. . . and then he was plunging into the darkness, the asphalt sloping downward beneath his feet like a slow descent into Hell. Dimly, his eyes began to pick out the details of the loading docks: the wall of black steel mesh to his right, light twinkling starlike through the million tiny holes; the rows of massive concrete pylons holding up the bridge; the piles of garbage and rubble against the walls and the pylons; the girl
She was cowering in the corner, where the steel mesh met the stone. She was tall and flashy, clearly a hooker, long white legs under a short black shift, long slender hands clutched over her face. He could hear her quietly sobbing as he veered toward her, could see the luxuriant blondness of her hair. She's alone, his mind informed him, and he began to wonder why.
Then he was upon her; and as the words, "Are you okay?" began to slide from his lips, she moved her hands away from her face, and he could see that she wasn't a woman at all, she was a clever reproduction, a pretty boy in drag, grinning wickedly at him, no tears whatsoever on that lovely, phony face . . .
. . . and there was a noise behind him, and Billy turned just in time to see the other man hiss, "You're dead," thrusting forward with his hand . . .
One second, frozen in time. The knife, insanely clear in the darkness, seeming to hang in stasis even though he knew that it was moving toward him. Eight inches of flat black non-reflective steel, serrated along the top edge, hooking upward at the tip, with blood-gutters running down the sides.
Then time unfroze. The knife became a blur of motion, too fast to follow with his eyes. He felt the center of his breastbone shatter, felt the cold steel sliding inward, sawing back a second, punching through again. The world went a blinding, luminous red.
And Billy Rowe went berserk.
"NOOOO!" he screamed, reaching out with both hands to grab his murderer by the collar. "NOOOOOO!!!" he repeated, whipping the man around and smashing him into the black steel mesh with a resonant booming sound. The grip on the knife slipped away. The blade stayed where it was, wedged to the hilt in Billy's chest.
The killer's name was Bobby Ramos. He was twenty-four years old. This was the third time that he and his little playmate, Johnny, had set up and skewered some well-meaning chump. It was getting to be a habit. The first two guys had gone down without so much as a squawk, and he saw no reason why this one should be any exception.
He never got a chance to find out.
Because Billy Rowe screamed and grabbed Bobby Ramos by the ears, wedged his thumbs into the holes, and proceeded to beat the man's head in against the wall, still screaming, the first blow raising a faint fracture line across the back of the skull, making the stars dance in front of Ramos's eyes, the glazing eyes that stared into Billy's and saw red there, inhuman and glowing and mad . . .
. . . and then his head hit the wall again, putting the lights out forever, putting a seven-inch vertical crack in the bone, the black steel mesh denting inward and splotched with blood and meat and hair, but that wasn't enough, because Billy was dying and this flucker had killed him and control no longer mattered, control was a joke from the past, nothing mattered in the whole spinning universe of rubble and filth and screaming drag queens and screeching demons but the knife in his chest and the head in his hands and the fence that thrummed and bowed in now as Billy split the skull in half against it, caving in the back of the head, letting the pulped red brains seep out, mashed through the tiny holes in the fence, oozing sluggishly down the other side . . .
. . . and then there was nothing left to destroy, and the body slumped gracelessly to his feet, and Billy fell forward against the fence, fingers sliding in through the gore-smeared holes and hanging on, heart thundering in his chest like an elephant stampede. He had not been aware that he'd been screaming the whole time.
It took him almost a minute to stop.
Silence fell over the loading docks. If the queen was still there, she was no longer breathing. Billy took the time to get his own breathing under control. He was afraid to open his eyes. He was afraid that he wouldn't be able to.
Very slowly, he did it anyway.
The knife was still there, jutting from his chest like an extra tit. The body was there, too, brainless and stinking. He gagged and pulled his fingers from the fence, staggering south and closer to the street. The smell went with him, soaked into his hands and his clothing.
But there was no pain; and in that instant, Billy realized that he wasn't going to die, he was never going to die, Christopher had been telling the truth in saying that nothing could stop him.
