Sacrifices (30 page)

“I believe I am, yes.” He held his hands out, weaving unsteadily. “I am entirely at your mercy.”

The five of them stood silently as Karyn and Sobell stared each other down. There was a good argument, Karyn knew, for ditching Sobell right here in this parking lot, or maybe shoving him off the nearest bridge—he'd offered up his throat, and she thought at some level that she'd be a fool not to cut it. After all the misery he'd caused, he deserved no less.

But we need him.

She stood there, trying like hell but unable to reach any other conclusion.

Genevieve shifted, gaze flicking from Sobell to Karyn and back, looking like she wanted to crawl under a rock and wait it out there.

“Anna is positively itching to pull somebody's head off,” Karyn said. “If you give me the smallest reason, I'm inclined to let her start with yours.”

Sobell nodded gravely. “In my current condition, I'd be hard-pressed to stop her. We are, once again, in this together.”

That deserved some kind of snarky retort, but Karyn couldn't muster the energy.

“Perhaps we should get down to business,” Sobell said. “When you're quite ready.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Anna said.

“Hey,” Genevieve said, giving Anna a nervous look. “Hey. He's on our side. It's—it's okay.”

Anna didn't seem to hear. She took a step toward Sobell, her shoulders thrown back, her head tipped up to look him in the eye.

“Anna!” Karyn shouted.

Anna spun. Rage had pulled her face into a mask of hate, and for one terrible second, Karyn thought Anna didn't recognize her at all. Then the rage dissolved into confusion.

“What?” Anna said.

“You gotta focus, babe,” Genevieve said. “Please.”

Anna turned back to Sobell as though nothing had happened. “Where is Belial?” she asked him.

“I'm not sure. I suspect it's out doing things both nefarious and adverse to our interests.” His gait uneven, he approached the priest and extended a trembling hand. “Enoch Sobell,” he said.

The priest, taken aback, shook Sobell's hand and quickly took his own hand away. “Alonzo Abas.”

“I am told you intend to invite one of the upstairs neighbors down for a visit.”

“I intend to plead with an angel for intercession,” Abas said. Sobell, Karyn noted, didn't take his eyes from the man's face, not for an instant, studying every tic and movement as though for a revelation.

“And this angel will what? Bar the gates of your own personal Eden in the Gardens?”

“If God wills it.”

“And what will it do to me, Father?”

“Abas. Just Abas,” the priest said. “If you repent and abase yourself before it, it will purge the corruption from you.”

Sobell's scrutiny didn't waver. He chewed on the words for a moment, unblinking, as though waiting for the priest
to amend his statement. Then: “How do you know it will not simply smite me dead?”

Abas offered up a smile that seemed entirely too calm. “I don't.”

“Well,” Sobell said, his expression sagging, “that's fair, I suppose. To destroy, or to be destroyed,” he added quietly. He put his hands in his pockets, stood up straight, and visibly tried to muster some of his old swagger. “My understanding is that you'll be needing a demon for this. Where would you like me to have it delivered?”

“That's the trouble,” Karyn said. “I think Belial has gone on a recruiting drive.”

“I'm quite sure of it.”

“If we simply invite him to show up at the church, there's going to be a massacre.”

“It does excel at massacres, by all available evidence.”

“Abas has preparation to do. We can't risk Belial showing up with his men before he's finished, and honestly it would be better if his men never showed up at all. How do we get him somewhere, alone?”

“I believe that I can get it to show up somewhere on fairly short notice. Whether it arrives alone . . .”

Karyn tuned out the image in her mind and focused on the scene in front of her, trying to get a read on Sobell, to get any indication that he was playing them false. In her vision, he wasn't even present. It was night, the parking lot was empty, and there was a huge crack running down the center of it. No help at all. “I don't suppose you can just ask it to come alone?”

“Alternatively, I could ask it to show up
expecting
an altercation. I suspect the response will be the same either way. It's impulsive and reckless, not stupid.”

