Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel (29 page)

“What was that?” I say.

“I told him he was already swimming in blood,” says Brigitte. “He said I was a child and that I had no idea what it is to be a deity.”

“Mr. Muninn said that same thing to me.”

Traven says, “Are you going to tell us where to find the Qomrama?”

Nefesh looks down and takes a step back from the spreading red.

“You’re going to hate me if I tell you. Maybe we should play Twenty Questions. That way you’ll ease into the answer. What do you say, ex-priest?”

Traven shakes his head.

“I give up. I don’t care about the world or any of this anymore.”

“You were right,” says Nefesh. “He
is
a sentimentalist. Okay. I’ll tell you. Up in the lobby. Is there still a Christmas tree?”

“Yes,” I say.

“That’s where the Qomrama is. The ornament at the top of the tree.”

“Merde,”
is the first thing I hear, then more curses echo around the room.

“I told you you’d hate me,” says Nefish.

I really want a drink.

“So, we could have been in and out of here in twenty minutes?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“This really is a nightmare,” says Traven.

“Keep it together, Father.”

I go to Candy and wipe off the last smears of blood on her face.

“Okay. The fucking thing is on the tree. How does it work?”

Nefesh comes across the surface of the water to the steps and walks out of the pool.

“Oh. I don’t think I’m going to tell you that.”

“It’s not going to do us much good against the Angra.”

“We’ll see if they make it this far. I’m not convinced. If they do, maybe then I’ll tell you.”

“All of this is very interesting,” says Vidocq, “but we’re lost. We’ve come a long way and have no idea how to get back to the lobby.”

Nefesh points out to the spa area.

“Just go up the broken escalator, then up a set of stairs. You’ll be right there.”

“That’s impossible,” say Traven. “We must have come down at least eight floors to get here.”

“You went through the old tunnels? Down those funny spiral stairs? Did you happen to notice that there’s some strange magic lingering around this place?”

Candy says, “Maybe that’s why Aelita left the Qomrama in here. It’s easy to get in but hard to get out.”

“That’s part of it. But I think the chapel might have been calling to her,” says Nefesh.

“What chapel is that?” I say.

“On the other side of that wall is an adorable little chapel that was supposed to be used for weddings.”

“Wed in a shopping mall. How wonderfully American,” says Vidocq.

“It’s why I like the baths. They’re right next to the chapel. And part of the wall is missing, so I can ease out into the ocean and drift among the seaweed and fish from time to time.”

I say, “I don’t get it. There’s a fast-food wedding factory so Aelita decides to leave the most valuable object in the world?”

“No. I think what called her is the chapel inside the chapel. Some clever boots brought in stones from an ancient Angra temple and built a small shrine to one of their gods right into the chapel wall.”

“The shrine called to Aelita and the Qomrama without her knowing it,” says Vidocq. “I wonder if whoever built it also built the spiral stairs?”

I say, “Do demons come through the shrine?”

“All the time. Another reason remaining incorporeal is convenient.”

“I wonder if they collapsed the mall. The Angra might not like a Burger King on their sacred soil.”

Nefesh shrugs.

“Who knows with those things? Ancient gods. Mysterious ways. If I can’t figure it out, how could you?”

“Are you going to rot down here or pay Mr. Muninn a visit?” I say.

“Now that you busybodies have found me, I don’t suppose I have any choice.”

“Do you know where your brother Chaya is? You might tell him to go to Muninn too.”

“If I knew his whereabouts, do you think I’d tell you?”

Candy pulls on my arm.

“Forget it. Let’s go.”

I follow her for a few steps and turn back to Nefesh.

“Every time I meet one of you little Gods, it’s a ray of sunshine on a rainy day. Thanks for keeping the streak going.”

We head back to the lobby to find the broken escalator. We’re almost to the door when I hear Nefesh clear his throat.

“Thanks for the cigarette, Sandman Slim. And by the way, when I said one of you isn’t what he seems, I wasn’t talking about the mechanical man.”

“What does he mean?” says Traven.

“Forget it. He’s fucking with us because it’s all he can do. Play around in our heads. He can go to Hell or rot down there. Either is fine by me.”

