Sacrifices

by Jamie Schultz

  “Huh?”

  Anna was just hanging up her phone, Karyn noticed. Had she been talking? Karyn’s head swam, and she felt an intense, bone-deep fatigue settle into her. She blinked, yawned. Air filled her lungs, and the disorientation abated somewhat, but the weariness was crushing.

  “Nail says hurry up,” Anna said.

  “Belial’s going to hand himself to us,” Karyn said, forcing her eyes open and her mind to focus on the situation at hand. “Somebody is going to come running out that door like hell on wheels, most of the others are going to follow him to run him down. Belial is going to stand there like a smug asshole and watch. Right there, after dark,” she said, pointing at the sidewalk in front of the door. “It’s the best shot we’re likely to get.”

  “All right. Just tell me where to set up.”

  Karyn looked at the shadows creeping across the lawn. They had, what? Four hours? A little more? Was it enough time to make a difference?

  “Actually,” she said, “we have a little time. And I need you to do something else.”

  * * *

  “You know this is stupid, right?” Genevieve asked. They were her first words in the uneasy silence since Karyn had sent them on this mission. Anna had seemed distracted, ready to snarl at anything that moved, and the joy of being reunited was quickly dampened by, if not outright suspicion, then a poisonous, bubbling wariness.

  Anna signaled and guided the car down the off-ramp into Doyle Gardens. “Maybe,” Anna conceded. “And maybe it’s gonna keep a lot of people from getting killed.” She pulled the car up to the curb. “Here’s your stop.”

  Genevieve didn’t open the door. “Hey. I know everything got fucked—no. I know I fucked up. I just want—”

  “Not now,” Anna said, brusquely enough to hurt. “Let’s get this shit done tonight. Clear my head. We’ll worry about the rest after that.”

  “I don’t know if—”

  “I said not now.”

  “Right. Sorry.” Genevieve got out of the car. Anna rolled away the instant the door closed.

  Genevieve started walking. She’d gotten a little turned around approaching from this side, but she soon saw familiar landmarks and oriented herself. Her destination was just a few blocks up. Hopefully, Stash would be there, but if not, she thought it wouldn’t be hard to get somebody to take her to him. Finding him would be easy. Getting him to sign up for this latest craziness was a whole other level of problem.

  A woman with a stroller looked at her distrustfully as she passed. So did a bony old man on a stoop. She supposed she couldn’t blame them. Strangers here brought trouble, and more so recently than ever. It sure didn’t ease the pervasive feeling of impending doom, though, and she wondered again how she’d let it get to this point.

  Focus on Anna. Focus on getting this done. That’s all that matters right now. She repeated the words like a mantra until she reached the boarded-up shop.

  There were guards outside, the same two guys who had escorted here the first time she’d come. She’d never learned their names, she realized, and she just thought of them as Eighteen and Goatee. Eighteen gave her a nod that might have been respect. Goatee crossed his arms and hardened his face. More distrust.

  “I need to talk to Stash,” Genevieve said.

  “He ain’t feeling too good right now,” Goatee said.

  “That’s too bad. I still need to see him.”

  “He ain’t feeling too good because he’s shot. You fucked him over.”

  “Come on, man,” Eighteen said. “You know it wasn’t like that.”

  “I don’t know shit.”

  Genevieve held her hands up. “How bad? Is he going to be all right? Should he be in the hospital?”

  “He’ll live,” Goatee said. “No thanks to you.”

  “I’m pretty sure I saved his life. What he did after that . . .” She shrugged. “A person can only do so much.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Look,” Eighteen said to his companion. “We ain’t here to decide who gets to see him or not. Sit tight a sec,” he said to Genevieve. “Be right back.”

  Goatee scowled as the other guy disappeared into the building. Genevieve stood out there with him as he resumed his palace guard routine, looking straight ahead. She might as well not have been there.

