Wrong City (18 page)

V
ish had no clue what had happened. The
surfers had been standing there, staring at Sparky, and Sparky hadn’t moved,
but now they were enveloped in blue-white fire, supernova-bright. Vish was only
a couple feet away; he instinctively recoiled back, but the flames radiated no
heat. The cavern seemed colder now, in fact, much colder.

Chaos broke
out, shrieks and shouts as the surfers flung themselves to the sandy floor and
rolled around in an attempt to extinguish the flames. Skin reddened and
blistered and charred. After one glance, Vish couldn’t look at them.

Philip’s eyes
rolled back in his head, and he crumpled to the sand. The ground shifted and
lurched. Rocks and chunks of earth rained down from the top of the cave.

“What’s
happening?” Vish asked Sparky. He tried to yell, but he couldn’t get enough
air, and his words, thin and breathless, got lost somewhere in the rumble of
the earth and the shrieks of the dying surfers.

“This’ll be
good,” Sparky yelled back, his voice carrying over the commotion. “He’s
reverting to his true form. I’m going to follow suit.” He shot Vish a jaunty
thumbs-up. “Keep your eyes shut. If you see what I look like, you won’t leave
here alive.”

A roar and a
screech, and then the back wall of the cave exploded, turning the mosaics into
a glittery shower of multicolored tiles. An avalanche of dirt and sand poured
down over Vish.

Vish shut his
eyes so tightly his temples ached from the strain. The cave was collapsing, and
bad things were happening, and he needed to get out of there. Sightless, he
crawled in the direction of the exit. He bumped into a body slumped on the ground.
Must be Philip. He was warm and breathing, though unconscious.

Blue-white
light penetrated through Vish’s shut eyelids. A high-pitched hum soared above
the terrible rumble and reverberated through his chest. The surfers had long
since stopped making any noise at all; a stench of charred meat hung heavy in
the air, overpowering the older, fouler smell of decomposition.

Vish stood up,
eyes still screwed shut. Pain erupted all over his body in little volcanic
bursts, but he was alive and determined to stay that way. He groped around for
Philip, then grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him out of the cave. He
didn’t dare open his eyes until he heard the traffic noises of the PCH, felt
the clammy ocean air against his face.

He dragged
Philip down the remainder of the bluff to the side of the highway. He glanced
back at the opening of the cave. White smoke streamed out of the opening in
great clouds.

Vish couldn’t
guess what was going on in the battle between Sparky and the Troy/Philip
creature, and he didn’t want to know. It was something bigger than him, and it
involved him only in a tangential way, and his part was over.

Philip opened
his eyes. He looked at the highway, at the smoke billowing out of the cave, at
Vish. He got to his feet and stared at Vish in confusion and dawning horror.

“I took you… I
don’t know why… I didn’t…” He seemed a heartbeat away from dissolving into
hysterics. Vish didn’t have the energy for that.

“It wasn’t
you,” he said. “Something took over your body for a bit. It’s gone now.” He
pointed at the cave. “It’s in there. I think that’s where it lives.”

Philip looked
at him in incomprehension, eyes wide. From somewhere in the distance, further
north on the PCH, Vish heard a siren.

He thought
fast. “We met in Koreatown, and you offered to give me a ride back to Venice.
We decided to drive up to this beach to go hiking. And those surfers attacked
us and dragged us into the cave with all those bodies, and somehow a fire broke
out. That’s all we know.”

Philip stared
at him. He shook his head. “I didn’t…”

“For the
police,” Vish said. “If the police ask us about it, that’s what we have to tell
them, because the truth doesn’t make sense.”

After a moment,
Philip nodded, slowly. “They attacked us and took us to the cave,” he said.

“Right,” Vish
replied. “Are you okay with that?”

Philip nodded.
He looked like he was about to cry. Vish could understand that. He probably
looked the same.

Standing took
too much energy. Vish sat down on the cement barrier dividing the bluff from
the highway. Philip remained on his feet, looking baffled and sick. Vish looked
out past the road at the ocean, at the gray water barely visible through the
thick white layer of fog, and waited for the authorities to find them.

