Authors: Richard Kadrey
But Cabal isn’t the only Sub Rosa who’s been fucked by Drifters. Someone let loose a roomful of eaters on Enoch
Springheel. The Vigil sent two after me. I bet whoever sicced them on Cabal and Springheel rented Aelita my pair.
Then there’s poor Titus. The guy never hurt anyone. The worst thing Titus ever did was pad his hours when his client had money. And he was small-time. He never had a big-time or dangerous case in his life. He was just doing a back-of-the-milk-carton job. He must have seen something he wasn’t supposed to. What was it? Maybe whoever has the local zombie franchise? And now every flavor of Drifter is running—well, stumbling—down every street in the city. Was that the plan all along or is someone making a bigger mess to cover up the mess that Titus found?
Why would anyone bother to kill a loser like Enoch Springheel? And—sorry, Cabal—take out another loser like Cabal? Cabal might mix a good glamour cocktail, but he can’t be the only Sub Rosa in town who could do that. Vidocq could do it in his sleep. There have to be others as good as Cabal and more reliable. So, the glamour might have been only half the reason the buyer came to Cabal.
What did Cabal Ash and Enoch Springheel have in common? Nothing except that they were the heads of two important Sub Rosa families. But who fucking cares about that? No wonder Sherlock Holmes did all that coke. Math is hard.
I get out my cell and call Kasabian.
“Listen, is there anything online or in the Codex about old Sub Rosa families?”
“Yeah. What do you need?”
“Spencer Church. Are the Churches a big deal? In the history of L.A.?”
“Wait.”
The line goes quiet. I can hear typing and low voices.
“Yeah. The Churches were one of the first four families in the area.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Connections. Cabal is dead. So’s Springheel. Church went missing and then turned up dead and hungry at Bamboo House. What do they have in common? They’re all from heavyweight households. Someone is using Drifters to go after all the original families.”
“Why?”
“A grudge? Social climbing? I don’t know how those people think. But if I’m right, it means that the Geistwalds could be next. Hell, even without Drifters they’re in trouble. It looks like their son is an impostor. A con man. He might be the one behind this whole ballistic cluster fuck.”
“You know, sometimes I’m glad I never leave this room.”
“I’m going to stop by the Chateau before heading over to the Geistwalds’.”
“Don’t get eaten, man. Your friends are nice, but they’ve never even heard of
Once Upon a Time in the West
or
Le Samourai.”
“I make no promises.”
I
GO OUT
through the broken front doors. There are no shadows and no decent wheels to steal, so I head back toward the city lights on foot. How do regular people ever get anywhere?
I almost do a header into an open manhole in front of
the hospital. Another manhole is open farther up the street. And another beyond that. I want to get mad at the teenybopper clever kids who would do something like that, but I can’t because it’s exactly the kind of asshole move I would have found hilarious when I was fifteen.
The empty streets are getting crowded ahead, but no one is going anywhere. Great. A Drifter block party. They’re crawling up out of the sewers, but there’s nothing to eat in this part of town but me and I’m off the menu. I broadcast a general “Fuck Off” message through the
Druj
Emergency Broadcast System. That doesn’t leave the shamblers much to do but shamble. They look like little kids at their first dance class, turning in vague circles, swaying back and forth, and bumping into each other. If it wasn’t for the murder, cannibalism, and trapped, tormented souls in their rotting carcasses, they’d be almost cute.
I could go around the Drifters, but even the angel part of me is fresh out of reasonable behavior where they’re concerned. I follow the white line down the middle of the street, shoving Drifters out of the way, knocking over the slow ones and walking over them.
More open manholes and more Drifters crawling out.
Being a salaryman bad guy must really suck. Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom get to come up with the crazy schemes, but then some poor schmuck has to actually corral the giant radioactive ants or put exactly the right amount of poison in exactly the right water treatment plants at exactly the right time. And an entry-level bad guy probably doesn’t even have a helicopter. He has to drive the poison from treatment plant to treatment plant on city streets in his second-hand
Civic, hoping there isn’t a flock of ducklings or a broken-down minivan blocking traffic.
Case in point is the loser up ahead prying up another damn manhole with a crowbar. Does he have gloves? Is he wearing a lower-back brace like warehouse workers use? Are there OSHA rules for supervillain henchmen?
