The Dirty Streets of Heaven

meant to. “You’re as good as dead.”

“I already am dead, stupid. That’s how you get to be an angel.” I pushed down harder on his neck. “How many men have you got out there?” He just stared at me so I prodded him with the gun. “Remember our past meetings? I sure do. I treasure every golden minute. Why were you babysitting Grasswax when you work for Eligor? If you’re really his security chief, you’re too high-ranking to be a prosecutor’s bodyguard.”

He stared at me, his single eyebrow drawn down in a scowling V. “I’m not telling you shit, Dollar. I told you, you’re a dead man-the real kind of dead, like Grasswax. The Grand Duke is going to eat your heart.”

“Maybe, but if you don’t tell me what I want to know you won’t be around to enjoy it.” I was bluffing though, and he probably knew it-I didn’t have the time to shake him down for information.

He definitely knew it. “Have a nice ride down to Hell, Dollar,” he rasped past the pressure of my knee on his compressed throat. “Go ahead and kill me-my boss’ll just get me another body.”

“Really?” I straightened up but still keeping my foot squarely on his windpipe. “Do you think he’ll bother if I just blow off your nuts?” I paused to savor the expression on his bestial face briefly, then gave him a couple of silver hollow-points in the general crotch area before I turned and ran toward the front of the building, reloading as I went. Howlingfell’s screams of agony sounded loud as an air raid siren behind me. Every member of his assault team still on the premises would be spilling out the doors of Islanders Hall within half a minute.

Just before I reached the front of the building I veered off and scrambled over the high iron fence, catching my pants leg and ripping it on the spikes at the top. Yanked off balance, I came down tumbling and flailing and crashed right into an angular, painful shadow that appeared out of nowhere, sending both of us flying. I sprang up, revolver in hand and braced to run or shoot, but it was only Edie Parmenter, sprawled in the street with her bicycle lying beside her, its wheels still spinning. Horrified, I leaped forward to lift her onto her feet and give her back her bicycle.

“Edie, get out of here!” I whispered. “Hurry up!”

“It’s okay,” she said, as calmly as if we had met in front of her boarding school instead of while being chased by armed troops. “I live real close. I’ll be fine. They don’t want me.” As she climbed back on her bicycle she asked, “Is it safe? The feather?”

For a moment I didn’t know what she was talking about, then suddenly the light went on. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I didn’t bring it. Be careful!”

“You too, Mr. Dollar,” she said as she pedaled off into the darkness.

I didn’t have much time to savor the revelation that Eligor’s object was apparently some kind of feather, because I could hear Howlingfell screaming orders from the back porch of Islanders Hall and his soldiers’ rapid footsteps getting closer. I jumped up and started scorching leather toward where I’d left my car, doing my best to keep out from under any streetlights as I sprinted out of King and onto Jefferson. I spotted my loaner a few dozen yards down and headed toward it, and although I could hear many voices in the street behind me now, I was thinking I might actually manage to reach it, and had even started to fumble in my pants pocket for the keys-no easy feat when you’re running, looking over your shoulder, and holding a revolver in your other hand-when somebody screamed my name.

“Bobby! Look out!”

Everything that happened next seemed to take place in a single kaleidoscopic swirl of light and darkness, a muddle of flaring streetlights, clawing shadows, and things that shouldn’t exist but did, right where I didn’t want them. A blazing hot blackness snapped past my face with such force that if I hadn’t slowed at the shouted warning it would have knocked my head right off like I was a carnival sideshow game. It was the ghallu. The rotten, burning, bastard thing had been waiting for me and had almost got me. The voice had been Sam’s.

I stumbled as I avoided the creature’s flailing swipe, which missed so narrowly that the hairs on my head crackled and curled from the heat, then I took a few more steps without ever really getting my balance. Finally, surrendering to gravity, I fell and rolled, smacking some part of myself hard against the asphalt with every revolution, until I came to a stop halfway onto Jefferson Avenue and still several yards from the Pontiac Orban had loaned me. There weren’t many other cars on the street this time of night, but they all had to swerve abruptly to avoid hitting me. The drivers only located their horns afterward, blatting indignantly as they straightened out and went on their way, apparently never noticing the huge black shape pounding after me.