N
EFESH MIGHT HAVE
been playing mind games when we left, but he told the truth about the way out. Up the dead escalator. A U-turn onto the stairs and we’re back in the Gothic rain forest of Kill City’s main lobby. The Christmas tree is straight and huge, a fungus-covered evergreen where there should be a giant banana palm or kapok.

“What do we do now? Nefesh said the Qomrama is all the way at the top,” says Traven.

Candy looks at me.

“You’ve used it before. Can you summon it or call it down or something?” she says.

My gut aches. I’m dizzy but I don’t want the others to know right now.

“Even if I knew how, I don’t think I have any hoodoo left in me.”

“You’re still here,” says someone from across the lobby. “I thought you’d all be gone by now. Or dead.”

It’s Hattie. Her tattered robes are in even worse shape than they were before. Her hair is wild and dirty. Her face is scratched.

She says, “Are there any Shoggots left?”

“A few, but not enough for you to worry about. Sorry about your kids.”

She nods.

“So am I. You’re trying to get up the tree. Why?”

“The thing we came here for is at the top.”

She smiles at us like the fools we are.

“You come all this way to end up back where you started. Ain’t that a kick in the backside.”

“It’s a kick, but I was thinking somewhere else.”

She looks Vidocq and me over.

“You’re too big to climb it. It’s rickety. You’ll bring the damned thing down on top of us.”

“I won’t,” says Candy.

She looks up the length of the tree like she’s climbed it a million times.

I say, “That’s fifty feet. You sure about this?”

She zips up her jacket. Pushes back her hair.

“Can any of you grow claws?”

“Take this,” says Vidocq. He hands her a white filter mask. “I thought these might come in useful. You don’t want to breathe any of that foulness into your lungs.”

“Thanks.”

Candy flips up her jacket collar and heads for the tree. On the way, curled claws extend from her hands as she goes Jade.

“Brave girl,” says Hattie.

“Yes. She is.”

“Foolish.”

“You live in a garbage dump, lady. You don’t get to pick and choose who’s a fool.”

The tree creaks as Candy climbs. Shaggy branches shake, sending down a storm of pine needles, dust, and fungus. I cover my eyes and mouth but still get a mouthful of the gritty, dirt-flavored mess. The others choke and go into racking coughs around me.

I look up through the bad air. Candy is climbing along the trunk, so I can’t see her, but the moving branches show me where she is. Jades are fast and strong. She’s already more than halfway up. The top of the tree sways as she gets higher. Wood snaps and pops in ways that inspire anything but confidence. Branches and glass ornaments crash to the floor.

“Are you all right?” yells Brigitte.

“Don’t bother,” I say. “She doesn’t talk when she’s Jaded out.”

The tree stops shaking. A branch at the top moves. There’s something silver on the end. The branch bends back toward the tree trunk.

“She’s found it,” says Hattie.

The treetop sways as Candy goes farther out onto the limb to drag it backward. There’s a loud
crack
and the whole top of the tree comes loose like it’s on a hinge, slamming into the lower branches, upside down but intact. Something falls through the branches. Not falls. Shoots like a bullet and crashes into the lobby floor, kicking up shards of marble and concrete like shotgun pellets.

I run to where it came down, not breathing. Not thinking. My head swims as I go. I stumble but I don’t stop.

In a crater two feet wide and three feet deep lies the 8 Ball. The others crowd around me. I look up at the tree. Branches shake, but this time they’re headed down. A few seconds later, Candy emerges from under the tree and sprints across the lobby, turning back to herself. She’s covered in a fine film of dust and spores and her hair is matted with pine needles. She runs her hand through her hair and shakes her head like a dog, sending dust everywhere.

“Told you I could do it,” she says.

“Good job. Now go take a shower. You smell like a love-hotel welcome mat.”

Hattie stands at the edge of the hole, looking down.

“Don’t look like much, does it?”

Traven says, “The core of the first nuclear bomb was only sixty-four kilograms and it leveled a city.”

“That so? Aren’t you a font of useless information.”

“I didn’t drop it,” says Candy. “It shot away from me when I tried to touch it.”

“Maybe it didn’t like you,” I say. “The father said it might be alive. Maybe your Jade form freaked it out.”

“Touchy little bastard, for a weapon,” says Candy.

I look at Traven.

“Okay, Father. You’re up. Let’s see if it likes you.”

“Do you think it’s safe now?” he says.

