“Forget it. He’s fucking with us because it’s all he can do. Play around in our heads. He can go to Hell or rot down there. Either is fine by me.”
NEFESH MIGHT HAVE been playing mind games when we left, but he told the truth about the way out. Up the dead escalator. A U-turn onto the stairs and we’re back in the Gothic rain forest of Kill City’s main lobby. The Christmas tree is straight and huge, a fungus-covered evergreen where there should be a giant banana palm or kapok.
“What do we do now? Nefesh said the Qomrama is all the way at the top,” says Traven.
Candy looks at me.
“You’ve used it before. Can you summon it or call it down or something?” she says.
My gut aches. I’m dizzy but I don’t want the others to know right now.
“Even if I knew how, I don’t think I have any hoodoo left in me.”
“You’re still here,” says someone from across the lobby. “I thought you’d all be gone by now. Or dead.”
It’s Hattie. Her tattered robes are in even worse shape than they were before. Her hair is wild and dirty. Her face is scratched.
She says, “Are there any Shoggots left?”
“A few, but not enough for you to worry about. Sorry about your kids.”
She nods.
“So am I. You’re trying to get up the tree. Why?”
“The thing we came here for is at the top.”
She smiles at us like the fools we are.
“You come all this way to end up back where you started. Ain’t that a kick in the backside.”
“It’s a kick, but I was thinking somewhere else.”
She looks Vidocq and me over.
“You’re too big to climb it. It’s rickety. You’ll bring the damned thing down on top of us.”
“I won’t,” says Candy.
She looks up the length of the tree like she’s climbed it a million times.
I say, “That’s fifty feet. You sure about this?”
She zips up her jacket. Pushes back her hair.
“Can any of you grow claws?”
“Take this,” says Vidocq. He hands her a white filter mask. “I thought these might come in useful. You don’t want to breathe any of that foulness into your lungs.”
“Thanks.”
Candy flips up her jacket collar and heads for the tree. On the way, curled claws extend from her hands as she goes Jade.
“Brave girl,” says Hattie.
“Yes. She is.”
“Foolish.”
“You live in a garbage dump, lady. You don’t get to pick and choose who’s a fool.”
The tree creaks as Candy climbs. Shaggy branches shake, sending down a storm of pine needles, dust, and fungus. I cover my eyes and mouth but still get a mouthful of the gritty, dirt-flavored mess. The others choke and go into racking coughs around me.
I look up through the bad air. Candy is climbing along the trunk, so I can’t see her, but the moving branches show me where she is. Jades are fast and strong. She’s already more than halfway up. The top of the tree sways as she gets higher. Wood snaps and pops in ways that inspire anything but confidence. Branches and glass ornaments crash to the floor.
“Are you all right?” yells Brigitte.
“Don’t bother,” I say. “She doesn’t talk when she’s Jaded out.”
The tree stops shaking. A branch at the top moves. There’s something silver on the end. The branch bends back toward the tree trunk.
“She’s found it,” says Hattie.
The treetop sways as Candy goes farther out onto the limb to drag it backward. There’s a loud crack and the whole top of the tree comes loose like it’s on a hinge, slamming into the lower branches, upside down but intact. Something falls through the branches. Not falls. Shoots like a bullet and crashes into the lobby floor, kicking up shards of marble and concrete like shotgun pellets.
I run to where it came down, not breathing. Not thinking. My head swims as I go. I stumble but I don’t stop.
In a crater two feet wide and three feet deep lies the 8 Ball. The others crowd around me. I look up at the tree. Branches shake, but this time they’re headed down. A few seconds later, Candy emerges from under the tree and sprints across the lobby, turning back to herself. She’s covered in a fine film of dust and spores and her hair is matted with pine needles. She runs her hand through her hair and shakes her head like a dog, sending dust everywhere.
“Told you I could do it,” she says.
“Good job. Now go take a shower. You smell like a love-hotel welcome mat.”
