Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga (14 page)

The devils, except for one, were on their
feet applauding. The Debauchery Devil was glad she had on
sunglasses now, because her red eyes were blazing. They were trying
to do her out of a job! Bombarding people with reality, smothering
them with virtue, left her with no organized power base. Just all
the little stuff that went on underground. Of course, that would
get bigger and bigger ordinarily, due to human nature. Still the
Company had always organized the chemical and fleshly escapes
people indulged in. There was no whisper of that at this meeting.
Slowly, slowly, she slipped her red high heel back onto her foot
and swayed to her feet. She clapped one short staccato clap
followed after a few deliberate seconds by another.

The Doom and Destruction Devil glowed,
however, as the boss extended a hand toward him and said, "I'd like
to thank Threedee here for the inspiration for this program."

Threedee waved his palms in modest
disclaimer. "Hell, boys, we've been using this tactic for a long
time. Take a bunch of people and put 'em under pressure, fill 'em
with self-righteous baloney about how good they are versus how bad
somebody else is, bore the shit out of 'em long enough, and they'll
start takin' bites out of each other if you don't give 'em somebody
to kill soon enough. It's not original or anything."

"I'm ashamed it's taken me so long to see
the modern applications," the boss apologized. "But one day when
Threedee and I were doing a hot tub together and he was talking
about his latest operations, it just came to me. I'd like that kind
of input from all of you others from time to time."

Right, thought the Debauchery Devil. She
felt ready to blow something up then and there. If only she had
never signed that treaty with hell. Had never agreed to the tribute
each year, especially to that clause that said if she didn't come
up with a sacrifice, she herself was forfeit—not just for the
standard seven-year contract she had with mortals, but for so long
as her services were required. After which—if there was an
after—they could dispose of her as they liked.

Of course, back when she signed the
contract—so long ago she almost couldn't remember—she had been a
wild, free creature, full of starlight and harp music and the smell
of rain in the nighttime woodlands. All sensation and magic and no
logic. And hell, of course, had then, as now, all the wiliest,
craftiest lawyers. But then she had believed if she didn't
compromise, her kingdom would be annexed anyway. The treaty had
bought her and her people a few centuries more of song and
laughter, until that cursed Janet had ambushed the Ride and stolen
away the sacrifice. That was her own damned fault too—her and her
weakness for sexy mortal males who undoubtedly had a fairy in the
woodpile somewhere. Their charm and winning ways worked as
compellingly on mortal women as it did on fairy queens—and on
debauchery devils, for that matter. The Janets of the world had
their own kind of ruthless powers.

She'd gotten used to trading starlight for
neon lights, the smell of rain in the woods for the smell of floral
room freshener superimposed on vomit. And the songs—well, the songs
were just about to go too.

The boss interrupted her reverie with a
severe look from his slitted red eyes. "DD, have you got something
to say?"

She shrugged. "I was just wondering
what—uh—contribution my department is going to have to make in all
of this now."

He looked her straight in the eye, and she
saw all the grimiest, ugliest, noisiest, smelliest, itchiest,
hottest parts of hell opening up before her. "I've been wondering
that myself."

"It doesn't sound like you've got much for
me to do in this new scheme."

"No. Your problem, DD, is that you're not
just an escapist, you're escape itself. There's not going to be any
room for you in the new order. Not in this country anyway. And the
rest of our staff is taking things pretty well in hand in other
countries—our minions there can't afford your fancy ways anymore
anyhow."

"Fancy ways?" The boss sounded like he'd
been talking to the TV evangelists.

"So I guess we're sort of temporarily
overstaffed. Of course, there is the little problem of that gang of
loudmouths who got back in here. If they were by themselves, we
wouldn't worry. Sooner or later the pressure of the rest of the
society we're molding will grind them into submission or force them
to self-destruct. But there is that magic noisemaker. For eight
years your assignment has been to retrieve that thing, and you
haven't done it yet. What do you do on company time anyway?"