He was never. Going. To die.
But I can kill, Billy thought as he dropped to his knees on the pavement. I can kill. Dry-heaving, bent double at the waist, clutching his belly. I can kill. Like a nobleman in the last throes of seppuku, with the knife still in his chest.
And that was when the monsters began to applaud.
Pitta-patta-pitta-patta. They were tiny-flippered sounds, pockmarking the bloated silence. Pitta-patta-pitta-patta. Perhaps fifteen pairs of paws in all, slapping together with evident glee.
And then, of course, there were the high-pitched chittering sounds.
Just as he'd remembered them.
All his life.
Billy opened his eyes, and they were there: easily fifteen of them, clustered in the darkest section of the lot. There was a wrought-iron stairway leading up to the abandoned bridge. The heaviest concentration of garbage and rubble was at its base. The monsters seemed to prefer it there, too.
Their shapes were vague; they blended in too well with the shadows. But he could see their eyes, and that was the most terrifying thing of all. Because they were the same flat and utterly-soulless black that he remembered them to be, but he was seeing them clearly in total darkness. As if they were blacker than black, blacker than any shade this world could produce.
Blacker than Hell.
And all of them were staring at him.
Billy scuttled backward on his knees, hit the wall. The cheering grew wilder, more enthusiastic. He didn't think he had any screams left, but one forced its way out with astonishing conviction. The screeching got wilder, seemed almost to mimic him.
"GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!" he roared. "HERE! HERE!" a few of them called. The rest continued to titter or mock his scream.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!"
"'LONE! 'LONE!" yowled a single voice, more singular and chilling than the others. "LEE ME 'LONE! LEE ME 'LONE!" Gales of hysterical gremlin laughter ensued, punctuated by screams and sounds that Billy couldn't begin to understand;
A few of them began to move toward him, and that was when Billy remembered the knife. He grabbed the hilt with both hands, tugged, felt the hooked end catch and the saw edge rasp, gritted his teeth against the horror, and yanked. The knife came out, blade black and non-reflective as it was when it went in.
There was no blood.
There was no pain.
There was no wound.
One of the demons was up on its stubby hind legs, forelegs kicking like a palomino's, misshapen head thrown back in laughter. Billy let out a cry and hurled the knife, sent it whickering across the loading docks with incredible speed. The dark shape split in half and crumbled. A few of the others converged on it. They didn't look like they were trying to be helpful.
Then the feeding sounds began, and the madness became a bright gem in Billy's forehead that lit from within. He scrambled to his feet and ran, heading back toward a Little West Twelfth Street that would never amuse him again. The taunting voices of the horrors followed him for over a block, then receded. He ran the rest of the way with only his own voices to torment him.
At the corner of Eighth and Greenwich avenues, Billy came across his first living human being: an elderly matron with a pair of pitiful Pekinese. "You can't see me," he hissed, and it was true, though the dogs continued to yap like crazy.
It remained true, through the rest of the miles and twenty minutes home.
They couldn't see him.
They
couldn't see the blood.
TWENTY-FIVE
A NORMAL LIFE
The door was swinging open when Billy reached the top of the stairs. It was Christopher, radiant and dapper as always, framing the doorway in pale white light. There was compassion on his face and a quart of Bud in his hand. He held it out to Billy, a gesture of pacification, and said, "Here, muh man. Come on in. I'm so sorry—"
Billy's hand was a blur of arcing motion. It struck the quart and sent it exploding against the wall. The angel had no reaction time. Billy's hand whipped back up, striking Christopher across the face. Then Billy stepped up within an inch of him and hissed, "Get out of my way, God damn you to Hell."
Christopher's eyes went wide for a second, bearing anger and hurt and the tiniest flicker of fear. Then he blinked, and only a trace of melancholy remained to mar the calm. He didn't speak. He didn't budge:
"Didn't you hear me?" Billy went on, a little louder. "I said to get out of my goddam way." His eyes were red and huge and crawling with pain, but they never left Christopher's for a second. The stairwell was rank with the stench of death, still caked over him; violence raged through his body in shuddering waves.
