"Sandman Slim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kadrey Richard)

"I WAS DEAD."

"Pretty much," says Kinski. He's leaning over me, shining a light into my eyes as I lie on his exam table. "But Eugene poured a whole bottle of white nightshade elixir down your throat. It kept your soul from wandering away. After that, it was just a matter of kick-starting your body. How do you feel?"

"All right. Tired, but all right."

Several of Kinski's rocks are arranged around the wound in my chest. Others around my head, arms, and legs. The doc takes the stones off me, one by one.

Vidocq and Allegra are at the other end of the table. "I saw you there," I say. "I thought I was dreaming, but you were there."

"Yes," Vidocq says. "I'm so sorry for what happened."

"You knew those cops were going to snatch me, didn't you? You told them where I'd be. You set me up."

"You've been so out of control lately. I thought meeting the Golden Vigil and seeing their work would help you to focus your energies. You're going to kill yourself or some innocent person."

"So, you handed me over to Homeland Security and a psychotic angel. Is that your idea of group therapy?"

"I had no idea this would happen. Aelita was just going to talk to you."

I swing my legs over the edge of the table and try to stand. My vision blurs and my head swims. I sit back down.

"I crawl all the way out of Hell just to get kidnapped and sold out by friends all over again. But you know what the funniest thing about this is? Mason didn't get me killed. You did." Vidocq is sweating and cold. It's a fear reaction. Fear and guilt. "How long have you been working for them?"

"I work with them, not for them. It's been a while. Half a year. A little more, maybe. You don't know how things have been getting here. It's bad and getting worse. Things are quieter now. I don't know why. But they'll turn bad again and then you'll see why I did what I did."

"Were you working for them before I went Downtown?"

He shakes his head. "No. I'd barely heard of them back then."

Kinski hands me a glass of some stinking brown tea.

"Drink that down. All of it. Don't sip it."

I down the tea in three long gulps. It's thick and hot and I can feel little bits of twigs and leaves in my mouth. I hand the glass back to Kinski.

"Thanks. That was disgusting." I look at Vidocq. "At least your lie is a new lie. That's something. Small mercies, my father would say."

Allegra is holding on to Vidocq's arm, like she's supporting an old man who's had a stroke but is too proud to use a cane. Her heart is racing. Her pupils are like hubcaps. She's afraid, but not of me. Of everything. It might not have been such a good idea to bring her into the Sub Rosa world. She's seen a lot in just a few days. "Were you in on this with him?" I ask.

She looks at Vidocq, then back at me.

"He told me earlier. Look, after the thing on Rodeo and Medea Bava with those feathers and teeth, it didn't seem like such a bad idea."

"Okay. Thanks. You can leave with him."

Vidocq comes around the table. The bottles of potions and poisons sewn into his coat tinkle as he walks. "No, Jimmy."

"Yes, Jimmy. Get out of here. Both of you."

"Eugene saved you," says Allegra. "Aelita about killed your ass."

"Maybe next time she'll get lucky and save you two the trouble of selling me out."

Kinski says, "Why don't you ease up on these people a little? You brought some of this on yourself." I can't read Kinski. His eyes are steady. I can't hear his heart or breathing. He's hiding them from me somehow. Maybe Candy taught him some Jade tricks.

"Thanks for saving me, doc. I mean it. I'm going to need to sit here for a while. After that, I'll be out of your hair. But until then, please stay the fuck out of this."

Candy is over in the corner of the room. I missed her before. She's got her back to the wall and is trying to make herself small.

Looking back to Allegra and Vidocq, I say, "You two need to leave now. I don't want to look at you anymore." Vidocq starts to say something, but I cut him off. "I should have seen something like this coming. Hell's a circus run by mental patients. Heaven's a gated community where we're the bastard stepkids the real kids hate. Daddy's little mistake. Where does that leave us on this rock? I believe Aelita's story about the broken glass starting life. Trash falls from the sky and no one cleans it up because the trash starts talking. Why should anyone expect anything from anyone? How can trash trust trash?"

Vidocq nods. "Right, then." He looks at Allegra and they walk out together, closing the door to the exam room behind them.

Kinski and Candy start putting things back in cabinets. Bottles. Bundles of dried plants. A tray of desiccated sea horses. Kinski wraps his rocks up in their silk covers and quietly stows them away.

"What's wrong with your arm?" I ask. His left arm is bandaged up to the elbow. Spots of blood have soaked through the dressing.

"That's nothing. A couple of kids jumped me last night. They must have been high or something. They weren't very good robbers. They didn't get anything. Maybe they just wanted to beat someone up."

"Did they grab you or did they just start pushing you around?"

"What difference does that make?"

"If they grabbed you, it was probably a robbery. If they started whaling on you, then they were just looking to kick someone's ass. Which was it?"

"I guess they sort of grabbed me, at first."

"Then it was a robbery."

"Yeah, but they didn't ask for my wallet or pat me down. They just kind of held on and dragged me around."

"Were they trying to pull you toward a car or into one of these stores?"

"Like they were kidnapping me? No. I don't think so. They were just high."

"Who've you pissed off? You owe anyone money?"

"No one. It was nothing. Just life in the big city." He puts the last of the rocks away and turns to me, half smiling. "Look who's quizzing me about pissing people off. I think you took the gold, silver, and bronze in that event."

I waited for a minute, not sure I was going to say the next thing.

"I figured out one of your secrets."

"Which one would that be?"

"The rocks you used on Allegra and me. They're glass, aren't they? The glass from Aelita's story. Glass all full of divine light. Where did you get them?"

"You can find anything on eBay."

"Or from Mr. Muninn," says Candy.

"He has some nice things, no doubt."

"Why did you want them?" I ask. "You don't seem like a hippie New Age type. And you seem smart enough. Why aren't you a regular doctor?"

"What do I keep telling you? We'll talk when you let me take those bullets out."

"Then it was a bad move using those rocks on me. I don't even feel them anymore."

"You will." The doc keeps moving around the place, putting little things away. Examining others before handing them to Candy. He drops things, clumsy with just the one good arm. Candy leans against the end of the exam table. I pull my legs back so she can sit down. "Keep running around things and you'll feel them soon enough." Kinski picks up some green stems with small white blossoms on top. Candy leans over and takes them from him. "See? I told you we had some veratrum," he says.

"That's why you're the doc," says Candy.

The doc looks at me and crosses his arms.

"You might want to ease up on Eugene. He stood up for you while a lot of folks around here want to see you sent right back to where you came from, but he stood up for you."

"You one of them?"

"I'm on the fence."

"That's why I don't know if I trust you to cut me open."

"Imagine how I feel having you in my home, Sandman Slim."

I hadn't thought of that.

"Thanks again for fixing me up. I owe you."

Candy says, "You're going to have a nice new scar for your collection."

I rub my chest. She's right. There's an almost-healed burn near my heart, right where the sword went in.

"It's a good one, too. I think I'll be immune to nukes after this." Candy's heart has slowed, but her pupils are still wide. "Listen. I was an asshole the other night. I had no call to talk to you the way I did. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Jades freak out a lot of people."

"Not me. I know better than that. When I was Downtown, I met Hellions more honorable than ninety-nine percent of the people I have to deal with up here. And I met human souls as vicious and treacherous as any Hellion. So for me to say that stuff to you, that was double shitty. My father would have smacked me and I'd've deserved it."

"I forgive you. We'll all be freaks together. A bloodsucker who doesn't suck blood. A human who thinks he's a Tasmanian Devil driving a tank. And a two-armed witch doctor with only one working arm."

I ask Kinski, "Why don't you use the glass to fix yourself?"

He shakes his head.

"They don't work the same way on everybody and they can't fix everything. I've got my herbs and my ice packs. I'll be fine."

"It's funny, you got mugged by people who didn't know what they wanted and I sort of did, too."

"You mean the angel?" asks Candy.

"Yeah. One minute, she's doing the hard sell and then she's coming over all beatific and Mother Teresa. Then she suddenly goes batshit psycho. Screams, 'Abomination,' and stabs me."

"You're sure she said 'Abomination'?"

"She was screaming it right in my face. I'm sure."

Candy makes a face and says, "Angels can be such pricks."

"That they can, darlin'," Kinski says. "Listen, you're going to have to watch your back. Just because Eugene stopped Aelita today doesn't mean he'll be able to do it again."

"You think she'll come after me?"

"Angels don't use the word Abomination lightly. You're the lowest of the low to her. Worse than a Hellion."

"So, if Parker or Mason or Hellions or Homeland Security don't get me, she will."

"Don't forget the Sub Rosa," says Candy.

"Thanks, sunshine. The Sub Rosa, too."

"You can always come here if things get too hot. I know people who can help get you out of town," Kinski says.

"I'll remember that." I slide off the table and try out my feet. What do you know? I don't fall over or want to throw up. It's the little things that make life special. "I should go. Do you know the number of a cab company?"

"I've got one in the desk. I'll go look." He goes out and Candy and I are alone in the exam room. She gets off the table and brings me a plastic bag full of what looks like mulch.

"Doc wants you to boil this stuff and drink it once in the morning and once at night until it's gone. Don't worry. It doesn't taste any worse than a boiled doormat."

"Thanks. Is this what the doc gives you to wean you off being a Jade?"

"My tea tastes a lot worse than yours."

"How's sobriety working out for you?"

"You know. One day at a time."

"Were you bitten or something? How do you become a Jade?"

"You're born to be a Jade. The gift, or affliction, depending on who you ask, descends through the female line in the family. I can trace all my Jade ancestors back to the First Crusade."

"If it's your nature to eat people, doesn't it feel funny to go against that? And against a thousand years of your family history?"

"We drink people. We don't eat them. And giving it up isn't so bad. Everything has to evolve, right? We're monkeys in trees one day and the next we're monkeys with dental hygiene and cell phones. Best of all, we don't throw shit at each other anymore."

"Speak for yourself," I say, and Candy laughs. Her heartbeat goes up a little. "Do you think that if the doc can get you off drinking people juice, you'll feel like a regular person someday?"

"Project much, Sandman Slim? What you mean is that if doc can make me less of a monster, can he do it for you, too?"

"I didn't say you were a monster."

"But I am. By any human definition, I am a monster. And I always will be, so, no, I don't think I'll ever feel like a regular person. I'll just be a monster who chooses to be a little less monstrous. Who knows? I might fall off the wagon and start drinking people milk shakes again. But I'm going to try not to. Are you asking because you want to see if doc can turn you into a librarian when all this is over?"

I'm walking circles around the table, trying to get my sea legs back. Candy cranes her neck around to watch me. It's weird being alone with her.

"I don't know exactly what I want. I know that no one outside of Hell can stand what I am. I'm not wild about it most of the time myself. But I can't picture being something else."

"Try. Just imagine it for a few days. See how it feels."

"Why not? But I'm lazy. When it's time, I'll probably go for a simpler fix."

"Like what?"

"Going back to Hell isn't the worst thing I can imagine. I know the place. I have a rep. I can probably get my old job back, fighting in the arena."

"Are you talking about killing yourself?"

"Nah. I'm not the suicide type. I just mean that if I get to pick my moment, it might not be so bad. That was the problem last time. I wasn't ready. I didn't get to pick the moment. I could this time."

"I hate to break it to you, but planning your own violent death, whether it's you murdering yourself or letting someone else do it, is still suicide."

"You think so?" I shake my head and lean against the wall, suddenly out of breath. "Ignore me. I'm babbling. I'm tired. My only friends narced me out to Norman Bates's mom. And every time I get up close to death, I think about Alice."

"You know she's not down below. You let yourself be killed and you'll be farther away from her than ever, and it will be forever."

"Point taken. Truth is, enough people want me dead that I'm probably never going to have to make that choice."

"See? Things are looking up already."

"Let's see if my cab's here yet."

I WAKE IN the early afternoon, wander into the bathroom, and see myself in the mirror. Candy was right. Aelita's sword has given me one of my best scars. It looks like a rattler set itself on fire and did a GG Allin stage dive into my chest. This scar is a work of art. It deserves an Oscar and a star on Hollywood Boulevard. It deserves its own power ballad. Now I sort of know how Lucifer must have felt when that last thunderbolt hit and he fell out of Heaven's cotton candy clouds and into the deep, deep dark.

Aelita seems to have given me something else, too. Back in Hell, each new scar was a gift. Protection against a new attack. That attack in Aelita's chapel seems to have left me with something besides a new scar. She's given me some part of her angelic vision. Or maybe she just tore open my third eye, the one that's been sensing other people's moods and heartbeats. Whatever it is, I see with different eyes now and I see what she was trying to tell me. The Kissi are everywhere.

There's graffiti on the alley wall behind Max Overdrive. It's painted on the buildings and street corners. Store windows and telephone poles. The marks aren't in any language I know, but I can almost understand them. Like a name on the tip of your tongue that just won't come. The marks are greetings, warnings, and messages. Hobo signs for eldritch hicks.

The Kissi wander the streets ghosting the holiday merrymakers. Giddy families window-shop, trying to fill some of their desperate hours together with anything that gets them out of having to talk to each other. In some of those families, Mom or Dad is a Kissi. Or possessed by one. A little Kissi girl follows her parents, holding her big brother's hand, literally draining the life from him as the family stops to admire a blinking LED wreath outside a Burmese restaurant.

There are Kissi as pale and tenuous as vapor from a car exhaust. They whisper lies into people's ears. Slip hotel receipts into a husband's wallet. A phone number into a wife's jacket pocket. They merrily plant little cells of paranoia that grow like a melanoma, because what's more fun at this time of year than a holiday family slaughter?

I have to get off the street. I can't stand looking at this. Regular people are bad enough, but regular people being made worse by chaos-sucking bottom feeders is something I can't take right now.

What's going on in the street doesn't look much like a detente to me. The Kissi don't care who sees them. The Vigil might be right about the Kissi breaking the treaty, but they don't seem to have a clue how to do anything about it.

There are plenty of cops out, too. Unis and plainclothes. More than I'd expect around Christmas. Aren't people supposed to be nodding off on tryptophan, eggnog, and fascist Santa's order to be merry? Maybe the cops know something the rest of us don't know. Maybe they just feel the undercurrent of craziness in the air. They try to blend in with the holiday wanderers, but they're as inconspicuous as spiders on a birthday cake.

I just want quiet, a cup of coffee, and no one talking to me. I head for Donut Universe.

Some genius has installed a TV on the wall behind the doughnut counter. Those of us stupid enough to want to sit and drink our coffee inside get a complimentary twenty-four-hour-a-day slice of weather, sports, and geno-cide with our glazed old-fashioneds. When the local report comes on, it confirms more of what Aelita told me. Robbery. Murder. Rape. Arson. They're spiraling up and out of control. The local politicos and law dogs don't have a clue why or what to do about it. Sounds like someone moved Devil's Night to December and forgot to tell the rest of us to duck and cover.

The green-haired pixie counter girl I've seen before is working today. She's good at her job. Chats up the customers. Smiles and listens without looking fake or like a mental patient. At another time and place, I'd steal a car for her every night and leave it in the parking lot with the keys in the ignition. But here and now I can't keep falling in instant love like this. It's embarrassing and distracting. If Vidocq was around, I'd ask him for a potion. A temporary lobotomy, please. Just something to get me through the holidays, and maybe kill off this idiot nineteen-year-old who still lives in my head.

I look up from the pixie girl to burning houses in East L.A. Crying mothers. Screaming kids. There's blood in the water, so the TV reporters swim up with blank eyes and a mouthful of shark's teeth. They stick microphones in the faces of new widows and ask, "How does it make you feel?" I love L.A.

I wonder if things have always been this way. Are the Kissi the devils on our shoulders? Or do they just like us because our devils are so loud and hard to miss? I see why Heaven and Hell want to control the Kissi. They can't ever let regular people hear about them. After the panic, it'd be too easy to pin all of humanity's bad habits on them. Plus, someone would have to explain where they came from. That means people finding out that God is a fuckup and the devil doesn't matter. Neither side wants that.

I wonder if the Kissi are strong enough to jack an angel? Maybe. If they really are anti-angels. Muninn said someone was dragging angels up the hill to Avila. That sounds like urban-myth bullshit to me. Like that kid down the street who made a funny face and it stayed that way, so his family had to move away. If someone is snatching angels, it's probably the Kissi. I don't think even Mason could mug Aelita.

Two guys come in from the parking lot. I can feel them from all the way across the room. Heat and crazy breathing. Their hearts are going off like machine guns. But they look boring. An older guy in a gray suit. A junior high boy with a skateboard under his arm. They're bent over the counter ordering doughnuts. I can't get a look at their faces. They order a few dozen. A whole box full. The green-haired girl rings them up, and when she tells them the total, the guy in the suit pulls a.44 from his jacket and shoots her. And he keeps shooting her. He has to lean all the way over the counter to get off the last few rounds.

I'm up while he's still concentrating on the girl. Junior drops his deck, pulls his own piece, and aims it at me. I stop. They're both Kissi.

This isn't a good time. I'm weak. I don't want to get shot right now and they know it. They laugh at me.

The guy in the suit says, "You naughty boy."

"You stole our na'at," says the kid.

"And after we invited you into our home so nicely and politely."

"Some people have no manners."

"No manners at all. That's all right. We'll do you a trade." The man points to his chest, then mine. "Hold on to whatever that is in there for us. We'll be back with a doggy bag."

"Happy holidays," says the kid. There's blood all over the box of doughnuts. The kid opens it and takes out an apple fritter. "You really ought to try these. They make 'em fresh every morning."

They stroll out the door like they just won the lottery.

Behind me, an old lady is screaming. I hear cell phones beeping as people fumble with the keypads trying to make their fingers hit 911. I look over the counter at the green-haired girl. She's dead. As dead as anyone I've ever seen.

Is that what Alice looked like?

Good-bye, green-haired girl. How many more of you am I not going to save?

THERE'S A GOLD Lexus parked around the corner. Ten seconds later, it's mine. I pull into a no-name indie gas station and buy a pack of cigarettes, two plastic gas cans, and a T-shirt with mann's Chinese theatre on the front. I pay for four gallons of gas in advance, fill the two cans, and get back in the car. I've always been pretty good with directions. Hell made me good with them even when I'm getting my ass kicked, so I know where I'm going. Fifteen minutes later, I'm parked down the block from the furniture warehouse where the skinheads party.

I slice the T-shirt in half and dip each piece into the can, letting them soak up the juice. Then I stuff them in the cans' mouths and head for the clubhouse.

A fat man in a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts is walking the other way. As we pass I say, "You should call 911."

He stops. "Has there been an accident?"

"Not yet."

There's no one outside the clubhouse. Why would there be? Who's going to play games with a building full of methed-up headbangers?

I light the rags in each can with Mason's lighter. I knock on the door politely. My other adolescent crush, lisa, the skinhead girl, opens up. She smiles at me like you smile at an old dog that can't help shitting on himself.

She asks, "What the fuck do you want?"

I kick once, slamming the door open and her out of the way. I sling the gas cans underhanded, aiming at the opposite ends of the room.

They explode, one a fraction of a second behind the other. Flames splash across the walls like a flood of hellfire. It's an instant riot inside. Screaming. Punching. Skinheads and their white power girlfriends clawing past each other for the one exit. I pull the door closed and kick a garbage can in front of it.

The first one out is the big gorilla I stabbed in the leg at the Bamboo House of Dolls. He trips over the can and face plants just outside the door. The next few drowning rats trip over him. Fall in a screaming pile of bodies, blocking the door. It's the Keystone Kops with third-degree burns.

Eventually, enough people inside push forward that the bodies and the door get kicked out of the way. The panicked, burned, and smoke-choked master race pours outside and collapses in the street.

Josef comes strolling out last. His clothes are smoldering and his face looks like a hamburger someone forgot to take off the barbecue. lisa and a dozen of Josef's steroid lapdogs get up and follow him.

Josef doesn't even look around. He knows who did this. He comes right for me. I can see the beast under his skin. I can't tell if he was ever human.

When he's a few feet away, he starts to say something. It's going to be some Kissi threat or demonic one-liner. Who cares? I slash his throat with the black blade, giving the knife a little twist. Unlike Kasabian, when Josef's head pops off, he's totally, one hundred percent dead.

I pick up the head by its singed blond hair and push it into lisa's chest. It takes her a minute to figure out that she's supposed to take it. I wait for one of the big boys to make a move, but they're mostly staring at the raspberry-colored lake forming around Josef's body.

I say, "You tell the rest of these animals and any Kissi you run into to stay away from my doughnut place."

I go back to the Lexus and floor it out of there before they come to enough to realize that there are fifty of them and only one of me.

IF YOU DO it right, cleaning your guns is a form of meditation. There's the precise disassembly. Attaching a cotton swatch to the end of a ramrod, soaking it in solvent, and passing it through the gun barrel from the breech end and out the front. Cleaning the nooks and crannies with a soft toothbrush. Carefully applying a few drops of gun oil. Then wiping the gun down and reassembling it before starting on the next gun, moving from smallest to largest. It's a calm, quiet, and satisfying process. I'm ashamed that I've neglected the guns this long. I should have cleaned them the moment I dug them out from under the floorboards at Vidocq's. Wild Bill would be ashamed of me.

I'd picked up the cleaning kit at an upscale gun club in West Hollywood on the way back to Max Overdrive. Also a can of WD-40 to clean the na'at. On the night table next to the bed is the bottom half of a Coke can I ripped in half. There's an inch of Spiritus Dei floating in the can and I dip each bullet into it before reloading the guns.

That encounter with the Kissi back at Donut Universe woke me up. I need to be more careful now that I don't have any real backup.

I can't get the bloody image of the green-haired girl out of my mind. Every time I think I've pushed her away, Alice drifts in to take her place.

No wonder I'm so popular.

There's a knock at the door. I stay sitting on the bed, but hide the reassembled.45 under one leg, where I can get it quickly. I don't say, "Come in," but she comes in anyway.

Allegra only takes a couple of steps into the room, like she's afraid there are snakes under all the furniture. She sits on Kasabian's old bootlegging table, knocking over a couple of stacks of DVDs that I'd stolen from the racks downstairs. I soak another cotton patch in solvent and go back to cleaning the guns.

"Why didn't you tell me before about what happened to you? What Mason did?"

"Vidocq told you my little secret? Is he in some contest I don't know about? Rat out your friends three times in a day and win Springsteen tickets."

"He just wanted me to understand why you're the way you are."

"And now everyone knows. Did you come up here to gloat? I give up. You win. You and Vidocq showed me up for the chump I truly am."

"That's not what this is about and you know it."