"Oh, I'll get it boss. . . ."

"Your problem, DD, is that you're
unpredictable. Not reliable. That was always your problem. If you
had delivered the agreed tribute way back when you had your own
kingdom, we wouldn't be having this discussion now. I gave you this
chance to redeem yourself, to prove yourself of some value, but I
must say that unless you bring the profit to the company that we
contracted for, well . . ." He clucked his tongue and flicked his
nails together as if he were flicking a cigarette lighter, with the
same result that a little tongue of flame licked up between
them.

"Boss, you're a slimeball," she said.

"Don't try to brownnose your way out of
this," he warned.

"And don't think I take your threats
lightly, but pardon me if they seem to me to be a little—inevitable
anyway, the way you have things planned now. In other words, if I
do bring you all that you want, the banjo, a sacrifice, what have
you—what's in it for me?"

The boss beamed at her, doused the
flame, and held his arms open as if about to embrace her.
"Now
that's
the
spirit."

CHAPTER 10

"Oh, come now," Barbara said to Ute. "Don't
try to tell us there was anything diabolical about the success of
the campaign against addictive substances. Surely if anything
supernatural was behind it, it was a blessed miracle, not some
devilish scheme."

"She's got you there, Ute," Heather-Jon
said. "Maybe you've been isolated out here on this ranch instead of
on the streets in the cities. You have no idea how scary it was
getting for a while there, and then suddenly everything that was
being done against the drug dealers started working and the detox
programs became big business and people began recovering and
leading productive lives—"

"If they survived the recovery," Shayla
said.

"What?"

"I had several friends who committed suicide
about that time. They recovered from alcohol and drugs, but they
weren’t able to reenter normal life without them. If you were a
lousy businessperson before you became a drunk, recovering from
alcoholism doesn't suddenly make you a better businessperson.
There's still the IRS and bill collectors and ex-husbands and all
of the other things that make life difficult to face that, if you
had the need to escape from it in the first place, are still harder
for you to face maybe than they are for most people. Some of the
people recovered and found someplace. A lot didn't. A lot died or
went crazy. Or something."

"Well, yes, but society at large benefited
and so did most of those people individually."

"Yes, ma 'am," Ute agreed. "It sure seemed
that way mostly. But you recall, only seven years have passed by
this time, and the devils were thinkin' long range. You know, when
I studied comparative religion up in Austin, the professor told us
that the Hindus have this wheel of life where something that
happens on the upturn of the wheel and is a good thing there
becomes a bad thing on the downstroke. That's kind of what the
devil corporation had in mind in this case, I think. A salvation
that brought the seeds of its own damnation because it didn’t go—as
most solutions don’t—quite far enough.

"But Willie and his buddies were only just
discovering some of the ways things had changed. They were
discovering some changes in themselves too, and the way they were
ready to ride back out of the chute and into the arena.
Furthermore, with a little nudge from a two-timin' redheaded
supernatural entity, a certain six-year-old boy was deciding that
he was more than ready for a few changes.

* * *

Nothin' but nothin' was happenin' in
the
neighborhood anymore, Jaydee Endicott thought
disgustedly, as he sat on the dilapidated front stoop of his
apartment building, watching the street. Schools were so crowded he
went only a half-day, even though his mama had to work until three
at the hospital. Used to be, his big brothers were home to boss him
around and take care of him, and
used
to be Harold, his eighteen-year-old brother
who was the youngest next to him, used to play with him sometimes.
Now Harold was in the m'lisha and didn't have no time for babies,
he told Jaydee.

Used to be the playground over back of the
church was open, but the m'lisha bosses, they said playgrounds was
used too much for drug deals and doin' bad stuff to kids, so you
couldn't play there no more.

Used to be summer and at least you could go
outside and play kick the can, till the projects manager said you
wasn't allowed to play with no litter an' be a litterbug.

