Kill the Dead

I COME OUT in the old apartment. Vidocq and Allegra are studying a pile of books.

“Jimmy, are you all right?” asks Vidocq. “Allegra told me about what happened with the revenants.”

“I’m fine. Everything is fine. This is for both of you, but you in particular.”

I hand Allegra the flask.

“You want to be a healer? Here’s your chance to be a famous one. Follow the instructions on the paper and you’ll be the only person alive who can cure a Drifter’s bite.”

Her eyes widen.

“What’s in here? Where did you get it?”

“I’ve gotta go. We’ll have lunch after the apocalypse. Have your people call my people.”

I go back out the way I came in.

I COME OUT on the corner in front of the building just to see what it’s like in the street. It’s not pretty.

I can see a couple dozen Drifters from where I’m standing to the next corner. Most are just doing the dead-guy shuffle, but a couple of dumb-ass civilians are belly-crawling behind parked cars. What is it with regular people? They don’t seem to get the idea that extremely bad things can happen to them until they’re on fire at the bottom of a ditch or handcuffed in the back of a cop van on their way to central lockup and their first night as a prison bride to a three-hundred-pound crack dealer.

Plus, they don’t know how to do anything. These geniuses think they can scuttle along like crabs and not get spotted. A good belly crawl is slow and steady, moving like a tree sloth. Why? Because you’re simultaneously moving and fucking hiding from the fucking enemy. Zeds might have kitty litter for brains, but I’ve seen them in action, and like all predators, they have a good sense of smell and their eyes pick up motion before they see anything else. The moron twins doing the dog paddle from the VW Bug to the Camry are sending out every prey signal in the book. Just ask the Lacuna who’s spotted them and is scrambling over the Camry’s hood.

Whoever owns the car keeps it in good shape. It must be waxed because the Lacuna is slip-sliding back and forth and lands right on his head between the cars. Even if he’s clumsy, he’s fast enough to run down a couple of panicky idiots.

When the civilians stand, the Lacuna finds his footing, which alerts the other Drifters, who move in on them. I pull the Smith & Wesson and turn the Lacuna’s head into a pretty pink-and-bone-colored cloud, which gets everyone’s attention.

“Run home, assholes. And don’t go out again or I’ll feed you to these shit sacks myself.”

I don’t have to tell them twice.

At this point, I could just use Eleanor’s buckle to get the Drifters to lie down, crack each other’s skulls, or square-dance. But I don’t. I put away the gun, get out the na’at, and let them come at me.

I’m not too subtle, but I’m not too greedy either. I only gut a few of them. The angel inside me is getting impatient, but Stark loves the sound of their spines snapping and watching them fold in half when there’s nothing left to support their upper bodies. Seeing a Drifter come at you with just its legs working, dragging everything from the waist up on the ground like a bag of dirty laundry, is a sight I recommend to anyone who gets the chance to see it.

But the angel finally wins the argument and I grab the buckle and tell the Drifters, “Sit,” and they do. “Good doggies. Now wait there until someone comes along to burn you like Yule logs.”

I step through a shadow under a streetlamp and come out by the hospital that’s the entrance to Cabal’s place. It’s dark enough that I can only make out the hospital’s outline with the angel’s vision. The darkness extends for blocks in all directions. A blackout. That means no decent shadows to get inside. No problem. This place has glass doors, too.

The locks are strong, but the doors are the usual crap aluminum that most institutional places use. One good kick and they swing open like the saloon doors in My Darling Clementine.

I’m halfway to the morgue when my cell rings. It’s Kasabian.

“Druj Ammun.”

“Gesundheit. You might want to put the snakes down. You’re speaking in tongues.”

“Actually, I am. Druj Ammun is from the same old angelic language I saw on your belt buckle. It means ‘Sleepless Aegis.’ It’s a seal of protection that was on the gates of Heaven.”

I duck and go around TV cameras and microphone booms the crew left in the hall.

“Protection from what?”

“Who else? Lucifer and the fallen frat boys. God put it there to keep them from sneaking back into Heaven. It mind-fucks any fallen that get near it. Turns them into Muppets.”

“You dug all this out of the Codex?”

“Well, Kinski helped. He pretty much knew what it was when I showed him the drawing. I found the rest after.”

“So what’s the Druj Ammun doing here?”

“You know how the Kissi like a little chaos with their morning coffee? The story is that they stole it off the gates and dropped it on earth just to see what would happen.”

“Okay. That still doesn’t explain how Eleanor got it or why it affects Drifters.”

“I don’t know about Eleanor, but the zed thing makes perfect sense. Remember the story that the first zombies were civilians who’d been attacked by the fallen angel that landed on earth? It must be true. Zeds were made by that dying angel’s blood and saliva. They have a direct blood link to Hellions, so the Druj affects them the same way it affects any of Heaven’s rejects.”

I make it to the morgue, but don’t go in since I might lose the phone signal.

“Nice work. It’s good to know what this thing is. I’d hate to end up gnawed to death because the batteries ran out.”

“Hey, man. I don’t know if you’re zeroing in on the big picture. Not only can you control those coffin jockeys from skull-fucking tourists, but the Druj is kryptonite to Hellions. That means you can stroll into Hell, make one of Lucifer’s generals tell you where Mason is, go right up to the son of a bitch, and put a bullet through his head and no one is going to stop you.”

I get out the gun, push open the morgue door with my foot, and take a look around. I don’t want any surprises when I step inside. The room is empty.

“Speaking of strolling into Hell, have you talked to Lucifer?”

