Richard Kadrey - Sandman Slim

More satanists are running out of the room than are staying around to fight, which is fine by me. My knee burns me every time I take a step. Candy isn't using the guns anymore. She's back to teeth and claws, a meat grinder in tight jeans and Chuck Taylors.

I collapse the na'at and hold my arms out at my sides. The last few hard cases come at me with their daggers. I don't even fight them. I don't have to. They stab and slash and all they hit are my scars. Each knife thrust hurts, but not enough to matter, and none draws blood.

And then it's over.

The last satanists are dead or limping off into the club where the Vigil is waiting for them with hot cocoa and Tasers. The drugged starlets stare at each other trying to remember exactly what they're auditioning for and when wardrobe is going to arrive.

Aelita is lying hog-tied and unconscious at the far end of the altar. The black knife cuts through the diamond cord around her wrists and ankles. I free Aelita, then hand Candy the knife and tell her to free the others.

I pick Aelita up off the bloody floor and carry her back to the front room.

I'm not one hundred percent certain, but I think that two monsters just saved the world. And I couldn't care less.

Parker was supposed to be in the sacrifice room. And he should have had Vidocq and Allegra with him. If they're dead, the world should be, too. It's only fair. But I learned a long time ago that fair doesn't have much to do with how the universe works. If things were fair, Lucifer wouldn't have had to rebel. Adam and Eve wouldn't have been card-sharked out of Eden. The big man's kid wouldn't have been nailed up at Golgotha. And the Kissi would be just another pack of boring angels. And nothing that's happened in the last few days would have happened.

Wells and his crew have Avila secured when I get up front. They're already sorting the living from the dead, the inner-sanctum bastards from the gentleman's-club morons. All the club members still alive are sitting on their asses in the front room, arms and legs locked together with plastic restraints. Politicians, movie producers, stock-market czars, and fair-haired heirs to Babylonian-size fortunes. If the Vigil really wants to do the world a favor, it'll burn Avila down with them inside.

I don't see a single magician among the living. Maybe that's all the fairness I'm going to get tonight. It's better than nothing.

I must look worse than I thought. Or maybe it's because I have Aelita with me. Either way, the entire Vigil crew stops and stares when I carry Aelita in and hand her to Wells.

"She's okay," I tell him. "We stopped the thing before it happened."

"We?"

"My friend Candy and me. She's back there freeing the rest of the angels. You might want to send some of your people back to help her. And bring some bathrobes."

Wells nods and some of the Vigil crew head off the way I came.

Wells kneels and sets Aelita on the floor. He takes a small bottle of what looks like holy water out of a jacket pocket and pours a few drops over each of Aelita's eyes. The angel's lids open a fraction of an inch. She begins to breathe. A Vigil medical team pushes Wells and me out of the way. They wrap Aelita in a Mylar blanket and give her drugs from bottles that look older than the world.

I take off what's left of my silk coat. It's just rags with a hundred bullet holes, a thousand knife slashes, and enough blood to paint a Camaro.

I strip off the body armor and hand it to Wells.

"You should check this out. Either you accidentally made armor that's Kissi-proof or you can make the armor Kissi-proof with some Spiritus Dei."

"Thanks."

I pick up a jacket someone's dropped on the floor and use it to wipe the filth off of my face.

"I never found my friends," I say.

"I'm sorry. We got a lot of bad people tonight, but we lost your pal Parker."

"Parker was here?"

"Yeah. He took off pretty early in the assault. We lost him in the trees below the house. I don't know how."

"Mason probably gave him something to make him invisible or to transport him someplace. Was he alone?"

"As far as I know."

"How well have you searched this place?"

"Well enough that if there were two people who knew you, we'd have found them by now."

I nod toward the line of bodies on the other side of the room.

"What about the dead?"

"We've been watching you, remember? I know what your friends look like. They aren't here."

"I'll need that body armor back for a while."

"Why?"

"I'm going to go get them."

"Be realistic. Parker took off. If he had them, he's killed them. That's what men like Parker do."

"No. They're alive. He wants me to come and find them. Then he can have the fun of killing them in front of me. I think I know where he has them."

"Where's that?"

"The Orange Grove Bungalows on Sunset."

"We used to have that place under surveillance. Sub Rosa kids used it for magic and sex games for years."

"Yeah, we did."

"No one goes there now. It's just pathetic civilians. Strictly crackheads and whores these days."

"It's where he'll have them. It's his idea of a joke." I look at the body armor. "Can I have that back?"

To my surprise, Wells hands me the armor. I put it on and go to the line of corpses. Find a guy a little bit taller and fatter than me with a decent-looking jacket. I slip the jacket off his body and try it on. It fits across my shoulders and is loose enough that when I button it closed, it covers the body armor.

I ask Wells, "You find any usable shotguns?"

"Around the corner. There's a whole pile-help yourself."

I find a nice sawed-off double barrel, about twelve inches long.

"I'm taking this," I say, holding up the sawed-off.

"Be my guest."

Vigil members come from the sacrifice room, carrying angels on stretchers. Candy trails behind them looking more than a little uncomfortable.

I steal a clean cloth from the medical kit of the crew working on Aelita. Go over to Candy. She looks completely human now, except for all the blood and dirt. I put the shotgun in her hands, push her head back, and gently wipe her face. She laughs.

"You sure know how to show a girl a good time, Mr. Stark."

"I try to keep things interesting for my friends."

"So far, so good."

If I was a regular person and Candy was a regular girl and this was a regular moment, I'd be kissing her, but we're not and this isn't. She looks at me like she knows what I'm thinking.

"I should probably give doc a call and let him know everything's all right."

"Yeah. He's probably worried."

"You look like you're going somewhere."

"I know where Parker has Vidocq and Allegra. I'm headed down there now."

"I'll go with you."

"No," I say. "I could be wrong. If I am, I want someone here I can trust to look out for them."

"Okay," she says, sounding a little hurt.

"I should get going."

She looks at the medics working on Aelita. The angel is sitting up now.

"I'm going to call doc in a minute and then I'm going home to him because that's where I belong. I'm going to tell him most of what happened tonight, but not everything. But I want you to know that I'm not sorry for what we did."

"Me neither," I say. "The one good thing about an awk-ward moment like this is that, with the way we look, the longer we stand here torturing each other, the more likely we are get to get some of these Vigil nervous nellies to pee themselves."

Candy smiles.

"Go," she says. "I'll keep an eye on things here."

"Thanks."

I take the sawed-off from her hands, nod at Wells, and step through a shadow behind the dead magicians. Still the best first date ever.

THE PHONE BOOTH outside the Orange Grove Bungalows hasn't changed much since I was here eleven years ago, except that now there's a guy living in it.