"Princess, I only know two things. One is that I'm going to kill Mason and Parker, and nothing human or inhuman is going to stop me. And two, I'm on my own."

"Don't play that martyr shit with me. I've seen how you are."

"You don't get it. You think I'm saying this because I'm still mad. I'm not. I just understand things better now. A friend laid it out for me. I'm not one of you. The only thing I live for now is to kill as many people and break as many things as I need to, to get what I want. By the standards of most sane people, that makes me a monster. I'm fine with that. And, if I'm alive when this is over, I'm going back to where the monsters live."

"Hell?"

"It's where I belong. It's where I want to be."

Allegra reaches down, picks up one of the piles of DVDs, and begins to straighten them.

"Eugene loves you," she says.

"That's nice. My father loved me. He tried to shoot me once."

"What?"

"We were out deer hunting. It was just after sunup and cold enough that I could see my breath. I'd spotted a six-point buck ahead in the tree line. I led the way, up front a few yards, with my father right behind me. I spotted the buck in a clearing, signaled my father to stop. I raised my rifle and took the shot. Just as I pulled the trigger, I heard another gun go off and something hit me on the side of the head. My father's shot had missed me by maybe an inch and hit the tree where I was leaning. I looked back at him, blood coming down my face where flying bark and splinters had hit me. He came running up apologizing, saying it was all an accident, asking if I was okay. But behind all the panic in his eyes, there was nothing but fear and loath-ing. He hated himself for taking the shot, but he hated me more for still breathing."

"I'm so sorry."

"Just because someone says they love you doesn't mean they're not going to fuck you over the first chance they get."

"What about Alice? Did she fuck you over, too?"

"No. She's the one who didn't."

Allegra empties a couple of overflowing ashtrays into a metal trash can on the floor.

"Doesn't that mean anything?"

"No. I told her I loved her about a million times. It didn't save her. It's what got her killed."

"But you both loved each other. You still have that."

"You loved your drug-dealer boyfriend. I bet he told you he loved you every day. How'd that work out for you?"

"This isn't about me."

"You're right, it's not. So, why don't you run along back to Vidocq and let me finish my work so I can get all of you and this town behind me?"

She shakes her head, pushes more junk from the table into the trash, and starts for the door.

"After I'm gone," I tell her, "as far as I'm concerned, you can have Max Overdrive. Parker's killed Kasabian by now, so he's not going to want it back. I'm sure Vidocq can come up with some kind of glamour that'll make it look like you owned the place all along."

She drops the trash can by the door. Lets it fall over and spill food wrappers, empty cans, and cigarette butts on the floor.

"You know what? You're not a monster. You're just a motherfucker. Eugene should have let Aelita put you out of your misery."

"Good-bye, Allegra. Go tidy up at Eugene's." She kicks the can out of the way and slams the door. I can hear her stomp down every single step, like she's punishing the staircase, like God's tiniest tyrannosaurus.

WHEN ALLEGRA IS gone, I finish cleaning and reassembling the guns. When that's done, I take old newspapers and paper bags from under the bootlegging table and lay them out flat on the floor.

When you stretch out a regulation na'at to its full length, it's ten feet of very sharp Hellion steel teeth, spikes, and spines. Some are spring-loaded and ready to go whenever you pick up the na'at. Others only open up when you trigger them from the grip.

Traditionally, you use a na'at like a spear or a staff, but there's another trigger that collapses the central shaft. Suddenly the na'at is as loose as chicken chow mein, a metal whip that can strip the skin off a rhino like peeling a grape. Not that I've ever peeled a rhino or a grape, but you get the idea.

I only mention this to explain that your basic na'at has a lot more intricate mechanical parts than anything any human has ever manufactured. When you decide to WD-40 your na'at, you need a lot of room and a lot of newspapers to soak up the excess oil. You should also open a window before you start spraying lube and solvents around your bedroom, something I almost always forget to do.

I drag the newspaper and the na'at across the room and out of the way. I stash the guns under the mattress and wash the WD-40 off my hands in the bathroom. I've trashed enough clothes that I'm back down to video-store T-shirts and jeans. I throw on the silk overcoat I've been avoiding and slip the knife inside. On the way out, I push open the three big windows on the wall opposite the bed.

The short walk to the Bamboo House of Dolls clears the stink out of my nose and head. A drink and a cigarette later and I'm happy to be back on Earth. When Carlos brings me my food, I drink to his health. I haven't done much for him lately, except maybe cooking and decapitating some skinheads, but I can't exactly talk to him about that. He brings up sports and I try to say something that doesn't sound stupid, but I didn't know much about sports before I went Downtown. Finally, he gives up and walks off to serve other customers.

I haven't talked to him much lately. I haven't wanted to talk much at all. It seems like a good idea to let the guy know that I appreciate him, his bar, and his food. Right now Carlos is about the closest thing I have to friend on this planet. With Cherry, Jayne-Anne, and Kasabian gone, so are all my ties to Mason, leaving me right in the middle of downtown with nothing to do and nowhere to go. When you're in that neighborhood, you need at least one person on your side. Preferably one with a bar.

I finish off two more drinks before it becomes dangerously clear that if I hang around much longer, I'm going to have to talk to someone.

I time the walk back to Max Overdrive perfectly. I get to the door right on the last puff of my cigarette. Flicking the butt into the Dumpster, I let myself in the back way.

Inside, the oily solvent smell is gone, but now there's something else. Alcohol? Disinfectant? The staircase smells like a hospital waiting room.

I find out why a minute later. By then I'm already on the floor and the world is a shivering Slip and Slide, so there's no chance of me getting up. I have a feeling that the robot ghost in the dirty trench coat that's waving a baseball bat in my face might have something to do with it.

Pieces of the world start falling back into place enough for to me to see that the robot ghost isn't really a robot or a ghost. It's Kasabian, and he's held together with a lot of metal rods and screws. There's a metal band bolted around his head, held in place by steel dowels that are attached to a brace on his chest. A traction halo. It holds his head onto his body well enough for him to stand up, but the rig makes him move like a rusty windup toy. Still, for a kid's toy, he's doing a pretty good job tuning up my ribs.

I deflect a couple of the blows with my arms, which feels just as good as it sounds. Kasabian is so stiff, he has to stand in one place to work me over. Lucky me. I swing one of my legs around and catch him behind the knee. He goes down on the knee, but refuses to fall over. Just keeps smashing me with the bat, teeth gritted, sweating and red-faced. But he's working from close range now, so the shots hurt a lot less than before.

I swing my leg again. This time I hit the top of the metal halo. That gets his attention. Kasabian drops the bat and crab walks his way back, putting some distance between my foot and his head.

Except for the first surprise shot on the back of my skull, he hasn't hurt me too much. Kasabian moves like he's half frozen in ice. Can't get up the strength to do any real damage. If he wasn't up and walking around, I'd swear that his body was in rigor mortis. Maybe he's afraid that if he wiggles around too much, his head will pop off. Let's test that theory.

Still on the floor, I throw a kick at his head. Kasabian tries to move out of the way, but I'm faster than him. But I still miss. Okay. So that first smack on the head scrambled my brain a little more than I thought.

I go for the guns under the mattress, but my aim is still off. It gives Kasabian a chance to drive the bat into my ribs again. I'm breathing hard, trying to take in air every time it gets knocked out with another rib shot. I could probably throw a spell at Kasabian if my head was clearer and my chest wasn't hurting. I can feel every single bruise from the Kissi attack. And all this wrestling around is waking up those bullets again. Fuck Kinski for being right about them getting angry again.

When Kasabian tries to jam me with the bat again, I move faster and get my hand on it. One twist and it's out of his hands and bouncing off the floor. Kasabian backs up and braces himself against the wall. He reaches for something under his dirty trench coat, but he's not fast enough. The world is settling down. Becoming firmer around me. I grab the bat and swing. It smashes into his halo, buckling and scattering the metal dowels.

Kasabian screams, "Fuck!" His head is hanging free, held on by just the stitches and the couple of remaining dowels. He gets his feet under him, braces his back against the wall, and pushes himself up until he's standing. His eyes are wide. Not so much in anger anymore. He's remembering what it was like the first time his melon came off and he doesn't like the picture. That's why his hands are shaking and he's muttering, "No, no, no," when he pulls what looks like a short tree branch out from under his coat. It wraps around his arm from the wrist to his elbow.

Now it's my turn to scramble back. The skinhead at Carlos's bar tried to shoot me with a Devil Daisy, but he didn't know what he was doing. In a room this small, even a crippled, half-dead wreck like Kasabian couldn't miss me. But I'm more worried about something worse.

I yell, "Stop!" and put up my hands. Kasabian just looks at me. I guess he wasn't expecting such an easy surrender. He face splits into a big grin. He waves the Daisy around a little, stabbing the air with it, trying to intimidate me. He does, but not for the reasons he thinks.

"Listen to me, Kas. I know that Parker and Mason gave you that thing. If you use it, you're going to die. For real this time. No second chances."

"Kiss my ass, man. They helped me. Parker took me out of here. He and Mason gave me back my body."

"Nice job they did, too. You look like Frankenstein's ball sac. You can barely move. Don't you think if they liked you they could find a spell to put your head back on for real?"

"That's your fault! You and your goddamn knife. It left some kind of residual magic behind. No matter what we tried, my head wouldn't go back on. Parker put together this traction rig for me. It sucks, but it's better than spending the rest of my life in that closet watching infomercials until you decide to shoot me."

"You're right. I got a little more extreme with you than I meant to. Sorry. I wanted Mason, but I had you. You got some of the grief I was saving up for him. That wasn't right. So. You know. Sorry."

"Sorry? Even if you didn't cut my head off, you came here to kill me. You think sorry covers that?"

"I'm not so sure you want to know the truth about that."

Kasabian hoists the Devil Daisy up to face level. I take a couple more steps back, until I'm on the other side of the bed. Still in point-blank range.

"Tell me," he says.

"When I got here, yeah, I planned on killing you. But after ten minutes, I was pretty much over that. I mean, how much more could I do? Mason did a pretty good job of wrecking you before I ever got here."

"Yeah, but I stood up to you and he's on my side again."

"No, he's not. He's never been on your side and he never will be. You think he gave you your body and sent you back here to get me? This is a setup. You're here to kill yourself. Me, too. But mostly you."

"Look at you. Look how scared you are. You'll say anything."

"Ask me how Jayne and Cherry are. I double-dog dare you."

"Why? Is that a trick question?"

"Yeah. Because they're dead. Parker killed them. He's killing everyone connected to him and Mason. If he gave you that weapon, it'll probably kill me, but I guarantee that it'll kill you."

"You are such a liar. Not even a good one. Look how scared you are."

"I'm scared you're going to do something stupid."

He pushes the Daisy in my direction.

"Don't call me stupid!"

"Sorry. Just don't do anything you-we-can't take back."

He starts to nod, but catches himself. The nod turns into a twitch as he pushes his shoulders and head back against the wall. His heart is a trip-hammer. His pupils narrow. Now that he's done something dumb in front of me, he's angrier than ever.

"Kas, Mason and Parker are using you."

"Keep talking, dead man. I hear there's a bunch of imps waiting for you with knives and forks."

I take another step back. He's going to do it. It's building inside him.

"Don't do it, man. You'll die, too."

The grin is back on his face.

"This is nice. This quiet moment before you die. Thanks for lying and whining. You made it really special for me."

Oh, hell.

I know it's coming, so I don't wait. I dive for the floor. When he fires the Devil Daisy, I'm behind the bed collapsing the na'at to its spear configuration. I dig one end into the floor and, staying low, angle the shaft over me.

The first wave of dragon fire hits, tries to tear the na'at out of my hand. The intricate Hellion web of edges, angles, and teeth along the weapon's body spreads the fire out and over me. Then the second thing happens. The one I've been worried about.

The Daisy explodes. The room turns into Dresden, burning under the Allied planes. It's Rome while Nero fiddled and pissed on the panicked mobs. It's Hamburg and Chicago and the Hindenburg all going off at once in my room. It's all I can do to hold the na'at in place and chan-nel the supernova on the other side of the bed anywhere but on top of me.

And it's over. No fire. No smoke. No nothing. The Daisy has swallowed the remains of the fire. The room is a wreck. Lath is blown off the walls. Part of the ceiling is down. The junk on the bootleg table is scattered around the room like a hurricane blew through. All the windows are gone.

I pick up the charred bed and push it out of the way. Kasabian is lying under it. Considering how he looked before the explosion, he's not looking that bad right now. His right arm is gone. The Daisy took that off when it blew. And his head has fallen off. I get down on my knees and push random junk out of the way. I spot it a minute later under the bed.

Poor stupid, idiotic, goddamn Kasabian. If he was still alive, I'd strangle him. Right now I kind of don't mind him coming after me with the bat. I was pretty hard on him. He really did get me down on my knees and speaking in tongues for a minute, so he got at least a little of his own back before he made the big mistake of trusting Mason. Kasabian was an idiot, but he wasn't stupid. He must have known that Mason hated him at best. Considered him an insect at worst. Did Kasabian really not know what was going to happen when he pulled that trigger? Or did he want to go out in a sexy murder-suicide that would make it onto the local news? Idiot reporters would get it all wrong. They'd think it was an insurance scam gone wrong. Or that we were clumsy terrorists. More likely, they'd go with the sexiest choice, a lovers' quarrel gone nuclear. It's more than an even bet that he wanted to kill us both. At least then, one person would know that he'd done something right. I'd know that he'd gotten me, that I was truly dead, and that there was nothing I could do about it.

I stand very quietly for a minute, listening for sirens. If I had time and a clear head, I could probably come up with a spell to keep everyone away or send them off in the wrong direction. But that's not going to happen. I wait.

The sirens don't come. The fire was here and gone so fast that while the Daisy wrecked the place, it's sparing me from having to explain the headless body, all the guns, the video bootlegging gear and me. Who am I? Also technically dead, thanks. Just ask Homeland Security.

Someone's cell phone goes off. It's not my ring. I pat down Kasabian's body. Pull his phone from a coat pocket. It's one of the cheap prepaid models. I flip it open and wait.

"Well," someone says. "What the hell, man? Is it done?"

"Who is this?"

There's a pause. Then a low laugh.

"Stark? Is that you? Oh my God. What an asshole. I give Kasabian a flamethrower and a bomb and he still can't kill you. Where is he?"

"All over the place. He's in pieces."

"One thing went right tonight, at least. You must be feeling pretty good right now, huh? Pretty proud of yourself. You kicked a headless guy's ass. Thank you, masked man. You saved our city."

I listen for signs of strain or stress in his voice. I wish I could see his eyes. Or catch a whiff of his sweat. But on the crap phone, Parker sounds thin, distant, and far away. Like he's calling from the Marianas Trench.

"You're the one who sent a half-dead guy to kill me. What did you think was going to happen?"

"I expected you to die, Mr. Bond," he says in a bad German accent. "Actually, Mason and I had a bet. He thought Kasabian might be able to do one thing right one time. He told the fat man to his face how much faith he had in him. I guess I won that bet."

"What happens now? You going to send more cripples after me? Blind guys with blowguns? Grandmas in wheelchairs with chain saws? What's your next brilliant move? All I've seen you do so far is get your pitiful excuse for an assassin blown up and yourself shot in the back. How did that feel, by the way? Were you awake when you fell? I'm glad Mason saved you. It means I get to kill you all over again."

"Calm down, sweetheart. You're getting all worked up. Trust me. You'll get your chance. We're going to see each other again. Not here. Not now. But it'll be soon. Cross my heart."

"I can't wait."

"You don't have to. Mason is sending you a late Christmas present. Don't worry. No more explosions or ninja at-tacks tonight. Just a token of his and my esteem for staying alive this long. How did you stay alive down there, by the way? Did you suck demon cock all day every day, or did you get weekends and holidays off?"

"Pucker up, tough guy. You'll know all about it soon enough."

The line goes dead. I toss the phone into the corner of the room. At least I know one thing now. Parker took Kasabian to wherever Mason is hiding. He was with both of them. He's seen their hideout and might have even heard them talking about what they're planning next. Mason thought Kasabian was an idiot and knew that one way or another, he was going to be dead tonight. Why not talk in front of him? Make him feel like he's part of the plan. If Mason convinced Kasabian that he'd been promoted and was going to get to play with the big boys, Kas wouldn't have asked any questions, but would have run along like a dog to please him.

I need to talk to Kasabian. But I can't get to him when he's in Hell. No way I'm setting foot Downtown. I need to get to him before he hops the ferry.

I only know one way to do it and it's really going to suck.

The Daisy has saved me the trouble of having to move the bootlegging table. I just push it up against the wall so it's out of the way. I kick broken, powdery lath, boxes of DVDs, dirty clothes, cigarette butts, and Jack Daniel's bottles out of the way until I clear an area about six by six on the floor. Aside from the furniture, most of the junk is pretty light. It's easy to sift through until I find something that's heavy. The lead Kinski gave me.

Start by drawing thirteen circles, six on the outside, and six on the inside, and one in the center. Take the lead and, at the outer top circle, draw a line across to the farthest. Then draw lines to the other circles on the outer rim so that they're all connected. Now do the same thing with the other five outer circles. Wash, rinse, repeat on the inner circles until you have seventy-eight lines that connect all thirteen circles. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Metatron's Cube. One of the holiest of holy glyphs. The soul of the angel Metatron, the voice of God. Good for keeping away imps, flesh-eating zombies, and ants at a picnic. It slices. It dices. It has a thousand and one uses. A thousand and two if you draw it on a brick and throw it through the windshield of your ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend's car.

Kasabian's head is still under the bed. I pull it out and set it on his chest, then grab his body by the ankles and drag him into the Cube. I straighten the arms and legs, set Kas's head back on its shoulders, and generally try to make him look more like a respectable human being and less like a big pile of loser jerky.

Under one of the windows are the remains of the warning bundle Medea, the Inquisitor, left for me at Vidocq's place. I leave the wolf teeth. All I need are the crow feathers. Pretty much any part of a crow is useful. Especially when you're dealing with the dead. Crows are psychopomps.

They guide the dead from this world to the next. There are quicker, more direct ways to get through to dead souls, but crow's feathers are the smart way to go if you don't want some clever boots to come along and pluck your soul out of your body while you're distracted, waiting on line one for dead Aunt Lily to pick up.

I rip open Kasabian's shirt, dip the feathers in his blood, and paint a smaller version of Metatron's Cube on his chest. Then I open his mouth and put one of the feathers inside. I dip a finger into his blood and, with it, paint a circle over my third eye.

The one remaining unopened, unbroken bottle of Jack is under the mattress with the guns. I crack it open and have a couple of long drinks. Whatever I thought of Kasabian, whatever I thought that I might do to him when I tracked him down, painting him with his own blood and wearing some of it myself was never on my original agenda. One more drink and I'm ready to hit the road.

I lie down in the Cube next to Kasabian so that our shoulders and feet are touching. I use the black blade to cut one of my wrists, deep enough to really get the blood flowing, but not so deep that I lose control of my hands. I upend the bottle for one more shot of liquid courage, and then slice the other wrist.

Nice and relaxed now. Warm and drifting. The Jack and the flowing blood are doing their job. I'll be unconscious soon. Just before I lose consciousness, I put the second crow feather between my teeth and hold it there.

I'm standing on the floor of an empty desert. The alkali plain is cracked and glistening. There's a shaft of light at the horizon, but it never moves. It's always just before sunrise or just after sunset. Take your pick. The air is thick and hard to breathe. The light is a watery blue green.

Kasabian is standing a few yards away wearing the same Max Overdrive T-shirt and chinos that he was wearing the night he shot me.

"So, this is it?" he asks. "This is death?"

I walk across the packed earth to where he's standing.

"Not really. You're kind of in between worlds right now. There really isn't a desert and there really isn't a sunrise or sunset. This is just something to look at while you wait. You're sort of on hold and this is the Muzak."

"While I'm waiting to see if I'm going to Heaven or damned to Hell, this is the best the all-knowing occult powers that run the universe could come up with? Talk about being underachievers."

"Be fair, man. Everyone knows where you're headed. Maybe they just didn't break out the A material for you."

Kasabian nods.

"You're right. Why bother? I fucked up my life and I even fucked up dying."

"So we're clear, you know that wasn't me who killed you just now, right? It was Parker."

"I should never have trusted those guys. Why would Mason help me after all these years? I thought it was dif-ferent now. I thought that with you back, he'd need me again."

"Where is he?"

"Listen, you were straight with me before. You know, saying you were sorry for locking me up in that closet and everything. I want to be straight with you."

"Don't worry about it. There isn't a lot of time. Where's Mason hiding?"

Kasabian looks over his shoulder to the mountains in the distance. There's a low rumble of thunder. It won't be long now. He turns back to me.

"I knew something was up that night. I knew Mason had something waiting for you. I thought he was just going to hit you with a leech charm or something. Suck out all your power and keep it for himself. But when those Lurkers showed up…"

"Kissi. They're called Kissi."

"I didn't know he was going to do that."

"What did you know about Alice?"

"Nothing. I'm not into doing stuff like that to women. And a civilian? That's messed up."

"Would you have told me if you'd known?"

He shrugs. Looks down. Shakes his head.

"Come on, man. That's not even a real question. Going against Mason feels like you're going against the devil."

I can't read a dead man like a living one. No heartbeat. No breath. Fixed pupils. But I don't need any of that now.

"I believe you," I tell him. "And Mason isn't the devil. He just likes to play dress-up. Tell me where he is and I'll get him for both of us."

"I don't know where he is exactly. It was sort of like here. Spooky and wrong, but a lot weirder. Somewhere far away and dark. Not regular dark, either. Dark like it had no idea what light even was. Like light was Kryptonite to the place. There was no one there, but it wasn't empty. In fact, it was crowded. But it was full of nothing." He holds up his hands in frustration. "If any of that makes sense."

Thunder rolls down the mountains again. A dot of light appears at the base of one a couple of miles away. A door has opened. I take Kasabian by the arm and start walking him that way.

"Listen, when you get to Hell, look up a guy named Belial. He's one of Lucifer's generals. Tell him I sent you and ask him for a job. Tell him I said not to send you to the pits."

"The pits?" asks Kasabian. "What pits?"

"When you tell him who sent you, make sure you tell him it was Sandman Slim. And remind him that the Sandman knows where he lives."

Kasabian gives me a look.

"What the fuck is Sandman Slim? It sounds like a Japanese cartoon."

"Just tell him," I say, and let go of his arm. "This is as far as I go. I have things to do back in the world."

