TWENTY-FIVE

}}}Carey. 1983. Los Angeles, California. East L.A.}}}}}}}}}

Before the little boy with the hammer bashed my skull in, the last thing I saw was Rosa, upside-down, balancing on one hand, before finally losing it and collapsing, feet-first, into the angel. Nobody had as much fun with it as her. Not before, and not since.

There was a big white flash, and then the sweet comfort of unconsciousness. I love unconsciousness. We’re real good friends. Whether it’s sleeping late, passing out from drinking too much, or getting kicked in the head by a big guy who doesn’t like being called a condom-drinker, I’m generally on good terms with being put down. Waking up, on the other hand—we don’t get along. Especially when I’m doing it with a three-inch gash in the side of my head from the wrong end of a claw hammer. Felt like I was going to throw up a bucket full of rusty nails.

No sign of the little boy. God, that kid was creepy. Must’ve been seven or eight, but a thousand years old behind the eyes. Wore a three-piece suit, looking like a ventriloquist’s mannequin come to life. He didn’t happen upon a hammer and, fortune smiling upon him, use it to further sully my good looks. He had it with him the whole time. Pulled it out of a special velvet holster sewn inside of his jacket. Did it real slow, too, so I could see it.

I was not going to miss him.

I pushed myself up on my elbows, which was about as close as I could get to upright. The world still swam around like somebody shook my fishbowl. The room was mostly vacant now—just me, blood sealing one eye shut, dry-heaving into the collar of my leather jacket—and Rosa, crumpled up like a discarded burger wrapper in the far corner. The angel was gone. Same for all the Empty Ones that had been here just seconds (Minutes? Hours? Time’s funny when you take a hammer to it) ago. A bunch of greasy black marks on the floor now.

Rosa wasn’t moving, but I knew the drill. Old hat by now. She’d be up and around in a few minutes. Not in fighting shape, mind you, but a good night’s sleep—the only time she ever did anymore was after taking an angel—and she’d be up at 6 A.M., rattling around in the kitchen of Zang’s boathouse, totally heedless of the sanctity of my bedroom, which was the couch, and generally ruining my sunny disposition. Used to take her days to recover after taking an angel. Now it was like a bad hangover—gone with a night’s rest and a big, greasy breakfast. Zang would probably be all healed up by then, too. Even though they’d torn both of his arms off before chucking him out the window and into the Pacific Ocean.

It’s annoying, is what it is. Being the only one of your roommates who takes lasting damage. Like being the oldest guy at the party.

Somebody knocked on the door.

I stared at it, cross-eyed. Waited.

Knocked again.

Huh. Guess I wasn’t hallucinating.

I army-crawled on my belly until that got more frustrating than trying to stand. I hobbled the rest of the way to the door, threw the bolts, and opened it to a soaking wet and armless Zang. He flashed me a winning smile and stepped around me, into the ranger station.

“How did you knock?” was my first stupid question.

“With my head,” he answered.

“You all right?” was my second stupid question.

“What do you call a man with no arms and no legs lying in a bush?” he asked.

“I don’t … what?”

“Russell,” he finished.

It was the only joke I ever heard him tell. I was too shocked to laugh. Or maybe it just wasn’t funny. When it got no response, Zang dropped his pretense at humanity and lapsed into his usual monotone.

“I will try jokes another time,” he said. “I am fine. The arms will heal. You are also not dead, which is useful.”

At that, I laughed. It was the closest thing he could get to concern.

“Is it, now?” I asked, rubbing my bleeding scalp and wincing.

“It is,” he said. Never did get the hang of rhetorical questions. “Because it is time. I find myself temporarily fingerless, so you will have to shoot the girl.”

“What?!” It was so hard to stand. I leaned heavily on the thin wooden walls. Heard the wind howling through the cracks between the boards. “Are you joking again?”

“You are the one who told me this was necessary,” he said.

“Yeah, but maybe I was wrong,” I answered. The wall behind me felt strangely gritty. I scratched at it with my fingernails, and they came away black. I turned around and saw a charcoal smudge, roughly the shape of a man, burned into the wall right where I’d been leaning.

“You are frequently wrong,” he said, thinking. Then, “But I don’t think you are about this. I have reason for concern. The girl and I have been getting along much better lately.”

“You’re becoming friends, so you want to kill her?”

“She despised and feared me at first, which is a normal human response. Now, we have more in common. Taking the angels is changing her. The only wounds that slow her are the psychic ones she sustains from destroying the tools of the Mechanic.”

“Just call them angels,” I said. “Don’t spout that pretentious bullshit.”

Pretentious bullshit, my mind echoed.

Randall’s favorite phrase.

My heart hurt, for the few seconds I allowed it.

“Her recuperative period from those wounds is also growing shorter. Soon there will not be a window of weakness to exploit. We act now, or not at all.”

“Then not at all!” I said, too loudly. If felt like I tore something inside my skull.

“I understand you have feelings for the girl,” Zang said. “But to be fair, you have feelings for every girl we meet. These feelings, I believe, are a result of you confusing lust with genuine affection.”

Well, shit, Carey—he’s got you there.

“You promised me one thing: that we pursue and destroy Jie, no matter the cost. Do you remember?”

“I remember,” I snapped.

“Sometimes humans forget,” he said. “Perhaps your anger has faded over time. This also happens to humans. It does not happen to me. My anger is a remnant, the remainder of an emotion locked in place when the angels solved me. My anger does not waver. Does yours? Is it no longer important to you, to kill Jie for what she has done?”

Pretentious bullshit.

Snapshots of Randall bounced through my brain. The two of us in our first apartment, bored out of our skulls, throwing silverware at each other in a game we called “dodge the silverware.” Killing beers on the benches of Liberty Park in the middle of night, trading jokes about what we’d do to the Statue of Liberty if we could reach her. Stealing a whole hot dog cart because we hadn’t eaten in days—we were so hungry it seemed brilliant at the time. Twenty hot dogs later, less brilliant. Randall and his stupid fucking shirts. Randall, who all the girls liked better. Randall, being torn apart in an empty lot beneath a roller coaster.

“I still want her dead,” I said.

My chest had been fluttering seconds ago. Heart beating too fast, breath coming too shallow. Now I felt cold. And numb.

Hate doesn’t feel like passion. Hate feels like autopilot.

“I would do it for you, but…” Zang tried to gesture at Rosa, still immobile in the far corner. But he had no arms, so he just kind of tilted. Any other moment, I’d have laughed at him.

“You couldn’t do it anyway,” I said, pulling the Colt Navy revolver from the waistband of my jeans. “You have to give a shit about her for it to work.”

“Ah,” he said. “You already knew. You brought the gun.”

“I always bring the gun,” I said.

“Then you always knew,” he said.

And the asshole was right.

Rosa had taken half a dozen angels now. She stopped sleeping months ago. She hadn’t eaten anything in weeks. Maybe longer. Sometimes she talked like Zang—all formal and vacant—for a few seconds, before snapping out of it with her bashful little smile and laughing it all off.

I remembered being on that ramshackle plywood stage in the middle of a marsh in England. Watching Meryll touch a human being, and watching him practically fold inside out as he transformed into a bloody, screaming monstrosity.

Everything the angels touch turns to shit. She’ll turn to shit if you let her. Hell, maybe she’d even want you to do it. Maybe she’d forgive you, if she was awake.

But she wasn’t. And that’s about the only thing I’m grateful for. Means I didn’t have to look her in eye when I put a bullet through it.