Candy unbuckles and slips off her jeans, leaving them in a heap on the floor. She sits beside me and shivers. Pulls my arm around her. My left arm. She doesn’t mind the prosthetic. I think she kind of likes it. I pull her closer.

I say, “So, Allegra fixed you up?”

Her head moves against me as she nods.

“She said it was probably the stress of getting the new place together and doing stuff with you and the Vigil, knowing no one at the Vigil wants me there.”

“Fuck ’em,” I say. “They’re paying me to be there. They’re getting you for free. If you don’t want to come in you don’t have to. Take it easy and settle into the place.”

She looks up at me.

“And let you have all the fun? Besides, what would I do here while you’re gone? We only get a few customers, and unlike Kasabian, I can only jerk off so many times a day.”

“What do other domestic ladies do? You could take up needlepoint or do crossword puzzles. Maybe get into Valium and martinis.”

“I like the sound of the last part. But seriously, Allegra has all the help she needs at the clinic and I like being Robin to your Batman. That and my Duo-Sonic are about the only things I give a shit about right now.”

I gave Candy a cherry-red electric guitar a few weeks back. She got herself a little used Roland CUBE amp and bashes away every moment she can. She only knows about three chords, but she plays them with great conviction. Sometimes Fairuza, a Ludere who works with Allegra at the clinic, jams with her on drums. They’re talking about starting a band, calling it the Bad Touch Sugar Cookies because it sounds like one of the idoru bands they like. Supposedly, Fairuza’s old band once opened for Shonen Knife at the Whiskey. I think Candy about dumped me for her when she heard that, but I have a better movie collection, so she stayed.

I take a blanket off the back of the couch and wrap it around Candy and we watch the rest of the movie. After that, I write the report I promised Wells, and e-mail it to him. I still can’t figure out what the mess in Hobaica’s demented head meant. Tooth flowers. Seas of fire. Hacked-up bodies. It’s like a Texas Chain Saw wet dream. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. Maybe I just left him on ice too long and Hobaica’s soul was all screwed up from his brain getting frozen and oxygen deprived. Anyway, it’s not my job to figure out. That’s for the bag of Shonin bones.

Later, Candy reheats the burritos and we eat them while watching Hausu, a funny Japanese haunted-house flick. Candy cackles the whole way through it. I don’t pay much attention. She goes downstairs when we’re done eating.

I’m still wondering if I should take a chance and go see Mr. Muninn in Hell. Maybe it would be smarter to check in with Samael first. He’s living in the palace with Muninn and would know if it’s all right for me to go down. Your holy roller types are talking about God sending a new flood to cleanse the world. I’ve got news for them. God’s got his hands full right now. The parts of him that aren’t already dead.

A rhythmic thumping and buzz comes up through the floor, from the storeroom we soundproofed with egg cartons and blankets. Candy and Fairuza are thrashing through a ragged version of “Rock ’n’ Roll High School” because what else is there to do at the end of the world?

[Chapter 4]

A FEW GLASSES of Aqua Regia later, I remember something I promised to do. I put on a hoodie and one of my frock coats and dig around under the bed for a dusty sack of bones that I took out of Kill City, a cursed shopping mall at the beach in Santa Monica. There was a pack of ghosts in the basement that wanted me dead, but we cut a deal. They let me go and I promised I’d bury their bones in the ground outside the mall. With fixing up Max Overdrive and starting back with the Vigil, I’d put it off a dozen times. All this talk of the apocalypse, I think maybe I should do it now just in case. I don’t want to die having lied to a bunch of poor slobs buried under a thousand tons of concrete, corn dogs, and panty hose.

I put a little LED flashlight in my pocket and step through a shadow. Go through the Room of Thirteen Doors and come out under the Hollywood sign in the hills overlooking L.A. From up here, through the air that’s been washed clean by the rain, the city is beautiful. L.A. always looks best in the dark, when it’s just lights and the ugly hulks of the buildings have been softened to vague night shapes. Even from up here, I can see the traffic snarling the main streets and spilling out onto the Hollywood Freeway. People are leaving town and they don’t even know why. They’re running just to run. Some animal part of their brain knows something bad is coming and they want to get as far from it as possible. Who can blame them? But if the Angra come stomping back to the world, there won’t be anywhere too remote to hide. In the meantime, they run like lemmings.