Kasabian looks at the door and then at me.

"I know," he says. He turns and heads for the mountain. "I'll see you around."

"Probably."

Flat on my back again. I gulp and the crow feather almost goes down my throat. Rolling over, I spit it onto the floor. Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

I'm not bleeding anymore, but I'm a mess. Again. Besides getting my ass kicked, my main accomplishment on this trip has been to massacre an incredible number of completely innocent clothes. I'm the Joseph Stalin of laundry. I take off the shirt, toss it onto a pile of other junk, and slip on the silk overcoat.

My ears are still ringing, but I'm pretty sure there aren't any sirens headed this way (the crackheads aren't going to call it in and who else hangs out here at night?). But some passing Joe Citizen could call in the noise. And the morning crew will be opening the place at eleven tomorrow. I can't leave Kasabian's corpse lying here. First, I have to find something.

I find it under the splinters of the bedside table. Alice's magic box. It's been crushed a little by the blast. Inside, the bloody cotton has come loose, but it's still in one piece. I put it under the bed, near the wall.

I pull the blanket off the bed, roll up the body, and use some duct tape I get from behind the counter to hold the blanket tight. I take Kasabian downstairs and out the back way. Also grab a couple of cinder blocks that the day crew uses when they're on a cigarette break. I'm trying very hard not to think about anything I'm doing. Of all the iffy things I've ever done in my life, I've never had to ditch a body before. While it's giving me a migraine right now, I think the fact that I'm not an expert on corpse disposal says a lot of good things about me and my life choices.

About a block away, I find a shiny new BMW SUV, which is way too many random letters strung together. It makes me feel less guilty about stealing it.

I drive it around the block, pull up to Max Overdrive, and load the body and the cinder blocks in the back. Then I drive to Fairfax and turn south. At Wilshire, I make a left and hit the gas until I see mammoths.

Animals have been falling into the La Brea Tar Pits since the last ice age. Not so much recently, since the pits are fenced in and part of a pretty slice of upscale urban green called Hancock Park. There's a big museum. A lot of wolf skulls and bird bones. A gift shop. And, soon, a dead video store-owning ex-magician.

There's not a lot of traffic on this part of Wilshire late at night. I hop the curb and pull the van up onto the brick walkway that leads to the museum. When I figure out which light pole I want, I gun the engine and smash the BMW into it at full speed. The van's windshield and front bumper are totaled. Steam billows from under the hood. The good news is that the pole with the surveillance camera is now a big aluminum toothpick by the museum's front door.

If you ever need to weigh down a dead body, remember that it's not hard duct-taping cinder blocks to a stiff, but it is hard getting them balanced right. I'm sure that with enough time and practice, I could come up with a corpse-cinder-block arrangement stable enough that a tightrope walker could use it, but I don't have time for that now. I'm parked on a major thoroughfare in a stolen van. I have no shirt, an expensive overcoat, and fresh scars on my wrists. And I'm dragging around a dead guy accessorized with building materials. This is not a precise or subtle situation. This is a situation for mindless violence and brute force. First good news I've had all day.

I get Kasabian's weighted body onto my shoulder and haul it out of the van. I drop him on his back a few yards outside the fence. I stoop and grab the body by the ankles, then I start spinning, holding the body like the hammer in a hammer throw. After a few revolutions, I'm dizzy, but have a pretty good head of steam up. When I release him, Kasabian goes flying. He sails through the air end over end, like some long-forgotten Russian space probe returning to Earth, off course and out of control.

The body hits the tar with a thick, dull thunk. At first, it doesn't move. Kasabian floats on the surface defiantly, a corpse burrito refusing to sink. Demanding to be eaten by one of the local dinosaurs lying at the bottom of the pit. Finally, he realizes how unreasonable he's being, and starts to go under. Slowly. Very slowly. Kasabian's head disappears. Then his gut. When all that's left of him above the surface are his shins and feet, I leave. Even if the surface of the tar lake is disturbed in the morning, I think the police will be more interested in the stolen van.

It's a long, exhausting walk back to Max Overdrive. When I get back to the room, all I can do is flip the mattress clean side up. I don't bother taking off the overcoat. I lie down in it and get some clean towels from the bathroom to use as a pillow.

All night long, the song someone played once at the Bamboo House of Dolls loops in my head.

"Set me adrift and I'm lost over there

And I must be insane, to go skating on your name,

And by tracing it twice, I fell through the ice

Of Alice…"

Are there people smart enough to know how doomed they are before the world crashes down on them, the way pianos fall on people in old cartoons? There must be, but I've never been one of them. Before my trip down the rabbit hole, I figured that I could joke, lie, and bullshit my way through pretty much anything. That's what's known as being a professional brat, and I was Superman at that.

Alice never liked Mason and didn't really trust the rest of the Circle. Neither did I. At least the old, sharp-tooth reptile part of my brain didn't, but that just made playing with them and being better than them more fun. Especially being better than Mason. Alice could never see the fun. She talked about the Circle like it was crystal meth and I was an addict.

"Didn't your mommy and daddy teach you that if you play with the bad kids, you're going to be kept after school?"

"My mom told me I was the handsomest boy in the world. My father taught me to shoot and how to smile while getting the back of someone's hand. That's pretty much all I remember."

She was wearing a white wifebeater and black panties. She was making coffee, but stopped, came over, and sat on my lap.

"That's why I love you. You're Norman Rockwell's perfect boy. Don't go out with those magic assholes tonight. Stay home with me. We'll eat apple pie and fuck on a flag."

"I've got to go. Mason's got something big to show us tonight. I need to be there to piss on his parade."

She got up and went back to the kitchen.

"Fine. Go, then. Go and show a bunch of losers that you're better than them. That's huge. That's a fucking accomplishment."

"This is important. You don't understand. If you had the gift, you'd know. Most of the Sub Rosa are rich dicks or Goth kids without the clove cigarettes. But I need to be around magic people sometimes. People I don't have to explain myself to."

"You need to show off to them more than you need to be with me. They're dangerous and they're going to suck you into something dangerous and stupid, like summoning the devil or something. And when they get killed or thrown in jail, you're going with them."

I grabbed my jacket and went to the door.

"I need to go. I'm late."

"You know, trying to still be the precocious one isn't that cute after you're old enough to buy beer. Grow up. Stop being such a fucking child."

Walking out, I said, "You know, sometimes you sound just like those regular jack-offs out there. You say you don't care about the magic. You say you're not jealous, but you are. You want what I have or you don't want me to have it at all. Fuck that."

Later that night, Mason played his little trick on me and I never saw Alice again.

Only now she's standing at the foot of the bed, staring at the wrecked room. She doesn't have to say a word. I know what she's thinking because it's what I'm thinking. That the mess is a kind of metaphor for my life. She sighs. Picks up small things, drops them, then picks up something else. She shakes her head in wonder at all the junk until I feel ashamed and stupid.

I know that none of this is real. This Alice is a golem. The present Parker said Mason would be sending me. This sighing ghost isn't Alice any more than the slab of meat I tossed into the tar pits was Kasabian.

The golem's eyes are milky gray. Its skin is cracked and stained with red, green, and brown lichen, like old granite. Its broken teeth ooze blood. Golem Alice's fingertips are bare bone, like something has been gnawing at them.

Unfortunately, knowing that something isn't real doesn't mean it's going to go away or that it doesn't affect you. When she isn't eyeballing the wreckage of my mini Pompeu, Alice is leaning over me and whispering in my ear.

"You wouldn't throw me into the black tar, would you, Jimmy? There's no air down there. And it's so dark. You wouldn't do that to me, would you, baby?"

THE MORNING CREW arrives like a herd of baby elephants jacked up on lattes and enough mutant energy drinks to give a rhino a stroke. The crew is an ever-shifting posse of film school hipster dudes. I don't know any of their names and I don't want to. They're just Blond Surfer Dude. Billy Goat Beard Surfer Dude. Dreads Dude, etc. They really are dudes. Sleepy eyes. IQs drowning in bong water. They invent complicated filing systems for the movies because the alphabet baffles them.

One of them knocks on my door. I open it without putting on a shirt. My wrists have healed, but there's dried blood on my hands. I hope I didn't ruin the overcoat. Time to look for a dry cleaner.

It's Billy Goat Beard Surfer Dude. He smells like he used bong water for aftershave. My lack of a shirt and the blood don't even register.

He says, "Um, a bunch of the shelves in the porn section fell down last night. What do you want us to do?"

For a second, I wonder if he's kidding. Then I remember who he is.

"Maybe one of you should go and clean it up."

"Okay, but I'm the only one who can work the register. Bill's allergic to dust and Rudy just got born again, so he's a no-porn zone till he gets over it."

"So, none of you is capable of walking to the back of the store and picking up the movies?"

"I guess not. Plus, there's cracks in the ceiling. Looks like there's cracks in there, too," he says, pointing into the room. I pull the door closed a little.

"Fuck it. It's porn. People who want it will paw through it wherever it is. Hell, they might like it better down there. Maybe we should put the whole porn section in a big pile on the floor."

"What?"

I forgot. The only things that are funny when you're as buzzed as Billy Goat Beard are cartoon animals and seeing other people get hurt.

"Never mind. Just open the store and let me get dressed."

"When is Mr. Kasabian coming back?"

I look at the kid. Does this doe-eyed weed monkey suspect something? Am I going to have to lobotomize this twerp?

"When he's damn good and ready," I say.

"Okay." He walks away, like he's already forgotten the whole conversation.

I throw the dead bolt when I close the door. Need to start locking the room up all the time. Too many weapons in here. Too much blood on the floor. Too much residual magic in the walls. All I need is for some stoned teenybopper to take a post-weed nap in Metatron's Cube and wake up with his soul on a hook in some stalker's trading booth in the souk.

I clean up in the bathroom. There's a brownish-red ring around the drain. I need to get some bleach before all the blood I've been leaking into the sink stains it permanently. I wonder if Kasabian had any accident or maybe earthquake insurance. I saw official-looking papers in one box-I'll have to track that down. It'd be nice for Allegra to be able to get the place fixed up when I'm gone and she takes over.

The overcoat is wadded in a ball at the end of the bed. It looks pretty rough. Praise Lucifer that my jeans are black. Blood's not so obvious on them. I find a box with the last of the Max Overdrive T-shirts in my size and slip it on. The only thing I have to wear over the T-shirt that will hide a weapon is the half-burned motocross jacket. I'll look a little crazy in it, but it's still wearable. Because it's such a wreck, I don't have any regrets about tearing the lining open so I can slip the na'at inside. I'll still pack Azazel's knife for backup, but from now on, my primary weapons are the ones that will keep attackers the hell away from me. I didn't crawl back to Earth just to go bankrupt buying new shirts.

It takes me a minute to find where I stashed Muninn's money. I slipped it into the back of a Val Lewton box set that was blown against the far wall. I take a wad of bills from inside and toss the box on the bed.

With the overcoat tucked under my arm, I lock up the room and slip out the back without any of the dudes seeing me.

Aelita is waiting in the alley, standing there like the angel of death in librarian drag. I drop the coat and take a couple of steps into the alley so my back isn't pinned to the wall.

I say, "You're big on the Fortune magazine look. Know any decent dry cleaners around here?"

She shakes her head and shoots poison darts at me with her eyes. Or she wishes she could.

"The Vigil saw you last night. What you did with that man. You're disgusting."

"I'm an Abomination. What do you expect? If you clowns really did have me on your radar, you'd know I was just taking out the trash and that I didn't kill Kasabian. He was killed by someone you should have dealt with a long time ago."

"You followed the poor man into death and tormented him even there."

"I talked to him. I gave him a job recommendation. I helped him more than you ever helped me."

"I offered you help just yesterday. Help and redemption."

"You helped me so much that I had to get glued back together again by Doc Kinski."

"Don't speak that name in front of me!" she shouts. "He's the only creature alive more vile than you."

"Thanks. You hating Kinski makes me feel a lot better about the guy. Maybe I'll let him cut me open after all."

"Why wait? I can do that for you right now."

"Yeah, but when Kinski cuts me, he won't have a hard-on while he's doing it."

"You dare speak to an angel of the Lord that way?"

"If I hurt your feelings, get God down here so I can tell Him to His face."

"Maybe you are worse than Kinski."

"You're the most useless thing I've ever met. Even the worst Hellion has a purpose. What's yours? You can't keep a treaty from falling apart that might destroy the world. You don't even go after Mason. Why is that?"

"Don't you dare interrogate me. We've been looking for Mason for many years."

"But that's not the same as finding him, is it? I mean, the way no one seems to be dealing with the guy makes me wonder if there isn't something else going on."

"We are agents of Heaven and do its bidding."

"And while you do, you let Parker roam around free, slaughtering people, hoping he'll lead you back to the big boy. How many people has Parker killed in the last eleven years and you didn't do anything about it?"

"You're suddenly so concerned about death? People die around you every day and you barely seem to notice. What does that make you?"

"Fuck you, angel. Fuck you and all God's little prison bitches. He slips you some cigarettes and a con job smile and you run off to do his dirty work for him. Go and scare some sinners. No one's listening to you here."

I can't read an angel the way I can a human, but I can read a fighter's body. Aelita shifts slightly, sliding one foot back a few millimeters at a time, letting her weight settle on her back leg.

"God can still save you, Abomination. He can't change the vile thing you are, but through me he can save you from perdition."

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather go to Hell."

"So be it."

Aelita must have been holding back yesterday. She manifests her flaming sword incredibly fast and shoots forward like a bullet. Thing is, I'm pretty fast, too. Especially when I know what an opponent is going to do. Before she charges me, I already have the na'at out, extended, and I'm sidestepping her. When she blasts forward at me, she also impales herself on one side of the na'at, like she's run onto the cutting edge of a chain saw.

Aelita freezes for a second, stunned to find her angelic body sliced through. That gives me a chance to give the na'at a slight turn so that the barbs lock into her. She lets out a monstrous roar, something to rattle Heaven's gates. Buildings shudder and car alarms go off. I can't let go of the na'at to cover my ears. Her scream is like a vise crushing my skull.

She swings her sword at my head and tries to move forward, but she's stuck on the na'at. I push a stud in the handle and step back, locking her in place while extending the na'at so her sword can't reach me.

Aelita is strong. She lunges at me, but each time she moves she just drives the na'at's razor edge deeper into her body. She stops moving and stands there bleeding. Turning pale. After a few minutes, her sword dims and flickers out. She refuses to fall. She won't submit to an Abomination. If I didn't hate her so much already, I'd probably like her.

Then she crumbles all at once. Like someone pulled the plug and shut her down. When she's flat on her back, I turn the na'at to release the barbs, pull it from her chest, and retract it.

Slipping it back inside my jacket, I go over to have a look at her. Her eyes are open, and even though she's looking up, I know she's not looking at the sky. She's looking a lot farther away than that. I wonder what she sees.

"You'll suffer for this, Abomination. Do you know that? God sees everything and He sees you."

"Does He see you? I have an idea. Call God to come down and save you." I look up at the sky with her. "Nothing." I look down again and shrug. "I guess you're expendable, too."

"I hate you more than anything I've ever seen or known."

"There we go. The truth. You hate me. Not for God's sake, but for yours. Feels good, doesn't it? Feels human."

I wonder if an angel can die the way humans do. I wonder what happens to their bodies. Does their spirit go back to Heaven or Hell or do they just evaporate?

I kneel by Aelita's head. She looks up at me, sort of blank.

"I've been thinking about it. Remember when I asked you why God left me in Hell and you said that He probably thought I was where I should be? Maybe He thought I should be here today. To face you down in this alley. Maybe He wants me to finish what I came here for, only to do that, I had to get past you first. It's something for both of us to think about."

Aelita straightens out her arm and tries to manifest her sword. A fighter to the end. Maybe I do like her a little after all. No. I don't.

I don't really believe that angels can die the way we do. And God wouldn't let an important one like Aelita go so easily. Wells and his Golden Vigil buddies and half of Homeland Security are probably on their way over right now. Time for me to find a cleaners, buy some clothes, and generally, not be here.

THERE'S ONE GOOD way to always get what you want from someone who doesn't necessarily want to sell you something. Pay in advance and pay too much. When you're dropping off a coat covered in blood and plaster dust, it's no time to cheap out. The old lady behind the dry-cleaning counter gives me a I-might-call-the-cops look over the tops of her glasses. I slip her one of Muninn's hundred-dollar bills, and just like that, all is forgiven. The coat will be ready later tonight. Civilians really need to remember this. Cash is the magic that anyone can do.

Where did all the Kissi go? The streets were lousy with them yesterday and now they're as gone as a Friday blockbuster with a bad weekend gross.

What the hell is wrong with L.A.? Full of magicians, alchemists, bloodsuckers, soul suckers, the Golden Vigil, and federally funded angels, and no one's been able to touch Mason? That doesn't make any sense. It stinks of protection. It smells like a conspiracy, but I don't believe in conspiracies. Guys will say anything to get laid. If some CIA guy thought he could get a little action by showing a coed how he was the guy on the Grassy Knoll, he'd do it and we'd all know about it by now. But if there's no conspiracy, what does that mean? Maybe there's an asshole A-list that no one told me about. Shake hands with the forces of darkness and get a gift bag from Neiman Marcus and a free pass on murder and apocalyptic power plays.

Is Mason bulletproof because he's tight with the Kissi? Is everyone really that afraid? What did he have to do to cozy up to that celestial vermin anyway? What did he have to steal? Who did he have to kill? What Lovecraftian sewer slug did he have to blow to get up close and personal with God's bastard kids?

I don't believe in conspiracies, but I do believe in bullshit and I believe I'm up to my balls in it right now.

I throw the Veritas and it comes up showing a tangle of what looks almost like barbed wire. The thorn forest in Sheol, Downtown's wild western region. Caatinga thorns will strip and debone anything that wanders into them faster than a piranha with a chain saw. Roughly translated, the Hellion script around the edge of the coin reads, It's not too late to go back and get your GED. I can't tell anymore if the Veritas is giving me advice or just making fun of my doomed ass.

I've pretty much used up any sense of charity or obligation I might have had in this lifetime, but I don't want to turn into just another L.A. dick looking out for number one. I get out my cell and dial Allegra's number. She doesn't pick up. I dial my old number, but no one picks up at Vidocq's. I text Allegra the way I'd seen her text her friends: Keep yr doors locked. Mason 3's suicide bombers.

I wonder if Wells and his G-men have picked up Aelita. It couldn't hurt to make a quick check. The Chinese believe that having a funeral home near your store is bad luck in general and lousy for business. How bad must a dying angel outside your back door be?

I pick up a Jag outside a raw food restaurant next to a tanning salon. Isn't a tanning salon in L.A. like a frostbite salon in Fairbanks?

There's no one is behind me, so I can do a slow drive-by at Max Overdrive and get a look in the alley. Aelita isn't there. There's no blood. No scorch mark from her sword. No sign that anything has ever happened there. Thank you, Marshal. I'll drink to your health on New Year's.

I'D BE A happy camper if between now, when I kill Mason, and when I'm back Downtown, I didn't have to speak to anyone. But that's not how this is going to work out. I drive the Jag over to Allegra's apartment and pound on her door. Do it loud enough and long enough that one of her neighbors comes out and explains to me that she hasn't been home in a couple of days and that I should fuck off. I drive over to Vidocq's and ditch the Jag a few blocks away. There's a little bodega on the corner. I step into a shadow beside it. Two gray-haired men sitting on plastic milk crates and drinking beer ignore the weird white boy doing weird-white-boy stuff.

Vidocq's door is open. That's not so bad all on its own. The door opens and closes all the time when he goes in and out. But now it's standing open and the vaguely diffuse glow that signals a glamour is gone, like someone took soap and water and washed it off.

"When did they put an apartment in over there?" A nosy neighbor stands down the hall staring at the open door. He wants to see it, but he won't get any closer, like maybe the place is radioactive.

"Stay here," I tell him, and reach under my jacket for the na'at. The day I don't pack a gun, that's when I really want one.

"Should you go in there? Should I call the landlord?"

I throw him a quick keep-talking-and-you'll-be-shitting-out-your-tongue look and he backs off.

There's something really wrong with the apartment. Like the one out-of-tune string on a guitar. I can feel it before I even get inside. When I step over the threshold, something else hits. A taste and a smell. Vinegar at the back of my throat. Josef smelled like that when the Kissi revealed themselves. Not that I need another clue that there's something wrong with Vidocq's place.

The walls, ceiling, and floor are covered in twisting, spiky ideograms and letters, intertwined with endless spirals. Spirit faces or maybe images of God the Father, looking more like some saucer-eyed alien than a deity, are smeared around the room. The colors run from rust to a snaky, metallic green, but I've smelled enough dried blood in my time to know what the basic ingredient in all these pigments is.

I stop and I listen, waiting for something. The nosy neighbor is so freaked out, I can feel his heart and breathing. Don't stroke out, guy. We've got enough problems here.

Or not. I don't feel anything. There's nothing alive in the apartment. I can't read the Kissi, but between my own heightened senses and the new sight that Aelita has given me, I think I'd know if there was a Kissi lurking in the corner with a lamp shade on its head. As much as I don't want to wrestle anything magic for a while, not finding a single Kissi is a letdown. Finding the body is worse.

It's a man's body. Naked. Nailed face-first to the wall about six feet off the ground. Someone has carefully peeled back the outer layers of skin. Let them fall back like pale, fleshy leaves on a plant, leaving the muscles and bones untouched. There are only two or three drops of blood on the floor. At least I know where the blood for the frescoes came from. And that whoever peeled and drained a body that cleanly really knew what he or she or they were doing.

The body is nailed the wrong way around for me to see the face. I can tell from here that it's the body of a middle-aged man. Vidocq has been in his fifties for two hundred years. Is that still middle-aged? I wish the old bastard had some tattoos I could look for. The body is too badly beaten up to look for scars.

I know I should take the body down. All I have to do is stand on a chair, yank the nails from the hands, and it's taken care of. But I don't want to get near it. I can't look away, either. I had the same reaction seeing my father at the funeral home. I couldn't get near him and I couldn't move away. My brain knew that I needed to react, but my body wouldn't go along with any of it. I only got over it by forcing myself to go to my father's body and touch his face. Looking just vapor-locked my brain. I had to feel that he was dead.

There's a stepladder next to the refrigerator in the kitchen. I bring it to the living room and open it up right below the body. Before I can start the dirty work, out of the corner of my eye I see the nosy neighbor sticking his nosy face in where it shouldn't be.

"Oh God. Oh my God. I'm calling the cops."

