It helped that the dirt was loose. It also helped that I was Shadow. He didn’t have amazing strength like Red had superhuman energy. But he was a vicious, relentless fighter, and now he was fighting the ground.
One of my hands punched out into air, and then the other. I dug my fingers into grass and soil and dragged my head up into the sunlight. I gasped and coughed for a couple seconds, then finished crawling out, leaving what looked like a big gopher hole behind me.
Georgie had said he was going to stand guard. As I stood up, I looked around for him and imagined his dead slimy flesh in my fingers. It felt good. For all I knew, he knew how to put himself back together like Lorenzo after the human cannonball trick. But even if he did, I’d find a way to rip him to pieces and keep him that way.
Or I thought I would. But then the part of me that wasn’t Shadow woke up. I still felt all that hate, but knew it was sick and wrong. It was also likely to get me killed if I let it hang on now that it had served its purpose.
I struggled to push all the rage and spite away. Shadow shrank back down more reluctantly than Red had. But he did let go, and left me feeling ashamed that he was any part of me.
But before I could even promise myself I’d become a better person, Georgie chimp-walked out of the patch of shadow underneath a stand of oaks. The little bastard really was good at hiding. I’d looked right at the trees without spotting him.
He stood on his stumps and brought up a pistol in both sets of claws. My Smith and Wesson, probably. Backing away from him, I visualized the Thunderbird, tried to make another invisible wall, and felt a shiver of magic jump out of me when the ward popped into existence.
Georgie fired. The bullet cracked against the side of the garden mausoleum behind me.
Apparently the kind of wall I knew how to make would stop a brownwing but not a bullet. It would have been nice if Timon had included that particular fact in my lessons.
I turned and ran. The automatic banged again. Another miss, but I couldn’t see myself just running and running while Georgie emptied the gun at my back. There was too good a chance that he’d get lucky.
I dodged behind the mausoleum. Then I scrambled up onto the roof of it. It wasn’t too hard. There were carved letters and grooves in the marble that gave me finger- and toeholds.
Georgie was smart enough to slow down as he came around the side of the crypt. He was looking for an ambush, but he didn’t think to look up.
I jumped. My feet hammered down on his shoulders and smashed him sprawling on the ground. I almost fell down, too, but staggered a couple steps and caught my balance.
He was lifting himself up when I kicked out some of the rest of his teeth. Then I stamped on the pincer-fingers that held the automatic. Something cracked. I stooped, yanked the gun out of his grip, and leaped away.
He swung himself right after me, just not quite quickly enough. I pointed the automatic, squeezed the trigger, and blasted a new hole in his forehead. Dark gray sludge blew out the back of his skull. It spattered the grass and the foot of the mausoleum wall. He collapsed.
And believe it or not, as I stood there panting, my pulse pounding in the arteries in my neck, I felt bad about it. At least until he groaned and twitched.
“Stay down!” I said. “Or I’ll blow out the rest of your brains, and see if I can twist your head loose from your neck while you’re out.”
He stayed put as I backed away. But he did say, “Billy.”
“What?” I answered.
“We were only doing what we had to.”
“Yeah,” I said, “me too.”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw that I’d almost reached the waist-high wall at the edge of the cemetery. Hoping Georgie wouldn’t chase me any farther, I stuffed the automatic back into my jeans, hopped the barrier, and trotted south on North Boulevard.
After a couple blocks, I came to a convenience store. Everybody gave me the skunk eye when I came in, including the chunky Hispanic woman behind the counter. I understood their point of view. I was filthy from head to toe, I had blood on my hands, and I smelled like Georgie.
But on the plus side, I had lots of cash. I pulled the wad out of my pocket, tossed bills on the counter, and headed for the men’s room.
On the way, I noticed this was one of your full-service convenience stores. Along with the beer, cigarettes, beef jerky, Lotto tickets, and DVD’s of thirty-year-old movies nobody ever heard of in the first place, they were selling cheap underwear, socks, jeans, and T-shirts with Harley Davidson and Iron Maiden logos on them. Figuring that I’d thrown the clerk enough money to cover a change of clothes as well as the use of the john, I found my sizes.
