Something Wicked 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)

4: Hot dude falls off clock tower

VOGEL TECHNOLOGIES, October 10

Halloween season, but the sun still burned like Riyadh.

Luckily the winding ribbon of shade under Vogel's colossal perimeter walls marked my patrol route. My white tie and collar chafed my neck. Too-tight boots slid with sweat. My dumb black hat with Vogel Security emblazoned across it added injury by itching my scalp, and insult by making me look like a fucking penguin.

Alcor Security had the right idea: red hoodie, kevlar vest, jeans. None of this penguin uniform shit. Before Alcor, Don Genovese had insisted I wear an Italian suit as his bodyguard. I'd hated it, but the number of women who'd loved peeling it off me at the end of the night had made it almost worth the discomfort.

The two-way crackled in my hand. "All quiet this side, over."

No fucking peace for me. I held the radio to my lips. "All quiet here too, Charity. We've walked the perimeter three times. You wanna get a soda? Over?"

What I thought was a buzz of static was Charity guffawing into her radio. "If you wanted an easy ride you shoulda begged your parole officer to give you Community Service with McCloud Technologies, not Vogel. That crazy lefty liberal Hamish McCloud takes in any criminal snowflakes who can't serve their sentence like real men."

"I'm not a...I didn't..."

This fucking woman.

"It's not Community Service, Charity. I'm a police witness. And I got a police interview at twelve," I lied. My interview wasn't until two, but Charity was killing me slowly, and I needed to get the fuck outta this uniform before I became a human tamale. "Over."

"Whatever, Torres. Just bring my radio back, over."

"Fucking copy that. And it's not Community Service. Over."

The joy at hanging up my penguin uniform lasted about three seconds before I realized that I had to don my old clothes. My unofficial Alcor uniform had been in storage at María Penitentiary for two months: red hoodie, now customized with a fraying bullet hole in the hood, threadbare red T-shirt, ripped jeans, beat-up Nikes.

Looking nothing like a police witness, and everything like felonious trash doing Community Service, I walked the grimy, sweaty, fucking beautiful streets of María Estrella del Mar. OK, so it was a crumbling rain-drenched shit-hole of a city, but it was my crumbling rain-drenched shit-hole. And I was walking the slippery sidewalks as a free man. Except that my freedom wasn't real, no matter which side of the bars I stood on. As soon as I stopped being useful to María PD, I was probably gonna be back in Mercedes, in a straitjacket next time. If Alcor didn't get to me first. Carmen's words—her words channeled through Carmen's mouth—screamed in my ears louder than the traffic on Fourteenth Street.

"You can't hide, Ahmar. The Demon Star is rising."

But Carmen's real words kept permeating the choking demon-fog, feeding me stupid hope. Maybe I could outrun Alcor. Maybe Sylvia Payne could shut them down before they took me.

Too many maybes cluttered my brain. I needed to think. Get my head straight before my police interview. I knew just the place. My favorite spot.

A quiet alleyway behind the cathedral led to mossy steps hidden by dumpsters. From the top step I leaped up the wall, catching an overhanging branch to haul me over. I was outta practice, but managed to hook my fingers onto the corroding rail of a fire escape. It took me up and up.

Eighteen floors high, I jumped the railing. Grasping hands almost didn't catch the faded highway sign. I dragged myself into a tangled morass of cell towers. From there it was a short run of underclings to the Cathedral's spire, and a drop down to my secret place: the top of María's gothic clock tower.