Idiot that I am, I didn’t bring a shovel, so I have to dig with my hands. I put the bones in the ground between the h and the o in hollywood. I don’t know if being in soil will help those ghosts rest easier, but I’ll sleep better knowing I’m not just another liar in a city built on slick pitchmen who’d sell you their mother’s kidneys if it got them salesman of the month.

It’s dark up here and there isn’t a shadow in sight. I turn on the LED flashlight and bury one end in the ground. I get in front of the beam and step into my own shadow, soaked and cold, heading home.

Later, Candy comes upstairs. Her T-shirt is soaked through with sweat.

“Having a little drink?”

“I went out. I’m trying to get the chill out of my bones.”

She takes off her shirt and tosses it on the back of a chair. She comes over and straddles me on the couch, presses her warm body into mine.

“Better?” she says.

“Much.”

She leans down and kisses me. I set my glass on the floor. She pushes me down on my back and starts pulling my pants off.

I should have insisted we get a sturdier couch. We break one of the legs and have to prop up the end on a pile of ancient VHS tapes from the bargain bin downstairs. Broken furniture rescued by forgotten movies. The place is starting to feel like home after all.

[Chapter 5]

THE FLAYED HEART is all over my dreams. Grinding teeth. Pulped bodies in flames. Zhuyigdanatha is in the freezing locker where I found Hobaica. Fire licks the meat-hooked body parts in the flesh cathedral. Chars the sides of beef. Fills the locker with a dense, oily smoke that settles on the walls and floor like a slick skin. Hot blood bubbles from the broiling meat. It pools on the locker floor like wounds. I double up in pain, maybe just in my dream or maybe for real.

I’m stuck somewhere dark. Bound to a wall underground in Kill City. Besides ghosts, the place is full of addled Lurkers and Sub Rosa families so far down the food chain they haven’t seen daylight in years. Ferox, the head of the Shoggot clan, is there with his giggling relatives. They’ve filed their teeth to points and let maggots clean the places where they’ve carved up their own bodies. Ferox wants to see what makes a being like me tick. He shoves a scalpel low into my belly and drags the blade north. He wants to open me up. Pull me apart like those bodies falling into the abyss of the Flayed Heart’s gullet. I’ve never felt anything like this, even in Hell. It’s not just the pain. It’s the idea of being gutted like a trout and left a hollow husk. After all I’ve been through, here I am, dying at the hands of a freak in the basement of a goddamn department store. I cramp again. This time I’m sure it’s real.

The dream changes. I’m back in Vigil headquarters. Their first one, down south of L.A. Aelita is there. She’s an angel. One of God’s most hard-core. Pure Old Testament rage. She runs the Vigil with Wells. Only she’s crazy, or maybe I make her crazy. The knowledge of my existence does. I’m Abomination. Nephilim. I shouldn’t exist and yet God lets me live. She does Ferox’s trick. Pig-sticks me with a flaming angelic sword. Kills me good. My first death. But I got over it and stabbed her right back. Still, I can feel her sticking me more than I can feel any satisfaction in getting revenge.

My stomach burns like it’s filled with fire and metal.

All these scars. The road map of my life. My armor. Sometimes being hard to kill isn’t exactly a blessing. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s my punishment for being born a freak. I don’t think even God knows at this point. He’s broken up enough these days I don’t know if I’d trust any answers he gave me.

Aelita declared war on God before she died. Wanted nothing more than to murder him. Here I am with her former friends trying to do the same thing to the Angra Om Ya. Who’s right and who’s wrong doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe God did trick the old gods out of this universe and steal it for himself. But here’s the scary question: which God is worse? The Angra, who might be competent, but want to wipe us out, or our God, who isn’t good at his job, but if not benign, is at least indifferent to us? Parental neglect is starting to look pretty good right now, isn’t it?

