“That’s your present. You get to watch.”
“I can see it for free on the Web.”
“I’m better than the Web.”
“I’ll give you that. But you’re still coming out ahead on this deal. Better get me that pointy hat so I won’t feel cheated.”
She takes my hand.
“You got it, Jingles.”
We step into a shadow and come out in the Golden Vigil’s new L.A. headquarters, right off the eight hole of the Wilshire Golf Club. They eminent-domained the place right out from under the blue bloods, paying ten cents on the dollar, for what it’s worth. It’s the first time I ever really respected the Vigil. Marshals and Vigil witch doctors still dress up in pricy sports clothes and play round after round of existential golf on the grounds. No one keeps score, but someone has to be out on the greens keeping up the appearance that the club is still just a place for rich morons to blow an afternoon. Like maybe none of the locals noticed the surplus Iraq War ASVs, enough lab gear to restart the Manhattan Project, and about a hundred blacked-out bulletproof vans sneaking into the club.
A man is waiting for me inside the clubhouse. He’s wearing a black suit and skinny tie, with a flag pin on the lapel. He looks like a mortician’s idea of a high school principal.
U.S. Marshal Larson Wells is God’s own Pinkerton on Earth. The Golden Vigil is Homeland Security’s dirty little secret—an investigation and law enforcement operation for supernatural activity. Which is a nice way of saying they’re dedicated to harassing people like me and pretty much everyone I know. They’re thorough and obsessive. From what I’ve heard, they still have Lucifer on a terrorist watch list with a price on his head.
Wells is a charming piece of work. A Nevada Holy Roller marshal who hates working with me as much as I hate working for him. But we both have a vested interest in stopping the old gods, the Angra Om Ya, from returning and eating the world. Wells has a habit of calling all Sub Rosa and Lurkers “pixies,” which isn’t so bad on its own. It’s just that he says it the way a backwoods redneck says “faggot.” He used to run the Vigil with an angel named Aelita. She’s dead. I didn’t do it, but I would have been happy to.
I’ve been back on the Vigil payroll for a couple of weeks and things are going swell.
“Where is he?” says Wells when he sees me and Candy.
“There was a problem,” I say.
“What kind of problem?”
I hold out the ice chest. Wells’s eyes narrow and he opens the lid an inch before dropping it down again.
“What in all of God’s creation is wrong with you? I sent you on a simple snatch-and-grab. I wanted to question this man. Where’s the rest of him?”
“In a meat locker near Sunset and Echo Park, along with a dozen other dead Angra fans. They built a Sistine Chapel out of body parts in one of the freezers. You might want to send a team over before the cops haul away all the evidence. You can get the GPS off my phone.”
“Don’t move,” says Wells. He pulls out his BlackBerry and thumbs in a text like he wants to punch the keys in the face. When he’s done he sighs and peeks in the cooler again.
“Why did you even bring that thing here? I’m not paying you by the scalp.”
“He didn’t do it,” says Candy. “Well, not all of it. Just the last part to get his head off. The guy did the rest himself.”
Wells turns to Candy. It’s the first time he’s acknowledged her presence.
“It’s truly a comfort knowing that your paramour only partly cut off the head on a key witness in our investigation.”
“Just ’cause he’s dead doesn’t mean we can’t still question him. That’s why he’s on ice,” I say.
“Go on.”
“There’s this ritual I know. It’s messy, but if I do it right, I can catch his soul before he goes into the afterlife.”
“And how pray tell does the ritual work?”
“First I have to die a little.”
Wells puts up his hands and claps once.
“Well, isn’t that peachy? Another death today? And a suicide? Right here in Vigil headquarters? I can’t see Washington minding that at all. Please go ahead.”
“It isn’t technically suicide because I’m only partway dead and only for a little while.”
“Good, because suicide is a sin, this is consecrated ground, and I’ve already broken enough commandments just letting you in here.”
