I closed my eyes, stayed crouched under the ruined desk and began the earth mudras with my hands and fingers, willing them to not tremble. I tried to remember what Wayne English had taught me, so briefly, about his own war with these nightmares given substance, so long ago. I had to calm my mind. There was no Crash Cart, there was no pain, no wounds, there was only the clean, bright, endless intellect. I was anchored to the world and it was anchored to me. There was no second before impact, no second before my spinal cord was severed; there was no time, it was a shade, a trick, a lie of possession, of attachment. There was nothing. It was all a sick dream, and I gave it no power over me. In this I was infinite, not a single atom of my being doubted, flinched. It. Was. Nothing.
I opened my eyes. The pain in my back was gone, my spine was intact. No blades had touched my face. Roland Blue’s body, his bloody, hewn face, was a few inches from me on the floor. His eyes, my eyes even to the last second of life, could no longer see me. His lips formed a word, summoning a bubble of blood to his mouth. The dark bubble popped, and he died, the life leaving my reflected eyes. Then the eyes themselves faded, leaving only bloody, empty sockets. I glanced over to see my spilled whiskey glass, the amber liquid pooling on the floor with melting ice.
Crash Cart was still manifested, ripping into Blue’s men now. Vigil, with twin pistols he’d acquired from some of Roland’s dead soldiers, was blasting away, making a valiant charge at the creature. He’d die. I stumbled to my feet and tackled him in mid-charge, driving both of us, crashing, through Blue’s office window and plummeting down to the stage below in a rain of bloody glass. We both hit hard, and the crowd gasped and then shouted angrily. Vigil and I helped each other to our feet, and he fired off a round into the air; the crowd’s anger at us ruining the show was replaced with squeals of fear and lemming-like running for the exits.
“What the hell was that for?” he asked, brushing glass off himself and scanning the panicking crowd for Blue’s security.
“The only way to not get killed by that thing is to be absolutely certain it’s not real,” I said. “It would have done to you what it did to Roland and was trying to do to me.” Above us, from the shattered office window there was the burp of automatic weapons fire, screams, and then silence. “We need to get the fuck out of here. It was sent to shut Blue up, but I’m pretty sure it will be happy to slaughter every single person in this building.”
As if to punctuate my point there was more screaming and the squeak of rubber wheels from up on the catwalk. I saw some of Blue’s pit security headed our way, fighting against the stream of fleeing customers. I headed for one of the stage exits but looked back to see Vigil walking toward the unicorn. “We don’t have time for this shit!” I shouted.
Vigil stuffed a pistol in his waistband and leveled the other 9mm in the direction of the oncoming gunmen. A beautiful knife with an ornately engraved silver hilt and a blue, glowing, crystal blade about a foot long sizzled into being in Vigil’s free hand.
“You have a soul-bound knife?” I said, shaking glass out of my scalp. “Where the fuck did you get that from?” A soul-bound weapon was tricky, high-order magic. It was knitted into the very essence of the wielder. Very few mages were adept enough to even try it, and few people had the focus and discipline to endure having the weapon tattooed onto their soul.
“Shut up,” Vigil said. The hissing blade sliced through the mythical beast’s enchanted collar. The warding symbols on the steel flared red-hot for an instant then faded as the smoking metal hit the stained floor of the stage. “I know people too.” The unicorn met Vigil’s gaze, snorted, and pawed the stage. It lowered its head, touching the tip of its horn to the knight’s shoulder. Then it reared up, its hooves pawing the air, and faded away in a soft white light into nothingness.
I helped the naked, traumatized sea nymph to her feet. Vigil sliced off her collar as well, and she gave him a slight sigh as she became seawater, soaking us and the stage floor. A few of Blue’s men, who hadn’t realized yet they were out of a job, were stepping onto the stage through one of the gate entrances. Vigil aimed the gun at them, thumbed back the hammer, and placed his finger on the trigger. “You looking for this?” he asked calmly. What they saw in his eyes made them slowly retreat. Vigil lowered the gun and looked around at the stage. “Now,” he said, releasing the hilt of the cracking, sputtering soul knife so that it evaporated back into nothing, “we can go.”
