“A shotgun, so you won’t need to learn to shoot. I can’t give you one, but—”

“Inspector, I’m going to have to get back to you.”

“I’m serious, Charlie, whatever these things are, they are going after your kind.”

“You have no idea how clear that is to me, Inspector.”

“Is that the one who shot me?” said the closest harpy. “Tell him I’m going to suck his eyeballs out of the sockets and chew them in his ear.”

“You get that, Inspector?” Charlie said.

“She’s there?”

“They,” Charlie said.

“This way, Meat,” said the third sewer harpy, coming out of the drain at the far end of the block. She stood, extended her claws, and flicked a line of venom down the side of a parked car. The paint sizzled and ran where it hit.

“Where are you, Charlie? Where are you?”

“I’m in the Mission. Near the Mission.”

The little creatures were coming down the steps now, down the walk toward the street.

“Look,” said a harpy, “he brought presents.”

“Charlie, where exactly are you?” said Rivera.

“Gotta go, Inspector.” Charlie flipped the phone closed and dropped it in his coat pocket. Then he drew the sword from the cane and turned to the harpy from the alley. “For you,” he said to her, whipping the sword in a flourish through the air.

“That’s sweet,” she said. “You always think about my needs.”

The 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham was the perfect show-off of death machines. It consisted of nearly three tons of steel stamped into a massively mawed, high-tailed beast, lined with enough chrome to build a Terminator and still have parts left over—most of it in long, sharp strips that peeled off on impact and became lethal scythes to flay away pedestrian flesh. Under the four headlights it sported two chrome bumper bullets that looked like unexploded torpedoes or triple-G-cup Madonna death boobs. It had a noncollapsible steering column that would impale the driver upon any serious impact, electric windows that could pinch off a kid’s head, no seat belts, and a 325 horsepower V8 with such appallingly bad fuel efficiency that you could hear it trying to slurp liquefied dinosaurs out of the ground when it passed. It had a top speed of a hundred and ten miles an hour, mushy, bargelike suspension that could in no way stabilize the car at that speed, and undersized power brakes that wouldn’t stop it either. The fins jutting from the back were so high and sharp that the car was a lethal threat to pedestrians even when parked, and the whole package sat on tall, whitewall tires that looked, and generally handled, like oversized powdered doughnuts. Detroit couldn’t have achieved more deadly finned ostentatia if they’d covered a killer whale in rhinestones. It was a masterpiece.

And the reason you need to know all that, is that along with the battle-worn Morrigan and the well-dressed chimeras, a ’57 Eldorado was rapidly approaching Charlie.

The bloodred lacquered Eldo slid around the corner, tires screaming like flaming peacocks, hubcaps spinning off toward the curb, engine roaring, spewing blue smoke out of the rear wheel wells like a flatulent dragon. The first of the Morrigan turned in time to take a bumper bullet in the thigh before she was dragged and folded under the car and spit out the back into a black heap. The headlights came on and the Caddy veered toward the Morrigan nearest Charlie.

The animal creatures scurried back up the sidewalk and Charlie ran up onto the hood of a parked Honda as the Eldo smacked the second Morrigan. She rag-doll-whipped over the hood as the car’s brakes screamed, then flew twenty yards down the street. The Caddy peeled out and hit her again, this time rolling over her with a series of thumps and leaving her tossing down the tarmac, shedding pieces as she rolled. The Caddy blazed on toward the final Morrigan.

This one had a few seconds on her sisters and started running up the street, her shape changing, arms to wings, tail feathers trying to manifest, but she didn’t seem able to make the transformation in time to fly. The Eldo plowed over her, then hit the brakes, reversed, and burned rubber on her back.

Charlie ran up on the roof of the Honda, ready to leap away from the street, but the Caddy stopped and the blacked-out electric window wound down.

“Get the fuck in the car,” said Minty Fresh.

Minty Fresh hit the final Morrigan again as he speeded off down the block, took two screeching lefts, then pulled the car to the curb, jumped out, and ran around to the front.

“Oh, goddamn,” said Minty Fresh (damn on the downbeat, with pain and sustain). “Goddamn, my hood and grille are all fucked up. Goddamn. I will tolerate the rising of darkness to cover the world, but you do not fuck with my ride.”

He jumped back in the car, threw it into gear, and screeched around the next corner.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to run over the bitches again. You do not fuck with my ride.”

“Well, what did you think would happen when you ran them over?”

“Not this. I never ran over anyone before. Don’t act like that’s a surprise.”

Charlie looked at the gleaming interior of the car, the bloodred leather seats, the dash fitted with walnut burl and gold-plated knobs.

“This is a great car. My mailman would love this car.”

“Your mailman?”

“He collects vintage pimp wear.”

“So what are you trying to say?”

“Nothing.”

They were already on Guerrero Street and Minty floored it as they approached the target block. The first Morrigan he had hit was just getting to her knees when he hit her again, knocking her over two parked cars and into the side of a vacant building. The second one turned to face them and bared her claws, which raked the hood as he rolled over her with a drumroll of thumps, then he ran over the third one’s legs as she was crawling back into the storm sewer.

“Jeez,” Charlie said, turning and looking out the back window.

Minty Fresh seemed to turn his full attention to driving safely now. “What the hell are those things?”

“I call them sewer harpies. They’re the things that call to us from the storm sewers. They’re a lot stronger now than they used to be.”

“They’re scary is what they are,” said Minty.

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Have you gotten a good look at them? I mean, they got the badonkadonk out back and some fine bajoopbadangs up front, know what I’m sayin’, dog? Buss a rock wid a playa?” He offered his fist for Minty to buss him a rock, but alas, the mint one left him hangin’.

“Stop that,” Fresh said.

“Sorry,” Charlie said.

“Talk Like a Playa in Ten Days or Less—Stone Thug Edition?” Minty asked.

Charlie nodded. “We got the CD into the store a couple of months ago. I practice in the van. How am I doing?”

“Your Negro-osity is uncanny. I had to keep checking to make sure you’re still white.”

“Thanks,” Charlie said, then, as if a light went on: “Hey, I’ve been looking for you—where the hell have you been?”

“Hiding out. One of those things came after me on the BART a few nights ago when I was coming back from Oakland.”

“How’d you get away?”

“Those little animal things, a bunch of them attacked her in the dark. I could hear her screaming at them, tearing them to ribbons, but they held her off until the train pulled into the station, which was full of people. She bolted back into the tunnel. There were pieces of the animal creatures everywhere in the train car.”

Minty turned onto Van Ness and started heading toward Charlie’s side of town.

“So they helped you? They’re not part of the Underworlders trying to take over?”

“They don’t appear to be. They saved my ass.”

“So you know some of the Death Merchants have been killed?”