by Laura Bickle
Oh, shit. We’re getting robbed. I have no idea if Sid hit the panic button before the lights went. I wish to fuck I’d remembered to snatch the time-stopping watch off my desk before I came down. Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck. Too late now.
I grab the nearest object, which happens to be a ridiculous didgeridoo. Heart pounding, I dive forward to swing at the nearest invader.
I actually manage to make contact. I keep swinging the instrument like a baseball bat. The guy stumbles against one of the glass cases, shattering it. Panicked, I keep wailing away at the metal and glass and legs sticking out from the case.
Another shot rings out, deafening me in this small space. My ears ring as shadows roil in the darkness. Not all of them are human.
Small creatures with wings hop through the broken window. The streetlight shines through leathery wings with veins. Red eyes glow, and I recognize them instantly as they scuttle through the broken glass into the fray.
The gargoyles. Someone screams and shoots again. Batlike shadows flicker through the room as they race up on walls, over cabinets. Someone shoots wildly at them—sparks bounce in the darkness. There’s the sound of a heavy body falling to the floor, and the smell of blood.
A deep bass growl emanates from the mouth of the hallway. The streetlight picks out Bert’s silhouette. He’s dropped his glamour—I can tell by the gasps and muzzle flashes. He’s standing there in his pajamas. Bert likes pajamas with feet, though he eschews pants the rest of the time. He’s holding a Tommy gun he got from God knows where.
“Say hello to my little friend!”
At first, I think he means the gun. But he doesn’t fire it. Instead, a shadow falls over the room. A shadow from the broken window.
My breath falters, and I stare. A triangular shadow rises from the glass, followed by tiny limbs. Fingers grasp through the pieces, and the small figure stands up on the counter. Its eyes glow red, red as the exit sign. The temperature has dropped by a good twenty degrees.
“The Gnome,” I breathe. And I tremble.
The Gnome opens its mouth. Rows of serrated white shark teeth gleam. It plunges into the dark. Instinctively, I yelp and try to scramble up on the nearest chair. Screams echo. It’s not me, but I understand why. Muzzle flashes illuminate edges of teeth and black liquid spilling out on the floor and splashing the walls. Some of it slaps me across the face, and I recoil, scuttling up against the wall.
There’s more screaming. I don’t seem to be instrumental for any of it, but I’m conscious to keep my feet off the floor and out of the way of tails, limbs, and teeth. I hop up on the counter. One of the gargoyles jumps up on the ruined chair beside me. Its tongue snakes out from its lips. Like a cat, it washes the blood from its stony hide.
An invader pops up. I know he sees me; he levels his gun at me.
Fuck. I reach for the didgeridoo, but I’m pretty sure I’m toast.
A suit of armor robotically thunders across the floor. The arms swing crazily. I suck in my breath. I had no idea the suit of armor was haunted, but it’s lurching across the floor like a bad prop in a movie, right toward us. The guy with the gun lets loose a string of obscenities, but fear reverberates in his voice.
I yelp and dive behind the counter. The gargoyle launches itself at the mobster.
The spark of a bullet glances off the armor. Another sizzle of a bullet lands squarely in its chest. I dimly realize that the suit of armor is shielding me.
A heavy form dives over the counter, tackling me. It’s Carl. The suit of armor and the mannequin inside it slump against the counter.
“Carl! What the fuck?”
“Nice trick, huh?” He pantomimes operating the suit of armor like a puppet on a string. His ring glistening on his pinky finger, and it clicks for me.
“That was you?”
“Dancing with the armor. This invisibility thing rocks my world.”
“Thanks, man. You saved my bacon.”
A couple of men manage to haul their asses through the window, out onto the street. Sirens wail in the distance.
Flashlights flick on, piercing the darkness. I squint at my father at the mouth of the hallway, Pops behind him. Pops is ridiculous holding the samurai sword. The light picks out Bert, in his footie jammies, pummeling the shit out of a guy in black on the floor. His shoes are good leather. Mafia good. One of the gargoyles is chewing the shit out of his kneecap, then spits out a bone fragment like a toothpick.
