by Tad Williams
“This is Daley in the lobby,” I announced, trying to sound like an excited nine dollars an hour. “Somebody just ran out the back to the rear parking lot carrying a woman’s purse. I think it’s a robbery! I’m in pursuit!” I keyed it off and attached it to his belt again.
Luckily no one was waiting for an elevator on the 40th floor. I dragged Daley down to the restroom, then into one of the stalls where I propped him up. I dumped his walkie-talkie into the toilet of the next stall so it wouldn’t disturb his slumber, and also so he wouldn’t be able to alert anybody too quickly if he came to before I left. I also checked to make sure he was breathing okay, just in case he turned out to be an actual person. Yeah, I’m that soft—I’m an angel, remember?
And this is where you came in.
I already explained what happened next. I reached the top floor of Five Page Mill and encountered Vald’s demon-secretary, who flaunted most versions of expected business etiquette by leaping across her desk and trying to rip me apart with her claws and teeth. I shot her twice in the face, which caused a lot of damage but didn’t slow her down much, and I also broke her jaw so badly that it swung like a door coming off its hinges, but she was still coming after me. It was when she got me down on the floor and began trying hard to tear my head right off the body it belonged on that it became clear I was losing the fight.
When you’ve only got seconds to live you don’t fuck around with etiquette. If you’re fighting a guy you hit him in the nuts as hard as you can. If you’re fighting a she-demon who is wrapped around you like a constrictor and trying to bite off your face, and you can’t reach anything else, you punch her in the tit. It caught her by surprise just enough to make her rear back with a snort of rage, at which point I got my hand free, reached up, and yanked hard at the strings of bloody flesh hanging from her wounded face, peeling them most of the way down. Thank goodness that even borrowed mortal bodies have nerves, because the pain was enough to distract her long enough for me to fight my way free, panting and covered with blood, some of it hers but not all. I’ve had fights that made me feel better about myself.
I scrambled my way back across the outer office as she lurched after me, still trying to locate me through the tatters of flesh blocking her vision. When she realized I must be trapped against the floor-to-ceiling window she leaped toward me, arms wide and snarling, a faceless, hateful thing. I didn’t want those red nails sinking into me again, so I shoved my gun against the plate glass and fired twice before I spun out of her way. The safety glass spiderwebbed, then leaped outward in a sparkle of little irregular pieces as she hit it and crashed through.
I waited a few seconds, then leaned out into the cold air to check out the body in the tasteful silk power suit lying motionless on a rooftop about a hundred feet below. She was about as dead as demons get, or at least her real-world body was, and that was the part that would get me arrested.
Shit, Bobby Dollar, I thought, what have you got yourself into now?
It was way too late to turn back. I shouldered through the door to the spacious inner office, gun held high. I couldn’t remember exactly how many times I’d shot the she-demon, and even if I was lucky there couldn’t be more than one bullet still left in the chamber, but I was damned if I was going to let anyone know that. Not that the man waiting for me looked very scared of my .38. He turned slowly away from the window where he had been looking down at the remains of his secretary. Kenneth Vald was handsome as a Spanish grandee out of a Velasquez painting.
“So, you couldn’t make an appointment like anyone else?” he asked.
“Very funny.” I moved sideways until I had his huge teak desk between him and me. He was maybe in his early forties at most, dressed in the casual-est of business casual, a blue Lacoste polo shirt and khaki slacks, expensive loafers without socks. He was pleasantly tanned, had white-blonde hair that was less sticky but just as impressively full as Young Elvis’s, and a neatly trimmed goatee. He looked like a talent agent who would represent the Hitler Youth.
“What do you know about the Magian Society, Mr. Vald?” I asked him.
He frowned just a little bit. “Just like that? Get you, you come in and kill my assistant—do you know how long it takes to train a really good executive PA?—then demand information. Why should I talk to you? I’m sure you’ve arranged some little diversion but it’s only a matter of time until security gets here. Oh, and if you think you’re going to scare me with that toy gun—well, go ahead.” He pointed right to the alligator over his heart. “Put a couple right there. See if it even slows me down while I twist your head off.”
