It was a gamble, sure. I was betting that Benedict’s failure came mostly from his inability to find Kelsen most of the time. Kelsen had set him up, time and time again, and the one time Benedict had found him, there were the demons to contend with. I thought I had both problems solved, though I still figured there was a good chance we’d have to cut our way through half an army of irate Russian thugs regardless. Whatever.
The guys nodded. If they had reservations about the plan, they didn’t show.
“All right. Frankie here is the only other guy who can operate this thing,” I said, nodding at the chicken bones, “so he’s gonna be on one team, and I’ll be on the other. Tink, Alfie, you’re with me.” Alfie gave me the creeps, and I’d just as soon have kept him as far away from me as possible, but putting him and Lazzaro together seemed like inviting the wrath of God. Lazzaro was sane at least some of the time. I didn’t figure he needed Alfie’s example to follow. “Cliff, Steve, Tommy—you’re with Frankie.”
“When do we get started?” Lazzaro asked.
“First thing in the morning, me and my guys will start. You guys will get the night shift.”
“Cool.”
I broke up the party after that, and folks headed out. “Frankie, stick around for a bit,” I said. “We gotta go over a couple of things before you take off.”
The other guys left. Probably they shouldn’t have been out on the street—they should have just crashed at my place—but I was exhausted, and a night’s peace sounded as close to paradise as I’d ever get. One more chore before I could rest, though.
Lazzaro boosted himself up to a seat on the counter. “What’s up?”
“You know what that fucker’s gonna do when you find him, right?” I asked.
“Demons.”
“Yeah. I got rid of one the other night, and I’m pretty sure I can do it again. I think I can show you how to do it, too.” I’d probably have to prepare some of the drawings for him, but if he could remember the rest, he’d be okay. Maybe.
“What, tonight?”
“My schedule tomorrow’s a little full,” I said.
“Yeah. All right.”
He hopped down from the counter, and we got started.
Chapter 19. Going to War
I wish I could say something about how my clever plan brought us all to victory in short order, but there were no surprises in that department. It was a bloody slog. Days passed in a haze of gunfire and screams. Kelsen was well protected, and he had the instincts of a cockroach. Time after time, we attacked his guys, just to find that he’d scuttled out the back minutes before the fight started. At every fight, there was more blood, some of it ours, some of it theirs. Cliff got a hole punched through his head with a .32 slug. Lazzaro was pissed about that. He’d been standing next to Cliff at the time, and apparently blood’s impossible to get out of a suede jacket. Tommy got wasted on the same hit, when Lazzaro fumbled the banishment spell and gave a hunched, deformed, dragonlike thing the half-second it needed to rip Tommy open from his left knee to his right shoulder. Steve didn’t think it was too cool to be the last man standing on Lazzaro’s team. “Guy’s fucking crazy!” he told me. I agreed, but we were shorthanded, so he was stuck with it.
For my part, I gunned down two men in midafternoon, under the twinkling spring sun, right in the middle of the street. I can’t say I felt bad about it. I can’t say I felt anything about it. It didn’t even the score, didn’t help my old man get un-burned. I guess I’d known it wouldn’t from the beginning, but I had to feed something to the seething black core of rage boiling in my gut. For that matter, I didn’t feel any more for Cliff than Lazzaro had. This was a war. There were casualties. If only the smell of cordite hadn’t hung around me at all times, reminding me of other burning things, I’d have been almost calm.
Friday came and went, and nobody said anything to me about the Slob’s ten large. Maybe he’d let it slide, but I thought the more likely scenario was that he’d have Tink put two in the back of my head while we were out harrying Kelsen. Whatever. If he could wait until we got the job done, that would be great—and if not, well, the job wouldn’t be my problem anymore.
I stayed alive, though, and Kelsen looked a little more ragged every time we saw him. He couldn’t stay put, and moving around didn’t lose us for long. My biggest concern was that he might really get scared and skip town.
I was getting pretty ragged myself. Not as bad as Kelsen, since I actually got a chance to sleep, but bad enough. I was trying to work in a few hours every day of fucking around with the summoning spells, trying to call up and banish bigger and bigger things. Kelsen was summoning scarier things every time we saw him, and I was bound and determined to dismiss every new monstrosity he called. If I happened to get shot in the head, so be it, but getting eaten alive was right the fuck out.
