"Saw him get right up with my own eyes," Mason said. "Reckon he's one of them?"
"Of course not," she snapped. "Don't be an idiot. Drago can barely keep his zombi walking, never mind make a dead man stand up and talk like this one."
Mason hefted his gun. "I still say we plug him. Montrose is no joke."
The woman turned on him, and I was glad I wasn't on the receiving end of that look. "I don't murder innocent people, Thomas. And neither do you."
"He ain't innocent," Mason muttered. One of those white figures got too close to him, and he spat out the liquor. "Keep those fuckin' things away from me, Marie, will ya? They make me irritable."
She turned to the creature and made a shooing motion, snapping at it in a language I caught maybe every third word of. "The question remains, Mr. Grey--what to do with you?"
"Untie me and let me go?" I suggested. She laughed, and I realized she was younger than I'd thought.
"No, I think a man like you is more useful to me tied up. You can stay down here. The creatures have no taste for dead flesh."
"What are they?" I craned around Tom Mason. One a man, older, probably not bad-looking in life, one a woman--a girl, really--blond and naked and very, very dead. I could practically count the veins under her dirt-smeared skin.
"Surely you've encountered those who walk the shadow world, Mr. Grey," said the woman. "After all, you are, to poor Tom at least, the boogeyman."
"I ain't scared," Mason insisted, plucking at his piss-stained pants.
"Never seen anything like that," I said. "They're . . . alive?" I'd seen dead men get up and walk before--hell, for that, all I had to do was look in the mirror--and I'd dealt with vampires, demons riding a corpse's skin, but never had I seen a human corpse dig its way back to the surface. After all the time I'd spent in my position, it was nice to know some things could still surprise me.
"Enough questions outta you," Marie said. "I got a few of my own." She retrieved a shiny red purse from out of my line of vision and drew a photograph from it. It was faded and stained, one corner folded over. A girl just as beautiful as Marie grinned out at me, a high-collared school uniform pegging her as the little sister.
"I've never seen her," I said. Marie snorted.
"Oh, so now you're psychic, too?"
"No," I said. "But if you're looking for a pretty teenage girl in a city like this, there's a dozen holes she could've fallen into. If she's been gone from home more than a month, then she's probably on dope, turned out, or dead. I'm sorry, but that's how it goes out here."
This time, it was Mason who smacked me in the head. His fist was hard and knobby as a desert outcropping, and it set the bells in my skull to clanging all over again. "Back in my day, we knew what to do with men like you," he said. "All it took was a sturdy tree and a piece of rope."
"They tried that once," I said, staring up at his red-rimmed eyes, not blinking. "It didn't take."
"Thomas." Marie put a hand on his arm and guided him away from me. "Give me a moment alone."
"Ain't leaving you alone." Mason gave a deep, wet sniff. "Don't you see we can't let him leave this place? Ain't pretty but it's got to be done."
Marie's grip tightened. "A moment," she said. "Go upstairs, Thomas."
He grumbled and stomped up the stairs. The Santa Ana howled like something alive and hungry as he opened and shut the bulkhead.
Marie pulled up another chair. The creatures had taken to leaning against the walls. One, the man, scraped listlessly at the dirt walls with broken fingernails.
"Listen," I said to Marie. "I can help you. I don't know what you've gotten yourself into, but I'm not a stranger to this."
"I thought you were a mere thug, Mr. Grey," said Marie. "Shackled to Louie Montrose."
"He's not the only one footing my bills," I said. "I do what I want, and this is way more than what I signed up for. You want to find that girl, I know every flophouse, gin joint, and opium den in this town." I tested the ropes again, but the knots were good. Probably Mason's handiwork. "You can't kill me," I told Marie, "so you might as well take me up on my offer."
"And what will you take in return?" she said. "I know men, Mr. Grey, and not one of them gives favors freely."
"I want to go home and forget I ever saw this goddamn basement," I said. "If finding some wayward kid is what it takes, then fine."
Marie tightened her lips and then reached into the purse. She extracted a switchblade and cut me free. I sat for a minute, waiting for feeling to come back to my hands. The girl in the corner turned to watch me. One of her eyes was cloudy.
