by Jackie May
“There is a third option.”
“Yes. I kill you all where you stand.”
The baphomet blasts air from his flaring goat nostrils. His abnormally large human hands curl into fists. Next to him, the harpy rises and stretches her black wings, a terrifying twenty-foot span. My instincts kick into overdrive. I feel a desperate urge to run, find a hole in the ground, any kind of cover. Brenner moves himself between them and me. The whisper in my head says, Yes, kill him, not me! I argue back in the same voice, No, that’s not what I want.
“Washington knows I’m here,” Hillerman explains. “If I don’t report back within the next twenty-two minutes, it will be assumed that you’ve chosen extradition.”
“Good. Maybe they’ll send the army.”
“No. I’ve already told you what they’ll do.”
“Unless I take a trip downtown.”
“Yes.”
“To the Agency. And I’d be expected to cop to some bullshit plot?”
“A mass casualty incident involving improvised explosion devices.”
“IEDs!”
“A bombing.”
“Those aren’t bombs, no, those are not bombs. Those are firecrackers.” He shakes two fists. “Bombs! Bombs are dropped from planes, Agent Hillerman. They wipe out whole cities, they demoralize entire continents of enemies, they win wars. Real wars, the wars to end all wars. What you’re talking about isn’t war; it’s terrorism, that modern plague of cowardice. It’s assassination. There’s no fight in it. You’re not looking for me. Who you’re looking for is somebody who wants somebody else dead, and what do I want with that? I ain’t a rotter. I got no use for corpses!” Arael is forced to go searching for the mask again. He follows the plastic tube with his fingers, finds the mask, and takes a deep hit of oxygen.
“Which option do you choose?”
“You’re not hearing me, dammit! What have you got? What evidence? Some dead people who used to live here? So what? What else?”
“Which option do you choose?”
I’m dumbfounded. No mention of Dario and his deal with the vamps? No 40K in cash? No white Ford car, white Ford van? She’s not going to ask him about any of it? Because she doesn’t care, I realize. This was never about the case. The case was only a way in to Arael Moaz. To squeeze him with some semblance of legality. The case gives probable cause.
Arael points at Hillerman. “What if the target is you? Demon business isn’t handled by the Agency. Somebody is sent out from Washington to deal with demons, we all know that. Think about it—who wants you dead?”
She sighs, unimpressed. “Who doesn’t?”
Arael has a point. A possible motive. I mean, it’s thin, but it’s something.
Hillerman, though, is having none of it. “Extradition, or downtown? You have five seconds.”
“Or what? You think you can just walk out of here?”
“I think I can start taking your name in vain.”
Jaw clenching, Arael grips the railing with both hands. “Downtown, when? Supposing I say yes, what time? Now, with you?”
“No. After dark.”
“Why?” Arael stares at his hands on the railing. I can almost feel his wish that the railing were Hillerman’s neck, so he could crush it. “Why dark?”
I suspect that he is only asking to stall for time. We all know why it has to be dark. It’s the only time a vampire could be present.
“Choose,” Hillerman presses.
“What time?” he snarls.
“You choose the time.”
“Midnight.” He glares venomously at her. “Will you be there?”
Her answer is quick and emphatic. “No. But I’ll know if you aren’t.”
“But I will see you again?” He speaks the words with an almost painful longing. It’s a challenge, a desperate plea for another shot at her, a fair fight.
To my surprise, Hillerman again answers quickly and emphatically. “Yes.”
Arael Moaz—demon horde master, ruthless East Side gang leader, warmonger, cancer patient—pushes away from the railing and stands at his full height, summoning a kind of imposing dignity you’d expect from a Prince of Darkness. Though, I doubt he’s a prince. Maybe a duke or a baron. The point is, he looks as though he might put a hand out, expecting Hillerman to kiss his ring. I can’t decide if he’s impressive or just pathetic.
“Your car’s out front,” he says in a surprisingly quiet voice. After so much exertion, his wheezing is more pronounced. He really should be hooked up to a breathing machine. “Nothing has been taken. Your weapons are still there. They are loaded. And it’s likely you’ll need them. Nothing inside these walls will touch you, but I can’t make any promises outside.”
