Hotter Than Helltown: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (Preternatural Affairs Book 3)

by SM Reine

  “I get what you’re doing, but we do have work in the morning.” I spoke slowly, chose my words carefully. “My place isn’t far. You can crash there, if you want.”

  “Doesn’t matter where I sleep,” Suzy said. “The dreams are always there.”

  “I have potions. I can knock you out without dreams, and without the help of total exhaustion and cheap beer.”

  Now I had her attention. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I used to make them for my sister.”

  Ofelia had a lot of nightmares to avoid considering she’d been abducted by the incubus mafia, the Silver Needles, and tortured for a week. I’d brewed potions for her every night until she moved away to escape Los Angeles. Domingo and I missed our baby sis, but I couldn’t blame her—I’d have done the same thing.

  I was pro at dreamless sleeping potions now, though. I could whip them up in my sleep.

  Pun intended.

  “I appreciate the offer, Hawke,” Suzy said. “I might take you up on that later. I just can’t deal with twelve hours of magicked sleep right this second.” She poured yet another glass of beer, but I was glad to see that she sipped at this one. “Anyway, sleeping isn’t going to fix the problem.”

  “You’re not in the detention center anymore,” I said. “There isn’t really a problem to fix, is there?”

  “There’s still a problem.” Her eyes gleamed darkly in the light of the bar. “The whole fucking Union is a problem, and I’m going to have to do something about it at some point.”

  That threw me. “What are you talking about?”

  A man stepped up to the edge of our table. I thought it was Carlos returning with my credit card. Instead, I looked up to see Fritz Friederling.

  It was one of the only times I’d seen him in anything but a well-tailored suit. He wore a collared shirt under a light sweater, khakis, and the kind of leather driving moccasins that had probably cost a month of my shitty apartment’s rent. He looked like he was ready for a day boating off the coast.

  Did everyone deal with two o’clock in the morning better than me? Didn’t anyone freaking sleep?

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Fritz said, slipping into the booth across from us. He took the empty glass that Carlos had left for me and filled it halfway.

  “Plenty of booze for everyone,” Suzy said. “Cèsar’s buying.”

  “Isn’t Cèsar generous?” he asked lightly. Something in his expression that told me this was all business, not a social call.

  What the hell had Suzy texted him?

  “Cèsar is reluctantly generous,” I agreed. “And tired.” That was aimed at Suzy.

  “Yes, I expect you’d like to get some sleep if you’re planning on working at dawn,” Fritz said.

  Oh yeah. Suzy had told him what I was planning to do with Isobel.

  “I’m hoping to find Sister Catherine at Compassionate Heart Ministry,” I said. “If not, we might at least be able to find the body of Roberto Tanner for Isobel to question him.”

  Fritz just stared at me. The silence was so much worse than if he’d berated me, even though I was just doing my job and I had no reason to get berated in the first place.

  I had to say something. “I hoped you could position support for us outside of Helltown. Just in case.”

  “No,” Fritz said. “It’s not happening.”

  “You mean tracking down Sister Catherine?”

  “Going to Helltown.”

  “I can deal with it. This isn’t my first visit,” I said.

  “It’s also not Isobel’s. She’ll be recognized, and the Silver Needles now recognize where her loyalties lie.”

  Well, at least Fritz was being honest about his intentions. Hos before homicide investigations. Or something like that.

  “The Silver Needles don’t like me, either,” I said. “We’ll avoid them.”

  “You can go to Helltown if you go alone. I’ll provide support outside the neighborhood.”

  “She has to come,” I said. “I have no idea where I’m going without her. Wandering around that place blind would definitely get me killed.”

  “You’re not taking Isobel to Helltown and that’s final.” Fritz pushed the untouched glass of beer away from him and stood. “Lucrezia de Angelis is arriving this morning.”

  If my night hadn’t already been on the fast track to Shit Town, that pretty much set the destination. “What? Why?”

