King Bullet

by Richard Kadrey

  “No. If there was another one of me here, I would know it. I would have met him or her long before you creeped into town.”

  “Not here, you idiot.” He’s shouting again. “My mother was loved and abandoned millions of years ago. Not on this stupid mortal rock, but in an infinitely older realm. The realm of the Kissi.”

  I look at him hard.

  “You’re saying my father fucked a Kissi and had a darling little baby and left them there?”

  “No. He left me. But he imprisoned my mother. Because of his shame. These barbs I wear around my neck held her. But our father pricked his finger on them and left a drop of his blood there. That’s why I’m stronger than you. That’s why I can regrow a limb. That’s why you can hurt me, but never kill me.”

  I was wrong earlier. This guy is nuts. He has a good story with a lot of cute little details, but it’s complete bullshit.

  I say, “That arm could be a prosthetic for all I know. If you’re so powerful, why don’t you regrow your face? You look like someone melted a candle on a baboon’s ass.”

  “Look closer, you idiot. My mother was Kissi and so am I. But I’m part Uriel too.”

  My mind goes blank for a second. I can almost see something familiar under all the ugliness. But no. It isn’t possible. It’s just a clever con. It goes right to the soft spots of my family memories. My mortal father wanting me dead. Then almost knowing Uriel, only for him to get murdered by Mason Faim before that could truly happen. But what’s the angle? What does this guy really want?

  Something else occurs to me then. His smell. Kissi always reeked of vinegar. That’s a weird detail to know about, even for a good con man. It’s not like there are a lot of books on the Kissi in the library. They’re practically unknown outside the celestial realms. But this still doesn’t make sense. It can’t be right.

  King Bullet says, “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “You’re thinking that what he says can’t be true because there are no more Kissi. I killed them all.”

  “That’s right. I did. I finished the last one Downtown and that was the end of it.”

  “But you didn’t kill me. I wasn’t there during your great betrayal with the Hellions. I was in the Kissi realm looking for my mother. And I found her at the bottom of the farthest westerly hills. Where there are no stars to light the way, and so she was hidden in darkness from all eyes. Including God’s. I found her and here I am. Truly, the last Kissi.”

  My guts feel like someone has been working them over with a baseball bat. I don’t want to believe a word of this, but just enough of it maybe makes sense that it’s possible King Bullet isn’t entirely full of shit.

  I breathe another lungful of the vinegar. It’s there and real.

  Damn you, Mr. Muninn, for your half-baked universe. You made weak and stupid angels and they brought nothing but misery to humanity and maybe even the monsters who lived in the chaos at the ass end of the universe.

  But I can’t show that to the King. He wouldn’t like me being weak.

  “Okay, Norman Bates. You’ve had your fun with making me miserable. I mean mission fucking accomplished. What else do you want? You want me dead? I say fine. You and me. Right here and right now. You’re stronger because you have our daddy’s blood on the necklace? Prove it. I took your hand and I took your skin. Now I’ll finally take your head.”

  King Bullet laughs and presses his face to Janet’s cheek.

  “Who do you bet on, sweetheart? Which of us was Daddy’s favorite? Me?” He takes the knife from their throat and points to me. “Or that piece of shit?”

  Janet doesn’t wait. The moment he moves the knife away, they lean forward and dig their teeth into his wrist until they draw blood. King Bullet bares his teeth and stifles a grunt.

  I sprint at him with the black blade in my hand.

  The King elbows Janet back hard enough that they almost fall into the pendulum pit. He slashes at me with his knife when I’m close enough. He wants to fight, but I’ve won already because I don’t. I’m just going to run away.

  I angle around so that Janet is to my back. Thrusting forward with my knife hand, I grab Janet with my left and pull them to a shadow.

  We almost make it.

  I’m halfway into the shadow when King Bullet jumps on us. We both have hold of Janet and when he swings his knife I’m sure he’s going to stab her. Instead he brings it down hard on my hand, which is holding Janet’s arm. There’s a second of blinding pain before I look down and see my left hand lying on the floor. Blood splatters onto my boots. Janet screams and rakes their nails down King Bullet’s face. He still has hold of them, but it blinds him long enough for Janet to grab his barbed necklace and snap it off his neck. They throw it to me and push me the rest of the way into the shadow.

