Читать книгу Sandman Slim - Richard Kadrey - Страница 8

I SNAP AWAKE at the sound of the door slamming downstairs. I sit up, relieved that the pain in my ribs is gone. The good feeling is short-lived, however, when I realize that the room looks like a bad night in a slaughterhouse. The bloody jacket and shirt are still on the floor where I dropped them. I’m covered in dried blood, a lot of which I’ve managed to smear in a crimson Rorschach blot all over the bed while I was asleep.

I toss the jacket and shirt onto the dirty sheet, pull it off the bed and onto the floor. In the bathroom, I use up most of a roll of paper towels scrubbing the blood off me. The bullet wounds are just black welts surrounded by psychedelic-blue-and-purple bruises. If I twist the right way, I can feel the .45 slugs nestled inside me, like marshmallows in Jell-O salad. I’ll probably have to do something about getting them out, at some point, but not now.

The wet paper towels I toss on the sheet with the bloody clothes. In a little storage cabinet under the sink, I find a roll of black plastic garbage bags. Tear one off and stuff the bloody remains of last night’s square dance inside.

It hits me then that I still have a problem. I’ve just thrown away half of my clothes, leaving me with nothing to wear but taped-together boots and scorched jeans, which are starting to crack and come apart in places. For a second, I consider stealing the shirt off Kasabian’s body, but that’s too disgusting even for me. Plus, opening the closet door will just start his head screaming again.

I toss the room, tearing open boxes, looking for a lost and found or something one of the college kids might have left behind. I hit the jackpot—a whole box of store T-shirts is stuffed in the back, under the worktable. The shirts are black, with MAX OVERDRIVE VIDEO printed in big white letters on the back. Printed on the front is a fake store name tag that says Hi. My name is Max. Cute.

I stand by the door for a second, listening to Allegra move around downstairs. I can almost see her in my mind’s eye. She’s young. Bored and annoyed at having to open the store so soon after Christmas. I get a sense of brains and something else. Something she’s trying not to think about as she straightens the shelves and counts the cash in the till. Quietly, I open the door and start down the stairs, then turn around and go right back up. The .45 and Brad Pitt’s stun gun are lying on the floor. I stuff them under the mattress, then head back down.

Allegra is by the door, backlit by the light through the window. She looks to be not much older than I was when I was carried off to Oz. Maybe old enough to drink. Maybe not. She doesn’t wear much makeup. Black around her eyes. Gloss on her lips. She’s thin, with darkish café au lait skin. She’d look like Foxy Brown’s little sister, except her head is shaved smooth. Her coat and skirt are thrift store hand-me-downs, but her boots look expensive. An art school girl with priorities.

She looks up as I unlock the chain at the bottom of the stairs.

“Morning. You must be Allegra.”

Her head snaps up in my direction. “Who are you? Where’s Mr. Kasabian?”

“Kasabian had to leave town. Some kind of family crisis. I’m an old friend. I’ll be in charge of the place while he’s gone.”

That wasn’t the right thing to say. Allegra is angry. She tries to hide it with surprise, but doesn’t pull it off.

“Really?” she asks. “Have you run a video store before?”

“No.”

“Ever run any kind of retail operation?”

I come up front and lean on the counter, checking the floor for blood as I go. Only a few drops that I can spot. I tend not to bleed for very long, and it looks like Brad Pitt’s clothes soaked up most of what leaked out of me.

“Let me clarify. When I say I’ll be in charge, that doesn’t mean I’m going to actually be doing anything. I’ll mostly be gone or working upstairs.”

“Ah,” she says, even colder than before. She knows exactly what Kasabian does up there and she doesn’t approve. An L.A. girl with a conscience. They’re about as rare as unicorns.

“Not doing anything is Mr. Kasabian’s management style, too. You’ll fit right in.” Her heartbeat kicks up and her pupils dilate. Why the hell am I noticing these things?

She frowns, looks down, then up at me. “Please, don’t tell him I said that.”

“Your secret is safe with me.”

Her breathing slows. She relaxes, just a hair. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“What the hell is wrong with your clothes?”

“Yeah. I had a little accident coming into town,” I say, giving her a sheepish grin. It’s a look that girls used to like when I was young and not entirely unhandsome. Talking to a cute human girl that I might have flirted with in my former life, I forget for a second that I’m no longer young or handsome. I shift to what I hope is a more neutral expression.

“I might need to pick up some new things. What do you think?”

“Don’t bother. I hear that arson is the new black.” She crosses her arms, giving me her best defiant look.

“Stark.”

“Stark. Just the one name then, like Madonna?”

“Or Cher.”

“Okay, Mr. Stark …”

“Stark. No ‘mister.’ Just Stark.”

“Okay, Just Stark. Here’s the thing—I quit. I can run this place in my sleep, but Mr. Kasabian obviously doesn’t trust me enough, so he brings in some, if you’ll excuse me, thug buddy to keep an eye on me? No fucking thanks.”

“The last thing I’m here to do is keep an eye on you. The truth is, I don’t have any place to stay and Kasabian told me I could crash upstairs. The running-the-shop thing is purely honorary. As far as I’m concerned, you’re in charge. Run the place any way you like.”

“You still look like somebody I probably shouldn’t know.”

“Yeah, you said that.” I take a step toward her, waiting to see if she’ll take a step back. She doesn’t. Nervous, but brave. I like her already. “Listen, a thug is someone who’s out for no one but himself. Me? I take care of my friends.” Alice’s face flashes in my brain, a reminder of how empty a promise like that can be. Good intentions and a dime won’t get you a damned thing in this world. Reluctantly, I push Alice back into the dark. “Stay here and I guarantee that you’ll work in the safest video store in L.A.”

“Gee, that’s not at all terrifying.”

“Also, whatever Kasabian has been paying you, I’ll give you a fifty percent raise.”

Now I have her attention.

“You can do that?”

“There’s no one here to tell me I can’t. I figure, as long as I’m technically in charge, I can pay people whatever I like.”

“When will Mr. Kasabian be back?”

“I have no idea. You know how these family things are. It could be a while.”

She nods, looks down, then up at me. “Okay. I’ll stay. For now.”

Hallelujah. “Thank you, Allegra.”

“You’re welcome, Just Stark.”

I WAIT FOR an hour upstairs, until the store fills with the lunch-hour crowd. When there’s enough ambient noise downstairs, I figure that I can check on Kasabian and be covered if he starts screaming again.

He’s right where I left him on the shelf. When he sees me, he doesn’t scream. He just moans.

“For chrissake, put a bullet in my head or change the goddamn channel!”

On the set, some daytime talk show is playing. An older guy in a suit and a bottle blonde are talking about an actress I never heard of and a pasta maker that’s going to change everyone’s life.

“Please, turn this shit off.”

“I don’t know. That sounds like one damn fine pasta maker.”

“Fuck you.”

“Do you have a car?”

He stares at the TV, ignoring me. I reach over and turn down the sound.

“The keys are in my right hand pocket,” he says.

I tilt his comatose body to the side so I can reach into his pocket. Got ’em.

“What kind of car is it?”

“Give me back my body.”

“Where’s Mason?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Trust me, if I knew how to send you to Mason, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Then I’d ask him to let me watch as he ripped your balls off.”

I turn the talk show back up and lock the closet door. Muffled profanity comes from inside.

I grab the garbage with the bloody clothes and sheets and head down the stairs to the store. Allegra and another kid are behind the counter, busy with customers. There’s a rear exit to the store in a small storage room behind the porn section. I get out the bone blade and try a trick that worked in Hell. Placing the tip of the blade into the lock, I push it inside and turn. The lock clicks open.

Behind the store is a short alley with a couple of Dumpsters. I toss the garbage bag and head for the street.

It’s nice out. Sunny, but not yet hot. I feel a lot more human and settled today, just another normal guy with a .45 tucked in the back of his jeans, out to run some errands. I counted Brad Pitt’s money last night and it came to twenty-two hundred bucks, so I’m sure I can get everything I need.

