Copyright

HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2014

Copyright © Richard Kadrey 2014

Cover Illustration © Crushed Creative (www.crushed.co.uk)

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014

Richard Kadrey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007446087

Ebook Edition © August 2014 ISBN: 9780007446094

Version: 2017-11-14

Dedication

This book was finished on William S. Burroughs’s one-hundredth birthday. This one is for you, Bill.

They stood on the far shore of a river and called to him. Tattered gods slouching in their rags across the waste.

—CORMAC MCCARTHY, THE ROAD

“I’m very brave generally,” he went on in a low voice: “only to-day I happen to have a headache.”

—LEWIS CARROLL, THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Richard Kadrey

About the Publisher

[Chapter 1]

YOU’D THINK THE end of the world would be exciting, but this apocalypse is about as much fun as dental surgery.

Take the current situation. Sitting at a dead stop in traffic, as lively as a stone angel over a tomb. Not one car has moved in ten minutes. It’s bumper to bumper on Sunset Boulevard, which is nothing new, but this kind of traffic is 24/7 these days, as it seems like half the city is hightailing it out of Dodge all at once. And the rain. It’s been coming down nonstop for two weeks. It’s like L.A. lost a bet with God and the old bastard is pissing his Happy Hour whiskey all over the city. Which, when you get down to it, isn’t far from the truth. This isn’t how I figured I’d ring in the apocalypse.

“Any time now, Jeff Gordon,” says Candy from the passenger seat. “I thought this was supposed to be a car chase.”

“By current L.A. standards, this is a car chase.”

“Current L.A. seriously blows. And I think my boots are starting to grow gills.”

We’re in an Escalade I stole in Westwood. I hate these showboats, but it can handle the flooded streets and gets me high enough over the other cars that I can keep an eye on a cherry black ’69 Charger up ahead. There’s a guy inside that U.S. Marshal Wells, grand high shitbird boss of the Golden Vigil, wants to talk to.

“I should go up there, rip the fucker’s door off, and stuff him in the back of the van.”

“And you could take a brass band so no one misses the show. Your boss would love that.”

“He wants discreet, but he knows I’m not good at discreet. I swear he did this to me on purpose.”

I reach for the Maledictions in my coat pocket. Drop them and the lighter on the floor on Candy’s side. She picks them up and taps out a cigarette.

“Marshal Wells is a man of God,” says Candy, grinning. “He only has your best interests at heart.”

“Abraham was a man of God and he almost did a Jack the Ripper on his kid to prove it.”

“See? You get off light. Your father figure just sends you out in the rain to drown.”

Candy flicks the lighter and sparks a cigarette. Hands it to me and rolls down her window to let out the smoke.

I say, “Wells is a father figure like I’m one of Santa’s elves.”

“There you go. You’re getting into the Christmas spirit. I’ll have to get you a pointy hat with a bell so you feel like a real elf.”

“You already gave me the Colt. I thought that was my present. And I gave you the guitar.”

“That was different. Those were ‘We might die tonight’ presents. And it was November, so they don’t count.”

“This is just you angling to get another present.”

“It’s the end of the world, sweetheart. Crack open the piggy bank.”

“We spent the piggy bank on Max Overdrive.”

She shrugs.

“That’s your problem. I already have something picked out for you, so don’t try to weasel out of this. I want a real damned present on real damned Christmas morning.”

I puff the Malediction. Brake lights go dark in the distance.

“Yes, ma’am. Anything else? Eight maids a-milking maybe?”

“Are they hot maids? ’Cause I never had a nine-way before, so, yeah.”

Somewhere far away a car moves. More brake lights go off ahead of us. In the distance, I actually see a truck inch forward.

“It’s a Christmas miracle,” shouts Candy. “God bless us every one.”

Like some great wheezing machine no one has fired up since D-Day, cars around us begin to creep tentatively forward. I take my foot off the brake and let the Escalade roll.

At that moment the sky opens up. I hit the windshield wipers, but a second after the glass goes clear, it’s drenched again. I roll down my window and stick my head out. The Malediction is instantly soggy. I spit it out. The sky has gone dark gray, dulling the colors on all the cars. In the downpour I lose sight of the Charger.

“Do you see it?”

Candy has her head out her window.

“It’s about a block ahead,” she says. Then, “Wait. It’s got its signal on. I think it’s turning. Yeah, there it goes.”

Traffic lurches to a stop. Horns honk. People shout at each other.

“Wait. He’s gone?”

“Yeah, around the first corner.”

It’s a sea of brake lights again. No one is going anywhere.

“Know what?”

“What?” says Candy.

“I’m about to call in that brass band. Get your head back inside the car.”

“Now you’re talking.”

Traffic is ass to nose again. I put the Escalade in reverse and ram the car behind me. Put it in drive and ram the car ahead. Reverse again, then drive the van up onto the sidewalk. I hit the horn and floor it.

Angelinos are used to desert heat and chocolate-colored smog skies. Rain is kryptonite to these people, so there’s hardly anyone outside. The few rain birds hear me coming and jump out of the way. The only casualty of my sidewalk Le Mans is a sign outside a café and a bench outside a Chinese restaurant. No one’s used the damned thing in weeks and no one will until the world ends, which means it shouldn’t even be there, so fuck it.

I turn hard at the corner. The rear end of the van fishtails and hits a mailbox. Letters explode like New Year’s confetti over the stalled cars.

“Jerk,” says Candy. “Now people’s Christmas cards are getting wet.”

“Will you shut up about Christmas and help me look for the car?”

Traffic is a little lighter on the side street, so the Charger could still be ahead. Or have pulled off into a parking lot or another side street.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.”

On the next block is a row of warehouses. Distribution points. The kind of places that get goods from big warehouses and parcel them out to regular stores.

“There,” says Candy. “By the open loading dock.”

I look to where she’s pointing and spot the Charger. It’s sideways to the dock and the driver-side door is open; not parked, but abandoned. I stop the Escalade and get out. Instantly, I’m soaked. My frock coat, motorcycle pants, and boots weren’t made for this Noah’s ark bullshit. It feels like I’ve gained twenty pounds before I take a step.

Candy comes around the van. I start across the street.

“You got your gun?”

She holds up her Swiss folding pistol. Unopened, it looks kind of like a skinny lunch box. She’s covered it with stickers from some of her favorite animes. FLCL. Ghost in the Shell. Blood. Appleseed. She pushes a button and the lunch box unfolds like a matte-black Transformer into an extended 9mm pistol with a shoulder stock. She grins. She always grins when she gets to use her gun because she thinks she’s Modesty Blaise and who am I to tell her she’s not?

“I’m going in the front. Go around the side and see if there’s a back way in. If you can’t get through it, make sure no one gets out.”

As she starts away she says, “Be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

“Right. That’s how you got all those scars. From being careful.”

I wait for her to disappear around the side of the building before I go in. I jump up onto the Charger’s hood and from there onto the dock platform.

It’s at least twenty degrees colder inside the warehouse. I spot maybe fifteen people working. Carrying boxes and driving forklifts. It’s a meat-packing plant, prepping orders to take to butcher shops. I can see my breath in front of my face.

Wells gave me a photo of the man I’m supposed to follow but I don’t see him among the faces up front. I head into the back of the plant to the big freezer. The entrance is covered with a thick plastic curtain with slits every couple of feet so forklifts can pass in and out. I grab a clipboard off a nail on the wall and stroll past a forklift coming the other way.

Inside the freezer the real cold hits me. This isn’t muggy L.A. showers weather. This is penguin country. I swear my wet clothes start freezing to my body.

They must be doing good business at the warehouse. The freezer stretches away in both directions, full of sides of beef on nasty-looking meat hooks. I don’t want to go in unarmed, but I might as well try the discretion thing as long as I can. I take out the na’at instead of my gun. The na’at is a weapon I picked up in the arena in Hell. It collapses to no longer than a cop’s riot baton, but can extend like a spear or a whip. It isn’t always a quiet weapon because of all the screaming, but it’s more subtle than a Colt pistol.

I snap open the na’at into a spear shape and move through the meat forest as quietly as I can. This might be a mistake. Maybe I should have checked the office first. But Wells didn’t say anything about the guy working here and most people when they’re scared head as far from the front door as possible. That’s back here. Still, after staring at row after row of dead cow, I’m getting bored and hungry. Then I spot a different kind of light a few rows ahead. It’s softer and more diffuse than in the rest of the freezer, and tinged in pink. I head for it and find Mr. Charger. He’s not alone.

Thirteen of them stand in a circle in an open area in the back of the freezer. By open area, I mean there aren’t any sides of beef hanging back here, but there’s a hell of a lot of meat. They’ve made a whole cathedral of the stuff. Arches made from ribs, livers, hearts, and leg bones all frozen together. A vaulted ceiling from muscle trimmed from sides of beef hanging on high hooks. Their flesh church even has nave windows made of stitched-together sheets of pig caul. The light back here is a milky crimson.

All thirteen of them, six men and seven women, smile at me. Big and toothy.

“It took you long enough to find us,” says Mr. Charger.

“Sorry. I took a wrong turn at the pork chops.”

“No worries. You’re here. That’s all that matters.”

I know I should watch the crazies, but I can’t take my eyes off the meat Notre-Dame.

“I love what you’ve done with the place. Ed Gein chic.”

“Thank you. It took some time to get it just right.”

“Who’s your decorator? We’re finishing my new place and there’s all this leftover chorizo. Maybe we could use it for a rumpus room.”

Mr. Charger doesn’t say anything because he’s watching me as I see it.

Not all the meat in the church is animal. There’s a human body cut into six pieces—arms, legs, torso, and head—hanging like nightmare piñatas over the smiling circle of freaks.

Mr. Charger says, “Do you understand why you’re here?”

“If you think I’m going to be the next one hanging from those hooks, you’re extremely mistaken.”

Normally, I could probably handle a flock of unarmed fruit bats. Hell, the freezer is big enough that I could just run away if I broke a nail. But these particular fruit bats are all armed. Each holds a wicked-looking motorized meat saw, like an oversize electric knife. Outwardly they all look calm, but they’re sweating, even in this cold. They smell of fear and adrenaline. The sweat steams from their bodies and collects at the ceiling like incense in their mad church.

Mr. Charger shakes his head.

“We’re not here to hurt you. You’re here to help us.”

“How did you know I was coming?”

Mr. Charger looks around at his friends.

“God told us.”

I shake my head.

“I’m kind of acquainted with God and I don’t think he told you dick.”

A thin redhead from the back says, “We mean the true God.”

“Oh hell. You’re Angra worshipers, aren’t you? Is that what this is all about? I don’t mean to cramp your little chautauqua, but my boss wants a word with you. How about you put down the saws and you can come and be crazy where it’s warm?”

A chuckle goes around the circle.

“I’m not going with you because I’m not here for you. You’re here for us,” says Mr. Charger.

“If you’re selling candy bars to go to summer camp, I’m tapped out right now.”

Mr. Charger raises his meat saw. I move my weight onto my back leg, ready to move when he tells them to rush me.

“We don’t want anything from you except to be our witness.”

“To what?”

“The sacrifice.”

Without another word or a signal, all thirteen of them raise their meat saws to their throats.

Mr. Charger is the first to shove the buzzing saw into his neck. He screams, but just for a second before the blade rips through his larynx and his throat fills with blood. He goes down twitching as the others fire up their own saws, following their leader’s example. It’s the same for all of them. A small scream as the blade tears into them. A gurgling as their voice box goes, the blood fills their throat and jets from their severed arteries. It only takes a few seconds and all thirteen are on the floor, their blood steaming on the cold metal. Their saws rattle and buzz where they dropped them.

I’ve seen some cold moves in my time, I’ve fought and killed in Hell and on earth, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.

Over the sound of the saws I hear voices. All the screaming got someone’s attention. That’s all I need. A warehouse of hysterical meat packers with big knives and cell phones. Imagine explaining this to a 911 operator. It might take awhile to get a patrol car. But still, it’s the principle of the thing. I’m not in the mood to deal with another crazed mob right now.