I
t was night when Officer Guerrero showed
up in his hospital room. He’d been there ever since the ambulance had whisked
him away that afternoon. A nasty concussion, four broken ribs. No sign of
poison in his system, nothing even close, and the kind emergency room doctor
had looked at Vish like he was nuts when he’d asked if she could pump his
stomach just to be sure. He felt okay now. He felt pretty good, actually,
because he was floating on whatever awesome painkillers they’d pumped into him.
He greeted Guerrero with a dreamy smile. “Hey, you.”

She looked down
at him, her face expressionless. “Oh, you’ll be fun,” she said. She dragged a
chair closer to his bedside and sat. He didn’t have a private room; there were
three other beds lined up beside his, all occupied, so Guerrero reached behind
her head and yanked the vinyl curtain around them to give the illusion of
privacy. “I’m half tempted to ask you a bunch of questions right now, just to
see what your drugged-out answers would be.”

“You’re not
here to question me?” Vish struggled to sit upright. His ribs protested at
that, but it was a dull pain, far away.

“Hang on.”
Guerrero reached over him and fiddled with the controls on the adjustable bed
until he was raised to a comfortable sitting position. She smelled like apples
and shoe polish. She was in her warm-weather uniform again, her heavy black
shoes incongruous with her shorts and short-sleeved top.

She sat on the
edge of her chair, both feet planted on the floor, and leaned in to talk to
him. She propped her tanned forearms on her thighs. “They’ve identified eight
of the dead kids in that cave, got maybe a dozen more identifications to go.
That’s not counting the three freshly-charred corpses we found.”

“The guys who
attacked me. The surfers,” Vish said. “I’m not sure how they caught on fire.”
He was babbling a little, and even in his narcotic haze he knew that was
dangerous. There were lies he needed to tell, and Guerrero was sharp enough to
see through them if he didn’t take some care.

Guerrero held
up a hand. “I haven’t asked any questions. Stop volunteering answers.” She
shook her head. “Word from the top brass filtered down to me: You’re out of
this. You’re an innocent bystander who got targeted for no reason, and we’re
supposed to leave you alone while we sort this mess out.”

Vish turned his
neck to look at her. The room floated a bit at the movement, which was
pleasant. “Really?”

“You got
friends in high places, Vish.” Guerrero sat up straighter. “So I’m not even
supposed to be here, much less ask you questions, which seems all kinds of
wrong to me.”

“Asking me
questions wouldn’t help, anyway,” Vish said. “I know you don’t believe me, but
I don’t know anything useful.”

Officer
Guerrero stared at him, then exhaled. “Yeah. So I hear.” She got to her feet.
“I guess I’ll just see you around, Vish.” There was a note of warning in her
voice that penetrated even through the warm, soupy haze in his head.

“How’d they
kill all those people without anyone noticing?” he asked.

“Nobody knew
they were missing, for the most part.” She shook her head. “We had
missing-persons reports on file for some, but they were actors mostly, or
singers. A few screenwriters. All of them were living pretty marginal lives. No
concerned family members, no one to raise a stink. Most cases, we had no reason
to think they hadn’t packed up and left town.” She twisted her mouth in an
ironic smile. “They slipped through the cracks.”

Vish hoped he
wouldn’t see Sparky Mother again. He couldn’t get that lucky.

Sparky bore a
peace offering in the form of a gigantic flower arrangement, white camellias
and flowering jasmine branches and stems of fragrant verbena stuck in a massive
silver urn and tied with a blue satin bow. Sparky hovered by his bedside and
waggled the arrangement back and forth.

“Poppy’s idea,”
he said. “She chose them. It’s generally acknowledged her taste is better than
mine.”

He plunked the
arrangement down on Vish’s bedside stand, jostling aside the baby blue teddy
bear Mariposa had given to him. It wore a pink t-shirt with a glittery heart on
it and clutched a giant heart-shaped lollipop.

Sparky poked
the bear with one finger, then glanced at the attached card. “Your fan club?”
he asked.

“Is that…
thing… dead?” Vish asked. “The thing that had taken over Troy?”

“Nope. Can’t
happen. But he’s learned a lesson about not getting too big for his britches,
maybe. Might be a while before he decides to mess with me again.”

