Sacrifices (27 page)

Anna woke to
a predawn light so thin and feeble it had yet to outshine the streetlights outside the window. She surfaced, tearing through a skein of tangled, violent dreams that seemed to cling to her skin in bloody threads. As if she didn't need a shower already. Her skin was oily, her hair itched, and when she touched her face it felt coated in a light, greasy grit that came away on her fingertips. She rubbed it between her thumb and fingers. Oil from her skin mixed with—with what? Dust? Fine metal shavings from the shop below? Cobwebs?

All that plus bad dreams, she decided. She ran her thumb across the whorls of her index finger in slow circles, watching the arcs of grime left in its wake. She could almost feel the individual particles, each one rolling up the high ridge made by her fingerprints, then sliding down into the valley before the next ridge. A tiny cut on the side of her finger, so shallow its white edges hadn't even bled, caught the debris. The little slash became a blackened valley.

“Are you high?” Karyn asked.

Anna didn't look away from her fingers. “Huh?”

“You've been staring at your fingers for twenty minutes.” Karyn sat on the floor in front of her, her back to the main windows. “There's nothing that interesting there, unless you're high.”

“That
is
kinda what it feels like.” She picked at the cut with her thumbnail, wondering without much interest if
she was trying to push the grime down into it or open it up and let it irrigate itself. Either seemed fine. “It's, like, totally intense, man,” she said, affecting an idiotic surfer-boy accent.

Karyn closed a hand over hers, stopping the motion. Irritation swelled suddenly into rage and then was just as abruptly gone. Anna closed her fist, trapping her thumb inside. She pulled her gaze up to Karyn's.

Sharp shadows shrouded half of Karyn's face, the yellow sodium lights casting the other half into bright relief crossed with impossibly dark valleys. Karyn was twenty-seven, Anna thought. She looked a thousand. Care and grief had worn new lines around her eyes, it seemed, in just weeks. There were permanent purple hollows below her eyes now, testament to how little she slept.

Suddenly, Anna wondered how she herself looked right now. Worse, probably. Still pale from blood loss. Too thin, despite shoveling food into her face in grotesque quantities. Was her metabolism running hot these days, or just not processing anything at all?

“Tell you what,” she said, summoning up a grin. “Let's order some pizzas. Like, a dozen.”

Karyn gave her a perfunctory smile in answer. “It's a little early for that—don't you think?”

“I don't know
anything
anymore. All I can focus on is bullshit. Getting in with Sobell, that stupid job, that was supposed to be the answer. That was supposed to end all this, and it only gets worse. I almost ate a rat yesterday. Would have, if I coulda caught the damn thing.”

They didn't get pizza, but Karyn made coffee. Anna drank it. It hit her empty stomach like battery acid and sat in a corrosive pool as the sun got higher in the sky. Few words were spoken, and then only functional ones. Anna was distracted, itching to get her hands on a pen and paper, to draw and to draw blood, and Karyn seemed too exhausted to try to draw her out. That was fine. If only she'd go
do
something, rather than sit and watch.

Better this way,
Anna reminded herself.
Keeps me out of trouble.

At about eleven, they headed down to the car. Anna still felt groggy, as if the cobwebs hadn't quite shaken off, but the promise of meeting Abas helped clear them away. She was, she realized, gearing up for a fight. There was no reason this had to be a fight—Abas had been courteous enough on the phone—but she was already thinking of it like one.
God, I'm fucked up right now. I need to end this.

The trip to Doyle Gardens took far longer than she would have liked. Karyn said little, and what she did say mostly got on her nerves. Meaningless shit about traffic and the weather and hoping this would all come out all right. It wasn't like her, and it pissed Anna off. She felt like opening the door and jumping out of the car, partly to get away from the bullshit chitchat and partly just for the hell of it, and once she caught her hand working toward the handle with that very purpose.

She took the exit down into the Gardens. The kids at the corner watched her suspiciously as she approached. Strapped, every one of them, some with guns already to hand, others merely touching them, ready to pull chrome at the first rude word.

