Aloha from Hell (Sandman Slim 3)

Vidocq bumps against the desk when I pull him to his feet. The digger freezes and turns. It’s blind but it has great hearing. I can slow my heart and breathing, but in a few seconds the demon’s going to zero in on Vidocq. I step back from him, leaving him exposed to the digger. He turns and looks at me with wide horrified eyes.

Sorry, man. This is how it has to be.

The digger turns. It has Vidocq’s heartbeat. It hooks its two huge digging claws into the wall and uses them to slingshot forward. A metallic blur, four glittering jaws, and arm-size hooks going right for the old man’s chest. He doesn’t look at it. ty look a He never takes his eyes off me.

As the digger’s body blurs across the desk, I whip the na’at out. Twist the grip out from the body into a hair-thin serrated whipsaw.

The digger hits the na’at like a meteor with teeth. I twist the na’at’s cutting edge into its body and the bug splits in two lengthwise. The halves come apart and smash into the wall on either side of Vidocq, embedding themselves deep into the wood and plaster.

Vidocq swivels his head, checking out the giant insect shanks that flank him.

I say, “What do you know? I do remember how to kill things. Good news for our side.”

“Fuck you, boy.”

An alarm goes off when a naked fat man kicks open the office door. I’m going to roll the dice and guess he’s the home owner. He points an exquisitely made-over and -under shotgun at us. It might even be a Tullio Fabbri. A hundred and seventy-five grand worth of etched steel with a carved walnut stock and accurate as a cruise missile. I’m almost tempted to ask him, but his pupils are dilated and I smell the excitement in his sweat because he thinks he’s finally going to get to use that Fort Knox popgun on actual human beings.

Through the angel’s senses I hear the infinitesimal scrape of metal over lubricated metal as the fat man applies pressure to the shotgun’s trigger. I grab Vidocq in a bear hug and jump through the window just as the gun goes off.

Davy Crockett here isn’t Sub Rosa, but he must know some because he has an antimagic cloak over his house and the grounds outside. What that means is no one’s supposed to be able to throw any hoodoo or hexes around here. Whoever built the cloak probably pegged him for a mark right off. I figure they got him to pay a bonus to build it big enough to cover the whole estate, the perfect way to turn a cloak into something as reliable as a marshmallow condom. Antimagic shields are powerful things when you do them right, and part of that’s knowing they can only be so big. Blow them up too much and the skin stretches thin. Keep blowing and they can pop right out of existence. That’s what Davy the Rube paid for: a one-hundred-thousand-dollar soap bubble.

The cloak is stretched so thin I can throw all kinds of hoodoo in here. Like when we climbed the fence onto the grounds, I could take us into the house through the Room of Thirteen Doors. But I can’t get us off the grounds that way. Of course, I could have used some hoodoo to wrap Davy Crockett’s shotgun around his neck like a mink stole and swung him around like a carousel pony while I shot the shit out of his office, but I didn’t do any of that. Someone else might think that would earn them karma points down the line, but I know better. Karma is just loaded dice on a crooked table. Celestial pricks with wings and halos make the rules and the house always wins. Always.

SO VIDOCQ AND I are falling. Tinkling glass falls with us like razor-blade snowflakes.

When you’re jumping two floors with a civilian whose broken bones won’t heal overnight like your own, you need to remember a couple of things. One, cushion the fall as much as you can, and two, be prepared to use your body as an air bag. That means controlling the fall enough so the other, usually extremely startled, person lands on top of you. Does it hurt? Go outside, get a friend to drop a garbage-can-ful of bacon fat on your chest, and see.

Trying to control a fall is no tea party when you’re holding on to someone who’s thrashing around like a Tasered octopus. But it’s not impossible. The trick is to grab them just under the ribs and squeeze so they can’t breathe. Then you let go just as you hit the ground so they breathe out hard when they hit. It helps absorb the shock, though it still hurts. Especially if you’re the one on the bottom.

There’s a tree below Davy’s window. I aim for it, rolling us into the branches, hoping it’ll slow our fall a little. It does. Coming down into the hedges helps, too. We still have some momentum to burn off, so I keep rolling and we end up on the lawn that Davy was kind enough to lay out with fresh soft sod in the last few days. Thanks, man. I’ll send you a honey-baked ham for Christmas.

I pull Vidocq to his feet and we run for the wall like a couple of spooked raccoons. I look back over my shoulder and Davy is standing in the broken window with the shotgun at his shoulder. Wishful thinking. We’re too far away for him to hit anything but the air.

Don’t sweat it, Davy. Vidocq and I aren’t going to touch your safe or wreck your office again. But I might have to come back some night for that Tullio Fabbri and you can try to shoot me with something else. I am in severe need of something like that. It’s so quiet and peaceful out here I’m getting bored with breathing. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the world will go to Hell again. Fingers crossed.

I PARKED THE stolen Lexus half a block away. Vidocq is limping. He stops and opens his coat like a flasher. There are dozens of pockets sewn into the lining. Each holds a different potion. Batman has his utility belt. Vidocq has his coat. I have guns and a knife. None of us will be on the cover of GQ.

Satisfied that Vidocq’s little glass vials aren’t broken and leaking about a hundred hexes into his underwear, we head for the car. The old man is limping, but when I put a hand on his arm to help him, he shrugs it off. Another grateful customer. I have a knack for pissing people off, especially my friends.

He still won’t talk to me, but at least when we get to the Lexus he lets me help him into the car. I start to close the door, but he blocks it with his hand.

“Who is that?” he asks.

I turn and see a man a few yards away. He’s standing in the shadow of a big shade tree on someone’s lawn. He doesn’t move when I look at him. I reach behind my back and pull a Smith & Wesson .460, making sure he sees it. He doesn’t flinch. I put the gun back and stackeback anrt toward him. Now he moves. He comes right at me.

o;TELL ME,” SAYS the Frenchman. “How long has it been since you last killed anything?”

He’s fucking with me. He knows the answer, but he wants to make me say it. Father Vidocq taking confession.

“I don’t know. What time is it?”

“That long, then?”

I shrug.

Vidocq and I are in a very dark room in a very large house full of very fashionable furniture and we’re stealing something very valuable. I have no idea what and pretty much don’t care. It’s just nice to be hanging out and doing some crimes with the old man. Crimes where no one ends up zombie meat, shot, or annoyingly decapitated.

“It’s been a while,” I say. “Six. Eight weeks. Somewhere around there.”