Authors: Richard Kadrey
“We’re done here,” she tells him.
“What?” shouts Wells.
She tosses the gun aside and points at me.
“He can manifest the Gladius. How is that possible? The answer is: it’s not. But there he is and there it is. This is a divine sign.”
“We can’t let him walk away. You said that with the others gone, stopping him was the most important thing.”
Aelita smiles. She goes to Wells, puts a hand on his cheek.
“Things have changed. Look at him. He has no purpose. He won’t survive what’s to come. Soon enough, he’ll be back in Hell, where he belongs. The other rogue angels were the dangerous ones and they’re being dealt with.”
I move with angelic speed and grab Wells. Hold the Gladius in front of his face.
“What about the other angels? What have you done?”
“This day has been a long time coming. I know that the marshal explained it all to you. I heard him tell you the story. The one set in Persia about the troubled man who went away and left his family behind. But his shadow remained and became head of the house and took care of them. I look at you, an Abomination with the Gladius, and I know for certain that our Father has truly abandoned us. But I am the shadow on the wall. I will become the Father and I will never leave my family behind. The troubled Father has lost his way and must be dealt with: mercifully, lovingly, but he must be dealt with.”
“Where are Kinski and Lucifer?”
“Alive as far as I know, but they’ll both be dead soon enough. One might already be. Who knows? Only one will die by my hand.”
I press the Gladius closer to Wells’s throat. The flame
singes the hair on the side of his head. Instinctively he tries to move away, but I don’t let him.
“Which one are you going to kill?”
“Go to your master’s room and see for yourself.”
I toss Wells across the parking lot and charge Aelita. She manifests her sword, swings it easily, and meets my blade. The jolt throws me back onto the Beamer’s trunk, where I leave a Stark-size dent. I roll off onto the ground, seeing stars.
“Just because you have a Gladius doesn’t make you a true angel. It merely confirms that you’re a freak.”
Aelita helps Wells to his feet. He looks like he still wants to put a bullet in my head, but he’d have to be able to stand up on his own to do that and he won’t be doing much of anything for the rest of the night.
Aelita says, “Stark, I know you won’t believe me when I say thank you, but I mean it sincerely. The scales have fallen from my eyes. You’ve opened the Glory Road and shown me that it was finally time to act. I’ll always be grateful to you for that. Bless you.”
She guides Wells back to the lead van and helps him into the passenger seat. He’s limping and holding one arm across his chest. I hold on to the Beamer’s bumper and haul myself to my feet. My Gladius has gone out, so I pull the Smith & Wesson. It’s empty, but still looks intimidating.
“I’m not going to let you leave and kill an angel.”
Aelita smiles at me. Exactly the kind of beneficent smile you’d want from one of God’s chosen ones.
“I’m done with this world, you, and the fallen angels who wallow with you in humanity’s filth. Sin, destroy, and corrupt
this world to your heart’s content. I’m called to something more beautiful than you can imagine. I will become the Father and I will take care of my family. But before I do, I’m going home to kill God.”
Aelita closes Wells’s door, goes around to the driver’s side, starts the engine, and drives away.
I
DRAG AKI
from the BMW and push him ahead of me into the lobby. He limps and whines and I’m seriously thinking of hurting him some more, but the Chateau’s lobby shuts him up.
The place is a meat market. The streets looked bad, but seeing the remains of what must be twenty to thirty people in an enclosed space is shocking even by the standards of what I saw Downtown. The scene is made merry because groups of zeds are still working on the human leftovers. They notice Aki and me coming in, drop the femurs and livers and brains they’d been snacking on, and come for us. I send out a “Sit, Stay” order with the
Druj
and they go back to eating the hotel’s guests.
I spot a metal cane by the check-in desk and hand it to Aki.
“Use this and be quiet.”
Before we head up to Lucifer’s room, I find a janitor’s closet in an alcove on the far side of the lobby. I fill a trash bag with duct tape, a gallon bottle of liquid soap, and all the lightbulbs I can find. I push Aki out of the closet and over to the elevators.
