Premonitions (24 page)

Christ.
Anna had been with Karyn during a couple of pretty bad episodes, but if she’d really gone through the rest of her blind since their last visit to Adelaide, Anna couldn’t imagine what she was going through. What she’d put herself through. She coughed. There was no way to sugarcoat this next bit, and as much as she’d like to forget about it, that wouldn’t do Karyn any favors.

“Adelaide sold us out,” Anna said. “I’m not sure what they offered her, but she sounded like it was a big deal.”

Total silence from Karyn.

“I think they were gonna hold off payment until she could track you down. She was pretty far gone, though. I’m not sure she’s going to be any help. I mean, I think they might kill her.”

No response.

“How does that even happen? I mean, doesn’t she see everything?”

Karyn’s voice floated across the darkness in a whisper. “Seeing too much is just as bad as seeing nothing. It gets . . . confusing. You know that.”

“Yeah. You’ve told me,” Anna said, and bitterness surged within her. “What the hell were you thinking? You know I was looking for you, carrying around a bag with a quarter of a million dollars in it?”

“I don’t deserve a cut. I didn’t finish the job.”

“Doesn’t matter. It was in my car, so I guess the fucking Brotherhood’s got it now.”

Karyn moved again, and this time Anna heard her sigh. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have come looking for me.”

“That’s bullshit, Karyn. You don’t just walk out on your friends and disappear like that. Not because you fucked up, not for anything.”

The murmuring in the next room had gone quiet, or the sound of Anna’s breath in her own ears drowned it out. Her eyes had adjusted well enough now that she could see Karyn massaging her temples, eyes closed, expression unreadable from here.

“The guys need you,” Anna continued. “This is
your
outfit, for Chrissakes.”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like?” Karyn said. Her voice was barely louder than a whisper, barely audible over that goddamn cricket. “I didn’t ask to be the oracle.”

“Cry me a river.” Karyn had nothing but a bullshit argument, and Anna was scoring points left and right, so why didn’t she feel any better?

“You know I almost got you shot in the head back there? I saw a wound in the guy that grabbed you, a bullet hole, and I
knew
Nail could make that shot. Was going
to make that shot. I told him to shoot. He wouldn’t do it. Said he’d hit you instead. But, hell, I saw the evidence right in front of me—he
would
make that shot.”

Anna shrugged. “He made the shot. What’s the problem?”

“He never fired. One of Sobell’s guys got the bastard.” Karyn opened her eyes, twin gleams of silver faint in the shadows. “Nail would’ve killed you.”

“
Might
have killed me.”

“Jesus Christ. You’re not listening. Everybody thinks I know the goddamn future—I don’t know shit. I have guesses, maybe a little better than average, but everybody takes my word like it came from God or something. I can’t take this shit anymore.”

“Nail didn’t.”

“What?”

“Nail didn’t take your word like it came from God. You said he could make the shot, he knew better. So he didn’t shoot. Yeah, you’ve got the inside info, but that doesn’t mean everybody just puts their brains on automatic and goes with it.” She’d made her point, but she couldn’t resist going a little further. “Maybe if your head wasn’t so fucking huge, you could see that.”

That got Karyn to sit up straight. “Which is it? Either my head’s so goddamn big we can’t all fit in the room with it, or you all really do need my help. You can’t have it both ways.”

“Why not?”

Karyn’s eyes widened, silver slivers opening to ovals. “That’s not fair.”

“Poor baby.”

“So now what? We sit here for another hour and fight while you get off one-liners at my expense?”

Anna felt a pang of guilt at that, as she’d just been thinking much the same thing, yet the urge to get off another one still swelled inside her. She quashed it as best she could. “We can have the whole knock-down, drag-out fight later. For now, I just need to know—are you with us?”

Karyn nodded.

“We’ll get this thing with the blind
figured out. We’ll
find somebody else. Or if all Adelaide wants is the highest bidder, we’ll make that happen somehow.”

“Sure.”

“You all right?”

Another nod, but even in the grayscale shadows of the living room, Anna knew it for a fraud.