They’re getting near me now and I let them. When the first few tough guys emerge from the rows of beef and see me in the meat cathedral surrounded by freezing corpses, they stop. Good. They’re not going to rush me but they’re still between me and the door. I pull the Colt and shoot three rounds into the floor by their feet. That alters their mood and sends them scurrying like sensible rats out of there.

Only one person is still coming in my direction. Candy shoulders her way between the beef rows, her gun up, sweeping the room. But when she sees me, even she stops. For a second I can see it in her eyes. She wonders if I did this. Then she sees the meat saws and relaxes. She lowers her gun and comes over to me.

“Oh man,” she says. “I mean. Oh man.”

I go from saw to saw and turn them off. The sound is giving me a headache.

“Yeah.”

“What were they …?”

“It was a sacrifice to one of their idiot Angra gods.”

“Couldn’t they have just had a bake sale?”

I walk over and put my hand on her gun, lowering it to her side. I put my arm around her. I haven’t seen her this freaked out before. She presses against me.

I say, “Wells is going to be pissed.”

She nods.

“He can’t blame you for this insanity.”

“Wells blames me for tooth decay. He can sure blame me for this. But maybe there’s something I can do. Help me find a cooler and some dry ice.”

There’s a stack of Styrofoam coolers just outside the freezer. I grab one and Candy gets plastic packets of dry ice. We go back into the cooler. I have to work fast. Someone’s called the cops by now. For all I know, one of the workers has a pistol in the back of their truck. There’s a lot of that going around these days. When we get back to the suicide circle, I tell Candy to go back and guard the door.

“You just don’t want me to see you do it,” she says.

“You’re right. But I also want you to guard the door.”

“Okay.”

She runs back to the freezer entrance. I turn on one of the meat saws and get to work. It doesn’t take long. Mr. Charger did the hard part himself. All I have to do is get through some gristle and the spinal cord so I can twist his head all the way off.

When I do, I put it in the cooler and pack ice around it.

Candy shakes her head when she sees me with the container.

“I’ve dated some messed-up people in my time.”

“Write ‘Dear Abby.’ Let’s get out of here.”

“Let’s.”

There’s a nice dark shadow by a stack of boxes on the loading dock. I start to pull Candy through and stop.

“What you said before. Eight maids and you. That’s a nine-way. Where am I in all this?”

“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. Like 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 and 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.”

“And yet here you are. Downtown Nowheresville. Like the view?”

Hobaica comes at me.

“You did this.”

He tries to grab me. I sidestep, give him a little shove to throw him off balance, and stomp on the back of his knee. He goes down on his face, hurt but in one piece.

“You got that out of your system and now you’re going to be smart, right? Good. First off, who told you I was following you?”

Hobaica nurses his hurt knee, but manages a smile.

“A little birdie. Der Zorn Götter has friends in many places.”

I’ve heard of them. An upper-crust Angra sect. They have connections in money and politics all over the Sub Rosa and civilian world. Could they have connections to the Vigil?

“You made a mistake asking me to be your witness, genius. First, I’m not exactly mortal, and second, I spent eleven years in Hell. You think a bunch of nitwits sawing their own heads off is going to shatter me? In Hell we called that ‘Wednesday.’”

I go over and pull Hobaica to his feet.

“This is a trick,” he says.

“Show me what’s in your head. I want to see what you expected when you died. Show me the Flayed Heart.”

“Never.”

“Listen, man. I know you don’t mind a little pain, but you’re dead now. You don’t need to have to do that anymore. Show me what I want or it’s going to hurt.”

He stands up straight. A moron with scruples.

“I won’t tell you a thing.”

I nod.

“No matter what the old mummy said, I knew I wasn’t getting through this without losing some blood.”

“What?”

“Hold still,” I say, and pull my knife.

Hobaica tries to run, but his gimpy leg collapses and he goes down on his face. I kneel on his chest, pinning his arms to the ground.

“I should probably feel worse about this, but you hack up people to decorate your playpen, so I don’t.”

I grab his chin with my free hand and cut a sigil into his forehead. The mark of Nybbas, the Seer. He stops thrashing for a second when the blood flows into the eyes. I take that moment to run the knife over my own forehead, making a deep gash. Grabbing Hobaica’s face, I push my forehead to his until our wounds touch. As our blood flows together, I get a dirty, low-res image of his mind.

This is what Hobaica expected. What he wanted.

An endless sea of fire and bones, and floating there, as big as the sky, is a lotus made of rotting human teeth. Bodies pour into the flower’s fanged maw and are ripped apart. Zhuyigdanatha swallows some of the bodies, but there’s so much falling into its stinking gob that limbs, heads, torsos, and feet cascade down the side. They crawl together in the fire, forming new, weird creatures. A couple of arms merge at the shoulder with an eye attached under each armpit. Torsos with six, eight, ten legs bob along on the flames, swimming in one direction and then another as the legs compete with each other. A few piles of limbs have pulled together enough pieces to form a complete body. These climb up the sides of the tooth lotus, pushing back bodies that miss the Flayed Heart’s mouth and try to get away. Others swim through the fire into caverns at the base of the lotus.

Since he’s dead, I can’t gauge Hobaica’s mood by the smell of his sweat or the sound of his heartbeat, but being in his head, I can feel his excitement. This is what Hobaica hoped for when he cut his head off. To be one of those bodies falling into Zhuyigdanatha’s mouth, feeding his master.

The old Angra moves as it chews its lunch, twisting this way and that to catch the choicest bodies. If you see it from different angles, Zhuyigdanatha changes. It becomes a slimy lizard, snaring falling bodies with a prehensile tongue a thousand miles long. A baobab tree, with razor foliage and a trunk made of rheumy eyes. A crawling fungal mass plucking bloating corpses from a sea of sewage. At least I know this really is an Angra I’m seeing. Zhuyigdanatha isn’t really changing. It’s a transdimensional being. We ordinary slobs can only see one dimensional aspect of the God at once, so it seems to change as it moves and dreams.

From inside Hobaica’s head, I can feel the man wilt as it finally comes to him that he’ll never be saved by his God. His sacrifice was a joke. The Angras are in another dimension. The other God, the God of this dimension, isn’t wild about people deity shopping. It starts to dawn on Hobaica that he’s not only lost his personal Jesus, but killing himself as a sacrifice to the Flayed Heart means he’s pissed off the other God. With his frequent asshole miles he’s earned himself a window seat on the big coal cart to Hell. He’s not even scared. He’s beyond fear or even despair. He knows he’s lost. That he lost the first day he drew his or anyone else’s blood for Zhuyigdanatha.

There’s a mountain range off to the side of where we lie. I climb off Hobaica and he struggles to his feet.

“Where did those mountains come from? I swear they weren’t here before.”

An opening appears in the side of one mountain. Pale light shines out onto the dim plain.

“That’s for me, isn’t it? I’m going to Hell.”

“Don’t feel so bad. It beats Fresno.”

Hobaica drags his arm over his forehead, wiping away the blood.

“I’m a fool.”

“You bet on the wrong horse, yeah. But you’re not the first one, so don’t beat yourself up.”

I sort of feel bad for the sucker. I mean, his life has been a joke from day one. But Hobaica’s current attitude isn’t a bad way to enter Hell. There’s not much the Hellions can do to him that he isn’t already doing.

He says, “What do I do now?”

“You can stay where you are for the rest of eternity, which, the way things are going, might not be that long. Or you can go inside.”

“To Hell.”

“Yes.”

“So, I can be somewhere awful or nowhere at all.”

“It’s a lousy choice, I know.”

He looks at me. His clothes are speckled with his blood. He looks a little like what he looked like back in the meat locker. It’s pathetic.

“Which would you choose?” he says.

“I didn’t get to make a choice when I went. But if I were you, I’d choose to be someplace. All they can do in Hell is hurt you. Out here with nothing but yourself to talk to, you’re going to destroy your mind. Being alone is worse than being somewhere bad.”

He nods. Even manages the faintest smile in human history.

“Thank you,” he says, and starts for the mountains.

“Vaya con Dios.”

He stops.

“Is that a joke?”

“Yeah. Not one of my best.”

“A bad joke isn’t much of a send-off before an eternity in Hell.”

“I could tell you the one about the one-eyed priest and the bowlegged nun.”

“I’ll be going now.”

He walks to the mountain and goes into the tunnel without looking back. It closes behind him. Alone on the alkali plain, I sit down with my legs crossed. I wipe the blood off my face with my hand and the alkali burns the cut in my forehead. The drunken feeling comes over me again. My shoulders sag. My head falls forward and my mouth opens. Something light drifts out and settles on my leg.

I wake up in the circle across from the severed head. There’s a puddle underneath it where it’s starting to defrost. Candy takes my arm and helps me up. I run my fingers over my forehead. No blood. Score one for the bag of bones. I didn’t have to bleed in real life after all.

I put Hobaica’s head back in the cooler and hand it to Wells.

“I’m done with this. It’s your problem now.”

He sets it on the floor. Goes to a sink and washes his hands.

“Did it work? Did you see anything?”

“Some bad dental work. And fire. And bodies being ripped apart. The meat locker where I found ice-chest man was feng-shuied with body parts.”

“You think the man cut up the bodies?” says the Shonin.

“Him and his friends, yeah. My guess is those meat piñatas were volunteers. More Angra zealots.”

“They wanted to be cut up like meat?” says Candy.

I nod.

“Yeah, but they didn’t see it that way. The feeling I got from Hobaica—that’s your dead man—is that he and his pals wanted to be hacked up like those bodies. They thought if they sacrificed themselves right they’d be reborn as bouncing baby Angras.”

The Shonin laughs at that.

“They’re even dumber than you.”

“Did he actually tell you he cut up those bodies?” says Wells.

“I wasn’t taking a deposition. These are all just impressions I got from a shell-shocked dead man on his way to Hell.”

“Is that all?”

“Some of the body parts clumped together and made new bodies. There were caves they might have drifted into. Everything was on fire.”

“It sounds like the realm of the Flayed Heart,” says Shonin.

“It was.”

“Zhuyigdanatha likes underground places,” says Shonin to Wells. “If there’s a larger Angra group, you might find them there.”

Wells shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

“What caves are we talking about? Carlsbad Caverns? A salt mine in Louisiana? Lascaux?”

The Shonin pours out the muck he gave me. Puts water and green tea into the pot and places it back on the burner.

“These were California boys, so it will be a California cave that connects, at least on a spirit level, with the Flayed Heart’s dwelling place.”

I start to say something, but don’t. I know some caves nearby, but if the Vigil doesn’t know about them I’m not going to tell them yet. I need to check with someone first.

Candy is slumped on a metal stool on the other of the room, away from everyone. She’s pale and fidgety. I go over to her.

“You all right?”

“I’m fine,” she says. “Just let me sit here.”

“I can take you home if you want.”

“I’m fine. Okay?”

I nod.

“Okay.”

“Stark,” says Wells. “You know lowlifes. Any of your pixie friends like to spend their time underground?”

“What makes you think the Sub Rosa or Lurkers have anything to do with this? Angra worshipers are mostly lily-white civilians.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

I look at the Shonin.

“You want to know about underground dwellers? Why don’t you ask the jabber over there?”

Jabbers are ghosts so scared of the afterlife that they won’t even leave their dead bodies. They claw their way through the soil under the city, dried-out bones living in dirt.

“Don’t you dare talk about Ishiro Shonin that way. This is a holy man. Jabbers are cowards. What this man did took years of dedicated training and preparation. Successful self-mummification is incredibly rare.”

I fish around in my coat pocket for a pack of Maledictions. I find them but they’re soggy with rainwater. I crumple up the pack and throw it in a wastebasket.

I look at the Shonin.

“You’re what successful looks like? I’ve met Buddhist monks before. None of them looked like Johann Schmidt’s foreskin.”

