Ballistic Kiss (Sandman Slim 11)

On the way out, I steal as much of the doom twins’ liquor as I can shove into my coat.

The next afternoon, I sit around with Vidocq at his place, my hoard of stolen booze spread out on his coffee table. I haven’t spoken to Janet since last night, so that might be the end of that. I don’t like to think about it, but then I don’t like to think about being cool with people cutting up poodles for no goddamn reason. I want to think that Janet is better than the rest of the Lodge Within the Lodge crowd. I know it’s a reach at this point, but I want to think that what Janet said was just a momentary bout of dementia. Still, not hearing from them makes me think that they’ve made up their mind about whose side they’re on, and it’s not mine. It’s too bad. I lost Alice and mostly lost Candy but I’m still here. I suppose I’ll get over Janet, but it’s going to be a long, sad process finding a new donut place.

Vidocq says, “You’re sure they were discussing animal sacrifices?”

“Dogs. Then a horse.”

“Mon dieu. I’ve known alchemists who, when struggling with a seemingly unsolvable problem, turned to foul methods to obtain knowledge. But they never truly succeeded. One tainted morsel of information made them hungrier for more. And since it seemed to them that they had found a way of advancing themselves with little work, they turned from fools into monsters.”

“Tell me about it.”

Vidocq cups his hands like he thinks a hedgehog might fall from the ceiling.

“They would begin with small animals, eventually moving to larger and larger ones. When single beasts were no longer sufficient, they fell in with criminals, stealing whole herds to satisfy their growing desire for foul knowledge.”

“Did it work? What happened to them?”

“The ones not arrested by the authorities turned darker and crueler in their desires. Some went mad. A few, realizing what they’d become, hung themselves. Some, however, simply became ever more monstrous. I remember one winter in particular. A deep cold had settled over Paris. The type that seems endless. Daily, there would be bodies in the street. The homeless. The foolish who walked into a storm after too much wine. It took some time, but contacts of mine in both the criminal and legal worlds told me that the greatest number of dead that winter were children.”

“That stinks, but is it so strange? Aren’t kids always the first to get hurt?”

“True. But the heads of children in a flood remained on their shoulders. Their hearts remained in their chests. You couldn’t say the same for the dead children of Paris that winter.”

“Human sacrifice?”

“The bodies and blood of children have powerful mystical properties. The younger the child, the more power it has. This is well-known in the world of dark magic. What was equally well-known among circles such as mine was that even contemplating hurting a child would lead you to the guillotine. Or worse.”

“What’s worse than having a sweaty cop cut your head off?”

“Us,” Vidocq says.

He doesn’t speak for a minute, lost somewhere in Paris a hundred years ago.

Finally, he says, “We were what the monstrous feared more than the police. The legitimate and sane alchemists and magicians of Paris. We did not take madmen and -women lightly. If we found a baleful wizard or witch before the police did, their end would be much slower and more terrifying than a quick death by the guillotine.”

I take a sip of some expensive Scotch. It tastes like burnt dirt.

“Dan and Juliette are nuts, but I don’t think they’re baby-stealing nuts.”

“For now.”

I watch a seagull fly by the window.

“Janet wouldn’t put up with it. They’d tell me, even if we were on the outs like we are now. They’re in over their head, but not so deep they’d let the doom twins feed Kenny a kid.”

“I hope you’re right. But power changes people. It creates a desire for more power. At a certain point it can become overwhelming and after certain acts people can find that there is no turning back.”

Hearing all this, more than ever, I want to get Janet away from the Lodge crowd. Manimal Mike too. I hope Maria isn’t leading him somewhere he can’t come back from. Of course, I don’t even know Maria, so I can’t write her off yet. Maybe she was just caught up in the moment last night. But the others—Juliette, Dan, turtleneck guy, and the rest—they can’t join Kenny in the House of Knives fast enough to suit me.

Vidocq says, “Tell me more about Little Cairo. Have you learned anything helpful from your restless spirits?”

I paw through the bottles on the table, looking for bourbon.

“A few things. Just not enough to matter. The Sub Rosa Council wants to wipe out the Stay Belows and my money is on that happening.”

“A slaughter of the innocents.”

“Not exactly innocent. I saw them kill people.”