Hattie stands at the edge of the hole, looking down.
“Don’t look like much, does it?”
Traven says, “The core of the first nuclear bomb was only sixty-four kilograms and it leveled a city.”
“That so? Aren’t you a font of useless information.”
“I didn’t drop it,” says Candy. “It shot away from me when I tried to touch it.”
“Maybe it didn’t like you,” I say. “The father said it might be alive. Maybe your Jade form freaked it out.”
“Touchy little bastard, for a weapon,” says Candy.
I look at Traven.
“Okay, Father. You’re up. Let’s see if it likes you.”
“Do you think it’s safe now?” he says.
“When I had it before it only hurt anyone when I was angry or threatened. As long as you’re calm, it should be fine.”
“Calm,” he says, and looks at me. “That’s a tall order right now.”
Traven’s eyes are a little glassy. He looks far from a hundred percent as he gets on one knee and gently reaches for the 8 Ball.
“You’ll do fine,” I say. “Nice and easy. Look out for any sharp edges. It can nick you.”
He hesitates before reaching down again. Lays his hand on top of the ball and holds it there for a second. Nothing happens. He relaxes and gets a grip on it and pulls it out. He’s smiling when he stands up.
“I think the books were right about it being alive,” he says. “It feels like it’s asleep.”
He brings it over to us. I’d rather have it a mile away, but beggars can’t be choosers.
“We’re all right,” he says. “It’s over.”
“Let’s get out of here and go home,” says Brigitte.
“In a minute,” says Traven. His smile is vacant. There’s something wrong with his eyes.
He turns and hands the 8 Ball to Hattie. She takes it from him like she knew exactly what was going to happen.
I should have seen it before, but I’ve been so wrapped up in my own aches and bullshit that I missed it. One of us isn’t who he seems, said Nefesh. Father Traven is possessed. Someone in Hell is using the possession key. They’ve taken him over and Hattie knew it was going to happen.
“What are you doing?” says Vidocq.
Hattie cradles the 8 Ball against her chest.
“Just doing what he was told,” she says.
I reach for Traven, but before I can get to him, his eyes flutter closed and he slumps to the floor, his head cracking on the pavement. Brigitte starts for him but I grab her and push her behind me.
I take a couple of steps toward Hattie. I want to rip her apart. Traven is bleeding where his skull hit the floor. I want to see her bleed too. She steps back, but not because she’s afraid.
“Who are you?”
“Don’t you recognize me?” she says, her voice coolly amused. “You destroyed my home. You humiliated me. You’re an Abomination and your presence in this city has brought it and me nothing but misery.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Her face shifts. Her skin crawls. The old woman becomes a young one, then cycles back to a crone, like the phases of the moon.
“Medea Bava,” I say. “I heard you were Deumos’s sorority sister. Shouldn’t you be in Hell?”
“And leave the world to your tender mercies?” she says.
“You killed Hattie and took her place. Why?”
“For just this minute. To see the look on your face when you knew.”
“Why didn’t you just take the 8 Ball and go?”
“I didn’t know where it was in here any more than you did. Besides . . . letting you find it for me was a chance to watch you and your friends suffer, and that alone was reason enough to watch and wait.”
I pull the SIG from my pocket and aim for her head.
She holds up the 8 Ball.
“You say it works when you’re angry or threatened? How do you think you make me feel?”
I lower the SIG and put it back in my pocket.
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Why, return it to its rightful owner.”
She pulls out a pendant from under her robes. I recognize the shape. It’s Aelita’s angelic sigil. Hattie kisses it three times.
“Come to me, sister. Come and receive what’s yours.”
“Medea.”
It happens instantly. The voice comes from behind us. Aelita, in a Maggie Thatcher power suit, shoulders her way past Vidocq and Candy. Bumps my shoulder as she goes past.
“You have the Qomrama, I see.”
Medea uses it to point in my direction.
