The Perdition Score (9 page)

What the hell is a creep like Charlie doing with angel poi
son? And where did he get it? Are rich Sub Rosas keeping celestial beings in the backyard as pets these days? There's no way I am letting these assholes out of my sight.

I double-park a couple of doors down from Musso's, waiting for the Rolls to emerge from the lot. Stopping does not endear me to the other drivers on Hollywood Boulevard. People shout at me in a fascinating variety of languages. They give me the finger. Threaten to call the cops. I want to shout at the morons that I'm trying to save their souls, but all they want is for me to move my ass.

Without the Room, this is what I'm reduced to: sucking up abuse and dodging thrown coffee cups.

Soon the Rolls-Royce appears from the side of the restaurant, easing its way into traffic. I don't want to close in on Charlie and Jean too fast. I want them to feel safe and anonymous, so I gently lift my foot off the brake and let the car roll forward.

I get about twenty feet when the Catalina slams to a stop. It feels like I hit a brick wall.

I should be so lucky.

Because it's much worse. There's an angel in front of me with one armored boot on my front bumper, and she looks pissed. No point hesitating. I floor the accelerator, hoping to knock her out of the way, but she leans into the car and I just end up burning rubber. I let up on the pedal, throw the car into park, but leave it running. By the time I get out, a crowd is gathering around us. Even on Hollywood Boulevard, a six-foot-plus woman wearing armored boots stopping a muscle car is something people will notice.

She slams her fists onto the Catalina's hood and screams, “Give me the box.”

I stab a finger at her.

“Hey, sister. You dent my car, you're paying for it.”

She punches the hood again. I look past her. The Rolls is out of sight, disappeared into the general flow of traffic.

“Return it to me,” she shouts.

“You want the box?”

I point past her.

“It's going that way in a silver Rolls. Why don't you puff out your wings and flutter after it? You'll love Charlie.”

She comes around the side of the car.

“Not that one. The one you stole.”

“Guess again. It was a gift from one of your kind. Ain't that a kick in the teeth?”

I shouldn't have said that last part. It gives her ideas. She lunges for me, but even though I'm only half angel, I'm as fast as her. I dodge her and slide across the hood of a Camry aiming for the curb. With one hand, the angel shoves the Camry out of the way, smashing it into an SUV full of kids in soccer uniforms. What sounds like all the banshees in Hell letting loose at once fills the street as the kids in the van completely fucking melt down. The boulevard crowd, who'd been digging the show up until then—probably thinking we were a publicity stunt for a shitty action movie—starts running at the sound of breaking glass and the kids wailing.

I can't outrun an angel, but I'm about as strong as she is, so I can sure as hell hurt one.

It takes a couple of kicks to knock over the parking meter. When she comes for me, I swing it at her head like a baseball
bat. She doesn't even try to get out of the way. Takes the full force on the side of her head. The blow knocks her down, but I can tell I haven't really hurt her. When she gets up, her hands and shoulders are shaking, but not from fear or pain. Her eyes are rimmed in dark circles. Her lips and fingernails are cracked. She clicks her lower jaw against the upper, then bares stained teeth at me. I swear, if she wasn't an angel, I'd peg her for a meth head.

She has scars on her cheeks and her armor is dented and battered. She's seen some heavy action, so my parking-meter stunt isn't going to impress her. Before she can come at me again, I bark some Hellion hoodoo and the car she's leaning against explodes in flames, knocking her through a camera-store window. Now the last few hardcore cases in the street abandon their cars and head for higher ground.

When she comes out of the store her face is singed on one side, which doesn't improve her looks or her mood. But the flames don't intimidate her. She sticks her face into the burning car, takes a breath, and exhales a goddamn wall of fire in my direction.

I dive between a couple of parked cars, letting the flames pass over my head.

Who the hell is she? She's sure as shit acting like a Hellion, but fallen angels are trapped Downtown. They can't come up here. That means she's come here from Upstairs, which is infinitely worse. It means that whatever angel war is going on in God's backyard, I'm now part of it.

