Tuatha says, “You saved me once. You can do it again.”
“Why not? There’s not much else to do in L.A. these days.”
Blackburn and Tuatha shake my hand and a second later I’m back in front of the ruined building with the moist, surly guards.
I head for the bike, but Ishii gets in front and stops me.
“Just a minute,” he says, and we stand there in the rain like a couple of dummies.
“Are we waiting for something?”
“A phone call,” he says. “Telling me you misbehaved.”
“I was a perfect gentleman. Freddie Bartholomew in Little Lord Fauntleroy.”
He keeps his hand up between us.
“We’ll know in a few seconds,” he says.
His crew stays put, trying to keep out of the rain, but ready to move when the ringmaster says “jump.”
Ishii’s phone doesn’t ring. He looks more disappointed than a tiger at a vegan luau.
He hooks a thumb over his shoulder.
“You know, one of these times you’re going to show up and there’s going to be an accident,” he says. “It won’t be anyone’s fault. Shit just happens sometimes, right?”
I get on the Hellion hog and kick it into life. It roars and the water around us steams.
“You’re right,” I say. “Here’s some shit that just happened. Your boss offered me your job.”
I pop the clutch and haul out of there before Ishii can say or, more importantly, do, anything.
It’s nice to be wanted, but it’s unsettling to see the boss of bosses rattled. As much as the mansion-on-the-hill crowd bugs me, it’s weird seeing them actually scared. You want them dumb and arrogant. When they’re scared it means that however bad you thought things were, they’re worse.
I TAKE BACK streets all the way home. A lot of street- and stoplights are out, drowned in the endless rain. Whole neighborhoods—almost the entire length of Franklin Street—are dark. No lights on in the houses. No cars on the street or in driveways. The city really is emptying its guts onto the freeways. I wonder how many of us there will be left in the end. And who’s going to be top of the food chain? Civilians, Sub Rosas, or Lurkers? I can deal with any kind of supernatural asshole playing King of the Hill, but civilians make me nervous. In times of stress they tend to grab pitchforks and torches. I don’t know how many staying behind even know about L.A.’s hoodoo world, but based on history, I hope it’s not many.
When I get to Max Overdrive, I park the Hellion hog around the side and let it sit for a while to cool off. If I throw the cover on now, it’s likely to melt.
As I walk inside, I’m hit with a blast of noise that makes my ears ring. It’s like a 747 having rough sex with a skyscraper on a pile of exploding transformers. The sound doesn’t let up, but settles into a steady beat. Steady enough that I can identify it as a warped version of a song. “Ace of Spades.” Candy is practicing guitar again.
“Tell me again why we built her a soundproof practice room?” says Kasabian. He’d like to stick his fingers in his ears, but they’re modified hellhound paws and ungraceful enough he’d probably put an eye out if he got them near his head.
“The practice room is to make us grateful for all the times she doesn’t do this.”
I go upstairs and open the door to our rooms. The sound is like getting punched in the chest. I hold up my hands in a T time-out signal. She smiles at me like a demented eight-year-old.
“It sounds great up here, doesn’t it?” she says.
“It’s beautiful. Angel choirs and demon songs. Now please go and play in the practice room. If I hear much more of this gorgeousness it will spoil me for all other music forever.”
She screws up her mouth into a half sneer.
“You’re weak, old man. And you’re dripping all over the floor.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” I say.
She unplugs her guitar and amp. Picks up both.
“You’re off the guest list for our first show.”
“Then it won’t be the first show I’ve crashed. I know all the back exits and kitchen doors on the Strip.”
She comes over and stands on her toes.
“Kiss me and I won’t hate you forever for being such a noise wimp.”
I lean down and we kiss. She head-butts me lightly when we stop.
“Nope. I still hate you. You’ll have to make it up to me later.”
“How?”
“Be sure to lock the door tonight. We’re going to play the Cowboy and the Duchess.”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“You will,” she says. “And I make no promises that you’ll be the cowboy.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
I get out of my wet clothes and leave them to dry in the bathtub. Pull on some dry jeans and a moth-eaten Max Overdrive T-shirt and go downstairs.
“Thank you,” says Kasabian.
“If I’m the Duchess later, you’re going to owe me.”
“What?”
“Nothing. What’s that you’ve got?”
He holds up a disc and wiggles it.
“Your witch stopped by with a new movie. The full eight-hour version of von Stroheim’s Greed. Before us, only twelve people ever saw the uncut film. We can be the thirteenth and fourteenth.”
“I like a lot of odd stuff, but even I think eight hours of Teutonic existential grimness sounds awful.”
Kasabian shakes his head.
“Pussy.”
“Everyone is calling me names tonight.”
Kasabian sets down the disc and puts a copy of Hitchcock’s lost flick, The Mountain Eagle, back on the shelf.
“People keep asking about buying copies of the discs,” Kasabian says.
“Selling isn’t part of the business plan. We’re strictly a rental operation.”
“That’s what I keep telling them. But those vampires can get scary insistent.”