I keep pressing the little unlock button on the key chain and my good mood evaporates when Kasabian’s car finally chirps. A white Chevy Aveo with a dented trunk. Only rental companies buy white American cars, which means that not only is Kasabian’s car a piece of shit, it’s a used piece of shit. But who’s more pathetic, the guy who drives a used piece of shit or the guy who steals it?

IT’S WEIRD STARTING over from zero. It changes the scale of your ambitions. Instead of fantasizing about what kind of mansion you’ll buy when you win the lottery, you ask yourself, Do I own socks? Do I have a toothbrush? Do I have a shirt that’s not covered in blood?

Money is strange, too, if you haven’t used it for a while. Hell is mostly a barter economy. Especially among the high and mighty, having to buy something is a massive social faux pas. It means that you don’t have anything good enough to trade or you aren’t clever enough to swindle your way to your heart’s desire. Brad Pitt’s wad seemed like a fortune when I counted it, but I blow through most of it in a couple of hours.

The big money goes for a few choice items. A new pair of Caterpillar steel-toed boots, because steel is always a good idea. I also pick up a long, light overcoat. There’s a reason spies and private eyes wear trench coats in all those old movies. They’re big enough to hide a multitude of sins, especially the kind with bullets. I pick up a long, charcoal-gray silk overcoat at a West Hollywood rent-boy boutique. Anything heavier than silk will look ridiculous in L.A., and wearing a black overcoat is nature’s way of telling you to lay off the Bauhaus.

Down on Melrose, the movie biz show-offs and trust-fund bikers meet at smart cafés for lattes and burgers that cost as much as a face-lift. Out in front of the cafés stretch long, gleaming lines of $40,000 Harleys that have never seen a speck of dust or a splash of mud. As much as these clowns set off the self-righteous parts of my white-trash ego, I know there’s one good thing about them. They demand the best bike gear available.

At a bike shop that’s laid out more like a museum than a store, I pick up leather race pants and an armored motocross jacket. After getting shot and almost stun-gunned, I like the idea of having a layer of Kevlar between the world and me. I also get a Kevlar jacket liner, a kind of long sleeve mesh shirt with armored panels sewn in. I’ll wear the liner under the overcoat and hope it’s not so bulky that I look like a robot in a bathrobe.

I put on my new boots, pants, and the motocross jacket in one of the dressing rooms, and toss my burned stuff into the trash on the way out of the store. That’s just about the last of it, I think. The last physical connections to my former life. The only thing left is the Germs T-shirt, now full of blood and bullet holes, stuffed under the mattress back at Max Overdrive. Maybe I should have tossed it with the rest, but Alice gave it to me, so it stays with me until I crash and burn for good.

When I parked the Aveo earlier, I left the .45 under the driver’s seat. I do a switch when I get back, putting the .45 in the bag with my new coat and leaving the Aveo’s keys on the seat. Maybe some desperate-for-wheels kid will find it, or a few homeless guys can turn it into a condo. I carry my bags down Melrose to do some car shopping.

There’s only one way to steal a car and not feel guilty about it, and that’s to steal the most expensive car you can find. That way, you know that it carries the maximum insurance possible, so whatever happens, the owner is covered. I pick out a black Mercedes S600, go around to the driver’s side, and using my body to block the view, stab the bone knife into the lock. I hold my breath. The car chirps once and the lock pops. I slide in with my bags, jam the knife in the ignition, and the engine purrs to life. I do a check of the mirrors and windows. No one is even looking at me. Stepping on the gas, I guide the Mercedes into the afternoon traffic.

THE BUILDING IS like the Sphinx—eternal and unchanging—exactly as I remember it. Same wrought-iron bars bolted over the first floor windows. The chicken-wire-embedded glass in the upper floor windows reveals dusty curtains and tattered window shades. The building manager’s window is easy to spot: there are shreds of the gold-leaf letters that once spelled out the safe company’s name. Instead of a curtain, the manager’s window is covered in foil. I’ve always wondered what goes on in there that he’s so desperate to keep out the light. Someday I’ll have to find out.

I watch the building for the time it takes me to smoke three cigarettes. Nothing unusual or even interesting happens. Cars drive by. An old woman wanders by pulling a couple of tired-looking Jack Russells.

I’m not sure about the wisdom of walking into the place in broad daylight, but I’m not getting any demonic vibes off the place. I snap the Veritas off its chain and give it a quick flip inside the car. Should I go in or not? The coin comes down with the morning-star side up. The Hellion script around the edge reads, Go back to the store and talk to the pretty girl. Nice. My magic coin is trying to get me laid. While I appreciate the thought, the timing stinks. I get out of the car, tuck the .45 under my jacket, and jog across the street to the building.

As usual, the front door is locked, but the side door, by the loading dock, is wide open. There’s a freight elevator to the right of the entrance. I pull down the upper gate, which closes the elevator’s wooden jaws, and hit the third-floor button with the side of my fist. The elevator jerks and starts to climb.

I could have stayed across the street and walked in here through a shadow. I could have walked through a shadow straight into my apartment. Fuck that. This is my home. I’m going in through the door.

When the elevator hits three, I roll up the gate and sprint right down the central corridor, then cut left. My place is at the end of a hall just long enough to let me get a running start. The door is the original, solid steel and balanced perfectly on two heavy metal hinges. I wouldn’t have thought about doing this before, but I’m a bit stronger now. I take a few long, running steps, swing my leg up, and slam my heel into the door. It pops open, the rusty lock mechanism spinning through the air like a metal Frisbee. I have the .45 up and in front of me, ready for anything.

“Well,” says the two-hundred-year-old Frenchman from his easy chair. “It fucking took you long enough.”

HE STANDS UP from a battered, green recliner. He’s a little taller than I remember and a little heavier, but he still has the same salt-and-pepper beard and close-cropped hair, the same impressive Roman nose and dark eyes that, at different times, might belong to your favorite uncle on Christmas morning or to the pissed-off ex-thug who’s about shove a power drill through your forehead.

I just look at him. Normally, I like hearing Vidocq shout “fuck” because he pronounces it “fock.” On the other hand, of the top ten people I didn’t expect to find here, he’s the entire top five. I stay put, not moving to the right or left, orienting my body so that, if I have to, I can make it out the door without looking.

“Vidocq? What are you doing here?”

“That’s how you greet a friend after all these years?” he asks, setting the battered book he’d been reading on the floor. “I’ve been waiting for you, keeping your home safe. You think I wanted to squat in this concrete shithole?”

I raise the .45 and aim it at his head. “How did we meet, old man?”

“Ah, you don’t think it’s me, no? You think this is some trap. I might, too, if I were you.” He picks up a tumbler filled to the top with wine so red it looks black.

“You and I met at a saloon. It’s closed now. Blood Meridian. This was before you met lovely Alice. We were both at the bar, each chatting up the same pretty girl, who stood between us. Neither of us had more than a few dollars then, so we’d employed a small memory charm on the bartender so that we could pay for drinks with the same money over and over again. When we realized what the other was doing, we forgot the pretty girl and talked about what and who we were, what and who we knew, paying the poor bartender with the same few dollars all night.”

“No great loss, from what I remember. The girl was pretty, but kind of wasted.”

“So were we, as I recall. Our sudden loss of interest offended her.”

“Next lifetime, I’ll buy her drinks and listen to her all night long.”

“Next lifetime.”

The gun suddenly feels heavy in my hand. I lower it. Vidocq, a head taller than me and half again as wide, comes over and crushes me in a long bear hug.

“It’s good to see you, boy,” he says.

Like the building, Vidocq hasn’t changed a bit. He looks about forty-five, but is old enough that he can tell you what guillotines sounded like offing the aristocracy during the French Revolution.

I look around the room. It doesn’t look right. Where’s all my stuff? Where’s Alice’s?

“How long have you been living here? Where is everything?” I ask.

