“I wonder which group you were with?”
“The Madonna and I had parted ways many years before that, I’m afraid.”
I look around the room and spot Brigitte sitting at a table with a group of network executives decked out in designer faux-military gear and safari vests like they’re running off to a Brentwood Red Dawn key party. But like a few million others, they’re just headed out of town with the family jewels sewn into the lining of their bulletproof trench coats. Brigitte laughs as the gray-haired alpha wolf exec lays some of his survival gear on the table. Lengths of paracord. Sapper gloves. A multicaliber pistol. Condoms in Bubble Wrap. A multitool with more moving parts than a Stealth bomber. Watching her smile, I wonder if Brigitte is pulling out of her depression or if she’s just an actress playing at being all right.
“There were suicides and riots. Fury and ecstatic joy, and all for the same reason. The world would end or be transformed, and unlike now, in this age of science and desperate rationality, there was nothing we could do about it. So each of us did what made sense. Drink. Pray. Stay with loved ones or sail off to the ends of the earth.”
“And here you are.”
“And here I am. Alive and not quite yet mad.”
He finishes his drink and holds up the empty glass for another.
“The point is that I believe we will survive. Or enough of us will to make the world worth fighting for.”
“It better be. I’m not kickboxing monsters so the Vigil and Homeland Security can turn L.A. into one big It’s a Small World ride.”
One of the Luderes gives a little shriek. She’s been stung by one of the scorpions. The shrieker gives the room a little wave.
“Sorry. Everyone’s fine. Carry on.”
She and her friend crack up.
I turn back to Vidocq, but there’s someone in the way. One of the Goth boys from the table in the back has joined us. He’s dressed in a long high-collared coat and has wild Robert Smith hair. He looks vaguely like a mad scientist disguised as a priest. There’s something funny about his eyes. I glance over at his friends. They look as surprised as I am.
“No autographs today, kid,” I say. “I’m with friends.”
The kid takes a step. Stumbles and slams into the bar. I have to grab his arm to keep him from falling over.
He says, “It’s not going to stop. No matter what you do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s my message to you. It’s never going to stop.”
I know what’s wrong with his eyes. He’s possessed. In Hell there’s a key. If you know how to use it, and not many down there do, you can temporarily take possession of a body up here. Someone is riding this kid like he’s a carousel pony.
“He isn’t Death. Or God or the Devil. He is the Hand. Cut one off and another takes his place. He is many-bodied. Many-handed. A hand for each soul on Earth.”
I slap the kid. Shake him. His eyes stay vacant and dead.
“Who are you? Who gave you the message?”
“Come out and see,” he says.
Vidocq puts a hand on my arm.
“Don’t you dare go anywhere with this boy. He is dangerous.”
“I know. But if there’s something out there I can’t stay here.”
“Don’t be stupid,” says Carlos. “Let me call the cops. This is why I pay the fuckers.”
I nod.
“Maybe calling them isn’t a bad idea.”
I turn to Vidocq.
“Keep everyone else inside.”
The kid is still holding on to me.
“Let’s go,” I say.
I get up and the kid lets go of me, leading the way outside. I put my hand under the coat and slip out my na’at.
We go out into the rain. Smokers huddle under the awning. A few of the regulars nod and wave. I don’t wave back.
The kid walks all the way to the curb. I stay a couple of steps behind him. We stand there in the rain like a couple of assholes. He steps into the street between two cars, looking around like he’s waiting for a cab.
“You saw a golden woman in the water. There,” he says, pointing west to the Pacific.
“I remember.”
When Kill City collapsed into the ocean a few weeks ago, I was in it. Something that looked like a woman covered in gold swam up from the wreckage and tried to pull me down.
“She served the Hand. She was beautiful.”
“Except for the part where half her face was missing.”
He nods. His long hair is plastered to his head, covering one eye.
“She was incomplete. That won’t happen again.”
“You couldn’t tell me this inside, where it’s dry?”
He holds his hands out wide.
“You don’t understand what’s happening and even if you did you can’t stop it. The old ones are coming. They will bless us with annihilation.”
A delivery truck speeds up the street. It swerves toward the curb. Hits the cars the kid is standing between. The impact drives both cars up onto the sidewalk. The kid is still between them, but now he’s in two pieces. A girl screams and keeps on screaming.
The kid’s friends must have followed us outside. A couple of the other Goth kids run to the curb like maybe they can put their friend back together again. I climb over the trunk of one of the wrecked cars. Go to the truck and pull the driver-side door open. The driver half falls out, held in place by his seat belt. His head is pulped from smashing into the windshield. I test his seat belt. It’s locked right across his body. It doesn’t make sense that he could have hit the inside of the windshield. Unless someone else belted him in after his head was in pieces and he was dead. I step up onto the running board to check out his body. His right arm is gone. Cut off neatly at the shoulder. Another Angra groupie? I can see why he’d sacrifice himself, but why take out the kid? No way he was looking to die.
I start back into the bar. The kid’s phone rings. He had it in his hand the whole time.
“Don’t touch it,” I say.
I kneel down and pry it from his hand. One of the boys vomits into the street. I go back inside the bar and head straight for the men’s room, where it’s quieter. No one is inside. I shove a trash can under the doorknob so no one can get in. Where the number of the caller should be displayed it says blocked. I thumb the phone on.
“He’s right, you know. You can’t stop it.”
There’s static on the line, but I know the voice. This isn’t the first time he’s crank-called me from Hell.
“Fuck you, Merihim.”
Merihim is head of the Hell’s one official church. But it was all a ruse. He’s also in a Hellion Angra cult. A lot of the fallen angels want the old gods back so that they’ll destroy the universe, hoping it will relieve them of the torments of Hell. It’s the biggest suicide pact in the history of creation.
“Try again.