Devil Said Bang (27 page)

I jerk the wheel right, completely blind. Aiming
for the shoulder of the road. Lucky for us there’s no one there. It’s shit news
for the truckers though. The shooters in the pickup truck start firing their
modified rifles. They miss us and hit the side of the rear truck. Rear and front
tires blow. Shots hit the cab. I can’t tell if the driver is hit or not. The
truck starts drifting into the pickup’s lane while its trailer slides in the
opposite direction, pulling the rear of the truck around on the bad tires. It
jackknifes, cutting off five of the six lanes. I hit the accelerator, trying to
get ahead of the chaos. I do, but so does the pickup. It rams us again. And
again. The little Porsche isn’t made for this kind of abuse. There’s a metallic
grinding from the back like the rear axle is about to go.

There’s an overpass ahead. I look at Candy.

“Do you trust me?”

“I hate that question.”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then undo your seat belt and put your head down on
your knees.”

“I hate how this sounds.”

“Don’t worry. It gets worse.”

The pickup moves up to ram us again. I stay ahead
until just before the overpass. And stomp the brakes, pulling up on the
handbrake at the same time. The pickup can’t slow and hits us at full speed,
driving up the rear of the car and over the top like we’re a ramp. I throw
myself on top of Candy. Wrap my arms around her. The car roof smashes down on my
back but stops when it hits the armor. The weight of the truck is suddenly gone
and we start to slow. From below I hear the sound of crashing metal and
exploding glass. The Porsche slows and comes to a stop, grinding against the
guardrail.

I slam my back against the roof a few times and
manage to raise the crushed metal a few inches. When I have enough room to move
my legs, I kick out the driver-side door, slide out, and run around to Candy’s
side. Her door is jammed so tight that I can’t even get a good grip. I climb on
top and drive the black blade through the roof, slicing it and prying it open
like a sixty-thousand-dollar oyster. Candy looks up at me through the hole.

“This is what you mean by ‘trust me’?”

“You’re alive, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but I’m developing what are called trust
issues.”

“I’m sure Allegra knows some good shrinks. Reach up
your hand and I’ll get you out of there.”

We get a ride into Hollywood in a station wagon
with a family from Houston. I agree with them that we’re damned lucky to walk
away from an accident like that with just a few scratches. Luckier than the
pickup that went off the overpass and crashed onto the street below. They drop
us on Hollywood Boulevard near Allegra’s clinic, and when I try to give the dad
some money he waves it off.

“I’m sure you’d do the same for someone stranded.
Just pass the good fortune along.”

Candy and I look at each other and I know we’re
thinking the same thing.

Who knew people not playing angles or hustling
something still existed. I thought they’d died out with the triceratops. I feel
funny now. A little dirty. Like maybe I contaminated their car with bad luck. I
wonder if they would have given us a ride if they knew I was the Lord of the
Underworld. What’s funny is I think they would have.

Nice people are fucking weird.

C
arlos
is sitting up in a plastic chair in the clinic reception area. His arm and
shoulder are still bandaged and smell of aromatic oils and potions.

I sit down next to him.

“Hey, man. I’m really sorry to get you mixed up in
my shit.”

He laughs, patting his pockets.

“When haven’t I been mixed up in your shit? I met
you on the day you got back from Hell, remember?”

“I guess so.”

“Yes so. I knew something like this could happen.
It’s called a calculated risk. And now it’s happened and I’m walking away. It’s
like I got a measles shot. I’m immunized. Nothing bad will ever happen to me
again.”

“I’m not sure it works like that.”

“Of course it does.”

He gives up patting his pockets.

“You have any cigarettes? I’m dying for one. No pun
intended.”

“I thought you didn’t smoke.”

“Only after surgery.”

“Sorry, but I gave my last one to a guy who sold
his soul to the Devil.”

He sits up in his chair.

“I guess there’s some things worse than getting
shot.”

“Not many. Anyway, I hear the guy is such a fuckup
he’s getting his soul back. Even the Devil doesn’t want it.”

“I must have missed that day at Catholic school.
The nuns never told us that being a dumb-ass was a weapon against the
Devil.”

“Now you know.”

He leans forward, propping his good elbow on his
knees.

