Kill the Dead. Richard KadreyЧитать онлайн книгу.
kid. Maybe if she hadn’t pissed off whoever it was that got the Golden Vigil to call in the hit, she would have had enough time to figure that out.
Good night, Eleanor. I’m sure Mutti forgives you and maybe even misses you. As long as she never finds what you’ve been up to these last few weeks. She sure won’t find it out from me.
I give the ghoul belt buckle one more look. It’s heavy like metal, but the edges are chipped like an old china saucer. The dumbest fence in L.A. wouldn’t give me a dime for it. I toss it into the dark with the other trash and get to work on Eleanor’s friends, going through their pockets, bags, and backpacks. These aren’t Beverly Hills Lurkers, just a bunch of downtown scroungers, so I’m not exactly coming up with the crown jewels. Still, it’s tourist season, so there’s about three hundred in cash that didn’t burn up when they ashed out. Some joints, movie ticket stubs, car keys, condoms, and Eleanor’s play jewels. I toss everything but the jewelry and the cash. Looting the dead might seem harsh, but they don’t need the stuff anymore and the Vigil doesn’t pay overtime. Besides, killing monsters is my day job. The way I look at it, me stealing from the dead is like regular people pocketing Post-its on their way out of the office.
I go out into the sun and take a breath to clear the greasy flesh smoke and ashed bodies out of my lungs. I sit on my haunches, head down, my back against the broken theater door, just breathing. My face and chest are covered in darkening bruises and enough blood that it looks like I’ve been sumo wrestling in a barbwire kimono. My burned arm, the one Eleanor got back at the garage, is starting to flake black skin. When I look up, a dozen faces are locked on me, mostly old Mexican women holding T-shirts and pink-and-orange flip-flops.
I stand and the women take a step back like maybe they’re doing Swan Lake. There’s a knockoff Evil Dead T-shirt on a hanger at the end of the nearest rack. I take it. The woman by the market cash register is holding an unopened bottle of water. I take that, too, and give her twenty dollars from the cash I took off the shroud eaters.
“Gracias,” I say.
“De nada.”
She nods at me nervously, a big “please get the hell out of here before my brain explodes” smile plastered on her face. I take off my bloody shirt, drop it into the trash can by her register, and slip on the new shirt. I kill the water in three big gulps before walking back into the theater.
In the dark, Mason’s lighter sparks on the first try and I hear sirens just as the cigarette begins to glow.
The woman from behind the counter leans her head in the door.
“Hey, mister.”
She points out at the street.
“Thanks. I heard.”
She shoos me away with her hands.
“Just go. No trouble here.”
“Plenty of trouble here,” I tell her, pointing into the theater, where I left the bodies.
“Los vampiros? No trouble. Only bother turistas and pendejos.”
So, they knew about the pod. L.A. is a get-along kind of town. The ladies work the day shift and los vampiros work the night. As long as they don’t shoplift flip-flops, the undead are probably pretty decent neighbors. The muggers and dealers will learn to stay away. Hell, as long as you wear a muffler 24/7, this might be one of the safer streets in L.A.
The woman standing in the door turns to someone outside. I can hear them talking, but I don’t really listen. The cop’s voice is loud and clear and I know what he’s asking. I take my phone out of my pocket, go to Eleanor’s body, and snap a proof-of-death shot. When I get back to the lobby the cop is coming in, his hand on his Glock. He goes for it when he sees me. He’s pretty smooth, but his body is all wrong for this game. He’s been exercising for bulk at the gym, all showy slow twitch muscles, going for a Terminator look. He can probably throw a mean choke hold, but I bet even the old ladies outside could outdraw him. I flick my cigarette and it bounces off his chest before he has the gun belly-button-high.
He screams “Freeze!”, but I’m already slipping into a shadow.
GETTING IN TO see Wells is always a merry little dance. At the gate, the guys in suits go through an elaborate security and ID check. They scan my photo and fingerprints. Scrape cells off the back of my hand for quickie DNA profiling and species confirmation. Then they have to call inside for verification because maybe there’s another guy who shows up at their gate from out of a shadow.
There are two agents on the gate today. One is the usual fresh-faced new guy that always pulls door duty and the other is a Shut Eye. A salaryman psychic. This one is young, almost as young as the guard. He’s ambitious, too. I can feel him sizing me up. Most people don’t like having their minds read. It doesn’t bother me.
When I was a kid, I once took a sharp piece of wood from the backyard and smacked one of our neighbors’ Dobermans with it. The dog chased me all the way to the end of the block, and when he was done, I had bruises and bloody teeth marks all down my left calf. My father was in the driveway, working on my mom’s old Impala, and saw the whole thing. When I asked why he didn’t stop the dog from biting me, he said, “’Cause you deserved it.”
“What’s that line from The Maltese Falcon?”
“Excuse me?” asks the guard. His name tag reads Huston.
“Bogart says it. ‘The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.’ You ever think about that when you’re patting people down?”
“We’re just doing our jobs, sir.”
“Trust me, I know. I’ve been coming here about every week for six months. You’re doing a really thorough job of looking at my fingerprints for the four-hundredth time and talking to the same guy inside you always talk to, the one who always gives you the same answer. I mean, I always get invited in, right?”
“We have to establish your identity, sir. It’s procedure.”
“You know who I am. Or do a lot people show up here covered in blood and goofer dust?”
That last bit sets off the Shut Eye. An unsubstantiated claim of identity. Catnip to psychic snoops. I can feel it when they’re slipping their ghost fingers into my skull. It tickles behind my eyes.
There are two basic ways to deal with a peeper. You can back off and go blank. Name all the presidents or run through multiplication tables.
The other way to deal with psychics is to welcome them in. Throw open all the doors and windows and invite them deep inside your mind. Then grab them by the throat and drag them straight down to Hell. Well, that’s what I do. It’s not mandatory. The point is that once you’ve led them deep enough into your psyche, you’re the one behind the wheel and they’re strapped in the kiddy seat in back.
I give them the grand tour of Downtown, starting out with a quick jolt of the early days in Hell when it was all nausea and panic. Give them a quick taste of psychic rape. Experiments and Elephant Man exhibitions. Being the fox in a mounted hunt through forests of flayed, burning souls. Then some highlights from the arena. Killing, eleven years of killing. I let them see exactly what being Sandman Slim is all about. Most of them don’t get that far.
This Shut Eye doesn’t make it past my first week Downtown, when a drunk Hellion guard slit me open and tried to pull out my intestines because he’d heard that’s where humans hid their souls. But I don’t let the Shut Eye off that easy. I hold him inside long enough to feel me running away from the neighbor’s dog and getting my leg chewed up.
When I let go, Criswell flies out of my head like a goose through a jet engine. He gasps and is on the verge of tears when the connection finally breaks.
Huston grabs him by the shoulder.
“Ray, you okay?” Ray doesn’t hear him. He’s looking at me.
“Why?” he asks.
“’Cause