“We figure the last important guests will be there by ten, so we’ll go in a little after.”
“I’ll be back before then.”
I start out the way we came in, but I get stopped by a beautiful sight. A heavy metal clothes rack on wheels with a row of brand-new, state-of-the-art body-armor vests. At least fifty of them. I take one off the rack and hold it up.
I yell back at Wells, “I’m taking this.”
“Fine. Go.” Then, “Wait. One thing.”
“What?”
“Stop calling me Tex. I’m from Sparks, Nevada.”
“You know the only thing worse than a Texan?”
“What?”
“A pretend Texan.”
“Be back before ten or we go without you.”
THE KISSI ARE still nowhere to be seen. Something is definitely up. I look out the Jag’s window at a couple waiting at a red light, not talking to each other, glaring off in different directions about a stupid fight they just had. A couple of kids in front of a newsstand are picking on another kid. Teen gangsters in training hang on a corner by a liquor store passing a joint around. I want to lean out the window and tell them that world is about to end and they should get their shit together, but why bother?
Does anyone really know what goes on in the world? I used to think these people were a joke because they only believed in their concrete reality and never dreamed of looking below the surface of the world. Most of them, even if they ran face-first into a bunch of Sub Rosa nec-romancing John the Baptist, Billie Holiday, and Wild Bill back from the dead, they’d never believe or understand it.
I don’t understand anything, either. My brain is bouncing back and forth between asking why Mason wants to open up Hell and wondering if that’s what’s really going on at all. It seems like opening Hell, or pretending to open it, might be a nice distraction. While everyone’s looking one way, he does a slip and slide around back and pulls something else. But what?
Mostly, I’m trying not to think at all. I’m never going to get inside Mason’s head. I might have been born a better magician, but he’s always been smarter. That’s why he’s going to end up running the carnival and I’m going to end up biting the heads off chickens. But that’s thinking, too. I want silence. Big, blank, Zen silence. I need to get back to that calm quiet moment I’d have before I went into the arena. No thought. No action. Thought and action as one. I control my breathing and focus on the road ahead. I can feel the calm coming on.
That’s when the siren starts and the light bar pops behind me. Colored lights reflect off the rearview mirror and right into my eyes. A cop’s garbled, amplified voice echoes off the glass buildings. I can’t understand a word, but I know how to translate this cop haiku: You’re driving around in the same stolen Jag you should have ditched an hour ago. It’s not like there aren’t other cars in L.A. to steal. But you started thinking and you got distracted and now look what’s happened.
This is really the last thing I need right now. I wonder if they’ll let me off with a warning if I tell them I’m going to be trying to save the world later tonight?
The cop voice booms again. They hit me from behind with their searchlight. About a billion candlepower. I stop the car and put it in park.
Thanks for the shadow, Dick Tracy. It’s a tight fit, but I can just slip through. I drag the body armor in behind me. I hope that one of the cops sneaks up on the driver’s side window in time to see my feet disappear into the dashboard.
I step out into the lobby of the Bradbury Building. The place is dark. Shut down tight. I get into the elevator hoping they haven’t cut the power over the holiday. I hit the button. The car shivers and rises, and I can breathe again.
It goes up a floor and stops. I press the one and three buttons at the same time and the car starts moving. I get out when it stops, not sure I did it right. Then the Fury in Muninn’s window lunges at me from inside its glass cage. I blow her a kiss, go inside, bump my way through the clutter, and head straight down the stairs in back.
Muninn is waiting for me at the bottom.
“My boy! I heard the bell and wondered who’d be coming here tonight. This is usually a quiet evening for me.”
“Sorry if I’m keeping you from a party or something.” Muninn laughs.
“My boy, when you’ve seen as many new years as I have, the last thing you want to do is throw a party for the damned thing.”
He takes me by the arm and leads me to a table covered with neatly laid out groups of bones. Fingers. Toes. A whole hand or foot.
“Relics,” he says. “Each bone and appendage belonged to one saint or another. I have a client who wants to build a summer home in the form of a sort of ossuary. But only with the bones of saints. No commoners allowed. As you might imagine, that takes quite a lot of bones. I’m just cataloging this batch tonight.”
