The Getaway God. Richard Kadrey

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СКАЧАТЬ the morgue. Do you do balloon animals too?”

      “Fat, and ugly too. Not much for someone like you out in the world, is there? You have to hide and consort with the dead like me.”

      “Speaking of the dead, why don’t you get more shut-eye? I need to talk to a dead man before he’s gone completely. You have any crow feathers around here?”

      Ishiro Shonin glances over at the ice chest. I don’t have to tell him what’s in there.

      “How are you going to talk to him?”

      “A messy ritual. But effective. It’s the Metatron’s Cube Communion.”

      The Shonin nods.

      “That’s why you want crow feathers. You lie down with the dead man and slash your wrists. Lots of blood and all that? Of course you’d choose that one.”

      “I’ve used it before. It’s goddamn effective.”

      “Watch the blasphemy,” says Wells.

      “You like the Cube Communion because you’re in love with death,” says the Shonin. “You die a little and come back. Cheat death over and over like a bad boyfriend kissing another girl.” He looks at Candy. “Is he a bad boyfriend?”

      “No. He’s great.”

      “Then you shouldn’t let him be so stupid.”

      I say, “So what do you suggest?”

      The Shonin pokes around the table of herbs with the black bony fingers. Picks up a furry twig dotted with small yellow blossoms.

      “Dream tea. I learned it from a moon spirit. You probably don’t believe that kind of thing, but it’s true.”

      “Me? I believe in everything. How does it work?”

      “You make a tea. You meditate. You enter the spirit realm and find your man before he drifts away. That okay with you, fatty?”

      “Great. Brew some up. I’ll try it.”

      “You know how to meditate?”

      “Everyone in L.A. knows how to meditate.”

      The Shonin looks as doubtful as a skeleton can. He puts water on a small flame to boil. Drops the twig into the pot.

      “I should do it. I have more experience,” says the Shonin.

      “And I have trust issues. I’ll do it.”

      “If you get lost and can’t come back, don’t blame me.”

      “If I get stuck because of your hoodoo juice, my ghost is going to come back and shit in your skull.”

      The Shonin shakes his head. It sounds like twigs cracking.

      “No reasoning with some people.”

      “Amen to that,” says Wells.

      Candy says, “You’re really going to drink that stuff?”

      I take off my wet coat and throw it over the back of a chair.

      “If I don’t have to slice and dice myself, I’m willing to try it. Wells won’t let him kill me, will you, Wells? I’m the only one with experience handling the 8 Ball.”

      “So far,” says Wells. “But there’s always tomorrow.”

      “Maybe not too many,” says Candy. “You might want to remember that.”

      The Shonin takes the tea off the burner and pours a brown mess into a small ceramic cup.

      “The girl …”

      “Candy,” she says.

      The Shonin looks at her.

      “Your name is food? How about I call you Banana Split or Hot Dog?”

      Candy turns Jade for a second. Her eyes go black, with pinpoints of red at the center. Her teeth are as sharp as a shark with a switchblade.

      “Why don’t you just do that?”

      The Shonin looks at Wells.

      “What the hell kind of a place do you run here? You bring me a fatty and a demon to work with? I didn’t meditate in a hole in the ground for four hundred years for this crap.”

      Candy goes back to her human face and I touch her shoulder on the way to the cooler. She doesn’t take shit from anyone. It’s one of the reasons we get along.

      I take the dead man’s head from the cooler and sit facing it in the silver circle on the floor. I take the Colt from my waistband and hand it to Candy. She snatches the tea out of the Shonin’s hand and brings it to me.

      “Thanks.”

      “Now I have both of our guns. If anything weird happens here, I’m shooting these two first.”

      “Please do.”

      I look at the Shonin.

      “I’d still like that crow feather.”

      He goes to the herb table and pulls a feather from a bundle wrapped in twine. Candy takes it from him and brings it to me. This isn’t like the old days. I’m still getting used to having someone watch my back. It’s an okay feeling.

      “Thanks, baby.”

      I throw back the cup of tea. It tastes like hot swamp water filtered through a baboon’s ass.

      “Okay,” the Shonin says. “Now you meditate. You need a zafu to sit on? What kind of meditation do you do?”

      I pull a flask from my back pocket.

      “The liquid kind,” I say, unscrewing the top and downing a long drink of Aqua Regia, the number one booze in Hell. It goes down like gasoline and hot pepper and washes the taste of baboon out of my mouth.

      The Shonin says, “Drink all you want, dummy. You won’t find God in a bottle.”

      “I already found God,” I say. “That’s why I drink.”

      I hand Candy the flask and she takes a quick gulp before putting it in her pocket. I’m used to Aqua Regia’s kick, but down enough at once and it’s going to turn anyone’s cerebral cortex into chocolate pudding. I let it and the tea do their work. They fight it out in my stomach. The Hellion hoodoo wrestling whatever kind of magic Mr. Bones uses. My stomach cramps and for a few seconds I want to throw up. But I hold on and the feeling passes. The room gets thin, like it’s made of black gauze. I put the crow feather between my teeth just as I fall out of myself.

      I’m standing on an alkali plain stretching out flat and cracked in all directions. In the far distance is a shaft of light, but it never moves. The sky is dim, like just before sunrise or after sunset. СКАЧАТЬ