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“Define ‘good guys.’”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
“That’s not a comfort, Father. You could at least give your flock comfort.”
He makes the sign of the cross and ends it by giving me the finger. It actually makes me smile.
“That’s more like it,” I say.
“I’ll see you in a little while.”
“A little while” is relative—the four of them go over the map for a long time. Cherry throws stones. Traven consults his books. The Magistrate plots a course using a pile of shiny Hellion tools that make it look more like he’s dissecting something than reading a map. After a half hour of good old-fashioned geomancy, the Magistrate hops onto the hood and then the roof of the car like a goddamn gazelle. As he scans the horizon with a telescope, the others gather up the map and tools he scattered all over the ground. A minute later he jumps down just as gracefully as he got up. I didn’t expect that. I’d pegged him for a desk warrior. Serves me right for assuming too much too fast. I wonder what other tricks he can do?
By now, all the vehicles are ready to go. Traven heads back in
my direction while Cherry goes back to her ambulance and Daja fires up her Harley. The Magistrate guns the Charger. As it belches black smoke a small cheer goes up. He pops the clutch, turns a donut, and blasts out into the desert at the head of the havoc. When Samael was Lucifer he could have learned some tricks from this guy. The prick knows how to put on a show for his people.
As the rest of the vehicles pull out, a Mohawked Hellion woman heads straight at me. I shift my weight, ready for a fight. Instead, she walks right past me and unlocks the cab of the pickup truck. When Traven makes it back, she comes around and locks his old book in the camper. She tosses me a set of keys, then she peels out after the others.
I look at him.
“I might be in charge of the library and records, but it doesn’t mean I’m trusted with them,” he says.
“He thinks you wouldn’t run off without your books.”
“Exactly.”
“Would you? Run off? I need to know if you’re with me when I see an opening to get clear.”
“Do you think that’s possible?”
“I don’t know, but I want to be ready. You with me?”
“Yes,” he says, but he’s not exactly excited about the prospect. I’m worried, but this isn’t the time for a heart-to-heart. Most of the havoc has already moved out and the half-dozen members left as our watchdogs are looking antsy. Traven wraps his bandanna around his face and steps onto his hellhound. I go back to the burned-out pickup and try the key.
Damn. It starts.
We head out after the others with our babysitters hot on our heels.
We travel for hours across the Tenebrae’s monotonous plains. Imagine an optical illusion where you’re on a flat, endless road. There are mountains in the distance on both sides and low peaks in the far distance. And nothing ever changes. Nothing moves. Nothing gets any closer or farther away. You know you’re moving because you can feel the motion, but nothing ever fucking changes.
I’ve heard of souls who refused to enter Hell getting lost in the Tenebrae and wandering for years before going flat-out crazy. That’s a whole new level of fucked. Dying, escaping Hell, then finding yourself someplace worse. If the Church had afterlife travel agents, they could make a fortune. Pay now, then later see the most colorful views of damnation from a double-decker, air-conditioned tour bus. Stop for lunch at the damned soul deli, where you can try Phil, your racist neighbor, on whole wheat. Or roast hot dogs over the lava pits where crooked politicians and show-business accountants do synchronized-shrieking shows every . . . well . . . forever. Don’t forget to tip your driver on the way out or you’ll end up with the other stingy bastards, growing gold teeth and pulling them out with pliers for eternity while other stingy dumb-asses pound them into coins with their faces. Where do you think Hellion money comes from?
The other part of this Bataan death march across nowhere: I’m still in this goddamn fried truck. There’s no material left on the seats, so I’m riding bare springs all day. My bruised ass feels like it’s welded to a demon pogo stick.
I’m a little worried about Father Traven. Has he gone a little too native? There’s things you have to do to survive, but that doesn’t mean you have to believe whatever mad shit your torturer is feeding you. I don’t think he’d rat me out, but I’m worried that maybe he’s got a bad case of Knights Templar and has actually bought into the idea of a holy crusade. I’ll have to keep an eye on him. When I make a break for it, I’ll drag him by his heels if I have to.
But Cherry is the one I’m really worried about. She’s too crazy to predict what she’ll do. I mean, she wasn’t exactly stable when she was alive, but after she died she did a deep dive into unstable. She refused to leave her dead body for a long time and lived as a jabber—an animated corpse—clawing her way through the dirt and filth under L.A. When I finally got her to leave her body, she lived in the bombed-out version of L.A. in the Tenebrae. She played a sexpot ghost for a while and I don’t know what else since I’ve last seen her. And now she’s here with a whole new act. I don’t think she’d deliberately let on who I am, but who knows what twisted stuff she might blurt that could make things a lot more difficult for me.
When my mind drifts back to Candy and home, I push the thoughts away as hard as I can. I’m dead. There’s no going back now. None that I can figure, at least. But fuck everyone down here if they think I’m staying. All that matters is getting through this mess and figuring out what to do after that.
I lose track of the time on the plains. Bits of paint flake off the truck’s crisped body and stick to my face and hair. That’s fun. Traven rides beside me. He seems like a real natural. Maybe I’m selling him short. Maybe he likes being out of the library. He used to help us track bad guys back home before he died. Maybe this is like that and I should ease up on the guy.
About the time I’m wondering which of the babysitters I’m going to run off the road so I can steal their vehicle and save my aching ass, there’s something new on the horizon. The ruins of a town. Of course, everything is ruins in the Tenebrae, but this looks more ruined than most. I wish I could get a look at the Magistrate’s map. If I could place the town, maybe I could navigate my way back to Hell. That’s something else to think about. The map.
Up front someone, probably the Magistrate, sends up a red flare. The havoc spreads out across the plain, zeroing in on the town. Me and Traven are at the rear of the joyride, between the main havoc and the trucks pulling the tarp. When the flare goes up, our babysitters peel off to join the main group. I look at Traven and point out into the open desert. He shakes his head. He’s right. I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s nowhere to run to yet. Sit tight and learn how the havoc works. Then disappear at the moment of maximum confusion. For now, though, I hit the gas. At least if we stop somewhere, maybe I can get out of this damned truck for a while.
By the time us stragglers reach the others, they have the town surrounded. But no one is going Hell’s Angels on the place yet. They’re just sitting in their cars, gunning the engines and looking like hard desert bandidos. It isn’t exactly a stretch for them.
