Secondhand Souls (25 page)

“Really?”

“Just until this is over. Actually I had them lock him in a cage at the animal shelter so his men could stay with him. They owed me a favor.”

Charlie joined them at the back of the Ford. “My motocross leathers got all cut up when I—when Mike jumped off the bridge, so I only have this jacket. Should be okay, right?”

“Yeah, you ain’t going to need them,” said Minty Fresh.

“Go home to your daughter, Charlie,” Rivera said.

“What are you talking about? This is
my
battle. I’m not a afraid of them. I’ve done this before.”

“We know,” said Rivera. “That’s not even the issue. You have to go back to Audrey and your daughter and your sister because you have them to go back to.”

“We don’t,” said Minty Fresh.

“I have guns now. Look at these bad boys,” Charlie said, flexing his biceps. “I didn’t have these before.”

“Have you ever been to the animal shelter, Charlie?” Rivera said. “I could show you around.”

“Go home, Charlie,” said Minty Fresh. “I didn’t go to all that trouble to bring you back to life so you could get killed again. If something happen to me, you look out for Lily, you hear?”

“You know I will.” Charlie slumped, knowing he was defeated. They had decided this long before now. If he hadn’t shown up early, it would all be over by now. And they had a point. He had charged into battle against the Morrigan once before, and Sophie had lost her daddy for a year. He couldn’t do that to her again.

“Well, at least take this with you.” Charlie held out the cane. “It’s my sword cane.”

“We look like we need more weapons?”

“It was my soul vessel—where my soul went before Audrey put it into that little body. It might be good luck or something.”

“Didn’t you have this with you when you got killed?” the Mint One asked.

“Kind of.”

Minty took the cane from him and tucked it into his belt. “Thank you.”

“Give a brother a pound?” Charlie held out his fist to receive a pound. The Mint One left him hanging.

“Don’t do that,” said Minty.

“Sorry.” Charlie turned to Rivera, started to go in for a hug, which Rivera intercepted and turned into a handshake. “Something happens, you can have my suits,” he said.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” said Charlie.

Rivera smiled. “If you’re going to stay out here, tell anyone who comes up that we’re animal control and they should move along because of the chemicals.”

“What chemicals?”

“The dangerous imaginary ones,” he said. Rivera looked to Minty Fresh. “You ready?”

Rivera started for the doors, Minty Fresh followed, the bolt cutters in one hand, the shotgun in the other.

Minty Fresh said, “Are you absolutely sure you want to do this? Seems like maybe it would make more sense to call in a SWAT team or Special Forces.”

“That won’t work, isn’t Special Forces where everyone gets a hug?” Charlie called.

“That’s the Special Olympics,” Rivera said over his shoulder. To Minty he said, “How are you going to explain this, the Morrigan?”

“Just so we’re clear, then,” said the Mint One, “we’re only doing this because we want to avoid an awkward explanation to other police, right?”

Rivera paused. “No. We’re doing this because they murdered my partner and I don’t think they’re going to come along quietly if I try to arrest them. They’re going to come for us, eventually, and if we wait, it will be on their terms. Now is better.”

“You don’t never be lyin’,” said Minty Fresh. He stopped at the doors and leaned the shotgun against the concrete wall. “Do you smell something burning?

“Oh, hell,” said Rivera. He cringed and braced himself.

“AIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
called the banshee.

Minty Fresh dropped the bolt cutters, snatched up his shotgun, and brought the sight down on the sooty wraith.

“Don’t shoot her, don’t shoot her, don’t shoot her.” Rivera stepped away from the banshee and pushed down the barrel of Minty Fresh’s shotgun.

“What do you think you’re doing, ya ninny?” said the banshee. “Ya can’t go in there.”

“We have to,” said Rivera.

“I tried to warn your great fat friend, and ya know how that turned out. And the harpies are even stronger now than they were then.”

“I know. Thank you,” said Rivera. “But we have to do this.”

