Текст книги "Kill City Blues"

Автор книги: Richard Kadrey

Соавторы: Richard Kadrey,Richard Kadrey
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“I called you ‘it’ because that’s what you are,” says Nefesh. “I’m sorry no one told you earlier, but that’s how things are. You’re not a man. You’re a mechanism.”

Candy twists and slams her elbow into the side of Delon’s head. He gets off one shot but misses her. She goes Jade, her skin darkening, her teeth sharpening to shark knife points, and bites down on his wrist. Delon screams, smashing his fist onto the back of her head while she digs in her fangs. With one last deafening scream, his hand comes off. Candy knees him in the balls, and as he falls, she spits his hand at him. A few seconds later, she’s Candy again, panting and wiping his blood off her face with her T-shirt.

Delon cradles his mangled arm against his chest. When he gets the guts to look at it, he sees the steel armature poking out of his wrist. The pulleys and gears, all the delicate clockworks buried under his skin.

“Fuck. What did you do to me?”

“Me?” says Candy. “Go ask Atticus Rose, you prick.”

I start to tell him about Norris Quay. How he’s Geppetto and Delon is his Pinocchio. But even I don’t feel like rubbing it in to a guy who didn’t just lose a hand but his whole life.

Delon holds out the stump of his wrist to Nefesh.

“If you’re God, fix this.”

Nefesh drops the last inch of the Malediction in the water.

“You don’t want that arm fixed. You want me to make you real. Sorry to tell you, friend, but I’m not the Blue Fairy. The way things are these days, I’m barely me.”

Delon grabs his gun with the other hand and blasts a couple of rounds at Nefesh. Bullets kick up sprays of water as they pass right through him. Nefesh smiles and looks at me.

“That’s funny. I was expecting you to do that.”

“If you didn’t remind me of Mr. Muninn a little, I probably would have.”

Delon swings the gun around so it’s pointing at me. He struggles to his feet and walks toward me.

“You knew this all along and you didn’t say anything? Fuck you.”

Glass explodes at Delon’s feet. By the time he looks down, it’s too late. His legs have turned to a loose, powdery stone. As the effect moves up, he starts to collapse, his body unable to support its own weight. Vidocq stands behind him, another potion bottle in his hand. When he sees Delon go down, he puts the bottle away. Delon’s powdery remains slide into the bath, dissolve, and sink to the bottom as a faint red stain floats on the surface.

“You couldn’t have done that when he was back against the wall?” Nefesh says to Vidocq. “You had to get blood in my water.”

Brigitte says something to him in Czech. He says something back.

“What was that?” I say.

“I told him he was already swimming in blood,” says Brigitte. “He said I was a child and that I had no idea what it is to be a deity.”

“Mr. Muninn said that same thing to me.”

Traven says, “Are you going to tell us where to find the Qomrama?”

Nefesh looks down and takes a step back from the spreading red.

“You’re going to hate me if I tell you. Maybe we should play Twenty Questions. That way you’ll ease into the answer. What do you say, ex-priest?”

Traven shakes his head.

“I give up. I don’t care about the world or any of this anymore.”

“You were right,” says Nefesh. “He is a sentimentalist. Okay. I’ll tell you. Up in the lobby. Is there still a Christmas tree?”

“Yes,” I say.

“That’s where the Qomrama is. The ornament at the top of the tree.”

“Merde,” is the first thing I hear, then more curses echo around the room.

“I told you you’d hate me,” says Nefish.

I really want a drink.

“So, we could have been in and out of here in twenty minutes?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“This really is a nightmare,” says Traven.

“Keep it together, Father.”

I go to Candy and wipe off the last smears of blood on her face.

“Okay. The fucking thing is on the tree. How does it work?”

Nefesh comes across the surface of the water to the steps and walks out of the pool.

“Oh. I don’t think I’m going to tell you that.”

“It’s not going to do us much good against the Angra.”

“We’ll see if they make it this far. I’m not convinced. If they do, maybe then I’ll tell you.”

