The Mall of Cthulhu (15 page)

He suddenly felt bad. He'd been feeling so good in the last few days, like he'd found his purpose, like he was a supernatural asskicker, but it turned out he was just the same old slacker-loser he always was.

"Hey," Cayenne said, "what's the matter? You look funny all the sudden."

"Well, I guess if you've only just noticed that I look funny, I'm doing pretty well."

She smiled. "You know what I mean. You just thought of something that made you sad."

"Well," Ted said, then paused. Things had gone way better than he had any right to hope for, and he couldn't say I just ruined this great intimacy by thinking about how I have to protect the earth from octopus-headed beings from another dimension, oh, yeah, and I'm thinking of another woman besides, even if she is my lesbian friend and not anything else . . . And, incredibly, he found something else to say that wasn't even a lie, really.

"I guess I was just thinking that this evening seems to be moving towards a logical conclusion, I mean, I don't want to be presumptuous, but I just feel like . . . "

"We're gonna do it. Keep talking."

"I just . . . . I really like you a lot, I mean I don't want to creep you out, but I feel this connection to you that I don't know if I've ever felt with anyone, and I just think I've had too many margaritas to really be at my best in that department, and I really don't want to disappoint you and have you break it off, so even though I really really want to, I also don't want to because I want to make sure you stick around."

Cayenne looked at him. "You know, for a guy who slays the undead, you're really awfully sweet."

"Hey, I only did that once," Ted said, and smiled. He paid the check, and they walked outside.

"Will you at least walk me home?" Cayenne asked. "I might need protection if there are any vampires lurking around."

"Okay, now you're busting my balls."

"Yeah, but I want you to walk me home anyway."

They walked the five blocks to Cayenne's apartment in silence, holding hands. The night was cool, and Cayenne's hand felt warm and soft in Ted's. They stumbled into the street and managed to just barely keep a hold on each other's hand as they walked with a parked Mini Cooper between them. At Cayenne's door, they kissed long and slow, and the feeling of her tongue stud against his tongue gave Ted all kinds of ideas.

"See you tomorrow," she said, and Ted floated down the sidewalk. Two blocks from Cayenne's apartment, he felt a vibrating in his pants. It took him an unusually long time to realize that this was his phone. He fumbled in his pocket and dug the phone out.

"Hello?"

"Jesus, Ted, this is the fifth time I've called you. Where are you? Are you scoring?"

"Do you think I would have picked up the phone if I were?"

"Hey, I like to think I'm a priority call."

"Nobody's that high a priority. Anyway, no, I'm walking home."

"Good. I'll see you in a few minutes. I'm crashing in this apartment I'm renting for you, because I'm way too exhausted and pissed off to drive home tonight."

"What happened?"

"I'll tell you everything when you get home. I hope you've walked off some of your margarita buzz, because we actually have some work to do."

"So that
was
you in the restaurant!"

"Yeah. Talk to you soon."

When Ted reached the apartment, a haggard-looking Laura told him everything about sitting in a foul-smelling van, about Brother Leonard disappearing, about the Angry White People and Boston's disappointing response.

"That's actually really interesting," Ted said. "I mean, first of all, if they're trying to raise Cthulhu, then they sent that guy to the lost city of R'lyeh . . . "

"Is that a place where his burns will be healed?"

"Well, according to the stories, it's a nightmare of desolation and non-Euclidean geometry."

"Right, I remember that. "

"Yeah, the characters are always ranting about how the geometry doesn't work or something—they see parallel lines intersecting and it drives them mad, mad I say. I mean, I never got the impression from anything I read that it was a place you'd want to send one of your buddies, and since we are as gnats in the sight of the Old Ones, I kinda doubt there's going to be any healing involved."

"Well, I suppose that would explain the screams of horror I heard."

"Yeah. Spooky."

"Yeah, it creeped me out. But what's up with the race thing? I thought white supremacists were always psychotic Christians."

