She sounded like she was on the edge of hysteria. “Hold on, Lily. Stay there and I’ll come to you. Go in the back room and don’t open the door until you hear me, okay.”
“Asher, what the fuck was that thing?”
“I don’t know, Lily.”
The bullheaded Death flew into the culvert and immediately fell to all fours to move through the pipe, dragging the bag of souls behind him. Not for much longer—he would not crawl much longer. The time had come, Orcus could feel it. He could feel them converging on the City—the City where he had staked his territory so many years ago—his city. Still, they would come, and they would try to take what was rightfully his. All of the old gods of death: Yama and Anubis and Mors, Thanatos and Charon and Mahakala, Azrael and Emma-O and Ahkoh, Balor, Erebos, and Nyx—dozens of them, gods born of the energy of Man’s greatest fear, the fear of death—all of them coming to rise as the leader of darkness and the dead, as the Luminatus. But he had come here first, and with Morrigan, he would become the one. But first he had to marshal his forces, heal the Morrigan, and take down the wretched human soul stealers of the City.
The satchel of souls would go a long way toward healing his brides. He marched into the grotto where the great ship was moored and leapt into the air, the beat of his great leathery wings like a war drum, echoing off the grotto walls and sending bats to the wing, swirling around the ship’s masts in great clouds.
The Morrigan, torn and broken, were waiting for him on the deck.
“What did I tell you?” Babd said. “It’s really not that great Above, huh? I, for one, could do without cars altogether.”
Jane drove while Charlie fired out phone calls on his cell, first to Rivera, then to Minty Fresh. Within a half an hour they were all standing in Charlie’s store, or the wreckage that had been Charlie’s store, and uniformed policemen had taped off the sidewalk until someone could get the glass swept up.
“The tourists have to love this,” Nick Cavuto said, gnawing an unlit cigar. “Right on the cable-car line. Perfect.”
Rivera was sitting in the back room interviewing Lily while Charlie, Jane, and Cassandra tried to sort through the mess and put things back on their shelves. Minty Fresh stood by the front door, wearing shades, looking entirely too cool for the destruction that lay strewn around him. Sophie was content to sit in the corner and feed shoes to Alvin and Mohammed.
“So,” Cavuto said to Charlie, “some kind of flying monster came through your window and you thought this would be a good place to bring your kid?”
Charlie turned to the big cop and leaned on the counter. “Tell me, Detective, in your professional opinion, what procedure should I use in dealing with robbery by a flying monster? What the fuck is the SFPD giant-fucking-flying-monster protocol, Detective?”
Cavuto stood staring at Charlie as if he’d had water thrown in his face, not really angry, just very surprised. Finally, he grinned around his cigar, and said, “Mr. Asher, I am going to go outside and smoke, call in to the dispatcher, and have her look that particular protocol up. You have stumped me. Would you tell my partner where I’ve gone?”
“I’ll do that,” Charlie said. He went into the office with Lily and Rivera and said, “Rivera, can I get some police protection here at my apartment—officers with shotguns?”
Rivera nodded, patting Lily on the hand as he looked away. “I can give you two, Charlie, but not for longer than twenty-four hours. You sure you don’t want to get out of town?”
“Upstairs we have the security bars and steel doors, we have the hellhounds and Minty Fresh’s weapons, and besides, they’ve already been here. I have a feeling they got what they came for, but the cops would make me feel better.”
Lily looked at Charlie. She was in total mascara meltdown and had smudged her lipstick halfway across her face. “I’m sorry, I thought I would handle it better than this. It was so scary. It wasn’t mysterious and cool, it was horrible. The eyes and the teeth—I peed, Asher. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, kid. You did fine. I’m glad you had the sense to get out of its way.”
“Asher, if you’re the Luminatus, that thing must be your competition.”
“What? What is that?” Rivera said.
“It’s her weird Gothy stuff, Inspector. Don’t worry about it,” Charlie said. He looked through to the door and saw Minty Fresh standing at the front of the shop, looking at him, shrugging, as if saying, Well? So Charlie asked: “Hey, Lily, are you seeing anyone?”
Lily wiped her nose on the sleeve of her chef ’s coat. “Look, Asher—I, uh—I’m going to have to withdraw that offer I made you. I mean, after Ray, I’m not sure I really ever want to do that again. Ever.”
“I wasn’t asking for me, Lily.” Charlie nodded toward the towering Fresh.
“Oh,” Lily said, following his gaze, now wiping her eyes with her sleeves. “Oh. Fuck. Cover for me, I’ve got to regroup.” She dashed into the employee washroom and slammed the door.
Rivera looked at Charlie. “What the hell is going on here?”
Charlie was going to try to come up with some kind of answer when his cell phone rang and he held up his finger to pause time. “Charlie Asher,” he said.
“Charlie, it’s Audrey,” came the whispered voice. “They’re here, right now. The Morrigan are here.”
26
ORPHEUS IN THE STORM SEWER
Charlie parked the van sideways in the street and ran up the steps of the Buddhist center calling her name. The huge front door was hanging askew by one hinge, the glass broken, and every drawer and cabinet had been opened and the contents scattered, every piece of furniture overturned or broken.
“Audrey!”
He heard a voice to the front of the house and ran back out on the porch.
“Audrey?”
“Down here,” she called. “We’re still under the porch.”
Charlie ran down the steps and around to the side of the porch. He could see movement behind the lattice. He found a small gate and opened it. Inside, Audrey was crouched with a half-dozen other people and a whole crowd of the squirrel people. He scrambled into the crawl space and took her in his arms. Charlie had tried to keep her on the line during the drive over, but a few blocks away the battery in his phone had died, and he had tried, for those few terrifying moments, to imagine losing her—his future, his hope—after his hope had just been awakened again. He was so relieved he could barely breathe.
“Are they gone?” Audrey asked.
“Yes, I think so. I’m so glad you’re all right.”
Charlie led them out of the crawl space and back into the house, the squirrel people staying close to the walls and moving quickly so as not to be seen from the street.
Charlie felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see Irena Posokovanovich smiling at him. He jumped up a couple of steps and screamed. “Don’t shock me again, I’m a good guy.”
“I know that, Mr. Asher. I was wondering if you’d like me to park your van for you before it gets towed away.”
“Oh yes, that would be nice.” He handed her the keys. “Thank you.”
In the house, Audrey said, “She just wants to help.”
“She’s creepy,” Charlie said, but then he caught what he thought was a look of disapproval rising in Audrey’s eyes and he quickly added, “In a completely sweet way, I mean.”
They went directly to the kitchen and stood before the open pantry.
“They got them all,” Audrey said. “That’s why they didn’t hurt us—they weren’t interested in us.”
Charlie was so angry he was having trouble thinking, but without an outlet, he just shook and tried to keep his voice under control. “They just did the same thing at my store. Something did.”
“There must have been three hundred souls in here,” Audrey said.