Under a dead streetlight, someone has broken the front windows of a Gap store. A few kids run away with jeans and a couple of cops load armfuls of stuff into the back of their squad car. A whole deserted city for the taking and they’re stealing Dockers.
I run the bike into the alley behind Max Overdrive and throw the cover on top, though I’m not sure why at this point. What’s to keep dry anymore? We’re living in an open-air aquarium. Everyone and everything is wet inside and out. Soon we’ll grow gills and fins. We’ll swim out into the California Current and let it carry us down to Baja, where we’ll live off cheap cerveza and krill. Until someone decides our bones make good soup. Then we’ll head out to sea, into the deep, deep water where transparent creatures, so long in the dark they’re born blind, skulk along the ocean floor waiting for us to tire out or die or just give up. We’ll drift down to the bottom of the world, food for things that have never dreamed of land or humans or the Angra. Will we be happy then? Primordial shit in a volcanic trench older than God’s jodhpurs? I doubt it. We’ll just get absorbed by something else and fed up the food chain again until we’re back on land, food for the God or Gods that marooned us here in the first place. And we’ll start the whole thing again. Our only consolation is that maybe in the new world, the studios will have more sense and no one will green-light Battlefield Earth. That would be worth coming back for.
I go in through the side door. I can feel the wrongness of the place even before I see it. Discs are scattered all over the floor. A display case is knocked over and another one is torn to pieces. Kasabian’s door looks like it was ripped off its hinges. Screams come from his room.
The lights are off, but I can see someone on top of him. I grab whoever it is by the collar and throw them as hard as I can out the door. They slam into the floor, slide, and bang into the far wall hard enough to leave a dent.
It isn’t until she gets to her knees that I recognize her. It’s Candy. She’s gone full Jade. I’ve never seen her so far gone before. Her skin has gone almost obsidian and her nails are curved back into claws. She growls, showing a mouthful of white shark teeth. Her eyes are red slits in black ice. She’s sweating and blood drips from her mouth where she bit herself.
I shout, “Candy. It’s me. Stop.”
She charges and hits me square in the chest, knocking me onto my back. She’s ridiculously strong in this form, and as vicious as an Eater. All teeth and madness. Candy’s teeth are bad enough, but then she stretches her mouth open like a snake, exposing needle-thin fangs she uses to inject the Jades’ necrotizing poison.
Candy’s my girl, but I don’t want to die and I don’t want anyone drinking me when I do. But this isn’t her fault. She’s fucked up and I don’t want to punch her out.
I bark some Hellion and she flies off me like ghosts playing horseshoes. She’s up a second later and charging me again.
I grab her, wrapping my arms and legs around her. Still, it’s all I can do to hold on. I bark a sleeping hex into her ear. She slows down. Her eyes close. Then I feel her body tense again as she fights her way through it, snarling and clawing at me again.
She braces her feet on the ground and pushes back against me, freeing one leg. It’s enough to wriggle a leg, then a hand free. She drags her claws down my arm, shredding my coat and skin.
I yell, “Candy. Stop.”
She bites my wrist down to the bone. I grab her again and shout more Hellion. Something harder and worse than sleep.
She lets go of my wrist, shaking violently. Every muscle in her body going rigid. Her eyes go wide and her lips draw back from her teeth in a painful grimace. She’s having a seizure. A kind of hoodoo epilepsy. But even with every muscle in her body locked in place, she’s still fighting. I push her off me, but hold on to her.
“Kasabian. You all right?”
He comes to his door like a groundhog afraid of the light.
“I’m okay. What the fuck is going on?”
“I’ll tell you when I know.”
I pick her up, slipping in some blood from my wrist. When I get my footing, I carry her through a shadow to the clinic.
The clinic is as empty as the streets. Fairuza sees us coming and yells for Allegra. She comes out of the exam room.
“My God. What’s wrong?”
“Look at her. She’s full Jade.”
Allegra comes over and looks at Candy. Checks her forehead. Pushes up her eyelids.
“This doesn’t make sense. I just gave her the potion.”
I carry Candy into the exam room and put her on the table.
“Could something be wrong with it?”
“I made it myself.”
“Check it anyway.”
Allegra calls to Fairuza.
“Get me the skullcap sedative.”
Fairuza opens a cabinet and paws through bottles. When she finds the sedative, she hands it to Allegra. I’ll give Allegra points for brave. She sticks her hand into Candy’s mouth and pries her jaws open enough to pour the potion into. It’s green and smells of licorice like it has an absinthe base.
When Candy starts to relax, I speak Hellion to clear the hex. Her muscles unknot and her jaw drops open. In less than a minute, she’s back to being Candy.
Allegra looks at me.
“We’re going to have to restrain her until we know what’s happened.”
“I know. Try not to hurt her.”
“I’ll try to keep her unconscious until we figure out what’s wrong.”
She looks at my bloody wrist.
“You’re bleeding. It’s like the old days. You in here all the time covered in blood. Sit down. I’ll get some gauze.”
