Sandman Slim

“Stark? You’re dead.”

“Tell me, Kas, how does it feel to wake up in the worst place you can imagine? Of course, you’re luckier than me because you know why you’re there.”

“Fuck you! You think you’re sneaky? You used magic. The whole Sub Rosa will know you’re here. Mason will know you’re here. He’ll kill you.”

I make a game-show-buzzer noise.

“Guess again, fat man. This knife doesn’t disturb the aether and doesn’t leave any magical traces. Pure stealth tech, which is sort of its point. That, and not killing its victims unless I tell it to.”

“Oh God, look what you did.”

“God’s away on business, Kas. Talk to me.”

He looks up at me with big moon eyes. “I thought you were dead. When you disappeared, we all thought you were dead. I mean, what Mason did, it worked?”

“I was alive and in Hell for eleven years, so, yeah, you could say it worked.”

“How could you live through something like that? Mason was right about you.”

“What did he say?”

“That you were the only other really great natural magician he’d ever met.”

I have to smile at that.

“Sounds like Mason. I mean, it comes off like a compliment. But he calls me a great magician so he can call himself an even greater one.”

I turn away like I’m checking out the room, but really my gut is killing me. I’m burned and bruised where the slugs went in and I’m pretty sure I have a couple of cracked ribs. They’ll probably be all right by morning, but I’m not going to do much more walking around tonight. And I’m not about to give Kasabian the satisfaction of knowing I’m in pain.

“It must be true, though. You survived all those Hellions and you came back.”

“Wringing your neck is what brought me back. Yours and the others’.” The old anger comes boiling up, but I don’t want to lose control. It’ll scare Kasabian too much and he’ll be useless for information. I need to catch my breath. I can’t plan anything running around barking like a mad dog.

“For your information, I didn’t use any magic Downtown. Our magic is a joke down there. It doesn’t work. You might as well be shouting brownie recipes.” I take a calming drag off the cigarette. “I don’t even remember much of the magic we did in the Circle, but I did learn a trick or two down under. Hellion magic, and every bit of it is designed to make you cry all the way home.”

“Are you gonna kill me?”

“Did you happen to notice me cutting off your head? If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”

“Why did you come after me? Is it about the girl?”

“I don’t want to talk about her yet.”

I can’t talk about her yet.

“What do you want, man?”

“I want all of you. You were all in on it when Mason sent me down.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Right. You just stood there. You knew what was coming and you just stood there.”

“We didn’t know what was going to happen.”

“But you knew Mason was going to off me.”

Kasabian starts to say something, but he looks away.

“What did Mason promise you?”

“The sun and the moon. All our dreams come true, if we stayed out of the way and zipped our lips. It was hard stuff to refuse.”

“So, you said yes, then Mason screwed you and dumped you here. What a surprise. That’s why you’re about the last one in the Circle I need to kill.”

“Why?”

He frowns, like me not killing him first hurts his feelings.

“Because you’re a fuckup. You’re a third-rate magician and a second-rate human being. That’s why Mason and the others left you at the altar. You’re excess baggage.”

“You want to find the others from the Circle and you want me to help you.”

“I want a lot of things, but let’s start with that.” I shift around on the chair, trying to find a position that doesn’t hurt my ribs. I don’t find one. “Where are the cool kids hanging out these days?”

“Are you crazy? Do you know what any of them would do to me if I told you?”

When I was Downtown, I learned a lot about making threats. Make them big. Make them outrageous. You’re never going to kick someone’s ass. You’re going to pull out their tongue and pour liquid nitrogen down their throat, chip out their guts with an ice pick, slide in a pane of glass, and turn them into an aquarium. But you have to be careful with threats. Some Hellions and humans don’t know when to back down, and you might have to actually follow through. It didn’t happen often, but it was always a possibility.

“You know what I’m going to do to you?” I ask quietly and evenly. “You see that body over there? I’m going to drag it to the deepest, darkest part of Griffith Park and leave it for the coyotes.”

“Please don’t do that!”

“Then talk to me about the others. Where’s Mason?”

Mason had been the leader of our magic circle, which made me Mr. Green Jeans to his Captain Kangaroo. He was a talented magician and never passed up a chance to remind you of it. He came from money. At least he acted like he did. The truth is, none of us really knew much about his life outside the Circle. Parker did, though. They were tight. Parker was a thug with a boxer’s build and just enough magical ability to make him really dangerous. Mason saw the possibilities in someone like that and made the guy into his pet pit bull. Mason never got blood on his hands because Parker was only too happy to do it for him.

Mason also made a point of calling me Jimmy, James being my given first name. No one else ever called me Jimmy because I wouldn’t let them. I’ve always gone by Stark because the rest of my name had always been an issue in the family. I don’t know how Mason found out the rest of my name.

“Are you kidding? Does it look like I hang out with Mason anymore? I rent porn and Schwarzenegger to halfwits,” Kasabian says. “I’ve hardly seen him since that night and, to tell you the truth, I’m glad. After you were gone, those demons, or whatever they were, charged him up with power. Superman stuff. No, more like the Hulk. He changed, right in front of us. His skin, his bones, his whole body turned weird. It kind of glowed and it looked like there were things crawling around under his skin.”

“Sounds like they gave him an assload of nebiros.”

“What’s a nebiro?”

“A parasite. They live off the energy of whatever they infest. The only reason the host doesn’t drop dead immediately is that the nebiros excrete supernatural energy. They shit magic. It supercharges the host, keeping him and the parasite alive. Hellions eat those things like popcorn. I didn’t know they worked on humans.”

“Whatever happened, he wasn’t just Mason anymore. He was Mason and something else. Like God’s older brother, who takes God’s money, steals his car, and fucks his girlfriend. That’s Mason now. A guy who isn’t afraid to pants God. He took off and took Parker with him.”