The light sweeps around, catches three prone bodies, stacked on top of each other. Their ribs are peeled open like sardine cans. The Gnome is standing on top of them. He has a liver in each fist. Blood runs down his chin. He grins greedily. He leans toward one of the livers and takes a bite.
The Gnome loves liver. That’s his thing. He’ll do anything to get it.
I turn around and throw up. In this steaming heap of gore, I don’t think the mess matters.
“Dad!” Carl cries out, lurching away from me.
The flashlights focus on Sid, slumped against a wall. His hands are wrapped around his chest, and blood leaks between his fingers, slipping over them and dripping on the floor. Carl falls on his knees beside his father, shaking him. Sid’s face is a red pulp.
“Dad...”
But Sid doesn’t answer.
HOODIE DEMANDED BLOOD.
Staring at that puddle on the floor, that is my first, automatic thought.
The paramedics sweep in with their plastic bags and red tackle boxes. They fit an oxygen bag over Sid’s ruined face and thread IVs into his arms, cut away his shirt, and press huge wads of gauze to his chest to try to staunch the bleeding. Chattering in low tones, they shovel him onto a gurney and race out the door with him.
We want to follow, but the police arrive. A couple of uniforms take Carl away, and I hope they’re taking him to the hospital. The rest of us are corralled and separated.
There’s no questioning the Gnome or the gargoyles. When the red and blue lights shine through the windows, they shift back to their original forms. The gargoyles revert to stone creatures perching on the cases, twisted and washing blood from their bodies. The Gnome changes back to concrete, perched on the pile of bodies. Blood smears his face and hands, but the red light still glints in his eyes.
The police don’t know what to make of it. A couple of them even refuse to enter, focusing instead on threading yellow police line along the sidewalk. One guy barfs up his dinner all over the front steps. A detective takes me back to Pops’s office, shutting the door behind him. He’s a tall man with a goatee, dressed in a clean blue shirt and navy windbreaker. A plain gold wedding band glitters on his left hand.
“Come on and sit down, son.”
I sit in one of the chairs, trying to ignore the glass shards stuck to the ass of my jeans, and the detective sit opposite me. I hadn’t realized that my hands were shaking until now. I lace them together to hide it.
“Would you like some water?” He offers me a bottled water.
“Yes, please.” The water feels jarringly cold against the back of my throat.
“My name’s Detective Ryan.” He rubs his forehead. “It’s a real mess out there.”
“Yeah.” I wonder how much carnage this guy has seen. He seems awfully calm. Maybe he works homicide and sees chewed-up livers all the time.
“I’d like to talk to you about what happened out there.”
I take another swig of the water to stall for time. I know he can’t question me without a lawyer, or at least a parent present. Beyond the door, my dad is screaming about how he wants one.
“I’m just trying to figure out what happened,” he says. “We can talk off the record, if you want. You’re not a suspect in any of this.”
I stare at him, weighing whether or not to trust him.
Ryan pulls his wallet out of his back pocket. I see family pictures as he digs through it. There’s a picture of a wife and a teenage boy and a college-aged girl. He catches me looking, turns the wallet around and hands it to me.
/> “That’s my wife, Marcella. And my kids, Jennifer and Matt. Matt’s about your age.”
I grasp the wallet, let my guard down for a moment to flash on the photo. I see glimpses of Christmases full of shrieks and the shag carpet in the living room covered in wrapping paper. There’s an image of Ryan throwing a football with his son in a grassy backyard. I flash on the wife and the daughter setting the table for a barbecue, with Ryan standing at the grill, cooking hot dogs. A big yellow lab romps in the background, chasing a Frisbee the son is throwing.
I hand the wallet back, swallowing a pang of jealousy. But maybe I can trust him. As much as I can trust anyone in his position. “Okay,” I say.
Ryan takes a business card out of his wallet and hands it to me. “That’s my cellphone number. You can call me anytime, okay?”
