SS 04: Devil Said Bang: A Sandman Slim Novel

by Richard Kadrey

  Semyazah slides the knife back into its scabbard.

  “This doesn’t change anything. You’re still a coward and a fraud.”

  “And you won’t do anything about it ’cause you’d rather have a coward and a fraud on the throne than sit there yourself.”

  I find my knife where it’s embedded in the wall and slip it into the waistband at my back. Walk back to where the last of Bill’s bourbon fell. The bottle hit the floor but didn’t break. Lucky me. My desk is cracked and splintered but still has four legs. I pull it upright and sit down, taking a couple of pulls from the bottle. The wound on my head throbs but is already scabbing over; my burned hand, though, got bounced around enough that it throbs and aches.

  “You Hellions think you’re so fucking special. What’s that stuff on the ceiling? The Thought. The Act. The New World? You think God threw you out because you bravely stood up to Him? Bullshit. You started a fight and you lost and you’ve been whining about it ever since. Hell isn’t righteous exile. With all your secret handshakes and horseshit rituals, you’ve made the place into one more members-only gated community. All you people need are Mercedes SUVs and illegals to clean your pools and you couldn’t tell Hell from Brentwood. That’s why you hate Deumos and her heretic ducklings. It’s not because they’re crackpots, which they definitely are. What gets under your skin is that they want to move into the house down the street. Old money hates the nouveau riche. It’s a sad, stupid story even down here in the stupidest place in the universe.”

  Merihim and Marchosias get to their feet. When Marchosias starts to help Semyazah, the general shakes her off.

  “Are you going to open the door or are we your prisoners?” he asks.

  I bark some Hellion and the library doors unlock.

  “May I have my gun?”

  I get the derringer, pop out the remaining bullet, and toss the pistol to him. He heads for the door without waiting for the other two. Merihim pulls a book from his robes and throws it on the floor.

  “Here’s the book you asked about, you ungrateful lout. Read it before you do anything else stupid. Pay particular attention to the final passage. It’s more apt now than ever before.”

  When they’re gone I go over and get the book I never asked Merihim about.

  It’s an old copy of Hellion psalms. Battered and annotated in the margins. Complete bargain-bin shit. The book doesn’t matter. It’s the note inside. I recognize Merihim’s neat writing.

  Last night Ipos sent word that he found evidence of someone or possibly more than one person in maintenance uniforms using building plans to move about the palace. This morning Ipos is dead. I’ll send updates when and if I can. Until then, do not contact me.

  Looks like I just burned a few more bridges. Fuck ’em. I was always the dog-faced boy to Semyazah. A sideshow freak in a suit. Merihim might have been on Samael’s side but he knows I don’t give two shits about his church. Marchosias, well, she likes to be where the action is.

  I feel bad about Ipos. One more face to go up on the wall of the people who’ve died for me one way or another.

  I check the peepers in the bedroom. It looks all clear. I go in and grab everything I need. Clothes. Toothbrush. I toss the na’at into the drawer with the Smith & Wesson, the singularity, and the Magic 8 Ball and carry it like a TV tray into the library.

  The front doors feel safe for now. I put down arsenic and sulfur in front of the secret door that Ipos and Merihim used. The truth is, I feel pretty good. I shook things up. I got to break things. I got shot without dying. And I didn’t even have to go to the arena to do any of it.

  The list of my enemies was the size of a phone book when I got here and it’ll be a whole set of encyclopedias by the time I leave. If the enemy I’m counting on doesn’t come through, at least I’ll have a lot more to choose from.

  I’ve tried to avoid everyone, so I haven’t used the hotel phones much. The one in the library is like the others. Even though the Beverly Wilshire is my demonic palace, it’s still a hotel and the phones are put together hotel-style. A regular push-button model with a row of specialty buttons at the top. Instead of direct lines to the concierge and front desk, this phone only has two buttons. They read VIAND and PISSANTS. I pick up the receiver and push PISSANTS. Brimborion picks up.

  “Lucifer?”

  “Do you know who’s locked up in the dungeon?”

  His voice drops to a whisper.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m guessing you know discreet ways to get around the palace where no one’s going to see you.”

  “Of course.”

  “I want you to get the leader out without anyone seeing. Especially the guards. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll have to distract them.”

  “Whatever you need.”

  “May I use a hellhound or two?”

  “Use a zeppelin, for all I care. Just get her up here. I think we’ve come to an understanding, so I’ll even give you your passkey back.”

  “Thank you,” he says. There’s a microsecond’s hesitation.

  “You have another stashed away, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t be good at my job if I didn’t plan ahead.”

  “Just get her up to the library. And be sure to knock. There was a little scuffle in here earlier and I’ve added new security.”

  “Is anyone interesting dead?”

  “Soon.”