“All of this is very interesting,” says Vidocq, “but we’re lost. We’ve come a long way and have no idea how to get back to the lobby.”

Nefesh points out to the spa area.

“Just go up the broken escalator, then up a set of stairs. You’ll be right there.”

“That’s impossible,” say Traven. “We must have come down at least eight floors to get here.”

“You went through the old tunnels? Down those funny spiral stairs? Did you happen to notice that there’s some strange magic lingering around this place?”

Candy says, “Maybe that’s why Aelita left the Qomrama in here. It’s easy to get in but hard to get out.”

“That’s part of it. But I think the chapel might have been calling to her,” says Nefesh.

“What chapel is that?” I say.

“On the other side of that wall is an adorable little chapel that was supposed to be used for weddings.”

“Wed in a shopping mall. How wonderfully American,” says Vidocq.

“It’s why I like the baths. They’re right next to the chapel. And part of the wall is missing, so I can ease out into the ocean and drift among the seaweed and fish from time to time.”

I say, “I don’t get it. There’s a fast-food wedding factory so Aelita decides to leave the most valuable object in the world?”

“No. I think what called her is the chapel inside the chapel. Some clever boots brought in stones from an ancient Angra temple and built a small shrine to one of their gods right into the chapel wall.”

“The shrine called to Aelita and the Qomrama without her knowing it,” says Vidocq. “I wonder if whoever built it also built the spiral stairs?”

I say, “Do demons come through the shrine?”

“All the time. Another reason remaining incorporeal is convenient.”

“I wonder if they collapsed the mall. The Angra might not like a Burger King on their sacred soil.”

Nefesh shrugs.

“Who knows with those things? Ancient gods. Mysterious ways. If I can’t figure it out, how could you?”

“Are you going to rot down here or pay Mr. Muninn a visit?” I say.

“Now that you busybodies have found me, I don’t suppose I have any choice.”

“Do you know where your brother Chaya is? You might tell him to go to Muninn too.”

“If I knew his whereabouts, do you think I’d tell you?”

Candy pulls on my arm.

“Forget it. Let’s go.”

I follow her for a few steps and turn back to Nefesh.

“Every time I meet one of you little Gods, it’s a ray of sunshine on a rainy day. Thanks for keeping the streak going.”

We head back to the lobby to find the broken escalator. We’re almost to the door when I hear Nefesh clear his throat.

“Thanks for the cigarette, Sandman Slim. And by the way, when I said one of you isn’t what he seems, I wasn’t talking about the mechanical man.”

“What does he mean?” says Traven.

“Forget it. He’s fucking with us because it’s all he can do. Play around in our heads. He can go to Hell or rot down there. Either is fine by me.”

NEFESH MIGHT HAVE been playing mind games when we left, but he told the truth about the way out. Up the dead escalator. A U-turn onto the stairs and we’re back in the Gothic rain forest of Kill City’s main lobby. The Christmas tree is straight and huge, a fungus-covered evergreen where there should be a giant banana palm or kapok.

“What do we do now? Nefesh said the Qomrama is all the way at the top,” says Traven.

Candy looks at me.

“You’ve used it before. Can you summon it or call it down or something?” she says.

My gut aches. I’m dizzy but I don’t want the others to know right now.

“Even if I knew how, I don’t think I have any hoodoo left in me.”

“You’re still here,” says someone from across the lobby. “I thought you’d all be gone by now. Or dead.”

It’s Hattie. Her tattered robes are in even worse shape than they were before. Her hair is wild and dirty. Her face is scratched.

She says, “Are there any Shoggots left?”

“A few, but not enough for you to worry about. Sorry about your kids.”

She nods.

“So am I. You’re trying to get up the tree. Why?”

“The thing we came here for is at the top.”

She smiles at us like the fools we are.

“You come all this way to end up back where you started. Ain’t that a kick in the backside.”

“It’s a kick, but I was thinking somewhere else.”

She looks Vidocq and me over.

“You’re too big to climb it. It’s rickety. You’ll bring the damned thing down on top of us.”

