“More like generally weird shit,” Elliot said. Her smile turned somewhat apologetic.
“Weird shit. Like X-Files shit?”
“Last year, in Bakersfield, there was a very bizarre murder. The—”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“I’m getting to it. The victim was a burglar, a pretty accomplished second-story man. They found him in the middle of a bank vault, near the safe-deposit boxes. How he’d gotten in was anybody’s guess. Half his body was severely burned. The fire was so hot that the last two inches of the fingers on his right hand had actually burned up in their entirety—instantly vaporized. The burns got less severe radiating from there. The left third or so of his body was basically untouched. The vault was completely undamaged.”
“Aliens got him.”
“Not exactly. They were going to file it as an accident. There was no murder weapon, so how could they call it a murder? I never would have heard about it except the burglar was wanted on racketeering charges, and the FBI was already watching for him.”
“Okay.”
“The murder weapon was a safe-deposit box.”
“On fire, I guess.”
It seemed Elliot’s grin wouldn’t go away, no matter what Nail said to provoke her. “Not exactly. The only part of the box that showed any evidence of fire was in the inside on the bottom, where somebody had drawn a very particular diagram. They’d done some unusual things to prepare it. Most of it had burned away, but there was enough left to get a match.”
“A match on what?”
“Another diagram, one I know well.”
“A diagram can’t kill a man.” For the first time in this meeting, Nail was beginning to get genuinely nervous. Bad enough the FBI was involved at all, but that they’d brought in a division he’d never heard of that dealt with precisely the kind of shit the crew trafficked in was even worse.
Elliot leaned forward. “Yes. It can.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I’ll be blunt, Mr. Owens. The occult. The box was set with what was basically a very nasty sort of magical trap.”
“Now I know you’re messing with me. You’re wasting my time. Come on.”
“I get that everywhere I go.” She didn’t look concerned. “The box was traced to a man who we believe worked—off the books, of course—for Enoch Sobell.”
“That’s great. So you got your case, then.”
“The box’s owner has disappeared. We can’t find that poor bastard anywhere.”
“What makes you think he’s a poor bastard?”
Elliot tipped her head forward so that she could give Nail a mock-incredulous look under raised eyebrows. “Even going along with the fiction that you don’t work for Sobell, surely you’ve heard some of the rumors. If somebody working for him drew attention in such a high-profile way, don’t you think he’d have them disposed of?”
“I got no idea.”
“Somebody in your crew’s going to get hurt, Mr. Owens. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Oh. So this is, like, a public service thing here. You lookin’ out for me. You got my back, is what you’re sayin’.”
“Exactly. Almost nobody understands what the man’s really capable of. I do. If you help us get Sobell, we can protect you.”
“That don’t sound like you got my back. That sounds like you chargin’ a protection fee.”
Elliot gave him a faux-helpless smile. “The bureau’s got a lot of priorities, and my division in particular is very small. We can’t help everyone.”
He wasn’t really tempted, but he was in shouting distance of it. Sobell’s money was good, but, as Anna kept saying, shit was getting out of control. How long before he just wanted them to outright start capping people? Nail was already worried it would come to that with Van Horn. Bad habit to get into. Maybe sometimes you did what you had to, but making it into a full-time paying gig sounded like a bad, bad idea. If he could get the same kind of protection for Anna, Karyn, and Genevieve . . .
Nah. Didn’t make sense. He wasn’t sure whether to bet on Sobell or the FBI, but he didn’t want to outright bet against neither one. And anyway, the FBI wouldn’t kill him. Plus, you didn’t rat. Those were the rules.
“Sounds like you can’t help me,” Nail said. “Appreciate the offer. We done?”
“We could arrest you right now,” Elliot said.
“Not unless you want a lawyer so far up your ass he could wear you like a suit.” Nail was all ready to go another ten rounds of stare-down, but he flinched when Elliot tossed a folder on the table in front of him.
