The process was repeated for the second guy, who slurped down the gobbet of flesh without the slightest hesitation.
Raul took off the blindfolds.
“That’s a trooper,” Van Horn said, extending a hand to Jerry. Confused, Jerry hesitantly reached up and took it. Van Horn helped him to his feet. “You will be rewarded for your service.”
Jerry made a sound lodged somewhere between a gag and a cough. “Man, that’s—that’s fuckin’ great, man.” He cleared his throat. “Warm in here.”
Van Horn patted his shoulder. “Turn, and greet your brothers and sisters.”
As Jerry turned, Van Horn took his hand and raised it in victory. The entourage cheered, and damned if a hesitant smile didn’t appear on Jerry’s mug.
“Bring me more,” Hector said.
Sobell’s lackey went out. Van Horn sent the two new initiates behind him.
Moments passed. Genevieve looked over at Anna, an idle glance, probably just to get a quick read on how she was doing. Whether it was the glance or simple sadism, Hector pointed at Anna.
“You,” he said. “You will take communion.”
Anna ran her options as she fought down terror. She could run and get caught. She could fight and take a beating. Maybe get killed while Karyn and Gen watched. If there were other options available, she couldn’t identify them.
“I don’t wanna be in your fuckin’ club,” she said.
“Heretic. Heathen. Blasphemer. You’ll eat, whether you will or no. Or be eaten.”
“Please don’t,” Genevieve said. Her tone was even, try as Anna might to read some desperation there. “Anna’s my friend.”
Hector didn’t look at her. “Good.” His tongue darted from his mouth, then pushed at his lip and cheek rapidly, seeming to move of its own accord. Drool oozed into his beard.
“You don’t have to do this. She’ll cooperate. We’ll all cooperate.”
“I want to do this,” he said. He looked over his shoulder at her. “If it’s so important to you, make me stop.”
“This is stupid,” Genevieve said. But she didn’t move.
“Stop this,” Karyn said. Anna had no idea who the words were directed at.
Hector didn’t look over. “We’ll get to you,” he said. He stopped in front of Anna and sliced a thin strip of skin from over his hipbone. The knife missed the last bit, but he simply tore it away. He said his incantation again.
“Take this and eat,” he said, proffering the strip, which lay flat, leechlike and oozing on his palm.
She could shove him, knock him down, run for it. And even if she made it, Karyn would be left there. Genevieve, too.
Anna picked the strip of flesh up between thumb and forefinger and put it in her mouth. The rubbery, wet texture made her want to gag, but she chewed slowly, grinding it between her teeth as she stared a silent Fuck you into Hector’s eyes. Finally, she swallowed it.
Anna caught Genevieve’s gaze. There was nothing there, no expression at all. She’d shut down, her emotions gone on vacation.
Hector put a hand on her forehead, almost as if he was checking her for a fever, then leaned forward. He stank so badly it curdled Anna’s guts, and when he exhaled it was the breath of a dog that had just eaten five pounds of roadkill. His eyes wouldn’t leave Anna’s. “Bless you, my child,” he said.
Sobell’s guy came back with another couple of crooks. Hector winked at Anna and turned away to attend to that business.
A strange heat burned in Anna’s gut. Warm, like bathwater, or a candle held several inches away. It moved up through her chest and down through her legs, spreading through her body. It felt . . . corrupt. Not the heat of bathwater at all, but the heat from a rotting garbage pile. She wanted to tear her flesh away everywhere she felt it.
She felt feverish now, as though she ought to be shivering under a blanket and sweating, body aching from head to toe, but she wasn’t sweating, and she wasn’t in pain. She was just warm. Really, really warm.
This can’t be good for me, she thought, and she nearly laughed aloud as she understood. Hector was a contagion, an infection in human guise. A little fever was the least of her problems right now.
“We’re gonna figure this out,” Genevieve said quietly, sidling over to her. “It’s going to be okay, I promise. We’ll figure it out. Somehow. I promise.”
Anna laughed. “Everything’s gonna work out for everyone, right?”