“Don’t apologize for any of this. Remember when you
and your pretty squeeze killed all those zombies in the bar? Business doubled
after that. With you back and ninjas going Wild West, I’m going to make a
fortune.”

“As long as no one shoots the jukebox.”

“I’ll kill any cocksucker that touches my
jukebox.”

“You’ve got someone to take you home?”

“My brother-in-law is going to give me a ride.”

“You never told me you were married.”

“I’m not. He’s really my ex-brother-in-law but I
like him a lot better than my ex-wife.”

I get up and look around for Allegra.

“You take care yourself. Heal up before you reopen
the bar.”

“I’m going to make so much money I’ll buy a
Cadillac to drive me to my Lexus and drive that to my other Cadillac to drive to
work.”

“I’ll catch you later, man.”

“Later.”

Candy disappeared into the back of the clinic right
when we got here, but Allegra is putting things away in the treatment room.

“Welcome home. Candy says you two had an adventure
today.”

“The other guys had an adventure. We had a car
wreck.”

“And walked away with a couple of scratches. I’m
jealous. Remember that time you took me with you to meet the dead man Johnny
Thunders? I miss that kind of thing.”

“Maybe you should train some people to take a few
of your shifts.”

“I am. You met Fairuza, the sweet Ludere, the other
day. She’s my chief apprentice.”

“Cool. I’ll drag you and Vidocq along when the
right kind of craziness comes up.”

She smiles and wraps two chunks of what look like
pearly rocks in dark blue silk. Divine-light glass from the beginning of time.
God broke a star and dropped the glass to Earth. One of his original fuckups. It
wasn’t all bad. It turns out it heals a lot of wounds. Doc Kinski once used it
on Allegra.

“You don’t know anything about the other Stark, do
you? You’re a doctor. Maybe he’d tell you something he wouldn’t tell other
people.”

“No. Sorry. He never told me anything.”

“Have you been getting some stabbings in here?”

“Are you talking about the girl? No. No stabbings.
From what I hear, if she cuts you, you die. I heal people. She kills. There’s no
point in me treating the dead.”

Candy comes in and crooks her thumb over her
shoulder.

“Can I talk to you a minute?”

“Sure.”

We walk outside into the cool, crisp L.A.
afternoon. The sky looks a little strange. Clouds are rolling in fast and it’s
like the light is strobing behind them.

“I have to take a rain check on your suite. Rinko
got a taste of blood last night and now she’s kind of in withdrawal. I need to
take her home.”

“I understand.”

“Sorry. I keep seeing you and running off.”

I shrug.

“Maybe I deserve it. I ran out first. Anyway, you
have to do the right thing by your friend.”

“Doing the right thing usually sucks.”

“Almost always.”

She kisses me and goes back inside. Through the
glass I see her giving Rinko a potion and leading her into the treatment
room.

There’s another reflection in the glass. A
ghost.

I turn and the little girl is standing there.
Frilly blue party dress and a knife as big as her leg. She stares at me like I’m
a rat on her birthday cake.

“Who are you?” I ask.

She doesn’t say anything.

“What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you
killing people? You pissed off? Hungry?”

Still nothing.

I take a step toward her. She takes one back. I
take another. There’s an earth tremor, like a small earthquake. I look down at
my feet. When I look up again, the girl is gone. I walk out to where she was
standing. Then to the far wall. I get on my knees to look under all the
vehicles. The ground gives way and I land flat on my back. I was run over by a
pickup truck about thirty minutes ago. It hurt. Falling six feet onto a sore
back hurts more. I lie in the fresh dirt, trying to catch my breath.

“Hi, Stark.”

The voice is breathy. Barely a whisper and hard to
hear over the traffic.

I’m lying in a hole as deep as a grave. There’s
another hole like a tunnel leading off into the dark. The voice is coming from
there.

“What is this?”

A desiccated corpse, gray parchment skin stretched
like tissue paper over brittle bones, sticks its head out of the hole like a
turtle and draws it back in when the light hits it.

“Don’t you recognize me?” says the corpse.

“You’re a fucking skeleton. How am I supposed to
recognize you?”

