Madame Zebella pressed one ringed hand to her chest. “Dr. Bella Zalbeck,” she said with a slight bow toward Bishop. “Professor of Eastern European Mythology and Ethnic Studies. I come from a long line of full-blooded Romany Travelers. I put myself through college working this neighborhood in a slightly different profession than I have now.” She nodded in Rain’s direction. “Madame Zebella funds my research, but it’s not an act. You are in serious danger.”
Bishop looked over at Rain, who gave him a grim little smile. He’d known what Madame Zebella was all along.
“What do I owe you?” Bishop asked, wanting to escape to fresh air.
“I cannot take money from you for this. It would bind me to your fate and I am not willing to risk that. I can, however, provide you with a small charm of protection.”
She stood, her skirts swaying to the undulation of her generous hips as she made her way to a large wooden cabinet with many small drawers. After a moment’s thought she pulled one out and removed a round piece of yellow metal about the size of a quarter tied to a red string.
“Carry this with you at all times,” she said, placing it in Bishop’s hand. “If it becomes warm to the touch, prepare to defend yourself.”
Going back to the table, she placed the note and knife into the plastic bag with the goat head and knotted it shut. Waving her hand toward Bishop, she indicated that he was expected to remove it now that she was done with it.
“Burn it,” she instructed.
As she saw them out Bishop watched her put a hand on Rain’s arm and whisper something in his ear before she closed the door behind them. Locks clicked into place one, by one.
“What did she say to you?” Bishop asked, holding the bag with the goat head at arms-length.
Rain looked back over his shoulder at the door. “She told me I needed to be careful carrying so much money in my pocket in this neighborhood.”
Bishop shook his head. “And I thought I had weird friends.”
* * *
Rain insisted on taking the knife with him. It was evidence and there was the possibility of fingerprints on the handle. He made Bishop dig it out of the bag and drop it into one of the plastic evidence bags he carried in the trunk of his car.
“If there’s prints I’ll run them through the database. It may take a while. Un Uh!” he said as Bishop opened the passenger door. “You’re not bringing that stinky goat head back into my car.”
“She told me to burn it. I can’t do that right in the middle of the street, I have to take it somewhere.”
Rain sighed. “Okay. I know a place, but nobody better see us. I think it’s against the law to burn ungulates inside the city limits.”
The abandoned lot was next to an empty brick warehouse and a freeway bridge. A couple of oil drums on the property had already been used for fires, probably in the winter when the homeless gathered to camp in abandoned buildings and under bridges.
Rain pulled a gas can out of his trunk, leaving the bag to Bishop. “Throw it in there,” he said.
Bishop dropped the bag into the drum and stepped aside to let Rain soak it with gasoline. Rain produced a book of matches, lit one and threw the rest of the book in after it. The can ignited with a loud whoosh.
“Done,” Rain said, the light from the fire gave his face a demonic look. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
From a decorative parapet high up on the old building, eyes watched their movements. As they accelerated down the street, leathery wings unfolded to follow the car.
- 18 -
The Seventh Circle was a bar down by the waterfront in a decidedly non-yuppie neighborhood. All the flickering red neon sign mounted on the outside wall said was: BAR. The drippy red circle with a slash through it painted on the door was shorthand for ‘Abandon All Hope’ -- a 21st century demon joke.
Tobacco-yellowed scenes from Hieronymus Bosch paintings covered the walls inside. Ugly, round little demons with bird heads prodded naked, potbellied humans into flaming holes in the earth.
No one who patronized this bar ever said to a friend, “I’ll meet you at the Seventh Circle.” They said, “See you in hell.”
It was that kind of place.
Smoky was an understatement inside the Circle. The atmosphere was more like a fog bank. Smoke hung in the air like it was part of the building. Opening the door brought in unwelcome rushes of slightly cleaner air that soon gave up and joined the general sea of pollution. Nobody enforced non-smoking laws in this bar, and it wasn’t all tobacco. Heads turned when Ariel walked in, but nobody stared. The Circle was a truce bar. It catered to a mixed crowd, supernaturally speaking, and if patrons had issues with each other, they took them outside.
