Текст книги "Kill City Blues"

Автор книги: Richard Kadrey

Соавторы: Richard Kadrey,Richard Kadrey
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Our shadows flash across the far wall as lights come on behind us. For a second I think I can smell the Shoggots. I reach for the Colt in my waistband when a voice echoes off the walls.

“Don’t go for your gun, Stark. We have more of them than you do.”

I know that voice. It’s Norris Quay. I think I would have preferred the Shoggots.

“Stay there. I’m coming to you.”

Candy grabs my arm and Vidocq circles in front of me.

“What are you doing?” he says.

“Listen. I’m the only one who knows this guy. I can talk to him. The most important thing is to keep an eye on Delon. Make sure he doesn’t come over.”

“Why?”

“That’s Victor Frankenstein out there.”

Candy says, “I’m coming with you.”

“Fine. Don’t go for your gun unless I do.”

“Okay.”

I hold my hands out by my sides so they can see I’m not armed.

“Get those fucking lights out of my eyes so I can see you.”

“Do it,” says Norris, and the lights swing away, lighting the cavern and not burning holes in my retinas.

Quay is in the middle of a group of twelve men. He’s dressed in padded overalls and wearing lightweight leg braces. An attendant on either side of him keeps hold of his elbows in case the braces aren’t enough to keep him upright. Down here Quay looks so frail it’s like his attendants are perp-walking a mummy. Quay’s two Titans are there, each armed with HK417s, rifles you don’t walk toward but flee from as fast as you can. If you have a choice about which way to go. Quay’s other goons are just as heavily armed. Probably a collection of ex-military and cops. They look at Candy and me like we’re a couple of baked hams with biscuits and beans. There’s someone behind Quay but I can’t quite make out who.

“Does the old folks’ home know you’re missing bingo night, Norris?”

He smiles.

“I couldn’t let you and Paul have all the fun, could I? Who’s the young lady? You two have seemed awfully close on the journey.”

“Candy, meet Norris Quay, the richest asshole in this time zone.”

Candy puts her hand up to shield her eyes from the glare of lights.

“Wow. He does look like Paul.”

“Paul looks like me, dear,” says Quay. “Get the lineage right.”

The man behind him pushes past the attendants and points at us.

“They’re the ones who destroyed my workshop. Them and some Mata Hari. Now I can’t make any more familiars.”

Candy waves to him.

“Hi, Mr. Rose. How are you?”

Quay holds up a hand.

“Calm down, Atticus. We’ll have you set up in a new space as soon as we get what we came for.”

“Which brings me to the sixty-four-dollar question. What the hell are you doing here, Norris? You already have Paul planted with us. Does he even know about you? What’s going to happen if he sees you?”

“I don’t give a tinker’s balls what happens to him. He’s an instrument. A pocket watch bought and paid for. As to why I’m here, I thought that would be obvious. Redundancy.”

“There’s plenty of assholes in Kill City already. We don’t need duplicates.”

“Did you know that when NASA sent the Apollo rockets into space, they each had three computers on board? Three, on the assumption that two would fail.”

“So Paul is the first two and you’re lucky number three?”

“No. Paul is one. You’re two. I know you’d move Heaven and earth to get what you set out for. But what if you both failed?”

“What if I succeeded and didn’t want to give the 8 Ball up?”

“That too. And now that we’re this close, I don’t know that a redundant system is all that necessary.”

“We’re not there yet.”

“When the Apollo Eleven lunar module, the one that first put men on the moon, was landing, all three computers failed. Neil Armstrong had to land on the moon manually. But he was an experienced pilot and they were so close that it was not only feasible but doable. And so man landed on the moon and returned safely. I believe that from here my little team can pilot ourselves down to Mare Tranquillitatis all on our own.”

Shadows move in the cavern behind Quay and his people. They’re so focused on Candy and me that they don’t notice.

“Do you really want the thing so bad that you’re prepared to fuck up the plan this close to the end?”

“Yes. And we won’t fuck it up.”

