The Getaway God (20 page)

“What have you learned about the 8 Ball from your killer book?”

He flips through a notebook covered with long scribbled lines of kanji.

“Lots and lots. But the book is philosophical and theoretical. Not geared toward practicality. I can tell you the Qomrama's history, but not how to use it to attack or summon.”

“Your book doesn't sound like it's worth a damn.”

“It hasn't all been bad.”

He looks at the 8 Ball rotating in the magnetic field.

“I got it to reverse direction for a few seconds once.”

“I for one feel better knowing that you might have the power to make the Angra dizzy.”

He flips through pages of his notebook.

“What am I not seeing?”

“That poison book is probably fucking with your mind. If it hasn't told you anything useful by now, why don't you stop drinking it?”

“Because what if it reveals something tomorrow? The answers we need might be in the next bottle. Or the one after that.”

I walk over to the 8 Ball. Mr. Chop Shop bares his teeth at me. I want to knock them out.

“You keep drinking that stuff and the gristle holding you together is going to fall off. You know the old joke, a guy goes into his doctor's office and says, ‘Doc, it hurts when I do this,' and the doctor says, ‘So don't do that.' That's you. Stop doing that.”

The Shonin sits up.

“That's your way,” he says. “You can't conquer it with your fists or your gun, you give up. I meditated in my tomb for centuries. I will find the answer.”

“We don't have centuries, Jack Skellington. We need something now.”

“Do you have any suggestions?”

I touch the glass chamber where the 8 Ball floats.

“You're trying to use all these potions and rituals, but the only time I saw the 8 Ball do anything is when someone was touching it.”

The Shonin sets down his notebook.

“Yes, you told me about that. The Qomrama killed a group of soldiers in a market in Hell. Later, your Sub Rosa inquisitor used it to kill Aelita, an angel of considerable strength.”

He shakes his head.

“What you're saying is it's too dangerous. No one is to touch the Qomrama until I understand it more thoroughly.”

I take off my glove, revealing my Kissi hand. The Shonin stands up when he sees it. I wonder what the Vigil clowns outside would think if they got a look at it. Would they still think I'm an angel or something even worse?

The Kissi hand is like an insect appendage, but it's also like skeletal machinery. The Terminator's arm crossed with a praying mantis. I think it's the ugliest thing on the planet. Still, sometimes it comes in handy.

“I've never seen one of those before. Only block prints. I wasn't sure they were even real,” says the Shonin. “You're more of a monster than I thought, fatty.”

“That's nothing,” I say. “Watch this.”

I open the lock on the magnetic chamber. There's a whoosh as air rushes in to fill the vacuum.

“What are you doing?” shouts the Shonin. “Stop that.”

I reach inside and pull the 8 Ball out of the field. It takes a ­couple of tries. The field doesn't want to let go. But with a little twisting, I work it out. And that's why the Kissi hand is so useful. In all the twisting and turning from a sphere covered in diamond plate to an egg covered in an intersecting pattern of serrated blades the 8 Ball doesn't do any damage. The Kissi hand is just too tough to cut and there's nothing to bleed.

“Put it back,” says the Shonin. He backs away across the room.

I bring the saw-­toothed 8 Ball over to Mr. Chop Shop. Instead of snarling and biting, he calms right down. The only sounds he makes are the ragged breaths through his torn mouth.

The Shonin slowly comes over to us.

“You're not entirely stupid after all,” he says. “I don't know if it's of much value, but it's a little impressive.”

“What do you mean it's not valuable? I calmed this fucker right down. That's more than you've done.”

“It's a nice trick,” he says, “but I caused the Qomrama to change rotation once. Is that any more useful than this?”

“Of course this is more useful. I'm controlling a Qliphoth. How is that not helpful?”

The Shonin looks at the 8 Ball and then at Mr. Chop Shop.

“All that power to control one little demon. I would think that with your experience you'd see the absurdity.”

“You're just pissed because your holy books and snake oil got you nothing with a capital zero. Look. I can even touch the thing.”

