The Kissi come down on tligme downhe building like a black boiling fog. At first they look like a solid mass. It isn’t until they start tearing the building apart that you can see individual ones. I’m behind Candy with my arms wrapped around her, not because it’s cold but to prevent her from doing exactly what she’s doing now. Trying to leave the alley to get closer to the carnage. She only does it for a few seconds then settles down against my chest. I can hear her heart beating like a speed-metal-band encore. Something explodes and she jumps back against me. One of the Kissi must have hit a gas line. The building already looks like Pompeii. Broken walls. Cracked stones. And everything on fire. The horrible-beautiful faces of individual Kissi are visible in the flames. That’s enough fun for one night. I pull Candy back farther into the dark.
We come out by the hotel. She’s holding on to my hands, which are wrapped around her.
She looks up at me.
“I don’t have the words,” she says. “You’ve seen a lot of that kind of stuff, haven’t you?”
“Way too much for my taste.”
She steps out from my arms and takes my hand.
“Let’s go upstairs and finish off the furniture.”
“I can’t right now. Every bit of information I get makes this whole thing more confusing. I know Aelita is doing this to fuck with me, but that can’t be all there is to it. She thinks too big for that. And what does ‘If you’ve made it this far, it’s already too late’ mean? I need to talk to Kasabian. Want to come with me?”
She shakes her head.
“He talked my ear off before. He doesn’t get out much, does he? I think I need to take a break before I dive back in.”
“Okay. I’ll see you upstairs in a little while.”
She heads for the room.
“Take as long as you want. I’m starting without you. You’ll just have to catch up.”
“I’ll bring my Jet Ski.”
INSIDE, KASABIAN IS drinking a beer and watching Las Montañas del Gehenna, an obscure seventies Mexican spaghetti western. Kind of a cross between Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Jodorowsky’s God-is-a-Freudian-shootist epic, El Topo. After a long drought hits their village, the residents decide to sacrifice a young girl to the ancient Mayan rain god. The girl’s father and lover shoot up the village and rescue her. Later, a priest visits them at their hideout in the desert. He tells them that they have to find the gods and make it up to them for stealing their sacrific" aeir sace. Midway into the movie, the girl and the two men ride their horses up a mountain of bleached human and animal bones to a cave that’s the entrance to the Mayan underworld. The gods’ minions grab the girl and lay her out on a stone altar while a priest holds an obsidian knife over her, ready to cut out her heart. The girl’s father and lover have to play the traditional to-the-death Mayan ball game to see if they’re all going to be sacrificed or they get to return to earth. I was watching Las Montañas del Gehenna the night Mason sent me Downtown, so I never got to see if any of them survived.>The office at the front of the building overlooking the street isn’t set up to impress, but at least it looks like the lab is a legit business. It must do everything by courier or pickup them. There’s a plain wooden desk that you’d see in any high school principal’s office, piled with receipts, schedules, and undelivered lab results. A business phone with about ninety buttons, most unlabeled. A combination fax and copy machine. In the corner is a plant with shiny green leaves. It looks like the only thing in the office the occupant cares about.
We go into the next office. Hallelujah. This one is decked out for a bank president. Dark green walls with light trim. Very Victorian. An oak desk with inlaid leather, big enough to land cargo planes. A plasma TV on one wall and a glass-fronted cabinet on the other filled with framed certificates and trophies. It’s all very nice and respectable looking and copied straight out of an executive furniture catalog, I bet. The wall to the left of the desk is why the nice office is back here and not up front with a view. This one has a window looking right into the lab.
I was right. There are eight people on the night shift. A collection of clean-cut MIT types and scruffy old-school meth cookers who have enough brain cells left to move up the food chain to the exotica market.
What’s really interesting isn’t the people but their gear. It isn’t ordinary college-surplus Bunsen burners and Dr. Frankenstein bubbling flasks. The place is decked out like a TV starship. Smooth, sexy, and at times translucent Golden Vigil gear, a collection of advanced human tech tweaked by angels recruited by Aelita, the Vigil’s psycho angel queen. The last time I saw her, she was quitting the Vigil so she could return to Heaven and, no shit, kill God, the dead-eyed neglectful dad who she thought had outlived his usefulness. Aelita might be the most vicious and craziest thing with wings I’ve ever met, but you’ve got to give her credit for ambition.
The window looking into the lab must be one-way glass because no one in there has noticed us. Candy has probably seen drug cookers and I know she’s never seen anything like Golden Vigil tech. She’s got her nose pressed against the window like it’s her first visit to the zoo.
I sit down at the desk and dial Hunahpu’s number from his office phone. That ought to get his attention. I look through the lab window, hoping Hunahpu is inside with the techs. I hear the cell ring, but none of the techs pulls out a cell phone. After the few rings, Hunahpu’s phone cuts off. No voice-mail message. Nothing. A minute later the desk phone rings. I wait. A few rings and a recorder built into the phone kicks in. An amplified voice comes through the unectrough tit’s speaker.
“Stark. Pick up. I know you’re there.”
Damn.
I pick up the receiver.
“Who is this?”
“It’s who you wanted to speak to. So speak.”
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“I know you saw Carolyn. And I know you’re the kind of persuasive person who would get her to talk about Cale. If you have my cell and are calling from my office, something tells me you found him, too. Is he dead?”
“Entirely. Have you ever been to Donut Universe? They’re open twenty-four/seven. Why don’t we meet for coffee?”
“Let’s not and say we did.”
“I’m looking at your lab.”