I go to my eye and start the projection over again in case I missed something the first time through.
Ipos comes out from under the desk. He wipes dirt from his knees and says, “Even without war we’re still trapped in chaos and fear. It reminds me of waking up here after the fall from Heaven.”
He looks at Merihim.
“Do you remember? How many brothers and sisters cut their throats or threw themselves off the high mountains?”
“And the ones who turned on each other. I remember. It was a terrible thing to see.”
Ipos looks at me.
“Lucifer saved us. The first one. Like you, he had us work building Pandemonium. It took our minds off those . . . other possibilities.”
Neither of them looks at each other or at me. Their eyes are glazed in an ex-soldier’s thousand-yard stare.
I never thought of Hellions this way. They always seemed so full of Fuck You spirit when it came to the war in Heaven. It never occurred to me that being thrown here was as terrible for them as it was for me. When Heaven started shipping in damned souls, it must have been a nice distraction, but only for a while. Guarding passive, broken ghosts can’t be that exciting. And maybe they reminded the fallen angels too much of themselves. The damned minding the damned. If Hellions hadn’t tortured me for all those years, I might even feel sorry for them. But they did, so I don’t.
I take a picture from my pocket and hand it to Merihim.
“While we’re on the subject of lousy deaths, this is a girl from L.A. She had dyed green hair and worked at a donut shop on Hollywood Boulevard. She was murdered by two Kissi sometime between last Christmas and New Year’s. I don’t know if she’s down here, but if she is, can one of you find her?”
Merihim hands the photo to Ipos. He wipes the blood from his hands before taking it. “There can’t be that many pretty mortals killed by monsters in donut shops at Christmas. If she’s here, we’ll find her.”
“When you do, get her a job. Something safe. Away from the craziness. I’d do it myself but being near me is what got her in trouble in the first place.”
Ipos puts the photo in the breast pocket of his work overalls.
“She’s a friend of yours?”
I shake my head.
“I don’t even know her name.”
On the screen I watch myself unwrapping the soldier’s body.
Merihim cocks his head.
“I can’t help but be curious: you want us to find a complete stranger to ease the burden of her damnation but you’ve never once asked about your mother or father.”
“I don’t have to. Believe it or not, I’m capable of doing a few things on my own. They’re not here. It turns out being drunk and miserable are only venial sins after all. Lucky them.”
Ipos says, “Didn’t your father try to shoot you? Shouldn’t he be here with us?”
“I suppose by Heaven’s standards, killing an Abomination isn’t the same as killing a regular human,” says Merihim.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
I look at the screen, not really watching it.
I say, “I think we’re done here for now. Don’t you?”
As they head for the fake bookcase, Merihim says, “Yesterday I said that I’d bring you a protective potion. That will have to wait until I can check that they’re not bogus.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m not sitting around waiting to get my brain cut open. I’m going to do something.”
“What exactly?”
“I have no idea. Something, you know, subtle.”
Merihim says, “Like when you burned Eden? I only ask because I’m still trying to gauge your definition of ‘subtle.’ ”
I look at him and can’t help but smile.
“That was a fun afternoon. Anyway, you’ll know it when you see it.”
“I have no doubt.”
They go out and Ipos pulls the bookcase shut behind them.
I go over to the screen, put my eye back in, and set the others back on their projection stands.
I open the desk drawer and shove the Glock out of the way. That needs to go in the bedroom drawer with the Smith & Wesson. The Veritas is under some papers where I’d scrawled Hellion power charms. I found the originals stuck in an old notebook Samael tossed in the trash. I copied out all the charms and tossed off hoodoo for darkness and wind. I tried getting into the heads of the salarymen downstairs. Nothing. Maybe instead of trying to be Samael, acting like me again will make me better at this Lucifer thing.
I take out the Veritas and toss it, catch it, and slam it down on the table.
Should I go out or stay here?