“No. He’s not answering his phone. I’ve left messages, but the way things are, I don’t even know if my calls are getting through.”

“Okay. Thanks for the spook story. I’ll swing by the Chateau Marmont when I’m done making Cabal cry.”

I hang up and push open the wall to Uncle Cabal’s Haunted Mansion ride.

I don’t get more than a few steps inside the front room when my heart is broken. I’m not going to make Cabal cry. Someone has beaten me to it.

Cabal’s body is scattered in about fifty pieces around the table where Brigitte and I first talked to him. If Drifters didn’t do it, then it was someone doing an A-plus impression. I follow a trail of bones and splintered furniture through the curtain and into the room where Cabal’s party guests had been asleep the last time I was here.

It’s the same story. Shredded bodies spread across the floor and furniture and splattered up the walls. There’s one Drifter left. A female at the back of the room. She’s hunched over the body of a naked boy. His chest is cracked open and someone has been gnawing on his exposed ribs. The female has the boy’s heart in her hands and she’s working on it hard, trying to bite through the tough muscle. A couple of her teeth are embedded in the shiny meat. It’s a good few seconds before she sees me and gets up to attack. That’s when I see her face. It’s Cosima. I hoodoo her back against the far wall and pull out her spine fast with the na’at. Even though I never really knew Cosima, ripping apart someone whose face you recognize isn’t as much fun as gutting a stranger. Go figure.

Bottles are scattered around the furniture and bodies. I rescue an unopened bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the depths of a beanbag chair and a bottle of wine from a moldering stack of Italian Vogues. Go back to the room where Cabal lies in peace. He was nice enough to die on the other side of the room and not get blood or meat all over my chair.

Stark and not-Stark are going at it inside my skull. Jack Daniel’s versus no-name wine. Stark is too weak. Wine wins. I slice off the top of the bottle with the black blade and drink a toast to my dead host.

“You were a prick and a crook, but no one deserves to go out the way you went. I hope it was over quick and that you tasted like ass all the way down. Amen.”

So much for suspect number one. Under other circumstances, I might think Cabal ending up a Hot Pocket was just a case of bad juju or karma coming home to roost, but he was too good a magician to let some dumb Drifters wander in here. And he just came into a load of money, which sounds like he’d done some iffy magic for someone. I’m sure he’s the one who sold the glamour to Rainier, which makes him suspect number one in Cabal’s death.

But Cabal isn’t the only Sub Rosa who’s been fucked by Drifters. Someone let loose a roomful of eaters on Enoch Springheel. The Vigil sent two after me. I bet whoever sicced them on Cabal and Springheel rented Aelita my pair.

Then there’s poor Titus. The guy never hurt anyone. The worst thing Titus ever did was pad his hours when his client had money. And he was small-time. He never had a big-time or dangerous case in his life. He was just doing a back-of-the-milk-carton job. He must have seen something he wasn’t supposed to. What was it? Maybe whoever has the local zombie franchise? And now every flavor of Drifter is running—well, stumbling—down every street in the city. Was that the plan all along or is someone making a bigger mess to cover up the mess that Titus found?

Why would anyone bother to kill a loser like Enoch Springheel? And—sorry, Cabal—take out another loser like Cabal? Cabal might mix a good glamour cocktail, but he can’t be the only Sub Rosa in town who could do that. Vidocq could do it in his sleep. There have to be others as good as Cabal and more reliable. So, the glamour might have been only half the reason the buyer came to Cabal.

What did Cabal Ash and Enoch Springheel have in common? Nothing except that they were the heads of two important Sub Rosa families. But who fucking cares about that? No wonder Sherlock Holmes did all that coke. Math is hard.

I get out my cell and call Kasabian.

“Listen, is there anything online or in the Codex about old Sub Rosa families?”

“Yeah. What do you need?”

“Spencer Church. Are the Churches a big deal? In the history of L.A.?”

“Wait.”

The line goes quiet. I can hear typing and low voices.

“Yeah. The Churches were one of the first four families in the area.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Connections. Cabal is dead. So’s Springheel. Church went missing and then turned up dead and hungry at Bamboo House. What do they have in common? They’re all from heavyweight households. Someone is using Drifters to go after all the original families.”

“Why?”

“A grudge? Social climbing? I don’t know how those people think. But if I’m right, it means that the Geistwalds could be next. Hell, even without Drifters they’re in trouble. It looks like their son is an impostor. A con man. He might be the one behind this whole ballistic cluster fuck.”

“You know, sometimes I’m glad I never leave this room.”

“I’m going to stop by the Chateau before heading over to the Geistwalds’.”

“Don’t get eaten, man. Your friends are nice, but they’ve never even heard of Once Upon a Time in the West or Le Samourai.”

“I make no promises.”

I GO OUT through the broken front doors. There are no shadows and no decent wheels to steal, so I head back toward the city lights on foot. How do regular people ever get anywhere?

I almost do a header into an open manhole in front of the hospital. Another manhole is open farther up the street. And another beyond that. I want to get mad at the teenybopper clever kids who would do something like that, but I can’t because it’s exactly the kind of asshole move I would have found hilarious when I was fifteen.

The empty streets are getting crowded ahead, but no one is going anywhere. Great. A Drifter block party. They’re crawling up out of the sewers, but there’s nothing to eat in this part of town but me and I’m off the menu. I broadcast a general “Fuck Off” message through the Druj Emergency Broadcast System. That doesn’t leave the shamblers much to do but shamble. They look like little kids at their first dance class, turning in vague circles, swaying back and forth, and bumping into each other. If it wasn’t for the murder, cannibalism, and trapped, tormented souls in their rotting carcasses, they’d be almost cute.

