“Yes, you can,” says Bill.
“What if someone comes to take me back to the donut shop?”
“The powers that be have a lot on their plate right now,” I say. “I doubt anyone’s going to notice you’re gone. And if they do, they’re going to have a hard time finding you. If anyone comes for you, don’t worry. I’ll know about it.”
I look at Bill.
“You should have taken that gun I offered you back at the palace.”
“That funny Glock thing where I couldn’t even see the bullets? No thanks. Besides, with all the drunks and ne’er-do-wells that pass through here, I’ve got all the guns and ammunition I need. Under the floorboards back here.”
He sets the cigar on the bar and picks up his drink.
“You think it’s going to come to that?”
“No. But in strange times like this it’s better having too many guns than too few.”
“Amen to that,” says Bill.
I cock my head at the legionnaire.
“Is he someone to worry about?”
“Him?” says Bill. He smiles.
“He’s a deserter. That’s pretty much all we get out here these days. Law enforcement or anyone in authority are the last folks he wants to see.”
“Good to hear.”
I look at Cindil.
“I’ll say good-bye for now. Don’t worry about anything. Bill will take good care of you.”
“Thanks,” says Cindil.
“Can I have my coat back?” I say.
She shrugs it off and hands it to me. When I take it she leans forward and gives me a quick hug. I think she’s still a little shell-shocked.
“Take care, both of you. Look after her, Bill.”
“That I will,” he says.
I turn to the legionnaire. He’s barely moved since we came in. My first instinct is to blow his head off just to make sure he won’t talk to anyone. But Cindil is still skittish and has seen enough death, and the last thing I want to do is send her screaming into the night. I take out the black blade and go over. When the legionnaire looks up, I stick it under his throat.
“My name is Sandman Slim. I’ve killed more of you Hellion pig fuckers than I can count. You breathe one word about what’s happened here today to anyone . . . well, you know what Tartarus is?”
Everyone in Hell knows what Tartarus is. It’s the Hell below Hell. The resting place for the double dead.
The rummy nods.
I wrecked Tartarus once, but I had it rebuilt for just one man. Mason Faim, the mortal man I killed to become Lucifer. I hated him more than all the Hellions put together. He’s the only soul in Tartarus these days.
“There’s plenty of room in Tartarus for a dumb guy with a big mouth. Especially a deserter. No one would notice or care if you disappeared. So you didn’t see anything today. And if anyone asks, that girl over there has been working here since the day the place opened. Got it?”
His eyes are wide. When he tries to nod he sticks himself on the tip of the knife.
“Ow.”
“I’ll take that for a yes.”
I put the blade back under my coat and head for the nearest shadow.
“And you didn’t see this either, fucker,” I say, and step into the dark.
I COME OUT in Mr. Muninn’s cavern under the Bradbury Building. The shelves are crammed with books, ancient weapons, and scientific instruments. Animal teeth and dinosaur bones. Paintings cover the walls and sculptures fill every empty corner. In the distance is a drive-in movie screen. Who knows what else? You could spend a couple of lifetimes down here trying to inventory the place.
I go to where Muninn’s fortress of solitude opens onto the main tunnel that used to be home for L.A.’s dead. Kneeling, I pour the potion across the floor. A wall quietly assembles itself from the surrounding stones and fills the gap. It only takes a few seconds to form and it looks like it’s been there since T. rexes used the Rockies as a skateboard ramp.
There’s a new war in Heaven. Angels eating their own. What a surprise. I don’t have a good history with angels. They’re bigger control freaks than Wells and crazier than manic-depressive cobras. Aelita, the loon. Rizoel, who made me take his arm when he tried to keep me out of Eden. That tricky bastard Lucifer. And my father. He was technically an archangel. Uriel. He went by the name Doc Kinski when I knew him and I didn’t even know he was my father until after Aelita murdered him. The one good thing he ever did for me, that any angel ever did for me, was take care of Candy. He pulled her off the street and got her the Jade potion that keeps her from eating people. A couple of points for Doc Kinski, then. But the rest of them? I can’t wait for the rain to break in L.A. because it will mean the blood has stopped in Hell, and that will mean there aren’t any angels left in Heaven. Of course, we’ll still have Ruach upstairs and the Angra knocking at the back door. Once again, the powers that be have completely fucked us. They play out their family traumas on a cosmic scale and we’re caught in the middle, like we’ve always been. We’re just bugs on God’s windshield.
I try calling Candy to let her know that I’m back and everything is all right, but I can’t get a signal this far underground.
I check on the new clothes that Muninn gave me, but Hell’s red rain has soaked through my jacket and ruined them. I toss them on the ground and step through a shadow.
Come out on Hollywood Boulevard a few blocks from Max Overdrive. I walk the last five minutes home in the rain trying to wash as much of the blood off me as I can.
I’ll have to remember to give Kasabian his hat.