Anna slowed, holding her hands open on the wheel, palms facing the kids. Freak was there, the oldest, it looked like, muttering reassurances as the others got ready to throw down. One of the kids was biting his lower lip, and two of the others had on the most fragile-looking tough-guy faces Anna had ever seen. “Kids” wasn't the right word, Anna realized. That could mean anything all the way up to men in their twenties, depending who was talking. These were
children.
Cutting class so they could stand on a corner and mow down anybody who threatened their home, or, equally likely, die trying. She didn't know whether to thank Abas for trying to protect them or hate him for escalating the situation. Would these kids have been okay if the other gangs had moved in, or would they be dead already?

These are not my problems,
Anna thought, but the thought didn't stick.

“Hey,” Freak said. “What's going on?”

“Need to talk to Abas.”

“Yeah, I don't think now's a good time.” She lifted her chin and cocked her head, hooking her thumbs into her waistband and looking at Anna with all the considerable swagger she had at her disposal. Anna, who had felt an odd species of pity moments ago, felt a combative part of her well up, like she'd like nothing better than to get in some kind of pissing contest or, better still, get out and brawl right here.
That ain't me,
she told herself. She wasn't sure if that was entirely true, but she focused on it anyway.
That ain't me.

“Ain't never gonna be a better one,” Anna said.

“What the fuck do you know?”

It would take two seconds for Anna to grab her knife, another two to unfold it. Two more to get out of the car and get to Freak. Did she think any of these scared kids would pull a gun, let alone a trigger in that time?

This ain't me.

“He said he can help me,” Anna said. “Said he can help the Locos, too, if I can get him something he needs.”

“Yeah?”

Anna nodded. “I can get him something he needs. He'll want to talk with me.”

Freak broke eye contact. “Eddie, you got the corner. Back in twenty.” A challenging look at Anna. “Open the door.”

The younger woman got in the back and Anna pushed the accelerator. “You better not be fucking with me,” Freak said. “You better be for real.”

“How's your old man?” Anna asked.

“He's all fucked-up—what do you think? Still looks like he got run over by a garbage truck.”

“Abas taking care of him?”

“When I'm not. Yeah.” Freak swallowed, looked like she was going to spit, then shook her head, a disgusted look on her face. “Considering he's the one fucked him up, he ought to.”

“He did it for the Locos,” Anna said.

“Awful nice of him.”

There didn't seem to be anything to say to that.

They drove without further conversation. Anna parked the car in front of Moreno's house. It looked smaller than she remembered, even since just the other day. Smaller and seedier, as if the neighborhood was leaching some vitality from it, or maybe its strength had faded with Moreno's.

Freak kicked open the chain-link gate, walked to the front door, and let herself in without knocking. Karyn gave Anna a worried look, and then the two of them followed.

“Yo,
Padre
,” Freak said, infusing the word with undisguised hatred. “You got company.”

Abas sat on a chair next to the couch on which Moreno still reclined. Moreno looked pretty much as Freak had described, though better than Anna had remembered. More like he'd been run over by a garbage truck a few weeks ago than just now. He still sported an ugly purple bruise on his forehead, but the edges had begun to yellow and fade, and most of the other bruises had faded as well.

Abas sipped tea from a chipped blue mug, swallowed, and put the mug down. He didn't get up.

“Hello, Anna,” he said. “And you must be Karyn.”

“Hi.”

“Call me Abas.”

“Just . . . Abas?” Karyn asked.

“Yes. Would you like to sit?” Before she answered, he looked to Freak. “Luisa, would you please get our guests some chairs from the kitchen?”

“How about you get off your ass and get them yourself?” Freak said. Abas made a pained, long-suffering face.

“It's fine,” Karyn said. “I'll go.” The kitchen was just a few steps away, and Karyn came back in moments with a couple of small but sturdy wooden chairs. “You want one?” she asked Freak, but the younger woman just crossed her arms and leaned against the wall.

