“Nothing.”
She looks past me to somewhere in the distance.
“You look a lot worse than the last time I saw you. If you just cooperated a little, we might be able to help you.”
The blood running down my neck is making my shirt and coat sticky.
“I don’t want your help, but can I at least stop this damn bleeding?”
“How?”
“I have a bandage in my pocket.”
Marcella says, “You’re aware there are three associates here who’ll shoot you if you try anything smart.”
“Don’t worry. I haven’t done anything smart in years.”
Very slowly, I take the duct tape from my pocket and show it to everyone. Cool. No one shoots me. I pull out a couple of inches and tear it off with my teeth. I’m still not shot. Things are going great. With my coat sleeve, I clean my cheek, then smack the tape into place. I put the roll back in my pocket and show everyone my hands.
I say, “How do I look?”
“Like a pail of manure dragged down a bumpy road and dumped into a river of puke,” says a familiar voice from behind me.
He comes around the side and stands with Marcella.
“It took a while,” says Marshal Larson Wells. “But you finally have the face you deserve.”
I look around the room. I’m surrounded by men and women in sharp business suits. A lot of flag lapel pins and BLUE LIVES MATTER buttons. All of them have little cross tie tacks and the power of the Lord in their hearts. Beyond them are military vehicles and long racks of impressive weapons.
Oh Hell.
The faction really isn’t Wormwood.
It’s the Golden Vigil.
Wells leans down a few inches for a better look at me and says, “How’s my favorite pixie today?”
He says “pixie” the way he always does. The way a redneck says “faggot.”
The Golden Vigil is the first bunch of bastards I worked for. Soon after I crawled out of Hell the first time, Wells and his people picked me up and offered me a job. Didn’t offer it so much as said they’d kill me if I didn’t take it. The Golden Vigil was a secret paramilitary group that, in theory, policed Lurkers, magicians, and all kinds of questionable mystical activity for the government. I don’t know if it was by design or just the kind of volunteers the Vigil got, but they were also psycho religious fruit bats. And I thought they’d been disbanded after Marshal Wells put a bullet through Mason Faim’s head.
I smile at him with my gray teeth and black gums.
“Hi, Larson. I thought you were in jail for murder.”
“Don’t throw my name around like that, son, or you will be sorry,” he says. “And as to your other point, I’m not in jail because you can’t murder someone who isn’t human. It’s in the Constitution.”
“Where?”
“Well, it will be soon enough.”
“Mason was a human—a backstabbing bastard, but human enough. You shot him in front of a hundred witnesses.”
“Wrong,” he says, “and watch your language. The person you refer to as Mason Faim was an unclean spirit possessing the body of a dead man. He had committed a number of gruesome murders and deserved to be shuffled off this mortal coil forever. Amen.”
“But it was still a scandal, Wells. How do you live with yourself over that?”
“Just fine, thank you. Time with like-minded brothers and sisters and solitary prayer brought me back to my senses. A good union kept me in government service. And a keen awareness of Wormwood’s growing power brought me and these good people right to where we are today. Hallelujah.”