Mob Rules (19 page)

“We hung out after the club closed sometimes.”

“You picked up girls at the club.”

“Yeah, I guess. Jamal showed me his graffiti, too. He tried
to explain how it worked, but I couldn't understand half of it. It was cool, though.”

He looked up at me and I nodded again. “Jesus, Domino, you're still not going to ask any questions?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. The thing is, I was at his apartment the night he was killed. Earlier, I mean. We were pretty drunk and we wanted to smoke some weed.”

“What happened when you got to his apartment?”

“Finally a question. That's the thing, though, I don't know. I guess I drank too much and I blacked out. I woke up here the next morning and I couldn't remember much about it.”

“You must have been pretty drunk,” I said. “Shouldn't have been driving. Do you think Jamal drove you home?”

“I just don't know, and you're right, that's never happened to me before. I don't see how I could have made it home by myself.”

“Maybe he drove you home and caught a cab back to his place.”

“Yeah, I guess. When I heard about it, though—Jesus, it was like a bad movie. I thought maybe I did have something to do with it, you know, and just couldn't remember. Like temporary insanity or something.”

“What did you do? Did you go to your father about it?”

“No fucking way. I only found out about Jamal yesterday. One of the guys called me. He said there had been two murders, and I knew I didn't have anything to do with the other one. Anyway, I didn't really think it was me. It was just weird, you know?”

“Yeah, I'll bet.” I remembered how freaked out he'd been after the episode in his loft the night before, when I'd broken
in. He'd had plenty of weirdness the last few days, and I was amazed how well he was holding it together.

“That's about it,” he said. “You know, I just didn't want there to be any secrets.”

“I'm glad, Adan,” I said. “No secrets.” I almost gagged on the words.

“So do you have any idea who did it? I mean, if you don't mind me asking. Do you think it was those guys I told you about? Papa Danwe's outfit?”

“I don't mind, but there isn't much to tell. That's what I'm working on, and that's why I have to go.”

The look in his eyes said he'd noticed I didn't answer his question. “Do you think Manfred is involved? The reason I ask is, you know, he didn't like Jamal very much. And he could have followed us that night.”

“It's possible. He couldn't have done the ritual, but he might have been involved. Either way, it wasn't your fault.”

He nodded uncertainly.

“Jamal wasn't a random victim, Adan. Whether Fred was in on it or not, Jamal got squeezed. You don't set something like that up on a whim. Whoever did him had a reason for it, and that's what I'm trying to find out.”

“I hope you do. Jamal was a cool guy. It's fucked up what they did to him.”

“Whoever did it, I'll find him,” I said, standing up. “I don't have the juice to bring Jamal back—no one does—but I can make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else.” I sort of did have the juice to bring him back, as it turned out, just not in the way I meant.

“Be careful, Domino. Look, I know you can handle yourself, and it'd be pretty ridiculous for me to get protective. But be careful. Promise me.”

“I promise,” I said, and kissed him goodbye.

The promise was broken when it came out of my mouth. It was too late to be careful. I had to stick with reckless and try to finish the job before anyone noticed.

 

When I got home, Honey was waiting for me with an interrogation lamp and a rubber hose. We went through twenty questions and I ignored the ones I didn't want to answer. That was most of them. She was concerned or jealous or both, but she wasn't angry. I told her the potion seemed to have worked. I told her I was ready for training.

I went into my bedroom to change clothes and was momentarily defeated. What exactly is proper attire for shadow world training in kung-fu magic? Finally, I decided it didn't matter since my clothes wouldn't really exist in the Between anyway. I opted for running shorts, a sports halter and cross trainers. Honey said I looked like I was ready for yoga class.

If I'd have known where we were going, I'd have chosen a different outfit. Honey wouldn't say. After we crossed over and were ignored by Mrs. Dawson, Honey told me to follow her into the mist.

“How do I follow you? We don't actually go anywhere, as far as I can tell.”

“If we both have the same destination in mind, we'll show up there together. Otherwise, we have to stay in physical contact and you have to focus on staying with me. Think of this as the first part of your training.”

Honey zipped off down the street and I went after her. When we reached the mist, she grabbed my ear and pulled me in after her. I focused on staying with her.

The L.A. Coliseum didn't suffer much in the Between.
It didn't seem to be missing too many colors, the way other buildings might. It was drab and ugly in both worlds.

“The Coliseum?”

“Sure. What better place to learn how to fight? It's kind of a neutral ground and there are real fights here sometimes, but usually at night. Let's go!”

Honey zipped through the north entrance of the sprawling stadium, down a couple of ramps and out onto the field. There wasn't much grass to it, just hard-packed dirt. There were certainly no yardlines or goalposts anymore.

The stands were filled with ghosts. I stood in the middle of the field and turned a full circle. They were different from the ghosts of the Goth kids I'd seen standing in line at the Cannibal Club. They were loud, belligerent and I saw more than one brawl rippling through the densely packed crowd.

“What's with the peanut gallery?” I asked.

Honey shrugged. “Raiders fans. They're always here. I guess they're waiting for the team to come back.”

“The Raiders went back to Oakland in ninety-five.”

“Yeah, I guess that's why they're so pissed.”

Before long, the ghosts sitting nearest the field noticed me and the abuse started. Shouted hoots, whistles and catcalls rained down on me. When I gave them the finger, I was answered with intermittent showers of litter, beer bottles, batteries and generic debris that seemed to have been liberated from the stadium itself. A three-hundred-pound guy whose shaved head and naked torso were painted black-and-silver nailed me in the ear with a half-eaten hot dog.

“Real nice choice, Honey,” I said, mining mustard from my ear canal with my pinkie.

“Yeah, like I said, it's a good place to fight. Nice energy. Plus, do you see the kind of distance they're getting on those
throws? They're just ghosts, but they've learned how to use their juice.”