I hold the card in my hands. His gaze focuses on the skin beneath my torn shirt, and my cheeks flush. I know what this is. He thinks I’m an abused kid. Shit. I nod and tuck the card into my pocket.
“What happened to your ribs?”
“Things got sort of crazy out there.” I gesture to the shop floor with my chin.
“I’ve seen a lot of bruises in my time. Those aren’t new. Fresh, maybe. Less than twenty-four hours. They’re blue. And given the Superman Band-Aid, I’m pretty sure those didn’t come from the fight out there.”
I stare down at the floor. “I got into a fight after school.”
“Who with?”
“Bunch of guys. I was walking down the street. They took my MP3 player.”
He knows I’m lying. His gaze bores through my eyes to the back of my head. He leans forward, pressing his elbows on his knees, and braces his head on his hands.
I don’t know why I’m protecting my father. I glance right and left. Why am I? “I took a swing at my dad,” I amend. “My dad took a swing back at me. So...you wanna talk about the break in?”
“I’m more interested in what’s going on with you and your father.”
I frown. “I’m not an abused kid. Really.”
“I’m not making any judgments here. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
I look him in the eye. I’m going to spend the rest of the evening lying to him, but I want to give him a little grain of truth. “I’m okay.”
Ryan frowns, looks down at his hands. “What happened out there?”
I tell him my side of the story, omitting the gargoyles and the gnome. I have no idea what the police are going to think of the livers and the broken ribs. But my hands are literally clean.
“Do you know why these guys were here?”
I shake my head. “No. I’ve never seen them before.” That’s a half-truth. I’ve never seen these guys before, but I know who they are and who sent them. “I’m guessing they want money. People come by the night window, trying to get money every once in a while.”
“These guys weren’t after money. They have plenty of it. They’re Mob guys.”
I swallow. Hopefully, he takes this as shock. But how long will it be until they connect the dots to the killing in the parking garage? I wonder if the Mob gave the surveillance tape to the police, or if they sat on it. My hands sweat. Ryan already has to know about the arson next door.
“That doesn’t sound good,” I say.
“This is what I think,” Ryan says quietly. “I think your dad is mixed up in something bad. Really bad. I don’t know what it is. But I want to make sure you and your cousin Carl are safe.”
I almost snort at that. There isn’t anything that the police can do to keep us safe. Not from my father. Not from the Mob. And certainly not from Hoodie.
I keep my mouth shut as I stare at Ryan. I have no idea what he’s going to do next. Is he going to call Children’s Services, get us parked in a foster home? I rub the sweat from my hands on my pants. That could be worse. Much worse. I know that there are people out there much worse than my father. And there’s no safer place on earth for us than the shop, guarded as it is by gargoyles, gnomes, and Bert.
Ryan rubs his stubble. Was he on duty when this went down or was he was called out of bed in the middle of the night? I can tell he presses his shirts—his sleeves have knife-edge creases in them. “I’m going to level with you. At your ages, it would be really difficult for me to get the two of you placed in a foster home.”
I nod. “Yeah. Most people want little babies.” Babies are cute. Babies don’t remember anything. And I’m about a month away from being eighteen.
“Right. And the backlog for the social workers in this town is huge. I’d have better luck getting you boys emancipated as adults.”
My ears perk up at that.
“That’s something we can talk about. If it’s possible. But that’s not for tonight. What I’m gonna do is confine all of you to house arrest.”
“We’re under arrest?” I squeak.
He puts his hands down in a placating gesture. “Don’t freak out. This is mostly a formality. It gives me an excuse to post police guards outside and continue collecting evidence from the scene.”
I squint at him, not sure if this is good or bad. “I want to see my uncle.”
“And I can give you a police escort for that. But nobody leaves this place without a uniform. Nobody goes in or out. And I know everything that goes on in here. Understand?”
I nod mutely.
But he would never understand everything that went on in here. It would blow his green-grass, good-guy, weenie-flipping mind.
CHAPTER 22
It’s really hard to believe what adults say. I don’t know if they mean to lie as much as they do, at least about stuff that matters. Mostly, I don’t trust them.
