“Fine. Gardena.”
“What’s in Gardena? Please don’t say Gloria’s relatives.”
“She’s fifteen and terrified. The kid was kidnapped, sold as a sex slave. She needed her family, and I wasn’t exactly at the top of my game after you knocked me—”
“First place they’ll look for her.” I cut onto the right shoulder and stomped hard on the gas. Truth be told, Gloria’s vulnerable situation was an asset. Bait on the hook, as long as she wasn’t already dead.
Gloria’s abuela lived on a street of squat adobe housing units behind black iron fences, which felt more like a prison compound than a neighborhood. Gloria herself stood in the dirt patch front yard, tapping away at her cell phone. She didn’t even notice me pull up.
I leaped out of the car, hit the sidewalk, and vaulted over the five-foot security fence. When I landed in a crouch at Gloria’s feet, she dropped her phone and slapped both hands over her mouth, too stunned to cry out.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” I snapped.
“I couldn’t get any bars inside.”
I scooped up her phone and crushed it into a handful of miniature parts. “Let’s talk in the house, where it’s safe.”
“Should I just chill out here?” Vincent asked sardonically from the other side of the locked security gate.
While Gloria let him in, Vincent kept his eyes on the neighborhood. For now it seemed we’d lost the biker on the Gardena side streets.
Inside, a teacup Chihuahua burst toward us across the tile floor so suddenly that its feet couldn’t get traction at first. Gloria tucked the dog under her arm, but it still kept on barking.
The Price is Right was on the TV. Gloria’s grandmother was so tiny, I almost didn’t notice her sitting on the recliner watching it.
“Okay, listen,” I told them. “Nobody’s safe here. If Mellado knows your family connections, he’s going to find you here and finish what he tried to do last night.”
The grandmother made the sign of the cross when I said Mellado’s name. She had the same look on her face as all the suffering saints in the paintings on her walls.
“Why would he care about me?” Gloria asked.
“Because of what you saw and what you might know.”
“What did she see?” Vincent asked.
My admonishing look kept Gloria quiet for a moment, but then her eyebrows came together in a scowl. “Lady, I don’t know who you are. You messed with my head and almost got me killed. But you also saved my life and set me free.”
“She’s a whirlwind of contradictions,” Vincent agreed. He was checking the sight lines from the living room window.
“There’s a safe place for you to stay,” I explained to Gloria. “You and your abuela and the dog. A woman—”
“Damn it, I knew it,” Vincent said as the biker pulled up behind the Infiniti outside, clad all in black, more like a shadow than a person.
The biker planted her boots on the ground and lifted off her helmet. A mane of silver hair cascaded down her back. Her face was as creased and wizened as an Indian chief’s in an old portrait.
“That’s Hannah,” I said. “She’s with me. She’ll take you to the safe house.”
“Your Czech associate,” Vincent realized aloud.
I stepped out into the dirt yard and raised my fist against my chest. Hannah’s return gesture struck me with an unexpected wave of sadness, maybe even regret.
We’d talked on the phone since my return to LA, but this was my first time seeing Hannah in more than a decade. I trusted all my girls with my life, but most of them weren’t girls anymore. For them, time kept on marching.
Hannah was pushing seventy and showing her age, even if she was still sharp enough to pilot a speed bike and handle the firearm hidden in her saddlebag. At least, I had to believe that.
“Vincent, you can follow Hannah in my car.”
“You’re not coming?” he asked. “You think I’m just going to let—”
“I could make you all go, but I promised I wouldn’t.”
I dangled the key fob. Vincent clutched my whole hand in his. He squeezed my fingers in his grip as our eyes debated trust against lust and trickery.
“Six o’clock, Madeo’s in West Hollywood,” I said.
“Are you asking me or programming me?” he said.
“You’ll know. Don’t get killed before then, please.”
Chapter 18
A trio of thugs showed up twenty minutes later in a Toyota 4Runner. When I saw them through the window, my stomach tightened. My shoulders hitched. I had no choice now but to see this through.
