“Who are your new friends, Drew?” Martel asked. It should have sounded menacing, or sarcastic at the least, but the guy delivered it with such grandfatherly charm that it seemed sincere. Nail started to get the cult thing, after all. Then the guy added in a low whisper, “Friends,” and the charm turned instantly to creepy.
“I probably ought to cover that,” Nail said.
Martel’s eyes flashed in irritation. “Oh?”
“Yeah. We, uh, haven’t all been on the same side until just recently. I figure that’s going to take some explaining.”
The man waited.
“One of my, er, colleagues took your relic.” There. It was out. The cult members looked to Martel and shifted their weapons, and Nail felt his body tense again.
Martel reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pair of beat-up channel-lock pliers. The green rubber grips had been ripped in places, and they were covered in dark stains. “I hope this isn’t going to lead to a ransom demand,” Martel said. He clacked the pincers together, but that wasn’t the most unnerving thing about the exchange. Nail swore the man was mumbling under his breath between sentences—nothing Nail could make out, but enough to give him a serious case of the willies. “Surely you wouldn’t be that stupid.”
“No, sir,” Nail said. He had a sense that showing any fear here would cause Martel to leap on him like a mad dog, and he kept his eyes trained on Martel’s. “We don’t have the relic anymore.”
Martel waited, his hand convulsively working the pliers.
“We gave it to one of Enoch Sobell’s men, who took off with it instead of delivering it.”
Martel’s grandfatherly facade cracked, revealing something baleful and angry beneath. “So. Sobell wants it, too. Is that supposed to explain why six of the faithful were killed earlier tonight? Six of the faithful? The faithful?”
Damn. Sobell ought to be here to explain this. I’d leave it to Brown if I didn’t think he’d fuck it up. “I think that was all a misunderstanding. He wanted Anna—the woman. In any event, he contacted us. He’s prepared to help you recover the relic.”
“Lies. Lies. I can see right through your lies.”
“No lies.”
Martel narrowed his eyes for a moment and then grinned. With that grin, all traces of the avuncular were gone. “I see. Sobell’s lackey has used the relic to displace him.”
“That is my understanding.”
“Well, then. Perhaps we can reach an arrangement after all.” He muttered something inaudible. “An arrangement.”
Chapter 28
Karyn sat in the passenger seat of Anna’s car and picked a lump of blind out of the plastic bag. She let it rest in her palm, a chunk no bigger than a pencil eraser. It would taste like shit, she knew, acrid and eye watering, and she didn’t even know how much of an effect this amount would have on her, as bad as the hallucinations had gotten.
“You gonna take it, or what?” Anna asked.
“Give me a minute, OK?”
Anna started the car. Karyn stared at the lump in her hand.
“It isn’t going to bite you,” Anna said.
“Don’t be so sure.” Karyn checked the landscape outside the car window again. It didn’t look like L.A. anymore—it barely even looked like Earth. It was a jumble of structures and creatures and things that might have been either, some symbolic, some merely projections of their future selves, and maybe even some that appeared as they were right now. It was impossible to tell.
Karyn ate the tiny chunk of blind.
Anna pressed the gas, accelerating the car away from the broken-down building Adelaide called home.
Karyn watched the world outside as they passed by. Things hadn’t calmed down yet, but it was early. The taste of the drug still coated her tongue like some foul turpentine. It would be long minutes yet before it worked. Even so, she fought a dim panic that, this time, it wouldn’t do anything at all, fought the urge to take a handful from the bag and eat that, too. Anything to get some reassurance that she wasn’t doomed to propel herself headlong into madness.
Still, though, she knew it would be a bad idea to take too much. Look what had happened last time. And, given her low supply and no certain source of more, moderation made sense.
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the headrest. Watching the craziness for signs of improvement would be akin to watching water and waiting for it to boil, only twice as maddening.
“How are you feeling?” Anna asked.
“Honestly? Like somebody put my brain in a blender, pureed it, and poured it back into my head. I think they slopped some on the floor when they did it, too.”
“That good?”
“And better all the time.”
“About what I said earlier . . .”
Karyn waited as the words trailed off. Anna obviously wanted her to cut in and say it was all OK, but Karyn didn’t have that kind of energy right now. And, anyway, she wasn’t sure it was all OK.
“If you gotta sit this one out, that’s OK. I mean, I’ll be OK with it.”
Karyn considered that. On the surface it sounded great, but it wouldn’t work. If somebody got hurt or killed, and she could have stopped it, she’d never forgive herself—and she had plenty of that flavor of guilt already, thank you very much. Besides, she needed the cash. After the job, if somehow they managed to find a new hookup, it would cost. She didn’t think she could stand it if Anna came back from the job with a few hundred grand and handed her a big wad of money on the grounds that Karyn was her new favorite charity. Fuck that. Anna had been looking out for her since forever, but that was a bridge too far.
Unless, of course, the blind didn’t work this time. Then she’d be a complete liability.
“We’ll see,” Karyn said. “As long as I can tell the ground from the sky, I’m in. Just, you know. That’s not exactly guaranteed right now.”
