The ride was as much of a nightmare as the dissecting room. Shapes jumped from corners, colors rammed against screaming odors. I tried balling myself up as much as I could and only succeeded in curling smaller and smaller like Igli until I disappeared and returned to the passenger seat.
By the time we reached her home, I had almost completely recovered. I shivered and yanked myself together. An arm here, a leg there. One last squid stuck a tentacle at us from the bushes around her driveway as we pulled in to park. The fear still sat with me.
"It was just a bad trip, Dell. The things you're scared of don't exist."
I pulled over to the far side of the car, leaned up against the door. "They do, though. They're in my mind. Waiting like some punk around a corner. Waiting to strike no matter what I believe."
She unlatched the door and got me out of the car. I noticed that it was a Porsche 964. Not bad.
I stood and took a step up the brick path. I walked well enough. What made me unsteady was the urge to flinch at every wavering shadow, at every flitting insect and bird. The breeze blowing up the back of my hospital smock didn't help much, either.
"Those people programmed the fears in, and you can reprogram them right out just as easily. That's what psychotomimetic drugs are for. Programming and metaprogramming. Better than hypnosis."
She used some pretty long words for an accountant. My suspicions weren't exactly lying quiescent…
The house was no mansion. It sat up on a hill overlooking Silver Lake, one of many. The construction looked mid-twenties, maybe early thirties. She kept it in good repair. Two stories, white paint. A garden ran from the driveway to the front door, split by a brick walk.
She offered me her arm. I accepted it for reasons perhaps ulterior. She looked beautiful despite the rough treatment she had obviously received.
"Where'd you rent the car?" My mind had regained enough of its fortitude to wonder how the hell Ann had escaped her kidnappers.
"It's registered to a Reverend Morris Beathan."
I grinned even though my legs were feeling like unvulcanized rubber.
"What did they do to you?"
"More or less what they did to you." She fumbled about in her purse for the house keys. "They took me to the monastery and grilled me about you, about the contract, about Emil Zacharias, the TV evangelist. They thought locking me in a stuffy confessional for hours would make me crack. I pretended to and gave them a bunch of creative nonsense to keep them paranoid."
"Uh… Such as?"
She pulled out a key ring made of silver and turquoise and unlocked the door. "I told them that we were making a horror film. The rumors were designed to build interest in the movie."
I frowned. "They bought that?"
"No. That was when they took me out, shot me up with junk, and locked me in the rectory with a little guy for a guard. I guess that's all they figured I'd need." She rattled the key loose and pushed the door open. "When I was done with him, he couldn't have broken his celibacy vows if he'd tried."
"The drugs seem to have worn off faster for you than they have for me." I stepped inside and watched my head spin.
"Are you kidding?" she asked. "I'm sailing the stratosphere!" In the subdued light of the hallway, I saw that her pupils were the size of dimes.
"Less than a novelty to you, I presume?"
She grinned giddily. "When I was a young, sweet, impressionable child of sixteen I consumed a greater variety of drugs than most people are comfortable pronouncing. I was always the only person in my group who could drive wasted." She closed the door and set the deadbolt. "When they started the injections, I was sort of grateful for the free vacation. They didn't expect me to be able to function."
"Why weren't you so resourceful when they first grabbed you at the bar?"
She shrugged. "They had the drop on me with guns. They didn't seem to care whether they killed me or not. So I went along."
My drug-sensitized nose immediately bore an assault by a riot of scents. It smelled as if we were in a flower garden in spring. I felt safe, reassured, cozy.
"What is that smell?"
"Just some flowers and stuff. Come on."
She led me through a hallway done up with the sort of knickknacks a woman accumulates. She sat me in the living room on a high-backed wing chair. The place had a few bookshelves with a fair amount of books. That's the way I gauge people, I suppose. The fewer the books, the stupider and duller the person.
She wasn't dull. Her actions revealed that much.
"Anyway," she continued, clanking around in the kitchen, "I snuck out of a window and into the courtyard and hotwired the first car I could get to."
"You have good taste in cars."
"I was on my way to call the police when I saw you."
"Forget the cops-they're just priests with guns."
I heard her laugh lightly. In a moment she appeared with a cup of coffee.
"Black?" she asked.
"Black." I took the cup and let the hot liquid warm my insides.
"Feeling better?"
"Yeah." I stretched and slid back in the chair. "I saw a whole lot of bad things back there. In my mind. I've seen worse in real life. I'll get over it." I let out a breath, took another sip of brew. My hair may have been getting younger, but I wasn't. I felt old and rattled.
Ann went back into the kitchen and reappeared with her own cup. She pulled up a chair next to mine and sat. A shaft of morning sunlight hit the lower part of her dress, shotgunning silver and gold pinpoints around the room. Her hair hung in straggles caused by drying sweat. She'd been through a lot and came out looking like an angel slumming it among mortals.
I felt a few degrees less than mortal. The house was too cheerful to reflect the way I felt.
