Circle of Enemies

burns?” she asked. “Broken bones are worse.”

She was right.

When we landed in Burbank again I was shaky and sick to my stomach, but I could walk again and my bruises were gone. I rode back to the hotel with Annalise and Talbot, but I couldn’t look at them. I was wrung out and tired, and pissed off at the world.

Annalise had Talbot drive us to my Escort. “Stay here,” she told him. Talbot gave us an unhappy look as we climbed out and went to my car. There was no pain in my ankle at all. It was completely healed.

Annalise stood beside the driver’s door. The heat roasted us. “Well, he was useless.”

“He wasn’t wrong to run, boss,” I said. I sighed. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. “Csilla didn’t give him a useful weapon. He’d have fed a predator, and there would have been two victims to draw them in. You might not have gotten them all with your green fire.” She shrugged. I was boring her. “What’s next?”

“Same thing we’ve been doing: find your buddy Wally King. I want you to get out there. Here.” She gave the cellphone back to me. A quick check showed that the pictures I’d taken had been erased. “My number is in there. Call me when we have some killing to do.”

“What about the predators he’s been summoning?”

“Wally King is our top priority. If I find out anything about those pictures, I’ll let you know. The predators …” It was her turn to sigh. “You knew these people, yeah? If you confirm they have predators in them but you can’t bring yourself to cure them, give their names and addresses to me.” I knew what she meant by cure. “I can make it quick, Ray.” There was no kindness in her voice, and I was glad of it. The woman who’d given Captain that note shouldn’t play at kindness.

She turned and walked back to her van. Did I want to see Annalise burn Fidel down to a pile of bones? Did I want to sit alone in a motel room, TV blaring, while I knew she was out there killing him, or any of them?

Hell, no.

I drove back to my motel.

Annalise had promised to tell me what she learned about Wally’s pictures. She had never offered to pass me information without prompting before. Now, just as she was trusting me, I wanted to be far away from her.

My duffel was still in my room; I was glad I’d paid for the week. Then I showered and lay on the bed. I dreamed of a huge mob of women, all of them clones of Captain, weeping on their knees beside tiny caskets.

When I woke up, it was just six o’clock. The air-conditioning had turned the place into a fridge. My throat was raw from the dry air. I went into the bathroom and ran cold water over my hands.

I’d nearly died the night before.

It seemed like such a small thing. I nearly forgot my keys. I nearly bought new shoes. I nearly died. I looked at my face in the mirror, remembering the way the talon had clamped down on me, and trying to picture how it would look in the light.

I also remembered the Iraqi kid with the Jackie Chan DVDs—maybe he would have made it if he’d had an Annalise of his own at his back—an Annalise who threatened a woman’s son.

I left the room and got into my car. The filling station was packed; cars were lined up three deep at each of the pumps. After I topped the tank, I drove aimlessly for a while.

Annalise had offered to kill my old crew for me. I knew she thought she was doing me a favor, but I couldn’t turn the responsibility over to her. I had come here because my old crew was in trouble. I wanted to save them.

That was the hard part. I wanted to be a guy who saved people. I wanted to protect them from sorcerers and predators, but that wasn’t how this game was played. Arne and the others were being eaten alive by predators, and I had no idea how to save them. In fact, I was nearly certain it couldn’t be done.

I knew what I had to do. I had to kill them. Because it didn’t matter what they’d done, and it didn’t matter if they had people who loved them and kids to look after. Only the predators mattered. Not the people.

I said it aloud in my car: “Only the predators matter. Nothing else.” It was easy to say when I was here alone. It was a lot harder when I was holding a gun to someone’s head, or swinging a length of pipe in a crowded room. I had killed people to get at predators, and if I had to be honest with myself, I knew I’d do it again.

But I couldn’t kill a woman’s kid because she refused to give me a boat ride.

The Twenty Palace Society had changed me, but maybe I needed to do more to change the society.

I parked a block away from the Roasted Seal. I didn’t have a conscious reason to go there, but it was as good a place as any to take the next step. I walked through the back alley to confirm that it was empty before I went to the front.

The bar was busier than it had been, which meant it had ten or twelve people in booths or sitting at the bar. The bartender was new, but he looked enough like the other guy to be his brother. A pair of middle-aged women gave me the once-over as I scanned the room, but Arne wasn’t there, and neither was Lenard, or anyone I knew. One thick-necked guy with a crew cut looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He was talking on his cell and looking down at his beer, not at me at all.

Most of the crowd were watching Mexican soccer on two flat-screen TVs mounted high on the wall. The surging white noise of the crowd was the loudest sound in the room.

Three tall, slender men occupied Arne’s booth. They wore waitstaff black and had stylish haircuts. They were victims; they wouldn’t know where to find Arne.

The back door had already been replaced, and the wall was patched with fresh spackle. Soon it would be painted over, I was sure, and all traces of that incident would disappear.

Behind me was the alcove Lenard had been standing in. It was a wait station, but there were no waiters here. The plastic tub was dusty, and the notepad on the counter had yellowed at the edges. Only the bar stool looked as if it had been used lately.