I move fast. Fast enough that I scare him more than the body does. Before he can finish dialing, I snatch the cell phone out of his hand and perp-walk him to a window. Lean him out and make him watch as I drop his phone into a Dumpster several floors below.

I say, "Go get it. Then you can call."

Nosy Neighbor looks at me like I just told him that I'm Darth Vader and I fucked his sister, but he doesn't say a word. He heads straight for the stairs.

Back at the body, I pull the nails from the feet first. They're some kind of heavy concrete nail. Perfect for going through muscle and bone and into a wall stud.

With the feet free, I can get the body down on the ground. I climb onto the top step of the stepladder. Yank one nail out of one hand and the other out of the other. Suddenly free, the body drops heavily into my arms. The limbs flop. The head tilts, snaps, and falls off.

Too much. I let go and it hits the ground.

I should have seen it the moment I started to move the body, but I was distracted, trying to decide between collapsing into a queasy heap or pulling a John Wayne to see what was right in front of me.

Kasabian's corpse is lying on the floor. That's why the body is so beaten up. The Kissi didn't torture Vidocq. They just stitched back together what Parker blew apart last night.

How do you steal and clean a body from the bottom of a ten-thousand-year-old tar pit? Why do you steal and clean a body from the bottom of a ten-thousand-year-old tar pit?

And if Kasabian's boomerang corpse is here on the floor, where are Vidocq and Allegra?

My phone rings. I thumb it on.

"Boo. Fooled you with your own dead guy." It's Parker. "I bet right about now you're wondering where your friends are."

"How are you seeing me?"

"Look around you, shit for brains. There's eyes everywhere."

"The paintings."

"There's this thing called magic. Maybe you've heard of it."

"Where are Vidocq and Allegra?"

"Relax, sweetheart. They're fine. In fact, we're having a New Year's party tonight and you're invited."

"At Avila?"

"How do you walk around with that big brain? Yeah, Avila. It'll be a blast. We're gonna raise a little hell. Get your ass there before midnight."

"I'll be there."

"This is a personal invitation. No guests. No plus ones. If I see a cloud of dust behind you, Senor Frog and that little slice of cherry pie go right in the wood chipper."

"I'll be there."

"Before midnight. That's twelve. When the big hand and the little hands are straight up."

"Either one of them gets hurt, I'm going to personally teach you the Tombstone Dog Paddle."

"That another scary trick you learned in Hell?"

"No. Wild Bill told my great-granddad about it. It's where I take you down the river. Someplace the ground is soft and wet. I break your arms and legs. You fingers and toes. Your neck and back. I dig a hole in the wet, soft ground, put you inside, and fill it back up. Then I have a cigarette and wait for you to dig your way out."

"Before twelve," says Parker, and hangs up.

IF I LEARNED anything Downtown, it's this: the only real difference between an enemy and a friend is the day of the week.

I go back to where I abandoned the Jag, jam the knife in the ignition, and aim the car west, then south, heading back along the same surface streets I traveled with Wells once before. A good sense of direction can get you into or out of a lot of trouble.

Who's higher on the food chain? The Golden Vigil or Homeland Security? The feds are probably picking up the tab for the operation, but that probably has more to do to with Washington control freaks and politicians who want their names next to supersecret intelligence groups. Wanting to put Ran CIA or Busted terrorist cell on your resume when you run for president seems obvious, but would telling people that you run angels and G-men who keep the world safe from chaos creatures on the edge of the universe help your political career or get you a syringe full of Thorazine and a lifetime supply of adult diapers? What does whoever runs the Vigil back in D.C. put on their quarterly work reports? At least, the people that person reports to must know what the Vigil does. But what do you tell oversight committees and budget fascists? "We need that extra billion for a gun that will turn vampires into dog food and dark angels into the filling for Bavarian cream doughnuts." Who runs this sideshow and what do they want?

If what I'd read was right, it was all a joke anyway. Before the morning herd came into Max Overdrive this morning, I looked up the Golden Vigil on an occult encyclopedia Web site. The Golden Vigil has been around at least since the First Crusade in the eleventh century. That's when the Brits and the French started writing about it.

According to some of those stories, the Vigil was a splinter cell of the original Hashishin, the frat-house assassination cult that was the Al Qaeda of its day. While the regular Hashishin stuck to Dirty Harry jihadist political power-structure attacks, the Golden Vigil went after invisible enemies.

The French chroniclers insist that the Vigil is much older than most people realize, and that its origins might actually explain how and why some of the first tribes stopped chasing game up and down the Fertile Crescent and settled down to build the world's first trailer parks along the Euphrates. If the Kissi have been here for as long as Aelita said, it makes sense. It means that the Vigil has been around for at least eight to ten thousand years. Even longer, if the tribes were negotiating with the Kissi when they first wandered up out of Africa. That would push the Vigil's origins back to around seventy thousand years, according to another encyclopedia site.

Which brings us back to the question of who's the big meat eater along this food chain, Homeland Security or the Golden Vigil? Whoever controls the money is in the driver's seat. The gray-suit guys back east might pony up the money now, but I have a hard time believing that if Washington pulled the plug, the Vigil couldn't support itself. You can stuff a lot of loot into the cookie jar over seventy thousand years.

WHEN I PULL into the parking lot of the Vigil's warehouse, a couple of G-men dressed like rent-a-cops hold up their hands for me to stop. Being highly trained security professionals with keen powers of observation, they leap and lurch out of the way when they see that I'm not slowing down. By the time I'm up to the warehouse entrance and out of the Jag, six of them have surrounded me and each one of them has an identical Glock 9mm pointed at my head. I hate Glocks. Guys who love Glocks love Corvettes. Not because it was a hot car, but because it was cool forty years ago and they once saw a picture of Steve McQueen in one. Their dad probably had a Vette when he was young, but he was never cool. But if they have a Vette, maybe they can forget the fat man who made them mow the lawn when they should have been out with their friends sneaking into R-rated movies, and who embarrassed them in front of their first girlfriends. Maybe their dad was the guy driving fast and locking lips with Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair. Maybe their dad was cool after all and maybe that made them cool, too. That's what Glocks are. High-precision killing machines that scream "Daddy Issues."

They come on attack-dog fierce, but no one seems eager to pull the trigger. Lucky me. I don't want to get shot. Lucky them. I know these guys are just the hired help, but right now I really want to hurt someone.

A couple of them are talking into their sleeves, nodding to the air. Another minute of the silent Sergio Leone standoff and Wells comes out of the warehouse, banging the door open.

"I ought to let these men shoot you. You drove straight here, shitsack. Did you, even for a second, think about who might be watching or tailing you?"

"Not even for a second."

He nods to his men.

"Bring him inside."

"I want to talk to you, not your Boy Scouts."

"I don't want to talk to you at all out here. Shut up until we're somewhere secure."

I keep my mouth shut. I don't need any more enemies. Well, any more enemies who want to see me turned into chum any more than they already do.

We pass through the electric Jell-O interior barrier and the work floor appears. It's different inside. Like Vegas on the Fourth of July. All lights, machine noise, a din of voices, welding sparks like fireworks. Vigil members are trying out new weapons. Some look like modified guns. Others are like metal parasites attached to their backs, wrapping around their arms and waists. Across the warehouse, they're prepping vehicles. I don't see Aelita, but then, there's no reason she'd want to see me.

Wells says, "We're kinds of busy right now, so talk fast."

"I thought you'd like to know that a couple of civilians have been kidnapped and dragged up to Avila."

"Friends of yours? Then I doubt they're civilians, in the true sense of the word. I mean, in the sense that anyone gives a rat's ass about."

"You're going to leave a couple of innocent people hanging because you have a beef with me?"

"I don't think you'd know innocent if it rode up and bit you in the balls. And, for your information, I don't leave innocent people hanging."

"Then what are you going to do about it?"

Wells sweeps his arm around at all the activity.

"I'm going back to work. We're a little busy right now. Thanks for stopping by."

He turns away, but I put my hand on his shoulder. Hard. Come up right behind him, close enough to snap his neck. When I feel him tense, I know he knows it. I say it all quietly and evenly.

"I can go up there and tear Avila apart on my own. I'm far from bulletproof and they have enough firepower that I'm pretty sure they'll kill me, but I'm going to take a lot of people with me, including every magician in the place. A fight like that, it can't be helped if some of Avila's rich clientele gets burned, including the richest, most important ones. Imagine the shitstorm when all those old-money families and the Sub Rosa find out that you knew what was going down and did nothing about it. Or, you and your Mouseketeers can come with me and we can take the place down together."

"You're a day late and a dollar short, Chuck. What do you think all this is? We're hitting Avila tonight."

"If you're not going for the civilians, what are you going for?"

"We're trying to stop the end of the world, asshole. Which, by the way, is entirely your fault."

I let go of him. He turns around and faces me, rubbing where I held him. He's not lying. I can see that right away. His heart is hammering like a car running third at NASCAR. He smells like anger with a little fear mixed in, but no lies.

"Keep talking," I say.

"You know why you piss me off? It's not that stunt on Rodeo Drive, your schoolyard threats, your pixie friends, or even you wanting to kill every living thing in sight. It's that you think you're alone in the world and that there's nothing going on except for you and your problems."

"Enlighten me. What, are you and your cowboys going up there with your Flash Gordon toys to make them turn down their music?"

He looks over his shoulder, then back at me.

"Do you even know what Avila is? What's going on up there?"

"I've been there. It's the best little whorehouse in Purgatory. So what?"

"Yeah, to the college boys and businessmen in the dumb-ass front rooms, but Avila is a lot more than that to insiders. Avila is a dark-magic power site in a city that's one big power site. What's today's date?"

"I have no idea."

"That's what I mean. You don't know anything. It's New Year's Eve. It's not just another frat party. Tonight is a ritual night. The ritual. At midnight, you know all those angels they've been fucking in the back room? They're going to sacrifice each and every one, and when they do, they're going to open up the gates of Hell and let your pal Lucifer and all his Hellion armies stroll through L.A. like it's the goddam Easter parade."

"That doesn't make any sense. Mason runs Avila; why would he want to destroy the world? It could be the Kissi. They'd love the chaos, but why would they want competition from Hellions?"

"Avila was built for this one purpose. They've been kidnapping and turning angels into whores for as long as anyone can remember."

"And how is this any of my fault?"

"Because you wouldn't stay put. Because you were in Hell, which is the only place that damned key you're carrying around is safe. But Mason got you back here by killing your girlfriend, the one thing he knew you couldn't let go of."

"Would you have let him get away with that?"

"It's not me or my girl we're talking about. You bringing that key to Earth is like opening a tiny crack in the universe. The ritual tonight is going to kick that crack wide open. That's why he killed your girl now. He needed you to get the key to Earth before New Year's."

"So, let's go up and hurt some bad guys."

This time, he puts his hand on my shoulder and turns me to look round the room.

"Wait. There's more, sunshine. Do you see Aelita? No, you don't. You know why? Because some hothead fucked her up and left her in an alley where the Kissi could find her, and they carried her on up the hill. That's right. Aelita's in Avila right now and they're going to kill her in a few hours. So, pardon me if I don't get all choked up about you and yours. I've got my own people to worry about."

I nod, a little numb. I have absolutely no reason to feel bad about what happens to someone who's tried to kill me twice. But I don't like the idea of throwing anyone, even a crazy, homicidal angel, to Mason. Besides, anything Mason wants, I don't want him to have.

"Okay, Tex. You wanted me, you got me. And before you call me an asshole and tell me to get out, listen: I can give you something that no one else in the world can."

"What?"

"I can walk you and your troops straight inside Avila. Past security and alarms, magicians, and whatever goblins or devil dogs they've hired as lookouts."

Wells looks at me. I can practically see the hamster wheel turning in his head. He so wants to tell me to get out, but he's read my file and knows that I've gotten to some of the best-protected Hellions Downtown. It's fun watching a cop squirm.

"You'll use the key? How? I need to know that my people will be safe."

"I'll walk them straight in. If there's a shadow anywhere, I can get in through it."

"Show me."

"I'm not going to do magic tricks for you. Do you want my help or not?"

He stares at me. Chews the inside of his cheek. He wants a cigarette. He's a secret smoker. I can smell it in his sweat.

"Know what, Tex? I don't need you giving me the pig eye. You need me a lot more than I need you. I can wait until you and the cavalry charge in through the front door and get blown to rags. I'll stroll in after and use your corpses for shields. Have fun getting slaughtered."

"Okay," he says. "This one time."

"One more thing. We have different agendas. I'll get you in, and if I can, I'll step up and help you save the world and all that Boy Scout crap, but not until I get my friends out of harm's way. Deal?"

"The world could end tonight and you're determined to go out a selfish bastard."

"Being up close to you godly types just brings it out in me."

"We have a deal."

I can tell that it's killing him to say it. This is better than ice cream and cake for dinner.

Wells says, "But when this is over, you have to have a face-to-face with Aelita over what you did."

"I'll be there. When do we leave?"

Wells checks his watch. Looks up at a big digital countdown clock on the wall. Preparations are picking up in pace. The animals are getting worked up. Attack dogs doing lines of crystal meth, hoping that if they do enough, their teeth will turn to razor blades.

"We figure the last important guests will be there by ten, so we'll go in a little after."

"I'll be back before then."

I start out the way we came in, but I get stopped by a beautiful sight. A heavy metal clothes rack on wheels with a row of brand-new, state-of-the-art body-armor vests. At least fifty of them. I take one off the rack and hold it up.

I yell back at Wells, "I'm taking this."

"Fine. Go." Then, "Wait. One thing."

"What?"

"Stop calling me Tex. I'm from Sparks, Nevada."

"You know the only thing worse than a Texan?"

"What?"

"A pretend Texan."

"Be back before ten or we go without you."

THE KISSI ARE still nowhere to be seen. Something is definitely up. I look out the Jag's window at a couple waiting at a red light, not talking to each other, glaring off in different directions about a stupid fight they just had. A couple of kids in front of a newsstand are picking on another kid. Teen gangsters in training hang on a corner by a liquor store passing a joint around. I want to lean out the window and tell them that world is about to end and they should get their shit together, but why bother?

Does anyone really know what goes on in the world? I used to think these people were a joke because they only believed in their concrete reality and never dreamed of looking below the surface of the world. Most of them, even if they ran face-first into a bunch of Sub Rosa necromancing John the Baptist, Billie Holiday, and Wild Bill back from the dead, they'd never believe or understand it.

I don't understand anything, either. My brain is bouncing back and forth between asking why Mason wants to open up Hell and wondering if that's what's really going on at all. It seems like opening Hell, or pretending to open it, might be a nice distraction. While everyone's looking one way, he does a slip and slide around back and pulls something else. But what?

Mostly, I'm trying not to think at all. I'm never going to get inside Mason's head. I might have been born a better magician, but he's always been smarter. That's why he's going to end up running the carnival and I'm going to end up biting the heads off chickens. But that's thinking, too. I want silence. Big, blank, Zen silence. I need to get back to that calm quiet moment I'd have before I went into the arena. No thought. No action. Thought and action as one. I control my breathing and focus on the road ahead. I can feel the calm coming on.

That's when the siren starts and the light bar pops behind me. Colored lights reflect off the rearview mirror and right into my eyes. A cop's garbled, amplified voice echoes off the glass buildings. I can't understand a word, but I know how to translate this cop haiku: You're driving around in the same stolen Jag you should have ditched an hour ago. It's not like there aren't other cars in L.A. to steal. But you started thinking and you got distracted and now look what's happened.

This is really the last thing I need right now. I wonder if they'll let me off with a warning if I tell them I'm going to be trying to save the world later tonight?

The cop voice booms again. They hit me from behind with their searchlight. About a billion candlepower. I stop the car and put it in park.

Thanks for the shadow, Dick Tracy. It's a tight fit, but I can just slip through. I drag the body armor in behind me. I hope that one of the cops sneaks up on the driver's side window in time to see my feet disappear into the dashboard.

I step out into the lobby of the Bradbury Building. The place is dark. Shut down tight. I get into the elevator hoping they haven't cut the power over the holiday. I hit the button. The car shivers and rises, and I can breathe again.

It goes up a floor and stops. I press the one and three buttons at the same time and the car starts moving. I get out when it stops, not sure I did it right. Then the Fury in Muninn's window lunges at me from inside its glass cage. I blow her a kiss, go inside, bump my way through the clutter, and head straight down the stairs in back.

Muninn is waiting for me at the bottom.

"My boy! I heard the bell and wondered who'd be coming here tonight. This is usually a quiet evening for me."

"Sorry if I'm keeping you from a party or something."

Muninn laughs.

"My boy, when you've seen as many new years as I have, the last thing you want to do is throw a party for the damned thing."

He takes me by the arm and leads me to a table covered with neatly laid out groups of bones. Fingers. Toes. A whole hand or foot.

"Relics," he says. "Each bone and appendage belonged to one saint or another. I have a client who wants to build a summer home in the form of a sort of ossuary. But only with the bones of saints. No commoners allowed. As you might imagine, that takes quite a lot of bones. I'm just cataloging this batch tonight."

He goes to a shelf and takes down the same dusty bottle we drank from after Vidocq and I got back from Avila. He gets two small glasses and pours us each a drink.

"Thanks," I say, and shotgun it. "I'm in kind of a rush tonight."

"Of course. Sorry," he says. "Just because I ignore the new year doesn't mean you do. My apologies."

"No problem." I clear my throat. "Mr. Muninn. I want to make a deal with you. A big one."

"I'm always open to a good trade. What would you like?"

"It's not what I want. It's what you want. You're going to want this." I reach under my shirt and take off the coin. I set it on the table and push it toward him. Muninn looks at it without touching it.

"Is that a Veritas?"

"Straight from a Hellion general's pocket."

"You've had it all this time?"

"I brought it back with me."

"My boy, I could have made you a very rich man by now, if I'd known that. Does it work?"

"Like a charm. Take it for a test drive."

"You're the experienced one. What's the proper way?"

"There's no trick to it. Just hold it and ask your question. Say it in your head, not out loud. Saying it out loud won't ruin the magic. Just makes you sound like a mental patient."

Muninn picks up the Veritas slowly, like it might shock him. He makes a fist and closes his eyes. A moment later, he opens his hand and laughs at what he sees.

"Well?"

"I asked if buying it would be a good deal. It presented me with a lovely view of Abaddon's bottomless pit, lit in such way as to look like a large, not terribly clean sphincter. Along with that is a message on one side of the coin telling me that I'm an impotent, flatulent, fat, old fuck, and on the other side, telling me that it's a good investment only if I like having hot coals shoved down my throat by Hellion cocks."

"What do you think?"

"I think it's brilliant. I must have it. What do you want for it? Money? I know you like money. I'll give you a lot for this. Enough for this lifetime and for your children's children."

"No. This is too big for money. I want something special for the Veritas. Something cool. Something apocalyptic."

Mr. Muninn smiles at me like he might end up celebrating New Year's after all. having learned my lesson with the Jag, I go through the room to Max Overdrive. Upstairs, I toss the bedroom like a nervous B amp;E guy, shoving broken furniture and video players against the walls. It's nice to be strong at moments like this. I shove the bed frame and all the furniture into one corner of the room without breaking a sweat. Eventually, when I've tossed enough junk into enough piles, I've found all my guns. Then the bullets and shells. Then the bottle of Spiritus Dei. I guess the stuff really is as magical as Vidocq said. The bottle is sitting upright and is perfectly clean. Everything else in the room is covered in plaster dust and lying on its side.

The pistols are already loaded with bullets dipped in Spiritus. I go downstairs and find a paint-caked hacksaw in the little storage room behind the porn section. I take it upstairs and start sawing down the Benelli shotgun. Sawing down a simple double-barrel model is easy. You can cut the barrel down all the way to the front of the shell. Turn your long-range shotgun into a short-range blunderbuss. I don't want to go that far with the Benelli. I just saw off most of the stock, down to the curved part of the grip, so that it fits into my hand like an oversize pistol. I find a ball of heavy twine from under the bootleg table and tie a tight knot around the grip, then tie off a loop so that the gun can hang off my shoulder under my coat. Simple, crude, and deadly. What Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker called a Whip-It gun because you could whip it out from under your coat before anyone knew what was going on.

I'm moving, staying in motion, doing things that feel like they make sense, but how do you accessorize for the end of the world? When you're not sure what to bring, I figure you should bring everything. Four handguns, a shotgun, a Hellion knife, and the na'at feel like a good look for me.

I dip each shotgun shell into a little Spiritus and chamber it. Eight rounds in all. Then I sprinkle Spiritus on the shotgun itself. Why be stingy? I sprinkle Spiritus on all the guns, keeping my thumb over the top of the bottle to control the flow. I'm Martha Stewart spritzing my orchids. While I'm on a roll, I toss Spiritus onto the body armor and my coat, and wipe the rest on my hands.

Wild Bill might have been the greatest shootist of his time, but he had a habit that's come back to bite me in the ass. Wild Bill didn't believe in holsters. He carried his Navy Colts tucked in a red sash he wore around his waist, a fashion back then. I didn't grow up using holsters, either. It's easy to tuck one big gun down the back of your jeans, but it's not so good for four.

Time for a sacrifice. I slit both side pockets on my coat a few inches, long enough so that the Colt.45 and the LeMat can rest inside, but far enough out that I can quick draw them. When I get the cuts the right length, I reinforce the interior and sides of the pockets with duct tape.

This is one of the reasons I'll never own a car. I'm hard on things. Everything ends up broken, ripped apart, modified, stuck together, or shot to shit. I'd be naked as Adam and cold as a polar bear if it weren't for duct tape.

If anyone ever asks you what a desperate man looks like, you can tell them that he looks like this: He's down on his hands and knees, digging through the ruins of his exploded bedroom, looking for a cigarette. If he looks hard enough, he might find a real treasure, like a bent, but only half-smoked butt. I hold it up like the Holy Grail, blow off as much of the dust as I can, and fire it up with Mason's lighter. Like my grandmother used to say, "I am blessed and highly favored."

I get out my cell and dial Kinski's number. Candy answers.

"Are you always the designated phone answerer over there?"

"Stark? Doc doesn't like phones. He thinks they're too disembodied."

"I'd love to be disembodied. All my problems solved at once."

"Ghosts don't smoke or get to drink Jack Daniel's."

"Forget it, then. I'll live forever."

"That's a better plan than what you had the last time we talked."

"That's why I called. I wanted to ask about some of that. I know you're taking the cure and trying to stay clean and all, but we're still a lot the same, too. Still monsters under the skin."