“Fine. I’ll nae sing at your funeral, you bloody loony.” The stun gun crackled in the air and she was gone.

“She thinks it’s a box of lightning,” Rivera explained. “She thinks it adds drama to her entrances and exits.”

“Right, ’cause what the bitch need is more drama.”

B
ecause the Morrigan were goddesses of war, they were attracted to the sound of war drums. So when they first rose in the modern world, a pocket of the Underworld opened under the rumbling boom they followed. As it turned out, they had entered the world under a bowling alley, and it was there that they absorbed the dialect of English that they now spoke.

“This sucks,” said Babd. “I don’t know why we have to stay down here now.” She was reclining in the bucket of a skip-loader, methodically licking the last remnants of some Squirrel Person from her claws.

They were all strong, and lithe, and they shimmered in the dim light of the tunnel like swaths of starry night. Macha leaned against the tunnel wall and preened her breast with her claws, retracted to the length of a cat’s claws.

“We can go into the light,” said Nemain, who was crouched over a wolf spider, dripping venom from her talon as the creature tried to escape, then blocking its path with another sizzling drop as it bolted the other way. “What does Yama know?”

They had flown in their raven forms to the tunnel while it was still dark. Bloated with the power of new souls, moving again as shadows was beyond them, at least for a while.

“We could find the rest of the soul stealers,” said Babd. “Take their souls. Kill them.”

“Yama says if we go into the light we’ll attract the attention of humans,” said Nemain.

“I thought that was the point,” said Macha. “Have our names on their breath as they die. Have them cower when a raven passes over them.”

“Why can’t we just kill everybody?” said Babt, pouting.

An inhuman shriek sounded from the far end of the tunnel.

Nemain impaled the spider she’d been torturing with her talon and stood. “Did you hear that?”

Babd climbed out of the skip-loader basket, looked down the tunnel around the column of heavy machinery. “There’s too much light. Someone’s moving down there.”

“Snacks,” said Macha, grinning in anticipation, her fangs showing against her lower lips.

Something clattered against the wall on Macha’s left and fell at her feet, it looked like a green soup can. Another object rattled and bounced down the other side of the tractor and settled a few feet from Babd.

The flash bangs exploded. Deafening concussion. Blinding light. Babd was thrown back into the bucket of the skip-loader. Macha staggered, spun, bouncing off the wall, her arms up by her ears as she willed them not to turn into wings to flee—not in the tunnel.

Babd shrieked, her most ferocious battle cry, the call that had made warriors soil themselves and cower in terror on the battlefield as their enemies harvested their heads. She was answered with a flash and a shot and her left arm was shredded. Another shot, her foot blown out from under her.

“You fuckers!” Her scream resonated in the metal of the machines.

On the opposite side of the tunnel Macha fell into a crouch, having deduced where the attack was coming from. A light and a red dot panned up the side of the tunnel, settled on her as she dove and the projectiles took her full in the side, rolling her over in the air to land against the bucket of the skip-loader.

Nemain fell between the unused train tracks. Light and lasers and explosive fire were blazing down either side of the tractor in front of her. She watched as parts of her sisters were shaken and shredded with impact. Flares smelling of sulfur came bouncing down the tunnel and projected shadows of her sisters’ torment across the ceiling. She scuttled forward under the tractor, rolled onto her back, pulled herself up onto the driveshaft, and hung there, perhaps a foot off the ground, as the conflagration raged on either side of her. Fear was foreign to her—in a thousand years on and over the battlefields of the North she’d never had to defend herself. It was war, someone was going to die and she was Death; it had always been win-win.

The roar of gunfire paused. Human footfalls, the hiss of the burning flares, a mechanical clicking noise. Light beams bouncing in the sulfur smoke.

“Anything?” A man’s voice.

“Something on my side headed away—further down the tunnel.”

“One here, too. The tunnel is walled up at the other end, heavy wooden slats, into Fort Mason parking lot. Reloading.”
Click. Click. Click.

