THIS IS SOMETHING I haven’t felt for a while. This is pain. Real pain. Fire ants gnawing their way out of the stitches over my bullet wounds. Some use their pincers, but the twitchy speed freaks are going at it with chain saws and jackhammers. I remember this feeling from my early human-punching-bag days Downtown and later ones in the arena. I don’t like remembering it and I sure as shit don’t like feeling it. This is how regular people feel, not me. I’m home and my body is developing a mind of its own. It thinks it gets a vote in how things work around here. It wants my scars to heal and it’s taking away my most basic weapon—my armor. My body is staging a revolution and it no longer recognizes me as its great and glorious dictator. Pain is how it’s burning me in effigy.
It’s not just the bullet wound, but also the road rash from bailing out of the limo. I didn’t even notice it last night when I was busy leaking all over the stolen Jeep and hotel. My pants are shredded and Lucifer’s shirt is stiff with dried blood. I may need to rethink my priorities. Maybe put off the not-killing-everyone thing while I work on shielding hexes. Getting hit without my armor just isn’t fun anymore.
As sweet as it feels, I can’t lie here forever curled up in a big ball of fuck-the-world.
If I was really smart, I’d go online, take an aptitude test, and change careers completely. Work around soft things and away from bullets. A marshmallow factory or a plush-toys sweatshop. Maybe dress like a clown and learn to make balloon animals for kids’ parties. I know some beasts the kiddies have never dreamed of.
“You’re awake,” says Kasabian.
“If you say so, Alfredo Garcia.”
“What happened to your pretty Sunday school clothes?”
“I jumped out of a car.”
“Of course you did.”
I get out of bed slowly, stagger into the bathroom to piss and brush my teeth. I wash my face in cold water, but it doesn’t help. I’m as zombied out as last night’s golems. I hope someone has the courtesy to burn my chewed-up headless corpse when I die. The thought of ending up a billionaire’s Muppet makes me want to shoot every Sub Rosa I can find, starting in East L.A., heading west, and not stopping until I hit the ocean. I’d need a pickup truck to carry that many bullets. I wonder if Kasabian can drive shift?
Still on autopilot, I flop back down on the bed. It hurts, but I don’t have to move again for a long time. Glad I told Lucifer I was taking the day off.
When I was a kid I plucked magic out of the air. Didn’t even think about it. It was just there, like breathing. I was naked last night without my gun. I can’t live without my weapons and I’ll never give them up, but I can’t rely on guns to get me out of every scrape. I need to make friends with my inner brat, get back to when magic was as easy as getting bit by the neighbor’s dog. Ever since I got back, I’ve been in arena mode. I picked up the habit of weapons there and I have to get out of it here.
Time for a drink. Something to loosen up and let little Stark out of the basement, where he’s been locked up playing five-card stud with Norman Bates’s mom. She cheats, of course. The dead think they can get away with anything because you’ll feel sorry for them. If you play cards with the dead, make sure you deal and don’t let them buy you drinks. They’ll slip you a formaldehyde roofie and pry the gold fillings out of your teeth.
I pour a tumbler of JD and take a long sip. Whiskey doesn’t mix well with toothpaste, but I already filled the glass, and once whiskey’s been let loose you have to deal with it, like love or a rabid dog.
There’s a crumpled bag from Donut Universe on the floor. I drink and Kasabian likes glazed chocolate with sprinkles. We’re the trailer trash that Dorothy never met in Oz.
I tear a square from the bag and fold it over and over again, trying to remember the pattern. When I’m done, I have a lopsided origami crane. I put it on the bedside table, tear another square, and start folding. It takes a couple tries, but I end up with a kind of thalidomide bunny. Now I’m on a roll and make a fish, a dog, and an elephant whose legs are too long. Like he escaped from a Dalí painting.
I set up my inbred critters around the whiskey tumbler like carousel animals and whisper a few words to them, not in Hellion, but in quiet English, like I’m trying to coax a cat out from under the bed.
