Run the Day (10 page)

"But did you know him?"

"No, not personally. I had only recently made my way to Hanford, following the railroad's expansion. Times were hectic what with the land purchases, and the land-owner uprisings," Devlin said, he spoke wistfully, eyes looking off somewhere in the past as he spoke, "Hanford was barely more than a loose gathering of farmers and rail workers in those days."

"So you never actually met him? Did you know he had the Libro Nihil right before his capture?"

Devlin was dodging giving me a straight answer, he knew something. I had heard the venom in Grannok's voice, Devlin knew him.

"He did?" Devlin asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

"Yeah, he did. But he was working with someone, or something, and they got away with it before Grannok was brought down. I need to know who that was, Devlin. And I need to know where your informant got their information," I said.

"I will assist you to the best of my ability, if it helps your hunt for the book," Devlin spoke carefully, slowly, like he was deliberating whether or not to answer at all.

Weird.

That was around the time Sarah, Devlin's nurse, walked into the office with a couple glasses and a pitcher of iced tea. Also weird that Devlin had hired a nurse, it's not like he really was a frail, eccentric octogenarian. She set the glasses and pitcher on the desk, turned on her heel and left, taking the scent of sunshine with her.

"She's a remarkable girl," Devlin said.

"The best. Back to business, Devlin. Sorry but I don't have all day, things are unraveling too fast."

That got a frown from Devlin, but I launched into trying to describe the thing that I had seen speaking to Abel Grannok. His frown just got heavier, and was now coupled with a furrowed brow. He looked genuinely disturbed, even fidgeting a bit as I spoke.

"Flesh-Thing. Stinking, crawling, lurking creature, I'm not surprised Grannok consorted with it. It was here before even I arrived. It usually hides in the dark of the sewer, only venturing forth to cause havoc. I've wanted that thing's head for decades."

Sewers, that was pretty awesome. It brought back less than pleasant memories of tracking down the Broken Circle. But I knew now where to start looking for it. I skirted the subject of Devlin's informant, but I could tell there was something he wasn't telling me, something that was obviously upsetting him about this Flesh-Thing creature. I was about to thank Devlin for his time and get the hell back on the trail when the sound of a door banging open came from downstairs, followed by raised voices.

Devlin was up out of his seat in a flash, moving more fluidly than anyone with that many wrinkles had any right to. He snatched up his walking stick, the thing smoldering an angry orange in his hand.

"Who dares?" Devlin stomped to the door of his office.

Obviously, I had fooled myself into believing this was just going to be a simple visit. I was grievously wrong, and I should have known better. I moved to follow Devlin and we came down the stairs into the middle of a melee.

Rosa had Hack pinned to the floor on his stomach with a cleaning rag around his throat like a garrote; his back was bent in an unbelievable arch as she rode him. His face had turned about as blue as his eyes. Swift stood in the doorway covering his mouth with his hands and trying not to fall apart laughing, and Sarah was standing to the side holding the phone in her hand and her mouth agape. The poor girl.

"I got him, Senor Desmond. This pendejo ain't going anywhere; I'll break his evil neck," Rosa said, and she totally looked like she would. Hack was flopping, gasping and scrabbling at the rag.

"Desist at once," Devlin said when he reached the foot of the stairs, knocking his cane on the ground.

His voice rang out and everyone in the room froze. Rosa immediately let go of the rag and Hack hit the ground like a landed fish.

"What the hell's going on?" I said.

Sarah still looked like she was about to call the cops, and Rosa had stepped away from Hack; she was still giving him a gnarly glare. Swift rode out the giggles and straightened himself out.

"You'd been inside for a while; Hack started getting worried so he kicked the door in. That's when the cleaning lady jumped him. It was like watching a lion mauling a baby gazelle, he didn't stand a chance," Swift said.

"Just wait…I'll burn her eyeballs out," Hack sputtered from the ground.

"Hack Spencer, you mad old hillbilly. You went and did it, didn't you?" Devlin asked, moving off the steps towards where Hack was picking himself off the ground.

Went and did what?

Sarah had retreated back down the hall, probably to the relative safety of the kitchen or something, and Rosa was packing her cleaning things away and muttering angrily to herself in Spanish. Hack stood, rubbing gingerly at his neck and giving Devlin a mixed look. It was hard to tell what was going on with Hack, what with the eyes and all.

"Yeah, I did. You're starting to look wore out, Devlin," Hack said.

Devlin gripped his walking stick so tightly his knuckles went white and it began glowing again. I took that as my cue and rushed over to Hack, corralling him back towards the door. Swift caught on and made his way out and back to the car.

"So, thanks Devlin. Sorry about…whatever. If you don't hear from me soon, just assume I'm dead and the world will be ending shortly."

We were in the car and down the road a ways when I turned around to look at Hack in the back seat where he was looking pointedly out the window.

"Mind telling me what that was all about?" I asked.

"Thought we were supposed to be finding the book?" Hack sat in the back, watching the road pass by.

