Текст книги "Devil Said Bang"

Автор книги: Richard Kadrey

Соавторы: Richard Kadrey,Richard Kadrey
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“That’s what every amateur killer says when they’re up to their elbows in blood. Not only did you kill all those people but you poked a hole in the universe. Opened us up to angry Godeating motherfuckers who want you and me and Brigitte and your precious wife flushed down the cosmic toilet.”

He shakes his head.

“I had no choice,” he says. “You see, they took her soul.”

“Who?”

Brigitte raises her eyes to something behind me.

He catches me with the first bullet before I can turn around. It shouldn’t go through the armor but it does. He must have used my Spiritus Dei trick. My back burns and my chest aches. It feels like a rib is cracked. When I turn to face him, Cairo empties the rest of a 9mm clip. Fourteen quick shots. I throw myself onto the floor and roll toward him. Even hurt, I’m fast and he’s hurt worse, so most of the shots miss. Still, he tags me three more times. It’s bad but not enough for this punk to kill me. When I’m close to him, I extend the na’at, knocking the gun out of his hand. Very suave, but when I try to sit up, the bullets grind in my chest, taking my breath away. I spit and there’s blood in it.

The next thing I’m looking at is the ceiling. Then Cairo’s grinning face. It’s covered in blood and road rash. There’s a nice chunk of radius bone sticking out of his right arm. One of his knees is ripped open but he’s still walking on it. That’s not healing magic. That’s Dixie Wishbone. He’s higher than the Goodyear blimp. He pushes a finger into each of the bullet holes in the armor when he talks. It feels exactly what you think having a junkie’s bony fingers in your chest feels like.

“Funnyman. You look awfully funny down there, funnyman.”

Cairo pats me down. Feels the Qomrama Om Ya in my coat pocket. He’s so pleased with himself that when he reaches for it, he doesn’t see me shake the glove off my hand. I don’t have a lot of strength but I have enough to pull him down on top of me and hold him while I stab my oh-so-pointy Kissi arm up between his ribs and into his heart. I feel him twitch and die and enjoy every second of it.

A light flares in the hall. Aelita manifests her Gladius and comes at me.

I get my legs under Cairo and kick his body up at her. She slashes down with the Gladius, cutting him in two. Blood and bile spray in all directions, ruining Blackburn’s pretty rugs and wallpaper.

The move bought me just enough time to pull the Qomrama and throw it at her. Which turns out to be exactly what Aelita wanted. She kills the Gladius and lets the Qomrama sail past. When it starts back, she catches it in an iron box studded with Angra runes.

She throws the catch and says, “Thank you for bringing it to me. You’re the most helpful Abomination of them all.”

She manifests her Gladius again and heads for me. Five shots hit her in the chest. She drops the box and falls to her knees.

I look back and see Brigitte holding the gun of the guy I killed when I came in.

She kneels down next to me and helps me up.

“Thanks,” I say. “Get the box.”

When she reaches for it, Aelita twists and kicks her in the face. Grabs the box and runs out of the room. I pull myself to my feet and help Brigitte up.

“What the hell are you really doing here?” I ask.

Brigitte goes back to Blackburn and I drop into the chair she’d been sitting in. My chest is on fire but I can breathe. At least a couple of the bullets are still inside me but the armor is holding me together.

“I’ve been seeing Saragossa,” says Brigitte. “Tuatha has been, as he said, unwell for some time. He was so depressed. And my career was not going as well as I might have led you to believe. He introduced me to people.”

“What was that about his wife’s soul?”

“Nasrudin Hodja, the soul merchant, took it,” says Blackburn. “But I know it was on Aelita’s orders. I made her head of security. It kept her close by.”

“Where is it?”

He shrugs.

“Where do you hide a soul?”

“So you assholes have been killing off dreamers to control reality and you use the Imp to do it. Was that Aelita too?”

Blackburn nods.

“And who controls the Imp?”

“Osterberg.”

“And who controls him?”

“Aelita.”

“Are you sure?”

