Ballistic Kiss

by Richard Kadrey

  Hearing the word “Kissi” makes me mad.

  “You’re saying this Zadkiel asshole could have kept the Kissi locked up, but she didn’t?”

  Samael nods.

  “Exactly. A shirker, and a dangerous one at that. But on the other hand, if she can open the gates of Heaven, it makes the war moot. All the angels who want Heaven to remain pure can fuck off down to Hell and turn it into the priggish wonderland they so desperately want.”

  For the first time in what feels like a long while, I’m excited about something.

  “Then all we have to do is get Zadkiel to do her key trick. How do we do that?”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  And now I feel shitty again, but I don’t want him to know that, so I get angry.

  “No. I’m not doing this. I can’t. Not right now.”

  “Come on. Join in the fun and help every mortal who’s ever lived. Even the depressing ones like you.”

  I look at him.

  “Careful with the guilt trips. I’m not all that thrilled with human beings right now.”

  “Don’t you want to hear the rest, at least? Why she won’t work with Father?”

  “That’s easy,” I say. “She’s missing.”

  Samael looks at me like a dog trainer whose favorite puppy just learned to fetch.

  He says, “Good guess. But we have a clue as to where she is: Earth.”

  I give him a look.

  “You want to narrow that down a little?”

  “All right. The Pussycat Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.”

  “That old porn place? That’s been gone for a million years. How long ago did she disappear?”

  “Forty-some-odd years now.”

  I knock some ashes from the Malediction.

  “What the hell was the Opener of the Ways doing at a porn palace in the seventies?”

  “I told you, she liked spending time with mortals. From what I understand, some of her friends had . . . exotic tastes. Do you really think it’s important?”

  “Who knows? But maybe if we can figure out what happened forty years ago, we’ll be able to find her. Only, even if there were any Pussycat Theatres around, what are the odds someone would remember her?”

  “Virtually none,” says Samael.

  “Exactly. Case closed. See you around.”

  “You must be excited. Running off to solve the case already.”

  “I just said I wouldn’t.”

  “You said you couldn’t. Not the same thing.”

  I pick up a pebble and toss it across the graveyard.

  “Why are you asking me to do this? Why don’t you do it or get winged minions to do it for you?”

  For the first time, he looks a little uncomfortable.

  He says, “That’s not really possible at this moment.”

  “It’s Mr. Muninn, isn’t it? If he isn’t looking for her, why should I?”

  His face softens a little.

  “I know that you have your own problems. Bad dreams. Fists through walls. Questions about what’s left for you on Earth. And then there’s your donut friend. It must all be very confusing.”

  “It is and I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Of course. But if you ever do, you can always call. Anyway, I have to go before I’m missed. Good luck with your brooding or whatever it is you’re doing out here.”

  “If you were me, considering my situation with Candy and whatever’s going on with Janet, what would you do?”

  Samael puts a hand on my shoulder.

  “You’re a mess, Stark. Give those women and yourself a break.”

  He heads back down the hill.

  “Wait. What does that mean?” I yell.

  He keeps walking but calls back over his shoulder.

  “One more thing. You’ll want to find Father’s lost lamb soon. He’s on the verge of giving up.”

  “What do you mean giving up?”

  “The war. He has this idea that if he can stop the fighting now the rebels will be more reasonable in the future.”

  “What do you think?”

  He gives me a sly look.

  “You know what I think. Anyway, get cracking on the search. You have a week. Maybe a smidge more.”

  “I didn’t promise anything,” I say, but he’s already vanished.

  I sit down and lean against a marble Buddha. Finish my Malediction and smoke another, waiting for the sun to go down.

  Mr. Muninn is giving up? That’s insane. But Samael is right. Muninn would rather talk than fight, and if he thinks he’s losing, maybe that’s all he has left. Now that Samael has asked me to help, if I don’t do it and Muninn gives up, I’ll be as guilty as the old man when Heaven slams closed forever.

