Kill the Dead

“Was she hungry when she ate the seed?”

“I expect so.”

“Then what’s the problem? I once ate some greasy scrambled eggs at a truck stop near Fresno and puked and shit myself for two days. That was six months in Hell right there.”

Lucifer picks up a phone next to his chair.

“I’ll call room service.”

LATER, MY PHONE goes off. It’s Wells texting me the address of where I’m supposed to meet him. I go out the Alice in Wonderland clock and down to the garage, where top-of-the-line cars are laid out like Christmas morning on repoman island. There’s a white ’57 T-bird with a white top. I pop the knife into the ignition, fire it up, and head outside. On my way out of the lot, I nod to the valet I gave the Bugatti to. He raises one arm and gives me an unsure little half wave. He won’t be able to keep the Veyron, of course, the cops and insurance company will make sure of that, but I hope he gets to have some fun before he has to ditch it.

I DRIVE EAST along Sunset. Cut south into what the chamber of commerce calls Central City East, but the rest of the universe calls skid row. The corner of Alameda and East Sixth is so boring and anonymous it’s amazing it’s allowed on maps. Warehouses, metal fences, dusty trucks, and a handful of beat-up trees that look like they’re on parole from tree jail. I turn right on Sixth and drive until I find a vacant lot. It’s not hard. A half dozen of the Vigil’s stealth supervans are parked by the curb, looking just a little out of place. Flying saucers at a rodeo.

The lot isn’t one hundred percent vacant. There’s a small house in the middle, an overgrown wood-frame shit box that’s so swallowed up by weeds, vines, and mold that I can’t even tell the original color. It’s not much more than a shack. A leftover from the days when L.A. was open enough to have orchards, oil wells, and sheep farms. Not that this place was ever any of those.

Rich Sub Rosas aren’t like rich civilians. Civilians wear their wealth on their sleeve. They get flash cars, like the Bugatti. Twenty-thousand-dollar watches that can tell you how long it takes an electron to fart. And big beautiful mansions in the hills, like Avila, far away from God’s abandoned children, the flatlanders.

Sub Rosa wealth works on sort of the opposite idea. How secret and invisible can you make yourself, your wealth, and your power? Big-time Sub Rosa families don’t live in Westwood, Benedict Canyon, or the hills. They prefer abandoned housing projects and ugly anonymous commercial areas with strip malls or warehouses. If they’re lucky or been around long enough, they might have scored themselves an overgrown wood-frame shit box in a vacant lot on skid row. Chances are this house has looked exactly this feral and miserable for the last hundred years. Before that, it was probably a broken-down log cabin.

I park the T-bird across the street and jog over to the house. Just a few streetlights and warehouse security lights. There’s nothing else alive. Not a headlight in sight.

There’s a tarnished knocker on the door. I use it. A woman opens the door. Another marshal. She’s in the female equivalent of Wells’s men-in-black chic.

“Evening, ma’am, I’m collecting for UNICEF.”

“Stark, right? Get in here. Marshal Wells is waiting.”

“And you are?”

“No one you need to know.”

She lets me inside. The interior of the place is as rotten and decayed as the outside. She leads me into the kitchen.

“Nice. Defensiveness and moral superiority in two-point-four seconds. A new land speed record.”

“Marshal Wells said you liked to talk.”

“I’m a people person.”

“Is that before or after you cut people’s heads off?”

“I only cut off my enemies’ heads. I break my friends’ hearts.”

“So, that’s, what, zero hearts broken?”

“The night’s still young.”

She stops by the door. Where the back porch would be, if it hadn’t collapsed back when Columbus took his big cruise.

“Wells is in the study.”

“Thanks, Julie.”

“How did you know my name is Julie?”

Her heartbeat just spiked. I’m here in the middle of the night and being underpaid because of Wells. I don’t need to take it out on her. I smile, trying to look pleasant and reassuring.

“It’s nothing. Just a silly trick.”

“Don’t do it again.”

“It’d be a little stupid guessing someone’s name twice.”

Marshal Julie listens to something coming through her earpiece.

She says “Got it” into her cuff and looks at me.

“Is that your Thunderbird across the street?”

“No.”

“But you drove it here.”

“Yes.”

“You came here in a stolen vehicle?”