TWENTY-ONE
We made our way through the tide of panicked patrons at the Iron Cauldron, scrambling to the exits ahead of the sounds of screams and gunfire. I looked over to the Weathermen’s booth to give them the signal to cut out, but they were already long gone. Outside, we met up with Dwayne and Gretchen and started down the street toward the car. I didn’t see the golems.
“What a mess,” the urban shaman said, looking back. “Shouldn’t we do something to help?”
“We are,” I said, “we’re getting the fuck out of the way. We already unlocked our compassion achievement for the night.” Vigil gave me a dirty look. “That thing will run out of steam if the remaining security are smart enough to leave it alone.” There was a rumble of automatic weapons, which got the fleeing crowd shrieking again. “Roland always hired cut-rate help,” I said.
Back at the Trevita, the secure satellite phone Vigil had given me chirped. I looked at the screen and noticed I had missed three other calls, all from the same number. “Yeah,” I said.
“It’s Anna. I got a lead on your girl, Crystal. Can you meet me now?”
* * *
I convinced Vigil and Dwayne to head back to the Hard Limit. Strangely, Vigil didn’t give me any shit. He seemed lost in his own head. Some of the revelations from the Weathermen about Caern’s drug use and pregnancy had hit him harder than it had me. I also think the exposure to in-your-face grotto had created a toxic waste dump in his skull that he was still trying to decontaminate. Vigil was chasing the ideal of Caern Ankou, the princess, the little girl lost. He still believed in a just world. I just wanted to inspect the wreckage of the real world, and see what, if anything, could be salvaged. One of the few advantages to being a monster was that life seldom disappointed you anymore. This was going to get harder on Vigil before it got easier.
I met Anna and another woman at a coffee shop called Cafe Spot on West Sixth. It was three in the morning, and the place had only a few patrons. I was now officially at my deadline time to be out of L.A. I managed to bury my panic with a yawn. One of the local jazz radio stations was playing softly on the ceiling speakers. I slid into a seat and ordered a Cheerwine, got my usual response, and ordered a large coffee, black, and lit a cigarette. Anna’s friend tried to hide her disgust. I knew there was no smoking in here, hell most of L.A. was no smoking. I’m kinda an arch-villain like that. I seldom return library books in a timely fashion either.
“This is a … friend of mine,” Anna said to me. “Dr. Alexis Matos. I think she might be able to help you. Alex, this is Laytham Ballard.” It dawned on me that Dr. Matos, who was perhaps of Hispanic descent, bore a striking resemblance to Anna in build, hairstyle, color, and even her delicate features. The doc’s eyes were a warm brown as opposed to Anna’s blue, and her skin tone was darker than Anna’s. Still, I was pretty sure “friend” meant “client,” and the notion of the two of them together was a pleasant one. “Tell him what you and I discussed, please. You can trust his discretion.”
I looked like a street bum who’d been run over by a taxi. My hands shook with the beginning of the DTs as I sipped my coffee, and I was puffing away, killing random faceless hipsters with my secondhand smoke. Dr. Matos looked at Anna skeptically.
“Anna, I—”
“What did you just call me?” Anna said quietly, almost politely.
“Mistress,” the doctor corrected, her eyes darkening in fear, possibly arousal. “Are you sure he’s…”
“Tell him what I instructed you to tell him, Alexis,” Anna said, her voice still even, conversational
, not a hint of threat or malice in it.
“Yes,” Dr. Matos swallowed hard, “mistress.” She looked to me and managed to get her composure back quickly. “You’re looking for a young woman who was working in adult entertainment out here. I’m a plastic surgeon. My practice is in Beverly Hills, and I do a lot of work for that particular industry, most of it through production companies, or agents. Your ‘Crystal Myth’ wasn’t one of my clients, but I have heard the name from some of my patients.”
“Do you know who Red Hat Productions used as doctors for their talent?” I asked.
“I’ve met Brett Glide at numerous social functions,” Matos said. “He’s charming, well-educated, compassionate—he donated over half a million personally last year to local charities that help children, not what you’d expect from a pornographer.”