“The Abomination almost had it. I took it from him and now I want to do what’s right.”
“Thank you, sister,” says Aelita, and reaches for the 8 Ball.
Medea’s lips go from a smile to a hard straight line. The 8 Ball shoots from her hand like a cannonball, slamming into Aelita over the heart, driving her across the lobby and into the wall. Spinning blades sprout from the ball, whirring like rotary saws burrowing into her chest. An angel’s scream is a terrible thing to hear. It’s the death wail of something that was never supposed to die but has lived long enough to see the universe turned upside down as it now stares down death’s gullet. Holy angel blood splatters the floor and our feet as the Qomrama punches through Aelita’s chest and out her back. She slumps to the ground, and for a few seconds she twitches, trying to breathe, trying to focus on something besides the pain, her blood, and fractured bones. Medea hasn’t moved. The 8 Ball flies from Aelita’s chest and back into her hand. Aelita gasps one more time and fades away. An angel’s death. Leaving nothing behind but one more hole in the universe.
Medea looks at me.
“Her war with God was a child’s thing,” she says. “It got in the way of the true work.”
“Coming after me? I’m flattered all to hell,” I say.
Medea makes a face. Behind her, Traven’s eyes flutter open. He looks around for a second, unsure what’s happening. With his sleeve he wipes blood from his eyes.
“You’d like to think that all this is for you, wouldn’t you, Abomination?”
“You sure talk like it is.”
“I call you by your true name because it’s the one thing Aelita was right about. You’re the filth of the universe.”
“So you’re not going to be in our Secret Santa pool?”
Traven gets up unsteadily behind her. I keep hold of Brigitte.
“This . . .” Medea holds up the 8 Ball. “This will do the real work now. I’ll return to Deumos and my true sisters in Hell and we’ll finally bring the Angra Om Ya back home.”
I take a step and she steps back. Right into Traven.
“No you won’t,” he says. He picks up a fist-size piece of concrete and slams it into the back of her head. Medea drops the 8 Ball and lunges after it. Before she can get her hand on the thing, Traven has his hands around her throat and pulls her upright.
He says, “You want to go to Hell? I can send you there forever.”
He plants his mouth over hers, like a terrible kiss. The Via Dolorosa. He spits millions of the sins he’s eaten over the years into her, burning her insides, turning her soul blacker than any normal human’s could ever be. Guaranteeing her the lowest depths of damnation.
But something is wrong. I’ve never seen the Dolorosa take this long before. Bava spasms and tries to push him away. Digs her nails into his face. Then goes slack. Traven’s skin is white. He lets go of Bava, tenses, and falls onto his back in some kind of seizure. I let go of Brigitte and we run over. I hold down his shoulders and Brigitte grabs his legs until it passes. When Traven opens his eyes, they’re dull and the whites are red with blood. He’s blind. His face and hands are covered in deep red hemorrhages. His heartbeat is an unsteady staccato. Each of his slow, shallow breaths is harder for him to take than the one before. When he can talk, it’s just a whisper.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I gave it to her.”
“It’s okay. You couldn’t help it. Everyone knows.”
“Does she have it?”
“No. You stopped her.”
“Liam,” says Brigitte. She’s crying, touching his bloody face. “Don’t move. We’ll get you to Allegra.”
Traven laughs when he hears her voice. She leans down and kisses him. He goes slack in her arms. She looks at me.
“Take us through a shadow. Now.”
Traven draws a deep painful breath and grabs my arm.
“Put the Qomrama in the Room. Keep it from anyone who can use it.”
I look for a dark shadow, one big enough to take all of us. I spot one by a pillar. Candy grabs the 8 Ball, but when I try to pick up Traven, he stiffens in a new round of convulsions, coughing blood.
Vidocq pushes me away. Pours something down Traven’s throat. He goes still. Brigitte is trying not to scream. When the shaking starts again, Vidocq pulls out another potion. Brigitte grabs my arm.
