“So you just want to kill people. I’m still not seeing the point of all this talking.”
“Oh, not killing, exclusively,” the demon said, “though there is great power in murder, as you know. Kill enough people and you may become a sorcerer. Kill a great many more and you may become a god.”
“At least you don’t have delusions of grandeur or anything.”
“No delusions, Ms. Riley. I am an ant, a worm…a parasite surviving on the shit in a worm’s asshole.”
“Now you’re making sense.”
“But it need not always be so,” Valafar continued. “It is the pursuit, the process, the becoming that really matters. If a single, nasty little world must be reduced to ashes in this most noble endeavor-surely that is a small price to pay for transcendence?”
“Aaaaaand now you’re boring me again.”
“When I am alone at the end of days I shall run amongst those ashes, I shall wallow in them, and I shall be a more beautiful, a more wonderful, a more perfect thing than could ever crawl forth from the blood, filth and cum that lubricates this-”
I raised the forty-five and shot the preacher in the forehead. I saw the flame in his eye wink out just before the bullet pierced flesh and bone. The man sank to his knees and toppled over on his side. I took a look at the corpse with my witch sight and the black cancer growing inside it was gone. I walked up to the man, knelt and pulled his spirit from his body, binding it to the driver’s seat of the Cadillac. I reached down and gently closed his eyes.
When I stood up, Terrence was at my side. He stared down at the body for a moment, and then covered it with a thin, frayed blanket from the motel. “You feeling me now, Domino? Ain’t none of us going to be the same after this.”
I nodded and reached around Terrence’s wide back with my gun hand, pulling him to me and resting my head against his shoulder. “I feel you, Terrence,” I said. “But who knows? Maybe some change will do us good.”
The drive down to Inglewood from Oberon’s place had taken two hours, even with the traffic spell. The freeways were choked and the surface streets weren’t much better. I could have saved a lot of time by just getting on the phone and telling Terrence his days as a boss were over, but I hadn’t been willing to do it that way. I felt pretty good about that, and if I hadn’t gone to see him he might be dead. But now I had to get back up to the warehouse district south of downtown, and if anything the traffic was even worse. The civilians didn’t yet understand a zombie apocalypse was underway, but they knew some bad shit was going down and it seemed a few million were seizing the opportunity for some paid time off.
I stayed on Manchester at the entrance ramp to the Harbor Freeway when my traffic spell didn’t open enough space in the gridlock for me to ride a bicycle through. I drove east on Manchester to Alameda and turned north. I was swimming upstream against all the traffic headed south out of the city when some asshole with a fully loaded pickup turned in front of me from Gage and promptly shuddered to a dead stop, lying on his horn. Ahead of me was a sea of cars packed door handle to door handle across all four lanes. The BMW and Bentley dealership on the corner was being looted-more like vandalized, since even if you could steal a car you wouldn’t be able to drive it anywhere. Several cars in the outside lot were burning, others had been smashed, and rioters had broken out the plate glass and were getting started inside. I pulled out my cell and called Chavez.
“Where are you?” he said when the line connected.
“I’m a little over three miles from the club, but I’m not moving. I’m going to have to hike it. What’s it look like there?”
“We’re standing room only, D, and the civilians are freaked the fuck out. But hell, it’s already a fucking riot outside so I’m not sure how much worse it can get.”
“Get a handle on it, Chavez. Any other problems?”
“The usual. We’ve had some zombies try to get in. Some are just hungry, others don’t know they’re dead and they’re just as scared as the living. We put them down.”
“Okay, I’m on the move. No idea how long it will take me to get there.” The distance wasn’t far, but there was a pretty good chance the zombie apocalypse would slow me down. I slipped the cell phone in my pocket, drew my forty-five from its shoulder holster and got out of the car.