My mother once told me a story she said got left out of the Bible. It’s when Jesus was a young boy. He snuck off from the fields where His family was working and Mary finds Him on a riverbank making birds out of mud. The little sculptures are lined up next to Him, drying in the sun. Mary yells at Him and tells Him to come back to work. Jesus gets up but before He goes He waves His hands over the mud birds and they come to life and fly away. A great way to let your folks know you’re not going into the family business.
The origami animals start to move. The elephant takes a step. The crane tries its wings. I lean in close and blow on them. That does it. They march and flutter around the glass like a special-ed Disney cartoon. I pick them up, set them on the floor, and point at Kasabian. They start the long Noah’s Ark march across the room.
I take another sip of my drink and see Lucifer’s stone on the table next to the money he gave me last night. Is it a seeing stone? Chewing gum? Am I supposed to start carrying around a slingshot because he knows I’m going to run into a giant who never went to Sunday school and doesn’t know how the story ends? I stare at it and the stone lifts from my hand and hovers about six inches over it. I tap it with a finger and start it spinning. Maybe Lucifer is supposed to take the stone back from me like David Carradine in Kung Fu. Or maybe he was fucking with me and it’s just a stupid rock.
“Shit. What is this?” asks Kasabian.
The animals have made it across the floor, up the table legs, and are clambering onto Kasabian’s skateboard.
“Get ’em off me!”
“Don’t move, man.”
I crook a finger and imagine a peashooter. When I flick the finger, the bunny flies off Kasabian’s deck like it stepped on an origami land mine. The fish and the dog get the same kill shots. When I try to sniper the elephant, it seems to see it coming and the shot knocks Kasabian’s beer over onto his keyboard. He kicks the bottle off the table as the elephant legs it for the window. The crane might be lumpy and not very aerodynamic, but it’s no dummy. It flutters out the window after the elephant.
“What’s wrong with you, goddamn it?” yells Kasabian.
Luckily, the beer bottle was mostly empty. I point to it.
“Come on, I’m open. Hit me!”
He doesn’t need that much encouragement. Kasabian half turns and kicks the bottle at me with six of his legs. It goes somersaulting at my head.
When it’s a foot away, I bark some Hellion and the bottle explodes into a million pieces. Okay, it wasn’t exactly shield magic, but I didn’t get hit.
“Don’t even dream of asking me to clean that glass up.”
“I’ll get the maid to do it. Come on. Boot something else. I need to practice.”
I don’t have to tell him twice. He kicks an empty DVD case, a wire-mesh penholder, and a pile of printer cartridges at me.
This time I hold back and throw a big mental marshmal-low around me. The DVD case bounces and ricochets off the ceiling. The penholder bounces and flips into the bathroom. I block two of the printer cartridges.
“My wings are like a shield of steel!”
I’m so pleased with myself that I miss the third cartridge and it hits me over the eye.
“Touchdown!” yells Kasabian.
“Damn. That hurt.”
I take another sip from my tumbler. The pains in my stomach and side aren’t getting any better, but they’re getting farther away. Like I’m looking down at them from the third floor. My cell phone rings. It rings again. Kasabian is back working on the computer. After the third ring, the phone stops. A second later, the phone at Kasabian’s desk rings. He picks it up and gives me a look.
“Yeah, he’s here. Sure it rang. He’s just being a little bitch today.”
I have a pretty good idea who’s on the other end of the call. Kasabian mostly listens and grunts every now and then.
He has Black Sunday playing on the monitor with the sound down. Some very bad men are nailing a devilish witch mask to Barbara Steele’s pretty face. I’ve seen that done for real. I’m glad this version is in black-and-white.
A couple of “okays” followed by a “yeah” and Kasabian hangs up.
“Guess who that was,” he says.
“Unless it was about me winning the lottery, I don’t care.”
