“On fire is my best look. Ask anyone.”
Muninn shifts his eyes to Vidocq and then back at me.
“How may I ask did a simple robbery turn into a Greek drama? And were there any witnesses who might make things complicated later?”
I say, “The drama started and ended with demons. One in the house and one in the street.”
“The only witness is the man who owned the scroll you wanted,” says Vidocq. “His residence was badly cloaked and there was a guardian demon in the safe. He’ll be too embarrassed that he paid for a worthless shield to tell anyone. No doubt he knows that leaving a demon mantrap where an innocent party might stumble on it is a serious violation of Sub Rosa precepts. No, I believe he’ll lick his wounds and not tell a soul about tonight.”
Muninn smiles and does his benediction thing again.
“And there we are. An adv he are. Aenture complete with just a few scars to make the memories all the more vivid. And then there’s your reward. Not a bad night’s work, I’d say.”
I take the box out of my pocket, then peel off the charred remains of my coat and drop it on the stone floor. If it was anyone else, I’d stomp him for his attitude, but Muninn doesn’t think like regular people. I don’t know if he’s the oldest man in the world, but I’ll bet there isn’t anyone else within midget-tossing distance who’s seen multiple ice ages freeze and thaw the world. He’s a nice guy for someone who thinks like a Martian. And he’s always fair when it comes to business. If you ask me, we could use a few more like him. You never know what’s going to come out of his mouth and he always pays on time.
He rummages around his endless maze of shelves crammed with books, bones, strange weapons, the crown jewels of kingdoms no one’s ever heard of, and ancient scientific devices. Does even he know what they do? They could be Krishna’s gumball machine for all I know.
He comes back with a handblown green glass bottle and three small silver cups, takes them to his worktable desk, and pours drinks. He hands us each a glass and raises his own.
“To God above and the devil below.”
Vidocq says something pithy back in French.
Great. Now it’s my turn to sound smart. The angel in my head chimes in with something, but I shove Beaver Cleaver back into the dark.
“You owe me a coat,” is all I can think of.
He smiles and nods, pouring more drinks.
“A man of many thoughts but few words. Lucky for us all that it’s not the other way around.”
Vidocq laughs and turns away, pretending he’s looking at the shelves so I won’t see him.
Muninn says, “I hear that when you’re not playing le voleur with Eugène, you’re rebuilding your movie house.”
“Rental place. We don’t show them. We just pimp them. And yeah, Kasabian and I are rebuilding and expanding Max Overdrive with all the Ben Franklins that vampire bunch, the Dark Eternal, gave me.”
Muninn looks down, contemplating his glass.
“I expect they would be grateful for you clearing out the revenants. Zombies can’t have much nutritional value for vampires.”
“According to the news, it never happened. It was mass hysteria. Drugs in the water or weaponized LSD. Between tourists, traffic cams, and private security, there’s a million video cams in L.A., but there’s not one good minute of zed footage andzed fooanywhere, just blurry cell-phone shit. We might as well say we were attacked by Bigfoot.”
It stinks of the feds like ripe roadkill. Like Marshal Wells.
Until I snuffed the zeds, Homeland Security had heavy muscle in L.A. I mean, they had a goddamn angel on staff. Aelita. The meanest celestial rattlesnake I ever met and I’ve partied with Lucifer. Aelita is Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, but not as good-natured. She was the organ grinder and Marshal Wells was the monkey. They’re exactly the kind of bastards with connections to levels of occult and law enforcement power who could make thousands of hours of video disappear overnight.
Washington spanked Wells hard after the zeds got out of control. Aelita strolled away, so he got to be the fall guy. DHS closed him down out here. Who knows, if he plays nice and eats his vegetables, maybe the Men in Black will send him back. They might even let him resurrect the Golden Vigil, his and Aelita’s private jackboot army. Heaven’s Pinkertons on earth.
Muninn waves his hand.
“It was bound to happen. Most ordinary people’s desire to forget what they can’t comprehend is virtually infinite. It’s more comforting to disbelieve their own eyes than accept the possibility that the dead can walk the streets. I can’t say I blame them.”
I raise my glass.
“To reality. The most overrated and underpaid game in town.”
We all drink.
“So, what will you do until your movie palace is complete?” asks Muninn. “Are you considering carrying on as an investigator? You seem to have a flair for it. No one else figured out the nasty little secret behind the revenants.”
“That was a onetime thing. And I got lucky. If Brigitte and I hadn’t been bitten, I wouldn’t have done any of it. I would have taken her and blown out of town.”
Brigitte is a friend from Prague. A trained High Plains Drifter—that is, a zombie—hunter. I might have fallen for her if we’d met at a different time, under different circumstances, and on another planet. I screwed up and let Brigitte get bitten by a Drifter. She almost turned. If it hadn’t been for Vidocq and his alchemy hoodoo, she would have.
“That’s not true and you know it,” says Vidocq. “Perhaps you’ll turn your attention back to Mason? If I remember correctly, finding him was the main reason you returned from Hell. I understand, of course, your getting distracted, what with saving the world and all.”
“I did find Mason. And I locked him up good and tight Downtown.”
“Which is what he wanted all along,” says Vidocq. “I’m not sure you can call that punishment.&igipunishm#x201D;
I give the old man a look. I don’t like having my own stupid confessions thrown back at me. Of course he’s right. Mason wanted to go to Hell and he wanted to go there alive, just like I did. And I walked up to him like a backwoods rube with a corncob pipe and put him there. Not many people know about that. I couldn’t walk the streets if they did. I couldn’t look people in the eye if they knew I’d sent the most dangerous man in the world to the worst place in the universe so he could raise an army to kill them all. People get murdered for mistakes like that. Sometimes they don’t wait for someone else to do it. If someone else tries it, they might get it wrong and leave you in a coma, only half dead. That would be even worse. Someone might feel sorry for you and that’s something I couldn’t take.
“Kasabian still has access to Lucifer’s book, The Daimonion Codex. He keeps an eye on Downtown twenty-four/seven. If Mason makes a move, I’ll know about it.”
“Why not simply go yourself?”
“I’ve tried a few times. Even changing my face with a glamour, there’s always some Hellion or other who spots me and I have to de-ass the place fast. There’s got to be another way to get to him, but I haven’t figured it out yet.”
I’m lying. I’ve tried it a couple of times and I was so nervous that the glamour wasn’t even half-baked. I thought I could walk back Downtown like Patton riding a tank. But I can’t. The smell and the heat hit me and I’m back on the arena floor, ripped open and bleeding, hoping my guts don’t slip out into the dirt. Or I’m covered in thick Hellion blood, playing hit man for another Hellion while he tells me Alice will be safe as long as I keep killing for him. And then she’s dead and all I am is a murderer. So I close the door to Hell and I slink back home, sitting at my favorite bar long enough that the smell fades and Kasabian won’t know what a coward I’ve become.
What’s more useless than a weak-kneed killer?
“You’ll find a way in,” says Vidocq.
I nod and finish my drink, putting on my serious, thoughtful face.
“I hope it’s soon. Since I can’t play Hannibal Downtown, the angel in my head wants me to roam the streets at night looking for bad guys like Batman. I got so pissed one night that I actually did it. Know what happened? Exactly nothing. Looking to get mugged is crazy and bad guys walk the other way when they see crazy coming. What I need is angel Valium to shut this Boy Scout up.”