“Wha—?” He stopped when he saw his idiot brother staring up at him from the front of the folder. What was this new bullshit?
“Would you believe we got your brother on possession with intent to sell?”
That surprised Nail. DeWayne had gotten into a lot of trouble over the years, but as far as Nail knew he’d never sold drugs. It sounded fishy, but he wasn’t about to give Elliot the satisfaction. “Yeah. So?”
“He’s looking at five to ten.”
“Probably do him some good.” There. That ought to cut off any talk of some stupid deal. Nail didn’t care for the smug look on Elliot’s mug, though.
“Would you believe he might actually walk on this?”
“Anything’s possible.”
“We’re going to cut him a deal.”
“That’s pretty stupid.”
“It turns out your brother has an awful lot of info about a known bookmaker and loan shark, one Clarence Wilkinson. We drop the charges, DeWayne testifies. We think we can put Wilkinson away for a good long time. Pretty tidy, huh? Justice will be served.”
Nail’s heart pounded so hard he thought Elliot must be able to see his pulse in his temples, at his throat, his wrists. “You motherfucker.”
“Me? I’m doing your brother a favor.”
“Clarence will cut him into a hundred pieces and eat the fuckin’ pieces.” Nail bit down, squeezing his jaw muscles, crushing his molars together before easing up. “But I guess you know that. Probably countin’ on it, huh?”
“What do you say, Mr. Owens?” Elliot put in. “We could get those charges to go away, if you can help us.”
“Is this even fuckin’ legal? I never heard of a deal to reduce someone else’s sentence before.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“What do you need from me?”
“We just need you to testify that Sobell gave you the orders to commit a crime.”
Nail considered that. “You mean directly?”
“It doesn’t have to be direct, as long as you witnessed him giving the orders to somebody.”
“Uh . . . I’m not sure I did.”
For the first time, Elliot frowned, frustration drawn in the lines of her forehead. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I spent all of ten minutes in the same room with the guy, and in that time, I don’t think he told us to do anything illegal. You want the dirt, you gotta dig somewhere else.” Anna would be the best place, but he wasn’t going to tell them that. No reason to drag her into this shit. He thought about the video, and the photos. They would have already got to her if they had any leverage, he realized.
“Are you still working for him?”
Nail shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Can you get close to him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Are you willing to wear a wire?”
“Yeah, if I want my guts unzipped clear up to the bridge of my nose. Are you nuts?”
Elliot folded her hands again. “What can you give us?”
“I can look for a chance. See what I find out. But you gotta kill the deal with DeWayne. That shit will get him killed if you let it happen.”
“We can put it on hold and give you a chance to come up with something. Probably push it back a couple of days.”
“Days? What am I supposed to do in a couple of days?”
Elliot’s smile
was a thin, acid-etched line. “Figure it out.”
Chapter 17
For the seventh time, Sheila gathered the Chosen together for the ritual. She looked down at her bloody, unwrapped hands. It would have to be an index finger this time. This is horrible, something inside her said, but she merely laughed. The only horrible thing about it was that it might slow her down, make it harder for her to complete the task. Even the pain felt good, kicking off an endorphin rush every time she brushed the raw stumps against something. The same distant part of her that thought this was all very horrible had noticed a creeping redness radiating up from the stumps of her left pinkie and ring finger, but even that wasn’t of much concern. Maybe it would spread, but the hand was almost useless now anyway. No reason not to take it at the wrist, or the elbow.
The ritual was routine by now, and she didn’t even really need to concentrate to finish it. She shuddered with pleasure and agony when she cut off her finger, and then the creature appeared, just as it had the last six nights, heavy and gray, slick with mucus. It no longer bothered waiting for her instructions. It knew she was looking for Van Horn, as she had on the last several nights, and it immediately pivoted toward the mouth of the alley. The Chosen had stopped oohing and aahing on the third or fourth day. Now they just followed wordlessly.
