Mortality Bridge (41 page)

Niko drives and the night goes on forever and Niko drives.

WHEN NIKO HEARD his demon splash into the river he got out of the dripping wet sedan, the engine still running and steam glowing in the headlights as it rose from the Franklin’s dark contours. Niko looked up at the solid roof of night and realized he couldn’t run back to the water to help his demon or even look to see where his demon was. From behind him came splashing. “Hey,” he called to a Polynesian man embedded in ice up to his waist. “Can you see what happened to the demon who fell in?”

The man nodded agreeably and said something Niko couldn’t understand. Near the rear of the Black Taxi a chubby man with a patchy beard was embedded up to his thighs and bent over as far as he could to warm his hands in the car’s softly puttering exhaust. “Yo,” he called to Niko. “He’s right there. You blind?”

“I have a curse. I can’t look back.”

“Ooh, some curse.”

“Is my, has the demon gone under?”

“You kiddin? He’s standing right there like he lost a fuckin contact lens. The water’s yay high.” The man put a hand near his hairy genitals. “Hey. You’re that guitar guy aren’t you? Nike, some shit like that. My fuckin kids used to get stoned and listen to you. Bouncin around the house with their fuckin hair and pretendin to play the guitar. Dope dealin little bastards. Fuck, I sent one of em down here.” The man straightened from the exhaust pipe. Melted ice puddled beneath the car. “So you’re here too huh? Like I’m surprised. Weren’t you a junky or something?”

“Or something. Listen—”

“So I guess you’re just mister big fuckin rock star huh? Clothes and a fuckin gangster car for the big celebrity. Whose big ol devil dick did you suck, Mister Dope Fiend?”

Niko started looking around for another source of help. “It’s not like that. I’m sorry but I’m in a hurry—”

“Oh he’s in a hurry. He’s got a fuckin schedule. No shit, I’m glad you’re even talking to a nobody like me. Before you go I wonder if I could get your fuckin autogra—”

“Could you yell for him to come here?”

Patchy Beard crossed his arms. “Fuuuuck you.” He nearly sang it. Niko glanced at the Black Taxi. The well of its reflection on the melted ice. “Call him over and I’ll pull you out.”

“You’re fuckin A, Jackson.” The man made longhorns with his fingers and whistled piercingly and then cupped his hands and shouted. “Yo Batman. Hey ugly. Cmere.” He put his hands on his hips. “He’s coming. Hey how the Yankees doing? Been in the series lately?”

“They lost.”

“Damn Yankees.”

Niko heard his demon splashing toward the shore. “What did you say to me?” his own approaching voice said.

Patchy Beard stopped with his yap half open as he recognized the demon’s voice and then the demon’s face. “Well put my dick in a blender. He’s fuckin ugly as you.”

Niko sidestepped and backed up until he stood before his demon and he craned his neck to look the waterlogged creature in the eye. His demon’s face was changed. The expression lacked the gleeful hostility and brooding menace hewn into cheek and brow and lip. More, his demon looked lost. Still frightening. Still powerful. But lost. “Do you remember who you are?” said Niko.

His demon’s look was unlike any Niko ever saw him wear. The pure befuddlement belied its very design. The demon slowly shook his head and Niko felt a little tug of pity. He sighed and walked past his demon’s burly shoulder, treading carefully on the ice, to open the passenger door. “Climb in,” he told the demon who did not know he was Niko’s demon.

“Whyyyy?” He sounded like a child.

“Because I can tell you who and what you are and why you can’t remember.” Niko smiled as he gestured for the demon to get in. “Trust me.”

NOW NIKO LISTENS to his passenger shiver and shift on the seat behind him. My demon. “Your name,” he tells the thrumming night unspooling there before him, “is Nikodemus.”

“Nikodemus.”

“Does that ring any bells?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Niko bites his lower lip and takes a deep breath and glances at the mason jar beside him. He doesn’t need to see the hairline crack, he feels it in his fissured heart. Is the feather’s glow a little dimmer? It seems to be. He gently lifts the jar and holds it out behind him without looking, left hand steady on the wheel. “Here. Careful with it.” He hopes he sounds less nervous than he feels.

Tendrils wrap the jar and take it from him. “What is it?”

“It’s somebody’s soul.”

Greenish shadows shift. “It’s broken.”

“It broke when we jumped the Lethe a few minutes ago and you fell in.”