"That actually makes complete sense to me. In the stories, it's always the degenerate mixed-blood sailors who are involved in this stuff, but that was in the twenties. It's a different world now. All these angry white guys see the writing on the wall—you know, their light-brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking great-grandchildren won't even understand what being white even means. I mean, I noticed it in the mall—the teens cruise around in these multiracial packs, white, black, Asian, whatever. So by the time those kids have kids, they won't have any white pride or identity or whatever. So, you know, as a white guy, our day is pretty much coming to an end. So if it's the angry white guys who are the priests of Cthulhu or whatever, then they'll be sure to have some power in the new, Old God-centered world, and you know what Kissinger said about power."

"No, but I can guess. But, uh, I thought humans were insignificant gnats to these things—how are the angry white guys going to have any power?"

"No idea. Maybe the book actually gives them some control over them. Or maybe they're willing to risk the end of the world because living in a world where white people aren't on top amounts to the same thing as far as they're concerned."

Laura paused and thought. "So what are we going to do? What can we do?"

"I don't know," Ted said. "How long do you think you'll have the van?"

"Killilea says two days max. And we're—shit, Ted, I have no idea! I don't know if there's anything to do besides arm ourselves and try to take as many of them out as we can when they start their ceremony in the mall."

"Shooting spree in the mall? Are you kidding?"

Laura looked slightly hurt. "Well, no. I mean, it's a last option, obviously, but if we're talking about saving the world . . . "

Ted's face was reddening. "Are you a good enough shot to avoid hitting that mom with the stroller on level three? Well, you probably are, but I'm sure as hell not. And I got away with a killing spree once—I don't think it would happen again."

"Goddammit, Ted, if they get away with this, it won't matter whether you're in jail or not! I . . . I mean, I don't have to tell you that doing the right thing is hard. We might have to spend the rest of our lives in jail to make sure the world is safe. That sucks for us, but maybe we're not the most important thing in the world!"

"No. Goddammit, no. I did that once. It can't keep coming down to me. It just can't. I was—fuck!" He was starting to cry. "I didn't know how horrible it was going to be last time, Laura, I just had to do it, and I'm not strong enough, I'm not brave enough, I can't . . . There's shit that happened that I've never told you, that I can't even bear to think about, the stuff that makes me wake up screaming, the stuff . . . I killed Steve, Laura. Did you know that? He cried and begged me to kill him right after they turned him and I cut his head off. It took two strokes, and I can still feel the axe kicking back in my hand when I hit his spine. It . . . it ruined me. You . . . I know you're impatient with me, that you don't get how I could still be so fucked up because you were there too, but you don't know what it's like! I was the one who had to swing the axe! I had . . . " Tears were streaming down his face. "I really liked Steve, and I . . . oh God! And I can't do it again, Laura I can't, I don't care if the world ends—if it all comes down to me again, if I'm all that stands between the world and Armageddon, it's just going to have to end. I've just done too much killing. I can't keep killing, I just can't."

Laura looked at him for a minute like she was going to yell at him, and then her face relaxed. "You know what? Let's just get some sleep. Maybe we'll think of something in the morning. They said they needed a couple of days to get the whole incantation right, so we can probably take a few hours off here and just get some sleep. We'll think more clearly when we've slept. And when we're not still half-buzzed on margaritas."

"She's really nice. She might be able to help."

"In the morning. Talk in the morning. Sleep now."

And so Ted found himself in bed with Laura, which was a circumstance he'd spent probably four years dreaming of before finally admitting to himself that it was impossible. He thought of Cayenne and was asleep in forty-seven seconds.

Laura woke up early as the sun poured in the curtainless windows of Ted's apartment. She felt great—she'd slept like a log, the sun was shining, it was a nice spring day . . . and then she remembered everything. That the cultists knew how to open portholes to other dimensions, and were planning to do it in the mall, that they'd almost certainly succeed, and that, if they were right, it was going to be the end of the world as we know it.

Laura did not feel fine. She felt vaguely nauseous. And then she contemplated crawling back into the van for twelve hours. Well, fuck it. Killilea had made it pretty clear that Boston wasn't interested, DC wasn't interested, this was just a magic club to them. Well, she'd at least go poke around the temple and see if she could find something—anything that might convince Boston to devote some resources to this problem, enough men to take these guys out when they came in and started chanting.