The asshole in the pickup truck got out, too. He pulled a golf club out of the back and stalked up to the driver’s window of the Camry in front of him. He reared back and swung the club like a baseball bat, starring the safety glass. The zombie who was driving the Toyota pushed the glass the rest of the way out of the frame and reached for the asshole, trying to drag him inside the car. She was a middle-aged Latina and her skin was gray and blotched. She grasped for her attacker and snapped yellow teeth at him.
The asshole dropped the golf club and ran. A small, high-pitched voice screamed from the open cab of the pickup. “Daddy! Don’t leave!”
I stopped in the middle of the street and looked north at the ragged line of cars that choked all four lanes, and then some. I heard gunshots, though I couldn’t see the shooters and didn’t know who their targets were. Then I ran over to the pickup and ducked my head inside. Two little boys, the oldest no more than six or seven, sat huddled together on the bench seat. They were crying and shaking from head to toe. “Your daddy went to get help,” I said. “He asked me to take you someplace safe. Will you come with me?”
The youngest boy just shook his head. The oldest said, “We’re not supposed to talk to strangers.”
I could juice the kids and feel bad about it later. It would be the smart thing to do. “I know, little man, and that’s usually real good advice, but it’s not safe here. Maybe if we weren’t strangers, then you could talk to me. I’m Domino, like the game.” I smiled and held out my hand. The oldest boy looked at it for a moment and then shook it. “I’m Ethan and this is Dylan,” he said.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Ethan and Dylan. Will you let me take you to a safe place?”
“How will we find Daddy?” Ethan asked.
I could find the guy easily enough. I wasn’t sure the kids weren’t better off without him. I understood getting a little freaked out by the zombie apocalypse, but you don’t run off and leave your kids. “I’ll find him,” I said. “Once you’re safe, I’ll find him and bring him to you. I promise. Okay?”
Ethan nodded and they slid across the seat to me. I helped them out of the truck and took Ethan’s hand. “Now you hold on to Dylan’s hand,” I said. “And no matter what happens, stay right beside me. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Domino,” Ethan said, taking his brother’s hand.
I looked north up the street and then back at Ethan and Dylan. I pulled juice from the streets and dropped protective wards on the boys. “It’s not far,” I told them. “But it’s going to be really bad.” I spun up a charm and let the magic flow over them. “Keep your eyes down at your feet. Don’t look at anything else unless I tell you. And if you see anything, don’t remember it.” I didn’t want to use magic to compel them, but I figured this was no different from the protective wards.
“Yes, Domino,” they said in unison.
“Good. There are a lot of bad people around here, and I don’t want you to be scared if I have to fight, okay?” The boys nodded, but they didn’t seem convinced. I squeezed Ethan’s hand and we set off into the slaughterhouse.
It didn’t take long to put my suspicions to the test. We’d just started down the sidewalk when a gang of looters came out of a lot filled with commercial trucks. A punk who looked like he was in his late teens dropped one of the cardboard boxes he was carrying and CDs spilled out. He saw us and grinned.
“Check it out,” he said to his friends. “Someone brought us a MILF!” The friends all laughed. There were five of them. The leader bent down and pulled a knife out of his boot. “Come here, bitch,” he said, walking toward me. “You give it up real sweet, we won’t hurt the kids.”
I extended my hand to him, palm out. “Vi Victa Vis,” I said, and punched him through a chain-link fence into the grille of a large panel truck. His homeboys dropped their loot and ran. Ethan and Dylan started bawling but their eyes stayed on their sneakers.
It took us more than three hours to walk through the endless warehouse district that stretched south from the edge of downtown. By the time we got to the intersection at Washington, I’d lost track of how many spells I’d cast. We saw a few rioters and a lot of zombies. A large pack attacked the gridlocked cars at the railroad tracks near Twenty-Fourth, and I learned my wallflower spell didn’t have any effect on Zed. I couldn’t say whether it was smell or some arcane sixth sense, but the zombies locked onto us immediately. There were too many for the ghost-binding spell and they came at us too quickly, so I had to use fireballs. The screams of dying zombies and the