I'm still hunkered down behind a car when it splits in two in a shower of heat and sparks. With her free hand, the angel shoves the rear end of the car out of the way while holding
her Gladius, her angelic sword of fire, in the other hand. I get up and manifest mine. She twitches. Opens and closes her eyes like she's not sure what she's seeing. However, it's not the Gladius that has her vibrating, it's whatever is wrong with her. But that's not my problem. She bellows and runs at me, her Gladius held high. I didn't want to be here before and now I'd like a big fat shadow to disappear into, only I can't, so I bellow right back at her and charge like the stupidest bull who's ever been stuck on a matador's sword.

When her Gladius crashes into mine it sends a shock wave up my arms. She's goddamn strong. Maybe too strong for me. The fiery explosion from Gladiuses colliding blows out the windows on a nearby shop, setting a row of mannequins and Valentine decorations on fire. An alarm goes off. She doesn't notice and comes at me, thundering chopping blows down at my head. I get my Gladius up and hold her off, but she's not stopping, deep into some kind of berserker rage.

I back up under the strength of her blows, but I can't keep playing defense. When she rears back for one last killing chop, I roll out of the way and tag her in the right arm.

But it doesn't do anything.

I only caught her with the tip of the Gladius and her armor deflected most of the blow. Still, she's getting wilder and fighting sloppy. If I can hold on long enough, with luck she'll do something stupid.

The problem is, she's taking her sweet time about it. Neither one of us is landing a killing blow, but she manages to get close to my right arm, setting my coat sleeve on fire. I don't have time to put it out as she charges in again. I aim
under her sword arm, hoping that if I can catch her at the right moment, the tightened chain mail will give way. I get the shot in, but the mail doesn't budge. She smiles, thinking she's winning, and I'm afraid she might be right. In the second she takes to gloat, I get to wave my arm enough to put out my burning sleeve. Something is going to give here soon and I'm afraid it might be me.

When she comes at me again, I feel the parking meter under my foot. I kick it at her and it glances off her left knee, slowing her just long enough to pull the Colt Peacemaker I keep in my waistband at the back. Normally, shooting bullets at an armored angel is a bigger waste of time than teaching algebra to cats, but I don't use ordinary bullets. I dip mine in Spiritus Dei, a rare and excruciatingly expensive potion. It can cure wounds when used right, and when it isn't, it will kill pretty much anything that walks, crawls, or flies. I don't know what the bullets will do to angelic armor, but desperate times call for stupid choices and I'm the world champion of those.

I fire three times right into her heart. The bullets hitting the celestial armor sound like someone smashing a church bell with a sledgehammer. The bad news is, while the bullets dent her armor, none get through. She takes a step back, realizes what I did, and laughs at me. I'll admit it. That hurts a little. It also leaves her open, though, so I shoot her where she isn't armored. The first shot rips off part of her right ear. The second goes through her cheek. The third bullet goes straight through her eye. She staggers, goes down on one knee. There's no time to see if she's playing possum. I charge her.

Even hurt, she's still strong and partially deflects my blow, but I spin my Gladius around and rake it across the side of her throat.

I don't know what kind of vitamins they have in Heaven, but even wounded, she looks like the berserker in her is making a comeback. She lunges at me, but she's slow and she knows it. She has one hand to her throat, but she's leaking blood down the front of her armor. I get ready to move in again, but before I can take two steps, she hammers her Gladius into the sidewalk, splitting open the pavement. I go down flat on my ass, but manage to keep my Gladius up to block her next blow, only there isn't one.

The angel staggers back and her Gladius flickers out. Then she does the one thing I've never seen an angel do in front of civilians. She rolls back her shoulders, allowing her enormous wings to sprout from under her armor.

She points a shaky finger at me and rasps, “You aren't part of this, Abomination. Give me the box.”

“How about we go to Musso's instead? Martinis are on me.”

She flaps her wings and lifts from the cracked street.

“There will be others coming for you,” she says.

