Niko looks up from his field dressing. “Really? I don’t think so.” And as he says it knows it’s true.
“We better get in there,” says the cabbie.
“Yeah.”
The gate code is the date that he and Jemma floated on Lake Arrowhead and felt themselves begin again. Niko punches in this anniversary and the gate begins to rattle open. “This still isn’t your fight,” he tells the cabbie.
Her only reply is a get-serious expression and a gesture for him get moving, for which he gives a grateful smile. He owes her so very much.
Niko passes on into his statuaried driveway. Behind him the cabbie takes a last long pull at her cigarillo and flicks it away.
THE FRONT DOOR stands open. Niko and the cabbie look through the doorway at the veined marble floor, cherry knickknack shelves with dried flowers, Lalique crystal, an oval mirror. Niko is struck with sudden fear that he’ll see his own body on the couch, an empty hypodermic beside it. All of this the raving of a mind that’s shutting down. I am returned to haunt myself.
He gives the cabbie what he hopes is an encouraging look and limps into the ululating house. The black leather couch unoccupied. The empty hypodermic rests where it was tossed on the glasstopped table. Sweeping curve of carpeted staircase. No one else in sight.
Niko limps to the security alarm panel and enters the code. Sudden silence jars the house. Faint tick of the moonfaced clock. Niko jumps when the telephone rings.
“Security company?” the cabbie ventures.
Ah. He hobbles to the phone and picks it up and says Hello. “Regent Security, sir. We show an activation at your residence.”
“Yes. I’m sorry. My uh friend came into the house ahead of me and uh I was unloading the car. I forgot, sorry. It’s off now but thanks for—”
“Who am I speaking with please?”
“I’m the homeowner. Niko, Nikkoleides Popoudopolos.”
If the man from Regency recognizes Niko’s name it doesn’t register in his tone. “The alarm has been active for several minutes, sir. I’ve dispatched a unit to your home.”
Niko strangles the phone. Somehow he feels it’s all that’s holding him upright. “Oh that isn’t necessary. We’re fine.”
“Fine, sir. If I could just get your password.”
“Password.” Niko feels thick and stupid. “It’s eight oh one—”
“Not your alarm code, sir. Your secret password.”
Niko looks helplessly at the cabbie. This is just too fucking absurd. Here in his house in the Hollywood Hills there’s a dead body, a demon, a messenger of death, a mythic ferry operator, and a leaking mason jar containing his girlfriend’s soul, and he has no idea how to stop a bored security dispatcher on a telephone from sending armed rentacops to his door.
“I can’t recall the unit without your password, sir,” the dispatcher says into the silence.
“I’m sorry, I’ve just never had to use it, hold on a second.” Something thuds upstairs.
“Sir?”
Niko feels an absurd urge to command the dispatcher by one of the old Keys. Leave me alone, this has been willed where what is willed must be. But that won’t play here.
“Sir, I’m afraid I have to—”
“Lyre. It’s lyre, L Y R E.”
A pause. Niko hears taps on a keyboard. “That’s correct, sir. Sorry to trouble you.”
“No um trouble. You’re just doing your job.”
“You have a nice night now, sir,” says the dispatcher.
“Too late.” Niko drops the phone to the marble floor. “You all right?” the cabbie asks.
“Fuck no.” He nods at the stairs. “Let’s go.”
The cabbie helps him climb the stairs. Every step a gardenclaw embedded in his ribs and lower back and pulling. By the top of the sweeping curve his compress feels hot against his back and he suspects his wound is bleeding freely again. They pull up short at the top of the stairs and Niko grabs a newel to keep from falling down.
“Darn,” the cabbie says.
Down the hall stands Nikodemus, back to them and tattered wings outspread and trembling taut to fill the corridor. Niko starts to call out to him but suddenly the wings retract and Niko sees his demon holding the fractured mason jar and glaring sliteyed at the Driver who stands calm and confident between Nikodemus and the door to Jemma’s sickroom. Wearing his perpetual halfsmirk and waiting for the demon to make his move. With Jemma seeping out into the mortal night and Jemma’s body soon to pass all hope of resurrection time is on the Driver’s side.
