“Both, I guess. I’ve had so many questions since I’ve been back. Like, the first time I almost died, my angel half and human half split. I was two people for a while. This time, though, I was just fucking dead and no sign of any angels. What do you think it means?”
Vidocq gets up and brings back an ancient book that smells like wood smoke, old blood, and mildew. He opens it to a dog-eared page and points to a hand-drawn image of an anvil. It’s surrounded on both sides with alchemical symbols and a long set of instructions written in Latin.
“Very pretty. What am I looking at?”
“The formula for Samvari steel. It’s an obscure substance even among those who practice the craft. It’s said that the formula comes from another plane of existence and was payment for some great, dark favor. What it was, I don’t know. What I do know is this. The steel, once made into a weapon, had the power to kill both your human and angelic halves.”
“But I’m back now. Shouldn’t there be an angel me too?”
Vidocq runs his finger along a line of Latin and reads it out loud. It’s all gibberish to me.
He says, “I suspect that your unusual death and peculiar resurrection have fused your dual nature into something inseparable.”
“Is that good?”
“I have no idea.”
“Where would a third-rate creep like Audsley Ishii get something like that?”
“A very good question and one, like your previous one, I can’t answer.”
I take a long sip of the coffee. It burns just right going down.
“All right. Let’s forget the knife. What about my body?”
“You’re referring to your left arm, I assume?”
I hold it up in the light streaming from a window.
“Right. It’s my regular arm again. Not my Kissi prosthetic. When I was almost dead and you burned me, my body came apart and put itself back together. I was healed.”
“A fortunate outcome if you ask me.”
“I’m not complaining. But if the fire fixed my body, why not my scars? I still look like I went through a woodchipper.”
“That’s easy,” says Vidocq. “Should I get another book for you?”
“Please don’t.”
“Very well. You are a Nephilim. The last of your kind. We don’t have any trustworthy descriptions of previous Nephilim. We have no idea if their complexions were smooth . . .”
“Or scarred like mine.”
“Exactly. It’s my theory that you haven’t really received the scars over the years, but that your scars are simply part of your divine nature. Like a sculptor chips away stone to reveal a face beneath, so your various injuries removed the flesh that obscured your true self. I’m sure this process will continue and that you’ll acquire new scars in the future.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
He sips his coffee and shakes his head. “And I don’t care for the immortality with which I’ve cursed myself. All we can do is carry our burdens with grace.”
When we finish our coffee, Vidocq goes to get us more.
I say, “It was nice seeing you and Allegra getting along so well at the party.”
“Yes. Things are back to much the way they were before our troubles. However, she still refuses to live here with me again.”
“Love is the worst.”
“How are things with you and Candy?”
I stare into my coffee cup.
“It’s complicated. We spent last night together, but I’m not counting on it happening again. At least any time soon.”
“Still. Her feelings for you remain strong. She’s loved you through life and death and now life again. That’s more than most men get.”
“I know you’re right. But I just want things simple. The way they used to be.”
Vidocq sits back and crosses his arms. The idea gets to him too.
Finally he says, “Nothing is ever the same the second time. It might be worse. It might be better. But it’s never the same. And it’s never as simple or innocent as it once might have seemed.”
I look at him hard.
“I thought you French bastards were supposed to be romantics.”
“You must be thinking of someone else.”
“There’s no secret formula for turning back time with people? Bring her enchanted posies that sing show tunes? Magic escargots that pick lottery numbers?”
He laughs a little.
“Trust me. I’ve looked for tricks in all my books and travels. Nothing can truly fix a fractured romance. And love potions just drive people mad.”
“I was afraid of that.”
He thinks for a minute.
“I liked your lady friend, Janet.”
“It’s nice, but a whole other kind of complicated. I mean she’s great. And she gets me free donuts.”
“At least there are some compensations.”
“It’s nice hanging out like this. You should come to my place. Just you and me. We’ll drown our sorrows in movies and booze.”