  I come out in the observatory parking lot. The park burns around me. The smoke fills my lungs and I’m bleeding badly. My left arm is pressed against my body while I hold the black blade and broken chain in my right. I’m done, but I can’t leave Janet. I take a few steps to a nearby shadow, cough, and fall on my face.

  When I come to, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen is lowering me into the passenger seat of a silver Corvette convertible. My head swims and I can’t focus on anything but her evening gown. She takes off a long silk scarf and wraps it around my wrist.

  “You are the biggest mess, Stark. There. That should take care of that nasty arm of yours. But you got blood all over my nice leather seats.”

  I blink twice.

  “Mustang Sally?”

  “I was on my way out of town when who comes stumbling out of the dark right in front of me, but you. It must be kismet. Want to get out of here?”

  “I can’t. I have to go back for Janet.”

  I try to climb out of the car, but Sally—strong as any goddess of the road—shoves me back down.

  “Not with that arm you’re not. Now let’s get out of here before you choke to death on smoke.”

  Sally revs the Corvette, does a donut in the parking lot, and rockets us down the hill.

  There’s a shot behind us. One. Then two more. Sally jerks forward, blood erupting from the side of her head.

  The Corvette skids off the road and plunges down through the burning park. Flaming branches and hot stones pelt my face and arms. When the car hits the street below, Sally throws herself on top of me. We flip once, twice, and the Corvette comes to a stop resting on its twisted wheels. I have my good arm over my face.

  “Sally?”

  She isn’t there. I crawl out onto the road and look around and under the car.

  “Sally!”

  She’s gone. There’s blood on the steering wheel, but all that’s left of her is the silk scarf on my mangled hand.

  “I’m sorry, Sally. I’m so sorry.”

  I hear shots coming from somewhere above. Bullets slam into the ground all around me. I don’t have a choice but to dive into a shadow, a mangled fool leaving Janet and Sally behind.

  Stumbling. Panting. Banging off walls in the Room. I crack my head. I try to push off with the hand that isn’t there and smash it into the stone wall. I want to throw up. I want to scream. I fall on the floor, dreaming or hallucinating. I don’t know which.

  King Bullet laughing. Janet crying. Flying down an endless hill of flame. A bloody Samael in bed. The burning hill seems endless. But I hit the ground, flipping over and over. Candy’s face covered in soot outside Max Overdrive. Mustang Sally. There one minute. Gone the next. Glass-filled sushi. Then the burning hill again. Turning over and over. Rolling for a million years into a starless canyon surrounded by towering mountains. Then nothing.

  I come to on the floor, cradling my mangled arm swaddled in a dead woman’s scarf. The silk, or whatever crazy magic stuff it is, has stopped the bleeding. The funny thing is that I can still feel my hand. A phantom limb, I think they call it. The addled nerve endings twitch, sure they’re moving finge
rs that aren’t there. I felt this once before. When I lost my arm in a gladiator battle Downtown. I look at my right hand. There’s King Bullet’s necklace. The barbs have cut deeply into my palm, but I still have it. The necklace grew back the King’s hand. I wonder if it will do the same for me? I put it in my pocket and hope for the best.

  Janet and Sally. I lost them both in the span of, what, three or four minutes? But can you really kill Sally forever? A goddess of the road. The goddess, if you ask me. No, you can kill an incarnation, but you can’t kill her. I think. I hope. I’ve never seen a goddess die. Not one I cared about. I don’t have the rule book. Please don’t be gone forever, Sally. I can’t carry that kind of weight on my back.

  But Janet is alive. That much I know. King Bullet wouldn’t kill them yet. They’re too useful a way to get to me, and that’s what he wants. They’re okay. As okay as you can be in the hands of a Kissi lunatic.

  Kissi.

  So, do I believe him now? He’s not just another fruit bat, but the real, living, last Kissi and, like me, an Abomination? Nephilims don’t grow on trees. I need to know for sure. Just as soon as I can walk. Can I walk? Am I walking now? No. I’m sure of that, at least. Maybe I’ll just lie here for another thousand years until my hand grows back or I sprout horns. Whatever it is the necklace wants to do to me.