The cabbie touches Niko’s arm. “Even if he gets by him he won’t have time to put her back.”
Niko tries to make what the cabbie says mean something but he’s having trouble making words connect. He feels he’s looking out through eyes not quite his own. But he understands that once again the game has changed and that their hastily concocted plan must be abandoned.
Just to drive home his point the Driver lights a cigarette and blows smoke in Nikodemus’ face. The demon whipcracks the air in frustration.
The sound goads Niko to action. “Give me a minute. Stall the Driver any way you can and then send Nikodemus my way when you hear me honk out front.”
She nods. Niko glances once more at the silent power struggle in the hallway and then struggles back down the staircase. He clumps through the living room and master dining room and into the big kitchen hung with copper pots. On the tiled wall a green-painted pegboard hung with several sets of keys. He snatches up the black keychain embossed with the winged B and hurries back as best he can through the living room. His lower back throbs in time with his heartbeat. Pain lances his ribs and flares his twisted ankle with every step. I am held together now with paperclips and duct tape. I believe my clock is winding down.
He clutches the keys and heads for the door. How strange to be back among his comforts and accumulations. He hadn’t expected to see them again when he left. An hour I’ve been gone. All this traveling encompassed by a single sweep of any clock. This time he feels no pang of loss at leaving them behind forever once again, and when he leaves he doesn’t look back.
THE BENTLEY CHIRPS and flashes and unlocks itself. The burgundy GT Speed looks almost black in this light. Niko nearly falls into the seat. It hurts but the pain is somewhere far away, a noise in another room. He touches his back and his palm comes away red. Well beyond panic at the sight of his own blood he merely shakes his head and wipes his palm on his filthy pants leg. The dealership’s gonna love me.
He starts the car and half expects it won’t turn over, thinking it must have been months since he drove it, but it starts right up and Niko realizes it has in fact, only been a few days since he took the Bentley out.
Niko drives out of the garage. Rounding the fountain in front of the house he sees the cabbie trotting down the driveway toward the front gate. What gives?
She glances back at the sound of his car and waves and then gestures for him to stay put. He stops before the front door. When he honks the horn he half expects to hear the bellow of some prehistoric beast. But no. It’s just a carhorn and the Bentley’s just a car.
What seems like a long time is less than ten seconds before Nikodemus rushes from the house in a blur of wings and tendrils and sees Niko in the Bentley and runs toward him with one tendril wrapped around the mason jar and the other reaching for the door. The demon lifts the latch but nothing happens. The automatic locks engaged when Niko put the car in gear. Past Nikodemus the Black Taxi Driver appears in the doorway of the house. Niko blindly stabs the control panel and his window whines down. Nikodemus is about the tear the door off when Niko stabs another button and the doors unlock. Nikodemus piles in and Niko peels out.
Nikodemus holds the mason jar in one coiled tendril. “I tried.”
“I know you did.” Niko speeds down the drive past soulless blind statues and surges to a halt before the gate. They wait an eternity for the automatic gate to clatter open. Niko glances at the jar. Does it give f
orth light or mere reflection now?
Beyond the gate the Black Taxi still faces the pummeled Checker Cab, but the black sedan’s bonnet hood is folded up. There’s no sign of the cabbie. In the rearview Niko sees the Driver strolling down the driveway toward them.
When the gate is open wide enough Niko glides forward twenty feet and punches an overhead button and the gate begins to slowly rattle shut as Niko stops beside the Franklin. The black car’s hood folds down and the cabbie looks at Niko with a big old shiteating grin. Her hands are smudged with grease and a smear of it warpaints her forehead beside the streak of Niko’s blood. The cabbie glances up the driveway at the Driver coming toward them. “Goodbye, good luck, get going.”
“One question.”
“Better be quick.”
“Black Cab test question.”
Her eyebrows raise. “Shoot.”
“Shortest distance from point A—” Niko indicates their surroundings “—to point B.”
And points up.
Her mouth opens in surprised delight. “Dang I like you. You got brass.” And quickly she gives Niko the directions he needs.