I say, “Here, kitty kitty,” and the Drifters come to us, but under my control this time. I shove Aki to the back of the elevator, herd the drifters inside, and squeeze in last. I
hit the button for Lucifer’s floor and look over my shoulder at Aki. He’s squeezing his eyes closed so hard, I’m surprised they don’t pop.
We get off on the third floor. I leave the zeds in the hall and take Aki through the grandfather clock into Lucifer’s room. Even though he’s in considerable pain, Aki is impressed. He might be Sub Rosa, but he’s only seen hick hoodoo before.
“This is amazing,” he says, limping around to look over Lucifer’s room.
I point to a sturdy wooden chair with arms.
“Sit.”
Aki comes over slowly and sits.
“You don’t have to do this. I’m not exactly going to run off. What if those things get in here?”
“Don’t worry. They will. But not now.”
I take away his cane and toss it across the room. I take my time duct-taping him to the chair, but I’m not thinking about it very hard. I’m wondering why Lucifer hasn’t shown up or yelled at us from another room. The suite is big, but I’m not trying to be quiet. He must have heard us come in.
When the kid is secure, I drag the chair into the middle of the room onto the hard marble floor and leave him.
I go into the bedroom carefully. I have the knife in my hand and keep my head low. Even though it’s dark, each object is perfectly outlined. Still, the two crumpled piles of something on the floor aren’t distinct enough to see in detail. I find the light switch and throw it.
There are two bodies at the foot of Lucifer’s bed. The tailor and Dr. Allwissend. Each has been shot three times.
Twice in the chest and once in the head. A triple tap. It’s a little excessive considering that they’re a glorified seamstress and a sawbones. There’s no sign of Lucifer except for a bloody patch on the bed.
I sit down and look at the bodies. It hadn’t occurred to me until now that Lucifer’s attendants would be human. Even though I know none of the Hellions can crawl to earth from Downtown, in the back of my mind I’d always imagined that they’d be Sub Rosa or at least Lurkers. But the two men on the floor are just a couple of common ordinary everyday dead men. Lucifer must have owned their souls. Or maybe they were members of Amanda’s devil groupie cult. Whatever they were, they aren’t that anymore. I want to feel sorry for them. Stark would have, but from where I sit, they’re too small and human to matter.
I go back to the living room. Aki is moaning again.
“I’m really hurting here, man. Can I have a drink or something?”
“Say another word and I’ll staple your lips shut. Understand me?”
He nods, biting his lips like they’re alien animals stuck to his face and he has to get hold of them before they do something stupid.
I circle the room looking for something, anything that might tell me where Lucifer is. The light on his phone isn’t blinking, so he doesn’t have any messages. His desk is neat and there’s nothing interesting in the drawers. Most of what’s in the wastebasket are notes and set sketches for
Light Bringer.
Someone from the studio was here. And they had lunch. I smell a turkey sandwich and roast chicken. That narrows
the suspects down to everyone in L.A. who eats meat.
On the table by the sofa where Lucifer showed me his wounds is an open bottle of wine and his jewelry-store tray full of objects confiscated from people whose souls he owns. The watches, lighters, reading glasses, and rings are laid out in tidy rows. But there’s a blank spot. Something is missing. A child’s rosary necklace with a gold unicorn charm.
I get the bottle of liquid soap and pour the whole thing around Aki’s chair. I toss the lightbulbs next, so Aki is surrounded by a moat of soap and glass.
“I’m leaving for a while, but I’ll be back. I don’t think you can get out of that chair, but on the off chance you do, with that bad foot of yours you’re going to slip on the soap and fall on all the broken glass and end up a bloody mess. Sooner or later those Drifters in the hall are going to find a way in here. I think that you lying on the floor helpless and covered in blood is going to be enough to overpower whatever hoodoo has been keeping the Drifters from eating you. So, you can try to break out, crawl through the soap and glass, slip by the zeds in the hall, and make it home with all your limbs, or you can sit there like a good boy, and when I get back, we’ll call your mutti, get her over here, and make a deal to end all this. Do you understand me?”
