Broken Souls, page 17
“What the hell happened?” she says. “Who was that?”
“Are you all right?” I say. I look her up and down. She’s got a nasty cut on her cheek and her right temple is bruised.
“I’m fine,” she says, pushing my hand away. “What’s going on, Eric?”
“His name’s Sergei Gusarov,” I say. She gives me a blank look. Well, at least I’m not the only person who doesn’t know who the hell that is. “He’s trying to get the Ebony Cage. He already hit the bar.”
“The bar? When? Is anybody hurt?”
“Couple hours ago? I think? My time sense is a little off. Tabitha’s in the hospital, she’s—Well, she’s alive. I made sure she got into an ambulance. It’s kind of complicated.”
“What hospital?” She picks her way past the debris on the floor, roots around until she finds her cell phone.
“UCLA Westwood,” I say. “I think. It got a little weird.”
“With you around? Of course it did.” She starts punching buttons. “Goddammit. I knew that thing was bad news. I told Alex to get rid of it.” She starts shaking, closes her eyes and wills herself to stop. It mostly works, but the adrenaline is still in her system and she can only do so much.
“I thought that was Max,” she says. So that was the bouncer’s name.
“It sort of was.”
She holds up a finger, cutting me off from saying more as someone answers her call. “Hi, Nancy, this is Doctor Winters.” She pauses. “Yeah. I’m calling about a patient who should have been brought in to the ER a little while ago. Korean woman. Tabitha Cheung.” Pause. “Yeah, I’ll hold. Thanks.”
She turns back to me. “What do you mean it was sort of him?”
“It’s going to take me longer to explain what the hell is going on than I’ve got. So short version. The guy we just shoved out the window has a knife that can steal a person’s form, memories, everything. It kills them in the process. He got to Max to get to you and Tabitha. Did you tell him where the Ebony Cage is? I know it’s not in the bar, anymore.”
She stares at me, a dozen questions lighting across her face, decides against all of them. “Yes. It’s in a storage unit. I knew there was something wrong when he started talking about the cage. I’d never told him about it and Alex swore he’d never tell any normals about it, either. But I didn’t realize that until I’d told him where it was. He doesn’t have any of the codes to get inside, though.”
Shit. I was hoping he didn’t have the location. “And then he changed?”
“Yeah. Into the old guy. Is that Sergei?”
“No,” I say. “The guy who walked away from the splat on the sidewalk was Sergei. Old guy was Harvey Kettleman.”
“Thought he looked familiar,” she says. “Jesus. He used to hang out with my parents—Wait. Does that mean he’s dead, too?”
“Few nights ago. Up at Griffith Park. He almost got me, too.”
“What does this guy want?”
Telling her what I know would take too long, so I just shrug. “Don’t know, but he’s already gotten a lot of people killed. And if he’s after the cage who knows what he’ll do with it.”
“A storage place on Santa Monica Boulevard near Cahuenga. Let me write down the entry code.” She finds a pen in the mess on the floor and writes some numbers on a business card for a local restaurant. “If you need to get in these codes will do it.” She jots down some runes. “And these will deactivate the wards on the unit. You don’t want to go in there without doing that first. Whoever triggers it won’t live very long. Also, I had to put them up kind of quick. I was going to go back this weekend and do a better job.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means if you trigger them there’s a decent chance that whatever’s inside the unit will get hit, too.”
“Oh, Jesus, Viv.”
“Fuck you, I was in a hurry. And I didn’t think some psycho was going to skin my bouncer and try to kill me for it.”
“If these go off will they break the cage?”
“Maybe? How the hell should I know?”
“Does he have this information?”
“No, I didn’t give the codes to Max, Sergei— whoever the fuck that was.”
“Okay. I shouldn’t need to get inside, but he’s going to try.” I take the card from her and look at the runes. Some I recognize, others not so much. A combination of ancient languages and hermetic seals, they all combine into a pretty straightforward lock spell, but I can see some things in the patterns that make my skin crawl. “Jesus. Does this one mean ‘dysentery’? Whatever happened to do no harm?”