The thin one with arms too long for his jacket jumped the neighbor’s fence. He’d be coming in through the back to prevent any escape. The short one with the pompadour waltzed through the open gate like he owned the place. Last came the thick one with the bulldog face.
None of them wore bandannas or balaclavas, a clear sign they didn’t intend to leave any witnesses. They weren’t entranced, either. They carried themselves with too much swagger, high-ranking Mellado soldiers loyal enough to use their own brains. It made them smarter and faster.
I sat down in the recliner and pulled the grandmother’s quilt over my shoulders. I actually did feel a sudden chill. Maybe this time I’d slip up, fatally. Even experts in five types of martial arts eventually misstep.
A portrait of Jesus looked down on me. On the side table was a bronze cast of life-sized hands clasped together in prayer. I put the prayer hands on the floor between my feet. A bread knife from the kitchen was tucked snugly beside my thigh.
The abuela’s game show was still airing on the television as Pompadour stepped inside and gave me a crocodile grin. “Well, hello there, hot stuff. I know you ain’t Gloria, but I don’t think you’re her grandmother, either.”
“Maybe I’m the big bad wolf,” I said.
Pompadour guffawed and slapped his buddy on the shoulder. Bulldog didn’t appreciate my joke. Neither man seemed to recognize me, either. Was it possible I’d escaped Sapa Inca without getting identified?
Pompadour stepped in front of my recliner while Bulldog went around the back. Scrawny in the undersized jacket came in through the kitchen and stood at the front door. He folded his hands at his crotch with a snub-nosed .38 Special peeking out from between his fingers.
I sensed Pompadour’s nasty plans like a gust of foul fumes. They’d positioned themselves so I could only see one man at a time, vulnerable from two directions. My breath tightened.
“You a friend of Gloria’s?” he asked me.
“I’ll ask the questions,” I said. My voice sounded unnaturally slight.
“Oh yeah?” He rolled his shoulders like a boxer stepping into the ring. Then, in Spanish, he asked his friends, “Can you believe this bitch?”
“Believe,” I answered in Spanish. “That two of you will die. One will survive, for questioning. Believe, because I’m the bitch who caused the pandemonium at the club last night.”
Scrawny said, “No way, we know that narc Vince—”
“Shut up, Renz,” Pompadour scolded.
“Tell you what,” I explained. “I’ll let you three decide who will be my informant. Last man standing.”
“Lady, you’re something else,” Pompadour said, a note of uncertainty in his voice. He kept on smiling, but his Adam’s apple quivered.
“We should take her back to Mellado,” Renz suggested. He was young and uncertain, too thoughtful for his line of work. Even his peach fuzz mustache didn’t suit him, poor kid.
“What you got under that blanket there?” Pompadour asked me. He tossed back his jacket lapel and drew out an impressive blued-steel 9mm.
My world focused in, down to the size of that living room. Every nanosecond an impossible feat. I sought the quiet calm between the beats of my heart.
Then, I said a little prayer and threw open the quilt. Pompadour’s eyes traveled down to the bronze hands clasped tightly between my Pumas.
I threw back the footrest lever and kicked the prayer hands off the floor, dead center against Pompadour’s face. The recliner slapped horizontal and I rolled backward with the momentum, kitchen knife in hand.
My somersault knocked Bulldog against the wall. I launched to my feet and pinned him there, blade through the sternum, down to the hilt. I savored the sleek efficiency of his death, inhaled it.
Renz’s eyes were as wide as headlights. He raised his arms in surrender, jacket cuffs stretched back to his elbows. The gun was still in his grip.
I panted like a lioness on the verge of a kill. I could fill myself with his life, his youth, and it would be glorious. But a promise was a promise, at least for the moment.
“I’m the last guy!” he pleaded, in English, no less.
Pompadour groaned and grabbed for some leverage on the windowsill. His face was a battered mess, but he was still breathing.
“Not so fast,” I told Renz, nodding at Pompadour.
