Sacrifices

by Jamie Schultz

  “They will need expert help,” Sobell said. “Perhaps you can tell them that you happen to know an expert. He normally works for an exorbitant rate, but he might be interested in the problem for academic reasons.”

  “You think that will work?”

  “That depends on how well you sell it.” He wiped sweat from his forehead with a shaky hand. “You’ve done well, Genevieve. I appreciate it. And I won’t forget.”

  She nodded.

  “Use them to find the priest, if you can. I don’t know if he has our answer, but he may very well be searching for it. He may know what it is.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I recommend avoiding those diagrams, though,” Sobell warned. “Whatever they do, I’m sure it’s not good.”

  “You don’t say.”

  Chapter 17

  Anna woke to low light in a musty room not much larger than the bed she was lying in. The curtains were closed, but daylight aggressively pushed in at the edges and showed her the room. It was nothing special. White walls, a small closet with a closed folding door, a terrible painting of Mary holding a baby Jesus that was probably supposed to look wise beyond his years but ended up looking like a scary, cranky, tiny old man.

  She didn’t remember anything after she’d fallen down outside Moreno’s house. Right before that there had been, what? Some kind of dizzy spell. She still felt light-headed. Thirsty, too, and she could eat a live cow, but that was constant lately.

  Somebody had left a glass of water on the small nightstand. She sat up—not too quickly—and drank. Her left hand was wrapped in a thick layer of gauze, and a red stain colored the center of the palm. It must have soaked through half an inch or more of bandage, but it was dry now.

  What had happened last night? And where was she now? She glanced around the room for a weapon, wishing she’d brought a gun, then unwishing it when she gave it another moment’s thought. A gun wouldn’t have done her any good the previous night, and had she brought one, it would be in somebody else’s hands now.

  She turned, swinging her legs down from the bed. Her feet were bare and filthy, and it took her a minute to remember that she’d simply abandoned her shoes when she worked last night’s magic. Why the hell had she done that?

  She stood slowly, using the nightstand for support. A white-painted door, badly hung in an ill-fitting frame, was the only way out of the room, unless she wanted to jump out the window. Time to see who’d taken care of her last night.

  She opened the door onto somebody’s living room. Two battered couches, one gray and the other orange, sat against the walls. To the left was the front door, and to the right, a narrow doorway to a small kitchen.

  At a table sized for two sat the priest. It was her first really good look at him, and he didn’t look like much. He looked to be in his fifties, though his ravaged, pockmarked face and receding hairline might have made that estimate falsely high. He had a soft chin and eyes peering out from puffy purple hollows. No collar, but he still wore the dress, or whatever it was. A mug steamed on the table in front of him.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Great. I could run a marathon. Wrestle a bear.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Enough to eat the bear after I wrestle it. What do you want?”

  “There are some eggs in the refrigerator. Meat, too.” His watery gray eyes didn’t waver from hers. “I recommend cooking it first.”

  So. He knew something. She would follow that up in a moment, just as soon as she checked out the meat situation. She edged past the priest to the refrigerator, opened it, and took pretty much everything out. Eggs, a pound of graying hamburger, a huge bottle of Gatorade, some carrots, sour cream, grape jelly, pickles, and cheese.

  “Any bread?” she asked.

  “In the cupboard.”

  “You eating?”

  He looked over the array of food on the counter. “No, thank you.”

  She busied herself making the most disgusting omelet she’d ever even heard of. It was all going in, except the Gatorade, which she was on her way to finishing before the pan even got warm. Gross, but it didn’t bother her. She wanted calories.

  “You could have bled to death,” the priest said.

  “It was a little cut,” she said, holding up her bandaged hand. “Nobody bleeds to death from something like that.”

  “It wasn’t just a cut.”

  She shrugged. There were only four eggs, but it was a start. She found another pan and got to browning the hamburger. It hardly seemed worth cooking the stuff, but she wasn’t about to give the priest the satisfaction of watching her dig in with her hands.

  “The wound never closed,” the priest continued. “Not until you lost consciousness. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Lucky you didn’t kill me, you mean.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. You have a poison in you.”

  She had no idea whether he was being literal or not. “You mean besides the demon?” she asked. It came out sounding more sarcastic than she meant—she really did want an answer.

  “What were you doing here last night?” the priest asked.

  “What were you doing here last night?”

  “I live here.” He pulled a tea bag from the mug and set it on the table. “Your turn.”

  The smell of cooking meat made her stomach grumble. She wanted to start popping half-cooked bits in her mouth, but she just turned them over with the spatula and swallowed. “I have a problem,” she said. “You seem to have noticed.”

  “I have.”

  What to tell him? It crossed her mind to be straight with him. Certainly, that would be the simplest thing, and he might even help her. On the other hand, he was obsessed with relics. What if he thought she was searching for the same thing he was? What would he do then? There had to be a thousand ways he could make the search even harder, if he took a mind to.

  “I didn’t ask for this,” Anna said. “I’m not one of those occult junkies. Be happier if I never touched the stuff.”

