Dead Man s Hand Page 0,127

falling. His legs tangled under him, unable to support his weight, and he collapsed, his head hitting the damp stone beneath a solid crack as he fell. Jay groaned.

"Give him another shot," a distant voice said. " I don't want to take any chances with him until we reach Ti Malice." No, Jay tried to say. All he produced was a moan. Someone kicked at his broken rib, rolling him over with a foot. Then there was a bright light shining in his eyes, a sharp pain inside his elbow. After that he slept.

11:00 A.M.

Chrysalis smiled at him. Brennan thought it was strange to see her again, because he was pretty sure that she was dead. Or maybe she'd just been out of town.

He smiled back tentatively. Now that she was back, how would he explain her to Jennifer? And vice versa? He decided to worry about it later and reached for her. They embraced and he pulled back to arms' length to look at her. His smile froze.

Chrysalis was deteriorating before his eyes. Her crystal flesh clouded with corruption and fell away from her face and body in rotten chunks. Blood ran in sluggish tears from her eyes, her breath whispered in a ghastly rattle from her laboring lungs. He held a corpse in his arms. He felt guilt tear angrily at him and with her last gasp she said, "Brennan," and he awoke soaked with sweat and shaking from horror and anesthesia reaction.

"How do you feel?" someone asked from his bedside. "Fine," Brennan lied. "Where am I?"

Brennan turned and looked at the speaker for the first time. He was a young man in a white lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck. He looked like a cross between a surfer boy and a palomino pony. Dr. . . . Finn. That was his name.

"The Jokertown Clinic," Dr. Finn told him. Brennan nodded wearily.

"You know," Finn went on, "it's most astonishing that you're with us at all."

Brennan nodded again. He was groggy and disoriented, but he was starting to remember things. The fire. Mother. The ceiling collapsing.

"It seems," Dr. Finn said, watching him closely, "that a fireman found you in a secret subterranean room when looking through the wreckage of the Crystal Palace. Apparently you were saved from the flames by... something... that was only a charred, fleshy mass covering your back when the fireman discovered you."

"Mother," Brennan whispered. His mouth felt as if it were full of wet cotton batting and his right arm was a hunk of unfeeling meat encased in a plastic cast. He sat up and swung his legs onto the floor, fighting sudden vertigo that made his head swirl as if he were in the middle of a three-day drunk. His arm was totally numb, but he knew that the numbness would wear off unfortunately quickly. "Where are my clothes?"

"You're in no condition to leave the hospital," Finn said gravely. "Your arm was broken pretty badly, and you've lost a lot of blood. You've also got some burns on your hands and face. You should rest for at least a day."

Brennan shook his head. "I've no time to rest."

"I can't be responsible if you leave the clinic," Finn said, his tail twitching in distress.

"You're not responsible for anything. I am." Brennan stood, and almost immediately collapsed again when he was struck by a severe attack of vertigo. "Now, where are my clothes?"

Finn shook his head. "If you're really determined to leave, I won't stop you. Wait here a minute and I'll find your clothes. It may take a while because everything's a mess this morning."

"The fire?" Brennan asked.

"No. The Crystal Palace was destroyed, but there were actually very few injuries from the fire. It seems that half the staff was up all night partying with the rest of Jokertown, and the other half is being run ragged trying to treat the results of that partying."

"Partying?" Brennan asked. "Why?"

"Oh, I guess you couldn't have heard. Senator Hartmann was nominated for the presidency last night. All of Jokertown's gone Hartmann crazy."

Somewhere in the darkness, the voices were arguing. "It's not fair," the first voice said. "We need the kiss, too. He spends so much time with him. How long is he going to keep us waiting?"

"As long as he desires," the second voice said. "It is not our right to question the master's comings and goings. Ti Malice does things in his own time, for his own reasons."

"We ought to kill them both," the first