Our Lady of Holy Death Read online

  “Okay,” she said, looking over at Carreras. “I’ve got an idea.”

  * * *

  Once she explained what she had in mind, Carreras ordered his men to uproot every last one of the zombie roses growing in pots around his estate.

  For the duration of the experiment, Carreras was also willing to allow Miles back out of the pit. A rope ladder hung down the side of the pit beneath a door set into the bars.

  Miles scrambled up the ladder with undue haste the moment one of Carreras’s men unlocked the pit door. He stood before Dutch, panting with nervous exhaustion, his skin slick with sweat and his cheap suit so filthy she couldn’t say for sure what colour it had started out as.

  “Dutch,” he said, grinning weakly. “I can’t thank you enough. I…” He swallowed. “I’ve been stuck down there with that thing for two days, and I haven’t slept for one second in case it…” He shuddered.

  While he stood there, Carreras’s men went back and forth, bringing bundles of hastily uprooted zombie roses into the chapel and pushing them through the bars above the pit.

  “Something’s happening,” said Eddie, looking down through the steel bars. “It’s moving!”

  Dutch stepped up to the pit’s edge and looked down. The kaiju was indeed showing signs of activity, chewing thoughtfully on the mound of flowers. It wasn’t exactly lively compared to any of its brethren, but it was at least something.

  Dutch stepped up close to Miles and spoke to him in a low voice. “What the hell does Carreras want with a kaiju he’d be willing to smuggle it all the way here from Teijouan? And how the fuck did you get involved?”

  Miles giggled and wiped something slimy from the arm of his jacket. “Do you know, it peed on me in the middle of the night?” He shuddered. “I think I got some in my mouth.”

  “Answer the question, Miles,” she hissed, poking him hard in the chest with one finger.

  He sighed. “Okay, fine. I lost my sponsor for the next Devil’s Run. So I figured I’d try to raise the money myself, and…” he gestured towards Carreras with his chin.

  The Toothgrinder now began lumbering around the pit, snatching up more of the long-stemmed flowers as they were dropped between the bars. It blinked up at them and let out an ear-rending bellow before resuming its meal.

  “Champagne!” Carreras cried, waving to a man in a butler’s uniform who had just walked into the chapel carrying a tray loaded with glasses. “Good thing for me you’re such a lousy gambler, huh?” he said, slapping Miles hard on the back. “Otherwise I’d never have my own kaiju!”

  Dutch shot Miles a look, but before he could explain what the other man meant Carreras had stepped towards her.

  “Please, you must stay and help me celebrate,” said Carreras, grinning broadly. “It’s the least I can do to show my gratitude.” He put one hand on Miles’s shoulder. “There’s little I won’t do for my friends.”

  Carreras tapped another cigarette from a packet, the sleeve of his jacket rolling up to reveal a nicotine patch on his wrist.

  “Trying to give up?” Dutch asked dryly.

  Carreras blinked at her, then looked down, as if he’d forgotten the patch was there. “This whole unfortunate affair has been stressful enough without trying to quit smoking as well,” he explained with a shrug. He extended the pack towards her. “Do you smoke, Miss McGuire?”

  “Not anymore,” she said.

  With that, Carreras went to rejoin his cronies by the edge of the pit. They were all staring down at the kaiju as more of the ugly-looking flowers were dropped into the pit.

  Dutch returned her attention to Miles.

  “Now tell me what the hell you got yourself into.”

  “He’s a collector,” said Miles. “You saw that zoo of his.”

  “Bullshit,” said Dutch. “He wants to feed people to that thing, doesn’t he? Just look at this place, at these people. What else has he got a private zoo for except so he can feed his enemies to a bunch of carnivores?”

  “Look,” said Miles. “I just arranged to get the thing to him. What he does with it is his own business.”

  The Toothgrinder roared again, and the ground beneath their feet shook as it battered against the concrete walls of its new home.

  * * *

  After that there was more champagne, and Dutch found herself invited to stay the night at Carreras’s oversized mansion. She accepted only because she was unsure what Carreras might do should she refuse.

