The Blue Blazes (19 page)

But the third and fourth…

Their necks are ripped out. A Hispanic kid, his throat torn from the front. A black girl, Dominican maybe, the side of hers chewed open.

Ahead is the door into their safehouse.

It is no longer safe. It hangs open. She sees the hallway and a handful of doors, and in that hallway and between those doors are more bodies. Another five, easy.

Then a door down that hallway squeaks open.

A bulldog of a man in a cheap gray suit steps out. Grinning at her. She knows his face. One of the Organization lieutenants. A hands-on hitter. Spall. Or Lutkevich. They come in a pair and she’s not sure which one is which, but he’s damn sure one of them.

He waves at her. Little waggling fingers. Playful-like.
Toodle-oo
.

They’re ahead of her. They knew. Somehow, they knew. The Sinner Boys gave her up. Or the Black Sleeves. She told them where she was going. Damnit.
Damnit.
 

The bulldog’s got a gun. A shotgun. Pump action with the sling hanging loose.

But then he does a strange thing: he drops it. Holds up his hands as he walks toward the door, toward her. “Hey,” he says. “Wait there. Let’s be friends.”

Big smile.

A trick. It’s a goddamn trick. He knows the shotgun has a spray pattern. Won’t get a good hit on her from here. Pellets. Just pellets.

He’s going to get close. Stick her with a knife.

Fuck this. She knows enough. Time to run.

She pivots. Down the steps. Feet running a rumbling drum roll – fast, too fast, almost tripping, toe of one foot almost catching the heel of the other–

She catches herself on the railing. Down, down, down.
Go, go, go
–

Ninth floor.

She’s watching her feet now.

Mistake. Nora almost runs into him.

The other one.
Of course
the other one. Spall and Lutkevich. Those names, you always say them together. Partners in knee-capping.

(Partners in… throat-ripping?)

The skinny one has that same smile. Waves the same way. Wiggle, waggle.

She’s caught. Trapped like a rat between two cats.

Except this rat has a trick.

Her hand darts into her pocket. Finds the scales there – scales from a dead Snakeface, scales purchased from an old blobby half-and-half at the Oddments bazaar. Magic trick time. She pops one scale under her tongue. The taste is like licking a bloody battery.

The trick is she disappears. She can’t feel it, but she can see it. Disconcerting as all hell to have your hands fade from view, to lose sight of your own peripheral eye sockets – you never think about those until they’re gone.

The killer before her looks shocked – one minute she’s there, the next,
poof
.

Good. She leaps the railing – hits the stairs going down. Body slams against the wall. Feet still echoing. The scale hides her from sight, but she’s still on all the other senses. They can hear her.
Smell
her. Nora wishes suddenly she didn’t wear that perfume all the time – the one that smells like gardenias, the one her father bought her a few years ago for Christmas.

No time to worry about that now.

Eighth floor. Through the door. Another stairway on the far side. It won’t connect up to the tenth floor but connects to all the others. In the hall, a small black kid peers out his door, holding a raggedy Elmo doll. As she darts past, she gives him a gentle shove backward, whispers, “Hide!” Then she closes the door.

Nora keeps running.

She tries to soften her steps. Bolts across to the far side of the hall. Opens the door. It squeaks. It
bangs
.

Still, she’s on the other side. The lights are brighter here. Doesn’t matter, they won’t be able to see her. And nobody’s here.

Time, then, to wait. To hide in plain sight.

Nora eases up against the corner. Presses herself tight against it. Willing herself small.
Calm your breath.
Her teeth start to chatter. She tenses her whole body till it stops.

Nothing. No movement. Nobody here.

Just the buzz of fluorescents. The distant sound of someone yelling.

She’s not sure how long she stands there. Two minutes? Twenty?

But she’s lost them. She has to have. She creeps out from the corner. With each step she brings her foot gingerly down, soft heel to easy toe. Tip-toe gently toward the steps –

Bam
. Something hits her in the solar plexus. The air goes out of her. She staggers back, looks forward. Nobody’s there and–

The air shimmers.

The other fat one appears. Smiling.

“We have magic, too,” is all he says.

Then someone grabs her from behind. Long arms wrap all the way around her. It’s impossible, even as tall as the other killer is. These arms
feel
like they wind around–

Like snakes.

