A sharp knock cut him off.
“Komm rein,” he barked.
The door flew open and Vogler’s assistant-Heinrich-stepped inside, hefting the black nylon suitcase he had retrieved from Dimitri Kovalenko’s hotel room. Setting it next to the one on the desk, he unzipped it and threw it open.
They all stared at its contents: five lead cylinders containing fifty pounds of highly enriched U-235 weapons-grade uranium.
The one who called himself Radek eyed it appreciatively. “You see, my dear, this is how it’s done. This is the kind of dance that can be useful to us. No myths, no fantasies. Just good old-fashioned human ingenuity-with us pulling the strings.”
He looked at Belial, a self-satisfied grin spreading across his face.
“Welcome to the end of the world.”
22
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
He spent his days watching the girl. Jenna.
He’d found a spot across from the shelter, a stretch of curb between two parked cars that he’d staked a claim on. To anyone observing, he was just another homeless waste-of-space waiting for the shelter to serve its evening meal.
In a way, that was true. He was homeless. He’d been thrown out of the only home he’d ever known a long, long time ago and had found himself feeling unsettled and lost, searching for a reason for his father’s betrayal.
But his father had never been big on explanations.
Only consequences.
The shelter was a small, squat building in the center of the block that looked as if it had once been a store of some kind. Record shop. Used books. Auto parts. Pizza stand. Pawn shop.
Maybe all of the above.
It didn’t matter. It was now doing double duty as a bunkhouse and a soup kitchen, with enough room for about ten beds-cots and blankets, really-that were folded up each afternoon to make space for a dozen or more tables and chairs.
He watched Jenna through the front window. Saw her with the woman from the coffee shop, who had apparently asked her and several of the other girls to help out in exchange for guaranteed bed space. They worked with her in the kitchen and carried trays full of food to a long, narrow table in the back of the room, then stacked paper plates and cups and plastic sporks and knives on one end.
At six in the evening, the doors opened and anyone who was hungry was invited inside for a meal.
Deserting his curb, he shuffled across the street and fell in line. He could hear Jenna’s song, louder and more vibrant than ever, and any thoughts that he may have been wrong about her immediately vacated his mind.
She stood with three other girls behind the counter, scooping baked beans with a large serving spoon. She eyed him warily as he approached her and held out his plate, and he knew it must have been an effort not to look away. The skin he’d procured was young, but badly damaged by booze and cigarettes and drugs and couldn’t have been easy to look at.
It served its function, but he knew it wouldn’t last much longer.
“Thank you,” he said softly, and offered her a smile, feeling the song of her soul wrap itself around him as he mentally counted the days until the fourth moon.
Everything would change for her then.
Everything.
And the world would never be the same.
He was sitting at a table, eating his dinner, when the pretty boy walked past the front window and glanced inside.
Zack the drudge.
The punk was merely trolling-just as he had been the other night-but there was a noticeable hitch in his step as he caught sight of Jenna, then moved on.
He’d be back. No question about it. He’d wait for the woman who ran the place to disappear into her office, or go to the coffee shop for an Americano, then he’d swoop in again and give Jenna another try. Pull out all the stops this time to put the lie to the woman’s warnings and charm Jenna into coming home with him.
Could he hear her song, too?
No. Drudges weren’t attuned to such things. But maybe someone had sent him here. He seemed just the type that Belial was drawn to, the kind of perfect specimen she took such pleasure in corrupting, so his presence here could well be her doing.
And that wasn’t good.
Whatever the reason, Zack was an annoyance who needed to be stopped before he got his hands on Jenna again. Something that should have been done two nights ago, right outside that coffee shop.
Better late than never.
It took him a while to find the guy.
As darkness approached, he heard laughter and turned in to an alley off Western, just three blocks south of the shelter. He saw the pretty boy huddled near a cluster of trash cans with another young girl, lighting up a meth pipe. This girl was even younger than Jenna, maybe thirteen or so, with a premature hardness and enough open sores on her face to tell him she’d been on the streets for quite some time.
What a waste.
But he didn’t hesitate. Walked right up to her, spun her away from Zack and the pipe and nudged her toward the mouth of the alley.
“Go home,” he said. Wherever home was these days.
She didn’t have to be told twice, and a moment later she was gone.
Apparently Zack didn’t appreciate the intrusion. He paused mid-toke and exhaled a plume of rancid smoke. “Who the fuck are you?”
“You don’t know?”
“Am I supposed to, asshole? You just cost me a sweet fuckin’ blow job.”
“You really shouldn’t have told me that.”
He shot a hand forward, grabbing a fistful of Zack’s shirt, then shoved him upward against the alley wall until his feet were dangling.
The pipe went flying and Zack struggled, kicking and waving his arms desperately, and you could tell by the look on his face, the sheer panic in his pretty-boy eyes, that he suddenly knew exactly what he was up against. “Holy shit, you’re him, aren’t you? The one they’re always talking about.”