He took a step toward his desk. I didn’t want him getting anywhere near it, so I steadied my revolver. “Fine. But if I shoot you in the face, at the very least it’s going to ruin your weekend, Ken. And I have another even better reason you should behave yourself.”
“Oh? What might that be?”
“Because I don’t think you want everyone in Pandaemonium to know about your connection to the Magian Society.” I watched him carefully (I still didn’t know if he was a sold soul or an actual, paid-up member of the Opposition) but his face gave nothing away. “See, my guess is that you’ve got more than a few friends downstairs, Ken—and I don’t mean in the lobby of number Five. Oh, and the Celestial City might be interested in your activities too, so remember, if anything happens to me they’re all going to know, because I arranged things that way.”
“What, that old if my lawyer doesn’t hear from me he’ll go to the authorites wheeze?” He looked me over for a long, speculative moment. “Cute,” he said at last. “And what do you think this is going to get you? Wings? Because you must be an angel, or at least an ex.”
Which I confess freaked me out a bit, because I’d never heard of such a thing as an ex-angel, or at least not any new ones since the Fall. I was beginning to think this guy was no ordinary sinner. Listening too closely to what demons say is a famous rookie mistake, however, and whatever else I might be, I’m no rookie. “Does it matter?” I asked. “I just want information. If you give it to me and it’s real, then I’ll walk away and everyone’s happy.”
“Everyone? What about poor Holly? She was the pitcher on our company softball team.” He took a few steps back toward the window and looked out and down again. “Ah, the police are here. Looks like somebody noticed her body.” He turned around and smiled at me. “What’s your name, angel? Who is it I’m going to see dragged down to the deepest pits of Erebus?”
“I’m not telling you my name unless you tell me yours.” There are rules about these things, you see. “But I don’t care that much about you, really. I just want to know about the Magians. Now hurry up, Ken. If your guards get here you’re going to be in more trouble than I’ll be in, remember?”
He sighed and shook his head, then spread his arms in a gesture of amused resignation. Something I can only call an aura of power began to radiate from him, strong as the heat of the sun on a hungover morning, strong enough to make my eyes blink and my head ache. The master of Five Page Mill was golden and self-assured as a lion on the veldt. “Tell you my name? You mean you really don’t know? Do you think that if you find out you’ll wield some kind of control over me?” He laughed like he truly was enjoying himself, as if I had shown up just to please him. “I’m Eligor the Horseman, you wretched upstart—one of the Grand Dukes of Hell.”
Oh, shit. That was all I could think, over and over like a skipping CD. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Eligor was one of the really big ones. I had tossed in my little baited hook, and I had snagged Leviathan.
“I fought beside the Lightbringer at the walls of Heaven.” His voice seemed to get louder with every moment. “I was cast down when He was cast down. I have shared His exile since the beginning. But you—you’re nothing. A fly.” With that he began to grow, shadows of both glaring light and total darkness stretching around him, his face blossoming into something grotesque and horrifying beyond description, until he towered above me crowned in flames and
cloaked in shadow and the room itself seemed shrunken to the size of a grave.
“And do you know what else?” His voice pressed in on me from all sides, louder even than my heart’s blood as it rushed through my veins. “I don’t believe your story, little angel. I don’t think you’ve made any arrangements at all. No, I’d guess you’re the improvisational type—that you’re here by yourself without any backup plan at all. And that’s how you’re going to die, too. Alone.”
He stretched out his hand toward me. I couldn’t move. Dimly, dimly through the thundering of my arteries I could hear the guards banging on the office’s outer door, breaking in, but I couldn’t turn, couldn’t see anything but Eligor’s triumphant, terrifying face.
fourteen
friends in low places
ELIGOR’S LONG, icy fingers wrapped my head. Again I was in the presence of something that could tear my mortal body apart like bread dough, but this time it had already caught me. The founder of Vald Credit lifted me at arm’s length until my feet were kicking several inches above the floor and my neck felt like chewed taffy.
