Vidocq laughs and turns away, pretending he’s looking at the shelves so I won’t see him.
Muninn says, “I hear that when you’re not playing le voleur with Eugène, you’re rebuilding your movie house.”
“Rental place. We don’t show them. We just pimp them. And yeah, Kasabian and I are rebuilding and expanding Max Overdrive with all the Ben Franklins that vampire bunch, the Dark Eternal, gave me.”
Muninn looks down, contemplating his glass.
“I expect they would be grateful for you clearing out the revenants. Zombies can’t have much nutritional value for vampires.”
“According to the news, it never happened. It was mass hysteria. Drugs in the water or weaponized LSD. Between tourists, traffic cams, and private security, there’s a million video cams in L.A., but there’s not one good minute of zed footage andzed fooanywhere, just blurry cell-phone shit. We might as well say we were attacked by Bigfoot.”
It stinks of the feds like ripe roadkill. Like Marshal Wells.
Until I snuffed the zeds, Homeland Security had heavy muscle in L.A. I mean, they had a goddamn angel on staff. Aelita. The meanest celestial rattlesnake I ever met and I’ve partied with Lucifer. Aelita is Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, but not as good-natured. She was the organ grinder and Marshal Wells was the monkey. They’re exactly the kind of bastards with connections to levels of occult and law enforcement power who could make thousands of hours of video disappear overnight.
Washington spanked Wells hard after the zeds got out of control. Aelita strolled away, so he got to be the fall guy. DHS closed him down out here. Who knows, if he plays nice and eats his vegetables, maybe the Men in Black will send him back. They might even let him resurrect the Golden Vigil, his and Aelita’s private jackboot army. Heaven’s Pinkertons on earth.
Muninn waves his hand.
“It was bound to happen. Most ordinary people’s desire to forget what they can’t comprehend is virtually infinite. It’s more comforting to disbelieve their own eyes than accept the possibility that the dead can walk the streets. I can’t say I blame them.”
I raise my glass.
“To reality. The most overrated and underpaid game in town.”
We all drink.
“So, what will you do until your movie palace is complete?” asks Muninn. “Are you considering carrying on as an investigator? You seem to have a flair for it. No one else figured out the nasty little secret behind the revenants.”
“That was a onetime thing. And I got lucky. If Brigitte and I hadn’t been bitten, I wouldn’t have done any of it. I would have taken her and blown out of town.”>“Is this Disneyland?” I say. “Are you Mickey Mouse? I always wanted to shake hands with giant vermin.”
Not a peep. Maybe he’s a Daffy Duck fan.
There’s something wrong with his face. I can’t make out any ears and there’s a deep slit where his nose should be, like he’s healed up from third-degree burns. Must be a tough bastard to go through that and still walk.
We both stop about six feet apart, having a Sergio Leone stare-down.
“I don’t know if you’re looking for directions or a date, but we’re fresh out of both. Take a walk and stare at someone else.”
He’s fast for a guy who looks like he just escaped from a deep-fat fryer. He lunges and grabs my arms over the biceps. He’s strong for a cripple, but nothing I can’t handle.
Then my arms are burning. Literally. My coat sleeves smoke and burst into flames where he’s holding me. I have heavy Kevlar inserts in the sleeves, but in just a couple of seconds the heat is almost through and down to my skin.
I step back and bring up my forearms in an outward circle from underneath and hit his arms hard. Standard self-defense stuff every high school kid knows. It doesn’t work. It’s like hitting Jell-O. And now my forearms are burning. Wrestling this guy is like waltzing with lava. I try to form hoodoo in my mind to knock Smokey the Asshole across the street or at least make him let go, but the pain makes it hard to think straight.
I bark some Hellion I learned back when I was fighting in the arena. If you do the hex right, it’s like a garbage-can-size gut punch that hits in a blaze of purple light and bores like an oil-rig drill through just about anyone or anything. I get it just right. The purple explosion, the whirlpool of power. Smokey’s midsection collapses in on itself. And goes through and out his back, dragging a long strip of lava flesh with it like burning taffy. The prick doesn’t even seem to notice.
The guy isn’t a burn victim. His face churns like thick liquid as we wrestle. Stupid. I should have known this asshole wasn’t human.
The heat is down to my skin, cooking my arms. Being hard to kill means a lot of things. I have a high pain threshold, but it’s not infinite. Not when something a volcano shit out is trying to give you an Indian burn. Being hard to kill also means that you don’t go down fast, so whatever’s cutting you, shooting you, or burning you alive is something you get to experience for a good long time.
Being hard to kill isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you, but it sure as shit isn’t the best, and right now it isn’t even fun.
Something clear and hard spins past my shoulder and hits Smokey in the face.ionin the He jerks his head away like I have bad breath. But he doesn’t let go. Another vial flies past. And another. Smokey lets go this time. Vidocq is behind me, limping over and tossing potions like a pitching machine.
Smokey backs away, his arms pulled in close to his body. Something’s hurt him. Good. He starts to shake like someone stuck a vibrator in a bowl of cherry Jell-O. I step back and grab my gun, but before I can use it, Smokey melts like the Wicked Witch of the West, leaving a circle of scorched black earth on the green lawn.
Vidocq grabs my shoulder and pulls me back to the car. He bunny-hops on his good leg into the passenger side and I slide into the driver’s seat, jam the black blade I carried back from Hell into the ignition, and we peel out.