"Those things really aren't going to chew on me?" I said.
"No," Marie said. "They're poor work. I am only caring for them, waiting for the curse to wear off so they can pass on peacefully. Come."
We left the basement for the marginally more hospitable confines of Tom Mason's kitchen. Flies were everywhere, hovering over spoiled food, glasses of bourbon and cigarette butts, and a sink full of what once might have been dishes.
I lit a smoke of my own to cover the stench. It didn't seem to bother Marie, but I was getting the sense that not much bothered Marie. "Where'd you last see your sister?"
"I didn't," she said. "I got a letter back home that she'd been offered a small part, and she was terribly excited. That was two months ago. When the letters stopped, I came here. I also started looking for work, hoping I'd run across the person who'd done her harm. That's when I met Mr. Mason."
"And the two of you shacked up to open a home for wayward zombies?" I dragged and felt the smoke scald the still-raw parts of my lungs.
"Mr. Mason told me where she'd been staying, and when I went there I discovered the poor creatures," Marie said.
I took out my notebook and pen, poised, while she looked me over. "You're not the usual sort of thug, are you, Mr. Grey?"
"What tipped you off?" I said. "Surviving a slug to the chest, or my rugged good looks?"
She sniffed. "The Deluxe Hotel on Fountain Avenue."
I put the notebook away without writing anything and stood, causing a horde of flies to swarm along with me. Marie frowned. "Don't you want to make a note of that?"
"No need," I said, going and retrieving my hat from the living room floor. I swiped a hand through my hair and clapped it in place. It'd been a lot of years since I'd needed to wear one to keep desert dust and sun out of my eyes, but I felt a little naked without it.
"I know the place," I said to Marie, going back down the creaking porch steps to my car.
I changed out of my shredded, blood-soaked shirt and replaced it with a fresh one I kept behind the seat before I pulled up at the Deluxe Hotel. My jacket was done for, which meant I had to leave my shoulder holster behind, too. I shoved my automatic into the back of my waistband and hoped I wouldn't shoot myself in the ass.
The Deluxe had drapes shut tight across every window, but knowing what went on there, I was glad. Whorehouses are all the same, really--dress them up however you want, change the time and the place, but they all smell like desperation and dead dreams. And a few other things I preferred not to think about.
In the lobby, I loitered for a minute before I started walking the halls. It was quiet. The kind of quiet that only comes right before lightning strikes.
A scream wavered from down the long hall behind me, tinkling the dusty crystals in the lobby chandelier.
I pulled out the automatic and moved without thinking--the part where I go toward the monster was second nature. Thinking about how rotten this situation was was a newer thing. I was just muscle. My days of saving people were a long way back on the road.
Plus, Marie's innocent sister working in one of Hollywood's biggest whorehouses? Her just happening to be there when I busted in looking to rough up Mason?
No. Something else was up here. I took aim as the door in front of me burst open, and a man in a cheap suit stumbled out, going down hard. It was one of the bouncers who should have been in the lobby, scrambling along the ca
rpet like a crab at low tide. The guy collapsed with a soft sound, like air escaping from an inner tube. I put my gun away and turned him over, but it was too late. His throat was torn, and ruby-red arterial blood dribbled down his neck and over my hand, a warm brook soaking the carpet.
It distracted me, I'll say. That's my excuse for how the thing that had killed him landed on my back, nails scraping across my cheek, sour body odor overpowering the coppery blood.
The zombie hooked one finger in the corner of my mouth, letting out the kind of moan that only trapped, hungry animals are capable of.
I spun around, slamming it into a wall, which had all the effect of slapping the thing with a rolled-up newspaper. Teeth sank into my shoulder through my shirt, and I tripped over the dead bouncer and fell.
I prefer when I don't see my death coming, like when Mason shot me. The first time I'd died was slow, had left me plenty of time to stare the reaper down, and now I threw up my arms to try to knock the zombie away. It had been one of the girls, and she was bloated and blue, like she'd been floating in the LA River for a night or two.