Then she saw them, human legs moving up the tunnel, one man on either side of her, the one on her right closer.
Take down one and then make a dash after Macha and Babd.

The one on the right, then, in the green leather. She unsheathed her claws on that side to their full length. Venom dripped and softly sizzled on a steel rail below . . .

M
inty Fresh was trying to keep the light on the shotgun pointed down the tunnel as he pushed fresh shells into the tubular magazine, which made his grip on the gun precarious at best. When the Morrigan’s claws struck his calf, he lost his grip on the shotgun and fumbled it away, the light bouncing around the tunnel like an epileptic Tinker Bell.

He pulled away from the pain and his feet were yanked out from under him. He landed hard on his side, his breath knocked out, and he felt himself being yanked under the tractor. With one hand he caught a piece of metal that protruded from the front wheel of the tractor, a steering bar, perhaps, while he swung a fist at his attacker, hitting nothing.

Rivera shouting. White pain in his leg. Frantic digging in his coat with his free hand for one of the Desert Eagles. He touched one, was yanked, lost orientation, reached again. His free hand whipped around, settled on something round—at first he thought another piece of the tractor—but it was Charlie Asher’s sword cane. He pulled it free from the scabbard and swung in the direction of his attacker as hard as he could.

A screech, not Rivera. The grip on his calf gone, he fell slack on the train tracks. A shotgun firing, a figure, illuminated by the highway flares, rolling out from under the tractor, awkwardly scrambling to her feet. Another shotgun blast and she was spun around, fell, and scuttled off into the dark screeching.

“You okay?” asked Rivera, his face appearing by a wheel on the opposite side of the tractor.

“Yeah. The fuck?” Now, on the ground by his leg, he saw the severed claw of the Morrigan twitching, evaporating into a feathery vapor spewing from the severed wrist until, in a few seconds, it was gone. “She got my leg.”

Rivera ran around the front of the tractor, crouched beside the Mint One. He pulled a flashlight out of his vest, played it over Minty Fresh, set it on the ground pointing at his leg. The blood looked like tar. Rivera took off his belt and wrapped it around Minty’s leg just above the knee, tightened it down, putting his foot on it for the tension. “Hold this. Tight.” He handed the free end of the belt to Minty Fresh.

“Go get them,” Fresh said.

Rivera shook his head, dug his phone out of his jacket pocket, checked the signal. “Fuck. I’m going to have to go back out to get a signal and call help.”

Rivera helped Minty Fresh sit up against the tractor wheel, then took the end of his belt from the big man and tied it off. He picked up his own shotgun and handed it to Minty. “Two still in it, the extras still on the stock.”

“Yeah, reloading might have been my mistake,” said Minty.

“I’ll be back.”

Rivera picked up his flashlight and stood. As soon as the light played back toward the entrance he saw the new, fitter Charlie Asher coming out of the darkness. “A really scary-looking woman in black rags told me you guys might need help,” Charlie said.

“Grab an arm,” Rivera said. “We need to get him out of here.” He looked down to see that Minty Fresh was unconscious.

25

The Death Card

C
harlie hadn’t told Audrey he was going to attack the Morrigan—he hadn’t told her
anyone
was going to attack the Morrigan. The last she had heard about it, the attack was theoretical, Inspector Rivera blowing off steam, she’d thought.

Charlie had taken a taxi home from the hospital after Mrs. Korjev’s son had arrived from Los Angeles, and let himself into the new apartment, which still smelled of paint and cleaning products. He crawled into bed with Audrey and kissed her awake enough to tell her that Mrs. Korjev was stable, and for her to tell him that Sophie was sleeping in her own bed in the other apartment, but she hadn’t told him anything else.

