by Jason Ridler
“That was unreal, Dick,” she said. “What did you do to me?”
“Honest affection,” I said.
She took my hand and braised our fingers, then cupped her large left breast. “That was too dirty to be so sweet. Downright cosmic.”
I lay down with a woman who slept with Nico before all hell broke loose. A woman who had a sigil on her back, and didn’t know it. The ethics of magic was a world I was still negotiating. Edgar believed magic made you above ethics. But I knew that wasn’t the case. And I knew that what I’d done was crossing a line. “Terra?”
“Yes, Dick?”
“Please don’t tell Maxine what we did.” Terra turned to look at me as I applied the “Gosh, Wow” face of a Midwestern man caught in a guilt trip. “I mean, she might be mad if she found out her brother was romancing the star.”
A funny smile and kind yet embarrassed look came upon her face. She cupped my face. “Oh, sweetie, I’m not the star. Your sister is. Her and another girl. Me? I’m a cheap piece of luster for a very Roman epic.”
“What?” I said. “But you’re gorgeous.”
She smiled. “I am. And I’m old enough to be your little sister’s mother.” A dirty thought crept across her visage and she grinned like a cat. “Kiss me.”
I did.
When she pulled back, she grabbed the highball glass from the nightstand that TV had brought, slugged it back, then exhaled hard. “Pardon me while I freshen up. Make yourself comfortable. I may have some spare clothes in the bottom drawer. Your outfit is . . . a little ripe.”
She left me on the bed, drained but sated and confused. The bathroom door shut. I peeled off my shoes so that the gucky pants I was wearing could air out. But I wasn’t going to hunt for clothes.
I slid across the bed and opened the nightstand drawer, breathing deep so that the aroma of our lovemaking wasn’t lost too fast. And here, I could taste the hint of magic that had led me here. When the shower’s hiss awoke in the bathroom, I pulled open the drawer.
CHAPTER 25
CRUMPLED PACKS OF COOLS, A VARIETY OF LIGHTERS, AND TWO hashish pipes covered something that had the tang of dirty sorcery. I plunged my hand and wiped away the fire hazards. A wooden block sat at the bottom of the nightstand with a wax cover. I tasted sparks and ash as I gripped the wax’s corner and pulled slow and sure so that nothing would tear or crease.
The image stared glared back, an image inspired by the one I’d seen in Montague Summer’s book during my Joyride.
A beautiful woman with black hair and alabaster skin, tied to the rocks on a storming shore. A snake birthed from her mouth, wide as a strongman’s arm, fangs sharp and serrated, leaping at the viewer with malicious intent and red eyes, and within the pupils were dark inscriptions, twisted runes whose meaning was fathomless as the darkness in which they swam, just like the sigil on Terra’s back. The style was Japanese, Edo period, but the raven-haired woman was buxom, like a German model. The entire visual tasted of old blood, and I chewed on it, searching for more clues within the catacombs of my memory, books I’d read, tales I’d heard, as if this flavor might link up. Otherwise, it was just another stack of information that someone here was playing with the dark fringe of the occult, warping it to their desires. Right now, money was on Octavia: she created a film company that catered to young people who would do as they were told and not ask questions because of daydreams of stardom. That was a bottomless trough from which to draw in victims for any kind of experiment. But why would she? And was Nico involved, seducing other women? Or was she a master’s pet, like I’d been to Edgar?
I needed to talk to Octavia, and fast.
The shower died.
I pushed the nightstand drawer with enough pressure that it shut fast and quiet. I slid off the bed and dove for the bottom drawer of a dresser filled with beads, rings, bracelets and perfumes that made the air taste like vanilla.
The bathroom door opened. Terra was naked and glorious but for the towel in her hand that she used to wring out her hair. “Say, Dick, I was wondering . . .”
I pulled out a pair of striped plaid trousers so thin I could barely get my arm down one leg, let along my thigh. “What’s that, Terra?” Beneath them was a pair of terracotta slacks. God, what happened to gray, black, and blue as the colors of manhood? They went with everything. What went with Terracotta except . . . more terracotta?