“Define ‘stolen.’ It’s not like I’m keeping it.”

“I don’t suppose you have the keys?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

She walks back to the front door, talking to whoever is in her earpiece.

“I need someone to evacuate a red and white Thunderbird coupe from the 6th Street inquiry.”

I head out back, pretty sure that Marshal Julie will not be my secret Santa at the Homeland Security Christmas party.

I’VE ALREADY GONE down one rabbit hole tonight at the Chateau, so it’s no surprise that the house beyond the porch door has nothing to do with the wreck I entered. The house through the door is a sprawling old-fashioned California mansion. Very western. Almost cowboy. Lots of wood. Two-story-high ceilings. Leather and animal-print furniture right out of an old Rat Pack movie. Massive picture windows look out over the desert and San Gabriel Mountains.

This, the Sub Rosa house hidden inside the other, is crowded with Wells’s people. There are at least a dozen forensic agents in the living room alone. They’re using a lot of strange gear I’ve never seen before, more of the Vigil’s weird angelic technology. The room is full of agents lost behind flashing lights, on their knees shoving beeping probes under furniture or lost behind transparent floating screens showing weird images of supermagnified carpet fibers.

“Down here, dead man.”

It’s Wells, yelling to me from the far end of the house. He never gets tired of reminding me that I’m officially dead and off the radar of the cops and most of the government. But only as long as I make nice with the Vigil. It’s a good threat. Without them, my life would be a lot more complicated.

I pass another ten agents in the hall on the way to the study and six more in the study. Between agents chattering, vacuums sucking up evidence, and probes flying around checking for aether residue, I can hardly hear my own voice.

“Why the hell do you need so many people, Wells?”

The marshal doesn’t look at me. He’s staring off at something across the room.

“You do your job and let my people do theirs.”

What Wells is looking at is worthy of some top-drawer staring. There’s an altar and above it, a six-foot-tall statue of Santa Muerte, a kind of grim reaper parody of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Despite her bony looks, she’s someone her believers pray to for protection. I guess whoever owned the statue wasn’t very good at it. It looks like half of his blood is sprayed across Saint Death, the altar, and the walls. The rest is in a nice congealed pool of rust-colored Jell-O around what’s left of his body. You can’t even call what’s on the floor a corpse. There isn’t enough of it. It looks like he tried to crawl into a jet engine, changed his mind, and tried to crawl out again.

I say, “I think he’s dead.”

Wells nods, still staring at the slaughter.

“I’ll be sure to write that down. Anything else?”

“This was no boating accident.”

Wells looks at me like he’s a trash compactor and I’m week-old bacon.

“Damn you, boy. A man is dead here and he was one of yours. Sub Rosa. And he died badly. Do you have anything to contribute to our finding out what the hell happened here?”

I want to get closer to the death scene and I have to walk around several agents to do it. Glad I’m not claustrophobic.

The body is lying in pieces scattered inside a strangely modified calling circle. The edges are sharp. It’s not a circle. It’s a hexagon, a shape only used in dark magic. It looks like at least part of the circle was painted with blood, though it’s hard to be sure with pieces of the guy laid out across the floor like a buffet. There are a lot of bones scattered around. Too many to all be his. He probably used them to reinforce the hexagon.

I have to walk all the way around the room to get back to Wells.

“He doesn’t stink. How long has he been lying there?”

“At least two days. There’s been very little tissue breakdown. No blowfly eggs. Not even rigor mortis in the one elbow joint we found.”

“Did you find anything in aether tracings?”

“There’s definitely dark magic residue. We’re not sure what kind yet.”

I go back to the body and stand as close as I can without touching it. Even without trying, I can feel something radiating off the mangled flesh and bones. But I can’t tell what. It’s ancient and cold. For a minute I wonder if the Kissi could have done it, but there’s no vinegar reek. If Wells’s crew would quiet down for a goddamn second, it probably wouldn’t be hard to figure out. Some of the angel devices are pumping out celestial energy fields, stinking up the aether.

“Can you get these people to quiet the hell down for a minute?”

“This is a priority job. It’s a big crew and everybody works. Do some magic, Sandman Slim. You’ve worked loud rooms before.”

