A fat man in a white suit sat in a red Cadillac convertible parked on the other side of the driveway from the office.
The hood ornament had been replaced by a large white cross. The man looked up at my eye-which should have been invisible-and a fleshy smile peeked out between his heavy jowls. He waved.
“There’s a preacher parked out front,” I said.
Terrence eased forward, trying to stay out of sight, and looked out through the shattered window. “Maybe he needs a room,” he said. “But I don’t see a hooker in the car.”
“I don’t know, I think this guy’s got some juice. You hang back, I’ll see what he wants.”
I walked out of the office, picking my way carefully between Terrence’s dead muscle. The preacher opened the door of the Cadillac and clambered out, his face flushing with the effort. He stood and straightened his toupee, then smiled that beatific smile again. I was pretty sure he was even fatter than Anton-before he’d become a zombie, even. I checked him out with my witch sight and saw black juice radiating from him in waves, like the stink from a cartoon skunk’s tail.
“What the fuck are you supposed to be?” I said, stopping in my tracks and gripping the forty-five more tightly.
“You don’t recognize me, Ms. Riley? I’m disappointed.” He looked down at his gut-creating a few more chins in the process-and straightened his lapels. “I suppose it’s the new suit.”
“Valafar,” I said. “You’re possessing that man.”
“Yes,” he said, smiling. “Ironic, isn’t it? He’s hideously fat, don’t you think? A true glutton-and not just for food, mind you. Most appealing.”
“Thanks for showing up and giving me another chance to kill you,” I said. “You ran too fast the last time.” I started pulling juice from the parking lot, and I hoped Terrence was doing the same.
“That was neither the time nor the place,” the demon said. “Nor is this, if you ask me. But go ahead, kill me if you must. No need for witchcraft-the gun will do nicely.” He sighed and spread his arms.
“You’ll just possess someone else.”
“Well, sure,” Valafar said, shrugging. “But you’ll ruin my suit. Not that it will last very long, anyway-I wear them out so quickly.” One of his eyes popped and flames licked out.
“What do you want?”
“I want…what is it you say? A sit-down, yes, that’s right. A parley.”
“What do you and I have to talk about? You’re a demon, I’m a human, sooner or later we’re going to throw down.”
Valafar nodded. “Yes, I’m a demon. So what? What does that mean, anyway, a demon? It’s just another word for bad guy. You’re a bad guy, I’m a bad guy-we’re all bad guys to the sheep, stumbling their way through life until it’s time for them to be slaughtered. It’s semantics.”
“You’re a psychopath. Born without the knowledge of good and evil. It’s not in the cards for you and me to be friends.”
“Oh, right, you know that because it’s what your own personal demon told you, and of course he would never lie.”
“Okay, we’re talking. I’ll ask again-what do you want?”
“Will you trick me into revealing my secret plan?” the demon asked.
“I doubt it. I figure you’re itching to tell me anyway, otherwise you wouldn’t be standing here flapping your fat face at me.”
Valafar giggled. “I’ll tell you the honest-to-God truth,” he said. He started to cross himself but seemed to get lost about halfway through and wrapped it up with a vague flutter of his hand. “I don’t have a plan. None of us do, not really. Not even world domination. Oh, sure, we do want the world-we want it back-but not to rule it. We just want to have a little fun.”
“You should try Disneyland.” In my defense, I regretted the quip as soon as the words were out of my mouth. My bad, Anaheim.
“I believe I shall,” he said. “A whole park filled with people-with children-all for my amusement. It’s a lovely concept, these amusement parks. Sadly, I believe the current situation has forced it to close, temporarily. It will have to wait until things die down a little, if you’ll excuse the expression.”
“So you just want to kill people. I’m still not seeing the point of all this talking.”
“Oh, not killing, exclusively,” the demon said, “though there is great power in murder, as you know. Kill enough people and you may become a sorcerer. Kill a great many more and you may become a god.”
“At least you don’t have delusions of grandeur or anything.”
