We walk to the other side of the street and into an alley hidden from view. Normally I’d cut and run from a scene like this, but Candy will want to see it.
“Who was that?”
“A guy who’s head I once chopped off.”
“What is it with you and cutting off heads?”
“It’s an old habit. The crowd loved it in the arena. If you do it right, the body does a twitchy little dance before it falls over.”
“It’s pretty fucked up that you know that. I like it.”
“I know. I’ve been saving that one up for you.”
She kisses me on the cheek.
A warm wind swirls down from the sky, kicking up garbage and whirlpooling it away. There’s a roar behind it. Like the wind, but lower in pitch. Like a billion hungry locusts. Or a jet flying low. Maybe both.
I say, “Among God’s many fuckups at the beginning of time was this. When he created the angels he created something else, too. They’re called the Kissi. Watch close because we’re not staying long.”
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.
“Is that blood on your jacket? You got shot again. Are you a bullet magnet or just have a fetish for never wearing the same clothes twice?”
I don’t want to see how Las Montañas del Gehenna turns out. I decided a long time ago that the girl makes it home and I don’t want to find out I’m wrong. I turn off the set.
“Hey! I’m watching that.”
“You can finish it later. I just found out that Aelita is mixed up in this Hunter thing.”
He nods.