A sound of movement as Anna shifted position. “Yeah,” she said quietly.
The rest of the trip passed in silence, and Karyn kept her eyes closed until Anna stopped the car and turned it off.
“Ready?”
Karyn opened her eyes. Outside, in the spotty light from the streetlamps, the suburbs hardly looked strange at all. That doesn’t mean anything. But it’s a good sign.
“Yeah.”
* * *
It was another hour before Genevieve and Sobell returned, an hour Anna spent napping in the corner chair and Karyn spent fidgeting on the couch. It would be a good idea to catch some sleep, Karyn knew, but she’d never slept well before a job, even a well-planned one, and this promised to be more half-assed than most. Given that it was three in the morning and they didn’t even have a plan yet, “half-assed” might be an overstatement.
The blind had done some of its thing, but not enough. The structure around her still flickered from one state of decay to the next, and the strange images coming from Anna were as varied as they were incomprehensible. After thirty minutes of watching the scenery change, Karyn ate another couple of pieces of blind. That’s all for now. I need to be lucid when we do this. Pity she wasn’t sure yet when “this” would happen.
When Genevieve knocked on the door, there wasn’t much of a door to knock on, just a rotting hole with a few boards standing up in it. Karyn heard the sound, though, even as she saw Genevieve whacking on air. She got up and crossed the room, wondering how she was going to open a door she couldn’t exactly find. In the end, she had to close her eyes and run a hand along the edge of the door to find the lock and open it. She did find it, though, and she smiled a shaky smile of relief as the shape of the cool metal resolved itself against her hand. She turned the bolt. Definitely getting better.
Genevieve came in hurriedly, and Sobell strode in after her, coat flapping behind him. Genevieve shut the door and dropped to a crouch, messing with some of
the glyphs near the floor. Sobell watched. His face was unreadable.
“What did you find out?” Karyn asked.
Sobell took off his gloves, folded them, and put them in his pocket. “Precious little.”
Genevieve nodded miserably as she worked. “Place is locked down. Shitload of security guys out front. Fewer in back, but he says they can get a dozen or more to any part of the first floor in less than a minute. And they have the cops, too.”
Anna was sitting up now, attentive in the corner. “They ‘have’ the cops? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Means the chief of police was paying a friendly visit when we stopped by. I guess that means when they call, the cops will come running.”
“What else?”
“I’ve got an idea, but it sucks.”
“I thought it rather inventive,” Sobell said. “And interesting, if you’re up for acrobatics and derring-do and whatnot.”
“You gonna make me beg?” Anna asked.
“That could be fun,” Genevieve said, a shadow of her usual smile on her face.
Anna wasn’t smiling. “Come on, what is it?”
Karyn looked from face to face. Nobody seemed to be bleeding or sprouting new body parts or sporting any kind of funky aura. Would wonders never cease?
“Where’s Nail?” Genevieve asked. “I’d like to run this past him first. It seems like the kind of thing that might be up his alley.”
“I like it already,” Anna said.
“He’s not back yet,” Karyn said. “Still out recruiting the Brotherhood.”
Genevieve frowned. “Still?”
“Maybe they take a lot of convincing,” Karyn said uncertainly.
“Great.”
Anna crossed her arms. “He’ll get back to us later. Come on. Let’s hear this idea of yours.”
“OK, OK. Here goes.”
* * *
Genevieve sketched out her plan while Anna made pained faces and Sobell looked on, grinning sardonically. If Karyn was any judge of these things, she was right—the plan sucked. Unfortunately, she couldn’t think of anything better.
Genevieve finished the rough outline and stood back, hands on her hips, waiting for a response.
“Magical defenses?” Karyn asked.
Sobell nodded. “Some, but of course I know what they are and where. I can take care of that part.”
A tinny speaker spit out the opening strains of Queen’s “Under Pressure,” or maybe “Ice Ice Baby.” Genevieve pulled her phone out and answered it. “Hello.” A pause, during which her face fell from a nervous but excited grin to a sick grimace. “You sure?” she asked.
“Fuck yeah, I’m fucking sure!” somebody shouted through the phone, loud enough for Karyn and the rest of the room to hear. It sounded like Nail. He followed up with a few more choice words, too quiet to make out.
“All right,” Genevieve said. She held the phone out to Sobell. “It’s for you.”
Sobell raised his eyebrows and cast a long, disparaging look at the phone, but he took it and pressed it to his ear. “Yes?” His expression betrayed nothing, but as Karyn watched, the skin of his forehead split open and peeled back, pouring blood down his face.
“I see. I will meet you shortly.” He handed the phone back.
“Hello?” Genevieve said. “Shit.” She put the phone in her pocket. “Oh, shit.”
“What was that all about?” Anna asked.
“The Brotherhood.”
“Huh?”
“Indeed,” Sobell said. “It appears they do not fully trust your colleague.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they are amenable to participating in an assault on my office building, but only if I physically accompany them.”
“Why you?”
“I can think of a number of reasons. Possibly they think your group is trying to use them to attack me, regardless of where the bone might be. If I am present, they can rule that out. Alternatively, they think I’ll afford them some protection from my security staff—not a bad assumption, if you don’t know what the hell is going on. Or perhaps they think we’re less likely to use them as pointless cannon fodder if I am in their midst. In any case, it’s a smart request.”
