by Rachel Caine
When a friggin’ Flaming Angel tells you that, I mean, you ought to listen. But I was in no mood, believe me. I went up a level, too – it hurt, and it was pretty much as high as I was able to go without somebody yanking me by the short hairs – and did a little aetheric flaming of my own.
"Yeah?" I snarled. "Whose place was it? I’d like to know, because if he don’t start paying attention to his job – "
"I’m her guardian," Ed said simply.
I took the time to think about it before I said some things better left unsaid to a boss, an Angel, or somebody who could crush me like a stinkbug. I said ‘em anyway. Ed just looked at me, all tender again, a parent disappointed in a bad kid who just doesn’t get the point.
"One more," he said. "Shall we do this and get you home?"
Home. Yeah. Home. Home where we could all hide our heads and pretend Hell wasn’t happening, wasn’t sucking in kids like Harley, wasn’t spreading out to eat everything in the Magellan lock, stock and soul. Because all I had to do was kick one more demonic ass and go home. Let the next poor bastard take on the underworld.
I said, "What about her?"
I couldn’t tell what was going on in Ed’s blue eyes. Nothing. Everything. Shit.
"He’s upstairs," Ed said. "Room 520. Be careful."
I walked into Room 520 and found my best friend cleaning his gun. His name was Joey "Two-Tone" Vanzetti, and in the old days there hadn’t been a dime’s difference between us; the same oil-black hair, the same blue eyes, the same Made Guy killer smile. Joey had gone more into administration. I liked to keep my hand in.
Joey looked up, smiled, and kicked a chair out from the table. "Vic. Been too long. Sit."
"What am I, your dog?" I felt it coming off of him, waves of black, pain, evil. Oh, man. No way could I sit down with that. "What the fuck, Joey?"
He snapped the slide on his automatic and checked the chamber. Always picky about his piece, Joey. Always cleaning. He loaded a clip in and laid the gun down on the table between us.
"They let me keep it," he said. "I’m guessing you don’t got one anymore, Vic. What do they let you do, strum a little harp? Sing a few choruses of ‘Ave Maria’? What a fucking joke."
I didn’t say anything. Joey always was a talker. I remembered this time we took a guy out to the docks and Joey kept talking, talking all the time about his wife, his kids, his mortgage, the price of good steel-belted radials. He talked right up until the time he’d put two in the back of the guy’s head.
I wished to hell I had a gun, but that was the one thing I couldn’t have. Guns were what I’d left behind. If I reached for a gun, I lost everything. The rules sucked, but I hadn’t made ‘em.
"Your wife, Gina – you remember Gina, right – you know, she got real lonely after you were gone. Oh, wait, she got real lonely before you were gone. Did you know she was pumping the guy in 14-B when you went out to work? I got a look, Vic, it wasn’t pretty. Listen, sit down, would you? I’m getting a backache, here."
"Let’s just do this," I said. When I was ten, me and Joey had seen our first dead guy. He’d been lying in the street in a pool of blood. He’d tripped and bashed his head open on the curb. I remembered Joey walking right up to the dead guy, looking down into the open eyes, and saying, It’s not so bad, Vic. He’d scared me then.
He scared me worse now that I could see him without the bullshit of a lifetime of friendship.
"Do what?" Joey cocked his head. "You gonna hurt me, Vic?"
"That’s the plan."
He was quiet for a while, which wasn’t like Joey, not at all. Then he said, "They came into my house, Vic. They came into my house and they shotgunned me and my wife. I didn’t get no friggin’ last rites. No confession. Nothing. So I end up here."
"You didn’t have to."
"Like hell. My history, this is where you end up. It ain’t so bad. I get to do what I do best."
"What’s that, Joey?"
"Take out soft little pricks like you all day, every day," he said. "Same thing you do. Only you’re friggin’ doing it on the wrong side."
I didn’t say anything. The talking was over. Me and Joey, we were scheduled for a dance.
Joey picked up the gun and looked down the barrel, a stupid thing to do except even if he finger twitched and he blew his head off, hey, so what? Wasn’t like he couldn’t get another one. The gun turned around to focus on me. It was like it was alive, that gun, alive and hungry.
"Know what?" he said. "Let’s take a walk, Vic."
How many guys had I said that to? Let’s take a walk. The walk only went one direction.
"Sure," I said. "Let’s stroll."
We went out into the hall. The fifth floor, Joey’s floor, was, if anything, worse than the lower ones. These damned souls weren’t just stuck to the floors and walls and ceilings, they were embedded into wallpaper and trapped behind coats of paint, so the walls moved all the time, all those damned trying to slither out. Made me dizzy. The carpet rippled, too, and the screaming was loud enough to bust out light bulbs.
Joey walked down the hall ahead of me. Where he stepped things bled and screamed and begged for mercy.
Damn, I wished I had a gun. I really really did. The back of Joey’s head was a tempting target. Trouble was, there wasn’t much of a step between wishing and doing.
He went down the stairs to the fourth floor, turned right at the landing and leaned against a piece of wall with a guy hanging out of it. The guy was screaming and dripping blood from a cut throat. Joey put a hand over his mouth to shut him up and said, "Hey, Vic?"
"What?"
Joey’s grin cut through the air between us like a shark fin. "Ready? Here it comes. You’re gonna love this part."
