Aloha From Hell (21 page)

Hunter’s body goes slack. Mason has released control. A second later Hunter snaps back up. His eyes brighten and he looks around, but is unsteady on his feet. His lips move as he looks for his voice.

“Jim?” says Hunter.

No. Not this.

“Are you there? What’s happening? Where am I?”

I can’t see anything for a minute. It’s like someone flipped a switch and my vision has gone out. This is what happens to people in deep shock or sudden anger. “Blind rage,” they call it. It’s a real thing.

“Don’t listen. It’s the demon,” says Traven.

“Shut up.”

Alice’s voice comes out of Hunter’s mouth again.

“Jim? I don’t know where I am. An angel took me away and locked me up here. She said it was your fault. That you made her do it. I don’t believe her, but I’m scared.”

Hunter’s body twitches.

“That’s all you get of Little Miss Falling-Down-the-Rabbit-Hole for now.”

“How did you find her?”

“Don’t worry, Jimbo. She hasn’t been here all along. Except for getting mixed up with you, Alice was a good girl and all good girls go to Heaven. But God isn’t what he used to be. You should know that. So while good girls might get to Heaven, they don’t always get to stay.”

“Alice is what Aelita brought you.”

“She dropped poor Alice here like a basket of muffins from the neighborhood welcome wagon.”

“Why?ȁ ThC;Why?&D;

He doesn’t say anything for a long minute.

“Why? Because you made me do it,” he says. “You could have come down here and we could have settled this like men, but you stayed up there with your quilting bee, drinking beer and getting soft. Now you have to come down and face me. Or not. You can always leave poor Alice alone down here with me. I know Kasabian can see us through the
Codex,
so you can see what happens like watching the Super Bowl in that bar you like.” He smiles and takes a breath. “You thought Downtown was crazy when you were here? You ain’t seen nothing, pal.”

I start for the platform. Candy puts her hand on my shoulder. I shrug her off. She thinks I’m going to charge Hunter. I’m not. I just want to get close to see who I’m talking to.

Mason understands and kneels down so that we’re eye to eye.

He says, “Now you have it. Your invitation. You have exactly three days from when I leave this body to find Alice and take her . . . well, I really don’t care what you do with her. In the meantime, don’t worry. She’s in the safest place in town. The penthouse suite of the big asylum. Most of the inmates escaped weeks ago. The dangerous ones. Of course, the place is home to them, so they tend to wander back.”

I can see him looking back at me through Hunter’s eyes. No demon. It really is Mason.

“What’s it going to be? Are you going to play my game or are you going to stay safe in L.A. playing Gary Cooper and wasting your time saving people who don’t deserve it from things they’ll never understand?”

I lean in close to Hunter’s ear. Mason leans in to listen. I say a word in Hellion and he flies back, bouncing off the shield on the far side of the platform like he was hit with a sledgehammer. Vidocq and Candy get me from behind, throwing their full weight into me. Pulling me down. I let them. I don’t want to kill Hunter because of what’s inside him.

Mason staggers to his feet.

“You got me good, Jimbo. But that’s all right. I’ll take that as a yes. It’ll be good to see you again.”

He twitches.

“Jim? Are you still there? What’s happening? I . . .”

And Alice is gone. Hunter collapses onto the platform. It’s over.

Traven rubs away some of the binding hex marks. He and Vidocq lift Hunter from the platform and lay him out on the floor.

I’m stuck where I am. I feel a sucking sensation in my chest and for a second I can’t breathe. Gradually I feel Candy’s armsowix2019;s around me. I squeeze her hand and she lets me up.

Hunter is breathing. His eyes flicker open and closed. He doesn’t look like he’s going to drop dead this minute, but he’s still pretty Linda Blair. Traven isn’t looking so good either. He’s pale and his neck is dark with bruises and broken blood vessels where Hunter grabbed him.

I pick Hunter up and tell Candy and Vidocq to help Traven.

“We’re going out the fast way.”