  “For your test tomorrow. I’ll be picking her up at the airport at seven o’clock, so I’m going into the office to prepare for her arrival. You should likewise expect a meeting.” He caught Carlos coming back to the table and slipped a roll of cash into his hand. “For whatever these two people want. Keep the rest as a tip.” He nodded at us. “Have a good night.”

  I gaped at him as he walked away.

  Lucrezia de Angelis was coming to town to make sure I passed my aspis test.

  The test I still hadn’t had enough time to study for.

  The test that I needed to pass in order to keep my job, and possibly my life.

  “You might as well drink,” Suzy said, shoving Fritz’s cup at me. “You’re fucked anyway.”

  She had a point.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A CHURCH IN HELLTOWN. The very idea of it reeked with irony.

  I’m not a real religious guy, but my family used to attend church on Easter and Christmas, like any decent American should. To me, churches mean hushed silence, a feeling of being at peace, the comfort of knowing someone’s watching over you.

  That, and the sensation of Pops kicking me in the Achilles tendon because I wouldn’t stop swinging my feet in the pews.

  You know, a family place.

  Helltown was the opposite of that in every way possible. You were always watched in Helltown, but not by a benevolent caretaker. More like glowing red eyes waiting for an opportunity to sink their teeth into your throat.

  The neighborhood is a major source of stress around the OPA offices. The smartest of us avoid going inside at any costs, but the ones who visit and survive wear it like a badge of honor. I survived a visit to Helltown and all I got was this lousy admiration from my coworkers.

  All the agents say there’s nowhere hotter than Helltown, and they’re right.

  It’s not just the heat, although that’s part of it. The streets burn like there’s a fire smoldering right under the pavement. The wind never quite seems to clear the smoke from the food carts where they cook human flesh for snacks. The air is always stale, always stuffy, always hot.

  But when your case goes cold, if you’re brave enough, you can usually heat it up by visiting Helltown too. The demons there, they know things.

  There’s nowhere more dangerous than Helltown. Not in Los Angeles. Not anywhere else in California. Maybe nowhere else in the country.

  And I was about to go in there willingly.

  Again.

  “It’s not so bad once you get used to it,” Isobel said as we headed for the gates.

  We’d parked outside a nearby apartment complex and were taking the remaining distance on foot. Cars didn’t work in Helltown. Neither did cell phones or Bluetooth earpieces, for that matter. We’d have no way to contact backup once we got inside.

  Not that it mattered, since I was going in without Fritz’s approval, which meant no backup.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it,” I said. I’d been there a few times and it was equally awful every time.

  “Really, Cèsar, you just have to know where to go and where not to go.”

  Wasn’t the whole place a “where not to go?”

  “I used to be scared of it, but once I realized that nothing’s going to get you during the day, the whole place is kind of a joke,” Isobel went on. “I mean, as long as you stay away from Needles territory. And keep out of the shadows. And, you know, don’t talk to any demon who might want to kill you. And—”

  “I get the idea.”

  Isobel patted my cheek. “You just looked worri
ed. I was helping.”

  No, she definitely wasn’t.

  Just because I was heading into Helltown with a guide—a death witch who used to serve as priestess for the Hand of Death—didn’t mean that I was safe. I’d left the suit at home and was wearing street clothes, but I still felt like I had a flashing “OPA agent” sign over my head.

  She led me into Helltown through a street on the east side. From the opposite side of the intersection, it looked like a normal suburban neighborhood, not unlike Cherry Tree Lane.

  But as soon as we set foot on the sidewalk on the other side of the stoplight, everything changed.

  The houses and unkempt yards vanished. The air got heavy. Heat radiated through the soles of my shoes and stirred my jacket.

  Stretched in front of me was a neighborhood that looked like it had been hit hard by an apocalypse, maybe more than once. The buildings leaned against each other for support. Windows were boarded over, shuttered with plywood. Doors were jammed shut with the carcasses of cars that hadn’t run in fifty years.

