Brigitte is a friend from Prague. A trained High Plains Drifter—that is, a zombie—hunter. I might have fallen for her if we’d met at a different time, under different circumstances, and on another planet. I screwed up and let Brigitte get bitten by a Drifter. She almost turned. If it hadn’t been for Vidocq and his alchemy hoodoo, she would have.
“That’s not true and you know it,” says Vidocq. “Perhaps you’ll turn your attention back to Mason? If I remember correctly, finding him was the main reason you returned from Hell. I understand, of course, your getting distracted, what with saving the world and all.”
“I did find Mason. And I locked him up good and tight Downtown.”
“Which is what he wanted all along,” says Vidocq. “I’m not sure you can call that punishment."
I give the old man a look. I don’t like having my own stupid confessions thrown back at me. Of course he’s right. Mason wanted to go to Hell and he wanted to go there alive, just like I did. And I walked up to him like a backwoods rube with a corncob pipe and put him there. Not many people know about that. I couldn’t walk the streets if they did. I couldn’t look people in the eye if they knew I’d sent the most dangerous man in the world to the worst place in the universe so he could raise an army to kill them all. People get murdered for mistakes like that. Sometimes they don’t wait for someone else to do it. If someone else tries it, they might get it wrong and leave you in a coma, only half dead. That would be even worse. Someone might feel sorry for you and that’s something I couldn’t take.
“Kasabian still has access to Lucifer’s book, The Daimonion Codex. He keeps an eye on Downtown twenty-four/seven. If Mason makes a move, I’ll know about it.”
“Why not simply go yourself?”
“I’ve tried a few times. Even changing my face with a glamour, there’s always some Hellion or other who spots me and I have to de-ass the place fast. There’s got to be another way to get to him, but I haven’t figured it out yet.”
I’m lying. I’ve tried it a couple of times and I was so nervous that the glamour wasn’t even half-baked. I thought I could walk back Downtown like Patton riding a tank. But I can’t. The smell and the heat hit me and I’m back on the arena floor, ripped open and bleeding, hoping my guts don’t slip out into the dirt. Or I’m covered in thick Hellion blood, playing hit man for another Hellion while he tells me Alice will be safe as long as I keep killing for him. And then she’s dead and all I am is a murderer. So I close the door to Hell and I slink back home, sitting at my favorite bar long enough that the smell fades and Kasabian won’t know what a coward I’ve become.
What’s more useless than a weak-kneed killer?
“You’ll find a way in,” says Vidocq.
I nod and finish my drink, putting on my serious, thoughtful face.
“I hope it’s soon. Since I can’t play Hannibal Downtown, the angel in my head wants me to roam the streets at night looking for bad guys like Batman. I got so pissed one night that I actually did it. Know what happened? Exactly nothing. Looking to get mugged is crazy and bad guys walk the other way when they see crazy coming. What I need is angel Valium to shut this Boy Scout up.”
Muninn nods.
“I know how it feels to constantly be at odds with those closest to you. Eventually you reach the point where none of you can stand the sight of each other anymore. My brothers and I are like that.”
“Brothers?” says moan.
That’s more interesting than a two-headed calf singing “Some Velvet Morning” in tight harmony. I have about a million questions, but most aren’t real discreet. I go with the easiest.
“Are they like you? Live in caverns and know everything about everything?”
Muninn shakes his head, lost in thought. He stares at the green liquor bottle.
“I have four brothers, and no, none live in caverns. None of us is even the slightest bit like the others. I haven’t seen any of them in years. Centuries. Occasionally I miss them, but the truth is that I have no real interest in tracking any of them down. I daresay they feel the same thing about me.”
No one says anything. We’ve hit into one of those weird silences that happen when someone drops something too real into the middle of a conversation that should just have been about drinking and patting ourselves on the back. Somehow, while we were talking, Muninn has opened the box and extracted a scroll from the scarab. I pick it up.
“What’s so special about this that we had to bust open Fort Knox to get it?”
Muninn’s eyes lighten. He smiles.