I could go around the Drifters, but even the angel part of me is fresh out of reasonable behavior where they’re concerned. I follow the white line down the middle of the street, shoving Drifters out of the way, knocking over the slow ones and walking over them.

More open manholes and more Drifters crawling out.

Being a salaryman bad guy must really suck. Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom get to come up with the crazy schemes, but then some poor schmuck has to actually corral the giant radioactive ants or put exactly the right amount of poison in exactly the right water treatment plants at exactly the right time. And an entry-level bad guy probably doesn’t even have a helicopter. He has to drive the poison from treatment plant to treatment plant on city streets in his second-hand Civic, hoping there isn’t a flock of ducklings or a broken-down minivan blocking traffic.

Case in point is the loser up ahead prying up another damn manhole with a crowbar. Does he have gloves? Is he wearing a lower-back brace like warehouse workers use? Are there OSHA rules for supervillain henchmen?

“Lift with your legs, not your back. Didn’t Dr. No teach you anything?”

He looks up and starts running. Right into a wall of wandering Drifters. I catch up in about two seconds. He swings the crowbar a couple of times. I catch it on the third swing, tear it out of his hands, and jam it through the skull of the nearest zed. Yeah, it’s a little showy, but a move like that can save you from having to waste time making a lot of boring threats.

He went down on his ass when I snatched the crowbar, so I grab his jacket and haul him to his feet. It takes me a minute to figure out what exactly I’m looking at. There’s a face superimposed over another face, like two ghost faces stacked on top of each other. The angel’s eyes take over and separate his real face from the glamour. I recognize one immediately. The other takes a few more seconds. I smile, but the Thug Number Six doesn’t smile back.

“Nice night, fake Rainier. How’s it hanging?”

He doesn’t say anything. His hands fumble at his waist. He has another weapon. I let him look for it.

“Is this how you got the Drifters into Cabal’s place or did you walk them in yourself? I know you were in there because he put on that glamour you’re wearing right now. I couldn’t see it back at the party, but now I can see both of your faces.”

He finally pulls his backup weapon. A cute little Sig Sauer P232. It’s a compact, toylike pistol that will blow substantial holes in you at close range. I let him get it out of his belt, but catch his arm as he’s swinging it up to shoot. Fake Rainier is a big bundle of twitchy fear, so when I grab him, the gun goes off and blows a hole in his foot. He screams and I let him fall. I take the Sig and put it in my pocket.

I look around and spot a Drifter bouncing off a chain-link fence across the street. He looks brand-new, like he was bitten and turned tonight. I go over and rip off his shirt and take it back to Rainier.

He’s on the ground rocking back and forth, whimpering and clutching his foot in both hands.

“Relax. You’ve got another foot.”

He says, “Fuck you,” through gritted teeth.

“You might want to watch your tone with the man who can bandage you or let you bleed to death.”

“Get away from me. Do you know who my family is?”

“Yeah, and the Geistwalds aren’t your real family, are they, Aki?”

He blinks at me. His hands open and close around his bleeding foot. I tear the Drifter’s shirt into strips and wrap them around the wound.

“I remember you at Bamboo House of Dolls. You came over to the bar like a snotty little prince and ordered me to do my portaling trick. When I told you to go away and you wouldn’t, there was almost a scene. But it was all an act, wasn’t it, Aki? Your mom was there hoping to find someone who could track down her lost boy. Someone told you she was going to be there. You weren’t in the bar to impress your friends or get under my skin. You were testing your glamour. You knew if you could walk by your own mother without her recognizing you, you were home free. No one would ever see anything but Rainier Geistwald.”

“Keep talking, asshole. You’re dead.”

I pull the bandage tight and make him wince.

“If Cabal did such a good job with the glamour, why did you have to kill him?”

“Have you smelled the guy? Besides, I never killed anyone.”

“Right. You just opened the door and let your friends do the dirty work. I bet you didn’t even go inside to watch the fun. You stayed by the door until the screaming stopped and then shooed your friends back out. One thing. I know why Drifters don’t eat me, but why don’t they eat you?”

The kid shrugs. Hits me with a very professional sneer. I bet he practices in a mirror.

“Maybe I was good in Sunday school and Jesus loves me.”

“Or someone threw a protection spell your way.”

He shrugs.

“There’s so much going on right now, who can remember?”

I flick his bleeding foot with my finger.

“You still haven’t told me why you killed Cabal. Mind if I take a guess? Cabal and Cosima had hit some hard times, so when he found a ripe young rube like you on his doorstep asking for illegal hoodoo, he had to say yes. Not for the fee, but so he could blackmail you later. Isn’t that what happened? He threatened to let slip that you weren’t really Rainier?”

Aki shakes his head.

“You have no goddamn idea what’s going on.”

“I know you’re impersonating the Geistwalds’ son and that someone is gunning for the old families. I have to give it to you. Hiding with an old family while you take out the others is pretty slick. You already got Cabal, the Springheels, and Spencer Church’s family. Probably others I don’t even know about. Tell me, when do the Geistwalds get it?”

“Gee, I don’t know. You’re the one with experience killing Geistwalds. You tell me.”

I look at him and keep looking until he turns away.

“You’re not a Geistwald, so don’t give me any family outrage over Eleanor. And she was a vampire. She was already dead when I got to her.”

