Devil Said Bang (3 page)

I go over and look at it like maybe I’m going to
have the head stuffed and mounted like a big-mouth bass. I’m waiting for a
sound. And there it is. The tiniest tick as a boot comes down on a pebble behind
me. I spin and toss the head like a scaly bowling ball. Hellion assassination
teams usually work in threes. Seeing as how the first two had the combined IQ of
waffle batter, whoever is left has to be the squad leader.

He’s taller than the other two, with the same
not-bright lizard look you see in a lot of the legion’s grunts. His SWAT body
armor is heavier than the others’, so the head just knocks him off balance for a
second. He has a Glock strapped to his hip, but he’s making flashy fighting
moves in the air with a couple of nasty-looking serrated long swords. He could
go for the gun, but he wants to make himself a name by slicing up Lucifer old
school. Fucking devils and their fucking rituals.

I take a step back like I’m dazzled by his
video-game moves. I fought in the arena down here for years. Swords hurt, but
after you get cut a few hundred times, they’re about as scary as road rash.
Meaning they’re something to avoid if you can but they’re nothing to lose sleep
over. Still, they hurt and I’m already hurt. And I lost my snack.

He takes the bait and charges. I step forward and
catch his wrist with my forearm, deflecting the blade as it comes down on my
head. Now that I’m in striking range, the textbook step two of an attack like
this is simple: while your opponent is busy blocking your downward attack, you
step in with a forward thrust of your second blade, skewering him like a
cocktail wiener. The only problem with it is that every sentient being in the
universe knows it and is ready for it. Instead of attacking, I let him plant a
powerful shot in my solar plexus. His blade kicks sparks when it hits the armor
and snaps in two. It startles him long enough for me to move a couple of steps
and plant a foot behind my helmet on the ground.

When he comes back at me, I kick, sending the
helmet into his face like a cannonball. I hear bones crunch and he spins around
before landing on his face. I stand over him, kick the sword out of his hand,
and shove his pistol in my pocket. I grab him by the lapels, spin and slam him
headfirst into a pile of rubble. While he’s busy trying to breathe through a
crushed face, I rifle his dead friends’ pockets. Empty. They don’t even have dog
tags, so I can’t tell what part of the legion they’re from.

Their boots and body armor are the heavy kind
issued to frontline infantry who are basically cannon fodder. But since the war
with Heaven is over, clowns like this aren’t supposed to have time on their
hands. Avoiding this kind of fucking mess is why I’m going slow with the
rebuilding. Why aren’t these pricks with the rest of the grunts, clearing rubble
or rebuilding roads? Did they think if they killed me, one of them would be the
new Lucifer? Maybe they were going to share the title—Moe, Larry, and Curly, the
Three Infernal Stooges. But not one of this bunch had the imagination or balls
to try something like that on their own. Someone put them up to it. The one I
clocked with the helmet is coming around, so I go back to him.

I pick up the unbroken long sword and press it
against his throat.

“You awake, sunshine?”

He grunts. Shakes his head, trying to clear it.

“Who sent you?”

“No one. I don’t need permission to slaughter
mortals.”

I lean forward, using my weight to press the tip of
the sword into him until he bleeds.

“This mortal signs your paychecks, ugly. Guess
who’s not getting a Christmas bonus?”

He grimaces and spits.

“A mortal will never be the true Lucifer. Mortals
are spirits, good for nothing but torture and chores you could teach an animal.
I curse you and the mortal Mason Faim. At least he promised us Heaven. What have
you given us?”

“I haven’t cut off your arms and legs and made you
into a throw pillow. How’s that?”

He tenses. Even with the sword at his throat he
wants to lunge at me. This guy is the real deal. A true believer. His type built
Auschwitz and had lynching parties back home. Who knows what games he and his
friends are playing with souls down here?

I take the sword away from his throat and smack his
mangled face with the broad side. He groans and doubles over. Lucky bastard. I’d
like to be lying down groaning too. My bruised ribs hurt. I toss both of his
swords into the nearby sinkhole.

“You still haven’t answered my question. Who sent
you here?”

He catches his breath and says, “We came on our own
to kill the false Lord of Perdition.”

