Mortality Bridge (50 page)

She glances back at the sound of his car and waves and then gestures for him to stay put. He stops before the front door. When he honks the horn he half expects to hear the bellow of some prehistoric beast. But no. It’s just a carhorn and the Bentley’s just a car.

What seems like a long time is less than ten seconds before Nikodemus rushes from the house in a blur of wings and tendrils and sees Niko in the Bentley and runs toward him with one tendril wrapped around the mason jar and the other reaching for the door. The demon lifts the latch but nothing happens. The automatic locks engaged when Niko put the car in gear. Past Nikodemus the Black Taxi Driver appears in the doorway of the house. Niko blindly stabs the control panel and his window whines down. Nikodemus is about the tear the door off when Niko stabs another button and the doors unlock. Nikodemus piles in and Niko peels out.

Nikodemus holds the mason jar in one coiled tendril. “I tried.”

“I know you did.” Niko speeds down the drive past soulless blind statues and surges to a halt before the gate. They wait an eternity for the automatic gate to clatter open. Niko glances at the jar. Does it give forth light or mere reflection now?

Beyond the gate the Black Taxi still faces the pummeled Checker Cab, but the black sedan’s bonnet hood is folded up. There’s no sign of the cabbie. In the rearview Niko sees the Driver strolling down the driveway toward them.

When the gate is open wide enough Niko glides forward twenty feet and punches an overhead button and the gate begins to slowly rattle shut as Niko stops beside the Franklin. The black car’s hood folds down and the cabbie looks at Niko with a big old shiteating grin. Her hands are smudged with grease and a smear of it warpaints her forehead beside the streak of Niko’s blood. The cabbie glances up the driveway at the Driver coming toward them. “Goodbye, good luck, get going.”

“One question.”

“Better be quick.”

“Black Cab test question.”

Her eyebrows raise. “Shoot.”

“Shortest distance from point A—” Niko indicates their surroundings “—to point B.”

And points up.

Her mouth opens in surprised delight. “Dang I like you. You got brass.” And quickly she gives Niko the directions he needs.

He can only shake his head when he hears where he is bound. Doesn’t that just goddamn figure? He glances in the rearview and sees the Driver at the gate now. “Thanks,” he tells the cabbie. “I’ll marry you next time around, I swear.”

“You already did. Now get out of here.” She squeezes his arm and nods farewell to Nikodemus and slaps the rear of the Bentley as if spurring on a horse as Niko speeds away. She watches the car speed round the corner and listens to the throaty engine dwindle down the hill. Good car, the Bentley. Rich man’s car.

She closes her grease-stained fingers over an object in her hand and smiles. Then she straightens her thin tie and turns toward the gate to face the enemy she has faced so many times so many places, the enemy she so truly deeply loves. “I think you dropped this, Sparky,” the cabbie says, and holds out the magneto wire she tore loose from the Black Taxi.

XXXII.

RUNNING ON FAITH

SO. FRIDAY NIGHT, Hollywood Freeway northbound. Traffic not too bad if you don’t mind whipping in and out of the breakdown lane at ninety to pass the slowpokes and piss off just about everybody.

Niko doesn’t mind. Whatever the cabbie did to the Black Taxi will only be a stalling measure at best. We’re talking about a car that repaired itself after an eighty mile an hour collision with an iron gate and a dog the size of a one ton clubcab pickup. So put some miles on, buddy pal.

Speaking of buddy pals. Niko looks at Nikodemus filling up the front seat like a grownup in a schoolboy’s desk. The torn and battered eyepatched demon watches cars they pass, watches the city with the open curiosity of a child. He shifts constantly on the seat. Nowhere is comfortable because of his wings. Opposing traffic a motionless headlight river. Must be an accident somewhere past Hollywood. Oh wait a minute. Niko remembers the overturned fueltruck by the Virgil exit. I drove by the cause of this traffic jam an hour ago. My god.

Nikodemus rubs a tendril against the thick pad taped over his ruined eye.

Nikodemus I owe you so much. You haven’t even asked where we are going. My dark and ruinous twin you have a faith I never had. Our destinies are linked and always have been. Knowing this should make it easier to tell you what I must. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t. I still believe in my own volition.

He snakes through traffic as he speaks his demon’s given name. “So Nikodemus.”

The white patch turns toward him. “That’s not really my name, is it?”

Niko shakes his head.