“But she was still walking and talking. That’s an okay kind of dead. Not the best because she needed blood to keep going, but it’s better than nothing. And you had to take that away from her. Were you jealous that for all your supposed powers, you’re still going to die like all those anonymous sheep back in town? You should have been smart and let Eleanor bite you. Or do you have something against living forever?”

Interesting question. I hadn’t thought about Eleanor’s death beyond it being one more thing I regretted. But Aki has a good point.

“I don’t have anything against immortality, but I’m not begging for it either. Are you? Is that what this is about? You think you found some way around death? How? As one of these things? Jesus, kid, I hope your brilliant idea isn’t to somehow get yourself turned into a Savant.”

“You don’t understand one damned thing that’s going on.”

The angel whispers something in my ear.

“Are you sure, Aki? If you’re not going to night school to become a Drifter, what was Eleanor doing with the Druj Ammun? Where did she get it? From you?”

“How do you even know about that?”

Aki thrashes around. Almost grabs me before falling back down.

He says, “You’re dead. You are so fucking dead. And not like Eleanor. You’ll be the kind where your soul is trapped in your rotting flesh while the city sucks it dry. L.A. belongs to the Death Born. It always has and it always will.”

That’s interesting.

“Who are the Death Born, Aki? Not you. You’re just a suburban brat. You learned your magic from watching Bewitched. Who are the Death Born?”

“Your ass is grass, man. I cannot believe how fucking dead you are.”

The angel speaks again and things fall into place.

“How’s Mutti doing? Not your birth mom. Your fun mom. Koralin. Is she all right? I hope she’s somewhere safe and sound.”

He blinks, slowly.

“Eleanor wanted me to apologize to her mom for her. To tell her that Eleanor was sorry and she only took the Druj to scare her mom the way Mom scared her and Daddy. Is what Eleanor said right? Did Mutti own the Druj? Was she controlling the Drifters? Is she the one behind this? What does she want? Does she want to join the Death Born, too?”

Aki looks away. He’s talked too much and he knows it.

I bark a couple of Hellion words. A Drifter behind Aki bursts into flame. I say the word again and another zed goes up. I tell all the dead in the neighborhood to close in on us. I start burning them all. Aki and I are in the middle of a walking bonfire.

I slap the kid and hold him down on the pavement as the temperature rises.

“She knows you’re not Rainier, doesn’t she? What is she up to? What does she want? Tell me!”

Aki’s head swivels back and forth and he’s letting out a kind of high-pitched moan that hurts my ears.

I haul him to his feet and turn him around so he has to look at burning Drifters closing in around us. Thirty more seconds and it’s officially un-fucking-comfortable in the circle. The air ripples and greasy corpse smoke hurts every time I suck in a breath. The kid goes limp in my arms and starts screaming.

“It’s Mother. Mother runs everything. Who else? Father is useless. Hiding and weeping for poor dead Eleanor. Boo-hoo.”

I turn Aki around so I can look at him. His crazy fear has turned just plain crazy. He snarls when he talks.

“We’ll own this place soon and the rest of you are going to be gone or you’re going to be food.”

I could let Aki go and turn the Drifters back, but I don’t. I hold him and let them close in. My skin turns red and starts to blister. So does Aki’s. Stark likes the pain. The angel doesn’t care.

Aki starts doing the panic moan again, so I drop him and shout another Hellion word. The Drifters fall to the ground, sizzle, and ash out. Gray flakes still red-hot at the edges float away like dirty snow.

I nudge Aki with my foot.

“You have a car around here?”

“A block up.”

“Get up. I’m taking you someplace safe and then we’re going to invite Mommy over for tea.”

“She knows who you are. She’s not afraid of you, you know.”

“Not yet. But if she knows I have her little boy, she’ll come over. And if she doesn’t, I’ll kill you and find her myself. Where’s your car?”

He points behind us.

“It’s the silver Beamer.”

“Give me the keys.”

He does. I pick him up and toss him over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

The BMW is a silver four-door coupe. I open the rear driver’s door and toss Aki in so he can straighten out his leg and bleed somewhere that’s not on me.

It feels funny to start a car with its own key. Blasphemous almost. Who would want to own something like a BMW? You’d have to take care of it like it’s a pet. The whole idea of owning things makes me queasy.

I adjust the mirrors and look back at Aki in case he has another pistol hidden under the seat. If he does, he’s not pulling it. He’s flat on his back, sweating and bone white.

“I don’t want to drive around in a puke-smelling car, so if you need me to stop, say so.”

“Okay,” he says. “Thanks.”

I turn the ignition and we head for the Chateau Marmont.

IT’S ONE LONG, wet shit storm from the hospital to the hotel. Drifters and civilians fill the streets. Civilians run and the slow-moving Drifters bring them down in groups, like hyenas. They grab people at gas stations and all-night markets, off buses, out of cars, and chase them off the roofs of nearby buildings.

The pack is the Drifters’ real weapon. A motorcycle cop in the intersection manages to get away from one group and runs straight into the arms of another. There are just so damned many of them. I have to drive on the sidewalk and over a few stop signs to get around all the abandoned cars. The Beamer is heavy enough that it makes a pretty good battering ram, so along the way I splatter as many Drifters as I can on the hood. Mostly I go for Lacunas, the vicious little pricks. They’re easy to pick out. Zeds lumber like windup toys, but Lacunas can run and climb and hunt specific people. And they’re intelligent enough to understand what’s happening when I crush their spines and skulls under my wheels. By the time I get to the Chateau Marmont, the front of the car is a slaughterhouse spin-art painting.

