“Sssshhhh, Minor Danzig.” The same voice as before.
Cool, dry lips were pressed to his forehead, his cheek, his lips. His right arm was aflame, impossible to move, but his left was free and he moved it, brought it up near his face. The lips pulled back, but his hand met hair, an ear, soft skin. Then other fingers locked with his.
“Soon, Minor Danzig.” Was that St. Katherine’s voice? “You are healing well.”
“My…eyes,” he whispered.
“Your eyes are fine. The lids were badly burned. They’re healing now. Tomorrow the bandages come off.” The fingers squeezed his, massaging, reassuring. “Tomorrow you will see.”
“My arm,” he said.
There was a long silence, another squeeze of fingers. “Your arm,” the woman’s voice said. “Tomorrow you will see.”
He woke again. Everything seemed darker, quieter. Night? Strangely, he was almost completely without pain. Even stranger, he was afraid. The world seemed to have disappeared.
“Saint Katherine?” He barely managed a whisper. “Saint Katherine?” Louder this time. Then, one final time, straining. “Saint Katherine?” He reached out with his left hand, moved it from side to side, feeling nothing, panic ratcheting up inside him. “Where are you?”
Then he heard a rustling, felt fingers taking his hand again, two hands taking his.
“I’m here,” she said, voice sleepy. “It’s all right, I’m here.”
Mixer sank back, relaxing, the panic sliding away.
He felt a patch being pressed against his neck. “I…” he started, then forgot what he wanted to say. He squeezed the fingers holding him. Everything was fine.
Awake once more. The pain back, but easier now. St. Katherine at his side—he was certain now that it was she. The bandages still covered his eyes, but he saw a bright flash of light through them. A few moments later he heard thunder crash and roll, shaking glass. Then he noticed the sound of rain, heavy and steady.
“Hot thunderstorm,” St. Katherine said. “It’s pouring outside.” A slight pause. A sliding sound, the room growing dimmer still. “Now, keep your eyes closed, let me take off the bandage.”
She raised his head with one hand, worked at the bandage with the other. Mixer fought the urge to open his eyes, kept them shut until he felt the last of the bandage come away, the air cool and soothing on his eyelids.
“Beautiful,” St. Katherine said. “They’ve healed beautifully. Go ahead, Minor Danzig. Open your eyes.”
Mixer did, blinking. The light in the room was dim, a heavily shaded lamp in the corner. Window blinds closed.
The room was small, sparsely furnished. His bed, medical equipment, two small tables, two chairs. Bare walls that hadn’t been painted in years. The only person in the room was St. Katherine, standing on his left. She was just as beautiful as he remembered.
He looked at his right arm and hand. He expected them to be heavily bandaged, but he couldn’t be sure—plain white cloth was tented over them. The arm felt heavy. He could just see a patch of metal around his shoulder. The exo?
Mixer turned to St. Katherine. “My arm,” he said.
St. Katherine stood, came around the bed to the other side. “We did everything we could,” she said. “We saved it. Remember that, Minor Danzig. We saved it.” She lifted the tented cloth, revealing his arm.
Mixer’s arm was a confused mash of metal and scarred flesh and a few small, still-healing sections of raw skin. He could not believe that it didn’t hurt more than it did, and he wondered what they’d pumped into him to keep the pain bearable.
“The exoskeleton fused to the arm,” St. Katherine said. “To the skin, the muscle, in some places even the bone. Impossible to remove it without taking too much of the arm with it. Maybe up in New Hong Kong or some rich hospital they could do something else, but not here.”
Mixer tried to lift the arm, managed it a few inches. Tried flexing his fingers, strange digits of metal and flesh. They, too, moved slightly.
“We had a choice med-tech work on the arm, the exo. You’ll have movement, fingers, wrist, elbow, but it will be restricted.” She reached for his face, turned it gently toward her own and gazed into his eyes. “A stiff, awkward arm, Minor Danzig, but you still have it.”
Mixer lowered the arm, his shoulder exhausted from the effort of holding it up, and smiled at St. Katherine. “Got no complaints about the arm,” he said. “Looks pretty fucking rabid to me.”