“Who’s your significant?”
Zack said nothing, struggling like an insect pinned to a bulletin board.
“Is it Belial? Did she send you here? Tell you to go after the girl at the shelter?”
Zack kept struggling. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me go!”
He pressed harder, his knuckles digging into Zack’s chest. “Answer the question, you little shit. Is Belial your significant?”
“Yes”-the punk huffed, wincing in pain now-“yes, yes.”
“And the girl at the shelter?”
“Just another runaway. I found her on my own. I saw her the other night and decided to make a move.”
“And Belial didn’t send you?”
“No. She doesn’t know anything about her.”
“Good,” he said, then released his grip.
Zack dropped to the alley floor with a grunt, grabbing at his chest, coughing and choking, trembling like a frightened dog. A puddle of urine spread out beneath his feet. “Please . . . ,” he said. “Please let me go . . .”
“You know I can’t do that.”
Reaching under his jacket, he grabbed his knife. It was an old iron Roman folding knife he’d kept with him for many years, still in pristine condition. There was a time he would have carried a broadsword as well, but such things were a bit conspicuous these days.
As the knife came into view, Zack cried, “I can work for you! I’ll do whatever you want. Belial doesn’t need to know. I can be your spy!”
An interesting proposition, but the last thing he needed was a drudge of his own. Especially one who was so quick to betray his significant. He was about to dust the sonofabitch when he heard a shriek behind him and knew that he’d been careless-too quick to assess and dismiss.
The girl with the sores on her face was also a drudge.
And she’d brought reinforcements.
As her shriek reverberated against the alley walls, she shot forward and leapt onto his back, a switchblade snicking open in her hand. She brought it down hard, burying it in his nec
k, and he stumbled sideways, feeling the fierce white heat scorch through him.
Swinging around, he jerked an elbow back, smashing the girl’s nose, knocking her to the ground. She shrieked again and he spun and kicked, giving it everything he had, nearly taking her head off at the shoulders. Her feral eyes suddenly went blank as her neck snapped back and she slammed against the wall-
– bursting into a cloud of black dust.
Then the others moved toward him, three more street kids-two boys and another girl. Much older and even more dangerous than the shrieker.
He tried not to make the same mistake with them. Tried not to humanize them, to think about how they’d once been innocent children. He tried to forget that they had parents who missed them, who waited by the phone or watched the door every night, hoping to see them walk through it. He kept reminding himself that they were no longer children but savage, empty vessels whose only purpose was to help their significant harvest more souls.
And kill anyone who tried to stop them.
As they circled around him, he yanked the switchblade from his neck, blood pumping from the wound, spurting across the alley wall, then running down the front of his jacket. With a knife in each hand now, he widened his stance and waited for their soulless gazes to connect-that silent signal that the attack was on.
Then it came and they all moved in unison, approaching him from three different directions. The girl and one of the boys had knives of their own and the second boy carried a length of two-by-four, three sharp nails protruding from one end.
The weapon came at him fast and hard, swung like baseball bat, but he deflected it with his right forearm, feeling the sting of one of the nails. Stepping forward, he arced his arm and scraped the Roman across the kid’s chest, opening a deep, bloody gash. The kid’s eyes went wide and he stumbled back, grabbing at the wound-but it was too late. The blow was fatal and the kid knew it.
A split second later he was dust.
One down, but the other two were still in motion, the girl coming up on his left side, thrusting her knife at him. It was a good six inches long and it sank deep, just under his rib cage, its heat radiating painfully through his body.
Without hesitating, he swung his left arm out, slashing her forehead with the switchblade, then brought a leg up and kicked, the sole of his boot slamming into her chest, knocking her to the ground. Then he turned his attention to her boyfriend, who came at him in a headlong charge.
The kid was making it too easy.
He simply sidestepped and swung the Roman, its blade slicing through the kid’s neck with surprisingly little resistance. The kid’s head tumbled to the ground and burst into a cloud of dust, followed shortly by his body.
But it wasn’t over yet.
The girl was on her feet again, and despite the curtain of blood running down her face, she wasn’t about to give up. He could see that she was ready to make another charge, and he didn’t feel like wasting any more time on her.
Dropping the switchblade, he reached behind his back, freed his Glock 20 from his waistband, then swung his arm around and fired, putting two bullets in her chest.
She blew backwards onto the asphalt, her mouth opening and closing like a grounded carp, then the inevitable happened and all that was left of her was a pile of black dust.
When he turned his attention again to Zack, he wasn’t surprised to find that the punk had fled, leaving behind a smelly puddle of urine.
But there wasn’t much he could do about it now.
He was hurt. Badly. And it wouldn’t be long before this body gave out on him for good.
Clamping a hand to his bloody neck, he pulled the knife from his side, tossed it to the ground, then made his way toward the mouth of the alley, knowing he’d have to temporarily forego his surveillance of Jenna.