“And this is all because you’re an art lover and not some crazy old man who thinks the Qomrama can somehow make him live forever.”

“My reasons are no concern of yours.”

Whatever is moving in the dark is getting closer. I take a step toward Quay. His goons level their guns at me. I’m fast but there’s no way I can get to Quay without acquiring many, many new holes in my body. Am I strong enough to throw any hoodoo? Maybe. But if the door to the spiral staircase was any indication, nothing fancy. On the other hand, maybe I won’t have to do a thing.

“What if you’re wrong, Norris? Did you find the bridge? Did you see the spiral stairs back there? Did your master plan include any of those? What if there’s more of that ahead?”

“Of course we didn’t cross the bridge. Some idiot destroyed it. But another family showed us a safe way around. You’re not the only one who thought to bring trinkets to trade with the natives. As for the stairs, slippery as they were, we navigated them just fine.”

“You walked straight down the stairs?”

The shadows behind Quay’s men have spread out across the whole cavern. There are so many I can’t count them.

“Of course. Did you expect us to fly?”

From the dark comes a grunt.

“You’re not a stupid guy, Norris, but you’re one dumb son of a bitch.”

With another grunt the shadows behind Quay swarm over him and his men. I don’t wait to see who or what they are. I bark some Hellion and practically fall over. Candy grabs me as a smoke screen fills the cavern between Quay’s people and us. We head back to our group, Candy pulling me the whole way. By the time we get back I can breathe again.

Behind us it sounds like a bad night in the arena. Shrieks and curses. The crunch of bones cracked by kicks and rocks. Then gunfire. Rifle flashes explode through the smoke like stars going nova. More screams. Some human and some not. The shooting gets sloppier. More desperate. A few rounds hit the floor near us. Whatever is back there is winning and won’t go home quietly once they’ve finished off Quay’s Boy Scouts.

Candy holds out her hand. It’s covered in blood.

“I think I’m shot.”

Her T-shirt is ripped and there’s fresh blood on the side. I tear it open until I can see the wound. There are a dozen punctures. Ragged lacerations.

“It’s rocks or shrapnel. You’re okay.” To the others I shout, “Go, go, go.”

They take off. Candy still looks a little freaked by the blood. I grab her hand and we follow.

Soon the wide passage is clogged with wreckage on both sides, narrowing the way so only one person at a time can squeeze through. Ahead is a long section of scaffold closed on both sides with lumber. Paul freezes at the entrance looking back toward the noise. Brigitte goes around him, turns on her light, and goes inside to see if the way is clear.

“Shit!” she yells, and backs out into the open. The skin on both of her shoulders is ripped and bleeding. She moves her light around inside the scaffold. The wooden planks are studded with metal. Some are wedged in sideways and sharpened like razors. Others bend back on themselves like fishhooks.

“It’s very narrow inside,” says Vidocq, looking past her. “We’ll have to walk sideways and carefully. It will be slow.”

“Then get going.”

They head straight for us as the smoke screen dissipates. I can’t tell how many of them there are, but it sounds like a small army. As the others file into the scaffold I try one more bit of hoodoo. Something simple, blunt, and not very powerful. I recite some Hellion and try to move just a few small stones on the nearby rubble just a little shove. Every breath I take hurts. Pain builds behind my eyes like an ice pick. But it works, in its own lame way. A few keystones shift and jagged slabs of rock and concrete slip away from the wall and crash onto the floor, blocking the narrow passage. It’s not exactly the Great Wall of China, but it will slow the crazies down, and right now I’ll take anything.

Candy is waiting for me at the scaffold entrance.

“Come on,” she shouts.

I push her inside and get out the Colt. She starts down the metal-lined corridor trying to keep her eye on me. But she can’t see what’s coming and keeps cutting herself.

“Turn the hell around. I’m fine back here.”