She cocked her head, not quite smiling. “Is that good?”
Mixer gave a short laugh and closed his eyes. “Yes, that’s good.”
“How long has it been?” Mixer asked later that day.
“More than a week,” St. Katherine replied. She handed him a strawed glass of ice water. Mixer held it in his left hand, got the straw in his mouth, and sucked hard. He was so thirsty, constantly thirsty. A med tech had come in and taken out the IV’s and catheter. Solid food was on its way, St. Katherine promised.
“We kept you completely sedated to aid the healing, and to let us work on the arm.”
“Why did you save me?” Mixer asked. “Why didn’t you just let me die?”
St. Katherine turned away, and didn’t speak for a long time. When she turned back around, there were tears in her eyes. Real tears, Mixer realized. Which made him feel strange.
“Because you survived the trial,” she finally said. “Because you broke the Wheel. And because I love you.”
Mixer slept, woke, slept some more. During his waking periods he began moving about, working out the stiffness in his limbs, his neck, everything. He ate and drank, used the toilet across the hall from his room. He stood at the barred window and looked out at the Tenderloin, the alleys and streets six or seven floors below him; at night there were drum fires in the alley, flames casting shadows up the building walls. Off to the right, he could just see the edge of the Core, the four square blocks of hell in the center of the Tenderloin, which reminded him of Sookie again. She’d had metal fused to her own arms and legs by the Chain Killer before he’d murdered her. The pain came and went, and he asked St. Katherine to cut back on the meds. She did.
There was no mirror in the room, no mirror in the bathroom, and he finally asked for one. His vague reflection in the window looked wrong, somehow. When St. Katherine brought him into a larger bathroom one floor below, with a large mirror above the sink, he saw why.
The spikes were gone from his forehead, burned and melted away; scarred, nearly smooth flesh remained behind. His eyebrows were just now growing back, stiff and coarse. Beard and moustache, too, had begun. His hair was uneven, stuck out from his head.
“I like the look,” he said. And he did. He looked like someone else, which matched the way he felt.
“That’s good,” St. Katherine said, standing beside him. “Better if you are not recognizable.”
“Why?”
They looked at each other’s images in the mirror, reflected gazes meeting.
“Because you’re dead.”
They sat at the table of a small kitchen on the same floor as the larger bathroom. St. Lucy served coffee and joined them.
“Saint Lucy is my primary adviser,” St. Katherine said. “Also our medical expert.”
Mixer stared into St. Lucy’s eyes. A stunning, deep blue, unlike anything he had seen before. “Are your eyes real?” he asked.
St. Lucy smiled softly. “Yes, they’re real. They’re not the eyes I was born with, but they’re real.” Her smile faded. “They’re New Hong Kong eyes.”
There was something pained in her voice, in her expression, and Mixer knew better than to ask any more about it. He turned back to St. Katherine.
“So why am I supposed to be dead?”
“We made…an announcement. Over the nets. You died a martyr. Something like a Saint yourself.” She looked away, apparently uncomfortable. “A great trial, providing us with profound revelations.”
“Why?” Mixer asked again.
“For your pr
otection,” St. Lucy said.
“We did something terrible,” St. Katherine said, still not looking at him. “I did something terrible.”
“It was a joint decision,” St. Lucy put in.
St. Katherine shook her head. “You advised against it. My responsibility.” She finally looked back at Mixer. “I came looking for you, Minor Danzig. For the trial. I came looking for you.” She laughed harshly. “I entered into a contract, a contract of the damned. For money and…other considerations, I agreed to find you for my next trial. You were expected to go the way of all the others. You were to die, or lose your mind.” The tears reappeared, welling in her eyes. “You did neither, Minor Danzig.”
Mixer didn’t know what to say. He looked back and forth between the two women. “Why do you call me Minor Danzig?” Not the question he really wanted to ask. “It’s the name I was born with,” he said, looking into St. Lucy’s incredible blue eyes. “But it’s not my name any longer. My name is Mixer.”
“You’ve been reborn,” St. Lucy said, smiling again. “It’s only right that you reclaim the name you were given at birth.” Then she gave a brief, graceful shrug. “You will need a new name, when you go out into the world again.”