It had been awhile since Ariel had gone out for a drink. She’d dressed for the occasion; black leather jacket over a bodega t-shirt with a picture of a shackled woman surrounded by a sea of flames, a mid-thigh black kilt with buckles and straps, ripped tights and battered engineer boots. She let the talons on her fingers slide out. They were cheaper than nail polish and probably more conservative than the accessories of some of the other patrons.
Ariel hooked a stool at one end of the bar with a booted foot and slid onto it. She could see most of the room in the mirror behind the liquor shelf. It was early yet, and she didn’t see anyone she knew except for the bartender, who set a shot glass of tequila in front of her next to a bottle of beer. His knobby head was speckled with irregularly shaped yellow spots and there was just a bit too much peak to his ears and point to his teeth for human. As he set down her drinks he said, “No trouble, okay?”
“It’s my day off,” she told him. “People leave me alone, I leave them alone. It’s as easy as that.”
The bartender shook his head. Ariel had no days off where trouble was concerned. She ignored him. He worried too much. If somebody tried to start something with her, was that her fault? Any demon in here should know better, but some hotheads never learned.
“You seen Timmy Jon?” She asked the bartender. Timmy Jon was a polite, soft-spoken thief of southern extraction. He was also a demon, but basically harmless. He broke into empty apartments during the day, and shops at night after everyone had left. Timmy Jon didn’t want any trouble; he just wanted to make a living off of other people’s stuff. He also sold information.
Timmy Jon was nosy. He listened to other people’s conversations and he read other people’s mail. When he broke into people’s houses he raided their refrigerator and surfed porn sites on their computer. He also looked at their email and rifled through their underwear drawers. T’ Jon knew a lot of things about a lot of people, and he could be persuaded to share what he knew with the right people, for the right price.
Ariel was just considering switching to white wine when T’ Jon walk through the door. He’d either recently robbed a pimp or someone in the Vegas end of the entertainment industry. His jacket was an appallingly shade of chartreuse over an expensive maroon polo shirt and yellow slacks. If the demon-thief had a professional fault, it was a total lack of subtlety.
He nodded to Ariel and sauntered over to the bar. “El,” he said, taking the seat next to her. “Long-time-no-see. I was starting to worry. How is my favorite feathered female avenger?”
“Same old, same old,” El told him. “I imagine you want me to buy you a drink?”
“So kind. Bartender, a Kettle One Greyhound in a Martini glass, double eye balls.”
“You do that just to gross me out, don’t you?”
T’ Jon gave an elaborate shrug. “I’m a dog lover, what can I say?”
The bartender delivered T’ Jon’s drink. “I need information,” Ariel told him after the bartender had moved away.
“Quelle surprise.” T’ Jon took a sip of his drink. “Domestic grapefruit,” he complained. “I really should change bars.”
“What do you know about resurrection?” Ariel asked impatiently. T’ Jon had the palate of a homeless Sterno addict.
“I assume we’re not tal
king about “The Resurrection?” T’ Jon made quote marks in the air with his fingers. “I’m not willing to get involved in those politics.”
“I’m talking about demon resurrection Timmy.”
“Me too, but be that as it may. What demon?”
“Nicolai Tesslovich.”
“Tesslovich? Hmmm. He has been looking a mite peaky lately.”
“I’m serious, T’ Jon. I killed Tesslovich myself. Dead. Three days later he was back in court, head on his shoulders and slimy as ever.”
“Curious.” Timmy mused. “He’s not that type of demon.”
“Precisely my point. Something strange is going on and I need to know what it is.”
Timmy Jon toyed with his glass, spinning it on the bar top by its stem. “I have heard . . . something. Just rumors. Some sort of regeneration technology. Not magic though. Science. I don’t have any details, but there’s buzz.”