"Why do you want to talk about that?"

"I was wondering if maybe you'd like to go do some-thing with me tonight. Some friends and me, we're going to crash a New Year's Eve party and kill a whole bunch of people."

"Why, Stark. Are you flirting with me? You bad boy."

"We're going to stop a mass sacrifice, so there's going to be a lot of bad guys. I figure that having as many experienced killers as possible will help even out the odds. But it sounded like Doc Kinski's clipped your wings. You haven't tasted a human in a long time, have you?"

"Doc makes me this amazing cocktail. My iced frappuccino people substitute, I call it. I haven't fed on anyone in two years, three months, and eight days."

"If you've ever had the itch, here's your chance. And this time when you're killing, you'll be on the side of the angels. Literally."

"You sure know how to turn a girl's head." She doesn't say anything for a minute.

"Candy?"

"I'll have to talk to Doc first. I can't lie to him."

"I understand. It's up to you. My friends and me, we're going to be at Club Avila a little after ten. You know where that is?"

"Everyone knows where Avila is."

"This party is going to be special. Assuming the world doesn't end, no one is ever going to forget it."

"I'll try to be there."

"One more thing."

"Yes?"

"Thanks for treating me like, you know, a person through all this shit. I know that isn't always easy."

"You do have a habit of pissing on other people's welcome mats. But, when a gentleman gives you a booty call to a massacre, it's easy to forgive him. Ciao."

I finish my cigarette and start getting ready. I strap on the body armor, which feels tough enough, but closes with Velcro strips. I know this is state-of-the-art gear, but I'd feel more confident if it wasn't held together with the same stuff they use to fasten kids' sneakers.

I'm going to feel really bad if this all falls apart tonight. I don't want the last thing I say to Vidocq and Allegra to be "Get out."

I tuck the Navy Colt and the Browning into the back of my jeans.

Two more dead like Alice. Two more who don't deserve it.

The looped cord on the Benelli Whip-It gun goes over my shoulder and the coat goes on over that.

Will Avila be full of Kissi? If that's who's waiting for us, this is going to be a very bad, very short night for anything with a pulse.

The Colt.45 and the LeMat pistols go in the coat pockets, butt ends out.

They must be partying hard Downtown tonight, waiting for the velvet rope to come down and the doors to the VIP section of Creation to be blown off their hinges.

What's going on in Heaven? Are all the ranks of the angelic throng on their knees, praying for humanity's faith in the Word to pull them through? Me, I bet it's more like a sports bar the night before the Super Bowl. Crowds of drunken, winged frat boys with team hats and big foam fingers. Maybe that's why Heaven is silent and God doesn't speak to Man anymore. Heavenly intervention would blow the point spread.

THERE'S TOO MUCH weird, magic-cloaking static and protection hoodoo around the Vigil's warehouse. I don't have time to find a straight path inside through the room, so I have to use a shadow a few blocks south and run the rest of the way.

A line of low-profile, matte-black transports warm up their engines in the parking lot. They're nearly silent, and where their bodies touch the dark, they disappear. Stealth party vans. If I'd known about these, I wouldn't have bothered stealing all those cars.

The rear hatch of the lead van is open. Wells motions me over, squinting at me like a constipated Clint Eastwood.

"Why'd I know you were going to cut it short? Two more minutes and we'd have been gone."

"Your damned Flatulence Accelerator has the whole area fuzzed out. I had to walk halfway here."

Wells holds up a hand. "Wait. You couldn't even get here with the pixie hocus pocus you're going to use to get us into Avila? I am not filled with confidence."

"Relax. I've already broken into Avila. They don't have anything like your setup."

"And what if they have? What if they've brought in a load of technology and dark magicians?"

"Then we do it your way. Blow the place open. Take heavy losses. Get inside. We're walking into the O.K. Corral. You want a guarantee that your hair won't get mussed, Marshal Wells?"

"You get any of my people killed unnecessarily, I'm coming after you."

"Take a number."

Wells steps up into the transport. I take a quick look around the lot. No sign of Candy. Guess she really has taken the cure.

I get in the transport and squeeze into a seat next to Wells.

THE TRANSPORT MIGHT have been quiet outside, but inside it's like sitting in a washing machine. None of the Vigil crew is talking. A few are praying, but most probably don't want to have to shout over the noise.

Wells's G-men are wrapped up in weird electronics and nylon webbing, and holding strange guns. Some are in aluminum-coated full-body suits like foundry workers. The rest are in black pants and skintight tops that stretch over their heads like balaclavas. The ones not carrying guns are wrapped up in metal exoskeletons like they're being raped by robots.

I lean over and shout into Wells's ear.

"Seriously, you people should try to learn just a little magic. I saw celestial types working at your warehouse. They could teach you something. I know you civilians can't handle any really heavy magic, but maybe you could pick up something useful so you wouldn't have to dress up like the Terminator's retarded cousin."

Wells shouts back, "Learn your kind of magic so I can spend eternity in Hell with people like you? No thanks. I'll stick to the weapons Heaven's given us."

"You'd think if Heaven was that completely on your side, it'd be a little more helpful."

"Aelita, God's hand on Earth, is on our side. You'd be able to understand that if you didn't have a soul dirtier than a hobo's boxer shorts."

"All I'm saying is that I don't trust either side. Heaven just might be hedging its bets."

"I'm sure that's what you think, but our weapons have never failed us yet."

"Suit yourself. But with magic, I don't ever run out of ammo."

"No, just brains."

WE STICK TO backstreets until we get north of the city, then cut overland through the hills and canyons until we cut south near the Stone Canyon reservoir. Come down through Bel Air, paralleling North Beverly Glen Boulevard. The drivers up front wear helmets like fighter pilots, with night vision and heads-up displays. Monitors over our heads show us what they're seeing. It's nothing special. Trees as we mow our way through the hills. Flares and pinpoints of light when we come close to a housing development. This is either the worst amusement park ride in history or I'm back in Hell.

Soon we're at the bottom of one especially tall hill with lights like a piece of the sun is sitting on top. That's how Club Avila looks through night vision. To anyone driving by, it would be just another gated mansion.

There are six transports in our convoy. Four of us stay put while two drive onto Beverly Glen so they can roll up to Avila's front door.

Wells say, "We're flanking them. A-team will initiate the attack at the front, drawing the club's security that way. You're going to get us inside so we can attack from the rear."

I nod.

"Listen to me," says Wells. "I don't want this to be the last night of the world, so I'm going to ask you one more time, are you sure you can get us all inside? There's still time to catch up with the other team if you can't."

I say, "I was in a rush earlier. I didn't take the time to find a good way in. But I can walk into Heaven or Hell or anywhere in between. I can damn sure walk us into this place."

"You know I'm going to shoot you if you say you can and you can't."

"That won't kill me, but I tell you what. If I can't get us inside, I'll show you what will."

Wells looks back, nods at his G-men, and then turns back to me.

"Let's get going."

I swing up the Whip-It gun and pump a shell into the chamber.

"What was all that BS in the transport about you only using magic?"

"This is magic. Wild Bill magic."

"Just get us inside, Sandman Slick."

"Hold on to my shoulder and keep your eyes shut. Tell the guy behind you to do the same thing and all the way down the line. Whatever you do, don't open your eyes or let go of me until you're completely inside Avila. You don't want to be stuck with half your ass sticking out of a hill."

Wells passes the instructions down the line. I should have bought blindfolds. I hope I scared Wells and his crew enough to really keep their eyes closed. The Vigil just wants to get inside the club. I don't need everyone who works for them knowing about the Room of Thirteen Doors.

Wells comes back a minute later and thumps his hand on my shoulder.

"Time for you to redeem your sorry ass."

"Okay, Dorothy, click your heels together three times and say, 'There's no place like home.'"

I step into the dark at the bottom of the hill. I've never tried to walk this many people in and out of a shadow before. I hope I don't kill everyone.

A second later, we're inside Jayne's office in the club. It looks pretty much the same as when Vidocq and I were here a day or two ago. I doubt anyone has been inside since Jayne turned up dead.

"You can open your eyes," I say.

"Gabriel's swinging blue balls, boy. You did it. You actually did something."

"Thanks, Dad."

The room fills up fast. Vigil members gasp and cross themselves when they open their eyes and see that they're still alive. I pull Wells over by the office door so that we'll be the first ones out. If there's an ambush outside, I don't want him to miss a second of it.

"What do we do now?" I ask.

"Wait. I'll tell you when to go."

It gets hard to move as the last of the Vigil crew comes through the room.

"This isn't a raid. It's a Marx Brothers movie."

"Shut up."

A blast rocks the whole building. Another blast hits a second later. Avila shudders, like the building is floating on water. I reach for the door, but Wells grabs my arm.

"Wait," he says.

Thunder in the hall as people stampede past the office. Harsh voices yelling over the noise.

"Move! Security! Out of the way!"

There's a sizzle and a wave of static electricity pulses through the wall, making the hairs on my arms stand up. That was a magician, clearing the hall the quick way. The smell of the burned bodies makes some of the Vigil crew gag. I smelled enough of it Downtown that it's familiar and even sort of comforting. I really hope there aren't any mind readers with us.

"Okay," Wells says.

I step into the hall, shotgun first. Wells is behind me, ordering his troops to split up and head out in different directions.

I wait until he's done and say, "I got you in. That was our deal. Now I have my own to do."

"This is the world we're fighting for."

"You're fighting for. I'm here for my friends."

He shakes his head and moves off with some of his people to the back of the club.

I keep my head down and move in a slow lope to the front, where the fighting is the loudest. I have no idea where to start looking for Vidocq or Allegra, but if I can get hold of one of the human security guards, I bet I can make him sing me a song.

It's all Scarf ace gunfire and flashes of murder magic up front. A young magician in a bloody tuxedo shirt sprints around the corner, sees me, and shrieks a death hex. A swirling vortex like black smoke shoots from this chest. I fire the Benelli twice. The Spiritus-dipped shot rips through the smoke, tearing it to pieces, before slamming into the magician's chest. He goes down and doesn't move.

I run straight into the chaos. I don't even bother shooting the human security. Why waste supercharged ordnance on civilians? Their gunfire can't get through the Vigil's body armor, which gives me plenty of time to work. I elbow one security guard in the throat, crushing his windpipe. Get my arm around another's head and plant my knee in his back. Pull and push, and his spine snaps.

There are still plenty of magicians firing wildly, hitting as many of Avila's men as the Vigil's. Three or four of them spot me in the middle of the firefight. They fire their deadliest spells all at once.

A crawling wave of red lightning rimmed with bright blue sizzles across the floor and ceiling. A smoking death-spell vortex spins through the center.

In the Old West, they called shotguns "street sweepers," and that's how I use the Benelli. I open up, firing into the eye of the shitstorm, sweeping the gun barrel from left to right.

The magic breaks apart. Flies like shrapnel in all directions, burning anything it lands on and turning some human security guards into pillars of fire.

Blowing their curses apart catches the magicians off guard. The shotgun blasts three of them dead. The last one, a blond, blue-eyed, fashion-model type, falls over backward, minus her left arm. She's flat on her back, bone jutting from her shoulder, still screaming curses. They swarm from her mouth and carpet the floor in an army of fat, blue-eyed spiders.

The Benelli empty, I rip the cord off my shoulder and drop it, while pulling the Colt.45 and the LeMat. I dive to the side, getting off one shot with the Colt. It catches Twiggy at the base of the throat and she falls back dead. Her spider army turns to dust.

The Vigil are holding Avila's killers off, but I need to get out of here and into the back rooms to look for Vidocq and Allegra. All I can do is hunker down and go Wild Bunch on the room. I'm faster than just about anyone else at Avila, so I put my head down and sprint through the gunfire. To anyone else, I look like I'm running scared and firing at anything that moves, but I'm carefully aiming and killing the last few magicians I can find.

Something hits me in the knee. It feels like it's on fire. I tuck and roll so that I don't go down on my face. When I get my balance, I'm looking up at another magician ten yards away. A huge, ancient, heavyset man. He could be Lawrence Tierney's stunt double. I bring up the Colt and pull the trigger. Click. Damn. The LeMat does the same.

If I had another thirty seconds, I know that I'd be able to stand again and kick Lawrence's head to Argentina. But I don't have thirty seconds. The old man is so close that I can feel the hex building up inside him. As he starts to shout the spell, his jugular explodes.

Something is on top of him, ripping at his throat. It digs its claws into his chest and cracks him open like a boiled lobster. Lawrence doesn't move after that. A blur, the creature spins and grabs my ankle, dragging me behind a grand piano in a corner of the room. I twist around and grab the Browning.45 from behind my back just as it turns on me. I have the trigger half pulled when I realize that the rib cracker is Candy. I twist my arm just in time to pop off the shot in the air.

"Miss me?" she asks. Candy is covered in blood and things I don't want to think about.

"How did you get here?"

"I came up through the woods. When I saw those black trucks, I hitched a ride on top."

I've never seen a Jade in full feral mode before. Candy's nails have curved out into thick claws. Her eyes are red slit pupils in a sea of black ice. Her lips and tongue are as black as her eyes. Her mouth has a slightly different shape. Like she has a few more teeth or the ones she has are wider and sharper than before. A mouthful of pretty white shark's teeth. She's the most beautiful thing I've seen in eleven years. I want to have monster babies with her right here and now. But something explodes, someone screams, and I remember my other friends and the end of the world.

"Parker probably has Vidocq and Allegra at the center of the club, near the sacrifice," I tell her. It's just a guess, but with D-day going on in the front parlor, it's where I'd go.

Candy helps me to my feet. My knee is knitting itself back together. It can almost take my weight, but it's not there yet. Candy slings my right arm over her shoulders, puts her left arm around my waist, and practically picks me up. I didn't know that Jades were that strong. So far, this is the best first date ever.

I talk Candy through the twists and turns I remember from Muninn's blueprints. There isn't much action in the inner rooms. Mostly, it's half-naked civilian assholes cowering behind the furniture, trying not to listen to the slaughterhouse noises from the outer rooms.

Candy and I are almost to the door of the central room.

And about to be monumentally dead.

A couple of Kissi are sitting and smoking on the stone steps outside the sacrifice room. The father-and-son murder act that killed the counter girl at Donut Universe.

"Look what the cat drug in," says the kid.

"Dragged in, but won't drag out," says Dad.

"Let's eat him this time. Eat him and get the shiny thing inside."

"You don't mind, do you?" Dad asks me. He seems to notice Candy for the first time. "Oh, look, he's bought dessert."

"What is she?"

"A filthy, dirty monster, son. Maybe you should nibble her first. I want to see what Mr. Shiny Chest tastes like."

The Kissi aren't carnivores, like the Jades. There's a hint of game playing in their voices. Fear and confusion are the Kissi's favorite snacks and words are a good way to tenderize the meat. Candy takes her arm from around my waist. I can barely stand, but I manage.

The young Kissi circles Candy, but I can't watch long.

Dad is coming for me. My knee still isn't back yet, so I have to stand my ground. It's not my favorite place to be, but I've been here before. You can't avoid an attack, so you hang back, leave yourself open, and let the attacker show you what he's going to do.

The Kissi goes straight for my bad knee. I pivot the best I can to bring the butt of the Browning down on its neck. But he tricks me. Feints for the knee and lunges up at my chest. I'm crippled and off balance. I can't get out of the way in time.

Daddy Kissi plants his shoulder in my sternum and knocks the wind out of me. He's on top of me, pinning me down with his weight. I know what's coming. Fingers inside my chest, like spiders crawling over my ribs. Then he'll pull out my heart and the key with it. When I fell, my arm twisted behind my back. I can't use the Browning or reach my knife.

I get ready for the pain. He brings his hand down hard. But just sort of punches me in the chest.

I look down, then at him. The Kissi looks as surprised as I do. He rears back and slams his hand down again. It just bounces off the body armor. I have a feeling that this isn't part of the armor's original design. But my heart and the key are still where they should be, so I'm not complaining.

The Kissi screeches, "What are you doing? Stop it!"

When he rears back for another try, his weight shifts enough for me to get my hand out from under my leg.

This time, when Daddy Kissi slams into my chest, I wrap my arm around his neck, shove the Browning under his chin, and blast away. The Spiritus bullets blow the Grand Canyon out the back of his head.

I shove his carcass off and look around for Candy. She's on her stomach, tearing out chunks of Avila's polished wood floors with her claws while Junior is on her back with both hands buried inside her spine.

I can move enough to limp up behind Junior, shove the Browning in his ear, and blow half of his head off. Junior falls one way. I fall the other. Candy pushes herself up onto her elbows, crawls over, and collapses on top of me.

"The sacrifice is in there," I say. "We can't stay here."

"I know," Candy says. She sits up and pulls me up with her. We're both streaked with human and Kissi blood. Candy grabs my head and plants a hundred-thousand-volt kiss on my lips. There's something in her saliva that feels like spider venom and speed. Her black tongue draws my tongue into her mouth and her razor-sharp shark teeth slide down the full length of it.

Candy lets go and smiles. She uses her thumb to wipe off some of the blood she's smeared on my lips.

"Thanks for getting him off me," she says.

"Anytime."

She helps me to my feet. I'm still shaky, but I can walk again. I can tell that Junior hurt her, playing around in her lungs. I give her the Browning and the Navy Colt pistols. I pull the na'at from my coat. Twist the grip to collapse the center shaft so that it hangs like a whip.

I point to the doors.

"Open sesame," I say.

Candy brings up both guns and blasts open the twin doors.

Inside, it's almost comical. Don't devil worshippers have any imagination? It's like a Hot Topic Halloween party. There's a circle of men wearing long, black, hooded robes. Each man holds a silver dagger. Between each of the men is a drugged, naked starlet wannabe with an inverted pentagram cut into her chest. Up at the altar, the head priest holds a shiny kris over an unconscious angel. The angels are what make the scene not funny. There are thirteen of them. The ones who've been at Avila the longest are filthy. Cut up, pale, and bruised. The newer, less abused ones are hog-tied with bright, diamond-like cords.

With Kissi guards stationed outside, it probably didn't occur to the devil's nitwits to have some security inside. Candy and I are pretty beat up, but they don't know that. Plus, we're armed. Plus, we're covered in enough blood and filth that we look like Hell arrived in the room a little sooner than they expected.

One of the robed satanists takes a swipe at Candy with his dagger and she blows a manhole in his chest with a blast from the Navy Colt. More men charge as the big clock over the altar hits the first midnight chime. Candy wades into the crowd and blasts anyone who gets near her. I swing the na'at over my head, let it extend to almost its full length, and crack it like a bullwhip. The high priest's hand and kris knife fly off in different directions. He screams and falls to his knees. Bye-bye, gates of Hell.

The rest of the old-boy coven doesn't seem to notice that they've already lost. They swarm us. Suddenly I'm back in the arena. Swinging the na'at, feeling it shear bones just right. Bring my arm up and sweep it down. Let the na'at's own momentum carry it through anything in its way. I could go on killing these guys all night. But I can't go completely wild. The glassy-eyed starlets are standing around like drugged sheep. I muscle them off the killing floor when I can. They fall over like bowling pins with tits.

More satanists are running out of the room than are staying around to fight, which is fine by me. My knee burns me every time I take a step. Candy isn't using the guns anymore. She's back to teeth and claws, a meat grinder in tight jeans and Chuck Taylors.

I collapse the na'at and hold my arms out at my sides. The last few hard cases come at me with their daggers. I don't even fight them. I don't have to. They stab and slash and all they hit are my scars. Each knife thrust hurts, but not enough to matter, and none draws blood.

And then it's over.

The last satanists are dead or limping off into the club where the Vigil is waiting for them with hot cocoa and Tasers. The drugged starlets stare at each other trying to remember exactly what they're auditioning for and when wardrobe is going to arrive.

Aelita is lying hog-tied and unconscious at the far end of the altar. The black knife cuts through the diamond cord around her wrists and ankles. I free Aelita, then hand Candy the knife and tell her to free the others.

I pick Aelita up off the bloody floor and carry her back to the front room.

I'm not one hundred percent certain, but I think that two monsters just saved the world. And I couldn't care less.

Parker was supposed to be in the sacrifice room. And he should have had Vidocq and Allegra with him. If they're dead, the world should be, too. It's only fair. But I learned a long time ago that fair doesn't have much to do with how the universe works. If things were fair, Lucifer wouldn't have had to rebel. Adam and Eve wouldn't have been card-sharked out of Eden. The big man's kid wouldn't have been nailed up at Golgotha. And the Kissi would be just another pack of boring angels. And nothing that's happened in the last few days would have happened.

Wells and his crew have Avila secured when I get up front. They're already sorting the living from the dead, the inner-sanctum bastards from the gentleman's-club morons. All the club members still alive are sitting on their asses in the front room, arms and legs locked together with plastic restraints. Politicians, movie producers, stock-market czars, and fair-haired heirs to Babylonian-size fortunes. If the Vigil really wants to do the world a favor, it'll burn Avila down with them inside.

I don't see a single magician among the living. Maybe that's all the fairness I'm going to get tonight. It's better than nothing.

I must look worse than I thought. Or maybe it's because I have Aelita with me. Either way, the entire Vigil crew stops and stares when I carry Aelita in and hand her to Wells.

"She's okay," I tell him. "We stopped the thing before it happened."

"We?"

"My friend Candy and me. She's back there freeing the rest of the angels. You might want to send some of your people back to help her. And bring some bathrobes."

Wells nods and some of the Vigil crew head off the way I came.

Wells kneels and sets Aelita on the floor. He takes a small bottle of what looks like holy water out of a jacket pocket and pours a few drops over each of Aelita's eyes. The angel's lids open a fraction of an inch. She begins to breathe. A Vigil medical team pushes Wells and me out of the way. They wrap Aelita in a Mylar blanket and give her drugs from bottles that look older than the world.

I take off what's left of my silk coat. It's just rags with a hundred bullet holes, a thousand knife slashes, and enough blood to paint a Camaro.

I strip off the body armor and hand it to Wells.

"You should check this out. Either you accidentally made armor that's Kissi-proof or you can make the armor Kissi-proof with some Spiritus Dei."

"Thanks."

I pick up a jacket someone's dropped on the floor and use it to wipe the filth off of my face.

"I never found my friends," I say.

"I'm sorry. We got a lot of bad people tonight, but we lost your pal Parker."

"Parker was here?"

"Yeah. He took off pretty early in the assault. We lost him in the trees below the house. I don't know how."

"Mason probably gave him something to make him invisible or to transport him someplace. Was he alone?"

"As far as I know."

"How well have you searched this place?"