  The interior of the mansion contained enough gold and imported marble to make it clear Carreras could have financed his own team in the Devil’s Run if he’d wanted to. It was also clear to Dutch, from the way Miles followed Carreras around like a puppy dog, that he’d figured this out too.

  Dutch slunk off to find herself a corner where she could stay out of sight while the carousing went on. At one point, as the evening drew in, someone fired off a machine gun. The sound was so loud and so terrifying that Dutch nearly puked up the single glass of champagne she’d drunk, but after a moment came the sound of high-pitched whoops and laughter, showing it was all just part of the fun and festivities.

  Time to go, thought Dutch, searching for the nearest exit. Screw Carreras and his invitation; if she could find Eddie, maybe she could persuade him to forget just how badly she’d humiliated him and drive her back to her hotel. And if he was reluctant to do that, well…she could always just steal his keys and take the SUV anyway.

  #

  Instead of Eddie, she found Miles, wandering through the mansion looking lost. Despite her sense of self-preservation, Dutch found herself suddenly curious how he’d smuggled a kaiju out of Teijouan—a feat she might otherwise have believed impossible.

  “How did you do it, Miles?” she asked, waylaying him. “How the hell does anyone smuggle a kaiju egg all the way to El Salvador?”

  “Sometimes they find one close enough to shore they can retrieve it for study,” Miles slurred. He tapped the side of his nose. “And sometimes those eggs get lost in transit.”

  “You know you’re lucky to be alive, don’t you?”

  He laughed, the sound high and shrill. “How was I to know? How was anyone to know the Toothgrinder would just…sit there once it hatched?”

  “Maybe if you’d asked someone who actually knew something about kaiju, you wouldn’t have wound up in a hole in the fucking ground with one.” She took hold of his sleeve and dragged him into a corner. “For fuck’s sake, Miles, what are you doing messing around with people like this?”

  Miles shook her hand off. “Look, there’s no way I could afford to race in the next Devil’s Run without the money Carreras paid me. I’m not as bankable as you or the Countess Koenig or even that nutjob Doktor Elektron. I have to go cap in hand to sponsors and hope for the best.”

  “You could always not race, you know,” said Dutch.

  Miles laughed softly. “And how about you, Dutch? You going to quit?”

  Dutch’s mouth worked for a moment. “You know I can’t,” she mumbled.

  Miles raised his almost-empty champagne glass in a toast. “Then you already know why I can’t quit either. To old times,” he added, then drank the rest down.

  He looked down at the empty glass with a frown. “Hey, how about we get out of here?”

  “Spoken like—”

  Just then Dutch heard raised, angry voices instead of laughter and music. Something’s wrong, she thought, a prickle of fear running up her spine. A red-faced Carreras came hurrying towards them, flanked by several goons wielding machine guns, and immediately she knew something had gone badly wrong.

  #

  It was worse than bad; the kaiju was dead.

  Dutch stared down through the steel bars at the creature’s rapidly cooling body, the muzzle of a machine gun pressing against the back of her head. Miles kneeled next to her, another gun pressed against his own head.

  “Dead!” Carreras screamed, stomping back and forth, his shouts reverberating within the wood-lined confines of t
he chapel. “All that money, for a fucking corpse!” He stopped in front of Miles. “Do you take me for an idiot, huh? Is that it?”

  Miles stared over at him, his face ghost-white. “Look, Mr Carreras, I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable exp—”

  Carreras motioned to the goon standing behind Miles and the man swiftly turned his machine-gun around, slamming its butt into the back of Miles’s head.

  Miles crumpled onto his side, groaning with pain, but remained conscious. Right then, Dutch wouldn’t have felt too sorry if the goon had put a bullet in the back of his head.

  The shredded remains of zombie roses surrounded the Toothgrinder’s still form. Carreras shouted something in Spanish, and one of his men unlocked the door above the pit. Dutch wasn’t remotely surprised when they dragged first Miles and then her over to the hole and forced them down the ladder and into the pit.

  * * *

  “Well,” Miles said some hours later, “at least we won’t starve to death down here.”