Maybe the Angra are entirely in the right to want back in, but if they’re coming back means wiping us out, then fuck ’em. This isn’t Metaphysics 101. This is self-defense. Anyway, what else am I going to do? Where else am I going to go? Hell is boring and Heaven sounds like a Disneyland fireworks parade forever.

My Shoggot scar burns and I feel mountain-size teeth crunching my bones.

But why be a Gloomy Gus about Armageddon? I survived Hell and Hollywood and the 1989 remake of Godzilla. I can survive this. The pain in my gut eases up.

Besides, I still have the Mithras and the Singularity. I can burn the universe to the ground or I can start it over brand-new. True, I’ll be toast, but when I make that last big fuckup at least Wells won’t be anywhere around to say “I told you so.”

[Chapter 6]

IN THE MORNING, Candy is feeling sick again.

“What’s it feel like?”

She shrugs.

“Anxious. My stomach hurts like I haven’t eaten for days. I have a headache like there’s thunder in my head.”

“You’re not …”

“Pregnant?”

She gives me a soft kick.

“Allegra’s a doctor, asshole. That’s the first thing she checked. Besides, the pregnancy thing isn’t really an issue for Jades. We only make babies when we want and that’s only when we’re told.”

“What do you mean when you’re told? You never said anything about that before.”

“It’s not a big deal. There’s a council in charge of things like how many of us there are in the world and when we need more. Don’t worry about it. They’re not going to ask me to pop out little Jadelets.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m fucking a monster. The biggest monster on Earth. You’ve polluted my precious bodily fluids.”

She says it like it’s a big joke, but she’s never talked much about Jade life before.

“Tell me the truth,” I say. “Did I fuck up some big deal for you? Get you on the outs with the other Jades?”

She sits up and puts her hand on my arm.

“You didn’t fuck up anything. I chose to be here with you, remember? If any of the Jade Ommahs have a problem with that, they can take away my cookies and my merit badges and I won’t care.”

“Thanks. If that ever changes you better tell me.”

She gives me a push.

“Shut up and go to work, drama queen.”

I lean against the bedroom door and pull on my boots.

“I have to spend the day with cops and you get to hang out in bed.”

“Sucks to be you,” she says.

“Maybe I should call in sick.”

“Maybe you should go and get us some money and find out more about what was going on in that meat locker. Don’t you sort of wonder about that?”

“Not really.”

“Well, I do. Don’t come back without some answers and ice cream.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She turns the light off and I shut the bedroom door. I’m going to have to trust that she isn’t bullshitting me when it comes to the Jade stuff. I want to know more about it now, but if I ask her about that she’ll want to talk to me about Doc Kinski, my real father, and I’m not ready to do that. Maybe if I can get her talking first she’ll forget about my crap.

And what the hell is an Ommah? The Shonin is supposed to be Mr. Wizard. Maybe he’ll know.

I step through a shadow and come out in the Vigil HQ across town.

[Chapter 7]

I HEAD INTO the Shonin’s room, but the place is empty. There’s a note taped to the door with a map and a red X over a nearby room. I find it around the first corner. There are heavy curtains over the window in the door. Someone has left a drawing on the clipboard attached to it. It’s a clipping from a newspaper. A butcher-shop ad with a cow sectioned into the different cuts of meat. Someone has drawn a little headstone and Xs over the cow’s eyes. I never knew feds had a sense of humor.

The inside of the morgue is almost as cold as the meat-locker freezer. Wells and the Shonin are there. Wells is reading aloud from the report I sent in last night. Both men look at me and Wells stops reading.

“You took your sweet time getting in today.”

“But it looks like I haven’t missed brunch.”

The room smells of incense. All thirteen bodies from the meat locker are laid out on stainless-steel tables, with their heads propped up next to them. The top of each head has been sawn off, revealing the gray brain matter. Each brain sports three incense sticks jammed right into the head meat.

I look at Wells.

“You give me a hard time and this guy’s one step away from turning these people into bongs.”

“Very funny. This man has been doing real work while you’ve been lying around at home.”