  I hang up and take out the black blade. Carve dark magic crosses and hexes on the floor up front and by the secret door. Shapes of ice, fire, and darkness. You can’t be too careful, especially after you know at least one other person has the keys to the kingdom. Now I just have to not step in my own traps on the way out.

  It’s easy to lose track of time Downtown. I’ve been here one hundred days and a week. A week? More like three or four days since the first attack. In the next day or so I’ll either have the assassins off my back or be dead. Either way I won’t have a Dr. Caligari reject in the bedroom belching bugs on the duvet. On the other hand, there’s no reason to think I’ll destroy the possession key or the psychic amplifier anytime soon. So I’m still fucked, but finding out who’s actually sending bug men and bikers after me and killing my killers should buy me enough time to figure out how to access the last of Lucifer’s power.

  I look at the hotel phone. If there are only two buttons and one is to a lackey, what’s the second for? I push VIAND.

  “My lord?”

  “Is this the kitchen?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “Don’t call me ‘lord.’ Did anyone down there watch the cable cooking shows I told you about?”

  “Yes, lord. Lucifer. I did.”

  “Great. Let’s keep things simple. How about you make me a burrito?”

  “What kind of meat would you like?”

  “What have you got?”

  “Manticore. Greater and lesser sand jellyfish. Archaeopteryx. And white strangler fungi. It’s called fungi but really it’s a light-tasting parasite that grows in the bowels of—”

  “I know what it is and I wouldn’t eat that shit with God’s mouth. Make it manticore. And send up some Aqua Regia and a carton of Maledictions. Leave it all outside the library door.”

  “Will there be anything else, lord?”

  “Yeah. Book me a first-class seat on the red-eye to Burbank.”

  “You want a book, lord? I thought you were in the library.”
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  “Forget it. Just the food and smokes.”

  I know whatever they bring up will be horrible but at least it will look like something from home. And manticore meat isn’t that bad. Sort of like a buffalo, a jalapeño, and a jar of vinegar had a baby.

  Fuck me. I’m turning into a lifer. I’m calling the apartment mine and getting used to the food. I need to be dead or out of here fast.

  There’s a soft knock on the library door. I open it, careful not to step in any of my bear traps. Brimborion is in the hall with Deumos.

  “No one saw us. Also, this was outside the door.”

  He holds up the food tray. I lift the metal top off the plate with the burrito. It looks like a giant maggot in a gray bathrobe. I put the top back on the plate and pull Deumos inside.

  “Cool your jets for thirty minutes.”

  I take the Aqua Regia and cigarettes off the tray.

  “Keep the burrito. I hope you like manticore.”

  Brimborian looks at the tray and back at me, surprised.

  “Thank you.”

  “Thirty minutes,” I say.

  I close the door and look at Deumos. She looks very human even if her skin is a little on the snaky side. She holds her head up high enough that it looks like she could use the horns wound in her hair as a weapon. She’s in a floor-length robe that shades from a deep bloody red at her shoulders to a pink so pale it’s almost white at her feet. I point to the floor.

  “You’re going to want to walk around those marks. Otherwise you’ll end up boiled, blind, or a Popsicle, depending on which hex you step into.”

  She looks down, gathers up the bottom of her robe, and carefully steps over the marks. When she’s clear she walks a few paces farther and turns and fixes me with her hard, bright eyes.

  “Did you bring me here to kill me? You have quite a reputation for that sort of thing.”

  “I pretty much live in here. If I was going to kill you, I’d do it down the hall in the room with the dead guy and the bugs.”

  She looks around at the bookcases. When she looks at the fresco on the ceiling she smiles.

  “I take it the first Lucifer made this.”

  “Yeah. I’m more the high-def TV man.”

  “I’m sure,” she says. “If I’m not here to die, why am I here?”

  “First to remind you that I’m not the first Lucifer. I didn’t set up any deals with the Tabernacle and I’m not your enemy. Just because I’m the Devil doesn’t mean I give a goddamn about religion.”

  “If you’re not my enemy, then why are my sisters and I in a dungeon?”

  “If you want to play it like that, how about you burned the goddamn king in effigy?”

  “Ah. You know about that.”

  “I was there.”

  She clasps her hands in front of her.

  “You shouldn’t have been so shy. We would have welcomed you into the circle.”

  “Thanks, but I’m allergic to seeing myself executed.”

  She makes a tsk sound with her teeth.

  “A symbolic burning is just that for us. Symbolic. We meant and we mean you no physical harm. Burning the symbol of authority is a signal that we must overturn completely the current order of Hell.”

  “Now you sound like a politician.”

  She shakes her head.

  “I mean spiritual order. Though I suppose to Lucifer there’s no difference between the two.”

  “You didn’t have anything to do with the attacks on me, did you?”

