Broken Souls (13 page)

“Hey. It’s me,” I yell. “Like really. And I know you’re you. This thing in my hand? It’ll track the Russian. And since I’m not getting a read from it, I know he’s not here. And I got his name. Worked for Griffin. Now can you get the gangbangers to lower their guns so we can actually talk?”

No answer. The cholos are looking even more nervous. Some of them are starting to sweat. I wonder if I said boo they’d shit themselves. Or just freak out and shoot me. But god, it’s so tempting.

“We’re doing this?” I yell. “If I were him wearing my skin, do you honestly think I’d be stupid enough to show up like this? Alone? After what happened in the hotel? Thanks for pulling me out of the fire, by the way. Appreciate it.”

One of the gangbangers puts a hand to his ear and I can see that he’s wearing a radio. “She says he’s cool.” Guns lower, everyone lets out a collective breath.

“I ain’t scared of you,” one of them says, clearly feeling the need to reassert the size of his penis.

“Then you’re an idiot,” I say.

Gabriela steps out onto concrete ledge of the loading bay, machete over her shoulder. “You’re alive.”

“More or less,” I say. “I hear you—” I stop myself, wondering if any of these guys know who she is. “I hear the Bruja took out that thing that bit me.”

She waves it off. “I’m done hiding,” she says. “They know.”

I look at the assembled troops. “So you guys know how much of a badass she is, right?” From the fact that half of them are afraid to look at her and the others are standing in rapt silence waiting for her next move, I’d say yes.

“Come on in,” she says. “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“You look like you’re
auditioning for a Che Guevara biopic,” I say. She has bandages on her face, stitches in her forehead. Wearing Doc Martens, camo cargo pants, a black t-shirt with the words “BULLETS CAN’T HURT ME” on the front in iron-on letters.

“Yeah, just need a red beret and I’m all set,” she says. “Most of my clothes went up with the hotel.”

“That work?” I point to the letters on her shirt. I can’t tell for sure, but I’m betting it’s an extension of the kind of Sharpie magic I use. I’ve never gotten it to do more than fool perceptions, screw with electronics a little. Even with a camera it’s more futzing with the viewer than it is the image. And I sure as hell can’t stop bullets.

“More or less,” she says. “Mostly it just fucks with people’s aim. Helps some if I get hit. I’ve got other protections, though.” She points at one of the tattoos peeking up over my collar. “A few of those, too. Some other things.”

I follow her through a maze of shelves holding stacks of cardboard boxes, past a long empty space with a massive workspace. Long tables littered with boxes, packing materials. They’re making something. But what?

“Drugs?” I say.

She gives me a look like I just farted in an elevator. “Fuck you. Knockoff handbags. Shoes. Leather jackets. Prada, Louis Vuitton. That sort of thing. Sell them down on Broadway. That’s how I pay for all this shit.” She shakes her head. “Drugs. Please.”

“Sorry. Just seems to be a good moneymaker.”

“Do I look like I’m here to make money?” No, she doesn’t. She looks like someone who’s trying to change the world. And from what I’ve seen so far she might just do that.

The second floor is mostly empty. A massive loft space with hanging barn lights. Boxes stacked on the sides. Men with rifles patrolling the blacked-out windows. She’s cordoned off a space that looks like a tactical command center. Radios, computers, whiteboards plastered with maps of L.A. Guys on phones are jotting down notes, putting pins into the maps.

“I’ve got my crew scouring the city for this guy. You said you have a name?”

“Sergei Gusarov.”

She stops, turns to look at me. “You are fucking kidding me.”

“Am I like the only person who hasn’t heard of this guy?”

“Probably. Guy’s an asshole. He was the main reason Griffin was able to hang onto the Russians that he had. Russian mob would try to shut Griffin down and he’d send Sergei. Lots of horror stories about that guy. Effective but not smart. You sure it’s him?”

“That’s what the wind tells me.”

“The— Okay, back up. The wind?”

“Had a conversation with the Santa Anas.”

“Maybe you should fill me in a little. Let’s start with after I lost you at the hotel.”

I tell her what happened at the electronics store, the demons, the runes that blocked the magic. I gloss over how I got out, skip over Tabitha completely. I want to keep her out of this as much as possible. I tell Gabriela I was able to get through the door and get enough power to take the demons down.

“I figured they’d killed you,” she says.

“Figured the same about you.”

“Almost did. That little monster girl threw me through a plate glass window across the street.”

“They leave you alone after that?”

“No, I managed to give them the slip. But I was so tapped I knew I couldn’t take them. I had to cut and run. Sorry about that.”