When the angel failed to respond, he swung again, this time with his fist. Christopher caught it with the flat of one hand and held it; not painfully, but very very securely.
"FUCK YOU!" Billy yelled, his last thread of control snapping. He struggled to free himself from the grip. He couldn't.
Throughout it all, their eyes were locked; and little by little, Billy felt the righteousness of his anger slip away. It didn't stop feeding the fury, but it whipped the carpet out from under it. He felt less centered and more insane, the longer he stared into that unwavering blue.
And then the tears started to roll, and he couldn't handle that, so he poured every last ounce of his strength into breaking away, and it worked, and he went stumbling past Christopher and into the kitchen, where he landed on his knees and proceeded to cry his head off.
A barking, bellowing roar erupted from the bedroom doorway. He looked up through streaming eyes to see Bubba, the dog's fur hackled on the rigid, quivering body. Bubba -seemed to be looking right through him; not recognizing him at all. The yowling corkscrewed into his ears, stuck razors in his spine.
"BUBBA, SHUT UP AND GO TO SLEEP!" he screamed.
And Bubba fell over on his side with a mute, almost comical thud.
Just like that.
Billy stopped in mid-tearfall, staring. For a second, it looked like Bubba wasn't even breathing; he crawled closer, saw the gentle rise and fall of the breast, and relaxed slightly. If Bubba died, he thought, that would be it. That would be absolutely all she wrote. The thought raked screeching fingernails across the blackboard of his mind.
When he closed his eyes, there were pictures to augment the sound, pathologically vivid: skulls crumpling like beer cans, caving in like buildings in the throes of demolition. The full horror of what he had done came back, as it had a thousand times before in the hundreds of thousands of seconds since the slaughter out back of Golden Packing.
And the tears came back.
With a vengeance.
"He smelled you, but he couldn't see you," Christopher said from behind him. "That was a big part of it. Mostly, though, I think it was the blood. It was driving him crazy." Pause. "It's not doing wonders for me, either."
Billy pivoted on his knees, very slowly, to face Christopher. He was still crying, but a wide, incredulous skeleton grin slowly spread across his features. He held out his hands, as if in praise of Allah.
Twin bubbling fountains of blood erupted from the palms of his hands.
"So how do you think I feel?" Billy cried out, the blood rolling down his arms and sploshing over onto the floor. "How do you think I fucking feel, huh? I've got chunks of that guy under my fingernails I—" He broke down then, bringing his still-gushing hands to his face, completing his baptism in gore.
"As I recall," Christopher's voice intoned, "the man was trying to kill you. Technically, in ordinary mortal terms, you'd be deader than a doornail right now.
"Given the choice, I think most people would be glad that you walked away and he didn't. If you hadn't stopped him, he'd have just gone along his merry way, robbing and killing as much as he liked, until somebody else put a stop to him. Do you understand that?"
Billy understood perfectly. It didn't stop the blood from pouring, and it didn't stop the tears. The sobbing and stigmata went on and on. Like Christopher's voice. On and on . . .
"You want to know why the monsters were there, don't you? You want to know why they applauded. Well, let me tell you.
"They're waiting for you to go over the edge, Billy boy. Believe it. They're waiting for you to flick up royally. Know why? Because you've got the Power now, and the Power can go either way. Much as the Light wants you, there are things out there in the Darkness that want you just as badly. And if you're not very careful, they'll get you.
"That's why you've got to get yourself under control."
Control, it occurred to Billy, was the one thing he didn't have. He didn't have a grip on the Power. He didn't have a handle on his life. He couldn't even take the reins on his own emotions. All three of them could go skittering out from under him at any moment, and all he could do was gawk at them like a starving cartoon character with a plateful of Mexican jumping beans.