“Fairly,” says Blackburn.

Brigitte says, “Teddy’s family had power and lost it. He isn’t Sub Rosa but he thinks like one. The world is all status with him. He had a vicious little ghost in his collection and he let her loose for Aelita so he could remain in the synod.”

“That’s not true. The ghost isn’t his. I’m sure of it.”

“I know he controls the girl. That’s all that matters,” says Blackburn.

“It makes a sick kind of sense. Someone gave him power over the ghost but didn’t give him the ghost itself. That way when I asked if she was his, he could say no and I wouldn’t detect a lie.”

“That sounds like Aelita’s way of thinking.”

Blackburn pats his pockets in a way I recognize. I toss him the Maledictions. He looks at the pack. Doesn’t like that he doesn’t recognize the brand. But beggars take what they can get. He takes one and tosses the pack back.

“People tell me that the Imp killed people who weren’t dreamers. Did you or Aelita order that?”

He shakes his head and lights the cigarette. Coughs and starts to put it out. Brigitte takes it from him and puffs gently like she’s teaching him how it’s done.

“I never ordered her to kill.”

“Jimmy, I was Blackburn’s friend but I didn’t know about any of this until today. Please believe me.”

I have to think for a minute.

Blackburn goes to where his wife is sitting, takes her hand, and holds it in both of his.

“I do.”

She says, “I think I know why other people were killed.”

“Go on.”

“If I’d known about Teddy, I swear I would have told you myself. I thought he was dead.”

“Why?”

“Because I stabbed him almost three months ago. I didn’t know he was alive until Saragossa told me he’d been at the synod.”

“Why did you stab him?”

Brigitte looks away. I’ve never seen her uncomfortable like this before.

“He wanted to eat me,” she says, shrugging. “Teddy is a ghoul. He eats the dead but he’d never eaten a revenant. Though I wasn’t a real zombie, I was as close as was left in the world and he wanted me. I thought I killed him.”

“Amanda said Teddy had been mugged. It’s what he must have told people. Does anyone else know about this?”

“I don’t think so.”

I flash on the ragged kids in the Tenebrae. So scared they form gangs and avoid other ghosts. I see their knife slashes and crescent-moon wounds. Bite marks.

I get up and feel my ribs. The armor saved me but something wet inside is sloshing against something else and it’s hard to breathe. That’s okay. Teddy doesn’t look like a sprinter. If he runs, I’ll take his little golf cart and chase him around the graveyards until his heart explodes.

“I’ll come with you,” says Brigitte. “I’ve felt dead inside and I thought it was the bite. It wasn’t. It was losing the hunt. When you killed off all the undead, my life lost meaning. Now, fighting again, I feel alive. Let me come with you and we’ll kill Teddy together.”

Sure. Candy wouldn’t mind the woman who kissed me in the bar tagging along. Maybe they can have some girl talk about shoes on the way to Malibu.

“If you want back in the game, that’s fine by me. But Teddy I can handle. I need you to get these idiots somewhere safe. If Aelita comes back, I don’t want her taking the royal assholes hostage.”

She nods.

“Just makes sure Teddy dies this time.”

“That I can promise. I’m cutting him into little pieces and burying him with the Imp. Let’s see how they enjoy each other in the Tenebrae.”

I look back at Blackburn.

“I’m sorry about your wife’s soul. I don’t know what to do about it, but if I come up with anything, I’ll let you know.”

He nods and puts his arm around her shoulders.

Pain is pain and even the rich and powerful get shafted sometimes. I want to hate Blackburn but I can’t. He’s too pathetic and his wife is too fucked up for that. But a part of me still wants to take his head. He let all those people die. He let Patty die. The Sandman Slim part of me that killed dozens of high families wants to cut a piece of revenge out of his hide. But this isn’t Hell and I’m not Sandman Slim full-time any more than I’m full-time Lucifer. I’ll stick to the Teddys of the world. The sure-thing monsters. That’s a judgment call I can make. A monster knows another monster and a real monster knows which ones need to die.