He goes to a shelf and takes down the same dusty bottle we drank from after Vidocq and I got back from Avila. He gets two small glasses and pours us each a drink.
“Thanks,” I say, and shotgun it. “I’m in kind of a rush tonight.”
“Of course. Sorry,” he says. “Just because I ignore the new year doesn’t mean you do. My apologies.”
“No problem.” I clear my throat. “Mr. Muninn. I want to make a deal with you. A big one.”
“I’m always open to a good trade. What would you like?”
“It’s not what I want. It’s what you want. You’re going to want this.” I reach under my shirt and take off the coin. I set it on the table and push it toward him. Muninn looks at it without touching it.
“Is that a Veritas?”
“Straight from a Hellion general’s pocket.”
“You’ve had it all this time?”
“I brought it back with me.”
“My boy, I could have made you a very rich man by now, if I’d known that. Does it work?”
“Like a charm. Take it for a test drive.”
“You’re the experienced one. What’s the proper way?”
“There’s no trick to it. Just hold it and ask your question. Say it in your head, not out loud. Saying it out loud won’t ruin the magic. Just makes you sound like a mental patient.”
Muninn picks up the Veritas slowly, like it might shock him. He makes a fist and closes his eyes. A moment later, he opens his hand and laughs at what he sees.
“Well?”
“I asked if buying it would be a good deal. It presented me with a lovely view of Abaddon’s bottomless pit, lit in such way as to look like a large, not terribly clean sphincter. Along with that is a message on one side of the coin telling me that I’m an impotent, flatulent, fat, old fuck, and on the other side, telling me that it’s a good investment only if I like having hot coals shoved down my throat by Hellion cocks.”
“What do you think?”
“I think it’s brilliant. I must have it. What do you want for it? Money? I know you like money. I’ll give you a lot for this. Enough for this lifetime and for your children’s children.”
“No. This is too big for money. I want something special for the Veritas. Something cool. Something apocalyptic.”
Mr. Muninn smiles at me like he might end up celebrating New Year’s after all.
HAVING LEARNED MY lesson with the Jag, I go through the room to Max Overdrive. Upstairs, I toss the bedroom like a nervous B&E guy, shoving broken furniture and video players against the walls. It’s nice to be strong at moments like this. I shove the bed frame and all the furniture into one corner of the room without breaking a sweat. Eventually, when I’ve tossed enough junk into enough piles, I’ve found all my guns. Then the bullets and shells. Then the bottle of Spiritus Dei. I guess the stuff really is as magical as Vidocq said. The bottle is sitting upright and is perfectly clean. Everything else in the room is covered in plaster dust and lying on its side.
The pistols are already loaded with bullets dipped in Spiritus. I go downstairs and find a paint-caked hacksaw in the little storage room b
ehind the porn section. I take it upstairs and start sawing down the Benelli shotgun. Sawing down a simple double-barrel model is easy. You can cut the barrel down all the way to the front of the shell. Turn your long-range shotgun into a short-range blunderbuss. I don’t want to go that far with the Benelli. I just saw off most of the stock, down to the curved part of the grip, so that it fits into my hand like an oversize pistol. I find a ball of heavy twine from under the bootleg table and tie a tight knot around the grip, then tie off a loop so that the gun can hang off my shoulder under my coat. Simple, crude, and deadly. What Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker called a Whip-It gun because you could whip it out from under your coat before anyone knew what was going on.
I’m moving, staying in motion, doing things that feel like they make sense, but how do you accessorize for the end of the world? When you’re not sure what to bring, I figure you should bring everything. Four handguns, a shotgun, a Hellion knife, and the na’at feel like a good look for me.
I dip each shotgun shell into a little Spiritus and chamber it. Eight rounds in all. Then I sprinkle Spiritus on the shotgun itself. Why be stingy? I sprinkle Spiritus on all the guns, keeping my thumb over the top of the bottle to control the flow. I’m Martha Stewart spritzing my orchids. While I’m on a roll, I toss Spiritus onto the body armor and my coat, and wipe the rest on my hands.