Aki nods, still biting his lips.
“You can talk now.”
“Okay. Yeah, I understand.”
“Good.”
“You’re leaving me here to go after Lucifer? Why would you do that?”
“Because you have to rescue family. Even asshole family.”
He starts to say something, but before he can get it out, I tear off a length of duct tape and slap it across his mouth. I don’t have to do it. There’s no one around to hear him if he starts screaming. I do it because I enjoy it.
I check to make sure he’s securely fastened to the chair. When I’m sure he is, I step into a shadow and come out by the studio bungalow where I abandoned the GTO. The
Light Bringer
soundstage is across a wide parking lot full of construction equipment.
I work my way past the machinery and onto the stage to the little office where I remember the panic room is located. The chair Ritchie pushed out of the way the last time we were in here is on its back across the room. I lean on the wall where it opens and I listen. I can’t hear anything, but I can feel something alive just beyond the hidden door. Light throws shadows against the wall. I slip inside and emerge in the panic room.
Lucifer is on his back on the floor. His shirt is open, revealing his seeping bandages and wounds. He looks drugged, but I’m pretty sure that what’s keeping him down is the silver athame dagger sticking out from between his ribs.
Ritchie is sitting with his fat cop ass on the lip of the control console and his feet propped on an office chair. He’s chain-smoking and covered in flop sweat. The air is thick with Marlboro smoke. He’s flicking ashes and dropping his butts on Lucifer. There’s an HK assault rifle across his lap. He looks lost in thought. He checks his watch. Shakes his head. He looks like he’s expecting someone.
I speak softly so I don’t startle him so much he’ll start shooting.
“I don’t think Aelita’s coming.”
It doesn’t work. Ritchie starts and jumps off the console, spraying the room with the HK on full auto.
I don’t have to hit him or grab him or do anything. I just hit the deck and stay there.
The shots that don’t embed themselves in the furniture and video monitors ricochet back and forth off the blast-proof walls. Ritchie just invented a new game. Ballistic handball. Too bad that he’s the ball.
I keep my head flat against the cool concrete floor as he blows the whole clip. Ritchie is taking the name “panic room” way too literally.
A three-inch chunk of heavy glass is blasted from one of the monitors and into my arm just below where Ray shot me. The coating on the back of the glass itches and burns. The shooting only lasts a few seconds, and then Ritchie is out of ammo.
When he stops shooting, the room becomes unnaturally quiet. My ears ring from the noise of the HK blasting in the confined space. The only thing I can hear is Ritchie’s slow and labored breathing. He’s on the floor next to Lucifer. Ritchie is full of holes from his own bullets. They must hurt like hell. Most of what hit him ricocheted off the steel-and-concrete walls, so he was slammed with heavy, flattened lead discs the size of quarters and traveling faster than a jet fighter.
I go to where he’s lying and take away the rifle. Pat him down and take a .45 from his belt. Then I leave him on the floor, bleeding.
“Brigitte is fine, by the way. She got what she needed. Or did you even notice or care that she was gone?”
Ritchie doesn’t say anything and I didn’t expect him to. He’s on his back, opening and closing his mouth, spitting blood and gasping like a fish.
I pull the monitor glass from my arm and toss it so that it bounces off his forehead before smashing against the wall.
I grab Lucifer’s feet and drag him out of cigarette ashes and blood and pull the silver dagger from between his ribs. There’s a sudden intake of air as he gasps and coughs, like pulling out the knife kick-started his lungs. When he looks awake enough to sit up, I help him onto the office chair. He picks up the athame from where I set it on the control console.
“Thank you,” he says. “That was getting uncomfortable.”