"They mean business, Dell."
"If they meant business, babe, we'd be under the churchyard by now." I finished the cup and set it aside. "Here I thought I'd just draw some pay for a few weeks from a flush eccentric. Next thing I know, someone's taking it seriously!"
"You took it seriously enough to accept the offer."
"If God is worried about me, why doesn't He just hit me with a bolt of lightning?"
"They say he works in mysterious ways. Maybe he's softening you up first." She grinned. Her eyes were mostly pupil. I understood why women used to put belladonna drops in their eyes. She looked achingly beautiful.
"Or maybe," she suggested, "the reactions to you are taking place through a network of consciousness."
What she said didn't make much sense, but I was still stoned enough that her words carried a profound impact. I sensed that something important was trying to get through. I answered with appropriate awe.
"Huh?"
She leaned forward, suddenly emphatic.
"People such as those monks are acting on feelings that don't come from within them. They're operating on emotions impinging on them from outside-from a worldwide reaction to our activities."
It was as if she'd stuck another hypo of junk into me. I felt a swelling tide of alarm flow over me. This was true. I was really supposed to assassinate God! And there were forces out to stop me.
And then I realized what was happening.
"What're you up to, Blondie? You're laying a program on me as thick as the one Beathan tried."
She stared with those black saucers for a moment, then said, "Everything will seem more important right now. Don't pay any attention to it. We've got work to do."
"What do you mean `we,' girlfriend?"
She stood to lean over me. "Do you think that after what happened to me I don't have a grudge?" She looked as though she'd volunteer to pull the trigger on Number One all by herself. "This sort of thing has gone on long enough. It's all gone on too long."
"I work alone."
"Have it your way. The offer's there. What's that on your fingers?"
I didn't want to know. I raised my hand and saw grey gunk under a few nails. Memories flashed back. My stomach tried to beat the high jump record. I pressed up under my solar plexus to lift my diaphragm off the lurching organ. The sick feeling passed.
It was a technique I used a lot in my occupation.
A corner of my light blue hospital robe served to wipe the particles of dead flesh from beneath my fingernails. "Leftovers," I muttered.
She wasn't distracted. "I can help you on this. I want to help you. I know someone who can straighten you out on a few things about what god is."
I relented. "Do I have time to put on something less drafty?"
She showered and changed her outfit to a skintight peacock-blue Danskin top and a ruffled turquoise dress. After taking my measurements in a giggly stoned manner, she hopped into the stolen Porsche to head for Hollywood. She was gone until well after noon.
I took the opportunity during her absence to look around. After all, even if she hadn't actually told me to make myself at home, I was certain that such was her intent.
A quick glance through the medicine cabinet revealed nothing but the usual assortment of feminine colorants and perfumes. No medicine. Healthy sort.
One room contained an odd collection of metal and crystal sculptures. Copper and onyx and silver and amethyst glittered under the light from a ceiling lamp. The curtains were drawn. Bronze and quartz and gold and peridot scattered colors about.
Her bedroom barely enclosed a king-size bed decorated with an Egyptian motif. Lots of silk-screened papyrus leaves and scarabs. Stylized cobras. Very sexy.
I cut my tour short since I didn't know how long she would be out. I spent the next hour waiting for her, looking through her library. Real books, not plaques. Only a few of them were fiction. A good number concerned religions around the world and in antiquity. She owned books on history, mathematics, physics. The usual computer manuals were stuck here and there. All in all, a good balance.
Ann returned a few minutes after I'd settled onto the living-room couch. She tossed a navy blue pinstripe business suit my way.
I held it up. A lovely wool blend, not like the reflective stuff I usually wore to merge with the crowd. It fit in with the current style-wide lapels and shoulders, baggy pants with cuffs. Nostalgia for a time even I didn't remember.
A light yellow oxford cloth shirt and a navy-hued silk tie with nearly invisible maroon polka dots completed the outfit.
"Tasteful," I said, draping the wardrobe over my arm.
"Don't forget these." She pulled a pair of black wingtips out of a box and handed them to me along with a pair of black socks.
"Over the calf," I said with appreciation. "You know all the tricks of the trade."
She smiled. "You didn't strike me as the baggy-socks type. And I'm the one with the garters." She pointed to the already-familiar bathroom. "Would you like a shower?"
"I suppose I should, if we're calling on the country's top atheist."
Theodore Golding lived in Hollywood near his Philosophical Forum on the Foundations of Theology. The Forum was located on Larchmont, right next to Thucydides, a bookstore that he also owned. He must have had money to situate his esoteric businesses near the Wilshire Country Club. I was determined not to be impressed.
Ann pulled the Porsche up to a modest house on the four hundred block of Van Ness.
"That's Golding's home. Feel well enough to go in?"
With a shower and a new set of threads, I was more than ready for anything. "Bring him on. I think I can survive the experience."
"He can help you understand god better than any preacher or shaman."
"Certainly better than Father Beathan could."