Candy gets out of the car when she sees me. I’m breathing better but walking slow.

“What happened in there?”

“I forgot to tip the maid and she short-sheeted the bed.”

“You realize you’re covered in blood?”

I look down at my shirt and armor. I’m a mess. If I wasn’t me, I’d probably be alarmed.

“Don’t worry. It’s mostly Cairo’s.”

“You’re holding your side.”

“I got nipped a couple of times but I’m fine. Just sore.”

She opens the Metro’s door.

“Get in the damn car. We’re going to the clinic.”

I shake my head.

“I’m going to Teddy Osterberg’s. I’m not letting that corpse fucker kill one more person. If you’re going to be part of what I do, you have to understand this is how things are sometimes. I’m used to bleeding and being hurt and they don’t have a damn thing to do with finishing the job.”

She stalks away, spins, and walks back again.

“You’re such a fucking guy. I bet you never stop and ask for directions.”

“If I stopped and asked for directions, I wouldn’t end up in Hell so much and where’s the fun in that?”

Candy gets in the car, which is a good thing because the ground trembles and opens where she was standing. I go to the edge of the hole.

“Not now, Cherry.”

“The girl is on a rampage. You have to save us.”

“Up here too. She’s not going to stop until I get Teddy, so crawl back into your box and hide.”

“If you don’t kill her, I’ll never leave you alone. I’ll pull the floor out from under you and drop you so low you’ll be a cripple . . .”

I get in the Metro while Cherry is still talking. Traven looks a little alarmed.

“You were talking to a hole. Why?”

“Sometimes you need to remind the dead to stay dead. Maybe I hurt her feelings. She’ll get over it.”

“Who?”

“After we deal with Teddy, I’ll tell you all about it. Now please, can we just fucking go?”

Traven starts the car and pulls away from Blackburn’s, aiming us at Malibu.

“Why do we hate Teddy so much that we have to go there now instead of patching you up?”

“Teddy kills people and eats them and I don’t know if he does it in that order. And if he keeps killing dreamers, the world is over.”

Traven nods.

“I understand. But maybe we could stop and at least get you some bandages?”

“Also, Teddy seems to have a real taste for kids.”

Traven stops the car.

“Drive, Father.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t just leave you bleeding. I have towels in the trunk. You can at least staunch your wounds.”

“Fine.”

Traven pops the trunk and Candy grabs a couple of towels. I stuff them under the armor. The pressure feels good but I can’t help wondering a little if Traven doesn’t want me leaking all over the back of his car.

While Traven drives, Candy reaches between the seats and squeezes my bloody hand. I squeeze hers back.

What am I supposed to think about someone like Teddy Osterberg? I want to kill him but I want to understand him. Maybe that makes me weak. Maybe it’s just self-serving. Teddy is a stone-cold son-of-a-bitch killer. I want to look into his eyes and cross my fingers and hope I don’t see myself looking back. Which me would it be? Stark? Sandman Slim? Lucifer?

As much as I hate this guy, I can’t get rid of the image of those Hellion skins hanging loose and limp around the palace in Pandemonium. Maybe that’s the joke and has been all along. I go after a ghoul with all kinds of righteous fury, but looking back at all the things I’ve done, what if I’m there too, gnawing on skulls right along with Teddy? Just another ghoul in love with the dead.

I hid a lot of myself from Alice and I’ve hidden what I did in Hell from Candy. I know the monster part of myself. I love it and I hate it. Sometimes I’m ashamed of it. I don’t want to be Teddy, sitting on a hill by himself with only his ghosts and corpses for company. Being a real monster is easy enough on your own but not so much when you have something to lose. When this is over, I’m taking Candy back to the Chateau Marmont and get good and drunk and tell her a long story about how I spent my summer vacation in Hell. I should have done it earlier. It’s one thing to congratulate yourself for saving Wild Bill and maybe a couple of other souls from torture but it’s another to let someone who thinks they know you in on your dirty secrets about the bodies in gibbets and wet skins flapping like flags on the Fourth of July. That’s how you don’t become Teddy. You lay it all out and let others decide if they want to hang around the graveyard with you or catch the bus back to town.