“Lucifer says for you to answer your damned phone.”
“What did he want?”
“He doesn’t need you today and maybe tomorrow, too. Ritchie and some bigwigs are coming to the Chateau for a meeting.”
“Does he know them all? Does he trust them?”
“He said you’d ask that and says not to worry. He owns all their souls. They wouldn’t dare cross him.”
“Those are exactly the people who are going to cross him.”
“He says he’s got it under control.”
“I hope he has fun and only agrees to tasteful nudity.”
“You know, you’ve been drinking a lot lately, even by your standards.”
“‘There was moonshine, moonshine to quench the devil’s thirst. The law they swore they’d get him, but the devil got him first.’ Robert Mitchum wrote that for Thunder Road, the year of our Lord, 1958.”
“You’re not Robert Mitchum, this isn’t Cape Fear, and the devil is pissed at you. You might think about spacing out the Jack with, I don’t know, anything that’s not Jack.”
“You heard anything new about Mason?”
“Nope.”
“Ever hear of a guy named Spencer Church?”
“Should I?”
“Probably not. He’s a rich junkie who’s turned up missing.”
“There’s a first.”
“What about the Sub Rosa. The families. Are they in the Codex?”
“Everything is in the Codex.”
“Except what I want.”
“Try asking the right questions.”
“It’s my fault, then. You’re not holding out on me.”
Kasabian ignores me and watches his movie.
“What does it say about the families?”
“It’s boring. It’s mostly histories. Family trees. Who begat who. There’s one fun fact to know and tell. Whenever a lot of families are in the same geographic area, each family specializes in a different kind of magic. It’s like a franchise. Supposed to keep down the hillbilly feuds.”
“The Springheels were blue bloods, so I suppose they’d have first dibs. What kind did they do?”
“Past-tense blue bloods. They didn’t have much by the end. I don’t know what magic they started out with, but even at the end they were pretty respected charm makers. Amulets. Talismans. Protective runes.”
“What about the Geistwalds?”
“Scryers. Fortune-tellers. If you ask me, the whole so-called art is a joke. I’ve met maybe two or three scryers with enough nickels in their pockets to make a quarter. The others I’d second deal at poker and take all their money. They couldn’t even see me cheating. What kind of seer is that? The whole so-called art is for rubes.”
“The Geistwalds look like they’re doing all right. Their house is about the size of the San Fernando Valley. Someone said they advise studios on what movies to make.”
“Still sounds like a gaff.”
“What does it say about the Ashes? Cabal and his sister.”
“Another old family. They pulled something shady back in the old country, took off, and ended up here. No one’s sure if Cosima, the chick, is Cabal’s sister or his wife. Hell, they probably don’t even remember anymore, which makes it even worse if you’ve ever seen them.”
“I have.”
“My condolences. The Ashes are into the Black Sun. Chaos magic. Technically, it’s about controlling elementals to bring you luck and your enemies bad luck. It’s power yoga for the ruling class. Tycoons and politicos love it. It’s sketchy, but no one’s getting attacked, so it’s all legal. Everyone knows the Ashes keep the big-money stuff off the books. Revenge. Banishments. Maybe even vaporware.”
“They’re soul merchants?”
“Soul trading is bigger than hookers and drugs combined in L.A. So many people have lost theirs or the one they have is so rotten they need a transfusion.”
“Think they’d murder someone for a particular soul?”
“There’s stories.”
“Working with elementals means they’d probably have hotshot demons on their Christmas-card list.”
“Along with their T-shirt size and favorite Beatle.”
“They ever been caught playing rough, demonwise?”
“The Inquisition has made some moves, but never found enough to do more than fine them. The Ashes are one of the oldest families in the world. They know how to cover their tracks.”