She smiled. "Well, don't be too sure about that."
Golding answered the door himself. For a man my age, he had all the exuberance of a teenager in heat.
"You must be Ann Perrine," he said, snapping his fingers and pointing at Blondie. The finger shifted to me. "Because you don't look as if you'd sound as sexy on the phone."
Deep blue eyes gazed sharply from beneath jet-framed glasses. The frames matched his longish hair. Dressed in a bright red silk kimono, he stood a few inches taller and about fifty pounds lighter than I did. His voice had the vague musical quality of impish good humor. I suppose he needed it in his business.
If a man could live in a library, he might live as Golding did. Bookshelves lined every available square foot of wall space. Locked glass cases thrust out to serve as room dividers. What framed artwork he owned hung perilously here and there in front of the shelves. To top it off, in the center of it all stood a computer table sporting a library console.
Golding glided between the cases and around stacks of books until he reached a break in the mess that I arbitrarily declared the living room.
He cleared off a heap of plaques from each of three folding chairs. "I presume that this is your friend with the theological crisis?" He extended his hand as an afterthought.
I shook it. "Dell Ammo."
His grip was firm, pleasant.
"Good name," he said. "Spanish?"
"Just American."
He sat, folded his hands over his slim torso and smiled. "Ms. Perrine tells me that you're experiencing problems of a religious nature."
I rubbed the bruise on the back of my skull and nodded. "You might say that."
"I must admit that I sometimes feel like a priest, the way that people come to me with problems of faith. Except, of course, that I try to steer the doubters away from God."
"I, uh, don't exactly have a crisis of faith, actually." I tried to phrase things so that I didn't come off sounding like the consummate buffoon. "I simply would like to know which definitions of God are false" "They all are."
"Yes," I said hastily. "But why?"
"Because God doesn't exist. It's just a concept that people have an uncommon affection for."
"It's fine to assert that, but lots of people-lots of intelligent, sane people-believe in God. What sort of proof can you provide that God doesn't exist?"
He grinned and took a deep, satisfied breath. I had the uncomfortable feeling of talking myself right where he wanted me to.
"You can't demand proof of the nonexistence of something. It's logically impossible. The burden of proof is on those who assert that God exists."
"Why?"
"For the same reason that-up until a few years ago-an accused man didn't have to prove his innocence in court. Suppose you told me that there had been a murder. You demand that I prove I didn't do it. I ask you who was killed-how, when, where. You refuse to tell me and repeat that I must prove I didn't do it. How can I logically prove the nonexistence of something for which there is no evidence? The burden of proof must always be on the prosecution-on the one who asserts that something exists, whether it be a crime or a god. Only when I'm confronted with evidence purporting to prove that God exists can I do anything. Then it would involve demonstrating that the evidence is in error."
"Which," I said, "wouldn't prove the nonexistence of God, only the inadequacy of the evidence."
"Exactly." Golding peered at me. "Have you a philosophical background?"
"No. I've given extensive consideration, though, to what constitutes proof in, um… judicial situations."
"So why the interest in God?"
"My client wishes to lodge a complaint about the Big Bang." I wanted some sort of an answer from him. "Maybe you can begin by giving me a few definitions-"
"No," he said. "Begin you. You define God."
"I can't."
"Come now." He used both his hands to brush back his hair. "Any God will do. Greek, Christian, Moslem, Hindu, Hebrew, African…"
"The only thing I've found," I began, stuffing my hands in my pockets and leaning back in the chair, "that is common to all the accounts I've read is that God is unknowable to varying degrees. That makes my search a bit difficult."
He peaked his fingers together like Basil Rathbone contemplating a crime. "Epistemological transcendence. Yes. Claiming to know that something cannot be known, ever. Claiming to possess the omniscience to know that something will never be known. Contradiction and conceit-the traits of a successful theologian. In my book, anyone stating that God is incomprehensible is merely confessing the specious nature of his own arguments."
Footsteps approached from the bedroom before I could respond, saving me from having to think of a snappy rejoinder.
A short, slender woman appeared, wrapped only in a large burgundy-hued bath towel. She gave Ann and me a quick glance with large, dark eyes. Her throat made pardon-me noises.
"Ted?" she said in a gentle voice.
"Raissa! Come in and meet Ann and Dell."
She entered the room with a fluid motion of her bare legs. From the silver-streaked raven hair that hung down to the nape of her neck, I guessed her to be somewhere in her early forties. That body told some fine lies, though. Her arms, legs, face, and hands displayed enough youth in them to say what needed to be said about the parts of her hidden beneath the towel.
Raissa smiled warmly at the two of us and maneuvered her way past to reach the study. A word processor whirred and clacked into life. Soft tapping of fingers against keys drifted into the living room.
Golding smiled.
"The greatest joy in my life and my highest value." From where he sat, he had a vantage on the study that we didn't. He watched her for a moment. "She gives great perceptual reaffirmation of my self-concept."