I walk between the tables, checking out the bodies. It’s like a weird corpse maze. Each head has a sigil painted with a brush a little below the hairline. Over their third eye. My guess is that the Shonin has been poking around in some of these dead people’s memories.

I say, “How did you get the bodies? You scoop them up before the cops get there?”

“No such luck. Local law enforcement arrived just as we were removing the physical evidence.”

“Dead people, you mean.”

“Among other pieces of evidence, yes. I’m afraid there was an ugly scene. I don’t enjoy territorial clashes, but I suppose with a crime this large local authorities are bound to be …”

“Emotional?”

“Clingy. However, when I explained the gravity of the situation to the commanding officer, he was happy to allow us to assist in the investigation.”

“You pulled rank, didn’t you? Got all federal. Maybe threatened to bring in Homeland Security.”

“I didn’t have to. As I said, the commander was a reasonable man.”

“LAPD is a lot of things, but I don’t remember reasonable.”

“The chief is Sub Rosa, so he understands how important our investigation is.”

“Having fun, fatty?” says the Shonin. “Does he always waste time like this?”

“He’s a child,” says Wells. “A misbehaving child. That’s why I’m so reluctant to give him this.”

The Shonin laughs a grumbling laugh. Like rocks in a tumbler. I hope I don’t hear him do it again.

“We’re getting early Christmas gifts? Are you my Secret Santa?”

Wells reaches into a jacket pocket and takes out a folded piece of leather. Hands it to me. Inside is a card with my name on it and the Golden Vigil insignia.

“This is official Vigil ID. If a situation develops with local law enforcement, show it to them. It won’t work in little Podunk towns, but it will in L.A. and you’re not going anywhere anytime soon, are you?”

“Not with a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card, I’m not.”

“Do not even begin to think about abusing the authority afforded to you by this identification.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. But LAPD does know that I’m a car thief, so the thing might actually come in handy.”

Wells takes back the ID.

“Speaking of your previous criminal activities, understand this. This identification is only good while you work for this organization. My organization. You get cute, you go off the reservation, and I’ll throw you to the wolves. Do you understand me?”

“I’m a team player, sir. I won’t let you down.”

“See that you don’t,” he says, and hands me back the ID. I put it in my pocket before Wells can take it away again.

The Shonin crooks his finger at me and says, “Come over here and see what real mystical forensics looks like.”

I go over. He waits on the other side of a table holding Hobaica’s body.

“The man’s name is Joseph Hobaica. He’s thirty-eight years old, and by the cross around his neck, a good Catholic boy.”

“Wow. You and your mystical powers found his driver’s license and a first communion present. You’re goddamn Kreskin.”

“Language. He runs the distribution company where you witnessed the ceremony,” says Wells.

“Was that even a ceremony? It just looked like some kind of elaborate suicide pact to me.”

“You know damned well it was an Angra offering ritual. Stop being a smartass.”

“What I’m saying is, the all-beef church aside, the whole thing looked kind of thrown together. There weren’t any ritual objects. They didn’t have time to do an invocation before I got there. They didn’t even have decent suicide instruments. What kind of Gods want a life offering made with something you can get at a hardware store?”

“Do you have any brilliant theories?”

“I think they were freaked out and desperate. I could smell it on them. Maybe they were offering themselves to their freaky God, but they were also splitting town. Just like all the other suckers clogging the freeways.”

Wells nods.

“You might actually have a point there.”

“But you’re wrong about there being no ritual objects. Did you see the amputated limbs hanging among the circle?”

“They were a little hard to miss.”

The Shonin goes to a table nearby and throws back a blue hospital sheet revealing arms, legs, hands, a whole buffet of body parts.

“These are what Marshal Wells’s men brought back from the scene. Four arms. Four legs. Four hands. Four feet. You get the idea.”

“Yeah, they butchered two poor slobs or two of them committed suicide before and let themselves be cut up.”

The Shonin shakes his head.

“You were closer to right on your first guess. The marshal and his men saw this collection of wretched humanity and logically assumed that with this particular inventory of parts, they were the remains of two bodies.”