“It took a thousand days to purify my body and mind before I could inter myself, preparing to come back when the world needed me. Of course,” he says, looking around, “I didn’t think I was coming back to a world of gaijin, urban yôkai, and whatever it is you are.”

“Angels call me Abomination, but looking at you, I don’t feel so bad about it.”

“What’s ‘urban yôkai’?” says Candy. Her voice is shaky.

“He means Lurkers. Don’t you, muertita?”

The Shonin says, “I knew, for instance, respectable tengu back home. You Los Angeles people—humans, and monsters—you are lost beings.”

“Speaking for all the yôkai in L.A., go fuck yourself,” says Candy.

“Watch the profanity,” says Wells.

I go over to him.

“Exactly what is Mr. Bones doing here?”

“He was a yamabushi back in Japan. A lone mountain monk in Sennizawa. They called them Swamp Wizards. He has a deep background in the mystical arts. He’s going to figure out how to make the Qomrama Om Ya work.”

“I’m supposed to be lab partners with this guy?”

The Vigil has the 8 Ball locked up in a secure clean room all by itself, suspended in a magnetic field. It floats in the air and changes shape as you walk around it.

“Not supposed to,” says Wells. “You are. It’s done and settled. He’ll figure out the Qomrama and you’ll use it.”

“Why don’t you clue me in on these things from time to time so I know what to expect?”

Wells pushes the cooler against the wall with the toe of his highly polished shoe.

“Fine. Here’s your clue for today. I want you to write down everything that happened before the man you brought in died and everything you saw and heard when you went inside his head. Make sure Ishiro Shonin gets a copy and so do I.”

“Now I’m your secretary.”

“For the kind of money we’re paying you, you’re whatever I need. Today you weren’t much of anything at all.”

“Speaking of money, I still don’t have my first check.”

Wells squares his shoulders.

“I wanted a man to question and you bring me back a horror show. This isn’t a good time to complain to management about your salary.”

I look over at Candy. She’s leaning her elbows on the table.

“I’ll write your report, but I’m doing it at home.”

“I want it by nine a.m.”

“Noon, it is.”

Wells is tense. His heart rate is up a little. His pupils are narrow. I head over to Candy.

“Is there something else you have to say? Something you’re not telling me?”

“Yes. Up your game, Stark. These might be the End Times. I don’t want you half-assing your way through them.”

It’s a good party-line statement, but it’s not what he’s thinking about. There’s something else.

“Sure,” I say. Then to the Shonin, “See you around the watercooler, King Tut.”

“Don’t eat too much tonight, fatty. Salads are your friend.”

I grab my coat and Candy and I follow Wells outside. The Shonin stays behind and pours himself some tea.

“What an asshole,” she says.

“He’s just trying to get under my skin. Sounds like he’s getting under yours.”

She shakes her head.

“Maybe. I don’t feel well. I’m going to see Allegra.”

I touch her cheek. It’s cold, but Jades always run a little cool.

“You feel a little colder than usual. Want me to come along?”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll see you at home.”

“At least let me take you through a shadow. It’ll take you forever on the street.”

“I’m fine,” she says. For a second she flashes her Jade face. It’s almost subliminal, like she wasn’t in control. “Stop getting all over me.”

I say, “I’ll see you at home.”

Candy doesn’t say anything. Just walks away.

I remember that she still has my gun and I almost go after her. But I don’t. Maybe some space is what she needs right now. Anyway, whatever’s wrong, Allegra’s clinic will fix her up.

I find a good shadow by the lab door and go through, coming out at home. Maximum Overdrive. The video store I run with a not-quite-dead man named Kasabian.

[Chapter 2]

MAX OVERDRIVE IS located on Las Palmas, right off Hollywood Boulevard. It sits midway between Donut Universe and Bamboo House of Dolls, the only junk-food place and bar that matters in L.A.

Kasabian used to run the store. When I came back from Hell I cut off his head. I might have been a little hasty, but he’d just shot me and I wasn’t feeling entirely reasonable at the time.

The trick with the black blade I used on him is that if you hold it just right it cuts, but it doesn’t kill. And that’s what I did to Kasabian. He’s spent most of the last year as a disembodied head and he hasn’t shut up about it.

Lately I started feeling sorry for him, so I had a Tick Tock Man called Manimal Mike attach Kas to a mechanical hellhound. Now he sort of has a body, even if it’s a little wobbly and whirs like a toy train when he moves.

Some Lurkers are in the store. A young Lyph whose denim jacket looks like it was mugged by a Bedazzler. All rhinestones and shiny bits on the back. Jim Morrison’s face in flames. Underneath it says light my fire. Lyph have horns and hooves and tails just like Halloween devils, but they’re as sweet as peach ice cream when you get to know them.

A couple of Tykho Moon’s boys are in the shop, dressed to the nines in the best leather and latex you can steal off a dead model.

Tykho is the boss of the Dark Eternal, the biggest, baddest vampire clan in L.A. Yeah, Dark Eternal sounds kind of like an eighties Goth band, but Tykho assures me the name is a lot scarier in Latin. The Eternal have been around for a long time. Tykho’s boys are arguing, bumping shoulders like a couple of young pups, and whispering to each other.

Kasabian isn’t anywhere in sight, which isn’t a big deal. It isn’t like anyone is going to shoplift any of what we carry. Max Overdrive used to be a regular video store. We rented movies, sold new and used discs. In other words, a money pit. BitTorrent and movie streaming were killing us. Thanks to Kasabian’s obsessive collecting, our impressive porn and horror collections kept us afloat for a while, but we were going down fast. Now we’re a boutique shop catering to a select clientele of Sub Rosas, Lurkers, and a few civilians with money and a taste for something special. Mainly, movies that don’t exist.

The taller of Tykho’s boys turns and spots me. He wears a patch over one eye. Sucks for him. He must have lost it while he was still alive and couldn’t regenerate it when he turned. He gives me a toothy smile and comes over. Leans on the counter, hooking his thumb at the rack of our specialty movies.

“Don’t get me wrong, Stark. I appreciate all the artsy stuff, but don’t you have anything that’s actually fun?”

What we rent mostly now are lost movies. Movies cut to pieces by the studios or lost in fires or time. Movies that literally don’t or shouldn’t exist anymore in this dimension of reality.

“London After Midnight is fun. It’s a murder mystery. Lon Chaney plays a creepy guy with a giant set of fangs and a weird beaver hat, who might be a vampire.”

Eye Patch leans back, frowning.

“Silent movies? Those are as scary as a damp sponge.”

“That means you wouldn’t like Metropolis. I have the only totally complete copy in the world with the original score, you know.”

He shakes his head.

“Not interested.”

This isn’t the first time this has happened. We only have one rack of special discs. We’re still building up inventory. You think it’s easy conjuring video and film from other dimensions? It’s not. And the young curandera I contracted with to get them charges a fortune for each one.

“What is it you want?”

“Action. Guns. Explosions.”

“Go home, crack open a light beer, turn on your TV, and find some Michael Bay shit.”

“Come on, man. You have any Clint Eastwood?”

“No special ones. You like his spaghetti westerns?”

The shorter vampire comes over when I mention westerns.

“Who doesn’t?” he says.

I point to an old poster on the wall.

“You know that gangster flicks are the natural descendants of those Italian westerns, right? Action. Crime. Lawless loners and gangs riding the range, only in cars, not on horseback. Antiheroes and ambiguous heroes who aren’t all good or all evil. You follow me?”

Eye Patch says, “Look at you. The philosopher.”

“Once Upon a Time in America is what you want. Leone shot it to run five hours. The studio cut it to ninety minutes. Later there was a three-hour version, but it still wasn’t the whole thing. If you like cowboys, you’ll like it.”

“Who’s in it?” says Eye Patch. His buddy goes over to the poster and reads off names.

“Robert De Niro. James Woods. Joe Pesci. Tuesday Weld. William Forsythe …”

“Sold,” says Eye Patch.

“Good choice,” I say, taking a disc from under the counter. I put it in a couple of plastic bags to keep it from getting wet.

“Your turn to pay,” says Eye Patch. His friend sighs, which always hits me as slightly creepy. I mean, vampires don’t breathe, so sighing is something they have to practice. Willing their diaphragms to move, sucking air in and pushing it out again. It’s a lot of work just to sound disgusted.

Short guy slaps a hundred-dollar bill on the counter.

“Your prices are highway robbery.”

“You can find any of our movies somewhere cheaper, go rent from them.”

Eye Patch puts the disc in the pocket of his PVC jacket.

“I always wondered about that. How do you keep people from bootlegging your wares?”

I get out another disc, an original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons, and show him the runes inscribed around the edge.

“The discs are hexed. They know when they’re being copied and melt down like a nuke plant, killing themselves and whatever machine they’re in. We have an alarm rigged up that goes off when it happens. Store policy is that you kill my disc, well, you know.”

“You kill them?”

“Don’t be stupid. I can’t kill off my customer base. No, I just cut off their fingers and feed them to Kasabian.”

From the back room Kasabian yells, “I heard that. Fuck you.”

“See? A barely controlled beast.”

“Take it easy, Stark,” says Eye Patch. “How long do we have the movie?”

“Three days. After that, it’s a hundred-dollar-a-day late fee.”

The short vampire gets their umbrellas from the bin up front.

“You’re a fucking thief, you know that?” he says.

“Wrong. I’m P. T. Barnum. You want to see the Fiji mermaid, I’m the only one in town who has one and no one gets in free.”

“This movie better be fucking great.”

“If you don’t like it, come back and you can exchange it for one of these.”

I hold up my middle finger.

Eye Patch laughs. When his friend takes a step toward me, he puts a hand on his shoulder and he backs down. Yeah, the short one is new to the bloodsucker game. Anxious to show off his power. Good thing he’s got Eye Patch looking out for him. He might actually make it to New Year’s.

The Lyph comes over and asks for Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible Part 3.

“You have good taste,” I say.

She lays down a hundred.

“You too,” she says. Her horns are still a little damp. Rain beads on them like she’s glued rhinestones there too.

“You okay getting home with your radar showing?”

She realizes I mean her horns and grins.

“I’m fine. The umbrella has a glamour on it.”

She picks it up and instantly looks like the kind of sweet old lady who spends her days baking apple pies for orphans.

“Nice trick.”

“Thanks,” she says, setting the umbrella against the wall. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“Why do you wear that one glove?”

I hold up my left hand. The prosthetic one. Flex the fingers.

“I paid good money for this manicure. I’m not messing up my cuticles around here.”

She hesitates.

“People call you Michael Jackson behind your back, you know.”

“I’ve been called worse.”

She purses her lips in embarrassment.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just, you hear stories.”

I hand her the disc.

“No problem. For a hundred dollars a movie, I guess you’re entitled to a question or two.”

She glances around the store.

“You have some really nice stuff, but you ought to expand into BBC shows.”

“Which ones?”

“In the early sixties they used to erase a lot of TV to save on videotape. They lost old Doctor Whos. The Avengers. Cool shows like that. I have friends who’d kill for those.”

“Tell you what, make me a list of what you want and I’ll see what I can do.”

From the back, Kasabian yells, “That’s TV. We don’t do TV.”

I shake my head.

“Ignore him. He’s a snob. Bring me the list and your next rental is free.”

“Awesome,” she says. She gets her umbrella, does her old lady trick, and heads out. Stopping by the door she says, “Merry Christmas.”

“Same to you, Mrs. Cratchit.”

She opens the door and a blast of wind blows rain inside. It’s coming down hard enough that the street out front is flooding again. I lock the door behind her.

“Cute girl,” says Kasabian, coming out of the back. His mechanical legs click with each step. He wears a loose knockoff Nike tracksuit. It makes him look like the movie version of a Russian mobster, if Russian mobsters were robots.

“Nice salesmanship with her,” he says. “Not so much with the guys you threatened.”

“The little guy annoyed me. Anyway, we need signs or warning labels or something on the discs. I don’t want to keep having that conversation.”

“If it’ll calm you down I’ll print out something.”

“Yeah, it would.”