I hadn’t dropped my gun until the last roll so it hadn’t gone far, but as I scrambled after it I still doubted I’d reach it in time-the ghallu was right behind me. Then Sam, bless him, leaped out into the street from behind my car and opened fire on the monstrosity, emptying a whole clip from his automatic into the thing. Whatever kind of loads he was packing didn’t seem to hurt it at all, but it startled the creature a little and it hesitated before continuing after me, which gave me time to reach my own gun, roll, and start firing.

I pulled the trigger three times before I hit an empty chamber, and I swear all three silver hollow-points hit that big ugly bastard right in the torso, but the ghallu only stood up straight like an angry bear and bellowed in pain or maybe just irritation. It was the first cry I’d heard it make-a booming roar that made my ears pop and set off car alarms up and down the block. The gunfire must have already awakened everybody in the neighborhood, but now windows started slamming open up and down Jefferson as people peered out to see who was jackhammer-murdering an African lion in front of the Arco Station. The ghallu shook its misshapen, horned head and then started toward me again. Meanwhile, I had already given up on the idea of trying to reload in the street and was sprinting toward my car.

“It’s unlocked!” I screamed at Sam. “Get the hell in!”

I yanked the door open and threw myself behind the wheel even as my buddy came crashing in from the passenger side. I tossed him my.38 and a speed loader as I cranked the ignition, grateful beyond expressing that I hadn’t dropped the keys and equally thankful that Orban’s old bomb had decent plugs. It caught on the first rev and I threw it into reverse, skidding backward just as the thing threw itself onto the armored hood. We crashed into the car parked behind us but the ghallu hung on. For just a moment I could see something of its face through the windshield, a sight I will probably never be lucky enough to forget-insane hatred sketched in fire, features that rippled and ran like a slow liquid, and a beard composed of writhing, headless snakes. It stared back at me like a burning mask of Hammurabi, with just enough human symmetry to make it inexpressibly alien. The ghallu was primitive, I remembered, and that was its power; it came from some even deeper, darker pit than Hell itself.

The beast raised fists like black sledgehammers. I knew it was going to punch its way through the hood and destroy the engine, stranding us, so I gunned the engine and threw the Pontiac into drive, slamming into the car parked in front of me as hard as I could, trying to nutcracker the monster between the vehicles. The thing bellowed and thrashed but didn’t seem badly hurt. I grabbed the gun-butt that Sam was pressing into my hand and emptied my weapon into the ghallu as it scrabbled to tear itself loose. It bellowed again, and I swear I heard some pain in the cry this time, but although I’d knocked it off my hood it was quickly pulling free from the tangle of the other car’s bumper.

“Let’s get out of here!” yelled Sam. I didn’t need to be told.

The Bonneville screeched backward, tires smoking. The ghallu dropped to one knee, then shoved itself upright, pressing down on the other car so hard that the whole chassis collapsed and one of the wheels popped off and skidded across Jefferson Avenue. I didn’t wait around to see what kind of shape the monstrosity was in-I could tell it wasn’t badly hurt. Seven or eight silver rounds in the thing and it was still up and running, as I quickly saw in my rear-view mirror-loping after us like some horrible carbon-black ape, dodging between the honking cars on Jefferson as I pushed the pedal to the floorboard.

Sam leaned out the window and fired a couple of shots back at the thing.

“If those aren’t silver, don’t bother,” I shouted over the roar of the V8. “And even if they are, it probably won’t slow it down much. What the hell happened to you?”

“What happened to me?” he shouted back. “That thing happened to me! I was a couple of minutes late, and it was waiting outside the building. Damn near caught me, but I managed to get down a manhole where it couldn’t follow me. I got back out in time to see you running toward me, so I figured it might be laying for you.”

“Thanks. Shit!” I swerved to avoid a group of merrymakers in Carnival costumes