I hand Candy the cooler and go up to Wells.
“You came to me for help, remember? You know what I do and how I work. Anytime you don’t want me around I’m gone. But when I leave, the Magic 8 Ball comes with me.”
“So you can lose the weapon again? How about you clean up this mess before you go causing another?”
“Fine. Get me a room where I can do the ritual. Preferably somewhere quiet and private. There’s going to be some blood.”
“More good news,” he says. “Come with me. I wanted you to see this anyway. It’s one of the old club offices. We’ve turned it into a kind of lab so you pixies can do magic or whatever without contaminating or scaring the bejesus out of the newer agents.”
“They sound a little too sensitive to be cops.”
“Don’t bad-mouth my people. None of them’s ever come back with a head in a box.”
“Maybe you didn’t ask nice enough.”
Wells leads us through the place. The building is swarming with agents. Some in dark suits like Wells’s. Some in lab coats.
The building doesn’t resemble much of a country club anymore. They’ve knocked down walls and torn out floors and ceilings to bring in their special tech. I never had much use for the stuff, but I guess it suits whatever most of them do. The tech is a mix of hush-hush black budget science-fiction toys crossed with angelic hoodoo they used to get from Aelita. I don’t know what they’re doing for it now. Maybe they have another angel on the payroll. They sure can’t ask me for help. I’m a nephilim. Half human, half angel. And I worked hard to get the angel part of me under control. The little prick is a boy scout and a bore. I’m not bringing him out again just to sup up some laptops and ray guns.
Wells leads us into what used to be one of the business offices. Now the windows have been blacked out and it’s been turned into an occult space. A place where disreputable pixies like me can perform forbidden rites and magical high jinks.
Candy sets the cooler down on a worktable piled high with old books and manuscripts.
“What do you think? Looks like you finally got your hoodoo man-cave.”
“I’ve seen the Vigil do worse. At least they’re admitting that they need something more than angelic halo polishers on their side.”
Candy flips through the old books, looking for wood prints of medieval monsters, one of her favorite things. I look around.
There are lab coats, aprons, gloves, and eye protection by the door. Dry-erase boards mounted along one wall covered in English and angelic script. A few Angra runes too. There’s what looks like an alchemy setup in the corner, with test tubes, burners, alembics, and enough herbs, elixirs, and powders to build a hedge maze. Some clever boots has installed a silver magic circle in the floor. A massive crucifix is bolted to the back of the door. A rube’s talisman designed to keep our unholy magic from contaminating the rest of the Vigil’s headquarters. Same as always. They need us hoodoo types, but they never let us forget that we belong in the back of the bus.
“What’s that?” says Candy.
Back by the plants and lab gear is a broken-down Japanese shrine, just big enough to hold a wizened old body. The coffin-size shrine and mummy look hundreds of years old. The body sits cross-legged in a meditation pose. It’s dressed in gold ceremonial robes and a conical monk’s hat, so someone is looking after it. Paper-thin flesh stretches over delicate bones. It almost looks polished. L
ike the body isn’t a mummy at all, but a statue carved from lacquered wood. There are offerings of mochi, an orange, and incense at the foot of the shrine.
I go over and touch the dried, worm-eaten word on the top of the shrine.
“Don’t know. It looks like Norman Bates’s prom date.”
Wells comes in and sees me.
“Don’t touch that,” he barks.
“What’s the deal with Skeletor here?”
With a creak, the mummy turns its head.
“Me? What’s the deal with you, fatty?”
Slowly, the mummy monk unfolds its arms and legs. It’s so slow and delicate, it looks like a giant stick insect waking up.
I take a few steps back. Candy comes around the table and stands beside me, holding on to my arm. Not out of fright but in a “Holy shit can you believe this shit?” way.
Finally, the mummy is standing. The golden robes hang off him like a layer of extra flesh. He stands up straight, puts out his arms, and stretches.
