City of the Lost (9781101563137)

by Blackmore, Stephen

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ve already made a deal with Darius. If I’m not around to help you, he’ll try.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I say.

  “Just drive.” I decide it would be more of a pain in the ass to kick her out at this point. I pull the car into the road and head for the freeway.

  Frank’s place is in a condo overlooking Echo Park. It’s after midnight, but traffic’s heavy. Backed up all the way to the freeway.

  When we get there, we figure out why. I park a block away but close enough to see the paramedics, enough black-and-whites to make their own parade. Blue and red lights strobe off a sheet-covered gurney, dark stains soaking through.

  Though I tell myself it could be something else, I know Giavetti’s already been here. “We’re too late,” I say.

  “No,” she says, “we’re not. Come on. We don’t have a lot of time.” She bolts out of the car. I follow her toward the crowd of gawkers gathered at the edges.

  She’s taking a bunch of fast, deep breaths. The way a swimmer does when he’s about to go under.

  “I hate this part,” she says, grabbing my hand. Tight. “Don’t let go.”

  The world goes the kind of flickering gray you see in silent movies. Skipping frames, stuttering lights. The crowd thins to a handful of people, all of them jerking along like bad animation.

  “What just happened?”

  The sounds of traffic, the chatter of the crowd, it’s all gone. There’s nothing but the sound of a wind I can’t feel.

  “Don’t touch any of them,” she says, pointing at the few remaining people. “And don’t let go of me. It’ll be okay.” She grips my hand tighter for emphasis. I’m not sure which of us she’s trying to reassure.

  I catch a better look at a guy in a hoodie and low slung jeans as he skitters past me. The hoodie hides his face, but his eyes burn like they’re on fire. Gun in his hand, a hole in his chest. Casting about like he’s looking for something.

  “They’ve all died,” Gabriela says. “They don’t last long out here. A few hours. A couple days. If they’re around more than a week they’re here for the long haul.”

  We make our way to the gurney, Gabriela shivering every few steps.

  “Problem?”

  “No,” she says. “All those cops? They’re still here. You can’t see them, but you can walk through them. You can’t feel it?”

  I cast my hand around, searching. “Not a thing.”

  We duck under the sawhorses blocking the scene. With all the cops gone, the gurney looks barren and alone. The sheet covering it is bloody, stains coming up through the fabric.

  Gabriela pulls the sheet down to show Frank, clawed and torn. Hard to tell just how badly he’s messed up, his whole body is stuttering in and out of focus. Safe to say he’s missing a lot of meat.

  Gabriela touches him lightly on the forehead. He snaps into focus, jerks on the gurney like he’s touching a live wire. His eyes flutter open, blazing out of his face.

  He holds my gaze a moment, and says, “I’m in hell, aren’t I?”

  “Good to see you, too.”

  He struggles to sit up, propping himself on one arm. The other’s been chewed off at the shoulder, flaps of meat dangling down his side. He looks down at his ravaged chest, not quite sure what to make of the damage there.

  “That’s a big hole,” he says.

  “You’re dead,” Gabriela says.

  “She’s brilliant,” he says to me. “Where’d you find her?”

  “Skid Row.”

  “Figures.”

  I reach over to help him sit up, but Gabriela grabs my hand. “Don’t touch him. I mean it.”

  Instead I say, “You know who did this?”

  “Like you have to ask.”

  “We don’t have time,” Gabriela says. “Just answer his questions.”

  “Look, chica, I don’t know who—” Frank starts, but Gabriela silences him with a wave of her hand. He stops like she’s hit the pause button.

  “I said answer his questions.”

  Neat trick. I try again: “Who did this?”

  “Giavetti,” he says, voice a monotone.

  “What happened?”

  “I was going to give him the stone. Had him come to my place. He had a dog, like a mastiff. It attacked me. I shot it, but it wouldn’t go down.”

  “I don’t get it. Why? What was he gonna give you for the rock?”

  “He was going to bring my brother back to life.”