He shifted his attention back to me. "God is one of those words that has been bandied about into the realm of the meaningless. You can't define god any more than you can define love or freedom. Everyone has his own definition, right or wrong. With so many different interpretations of a term, the intellectual noise generated turn the words into nothing more than floating abstractions-words meant to conjure up an emotional image that's not concrete or identifiable." He stopped to smile at Ann and wink. "How'm I doing?"
"The gods that existed before the advent of Judeo-Christianity were far more concrete," she said.
"Yes," he agreed. "And they were denounced by later theologians for being too concrete, too easy to conceptualize. Who needed to pay a priest to communicate with such deities when an idol in the living room was sufficient to invoke the spirit?" He looked over into the study. "Raissa! Make us some coffee!"
"Fuck off, love-I'm on a hot streak." The word processor buzzed and clattered.
Golding smiled. I wondered whether the man ever frowned. I sniffed the air to check for the aroma of burning hemp.
"I guess I'll make the coffee." Golding went to the kitchen, sidestepping books and plaques all the way. He spoke over his shoulder.
"As with any type of fiction, Dell, suspension of disbelief is an absolute necessity in religion. Faith is the tool used to undermine reason and circumvent proof. Faith supposedly operates where reason is deficient. Shit!"
A coffee cup clattered to the floor. He stooped to pick it up. "Religion, like politics, cannot be defended as rational."
Ann smiled gently. "You put in a qualifier back there, Mr. Golding. About the older gods."
"Yes I did, Ann. And I'm about to get to that."
I stretched my feet out and sighed. I wasn't getting anything that I figured would be of use. I stood and walked into the kitchen, pulling a cigarette from the pack in my coat pocket. I had to ask him the question. Directly.
"Look, Golding." I lit up the coffin nail. "I just want to know one thing." I paused for dramatic effect and took a deep drag. "Whether He exists or not, a lot of people act as if He does. With that in mind, how can I kill God?"
The canister of coffee slipped from Golding's hands to thud against the parquet linoleum, spilling its grounds like jewels from a chest. I had finally succeeded in getting him to frown.
It was actually more of a scowl.
"How, precisely, do you plan to kill God? Poison? Drowning? High explosives? Magic?"
"That's what Ann thought you could help me with. I-"
Anger gathered in his gaze like a burning L.A. smog. "Kill something that doesn't exist? Kill a mere idea floating around in people's minds? I'm sorry if I seem insulted by your intrusion here. I don't have much time for cranks. You may have the coffee I promised you, then I'd like you to leave."
"Dell is serious," Ann said. "I thought that your experience-"
"That's rather the point," he snapped. "My experience. I've been fighting a battle against antihuman, antirational, anti-joy brutes for thirty years. The most I can show for it is a few thousand people who now aren't afraid to question their early conditioning. That's good, and I've made a living at it. Around the world, however, murder and plunder still thrive in the name of God. Look at what Ireland is doing to Ulster and vice versa. Look at what Israel and PanArabia are doing to one another. Look at the Church that gathers and hoards gold and art treasures while its adherents starve, that smugly states that `the poor are with us always' without admitting that there's such a thing as less poor and less-" He looked at Ann for a moment. The muscles in his face relaxed, though what remained was less anger than weariness.
"Do you think that, because I'm an atheist, I don't take God seriously? Do you think that a doctor doesn't take cancer seriously, simply because he thinks it has no place in human life?"
"Cancer exists," I said. "A doctor can find it. He can cut it away. He doesn't play word games to deny its existence."
Golding paused for a moment to consider my non sequitur. He smiled once more. Almost impishly.
"Many cancers are created by the mental attitudes of the victim. So it is with God." He tapped at the side of the coffee pot with fingernails immaculately maintained. "You want to know where the current God came from? The Judeo-Christian God evolved as a construct-as a political effort to accumulate church power and crush the followers of older, established religions by making the new God more powerful, more intrusive, more petulant, and more irrational than any previous god or goddess. The Levite priests of Israel brazenly copied religious concepts of the Aryans, the Sumerians, and dozens of other Indo-European races. The theft from the Romans and the Greeks was even more obvious-they just changed the names a bit. Jove became Je-ho-vah, Zeus became Ya-Zeus, the goddesses Ma and Rhea became Ma-ria."
That was too much. "Are you saying that the Jews adopted the religion of their enemies?"
"Can you think of a better way to co-opt your foes? Can you think of a better way to attract possible converts than to use their own symbols? How do you think the Christians co-opted the Jews and the pagans? Certainly not by offering a totally different religion to usurp its predecessors. They incorporated the old religions almost whole cloth while simultaneously stripping the symbols of their former meaning. The Babylonians still worship Ishtar? Substitute worship of the Virgin Mary. Egyptians believe that Osiris rose from the dead? Have Ya-Zeus do the same."
Golding seemed to be warming up again. He began to spit out snippets of historicity as if they were theological watermelon seeds. The outcome was about as intellectually tidy.
