“This is important. You don’t understand. If you had the gift, you’d know. Most of the Sub Rosa are rich dicks or Goth kids without the clove cigarettes. But I need to be around magic people sometimes. People I don’t have to explain myself to.”
“You need to show off to them more than you need to be with me. They’re dangerous and they’re going to suck you into something dangerous and stupid, like summoning the devil or something. And when they get killed or thrown in jail, you’re going with them.”
I grabbed my jacket and went to the door.
“I need to go. I’m late.”
“You know, trying to still be the precocious one isn’t that cute after you’re old enough to buy beer. Grow up. Stop being such a fucking child.”
Walking out, I said, “You know, sometimes you sound just like those regular jack-offs out there. You say you don’t care about the magic. You say you’re not jealous, but you are. You want what I have or you don’t want me to have it at all. Fuck that.”
Later that night, Mason played his little trick on me and I never saw Alice again.
Only now she’s standing at the foot of the bed, staring at the wrecked room. She doesn’t have to say a word. I know what she’s thinking because it’s what I’m thinking. That the mess is a kind of metaphor for my life. She sighs. Picks up small things, drops them, then picks up something else. She shakes her head in wonder at all the junk until I feel ashamed and stupid.
I know that none of this is real. This Alice is a golem. The present Parker said Mason would be sending me. This sighing ghost isn’t Alice any more than the slab of meat I tossed into the tar pits was Kasabian.
The golem’s eyes are milky gray. Its skin is cracked and stained with red, green, and brown lichen, like old granite. Its broken teeth ooze blood. Golem Alice’s fingertips are bare bone, like something has been gnawing at them.
Unfortunately, knowing that something isn’t real doesn’t mean it’s going to go away or that it doesn’t affect you. When she isn’t eyeballing the wreckage of my mini Pompeii, Alice is leaning over me and whispering in my ear.
“You wouldn’t throw me into the black tar, would you, Jimmy? There’s no air down there. And it’s so dark. You wouldn’t do that to me, would you, baby?”
THE MORNING CREW arrives like a herd of baby elephants jacked up on lattes and enough mutant energy drinks to give a rhino a stroke. The crew is an ever-shifting posse of film school hipster dudes. I don’t know any of their names and I don’t want to. They’re just Blond Surfer Dude. Billy Goat Beard Surfer Dude. Dreads Dude, etc. They really are dudes. Sleepy eyes. IQs drowning in bong water. They invent complicated filing systems for the movies because the alphabet baffles them.
One of them knocks on my door. I open it without putting on a shirt. My wrists have healed, but there’s dried blood on my hands. I hope I didn’t ruin the overcoat. Time to look for a dry cleaner.
It’s Billy Goat Beard Surfer Dude. He smells like he used bong water for aftershave. My lack of a shirt and the blood don’t even register.
He says, “Um, a bunch of the shelves in the porn section fell down last night. What do you want us to do?”
For a second, I wonder if he’s kidding. Then I remember who he is.
“Maybe one of you should go and clean it up.”
“Okay, but I’m the only one who can work the register. Bill’s allergic to dust and Rudy just got born again, so he’s a no-porn zone till he gets over it.”
“So, none of you is capable of walking to the back of the store and picking up the movies?”
“I guess not. Plus, there’s cracks in the ceiling. Looks like there’s cracks in there, too,” he says, pointing into the room. I pull the door closed a little.
“Fuck it. It’s porn. People who want it will paw through it wherever it is. Hell, they might like it better down there. Maybe we should put the whole porn section in a big pile on the floor.”
“What?”
I forgot. The only things that are funny when you’re as buzzed as Billy Goat Beard are cartoon animals and seeing other people get hurt.
“Never mind. Just open the store and let me get dressed.”
“When is Mr. Kasabian coming back?”
I look at the kid. Does this doe-eyed weed monkey suspect something? Am I going to have to lobotomize this twerp?
“When he’s damn good and ready,” I say.
“Okay.” He walks away, like he’s already forgotten the whole conversation.
