XXXII.
RUNNING ON FAITH
SO. FRIDAY NIGHT, Hollywood Freeway northbound. Traffic not too bad if you don’t mind whipping in and out of the breakdown lane at ninety to pass the slowpokes and piss off just about everybody.
Niko doesn’t mind. Whatever the cabbie did to the Black Taxi will only be a stalling measure at best. We’re talking about a car that repaired itself after an eighty mile an hour collision with an iron gate and a dog the size of a one ton clubcab pickup. So put some miles on, buddy pal.
Speaking of buddy pals. Niko looks at Nikodemus filling up the front seat like a grownup in a schoolboy’s desk. The torn and battered eyepatched demon watches cars they pass, watches the city with the open curiosity of a child. He shifts constantly on the seat. Nowhere is comfortable because of his wings. Opposing traffic a motionless headlight river. Must be an accident somewhere past Hollywood. Oh wait a minute. Niko remembers the overturned fueltruck by the Virgil exit. I drove by the cause of this traffic jam an hour ago. My god.
Nikodemus rubs a tendril against the thick pad taped over his ruined eye.
Nikodemus I owe you so much. You haven’t even asked where we are going. My dark and ruinous twin you have a faith I never had. Our destinies are linked and always have been. Knowing this should make it easier to tell you what I must. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t. I still believe in my own volition.
He snakes through traffic as he speaks his demon’s given name. “So Nikodemus.”
The white patch turns toward him. “That’s not really my name, is it?”
Niko shakes his head.
“I didn’t think so. It doesn’t feel right.” The head turns away again. They’ve reached the downside of the Cahuenga Pass connecting Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. Ahead to the right the multicolored neon and lighted tubes and spires and pyrotechnic flashes from Universal City Walk hold the demon’s attention. Its black tower cleaves the misted night.
“I don’t know your real name. I gave you that one after you fell in the Lethe. I had to call you something.”
“I’m not mad. It’s kind of funny. Nikodemus.”
Niko feels like a total shit. He has to tell Nikodemus what he’s up to. The demon has the right to know. Especially now that he is mortal.
Ahead the right three lanes split off to form the westbound Ventura Freeway. Niko whips across traffic and into the far right lane. Streetlights all around them dim. How odd.
Then Nikodemus is shaking his shoulder with one tendril and steering the car into the breakdown lane near Laurel Canyon with the other. “Hey. Wake up. Come on, wake up.”
Niko grabs the wheel. “I fell asleep?”
They ease into the breakdown lane and stop. Staccato rush of passing cars. Nikodemus studies him. “You’re very pale.”
The surrounding traffic lights have grown abstract. Niko can’t make sense of them. He’s cold. Ask Nikodemus to turn the heater on? Can’t concentrate. Nikodemus talking. “What’s that?” Niko shouts as if his demon is far away.
“I said I think you’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“Oh.” Niko considers this. Yes that seems right. He’s lost a lot of blood. He shakes his head in great big arcs. “Can’t do that. Wayyy too soon. Got a little ways to go. Then I can bleed to my heart’s content.”
“How far?”
“Hmm?”
“How far away is where we’re going?”
“Maybe thirty miles.”
“All right.” The car chimes as Nikodemus gets out. Niko’s head lolls as he watches the enormous alien figure walk around the car and open his door. The surf of speeding cars grows louder. A horn blows and tires screech. Boy gonna cause him a accident.
Nikodemus leans into the car. “Come on.”
“Wherem I goin?”
“Passenger side. I’m driving.”
“Smy car.”
“All right, I’m driving your car.”
“Oh. Okay.” Niko sleepily acquiesces and clambers painfully to the passenger seat instead of getting out and going around. Ooh look at all the blood. A cable in his back pulls taut. Niko lifts the mason jar from the floorboards and breathes deeply. Faintest trace of her perfume and not a ray of light. Hang in there baby Niko tells the jar and cuddles it.
“Where is the clutch pedal?” Nikodemus says. “How do I work this lever?”
“Issa automatic. Put it in D an you don’t gotta shift.”
Nikodemus looks impressed. He fiddles with the electronic controls until the seat is as far back as it will go. He adjusts the rearview mirror and puts the Bentley in drive and abruptly steers onto the freeway. A horn blares and a Honda screeches around them, missing their rear bumper and then the car in the next lane over by less than a foot.
They’re doing ninety by the time they pass Coldwater Canyon. “Umunna go seepy now.”
“Where are we going?”
“Malibu Canyon.”
“What’s there?”
Niko blinks blearily at his companion. “Heaven.”
NIKO GETS A second wind as they climb out of the Valley just past Woodland Hills. He wakes up with a gasp and glances around, disoriented. They’re really whipping along the freeway. The speedometer hovers just above one hundred. Shouldn’t we slow down to avoid attention? Ah fuck it. What are they gonna do, shoot me?
The fuel gauge is below empty and the idiot light is on.
Niko turns to look behind them and feels that awful pulling in his back. Like a guitar string tightened to snapping. Great, I’m a highnote test.
A pair of bugeyed headlights races in the breakdown lane a couple miles back and slowly gaining.
“He’s back there,” says Nikodemus.
“I’m cold.”
Nikodemus frowns. “The heater’s all the way up.”
“You want me to drive?”
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
“Okay. We’re a mess, huh?”
“We’re a mess.”
They pass the sign for Parkway Calabasas. Calabasas means pumpkins Niko thinks. Someone named a place pumpkins. “You don’t think we’re gonna make it, do you?” he says to the road ahead.
His demon drives in silence for a mile. “It would help if I knew what we were doing.”
“Okay. In a couple miles take the Las Virgenes exit. Go left and head out Malibu Canyon toward the ocean. Just before Pepperdine there’s a tunnel. If we can get to it before the Black Taxi gets to us I think we have a shot.”
“Whyyy?”
“Well. As below so above.”
“I don’t understand.”
“As the Red Line tunnel is an entrance to your old stomping grounds, so the Malibu Canyon tunnel is an entrance—” And Niko gestures at a point beyond the roof.
Silence for a while.
“Are you sure?”
Niko looks at Nikodemus. Worry does not sit well on the demon’s face. “Yeah. I’m sure. You still don’t think we’re gonna make it, do you?”
“We might. We could. If the Driver doesn’t run us off the road. If your car doesn’t run out of gas. If you don’t run out of blood before we get there. If your woman’s soul is still in the jar.”
“Okay, so other than that.” Niko leans his head against the window. The glass cool against his forehead. “Thanks for driving. You didn’t have to come you know.”
“Yes I did.”
“Yeah. I guess you did.” Niko shuts his eyes. His hands and feet feel miles away. He shivers with some inner cold. All he wants to do is sleep. O Faustus now hast thou but one bare hour to live. I am in the last hour of my life. All I do now a compendium of final things. I have kissed Jemma one last time. I have left my home a final time. The last time I will see my city. Music has left me now. On the road ahead my last words wait for me. Last breath. Final heartbeat. Sight. As always they have lain out there. As for all who ever lived. My enemy and friend beside me drives me toward that meeting I’ve evaded but anticipated all my life. The unsailed sea that shapes the continent of life itself by giving it a shore. Now my untried soul will brave that deep. As Jemma here beside me has though I have hauled her partway from that drowning.