Aces High Page 0,9

he fought off ten years of training and let it happen, let the power spurt out of him and into the woman and for an instant he was both of them at once, hermaphroditic and all-encompassing, and he felt himself expand to the ends of the universe in a giant nuclear blaze.

And then he was back in bed with Eileen, feeling her breasts rise and fall under him as she cried.

The only light came from the gas heater. He must have slept. The pillowcase felt like sandpaper against his cheek. It took all his strength to roll over onto his back.

Eileen was putting on her shoes. "It's almost time," she said.

"How do you feel?" he said.

"Unbelievable. Strong. Powerful." She laughed. "I've never felt like this."

He closed his eyes, slid into her mind. He could see himself lying on the bed, skeletal, his dark golden skin disappearing into the shadows, his forehead shrunken to where it blended smoothly into his hairless scalp.

"And you," she said. He could feel her voice echoing in her chest. "Are you all right?"

He drifted back to his own body. "Weak," he said. "But I'll be okay."

"Should I . . . call somebody for you?"

He knew what she was offering, knew he should agree to it. Caroline, or one of the others, would be the fastest way to get his power back. But it would also weaken his bond to Eileen. "No," he said.

She finished dressing and bent over to kiss him lingeringly. "Thank you," she said.

"Don't," he said. "Don't thank me."

"I'd better go." Her impatience, her strength and vitality, were a physical force in the room. He was too distant from it to be jealous of her. Then she was gone, and he slept again.

He watched through Eileen's eyes as she stood by the front door of the bookstore, waiting for Clarke to close up. He could have moved all the way into her mind, but it would have used up what little strength he was slowly getting back. Besides, he was warm and comfortable where he was. Until the hands grabbed him and shook him awake and he was looking into a pair of gold shields. "Get your clothes on," a voice said. "You're under arrest."

They gave him a holding cell to himself. It had a gray tile floor and gray-painted cement walls. He squatted in the corner and shivered, too weak to stand. On the wall next to him somebody had scratched a stick figure with a giant dripping prick and balls.

For an hour he'd been unable to concentrate long enough to make contact with Eileen. He was sure Balsam's Masons had killed her.

He shut his eyes. A cell door banged closed down the hall and brought him back. Concentrate, goddamn it, he thought. He was in a long room with a high ceiling. Yellow light flickered off the distant walls from banks of candles. The floor was black-and-white-checkered tile. At the front of the, room stood two Doric columns, one on either side, that didn't quite reach the ceiling. They stood for Solomon's temple; they were named Boaz and Joachim, the first two Masonic Words.

He didn't want to take control of Eileen's body, though he could if it came to that. From what he could tell she was all right. He could feel her excitement, but she wasn't in pain or even especially afraid.

A man matching Eileen's description of Balsam stood at the front of the room, on the dais reserved for the Worshipful Master of the Temple. Over his dark suit he wore a white Masonic apron with bright red trim. He wore a tabard like an oversized bib around his neck. It was white too, with a red looped cross in the center. An ankh.

"Who speaks for this woman?" Balsam asked.

There were a dozen or more others in the room, both sexes, all of them in aprons and tabards. They made a curving line along the left side of the room. Most of them seemed normal enough. One man had bright red skin and no hair at all, an obvious joker. Another seemed terribly frail, with thick glasses and a dazed expression. He was the only one not wearing street clothes under his apron. Instead he was wrapped in a white robe a couple sizes too large for him, with a hood and sleeves that hung down over his hands.

Clarke moved out of line and said, "I speak for her." Balsam handed him an intricate mask, covered in what seemed to