Page 37

The Magistrate and the Empress are holed up in his motor home while the kids play kid games. Everyone is drinking. I pick up an empty bottle and weave a little as I walk, hoping to look a lot more drunk than I feel.

It looks like half of the havoc is gambling at the casino tables while the other half is fucking on every conceivable piece of looted furniture. Some are fucking on the tables while the games go on around them. Everything else that isn’t useful or fun gets tossed into a giant bonfire at the center of camp. The cooks burn big haunches of meat in the flames. I’m sure I don’t want to know where they got it.

I head back to the earthmover, where I left the Harley. Settling down on the edge of the bucket where I can be seen, I nurse the bottle against my chest. Havoc members weave by drunkenly, dance or run by. I give a tipsy wave to anyone who looks at me.

When the first wave of elation settles down into the kind of steady low-level craziness that can go on all night, I slip out of the earthmover’s bucket and stagger closer to the flatbed.

Traven was right. Six souls are on guard. However, people have been running booze to them all night. Five of them look pretty wasted and the sixth is trying to catch up. But even this fucked up, they’re too awake to sneak past. I can’t spike their drinks because Vidocq isn’t here with one of his sneaky potions. All I can think of is to try some hoodoo. I consider putting them to sleep, but I’m not good at subtle stuff. More than likely I’d pop their heads like a shotgun in a jack-o’-lantern. And that gives me an idea.

When you can’t go subtle, go loud.

I hold up the bottle like I’m taking a swig and whisper some Hellion hoodoo. Across the camp, a Lamborghini explodes. I never did like those cars. Show ponies for day traders with more money than taste.

Whatever part of the havoc that isn’t fucking or rolling dice rushes over. The ones that stay put . . . well, they’re fucking and gambling. The flatbed’s guards come to the front to whoop it up at the flames.

I slip into the shadows around the back of the truck and crawl under the tarp.

The material is something like canvas and all the fire outside lights things up pretty nicely inside. I walk the length of the dual flatbeds, running my hand along the Magistrate’s secret. It’s a long iron tube mounted on a metal turntable. Along the sides are bas-relief scenes of angelic warfare. There are heavy wheels and at the back is something that looks distinctly like a breech.

Shit.

It’s a gun, and a fucking huge one. What the hell did the Empress point out to the Magistrate? An ammo dump? That doesn’t make sense. He could find it or make it back in Hell.

This is one huge goddamn disappointment. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this popgun. The thing doesn’t even look Hellion made. More like the too-pretty stuff I’ve seen angels carrying from Heaven.

Wait. How did the Magistrate get a gun from Heaven? Okay. That’s a lot more interesting. But I can’t fuck around forever under here.

I crawl back to where I got in and drop down to the ground. Right in front of me is the sixth guard, pissing on one of flatbed tires. He squints at me like he’s trying to figure out if I’m real or a whiskey phantom. He must decide I’m real because he springs into truly inept action, fumbling for his rifle with one hand while finishing his piss with the other. It’s not a pretty sight, nor is it sound decision making because before he can complete either task, I grab him and slam his head into the side of the flatbed. Now I hope my decision making is better than his.

I could kill him and he’d disappear without revealing that he’d seen anyone skulking around the tarp. Or I can leave him and hope, one, that he can’t identify me, and two, that he’s wasted enough that no one believes anything he says. Of course, there might be a third option—I could always try some of the subtle hoodoo I was afraid to use earlier. The more I think about it, the more it’s the only thing that makes sense. Killing him would raise too many questions and leaving him means he could rat me out. That’s it, then.

I don’t have to do much to him really. He’s drunk, his cock is out, and there’s piss everywhere—plus I already gave him a concussion—so everyone will think he stumbled and cracked his head on the flatbed. Okay. Just wipe out, say, the last hour or so of his memory.

This will be interesting. I’ve never tried it before. Still, I’m good at improvising hoodoo. I bark a few Hellion words at him.

The first thing I note is that my hex doesn’t make him explode. So far, so good. I grab the booze bottle he set on the ground and pour some over him so that he really reeks of the stuff. There’s nothing else I can do if I’m not going to kill him. I need to get moving or risk more guards coming back.

I make a wide circle from the flatbed to the trucks and construction equipment, staying in the shadows as much as possible. Eventually, I come out at the earthmover and slip back into the bucket from the far side, hoping that no one came by to check on me and found me gone. At this point, though, there’s nothing to do about it but curl up with the empty whiskey bottle and pretend to sleep it off while worrying about the fifty things I probably forgot while trying to cover my tracks.

The sounds of the camp have settled down again. Either they put the Lamborghini out or they’re using it to roast marshmallows. Now that I think about it, I probably should have killed that guy. But ever since I got Doll Man hanged, I feel like I want to ease back on the homicide for a little while. Just a little.

That said, I probably should have picked up a bottle with a little whiskey left in it. Or gone looking for the greatest Hellion libation of all—Aqua Regia. But what are the chances of finding that out here in the boonies?

I lie in the earthmover’s bucket, staring up at the bruised eternally twilight sky wishing I hadn’t thought about Aqua Regia. My big decision now is whether I lie here until we break camp or give in to one of my mother’s favorite expressions: beggars can’t be choosers.

In the end, I decide to go and beg for a drink. Anything is better than lying here hoping I got the hex on the guard right. If I fucked up and gave that idiot superpowers, I’m going to be really pissed.

The ground at center camp is littered with empties. I walk around like a true wino, checking each one to see if there’s enough to get one good belt. After striking out a good dozen times, I drop-kick a couple of empties into the bonfire in frustration.

“Here,” someone says. “Before you hurt yourself.”

When I turn around, Daja is there holding out a mostly full bottle of . . . hell, I couldn’t care less. It’s liquor. I accept the bottle and take a couple of long pulls. When I hand it back, it’s considerably emptier than it was a minute ago.

“Sorry,” I say. “I’ve been looking for a while.”

“No problem. We got every bottle in town. We’re set for a month.”

“A month? How do you tell time out here? I don’t even know how long we’ve been in this town.”