Of course, this would be putting her career in jeopardy, since their warrant only covered electronic surveillance, and she'd be defying her supervisors, but what the hell. She had to do it—there was too much at stake. Was this how Ted felt when he was grabbing the fire axe the night he saved her soul? He'd never told her much about it—in fact, she'd had no idea he'd killed Steve, or how it felt to behead somebody (though she'd always had a morbid curiosity about that part). All he'd ever really told her was that he'd done two shots of tequila before he'd gone in there. But somehow he'd found the courage to focus on what was really important, and he was right—he'd done heavy lifting that she could only imagine, and it just wasn't fair to make sure it all came down to him again. She'd give him a gun to take them out if it came to that, but she needed to step up and take care of business. Ted had done it for her ten years ago, and Laura felt very strongly that it was her turn to do the same.

Her cell phone chirped, and Ted gave a groan of complaint from the bed. "Harker," she said. It was Killilea, who told her that he'd fought like hell, but the van had to go back tonight, so if they were going to find anything, they had to do it today.

Apparently the taxi whose number she'd recorded had dropped the guy at a Dunkin' Donuts, one of the cars they had a plate on had turned out to be stolen, and the third one was a rental, paid with a credit card issued to a Howard Phelps Lovecraft. The card issued to H. P. Lovecraft had a P. O. Box billing address, and the box had been rented by a guy named William Castle. Killilea gave Laura William Castle's home address and told her that they did not have a warrant, and that this investigation would be closed down by midnight anyway, so under no circumstances was she to go snooping around the house of this guy who'd left the temple after the magic trick last night.

Laura replied that she'd see Killilea in the van as soon as she was finished not doing any snooping.

"Be careful. You don't know what psychotic paranoids have in their houses, but it's probably nothing good, and we won't be able to use anything you'd find there anyway."

"Got it," Laura said, hanging up the phone.

A haggard-looking Ted was propped up on an elbow in bed. "Jesus, do you have to save the world before six in the freaking morning? Can you see that it's—"

"Hey," Laura said. "I . . . I want to tell you something."

"Is it 'turn over and go back to sleep'?"

"No, Ted, I'm being serious. I . . . I mean, you were right. I never knew how awful it was, I mean I figured it was awful, but I didn't know, and I just . . . well, thank you."

There was a pause. "You're welcome," Ted said.

"Okay. So it's not all going to come down to you this time, because at least you have me. But you need to get up. We've got a name and an address."

"Ugh. So? We know where to find these guys. What's the use of knowing where they live if your bosses don't believe they're up to anything?"

"I don't know. Maybe they'll have something essential to their task in the house, and we can steal it. Maybe there will be some kind of information that tells us more specifically what they're up to and how we can stop it. In any case, it feels better than doing nothing."

"I dunno—another couple of hours of sleep might feel even better. I had way too many margaritas last night."

"Boo hoo. You had to have dinner with some hottie while I sat in the back of a van and got constipated."

"Do you really think she's hot? I think she's pretty fantastic. I told her about the vampires, and about Queequeg's, and—boy, you do have a plumbing problem, don't you? Maybe you should see somebody about that . . . "

Laura took a deep breath, counted to ten, and tried to unclench her jaw. When she was confident she could say something in a calm tone of voice, she opened her mouth. "You told her about Queequeg's?" Suddenly she was yelling. Apparently she wasn't ready to be calm after all.
"You told her?"

"Yeah. So?"

"Ted, you are a moron! Aagh, that was so stupid, even for you! So you are a fugitive wanted for questioning in connection with a multiple murder, and you just told that to somebody you just met? That's great! The cops will be waiting at your cart this morning!"

"No they won't! I trust her! She believes me!"

"Honest to God, I don't know how you could be through everything you've been through and still manage to be so naïve. You can believe that people are trying to unleash supernatural forces, but the idea that a woman might be scared of the truth about you never even fucking occurs to you! Even though it's happened every single time! You tell somebody you're a fearless vampire killer and that you weren't really the guy who shot up that coffee shop, and she nods and smiles because she's terrified, and you think it's true love! You've just completely compromised your end of this! Jesus! I mean use your head for once!"