Not something he wanted to do, but he had no choice.
It was time to find a new skin.
23
The one who called himself Jonathan Beel hadn’t felt like doing the interview, but the moment he saw the reporter, he changed his mind.
She was quite fetching.
It was obvious that she had dressed up for the occasion, and he had no desire to disappoint her by politely feigning indifference to her appearance. He supposed he could uncross his legs and let her have an unvarnished view of her effect on him, but he decided that this might be pushing it. He didn’t want to frighten her away.
Instead, he merely offered her his appreciative gaze, and she drank it up like a milk-starved kitten.
“So for the one or two readers out there who haven’t yet seen the show,” she said, “why don’t you explain what Saints and Sinners is all about?”
They were seated in directors’ chairs just to the right of the soundstage. He’d given her a tour of the new house they’d constructed, and she’d seemed suitably impressed by it. The truth was, this was first time Beel had seen it himself. He didn’t normally spend much time on the set. He had an empire to oversee, and this was only a very small part of it.
“It’s simple,” he told her. “We put twenty people in a house and force them to live together. Ten of them lead what most of us would consider virtuous lives, and the other ten have run into a bit of trouble, so to speak. Saints versus sinners. After eight weeks of various challenges to their hearts and minds, whoever is left standing is awarded a million dollars.”
“Well, it’s obviously a winning formula.”
Beel nodded. “Six weeks at number one. The network has already renewed us for another season, which is why we built this new set. We’re casting now.”
“Great news. But what do you say to those who claim that the show is fixed?”
“In what way?”
“The Saints never seem to win any of the challenges. Only the Sinners.”
Beel laughed, waving off the accusation. “Isn’t that the way the world usually works?”
The air outside the soundstage was chilly. As he walked the reporter to the parking lot, Beel pulled off his leather jacket and threw it over her shoulders. It was a shame to cover that smooth brown skin, but chivalry was a rarity in Hollywood and was sure to win him a few points.
He wanted to seduce her the old-fashioned way.
The interview had gone quite well. After she was done with her questions, the reporter had smiled and given him a look that said she was clearly interested. He knew that he could tempt her with a walk-on in one of his episodics (he was currently producing twelve shows for various networks), or maybe an on-air reporting audition for one of his cable news channels-but that would be cheating. Beel had no desire to use any tricks with this one. He considered her a challenge, and he had a feeling his efforts would not go unrewarded.
“Do you always wear your sunglasses at night?” she asked.
Her lips were full, but not altered by collagen or implants like so many of the women out here. He could imagine himself biting into the lower one, hearing her cry out in pain as he drew blood.
Then he’d move on to her nipples.
He had put on his sunglasses because he knew that his eyes gave him an unfair advantage with her. Inside the studio, she had so loved the feeling of his gaze as it washed over her, that he had decided to give himself another handicap.
“Always,” he said, in answer to her question, but didn’t offer any further explanation.
“It just seems so . . . pretentious, I guess. And I like it better when I can see your eyes.”
Of course she did.
Beel smiled. “If you could see my eyes right now, I’m afraid it might embarrass you.”
Ten points for that one.
They reached the parking lot and she moved to the slot he had reserved for her, where a worn ten-year-old Miata waited. He had expected her to be driving something a little more upscale, but then he remembered that she was a newspaper reporter.
She definitely carried her poverty well.
Stopping at the driver’s door, she opened her purse and dug
around for her keys. When she found them, she turned, and Beel made sure to be standing close. Not close enough to make her uncomfortable, but enough to make his intentions clear.
She didn’t shy away. In fact, she surprised him. “Do you feel like having a drink?”
“I’d love to.”
“I have an apartment off Cahuenga, just over the hill. I might even have some vodka.”
“Excellent. Lead the way.”
She smiled now and leaned into him, brushing her fingers against his jeans. “And when we’re finished with our nightcap, maybe I can do something about this little devil you’ve been trying to hide from me all night.”
“Not so little,” he said.
Her smile broadened, and she leaned up to kiss him. “I certainly hope you’re telling me the-”
She stiffened suddenly and her whole body began to shake. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets until only the whites were showing.
Beel was momentarily startled, but then he sighed.
Shit.
He stepped back as the reporter continued to shimmy and shake in what, to the uninitiated, might look like some kind of medical emergency.
But Beel knew better.
Reaching into a pocket, he pulled out a pack of smokes and lit one up, waiting patiently for the moment to pass. Then, with the whites of her eyes still showing, the reporter stopped shaking and perched herself on the hood of her car.
“We’ve had an interesting development,” she said.
Belial. Always one for the dramatic entrance.
“It had better be, my dear. I don’t appreciate this interruption.”
She stared at his jeans with her blank eyes. “That’s obvious. You seem to be adjusting to this skin you’ve acquired. You look even better than you did in Istanbul.”
He waved a hand at her. “Get to the point.”
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