“Alice moved out a few months after you disappeared. I saved your things and the things she left in the bedroom.”

“Where did she go?”

“She moved in with a friend in Echo Park. That’s where she was when the terrible things happened.”

“Mason murdered her. You can say it.” I feel stupid, but I have to ask him. “The friend she moved in with, was it a girl or a guy?”

“No, a girlfriend,” he says. “Alice had lovers after you were gone, but none of them were very serious. You broke her heart. She wasn’t the same girl.”

I go over to the counter that separates the living room from the kitchen. The teakettle on the stove looks familiar, but not much else. And I’m not sure about the kettle.

“You checked up on her?”

“As much as I could. She didn’t really want to see anybody from your old days together. Certainly, no one associated with magic.”

That sounds like her. She didn’t like Mason or anyone else in the Circle. After I was gone, she’d want to get as far away from magic as she could. But she didn’t run far enough. I should have told her to leave town if something happened to me. I should have given her an escape plan. But what could happen to me? I was a golden boy. I was bulletproof.

I say, “Thanks for trying. And thanks for keeping the place. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d come in and found some asshole stranger sitting here.”

Vidocq picks ups the bottle of red wine from the coffee table, gets a glass for me from the kitchen, and fills it to the rim. He fills his glass, raises it, and we both drink. I sit down on the couch.

“So, how are you? What have you been doing since I’ve been gone?”

“I’ve been working. These days, the work is all I have,” he says. “Thievery pays for the tools, and the work shows me the mind of God. Stealing is a lot like alchemy, you know. In each, we each try to find what is beautiful and hidden and make it ours.”

“This is funny. The whole time we’ve known each other, I don’t remember you staying more than a few weeks anywhere. It’s hard to picture you here as a rent-and-electric-bill guy.”

“Don’t insult me. I wouldn’t pay a penny for this hovel. I used an old gypsy potion, a vin de mémoire manquée. I painted the walls, the windows, floor and ceiling, et voilà! Your home no longer exists. It is not seen or remembered, except, of course, by our funny sort of people. The Sub Rosa.”

The Sub Rosa. I haven’t thought about the Sub Rosa in a long time.

Vidocq is Sub Rosa. So are Kasabian, Mason, and the rest of the Circle. I’m Sub Rosa, too, though back in the day I never thought of myself that way, even though there are maybe a few thousand of us walking around Southern California.

Sub Rosas are the secret people who look just like you, but are different. They bank where you bank. They stand behind you in line at the coffee shop. They panhandle you for the money that you suddenly and inexplicably have to drop into their grimy hands. Some of us also talk to the dead. Some see the future, trade souls like baseball cards, or bribe angels for a peek at God’s to-do list. Mostly, Sub Rosas are the people regular people aren’t supposed to know about. It’s not that we don’t like you; it’s that you have a habit of burning us at the stake when you notice us.

Vidocq’s alchemical supplies and burglary gear cover nearly every surface—racks of potions, books and scrolls in Latin and Greek, alembics, test tubes, and grinding stones. On a table in a corner are the baubles he’s stolen on commission—netsukes, loose diamonds spilling from courier envelopes, passports, and computer discs. It was one of his less successful experiments that turned him immortal. He’s spent the last hundred and fifty years stealing things to fund his research for a cure.

“Thanks for watching the place. I’m glad you have it,” I tell him. “I couldn’t live here without Alice.”

He nods solemnly.

“Where will you live?”

“I’m crashing at a friend’s place. There’s a bathroom, a comfy bed, and all the movies you can eat. You should come by and see it.”

“It sounds charming.”

“I’m back here to kill some people, you know.” I blurt it out, trying to get the words out fast. “I’m going to take out the whole magic circle.”

“I knew that when you walked in. And I understand. I won’t even try to talk you out of it, but there are things you should know before you start.”

I can tell this is going to be a Real Talk. I light a cigarette as Vidocq pours more wine.

“I did something much like what you’re doing, many years ago. Long before you or your grandparents were born. Revenge is never what you think it’s going to be. There’s no pleasure and glory, and when it’s done your grief remains. Once a man does the things you’re talking about, he will never be the same, and he can never go back to who he was before. Worst of all, no matter how many enemies you kill, you are never satisfied. There is always one more who deserves it. When it becomes too easy to kill, it never ends.”

“You stopped.”

“The desire is still there, even though all the men are dead, the ones I killed and the ones who passed away during the many years I restrained myself. Worse, when it was over I had to leave Paris, get on a ship, and come here to the land of cheeseburgers and cowboys. You are starting down a bad road, my friend.”

“I appreciate the advice. Don’t worry. I’m not here to ask for help.”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course I’ll help you. We must always look after our friends, even when they are foolish. Especially when they are foolish.”

“Thank you, old man.”

“Salut,” he says, and holds out his glass. I clink mine into his.

When I finish the cigarette, I take out the knife I used on Kasabian and pry up some boards under the coffee table. The oilcloth wrap containing my father’s guns is still there. I pull out the bundle and set the guns on the table, one by one. A good copy of an 1861 Navy Colt revolver, modified for modern .44 caliber shells. A heavy Civil War–era LeMat pistol. A Browning .45 semiauto my granddad used on D-day. And a Benelli M3 shotgun. They all need a good cleaning before I can use them.

Something flashes through Vidocq’s mind. I only catch a fragment of it before he pushes it away. Seeing it feels like a migraine coming on, a knife behind my eyes.

“What’s wrong?” asks Vidocq.

“There’s something funny going on with my head. I keep feeling and hearing things I shouldn’t. Like right now you’re sweating and your heartbeat is going up. Like maybe you’re a little afraid.”

“You’re back here from Hell, talking about murder, and you’re pulling guns from under my floor. Shouldn’t I be a little frightened for both of us?”

“There’s other things, too. I’ve turned kind of death-proof. I can get shot, ripped apart, dropped in a Cuisinart, and I just get up and walk away. I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”

“You fall into the Abyss a young magician and you emerge as Superman. How is that possible?”

“You’re the one with the all the books. You tell me.”

“Perhaps, like me, you were cursed with an inability to die.”

“What happened to you wasn’t a curse. You just decided it was. Besides, if anything, those Downtown demonfuckers would make me easier to kill so I’d get back there quicker.”

“Perhaps it’s simple biology. You’re the first living man to have entered Hell. Your condition might be a natural biological response. A side effect of having been in that awful place. Perhaps you should be grateful that you have this new gift to accentuate your natural magical abilities.”

“I don’t trust it. It means something I can’t figure out. Or it’s a setup. Nothing that happened down there was for my benefit.”

“We’ll know in time, then. Your friends in Hell will be after you soon, I suppose?”

“Eventually, but not now. There’s a war going on down there. It’s fucking chaos.”

“Lucky you.”

“Lucky me.”

I get a dish towel from the kitchen, bring it back to the living room, and use it to wipe the dust from each gun. Even though I had them in the oil wrap, I can see traces of rust. I’ll have to clean them for real later.

“So, what was it like in Hell? Did you try to escape? You were always such a clever magician.”

“Clever magic doesn’t get you much down there. Even when I got stronger, I couldn’t cast the simplest hex until I started learning Hellion magic.”

“Is that how you got away?”

“No. I was the property of Azazel, one of Lucifer’s generals. He made me his designated hitman. He said that Alice would be all right, as long as I played along.”

“And then she wasn’t all right.”

“I don’t know how I knew, but I did. It’s like these new things I can hear and feel.” I gulped some wine. “Before I left, I cut out Azazel’s heart and left it on his altar.”

“How did you get out?”

“A key. A key to anywhere in the universe I want to go.”

“Do you have it with you?”

“It’s right here,” I say, putting my hand on my chest like I’m about to say the Pledge of Allegiance. “Over my heart. I took his knife, cut myself open, and put the key inside. Now I can walk through shadows to the Room of Thirteen Doors. Go anywhere I want, anytime I want. Back to Hell. Maybe Heaven, too. I don’t know. I haven’t opened all thirteen doors.”