“I'm gonna skip the bullshit,” Anna said. “We know you're looking for a relic. We need the same thing. How about we help each other out here instead of knocking our heads together?”

“You're mistaken. I have the relic I need,” Abas said.

“Since when?”

He said nothing, only smiled without humor.

“What are you trying to accomplish here?” Karyn asked.

“Here?”

“In general. In Doyle Gardens.”

“Doing God's work the best I can. That's all.”

Anna scoffed. “I doubt God's work has much to do with killing dozens of people.”

“Not killing—saving. The Locos.”

“Funny enough, saving the Locos from the other gangs means killing a lot of people in the other gangs.”

Moreno sat up. “He came to help. That's what matters.”

The priest nodded sadly. “They were vulnerable. They needed help. I needed to do some good. Penance and atonement—they're a strong part of my faith.”

“I see. God put them on earth so you could redeem yourself.”

“God is more subtle than that, and a single tool can be put to multiple uses.”

Karyn put her hand on Anna's wrist. “Let it go. If he already has the relic, I don't know what else we can do here.”

“You find it by digging up graves, maybe?” Anna asked. Part of her thought she ought to let it go, that it was irrelevant, but another part wanted to shake Abas like a dog shaking a rat in its jaws.

“No.”

“You wanna tell me what
that
was all about, then?”

“Penance and atonement,” Abas said. “Blood ties are powerful in the eyes of God. Important.”

Blood ties. Nail had called it. Anna opened her mouth to retort, but Abas spoke first. “There is something you can help me with. Something that is in
all
our best interests,” he said, raising his hands expansively, whether to encompass the whole room or the whole neighborhood Anna couldn't tell. His hungry smile made Anna want to hit him in the mouth.

“Belial,” she said.

“Yes.”

“How does that help
all
of us?” she asked, waving her arms in mockery of his earlier gesture.

“I will ask for intercession from an angel of the Lord.”

This time, Freak did the scoffing. Anna didn't look over. Instead, she looked into Abas's eyes, searching for a lie or falseness of any kind. If it was there, she couldn't see it. “I don't know what that means.”

“Direct intercession. I will beg a mighty angel of the Lord to descend from Heaven. It will purge you of the demonic, protect the faithful, and destroy a great evil.”

“You can just call one up? ‘Hey, come on down, do some demon smiting'?”

“No,” Abas said. “Intercession will only happen for the greatest need. To purge the world of something so vile that it offends God Himself.”

“I don't understand,” Moreno said. He sat up, wincing as he braced himself with one arm.

“Belial. An enemy of God,” Abas said. “A chance to bring God's favor down upon us all, just as we discussed.”

Anna glanced at Moreno, who had forced himself to a sitting position. He was listening intently, the avid expression on his face not too different from Abas's.

“This angel of yours will come down for the express purpose of wiping Belial out?” Anna asked.

“And other demons. It will cleanse your soul. Bring Belial to me, and we can do this together.”

“I can't
hand
him to you, you understand?” she asked Abas. “He'll be coming for you. You have something he wants. You'll be bait, get it?”

“That's fair. I trust you'll at least provide security.”

“I need this as bad as you do,” Anna said. “Maybe worse. We'll cover you.”

“What do we gotta do?” Moreno said.

“What? You're more dead than alive,” Anna said. “You ain't gonna be no help to us.”

“He comes,” Abas said. “This is his neighborhood. These are his people.”

“Jesus, you—”

“What the fuck is going on here?” Freak said. “I don't know nothing about any of this, but it all sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me.”

“Stay out of this, Luisa,” Moreno said.

“‘Luisa'? Fuck you. I been watching corners and pulling triggers with every one of them homeboys out there, and now
you
call me fuckin'
Luisa
? You ain't cutting me out.
Papa
.”

Anna expected an explosion, some kind of typical macho respect tirade, maybe fists, but to her surprise Moreno merely nodded. Resignation, or perhaps a deeper form of sadness, softened his face.

“She should stay out of this,” Abas said.