“Wait. You,” Van Horn said, crooking a finger at Genevieve. “We require your services.”
Genevieve paled. “I don’t—”
Van Horn scowled. “Not like”—he waved his hands at the room—“all that. We need your expertise. Come here.”
Genevieve gave Anna a lame pat on the shoulder, then walked to the corner of the room and started talking in a low voice with Van Horn. Anna cast a disgusted look in her direction.
“Are you all right?” Karyn asked.
“I don’t know.”
A few minutes later, the naked guy sitting on the bench on Karyn’s other side started fidgeting and mumbling. Anna tried to ignore him, but he got louder and more agitated. When she glanced over, she saw something dark move at the corner of his left eye. Before Anna could say something, he reached up to touch it. When he pulled away his fingers, a dark red clot about the size of a pencil eraser tumbled down his forearm, leaving red traces the whole way down. He watched, bemused, and then tumbled forward. Anna thought that the flat whack of his face hitting the concrete floor might keep her awake nights for a long, long time.
Across the room, another low-rent thug took infernal communion.
Near Anna, nobody moved. The pool of blood widened around the naked man, and nobody cared. There were maybe nine people total, four holding candles, most of them seated. One or two gave the dead man a hungry look, but for once it appeared they were waiting on word from the boss before chowing down.
Eventually, Anna couldn’t stand it anymore. “Is somebody gonna get rid of him?” she asked.
Van Horn shrugged and waved at the body. “Raul, Deanna?” The two dragged the body out. Judging by the short time they were gone, Anna supposed they’d dragged him to just the other side of the door and called it good.
“What’s wrong with your guys?” Anna asked. Van Horn scowled, but didn’t make eye contact with her. He angled his body away, in fact, so he couldn’t even see her by accident.
Anna couldn’t leave it alone. “They’re all dropping dead.”
Van Horn took Genevieve’s arm and walked to the other side of the room, still without making eye contact. He did it casually, as though it had just occurred to him that maybe it would be more comfortable over there. Like he needed to stretch his legs.
Damn, it was hot in here. For a moment, Anna wondered how that was even possible—it was night, and this deep in a concrete building, in a room with no windows, it probably would have been reasonably cool even at midday. It wasn’t the room, she finally understood. It was her, still running hot from whatever Hector had done to her.
She thought about the guy who’d dropped dead. A contagion.
Somebody came back and opened the door, poking his head in. He said something Anna didn’t hear. Hector and Van Horn started conversing in low voices. Once, they even paused to ask Genevieve something.
“It’s the magic,” the woman to her left whispered. Her name was Rain, if Anna had heard correctly, and she creeped Anna out, partly because her recently maimed hand made Anna imagine all the bad things that could have happened to her, but mostly because, unlike most of the others, she wore a haunted, haggard look. She, at least, had been thinking about her situation. Yet she was still here.
“Say what?”
“The magic. It’s killing us.”
“Which magic is that?”
“We thought it was a gift. Maybe it was. Some of the others think Belial can fix us, but I don’t think he knows how. Doesn’t care. We’re waiting to die.”
Anna glanced around the roo
m. The others didn’t seem to care about Rain’s loose lips. They were each tracking their own obsessions, holding conversations with themselves, or assisting with the latest iteration of Hector’s grotesque ritual.
“Who’s Belial?”
“Hector, Belial. He has other names, I think.”
“He gave you magic,” Anna prompted.
“He gave us something. Magic comes with it.” She looked down at the bloody rag wrapping her hand. “Or maybe magic is only the side effect, and we—I—mistook it for the whole point.”
“So, can I do magic now?”
“I don’t know. Can you?”
“How the hell should I know?”
Rain shrugged. “You’ll know. First you get really warm. Like a fever, only you feel okay.”
“Yeah,” Anna said, and despite the warmth, she shivered.
“Then you start having really strange thoughts.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’ll suddenly think car exhaust smells amazing. Or that sunlight is like being in the light of God—awesome, but too intense. Or that it would be a really good idea to shove a kid out into traffic to see what happens.”