“You put the key inside you? And it was made with Hellion magic? It will poison you.”

“Everything that happened to me for eleven years poisoned me. You think one little key is going to make a difference now?”

“This isn’t good, Jimmy.”

“Please don’t call me that. I don’t have that name anymore.”

“So, you are still afraid of them. Afraid they can find you through your name?”

“Not if no one uses it.”

“Your name is who you are. It’s your family. It connects you to this world. You can’t give it away so easily.” He took a long gulp of wine and said, “Wild Bill.”

“Especially, don’t call me that.”

Vidocq is one of the few people who know that my full name is James Butler Hickok Stark. That’s Wild Bill Hickok’s name, except for the Stark. I learned to shoot and appreciate guns young because we’re supposed to be direct descendants of Wild Bill, the greatest shootist of the American West. “Stark” was tacked on sometime after those prairie towns became cities to keep idiots from showing up at the door wanting to touch great-great-granddad’s legend. Or worse. There were more than a few fights and even some gunplay. The funny thing is no one knows for sure if we really are connected to Wild Bill. Supposedly, he left a few little bastards behind in Kansas and Missouri, so it’s possible. But it might just be a tall tale. My family never let facts get in the way of a good story.

“Wild Bill is dead. I’m just Stark.”

“That is your family, your identity. You can’t just walk away from your name.”

“I can and I have. I’m looking for Mason. He gave me to the Hellions for power and now I’m here to pay him back. Do you know where he is?”

“No one sees Monsieur Faim anymore. Like God, he is a great mystery. What will you do if you find him?”

“Kill him.”

“And then what?” Vidocq sets down his glass and steeples his fingers. “What you want may not be possible. Mason is a very powerful man these days. Very well protected.”

“I’ve gotten through to plenty of well-protected Hellions. And I learned a few things along the way. Want to know what the first lesson was?”

“Tell me, please.”

I pick up a little vial of mercury sitting on the coffee table and shake it, watching the light glint of its silver surface.

“Up here in the City of Angels USA, magicians worry about good and evil. White magic versus black.”

“All magicians think about those differences.”

“Not Downtown they don’t. Hellions understand something we don’t. That there is no white magic. There is no black magic. There’s just magic. You can kill with a healing spell as easily as with a curse. If you were having a heart attack right now, I could do a spell to slow your heart and keep it from beating out of your chest. I could regulate your blood pressure, bring it up or down. But I can use those same spells if you aren’t having a heart attack. I can turn down your blood pressure until you pass out. Slow and stop your heart. And you’d be just as dead as if I’d hexed you.”

“This isn’t Hell, boy. People will know. There are rules up here.”

“Not for me. I don’t even know if they can read my magic up here. If it will even disturb the aether.”

Vidocq picks up, and then sets down his wineglass with a thud. Loudly, he says, “Then why don’t you use it? Go on and do a location charm for Mason right now.”

I set down the mercury and look around the unfamiliar familiar room. “I can’t. I don’t know what will happen. The magic might not show up at all, or it might go off like fireworks at the Super Bowl. I can’t take a chance on anyone knowing I’m back.”

Vidocq smiles and wags his finger at me. “So, for all your power you have no power at all. That’s a little funny, don’t you think?”

“I have guns.”

“Yes, you’ll conquer the whole Sub Rosa with guns. More Roy Rogers bullshit.”

I think about that for a minute. “There are things I used in the arena. I’m going to have to get some weapons made. I need to find someone who can work with metal.”

“You must let me help you,” says Vidocq intently. “Let me help keep this plan of yours from going too far. I know that you’ve come back to Le Merdier, this world of shit, but where else is there for you to go? You must live here. You must have a name. You must be a man again.”

What’s that old Sunday school warning about how if you fight dragons too long, you can become one? That’s been spinning around in my head for years, long enough that I know I’d rather be a dragon than a sheep to the slaughter. Maybe, in some kinder, gentler version of the world, I could walk away from the Circle, get Zen, and forgive them for what they did to me. But I can’t forgive them for Alice. Never for that. Maybe I’m not worth killing for, but she is.

“I should go. I have to meet someone,” I lie. I set the guns back in the oilcloth and wrap them up. I’m feeling a little ashamed of myself, like I’m letting down the old man. Without looking at him, I ask, “Want to meet up tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

I make it out the door before he can give me another French bear hug.

I STEER THE Mercedes west toward the one other place in town that makes my skin crawl almost as much as the old apartment.

I turn off Sunset and onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard. The change from Hollywood to Beverly Hills is always sudden and startling, like flipping a switch. Bus fumes and strip-mall nail salons transform to trimmed green lawns and stately homes. This isn’t movie-star Beverly Hills, but the older part. The homes are large, but not bloated parade floats. It looks like grown-ups might have lived here.

After crossing Mulholland, I turn right into a maze of streets all named Doña. Doña Isabel. Doña Marta. Doña Sarita. When I find the right Doña, I park and sit for a minute, thinking. I should have seen something like this coming. Things had been going too easy since I got back. Brad Pitt wasn’t my fuck-you welcome back to the world. This is.

There’s no need to get out of the car, but I do anyway, and cross the street to the empty lot where Mason’s house—the place where our magic circle used to meet—once stood. The vacant land looks corrupt and out of place in this perfect landscape, like a starlet showing rotten teeth behind her million-dollar smile. Tall weeds grow through the sandy soil. There’s a faded sign with the name of a real-estate developer and a “Coming Soon!” message on top, but it doesn’t look like anyone has set foot anywhere near the lot in years.

The sun is going down fast. When a breeze picks up, I feel a chill. I know it’s all in my head. Even at Christmas, L.A. isn’t that cold, but it doesn’t stop my teeth from chattering.

Night is coming on fast. I walk back to the Mercedes, get in, and light up one of the last few cigarettes from the pack Carlos gave me. I look at the empty lot and wonder what happened there. It doesn’t look like the house burned. From what I remember, this neighborhood is on bedrock, so it probably didn’t fall down in a quake. It just went away. I know I should go over and walk around to see if I can find something that could point me to Mason and the others. But not tonight. The shit and sulfur smell when I was dragged to Hell through the basement floor are coming back strong. I stay in the car, and when the last of the cigarette is gone, I flick the butt onto one of the manicured lawns and drive away.

I DITCH THE Mercedes a few blocks from Max Overdrive. At another time it would break my heart to have to leave such a brilliant machine behind, but L.A. is an all-you-can-eat car buffet, and now that I’ve seen what the knife does to locks and ignitions, I’m never going to starve.

I grab the oilcloth bundle with the guns and the bags with my new clothes. When I get to the store, it is closed, but I rap on the glass and Allegra lets me in.

“Damn,” she says. “You clean up pretty good.”

“Thanks.” It feels nice being complimented by a human woman. The few kind words I’d heard in the last eleven years usually came from Hellions that looked like something a snake had just thrown up.

“Did you lose your key?”

“I forgot it. I haven’t had to carry one for a while.”

“Where did you live that you didn’t need keys?” She looks at something in her hand that’s beeping at her. It looks like a TV remote fucked a little typewriter and this is the bastard offspring. She types something on the tiny typewriter with her thumbs, and smiles.

“What’s that you’re playing with?”

“You’ve never seen one of these? It’s a BlackBerry.”

“Is it like a phone? But you’re typing with it.”

“I’ve got it now. You’ve been in a coma since the seventies. No. Abducted by aliens.”

“You nailed me. Klatuu barada nikto.”

“The Day the Earth Stood Still, right? That was one of my favorites when I was a kid.”

“Me, too. So, why are you typing on your BlackBerry thing?”

“Just BlackBerry. Like you, Just Stark.” She turns the little device so I can see it better. “You can talk on it or you can send text messages. It’s like e-mail, only it’s instant. You’ve heard of e-mail, right.”

