“Who am I playing against?”
“What?” The barfly raised an eyebrow. “Verrity isn’t enough of a name for you?”
“No…” McNihil shook his head. “Not if it isn’t the real one.”
“Real, schmeal-that sort of thing just doesn’t apply here. Not as far as names go, at least. There’s a thousand different names for her, just like there are for the Wedge. It just depends on where you’re coming from.” The barfly’s gesture pointed beyond McNihil. “Take another look out the window. A good look, this time.”
The light had shifted outside; looking up as he stood at the window, McNihil saw the dark streaks of clouds cutting beneath the sun. Around the buildings, the shadows had diminished and grown less distinct, a slow fade into the graying daylight.
“Tell me what you see.”
He didn’t answer the barfly. McNihil leaned his hands against the charred windowsill, bringing his face past the shards of glass still embedded in the frame. The remains of the buildings’ shadows had drawn his gaze downward. Now he saw what lay in the streets.
“I told you.” The barfly’s voice was a soft whisper from behind him. “I warned you. This isn’t anywhere you want to be playing games. She plays for keeps.”
When he’d been at the End Zone Hotel before, in that other world he’d left behind, he’d looked down from the rooftop. The building had been in flames then, real ones that consumed both architecture and flesh. But past the fire and billowing smoke, McNihil had been able to see the mass overlapping and interconnecting copulation that had been taking place down at ground level, the bodies writhing and seeking each other’s heat in the wet, sticky bounds of the fire-dousing foam. All that motion had ceased, along with any warmth, either fiery or body temperature.
The foam had been sluiced away, down the street’s gutters and out to this world’s hidden sea, by endless centuries of storms. Leaving behind the remains, in this world, of what had been alive in that other one. Whitening bones were knitted together, a stiff tapestry of static coitus. The human skeletons reached as far as McNihil could see, as though a tide had receded from among the buildings, revealing coral reefs at their base. Empty eye sockets gazed back at him, darkness and silence inside the bone, hollow grins fixed in transports of idiot delight. We came here, said the skeletons to McNihil, in more ways than one. He could hear them inside his head. And it was worth it.
“Sometimes she dances,” the barfly said softly, “arrayed in skulls. Those ornaments have to come from somewhere, don’t they?”
“I suppose so.” This was part of the memory, he knew. That they had given him in the barfly’s kiss-This is what they want me to see, thought McNihil. “I guess it’s all part of the gig.”
“She has one name when she’s like that. And one dreadful visage. Probably better-for you, that is-if you don’t see her in that form.”
McNihil glanced back over his shoulder. “Do I have a choice?”
“No…” The barfly shook her head. “Not really. Not here. But you have luck; at least for a little while. You’re lucky you’re from the Gloss, the real one outside. That’s where her worshipers know her as Tlazoltéotl. Also Ixcuina, or Tlaelquani, depending upon whether you want the Nahuatl, the pure Aztec, or the original Huaxtec.”
He’d seen that name, the first one, before. On the sandwich-board advertisements of the homeless marching single-file in nocturnal alleys, on a bishop’s monitor and a dead man’s stomach, revealed and hidden. McNihil supposed it’d been inevitable that he’d meet up with her someday. But not just yet.
“It doesn’t feel like luck,” said McNihil.
“You don’t even know.” The ultimate barfly slowly shook her head. “To have any encounter with Tlazoltéotl at all, to have seen her in my face the way you did, and still be walking… you’re a totally lucky bastard.”
“Why? Who is she?”
“Like I said.” The barfly gave a shrug. “Different names, different forms. But always the Filth Deity-that’s what the name means-the goddess of sexual impurity and deep, bad, annihilating sin. First a seductress, with no thought in her immaculate head other than connecting. Then comes her first destructive form, the one dedicated to gambling, risking and daring everything, including your own life. Then the redemptress, the form that can absorb and absolve human sin. That form can forgive sinners and remove all the world’s corruption. But it’s not her last form. The last form is the hag with teeth of iron, the destroyer of pretty youths and all innocence. Like I said-everybody meets up with her eventually. But not many walk away.”
“She’s the one with the wild black hair? The crazy eyes?”
“Very good,” said the barfly. “You’ll know her when you see her again. The wild hair, the crazy eyes-and wearing the flayed skin of one of her victims.” The barfly smiled. “Rather appropriate for around here, I think you’d have to say.”
“And this is her world,” said McNihil. “Isn’t it?”
“Of course it is.” The barfly regarded him with amusement. “What else could it be? This business with the prowlers, people trying to protect themselves from the dark and scary stuff… what good does it do? Nothing at all. The prowlers can’t help you. Nothing can. Just because you created a world without Tlazoltéotl in it doesn’t mean it was ever going to remain that way. The doors will be broken down and the dark, scary stuff will come flooding in.” One of her hands flicked a tiny gesture toward him. “Same way with your own little world. Yeah, you made up Verrity… but it didn’t end there. You made her up-and then you made her real. You made the place for her, out of your own lusts and fears. And Verrity came to fill it. You should’ve known that was going to happen.”
He knew she was right. But he still had a job to do.
“What about Travelt?” McNihil turned away from the window. “That’s who I came here to find. That’s my job. You said she did something nice for him. So I take it he’s still alive?”
“Sure,” said the barfly. “But that’s not going to help you.”
“You mean because of him being inside his prowler? I can deal with that.”
The barfly shook her head and laughed. “He’s gone way beyond that. He was looking for a place to hide. From everything. Just walking around inside a prowler wasn’t going to do it for him. He knew they could still find him. Somebody like you could find him.” She leaned back, smiling. “So he’s gone where you won’t be able to reach him. He had a Full Prince Charles done on himself. That’s what she did for Travelt: he got it for free. On the house, as it were.”
That was just what McNihil had expected. If somebody was going to run, they might as well run all the way.
“All right,” said McNihil. He’d come prepared; that was what the stuff in his jacket pocket was for. “Take me to him. To where he is.”
The barfly stopped smiling, and regarded him for a few moments in silence. “You’re the boss,” she said with a shrug, and stood up from the bed.
TWENTY-ONE
Nothing going on in there.”
November turned and looked behind her. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.” Another cameraman, different from the one she’d talked to at this slow ocean’s perimeter, but with the same lazy-and-hip attitude-he watched her from behind an identical pair of dark-lensed glasses. November wondered if they were part of some network-issued uniform. “That wreck’s all burnt out.” He was perched in the molded plastic seat of a camera boom, extending across the expanse of gelatinous liquid and the catwalks below like the neck of some mechanical brachiosaur; the visual echo of a small microphone arced from his headphones. The cameraman pointed to the End Zone Hotel, or what had been the hotel before the fire. “Nothing’s going on, because there’s nobody inside. Gone, gone, gone-a long time ago.”