“Yeah,” I said, “he’s a prince. The Albert Schweitzer of the money shot.” Matos made the stank face again, glanced to Anna, and then resumed.
“Glenn Thobias,” she said. “He’s an ob-gyn, a really good one, has a lot of A-list celebrity patients. He is also the go-to resource for all the latest infertility treatment therapies. He’s given superstars mega-babies when everyone else said they’d never conceive. He’s a miracle worker. I’ve also heard he has patients from Glide, from Red Hat. He doesn’t advertise that, obviously. Why on earth a man as talented and well-off as he is would do that kind of work … I heard that Glenn performed abortion procedures for some of the performers. I also heard that he acted as physician for several of the porn actresses that carried their children to term. He’s very active with many private adoption services, placing children.”
A sick feeling slithered through my guts like an oily snake. I asked Anna for the scrap of prescription pad I’d found. “You ever hear of Crystal Myth being one of his patients? Have you ever heard anything about Glide or this Dr. Thobias having anything to do with a guy named Roland Blue?”
“Some of my patients said Crystal had been to see Dr. Thobias numerous times over her career,” Matos said, “after she started working for and dating Brett. I’m afraid I’ve never heard of a ‘Roland Blue’ before.”
“Yeah, you won’t be hearing anything about him either,” I said.
Anna handed the torn prescription pad to Matos. “This look like it might belong to anyone you know?”
“No,” Matos said. “Do you have any idea how many doctors, public, private, shadow, and street there are in the greater Los Angeles area? You have part of a number and a bit of a name. I’m sorry I can’t help you with that, Mr. Ballard.”
“It’s okay.” I took back the prescription scrap. “You’ve helped. Could you do me one last favor, Doc? If you know them, give me the names of the adoption agencies Thobias has helped out in the past.”
I excused myself from the table. I didn’t offer to shake Matos’s hand, and she didn’t offer it. Anna walked with me to the door and just outside the coffee shop. It had started to rain, and the tires of the cars running up Sixth whooshed as they drove by.
“Did that help? Really?” Anna asked. I nodded.
“Yes, thank you. I know you like to keep your business your business, but that filled in a few more pieces for me. If this is what I think it is, it’s ugly, Anna. I can’t walk away from any of this.”
“You’re out of time,” she said. “Dragon will have to bring you in if she sees you. Don’t do that to her, Laytham. This whole mess, you, it’s brought up so many bad memories and emotions for her.”
“And for you,” I said. “I wish there was some way I could tell you how sorry I am for what I’ve done. There isn’t. I can try to keep you two out of the rest of this as best I can. It’s all I can do. I’ll make sure me and my crew are out of the Limit tonight.”
“Take care of yourself, Laytham,” she said, and caressed my cheek as gently as the rain. “We still love you, and you’re still our family, always.”
I wanted to kiss her, but I knew it would just tangle her up inside. If I’d had a few drinks in me, I would have done it anyway. Another pro to drinking, kissing more beautiful women. I smiled and shuffled off down the street to find a cab.
“Ballard!” Anna called after me. I stopped and turned, looking a bit like junk-tripping John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. “We believe in you, even if you don’t anymore.” The thought of that kept me warm until a cabbie, a broad-shouldered Samoan, took pity on my drowned ass and picked me up.
“Where to?” the driver asked. I handed him a hundred.
“I have no fucking clue,” I said. “Drive me around for a bit and let me see what I can scrounge up.” The cabbie grunted and pulled out into the sporadic four A.M. traffic. I called Grinner on the secure cell.
“I need you to do a little more digging,” I said.
“Do you actually comprehend the meaning of ‘get the hell out of Dodge’?” he asked. “I am packing. I am going to the airport, I am lying to all the nice TSA people about … well, everything, and I am getting out of this cluster fuck of a town. I do have some more intel cooking for you about Glide, but just for yucks, what you need?”
