fist and squeezed, and Jack screamed. Then the vodyanoy slammed him down into the sand, silencing the piskie warrior.
“Cover me,” I said, and I was over the railing before I had a chance to think about what I was doing. It must have been at least thirty feet to the stone-tiled patio below the balcony. I whispered Honey’s mantra as I fell: “Magic and mind, magic and mind…”
I landed in a crouch with the fingers of one hand braced against the stone to steady myself, and then I was running for the beach. I was a hundred feet from the vodyanoy when I started firing Ned on the run. Honey was still down, struggling to free herself from the sticky, severed tongue, and the creature was dragging itself across the sand toward her, pulling with its powerful arms and slapping the sand with its fishtail.
In the real world, with a normal gun, you wouldn’t have high expectations for any shots you fired at a dead sprint. This wasn’t the normal world, though, and Ned definitely wasn’t a normal gun. A burning blue wound blossomed in the vodyanoy’s side and another where the thick tail merged into his torso. He let out another watery foghorn blast but kept crawling toward Honey as the sapphire energy chewed his blubbery hide. The piskie pulled frantically at the clinging strands and tried to scramble away, but the vodyanoy was covering a lot more ground than she could.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to get there in time. I could keep firing and hope for a lucky shot that would put the creature down or I could stop and aim. Indecision gripped me and I barreled on across the sand by inertia, fanning the Peacemaker’s hammer and silently praying for a kill-shot. The vodyanoy opened its mouth and screamed again, drowning Honey in a deluge of mucus, spittle and bile. It reached for her with one clawed hand, its long, knobby fingers twitching eagerly.
Then I heard an echoing crack like thunder rolling overhead, and the vodyanoy’s head exploded, splashing greenish-black juice across the beach. The monster’s fat body dropped and jerked a few times before collapsing into a pool of evil, foul-smelling magic that quickly soaked into the sand.
I ran to Honey and helped pull the last bits of tongue from her. Then we both looked over to where Jack had fallen. He lay there unmoving, his body limp and broken. A tortured cry tore itself from Honey’s lips and she half ran, half flew to his side. She cradled him in her arms, tilted her head back and wailed at the sky. I dropped to my knees beside them just as Adan ran up, holding the rifle lightly in one hand.
Jack coughed and opened his eyes. He blinked. “Good fight,” he said.
Honey made fists of both hands and began flailing at him, pummeling his chest and stomach. She was laughing and crying, and Jack finally defended himself by grabbing her and pulling her onto the sand with him, rolling over so she was pinned beneath his body.
“Do not cry, my love,” he said, and I noticed the slight brogue in his voice for the first time. “The gods gave us victory this day and there is life in us still.” Honey pulled him closer and kissed him fiercely.
I looked at Adan and cleared my throat. “Maybe we should…”
“Yeah,” he said, and we turned and walked back toward the beach house.
“Nice shot,” I said.
He shrugged. “Frog-boy had a big fucking head.”
“Yeah, he did.”
Adan glanced at me and lifted an eyebrow. “What’s the problem?”
“I was supposed to bring it to the Burning Man.” nine
I was prepared to tell the Burning Man to grab a shovel and scoop up some sand if he insisted on having De dushka’s head. As it turned out, news of the hit beat us back to Van Nuys and the spirit wasn’t inclined to jack me up on a technicality. He’d arranged to escort Adan and me to the Mocambo later that night. It seemed the piskies weren’t welcome-La Calavera had a problem with the way the fairies had moved in and used her turf as a rest stop on the way from Avalon to Arcadia.
I also considered asking Adan to stay behind. I knew the only way to stop the zombie outbreak was to rescue the Xolos, but in the meantime there were zombies running loose in L.A. Still, if Oberon, Terrence and Chavez couldn’t keep a lid on things, Adan probably wouldn’t make much of a difference. I didn’t really know what I’d be walking into-except that it was an underworld nightclub in the Between run by the Lady of the Dead. Even if I couldn’t be sure where I stood with Adan, I needed backup. I also needed to keep an eye on him.