“Sure. But why would you type something to someone? Why not just call them?”

“Sometimes texting is more fun. Or, like now, if you’re sending someone an address, it’s nice to have it in writing.”

“What’s that on the screen?”

“It’s Google Maps. I looked up the address so I could give Michelle directions.” She clicks and the little screen changes. “See, you just get on the net and enter the address.”

“You have the Internet on that? If I got the Internet, I could look things up on it, right? Names, places, history?”

“First off, you don’t get the Internet. It’s the Web, and you don’t get it. You use it. And, yeah, you can look up anything you want.”

“Can I get one of these?”

She looks at me like I really have spent a decade with Martians.

“Of course. You just have to figure out what kind you want.” She types a few more words into the BlackBerry and puts it in her coat pocket.

“Thanks,” I say.

“No problem. I’ve got to go and meet some friends. Can you lock up after me?”

“Sure. Good night.”

“Night.”

I haven’t used keys for a while. What a stupid damn thing to say. I could see it in her eyes. She’s wondering if I’m flat-out crazy or a recent jailbird. Worse, she’s wondering if I’ve done something to Kasabian. Plus, she’s wondering about what’s wrapped in the dirty oilcloth. I’ll have to start locking the upstairs door. I’ll have to do something about her suspicions, too, but I don’t know what, and I’m not going to figure it out tonight. I take my bags and the bundle with the guns upstairs and drop them on the bed. Tomorrow I’ll check into the BlackBerry thing. Having the Internet or Web or whatever with me will help me catch up on the world and keep me from sounding like a newly landed Martian.

I go over and open Kasabian’s closet.

“Morning, sunshine. Sleep well?”

There’s a cheesy infomercial playing on the TV. Some guy in a chef’s uniform is waving kitchen utensils around.

“You ever see these knives, man? I just might have to get a set. They cut right through soda cans and bricks.”

“If I ever start eating bricks, I’ll come by and borrow them. You had any thoughts about our conversation last night? Like, where I can find some of the old crowd?”

Kasabian doesn’t look at me, but keeps staring at the TV. “They never rust, you know. And you never have to sharpen them. They’re amazing. They’re almost magic.”

“You’re really not in a position to be fucking with anybody right now.”

He finally aims his eyes up at me. “Think so? See, I think I’m in exactly the position where I can do any goddamn thing I want. You want to kill me? Go ahead. I wasn’t exactly having an E ticket life before and now I don’t even have that.”

“You’re not getting back your body. Someday maybe, but not right now.”

He turns back to the TV. “Did you meet Allegra? That is one sweet little piece of art girl scooter pussy. It’s not like I fucked her yet or anything, but New Year’s is coming and I figure some champagne, a couple of roofies, and I’ll finally know if the carpet matches the drapes.”

“Whether you mean any of that or not, you really are just puke on two legs.”

“I don’t have any legs, asshole.” He nods toward his body. “Aw, did I offend the serial killer? I’m so sorry. Murder anyone today? Cut off any friends’ heads?”

I recognize the pose, the B-movie defiance. I tried the same thing in Hell. It’s hard to scare someone who thinks he has nothing to lose. The trick is to remind him that there’s always something left to lose. For some, it’s family or friends. For a creep like Kasabian, demonstrating the possibility of future loss is easy.

I get his gun from the bed, wrap it in a towel from the bathroom, and fire off three shots in the direction of his body.

“Are you fucking crazy?” he screams. “I need that!”

“All of it? You’ve got two knees, two kidneys. That’s a spare for each.”

“Fuck you, you fucking fuck.”

“You want to answer some questions or do you want me to play William Tell?”

“You know, this, right here, is why it was so easy for Mason to sell you out and why the rest of us didn’t really care.”

“Why was that?”

“Because you’re such a dick.” He raises his eyebrows at me, hoping I’ll react. I don’t. “Back with the Circle, Christ, you were just a punk kid and you had all this power. More than any of the rest of us, including Mason. But did you care? Hell no. It all came too easy for you. The rest of us had to kill ourselves studying to get the simplest spell to work. Most of the time, you didn’t even pretend to study the books. You’d just make up something on the spot and angels would fly out of your ass. Do you know how that made the rest of us feel?”

“So, you sent me to Hell because I hurt your feelings?”

“No, because you hurt Mason’s. You never let up on the guy.”

“If I gave Mason a hard time it’s because he deserved it. Always going on about being a great dark magician. He didn’t want to learn anything from magic. He didn’t even want to have fun with it. He just wanted to be Lex Luthor. I might not have given him so much grief if I’d known what a little hothouse flower he was.”

“See? You’re still doing it. But for all your bullshit and your show-off magic, Mason beat you, didn’t he? You could pull magic out of the air, but he ended up with real power and you ended up blowing demons for eleven years. Every night, before I go to sleep, I cherish the look on your face as they dragged your ass down to Hell.”

Without looking where I’m aiming, I pop off a couple more rounds in the direction of his body.

“Stop it! Stop, goddammit! What do you want to know?”

“Same thing I wanted yesterday. Where’s the rest of the Circle?” I toss the gun onto the bed. God, I want a cigarette. “Let’s try a different approach. You’re right here, so where’s Jayne-Anne?”

If Donald Trump and the Wicked Witch of the West had a kid, it would be Jayne-Anne. She looks like a librarian with some money and good taste in clothes, but underneath the Versace, she’s Godzilla with tits. She isn’t as powerful a magician as Mason, but next to him she’s the most focused and ruthless and, in her way, scarier than bad dog Parker.

“I don’t know. I heard she’s got some kind of movie-business gig.”

“What about Cherry Moon?”

Crack open a pedophile’s piñata and Cherry Moon is the candy that falls out. She’s a Lollipop Doll, one of a gang of girls who take their manga and anime a little too seriously. They all want to grow up to be Sailor Moon and Cherry had the magical skill to do it. Last time I saw her, she was in High Gothic Lolita drag, radiating rough sex and looking all of twelve years old.

“Also don’t know about her. Someone said she’s running some kind of spa or plastic surgery thing for rich assholes.”

“I’m glad to hear that everyone’s using their new power for such worthy causes.”

“We’ve all gotta eat. Not me right now, but generally.”

“Where’s TJ?”

He rolls his eyes when I say the name. “That fucking hippie. After the Lurkers grabbed you, he bawled like a little girl for days. Some people aren’t cut out for real life.”

“Lurker” is what the Sub Rosa call any secretive magical, mystical, or monstrous freak that isn’t them. A naiad is a Lurker. So are zombies and werewolves. Undercover cops are secretive and sometimes monsters, but they aren’t Lurkers. They’re just pricks.

“Where is he?”

“Sucking dirt in Woodlawn. The little faggot hung himself a week after you went bye-bye. Guess he couldn’t get the monsters out of his head.”

Poor dumb kid. TJ was even younger than me. He would have been sixteen or seventeen back then. But Kasabian is right about one thing; some people aren’t built to see the dark side of magic or deal with the vicious parts of life. TJ never belonged in our little wolf pack. In a way, I was glad he was gone. I hadn’t been looking forward to hunting him down.

“I guess we covered Mason and Parker last night. Mason’s gone and he took Parker with him. Do I have that right?”

“Yeah. And don’t ask me about them because I don’t know. People see Parker around town sometimes. Usually right before some other nosy magician gets his neck broken.”

The thought of an attack dog like Parker and a Darth Vader wannabe like Mason running wild with heads full of Hellion hoodoo does not take me to a happy place. And the two of them could be holed up anywhere, from Glendale to Bhutan.

“You been out to the old house yet? Pretty, isn’t it?”

“What happened to it?”

“Don’t know. Maybe Mason took the house with him. Did you find anything good when you went inside?”

“Inside what? The house is gone. What’s there to find?”

“You simple son of a bitch. The basement’s still there. You’ve got to go underground.” Kasabian gives me an appraising look. “What, did you just drive up and leave? Pretty tough, tough guy.”