“Don't you dare,” says the Shonin. “We don't know what might happen. Continue in this manner and I'll be forced to call Marshal Wells.”

“That's right. Run home to daddy when things get a little intense. I thought you'd have bigger balls than that,
muertita,
or did those shrivel up and drop off too?”

“Put the Qomrama back in its chamber.”

“When I'm done.”

The 8 Ball jumps in my hand. Sprouts spider legs that wrap around my arm and hold on tight. It softens. Liquefies. Crawls over my sharp, skeletal claw of a hand, wrapping it in living silver. The 8 Ball jumps again, pulling my hand down onto Mr. Chop Shop's chest. The Shonin retreats back to his worktable, grabbing a fistful of talismans and charms and holding them up like a shield.

“Take it off,” he shouts. “Take it off.”

“I can't.”

Mr. Chop Shop is back snarling and snapping his cracked teeth. His eyes are wide, the whites splotched with broken veins.

My Kissi hand closes on Chop Shop's chest, ripping into the skin. I have a bad feeling the hand is going to tear out his heart or lungs, but it only breaks the surface flesh. Chop Shop goes into convulsions, bucking and kicking against the gurney's straps. Rivets pop. I hear the restraints by his feet rip. I try to pull my hand away. I get it up an inch, then another. It feels like I'm being held to him by invisible chains. I lean back, using my weight to pull back my hand. Slowly, I come up off of him. But something comes with me.

The Qliphoth emerges from his flesh like a mist. A long beaklike mouth. Concentric circles of cutting fangs and grinding molars. It's an Eater, but without a body. Just spiritual essence.

I plant my feet on the ground and pull, dragging the demon from Chop Shop's body.

Bad idea. It makes sense that a Qliphoth with no body wouldn't have any power. It makes sense, but it turns out it's not true.

The Eater twists and snaps at my face. I try to hold on, but it wriggles out of my hand and goes straight for the wall, attacking it with its massive choppers. In just a few seconds, it's almost through the concrete. I grab it with my Kissi hand and pull it back. Toss it across the room. It hits one of the lab tables by the door and bites right through it. Ripping through high-­impact plastic and steel like it was cotton candy. It scrambles to its feet, pulling equipment off tables and the wall, cutting deep grooves into the floor, where it tears at them with its teeth. I throw a chair at the thing and its beak snaps it in two.

The Eater charges me. I pull the na'at and snap it open. It goes right through the Eater's mist body without slowing it.

Fuck me.

I'm reaching for my gun when the Eater hits me, driving me into the wall like a bull in a jet pack. The beak dives for my face.

And my Kissi hand closes on it. Holds it in place. Jerks up and snaps the beak like a Popsicle stick. It slides into the Eater's body to where its heart should be and closes on it. There's nothing in my hand but mist, but the Eater thrashes like I'm pulling its guts out. One more jerk, and the mist explodes, knocking me into the damaged wall. I scramble to my feet, my head spinning. I turn around in a quick circle, making sure the Eater isn't behind me. It isn't. It's gone. And the 8 Ball has changed. It's just a metallic ball in my left hand. I take it back to the magnetic chamber and put it inside. It hovers, spinning quietly.

I lean against the wall and slide down into a sitting position. Half the furniture in the room is broken. I hope the Vigil has homeowner's insurance.

“Do you think it's dead?”

The Shonin comes out from around his potion table. But he doesn't let go of his talismans.

“No doubt,” he says.

“Admit it. That was fun, wasn't it?”

The Shonin looks around his wrecked lab.

“How did you remove it? And how did you kill it?”

“I have no idea. The damned thing acts a little different each time I use it. Every time anyone uses it.”

“This is good. You made it work, fatso.”

“I've made it work before, but I still don't know how. That's no help.”

The Shonin walks around the room righting broken chairs, which fall back over. He tiptoes around scattered piles of herbs, dried lizards, caustic chemicals, and pickled animal hearts.

“The Qomrama likes your ugly hand.”

“The Kissi were seriously fucked-­up angels. Maybe they taste good or something. More goddamn theories aren't going to help.”

The Shonin picks up a box of dried tarantulas.