“I won’t,” says Candy.

She looks up the length of the tree like she’s climbed it a million times.

I say, “That’s fifty feet. You sure about this?”

She zips up her jacket. Pushes back her hair.

“Can any of you grow claws?”

“Take this,” says Vidocq. He hands her a white filter mask. “I thought these might come in useful. You don’t want to breathe any of that foulness into your lungs.”

“Thanks.”

Candy flips up her jacket collar and heads for the tree. On the way, curled claws extend from her hands as she goes Jade.

“Brave girl,” says Hattie.

“Yes. She is.”

“Foolish.”

“You live in a garbage dump, lady. You don’t get to pick and choose who’s a fool.”

The tree creaks as Candy climbs. Shaggy branches shake, sending down a storm of pine needles, dust, and fungus. I cover my eyes and mouth but still get a mouthful of the gritty, dirt-flavored mess. The others choke and go into racking coughs around me.

I look up through the bad air. Candy is climbing along the trunk, so I can’t see her, but the moving branches show me where she is. Jades are fast and strong. She’s already more than halfway up. The top of the tree sways as she gets higher. Wood snaps and pops in ways that inspire anything but confidence. Branches and glass ornaments crash to the floor.

“Are you all right?” yells Brigitte.

“Don’t bother,” I say. “She doesn’t talk when she’s Jaded out.”

The tree stops shaking. A branch at the top moves. There’s something silver on the end. The branch bends back toward the tree trunk.

“She’s found it,” says Hattie.

The treetop sways as Candy goes farther out onto the limb to drag it backward. There’s a loud crack and the whole top of the tree comes loose like it’s on a hinge, slamming into the lower branches, upside down but intact. Something falls through the branches. Not falls. Shoots like a bullet and crashes into the lobby floor, kicking up shards of marble and concrete like shotgun pellets.

I run to where it came down, not breathing. Not thinking. My head swims as I go. I stumble but I don’t stop.

In a crater two feet wide and three feet deep lies the 8 Ball. The others crowd around me. I look up at the tree. Branches shake, but this time they’re headed down. A few seconds later, Candy emerges from under the tree and sprints across the lobby, turning back to herself. She’s covered in a fine film of dust and spores and her hair is matted with pine needles. She runs her hand through her hair and shakes her head like a dog, sending dust everywhere.

“Told you I could do it,” she says.

“Good job. Now go take a shower. You smell like a love-hotel welcome mat.”

Hattie stands at the edge of the hole, looking down.

“Don’t look like much, does it?”

Traven says, “The core of the first nuclear bomb was only sixty-four kilograms and it leveled a city.”

“That so? Aren’t you a font of useless information.”

“I didn’t drop it,” says Candy. “It shot away from me when I tried to touch it.”

“Maybe it didn’t like you,” I say. “The father said it might be alive. Maybe your Jade form freaked it out.”

“Touchy little bastard, for a weapon,” says Candy.

I look at Traven.

“Okay, Father. You’re up. Let’s see if it likes you.”

“Do you think it’s safe now?” he says.

“When I had it before it only hurt anyone when I was angry or threatened. As long as you’re calm, it should be fine.”

“Calm,” he says, and looks at me. “That’s a tall order right now.”

Traven’s eyes are a little glassy. He looks far from a hundred percent as he gets on one knee and gently reaches for the 8 Ball.

“You’ll do fine,” I say. “Nice and easy. Look out for any sharp edges. It can nick you.”

He hesitates before reaching down again. Lays his hand on top of the ball and holds it there for a second. Nothing happens. He relaxes and gets a grip on it and pulls it out. He’s smiling when he stands up.

“I think the books were right about it being alive,” he says. “It feels like it’s asleep.”

He brings it over to us. I’d rather have it a mile away, but beggars can’t be choosers.

“We’re all right,” he says. “It’s over.”

“Let’s get out of here and go home,” says Brigitte.

“In a minute,” says Traven. His smile is vacant. There’s something wrong with his eyes.