They get their arms around Traven’s shoulders and steady him. Vidocq is closest to me, so I grab his arm and walk the few steps to the wall. We disappear into a shadow.

Come out again in the minimall parking lot. Pedestrians pass us on the way to their cars with take-out pizza and new manicures. A few of them stare. They must have seen us. Fuck ’em. The way we look, no one is going to tell anyone about it without a doctor shoving Thorazine down their throat.

We head across the lot for Kinski’s old hoodoo clinic. The place Allegra has taken over. A sign on the door reads
EXISTENTIAL HEALING
. Vidocq gets out his cell and dials Allegra. I don’t wait. I start pounding on the door.

A few good raps later, someone opens the doors looking pissed. It’s Allegra. She looks at Hunter and her eyes narrow. Then she sees Vidocq and Candy holding up Father Traven.

“Jesus, Stark. You’re like the Antichrist Santa Claus. Bring in the presents.”

We get Hunter inside and on the exam table. Allegra takes over, looking at Hunter’s eyes, shining a light into his blackened mouth. She turns and takes things out of a drawer. She presses one of them to Hunter’s forehead. A silver crucifix. Nothing happens. Then she touches iron. Gold. A mixture of garlic and holy water. Nothing happens with any of them.

“Good,” she says.

She rubs a yellowish salve on the inside of a mortar and tosses in thistle leaves, white ash bark, and things I can’t identify. She holds a match to the gloop and the whole thing goes up in a
whoosh
of fire, leaving only ash. She dumps it into her hands and rubs the ashes across Hunter’s forehead and eyes.

“Get me the glass, will you, Candy?” she says.

Traven is standing on his own now, so she leaves him and lifts several bundles of purple silk from a cabinet. Allegra takes one as Candy sets the rest on the exam table.

Allegra unwraps the first one and sets it over Hunter’s heart. It looks like a heavy white stone. She sets other pieces of glass on Hunter’s hands and diaphragm.

The stones are really pieces of ancientanys of an glass vessels saturated in divine light. Shards of the first stars. Kinski once used six of them to save Allegra. Now Allegra is the doctor, using them to save a kid she’s never seen before and has no reason to care about. But she does it like she’d die, too, if the kid doesn’t make it. It’s a funny world.

Hunter shudders and opens his mouth. Vapor drifts from his mouth again, but it’s the same gray now as the ash. Allegra nods.

“Whatever was in him is gone.”

“You sure?”

She looks at me.

“I know what possession looks like. This one took more stones than usual. What was in him?”

I don’t want to tell her. I’m feeling stupid and the last thing I want to do is have to hang around and explain anything.

“Candy and Vidocq can tell you.”

“Well, whatever it was, it’s gone now.”

“Good.”

She nods at Traven.

“What happened to him?”

“That’s Father Traven, the exorcist. No hoodoo injuries. The demon just grabbed his throat and squeezed like it was trying to make orange juice.”

Allegra looks past me at the father.

“Set him down in the lobby and let me get my instruments. I don’t want to move the boy for a while.”

Traven makes it to the lobby under his own steam, though Candy and I walk behind to catch him if he falls. He drops onto one of the plastic chairs. He leans forward, resting his face in his hands.

“I think I left my bag at that place,” he says.

“Don’t worry, Father. We’ll retrieve it for you,” says Vidocq.

I hand him Allegra’s car keys.

“Sorry. I’d like to go back and get it, but I have things I need to do.”

“I understand,” he says. He looks at me like I’m ice and someone is about to toss boiling water on me. Will I explode or just melt?

He says, “We all heard what the demon said back at Avila. Don’t do anything insane based on the word of a creature like that, Jimmy. They are masters of lies.”

ont>

I shake my head.

“That wasn’t the demon talking. That really was Mason. And he has Alice. I’m not going to do anything crazy. I’m going to do what I should have done all along.”

“What?” he says, but I ignore the question.