“Go ahead,” I told him, determined not to go out begging. It probably sounded a lot like Grrruhrhrdd, since his hand was crushing my features into a shape they weren’t meant to take. “Kill me.” Krrrmrr.
“Oh, definitely. Sooner rather than later.” He smiled. There were sharp things in his mouth that didn’t even look remotely like teeth. “But first, I’m going to call up a couple of hard, pipe-hittin’ Nergalis and we’re going to go to work on you until we find out who you are and why you came storming into my office with this Magian Society bullshit.”
Still dangling me in mid-air like a prize trout he muted his glamour and shrank back to looking like Kenneth Vald once more, but his eyes remained distinctly goatlike, pus-yellow with horizontal slots for pupils. This was about as bad as things could get. Eligor may not have been Old Scratch himself, but he was high in the Hellish nobility, with strength and abilities to match. They don’t really have a firm hierarchy down there, but I couldn’t kid myself—he was a member of the All-Star Team and I was one of Heaven’s lowliest bench-warmers.
The demon lord fluttered the fingers of his free hand and the nearer office door abruptly sprang open. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a half-dozen or more armed guards dressed like SWAT commandos tumble through and into the office. One was so surprised by the door’s sudden unlocking that as he fell he discharged his M4 with a deafening rattle. Bits of ceiling rained down around us for several seconds as the guards scrambled to their feet and surrounded me with a ring of automatic weapons, although it scarcely seemed necessary since I was still hanging helplessly in midair and no threat to anything except my own dry underwear.
Several of the plainclothes security guys shoved in after the armored men. The leader of these had his gun in one hand and a phone in the other. It was Howlingfell. “Boss,” he said, “—I mean Your Grace—we got a problem!”
“I’ve got the problem right here,” said Eligor, bouncing me gently up and down. I swear I could hear my neck vertebrae popping like popcorn. “I want you to get me some of those nasty Shahr-e Sukhteh fuckers who like to play with needles and fire. We’re going to find out who this little winged rat is and who sent him.”
“Oh, shit,” said Howlingfell. “I think I know that guy.” He pushed his way through the ring of guards and got right up in my face, standing on tiptoes so he could examine me as I struggled in Eligor’s unbreakable grip. Even in his human body he was no prize: not only was he ugly, he had breath like rotting dog food. After a moment he showed his teeth in a tongue-lolling grin. “Yeah, that’s Bobby Dollar. I met him a coupla times—he’s one of those advocates.” If he remembered me, I was pretty sure he also remembered my foot on his windpipe.
I smiled back, then spat at him, hoping he might go for me despite his boss’s presence and accidentally kill me (this definitely seemed like one of those situations where dying had to be better than the alternative) but although the gob of spittle landed on his cheek, Howly never had the chance to do anything but step back, because suddenly Eligor roared like a wounded lion and flung me to the ground.
“Bobby Dollar?” his master bellowed. “You mean this is Doloriel? The little pimp who stole from me?”
This shit was just getting worse and worse. So that thing I was supposed to have (but didn’t actually possess) belonged to one of the Grand Dukes of Hell? To the same archdemon who had just captured me with the ease of a man scooping up an escaped hamster and had decided to set some sadistic Middle Eastern demons on me before he even knew who I was? This was just fucking peachy.
“Tell me where it is, punk. Right now.” Eligor leaned down and yanked me back into the air, this time with hands clamped on each arm, and held me in front of his face. He smelled a lot better than Howlingfell, but for a moment I could see into the endless abyss behind those black-slot eyes, and it nearly stopped my heart. Eligor wasn’t Hell’s only grand duke, but there aren’t many and they are all horrifyingly dangerous. Like the stupid dick I am, I had started a bar fight with a stranger who turned out to be a World Heavyweight Champ. “If you tell me right now,” he said, “maybe I’ll just peel your face off and let you live like that for a while, chained to my desk.”