He turns and hands the 8 Ball to Hattie. She takes it from him like she knew exactly what was going to happen.

I should have seen it before, but I’ve been so wrapped up in my own aches and bullshit that I missed it. One of us isn’t who he seems, said Nefesh. Father Traven is possessed. Someone in Hell is using the possession key. They’ve taken him over and Hattie knew it was going to happen.

“What are you doing?” says Vidocq.

Hattie cradles the 8 Ball against her chest.

“Just doing what he was told,” she says.

I reach for Traven, but before I can get to him, his eyes flutter closed and he slumps to the floor, his head cracking on the pavement. Brigitte starts for him but I grab her and push her behind me.

I take a couple of steps toward Hattie. I want to rip her apart. Traven is bleeding where his skull hit the floor. I want to see her bleed too. She steps back, but not because she’s afraid.

“Who are you?”

“Don’t you recognize me?” she says, her voice coolly amused. “You destroyed my home. You humiliated me. You’re an Abomination and your presence in this city has brought it and me nothing but misery.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Her face shifts. Her skin crawls. The old woman becomes a young one, then cycles back to a crone, like the phases of the moon.

“Medea Bava,” I say. “I heard you were Deumos’s sorority sister. Shouldn’t you be in Hell?”

“And leave the world to your tender mercies?” she says.

“You killed Hattie and took her place. Why?”

“For just this minute. To see the look on your face when you knew.”

“Why didn’t you just take the 8 Ball and go?”

“I didn’t know where it was in here any more than you did. Besides . . . letting you find it for me was a chance to watch you and your friends suffer, and that alone was reason enough to watch and wait.”

I pull the SIG from my pocket and aim for her head.

She holds up the 8 Ball.

“You say it works when you’re angry or threatened? How do you think you make me feel?”

I lower the SIG and put it back in my pocket.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Why, return it to its rightful owner.”

She pulls out a pendant from under her robes. I recognize the shape. It’s Aelita’s angelic sigil. Hattie kisses it three times.

“Come to me, sister. Come and receive what’s yours.”

“Medea.”

It happens instantly. The voice comes from behind us. Aelita, in a Maggie Thatcher power suit, shoulders her way past Vidocq and Candy. Bumps my shoulder as she goes past.

“You have the Qomrama, I see.”

Medea uses it to point in my direction.

“The Abomination almost had it. I took it from him and now I want to do what’s right.”

“Thank you, sister,” says Aelita, and reaches for the 8 Ball.

Medea’s lips go from a smile to a hard straight line. The 8 Ball shoots from her hand like a cannonball, slamming into Aelita over the heart, driving her across the lobby and into the wall. Spinning blades sprout from the ball, whirring like rotary saws burrowing into her chest. An angel’s scream is a terrible thing to hear. It’s the death wail of something that was never supposed to die but has lived long enough to see the universe turned upside down as it now stares down death’s gullet. Holy angel blood splatters the floor and our feet as the Qomrama punches through Aelita’s chest and out her back. She slumps to the ground, and for a few seconds she twitches, trying to breathe, trying to focus on something besides the pain, her blood, and fractured bones. Medea hasn’t moved. The 8 Ball flies from Aelita’s chest and back into her hand. Aelita gasps one more time and fades away. An angel’s death. Leaving nothing behind but one more hole in the universe.

Medea looks at me.

“Her war with God was a child’s thing,” she says. “It got in the way of the true work.”

“Coming after me? I’m flattered all to hell,” I say.

Medea makes a face. Behind her, Traven’s eyes flutter open. He looks around for a second, unsure what’s happening. With his sleeve he wipes blood from his eyes.

“You’d like to think that all this is for you, wouldn’t you, Abomination?”

“You sure talk like it is.”

“I call you by your true name because it’s the one thing Aelita was right about. You’re the filth of the universe.”

“So you’re not going to be in our Secret Santa pool?”

Traven gets up unsteadily behind her. I keep hold of Brigitte.