Thank God for whiskey or the world would be so full of secrets the weight would spin us into the sun.

The front door is open when we reach Teddy’s Malibu mansion. The sky has stopped pulsing. Now clouds spin like airborne tornados, coming together in a single funnel cloud as big as the sky and then falling apart into islands of minitwisters that skim along the top of the ocean. A rain of fish, birds, and smooth ocean stones falls like hail when we reach the door. We don’t have any choice but to run inside or be brained.

Like the first time I was here, it’s mausoleum dark inside. We leave the door open for a little light but there’s not much to see besides the spindly foyer tables and Teddy’s bone sculptures. I take out the .45 and head into one of the side rooms to look for Teddy.

I left the towels in the car. It’s hard intimidating people with fluffy white towel corners sticking out from under your shirt. I feel a little liquid in my chest when I take deep breaths. Maybe a bullet sliced into my lung. The armor is holding me together, but whenever I cough there’s blood in it. Besides Teddy, my biggest worry is not letting Candy see it. I wish I had some Aqua Regia. That stuff is better than a swimming pool full of penicillin.

Something small shoots past my ear. A hand grabs my shoulder and slides down my back. When I turn, Candy is lying on the polished marble floor.

“Wow. She really is a Jade. I wasn’t sure.”

I kneel by Candy. Hold my fingers to her throat. She’s still breathing and her heart is beating.

I look around for the voice.

“This stuff doesn’t do anything to regular people but it’s like curare to Jades. Completely paralyzing. Amazing stuff.”

I turn slowly while Teddy talks, listening for where he might be. I hear him reloading the tranq gun but the foyer echoes, making him hard to pinpoint.

“Are you going to play with your gun all day or do something?”

“Come for me,” he says.

Traven leans down beside me and says, “There.”

In the dark, I can make out someone at the foot of the sweeping staircase with his hands up like a bank robber surrendering in a movie.

I charge him. Fish and rocks smash and splat outside and in my head I see Teddy hitting the ground and splitting open with them. Maybe I’ll toss him off the roof.

I fall. But it’s not really a fall. More like I’m a piece of iron sucked down by a magnet the size of Arizona. I land on my injured side on a big square of canvas, coughing up an impressive fountain of blood. Something is holding me to the floor like two-ton shackles. Lying here isn’t so bad. It’s hard to catch my breath, so I doubt I could stand right now anyway.

Traven moves from Candy to kneel beside me. He tries pulling me up but I don’t budge.

Teddy flicks a switch and a crystal chandelier lights up the foyer. There’s someone with him. She’s on the stairs above him, so even though she’s smaller, she towers over him. She has a pistol in her hand.

“You. Priest. Get away from them. Over by the wall.”

She moves the barrel of the gun to indicate where she wants Traven to stand.

Teddy opens his hands wide.

“Two-for-two. I’ve never been so lucky. You’re a gem. Do you know that? Poison for the Jade and a binding circle to trap the Devil.”

He looks at Traven and frowns.

“We didn’t expect a civilian. All there is for you is the gun. How boring.”

I can move just enough to crane my head around and see the woman. I’m low and from this angle can only see her upside down but I know those scars. It’s Lula Hawks.

Teddy comes over from the stairs. I haven’t seen him like this before. Happy and animated. The crazy fuck is practically skipping like a little kid to dinner. He walks right past me to Candy. I try to turn my head but I’m stuck.

“I’m keeping this one alive,” he says. “She’ll go into one of the Gnostic graves until she’s ripe. I won’t eat her all at once. How often does one get to eat a Jade? I have to make her last.”

All I can see are his calfskin loafers as he circles in front of me. He bends at the waist and looks down so we’re eye to eye.

“Cat got your tongue?” he says.

He looks at Lula and brightens.

“Can I have his tongue? You can have the rest. I just want one little taste.”

“No,” she says. “The deal was you get the girl and I get the monster.”