He sets the knife delicately back onto the console.
“What was this? Was he waiting for Aelita to come and finish you off?”
“Yes. But she never appeared.”
“How the hell did you let this prick do this to you?”
“We were having a nice chat about the movie at the Chateau and he caught me off guard. It’s my fault for taking his fear for compliance. Aelita gave Ritchie the athame. It’s not exactly an ordinary knife. It’s straight from Michael’s own armory. She could have killed me with it. Truly killed me. Not just this body. But she missed their appointment and poor Ritchie had been getting steadily more and more panicked.”
“Ritchie doesn’t strike me as the type to help an angel out of the kindness of his heart.”
“Aelita promised him his soul back if he incapacitated me.”
I nod, pick up one of Ritchie’s cigarette butts from the floor, sniff, and drop it again. It smells like hot tar and cancer. A little echo of Stark’s compulsions.
Lucifer cocks his head and gives me a sidelong look.
“What’s wrong with you? You sound different, James.”
“James isn’t here. It’s just me now.”
Lucifer rolls his eyes.
“I was wondering when this was going to happen. Nephilim are so unstable. Now it’s time for you to have a little psychotic break and imagine you’re a true angel. How sweet. Sad, but sweet.”
“You knew that something awful was going to happen, didn’t you?”
I sit down on the console near Lucifer.
“You knew about the Geistwalds. And maybe even that Aelita would use the chaos to pull something, didn’t you?”
Lucifer nods.
“You never intended for
Light Bringer
to get made. The movie was just an excuse to hang around and see it play out. Tell me that you didn’t know it was going to be a Drifter shit storm.”
He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a pack of Maledictions, finds one that isn’t broken, and lights it.
“Are you interrogating me? Remember who it is you’re talking to.”
“A half-dead old man who hides his seeping wounds and bloody bandages under dark shirts.”
“Playing angel is fun, isn’t it? You feel powerful. Omnipotent. Don’t let it go to your head. Even if the Stark part of you is gone, it doesn’t make you an angel. At best it makes
you half. You’re a novelty toy like a talking doll or sea monkeys.”
I pick up the athame and shove it back between Lucifer’s ribs. He doubles over and collapses onto the floor. I leave him there and go to Ritchie’s gun cabinet to look for bullets. I find the right ones on the top shelf and reload the Smith & Wesson. Take that box and another box of shells and put them in my pocket.
“You knew all about it. You knew about Koralin and Aki and how they were going to murder the city.”
From the floor he says, “What if I did?”
“Why? You own half the place. Why would you let that happen?”
Lucifer tries to sit up. It gets annoying watching him flail around, so I pull out the knife. He breathes deeply, leaning on one elbow on the floor.
“Remember when I came to your room after you stopped the angel sacrifice at Avila? I joked that you were my science project.”
“Yes.”
“You still are.”
“You sent Spencer Church into the bar the other night.”
“I had to. You’d missed so much in your drunken self-pity these last months. You didn’t notice people disappearing or sense the presence of golems in the aether. I sent Spencer to nudge you in the right direction.”
“Why me? Why am I your damned project?”
He draws on the Malediction and coughs. Smoke leaks from the wound in his side.
“Weren’t you a Boy Scout when you were young? I’m helping you earn a very special merit badge.”
“Explain.”
Lucifer shakes his head and laughs.
“There’s that tone again. You’re beginning to sound like Aelita. I don’t like you towering over me. Help me into the chair.”
“I think you look good right where you are.”
“Have your fun, then. However, I might point out that if you don’t help me, Mason is going to win and you’re going to die and that if you think that tonight is Hell on earth, kiddo, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
I holster the gun, take him by the shoulders, and set him on the chair. I can’t tell if he’s smaller than I remembered or if I’m getting stronger. Maybe both. Lucifer has to lean on his arm to stay upright. He sets the Malediction on the console and lets it burn into the plastic top.