“I can’t feel good about that,” Anna said.
“Truly, I’m touched.”
Genevieve shook her head, almost violently. “No, this is fucked. Sobell knows the layout, he knows the rough security plan, and remember those magical defenses you were so worried about? He’s the only one who can turn them off. I don’t even know what’s there.”
“Unless you have another sort of diversion in mind, I don’t know what choice we have,” Sobell said. “We simply don’t have the manpower to deal with the small army Greaser has stolen from me.”
“We could, I don’t know, blow something up. You know, like a distraction.”
“That only works in the movies, I fear. The building isn’t going to disgorge all its security personnel to come check out an explosion—my security chiefs have not been notably bright in the past, but they haven’t been incompetent, either. I have no reason to believe that’s changed.”
“Jesus,” Genevieve said.
“I suppose I’ll have to tell you what I can, and give you some instruction on how to disable the more, ah, arcane defenses.”
“You can do that?”
“I can teach it. Can you learn it? We haven’t got a lot of time.”
Genevieve hesitated. “All right. Let’s do it.”
The scene that followed did not fill Karyn with a great deal of confidence. First, Sobell grabbed up the phone book from the stand near the TV and produced a fountain pen from his pocket. He began by sketching a floor plan, right over a page full of Ramirezes, and then he launched into a mess of gobbledygook.
“Then you’ll need to transect an inverted cadaver sigil with a Scythe glyph . . .”
Genevieve waited, mouth pursed tightly shut and eyes darting back and forth across the page, trying to follow the lines. It looked like she was waiting for a pause, but if one was coming, it would be a while.
This was going to be a mess, if Karyn didn’t say anything. “Mr. Sobell!”
Sobell looked up from his phone book. “Yes?”
“She doesn’t know what most of that stuff is.”
One glance at Genevieve’s face erased most of the cockiness from Sobell’s expression. “Fuck,” he said. “Fuckety-fuckety-fuck.”
“Sorry,” Genevieve mumbled.
“Never mind. I’ll draw up the diagrams you’ll need in the car.”
“In the car?”
“Well, yes. You didn’t think I’d drive myself to this fiasco, did you?”
“Uh, no. ’Course not.” Genevieve shot a wide-eyed glance over at Karyn, who just shrugged. Not much to be done for it now. She just wished Sobell’s head would stop gushing blood all over the place.
“Hey, Mr. Sobell,” she said. “I think this might be really dangerous for you.”
He gave her a bland, deadpan look loaded with enough sarcasm to fell an elephant. “Is that your professional opinion?”
“Yes, actually.”
“I have been shot at by my own employees, robbed of my worldly riches, and betrayed by my otherworldly minions. Amazingly, I had already reached the conclusion that my continued good health comes with no guarantees tonight. Is there anything specific you’d like to add?”
She shrugged. “Watch your head.”
“Of course. Ms. Lyle, shall we depart?”
“Hold up,” Anna said. “Is there anything left to do here?”
Karyn shook her head.
“All right, then. Let’s load up. We’ll drop you off on the way,” she said to Sobell.
Chapter 29
It didn
’t take long to load up—just a moment for everybody to check their weapons. Anna was strapped, Genevieve had her phone book, and Sobell had—whatever it was he had. Karyn went empty-handed. She’d contemplated arming herself, but fear of shooting the wrong thing made her hesitate, and it turned out they didn’t have a spare gun, anyway.
Then it was into the car. Anna drove. Karyn rode shotgun, and Sobell and Genevieve climbed in back. Genevieve got out a key-chain flashlight and pored over the phone book, taking whispered instructions from Sobell even before Anna started the car. Karyn didn’t take a great deal of confidence from the way Genevieve’s eyes flicked back and forth and she kept fiddling with her lip stud. She was scared, and it was contagious.
Karyn turned to the window, leaning her head against the glass and letting the fog from her breath obscure the view. She didn’t need to see the future to know that this situation was a mess and very little good was likely to come from it. She wondered about Nail. The big guy was hanging with the Brotherhood now, which didn’t bode well. In the best case, they’d use him as screaming armor, cannon fodder vanguard of their attack, and in the worst case—well, it could get pretty bad. Nail could handle himself, but there were a lot of those guys.
Nobody else dies, please.
It didn’t take long to get to the address Drew had given them, but it was enough time for Karyn to turn herself into a nervous wreck. She folded her hands in her lap and willed herself not to chew her nails. Her fingers would start bleeding soon if she didn’t lay off.
“Verily, a paragon of shitholes,” Sobell observed as they pulled up. “How do these people select their accommodations?”
“Places that take cash and don’t ask for identification,” Anna said.
“Indeed.”
“Light’s on. Apartment one thirty-seven.”
“Thank goodness they waited up for me.” Sobell opened the door and got out. He leaned down. “I’ll watch my head. See you at the office shortly.” He slammed the door and strode across the parking lot, walking like he was ready to crush the cars themselves under his heels.
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