She turns and starts moving faster. The pace through the scaffold is slow enough that I can actually keep up. Little curses and whispers of pain echo off the walls. Everyone is trying to keep quiet, but the corridor is long and the metal is sharp and every inch of this place fucking hurts. But we’re cooler than Steve McQueen and no one panics or rushes. Even Delon is keeping a steady, reasonable pace.

Concrete crashes to the ground behind us, followed by screams and running feet. The crazies are through and coming at us. Up ahead, Brigitte, Delon, and the others are out from under the scaffold. A second later, so is Candy. As I step out, the scaffold shakes like there’s an earthquake. The crazies pour in behind us and it’s not pretty.

They’re not going sideways and they’re not slowing down. They sprint at us full speed, teeth bared and eyes blank, ripping themselves to pieces on the blades and hooks. I try some arena hoodoo, a killing hex. I shout the words and almost throw up. It’s too little too late, I played myself out collapsing the rubble. I aim the Colt and pull the trigger. It clicks.

Shit.

I fired the last two rounds in the corridor upstairs. Brigitte pushes past me and shoots at the mob.

“Go for the legs,” I say.

The crazies start falling, and the fallen ones at the front are trampled by the ones behind. Each fallen body narrows the way and slows them. I reach into my coat and pull out a SIG .45, and while Brigitte shoots at the crazies’ legs, I shoot at their chests. Between the two of us, we’re piling up bodies fast. It’s harder for each new crazy to climb over the body of its fallen, fruit-bat comrade. Soon there are so many bodies that the passage is blocked all the way to the ceiling. We can still hear screaming from behind the all-beef barricade, but no one is coming through.

I shout at Delon, “Find us a way out of here,” and he sprints into the dark.

On the far side of the dead crazies, the live ones are still trying to get through. They pull bodies from the pile, then pass them back and out of the bloody passage. The whole skeleton of the scaffold shakes with their movements. I have a couple of more guns, but we’re going to run out of bullets soon.

I grab Candy and Brigitte and point to a joint in the scaffold’s ceiling halfway between the crazies and us.

“See that? Shoot there. Everything you have.”

They both open up. I put away the SIG and take out the Desert Eagle .50 the Satanists left for me at the Chateau. Normally, I hate pistols like this because they’re more suited for killing tanks and dinosaurs than shooting people. But I might have finally found a use for it.

I join the women in emptying shot after shot into the scaffold joint. Candy runs out of bullets first. Brigitte has more shots, but her CO₂ pistol is designed to punch through flesh not metal. I empty almost the whole clip from the Desert Eagle before I hear the first creak. The crazies have pulled enough bodies out of the way to start down after us again. They’re rocking the scaffold so hard it’s bouncing off the walls of the narrow concrete passage. The damned thing is rocking but it won’t fall.

When the mob hits the area with the weak joint, the whole structure moans and bellows like a gut-shot buffalo. And comes crashing down on top of them. As metal, wood, and concrete cascade down, the crazies claw the air and crawl on crushed arms and legs, still trying to get to us. The roar of the collapse bounces around the stone walls until it feels like my eardrums are about to implode. A blinding storm of concrete dust fills the air. We cough and hack like asthmatics running a marathon in a sandstorm.

Soon the air begins to clear. The echoes of the crash and the crazies’ screams fade away. There’s just the gentle sound of Vidocq cursing in French and Brigitte meeting him curse for curse in Czech.

“Who the fuck was that?” says Candy. “More Shoggots?”

“No. It was the construction workers. Some of them still had their hard hats and work shirts.”

“What happened to them?”

“They fucking invoked something on those stairs and then Norris and his boys invoked it again. Maybe they were going to change too, but they didn’t get the chance.”

Traven says, “Is that madness going to happen to us?”

“We didn’t walk straight down, so maybe we got around the hex.”

“Who would build something like that in here?”

“Right now I don’t really care. Let’s get out of here.”

Delon comes back and leads us to another staircase, this one with no amusing markings on it. Sore and bloody, we head down.

Right into a dead end. There’s no wreckage covering a possible exit. No windows or crawl spaces. Just a solid wall ahead and a small pile of debris behind.