IN THE MORNING, way too early in the goddamn morning, I’m back in a Vigil van moving through Hollywood. The streets are empty except for a couple of homeless people huddled asleep in the doorway of the wax museum near Highland. The traffic lights have stopped working, which doesn’t matter since there’s no traffic. Most stores are deserted, though a few places forgot to lock the door. Water sloshes up over the curb to soak their carpets. But the merchandise stays where it is. There’s no one left even to loot the place.
An LAPD cruiser riverboats past us, too smart to slow or do anything but stare at our blacked-out caravan.
We pull over at the Hollywood and Vine underground metro stop. The place is locked down tight. There’s a big “Closed for Maintenance, Sorry for the Inconvenience” sign on the gate blocking the stairs. Julie Sola jumps out of the second van, unlocks the gate, and pushes it out of the way. Just like at the funny farm, Wells’s crew starts unloading personnel and forensic gear for our trip down the rails. The Shonin is back at headquarters, warm and dry. Mummies don’t much like wading through ankle-deep water, and when we’re downstairs, let’s face it . . . the jerky on the guy’s bones is going to attract rats. Best for everyone if he stays at the HQ sipping his poison book.
“Stark, stay close to me,” says Wells.
“I didn’t know you cared.”
“I don’t. I just don’t want you making up your own mission and wandering off.”
Someone gets the lights turned on below and we head down.
The Hollywood and Vine subway is a themed stop, a municipal tourist trap, trying to keep travelers out of their cars while they’re in town. The concrete support columns below are tiled to resemble shiny palm trees. The ceiling is covered in empty film reels and along the walls of the tunnel are decorations that look like lengths of movie film.
The trains had been running less and less the last few weeks, and with no one left to ride them, they’ve stopped completely. A shallow channel of water flows from the surface all the way down to the platform and falls onto the tracks.
Around us, Wells’s crew talks quietly as they calibrate their equipment. There’s a few nervous laughs. A few brave ones and a couple that sound like I feel. Uncertain.
“Tell me why we’r
e down here, Wells.”
He drags his fingers along a map on a minitablet, enlarging the image. He doesn’t look up while he studies photos that pop up as he moves his finger down the screen. I look over his shoulder. It’s a subway map, but with more detail than the one commuters get, and with the tunnels between the stations laid out.
“Some of the lower tunnels run parallel with the cave system that held L.A.’s dead.”
I look at him.
“You knew about them?”
He glances up at me then goes back to his screen.
“Of course. We’re the Golden Vigil, we know everything about everything.”
He raises his eyes again for a second.
“All your dirty little secrets.”
“If you know my secrets then you know I’m not Saint Nick.”
“You know what they say. Only a man with a guilty conscience keeps reminding you of how innocent he is.”
“Okay, you got me. I am Saint Nick. And Mr. Bubbles. And the Easter Bunny.”
Wells ignores me. The Vigil crew stops chattering, their gear pretty much squared away.
“If the Vigil knew about the corpse tunnels, why didn’t you do anything about them?”
Wells slaps the cover shut on the tablet and puts it in his pocket.
“What was there to do? Move hundreds of thousands of bodies? To where?”
For a second he sounds like Mr. Muninn.
“Besides,” he says, “before Jan and Koralin Geistwald came to town and turned the horde into a bunch of kill-crazy zombies, they weren’t a problem. The Vigil has learned to let many of these things be and not to tamper with the balance of supernatural forces in the city, no matter how revolting and profane they might be.”
A couple of the Vigil crew unfold portable staircases that extend from the platform to the tracks. Wells is the first person down. I follow him.
“You’re not saying there’s access to those dead tunnels from the subway, are you?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” he says. “I said they run parallel. There were never any stops in zombie country.”
“Then why are we here?”
“We’re looking for breaches.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll know it if we find one.”
Sola walks over.
“We’re ready to go anytime you are, sir.”
Wells turns to the troops like General Patton.
“Let’s move out.”
Sola hands him a pair of night-vision goggles and puts on a pair herself. The rest of the crew does the same thing.
“Where’s mine?” I say.
Wells takes something out of his pocket and hands it to me. A cheap plastic LED flashlight.
I say, “Gee. How does this work?” and shine it into his eyes for a second.
“What’s wrong with you?” he says, his voice just a notch below rage. “This is no time for your playing.”
“Sorry. I’m not used to this advanced Vigil technology.”
As Wells starts down the tracks he says, “Stay behind me. But close behind. Marshal Sola, make sure our pixie doesn’t flutter off.”
“Yes, sir,” she says.
Not far into the tunnels, the water rises to almost ankle depth. I guess monsoons weren’t high on the worst-case-scenarios list when they built the place.
I play the light ahead into the tunnel. I can’t see much of anything. The tops of the tracks. Bare concrete walls with occasional maintenance access doors. Long lines of metal conduits carrying power up and down the station.
“See anything interesting?” I say to Wells.
“Not much more than you, but we didn’t expect to see anything out here. We’re taking a spur line up ahead. Employees and maintenance personnel only. A line the public never sees.”
“Great. If you spot any Angra roadside-attraction signs let me know. I’ll pick up a pecan log and a belt buckle.”
Wells ignores me.
Sola whispers, “Why do you do that?”
“What?”