“No delusions, Ms. Riley. I am an ant, a worm…a parasite surviving on the shit in a worm’s asshole.”
“Now you’re making sense.”
“But it need not always be so,” Valafar continued. “It is the pursuit, the process, the becoming that really matters. If a single, nasty little world must be reduced to ashes in this most noble endeavor-surely that is a small price to pay for transcendence?”
“Aaaaaand now you’re boring me again.”
“When I am alone at the end of days I shall run amongst those ashes, I shall wallow in them, and I shall be a more beautiful, a more wonderful, a more perfect thing than could ever crawl forth from the blood, filth and cum that lubricates this-”
I raised the forty-five and shot the preacher in the forehead. I saw the flame in his eye wink out just before the bullet pierced flesh and bone. The man sank to his knees and toppled over on his side. I took a look at the corpse with my witch sight and the black cancer growing inside it was gone. I walked up to the man, knelt and pulled his spirit from his body, binding it to the driver’s seat of the Cadillac. I reached down and gently closed his eyes.
When I stood up, Terrence was at my side. He stared down at the body for a moment, and then covered it with a thin, frayed blanket from the motel. “You feeling me now, Domino? Ain’t none of us going to be the same after this.”
I nodded and reached around Terrence’s wide back with my gun hand, pulling him to me and resting my head against his shoulder. “I feel you, Terrence,” I said. “But who knows? Maybe some change will do us good.”
The drive down to Inglewood from Oberon’s place had taken two hours, even with the traffic spell. The freeways were choked and the surface streets weren’t much better. I could have saved a lot of time by just getting on the phone and telling Terrence his days as a boss were over, but I hadn’t been willing to do it that way. I felt pretty good about that, and if I hadn’t gone to see him he might be dead. But now I had to get back up to the warehouse district south of downtown, and if anything the traffic was even worse. The civilians didn’t yet understand a zombie apocalypse was underway, but they knew some bad shit was going down and it seemed a few million were seizing the opportunity for some paid time off.
I stayed on Manchester at the entrance ramp to the Harbor Freeway when my traffic spell didn’t open enough space in the gridlock for me to ride a bicycle through. I drove east on Manchester to Alameda and turned north. I was swimming upstream against all the traffic headed south out of the city when some asshole with a fully loaded pickup turned in front of me from Gage and promptly shuddered to a dead stop, lying on his horn. Ahead of me was a sea of cars packed door handle to door handle across all four lanes. The BMW and Bentley dealership on the corner was being looted-more like vandalized, since even if you could steal a car you wouldn’t be able to drive it anywhere. Several cars in the outside lot were burning, others had been smashed, and rioters had broken out the plate glass and were getting started inside. I pulled out my cell and called Chavez.
“Where are you?” he said when the line connected.
“I’m a little over three miles from the club, but I’m not moving. I’m going to have to hike it. What’s it look like there?”
“We’re standing room only, D, and the civilians are freaked the fuck out. But hell, it’s already a fucking riot outside so I’m not sure how much worse it can get.”
“Get a handle on it, Chavez. Any other problems?”
“The usual. We’ve had some zombies try to get in. Some are just hungry, others don’t know they’re dead and they’re just as scared as the living. We put them down.”
“Okay, I’m on the move. No idea how long it will take me to get there.” The distance wasn’t far, but there was a pretty good chance the zombie apocalypse would slow me down. I slipped the cell phone in my pocket, drew my forty-five from its shoulder holster and got out of the car.
The asshole in the pickup truck got out, too. He pulled a golf club out of the back and stalked up to the driver’s window of the Camry in front of him. He reared back and swung the club like a baseball bat, starring the safety glass. The zombie who was driving the Toyota pushed the glass the rest of the way out of the frame and reached for the asshole, trying to drag him inside the car. She was a middle-aged Latina and her skin was gray and blotched. She grasped for her attacker and snapped yellow teeth at him.