Tonight was no exception. The Chosen followed the creature. Sheila trudged after as well, trying to focus through an interior haze of pain and weariness. One of the others passed her, then another. The gray thing and the others receded ahead of her. She sped up as much as she was able. Block after block, she walked as the night ground on, passing by darkened doorways and barred windows. Before long even those stopped registering as her world narrowed to one step and then the next. She staggered. She put her right arm out, caught herself against the pole holding the traffic light, and slid up against it. Dizzy. Why am I so dizzy? The gray thing was somewhere ahead of her, but she couldn’t quite see where, and the world felt as if it had tipped on one side, then the other, like it was trying to shake her off. She slid farther down the post, reached for it, and bumped the end of one of her fingers. Screaming pain shot up her arm, delicious in its intensity.
The world came back into focus.
Rain was standing a few feet away from her. She’d stopped at the curb and turned around, and now she was staring at Sheila, her lips parted, tongue at the edge of her teeth. She wasn’t staring at Sheila’s face, though. Sheila followed the line of her gaze, saw red, red everywhere. Her stomach grumbled again.
My hand. That’s my hand. She blinked. Yes. It was her hand, her left hand, leaking blood all down her pants in a sloppy red stream. Dimly, she understood her sudden dizziness. Did it really matter, though? All that blood . . . Her mouth watered.
Van Horn. We need to find Van Horn.
With an effort, she lifted her bleeding hand to her shoulder and, with an awkward motion, wrapped the wound in the collar of her shirt. Red flowers bloomed in the fabric.
“I’m hungry,” Rain said.
Sheila looked up at her. “Me, too.”
“I’m always hungry now.”
“Me, too.” She wondered just how hungry Rain was. If the younger woman thought Sheila would make a good meal, she’d have an ugly surprise coming. Sheila might have been weak, but Rain was barely five feet tall and slight. Her waist-length hair would provide ample handholds, and Sheila had a sudden vision of strangling the other woman to death with it. Somebody might end up a meal, but it wasn’t sure to be Sheila.
“He did a magic trick,” Rain said wistfully. “A blue light, like a circle.”
Van Horn. She was talking about Van Horn. “I know,” Sheila said. “He did it for me, too.”
Rain said a few words, waved her hands. A glowing blue sphere of light appeared in front of her, bobbing slowly at chest level. “It’s not as good when I do it.”
“It’s beautiful,” Sheila said.
“It’s not as good. I thought it would be good, but it’s not.”
Sheila pushed herself upright. The dizziness had passed, mostly. She thought she could walk now, anyway. The others had already followed the gray thing down to the end of the next block, where an art deco gallery with bars on the windows sat, dark.
“Everything’s good now,” Sheila said. “Everything is . . . better. Brighter.” She smiled. “Magical.”
“Did you ever break up with somebody? And then, like, one night it’s late and you’re lonely, and they call you, and you meet, and next thing you know, you’re screwing underneath the kitchen table?”
Sheila nodded. Part of her felt a low, building thrill at even the mention of sex, but the other part thought of an afternoon on a hillside off the PCH, a long time ago, and that part was . . . confused. It hadn’t been a good experience, had it?
“And, like, you’re thinking this is not a good idea, he’s gross and mean and he ditched you all the time and never called and treated you like shit—you’re thinking this while he’s inside you, but right then it just feels so good you can’t stop yourself.”
Sheila nodded, the details of that long-ago afternoon coming into clearer focus. “And you just want the sex to last forever, because it’s so good.”
“And because, you know, as soon as you’re done—the very second after you come—you’re going to regret it. All of it.”
“Yeah.”
Rain threaded a hank of her own hair through her fingers, then suddenly gave it a vicious yank. Her head whipped sideways, and she grinned. “I think we’ve done some bad things, Sheila.”
“I think so, too.”
“But I don’t care. I feel good.”
Sheila twisted her maimed finger in her collar, felt a spike of pain. Smiled. “Me, too.”