For the first time, I see Hillerman’s brow furrow. “No promises? They follow your orders.”
“Spirits follow orders, because they’re weak. But the bodies out there…that’s different.”
Hillerman’s concern turns to anger. “It’s your horde.” I don’t like the edge in her voice. It tells me she hasn’t anticipated this.
“It is mine!” he agrees. “It’s been under my influence for three decades, and the people here’ve been twisted and bent my way. But these things take time, dammit, they take passion. We’re not like your bloodsuckers. We’re not cold and detached, and we won’t force a mind. The power of loyalty is in the will—the agency of humans is what we want—and once you got it, that kind of commitment can’t be turned off.” He speaks rapidly, ignoring the need to breathe, which turns his face purple and sends the veins in his neck popping. “No, they’re a pack of wild dogs. I don’t and I won’t and I can’t leash them.”
“Bullshit!”
Wild dogs! Why did he have to say dogs?
Arael’s voice raises with intensity, grinding through his throat like sandpaper. “These were choices! You made the choice to come here, not me, but you don’t get to choose the consequences.”
The baphomet folds his arms across his chest as the harpy circles behind him, eyeing me from above his shoulder, then disappearing behind his head, then darting out from the other side, as though we’re playing peek-a-boo. My flesh crawls.
“I can tell you this,” Arael continues. “Get in your car and drive fast, and don’t stop, not for anything. No matter what you see—if you see a baby alone and crying for help in the middle of the street—do not stop.” Pausing to suck in a quick breath, he suddenly bellows in a commanding voice that recalls the ten-foot demon god sitting on its throne, “GET OUT!”
Hillerman breaks for the hallway, practically running. Brenner and I follow, with tails between our legs.
Bursting through the front doors into sunshine feels like exiting a dark theatre after a horror film. You’re relieved to find that the real world is still out there, the sun is smiling brightly, and you’re now free to laugh with your friends over how scared you were.
Well, we’re not laughing. But the sight of my Crap-pile parked at the curb sends my spirits soaring. Is it possible they’ll actually let us back into my car? Will a shadow of black wings fall over me from the sky just before I can open the door? Will snipers from the rooftops light us up the moment we’re inside? Will a car bomb explode when I turn the key?
Glancing back, I’m not surprised to see a four-story brick and cement building shaped like a horseshoe around us. I was right about it being an old automobile plant. The entire front of the building is covered in windows, their brittle glass turned brown with grime.
No words are spoken, but I can feel the relief breathing back into us with each milestone we reach: first arriving at the car without sight of another soul; opening the doors, dropping in, me behind the wheel, Hillerman shotgun, Brenner in the back; the sound of their guns being checked, safeties clicked off; turning the keys in the ignition…and the car not exploding. I move my seat back to its normal position, and suddenly I’ve come home. All the fear, all the anger and uncertainty—with the sound of my Crap-pile purring to life it is all conver
ted into maniacal joy. Ohhhh, I coo to myself, they made a mistake, didn’t they? It’s as though I’ve secretly drawn the one card in the entire deck that could have kept my game alive.
Hillerman turns her shades on me, and I know what that look means. She wants to know if I can really get us out of here, even though we were blindfolded on the way in. But I’m too pissed at her to care about easing her mind. You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?
I can get us out of here. The exit from this maze is to the northwest, and we’re now pointing east, so any road that goes to the left is good. Right is bad. Also, on the way here I mostly felt a lot of short streets, maybe alleys, but there was one long stretch without turning. If I can find that long street, I’ll have this place unlocked. So yeah, I can get us out of here. The real question is, will they let me? Finding your way through a maze is one thing. Dodging bullets is another.
For three blocks, we drive silently through an apocalyptic wasteland. The street, the sidewalks, the dirt lots—everything is littered with the rubble of buildings, like shattered bones in a mass grave. I’m constantly turning the wheel this way and that way, skirting all over the road to avoid large potholes and piles of debris. No wonder Arael Moaz chose this place to call home—it looks like somebody dropped his beloved bombs on it.