“Tell them to come and talk to me,” I say. “Besides, what can a vampire do to you? I mean, do you even have blood anymore?”
He looks hurt.
“Watch the language. I’m just starting to feel good about this body and you go and bring that up.”
“Relax. We’ve both been dead. It’s no big deal.”
“Says the guy with the hot girlfriend and a body still made of meat. You think sweat stains are hard to get out of clothes? Try machine oil.”
“Anytime you want to go back on your magic skateboard, I’ve got it for you in a closet upstairs.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Candy uses it to do her paper rounds.”
Kasabian pulls a beer from behind the counter and twists the cap off. I’ve talked to him about drinking in front of customers, but he’s just one more person around here who doesn’t listen to me.
“You two are so domestic these days it’s sickening.”
“You should get out more, or at all,” I say. “You’ll meet someone nice and we’ll have little puppy hellhounds running around the place.”
“Speaking of shit that’s never going to happen, guess who just showed up in Hell?”
“Who?”
“Chaya, the long lost God brother. He doesn’t look too good. Like he booked a long weekend in an ass-kicking machine. You should go down and check it out.”
“You just want me to do your swami work for you.”
“We need the money, genius.”
“I’m sick of talking about money.”
“That’s what people with no money say.”
I want to say something. About an incident that’s bothered me for almost a year. Even thinking about it makes me angry and ashamed. Angry she got killed and ashamed I couldn’t do anything about it.
; “I’ll make you a deal,” I say. “There’s a green-haired girl in Hell somewhere. Find her for me.”
“A green-haired girl? Sure. There can’t be more than a million of those.”
“She used to work at Donut Universe. I never told anyone, but I found her name in an online obit. Cindil Ashley. Find her and I’ll do your job.”
Kasabian waggles an eyebrow at me.
“An old love? You sly thing.”
“You do not even want to begin joking about this,” I say. “She was murdered by the Kissi right in front of me. If they weren’t dead, I’d kill them all over again for it.”
The Kissi were a race of mad, malformed angels that lived in the chaos at the edge of the universe. They’re gone now, but before they went, they killed a lot of innocent civilians. When I lost an arm in Hell, the Kissi marked me by replacing my normal arm with a Kissi one. Now I wear a glove on my left hand to hide it from people.
Kasabian holds up his metal hellhound hands in a “calm down” gesture.
“It’s cool. Sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Now you do. Find her for me.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
There’s a knock at the front door. I open it. A blond Ludere girl comes in. She’s all wet and all smiles. It’s Fairuza, Candy’s drummer.
“Hey, Stark. Hey, Kasabian,” she says.
Kasabian hides his beer. I’ve never seen him do that before. But I’ve never seen him around Fairuza.
“How are you doing?” he says.
“Great. Thanks for the movie. It was cool. I never thought I’d like a silent flick.”
She hands him a copy of Metropolis.
“You said you liked sci-fi, so I figured.”
“Good choice. You have anything more like it?”
“Are you kidding? We specialize in shit . . . stuff . . . no one’s seen. Let me dig around and see what I can come up with.”
“Cool. Thanks.”
“I don’t know how you watch your movies. Lots of people do it on computers these days . . .”
“Yeah. That’s me.”
“Well, if you ever want to see something like it’s supposed to be seen, a good screen and sound,” he says. Then stops. When he starts up again he speaks in a rush. “I have a real good setup in my place. If you ever, you know.”
She hesitates.
“I like to eat Chinese food when I watch movies. Do you, I don’t mean this in a bad way, eat?”
“Sure. All the time. Ask him,” he says.
I nod.
“He’s a great white shark. Nature’s perfect eating machine.”
Fairuza shrugs.
“Sure. Why not? Find me something good and it’s a date.”
“Okay. Great,” he says.
Candy starts torturing “Ace of Spades” again in the practice room. Fairuza points.
“That’s my cue,” she says.
“I’ll have something for you when you’re done,” says Kasabian.
She smiles.
“Impress me.”
He nods and she goes into the room.
I say, “I believe you have a date.”
“Now all I have to do is find something dazzling.”
“I don’t think you know her well enough for 2001 or Zardoz. One’s too weird and one’s too slow.”
“Yeah. Those are second-date movies.”
“Third.”
“You think?”
“At least.”
“She means it, right? Like, you don’t think she just said that to make fun of me?”
“I don’t think Candy hangs out with people like that. She knows killers, but not mean girls.”
“Okay. Now I just have to find something. The Fifth Element?”
“That could be a first-date movie.”
“Okay,” he says, taking out his beer and finishing it in one go.
“You keep saying ‘okay.’ ”
“Do I?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
Drums come through the wall, mixing with the wailing guitar.
“Good luck,” I say. “I’m going to Bamboo House.”
“Okay.”
A LITTLE HUNG over, I head to the Vigil the next afternoon.