“Unless they don’t want to cover their tracks. Unless they want to make an example of someone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
I mentally walk through the Springheel house, from where Marshal Julie was pulling doorman duty to Santa Muerte standing guard over bones and gristle, to the broken magic circle that was really a hexagon drawn to call dark forces. One dark force. The eater. Did Cabal and Cosima know that Enoch Springheel was a Bone Daddy and sent him something special delivery? But why bother? From what everyone is saying, the Springheels were about as low as you could get and still have indoor plumbing. If you wanted to off somebody to make a point, why not go for the Geistwalds? But the Ashes are too smart for that. And if they just wanted to have fun, they’d go for civilian rubes, not another Sub Rosa. Still, there is a dead guy and the demon that ate him.
I don’t even know why I care. I didn’t know the guy. I don’t know any of these people. But I don’t like being lied to, especially if being lied to gets me shot. Springheel gets eaten. Lucifer gets bushwhacked. Another Sub Rosa named Spencer Church is missing. Carlos lost his pal, Toadvine, and that woman at Bamboo House is missing a kid. Probably none of this has anything to do with me, but as long as Lucifer means to drag me along into the Sub Rosa’s billion-dollar outhouse, I know there’s a gun pointed at the back of my head.
“Give me the Walter Cronkite on Hell. What’s the weather like down there?”
Kasabian turns from the movie and looks at me. He sighs.
“There’s nothing to tell. It’s the usual mess. Guys stabbing guys. Women stabbing guys who just stabbed guys. It’s rerun season down there. Nothing new.”
“The other night I was walking around East L.A. and for a second I thought I saw Mason.”
“You didn’t. That’s impossible.”
“Then he’s down there. You’ve seen it.”
“I don’t have to see it. I know.”
“From Lucifer?”
“I just know.”
“That’s not good enough. I need to know what’s happening. Lucifer is here for a reason and it’s not to make a damned movie.”
“Can’t help you. Speaking of movies, shut up. The two traveling doctors are about to open Barbara Steele’s coffin and bring her back to life.”
When you make a threat, make it big. When you make it big, make sure you’re prepared to go all in if someone calls you on it.
I go to the table and hit the power switch on Kasabian’s monitor.
“Hey, I’m watching that.”
I grab Kasabian and his deck under one arm, pull open the door, and carry him downstairs.
He stage-whispers, “Put me down! Take me back!”
I carry Kasabian straight out the back door to the alley. If any customers caught a glimpse of a head on a deck, they would just think I was throwing away a mannequin or an old movie promotion.
Kasabian is pretty discreet considering his situation. He doesn’t start screaming until I close the back door.
“What the fuck are you doing, man? Take me back inside.”
“It’s time for you to leave the nest, Tweety Bird. The world is your oyster. I saw a ‘Help Wanted’ sign at Donut Universe. With your managerial skills, you’ll be running the place by the end of the week. Vaya con Dios, Alfredo Garcia.”
“Are you out of your mind? What if someone sees us?”
“People will pay big bucks to see you. Maybe you should go to Griffith Park and sign up at the petting zoo. Hell, you’ll be their star attraction.”
“Is this about the money? I wasn’t embezzling. I was investing it for us. The store is on its last legs, man. We’re going to need a stake when it goes under.”
“It’s not the money or the attitude or you shitting beer out your neck hole. You’ve outgrown the place. You’re a lone wolf, not a team player, and I don’t want to hold you back.”
I reach into my pocket, wad up one of Lucifer’s hundreds, and toss it at him.
“Go buy yourself some platform shoes. Tall people always get the best job offers.”
When I go back inside, he’s still sitting there with his mouth open, the hundred lying at his metal feet.
I pull the door closed and wait. Right away I hear scratching, like a stray cat trying to get in after it got locked out of the house at night. Kasabian is cursing me through the door, but not loud enough for anyone else to hear. He doesn’t want that. The kicking and cursing goes on for thirty or forty seconds, getting louder the whole time. Then it stops. I listen. Nothing.
