Aloha from Hell. Richard Kadrey

      I ASK THE night manager what room Candy is in and head upstairs to the last one at the back. It has a nice view of a used-car lot.

      I stop for a second before going in, feeling a little strange. Candy and I have been dancing around each other for months, but we’ve hardly ever been alone together. Maybe the one and only time was when she stabbed me in the heart to give me the zombie serum. Does that count as a first date? And if so, on what planet? I’m thirteen again, trying to figure out how to talk to a girl. This is ridiculous. We’ve killed and fought side by side and kept the gates of Hell from opening. I should be able to string enough words together not to drool on myself.

      I open the door and Candy is waiting for me, standing naked in the middle of the bed. I barely get the door closed when she jumps all the way across the room and lands on my chest, pinning me against the wall. A pure predator ambush.

      Candy’s skin is as corpse cold as I remember from the first time she pecked me on the cheek outside Doc Kinski’s clinic. But she warms up when we fall onto the bed and I’m on top of her and we’re kissing like it’s the cure for cancer.

      She shreds my shirt with her nails and I barely get my pants off before she destroys those, too.

      Candy wraps her legs around me. I slip inside her and the world goes black and hot. Her teeth wolf into my shoulder. I pull her hair as her nails dig into my back. I pull harder and bend her head back so I can see her face. I catch a glimpse of the Jade lurking just under the skin. Her nails extend into claws and our grinding bodies torpedo us from this soft and stupid human world to someplace where monsters can tear and bite. No one’s afraid of it and all the groans and pain and craziness are beautiful.

      The hotel bed makes a sound like a bullet and collapses beneath us. I pull her legs onto my shoulders and push deeper inside her. When she throws back her arms, her hands smash through the cheap wall paneling. She shifts her weight and rolls on top of me. My elbow comes down on the nightstand, cracking it and demolishing the phone.

      We fall out of bed and onto the floor. Candy is on her hands and knees and I’m in her from behind. She doesn’t hold the Jade inside anymore. Her body starts its transformation but she holds it halfway. Not quite girl and not quite beast. She moans and snarls as one clawed hand rips the stuffing and springs out of the sofa next to us.

      The mirror on the dresser falls and shatters on the floor. I’m not really sure which one of us did that.

      We crawl back onto the bed. Candy crawls back on top and thrusts down on me hard enough to crack the San Andreas Fault. I swear I hear plaster falling from the ceiling in the room below us. I don’t care. All that matters is the girl and the monster thrusting down against me.

      In the dim distant parts of our brains that can still form thoughts, I know we’re both thinking the same thing.

      This has been a long goddamn time coming.

      LATER WE LIE in the ruins of the room. We push some debris out of the way and move the bed so it’s at least flat on the floor. We lie down, wrapping ourselves in torn sheets and what’s left of the bedspread.

      “I like this hotel. The rooms are simple, but kind of pretty,” says Candy.

      “I think we broke this one.”

      “Want to do it again?”

      “Sure.”

      Later, when Candy falls asleep, I put on my pants and boots and go back to the other room to get a new shirt. Kasabian hasn’t moved from the computer. Beer cans are piled under his table.

      “Your shoulder is bleeding,” he says. “Let me guess. On the way over you ran into a midget with an armful of razor blades and barbed wire.”

      “I don’t kiss and tell.”

      “You don’t have to. I could hear you all the way over here. The whole hotel could hear you. Everyone was out of their rooms. They thought it was a gang fight. The hotel manager called 911.”

      I find a clean Max Overdrive T-shirt and put it on.

      “Cops are coming?”

      Kasabian shakes his head.

      “Relax. I routed the call to a phone-company all-circuits-are-busy message.”

      “You know how to do that?”

      “I’m on this computer all day. Making it do bad things is the only fun I have. Did you really think I spent all my time looking at video catalogs and porn?”

      “Yeah. I sort of did.”

      His eyes narrow at me.

      “See. That’s exactly the kind of thing I expect from you. No respect whatsoever. After all the research and information I’ve found for you.”

      “That’s not how I meant it. I just never pictured you as the high-tech type.”

      “I have to be. All my magic goes into keeping this goddamn skateboard upright. I don’t have extra for anything else, so I have to use machines.”

      “That’s actually a real smart way to deal with things. You’re a credit to your race, Alfredo Garcia.”

      “Hey, don’t call me that when you’re off getting laid and I’m in here keeping LAPD off your back,” he says, pissed and with a right to be.

      “You’re right, man. I owe you.”

      “You’re goddamn right you do.” He leans toward me and speaks in a whisper like maybe the CIA is listening. “Is she as cute naked as she is with clothes on?”

      “Don’t even start.”

      “Come on. I saved you both. And you just said you owe me. Get me a Polaroid.”

      I crack a smile at that.

      “You know, she just might think that’s funny enough to do. She’s not shy.”

      “Seriously?”

      “I’m not going to ask her for you. You want it so bad, you do your own begging. And I don’t want to see you Photo-shopping her head onto porn stars.”

      “What’s her e-mail address?”

      “I don’t even know if she has one.”

      “You hick. I’ll find it myself.”

      I take the Smith & Wesson out of my coat and reload it with special rounds I made with cut-down .410 shotgun shells. I might not need them, but fortune favors the prepared mind that thought to bring a really big gun.

      I say, “Don’t crash out on me. I’m looking for information right now and that’ll probably lead to more questions. I might quiz you now, but I need to make a call.”

      “You know where to find me.”

      IF YOU’VE EVER wondered if your life has run off the rails, here’s a handy quiz.

      Is the only person left in the universe you can go to for help someone even God doesn’t want to talk about?

      Is the only alliance left to you with a gang that eats and shits chaos?

      Are you about to drunk-dial the only guy in Creation who’s probably more despised than you?

      If you answered yes to any of these, then you should seek psychiatric help. If you answered yes to all of them, you’re me.

      I WALK OUT the front of the hotel and a block down Hollywood Boulevard.

      On the way I get out my phone and thumb in a number I’ve had for a while but never dialed before.