After a few left turns we find less debris in the streets, and though there are no people outside, I do spy some faces in the upper windows of sorry houses.
“Everybody went inside,” Brenner comments.
He doesn’t have to point out that this is not a good sign. Like high noon in a Western movie. Women and children inside, lock the doors.
Very slowly, Hillerman slides around in her seat to peer out the back window. Brenner does the same, and I hear him curse. I see it in the rearview: the maroon El Camino, following at a distance. No guys in the back this time.
“Maybe they’re just seeing us to the door,” I say.
Up ahead there is a left turn onto a gravel road. Cutting across that road is a solid line of concrete curb blocks—the kind used in parking spaces. A memory is triggered in my mind: pillowcase over my head. Driving in circles. Then cruising down a long straightaway (east). Finally turning (south). Hearing gravel under the tires. A sudden jolt as the car bumps over something in the road.
I’m in the middle of saying, “This is it,” when I see the brown truck pulling up to the curb blocks.
“Don’t turn,” Hillerman says. “We have to find another way.”
I slow as we pass the gravel road. Three men are crushed inside the cab of the brown truck. They glare murderously at us, and then the driver does something I’m grateful for: he revs the engine. The sound—the challenge of it—sets me off. My heart races. Not with fear or anger, but with focus. This is it.
“Don’t stop,” Hillerman says. “Remember what he said.”
I remember. Don’t stop, not for anything. But soon we won’t have a choice. At the end of this street is a cul-de-sac. A taunting yellow street sign warns: No Outlet.
Quickly, I pull my seat belt on. Hillerman follows my lead.
“Seat belts are broken back there,” I say into the rearview mirror. “Push those clothes to the floor, lie down across the seat, and brace yourself with hands and feet against the doors. Brenner ducks down and goes to work.
I survey the street. Houses on both sides. Rock piles. Rusted out cars. To our left, there is an empty lot between houses, with a rotted, wooden fence snaking across the property. There is nothing on the other side of the fence.
“Guys on the second floor,” Hillerman says, pointing to the houses in the cul-de-sac.
I see them. Men waiting in the windows and on the roofs, their weapons glinting in the sun. An ambush. As soon as we reach the roundabout, they’ll open up from all sides. “End of the line.”
“Do not stop.”
“We’re not stopping,” I insist.
“But turn around.”
“Obviously.”
“But I mean fast.”
The way she says it, I know that she knows. Still, there’s about three more seconds that I need to stall. “Fast?”
“Enough bullshit. Punch it!”
“I wasn’t bullshitting. You asked me if I race, and I told you, I don’t race. Not anymore.” And then I jam the shifter into gear, and I add, “But I’ll tell you one thing. If they didn’t want us to leave, they never should have let me get back in my car.”
I smash the gas pedal to the floor, which has the same effect on my Crap-pile as an electric shock to a bull’s balls—the beast roars to life with a leap and tears into the ground, an unstoppable force. Tires screech, swimming through an instant cloud of white smoke. The back end swipes around with so much force that I’m thrown sideways, my hand is ripped from the wheel; Hillerman slams into her door; Brenner’s legs fly up toward the ceiling.
I grab the wheel just as we’re completing a 180-degree spin. As gunfire erupts from the houses, the tires chirp, gripping the road and jerking hungrily at it. The car rockets forward with the deafening growl of a billion horsepower, or something close to that; I don’t know, I’m not the one who built this speed demon. I don’t know anything about race car mechanics—I just know how to drive them really fast.
And I know that I love that sound, those bone-rattling exhaust notes that could only come from a finely-tuned, high-performance racing engine. I have exactly two seconds to enjoy being pinned back into my seat before it’s time to change course. The brown truck and the El Camino are speeding toward me in a game of chicken. They spread out to block the whole road. But I’m not trying to get past them. I’m trying to beat them to the dirt lot with the wooden fence.
