Sacrifices (29 page)

Tran reached past him and flipped to a yellow plastic marker on the last page. “Sign here.”

He signed.

Tran took the papers and put them back in the brown accordion folder she'd brought them in. “Good-bye, Enoch. It's been . . . interesting,” Tran said.

“I'm not dead yet.”

She walked to her car.

The black spots, which had receded, came back in force, crowding around until they were no longer in just his peripheral vision. They must have blotted out a quarter of the world now with their teeming and curling, twisting into fantastic shapes. The whispering was louder now.

To destroy, or to be destroyed
. Wasn't that what Belial had said?

It wasn't too late to contact Belial. Turn over the priest and the others, and hope the demon could extract what it needed. Further hope that it held by its promises; that it
had not, in fact, been up to some skullduggery with Simon's goodies; that it would help Sobell at all. More time and perhaps he could figure out how to do it himself, but he had no more time. That option was gone, leaving him with just two possible paths: trust Belial, or call the dragon and pray that it didn't scour him from the earth in its eagerness to destroy the rats that plagued him. A lousy choice. The tiger or the tiger.

He texted Genevieve.
I'll be there.

Anna frowned, turning
away from the welding shop's window where she'd been watching the street. “I'm hungry.” She made a sort of disgusted growl. “Goddammit. I'm trying to focus, really I am. Abas said he's got the place. Wants us to pick up a few things and meet him there.”

Karyn's misgivings about Anna's frame of mind were only growing. She kept seeing Anna with a bloody grin and a wild-eyed expression from which sanity had wholly fled. How long? Was that tonight, or some long-distant possible future that crept closer with every passing moment?

“What kind of things?” Karyn asked.

“I texted Nail. He's on it. Same kind of shit Tommy would have wanted. Normal stuff. Candles, chalk, frankincense and myrrh, and all that weird shit we used to get from Pendergast.”

“Used to?”

Anna shrugged. “He liked Tommy. Don't want nothing to do with us now. I got another hookup.”

Another hookup. Another of a thousand odd details that had changed while Karyn was checked out of the real world. Sometimes she had the feeling she'd woken up in another world entirely, or, worse, that she'd never woken up at all. That this was all just debris dredged up from an increasingly out-of-touch—and morbid, apparently—mind. She almost wished that were true.

“Sobell's a go,” Anna asked. “We should get going.”

“Look, about this ‘wiping out all the demons' thing . . .”

“Yeah?”

Karyn held up her thumb. “I'm not sure what will happen to this guy when that happens, but I think I'll want to get myself clear at that point. I've kind of gotten used to being back in the world, you know?”

“Makes sense to me.”

“All right. You ready to go?” Karyn asked.

“Yeah. If we can stop and grab a taco or something.”

“I'll buy.”

The site Moreno and Abas had chosen was the church, Nuestra Señora de las Misericordias, the same place Abas had been working at nights and sometimes robbing for parts, as Anna was quick to point out. It didn't take long to get there, even with a side trip to get an afternoon snack. Nail's car was parked out front, a couple of Locos nearby watching over it.

“This can't be a good idea,” Anna said as they approached the building. “Who holds demonic rituals in a church, of all places?” To Karyn's surprise, she looked genuinely uneasy.

“You've already been in there, right? You're not going to explode or anything.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Karyn laughed and held up her thumb, the black line of Amaimon's splinter visible through the nail. “Wanna bet?”

“Great,” Anna said, grinning. “We can explode together.”

Karyn opened the tall front door, and adrenaline, the urge to flee, sent an electric bolt through her entire body as she saw what was inside the church. Anna didn't move, though, and in a moment Karyn realized that the awful, disjointed scene before her was in her eyes, not her mind. It wasn't real—not yet.

“What?” Anna asked. “What did you see?”

“Uh . . .” Lots of things, and it took a few moments of concentration to start pulling them apart into separate, coherent tableaus. “A war, it looks like,” she said. It was still hard to tell. There were gang members sporting at
least three different sets of colors. Shots were fired, kids went down clutching holes in their bodies or screaming. Splinters flew from pews and railings. A shape formed of darkness and flame—surely representing Belial—loomed behind the altar, surrounded by a dozen or so creatures wrought from some grim, misbegotten interpretation of myth, half human and half animal—a satyr, a werewolf, other, much weirder things with clutching hands and tormented faces. The monsters quailed and shrank back from a blazing pillar of blue light in the nave. A bright counterpart to Belial's darkness rose from the altar, sword cutting a shrieking swath through the air.