"Well enough that if there were two people who knew you, we'd have found them by now."

I nod toward the line of bodies on the other side of the room.

"What about the dead?"

"We've been watching you, remember? I know what your friends look like. They aren't here."

"I'll need that body armor back for a while."

"Why?"

"I'm going to go get them."

"Be realistic. Parker took off. If he had them, he's killed them. That's what men like Parker do."

"No. They're alive. He wants me to come and find them. Then he can have the fun of killing them in front of me. I think I know where he has them."

"Where's that?"

"The Orange Grove Bungalows on Sunset."

"We used to have that place under surveillance. Sub Rosa kids used it for magic and sex games for years."

"Yeah, we did."

"No one goes there now. It's just pathetic civilians. Strictly crackheads and whores these days."

"It's where he'll have them. It's his idea of a joke." I look at the body armor. "Can I have that back?"

To my surprise, Wells hands me the armor. I put it on and go to the line of corpses. Find a guy a little bit taller and fatter than me with a decent-looking jacket. I slip the jacket off his body and try it on. It fits across my shoulders and is loose enough that when I button it closed, it covers the body armor.

I ask Wells, "You find any usable shotguns?"

"Around the corner. There's a whole pile-help yourself."

I find a nice sawed-off double barrel, about twelve inches long.

"I'm taking this," I say, holding up the sawed-off.

"Be my guest."

Vigil members come from the sacrifice room, carrying angels on stretchers. Candy trails behind them looking more than a little uncomfortable.

I steal a clean cloth from the medical kit of the crew working on Aelita. Go over to Candy. She looks completely human now, except for all the blood and dirt. I put the shotgun in her hands, push her head back, and gently wipe her face. She laughs.

"You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Mr. Stark."

"I try to keep things interesting for my friends."

"So far, so good."

If I was a regular person and Candy was a regular girl and this was a regular moment, I'd be kissing her, but we're not and this isn't. She looks at me like she knows what I'm thinking.

"I should probably give doc a call and let him know everything's all right."

"Yeah. He's probably worried."

"You look like you're going somewhere."

"I know where Parker has Vidocq and Allegra. I'm headed down there now."

"I'll go with you."

"No," I say. "I could be wrong. If I am, I want someone here I can trust to look out for them."

"Okay," she says, sounding a little hurt.

"I should get going."

She looks at the medics working on Aelita. The angel is sitting up now.

"I'm going to call doc in a minute and then I'm going home to him because that's where I belong. I'm going to tell him most of what happened tonight, but not everything. But I want you to know that I'm not sorry for what we did."

"Me neither," I say. "The one good thing about an awk-ward moment like this is that, with the way we look, the longer we stand here torturing each other, the more likely we are get to get some of these Vigil nervous nellies to pee themselves."

Candy smiles.

"Go," she says. "I'll keep an eye on things here."

"Thanks."

I take the sawed-off from her hands, nod at Wells, and step through a shadow behind the dead magicians. Still the best first date ever.

THE PHONE BOOTH outside the Orange Grove Bungalows hasn't changed much since I was here eleven years ago, except that now there's a guy living in it.

The Orange Grove is a collection of about two dozen small cabins that were twenty years past their prime before I went Downtown. Now they look like a condo complex in Hiroshima the day after the bomb. The bulletproof glass in front of the check-in counter has had a good workout. In eleven years, no one's painted anything or cleaned the pool. There are things wiggling down in the stagnant backwash that I don't even remember seeing in Hell. This is where David Lynch groupies go to lose their virginity on prom night.

There's one specific cabin where we used to party, but I can't remember the number. I walk up and down the concrete walkway that snakes between the cabins. It's New Year's Eve, so the place is crawling with skinny hookers with black meth teeth and equally skinny Johns who can't walk straight. A lot of smells in the air. Pot. Stale cigarettes. There's a lot more piss and the weird burning plastic stink of bad crack. Those are the least offensive.

I spot the badness near the back of the third row. It looks just like the others, but to my eyes, it pulses with chaotic energy. The energy fields around the window and front door are brighter and the colors are more intense than the rest of the cabin. When I put my hand out, the brighter energy morphs into teeth, like a giant cartoon version of the bear trap, and snaps at me. When the civilian hookers and their Johns wander by, nothing happens. A tired looking hooker, in a miniskirt way too short for her veiny legs, wanders by alone.

I say, "Hey, darlin', want to make some quick money?"

"I'm done for tonight, honey."

"No hanky-panky. I'm pranking a friend. I just need you to go over there and bang on that door real loud."

"How much?"

I pull out a wad of Muninn's money. What the Hell. It's New Year's.

"Five hundred dollars."

Suddenly Miss Done for Tonight is all smiles.

"Hell, I'd suck the shine off the doorknob for that."

I give her the money and she stuffs it in an inside jacket pocket in case I change my mind.

"Don't do anything until I tell you. Then bang on the door as hard as you can and take off."

I leave her by the door and go around to the back of the cabin.

I hold up my hand, drop it, and say, "Now!"

The hooker takes a step forward and gives the door six or seven good raps. She looks at me and I motion to her to get the hell out of there. Then I step through a shadow into the room. I go through it fast and to the Door of Memory. I make sure the sawed-off is still there. I left it by the door when I came through from Avila. I had a feeling that Parker would have spells up that could detect weapons.

Through the door and into the cabin. Parker is up front, hands on the door, trying to feel who's out there.

I'm in the bungalow's bathroom. Allegra and Vidocq are on the floor, their mouths closed with duct tape and their hands tied in front of them. I put a finger to my lips for them to keep quiet.

There's a wooden plunger behind the toilet. I grab it and sprint at Parker. Just before I reach him, I snap the plunger's wooden handle and bury the sharp end of the bigger piece in his back.

Parker screams in pain and the sound of his voice knocks me back against the far wall.

Parker turns and smiles at me. Slams his back against the wall so that the sharp end of the wooden handle punches all the way through and comes out his chest. Then he reaches up, pulls it out, and drops it on the floor.

"How fun is that, huh? That's the kind of thing you would do. Mason knew you'd find me, so he juiced me with a Kissi power enema. Is this how you feel, Sandman Slim? It's like I could tear the world apart with my hands. Let me show you."

I bark a Hellion phrase and Parker sinks halfway into the carpet, which is sucking him down like quicksand.

Parker isn't shocked or scared. He presses his hands into the melting carpet, whispers a few words, and the quicksand reverses itself, pushing him up out of the floor. Before I can get out of the way, he throws one of the plasma balls he was using on Rodeo Drive. Hits me square in the chest. I hit the back wall hard enough that some of the studs snap, leaving the wall bowed out. The body armor keeps my ribs from cracking, but I feel like I got hit by the same meteor that killed the dinosaurs.

Parker comes over and takes a good long look at me on the floor.

"This is the best New Year's ever. Yeah, you messed up our little Hell surprise on the hill, but that's okay. Mason's got lots more ideas, and let me tell you, hanging out with the Kissi is a blast. Those boys really like to party."

With a superhuman effort I try to push myself to my feet, but only get as far as propping myself on my elbows like a white-trash Sphinx.

Parker smiles and shakes his head. I've never seen him so happy. He disappears into the bathroom and comes out holding Allegra by the arm. She holds her hands up in front of her face like she's afraid he might hit her.

"Is that your new bitch here? Alice two-point-oh? She's about as pretty as the first Alice."

He pulls the tape off Allegra's mouth. Grabs her by the hair and gives her a peck on the lips. Still holding her, he turns back to me.

"You're the definition of a loser, Stark. You know what a loser is? Someone who can't keep his women alive." He winks at Allegra. "Know what I mean, sweetheart?"

When Parker leans in for another kiss, Allegra puffs out a stream of air across her fingers. Flames burst from her fingertips, right into Parker's eyes. He screams and falls to the floor.

I yell "Get out!" to Allegra and she steps back into the bathroom.

Still blind, Parker screams hexes that shoot around the room, blasting holes in the walls and roof. He pulls a pistol from under his jacket and shoots wildly in all directions. I keep my head down until he's about an arm's length away. Then I reach into the shadow under the bed and pull out the sawed-off. Press it against his forehead and give him both barrels.

One minute Parker has a head and the next minute he doesn't.

I hope Kasabian makes you into his ponyboy in Hell.

Allegra helps me up, then goes into the bathroom and unties Vidocq. When he's on his feet, he comes over and grabs me like only a two-hundred-year-old Frenchman can.

"It's good to see you, boy," he says. Allegra is saying, "Thank you." I'm calculating the odds that the motel manager or a scared John has called the cops. No reason to wait and find out. I grab both of them and half walk, half fall into a shadow by the door, pulling them with me.

We come out in the hallway by Vidocq's place. The door is closed and yellow-and-black crime-scene tape is tacked up over the entrance. Allegra tears it down and opens the door. Vidocq helps me to the sofa, where I collapse. He drops to his knees and rummages in the potions and elixirs scattered across the floor. Comes up with a cracked blue bottle, goes back out to the hall, and runs a line of liquid all the way around the door frame. There's the faint aetheric glow of the glamour as it turns the door back into a blank wall.

Allegra comes back from the kitchen with a cold cloth. I lie back and she drapes it over my forehead. I run a body check, like I used to do after a night in the arena. Flex, move, feel, and evaluate each part of my body, starting with the feet and moving up. Feet and legs work. Knees bend (one is still a little stiff). Gut and ribs are about the same. Arms, neck, and skull intact. Hands and fingers flex. I'm all right. I'm just having a hard time getting my breath after Parker's fireball love tap. I shrug off my coat, peel off the ruined body armor, and drop it on the floor.

Vidocq is on the floor again, clinking bottles together, looking for usable potions. He comes back to the sofa with a couple.

"These aren't my first choices, but they will do. Drink this."

"What is it?"

"Mustika Pearl. From Turkey. You'll feel stronger and heal faster."

"Christ. It tastes like boiled goddamn roadkill."

"Have some of this-now. You'll feel very good and it will help wash away the taste of the other."

He's right. The second one is warm and earthy, with a slightly bitter edge.

"That's nice. What is it?"

"Vin Mariani. Red wine and cocaine."

I don't know if it's the Vin or the Pearl, but within a few minutes, I feel sort of like myself again. A shaky, hot, glued-together version, but definitely me.

"Don't tell anyone," I say, "but every rotten thing that's happened since I got back is my fault."

"What does that mean?" asks Allegra.

"Wait. It gets better. I could have gone after Mason and the Kissi a long time ago. But I was flat-out chickenshit."

Vidocq asks, "How is that possible? You didn't even know about the Kissi until two days ago."

"I knew about them. Not their name or what they were, but I knew there was something like them right in front of me. What did the Kissi want from me, the moment they knew I had it? The key. Mason would have told them about that. When I followed Kasabian into the Twilight, he told me that he'd been with Mason and Parker somewhere dark. Not empty, but filled with nothing. That's why Mason and the Kissi want the key."

"Because they're in nothing?" asks Allegra.

"Because they want me in nothing. I've been through twelve doors in the Room of Thirteen Doors. I've never gone through the thirteenth. I've always been afraid of it. All the other doors are marked with a symbol. A sun. A crescent moon. A frozen lake. Only the thirteenth door is blank. There's nothing on it. It's the Door of Nothing. That's where the Kissi and Mason will be. And I could have gone there anytime since Azazel gave me the key. Years ago. But I was too afraid of that blank door."

"You're going to go there now?" asks Vidocq.

"I should be there already." I pull a wad of bills out of my pocket and hand them to Allegra. "There should be around a thousand dollars there. The rest of Muninn's money is in an envelope under all the junk upstairs at Max Overdrive. If I don't come back, it's yours. If I do come back, I'll need some of it back. The place needs a little fixing up."

Their heart rates and breathing are all over the place. The stress is going to kill them quicker than Mason or the Kissi. They both want to say something. I make sure I have my knife and step through a shadow before either of them can get out a word.

THE THIRTEENTH DOOR looks older and more battered than the others. If the other doors are portals to different planes and places in the universe, the thirteenth is the entrance to a prison. Strange sounds leak through it. Growls. Vibrations. A faint stink of vinegar. What could be the wind or voices whispering. A slow but relentless scratching, like something is trying to dig its way out.

I throw the bolt and open the Door of Nothing.

The name is pretty damned apt. Some of the other doors, I still can't figure out. What does the Door of Abandoned Melancholy mean? Not much. But the Door of Nothing is right on the money.

There's nothing beyond on the door. Not darkness. Not emptiness. Nothing. It's the total and absolute absence of everything. Especially light. I step inside and pull the door closed. Immediately I hear sounds all around me. Scurrying, secret sounds. Bugs under dry leaves. Something wet pulling itself through mud. Hungry things, chewing their claws and grinding their teeth. Things touch me in the nothing. They crawl on me and try to work their way under my clothes. I can't move. I don't know where to go. Then I remember the thing Mason left for me because he knew that sooner or later, I'd be standing here. I take out the lighter.

Let there be light.

The Zippo flares, looking like an oil-well fire in all that lightless empty space. A billion soft, pale, half-formed anti-angels limp back into the dark. Their big blank eyes glitter like black chrome. The Kissi are crowded into every inch of their chaotic nonspace. They live piled on top of each other, like dead and dying angels. The piles of bodies look like pictures of Auschwitz. This is what Heaven must have looked like after Lucifer's war.

When I start walking, the wall of Kissi bodies parts like the Red Sea, then closes in behind me.

I'm moving just to move. Standing still feels like asking for trouble. But every direction looks exactly the same to me. I can't tell if I'm walking on something solid or just the idea of something. One minute, it feels like I'm on hard-packed dirt, then the next, I'm sinking into sponge cake. I don't stop or slow down. I keep walking, like I know exactly where I'm going.

A Kissi puts its glowing hand on my arm. I look at it like I talk to zombie angels every day. Its face is half-baked dough. I can't quite bring it into focus.

"I told you we'd meet again."

The Kissi's face rearranges itself for a second. Turns into Josef's Aryan poster-boy mug. "He's waiting for you. Straight ahead. We've all been so looking forward to this."

"Hang around, ugly. When I'm done with Mason, the two of us can get some dim sum before I kill you again."

Josef laughs, turns his sluglike head, and dissolves into the writhing mass of Kissi bodies. They pick up his laugh and it spreads out across the colony, so that in just a few seconds the sound surrounds me. Thunders down on me from a billion throats like a storm. It rattles every molecule in my body. I'm being mugged with sound. I turn and shove the lighter straight into the heart of the closest group of Kissi. They shriek and scatter. Shove the lighter in another group. And another. They still surround me, but they're not laughing anymore. And they keep their distance.

Straight ahead is the Faim family's Beverly Hills mansion, a Tudor playhouse standing in a universe of nothing. I don't bother knocking.

Head straight downstairs to the basement. Mason's magic room. The room where he sent me to Hell and where I found the lighter.

I open the door at the bottom of the stairs and, like that, it's eleven years ago.

The room is exactly the way I remember it. Even the circle drawn on the floor in lead is the same. I never figured Mason for the nostalgic type.

"I know you're not going to believe me, but it's really good to see you, Jimmy."

Mason sounds exactly the same. He looks the same, too. I can't tell if he's keeping himself young with magic or if time works differently here.

"When you've spent as many years as I have with no one to talk to but Parker or the Kissi, it's a real thrill to run into someone with some brains. Who isn't here to kiss my ass or be my Renfield."

"That's funny. I always thought you and Parker were best buds. Not Vlad and Renfield."

"You used to call him my attack dog. Maybe that's a better way of putting it. A dog is man's best friend, but it doesn't mean you're going to talk to it about anything im-portant. You pet a dog. You feed a dog. You put it out back to guard the henhouse. Reward it when it's been good. Punish it when it's been bad. That's pretty much it."

"Your plan is working out great, if your plan was to sit out here in an empty house in the middle of fuck-all, surrounded by talking army ants. Wow. You really are a genius. I never saw that one coming."

"You see? Anyone else, I'd want to strangle by now. But noise like that. Criticism. It's all right coming from you. Because I respect you. You really are the only other Sub Rosa I thought had any real talent and style."

"That's why you had to kill me."

"I didn't kill you, did I? I could have and you wouldn't have seen it coming any more than the other thing."

"You can't even say it? You sent me to Hell. Say it."

"I don't want to reopen old wounds. That's not why I brought you here. And before you tell me that you found me on your own, we both know that I made sure that Kasabian knew just enough about where we were to help you finally figure it out."

"If you wanted me here so bad, why didn't you just send up a flare or have one of your Kissi forward me a Google map link?"

"Because I had to know that you could do it. I haven't seen you in eleven years. Maybe the air in Hell or all those knocks on the head in the arena turned your brains to butterscotch pudding. I had to see you work it out and here you are. And since you got rid of Parker, I have a staff opening right now. A nice midlevel executive job. Good hours. Terrific benefits. Possible deification. Interested?"

"Keep talking. The more you yammer, the more I want to kill you. That's the only reason I'm here, in case you forgot about what you did to me and Alice."

"Alice was Parker's thing. I just wanted to make sure she wasn't going to make too much of a fuss after you were gone. He took it too far."

"He was your dog. You sent him out to hunt. Your responsibility."

"What if I told you that you could get her back? Exactly as she was. And the two of you could live together forever. What would you say?"

I'm not at all surprised by his arrogance and bullshit. What's so strange about Mason is how young he seems. Like he's exactly the same little show-off he was all those years ago. Has he really been sitting here alone for eleven years? That's worse than what happened to me. I'm the old man now, but I saw and did a few things. I didn't just crawl up my own teenybopper ass for a decade. Imagine eleven years, sitting in a dollhouse version of your childhood home, reading magic books and not talking to anyone but your pet thug and talking roaches. If Mason wasn't crazy before, he's definitely joined the banana army now.

"What are you talking about? How could I get back Alice?"

"That's why I had to make you solve a puzzle to get here. I had to know if you could keep up once the project got rolling. Stage one is why I formed an alliance with the Kissi. To take control of the world."

He smiles at me like he just got all A's on his report card.

"Why would anyone want to run the world?" I ask. "It sounds like a huge pain in the ass."

"That's just stage one. If all I wanted was to take over the world, believe me, the Kissi and I could have done it already."

"What do you want the world for?"

"In any military campaign, you need a few basic things. Troops. Equipment. Support staff. Supply lines, that kind of thing. Earth is the perfect staging area for that."

"When I knew you, all you wanted was to prove that you were the best little magician in Candyland. Now you want to be Patton, too? What is wrong with you?"

He goes to a large ebony desk, piled high with books, writing paper, and maps of the universe like Aelita had, from Heaven looking down and from Hell looking up. Mason grabs an old book about the size and weight of a bag of cement and shows me the pages he's been studying. A single word crosses the two pages of the spread: L'Infernus. Below that is a detailed map of Hell's topography.

"We're invading Hell. I have the troops and the plan. You know Hell's strengths and weaknesses. You've already softened the place up for invasion. How many of Lucifer's generals have you killed? A dozen? Two? More?"

"You want to rule this world, a not particularly great place, so you can take over an even worse place? Is that basically it? That's why you ruined me, killed Alice, and fucked over everyone who ever trusted you?"

"Firstly, fuck all those people who trusted me. Except for Parker, every one of them was greedy and then turned jellyfish the moment you stuck your nose out of the grave. I gave all of them their heart's desire and they folded the moment things got a little weird."

"You didn't exactly give Kasabian his heart's desire."

"Yeah, I did sort of screw him, didn't I? But admit it. There's the opposite of love at first sight. There are people walking the earth that the moment you meet them, you want to punch them and keep punching them."

"I can't argue with you about Kas, but what do you want with Hell? It's already on the verge of a civil war. You want to walk into the middle of warring Hellions?"

"With the Kissi and you to back me up, yes. I really do. Because with our combined strength and your contacts with Lucifer's generals, we could find which to kill and which will make good allies. Then march in and take Hell, just the way we took Earth. Once we've secured the place, we'll combine the armies from Earth and Hell with the Kissi. Then go to stage three."

"You want to invade Heaven."

"I want to storm Heaven. I want to rip open the Pearly Gates and throw them from the firmament. I want to see all nine ranks of angels on their knees bowing down to the humans that conquered them. And I want to throw out that senile old fart that runs the place. Ship Him off to a retirement home for old deities. He can get a duplex with Zeus or Odin. He ruined the universe at the beginning of time and He's been ruining it ever since. He needs to be off playing golf in Boca and power walking at the mall, not running the fundamental laws of time and space. One day, He's going to forget where he put the remote, get all distracted, and forget about gravity. Then where will we be? I know you know I'm right. I know how you think."

I look at him. I don't know what else to do. He's right, of course. I agree with pretty much everything he said about Heaven and Hell. I wouldn't mind seeing God and Lucifer stuck on a cruise ship-shuffleboard, all-day buffets, a decent band in the bar, and a passable magic act in the lounge for all eternity. But the idea of replacing the current fuckups with Mason? That part doesn't scan and he knows I'd never go for it.

"So, I help you become the new Yahweh, and what do I get out of it?"

"The world. It's yours. And Alice. You and she can live forever. If you want her to. Once we're in charge, we'll control that kind of thing."

"Who gets Hell? The Kissi?"

"Who better to run the place of torments than a race of natural-born torturers and killers?"

This isn't what I was expecting. I don't know what I thought would be waiting for me here in Never Never Land, but it wasn't this. I came ready to fight Genghis Khan and I walk in on a shut-in playing the biggest Dungeons and Dragons game in history.

"You're right. I can't think of anyone better suited to run Hell than the Kissi."

I walk around the room, admiring how detailed his memory must be to have built this place. I stop at a bin full of maps that runs from the floor to the ceiling. City maps. World maps. Maps of time and celestial mechanics. Maps of the edges of the universe. I'm still holding Mason's lighter. I flick it and hold it to one of the maps.

"What are you doing over there?"

Old maps are printed on good, heavy paper stock. They burn well. Old ones are dry enough to burn fast. When Mason runs to the maps, I use the lighter to fire up the books and papers on his desk.

"Stop it!" he yells.

I hold the lighter to a book on his lectern. The book is written in Aramaic. It looks very rare and expensive.

"Stop it!"

That's the one I'd been waiting for. He's losing his shit. Getting sloppy with his power. The demonic boom of his voice knocks the house off its foundation and cracks the walls. Books, globes, and old specimen jars fly off the shelves. I lose my balance and knock over a spiderlike Kissi skeleton.

"The problem, Mason, is you only know me from the old days when breaking things was more fun. Your plan is so completely brain damaged that I might have gone for it back then. But all that matters now is one thing. You killed Alice and I'm going to kill you."