“Well, they've had a lot of time to practice.” I picked up a rough chunk of concrete that looked like it had come from the mezzanine facade. I hurled it at the fat guy, but it didn't make the stands.

“Let's get started,” Honey said. “Do you remember when I knocked you down yesterday?”

“Yeah, both times.”

“And the vampire basically did the same thing, only he hit you a lot harder.”

“I guess.”

“Well, I didn't really use any kung-fu magic. I just moved really fast and ran into you.”

“So…”

“So that's really all there is to combat in the Between—speed and power.”

“Isn't that all there is to kung-fu fighting in the real world?”

“Speed and power are good, sure, but the physical world is a lot more complicated.”

“How so?”

“Well, for example, there are those pesky laws of physics and biology. You have to worry about things like mass, and momentum and conservation of energy, and if you want to hurt someone, you have to worry about things like anatomy.”

“And here?”

“There aren't any such laws here. There are other laws, I guess, but they're very different. Anyway, in the Between, you don't have any mass, you don't have any anatomy, and neither does your opponent.”

“I just have juice.”

“Right. Juice and thought. Magic and mind. That's what you are.”

“Okay, I'm made of juice. What do I do now?”

“Magic and
mind,
Domino. You have to learn to control the magic part with the mind part.”

“So it's like a ‘free your mind' thing.”

“Yes, exactly like that,” Honey said, and smiled.

“Are you saying I can dodge bullets?”

“It's just a movie, Domino.”

“Sorry. How do I do it?”

“I'll try to hit you again, and you try to dodge out of the way.”

“Don't you have any other training methods?”

“It won't hurt if you don't let me hit you.”

“That's brilliant, Honey. Why didn't I think of that?”

“Okay, on the count of three. Ready?”

I shrugged.

“One…”

“Two…”

Honey blurred, I felt the now-familiar burst of pain in my chest, and then I was hurtling backward through the air. The packed earth of the Coliseum surface was nearly as rough as the pavement I'd spent so much time on the last couple days. I couldn't be sure with no lines on the field, but I must have been good for at least fifty yards. My chest felt like I'd taken a major-league fastball in the sternum. I lay on the ground and tried to find my breath.

Honey flew up to me. “Oh, stop that. You don't even really breathe here, remember?”

I stopped gasping for air and tried it out. Honey was right—despite what my brain was inclined to think, there didn't seem to be much point in breathing.

“You cheated,” I wheezed. I sat up and rubbed my chest.

“Your bad guys probably will, too.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Anyway, it shouldn't matter. You should be able to move out of the way as quickly as you can trigger one of your spell talismans.”

“Maybe I don't have enough juice for this.”

“It's not your magic that's the problem, it's your mind. You're a little slow.”

“Fuck you, Honey.”

“I don't mean you're stupid. You just have to realize you can move as fast as you can think. The juice will do the rest.”

“Okay, let's try again.” We did, and on the last take—I'm not sure how many it was, but we were well into the teens—I managed to flinch before Honey hit me. By this time, the stadium was filled with the dull roar of the ghosts' laughter. The fat guy was rolling in the aisle.

“That was better, I suppose,” said Honey when she flew over to me.

“Fuck this, Honey.” I looked down and saw I was sitting in a rough depression, like a small crater, that my body had eroded into the hard earth over the course of the training exercise. I wrapped my arms around my throbbing ribs and winced. “I think you're using some kind of secret fairy juju on me. This is bullshit.”

“I am. I already told you, I
am
fairy juju.”

“Well, it's no fair. I don't have to fight you, just Fred and the spirit.”

“And what makes you think you can handle the spirit juju if you can't handle the piskie juju? It's not that different—it's all magic from the Beyond, just not from Avalon, where I come from.”

“What's Avalon?”

“Faerie, the Otherworld, Anwnn, Tir na Nog—it has a lot of names. Avalon is the place where fairies were born and where we retreated as magic faded from Arcadia.”

“And it's in the Beyond? That's why I can't see your glamour, just like I can't see the spirit's magic.”

“Right.”

“So the spirit can school me just like you can.”

“If the spirit just wants to hit you, yeah, it can do that. Probably harder than I can. The vampire, too.”

“Well, then, we have to keep trying. Let's go again.”

“I don't know, Domino. You're not really getting any better at this. I think you only flinched that time because you knew what was coming.”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying I don't think I can train you. I'm hurting you, even though I'm trying not to.”

“You're pulling your punches?”

“Of course. If I wasn't, I'd have killed you already.”

“Well, that sucks. What am I going to do?”

“You could get a gun.”

“What? I thought guns didn't work here. Nothing seems to work here.”

“They don't, usually. Some events, though, usually murders and suicides, create echoes in this place of the weapons that were used.”

“Okay, that works.”

“Is your gun, the one at home…?”

I shook my head. “No, it's clean. I'll have to find one here.”

“Most of the guns that become real in the Between are controlled by a spirit called the Burning Man.”

“I thought that was some kind of party out in the desert.”

“This guy's no party. He's a spirit from the Beyond, probably a lot like the one that's possessing Adan. He's very dangerous. He's the boss of a gang in this place and he's basically cornered the local weapons market.”

“Can I deal with him?”

“I think so. He's a businessman, after all. But be very, very careful what you promise him, Domino.”

I nodded.

“This isn't a very good solution. You're still really slow. I'm not sure you'll be able to see the vampire long enough to shoot him.”

“I can handle Fred if I'm carrying.”

“I'll help you. I'll try to keep him busy, give you time to get a clean shot.”

“Thanks, Honey, but it could be dangerous. It
will
be dangerous.”

“Warrior-princess.”

“Oh, yeah. Okay, thanks. So where do I find this Burning Man?”