Once inside the restroom, I stripped and cleaned myself up as best it could with liquid soap and paper towels at the sink. When I finished, I checked myself out in the mirror and decided that while I didn’t look—or feel—really clean, what I saw was a big improvement. And then I started shaking.
I’d gone through too much weirdness, and too much of the weirdness had been trying to kill me. I had a high tolerance for bad, but everybody has his limits.
But I couldn’t afford to fall apart while Vic still needed me. I made myself take slow, deep breaths and splashed cold water on my face.
It helped, and then I dressed. The shirt I’d grabbed without looking at anything but the L on the tag was black with green marijuana leaves on it. I made sure it covered the automatic, then went back out into the store.
As soon as I did, I spotted the two Latino teenagers who were waiting for me. One had a 5 in a five-pointed star tattooed on his left forearm. They both had their left shoes untied.
That wasn’t enough to tell me what gang they belonged to—not that I really cared—but it did show they were in one that was part of People Nation. You learn to recognize your fellow criminals when you’re a lawbreaker yourself, even a harmless one like me.
I almost couldn’t blame them for what they had in mind. A crazy-looking guy waving a big roll of bills around? It must have seemed like Christmas had come early.
And maybe it had, but not the way they thought. I fixed my eyes on them and walked right over. Something they saw in my face made their hard expressions soften.
“It’s like this,” I said. “If you try to rob me, I will hurt you bad. But I’ll give you money if you’ve got a car. I’ll pay five hundred bucks for a ride to Ybor City.”
The kids exchanged glances. Then the one with the tattoo said, “I got a car.”
It turned out to be an ’87 Grand Prix with suicide doors and a chain-link steering wheel. Even stressed as I was, the sight of it made me smile. I wasn’t into low-riders, but still, it was somebody’s special, customized pride and joy, and I appreciated it for that. Maybe catching a ride in it was a sign my luck was turning.
Okay, probably not. But I got in anyway.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I considered spirit traveling to scout out Rhonda’s store. But I didn’t want to waste the mojo, and I was scared of getting sucked into another magical dimension or psychic world or whatever I was supposed to call them. I also didn’t trust my little posse in the Grand Prix to deliver on their end of our deal if I zoned out.
So instead, I had them drive around a little while I hunched down low and looked out the window. Eventually I spotted a guy loitering in the mouth of an alley, where he could watch one approach to Rhonda’s place. Like with some of the people on the Tuxedo Team, you couldn’t point to any one feature that marked him as absolutely, positively not human. But put them all together, and the effect just wasn’t right. He had too much face from the nostrils on down, and not enough above.
I had the kids drop me off by the other end of the alley. “Good luck, man,” said the one with the star. He’d figured out that I was involved in something serious.
“Thanks,” I said as I climbed out. “Don’t do drugs. Stay in school.”
He snorted a laugh, and then he and his buddy pulled away.
I waited a few se
conds in case the sentry heard the low-rider and glanced around. Then, wishing it wasn’t still broad daylight, I sneaked down the alley, past loading docks, dumpsters, and a couple parked cars.
I told you, I’m good at sneaking. The sentry didn’t hear me until I said, “Don’t move. I’ve got a gun.”
He froze, and I patted him down with my off hand. I may have been kind of awkward about it. But the Army had also taught me the basics of securing a prisoner, and I found the Baby Glock 27 in his pocket. First Georgie, now him. I wondered if Frodo would have made it to the volcano if the orcs had been packing heat.
“Okay,” I said, backing up a step, “turn around.”
He did. I studied his face. He was pissed off and scared. I couldn’t tell which feeling was stronger.
“Who do you work for?” I asked.
“Go to Hell,” he answered. His voice was less human than his face, or at least it had no business coming out of a grown man. High-pitched and rhythmic, it reminded me of a little girl singsonging a jump-rope rhyme.