  Eighteen came back after an agonizing five minutes and waved her in. He gave Goatee a friendly elbow as she walked by.

  Stash sat at a table inside. Black Cat and a few of the other Eighteeners sat around smoking. Cards were scattered across the table, but nobody was paying any attention to them now. All eyes were on Genevieve.

  Genevieve pointed at the sling cradling Stash’s left arm. “To hear your guy at the door tell it, you got six bullets in your lungs and another two in your guts.”

  “He’s pissed. Thought we had them on the run, and then—well, you saw what happened.”

  “I saw dead kids. I don’t know whose side they were on.”

  “View must be nice from up there. All impartial, like.” The young men and boys around him scowled. Only the one they called Black Cat watched Genevieve without either hostility or condemnation.

  “I did what I could,” Genevieve said.

  “And don’t think I don’t appreciate it.” Stash mimed a gun and pretend to shoot. “Click. What’s that good for today? What are you here for?”

  She studied the wall of faces. This was going to go over poorly. “This time I need your help.”

  “Oh well, shit. Sign me up for that.” A round of chuckles followed that statement, but Genevieve fixed her gaze on Stash’s and didn’t waver. He broke eye contact. He paused, then turned back to her. “What do you need?”

  “I need you and everybody you can round up to help evacuate the civilians from Locos territory.”

  No chuckles this time. A few incredulous faces among the mostly confused. Stash wiped a bead of sweat off the side of his face.

  “You’re fucking with me, right?” he said.

  “I can see why you’d think that. But . . . no.”

  He blinked a couple of times, made a false start at speaking, and finally just stopped, with his head cocked and lips parted slightly in puzzlement.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask,” Genevieve said. “Believe me—I wouldn’t ask if I had any better options.”

  “I don’t even know where to start with this shit. How about: Why? Why would we do that? Why would you even want it?”

  “Some very bad things are going to happen there tonight. A lot of people are going to die if we don’t get them out.”

  “The fuck do I care about a bunch of Locos?”

  “Not Locos,” Genevieve said. “Just . . .” She shrugged lamely, trying to find a better word and failing. “Just people. The people that live there. Kids, women. Noncombatants, if you want to put it in those terms.” She tried to do the math—eight blocks, mostly one-story houses with a single apartment building—and gave it up as hopeless. “It’s got to be hundreds of people. I know you hate the Locos, but that’s, what? Twenty kids and an old man? We’re talking about hundreds of people that have nothing to do with this.”

  “This is a trick,” one of the other guys said.

  “In what possible way could this benefit me?” Genevieve asked. She was letting her exasperation show, she knew that, but she couldn’t help it. “Look, the clock is ticking, okay? The longer we sit here arguing about it, the less time we have to actually get people out.”

  “What’s going to happen?” Stash asked.

  “Honestly? I’m not completely sure. But take all the bad shit that’s been happening around here lately and multiply it by a thousand. Ten thousand. Sodom and Gomorrah, fire and pillars of salt stuff. Streets running with blood.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Stash said.

  Black Cat
cleared his throat. “I do.” His face was tight, nervous, and miserable, and he glanced from the gang members to Genevieve and back. “I mean, the basic idea. It’s those drawings, stuff like that.”

  “Yeah. Only a lot worse. There are a lot of bad people with a lot of power that are going to come down here, and I can’t stop them, and I can’t turn them away. All we can do is try to reduce the casualties.”

  “She for real?” Stash asked the kid.

  His reply was quiet, a tortured whisper in the big room. “I don’t know.” The words hung there in an endless, oppressive echo. Somehow the kid had shaken the room. A couple of guys at the table looked nervously at each other, then quickly away. Somebody else bounced his leg at a frenetic pace.

  “Miguel Lopez owns the butcher store,” one of the guys said. “He ain’t part of this.”

  “Flora Rueda, neither. She babysits my brother’s kids.”

  A contemplative silence followed, and then:

  “We could put ’em up in the old corner store,” another of the guys said softly.