“I’m not the angel I used to be. I showed you my dirty little secret back at the hotel for a reason. The truth is that my wounds are getting worse, not better.”
“And you don’t want Mason or your generals to see you getting weak. I get that.”
“When Father threw us out of Heaven, all he gave us was a hole in the ground. I built Hell out of my sheer will, the same way he created Heaven. But now I’m falling apart.”
“And so is Hell.”
“The king is the land. The land is the king. The dying king is the death of the land. It’s an old story.”
“If you want a damned doctor, why don’t you go to
Kinski? He has God’s divine-light punch-bowl glass. Wouldn’t that help?”
He laughs.
“Uriel is just sentimental enough to help me. That’s why he fell for you people in the first place. But the truth is, I’m not looking for that kind of help. What I want is to go home. But I can’t simply abandon Hell. The fallen are my responsibility. I can’t leave them to Mason and chaos and self-destruction. When I’m gone, Hell will need a new Lucifer.”
“If this is going where I think it’s going, then fuck you and every other blackhearted angel in the universe.”
“Careful with those curses. Don’t forget. You’re one of us now.”
He laughs at his own joke and stubs out the Malediction.
He says, “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going home to fall on my knees and beg Daddy for forgiveness. I still believe in the argument. Angels shouldn’t be slaves to God or man. But I regret how I made the argument before. All the slaughter. I won’t ever be one of Father’s sycophants like Michael. I’ll be the thorn in Heaven’s side as much as I ever was. But I’m not a child anymore and I don’t want to burn the house down.”
“The way Aelita does?”
“You know about that?”
“She told me. She was practically bragging about it. She said I set her on the right path when I manifested a Gladius.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“That I hadn’t expected.”
“So, you want to go home and help out dear old Dad. Who’s the sentimental one now?”
Lucifer’s lips curl into a weak smile.
“Whatever else happens, I don’t want Aelita and the Sisters of Perpetual Smugness taking over. She’s such a bore. My war with Heaven had some style to it. You should have seen my golden armor. It was brighter and more beautiful than the sun. So bright that even after Father blasted the golden metal with a thunderbolt, driving us rebels into the dark, I still shone like the morning star. I was the light that the other fallen followed as we plunged from Heaven to the bottom of the abyss.
“Aelita’s war, on the other hand, will be drab and vicious, and Heaven will be worse than Hell if she wins. If Mason wins down below, then there will be all-out war between Hell and Heaven, and when it’s over there won’t be enough of either left to matter. Do you think this fragile world of yours can survive that? Can Alice and all those other helpless souls up there strumming their harps?”
“Thanks for the offer, Dad, but I’m not really interested in going into the family business.”
He looks at me, his eyebrows creasing.
“Good lord, boy. Do you seriously think I’m your father?”
“It’s obvious. My father is an angel. You’ve helped me over and over, when I was Downtown and now that I’m here. Now you come back to L.A. and invent some lame excuse that you need a bodyguard just to keep me around. And you’ve never for one minute stopped messing with my head. That sounds like a father to me.”
“First of all, considering that you just pulled a knife from my side, your ‘not needing a bodyguard’ argument falls spectacularly short. And second, if I helped you it was just
to occasionally nudge you in the right direction. You did the rest yourself. If I ‘messed with your head,’ it was to challenge you to get past any obstacle in your way. You’ve seen Hell, so you should understand that ruling and surviving there takes cunning, insight, creativity, a little bit of luck, and a fair amount of ruthlessness. You had the kernel of all those qualities, but you lacked focus. You needed training.”
“You’re my Mr. Miyagi.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“I’m not through with Mason, but I’m not interested in being you.”
“Too bad. It’s a package deal. Whatever you decide, I’m going home. None of my generals is equipped to run Hell on their own. It will fall apart in months if one of them takes my place. There are only two candidates with the power and knowledge to take over: you and Mason. One of you will live and lead. The other will die. I’m on your side, James, but if Mason is better than you, I won’t be able to stop him from taking over.”
