“All right,” I said. “You’re the boss. For now.”
“Oh, for much longer than that.” He laughed as if he was really enjoying himself, but the gun never wavered from where he held it against Halyna’s head.
thirty:
death by porcelain
VON REINMANN and his cronies herded us toward the stairwell that led to Donya Sepanta’s secret office. These fuckers had been watching us for awhile, it was clear, or more likely their demon minions had done it for them. It was an object lesson in the power of selling your soul. They’d reached out to Prince Sitri, Eligor’s rival, and from the depths of Hell he’d sent them what they needed. Just as any jumped-up punk with a gun instantly becomes a threat, anybody with infernal backup becomes a monster.
“How is getting hold of this horn going to do you any good?” I asked von Reinmann. I already knew what his plan was, of course, I was just stalling. Half a dozen guys were pointing serious guns at us, but assholes love to talk about themselves.
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said. “You think only of small things—your woman, your boss, your job.”
“I haven’t thought about my job in years, von Rhinemaiden. Only a dick thinks everyone else is a dick.”
“And the small-minded always think they are the measure of all things. They cannot understand those who have bigger thoughts, larger aspirations . . .”
I let him blab, hoping he’d work himself up into a mighty we-will-rule-the-world froth. I was close enough to Sam now to whisper and trust to my old buddy’s angel ears.
“Do you still have that glove thing?” I asked in my quietest back-of-the-classroom voice. “The one you wear to do shiny stuff?”
“The God Glove?” That was Sam’s nickname for a very powerful object Anaita had given to him to help him perform his Third Way job. “Yes, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“I’m not really interested in good or bad ideas, right now,” I whispered. “Because as soon as we’re in that little room down there, it’ll be a kill zone. The moment they’re done with us—rat-a-tat-tat.”
“No, I’m telling you, B, it’s a really bad idea!” Sam wasn’t whispering any more.
“I don’t care! Do something!”
“. . . But I see you are not even listening,” said von Reinmann. “You think you will distract me until you think of some plan. Go down the stairs now, Mr. Dollar. By yourself. If you are not back with the horn in two minutes, one of your companions will die.” He chuckled. “My choice. Probably one of your girls.”
“Fuck it yourself, you Norwegian bitch!” said Halyna, which I didn’t think helped the tenor of the conversation. “We are not girls, we are fucking Scythians!”
Clarence reached out and grabbed her arm to try to shut her up. At their feet, Oxana was finally stirring.
Von Reinmann smiled and looked at Halyna, then his watch. “So. If Dollar is not back in . . . one minute and forty-four seconds, you will be the first to be shot, whore.”
“One thing I don’t think you boys from the Black Sun understand,” I said, stepping in front of Sam to block their view of him. (I prayed he was doing something worth blocking.) “You are only children with guns. But we . . . we are angels of the Lord!”
Von Reinmann looked at me with zero fear or concern. Apparently he’d figured that out already. “So? You have bodies full of blood and organs. We have guns. We win.” He looked at his watch. “One minute and twenty-two seconds, now.”
“No, I said,” and I made my voice louder, “we are angels of the Lord!” Still nothing happened, except me looking like an idiot shouting at men with AR-16s, so I screamed, “Sam! For fuck’s sake, don’t leave me hanging here!”
A great white light burst up and outward from where we stood, bright as a Saturn rocket lifting off, a blinding radiance that made the neo-Nazis stumble back. A second later the light faded to a fierce glow that only burned at the end of Sam’s uplifted arm. Timon and Pumbaa found their courage and stepped back toward us.
“Aren’t the bad guys supposed to die or something, Sam?” I asked.
“Shut up,” he said. “I’m working.”
“I have grown tired of your silly shit.” B von R looked a little shiny—in fact, everything in the museum hall suddenly looked a little shiny—but he sure as hell didn’t look blasted by angelic fire, or even mildly singed by angelic lukewarming. “Shoot all of them,” he told his men. “Except Dollar and the red-haired girl.”
I didn’t even have time to dive for the floor. The guns roared, coughing flame. Bullets that would rip us to pieces rushed toward us at twice the speed of sound, far too fast for even an angel to see . . . except that I could see them. And they were slowing down rapidly. In fact, the closer they got to us, the slower they went, until they stopped and then fell to the ground like tiny, exhausted lead birds. Ping, pingety-ping-ping, ping. Dozens of them, rattling to the museum’s tile floor.
“Wow,” I said. I could see the astonished faces of the neo-Nazis only yards away, but except for the sort of prism-like glow around the edges of them and everything else, all looked normal. “Nice one, Sammy boy.”
“Just . . . hurry up . . . and figure out the next part,” Sam gasped, face dripping sweat, arm radiating light like a live-action Statue of Liberty. “Because I can’t do this . . . too long . . . and we’re going to have . . . real trouble soon.”
The neo-Nazis were trying to shove their way through our God-Glove barrier, but having the same problem as the bullets. They would shove forward a little way, but then the emptiness seemed to thicken before them. Veins bulged on their necks as they tried to force their way toward us, but they couldn’t get closer than a seven- or eight-foot radius, and when they fired again, the bullets didn’t make it any closer to us than before, sometimes barely getting out of the barrel before slowing and falling.
Still, we had no guns inside the Glove’s hemisphere of light, and I was having a difficult time thinking of what we’d do when Sam couldn’t manage it any longer. Oxana had finally recovered enough to get onto her hands and knees. Halyna was kneeling beside her, and Clarence was trying to help her stand. I hoped they were also explaining about the bad men trying to kill us, and that Oxana wasn’t too badly hurt, because whatever happened, I was pretty sure some strategy on the order of run like motherfuckers would be in order very soon.
In the middle of this intense five or ten seconds of panicked thought, a memory wafted up. I threw myself down next to Oxana and began to pat her clothing up and down.
“She is okay!” Halyna protested.
“Good,” I said. “But that’s not what I’m doing.”
I looked out past Black Sun commandos trying to pierce our ring of protection. Von Reinmann had withdrawn to a display area at the top of a couple of steps, like a cat seeking out the highest place in a room, but it didn’t look like a retreat. He took off his gaudy medallion and held it in his hand. As I frantically scoured Oxana’s jumpsuit pockets for a weapon, since she was the only one who hadn’t been searched, I saw him hold the medal out before him, swinging it on its length of chain like a prop in a bad hypnotism act. Then he began to chant.
I’d say my heart sank, but my second-favorite organ (just in front of brain, just after you-know-what) was already huddled down at the bottom of my rib cage, and had been there ever since the Nazis-with-guns element had been introduced. Because I recognized the chant, if not the language von Reinmann used. It was a summoning, like the one we’d seen on the flash drive footage. I could only pray—and I mean that literally, because I am a goddamn angel, and sometimes I have to do it—that he wasn’t calling Sitri.
Please, God, I know I’ve been a pretty bad servant, but there are people here who are actually almost entirely innocent . . .