A shape the size of a steamer trunk flew at the zombie and took it to the ground, snarling and shaking it by the neck until I heard a snap. A giant goddamn dog, twice the size of the wolves that prowled the Superstition Mountains back home. Black as coal, with red eyes. It let out a snarl like a motorbike backfiring, and with a final rip, the zombie's head came off.
I pulled myself up the wall, feeling all the places I'd hurt tomorrow. The air around the dog shimmered, a bare second of heat rising off a desert floor, and in its place a woman stood. I stiffened, fighting the urge to reach for my gun. It wouldn't do any good, much as I wanted to put a bullet between her eyes.
That wasn't my job anymore, I reminded myself. I was calm, steady. I didn't give a shit about monsters, unless they cut me off in traffic or tried to unionize Mr. Montrose's production company.
"You all right, mister?" the woman asked, smoothing a hand over her hair. Her accent was pure hill country, and she wasn't dressed like the city was her natural habitat, either.
I examined the bloody hash marks in my shoulder. "I'll live."
She looked me up and down. She had the sharpest gaze I'd encountered in a long while, predator eyes that didn't miss anything. "You a cop?"
"Nope."
She pointed at my waist. "Then why the piece?"
"You ask a lotta questions for a lady who just turned from a giant dog," I said. She tilted her head, running my accent through her head to try to place it, no doubt.
"Texas?"
"Arizona," I said.
"What's your name?"
"Lee."
She extended her hand. "I'm Ava."
I went to shake it, and she twisted my wrist and slammed me into the wall, giving it a nice dent in the shape of my head. "Where's Marie?" she shouted, her small hand wrapping around my throat.
She was strong and sneaky, I'd give her that much, but her approach could have used some work. I couldn't answer if she was choking me unconscious.
She slammed me again, and this time I saw two bright spotlights flare in front of my eyes. "I know you're helping her find Constance!"
"Yeah, you figured out I'm helping Marie find her lost sister. You want a medal?" I grumbled, tugging at my shirt, popping off the buttons. Two in one day. Goddamn wardrobe changes were eating up all the pay I could hope to see from this lousy gig.
Ava let out a half hiss, half scream and jerked back from me like I'd burned her. In a way I had--the white lines that ran all over the skin of my chest and stomach were meant to pack a jolt, if you were a monster. Or the human kind of monster, the one that made the types that looked monstrous on the outside.
I didn't bother with good-byes, I just hauled ass out of there. I had a feeling Ava and I'd be seeing each other soon enough.
At home, I double-locked the door and leaned against it until my hands stopped shaking and my heart calmed down. Hellhounds didn't bother me so much as what they represented--hellhounds worked for a Reaper, and Reapers worked for demons. If one of them was tracking Marie, then she wasn't just a nice lady looking for her sister, and this wasn't just another job I did to make rent and buy cheap liquor. I mostly needed the liquor to forget those days when the job was a calling rather than a burden I'd shrugged off a long time ago.
There was a division there. The Lee Grey from Arizona, the man who expected to grow old and die, was the one who had handled hellhounds and necromancers running in the streets. The Lee Grey I was now couldn't have given a rat's ass.
I'd bought the little bungalow in Laurel Canyon for the view--it sure as hell wasn't for the termites or the sinking foundation. On my back porch, I could look away and imagine I was back home--the mountains, the violent blue sky, the ferocious light. Sure, it was anchored by mansions and scrub instead of the empty desert floor, but it was close enough.
I tossed the cap from a bottle of whiskey into the patch of scrappy yucca that was my backyard and took a long swig. It burned a little less, but not much. The yard was the only place outside my shower I went without being totally covered up. The scars all over my torso tended to put normal people right off their food, and I couldn't blame them. But it wasn't like I could get rid of them. And hell, they'd actually come in handy today, putting the hellhound back on her keister.
I was a good mile down the road to being drunk when I heard a clang from my garage and jumped up. Probably just a coyote come down from the hill, but I still kept my body out of the way as I rolled the door of the garage back. Shadows filled up the space around ancient paint cans and old boxes from the previous owner, and rusty lawn tools hanging from the rafters.