He can only shake his head when he hears where he is bound. Doesn’t that just goddamn figure? He glances in the rearview and sees the Driver at the gate now. “Thanks,” he tells the cabbie. “I’ll marry you next time around, I swear.”
“You already did. Now get out of here.” She squeezes his arm and nods farewell to Nikodemus and slaps the rear of the Bentley as if spurring on a horse as Niko speeds away. She watches the car speed round the corner and listens to the throaty engine dwindle down the hill. Good car, the Bentley. Rich man’s car.
She closes her grease-stained fingers over an object in her hand and smiles. Then she straightens her thin tie and turns toward the gate to face the enemy she has faced so many times so many places, the enemy she so truly deeply loves. “I think you dropped this, Sparky,” the cabbie says, and holds out the magneto wire she tore loose from the Black Taxi.
XXXII.
RUNNING ON FAITH
SO. FRIDAY NIGHT, Hollywood Freeway northbound. Traffic not too bad if you don’t mind whipping in and out of the breakdown lane at ninety to pass the slowpokes and piss off just about everybody.
Niko doesn’t mind. Whatever the cabbie did to the Black Taxi will only be a stalling measure at best. We’re talking about a car that repaired itself after an eighty mile an hour collision with an iron gate and a dog the size of a one ton clubcab pickup. So put some miles on, buddy pal.
Speaking of buddy pals. Niko looks at Nikodemus filling up the front seat like a grownup in a schoolboy’s desk. The torn and battered eyepatched demon watches cars they pass, watches the city with the open curiosity of a child. He shifts constantly on the seat. Nowhere is comfortable because of his wings. Opposing traffic a motionless headlight river. Must be an accident somewhere past Hollywood. Oh wait a minute. Niko remembers the overturned fueltruck by the Virgil exit. I drove by the cause of this traffic jam an hour ago. My god.
Nikodemus rubs a tendril against the thick pad taped over his ruined eye.
Nikodemus I owe you so much. You haven’t even asked where we are going. My dark and ruinous twin you have a faith I never had. Our destinies are linked and always have been. Knowing this should make it easier to tell you what I must. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t. I still believe in my own volition.
He snakes through traffic as he speaks his demon’s given name. “So Nikodemus.”
The white patch turns toward him. “That’s not really my name, is it?”
Niko shakes his head.
“I didn’t think so. It doesn’t feel right.” The head turns away again. They’ve reached the downside of the Cahuenga Pass connecting Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. Ahead to the right the multicolored neon and lighted tubes and spires and pyrotechnic flashes from Universal City Walk hold the demon’s attention. Its black tower cleaves the misted night.
“I don’t know your real name. I gave you that one after you fell in the Lethe. I had to call you something.”
“I’m not mad. It’s kind of funny. Nikodemus.”
Niko feels like a total shit. He has to tell Nikodemus what he’s up to. The demon has the right to know. Especially now that he is mortal.
Ahead the right three lanes split off to form the westbound Ventura Freeway. Niko whips across traffic and into the far right lane. Streetlights all around them dim. How odd.
Then Nikodemus is shaking his shoulder with one tendril and steering the car into the breakdown lane near Laurel Canyon with the other. “Hey. Wake up. Come on, wake up.”
Niko grabs the wheel. “I fell asleep?”
They ease into the breakdown lane and stop. Staccato rush of passing cars. Nikodemus studies him. “You’re very pale.”
The surrounding traffic lights have grown abstract. Niko can’t make sense of them. He’s cold. Ask Nikodemus to turn the heater on? Can’t concentrate. Nikodemus talking. “What’s that?” Niko shouts as if his demon is far away.
“I said I think you’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“Oh.” Niko considers this. Yes that seems right. He’s lost a lot of blood. He shakes his head in great big arcs. “Can’t do that. Wayyy too soon. Got a little ways to go. Then I can bleed to my heart’s content.”
“How far?”
“Hmm?”
“How far away is where we’re going?”
“Maybe thirty miles.”
“All right.” The car chimes as Nikodemus gets out. Niko’s head lolls as he watches the enormous alien figure walk around the car and open his door. The surf of speeding cars grows louder. A horn blows and tires screech. Boy gonna cause him a accident.