“But there’re more, aren’t there?”

Wells goes to the table and pulls the sheet back over the limbs.

“The Shonin expressed some doubts after examining the remains, so we ran DNA from each limb. There are parts of twelve bodies here. I seriously doubt they butchered twelve of their own members just so that thirteen more could commit suicide.”

“So, what are you saying? They’re part of some kill-crazy Charlie Manson gang?”

“You’d like it to be that simple, wouldn’t you, lazy boy?” says the Shonin.

Wells picks up a manila envelope from a nearby desk.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of corpse desecration. Limbs severed and mixed together.”

“I saw something like that in Hobaica’s head. Body parts in the fire.”

Wells opens the manila envelope. Looks at a couple of pages.

He says, “Have you heard of a killer called Saint Nick?”

“I think maybe I saw something when Kasabian was channel-surfing. A killer running around in the rain. So what? L.A. cranks out more serial killers than shitty sitcoms. He sounds like cop business to me.”

“To me too until yesterday,” says Wells. “Do you know why they call him Saint Nick?”

“Because it’s close to Christmas?”

“Half right,” the Shonin says. “He’s Saint Nick because he likes to give his victims a little cut.” He laughs.

“You mean he chops them up?”

Wells nods.

“And removes some of the parts. Different combinations of limbs and organs with each killing.”

“Why?

“We don’t have a motive yet,” says Wells. He tosses the manila envelope back on the desk. “But we found some notes and coded e-mails that lead us to think that this Angra bunch wanted to die by his hand. They thought they’d draw him out by imitating him.”

“That explains all the mystery bodies.”

“Right.”

“But he never showed up,” says the Shonin. “Hobaica was afraid that they’d been rejected by their God.”

“So, this Saint Nick guy is an Angra worshiper?”

“Who knows?” says Wells. “But this bunch thought he was, and when they felt rejected they did the only thing that made sense to them.”

“To prove their loyalty to the Flayed One, they sacrificed themselves imitating Saint Nick as best as they could,” the Shonin says.

I say, “Hobaica told me he was waiting for me. How did he know I was following him?”

“You’re so fat he saw you coming a mile away,” says the Shonin.

“I saw that in your report. You’re certain he said that?” asks Wells.

“He saw me standing in a slaughterhouse with a knife to his throat. Yeah, the moment is pretty well imprinted in my brain,” I say.

“That’s bad. It means at least this one Angra cult is working with a psychic. And if one has a practicing psychic, it probably means they all do.”

“I have a slightly different theory.”

“What’s that?”

“You have a mole in the Vigil.”

Wells comes over to me.

“Are you trying to be offensive? This isn’t just a law enforcement organization. It’s a holy calling.”

“What this bunch did was a holy calling too. To them. You think you’re immune to bad influences in the ranks? Stop a moment and think who you’re talking to. I’m a bad influence on bad influences, but at least I’m up front about it. If an asshole like me has Vigil credentials, who else does?”

“I do not believe one word of this malarkey,” says Wells. He doesn’t say anything for a minute. “But it can’t hurt to get new security clearances on all the personnel.”

“I left my résumé in a hole in the ground in Yamagata four hundred years ago,” says the Shonin. “Happy hunting for that.”

Wells looks at me like he’s thinking of taking the ID back.

“Get out of here for now,” he says. “But keep your phone on. I might need you later. I want to sort this Saint Nick thing out fast.”

“What about the 8 Ball?” I say. “Shouldn’t the bag of bones be working on that instead of playing medical examiner?”

“Unlike some people, I can multitask,” says the Shonin. “So fuck you, round boy.”

“Please,” says Wells. “The profanity. You’re a holy man.”

“Your nephilim is right about himself. He’s a bad influence. Go home and infect your friends.”

“Don’t leave yet,” says Wells. “I need you to go and see Marshal Sola.”

“Julie Sola is back in the Vigil?”

“Marshal Sola is with us again. And she has some papers to go over with you.”

“What kind of papers?”

Wells smiles.