Wild Bill might have been the greatest shootist of his time, but he had a habit that’s come back to bite me in the ass. Wild Bill didn’t believe in holsters. He carried his Navy Colts tucked in a red sash he wore around his waist, a fashion back then. I didn’t grow up using holsters, either. It’s easy to tuck one big gun down the back of your jeans, but it’s not so good for four.
Time for a sacrifice. I slit both side pockets on my coat a few inches, long enough so that the Colt .45 and the LeMat can rest inside, but far enough out that I can quick draw them. When I get the cuts the right length, I reinforce the interior and sides of the pockets with duct tape.
This is one of the reasons I’ll never own a car. I’m hard on things. Everything ends up broken, ripped apart, modified, stuck together, or shot to shit. I’d be naked as Adam and cold as a polar bear if it weren’t for duct tape.
If anyone ever asks you what a desperate man looks like, you can tell them that he looks like this: He’s down on his hands and knees, digging through the ruins of his exploded bedroom, looking for a cigarette. If he looks hard enough, he might find a real treasure, like a bent, but only half-smoked butt. I hold it up like the Holy Grail, blow off as much of the dust as I can, and fire it up with Mason’s lighter. Like my grandmother used to say, “I am blessed and highly favored.”
I get out my cell and dial Kinski’s number. Candy answers.
“Are you always the designated phone answerer over there?”
“Stark? Doc doesn’t like phones. He thinks they’re too disembodied.”
“I’d love to be disembodied. All my problems solved at once.”
“Ghosts don’t smoke or get to drink Jack Daniel’s.”
“Forget it, then. I’ll live forever.”
“That’s a better plan than what you had the last time we talked.”
“That’s why I called. I wanted to ask about some of that. I know you’re taking the cure and trying to stay clean and all, but we’re still a lot the same, too. Still monsters under the skin.”
“Why do you want to talk about that?”
“I was wondering if maybe you’d like to go do something with me tonight. Some friends and me, we’re going to crash a New Year’s Eve party and kill a whole bunch of people.”
“Why, Stark. Are you flirting with me? You bad boy.”
“We’re going to stop a mass sacrifice, so there’s going to be a lot of bad guys. I figure that having as many experienced killers as possible will help even out the odds. But it sounded like Doc Kinski’s clipped your wings. You haven’t tasted a human in a long time, have you?”
“Doc makes me this amazing cocktail. My iced frappuccino people substitute, I call it. I haven’t fed on anyone in two years, three months, and eight days.”
“If you’ve ever had the itch, here’s your chance. And this time when you’re killing, you’ll be on the side of the angels. Literally.”
“You sure know how to turn a girl’s head.” She doesn’t say anything for a minute.
“Candy?”
“I’ll have to talk to Doc first. I can’t lie to him.”
“I understand. It’s up to you. My friends and me, we’re going to be at Club Avila a little after ten. You know where that is?”
“Everyone knows where Avila is.”
“This party is going to be special. Assuming the world doesn’t end, no one is ever going to forget it.”
“I’ll try to be there.”
“One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Thanks for treating me like, you know, a person through all this shit. I know that isn’t always easy.”
“You do have a habit of pissing on other people’s welcome mats. But, when a gentleman gives you a booty call to a massacre, it’s easy to forgive him. Ciao.”
I finish my cigarette and start getting ready. I strap on the body armor, which feels tough enough, but closes with Velcro strips. I know this is state-of-the-art gear, but I’d feel more confident if it wasn’t held together with the same stuff they use to fasten kids’ sneakers.
I’m going to feel really bad if this all falls apart tonight. I don’t want the last thing I say to Vidocq and Allegra to be “Get out.”
I tuck the Navy Colt and the Browning into the back of my jeans.
Two more dead like Alice. Two more who don’t deserve it.
The looped cord on the Benelli Whip-It gun goes over my shoulder and the coat goes on over that.
Will Avila be full of Kissi? If that’s who’s waiting for us, this is going to be a very bad, very short night for anything with a pulse.