But I trust Bert. Maybe because he’s not an adult. Not really. Maybe because he’s so old, he’s left all that bullshit behind a long time ago. Or maybe it’s that he’s not human, and doesn’t play the kinds of games we do.
And yes, I know I feel that way about a demon. I don’t know if that says much about the quality of people I’m around. But it’s the truth.
My father and Pops try to comfort Carl. Well, Pops does. Pops makes Carl some toast and cereal and ineffectually pats his back, though he’s curled up in a ball on the couch. I can’t tell if Carl’s hiding his face or sleeping. He said they let him see his dad at the hospital, but only for a moment. He came out of surgery with a bunch of bandages on his chest and a patch over one eye. He didn’t wake up while Carl was there.
My father...my father is preparing for the apocalypse. The bottom floor is cordoned off by the police, and I gather the weapons have been taken. My dad’s roaring on the phone to his lawyer.
But he’s scared. I can see it in the way he runs his hand over his brow into his receding hairline. No idea how he’s avoided getting arrested so far. Maybe because Carl and I are technically children and we need someone to look after us. Maybe he used some of the magic from the vault. I suspect Pops has paid somebody off. I don’t know if his being in the relative freedom of the house is a temporary or permanent thing. I’m sort of afraid to ask.
Instead, I turn to Bert. He’s pacing the hallway, tail lashing, eating licorice. The bag crinkles in his grasp, and he gnaws at the candy like it’s the legs of some prehistoric spider he’s taken down in a fight.
“Bert,” I fumble, “Is there a hell?”
He stops pacing, and his tail swishes. He looks sidelong at me. He lowers his voice so that the guys in the living room can’t hear. “What brought that on?”
I walk to the end of the hallway, stare out the window into the alley. The lights in the girls’ rooms are out. Probably a good thing. It’s only an hour or so before dawn. Somebody should be getting some sleep.
I shrug. “I dunno. Just wondering...and please tell me the truth. No glib answers.”
“No ‘Hell is other people’?”
“No.” I don’t want to have to command him to tell me the truth. I won’t.
Bert gestures to my door. I open it and usher him inside. Bert sits
on the edge of my unmade bed. I park my butt beside him. He offers me a piece of licorice.
“Yeah,” he says. “There’s a hell. It’s not really what most people think of when they think of hell, though.”
“No pointy-tailed demons stirring lava soup?”
“Eh. Not really. I mean...” His tail snakes up, and he examines it. “I guess it’s pointy. But hell is...a force of nature.”
“A force of nature?” I struggle to understand. “Like...hurricanes and earthquakes and gravity?”
“Kind of. There’s good and evil, as you well know. Most people want to believe that all the bad shit that happens in the world happens as punishment, as a result of stuff they’ve done or whatever. That it’s all in the hands of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good guy in a white robe who’s sitting back watching a clock he built run down to the end of the world. When shitty things happen that they can’t understand, like when kids starve in Africa, they attribute it to some cosmic reason that only the guy in the robe knows, and try not to think about it.”
“There’s no God?” I’m not sure I’m ready to know that. But I asked about the reverse of the equation, the other side of the scales. I guess I want the full answer.
“Not that I’ve ever seen, no. What I do know is that there’s good and evil.” Bert gnaws on a piece of licorice. “The secret is that neither of them is more powerful than the other.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. There were some guys called Zoroastrians many centuries ago who got it pretty close to right. That evil and good are inseparable, locked in mortal combat. That’s the balance of the universe. Dark and light. It goes by different names, depending on the time. But that shit’s been around since the world was made.”
“And hell?” I haven’t forgotten my original question.
“Home sweet home.” Bert twirls the licorice. “It’s not a place in the center of the earth. You ever seen any stuff on television about quantum physics?”
“Um. Strings? Subatomic particles.” I dimly recall seeing some stuff one night on the Discovery Channel when I couldn’t sleep, narrated by a man with a very soothing, hypnotic voice.