She comes around next to Teddy, one hand on Traven’s arm and the other holding the gun.

“You know me now but do you remember me from before King’s place? Before Blackburn’s? Before I got these scars?”

“Didn’t I scrape you off my boots at a Fresno dairy farm?”

Teddy laughs. All worked up like this, he sounds creepily like the little girl.

“You killed Josef right in front of me. I loved him and you cut off his head and handed it to me like it was a big joke.”

All the birds do come home to roost. Cherry was right. The past catches up with us in Hell and in L.A.

I remember a girl. It was right before New Year’s at a skinhead clubhouse where Josef the Kissi had set up shop. His pretty-boy Aryan face and dominant personality made him a perfect White Power leader. He used the skinheads for muscle and cover. Lula was there but I didn’t know her name back then. She was just a pretty tattooed girl with a shaved head. It was right after I escaped from Hell the first time. I hadn’t been back on Earth very long and was still getting used to mortal women. I fell in love with her for the ten seconds I saw her in her white wife beater. A day or two later I burned the skinhead clubhouse to the ground. Probably killed a lot of them. Burned the hell out of others. I cut off Josef’s head that night. Of course, all I did was kill Josef’s human body. The Kissi part of him was fine but Eva Braun here never got the joke because she never copped to the fact that Josef wasn’t human. I’m going to die because a dumb little Nazi bitch had a crush on another monster. Maybe God has a sense of humor after all.

“Why?” I say. It’s all I can get out.

“Why didn’t I kill you when I met you at Blackburn’s? Why didn’t I feed you to King or send you straight to Teddy to die? Because I knew all I had to do was give you a little push and you’d find your way up the hill on your own. And it would hurt a lot more along the way. I hope it did. But not as much as what’s going to happen.”

“Mr. Osterberg,” says Traven. “When God threw Satan out of Eden, he said, ‘Thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.’ Do you know how much lower than that you are?”

Good for you, Father.

Teddy raises his eyebrows in mock innocence.

“None of this is my fault. I was just hungry and King Cairo told Lula here my secret. All the men in my family have the hunger. If you want to blame someone, blame Great-Grandfather. He made a deal with . . .” Teddy leans down into my face and yells, “The Devil. Yes, Great-Grandfather made a deal for wealth and power and volunteered to become something abominable—an eater of the dead—to prove his loyalty to Satan.”

Samael must have laughed his ass off at that. He would have been happy with the idiot’s soul, but when the nitwit offered to eat corpses for the next fifty years, how could he say no to that? Some people are too stupid to even damn themselves properly.

“None of you will be as tasty as the kids but I’m forced to go on a child-free diet for a while. The Imp hasn’t killed all the parents of the ones I’ve already taken and until then I’m forced to subsist on dreary adults.”

I was right. He used the girl to kill for Aelita, then for himself when Aelita didn’t need her. A sweet deal for a guy like Teddy. I wonder if he used her to kill new food for his pantry? How could he resist? I think I finally know what Aelita wanted out of all this. Not that it matters down here on the floor.

I take a deep breath and cough up blood on Teddy’s shoes.

His face turns red and he kicks me in the teeth. Lula slaps him hard enough to leave a mark.

“You don’t touch this one.”

Traven says, “How do you control something as powerful as the girl? You barely seem to be able to control yourself.”

Lula hits him in the back of the neck with the gun butt.

Teddy goes to a table where a child’s skull sits under a bell jar.

“Isn’t she beautiful? The angel bought me the Imp’s cemetery for safekeeping. As payment, she gave me the skull. There was hardly any flesh left on her and it was as dry as paper. I soaked it in toddler fat and fried it brown and crispy. The Imp was exquisite. And after I said the words the angel gave me, her ghost was mine to command.”

“That’s it,” says Lula. “They’ve heard enough to know they’ve been fucked all along. Especially this one.”

She kicks me in my injured side. Teddy laughs.

“He pulled a gun on me, you know.”

Lula rolls her eyes.

