Traven nods.
“I understand. But maybe we could stop and at least get you some bandages?”
“Also, Teddy seems to have a real taste for kids.”
Traven stops the car.
“Drive, Father.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t just leave you bleeding. I have towels in the trunk. You can at least staunch your wounds.”
“Fine.”
Traven pops the trunk and Candy grabs a couple of towels. I stuff them under the armor. The pressure feels good but I can’t help wondering a little if Traven doesn’t want me leaking all over the back of his car.
While Traven drives, Candy reaches between the seats and squeezes my bloody hand. I squeeze hers back.
What am I supposed to think about someone like Teddy Osterberg? I want to kill him but I want to understand him. Maybe that makes me weak. Maybe it’s just self-serving. Teddy is a stone-cold son-of-a-bitch killer. I want to look into his eyes and cross my fingers and hope I don’t see myself looking back. Which me would it be? Stark? Sandman Slim? Lucifer?
As much as I hate this guy, I can’t get rid of the image of those Hellion skins hanging loose and limp around the palace in Pandemonium. Maybe that’s the joke and has been all along. I go after a ghoul with all kinds of righteous fury, but looking back at all the things I’ve done, what if I’m there too, gnawing on skulls right along with Teddy? Just another ghoul in love with the dead.
I hid a lot of myself from Alice and I’ve hidden what I did in Hell from Candy. I know the monster part of myself. I love it and I hate it. Sometimes I’m ashamed of it. I don’t want to be Teddy, sitting on a hill by himself with only his ghosts and corpses for company. Being a real monster is easy enough on your own but not so much when you have something to lose. When this is over, I’m taking Candy back to the Chateau Marmont and get good and drunk and tell her a long story about how I spent my summer vacation in Hell. I should have done it earlier. It’s one thing to congratulate yourself for saving Wild Bill and maybe a couple of other souls from torture but it’s another to let someone who thinks they know you in on your dirty secrets about the bodies in gibbets and wet skins flapping like flags on the Fourth of July. That’s how you don’t become Teddy. You lay it all out and let others decide if they want to hang around the graveyard with you or catch the bus back to town.
Thank God for whiskey or the world would be so full of secrets the weight would spin us into the sun.
The front door is open when we reach Teddy’s Malibu mansion. The sky has stopped pulsing. Now clouds spin like airborne tornados, coming together in a single funnel cloud as big as the sky and then falling apart into islands of minitwisters that skim along the top of the ocean. A rain of fish, birds, and smooth ocean stones falls like hail when we reach the door. We don’t have any choice but to run inside or be brained.>“Who?”
Brigitte raises her eyes to something behind me.
He catches me with the first bullet before I can turn around. It shouldn’t go through the armor but it does. He must have used my Spiritus Dei trick. My back burns and my chest aches. It feels like a rib is cracked. When I turn to face him, Cairo empties the rest of a 9mm clip. Fourteen quick shots. I throw myself onto the floor and roll toward him. Even hurt, I’m fast and he’s hurt worse, so most of the shots miss. Still, he tags me three more times. It’s bad but not enough for this punk to kill me. When I’m close to him, I extend the na’at, knocking the gun out of his hand. Very suave, but when I try to sit up, the bullets grind in my chest, taking my breath away. I spit and there’s blood in it.
The next thing I’m looking at is the ceiling. Then Cairo’s grinning face. It’s covered in blood and road rash. There’s a nice chunk of radius bone sticking out of his right arm. One of his knees is ripped open but he’s still walking on it. That’s not healing magic. That’s Dixie Wishbone. He’s higher than the Goodyear blimp. He pushes a finger into each of the bullet holes in the armor when he talks. It feels exactly what you think having a junkie’s bony fingers in your chest feels like.
“Funnyman. You look awfully funny down there, funnyman.”
Cairo pats me down. Feels the Qomrama Om Ya in my coat pocket. He’s so pleased with himself that when he reaches for it, he doesn’t see me shake the glove off my hand. I don’t have a lot of strength but I have enough to pull him down on top of me and hold him while I stab my oh-so-pointy Kissi arm up between his ribs and into his heart. I feel him twitch and die and enjoy every second of it.
A light flares in the hall. Aelita manifests her Gladius and comes at me.
I get my legs under Cairo and kick his body up at her. She slashes down with the Gladius, cutting him in two. Blood and bile spray in all directions, ruining Blackburn’s pretty rugs and wallpaper.
The move bought me just enough time to pull the Qomrama and throw it at her. Which turns out to be exactly what Aelita wanted. She kills the Gladius and lets the Qomrama sail past. When it starts back, she catches it in an iron box studded with Angra runes.
She throws the catch and says, “Thank you for bringing it to me. You’re the most helpful Abomination of them all.”
She manifests her Gladius again and heads for me. Five shots hit her in the chest. She drops the box and falls to her knees.
I look back and see Brigitte holding the gun of the guy I killed when I came in.
She kneels down next to me and helps me up.
“Thanks,” I say. “Get the box.”
When she reaches for it, Aelita twists and kicks her in the face. Grabs the box and runs out of the room. I pull myself to my feet and help Brigitte up.
“What the hell are you really doing here?” I ask.
Brigitte goes back to Blackburn and I drop into the chair she’d been sitting in. My chest is on fire but I can breathe. At least a couple of the bullets are still inside me but the armor is holding me together.