“And?” Anna prompted.

“And . . .” She watched the scene unfold in a series of overlapping catastrophes. There was blood everywhere no matter how the scene unfolded. Nail went down in one, burning, half his face clawed away. Black wings rose from half a dozen Annas, and monsters descended on her, bearing her to the floor. And everywhere, kids with guns blazed away at each other and fell screaming.

“Dammit, we need to change the plan. We're going to be overrun. Gangs, for starters, and Belial's minions, and I can't even tell what else right now.” A crushing weariness bore down on her, and she stepped back out of the church. There were monsters out here now, people running shrieking through the streets. A barefoot man in sweatpants was snatched up by a huge, oily gray serpent thing and devoured screaming. Something exploded to her right, the light like a searing nova. Fire spread from one house to the next. The weariness redoubled, and the weight pushed her to the ground. She sat on the top stair, then lay back, shoulders pressed against warm concrete. The sun added its own oppressive weight to the feeling, and she threw one arm over her eyes to avoid the worst of it.

“This is not helping,” Anna said.

The words “Go to hell” sat on Karyn's tongue like a stone, waiting for her to spit them out. That was unlike her, but everybody was acting unusual these days, and she felt
a pressure to let it out for once, screw the consequences, just feel
better
for the thirty seconds after the words escaped.

But again, no. Anna was driving her nuts, but she deserved better.

“I can't do this again,” Karyn said.

“Do what?”

A scene from the first job with Sobell popped into Karyn's mind. Sitting around the table in the old apartment, talking about the mayhem Nail wanted to create to disrupt the ceremony and give them a chance to steal that accursed jawbone. He'd started talking about guns and grenades, and Karyn had warned him about it. “I don't want a slaughter,” she'd said, and she'd meant it. Nail hadn't intended to actually shoot anyone, but it had clarified the mission when she put it out there in no-nonsense terms. Only . . . what had finally happened? Not at the job, but later, at Sobell's office? A slaughter. And then again in Belial's lair where the ritual had gone down. Less severe that time, she thought, but still. She'd heard numbers like a dozen dead as Belial's new recruits went berserk and the terrible thing that Anna had helped conjure went on a rampage, leaving crushed and torn bodies in its wake.

“Everything we touch, people get killed,” Karyn said. She didn't move her arm and so couldn't see Anna's expression, but there was a long pause. In Anna's current frame of mind, Karyn was almost sure her response would be “So?” but that didn't come.

She heard Anna's feet scrape the steps, then a grunt as Anna sat next to her. “I'm excited about it,” Anna said, her voice soft and hesitant. “I mean, I know I shouldn't be, but it gets my pulse up.”

“That's not you,” Karyn said.

“I know. Kind of. It feels like me, even though I know better. That's how it works, I guess.”

“I guess.”

“So this is going to be more of the same, then?” Anna asked.

“Yeah. Only it's not just us and our enemies and the enemies of our enemies. I think, maybe, if I stared at this mess long enough, I could piece a way through it for us. Maybe. But . . . it's the whole damn neighborhood this time. They're going to destroy everything.”

“What do we have to do?” Anna asked. “How do we stop it?”

Karyn peeled her arm away from her eyes and squinted at the sun. “Get Nail, huh? We've got a lot to figure out.”

As Anna departed, Karyn was already dialing Elliot.

“Hello?” Elliot said.

“Sobell and Belial. Do you want them?”

“Do you make a habit of asking questions you already know the answers to?”

Karyn bit back her annoyance. “I can get them both to you tonight, but you have to do something for me.”

A crackle as Elliot moved the phone and something brushed the microphone. “What is it?”

“There's . . . Look, a whole bunch of badness is going to happen down in Doyle Gardens tonight, and on top of that I think a couple of the local gangs are spoiling for a fight. Can you clear out a couple of streets? Get people out of here before they get hurt?”

“‘Clear out a couple of streets'? As in, evacuate eight or ten blocks? I don't know who you think I am, but I can't just send in the National Guard. Even if I could, there would be riots. Think about it.”

“Shit.” Karyn looked for some other alternative. Teenage kids, dead in the street. The Locos unprotected, the priest busy. It would be an opportunity for their enemies to finish them, and from the look of things, that was exactly what would happen. “Cops, then,” Karyn said. “Can't you, I don't know, call the mayor? Engage your super FBI powers?”

