Carlos says, “Exactly what it looked like. Protection. But for real. Do you know how many cops are left in the city? They’re splitting town just like everybody else. The cops that are left, they need a little extra motivation to answer the phone if there’s trouble.”
“A nice racket.”
Carlos shakes his head and throws back his drink.
“The price of doing business in L.A.”
He pours us both another round and holds up his glass for a toast.
“Merry Christmas.”
We clink glasses and drink. I shake my head.
“I can’t believe it’s Christmas again. How do you -people stand having the same holidays over and over? In Hell they only have holidays when Lucifer feels like it, so it’s always a surprise and all the little goblins are giddy as kindergartners.”
“You going back to the old country for the holidays?”
“Yeah, I’m Hell’s Secret Santa, bringing all the good little imps coal and fruitcake.”
“How do you tell the difference?” says someone behind me.
I turn and find Eugène Vidocq, besides Candy probably my best friend on this stupid planet. He doesn’t like talking about his age and swears he isn’t a day over a hundred and fifty, but I know he’s well over two hundred. He’s also immortal. And a thief. And after being in the States for more than a hundred years, he still has a French accent thick enough to slice Brie, a last remnant of his home that he won’t ever let go of.
He claps me on the back and nods to Carlos. Orders a -couple of drinks. He isn’t alone. Brigitte Bardo is with him. She gives me a quick peck on the cheek. Brigitte is Czech. She was a skilled zombie hunter back in the day and used to do porn to support her hunting habit. These days she’s working her way into regular Hollywood films. But it’s slow. She still has an accent and it’s, you know, the end of the world, so there’s fewer films in production. When she’s not auditioning, she helps out at Allegra’s Lurker clinic.
Carlos brings Vidocq whiskey and Brigitte red wine.
“Where’s Candy?” she says.
“She wasn’t feeling well. Did you find anything wrong with her when she stopped by yesterday?”
“Nothing that I know of. She just took her Jade potion and left. She seemed fine.”
“Maybe I should call her again.”
“Leave her alone. This time of year can put -people into odd moods.”
“Don’t I know it,” says Carlos. “It was just about a year ago that you wandered in here the first time. You were looking a little bleary, Mr. Stark.”
“As I recall, I’d just crawled out of a cemetery and was wearing stolen clothes.”
“You always make an impressive entrance,” says Vidocq. “As I recall, after your return you were going to shoot me the first time we saw each other.”
“Total misunderstanding. And sorry.”
He holds up his glass.
“Whiskey under the bridge.”
“You kicked a bunch of skinheads’ asses for me, remember?” says Carlos. “I didn’t know about any of you Sub Rosas or Lurkers back then. If those fuckers came in here these days, I’d give them a faceful of this.”
He holds up a potion from behind the bar.
I look at Vidocq.
“One of yours?”
“You’re not the only one who barters for drinks,” he says.
“Rumor has it you’re doing some freelance work for the Vigil these days too. How does it feel to be back?”
Vidocq shakes his head. Regards his drink.
“Strange. As strange as I bet it is for you.”
“I’m still not sure it’s the right thing to be doing, but if I wasn’t working for them I don’t know if I’d be doing anything at all.”
“Confusion. Strange alliances. God’s new deluge. These are the things the world has been reduced to. Apocalypse. Le merdier. So let’s drink to the void.”
Brigitte sighs and picks up her wine.
“You boys are too grim for me. I’m going to find more congenial company.”
I say, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be a drag.”
“You’re never a drag, Jimmy, but I see a studio friend I met when I first came here. A girl must maintain her connections, mustn’t she? Maybe I can be in the last movie before the world ends.”
“Now who’s the drag?”
She shrugs extravagantly.
“Knock ’em dead,” I tell her.
I turn back to the bar and pick up my drink. I haven’t had a cigarette in hours. My lungs are aching for abuse.
“Tell me the truth. Are we good enough for this? Look at us. What a bunch of fuckups.”
“What choice do we have?” says Vidocq. “Who else will do this if not us?”
“The government.”
“Save us from our saviors.”
I sip my Aqua Regia and Carlos moves off to serve other customers.
“I don’t trust the Vigil much more than the Angra. What’s more important to them, saving the world or controlling whatever’s left when this is over?”
Vidocq looks at his hands. Flexes his fingers. He looks good for two hundred. Not more than his forties.