“I could have sworn that Maxine . . . said you guys were . . . from Milwaukee —”
I sprang from the floor and caught her before she collapsed. Terra’s eyes rolled back, mouth agape, as I gently brought her to the shaggy floor. I checked a pulse. Her breath. She was alive, and breathing hard, but something had knocked her out.
The highball glass sat upon the nightstand.
TV had drugged it.
I pulled her from the floor and lay her upon the bed, propping up her right side so that should she vomit it wouldn’t be fatal.
The sigil on her shoulder . . . hissed, and for the briefest of seconds I tasted blood and iron. But it was still a goddamn jumble.
“Fuck,” I muttered. There was no running to Edgar from now on in. No knocking at his chamber door and getting his wisdom and insight along with insults and punishments. “Never touch a foreign sigil, boy,” Edgar had told me when I thought I saw one on the carcass of a deer in Montana. “Little scratches hold big power. And when they’re thrust upon someone else, you know it’s about one things: obedience.”
Charms. Control. Slavery.
Someone wanted to control Terra on the set where Maxine sprouted a demon and Nico got scarred. A love triangle? Maybe. But even if this was Roman bathhouse with cameras, these were not crimes of passion. Time, effort, control, calculation.
I could almost hear Edgar laughing. “Listen to my adept playing detective. All he needs is a cocaine habit and a fat foil to ask stupid questions and he’d be bound to find Moriarty in the nick of time.”
I shook Edgar’s voice away and focused on the sigil.
It was the only fresh clue I had. I took a breath, and did what Edgar wouldn’t.
My lips touched the sigil.
Burning filled my corneas as my eyes fell out of their sockets like two bowling balls into the gutter of the universe, and time and space cut each other to ribbons and through the hack and the slash I plunged into a starless abyss where everything tasted of blood and iron and the screams of the damned were answered with the howls of the insane before my consciousness landed at the seat of a high throne made of the skulls of children, and in its lap sat a giant heart of black velvet that pulsed like a heartbeat, a clock, a countdown to oblivion, and behind me the hideous creek of a door opened and there within the crack of light and the black heart mutated into a figure of lithe desire, a pulsing creature of maws and tentacles, a call to worship, to be enthralled . . . and this vision of seductive terror and the promise of brutal joys whispered but one word to me as its eyes opened to reveal the gaze of a demon snake . . .
“Brimstone.”
I snapped back from Terra’s body. Blood and iron fled from my lips as the aromas and tastes of this world crashed into my mouth.
The creature, whatever it was, that goddamn creature . . . knew me.
I turned to the door.
TV stared at me, a .44 in his mashed and thick fingers. “Ah hell,” he said, as I stood with terracotta slacks in one my hand and Terra on the bed. “Get those pants on.”
I did. They were snug, and revealing, but they fit and were cleaner on my sweaty skin than my sticky blues. “I just want to see my sister.”
“Yeah,” TV said. “And it woulda been easier if you’d taken a powder, instead of Red. Maybe you’d have woken up and ya sis would be back.”
“Why would you drug me instead of letting me wait here? Where is she?”
TV plucked out his cigar. “Yer voice is giving me gas, kid.”
Mercy, it was hard to keep the witty comebacks from spewing past my teeth, but I was Richard, not James, and keep
ing up appearances increased my survival rate far more than pithy jokes shoved at an asshole dwarf. “Where is Maxine?”
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he said, walking forward in his clunky loafers. “Yer going to get in your miserable excuse for a car. Yer going to fuck off to parts unknown. And yer going to wait for your sister to contact youz. Don’t like it, I’ll drag your dead weight out of this room. We can’t have people nailing our actresses like it’s a whorehouse. We’re a respected film company, Mack.”
Murder. The little man was willing to murder me to protect whatever happened to Maxine. My opinion of TV was starting to change. Perhaps he wasn’t a bitter slice of misfortunate DNA in a deformed body. Was he magic? If he was a familiar, as some little folks are, I would have tasted the stink of his link to a sorcerer. Unless he was covering up.
He puffed his Century Sam. “Hurry up with that zipper, clown. I got laundry ta do.”
It was the same cigar. It wasn’t ashed away. A charm, perhaps? Smoke could hide many things . . . maybe even the taste of magic.