  He catches me with that one. I was expecting maybe some weird plan to have him get his guard down and then try to take him. But not this.

  “Joe,” Gabriela says, urgency in her voice. “We have to go.”

  I’ve been so focused on Frank I haven’t been paying attention. The dead have been heading toward us for the last few minutes. They’ve surrounded us in a loose ring, and they’re closing in. Not slow, just unfocused. Like they know we’re here, but can’t find us.

  “What do they want?”

  “Me,” she says. “No more time.”

  I ignore her. “Where’s Giavetti now?”

  “I don’t know,” Frank says. “I was dead before he left.”

  The guy in the hoodie has gotten within an arm’s length of me. I don’t know what will happen if he touches me, but Gabriela doesn’t give me a chance to find out.

  The world snaps back into blinding focus, the murmur of the city a deafening roar. Cars, sirens, shocked paramedics.

  Gabriela collapses against me, her face ashen. A cop comes toward us, reaching for his gun. And stops, eyes searching for us. The words on Gabriela’s camouflage shirt glow bright and blue. She’s got a grip on me like a vise. “Don’t let go of me,” she says and passes out.

  “She knows not to do this,” Darius says. We’re down in the bar. I brought her here, and Darius told me to get her upstairs into a bed right away. Get her warmed up and keep her that way. Let her sleep. He gave me a candle to light by her bed. Thing stunk like a three-day-old corpse.

  He didn’t make any wisecracks, so I knew it was bad.

  “I told her the last time not to do this again,” he says.

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  “None of them touched her, right?”

  “No. She touched one of them, though.” I tell him about her reviving Frank.

  “She should be fine, if she did it right. She’ll be out for a while, though. That candle will help.”

  “Could what she did have killed her?”

  “Could have?” he says. “Dead Man, it did. That’s how it works. Stay too long and that’s it. One of them touches you it tears away any life you’ve got left.” He gives me a hard stare.

  “She died to help you,” he says, “and she almost didn’t come back. I hope you appreciate that.”

  “She died to help her people,” I say. “All her junkie vampires. Her disenfranchised undead. She wants the stone so she can keep Giavetti from using it. She didn’t do this to help me.”

  “Damn. And I thought I was a cynic. What makes you think you’re not one of her ‘disenfranchised undead’? The hell do you think you are?”

  “I’m not her people, Darius. I’m just a problem she doesn’t need.”

  “Hmph. Dead Man, you don’t know a goddamn thing.”

  Chapter 26

  I wonder if I tore Samantha’s heart out of her chest and ate it, would it kill her or just piss her off?

  I know I’m stalling. Sitting here in the car a block from her building. I’m sure she knows I’m coming. But this time I doubt she wants to see me.

  I check the Glock for the third time. Don’t know why. Not like I’m going to shoot her. Probably wouldn’t be any point, anyway.

  I’ve stalled long enough. She knows where Giavetti is, and she’ll tell me if I have to beat it out of her. I get out of the car and walk.

  There’s a different guard inside the foyer this time. He tries to step in front of me, but I ignore him.
r />   “Can I help you, sir?” he says, putting one hand out and the other on the taser he’s got clipped to his belt.

  “No, I’m good, thanks.” I punch the button on the elevator.

  “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises.”

  “Or what? You’re gonna shock me?” I’m making him nervous. The most he has to deal with on a regular night are homeless men pissing in the garden. I lurch out at him, waggle my fingers. Go, “Boo.”

  He shoves the taser into my throat.

  The electricity runs through me, but it doesn’t find much to hang on to. My eyelid twitches, but that’s about it. From the look on his face, I’d say the guard’s more shocked than I am.

  I backhand him across the face, grab his wrist at the same time. There’s a pop as his shoulder separates. He howls, but only for a second. The taser shuts him up pretty quick; a couple pops to the head and he won’t be getting up any time soon.

  I haul him to his feet, twitching and unconscious. We ride to the penthouse, me and this poor fucker who has no idea what he’s gotten himself into.

  When the doors open, I toss him across the floor to Samantha’s waiting feet.