“Lift with your legs, not your back. Didn’t Dr. No teach you anything?”
He looks up and starts running. Right into a wall of wandering Drifters. I catch up in about two seconds. He swings the crowbar a couple of times. I catch it on the third swing, tear it out of his hands, and jam it through the skull of the nearest zed. Yeah, it’s a little showy, but a move like that can save you from having to waste time making a lot of boring threats.
He went down on his ass when I snatched the crowbar, so I grab his jacket and haul him to his feet. It takes me a minute to figure out what exactly I’m looking at. There’s a face superimposed over another face, like two ghost faces stacked on top of each other. The angel’s eyes take over and separate his real face from the glamour. I recognize one immediately. The other takes a few more seconds. I smile, but the Thug Number Six doesn’t smile back.
“Nice night, fake Rainier. How’s it hanging?”
He doesn’t say anything. His hands fumble at his waist. He has another weapon. I let him look for it.
“Is this how you got the Drifters into Cabal’s place or did you walk them in yourself? I know you were in there because he put on that glamour you’re wearing right now. I couldn’t see it back at the party, but now I can see both of your faces.”
He finally pulls his backup weapon. A cute little Sig Sauer P232. It’s a compact, toylike pistol that will blow substantial holes in you at close range. I let him get it out of his belt, but catch his arm as he’s swinging it up to shoot. Fake Rainier is a big bundle of twitchy fear, so when I grab him, the gun goes off and blows a hole in his foot. He screams and I let him fall. I take the Sig and put it in my pocket.
I look around and spot a Drifter bouncing off a chain-link fence across the street. He looks brand-new, like he was bitten and turned tonight. I go over and rip off his shirt and take it back to Rainier.
He’s on the ground rocking back and forth, whimpering and clutching his foot in both hands.
“Relax. You’ve got another foot.”
He says, “Fuck you,” through gritted teeth.
“You might want to watch your tone with the man who can bandage you or let you bleed to death.”
“Get away from me. Do you know who my family is?”
“Yeah, and the Geistwalds aren’t your real family, are they, Aki?”
He blinks at me. His hands open and close around his bleeding foot. I tear the Drifter’s shirt into strips and wrap them around the wound.
“I remember you at Bamboo House of Dolls. You came over to the bar like a snotty little prince and ordered me to do my portaling trick. When I told you to go away and you wouldn’t, there was almost a scene. But it was all an act, wasn’t it, Aki? Your mom was there hoping to find someone who could track down her lost boy. Someone told you she was going to be there. You weren’t in the bar to impress
your friends or get under my skin. You were testing your glamour. You knew if you could walk by your own mother without her recognizing you, you were home free. No one would ever see anything but Rainier Geistwald.”
“Keep talking, asshole. You’re dead.”
I pull the bandage tight and make him wince.
“If Cabal did such a good job with the glamour, why did you have to kill him?”
“Have you smelled the guy? Besides, I never killed anyone.”
“Right. You just opened the door and let your friends do the dirty work. I bet you didn’t even go inside to watch the fun. You stayed by the door until the screaming stopped and then shooed your friends back out. One thing. I know why Drifters don’t eat me, but why don’t they eat you?”
The kid shrugs. Hits me with a very professional sneer. I bet he practices in a mirror.
“Maybe I was good in Sunday school and Jesus loves me.”
“Or someone threw a protection spell your way.”
He shrugs.
“There’s so much going on right now, who can remember?”
I flick his bleeding foot with my finger.
“You still haven’t told me why you killed Cabal. Mind if I take a guess? Cabal and Cosima had hit some hard times, so when he found a ripe young rube like you on his doorstep asking for illegal hoodoo, he had to say yes. Not for the fee, but so he could blackmail you later. Isn’t that what happened? He threatened to let slip that you weren’t really Rainier?”
Aki shakes his head.
“You have no goddamn idea what’s going on.”
“I know you’re impersonating the Geistwalds’ son and that someone is gunning for the old families. I have to give it to you. Hiding with an old family while you take out the others is pretty slick. You already got Cabal, the Springheels, and Spencer Church’s family. Probably others I don’t even know about. Tell me, when do the Geistwalds get it?”