“Once upon a time you wanted to kill me. Then you
wanted to save me. You didn’t do either. You let Parker murder me.”

“Cherry? Is that you?”

Cherry Moon was a member of my old Magic Circle.
One of the ones who stood by and let Mason send me to Hell. For staying out of
the way, Mason gave her the gift of youth. Creepy youth. Candy is into Japanese
cartoons but Cherry Moon wanted to be a cartoon. A forever-prepubescent Sailor
Moon love doll in a school uniform. Do you know what it’s like to get hit on by
a thirty-five-year-old woman who looks like she’s twelve? No. You don’t. It’s
strange and unpleasant on so many levels I can’t begin to count them.

“Was that you who dropped me into a hole in Bamboo
House?”

“Do you get followed around by a lot of tunneling
dead girls?”

“You saved me from getting shot.”

“Yes. You owe me. You didn’t save me when I was
alive. I want you to save me now.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Kill the little girl.”

When I first saw her, I thought Cherry was a ghost
cursed to stay on Earth and the hole was just a ghost projection from her mind.
Seeing her skeleton crammed into the narrow tunnel, I see I was wrong. Cherry
did this to herself.

“Is the girl hurting you?”

“She’s killing us. All the other ghosts and spirits
in L.A. When she isn’t killing you, she hides with us in the Tenebrae. Kills us
like she kills the living and we don’t know why.”

When Cherry died, she was so afraid of moving on
that she made herself into a jabber. Jabbers are a kind of ghost so traumatized
by death that they can’t even haunt people or places like normal ghosts. They
stick close to their bodies. Literally haunt their own corpses and tunnel in
them from place to place. They won’t come out of the ground because their bodies
are fragile and they’re afraid of being mistaken for zombies. Jabbers are about
the most pathetic thing in the world.

“I don’t know what you want me to do. I can’t get
near the kid.”

“You travel between worlds. I saw you come here
from Hell. Come into the Tenebrae and stop her.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Find out.”

I get nearer the hole. Cherry doesn’t back away
this time. I put out my hand. Slowly she creeps her hand forward until our
fingertips are just touching. I was right. She’s real. A ghost hiding in her own
bones.

“Jesus, Cherry, all you have to do is let go. Get
out of this body. Get out of the ghost realm. Go on to wherever it is you’re
supposed to go.”

“No!” she says. “Do you think Heaven is waiting for
me with open arms? We both know where I’m going, and as long as these bones hold
together, I’m staying right here.”

“I can help you when you get to Hell. Like you
said, I couldn’t save you when you were alive. Maybe I can help now that you’re
dead. But you have to let go.”

She crawls closer to the tunnel opening. I can see
her lipless smile and eye sockets full of dirt and dry plant roots. I want to
look away but I don’t.

“Where do you stay when you’re not stalking
me?”

“I moved into an old cemetery in a field of old
cemeteries. It’s the strangest place. Full of aetheric ghosts and physical
ghosts like me.”

She makes a sound that’s almost like a laugh.

“There’s practically a traffic jam with us
tunnelers. We have to be careful digging or we can fall into each other’s
chambers.”

“What do you mean by a field of cemeteries? What
the hell is that?”

“It’s like a cemetery for cemeteries. Or a garden
where some kind soul has planted the dead and where we live. Go ask Teddy
Osterberg. He’s the one who collects the cemeteries. I’m just one of the flowers
in his garden.”

“So the little girl is killing Sub Rosas,
civilians, and now ghosts. She tried to kill the other Stark, so she’s tried to
kill an angel. Do you know anything about him?”

“Other Stark? He’s prettier than you. Like you in
the olden days. Now you’re a mess. A girl likes a few scars. They give a man
character. But you don’t have a shot with me anymore, darling.”

“Does anyone call the Tenebrae Blue Heaven?”

“I’m afraid we’re plain old Tenebrae. Tell me
you’ll help us.”

I reach into my pockets for a Malediction and
remember I gave my last one away. Anyway, Cherry wouldn’t want me smoking.
Dried-out corpses are perfect kindling.

“If Teddy Osterberg collects the dead, he could be
connected to the girl and I know the girl is connected to Saint James. I’ll
check him out. Maybe I can help both of us.”