Okay. That’s something I didn’t count on. That moneygrubbing jack-o’-lantern isn’t crazy enough to go around to the front, is he?
I run up the stairs far enough that the customers can’t see me, and step through a shadow into the alley.
At first, I don’t see him. Then I hear a scrabbling from overhead. Fuck me. The little centipede is halfway up the wall, climbing for the bathroom window on his prehensile legs. He’s slow, but he’s moving steadily. I had no idea he could do that. Something else he’s been hiding along with all the other information he’s locked away?
I start to say something. When he looks down his eyes go wide. He screams and starts to fall. I throw up the shield I used earlier in the room. Kasabian is right over the Dumpster, so I vault the side and catch him when he bounces off the shield.
He yells, “Get out! Get out now!”
“Calm down. You’ve been in plenty of dirtier places than this.”
“Look down, asshole.”
I move Kasabian’s deck to the side and look at my feet. At the bottom of the Dumpster, on a pile of JD bottles, boxes, and worn-out DVD cases is a man’s hand. There’s a few inches of bone sticking out past the torn and ragged wrist. It looks like rats have been having a Sunday buffet.
“Please take me back inside.”
“What are you so upset about? It’s not yours.”
I get out of the Dumpster and set him on the ground.
“Sorry. I can’t go carrying you through there naked again. You’re wearing a disguise this time.”
There’s a Disney box lying on top of the Dumpster junk. I grab it, drop it on top of Kasabian, and carry him inside and up to the room. I punch the power on his monitor and set him down in front of it. Black Sunday is still playing. He stares at it for a moment like he’s never seen a movie before, and then turns it off.
“Is there any beer left?” he asks.
“I think so.”
I take one from the minifridge, pop the top, and slide his bucket under him. Kasabian is still staring at the blank monitor screen.
“Did you see that fucking thing?”
“It was pretty much on my foot.”
“Where do you think it came from?”
“A guy’s arm.”
“I mean did you recognize it. Did it look familiar?”
“It looked like a hand. You want to be Sherlock Holmes? I’ll drop you back down there and you can play patty-cake with it all day.”
“Body parts lying around. That’s a bad omen for me. I can’t afford to lose anything else.”
“That’s right. The universe stopped by our trash to personally deliver you a message from the great beyond. Get a grip. Some wino probably died in the neighborhood and the dogs got at him. Or there’s medical trash on the beach again and kids are leaving legs and eyeballs all over town.”
“What a waste. A perfectly good hand like that.”
“I’ll look for the other one. You can wear ’em like angel wings.”
“I’ll never have one again. Lucifer’ll never let that happen.”
“You mean a body.”
“It’s humiliating, you know. This whole situation. I’m not even a dog. I’m half a dog. On top of that I got you and Lucifer surrounding me, gnawing my ass like it’s filet mignon. You both want information and I know someday I’m going to tell one of you something you don’t like and you’re going to throw me into the wood chipper without a second thought.”
“I can’t help you get a body. The black blade is a mean Hellion hex machine. Whatever it cuts stays cut and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t, you know.”
Kasabian picks up his beer and chugs the bottle. It drains out of his neck and into the bucket, sounding somewhere between a light summer rain and someone peeing in a Dixie cup.
“So, my options are: I can go back to Hell, be damned and tortured forever, but at least I’ll have a body, or I can be Zardoz on a skateboard up here with you forever. You’d think this would be an easy choice, but it isn’t.”
“Does the Codex say anything about someone in your situation putting a body back together?”
“No, but I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned. Any spell cast can be broken. Any spell broken can be put back together.”
“If you want I can have a word with the boss.”
He shakes his head and drops the bottle into the recycling bin.
“Forget it. The last thing I need to get into is office politics.”
“I can see how your situation sucks, but in case you haven’t noticed, neither one of us is exactly free to go drink mai tais in Maui. Maybe if we don’t shank each other in the shower, we can do something to improve that stupid situation. I don’t know what exactly, but maybe something.”