“Where’s the hostage?”
“I’m not telling you anything.” Like before, he sang soprano and gave the words a beat.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt you, your lord, or anybody. I just want to get the girl and go. But I will shoot you if you don’t help me. You Old People keep telling me you don’t give a damn what you do to humans, and, the day I’m having, I’m ready to turn that around.”
He tensed up, and I could tell he was about to rush me. It was an idiot move, and never mind that I’d made it myself when it was Lorenzo holding the gun. I like to think that at least I didn’t telegraph it.
We were far enough apart that I could have shot him easily. I jumped out of his way and tripped him instead. As he toppled forward, I lashed the barrel of the Model 439 against the back of his head. He finished falling on his face, and then he didn’t move anymore.
I dragged him out of the middle of the alley and over behind some trashcans. Then I checked the mag in the Glock. It was full, which gave me fourteen rounds, nine in this gun and five left in the Smith and Wesson. Yippee. With all that firepower, what was there to worry about?
Well, lack of intel, for a start. I still had no idea what I was walking into. But I did know which approach to the store the soprano had been watching. If nobody else was covering it, maybe I could get up close without being spotted. I tucked the guns away and headed forward.
Rhonda operated out of a ratty little crafts store on the ground floor of an old redbrick building. The mouth of the alley was thirty feet away on the other side of Seventh Avenue. Just close enough for me to make out the samples of needlepoint, beading, macramé, jewelry, and other hobby projects behind the dirty windows.
A small parking lot separated the place from the bank next door, and gave me access to the side of the building. Where there was a fire escape. I stared up at the ladder, threw the Thunderbird at it, and willed it to drop.
It didn’t. Even though the damn thing was meant to fall when somebody released the catch, I couldn’t make it happen. It was another reminder—like I needed one—of just how limited my magic really was.
But then I saw an answer. Hoping it was safe to leave my body for just a couple seconds, I flew up out of the top of my skull onto the second-story platform and willed some solidity into my ghostly hands, like I’d needed to do to drive the T-bird. I jerked the lever, and the ladder fell with a rattle. I dropped and beat it back to my body. It was all pretty slick, except that the flesh-and-blood part of me had already started to lose its balance. I had to stagger and windmill my arms to keep from falling.
I climbed up onto the lowest platform and hauled the ladder back up after me. There was a fire-exit door, but it was locked. I risked another little hop out of my body to get on the other side of it and push it open. Then I just had to jump back in time to catch it before it swung shut again.
That got me into a hallway with a linoleum floor and fluorescent lighting, like you’d find in most any aging office building. Judging from the little white plastic signs sticking out from the wall beside their doors, a few of the offices had tenants. Most didn’t.
I had a hunch Rhonda owned the whole building. And if Vic was being kept here—a big if, but I had to start someplace—it might make more sense to stash her in an empty office than anywhere down in the crafts store, where there’d be customers coming and going.
I prowled along listening at the doors with no signs. Then I cracked them open and peeked in at the sad-looking empty spaces on the other side, all dull pastel paint, and industrial carpeting with dents to show where furniture used to be.
Eventually I came to one that wasn’t quite as empty as the others. A guy in a blue shirt sat in a metal folding chair by a window, where he could watch Seventh Avenue. Even from behind, he didn’t look quite right. Maybe it was the shape of his shoulders.
I was lucky he hadn’t spotted me crossing the street. Maybe he’d been looking elsewhere. Or maybe the marijuana shirt had thrown him off, since I hadn’t been wearing it back at the hotel.
Whatever. I pulled the Smith and Wesson out of the back of my jeans, tiptoed over to the guy, and said, “Don’t move.”
His head snapped around. Then he screamed. The sound was loud and shrill enough to make me flinch, and had a warbling beat to it, like a siren. He tried to jump up and reach into his pocket.