Aki moans and whines every time the car bumps into something.

“Aaaah! I’m losing a lot of blood back here.”

“If you were losing a lot of blood, you wouldn’t be able to talk, so feel free to bleed faster.”

I steer us into the hotel parking lot, minus a headlight and with a lot more dents in the hood and skull fragments in the radiator than when we started. Fuck me for having too good a time on the way over. I don’t spot the vans following us until I kill the engine and the vans are moving into position to block the only exit to the street.

“The cavalry is here. Want to give yourself up, kid?”

Aki pulls himself up into a sitting position using the passenger-side headrest. He looks outside through the windshield.

“Who’s that?”

“That’s a law enforcement combo pack. The Golden Vigil and Homeland Security.”

“Golden what?”

“God’s G-men. If you think I’m bad, see what happens when those feds and sky pilots get hold of you.”

“No way, man. No cops and no preachers.”

“At least we agree on that. Keep your head down and don’t make a sound.”

The doors slide open on the sides of the Vigil vans and they make a big show of moving their troops outside. There are a dozen true-blue men in black. None are holding guns, but all have the distinctive jacket bulge that says they’re packing. There will be more and heavier artillery in the vans.

I recognize the two guards on the gate from a few days back. I’d taken the Shut-Eye, Ray, on a roller-coaster tour of Downtown. Most of the others I recognize from when Wells tossed me out of his clubhouse and off the Vigil’s payroll. Even Marshal Julie is there, though she looks like she’d rather be on an ice floe wrestling polar bears.

Wells stands in front, hands behind his back, a corn-pone Napoleon.

“Hold it right where you are, Stark. Put your hands behind your head and move away from the vehicle.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“I sure as shit am, junior.”

“For what?”

“General assholery in the face of God and reason.”

“You know, just because you’re in love with that angel hiding in your van doesn’t mean you have to be her monkey on a chain.”

He shakes his head.

“You heard stories about Gitmo? We have black prisons over in the Arctic that make Gitmo look like the penthouse at the Bellagio.”

“Does that come with a continental breakfast?”

Aelita steps out of the van and into the green fluorescent glare of the parking lot. In the flat light, everyone looks like a corpse. Only Aelita looks alive. The jittery fluorescent light doesn’t seem to affect her like the rest of us. It sort of flows around her, leaving her looking more alive and human than anyone in the lot.

“Good evening.”

“Good nothing. Did you happen to notice what we just drove through? Why are you people here playing games with me when you should have your troops and firepower out there burning down those Drifters?”

“Los Angeles isn’t our concern anymore. These lost souls will be dealt with by God. Or not.”

She gives me a conspiratorial wink.

“My guess is not.”

“It’s every man for himself now? I must have missed that Commandment. Why did you send those Lacunas after me? They almost sliced a friend of mine.”

“Whoever the friend was, I’m sure they deserved it. And I didn’t send any golems after you. Marshal Wells was good enough to put a tracking device on you, but that’s all. Trust me, if I had sent something, it wouldn’t have been to frighten you.”

She’s telling the truth. I can’t read angels like civilians, but the angel inside me can and it isn’t picking up any lies. So, who would want me to stop what I’m doing? Cabal? Aki? His mother or someone working for her? Maybe. Maybe it’s Brigitte’s people wanting me to stay out of their business. Hell, Fiona and Tracy might have talked to some of the other zombie minders. They all have reasons for wanting me not to get too close to a Savant. Not that worrying about it really matters. Cabal is already dead. Aki, Koralin, or whoever else it might have been won’t get another chance to ambush me. Everything ends tonight. All debts paid. All accounts closed. Tonight is the end of someone’s world. If it’s mine, it’s going to be messy.

Wells turns to someone in his crew.

“Marshal Sola, arrest this man.”

Marshal Julie looks even more uncomfortable. But she reaches under her jacket and pulls out a set of handcuffs.

Aelita shakes her head.

“No. We’ve discussed this. We’re not doing that. Not with his type. He’s a walking heresy. An Abomination, and anywhere he stays or stands becomes corrupt, even prison. Kill him.”

Wells looks at her for a minute, then at me. He turns to his people and gives a small nod. Suddenly I’m looking down the barrels of an awful lot of guns.

“Did you forget what we talked about a few months ago over donuts? The dead man’s switch and the Mithras?”

She nods.

“Yes, if you die, the Mithras will be loosed and it will set fire to all creation. I remember. And I know you’re lying. You’re too attached to this world to let that happen.”

“You silly bitch, you’re going to kill everyone in L.A. because you’re too good to help them? How many Deadly Sins is that? Pride. Anger. Greed. Envy, too, maybe?”

Aelita turns away from me. I take a couple of steps toward her and a bullet rips into my right arm. It’s Ray, the Shut-Eye, getting back a little of his own. I look at him and he seems as surprised as anyone else that he fired. Without a verbal order, the other marshals are unsure if they should follow up.

Ray’s bullet is just a grazing shot. It ripped off a lot of skin near the deltoid. Surface shots can tear up a lot of nerves and nine times out of ten they hurt more than a killing shot. This one burns like a hot wire pressed against my arm from the shoulder to the wrist. I hate to admit it, but the pain catches me off guard. It comes quickly enough that I close my eyes reflexively when it hits. I don’t see Aelita turn to her people, but I hear her voice.

“You are the Golden Vigil. Holy Crusaders on a mission from Heaven. You have no reason or right to hesitate. Kill the Abomination.”