  Stop it. Stop. I can’t be like this. Janet is alive, but they’re still in danger and I need answers. I can’t pull myself up with one hand, so I brace my back against the wall and push myself upright using my legs.

  There. One job accomplished. Now what?

  Once I can stand upright and walk in a straight line, I go to the far side of the Room of Thirteen Doors. There, I lean against the last door. The Door to Nothing. I boarded it up after the last Kissi died, but now I need it again. With my good hand, I start ripping away the boards. It’s hard work. Points to me for doing such bang-up carpentry.

  After working for several minutes, I’m sweating and shaking. My phantom hand aches and the pain is getting distracting. I have to work faster than this. Taking a few steps back, I growl some Hellion hoodoo and the Door to Nothing explodes, showering the Room in splinters and shards of wood. A cold wind blows into the Room. It carries the faintest hint of vinegar—the last remnants of a dead race.

  There’s a deep darkness beyond the door. I take a breath and step inside.

  The Kissi realm is cold as a deep freeze. I can see my breath as I walk. All around me are the insectlike husks of the few Kissi who escaped Hell and came back to die on their home turf. I’ll give them credit. They were tough fuckers. Was I wrong to wipe them out? They’d tormented mortals for centuries, causing wars, pogroms, and plagues. They fed on mortal terror. No. They would have never let up. Never given humanity a moment’s peace. In the end, I wasn’t wrong to stop them. But that still doesn’t mean I can’t feel a little sympathy for what they were. God’s first big mistake. Imperfect angels, banished to chaos forever. And then he and all the other angels pretended it never happened. That the Kissi never existed. That would put anyone in a bad mood.

  I start walking west to a line of distant mountains. The riot of stars above me is a mess. A wild jumble of pinpoints, then vast dead holes of empty space between them. I’m lightheaded, but I keep going. I have to know for sure.

  King Bullet is a killer and a monster. But that doesn’t necessarily make him a liar. What if what he said about me is true? Then I haven’t just ruined my friends’ lives, but maybe wounded the world too.

  It all comes down to hubris. My ego. I was a stuck-up little shit when I was in the magic circle with Mason. The two of us were locked in a kind of Cain and Abel game of who was the best magician. Only Mason was the smart one and got rid of me in the best way possible, by sending me straight to Hell. The one place in the universe there was no coming back from. That one night changed everything. And it didn’t have to happen. Alice, my old great love, told me not to go. But my ego wouldn’t let me stay home. I knew that Mason had something special planned and I had to see it, just to prove that I could do something better later. Alice begged me, but I went anyway. And went to Hell. And then Alice died. Sure, she killed herself to keep Mason from killing her—her small fuck-you to him—but she didn’t have to die at all. I caused that. I murdered her. Maybe like King Bullet said, I have to make amends.

  The ground in the Kissi realm is cracked and littered with rocks and boulders. I trip frequently as I go. Each step and misstep jars my mangled wrist. The pain is starting to get to me. I whisper a little healing hoodoo. It doesn’t actually fix anything, but it will keep the pain at bay for a while. I take the plastic bottle out of my pocket and have to hold it between my knees so that I can twist off the cap with my good hand and get out some PTSD pills—I don’t bother to count. I dry swallow them, put the bottle away, and start walking again.

  The only reason I’m Sandman Slim is that I went to see Mason that night. If I hadn’t done that, I might have just spent the rest of my life with Alice. I would have been a drinker and a bit of a showoff who could do slick hoodoo with no effort whatsoever.

  Would that have been such a bad life?

  Instead, I went to see the circle. Then I went to Hell. If I hadn’t fought in the arena, I wouldn’t have become the monster who kills monsters. Eleven years later I wouldn’t have escaped and gone looking for revenge. I wouldn’t have fought Lucifer or become Lucifer. I wouldn’t have fought the Angra Om Ya. I wouldn’t have died and come back. And I wouldn’t have killed an angel named Zadkiel and she wouldn’t have released King Bullet.

  The fucker is right. I have amends to make. A lot of Hallmark cards to send out.