“I’d like that.”
I say, “To whatever the hell it is we’re doing with our lives.”
We clink mugs. Then I remember what brought me here.
“What do you know about exorcisms?”
Chris Stein’s police report is sitting on the living room table when I get back. The folder is old and thick. There are coffee stains and some smeared inky fingerprints on the front. When I open it, the file smells musty. You can tell no one has so much as touched it in decades. I open it and start spreading papers on the table. There are interview transcripts. Medical reports. Police reports about the original call. Detective reports about local resident interviews. Hair and blood samples. An autopsy report diagrams the exact angle at which Stein was cut in half.
Now I remember why his murder stuck in my brain. It wasn’t so much that he was a hot young actor cut down in his prime, it was that he was the punk-era Black Dahlia. Sliced in two and left in a small long-gone park in West Hollywood. I go straight to the crime scene photos.
They’re strange. I’ve seen plenty of human and inhuman bodies ripped apart and cut up, but seldom so neatly. The cut is so straight it’s like someone put him on a worktable and pushed him sideways into a giant circular saw. But that can’t be what happened. The flesh around the wound wasn’t ripped or damaged the way a saw blade would. In fact, the edges of the wound, Stein’s internal organs, and his spine were smooth. Cauterized. Like someone cut him up with one of those hot wires you use on Styrofoam. Only I never heard of a foam cutter that goes through bone. From the reports, it sounds like a lot of people thought it was some kind of cult killing. Maybe he was trying to get out and they wanted to send a message to the other members not to run. A couple of detectives decided it was Satanic ritual abuse, an idea that would catch on big a few years later.
In the photos, Stein’s right hand is balled into a fist. When I look closer, I realize that he’s holding something. I drop the photo and paw through the other papers fast. Inside a plastic envelope I find it. A note. It was crumpled in Stein’s hand, but someone smoothed it out. The night Stein was murdered it rained, so most of the ink is illegible. But the part he clutched in his mitt—the very bottom of the note—is still clear. In a neat cursive hand someone wrote, “Forever Yours Forever Mine.” I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t ring Satanic to me. The cult angle might still hold. It could be a code. Something you’d say to a fellow traveler to let them know you’re on their side. Really, though, it reads more like a mash note to me. A love letter from a killer who was sorry for what they were about to do.
I read through the file for a couple of hours, especially the interviews. Stein’s career was on a severe downturn by the time of his murder. Scattered parts in B- and C-grade films. Mostly quickie one-or-two-day jobs. He did a lot of local theater, keeping his hand in with the L.A. arts scene. There were stories that he was a member of the Hollywood sex party crowd, too, making side money hustling sparkly debutan
tes and/or their handsome boyfriends. Nothing surprising there. It was the seventies by then. With access to the best cocaine and the prettiest bodies in the universe, who wasn’t going to dive in? But 99 percent of the partiers were doing it just for kicks. If Stein was making money, combine that with drugs and sex and Hollywood careers that could topple if the right stories got out, and you have a great motive for murder.
But what kind of maniac turns a simple murder into a Vincent Price movie by chopping the victim in half and carefully cooking the wounds closed?
There’s one other thing that hits me: Stein never lived in Little Cairo. Ever. And the park in West Hollywood where they found him was miles away from there. So much for my one brilliant theory.
When I can no longer stand the crime scene diagrams and witness transcripts—all of which amount to one big nothing—I get another bright idea.
I put on Stein’s movies and go through them in chronological order, watching him go from bit player with a few lines to matinee idol playing second fiddle to bigger stars, to Murdering Mouth, his last big movie. It seems to me that the phrase “Forever Yours Forever Mine” is so stilted it might be from a movie. I check all Stein’s roles on IMDb and it’s not a title. But it still might be a line of dialogue in a cheap melodrama.