Oh, no.

The thin one laughs as his fangs sink into her neck.

And he keeps laughing. She can hear that laugh, echoing into her heart and her head. Dull and throbbing around her fading pulse-beat. She tries to cry.

She can’t.

 

19

 

This is what I have discerned from looking upon their cave drawings and reading their crass hieroglyphics found at their temples: I think the gobbos are slaves. We think them as animals, as monsters, but I believe they are a race of people – subterranean hominids long separated from the genetic line that created us, or created the Neanderthals. I further suspect they found their way into the dark to survive some cataclysm of the above world. The Deluge? An Ice Age? Some… volcanic pyroclasm? Their myths are unclear. They came down here thinking they were alone, but they were not. Entities waited here at the bottom of the labyrinth: Those Who Eat. Chthonic gods, entrenched at the center of the maze like worms in a dog’s heart. And I believe those gods enslaved the gob-folk, whether out of fear or appeasement, or out of love or even some other heretic magic, I cannot say. I believe if we can break the goblins free of those gods, they can be tamed. Even made to live among us as people. Wouldn’t that be grand?

– from the Journals of John Atticus Oakes, Cartographer of the Great Below

 

“Skelly’s gone,” Mookie says. His voice is more a croaking bleat than the booming growl he’s used to. He drops her Bowie knife on the ground. “I found this. Nobody’s seen her. Which means they took her. Which means I
lost
her.”

Burnsy paces in front of Mookie just outside his house. Around, the dead of Daisypusher hover. Some clean up goblin bodies. Some weep. Some console.

“Was she someone to you?”

“No. Yeah. I dunno. A friend of my daughter’s, I guess.” Just one more way I failed you, Nora.

“She seemed all right,” Burnsy says. A tepid sentence, but spoken with the weight one criminal affords another. She’s a stand-up guy
.
Like you could trust her.

Could he? Mookie doesn’t know. Was she planning to stab him in the back when he wasn’t looking? At this point, it doesn’t matter.

The cleaver hangs at his side. Wet with clotting gobbo blood. And matted with hair.

“I gotta go after her,” Mookie says.

“Do you?”

“This is on me. Maybe if I figure out where they’re going, I can catch up–”

“Where
are
they going? They could go south. Could go north. Could find a shaft down into the Tangle. Will she be a breeder? A sacrifice? A test for their weapons? Food? A free fuck? You don’t know what they’re gonna do with her, which means you don’t know where they’re taking her. The Underworld’s a big place, in case you hadn’t heard.”

“Yeah, I
heard
.” Then, quieter, “I still have to try.”

Just then – a raspy throat-clear at the door. It’s the woman in the pink robe.

“Burnsy,” she says, holding out the scalloped box.

“What the–?” Burnsy steps up, takes the box. “Florence, what the hell is this?”

“The girl gave it to me. Said to protect it. I think those gobs were lookin’ for it.”

“It
is
Ochre,” Mookie says. The Golden Gate.

Burnsy takes the box, then mists himself with the blue spritz bottle: a nervous gesture if not a necessary one. “Yeah. It is.”

“Why would they want it?”

“No idea. I don’t even know what it does. I just know it opens a gate.”

“To what?”

On this, the dead man says nothing. Does he have an answer? Or doesn’t he want to say? Whatever the case, Burnsy hands the box to Mookie. “Here. Take it. If I’m gonna be looking into this murder thing for you, then someone’s going to need to protect the box. I figure a human cement mixer like you ought to do the trick.”

Mookie takes it. “You sure?” The dead man nods, but then says:

“That means you don’t go after Skelly. I can’t have you carrying this stuff straight to the gobbos. If they were looking for this, then you need to take it up top.” Burnsy lowers his voice: “Mook. Go find your daughter. Quit fuckin’ around down here. If they think she did it, then they’re gonna go after her. And you need to be there.”

“You’re right.” Mookie slides the box of what-may-be-Ochre into his satchel. Next to the container of Vermillion.
Golden Gate and Red Rage
. Both myths until now. Could that mean that the Death’s Head is real? Maybe, Mookie tells himself, he can still find it. Can still bring it to the Boss and cure him. Especially now that Casimir is dead. He suddenly thinks to ask Burnsy, “What do you know about sacrificial offerings? We found marigolds, mezcal, chocolate on the kid’s body.”