Kasabian has lost more hair in the year since I’ve been back. His face is still as round as it ever was. Must be the hoodoo keeping him alive. He eats plenty, but the food drops right through a tube in his mechanical body, so it’s not like he’s taking in any calories.

“You’re in a mood,” he says. “You and the other Johnny Laws have a busy day arresting jaywalkers?”

“It was a funny day, now that you ask. I cut off a guy’s head, and when he died I followed him into limbo. Sound familiar?”

Kasabian touches his throat.

“You and cutting people’s heads off,” he says. “You’re like an alcoholic, only with a guillotine.”

I think about getting a drink, but the moment has passed. I don’t want it anymore. I’m worried about Candy.

“You notice anything about Candy recently?” I say. “She wasn’t feeling well at work.”

“Was she there when you started lopping heads off, because regular people aren’t exactly used to that?”

“Candy isn’t regular people. She’s seen a little blood in her time.”

Candy is a Lurker. A Jade. They’re kind of like vampires, only scarier. More like spiders, really. They don’t drink their victims’ blood. They dissolve them from the inside and drink them dry. Candy has been clean for years. Doc Kinski came up with a potion that curbs her appetite for human milk shakes. After he died, Allegra stepped in and took over his practice and has been giving Candy all the Jade methadone she needs.

“How’s the swami biz?” I say, wanting to change the subject.

“This is how it is,” says Kasabian, dropping a pile of printouts on the counter.

“What are these?”

“Requests from potential clients.”

Kasabian started a little side business a few weeks back and it’s taken off like a bottle rocket out of a carny’s ass. He can’t go to Hell like I can, but he can see into the place. He set himself up as an online seer. For a fee, he’ll tell you how the dearly departed are getting on in the Abyss. Seeing as how most people seem to end up down there, he doesn’t lack for clients.

Kasabian riffles the pages with his pointy hellhound claws.

“All these people have family or friends Downtown. And all want more than I can give them. Paying clients don’t want to hear about sweet Aunt Suzy up to her eyeballs in a river of shit.”

“And this concerns me how?”

“Most of these people want to, you know, talk to the departed. Hear a story about redemption, maybe. Mostly, they want to know where they hid the good silver or did they really love them. You know. Normal family bullshit.”

“And you want me to go Downtown and play twenty questions with damned souls because they don’t have enough problems.”

“Yes. That’s what I always want. Come on, man. Look at the streets. This city is going to be empty soon. Empty and underwater. It’s no-shit Ragnarök. People want to know what to expect on the other side.”

I shake my head. Push the papers back across the counter.

“Not my problem. And I told you. Mr. Muninn is still pissed at me for stealing Father Traven’s soul. He doesn’t want me back in his petting zoo playing with the animals.”

“It doesn’t have to be all of them,” says Kasabian. “Just for a few of the high rollers. We need the money.”

That much is right. We are severely on the rocks. Kasabian squirreled away a few grand from a payoff I got from the Dark Eternal when I put down some pain-in-the-ass zombies. But we blew the last of that fixing up Max Overdrive so we could live here and reopen the store. The special video section is bringing in cash, but barely enough to pay for beer and utilities.

“Okay. Cash is a good incentive, but seriously, Hell is kind of off-limits for me right now.”

“What about Samael? Would he do it if you asked nice?”

“You think you’re going to bribe Samael with money? He’s a fucking angel. He doesn’t carry a lot of pocket change.”

Kasabian picks up the paper. Taps it on the counter to straighten the edges.

“Maybe Muninn would be happier to see you than you think. Hell isn’t looking too pretty right now.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing, that’s the problem. All the public-works projects, fixing the place up after you broke it …”

“That wasn’t my fault. Samael fucked it up when he was still Lucifer. I just let it get a little worse when I was running the place.”

“Whatever you say, man. Well, it’s all stopped. They’re not even pretending to put the place back together again.”

“That doesn’t sound like Muninn.”

“You so sure he’s still in charge?”

“I’d know if anything changed.”

“How?”

“I just would.”

“Okay, Cassandra, there’s something else. Did it rain much when you were down there?”

“No. I don’t remember it raining at all.”

“Well, it is now. Raining cats and dogs and little imps with pitchforks. I mean, there’s doomed. There’s screwed. And there’s monsoons-in-Hell fucked. And we’re at fucked o’clock.”

Suddenly I want a cigarette. I take out the Maledictions. I go to the back door and open it, blowing the smoke outside. Candy doesn’t like me stinking the place up with cigarettes that smell like a tire fire.

“I don’t get it. Could the Angra be doing it?”

“Who cares? It’s happening and whoever’s in charge down there can’t stop it. What makes you think I can?”

“You were the Devil,” says Kasabian.

It’s true. I got stuck with Lucifer’s job for three miserable months. And what do you know? I wasn’t good at being a bureaucrat or a diplomat. I fucked Hell up worse than it was when I got there, and barely made it out with my hide intact.

“You know God,” Kasabian says. “Get him off his backside. Or better yet, hide us in your magic room. You’ve always said that nothing can get in there. It’s the perfect fallout shelter.”

I puff the Malediction, cupping it in my hand so the rain doesn’t put it out.

“So your solution to the end of the universe is to hide for the next billion years in the Room of Thirteen Doors? A room with nothing in it and nowhere to go.”

“Okay. It doesn’t sound great when you say it like that. But we could fill it up with food and water and movies. Everything we need.”

“There’s no electric outlets in the Room, and more important, no toilets. Get the picture?”

Kasabian comes over to the door and sticks his fat face into the rain, looking up into the black sky like maybe if he stares long enough God will part the clouds and give him a thumbs-up.

“If we can’t hide, then fix this shit. My business is going to fall apart when people realize they don’t need me to find their relatives because they’re going to be Downtown soon enough themselves.”

He wipes the rain off his face with his sleeve and heads to the back of the shop where his rooms are.

“If anyone wants me I’ll be having a Béla Tarr festival in my boudoir.”

“Bullshit. You don’t watch gloomy Hungarians when you’re depressed. You’ll be watching porn all night.”

He gives me the finger without turning around and closes the door to his Batcave. I head upstairs.

Yeah, we’re broke now, but it was money well spent. We got Max Overdrive up and running again, at least on a small scale. And we fixed the place up so it’s less like a crash pad for a crazy person and a dead man and more like a place where actual people might live.

Kasabian has the ground floor, in three small rooms built behind the video racks. Candy and I have the upstairs. Three rooms like he has, with a little kitchen area. When we were building the place, all I insisted on was a bed with an extra-strong frame, the largest flat screen humanly possible, and a dishwasher. I would have been happy eating off paper plates with plastic forks for the rest of my life, but Candy said I should stop pretending that the world is a squat and that I’m just passing through. I’ve stuck around for almost a year, so maybe she’s right. After losing room service and our cushy life at the Chateau Marmont, there was nowhere else for us to go but Max Overdrive. I don’t think Candy ever lived anywhere very long before Doc Kinski took her in. She doesn’t talk about her life before that. If playing Ozzie and Harriet makes her happy, then it’s all right with me. But I’m still not folding fucking pillowcases. Good thing for everyone there’s a laundry down the block.

Why has she been moody and off her feed lately? Today wasn’t the first time she’s been mad enough to snap. What if she feels like she got in too deep with the domestic bliss stuff? She dumped me once before, back when I disappeared for three months in Hell. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if after getting sheets and plates and all kinds of kitchen trinkets, she decides she can’t handle it? It wouldn’t exactly surprise me. Most of my luck revolves around breaking things. If every day was car chases and sawing people’s heads off, I’d be the Pope of Lucky Town.

[Chapter 3]

CANDY COMES HOME about an hour later. I have Spirited Away going on the big screen. Her favorite movie when she’s feeling down. She sticks her head around the door and raps on it with her knuckles.

“Knock, knock,” she says. “I brought a peace offering. Burritos from Bamboo House of Dolls.”

“Then you may enter.”

“Thank you, sir.”

She puts the burritos on the table. She left her jacket downstairs, but her jeans are soaked through. She’s even given up her Chuck Taylor sneakers for shin-high rubber boots with skulls and stars. She takes them off and tosses them in the tub, then comes over and flops down next to me on the secondhand sofa.

“What are we watching?”

“If you don’t remember it, Allegra needs to check you for a brain tumor.”

She pushes up against me and gives me a little elbow in the ribs.

“I’m sorry. Was that your side, Mr. Sarcastic?”

“You’re dripping on the linoleum and getting the couch wet, wino.”

Candy unbuckles and slips off her jeans, leaving them in a heap on the floor. She sits beside me and shivers. Pulls my arm around her. My left arm. She doesn’t mind the prosthetic. I think she kind of likes it. I pull her closer.

I say, “So, Allegra fixed you up?”

Her head moves against me as she nods.

“She said it was probably the stress of getting the new place together and doing stuff with you and the Vigil, knowing no one at the Vigil wants me there.”

“Fuck ’em,” I say. “They’re paying me to be there. They’re getting you for free. If you don’t want to come in you don’t have to. Take it easy and settle into the place.”

She looks up at me.

“And let you have all the fun? Besides, what would I do here while you’re gone? We only get a few customers, and unlike Kasabian, I can only jerk off so many times a day.”

“What do other domestic ladies do? You could take up needlepoint or do crossword puzzles. Maybe get into Valium and martinis.”

“I like the sound of the last part. But seriously, Allegra has all the help she needs at the clinic and I like being Robin to your Batman. That and my Duo-Sonic are about the only things I give a shit about right now.”

I gave Candy a cherry-red electric guitar a few weeks back. She got herself a little used Roland CUBE amp and bashes away every moment she can. She only knows about three chords, but she plays them with great conviction. Sometimes Fairuza, a Ludere who works with Allegra at the clinic, jams with her on drums. They’re talking about starting a band, calling it the Bad Touch Sugar Cookies because it sounds like one of the idoru bands they like. Supposedly, Fairuza’s old band once opened for Shonen Knife at the Whiskey. I think Candy about dumped me for her when she heard that, but I have a better movie collection, so she stayed.

I take a blanket off the back of the couch and wrap it around Candy and we watch the rest of the movie. After that, I write the report I promised Wells, and e-mail it to him. I still can’t figure out what the mess in Hobaica’s demented head meant. Tooth flowers. Seas of fire. Hacked-up bodies. It’s like a Texas Chain Saw wet dream. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. Maybe I just left him on ice too long and Hobaica’s soul was all screwed up from his brain getting frozen and oxygen deprived. Anyway, it’s not my job to figure out. That’s for the bag of Shonin bones.

Later, Candy reheats the burritos and we eat them while watching Hausu, a funny Japanese haunted-house flick. Candy cackles the whole way through it. I don’t pay much attention. She goes downstairs when we’re done eating.

I’m still wondering if I should take a chance and go see Mr. Muninn in Hell. Maybe it would be smarter to check in with Samael first. He’s living in the palace with Muninn and would know if it’s all right for me to go down. Your holy roller types are talking about God sending a new flood to cleanse the world. I’ve got news for them. God’s got his hands full right now. The parts of him that aren’t already dead.

A rhythmic thumping and buzz comes up through the floor, from the storeroom we soundproofed with egg cartons and blankets. Candy and Fairuza are thrashing through a ragged version of “Rock ’n’ Roll High School” because what else is there to do at the end of the world?

[Chapter 4]

A FEW GLASSES of Aqua Regia later, I remember something I promised to do. I put on a hoodie and one of my frock coats and dig around under the bed for a dusty sack of bones that I took out of Kill City, a cursed shopping mall at the beach in Santa Monica. There was a pack of ghosts in the basement that wanted me dead, but we cut a deal. They let me go and I promised I’d bury their bones in the ground outside the mall. With fixing up Max Overdrive and starting back with the Vigil, I’d put it off a dozen times. All this talk of the apocalypse, I think maybe I should do it now just in case. I don’t want to die having lied to a bunch of poor slobs buried under a thousand tons of concrete, corn dogs, and panty hose.

