Dead Man s Hand Page 0,16

panties. Her pubic hair was black and thick, and when she stood with her legs apart like that, he could see a lot more than just hair. Her skin was a light brown color, the kind Hiram would call cafe au lait. A tangle of wild black hair fell across her shoulders and back, longer than her teddy. Under the wisp of fabric was the most magnificent pair of tits that Jay Ackroyd had ever seen. "Come on," she said to him.

Her accent was as provocative as the rest of her. "Come on," she repeated, with more insistence.

Jay resisted the urge to look over his shoulder to see if somebody else was on the steps behind him. He couldn't take his eyes off her anyway. When Jube had said that Sascha was seeing a Haitian prostitute, he'd expected some gaunt, pockmarked girl with hungry eyes and needle tracks along her arms. He cleared his throat and tried to sound like he ran into half-naked women all the time. "Ah," he managed, "Sascha, ah-"

"Sascha bores me," the woman said. "I am Ezili. Come." She smiled again and held out her hand.

"I'm Jay Ackroyd," Jay said. "I'm a friend of Chrysalis," he added. "Sascha too," he went on. "I need to talk to him again," he explained. "About her," he clarified. "Chrysalis, that is." All the time walking up the stairs. Ezili just listened, nodding, smiling, nodding. Jay was two steps below her when he saw that her eyes matched her lingerie, two small black irises surrounded by a sea of liquid red. "Your eyes," Jay blurted out, stopping suddenly.

Ezili reached down, took his hand, and put it between her legs. Her heat was like a living thing. Moisture ran over his fingers and down the inside of her coffee-colored thighs.

She moved against him, and gasped as his fingers slipped up inside her, moving almost of their own accord. She had her first climax right there on the stairs, grinding her hips furiously against his hand. Afterward she licked his fingers like a greedy child, sucking the fluids off them one by one, then drew him wordlessly into the apartment.

By then Jay had forgotten all about her eyes.

10:00 P.M.

There was never a Werewolf around when you needed one. Egrets were scarce, too. Brennan pounded the streets for two hours before he spotted one of the gang members, a Werewolf, staggering out of Freakers.

The Werewolf was big, hairy, and muscular. He wore faded and torn jeans and enough chains and leather straps and cords to fill Michael Jackson's closet. The plastic Mae West mask that covered his face added more than a touch of incongruity to his appearance. He stopped on the street in front of Freakers to extort a few bucks from some slumming nat tourists who were trying to decide whether or not to go into the bar, then lurched past them into an alley half a block down the street. Brennan followed him.

The alley was suitably dark and isolated. The joker was urinating against a brick wall and singing "I'm So Lonesome I Could Die" to himself, lowly and badly. He was zipping up his fly when Brennan laid the edge of his knife against his throat and said conversationally, "I think your voice would sound a lot better if I cut you right here. What do you think?"

The joker stood paralyzed until Brennan stepped back, then he turned around slowly, carefully holding his hands out and away from his sides.

"You some kind of crazy nat?" the joker finally asked. "Just visiting the big bad city to check on some of my old friends." Brennan reached into the pocket of his denim jacket with his left hand. "My card," he said, holding up an ace of spades.

The huge joker seemed to shrink back into himself. "You the real thing, man?"

"Try me," Brennan offered, but the joker just shook his head. "I don't want to dance," Brennan said. "I just want to talk. I'm looking for one of the bigger fish. Warlock. Lazy Dragon. Maybe Fadeout. Seen any of them tonight?"

"I seen Dragon earlier. He said he was going to be spending the night at Chickadee's, but he wasn't too happy about it. He was bodygdarding some Fist wheel, so he couldn't party."

Brennan nodded. Lazy Dragon was a free-lance ace who worked part-time for the Fists, often directly for a Shadow Fist lieutenant named Philip Cunningham, who was fairly high in the organization. Cunningham, who was also called Fadeout because of