“The Lethe.”

“It’s a river. The water causes amnesia.”

“I fell in?”

Niko nods. “It’s why you’re soaking wet.”

“I don’t remember falling in.”

“That’s because you fell in.”

“I’m cold.”

Niko adjusts the heater. “Better?”

A long pause. “You’re mortal?”

“Very.”

“I’m helping you?”

“You’ve been assigned to me. We’re like partners in a race. There’s a bet on whether we can get the jar to the gate. A lot of people are trying to stop us.”

A tendril taps the jar’s screwon cap. “Why don’t I just fly this to the gate?”

He is startled by the suggestion. But no. “There are conditions. I’m not allowed to look back, but you can. They can’t try to stop me but they’re allowed to try to stop you. You’d catch hell if you tried to make it out with that.” He glances toward the rearview to gauge Nikodemus’ reaction and once again is glad and frustrated at the mirror’s absence.

The demon actually scratches his head with a tendril as he concentrates. “Okay. Anything else?”

“If anything happens to the jar we’re screwed.”

Green light shifts. “But something’s already happened to the jar.”

“I think it’s still okay. Just don’t let it break.” The Franklin slurs on a wet patch and Niko nudges the wheel in the direction of the mild skid. The tires regain traction and the Franklin straightens out. “Any other questions?”

“What’s your name?”

Niko senses Nikodemus is distressed by the absence of what he feels should be there. Niko remembers the sensation well. He grips the steering wheel tighter. “Niko.”

“Niko.”

“Sound familiar?”

“No. It sounds like my name though. Are we friends?”

Niko frowns. “Well. We’ve known each other a long time. You kind of work for me.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Niko drives another mile with his mouth pressed tight. The darkness weighs around them with oceanic pressure. We do not drive across so much as tunnel through.

Finally he bangs the steering wheel. “Look,” he tells the hollow dark, “you don’t really work for me. We’re not partners. I made that up. I’m sorry.”

“Oh. What are we then?”

“You were assigned to me, but not for some bet. It was your job to lead me into temptation. To give me a nudge when I was wavering.”

“But now I’m helping you.”

“Apparently.”

“How come?”

“I don’t really know. I think you feel sorry for me.”

“Sorry for a mortal?”

“I don’t really know. I’m not sure you do either.”

“You could just be telling me all this too.”

“I could. But I could have not told you you’re my demon at all and you wouldn’t know any better.”

“How’d we end up in this, this situation?”

Niko barks a laugh and feels a sudden craving for a cigarette. He drives, and as he drives he talks to the advancing night that never tires of its own disgorgement. And for once he tells the dark the truth. And for once the darkness listens.

“SO THAT’S THE deal.” Niko’s throat is raspy and he wants a drink. Water, but he’d chug a double whiskey without a thought. He’s exhausted and his side is throbbing where his rib is fractured and the pain is probably all that’s keeping him awake by now. They’ve left behind the plain of ice and drive again upon the barren floor of Hell. Somewhere in the gloom a mountain rises, somewhere on its face a fallen god is chained. Far ahead a thin black thread has formed the flat horizon of the Ledge. Niko watches as it slowly thickens and he clears his throat. The heater’s off now. The windows are open and a hot and septic wind plays through the spacious car.

“And this is all true,” says Nikodemus.

Niko’s very aware his demon literally holds Jemma’s life in his—well, his tendrils. “Every damned word.”

“And if I go back they’ll obliterate me.”

“After they hurt you a lot for a long time, yeah. That’s what you said.”

Shadows shift as the jar is held up and turned about. “Will my memory come back?”

“Mine did. Eventually. I don’t think it’s gone, I think you just can’t get to it.” Now he sees the faint outlines of the ascending hills of the mounded dead fallen from the Ramp. The Meat Pie Mountains.

“Okay,” his demon finally says.

Niko frowns at the prow of the car plowing the dark. “Okay what?”

“Okay, I guess Nikodemus is an all right name.”

Tears sting Niko’s eyes. “Okay,” he says. As much to himself as to his darker version.

“So what do we do now?”

“Is anyone behind us?”

“Not a soul.”

“Okay then.” Niko takes a deep breath and yawns deeply and arches on the seat and stretches to his fingertips. He shakes his head and rubs his heavy eyelids. “Now we teach you how to drive a stick shift.”