  To Whom It May Concern,

  Sorry for everything. None of this was necessary. Please accept this Starbucks gift card as my way of making up for ruining the world.

  Yours sincerely,

  Sandman Slim

  But it isn’t just my fuckups that I have to make amends for. There’s what Uriel and Mr. Muninn did. I had a life and King Bullet had nothing but torment.

  Uriel, you asshole. In the end, you were no better than my mortal father. And now I have to clean up your mess.

  And Mr. Muninn. Granddad. You’re the worst of all. You made angels weak and then tried to hide the worst of them where no one would ever find your mistake. If you hated the Kissi so much, why didn’t you just wipe them out? You caused floods and burned cities. Why didn’t you clean up your biggest mess? Because you’re weak too. A weak God—a caretaker, a janitor—making weak angels who made weak and stupid mortals. Why didn’t you kill me? You had plenty of chances. Me being gone would have improved the lives of a lot of people. Maybe yours too. But I guess you needed me just enough to clean up some of the mess you made, so you let your Abomination off the hook. Thanks a bunch for that.

  Finally, the stars go out and the sky is black. I manifest my Gladius and hold it up like a torch so I can keep going. How long have I been walking? How long was I unconscious? How many hours or days have passed back home? It doesn’t matter now. I’m in too deep. I have to know.

  Eventually, I come to a wall of mountains. There’s nowhere farther to go. I’m as far west as I can get, staring at a sheer rock wall with no openings and no markings. I hold the Gladius up high and look around. The light is bright, but it doesn’t extend far enough into the dead dark that surrounds me. I bark some Hellion and a fiery ring appears above me, like a twenty-foot halo. I expand it farther and start down into a deep valley at the base of the mountains. If I was going to hide a body, this is where I’d do it.

  At the bottom of the canyon, something glitters. Tiny sparks in this black world. I run down toward it, tripping over stones and slamming my knees into rocks. I can’t help myself.

  And there it is. A cross made of the same smooth stone as the whole Kissi realm. I move closer to it until I can clearly make out the lengths of barbed silver chain used to secure something to the high cross bars. I can’t say for sure if it’s King Bullet’s mom o
r not. The body is too far gone. But it’s where he said it would be. And it looks the way he described. Like I said, he might be a monster, but it doesn’t necessarily make him a liar.

  I sit down on a boulder for a moment to catch my breath.

  So, King Bullet was telling the truth. We’re both Abominations and maybe I’m the worst of us. I almost feel sorry for the bastard. I definitely feel sorry for his mother. Betrayed by Uriel and abandoned by the other Kissi for taking an angel for a lover. It must have been a cold and lonely death. And it couldn’t have been fast. I’m sorry, Ms. Bullet. If I’d been around and known what my father was up to, I would have tried to stop him. But here’s the thing. I can’t let your kid—my half brother—get away with what he’s doing any more than I could have let Uriel off the hook. I feel sorry for your son. Hell, I feel sorry for all of us. But I’m still going to kill him. Because, like the rest of you Kissi, he isn’t going to stop. Even if he kills me that isn’t going to stop him. It isn’t the hubris talking this time. It’s the understanding of a simple reality: that I’m the only one who can do it. It’s absolutely my job. Maybe more than that. Maybe it’s me making amends.

  I whisper some hoodoo and a few ragged roses sprout from some nearby rocks. I pull them up and lay them at the base of Ms. Bullet’s cross.

  I let the flaming halo that lit my way in the valley go out as I head back the way I came. I know what I need to do, but I have a few questions. And there’s only one person I trust to give me the answers.

  I go back through the room and come out again by the Devil’s Door Drive-In. I don’t know how long I was in the Kissi realm, but it’s night in L.A. Normally, there would be a line of cars bumper to bumper waiting to get in for the night’s double feature. But those days are over, at least for now. The Devil’s Door is as locked down and dark as any tomb in the graveyard. Still, that doesn’t mean there’s no one home.

  But before I can go inside, my phone rings. I’m so clumsy one-handed that it takes me a minute to answer the damn thing. But I finally manage it. Again, the caller says Janet, but King Bullet’s voice comes out of the speaker.