The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

“Shouldn’t we go over things now?”

“She has work to do first. And nothing you’re doing is complicated. You’re just there to get her through any doors she can’t breach herself.”

“I can probably do this whole thing myself in ten minutes.”

“Or blow it in one. The plan is already in motion. Be back here at midnight.”

I leave Wells’s office and walk around looking for Sola and Vidocq, but can’t find them. Not a bad day all in all. I saw Ishii tossed out on his ass. I’m cleared of being Saint Nick. And I got to sucker-­punch a demon.

Armed guards stand around the entrance to the Shonin’s room as movers take out the wrecked furniture and bring in new. I’ve always been in such a hurry to get inside I never noticed that he’s hung mistletoe over the door.

I RIDE THE Hellion hog home from the Vigil compound through wet, empty streets. The rain beats down hard today. Fat drops the size of quarters. I rev the engine and speed the hog down Hollywood Boulevard, sending mini-tidal waves onto the sidewalk.

Under a dead streetlight, someone has broken the front windows of a Gap store. A few kids run away with jeans and a ­couple of cops load armfuls of stuff into the back of their squad car. A whole deserted city for the taking and they’re stealing Dockers.

I run the bike into the alley behind Max Overdrive and throw the cover on top, though I’m not sure why at this point. What’s to keep dry anymore? We’re living in an open-­air aquarium. Everyone and everything is wet inside and out. Soon we’ll grow gills and fins. We’ll swim out into the California Current and let it carry us down to Baja, where we’ll live off cheap cerveza and krill. Until someone decides our bones make good soup. Then we’ll head out to sea, into the deep, deep water where transparent creatures, so long in the dark they’re born blind, skulk along the ocean floor waiting for us to tire out or die or just give up. We’ll drift down to the bottom of the world, food for things that have never dreamed of land or humans or the Angra. Will we be happy then? Primordial shit in a volcanic trench older than God’s jodhpurs? I doubt it. We’ll just get absorbed by something else and fed up the food chain again until we’re back on land, food for the God or Gods that marooned us here in the first place. And we’ll start the whole thing again. Our only consolation is that maybe in the new world, the studios will have more sense and no one will green-­light Battlefield Earth. That would be worth coming back for.

I go in through the side door. I can feel the wrongness of the place even before I see it. Discs are scattered all over the floor. A display case is knocked over and another one is torn to pieces. Kasabian’s door looks like it was ripped off its hinges. Screams come from his room.

The lights are off, but I can see someone on top of him. I grab whoever it is by the collar and throw them as hard as I can out the door. They slam into the floor, slide, and bang into the far wall hard enough to leave a dent.

It isn’t until she gets to her knees that I recognize her. It’s Candy. She’s gone full Jade. I’ve never seen her so far gone before. Her skin has gone almost obsidian and her nails are curved back into claws. She growls, showing a mouthful of white shark teeth. Her eyes are red slits in black ice. She’s sweating and blood drips from her mouth where she bit herself.

I shout, “Candy. It’s me. Stop.”

She charges and hits me square in the chest, knocking me onto my back. She’s ridiculously strong in this form, and as vicious as an Eater. All teeth and madness. Candy’s teeth are bad enough, but then she stretches her mouth open like a snake, exposing needle-­thin fangs she uses to inject the Jades’ necrotizing poison.

Candy’s my girl, but I don’t want to die and I don’t want anyone drinking me when I do. But this isn’t her fault. She’s fucked up and I don’t want to punch her out.

I bark some Hellion and she flies off me like ghosts playing horseshoes. She’s up a second later and charging me again.

I grab her, wrapping my arms and legs around her. Still, it’s all I can do to hold on. I bark a sleeping hex into her ear. She slows down. Her eyes close. Then I feel her body tense again as she fights her way through it, snarling and clawing at me again.

She braces her feet on the ground and pushes back against me, freeing one leg. It’s enough to wriggle a leg, then a hand free. She drags her claws down my arm, shredding my coat and skin.

I yell, “Candy. Stop.”

She bites my wrist down to the bone. I grab her again and shout more Hellion. Something harder and worse than sleep.

She lets go of my wrist, shaking violently. Every muscle in her body going rigid. Her eyes go wide and her lips draw back from her teeth in a painful grimace. She’s having a seizure. A kind of hoodoo epilepsy. But even with every muscle in her body locked in place, she’s still fighting. I push her off me, but hold on to her.

“Kasabian. You all right?”

He comes to his door like a groundhog afraid of the light.

“I’m okay. What the fuck is going on?”

“I’ll tell you when I know.”

I pick her up, slipping in some blood from my wrist. When I get my footing, I carry her through a shadow to the clinic.

The clinic is as empty as the streets. Fairuza sees us coming and yells for Allegra. She comes out of the exam room.

“My God. What’s wrong?”

“Look at her. She’s full Jade.”

Allegra comes over and looks at Candy. Checks her forehead. Pushes up her eyelids.