The Wrong Goodbye

three-odd floors of half-finished building —all concrete, steel girders, and plastic sheeting, which billowed like curtains in the breeze. It was surrounded by a high chain link fence topped with three lines of barbed wire, which slanted outward overhead. Floodlights shone at ground level to deter any would-be trespassers. I shouldered through the horde of celebrants to get a better look, drawing my share of half-hearted Spanish curses —and shouts of alarm from those few who noticed the shotgun in my hands. One passerby, who looked for all the world like an undead bullfighter, shouted “?Escopeta!” and panic rippled through the crowd. As I’ve said, I don’t know a lot of Spanish, but that’s one word I understand. Means shotgun. Means our chances of staying hidden in the crowd just dropped to nil. So I said to hell with hiding, and took off full-bore toward the building —the crowd parting before me, Gio and Theresa following close behind.

When we reached the fence, I saw the building was of a peculiar structure. Something about it set my Spidey-sense a-tingling, though at first, I couldn’t put my finger on why. Then I spotted it: a sign, graffiti-spattered and bolted to the chain link fence, proclaimed the site as the future home of Asphodel Meadows Condominiums, with a projected completion date of three years back. The sign was illustrated, showing an artist’s rendering of the completed building —six stories tall and complete with landscaping, rooftop pool, and smiling, happy tenants. And from the angle of the illustration, it was clear the footprint of the building was a five-pointed star —also known as a pentagram.

A pentagram is a common focal object for all manner of mystical rights. Upright, it’s said to represent the wounds of Christ. Inverted, the pentagram is the sigil of the demon Baphomet, long rumored to be but one aspect of the Morning Star himself, also known as Lucifer.

No telling from where I stood which way this pentagram faced. But it was fucking big. Which meant it was capable of channeling some serious power.

And lest I think it was a coincidence I stumbled upon a giant fucking pentagram in the middle of this Dia de los Muertos celebration, the name of the place had Danny’s fingerprints all over it. He always was a cheeky motherfucker.

According to Greek myth, Asphodel Meadows is the land in the afterlife dedicated to the dead whose lives straddled the boundary of good and evil without ever tipping to either side. Guess that classics education of his was finally paying off. But this building, if it were his, represented years of planning, investing, careful construction —maybe decades. The Danny I knew couldn’t be counted on to plan lunch.

I was beginning to think I’d never really known Danny at all.

Something else about the building troubled me, but it took me a sec to figure out what it was. The buildings across the street were covered in crows. Ditto the ones on either side, and the three barbed wires that topped the fence surrounding it. But despite the fact this place —with all its nooks, crannies, and exposed girders —should have been a perfect roost, its every perch was bare.

Then I noticed the birds perched atop the fence weren’t watching Gio, Theresa, and me like the others. To a one, they faced away from us.

They were looking at the building.

At Danny’s mammoth pentagram.

I couldn’t help but feel they were waiting for me to do something. I wished to hell they’d tell me what. Because if the red and blue that spilled across the crowd on either side of us was any indication, I didn’t have much time.

The music cut out to the angry protests of the deathly crowd nearest the stage, who were not yet wise to the crazed gunman in their ranks. Over the PA, one of the boys in blue insisted they disperse. He said they were in danger. That there was a killer in their midst. Both those things were true enough, I suppose —they were in danger, and God knows I’d killed plenty —but tonight, at least, the killer they should be worried about wasn’t among them, but hidden somewhere within the skeletal frame of the building before me.

The crowd reacted, some with jeers, and others with blind panic. A mob of cartoon skeletons, threatening to bubble over into chaos. Police cruisers dotted every intersection in sight —parked at harsh diagonals in the centers of the intersections, their lights and sirens a vulgar parody of the festivities they’d interrupted.

Officers, ten feet apart, had formed a line along Cesar Chavez Avenue to the north, and pushed southward into the crowd —no doubt hoping to drive me out. Some of the drunker celebrants taunted them or refused to move, while others fled —by reflex or necessity, I wasn’t sure. But though the cops’ progress was slow, it was unrelenting; they knew full well the freeway blocked any chance of egress to the south, and no doubt the routes to the east and west were covered. They had me cornered, and it was just a matter of time before they found me.

“Gio, listen —you and Theresa need to get out of here while you can. They’re not looking for you. You can use the crowd for cover. Just leave, and don’t look back.”

“Fat fucking chance, dude.”

“Gio, don’t be an idiot —there’s nothing more you can do for me. And remember, if you can sense Danny, Danny can sense you. If you encounter him, he won’t hesitate to collect you.”

“I ain’t leaving you.”

“Damn it, Gio, don’t you get it? I’ve been using you. No matter what happens tonight, things aren’t going to end well for you. Stopping Danny won’t change that. The best you can hope to do is extend the time you’ve got. Because once it’s done, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“You think I don’t know you’ve been using me? Shit, Sam, that’s all anybody ever does. We use each other to get ahead. To pass the time. To cure the boredom, kill the pain. Half the time, ain’t even nothing wrong with that. Shit, you see this lady here? A daily dose of her, and I feel like a better man than I got any right to. I done my share of nasty shit, Sam; you know it as well as I do. You think I don’t know how this’ll end for me? Some part of me’s suspected all my life. Truth is, I don’t mind.” He took Theresa’s hand in his own and smiled, his eyes wet with tears that wouldn’t fall. “Just knowing there’s a heaven’s good enough. But if you think I’ve come this far to give up now, you’re fucking nuts.”

Theresa laughed. “Baby, if you ain’t noticed, fucking nuts is our boy Sam’s specialty.” Then, to me: “But he’s right. We see this through.”

“You don’t have to,” I said, but she raised a hand to stop me.

“I go where my man goes.”

Great, I thought. The cops are closing in, and I’m off to stop a modern Deluge with a blind chick and a dude who needs a breather when he climbs a flight of stairs.

This should go well.

“OK, first we’ve got to find a way in.”

Turns out, there wasn’t one. Sure, the fence had a gate and all —one of those slidey deals with rollers and a track, big enough to drive a dump truck through, but it was fastened with a chain as thick as my arm, from which dangled a stainless steel padlock the size and shape of a child’s lunchbox. Disc tumblers, not pins, which meant I’d need an hour and a decent set of tools to pop the fucking thing.

“Hold this,” I said, handing Gio the sawed-off. “I’m going over.”

“The hell you are,” he said. “That barbed wire’s gonna tear you all to shit —and no way the two of us’re gonna be able to follow.”

“Speak for yourself, Tons of Fun,” said Theresa.

“Oh, excuse me,” Gio shot back. “I’m sure you’d scale the fence just fine once I point you at it.”

I eyed the barbed wire, the crows wing-to-wing atop it. “Give me your shirt to toss over it, and I’ll be fine.”

“You kidding me? I ain’t giving you my shirt. Then I’m standing here half-naked with a fucking shotgun when the fuzz shows up. Ain’t you ever seen an episode of Cops? It’s always the shirtless dude who gets arrested.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, boys —quit arguing!”

Theresa, who’d been feeling around the fence while we two bickered, grabbed the shotgun from Gio and made for the gate. Before I could shout at her to stop —that lock’d stop a load of buckshot without so much as getting scratched —she unloaded two quick blasts. They pierced the night like thunder, and set the crowd screaming. I only hoped the echoes were enough to mask its origin. Somehow, though, I doubted it.

But she hadn’t shot the lock. She’d shot the metal track the gate’s rollers were seated on. Ripped a hole