“I didn’t think so. It doesn’t feel right.” The head turns away again. They’ve reached the downside of the Cahuenga Pass connecting Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. Ahead to the right the multicolored neon and lighted tubes and spires and pyrotechnic flashes from Universal City Walk hold the demon’s attention. Its black tower cleaves the misted night.

“I don’t know your real name. I gave you that one after you fell in the Lethe. I had to call you something.”

“I’m not mad. It’s kind of funny. Nikodemus.”

Niko feels like a total shit. He has to tell Nikodemus what he’s up to. The demon has the right to know. Especially now that he is mortal.

Ahead the right three lanes split off to form the westbound Ventura Freeway. Niko whips across traffic and into the far right lane. Streetlights all around them dim. How odd.

Then Nikodemus is shaking his shoulder with one tendril and steering the car into the breakdown lane near Laurel Canyon with the other. “Hey. Wake up. Come on, wake up.”

Niko grabs the wheel. “I fell asleep?”

They ease into the breakdown lane and stop. Staccato rush of passing cars. Nikodemus studies him. “You’re very pale.”

The surrounding traffic lights have grown abstract. Niko can’t make sense of them. He’s cold. Ask Nikodemus to turn the heater on? Can’t concentrate. Nikodemus talking. “What’s that?” Niko shouts as if his demon is far away.

“I said I think you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“Oh.” Niko considers this. Yes that seems right. He’s lost a lot of blood. He shakes his head in great big arcs. “Can’t do that. Wayyy too soon. Got a little ways to go. Then I can bleed to my heart’s content.”

“How far?”

“Hmm?”

“How far away is where we’re going?”

“Maybe thirty miles.”

“All right.” The car chimes as Nikodemus gets out. Niko’s head lolls as he watches the enormous alien figure walk around the car and open his door. The surf of speeding cars grows louder. A horn blows and tires screech. Boy gonna cause him a accident.

Nikodemus leans into the car. “Come on.”

“Wherem I goin?”

“Passenger side. I’m driving.”

“Smy car.”

“All right, I’m driving your car.”

“Oh. Okay.” Niko sleepily acquiesces and clambers painfully to the passenger seat instead of getting out and going around. Ooh look at all the blood. A cable in his back pulls taut. Niko lifts the mason jar from the floorboards and breathes deeply. Faintest trace of her perfume and not a ray of light. Hang in there baby Niko tells the jar and cuddles it.

“Where is the clutch pedal?” Nikodemus says. “How do I work this lever?”

“Issa automatic. Put it in D an you don’t gotta shift.”

Nikodemus looks impressed. He fiddles with the electronic controls until the seat is as far back as it will go. He adjusts the rearview mirror and puts the Bentley in drive and abruptly steers onto the freeway. A horn blares and a Honda screeches around them, missing their rear bumper and then the car in the next lane over by less than a foot.

They’re doing ninety by the time they pass Coldwater Canyon. “Umunna go seepy now.”

“Where are we going?”

“Malibu Canyon.”

“What’s there?”

Niko blinks blearily at his companion. “Heaven.”

NIKO GETS A second wind as they climb out of the Valley just past Woodland Hills. He wakes up with a gasp and glances around, disoriented. They’re really whipping along the freeway. The speedometer hovers just above one hundred. Shouldn’t we slow down to avoid attention? Ah fuck it. What are they gonna do, shoot me?

The fuel gauge is below empty and the idiot light is on.

Niko turns to look behind them and feels that awful pulling in his back. Like a guitar string tightened to snapping. Great, I’m a highnote test.

A pair of bugeyed headlights races in the breakdown lane a couple miles back and slowly gaining.

“He’s back there,” says Nikodemus.

“I’m cold.”

Nikodemus frowns. “The heater’s all the way up.”

“You want me to drive?”

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

“Okay. We’re a mess, huh?”

“We’re a mess.”

They pass the sign for Parkway Calabasas. Calabasas means pumpkins Niko thinks. Someone named a place pumpkins. “You don’t think we’re gonna make it, do you?” he says to the road ahead.

His demon drives in silence for a mile. “It would help if I knew what we were doing.”

“Okay. In a couple miles take the Las Virgenes exit. Go left and head out Malibu Canyon toward the ocean. Just before Pepperdine there’s a tunnel. If we can get to it before the Black Taxi gets to us I think we have a shot.”

“Whyyy?”

“Well. As below so above.”