This made two times in a row that my gun hadn’t gotten any respect at all. Maybe the sopranos just never backed down for anything. Or maybe they were under a spell that made them love their boss more than their own lives. Which was another reason to think their boss was Leticia.
I stepped in and whipped the Model 439 across the screamer’s face, then banged him over the head with it. He fell back into the folding chair, which overturned underneath him. I watched him for another second, and he didn’t move.
But if his buddies had heard him howl—and there wasn’t much doubt about that—they were probably coming, and I wanted to be gone before they showed up. I hurried back out into the hallway.
When I turned the next corner, it was just in time to see Raul and Pablo Martinez dragging Vic through the door to the service stairs. Her face was bruised, with a black eye, and full of fear.
I yelled,” Stop!” and aimed the pistol. As usual, nobody cared. Pablo raised a new damn tire iron and charged me. It blocked my shot at his brother, who dragged Vic out of sight.
So I shot Pablo instead.
I didn’t like doing it. I came back from Afghanistan knowing I didn’t want to shoot people anymore, not even ones as mean and stupid as him. And I was pretty sure he was only rushing the gun because Leticia had turned him into one of her love monkeys. But I didn’t feel like giving him the chance to rearrange my head, either.
The bullet hit him in the belly like I wanted. He pitched forward. The tire iron tumbled from his hand and clanked on the floor. He tried to lift himself up, but couldn’t do it. Then the rage and determination drained out of his face, and pain and fear rushed in.
“It wasn’t a kill shot,” I said. “Keep pressure on it, and you’ll be all right till somebody comes to help you.” I wasn’t sure if that was true, but I hoped so.
I edged around him, headed on toward the stairs, and wondered if somebody was waiting to shoot at me from below. Then the phone in my pocket rang. I pulled it out and flipped it open.
“You’re still with us,” Leticia said. She sounded happy about it, and even now, that sexy purr made me catch my breath.
“So far,” I said.
“You can have your friend back,” Leticia said. “This doesn’t have to be unpleasant.”
“That’s interesting. Because it kind of looks like you set up the whole thing specifically to kill me.”
“That was Gimble’s contribution.”
“And he’s not here now?”
“No. Poor thing. He’s so big and conspicuous that it’s a lot of trouble for him to go among the human
s.”
“So what’s your offer?” I glanced around to make sure nobody was sneaking up behind me.
“Surrender, and no one else gets hurt. My people will simply hold you and Victoria until midnight, then set you free.”
“Sounds familiar,” I said.
“What?”
“It sounds like bullshit, too.”
“I’ve got nothing against you, Billy. I just want to win. But I want it badly enough to hurt Victoria to get it. Should I hold the phone where you can hear her scream?”
“Should I come in shooting with all my magic cranked up to eleven?”
“I don’t think that would work out well for you.”
“You didn’t think I’d come out of the flashbacks with my mind in one piece, either. You didn’t think I could get inside this building without you knowing it. You don’t know what I can do.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m afraid of you.”
“Look at it this way. There are normal people here. Some of them must have heard your sentry scream. Some of them probably heard me fire a shot, too. Somebody probably called 911. If not, I can make sure somebody does.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice sweet talking the police.”
“I’ll bet. But do you want to try handling them and a standoff with me at the same time?” I glanced over my shoulder again. The hall behind me was still clear. Pablo had taken my advice, rolled onto his back, and planted his hands on his wound. “Won’t it be easier if Vic and I are gone before they show up?”
Leticia thought if over for a second, then said, “What’s your offer?”
“I take Vic and go, and you and I will see each other back at the hotel.”
“Can you guarantee that she won’t tell anyone about us?”
“Yes.”
“Then come get her.”
“I’ll be coming with a gun in my hand. I’d better not see one in anybody else’s. If I do, I’m going to shoot, and I’ll start with you.”
She laughed. “You’re sexy when you talk all rough and tough. No weapons in anyone’s hand, I promise. Just a couple friends standing by to make sure you don’t put me out of the tournament.” She hung up.
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