“I c-can bring it to you. I swear I can—if you let me go. Otherwise you don’t get shit out of me.”
“Oh, I’ll get everything out of you, you little winged pimple.” The demon lord was having trouble keeping his Kenneth Vald face on: it was rippling as if it might get too hot and just melt away. The experience was a bit like sitting in the control room of a nuclear power plant in mid-disaster—fascinating in that you only get to watch something like that once in your life, and it’s probably also going to be the last thing you’ll ever see. “Sweat, blood, shit, and piss to begin with,” Eligor snarled, “—oh, a lot of blood. Then eventually every cell of your body will slowly be turned into liquid and squeezed out onto the floor of my recreation room.” He dropped me again. I fell hard but managed to crawl back up onto my knees. Might as well die with my head above floor level, I figured. (Don’t ask me why—it just seemed better somehow.)
“But, Master,” said Howlingfell, “you can’t—I mean, not now!”
Vald/Eligor turned toward him, head pivoting slowly like a king cobra gauging optimum striking distance. “I can’t…?”
Howlingfell went pale and began squirming. I thought he was going to throw himself to the floor beside me and show Eligor his belly. “No, it’s because of the cops! There’s about forty of them down in the lobby.” He waved his phone. “They said there’s a fugitive up here—they must have meant this Dollar guy. He’s wanted for murdering Grasswax, the prosecutor—I mean Grazuvac. They were afraid he might have taken you hostage. It was all I could do to get them to wait five minutes and let me and my men check things out!”
Eligor snorted. “Cocksuckers. As if some minor-leaguer’s going to…” He shook his head in irritation. “Look, just tell them we killed the little shit already, and they can come pick up the body pretty soon. That’ll give us time to—”
Astonishingly, Howlingfell interrupted. He had bigger balls than I thought, although judging by the look on Eligor’s face he might not have them for long. “But it’s been more than five minutes, Master. They’re already on the way up. Talk to the guy in charge of them, Your Grace—he won’t listen to me!”
“Give me that fucking phone.” Eligor reached out and snatched it from Howlingfell’s hand. “Is someone there? This is Kenneth Vald speaking. Officer, I don’t know who you are, but I demand you contact Deputy Chief Bryant and he’ll tell you…” He paused for a moment. “Bryant? That’s you? What the hell is going on? How dare you enter my building without…” There was another kind of anger in his voice now and, for at least this moment, he had forgotten about me. I stared blearily around the room but didn’t see any immediate hope of escape. My revolver, which might or might not have been empty, had fallen
to the ground when the Grand Duke grabbed me, then had been kicked aside somewhere by one of his guards. Unlike the window in the outer office, the one in here was still whole, and without a gun I had doubts I could break the safety glass, even if I could somehow get through the ring of guards pointing their assault rifles at me.
“What do you mean you’re outranked? I don’t care!” Duke Eligor was beginning to look a bit bothered: his hair and whiskers were still the same pale, pale gold, but his skin had gone the color of new brick. “Well, screw you and your higher authority, Bryant! I’m going to cut the little bastard to pieces, and you can have what’s left when you get there. So? I don’t care if this is a public frequency! Anyway, who’s even going to know if you tell them the guy was already…” He frowned, listening, then pointed at Howlingfell. “Go look out the window.”
The minion went to the window. “What do you want to know?”
“Are there guys with sniper rifles and cameras on the roof of the Courier Building?” Eligor asked. “Looking in the window here?”
“Yes, Master,” Howlingfell said. “A lot of them. Do I have to keep standing here? What if they think I’m him?”
Eligor raised the phone again. “Who did this shit to me, Bryant? Because that’s a pretty damn big coincidence. I want a name.” His slotted eyes narrowed. “Oh, really? All right, you can take the suspect. Bring your men in and I’ll have my boys stand down.” He clicked off the phone and turned to Howlingfell. His expression could have removed paint from a battleship hull. “We’re going to let them have him. Too much shit to clean up, otherwise.”