The Colt .45 and the LeMat pistols go in the coat pockets, butt ends out.
They must be partying hard Downtown tonight, waiting for the velvet rope to come down and the doors to the VIP section of Creation to be blown off their hinges.
What’s going on in Heaven? Are all the ranks of the angelic throng on their knees, praying for humanity’s faith in the Word to pull them through? Me, I bet it’s more like a sports bar the night before the Super Bowl. Crowds of drunken, winged frat boys with team hats and big foam fingers. Maybe that’s why Heaven is silent and God doesn’t speak to Man anymore. Heavenly intervention would blow the point spread.
THERE’S TOO MUCH weird, magic-cloaking static and protection hoodoo around the Vigil’s warehouse. I don’t have time to find a straight path inside through the room, so I have to use a shadow a few blocks south and run the rest of the way.
A line of low-profile, matte-black transports warm up their engines in the parking lot. They’re nearly silent, and where their bodies touch the dark, they disappear. Stealth party vans. If I’d known about these, I wouldn’t have bothered stealing all those cars.
The rear hatch of the lead van is open. Wells motions me over, squinting at me like a constipated Clint Eastwood.
“Why’d I know you were going to cut it short? Two more minutes and we’d have been gone.”
“Your damned Flatulence Accelerator has the whole area fuzzed out. I had to walk halfway here.”
Wells holds up a hand. “Wait. You couldn’t even get here with the pixie hocus pocus you’re going to use to get us into Avila? I am not filled with confidence.”
“Relax. I’ve already broken into Avila. They don’t have anything like your setup.”
“And what if they have? What if they’ve brought in a load of technology and dark magicians?”
“Then we do it your way. Blow the place open. Take heavy losses. Get inside. We’re walking into the O.K. Corral. You want a guarantee that your hair won’t get mussed, Marshal Wells?”
“You get any of my people killed u
nnecessarily, I’m coming after you.”
“Take a number.”
Wells steps up into the transport. I take a quick look around the lot. No sign of Candy. Guess she really has taken the cure.
I get in the transport and squeeze into a seat next to Wells.
THE TRANSPORT MIGHT have been quiet outside, but inside it’s like sitting in a washing machine. None of the Vigil crew is talking. A few are praying, but most probably don’t want to have to shout over the noise.
Wells’s G-men are wrapped up in weird electronics and nylon webbing, and holding strange guns. Some are in aluminum-coated full-body suits like foundry workers. The rest are in black pants and skintight tops that stretch over their heads like balaclavas. The ones not carrying guns are wrapped up in metal exoskeletons like they’re being raped by robots.
I lean over and shout into Wells’s ear.
“Seriously, you people should try to learn just a little magic. I saw celestial types working at your warehouse. They could teach you something. I know you civilians can’t handle any really heavy magic, but maybe you could pick up something useful so you wouldn’t have to dress up like the Terminator’s retarded cousin.”
Wells shouts back, “Learn your kind of magic so I can spend eternity in Hell with people like you? No thanks. I’ll stick to the weapons Heaven’s given us.”
“You’d think if Heaven was that completely on your side, it’d be a little more helpful.”
“Aelita, God’s hand on Earth, is on our side. You’d be able to understand that if you didn’t have a soul dirtier than a hobo’s boxer shorts.”
“All I’m saying is that I don’t trust either side. Heaven just might be hedging its bets.”
“I’m sure that’s what you think, but our weapons have never failed us yet.”
“Suit yourself. But with magic, I don’t ever run out of ammo.”
“No, just brains.”
WE STICK TO backstreets until we get north of the city, then cut overland through the hills and canyons until we cut south near the Stone Canyon reservoir. Come down through Bel Air, paralleling North Beverly Glen Boulevard. The drivers up front wear helmets like fighter pilots, with night vision and heads-up displays. Monitors over our heads show us what they’re seeing. It’s nothing special. Trees as we mow our way through the hills. Flares and pinpoints of light when we come close to a housing development. This is either the worst amusement park ride in history or I’m back in Hell.