Premonitions (22 page)

The van ride to
Adelaide’s ranked among the most surreal experiences Karyn had ever had. She ended up in the backseat next to one walking, talking dead Anna, while two more sat up front. She started labeling them in order to hold on to her sanity. To her right was Drew-Anna, the one whose brains were leaking out her head. Genevieve-Anna drove, and Nail-Anna rode shotgun—and held a shotgun, for that matter. Held it in his lap out of sight, but this business with Sobell evidently had him worried pretty badly.

Karyn felt a moment of unaccustomed warmth toward Genevieve when the other woman pressed the pedal to the floor and sent the van blasting forward almost before everybody was sitting down.

“Where?” Genevieve-Anna asked.

“Next left,” Karyn said. “Then right on Santo Domingo.”

The van careened from side to side around each corner, until even Nail-Anna was telling Genevieve-Anna to slow it down a little, huh? They couldn’t do Anna any good if they were all dead or in jail. Karyn shouted directions from the back, trying to focus on the streets and the map in her mind rather than the odd, unreal details that showed up alongside the road—images of decay, mostly, rusted-out vehicles and collapsing buildings. Like the mold in her aunt’s place, these weren’t visions of tomorrow or the next day, but of some distant future, and she
had to continually remind herself they weren’t relevant to here and now.

“There,” she said. “Adelaide’s. Stop up there on the right.”

“Anna’s car’s not here,” Genevieve-Anna pointed out. The streetlights here were dark, broken in many cases, but she flicked on the van’s high beams. The only car on the street was Drew’s, sitting forlornly on its flat tires.

Karyn could feel her pulse pounding in her chest, her neck, even her wrists. Where was Anna? It wasn’t simply that she’d come and gone and was safely on her way, or Karyn wouldn’t be surrounded by macabre visions of her best friend’s walking corpse. “The Brotherhood . . . I don’t know.”

“Goddammit, you have to know!” Genevieve-Anna yelled, and Karyn’s sense of unreality pressed in on her. Was that Genevieve really talking, or was it a vision of Anna herself, pleading for Karyn’s help?

Drew-Anna cleared his throat. “Um. I might be able to help.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Karyn said softly.

“No, I, uh, I might know where she is. I mean, there’s really like only one of two places it could be.”

There was a moment of shocked silence, then all the Annas started talking at once, the racket threatening to split Karyn’s skull. She pressed her hands to her head, as if with enough pressure she could get everything to calm down.

Nail-Anna turned around and stuck his shotgun in Drew-Anna’s face over the back of the seat, as he kneeled backward in the passenger seat.

“Start talking,” Nail-Anna said.

“Motel 6, Figueroa and Grand.”

Genevieve-Anna didn’t wait. She pulled the van out with a lurch.

“Good start,” Nail-Anna said. “Keep going.”

“Or there’s an apartment complex, but a bunch of the guys live there. I’m guessing they won’t use that unless they have to.”

“Keep talking. What else do you know about all this? What the fuck are you even doing here?”

“Look, I didn’t want any part of this shit, really. This isn’t my fault.”

Nail-Anna racked the shotgun. “I would hate to have a
Pulp Fiction
moment in this car, if you know what I’m saying.”

“Please don’t,” Genevieve-Anna said. “Just let the guy talk, huh?”

Karyn studied Drew-Anna. The only message she could pull from her vision was the obvious one—Anna was going to get hurt or killed, if she hadn’t already. She saw no signs that might be interpreted as threat or duplicity, and she hadn’t the whole brief time she’d known Drew. She’d ignored or misinterpreted signs before, but this wasn’t the same—there was nothing here to misinterpret. If she was missing something, it was very subtle indeed.

“Ease up,” she said. “I think he’s safe.”

“Not good enough,” Nail-Anna said. “Not this time.”

Karyn winced inwardly, but she couldn’t fault Nail for that after the way the last job had gone down. She wasn’t even sure whether to trust herself.

“Can you at least put that thing away?” Karyn asked. “This isn’t Afghanistan. Somebody’s going to see you and call the cops.”

“OK,” Nail-Anna said, pulling a pistol from his jacket. He slid the shotgun down onto the floor, and pointed the new gun at the backseat.

“That’s not what I was going for.”