“Paul,” I say.

He turns and looks at me. There’s already a trace of panic on his face. He knows where this is heading. I get a hand around his throat and shove him against the wall.

“What have you fucking done to us?”

He looks around like maybe a magic door will descend from Heaven above.

Candy puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Can’t you take us out through a shadow?”

“Take us where? Home? Disneyland? We didn’t come here for that. I want the ghost, and you, Delon, were supposed to get us to him. You’re Tykho’s spy and I went along with that as part of the deal, but you’ve been about as useful as a three-legged elephant. Why should I even explain myself to you? You’re not even a real boy.”

I reach under my coat for the black blade. But it’s not there. Candy grabs my arm.

“Stop. Just stop.”

I look at her, and for a second I see Alice’s face the first time she saw me kill someone. The moment she understood what I’d become. It didn’t feel good then and it doesn’t feel good now. I let go of Delon and he pushes past me and climbs halfway up the stairs.

“You okay?” says Candy.

“Swell. How about you?”

“Just another day in paradise.”

I want to say something more, something dumb and funny and reassuring, but in my head it’s all black and full of the snake-eyed dice and Devil heads. Bad juju. Evil thoughts. I’m not taking Delon apart right now, but that doesn’t make me want to do it any less. The only other thing I can think to do is what Candy said. Leave. Go out through a shadow and what then? Start over? Delon isn’t coming back with us, and without a guide we’ll be right where we were before we started. Maybe I could trade Tykho something for the map. Promise not to burn down her club or stake out all her toadies on the roof at sunrise. Maybe maybe maybe. It’s all bullshit. This city has done its best to keep the 8 Ball from me and I think it might have won. Maybe it’s time to go home, order room service, and wait for the end of the world in luxury.

“We are such fuckups,” I say.

“Relax. It could have been ten,” says Traven. Neither of us laughs, but I want to murder someone maybe 10 percent less. I think about what Mustang Sally said. “When you get lost keep going till you hit the end of the road. There will be something there, even if it’s not what you were looking for.” But there’s nothing here at all. Just a bunch of fools and a lot of ruins.

“Let’s go home,” I say.

“How?” says Delon. “We’re trapped. We’re fucked.”

“Does anyone know what this is?” says Traven. He holds out a blue plastic ball about five inches in diameter.

“Where did you find it?” says Brigitte.

“Back here. There are a lot more.”

We follow Traven back along the bread-crumb trail of plastic balls. It leads to the pile of debris in back. Vidocq goes down and he and Traven pull pieces of concrete and cinder blocks from the wall. Hundreds of colored plastic balls cascade out. Red. Blue. White. Green. Then the balls stop. There are so many of them that they’ve plugged up the hole they were pouring through.

“What are they?” says Candy.

“A way out?” says Traven.

I say, “Let me try something.”

They clear away from the hole. I get down right next to it and stick my Kissi arm into the wall of plastic. Nothing is going to bite the arm off, and if anyone is hiding on the other side, my bug arm will scare them off. But I don’t feel anything except more plastic balls. I pull my arm back.

“The hole is big enough to get through. I’m going in.”

“Like hell you are,” says Candy. “You’re hurt, you can’t do magic, and you’re probably out of bullets by now.”

“Someone has to go through and see what’s on the other side of this wall. And it’s not going to be Vasco de Asshole over there,” I say, looking at Delon.

“I’ll go,” says Brigitte. “My gun has some shots left.”

“Please don’t,” says Traven.

“It’s fine. There’s probably nothing there and I’ll be back in two seconds.”

Traven lets go of her arm. Brigitte gets out her pistol, kneels by the opening, and worms her way inside. More balls pour into the room. When she’s up to her waist, she’s still burrowing. Then only her feet are showing and she disappears.

A whoop comes through from the other side of the wall. Balls begin to fall again. In a few seconds Brigitte has dug back far enough to stick her head back into the room.