I throw the dead bolt when I close the door. Need to start locking the room up all the time. Too many weapons in here. Too much blood on the floor. Too much residual magic in the walls. All I need is for some stoned teenybopper to take a post-weed nap in Metatron’s Cube and wake up with his soul on a hook in some stalker’s trading booth in the souk.
I clean up in the bathroom. There’s a brownish-red ring around the drain. I need to get some bleach before all the blood I’ve been leaking into the sink stains it permanently. I wonder if Kasabian had any accident or maybe earthquake insurance. I saw official-looking papers in one box—I’ll have to track that down. It’d be nice for Allegra to be able to get the place fixed up when I’m gone and she takes over.
The overcoat is wadded in a ball at the end of the bed. It looks pretty rough. Praise Lucifer that my jeans are black. Blood’s not so obvious on them. I find a box with the last of the Max Overdrive T-shirts in my size and slip it on. The only thing I have to wear over the T-shirt that will hide a weapon is the half-burned motocross jacket. I’ll look a little crazy in it, but it’s still wearable. Because it’s such a wreck, I don’t have any regrets about tearing the lining open so I can slip the na’at inside. I’ll still pack Azazel’s knife for backup, but from now on, my primary weapons are the ones that will keep attackers the hell away from me. I didn’t crawl back to Earth just to go bankrupt buying new shirts.
It takes me a minute to find where I stashed Muninn’s money. I slipped it into the back of a Val Lewton box set that was blown against the far wall. I take a wad of bills from inside and toss the box on the bed.
With the overcoat tucked under my arm, I lock up the room and slip out the back without any of the dudes seeing me.
Aelita is waiting in the alley, standing there like the angel of death in librarian drag. I drop the coat and take a couple of steps into the alley so my back isn’t pinned to the wall.
I say, “You’re big on the Fortune magazine look. Know any decent dry cleaners around here?”
She shakes her head and shoots poison darts at me with her eyes. Or she wishes she could.
“The Vigil saw you last night. What you did with that man. You’re disgusting.”
“I’m an Abomination. What do you expect? If you clowns really did have me on your radar, you’d know I was just taking out the trash and that I didn’t kill Kasabian. He was killed by someone you should have dealt with a long time ago.”
“You followed the poor man into death and tormented him even there.”
“I talked to him. I gave him a job recommendation. I helped him more than you ever helped me.”
“I offered you help just yesterday. Help and redemption.”
“You helped me so much that I had to get glued back together again by Doc Kinski.”
“Don’t speak that name in front of me!” she shouts. “He’s the only creature alive more vile than you.”
“Thanks. You hating Kinski makes me feel a lot better about the guy. Maybe I’ll let him cut me open after all.”
“Why wait? I can do that for you right now.”
“Yeah, but when Kinski cuts me, he won’t have a hard-on while he’s doing it.”
“You dare speak to an angel of the Lord that way?”
“If I hurt your feelings, get God down here so I can tell Him to His face.”
“Maybe you are worse than Kinski.”
“You’re the most useless thing I’ve ever met. Even the worst Hellion has a purpose. What’s yours? You
can’t keep a treaty from falling apart that might destroy the world. You don’t even go after Mason. Why is that?”
“Don’t you dare interrogate me. We’ve been looking for Mason for many years.”
“But that’s not the same as finding him, is it? I mean, the way no one seems to be dealing with the guy makes me wonder if there isn’t something else going on.”
“We are agents of Heaven and do its bidding.”
“And while you do, you let Parker roam around free, slaughtering people, hoping he’ll lead you back to the big boy. How many people has Parker killed in the last eleven years and you didn’t do anything about it?”
“You’re suddenly so concerned about death? People die around you every day and you barely seem to notice. What does that make you?”
“Fuck you, angel. Fuck you and all God’s little prison bitches. He slips you some cigarettes and a con job smile and you run off to do his dirty work for him. Go and scare some sinners. No one’s listening to you here.”
I can’t read an angel the way I can a human, but I can read a fighter’s body. Aelita shifts slightly, sliding one foot back a few millimeters at a time, letting her weight settle on her back leg.
