Free The Light is the Darkness by Laird Barron

like you been through a wood chipper. Givin’ the crowd a show?”
    “It’s nothing.”
    “A flesh wound, huh.”
    “Is she still there?”
    “Uh, yah. She’s still there.”
    Conrad smoked. Each inhalation made him aware of his battered ribs, the bloated mass of his spleen.
    “Maybe you better reschedule this meet.”
    “Why?”
    “Never mind, never mind.” Kite stared out the crack at the blowing dust, and presumably, the woman in the Cadillac. “I wonder who that bitch is, man.”
    “I assume we’re green light.”
    “Sure, man. Green light. It was expensive...”
    “Okay. How does fifteen percent above duty sound?”
    “Sounds like me and my old lady are going to Costa Rica for the winter. Although, why take sand to the beach, eh?” Kite turned from his post to wink.
    “Give me the news.”
    “Right. I got the Brazilian; he’s a fuckin’ butcher. My people, that’s what they say—he’s a butcher. He did some illegal plastic surgery in Beverly Hills, blinded some producer. The cops want him bad.” Kite went to the register and brought back a photograph.
    Conrad took the photo. It matched the surveillance shots baby sister Imogene had snapped back when she was spying on Dad at the booby hatch, although she hadn’t truly grasped the implications, she’d simply been following woman’s intuition, bless her dark, little peach-pit of a heart. Nonetheless, this was the Brazilian, alright. They’d met several times at the Cloister. Dr. Souza was old as dirt then and nothing seemed to have changed during the intervening decades.
    “Well, the Brazilian’s a menace. Did freelance work for Lockheed-Martin, DynCorp, plus some Podunk outfits. He got drummed outta all of them. Had an international rap sheet long as my arm, before this Beverly Hills action. Guy likes psychotropic and designer poisons. Don’t know why the hell he switched to surgery—he ain’t much good at it, ha-ha.”
    Pain, suffering, cruelty. “They have this thing about transformation,” Conrad said.
    “They?”
    “There’s a conspiracy.”
    “There’s always a conspiracy. I gave him the quiz, like you said. Did the Twenty Questions bit. Told me to tell you, ‘Drake is the Prince of Darkness’. Said he’ll deal for the codex.”
    Conrad thought of the manuscript safely hidden in the wheel well of his Cadillac. A bundle of desiccated vellum sheaves bound in catgut, throbbing like a chunk of plutonium or a piece of concentrated darkness. Imogene’s gift to him and the one piece of intelligence he’d withheld from the Stooges. “Blood of Old, Opens the Eye. Flesh of Flesh, Opens the Mouth to Drink the Stars.” Oh, this is definitely the real McCoy. His palms sweated. He was done with it; question was, was it done with him?
    “Man, you’d tell me if you had cancer, or somethin’.”
    “I don’t have cancer.”
    “Then what?”
    “Revenge.” Conrad knew that Kite knew—his friend was trying to keep his feet warm by making small talk. Conrad was bad at small talk.
    “Hey, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida , baby. I loved Genie, too,” Kite said. “Whatever you gotta do to get inside, that’s fine as far as it goes. But, come on, man. Are you really gonna let this lunatic stick you? What if it’s not authentic? Or, what if it is?”
    “I’m reasonably certain it’s authentic.”
    “You’re reasonably certain.”
    “My father knew him when I was a boy. They were colleagues.”
    “Yeah, but that’s a long time gone. Man it ain’t cool to take rides from strangers. You don’t know where it’ll end.”
    “We all end up in the same place, T-dog.”
    “Well, shit. Don’t make me sorry for mixing up in this deal.”
    “Think about Costa Rica and you’ll feel better.” Conrad couldn’t tell Kite what he thought the serum did without sounding like a bigger lunatic than the Brazilian. “When and where?”
    “Souza’s waiting in Rattlesnake. Eagle and his brother brought the dude in and got the building and everything.