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 teenyboppers 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 righ teous cause of the Golden Vigil?”
“When you ask so nicely, it makes me feel all nonabhor-rent.”
“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 Eugène 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.