I put a little LED flashlight in my pocket and step through a shadow. Go through the Room of Thirteen Doors and come out under the Hollywood sign in the hills overlooking L.A. From up here, through the air that’s been washed clean by the rain, the city is beautiful. L.A. always looks best in the dark, when it’s just lights and the ugly hulks of the buildings have been softened to vague night shapes. Even from up here, I can see the traffic snarling the main streets and spilling out onto the Hollywood Freeway. People are leaving town and they don’t even know why. They’re running just to run. Some animal part of their brain knows something bad is coming and they want to get as far from it as possible. Who can blame them? But if the Angra come stomping back to the world, there won’t be anywhere too remote to hide. In the meantime, they run like lemmings.

Idiot that I am, I didn’t bring a shovel, so I have to dig with my hands. I put the bones in the ground between the h and the o in hollywood. I don’t know if being in soil will help those ghosts rest easier, but I’ll sleep better knowing I’m not just another liar in a city built on slick pitchmen who’d sell you their mother’s kidneys if it got them salesman of the month.

It’s dark up here and there isn’t a shadow in sight. I turn on the LED flashlight and bury one end in the ground. I get in front of the beam and step into my own shadow, soaked and cold, heading home.

Later, Candy comes upstairs. Her T-shirt is soaked through with sweat.

“Having a little drink?”

“I went out. I’m trying to get the chill out of my bones.”

She takes off her shirt and tosses it on the back of a chair. She comes over and straddles me on the couch, presses her warm body into mine.

“Better?” she says.

“Much.”

She leans down and kisses me. I set my glass on the floor. She pushes me down on my back and starts pulling my pants off.

I should have insisted we get a sturdier couch. We break one of the legs and have to prop up the end on a pile of ancient VHS tapes from the bargain bin downstairs. Broken furniture rescued by forgotten movies. The place is starting to feel like home after all.

[Chapter 5]

THE FLAYED HEART is all over my dreams. Grinding teeth. Pulped bodies in flames. Zhuyigdanatha is in the freezing locker where I found Hobaica. Fire licks the meat-hooked body parts in the flesh cathedral. Chars the sides of beef. Fills the locker with a dense, oily smoke that settles on the walls and floor like a slick skin. Hot blood bubbles from the broiling meat. It pools on the locker floor like wounds. I double up in pain, maybe just in my dream or maybe for real.

I’m stuck somewhere dark. Bound to a wall underground in Kill City. Besides ghosts, the place is full of addled Lurkers and Sub Rosa families so far down the food chain they haven’t seen daylight in years. Ferox, the head of the Shoggot clan, is there with his giggling relatives. They’ve filed their teeth to points and let maggots clean the places where they’ve carved up their own bodies. Ferox wants to see what makes a being like me tick. He shoves a scalpel low into my belly and drags the blade north. He wants to open me up. Pull me apart like those bodies falling into the abyss of the Flayed Heart’s gullet. I’ve never felt anything like this, even in Hell. It’s not just the pain. It’s the idea of being gutted like a trout and left a hollow husk. After all I’ve been through, here I am, dying at the hands of a freak in the basement of a goddamn department store. I cramp again. This time I’m sure it’s real.

The dream changes. I’m back in Vigil headquarters. Their first one, down south of L.A. Aelita is there. She’s an angel. One of God’s most hard-core. Pure Old Testament rage. She runs the Vigil with Wells. Only she’s crazy, or maybe I make her crazy. The knowledge of my existence does. I’m Abomination. Nephilim. I shouldn’t exist and yet God lets me live. She does Ferox’s trick. Pig-sticks me with a flaming angelic sword. Kills me good. My first death. But I got over it and stabbed her right back. Still, I can feel her sticking me more than I can feel any satisfaction in getting revenge.

My stomach burns like it’s filled with fire and metal.

All these scars. The road map of my life. My armor. Sometimes being hard to kill isn’t exactly a blessing. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s my punishment for being born a freak. I don’t think even God knows at this point. He’s broken up enough these days I don’t know if I’d trust any answers he gave me.

Aelita declared war on God before she died. Wanted nothing more than to murder him. Here I am with her former friends trying to do the same thing to the Angra Om Ya. Who’s right and who’s wrong doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe God did trick the old gods out of this universe and steal it for himself. But here’s the scary question: which God is worse? The Angra, who might be competent, but want to wipe us out, or our God, who isn’t good at his job, but if not benign, is at least indifferent to us? Parental neglect is starting to look pretty good right now, isn’t it?

Maybe the Angra are entirely in the right to want back in, but if they’re coming back means wiping us out, then fuck ’em. This isn’t Metaphysics 101. This is self-defense. Anyway, what else am I going to do? Where else am I going to go? Hell is boring and Heaven sounds like a Disneyland fireworks parade forever.

My Shoggot scar burns and I feel mountain-size teeth crunching my bones.

But why be a Gloomy Gus about Armageddon? I survived Hell and Hollywood and the 1989 remake of Godzilla. I can survive this. The pain in my gut eases up.

Besides, I still have the Mithras and the Singularity. I can burn the universe to the ground or I can start it over brand-new. True, I’ll be toast, but when I make that last big fuckup at least Wells won’t be anywhere around to say “I told you so.”

[Chapter 6]

IN THE MORNING, Candy is feeling sick again.

“What’s it feel like?”

She shrugs.

“Anxious. My stomach hurts like I haven’t eaten for days. I have a headache like there’s thunder in my head.”

“You’re not …”

“Pregnant?”

She gives me a soft kick.

“Allegra’s a doctor, asshole. That’s the first thing she checked. Besides, the pregnancy thing isn’t really an issue for Jades. We only make babies when we want and that’s only when we’re told.”

“What do you mean when you’re told? You never said anything about that before.”

“It’s not a big deal. There’s a council in charge of things like how many of us there are in the world and when we need more. Don’t worry about it. They’re not going to ask me to pop out little Jadelets.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m fucking a monster. The biggest monster on Earth. You’ve polluted my precious bodily fluids.”

She says it like it’s a big joke, but she’s never talked much about Jade life before.

“Tell me the truth,” I say. “Did I fuck up some big deal for you? Get you on the outs with the other Jades?”

She sits up and puts her hand on my arm.

“You didn’t fuck up anything. I chose to be here with you, remember? If any of the Jade Ommahs have a problem with that, they can take away my cookies and my merit badges and I won’t care.”

“Thanks. If that ever changes you better tell me.”

She gives me a push.

“Shut up and go to work, drama queen.”

I lean against the bedroom door and pull on my boots.

“I have to spend the day with cops and you get to hang out in bed.”

“Sucks to be you,” she says.

“Maybe I should call in sick.”

“Maybe you should go and get us some money and find out more about what was going on in that meat locker. Don’t you sort of wonder about that?”

“Not really.”

“Well, I do. Don’t come back without some answers and ice cream.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She turns the light off and I shut the bedroom door. I’m going to have to trust that she isn’t bullshitting me when it comes to the Jade stuff. I want to know more about it now, but if I ask her about that she’ll want to talk to me about Doc Kinski, my real father, and I’m not ready to do that. Maybe if I can get her talking first she’ll forget about my crap.

And what the hell is an Ommah? The Shonin is supposed to be Mr. Wizard. Maybe he’ll know.

I step through a shadow and come out in the Vigil HQ across town.

[Chapter 7]

I HEAD INTO the Shonin’s room, but the place is empty. There’s a note taped to the door with a map and a red X over a nearby room. I find it around the first corner. There are heavy curtains over the window in the door. Someone has left a drawing on the clipboard attached to it. It’s a clipping from a newspaper. A butcher-shop ad with a cow sectioned into the different cuts of meat. Someone has drawn a little headstone and Xs over the cow’s eyes. I never knew feds had a sense of humor.

The inside of the morgue is almost as cold as the meat-locker freezer. Wells and the Shonin are there. Wells is reading aloud from the report I sent in last night. Both men look at me and Wells stops reading.

“You took your sweet time getting in today.”

“But it looks like I haven’t missed brunch.”

The room smells of incense. All thirteen bodies from the meat locker are laid out on stainless-steel tables, with their heads propped up next to them. The top of each head has been sawn off, revealing the gray brain matter. Each brain sports three incense sticks jammed right into the head meat.

I look at Wells.

“You give me a hard time and this guy’s one step away from turning these people into bongs.”

“Very funny. This man has been doing real work while you’ve been lying around at home.”

I walk between the tables, checking out the bodies. It’s like a weird corpse maze. Each head has a sigil painted with a brush a little below the hairline. Over their third eye. My guess is that the Shonin has been poking around in some of these dead people’s memories.

I say, “How did you get the bodies? You scoop them up before the cops get there?”

“No such luck. Local law enforcement arrived just as we were removing the physical evidence.”

“Dead people, you mean.”

“Among other pieces of evidence, yes. I’m afraid there was an ugly scene. I don’t enjoy territorial clashes, but I suppose with a crime this large local authorities are bound to be …”

“Emotional?”

“Clingy. However, when I explained the gravity of the situation to the commanding officer, he was happy to allow us to assist in the investigation.”

“You pulled rank, didn’t you? Got all federal. Maybe threatened to bring in Homeland Security.”

“I didn’t have to. As I said, the commander was a reasonable man.”

“LAPD is a lot of things, but I don’t remember reasonable.”

“The chief is Sub Rosa, so he understands how important our investigation is.”

“Having fun, fatty?” says the Shonin. “Does he always waste time like this?”

“He’s a child,” says Wells. “A misbehaving child. That’s why I’m so reluctant to give him this.”

The Shonin laughs a grumbling laugh. Like rocks in a tumbler. I hope I don’t hear him do it again.

“We’re getting early Christmas gifts? Are you my Secret Santa?”

Wells reaches into a jacket pocket and takes out a folded piece of leather. Hands it to me. Inside is a card with my name on it and the Golden Vigil insignia.

“This is official Vigil ID. If a situation develops with local law enforcement, show it to them. It won’t work in little Podunk towns, but it will in L.A. and you’re not going anywhere anytime soon, are you?”

“Not with a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card, I’m not.”

“Do not even begin to think about abusing the authority afforded to you by this identification.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. But LAPD does know that I’m a car thief, so the thing might actually come in handy.”

Wells takes back the ID.

“Speaking of your previous criminal activities, understand this. This identification is only good while you work for this organization. My organization. You get cute, you go off the reservation, and I’ll throw you to the wolves. Do you understand me?”

“I’m a team player, sir. I won’t let you down.”

“See that you don’t,” he says, and hands me back the ID. I put it in my pocket before Wells can take it away again.

The Shonin crooks his finger at me and says, “Come over here and see what real mystical forensics looks like.”

I go over. He waits on the other side of a table holding Hobaica’s body.

“The man’s name is Joseph Hobaica. He’s thirty-eight years old, and by the cross around his neck, a good Catholic boy.”

“Wow. You and your mystical powers found his driver’s license and a first communion present. You’re goddamn Kreskin.”

“Language. He runs the distribution company where you witnessed the ceremony,” says Wells.

“Was that even a ceremony? It just looked like some kind of elaborate suicide pact to me.”

“You know damned well it was an Angra offering ritual. Stop being a smartass.”

“What I’m saying is, the all-beef church aside, the whole thing looked kind of thrown together. There weren’t any ritual objects. They didn’t have time to do an invocation before I got there. They didn’t even have decent suicide instruments. What kind of Gods want a life offering made with something you can get at a hardware store?”

“Do you have any brilliant theories?”

“I think they were freaked out and desperate. I could smell it on them. Maybe they were offering themselves to their freaky God, but they were also splitting town. Just like all the other suckers clogging the freeways.”

Wells nods.

“You might actually have a point there.”

“But you’re wrong about there being no ritual objects. Did you see the amputated limbs hanging among the circle?”

“They were a little hard to miss.”

The Shonin goes to a table nearby and throws back a blue hospital sheet revealing arms, legs, hands, a whole buffet of body parts.

“These are what Marshal Wells’s men brought back from the scene. Four arms. Four legs. Four hands. Four feet. You get the idea.”