I dug my lighter out of my pants pocket and flicked it, the flame making the shadows leap back. A figure in a pale nightgown threw up her arms. "Please don't hurt me!"
Her face was smeared with dirt, and the nightgown was torn along the hem, like someone had grabbed it. Her hair fell around her face in bouncy natural curls, but she looked just like Marie.
"Constance?" I said, shutting the lighter. She got up from where she'd crouched behind a box of old blankets and shuffled into the fading light outside.
"I heard you come into the Deluxe. When you fought those things off. You didn't seem scared, so I snuck out to your car," she said. "I had to get out of there. If I just ran out on the street, they would've found me right away." An all-over shiver wracked her as wind whined from the top of the canyon.
"Come inside," I said.
She didn't sit when she got to my sofa, just looked at it longingly. I went into my bedroom and dug out a fresh shirt for myself and a dressing gown for her. Dusty, but it did the trick.
"Thank you, Mr. . . . ?" she said as she wrapped herself in it.
"Call me Lee," I said. "Your sister will be happy to hear you're all right. She's real worried."
Constance's eyes watered and her chin wobbled. She did sit down then, and curled in on herself. "You can't take me back to her." She started to rock, rubbing her arms until her nails snagged in the cheap satin of the dressing gown. "Don't make me do it again," she whispered. "Don't make me . . ."
"Hey," I said, catching her and settling her. "Why don't you tell me what's got you so spooked?"
"I came here because I thought I could hide," she said. "Louisiana, where our people are, it's a small place. Easier to hide from her in cities. But she always finds me. Blood knows blood, she says."
I handed her a rag for her eyes and went to the little kitchen nook, striking a match to the gas under a pot of strong coffee that had gone cold from this morning.
"Is that why you're working the brothels on Fountain?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"I was hiding. I used to live up on Mulholland with this old lady; let me stay for a good price if I did a little bit of cooking and washing when I wasn't at the studio."
"Is that how you met Tom Mason?" I asked.
She bit her lip, nodding.
/> "Unfortunately. I was just a wardrobe girl. I thought he wouldn't even notice me. But he kept showing up when I was by myself, and then he followed me home, and I just . . ." She sucked in a shaky breath. "He said he had a taste for dark meat. I hit him. The next day, I went to work, and that son of a bitch Louie Montrose told me to clean up my worktable and get out."
Her jaw ticked, and I was suddenly awful glad I'd given Tom Mason that bottle of morphine after all. Sad I didn't follow it with a swift kick to the nuts.
"Marie must have promised him something," Constance said. "She's good at telling folks whatever they need to hear to get what she wants."
Like "Help me find my missing sister, the vulnerable ingenue actress." Had a much nicer ring than "Help me track down my streetwise tough-nut sister who clearly wishes I'd go play in traffic."
"One of the day players works the Deluxe, and she let me stay," Constance said. "But Marie found me, and she always makes me do it. Then it got out of control, and . . ." A shudder passed through her whole body. "Everyone there is dead, aren't they?"
"More or less," I said. She swiped at her face again and then looked up at me, twisting the rag tight in her fists.
"All this must seem incredible to you."
"Not so," I said. The coffee bubbled and I turned off the flame, pouring two mugs. I added some good Kentucky bourbon Louie had pressed on me when in a generous mood. "If you were watching me at the Deluxe, you saw my scars," I said. "I've seen the dead walk before." I took a sip, let the warmth tickle all the way down. "Hell," I said. "I'm one of them."
Constance blinked warily at me, and I waited. I was drunker than I'd realized, to be blabbing about this stuff.
"Marie's a warlock?" I said, to fill the hole. She nodded. "So what about you? You get in touch with the unseen world as well? They say it runs in families."
"The dead," she muttered. "I touch them, and they're not so dead anymore."
That made me set my cup down. "Raising zombies without any blood conjuring is a pretty good trick."
"It just happens," Constance said. "Any time I touch them. They're so hungry, so vicious. Much worse than normal zombies. The first was our father. Marie has been trying to use me ever since."
She gulped the last of her coffee and looked at me, steadier now. "I don't know about you being dead, but I know what you are. One of you killed my grandmother."