Her eyes go hard. “Hemorrhagic fever. And I tossed that shit out when my boyfriend died.”
“Vivian, I—”
“Stop. I know you didn’t kill him, but I also know that if it wasn’t for you he’d still be alive. So don’t even go there.” The person on the other end of the phone comes back on and she turns away from me before I can say anything.
“Hi Nancy,” she says. “No? Nothing’s come in all night?” She gives me a worried glance. “Okay. No, that’s fine. Must have the wrong hospital. I’ll check with Santa Monica. Thanks.” She hangs up the phone.
“They haven’t had any ambulances come in since around nine o’clock tonight,” she says. “You said Westwood UCLA?”
“Yeah, I—”
I’m interrupted by a banging on the door. “LAPD. Open up.”
“Shit,” I say. “I kinda told your neighbors I was a cop. Which might not actually cause as many problems as the fact that they saw me phase through the door.”
“You got any more of your stickers?” she says.
I pull one out of my pocket along with a Sharpie. “Always,” I say, as I uncap the pen and start writing.
“Then make yourself scarce.” I’m way ahead of her and slap a You Can’t See Me sticker over the one that says I’m a cop before she’s done talking.
“Coming!” she yells and runs to the door. She takes a deep breath, twists her face into one of panic and fear and a second later her eyes tear up. She’s a good actress, but I can’t imagine it’s all that hard right now. She’s just been assaulted in her own home. I know she’s holding things together well, she always has, but this can’t be easy.
She pulls the door open and immediately starts babbling at the two uniformed police. She contradicts herself two, maybe three times. A guy broke in the front door, went out the window. If it isn’t for the fact that she’s weaving a compulsion spell at the same time she’s talking to them I’d be worried for her.
As she leads them further into the living room, I slip past them unseen, hoping I can get to the storage unit before Sergei does.
I punch in Gabriela’s number when I get outside. Sergei’s got to know I’m coming and he’s not going to be alone. No reason I should be, either. I scan the street for something fast and settle on a Z4 parked nearby. Gabriela picks up as I’m popping the lock and sliding into the driver’s seat.
“Tell me this is good news,” she says. “I’ve got a shitstorm going on over here and you’re not exactly my favorite person right now.”
“Jesus, is anybody ever happy to hear from me? Yes, I’ve got two bits of good news, as a matter of fact,” I say. “If you kill a skin that Sergei’s wearing it actually dies. Turns to jellied mush. Really disgusting.”
“You killed one of his skins? How?”
“Threw him out a fourth-story window. I was hoping he’d be wearing Kettleman or be himself, but no such luck. The skin sort of ran off him like melted fat. Also, he definitely can’t cast when he’s not wearing the Kettleman skin.”
“Good to know. Okay, so what’s the other good news?”
“I know where he’s going. Probably right now, in fact. Storage unit on Santa Monica and Cahuenga, to get that Ebony Cage. If he has anybody left in his crew I’d say it’s a good bet he’s going to hit it hard. The only plus is that it’s warded and he doesn’t have the exact unit number, so that’ll take him some time.”
“Santa Monica and Cahuenga? Hang on.” I hear a rustle of paper over the phone. “Okay, I know that place. Any idea why he wants this thing?”
I should probably tell her that I think he’s trying to break into Mictlan with it, but I’ve got an idea forming in my head and the less she knows about what’s really going on, the better. I need that knife. Whether Mictlantecuhtli is right about what Santa Muerte is doing or not, if that knife can kill her, I need to get my hands on it. And I really don’t think Gabriela’s going to be too crazy about that idea.
“No clue,” I say.
There’s a pause on the phone and I’m not sure she’s buying it. “Doesn’t really matter, I suppose,” she says. “I’m not fucking around this time. I don’t care who gets in my way, I’m taking this sonofabitch out. Got me?”