I can’t get hold of whatever it is that’s coming off the body. I touch part of what I think is an arm with the toe of my boot. Turn it over. One of the forensic techs says something.

“Get that machine out of my way so I can work,” I say.

I’m not sure exactly how I sounded, but half of Wells’s crew suddenly find other parts of the room to work.

Kneeling down, I take a close look at the not-rotting skin. There are funny marks there. Old ones. He’d tattooed over them, like he was trying to camouflage them. There are marks on the bones, too. New ones.

The altar is a jumble of magic objects. Saints and rosaries. A sephirot stitched together from separate pieces of parchment and linen. Pentagrams and swastikas drawn on Post-its. An old bottle of no-name whiskey. Animal bones. Bowls full of meth, joints, and poppers. Yojimbe bark. Gray’s Anatomy. And a very nice selection of dildos, gags, butt plugs, nipple clamps, and antique handcuffs.

I drag a chair over to where Wells is standing. The forensic crew is falling in love with me.

“Who is this guy? Was this guy?” I ask.

“Enoch Springheel.”

“Springheel, like the Springheels?”

“Yep. Supposedly, the first Sub Rosa family in L.A. I guess a couple of hundred years back, when this was mostly Indians and coyotes, they were the cock of the walk. But other families settled here and things sort of fell apart for the Springheels. Lost most of their land. Lost their status. Homeland Security doesn’t know why. Neither does the Vigil. I was hoping maybe you knew something.”

“When I was a kid, I spent most of my time trying to get away from the Sub Rosa. I know the names, but not much of the family histories.”

“What a blessing it is to have you around.”

While Wells complains I climb on the chair to get a better view of the room. Whenever I reach out with my mind, the combination of whatever is coming off the body and the Vigil’s goddamn machines start making me dizzy. But from up on high something clicks in my brain and the scene falls together like a series of snapshots of things I’ve seen over the last eleven years.

Who needs nephilim superpowers when you’ve got the devil’s slide projector in your head?

I go back to the body and cut some skin and bone with the black blade. Then I spit on the incisions. That gets their attention.

“Give me some salt.”

One of the forensic drones pulls a vial from a potion case and tosses it to me. I sprinkle the salt over where I just spit. Nothing happens. Then there are bubbles. Steam. The saliva begins to boil.

“You know much about demons, Marshal Wells? What they are? How they work?”

“They’re elementals. Not like you pixies or Lurkers. Demons are primitives. Like insects. They’re pretty much programmed to do a single thing. Killing. Inciting lust. Planting lies.”

“They’re so dumb because they’re fragments of the Angra Om Ya. The old gods. They’re powerful but brain-dead crumbs of whatever god they fell from.”

“That’s blasphemy, boy. There were no gods before God.”

“Okay, forget that. Did your team take a look at these marks on the skin? They’re teeth marks. Señor Chew Toy could have healed himself, but he didn’t. He liked the scars. He just covered them with tattoos to hide his dirty little secret from the other Sub Rosa.”

Wells is looking at me now.

“Keep going.”

“If you find Enoch Shitheel’s head, check his teeth. I bet you’ll find he gave himself some of those scars.”

“Demon possession?”

“Think simpler. Ever heard of autophagia?”

“No.”

“I bet you’ve never seen any Sub Rosa porn either. You’re out of your depth, choirboy. In the books, autophagia is a mental disorder, but Springheel made it into a fetish. He got off on eating himself.”

Wells is giving me his disapproving squint, but he’s listening. His team edges in closer, not even pretending to work anymore.

“Santa Muerte is death and protection all rolled into one. A gangster Kali. She’d tighten Springheel’s jeans.”

“Watch your language.”

“Fuck you. You brought me in. I’ll do this my way.”

Pause.

“Keep going.”

“The altar is a dark-magic sex shop. All you need is Lucifer’s cock ring to have the party of the century. I only mention that because that’s what Springheel wanted to do. Party very hard.”

I walk over and stand in the hexagon, trying to step around the sticky bits.

“The hexagon with blood and bone calls dark power. Yojimbe mixes in sexual energy, but that’s not a big surprise considering all the speed and poppers on the altar. Well, maybe for you. Look at this one side of the hexagon. There’s maybe a half-inch gap where the edges don’t touch. If this is a protection configuration, it won’t work. Whatever Enoch calls will be able to slip in through that hole. That’s stupid and it’s sloppy. Unless it’s deliberate.”

