Devil Said Bang (14 page)

“What?”

“I want to be there tonight. I can supply you with
fighters and medical help but I want to be there so that whatever happens there
are no misunderstandings between the two of us.”

“You got it.”

I open the door and she steps out into the
hall.

“Is there anything else?” Brimborion asks.

“Take her back downstairs and get her anything she
wants. And keep a low profile yourself. Things are going to get weird in a
little while.”

“How weird?”

“Duck-and-cover weird. Take the lady downstairs.
She can fill you in.”

Brimborion wants to ask more questions. Deumos
takes his arm and leads him away.

T
he
Hellion hog rumbles to life. I slip out the back of the hotel and head north on
Rodeo Drive. There’s always a pang of nostalgia here. Once upon a time I got
into a kaiju smackdown with Mason’s attack dog, Parker, and almost burned the
street to the ground. But that was almost a year ago and I’ve forgiven it for
being so crowded with rich assholes. And for being so flammable.

I blow up Sunset heading north. My burned hand
aches from working the throttle but that’s just how it is.

Off the Boulevard, the road is a mess. Earthquakes
tore up the asphalt. Fires melted what was left, and when it cooled it was like
a lava bed, full of frozen waves and sudden dips. There aren’t a lot of repairs
going on up here. No percentage. There’s nothing but scorpions and lost Tartarus
ghosts out this way.

People don’t go where I’m going for fun. It’s not
smart to take the direct route, so I turn off the main street onto winding
two-lane roads that circle scorched hills and abandoned movie-mogul estates
before dropping off into hidden canyons. It’s midnight in a coal-mine dark out
here except for the bike’s headlight. I open up the throttle and the roadbed
shakes and cracks under my wheels. Lines spread around me like thin bolts of
black lightning. The edges of the road sag. Chunks break off and fall into the
dark. Most roads north of Hollywood are suicide roads, streets so fucked up by
underground blood tides and quakes that they could collapse into sinkholes at
any minute. This is my way of keeping things interesting for whoever is
following me.

I’m working from the idea that coming out to
no-man’s-land will encourage my assassin to make his or her move. And being in
the boonies will give me a better chance of running the hell away without any
freelance shooters or red leggers in town taking potshots at me when I go down.
I might have spooked my assassins by not lying down and dying. If I give them a
head start on the deed, let them get to me half dead, maybe it will encourage
them to come out in the open to finish the job.

That’s the idea. Truth is, I’m not even a hundred
percent sure that I’m being followed. I hope I am. I better be. I don’t want to
have to do any of this again. I’ll know soon enough.

There are lights ahead. I kill the bike’s headlight
and ease off the throttle.

Back home, Coldwater Canyon is a pretty green slice
of Heaven where nice parents take their happy kids for weekend hikes to expose
them to the joys of nature, rabid coyotes, and Lyme disease. In Hell, the canyon
walls are hundreds of feet high and impossible to climb. Twisted spires of
wind-smoothed granite are the only things that break up the bare landscape.
Millions of shadows swarm across the valley and up the sides of the spires and
walls. They beat, slash, shoot, and boil each other in open lava pools again and
again and they’ll do it until the end of time. Butcher Valley. This is where I
found Wild Bill.

A couple of hundred yards around the valley is a
guard station. We have these all over Hell. I have no idea why. No one has ever
done a dine-and-dash out of any of Hell’s punishment territories. My theory is
that the stations are for the guards. You have to be a real fuckup to get dumped
out here. The legions don’t have brigs or courts-martial. They have babysitting
dead assholes for ten thousand years with no days off. Worse, every year in Hell
is a leap year.

Considering tonight’s itinerary, I didn’t bother
putting on a shirt. Why throw good clothes after bad? I heel down the kickstand
and cut the bike’s engine before the lowlifes at the guard station notice
me.

I’m wearing the leather jacket that prick Ukobach
ruined with his sword. It seemed appropriate. I unzip it and toss it on the
ground by the bike. All the way up the canyon I’ve been debating whether or not
I should take off Lucifer’s armor. It would make what happens next more
dramatic. On the other hand, without my angel half, Hell’s fetid air is like
Kryptonite to my lungs and the armor is the only thing that lets me breathe.
Without it I’ll probably choke to death before anyone finds me. Which brings me
to the other point I’m going over. In a life full of dumb stunts, am I hitting a
new level of idiot behavior? I’m alone and trusting my life to people who had me
in a barbecue pit a couple of days ago.