Ten days in, two of us were dead, I was worn down and angry all the time, and the weather was flawless spring, which I took to mean everything was about to go right to shit. It didn’t disappoint.
I woke up that morning with a splitting headache and a crick in my neck from sleeping on a chair in the cheap-ass motel room me, Tink, and Alfie had rented for the night. I got up, scowling and rubbing my neck, to see Tink, bright-eyed and happily loading his gun at the desk. His lips were pursed, like he was whistling silently. Guy was amazing. Between Alfie’s weird muttering and me summoning demonspawn in the bathroom, the previous night had been a contest to see who could be creepier, but Tink had just watched HBO with the sound turned down for a while, and then slept through the rest. He looked like a shiny penny that morning. I swear, the only thing that ever bothered that guy was when he scratched on the eight ball, once every year or so.
“Ready to get after it?” he said, without looking away from his bullets.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
Tink woke Alfie up—from a distance, since we’d found out the hard way he didn’t take well to being shaken awake—and went out to the car. Nobody spoke as we drove to the rendezvous. This part of the day was the worst, even more tense than the moments before we struck. In these last few minutes, we couldn’t do anything but wait and wonder how the night had gone, if anybody on our side was dead or injured, or if we’d finally finished the bastard. My biggest worry was that Lazzaro had been killed, and the little chicken bone fetish was lost. All heart, that’s me.
We were maybe five minutes away from the alley we’d designated as a meeting point, where we’d get the news and I’d get the bones back, when my phone started doing the electric boogaloo in my pocket. I took it out, checked the caller ID. Lazzaro.
I flipped it open.
“He’s runnin’!” Lazzaro screamed into the phone, not bothering to wait for pleasantries or even a hello. He was out of breath, and it sounded like he was running. “He’s alone, separated from his guys, on fucking foot! We got his ass! Can you get here?”
“Where are you?”
“Ninth. Running south towards Hedgeway. Hurry the fuck up!”
The phone went dead. I dropped it in my lap and floored the gas pedal.
We screeched onto Hedgeway, and I’ll be damned if a thin man in a black T-shirt wasn’t running down the sidewalk as fast as his skinny legs could carry him. This was the first good look at Kelsen I’d ever gotten, I realized. He was pale, and his rimless glasses caught the light and twisted it into shining arcs. His long, stringy hair trailed behind him, beads of sweat flicking off the ends.
I couldn’t tell if he saw us or if he was just eager to get off the main drag, but he cut down an alley, too full of trash for us to follow. I hit the brakes and spun the wheel, and the car bounced up onto the sidewalk. The three of us were out before the engine died.
Lazzaro was half a block away, and Skinny Steve was nowhere to be seen. Dead, probably.
Well, Lazzaro would catch up, or he wouldn’t. We barely spared him a glance before plunging into the alley.
Ahead, Kelsen stumbled, caught himself, and put on new speed
. I had to hand it to him—he had to have been running for five, ten minutes by now, and he was still going. That was definitely an advantage. Most of the Slob’s guys would have followed him for maybe ten steps before wheezing to a stop and declaring, “Fuck it. We’ll get him next time.” Tink was already lagging well behind me, and Alfie was back even farther, though I could still hear his puffing and blowing.
The alley looked like a dead end, and a nasty grin dragged its way across my face. Then Kelsen turned sharply and opened a door on the left. A second later, he disappeared inside the building.
I didn’t slow or hesitate—I followed him straight in. The clattering of his footsteps rang through the stairwell, so I knew he’d gone up, even after all that running. Again, I followed. I heard the door bang on the second landing. When I reached it, moments later, it had failed to latch and was swinging open. I kicked it open and ran through.
Then, pain. Blue lightning flared, and my nerve endings crackled and sizzled as I fell to the floor. I screamed in pain and at my own stupidity—this fucking trap was Kelsen’s go-to spell. Hell, I’d gotten zapped with it the first time I’d gone out. Fucking moron! I kicked and jittered, too wrapped up in my own pain to be able to tell what was going on in the room. Noise, maybe. Frantic motion somewhere past my head, but my eyes were squeezed shut as I thrashed around and yelled.