I set fire to anatomy charts and diagrams of mystical automata.

He uses a throw rug to smother the fire on the lectern.

"When I'm sitting on my golden throne in the sky, I'm going to make you and your bitch my special project."

Mason blurs across the room at me, faster than I could ever move. He knocks me out of the way so that he can rescue the papers I've set on fire. He's working really well for a few seconds, but then the black knife that I stuck in his side when he cuffed me away really starts to hurt. He reaches around to take the knife out. But I'm pretty fast, too. I leap and roll, jam my boot heel into the knife hilt, plunging it another six inches into his side. Mason groans and falls on his face.

I climb on top of him and rip the knife out with my left hand. Get my right arm around his throat and stab up, slipping the blade between his ribs and into his heart. Mason shudders and so does the house. The walls and ceiling crack. Bricks, lath, and plaster rain down on us. I push the knife in farther and hear the upstairs collapse.

A bookcase comes loose from the wall and crashes down on me. Mason throws an elbow and knocks me onto my back. Then he's on top of me. I get the knife up in time and jam it right back between his ribs. But Mason does a trick I didn't know he could do.

He's been doing more with the Kissi than exchanging sea stories and brownie recipes. He slips his hand through my body and right into my chest. Instantly I'm cold and nauseous, remembering what it was like in Josef's office. With every wave of pain and sickness, I twist the knife deeper into him.

The mansion walls are dust and the floor is sagging under our weight. A great, black dome of nothingness hangs over our heads. Then even the floor is gone and we're in the dark, surrounded by the chittering, scuttling noises of the Kissi, the only reminder that we haven't fallen out of the universe completely.

I shout Hellion control curses and poison hexes into Mason's ear. He digs his hand into my chest and gets his fingers around the key. The whole universe shifts, like a car sliding on black ice. I drag the black blade between Mason's ribs. Throw attack spells. Mason chatters in Kissi, trying to fill my head with dread and confusion. Luckily, I'm already confused and full of dread, so the spell is kind of redundant.

The darkness shreds around us. Streaks of something leak through the opaque wall of nothing. A billion Kissi scream as light burns into their hiding place.

We're falling. Or things are swirling past us. I can't tell which. I catch glimpses of the Room of Thirteen Doors. Every time Mason tries to rip the key from my chest, the room shifts at the center of time and space, warping the universe.

Time flows like lava. Mason pulls on the key and the pain lasts a million years. The room swirls by, larger than the whole universe. One door. A dozen. A million. A blinking zoetrope as doors open, close, appear, and disappear.

We're crushed to the size of atoms. We expand to fill the Milky Way. I jerk the blade from Mason's side and sweep it through the center of a star. Slash the white-hot blade through the thin fabric that separates the Kissi's chaos realm from ours. The Kissi scream and scatter as light floods inside. They try to patch the holes, but I keep slashing new ones. The Kissi's bubble of nothingness swells and explodes, scattering their burning bodies away from the light and into the frozen void on the far edge of the universe.

The next time the room appears, I raise the knife and slice down through Mason's arm. His screams shake the nearby planets. I pull his severed hand from my chest and dive for the room. Get one hand around the edge of the Door of Shadows and pull myself inside. Mason hangs on with his one good hand. I have to drag him inside with me.

We collapse on the stones. I catch my breath and get to my feet. Mason is on his back, cradling his severed arm to his chest. He's pale and shaking, shirt soaked through with blood. I've been looking forward to killing Mason for so long and now he's spoiling it. In my fantasies, I kill the bullyboy, arrogant Mason. But this little guy on the floor, shivering like a goldfish that's fallen out of its bowl, isn't the monster I came to slay.

Mason says something, but I can't hear him. He says it again, but still too low to hear. I lean my ear to his mouth when he says it again. It's Kissi. I can't understand the word, but there's a crunch that I heard enough in the arena to know that it's either the sound of a bone breaking or being magically knit back together. This being Mason, of course, it's a bit of both, with something worse thrown in just for fun.

Something white and larvalike protrudes from where Mason's right arm used to be. Sounds come from beneath his skin, like termites eating glass. A final crunch and Mason's arm rips from his shoulder as a faintly glowing Kissi arm emerges to take its place. Mason's eyes pop open. Suddenly he's back to being the monster I've dreamed of killing. However, there's something about this new Mason that makes every cell in my body decide simultaneously that it would like to be at least a continent away from him.

Mason sits up and smiles. He knows exactly where he is. The space is too small and he's too fast for me to try taking his new arm off. There's an old saying among fighters in the arena, "A retreat is a good as an advance, especially if your opponent just grew an angel's arm."

I open the nearest door, slam it shut, and start running. I hear Mason behind me a second later. There's a sort of town square up ahead. I keep running, knocking people out of my way. At the far side of the square is a makeshift bar selling Aqua Regia. I jump on top and kick the drinkers' glasses in their faces. A Hellion infantryman lunges at me with his spear. I sidestep him and snap it in two with the black blade. Thanks, man. Anyone who wasn't sure who I was before, just saw Azazel's knife and now knows for certain.

"Hello you shit-sucking sulfur monkeys. In case you haven't guessed, I'm Sandman Slim and I crawled back down to perdition's ball sac for just a moment of your time. And if you don't believe I'm Sandman Slim, step up closer and I'll take a lot more than a moment from you.

"Now, I know what a lot of you would like to do to me, but I want you to think about this first: I might be the monster who kills monsters and the biggest bastard in existence, but that's your real enemy right there. The man who followed me here. Look at his arm. He's Kissi. And he's been chasing me all over Creation because he wants me to help him bring a Kissi army down here to turn you into the slaves you refused to be in Heaven. I didn't bring his army, but I brought him. And I'm giving him to you. A New Year's gift from Sandman Slim."

By now, most of the crowd is fixated on Mason and his arm. He transforms it to look human, but that just pisses them off even more. They press in on Mason from every direction, but no one wants to make the first move. I pick up one of the Hellion beer mugs and, just when I feel a wave of tension pass through the crowd, smash it. There's something magical about the sound of breaking glass. Especially around a mob. It works for both humans and Hellions. If you want to start a riot, throw a bottle.

The moment the mug shatters, the crowd surges forward, banshee-howling, crushing Mason at its center.

Hellion gendarmes are heading toward the square. That guarantees a full-scale devil's night party riot. I duck, stay low, and move from table to table until I'm out of the square. Then I take off running for the Door of Fire.

I make it through and just about have the door closed when someone grabs it from the other side.

A skinny Hellion adolescent in a uniform I've never see before gets as close to the door as he can.

"You killed my master, Abaddon. I'll get to your world somehow someday, and I'll avenge him."

"Why don't you come out here and tell me all about it, sweetheart? Oh, wait. You can't come out here, can you? Magic is such a tease. When you figure out how to get yourself on the other side of this door, be sure to look me up. Until then, stay in school. Say your prayers. And just before you fall asleep tonight, pucker up and kiss my ass."

I pull the Door of Fire closed. I know I probably ought to be worried, but I can't get worked up about one more Hellion who hates my guts.

I step out of the room and into Vidocq's apartment. Allegra is on her knees, sorting broken potion bottles from ones she can salvage. Vidocq is in the kitchen making coffee. They both look at me.

"If I just did to the Kissi what I think I did, I might have just saved the world twice in one night."

"And Mason?" asks Vidocq.

"Last I saw, he was being torn limb from claw by a bunch of highly motivated Hellions."

"How are you?" asks Allegra.

"My chest hurts, but I'll be great as soon as I get a cigarette, a drink, and a lobotomy."

A FEW DAYS later.

It's sunny out, a tourist postcard L.A. afternoon at Donut Universe. I'm still not great at paying attention to dates, but I know it's a Sunday. A perfect day for a date with an angel.

I push the tissue paper at her.

"Have an apple fritter. A friend told me this place has the best in town."

"Thank you."

Aelita looks at the fritter like I just passed her a dog turd.

"The food's better at the Bamboo House of Dolls, but you didn't want to meet there."

"I don't drink."

"We didn't have to drink.". "I don't like the smell of liquor."

"What about all the wine in the Church's holy magic shows?"

"Wine isn't liquor. It's the blood of our Lord."

I take a sip of coffee. It's hot and good, but good coffee in restaurants kind of depresses me. I always wonder why it doesn't come in a cigarette flavor for places where you can't smoke.

"The state of California disagrees, otherwise teenybop-pers would ask me to buy stuff for them at twenty-four-hour blood stores."

"This is exactly the kind of talk I'd expect from you."

"An Abomination?"

"Yes."

"I'll get you a thesaurus next Christmas. You need to expand your vocabulary."

"Some things are beyond redemption."

"I thought anyone could get through the Pearly Gates if they repented."

"No. Not everyone."

"Maybe I should take back my fritter."

Aelita sighs and looks out the window. She'd rather be having lunch in a volcano than sitting here with me.

"Not everyone deserves God's grace, but everything in existence has a purpose and a use. Even the abhorrent. Given that, I've come here to ask you one more time, will you work for the righteous cause of the Golden Vigil?"

"When you ask so nicely, it makes me feel all nonabhorrent."

"This is your chance to redeem yourself, if only just a little."

"Sure. I'll work for the Vigil. But on a freelance basis. And I want to be paid. In cash and in advance. I don't exactly trust holy rollers."

"You want money for doing God's work?"

"Yes. A lot of money. You practically have Area 51 tucked away in your warehouse. You can afford it."

"I didn't think you could possibly be more vile, but you've managed to surprise me."

"I know. I'm worse than the bogeyman and tooth decay. But the offer still stands. I don't have a business card, but you know where to find me."

I take my own apple fritter out of the bag and take a bite. The Kissi was right. It really is that good.

"Every day you're alive is like someone spitting in the face of God. I showed you mercy when I let Eugene save you. You won't get mercy from me again."

"I saved your celestial ass the other night."

"You put me in that awful place."

"No. The Kissi did. Or did you forget about them?"

She pushes her fritter and coffee across the table.

"This food smells like death. I'm sure you love it. I don't think we have anything more to say to each other. I'm leaving."

"You going to hide and massacre me in the parking lot?"

"It's tempting."

"No, it's not, and here's why. I went to some people and I traded some things. Got myself a kill switch."

"What is that?"

"They have them on trains. Tractors. Some other equipment. It's a button the operator has to hold down for the machine to work. The operator has a heart attack and dies, he lets go of the button. The switch kills the engine and the machine stops. A kill switch."

"Are you thinking of becoming a train conductor?"

"Better. I'm keeping an eye on this." I take out a small wooden box I bought the day before, a pyx, and slide it across the table to her. "You know what that is. It's usually for a consecrated host, but I put something better inside. Take a look."

Aelita looks at me for a minute, and then touches the box. Probably doing some angel magic to see if it's poison or a bomb or a poison bomb. Finally, she opens it and looks inside. There's a tiny light on the bottom. So small, a human couldn't see it.

"What is this?"

"Look closer, angel. Don't you recognize it?"

She drops the box.

"A piece of the Mithras."

"That's right. A fragment of a fragment of a fragment. I put the rest in the Room of Thirteen Doors. As long as I'm alive, it's safe. But if you ever run me through with that sword again, the glass holding the Mithras will break and burn its way out through all thirteen doors."

"You're lying."

"You kill me and I'll torch this whole little puppet show. Then, when Heaven itself is burning, you can explain to your boss how it's all your fault."

"Even you aren't this mad."

"There's an easy way to find out."

I put the pyx in my pocket and get up. Slide her pastry and mine into the paper bag and roll it closed.

"You don't deserve a fritter."

I leave Aelita there in the booth with the sun coming through the window, thinking about doughnuts and the end of everything.

I DIAL DOC Kinski's number and he picks up.

"Damn. When did you start answering phones?"

"It's a recent and very temporary development. What can I do for you?"

"How's Candy doing?"

"Still a little overexcited. When someone falls off the murder wagon, it can take 'em a while to calm down."

"That's why some of us don't ever stop."

Silence. Nothing. Crickets.

"That was a joke," I say.

"I'll take your word for it. That's not all you called about, is it?"

"No. I'm calling about the bullets. You said you'd take them out when things calmed down. Things have."

"Okay. Come by today."

"When?"

"How about right now?"

WHEN I PULL into the minimall, Kinski is outside smoking a cigarette. I park the stolen Mercedes SLR McLaren at the rear of lot, behind a pizza delivery van. The McLaren's doors don't open out. They flip up like insect wings. Kinski drops his cigarette and grinds it out with his boot.

"You couldn't find anything more conspicuous to drive over here? Maybe a blimp or an ocean liner?"

"No one can see it from the street."

"I suppose. You ready for this?"

"Yeah. I'm sick of things banging around inside me every time I sneeze."

"All right, then. Let's get them out."

He leads me back into the clinic. Nothing has changed in the reception area. Even the magazines are sitting exactly where they were the last time I was here. If this was anybody else's office, I'd guess that he was a bookie or selling dope out the back door.

I wait while the doc washes his hands.

"Take off your shirt and lie down."

When I'm on the treatment table, I ask, "You going to use your magic glass rocks on me?"

"Not this time, I'm afraid. This is more of a hands-on procedure. I'm going to have to go in there and get those slugs out manually."

I watch him dry his hands on a small towel covered with pictures of palm trees. The word Orlando is printed in bright red letters in one corner.

"A Kissi ran his hands around inside me. I didn't like it."

"This won't be like that. For one thing, you won't feel it. I have some special salve that'll numb you up good."

"I like the sound of that."

"Let's just get started."

He takes a stoppered bottle from the counter, opens it, and pours something thick, like Karo syrup, in a line down my chest. Then he takes a sponge-headed brush and paints the stuff across my body, from my neck down to my stomach.

He puts the brush back on the counter and says, "Tell me when that stuff gets warm."

"I think it's there already."

"Close your eyes for a minute."

I close them and he says, "Feel that?"

"No. Did you already put your hand in my chest?"

"Does it feel like I did?"

"No."

"Good. Then you're ready. Feel free to keep your eyes closed."

"Are you going to wear gloves or something, at least?"

"Of course I'm wearing goddamn gloves. I'm not a goddamn Kissi."

"Sorry."

"It's all right."

There's a clank. Like metal on metal.

"What was that?"

"That's bullet one."

"That was easy."

"See? We could have done this a long time ago and saved you some pain."

"I'll call you after my next shooting."

"Or you could try not getting shot."

"Where's the fun in that?"

He laughs a little.

"That's why you and Candy get along. That's what she'd say."

Candy is the last thing I want to talk to Kinski about when he has his hands in my guts.

"What's the going rate for magic surgery?"

Another piece of metal drops.

"It's on the house."

I don't say anything for a minute.

"How the hell do you make a living? You never have any patients and you don't charge me for surgery or for dragging my friends in here. What's going on?"

"You're tensing up. Relax. Every time you move, the bullets shift."

"Okay."

"And for your information, how I make a living is my business, not yours. As for why I don't charge you, let me ask you a question. Have you ever asked yourself how you survived all those years in Hell? Do really think you lived with Hellions and survived the arena because you're that much of a badass?"

"I don't know. I used to think about it, but I could never find any reasons. And I was kind of busy getting my ass kicked, so I stopped worrying about it."

"Well, you're back and there aren't any monsters chasing you right now. Tell me how it is that you, by yourself, managed to stay alive all those years."

"I don't know."

"Guess."

"I don't know. I'm nothing special."

"You think so? You fell into the bottom of the cesspool of Creation, survived and crawled out again. Doesn't that sound just a little special?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do. A regular person, a civilian, wouldn't have lasted a day down there, much less eleven years."

Another piece of metal falls.

"What does that mean?" I ask.

"Maybe it means you're different. Maybe it means that you're not who you think you are. Maybe it means you're not entirely human."

I open my eyes and look at him. No matter how hard I look and listen, I can't read him. Can't hear his heart or his breathing. Nothing.

"I don't like where this is going, doc."

"Another minute. We're almost there."

I close my eyes and try to calm my breathing. I didn't like seeing his hands moving around under my skin.

"You haven't answered the question. Are you human or not?"

"If I'm not human, what am I?"

"Same as me. An angel not quite fit for heaven or hell."

Another piece of metal falls. The fifth bullet.

I feel Kinski lean back. Hear him walk to the sink and wash his hands.

He says, "You can put your shirt back on."

I sit up on the table.

"What did you just say to me, man?"

He wipes his hands on a towel and says, "It's going to be harder for you than it is for me. I made concious choices that got me here. Half the universe hated you before you were born."

He moves slowly, choosing his words carefully. That much I can see. He's not high or drunk and he doesn't give off a Looney Tunes vibe. Still.

"Put your shirt on. Let's go have a smoke."

I follow him into the parking lot. The sun hurts my eyes after having them closed. I watch the doc, looking for any signs of obvious craziness. I could make a break for the Benz, but I'm a little woozy from the surgery.

Kinski is looking at me. He takes out a cigarette and offers me the pack. I take one.

"If you don't want to hear this, I'm not going to force you. I just thought that maybe you'd like to know who you are, why certain things have happened to you, and why certain other things are going to happen in the future."

"I'm listening."

"I'm sure Miss Aelita told you about God's great fuckup at the beginning of time. The thing is, there are other stories regular folks aren't supposed to know about. One is about how in the early days of the world, after what happened in Eden, yet another great fuckup, God sent angels to Earth to look after humans. These angels didn't float around in the sky with big white wings and harps. They lived as ordinary people. Had jobs. Farmed. Fought in wars. All the things regular people do. The only thing they couldn't do was fraternize with humanity. They had to remain apart and aloof so that they could be watchful."

I smoked my cigarette and watched the smog rim the clouds with funny shades of blue and gold.

"The problem with this plan is that you can't take anything, even angels, put them in a human body, give them a human life, and not expect them to start feeling and acting just a little human. Even falling in love. Even having children.

"The children these angels had with mortal women were called nephilim. There were a lot of them around once upon a time. Now, not so many."

"Why not?"

"They were killed. So were the angels who fathered them and the mothers who gave birth to them."

"Why?"

"They had to. There had to be no record, no trace that they ever existed. Most of those doing the killing didn't call the children nephilim. They had another name for them."

"Abomination."

Kinski nods.

"Smart boy."

"If you're not Doc Kinski, who the hell are you?"

"They took away my real name when they kicked me out of Heaven. Normally, when an angel falls from grace, that angel ends up with other fallen ones in Hell. That would have been too embarrassing in my case. See, I was an archangel. Uriel, the Guardian of the Earth. If they'd sent me all the way down, they knew what would happen. Lucifer would have thrown me a ticker tape parade. God wasn't going to let that happen. So, here I am. I run a little under-the-radar human fix-it shop next to some nice ladies who do other ladies' nails."

"What did you do to the kicked out of heaven?"

"I killed another angel."

"Why?"

"He deserved it."

I flick the remains of my cigarette out into the parking lot.

"Can I get another?"

The doc offers me one from the pack. I light it with Mason's lighter.

"Does Vidocq knew about this nephilim thing?"

"You mean, does he know what you are? He's a smart man who's read a lot of book. He can do the math."

"This is fucking ridiculous. I'm no goddam angel."

"Sure, you're a perfectly normal boy. You were born able to do more magic than most Sub Rosa learn in a lifetime. You survived Hell. You saved the world and you corraled the Kissi. Typical underachiever."

A skinny kid in a striped shirt and backward baseball cap comes out of the pizza joint, carrying a pile of boxes to the delivery van.

The doc nods toward him. "That kid is smarter than both of us put together. He's got a car and all the pizza he can eat. What more does a man need?"

He smiles at his own joke. It's the first time I've seen him be anything but serious.

"If I believe all this, where does that leave me?"

The smile fades.

"Not anywhere good, I am sorry to say. You're an Abomination. You'll always be an Abomination. Hell hates you for being more than a human and Heaven hates you for being less than an angel."

"No wonder I couldn't get a date for the prom."

"There's something else you need to know." He looks at his watch. "I should call Candy soon. See how she's doing. I have her on double doses of the blood substitute."

"Is she going to be all right?"

"Hard to say. It's hard to fight your own nature. I couldn't do it. Angels are creatures made to love and protect humanity, only we weren't supposed to fall in love. But I did. Candy's a predator. A killer through and through. She's trying to change that and I'm trying to help her. Maybe that's a mistake."

"I thought it was you who was making her give up the kill."

"No. She came to me."

"I wouldn't have guessed that."

"Like I said, I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing by helping her. There's something else you ought to know about the nephilim. Not all of them were killed off by God's hit squads. Your kind is mostly gone because you tend to kill yourselves. You're not the most stable being, but I guess you knew that."

"Is that how you got that wound on your arm? Those guys who tried to shove you into a car. Those were angels trying to kill you?"

Kinski laughs.

"No, boy. Heaven doesn't worry about me anymore. Those were Kissi. They were shopping for one last angel for their New Year's party."

I look at him hard, trying to read him. Wanting a final, for-real take on him. But he's a blank wall.

He smiles at me.

"I know what you're doing. You can't read angels like regular people. Even angels can't always read other angels. Otherwise we would have never had that little dustup with Lucifer in Heaven."

"Can you read me?"

"Of course."

"What am I thinking?"

"You're afraid I'm crazy because that's one more person you can't count on. And you're afraid I'm telling the truth 'cause that means you were screwed before you ever drew your first breath."

That's exactly what I'm thinking.

"Will I be like you? Will I be able to read you someday?"

He shrugs.

"It's hard to say. With nephilim, it's always different. Some are more human and some are almost angels and can do almost anything angels do. You'll know what you can do when you can do it. That's all I can tell you."

"Let's say I believe this story. Could you fix me up with a cocktail like Candy's? Make me like a regular person?"

"I wouldn't even try."

"Why not?"

"You always had magic, but you came into your real power in Hell. You were running wild, not holding yourself back like the nephilim that grew up around humans. You found yourself and accepted what you could do without all the angst and bullshit that they went through."

"And what is it I can do?"

"Warrior is the nice word, the traditional word, but that's just a polite way of saying that you're a natural-born killer. You're Sandman Slim, the monster who kills monsters. I'm not going to drug you up to change that."

"Even if I wanted to change it?"

"Especially then. How many angels showed up to save the world the other night? Did Aelita and her little quilting bee conquer the evil at Avila's heart? No. It took a monster to walk between all the forces massed there and to beat them all. No one else could have done that."

"There were two monsters there," I remind him.

He nods.

"Right. Two monsters."