  “And the plastic factory. Building ain’t been used for shit in years.”

  Stash surveyed the others. Somehow a consensus seemed to have built itself from the fears of the people in the room—their fears, Genevieve thought, and a better part of their natures that didn’t often get to shine through.

  “How long we talking?” Stash asked her.

  “Tonight. Just tonight.”

  “The Locos ain’t gonna just let us walk in.”

  Genevieve got out her phone. “Believe it or not, that’s one problem I actually have a solution for.”

  * * *

  Anna watched Freak’s face as they walked. It was sealed up, impenetrable as though behind layers of steel and concrete. A handful of other Locos, including grave-digging Rigoberto, followed a few steps behind. Nervous but not chattering.

  “Are you good with this?” Anna asked.

  “The fuck you think?”

  The initial discussion had gone easy enough. Even the priest had agreed that, regardless of his hopes for the avenging angel or whatever the hell it was, for the moment it would be best for people to stay clear. He was confident that any demon visitors would be wiped from the earth, but not at all confident that they wouldn’t do a shitload of damage before that. The timing would be dicey at best. From there, Moreno had tasked his little gang with the mission to cooperate. There had been nervous frowns and anxious shared glances but not the sputtering indignation Anna had expected. Additionally, appointing Freak the head of the delegation had been an inspired stroke—there was the blood connection, so the other gangs would be likely to take her seriously as his representative, but even more important, she was the one most likely to argue with Moreno. Putting her in charge had neutralized that before the arguing could even get started, but Anna wondered whether it was going to stick.

  Anna lowered her voice so the kids behind couldn’t hear. “I think that if you’re not, and you can’t fake it, you should go home.”

  “Don’t you tell me how to talk to Eighteeners. I know those fuckers.”

  “I don’t run in your circles, but I got a crew of my own, you know. We’ve been working with my friend Karyn for ten years. You know why we trust her?”

  Freak shrugged.

  “Because she knows when to take a risk and she knows when to back off. She knows not every fight is worth fighting, and sometimes—usually—you get what you want without fighting at all. In our line of work, if it comes to fighting, you fucked up.” True enough, yet right now even Anna didn’t feel the truth of the words. She wanted to fight. Part of her was prodding her to throw down with Freak, right now, for no reason she could identify. She’d kept that part tightly bottled. So far.

  “Don’t fuckin’ tell me, okay?” Freak said. “My dad has been doing this diplomacy shit for years. It’s how we stay alive.”

  “All right, then.”

  “Oh, shit,” somebody said from behind. Ahead, Anna saw Genevieve and a dozen kids and young men walking toward them, most puffed up with as much swagger as they could manage, mad-dogging the whole group. “Wish I was strapped,” the kid said. “Why the fuck ain’t we strapped again?”

  “Shut up,” Freak said. She stepped out in front, started to cross her arms, and then, with a visible effort, lowered them to her sides. “Hey. Stash, you in charge over there or what?”

  A young man with a permanent angry crease in his forehead and tattoos to rival Genevieve’s stepped forward. “This is pretty fucked-up,” he said.

  Anna’s eyes met Genevieve’s. Gen gave her a tight, worried smile and the slightest of shrugs. It’s out of our hands now, she seemed to be saying.

  “So, what’s the deal?” Stash asked.

  “She ain’t told you? We get the civilians out. That’s it. Put our beef aside for tonight, so the old ladies don’t get hurt.”

  “Show a little respect,” Stash said.

  Freak said nothing.

  “This looks like a setup to me,” Stash said. “Where’s your pops?”

  “Busy.”

  A ripple of motion went through the kids behind Stash. Shifting positions, wary glances. One guy touched the grip of the pistol in his jeans.

  “That ain’t exactly reassuring. How do I know more of my friends won’t be dead come morning?”

  “How do I know all of mine won’t? We came here in good faith, but I see you all loaded up for war.”