I do what I’m told simply because I don’t want to argue. Allegra comes back a minute later with gauze and tape.
“I could stitch this up to stop the bleeding, but I know you’ll say no.”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s mine and I keep my scars.”
She pushes up my sleeve, bandages my hand, and wraps gauze around it.
“Because you never want to let go of anything.”
I look at Candy on the table. Fairuza puts straps around her feet and across her chest.
“I swear, if someone did this to her . . .”
“I know. But you have to prepare yourself for something worse.”
“What?”
“That she might have developed a tolerance to the potion and it won’t work anymore.”
“Then you’ll figure out another one, right?”
She finishes my wrist and sets the gauze and bandages on the counter.
“I’ll do my best. I’m sure there will be something in one of Eugène’s books.”
“Find it. Whatever it is. I’ll pay for it.”
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s take things one step at a time. The first step is you leaving.”
“I don’t want to leave her alone.”
“She won’t be alone and you’re going to be in the way. If you want what’s best for her, go home.”
I look from her to Fairuza and back again. They don’t want me here. All I do is bring them broken people. And maybe Allegra is right. I probably will be in the way.
“Thanks. Call me the moment you know anything. Middle of the night. Whenever.”
“I know. Now go.”
I STEP THROUGH a shadow and come out in Max Overdrive. Kasabian is kneeling on the floor with a spray bottle of cleaner and a roll of paper towels, wiping up my blood.
“Not exactly life at the Chateau Marmont,” I say.
“If this was the Chateau, she still would have attacked me, but there’d be someone else to clean up the mess.”
“I’ll pick up the discs.”
“Why don’t you get down here and work on th
e blood?”
“You’re doing a great job. I don’t want to spoil your rhythm.”
“Fuck you.”
I pick up the DVDs and Blu-rays and stack them on the counter. They can fucking wait until tomorrow to go back on the shelves.
“She going to be all right?” says Kasabian.
“I don’t know. I’m waiting to hear.”
He doesn’t say anything for a minute.
“Candy’s all right,” he says. “Recent events aside.”
“Yeah. She is.”
“Did you see Fairuza at the clinic?”
“Yeah.”
“Did she say anything about me?”
I give him a look.
“Right. Wrong time.”
He finishes up the floor and climbs creakily up on his mechanical legs.
“Thing is,” he says. “Candy is a good influence on you. Around her you’re almost like a person.”
“I know.”
He throws the bloody paper towels into the trash and puts the spray bottle back in the storeroom.
“You want a drink?” he says. “I’ve still got some Belgian beer Fairuza brought over.”
I shake my head.
“Some other time.”
I start upstairs.
“She’ll be all right,” says Kasabian. “Allegra knows what she’s doing.”
I don’t say anything. I go upstairs and close the door. Find a bottle of Aqua Regia and don’t bother with a glass. I fire up a movie on the big screen, but when I finish the bottle I realize I have no idea what I’ve been watching.
AT THREE A.M., Sola and I drive down Wilshire in an empty sixteen-wheeler. My head hurts—hell, my eyes hurt and I’d rather be at home waiting for a call about Candy, but maybe this is a little healthier. Getting a little action instead of sitting at home drowning myself in Aqua Regia. I put a glove on to match the one that covers my Kissi hand. It covers the gauze on my wrist and Sola will think I’m getting into the James Bond spirit of things. I’m not.
“Christ, if we’re going to work together I wish you’d call me Julie instead of Sola,” she says on the way over.
“Careful. You took the Lord’s name in vain. Wells probably has the truck bugged.”
“Not for long,” she says.
She pushes the heavy truck through the gears like an expert and parks it on Wilshire a block away from Robertson. I start to help her drag our passenger into the driver’s seat, but she waves me off. Our passenger is a corpse in a T-shirt and jeans. Apparently, the Vigil has an arrangement to pick up the occasional unclaimed body from federal prisons around the country. So much for respecting the dead. I get out while she wrestles the corpse into place behind the wheel. She does the dirty work cleanly and efficiently. I’ve never seen this side of her before.
“Julie,” I say.
She looks at me.
“What?”
I shake my head.
“Nothing. Just practicing.”
“Okay.”
She smiles and hops down from the cab, slamming the door shut. We’re both dressed in black coveralls, courtesy of the Vigil. Mine are too tight. Julie’s are too loose. We look like a couple of idiot thrift-store ninjas. She slings a pack onto her shoulder and we cross the street, heading for our target.
Walking makes my head hurt, but sitting made it hurt too. The night rain is cool. It helps wake me up and get focused. No one at the Vigil knows anything about Candy. Rogue Lurkers are subject to immediate arrest, no questions asked. I’m not going to take a chance on that happening.
We walk to an empty store that used to sell high-end sound systems. We’re near the corner and have a great view of the Pickman Building. Inside the store, power cords, stereo cables, and coax snake the floor and hang from the ceiling like jungle vines.