"We are, but we're not going anywhere till you tell me what the hell's going on. Devlin seemed a bit on the shocked side when he saw you."

"We don't have time for this," Hack said sharply.

"Swift, stop the car," I said.

Swift shrugged and pulled over to the side of the road, a car behind us laying on its horn as it passed. Hack turned to faced me, blue eyes flickering.

"We're not moving till you tell me what's going on. I know we have some trust issues we need to handle, but I think I deserve to know what the hell's going on."

"You really want to know? I was dying, Tommy. I didn't have much choice," Hack said.

Hack was the longest lived mage I'd ever known. When I was just a little boy, my grandpa used to tell me how back when he was just a little boy, Hack was already an old man. And that was like, forever ago. He was like a valley oak, something that was just always there. The thought of Hack dying, of not being there, was difficult to compute.

"What? What does that have to do with your eyes?" I asked.

"Not long after you and I had our…argument, all the years of playing fast and loose with reality finally caught up to me. It was burning me out, literally. I was falling apart at the seams. So I found a way to beat it. I merged myself with the greater flow of Creation's energy," Hack said.

"You're speaking gibberish, Hack."

"He means he's become an Other," Swift said.

It spooked me for a second because he had been silent so long.

Hack's eyes, the way he just ripped reality a new one and hurled bolts of lightning like it was nothing, it was all beginning to add up. It was insane, it shouldn't actually be possible, and it kind of scared the hell out of me, but it made sense.

"Not entirely, I'm still me. I'm still Hack, Tommy. But I'm a lot more than that now, too."

"How?" My brain was whirring so fast it was a tremendous effort just to form that question.

"Boy this is a conversation for another time. Unless I'm remembering wrong, we got a book to find and an Armageddon to stop," Hack said, and yeah, he was totally right. As much as I wanted to know more about how he'd changed it would have to wait.

"You're right. Devlin said the creature Grannok was working with usually hangs out underground, in the sewers. He called it Flesh-Thing," I said and sat back around.

Hack and Swift made simultaneous noises of disgust when I said the name, and we rumbled back out onto the street.

"Why do I feel like everybody knows more than I do?" I asked, as much to Hack and Swift as myself.

"I haven't heard that name in years. I thought the stupid thing had finally died," Hack said.

"Me too," Swift said.

That figured. But if this Flesh-Thing individual made its home in the local sewer system, I knew exactly how to find it. The incident with the Broken Circle may have been a harrowing, disgusting nightmare but I met the most interesting, and unlikely, of allies. He knew every stinking inch of Hanford's dubious underground guts, and commanded an army of millions. My favorite part, though, was that he worked relatively cheap.

"Swift, take us to the closest liquor store."

"I really don't think now's the time to get hammered," Swift said.

"Not for me. We're going to visit royalty, and it's only proper to bring gifts."

"Royalty? What're you playing at, boy?" Hack said from the back seat.

"We're going to see the one true King of the Roaches, Uncle Satan."

Chapter Ten

At the local Stop-N-Rob, I convinced Swift to pay for the most expensive bottle of hooch the grandly mustachioed proprietor had behind the counter. I swore it was for the good of the cause, necessary to the continued existence of Creation at large.

"So, I just blew sixty dollars on a bottle of liquor, and we're going to go give it to some bum under the freeway?" Swift said as we pulled out of the lot and headed towards the freeway.

"Not just any bum, the King of the Roaches." I said, cradling the bottle in my lap.

"And this guy can help us?" Hack asked.

"Who do you think it was that actually destroyed the Broken Circle? This guy's no joke. For real."

It was Uncle Satan who tipped me off to the Broken Circle's true motives, and who led his filthy legions into battle against them. I just tracked them down and let him at them. He wasn't an Other, but I don't quite think he was a mage, either.

All I knew was that he was completely, literally, bugshit insane.

We made our way past Downtown, heading south. We went beyond the shops and suburbia, passing by the giant skeletons of old factories and smoky little bars. There was a strip mall where all the store's names were in different languages and just beyond it the freeway overpass. The thing was a massive concrete and asphalt gateway arching over the road. On the other side was a third-world reenactment of the Wild West. The property value plummeted as soon as you passed under the shadow of the freeway, there were sections of town out here that the police refused to go near, and with good reason. The local human tribes dominated.

South of the freeway was the one section of town where I feared the humans more than the Others. Life was deplorably cheap, and any number of criminal activities could be seen occurring in broad daylight. The Others were a distinct presence of their own, though. The wild ones, the angry ones, the Others who had trouble blending into the populous on the other side of the freeway. Most of them stayed away from the streets during the day, thankfully.

"Take a right up here then go ahead and park. Uncle Satan's usually giving sermons at the tent city around now," I said and Swift pulled off onto a side road, coming alongside a stretch of empty dirt, a vacant lot under the shadow of the freeway, where some of the city's social detritus had built their own ramshackle community.