We grabbed some dinner in my condo and then crossed back over into the spirit world a little after ten. We met at the warehouse in Van Nuys and I was surprised to see the Burning Man had left his gangbangers at home. When I asked about it, he explained that the Mocambo was considered neutral ground in his world, and besides, there would be enough “dangerous men” in the club that a couple ghosts wouldn’t make much difference if things got ugly. I didn’t have a problem with it-the Burning Man was my ticket in the door, but he wasn’t my friend. Whether he had muscle or not, it wasn’t likely to change my fortunes either way.
We walked into the mist and emerged on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, circa 1949. I didn’t recognize most of the old buildings that lined the street, and I figured all but a few had been demolished to make way for the chic boutiques, shops and street-level malls that hugged the boulevard in my world.
This was also the first time in the Between I really missed cars. You didn’t need them with the mist to transport you instantly wherever you wanted to go. But this street, in this time, had been a kind of drive-through shrine to the automobile. I should have seen Cadillac convertibles, Packard coupes and Lincoln Cosmopolitans cruising the boulevard.
Instead, the street was empty but for the few well-dressed ghosts with somewhere to be.
The Mocambo club was a two-story stucco building with a Spanish tiled roof and a row of faux-shuttered windows running along the top floor. There was a small marquee and a short canopy covering the entrance. The marquee was blank. I didn’t know if that was an oversight or some kind of existential statement.
The ghosts flanking the front doors were nothing special to look at, but malevolence rolled off them in waves. I wondered about the things they’d done in life to earn their juice in the shadow world. The Burning Man ignored them and they didn’t challenge us as we passed.
We followed our host down a short, dark hallway past a coat check and then stepped out onto the main floor of the club. The place made the Carnival Club seem a little staid and conservative by comparison. The central bar was designed like a carousel, featuring polished brass poles and a canopy with a red and white pinwheel design overhead. Candy-striped pillars were scattered around the floor and each was crowned with concentric, irregularly shaped hoops that gave them the appearance of huge, fanciful umbrellas. Behind the bar and adorning the walls were dozens of plaster figurines. There were weird, anthropomorphic animals in opulent, old-fashioned clothes, a variety of mythological creatures leering down at the crowd and vaguely human figures so bizarre as to be near- abstractions. Glass cases were set into the walls running up toward the stage. Ghosts were locked inside the cases, and they were of varying ages and vintages to judge by their clothing.
We were greeted by a hostess and escorted through a maze of round tables with white tablecloths to a booth with red-and-white-striped upholstery. Ghosts hung on the walls between our table and the adjoining booths like captive thieves. The Burning Man ordered champagne and waited until we sat, and then he went to make the rounds. I looked at the champagne but I wasn’t about to drink any. It couldn’t actually be champagne in the Between and I didn’t want to know what it really was.
The back wall of the club was draped in rich gold curtains that were pulled back from the stage and bandstand. A female ghost stood in the spotlight singing a Billie Holiday number to the accompaniment of the house orchestra.
I realized all of the staff were ghosts-the bartenders, waiters and cigarette girls, as well as the entertainment. The patrons were something else entirely. I’d never imagined a place where the Burning Man would appear ordinary, but the Mocambo was that place. Most of the clientele looked at least somewhat human and all were impeccably dressed.
But even when they lacked the Burning Man’s special effects, they clearly weren’t mortal. Some were impossibly tall and gaunt, and others were obscenely fat. I saw a woman in a crimson evening gown with barbed wire woven into the flesh of her throat and wrists. I saw a man in a tuxedo with a mask of human skin not his own.
It wasn’t hard to pick out La Calavera. She stood by the bar attended by a small army of waiters and sycophants. She was beautiful, with dark hair, pale skin and a lean, sinuous body. She wore a white cocktail dress with cascading ruffles and a wide black belt, black pumps and a huge floppy black hat with an elaborate bow. Her face and mouth were painted white to mimic a skull, with blacked-out eyes and nose and dark lines on her lips
