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“How many Kill Cities are there?”
“One too many for me.”
“Is the great Stark afraid of a dead shopping mall?”
I finish my whiskey.
“As a matter of fact I’m terrified of shopping malls. If you’d been to Hell, you would be too. All the cute little trinket stores. Fish-eyed mannequins and ladies squirting perfume in your face. Designer toilet seats and chakra-adjusting easy chairs. It’s all so fucking pointless. People using money to run out the clock, trying to find something to occupy their time before they die. It’s exactly like Hell.”
I signal to the waiter for another drink.
“We all have our weaknesses,” says Tykho. “For us, it’s daylight. For you, it’s Cinnabon.”
“Damn. That little girl ghost about killed me last month. I hoped I was done with ghosts for a while.”
This just gets worse and worse. On top of everything else, Kill City is all the way out in Santa Monica. All those tanned tourists might be fun for bloodsuckers, but the stink of SPF 90 sends me into cardiac arrest.
“There’s something else.”
“Good. I was hoping this could get worse.”
“We’re not the only ones who know about the ghost. Don’t bother asking who the other party is because I don’t know, but we have every reason to believe that they’re going after your 8 Ball too.”
“That’s all I need.”
“That’s not all. Medea Bava might be with them.”
“No way. She’s hiding out in Hell.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
This is all I need right now. Kill City, Medea Bava, and now I have to run a footrace to find the Qomrama.
“Thanks for the information.”
“You’re welcome. See? All your muscling people, your Sturm und Drang, got you nowhere.”
The waiter brings my whiskey and I drink it in one go.
“It got people off their asses and it got me answers, which is all I ever wanted. From where I sit, my plan worked fine. By the way, why are you helping me?”
Tykho pours another thick red shot into her glass.
“For the same reason we were grateful you took care of those pesky zombies. Self-preservation. If the stories about angry old gods are true, I doubt they’ll spare the Aeternus simply because we’ve been shunned by the madman in the attic.”
“So, you do believe in God.”
“Only when convenient.”
“Okay, then. Let’s put a team together, go in there, and get it.”
She wags a finger at me.
“No. We’re not going to do that.”
“A second ago you said you had a stake in this fight. Why won’t you step up when it really matters?”
“Who says we won’t help? The problem is this: the Dark Eternal can’t enter Kill City. There’s a long-standing but somewhat fragile détente with one of the federacies inside. A clan of gray fighters. Time has passed them by, but they’re still dangerous. To enter the mall would be a declaration of war, and a pointless war is something we don’t need right now.”
