Broken Souls (15 page)

“Goddammit, he’s getting away,” Gabriela yells. Sergei morphs into his own body, his clothes too tight around him, and bolts down the hall. The spell holding Gabriela in place evaporates and she scrambles to go after him.

Time rushes back in like a dam breaking. I run to Tabitha, fall to my knees. Blood is spreading across the floor in one long, steady flow, the heart that should be pumping it completely destroyed. I can’t think of what to do. I turn her over. Her eyes are blinking, mouth working as she tries to pull in air to fill lungs that aren’t there anymore. Part of my brain wants to try to shove all the blood back in. Another part wants me to try CPR, but there’s no chest to do compressions on, no heart to start.

“I need help here,” I say. Tabitha grabs my hand, not quite dead, yet. She hangs onto it as tight as she can, eyes going in and out of focus, body shaking as it tries to suck in oxygen it’ll never get.

Gabriela looks at Tabitha on the floor. Shakes her head. “There’s nothing to do, Carter. I am not letting him get away.” She runs after Sergei.

When Tabitha dies, she’s gone. Her hand loosens in mine. The light fades from her eyes and it’s all over. She doesn’t leave behind a ghost. A lot of people don’t. She’s off to wherever it is she’s supposed to go. Dead. Like my parents, like my sister, like Alex. She’s gone.

And I am not going to let that fucking happen.

I know rationally that Gabriela’s right. There’s nothing I can do, but I keep going through every spell I know, anyway. I’ve got nothing. My magic doesn’t heal. I can’t stitch people up or put their hearts back together or mend broken bones.

But as I’m trying to remember every little trick I ever learned, anything that might help, something inside me perks up. That dark power I felt in the electronics store with the demons. For whatever reason it’s awake and I have its attention. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it can do, but it’s alive and inside me and it wants out.

“All right, you sonofabitch. Let’s see if you’re good for anything besides killing.”

I feel that same rush of power pulse through me. My chest explodes into pain. I push past it. My insides feel like they’re being torn apart. This is worse than in the electronics store or on the train. My vision blurs, goes black around the edges. For a second I wonder if this thing inside me has decided that the best way to save her is to kill me.

No such luck. I can feel the power flow out through my hands and eyes into her corpse. Muscle knits beneath my hands, bones stitch themselves back together. The ravaged hole Sergei’s spell made through her closes up. Skin closes over new muscle. A second that feels like an hour goes by. As she heals it feels like my insides are being torn apart. I hang on and keep pushing. Then I feel a heartbeat in her chest. She rears up from the floor, gasps for air. Then falls back, unconscious. But she’s breathing.

In the distance I hear gunfire, Gabriela yelling orders to her men through the radio earpiece. Screams inside the bar as it empties out in a panic. Explosions.

A few seconds later Gabriela runs back into the office. “We have to go,” she yells at me. “No fucking thanks to you he got—” She stops as she sees Tabitha lying on the floor. Alive.

“That—What the hell did you do?”

“I don’t know.” My breath is coming out in ragged gasps. The pain in my chest subsiding, more quickly than in the storage room, but slower than I’d like. I just hope it was the right thing to do.

I’ve animated corpses, made puppets of dead meat dance. But I’ve never done this before. I didn’t know I could. And considering what I used to make it happen, I’m not entirely sure I’m the one who did it.

Gabriela stares at Tabitha breathing on the floor, no evidence of the massive hole that went straight through her. Gabriela snaps herself out of it, grabs my shoulder. “Come on. We have to go,” she says. “Cops’ll be here any second.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” I get up, wipe blood from my hands onto my pants, pick up the Browning from the floor.

“We can’t be here when the cops show.”

I pull a nametag and a Sharpie from my coat pocket, write the word COP on the tag, blood from my fingers coating the edges. Pump some juice into it and slap it to my chest. “You can’t be here. I need to be here.”

“Jesus, they’ll take care of her.”

“And I need to make sure that happens. She needs, fuck I don’t know what she needs, a hospital probably. I’m not leaving her alone.”

Gabriela chews the bottom of her lip. “Then you better see this. That nametag’s gonna do you fuck-all if you can’t explain what just happened out back. Come on.” I follow her out to the parking lot. Most of the cars are on fire. The explosions I heard. A couple near the back, a Honda and Tabitha’s Mini Cooper are fine.

“The fuck did he do?”

“Sergei turned back into Kettleman once he hit the parking lot. My guys opened up on him, but he chucked a fireball and did that to them.” There’s no way there’s anyone left alive in those cars. It’s like a bomb went off in each and every one of them. Sergei pulled out all the stops.