  “Then how did you come by your visitor?”

  “Wrong place at the wrong time. Do you know a demon called Belial?”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  “It . . . infected me. For laughs, as much as anything else.”

  The priest’s expression remained the same, that of mild concern, but he leaned forward ever so slightly. “You carry the demon Belial in your mind?”

  “No, no. One of its buddies, I guess. Belial is still running around somewhere. Looking for relics, last I heard.”

  “Do you know what it wants with them?” Too casual, by far, even for this guy.

  “No. Do you?”

  The priest shook his head.

  Anna took the pan from the burner, poured the grease into a red plastic cup, and dumped the meat on the eggs. The omelet was going to end up more like scrambled eggs with a bunch of stuff mixed in, but that was fine. She was gonna need a bigger pan, though.

  “Your problem,” the priest prompted while Anna dug around in the drawer under the stove. “Why did that bring you here?”

  “All kinds of occult shit going on down here. Thought somebody might know something.”

  “Rogelio says you’re the one looking for relics.”

  Anna could have slapped herself. How had she forgotten that? She’d offered the guy fifty thousand dollars, and now here she was, trying to lie to what had to be one of his closest confidants about it. “If Belial wants something, I want it first,” she said. Nothing for it but the truth at this point.

  “Why? Do you think you can reason with it?”

  She pulled out something that lived in a no-man’s-land halfway between a wok and a frying pan. It would work. She stood and started transferring the food. “Reason? I don’t know. Bargain? Maybe. Isn’t
that what demons do?”

  “That’s not a bargain you want to make, child.”

  She put the pan down. “Call me child again. I fucking dare you.”

  “I’m sorry. But surely you get my point.”

  “Nope.”

  “There are bargains not worth making, even if you think you get what you want from them.”

  “Funny you didn’t tell yourself that before you started robbing graves.”

  To her surprise, he just let that pass. No protest or argument, no excuses about why his decision was the right one in his particular circumstances, which of course she wouldn’t understand. He simply let the remark hang there, unaddressed. Anna waited for a response and, when she didn’t get one, went back to stirring her food.

  “Belial,” the priest said thoughtfully. “The worst of the worst, walking the earth.”

  Anna popped a bit of egg into her mouth. “Yeah. Not a fan.”

  “Hmm.”

  She glanced away from the food in time to see a speculative look on his face, for just a fraction of a second before he wiped it away.

  “What do you want from me?” he asked. “I have no relics. There’s no exorcism I can perform that won’t kill you.”

  “I can help you,” Anna said. “Moreno said he’s got nineteen people against the world. I can bring a few more. People with some specialized knowhow. Cash. Tools.” Are we in the business of funding wars now? she asked herself. I feel like the fucking CIA.

  “I didn’t ask for your help, as much as it might be appreciated. I asked what you want.”

  “What’s with the grave robbing?”

  The priest looked down, nearly resting his chin on his chest. He reached for his tea and took a sip. “That doesn’t concern you.”

  “Body parts. Relics. I’m not stupid. There’s a connection.”

  The priest shifted the mug, holding it in both hands as though trying to warm his hands against the ceramic. “This doesn’t concern you,” he said again. “You’re not family. You’re not blood.”

  “I grew up here.”

  “You lived here for a little while. It’s not the same.”

  She had a sudden urge to snatch the pan off the stove and sling it edgewise into the priest’s placid, mushy mouth. See how much he liked putting her off with platitudes and bullshit then.

  That’s not me, she thought, even as she caught her hand moving toward the pan’s handle. She forced it down to her side.

  “I have money. I have people.” I sound like Sobell. “You’re running out of bodies to snatch, from what I heard last night. Can’t do this on your own forever.”

  “You should eat your breakfast and go,” Abas said. “You don’t belong here.”

  “I don’t think you do, either.”

  He turned away, nursing his tea and looking out the window. He said nothing further.

  Anna dumped her mess of breakfast on a plate and stared at it. It was wholly unappetizing, but her stomach gurgled anyway. She grabbed a fork and dug in.

  She was halfway through her meal when the gunshots began.

  * * *

  It was easy to get in to see Stash this time. Genevieve drew a few suspicious or resentful glares, but he seemed happy to see her, and nobody said a bad word.

  “You got news for me?” he asked as she approached.

  “A little.” She recited Sobell’s nonsense to him, almost word for word as she remembered it. Odd magic. Different tradition. Can’t undo it without the priest’s cooperation. I know a guy, exorbitant fees, it would help if you can point me toward the priest, etc.

  Stash dejectedly kicked the table leg. “All due respect and all, but what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”

  “I can get my friend in here to have a look.”

  “I know you think we all drivin’ around in new Cadillacs with money piled up to the dash, but that ain’t how it is. I don’t know how much ‘exorbitant’ is, but I know what they say: if you gotta ask, you can’t afford it. Ain’t that right?”

  “I told you, he might be willing to have a look out of academic interest.”

  The smirk and “Do you believe this?” look he gave the others was not a good sign. She was losing him. “‘Academic interest’? My ass. Means I owe him.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “He’s just gonna wait to cash in later, that’s all.”