  “Don’t be absurd. Assassination is the last thing we want. Hell has seen enough upheaval to last us a thousand years.”

  “But if someone else put a bullet in my head, you’d be happy to send flowers to my funeral.”

  “Asphodels and moon wort in a lovely arrangement.”

  “See? No one else admits they want me dead. That’s why I don’t trust them. You want a drink?”

  I head down to the couch. Deumos follows, pausing to examine the broken bookcase and splinters from where I tossed the desk.

  “What do you have?” she asks.

  “Aqua Regia.”

  She makes a face.

  “No thank you.”

  I find the bottle Wild Bill sent.

  “This too. I’ve never heard of it before.”

  She looks the bottle over and nods.

  “This I’ll try.”

  I find a fairly clean glass behind the sofa and pour her a drink. I fill mine with Aqua Regia and raise it to her. She raises hers to me and takes a sip.

  “You knew my church and I had nothing to do with the attacks on you and you arrested us anyway. Why?”

  “You tell me.”

  She stares at her drink and doesn’t say anything for a minute.

  “To make a public spectacle. To make us look like more than we are and yourself less.”

  I hold up my glass like I’m toasting her.

  “Give the people what they want. The ones who are after me. They want me weak and twitchy. I send a SWAT team to take out a storefront preacher and it comes off like a huge overreaction.”

  “You get your shadow play and we get to sit in prison. Forgive me if I don’t applaud your cleverness.”

  “If I thought you’d applaud me, you’d still be locked up.”

  She sits on the sofa, relaxed but alert.

  “Here we are. Two civilized beings having a drink. Tell me why you called me up here.”

  “You know why. To make a deal. A deal where you get released with a pardon and something else.”

  “What?”

  “What do you want?”

  “You know what we want. The old order controls the government and the brothers control the church. They treat us like drytts and chambermaids. We want the Tabernacle.”

  I shake my head and sit down on the other end of the sofa.

  “I can’t give you that. But I can give you your own church. We’re rebuilding Pandemonium from the ground up. You can have a tabernacle as big and oppressive as Merihim and his boys’.”

  She sets her glass on the floor. Picks an invisible piece of lint from her robe.

  “And what do I have to do for this indulgence?”

  “You can get word out to your people from jail?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m going to need a few. Especially cops or soldiers. Anyone who won’t get rattled when things get noisy. And a doctor or a nurse.”

  “What will you be needing them for?”

  “They’re going to help me get murdered.”

  I take her over to the peepers and show her the one on the far end. A deep bowl in the desert floor glowing red from exposed lava pits.

  “That’s where it’s going to happen.”

  “What a fitting place for your demise.”

  “I thought you’d like it. And don’t get too excited. I’m not aiming for supersized dead. More like a kid’s-meal-with-an-action-figure dead. That’s where you come in.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Let me pour you another drink.”

  And I do.

  Fifteen minutes later we have a deal.

  Deumos is a preacher, so she has her own damned ritual to perform. She holds up a mirror so both of our faces are framed in the glass.

  She says, “As we’re bound in the mirror, we’re bound in the compact we make here tonight. If either breaks the pledge, may she or he shatter like the fac
es captured here.”

  Deumos lets go of the mirror and it falls, shattering into a million little pieces.

  “Looks like we’re married. Mazel tov,” I say.

  She squints and walks away from me.

  “Don’t even joke about that.”

  “Can you get your people together by tonight? I want to get this thing rolling.”

  “I’ll need to start right away.”

  “Brimborion will get you whatever you need.”

  She looks at me when we get to the library doors.

  “You agreed to the compact but don’t believe in oaths, do you?”

  “No. People do what they’re going to do.”

  “Yet you’re trusting me with your life.”

  “Believe me, if there was any other way to do it, I would. But you’re smart enough to see an opportunity when it takes a dump on your lawn.”

  “For a chance to have our own tabernacle I’d make a deal with the Devil himself.”

  “You’re a regular Phyllis goddamn Diller.”

  She doesn’t look at me but I can tell she’s pleased with herself.

  Brimborion knocks a minute later.

  I yell, “Hold on a minute,” and look at Deumos.

  “You’re wrong. You know that? I don’t think you mean to sell snake oil but your church is a New Age wet dream. There’s no Hellion fairy godmother who’s going to overthrow big bad Daddy and fix this mess.”

  When she smiles it’s like she feels sorry for me.

  “How is it you’re so sure? Because you’re the great and powerful Lucifer?”

  “Because I’ve had drinks with God. The real one. He’s broken into so many pieces He couldn’t lead a high school field trip. And trust me, lady, He doesn’t have a backup plan. We’re on our own.”

  She pats me on the arm and angles around to get to the door.

  “You let me worry about Hellion souls and you worry about your impending death. I have one more stipulation, by the way.”

  “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.”