  They sat side-by-side against a grating in the wall of the pit that covered some foul-smelling drain, staring at the huge form of the dead kaiju.

  It took her another moment to comprehend what he was suggesting. “Are you talking about eating that thing?”

  “Well,” he said, “theoretically we could. Might not taste very nice, but…”

  “You go first,” she muttered darkly. Asshole.

  There was little light beyond the faint ruby glow of the candles burning beneath Santa Muerte that crept over the edge of the pit. Carreras and his goons had long since vanished, along with the party guests.

  “How the hell,” Dutch muttered, “could I have got it so wrong?”

  “The zombie roses?” Miles shrugged. “Even you make mistakes sometimes, Dutch.”

  She turned to glare at him. “I was talking about you.”

  Miles blanched. “Oh.”

  Crickets, just barely audible, sang in the long hot night. Dutch closed her eyes. Her crappy little hotel room felt as distant as some fairytale palace. In fact, fuck fairytales. Right now she’d settle for a Vegas flophouse, or–

  Her eyes snapped open.

  “Miles, what did Carreras mean when he said you were a lousy gambler?”

  Miles looked hastily away from her, a sure sign that he was hiding something. Good thing you’re such a lousy gambler or I wouldn’t have this, Carreras had said, pointing at the Toothgrinder.

  “Miles,” she continued in a distinctly more threatening tone, “whatever you’re scared Carreras might do to you, it’s nothing compared to how much I’ll hurt you right now if you don’t tell me the truth.”

  A long time passed before he spoke, his voice trembling with shame. “Carreras owns a casino in San Salvador,” he said, his voice still and low. “I…figured maybe I could build up some cash that way. It didn’t go so good, and in the end I had to put the Ford Falcon Coupé up as collateral to try and win my money back.” He shrugged. “I lost.”

  “You gambled away the Coupé ?” Dutch exclaimed, her voice high and shrill. “Are you out of your mind?”

  The Coupé handled like a dream on the few occasions Dutch had got behind its wheel. She’d offered to buy it from Miles at the time, but he’d refused. The idea that he might have lost it in some…card game made her want to puke.

  “So where does the kaiju come into it?” asked Dutch.

  “The deal was if I could help Carreras acquire a kaiju, I’d get my car back.” He swore under his breath. “I don’t know what’s worse—that we’re down here in the pit, or that that asshole has my car.”

  Dutch wasn’t listening anymore, her attention having been drawn by something else. “Hey,” she asked, “do the crickets sound kind of weird to you?”

  “The what?”

  Except it wasn’t crickets, she realised—or rather, not just the crickets. There was another sound mixed in with their sawing, a kind of scratching that came from somewhere much closer to hand.

  Coming, she realised with a sense of growing dread, from the purportedly deceased Toothgrinder.

  Dutch crawled up next to the Toothgrinder’s flank and touched its mottled hide. It felt…brittle, which wasn’t what she’d expected. Impulsively, she placed an ear against its flank, discovering the scratching came from within the creature’s body.

  Something was moving around in there.

  She remembered what else the scientist had told her. They’d wound up in bed after a pre-time-trials party in Shinjuku one year and later that same night he’d told her about his work. It seemed, or so he had told her, that some kaiju previously believed to be separate species might in fact be distinct stages of the same creature, the way a caterpillar eventually transformed into a butterfly.

  Dutch crawled back from the kaiju, pressing her back hard against the grating. Her throat had turned so dry she had to swallow several times before she could speak.

  “Miles,” she said, her voice trembling, “we have to get out of here.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I’m serious,” she hissed. “I don’t think that thing is really dead.”

  He stared at her. “What?”

  “I think feeding it those damn flowers triggered some kind of change.” She quickly explained what she knew.

  “First you’re not an expert, and now you are?”

  “More of an expert than you,” Dutch snapped. What she didn’t know—assuming that anyone knew—was how long the transformation would take. Hours, days or longer?

  Whatever the Toothgrinder was turning into, she had a feeling it would emerge hungry for something other than zombie roses.