“You froze,” she says, eyes accusing. “We fucking had him and you froze. Who the hell is that in there, anyway?”

“Her name’s Tabitha. She runs the place. She’s a friend. I’m sorry.”

“A friend? I lost eight people. Eight loyal people. Because you fucking got sentimental.” She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes. “Fuck!”

“We’ll find him again.”

“Yeah? And who will he be this time, huh? And how are we going to track him down without your fucking little gadget? How many more people am I going to lose if we do find him? They trusted me. They trusted me to keep them safe.”

Sirens whine in the distance. “I’m not staying,” she says. “Good luck with the cops.”

The police will be here any second now, and once people realize nothing else is going to explode the lot’s going to fill up with looky-loos. Gabriela walks to a Lexus parked on the street. She snaps her fingers and it chirps as it unlocks for her.

“Your people knew full well what they were getting into,” I say. She’s not the only one pissed off about this. “Or do they just like carrying guns because it looks cool?”

“Fuck you,” she says. “They were my responsibility.”

“And Tabitha is mine.”

“Well, at least you got to save her. I’ve got eight charred corpses sitting in a goddamn parking lot. And the fuck did you do in there, anyway?”

“I told you, I don’t know. It just . . . happened.”

“This was a complete clusterfuck,” she says. “And right now all I want to do is shove this machete so far up your ass it knocks out teeth,” she says. “So I’m leaving. If you manage to talk your way out of this call me. And then I’ll figure out whether or not to fucking kill you.” She gets into the Lexus, slams the door, peels out into the street.

I head back inside to Tabitha. She’s breathing, seems fine. Just out cold. My hands are shaking, the blood on them has taken on a dark, metallic sheen. I can feel it drying on my face. I have no idea if she’s going to be okay.

I pull up a chair and wait for the police to arrive.

When the cops show
it doesn’t take much to convince them I’m one of them. A little “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” and some Sharpie magic can work wonders. I get some weird looks for wearing sunglasses in the middle of the night, but nobody says anything. The paramedics are confused as fuck. Tabitha’s clothes show what looks like a gunshot, there’s blood all over the place, bits of meat and bone, but she’s got no wound. They don’t know what to do with her, so they haul her into the back of an ambulance.

“Is she going to be okay?” I say, getting in behind them.

Paramedic shakes his head. “Everything scans. Heartbeat, blood pressure, O
2
, it’s all fine. Don’t know why she’s out, though. Could be anything. Drugs, trauma. We’ll know more when we get her to the ER. She should be fine.”

That right there is the problem. She should be fine. She should be awake and moving and generally pissed off at having been shot. But she’s not and I’m starting to get worried. I can think of half a dozen things worse than being dead and I have no idea what I actually did to her.

“You know her?” the paramedic asks.

I almost say yes, and it’s my fault she’s like this, like everything’s my goddamn fault. But then I remember I’m supposed to be a cop and say, “No, never seen her before.”

“Boy howdy, was that unexpected,” Alex says from the passenger seat of the ambulance. He leans back to look at Tabitha, whistles. “Nice job patching up the hole, though.”

“The fuck do you want?” I say. The paramedic looks at me, frowning.

“Nothing,” he says. “Are you okay, detective?” he asks.

“Oooh, detective,” Alex says, clapping his hands. “Are we playing cops and robbers now?” He makes finger guns at me and “pew pew” noises. I don’t say anything, don’t even look at him.

“Are we not talking anymore? You’re gonna hurt my feelings,” he says. “And here I thought I had graduated from hallucination to friend.”

“Sorry,” I say to the paramedic. “Where are you taking her?”

“Straight to Hell is my guess,” Alex says.

“UCLA Westwood,” the paramedic says. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.” I’ve done what I stuck around to do. They’ve got her ID, they’ll get her squared away. There’s nothing more I can do for her. We’re a few blocks out from the bar, far enough, I think.

“Oh, a hospital,” Alex says. “Yeah, that’ll fix her right up. Only, wait. No, it won’t. She’s gone, son. Been gone a long, long time.” He laughs. “Oh, man. This is so fucked up. You have no idea.”

“The fuck are you talking about?”

“Sir?” the paramedic says.

“I’d love to tell you,” Alex says. “Can I?” He cocks his head like a dog figuring out if it can eat the cat. “No. I don’t think I can tell you that one. Rules. I hate rules. So many pissy, little rules.”

That’s it. I’ve had enough. “Pull over,” I say.

“Excuse me?” the paramedic says.

I draw the Browning, shove it in the paramedic’s nose. “I said pull. The fuck. Over.” The driver hits the brakes. The ambulance skids to a stop, everything in the back lurching. I push the back door open and jump out. “Now get her to the hospital, or I’ll fucking hunt you down and kill you.”