“God can still save you, Abomination. He can’t change the vile thing you are, but through me he can save you from perdition.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather go to Hell.”
“So be it.”
Aelita must have been holding back yesterday. She manifests her flaming sword incredibly fast and shoots forward like a bullet. Thing is, I’m pretty fast, too. Especially when I know what an opponent is going to do. Before she charges me, I already have the na’at out, extended, and I’m sidestepping her. When she blasts forward at me, she also impales herself on one side of the na’at, like she’s run onto the cutting edge of a chain saw.
Aelita freezes for a second, stunned to find her angelic body sliced through. That gives me a chance to give the na’at a slight turn so that the barbs lock into her. She lets out a monstrous roar, something to rattle Heaven’s gates. Buildings shudder and car alarms go off. I can’t let go of the na’at to cover my ears. Her scream is like a vise crushing my skull.
She swings her sword at my head and tries to move forward, but she’s stuck on the na’at. I push a stud in the handle and step back, locking her in place while extending the na’at so her sword can’t reach me.
Aelita is strong. She lunges at me, but each time she moves she just drives the na’at’s razor edge deeper into her body. She stops moving and stands there bleeding. Turning pale. After a few minutes, her sword dims and flickers out. She refuses to fall. She won’t submit to an Abomination. If I didn’t hate her so much already, I’d probably like her.
Then she crumbles all at once. Like someone pulled the plug and shut her down. When she’s flat on her back, I turn the na’at to release the barbs, pull it from her chest, and retract it.
Slipping it back inside my jacket, I go over to have a look at her. Her eyes are open, and even though she’s looking up, I know she’s not looking at the sky. She’s looking a lot farther away than that. I wonder what she sees.
“You’ll suffer for this, Abomination. Do you know that? God sees everything and He sees you.”
“Does He see you? I have an idea. Call God to come down and save you.” I look up at the sky with her. “Nothing.” I look down again and shrug. “I guess you’re expendable, too.”
“I hate you more than anything I’ve ever seen or known.”
“There we go. The truth. You hate me. Not for God’s sake, but for yours. Feels good, doesn’t it? Feels human.”
I wonder if an angel can die the way humans do. I wonder what happens to their bodies. Does their spirit go back to Heaven or Hell or do they just evaporate?
I kneel by Aelita’s head. She looks up at me, sort of blank.
“I’ve been thinking about it. Remember when I asked you why God left me in Hell and you said that He probably thought I was where I should be? Maybe He thought I should be here today. To face you down in this alley. Maybe He wants me to finish what I came here for, only to do that, I had to get past you first. It’s something for both of us to think about.”
Aelita straightens out her arm and tries to manifest her sword. A fighter to the end. Maybe I do like her a little after all. No. I don’t.
I don’t really believe that angels can die the way we do. And God wouldn’t let an important one like Aelita go so easily. Wells and his Golden Vigil buddies and half of Homeland Security are probably on their way over right now. Time for me to find a cleaners, buy some clothes, and generally, not be here.
THERE’S ONE GOOD way to always get what you want from someone who doesn’t necessarily want to sell you something. Pay in advance and pay too much. When you’re dropping off a coat covered in blood and plaster dust, it’s no time to cheap out. The old lady behind the dry-cleaning counter gives me a I-might-call-the-cops look over the tops of her glasses. I slip her one of Muninn’s hundred-dollar bills, and just like that, all is forgiven. The coat will be ready later tonight. Civilians really need to remember this. Cash is the magic that anyone can do.
Where did all the Kissi go? The streets were lousy with them yesterday and now they’re as gone as a Friday block-buster with a bad weekend gross.
What the hell is wrong with L.A.? Full of magicians, alchemists, bloodsuckers, soul suckers, the Golden Vigil, and federally funded angels, and no one’s been able to touch Mason? That doesn’t make any sense. It stinks of protection. It smells like a conspiracy, but I don’t believe in conspiracies. Guys will say anything to get laid. If some CIA guy thought he could get a little action by showing a coed how he was the guy on the Grassy Knoll, he’d do it and we’d all know about it by now. But if there’s no conspiracy, what does that mean? Maybe there’s an ass-hole A-list that no one told me about. Shake hands with the forces of darkness and get a gift bag from Neiman Marcus and a free pass on murder and apocalyptic power plays.