"Mount Sinai stood for centuries as a mountain holy to the moon god Sinn, long before Moses went there to speak to Yahveh. And this new god's burning bush was nothing more than a psychedelic substance called loranthus growing on acacia-a bush sacred to the Sun." He prattled on while getting the cups and saucers. "The story of Christ is a slipshod retelling of the Mithras and Osiris legends grafted to the clumsy attempt of an aggressive rabbi to be crowned King of Israel.
"They made this composite God of theirs an incomprehensible mishmash of conflicting traits. He was as rational as Apollo and as murderous as Typhon. The priests kept everyone on His good side-for a price. The same group-the same philosophical movement that devised and later refined the Judeo-Christian God-outlawed the older religions and slandered the Old Gods as devils and demons."
Golding made motions as if he were coming to an important point. I had long before lost interest and was more mesmerized by the coffeepot in his hand. It floated and dipped with his every gesture. The dark brew inside sloshed and swirled, never quite reaching the rim. My vision of having a hot cup of Java in the near future dimmed considerably.
"They reserved their greatest hate for witchcraft, though. They rightly recognized it as a primitive form of science, not merely a rival faith. Science-in any form-is anathema to faith. How much more skeptical is the one who experiments with herbs or symbols or rituals to pick what works best compared to the one who places absolute trust in a priest or rabbi or imam?"
"I suppose we could ask Elvis."
He wasn't about to be sidetracked. The coffeepot sloshed precariously with every jab of emphasis he made at me. "Why do you think chemists, astronomers, and mathematicians were branded as warlocks and sorcerers during the Dark Ages? Why were Galileo's discoveries slandered as the Devil's work? He and others were using the scientific method of observation, theorization, and experimentation that paralleled that of ancient forms of witchcraft!"
"Are you defending witchcraft, Mr. Golding?"
He looked at Ann as if she'd just stepped on his eyeglasses. Her question disconcerted him so much that he actually poured a cup of the coffee and handed it to her.
"No," he said. "Of course I'm not." He pointed to some jars on the counter. "Creamer and aspartame over there."
I raised an eyebrow. Aspartame had been banned shortly after the discovery that its use resulted in increased intelligence.
I took the cup he offered. It was lukewarm. One of the pitfalls of philosophy, I suppose.
Golding sounded almost defensive. "I'm merely saying that-historically-it's been downhill all the way, religionwise. Besides, witchcraft per se is a craft, not a religion. It's a primitive form of science conducted by members of a religion. In much the way Lysenkoism was a crude science conducted by members of the Marxist faith."
Ann lowered her cup to say softly, "Lysenko didn't follow the scientific method. Witches do."
Golding raised an ebon-and-grey eyebrow in her direction. "Yes. And unlike Judeo-Christianity or Marxism, the Old Religions had quite understandable deities. Gods and goddesses who didn't take as great a delight in slaughtering their creations. Even as scandalous a god as Zeus was outmatched by the murdering war god of the Old Testament or the nearly identical Allah or the manic-depressive masochist of the New Testament. The old ones didn't issue as many commandments and contradictory orders.
"But, of course, I'd rather not have anything to do with any of them at all. Which is why I'm an atheist, not a Druid or something. All right?"
Ann nodded. She seemed vaguely troubled by his speech, though she hid it behind her cup of coffee.
I yawned. "I am serious," I said, "about killing God."
"Oh, sure."
"Look at me, Golding."
He lowered his gaze to stare down on me. The kimono would have seemed ludicrous if it had been on anyone else this side of Christopher Lee. It gave him an air of imperious superiority.
"Do I look like a kidder, Golding?"
"You look like a hood."
Ann opened her mouth to protest. A motion of his hand silenced her.
"An educated hood, perhaps, but a hood nonetheless. You are a man who thinks he can change things through violence, even if it's the civilized violence of mockery. It's ideas that change the world, Mr. Ammo-not force or ridicule."
"So you can't help me." I swirled the remaining coffee around in my cup.
"Help you to do what? Actually kill God? The idea is absurd! Changing the way people think is the only way to improve the world."
I stared into my cup. Perhaps improving the world was not my client's intention. I knew that achieving a promised immortality was mine. I doubted that the drive to better the human condition had much bearing on the contract.
"I know I'm on the right track," I said. "People would just brush me off otherwise." I gazed up at him to add, "People have been trying to stop me."
"Then I wish you luck. The only good God is a dead God."
From the study drifted warm laughter. Raissa said, "Remember Spencer on freedom, Ted?"
Golding smiled sardonically. "Yes. Remember this, Dell-No god is dead so long as one person has faith. You'd have to convince everyone that God doesn't exist. That's the enormity of your mission."
"Enormousness," Raissa corrected, entering to pour some Java in her unwashed cup.
Golding laughed. "The usage would be correct from the theist's point of view. Few people can countenance their gods getting snuffed."