  Dutch stood and went over to the rope ladder hanging down the side of the pit. She’d seen one of Carreras’s men lock the door above the ladder. She scaled the ladder anyway, taking a moment to test the door and confirm it couldn’t be opened.

  She could see more of the chapel from up there. The gap between the bars was just wide enough she could get one arm through.

  Santa Muerte gazed down at her from the chapel wall. A few black candles still guttered fitfully at the skeletal figure’s feet, while the rest had melted away.

  The candlelight reflected from something shiny lying on the edge of the concrete bench close by the pit door: Carreras’s Zippo lighter.

  That gave Dutch an idea.

  Hooking one arm around a bar, Dutch tried to reach up and snag the lighter, but however much she struggled she couldn’t get her fingers up high enough to snag the lighter.

  “Dutch!” Miles shouted up at her. “What are you doing up there?”

  Jesus. She quickly descended the ladder to where Miles stood looking up at her.

  “Will you shut up?” she hissed. “I’m trying to figure a way out of this mess, and you want to draw the attention of anyone left to guard us?”

  “It’s making more noise,” said Miles, his eyes huge and round. “Dutch, I think I saw it move. I mean, not move-move, more like…trembling, you know?”

  “Shut up and listen,” she snapped, then quickly explained what she had in mind. It was a desperate plan for sure, but it was the best she could come up with.

  Miles’ expression grew more and more horrified the more she explained. “What are you, suicidal?” he said, his voice a high-pitched whine. Then his face brightened. “Wait. I’ve got a better idea! Maybe if we tell Carreras we’ll race together in the Devil’s Run, he’d be willing to sponsor—”

  The very thought of partnering with Miles in the Run made Dutch nauseous. “Listen, Miles,” she said, “not only would I never race with you, if you say one more damn word to me about—”

  Just then one of the chapel doors opened with a creak and she heard a familiar voice.

  “Hey,” said Eddie. “What’s with all the noise?”

  He appeared at the edge of the pit a moment later. “Didn’t think he’d put you down there too, Dutch,” said Eddie, looking down at her. He chuckled. “I’d like to say I’m sorry how things
worked out, but I’d be lying.”

  “How about we let bygones be bygones?” Dutch called back up. “I won’t tell Carreras if you let us out.”

  “No can do,” Eddie replied amiably. “Boss says he’s thinking he’ll have to go back to feeding people to his lions. That’s probably what he’ll do with you and your friend.”

  Dutch ground her teeth together, but managed to keep her tone polite. “How about a cigarette, at least? You know, like a last request kind of thing?”

  Miles frowned. “I thought you gave up smok—?”

  Dutch drove a fist into Miles’ belly without taking her eyes off Eddie. Miles groaned and slumped onto the floor of the pit. It was dark enough, she figured, Eddie probably couldn’t see what she’d done.

  “Sure,” Eddie replied. “I can be generous. But I’d need to go back to the house for a lighter, and I’m not allowed to leave my post.”

  “I think someone left their lighter on the bench near where you’re standing.”

  Eddie glanced over. “Hey, so they did,” he said, reaching down and picking it up. He looked down at her for a long moment as if coming to a decision, then reached inside a pocket and took out a packet of cigarettes. “Here you go,” he said at last, holding the lighter and cigarettes up where she could see them.

  Dutch moved to a point directly below Eddie and caught the cigarettes and lighter when he dropped them through the bars.

  “Thanks,” she called up.

  “No hay problema. With you down there, I figure we’re equal for the way you embarrassed me in front of my boss,” Eddie added, then strode out of sight with another chuckle.

  Dutch heard a noise closer to hand. She looked to one side in time to see the kaiju tremble. Thin cracks had spread across its hardened exterior since she and Eddie had started talking: cracks that hadn’t been there moments before.

  “I’ve got another idea,” said Miles, his voice laden with desperation. He knelt in the dirt next to the wall grating, which Dutch now saw had come slightly loose. “I’m pretty sure there’s enough room behind this for both of us. It’ll be tight, but…”