It takes all day, from the afternoon to sunset, to go through his fucking oeuvre, and by the time I get to the closing credits of Murdering Mouth, I’m pretty sick of Stein’s chiseled good looks. What’s worse, no one ever says “Forever Yours Forever Mine.” I even freeze-frame the music credits of each film, hoping it might be a song title. Nothing. If the phrase is from a movie, it’s none of this batch, and I’m sure not going to crawl through Stein’s fifty-odd movie and TV credits. That means I’m right back where I started. A would-be star who fell off the map, was killed Roger Corman–movie style, hustled his way through the movie swinger world, and is now a murder-hungry ghost haunting a neighborhood he never lived in or had any connection to.
Maybe my whole “figure out Stein and you’ll figure out the haunting” idea is garbage, but I’m not willing to give up on it yet. There’s one more thing I want to see.
When I check my phone, Janet has texted me about classes and a band rehearsal but says that she—they—will call me later. That leaves me free to try out my new genius theory.
An hour after sunset, I pop back through a shadow into Little Cairo, the Colt reloaded and ready to go.
I throw on a glamour and just like last night, a little speck of light appears in the air and opens into a molten gate that oozes into the street. Then the weird singing starts and the ghost mob blasts into Little Cairo looking for action.
The shade of a teenage metalhead girl in a leather jacket covered in chains and silver studs grabs a pigeon that was dumb enough to peck through gutter trash. Metalhead Susie rips the bird’s head off. But instead of blood coming out, bright sparks like electric fireflies fill the air. The dead gather around the flies, swallowing them or kissing them before tossing them into the air, where they blend with the overhead stars. When the fireflies are all gone, Susie tosses the bird’s headless carcass into the air and it flies away like it’s just another night in Birdtown.
I have no idea what any of this means. It’s no hoodoo I’ve ever seen. After last night, I hang way back in the shadows and let the spook parade stream by on its way to bounce off Abbot’s barrier again. Soon, I see Chris Stein. He does the strange little trembling act he did last night and wanders right back to the house he ripped up earlier. By the time he reaches the place the street is filled with the sounds of shades merrily tearing apart one pyramid, obelisk, and Sphinx after another.
Stein takes his time getting to the royal tomb and just before he goes inside, I walk right out into the open, where the streetlamps light me up.
I’m behind him now, and from my pocket I take out the note Stein had in his hand the night he died and say, “Forever yours. Forever mine.”
He freezes. Doesn’t move. I say it again.
“Forever yours. Forever mine.”
He turns and takes half a step in my direction, like he’s not sure what to do. So, I go to him.
“Forever yours. Forever mine.”
I hold the note out at arm’s length in front of me. Stein is doing the trembling thing again when I get to him. Still, he reaches out and takes the note.
For a minute he just stares at the crumpled paper. When he looks up at me, there are tears running down his spectral face. I actually feel a little sorry for the murderous fuck. He pulls the note to his chest and holds it here. His whole body and demeanor change. He’s no longer rigid. No longer giving off crazy murder vibes. I was right. The paper is some kind of Dear John letter. When the tears stop flowing, he actually smiles a little. But just for a second.
He goes rigid again. Convulses once, then twice. Stein moves his hands out from his sides as a cut slowly crosses his midsection. When it’s sliced him cleanly in half, a brightness leaks out from the wound, like he swallowed a spotlight. He grimaces. Grabs his stomach. Stumbles. But he doesn’t let go of the note.
It’s then that I notice how all sound on the street has stopped. No poltergeist crashes or bangs. When I look around, I see that’s because every goddamn ghost in Little Cairo is in a circle around us that stretches from the edge of one side of the street to the other. When I look back at Stein, he’s just a couple of feet in front of me.
He says, “Forever yours. Forever mine.” And reaches for me.
I’m fast, but so is the dead man. He doesn’t get hold of me, but he almost tears one of the sleeves off my coat. Okay. No fucking around this time.
