No one to see him stand there facing westward for a while. Toward the land’s end and the everdrowning sun beyond. No one apart from those who traveled with him saw him draw a ragged breath and clench his fists and nod and slowly turn
turn and look back
look back at the way he came
and saw him break the cycle of tyrannic myth.
Whatever else might happen Niko had escaped the bonds of his conscripted fate. The future that befell him was to be his own.
On that unusually deserted street he stood a moment as if something belonging to him had fallen out the window of the cab and he was trying to remember what it was, let alone glimpse it back there on the road. No beggar, no broker, no hardhanded worker saw him raise the fractured jar, for all the world a pauper king proposing a toast, or saw his free hand rise above it with one long middle finger pointing toward the bottomlit and heavy sky.
THE UNIVERSE ACKNOWLEDGES neither gesture and after a moment Niko lowers the jar and turns back to the chugging cab. “Thanks for stopping. I guess—”
In the back seat Nikodemus’ mouth is open and his one good eye stares fixedly beyond the metal roof, beyond the roofless night.
The cabbie sees this and hurries from the cab and opens the back door to lean over Nikodemus. She pries open a dark leather lid to check his lone pupil, uselessly because his eye is such dark brown.
Niko wants to check for pulse but ends up feeling stupid with one limp tendril in his hand. Instead he sets his ear against the demon’s chest just as the cabbie brings her cheek near Nikodemus’ mouth, and Niko and the cabbie bump heads.
The cabbie says Owee.
“I think his heart stopped,” Niko says.
She points her cigarillo at the Blue Line tunnel mouth. “Probably when we drove out.” She backs out of the cab and straightens. “You know CPR?”
“Yeah.”
“You work on him. I’ll be right back.”
Niko sets the mason jar on the curb and climbs on top of Nikodemus and tilts back the huge and battered head to clear the airway. “You gonna call nine one one?”
“Not yet.” She goes to the front of the cab and pulls the hood latch.
Niko grimaces as he swabs the demon’s airpassage with a finger and then pinches the nostrils shut. He takes a deep breath and only hesitates a second before he puts his lips to his demon’s lips. The jellyfish of Nikodemus’ ruined eye is warm and wet against his cheek. Niko blows. It’s like trying to inflate a hotwater bottle. He blows harder and Nikodemus’ burly chest rises. Niko lifts his mouth and the chest deflates and foul breath washes over him. Well his own breath can’t be much better. He bends again to fill his demon’s lungs. Two breaths and thirty chest compressions. Assuming the same rules apply to refugee demons in cardiac arrest in the back of taxicabs.
The cabbie goes to the back and opens the trunk.
Niko checks again for pulse and respiration. Nothing. He scoots back and sets one palm atop the other on the demon’s sternum and leans down into it. I swear someday I’ll laugh at this. One and two and three and four. Nikodemus’ body moves but Niko can’t be sure it isn’t just a reaction to the compression.
The cabbie pulls a set of heavyduty starter cables from the trunk. Twentyeight twentynine thirty. Niko pushes stiffened fingers against the turtleskin neck. Nope. He bends to the slack face again and exhales hard. It’s like playing a tuba. Nikodemus’ unwilled lungs push corpse breath into the reclaiming world. The graveyard sigh fills Niko’s nostrils. O I cannot take this, it’s too much like it was with Van. I am haunted, I am haunted. He slaps a blood-dried cheek. “Come on, buddy pal. Come on, goddammit. Come back.” Niko moves to compress his demon’s chest again. One and two and three and four.
The cabbie ducks her head in. “Nothing?”
Niko shakes his head. He’s covered in sweat.
“Okay. Help me drag him out.”
Niko doesn’t waste time asking what she has in mind but instead backs out and helps the cabbie pull the heavy body from the cab. At the gate when they had dragged the demon through the wreckage to the waiting cab he’d wondered if Nikodemus was dead. Now there is no doubt. What the difference is he couldn’t say. But he feels it and he knows the cabbie feels it too. A certain bonelessness. A stillness different from sleep or mere unconsciousness. Dead weight.
“What are we gonna do?” says Niko.
The cabbie goes to the front of the cab and picks up a set of starter cables. “We’re gonna jumpstart him.”
“Are you out of your fucking—no, wait, never mind. Good idea.” Niko steps away and the cabbie clamps the black cable to Nikodemus’ left chest and then touches the red cable to his right chest. Bluewhite flash, electric sputter, flying sparks, smell of ozone and burned flesh. The galvanized body spasms. A tendril writhes like a detached lizard tail and quickly grows still. A puff of smoke rises from Nikodemus’ chest.
“Christ.” Niko glances at the sky expecting rolling thunder and quaking ground. He leans forward and feels for pulse and respiration and shakes his head.
A gray Mercedes with darktinted windows eases into the nearby intersection and stops with an abrupt bark. Powerlocks clack down and the sedan speeds away.
Again the cabbie touches Nikodemus with the red cable. Sputter spark smoke. Nikodemus jackknifes as if gutpunched and goes rigid and then goes slowly limp again as if deflating. The smell of seared flesh would be nauseating had Niko not become accustomed to such things. Niko sets an ear against the broad sternum. Still nothing.
The cabbie frowns and holds her car keys out to Niko. “Rev the engine when I tell you to.”
Niko limps to the cab and practically falls behind the wheel. The cabbie ducks beneath the hood and moves the red clamp from the positive terminal to the starter coil and then says Okay and backs quickly away.
The engine starts and idles knocking. Flash sputter spark and twenty thousand volts rush lightspeed into Nikodemus.
The cabbie yells Yes and Niko hears a long asthmatic wheeze of firstdrawn mortal breath and then a bellow that can best be called demonic. Then a thud of thrashing tendril denting quarterpanel.
Niko scurries from the cab to see the demon very much alive and on his feet and squared off with his snaking tendrils raised against the cabbie who holds up the starter cable clamps like a horror movie hero brandishing a crucifix against a vampire.
They both turn at Niko’s voice. “Welcome to Los Angeles,” he tells his demon.
THE CABBIE DRIVES down Wilshire Boulevard. Swerving through traffic caught by surprise at the signals’ sudden change. “Sorry to take surface streets,” she shouts into the wind buffeting through the mostly empty windshield frame. “The Hollywood Freeway’s still a nightmare.”
“A nightmare.” Niko laughs. He hears the edge of hysteria in it but he can’t help himself. A nightmare.
People stare at the cab as it hurries along. Beat to hell, no windshield, a demon filling up the back seat and gawking like the tourist he is. How could they not? But this is Los Angeles and most of them assume there’s a movie or a television shoot nearby, or that someone’s having a theme party or premiere. Or even if they don’t think there’s a movie or a party or a premiere, well, this is Los Angeles.