That meant TV was no joke. And this was a showdown.
He had a gun. I had pants.
But at my feet was my suit coat and Izzy’s gift. I’d found enough trouble. Time to make some.
“Okay,” I said, hands in the air. “Can I take my clothes? Please? It’s my only suit.”
“Grab it, townie, and all your gear. And then scram.”
I did, quicker than he could see.
On the floor I worked a little scarf routine, pulling the bulges of my clothes to hide my hands from TV’s eyes as they tunneled through the stained fabric still dusted with Lilith’s glass eyes. “Need my keys.”
“Hurry up, I ain’t getting younger.”
The thick braid of the anting-anting was across my palm as I pulled myself up and attempted put on my jacket while looking like a nervous wreck.
“Ya mudder still dress you? Get those sleeves in. I ain’t got all night.”
And as he let the collar fall down upon my naked shoulder, the face of the anting-anting dropped. The charm hung down with a weight of magic that tasted like overripe coco jam, sweet, strong and sticky. Bandits wore anting-antings to escape from danger and hails of bullets. I hoped it would be enough to stop a menacing dwarf with a ten-cent stogie and secondhand Colt.
TV’s eyes flared. “Sad world, guys starting to wear jewelry.”
“We can’t all be born with your good looks,” I sneered.
He raised the gun so it would hit anywhere between my balls and neck if he got shoved. “You finally grew a pair . . . something tells me you ain’t really nobody’s brother.”
“And something tells me you’re going to tell me where Maxine is.”
TV huffed a laugh that was so bitter and acrid it might as well have been the last breath of a dying ghoul. “You got a lotta guts for a dead man walking. But that necklace doesn’t look bullet proof.”
“Funny thing about this necklace, Tiny, is that it protects the wearer. But you never know how. Why, some of those bullets might turn into goose feathers, or just go ‘pop’ like kid’s cereal when milk hits the sugar. Or maybe it will ricochet like a pinball shot, crack that stogie out of your maw, and leave you exposed.”
That word scared him. Yup, whatever supernatural hijinks were infecting this place, TV was tied to them. Like Terra. Like Nico. Which meant I had to go to the top of the food chain. “What has Octavia done with Maxine?”
Dark fire forged in TV’s eyes. “Don’t you talk about the Boss like that, or I’ll take my chance with your goddamn trinket and see if it can stop a full clip.”
“Where is she?”
Thunder cracked from the front of the house, and TV’s attention slipped from me for a sliver.
Springing forward, I gripped his wrist and pulled it back. A shot fired out as we tumbled into the hallway. I tore the gun out of his hand as he kicked my shin hard enough to wake the dead. I flipped the pistol, pointing straight down on the little murderous man, another sound crackled from the front of the house. Electric and loud and clear.
“Vice! Open up or we will tear down this door!”
CHAPTER 26
VICE. THE WORD SHOT UP MY SPINE LIKE POISON. OF ALL THE departments of the LAPD, Vice’s reputation was the most brutal. A law unto themselves, they were an All American version of the SS. They answered to no one, had informants in the Valley, the Strip and even the regular Hollywood: anywhere that might bloom a good time or bad trip. Dirty movies, it appeared, were their game, too.
TV chewed his stogie as I punctuated the air with the gun. “Where do you hide here?” I whispered.
He grimaced, clearly wanting me to die under his glare.
“Right now? We’re helping each other. Later, try and kill me. But if you don’t hide us, we’re both spending the night downtown in handcuffs. What would Octavia think then?” The logic made his eyes shake, because being angry wasn’t going to help us a lick. He turned on his heels and marched into the dark hallway.
“Move,” he grunted.
In the distance I heard Octavia’s voice. “TV! Get the door!” He growled, but marched forward.
A cop barked. “Open this door or we’re breaking it down!”
We turned another corner as Octavia’s heels clicked behind us. “I’m coming!” Stifling a chuckle at her choice of words, I increased my gait as TV’s little legs scissored down a stretch of dark paneled halls that smelled of dust more than magic.
“Look, we have a warrant!” said a distant cop voice.
“Ah, shit,” TV said, picking up his pace. “We need to scram.”