The burns on my right hand are just about healed
but I’ve never tried invoking a Gladius with an injured hand. I take a
half-empty bottle of Aqua Regia from one of the bike’s saddlebags, have a long
drink, and decide to keep my armor on. There’s going to be drama galore even if
I’m in my Tin Man zoot suit.

I could use just a little help
right now, Saint James. I swear to God if I live through this, we’re going
to have a frank and honest talk about our feelings while I cut the Key to
the Room of Thirteen Doors out of your chest with a chop saw.

I’m feeling light-headed. Fear will do that. I got
it sometimes in the arena when I knew they were going to throw something special
at me but I didn’t know what. I pick up my leather jacket and bite down hard on
the sleeve. It would be a shame to live through this having bitten off my
tongue.

I don’t know what to say, Candy. We only had a
couple of days together but they were a hell of a couple of days. Sorry for
letting myself get stuck here. Talk about a long-distance relationship. If I
live through this, I’ll tell you all about the new big stupid thing I did. If I
die, just add it to the long list of bullshit you don’t need to hear.

I always wondered what Lucifer felt when God hit
him with the final thunderbolt. The one that scorched and dented his
theoretically invulnerable angelic armor.

This should be interesting.

I manifest the Gladius. It burns my injured hand
but not enough to stop. I hold it out and count to three. Then swing it.

Whatever it is I feel when the Gladius hits my
chest, it’s not pain. It’s something so far beyond pain that my human brain
can’t register it. The only way I know I’ve made contact is that I’m knocked
flat on my back with a heady bouquet of burning skin and seared metal in my
nose. I don’t think the Middle Way smells like this. Missed it again, Bill.

I’m done fighting and looking for answers. I got
mine.

What did that last thunderbolt feel like?

Nothing at all.

Good night, moon.

I
drift for a million years. I’m in Mr. Muninn’s cavern. Samael is with him.
They’re playing Operation. The buzzer goes off when Samael tries to take out the
funny bone.

Muninn doesn’t look surprised to see me.

“Would you like a drink, son?”

“Sure. Am I dead?”

He just smiles and wags a finger at me.

I look at Samael.

“No wonder you never went up against Aelita. You
can’t even work tweezers.”

He nods and sips from a crystal champagne
glass.

“Lovely to see you too, Jimmy. How’s tricks?”

“Is this real? Am I here? Are you there?”

“Real is a relative thing for people like us.
What’s real? What’s here? What’s there? Things are as real and as where as you
want them to be.”

“I’m not like you or Muninn. My celestial half is
gone. I’m just another human asshole.”

Over my shoulder I hear Muninn laugh.

Samael sets down his glass and tries for the funny
bone again. He misses.

“You’re not a regular human any more than we
are.”

I look around the cavern piled high with junk from
every earthly civilization that ever was. Everything from cave paintings to a
Higgs boson trapped in a magnetic bottle.

I turn to Samael. He raises an eyebrow.

“I went to my enemies.”

“And how did that work out?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“That’s the downside of working with enemies. You
seldom do.”

Mr. Muninn brings me a glass of Jack Daniel’s. He
has to put it in my hand. I can’t move it.

“Cheers,” he says, and clinks his glass against
mine.

“I think I’m just dreaming and all this is me
talking to myself. Except it’s a little like a phone call I got. It didn’t make
too much sense either.”

Muninn shakes his head.

“I’m afraid we can’t help you with those,” he
says.

“Let me at least ask Samael a question.”

“Of course.”

“All I’ve done down here is shuffle papers, try not
to get killed, and now I’ve completely fucked myself up. When do I get to do the
Devil stuff?”

He leans back in his chair.

“This is the Devil stuff.”

“I was afraid of that. I need the rest of your
power. Where is it?”

“Exactly where it should be.”

“Don’t riddle me, you bastard. Tell me where it
is.”

“East of the sun. West of the moon. Right in front
of you. Stop looking. Sit down and you’ll see.”