“Yes, I know. You’ve told me at least twenty times.”

“I was being polite and he pulled a gun.”

She nods.

“Go play with yours and leave mine alone.”

“I want to watch,” he says.

“Then get out of my way.”

Lula disappears and comes back with a big jerry can. I can smell the gasoline from here. She kicks Traven.

“Turn him over on his back and drag him outside on the canvas. We don’t want to break the circle. I want plenty of room to see him squirm while he burns.”

Teddy smiles down at me.

“Burn yours if you want. I’m eating mine raw.”

Fish and stones fall outside. Traven looks scared. He doesn’t want to help Lula kill me or go out into the supernatural rain. I know the look on his face. He’s vapor-locked. His brain can’t process the choices. He’s a good man and good men shouldn’t be in places like this having to do these things.

I feel a tiny earthquake. Teddy screams and drops the Imp’s skull. Tries to turn and falls backward into a hole.

All I can see is the top of the hole. Teddy’s hands scrabble around the edges trying to pull himself out while Cherry’s bony arms pull him back down. Lula points the gun at Traven and sidles up to the hole.

“What the fuck?”

She’s disgusted. The dead are misbehaving. You have no idea, lady.

Lula points the pistol into the hole and fires shot after shot. She doesn’t see Traven. He picks up the Imp’s skull and hits Lula from behind. She drops the pistol into the hole and falls to her knees. Traven hits her again and knocks her against the wall. He pushes Lula upright and pins her arms.

“Do you want to go to Hell, young lady?”

“Fuck you.”

She spits at him. Traven leans in like he’s going to kiss her. Black vapor and dust stream from his mouth into hers. I watch with Lucifer’s eyes, as her skin, already stained black with sin signs, turns wet and sloppy like she’s been dipped in hot tar. Her body sags. Traven has to hold her up to continue the Dolorosa.

“Enough” is all I can get out. Traven stops. I’ve never seen that look of fury on his face before. It’s happened. He wanted to do more and he walked into the belly of the beast. Ghouls. Jabbers. Murderers and hit men. All in a day. The good man that came in the house is gone. The man I’m looking at is still good but in an angry, wounded way that matches Traven’s lined soldier’s face.

Traven looks to where Lula slid down the wall into a sitting position. She’s unconscious and twitching. Eyes rolled back and breathing hoarse as her body tries to absorb the Dolorosa poison.

I whisper, “Help me.”

That wakes Traven up. He looks at me in a dazed way. Recognizes what’s happened and flips through all the books in his head. He takes the knife from inside my coat and slits the canvas, ripping out a piece to break the circle. Suddenly I can take a decent breath. I can even stand. Slowly. I spit blood and go to where Traven is bent over Candy.

I collapse onto my knees next to her body.

“She’s alive,” Traven says. “But the other woman. I think I might have killed her.”

“Who cares? Dead now or dead later. Either way she’s hellbound.”

He looks at me with a mixture of sorrow and shame. The preacher inside is still hanging on by his fingernails. Traven understands damning someone but not being an executioner. Maybe later I’ll tell him that the first one is always the hardest. Maybe not.

“Do you know how to do mouth-to-mouth?”

“Yes,” he says. “The Red Cross came to the seminary.”

“Get her to the car and do what you can. She’s just paralyzed now but we don’t want any brain damage, do we?”

“No.”

“Get her out of here.”

Traven nods. Picks Candy up in his arms and runs with her through the cursed rain.

I go to the hole and look inside. Lula plugged Teddy five or six times. There are lots of bone fragments in the dirt. She hit Cherry too.

I shouldn’t do what I’m doing but I’m still doing it. I pick up the Imp’s skull and throw it on the floor as hard as I can. The marble cracks and the skull explodes into a thousand pieces, destroying Lamia’s connection to this world. I don’t have to kill her. She was never really responsible for what she did. She was a slave killing for a sick bastard. I did plenty of that in Hell. With any luck, she’ll be just another ghost in the Tenebrae now. Maybe she’ll be strong enough to squeeze out whatever hole she came through and go home to the Angra. Who knows, maybe freeing her will buy humanity some brownie points when the Angra come back to eat our lunch. They can keep us around like sea monkeys and teach us tricks. Why not? One God fucked with us at the beginning of time. What’s one more?