“Can you find out for me?” Ariel slid a small square of folded green across the bar. It disappeared like magic into T’ Jon’s sleeve.
“If I can’t, girlfriend, no one can.”
“Be careful, T’ Jon. There’s something bigger going on than we know about.” Ariel slid off her stool and threw a twenty on the bar. “Another double Greyhound for my friend.” She called to the bartender. “Hold the eyeballs.”
As she crossed the barroom to the door the bartender said with a certain amount of wonder, “No Trouble?”
Just before the door closed behind her she heard T’ Jon say “It’s all a matter of perspective, my friend. All a matter of perspective.”
- 19 -
It was a great night for flying. The thermal currents created by the tall buildings and the updrafts from trapped ground heat made it a challenge. Mouser thought of it as air surfing; catch the lift, take the drop, ride the invisible wave until it was ripped out from under your wings by a change in geography or a wicked shift in the wind. It was the most alive he ever felt, except for a few hacks that had taken him places in the ether net he’d never expected to go. That was cool. But flying was better.
Still, he had to be careful. There was more than one kind of predator using the sky. Some of them roosted on the ledges of tall buildings waiting for unwary prey, others aggressively defended their territory like the falcons living on the Exchange Bank Building who chased him for blocks every chance they got.
Most, like the falcons, weren’t shifters, although Mouser had met a few who’d gone totally feral, never changing back into their human form. They liked living high up. Mouser could understand the freedom it brought them, but he passed on their diet. He’d eaten one mouse too many in the early days, now he was strictly PBJ, pizza, burgers and coffee.
Ariel had made that possible for him. A few years ago, she’d saved his feathered butt from a much bigger hawk that he couldn’t seem to out-fly. Swooping in from nowhere she’d grabbed him right out of the sky. By the time they hit a roof he was a naked twelve year old, shaking with cold and fear at his narrow escape. Ariel had wrapped him in her coat, taken him home and put him to bed on her couch.
When he woke up the next morning he’d asked her why? How did she know he wasn’t just another bird losing its battle for survival of the fittest?
“I’ve been watching you,” she told him. “I couldn’t let that happen.”
She got him off the streets, out of the cold. He couldn’t remember how long he’d been on his own, it seemed like years, and he couldn’t remember anything before that. Nothing about parents, family, friends -- just the day he discovered he wasn’t all human, and best of all, that he could fly.
Mouser had a crush on Ariel, but he knew he was just a fourteen year old kid. She treated him like a younger brother, but she’d also taught him things. Important things. Survival things. She taught him how to defend himself and how to watch his back. She found him his first computer then turned him over to Ez at the Caf’ so he could hang with people like himself.
Ez had some interesting tricks of his own to share. Each kid at the Caf’ had his or her own set of skills. Some, like Zoe who could open any lock in a matter of seconds, didn’t invite too much scrutiny. They all gamed and surfed and hacked, but some of them had jobs too. They went out into the world but they came back to where it was safe. Mouser sometimes imagined himself to be one of the Lost Boys, except Wendy killed demons and there was no Peter Pan.
Ez warned all the younger ones not to go out alone at night, but Mouser had promised Bishop he’d show the photos of the missing street kids around. He was part of the team and he had a job to do.
The only inconvenient thing about shifting from a hawk to human was you came back naked. Mouser had a shifter’s usual lack of modesty, but you couldn’t run around the streets naked for very long before somebody freaked out. Alleys were good for stashing your clothes, but roof tops were even better.
Mouser shrugged back into his clothes. They were his usual thrift store, poor box mish mash. He still looked like a street kid and he still knew where street kids hung. He’d scouted this neighborhood with care.
Before he hit the fire escape, Mouser made sure he still had the photographs of the missing kids in his jacket pocket. If he didn’t get any hits from the usual places he’d go deep. If these kids weren’t on the streets anymore they had a good reason not to be.