It’s her voice that hits me, not the threat. Something about the deep and beyond-time certainty of her tone. It’s like she’s shouting my death from the bottom of a well halfway across the galaxy and a billion miles deep. When she tells the marshals to kill me, she’s really giving the order to kill the world. She’s an angel. She’s seen stars and worlds come and go. We’re just mayflies living on this one. Maybe humans really are made in God’s image. That makes us harder to kill, but sweeter, too. Angels want revenge. Everything alive wants revenge, even if it’s simply for the affliction of existence. The sound of my death sentence and the death of everything I’ve ever known, cared about, or hated rattles and clangs in my skull, getting heavier every second as the weight of all the aeons it took to get from the Big Bang to my ears drops down on me. God went to all the trouble of creating the universe, the angels, the stars, and this world just to murder us. Alice and me and everyone else.

Even angels want revenge. Everything alive wants revenge.

The moment the thought crystallizes, Aelita wins. The solar winds and deadly vacuum freezing the empty space between the stars blows the last of Stark away. He falls into the dark. He doesn’t make a sound. He’s not surprised. He saw this moment coming. He fixes his eyes on me as he falls. That’s the last I see of him, the light reflected in his eyes as they go from white orbs to pinpoints to nothing. Then he’s gone and I’m alone.

Only the angel left in here. No humans allowed.

My eyes are still closed. The world has gone electric. I hear the rustle of fabric and the stretching of muscles and tendons as the marshals adjust their stances. Their heartbeats and breath go from fear to resignation. Ripples spread out like waves in a pond from their fingers as they increase the pressure on gun triggers. Metal shifts against lubricated metal. The muscles in their arms tighten. They’re already anticipating the explosions when the guns go off. The sound. Muzzle flash. Recoil. The pleasant reek of cordite.

I’m not angry or concerned. Time is slow and cold and it never stops. What’s going to happen will happen and nothing will stop it.

My arm burns and the heat throbs all the way down to the bone.

I hear a rattle of explosions as the marshals fire.

I’m not afraid. I see all this happening from the bottom of a well halfway across the galaxy and a billion miles deep.

The pain in my arm makes me double up. I’m burning alive.

When I open my eyes, the marshals’ bullets glide toward me in slow motion. I sweep my arm across them and my arm is made of fire. The bullets glow red, then blue, then white, and disappear like they’re made of steam. I swing my arm back and a dozen human faces gape at me. I look at my arm. It’s not burning, but it’s glowing red from the heat of the flaming Gladius in my hand. An angel’s weapon. Something Stark would never be capable of summoning, much less holding, but it’s my birthright.

The marshals don’t know what to do. They’re here for Stark, but Stark shouldn’t be able to manifest the sword. They don’t know that I’m not Stark anymore. I’d try to explain it to them, but they’re busy pulling triggers, filling the air with more slow-motion metal snowflakes. I brush them away like moths and keep moving.

I kill Ray first. He started the bullet party, so he deserves the first dance. His eyes open wide. He expects a high blow, that I’ll slice him from above, so I swing the fire blade under and up, taking off his legs. Before his torso hits the ground, I swing again and give him the downward stroke he was looking for. I take two more Vigil agents in the time it takes for a hummingbird to flap its wings. I cut each of them in half at the waist and let them collapse onto each other, the top half of each man trying to hold the other up so he won’t follow the other down. I catch the next marshal with a thrust into his gut. He’d already moved into fighting position while I was killing the first three, and when I stab him, his gun goes off by my ear. The ejected shell bounces off my temple. Before it hits the floor, I’ve pulled the blade up and out through his head. As I kill the others, each gets off one or two shots. In their confusion, most of their bullets hit each other. Ejected shells arc through the air and bounce off my cheeks and chest. The last few marshals all fire at once. The shots I can’t sidestep, I vaporize with the blade. When eleven are dead I move in to kill the last one, but when I raise the Gladius my arms stay up. She’s not like the others.

I stare at Marshal Julie for a moment and lower the burning sword to my side.

“You’re Sub Rosa,” I say.

She nods.

“We try to be like them. To have a few eyes everywhere, like them,” she says, inclining her head toward Wells and Aelita.

I look down at the gun in her hand. The steel barrel is black and cold. No trace of warmth there. She didn’t fire. When she sees that I’ve seen, she shakes her head.

“I wouldn’t hurt you. You’re one of us.”

“No. I’m not.”

That scares her, but it’s not what I intended.

“You should go now,” I tell her.

“No she shouldn’t.”

I turn and there’s Wells with a big .50 Desert Eagle pointed at my head. He gives me his Clint Eastwood stare. He’s scared to death, but disciplined enough that it doesn’t matter. He’d kill me without hesitation or regret if I let him.

He says, “If she’s a pixie spy, she can rot in prison alive and in Hell right next to you when she’s dead. You killed my people and she just stood there. Fuck both of you.”

I’m running at him with the Gladius at throat level, but Aelita is already moving to him and she’s closer. She’s as fast as I am, so while she’s a blur to others, to me she looks like a normal woman walking to a man and plucking a gun from his hand. She holds the pistol with the barrel up to indicate she isn’t going to shoot. I stop, but keep the Gladius high.

In real time, human time, Marshal Wells looks at his empty hand and starts. He turns, looking for his weapon.

Aelita shows him that she has it. He doesn’t say a word. His gaze is as puzzled as it is wounded.

“We’re done here,” she tells him.

“What?” shouts Wells.

She tosses the gun aside and points at me.

