Read Wild Cards [02] Aces High for Free Online

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    That was good. He wanted them all, but he would settle for the ones that were there. Them, and their coins and their golden masks, their rituals, their temple, everything that had a part in trying to bring their alien monstrosity to Earth, that had spilled blood and destroyed minds and ruined lives to do it. He wanted it over, finished, for good and all.
    The night was utterly cold, a vacuum as cold as space, sucking the heat and life from everything it touched. His cheeks burned and then went numb.
    He reached for the power he had left and it wasn't enough.
    For a few seconds he stood and shook with helpless rage, ready to go after the building with his bare, battered hands. Then he saw her, on the corner, standing in the classic pose under the streetlight. Black hot pants, rabbit jacket, fake-fur shawl. Hooker heels and too much makeup. He slowly raised his arm and waved her over.
    She stopped in front of him, looked him warily up and down. "Hey," she said. Her skin was coarse and her eyes were tired. "You wanna go out?"
    He took a hundred-dollar bill out of his jacket and unzipped his pants.
    "Right here in the street? Lover, you must be hurtin' for certain." She stared at the hundred and eased down onto her knees. "Woo, this concrete cold." She fumbled around in his trousers and then looked up at him. "Shit, what is this? Dry blood?"
    He took out another hundred. The woman hesitated a second and then stuffed both bills in her purse and clamped the purse under her arm.
    At the touch of her mouth Fortunato went instantly hard. He felt a surge all the way up from his feet and it made his scalp and his fingernails hurt. His eyes rolled up until they were staring at the second floor of the old church.
    He wanted to use his power to lift the entire city block and hurl it into space, but he didn't have the strength to break a window. He probed at the bricks and the wooden joists and the electrical wiring and then, he found what he was looking for. He followed a gas line down to the basement and back to the main, and then he began to move the gas through it, building the pressure the way it was building inside him, until the pipes vibrated and the walls shook and the mortar creaked. The hooker looked up and across the street, saw cracks splitting the walls. "Run," he said. As she clattered away Fortunato reached down and jammed his fingers into the root of his penis, forcing back the hot flood of his ejaculation. His intestines turned to fire, 'and in the crawlspace over the temple the black steel pipe bent and shook free of its connections. It spurted gas and fell to the floor, knocking sparks off the chicken-wire-and-plaster wall.
    The building swelled for an instant like it was filling with water and then it erupted in a ball of smoky orange flame. Bricks smashed into the wall on either side of where Fortunato stood but he wouldn't look away, not until his eyebrows had been singed to the skin and his clothes had begun to smolder. The roar of the explosion shattered windows up and down the street, and when it finally died the bleating of sirens and alarms took its place.
    He wished he'd been able to hear them scream.
    Eventually, a cab stopped for him. The driver wanted to take him to the hospital but Fortunato talked him out of it with a hundred-dollar bill.
    Climbing the stairs to his apartment took longer than anything he could remember. He went into the bedroom. The pillows still smelled of Eileen's perfume.
    He went back to the kitchen, got a fifth of whiskey, and sat by the window, drinking it down, watching the red glow of the fire slowly die over Jokertown.
    When he finally passed out on the couch he dreamed of tentacles and wet rubbery flesh and beaks that opened and closed with long, echoing laughter.
    1985

    JUBE: ONE
    After he had locked up the newsstand for the night, Jube loaded his shopping cart with newspapers and set out on his daily round of the Jokertown bars.
    With Thanksgiving less than a week away,