“I don’t think I’ll feel good forever, though. What happens then?” She pulled harder. The handful of hair came free with a tearing sound, taking a piece of her scalp with it. Blood trickled down over her eye. “You wanna fuck?”
Sheila glanced down the street. The rest of the Chosen were barely visible beneath a streetlight a couple of blocks away. “We have to find Van Horn,” she said.
She started walking before Rain could say anything else.
The next couple of hours were a miserable slog. Sheila’s wound had stopped bleeding, but the blood loss was bad, and she wasn’t going to recover from that right away. A couple of pints—that was the amount she had filed away in her brain somewhere. At somewhere around a couple of pints, an average person would pass out. Was that even real? Did it matter how long? She thought it mattered how fast you lost it, if there was a sudden drop in blood pressure. Regardless, she was still up, still walking, but it wasn’t easy. She trailed the group with Rain sort of hovering around her, probably in case she fell. Rain would want to get there first, get a head start on dinner.
At first, it was almost fun, careening from one side of the sidewalk to the other, feeling light-headed and seasick as she lurched about. Exciting, kind of. Certainly interesting. But she couldn’t keep up with the group, and she kept running into things. Fire hydrants, signposts. Buildings. Her breath came shorter and shorter. She lost track of where she was—only the gray thing’s slime trail showed her where to go. She stayed close to it, slipping in it over and over, once falling to the sidewalk and banging her head. Was Rain even there anymore at that time? She didn’t know. But the younger woman was certainly gone by the time she got up. Gone on ahead. Sheila supposed she should feel lucky—she hadn’t become dinner after all. Instead, she wanted to lie down on the sidewalk and sleep.
Nevertheless, she got up. The gray thing wouldn’t stay forever. It couldn’t, she thought. The index finger was a big finger, though, and important, so she thought the creature would last awhile before going back. Not like with a pinkie. They might get five hours out of it. Maybe six. But the slime trail would fade, dry up in the heat. If she hadn’t caught up to the group by the time that happened, she might never find them again.
She renewed her
effort. One foot, then the other. Stomp, stomp, stomp, squish, stomp. Slipped. Didn’t fall this time. She’d thought she was walking closer to the buildings—boarded-up retail, here, lots of brick—but she must have strayed back to the middle of the sidewalk. It wasn’t wide enough, that was the problem. She pushed on. Made it one block, then two. Her feet dragged and stumbled over each other. Her head spun. Halfway through the third block, she slumped into a recessed doorway.
Just a minute. Just a few minutes.
They were getting farther away, but she was so tired. The last time she’d been this tired was when? Grad school? She was better able to handle it then, the exhaustion a burden to bear up under, not a soul-sucking force that hollowed her out and left her barely able to stand. She felt rough splinters against her face, warm brick against her thigh, the coarse, gritty texture of concrete under her thumb. It would be easy enough to stay here, revel in the sensations until she fell asleep. The others would find Van Horn. If they could call the gray thing. The thought was disturbing, but too bad. She’d had lots of disturbing thoughts lately, if she really considered it. Maybe Rain was right. Maybe there would come a time when they would look back, and all the actions they’d taken in the throes of hunger or lust or pure thrill-seeking would be appalling, a weight of guilt and grief she’d carry until death. Or maybe death would come first. That might be welcome.
She fell asleep, or at least drifted in some dreamlike place far removed from ordinary consciousness. Time passed in irregular, inscrutable chunks. It was still dark when she woke, though, her senses fully opened, her body tense.
What was that? she thought. Then: what was what? What had woken her? Nightmare?
No. A sound. The clicking of footsteps, of hard-soled shoes on concrete. She pushed back into her alcove. Moments later, a man walked by. He wore slacks and a nice blazer despite the heat, and he walked slightly hunched. He was watching the slime trail, she realized. He was following it. She recognized him now as one of the men who’d attacked the Chosen and taken Don a few days back.
She got to her feet, muscles protesting. A spike of pain rammed through her head, and she fell against the wall. She’d never catch him. Never stop him. Unless . . .
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