“Is he going to
come after me?” Vish asked.

Sparky cocked
his head to one side and mulled this over. “There’s no reason for him to, but
that doesn’t mean he won’t. Doesn’t matter. I’ll look after you.”

“That’s worked
out really well for me thus far.”

Sparky snorted.
“Okay, sure, I guess I can see where I might not be your favorite person right
now. Don’t get snotty about it, though. I sort of saved your life.”

“You poisoned
me,” Vish said.

“Nope. I just
made you think you were poisoned for a bit. You’re fine. I mean, don’t get me
wrong, I’m sorry about all this.” Sparky made a gesture to indicate the
hospital bed. “But you’re going to be good as new. Better than that, I owe you
a serious favor.”

Vish glanced at
him. Sparky smiled. “I were you, I’d take this opportunity to cash in. We’ll
get your book published. Or we’ll get you a job writing for another television
show, one that doesn’t suck donkey balls this time.”

“I don’t want
to have anything to do with you,” Vish said.

“You sure about
that?”

“That I never
want to see you again? Absolutely,” Vish said. “Anyone ever tell you you’re an
asshole?”

“Watch it,”
Sparky said. “I’m feeling kind of warm and fuzzy toward you right now, but even
so, it’s not a good idea to insult me.”

Vish stared at
the wall just past the foot of his bed. A television was on somewhere, turned
to a news report about the bodies in his cave, but it was out of his line of
sight, and anyway, he didn’t want to hear anything more about that, not for a
long, long time. He didn’t trust himself to say anything further to Sparky
right now, and he couldn’t stand to have him in his room any longer, so he just
kept staring at the wall.

Eventually,
Sparky sighed. “See you around, Vish,” he said, and left.

Learn more
of the mystery behind Sparky Mother in DEMON CITY, available in paperback or as
an ebook from Luft Books. Download the Kindle-formatted version
here
.

In her follow-up to WRONG CITY, Morgan Richter once again takes readers
inside a treacherous, alluring version of Los Angeles, where enigmatic
supernatural forces manipulate the oblivious inhabitants from behind the
scenes.

Felix Dockweiler—former model, current entertainment reporter, and the
star of such films as "Frat Party USA"—yearns for fame at any cost. A
callow young Omaha native struggling to make an impact in image-obsessed,
celebrity-driven Hollywood, Felix torments, exhausts, and starves himself while
chasing after a goal that always lies just out of his grasp.

Felix’s fragile
status quo is disrupted when a seductive yet violent pair of fire demons blaze
into town and rack up a body count while hunting down his troubled younger
brother, Michael. As the temperature rises and out-of-control wildfires
threaten the city, Felix’s own search for Michael takes him from Hollywood
parties to Skid Row flophouses and all points in between. To save Michael,
Felix pursues a dangerous alliance with Sparky Mother, a charismatic and
unfathomably powerful entertainment mogul with more than a few skeletons in his
closet. Meanwhile, Felix’s attempts to secure the job of his dreams begin to
look more and more like a negotiation for his mortal soul.

Special thanks
go to Dan Liebke, Ernie Cline and Veronica Viscardi for making gentle and
encouraging comments about
Wrong City
when it was in pretty ragged
shape, to Morgan Dodge for banging out a fantastic cover in less time than it
took to ask if he’d be willing to do it, and to my wonderful aunt Elsbeth
Monnett for wanting to read more about Sparky Mother.

A graduate of
the screenwriting program at USC's film school, Morgan Richter has worked in
production on several TV shows, including “Talk Soup” and “America’s Funniest
Home Videos”, and has contributed pop culture reviews and essays to websites
such as TVgasm and Forces of Geek, as well as to her own site, Preppies of the
Apocalypse. She is the author of
Bias Cut
,
Lonely Satellite
,
Charlotte Dent
,
Preppies of the
Apocalypse
, and
Demon City
.
Bias Cut
won a silver medal in the
Mystery category at the 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPYs) and was
a 2012 semi-finalist for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA).
Charlotte Dent
was a 2008 ABNA
semi-finalist;
Lonely Satellite
was a
2014 ABNA quarter-finalist. Born and raised in Spokane, Washington, she
currently lives in New York City.