“Yeah, they butchered two poor slobs or two of them committed suicide before and let themselves be cut up.”

The Shonin shakes his head.

“You were closer to right on your first guess. The marshal and his men saw this collection of wretched humanity and logically assumed that with this particular inventory of parts, they were the remains of two bodies.”

“But there’re more, aren’t there?”

Wells goes to the table and pulls the sheet back over the limbs.

“The Shonin expressed some doubts after examining the remains, so we ran DNA from each limb. There are parts of twelve bodies here. I seriously doubt they butchered twelve of their own members just so that thirteen more could commit suicide.”

“So, what are you saying? They’re part of some kill-crazy Charlie Manson gang?”

“You’d like it to be that simple, wouldn’t you, lazy boy?” says the Shonin.

Wells picks up a manila envelope from a nearby desk.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of corpse desecration. Limbs severed and mixed together.”

“I saw something like that in Hobaica’s head. Body parts in the fire.”

Wells opens the manila envelope. Looks at a couple of pages.

He says, “Have you heard of a killer called Saint Nick?”

“I think maybe I saw something when Kasabian was channel-surfing. A killer running around in the rain. So what? L.A. cranks out more serial killers than shitty sitcoms. He sounds like cop business to me.”

“To me too until yesterday,” says Wells. “Do you know why they call him Saint Nick?”

“Because it’s close to Christmas?”

“Half right,” the Shonin says. “He’s Saint Nick because he likes to give his victims a little cut.” He laughs.

“You mean he chops them up?”

Wells nods.

“And removes some of the parts. Different combinations of limbs and organs with each killing.”

“Why?

“We don’t have a motive yet,” says Wells. He tosses the manila envelope back on the desk. “But we found some notes and coded e-mails that lead us to think that this Angra bunch wanted to die by his hand. They thought they’d draw him out by imitating him.”

“That explains all the mystery bodies.”

“Right.”

“But he never showed up,” says the Shonin. “Hobaica was afraid that they’d been rejected by their God.”

“So, this Saint Nick guy is an Angra worshiper?”

“Who knows?” says Wells. “But this bunch thought he was, and when they felt rejected they did the only thing that made sense to them.”

“To prove their loyalty to the Flayed One, they sacrificed themselves imitating Saint Nick as best as they could,” the Shonin says.

I say, “Hobaica told me he was waiting for me. How did he know I was following him?”

“You’re so fat he saw you coming a mile away,” says the Shonin.

“I saw that in your report. You’re certain he said that?” asks Wells.

“He saw me standing in a slaughterhouse with a knife to his throat. Yeah, the moment is pretty well imprinted in my brain,” I say.

“That’s bad. It means at least this one Angra cult is working with a psychic. And if one has a practicing psychic, it probably means they all do.”

“I have a slightly different theory.”

“What’s that?”

“You have a mole in the Vigil.”

Wells comes over to me.

“Are you trying to be offensive? This isn’t just a law enforcement organization. It’s a holy calling.”

“What this bunch did was a holy calling too. To them. You think you’re immune to bad influences in the ranks? Stop a moment and think who you’re talking to. I’m a bad influence on bad influences, but at least I’m up front about it. If an asshole like me has Vigil credentials, who else does?”

“I do not believe one word of this malarkey,” says Wells. He doesn’t say anything for a minute. “But it can’t hurt to get new security clearances on all the personnel.”

“I left my résumé in a hole in the ground in Yamagata four hundred years ago,” says the Shonin. “Happy hunting for that.”

Wells looks at me like he’s thinking of taking the ID back.

“Get out of here for now,” he says. “But keep your phone on. I might need you later. I want to sort this Saint Nick thing out fast.”

“What about the 8 Ball?” I say. “Shouldn’t the bag of bones be working on that instead of playing medical examiner?”

“Unlike some people, I can multitask,” says the Shonin. “So fuck you, round boy.”

“Please,” says Wells. “The profanity. You’re a holy man.”

“Your nephilim is right about himself. He’s a bad influence. Go home and infect your friends.”

“Don’t leave yet,” says Wells. “I need you to go and see Marshal Sola.”

“Julie Sola is back in the Vigil?”

“Marshal Sola is with us again. And she has some papers to go over with you.”

“What kind of papers?”

Wells smiles.

“Part one of your psych evaluation.”

“Excuse me?”

“Everybody goes through it. I did it. Marshal Sola—”

“How about Aelita?”

That stops him cold.

He says, “You will go to Marshal Sola, do her paperwork, and pass the evaluation or you don’t get paid.”

“This is bullshit.”

“Watch your language. And this is nonnegotiable.”

I start out but stop and look back at the Shonin.

“Hey, muertita. You know what an Ommah is? I heard a Jade say it.”

“You’re involved with a Jade and you don’t know what an Ommah is?”

“I lost my library card. Just tell me what it means.”

“It’s an old word. Arabic. It means ‘mother.’ The Ommahs are the Jade matriarchs. They control the whole Jade world. Set the rules. Tell them where to go and what to do.”

“When to have kids?”

“Especially that. Breeding is very important to Jades. They like to keep their lineage clean and controlled. It’s why they go for such a high price.”

“What do you mean a high price?”

“At market. When they’re sold. There are few Jades in the world. They live short, exciting lives and are gone. That’s why they’re so expensive.” The Shonin laughs. “How do you not know these things?”

“Thanks,” I say, and leave. As the door closes I can hear the Shonin.

“Seriously. How dumb is that boy?”

Apparently, dumber than even I thought.

To hell with Wells and his inkblots. I need a drink.

I go outside and call Candy. No one answers, so I leave a message that I’m going to Bamboo House of Dolls and that she should meet me there if she’s feeling better.

The rain still pounds down. A couple of agents under an awning palm their cigarettes when I come out. They whisper to each other and quietly laugh. Yes, I’m a commander of men.

Six Vigil agents in expensive golf clothes play a round under oversize umbrellas. Disguised spooks playing a fake round of a brain-dead game in a billionaire’s playpen in a monsoon while around them, the city reaches population zero. If the Angra have a sense of humor they won’t be able to invade. They’ll laugh themselves stupid and wait for us to die off pretending that nothing is wrong.

[Chapter 8]

I STEP THROUGH a shadow and come out in front of Bamboo House of Dolls. It’s my Sistine Chapel. My home away from home. The best bar in L.A. The first bar I walked into after escaping from Hell. It’s a punk tiki joint. Old Germs, Circle Jerks, Iggy and the Stooges posters on the wall. Plastic palm trees and hula girls around the liquor bottles. And there’s Carlos, the bartender, mixing drinks in a Hawaiian shirt. On the jukebox, Martin Denny is playing an exotic palm-tree version of “Winter Wonderland.”

It’s a small, damp afternoon crowd in the place. Smaller than usual. Few civilians. Mostly Lurkers. Three gloomy necromancers play bridge with a Hand of Glory filling the fourth seat. A couple of blue-skinned schoolgirl Luderes play their favorite scorpion-and-cup game. A table of excited Goth kids throw D&D dice and cop discreet glances at the crowd from the back of the room. Games for everyone. A necessary distraction when the sky is falling. Still, it’s Christmas and the mood isn’t bad. It’s a Wonderful Life crossed with Night of the Living Dead.

Carlos serves drinks wearing a Santa hat.

“The salaryman returns,” he says when I sit down at the bar. “How’s life behind a desk?”

“If anyone ever actually gets me to sit at a desk you have my permission to shoot me.”

Carlos pours me a shot of Aqua Regia from my private supply.

“It’s not so bad,” he says. “Take me. The bar is sort of my desk. I come in at pretty much the same time each day. Do my prep. Serve my bosses—you ungodly things—and go home tired and satisfied knowing that I’ve kept America watered and prosperous for one more day.”

“You’re a saint. When you die they’ll name a junior high after you and your reliquary will be full of shot glasses and lime wedges.”

“Don’t forget a boom box. I need my tunes.”

“The difference between us is one, you’re the boss. Two, you can throw out anyone you want anytime you want. And three, you have a jukebox by your desk. Me, all I have is a dead man in Liberace robes and a cowboy with a stick the size of a redwood up his ass.”

Carlos pours himself a shot and leans on the bar.

“Why don’t you have a drink and listen to the carols? That always makes me feel better.”

Someone comes in and Carlos stands, looking serious.

“Be cool,” he says, and goes to the end of the bar, where two uniformed cops have come in. The three of them speak quietly. Too quietly for me to hear over the jukebox. After a minute of chatter, Carlos hands one of the cops a Christmas card. The card is misshapen. Bulging. There’s something inside it. The three of them nod to each other and shake hands. One of them glances at me and stops like he thinks we might have gone to high school together. A second later, he turns and heads out with his partner.

“What was that?”

Carlos says, “Exactly what it looked like. Protection. But for real. Do you know how many cops are left in the city? They’re splitting town just like everybody else. The cops that are left, they need a little extra motivation to answer the phone if there’s trouble.”

“A nice racket.”

Carlos shakes his head and throws back his drink.

“The price of doing business in L.A.”

He pours us both another round and holds up his glass for a toast.

“Merry Christmas.”

We clink glasses and drink. I shake my head.

“I can’t believe it’s Christmas again. How do you people stand having the same holidays over and over? In Hell they only have holidays when Lucifer feels like it, so it’s always a surprise and all the little goblins are giddy as kindergartners.”

“You going back to the old country for the holidays?”

“Yeah, I’m Hell’s Secret Santa, bringing all the good little imps coal and fruitcake.”

“How do you tell the difference?” says someone behind me.

I turn and find Eugène Vidocq, besides Candy probably my best friend on this stupid planet. He doesn’t like talking about his age and swears he isn’t a day over a hundred and fifty, but I know he’s well over two hundred. He’s also immortal. And a thief. And after being in the States for more than a hundred years, he still has a French accent thick enough to slice Brie, a last remnant of his home that he won’t ever let go of.

He claps me on the back and nods to Carlos. Orders a couple of drinks. He isn’t alone. Brigitte Bardo is with him. She gives me a quick peck on the cheek. Brigitte is Czech. She was a skilled zombie hunter back in the day and used to do porn to support her hunting habit. These days she’s working her way into regular Hollywood films. But it’s slow. She still has an accent and it’s, you know, the end of the world, so there’s fewer films in production. When she’s not auditioning, she helps out at Allegra’s Lurker clinic.

Carlos brings Vidocq whiskey and Brigitte red wine.

“Where’s Candy?” she says.

“She wasn’t feeling well. Did you find anything wrong with her when she stopped by yesterday?”

“Nothing that I know of. She just took her Jade potion and left. She seemed fine.”

“Maybe I should call her again.”

“Leave her alone. This time of year can put people into odd moods.”

“Don’t I know it,” says Carlos. “It was just about a year ago that you wandered in here the first time. You were looking a little bleary, Mr. Stark.”

“As I recall, I’d just crawled out of a cemetery and was wearing stolen clothes.”

“You always make an impressive entrance,” says Vidocq. “As I recall, after your return you were going to shoot me the first time we saw each other.”

“Total misunderstanding. And sorry.”

He holds up his glass.

“Whiskey under the bridge.”

“You kicked a bunch of skinheads’ asses for me, remember?” says Carlos. “I didn’t know about any of you Sub Rosas or Lurkers back then. If those fuckers came in here these days, I’d give them a faceful of this.”

He holds up a potion from behind the bar.

I look at Vidocq.

“One of yours?”

“You’re not the only one who barters for drinks,” he says.

“Rumor has it you’re doing some freelance work for the Vigil these days too. How does it feel to be back?”

Vidocq shakes his head. Regards his drink.

“Strange. As strange as I bet it is for you.”

“I’m still not sure it’s the right thing to be doing, but if I wasn’t working for them I don’t know if I’d be doing anything at all.”

“Confusion. Strange alliances. God’s new deluge. These are the things the world has been reduced to. Apocalypse. Le merdier. So let’s drink to the void.”

Brigitte sighs and picks up her wine.