There’s an image of an open window and billowing curtains. In elegant Hellion script around the edges of the coin, it reads, DON’T WASTE MY TIME, ASSHOLE.
As always, the Veritas is right. I already have my coat on. If it said stay, I’d toss it in the trash and go out anyway.
I go into the false bookcase and head downstairs.
I go down below street level to the garage. The door is locked but I touch the brass plate on the wall and it clicks open.
The place is full of the Council’s limos, plus the legion’s trucks, Unimogs, and Humvees. Why didn’t I ever take any of these out for a late-night cruise? Do my own Dakar Rally through Hollywood. Play Vanishing Point with Hellion street security. Let them chase me all the way to Santa Monica. Hell’s five rivers crash into each other there, churning the water into an endless storm of whitecaps, tidal waves, and whirlpools. At the edge of the sea I’d get out and show them who I am. We could have a drag race all the way back into town.
Tonight, though, I’ll just have to settle for some motocross. Tomorrow, who knows? I could steal a Unimog and drive down the Glory Road to the gates of Heaven. Bring a bottle of Aqua Regia and toast Samael for the tricky, scheming motherfucker he is. I wonder if he’d drive me home or make me drive myself. Who’s the designated driver when you have two Devils in the room?
I head up the ramp to where they keep my bike. Get on and kick it to life. The growling engine vibrates my body from my feet to my head, shaking the stench of Mason’s chop shop out of my lungs. I whisper some hoodoo, and when I pull the hoodie up over my head, my face isn’t my face anymore. The glamour makes me look like any other ugly Hellion.
I put the bike in gear and head up the ramp to one of the repair bays in back of the hotel. When I get the gate open and I’m sure the way is clear, I pop the clutch. The rear wheel screams and smokes and I blast off into the dark.
It takes my eyes a while to adjust to the night light. I hit the throttle and the bike tears over the city’s broken streets, bouncing and flying high over sudden drops, fishtailing in the curves. By the time I can see right, Pandemonium is a superhighway of light, streaks of color bounded by the blood reek of sinkholes and the bruised Hellion sky. I cut in and out of traffic. Around troop transports and pedestrians. I’m up on the sidewalk, and in the few places that have working traffic lights, I run every red I can find. I’m a menace. I’m a monster. I’m a stooge and I don’t care who knows it. I’m moving and for the first time in a long time everything is perfect. Hell can kiss my ass.
I hide the Hellion hog under the collapsed roof of an abandoned garage. On the way out I smooth over the dust to disguise my footprints and toss some cinder blocks inside to give the place an extra about-to-completely-collapse look.
I find Wild Bill smoking outside the Bamboo House of Dolls. When I walk over he shakes his head at me.
“Hop on by, froggy. You see this mark on my shirt?”
He shows me his sleeve. Lucifer’s bloodred sigil. He blows out blue cigar smoke.
“I’m bought and paid for by Mr. Scratch himself and he doesn’t appreciate simpletons manhandling his merchandise. It lowers the resale value.”
“Is that what you tell people? That I own you? I suppose it’s technically true, the way things work down here. I just never thought of it that way.”
Bill leans forward and squints. Shakes his head and spits.
“I swear to God, boy. Warn a feller when you’re going to come ’round looking like a goddamn hobgoblin. I was five seconds from tattooing your head with a shovel I leave out here for just that purpose.”
He’s telling the truth. There’s a solid old shovel in a half-dug hole by the side of the building. I’ll bet cash money that hole never gets any deeper or any more full.
“Next time I’ll wear a rose in my lapel so you know it’s me. I can’t stand another night locked in Gormenghast and thought I’d come by for a drink. Maybe let someone start a fight. It’s one of those nights when I want to break things, bones especially. You know the feeling?”
Bill eyes me and tosses the stub of his cigar.
“I’m acquainted with it but you’re not going to start any fights in my establishment. I don’t want it to become known as somewhere bastards can pay for drinks with the heels of their boots. Also, there’s some witches and other magical sorts from your palace inside. I don’t know that they could see through your Halloween mask but it seems a foolish thing to chance.”