“Day of the Dead-style
ofrendas
? Sounds like someone’s trying to appease someone. Or something.”

“Found two broken chain links in the pockets, too. Iron.”

Burnsy’s crispy brow furrows. “Sounds like a summoning and binding.”

“What?”

“Someone called up something from the Underworld and then… locked it the fuck down. Bound it. Maybe to the body.”

“That’s bad, right?”

“It’s rarely good.”

“Thanks for your help, Burnsy.”

“We’re not fuckin’ fuck-buddies. But I’ll go do the job. I’ll find the ghost of the grandson. And I’ll keep my barely-there ear to the ground for your girl, Skelly.”

“I can’t leave that task to you.”

“You gotta. Because you have other shit on your plate. But you owe me, Mookie Pearl. You owe me and my family like you wouldn’t believe.”

 

From Daisypusher to a long unused subway station. Then to a subway tunnel. Then to the 2nd Avenue station. Then up the stairs. To the street.

Into the light. Again.

Everything hurts.

Afternoon coming into evening. Mookie hasn’t slept. He’s barely eaten. He had the hell kicked out of him by not one but two goblin hordes. And the mistakes he’s made seem like ghosts walking with him as he staggers up out of the subway tunnel.

Skelly: dragged away. Lulu and Karyn: one dead, the other forced to be alone. Werth: maybe betrayed him.

And his own daughter? Hates him. Hates him enough to go after his entire Organization. To maybe murder a young man. To bring it all down on Mookie’s head.

His ex-wife. Jess.
Jessamyn
. When was the last time he even
called
her? To check in? To do more than send her an envelope full of money?

Jesus. What an asshole he is.

No wonder they all hate him. No wonder everybody betrayed him.

Grampop’s voice in his head: You’re dumber than a truck full of broken toilets…

As his phone finds the signal, his cell dings. A text message coming in.

Mookie comes up to the corner, people moving in streams past him, and he checks the phone, shielding it from the glare of the sun.

One message from Werth. All caps.

CALL ME.
 

Mookie thinks about ditching the phone. But he doesn’t
know
that Werth sold him out. And he doesn’t know that Werth knows he suspects, either.

He dials the old goat.

Werth answers.

“Werth, what the f–”

“Mookie, shut up and listen. We have your daughter. You hear me?
We have your girl.
”

“You sonofabitch.”

“I want you to come in, Mook. It’s time to talk this out. Things have changed, you understand? You need to get right with this. There’s still room for you here.”

“Still room? Room for what? The fuck are you talking about?”

“The Boss is… listen, things have changed. Candlefly’s got the wheel.”

“Candlefly? And you’re on board?” Goddamnit.
“You sniveling fuck.”

“I’m texting you a couple pics so you know we’re serious.”

We’re
serious. Werth and Candlefly?

“I’m glad Nora shot you,” Mookie growls. “But I won’t be so gentle.”

“Shut up and look at your phone.”

The phone dings.

Deep breath. He looks.

“Nora,” he says. Voice a pained whisper. It’s her. Sitting on a chair in a wine cellar. Hands bound behind her. Feet bound to the chair. They beat her. Her face is bruised and bloodied. Head slumped forward. Mookie imagines that Werth did that. To get even.

Back on the phone.

“See?” Werth says. Sounding strained. Tired. Like all this was inevitable. “You can still do right by us. Come in. Play nice. We can all get on the same page. You can make out good. They wanna do right by us if we do right by them.”

“I’m going to break you in half. I’m going to beat you to death with your own horns. I’m gonna shove your hooves up your–”

“You don’t have room for that kind of bullshit here. The house, Mookie. Be here in the hour or else.”

“I don’t know she’s alive. Nora. It was just a pic. She might be–” He can’t even say the last word. It catches in his throat, a frog in a net. “I don’t know she’s alive.”

“Here.” A fumble of the phone. Skin or fabric rasping against the receiver.

Then: “Mookie.”

Nora. It’s her.

“It’s me, honey. It’s Daddy.”

All she says is, “You reap what you sow.”

Then Nora’s gone and Werth is back on the line.

“Satisfied?”

“Go to hell.”

“The house. One hour. Or she eats a bullet.”

Click
.