“I’ll try to keep my head down,” I say. As long as I can get my hands on that knife I don’t care what she does. But I really want to kill Sergei. “I’m on my way there now. Meet me a couple blocks away on—Christ, what’s down there?”
“Wilcox,” she says after a second. “Hey, how’s your girlfriend?”
It clicks what Vivian said in her apartment. The ambulance never made it to the hospital. I know it was supposed to go to UCLA Westwood. Would they have sent her to Santa Monica? That’s not much further, but it seems unnecessary when Westwood was right down the street. Even after my display of batshit crazy in the ambulance they would have taken care of her.
“I don’t know,” I say. “She was breathing when I left her.”
“That’s something,” she says. “All right, we’ll be there twenty minutes, tops. Don’t do anything stupid before we get there.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll wait until you’re there before I do anything stupid.”
Maybe.
___
It’s well past four a.m. and the morning is already gearing up. Delivery trucks and early morning commuters dot the road. The cops have washed away all the drunks and even the hookers on Santa Monica Boulevard have gone in for the night.
I drive past the storage building on the corner of Cahuenga, a twenties Deco building with a clock tower, painted-over windows, and a large parking lot in the back. I doubt they open for another few hours, but the loading doors for the buildings are wide open. The lot’s full of cars and about twenty guys standing around like they’re waiting for something to happen. This early in the morning it’s chilly, but these guys are all wearing long coats too warm for the weather. No doubt to hide their AKs.
It’s dark out and the Z4 has tinted glass, but I don’t linger too long lest they get ideas and decide to take potshots at me. I don’t sense anyone drawing power from the local pool, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any mages in that lot. It’s not like we wear hats that say “MAGICBOY”.
There are a handful of Dead on the streets. Couple murdered tourists, a bum or two. Not enough to cause me problems. I could pop over to the other side, walk right past all of them, and the only guy I’d have to deal with is Kettleman. I don’t see him in the parking lot, so he’s probably already inside. Pop up behind him and … Dammit, I wish I had my straight razor.
Fuck it. I drive around the corner and park out of view of the lot and dial Gabriela. Get her voicemail. “You know how I promised not to do anything stupid until you got here? Yeah, I kinda lied. I’m heading in. Look out for all the guys with AKs in the parking lot. They don’t look happy.”
I tell myself that this is a smarter approach, anyway. A bunch of people show up and there’s going to be bullets and screaming and any chance of surprise we might have is going straight down the toilet. This way I can get in quietly without having to worry about getting shot and get the knife without having to fight Gabriela for it. Because that’s really all I care about. Without it, Sergei’s useless. If he comes after me, well, he’s just a guy wearing a mage suit. I’m a fucking god in training.
And when Gabriela asks me about it, because I know she will, I’ll just tell her that I didn’t find the knife. He must have hidden it. And if they both happen to survive tonight, they can fight each other over it. With the knife, maybe I can finally get to Santa Muerte and finish this bullshit once and for all.
Once I’m out of the car I check for stray ghosts, extend my senses out to see where the closest ones are. The minute I pop over to the other side I’ll have a little while before they start coming for me and not long after that I’ll start attracting ones further out. Ten, fifteen minutes and this place is going to be crawling with the Dead. That should give me plenty of time to get into the building and up to the storage unit.
Relying on Mictlantecuhtli’s power is too unreliable, and I don’t want to do it too often and speed things along. And it fucking hurts. So if I need any more oomph to my magic I may need some blood. I rifle through the Z4’s trunk and find a box cutter shoved next to the jack. Perfect.
I wait until I’m close to the lot entrance before I slip over to the other side. The world goes a dull blue-gray and the sounds of the waking street around me disappear into a hollow echo chamber of howling wind. The objects around me glow or slip into shadow depending on how solidly rooted they are in the psychic landscape. The storage building itself glows like it’s lit with a blacklight, casting out a sense of solidity. It’s been here a long goddamn time. But the cars, streetlights and the car wash across the street all fade away into shadow.
