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I pick Hunter up and tell Candy and Vidocq to help Traven.
“We’re going out the fast way.”
They get their arms around Traven’s shoulders and steady him. Vidocq is closest to me, so I grab his arm and walk the few steps to the wall. We disappear into a shadow.
Come out again in the minimall parking lot. Pedestrians pass us on the way to their cars with take-out pizza and new manicures. A few of them stare. They must have seen us. Fuck ’em. The way we look, no one is going to tell anyone about it without a doctor shoving Thorazine down their throat.
We head across the lot for Kinski’s old hoodoo clinic. The place Allegra has taken over. A sign on the door reads EXISTENTIAL HEALING. Vidocq gets out his cell and dials Allegra. I don’t wait. I start pounding on the door.
A few good raps later, someone opens the doors looking pissed. It’s Allegra. She looks at Hunter and her eyes narrow. Then she sees Vidocq and Candy holding up Father Traven.
“Jesus, Stark. You’re like the Antichrist Santa Claus. Bring in the presents.”
We get Hunter inside and on the exam table. Allegra takes over, looking at Hunter’s eyes, shining a light into his blackened mouth. She turns and takes things out of a drawer. She presses one of them to Hunter’s forehead. A silver crucifix. Nothing happens. Then she touches iron. Gold. A mixture of garlic and holy water. Nothing happens with any of them.>As we drag Traven away from the platform, Hunter starts up his Wild Man of Borneo routine. He tries to jump off the platform and follow us, but Traven’s binding hex holds. Hunter punches, claws, and throws his whole body at the invisible barrier, but it knocks him back every time.
Vidocq rushes over, pulling another vial from under his coat. He pours the whole thing down Traven’s throat. Traven coughs. His color goes from asphyxia blue to something human. He sits up and draws in a couple of wheezing breaths. He is alive, but he doesn’t look all that happy about it.
“What’s in there?” he says to no one in particular. “I’ve never seen a demon like this before. If the salt and bread didn’t work, the Spiritus Dei should have paralyzed it.”
Hunter is on his knees prowling back and forth along the platform like a pissed-off hyena waiting for its pack to arrive and kick our asses. The invisible barrier doesn’t bother him anymore. He isn’t even trying to get out. He’s having fun. Licking it with his black tongue, spitting blood on it, and finger-painting with the clotted mess. At first it looks like he’s just doodling, but a shape begins to emerge. In a minute he stops drawing, leans close to the bloody barrier, and opens his mouth. The fire fog that drifted from his mouth earlier flows out again. Flattening against the binding barrier, it spreads out like dozens of burning snakes. When it’s done, he puffs out his chest and inhales the fire back down his throat. Then he collapses on the platform. This time I don’t sense anything coming from him. I can usually feel life, a beating heart, even the shallowest breath, but this kid doesn’t even feel dead. More like a black hole of life. Candy gets up and starts toward him, but I grab her arm. The hex barrier is still intact, but Hunter has burned a symbol into it. Sister Ludi’s, the same symbol he burned over his bed.
And then I feel Hunter alive again. Still on his back, he turns his head and looks at me.
“Do you get it now? Please say yes. Don’t make me embarrass you in front of your friends.”
It takes me a minute to get past the face to the voice.
Hunter sits up. He stands, still a mess, but looking alert and calm.
“So, do you get it?”
I nod.
He’s talking in Mason’s voice.
“You’re coming through loud and clear.”
I reach into the barrier and run my hand through the burning symbol he drew until it drifts apart. Storm clouds and miniature fireworks.
“It’s Sister Ludi’s sigil. A fake goddess for a fake possession.”
Hunter raises his hands and rolls his eyes heavenward in mock relief. He’s a riot. Bob Hope with horns and a tail. But I deserve every bit of shit he serves up. Wells and Aelita foxed me like this once before, covering up a Drifter attack with a fake demon. Would I have fallen for the gag the first time if I was still on my game Downtown? No way. This stupid world is making me weak. Or mayighweak. Obe it’s just reminding me of how weak I’ve always been. No more. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, you’re dead.
Hunter—Hunter’s body at least—shakes his head.
“I thought I was going to have to put on that medicine show forever. I mean Julia talked this idiot into exorcising me and it didn’t work. Now you drag him back and it goes tits up again. I thought that would have set off a few alarm bells.”
“It might have if I’d had time to think, but I was kind of busy with not letting your meat puppet kill him.”
Hunter smiles. Black gums and yellow teeth. I flash back on the Drifters and feel the urge to rip out his spine.
“What’s one Holy Roller more or less?”
“I like this one. He unfriended God on Facebook.”
Hunter looks skeptical.
“You sure it wasn’t the other way around? We have a lot of that type down here and I’m betting he’s on the party list. I’m getting a definite whiff of sulfur off him.”
