head vampire?
He had to tell Jimmy.
He had to tell Pan.
He stared at the mound of white.
Snort first, and then the phone? Could he possibly do this with a clear head?
Then something bright caught his eye in the skylight.
Something heavy landed on the roof.
Then the roof was gone, and so was the cocaine mound, blown away by the sudden rush of outside air as the heavy, bright something dropped through the ceiling in a rain of debris, smashing the tiles with its weight, gripping him in its cold metal grasp.
Then the kitchen filled with fire and Nico Tinkham was truly flying for the first time in his life, soaring straight up into the orange sky at something like 70 kmph, cradled in cold arms of silver and gold.
He couldn’t even scream against the rush of wind.
ELEVEN
Back to Tink’s.
Jim landed in the dark hills on the other side of the freeway about an hour after leaving Cassidy’s. He had dared to soar up the coast to try and clear his head until he had spied a pair of hel
icopters in the distance and driven inland. He waited a good half hour under a bridge through the canyon before he took the long walk through the dark past the gas station and over the overpass to Canfield, only a timid coyote along the road laying eyes on him.
He was in his socks and bareheaded. It was a chilly night. He looked like a homeless kid, and hoped the cops wouldn’t pull to the curb and try to question him.
But when he got within a block of Tink’s he knew there was no chance of that. Every sheriff’s deputy in Mogera Hills seemed to be parked on their street, and with a sinking feeling, he saw a squad in their driveway, splashing the house with red and blue lights.
Had TCA tracked him to Tink’s somehow? But how, when he had been at Cassidy’s the past day? Maybe they’d been investigating the house for a while. Maybe he’d been seen somehow, or maybe one of their unobservant neighbors had proven to be sharper than they’d thought.
He made a beeline for a neighbor’s house and when he was out of sight, floated up to their roof and crept on his belly. He crouched behind a chimney until he had a vantage of the house.
He could see the deputies walking through the place. They took a special interest in the kitchen, and Jim quickly saw why. There was a massive hole in the roof as if something too large for the skylight had dropped into the kitchen and taken most of the ceiling.
What the hell had happened here?
And then he thought.
Had Tantrum gotten free? He’d been out of circulation for a whole day. Hadn’t watched the news.
What Father Eladio had told him came back, that somebody had deliberately caused Tantrum to change. What if that person had gotten to him in the courtroom, or during a transfer to the prison bus or whatever they were carting Lattimer around in between public appearances?
But no, that didn’t make sense. Even if it Tantrum wanted revenge against him, how would he know to come here?
He couldn’t go to Tink’s. Couldn’t bring any more heat on Father Eladio, and surely couldn’t go back to Cassidy’s.
What to do?
Where to go?
As he crouched in the shadows, mulling it over, one of the deputies leaned out of his car and shouted something.
A minute later his partner jumped into the car and their siren was blaring, soon to be taken up by every squad crowding Canfield.
The deputies charged into their cars almost in unison and went tearing south down the street for the freeway ramp, leaving a single patrol car and an unmarked at Tink’s house.
The two plainclothes and the deputy watched their comrades depart, looked at each other, and rushed back into the house.
Jim knew what they were doing.
He flitted over to Tink’s roof and lay on his belly near the rim of the ragged hole. Peered down at the ruins of the kitchen. The floor, counter, island, and fridge were all badly scorched. God, had a bomb gone off? No, the damage wasn’t quite that total. It looked like some kind of fire had gone up but somehow not consumed everything. Like a flash or…
He ducked down as the three policemen got to the living room, shoes crunching on the broken glass and rubble.
One of them found the remote and turned on the big TV.
“Our top story tonight, Lance Lattimer has escaped police custody and the city of La Futura is once again under siege by the being known as Tantrum.”
Jesus Christ! There was no way Lattimer had escaped on his own. For weeks they’d been rolling him out in a total stupor.
And he thought about what Father Eladio had said about someone instigating the first attack.
That same somebody must have done it again. But why?
The news was showing aerial shots of the red infant blowing through buildings right in the heart of downtown.
Cops weren’t the only ones fighting him, though.
There was A-Frame in his blue wetsuit and hovering board, gesturing at the street below, causing geysers of sewage to burst from the streets to cover the evacuation of crowds of civilians.
And there was the P.O.N.E. squad in their police riot gear, the big guys flinging trucks and cars at the rampaging infant as their brother officers launched canister after canister of tear gas, until the whole scene was obscured by thick smoke.
Pecos was there too, looking like an oversized rodeo clown in his ten gallon hat, red and blue Expandex costume with a huge white lone star emblazoned across his face, his yellow kerchief, white leather gauntlets with embroidered red stars and ridiculous Holstein chapaderos. He managed to slip his steel coil lariat around Tantrum’s big head and fling him into a transformer, which exploded impressively and then knocked out half the lights in downtown, leaving the area lit only by the intermittent flashes of scores of emergency vehicles.