  Tall iron spikes grew from the sidewalks on either side, arching over the road to meet in the center. A metal plate hung from the apex of the arch. It said, with no small amount of self-aware humor, “Welcome to Helltown.”

  I read it aloud as we passed, and couldn’t help but add, “Population: Every sorry fucker too stupid to stay out.”

  Isobel chuckled. It sounded like she was just humoring me, but I appreciated it. Always loved a woman who laughed at my crappy jokes.

  It even briefly distracted me from how much I hated visiting this place.

  I’d never seen Helltown empty before, but there weren’t any demons on the street right now, in the first light of dawn. It felt hollow. Guess it was still too early for the daytime demons to emerge but too bright for the nocturnal ones to survive.

  Even though I couldn’t see them, I could feel them watching us through the cracks in the boarded windows.

  Hungry, waiting.

  Isobel strode ahead of me, head held high, somehow not staring at the empty streets.

  “It’s right over there,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at me. I couldn’t help but notice that she looked amazing for the early hours of the morning. My sister had always looked like a monster until about noon, but Isobel was perfection, with feathers in her braids and eyes unshadowed by fatigue. “Two blocks in.”

  Just two blocks in. Not that bad, right?

  At least, I didn’t think it was that bad until I saw the church itself. I’d expected to see something like the Temple of the Hand of Death, which had been built into a rundown old gas station.

  Instead, I found myself facing a cathedral with a bell tower, iron spires, crimson stained glass windows, and statues of warped saints weeping blood. The gargoyles had shriveled wings and cloven hooves and teeth longer than my hand.

  The whole place had to be at least ten stories tall, and it eclipsed the sun.

  “Compassionate Heart Ministry,” my ass. Whoever had named it that had a sick sense of humor. I would have called it something like “Church Doom.”

  “Wait,” I said when Isobel moved to head in.

  “What?”

  “All the shadows.” There wasn’t a hint of sunlight anywhere on the block.

  She looked at the church again like she hadn’t seen it before. Isobel seemed to glow against the black walls of the church. “We’re probably safe. What time is it?”

  I checked my watch. The second hand wasn’t moving.

  “It was six-thirty when we came in.” And I could definitely feel it. I’d officially been awake for twenty-four hours and wanted nothing more than my bed.

  Well, maybe I wanted to be outside of Helltown even more, but those weren’t mutually exclusive aspirations. My bed was, conveniently, not in Helltown. Two birds with one stone.

  “We should be safe,” Isobel said. She sounded entirely unconcerned.

  A door slammed somewhere on the street. I whirled to see a demon shuffling from window to window to open the shutters on his shop. He probably would have been seven feet tall if his back hadn’t been arched like a McDonald’s sign, making his horned head hang in the region of his waist.

  He wasn’t even looking at us, but I suddenly wanted to be in that church. Better the devil we didn’t know yet. Or something.

  Cool fingertips touched my cheek. “Are you okay?” Isobel’s brow furrowed with attractive concern.

  Down boy. “Just tired.”

  “Well, then let’s get in and out.” She pulled me into the shadow of the church before I even realized what she was doing. The path leading to the door felt cold, like an isolated winter swirling outside the walls. “Why are you so tired? Is the case keeping you up?”

  “Kind of. I was on a stakeout with Suzy, and then I owed her drinks, so I played designated driver until I met with you. Never did get any sleep.” Isobel stopped walking. I only realized when I was already a few feet ahead of her. “What?”

  “You bought her drinks?”

  “I know. I have no idea how she gets away with that on a work night. And I bet she still feels better than I do.”

  “You spent all night with Suzy,” Isobel said.

  Why had she stopped walking? Here, of all places? “Someone had to drive her drunk ass to the office. Come on, I don’t want to wait for the suspect to find us.” Or something worse.

  Isobel let me take her arm and pull her into the church’s entryway, a room with black walls and a low ceiling. Candles rimmed a statue of a marble figure with no face, leaving smoky stains on its shapeless legs and casting flickering shadows on its shoulders.

  “She likes you,” Isobel said.

