Candy comes in.
“What are you looking at?” she asks.
“A mark that’s rare and even rarer on dead men.”
“What is it?”
“Those shit sacks were Sub Rosa. A Sub Rosa SWAT team. I’m in town a day and my own people try to kill me.”
“Lucky for you you went through the floor.”
“That was lucky, wasn’t it? I’m not usually that lucky.”
I go to the hole and look inside. It’s a pit maybe ten feet deep. The dirt around the edge is soft and fresh. It hasn’t been here long. Almost like someone dug it right under my feet.
“What are you going to do now?” asks Candy.
“Me? I’m going to see a soon-to-be-dead man and tell him he missed.”
“Cool. I’ll drop Rinko off and we can go.”
“No. Take her home. Give her the potion and keep an eye on her. The last thing I want is her hurt or strung out because of me.”
“You bastard. You don’t want me to go with you.”
“Hell yes I don’t want you to go. If I fuck this up, I’m counting on you and Vidocq to bust me out of whatever dungeon he throws me in.”
“Who?”
“The Augur.”
“Oh hell.”
The Sub Rosa love anonymity more than candy and puppies. If they’re going to hit someone, they’ll do it with poison so it looks like a heart attack or hoodoo so it looks like the luckless slob slips on a plutonium banana peel. There’s only one person who can drop the cloak-and-dagger policy for a blanket shoot-on-sight order and that’s Saragossa Blackburn. The Augur. The high exalted godfather of the California Sub Rosa.
In grand Sub Rosa tradition, Blackburn’s mansion looks like a pathetic wreck. In this case, an abandoned residency hotel on South Main Street. The first floor is boarded up. The second and third have been gutted by fire and you can see the sky through the top-floor ceiling. Gang tags and spray-painted naked ladies are like outdoor cave paintings. Aeons of stapled ads and glued band flyers form a pale crust on the lower floors. Cut deep enough into those things and you’ll find flyers for Babylonian death-metal shows printed in cuneiform on papyrus.
The mansion is protected by more hoodoo than King Tut’s tomb. It can hold off the armies of Hell, a Bigfoot horde, and a Martian invasion all at the same time. In fact, Blackburn’s place is so loaded with wards and mantrap spells that he doesn’t have a single security guard. Not even a dog. The Augur is so high-and-mighty he thinks muscle is déclassé, which for him is sort of true but it’s not polite to rub the world’s nose in it. Someone should TP the place just to remind him he’s human. I’d like it to be me but right now I don’t know how to get close enough to even hit the place with a grenade launcher.
These Lucifer eyes can see the shimmering spells surrounding the hotel. A series of crystal spheres set inside each other like Russian nesting dolls. As far as I know, with the armor on, I’m as hard to kill as ever, but that means I can still snuff it or get hurt and I don’t want to be known as the Gimp Lucifer. I need to not fuck this up.
Most of my hoodoo is geared toward hurting people and making things go boom. I’m pretty good at making up spells on the spot but how many different ones will I have to wing if I try to hex my way through Blackburn’s defenses? Only one thing makes sense if I want to get inside before Santa takes a toy dump down everyone’s chimney. It’s really stupid but stupid is sort of my specialty.
I take a few deep breaths and summon all the heinous bastard Luciferness I can and wrap myself in Lord of the Flies drag. When it feels right, I go to the first layer of hoodoo and lay my hand on it.
When I first got back to Earth, Samael strolled into my bedroom above Max Overdrive. At the time I was so shocked seeing the Devil at my door I didn’t think about what it meant. By then I’d laid out wards around the store and my own improvised protection spells. Lucifer walked right through them. Is that one of the secrets the celestial types keep from us? That most human protections don’t work on angels? My angel half is off somewhere sipping Shirley Temples and reading Parade magazine but I’m still Lucifer and wearing angelic armor. Maybe that’s angel enough to keep me from going up like a refinery explosion.