  She glances at him, takes a sip of her martini. “Feel better?”

  “A little.”

  “I heard about Neumann,” she says. “And I know your friend is awake.”

  “You know what he told us?”

  She holds a moment, assessing. “Interesting. Couple of days ago I wouldn’t have figured you two to be an ‘us.’ What’s the lucky lady’s name again?”

  I ignore her. “I know about Imperial Enterprises, the auction, the house. I don’t know how you got the stone in the first place, but that doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  “Then why are you here? Just to tell me about everything I’ve done?”

  Why am I here? I kept telling myself that I wanted her to tell me where Giavetti had holed up. But do I really?

  Or do I want her to deny all of it?

  “I know you kept Carl from talking,” I say. “How come? Why didn’t you just kill him?”

  “Dear god, why would I do that? I’m not cruel,” she says.

  No, but she is crazy. I consider telling her about all the people Giavetti’s killed trying to get the stone or use it properly. But I don’t think it would matter. She’s too far gone for that.

  “It’s like that joke about the two guys walking in the woods when they run into a bear,” she says. “And one of them starts putting on track shoes. And he says to his friend, ‘I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you.’ Joe, the truth was going to come out eventually. I just needed to make sure Sandro didn’t catch on until it was too late.”

  “So, what’s gonna happen when Giavetti uses the rock and the book of fake instructions?”

  A psychotic smile creeps onto her face. “It’ll kill him. Slowly. The meat’s going to fall from his bones. His eyes are going to ooze out of their sockets. And he’s going to get to feel every excruciating moment.”

  And I thought I had it bad. “Why?” I say. “It’s been four hundred years, for chrissake.”

  She laughs. It’s a bitter sound, ripping through the air. Centuries of resentment, anger, and god knows what else, all in that driving cackle. You can feel her age in it. She cuts it off, throwing her martini to shatter against the wall as punctuation.

  “Can you really be that stupid?” she says. The anger was coming off her in waves. “Why do you think? He murdered me, Joe. He drove a knife in my chest and stuck me in the ground. For two fucking weeks.”

  She tries to compose herself, hands like claws raking over her face, bunching into fists. But it’s too much.

  “And he kept murdering me. Him and every other jackal out there. Live long enough, every horror a human being can do to another is going to happen to you.”

  “I—”

  “No. Shut up. You don’t get it. Have you any idea how many times I’ve been stabbed? Raped? Burned alive? You don’t know what it’s like. I was dipped in acid over the course of a month before it killed me. I’ve had the skin flayed from my bones. You have no fucking idea what I’ve been through. What he’s put me through. He left me in that goddamn box for two goddamn weeks, and that was cake. And nothing I could ever do to him was half as bad as what he did to me. I killed him. And I kept killing him. Over and over again, but he kept coming back. Like a fucking cockroach. He. Keeps. Coming. BACK.”

  Her breath hitches, tears stream down her cheeks. I should do something, say something, but I don’t know what. Hug her? Shoot her? She doesn’t give me the chance to make a decision.

  “So, you want to know why I’m killing him?” she asks. “Because this time I’m going to make it stick.”

  Her face is twisted with all the years of grief, and horror, and nightmare that she’s lived through. Pouring it all into her hatred of Giavetti.

  And just as quickly, it’s gone. Sweet, beautiful Samantha again. She sniffles, gives me a smile. Wipes the streaks of tears from her cheeks. She crosses over to the bar, pours gin into a new glass. Slams it back.

  “I give a fuck about Giavetti,” I say. But I care about her. I shouldn’t. She’s the one got me here. She’s bugfuck crazy, but god help me I do. But, like her, I’ve got other priorities. “You know what’s going to happen to me, don’t you?”

  She nods, looks me in the eyes. “Joe,” she says. “You’re so sweet. And so young. And I really care about you.” Sincerity dripping over every word. “But there isn’t anything I can do. It’s over. Sandro’s got the stone now. Not as quickly as I’d planned it, and with more collateral damage than I’d intended, but he’s got it, and that’s all that matters. I know you won’t believe me, but this is true. I’m really sorry you’re going to die.”

