Christopher Moore - Secondhand Souls

The one on the right, then, in the green leather. She unsheathed her claws on that side to their full length. Venom dripped and softly sizzled on a steel rail below…

Minty Fresh was trying to keep the light on the shotgun pointed down the tunnel as he pushed fresh shells into the tubular magazine, which made his grip on the gun precarious at best. When the Morrigan’s claws struck his calf, he lost his grip on the shotgun and fumbled it away, the light bouncing around the tunnel like an epileptic Tinker Bell.

He pulled away from the pain and his feet were yanked out from under him. He landed hard on his side, his breath knocked out, and he felt himself being yanked under the tractor. With one hand he caught a piece of metal that protruded from the front wheel of the tractor, a steering bar, perhaps, while he swung a fist at his attacker, hitting nothing.

Rivera shouting. White pain in his leg. Frantic digging in his coat with his free hand for one of the Desert Eagles. He touched one, was yanked, lost orientation, reached again. His free hand whipped around, settled on something round—at first he thought another piece of the tractor—but it was Charlie Asher’s sword cane. He pulled it free from the scabbard and swung in the direction of his attacker as hard as he could.

A screech, not Rivera. The grip on his calf gone, he fell slack on the train tracks. A shotgun firing, a figure, illuminated by the highway flares, rolling out from under the tractor, awkwardly scrambling to her feet. Another shotgun blast and she was spun around, fell, and scuttled off into the dark screeching.

“You okay?” asked Rivera, his face appearing by a wheel on the opposite side of the tractor.

“Yeah. The fuck?” Now, on the ground by his leg, he saw the severed claw of the Morrigan twitching, evaporating into a feathery vapor spewing from the severed wrist until, in a few seconds, it was gone. “She got my leg.”

Rivera ran around the front of the tractor, crouched beside the Mint One. He pulled a flashlight out of his vest, played it over Minty Fresh, set it on the ground pointing at his leg. The blood looked like tar. Rivera took off his belt and wrapped it around Minty’s leg just above the knee, tightened it down, putting his foot on it for the tension. “Hold this. Tight.” He handed the free end of the belt to Minty Fresh.

“Go get them,” Fresh said.

Rivera shook his head, dug his phone out of his jacket pocket, checked the signal. “Fuck. I’m going to have to go back out to get a signal and call help.”

Rivera helped Minty Fresh sit up against the tractor wheel, then took the end of his belt from the big man and tied it off. He picked up his own shotgun and handed it to Minty. “Two still in it, the extras still on the stock.”

“Yeah, reloading might have been my mistake,” said Minty.

“I’ll be back.”

Rivera picked up his flashlight and stood. As soon as the light played back toward the entrance he saw the new, fitter Charlie Asher coming out of the darkness. “A really scary-looking woman in black rags told me you guys might need help,” Charlie said.

“Grab an arm,” Rivera said. “We need to get him out of here.” He looked down to see that Minty Fresh was unconscious.

Charlie hadn’t told Audrey he was going to attack the Morrigan—he hadn’t told her anyone was going to attack the Morrigan. The last she had heard about it, the attack was theoretical, Inspector Rivera blowing off steam, she’d thought.

Charlie had taken a taxi home from the hospital after Mrs. Korjev’s son had arrived from Los Angeles, and let himself into the new apartment, which still smelled of paint and cleaning products. He crawled into bed with Audrey and kissed her awake enough to tell her that Mrs. Korjev was stable, and for her to tell him that Sophie was sleeping in her own bed in the other apartment, but she hadn’t told him anything else.

They made love and she flinched once when he brushed against her ankle, which was raw from where she’d been duct-taped by the Squirrel People, but she’d passed the movement off as passion and she fell asleep in his arms, feeling safe for the first time in days. She had awakened when he rose at dawn, went right back to sleep when he kissed her on the temple and crept out of the apartment, leaving a note on the breakfast bar that said, Had to go out. Will call you in a couple of hours. Tell Sophie I love her. Love, Charlie . Not, Going to engage the powers of darkness, because that worked out so well the last time. Not, I’m a complete moron with no common sense and no consideration for the people who love me. No, just , Had to go out. So when he called her around seven and said he was headed to San Francisco General Hospital because that’s where the ambulance was taking Minty Fresh and he would pick her up outside in five minutes, well, she’d been a bit surprised, and a little angry.

When he pulled up out front in her Honda and she crawled in, she really wanted to shout at him—hug him first, then maybe hit him a bunch of times, which caused her years of training to kick in, and instead she took a long, slow breath and let it out over a count of ten. One did not become the caretaker for the forgotten chapters of the Book of Living and Dying by indulging in random freak-outs every time one encountered difficulty. So she only hit him once.

“Ouch! What’s that for?”

“Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

She let that sit for a while. Were her reasons for not telling him about the massacre at the Buddhist Center any more pure? Wasn’t she just trying to keep him from being distressed? She had done so much wrong, with good intentions, but wrong nonetheless. She had done the right thing, not the easy thing, by not telling him. Probably. Maybe.

The man in yellow wasn’t like the other creatures. He might be dark, he might be of darkness, but wasn’t darkness necessary? Light, dark, male, female, yin, yang: balance. He’d convinced her as much after saving her from the Morrigan.

He’d righted an unbroken chair and pulled it over to where she lay bound on the floor, the remnants of shredded Squirrel People littered the room.

“Do you mind if I sit?” he asked. The absurdity of him asking her approval when she was trussed up on the carpet almost made her laugh.

“Please,” she said.

He tipped his hat as if spilling silky sax notes off the brim, then took five shuffling steps to get around from the back of the chair to the front, shaking a leg on every other step. He sat, leaned forward.

“How you doin’?” he said. He had a gold crown on an upper right bicuspid and he showed it to her with a smile.

“I’m tied up on the floor and I’ve almost been murdered twice in five minutes.”

“Well, the night is young,” he said, a little too much cheer in his voice.

She took a deep breath, let it out while reciting a Sanskrit chant in her mind. Right now, in this instant, she was fine.

He laughed, “I’m just fuckin’ with you. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you, Red. You mind I call you Red? That whole ‘venerable Rinpoche’ jazz a bit of a mouthful.”

Strictly speaking, her hair wasn’t red, but auburn, but she nodded approval anyway. “And you are… Death?”

“That really more a title than a name. You probably wanna gonna call me Yama.”

“Yama?” She thought she’d been as surprised as she could be tonight. Apparently not. “Protector of Buddhism?”

“That’s right, but we not using titles, right? Now, Red, I cut you loose, you not gonna freak out and go all kung fu and shit on me, are you?”