shadow underneath a stand of oaks. The little bastard really was good at hiding. I’d looked right at the trees without spotting him.
He stood on his stumps and brought up a pistol in both sets of claws. My Smith and Wesson, probably. Backing away from him, I visualized the Thunderbird, tried to make another invisible wall, and felt a shiver of magic jump out of me when the ward popped into existence.
Georgie fired. The bullet cracked against the side of the garden mausoleum behind me.
Apparently the kind of wall I knew how to make would stop a brownwing but not a bullet. It would have been nice if Timon had included that particular fact in my lessons.
I turned and ran. The automatic banged again. Another miss, but I couldn’t see myself just running and running while Georgie emptied the gun at my back. There was too good a chance that he’d get lucky.
I dodged behind the mausoleum. Then I scrambled up onto the roof of it. It wasn’t too hard. There were carved letters and grooves in the marble that gave me finger- and toeholds.
Georgie was smart enough to slow down as he came around the side of the crypt. He was looking for an ambush, but he didn’t think to look up.
I jumped. My feet hammered down on his shoulders and smashed him sprawling on the ground. I almost fell down, too, but staggered a couple steps and caught my balance.
He was lifting himself up when I kicked out some of the rest of his teeth. Then I stamped on the pincer- fingers that held the automatic. Something cracked. I stooped, yanked the gun out of his grip, and leaped away.
He swung himself right after me, just not quite quickly enough. I pointed the automatic, squeezed the trigger, and blasted a new hole in his forehead. Dark gray sludge blew out the back of his skull. It spattered the grass and the foot of the mausoleum wall. He collapsed.
And believe it or not, as I stood there panting, my pulse pounding in the arteries in my neck, I felt bad about it. At least until he groaned and twitched.
“Stay down!” I said. “Or I’ll blow out the rest of your brains, and see if I can twist your head loose from your neck while you’re out.”
He stayed put as I backed away. But he did say, “Billy.”
“What?” I answered.
“We were only doing what we had to.”
“Yeah,” I said, “me too.”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw that I’d almost reached the waist-high wall at the edge of the cemetery. Hoping Georgie wouldn’t chase me any farther, I stuffed the automatic back into my jeans, hopped the barrier, and trotted south on North Boulevard.
After a couple blocks, I came to a convenience store. Everybody gave me the skunk eye when I came in, including the chunky Hispanic woman behind the counter. I understood their point of view. I was filthy from head to toe, I had blood on my hands, and I smelled like Georgie.
But on the plus side, I had lots of cash. I pulled the wad out of my pocket, tossed bills on the counter, and headed for the men’s room.
On the way, I noticed this was one of your full-service convenience stores. Along with the beer, cigarettes, beef jerky, Lotto tickets, and DVD’s of thirty-year-old movies nobody ever heard of in the first place, they were selling cheap underwear, socks, jeans, and T-shirts with Harley Davidson and Iron Maiden logos on them. Figuring that I’d thrown the clerk enough money to cover a change of clothes as well as the use of the john, I found my sizes.
Once inside the restroom, I stripped and cleaned myself up as best it could with liquid soap and paper towels at the sink. When I finished, I checked myself out in the mirror and decided that while I didn’t look-or feel-really clean, what I saw was a big improvement. And then I started shaking.
I’d gone through too much weirdness, and too much of the weirdness had been trying to kill me. I had a high tolerance for bad, but everybody has his limits.
But I couldn’t afford to fall apart while Vic still needed me. I made myself take slow, deep breaths and splashed cold water on my face.
It helped, and then I dressed. The shirt I’d grabbed without looking at anything but the L on the tag was black with green marijuana leaves on it. I made sure it covered the automatic, then went back out into the store.
As soon as I did, I spotted the two Latino teenagers who were waiting for me. One had a 5 in a five-pointed star tattooed on his left forearm. They both had their left shoes untied.
That wasn’t enough to tell me what gang they belonged to-not that I really cared-but it did show they were in one that was part of People Nation. You learn to recognize your fellow criminals when you’re a lawbreaker yourself, even a harmless one like me.
I almost couldn’t blame them for what they had in mind. A crazy-looking guy waving a big roll of bills around? It must have seemed like Christmas had come early.
And maybe it had, but not the way they thought. I fixed my eyes on them and walked right over. Something they saw in my face made their hard expressions soften.
“It’s like this,” I said. “If you try to rob me, I will hurt you bad. But I’ll give you money if you’ve got a car. I’ll pay five hundred bucks for a ride to Ybor City.”
The kids exchanged glances. Then the one with the tattoo said, “I got a car.”
It turned out to be an ’87 Grand Prix with suicide doors and a chain-link steering wheel. Even stressed as I was, the sight of it made me smile. I wasn’t into low-riders, but still, it was somebody’s special, customized pride and joy, and I appreciated it for that. Maybe catching a ride in it was a sign my luck was turning.
Okay, probably not. But I got in anyway.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I considered spirit traveling to scout out Rhonda’s store. But I didn’t want to waste the mojo, and I was scared of getting sucked into another magical dimension or psychic world or whatever I was supposed to call them. I also didn’t trust my little posse in the Grand Prix to deliver on their end of our deal if I zoned out.
So instead, I had them drive around a little while I hunched down low and looked out the window. Eventually I spotted a guy loitering in the mouth of an alley, where he could watch one approach to Rhonda’s place. Like with some of the people on the Tuxedo Team, you couldn’t point to any one feature that marked him as absolutely, positively not human. But put them all together, and the effect just wasn’t right. He had too much face from the nostrils on down, and not enough above.
I had the kids drop me off by the other end of the alley. “Good luck, man,” said the one with the star. He’d figured out that I was involved in something serious.
“Thanks,” I said as I climbed out. “Don’t do drugs. Stay in school.”
He snorted a laugh, and then he and his buddy pulled away.
I waited a few seconds in case the sentry heard the low-rider and glanced around. Then, wishing it wasn’t still broad daylight, I sneaked down the alley, past loading docks, dumpsters, and a couple parked cars.
I told you, I’m good at sneaking. The sentry didn’t hear me until I said, “Don’t move. I’ve got a gun.”
He froze, and I patted him down with my off hand. I may have been kind of awkward about it. But the Army had also taught me the basics of securing a prisoner, and I found the Baby Glock 27 in his pocket. First Georgie, now him. I wondered if Frodo would have made it to the volcano if the orcs had been packing heat.
“Okay,” I said, backing up a step, “turn around.”
He did. I studied his face. He was pissed off and scared. I couldn’t tell which feeling was stronger.
“Who do you work for?” I asked.
“Go to Hell,” he answered. His voice was less human than his face, or at least it had no business coming out of a grown man. High-pitched and rhythmic, it reminded me of a little girl singsonging a jump-rope rhyme.
“Where’s the hostage?”
“I’m not telling you anything.” Like before, he sang soprano and gave the words a beat.