“You didn’t—”
“Other thoughts will come after that. Not impulses or sensations, but strange thoughts. Really, really weird stuff. Geometry. Songs in languages you don’t understand.” Her face softened into a forlorn smile. “That’s the magic. If it stopped there, it might have all been okay.”
“I feel warm,” Anna said.
Rain nodded.
“What happens after the magic?” Anna asked, because she couldn’t bring herself to come outright and ask how much time she had left.
“You get numb. Then it’s like you develop a tolerance. Like a drug addict who needs more and more after a while just to get a lesser high. It’s like that.”
“I don’t get it,” Anna said, though she was afraid she did.
“You can’t feel anything, so you cut yourself. You can’t taste anything, so you eat flesh. Raw. You can’t really taste that, either, but—but it’s a thrill. Rats, birds. People, eventually. Biggest thrill of all.”
Anna wondered if Rain knew she looked as though she wanted to throw up.
“And meanwhile all the thoughts keep getting weirder, and you keep trying stranger and stranger things. I don’t know why everybody’s dying, but I guess they’re not made for this. None of us are.”
“And Hector? He gonna die, too?”
“Not in a million years. He’s the Devil.”
Anna had nothing to say to that.
* * *
“Slow down,” Nail said. “You ain’t gonna do anyone any good you crash this thing. Or get us arrested.”
“You in a hurry or what?” DeWayne asked.
“We almost there?” Nail asked Sheila. He couldn’t keep the frustration out of his voice—not knowing what the hell was going on, or why, combined with that awful sense of everything happening outside of his control was making him nuts.
“I don’t get distance, just direction,” Sheila said.
“Great.”
The next ten minutes passed with agonizing slowness as Nail alternated between worrying they’d be too late and that DeWayne would get pulled over. Finally, they came to a T in the road and DeWayne slowed the vehicle.
“Now what?” Nail asked. The cross street ahead had a whole caravan of vehicles parked on it, fifteen or more, all with their lights on, idling. No blue and red, though, so it wasn’t cops. “Any chance we can back up and go around this?”
The cigarette pointed straight through the middle of the vehicles at the squat concrete compound beyond. Nail didn’t like the look of it.
“Really?” Sheila asked. “Is that how you think this works?”
“A guy can hope. They’re not in that mess, are they?”
Sheila said nothing. Nail considered the options, which all looked terrible. After a few minutes, DeWayne slapped his shoulder and pointed at a couple of men emerging from the building. “Know that guy?”
“Yeah,” Nail said. “Enoch Sobell.”
DeWayne laughed. “No shit? Huh. I meant the other guy. That’s Rhino Vasquez. Hangs with the Ninth Street Pinheads. Big-time banger. Breaks knees for Clarence on the side, too. You never heard of this guy? You ever get outta the library, or what?”
Rhino went to one of the cars and motioned to the people inside. Two men got out, one tall and skinny, the other tall and damn near as wide.
“Check out the ugly one.”
“The ugly one?” Sheila asked.
“Point. The one looks like a dump truck. Thaddeus Winchell. He breaks knees for Johnny Flathead.”
“Do you know every knee-breaking lowlife in California?” Sheila asked.
“If they run sports book, he does,” Nail said.
“Yeah, well. You know how it is,” DeWayne said. “But I’da thought it’d be a cold day in Hell before Flathead’s boys would sit down with Clarence’s. Something must be cooking here.”
They watched for a while longer while Nail tried and failed to come up with any kind of plan. Rhino moved to the next vehicle and sent those guys inside, too.
“Li’l Rodge Hastings,” Nail said.
“Yeah,” his brother added. “Breaks legs for Jimmy the Fence.”
“So not only do you know every knee-breaking lowlife in California, but they’re all here.”
Nail nodded. “Yeah. Tell me that shit’s a coincidence.”
A drop of blood spilled from Sheila’s nose. She wiped it off with her finger and stared at it, her expression veering suddenly from excitement to melancholy and back in an erratic way that made Nail uncomfortable.
He stared at the building again. “I don’t even know if this has anything to do with us, though.”