I say, “What were those three things again?”
Julie kneels and starts taking things out of the pack, laying them in a semicircle around her.
“Diversion, intrusion, and extraction.”
“This is the first one.”
“It will be in a minute.”
She looks at me.
“You’re not drunk, are you?”
“I toasted a friend’s health tonight, yes. But I’m fine.”
“Damn,” she says. “I need you Johnny on the spot tonight. Can you handle that?”
“No problem.”
“Screw this up and you can go back to calling me Sola. Marshal Sola.”
“I’m fine. Just point me at whatever you want dead.”
She plugs together several pieces of electronics, including a joystick and a small flat-screen monitor.
“With luck, dead won’t enter into things tonight.”
“That’s not my experience with breaking into secure places, but fingers crossed.”
The monitor comes on, displaying an image looking straight down Wilshire Boulevard.
“You ready?” Julie says.
“Not really. I can hoodoo us inside the building right onto the tenth floor, but I don’t like doing that kind of thing. I like coming out places where I at least know the terrain. That way I avoid walking into deadfalls and snake pits.”
“Here,” she says, handing me another small tablet. “There’s blueprints of the tenth floor, along with surveillance photos.”
I flip through the shots.
“How many guards will there be?”
“If we’re lucky, none. Most of the time no one is on the tenth floor but Saint Nick.”
“But someone might come up for a smoke or a chat.”
“If there’s anyone there, let me handle them.”
“Carrying another nonlethal, are you?”
She moves the joystick, getting a feel for it. The image on the monitor vibrates slightly. It takes me a minute to see that the image is looking out through the sixteen-wheeler’s windshield.
“We always start with nonlethals,” Julie says. “But we carry regular backup pistols.”
“Fine. You’re the one with shooting theories. I’m just the help. What’s the stuff after diversion?”
“Intrusion and extraction.”
“Yeah. Get in clean, then run away. Two of my favorite things, especially the last one.”
She flips a switch on the box with the joystick. The camera jumps as the truck shifts into gear.
“You ready?”
I think about Candy strapped to the exam table in the clinic and I want someone to shoot at me just so I can strangle them.
“Ready.”
She pushes the joystick forward and the truck moves out into the flooded street. Julie has the windshield wipers on full. The truck picks up speed and blasts through a red light at the corner. Then she floors it.
As the truck picks up speed, the wipers can’t keep up with the rain, and the windshield shows nothing but splotches and colored lights. Without missing a beat, she thumbs a switch and the camera shifts to infrared. The scene is clear again, the building straight ahead.
Out the window, the truck barrels past us. Julie hits a button and the truck’s air horn blows three times.
At the corner of Robertson, she hits the front brakes and the trailer starts to swing around, threatening to pull the cab over on its side. But she hits the accelerator and lets up on the brakes at just the right moment so that the truck slides across the intersection, up over the curb, and crashes into the front of the Pickman Building broadside.
Smashing through the glass and steel walls, the truck doesn’t slow until most of it is resting comfortably in the lobby. Julie cuts the engine. This isn’t the time for random fires. Just a distracting truck with a dead driver. How tragic.
“What about emergency response? We just set off a shitload of alarms.”
She hand
s me a box with one red button.
“Get ready,” she says, shutting down her electronics. “Hit it.”
I press the button. Nothing happens for a second. Then a dull thump echoes through the street. All the lights in the neighborhood go out.
“There’s an EMP device in the trailer. We just blew their power and all their electronics. They’ll come back up, but not until we’re gone.”
“You are diabolical.”
“Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment. Now get us inside.”
“It’s too dark. I need a shadow.”
Across the street, guards are coming out of the Pickman Building, gazing up at the truck. Some fiddle with their walkie-talkies. Some are trying to use their phones. None look happy.
Julie leads me into a toilet in the back of the store and snaps a glow stick.
“Is this enough light?”
“Barely. But it’ll work.”
I push my arm into a shadow just to make sure. I hear Julie draw in a breath.
“You’ve never seen this trick before?”
“Not this close.”
“You might want to close your eyes. It can be a little weird the first time.”
She closes them and I take her hand.
“Ready?”
“Definitely.”
I pull her into the shadow and out onto the tenth floor of the Pickman Building.
JULIE WAS RIGHT. There aren’t any guards on the tenth floor. All that’s there is a small room, a plastic cube in the center of the empty floor. This would be a cakewalk except that the floor is covered in magic circles. It was dumb luck that we came out between two of them.
“Don’t move,” I say. “This is why I don’t like going into places I don’t know. Step in any one of these circles and you’re dead. Probably we’re both dead and I’m not in the mood for that tonight.”
“Damn. What do we do to get around them?”
“It’s too dark for me to see them clearly, so I can’t draw a countersign.”
“I have climbing gear. We can go across the ceiling.”
“Easy, Catwoman. That will probably be hexed too.”
“What do we do?”
“If I knew what kind of hoodoo these were, I could answer that.”