Beautiful. Now I have to burrow like a groundhog into Mason’s basement to the same room where he summoned those things to take me Downtown. Nothing can possibly go wrong with this plan.

When I turn to leave, Kasabian yells at me.

“Hey, asshole. I gave you information. At least let me have a cigarette.”

“I’m out, so tonight we both suffer. I’ll pick up more tomorrow.”

I step out of the closet, and just before I close the door, I say, “I almost forgot. Your car was parked in a two-hour zone and I was afraid you were going to get a ticket, so I gave your car away.”

“You what?”

“Sweet dreams.”

I SIT ON the edge of the bed wanting a cigarette, but unable to summon the will to go out and find a store that’s still open. The bullets in my chest ache, almost like someone shot them in there. I think one of the slugs is scraping against a rib. I get up and scrounge around the room, moving furniture, opening cabinets, and digging through piles of empty DVD cases. Finally, at the bottom of a box filled with mangled porn tapes—I don’t want to even think about how they got that way—I find a bottle of cheap, no name vodka in a plastic screw-top bottle. In high school, we called drinks like this Devil’s Rain after an old horror movie. That strikes me as pretty funny, under the circumstances. I screw off the top and take a drink. The vodka burns my throat, and tastes like Windex and battery acid.

I can’t believe that some small, ridiculous part of me feels kind of sorry for a pig like Kasabian. To spend your whole life brownnosing and riding on the coattails of smarter and more talented magicians, then having them dump you like the prom date who wouldn’t put out right as they become infused with who knows what kind of power, has to sting. It has to be the final confirmation of all your worst fears, that you really are the chump you were always afraid you might be.

I, on the other hand, was exactly the prick Kasabian said I was. While he was struggling with kindergarten levitations and Mason was compulsively showing off some new spirit conjuration or fire blast, I bullshitted my way through magic the way I bullshitted my way through everything else, pretty well.

Magic really was always easy for me. At my fifth birthday party, I floated the family cat over to Tiffany Brown, a redhead I had a crush on, and dropped it on her. Tiffany didn’t get the joke and that was the end of my first romance.

When I was twelve, the teacher had us make clay animals in art class. I squeezed together some fat little birds. Then I made them fly around the room and out the window. I got suspended for a week for that one, though no one could explain to me exactly why.

I didn’t even know I was doing magic back then. All I did know was that I could do funny tricks and make the other kids laugh.

My family never talked about it, but they knew what I could do. I was dangerous when I got sick. I’d break windows with a look. My fevers started fires. I only learned that what I was doing had a name when my father gave me an old, leather-bound book titled A Concise History and Outline of the Magickal Arts. I knew right away what I was. Not a warlock or a wizard. That was Disney stuff to me. I was a magician. A few years later, I found out there were other magicians and some invited me into their tight little Circle. Then they tried to kill me.

Sitting on Kasabian’s bed, drinking his lousy vodka, I can picture Jayne-Anne, Cherry, Parker, and Mason sitting high above the city in one of those houses that hangs over the side of a hill on spindly spider legs, daring the earth to throw an earthquake their way. Each of them knows they’ll survive. Even without magic, they’ll survive, because that’s their greatest talent. And soon they’ll be up on another hill, looking down on us losers. They’re strong and we’re weak because we won’t do the things they did to get up to the top of the hill.

They’re right, of course. We won’t crawl through the shit, and over the bones and bodies of the dead. By their definition of the word, we really are weak, no matter how much we’d like to imagine ourselves being as cold and hard and determined as they are.

On the other hand, it might be fun to crawl up the hill one night and strap some dynamite to the spider legs holding up their houses. We’d jump on the roofs, like kids jumping on sleds in the snow, and ride down the hill until their bright, candy-colored mansions crash into the sea.

Between the bullets in my chest and the talk with Kasabian, sleeping isn’t going to be easy tonight. Kasabian’s vodka is pretty much poison, but it’ll quiet the noise in my head and that’s good enough.

When I finally drift off into alcohol dreamland, I’m back in Hell, lying in the dirt on the floor of the arena. My belly is slashed open and I’m holding my innards in with my hands. The beast I’d been fighting, a silver bull-like thing with a dozen razor-sharp horns, is lying dead a few yards away. They always had me fighting weird animals. I didn’t know for a long time that it was another Hellion insult. They made me a bestiari. It was a Roman thing—a fun way to use their dumbest, gimpiest, most cross-eyed fighters. Bestiari weren’t good enough to fight people, so they fought animals. Why waste a human gladiator on someone who had just as good a chance of cutting off his own leg as stabbing his opponent? Plus, it was fun watching bears eat retards. Still is, really.

A couple of Hellion arena slaves roll me onto a stretcher and take me backstage. In the fighters’ quarters, a wizened old Hellion gladiator trainer shuffles over and hands me a bottle of Aqua Regia. That’s medical care in Hell. A hospital in a bottle. Later, the same old Hellion comes by with a needle and werewolf-hair thread and sews me up.

Later that night, Azazel, my slave master, sends for me. Fresh wounds or not, when he calls, you go. At least he’s reasonable enough to send a couple of burly damned souls to carry me to his palace on a litter.

None of the palaces in Hell come close to Lucifer’s in size or beauty. Lucifer lives at the top of a literal ivory tower, miles high. You can’t even see the top from the ground. The joke is that he built it that high so he can lean out the window and pound on Heaven’s floor with a broom handle when he wants them to turn down the choir.

Lucifer’s four favorite generals have their own palaces.

Azazel is Lucifer’s second favorite general, so his palace is second only to Beelzebub’s in size and beauty. Beelzebub is Lucifer’s favorite general. While Azazel’s palace is made entirely of flowing water, Beelzebub’s is mud-and-dung bricks covered in human bones. Not what you’d call pretty, but it makes a statement.

Inside Azazel’s palace it’s all Gothic arches and stained glass, laid out in classic cathedral style. A carpeted nave leads to an altar at the far end where a mammoth clockwork Christ buggers the Virgin Mary every hour on the hour.

“You’re going to use those arena skills of yours to kill Beelzebub for me,” says Azazel.

“Don’t I rate a night off? I’m held together with Silly String and good wishes.”

He smiles, showing his hundred pointed teeth. “Perfect. Then no one will suspect you. More importantly, they won’t suspect me.” He hands me something, a sharpened piece of spiral-cut metal, like a long ice pick. I’ve seen it before. It’s General Belial’s favorite weapon. “Leave that behind, but be sure to dip it into Beelzebub’s blood first.” He pauses. “And wear gloves. I don’t want your human taint all over it. They have to think that Belial did it.”

“Beelzebub’s palace is a fucking fortress with about ten times more troops and guard animals than you have. And he knows I work for you. His guards will never let me get near him.”

Azazel shows me his teeth again. He likes doing that. It used to make me want to pee my pants. Now it’s just a ritual, like a dog biting another dog’s throat to remind it who’s the alpha.

Azazel reaches into his robes made of shimmering golden water and pulls out a heavy brass key. “Have you ever heard of the Room of Thirteen Doors?” he asks. “This key will take you there. The room leads to anywhere and everywhere in the universe simultaneously. Including Beelzebub’s bedroom.”

He hands me the key. It’s heavier than it looks and weirdly soft. I realize that it’s not made of brass after all. It’s living skin over bones.

“In one hour, you’ll enter the Room of Thirteen Doors through a shadow behind this altar. From the room, you’ll go out through the Door of Fire. That’s a killing portal. It will take you right to your prey. Once you’ve killed Beelzebub, leave Belial’s weapon and return here.”

I turn the key over in my hands. I should be horrified by it, but I’m not. There’s something animal-like about the key, like it’s a pet that wants to please its master.

“You’re thinking that I’ve given you your means to escape, aren’t you?” Azazel asks.

“Me? I love it here, boss. Why would I ever want to escape?”

He touches the edge of the key with a fingertip.