I slugged down the rest of the tepid jo and set the cup on the Formica countertop. An odd chill came over me that I attributed to the carbonremover I'd just swallowed. When I chanced to glance up past Golding, my spine took a trip to the Antarctic.
Blood dripped slowly down the wall.
It began at the ceiling and spread down and across the eggshelltoned paint. It flowed fanlike down the wall, glistening wet. Something throbbed in my head with a sick rushing sound.
"What's the deal, Golding?"
"Hm?" He stared at me as if I'd had a stroke. He turned to follow my gaze, swallowed a mouthful of coffee with calm ease, and shrugged. "That? I'm afraid the upstairs bathroom leaks. I haven't gotten around to-"
"A tub that leaks blood?" My hand edged toward my empty waistband holster.
"Blood?" Raissa looked up, mystified. "That's a water stain."
No one said a word for a long moment. I looked at the wall again. A semicircular rust stain discolored the paint. It didn't move. It looked dry. Like an ordinary water stain.
Ann gasped in shock. The cup fell from her fingers to shatter loudly against the linoleum. Coffee splashed against her ankles, dripping down to her shoes.
"It was blood!" she cried. "In my cup!" She rushed to my side and held on, suddenly terrified. Perhaps Father Beathan's fear imprinting had had some effect after all.
"It looks disturbingly like coffee," Raissa said, deadpan.
Ann trembled like a moth inside a fist. "Blood. It was. Red and salty. Thick. Clotted."
Golding cleared his throat. "I think you'd better take her home."
I didn't feel so grand either. "Yeah" was all I could muster. I guided her out the front door to the car.
They must have thought we were insane. The idea had crossed my mind, too.
"I saw blood, Dell."
"So did I, sweetheart."
"They didn't."
I nodded and put her in the passenger's seat. Her hands shook when she gave me the keys.
"Drive over to Hollywood Boulevard. Quick."
I climbed in and tried to start the engine. It growled without catching.
The same cold feeling that I'd had in Golding's home overcame me again. I felt a tremble of fear-real fear-begin to grow.
Around the edges of the instrument panel welled droplets of red ichor. They grew and linked together to run down the sides of the dashboard.
The same thick, warm fluid pulsed out of the ignition switch, soaking my fingers.
Ann pushed away from the panel. Her hands wildly sought the door handle.
"He's on to us," she murmured. "Get awa-"
She touched the handle and shrieked.
Blood was trickling down from the roof in rivulets and streaks across the sideglass.
"Get me out!"
I flung my door open, ignoring the sheet of red that splashed over me. Blood squirted from around the edges of the passenger door as I yanked it open. Her shuddering form collapsed into my blood-soaked arms.
"Get me out!" she cried. "Get me away!" She clamped her eyes shut.
In an instant, the carnelian stains vanished from our clothing. It didn't dry up or fade or anything. It just wasn't there anymore. The Porsche's interior sparkled like new.
"It's gone," I said, standing her up carefully.
"It'll be back," she said with grim certainty. Nervous hands wiped at her eyes. Her heels clacked loudly against the sidewalk.
I strode up alongside her. "Where are you going?"
"I've got to get to Hollywood Boulevard. There's a place there…" Her golden mane fluttered in the breeze that blew from the north. Her skirt rippled, clinging and sliding around her legs and thighs. Not a bad sight, had I been in a more receptive mood.
I looked back at the car. Shadows flitted around it like an outtake from Fantasia. I didn't go back to find out if they could drive.
I fell in stride with Ann. She took long, leggy steps with a panicky determination.
"What's on Hollywood? More gremlins?"
The walk calmed her a bit. She inhaled deeply the afternoon air. After a moment's thought, she said, "It's a sort of shop. It's been there for years. The woman who currently runs it is… sensitive to these things."
"Splendid," I said. "Now we're dragging in fortune tellers."
She stopped to stare at me as straight and as pointedly as a spear. "Maybe you can explain the blood. And why the others didn't see it."
I tried to think of causes, reasons, rational explanations. "The drugs?"
She frowned. "I'm not having a flashback, if that's what you're getting at." She smiled stiffly. "A friend of mine once told me that practically no one is so lucky as to get a free trip that way." She increased her stride with even greater intent.
The hair on my arms prickled. The icy feeling spread across my shoulders and up the back of my head.
Something was happening. The air grew rank and stale. More so than usual for Hollywood, that is.
Ann pointed to the side of a building on Melrose Boulevard. With a tone of hysterical triumph, she said, "See?"
I squinted. The vague outline of something-it looked like a moosehead with drooping antlers-shimmered almost invisibly on the south side of the building.
Blood flowed down the building, staining brick and glass, turning brown where it dried.
We weren't the only ones to notice it this time. Scores of cars squealed to a halt at the intersection. Not all of them did, though. The traffic jam was almost instantaneous.