Then it was over, the force of the magic spent. I wanted to lie there for a week or so and weep, but I opened my eyes instead. Kelsen was ten feet away, rifling through heaps of papers on a table of yellow wood, grabbing some, shuffling others aside. He turned when I stopped frying.
“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. A disgusted grimace twisted his mouth. He opened his hand and started chanting, and I knew I was a dead man. My ability to move didn’t extend much past trembling, and I’d never be able to stop him.
I heard a bang, and a boom!, and Kelsen’s face disintegrated, his sneer transformed into a sucking wet mess of bone chips and blood.
Tink kicked the door shut and leaned his shotgun against the wall.
“Holy shit,” I said. “You cut that close.”
“Got him, didn’t I?”
“And hallelujah for that.” He helped me to my feet. My knees shook, and my hands trembled, but I could stand, and it was getting better by the second. I got my first good look at the room. Kind of a nice loft—open space, lots of shelves lined up against brick walls, books everywhere. It was even well lit, with sunlight streaming in through wide windows out front. “Damn,” I said. “This is his place. I mean, this is it.”
Tink shrugged. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Not yet.” No way, in fact. Tink couldn’t understand the enormity of the find. It was all of Kelsen’s research, I was sure, a library equal to or surpassing Benedict’s. Kelsen must have been at the extreme end of desperation to come here. Maybe he finally was going to split town, and he’d come back here to get the most important bits of his stuff. I couldn’t very well ask him anymore. But I sure could loot his shit.
I stepped to the table and grabbed the first document I could reach. A bolt of blue electricity blasted my body to the floor, where I rehearsed my favorite I’m-being-electrocuted dance again.
“You okay?” Tink asked, when I’d stopped jerking.
I shuddered and shivered, and a tremor ran down my whole body. I felt like my hair would never lie flat again. “N-not really. D-don’t t-t-touch anything.”
“Yeah. I got that.”
Another minute, and I got shakily to my feet again.
“Paranoid fuck trapped everything,” I said. “It’s gonna take some time to disarm all this. Frankie’s gonna freak when he sees . . .” I trailed off. “Hey, where is Frankie?”
“And Alfie,” Tink said, his brow wrinkling in puzzlement.
By way of answer, the gunfire started. Half a dozen shots, maybe more, at least two different weapons. Sounded like it was coming from outside. Tink ran to the front window—stupidly, I thought, but maybe the people shooting had better things to worry about than his appearance in the window.
“Fuck,” he said. “The Russians are here. We gotta go.”
I stared. God knew what kinds of cool shit were hidden in this pile of papers and books, and I was going to have to leave it all right here. I didn’t have time to disarm the traps, and I wasn’t sure I’d survive another couple of jolts like the last one. “Fuck. Fuck!” I got a pen out of the smoldering remains of my jacket. “Gimme a minute, huh?”
“We ain’t got a minute,” Tink said. As if to underscore his point, somebody outside opened up with an automatic something-or-other. It sounded small, but it sure fired a lot of bullets in a short time.
I ignored Tink, and the bullets. I was tempted to pick up some of the papers that had fallen from Kelsen’s hands, but for all I knew those would zap the piss out of me, too. Those were probably the most important papers, though. He’d stopped fleeing for his life long enough to try to collect them, so there must have been some good shit there.
I crouched next to the nearest sheet of paper. Its edge was stuck to the floor with blood that was slowly wicking up into the paper. In the center, stark in thick black lines, was an intensely bizarre diagram—it gave me the creeps just to look at it. I recognized some of the elements, though. It was a summoning. Something big and nasty, I guessed.
More gunfire from outside, and some screaming.
“Come on,” Tink said.
“Just a sec.” I didn’t have anything to write on, so I started copying the diagram down on the back of my left hand. There were mistakes in it, obvious ones, and I wondered if Kelsen simply hadn’t quite figured out how this one worked yet. I corrected the errors as I drew, scribbling as quickly as I could while still trying to be accurate. Screwing up a summoning diagram was not generally considered healthy, and while I’d probably remember how to fix it later, I didn’t feel like taking extra chances, especially given my shaky hands.
