“Cover! Left!—”
They’re wearing Mall Ninja body armor and black helmets with gas masks and they’ve got flashlights and lots of spurious accessories bolted to the barrels of their carbines: it’s all very Tactical Ted, in Johnny’s mildly contemptuous opinion. One of them stumbles sharply in a shower of sparks as he comes up against the edge of the grid.
“You!” He’s seen Johnny. The gun barrel comes up. “On the—Jesus—”
More blue sparks. The goon takes a dance-step backwards, nearly goes over. His companion is less talkative; there’s a hammering roar and a series of flashbulb-bright sparks go off at the boundary of the grid as the bullets strike it and go wherever it is that steel-jacketed bullets go when they run into an energized containment field. He seems to be trying to shoot out the lantern on the breakfast bar.
Johnny is coldly angry. He opens his mouth to speak as the first goon stumbles into the field again, then jitters twitchily backward in a shower of purple flashes. Johnny can barely hear his own voice through the ringing in his ears. “Drop your guns!” he bellows. “Drop ’em now or I’ll rip your lungs out and shit down your windpipes!”
The drill sergeant’s voice of command usually works on anything short of a meth head’s full-blown psychosis, but it’s less than effective when punctuated by gunfire in a confined space. The talkative one appears to be frozen, but the second goon, the one with the hate on for light sources, whips round and raises his gun. There’s a loud snick.
“Drop it, son,” Johnny snarls, drawing his right hand back. For an answer, the goon fumbles with the magazine release. That’s more than enough for Johnny. He releases the knife and it accelerates towards the grid. There’s a crimson flash as the design inscribed on its blade flares white-hot for an instant before it lodges hungrily in the man’s throat, and Johnny feels a brief stab of melancholy horror as he takes two quick strides forward across the shorted-out grid and punches the other goon in the face. The man goes down as if poleaxed; Johnny spins knife-first towards the trigger-happy one, but he’s already down in a growing puddle of arterial blood. The knife-shaped thing sticking out of his throat is drinking greedily; one glance tells Johnny that the cop’s beyond help. There’s always a cost for using such occult weapons, and Johnny will pay it later, of that he is sure; but for now he’s simply relieved to still be alive.
First he sees to the one he punched out. Johnny rolls him away from the blood, grunting with effort, and turns him into the recovery position. The man’s still breathing, albeit noisily—Johnny fumbles a pair of handcuffs from the goon’s belt and secures him, then bends to unfasten his helmet and gas mask, keeping one ear alert for police sirens in the distance. Then he searches him.
The one who’s still breathing is in his forties, unfit, a salt-and-pepper mustache adorning a flaccid upper lip. The bad news is, he’s wearing a law man’s badge: Officer Benson of the Pinecrest Police Department. Worse: so is the dead gunman. Not rent-a-cops, real cops, Johnny decides. Pinecrest: home of the Golden Promise Ministries. No, not like Barcelona: this is worse.
Benson is breathing, but won’t be answering any questions for a few minutes. Johnny turns to the trigger-happy goon’s body, stoops, and takes hold of the knife-thing in his throat. A brief electric jolt runs up his arm: the feeder is intent, gorging, and does not wish to return to its warded scabbard. Johnny grimaces and tugs. There’s very little blood as the knife-thing comes free. A thin sheen of red droplets that cling to the blade disappears under his gaze, as if sucked into the metal. He prepares to sheath it, but stops. The dead goon’s mouth is moving, opening—
“Well, well, well.” Johnny pokes at the emerging host with the tip of the blade: it flinches away, avoiding contact. “Fancy meeting a girl like you in a dive like this!” He pulls his knife back, unwilling to use it on such an unclean thing; hunting around for a suitable object he finds the fallen goon’s carbine and hammers the host flat with its butt.
Roughly three minutes have elapsed since he completed the grid and unlocked the two captive goons. Police response times to reports of gunshots out here won’t be speedy, but they’ll be along by and by. Johnny checks on Officer Benson—unconscious, breathing stertorous—then exits the house. He knows a ward that will cause eyes to glaze and slide aside from the building: it needs to be applied to the gateposts out front before anyone comes by to check.
Then he and Officer Benson are going to have a little chat.
IT’S GETTING DARK AND I NEARLY MISS THE BATTERED PICKUP as I drive along the side street, half wondering if she’s sent me on a wild goose chase. But something about it catches my attention, and as I slow down I think I recognize the woman in the driver’s seat, her hair tied back in a bun, head bowed over a book.
I don’t stop. Instead, I drive around the block, checking my mirrors for company and the side streets for other occupied vehicles. Finally, when I’m certain we’re alone, I park behind her.
The cab door opens. It’s Persephone, wearing nursing scrubs, a battered-looking handbag slung over one shoulder. She pauses beside the coupé and does something fiddly with a ward before she opens the door and slides into the passenger seat. “Drive,” she says. “They’re a half hour behind me, but that should delay them.” I glance at her. Her eyes have aged about a thousand years since the last time we met. I start the engine and pull out carefully, then hunt for an avenue that’ll take us south and east, back towards the highway.
After a couple of minutes, Persephone inhales deeply, then sighs as if she’s expelling her final breath.
I glance sideways. The handbag is on the floor and there’s a book in her lap, open. “Where do you want to go?” I ask.
“Johnny’s in Denver.” She turns to study me, her face expressionless. “Head back up the interstate.” A pause. “I’d like to collect him. We need to talk.”
I turn my eyes back to the road. I don’t want to see her expression. “You know I’ve been ordered home. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, don’t stop to pick up hitchhikers.”
“Yes.”
“The operation is a bust: we’ve been blown, and the only thing left to do is to withdraw. All three of us.” I can feel her eyes on me as I take a right turn. “Mind you, Lockhart thinks it’s a qualified success. He thinks we’ve got enough evidence to justify him starting an official investigation into Schiller’s activities.”
Persephone is silent for a while. Then: “He’ll be too late.”
“Too late for what?”
She doesn’t reply immediately, so I let the silence lengthen as I drive. I don’t like people trying to pull mystery-man (or -woman) head-games on me. “Pull over,” she finally says as we’re passing a drive-through Dunkin’ Donuts. I turn into the car park and kill the engine.
“What is Lockhart going to be too late for?” I ask.
“Armageddon.” She taps the cover of the Bible with a crimson nail.
“Arma-what?”
“It’s all in here.” She opens it, close to the back. “Testament of Enoch, Second Book of Dreams, the return of Azâzêl at the End of Days, the triumph of the elect.”
“Testament of…” It doesn’t ring any bells from RE lessons back when I was in school. “What kind of bible is that?”