Dozens of people climbed out of their cars, pointing and staring. One man gestured wildly at the building. The woman with him shook her head in confusion. He pointed again. She shrugged as if nothing were wrong with the building but plenty were wrong with him. He looked one last time, gave up, and drove into the snarl of confusion at Melrose and Van Ness.
"See that?" Ann asked again, pointing to the crowd. Some people stared in shock at the building. Others stared in amazement at the people craning their necks. "Some see it. Some don't."
"Can't be holograms," I offered weakly.
"Holograms don't feel slick. Or taste salty."
We walked past the crowd on the south side of the street, moving through a whirlwind of chatter.
I glanced up again. The building appeared normal. Yet that chill was still with me.
A hand seized my shoulder. I whipped about to grab it.
My fingers clamped air.
The crowd had dissipated, and no one but Ann stood within a yard of me.
Another something stroked the side of my face.
"They're touching you, too?" Ann asked. She snapped her right arm sharply as if to free her wrist.
"Ann-what is this? Ghosts in broad daylight?" A bunch of wet fingers dragged over my face like snails. Voices hissed in my ears.
Ann gritted her teeth and broke into a run.
I ignored the invisible tentacles that clutched at my hair and raced after her. She ran wildly, trying to escape the phantasmal hands. The effort was pointless. They kept pace with us, tapping and stroking and grabbing and tugging. Shadows darted about at the edge of my vision, always vanishing at the turn of my head.
My longer strides brought me to Ann's side in a few frenzied paces. The Hollywood Cemetery blurred by to our left. I half-expected the graves to pop open and expel dead actors, looking as pale and grey as their fading images trapped in silver.
Despite my jitters, nothing arose from the graveyard. The trouble lay ahead on Santa Monica Boulevard.
Ann screamed, stopping suddenly to clutch at me. At first I thought hers was another invisible hand and ignored it. She nearly pulled me to the concrete.
"Look, Dell!"
A runny red fluid gurgled up out of the storm drains and sewers, filling the street with blood. Once again, some cars stopped, others honked angrily and sped about. Wheels splashed blood in crimson sheets across pedestrians. Dozens of people stopped in midstride to scream. Or vomit. Or faint. Others noticed nothing but their fellowtravelers' strange behavior.
"It's not real!" I shouted to Ann and the crowds. "We know it! How come it's still there?"
Ann looked as if she'd been worked over by a cop. She still flinched at the hands running over her, but she ignored them as much as she could, same as I.
She took shallow, long breaths to control her panic. "We're getting psychic impressions from an outside source. It'll affect us regardless of what we believe. Let's go!"
The light changed. She delicately lowered a petite foot into the flowing ichorous river. A couple of cars tried to run the light while swerving around the petrified rubberneckers. They skidded to a halt, splashing gore in all directions. Ann nodded at them and crossed.
I followed. Though our crossing produced a queasy sloshing sound, it didn't feel as if we were fighting a torrential stream. Even the slap of the blood against my ankles-a warm and sticky sensation-didn't feel like wetness.
We managed to make it across Santa Monica without serious consequences. The clamor of terrified pedestrians and motorists made the streets sound like an insane Shriner's convention. The air was drenched with the smell of blood, like a low, dank fog.
When we stepped out of the stream, blood stained our legs all the way up to midcalf. I felt as if we'd taken a stroll through a slaughterhouse.
I can't say when, but the stains vanished a few seconds after we were out. I looked down and they were gone.
So was the river.
My mind felt weak and dull. I was watching my nice, solid, normal world fragmenting about me.
"We're at the center of it, that's fairly certain." Ann removed her shoes when we reached Fernwood. She ran faster without them.
We got halfway past the Channel 11 building when she doubled over and stopped, one hand against the paint-scrawled wall. She looked like someone who'd been kicked in the guts.
"What's wrong?"
"Cramps." She clenched her teeth. "Worst I've ever had."
"From the running?" I reached out to support her.
She only groaned and bent further over.
Picking her up before she tumbled to the sidewalk, I held her to me as best I could. I'd handled drunks and saps and stiffs in my time but never a sick dame. I wasn't too sure what to do.
"Get to Hollywood," she murmured. "Let's get-" She spasmed in agony.
I lifted her up to carry in my arms. She clung to my neck gratefully. Her legs bounced up and down with each step I took.
We crossed Sunset that way. I doglegged over to Bronson and headed up toward Hollywood Boulevard. That same chill ran up and down my flesh. Ann shuddered.
The hazy L.A. sky dimmed. Dark clouds billowed up overhead, the color of clots and scabs.
Ann's jaw clamped her teeth together with grinding pressure. The pain pulled her into a fetal position. "Dell," she whimpered.
A gash tore across the cloud bank. My skin felt cold and clammy against my clothes as I watched. Ruby droplets fell in bands and sheets like a monochrome borealis. They seemed to drift slowly toward the ground.
I stopped to gape, hypnotized.
With sudden intensity, the blood hit the sidewalk and streets. Thick slapping sounds like spilling porridge drowned out the roar of cars and commerce.