I put my hand on the first layer of magic and press. Blue flame engulfs me but it doesn’t burn. Beyond the fire, the layer feels thick and liquid. I’m not dead yet, so I keep pressing. Slowly and steadily, like stepping out of a warm glycerin bath, I pass through the first layer. I do the same thing on the next layer. This one is full of wind and grit. A sandstorm of razor blades. I press slow and steady, holding a “do not even begin to fuck with me” mantra in my mind. The layer cracks and splits just enough for me to pass through. Four more layers and I walk up to Blackburn’s front door like the Avon lady. I reach out to test the door. The prick doesn’t even bother locking it.
Inside, Blackburn’s mansion is an old Victorian manor house with stained glass, potted palms, and a curiosity cabinet in every room. The kind of place where you wouldn’t be surprised to see Sherlock Holmes shooting coke in the guest room.
On one side of a sweeping staircase is Blackburn’s office. On the other side is what looks like a parlor. The sliding doors are open a crack. Inside are maybe twenty people listening to him ramble on about cost-benefit projections and which state political offices to keep and which corporate investments to kick loose. First someone tries to assassinate me and now another budget meeting. Where do I have to go to get away from this shit?
It looks like I walked in on a synod, a solstice meeting where Sub Rosa heavyweights get together to figure out what nefarious party games they’re going to play in the New Year.
Blackburn is a scryer, a seer who gets glimpses of the future. The Sub Rosa Augur is always a scryer and Blackburn is supposed to be a good one. If he’s predicted me coming, I’m in trouble. With any luck he’s blind to Lucifer’s tricks. Of course, this could be a trap and he wants me in close quarters where I can’t run. Okay. I haven’t killed any humans in months.
It’s tradition at official meetings that the Sub Rosa sigil floats at the front of the room like the Super Bowl blimp. The sigil is a caduceus, snakes wrapped around each other in kind of a figure eight. A symbol of knowledge. In the first crossing, the top hole of the eight, is a circle surrounded by a square surrounded by a triangle. The squared circle. An alchemical symbol for the work. The work is magic and the secret things you can learn to expand your mind and perfect the world. The bottom crossing is a black circle with three lines radiating outside the snake like the sun. The alchemical symbol for gold. In the old days, gold stood for enlightenment. These days gold just stands for gold. I kick one of the doors out of the way, pull the Glock, and put a bullet through each end of the caduceus. The thing flares and drifts onto the carpet like ashes.
“Looks like a party. You busted in on mine, so I thought I’d return the favor.”
Blackburn storms over, not the tiniest bit afraid. He’s a good-looking guy with a primo Italian suit and a wide politician’s face that looks like it should be on a hundred-dollar bill. His graying temples make him look like he’s in his late forties but I know he’s well over a hundred.
“How did you get in here? You’ve invaded my home and interrupted classified Sub Rosa business. If you weren’t a wanted criminal before, you certainly are now, Stark.”
Blackburn gestures past me at someone I can’t see.
“Get some security . . .”
I swing the Glock behind me and fire without looking. Something hits the carpet. I put the still-hot muzzle under Blackburn’s chin.
“If that sentence is headed where I think it is, you better say it pretty because it’s going to be your last words.”
“Pretty please, Mr. Blackburn. Let me do it. I’ve wanted to put the boot to this rude boy for a long time.”
It’s King Cairo’s hoarse voice. Hoarse because screaming at the top of his lungs is as quiet as he ever fucking gets. He’s head of a family specializing in freelance hoodoo muscle, stuff both on and off the books. He’s a skinny Mohawked shirtless rat in a floor-length velvet coat trimmed with ostrich feathers. He thinks shrieking and jumping on furniture makes him a punk. Really it just makes him a Dixie Wishbone addict.
Wishbone is a kind of hoodoo meth. It makes you jittery and paranoid, but guys like Cairo get off on it because it doesn’t fry them like regular meth. It burns out the people around them. A heavy Dixie Wishbone addict will end up surrounded by a pack of jaundiced, black-toothed psychopaths. Rumors are that’s how Cairo’s family got started down Alabama way.
He’s standing on a heavy mahogany settee. Leaps off and tries to kick it at me. He almost makes it too, but it catches on the edge of Kyzer Navarro’s chair and knocks him in his face. Navarro is head of the big South American Sub Rosa syndicate. Not someone you want to hit with a dining room set. Cairo’s high-drama moment turns into Three Stooges dope-fiend high jinks. He goes over to apologize to Navarro and a woman’s voice quiets the room.