St. Lucy glanced at St. Katherine, then got up from the chair and walked out of the kitchen, leaving the two of them alone.
“Who wanted me dead?” Mixer asked.
St. Katherine wiped tears from her eyes. “I’m confused,” she said, shaking her head, not quite looking at him. “I sacrificed my principles…no, not sacrificed. Sold them, for money and other things.” She now looked directly at him. “But doing that brought me you, one who has broken the Wheel and passed the trial. The first, the only one ever. The one man proven worthy to be my consort. Selling out my principles brought you to me, so perhaps it was meant for me to do, perhaps it was the right thing, perhaps I was guided.”
Mixer just shook his head. He finished his coffee, got up, and refilled his cup from the glass carafe on the stove.
“Perhaps…” St. Katherine said.
“No,” Mixer said. “It was wrong. I think all your goddamn ‘trials’ are wrong. Murder, is what they are. You believe it’s your calling; well, that’s for you to figure out. But doing what you did to me, for money, contracting out, even for you it was wrong. Doesn’t matter how it all turned out. Blasphemy, babe.”
He stood with his hip against the counter, watching her. He held the coffee in his left hand, though it was awkward. His right arm was too heavy, and still hurt. St. Katherine remained silent a long time, returning his gaze. Finally she nodded.
“You’re right, Minor Danzig. It was blasphemy, and I’ll have to atone for that.”
“Who wanted me dead?” he asked again.
St. Katherine sat up straighter in the chair, more confident and self-assured. Back to normal, Mixer thought. Was that good? She gave him a half smile.
“A woman named Aster,” she said. “But she’s not important, she was just a courier. She was working for someone else.”
“Who?”
“She wouldn’t tell us. What we did may have been blasphemous, but we didn’t do it stupidly. Lucy and I weren’t about to take the risk without knowing who was buying us.” She finished her own coffee and joined Mixer by the stove, refilling her cup and emptying the carafe. “Wasn’t easy tracing her, but we have hot demon resources. Angelic demons, of course,” she said, smiling. “Took us nearly three days, but we found it.”
“Who?”
“The trace led back to two sources,” St. Katherine said. “First, the mayor of this great city, the Honorable Terrance Kashen. And then, through him, we were fairly certain, to New Hong Kong.”
Jesus Christ, Mixer thought. The mayor. The New Hong Kong connection didn’t surprise him; there had been hints from Chick before he got himself killed. But the mayor. Fuck these people. What the hell was going on?
“Do you know why?” Mixer asked.
St. Katherine shook her head. “We never got even a hint.”
Mixer sighed deeply. “So, you were paid to kill me, and when I didn’t die, when my brains didn’t get scorched, you covered your asses and put out the word that I was dead.”
“No,” St. Katherine said, firmly shaking her head. “We could have let you die, and then it would have been the truth. We saved your life. You would have died without medical help. Lucy said it. We did it for your protection. So the mayor or whoever else won’t come after you again.”
“And you announced it over the nets.”
“Yes.”
He thought about Paula and Carlucci, Tia and Miklos and Amy, other people he knew, some friends, some not. They all must now think he was dead.
“Who knows I’m still alive?”
“Saint Lucy and I. The doctor, who is my sister. And the techs, but they don’t know who you are. The other Saints and all the novitiates think you’re dead. You looked dead when we carried you away.”
Mixer shook his head. “But I’m supposed to be your consort now, right? I survived the trial. So how does that happen if I’m dead?”
A wry smile crossed St. Katherine’s face. “I haven’t worked that out yet.”
Mixer looked out the small kitchen window. They were still several floors above the street. The day was bright and hazy, the sun glaring down through the sick mustard sky. What the hell was he going to do?
“I love you,” St. Katherine said.
Mixer turned back to her, remembering now that she’d said it once before. “You don’t even know me.”
She smiled. “It doesn’t matter. Besides, I do know you. I’ve been at your side for days, nursing you, watching you, talking to you, even when you couldn’t hear me. I know you, Minor Danzig. And I do love you.”
