26

ORPHEUS IN THE STORM SEWER

Charlie parked the van sideways in the street and ran up the steps of the Buddhist center calling her name. The huge front door was hanging askew by one hinge, the glass broken, and every drawer and cabinet had been opened and the contents scattered, every piece of furniture overturned or broken.

"Audrey!"

He heard a voice to the front of the house and ran back out on the porch.

"Audrey?"

"Down here," she called. "We're still under the porch."

Charlie ran down the steps and around to the side of the porch. He could see movement behind the lattice. He found a small gate and opened it. Inside, Audrey was crouched with a half-dozen other people and a whole crowd of the squirrel people. He scrambled into the crawl space and took her in his arms. Charlie had tried to keep her on the line during the drive over, but a few blocks away the battery in his phone had died, and he had tried, for those few terrifying moments, to imagine losing her - his future, his hope - after his hope had just been awakened again. He was so relieved he could barely breathe.

"Are they gone?" Audrey asked.

"Yes, I think so. I'm so glad you're all right."

Charlie led them out of the crawl space and back into the house, the squirrel people staying close to the walls and moving quickly so as not to be seen from the street.

Charlie felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see Irena Posokovanovich smiling at him. He jumped up a couple of steps and screamed. "Don't shock me again, I'm a good guy."

"I know that, Mr. Asher. I was wondering if you'd like me to park your van for you before it gets towed away."

"Oh yes, that would be nice." He handed her the keys. "Thank you."

In the house, Audrey said, "She just wants to help."

"She's creepy," Charlie said, but then he caught what he thought was a look of disapproval rising in Audrey's eyes and he quickly added, "In a completely sweet way, I mean."

They went directly to the kitchen and stood before the open pantry.

"They got them all," Audrey said. "That's why they didn't hurt us - they weren't interested in us."

Charlie was so angry he was having trouble thinking, but without an outlet, he just shook and tried to keep his voice under control. "They just did the same thing at my store. Something did."

"There must have been three hundred souls in here," Audrey said.

"They took Rachel's soul."

Audrey put her arm around his back, but he couldn't respond other than to walk out of the kitchen. "That's it, Audrey. I'm done."

"What do you mean, you're done, Charlie? You're scaring me."

"Ask your squirrel people where I can get into the storm sewer system. Can they tell you that?"

"Probably. But you can't do that."

He wheeled on her and she jumped back.

"I have to do that. Find out, Audrey. Everyone into my van. I want you at my building, where you'll be safe."

They were all gathered in Charlie's living room: Sophie, Audrey, Jane, Cassandra, Lily, Minty Fresh, the undead clients from the Buddhist center, the hellhounds, and fifty or so of the squirrel people. Lily, Jane, and Cassandra were standing on the couch to get away from the squirrel people, who were milling on and around the breakfast bar.

"Nice outfits," Lily said. "But ewww."

"Thank you," Audrey said. Sophie was standing next to Audrey, looking her up and down as if trying to guess her weight.

"I'm a Jewess," Sophie said. "Are you a Jewess?"

"No, I'm a Buddhist," Audrey said.

"Is that like a shiksa?"

"Yes, I think it is," said Audrey. "It's a type of shiksa."

"Oh, I guess that's okay, then. My puppies are shiksas, too. That's what Mrs. Ling calls them."

"They're very impressive puppies, too," Audrey said.

"They want to eat your little guys, but I won't let them, okay?"

"Thank you. That would be nice."

"Unless you're mean to my daddy. Then they're toast."

"Of course," Audrey said. "Special circumstances."

"He likes you a lot."

"I'm glad. I like him a lot."

"I think you're probably okay."

"Well, right back at you," Audrey said. She smiled at the little brunette with the heartbreaking blue eyes and the attitude, and it was all she could do not to scoop her up and hug the bejeezus out of her.

Charlie jumped up on the couch next to Jane, Cassandra, and Lily, and then realized as he looked across the room at Minty Fresh that he still didn't stand taller than the Death Merchant, which was a little unnerving. (Minty seemed focused on Lily, which was also a little unnerving.)