“You boys are too grim for me. I’m going to find more congenial company.”

I say, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be a drag.”

“You’re never a drag, Jimmy, but I see a studio friend I met when I first came here. A girl must maintain her connections, mustn’t she? Maybe I can be in the last movie before the world ends.”

“Now who’s the drag?”

She shrugs extravagantly.

“Knock ’em dead,” I tell her.

I turn back to the bar and pick up my drink. I haven’t had a cigarette in hours. My lungs are aching for abuse.

“Tell me the truth. Are we good enough for this? Look at us. What a bunch of fuckups.”

“What choice do we have?” says Vidocq. “Who else will do this if not us?”

“The government.”

“Save us from our saviors.”

I sip my Aqua Regia and Carlos moves off to serve other customers.

“I don’t trust the Vigil much more than the Angra. What’s more important to them, saving the world or controlling whatever’s left when this is over?”

Vidocq looks at his hands. Flexes his fingers. He looks good for two hundred. Not more than his forties.

“I was twenty-five when I faced my first apocalypse. When the bloated corpse of the eighteenth century rolled into its grave, making way for the wonders of the nineteenth. You should have seen Paris. Half the city praying, flagellating, and prostrating themselves before Notre-Dame and images of the Madonna. The other half whoring and drunk while fireworks burned brighter than all of Heaven.”

“I wonder which group you were with?”

“The Madonna and I had parted ways many years before that, I’m afraid.”

I look around the room and spot Brigitte sitting at a table with a group of network executives decked out in designer faux-military gear and safari vests like they’re running off to a Brentwood Red Dawn key party. But like a few million others, they’re just headed out of town with the family jewels sewn into the lining of their bulletproof trench coats. Brigitte laughs as the gray-haired alpha wolf exec lays some of his survival gear on the table. Lengths of paracord. Sapper gloves. A multicaliber pistol. Condoms in Bubble Wrap. A multitool with more moving parts than a Stealth bomber. Watching her smile, I wonder if Brigitte is pulling out of her depression or if she’s just an actress playing at being all right.

“There were suicides and riots. Fury and ecstatic joy, and all for the same reason. The world would end or be transformed, and unlike now, in this age of science and desperate rationality, there was nothing we could do about it. So each of us did what made sense. Drink. Pray. Stay with loved ones or sail off to the ends of the earth.”

“And here you are.”

“And here I am. Alive and not quite yet mad.”

He finishes his drink and holds up the empty glass for another.

“The point is that I believe we will survive. Or enough of us will to make the world worth fighting for.”

“It better be. I’m not kickboxing monsters so the Vigil and Homeland Security can turn L.A. into one big It’s a Small World ride.”

One of the Luderes gives a little shriek. She’s been stung by one of the scorpions. The shrieker gives the room a little wave.

“Sorry. Everyone’s fine. Carry on.”

She and her friend crack up.

I turn back to Vidocq, but there’s someone in the way. One of the Goth boys from the table in the back has joined us. He’s dressed in a long high-collared coat and has wild Robert Smith hair. He looks vaguely like a mad scientist disguised as a priest. There’s something funny about his eyes. I glance over at his friends. They look as surprised as I am.

“No autographs today, kid,” I say. “I’m with friends.”

The kid takes a step. Stumbles and slams into the bar. I have to grab his arm to keep him from falling over.

He says, “It’s not going to stop. No matter what you do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s my message to you. It’s never going to stop.”

I know what’s wrong with his eyes. He’s possessed. In Hell there’s a key. If you know how to use it, and not many down there do, you can temporarily take possession of a body up here. Someone is riding this kid like he’s a carousel pony.

“He isn’t Death. Or God or the Devil. He is the Hand. Cut one off and another takes his place. He is many-bodied. Many-handed. A hand for each soul on Earth.”

I slap the kid. Shake him. His eyes stay vacant and dead.

“Who are you? Who gave you the message?”

“Come out and see,” he says.

Vidocq puts a hand on my arm.

“Don’t you dare go anywhere with this boy. He is dangerous.”

“I know. But if there’s something out there I can’t stay here.”

“Don’t be stupid,” says Carlos. “Let me call the cops. This is why I pay the fuckers.”

I nod.

“Maybe calling them isn’t a bad idea.”

I turn to Vidocq.

“Keep everyone else inside.”

The kid is still holding on to me.

“Let’s go,” I say.

I get up and the kid lets go of me, leading the way outside. I put my hand under the coat and slip out my na’at.

We go out into the rain. Smokers huddle under the awning. A few of the regulars nod and wave. I don’t wave back.

The kid walks all the way to the curb. I stay a couple of steps behind him. We stand there in the rain like a couple of assholes. He steps into the street between two cars, looking around like he’s waiting for a cab.

“You saw a golden woman in the water. There,” he says, pointing west to the Pacific.

“I remember.”

When Kill City collapsed into the ocean a few weeks ago, I was in it. Something that looked like a woman covered in gold swam up from the wreckage and tried to pull me down.

“She served the Hand. She was beautiful.”

“Except for the part where half her face was missing.”

He nods. His long hair is plastered to his head, covering one eye.

“She was incomplete. That won’t happen again.”

“You couldn’t tell me this inside, where it’s dry?”

He holds his hands out wide.

“You don’t understand what’s happening and even if you did you can’t stop it. The old ones are coming. They will bless us with annihilation.”

A delivery truck speeds up the street. It swerves toward the curb. Hits the cars the kid is standing between. The impact drives both cars up onto the sidewalk. The kid is still between them, but now he’s in two pieces. A girl screams and keeps on screaming.

The kid’s friends must have followed us outside. A couple of the other Goth kids run to the curb like maybe they can put their friend back together again. I climb over the trunk of one of the wrecked cars. Go to the truck and pull the driver-side door open. The driver half falls out, held in place by his seat belt. His head is pulped from smashing into the windshield. I test his seat belt. It’s locked right across his body. It doesn’t make sense that he could have hit the inside of the windshield. Unless someone else belted him in after his head was in pieces and he was dead. I step up onto the running board to check out his body. His right arm is gone. Cut off neatly at the shoulder. Another Angra groupie? I can see why he’d sacrifice himself, but why take out the kid? No way he was looking to die.

I start back into the bar. The kid’s phone rings. He had it in his hand the whole time.

“Don’t touch it,” I say.

I kneel down and pry it from his hand. One of the boys vomits into the street. I go back inside the bar and head straight for the men’s room, where it’s quieter. No one is inside. I shove a trash can under the doorknob so no one can get in. Where the number of the caller should be displayed it says blocked. I thumb the phone on.

“He’s right, you know. You can’t stop it.”

There’s static on the line, but I know the voice. This isn’t the first time he’s crank-called me from Hell.

“Fuck you, Merihim.”

Merihim is head of the Hell’s one official church. But it was all a ruse. He’s also in a Hellion Angra cult. A lot of the fallen angels want the old gods back so that they’ll destroy the universe, hoping it will relieve them of the torments of Hell. It’s the biggest suicide pact in the history of creation.

“Try again. Do you think there’s only one who can speak through mortals?”

The line static clears up.

“Deumos?”

She’s another fallen angel. She ran another underground, radical church in Hell. Except it was all a con job. She was working with Merihim to bring the Angra back. I guess you can’t trust Hellions or preachers. Who would have guessed?

“The who doesn’t matter. The what matters. Return the Qomrama Om Ya. That’s the only way the killing will end.”

“So you can summon the Angra? I know how you want things to end.”

“Admit it. You’re as exhausted by existence as we are. Help us end it.”

“Hello? Say that again. It’s hard to hear you over the bullshit.”

There’s a pause. I start to think that the line has gone dead.

“Hello?”

“You’ll find each other sooner or later, and when you do, you’ll see how pointless your cowboy antics really are.”

I hear a click and the call is over. I drop the kid’s phone in my pocket and take out my own. I hit redial and call Candy.

It rings twice and she picks up.

“You all right?” I say.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“No reason. You weren’t feeling well earlier.”

“Where are you?”

“Bamboo House.”

“I’ll be there soon.”

“Don’t bother. Cops are on the way.”

“Are you okay?”

I switch the phone to my left hand. There must have been blood on the kid’s phone. I wipe my right hand on my coat.

“I’m fine,” I say. “You stay put, lock up the store, and I’ll bring home some donuts.”

“Yum.”

I try to slip out the front of the bar, but the cops are already there. It’s the two that were in the bar earlier. When they try the bully-boy routine, I use the only weapon I can think of. One that might backfire in my face. I flash my Vigil credentials at them. They back off. Reluctantly, but they back off.

“I understand you removed evidence from the accident scene,” says one. The one who looked at me funny before. He’s still looking at me kind of like I’m a talking lobster.

“I’m taking in a cell phone to the Vigil’s labs.”

“You don’t think this was a traffic accident?”

“I don’t know what it is, but I know the kid is a person of interest in a Vigil investigation, so I’m keeping the phone.”

“Let me see that ID again.”

I pull it out but keep it close enough that he can’t grab it from me.

He writes down my ID number and closes his notebook.

“We’ll be in touch,” he says.

“I’ll count the seconds.”

I walk around the corner into the alley next to Bamboo House. The headlights of the cop car throw a nice shadow on the wall. As I step through I catch the cop with the notebook watching me. I keep going. This is Hollywood. Fuck him if he can’t deal with a little street magic.

[Chapter 9]

I’M HOME MAYBE twenty minutes when someone pounds on the front door of Max Overdrive. I grab my Colt and head downstairs. The front of the store is all glass, so if someone really wanted to get in they could. Still, I’d like to know who I’m dealing with. I flip on the outside light and go behind the counter. We installed a surveillance camera over the door when Kasabian and I had the place fixed up. Except tonight all I can see is the outline of a body outside and heavy rain. More pounding on the door.

“Stark. I know you’re in there. Open up, dammit.”

It’s a woman’s voice.

I take a chance and look around the shade that covers the door and recognize Marshal Julie Sola. I stuff the Colt in my waistband and unlock the door. She brushes past me to get out of the rain. She’s in a long slicker raincoat with the hood pulled up over her head. Still, she’s drenched and making a puddle on the floor. I point to the peg on the wall where people can hang their raincoats. She gives a soft “Ah,” takes off her coat, and hangs it up.

Her hair is long and dark, pulled up high and pinned in place. It was, at least. Now it’s a wet rat’s nest. She’s dressed in light, loose-fitting sportswear, a kind of idiot camouflage the Vigil makes many agents wear to try and blend in with their country-club location. She looks vaguely embarrassed, but quickly shakes it off.

“Thanks,” she says. “I thought I’d find you here.”

“You’re half drowned. Why didn’t you wait till I came in tomorrow?”

“Would you have really come to see me?”

“Maybe not first thing, but sure. I like you fine.”

“That isn’t what I mean,” she says. “This is what I mean.”

She hands me the manila envelope she’s been holding. She had it under the jacket, but the front is still damp.

I open the envelope and find official Vigil stationery and forms. Many pages of forms. It’s my psych evaluation.

“I have to do all this?”

“Ah no. This is just part one. There are three parts.”

“Fuck me,” I say. The pages are full of word problems, shapes I’m supposed to group together, drawings, and questions about my parents.

“I can help you,” she says. “I know the right answers to give so Washington won’t ask any questions.”

“You think Washington is going to buy it if I come off like Mike Brady?”

She smiles and rubs her hands together to get the circulation going.

“So we’ll leave some rough edges on. The point is you’ll pass. We need you.”

I drop the envelope on the counter.

“Why are you back working with them? Last I saw you, you were happy in the Mike Hammer PI biz.”

She shrugs.

“Look at things. The world is too crazy to want one more inexperienced private investigator. Don’t get me wrong, I was good at my job, but I was slowly starving to death. Eating through my savings and playing a lot of Tetris waiting for the phone to ring.”

“Bad timing, I guess.”

“To say the least. When Marshal Wells called and offered me my old job back, it wasn’t hard to say yes. What about you?”

