lining the street. I trailed him silently, slowly narrowing the distance between us. I was maybe thirty feet behind him when he ducked through a gap in a chain-link fence and walked across a basketball court toward a small, Catholic elementary school. He skirted the school grounds and headed for the back of the modest, redbrick structure of Santa Isabel church that fronted Soto Street.
I loped across Whittier and darted through the fence. A plastic banner reading Our Future Is Bright, Drug Free hung by one corner next to the hole in the wire. The ghost of a junkie did the dope-fiend shamble at midcourt. He looked more like a proper zombie than the actual zombies I’d seen. “Nice doggy,” he mumbled when he saw me. I ignored him and quickened my pace as I stalked the ghost-hunter through the night.
Abe was headed for the back door of the church. Once this became clear, I had a decision to make. I knew I couldn’t let him enter the sanctuary. I was already probably on consecrated ground. It felt uncomfortable, unwelcoming, like God had posted a No Hellhounds Allowed sign at the property line. I was pretty sure I couldn’t pull off another glamour anyway, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it inside the church. The ghost-hunter might have allies in there, too. The question was whether to make a play in doggie form or risk shifting back.
Abe made the decision for me. He froze about twenty feet from the door. He turned and looked behind him. His gaze panned over the cramped schoolyard, and then…I couldn’t be sure, but since my coat was black and I was skulking in the deep shadows of the nighttime Between, I guessed he might have spotted my baleful, burning red eyes in the darkness. Really, it was a pretty crippling design flaw. Good for scaring the breakfast out of unwitting civilians, maybe, but worse than useless if you needed to do some serious stalking.
I snarled and crouched, feeling the muscles coil along the length of my powerful body. I launched myself into the air and saw the ghost-hunter’s eyes grow wide. He started to turn, thinking to make a dash for the church door, but he might as well have been trudging through half-dry cement. He had just about enough time to gulp, and then my massive body crashed into him. Damn it feels good to be a monster.
The impact didn’t send Abe flying through the air; there wasn’t even any sprawling or tumbling. He went down where he stood and stayed there, like a piano had been dropped on him. He tried to turn under me, to get his arms up to protect his head, but I dug my claws into his chest and clamped my jaws onto his neck. Actually, I got a piece of one shoulder and part of his head, too-my mouth wasn’t exactly a precision instrument. It did the trick, though, and I felt his body go limp. I’d been as gentle as I could and I assumed he was surrendering rather than dying.
I lifted him effortlessly and trotted back across the playground to Whittier. I wasn’t sure I could get through the gap in the fence without snagging Abe on it, so I leaped over it and into the street. I landed easily, my claws digging into the asphalt, but the ghost-hunter got knocked around a little. I heard him whimper and shook him a couple times-it was barghest for “hush.” Then I turned and loped into the mist.
Adan, Mrs. Dawson and the piskies were still at the cemetery. Adan reclined against a tree with his eyes closed and the piskies were huddled nearby, making out. Mrs. Dawson stood clutching her purse and looking timid, as usual. It looked like they hadn’t missed me much. I trotted over to them and tossed Abe at Adan’s feet-this time the ghost-hunter went sprawling. Adan knelt beside him and lashed his hands behind his back with a short length of cord. The piskies hovered to either side of him, their swords drawn.
When I was sure Abe was well and truly captured, I shifted back. I was prepared for the soul-rending agony, but there wasn’t any. In fact, the feeling of relief that flooded through me was almost as incapacitating as the pain. It felt like I’d finally dug out a splinter that had worked its way deep into my flesh. It felt so good I wanted a cigarette.
I stood over Abe and grinned at him, and then I kicked him in the ribs. “That’s for shooting me,” I said. I kicked him again. “That’s for making me chase you.”
Abe winced and shifted his position, trying to get comfortable. “I feel compelled to point out,” he said, “I wouldn’t have shot you if I hadn’t been assaulted by your companion.”