The asshole dropped the golf club and ran. A small, high-pitched voice screamed from the open cab of the pickup. “Daddy! Don’t leave!”
I stopped in the middle of the street and looked north at the ragged line of cars that choked all four lanes, and then some. I heard gunshots, though I couldn’t see the shooters and didn’t know who their targets were. Then I ran over to the pickup and ducked my head inside. Two little boys, the oldest no more than six or seven, sat huddled together on the bench seat. They were crying and shaking from head to toe. “Your daddy went to get help,” I said. “He asked me to take you someplace safe. Will you come with me?”
The youngest boy just shook his head. The oldest said, “We’re not supposed to talk to strangers.”
I could juice the kids and feel bad about it later. It would be the smart thing to do. “I know, little man, and that’s usually real good advice, but it’s not safe here. Maybe if we weren’t strangers, then you could talk to me. I’m Domino, like the game.” I smiled and held out my hand. The oldest boy looked at it for a moment and then shook it. “I’m Ethan and this is Dylan,” he said.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Ethan and Dylan. Will you let me take you to a safe place?”
“How will we find Daddy?” Ethan asked.
I could find the guy easily enough. I wasn’t sure the kids weren’t better off without him. I understood getting a little freaked out by the zombie apocalypse, but you don’t run off and leave your kids. “I’ll find him,” I said. “Once you’re safe, I’ll find him and bring him to you. I promise. Okay?”
Ethan nodded and they slid across the seat to me. I helped them out of the truck and took Ethan’s hand. “Now you hold on to Dylan’s hand,” I said. “And no matter what happens, stay right beside me. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Domino,” Ethan said, taking his brother’s hand.
I looked north up the street and then back at Ethan and Dylan. I pulled juice from the streets and dropped protective wards on the boys. “It’s not far,” I told them. “But it’s going to be really bad.” I spun up a charm and let the magic flow over them. “Keep your eyes down at your feet. Don’t look at anything else unless I tell you. And if you see anything, don’t remember it.” I didn’t want to use magic to compel them, but I figured this was no different from the protective wards.
“Yes, Domino,” they said in unison.
“Good. There are a lot of bad people around here, and I don’t want you to be scared if I have to fight, okay?” The boys nodded, but they didn’t seem convinced. I squeezed Ethan’s hand and we set off into the slaughterhouse.
It didn’t take long to put my suspicions to the test. We’d just started down the sidewalk when a gang of looters came out of a lot filled with commercial trucks. A punk who looked like he was in his late teens dropped one of the cardboard boxes he was carrying and CDs spilled out. He saw us and grinned.
“Check it out,” he said to his friends. “Someone brought us a MILF!” The friends all laughed. There were five of them. The leader bent down and pulled a knife out of his boot. “Come here, bitch,” he said, walking toward me. “You give it up real sweet, we won’t hurt the kids.”
I extended my hand to him, palm out. “Vi Victa Vis,” I said, and punched him through a chain-link fence into the grille of a large panel truck. His homeboys dropped their loot and ran. Ethan and Dylan started bawling but their eyes stayed on their sneakers.
It took us more than three hours to walk through the endless warehouse district that stretched south from the edge of downtown. By the time we got to the intersection at Washington, I’d lost track of how many spells I’d cast. We saw a few rioters and a lot of zombies. A large pack attacked the gridlocked cars at the railroad tracks near Twenty-Fourth, and I learned my wallflower spell didn’t have any effect on Zed. I couldn’t say whether it was smell or some arcane sixth sense, but the zombies locked onto us immediately. There were too many for the ghost-binding spell and they came at us too quickly, so I had to use fireballs. The screams of dying zombies and the smell of burning meat terrified Ethan and Dylan and further slowed our progress. I told myself the charm I’d used meant they wouldn’t keep it with them long. We kept walking.
