"My boy! I heard the bell and wondered who'd be coming here tonight. This is usually a quiet evening for me."
"Sorry if I'm keeping you from a party or something."
Muninn laughs.
"My boy, when you've seen as many new years as I have, the last thing you want to do is throw a party for the damned thing."
He takes me by the arm and leads me to a table covered with neatly laid out groups of bones. Fingers. Toes. A whole hand or foot.
"Relics," he says. "Each bone and appendage belonged to one saint or another. I have a client who wants to build a summer home in the form of a sort of ossuary. But only with the bones of saints. No commoners allowed. As you might imagine, that takes quite a lot of bones. I'm just cataloging this batch tonight."
He goes to a shelf and takes down the same dusty bottle we drank from after Vidocq and I got back from Avila. He gets two small glasses and pours us each a drink.
"Thanks," I say, and shotgun it. "I'm in kind of a rush tonight."
"Of course. Sorry," he says. "Just because I ignore the new year doesn't mean you do. My apologies."
"No problem." I clear my throat. "Mr. Muninn. I want to make a deal with you. A big one."
"I'm always open to a good trade. What would you like?"
"It's not what I want. It's what you want. You're going to want this." I reach under my shirt and take off the coin. I set it on the table and push it toward him. Muninn looks at it without touching it.
"Is that a Veritas?"
"Straight from a Hellion general's pocket."
"You've had it all this time?"
"I brought it back with me."
"My boy, I could have made you a very rich man by now, if I'd known that. Does it work?"
"Like a charm. Take it for a test drive."
"You're the experienced one. What's the proper way?"
"There's no trick to it. Just hold it and ask your question. Say it in your head, not out loud. Saying it out loud won't ruin the magic. Just makes you sound like a mental patient."
Muninn picks up the Veritas slowly, like it might shock him. He makes a fist and closes his eyes. A moment later, he opens his hand and laughs at what he sees.
"Well?"
"I asked if buying it would be a good deal. It presented me with a lovely view of Abaddon's bottomless pit, lit in such way as to look like a large, not terribly clean sphincter. Along with that is a message on one side of the coin telling me that I'm an impotent, flatulent, fat, old fuck, and on the other side, telling me that it's a good investment only if I like having hot coals shoved down my throat by Hellion cocks."
"What do you think?"
"I think it's brilliant. I must have it. What do you want for it? Money? I know you like money. I'll give you a lot for this. Enough for this lifetime and for your children's children."
"No. This is too big for money. I want something special for the Veritas. Something cool. Something apocalyptic."
Mr. Muninn smiles at me like he might end up celebrating New Year's after all.
Having learned my lesson with the Jag, I go through the room to Max Overdrive. Upstairs, I toss the bedroom like a nervous B&E guy, shoving broken furniture and video players against the walls. It's nice to be strong at moments like this. I shove the bed frame and all the furniture into one corner of the room without breaking a sweat. Eventually, when I've tossed enough junk into enough piles, I've found all my guns. Then the bullets and shells. Then the bottle of Spiritus Dei. I guess the stuff really is as magical as Vidocq said. The bottle is sitting upright and is perfectly clean. Everything else in the room is covered in plaster dust and lying on its side.
The pistols are already loaded with bullets dipped in Spiritus. I go downstairs and find a paint-caked hacksaw in the little storage room behind the porn section. I take it upstairs and start sawing down the Benelli shotgun. Sawing down a simple double-barrel model is easy. You can cut the barrel down all the way to the front of the shell. Turn your long-range shotgun into a short-range blunderbuss. I don't want to go that far with the Benelli. I just saw off most of the stock, down to the curved part of the grip, so that it fits into my hand like an oversize pistol. I find a ball of heavy twine from under the bootleg table and tie a tight knot around the grip, then tie off a loop so that the gun can hang off my shoulder under my coat. Simple, crude, and deadly. What Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker called a Whip-It gun because you could whip it out from under your coat before anyone knew what was going on.
I'm moving, staying in motion, doing things that feel like they make sense, but how do you accessorize for the end of the world? When you're not sure what to bring, I figure you should bring everything. Four handguns, a shotgun, a Hellion knife, and the na'at feel like a good look for me.