  “You motherfuckers killed Zippy and Heel.”

  “You motherfuckers came looking for trouble. We didn’t want nothing to do with you.”

  “Yeah, until you needed some help. How about you take care of your own kids and old ladies? How about that?”

  Anna’s patience burned down to virtually nothing, and she fought down the urge to lash out at him. A diagram etched surreptitiously on her palm with a fingernail, a few words, and she could burn him to screaming cinders where he stood.

  It looked as if Freak was fighting a similar internal battle, but after a moment she just said, “Because we can’t. Nowhere to take ’em, not enough of us to take ’em there.”

  “This looks like bullshit,” one of Stash’s guys said. “You know we can’t trust these bitches.”

  “Sounds about right,” Stash said.

  “You want a reason to trust us?” Freak held her hands out in two fists, close at the wrists. “Take me.” The Locos behind Freak made a collective gasp, but she kept talking. “Lock me up, drag me around with you, I don’t care. Kick me around some, if it makes you feel better. I don’t know what you think of my dad, but you can’t look me in the eye and tell me you think he’d sacrifice his own daughter just to set you up. No way. Even you know Rogelio Moreno better than that.”

  “Freak, you can’t do this,” Rigoberto said. “We can’t trust them.”

  She shrugged, her face set in unflinching stone. “Somebody’s gotta start.”

  “They’re gonna fucking kill you!”

  “Not if you don’t give ’em a reason to.” She fixed a stare on Stash. “Ain’t that right?”

  Stash returned her stare, but the aggression on his face had softened, and Anna thought he was looking for something besides a fight.

  “That’s right,” he said, and he put out his hand. When Freak took it, Anna could have sworn that the whole street went silent for a moment, from the cars on the highway to the breath of the people around her.

  “Let’s do this shit, then,” Rigoberto said.

  Anna’s phone buzzed. It was a short text from Karyn: I need you here. Quickly.

  * * *

  Headlights swept into the car, lighting up the gray interior brightly enough that Karyn turned her head away, kicking off a wave of vertigo that made the car feel like a raft on the ocean. The car behind her pulled up and stopped. The headlights darkened.
A few moments later, Anna was tapping on her window.

  Karyn got out of the car, grit crunching under her foot.

  “How’d that go?” she asked.

  “Better after they decided it wasn’t worth shooting each other. They were getting started with the evac when I left. It’s a little volatile to say the least, but Gen seemed to have it under control,” Anna said. “What’s going on here?”

  Karyn looked down the street again, hoping to get another glimpse of what she’d seen before calling Anna. Nothing. She had the one vision to go on.

  “Remember I said they’re going to run out of there and take off after a guy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, he doesn’t get away.”

  “Ouch.”

  Karyn nodded. “And it’s different than it was before. He doesn’t even really make a good chase out of it. They’re going to take him down and come back. Too fast. I don’t know what to do about it, but with Sobell being just about useless, it’s only me and Nail. We’re shorthanded here.”

  “Oh, there’s something I can do about it,” Anna said. “I can think of quite a few things, actually.”

  “All right. You’re good with this? It will get ugly. People are going to get hurt.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “I didn’t see a lot. ‘People’ might be you,” Karyn said.

  “Did you see that in your vision?”

  Karyn started to shake her head, then stopped, worried that that would kick off another wave of dizziness. “No.”

  “Great. Just tell me where they go. I’ll work the rest out.”

  Karyn pointed down the block, past the car. “There. They catch up to him just as he tries to turn the corner.” And tear him limb from limb, in her vision. She wondered if that part was literal.

  “All right, then. You and Nail grab Belial. I’ll rescue so-and-so, ditch the demons, and meet you back at the church.”

  “Just like that, huh? When did you turn into some kind of hero?”

  “Maybe it’s about time I did some clean living,” Anna said.

  Karyn chuckled. “You don’t know the meaning of the term.”