They made love and she flinched once when he brushed against her ankle, which was raw from where she’d been duct-taped by the Squirrel People, but she’d passed the movement off as passion and she fell asleep in his arms, feeling safe for the first time in days. She had awakened when he rose at dawn, went right back to sleep when he kissed her on the temple and crept out of the apartment, leaving a note on the breakfast bar that said,
Had to go out. Will call you in a couple of hours. Tell Sophie I love her. Love, Charlie
. Not,
Going to engage the powers of darkness, because that worked out so well the last time.
Not,
I’m a complete moron with no common sense and no consideration for the people who love me.
No, just
, Had to go out.
So when he called her around seven and said he was headed to San Francisco General Hospital because that’s where the ambulance was taking Minty Fresh and he would pick her up outside in five minutes, well, she’d been a bit surprised, and a little angry.

When he pulled up out front in her Honda and she crawled in, she really wanted to shout at him—hug him first, then maybe hit him a bunch of times, which caused her years of training to kick in, and instead she took a long, slow breath and let it out over a count of ten. One did not become the caretaker for the forgotten chapters of the
Book of Living and Dying
by indulging in random freak-outs every time one encountered difficulty. So she only hit him once.

“Ouch! What’s that for?”

“Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

She let that sit for a while. Were her reasons for not telling him about the massacre at the Buddhist Center any more pure? Wasn’t she just trying to keep him from being distressed? She had done so much wrong, with good intentions, but wrong nonetheless. She had done the right thing, not the easy thing, by not telling him. Probably. Maybe.

The man in yellow wasn’t like the other creatures. He might be dark, he might be
of
darkness, but wasn’t darkness necessary? Light, dark, male, female, yin, yang: balance. He’d convinced her as much after saving her from the Morrigan.

He’d righted an unbroken chair and pulled it over to where she lay bound on the floor, the remnants of shredded Squirrel People littered the room.

“Do you mind if I sit?” he asked. The absurdity of him asking her approval when she was trussed up on the carpet almost made her laugh.

“Please,” she said.

He tipped his hat as if spilling silky sax notes off the brim, then took five shuffling steps to get around from the back of the chair to the front, shaking a leg on every other step. He sat, leaned forward.

“How you doin’?” he said. He had a gold crown on an upper right bicuspid and he showed it to her with a smile.

“I’m tied up on the floor and I’ve almost been murdered twice in five minutes.”

“Well, the night is young,” he said, a little too much cheer in his voice.

She took a deep breath, let it out while reciting a Sanskrit chant in her mind. Right now, in this instant, she was fine.

He laughed, “I’m just fuckin’ with you. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you, Red. You mind I call you Red? That whole ‘venerable Rinpoche’ jazz a bit of a mouthful.”

Strictly speaking, her hair wasn’t red, but auburn, but she nodded approval anyway. “And you are . . . Death?”

“That really more a title than a name. You probably wanna gonna call me Yama.”

“Yama?” She thought she’d been as surprised as she could be tonight. Apparently not. “Protector of Buddhism?”

“That’s right, but we not using titles, right? Now, Red, I cut you loose, you not gonna freak out and go all kung fu and shit on me, are you?”

“I’ll make tea,” she said.

He laughed, pulled a straight razor from his jacket pocket, and leaned over. “Hold still, now.” He cut the tape on her wrists, then handed her the razor so she could do her ankles herself. The handle of the razor was ivory or bone, yellowed with age. She cut the tape then folded the razor and handed it back to him. Careful not to step in anyone, she braced herself and ripped the remaining tape off her ankles and wrists. He cringed at the sound, in sympathy with her pain.

“You got somewhere else we can chat? Disorder in here harshing my mellow.”

She led him through the dining room into the kitchen.

“Your minions made that mess. Those were human souls?” She wasn’t afraid of him. She had come face-to-face with Death three times tonight already, including him, and she was unafraid.

“Well, that is true,” he said, pulling out a chair at the oak table. “But they weren’t the ones put them human souls in those little monsters, now, were they? They freed those souls to their natural course. They methods can be rough, but they do get the job done. Truth told, they ain’t my minions, but I do admire a strong, black woman.”

