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THE BEVERLY WILSHIRE Hotel is so posh it gives the Taj Mahal a hard-on. Almost four hundred rooms and a million more secrets. It’s strange seeing it in daylight instead of Hell’s perpetual twilight. Downtown, there’s another version of the Beverly Wilshire. The penthouse was my—Lucifer’s—private space in the infernal palace. Of course, there are other differences. Basement kennels full of the hellhounds. Gibbets out front for extra-naughty prisoners. Hell’s legions on guard. And as far as the eye can see, the wreckage of Pandemonium, Hell’s capital. The heady reek of blood tides and open sewers.
Up here, the Beverly Wilshire is where Blackburn’s crowd buy and sell small countries and bang their mistresses before hunkering down in gated communities with more guns than the Third Reich.
This is the address Blackburn gave me for Brendan Garrett. The room number is for a corner suite. I have a hoodoo key buried in my chest. It lets me enter the Room of Thirteen Doors, the still center of the universe. Nothing can touch me in the Room. Not God or the Devil. It’s my vacation resort and my ace in the hole. From the Room I can come out through a shadow anywhere I want. But that doesn’t mean I like doing it. I especially don’t like walking into rooms when I don’t know what’s waiting inside. But I know the Beverly Wilshire well enough that I figure I can bail safely if I barge in on a gunfight or an ether frolic.
From Rodeo Drive, I step into a shadow next to a palm tree and come out in the hall by Garrett’s suite. I put my ear to the door and listen. Nothing. Just the steady hum of the hotel’s air-conditioning system. I go into the suite through a shadow around the doorframe.
The room isn’t too bad. Almost human in a show-offy kind of way. Gold carpet and drapes. Reds and earth tones for the pricey furniture. But even in Richie Rich hotels the art stinks. It’s all vague impressionist scribbles, like minimalist portraits of whoever the artist was hitting on that day. They’re not make-you-want-to-throw-up bad, they’re the kind of art designed not to offend or appeal to anyone. White noise in a classy frame. If I was staying here I’d have to cover them up like I was in mourning.
The room looks lived in, like Garrett’s been here awhile. Room-service menus and magazines on the coffee table. Clothes hung up in the closet and tossed over the backs of chairs in the bedroom. A half-empty bottle of Laphroaig and two glasses, one with lipstick. So he’s had company. But the most interesting things are the bird and the bedside table.
The bird is a raven and it’s fake. How do I know it’s fake? It hasn’t shit all over the floor. It’s a mechanical familiar and a nice one by the look of it. It cocks its head and stares at me with its shiny black eyes, letting me know that this is its space and it’s not going to move. In the bedside table I find a calfskin wallet, keys, a phone number in a feminine hand on a cocktail napkin, a thick wad of twenties and hundreds held together with a gold money clip, and five passports, all with different names but the same picture. I’m guessing Garrett’s. As I lay the goods out on the bed the bird cranes its head around and I’m reminded how stupid I can be.
I was so distracted by Garrett’s goods that I didn’t check out the whole suite. I don’t have to turn my head to know what the raven is looking at. Instead, I duck as a bullet from a silenced pistol flies by my head.
Garrett gets off another shot and hits the bedside table. That gives me just enough time to slip the black blade out of my waistband at the back and throw it. I don’t want to kill him. I just want him to stop shooting so I can ask him questions. Garrett flinches when he sees the knife, but he’s not quite fast enough. The blade hits the barrel of the gun and knocks it from his hand. But it doesn’t fall far enough away. He dives for it. I toss an easy chair at him and follow behind it, hoping to get to the gun first. Funny thing about hope. It seldom works out. That’s why they gave it a stupid name like “hope.”
Garrett gets to the pistol just as I reach him. Still on the floor, he tilts the barrel up and fires. My eyesight goes black for a second as the pain hits and almost doubles me over. I have enough momentum that I go over Garrett and hit the wall behind him. He looks me in the eye, but before he can swing the gun around, I clip him good on the temple with the heel of my chic loafer. Garrett flops onto the floor and the gun falls from his hand.
Having just had some sense shot into me, I grab the pistol and check to see that Garrett is really unconscious before I go into the bathroom to look at my wound.
I’m a nephilim. Half angel, which makes me hard to kill. And I’ve been hurt worse than this. Hell, just in the past year Kasabian shot me in the chest, Aelita stabbed me with an angelic flaming sword, and a Hellion cut off one of my arms. Garrett was packing a light, quiet .22. Not a shoot-out weapon. More like something a hit man would pack. A .22 shell might bounce off the thick part of your skull if it was coming from any distance, but put a slug in right behind the ear, it’s pennies-on-your-eyes time. So it seems like Declan and Brendan are both comfortable with killing when things don’t go their way. At least Brendan does his own dirty work.
I sit on the cool tile of the bathroom floor with a towel pressed to my side. The pain from the shot has turned to a steady ache that peaks when I breathe in. I’m lucky that he didn’t hit a rib or lung or I’d really be in bad shape. By tomorrow morning the wound will be healed. The bullet will still be inside me, but I’ll only feel it when I do the Twist, so I can wait to get it out.
In a few minutes the throbbing eases off. I get to my feet and go back into the suite. Check that Garrett is still unconscious and then go for his bottle of Laphroaig. Unscrew the bottle with one hand while holding the towel with the other and take a long pull. And instantly regret it. Laphroaig isn’t exactly my brand. I prefer Aqua Regia, Hellion moonshine. I developed a taste for it when I fought in Hell’s arenas. Sure it tastes like cayenne pepper and gasoline but it’s better than this Scotch. This stuff tastes like barnyard dirt and burned lawn clippings. The rich are different. They don’t just own the earth, they like to drink it.
Samael’s silk shirt is ruined. I’m hard on clothes. It’s like my body declared a jihad on everything I wear. At least this shirt wasn’t mine. But I kind of liked it. Candy isn’t going to be wild when she sees my blood soaked through.
I take the bottle and limp back to Garrett. I turn out his pockets but they’re empty. I pull my knife out of the floor and put it back in my waistband. Nothing to do now but wait for the guest of honor to wake up. Under other circumstances I’d dump water or a bucket of ice on him to get his ass moving, but I’m just as happy to have a few minutes of me time.
A phone on the coffee table rings. It’s not Garrett’s cell. It’s the hotel phone. I go over and pick it up.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Garrett?”
“Yes.”
“This is the front desk. A package has arrived for you. Would you like me to send it up to your room?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
“My pleasure, sir.”
I hang up.
I can’t answer the door like this. Garrett’s closet isn’t any help. He’s a lot bigger than I am. I’d look like I was wearing a tepee in one of his shirts. I toss the bloody towel in the bathroom and grab the hotel robe off the back of the door. I look at myself in the mirror. I’m pale and sweating, but I look more hungover than gut-shot. I set the pistol on the coffee table and drag Garrett to the bed, toss him on top, and cover him with blankets. The raven flutters over and stands on the lump that’s Garrett’s soon-to-be-kicked-around-the-room carcass.
There’s a gentle knock on the door. I grab the money clip and peel off a twenty.
A young, freckled woman in a hotel uniform stands in the hall.
“Mr. Garrett?”
“Yes. Thanks for bringing it up,” I say through my weak hangover smile.
“Of course.”