I manifest my Gladius, my angelic flaming sword, and he backs away as the circle of ghosts closes in on us. I rush the spook line and hack my way through. As I swing the Gladius around me, ghosts blip out of existence before they can get hold of me. That’s good to know. Angelic fire works on them. Now, if there just weren’t a few hundred of the dead fucks in every direction, I might be able to kill them all. Right now though, I just want to get closer to the light, where there are good shadows.
None of the dead set follow me. They’re too chicken. I hold my sword above my head and shout, “Warriors! Come out to play!” but none of them get the joke. These dead bores are as movie-deficient as Abbot.
Feeling a little cocky, I’m just about to the streetlight when the first overhead electrical cable falls. It lands in the street a few feet from me, dancing and hissing like a spark-spewing cobra. Then another falls. And another. The streetlight goes out.
Fuck.
I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but it’s time to try something else.
I grab a piece of parchment from my pocket. It’s covered in runes, geometric designs, and weird glyphs in ink made from red vitriol and mercury—and it’s supposed to send every one of these ill-tempered assholes straight to Hell.
I shout some Latin I don’t understand and touch the edge of the parchment to the Gladius, setting it on fire. Keep chanting the Latin until the parchment is nothing but ashes.
Something shoots past my ear. It happens again. And then my face is on fire. I double up, suddenly in pain and bleeding everywhere. It’s like a hundred invisible knives cutting me at once. When something almost takes my right eye, I figure it out.
Broken glass. It’s flying at me from every direction, from every house with a cracked window and every car with a shattered windshield. In a few seconds, my coat is in shreds and I’m bleeding from a hundred places. Plus, I have to hop over the hissing electrical lines like I’m doing goddamn Riverdance.
And the ghosts aren’t going anywhere.
So much for Vidocq’s useless goddamn spell. Lesson learned: never trust books.
All the streetlights on the block are out and the glass keeps flying. Holding one hand up to shield my eyes, I spot a Porsche sitting in the driveway next to me. I run to it and slam the Gladius through the rear end. The gas tank goes up in a beautiful rolling oran
ge Michael Bay explosion. The spooks don’t like that and the whole fucking mob rushes me.
Too late, Beetlejuice.
I jump through a jittery shadow and stumble out a couple of doors down from Bamboo House of Dolls. A few of the regulars outside smoking start to say hello but shut up when they see me covered in blood and glass. It’s the same thing inside. I walk to the far end of the bar and the last three stools are suddenly vacant. Before I can sit down Carlos jabs a finger in my direction.
“Don’t you dare,” he says, and hands me a bar rag. “Put that on the stool. I don’t want you bleeding all over my furniture.”
I spread it out and sit down. He sets an empty beer mug in front of me so I can drop the pieces of glass inside. I pick them out of my face, my arms, and my scalp. All over. It doesn’t take long before the mug is full. A second later there’s a shot of bourbon by my elbow.
He says, “Nothing changes, does it? You in here covered in blood and drinking until you’re stiff.”
“Sorry. I just didn’t want to go straight home.”
“No problem. Sandman Slim fucked up is what brings in the customers. You’re doing me a favor. Not yourself, but I’m cool with that.”
“That makes me your happy hour.”
He smiles.
“And I don’t even have to put out snacks.”
I down the drink and he pours me another.
“Seriously though, what the hell are you doing to yourself? You sit in that weird house all day, then you finally come by for a drink for the first time in how long looking like you’ve been boxing a buzz saw.”
“Ghosts. I was boxing ghosts.”
“Tell me you won at least.”
“I’m not dead.”
“You couldn’t prove it by me.”
“I’ll be healed up by morning.”
“Your coat won’t.”
The sleeve Stein grabbed is almost torn off. There are a million little holes from the glass, and the collar and cuffs are shredded.
I ask Carlos, “Know a good dry cleaner?”
“I know a good coat shop, you cheap bastard.”
“Give me the name before I leave.”
Ballistic Kiss Page 9