All around us a vermilion haze hung like a curtain. Clothes stuck to skin. Ann's long blond hair fell in fat, dripping ropes to pull her head backward. I draped a handful over my arm. Brakes squealed somewhere in the bloody rain. Metal screamed. Glass shattered.
People cried out.
I ran toward an apartment complex on the left. Heavily overgrown with tropical plants in the finest Southern California tradition, it beckoned with the promise of protection from the storm. I splashed toward the courtyard.
It was as if we'd entered another climate. One with sane weather.
The ground was dry. Overhead, blue sky-as blue as it can get in L.A.-spread from horizon to zenith. The street was dry and clear. Only the people acted strangely. They covered their heads, huddled in doorways, looked fearfully at the sky.
They still saw it. Some of them. Once again the illusion seemed to affect only a portion of the population.
I lowered Ann to the driveway and took a step out onto Bronson. In the space of that step I left clear skies and dryness for buckets of blood drenching the earth from heavy black clouds.
I was soaked to the bone. I took one step back. The day returned to normal L.A. autumn.
Ann stood slowly. "My cramps are gone." She fussed with her hair. Perspiration damped it a bit, but it flowed golden and free as though never touched by the blood outside.
She ventured a step past the property line, grabbed at her waist, and stumbled backwards to safety.
"It's like the corpse grinders out there, yet we're fine here."
I nodded and searched for a cigarette. "They could jack up the rents for that reason alone."
The apartment building possessed its own charm aside from the mysterious protection it offered. Christmas lights hung between the two parallel apartment blocks, imparting a festive mood to the surroundings. It sure looked more cheerful than Old Downtown.
"It's only two blocks to Hollywood," I said. "If we just concentrate on the fact that it's all imaginary, I think we'll make it easily."
Ann looked at me as if I'd asked her to jog up Everest. "Do you know what those cramps felt like?"
I shrugged. "I've been fondled with brass knuckles in the same locale a couple of times." I stepped out onto the sidewalk. "Besides, the rain's gone away. Come on."
Sirens whined somewhere east on Sunset.
She reluctantly followed me, keeping so close to my side that I could smell her perfume as well as when I was carrying her. The mysterious showers of blood had done nothing to wash it away.
We passed a small clump of tenement buildings on Carlton and reached Hollywood Boulevard in a few minutes. Traffic flowed at its normal slow pace. Old hulks and long sleek limos mixed together in automotive democracy. Too late in the day for bums to be sleeping on the sidewalks, yet still too early for most of the hookers, the street boasted a blend of tourists, business people, and shoppers.
Some still watched the sky, shrugging their shoulders and trying to explain what they'd seen to those who hadn't had the pleasure. We passed by a young couple trying to comfort an old woman who sat on the sidewalk tugging at her rosary.
"Sanguinis Virgine," she muttered over and over. Blood of the Virgin.
It was as reasonable an explanation as any.
"Another block," Ann said, walking carefully to avoid stepping barefoot into any of the trash and crud lining the Street of Dreams. We headed east until she nodded to her right.
"In there."
The building was a modest storefront, not connected to any of the other building by shared walls. On the plate glass-in large, ornate script-was the name
Trismegistos and in smaller, less flowery letters
CandlesIncenseOilsSpellsAnd OtherTools
"Oh, no." I grimaced.
"It's all right, Dell. I know the woman who runs the place."
"How?"
She stopped, halfway opening the door, to put her shoes back on.
"Well, if you must know, Bautista Corporation owns the building. I drew up the lease." She went inside.
A bell tinkled merrily to summon a pretty young woman from the back room. She wore a full-length violet peasant dress of a style that might have been popular a generation ago. Black hair trailed down her back in one thick, intricate braid. She smiled at Ann.
Ann smiled back and sashayed over to her. They spoke quietly.
Since I wasn't invited in on the tete a tete, I took the opportunity to nose around.
The store didn't look spooky or witchy. Three aisles of glass display cases sat under two banks of fluorescent lights. They, and the shelves along three walls, composed the entire shopping area.
Candles and vials of colored stuff constituted the majority of the sale goods. The contents were typed on Avery labels. No pretense of the supernatural tainted the place. It was as straightforward and businesslike as a corner pharmacy. More so. It lacked the garish display ads that promised miraculous cures.
One case contained an assortment of knives labeled Athames. They were the only really witchy items in the store. Some of the daggers were plain, in black wooden sheaths. Others bore intricate ornamentation. A bronze dragon formed the hilt of the fanciest. It grasped the blade to its belly, its tail twisting around to form the finger guards.
It was priced out of my reach.
"Dell."
I turned to see Ann swing her arm lightly in my direction. I walked over to the pair.
"Kasmira will take us to see Bridget," she said.
"Who's that?"
"The owner. Kasmira is her granddaughter."
I followed Ann and Kasmira through a bland, ordinary door in the back of the store. That's when things stopped being ordinary forever.