The gun didn’t waver.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Drew-Anna said.

“Anna. Who’s got her? How many? What are they going to do with her?”

Drew-Anna squirmed. “Look, they’ve been working up to this for over a year. They’ve been told for weeks that their god would come to them in the flesh—”

“It’s not a god,” Genevieve-Anna said.

“—when the time was right and the ceremony was complete. When you crashed the party and stole the
relic, it had to be like Armageddon for ’em. I bet they’re goin’
crazy
. Like, some fucking Crusades shit. They will do
anything
to get that thing back. I, uh, I really doubt they’d stop at kidnapping and, uh, torture.” He said the last word quietly, as though hoping nobody would hear.

Karyn wrinkled her nose. A ripe rotting smell had begun to fill the car, and now she noticed that the Annas were going through some kind of accelerated decay. Their skin had changed to a yellowed, waxy color, and flies had begun buzzing around them. She cracked the window.

“How many will be there?”

Drew-Anna shrugged. “All of ’em. What did you expect?”

“Shit.” Nail-Anna ran a hand over his forehead, dislodging a half dozen flies that flew around erratically before lighting again on his face.

“I told you, they’re really pissed. This was supposed to be the big deal, the Brotherhood rising to power at the side of their”—he looked sidelong at Genevieve-Anna—“boss.”

“Goddammit,” Nail-Anna said. “No wonder Sobell hired us. He didn’t want a shitload of nutcases gunning for him, so he hired out the job. That’s why he wants to waste us now. With us out of the picture, those crazy fuckers will never know where the bone ended up.”

“Those ‘crazy fuckers’ have a ton of guys, a pile of guns, and I have no idea what else. If they have your friend, they’re only going to keep her alive if they think she can deliver the relic or the rest of you. Any idea how you’re going to deal with the whole mob of them?”

“No clue,” Nail-Anna said.

Conversation died quickly after that. Genevieve-Anna went into her own thoughts and watched the road. Nail-Anna simply stared back, almost without blinking, waiting for an excuse to put more holes in Drew-Anna’s corpse.

Karyn watched the others and tried to keep an eye out, but that was rapidly becoming hopeless. Straightforward visions of decay weren’t all she saw out there now.
The streets were filling up with monsters, and even the buildings had taken odd new forms. A ziggurat-looking thing had taken the place of what she was fairly certain had been a Conoco last time she’d driven by, and it was by no means the strangest building she saw. She watched them pass with amusement at first, then greater concern. If her symptoms kept getting worse, the world would soon become impossible to navigate. No wonder Adelaide stayed in all the time.

The scene around her was so bizarre it took her a moment to acknowledge the white streaks blazing from a vehicle on a cross street ahead. It ran the light, careening into the intersection ahead of them and drawing angry honks from the cars with the right-of-way.

“Asshole,” Genevieve-Anna said.

Karyn spared it a glance. Then the shock hit her—it was a black SUV, and it was on fire.

“Follow them,” she said.

“What about the motel?”

“I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that.”

Genevieve-Anna pressed the accelerator and matched speed with the SUV, hanging back half a block or so. Another SUV joined the first from the right, and a third pulled in on the left, speeding to catch up with the other two. White light poured from each, but the flames blazing from the first one burned brighter. As Karyn watched, it exploded, yet somehow kept speeding forward. The windows blew outward on the one on the left.

“Something bad’s going to happen to them,” Karyn said.

“I can’t wait,” Nail-Anna muttered.

* * *

There had been shouting, the sounds of breaking furniture, and the occasional burst of senseless chatter from Adelaide, but if the Brotherhood and their Revered One were going to get what they wanted, it must have been obvious to them by now that they weren’t going to get it from Adelaide.

Unfortunately, it was looking like Anna wasn’t going to get anything from her, either.
But I can’t leave her with
these bastards,
she thought. That sentiment had occupied most of her concentration for the last ten minutes or so, but she couldn’t seem to do anything with it. The same situation held—the room was crowded, she was alone, and she couldn’t see a way through this that wouldn’t end in blood.

I should get out of here. Maybe try to get some help.
She pushed back from the little hole she’d cut in the wall—but then somebody in the next room shouted, and she stopped, listening once more.