“What did Springheel invoke and why did he let it in?”

I step forward to the broken edge of the hexagon.

“He would have been here, near the opening. He’s thrown yojimbe around. He’s probably been snorting meth and doing his poppers. He starts his spell and he calls up a demon.”

“What kind of demon?”

I hold up one of the still-smoking bones with my fingertips and point to the broken edge.

“An eater. Five hundred years ago, an eater was what you called when you wanted it to look like locusts chewed up on your neighbor’s crops or wolves killed their cattle. Enoch wanted something more up close and personal. That’s why there’s a break in the hexagon. Springheel built himself a cosmic glory hole. He was a Bone Daddy.”

Wells is frowning. He really wants me to shut up. I keep going.

“He’s got a hard-on for demons. For eaters. Springheel wanted to stick as much of himself as he could get through that glory hole and get it nibbled on by a primordial retard with ten rows of shark teeth. Only something went wrong.”

“What?”

“Damned if I know. Let your techs figure it out. Springheel called an eater because that’s how he got off. But he fucked up. Broke the circle too wide or made some stupid stoner mistake to completely break the hexagon’s protection and got himself eaten.”

“You’re sure about this sick shit?”

“Who else lived here?”

“No one. He was the last of the Springheels.”

“All alone with no one to look over his shoulder. That’s a nice setting to work out really elaborate fantasies. There’s one other thing you probably ought to check out.”

“What’s that?”

“If end-of-the-line Enoch was the last member of a house that went from number one to less than zero, getting eaten might not have been a mistake. It could have been a nasty, lonely little suicide. A hard-core player partying one last time as he pisses off this mortal coil.”

Wells turns and walks away.

“Enough. How do you live inside your head? I’m not saying you’re wrong or that I disagree with your conclusions or that disgusting scenario that you obviously know a lot about. All I’m saying is stop. I don’t want to hear any more. You’ve done your job. My team will finish up. Thank you for your valuable contribution to the investigation. Now please, get the hell out of here. I don’t want to look at you for a while.”

I’ve seen Wells screaming crazy, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him upset. I guess when you’re in love with an angel, the idea of someone spending his alone time shoving his cock down demons’ throats might be disturbing. Welcome to my world, G-man. I’ll show you Hellion hobbies that make Enoch Springheel look like Jiminy Cricket.

I go back to the porch and into the kitchen. Marshal Julie is still alone up front.

When she sees me she asks, “Did you do your job?”

“I just got thrown out. That usually means I did.”

“Good for you. I’m sure the marshal is grateful that you came through for him.”

“Not really.”

“Your car is gone.”

“It wasn’t my car.”

“That’s why it’s gone. Do you need a ride?”

“Are you offering?”

She gets quiet for a minute. Stares past me over my shoulder.

“What’s going on back there? I know it’s a murder scene, but I’m supposed to stay up here and guard the doorknobs.”

“You’re the new kid, right? They give you the worst hours, shit duty, and they short-sheet your halo?”

She almost smiles.

“Something like that.”

“Yeah, it’s a murder scene. A rotten one, too. Dark magic gone bad. It even got your boss upset.”

“Damn. I wish I could see that. You don’t know how much I want to be back there.”

“Cool your jets, Honey West. Don’t be in such a rush to get what’s back there stuck in your head. It doesn’t come out again.”

“I don’t care. I need to know what’s in rooms like that. I’ve prepared for it my whole life. Now I’m here, but I’m still missing out.”

Scratch a cop, find a pervert.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “L.A.’s not going to run out of psychos anytime soon.”

I go outside. The steps crack and crunch beneath my feet. Good special effects.

Marshal Julie says, “You never told me if you wanted a ride.”

“Mind if I steal one of your vans?”

This time she does smile.

“Yeah. I kind of do.”

“Then I think I’ll walk awhile. I can use the air.”

I get half a block down Sixth Street before I’m sure that someone is following me. Whoever it is isn’t very good at it. The heavy footfalls say it’s a he. And he’s dragging one of his feet. He kicks and steps on things. For a second I wonder if it’s Marshal Julie, but no one from the Vigil would be that amateur hour. I turn around twice, but the street is always empty.