“Come through,” she says. “It’s incredible.”

Before I can say anything, Candy dives in after her. I shove Delon through next. I follow him and Traven and Vidocq follow me.

It’s not much of a climb. Only a few feet. I’m suspended in plastic balls for a second when I hear Candy say, “Put your feet down, dummy.”

I shift around until I clear enough balls under me to move my feet down and touch a floor. When I straighten up I find myself waist-deep in the plastic balls. The others pop up behind me.

The room is dark and smells of mold and something sweet. Like old soft-drink syrup spilled and left to go bad in wet carpets. Brigitte has her flashlight on. I can make out shapes under the collapsed ceiling. Booths. Pool tables. Pinball and motorcycle-racing machines against the walls.

“What the hell is this place?” I say.

“It’s one of those family joints,” says Candy. “You know. The family fills up on pizza and the kids get to run around and play games, including climbing around in ball pits.”

She bounces some of the plastic balls off my chest.

“We’re saved by America’s shitty eating habits,” she says.

Brigitte leads the way out of the pit and we follow her through the restaurant. The aluminum doors have long since been knocked down. We step over them and a small sea of broken glass and then we’re back in the main floor of the mall.

I say, “Hallelujah. Back where we started.”

“Not quite,” says Delon.

He’s standing by one of the upright mall maps.

“According to this, we’re one floor above the baths.”

“Lead the way,” I say.

He starts down a long flight of marble stairs. There’s a wet breeze coming from below and the smell of salt. Seawater?

WE COME DOWN into the middle of a whole spa complex. Massages. Manicures. Hair salons. Skin salons. Probably designer blood transfusions too. But it looks more like we landed in Dracula’s forgotten root cellar. Mushrooms sprout from mist-covered cracks in the marble floor. Small, stunted palm trees and bromeliads sprout along the hall. It looks like this entire level of the mall is rotting in the salt air. The walls and ceiling have buckled from the moisture. Dripping vines dangle from the metal grid that once held ceiling tiles. In our feeble lights it looks like no one has been down here in a thousand years.

Underneath the vines and mold on one wall is a sign pointing the way to the Roman baths. As we head down there I move the bones from my pocket into the lining of my coat. Stick the SIG in my pocket. If I can’t throw any hoodoo, I’m sure as shit going be ready to blast every Shoggot and monster Morlock piece of shit in Kill City.

There’s a cool wind blowing between the doors to the baths. Maybe a hole that’s letting in a sea breeze. Thin, dawn light filters through filthy windows in the ceiling several floors above the main bath, turning it into a strange ceremonial space. Somewhere to come for a baptism or human sacrifice after getting a perm.

There’s a fake Roman temple at one end of the bathing area. The main pool is octagonal, with three tiered steps down to a foot of tea-colored water full of loose tiles and broken furniture. Delon heads for the temple. The others circle the pool, staring into the scummy water like maybe the 8 Ball will float to the surface like Excalibur and fling itself into our arms. I sit down on the top step of the pool and take out a Malediction. The flare from the lighter gets everyone’s attention, but when they see it’s just me, they go back to looking disappointed.

“What happens now?” says Traven. “Does anyone know how to summon the ghost?”

All their beady little eyes turn in my direction. I shake my head.

“Don’t look at me. I couldn’t pull a bunny out of a hat right now.”

“Anybody else?” says Traven. “Brigitte. You worked with the dead. Do you know anything?”

She squats at the top of the pool and flicks in a pea-size piece of concrete with her thumb.

“This is the wrong type of dead. I know nothing about ghosts.”

“Vidocq? Do you have any tricks or potions?”

Vidocq raises his hands and drops them to his sides, a gesture of exasperation.

“Rien. Nothing.”

“We can’t have come all this way for nothing.”

Candy comes over and hands me her water bottle. I didn’t even know I was thirsty, but once I start drinking, it’s hard to stop. I hand her back the bottle.

“Any ideas?” she says.

“One.”

“You better act on it before you have a mutiny.”