I dropped another dozen zombies between Washington and the Santa Monica Freeway ramp. Most of them were stragglers, and I had time to use the ghost-binding spell before they could get close. A few jumped out from behind cars and attacked, and I had to use force magic to create some space. A couple of them were armed. One middle-aged woman in sweatpants and a long, bloodstained Dodgers T-shirt came at us with a butcher knife in one hand and a hammer in the other. She leaped down from the roof of a blue minivan, and I barely had time to trigger my repulsion talisman before she landed right on top of me. The force magic knocked her across the street, and she was impaled on the climbing hooks of a utility pole. The woman wriggled on the hooks like a fish on the end of a line until I stepped up and tore her spirit from her body. I used my telekinesis spell to pull her body down.
Ethan and Dylan stayed at my side through all of this, their eyes glued to their sneakers.
I heard the zombie horde before I saw them. At first I thought it was another riot in progress down by the freeway. It sounded like a riot, like a mob-a cacophony of shouts and screams that blended together to create a dull roar that raised the hair on the back of my neck. Then I saw them pouring down the off-ramp from the freeway into the street. It reminded me of the footage I’d seen from Victoria Park. A lot of the zombies fell as they scrambled and staggered down the ramp, and the others just kept coming, climbing over the fallen and grinding them underfoot. I could see more zombies marauding among the cars up on the freeway. Some of the living had crawled over the barrier and hung from the overpass. Others jumped or fell to the street below.
I looked around for a defensible spot but didn’t see any attractive candidates. With no other options, I picked up Ethan and Dylan and carried them to a tractor-trailer rig that had been abandoned in the gridlocked traffic. With one of the boys under each arm, I spun my jump spell just as the first zombies reached us. Ethan was tucked under my right arm and I didn’t have a good grip on him because I was still holding the forty-five. I lost him when we landed on the roof of the trailer and he slid and tumbled toward the edge.
“All movements go too far!” I shouted as he fell over the side. The telekinesis spell caught him and pulled him back just before he reached the eager, outstretched arms of the zombies below.
There was plenty of food for the zombies stuck in the traffic jam, both down on the street and up on the freeway, but we attracted enough attention that our truck was quickly surrounded. The more enterprising zombies began rocking the trailer. Others threw rocks or junk they picked up off the street at us, hoping to knock us off our perch. I had Ethan and Dylan lie down flat on the roof of the trailer, and I spun my defensive shields to protect us. Zombies began climbing onto the cab of the truck to get at us and I knocked them down with force magic. I didn’t have time to use my witch sight, and I couldn’t be sure all of them were zombi
es. I told myself there was no way a living human could survive long enough to climb up on the truck.
These zombies might have been brighter than the average movie zombies but they were every bit as relentless. I thought after a while they might notice they weren’t getting anywhere with me and decide to look for easier prey. But once the idea we’d be their next meal got into their heads, it stayed there. The sea of zombies around the truck kept getting bigger and bigger as more of them noticed us. They were a carpet of decomposing flesh completely covering the street and empty cars and they stretched as far as I could see.
There was no break in the shouting, screaming and wailing of the hungry dead. It grew louder and louder as more of them swarmed around the truck. It was impossible to think. Could I fight my way through so many zombies with the children in tow? I couldn’t even be sure how many of them there were. I could start throwing fireballs and other destructive spells, but could I keep it up long enough to reach safety? I could call Chavez for reinforcements but I’d be putting anyone he sent in terrible danger. I might have been willing to do it anyway, but even if they could reach me it would pull them away from defense of the sanctuaries.
If it had just been me, I was pretty sure I could have walked to Pasadena without a zombie getting its rotten hands on me. I could make it, but I wasn’t sure Ethan and Dylan would. I needed help.
“Adan,” I called, reaching out with the juice.
“Domino, where are you?” he said, the words echoing in my mind. “Are you in trouble?”
“You could say that. I’m on Alameda down by the 10.
I’ve got a couple civilians with me-little ones-and we’re surrounded. I could use a hand, but I don’t see how anyone can get to me.”
“Open a gate,” Adan said.
“What?”
“Open a gate to the Between and call me, just like you did with Honey.”
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