  “I’d hope she likes me a little,” I said, checking behind the statue. There was another doorway leading into the main body of the church. It was open, but too dark to see what waited beyond. “Makes working together easier.”

  I leaned around the doorway to peer into the darkness.

  The inside of the church had a much higher roof, but the walls were just as black. Now I could see that the stained glass windows formed abstract crimson mosaics that barely let in any light. I’d been expecting more creepy imagery, like inverted crosses.

  Isobel huffed. “I’m saying that Agent Takeuchi wants you.”

  I almost didn’t hear what she was saying because I was too busy, you know, trying not to die. “Not following your line of thought here. Suzy wants me to do what?”

  “She wants to get in your pants, and then get you out of your pants, and fuck you brainless. Suzy Takeuchi wants to have sex with you. Are you really that stupid or do you just play a stupid guy on TV?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Yeah, it made me laugh in a creepy church in the middle of Helltown, where we were likely to get killed and mutilated by a nun. That’s how ridiculous it was. “You are reading way too much into drinks after work, Izzy.”

  “Look, I’m a woman, and I know the games women play. Women don’t want to get drunk until sunrise with guys they don’t want to sleep with.”

  She had no idea how literally I wanted to sleep with Suzy. Actual sleeping. Restful, snoring sleep.

  “You don’t know Suzy, Isobel.” And it was going to stay that way. Suzy was having a bad week. Or a bad month. Maybe even a bad year. I wasn’t going to tell Isobel why Suzy really wanted constant company.

  “I know women like her,” Isobel said darkly.

  “Can we shelve this conversation for later? For a sane time when we’re not going to possibly die?”

  “We’re not going to die.” She squeezed my bicep. “You’ll protect us if any scary old nuns attack.”

  Glad to know she was so confident.

  But it was easy to imagine my body sprawled on the red velvet runner between pews, my shattered teeth in the back of my un-breathing throat, foreskin peeled away by demon claws…

  Don’t think about the nurse.

  “Who does services here?” I asked.

  “A few p
riests rotate out. When I came, it was Father Mikhail Night. He moved on, and Father Bronson Webb replaced him. I’m not sure who it is now.”

  “What kind of ugly are the priests? Nightmares?” I didn’t want to imagine what kind of services demons might hold. The brief mental picture I couldn’t help but suppress involved lots of blood.

  Isobel giggled. “They’re humans. Normal human priests.”

  “Humans helping demons?”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “There are also a lot of other humans in Helltown.”

  “Mostly slaves.”

  “Yes, but smart demons fear God, Cèsar. They’re afraid of a good smiting. Many of them will allow their slaves to attend services instead of risking His wrath.”

  Color me skeptical, but that twisted logic didn’t jive. “Wouldn’t God smite them for keeping slaves in the first place?”

  “As long as He’s getting worshiped?” She shrugged. “I think He doesn’t care. Not that I’ve ever heard of a demon getting smote for holding a slave back from Sunday mass, mind you. Ann told me that allowing slaves to attend services is a pretty old superstition. Apparently they even have a few churches in the more civilized parts of Hell.”

  If a church in Helltown was too ridiculous for me to accept, then I wasn’t going to attempt to wrap my head around a church in Hell. A church that actually worshiped God.

  Isobel shook my shoulders gently, like she was trying to loosen me up for a massage.

  “Deep breaths, Cèsar. We’re safe in here. It just looks scary because it’s an old building, but it’s consecrated ground enchanted by generations of witches. It’s safe. I can’t even talk to bodies here.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Ann and I tried to work some death magic here at Father Night’s request. It didn’t work. If you ever want to be buried somewhere that you’ll be safe from my kind of interference, try Helltown.”

  “I’ll think about adding it to my will,” I said. Think about it, and then completely forget about it, because I did not plan on spending eternity in this place.

  We reached the front of the church to find an empty pulpit backed by a mural. The image was pretty innocuous: green fields with a radiant sun and lots of sheep. A lot like the murals I’d seen at the soup kitchen.