“We don't have time to screw around,” Anna said. “Get him to show up somewhere, and we'll figure it out. We'll either grab him then or tail him until we see a chance. Either that or we invite him to the church and he shows up with a dozen bloodthirsty, magicked-up maniacs and fucks everything up.”

“Just get him alone and grab him?” Karyn said. “Just like that?”

Anna gave her a chilling grin. “You can see the future, remember? How hard can it be?”

“I don't think giving Belial warning is the appropriate way to handle this,” Sobell said. “I may have another means of tracking it.”

“I tried,” Genevieve said. “There was a gross hairball in its den, or whatever. I can't track Belial, though. It's blocked somehow.”

“Do you suppose Clarence is as well?” Sobell asked with a smug grin. “Because, as disgusting as it is, I happen to have a bottle full of his saliva. It isn't as good as blood or hair, but with a few pointers, I suspect, you can work with it just fine.”

*   *   *

They left in a two-car convoy. Nail drove Genevieve's car with Sobell in the back while Genevieve worked whatever revolting magic was necessary to extract a location from the bottle of spit. Karyn and Anna followed. Abas had departed with Rigoberto, back to finish the preparations. The group was armed with Nail's gun, a few scraps of paper Genevieve had prepped with throwaway defensive magic, and a plastic 7-Eleven bag with the ball of hair in it, which Sobell insisted might come in handy despite its uselessness for tracking. After half an hour of weaving through side streets, they parked down the street from of a white building proclaiming itself the Gardena Methodist Church.

Rather than get out of the car, Karyn called Genevieve's cell.

“That's the place,” Genevieve said. “As best I can tell. Nail says the third car there is Clarence's.”

“Fuck me running,” Anna said from the driver's seat. “Four cars? How many of these clowns has he rounded up?”

Anna reached for the door handle, and Karyn put a hand on her arm. “Hold on. Just give me a second.”

“I'm just gonna have a look around,” Anna said.

“I know. Just—just wait,” Karyn said.

Anna glared at her, but she stopped.

Karyn stared at the scene in front of her, willing it to resolve not into the present, but into minutes and hours from now. At first, everything was a mess, bright daylight superimposed on late afternoon, noonday sun on churchgoers' heads and long evening shadows stretching out behind people walking down the sidewalk, but as she watched and concentrated, the daylight scenes dropped away. The result was still a visual cacophony. There were police cars and sirens, yellow tape, a small crowd. Cars on the street rolled through it all, each time causing Karyn to flinch as she expected a crash that never came. The light went on in the church, then off, then on, then off again, minutes or hours flashing by and compressing alternating periods into an uneven strobe.

She'd nearly given up on getting anything useful from the soup of imagery in front of her when a rabbit bolted out the (now open) front door. Three wolves followed, then a whole pack. A huge, shaggy gray wolf—a zombie wolf, with burning eyes and maggots dripping from its tongue—stepped from the crowd and watched the others run down their prey with what Karyn swore was amusement.

“Hang on,” Karyn said.

“Huh?”

Anna was just hanging up her phone, Karyn noticed. Had she been talking? Karyn's head swam, and she felt an intense, bone-deep fatigue settle into her. She blinked, yawned. Air filled her lungs, and the disorientation abated somewhat, but the weariness was crushing.

“Nail says hurry up,” Anna said.

“Belial's going to hand himself to us,” Karyn said, forcing her eyes open and her mind to focus on the situation at hand. “
Somebody
is going to come running out that door like hell on wheels, most of the others are going to follow him to run him down. Belial is going to stand there like a smug asshole and watch. Right there, after dark,” she said, pointing at the sidewalk in front of the door. “It's the best shot we're likely to get.”

“All right. Just tell me where to set up.”

Karyn looked at the shadows creeping across the lawn.
They had, what? Four hours? A little more? Was it enough time to make a difference?

“Actually,” she said, “we have a little time. And I need you to do something else.”

*   *   *

“You know this is stupid, right?” Genevieve asked. They were her first words in the uneasy silence since Karyn had sent them on this mission. Anna had seemed distracted, ready to snarl at anything that moved, and the joy of being reunited was quickly dampened by, if not outright suspicion, then a poisonous, bubbling wariness.