“I’m not leaving this house without Maxine.”
“Who said we was leaving da mansion?” One last turn and the center of the oubliette was a dead end with laundry chute. The little bastard had lead me into a compromising position. “Me first,” he said, but I pinched a nerve in his neck and he hissed like an asthmatic cobra.
“Not so fast. Something tells me you might run away if you get the chance.”
He rubbed his shoulder. “Wanna go? Head first?”
“We go together.”
“Revoltin’.”
“Just get in the chute, handsome. The cavalry is coming.”
TV muttered as he reset the cigar in his mouth, turned, and climbed into the chute. “Just sit at the top, like’s it’s a slide.” He shook. “When this is ovah, I’m gonna piss in your skull.”
I gripped his shoulder again, a little harder. “I’ve given worse eulogies.” Cop shoes on tile and hardwood approached. I took a deep breath and then dove in, gun in TV’s back so the little bastard would get no funny ideas, but then silently clicking the safety so I didn’t have a corpse clogging the drain.
Riding down the chute, we slid into pure darkness, TV blotting whatever light here was at the end of the tunnel so all my night eyes could see was his crumpled backside. We banged on the sides, my fingers gripping TV’s shoulder. Gaining speed, we cut our way hard and fast as the dull light of the drop mouth was before us and I realized what we were heading toward: the laundry bins of dirty movies.
“Gross,” I got out before we tumbled out of the chute.
We bounced against the hard embrace of a concrete floor. At impact, TV rolled out of my grip like a greased bowling ball. I got to one knee as he took off with goblin-like speed. I clicked off the safety of the pistol. “Close,” I said as he crested a corner. “But you can’t outrun a bullet. Hands up.” TV did so, but with one hand around the crested corner. “Where I can—”
“—see ‘em?” he said with mischief, and then smacked on the lights. Searing wattages covered my Night Eyes in sparks and the tiny bastard vanished before it came back. A dirty laugh echoed as a door slammed. I ran, but he was gone, the laundry door locked. My wallet was upstairs. I’d need to improvise some kind of key. But TV would be long gone, a little man hiding himself and what I expect to be his magic in a big house where he knew the ins and outs.
&nbs
p; Damn it. I tried to stifle the rising tide of doubt in my abilities by focusing on what could be done: survive, find Maxine, find Nico, get the hell out of here.
I took stock of myself and the room. My naked shoulder sported a fine abrasion from the serrated landing, but everything else seemed dandy. The terracotta trousers were a bit snug for my vintage, but looked good. The anting-anting lay across my chest, useless at stopping midgets from escaping, it would appear. Or polluted because of what I presumed was an anti-magic stogie.
The laundry room was cool, damp, and gray. Large washers and dryers were stacked against the far wall. Shelves held Dazzle, everyone’s favorite laundry soap, the one with the beautiful lady with the doe eyes holding a baby: the magic brand that could take out the worst stains of all kinds, wine, nicotine . . . blood.
The washer’s maw was open. The dryer was shut and full.
Seems TV had done me something of a favor. I tucked the .44 into my waistband, just above my ass crack, then opened the dryer.
Dirty magic fell out. Loincloths covered in faint blood splatter sat on my feet. And I tasted blood, iron, and something worse. I spat, but it stayed. The cloth was shredded, the kind of damage you’d get from wild fangs. The kind that marred Nico’s face forever. The kind that takes you three rounds of Dazzle to get clean.
But this was only the second.
The cloth was cold. Washed and dried twice, but abandoned.
And something familiar. Not magic. But strong and rich. I licked my parched lips, then brought the loincloth to my mouth.
Nico. Her scent was still warm upon the cold sheets.
I pressed the faint slice of blood to my lips—
Lava filled my eyes and choked whatever scream had tried to emerge from my gaping mouth: the world bled away, paralytic stitches of terrible pain cut through me, a red tower rose from a sea of churning humanity that was tied to each other, eating each other, rutting the pieces, and from above this mote was a tower . . . that rose into a snake’s neck, the tower head gazing at me. Its eyes flexed, and there was a twisted swastika etched on its iris. “Brimstone!”