I grab his head and press it back into the rubble.
I’ve always been good at telling when people are lying, but Lucifer can see
things I can’t and the armor gives me bits and pieces of his powers. It’s mostly
sideshow-level tricks so far but I can tell if someone is wearing a glamour to
conceal themselves or if they’ve been hexed. I look all the way to the back of
the assassin’s eyes. There’s a fluttering inside, like a microscopic strobe
light. That’s it. He’s hexed. Someone sent him and his friends out hunting for
me and erased their memories so the fuckwits would think it was their idea. I
let go of him and sit above him on the rubble.

“What’s your name?”

He looks at me hard. He really hates being
questioned by a mortal.

“Ukobach.”

I could take Ukobach back to the palace, hand him
over to the witches, and let them take his mind apart. They might be able to
find something useful inside, but I’m not sure about this guy. Whoever picked
these three chose them because they didn’t have an overabundance of brain cells.
With an intelligent Hellion or human, even after a memory wipe there’s usually
some residual impressions left. Sometimes you can find it if you dig deep enough
and aren’t worried about killing them or leaving them a vegetable. But with the
power of the hex I saw in Ukobach’s eyes, there isn’t going to be anything
useful inside him. I can’t throw him in the asylum or jail. I’m Lucifer, after
all. Whoever sent him needs a statement.

“Okay, Ukobach, here’s where things stand. You
ambushed me and you blew it. Your friends are dead and I don’t think you’re much
use for information. Plus, your goddamn sword ripped my jacket.”

He stares at me.

“I’ll make it simple. I can kill you now or I can
let you live, but it’s going to hurt. You choose.”

Ukobach shifts his weight. He wants to take one
last kamikaze shot at me. I finger the rip in my jacket sleeve. It’s not too
bad. I can probably get it fixed. I’m kind of hard on clothes. It’s all the
stabbing and shooting.

“I’d kill you and every mortal in the universe if I
could,” he rasps. “When your souls reached Hell, I’d spend eternity weaving your
guts into tapestries of glorious agony and hang them from every wall and parapet
in Pandemonium.”

“If wishes were horses we’d all have shit on our
boots. Choose, Chuck. A quiet death or a messy life.”

“I choose life. Any chance to return and kill you
for murdering my comrades is worth whatever feeble punishment a mortal can
muster.”

I nod.

“I thought so. If I were you, I might have gone the
other way.”

He kicks low, trying to sweep my ankle. I take his
Glock from my pocket and shoot him in the knee. He howls and rolls around,
holding his leg. It gives him something to do while I get to work.

I cut six long strips of material from Hobnail’s
overalls. I use four around his and his dead friends’ wrists. Then I get the
Harley on its wheels and roll it back so I can tie the dead men to the rear
shocks. I take the last two strips and tie Ukobach too. He kicks at me and
swings his fists as I haul him to the bike, but when he moves, it hurts him more
than it does me. I loop my arm through the front of the helmet so I can hold it
while I ride. There’s no sense in hiding who I am now. Before I get on the bike,
I look down at Ukobach.

“This isn’t the kind of thing I normally do, you
understand. Back home I’m a bad person but I’m not this kind of bad. Before he
left, Samael told me I was going to have to be ruthless to survive, and he was
right. People have to understand that if you dance with the Devil you better not
step on his toes.”

Ukobach looks up at me. I don’t know if it’s pain
or fear or general boneheadedness but he has no idea what I’m saying. I get on
the bike and start the engine.

“And away we go.”

The bike creeps forward like it wants to tip over
in quicksand. Even a Hellion motorcycle isn’t geared to drag three full-grown
bodies behind it. I give the bike some throttle. It straightens and moves
forward. Slowly at first, but it picks up speed as I twist the throttle. When it
feels stable, I kick the bike hard and we shoot down Santa Monica Boulevard to
the palace. I don’t turn around. I don’t want to see what it looks like behind
me.

T
he
closer we get to Beverly Hills, the more Hellions there are on the street. They
stare and point as I cruise by. I’m tempted to stop and make a joke about how
this is how I always tenderize meat, but I keep rolling without meeting any of
their eyes. I don’t have to. Seeing their ruler covered in blood and dirt,
hauling a few hundred pounds of bleeding bologna behind him, is all they need.
The story will be all over town in an hour. By tomorrow there will be rumors
that it wasn’t three. It’ll be a dozen men. Fifty. I killed them with a bitch
slap and dragged them with my pinkie.