The upshot of all this is that I can walk through the cars, some of the streetlamps and probably even the walls of the car wash, but the storage building is just as solid on this side as it is on the living side. Good thing they left the doors open for me.
I can see Sergei’s crew as indistinct blobs of man-shaped light. I can walk through them but it’s like stepping into a downpour of cold rainwater. I give them a wide berth and head into the building.
I take a flight of stairs up toward the fourth floor. The elevator won’t work for me. I could flip back and press the button, sure, but the minute that car starts moving it’ll leave me at the bottom of the shaft. Only the oldest elevators leave enough of a footprint to be solid on this side. I found that out the hard way on the second floor of an apartment building about ten years ago. Damn near broke my neck.
Past the second story I run into a problem. At some point not too long ago they changed out a section of the stairs and moved them in about ten feet. The new stairs are probably substantial enough to hold me, but I’m not entirely sure and they bleed so much into the old ones that I can’t tell where the boundary is.
Things get tricky on this side. It’s not so much a matter of whether something’s been around a long time as it is how much it’s been used and what people think about it. Take the Ambassador Hotel. Demolished back in 2005 to make way for a school, but on this side it might as well still be 1968 with Robert Kennedy bleeding out in a kitchen hallway.
Pretty soon the ghosts are going to start converging on this place and hunting me down. And if I flip back to the living side, I’m betting Sergei’s left some early warning alarms to tell him if anybody’s coming after him. Crap.
I step to the edge of the stairs I know are solid until they blur into the new ones, hope I gauged the distances right and keep going. Everything’s fine about five steps up and then my right foot misses the old stairs and disappears into the concrete.
The rest of me follows. It’s like stepping into an open manhole cover. My left leg buckles at the knee, slamming into the more solid steps, and I only manage to keep myself from going all the way through by shoving myself against the wall.
Takes a bit, but I manage to swing my right leg up and shimmy up the wall until I can find something solid to put my weight on. This is exactly why I don’t like to fly.
Not long and I’m back on the old staircase with only one more floor to go. I’m getting this itch on the back of my mind that’s telling me I’m running out of time. I can’t see them, but I can feel the ghosts outside coming from all over as they catch whatever passes for my scent in this place. They’re close.
It’s not like when I summon them and they pop in from all over. Most of them are walking, some of them, the ones that have enough consciousness and intelligence left over from their lives, have figured out that they can just will themselves from place to place. Fortunately, the psychic footprint of the building is going to get in their way just as much as it gets in mine. It’ll slow them down, but not by much. And I really don’t want to be caught in this stairwell when they come for me.
I step out of the stairwell onto the fourth floor and have to blink to adjust my eyes. The floor has been refitted so many times over the years that most of the walls are some degree of see-through. Plywood has been replaced with plaster and then drywall. The layout of the entire floor has been torn down and rebuilt. Hallways look like rooms look like doorways. It’s more confusing than H.H. Holmes’ murder hotel.
A wave of dizziness washes over me, but I shake it off. One of the dangers of being on this side too long. It saps your energy, your life, your will. I’m lasting longer than I used to, thanks, I suspect, to my new status as death god in training, but I’m still human enough that it’s getting to me. If I don’t slide over to the other side soon, I won’t have enough energy to do it at all.
I spy a couple of bright lights in the distance. One tall and broad, the other short and slim. Twenty bucks says that’s Sergei and his sister. If I’m reading the layout right I might actually be able to make a straight shot for them. There doesn’t seem to be anything all that substantial between us. I pop the blade on the box cutter. If I can get close enough to him, I can pop out and take him down before he knows what’s hit him. The sister could be a problem, but I might be able to grab the knife before she can react.
I’ll have to deal with the ghosts on this side, but if I can get a wall or two between me and her I can pop back onto the living side and head past most of the ghosts before I have to do it all over again to get past the goons in the parking lot.