I told Grinner what had happened at the Iron Cauldron, what Blue had told me before Crash Cart had turned him into salsa, and what I had gleaned from Dr. Matos. It would have been funny watching the cabbie’s face in the mirror as I laid it all out, but the cold rain had gotten into my bones, and I was having trouble not shuddering like a sick old dog. My blood was freezing acid, and it screamed for a drink, a line of coke, a hit of speed, a benzo, anything to stop the ugly burden of me. I gave it a cigarette and told it to shut up.
“Hey, you can’t smoke in here, man,” the driver began as I blew my first lungful of smoke out the open rear window. I handed him another hundred with a rapidly steadying hand, and he acquiesced.
“So what you thinking?” Grinner asked. “The Dugpa are doing something with the babies of the sacrificial victims?”
“Maybe. It’s sick as fuck to even comprehend,” I said. “Manson said something to me about children being the way to immortality, to control the future. To bake a successful Dugpa, you’d have to start indoctrinating them young. You can’t get much younger than right out of the oven.”
“Especially when you own the bakery. That is fucked up,” Grinner said. “Okay, you want me to dig into this Dr. Thobias and those adoption agencies and see if I find any trace of your girl in there?”
“Any of our victims,” I said, “not just Crystal. See what you can dig up. This is important.”
“Isn’t it always,” he said. “Meet me in parking at LAX about eleven this morning. I can give you whatever I got by then. My flight leaves at noon.”
He hung up.
I drove around in the predawn rain, feeding the cabbie money occasionally. I think I slept for a little bit. I had discovered over a lifetime of wandering that the back of cabs was one of my few safe places. I had an old sliver of a memory in my skull, in the places I seldom visited, never dwelled in. It was of Mom and Pa.
It was my last solid memory of life with my pa. He was driving us somewhere in that baby-shit-brown ’73 Buick Riviera. It was raining, like it was now, and I was stretched out in the backseat, mostly asleep. They were talking softly. Charlie Rich’s “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” was playing on the hissing AM radio, quietly competing with the rain on the roof and the hypnotic creak of the rushing wipers to be heard. They sang along, and I could hear, feel, the love between them.
I could smell Pa’s tobacco, sweet and musky. His death was not far away, out there just past the headlights in the onrushing future. It is my last memory of normal, of childhood, I retained, and it often tiptoed out of the ramshackle haunted house of my mind when I sat exhausted, safe in the backseat. What Elextra, Peggy, had said to me about feeling safe in the backseat of a car came back to me too. Normal people had scrapbooks; maybe broken people had the backseat of cars.
My phone buzzed and shocked me awake. I figured it would be Grinner, but it was a l
ocal number I didn’t immediately recognize. I answered. It was Gus Gilwaski, the erstwhile leader of the Weathermen.
“I’m sorry if I woke you, Laytham,” he said. I could hear Doris Day playing on vinyl in the background.
“No, no, Gus, it’s okay. I’m good. What’s up?”
“I did a divination as soon as I got home,” he said. “I wanted to get you the results as soon as possible. I hope they will help your investigation.”
“What you got for me, Gus?” I was surprised he had actually done it.
“Well,” the tyromancer said, “first of all, Crystal Myth herself is blocked from view by scrying. It’s powerful and old magic, probably related to her Fae heritage, maybe some kind of talisman or charm.” That made sense. Ankou had scoured the world for his daughter and had told me he had employed every resource, mundane or occult, at his disposal, including looking for her in the legendary revealing waters of Elphyne in the ancient Fae homeland. “However,” Gus continued, “I was able to get a read off of the young man who argued with Glide at the party we saw Crystal at. He’s with her now, and he has a strange dichotomy about him. He has been ally and nemesis to the now-late Roland Blue.”
None of this was knocking my socks off; however, the fact that the guy was still with her was helpful. Maybe Blue had put her on ice somewhere? Maybe the mystery man was one of Blue’s men and had decided to see if he could make his own deal with Ankou for Caern and had rabbited with her. If that was the case, what the hell was he waiting for? It had been years since she had vanished from L.A. Unknown guy’s presence just created more questions than answers.
“Thanks, Gus,” I said, “I really appreciate—”
“Wait,” he said, almost breathless, “I saved the best for last. I got an audible divination!”
The Night Dahlia Page 28