“Call Hunter’s parents,” I say. “Tell them he’s all right and give them the address. I need to go.”

I catch Candy’s eye and she follows me out into the parking lot.

“Where are you going?” she asks. There’s a little catch in her voice.

I get close and say, “I know this is the most fucked situation I could have dragged you into, but I need to talk to someone. Please trust me. I’ll meet you back at the hotel as soon as I can.”

She looks up at me.

“You’re coming back, right?”

“Of course.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

She kisses me. I kiss her back, though in the back of my mind I’m already going to do what I have to do.

She takes a step back.

“You’re going back, aren’t you? Back to Hell.”

“I don’t have any choice. They snatched Alice out of Heaven because of me. I can’t leave her down there.”

Candy nods.

“I know. You have to do the right thing. Ride into the sunset and do your
Good, the Bad and the Ugly
thing. I think that’s why I like you. You do the most fucked-up things for the best reasons.”

“I’ll see you back at the hotel. Scout’s honor.”

“Where are you going?”

“I need to talk to Mustang Sally.”

B
Y THE TIME
I make the corner, my hands are shaking. Even the angel is pissed, and that’s not easy to do. I want someone to try to pick my pocket or pull a knife. I want an excuse. All I need is an excuse.

No one comes near me. Iof near mex2019;m somewhere south of sanity right now and people can tell. Fuck it. I let the angel’s senses reach out and read the street until they zero in on exactly the right car. It’s stopped at a red light in front of me. Second from the front. A couple of gangbangers inside. They’re either on their way to a drive-by or coming back from one. They’re too high for the angel to be sure. That’s good enough for me. I step into the stopped traffic and go around to the gangbangers’ car, a red midfifties Bonneville lowrider. I put the .460 to the side of the driver’s temple.

“Do you want to keep the car or your head?”

There are two tough guys in the back. Real bruiser types. As big as linebackers. One of them wants to go for his gun. He stinks of coiled tension. I cock the .460 pressed against the driver’s head and pull him out through the window. Toss him one-handed onto the hood of the car next to us. He leaves a nice dent as he hits and slides off. By the time I swing the gun back to the two toughs, they’re scrambling out the passenger side. I get in and rev the engine.

I don’t care that it’s broad daylight, that a hundred people are watching, and that the traffic cams on the stoplights are recording everything. I want witnesses. I want them to see so that when I drag them from their cars, put a bullet in the gas tank, and let the explosion torch the street, they’ll understand.

“This is the world. This is how it is,” I’ll tell them. “Jesus might have died for your sins, but a girl is burning for them. I’d trade every one of your fucking lives for one minute of hers. Don’t you dare pray for her. Twiddle your rosaries and pray for yourselves, because if she goes down, I’m the Colonel, the fryer’s hot, and you’re my barnyard chickadees.”

But I don’t say it. I take the car and go. There’s no way I could get the words out right now. I probably would have stood there hissing and twitching. Just another homeless schizo. Then I’d set the intersection on fire with some Hellion hoodoo and none of them would understand why.

The light turns green and I cut off the car next to me and pull a squealing and massively illegal left off Sunset, steering the Bonneville onto side streets and away from the cops.

The dinky little neighborhood streets with their speed bumps and stop signs are molasses-at-the-South-Pole slow, but eventually I get to Fairfax, where I stop for gas. When the tank is full I go inside the station to the little grocery. There’s nowhere else you can get food like this. The donuts taste like diesel vapor and you have to smother the microwave hamburgers with mustard and onions to cover the taste of cancer. I spent a fair amount of time in places like this before I went Downtown. They’re a solvent-stained oasis for people who drink till the bars close and are too brain-fried to find a Denny’s for the grease injection they hope will soak up the poison they’ve been swallowing all evening. Here everything is poison and so full of preservatives that it will live forever. This is junk-food Valhalla. I grab a plastic basket and prowl the aisles, filling it with the right mix of the sweetest, greasiest, most guaranteed-heart-attack stuff I can find.