“This . . .” Medea holds up the 8 Ball. “This will do the real work now. I’ll return to Deumos and my true sisters in Hell and we’ll finally bring the Angra Om Ya back home.”

I take a step and she steps back. Right into Traven.

“No you won’t,” he says. He picks up a fist-size piece of concrete and slams it into the back of her head. Medea drops the 8 Ball and lunges after it. Before she can get her hand on the thing, Traven has his hands around her throat and pulls her upright.

He says, “You want to go to Hell? I can send you there forever.”

He plants his mouth over hers, like a terrible kiss. The Via Dolorosa. He spits millions of the sins he’s eaten over the years into her, burning her insides, turning her soul blacker than any normal human’s could ever be. Guaranteeing her the lowest depths of damnation.

But something is wrong. I’ve never seen the Dolorosa take this long before. Bava spasms and tries to push him away. Digs her nails into his face. Then goes slack. Traven’s skin is white. He lets go of Bava, tenses, and falls onto his back in some kind of seizure. I let go of Brigitte and we run over. I hold down his shoulders and Brigitte grabs his legs until it passes. When Traven opens his eyes, they’re dull and the whites are red with blood. He’s blind. His face and hands are covered in deep red hemorrhages. His heartbeat is an unsteady staccato. Each of his slow, shallow breaths is harder for him to take than the one before. When he can talk, it’s just a whisper.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I gave it to her.”

“It’s okay. You couldn’t help it. Everyone knows.”

“Does she have it?”

“No. You stopped her.”

“Liam,” says Brigitte. She’s crying, touching his bloody face. “Don’t move. We’ll get you to Allegra.”

Traven laughs when he hears her voice. She leans down and kisses him. He goes slack in her arms. She looks at me.

“Take us through a shadow. Now.”

Traven draws a deep painful breath and grabs my arm.

“Put the Qomrama in the Room. Keep it from anyone who can use it.”

I look for a dark shadow, one big enough to take all of us. I spot one by a pillar. Candy grabs the 8 Ball, but when I try to pick up Traven, he stiffens in a new round of convulsions, coughing blood.

Vidocq pushes me away. Pours something down Traven’s throat. He goes still. Brigitte is trying not to scream. When the shaking starts again, Vidocq pulls out another potion. Brigitte grabs my arm.

“Do something. Some magic.”

I try to remember any healing spells I used to know. I was never very good with them. I put my hand on Traven’s chest and say the words. I don’t feel anything. There’s nothing left inside me. I’m too weak and too fucked up. My hoodoo won’t work.

Brigitte shoves Vidocq aside and leans over Traven, doing CPR. She counts in Czech each time she pumps the father’s chest. She pinches his nose and blows into his lungs, her mouth smearing with his blood. Traven doesn’t move. I can’t hear his heart or his breathing anymore. Sweat drips from Brigitte’s face onto Traven’s chest. No one moves. No one stops her. Let her do what she has to do even if there’s nothing left of Traven to bring back. Finally, she collapses on top of him, crying. Candy puts a hand on her shoulder and pulls her up. When Brigitte sees me, she slaps me as hard as she can across the face.

“Great magician. Why can’t you do anything when it matters?”

“I’m sorry. I . . . I’m sorry.”

Brigitte puts her hands on Traven’s bloody, red cheek and leans her forehead on his, whispering good-byes to his corpse.

I’m not even mad. I’m numb. Of course, they used the possession key on Traven. He’s hardly had a glimpse of this kind of apocalyptic insanity. He’s the closest thing to an innocent any of us knows. And I brought him into this shit asylum and got him tangled up in my old battles. I look at Medea’s dead body. She was powerful. It must have taken every ounce of strength, every sin Traven had ever swallowed, to bring her down. Which is the real joke in all this, because for any other sin eater, it would mean they were empty of sin and they’d get a first-class ticket to Heaven. But not Traven. He was already booked on a coal cart to Hell before any of this. Candy asked if either of us has souls. Right now I hope I don’t because I can’t imagine a bigger, more damning sin on my record than bringing a guy like Father Traven into Kill City.

