Aloha from Hell (Sandman Slim 3)

“What’s a helmet?”

I take out the black bone knife, slice through the Cobra lock in one pass, and toss it away. I climb onto the bike. Candy gets on behind and puts her arms around me. I jam the knife into the ignition, turn, and gun the throttle. The Ducati purrs like a big mechanical cat. I kick up the stand, turn, and speed off to find Cale. At the corner I remember we’re going across town and there might be cops. I grunt a little Hellion trickster hoodoo so civilians will see helmets on our heads. Sometimes magic is as dull as taking out the trash.

The wind feels good on my face and Candy is warm against me. Talking to Alice has taken a weight off my back, one I didn’t even know I was carrying. I’m amazed I haven’t been walking around like Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I know some of what I’m feeling comes from Alice’s tough-love, leave-me-alone-and-find-a girl-that-breathes pep talk, but the more important part is finding out how she died. Not knowing was killing me and I never had a clue. I’m not saying that knowing feels good, but it feels more human. I’ve broken things and killed people for what happened to her and I don’t regret any of it. But now it feels like the bottomless fury that both pushed me forward and held me back might have an end to it. Or at least it won’t be cranked up to eleven all the time. I’ll never let go of Alice entirely and I’ll never forgive what happened to her, but I know I don’t have to destroy myself to make things right. I just have to kill Mason.

Sometimes, when I’m out at night and things are quiet, I take pity on the angel in my head and let it take the lead.

The angel can see in the dark, but not like it’s an owl or has night-vision goggles. The angel sees the world the way God must see it. Nothing is solid. Objects don’t exist except as strings of vibrating pearls of light. Molecules are interlocked Tinkertoys of atoms hiding in smudged electron fogs, all wrapped in the twisted folds of superstring taffy. Swirling and flowing, the universe folds in on itself in a multidimensional Technicolor Busby Berkeley dance of the celestial spheres. And that’s just in the city. I wonder what the ocean would look like with these eyes? Waves within waves within waves within waves, a fractal whirlpool dropping down forever, past Heaven and Hell and what? Could eyes like the angel’s see the Big Bang? Could I pick out the atoms of Alice’s ashes where I dumped them by Venice Beach? No. None of that tonight. I’m alive and I’m driving and there’s a pretty girl at my back. I’m a goddamn Bruce Springsteen song.

When we get near the club, I leash the angel and stuff him back in his doghouse. I need to see with my eyes now.

I stop the bike in the driveway of a gated warehouse down the block from Dead Set. The scene is pretty much what Carolyn said it was. The Goth industrial crowd wrapped in latex and chrome. Girls and skinny boys wearing boots with heels high enough to tickle Gabriel’s ball sac mill around outside, smoking.

Dead Set is in a converted furniture warehouse. There’s a projector on the low brick building next door splashing Stacy, a Japanese-schoolgirl zombie flick, across three floors on the side of the Deade o of the Set warehouse. A horde of barely legal shoujos in bloody school uniforms stumble toward soldiers firing automatic weapons. It goes the way these face-offs usually do. Schoolgirls one. Soldiers zero. I light up a couple of Maledictions, hand one to Candy, and we wait.

“Shouldn’t we go inside?” she asks.

“Too crowded. If we get into a tussle, all those extra bodies are just going to get in the way. A club like this only has one entrance. Give it some time. Cale will come to us.”

“I love it when you talk all Sam Spade.”

A cop car cruises by every half hour or so to let the crowd know they’re there. I smell some undercover bacon in the crowd, too. Their sweat is different. They’re excited, but it’s not by the drugs or possibility of sex. It’s at the possibility they might get the chance to put a beat down on the young and beautiful. The cool kids who wouldn’t let them sit at their table in the lunchroom. Fucking cops. They’re making me side with these preening assholes.

I have to wait around an hour for Cale to come outside. Yes, it’s boring. You can only make so many catty comments about the crowd when everyone looks pretty much the same. Candy and I burn through more Maledictions than we should. Fuck Lucifer, too. I saved his life. He could have at least sent me a crate of smokes before he fucked off back to Daddy’s condo in heaven.

I get back on the bike and gun the ignition.

“Follow me over on foot,” I tell Candy.

I hit the throttle and blast across the street like a twin-cylinder RPG. Cale and his crew have come outside. I screech-skid to a hard stop inches away from him. However high he is, his reflexes are good enough that he jumps back a few inches when he sees me closing in on him.

“Hey, Cale. Long time no see. How’ve you been doing?”

“Do I know you?”

“Sure. Carolyn McCoy introduced us.”

“Sorry. You’ve got the wrong guy. I don’t know you or any Carolyns or any McCoys.”

I’m close enough to see that yes, he does have runes and sigils tattooed on the sides of his head. I want a closer look, but the lights are shit and he’s too high to stand still.

He turns and tries to walk away.

“Sure you know Carolyn. You’re her Akira connection.” I say it loud enough so that everyone nearby can hear.

Cale turns and heads back, his long lanky body moving with a dancer’s practiced grace but a boxer’s strength. I Carength.2019;m pretty sure he’s armed, but I’m not sure what with.

“What did you just say?”

There are five in his crew. Three girls and two other guys. They spread out behind him, blocking the street in case I try to rabbit away.

“Akira. The Akira that Carolyn sells to stupid college kids and, for all I know, underage go-go dancers. Damn, how many felonies is that?”

“That’s what she says? And you believe everything every dumb junkie cunt tells you?”

“I believe her because you said you didn’t know any Carolyns, but you know she’s a dumb junkie cunt.”

He does a little grunting laugh.