“Where is she?” the Revered One bellowed.
Oh, come on. You
know
she can’t help you. What’s another round of this going to do?

A high keening sound began, then cut off abruptly with a heavy thud.

“Where is she?”

“Adelaide doesn’t know!”

“Where is the relic?”

“Adelaide needs—
I
need to go home! I can’t think! I can’t think here, everything is—everything is everything, all the time! I need—I need to go
home
!
You said you could help me, I
saw
that, Adelaide can I can we can—”

“Where is Ames?”

A pause, and then: “She’s coming! Coming here!” Adelaide shouted, a note of triumph in her voice.

What?

The sound of the lock turning pulled Anna’s attention from the drama next door. For half a second, she thought about dashing back to the closet and hiding, but she knew she’d never make it. She stood and raised her gun just as the door opened.

Two men stood there, staring. The one in front had only his key in hand and no weapons visible. The other had a small revolver jammed into his belt.

“Back the fuck up,” she said. “Right now.”

* * *

“Not good,” Genevieve said as she pulled the car up to the curb.

Nail nodded agreement, adding, “Damn,” under his breath.

The motel was a two-story building, planned in the shape of a giant U, with faded red doors at regular intervals. Lights glowed through the curtains in a handful of units, but it was obvious that business wasn’t so good these days. The small armada of black SUVs that rolled in doubled the number of cars in the parking lot.

Genevieve had kept the car back a ways, hoping the guys in the SUVs wouldn’t see them, but that had created another problem for Nail to worry about. “Sobell’s guys got here first,” he said. “What do we do about that?”

“How many you think there are?” Genevieve asked. She’d started tapping her fingers on the dash again, which made Nail want to tie her hands to her belt or something. That nervous shit spread.

“Dozen. Maybe fifteen. Depends how many guys they jammed into the cars.”

“How’d they know to come here?”

“How the hell should I know? Shut up a second, OK?”

Genevieve went back to wearing a hole in the dash while Nail studied the scene. Fifteen of Sobell’s thugs on one side, surely armed to the teeth and beyond; a shitload of deranged fanatics on the other side; and Anna in the middle.

“Who’s strapped?” he asked.

“I am,” Karyn said. Genevieve shook her head, and Drew just looked down.

“Gen, you got any magic tricks ready if we gotta throw down?”

Genevieve shook her head. Nail could see her sweating, her usual cool composure cracked and useless. “I got nothing. Maybe if I’da prepped, but . . .”

“All right. That’s what we got, then.”

“This is insane,” Drew said. “We’re outnumbered ten to one.”

Nail brushed the comment aside. Wasn’t nothing to be done about it anyway. “Which room?” he asked Drew.

“One forty-four. And one forty-five, six, seven, and eight. Maybe others.”

“Jesus.”

“What’s the plan?” Karyn asked.

Nail shook his head. “Ain’t got one. Love to hear it if you do.”

She didn’t say anything, just kept staring across the way, her eyes distant and haunted in that way they got sometimes. Nail checked his weapon rather than look at her.
She’s great,
he thought,
love that woman, but sometimes she freaks me right the fuck out.

Across the courtyard, the SUVs waited, rumbling, exhaust belching from their tailpipes.

“No plan,” Nail said. It came out even and calm, despite the adrenaline that coursed through his system. “No time for a plan, and I don’t know that I coulda come up with anything even if I had a few hours to work on it. We wait for an opening, that’s all.”

Nobody said it aloud, but Nail could see it reflected in their eyes and, hell, he thought it himself:
Great. Just great.

* * *

“This place is a shithole,” Enoch Sobell announced. To his right, Brown nodded. “I’m half inclined to burn the entire stinking edifice to the ground on principle, Ms. Ames and the bone be damned.”

Brown’s eyes widened fractionally, and Sobell could see him trying to come up with the whole litany of reasons why that was a bad idea. Unfortunately for him, they all tried to come out at once and got logjammed in his throat. His mouth hung open soundlessly.

So tough to find underlings with a sense of humor these days. I suppose I should let him off the hook.
“Not today’s job, though,” Sobell said. “We must stay on task.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t suppose that gadget of yours will tell us what room?”

“It’s accurate to within a meter.”

“I don’t know a meter from a furlong, Mr. Brown. Will it tell us the room or not?”