“Lucifer can leave Hell and travel easily through the cosmos, while the rest of us are bound here, cursed by the heavenly enemy. I’ve found a way out. Not for me, but for someone like you. However, you should remember not to go too far. Though I can’t leave Hell, I have some influence in your world, among those humans dedicated to Hell. Cross me, try to escape from me, and something awful will happen to the one you love. That pretty girl you left behind. Do you understand me?”

“I understand.”

“You’re not leaving here. Someday maybe, but not right now and not for a good long time.” Azazel turns and starts away. “Keep the key next to your body. That way, it will know to open the room to you. Wait an hour before you go. I need to be somewhere public when it happens.”

An obedient little slave, I do as my master tells me. I wait an hour and slip into a shadow behind the altar. Passing into that utter blackness feels like falling through cool air.

I find myself in a semicircular room that, surprise, contains thirteen doors. Each door seems to be made from a different material. Wood, water, air, stone, metal. More abstract things, too. The Door of Dreams moves and writhes, reshaping itself from second to second. There’s a sound from the far side of the room. I go to the only unmarked door and listen. There’s something moving behind the door and it knows I’m here. Something growls and scratches to get at me. Then there’s a shriek, a long, keening, furious animal sound that hits me like a knife dragged through my skull. Right then and there I know I’m going to do whatever Azazel wants and kill any damned Hellion he tells me to. I’ll be his servant as long as he leaves Alice alone and never, ever asks me to go through the unmarked door.

I wake up with the taste of Hell in the back of my throat. I know it’s just the bad vodka, but that doesn’t help. My head is full of monsters and I’m one of them. I sit up smelling sulfur and I want to kill something. I want a Hellion to burst through the window so I can take this bone knife and cut its black heart out. There are so many questions left. It feels like I’ve been doing nothing but talking since I got back. I need to do something. I need to hurt something. I need to kill Azazel, but I’ve already killed him.

I’m afraid. I’m so fucking afraid. I don’t know what’s worse, Hell or this stupid world where I’ll never be at home. But I need to keep talking to people. I need to keep asking the right questions. And I’ve already missed maybe the most important question of all.

I roll out of bed and slam the closet open, nearly tearing the door off its hinges. Kasabian lets out a yelp and turns his eyes up at me. I pick up his head in both hands and hold him so that we’re eye to eye.

“I have one question for you and I swear to God and the devil and everything holy and unholy that if you fuck me around for even one second, I will drop you in the ocean right now. Do you understand me?”

“Yeah.” He barely whispers the word.

“Where’s Alice’s body?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me!”

“I swear, I don’t know. Jesus, even I’m not that fucked up. Parker would know. He killed her. Parker’s the one that can tell you.”

There’s real terror in Kasabian’s eyes. I’m still holding him up, squeezing him tighter than I thought. His cheeks are red and starting to bruise. I set him back on the shelf and lean against the wall.

Kasabian stares at me like he’s never seen me before.

“What are you, hypoglycemic or something? Go eat a muffin, for shit’s sake.”

“I’ll bring by some cigarettes later,” I tell him, and close the closet door.

At least I got to ask the big question, but I’m not any less agitated. Kasabian was telling the truth a minute ago; I could see in his mind that he would have made something up if he could have thought of a convincing enough lie. That means I can’t find Alice’s body until I track down Parker. I’m still so wound up from having Hell in my head all night that I need to break something, and soon. I hate it when I get this way. Do they have anger-management classes for hitmen?

Allegra’s voice comes from downstairs. I didn’t hear her come in. She’s talking into her BlackBerry. I look around for a clean shirt and realize that I forgot to buy some yesterday. I steal another Max Overdrive shirt from the box and go downstairs quietly. I’m not in the mood for this, but I need to do something now so that I don’t have to do something worse later.

Allegra is still on the phone and has her back to me. She doesn’t hear me come up behind her. When she turns around and sees me, she jumps a little.

“Jesus, you’re quiet,” she says. Then, into her BlackBerry, “No, not you. Let me call you back.” She takes off her coat, stashes it behind the counter, and begins setting up the money and register for the day. “I thought you were upstairs. I heard noise.”

“I had a movie on. Dust Devil. You ever see it?”

“Isn’t that a horror flick?”

“Sort of a horror movie crossed with a spaghetti western. You ought to take a look. The girl character dumps her boyfriend and then spends the rest of the movie trying to get away from a ghost world killer who’s sort of in love with her. She runs, but she’s no coward. She fights back and stays brave. You’d like her.”

“Thanks. I’ll have a look.” She gives me a distracted smile.

“Listen, I’m sorry if I said anything stupid last night. I haven’t been in the city in a long time. I grew up here, but it might as well be the dark side of the moon.”

“I feel that way sometimes, too.”

“There’s something else you’re wondering about. You’re wondering if I’m an ex-con. The answer is yes.”

“Oh.” She busies herself breaking open rolls of coins and putting the change in the register. “I only wondered because of, you know, the scars.”

“Would it help if I told you that I didn’t go away because of something I did, but because of something someone else wanted?”

“Are you, like, on parole?”

“It’s more of a work-release thing. If things work out, I won’t be going back at all.”

“I had a boyfriend who did time.”

“A dealer, right?”

She looked up at me, her expression shifting from interest to suspicion. “How did you know that?”

“A long time ago, I had a girlfriend named Alice. Your eyes are like hers were when I first met her. There’s this funny thing that happens to girls’ eyes when they’ve been in love with a dealer. It’s a real particular look. More than not trusting people. It’s like you’re trying to figure out if they’re the same species as you, like they might be a snake in a people mask.”

She’s still looking at me, sizing me up, and trying to classify me as animal, vegetable, or mineral. “Can we maybe change the subject?”

“Sure. I just wanted you to know the truth. I’m not a snake. I’m just a person like you.”

She turns a key on the register, clearing yesterday’s transactions and getting ready for today’s. “But it’s not the whole truth, though, is it? You’re not like Michael was, but there’s still a little bit of the snake thing going on behind your eyes.”

“What do you expect? I’m from L.A.”

She laughs. I can hear her breathing steady, her heart slow. Her fear doesn’t disappear; she’s too smart and wary for that. But she’s not going to call the cops or stab me in my sleep, and what more can you ask of a pretty girl?

I start upstairs, but turn back to Allegra. “What day is it?”

“Thursday. It’ll be New Year’s in a few days.”

“We should get some champagne for the store. And those popper things, too. They look like little bottles. Take some money out of the till and go buy whatever you think is fun.”

“How much can I spend?”

“Buy whatever you want.”

“Hey, those were nice leathers you had on yesterday. Do you have a motorcycle?”

“I might just pick one up today.”

WHEN I WAS Downtown, Galina, one of Azazel’s vampire drinking buddies, liked to regale me with stories about what it’s like to hunt humans. She would go into exquisite detail, mostly to spoil my dinner. Sometimes to screw me up before a fight in the arena. She had a gambling problem.

Galina told me that most vampires work hard to keep a low profile. They dress, act, and often get jobs like regular people. Most vampires only feed once a month, at the new moon. A month is the longest vampires can go without fresh blood, unless they don’t mind shriveling to something that looks like hundred-year-old beef jerky.

There are the other vampires, too. The kind they make movies about. Mad-dog, Dracula-Has-Risen-from-the-Grave psycho killers. They hunt every night just for the sheer meat-market thrill of it. The craziest ones don’t even wait for night. They hunt during the day. Streaking from shadow to shadow, they snatch people right off the street and feed on them behind Dumpsters or in crack houses, next to the other addicts.

These vampires hunt for kicks, but not for fun. They hunt for rage. They hunt because something inside them is broken, and no matter how much new blood they fill their bellies with, it turns to fire in their veins. They hunt and kill because they need to, because if they didn’t, they’d tear their own heads off. Just like any fix, the calm that comes from the kill doesn’t last long, but for a few minutes or maybe an hour, the fire fades to a single glowing ember and they’re at peace. Until they need to hunt again.