“Yes, that. The scroll is for a gentleman in, let’s say, investment banking. A man like that can do extraordinary damage to his soul. Maybe even several souls. He is always on the market for new souls to wear until he ruins them too. Even L.A.’s many soul mongers can’t keep up with him. The price of souls is going up for everyone. And Los Angeles is a town that needs all the souls it can lay its hands on.”
“So, the scroll is a soul?”
“No. It’s a bit like . . . What do you call the elixir that restores hair?”
“Rogaine?”
“Yes! Rogaine for the soul. It restores and replenishes the user’s original umbra. A re-souling will last him a year or two I hope. Buyers can become testy when they want a new soul and you have to tell them that the cupboard is bare.”
“Suddenly I don’t feel so bad about my life.”
Vidocq says, “If you feel so good, why not come take a trip with me tomorrow?”
“Another job?”
“That’s for you to decide. I sometimes do work for a private investigator. Today she called and asked about you. She has a job that she believes you would be perfect for.”
I finish my drink and smile.
hat="0">“Get mixed up in a total stranger’s problems for no good reason? Sounds like a scream, but I think I’ll pass.” “Maybe doing something for a stranger will settle down your angel,” says Muninn.
The moment he says it, the haloed bastard starts squirming around. It tickles the inside of my skull and not in a good way. I try to push him back into the dark, but he smells a hero moment and won’t budge.
“And there’s my poor, abused knee,” the old man says, patting his leg. “You owe me for tossing me through a window tonight.”
I turn from Vidocq to Muninn.
“Never save a Frenchman’s life. He’ll hold it against you for the rest of yours.”
I look at Vidocq and screw up my face into the least sincere smile I can make.
“What the hell? I haven’t done anything truly stupid in weeks.”
THE BEAT HOTEL is in a typically glamorous area, near the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and North Gower.
Across from the hotel is the Museum of Death, a fenced gray bunker with a ten-foot painted skull out front. Next to it is the long-dead Westbeach Recorders, an empty studio local acts used to record and where Pink Floyd recorded part of The Wall (I believe that like I believe Jesus invented chili dogs). Down the street a car dealership is dying in the desert sun, the parboiled cars like beached fish carcasses slowly cooking to squid jerky. A couple of strip malls and empty parking lots on the corner. The front of the Beat Hotel is painted a pale industrial green. Maybe green paint was on sale that day or maybe it’s supposed to be ironic. I’ve never been sure.
If any of this makes you think I don’t like the Beat Hotel, you’re wrong. It’s like a cross between a seventies swingers no-tell motel and the kind of hipster hot spot where rock stars stay when they don’t want to be seen bringing home good smack or bad strippers. The rooms are comfortable in a Zen halfway-house kind of way. But the kitchens are decorated in bright primary-colored vinyl like a Playboy-chic burger joint. The place looks like where David Lynch would meet Beaver Cleaver’s mom for secret afternoons of bondage and milk shakes. I love it.
Kasabian and I have been there about three weeks. I rented us a room for the month. At the end of the month I’ll probably do it again. You’re not supposed to stay for more than a week, but I pay the right people to change my name on the registry so it looks like someone new moves in every Saturday.
I had to get out of Max Overdrive for a while. All the rebuilding going on after the zombie riots—the saws and hammers and especially the stink of new paint of new was making me feel kind of stabby. None of it bothered Kasabian, of course. He’d put on headphones, crank up the volume on Danger: Diabolik, and peck away on his computer. The smell didn’t bother him because he doesn’t have lungs, so he doesn’t breathe.
Kasabian and I have a lot in common. Like me, he’s a monster; only he wasn’t born that way. I made him one when I cut off his head with the black bone knife I brought back from Hell. The blade that didn’t let him die. Now he’s a chain-smoking, beer-stealing pain in my ass. To get specific, Kasabian is a head without a body. And he won’t shut up about it. He gets around on what to a civilian would look like a polished mahogany skateboard with a couple dozen stubby brass Jules Verne legs underneath. Really, it’s a hoodoo-driven prosthetic for a guy who’s wandering around with nothing but a bad attitude below his neck. It’s his own fault. When I came back from Hell, the idiot shot me, so I cut off his head. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now I’m stuck with him. We’ve gotten as used to each other as a couple of monsters can be. But I’ll never get used to a roommate surfing around on a magic plank like a beer-swilling Victorian centipede.