“I can’t stop. I have to get out of here.”

“Then that’s where it will be,” says Muninn.

“Fuck you. Fuck you both.”

I
open
my eyes. Standing over me is a girl with too much skin. It’s in piles around her
neck and hangs like dirty laundry from her arms. Her eyes are thin slits under a
curtain of flesh.

She’s dressed in a lizard-green Hellion EMT
uniform. She adjusts an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth. I’m breathing, so I
must be alive. Or this is another dream. But if it’s a dream, why does it feel
like Mike Tyson has been pounding on my chest with a bulldozer?

The EMT moves quickly. Her expression and gestures
alternately resemble a cool medical professional and a nervous babysitter who
just caught the cat’s tail in the refrigerator door. Maybe she has a hot date
waiting back in Pandemonium. Or she’s never worked on the Lord of the Underworld
before.

There are other people standing around. Some of
them look worried. Others puzzled. A couple more EMTs. Some soldiers. From the
guard station probably. Filthy Hellions in clothes like grimy rags. Some of the
ones who lit out for the hinterlands. A few others I recognize from Deumos’s
procession through the marketplace.

It takes me another minute for my sluggish brain to
put it all together. Someone besides my assassins saw me go down. None of them
would imagine Lucifer would hurt himself. To them I’m the victim of an
unsuccessful attack. Perfect. Word will get out that I’m vulnerable. If my
killers are ever going to move, it’s now.

The EMTs lift the gurney I’m on high enough to
slide me into the back of an ambulance. I’d feel a lot better if it was a troop
truck or Unimog. Hellion ambulances look a lot like garbage trucks. Not a
comforting look.

I’m strapped to the gurney with heavy nylon across
my waist and legs. My burned chest is covered with a heavy gauze dressing
stained bloody orange with Betadine. There’s a cool salve on my neck where the
Gladius struck above the armor.

When the gurney is locked down, the EMT with the
sagging shar-pei skin goes up front and starts the ambulance’s engine. As we
start to move, the other EMT, a big son of a bitch with crustacean eyestalks
sticking out over a bushy Grizzly Adams beard, checks my pulse.

“Does this bus stop at the Sands?” I say. “I hear
the Rat Pack is even funnier now that they’re all in Hell.”

Grizzly Lobster jumps a little. Guess I’m not
supposed to be awake yet. But seriously, I’m Satan, asshole. Time is money. The
Devil doesn’t nap.

I push myself halfway up on my elbows. Grizzly
shakes his head and puts his hands on my shoulders to hold me down. Message
received. I relax and lie back down and wonder if he has a mouth under the
beard.

The driver is running us through the hills at a
nice clip. I crane my neck enough to see the glow of a GPS on the dashboard.
Ipos told me they have them programmed with all the safe routes through the L.A.
badlands. What he didn’t say is how GPS works down here. Unless Hellions have
their own satellites. That would mean they have their own space program and can
I get a ride out of here on a sulfur-powered Saturn V? Do Hellion tots grow up
and want to be demon cosmonauts? The old Greeks believed the stars and planets
carouseled around the sky in celestial spheres. Megasize glass globes made of a
mysterious something called Quintessence. It would be fun to go target shooting
with Wild Bill and blow them to crystal kitty litter.

Plato and his pals are as full of shit as everyone
else who ever thought they had it all figured out. Deumos especially. The
universe doesn’t revolve around Earth. No goddess is going to come along with
milk and cookies for Hell’s lost lambs. We’re so fucked.

The ambulance crunches and jerks hard to the right
like we hit something. The rear end fishtails. Feels like it’s skidding along
the soft edges of the road. Then it catches again and we straighten out. I hear
the engine rev as the driver punches the accelerator. But ambulances are built
for stability. Not speed. A second later we’re bouncing to the right again. This
time we didn’t hit anything. Something hit us.

Grizzly Lobster is on his feet, pressing his big
hands against the ceiling to hold himself steady, and leans down to look out the
rear window. There’s a
pop
and Grizzly’s head
explodes. One eyestalk hits the wall and ricochets hard enough to knock bags of
saline and bandages off the storage shelves. I unbuckle the gurney straps and
haul myself to my feet, still wobbly and a little seasick.