  She gave up on the “academic” line—there was no way to sell that. “Is that so bad?”

  “It ain’t so good. Not with these guys.”

  Genevieve thought he meant practitioners, and he was probably right. “I can’t do anything else for you. I don’t know anything else.”

  “That ain’t gonna buy you much.”

  “Is there any chance we can talk to the priest?”

  The door opened, and Stash looked up, irritation creasing his forehead.

  It was the kid from yesterday, the one he’d called Black Cat. He was out of breath, his shirt translucent with sweat. “Yo, Stash, I . . . ” He paused, sucking great lungfuls of air. “I got it. Scrubbed it.” Another deep breath. “The—the fuckin’ spell! I broke it!”

  “What?”

  “It—it was all, like, faded and weird. So I just, I just scratched it out. It’s gone.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah!”

  Stash hiked a thumb toward one of the other guys. “Get your boys.”

  “What are you doing?” Genevieve asked.

  He walked toward the door, big strides loping across the concrete. “You wanna get clear of this,” he said. “Chrome?” he asked one of the guys at the door. The guy slapped a pistol into his hand. Stash racked the slide.

  “Get everybody you can in five minutes and get your ass back here. Tell ’em to come strapped.” The other guy started running, and Stash yelled after him: “Five minutes! Don’t fuck around!”

  “Don’t do this,” Genevieve said. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I ain’t gonna get another chance.”

  “Can’t you just . . . let it go?”

  He stared at her, and she got the impression he was confused that somebody could be quite that stupid. “It ain’t that simple. They make us look like punks. Pretty soon everybody gonna think we are punks. Rep is everything, but I guess they don’t teach you that in Malibu.”

  “Your enemies are all right here, looking like punks with you. They know the score.”

  “All my enemies?” He scoffed. “It’s a big city, little girl.” He scanned the street, looking for either cops or his returning troops. Genevieve looked with him. It was about ten thirty, and the sun came screaming in at a slant, bright and blazing, throwing dark shadows. The shops weren’t busy, the sidewalks were nearly empty, and it wasn’t hard to imagine some kind of modernized Old West showdown occurring here. Except that it was more likely going to be dozens of men instead of two.

  “This is crazy,” she said.

  “I told you. Best get clear, chica.”

  Genevieve’s heart dropped as she realized Anna might be on her way, or already there somewhere. She got out her phone and dialed. The phone went to voice mail. “Anna, if you get this, stay out of the Gardens. They’re about to become a war zone.”

  There. Shit. Now Anna would know she’d been followed, but there wasn’t anything Genevieve could do about that. Better that than she catch a bullet.

  If only Genevieve could do the same for the priest.

  A car packed with a small group of young Latino guys turned a corner a couple of blocks ahead, cruising toward Genevieve and Stash. Looked like six men, and one of them was the guy Stash had sent off to round them up like some kind of barrio Paul Revere. Guns bristled from the windows. Another car pulled in behind them, and a third after that.

  “This isn’t worth it,” Genevie
ve said. “Not over a couple of street corners.”

  Stash gave her that “Are you stupid?” look again. “What the fuck else you think we got?”

  Genevieve’s mind raced. What to do? Go with and look for an opportunity to cover for Anna, protect the priest, or learn some little tidbit that might be of use, and maybe get her brains blown out for her trouble? Stay clear and live with whatever the aftermath turned out to be?

  She dialed Anna again. No answer. In the absence of any other information, she had to assume Anna and the others hadn’t found the priest yet, and that the guy was still here, probably right where all the bullets were going to start flying.

  Stash pulled keys from his pocket and headed toward the car parked next to the building, a puke-yellow rust bucket that had to be older than him by a decade or more.

  “I’m coming with you,” Genevieve said, rushing to catch up with him.

  “The fuck you are.”

  “I need to talk to that priest. Are you gonna make sure he doesn’t get hurt?”

  A dangerous, bloody look came into his eyes. “You friends with Gant Street?”

  “No! No! I just need information, that’s all, but if he gets killed, I am screwed. I need to be here.” She thought for a moment, then offered: “I’ll help you. Trust me—you want my kind of support.”

  “Your kind of support.”

  She pulled the small notebook she kept with her from her pocket and drew a series of lines on it, stabbed herself with the broken-off clip of the pen, and dripped blood on the drawing, saying a few quiet words over it as the blood droplets fell. Then she folded it up and stuck it in her pocket. “Makes me lucky. I might not be getting shot here today.” She hoped. In point of fact, this one was new for her, from some of the materials she’d gotten from Sobell after the last job. She’d practiced the drawing and the incantation. Whether it actually worked . . . well, she hadn’t asked anybody to shoot at her to find out. It wasn’t a shield or armor, just luck. She thought it might keep the strays away, if not a shot aimed right at her at close range.

  “Get in the car,” Stash said. “And make me one of those. Spoon,” he yelled, waving at a shorter kid wearing a pair of cheap sunglasses. He threw the kid the keys. “You drive.”