* * *

Sobell had a good nose for trouble and, flamboyant personality notwithstanding, a good head for avoiding it. You didn’t get to be a few hundred years old otherwise, certainly not in his chosen line of work. He liked to keep it mysterious for the peons, but there was really no trick to it—you watched the details. People’s eyes told volumes, though they were tricksy buggers, and they lied to you more than you might expect. Not as much as mouths, but even so. When you walked into a room, what did people say? More importantly, how did the manner of their speech change? Even without a whisper of the content, there was much to be gleaned from volume, pitch, timbre—meta-information, he supposed they called it in this day and age, though he’d known those tricks since he was scrabbling for loose change in Amsterdam, literally centuries ago.

Tonight, he had a wealth of details at his disposal, and they added up to nothing good. He’d walked several blocks since the motel debacle, Brown and company his unwieldy entourage, and he’d seen a number of things that set him to worrying. The junkies and the pushers left off their dealings and watched him walk by—not with fear, but with an eerie species of recognition, like not only did they know who he was, but they had been expecting him. One sore-raddled toothless meth addict gave him the very hairiest of eyeballs and appeared to consider jumping him right there on the street. That was offensive enough, but the obvious recognition on that lowly specimen’s face, the indication that he knew who Sobell was and dared to think such thoughts anyway, was truly worrisome.

Sobell got the strong sense that, if it hadn’t been for the entourage, the guy would have gone for it, too. And he wasn’t the only one—Sobell was accreting a thin,
straggling tail of lowlifes, too scattered and too short on numbers to be much of a threat right now, but growing.

It was probably nothing to worry about, he reminded himself. Another couple of blocks, and he’d be at the rendezvous, whereupon his driver would pluck him from this shit-filled rat hole and whisk him back to the office. The entourage would have to take a taxi—such was the lot of minions and hangers-on.

He passed a bail bondsman’s shop, stepped over a passed-out hooker in front of the police surplus store. A set of footsteps accelerated behind him, and Brown caught him up in front of a seedy music store with heavy-duty bars on the windows.

“It’s unusually busy down here tonight,” Brown said.

“I’d noticed.”

“Employees?”

Sobell raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Of mine? Hardly.”

“We need to get out of here. I think this could get ugly.”

“Ah, I guess that means we’ll need to cut the tour short. Pity.”

Brown remained silent. Sobell wondered if he’d hurt the poor man’s feelings.

“Don’t worry—my driver should be up ahead.” He kept an even pace, worried that moving faster would set off some attack instinct in the people behind them.

Ahead, the street was empty save for a cracked plastic Starbucks cup. Sobell checked the signs at the corner as they approached and verified that he was in the right place.

“Hmm,” he said. “How long ago did I call?”

“Twenty minutes, at least. Maybe thirty.”

“It might be advisable to start worrying. Luis should have been here by now.”

“He could have gotten hung up in traffic,” Brown said. Sobell gave him a withering glare and offered no further comment. A glance behind them showed maybe two dozen of the area’s lost and forgotten strewn down the
length of the sidewalk, standing in doorways, and looming in the mouths of alleys. Not one bothered to look away when Sobell looked back.

“Hey, I think that’s your car,” Brown said, pointing. A pair of headlights turned onto the street a few hundred yards ahead.

It certainly looked like Sobell’s car, a long black town car, but the sight of it stirred a faint tickle of fear inside him.

“Too slow,” Sobell said. He started crossing the street, away from the approaching car, away from the drugged-out wolf pack behind. He walked quickly now, and Brown jogged to catch up.

“What?”

“Too slow. He’s more than ten minutes late and driving less than the speed limit. I don’t know who’s driving that car, but it’s not Luis. He wouldn’t dare.”

The distant purr of the car kicked up a notch.

“He’s speeding up now.”

“Run.” Sobell followed his own instruction, breaking into an open run with his overcoat flapping behind him. The clacking shoes of the entourage picked up the pace, and the vagrants behind them began cutting across the street, angling toward Sobell.

Sobell turned right and headed for an alley, running full-out now for the first time in years. It was as disagreeable an experience as he’d remembered, and in addition to his rough breathing and the general strain on his knees, he developed a stitch in his side almost immediately.

The sound of screaming tires echoed through the canyon of brick and stone, followed by a sound Sobell had grown exceedingly tired of in the last hour or so—gunshots. Somebody fell. Sobell found reserves of speed he’d been unaware of and dashed forward. Brick exploded on his left, but he made the alley unscathed, Brown close behind with the surviving members of his security detail.