“Nice nap,” he says, then looks back at me. “You’re the one I’ve heard so much about. You been running around shooting more people, fatso?”
Dead man or not, Candy steps up.
“Don’t call him names, you bony bastard. He’s skinny as a rail.”
The mummy waves a dismissive hand at her.
“You need glasses.”
“That’s a holy man, young lady,” says Wells. “You do not speak to him like that.”
“Then he shouldn’t call people names,” she says.
“Stark, let me introduce you to Ishiro Shonin.”
Before Candy can start arguing with Wells, I go over to the mummy, hoping this is all some kind of hazing ritual.
“What’s your story, dead man? I hear you speaking English, but your mouth is doing something else.”
He shuffles to the table with the herbs and lab equipment. Drinks something green from an Erlenmeyer flask.
“Ah,” he says when he’s done. “You have good eyes for a fool. I speak how I like and you hear how you like. Same thing for me. I hear you, so you make sense. Not that someone like you makes much sense.”
“I bet you wow them on talent night at the morgue. Do you do balloon animals too?”
“Fat, and ugly too. Not much for someone like you out in the world, is there? You have to hide and consort with the dead like me.”
“Speaking of the dead, why don’t you get more shut-eye? I need to talk to a dead man before he’s gone completely. You have any crow feathers around here?”
Ishiro Shonin glances over at the ice chest. I don’t have to tell him what’s in there.
“How are you going to talk to him?”
“A messy ritual. But effective. It’s the Metatron’s Cube Communion.”
The Shonin nods.
“That’s why you want crow feathers. You lie down with the dead man and slash your wrists. Lots of blood and all that? Of course you’d choose that one.”
“I’ve used it before. It’s goddamn effective.”
“Watch the blasphemy,” says Wells.
“You like the Cube Communion because you’re in love with death,” says the Shonin. “You die a little and come back. Cheat death over and over like a bad boyfriend kissing another girl.” He looks at Candy. “Is he a bad boyfriend?”
“No. He’s great.”
“Then you shouldn’t let him be so stupid.”
I say, “So what do you suggest?”
The Shonin pokes around the table of herbs with the black bony fingers. Picks up a furry twig dotted with small yellow blossoms.
“Dream tea. I learned it from a moon spirit. You probably don’t believe that kind of thing, but it’s true.”
“Me? I believe in everything. How does it work?”
“You make a tea. You meditate. You enter the spirit realm and find your man before he drifts away. That okay with you, fatty?”
“Great. Brew some up. I’ll try it.”
“You know how to meditate?”
“Everyone in L.A. knows how to meditate.”
The Shonin looks as doubtful as a skeleton can. He puts water on a small flame to boil. Drops the twig into the pot.
“I should do it. I have more experience,” says the Shonin.
“And I have trust issues. I’ll do it.”
“If you get lost and can’t come back, don’t blame me.”
“If I get stuck because of your hoodoo juice, my ghost is going to come back and shit in your skull.”
The Shonin shakes his head. It sounds like twigs cracking.
“No reasoning with some people.”
“Amen to that,” says Wells.
Candy says, “You’re really going to drink that stuff?”
I take off my wet coat and throw it over the back of a chair.
“If I don’t have to slice and dice myself, I’m willing to try it. Wells won’t let him kill me, will you, Wells? I’m the only one with experience handling the 8 Ball.”
“So far,” says Wells. “But there’s always tomorrow.”
“Maybe not too many,” says Candy. “You might want to remember that.”
The Shonin takes the tea off the burner and pours a brown mess into a small ceramic cup.
“The girl . . .”
“Candy,” she says.
The Shonin looks at her.
“Your name is food? How about I call you Banana Split or Hot Dog?”
Candy turns Jade for a second. Her eyes go black, with pinpoints of red at the center. Her teeth are as sharp as a shark with a switchblade.
“Why don’t you just do that?”
The Shonin looks at Wells.