“When I had it before it only hurt anyone when I was angry or threatened. As long as you’re calm, it should be fine.”

“Calm,” he says, and looks at me. “That’s a tall order right now.”

Traven’s eyes are a little glassy. He looks far from a hundred percent as he gets on one knee and gently reaches for the 8 Ball.

“You’ll do fine,” I say. “Nice and easy. Look out for any sharp edges. It can nick you.”

He hesitates before reaching down again. Lays his hand on top of the ball and holds it there for a second. Nothing happens. He relaxes and gets a grip on it and pulls it out. He’s smiling when he stands up.

“I think the books were right about it being alive,” he says. “It feels like it’s asleep.”

He brings it over to us. I’d rather have it a mile away, but beggars can’t be choosers.

“We’re all right,” he says. “It’s over.”

“Let’s get out of here and go home,” says Brigitte.

“In a minute,” says Traven. His smile is vacant. There’s something wrong with his eyes.

He turns and hands the 8 Ball to Hattie. She takes it from him like she knew exactly what was going to happen.

I should have seen it before, but I’ve been so wrapped up in my own aches and bullshit that I missed it. One of us isn’t who he seems, said Nefesh. Father Traven is possessed. Someone in Hell is using the possession key. They’ve taken him over and Hattie knew it was going to happen.

“What are you doing?” says Vidocq.

Hattie cradles the 8 Ball against her chest.

“Just doing what he was told,” she says.

I reach for Traven, but before I can get to him, his eyes flutter closed and he slumps to the floor, his head cracking on the pavement. Brigitte starts for him but I grab her and push her behind me.

I take a couple of steps toward Hattie. I want to rip her apart. Traven is bleeding where his skull hit the floor. I want to see her bleed too. She steps back, but not because she’s afraid.

“Who are you?”

“Don’t you recognize me?” she says, her voice coolly amused. “You destroyed my home. You humiliated me. You’re an Abomination and your presence in this city has brought it and me nothing but misery.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Her face shifts. Her skin crawls. The old woman becomes a young one, then cycles back to a crone, like the phases of the moon.

“Medea Bava,” I say. “I heard you were Deumos’s sorority sister. Shouldn’t you be in Hell?”

“And leave the world to your tender mercies?” she says.

“You killed Hattie and took her place. Why?”

“For just this minute. To see the look on your face when you knew.”

“Why didn’t you just take the 8 Ball and go?”

“I didn’t know where it was in here any more than you did. Besides . . . letting you find it for me was a chance to watch you and your friends suffer, and that alone was reason enough to watch and wait.”

I pull the SIG from my pocket and aim for her head.

She holds up the 8 Ball.

“You say it works when you’re angry or threatened? How do you think you make me feel?”

I lower the SIG and put it back in my pocket.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Why, return it to its rightful owner.”

She pulls out a pendant from under her robes. I recognize the shape. It’s Aelita’s angelic sigil. Hattie kisses it three times.

“Come to me, sister. Come and receive what’s yours.”

“Medea.”

It happens instantly. The voice comes from behind us. Aelita, in a Maggie Thatcher power suit, shoulders her way past Vidocq and Candy. Bumps my shoulder as she goes past.

“You have the Qomrama, I see.”

Medea uses it to point in my direction.

“The Abomination almost had it. I took it from him and now I want to do what’s right.”

“Thank you, sister,” says Aelita, and reaches for the 8 Ball.

Medea’s lips go from a smile to a hard straight line. The 8 Ball shoots from her hand like a cannonball, slamming into Aelita over the heart, driving her across the lobby and into the wall. Spinning blades sprout from the ball, whirring like rotary saws burrowing into her chest. An angel’s scream is a terrible thing to hear. It’s the death wail of something that was never supposed to die but has lived long enough to see the universe turned upside down as it now stares down death’s gullet. Holy angel blood splatters the floor and our feet as the Qomrama punches through Aelita’s chest and out her back. She slumps to the ground, and for a few seconds she twitches, trying to breathe, trying to focus on something besides the pain, her blood, and fractured bones. Medea hasn’t moved. The 8 Ball flies from Aelita’s chest and back into her hand. Aelita gasps one more time and fades away. An angel’s death. Leaving nothing behind but one more hole in the universe.