Nikodemus leans into the car. “Come on.”
“Wherem I goin?”
“Passenger side. I’m driving.”
“Smy car.”
“All right, I’m driving your car.”
“Oh. Okay.” Niko sleepily acquiesces and clambers painfully to the passenger seat instead of getting out and going around. Ooh look at all the blood. A cable in his back pulls taut. Niko lifts the mason jar from the floorboards and breathes deeply. Faintest trace of her perfume and not a ray of light. Hang in there baby Niko tells the jar and cuddles it.
“Where is the clutch pedal?” Nikodemus says. “How do I work this lever?”
“Issa automatic. Put it in D an you don’t gotta shift.”
Nikodemus looks impressed. He fiddles with the electronic controls until the seat is as far back as it will go. He adjusts the rearview mirror and puts the Bentley in drive and abruptly steers onto the freeway. A horn blares and a Honda screeches around them, missing their rear bumper and then the car in the next lane over by less than a foot.
They’re doing ninety by the time they pass Coldwater Canyon. “Umunna go seepy now.”
“Where are we going?”
“Malibu Canyon.”
“What’s there?”
Niko blinks blearily at his companion. “Heaven.”
NIKO GETS A second wind as they climb out of the Valley just past Woodland Hills. He wakes up with a gasp and glances around, disoriented. They’re really whipping along the freeway. The speedometer hovers just above one hundred. Shouldn’t we slow down to avoid attention? Ah fuck it. What are they gonna do, shoot me?
The fuel gauge is below empty and the idiot light is on.
Niko turns to look behind them and feels that awful pulling in his back. Like a guitar string tightened to snapping. Great, I’m a highnote test.
A pair of bugeyed headlights races in the breakdown lane a couple miles back and slowly gaining.
“He’s back there,” says Nikodemus.
“I’m cold.”
Nikodemus frowns. “The heater’s all the way up.”
“You want me to drive?”
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“Okay. We’re a mess, huh?”
“We’re a mess.”
&n
bsp; They pass the sign for Parkway Calabasas. Calabasas means pumpkins Niko thinks. Someone named a place pumpkins. “You don’t think we’re gonna make it, do you?” he says to the road ahead.
His demon drives in silence for a mile. “It would help if I knew what we were doing.”
“Okay. In a couple miles take the Las Virgenes exit. Go left and head out Malibu Canyon toward the ocean. Just before Pepperdine there’s a tunnel. If we can get to it before the Black Taxi gets to us I think we have a shot.”
“Whyyy?”
“Well. As below so above.”
“I don’t understand.”
“As the Red Line tunnel is an entrance to your old stomping grounds, so the Malibu Canyon tunnel is an entrance—” And Niko gestures at a point beyond the roof.
Silence for a while.
“Are you sure?”
Niko looks at Nikodemus. Worry does not sit well on the demon’s face. “Yeah. I’m sure. You still don’t think we’re gonna make it, do you?”
“We might. We could. If the Driver doesn’t run us off the road. If your car doesn’t run out of gas. If you don’t run out of blood before we get there. If your woman’s soul is still in the jar.”
“Okay, so other than that.” Niko leans his head against the window. The glass cool against his forehead. “Thanks for driving. You didn’t have to come you know.”
“Yes I did.”
“Yeah. I guess you did.” Niko shuts his eyes. His hands and feet feel miles away. He shivers with some inner cold. All he wants to do is sleep. O Faustus now hast thou but one bare hour to live. I am in the last hour of my life. All I do now a compendium of final things. I have kissed Jemma one last time. I have left my home a final time. The last time I will see my city. Music has left me now. On the road ahead my last words wait for me. Last breath. Final heartbeat. Sight. As always they have lain out there. As for all who ever lived. My enemy and friend beside me drives me toward that meeting I’ve evaded but anticipated all my life. The unsailed sea that shapes the continent of life itself by giving it a shore. Now my untried soul will brave that deep. As Jemma here beside me has though I have hauled her partway from that drowning.
Mortality Bridge Page 39