Down for a moment, but not out.
He had to do something. Had to lend a hand. He didn’t relish mixing it up with Tantrum again, but he couldn’t just sit here.
But what about Tink? Where was he? What had happened here?
The two cops below weren’t doing anything but staring at the TV, chafing as much as he was, wanting to chase after their comrades who had no doubt been rerouted to reinforce the dire situation.
He leapt off the roof.
In less than fifteen minutes he was at the old fire watch station where he’d stowed his costume weeks ago. He landed on the roof and found the duffle bag where he’d left it beneath the transmitting tower. It wasn’t until he had stripped off his clothes and gotten into his fighting greens that he realized his cowl was missing.
A dark shape moved high up on the tower scaffold, and his missing mask fell at his feet.
Jim stood frozen as the figure dropped from the tower and landed a few feet away from him in the pool of white from the exterior lighting.
That distinctive cowl, with its glowing yellow visor, the long, sweeping brown cape, the spotted white chest, and that solid chin, dappled with tightly curled black hair, flecked with distinguished white.
Amonson Spinks. The Brown Thrasher, one of the first and most formidable of TCA’s stable.
“This is a bit incriminating, isn’t it?” he said, in that easy Georgia drawl.
So he hadn’t gone back to Atlanta after all.
Jim looked down at his mask and clenched his fists. He was caught. There was little use in flying away now. Even if he could evade the TCA choppers that were no doubt inbound, the Thrasher had him. Had his face.
“Little late to be flyin’ around up here…little young, too,” said the Thrasher, cocking his head. “Or maybe not so young after all.”
Jim backed away warily.
“Don’t fly off, Jimmy. Let’s talk.”
That stopped him.
“Who’s Jimmy?” he said lamely.
“You are. James Michael Cutlass, born August 24th, 1993 in Crown Point, Indiana. Father Captain Michael Louis Cutlass, USMC pilot, killed in action. Mother Harmony Lorraine Purvis, also deceased. Sorry.”
Jim glanced over his shoulder, wondering where the choppers were.
“How do you know all that?”
“Not from reading Tiger Beat. Facial recognition software, tied into the DMV database.”
“So what happens now?”
“That depends on you. Like I said, I only want to talk.”
“The whole city’s coming apart and you wanna talk? Why aren’t you down there right now with Pecos and A-Frame and the P.O.N.E.s and all those cops?””
The Thrasher folded his arms.
“Out of my league.”
“How can you say that? You’re the Brown Thrasher.”
“That’s right. And I’ve stayed the Brown Thrasher by knowing my limitations. Just like you know yours. You’ve got flight, speed, a fair amount of strength, you can take some solid hits, and it seems you won’t grow up. You haven’t been entirely off TCA’s radar. We know you’ve fought chimerics before. Local characters, like that War God Bombero a few weeks ago behind th
e hospital. But nobody like Tantrum. How’d you wind up in the spotlight?”
“It was an accident. I just happened to be in the neighborhood,” Jim said, squatting down to retrieve his mask and putting it on.
“No accident. I think you know that by now. Somebody drew you out. But why? Who?”
“You’re not the first to think that,” Jim muttered.
“Yeah, I’m sure Angelus came to a similar conclusion.”
Jim frowned deeply.
“You know about him?”
“He’s how we found you. I found this place first. Analyzed your flight trajectory after the stadium fight, found your suit. Figured you’d be back. We had you pegged as one of Father Eladio’s lost sheep. You gave Pecos and our agents the slip, but I was monitoring via Bird’s Eye UAV. We could’ve taken you on the roof of the Pantazis, but I called off the search.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see who you were first. When Cassidy Hollis came and got you, it started to fit together. I didn’t think a kid could operate on these streets and not get caught. You survived the explosion at Perennial Pictures ten years ago. I guess that’s when your powers kicked in, stopped your clock. Has Hollis been helping you all this time?”
“No. Leave her out of it.”
“I intend to. But whoever engineered Tantrum’s attack to bring you out might not.”
Jim blinked. If the Thrasher had tracked him to Cassidy’s, maybe whoever was behind Tantrum’s breakout had, too. Maybe that’s what had happened to Tink.
“What is it?” said the Thrasher.
“Nothing.”
“Look, I’m not interested in you. I want whoever’s behind all this. They’re responsible for a lot of innocent lives. After tonight you’re welcome to go back to slugging pimps and pulling down stilt-houses…if you cooperate.”
Something on the Thrasher’s wrist emitted a shrill tweeting noise and flashed yellow.
He lifted his wrist, stared at it, and frowned.