  “No,” I say. That’s not going to happen. “You’re gonna tell me where he is.” I draw the Glock, rack the slide. She laughs at me.

  “If you kill me, you’ll never know. I don’t heal like you. For me it’s slow. I’ll be dead at least a day and by that time Sandro will be gone, you’ll be gone, and I’ll be heading down to a nice little villa I have down in Cabo.”

  “I can still hurt you.”

  “You’re not listening to me. I’ve been hurt before. By professionals. Men and women who knew what they were doing. And they’re all dead now. All I have to do is wait it out.”

  “I can be pretty persuasive.” She’s right, though. If I shoot her, she dies. And by the time she comes back it’ll all be over. And nothing I can do to her will be half as bad as what she’s already lived through.

  “I know you can,” she says. “The other night I almost—Let’s say I could think of worse things to do than spend a couple hundred years hanging out with you. If you’d stayed, we might not be having this conversation.”

  I should have figured what she was really doing when she went to the bar, but when she whips the snub-nose .38 from behind a bottle I’m surprised.

  Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Oh, come on. What the hell is that gonna do?” I put my hands in the air. “Go ahead. Put holes in me.”

  In the distance I can hear sirens. Loud and getting close.

  “I had the guard call the police while you were still downstairs,” she says. “I pay him enough to remember the story. Even after what you’ve done to him.”

  Fuck. The last thing I need. “Getting me locked up? That’s cheating.”

  She throws me a dismissive wave. “Oh, you’ll walk away from this,” she says. “I have faith. Besides, as far as the police are concerned you’re a short, overweight Asian man with a Mohawk. No, I just needed a little insurance so you won’t walk off and try to take me with you. I can’t take the chance you might convince me to tell you where he is.” Her face softens with something that might be sorrow.

  “Torture wouldn’t do it,” she says, “but that look on your face. Flash those eyes at me a few times, and I’d tell you anything. I so didn’t want to do this
to you. If nothing else, please believe that.”

  She shoves the barrels under her chin and pulls the trigger.

  Chapter 27

  The blast is deafening. Her body jerks as the bullet blows through the top of her head. Everything above her nose shatters like a birthday piñata, streamers of blood showering the ceiling.

  I run to her. I grab her as she collapses. Blood pumping from a heart that hasn’t figured out its job is over.

  Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I know this is temporary. I know she’ll be fine, and that this is only a quick escape route. But I’m holding her, shaking her, yelling at her just the same. She was right, I realize; I couldn’t have hurt her.

  Hadn’t realized how much she could hurt me, though.

  A groan behind me pulls me back to the real world. The guard twitches, eyes fluttering. I don’t give him the chance to wake up. I kick him in the head to keep him out. I can only hope he’s as professional as Samantha thinks. I don’t want Santa Monica’s finest looking for me.

  I can hear the cops’ footsteps on the stairs, see the elevator’s slow crawl upward.

  I run to a back window overlooking the alley below. This isn’t such a bad idea. Right? Maybe it won’t suck as much as I think it will. Besides, it’s not like I’ve never jumped out a window before. Just not from eight stories up.

  Cops are kicking the door in. I heave myself out of the window, get a second to regret doing it before I clip the roof of a Volvo. Both legs shatter. I bounce off it, scraping my face across the pavement. Bone crunches, skin shreds. I drag myself behind a Dumpster, wait a moment for my legs to rearrange themselves enough that I can hobble off.

  I give Samantha’s apartment one final look. Wonder if I’ll see her again. And what will happen when I do.

  “You all right?” Gabriela leans against the hotel room doorway looking in at me. She’s got hangover eyes, the slouch of the terminally exhausted.

  “Me? Darius said you were gonna be out all night.”

  She waves the idea away. “What does he know?” she says. “He’s just a demon. And you’re avoiding the question.”

  I’ve showered, changed into a leftover set of clothes from one of her vampires.