Last Call (Last Call 1)

"But it's using up our chip," panted Nardie as she cut one of the Caesars Palace Romans. "Look." In the instant before Dinh swung the edge again toward one of the legs of the giant clown, making the shimmering figure hop mindlessly back, Diana had seen that the Moulin Rouge chip was thinned down to no more than coin-thickness now and was white as a bone.

"The sword the turtle gave us," Nardie said through clenched teeth, "is wearing out."

The wind was strong on the highway on top of the dam. Mavranos thought he could hear weeping and laughter on the wind but then realized that the sounds were in his head, resonating from the minds of the tourists who were rushing in all directions to get away from the induced madness.

A man in a white leather jacket was leaning over the lakeside rail not far from Mavranos, waving one hand out over the long drop to the water. Mavranos saw blood on the man's hand and realized that this must be Ray-Joe Pogue.

Security guards were out on the highway directing traffic, having to shout over the wind at the drivers, who were simply intent on getting away. Even as Mavranos watched, one of the guards tossed his hat away and began running down the middle of the highway toward the distant Nevada side of the dam.

Mavranos wanted to get back down out of these mountains to the plains. This was much too high up—the sun, which was glinting so blindingly in the chrome of the rushing cars, seemed too close overhead, and the gunning of the engines didn't seem as loud as it should have, as if the air up here were less able to carry sound.

Pogue is doing this, he told himself, having to think loudly over the shouting and weeping in his head. He's shaking his blood into the lake, and somehow he's got a psychic chain reaction going here—all the minds of these people are echoing and reechoing insanity.

If I can knock him out …

He could feel a whimper starting up in his throat, and he wondered how long he could hold on to his purpose in the battering of the induced passions.

Or kill him, he thought.

Veils of pink fog spun in the wind. Mavranos stepped to the rail and looked down toward the water, and he saw that the wisps of fog were bursting into existence in the air below where Pogue leaned out over the parapet. The drops of his blood were apparently exploding into steam before they reached the water.

He hadn't yet succeeded in poisoning the lake.

Mavranos summoned all his remaining strength in order to take the last few strides along the walk and approach Pogue. He tried to smile like someone about to ask for directions or a match, and he shoved one hand in his jeans pocket to keep his untucked shirttail from flipping up in the breeze and exposing the walnut grip of the .38 tucked into his belt.

Pogue's jacket was blindingly white, and glittering rhinestones on the high collar sent needles of rainbow light into Mavranos's squinting eyes. Pogue was wearing a red baseball cap on the sculptured perfection of his pompadour, and when he turned toward Mavranos, glaring out of two blackened eyes past the white bandage on his nose, Mavranos saw the oversize card tucked into the band.

It was the Tower card from a Lombardy Zeroth Tarot deck, and the picture of the lightning striking the Babel-like tower and the two men falling struck Mavranos's mind like a blow.

He staggered back and looked away, forcing himself not to simply surrender to the violation of his mind by the potent symbol. This must have been what was causing the mental racket—every tourist who had looked squarely at the card, breathing the steam of Pogue's blood, would have got the psychic equivalent of a shock treatment, and even the ones who couldn't have seen it were nevertheless in the fog and picking up the signal and stepping it up and re-broadcasting it.

He clenched his fist and turned back to where Pogue stood—but the man wasn't there anymore. He was farther away, though he hadn't changed his rail-clutching posture. Mavranos wondered if his apparent nearness a moment before had been some kind of optical illusion in this thin, treacherous air.

Mavranos locked the fingers of his right hand on the grips of the .38 and started forward. But even as he watched, Pogue became, without moving, farther away.

It's some kind of magic he's doing, thought Mavranos. Playing with space and distance and scale. What the hell can I do against that? It doesn't look like I can get to him, and I don't dare shoot at him, not knowing where he really is. I might hit anything, anybody.

A lean hand grabbed his shoulder and shoved him aside, and Mavranos saw the twitching figure of Dondi Snayheever limp past him and out onto the surface of the highway.

Snayheever rocked free on the windy pavement, then raised his skinny arms, too long for his tattered corduroy coat, and opened his mouth. "I'm blind!" he roared up into the sky. "Blind as a bat!"