The building rumbles from below. It builds until it feels and sounds like a freight train under our feet. The whole mall slides sickly to the left. The Christmas tree sways. The trunk cracks. I pull Brigitte from Traven’s body and everyone runs to the wall as the tree crashes to the floor. For a minute we’re blind from the dust and fungus spores. I can hear sections of the ceiling coming down around us. The floor stops shaking, but the rumble remains, a steady background hum.

The rumbling rises and Kill City starts shimmying again. The glass around the elevator shafts shatters to the ground. I see faint light across the lobby.

“Follow me. Keep your heads down.”

I grab Candy’s hand and feel the weight of her grabbing someone else’s. Crouching, running, feeling stitches popping in my belly wound, I head us down the stairs we just came up. Then down the dead escalator.

The windows over the Roman baths have collapsed into the main pool, flooding the whole floor in pale dawn light. I look around for a hole in the wall.

“This way. Through the chapel.”

The building shifts in one direction and then the other. It’s worse now. Before it felt like a solid movement from side to side. Now the motion feels soft and liquid, like we’re off the foundation and floating free.

Inside, there isn’t much left. A chasm has opened in the floor in front of the altar, swallowing the pews and part of the wall, destroying the regular chapel and revealing the secret Angra altar. Those fuckers are everywhere. Whatever the plan is to bring them back, it was set in motion a long time ago.

Something is crawling out of the wall. Not a crack in the wall. The wall itself, like the plaster and stone is trying to pull itself free. Its long beaklike mouth comes through first. That’s all I need to see. Concentric circles of cutting fangs and grinding molars. It’s a demon. An eater. We can’t make it to the hole that leads to the ocean before it gets loose in the room. I shout at Candy.

“Give me your knife.”

She tosses me her black blade and I rush the thing. Get a foot on some rubble and launch myself over the demon so I land right on its snout. It roars when it feels my weight and forces itself out of the wall faster. Its five spiderlike eyes emerge next and then the rest of its head. I bring the blade down as hard as I can at the base of its skull, where it meets the body, slicing through nerves connecting it to the head. The eater screams and bucks like a bronco, finally throwing me off. Halfway out of the wall, its buzz-saw mouth whirs and grinds at me, but its body won’t move. It’s stuck where it is. I toss Candy her knife and we head for the wall.

Vidocq and Candy jump into the water first. Brigitte comes to me slowly, looking back over her shoulder every few steps.

“What about Liam’s body?”

Before I can say anything, the building drops like it’s heading for the center of the earth. Back in the chapel something pushes the eater out of the wall and starts climbing out. What looks like a human hand clad in gold emerges. I grab Brigitte, toss her through the hole, and jump through after her.

The Pacific water is icy. The salt burns my gut and the burn Ferox left on my chest. The rumble grows. Around us, whole sections of the beach slip into the ocean, leaving a deep chasm below, like all of Santa Monica might be pulled down on top of us.

I don’t know how deep we are underwater. I kick toward the surface, trying to keep an eye on Brigitte. As Kill City sinks the suction pulls us down with it, like the damned place is magnetic. I look back and something swims up from the churning murk below. A woman, completely covered in gold. Patterns on her skin like snake scales and circuit boards. She wears an elaborate golden headdress with swept-back wings. Half of her face is missing. An empty eye socket above a nonexistent cheek and a raw, ragged jaw are all that’s left on her right side. She reaches for me. I kick harder but it doesn’t feel like I’m putting any distance between us. She gets hold of one of my boots, but seems to lose strength. Her body drifts down a few feet. She comes to for a minute, but it’s too late. The suction is too strong that far down and she’s sucked into the swirling wreckage below.

When Brigitte and I hit the surface, we swim away from shore, out into the deeper ocean, as Kill City comes around behind us. I don’t know how long we swim. Maybe minutes. Maybe just one. When the noise and rumbling stop, I grab Brigitte’s arm and turn her around. She looks at me wild-eyed. She doesn’t want to go back. She isn’t swimming away from the wreck but from Traven’s body. I point her back toward shore and give her a shove. Soon she starts swimming.