“Go out of your way to aggravate Wells?”
“I have to do something. I can’t bring my knitting along.”
“No. Seriously.”
“Wells agrees with Aelita a hundred percent about me. I’m an Abomination. A monster. So I give him what he wants.”
“Why don’t you try to show him you’re more than that?”
“Try to convince him I’m a good guy? That would scare him more than if I showed up like Kali with ten arms and wearing a belt of severed heads.”
Sola is quiet for a minute. Then she says, “I’m trying to see you as a serious person.”
“What do you care? Are you spying for him?”
“No. I told you before. Maybe we can work together when this is over. I can restart my PI service. But I need to know you’re someone I can depend on.”
“When this is over.” I never took Sola for that kind of optimist. But I guess anyone who goes out on her own and hangs out her detective shingle has to believe there’ll be something down the road.
“How’s this? I’ve saved this world more than once already. I have friends here and I’ll kill anything that walks, crawls, flies, or oozes out of the ground if it hurts one of them. I know God and the Devil and their worst secrets. I know how to pull the plug on this whole rotten world and I don’t do it. You know why?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know either some days. But I don’t do it and the only reason I think I’d ever do it would be to take down the Angra.”
“You think.”
“Yeah. I think.”
I look at her.
“Serious enough for you?”
She nods.
“Enough,” she says. Then, “Are you really getting a million dollars for working on the mission?”
“I wish. I got talked down to five-five.”
“Fifty-five thousand?”
“Five hundred and fifty.”
“Holy shit.”
“I’m a special case. And I had the big weapon, the 8 Ball, so I told them I wanted to be paid like a defense contractor.”
“Wow,” says Sola. “No wonder Wells hates you.”
“Imagine how much more he’ll hate me when he has to hand me the check.”
“Don’t forget to get me those psych forms.”
“Sure. I’ll do them tonight.”
“If you girls have finished gossiping it would be awfully nice if you joined the rest of us on the mission,” says Wells.
Sola snaps to attention.
“Yes, sir. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he says. “Just do your job. Go back with the others, Sola. It’s obvious I can’t leave you children alone together.”
Sola goes back and disappears into the middle of the Vigil crew. Lots of grins and quiet chuckles back there. Law enforcement. It’s like high school with better guns.
“You don’t have to do that to her,” I say.
“Don’t tell me how to run my people,” Wells says.
“Aren’t I one of your people now?”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure you are a person. Lots of things can walk on two legs. Monkeys. Dogs. Bears.”
“You should have said parrots. Those others can’t talk.”
“I know. Just wishful thinking on my part.”
We’re well down the spur line now, heading to a dead end. There’s nothing and no one down here.
Wells turns to his team.
“Anything, anyone? Life readings? Heat signatures? Any signs of Angra ritual marks or bodies?”
A few “No sirs” come from the back. Then a high-pitched whoop from somewhere. Like a howler monkey, but quiet. Then comes chattering, like a hu
ndred people caught in the snow, their teeth tapping together. A scrabbling at the edges of the room. People look at their feet, checking for rats. I can hear breathing all around us.
“Take off your goggles,” I say to Wells. “And tell them to do the same.”
“Something’s coming. I’m going to light this place up.”
“Don’t you dare,” he says.
That’s when the first person screams.
I say, “Wells!”
“Goggles off,” he yells.
I don’t wait to see who obeys the order. My hoodoo isn’t subtle, but I figure that the tunnel is big enough to try it. I bark some Hellion and fire explodes across the ceiling. A lucky shot, as it turns out, since it knocks twenty or thirty of Saint Nick’s chop-shop people off the roof of the tunnel down onto the tracks like sizzling lunch meat. After that, it’s the O.K. Corral. The Vigil crew opens up with their weird angel tech guns, blowing bolts of purple light into Saint Nick’s creations. But it barely slows them.
A couple of chop shops rush me. One is clacking his broken teeth together like he’s gnawing his way through drywall. The other comes at me like a fucking velociraptor, his hands held out like claws, his legs pumping like pistons.
It’s like a night back in the arena, where I fought for most of my time in Hell. By instinct, I pull out the na’at and snap it open like a spear with a curved sword on the end. Broken Teeth is closest, all fangs and milky red eyes. I slice the na’at through the air and off pops his head, rolling away in the subway tide pool. I start to do the same to the velociraptor when I get a stab of paranoia. If Wells really thinks I’m Saint Nick, what’s tossing heads everywhere going to tell him?
I peg the velociraptor in the chest and angle the grip of the na’at up, forcing him to the ground. Then I pull the Colt and shoot him in the head. It’s a relief when he stays down.
I glance at Wells’s people. They’re holding off the crazies and even have a few of them down on their backs, but each one takes a dozen or more shots.
I plug a couple more crazies between the eyes. It seems to put them down nicely. Too bad I don’t have a hundred bullets.
More chop shops pour from the back of the tunnel. The Colt runs out of shots fast, but there’s no time to reload. I put it in my waistband. There’s no point pulling the black blade. I’d just start taking heads like with the na’at. That leaves one thing.
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