“Hey, you got me out of a burning building. More than most people would do. After I got out I tried to think of a way to track down the Russian. I suck at divination and with what he knows from Kettleman, I didn’t figure casting bones was going to do it.”

“Even asking the dead?”

“I thought about it, but Kettleman’s ghost didn’t give me a lot of hope of getting anything useful if I tracked down one of his victims. And the dead aren’t real good at nuance. Asking about one guy is easy. Asking about a guy who might look like any other guy? Not much point. So I started thinking about alternatives.”

I fill her in on the rest. The basics, at least. My conversation with the Santa Anas, getting Sergei’s name, the orb.

When I finish she gives a low whistle. “Damn. And you’re not on fire? Somebody invokes the Santa Anas and we at least get a red flag warning. I haven’t even noticed a dry wind tonight.”

“I kinda promised I’d burn something else. But I’m not sure L.A. won’t be on fire by morning.”

“It thinks you’re special?”

“Something like that.” From all that king business it was going on about, it sure seemed to. She gives me a look I can’t quite read, like she’s waiting for more. So I change the subject.

“You’re not hiding behind your scary-old-witch-in-the-hotel façade,” I say. “How come?”

“It’s been a long time coming,” she says. “I’ve been careful. For years. I set up the Bruja before I got out of college. Bought the hotel and built that place up from a rat-infested mess with shit plumbing and a junkie squatter in every room. I’ve defended it, I’ve fought for it.”

“And now it’s gone.”

“And the Bruja with it. People have been poking around my operation more. Getting bolder. Last year some asshole even managed to get the LAPD onto me.”

“Not another mage,” I say. There aren’t any hard and fast rules about how we do things, but one thing that’s pretty universal is that you don’t bring in the normals. Not that there aren’t mages in police work out there, but they keep that shit quiet.

“No, some lawyer on La Eme’s payroll put a bug in somebody’s ear. Took some doing but I got the investigation closed and then I sent the lawyer’s bosses a message to back the fuck off.”

“A message?”

“His head in a bag. Point is, not that long ago I didn’t need to do that shit. The disguise isn’t scaring people away the way it used to. So I figure with the hotel gone I gotta start over, anyway. Might as well start fresh.”

“Not a simple thing to do,” I say, remembering when I was forced to make a fresh start fifteen years ago. I spent a lot of months just wandering the country wondering what the hell my next move was.

“No, but I’ve got the same goal I’ve always had.” She tilts her head toward the orb in my hand. “And it starts with that. You sure it’ll track Sergei?”

“That’s what the wind tells me. Gets brighter as he gets closer. The glow points in his direction.” I hand it to her. She rolls it around in her hands, walks around the room.

“Any idea how bright it gets?”

“No clue. Probably won’t know until I’m right on top of him. It’s gotten brighter as I’ve gotten closer to L.A. but not by much. I think it’s safe to assume he isn’t too close.”

She holds it up. The light hasn’t changed the side it’s on by much. “Yeah. If he were closer you’d see the light move more. He’s probably pretty far out. Okay, this is good.” She hands it to one of her guys tapping numbers into a laptop. Stocky Latino guy with thinning hair and a handlebar mustache. “Hey, Emilio, can you do some math on this thing?”

He takes the orb and looks it over. “You want me to see if we can use it to triangulate him? Yeah. Might need to drive around a little. Okay if I take it?”

“Sure,” Gabriela says.

“Whoa, now. Hang on,” I say, grabbing the orb out of Emilio’s hands. “That’s my only way to find the guy and it’s kinda expensive. So, sorry, but I’m not about to hand it off to somebody I’ve never met before.”

“Emilio, this is Eric,” Gabriela says. “Eric, Emilio. Now you’ve met. Better?”

“No.”

“An hour, tops, chief,” Emilio says. “Seriously. Probably less. Just gonna drive around a bit with a couple of guys and map some stuff out.”

“I’m gonna need a lot more convincing before I hand this thing off to anybody.”

“What’d you pay for this?” Gabriela says.

“None of your goddamn business.”

“Fair enough. I’m not going to ask if you trust me, but I am going to ask if you want to find this guy without having to drive all over town the rest of the night.”

She has a point. I need to find Sergei and if her guy can get a fix on him quickly I might have a chance of getting him before he’s on the move again.

“I’m really not comfortable with this,” I say handing it back to Emilio. “If I don’t get that back I’m gonna be really pissed off.”

“Duly noted,” Gabriela says.

