Dead Man s Hand Page 0,73

in his ears. He heard it move through the bushes and high grass, searching for him.

He ran through the undergrowth, moving away from the thing as silently as he could. It paused and took a great snuffling breath as it tasted the air for his scent.

He kept moving, circling around the deteriorating mausoleum where once he'd ambushed a group of Immaculate Egrets who were using an alien teleportation device to smuggle heroin into the city. He paused a moment when he heard a vast, satisfied hissing, as if a dozen steam pipes had burst and were happy about it. The thing hunting him had found his trail.

Faster now, careless of sound, Brennan bounded over the broken tombstones and through a tangle of lilac and wild rose, his way lit by a late-setting moon a few days short of full. He pushed through the undergrowth, ignoring the thorns that tore at him, and reached the base of the crumbling brick wall that surrounded the cemetery.

There was a loud crash at his back as something long and sinuous smashed through the stand of lilac and wild rose and stood shining in the night, moonlight glistening off its silver and gold scales.

It was a twenty-foot-long dragon, slender as a snake. Its four feet bore razor-sharp talons; its face was an elaborate Oriental mask with knifelike teeth, bulging red eyes, and clouds of steam puffing from its flaring nostrils.

It had to be Lazy Dragon. Fadeout had sent him to the meeting as something far removed from a mouse or a cute little kitty cat. Brennan automatically reached for the quiver velcroed to his belt, though he doubted that even his most powerful explosive arrow could harm such a formidablelooking beast.

The locks were nothing special. Caution made the job take three times as long as it should have, but finally he managed to slide back the dead bolt. Jay opened the door a crack and moved inside the cool, dark interior of the Famous Bowery Wild Card Dime Museum.

A red light blinked silently in the key box mounted on the wall. Jay went to it and punched in the sequence of numbers he'd seen Dutton enter on Tuesday night. He had a good memory for things like that; the flashing red light was replaced by a steady green.

The interior of the museum was even creepier now that he was alone than it had been when Dutton had led him through it. The wax figures stared at him as he crept down the halls, and he kept imagining Monstrous Joker Babies lurking in every shadow. He got lost twice before he finally found the Syrian diorama.

All the lights were out. Jay could barely make out the outlines of the wax figures behind the glass, each frozen in a moment of time; Sayyid poised on the brink of collapse,

Hiram squeezing his fist, poor lost Kahina with the bloodstained knife in her hands. Somewhere in the middle was Hartmann.

It was too dark to see the senator clearly. There had to be some way inside. He looked over the row of special-effects buttons, picked one, and pressed. Inside the diorama, hidden lights bathed Jack Braun in a golden glow. Long dusky shadows grew from the wax figures. The dim light stained Carnifex's white costume yellow as a dandelion, glittered off Peregrine's metal talons. Off to one side, barely visible against the painted backdrop, Jay saw the faint outline of a door.

He released the button and looked around until he found a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. The accessway was pitch black, airless, and narrow. Jay lit a match and fumbled his way along with one hand on the wall. The door to Syria was unlocked.

Jay dropped the burnt-out match and lit another. Its reflected twin burned faintly in the dark glass, and the flame made the wax figures seem to twist and move. Jay stepped carefully over Dr. Tachyon, unconscious on the ground in his Arab finery, edged between Golden Boy and the Oddity, and passed under Sayyid's awesome looming presence to where Gregg Hartmann stood.

Hartmann's tie was deftly knotted, his dress shirt pressed and starched. He was in his shirt sleeves. Jay blinked in confusion. Then he heard the soft footfall behind him.

He turned just in time to see the huge black-cloaked figure looming over him, and glimpse the fist whistling out of darkness. The first blow nearly took his head off. The second smashed him square in the chest, and he stopped breathing. Somewhere in there he lost