The pizza delivery boy brings out a second pile of pizza boxes, loads them in the van, backs up, and heads into the afternoon traffic. He gives us the finger on the way out of the parking lot.

"I can feel a lot of stuff pinballing around in your head. You want to tell me what you think about all this?"

"If your story is true, then one of my parents fucked an angel. Which one?"

"Why does that matter?"

"It doesn't, but I want to know."

"Your mother."

"I thought so. My father was gone a lot on sales calls. Mom was lonely and pretty. I guess that explains some things about my father."

"If you say so."

"He knew I wasn't his."

"But he still raised you. Give him credit for that."

"He wanted me dead."

"Hell, boy. At some point, all fathers want to kill their sons. Just like all sons think about killing their old man. They're too much alike or the're not enough alike. It doesn't matter. What's beautiful is that they don't do it."

"Are there other nephilim around?"

"It's not like there's a newsletter or anything, but as far as I know, you're the only one."

"I used to worry all the time about being boring. Suddenly boring looks pretty good."

"Try not to sing too many sad songs for yourself. The universe already hates you. Self-pity isn't going to help."

Whenever the hammer has come down in my life, I've always wondered what my father would do. Then I usually do the opposite, but I still always think of him first. But now I'm seeing my mother's face instead of my father's. And I'm thinking about Alice. And Candy. And Allegra breathing fire into Parker's eyes. And Vidocq, who isn't a father, but who makes being a man easier than any of the men in my family.

I flick my cigarette butt at a rat that's stalking a couple of pigeons in the parking lot.

"You know what I'm thinking right now?"

Kinski is silent for a minute.

"That you really want a drink."

"Yeah, but that's too easy. I always want a drink. Guess again."

"You're back wondering if I'm crazy or not and leaning toward crazy."

I nod and take few steps in the direction of the Mercedes.

"Actually, I'm not. I'm leaning toward I don't give a goddam. I'm sick of Heaven and Hell and angels and nephilim and all the rest of it. I knew what I was doing there. And no one told me that I'm not who I am. Be a fallen archangel if you want, but leave me out of it. I don't want to be part of your soap opera. I don't want to be mythological."

I start back for the Mercedes, but it looks ridiculous to me now. A brain dead cross between a giant grasshopper and a Cubist Corvette. I walk past the car and into the shadow of a lampost at the corner of the lot. Kinski watches me go. As I slip into the Room of Thirteen Doors, for just a second, some annoying part of my brain whispers, "You know that thing that you're doing right now, going from a parking lot to the center of the universe and out again? That's pretty seriously mythological."

THERE'S ONLY ONE problem with L.A.

It exists.

L.A. is what happens when a bunch of Lovecraftian elder gods and porn starlets spend a weekend locked up in the Chateau Marmont snorting lines of crank off Jim Morrison's bones. If the Viagra and illegal Traci Lords videos don't get you going, then the Japanese tentacle porn will.

New York has short con cannibals and sewer gators. Chicago is all snowbound yetis and the ghosts of a million angry steers with horns like jackhammers. Texas is crisscrossed with ghost railroads that kidnap demon-possessed Lolitas to play strip Russian roulette with six shells in the chamber.

L.A. is all assholes and angels, bloodsuckers and trust-fund satanists, black magic and movie moguls with more bodies buried under the house than John Wayne Gacy.

There are more surveillance cameras and razor wire here than around the pope. L.A. is one traffic jam from going completely Hiroshima.

God, I love this town.

I NEED FOOD. I need booze. I need to smoke a cigarette outside a bar where you can hear people dry humping in the alley behind the Dumpster.

I walk from Max Overdrive to the Bamboo House of Dolls, sucking down stage-six smog-alert air and lingering over a sunset as bloody as the fall of the Roman Empire.

People stare and point at me as I go inside. For a second I have that anxiety-dream paranoia that I'm not wearing any pants. But no one's laughing and I've got a pocket full of money and a knife tucked in the back of my jeans, so I think I'm covered on the pants thing.

More girls smile at me going into Bamboo House than have smiled at me in my entire life. There must be a scar-fetish convention in town.

An older guy in a purple velvet Edwardian jacket holds the door for me when I go inside. Scratch the scar convention. We've been invaded by Renn Faire rejects on acid. I stand for a minute in the alcove. Let my eyes adjust to the dim inside.

The place goes dead silent. Carlos even kills the music. My balls shrink up inside my body and my hand sneaks back for my knife. I open my eyes and about a hundred schizophrenics start applauding. In a minute, they're all chanting "Sandman! Sandman!" There's a banner over the bar. In silver glitter it says ding dong, the witch is dead. There's a framed picture of Mason with a black wreath around it on the bar. Someone's drawn a mustache and devil horns on him in Magic Marker.

People rush forward and start shaking my hand. Patting me on the back. Women kiss me. Guys with funny accents kiss me, too. Some are dressed like ordinary businessmen and women, students, hipsters, and adolescent neopunks. Others look like they're on a weekend pass from an asylum in Oz.

Holy shit. The Sub Rosa have taken over my bar.

Word must have gotten around about my cage match with Mason and the Kissi.

Fuck me. I'm a rock star. And all I really wanted was a burrito.

I belly up to the bar and Carlos beams at me.

"Your friends are a blast!" he yells over the din. "Why didn't you bring them in before?"

"I didn't know they were my friends."

He keeps smiling. He can't hear a word I say. He motions me to get closer so he can whisper something to me. I get right up to him and he says, "Some of these people, no shit, can do magic."

"Can you magic me some rice and beans? I'm hungry enough to eat Orange County."

Two minutes later, Carlos brings me enough food to feed the Pacific Rim. I hold up my tumbler full of Jack and Carlos and I toast each other. He looks extremely happy. The Sub Rosa might be a bunch of lunatics, show-offs, and bureaucrats, but they're a big part of the underground economy that keeps California afloat. And they're not shy about splashing around cash. If the Bamboo House of Dolls stays Sub Rosa central, Carlos will have enough money to retire by Friday.

I try to eat, but people keep coming up and introducing themselves. If I need anything at all, don't hesitate to call. About fifty different women slip me their phone numbers. So do at least that many guys. I don't remember anyone's name. It's one big lovefest blur, and as nice as these people are being, it's really getting to me. I pretend that I'm going out for a smoke, but what I really need is a shadow to disappear into.

On the other hand, I really need a smoke, too.

I light up by the side of the bar. A woman walks over to me. She's dressed like Stevie Nicks in her how-fast-can-I-burn-out-my-nose-with-coke period. When she gets closer, she becomes really interesting. She has the whitest skin I've ever seen. And there's something strange about her face: it moves whether she talks or not. Her face is like the phases of the moon, going from a gorgeous bride-to-be to an old woman with a face like shattered granite.

"Are you having fun inside?" she asks.

I shrug.

"It's nice, but it's a little much. I'm going to finish this and sneak off."

"I'm glad I caught you then. I'm Medea Bava. Did you get the package I left with your friend Vidocq?"

Feathers. Wolf teeth. Blood.

"I got it. And it was after Christmas, but you still cared enough to get me something."

The young woman's and the old woman's faces turn serious.

"You might be a hero to those fools inside, but you're not to me. To me, you're a dangerous man. A criminal for sure. Possibly a wild dog that needs to be put down."

"You're from the Inquisition, aren't you?"

She laughs.

"My boy, I am the Inquisition. And from this moment onward, I will be watching every move you make."

"Isn't that a song by the Police?"

"That's exactly the kind of thing that will get you another package. Only this one will be a bit more, let's say, lively."

"Lady, I've seen Hell and I've seen Hollywood and I have a pretty good idea what Heaven looks like. So, take your threats and shove 'em straight up your deviated septum. For me to worry about your finger wagging, I'd have to give a damn about something, and I've pretty much reached my limit there. Anytime you want to get all junkyard dog, give me a call. You might kill me, but trust me, you're going to have a limp and that face of yours isn't going to move so easily anymore."

She keeps looking at me. No reaction. Nothing. Just her stare shifting through the phases of the moon.

"Have a nice party, young man."

"Leave a light on. Maybe I won't wait for you to come after me."

That makes her laugh. A high titter, like crystal wineglasses tinkling together.

That's enough fun for one night. I throw my cigarette into the gutter and look around for a comfy shadow.

"Littering is a crime, even in L.A."

I'll be hearing that drawl in my dreams for the next hundred years.

"U.S. Marshal Wells. Come to party with the pixies?"

"Don't be obscene," he says. "I can smell the crazy on these people from here."

"Don't knock it. You might get lucky. Some of them inside are going to love a man in uniform."

He shakes his head.

"I don't like wasting my time talking to people too crazy or stupid or addled to understand what I'm saying."

"Then maybe what you were going to say, it's not worth saying."

"No. It is. You did a good thing the other night. I don't know that we could have stopped the ceremony without you."

"And Candy."

"Yes, your sidekick monster. So, are you Batman and Robin now?"

"I think that was our first and last date."

"Too bad. You might have been good assets."

"I'll tell her we have Homeland Security's blessing. And you can hire us, if you want. I'm sure for the right price, I can get her out of retirement."

"Aelita told me about your business proposition. I'll never understand people like you. You respect nothing. You value nothing. But you went out of your way to take on the biggest evil this city has seen in a good long while."

"I value plenty. Probably just not things you'd care about."

"You might just be surprised."

He looks away. His heartbeat is up. He's hiding something.

"It's okay to be in love with an angel. Trust me. You wouldn't be the first."

He nods, but he still won't look at me. There's a package under his arm. He holds it out for me.

"I thought you might want this. We found it when we were searching Avila. There was a whole room of similar items. It's your girlfriend's ashes."

And there goes L.A., dropping down fifty thousand feet right under me. Swallowed up by the San Andreas fault. My head swims, but I don't want him to see that. I start to say thank you, but nothing comes out.

"Don't say anything. It's okay even for an asshole to get choked up. Trust me. You wouldn't be the first."

He walks away and gets into one of his blacked-out vans. I step into the first shadow I can find.

I WANT TO steal a car. Something big. Something ugly. A Hummer or a director's decked-out Land Rover. Reinforced suspension, emergency winch, and self-sealing tires, like he thinks he can four-wheel his way out of the Apocalypse. I want to steal something bright and shiny and stupid and expensive, set it on fire, climb into the driver's seat, and pile-drive it into the ocean at a hundred and twenty. Feel the windshield cave. The crack as the safety glass pops out, hits me in the face, and snaps my neck. I want to feel the cold black water swallow me up and spit me out on the sandy bottom of the world. Just blind crabs and bone-white starfish down here. I don't want death. I know what's waiting for me when I die, and Hell is too bright. Too loud. I want oblivion. I want to not exist. I want to feel something that's not pain. I want Alice.

But Alice wouldn't want me to disappear. She didn't like me stealing or breaking other people's things, so I won't do any of that tonight.

See? Even dead she makes me a better whatever-the-hell it is I am. A less stupid person. A more considerate monster.

I step out of a shadow and onto Venice Beach. Alice is under my arm in a brown plastic box. There are bonfires fifty yards down the sand. A boom box pumps out something that, at this distance, is just beats and the buzz of overloaded speakers. People cop drugs on the street behind me. Couples grope and sweat in the dark.

I knew a drug dealer from Marin County. A hippie, but the kind who slept with a.45 under his pillow. When he got into organic pot farming, he stopped using the toilet. He'd shit on a black plastic tarp behind his house, staked out in the sun, so his droppings would dry out and he could use them to fertilize his plants. He told me that he got the idea from a friend who made sun dried tomatoes.

He did the fertilizer experiment for a year. Collected each dried-out nugget after a month in the sun. He told me that at the end of that year, everything he dropped on the tarp fit inside one shoe box.

I don't know why I think of that, except that the only person I ever loved now fits into something about the same size as that dead hippie dealer's shit box.

There's a crescent moon out. Does that mean it's a good night to let Alice go or a bad one? If I was better at magic than murder, I'm sure I'd know.

The water is cold and calm. Low tide. I have to walk out a good ten or twenty yards to feel the waves on my legs, boots sinking into the wet sand all the way out. I wade into the sluggish waves until I'm in waist deep.

Pop the top of Alice's plastic sarcophagus. Her ashes are in a plastic bag, like something you'd put your lunch in. I hold out the bag so that the bottom is about an inch underwater. Pull the black knife and slit the side.

The waves lap at the bag, washing out her ashes. Alice floats on the surface of the ocean, a white cloud spreading out in all directions. When the bag is empty, I drop it and the box into the water. I wade out, following the ash cloud as it's drawn away with the tide.

I want to follow her all the way out, over my head, and keep on going. But she wouldn't like that, either.

I stop when the water is up to my chest and watch Alice spread out into the black Pacific. Scoop up a handful of her ashes, but they wash away when the water runs between my fingers. That damn song is stuck in my head again.

"It's dreamy weather we're on

You waved your crooked wand

Along an icy pond with a frozen moon

A murder of silhouette crows I saw

And the tears on my face

And the skates on the pond

They spell Alice."

My legs are good and numb when the last of her drifts out of sight. I'm not even cold anymore, but I can't stop shaking.

Good-bye, Alice. I know you probably don't like the idea of me killing, but it's all I have left to give you. And I've gone too far to stop now. When I'm sure about Mason, this thing is done. I'll go back down where I belong and dream about you in Hell. Till then, sleep tight.

WHO WOULD HAVE guessed that Kasabian had his act wired tight enough to have accident insurance? Allegra found the papers in the bottom of the safe when she was closing up the one night a week she still works at Max Overdrive.

Drop cloths, ladders, and paint cans are stacked along the edge of the staircase leading to my bedroom. The broken walls and ceiling have new drywall. In the morning (not too early; I tipped the foreman not to show up until after eleven), the crew will start plastering one end of the room and start painting the other.

I'm lying in bed after a shower, staring up at streaks of drywall tape and mud, the long white scars that hold the new ceiling panels together. I'm trying to talk myself into getting my ass out of bed and down to the Bamboo House of Dolls for some decent food.

"Knock. Knock."

I have the Navy Colt up and cocked in a fraction of a second. Lucifer is standing in the doorway, holding a red-and-white-checkered bowling bag. I lower the Colt's hammer and set it back down on the bedside table.

Lucifer says, "Don't get up. This is just a social call."

The Prince of Darkness is dressed in a tailored charcoal-gray suit that looks like it cost more than this building. He sets down the bowling bag on the bootlegging table and leans back against the door frame.

"Careful. That might not be dry," I say.

"Thank you." He stands up and checks his jacket for spots. "I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd drop by and congratulate you on outfoxing Mason. I honestly didn't think you had it in you."

"Up until he was gone, neither did I."

"It was clever how you tricked him into following you to Hell. It's just too bad that when you locked him in, you probably gave him exactly what he wanted. You don't really think that ritual at Avila was to let me or my kind out of Hell, do you?"

"No, it was to let him in. I didn't figure that out until later. So, the mob didn't rip him to shreds?"

"Of course not. Mason won't die that easily. And now he's free to crawl around down below, like a viper at my bosom, and conspire with my generals to overthrow me."

"It's going to be a lot harder for him now that he doesn't have the Kissi to back him up."

"Maybe."

"You telling me that the Prince of Darkness can't handle one lousy human? You've done it before."

"Not when he's protected by my entire general corps and the aristocracy. Things were chaotic enough before his arrival. I could gather the troops who remain loyal to me, find and kill him tomorrow, but I'd have to destroy half my kingdom to do it."

"That's not my problem."

"Not yet."

Lucifer takes out a pack of thin black silver-tipped cigarettes.

"Do you mind?" he asks.

"Damn. Are those Maledictions?"

"Right. You can't get these up here." He tosses me the pack. "Keep them. I have more."

"Thanks."

I tap a Malediction out of the box, fire it up, and puff. It tastes like a tire fire in a candy factory next door to a strip club. The best cigarettes in the universe.

"I heard a funny story the other day. Doc Kinski told me one about angels and human women and something called a nephilim. He says I might be one. You know anything about that?"

"I know all about Uriel and his disgrace. Do you think an archangel could fall without me knowing? I'd hoped that Heaven would cast him all the way down to me. I would have thrown him a ticker-tape parade."

"So, he was telling the truth?"

"Of course. I'd heard stories about the nephilim over the centuries, but I'd never seen one. I wasn't sure they even existed. When the Kissi dropped you down with us, I wasn't terribly interested. Unlike my brethren, I'd seen more than my share of humans. Then days passed and you refused to die. That's when you got interesting. I moved you from household to household. Put you in direct conflict with powerful Hellions. Decided who you would fight in the arena."

"I was your science project."

"You still are."

"What does that mean?"

Lucifer looks away and picks up an import DVD of Lucio Fulci's Zombi.

"This looks fun. May I take it?"

"Happy New Year. It's yours."

He throws back the drop cloth and starts going through the stacks of discs on the table.

I say, "I've been wondering, just how much of everything since I got back was your doing?"

Lucifer keeps going through the stacks of movies.

"The Veritas aimed me straight at Kasabian. Then some mysterious buyer wanted Muninn to get something for him, only Muninn needed my help and that sent me to Jayne-Anne and Avila, which led me to the Golden Vigil and Mason. Don't you think that's an awful lot of coincidences?"

He holds up a copy of To the Devil a Daughter.

I shake my head. "Don't bother."

He makes a disappointed face and tosses the disc back onto the pile.

"You're too hard on yourself, Jimmy." he says. "I'm sure you're simply a much better detective than you give yourself credit for."

"Really, I'm not."

He holds up a copy of L'Inferno, a 1911 silent version of Dante's Inferno.

"You'll love that one," I say. "Why would you tweak things so they ended up with me still alive and Mason in Hell? Either you never saw it coming or you were lying before and you really wanted him Downtown."

"Why would I want Mason where he'll cause me the most trouble?"

"I haven't figured that out yet."

"Don't overthink things. It's not your strong suit. I do have an ulterior motive for coming here tonight, besides raiding your movie collection. Now that you've beaten Mason and the Kissi, there's really no reason for you to be concerned with the Room of Thirteen Doors. I'd like to buy the key from you."

"How much?" . "Name a figure and don't be shy. You can be the richest man in the world. The richest man ever."

"No thanks. Sounds like there'd be a lot of paperwork."

"If you're worried about getting hurt, I'm not a butcher like the Kissi. I can take the key out and you won't feel a thing."

"But I have a feeling I might need it again sometime. You just said that Mason's busy conspiring with your generals. I might have to do something about that, and the key came in handy when I had to to kill a few of them. Besides, I'd still like another shot at Mason, so, thanks, but I think I'll hold on to the key for now."

"Suit yourself."

Lucifer turns away. Starts flipping through another pile of discs. I wish angels weren't so impossible to read. I know that he's got to be pissed, but I can't tell how much.

"But I'll work for you, if you want."

Lucifer turns and looks at me.

"Strictly freelance. On a case-by-case basis. Cash up front. And I have to not object to the job."

"Is this the same deal you offered to Aelita?"

"Exactly."

"All right. But I'd still rather have the key."

I go to the bathroom and take some pebbles from a pot in the window holding the remains of a dead flower. I take the stones back to the bedroom and hand them to Lucifer.

"You can have these."

He looks at them and gives me a big, toothy Prince of Darkness smile.

"Seven stones. Seven stones to chase away the devil. Are you trying to prove that you're not afraid of me, Jimmy? That's adorable. And how very Old Testament. Don't tell me that you've gone and read a book?"

"I saw it in an old monster movie."

"Phew."

Lucifer picks up a stone between his thumb and forefinger, takes my hand, and drops the stone into it.

"Keep it. You just might need it someday, Sandman Slim."

I don't know what that means, but the way he says it makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

He looks at his watch.

"I've got to run. Thanks for the flickers."

He gives me a wink and starts down the stairs.

I yell down after him, "You forgot your bowling bag."

Lucifer looks up at me.

"That's for you. I wasn't entirely sure I was going to give it to you, but after you gave me this lovely gift,"-he holds up the stones-"I think you deserve it."

That doesn't sound good. But if he wanted me dead, he could have done it without me even knowing he was there. I open the bag. Kasabian's head looks up at me from inside.

"Hello, asshole."

I slam the bag shut.

"I can't make these personal calls all the time," Lucifer says. "Kasabian here will be my voice when I want to get in touch. Of course, you can also relay messages to me through him."

"And the rest of the time he'll be your spy."

"O ye of little faith."

Lucifer vanishes from the stairs.

I can hear Kasabian's voice from inside the bag. I open it about an inch.

"Come on, man. You think I wanted this gig? You told me to ask for a job."

I open the bag the rest of the way and take Kasabian out. Clear a spot on the table and set him down.

"Is that a Malediction?" Kasabian asks. "Can I have one?"

I take mine, put it between his lips, and let him puff.

"So what's being dead like?" I ask.

"Eh. I've felt worse."

"You know. I thought I'd be dead now. That's how I always pictured it. When the Circle was gone, I was supposed to be gone, too."

"Aw. Dying didn't work out for you? Boo hoo. Shove your James Dean wet dreams up your ass. At the end of the day, you're still Sandman Slim and I'm still a head in a bag that smells like someone used it to store an extra ass."

"I miss Alice."

"I miss my balls." Kasabian looks around. "Who fucked up my room?"

"It's my room now and you did. When you blew yourself up."

"Oh, right. That sucked. I heard you got Parker."

"Yeah. Back at the old motel."

"I haven't thought about that place in a long time. You think it hurt when you killed him?"

"Definitely."

"Good."

I take a puff of the Malediction and let Kasabian finish it off.

I say, "Maybe us being stuck here isn't the worst thing imaginable."

"No, it is. It really is."

"I've felt so guilty about everything that's happened. Then I remembered that half of this shit is just because humans are jokes to Heaven and Hell. We're the punching bags in their family psychodrama. I know I can't change that, but I can make it more fun. A mosquito can't kill an elephant, but it can drive it crazy. Maybe that's enough. Fucking with Lucifer's bullyboys and God's Pinkertons. Maybe that's a good enough reason not to be dead."

"That's really beautiful. Why don't you go and knit that on a sweater, Heidi? Here's an even better idea-don't talk anymore. Put on a movie."

"What do you want to see?"

"Porn."

"There's no way I'm watching porn with you."

"You're such an old lady. What's on top of the player?"

"Master of the Flying Guillotine and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly first. Then The Flying Guillotine."

I take Kasabian to the bedside table, hit on, thumb play on the remote, and lie back on the bed. The no-copying warning comes up.

"Can we order in pizza later?" asks Kasabian.

"Can you eat?"

"I can chew."

"I'll put a bucket under you."

"Shut up. The movie's starting."