“Gee, I don’t know. You’re the one with experience killing Geistwalds. You tell me.”
I look at him and keep looking until he turns away.
“You’re not a Geistwald, so don’t give me any family outrage over Eleanor. And she was a vampire. She was already dead when I got to her.”
“But she was still walking and talking. That’s an okay kind of dead. Not the best because she needed blood to keep going, but it’s better than nothing. And you had to take that away from her. Were you jealous that for all your supposed powers, you’re still going to die like all those anonymous sheep back in town? You should have been smart and let Eleanor bite you. Or do you have something against living forever?”
Interesting question. I hadn’t thought about Eleanor’s death beyond it being one more thing I regretted. But Aki has a good point.
“I don’t have anything against immortality, but I’m not begging for it either. Are you? Is that what this is about? You think you found some way around death? How? As one of these things? Jesus, kid, I hope your brilliant idea isn’t to somehow get yourself turned into a Savant.”
“You don’t understand one damned thing that’s going on.”
The angel whispers something in my ear.
“Are you sure, Aki? If you’re not going to night school to become a Drifter, what was Eleanor doing with the
Druj Ammun?
Where did she get it? From you?”
“How do you even know about that?”
Aki thrashes around. Almost grabs me before falling back down.
He says, “You’re dead. You are so fucking dead. And not like Eleanor. You’ll be the kind where your soul is trapped in your rotting flesh while the city sucks it dry. L.A. belongs to the Death Born. It always has and it always will.”
That’s interesting.
“Who are the Death Born, Aki? Not you. You’re just a suburban brat. You learned your magic from watching
Bewitched.
Who are the Death Born?”
“Your ass is grass, man. I cannot believe how fucking dead you are.”
The angel speaks again and things fall into place.
“How’s Mutti doing? Not your birth mom. Your fun mom. Koralin. Is she all right? I hope she’s somewhere safe and sound.”
He blinks, slowly.
“Eleanor wanted me to apologize to her mom for her. To tell her that Eleanor was sorry and she only took the
Druj
to scare her mom the way Mom scared her and Daddy. Is what Eleanor said right? Did Mutti own the
Druj?
Was she controlling the Drifters? Is she the one behind this? What does she want? Does she want to join the Death Born, too?”
Aki looks away. He’s talked too much and he knows it.
I bark a couple of Hellion words. A Drifter behind Aki bursts into flame. I say the word again and another zed goes up. I tell all the dead in the neighborhood to close in on us. I start burning them all. Aki and I are in the middle of a walking bonfire.
I slap the kid and hold him down on the pavement as the temperature rises.
“She knows you’re not Rainier, doesn’t she? What is she up to? What does she want? Tell me!”
Aki’s head swivels back and forth and he’s letting out a kind of high-pitched moan that hurts my ears.
I haul him to his feet and turn him around so he has to look at burning Drifters closing in around us. Thirty more seconds and it’s officially un-fucking-comfortable in the circle. The air ripples and greasy corpse smoke hurts every time I suck in a breath. The kid goes limp in my arms and starts screaming.
“It’s Mother. Mother runs everything. Who else? Father is useless. Hiding and weeping for poor dead Eleanor. Boo-hoo.”
I turn Aki around so I can look at him. His crazy fear has turned just plain crazy. He snarls when he talks.
“We’ll own this place soon and the rest of you are going to be gone or you’re going to be food.”
I could let Aki go and turn the Drifters back, but I don’t. I hold him and let them close in. My skin turns red and starts to blister. So does Aki’s. Stark likes the pain. The angel doesn’t care.
Aki starts doing the panic moan again, so I drop him and shout another Hellion word. The Drifters fall to the ground,
sizzle, and ash out. Gray flakes still red-hot at the edges float away like dirty snow.
I nudge Aki with my foot.
“You have a car around here?”
“A block up.”
“Get up. I’m taking you someplace safe and then we’re going to invite Mommy over for tea.”
“She knows who you are. She’s not afraid of you, you know.”
“Not yet. But if she knows I have her little boy, she’ll come over. And if she doesn’t, I’ll kill you and find her myself. Where’s your car?”