Killing Pretty

  I walk around to the front of the store. Candy, Kasabian, and Vincent still stare at the place where I disappeared, moving so slowly they look like ants in amber.

  The front of the store looks as solid as the side. There’s only one place the hoodoo doesn’t glow, over where the angel painted KILL. I touch the spot and don’t feel any kind of resistance. It must not be ordinary paint, but something the angel brought with him from Heaven.

  I put a finger on the side bar of the K and push. My hand goes right through the wall. Slipping my other hand into the K, I pull as hard as I can, and a small gap appears in the hoodoo. If I duck down and pull my shoulders in, I can just slip through the breach.

  Inside, I go upstairs and grab some garbage bags from under the kitchen sink. Toss clothes from Candy’s and my closet, then Kasabian and Vincent’s room. Before I come down, I grab Candy’s laptop and stuff it in our bag so the clothes will cushion it.

  My one worry about being inside is that I won’t be able to get out again. But there’s a crack in the hoodoo at the point where I came in the front. I drag the K open again and shove the bags through, then climb out. Passersby on the street are just as frozen as Candy and the others. I grab the bags, go back to the side of the store, and step left.

  The three of them stare at me and the bags.

  “How did you do that?” says Candy. “You were only gone a second.”

  “It felt a lot longer than that. Time is funny when I’m backstage.”

  “Backstage?” Kasabian says.

  “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  I hand everyone a bag and we head for the car.

  “Where are we going to go?” says Candy.

  “Have a donut and give me a minute. I need to make some calls.”

  It takes twenty minutes, but on the fifth call I get hold of the right person who understands the subtle art of the bribe. Back in the car, I gun it and pull a U-­turn, getting us back onto Hollywood Boulevard.

  Kasabian leans up over the seats.

  “I don’t suppose you have a secret suite at the Beverly Wilshire?”

  “Better,” I say. “We’re going back to the Beat Hotel.”

  He puts a metal hand to his face and slumps into the back.

  “Somebody, kill me now.”

  IF KASABIAN WASN’T such a drama queen he’d remember that things weren’t so bad at the Beat Hotel. We stayed there a few weeks after an ill-­behaved zombie horde overran L.A. and trashed Max Overdrive early last year.

  The hotel is near the glamorous strip mall and parking lot by the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Gower, and right across from the Museum of Death. The front of the hotel is painted a shade of green no one asks for, but just sort of happens. The place is a dump, but I love it. The rooms are reasonably sized and the decor is sort of a cross between seventies swinger and halfway house. The kitchens are the best rooms, explosions of reds, yellows, and glitter, like someone’s bell-­bottoms exploded on the way to a Ziggy Stardust concert.

  Candy and I get settled into our room and Kasabian and Vincent settle into theirs. None of us are on the hotel’s register because we don’t know how long we’re going to have to crash here and we don’t want anyone knowing where we are. While I put away our clothes on the crooked wire hangers in the closet, Candy calls Julie back.

  I can only hear one side of the conversation, but I can tell when Julie asks about the stakeout because Candy turns a little white and changes the subject.

  “Max Overdrive was padlocked shut and the county put a spell on the place to keep ­people out. Be careful to take your work with you whenever you leave and back up everything else off-­site.”

  There’s a pause as Candy listens. Then she says, “I’ll get you a report in the morning.”

  Another pause and she says, “What? Are you sure?”

  She goes to the little kitchen and opens her laptop on the plastic table, types in a URL.

  “Oh shit.”

  I sit down beside her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She turns the laptop so I can see the screen.

  “Julie just told me about it.”

  It’s a headline on the New York Times site. Two ­people have died. A young boy in Tulsa and an old woman in São Paulo.

  It’s starting.

  The new Death is finally getting the hang of things. How soon will it be before he takes the thousands in comas all around the world? And then what does he want?

  Candy cruises around the Web, looking at other sites to confirm the Times’s story. It’s all over the place, the first story on every news site on the planet. Naturally, my favorites are the lunatics. Fundamentalist Chris­tians claiming it’s the Tribulation. Other, even crazier groups claiming that somehow it’s the fault of gays and unwed mothers. Techno-­hippies recalculating the Mayan calendar to prove that the 2012ers got it all wrong. Conspiracy freaks linking the situation to everything from the Kennedy assassination to 9/11 to lizard-­men flying-­saucer bases in the center of the earth. And then there’s the hucksters, selling everything from magnetic prayer beads that cure your arthritis while mainlining your prayers to God to homeopathic cures for “the death virus released by global warming.” There’s even a black metal band in Norway that committed mass suicide so they can be the first group to play a concert together in Valhalla.

  Humanity’s best and brightest step up to the plate again. You’ve got to love ’em.

  An hour later, Kasabian and Vincent come in. Kasabian is in a wrinkled tracksuit and Vincent is in an ancient Resident Evil T-­shirt three sizes too big. Maybe I should have taken a little more time when I was grabbing clothes at Max Overdrive.

  Kasabian drops onto the threadbare sofa and fires up the TV, scowling as he zips through the station listings.