“He can manifest the Gladius. How is that possible? The answer is: it’s not. But there he is and there it is. This is a divine sign.”

“We can’t let him walk away. You said that with the others gone, stopping him was the most important thing.”

Aelita smiles. She goes to Wells, puts a hand on his cheek.

“Things have changed. Look at him. He has no purpose. He won’t survive what’s to come. Soon enough, he’ll be back in Hell, where he belongs. The other rogue angels were the dangerous ones and they’re being dealt with.”

I move with angelic speed and grab Wells. Hold the Gladius in front of his face.

“What about the other angels? What have you done?”

“This day has been a long time coming. I know that the marshal explained it all to you. I heard him tell you the story. The one set in Persia about the troubled man who went away and left his family behind. But his shadow remained and became head of the house and took care of them. I look at you, an Abomination with the Gladius, and I know for certain that our Father has truly abandoned us. But I am the shadow on the wall. I will become the Father and I will never leave my family behind. The troubled Father has lost his way and must be dealt with: mercifully, lovingly, but he must be dealt with.”

“Where are Kinski and Lucifer?”

“Alive as far as I know, but they’ll both be dead soon enough. One might already be. Who knows? Only one will die by my hand.”

I press the Gladius closer to Wells’s throat. The flame singes the hair on the side of his head. Instinctively he tries to move away, but I don’t let him.

“Which one are you going to kill?”

“Go to your master’s room and see for yourself.”

I toss Wells across the parking lot and charge Aelita. She manifests her sword, swings it easily, and meets my blade. The jolt throws me back onto the Beamer’s trunk, where I leave a Stark-size dent. I roll off onto the ground, seeing stars.

“Just because you have a Gladius doesn’t make you a true angel. It merely confirms that you’re a freak.”

Aelita helps Wells to his feet. He looks like he still wants to put a bullet in my head, but he’d have to be able to stand up on his own to do that and he won’t be doing much of anything for the rest of the night.

Aelita says, “Stark, I know you won’t believe me when I say thank you, but I mean it sincerely. The scales have fallen from my eyes. You’ve opened the Glory Road and shown me that it was finally time to act. I’ll always be grateful to you for that. Bless you.”

She guides Wells back to the lead van and helps him into the passenger seat. He’s limping and holding one arm across his chest. I hold on to the Beamer’s bumper and haul myself to my feet. My Gladius has gone out, so I pull the Smith & Wesson. It’s empty, but still looks intimidating.

“I’m not going to let you leave and kill an angel.”

Aelita smiles at me. Exactly the kind of beneficent smile you’d want from one of God’s chosen ones.

“I’m done with this world, you, and the fallen angels who wallow with you in humanity’s filth. Sin, destroy, and corrupt this world to your heart’s content. I’m called to something more beautiful than you can imagine. I will become the Father and I will take care of my family. But before I do, I’m going home to kill God.”

Aelita closes Wells’s door, goes around to the driver’s side, starts the engine, and drives away.

I DRAG AKI from the BMW and push him ahead of me into the lobby. He limps and whines and I’m seriously thinking of hurting him some more, but the Chateau’s lobby shuts him up.

The place is a meat market. The streets looked bad, but seeing the remains of what must be twenty to thirty people in an enclosed space is shocking even by the standards of what I saw Downtown. The scene is made merry because groups of zeds are still working on the human leftovers. They notice Aki and me coming in, drop the femurs and livers and brains they’d been snacking on, and come for us. I send out a “Sit, Stay” order with the Druj and they go back to eating the hotel’s guests.

I spot a metal cane by the check-in desk and hand it to Aki.

“Use this and be quiet.”

Before we head up to Lucifer’s room, I find a janitor’s closet in an alcove on the far side of the lobby. I fill a trash bag with duct tape, a gallon bottle of liquid soap, and all the lightbulbs I can find. I push Aki out of the closet and over to the elevators.

I say, “Here, kitty kitty,” and the Drifters come to us, but under my control this time. I shove Aki to the back of the elevator, herd the drifters inside, and squeeze in last. I hit the button for Lucifer’s floor and look over my shoulder at Aki. He’s squeezing his eyes closed so hard, I’m surprised they don’t pop.

We get off on the third floor. I leave the zeds in the hall and take Aki through the grandfather clock into Lucifer’s room. Even though he’s in considerable pain, Aki is impressed. He might be Sub Rosa, but he’s only seen hick hoodoo before.

“This is amazing,” he says, limping around to look over Lucifer’s room.

I point to a sturdy wooden chair with arms.

“Sit.”

Aki comes over slowly and sits.

“You don’t have to do this. I’m not exactly going to run off. What if those things get in here?”

“Don’t worry. They will. But not now.”

I take away his cane and toss it across the room. I take my time duct-taping him to the chair, but I’m not thinking about it very hard. I’m wondering why Lucifer hasn’t shown up or yelled at us from another room. The suite is big, but I’m not trying to be quiet. He must have heard us come in.

When the kid is secure, I drag the chair into the middle of the room onto the hard marble floor and leave him.

I go into the bedroom carefully. I have the knife in my hand and keep my head low. Even though it’s dark, each object is perfectly outlined. Still, the two crumpled piles of something on the floor aren’t distinct enough to see in detail. I find the light switch and throw it.

There are two bodies at the foot of Lucifer’s bed. The tailor and Dr. Allwissend. Each has been shot three times. Twice in the chest and once in the head. A triple tap. It’s a little excessive considering that they’re a glorified seamstress and a sawbones. There’s no sign of Lucifer except for a bloody patch on the bed.