And that’s the other reason we’re at the hotel. I don’t want some schmuck carpenter wandering upstairs and getting an eyeball-ful of Kasabian’s disembodied cranium. When the guy’s brain explodes, our insurance would go through the roof.
I go right to the game room set up for the guests. There’s an “Out of Order” sign outside. I rap on the door using the secret knock Kasabian insisted on. (He’s been watching too many spy movies.) Knock. Pause. Knock. Knock. Pause. Knock. A second later I hear something scrape behind the door and it opens a few inches. I look around to make sure no one can see me and slip inside. When I get in, Kasabian uses his little legs to wedge a wooden chair under the doorknob, then tells me to throw the lock.
I say, “You’re riding the paranoia pony pretty hard today, Alfredo Garcia.”
“Blow me, biped. I have to be security-conscious or I’ll end up freak of the month on YouTube.”
“Don’t sweat it. We’re both going to end up a couple of pickled punks in the Museum of Death someday.”
“Yeah, but I’m not looking for it to happen tonight.”
He clambers on top of the pool table and gives me a sometime-today-asshole look. I roll the cue ball and we lag for break. Kasabian wins. I rack the balls and step back to light a Malediction, Lucifer’s favorite cigarette. You can only get them Downtown, and since I haven’t seen Lucifer in a while, I’m running low. It might almost be worth chancing going back down to snatch and grab a pack or three. Almost.
Kasabian shooting pool is as graceful as a lobster playing soccer. He scuttles around the green felt tabletop, lines up his shot, and kicks the cue ball with his stubby metal legs. I’m not sure if him playing like that is fair, but y">
“What’s that smell?” he asks.
“Me. I got parboiled by a demon when I was out with Vidocq.”
I shrug off the rifle frock coat Muninn gave me and show him the burns on my arms. I’m doing my best to ignore the pain, but I’m going to need a drink soon. Getting tossed in a meat grinder every now and then is part of what I do. I came back to earth to kill things, so I have to expect things to fight back occasionally.
“Nice. New scars to add to your collection. You collect getting fucked up the way old ladies collect state spoons.”
Kasabian takes a shot and sinks the nine, eleven, and four. Two stripes and a solid.
He says, “I’ll play stripes. Thirteen in the corner,” as he lines up the shot. He sinks it.
I puff on the smoke. I get the feeling he’s not going to leave me much else to do.
“So what kind of a demon was it?”
I shake my head.
“Damned if I know. I’d never seen one like it before.”
He creeps around the table, not looking up.
“What did it look like?”
“Not much. I mean, from a distance it looked like a guy in a cheap suit. But when it got closer, it was all Jell-O and acid. When it grabbed me, bang, I was burning.”
He takes one of the blue chalk cubes from the side of the table and uses it on his stubby legs.
“Sounds like a Gluttire.”
“A what?”
“Gluttire. A glutton. He wasn’t burning you. He was trying to dissolve you. Gluttons are pretty rare and mostly eat other demons. You been around any recently?”
“Yeah. The guy whose house we hit had a digger in the wall safe.”
“There you go,” he says, and sinks the fourteen. “He smelled the digger.”
“I need to start bringing cologne on robberies.”
“There’s a ton about demons in the Codex. There’s a lot more kinds of them thalis of than you think, but Gluttires are the rarest. Most people never get to see one.”
“Lucky me.”
Things get quiet for a minute. He knows what I’m going to ask.
“Talk to me about Downtown. Got any gossip? Marilyn Monroe dating the Antichrist? Is Lovecraft being tortured by sexy octopuses?”
“What makes you think Monroe’s Downtown?”