“Calm down, ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Stark might be guilty of many things but look closer and you’ll see he’s not who you think he is.”
I recognize the voice. It belongs to one of two or three people I hate most on this planet. I pocket the Glock, grab my na’at and get ready for a hoodoo attack, but when I turn she’s just sitting off by herself at Blackburn’s desk looking at me like I’m the soggy banana at the bottom of her bag lunch.
“Shouldn’t you be off somewhere playing Ragnarok?” I say and turn back to the room. “You know when she’s not with you bastards Cruella de Vil here is hot to murder God. How’s that for a grudge? Makes me seem downright reasonable.”
Aelita is another goddamn angel. Not a fallen one like Lucifer but one of God’s more recent rogues. Because God let a nephilim bastard like me live, Aelita’s decided the old man has gone senile and needs to be put out of His misery. She used to run the Golden Vigil, God’s earthbound Pinkertons, with a U.S. marshal named Wells. The Vigil is dead and I haven’t heard anything new about Aelita until this minute.
Blackburn moves between Aelita and me.
“Stop this right now, Mr. Stark.”
“Kill him. Fucking kill him, Blackburn,” screams King Cairo.
I grab the cantaloupe-size crystal ball off Blackburn’s desk and throw it at the ceiling. Shattered glass and smashed plaster rains down on Cairo.
“Fuck!” he screams, but he doesn’t dare do anything without the Augur’s permission.
I recognize a few faces in the crowd.
Tuatha Fortune, Blackburn’s wife. She’s a brontomancer. A thunder worker. A decent bronto can ride the storm clouds to find lost people and objects. A pro one can use lightning as a weapon. There must have been some heavy storms lately because Tuatha looks as green and worn as a civilian on chemotherapy. Some kinds of hoodoo take more out of you than others.
There’s Nasrudin Hodja. He’s a Cold Case. A soul merchant. From an old world Sub Rosa family. Like ante-fucking-diluvian old. His family might be oil and media barons these days, but buried in their vaults are ancient Sub Rosa relics traded along the Silk Road a thousand years ago.
L.A.’s Sub Rosa mayor lounges on a purple silk love seat surrounded by bodyguards. Richard William “Big Bill” Wheaton the Third. He dropped “the Third” for the last election but you always knew it was there, like he’s the king of merry old England and everyone needs to know how many of him there are.
Near Big Bill a guy sits with his hands folded neatly in his lap. He’s in a suit sharp enough to cut diamonds and has a manicure that would make the pope jealous. He’s not Sub Rosa and he’s on edge enough that I don’t think he’s ever seen so many in one place before. Or maybe he’s spooked because a crazy guy just broke in firing a gun.
At the rear of the place is a girl with a shaved head and a lot of tattoos. I’d swear I know her from somewhere but I’ve known more than a couple of tattooed girls over the years. She has thick scars on her neck and the side of her face is like one of those women you hear about who get hit with acid by a psycho ex-lover. That means I don’t know her. I’d remember those scars. You have to admire Sub Rosa who keeps their wounds. When you can go to a hoodoo clinic like Allegra’s and have them healed in an hour, you know this girl loves her scars more than she loves being beautiful. Good for her.
I look at Blackburn and flick open the na’at.
“Why did you send goons after me tonight? They busted into a public place and started shooting. Civilians got hurt.”
King Cairo laughs like I told a great knock-knock joke.
“Of course, Cairo. They’re your assholes. Aren’t they? I should have known by the Wishbone shakes. No wonder they couldn’t hit anything they aimed at.”
Aelita says, “They attacked you because they thought you were the other Stark. He didn’t carry guns or use profanity. He was a refreshing change until he murdered the mayor’s son.”
“That ring-tailed choirboy? I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it. We have witnesses.”
She folds her hands on the desk and gives me a cold smile.
“Maybe he got bored acting like a sane man and was trying to be more like you.”
“Or maybe you just made the whole thing up to kill me piece by piece like you’re doing with God.”
“Your doppelgänger made a lot of enemies.”
I take out a Malediction and light it. If you went by the gasp from the crowd you’d think I was skinning a deer on the Persian rug.