I run the bike into the alley behind Max Overdrive and throw the cover on top, though I’m not sure why at this point. What’s to keep dry anymore? We’re living in an open--air aquarium. Everyone and everything is wet inside and out. Soon we’ll grow gills and fins. We’ll swim out into the California Current and let it carry us down to Baja, where we’ll live off cheap cerveza and krill. Until someone decides our bones make good soup. Then we’ll head out to sea, into the deep, deep water where transparent creatures, so long in the dark they’re born blind, skulk along the ocean floor waiting for us to tire out or die or just give up. We’ll drift down to the bottom of the world, food for things that have never dreamed of land or humans or the Angra. Will we be happy then? Primordial shit in a volcanic trench older than God’s jodhpurs? I doubt it. We’ll just get absorbed by something else and fed up the food chain again until we’re back on land, food for the God or Gods that marooned us here in the first place. And we’ll start the whole thing again. Our only consolation is that maybe in the new world, the studios will have more sense and no one will green--light Battlefield Earth. That would be worth coming back for.
I go in through the side door. I can feel the wrongness of the place even before I see it. Discs are scattered all over the floor. A display case is knocked over and another one is torn to pieces. Kasabian’s door looks like it was ripped off its hinges. Screams come from his room.
The lights are off, but I can see someone on top of him. I grab whoever it is by the collar and throw them as hard as I can out the door. They slam into the floor, slide, and bang into the far wall hard enough to leave a dent.
It isn’t until she gets to her knees that I recognize her. It’s Candy. She’s gone full Jade. I’ve never seen her so far gone before. Her skin has gone almost obsidian and her nails are curved back into claws. She growls, showing a mouthful of white shark teeth. Her eyes are red slits in black ice. She’s sweating and blood drips from her mouth where she bit herself.
I shout, “Candy. It’s me. Stop.”
She charges and hits me square in the chest, knocking me onto my back. She’s ridiculously strong in this form, and as vicious as an Eater. All teeth and madness. Candy’s teeth are bad enough, but then she stretches her mouth open like a snake, exposing needle--thin fangs she uses to inject the Jades’ necrotizing poison.
Candy’s my girl, but I don’t want to die and I don’t want anyone drinking me when I do. But this isn’t her fault. She’s fucked up and I don’t want to punch her out.
I bark some Hellion and she flies off me like ghosts playing horseshoes. She’s up a second later and charging me again.
I grab her, wrapping my arms and legs around her. Still, it’s all I can do to hold on. I bark a sleeping hex into her ear. She slows down. Her eyes close. Then I feel her body tense again as she fights her way through it, snarling and clawing at me again.
She braces her feet on the ground and pushes back against me, freeing one leg. It’s enough to wriggle a leg, then a hand free. She drags her claws down my arm, shredding my coat and skin.
I yell, “Candy. Stop.”
She bites my wrist down to the bone. I grab her again and shout more Hellion. Something harder and worse than sleep.
She lets go of my wrist, shaking violently. Every muscle in her body going rigid. Her eyes go wide and her lips draw back from her teeth in a painful grimace. She’s having a seizure. A kind of hoodoo epilepsy. But even with every muscle in her body locked in place, she’s still fighting. I push her off me, but hold on to her.
“Kasabian. You all right?”
He comes to his door like a groundhog afraid of the light.
“I’m okay. What the fuck is going on?”
“I’ll tell you when I know.”
I pick her up, slipping in some blood from my wrist. When I get my footing, I carry her through a shadow to the clinic.
The clinic is as empty as the streets. Fairuza sees us coming and yells for Allegra. She comes out of the exam room.
“My God. What’s wrong?”
“Look at her. She’s full Jade.”
Allegra comes over and looks at Candy. Checks her forehead. Pushes up her eyelids.
“This doesn’t make sense. I just gave her the potion.”
I carry Candy into the exam room and put her on the table.
“Could something be wrong with it?”
“I made it myself.”
“Check it anyway.”
Allegra calls to Fairuza.
“Get me the skullcap sedative.”
Fairuza opens a cabinet and paws through bottles. When she finds the sedative, she hands it to Allegra. I’ll give Allegra points for brave. She sticks her hand into Candy’s mouth and pries her jaws open enough to pour the potion into. It’s green and smells of licorice like it has an absinthe base.
When Candy starts to relax, I speak Hellion to clear the hex. Her muscles unknot and her jaw drops open. In less than a minute, she’s back to being Candy.
Allegra looks at me.
“We’re going to have to restrain her until we know what’s happened.”
“I know. Try not to hurt her.”
“I’ll try to keep her unconscious until we figure out what’s wrong.”
She looks at my bloody wrist.
“You’re bleeding. It’s like the old days. You in here all the time covered in blood. Sit down. I’ll get some gauze.”
I do what I’m told simply because I don’t want to argue. Allegra comes back a minute later with gauze and tape.
“I could stitch this up to stop the bleeding, but I know you’ll say no.”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s mine and I keep my scars.”
She pushes up my sleeve, bandages my hand, and wraps gauze around it.
“Because you never want to let go of anything.”
I look at Candy on the table. Fairuza puts straps around her feet and across her chest.
“I swear, if someone did this to her . . .”
“I know. But you have to prepare yourself for something worse.”
“What?”
“That she might have developed a tolerance to the potion and it won’t work anymore.”
“Then you’ll figure out another one, right?”
She finishes my wrist and sets the gauze and bandages on the counter.
“I’ll do my best. I’m sure there will be something in one of Eugène’s books.”
“Find it. Whatever it is. I’ll pay for it.”
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s take things one step at a time. The first step is you leaving.”
“I don’t want to leave her alone.”
“She won’t be alone and you’re going to be in the way. If you want what’s best for her, go home.”
I look from her to Fairuza and back again. They don’t want me here. All I do is bring them broken -people. And maybe Allegra is right. I probably will be in the way.
“Thanks. Call me the moment you know anything. Middle of the night. Whenever.”
“I know. Now go.”
I STEP THROUGH a shadow and come out in Max Overdrive. Kasabian is kneeling on the floor with a spray bottle of cleaner and a roll of paper towels, wiping up my blood.
“Not exactly life at the Chateau Marmont,” I say.
“If this was the Chateau, she still would have attacked me, but there’d be someone else to clean up the mess.”
“I’ll pick up the discs.”
“Why don’t you get down here and work on the blood?”
“You’re doing a great job. I don’t want to spoil your rhythm.”
“Fuck you.”
I pick up the DVDs and Blu--rays and stack them on the counter. They can fucking wait until tomorrow to go back on the shelves.
“She going to be all right?” says Kasabian.
“I don’t know. I’m waiting to hear.”
He doesn’t say anything for a minute.
“Candy’s all right,” he says. “Recent events aside.”
“Yeah. She is.”
“Did you see Fairuza at the clinic?”
“Yeah.”
“Did she say anything about me?”
I give him a look.
“Right. Wrong time.”
He finishes up the floor and climbs creakily up on his mechanical legs.
“Thing is,” he says. “Candy is a good influence on you. Around her you’re almost like a person.”
“I know.”
He throws the bloody paper towels into the trash and puts the spray bottle back in the storeroom.