larger man with gentle, insistent hands. "I'll handle it, Hiram. Please, go."
"The police will want me to give a statement," Hiram said. "No," Gills said. "I'll take care of it. Hiram, I know you meant well, but you shouldn't ... I mean ... well, you just don't understand. I can't press charges. Go, please. Stay out of it. It will be better."
"You can't be serious!"" Hiram said. "These hoodlums..."
"Are my business," Gills finished for him. "Please, I ask you as a friend. Stay out of it. Go. You will get your lobsters, very fine lobsters, I promise."
"But-"
"Go!" Gills insisted.
His hoarse grunts and the beat of his groin against hers set a counterpoint to the ticking of the bright yellow dimestore "Baby Ben" alarm clock on the bedside table. Roulette pulled her topaz eyes fi-om Stan's brown ones, watched the second hand sweeping smoothly across the face of the clock. Time. The ticking of a clock, the wash of blood through her veins driven by the inexorable beating of her heart. Fragments of time. Fragments marking the passage of a life. Ultimately it came down to this. It respected neither wealth, nor power, nor saintliness. Sooner or later it came, and silenced that steady pulse. And she had her orders.
Roulette reached up, softly touched Stan's temple.
She drew breath-a gathering of will and power-but there was no release. It required hate, and all she felt was uncertainty. She lay back; and summoned an image of horror. The agony of labor, knowing it would soon end, and she would hold her child, and all pain would be forgotten. The doctor's eyes widening in terror. Struggling up to gaze at the thing between her legs .
Her taut belly went flaccid, and an added warmth washed through her vagina, an imitation of passion as the poisonous tide flowed free. Howlers eyes suddenly bulged, his mouth worked, and he recoiled from her, his rapidly swelling cock rasping harshly along the soft tissues of her vagina with his abrupt withdrawal. Hands wrapped protectively about his quivering discolored member, he gagged several times and emitted a choking scream. A glob of spittle ran over his chin in a thin thread, and the dresser mirror exploded in a crystal waterfall littering the bed with glass fragments. The baby Big Ben took the edge of the spreading wave of sound. Its crystal shattered, freezing the hands, and as the blow reached the clock's inner works the alarm gave a tinny, dispirited squawk as if it were complaining about its sudden and unfair demise.
Sound like a fist took Roulette across the right cheek raising a mottled bruise on the cafe au lait skin, coaxing a trickle of blood from her ear. Indrawn breath caught in her throat like a jagged block, and sickness filled her belly. Howler's agonized face hung above her, and she knew she was looking at death. His chest was heaving, lips skinned back from teeth, and a tide of blue-black was rising from his now completely black and swollen penis into his groin and belly.
The rumpled satin comforter gave no purchase to her flailing legs. She felt as if she were swimming on glass. With a final, desperate flounder, she got to her knees, and threw an arm around the ace's chest. Her other hand tangled in his sweat-matted hair, and she yanked his head around so he faced the wall separating bedroom from living room. A life-ending, time-stopping scream echoed to the fringes of the universe and back again, and the wall exploded. Plaster dust spun in lazy spirals, catching at the throat, and filling the nostrils. Rubble fanned across the living room floor, and the far wall was bulging. For an instant Roulette contemplated that sagging wall; pictured it falling, pictured the fat, lower-middle-class couple in the next apartment staring at the tableau she would present. Naked woman holding naked man-cock swollen to stallion proportions, whole body swelling as the poison exploded blood cells, the trail of the poison marked by blue-black discolorations.
Another convulsion shook Howler, but his throat had swollen, closing off the vocal chords. The sweat-drenched skin of his back was cold and clammy against her flattened breasts, and the stink of released bladder and bowel filled the room. Gagging, she pushed him away, crawled off the bed, and huddled in on herself on the floor by the bed.
Destruction at the Cloisters. He had implied it was Turtle who had crumbled the stone walls.... But he lied! He promised there would be no