  I don’t like this pressure right now. And I can’t help but wonder if Samael was being completely straight with me. He can talk around the edges of things and draw me into trouble he doesn’t want to face himself.

  And there’s the rest of my ridiculous life.

  Give those women and yourself a break.

  What the hell does that mean? I should walk away from everything? Become a monk, watch movies, grow old, and complain about the old days when we had real movies and not 3-D holograms? I hate 3-D almost as much as I hate soup.

  This whole setup bugs me and I keep wondering why an angel was watching porn on Hollywood Boulevard forty years ago in the first place. Maybe the Pussycat had extra-good popcorn. Or maybe, like Samael said, it was because of some exotic friends.

  Goddamn it. Why am I even thinking about this? I have Candy and Janet to worry about. Not getting knifed by Alessa. And who the hell is going to cook a turkey for me? Whoever said Hell is other people was wrong. Hell is other people in your house.

  I’m so fucked.

  I hang around Teddy’s playground just smoking and thinking until sunset. Finally, bored with myself and all the bullshit swirling around me, I fire up the Hog and head back to L.A. The only stop I make is on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. I throw the road rage pistol far out into the water. Let the fish have it. They have more sense than some people, including me.

  It’s a normal, boring ride back home. Then around Studio City, traffic slows. I pull off onto the feeder road that runs a little above the freeway. But just south of where Lankershim Boulevard meets the 101 something weird is happening. I stop the bike and look down on the scene.

  Two stretch limos are parked in the center breakdown lane. Twelve, maybe fifteen people mill around in front of the lead limo. They’re all in tuxes and ball gowns like they were on their way to a million-dollar wedding. The strange part is that none of them seem that upset to be stuck on the side of the freeway with traffic blasting exhaust and road grit all over their precious formal wear. In fact, it looks like they’re having a party, passing around joints and bottles of champagne. After a few minutes, one couple—a man and woman—herd the partiers together for some kind of announcement. I figure they’re giving the others an ETA on tow trucks, so I start to drive off. Only, then something really strange happens.

  The couple move among the other wedding guests, standing behind them, looping something around their faces and tying it at the back. It almost looks like they’re putting blindfolds on everyone. When they’ve trussed up the last guest, the couple lines them up along the edge of the median facing the road.

  Then, one by one, they run straight into traffic.

  The first few do surprisingly well, making it across three lanes before the first one—a blonde in a powder-blue floor-length gown—flies rag-doll-like off the front bumper of a Ford F-150 truck. When she finally hits the road, she flops around looking boneless, like a fashionable squid. But none of the wedding guests see her go down and they head straight into the speeding cars.

  By now, tires are squealing as drivers hit the brakes. Metal crunches on metal as cars and trucks rear-end each other. But the batshit-crazy suicide prom keeps running. A few—the lucky ones—end up in places where cars have stopped o
r crashed into each other. They make it through the maze of metal by feel. One guy in a paisley cummerbund makes it across four of the five lanes before a Coke truck plows into the back of a Prius just as he’s squeezing past. The Prius lurches forward, crushing the cummerbund’s left leg between its front bumper and the rear bumper of the car ahead of it. The cummerbund lies there screaming, trying to crawl across the final freeway lane, leaving a crimson line on the road as he goes. Farther up the road, another guy is tagged by a speeding Porsche. He spins like a wind-up toy, arms and legs flying out at funny angles. What fucking amazes me is that the rest of the group makes it across all five lanes. Yeah, a lot of them are limping on broken legs, or holding on to bloody arms, but the crazy fuckers are alive enough to stumble onto the opposite shoulder of the road.

  But the weirdness continues. When the last runner makes it to safety, the couple that started the whole thing dashes onto the road and heads to the bodies of the two extremely dead runners who didn’t make it. As they reach each body, they pat it down, taking something from the man’s breast pocket and the woman’s clutch bag. Then they run across the road to join their friends. By now, everyone has their blindfolds off, and in their bloody, ripped-to-shreds clothes and broken bones, they high-five each other and hug.