“Remember what I said about riots?”

“Figure it out, okay?” Karyn was almost screaming. The consequences of actions she'd taken long ago, consequences of actions she hadn't even taken yet, were mounting,
spinning off further consequences she couldn't foresee. “Enough people have died, for Christ's sake!”

“I. Can't. I'm sorry. I am genuinely, wholeheartedly sorry, but I don't have a lot of power, and I can't think of anything offhand that won't make everything worse.”

“Well . . . just think about it, huh? See what you can come up with?”

“I'll try,” Elliot said. From the dubious tone of her voice, Karyn doubted any real help would be coming from that quarter.

“If you want to try to get your prisoners straightened out, we might be able to make that happen, too.”

“Yeah? What about Belial and Sobell?”

“It's all the same thing,” Karyn said. “Round up your prisoners and get them down here tonight. The priest—your alternative tradition. He thinks he can do something to purge all the nasties, but it's going to be ugly.”

“What? How?”

“Don't ask me, because I can't explain any of this crap. I'm taking half of it on faith because I have literally no other options at this point.”

“I don't know if I can get on board with that . . .”

“You do what you gotta do. If you can't clear the neighborhood, you're useless to me. I'm trying to do
you
a favor.” Elliot said nothing, so Karyn continued. “Don't come early, or you'll screw the whole thing up. I'll text you. Or hell, I'll have Amaimon dial you up directly.”

“Tonight,” Elliot said. She sounded satisfied.

*   *   *

“I don't feel good about this,” Karyn said as Anna parked the car behind the buildings at the address they'd given Genevieve.

Anna's gaze was steady, serious. “Don't feel good, or . . . ?”

“Don't feel good. This is . . . half-cocked and poorly planned.”

“It isn't planned at all,” Anna said, her face breaking into a grin. “And half-cocked, shit. Reminds me of the old days.”

“Yeah. The
bad
old days. There were reasons we got our act together. Mostly to avoid getting our butts kicked. Or killed.”

Anna was already getting out of the car. “It's like you only remember the bad stuff. Come on.”

Karyn opened the door and got out. She supposed she should have been relieved at Anna's cheerful, devil-may-care attitude. It beat the pants off the bloodthirsty light that burned in her eyes most of the time these days, but Karyn had a hard time finding much comfort in it. Too flippant. Too “Whee, let's roll the dice and see what happens!” Karyn hadn't lived this long by gambling, at least not without a stacked deck. That was the sole benefit of her peculiar form of seeing the future, for God's sake.

Nail got out of the backseat. From the next car over came Abas and the kid, Rigoberto. Rigoberto stood off to the side, watching everything nervously. The priest appeared resolute, though the corners of his mouth twisted down as though he'd eaten something unpleasant.

Genevieve and Sobell got out of the back of a battered white Buick and headed toward them. Karyn scanned her visions, looking for any clue as to how this might go, but according to her eyes, the empty parking lot was full, bright hot metal glinting under the punishing afternoon sun. Nothing helpful there.

Genevieve walked right up and threw her arms around Anna, startling both Anna and Sobell, who stood frowning, as if he wanted to get on with things. Anna's arms froze at her side before she finally returned the embrace.

“I missed you,” Genevieve whispered. Karyn felt awkward overhearing it, like she ought to be somewhere else—but, really, they had stuff to do. If anybody ought to feel awkward—nah. She cut the thought off. After everything, if a little happiness could be found here, they should take it. For a moment, anyway.

Sobell stumbled, placing a shaking hand on a nearby car to steady himself. He looked terrible. His eyes had sunken, and the flesh had seemingly burned away, leaving skin hanging off his face in loose wrinkles that hadn't
been there even a couple of weeks ago. His close-cropped beard, also a new development, was more gray than brown and it looked thin, brittle, as if running a hand over it might break all the hairs off.

“Ladies,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

“Are you here to offer me up to your demon masters again?” Karyn asked.

Sobell made a pained face. “That was all a tragic misunderstanding. I assure you, that last fiasco was not my idea. I was, shall we say, overtaken by events. As were we all, I imagine.” He coughed wetly, then cleared his throat. To Karyn's surprise and disgust, he swallowed thickly, rather than breach parking lot decorum and spit whatever hideous oyster he'd hacked up onto the asphalt. “In any event, I am here in need of your assistance once more.”

“You're lucky we're all after the same thing,” Karyn said.