“If you’re not my father…?”
“Uriel is your father, you imbecile. But you always knew that. I know your mind, James. You liked the idea that I might be your father because it fit your image of yourself and would let you continue to cultivate your anger. You have to stop fighting yourself if you’re going to survive what’s coming.”
My mind ices over for a second. I shake it off. Now’s not the time to think about any of that.
“If I’m not your son, why does this come down to Mason and me? Is Mason your little monster, too?”
Lucifer winces and touches his side. There’s blood on his hand when he pulls it back, thick and so dark it’s almost purple.
“Hardly. I’ve had a million children over the centuries and they’re all like Mason. Even when I’ve had them with good, smart, kind women, they always came out the same. And no, none of them are nephilim. Not the way you are. Whatever the deformity in my blood that produces such little bastards also makes my progeny human. Powerful humans, but nothing more than mad, cruel little Caligulas. They’re more the way the Church has painted me than I ever was. Isn’t that funny? I wanted to keep this transition in the family, but none of them was ever worthy to take the throne. That was truly humbling. I’d been God’s favorite. More than Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, or even your father. But I couldn’t produce a single heir who wasn’t a miserable piece of scheming human excrement.”
“What you’re really asking me to do is clean up your mess.”
“No. I’m going home to clean up my mess. I’m giving you a chance to save your world.”
“This isn’t my world any more than it’s yours. I’ve changed and everything is different. Nothing is solid. The world is all motes of light. Random nodes vibrating on long strings of existence. Fireflies in a jar. Who could love that?”
I almost want a cigarette. Stark screams in my head. I have to concentrate to keep him locked in the dark.
“I think about the Mithras more and more. I’d solve everyone’s problem by releasing the first fire and burning down the whole universe.”
“I tried that with Heaven, remember? Talk to your father before doing anything rash. Unless you want to be exactly like Mason.”
I look over at Ritchie.
“What are we going to do with him?”
“Nothing. He’s dead.”
“And you don’t even have his soul. He’s on his way to the Jackal’s Backbone.”
“I’m perfectly happy to let him wander and rot for a while. I’ll have his soul eventually.”
“You can’t go back to the Chateau. I’m using your room to finish things with Koralin Geistwald.”
He shakes his head and tries to stand. He doesn’t make it.
“I wasn’t going back there anyway. I need to return below and ready things for my departure. Do you think you might take me through the Room? It’s the quickest way and I’d like to rest before leaving Pandemonium. The elevator is out of service and it’s a long walk up to Father’s place.”
“The
Druj Ammun
controls the Drifters. Is it true it will control Hellions?”
“I expect so.”
“That could be a nice weapon if I decided to take you up on your idea.”
“It could be, but don’t count on it. Magical weapons have a way of revealing a fatal flaw at exactly the moment you need them the most. The
Druj
is powerful, but don’t ever get dependent on a single weapon. Who knows? You might not be able to keep it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You figure it out, nephilim.”
“Am I still being trained?”
He pushes himself up and manages to stand this time. I put out a hand to steady him.
“Consider it a last homework assignment before graduation.”
“Hold on to my arm and I’ll take you through the Room.”
He pulls me back.
“Don’t leave the athame lying there. Just because you shouldn’t rely on weapons doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have as many as possible.”
I get the athame and slip it in my coat next to the black blade.
“That goes for my armor, too. At some point you’ll need it. If Mason has it, you’ll have to take it from him.”
“I’ll only need it if I go back to Hell and I’m not. Ever.”
“No. Of course you aren’t.”
“Let’s take you home, old man.”
“Thank you for this, James.”
“I’m not James.”
“I know. But I liked James better. I hope I get to see him again someday.”
I
LET HIM
through the door, but I don’t go in with him. He’s on his own Downtown. I honestly don’t know if I want him to make it to Heaven or not. Like me, he’ll have to rise or fall on his own.