Used to be the other kids would play
with him in the vacant lot, tossing the ball and such, but now the
vacant lot was being excavated for a new building that also took up
the lot where Grandma and Grandpa's house used to stand before they
had to move away because the building men wanted to tear down their
house. Used to be Grandma and Grandpa would give him cookies and
let him watch television, but now television was no fun anymore.
All it had on it he could even watch was
Roadkill Rabbit
,
Diego
the Death Squad Commando
, and the
Junior G-person
call-in show, where you could
report your folks for using drugs if you wanted to. Jaydee didn't
much want to, and he got tired of shows where nothin' happened
except somebody chased somebody else or blew somethin' or somebody
up. That's where all the other kids were, watchin' them things, but
Jaydee didn't like to, not all the time. He liked it better when
Grandma took him out in the vacant lot and helped him name the
stars. But that was when he was little. He never got to see Grandma
anymore since Grandpa died.

So he sat on the stoop and watched the
people do things. Miz Persimmon Simmons, the stripper, hung her
wash out her window, a line of tiny little strings with spangles
and fringe on them and a whole rainbow of the tie-dyed T-shirts her
ponytailed boyfriend Juan always wore. Jaydee liked those T-shirts,
specially the one with yellow, red, orange, turquoise, and purple
in it. Maybe if it got old or somethin' and Juan didn't want it no
more, he'd fetch it out of the trash for himself. Use it for
somethin'. Had to be good for somethin', pretty cloth like that.
Maybe make him a sweatband like the m'lisha wore, only prettier, or
somethin' for Mama.

Across the street in the little rectangle of
grass the streets ran around, Old Man Bulk sat with his cane. He
had on a clear plastic raincoat over a sweater. The m'lisha didn't
bother him none because he used to be an important man—a fighter.
Now he was a little crazy, punch-drunk, and Mama always told Jaydee
not to get too close to him.

Most people walked alone or in ones and
twos. You couldn't even have a club anymore cause the m'lisha said
that's what led to drug gangs. Only people allowed to have a club
was the m'lisha, and Jaydee watched them every afternoon strut past
or lounge, casual like, against the power poles, scratchin' itchy
trigger fingers. He wondered if he'd see somebody shoot somebody
with one of those big assault guns they carried, like them mob guys
shot ol’ Siffy Bascomb last week. Siffy was a friend of Harold's,
and Harold was real mad about it. Man oh man, Jaydee would sure
like to see somethin' like that. Maybe it would be Harold sometime.
Jaydee tried on how it would be with Harold gone—he'd probably get
all his stuff. Even that didn't seem very exciting or interesting,
though it made him shift his position back and forth from one side
of the stoop to the other, looking for Harold to see if he might be
on his way home.

Horns bleating, people yelling, cars
braking, the jackhammers that sounded like the m'lisha
target-practice range on Saturday nights, the beepers and the roar
of the big yellow cranes and earth-moving machines next door, the
smell of dust and cold rain, fast food and backed-up sewage, sweat
and dirty diapers—even the gray brown haze in the air—nothing in
his world was friendly until Mama got home unless Harold seemed to
be feeling like less of an asshole than usual.

A warm soft weight bumped against the back
of his arm, and he twisted to see what it was and caught only the
glimpse of an orange plumey tail-tip. The other arm got the same
bump as the soft weight rubbed against his back, and this time when
he turned, an alley cat stared up at him and meowed hello, just
like she knew him. Her ear was kinda torn up, and there was a ridge
over her nose where she bumped the garbage cans, but otherwise she
was a fine-lookin' cat. Her coat was real nice, like she took good
care of herself. Didn't have no diseases, he bet, no matter what
Mama would say.

And right away he knew there was somethin'
special about her. She reached up and patted his cheek with her
little paw, making a low rumbly sound inside her chest that sounded
good—must be a purr. He'd never seen a real cat do it. Real cats
mostly disappeared quick around here. He stroked her back and felt
the purr coming up out of her, like it was going into his hand and
up his arm and through his whole self, making him feel happy all
over.