  He says, “I’d forgotten how much hotel on-­demand movies suck. It’s like we’re stuck in a mall in Iowa still showing Lethal Weapon 3.”

  He wads up a Chinese-­restaurant menu on the table and throws it at me.

  “You couldn’t have taken a few discs when you came out of the store?”

  I toss the menu in the kitchen trash.

  “ ‘Do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you, but rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings.’ ”

  “What?” he says.

  “It’s from the Bible. I read it in one of those Twenty Thousand Unbelievable Facts books I found in Lucifer’s toilet in Hell.”

  “Want to end the world’s suffering? Give out HiDef boxes and decent surround sound systems.”

  “You’re the thirteenth disciple, Kas.”

  “No, I’m Job. Reduced to an analog picture, one shitty speaker, and a cheap remote the size of a car battery.”

  “You’re just spoiled,” says Candy.

  “Damn right. And proud of it. These primitives don’t even letterbox their movies.”

  I shake my head.

  “There’s a special place in Hell for whoever invented pan and scan.”

  “I think it’s nice here,” says Vincent.

  “So do I,” says Candy, I think less because she likes the hotel and more out of solidarity with Vincent.

  Kasabian continues to angrily flip through TV stations.

  “Turn on CNN,” I tell him.

  He shoots me a look, but does it.

  Vincent sits up when he sees the report on the dead boy and the old woman.

  “I’m being replaced,” he says. “I no longer have a purpose.”

  “Of course you do,” says Candy. “Whatever that thing in the Tenebrae is, it’s not Death. It’s a monster.”

  “Monster or not, if it can transport the living to the land of the dead, then it’s the true Death and I’m nothing.”

  “It’s done it twice. That’s not a great track record,” I say. ??
?What we need to do isn’t get our feathers ruffled, but figure out a way to get you back home so you can kick that guy’s ass.”

  From the kitchen, Candy says, “I think I found something.”

  I go in and sit down with her again.

  “What is it?”

  “Remember how I was looking for Sigrun under ‘actresses’ and ‘singers’? Well, I started adding new search terms like ‘fascist,’ ‘death,’ and ‘magic.’ This is what came up.”

  She pulls up a picture of a beautiful young blond woman. I swear I’ve seen the picture somewhere before, but I can’t place it.

  Candy sees me trying to place her.

  “Imagine her as a brunette,” she says.

  I look again.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I found a ­couple of more like it. They all look like her.”

  “When was the picture taken?”

  “Sometime in the early twenties.”

  “Fuck me.”

  “Later. Should I call Julie?”

  I go to the living room. Grab my coat and check for the Colt, the black blade, and na’at.

  “Make the call if you want. I’m going out and I’m taking Vincent.”

  “Are you going to do something stupid?”

  “Probably. Want to come with us?”

  She has to think about it for a minute. Finally she gets up.

  “I’m only going along to keep you from being too stupid.”

  “I’m never too stupid. I’m just stupid enough.”

  “That right there is the kind of stupid that worries me.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” says Kasabian.

  I get the Chinese menu from the trash can.

  “Order me some pork ribs in sauce and fried rice.”

  “And egg rolls,” says Candy.

  “I’ve never had Chinese food,” says Vincent. “Order me anything.”

  Kasabian waves as we go out.

  “Have a nice night. Fuck you all.”

  VINCENT SITS IN the back and Candy rides shotgun. I drive us out to a West Hollywood club called Death Rides a Horse. Back when John Wayne still walked the earth, it was an upscale cowboy bar. Now it’s a cowboy bar, crossed with a rave and a fetish club, and populated mostly with dead ­people. If Death Rides a Horse was in a tourist brochure, it would say that the club is the biggest, baddest, and priciest vampire club in the city. And day and night, human groupies and suckers line up on the boulevard hoping to walk on the wild side and to taste a little bit of eternity.

  I’ve been here before, so the bouncers all know me, which means they don’t like me.

  I nod to the guy working the door. He’s bearded, balding, and a little pudgy for a vampire. That sometimes happens when you get bitten past a certain age. The ones who get bit young stay pretty forever, but get bitten past fifty and you’re probably going to carry your middle-­age gut and bad knees with you for the next billion years. Welcome to the glamorous world of bloodsuckers.

  The doorman shakes his head when he sees me.

  “Forget it, Stark. It’s a private party.”

  “Not tonight.”

  I put my boot into his solar plexus and he flies through the front door like a chunky torpedo.

  Candy grabs one of Vincent’s arms and I grab the other. We shove and shoulder our way through the dancing, biting mob inside, all the way to the back, where there’s a roped-­off private table.

  When a guard by the table tries to brace me, I break his jaw and toss him onto the dance floor.

  The owner of Death Rides a Horse, the grande dame of all of So Cal’s vampires, looks us over with her tombstone eyes.

  “Not tonight, Stark. Whatever it is.”

  “Are you sure, Sigrun?”

  Tykho’s brows come down and she pulls back her lips, reflexively showing her fangs.

  “What did you call me?”

  I put my arm around Vincent’s shoulder and pull him forward.

