I lied to Kasabian. I can feel myself dying inside, but just the Stark part. He flickers in and out of focus, like a strobe light losing power. The intervals of darkness get longer and longer. Soon the flashes will stop and Stark will be gone.
The phone rings. I ignore it.
Rest in peace, asshole. Maybe someone will miss you, but it won’t be me.
The phone stops ringing, then starts up again a second later. I pick it up.
“What the hell is wrong with you, boy? Have you gone full time into the getting-people-fucked-up business? I swear, you could open a goddamn franchise.”
I sit up and swing my feet onto the floor.
“Hi, doc. What do you want? I’m just a little busy.”
Kinski says, “I’m an archangel, remember? The aether all of a sudden started smelling like blood and it was coming from your direction. Some girl of yours got hurt tonight, didn’t she? And it wasn’t Allegra.”
“It’s kind of late to be pulling out your little black bag right now, don’t you think? You got secrets you want to keep, that’s fine with me. I can respect that. But don’t go calling me when you’re road-tripping on the dark side of the moon getting all high-and-mighty. I thought you were one of the few people I could count on, but it turns out to be just one more reminder of how I should never trust an angel.”
“Did it ever cross your mind that taking off in the dead of night and dragging Candy along was about the last thing I wanted to do? That it would take something pretty important for me to do anything like that?”
“Like what? You need to get your harp restrung?”
“Like someone trying to kill us. Me, mostly, but they seem fine with killing anyone in my vicinity.”
“Is Candy all right?”
“We’re both all right, but we’ve been lucky and that’s not going to last forever.”
He doesn’t say anything for a minute. I never heard this kind of stress in his voice before. There’s noise on the line behind him. Wind and rumbling. It sounds like he’s calling from the side of a freeway.
“Exactly what happened?”
“We were out one night at a Thai joint we like and six masked heavies came in. They make like they want to rob the place, but I could read them and knew they were there for something else. They told the girl at the register to give them the money, but kept getting in her way. They told the customers not to move, but they kept tripping over them. The whole thing was an act to start a fight. When no one took the bait, they got real agitated and just started shooting up the place. These boys weren’t thieves. They were a hit squad.”
“How do you know that?”
“Street punks don’t have Dragon’s Breath rifles and quantum street sweepers. All around us people were burning up and gassing out into subatomic particles.”
“Shit, that sounds like Vigil gear.”
“Or Lucifer’s. He has a whole stable of state-of-the-art friends. Though why they’d come after me after all these years, I can’t say.”
“I know you’re Mr. Self-Control, but did Candy do anything to piss them off?”
“When the shooting started she went into full Jade mode and, no, it wasn’t easy holding her back. She took down a couple of them before I could stop her. All I wanted was to get both of us out of there while we were still on our feet. The longer we were in there the more civilians were going to be collateral damage.”
“Are you safe where you are?”
“We’re safe for now because we keep moving. This is a throwaway cell, but I’m still not wild about talking even this long.”
“Why did you call?”
“To tell you to get out of there. That city is about to be hit by the shit storm of the century. I can feel it. The dead have wandered out before and the Sub Rosa have always taken care of them, but this feels different. I don’t know that they can cork the bottle this time.”
“How is it different? What do you know?”
“This isn’t going to be a few zeds and Lacunas wandering out of some abandoned mine shaft. This is going to be big. I never felt anything like it before. It’s a damn sight too big for you to handle by yourself and don’t tell me you’re not going to try ’cause that’s exactly the kind of thing you do.”
“Thanks for the warning, but I have things to do here. There’s that hurt girl, remember?”