nothing for him now. But that wasn't really true. Where love had left a vacuum an earlier emotion was seeping in. Tainted with a toxic flavor of betrayal.
Andrea, Andrea, what have I done?
She bit her lip. The GSG-9 commando riding across from her saw and grinned, his teeth startling in his blackened face. She was instantly wary, but there was no sex in that smile, only the self-distracting camaraderie of a man facing battle with both pleasure and fear. She made herself smile back and nestled closer against Tachyon, sitting by her side.
He put his arm around her. It wasn't just a brotherly gesture. Even the prospect of danger wasn't enough to drive sex wholly from his mind. Oddly she found she didn't mind the attention. Perhaps it was her acute awareness of how incongruous they were, a pair of small gaudy cockatoos riding among panthers.
And Gregg ... did she really care what happened to him?
Or do I hope he never leaves that tenement alive?
The screaming had stopped, and the buzz-saw sounds. Hartmann had feared they might go on forever. He gagged on the reek of friction-burned hair and bone.
He felt like something from a medieval fable as painted by Bosch: a glutton presented with the fullest of feasts, only to have it turn to ashes in his mouth. Puppetman had drawn no nourishment from the terrorists' dying. He'd been nearly as terrified as they.
A humming, coming closer: Moritat, The Ballad of Mackie the Knife. The mad ace was locked in killing frenzy now, stalking toward him with his terrible hand still dripping brains. Hartmann writhed in his bonds. The woman Mackie had impaled was a dead weight across his legs. He was going to die now. Unless ...
Bile surged up his throat at what he was going to do. He choked it back, reached for a string, and pulled. Pulled hard. The humming stopped. The soft tocking of clogs on wood stopped. Hartmann looked up. Mackie leaned over him with glowing eyes.
He pulled Anneke off Hartmann's legs. He was strong for his size. Or maybe inspired. He pulled Hartmann's chair upright. Hartmann winced, dreading contact, fearing death. Fearing the alternative almost as much.
His own breathing nearly deafened him. He could feel the emotion swelling within Mackie. He steeled himself and stroked it, teased it, made it grow.
Mackie went to his knees before the chair. He unfastened the fly of Hartmann's trousers, slipped fingers inside, tugged the senator's cock out into the humid air and fastened his lips around the glans. He began to pump his head up and down, slowly at first, then gaining speed. His tongue went caduceus round and round.
Hartmann moaned. He couldn't let himself enjoy this.
If you don't it's never going to end, Puppetman taunted. What are you doing to me?
Saving you. And securing the best puppet of all.
But he's so powerful-so ... unpredictable. Involuntary pleasure was breaking his thoughts into kaleidiscope fragments. But I've got him now. Because he wants to be my puppet. He loves you, the way that neurasthenic bitch Sara never could.
God, God, am I still a man?
You're alive. And you're going to smuggle this creature back to New York. And anyone who stands in our way from now on will die.
Now relax and enjoy it.
Puppetman took over. As Mackie sucked his cock, he sucked the boy's emotions with his mind. Hot-wet and salty, they gushed into him.
Hartmann's head went back. Involuntarily he cried out. He came as he had not come since Succubus died.
Senator Gregg Hartmann pushed through a door from which the glass had long since been broken. He leaned against the cold metal frame and stared into a street that was empty except for gutted cars and weeds pushing up through cracks in the pavement.
White light drilled him from the rooftop opposite, fierce as a laser. He raised his head, blinking.
"My God," a German voice yelled, "it's the senator." The street filled up with cars and whirling lights and noise. It didn't seem to -take any time at all. Hartmann saw magenta highlights struck like sparks off Tachyon's hair, and Carnifex in his comic-book outfit, and from doorways and behind the automotive corpses appeared men totally encased in black, trotting warily forward with stubby machine pistols held ready.
Past them all he saw Sara, dressed in a white coat that was the defiant antithesis of camouflage.
"I ... got away," he said, voice creaking like an unused door. "It's over. They-they killed each other."
Television spotlights spilled over him, hot and white