"You guys, I'm going to go do something, and I might not come back. Jane, that letter I sent you has all the papers making you Sophie's legal guardian."

"I'm out of here," Lily said.

"No," Charlie said, catching her by the arm. "I want you here, too. I'm leaving you the business, but with the understanding that a percentage of the profits go to Jane to help with Sophie and will also go into a college fund for her. I know you have your career as a chef, but I trust you and you're good at the business."

Lily looked like she wanted to say something sarcastic, but shrugged and said, "Sure. I can run your business and cook, too. You do your Death Merchant thing and raise a daughter."

"Thanks. Jane, you'll get the building, of course, but when Sophie grows up, if she wants to stay in the City, you always have to have an apartment for her."

Jane jumped off the couch. "Charlie, this is crap, I'm not letting you do anything - "

"Please. Jane, I've got to go. This is all in writing, I just want you to hear what I wanted in person."

"Okay," she said. Charlie hugged his sister, Cassandra, and Lily, then went to the bedroom and gestured for Minty Fresh to follow him.

"Minty, I'm going into the Underworld after the Morrigan - after Rachel's soul, all the souls. It's time."

The big man nodded, gravely. "I'm right there with you."

"No, you're not. I need you to stay here and watch over Audrey and Sophie and the others. There are cops outside, but I think their disbelief might make them hesitate if the Morrigan come. You won't do that."

Minty shook his head. "What chance do you have down there alone? Let me come with you. We'll fight this thing together."

"I don't think so," Charlie said. "I'm blessed or something. The prophecy says, 'The Luminatus will rise and do battle with the Forces of Darkness in the City of Two Bridges.' It doesn't say, the Luminatus and his trusty sidekick, Minty Fresh."

"I am not a sidekick."

"That's what I'm saying," said Charlie, who wasn't saying that at all. "I'm saying that I have some sort of protection, but you probably don't. And if I don't come back, you'll need to carry on as a Death Merchant in the City - maybe get the scales tipped back for our side."

Minty Fresh nodded, lowering his gaze to the floor. "You'll take my Desert Eagles, then, for luck?" He looked up and was grinning.

"I'll take one of them," Charlie said.

Minty Fresh slipped out of his shoulder-holster rig and adjusted the straps until they fit Charlie, then helped him into the harness.

"There are two extra clips in here, under your right arm," Minty said. "I hope you don't have to fire it that many times down there or you will be one deaf motherfucker."

"Thanks," Charlie said.

Minty helped him get his tweed jacket on over the shoulder holster.

"You know, you might be heavily armed, but you still look like an English professor - don't you have some clothes more appropriate for fighting?"

"James Bond always wears a tux," Charlie said.

"Yeah, I understand the line between reality and fiction seems a little blurred here lately - "

"I'm kidding," Charlie said. "There are some motocross leathers and pads in the shop that will fit me if I can find them."

"Good." Minty patted Charlie's shoulders, like he was trying to make them bigger. "You see that bitch with the poison claws, you light her up for me, okay?"

"I'll buss a cap in da hoe's ass," Charlie said.

"Don't do that."

"Sorry."

The hardest part came a few minutes later.

"Honey, Daddy has to go do something."

"Are you going to get Mommy?"

Charlie was crouched in front of his daughter, and he nearly rolled over backward at the question. She hadn't mentioned her mommy a dozen times in the last two years.

"Why would you say that, honey?"

"I don't know. I was thinking about her."

"Well, you know that she loved you very much."

"Yeah."

"And you know that no matter what, I love you very much."

"Yeah, you said that yesterday."

"And I meant it yesterday. But this time, I really do have to go. I have to fight some bad guys, and I might not win."

Sophie's lower lip pushed out like a big wet shelf.

Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry, Charlie chanted in his head. I can't handle it if you cry.

"Don't cry, honey. Everything will be okay."

"Nooooooooooo," Sophie wailed. "I want to go with you. I want to go with you. Don't go, Daddy, I want to go with you."

Charlie held her and looked across the room to his sister, pleading. She came and took Sophie from his arms. "Noooooo. I want to go with you."

"You can't go with me, honey." And Charlie ducked out of the apartment before his heart broke again.