Anna signaled and guided the car down the off-ramp into Doyle Gardens. “Maybe,” Anna conceded. “And maybe it's gonna keep a lot of people from getting killed.” She pulled the car up to the curb. “Here's your stop.”

Genevieve didn't open the door. “Hey. I know everything got fucked—no. I know
I
fucked up. I just want—”

“Not now,” Anna said, brusquely enough to hurt. “Let's get this shit done tonight. Clear my head. We'll worry about the rest after that.”

“I don't know if—”

“I said
not now
.”

“Right. Sorry.” Genevieve got out of the car. Anna rolled away the instant the door closed.

Genevieve started walking. She'd gotten a little turned around approaching from this side, but she soon saw familiar landmarks and oriented herself. Her destination was just a few blocks up. Hopefully, Stash would be there, but if not, she thought it wouldn't be hard to get somebody to take her to him. Finding him would be easy. Getting him to sign up for this latest craziness was a whole other level of problem.

A woman with a stroller looked at her distrustfully as she passed. So did a bony old man on a stoop. She supposed she couldn't blame them. Strangers here brought trouble, and more so recently than ever. It sure didn't ease the pervasive feeling of impending doom, though, and she wondered again how she'd let it get to this point.

Focus on Anna. Focus on getting this done. That's all
that matters right now.
She repeated the words like a mantra until she reached the boarded-up shop.

There were guards outside, the same two guys who had escorted here the first time she'd come. She'd never learned their names, she realized, and she just thought of them as Eighteen and Goatee. Eighteen gave her a nod that might have been respect. Goatee crossed his arms and hardened his face. More distrust.

“I need to talk to Stash,” Genevieve said.

“He ain't feeling too good right now,” Goatee said.

“That's too bad. I still need to see him.”

“He ain't feeling too good because he's shot. You fucked him over.”

“Come on, man,” Eighteen said. “You know it wasn't like that.”

“I don't know shit.”

Genevieve held her hands up. “How bad? Is he going to be all right? Should he be in the hospital?”

“He'll live,” Goatee said. “No thanks to you.”

“I'm pretty sure I saved his life. What he did after that . . .” She shrugged. “A person can only do so much.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Look,” Eighteen said to his companion. “We ain't here to decide who gets to see him or not. Sit tight a sec,” he said to Genevieve. “Be right back.”

Goatee scowled as the other guy disappeared into the building. Genevieve stood out there with him as he resumed his palace guard routine, looking straight ahead. She might as well not have been there.

Eighteen came back after an agonizing five minutes and waved her in. He gave Goatee a friendly elbow as she walked by.

Stash sat at a table inside. Black Cat and a few of the other Eighteeners sat around smoking. Cards were scattered across the table, but nobody was paying any attention to them now. All eyes were on Genevieve.

Genevieve pointed at the sling cradling Stash's left arm. “To hear your guy at the door tell it, you got six bullets in your lungs and another two in your guts.”

“He's pissed. Thought we had them on the run, and then—well, you saw what happened.”

“I saw dead kids. I don't know whose side they were on.”

“View must be nice from up there. All impartial, like.” The young men and boys around him scowled. Only the one they called Black Cat watched Genevieve without either hostility or condemnation.

“I did what I could,” Genevieve said.

“And don't think I don't appreciate it.” Stash mimed a gun and pretend to shoot. “Click. What's that good for today? What are you here for?”

She studied the wall of faces. This was going to go over poorly. “This time I need your help.”

“Oh well, shit. Sign me up for that.” A round of chuckles followed that statement, but Genevieve fixed her gaze on Stash's and didn't waver. He broke eye contact. He paused, then turned back to her. “What do you need?”

“I need you and everybody you can round up to help evacuate the civilians from Locos territory.”

No chuckles this time. A few incredulous faces among the mostly confused. Stash wiped a bead of sweat off the side of his face.

“You're fucking with me, right?” he said.