I’ve got it, easily. No time to warn Hillerman and Brenner. Oh well. All four of my limbs work at once, each performing different split-second tasks in unison—I crank the wheel, shove the clutch in, jerk on the gearshift, and stomp the gas pedal. We careen across the road, jump the curb (Brenner’s feet hit the ceiling), scream over the dirt lot, and explode through the wooden fence as a bullet would tear through cardboard.
So that worked. Problem is, on the other side of the fence are mounds of junk, and though I swerve at the last second, it’s not enough to keep my front tire from bouncing off a cinder block. The car bucks away, pitching onto two wheels. I overcorrect, slamming us down and fishtailing out into the street.
More quick work—steer, clutch, shift, gas!—and now I really open her up. The long straightaway stretches out before us. In an instant, it is nothing but a blur of houses whipping past. I climb through the gears—one, two, three, four, five. Eighty, ninety, one hundred miles an hour. An elephant sits on my chest, smashing me back into my seat.
Over the clamor, I hear a shout. Hillerman points at something to our right. As alleys and cross streets race past, there is a flash of yellow—another car, a fast one, keeping pace with us on the next street over. I know what it’s doing.
Up ahead, there’s an alley. The yellow racer is cutting through it. I make the calculation in an instant—speed, trajectory, direction—and pull us onto the sidewalk, shifting into neutral to coast. The engine whines in freefall, taking desperate gulps of air, waiting for the whip to lash down again. Here comes the alley. We’re about to pass right across its opening. I hear the yellow car’s throaty engine echoing across the walls. If I’ve guessed wrong, the car will shoot out of that alley just as we’re passing—T-bone disaster, and instant death for all.
But I get the timing just right. We shoot past the alley half a second ahead of the yellow car, so that its driver thinks we’re running away. He guns it, leaping out of the chute at full speed, ready for hot pursuit. Only I’m not running. The instant we pass the alley, I jerk back on the parking brake and spin us around—Hillerman and Brenner make all kinds of painful sounds as they’re slapped against the inside of the car—and just as the yellow car clears out of the alley, my Crap-pile plunges in.
We’re halfway down the alley, ears
splitting from the sound bouncing from wall to wall, when I see a shimmer in the air at the very end of the corridor. Hillerman and I shout at the same time, “Sorcerer!”
The shimmer in the air becomes a floating translucent bubble, displacing the image behind it, as if we’re looking through thick glass. The bubble grows larger, sucking in power, trapping it inside. With nowhere else to go, and too late to stop, I can only floor the gas and hope to pass through before…
The bubble trembles. No more time. Just as we fly straight through it, the bubble explodes, narrowly missing its mark. An instant earlier, it would have exploded inside the car, rupturing our organs with a blast of air more powerful than dynamite. Instead, it only gives a slap to the back end of the car, sending us skidding sideways. By the time I regain control of our slide, there is another blast building in the air. I swerve. Boom! Another bubble forms. I swerve. Boom!
“Where is he?” I scream.
“Everywhere!” is Hillerman’s reply, and I see what she means. Coming out of the alley is like suddenly driving into a shopping mall. People are everywhere. Running along the sidewalks, skipping from house to house, piling into cars, leaping from roof to roof. We’ve kicked a hornet’s nest. Shots fire, striking my side mirror, the roof, the trunk. I push the car faster.
Trouble ahead. A Volkswagen bus has been crashed into a pile of bricks, blocking half the road, and I can’t get clear of it, because racing alongside us is the El Camino. Checking the rearview, I see the brown truck closing in behind.
Boxed in. If I don’t turn, I’ll crash into the parked bus. Turn to the left, hit a house; turn to the right, crunch with the El Camino. There’s only one sucky escape from this even more sucky rat trap, and since the math of survival says that sucky is still better than more sucky, I take it. I leap on the brakes, the El Camino flies right by, and in the next instant I crank the wheel just as the truck rams into my back bumper with the sound of an explosion. With my wheels turned out, there’s only one way for the collision to send us, and the world spins wildly as my Crap-pile is shoved away from the trap just before the other cars pile into each other.