Audrey was waiting in the hall with fifty-three squirrel people. "I'm driving you to the entrance," she said. "Don't argue."

"No," Charlie said. "I'm not losing you after just finding you. You stay here."

"You creep! What gives you the right to be that way. I just found you, too."

"Yeah, but I'm not much of a find."

"You're an ass," she said, and she walked into his arms and kissed him. After a long time, Charlie looked around. The squirrel people were all looking up at them.

"What are they doing here?"

"They're going with you."

"No. It's too risky."

"Then it's too risky for you, too. You don't even know what could be down there - this thing that broke into your store wasn't one of the Morrigan."

"I'm not going to be afraid, Audrey. There might be a hundred different demons, but The Book of the Dead is right, they are only keeping us from our path. I think these things exist for the same reason I was chosen to do this, because of fear. I was afraid to live, so I became Death. Their power is our fear of death. I'm not afraid. And I'm not taking the squirrel people."

"They know the way. And besides, they're fourteen inches tall, what do they have to live for?"

"Hey," said a Beefeater guard whose head was the skull of a bobcat.

"Did he say something?" Charlie asked.

"One of my experimental voice boxes."

"It's a little squeaky."

"Hey!"

"Sorry, uh, Beef," Charlie said. The creatures seemed resolute. "Onward, then!"

Charlie ran down the hall so he wouldn't have to say good-bye again. Ten yards behind him marched a small army of nightmare creatures, put together from the parts of a hundred different animals. It just so happened that at the time they were reaching the staircase, Mrs. Ling came downstairs to see what all the commotion had been about, and the entire army stopped in the stairway and looked up at her.

Mrs. Ling was, and had always been, a Buddhist, and so she was a firm believer in the concept of karma, and that those lessons you did not learn would continually be presented to you until you learned them, or your soul could never evolve to the next level. That afternoon, as the Forces of Light were about to engage the Forces of Darkness for dominion over the world, Mrs. Ling, staring into the blank eyes of the squirrel people, had her own epiphany, and she never again ate meat, of any kind. Her first act of atonement was an offering to those she felt she had wronged.

"You want snack?" she said.

But the squirrel people marched on.

The Emperor saw the van pull up near the creek and a man in bright yellow motorcycle leathers climb out. The man reached back into the van and grabbed what looked like a shoulder holster with a sledgehammer in it, and slipped into the harness. If the context hadn't been so bizarre, the Emperor could have sworn it was his friend Charlie Asher, from the secondhand shop in North Beach, but Charlie? Here? With a gun? No.

Lazarus, who was not so dependent on his eyes for recognition, barked a greeting.

The man turned to them and waved. It was Charlie. He walked down to the creekbank across from them.

"Your Majesty," Charlie said.

"You seem upset, Charlie. Is something wrong?"

"No, no, I'm okay, I just had to take directions from a mute beaver in a fez to get here, it's unsettling."

"Well, I can see how it would be," said the Emperor. "Nice ensemble, though, the leathers and the pistol. Not your usual sartorial splendor."

"Well, no. I'm on a bit of a mission. Going to go into that culvert, find my way into the Underworld, and do battle with the Forces of Darkness."

"Good for you. Good for you. Forces of Darkness seem to be on the rise in my city lately."

"You noticed, then?"

The Emperor hung his head. "Yes, I'm afraid we've lost one of our troops to the fiends."

"Bummer?"

"He went into a storm sewer days ago, and hasn't come out."

"I'm sorry, sir."

"Would you look for him, Charlie? Please. Bring him out."

"Your Majesty, I'm not sure that I'm coming back myself, but I promise, if I find him, I'll try to bring him out. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to open this van and I don't want you to be alarmed by what you see, but I want to get into the pipe while there's still some light from the grates. What you see coming out of the van - they're friends."

"Carry on," said the Emperor.

Charlie slid the door open and the squirrel people hopped, scampered, and scooted down the bank of the creek toward the culvert. Charlie reached into the van, took out his sword-cane and flashlight, and butt-bumped the door shut. Lazarus whimpered and looked at the Emperor as if someone who was able to talk should say something.