“I don’t understand.”

“As the Red Line tunnel is an entrance to your old stomping grounds, so the Malibu Canyon tunnel is an entrance—” And Niko gestures at a point beyond the roof.

Silence for a while.

“Are you sure?”

Niko looks at Nikodemus. Worry does not sit well on the demon’s face. “Yeah. I’m sure. You still don’t think we’re gonna make it, do you?”

“We might. We could. If the Driver doesn’t run us off the road. If your car doesn’t run out of gas. If you don’t run out of blood before we get there. If your woman’s soul is still in the jar.”

“Okay, so other than that.” Niko leans his head against the window. The glass cool against his forehead. “Thanks for driving. You didn’t have to come you know.”

“Yes I did.”

“Yeah. I guess you did.” Niko shuts his eyes. His hands and feet feel miles away. He shivers with some inner cold. All he wants to do is sleep. O Faustus now hast thou but one bare hour to live. I am in the last hour of my life. All I do now a compendium of final things. I have kissed Jemma one last time. I have left my home a final time. The last time I will see my city. Music has left me now. On the road ahead my last words wait for me. Last breath. Final heartbeat. Sight. As always they have lain out there. As for all who ever lived. My enemy and friend beside me drives me toward that meeting I’ve evaded but anticipated all my life. The unsailed sea that shapes the continent of life itself by giving it a shore. Now my untried soul will brave that deep. As Jemma here beside me has though I have hauled her partway from that drowning.

He turns the redsmeared broken jar in his bloodstained hands. Just glass. Just a feather. Jemma will I see you again? We are spirits I have learned. Something in us immortal and irreducibly ourselves. But paired and forever bound? I don’t know. I fear perhaps we intersect we waltz and we move on. The music stops and we are all alone. Well if that is so I can accept it. When I set out to get you back it was because you had been taken from me. But on the way my reasons changed. It was because you had been taken at all. Taking you was wrong. Not unfair, not tragic, but wrong. A violation. You didn’t deserve to die. You don’t deserve to be there. And I don’t care what happens to me so long as I can make that right. My winning or losing no longer matters. I don’t deserve you back. I signed my soul away and can’t stand on some right to overturn that. Phil was right: a binding contract freely entered into. But you did not. They can have me. But not until we have you safely from them. That’s what’s different this time. That is what we have a chance of winning here. For even just the fact of change can be a victory.

But now that we have broken free the story’s outcome is unknown. What will happen to you when we cross that boundary again? To think that you might simply be returned to where I brought you from.

All I can do is what I do now. The rest is in the hands of the gods. Who are not known for their evenhandedness. Not to mortal men and especially not to those who set themselves against them. Even Orpheus before me did not get so far. Yet he was not blessed with such companions as I’ve had. Perhaps that was his failure, that he took it on himself. That in truth he went down for himself and not for her.

So hold on Jem. Hold on. Soon we will be home.

THE CAR TURNS off the freeway and Niko opens heavy lids. “Where are we?”

“Las Virgenes exit.”

“Go left.”

They turn left and pass above the Ventura Freeway. Up ahead a McDonald’s and a liquor store and a gas station. “We need gas,” says Niko.

“Look behind us.”

Niko looks just as the black length of the Franklin turns left off the exit ramp. Shit. Nikodemus puts the hammer down and an invisible hand shoves Niko into the seat. Mournfully he watches the gas station whip by.

The Bentley flashes by an L.A. County Sheriff car parked on a side road before a condo cluster. The patrol car kicks up dust and speeds onto the road where it is nearly broadsided by the Black Taxi before the big black car yaws into the lefthand lane and whips around the black-and-white.

“Cop,” says Niko.

Nikodemus merely looks at him.

“Yeah right, never mind.” They lean hard into a curve. “This road is sort of glued onto a mountain range. It’s pretty curvy so be careful.”

“I like this car. It’s much easier to drive than that one.”

“I’ll will it to you.”

Colored light plays about them. The sheriff’s lightbar. Its strobing backlights the Black Taxi racing between the Bentley and the patrol car and definitely gaining.

Nikodemus sticks the Bentley round a tight right curve. The tires wail as they slide out toward the precipice in a mild fourwheel drift into the path of oncoming headlights. Nikodemus backs off on the gas and cuts in and a black Ford pickup streaks by honking and goes on to barely miss the Black Taxi and the pursuing patrol car.