“Yeah, but you tried to shoot my friend,” I said, nodding to Mrs. Dawson. She sniffed.
“Right, well, it was an honest mistake given that she was chasing you and you were screaming like a lost child.”
“Yeah, that was our trap.”
“An effective one, in the end, witch. The question, I expect, is why you felt the need to trap me in the first place.”
“I really do prefer sorcerer, buddy,” I said. “You keep calling me a witch, you might hurt my feelings.”
“Very well, sorcerer, looks like I’m at your mercy. What would you have of me?”
I crouched down so I could look him in the eye and rested Ned on my knee. “I wouldn’t have much of you, Abe,” I said. “Just need to know what you did with the dogs.”
The ghost-hunter nodded and smiled. “This is where I’m supposed to tell you I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Except you do and you’re smart enough not to waste my time.”
“Yes,” he said, chuckling, “I am at least that smart. I was hired to take the dogs. You may not believe me, but I didn’t anticipate the effect it would have on the mortal world.”
“Once you figured it out, maybe you could have stopped.”
“I couldn’t stop,” Abe said. “And, as a point of fact, there weren’t that many of them. By the time I realized what was happening…what I’d done…it was too late. You must believe me, Miss Riley.”
“Well, I don’t think I must, but it doesn’t really matter. Who are you working for?”
“Now I say, ‘If I tell you, she’ll kill me.’”
“And I say, ‘If you don’t, I’ll kill you.’”
“Right,” he said. “I do believe you would.” He looked down at Ned, nodded and lifted his eyes to meet my gaze again. “She is called La Calavera.”
“La Calavera Catrina?” I said. “Like the etching?” The famous image of a skeletal woman wearing a fancy hat had been created by a Mexican craftsman in the early twentieth century. It had become an icon of El Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. I’d had a mask of La Calavera, and a wooden doll, when I was a little girl.
“Not just any etching,” Abe said, “a portrait. It was the image of a spirit that visited the engraver, Senor Posada, and commissioned the work.”
“What would a spirit want with an engraved portrait?”
“She wanted to extend her influence in the mortal world, and thereby increase her power in this one. It was remarkably successful.”
“So why’d she want you to steal the dogs?”
“There is an underworld in this place, just as there is in your world. A criminal underworld, if you will, though there is no law. Indeed, in the absence of law, the gangs rule this world. The bosses are its kings.”
“Yeah, I met one. The Burning Man. He deals hardware out of a warehouse in Van Nuys.”
Abe nodded. “The Burning Man is small potatoes compared to La Calavera, but they are of the same breed. The Burning Man runs guns-La Calavera runs Hollywood.”
I snorted. “Maybe she runs the monochrome version. The fairy king runs Tinseltown on my side of the tracks.”
“Yes,” Abe said. “La Calavera was none too pleased with that development. Her turf has become a kind of highway and staging area for the fairies passing through to the mortal world from Avalon.”
“Okay, she’s got a beef with Oberon. What’s this got to do with the Xolos?”
“Nothing, so far as I know. The point is, La Calavera is a boss and she has her bony little fingers in lots of different pies. One of those rackets is a dogfighting ring.”
I let the words sink in. I felt like spitting or hissing or something melodramatic like that to express my revulsion and disgust. Blood sport hadn’t exactly been unknown in my neighborhood when I was coming up. The cultural roots of animal fighting went deep and poverty tended to harden even good-hearted, life-loving people. I’d always hated it, though. It seemed like the worst kind of perversion to domesticate animals, to tame them and then to turn them into murderous killing machines for the amusement of humans. It turned out there was an even worse perversion-doing that to a sacred animal like the Xolo. I wasn’t even sure what the sacred was to me, what it meant to me. But whatever it was, the Xolos qualified.
“Why would you do it, Abe?” I said, my voice low and harsh. “What could she possibly offer you to do something like that?”
Abe swallowed and nodded once. “She has something I want. The only thing I want.”
