I shout at Delon, “Find us a way out of here,” and he sprints into the dark.
On the far side of the dead crazies, the live ones are still trying to get through. They pull bodies from the pile, then pass them back and out of the bloody passage. The whole skeleton of the scaffold shakes with their movements. I have a couple of more guns, but we’re going to run out of bullets soon.
I grab Candy and Brigitte and point to a joint in the scaffold’s ceiling halfway between the crazies and us.
“See that? Shoot there. Everything you have.”
They both open up. I put away the SIG and take out the Desert Eagle .50 the Satanists left for me at the Chateau. Normally, I hate pistols like this because they’re more suited for killing tanks and dinosaurs than shooting people. But I might have finally found a use for it.
I join the women in emptying shot after shot into the scaffold joint. Candy runs out of bullets first. Brigitte has more shots, but her CO2 pistol is designed to punch through flesh not metal. I empty almost the whole clip from the Desert Eagle before I hear the first creak. The crazies have pulled enough bodies out of the way to start down after us again. They’re rocking the scaffold so hard it’s bouncing off the walls of the narrow concrete passage. The damned thing is rocking but it won’t fall.
When the mob hits the area with the weak joint, the whole structure moans and bellows like a gut-shot buffalo. And comes crashing down on top of them. As metal, wood, and concrete cascade down, the crazies claw the air and crawl on crushed arms and legs, still trying to get to us. The roar of the collapse bounces around the stone walls until it feels like my eardrums are about to implode. A blinding storm of concrete dust fills the air. We cough and hack like asthmatics running a marathon in a sandstorm.
Soon the air begins to clear. The echoes of the crash and the crazies’ screams fade away. There’s just the gentle sound of Vidocq cursing in French and Brigitte meeting him curse for curse in Czech.
“Who the fuck was that?” says Candy. “More Shoggots?”
“No. It was the construction workers. Some of them still had their hard hats and work shirts.”
“What happened to them?”
“They fucking invoked something on those stairs and then Norris and his boys invoked it again. Maybe they were going to change too, but they didn’t get the chance.”
Traven says, “Is that madness going to happen to us?”
“We didn’t walk straight down, so maybe we got around the hex.”
“Who would build something like that in here?”
“Right now I don’t really care. Let’s get out of here.”
Delon comes back and leads us to another staircase, this one with no amusing markings on it. Sore and bloody, we head down.
Right into a dead end. There’s no wreckage covering a possible exit. No windows or crawl spaces. Just a solid wall ahead and a small pile of debris behind.
“Paul,” I say.
He turns and looks at me. There’s already a trace of panic on his face. He knows where this is heading. I get a hand around his throat and shove him against the wall.
“What have you fucking done to us?”
He looks around like maybe a magic door will descend from Heaven above.
Candy puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Can’t you take us out through a shadow?”
“Take us where? Home? Disneyland? We didn’t come here for that. I want the ghost, and you, Delon, were supposed to get us to him. You’re Tykho’s spy and I went along with that as part of the deal, but you’ve been about as useful as a three-legged elephant. Why should I even explain myself to you? You’re not even a real boy.”
I reach under my coat for the black blade. But it’s not there. Candy grabs my arm.
“Stop. Just stop.”
I look at her, and for a second I see Alice’s face the first time she saw me kill someone. The moment she understood what I’d become. It didn’t feel good then and it doesn’t feel good now. I let go of Delon and he pushes past me and climbs halfway up the stairs.
“You okay?” says Candy.
“Swell. How about you?”
“Just another day in paradise.”
I want to say something more, something dumb and funny and reassuring, but in my head it’s all black and full of the snake-eyed dice and Devil heads. Bad juju. Evil thoughts. I’m not taking Delon apart right now, but that doesn’t make me want to do it any less. The only other thing I can think to do is what Candy said. Leave. Go out through a shadow and what then? Start over? Delon isn’t coming back with us, and without a guide we’ll be right where we were before we started. Maybe I could trade Tykho something for the map. Promise not to burn down her club or stake out all her toadies on the roof at sunrise. Maybe maybe maybe. It’s all bullshit. This city has done its best to keep the 8 Ball from me and I think it might have won. Maybe it’s time to go home, order room service, and wait for the end of the world in luxury.
“We are such fuckups,” I say.
“Relax. It could have been ten,” says Traven. Neither of us laughs, but I want to murder someone maybe 10 percent less. I think about what Mustang Sally said. “When you get lost keep going till you hit the end of the road. There will be something there, even if it’s not what you were looking for.” But there’s nothing here at all. Just a bunch of fools and a lot of ruins.
“Let’s go home,” I say.
“How?” says Delon. “We’re trapped. We’re fucked.”
“Does anyone know what this is?” says Traven. He holds out a blue plastic ball about five inches in diameter.
“Where did you find it?” says Brigitte.
“Back here. There are a lot more.”
We follow Traven back along the bread-crumb trail of plastic balls. It leads to the pile of debris in back. Vidocq goes down and he and Traven pull pieces of concrete and cinder blocks from the wall. Hundreds of colored plastic balls cascade out. Red. Blue. White. Green. Then the balls stop. There are so many of them that they’ve plugged up the hole they were pouring through.
“What are they?” says Candy.
“A way out?” says Traven.
I say, “Let me try something.”
They clear away from the hole. I get down right next to it and stick my Kissi arm into the wall of plastic. Nothing is going to bite the arm off, and if anyone is hiding on the other side, my bug arm will scare them off. But I don’t feel anything except more plastic balls. I pull my arm back.
“The hole is big enough to get through. I’m going in.”
“Like hell you are,” says Candy. “You’re hurt, you can’t do magic, and you’re probably out of bullets by now.”
“Someone has to go through and see what’s on the other side of this wall. And it’s not going to be Vasco de Asshole over there,” I say, looking at Delon.
“I’ll go,” says Brigitte. “My gun has some shots left.”
“Please don’t,” says Traven.
“It’s fine. There’s probably nothing there and I’ll be back in two seconds.”
Traven lets go of her arm. Brigitte gets out her pistol, kneels by the opening, and worms her way inside. More balls pour into the room. When she’s up to her waist, she’s still burrowing. Then only her feet are showing and she disappears.
A whoop comes through from the other side of the wall. Balls begin to fall again. In a few seconds Brigitte has dug back far enough to stick her head back into the room.
“Come through,” she says. “It’s incredible.”
Before I can say anything, Candy dives in after her. I shove Delon through next. I follow him and Traven and Vidocq follow me.
It’s not much of a climb. Only a few feet. I’m suspended in plastic balls for a second when I hear Candy say, “Put your feet down, dummy.”
I shift around until I clear enough balls under me to move my feet down and touch a floor. When I straighten up I find myself waist-deep in the plastic balls. The others pop up behind me.