  It’s then I notice what I didn’t earlier: that there’s another limo parked on the shoulder where the runners were headed. They limp and crawl inside and when the limo is packed, it blasts off out of there. Drivers run after it, screaming or throwing things. Some of them have pens and scraps of paper, but the car is long gone before they can catch a license plate (which I’m positive doesn’t matter anyway). And the other two limos?

  Well, they explode, sending dazzling red fireballs into the night sky and blowing out the windows of nearby cars.

  Whoever those suicidal blue bloods were, they planned everything perfectly. What their plan was, I’m not 100 percent sure. But they were all thrilled to make it to the shoulder, like it was just some kind of demented bar bet. And the ones who didn’t make it? There’s a small whoomph from each body and then they’re burning too. Maybe the couple weren’t taking things from the corpses but putting things on them.

  Whatever kicks they were looking for, I think they found them. A lot of solid citizens are going to have strange stories to tell their insurance companies tomorrow. I don’t know if what I just saw was a suicide pact or a human sacrifice, but to be honest, it’s not my damn business. L.A. has more weird religions and suicide cults than any place on Earth. By this time next week, we’ll be hearing about how they all drank poisoned Hawaiian Punch and ascended to a passing starship carrying Sun Ra and Amelia Earhart. Have fun on Venus or wherever it is you’re going, you dapper maniacs. I have to get home and worry about my turkey.

  The next day, I wander around the house like a penned bull. Bumping into things. Shoving furniture this way and that, then back again to its original position. I look around the cupboards for glasses so people can drink, and promptly break two of them.

  This isn’t like me. I’m not in high school or getting ready for my first kiss on prom night. I clawed my way out of Hell. This shouldn’t be such a big deal. But these are my friends. I want them to have a good time, and I want to show them that I’m all right. The Blue Fairy came down and made me into a real boy and everything is fine, or at least not a disaster. But the more I try to fix the place up, the more of a wreck it becomes. I feel clumsy and dull witted. I want to punch something. I want to go somewhere and have a dumb guy hit me so I can hit him back. I need my heart racing, not my brain.

  And on top of everything else, I have to worry about maybe helping Samael find a porn-addicted angel while helping Abbot hustle a bunch of dead people out into the street.

  It’s closing time. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t be dead here.

  I know it sounds easy, once you know where the haunting is taking place. Only, ghosts can get cranky when you serve them with an eviction notice. Things get thrown. Timid spooks suddenly grow fangs. People get cursed. I once saw a dead society lady—pink Chanel dress, cute little Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat—throw a three-hundred-pound exorcist out a bay window into a kiddie pool full of blood. The red stuff was a nice touch on her part. The exorcist survived the fall just fine, but when he looked around and thought he was covered in his own guts, he took off faster than Speed Racer. Next time I saw the guy, he had a van and was doing Hollywood spook tours for gawkers from Kansas and Wyoming. And he’d never looked happier. He was smart. Some people know when to call it quits. Other people have nowhere else to go, so we shake down hellbeasts and shades, trying to keep a roof over our heads and bologna in the fridge. The point of all this is that I have a lot on my mind. Enough that I forget to get the goddamn turkey.

  The party is set for eight p.m. My phone rings around six forty-five. It’s Janet. For a second my heart races. Maybe she’s going to cancel. Maybe everyone is going to cancel and I can sit quietly and eat tarragon on my own.

  I say, “Hi. How are you doing?”

  “I’m about to collapse. Come outside and help me.”

  “Outside where?”

  There’s a banging on the front door, like someone’s kicking it.

  “Is that you?”

  “No. It’s Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. Get in here. My back is about to break.”

  The entrance to the flying saucer house is through an abandoned nail salon. I open the door and there’s Janet, grinning underneath a couple of giant donut boxes and two or three large paper bags.