If I learned anything Downtown it’s this: I’m not a vampire, but I am a junkie. And every junkie needs a fix.

A DELIVERY VAN is pulling away from the curb outside the Bamboo House of Dolls. I go in and see stacks of whiskey in boxes, steel beer kegs, and Carlos by the bar, flanked by three lanky skinheads. One is in a bomber jacket, one is in a T-shirt of some black metal band, and the third, a huge skinhead, is in a German military officer’s coat.

Bomber Jacket jerks his head toward me. “We’re closed!”

“Just a quick one, sweetheart,” I say. “So I know you love me.”

Bomber Jacket pulls out—can you fucking believe this guy?—a Luger pistol, like he thinks he’s Rommel. Quicker than he can react, I scoop up one of the beer kegs and underhand it at him. It slams into his chest and knocks him across the room. The Luger flies out of his hand and lands on the floor somewhere near the bar.

The shaved ape in the officer’s coat starts across the room at me while the black metal skinhead pulls an impressive shank from his boot. Just to make things fun, I go straight for the one with the knife. This confuses the ape, who turns just as I reach his pal, whose arm is straight out, trying to pig-stick me. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone up against a human, so I don’t know if I’m really fast or if these geniuses are really slow, but I slip past the skinhead’s blade and pop him in the elbow, hyperextending the joint just enough to hurt, but not to snap. While little birdies are still flying around his head, I grab his arm and do-si-do around him, swinging him into the ape just as he comes up behind me.

But the ape is too huge to go down. He staggers back a step then lunges at me, faster than I expected. Fast enough to get hold of my jacket and throw a fist as hard as a tire iron into my jaw. I don’t want to get into a real fight with this guy because I’m more interested in his partner with the knife. When he loads up for another John Wayne punch, I grab one of the squat, bottom-heavy glass candles off the bar and smash it into the side of his head. That sends him staggering back to the opposite wall, where he slides down like a pile of bloody laundry.

The guy with the knife is back on me. He has just enough brains to know not to try to stab me straight on, so he’s going for a slashing attack. His arm blurs back and forth, then down, then up, trying to catch me off guard and bleed me. I parry his blows, letting one land on my forearm or shoulder occasionally. This is what I’ve wanted, a real chance to test the Kevlar armor in this jacket. He’s working up a pretty nice sweat, coming at me with all he’s got. Still, he’s easy to dance around, easy to block. His face is contorted and frantic with anger. As long as I let him get a shot in every now and then, I bet he’ll keep coming until he dies of old age or a stroke.

The guy I hit with the beer keg hasn’t moved, but the ape is getting back to his feet. Time to wrap things up.

As the black metal skinhead slashes down at my head, I reach up with my right hand and grab the knife. There’s a familiar ache, like electricity and heat, as the blade slices deep into my palm. I slam the heel of my left hand up under his jaw, staggering him, then twist my right hand, snapping the blade cleanly off his knife. As the ape rushes me, I go low and shove the broken blade deep into his thigh. He howls in pain and falls against the bar.

Damn, it feels great to hurt idiots.

None of the skinheads is getting up for a minute, so I look around for the Luger. Carlos is behind the bar, frozen in place, like he’s not sure if he’s more afraid of me or the Nazis on the floor. I spot the gun under a stool at the end of the bar and kneel to get it.

Good thing, too.

A blue-white ball of plasma misses me by a few millimeters and explodes against the far wall.

I wheel around and see him. It occurs to me that I might have been having a little too much fun before. I hadn’t thought to check if there was another skinhead in the storeroom. I snatch the Luger from under the stool, but it doesn’t help because the new skinhead does something a lot more interesting.

He holds up his right hand. There’s something with a glowing end. Gnarled like a short tree branch. It extends from his hand and wraps around his forearm to his elbow. It’s a piece of a Devil Daisy. I don’t know the real name. Devil Daisy is just what I called them. I haven’t seen one in a long time and that was in the arena. That’s all I get to think before he blasts a tongue of blue-white dragon fire at me. I’m still afraid to use magic. All I can do is dive to my left, rolling over some tables and chairs and landing on the floor. The second shot goes wide, as does his third. Still, I feel the heat and skin-crawling static as each shot streaks by.

This is some powerful magic the skinhead is packing, but it’s obvious from the way he’s waving the branch around that he doesn’t fully understand what it is or how to use it, beyond a dim aim-and-pray strategy.

My theory that he’s not in control of the weapon is confirmed when the ape yells something and the guy with the Devil Daisy turns and almost blows his own foot off. It’s the Three Stooges with death rays over there. The one I took the Luger from yells, “Asshole!” He gets to his feet and he and the ape, limping, with the knife still in his leg, get the skinhead I hit with the keg between them and drag him out the door. The one with the Daisy backs out of the place, holding the branch out like he’s covering himself with a gun.

“What the fuck was that?” yells Carlos.

“The Nazi asshole must have had a flare gun,” I lie.

I walk over, drop the Luger on the bar, and push it to Carlos. “Merry Christmas. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

“What am I supposed to do with that?”

“I don’t know. Put it up next to the tiki dolls.”

“I don’t like guns. Is it loaded?”

I pop the clip out, check it, and slide it back in. “Yeah. Keep it behind the bar. Those guys are going to come back. Not tonight, but sometime soon.”

“You think so?”

“Definitely.”

“I still don’t want it,” he says, and pushes the Luger toward me. I flick on the safety and shove it into my jacket pocket. Carlos nods toward me. “You’re bleeding,” he says, and hands me a clean bar towel. I wrap it around the hand I used to grab the skinhead’s knife. The hand still hurts, but it’ll stop bleeding by the time I walk outside.

Carlos leans on the bar. “So, what are you? Special Forces? Some kind of ninja?”

“Yeah, I’m the ghost of Bruce Lee. You have a cigarette?” Carlos shakes his head. The moment is still burning bright for him, but it’s over for me. The rage has gone south and now I have a bigger problem. No question I was shot at by a magic weapon, but it was used by someone who had no idea what he was doing. I consider the possibility that Mason sent the skinheads, not to shake down Carlos, but to ambush me, only that doesn’t make any sense. If Mason decides to send a hit squad for me, he’ll make sure they know exactly what weapons they’re packing and how they work.

So, what devil Kris Kringle is handing out death rays to pinheads?

“Can I borrow your phone?” I ask. Carlos hands it to me and I dial the number of my old apartment. Vidocq picks up.

THIRTY MINUTES LATER Vidocq and I are sitting in a doughnut shop on Sunset drinking coffee and eating. He’s paying. I’m close to tapped out. At least I spent Brad Pitt’s money well. Before Vidocq got to Donut Universe, I’d examined the motocross jacket for damage. The Kevlar did a pretty good job. None of the knife slashes made it through the armor down to me. All the damage was to the leather, and I could fix that with gaffer tape.

“I’ve heard of power amulets like guns, but not like the one you describe,” says Vidocq. “But I think I know someone who will. I’ll introduce you soon.”

The Frenchman puts a paper bag on the table. I take a bite of my Bavarian cream.

“What’s that?”

“Look for yourself,” he says, and pushes the bag at me. I open it and look inside. It’s full of shirts.

“They are yours. You look like a fucking child in those video store things. You should wear your own clothes. They will help you remember who you are.”

I roll down the top of the bag and put it on the seat beside me. I suppose I do look stupid in these shirts. In my head I’m still nineteen. Time is stuck there and it’s like a punch in the balls every time I look in the mirror. At least no one will bother me for ID when I buy beer now.

But I don’t want to look at what’s in the bag right away. Part of me wants to burn everything Alice and I left behind eleven years ago. Another part wants to leave it all right where it is, frozen in time, like bugs trapped in amber. It never occurred to me to wear any of my old clothes again.

“There was something weird and familiar about that amulet and I’ve been trying to remember what since I left the club.”