“What the hell kind of a place do you run here? You bring me a fatty and a demon to work with? I didn’t meditate in a hole in the ground for four hundred years for this crap.”
Candy goes back to her human face and I touch her shoulder on the way to the cooler. She doesn’t take shit from anyone. It’s one of the reasons we get along.
I take the dead man’s head from the cooler and sit facing it in the silver circle on the floor. I take the Colt from my waistband and hand it to Candy. She snatches the tea out of the Shonin’s hand and brings it to me.
“Thanks.”
“Now I have both of our guns. If anything weird happens here, I’m shooting these two first.”
“Please do.”
I look at the Shonin.
“I’d still like that crow feather.”
He goes to the herb table and pulls a feather from a bundle wrapped in twine. Candy takes it from him and brings it to me. This isn’t like the old days. I’m still getting used to having someone watch my back. It’s an okay feeling.
“Thanks, baby.”
I throw back the cup of tea. It tastes like hot swamp water filtered through a baboon’s ass.
“Okay,” the Shonin says. “Now you meditate. You need a zafu to sit on? What kind of meditation do you do?”
I pull a flask from my back pocket.
“The liquid kind,” I say, unscrewing the top and downing a long drink of Aqua Regia, the number one booze in Hell. It goes down like gasoline and hot pepper and washes the taste of baboon out of my mouth.
The Shonin says, “Drink all you want, dummy. You won’t find God in a bottle.”
“I already found God,” I say. “That’s why I drink.”
I hand Candy the flask and she takes a quick gulp before putting it in her pocket. I’m used to Aqua Regia’s kick, but down enough at once and it’s going to turn anyone’s cerebral cortex into chocolate pudding. I let it and the tea do their work. They fight it out in my stomach. The Hellion hoodoo wrestling whatever kind of magic Mr. Bones uses. My stomach cramps and for a few seconds I want to throw up. But I hold on a
nd the feeling passes. The room gets thin, like it’s made of black gauze. I put the crow feather between my teeth just as I fall out of myself.
I’m standing on an alkali plain stretching out flat and cracked in all directions. In the far distance is a shaft of light, but it never moves. The sky is dim, like just before sunrise or after sunset. Flip a coin to decide. The air is thick and hard to breathe. I wouldn’t want to have to run a marathon here.
The dead man wanders around shivering. Probably from being on ice for so long. I’m glad it worked and I didn’t have to come halfway to Hell for nothing.
The dead man stumbles back a couple of steps when he sees me. A second later he recognizes me and starts over, a little cautious.
I say, “Joseph Hobaica.”
He stops.
“How do you know my name?”
“We’re standing in fuckall limbo and that’s your first question? It’s just a little trick I can do.”
He looks around, hands across his chest, holding on to his shoulders, shaking.
“Where are we?”
“I just told you. Limbo. Halfway between Hell and Heaven. You’re dead. Remember?”
His face changes. Things start coming back to him. Death can be a real kick in the ass, especially a death like Hobaica’s. Sometimes it takes awhile for spirits to come back to themselves.
“This isn’t right,” he says. “This isn’t where I should be. Where’s the Flayed Heart?”
Now we’re getting somewhere.
“I know that name. It’s a nickname for one of the Angra Om Ya. A big goddamn carnivorous flower. Her real name is Zhuyigdanatha, right?”
He drops his hands to his sides. Narrows his eyes at me.
“You know nothing about the Flayed Heart.”
“I know it’s easier to say than Zhuyig-fucking-danatha.”
“Don’t blaspheme her name.”
“You can knock that off right now. I’ve already got one schoolmarm worrying about my language. I don’t need two.”
Hobaica turns in a dazed circle.
“I don’t understand. Where’s the fire? Why is my body still intact?”
“Maybe you blew your ritual. Remember that? It’s where we met.”
“You were the witness to our sacrifice. An ordinary, mortal man shattered by such a holy rite was our way to paradise.”