I sit down and look at the bodies. It hadn’t occurred to me until now that Lucifer’s attendants would be human. Even though I know none of the Hellions can crawl to earth from Downtown, in the back of my mind I’d always imagined that they’d be Sub Rosa or at least Lurkers. But the two men on the floor are just a couple of common ordinary everyday dead men. Lucifer must have owned their souls. Or maybe they were members of Amanda’s devil groupie cult. Whatever they were, they aren’t that anymore. I want to feel sorry for them. Stark would have, but from where I sit, they’re too small and human to matter.

I go back to the living room. Aki is moaning again.

“I’m really hurting here, man. Can I have a drink or something?”

“Say another word and I’ll staple your lips shut. Understand me?”

He nods, biting his lips like they’re alien animals stuck to his face and he has to get hold of them before they do something stupid.

I circle the room looking for something, anything that might tell me where Lucifer is. The light on his phone isn’t blinking, so he doesn’t have any messages. His desk is neat and there’s nothing interesting in the drawers. Most of what’s in the wastebasket are notes and set sketches for Light Bringer. Someone from the studio was here. And they had lunch. I smell a turkey sandwich and roast chicken. That narrows the suspects down to everyone in L.A. who eats meat.

On the table by the sofa where Lucifer showed me his wounds is an open bottle of wine and his jewelry-store tray full of objects confiscated from people whose souls he owns. The watches, lighters, reading glasses, and rings are laid out in tidy rows. But there’s a blank spot. Something is missing. A child’s rosary necklace with a gold unicorn charm.

I get the bottle of liquid soap and pour the whole thing around Aki’s chair. I toss the lightbulbs next, so Aki is surrounded by a moat of soap and glass.

“I’m leaving for a while, but I’ll be back. I don’t think you can get out of that chair, but on the off chance you do, with that bad foot of yours you’re going to slip on the soap and fall on all the broken glass and end up a bloody mess. Sooner or later those Drifters in the hall are going to find a way in here. I think that you lying on the floor helpless and covered in blood is going to be enough to overpower whatever hoodoo has been keeping the Drifters from eating you. So, you can try to break out, crawl through the soap and glass, slip by the zeds in the hall, and make it home with all your limbs, or you can sit there like a good boy, and when I get back, we’ll call your mutti, get her over here, and make a deal to end all this. Do you understand me?”

Aki nods, still biting his lips.

“You can talk now.”

“Okay. Yeah, I understand.”

“Good.”

“You’re leaving me here to go after Lucifer? Why would you do that?”

“Because you have to rescue family. Even asshole family.”

He starts to say something, but before he can get it out, I tear off a length of duct tape and slap it across his mouth. I don’t have to do it. There’s no one around to hear him if he starts screaming. I do it because I enjoy it.

I check to make sure he’s securely fastened to the chair. When I’m sure he is, I step into a shadow and come out by the studio bungalow where I abandoned the GTO. The Light Bringer soundstage is across a wide parking lot full of construction equipment.

I work my way past the machinery and onto the stage to the little office where I remember the panic room is located. The chair Ritchie pushed out of the way the last time we were in here is on its back across the room. I lean on the wall where it opens and I listen. I can’t hear anything, but I can feel something alive just beyond the hidden door. Light throws shadows against the wall. I slip inside and emerge in the panic room.

Lucifer is on his back on the floor. His shirt is open, revealing his seeping bandages and wounds. He looks drugged, but I’m pretty sure that what’s keeping him down is the silver athame dagger sticking out from between his ribs.

Ritchie is sitting with his fat cop ass on the lip of the control console and his feet propped on an office chair. He’s chain-smoking and covered in flop sweat. The air is thick with Marlboro smoke. He’s flicking ashes and dropping his butts on Lucifer. There’s an HK assault rifle across his lap. He looks lost in thought. He checks his watch. Shakes his head. He looks like he’s expecting someone.

I speak softly so I don’t startle him so much he’ll start shooting.

“I don’t think Aelita’s coming.”

It doesn’t work. Ritchie starts and jumps off the console, spraying the room with the HK on full auto.

I don’t have to hit him or grab him or do anything. I just hit the deck and stay there.

The shots that don’t embed themselves in the furniture and video monitors ricochet back and forth off the blast-proof walls. Ritchie just invented a new game. Ballistic handball. Too bad that he’s the ball.

I keep my head flat against the cool concrete floor as he blows the whole clip. Ritchie is taking the name “panic room” way too literally.

A three-inch chunk of heavy glass is blasted from one of the monitors and into my arm just below where Ray shot me. The coating on the back of the glass itches and burns. The shooting only lasts a few seconds, and then Ritchie is out of ammo.

When he stops shooting, the room becomes unnaturally quiet. My ears ring from the noise of the HK blasting in the confined space. The only thing I can hear is Ritchie’s slow and labored breathing. He’s on the floor next to Lucifer. Ritchie is full of holes from his own bullets. They must hurt like hell. Most of what hit him ricocheted off the steel-and-concrete walls, so he was slammed with heavy, flattened lead discs the size of quarters and traveling faster than a jet fighter.

I go to where he’s lying and take away the rifle. Pat him down and take a .45 from his belt. Then I leave him on the floor, bleeding.

“Brigitte is fine, by the way. She got what she needed. Or did you even notice or care that she was gone?”

Ritchie doesn’t say anything and I didn’t expect him to. He’s on his back, opening and closing his mouth, spitting blood and gasping like a fish.