"Miss me?" she asks. Candy is covered in blood and things I don't want to think about.
"How did you get here?"
"I came up through the woods. When I saw those black trucks, I hitched a ride on top."
I've never seen a Jade in full feral mode before. Candy's nails have curved out into thick claws. Her eyes are red slit pupils in a sea of black ice. Her lips and tongue are as black as her eyes. Her mouth has a slightly different shape. Like she has a few more teeth or the ones she has are wider and sharper than before. A mouthful of pretty white shark's teeth. She's the most beautiful thing I've seen in eleven years. I want to have monster babies with her right here and now. But something explodes, someone screams, and I remember my other friends and the end of the world.
"Parker probably has Vidocq and Allegra at the center of the club, near the sacrifice," I tell her. It's just a guess, but with D-day going on in the front parlor, it's where I'd go.
Candy helps me to my feet. My knee is knitting itself back together. It can almost take my weight, but it's not there yet. Candy slings my right arm over her shoulders, puts her left arm around my waist, and practically picks me up. I didn't know that Jades were that strong. So far, this is the best first date ever.
I talk Candy through the twists and turns I remember from Muninn's blueprints. There isn't much action in the inner rooms. Mostly, it's half-naked civilian assholes cowering behind the furniture, trying not to listen to the slaughterhouse noises from the outer rooms.
Candy and I are almost to the door of the central room.
And about to be monumentally dead.
A couple of Kissi are sitting and smoking on the stone steps outside the sacrifice room. The father-and-son murder act that killed the counter girl at Donut Universe.
"Look what the cat drug in," says the kid.
"Dragged in, but won't drag out," says Dad.
"Let's eat him this time. Eat him and get the shiny thing inside."
"You don't mind, do you?" Dad asks me. He seems to notice Candy for the first time. "Oh, look, he's bought dessert."
"What is she?"
"A filthy, dirty monster, son. Maybe you should nibble her first. I want to see what Mr. Shiny Chest tastes like."
The Kissi aren't carnivores, like the Jades. There's a hint of game playing in their voices. Fear and confusion are the Kissi's favorite snacks and words are a good way to tenderize the meat. Candy takes her arm from around my waist. I can barely stand, but I manage.
The young Kissi circles Candy, but I can't watch long.
Dad is coming for me. My knee still isn't back yet, so I have to stand my ground. It's not my favorite place to be, but I've been here before. You can't avoid an attack, so you hang back, leave yourself open, and let the attacker show you what he's going to do.
The Kissi goes straight for my bad knee. I pivot the best I can to bring the butt of the Browning down on its neck. But he tricks me. Feints for the knee and lunges up at my chest. I'm crippled and off balance. I can't get out of the way in time.
Daddy Kissi plants his shoulder in my sternum and knocks the wind out of me. He's on top of me, pinning me down with his weight. I know what's coming. Fingers inside my chest, like spiders crawling over my ribs. Then he'll pull out my heart and the key with it. When I fell, my arm twisted behind my back. I can't use the Browning or reach my knife.
I get ready for the pain. He brings his hand down hard. But just sort of punches me in the chest.
I look down, then at him. The Kissi looks as surprised as I do. He rears back and slams his hand down again. It just bounces off the body armor. I have a feeling that this isn't part of the armor's original design. But my heart and the key are still where they should be, so I'm not complaining.
The Kissi screeches, "What are you doing? Stop it!"
When he rears back for another try, his weight shifts enough for me to get my hand out from under my leg.
This time, when Daddy Kissi slams into my chest, I wrap my arm around his neck, shove the Browning under his chin, and blast away. The Spiritus bullets blow the Grand Canyon out the back of his head.
I shove his carcass off and look around for Candy. She's on her stomach, tearing out chunks of Avila's polished wood floors with her claws while Junior is on her back with both hands buried inside her spine.
I can move enough to limp up behind Junior, shove the Browning in his ear, and blow half of his head off. Junior falls one way. I fall the other. Candy pushes herself up onto her elbows, crawls over, and collapses on top of me.
"The sacrifice is in there," I say. "We can't stay here."
"I know," Candy says. She sits up and pulls me up with her. We're both streaked with human and Kissi blood. Candy grabs my head and plants a hundred-thousand-volt kiss on my lips. There's something in her saliva that feels like spider venom and speed. Her black tongue draws my tongue into her mouth and her razor-sharp shark teeth slide down the full length of it.
Candy lets go and smiles. She uses her thumb to wipe off some of the blood she's smeared on my lips.
"Thanks for getting him off me," she says.
"Anytime."
She helps me to my feet. I'm still shaky, but I can walk again. I can tell that Junior hurt her, playing around in her lungs. I give her the Browning and the Navy Colt pistols. I pull the na'at from my coat. Twist the grip to collapse the center shaft so that it hangs like a whip.
I point to the doors.
"Open sesame," I say.
Candy brings up both guns and blasts open the twin doors.
Inside, it's almost comical. Don't devil worshippers have any imagination? It's like a Hot Topic Halloween party. There's a circle of men wearing long, black, hooded robes. Each man holds a silver dagger. Between each of the men is a drugged, naked starlet wannabe with an inverted pentagram cut into her chest. Up at the altar, the head priest holds a shiny kris over an unconscious angel. The angels are what make the scene not funny. There are thirteen of them. The ones who've been at Avila the longest are filthy. Cut up, pale, and bruised. The newer, less abused ones are hog-tied with bright, diamond-like cords.
With Kissi guards stationed outside, it probably didn't occur to the devil's nitwits to have some security inside. Candy and I are pretty beat up, but they don't know that. Plus, we're armed. Plus, we're covered in enough blood and filth that we look like Hell arrived in the room a little sooner than they expected.
One of the robed satanists takes a swipe at Candy with his dagger and she blows a manhole in his chest with a blast from the Navy Colt. More men charge as the big clock over the altar hits the first midnight chime. Candy wades into the crowd and blasts anyone who gets near her. I swing the na'at over my head, let it extend to almost its full length, and crack it like a bullwhip. The high priest's hand and kris knife fly off in different directions. He screams and falls to his knees. Bye-bye, gates of Hell.
The rest of the old-boy coven doesn't seem to notice that they've already lost. They swarm us. Suddenly I'm back in the arena. Swinging the na'at, feeling it shear bones just right. Bring my arm up and sweep it down. Let the na'at's own momentum carry it through anything in its way. I could go on killing these guys all night. But I can't go completely wild. The glassy-eyed starlets are standing around like drugged sheep. I muscle them off the killing floor when I can. They fall over like bowling pins with tits.
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.
