It dawned on Bliss that this was what had set Cordelia and Lawrence apart, they cared. They had kept their vigilance against the forces of hell and had sounded an alarm. An alarm that no one was too keen on hearing. The Van Alens were the exception to the norm. It only made sense that Schuyler would be just like them. Her friend had never felt comfortable in the world of the leisured rich, even though she had been born into it. But Schuyler wasn’t the only one. Even Mimi and Jack Force were different. They had not forgotten their gloried past. Just one look at the way Mimi flaunted her extraordinary vampire abilities was enough to convince anyone that there was more to that skinny bitch than just the capacity to shop.
But these people, this self-satisfied group of elites who had barely even blinked at the news of the massacre, these people called themselves vampires?
“Exactly. Just like the members of the Conclave, they will be easy enough to overcome when the time comes.”
Bliss shivered. She had gotten used to being alone, and had forgotten that the Visitor could pop in at any time.
CHAPTER 20
Mimi
El Sol de Ajuste was located in Cidada de Deus, The City of God, the notorious slums in the western part of the city that had inspired a major Hollywood movie and a subsequent television show, City of Men. Of course, the real city was nothing like the cleaned-up Hollywood version, which was the equivalent of a ‘slum tour’ arranged by hotel concierges: showcasing fashionable grittiness. The reality of poverty was much harsher and much uglier, the towering mountains of trash, the stench of sewer and garbage, the bare-bottomed children languishing on the streets, smoking cigarettes; the way no one batted the flies away, they were way past caring about something so simple as flies.
The bar was nothing more than a tin shack, a lean-to with a roof and a wooden counter pocked with holes. When Mimi and the boys arrived, a group of rowdy toughs were harassing the barback, the boy who cleaned the counters and sopped up the spilled beer with ragged towels. Mimi recognized the fierce-looking tattoos branded on the gang members’ cheeks: they were members of Commando Prata, Silver Command, a notorious street gang, and responsible for most of the criminal activity in this part of the ghetto. This was going to be interesting.
“Voc? deve tr’s pesos?” the barback insisted. You owe me three pesos. “Caralho! Vai-te foder?” The fat one laughed and cursed at the boy, pushing him against the wall.
The elderly proprietor stood behind the table, looking frightened and annoyed to find his employee being harassed, as well as finding his small establishment suddenly crawling with strange, black-clad foreigners.
“Can I help you?” he huffed in Portuguese, keeping an eye on the kid. “You! Leave him alone?” he cried as one of the gangsters tripped the boy, sending him falling facedown on the floor.
In answer, the fat bully gave the cowering boy a sharp kick in the head. There was a sickening crunch of a steel-toe boot against bone, and in a quick movement, one of the gang had a knife to the bartender’s throat. “You got something to say to us, old man?”
“Put down the blade,” Kingsley ordered in a quiet voice.
“Piss off,” the leader said. He was a skinny kid with a pockmarked face sitting in the back. He held up his automatic weapon as casually as a soda can. The local drug lords acted as an unofficial police presence in the shantytowns, playing judge and executioner at their whim. But the only law they upheld was their own.
“Happy to, as soon as you let these good people go,” Kingsley said smoothly. There were twenty gang members and only four Venators, hardly a fair fight for the sorry group of Red Bloods. If the vampires wanted to, they could destroy everyone in the room without warning. Mimi could see it already: a pile of corpses on the floor.
She felt her blood rise to the challenge, but it was a superficial rise, the kind of shallow excitement one felt upon watching a boxing match when you already knew the outcome. These thugs thought they were so tough, but they were nothing: fleas on the backs of buffalo, hyenas before lions. Mimi wished for better sport, a bigger challenge.
The street gangs were not afraid of the foreigners, however, and were faster than the Venators gave them credit for. Before Kingsley could turn around he was cut with a blade, a tear on his sleeve revealing an ugly wound.
That was enough. Mimi spun around, kicking two of them to the ground and forcing another to his knees. She was about to draw Eversor Lumen, Light-Destroyer, when she heard Kingsley’s voice in her head. “No weapons! No deaths!”
As much as it pained her, she kept her blade sheathed. Two burly gangsters tried to bum-rush her, but she ducked from their assault, sending them crashing against the rickety tables. Another drew his gun, but before he could shoot, Mimi had kicked it away with her heel. Cake. She could tell even the Lennox brothers were enjoying themselves as they knocked heads and vanquished their attackers. Watching dreams and validating memories didn’t compare to a good old-fashioned fistfight. One of the thugs picked up a chair leg and pointed it straight at Kingsley’s chest, but Mimi slashed it into pieces before it could meet its target.
“Thanks,” Kingsley said. “Didn’t know you cared so much.” He grinned as he made quick work of a boy holding an Uzi.
Mimi laughed. She’d hardly broken a sweat, although she was breathing heavily. As Kingsley ordered, their combatants would live to see another day. She stepped over the heap of bodies, Ted helping her over to join them by the bar.
The bartender came out from underneath a table, bowing in gratitude. “What can I get you?”
“What’s the specialty of this place?” Kingsley asked.
“Ah?” The bartender shot them a toothless grin. “Get the Leblon,” he told the barback, whose cut had stopped bleeding. The boy disappeared into the back closet and came out bearing a bottle of cachana: sugarcane rum. The bartender poured it into four shot glasses.
“Breakfast.” Kingsley nodded and picked up his glass.
“Saude,” Mimi said, downing her drink in one go. To your health. “We’re looking for this girl. Have you seen her?” Kingsley asked, showing their new friends Jordan’s photograph. “tell us,” he said, using a small compulsion.
The boy shook his head, while the bartender looked at the picture for a long time. Then he too shook his head slowly. “I have never seen her in my life. But this is not a place where people bring children.” Mimi and Kingsley exchanged glances, and the twins? shoulders slumped slightly. They left the bar after finishing the bottle. It was midday. The sun was high and the weather was at a broil. A few curious onlookers had crowded around the bar entrance, drawn by the fight, but they kept a fair distance from the foursome. The stares were respectful. No one had ever lived to defeat the Silver Command.
“For you,” an elderly lady said, handing Mimi a water bottle. “Obrigado.”
The woman crossed herself, and Mimi understood it as a gesture of gratitude for bringing a small measure of justice to a lawless place.
“Thank you,” Mimi said, accepting the water with a nod. Once again she was struck by how helpless she felt.
These people’s problems are not your own, she told herself. You cannot help them.
She felt very far away from the sheltered, exclusive world of the Upper East Side as she stood on a dusty sidewalk in the slums, her muscles still tense from the encounter. This was why she had signed up for the mission, to shake up her life a little bit, to see a side of the world that wasn’t available from the backseat of a limousine. She might be a spoiled princess in this incarnation, but she was a warrior by nature. Azrael needed this.
But it was frustrating. They’d set out a year ago to find the Watcher and still had nothing to show for their efforts, save for a letter that didn’t tell them anything.