I pick up the jerry can and spread gasoline all over the floor. Before I light it, I find the kitchen and rip all the gas hoses out of the walls. I go outside and light a Malediction, letting the house fill with fumes. When I’m halfway through the smoke, I open the front door and toss it inside. The house catches. Windows blow out, sending burning debris onto the perfect lawn. Traven starts the car. The flames light our way down the long hill.

Good-bye, Teddy. So long, Lula. I hope Lamia and the ghosts of those kids don’t let your souls get to the afterlife too quick. I hope they give you a good long tour of the Tenebrae. Welcome to the Hell you made, assholes.

By the time we hit Hollywood, the sky has stopped puking ocean down on our heads. The streets are choked with dying fish and colorful stones. I don’t think there’s a car windshield or store window left intact anywhere in Southern California. Traven steers around the worst of it as well as he can with a cracked windshield, heading for Allegra’s clinic.

“I thought you had a falling-out with the woman who runs the clinic.”

“Allegra might be pissed but she won’t let anything happen to Candy.”

Traven carries her out of the car while I pound on the clinic door until they open it. Fairuza looks out and lets Traven inside. I stay in the parking lot.

Traven comes out a few minutes later.

“They say it’s a common drug. She’ll be fine,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“What happens now?”

“You mean what does a person do after car chases, arson, and their first kill?”

Traven looks out into the street. Some of the fish are still alive, gasping for breath on the sidewalk. He’d like to save every one of them.

“Even if you’re in the right, how do you cope with it?”

I shrug. It hurts.

“Drinking helps.”

He looks at himself in the clinic windows. I know the move. He’s checking to see if he’s still him.

“You jumped on a flying saucer today, Father. You’re on a whole other planet now.”

“That’s exactly how it feels.”

“There’s no going back. You know that, don’t you? You can’t unsee or unknow any of this.”

“I wouldn’t if I could. I didn’t just translate books because I had an aptitude for it. I did it hoping that one or two might reveal some deeper truth. That somehow my work would benefit people. These last few days . . .”

“I know. Truth can kick your ass. You know the Greek word for ‘revelation,’ right?”

“Apokálypsis.”

“Apocalypse. The truth shall set you free, but not before blowing your brain to Rice Krispie Treats.”

“Would you like to get a drink?”

“Yeah. But tomorrow. I have one more stop to make before this thing is over.”

“Are you going after Aelita?”

“No. She’ll be long gone with the 8 Ball. I’m seeing someone who owes me a favor.”

“Do you want some company?”

“This one I have to do on my own. But I’d be grateful for a ride back to the Chateau.”

The Metro’s windshield is too far gone. Traven and I kick it out of the frame and throw it in a Dumpster at the back of the lot. We don’t talk on the ride across town. My chest hurts like I was hit by a cruise missile, but I’m not spitting up blood. Kasabian is asleep on the couch when I get back. A big metal dog curled up and surrounded by beer cans. I lie down and nap in bed for a couple of hours. When I wake up, I change clothes, get on the Hellion hog, and head downtown.

The Bradbury Building is an Art Deco beauty in one of the amnesic parts of town that can’t remember whether it wanted to be a neighborhood or a tourist wasteland and now isn’t quite either. Once upon a time I killed a vampire named Eleanor near here. Her family was the one I locked in the Chateau Marmont with a roomful of zombies. Now I’m back here again, not starting trouble but trying to end it.

I park the bike on a pile of dead fish. The sky flickers like a lightning storm but there’s no thunder.

The Bradbury Building is closed up tight but I jimmy the lock with the black blade. Silent motion-sensor alarms will go off the moment I’m inside. I’m sure the cops will rush right over after they dig out their squad cars from under all the rocks and carp. Even if they come, they’ll never find me where I’m going.