Is Mason bulletproof because he’s tight with the Kissi? Is everyone really that afraid? What did he have to do to cozy up to that celestial vermin anyway? What did he have to steal? Who did he have to kill? What Lovecraftian sewer slug did he have to blow to get up close and personal with God’s bastard kids?
I don’t believe in conspiracies, but I do believe in bullshit and I believe I’m up to my balls in it right now.
I throw the Veritas and it comes up showing a tangle of what looks almost like barbed wire. The thorn forest in Sheol, Downtown’s wild western region. Caatinga thorns will strip and debone anything that wanders into them faster than a piranha with a chain saw. Roughly translated, the Hellion script around the edge of the coin reads, It’s not too late to go back and get your GED. I can’t tell anymore if the Veritas is giving me advice or just making fun of my doomed ass.
I’ve pretty much used up any sense of charity or obligation I might have had in this lifetime, but I don’t want to turn into just another L.A. dick looking out for number one. I get out my cell and dial Allegra’s number. She doesn’t pick up. I dial my old number, but no one picks up at Vidocq’s. I text Allegra the way I’d seen her text her friends: Keep yr doors locked. Mason 3’s suicide bombers.
I wonder if Wells and his G-men have picked up Aelita. It couldn’t hurt to make a quick check. The Chinese believe that having a funeral home near your store is bad luck in general and lousy for business. How bad must a dying angel outside your back door be?
I pick up a Jag outside a raw food restaurant next to a tanning salon. Isn’t a tanning salon in L.A. like a frostbite salon in Fairbanks?
There’s no one is behind me, so I can do a slow drive by at Max Overdrive and get a look in the alley. Aelita isn’t there. There’s no blood. No scorch mark from her sword. No sign that anything has ever happened there. Thank you, Marshal. I’ll drink to your health on New Year’s.
I’D BE A happy camper if between now, when I kill Mason, and when I’m back D
owntown, I didn’t have to speak to anyone. But that’s not how this is going to work out. I drive the Jag over to Allegra’s apartment and pound on her door. Do it loud enough and long enough that one of her neighbors comes out and explains to me that she hasn’t been home in a couple of days and that I should fuck off. I drive over to Vidocq’s and ditch the Jag a few blocks away. There’s a little bodega on the corner. I step into a shadow beside it. Two gray-haired men sitting on plastic milk crates and drinking beer ignore the weird white boy doing weird-white-boy stuff.
Vidocq’s door is open. That’s not so bad all on its own. The door opens and closes all the time when he goes in and out. But now it’s standing open and the vaguely diffuse glow that signals a glamour is gone, like someone took soap and water and washed it off.
“When did they put an apartment in over there?”
A nosy neighbor stands down the hall staring at the open door. He wants to see it, but he won’t get any closer, like maybe the place is radioactive.
“Stay here,” I tell him, and reach under my jacket for the na’at. The day I don’t pack a gun, that’s when I really want one.
“Should you go in there? Should I call the landlord?”
I throw him a quick keep-talking-and-you’ll-be-shitting-out-your-tongue look and he backs off.
There’s something really wrong with the apartment. Like the one out-of-tune string on a guitar. I can feel it before I even get inside. When I step over the threshold, something else hits. A taste and a smell. Vinegar at the back of my throat. Josef smelled like that when the Kissi revealed themselves. Not that I need another clue that there’s something wrong with Vidocq’s place.
The walls, ceiling, and floor are covered in twisting, spiky ideograms and letters, intertwined with endless spirals. Spirit faces or maybe images of God the Father, looking more like some saucer-eyed alien than a deity, are smeared around the room. The colors run from rust to a snaky, metallic green, but I’ve smelled enough dried blood in my time to know what the basic ingredient in all these pigments is.
I stop and I listen, waiting for something. The nosy neighbor is so freaked out, I can feel his heart and breathing. Don’t stroke out, guy. We’ve got enough problems here.