We walk out of the water and collapse, exhausted and hurting. Brigitte is crying. Then it hits me.

“The 8 Ball. Where’s the 8 Ball?”

“I dropped it during the quake,” says Candy.

She goes to Brigitte and puts her arms around her.

Vidocq, drenched and looking every one of his hundred and fifty years, comes down to the water’s edge and pulls me onto dry sand.

“All that for nothing.”

“Not quite,” he says. And pulls the wooden vessel Traven made for the 8 Ball from his coat pocket.

“I’m a thief, remember? Once a thing is stolen, it doesn’t get away from me unless I want it to.”

I’m so relieved I laugh. Then I hear Brigitte crying. A crowd of early-morning swimmers and surfers gathers behind us. The remains of Kill City slip into Santa Monica Bay, pulling a million tons of prime beachfront real estate with it. Sections of it continue to settle and collapse. Hattie’s rooftop kingdom comes crashing down. Walls crush inward, revealing the food court and the dead interior amusement park. I look for bodies to bob up in the waves. Where are the rest of the Shoggots and the other tribes we saw inside? Where are the Grays? They’re fighters. They’ll survive. Crawl out of the water and crouch among the pier pilings until the crowds go home. Then move into Santa Monica and find another abandoned space to take over and call their own.

People pull out phones and cameras and snap photos. That’s my cue to move. I look around and find a beautiful shadow by one of the broken boardwalk supports. I get everyone on their feet. While the crowd is busy watching Kill City breathe its last, I pull us through the Room and into the Chateau. I want to say it’s a relief being home, but it’s not.

Kasabian looks up from his work. I don’t know what we look like, but even he doesn’t have anything smart to say. I curl up on the floor, waiting for the salt ache to ease up on my wounds. The others fall onto couches and chairs. No one talks. Candy brings Brigitte some whiskey. Brigitte cries like she might never stop.

I FIND A bottle of Aqua Regia and drink enough that I’m more wasted than I’ve been in a long time. Maybe since Alice died. Drunk enough that for a while I blot out Traven, the Qomrama, the end of the world, and every other ugly thing boring into my brain.

Things swim in and out of my consciousness. Candy. Vidocq. Kasabian tries to talk to me and I push him away. It seems like maybe Allegra is there at some point, working on me. It doesn’t matter. This stupid dream is a joke. God is a joke. We’re a joke. Bugs on God’s windshield. If the Angra want to bite down on this shit sandwich, I say let them. What’s left to lose but a world that never made any sense in a universe that’s so out of control it takes a bastard like me to roust a little bit of God from his beach home and get him back in the game? Or at least to Hell, which is probably where he belonged in the first place.

I reach for the bottle but my eyes won’t focus, and anyway, it looks miles away. Maybe I’ll take a nap and try again later. Put on my walking shoes and make the long trek from this sofa to the coffee table.

How did any of us make it back in one piece? Mysteries within mysteries.

Man, I really wish I could reach that bottle.

SOMETIME BETWEEN KILL City and now, someone moved me onto the couch. Then someone set off Mount St. Helens in my head. Even my nose hairs ache. This isn’t a hangover. It’s cranial genocide. Candy is somewhere nearby. She hands me a glass full of something that smells like boiled crab ass.

“Drink it all,” she says. “Vidocq left it for you. He said it would clear your head. Personally, I’d like to see you suffer for diving into the bottle like that.”

“Sorry. I just.”

“You feel guilty. I know. We all do. Shut up and drink.”

She waves the glass in front of me. I sit up and immediately regret it. I hold my breath and swallow the potion as fast as I can. Halfway through, I hope the stuff kills me. That way I won’t have to finish it. When I’m done, Candy hands me a glass of water. I gulp it down, but I can still taste the crab muck in my mouth.

“Thanks.”

She takes the glass and says, “Brigitte’s asleep in the bedroom. I’m going to go and check on her.”

When she’s gone, Kasabian limps over on his twisted leg.