Read Online Suicide Kings by George R. R. Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass - Free Book Online Page A

shrieks. Warm blood wells up and burns. She trips and begins to fall.
    Wait a minute
, Michelle thinks.
Claws don’t do anything to me.
She reaches up and gently pulls the girl’s hands away.
    The girl gazes at Michelle with such longing and pain it makes her wantto cry. Michelle reaches out and touches her own hands to the girl’s temples, imagines pointing at herself, whispers, “Michelle.”
    An image blossoms in Michelle’s mind. It’s the girl in her lap, but now she’s wearing a pale blue checkered dress. Her hair is plaited with a pretty pink headband. The girl points to herself and says,
“Adesina.”
    United Nations
Manhattan, New York
    The United Nations perched at the edge of Manhattan like the guest at a party who really needs to leave now, but has just one more very important thing to say.
    Bugsy showed his ID to the guards at the front who all knew him anyway, and took the brushed steel elevator up to the seventh floor. In the brief time that the Committee had existed, they had commandeered much more space than Bugsy would have expected the international bureaucracy to permit. Having a lot of superhuman powers probably helped with that.
    Lohengrin’s office was on the western side, its windows facing out toward the skyscraper mosh pit of uptown. The hallways were filled with people in thousand-dollar suits looking harried. He nodded at the people who nodded to him and ignored the ones that didn’t.
    It was getting harder and harder to keep track of who exactly was with the Committee. It seemed like every time he turned around, it was
Let me introduce Glassteel. He can shatter anything made from hard metal.
Or
Noppera-bo here can mimic anyone’s appearance.
Then Bugsy would shake hands (with Noppera-bo it had been particularly creepy since she’d taken on his face as soon as their fingers touched), exchange some pleasantries, and scurry off to someplace he could add their names into his database. Even so, he forgot the newbies more often than he remembered them.
    Lohengrin, at least, was familiar. The long, blond hair actually looked really good with a dark grey power suit. Maybe a little tired around the eyes, but that went with the suit, too.
    Bugsy closed the office door behind him and plopped down on the couch while the Teutonic God finished his phone call. “No,” he said. “I have nothing to do with the prosecution on a day-to-day basis. You’ll have to call the World Court. At the Hague.” He put down the handset with a sigh.
    “Highwayman’s lawyers still giving you shit?” Bugsy asked.
    “Captain Flint today,” Lohengrin said.
CAHptain flEHnt.
No one could do round vowel sounds like the Germans. Except maybe the Austrians. And the Dutch. “There was a time, my friend, that I believed this would be fulfilling work. There are weeks I spend fighting and fighting and fighting and at the end, I think I might just as well have stayed at home.”
    It had been a long time since they’d gotten drunk and burned Peregrine’s house down. There weren’t many people Bugsy had actually known that long. Not that were still alive, anyway.
    “Brokering world peace keeping you busy,” he said, his tone making it an offer of sympathy.
    “Water rights. Human rights abuses. The slave trade. I come in every morning, and I find something new and terrible. And every afternoon, I find why we can do nothing direct. Nothing final. I am becoming tired,” Lohengrin said, then sighed. “What do you know about the Sudd?”
    “Their second album sucked.”
    Someone in the next office ran their shredder for a second. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” Lohengrin said.
    “Yeah, not really. No.”
    Lohengrin nodded like he’d just won a bet with himself and leaned forward over his desk. “The Muslim government of the Sudan has taken steps to join their nation to the Caliphate.”
    “Ah,” Bugsy said. “That’s a bad thing.”
    “No,” Lohengrin said. “That’s the