I nod. “There always are. You should get going. It looks like you're running a quart low.”

With her hand still at her throat, she pumps her wings hard and banks over the Egyptian Theatre, disappearing into the starless Hollywood sky.

Like I said, it's usually a bad move for angels to reveal themselves like that on a street in front of dumb-ass mortals, but after our little slap fight, I don't think it matters much. However, with her gone, I'm feeling a bit naked and exposed.
I might be fast and strong, but lousy nephilim like me, we don't have wings. And I can't disappear into a shadow anymore. I let my Gladius go out, dive into the Catalina, and hit the accelerator, using the steel nose of the beast to shove the lighter modern plastic cars out of the way. In a few seconds, I see a clear spot between the abandoned cars and blast through it. I take the corner on two wheels and keep going.

My heart feels like it's gone twelve rounds with Mechagodzilla and my burned arm hurts like part of me has been deep-fried. Why didn't she set fire to my Kissi arm? That thing is pretty much everything-proof. But no, she had to get my meat arm instead. If I didn't know better I'd swear there was no God. But I do know better and the worst I can truly say is that I wish he was better at his job.

I picture the angel flapping into the sky like an armored goose and wonder how many traffic, store security, and ATM cameras caught our square dance. LAPD already has video of me stealing cars. Now they're going to have shots of me playing laser tag with a celestial tweaker. Nothing I can do about it now.

I hear sirens closing in on Hollywood Boulevard.

The worst part of this whole thing is that when Abbot hears about it, I know I'm never going to get that cake he owes me.

I
DON
'
T HAVE
the heart to look at the Catalina until the morning.

My burned arm is healing nicely, but it's not pretty. Candy pulls off big flakes of dead skin and piles them on her night table like limp black potato chips.

As she plucks me I say, “What are you going to do with those?”

“Knit you a leather jacket.”

“I'm already wearing my skin. I don't need more.”

“Then I'll make one for myself and wear you to work.”

“How sweet. You'll be sexy Leatherface.”

“That's what I'm going to call my new clothing line.”

“Carnivorous clothes for carnivorous girls.”

She stops plucking and kisses me on the cheek.

“I'm stealing that. It'll make a good song title for me and Alessa.”

“My pain is your art. Good thing I like you so much.”

“Yes it is, smart guy.”

Fortified with a cup of coffee spiked with Aqua Regia, we go outside to survey the damage.

“Good move parking it right in front of the store so every cop in L.A. can find it,” says Kasabian.

“Give me a break. I'd just been set on fire.”

“Wait till some prick cuts your head off. Then you can tell me about your bad day.”

“Play nice, boys,” says Candy.

She walks around the car.

“Honestly, I've seen worse.”

“Not outside a junkyard,” says Kasabian.

“No, really. All it needs is a little Bondo and paint.”

“It needs a last cigarette and a bullet in the head.”

I look at Kasabian, wanting to say something, but I don't because I know he's right.

The top of the hood is partially caved in where the angel smashed it with her fists. The front bumper is bent into a
V-shape, maybe by the angel's boot, maybe by hitting the other cars. Both headlights are smashed and both front fenders are crumpled back on themselves. There's a puddle under the engine where something is leaking. And the passenger-side mirror is missing. I'm amazed the damned thing held together long enough to drive home.

“I guess that angel was mad,” says Candy.

“She wasn't happy to be there.”

“Can you get it fixed?”

“In theory. But how much is it going to cost? And how long will it take? I need wheels these days.”

“You need a babysitter and a Valium,” says Kasabian.

I pull a crumpled piece of paper from my pocket and show it to Candy.

“Oh yeah. I got this too.”

“A ticket? You're actually contemplating paying a ticket?” she says.

Kasabian shakes his head.

“What happened to you, man? When did you turn into such a pussy?”

I run a hand over the dented hood.

“The car is in my name. I can't afford to have cops tracing anything back to me.”

“Why did you buy this heap, I mean?” says Kasabian. “You're still an asshole, but at least when you were stealing them you had a little self-respect.”