  “Help,” she squeaks like a mouse on a life raft. I grab the heavy bags and let her carry the donuts inside. She takes a quiet look around the living room and says, “Nice. Where’s the kitchen?”

  “Over there on the left.”

  She’s wearing knee-high black boots and jeans with a high-buttoned dark blue pinstripe vest with no shirt underneath. The vest shows off her upper-arm tattoos, something I haven’t seen clearly before because all her shirts have had elbow-length sleeves.

  Janet heads in and I follow her, setting the bags on the center island. Once everything is down she takes a deep breath and smiles. Gives me a peck on the cheek.

  She says, “I might have gotten a little carried away.”

  I peek inside the bags.

  “What is all this?”

  Janet sniffs the air.

  “How’s the turkey? I don’t smell anything.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “That . . .”

  She starts unloading one of the bags on the counter.

  “I had a feeling. I didn’t get any warm food, but I stopped off and picked you up a charcuterie platter.”

  “Charcuterie?”

  “Meat. Cheese. Ever had a deli platter?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s like that, only it doesn’t suck.”

  She lays out a spread of thinly sliced meats and cheeses. More kinds of cheese than I’ve ever seen before. Some are really soft. I poke a plastic package and she swats my finger.

  “No poking. Now, show me what you got at the store.”

  I point to the pile of crap over at the far corner of a side counter. She frowns as she paws through the mess. Finally, she picks up a jar of olives and comes back.

  “We can do something with these.”

  “What about the rest of it?”

  “Is there a shovel around here?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Too bad. I was going to tell you to bury it in a shallow grave.”

  For the first time since this party thing started I laugh and feel a little more relaxed. She points to the Donut Universe boxes.

  “Here. Make yourself useful by laying those out on plates. I don’t suppose you picked up some dessert?”

  I’ve got her now.

  “I sure did. You’re going to love this.”

  I take her to the freezer and fling the door open.

  “Check that out, smarty.”

  She just stare
s. Doesn’t say a word.

  Then, “Is that a yule log?”

  “Isn’t it great? Everyone loves Santa. And there’s reindeers too.”

  “Stark, it’s the middle of summer. That thing is practically old enough to vote and buy beer. Speaking of which, do you have any?”

  “Beer?”

  She sighs.

  “Don’t tell me you forgot beer.”

  “I got bourbon, vodka, gin, rum, aquavit . . .”

  “But no beer.”

  I cross my arms.

  “Did I mention they were mean to me at the store?”

  “I know, and I wish I’d been there to give you your teddy bear and some warm milk, but you still need beer.”

  “I’ll go get some.”

  “Too late.”

  Janet goes to one of the bags and makes a few passes over the top like a magician—and pulls out two six-packs of pricey Japanese lager.

  “Voilà,” she says.

  I peek at all the loot in the other and lean back on the counter.

  “I fucked this up pretty good, didn’t I?”

  She looks sympathetic.

  “When was the last time you threw a party?”

  It takes me a while to work it out. Eleven years Downtown, then a year back in L.A., then another year dead.

  “Twelve? Maybe thirteen years?”

  “I bet you were a different person then. Before whatever happened that gave you all those scars.”

  “Yeah. Pretty different.”

  “You’ll get the hang of parties again. They’re pretty easy when you stop panicking, which you clearly are.”

  I think for another minute.

  “I’ve been shot, you know.”

  She frowns.

  “Several times,” I say. “Stabbed too. Poisoned. Set on fire.”

  “Is that true?”

  “That and worse.”

  She takes a step back.

  “I’m sorry, but why are you telling me this right now?”

  “Because none of it freaked me out as much as trying to do something normal like throw a party.”

  Janet comes over and hugs me.

  “You’re such an enormous pile of neuroses. Just stop and tell yourself it’s all going to be fine. We have plenty of time to pull this off. Just take a breath.”