“You’re going to improve things? I’m so fucking relieved. Just remember to tell Santa I’ll need a stepladder when he brings me that pony next Christmas.”
I get up and look for some clothes that don’t have blood on them. When I’m pulling on my boots, Kasabian says, “Beelzebub is the only one of the big generals left who hasn’t joined up with Mason’s bunch. He has all the other generals, but Beelzebub’s army is almost as big as all of theirs put together. But if he gets offed or switches sides, that’s it. Mason wins.”
“And Lucifer has nowhere to go.”
“Allegra can teach him to run a cash register. He can be night manager and we’ll be his bosses.”
I check the drawers in the bedside table looking for something to smoke. I check my pockets for the electronic cigarette and then remember that I tossed it into a canal in the ballroom. Sometimes we do dumb things to amuse women.
“There’s something else.”
“Don’t tell me. Mason has a herpes gun. Or a bomb that gives everyone a fat ass and they get depressed and sit around eating ice cream all day while he takes over.”
“Mason is working on something all right. He’s got his own Manhattan Project going with alchemists, sorcerers, witches—human and Hellion—all working together. One of Beelzebub’s spies found out and passed the word along. From what I heard, right after that, he ended up in Tartarus.”
“You can hear things when Lucifer talks with other Hellions?”
“Not always and not everything. But I heard enough of this.”
I shrug and give up on finding smokes. That’s okay. I need to get out of here and walk off some of the knots in my legs and side.
“This isn’t news. Mason’s always got two or three things going at the same time.”
“Yeah, but nothing like this before.”
“What is it?”
“He’s trying to make a new key to the Room of Thirteen Doors.”
I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but that wasn’t it. But it makes sense. What’s worse is that the prick is talented and relentless enough to actually do it.
“Is that what you didn’t want to tell me?”
“You shot at me once. You threatened to drop me in the ocean and throw me to the coyotes, so I had some concerns you might overreact.”
“You weren’t holding back because you thought you could cut a deal with Mason?”
“Make a deal with the guy who blew me up and left me like this? He’s right at the top of my people-to-trust list.”
“Okay. Thanks for coming clean.”
“You’re taking it pretty well.”
“No. I’m not.”
I head for a shadow next to the closet door, stop, and turn back to Kasabian.
“No one’s going to look out for us but us. We’re just bugs on God’s windshield. You need to get serious and work with me on this or we’re both going to end up in Tartarus.”
“What the Hell is in Tartarus? Even the Codex doesn’t say.”
“I don’t know, but I figure anything that scares Hellions ought to scare me. We need to talk some more, but I need some alone time to clear my head.”
“Me, too.”
“By the way, what happened out back? I wouldn’t have left you out there.”
“Yeah, you would have.”
“Only if I thought you were going to dick me around forever. Then yeah, but only then.”
“Lucky me some schmuck lost a hand.”
“You were wrong, see? Turns out it was a good omen.”
Kasabian scuttles around and hits the eject button on the DVD player.
“You got enough devil movies for tonight?”
“Suddenly I’m out of the mood for those. Maybe I’ll watch The Great Silence.”
“Do one more devil movie. Bedazzled. The original. It makes facing down Lucifer easier if you picture him in a Brit burger joint in a silly cape.”
“Maybe I’ll do that.”
“I’ll be going by Bamboo House later. Want me to bring you back something?”
“A burrito. Carnitas. Hot. Not those old-lady ones you get. Lots of salsa and green peppers.”
“Anything else, boss?”
“Thanks for not doing a slice-and-dice when I told you about Mason cooking up a new key.”
“You’ve got good timing. I was going to try and not kill all those other people out in the world, but that’s on hold since they’re trying to kill me. That means you get to be my no-kill project.”
“Lucky me.”
“Lucky us. We might be doomed, but we’re not in pieces in a Dumpster.”
