“Do you mind if I crash here for like ever? Allegra just fired me. And I think Rinko and I just broke up. It was hard to tell with all the screaming and her throwing things. Did something happen with you two?”
“She just wanted to unstitch my seams is all. I already have a roomie,” I say, nodding to Kasabian. “But it’s a big place. I think we can squeeze you in.”
She smiles and lies back next to the guns.
“This is a big bed. Think maybe I could stay in here with you? I promise to be good.”
“Good people end up on the couch. Only the bad ones get an all-access pass.”
“I’ll do my evil best to stay off the couch, sir.”
I lie down next to her. She slides against me.
Someone knocks on the bedroom doorframe.
“We’re out of beer,” says Kasabian. Then, when he sees us, “Oh Christ. Is this turning into a domestic bliss situation? I can’t stand that It’s a Wonderful Life crap. Take me back and let me die at Max Overdrive.”
“Be nice, Kas, and I’ll loan you my hentai discs,” says Candy.
Kasabian frowns.
“Schoolgirls and tentacles? No thanks. I prefer my porn mammal-only.”
“Hot cow-on-cow action. I like it,” Candy says.
Kasabian puts his hands up in an “I’ve had enough” gesture.
“I’ll leave you degenerates to work out whatever it is you’re working out. Just remember that I claim the bedroom at the far end of the place. It has the second biggest TV.”
I look at Candy.
“As much as I’d like to give you a proper naked welcome, I have to go and see a man about a ghost. You know where the food is. Please make Kasabian watch whatever you think will annoy him most.”
“Where are you going? Can I come along?”
“You got knifed a few hours ago, so no.”
“She just got skin. She didn’t even hit muscle.”
I put on my boots and check my ammo.
“No.”
She sits up.
“Seriously, we talked about this. When you run off somewhere you might not come back from, I go with you. No more stoic monosyllabic bullshit.”
I set aside the Glock and put the .45, the knife, and na’at in my coat. I hate that Candy is right. We made a deal and I don’t want to be an overprotective liar right off the bat. There’s plenty of time for that later.
“Okay. But you stay behind me if the things heat up. No going Jade and eating people. It’s my circus and I’m the ringmaster. Got it?”
“What does that make me?”
“You’re the head clown. You get out of the little car first while the others are still crushed inside.”
“And when they’re out, you know what we’re doing?”
“What?”
“Clown-car sex.”
I hope Traven gets here soon.
Traven calls twenty minutes later. Candy and I go down and meet him out front.
She brings the folding pistol with her. She’s already covered the case with InuYasha and Samurai Champloo stickers. I’m not sure if that’s technically low profile but the case looks more like an eighth grader’s lunch box than a gun tote, so I guess it works.
Traven is in the car when we get there. He’s uncomfortable in the presence of the last few beautiful people fleeing the hotel. Their opulence and generic decadence must be like seeing Martians to a cloistered brainiac like him.
“Thanks for the ride, Father.”
“I’m glad to help. You picked a good day to go to the ocean. Most sensible people—”
“Let me guess. Are hunkering down because the sky is plaid and Godzilla is fighting with Paul Bunyan in the Scientology building parking lot.”
“I’ll drive and you’ll see.”
“Hi, Father,” says Candy.
He smiles to her in the rearview mirror.
“It’s good to see you.”
Traven drives west on Sunset and I do see. The sky isn’t a bad color but the light pulses like a slow strobe. It’s the kind of thing that could give you a migraine if you stared at it long enough. Farther down Sunset, it gets more interesting. Sometime during the night, cars, mailboxes, stoplights, and telephone poles sank a foot into the roadbed like someone turned on a hot plate below the street. Traven’s Geo Metro bounces over asphalt frozen into low waves. Cop cars block side streets that have collapsed into sinkholes. A few look like they’re floating several feet in the air. The PTSD Hell flashbacks are coming on strong. At least there’s not much traffic.
“Do you still want to go all the way to Malibu?”
“I have to but you don’t,” I say. “Drop us off and I can steal something.”
He shakes his head.
“No. I want to tell you a story and I’d like to tell it now. It has to do with the Qomrama Om Ya and it ties into all this madness.”
“The ghost girl too. She’s scared to death of it.”
“You showed it to her?”
“I hit her with it. It’s the only thing that stopped her. And she has a name. Lamia.”
“Are you absolutely sure about that?”
Traven sounds about like someone just read him the winning Lotto numbers and he thinks he hit the Mega Millions.
“It’s two syllables. Even I can remember that.”
“So what is the Qomrama?” asks Candy.
Traven looks at me out of the corner of his eye.
“Remember you once asked me where I thought the old gods, the Angra Om Ya, had gone?”
“Yeah. You said you thought they hadn’t left but you didn’t say what that meant.”
“Well, I was wrong. They are gone. But not for much longer.”
“How soon is longer? I mean the world is coming apart.”
Traven picks up a book from the dashboard. It’s an old one I once saw in his apartment. There are rust-colored stains on the front that are probably blood.
“Lamia is the name of an avatar of one of the Angra Om Ya.”
“I pistol-whipped a goddess?”
He shakes his head.
“I think what you encountered was a kind of demon. An incomplete piece of one of the Angra.”
“But she’s the ghost of a real little girl. She was born in Spain.”
“How will lost deities enter our universe from the outside? They’re creatures without form. Maybe they have to do it through the mortal bodies to gain substance. What kind of a girl was she? Was she considered holy? Did she perform miracles?”
“She was a monster. Her own village killed her and buried her in an unconsecrated cemetery.”
Traven is quiet for a minute.
“I wonder if she brought the Qomrama Om Ya with her or came to retrieve it?”
“Forget the girl. What’s the Qomrama?”
Traven slows and steers us around a sinkhole that’s swallowed part of a sandwich shop and auto-parts store. Cops on the side streets look worn and shell-shocked.
“In the first language, ‘Om Ya’ simply means ‘God.’ ‘Angra,’ depending on how you say it, means ‘great’ or ‘grievous.’ ‘Qomrama’ is a bit murkier but it means something like ‘devourer.’ The Qomrama Om Ya is the Godeater. A weapon designed by gods to kill other gods.”
I check the side mirror.
“Father, did you come straight to the Chateau from your place?”
“Yes. Why?”
Candy looks out the rear window. I keep an eye on the mirror.
“There’s only one car back there and it’s been with us for several blocks. Speed up.”
The car falls back for a few seconds then speeds up and stays on our tail. It’s a Charger, not that that matters. In a flat-out chase, a skateboarder with a broken ankle can outrun a Geo Metro. The Charger is overkill. It accelerates and comes up behind us.
“Take it up to forty and keep it there.”
“The car will shake apart on this uneven pavement.”
“Yeah, but it’ll make it harder for them to shoot at us.”
“Oh,” says Traven. He hits the gas.
The Charger doesn’t even notice. It pulls up alongside and King Cairo rolls down the front passenger window.
“Switch places with me,” I say to Candy.
I squeeze into the backseat and she gets in the front.
Flame hits the side of the Metro.
“Don’t slow down.”
Traven nods. Steers around the bumps the best he can.