“You can’t cast a death hex for shit,” I muttered, blood spilling out with my last words.
Another of the windows behind us exploded as a figure flew into the room, wreathed in a million tiny slivers of glass, all reflecting the morning sun. It was Vigil, and he had a pistol in either hand. A bullet from one of them had shattered the window; he pumped three bullets into the assassin’s back with the gun in his other hand as he hit the floor and tumbled behind one of the couches.
The Carnifex had defensive magics, bullet wards, and the like, but I was certain Vigil’s guns were enchanted too. In a war of magic weapons, the side with the most money usually won. A hot spray of the Carnifex’s blood hit my face and chest, even as he dove for cover behind a steel-and-glass entertainment center. My vision was narrowing, but I saw the Carnifex touch a rune on the machine pistol, and the rune glowed for a moment. The hit man whispered something to the warm metal of his gun. He held his arm out, straight up, and pulled the trigger, letting slip a burst of silent fire and a swarm of bullets. The bullets zipped skyward, then twisted in midair and headed for the other side of Burris’s couch. There was a series of dull thuds as they hit behind the couch. Everything was silent.
I lost awareness for a second, but when it came back, I saw the Carnifex carefully peer out of his cover, stand, and begin to advance. Vigil popped up a second later, behind the couch, holding the corpse of an MS-13 solider in one hand, like a shield, and his pistol in the other. His suit’s upper chest was stained with blood from a hit. Burris fired again, and again, advancing on the killer. Vigil’s initial volley of bullets ripped into the side of the Carnifex’s face and his collarbone. The magical assassin grunted in pain but didn’t drop.
The Carnifex stopped the Elf knight’s advance with a withering blast of machine gun fire that forced Vigil to dive for cover behind one of the stone Aztec coffee tables. The silent blast of bullets sent drug and booze debris flying everywhere. There was a rattle and a crack as a chain shot out from the corner of the hall and snapped the machine pistol out of the Carnifex’s hand. It fell to the floor, out of the hit man’s reach, and I heard Gretchen’s triumphant bark as Dwayne ducked back behind cover, a second before that whole area was blasted full of bullet holes from the Carnifex’s backup pistol, which he had drawn with his still-functioning hand even before his machine pistol had hit the floor.
Burris took the second the assassin was firing at Dwayne to pop up from cover and put another rune-covered bullet into the trigger man’s upper back. The Carnifex’s defensive wards were losing their effectiveness and he hissed and staggered at the hit. Vigil dropped back behind cover.
“Enough of this,” the Carnifex rumbled. “Chak zam nan sal sa a monte ak touye motherfucker sa a, kounye a!” Every loose gun in the room floated into the air; bolts and slides clicked and moved into place of their own accord. The animated guns all aimed at Vigil from every direction. He was dead.
I tried to stay aware, but it was so hard, and I was really cold. Someone was shouting on a bullhorn, and the sirens were the wail of a heart monitor flatlining. The pain was far away, but so was my body. I made myself feel it, fought the slipping away, fought the warm comfort of the big sleep. I wiped my face, made a fist full of blood—the assassin’s blood—and aimed it at the Carnifex’s exposed back, just as he was hissing out the final syllables of his spell to fire the hovering guns. I spit out all the malice I had left in me. After this night, I was pretty much running on empty, so I pushed the thimbleful of hate with the last burning embers of my life force; I gave it up, burned it like nitrous. The hex hit the assassin, and he gasped and fell to his knees. Every floating weapon fell with him. I felt him die as my will, my life broke his. The Carnifex slumped face-first.
After a night of drugs, drink, rock and roll, old pain, old enemies, being burnt, shredding souls, human sacrifices, and getting death hexed, I was done. Not a bad last night as bar stories go, I thought with the last sputter of my awareness. Not bad at all.
“That,” I said, “is how you throw a death hex, motherfucker.”
And then the party was over, and someone shut off all the lights. No encore, no sea of trembling lighter flames, only the gray hum of an unplugged amp, then silence. I was thankful for the peace and quiet.
TWELVE
May 1, 1984
The ride out from L.A. had taken about three hours, so the sun was just starting to climb behind us as we neared the