At the corner of South Broadway, I look again. A man stands half lit under a streetlight. His posture is funny, like he needs a back brace but forgot his on the bus. He just stands there. When he tries to turn around, he stumbles on the foot he’s been dragging. For a split second, his face is in the light. I swear it’s Mason. His face is dead white and gaunt, the skin torn. But then it isn’t him. It never was. I don’t recognize him. By the time I run over to where the stranger is standing, he’s moved back into the dark and disappeared.

Hissing sounds of car tires rolling by on Broadway. Gurgle of water from the sewer at my feet. There’s nothing else. I’m the only thing alive on the street. Serves me right for turning down a ride home from a cannibal play party, even if it was with a cop.

I step through a shadow into the Room and stay there long enough to smoke a cigarette. I’m nowhere in here. I’m outside space and time. The universe crashes around me like cosmic bumper cars. Somewhere out there stars are being born while others flare out, frying planets and whole populations. A few billion here. A few billion there. Lucifer promises some pimply kid ten years at the top of the music charts for his soul. Of course, the kid is too dumb to specify which charts and is about to find himself with number one singles in Mongolia and Uzbekistan. God watches while a bus full of his worshippers spins out on a patch of black ice, flips, and catches fire, burning everyone inside alive.

The universe is a meat grinder and we’re just pork in designer shoes, keeping busy so we can pretend we’re not all headed for the sausage factory. Maybe I’ve been hallucinating this whole time and there is no Heaven and Hell. Instead of having to choose between God and the devil, maybe our only real choice comes down to link or patty?

When I got back to my room above Max Overdrive, I put Kasabian in the closet where I used to lock him up. I built him a bachelor pad in there. Padded the shelves with cabinets where he can keep beer and snacks, along with a bucket where he can slop the remains. There’s a computer inside, so he can surf the Web and watch any movies he wants. It’s soundproof so I can sleep and not hear if he’s watching Behind the Green Door. I know I’m going to dream about Springheel’s chewed-up carcass tonight and I don’t need Kasabian and Marilyn Chambers joining the party.

I DON’T WAKE up until almost two the next day. It took a fair amount of drinking to fall asleep last night. All the pillows are on the floor and the blankets are in a knot by my feet, so I know I dreamed, but I can’t remember what about. Kasabian probably knows. He’s back over on the table at the PC going through online video catalogs, pretending he doesn’t know I’m awake. I think Lucifer gave him a touch of clairvoyance so he can get snapshots of my mind. That’s okay. I’ve been playing a lot more with hexes lately so I don’t always have to go for the knife or gun. I have some tricks I’ve worked up that he doesn’t know about yet.

Losing the Bugatti has punched a car-size hole in my heart, so I steal a Corvette from in front of Donut Universe and drive to Vidocq’s. Maybe I should start thinking of it as Vidocq and Allegra’s. She’s always there when I go. I don’t think she goes back to her apartment to do anything but change clothes.

I hate Corvettes, so I leave it in front of the most obvious crack house in Vidocq’s neighborhood and walk the last few blocks to his place.

Inside, I take the elevator to the third floor and head down the hallway. I can’t find my cigarettes, so I stop in the hall to pat myself down. A gray-haired guy in a green windbreaker and worn chinos stops beside me.

“Didn’t you used to live here?”

I nod, still patting myself down. If I left the cigarettes in the car, the crackheads have them by now, dammit.

“A long time ago.”

“With a girl, right? Pretty. And she kept the place after you left.”

Why do I do this to myself? This is what happens every time I try to be a person. I do something normal, like walk in the front door of a building, and the Neighborhood Watch is on me.

“Yeah, she was very pretty.”

He gives me a just-between-us-guys half smile.

“What happened, man? She throw you out for doing her sister?”

Sometimes there’s nothing worse than the truth. It can be harder and sharper and hurt more than a knife. The truth can clear a room faster than tear gas. The problem with telling the truth is that someone then has something on you that they can use against you. The good part is that you don’t have to remember which lie you told who.

“I got dragged to Hell by demons from the dawn of time. While I was down there, I killed monsters and became a hit man for the devil’s friends. How have you been?”

The guy’s smile curdles. He takes a step back.