I’d lost my gun somewhere in the red rage, but it didn’t really matter. I couldn’t beat him. As long as Eligor or whoever was pouring this much power into keeping him alive and functioning on Earth, I was going to lose. I had nothing left to fight with but the bloody chunk of concrete in my hand. I backed myself along the wall toward a doorway, where I would have the best chance of defending myself, but the body I was wearing was not going to magically repair puncture wounds in seconds like his did, and he probably wasn’t planning to kill me right away in any case. He, or at least his master, wanted to know where the feather was, and I had no doubt he would happily take his time finding out.
The sirens were getting really loud now.
I had lost him again in the shadows, but I spotted movement and realized he had slipped down to the ground where he was harder to see, hidden by the shadow of a dumpster. I braced myself, guessing he wouldn’t wait long. I was right.
Smyler came across the alley like a crab, zigzagging sideways at crazy angles. I caught a glint of his sharklike stare, then the longer smear of reflected streetlight that was his blade. I ducked on pure instinct and the bayonet whipped invisibly past my ear. I only knew it was there when it cut my cheek coming back the other direction.
“Bobby!” someone said. “Close your eyes!”
And I did, a mere moment late, just slow enough that I saw the first burst of fiery light. The rictus mask of Smyler as he loomed over me, his eyes wide but his pupils suddenly no bigger than the heads of ants, was burned onto my retina.
The light burned brighter and brighter even through my closed eyelids, even through the lingering afterimage of Smyler’s terrible face, flaring so intensely that my own head seemed to turn all white inside. Smyler shrieked. Despite everything I had done to him, it was the first time I’d heard him in distress. Then the whiteness was too much, and I fell down and pulled the dark around me for a little while.
When I could think again I realized I was crouching on my hands and knees, my forehead against the cold pavement. I struggled upright. Smyler was gone. Temuel, or at least his human form, stood beside me. His hand looked like it was in an ex-ray machine, the skin still glowing so deeply pinkish-orange that I could see the bones beneath the muscle. He offered me his other hand to help me up. It felt pretty normal.
“Where did he go?”
“That thing?” Temuel looked troubled. “It ran away from the light. It’s stronger than it looks. You should get away from here. I pointed the police in another direction, but they’ll be back.”
I should have thanked him, but all I could think of to say was, “Do you know anything about that thing, as you call it?”
He gave me a look that said nothing, absolutely nothing. “I can’t be here, but I couldn’t leave you to be attacked, either.” He quickly looked me up and down. “I must go now.”
“We still seem to have a lot to talk about.”
“Do you know the Museum of Industry?” he asked. Duh. Even tourists knew the place, and I’d been living in Jude for years and years. “Good. Meet me in front of it tomorrow night, by the fountains. Ten o’clock.” He hesitated, looking me over. “And take care, Bobby.” Then he walked away.
I just watched him go. I was so tired and battered I could barely stand, but I did remember to retrieve my gun. One odd thing had struck me, though, and it was what I kept turning over and over as I limped home. The whole time he’d been here, Temuel had never once called me Doloriel, my true name. My angel name.
With wounds to tend and all this crazy to deal with, I couldn’t even take the evening off—not yet. I made it back home with a few rest stops, ignoring the comments of strangers who assumed I was drunk. It could be that Temuel’s disco light show had hurt Smyler bad enough to keep him away a long time. Certainly I’d never heard him react to pain before, and that included the time I saw him burned to charcoal. But I couldn’t count on it. The horrible thing had beaten me badly. Only Temuel’s interference had saved my life, maybe even my soul. I couldn’t gamble that Smyler wouldn’t come back.
Once inside my apartment I threw a few nights’ worth of toiletries and other emergency supplies into an old suitcase with a missing buckle. I left my real luggage in the tiny hall closet, since I didn’t want it to look like I’d moved out if anyone came looking for me, including my own side.
Just to avoid familiar patterns while searching for a place to crash, I headed up the Woodside Highway and then a few miles south before turning east again toward a part of town I hardly ever visited. The Sand Hill corridor was one of the leading indicators of whether San Jude was in boom or bust mode; you could track the square footage costs like a local stock. And because it was ground zero for venture capital money, it was also ground zero for fairly expensive hotels, many with gorgeous views of the hills, which turned dry gold this time of year before the rains brought back the green. I still had Orban’s money in my pocket, and if I was going to Hell, I wouldn’t be taking any cash with me, so I guessed I might as well spend some on comfort now.
The hotel I chose was a very chic little businessman’s special, and since I didn’t care about the view I got quite a nice suite for my several hundred dollars. What I really wanted was safety, and I was more likely to get it in a place like this, expenses be hanged. I had stopped at a service station to clean up a bit first, but I’m sure I still looked like someone who’d been mugged. To her credit, though, the young woman behind the counter didn’t even bat an eye and actually smiled when she handed me the change from my wad of bills. Inside, I raided the minibar, then took the longest, hottest bath I’ve ever managed, doing my best to scald away the worst of the aches, along with my compulsive shivering. I steamed long enough to be legally declared chowder, but the tremors wouldn’t entirely go away.
At last, I climbed out, wrapped myself in a thick terrycloth robe with the hotel’s logo on the pocket, and started another drink. Believe it or not, it was purely for the pain, since it had become obvious to me that I was in one of those dark, miserable moods that even booze wasn’t going to change. I know, that sounds unAmerican, but there you go: I know myself, and I know how these bodies I wear tend to work.
I was pretty sure who was behind all this, and it made me feel like I had something jagged lodged between my brain and the frontal bone of my skull. If it had been food in my stomach it would have been something indigestible like gravel or glass, but it was an idea, and that was a thousand times worse.
Eligor. First he had set his horned Sumerian monster to chase me all over creation, long before I had ever touched his ex-girlfriend, just because he thought I had his damned angel feather. Then he had taken Caz away right in front of me, but not before making her tell me she didn’t love me. Now he had started all over, siccing his undead psycho-killer Smyler on me like a cat after a rat, so that I had to hide even from my own employers and friends. And he had Caz! In other words, Eligor owned the game, but he was still going to grind me into the dirt to show me how strong he was and how little I mattered. How could Hell itself be any worse? (Yes, it was a very stupid question, and I was soon going to find out just how stupid, but at the time I was half-lit and hurting.)
If I had been wavering at all, I was now determined. I wasn’t going to sit around any more waiting for someone else to try to kill me, or frame me, or anything else. If the grand duke wanted to play for those kinds of stakes, I was going to do my best to take the game right to him.
Exhausted as I was, I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time even after I turned the lights out. I lay with my hands behind my head and watched the jittering light from the television make shadows on the ceiling while I thought about how much I hated Eligor the Horseman and how good it would feel to pull his scorched, worthless heart out of his chest and show it to him.