He glanced between me and his captain. Then he made his choice. He squeezed off all six shots, and dropped the empty weapon like it was burning his hand.
Chapter 19
It took a little convincing, but Renz drove me to Koreatown in the 4Runner. Fresh from two more corpses, I was electric with vital energy, overflowing.
I could barely sit in the passenger seat. Colors seemed more vibrant, sounds more acute. I felt like three people struggling for space in one body. And my next move wasn’t going to do anything to calm my nerves.
We took Olympic Boulevard past the ornate Da Wool Jung pavilion with its upturned tiled roof. Renz dropped me at a plaza cluttered with Korean signs for barbecues and laundromats.
I programmed him to drive around every ten minutes until he saw me again, although this plaza wasn’t my actual destination. I wouldn’t lead the enemy there like that.
On foot I zigzagged the two blocks to Seoul Market and entered to the chime of bells and the tangy smell of fresh kimchi.
Miss Seong gave me a shy bow from behind the counter. The most demure woman in our sisterhood, she had a childlike air, even though she was past fifty.
Seong knew the drill. I’d already stopped by her shop, twice every day since my arrival, in fact. She gestured toward the beaded curtain behind the counter and asked me if I’d like some tea.
“Something relaxing, please,” I said.
“Let me take your clothes, for disposal,” she added.
I glanced down at my tracksuit and gasped. Blood was spritzed across my chest as if by a spray nozzle. I’d just walked through part of Koreatown like this.
I needed peace. And I wasn’t going to get any, not soon.
Seong took care of things. She traded my clothes for a silk robe. She wasn’t the inquisitive type, thankfully. We didn’t need to discuss the threat Mellado posed to all of our sisterhood. She knew what was at stake.
The tiny storage space behind the curtain housed a single computer patched into the most secure network I could access in LA. Short of meeting in the flesh, this was the only other way I dared to communicate with my sisters. From this location, on our dark-web chat room.
I was desperate to hear from Shanti, the girl who was risking her life because of me, who was hiding under the streets of New York. I couldn’t dispel the shame that I’d left her to fend for herself with tools she was only beginning to learn how to use.
I had no way of knowing if she was safe, if she was alive or dead. Twice a day I came here on my vigil, only to find an empty message board. It was driving me mad with worry.
In a rush of anxious hope I logged on to our private board, balling my bare toes against the bamboo mat.
I braced myself for the usual anguish of no new threads. But then my heart leaped at the sight of the new-message icon from swahili_sister, Shanti’s user name.
She was still alive, still fighting. Even before I opened the message, I couldn’t hold back the tears of relief. I was a wreck.
All my life I’d been protecting these girls, loving them, training them, mourning them when they grew old, when they died.
Almost too much for one soul to bear. I couldn’t bring myself to put my sisters at risk anymore. Not after what happened to Terra. I had committed my life to arming and training them against Deus Inversus, but their defenses had been limited, like those of all human beings. I had been too wary to share my demonic nature with any of the sisters.
Part of me wanted to turn my back on my relentless river of emotion. If I was alone, if there were no sisterhood, I wouldn’t have to care. I could retreat to a Tibetan temple and let the world crumble around me. But that would be no way to live. I needed a reason for my life.
I clicked on Shanti’s message:
Turquoise took wing to Angel Town this morning. Don’t face him alone.
What might’ve sounded like a riddle to most was a sobering chill for me. I knew exactly what she was saying. Asmodeus, the murderer with the turquoise eyes, was headed back to Los Angeles. Was here already, as Shanti’s message was eight hours old.
For a moment, I considered the possibility that Deus Inversus had hacked into our chat room and posed as Shanti, trying to draw me out. Maybe Shanti was dead, and even as I sat here, I was being tracked. Maybe this was how they’d found my girls in the first place.
There was an attachment at the bottom of the message. I almost didn’t dare open it, out of some vague fear that I’d announce my location. But I couldn’t let the paranoia infect me. I couldn’t hesitate. I had to keep pushing through.