Mixer studied her face, looked into her eyes, and realized it was true. In her own way, whatever that was, whatever that meant to her, St. Katherine loved him. He thought it should frighten him, or repulse him, but for some reason it didn’t. Mostly he felt uneasy, a little confused. He remembered thinking as he was strapped to the wheel that he could fall in love with someone who looked like her. She was still stunningly beautiful, and there was something compelling about her, the way she was with him. But she had tried to kill him. She had saved him, but she had nearly killed him. Could he ever care for someone who had done that to him? Someone as crazy as St. Katherine? He didn’t know, and that disturbed him as much as anything else.
“Am I a prisoner here?” he asked.
“Of course not,” she replied. “But you’re still healing, you don’t have much strength.” She paused. “And it’s going to be dangerous for you. It would help if the beard were longer.”
“People think I’m dead. My friends think I’m dead.”
St. Katherine nodded. “And you had better be certain who your friends are, and careful who you see.” She paused. “Stay a few more days, Minor Danzig. Rest, and be cautious.”
Mixer nodded. “I’ll stay. And don’t worry, I’ll be careful.” He smiled. “I’ve already died once. I don’t want to do it again any sooner than I have to.”
18
PAULA WAS FEELING reckless. Chick was dead, Mixer was dead, why not go all-fire? She was still uncertain about Tremaine, and she wanted to get away from that as well. Fuck Jenny Woo and the Saints and whoever killed Chick, fuck ’em all. Jenny Woo had thought Paula was following her? Fine, she’d do it for real, see if she couldn’t find out what the hell was going on.
She thought about calling Carlucci and letting him know what she was doing, but he’d just try to talk her out of it, and she didn’t want to be talked out of anything right now. Instead, Paula left a message for Bonita, canceling another Black Angels gig that night, and headed for the Tenderloin.
Paula had her own ways into the Tenderloin, at least one into each of the Quarters. Two—into the Euro and Arab Quarters—were expensive and unpleasant, and she avoided them. Her two ways into the Asian Quarter would take her right into the heart
of where she wanted to be, but would be a hell of a lot more likely to alert Jenny Woo. The Latin Quarter was too far away, so she decided on the Afram.
The sun was setting, streaking dark, heavy incoming clouds with deep orange and red, and the heat of the day still shimmered in the air, baking up from the street and off the dark brick and stone and concrete all around her. It was probably going to rain sometime tonight; Paula could feel it weighing down on her.
She walked to the farthest reach of the Polk Corridor, then crossed into the DMZ between the Polk and the Tenderloin. DMZ was a bad name for the strip. After dark it got crazy, and by midnight was more of a free-fire zone than anything else. Now it was marginal, lights coming on and going off in windows, street traffic noisy and snarled, sidewalks jammed. Paula felt probing hands and fingers when she was bumped, saw crazed eyes staring at her, smelled panic and desperation in the air. A Black Rhino thundered down the street, clearing traffic as it ground up the pavement in its path, smashing vehicles aside. Paula leaped into the empty street in its wake, just in front of a pack of trailing Tick-Birds, ran behind it for a block, then cut up toward the Tenderloin, only two blocks from the Nairobi Cafe, her way in. She hurried along the two blocks, nervous energy pushing her close to a run. She’d have to settle down or she’d drive herself crazy.
She stopped across the street from the Nairobi Cafe, looking at the windows filled with lush tropical trees and plants and birds. A huge boa constrictor was wrapped around one of the trees, two feet of tail end dangling from a branch; a large, pop-eyed green lizard sat below the boa, flicking its tongue, eyes shifting with jerky movements. Paula crossed the street and pushed through the front door, still walking way too fast.
She was more than halfway to the rear of the cafe when she realized something was wrong. People turned to stare at her, and the noise level dropped, though the place didn’t actually go silent. As she walked among the tables, she realized she was the only white person in the place.
The Nairobi customers were always mostly black, but never exclusively, and though she’d never seen any Asians in the place, there were always whites, usually a few Latinos. Neither right now. Blacks at every table, at the bar, a lot of them looking at her. Shit. Shockley’s Raiders had re-formed recently, pounding around the city, making things jittery again. She’d bet they’d made some hit in the last day or two that she hadn’t heard about. Shit.
Carlucci Page 40