“Thanks, Chief” Emilio says and leaves with a couple of the others.

“We’re on the same side here,” Gabriela says.

“No, we’re not. We’ve got some overlapping goals, that’s it. But I don’t know you. And you don’t know me. And I’m sure as hell not part of your brave new world here. I’m sorry if I’m a little paranoid but when I run into other mages lately they have this annoying habit of trying to kill me. I’m here because MacFee said you needed to see me. So what do you need to see me about?”

She flops into a plastic chair. “I was going to share what we knew, which isn’t much. Mostly where he’s not. Been looking for Kettleman, but he’s pretty much gone to ground. I hear from MacFee that’s because of you.”

“Yeah, I had him spread the word that he’s dead. I hear it’s helped.”

“If by helped you mean anybody who sees him freaks out so he’s not showing himself, sure. Nobody’s seen him since the other night.”

“What about the crew he had?”

“Now that we know it’s Sergei, that’ll be easier. I can get some names and see if we can find him that way.” She drums her fingers on the table. “You know I’m not trying to kill you.”

“Yeah, I know. You were, though. That kinda sticks with a guy.”

“I thought you were somebody else. Look, we both have a goal here. Finding this guy and taking him down. We both have our reasons. And we could both use some friends.”

I look around at everybody in the room. They’re all doing things. On the phone checking on leads. Cleaning weapons. Patrolling the windows. She’s got at least fifty people here.

“Looks like you got plenty of friends,” I say.

“I’ve got a crew of normals. They’ve known me for years as the Bruja’s secretary, right hand to some shadowy old hag in the attic who’ll shrivel your balls off if you look at her funny. The minute I went public with who I really am half of them up and left. Some of them came back, and a lot of the ones who didn’t are going to be a pain in my ass. And now some of the ones who are still here are starting to question me. I don’t exactly have the look they were expecting. I’ve already had three of them try to hit on me.”

“Sexism is alive and well in America. I can’t imagine that went well for them.”

“Once they wake up from a weeklong nap full of nightmares, they’ll be fine. More or less. With the Bruja it was easy. Some old Baba Yaga witch they could be scared of was easier to swallow than a USC sociology grad. I’m starting from scratch here and I have to put the fear of god into them without her help.”

“What about the vampires?”

“Bailed. Building up trust with them again is gonna be tough. I’m on tenuous ground and I don’t want to see everything I’ve built disintegrate at my feet. Pretty soon La Eme is going to come calling again. Or the Armenians, or the Israelis, or the Chinese. I could use some friends. And I know you can, too.”

“I’m doing just fine.”

“Really? Bouncing from hotel to hotel, stealing cars, ex-girlfriend wants to kill you. Darius won’t talk to you. Last I heard your best friend had his soul eaten and you had to shoot him in the head. Yeah, you’re doing great on the friend front.”

“Okay. Yes, I’ve burned a couple bridges.”

“Burned? Dude, you napalmed the fuck out of ’em. I’m not asking for any kind of partnership, any kind of tit for tat crap. I’m just saying that we’re better off being friendly with each other.”

She’s right, of course. I’ve lost a lot of people. Lost them before I even came back to town. I could use some friends. There’s MacFee, but really, he’s not a friend. And Tabitha . . . I’m not really sure what Tabitha is.

I stick my hand out. “I promise I won’t try to kill you,” I say.

She takes it and gives it a shake. “That’s a start. So, what were you thinking of as a next move?”

“Use the orb to track Sergei down and feed him his own intestines. Between that and your operation here, we should be able to find him. What about Darius? Can he help?”

“When I asked him after the knife was stolen he said he didn’t want to get involved and wouldn’t tell me what he meant. And now the hotel’s gone. The door’s gone. I can’t get to him.”

“Why don’t you—Oh. You don’t know about the other doors.” That gets her attention and has me wondering what I can do with this new bonus bargaining chip.

“What other doors?”

“I think I’ll hang onto that little tidbit.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“Promising not to kill each other isn’t the same thing.”

“See, this is the problem,” she says. “This is why the world’s so fucked up. Nobody trusts anybody. Not every mage is an asshole, you know.”

“Really?” I say. “That your experience? Sure as hell isn’t mine.”

“Has it occurred to you that it’s because you’re one of the assholes?”

“I—Goddammit.” She’s easily as powerful as I am and she’s got a small army of heavily armed thugs. I still don’t entirely trust her. If I tell her where the other doors are I lose what little advantage I have. But a phrase pops into my head about how if more than three people call you a horse, buy a saddle. Whole lotta people calling me a horse these days.