I wondered if that last line was more than a simple warning. Don’t face him alone. I couldn’t take my eyes off the words, the possible implications. These dangers were converging too fast, even for my fast reflexes…
Behind me, the beaded curtain shimmered, and I nearly leaped through the drop-down ceiling.
“Very sorry to startle you,” Seong said.
She set down her serving tray and poured tea into a jade-green cup. The steam was chamomile scented, the calming herb.
I sipped the tea and drummed up the nerve to open the attachment. The computer clicked and clacked through its excruciatingly sluggish download, one line of pixels at a time.
Slowly an image formed. A head of close-cropped hair so blond it was almost white. Eyes like gems set inside a skull. A face so eerily bland it looked like a digital composite of all European male faces.
This attachment explained why Shanti knew the assassin had flown back to LA. It was a scan of his identification, his Canadian passport with no personal details. None, except the supposed real name of the killer we’d been calling Asmodeus: White, John Jay.
A nobody, a cipher. Except for those eyes.
Chapter 20
“We’re going after Mellado tonight,” I told Vincent. We were at Madeo, the classic Italian joint just down from Cedars-Sinai in West Hollywood.
His only reaction was to take a sip of his wine, a 2010 Bourgogne Pinot Noir. I just about melted at the calm he exuded, the self-assurance.
“Listen, you’re the most intriguing woman I’ve ever met,” he said. “You saved my life, saved my mind, and you’ve got guts…”
“Keep talking,” I said, nudging him. Frankly, I was basking in this momentary relief. Vincent had shown up on schedule, safe and alive and rested. He’d also shaved, and alas, now I wondered what his smooth cheek would feel like against mine.
“…but I’m not sure you realize what you’re facing here.”
“Aw, you ruined the mood, Romeo.” I ate a forkful of my antipasti, the crespelle al salmone. I chose only the best, in the event that this would be our Last Supper.
We were huddled close at our little table. Madeo was an intimate place, belowground, lights dimmed, with dark wood beams crossing just overhead. At a restaurant this crowded we had to sit tight, especially when our conversation was more private than a national security secret.
“We need to strike before Mellado finds out about me,” I argued. Mellado was already
at least one step ahead. He’d called Asmodeus back from New York, almost certainly to deal with the incidents I caused at Sapa Inca.
I hadn’t mentioned Asmodeus or New York to Vincent. I’d told him nothing about what happened in that room with the dead starlet Isabel and the old man. Not yet.
Ours was a game of murky, half-revealed truths. Neither one of us would give too much away to a relative stranger, even if we’d established some halting trust.
I let Vincent think he understood the scope of the threat. He knew nothing about Deus Inversus and the influence they held over dummy corporations, shadow governments, military regimes. Generations of my sisters lost to their brutal genocide.
The waiter came with freshly deboned branzino alla griglia for me and the lobster spaghetti for Vincent. After Vincent requested a small mountain of shaved Parmesan, we were left alone again.
“He’ll be back at Sapa Inca tonight,” I said. “He wants to send a message to the man who neutralized his men. Seven men, as of a few hours ago. He’ll refuse to be intimidated. That’s his weakness.”
“You know all this how?” Vincent asked.
“My afternoon chauffeur told me. They’re loyal as dogs once you strip their will. No offense.”
“Don’t even tell me,” he said.
Vincent was wise not to ask about Renz and whatever I might’ve done with him. Most men couldn’t hold my interest for long.
“Here’s the interesting part,” I said with a grimace. “Mellado thinks the assassin was you.”
The spaghetti unwound from his fork. “Really?” he said.
“But that’s good news,” I insisted. “It means I’m still your secret weapon. Tonight, you waltz in with me on your arm, you’ll throw Mellado off his beat, guaranteed.”
“Or take a bullet on the spot.”
“He’s too proud for that,” I said. “More likely he’ll want to humiliate you first, torture you. Steal your date right out of your grasp.”
Vincent dropped his fork and leaned back in his seat. As the shape of my plan became clearer to him, he shook his head in disbelief.
Diary of a Succubus Page 5