I try to think of a good argument but nothing comes to mind.
“That’s too bad. I really want a drink.”
Bill shrugs.
“Speaking of drinking, did you get the trifle I sent your way? It’s a bottle of a local swill I discovered that’s not half bad by the standards of the Abyss. Tastes a bit like bourbon and turpentine. There’s a note in there too.”
“I haven’t gotten anything from you in weeks.”
Bill nods slowly.
“You might want to speak to your butlers or whatever kind of flunkies you have up there. Sounds like someone is pilfering your liquor cabinet.”
I close in to whispering distance.
“How easy will it be for whoever stole the bottle to find the note?”
He waves his hand dismissively.
“It’s sealed under the label. You’d have to look for it to find it, so I wouldn’t worry. And any future bottles I send your way will be rotgut. Feeding your demon staff is not my job.”
One more thing to worry about. One more reason to punch someone very hard.
“I’ll go through the staff offices with hellhounds and a flamethrower. I bet that will turn up the bottle. Hell, maybe the Holy Grail and Amelia Earhart’s bones too.”
Bill looks past my shoulder as he lights another cigar. I half turn and see legionnaires staring at us. I slap the cigar from his mouth, grab him, and push him hard around the side of the building.
“Move, drytt!”
When we’re in the dark, I let Bill go. He shoves me with his free hand and balls the other into a fist.
He yells, “What the hell are you playing at, boy?”
“We were being watched. Hellions and damned souls don’t have heart-to-hearts in public.”
He lowers his hand and uses it to rub the arm I grabbed, more out of annoyance than pain.
“I suppose you’re right. Still, I don’t care for being roughhoused.”
“Would you rather I shoved you and stopped or that one of those other assholes who’d mean it did?”
“I suppose you have a point. But it don’t make me any less aggravated.”
“So what did the letter say?”
He leans his back against the bar and feels around for another cigar. Pulling one out, he lights it and glances back at the one I knocked to the ground. Cigars and cigarettes aren’t easy things for the damned to come by. I’ll send him a box in the morning.
“It wasn’t much of anything,” he says. “You’re always concerned with how the local populace regards you. From what I’ve seen, the rabble takes you as the grand exalted master of the infernal hindquarters just fine. Though your boisterous days as Sandman Slim have left a deeper impression. You’re credited with every cutthroat murder and cracked skull in town, of which there are more than a few.”
“Lucky me. Most people don’t get hated for one life. I’m hated for two. If I get a part-time gig as a meter maid, I can probably make it three.”
I find Mason’s lighter in my pocket but nothing to smoke.
“Do you have any cigarettes? I left mine back home.”
Home. That’s a bad habit. Stop thinking that way.
“Sorry. My last smoke went down the shitter when you knocked it out of my mouth.”
“Liar.”
He half smiles and pulls a pack from another pocket. Bill’s been in enough saloons to know that a well-timed cigarette can calm an argument quicker than an ax handle.
“Was there anything else in the note?”
Bill takes a while tapping the Malediction out for me. At first I think it’s just how a man who spent decades rolling his own smokes handles premade cigarettes. Then it hits me that he’s stalling.
“No. I don’t suppose there was anything else that mattered in there.”
I check both ends of the alley for movement. Nothing.
More secrets. Just what I need. Is he changing sides? Bill isn’t the happiest saloonkeeper in the universe. Taking orders and abuse from drunk Hellions isn’t what he’s built for. Maybe someone made him a better offer. Is there anywhere in this fucking town I don’t have to look over my shoulder? Do I have to fill the Bamboo House with peepers now?
I turn and start away.
“I shouldn’t keep you from your bar, Bill. Thanks for the information.”
“Where are you headed?”
“I’m thinking about getting drunk and seeing if I can pick a fight at the arena. I still want some carnage tonight.”