Outside, I stop with the other smoking fed delinquents and light up a Malediction. A grounds-keeping crew is running an industrial mower over the golf course, convincing absolutely no one that life goes as usual in the country club. How are they trying to fool with this shit? Is there anyone left in the neighborhood? These were high-toned families. Old money on the skids and new money on the way up, but all with enough resources to be among the first to blow town when the skies opened up.
Maybe the Vigil is keeping up the charade in case they get buzzed by enemy drones. Only who’s using drones over L.A. anymore? Not the Angra. Maybe al-Qaeda is in cahoots with the old Gods. Why not? We don’t look much like winners down here.
Inside Vigil headquarters is like the outside. Busy. Busy. Busy. Feds in suits and others in their golf togs disguises hustle from meetings with tablets under their arms. Others unpack and test angelic Vigil tech freshly shipped in from Washington. Maintenance crews swab the walls and floors. In the constant damp, mildew turns up here like anywhere else and the wet fouls some of the gear.
A group of Dreamers sits around a long plastic table in a break room. There’s a crèche and a little aluminum Christmas tree by the microwave. The Dreamers seem tired and a little hung over themselves. Looks like holding reality together is a bad career choice these days. Keitu Brown is there with her parents. Ten years old, she’s the leader of the bunch. Kids are always the strongest Dreamers. I met her once through Patty Templeton, a dead Dreamer I didn’t do a very good job of protecting. Keitu gives me a little wave. I wave back. Dad gives me a look and puts his arm around his daughter’s shoulder. I keep moving.
The door to the Shonin’s magic room is locked and there’s something new on the wall. A key pad and a box the size of an old PC, with a glass plate on the front.
There’s a shade over the door to the Shonin’s room, so I can’t see if anyone is in there. I bang on the glass. A few seconds later an intercom crackles.
“Put your hand on the scanner, fatso.”
I push the key on the intercom.
“The glass plate on the front?”
“No. The one sticking out of my ass, stupid.”
I touch the plate and the panel lights up. I feel a gentle vibration as a light inside runs across my hand. A second later, a panel above the scanner lights up.
ENTRY.
The door buzzes. I push and it opens. I’m pissed off until I get inside and see why they put on the extra security.
The Qomrama Om Ya sits in the far corner of the room. It floats, suspended in a magnetic field, spinning slowly, changing shape as it moves.
“You’re in the big time now,” says the Shonin.
“I wasn’t before?”
“Bigger. You get to play with the expensive toys.”
“I found the damned toy.”
“Yeah, but you gave it to the Vigil, so it’s here’s now, isn’t it?”
The fucker is right. I did give it to them. And I guess it’s as safe here as anywhere on Earth. And if I hid it in the Room, where no one could get at it, we’d never figure out how to use it.
The Shonin comes over to where I’m standing and looks at the 8 Ball.
I say, “How did the Vigil get my prints?”
“Have you ever touched anything?”
“Here?”
“Anywhere.”
“I see your point.”
The Shonin goes back to his worktable, piled high musty books marked with highlighters and Post-its. There’s an old
box on the table with about a hundred little cubbyholes, each holding a potion in a small vial. If Vidocq was here he could probably tell me what they were. Maybe the bag of bones gets tuckered out and needs mummy Adderall to study for his finals.
“I have a present for you,” I say, and hand the Shonin the dead Goth kid’s phone.
“I already have an iPhone. And this piece of shit is cracked,” he says.
“Fuck you. I got this off a dead kid. He was possessed and I got a call from some really annoying people in Hell on it. I thought maybe you could do some hoodoo on it and learn something.”
He looks at the phone. Presses it to his chest like he’s listening for something.
“I hate this kind of technology. Old stuff. Wood. Fabric. Stone. Metal. It holds pieces of the spirits that move through it. This stuff,” he says, tossing the phone onto the table with his books. “This stuff is empty. It beeps. It plays music. But it has no life.”
“Can you do anything with it?”
“Me? No. But maybe one of Wells’s machine fuckers. Boys and girls love staring at the screens. They think I don’t see them jerking around, playing World of Warcraft. Planning attacks when they should be saving the world.”
“Everyone needs to blow off steam.”
I can’t believe I have to defend federal geeks to a dead man.
“Tell it to Lamia or Zhuyigdanatha. Think they’re blowing off steam?”
The Shonin stops for a second. Stares off into space, then grabs a pen and scribbles something on a yellow legal pad.
“That reminds me. The kid said something about the ‘Hand.’ He said something like he’s many-handed. A hand for every soul on Earth.”
The Shonin nods and goes to a whiteboard. The names of the thirteen Angra are written there. He puts a check mark next to a name I’ve never seen before.
“His name is Akkadu. The Hand. Dumb as monkey shit. An enforcer.”
“It was just the kid talking. I didn’t see any Angra and the kid wasn’t any more or less powerful than other possessed people. He was just a vessel for whoever has the possession key in Hell.”
The Shonin writes Hellions on one corner of the whiteboard.
“What did the phone caller say?”
“Just what you think. Give us the 8 Ball. Resistance is futile. Help us destroy the universe because we’re bummed and daddy’s a drunk.”