The guards around the palace see me coming and step
out of the way like the Red Sea parting for Charlton Heston. I stop the bike by
the palace lawn, heel down the kickstand, and get off. A hundred Hellion
soldiers watch me in dead silence.

I say, “This is what happens to assassins.”

Soldiers crane their necks or climb onto jeeps and
Unimogs for a better look at what I’ve hauled in.

An officer walks over. I don’t know his name and I
don’t ask. He looks scared.

“I killed two where they jumped me. One was alive
when I started back. Gibbet all three. If the live one is still alive after two
days, let him go. Alive and skinless, he’ll still be an object lesson for
others.”

“Yes, my lord,” says the officer.

I start into the palace but turn after a few steps.
I can’t tell the condition of the bodies from here. There isn’t much of a blood
trail behind the bike. That’s probably not a good sign for Ukobach. The guards
stare at me.

“One of you take my bike into the garage and have
it cleaned and polished.” Not that I’m ever going to get to ride it again now
that everyone knows what it looks like.

I head inside wondering what Candy would think
about what I just did. I’m pretty sure she’d understand. She might even approve.
She won’t have to, though, because this goes on the long list of things I’m
never going to tell her.

I
n
this funny Convergence Hell, Lucifer’s palace is the penthouse of the Beverly
Wilshire Hotel. I’m not saying my digs are nice, but I am saying that my rooms
make Versailles look like an outhouse.

Palace security guards ring the inside of the
lobby. I give them a nod while tracking dirt, road grime, and blood across the
carpets. I head straight for my private elevator. Slap my hand over a brass
plate on the wall and the elevator doors roll open. Inside I touch another plate
and whisper a Hellion hoodoo code. The car starts up, the pulley and wires
humming overhead, gently rocking the compartment. It feels good. A Magic Fingers
motel massage loosening the tension knots in my shoulders. I move my arms and
legs. Rotate my head. The palms of my hands are scraped raw from the fall off
the bike, but there’s no real damage to anything but my damned jacket.

The car stops at the penthouse. I touch the brass
plate again and step out onto the cool polished marble floor. The penthouse is a
sight. Like
Architectural Digest
climbed to the top
of the hotel roof and shit out a Hollywood movie mogul’s château. Windows
everywhere. Expensive handmade furniture. Pricey art. And enough bedrooms and
bathrooms for all the cowgirls in Montana to stop by for a pillow fight.

I kick off my boots by the elevator. Fuck the lobby
carpet. Wash it. Burn it. I don’t care. But I don’t want blood all over my
apartment.

My apartment.

It still feels funny to say, but I have to admit
that after the three months the place is starting to feel like home. I used to
run a video store in L.A. If I could move the inventory and a wall-size TV in
here, I might go totally Howard Hughes and never leave. If I got Candy a day
pass, I could definitely get used to the Hellion high life. Up here, surrounded
by tinted glass and silk-covered furniture, I’m Sinatra with horns and
Pandemonium is my boneyard Vegas.

I go to the bedroom and glance at the peepers I’ve
scattered around the apartment. None are twitching and nothing looks out of
place. I can relax. The truth is, I’m less worried about getting into another
fight than I am about snoops. I need one place in Hell where I don’t have to
look over my shoulder 24/7.

In the bedroom I strip off my clothes, dropping
them in a heap at the foot of the bed. The ripped jacket I ball up and throw
into the closet. I could get it fixed but I’m goddamn Lucifer. I’ll tell the
tailors to run me off a new one.

I lock the bedroom door and run my hand over the
top of the lintel. The protective runes I carved are still there. I get under a
hot shower and stay there for a long time.

I might have gotten used to the apartment but I’ll
never get used to showering in Lucifer’s armor. I never take the stuff off. The
moment it’s gone, I’m vulnerable to any kind of attack. Knife, hoodoo, or a
squirrel with a zip gun. I know I look schizo soaping down in this Versace tuna
can but I don’t have to look at me.