“I’m counting to three, and then I’m leaving your ass,” Tink said. Something blew up outside. The Russians’ car, I guessed. It might have been loud; I wasn’t really paying attention. I kept drawing.
“Three.” I hadn’t actually heard one or two, but Tink was done. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him head for the fire escape in back.
I read the short incantation off the sheet, scrawled the words on my forearm, and tried to keep it in my mind long enough to memorize it.
The gunfire sounded like it was coming up the stairs. Covering a retreat, or advancing? I didn’t know, and I was done here.
I stood and cast one last, pained look over Kelsen’s library. Then I flicked my lighter open, tossed it on the heap, and headed for the fire escape.
Tink was long gone. How long, I really didn’t know, but I didn’t think it was more than a minute or two. He was probably clear, and I needed to forget about him and get out of here. Hopefully the fire would give the Russians something to think about for a while.
I climbed down, taking the rusting rungs slowly. I dropped to the ground at the bottom and tried to steady myself.
The guy with the length of pipe? Yeah, I didn’t see him until I was half turned around. The pipe connected with my head with a hollow bong, and I sank to the pavement.
Chapter 20. The Old Man
I clambered on up to consciousness slowly, taking stock of the situation before I opened my eyes.
First item of note: I was sitting up. Tied to something, probably a chair. That struck me as deeply not good, and I guessed that I was very soon going to be wishing the guy with the pipe had hit me hard enough to kill me.
Second, everything hurt. My head, obviously, but I also had sore muscles in places I didn’t know I had muscles, presumably from all the convulsing earlier. My jaws in particular felt like somebody’d been cranking on my chin with a towrope.
Lastly, Kelsen was dead. I thought I’d take some satisfaction from that, at least in the manner of somebody checking the last item off his t
o-do list, but the fact just squatted at the back of my brain, inert. If I got out of here alive, I’d have to go check and see if my dad was any better, or if the shop had built itself back up from its own ashes. Or, hell, maybe Benedict would have crawled out of his bottle for a change.
Right.
A handful of people around me muttered in Russian, impatiently I thought. Then somebody’s weight shifted, a boot scraped the floor near me (concrete?), and wham! My head rocked back from the great-granddaddy of open-handed slaps. Pain exploded in my head and neck, and the flat echo of the sound bounced off walls around me. My eyes flew open.
I looked straight into the gaze of Old Man Chebyshev, and I pissed myself. I had faced down armed men, called forth demons, and literally consorted with dark powers, but nothing had ever scared me half so much as the terrifying combination of dead calm and raving insanity in the old man’s eyes. I dunno, maybe if you saw him on the street, you’d think he was a harmless, jovial sort of old man—he looked vaguely like Wilford Brimley with the walrus mustache and general softness—but up close, all it took was one look to know that here was a man who had left his humanity behind long, long ago, and who had taken deep satisfaction in watching it go.
Or maybe it was the knife that had scared me so bad. It wasn’t a particularly scary knife—your basic jackknife, with maybe three whole inches of blade—but the way the old man held it up in front of me suggested that he and that knife were intimately familiar, old partners from way back, who knew each other’s quirks and habits and desires better than any married couple. The blade was oddly thin, and I realized it had been ground down over decades of sharpening and resharpening.
This was very bad. This was no POW situation covered by the Geneva Convention. I was sitting in a folding metal chair, my arms zip-tied at the elbows to the struts, in the middle of a big, empty warehouse, surrounded by half a dozen oversized goons, and looking into the eyes of a bona fide madman with a well-used knife. I was so fucked. I’d been involved, on the other end, in situations like this, and I knew how it went. First, there would be questions. Those were usually pretty context-specific. “Who did you tell?” and “Where’s the fucking money?” were typical. In this case, I expected general pumping for information about the Slob and our guys, so the Russians could hit them. Of course, I’d refuse to give it at first. Nearly everybody did, as though they needed to bleed first to understand that you were serious. Then blood would flow, or the beatings would start, and, slowly, the answers would come out. You were never sure what you could believe, though, that was the thing, so you pretty much kept going until the guy was dead. Then you left his mutilated corpse somewhere where his buddies would find it. That was the point of the exercise, even more than getting answers.
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