“I was twenty--five when I faced my first apocalypse. When the bloated corpse of the eighteenth century rolled into its grave, making way for the wonders of the nineteenth. You should have seen Paris. Half the city praying, flagellating, and prostrating themselves before Notre--Dame and images of the Madonna. The other half whoring and drunk while fireworks burned brighter than all of Heaven.”
“I wonder which group you were with?”
“The Madonna and I had parted ways many years before that, I’m afraid.”
I look around the room and spot Brigitte sitting at a table with a group of network executives decked out in designer faux--military gear and safari vests like they’re running off to a Brentwood Red Dawn key party. But like a few million others, they’re just headed out of town with the family jewels sewn into the lining of their bulletproof trench coats. Brigitte laughs as the gray--haired alpha wolf exec lays some of his survival gear on the table. Lengths of paracord. Sapper gloves. A multicaliber pistol. Condoms in Bubble Wrap. A multitool with more moving parts than a Stealth bomber. Watching her smile, I wonder if Brigitte is pulling out of her depression or if she’s just an actress playing at being all right.
“There were suicides and riots. Fury and ecstatic joy, and all for the same reason. The world would end or be transformed, and unlike now, in this age of science and desperate rationality, there was nothing we could do about it. So each of us did what made sense. Drink. Pray. Stay with loved ones or sail off to the ends of the earth.”
“And here you are.”
“And here I am. Alive and not quite yet mad.”
He finishes his drink and holds up the empty glass for another.
“The point is that I believe we will survive. Or enough of us will to make the world worth fighting for.”
“It better be. I’m not kickboxing monsters so the Vigil and Homeland Security can turn L.A. into one big It’s a Small World ride.”
One of the Luderes gives a little shriek. She’s been stung by one of the scorpions. The shrieker gives the room a little wave.
“Sorry. Everyone’s fine. Carry on.”
She and her friend crack up.
I turn back to Vidocq, but there’s someone in the way. One of the Goth boys from the table in the back has joined us. He’s dressed in a long high--collared coat and has wild Robert Smith hair. He looks vaguely like a mad scientist disguised as a priest. There’s something funny about his eyes. I glance over at his friends. They look as surprised as I am.
“No autographs today, kid,” I say. “I’m with friends.”
The kid takes a step. Stumbles and slams into the bar. I have to grab his arm to keep him from falling over.
He says, “It’s not going to stop. No matter what you do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s my message to you. It’s never going to stop.”
I know what’s wrong with his eyes. He’s possessed. In Hell there’s a key. If you know how to use it, and not many down there do, you can temporarily take possession of a body up here. Someone is riding this kid like he’s a carousel pony.
“He isn’t Death. Or God or the Devil. He is the Hand. Cut one off and another takes his place. He is many--bodied. Many--handed. A hand for each soul on Earth.”
I slap the kid. Shake him. His eyes stay vacant and dead.
“Who are you? Who gave you the message?”
“Come out and see,” he says.
Vidocq puts a hand on my arm.
“Don’t you dare go anywhere with this boy. He is dangerous.”
“I know. But if there’s something out there I can’t stay here.”
“Don’t be stupid,” says Carlos. “Let me call the cops. This is why I pay the fuckers.”
I nod.
“Maybe calling them isn’t a bad idea.”
I turn to Vidocq.
“Keep everyone else inside.”
The kid is still holding on to me.
“Let’s go,” I say.
I get up and the kid lets go of me, leading the way outside. I put my hand under the coat and slip out my na’at.
We go out into the rain. Smokers huddle under the awning. A few of the regulars nod and wave. I don’t wave back.
The kid walks all the way to the curb. I stay a -couple of steps behind him. We stand there in the rain like a -couple of assholes. He steps into the street between two cars, looking around like he’s waiting for a cab.
“You saw a golden woman in the water. There,” he says, pointing west to the Pacific.
“I remember.”
When Kill City collapsed into the ocean a few weeks ago, I was in it. Something that looked like a woman covered in gold swam up from the wreckage and tried to pull me down.
“She served the Hand. She was beautiful.”
“Except for the part where half her face was missing.”
He nods. His long hair is plastered to his head, covering one eye.
“She was incomplete. That won’t happen again.”
“You couldn’t tell me this inside, where it’s dry?”
He holds his hands out wide.
“You don’t understand what’s happening and even if you did you can’t stop it. The old ones are coming. They will bless us with annihilation.”