HE WAS ROWING on Lake Arrowhead. The water red and the sky dark. From the bow Jemma grinned at him and said Pass me a bun, hon. Niko shipped oars and picked up the paper sack from the seat beside him. When he opened it something green and glowing flew out and disappeared into the sky. He smelled Jem’s perfume. He looked at Jem to ask her if she’d seen what just happened but Jem had turned into a husk. Her body collapsed as he watched. He knew he had to get her back to shore and get the green thing back into the sack but when he picked up oars again he saw there was no shore. Only bloodred water far as he could see. He called her name. Not to the empty Jemma suit that rippled like paper in the breeze but to the vacant air. He began to row without direction. Calling and calling her name.

“Hey. Wake up.”

“Mnmn.”

“Niko. Come on, get up.”

Niko opens bleary eyes to find himself on the back seat curled around the mason jar as if he’s cold and it gives forth some form of heat. He sits up and his injuries are tallied and handed to him in one lump sum. An invisible knife is wedged between his ribs. His shoulders throb and his feet ache and his neck is stiff. “Whadissit. Jus laid down.”

“You’ve been asleep for two and a half hours.”

This wakes him up a bit. “Are we there yet?”

“Not quite. But we have company.”

“Um gotta pee.”

“Can’t help you there, buddy pal.”

“Who, who’s behin us?” Niko feels as if he’s trying to think thoughts his brain is too small to contain.

“I don’t know. Headlights.”

Niko blinks. “A car.”

“Niko, you have to wake up. I’ll never get this thing up the Ramp. It’s all I can do to drive it straight with nothing around us.”

“Nnkay.” Feeling drugged unsteady he carefully sets the jar on the front seat beside Nikodemus and climbs over the seatback like an old man. Nikodemus’ bulk takes up most of the space in the front of the sedan. Riding shotgun for a moment Niko collects his wits and stares at the obsidian Nothing filling the windshield. “Where the hell are we?”

“Coming up on the Ramp.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“That’s the Ledge. It’s so big you can’t see it all. Here.” He turns right and the Franklin angles more obliquely toward the infinitely wide upthrust fault. Now Niko sees the distant knife edge of the Ramp itself against the vast undifferentiated black of the Ledge’s face, angling down until it merges with the Lower Plain. The Meat Pie Mountains begin as small hills at the foot of the Ramp, undulating ever taller off into the starless distance. Beyond that a dull glint from the sluggish surface of the sea of blood.

Nikodemus steers them straight toward the Ledge again and once again the view is vacant black. It looks simultaneously as if the car is floating motionless in an empty universe and as if it’s constantly about to hit a wall.

“Go straight again. That’s making me sick.”

“Screws up your perspective doesn’t it?” Nikodemus turns the wheel. “I see what you mean about the car. It doesn’t like being driven.”

“Mmm. I wasn’t kidding about needing to pee.”

Nikodemus grins and holds out the mason jar.

“Aren’t you a fucking riot.”

“You could try peeing out the window.”

“Look, I’ve learned I’m capable of a lot of uncivilized things. But I’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

Niko clamps his knees together. “How far back are they?” Nikodemus’ head swivels far enough to break a human neck. “Eleven and a half miles.”

“I don’t think I can hold it till the next gas station. Better stop.” Immediately Nikodemus whips a tendril around the shift lever and puts the car in neutral and hits the brakes. They’re still creeping along when Niko jumps out and tears open his fly. And stands there waiting and feeling foolish.

“I thought you had to pee.”

“Quit staring.”

The demon looks puzzled. “Whyyyy?”

“Stop looking at me dammit.”

Shaking his gargoyle head Nikodemus lets the clutch out with the Franklin in gear and the big car bucks like a bronco and stalls. Nikodemus lets it roll a few feet. Brakelights make the patch of plain look like the surface of Mars. Nikodemus starts the car but forgets to take it out of gear and the Franklin lurches and stalls again.

“Oh heck” from inside and then the engine starts.

Niko finds himself staring at a pristine vintage car idling on the floor of Hell while he holds his penis in his hand and tries to pee. Yessir, I’m on me a heroic epic type journey.

Something monstrous shrieks nearby. Niko jumps back and pees on his own shoe before he realizes it’s Nikodemus leaning on the Black Taxi’s horn. Niko shouts God damn it and his knees buckle as the ground quakes and a roaring spreads across the sunless sky.

As quickly as it came the tectonic spasm passes. Niko runs for the car.