“Wisdom comes from knowledge. Knowledge begins with theories.”

“I don't want wisdom. I want a bazooka.”

“We have other demon-­possessed bodies. We can try more experiments.”

I get up. My back aches where the demon drove me into the wall.

“How many experiments do we do? A hundred? A thousand? That means we have to catch more chop-­shop assholes. Do we have that much time?”

The Shonin goes back to his table. Sets down the box and starts straightening things.

“Probably not. Do you have any ideas?”

I could use a drink about now. Getting monster-­hugged by the 8 Ball and fighting a demon, it's more than I counted on. But I don't suppose the Shonin keeps Aqua Regia around here.

“You have any sake around here?”

“For rituals. Not for you to guzzle.”

“Too bad. A drink would help me think better.”

“Look what you did to my room. You think I want to see you drunk?”

He picks up and drops a shattered alembic.

“Some say I'm charming that way.”

“Then you should go and work with them. I don't think I like your methods.”

“I don't like anything about any of this,” I say. “I don't know any more about the 8 Ball than when I came here. You ­people said you knew how it worked, but you were lying. As usual, the Vigil is full of shit.”

“I don't know why I ever tried correcting your speech,” says Wells, coming into the room. He stops by the door and looks around.

“What did you do to my laboratory?”

I drop the cup with the Malediction butt into a trash can before Wells can see.

“We pulled a Qliphoth out of one of Saint Nick's little Frankensteins. It kicked up a fuss about it.”

Wells looks past me to the Shonin.

“Is that true?”

The Shonin nods and adjusts his conical hat, which is sliding off to one side.

“He extracted and dispelled it using the Qomrama Om Ya.”

“That's a breakthrough then,” says Wells.

I pick up a chair and sit down.

“It would be if we knew how we did it. I just picked up the 8 Ball and it did the rest. I wasn't in control at all.”

Wells goes over to the magnetic chamber where the 8 Ball floats. He checks the lock on the chamber door.

“You took it out?”

“Yep.”

“Knowing how dangerous it is.”

“I just said yes.”

“I could terminate you for that.”

I pull the na'at from under my coat.

“You think any of your choir boys wants to come for me after what they saw me do yesterday?”

“Always looking for a fight, aren't you?” says Wells. “Put that away. I only meant terminate your employment.”

I study him. His heartbeat is normal. Up a little, but that might be because I drew down on him. His eyes aren't dilated, another good indicator that he's telling the truth. I slip the na'at back under my coat.

“You're going to watch that kind of behavior for the next few hours,” Wells says. “I'm pulling you off the Angra case for a while. You need to come with me.”

“Am I getting detention?”

“You're going to want to watch that kind of thing too. Saragossa Blackburn is dead and someone is making accusations.”

“Against me?”

“Yes. We need to deal with this.”

“What happened to him?”

“Later. Shonin, I'll have some ­people come by to help you put your lab back together. Between that and the breakthrough with the demon, it sounds like you have enough work to keep you busy for a while.”

“More than enough. You really think he killed Blackburn? I studied ­people a long time. He's a fool, not a murderer.”

“We'll see,” says Wells. He goes to the door and holds it open for me.

I turn to the Shonin.

“See you around, dead man.”

“Keep your nose clean, dumb-­ass.”

I
T'S A LON
G
walk to Wells's office. The silence is different this time. It's not the general silence of ­people going quiet as I pass. Now it's Wells's silence as he walks slightly ahead of me so he doesn't have to speak or look at me. This is truly fucked and potentially dangerous. But I have my na'at, my gun, and my blade. If things go bad for me, I'll make them worse for everybody else.

Wells's office is at the far end of the Vigil clubhouse. There's a plastic Christmas wreath on the door. Inside it's all wood paneling. A desk big enough you could rodeo on it. A Marshals Ser­vice seal and Vigil sigil on the wall behind. A cross on his desk. Everything you need to put the fear of God and Gitmo into anyone he drags in here. There's also something very loud in the room and it's in a really nice suit.

“Marshal, I want you to place this man under arrest right now,” says Audsley Ishii.