Maybe the woman is the acne kid’s aunt or something. He comes at me in a blind fury. Perfect. Dumb. His gives me the chance to do something I haven’t done in months. I put the butt of the na’at into his chest, just hard enough to stun him for a second. When I step behind him, I stab the na’at so the tip goes all the way through his back and comes out between his ribs. When I twist the grip, the end opens in three backward-facing hooks. I lean my weight into it and snap the na’at back as hard as I can. The kid is still pawing himself as I rip out his spine, a trick Brigitte taught me back when we were hunting zombies. The kid has just enough time to reach back and touch his bare vertebrae before his torso collapses and he falls to ashes, kicking up a spray of fine powder. I cough up a lungful of the toothy bastard.

“Whoa,” yells Jimi Hendrix. He raises his hands, the bottom one straight up and the other across the top like a T.

“Time out, man. Time out. What the fuck did you do to Phil?”

“I killed his dumb dead ass.”

“Why?”

“Golly, Mr. Rogers. A bunch of bloodsuckers kick and punch a guy long enough he starts to think he’s being attacked.”

“You are such an asshole. We were just fooling around.”

The Goth girl holds a lace-gloved hand close to her mouth. She says, “We’re in trouble, man.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” says Hendrix.

“You kids want to clue me in on what just happened?”

Hendrix puts his hands on his head and does an exasperated three-sixty turn.

“Fuck. We were supposed to deliver a message and just thought we’d have some fun first.”

“And I spoiled things. Sorry. What’s the message?”

“Nnnhhnn,” says the older woman, trying to talk while holding her broken jaw in place.

“The message?”

Hendrix looks at me like he’s bouncing back and forth between totally panicked and numb.

“Tykho wants to see you at the club tomorrow night.”

Tykho is the new boss of the Dark Eternal. I heard a freelance Bela hunter staked Jaime Cortázar, the old boss. Too bad. He once gave me an attaché case full of hundred-dollar bills. I gave him free movie rentals at Max Overdrive. But Tykho’s okay. Smart too. Like Cortázar, she once assured me that “Dark Eternal” sounds a lot scarier in Latin.

“If Tykho is summoning me to demand to buy the 8 Ball, she can kiss my ass and your ass, and she can dig up Gary Cooper and kiss his ass too.”

“She didn’t say anything about wanting to buy anything. It sounded more like she has something for you.”

Interesting. Vampires aren’t the giving type.

“Okay. What time?”

“Midnight.”

“Seriously? A vampire queen wants to meet me at midnight?”

Hendrix shrugs.

“She likes to watch Leno.”

“Fine. I’ll be there.”

“ ‘Fine. I’ll be there,’ ” says the Goth girl in a high, mocking, nasal voice. She shakes her head while she talks. “I’m not telling Tykho about this. She told you to give the creep the message. I’m not even supposed to be here.”

“Are we done?”

Hendrix shoots me the finger.

I nod to the ashes.

“Good night, Phil.”

I get the bag of donuts from the pickup truck and head to the Chateau. A crowd is watching us through Donut Universe’s recently repaired front window.

From behind me the older woman says, “Nnnhhhnnn.”

“What did she say?”

“She said fuck you sideways, asshole,” yells Hendrix.

LATER, KASABIAN IS back tapping on the computer, watching Hell through his peeper like it’s an old rerun of I Love Lucy. Candy is curled up next to me on the sofa. Too many donuts and too much wine have put her in a food coma. I want to get drunk, so I don’t. I drink black coffee and light up another Malediction.

What am I doing agreeing to go for cigars and brandy with a hundred vampires on their turf? What the hell kind of life is this? Is this what I came back from Hell for? Is the marginal existence I’ve carved out for myself going to get Candy and the others killed the way it got Alice killed?

I keep thinking that if I try to act more like a person, I’ll be less of a monster, but at night most of my dreams are about the arena and being Lucifer. Instead of running around asking questions, I’d rather be cutting off heads. But I won’t. Not even Nasrudin Hodja’s. Pick and choose your fights, that’s what Wild Bill said, and I know in my heart of hearts he’s right. A war with the Cold Cases would take over my life, and what would I get from it? A pile of skulls and a bit of idiot glee. That’s not enough anymore. The moment I admitted that I was connected to the people around me and this world, that life was over. Still, I feel like I could go off at any minute. I’m not sure which is the real me anymore. The reasonable guy who can sit in a bar without hitting anyone or the guy giving idiots compound fractures because no one will cough up the 8 Ball.

Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong. Maybe reasonable guy makes monster guy stronger. People used to run when they saw me coming because they knew I was there to break things. Now no one’s sure what I’m going to do and that’s its own kind of power.

But how does any of that get me out of this situation? I still have to find the 8 Ball and deal with Aelita or she’s going to deal with me. The only good news is that with the 8 Ball out of her hands she can’t run around killing off the God brothers. They might be the only things in the universe that can stand up to the Angra Om Ya. I’m not looking forward to going at Aelita one-on-one. She’s beaten me more than I’ve beaten her. Hell, she already killed me once. It was only one of Vidocq’s potions that brought me back before my soul wandered off to Hell or Fresno.

And I’d sure like to know where Medea Bava is. She wants me dead every bit as much as Aelita. I should have gone after her when I was still Lucifer. Once I burned down Tartarus, she didn’t have anywhere to run. Now she’s with Deumos and I don’t know what that means. I don’t even know if the Sub Rosa has an Inquisition anymore. If they do, maybe a new Inquisitor has it in for me. I could ask Blackburn, but what are the chances he’d tell me the truth? Medea doesn’t need any official title to come after me, and if she kills me, everyone is going to say, “He deserved it,” and go have lunch.

No, I don’t need a war with the Cold Cases. I’ve got all I can handle right now.

As vile as they were, things were so much easier in the arena. It was all pain and anger and I knew exactly what I had to do and when. I’ll never stop dreaming about it and wanting things to be that simple again. The arena is my heroin. I’ve kicked the habit, but I’ll never get completely over it.

THE DARK ETERNAL is set up in Death Rides A Horse, a posh fetish bar in West Hollywood.

The Eternal made their bones by killing off or absorbing a lot of the scattered bloodsucker street gangs, then updating and expanding their business. The Eternal has even been known to do hits or provide protection for some of the big Sub Rosa families. All very much on the down low. They make most of their money off Lurkers and vampire wannabes dealing B+. Blood Plus. It’s blood infused with every kind of up, down, and Ring Around the Rosie you can think of. Addicts come to the Eternal because their product is the best. Score cheap bathtub gin from one of the outlaw gangs in Compton or San Berdoo and you’re likely to OD. Or end up with permanent palsy. Imagine living forever shaking so much you can’t piss straight much less sink your fangs into an unwilling throat.

Outside the club there’s a line stretching all the way to the corner. I walk up to the doorman, a burly black dude with a cross tattooed on his bald scalp. It’s a common vampire joke. Crosses don’t work on them any more than flypaper.

He puts a hand in the middle of my chest and notices the bulge of the gun under my coat.

“We’re all full up tonight. Try again tomorrow,” he says with a slight Jamaican accent.