“This is the place,” Sheila said, though how she knew was anybody’s guess. “Let me out.”
“I don’t think that’s such a hot idea,” DeWayne said.
Nail tended to agree with DeWayne on this one. “I don’t see Van Horn here, or any of my crew, either. That was the deal, remember?”
“They’re in there,” she said to Nail. “And you owe me. You’d still be at Mona’s without me.”
“What if you’re wrong?” Nail asked.
“I’m not.” Another drop of blood, then several more, spattering her lap. “If I don’t get help, I’m going to be dead very soon.” Her deadpan tone created an eerie contrast against her words, further unsettling Nail. “The only people that can help me are in there. You can come in with me, if you want. I don’t care.”
“That’s not—”
Three sharp taps, metal on glass, and Nail swung his head around to look out the driver’s-side window.
“I know you,” a man said. Big guy, shaped like a fire hydrant, rocking a poorly fitting suit jacket like a bad disguise. The kind of guy with a permanent squint, as though he had to concentrate like hell just to stay upright and keep from dragging his knuckles. He tapped a nine-millimeter Browning against the window again. “Get out the fuckin’ bus, DeWayne.”
“Hey, Stevie, how’s it hangin’? Me and Clarence, we’re square. You didn’t hear? Paid up, paid in full, uh, think I got a receipt around here somewhere.” Still talking, he patted his pockets, either pantomiming the search for a receipt or going for his gun. Nail never found out, because Stevie hauled the door open with the hand holding the gun, grabbed DeWayne’s collar in his other fist, and threw him bodily onto the pavement.
Nail moved before DeWayne’s “oof” had finished sounding. Threw open the sliding door on the passenger side and, weaving a little, came around the front of the car.
Stevie brought up the gun, and Nail brought up his hands. “Hold up there, man,” Nail said.
“You wanna stay out of this. Ain’t none of your business.”
“What are you doin’ here, Stevie?” DeWayne said from the ground. “I got the feelin’ this is not a good place to be tonight. Hey, how’s your
nephew? He gonna play football this year?”
Stevie took his attention off Nail long enough to plant a foot on DeWayne’s wrist, eliciting an indignant squawk.
“Hey, what are you—don’t, man, just let’s be cool about this—”
Nail saw the man shift his weight, putting more pressure on DeWayne’s wrist. “Shut up.”
DeWayne shut up.
Stevie returned his attention to Nail. “Get the fuck outta here.” He gestured with the gun. “You don’t wanna die for this idiot.”
“This idiot is my brother,” Nail said.
“Oh, goddammit,” Stevie said, rolling his eyes.
DeWayne moved, faster than Nail would have thought him capable, and suddenly the three-eighty was in his hand.
Oh, shit.
DeWayne pulled the trigger.
A dry click echoed off the concrete of the building.
Stevie’s eyes went wide, and he whipped his gun around toward DeWayne’s prone form.
Nail charged. He slammed into Stevie, shoulder down, catching the big guy right under the ribs. The gun went off as the air blasted from Stevie’s lungs, and a fraction of a second later, Stevie hit the pavement with Nail on top of him. The gun went spinning away with a clatter.
The earth seemed to tilt under Nail, and his gut clenched again. He swung his fist, connecting with Stevie’s neck or collarbone or some damn thing, even though he’d been aiming for the face, the force of a useless impact traveling back up his arm. Thick fingers grasped his face, pushing his head back and away as he scrabbled for Stevie’s throat.
There was a flash like the sun going nova as Stevie’s fist collided with Nail’s head. The force was unstoppable, like a goddamn truck rocketing down the highway, and Nail was thrown to the side. The earth did that uneasy dip thing again, and it seemed as though Nail took half an hour to find his bearings, but it must have been a hell of a lot shorter, because he was on his back, some big fucker practically lying on top of him, choking the shit out of him. Black fluttering shadows moved at the edges of his vision. He was going to lose consciousness, and this fucker was going to kill him. He swung wildly, connecting with implacable shoulders, immovable arms.
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