I take a puff of the Malediction.

“Hey, asshole,” I yell. “Come out, come out, or I’m going to burn Kill City down. Also, Aelita sent us for the Qomrama.”

A gust of wind stirs the water. The light from the ceiling dims for a moment.

“Liar,” comes a disembodied male voice. “Aelita wouldn’t let you pick up her laundry.”

“If I say your name three times, will you show us your pretty face, Bloody Mary?”

“Why? I’m happy this way.”

“Are you afraid of us?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“You’re afraid of something,” I say.

“So are you, sonny. Being afraid is one of the realities of existence.”

Delon is back by the pool. He looks around the room, trying to pinpoint the ghost voice. Brigitte and Traven are as wide-eyed as starstruck teenyboppers. Vidocq, Candy, and I have all run into ghosts before. The others have never been in a real haunted house. Welcome to the Loudmouthed Dead Club.

“You know, for someone people keep telling us is a madman, you don’t sound all that crazy. Say something batshit for me so I know it’s really you.”

Silence. The cold wind blows in from a door at the back of the room.

“Samael is back in Hell. I don’t know if that’s exactly crazy, but it’s pretty funny. Also, one of you isn’t what he seems.”

No shit, Casper. It’s a real effort not to look at Delon.

I say, “I know all about that. How do you know about Samael?”

“The same way I know when and where you got that nasty Kissi arm.”

Slowly, he comes into focus, like an image on a video screen. First, the general shape forms and then it finally sharpens.

He’s entirely green—head, hair, and skin. And maybe a little taller than his brothers. Definitely not as round. Calling him buff would be stretching it, but by the family standards, the guy is Captain America.

“Fuck me. I should have known one of you was behind this bullshit. Does Muninn know you’re here?”

The ghost’s face splits into a wide grin. Not ghost. Mr. Muninn’s almost-twin. One of the God brothers.

“The five of us share some thoughts and knowledge in common, but we each have our secrets. This is one of mine.”

I get up and flick the Malediction into the pool a couple of feet from him.

“Hey, Father. Let me make some introductions. Father Traven, meet God. God, meet Father Traven.”

Traven’s eyes narrow at me. He can’t tell if I’m kidding or not. But he’s a smart enough guy and we’ve talked enough and he’s read enough arcana to work out the rest for himself.

“You’re God?” he says.

“A piece of the pie, yes. You look disappointed. Turn that around, multiply it by a million, and you’ll know how I feel about you people.”

I stand next to Traven in case he decides to freak out or faint.

“Remember how I told you that God had a nervous breakdown and broke into little pieces? The Mr. Muninn part is in Hell. Ruach is driving everyone crazy in Heaven. Neshamah is dead. That leaves two. Which one are you?”

“Nefesh,” he says, and mimes doffing a hat. “The smart one. The one no one even looks for because he’s an incorporeal, crazy old spook in a town teeming with them.”

He becomes solid, standing on the water like a lime Jell-O Jesus. He points at me.

“You, pretty boy. Give an old man a cigarette.”

I toss him the Maledictions and the lighter. Nefesh catches one in each hand. He rolls his eyes when he sees the cigarette brand. But he still takes one and lights up. Being a God of love, he tosses me back the lighter and smokes.

“I’m speechless,” says Traven. “I devoted my life to you and now I see you’re nothing but a ridiculous, foulmouthed little man.”

Nefesh raises a finger to Traven. An admonishment.

“You didn’t devote your life to me. You lost your calling a long time ago and hid from me in your books. And then you wrote that one particular book. Naughty, naughty.”

“You’re angry with me for translating a book?” says Traven. “But it was your duplicity that made it necessary for me to do it. No. You don’t get to reject me. I reject you.”

Nefesh lazily puffs the Malediction.

“Too late, priest. I got there first. I win again.”

I say, “You have to admit it’s kind of funny when you think about it. A guy powerful enough to run the universe and sneaky enough to trick the Angra out of it ends up a cabana boy in a drainage ditch. That has to make you smile just a little.”