He didn’t shoot me. He looked at the stairs.
Remember the guy from Harley’s room? The guy I’d sent off without his twenty? He was back, walking up the steps, heading for the landing. Heading for Room 409.
"Keep up with current events?" Joey asked. "Probably not, you guys probably don’t even get USA Today. There’s this killer, Vic. A real mean bastard. He likes knives and he likes to use ‘em for a long, long time. They call him the Ginsu Killer."
This guy was manifesting on the aetheric plane. Oh, sure, some humans could do it, mostly saints and swamis and Eagle Scouts, but I’d never seen one manifest like this. He threw a shadow, a big huge soul-sucking shadow that made me cold when it touched me.
This was the guy I’d thrown out of Harley’s room.
He was carrying a paper sack.
"Know what’s in the sack, Vic?" Joey asked. "Knives. All kinds of knives. Paring knives, boning knives, fish-gutting knives, big bread knives."
"He’s one of yours," I said. Joey had this proud-parent look as the guy walked past us, passing doors. He passed 401. 403. 405.
"Yeah. I got real hopes for this one."
407.
I wasn’t too worried, really. Because down at the end of the hall, next to Room 409, stood Ed, my Angelic boss in all his aetheric bozo glory. Didn’t look like much, but then he didn’t have to. Ed was High Up. Like the cranky Grandpa Demon I’d offed earlier, Ed didn’t need to put on a light show. He’d just get the job done.
Funny thing, though. Joey wasn’t worried, either.
"Watch this," he said. "This is the good part."
The guy walked up to Room 409.
And Ed …
Ed stepped out of the way.
The guy opened the door to 409 and went inside. Closed it. I heard the click of the lock.
Ed looked up at met my eyes, and what was in there wasn’t mild anymore, wasn’t gentle, wasn’t even sad.
His eyes were telling me don’t.
"You fuck!" I spat, and forgot all about Joey. I Translated.
Harley was asleep, face down on the bed. Sleeping like a heroin angel. The guy put down his paper sack on the bed and shook knives out like silver icicles; the noise they made was louder than all the screaming souls in this pocket of hell. I reached out �
��
-- and Ed wrapped his arms around me and held me. Held me still. Held me tight.
Held me useless while the sick bastard picked out his first knife, a thin-bladed little Ginsu number that could probably cut through steel pipe, and took hold of her arm.
"Let go!" I screamed. I was strong, you know. I could toss around demons, I could shred matter like smoke. But Ed was stronger. "Ed! Jesus, let go!"
He held me very still. As the guy put the knife to Harley’s skin, Ed whispered in my ear, "Nobody lives forever, Vic. Being a Guardian means knowing when to turn away. You have to stop protecting them."
He did, closing his eyes, turning his face so he wouldn’t have to look.
I watched the whole thing, all the way, all the screaming and the horror and the sick pathetic stupidity of it, and when I felt her body let go of her soul, Ed released me and reached for her.
She drifted right past him … to Joey, who was waiting in the other corner. Oh, man, no. Not after all this, not after what she’d just been through. She’d end up another damned screaming soul stuck to the floor, another toy for Joey to play with …
Not all truths …
It was like the second I’d metabolized the Star of David. I knew. Didn’t know how I knew, but I did. Instinct. Instinct and passion, like Ed had said.
I could stop this.
I metabolized a gun.
"No!" Ed burst out, but it was too late and for the first time in a long time I knew damn well what I was doing. This was my working gun, a chrome SW .45 with jacketed hollow points, and the way it fit my hand was like a lady’s hip on my palm.
I shot Joey six times, point black, center mag.
And Joey discorporated screaming.
I grabbed Harley’s aetheric body and held on to her, held on until she opened those agate-green eyes and looked at me and said, "Vic?" and even though that kind of thing didn’t mean anything anymore,
I kissed her before I took her hand and put it in Ed’s.
Safe. She was safe now.
"Joey," I said to Ed. "Only religion he ever had was the gun. That’s why they let him keep it."
Ed looked shocked. Pale. I looked over at the Ginsu Killer and all his bright shiny knives and wished I could shoot him, too.
Not my job. I was an exterminator, but he wasn’t my kind of roach.
"Get her out of here," I said to Ed. "Take her home, would you?"
"Why?" he whispered. "You knew it would keep you here. Why did you do it?"
I looked at the .45 in my hand, the only friend I’d ever had I could count on, and said, "Somebody’s got to stay. Next guy might not be so qualified."
So I’m back in Room 409. Ed drops around to make sure I’m doing okay, sort of like those home visits from the parish priest; the Magellan’s still a pit, and from time to time it’s still a hell-hole, but all in all, it ain’t nearly as bad as it was. The damned souls in the halls are gone, except for a stubborn few that just won’t clear out ‘cause they don’t think they can, the dumb shits, and every once in a while a Demon will pop its pointy head up into my hotel. The last one nearly got me – some damn Vishnu-worshipping son of a bitch – but I’m hanging in. I figure another twenty, thirty years, the city might bulldoze this fleabag and put up a Hyatt Regency. I’m sticking around for that. It’ll still be a pipeline to Hell, but at least it’ll have cable.
Meanwhile, room next to me’s empty.
Knock yourself out.