Kill the Dead

Hollywood Boulevard is long and the side streets aren’t always well lit. You’d be surprised how cheap rich people can be when it comes to parking. They’d rather leave a half-million-dollar Lamborghini in a drugstore parking lot after hours than pay a valet fifteen bucks. Their car insurance payments are what most people put out for a mortgage, and they pay them for the privilege of being stupid, so they can leave their car on the street alone and unprotected, like a four-wheel Red Riding Hood waiting for a wolf like me. I’m doing people like that a favor when I take their cars. Every time stupid rich people get ripped off, it makes them feel better about hating poor people. All they did was leave the equivalent of a big pile of cash by a parking meter, and when they came back, they were horrified to find it was gone. Leaving their stuff out for people to steal proves to them that people want to steal their stuff. Fear is like curling up under a warm blanket for some people, especially the rich.

Something evil and full of testosterone must be smiling down on me tonight. About half a block from Sunset on Cahuenga Boulevard, parked right out in the street like Grandma’s Camry, is a silver Bugatti Veyron 16.4. An easy two million dollars in precision engineering and eyeball kicks. If Hugh Hefner designed the Space Shuttle, it would look like the Veyron. Luke Skywalker would be conceived in the backseat of this car, if it had a backseat.

The Veyron is stuffed with more tech than a particle accelerator, so the black blade won’t get me through the electronic lock without alerting every screaming bit of it. Fortunately, this isn’t the first time the genius who owns the car has left it out in the open. A thin layer of dust covers the top. Just enough for me to draw in. I face west and move my finger slowly over the swept-back plastic roof, trying not to trip the alarm. I finish with a counterclockwise twist on Murmur’s sigil. Murmur is a big-mouth Hellion prick with a voice like a 747 engine, but when you reverse his name, you can hear a pin drop from a mile away. When I’m done, I give the car a good shove. It rocks for a second, the lights flutter as the alarm tries to activate, but it gives up and dies. I slip inside through a shadow, jam the black blade into the ignition, and start it up. There’s something very satisfying about stabbing two million dollars in the heart.

Murmur’s silence fills the car inside and out. My brain starts to untangle after a long, weird day.

Which is good and bad. It leaves me asking the big question I need answered: Why is Lucifer in L.A.? There’s nothing I’ve picked up from Kasabian that gives me a clue, and he can’t lie as well as a five-year-old. Have I done anything to piss Lucifer off or make him especially happy lately? Not that I know of. I haven’t done anything for him at all except take his cash. His retainer checks are a decent amount of money, and if I didn’t piss it all away on the big black money pit that is Max Overload, I’d be doing all right. If I was a regular desk monkey with a regular apartment and a used Honda Civic, I’d be living pretty well. But I like my little tree fort. Any more room and I’d get lost. Vidocq would find me a week later, starving and hallucinating in the breakfast nook. Max Overload is all I need or want. There’s a bed, a closet, a bathroom, and a million movies downstairs. I didn’t crawl out of Hell to hit the pillow sales at Bed, Bath & Beyond. I have a hard enough time keeping clothes for more than a week.

So, what the hell does Lucifer want? I don’t have my gun or the na’at with me, which is probably just as well. I have the black knife and the stone Lucifer gave me the last time we saw each other. I tested it. I’ve thrown every kind of magic I can think of at it and it seems to just be a rock. I don’t know why I carry the damned thing around. Superstition, maybe. When the devil tells you you might need something someday, I figure it pays to listen. Between the rock, Azazel’s knife, the na’at, Mason’s lighter, and Kasabian’s head, I’m starting to feel like a Gnostic junkyard.

As I cruise the streets, my mind wanders. Never a good idea. An image of Alice tries to form in my brain, but I concentrate on the lights, the billboards, and the other cars and it goes away. I spend a fair amount of time and energy not thinking about Alice these days. On the other hand, I think about Mason all the time. I know Kasabian knows more about Mason than he’s telling me. I’d love to get some alone time with the Daimonion Codex, but I’m not willing to get my head cut off for the privilege.

THE KISSI I don’t think about much, but I dream about them. Their vinegar reek chokes me while their fingers dig around inside my chest like bony worms.