  “Vincent, meet Tykho. Tykho, meet Vincent.”

  Vincent looks at me, then her.

  “Tykho Mond?” he says.

  “Who are you?” says Tykho.

  “We met once,” he says. “In Munich.”

  “I don’t know you and I’ve never been to Munich.”

  “Yes, you have. It’s where you escaped me.”

  She turns her dead eyes back to me.

  “I know you’ll cause a scene if I have you thrown out, so tell me what it is you want, Stark.”

  “Nothing. I just wanted you two kids to meet. Sigrun, Tykho Mond, whatever the hell your real name is—­meet Vincent. Of course, Vincent is just what we call him around the store. What’s your real name, Vincent?”

  “Death,” he says. And his voice carries the feeling of power and danger that I only heard from him once before.

  “Very cute, Stark. Now go away or I’ll make your beating part of tonight’s entertainment.”

  Vincent grabs the velvet rope surrounding Tykho’s table and starts babbling to her in German. Her eyes widen as he shouts.

  One of Tykho’s bodyguards grabs me, and I split open his face with the black blade. It starts healing immediately, but the pain leaves him rolling around on the floor for the duration. Vincent has crashed his way through the velvet rope and is practically climbing across the table to Tykho. They’re still screaming at each other in German. Candy and I are dancing around with a dozen of the club’s bouncers. Candy has already gone Jade. Her eyes, red pinpoints in black ice. Her hands are claws. She rips into the guards with her needle-­sharp shark teeth. Hoping to settle things down, I manifest my Gladius, a flaming angelic sword, and hold it up high, where no one can miss it. Most of the bloodsuckers back off, but one of them grabs a fire axe and rushes me with it. Since it would be rude to kill him in his own club, I just cut off his arm. It goes spinning off across the room. The partiers all think it’s part of the act, and toss the arm around the room like a beach ball at a concert.

  I turn just in time to see Vincent grab Tykho’s head so that they’re eye to eye. Tykho begins to scream. She screams for a long time. Long enough that the crowd finally understands this isn’t show biz. It’s a panic attack. The lights still crawl the walls and strobe wildly, but the music stops.

  “Everybody out!” Tykho screams. “Now!”

  Security, even the one missing an arm, swoop into the crowd, shoving the bloodsucking jet-­setters and immortal hipsters out onto the street, just like any bunch of punks and drunks getting the bum’s rush. When the goons come for us, Tykho waves them off.

  “Leave them. Wait here. I’ll be in my office.”

  She holds up a finger for silence. I put out the Gladius.

  “Not a word here,” says Tykho. “Come with me.”

  She looks at Vincent, grabs my arm.

  “And keep that creature away from me.”

  “Whatever you say, Sigrun. It’s your house.”

  She walks away and we follow.

  IF IT’S POSSIBLE for someone as pale as Tykho to turn white, that’s just how she looks when we reach her office.

  The door is plush leather on the inside, but made of heavy-­gauge steel and secured with a keypad.

  The room is Art Deco, polished wood in contrasting shades on the floor and walls forming elaborate patterns. The red leather chairs around the desk have rounded backs and arms, not quite shaped for human bodies. The wooden desk looks like something a Caesar would have, but constructed with graceful lines.

  Tykho takes her seat behind the desk and the rest of us drop down into chairs around the room. Candy has her phone out, probably recording the conversation.

  I say, “Tell us a story, Tykho.”

  She pours and downs a glass of thick vampire booze, blood with red wine and sometimes a little coca
ine. She ignores us, running a thumb around her lips and sucking the last of the wine off.

  When she’s done she says, “First off, stop calling me ‘Teye-­ko’ all the time. My name is French. It’s pronounced ‘Tee-­ko.’ Fucking Americans.”

  “But your last name, Mond, is German,” says Vincent.

  “Yes. My mother was French, my father German. Not that it matters.”

  “You’re right. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you cheated me. You cheated Heaven and Hell. You aren’t supposed to be in this world. Not for more than ninety years.”

  She smiles.

  “And here you are, Todesengel, powerless to do anything about it. I think that means I won.”

  “I am not powerless. I’m not much of an angel these days, but I have an angel on my side.”

  He holds out a hand indicating me.

  “He, I believe, can finish what I couldn’t.”

  She flashes me a look.

  “You wouldn’t dare. Not on my own territory. You’d start a war.”

  I take out a Malediction, light it. Take a long drag and tap ash onto her million-­dollar floor.

  “Right now, Tee-­ko, all I want is a story. We know you were part of the ritual that bound Death to this body. How are you connected to a bunch of supernatural skinheads and what do they want?”

  Tykho looks off into space. She doesn’t want to answer the question, so Candy jumps in.

  “Why disguise yourself, Sigrun?” says Candy.

  “Sure—­you can start with that.”

  “Back in the day, a lot of us in the völkisch groups used noms de plume.”

  I say, “What does your nom mean?”

  “It’s the name of a Valkyrie.”

  “So you were a Nazi.”

  She shakes her head.

  “I never cared about politics. I only cared about the real world that lay behind the veil we call the ordinary world.”