“They
slaughtered
them,” Audrey said.

“Slaughtered who, Red? The ladies can’t take a soul from a human. Mighta been a time, back in the day, but not now. Them things you made weren’t people, they was prisons. The ladies just busted them out.”

She was more shaken by that than by all the violence of the night. She
had
been wrong. Her intentions might have been pure, but her actions had not been. Had the Morrigan really freed the souls of the Squirrel People? She had seen them grow more solid, stronger, with each soul they devoured. She put on the kettle and went about the homey ritual of making tea. The fire on, she turned her back to the counter to face him.

“You’re right. Why didn’t you let them kill me?”

Lemon looked around, as if someone might be listening. “They no need for that. That’s not why I’m here.”

“They killed Inspector Cavuto.”

“Not my intention. You know how things get out of hand? They got out of hand that night. They was a long time down, they get a little drunk with being up here.”

“So they’re not here to bring up the darkness to cover the world and reign for a thousand years, like they said before.”

“Before? You mean when they with Orcus? That dumb motherfucker? Fuck no, that ain’t what I’m doing here. You tell soldiers what they need to hear to go to war. Bitches need a mission, not a goal. It’s
my
war.”

“War on who?”

He shrugged. “Not for me to say. I’m just fillin’ a need, puttin’ things in order. Ain’t no sides. Death don’t discriminate. I don’t judge. I don’t deny anyone. I don’t shun anybody. I accept everyone. Death be not proud, Red.” He shot his lapels, grinned. “Death be chic, baby, but not proud. I am loving-kindness. You think you know what life worth more than me? I speed these souls on to become one with all things. Y’all fucked things up. Y’all and all these motherfuckers selling souls in this city. You know that, Red. What you think call me up after a thousand years? This ain’t your first barbecue; you think this through, you’ll see I ain’t the one knocking things out of order, I’m the one putting them back. Y’all just need to stay out of my way.”

“Okay,” she said. There was a truth to what he said. A logic. The universe sought balance and the universe oscillated, and when it oscillated, between the beats of the heart of the universe, there rose the agent of change: chaos. Chaos sat at her table. “What kind of tea would you like?”

“You got any decaf? Caffeine make me jumpy.”

“Decaf green or decaf cinnamon spice?”

“Cinnamon spice sound nice.”

“So, you’re the Ghost Thief ?”

“Thought we wasn’t using titles.”

“Why did you move the souls to the bridge, then?”

“The bridge? Yeah, the bridge. Well, you know, seems like a good place for safekeeping.”

She had believed him then, believed that he was putting things in order, but now, after finding out about Mrs. Korjev’s heart attack, which Sophie insisted had been brought on by the man in yellow, after Minty Fresh had fallen under the Morrigan, well . . . Yama hadn’t really explained why he couldn’t control the Morrigan. He hadn’t explained why establishing his new order involved so much destruction, and for some reason, she hadn’t questioned him. She’d felt strangely calm after talking to him, drinking tea at the kitchen table, at peace. But now, not so much.

C
harlie parked in one of the hospital garages and they spent twenty minutes asking people where they might find a Mr. Fresh before Charlie’s phone buzzed with a text from Rivera directing them to intensive care.

Rivera had shed his tactical gear but was still wearing the ill-fitting sport coat.

“I tried to talk the doctor into giving him some antivenom but he wanted to know the species of snake.”

“Did you tell him ‘big’?” Charlie said.

“Yeah, he wanted more than ‘big.’ He probably passed out from blood loss or shock rather than the venom. The wound wasn’t as deep as we thought, but it nicked an artery. Lucky we got a tourniquet on him right away. He should be sewed up by now.”

“Did someone call Lily?” Audrey asked.

“Would you? Her number’s in my contacts.” Charlie handed her his phone and Audrey stepped outside of the waiting room.