So he was going to go where you went when you were running from the Big, Big Bad. He’d taken a friend there once, when she was trying to get away from a father Mouser would have sicced Ariel on in a minute, if he’d known her then.
The Deepers had wanted to keep him, but he wasn’t running from anything except hunger and loneliness, so he’d slipped away before getting too far in. He hoped Sissy was okay now, that she’d made it to California like she always wanted. She told him she’d heard if you went deep enough there was a train to the other side, where you’d be safe and warm and nobody would try to hurt you just because you were a kid that nobody would ever miss.
He didn’t believe that, but Sissy did. And Mouser thought everybody ought to be allowed a dream.
- 20 -
Trashed, smashed, tossed, wasted, torn up, obliterated and destroyed. Bishop had always been told that things looked better in the morning, but as far as his office went, things looked worse. He’d left the window open hoping to air out the smell. All it did was allow all of his paperwork to blow around, creating even more of a mess. The goat head was gone but some enterprising pigeons found their way in and used the top of his file cabinet as a latrine. He booted one off the window sill before slamming it shut. Now it was just him and the mess.
Ariel found him sitting in the last un-smashed chair, looking like Hamlet after he’d been told the bad news.
“This is your office?” she asked, shutting the door. “What happened?”
“It’s part of a curse,” Bishop told her. “You missed the flaming goat head hor d’oeuvres and threatening note. That was last night. I’d offer you a chair, but I’m sitting in the only one that still has four legs and I’m not getting up.”
“What were they looking for?”
“Beats me. They took my computer, I can’t tell yet if there’s any paper files missing, but off the top of my head I’d have to say it’s the missing kids. How did you find me?”
“You gave me your card, remember?”
“I’ll have to stop handing those out. It attracts the wrong element. What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for Mouser. Ez says he hasn’t seen him for almost 24 hours. I thought he might be with you.”
Bishop sat up straighter. “I haven’t seen him since the other night at the Caf’. Maybe he’s visiting friends.”
“Mouser doesn’t stay out all night unless he crashes with me. It’s too dangerous. Ez is really strict about it.”
“Ez? The petrified man? He can barely make himself move from one end of the bar to the other.”
“That’s not . . . he keeps an eye on the kids who hang out in the Caf
’. They crash in the back. He feeds them, tries to keep them out of trouble. He knows where they are most of the time. When Mouser didn’t check in by this morning he gave me a call.”
“He was going to check out the kids in those photographs, you don’t think . . .?”
Ariel shrugged. “I’m worried, Bishop. He gets really into conspiracy theories, and flying saucer sightings and video game superheroes, he’s amazing on the computer, but he’s just a kid. I’m afraid he might get in over his head.”
“Space aliens, superheroes?” Bishop cocked an eyebrow at Ariel. “Yeah, who’d believe in that?”
“I’m serious, Bishop. Will you help me find him, or not?”
“Look, I’m sure the kid’s fine. But I’ll be happy to help you look for him. The only problem is I need to go talk to this woman who said her kid came back months after disappearing, perfectly fine. She told my client that if she didn’t tell anyone her daughter was missing she’d get her back too.”
“Well, maybe it is a little early in the day to go looking for Mouser. If he’s hanging out with a bunch of runaways he probably crashed in some squat last night and won’t be up until mid-afternoon...”
“Tell you what,” Bishop dropped a pile of wrinkled papers and mangled file covers on his desk. “It doesn’t really matter if I clean this up now or later. My filing system was pretty lousy to begin with. Why don’t you come with me to the Corbin’s? Maybe you can get the kid to talk while I chat up the parents, then we’ll look for Mouser. I bet he’ll be back safe and sound at the Caf’ by the time we’re through. I’ll buy him pizza while you get all scary and parental. It’ll be just like a night with the Addam’s Family.”
“This won’t take very long?”
“Twenty minute drive, fifteen minutes with the family, in and out.”
“Can I drive?”
“No.”
- 21 -
Raptor: Urban Fantasy Noir Page 9