"Good luck, then, valiant Charlie," said the Emperor. "You go forth with all of us in your heart, and you in ours."

"You'll watch the van?"

"Until the Golden Gate crumbles to dust, my friend," said the Emperor.

And so Charlie Asher, in the service of life and light and all sentient beings, and in hope of rescuing the soul of the love of his life, led an army of fourteen-inch-tall bundles of animal bits, armed with everything from knitting needles to a spork, into the storm sewers of San Francisco.

They slogged on for hours - sometimes the pipes became narrow enough that Charlie had to crawl on his hands and knees, other times they opened into wide junctions like concrete rooms. He helped the squirrel people climb to higher pipes. He'd found a lightweight construction helmet fitted with an LED headlamp, which came in handy in narrow passages where he couldn't aim the flashlight. He was also bumping his head about ten times an hour, and although the helmet protected him from injury, he'd developed a throbbing headache. His leathers - not really leathers, but more heavy nylon with Lexan pads at the knees, shoulders, elbows, shins, and forearms - were protecting him from bumps and abrasions on the pipes, but they were soaked and rubbing him raw at the backs of his knees. At an open junction with a grate at the top he climbed the ladder and tried to get a look at the neighborhood to perhaps get a sense of where they were, but it had gotten dark out since they started and the grate was under a parked car.

What irony, that he would finally summon his courage and charge into the breach, only to end up lost and stuck in the breach. A human misfire.

"Where the hell are we?" he said.

"No idea," said the bobcat guy, the one who could talk.

The little Beefeater was disturbing to watch when he spoke, since he really didn't have a face, only a skull, and he spoke without ever making the P sound. Also, instead of a halberd, which Charlie thought should have come with the costume for authenticity, the bobcat had armed himself with a spork.

"Can you ask the others if they know where we are?"

"Okay." He turned to the damp gallery of squirrel people. "Hey, anybody know where we are?"

They all shook their heads, looking from one to another, shrugging. Nope.

"No," said the bobcat.

"Well, I could have done that," Charlie said.

"Why don't you? It's your _arty," he said. Charlie realized he meant "party."

"Why no Ps?" Charlie asked.

"No li_s."

"Right, lips. Sorry. What are you going to do with that spork?"

"Well, when we find some bad guys, I'm going to s_ork the fuck out of them."

"Excellent. You're my lieutenant."

"Because of the s_ork?"

"No, because you can talk. What's your name?"

"Bob."

"No really."

"Really. It's Bob."

"So I suppose your last name is Cat."

"Wilson."

"Just checking. Sorry."

"'S okay."

"Do you remember who you were in your last life?"

"I remember a little. I think I was an accountant."

"So, no military experience?"

"You need some bodies counted, I'm your man, er, thing."

"Swell. Does anyone here remember if they used to be a soldier, or a ninja or anything? Extra credit for ninjas or a Viking or something. Weren't any of you like Attila the Hun or Captain Horatio Hornblower in a former life or something?"

A ferret in a sequined minidress and go-go boots came forward, paw raised.

"You were a naval commander?"

The ferret appeared to whisper into Bob's hat (since Bob no longer had ears).

"She says no, she misunderstood, she thought you meant horn blower."

"She was a prostitute?"

"Cornet _layer," said Bob.

"Sorry," Charlie said. "It's the boots."

The ferret waved him off in a "no worries" way, then leaned over and whispered to Bob again.

"What?" Charlie said.

"Nothing," Bob said.

"Not nothing. I didn't think they could talk."

"Well, not to you," said Bob.

"What did she say?"

"She said we're fucked."

"Well, that's not a very good attitude," Charlie said, but he was starting to believe the go-go ferret was right, and he leaned back into a semisitting position in the pipe to rest.

Bob climbed up to a smaller pipe and sat on the edge, his feet dangling over; water dripped from his little patent-leather shoes, but the floral pattern brass buckles still shone in the light of Charlie's headlamp.

"Nice shoes," Charlie said.

"Yeah, well, Audrey digs me," said Bob.

Before Charlie could answer, the dog had grabbed Bob from behind and was shaking him like a rag doll. His mighty spork clattered off the pipe and was lost in the water below.