The driver hits the gas, leaving me standing in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard waving a gun, what little traffic there is at three in the morning backing up behind me. Some guy in a Porsche revs his engine, lays on his horn.

So I shoot out his windshield, put a couple rounds into his passenger seat. The driver goes white and if he hasn’t pissed his pants I’ll be impressed.

“Wow. You are an angry, angry man,” Alex says.

“Gotta shoot something,” I say. “And not much point in shooting you.” I point the gun at his head. “Or is there?”

“If you want to hit the tree behind me, sure. Hey, here’s an idea, how about we take this someplace that isn’t the middle of the street? Or would you like to talk more in jail?”

“You know what I did to her. You know what that power is that I drew on. I want some fucking answers. Who are you? What are you not telling me?”

Traffic is building up behind me. A couple brave souls have slowly edged past me, staring at me as I rant and wave the Browning around, headlights throwing wide shadows across the street. To them I’m just one more crazy fucker with a gun. They can’t see Alex. The Porsche driver tries to move the car and I stop him by pointing the gun at him.

“Lots, really,” Alex says. “For your own good.”

“Mine, or yours? You know what, forget it. You won’t answer me, I know somebody who will.” I go to the driver’s side of the Porsche, my gun never wavering from the driver’s head. He locks the door, but I pop it with a snap of my fingers and yank it open.

“Out. Now.” The driver tumbles out, throwing his wallet and watch at me. Asking me not to kill him. I look at the surprisingly dry seat before I slide into it.

“You have remarkable bladder control,” I say. “Be proud of that. Now get the fuck out of here.” I gun the engine, leaving the traumatized driver crying in the street.

“You’re thinking of going to see Santa Muerte, aren’t you?” Alex says, appearing in the bullet-filled passenger seat next to me. “You don’t want to do that.”

“I don’t want to do that or you don’t want me to do that?” I say. “I haven’t seen the little lady in a while. I’m sure she’s worried sick about me. I’ll pop on by, have a few laughs. Introduce you to her. Whatta ya say? Something tells me she’d just love to meet you.”

“You know, I don’t like you when you’re angry,” he says. “You get all sarcastic.”

“Then tell me what’s going on.”

“How about I show you instead? This is a good spot for it. Park the car.”

We’re just coming up on Hancock Park and the La Brea Tar Pits. I pull the Porsche over. Alex is gone before I even pull the key, but I can see him inside the park, just on the other side of the fence. I have to climb over it to get to him.

“Lovely place, isn’t it?” he says. We’re at the edge of the Lake Pit, the park’s largest pool of liquid asphalt. Life-size mammoth statues, two adults and a baby, posed to recreate a grim scene. An Ice Age memento mori of fiberglass and cement. One of the adults is trapped in the tar, its mate and child bellowing from the shore.

“Yeah, it’s a hoot.” The tar pits are as much cemetery as death trap. Forty-thousand years ago everything from dire wolves to mammoths to giant sloths were trapped in the tar, stuck until they died of dehydration or were torn apart by predators, who quickly found themselves trapped as well. Nothing’s died here in a long, long time, but I can feel it anyway, thick and fetid. A sense of death and desperation as the animals panicked and died.

“I think so,” Alex says. “Did you know that there are pits all around Mexico City, some of them just now being rediscovered, some that are never going to be found. Pits from before it was Tenochtitlan, a city on a lake. Before the Aztecs, before the Toltecs. Full of skulls. All of them the lives that the sun god Huitzilopochtli demanded before he even had a name. All so that he would rise in the east the next morning to keep the darkness at bay a little while longer. Hundreds, thousands of sacrifices. So many dead and your scholars have no idea. They think they do, but nothing compares to the reality. And we know how that turned out, don’t we? A dead civilization marked by mass graves that no one will ever see.”

He turns to me, spreads his arms out wide. “Like this place. How many dead are here, Eric? I know you can feel them. They’re old, buried, but they’re not gone. All those animals who wandered too close, who died of starvation, fear. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dead. There might not be a bigger death pit in all of California.”

The ground trembles and I think we’re having an earthquake. A hole opens in the ground next to me, widens, deepens. I jump away from it, expect it to fill with a geyser of liquid asphalt, thick tarry oil, to pull me down and leave me to rot like the animals that died here thousands of years ago. Instead dirt and soil keep disappearing, deepening the pit. Wide, flat stones burst from the sides, click together. A spiral staircase descending into the darkness.

Alex starts down the stairs. “You wanted answers, necromancer,” Alex says. “Come on down and get them.”