Traven nods. Picks Candy up in his arms and runs with her through the cursed rain.

I go to the hole and look inside. Lula plugged Teddy five or six times. There are lots of bone fragments in the dirt. She hit Cherry too.

I shouldn’t do what I’m doing but I’m still doing it. I pick up the Imp’s skull and throw it on the floor as hard as I can. The marble cracks and the skull explodes into a thousand pieces, destroying Lamia’s connection to this world. I don’t have to kill her. She was never really responsible for what she did. She was a slave killing for a sick bastard. I did plenty of that in Hell. With any luck, she’ll be just another ghost in the Tenebrae now. Maybe she’ll be strong enough to squeeze out whatever hole she came through and go home to the Angra. Who knows, maybe freeing her will buy humanity some brownie points when the Angra come back to eat our lunch. They can keep us around like sea monkeys and teach us tricks. Why not? One God fucked with us at the beginning of time. What’s one more?

I pick up the jerry can and spread gasoline all over the floor. Before I light it, I find the kitchen and rip all the gas hoses out of the walls. I go outside and light a Malediction, letting the house fill with fumes. When I’m halfway through the smoke, I open the front door and toss it inside. The house catches. Windows blow out, sending burning debris onto the perfect lawn. Traven starts the car. The flames light our way down the long hill.

Good-bye, Teddy. So long, Lula. I hope Lamia and the ghosts of those kids don’t let your souls get to the afterlife too quick. I hope they give you a good long tour of the Tenebrae. Welcome to the Hell you made, assholes.

By the time we hit Hollywood, the sky has stopped puking ocean down on our heads. The streets are choked with dying fish and colorful stones. I don’t think there’s a car windshield or store window left intact anywhere in Southern California. Traven steers around the worst of it as well as he can with a cracked windshield, heading for Allegra’s clinic.

“I thought you had a falling-out with the woman who runs the clinic.”

“Allegra might be pissed but she won’t let anything happen to Candy.”

Traven carries her out of the car while I pound on the clinic door until they open it. Fairuza looks out and lets Traven inside. I stay in the parking lot.

Traven comes out a few minutes later.

“They say it’s a common drug. She’ll be fine,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“What happens now?”

“You mean what does a person do after car chases, arson, and their first kill?”

Traven looks out into the street. Some of the fish are still alive, gasping for breath on the sidewalk. He’d like to save every one of them.

“Even if you’re in the right, how do you cope with it?”

I shrug. It hurts.

“Drinking helps.”

He looks at himself in the clinic windows. I know the move. He’s checking to see if he’s still him.

“You jumped on a flying saucer today, Father. You’re on a whole other planet now.”

“That’s exactly how it feels.”

“There’s no going back. You know that, don’t you? You can’t unsee or unknow any of this.”

“I wouldn’t if I could. I didn’t just translate books because I had an aptitude for it. I did it hoping that one or two might reveal some deeper truth. That somehow my work would benefit people. These last few days . . .”

“I know. Truth can kick your ass. You know the Greek word for ‘revelation,’ right?”

“Apokálypsis.”

“Apocalypse. The truth shall set you free, but not before blowing your brain to Rice Krispie Treats.”

“Would you like to get a drink?”

“Yeah. But tomorrow. I have one more stop to make before this thing is over.”

“Are you going after Aelita?”

“No. She’ll be long gone with the 8 Ball. I’m seeing someone who owes me a favor.”

“Do you want some company?”

“This one I have to do on my own. But I’d be grateful for a ride back to the Chateau.”

The Metro’s windshield is too far gone. Traven and I kick it out of the frame and throw it in a Dumpster at the back of the lot. We don’t talk on the ride across town. My chest hurts like I was hit by a cruise missile, but I’m not spitting up blood. Kasabian is asleep on the couch when I get back. A big metal dog curled up and surrounded by beer cans. I lie down and nap in bed for a couple of hours. When I wake up, I change clothes, get on the Hellion hog, and head downtown.

The Bradbury Building is an Art Deco beauty in one of the amnesic parts of town that can’t remember whether it wanted to be a neighborhood or a tourist wasteland and now isn’t quite either. Once upon a time I killed a vampire named Eleanor near here. Her family was the one I locked in the Chateau Marmont with a roomful of zombies. Now I’m back here again, not starting trouble but trying to end it.

I park the bike on a pile of dead fish. The sky flickers like a lightning storm but there’s no thunder.

The Bradbury Building is closed up tight but I jimmy the lock with the black blade. Silent motion-sensor alarms will go off the moment I’m inside. I’m sure the cops will rush right over after they dig out their squad cars from under all the rocks and carp. Even if they come, they’ll never find me where I’m going.

I get in one of the ornate wrought-iron elevators and press the buttons for the first and third floors simultaneously. The elevator rises to the thirteenth floor in a building that only has five.

I get out and walk to Mr. Muninn’s antiques shop. The door is unlocked. Go through the store, out the back exit, and down hundreds of feet of bare stone steps into a cavern below the city.

“Mr. Muninn!” I yell. “Olly olly oxen free.”

Mr. Muninn comes out from behind a Russian icon-style portrait of a king from a country that hasn’t existed for two ice ages.

“I didn’t expect you to come in that way. I’m so used to you appearing out of the shadows.”

“That’s Saint James’s trick these days. I just break into buildings and ride the Wonkavator to places that aren’t there.”

“It sounds like more fun when you say it.”

Muninn’s cavern is maybe the biggest antiques shop, curiosity cabinet, and junkyard in the universe. Shelves and tables sag under his crazy trinkets. Helmets and ancient weapons enough to take on Hannibal. Acres of old coins and endless galleries of paintings, jewelry, potions, karakuri, and old books. Piles of what look like dinosaur bones beside a moored zeppelin. Like a raven, he’s been plucking shiny pieces of this and that and hiding them in his lair for aeons. Maybe that’s why he goes by a raven’s name.

“I thought you might come to see me before this.”

“That was the plan but there was this ancient god and a whole Apocalypse thing happening. Maybe you heard about it.”

“I wouldn’t worry. You saved the dreamers. In a few days, they’ll take control of reality from the safety of their slumber and the sky will be blue and the world will be made beautiful again.”

“Make that brown skies, panhandlers, and things getting back to passable and I’ll believe you.”

“Always the optimist.”

I lean on a table and knock over piles of Confederate money.

“Sorry.” Then, “You lied to me, Mr. Muninn. This whole time. And I trusted you.”

“I know. And I have no excuses, just an explanation. I was afraid. To break down from one mind to five is troubling enough but then my own brother, Ruach, let Aelita kill brother Neshamah to save himself. It was too much to take. I don’t even know where my other two brothers are.”

He picks up a pile of gold Minoan coins and tosses them through the eye socket of a pterodactyl skull. A nervous tic.

“I’ve been down here and away from family squabbles since the world was young and I had hoped to stay here for eternity. But that’s not going to happen, is it?”