As soon as Audrey was out of earshot, Rivera said, “I went back in.”

“What? Alone?” Charlie trying to whisper, but it was coming out louder than if he were talking in a normal voice. The few people sitting in the lobby looked up.

“They were gone. I went all the way to the other side of the tunnel. It’s closed off.”

“Do you think they are just gone, like before?” Charlie said. “Like when Sophie did whatever she did? Atomized them, I guess?”

“I don’t think so. Certainly the one that clawed Fresh wasn’t hurt very badly. We hit the other ones hard, though. I saw what happened. But they were really strong, a lot more than the one I shot in the alley when—you know.”

“I was mesmerized by her or something,” said Charlie, still embarrassed about the time he had let the Morrigan give a handjob in an alley off Broadway and Rivera had delivered nine rounds of lifesaving .9-mm cock-block. “And sad. I was weak and
sad
.”

“Doesn’t matter, Charlie. What I’m saying is they got out of that tunnel somehow, and there’s no way out except the entrance we came in, not even a maintenance passageway like in the BART tunnels. And they didn’t get by me.”

“Did you check for drainage grates? You know they were sliding in and out of the storm sewers, they don’t need much space when they’re—”

“There’s a Buick in the tunnel,” Rivera said. “A big, old, yellow Buick. All the way at the Fort Mason end, which is boarded up with four-inch-thick beams. So either this man in yellow moved twenty pieces of heavy equipment out of the tunnel, parked his car, then moved twenty pieces back in, or he has another way of getting in and out of that tunnel. A way I can’t see.”

Audrey came back through the glass double doors and joined them.

“Her mom is bringing her over now.”

“Oh, good, she’s not alone,” Charlie said. “Lily’s mom is nice. Kind of surprisingly.”

“You’re dead to her,” Audrey said.

“Why, what did I do to her?”

“No, I mean you need to remember that Charlie Asher is dead to her. She’s not going to recognize you in this body.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

A nurse came in from the ward side of the waiting room and everyone looked up. She headed right for Rivera. “Inspector, he’s awake and asking for you.” She looked apologetically at Audrey and Charlie. “I can only let the inspector in, or family. I’m sorry.”

“We’re family,” Charlie said.

The nurse looked at him, then at Audrey, and seemed as if she was trying to think of exactly how to answer without seeming horrible and racist, when Rivera said, “They are part of this investigation. I didn’t want to tell the doctor, but this was an assault. Mr. Sullivan is a herpetologist and Ms. Rinpoche is a sketch artist.”

The nurse appeared almost relieved, but did look for Audrey’s sketch pad. Audrey held up Charlie’s smartphone. “All digital now.”

“We gave him something for the pain,” said the nurse.

As the nurse led them into Minty’s room, which was behind a glass wall facing the nurses’ desk, Audrey whispered, “My last name isn’t Rinpoche, that’s a title.”

“You’re not a sketch artist either, are you?” Rivera whispered back. “I couldn’t remember your last name.”

Minty Fresh’s injured leg was bandaged and held in traction so his knee was at a right angle. His hospital bed was propped up about thirty degrees and his other leg jutted a foot and a half out into space. He smiled when they came in. His face was starting to go gray.

“This is some bullshit,” said the Mint One. “I’ma die and my foot is cold.”

Audrey tried to adjust his blanket, but with the one leg propped up she couldn’t make it work without uncovering him to the waist. She whipped off her sweater and wrapped it around his foot. “Until I can get the nurse to bring you another blanket.”

“Thanks,” said the big man.

“How you doing?” said Charlie.

“How was you doing when this happened to you?” Minty looked to Audrey. “Don’t you put me in one of those creepy puppet things like you did him, just let me go, you hear?”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Audrey said. She hugged his jutting foot. “I didn’t know. I would have warned you. I watched them get strong, so strong, with each of the Squirrel People they killed. It was so horrible. I didn’t know you were going to go after them. I didn’t know.”