“Not so different. But he told me he knew how to work a weapon, something to fight the Angra with. Turns out it was a fib. He has a bag of bones working on it. Maybe he’ll figure it out.”

“I met him once. Creepy guy. He called me ‘tubby.’ I don’t look fat to you, do I?”

“I don’t know. He called me ‘lardass’ last time I saw him.”

Candy comes down the stairs.

“Is this where the party is?”

“Candy, this is Julie Sola. Marshal Sola these days. Julie, this is Candy.”

Candy comes down and they shake hands. She has powdered sugar on her fingers and it rubs off on Julie.

“Sorry,” she says, and holds out the bag she’s holding. “Want a donut?”

“No thanks. I was just dropping off some paperwork.”

Candy says, “You’re the private eye he talked about. You got him onto the zombie case.”

Julie nods.

“Yeah. We thought it was a simple demon possession at the time. He saved us.”

“Yeah, he does that.”

“I’ve seen you around Vigil headquarters.”

“Don’t bring me any paperwork. I’m just this one’s unofficial assistant.”

“Don’t worry. If you’re not on the payroll you don’t have to take the psych evaluation.”

Candy looks at me and laughs.

“You’re supposed to pass a government psych evaluation? Oh man, I hope you like the smell of a rubber room because that’s where you’re headed, pal.”

“I can pass for normal if I have to.”

“Yeah, and I’m Nancy Reagan’s wrestling coach.”

Julie puts her hand out and I shake it.

“Listen,” she says. “If we make it through this maybe we can work together again. Believe it or not, I still have a few clients. And I don’t think you’re going to want to stay in the Vigil forever.”

“Sounds good. If the world doesn’t end, let’s talk.”

She starts to put on her raincoat.

“Don’t forget about those papers.”

“I’ll get on them first thing in the morning.”

Candy holds out the bag again.

“One for the road? I have plastic wrap upstairs.”

“No thanks,” Julie says. Then, “Shit. I almost forgot the real reason I came. Marshal Wells gave this to me to give to you. It looked important.”

It’s an envelope. Nice, crisp, expensive paper. On the inside, it’s lined with a molecule’s thickness of gold. The thing is uncomfortably familiar. I open the note inside. It’s from Saragossa Blackburn, the pope of the whole Sub Rosa kingdom in California.

The note says, Come see me tomorrow. At noon. I know you’re not an early riser. His signature is under that, signed with a fine pen using ink that probably cost as much as a lung transplant.

“Thanks,” I say, and drop the note on the counter with the papers.

“Good night,” says Julie. To Candy she says, “Nice meeting you.”

Candy gives me a look.

“Offer the lady a ride home, Sir Galahad.”

I turn to Julie.

“Want me to get you home the fast way?”

She shakes her head.

“No thanks. I have my car.”

“Drive safe.”

“Thanks.”

“She seems nice,” says Candy, biting into a jelly donut. “What else did she bring you?”

I pick up the note from Blackburn and drop it again.

“I have to go and see one of the few guys in town who can call in a hit on me. I saw a kid get crushed today. I got a phone call from Downtown. And now this.”

I look at Candy. She’s already headed for the stairs.

“These are really good donuts.”

“Thank you for your concern.”

“Don’t whine to me. You forgot the coffee. Now I have to go make some. Forget those papers for tonight. Come upstairs and have something to eat, fatty.”

I can tell by her tone she’s going to be calling me that for a long time.

Before we fall asleep I almost ask her why she never told me about the Ommahs. Almost. Maybe I’ll ask later when we’re not so tired. Yeah, then.

[Chapter 10]

I CAN’T SLEEP, so I get up at the crack of eleven. Candy is still asleep, so I pull on my clothes quietly and go into the bathroom to brush the taste of lard and sugar out of my mouth. We killed most of the bag watching Barbarella and Danger: Diabolik last night. I don’t need to experience the wonders of fried dough again for a year.

I’m sick of hiding from the world, moving through the Room all the time. When I’m ready to leave I go around to the alley beside Max Overdrive and uncover the Hellion hog. It’s a little something I picked up in Hell, back when I was playing Lucifer. I wanted a motorcycle so I could get around by myself and not always in a clown-car presidential motorcade. I asked the local demon techs to throw together a 1965-style Electra Glide. They did their best. In fact they did a great job, but what they came up with was a lot more Hellion than Harley. The bike is built like a motorized rhino with handlebars that taper to points like they came off a longhorn’s head. The pipes belch dragon fire and when I kick the bike hard, the engine glows cherry red like it wants to shoot off into the sky, a panhead Space Shuttle.

But it’s not just kicks I want right now. The overcast skies mean there aren’t many good shadows to move through. Plus, I don’t want to spook any of Saragossa Blackburn’s guard dogs by appearing out of nowhere. When I get to his place, I want them to hear me coming.

I kick the bike into gear and it roars like a hungry Tyrannosaurus. At the curb, the water comes up almost to the tire hubs, but the bike doesn’t slow. The engine boils the water around us and every time I stop I’m enveloped in a cloud of steam.

The streets through Hollywood in the direction of the 101 are as snarled as ever, though some of the side streets are starting to be passable. People running for their lives 24/7—hell, even L.A. has to start emptying out sometime. I’d love to collar one of the runners and ask them why they’re going, but I know what the answer would be. Aunt Tilly is sick in Nebraska. There’s a vegan lute hoedown in Portland. Skull Valley Sheep Kill is headlining a nonexistent music festival in Houston. Lies, all lies, and they know it, but do they understand it? It’s animal stuff. Zebras don’t hang around a watering hole when the lions show up.

Maybe this parade of chickenshit civilians knows more than the rest of us Vigil and Sub Rosa types determined to tough it out until the end. I mean, why should the Angra pick L.A. to be their launching pad? Then again, why not? Maybe Zhuyigdanatha wants to do an open-mic night at the Comedy Store. Maybe the Angra want to have a drink at the Rainbow Bar & Grill like real old-time rock-and-rollers. Maybe they want to stomp us into the dirt because L.A. defines reality for three-quarters of the world. Or maybe because Mr. Muninn used to live here and they fucking hate him and the rest of the God brothers.

The brothers make up what’s left of God. See, he had a little nervous breakdown a few millennia back and split into five pieces. He’s weak, and one part of him, the brother called Neshemah, is dead. Murdered by Aelita and cheered on by big brother Ruach. Like the Ramones said, we’re a happy family.

Maybe I’m making too much of it all. L.A. is turning into Atlantis, slowly sinking beneath the waves. If the rain keeps up, those Brentwood blue bloods will be chain-sawing their mansions into arks, loading up the kids, the Pekingese, their favorite Bentleys, and heading for warmer climes. Trust-fund pirates and showbiz buccaneers, sailing the briny to Palm Springs and Vegas, where it never rains and Armageddon can’t get through the guards at the gated communities without an engraved invitation.

[Chapter 11]

WHEN IT COMES to showing off, the Sub Rosa aren’t like the civilian big-money crowd. They like anonymity more than kittens and cotton candy. While civilians compete for House Beautiful trophies, wealthy Sub Rosas like their places to come across as the most miserable shitboxes outside of the town dump. If they could live in a greasy Big Mac wrapper they’d do it.

Blackburn’s mansion is downtown, in an abandoned residency hotel on South Main Street. The bottom floor is boarded up, covered in aeons of graffiti and posters for bands and clubs that haven’t existed for a decade or more. The second and third floors have been gutted by fire. There’s something heroic about the utter devastation of the place. It probably says more about what the Sub Rosa have become than Blackburn ever intended.

The mansion is protected by more hoodoo than the gates of Heaven. So much that Blackburn didn’t have guards for years. Then I broke in that one time, and ever since, he’s stationed a private army outside. To fit in with the look of the street, his mercs are covered in grime and sporting the latest haute couture rags from Bums “R” Us.

Blackburn’s security chief, Audsley Ishii, and a dozen of his crustiest compadres surround me as I pull up outside the mansion. It takes me a second to recognize him under the moth-eaten wool cap and stage-makeup stubble. His raincoat is a plastic trash bag, which he’s cut open at the bottom for his head and the sides for his arms. He doesn’t pull a weapon. Neither does any of his crew, but if I sneeze I’ll have enough bullets and hoodoo thrown at me to knock loose one of Saturn’s moons.

Ishii says, “Stark. Don’t you even know enough to get out of the rain?”

“I like it. Makes this neighborhood smell less like a piss factory.”

“Well, you’d know all about living like a pig, would you?”

“Are you trying to insult me? ’Cause I can’t hear you over the sound of your garbage-bag tuxedo.”

One or two of his crew smile, but sober up when he throws them a look.

“What do you want here?”

“Don’t fuck around, man. You know I’m here to see Blackburn.”

He looks me and the bike over.

“I couldn’t help noticing you weren’t wearing a helmet when you drove up. You’re aware that the state of California has clearly spelled out helmet laws, aren’t you?”

He takes a couple of steps back and spreads his arms wide.

“And there’s no way this, whatever the hell this thing is, is street legal. It doesn’t even have a license plate.”

“So, write me a ticket, Eliot Ness. Just get out of my way.”

Ishii holds up a finger.

“Before I maybe let you in, I’m going to have to search you for weapons.”

“Try it and the last thing you’ll see is me pulling your skull out by the eye sockets.”

That does it. Ishii’s goons go on high alert, guns, hexes, and potions at the ready. It’s kind of fun really. Like a scene from some kind of hobo Power Rangers movie.

“Not smart,” says Ishii. “You know I can have you arrested this fast for making a terrorist threat.”

He snaps his fingers like maybe I don’t get it.

He says, “All Mr. Blackburn has to do is nod and you’ll be buried so far underground you’ll be sleeping on lava.”

“Yeah, but you still won’t have a skull. Your head’s going to look like a jack-o’-lantern a week after Halloween.”

He shakes his head in mock sorrow.

“I’m afraid under the circumstances I can’t allow you to see the Augur. And I’m forwarding your name to the local police watch list.”

“Do it. What are there, like a hundred cops left in L.A.? And they don’t want to be out in the rain any more than you do.”

“Maybe I won’t have to do anything if you turn this circus act of yours around and go home.”

“I’d love to, but I have an invitation from Blackburn himself.”

I reach into my pocket and Ishii’s crew goes rigid. With my fingertips, I slowly pull out Blackburn’s note and hand it to Ishii. He looks it over and crumples it up. Tosses it into a puddle.

“With your criminal associations it’s probably a forgery. Go home, Stark, before you fall on a bullet.”

Ishii’s phone rings. He has to fumble under his trash bag to pull it from inside his tattered coat. He puts it to his ear and listens intently for a few seconds.

“Yes, sir. He’s here now, but he’s not behaving rationally. He’s made threats.”

Ishii listens.

“No. Not to you personally, but this is a highly unstable individual, with a history of violence. As head of security, I have to take these things seriously.”

He abruptly stops talking.

“Yes, sir. No, sir. I understand.”

He purses his lips as he fumbles the phone back into his coat. Waves his arm in my direction.

“Let him through, boys.”

His crew gets out of the way so I can roll the bike to the curb and heel down the kickstand.

Getting off, I say, “Your problem, Ishii, is that you like playing protector of the realm for the Augur because it gives you a power hard-on. But you really don’t respect the man. I mean, he peeks into the future. He probably knew exactly what you were going to do before you did. The only reason he waited this long to do anything about it is he wanted to give you a chance to pull your head out of your ass.”

Ishii looks at his watch, waves his people back to their posts. He doesn’t want to look at me.

“Stop talking, Stark. And go inside before my gun goes off by accident.”

“Have fun with the fishes, Noah.”

The door is open for me when I reach the hotel.

The outside of Blackburn’s house might be a wreck, but the inside is something else. The inner sanctum is a Victorian fever dream of potted palms, gaslights, silk settees, and arsenic-green walls. You half expect to see Dickens and Queen Victoria sipping laudanum in the living room. I know the layout, so I stroll through the place to the parlor, where Blackburn has his office.

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