“Fucking
shoot
them!” Sobell snarled. Brown reached for his gun, and Sobell grabbed his wrist. “Not you.” He pulled a small folding knife from his pocket and opened it.

“Hold still,” he said. “This is going to sting like crazy.”

“Are you—ow!” A red gash appeared in Brown’s palm, blood flowing heavily forth. He tried to yank away from Sobell’s grip, but Sobell squeezed more tightly. Red droplets ran down Brown’s fingers and spattered the dirty pavement.

“Hold still,” Sobell repeated. Brown seemed to pull together his will and keep from coldcocking Sobell, but it looked like a close thing.

Sobell pulled Brown down to a kneeling position. He drew several quick lines in the dirt, then smeared his finger in the blood running from Brown’s palm.

“What the hell are you doing?” Brown asked.

“Shut up for a moment. I need to concentrate.” The gunfire was bad enough—tough to tell who was winning, but there was an awful lot of shooting. Again. Sobell dabbed the lines with blood in several spots, returning to his grisly inkwell a couple of times for a refill. Brown watched, either baffled or appalled, but at least he’d stopped complaining.

Sobell finished and stood. “Come on.”

Brown pushed the corner of his shirt into his wound and pressed.

“Quickly.”

Some of the entourage backed into the mouth of the alley, still firing. They were down to a mere handful now, the others having fallen to bullets or the depredations of the descending horde of low-rent criminals that had taken such sudden interest in the group.

“Guys!” Brown shouted.

“They’re fucked,” Sobell told him quietly. “It’s called sacrificing the rear guard. You can stay here and get violently introduced to the afterlife with them, or you can live. Your call.”

Sobell fled down the alley without checking to see if Brown followed. The man was a soldier—he’d understand. If not, he’d go down fighting and be assured a place in Valhalla or whatever.
Not my problem.

At the alley’s end, Sobell crouched to the dirt.

Brown was right behind him, face twisted in grief and anger.

“Are you with me, Mr. Brown, or are you here to exact revenge for your fallen comrades?”

Brown stared at Sobell, glanced over his shoulder, and looked back. Anger turned to disgust, but he nodded. “I’m with you.”

“Good. Give me your hand.” Another quick sketch, a line across the width of the alley, and a few more dabs of blood.

“Uh-oh,” Brown said, and Sobell looked up to see the last of the entourage fall. The alley filled with an angry, weapon-wielding mob. Sobell was surprised to see his driver among them, but he didn’t stop to think about it much, as the man started shooting at him.

He shoved Brown out of the alley and followed, ducking around the side of the building. Counted to three, peered back around to see the mob clawing its way toward him. He reached out, pressed his hand against the line in the dirt, and uttered a few words in a long-dead language.

A long stretch of ground convulsed with an enormous cracking and rending sound, heaving up under the feet of the oncoming mob. Shouts of alarm turned to cries as the walls of buildings on either side skewed, slumped, and finally collapsed inward. The air filled with choking black dust.

“Keep moving,” Sobell said.

Brown stumbled as he looked back at the wreckage.

Sobell pushed him along. “Careful, you’ll turn into a pillar of salt.”

“What?”

“Kidding. But move, would you? I doubt I got all of them.”

Brown’s eyes were wide with a familiar type of shock. Of course, there were rumors about Sobell’s occult pastimes, but they were all just stupid stories until you saw him in action. “What did you do?”

“Nothing a stick of dynamite wouldn’t have done better. Now come
on
.”

The two men ran.

* * *

“All done,” Genevieve said, wiping her hands as she stood. “It will take a miracle to find us now, unless the devil himself is looking.”

“You think he might be?” Nail asked. He wasn’t even sure whether he was joking. He raised his voice loud enough to be heard from the living room. “Hey, we cool?”

“Yeah, we’re good,” Anna said. “Good enough, anyway.”

“Cool.” Nail went into the living room, pulling a chair after him. He flipped it around so he could lean on the back. Genevieve edged around him and sat, legs folded, on the floor next to Anna’s chair. Karyn still sat on the couch, head down and hands over her eyes.