"You've been out of control for a long time, Billy. You couldn't get your career of the ground, you couldn't maintain a relationship, you couldn't even clean up your room. The closest you've come to coming to grips was a couple of days ago, before you pulled that dumbass stunt with Peace on Earth, Good Will to Man. And you haven't made a smart move since."
Billy snuffled a little, calming slowly. The bloodfall mellowed down to a trickle, then stopped. He was listening to Christopher now, getting caught up in the sense of the words despite himself.
But the anger would not go away. Like the Power, it made a sizzling gumbo of the world: ingredients whipped together into a savory but undifferentiated stew. It tasted too good to let go of, and it satisfied a hunger that lay deeper than the pit of his stomach.
"I got a question," he heard himself saying, the voice sounding labored and pained.
"Go ahead."
"Are you trying to tell me"—and his voice hitched for a second—"that it's good that I killed that guy, only I should have been tidier about it?"
Christopher was silent for a moment. Billy wiped the blood from his eyes and opened them. The angel was just looking at him. No expression. Just looking. Billy felt something tighten within himself.
Become solid.
And the sobbing stopped, sudden and irrevocable. He could feel the Power, the vibratronic tingle of it, wiping away all doubt and leaving clarity in its place. You're on to something, said a voice in his head, and he was inclined to believe it.
"No, really, Christopher," he said now, smiling. "I'd like an answer to that one; Was my mistake in killing the man who stabbed me, or in getting so out-of-control about it? I mean, is going around killing criminals what you really want me to be doing? Is that the name of the game?"
Christopher sighed. "We just want you to do what's right."
"And what's right?" Billy yelled. "Is that up to me, with my noted proclivity for having no handle whatsoever on how to do things right? I mean, why did you give me the Power in the first place if I'm such a goddam idiot? It doesn't make sense, Christopher! It's almost as if I were designed to fuck up, and you were sorta sent, along just to depress me while I do it! You know? It's like somebody's playing a nasty practical joke on me; and if that's true, then I don't wanna hang around for the punchline. I'm sorry. This shit is for the birds."
"You can't be saying this." Christopher looked stern, more than a little upset.
"Read my lips," Billy said, and the malevolence of his smile was genuine now. "I don't want your goddam Power anymore. You can take it and shove it right up your righteous little as
s. Next time you talk to God, you can shove it up His ass, too. I never joined Jews for Jesus, and I won't join Assassins for Jesus, either. I don't want it. You can have it. Just get it the hell away from me."
"It's not that easy." The angel was shaken. Billy was thrilled.
"What Oo you mean, it's not that easy? The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away: that's what I always heard. Well, taketh It away, my friend! And take your smiling self away with it! Go see the editors of Soldier of Fortune magazine! I'm sure they'd love the opportunity to clean up the streets for you!"
"I said it's not that easy, Billy, and I wasn't exactly kidding."
"How so?"
"Because the Power is yours. It has always been yours, I didn't bring it to you; I came along to instruct you when you awakened the Power yourself, by calling for help. You might recall the desperate moment itself."
A bright bubble of shame burst in the neighborhood of Billy's heart, thinking back on the night where it all began. "But I didn't ask for this," he croaked. For a moment, he felt like the Hindenburg in the deflating moment before it exploded.
"Yeah, but you sure got it, didn't you? So maybe you ought to listen up for a moment."
"And maybe I won't." All the air wasn't out of Billy yet. "Maybe I'm tired of listening to you."
"Maybe you are, but that doesn't change the fact that there are still a couple of things you maybe oughtta hear."
"Like, for instance?"
"Like, for instance, that you can't go back. No matter how badly you may want to, and I don't even entirely believe that. The simple fact is that you have gone off like a lantern in the night. You have been seen. And they are not going to let you go. They will be watching you, just as I will be watching you. Forever."
"And who are they?"
"The demons." There was a chill in Christopher's voice that had no problem filling the room. "As I've said before, they want you. And if you don't get your head together fast, they will have you in every way that there is to be had. Comprende? They'll have a field day with you, with all the Power you have. It'll be the greatest thrill of their miserable lives."
The Cleanup Page 18