Traven looks at me. His face is gray. Drained of blood.

“You’ve seen these kinds of horrors before. I’ve only seen them in my worst nightmares. I can’t find the humor in this situation.”

Brigitte puts her arm around Traven’s shoulder and leads him away from the pool.

“This man will give you no satisfaction. Turn your back on him,” she says.

“Do we have souls, Stark and me?” shouts Candy.

Nefesh looks at her like he hadn’t even noticed her before. I pull her away, pointing a finger at him.

“Don’t answer that.”

I pull Candy to the wall.

“Look at that clown. Do you really care what he says? Will knowing make a difference in what we do tomorrow or the day after? Forget the question. Forget him. Let’s just get the 8 Ball and get out of here.”

“So, you want the Qomrama Om Ya,” he says. “What for?”

“I’m starting my own magic act. You know, like Doug Henning, but with more decapitations and better music.”

“Don’t get snippy with me, junior. I can be gone in a second and you can explain to your friends how you wasted their time and, from what it looks like, their blood.”

“I want it to use against the Angra. And to fuck with Aelita. Even if I never figure out how to use the thing, not letting her have it will be a little bit of satisfaction. Do you know where it is?”

He nods.

“Of course. I saw her hide it. Can you imagine how shocked I was to see that crazy bitch walk into my hidey-hole with the one thing in the universe that can kill me?”

“Where is it?”

“I’m not sure I’m going to say. You’re not the most trustworthy character on the planet.”

“And you are? If you won’t tell me, then tell the priest.”

“Why? He’s not even a priest anymore.”

“Once a priest always a priest. However you want to split hairs, it means he’s the sentimental, spiritual type. He might be mad at ghost dad, but in his heart of hearts he still loves him and doesn’t want to see him die. Tell the father and he’ll be the one who gets the 8 Ball and will have the final say on what happens to it.”

“How do I know you won’t take it from him?”

“I’m not the one you have to worry about. Keep your eye on Robby the Robot over there.”

We both look at Delon. He takes a step toward the bath like maybe he didn’t hear us right.

“I was wondering why you were lurking around here with one of those things.”

“Why don’t you ask it yourself?”

“Are you talking about me?” says Delon.

Nefesh looks at me.

“It doesn’t even know, does it?”

“It doesn’t have a clue.”

“Know what?” says Delon.

He pulls his pistol and points it at me, swings it to Nefesh, and then back to me.

“What are you up to? I’ve done what I’m supposed to do. I got us here.”

“Brigitte got us out of that dead end you walked us into. If you were still leading, we’d be somewhere south of Borneo by now.”

“Put the gun away, son,” says Nefesh.

“Son? A minute ago you called me ‘it.’ Why?”

“ ‘Son’ was just me being polite. And you can put the gun down or I can turn you into a pillar of fire where you stand.”

Delon swings the gun back to Nefesh again. He doesn’t know where to point the damned thing. After he thinks about it, he lowers it to his side. He looks at me.

“Why did he call me ‘it’?”

“Forget it. Let’s just finish the job and get out of here. You’ll give the Qomrama to the father, right?”

I look over at Nefesh.

“How will you keep it from Aelita?” he says.

“With the father’s permission, I can hide it in the Room of Thirteen Doors. She can’t get in there. Even you can’t get in there.”

He smokes the Malediction a bit more. Takes a couple of steps across the top of the water like he’s thinking.

“Come on,” I say. “Haven’t you spent enough time down here floating around like a rubber duck? Just give us the 8 Ball and you can blow this place. Go stay with Mr. Muninn in Hell. He’ll be happy to see you. He can use the company.”

Delon sprints across the baths, and when Candy isn’t looking, he grabs her from behind and puts his gun to her head.

“Someone is going to talk to me. If you’re really God and this isn’t one of Stark’s scams, then tell me why you said what you said.”

I say, “Let go of her, Delon. You’re not going to like how this ends.”