“You got it.”
I open the door and she steps out into the hall.
“Is there anything else?” Brimborion asks.
“Take her back downstairs and get her anything she wants. And keep a low profile yourself. Things are going to get weird in a little while.”
“How weird?”
“Duck-and-cover weird. Take the lady downstairs. She can fill you in.”
Brimborion wants to ask more questions. Deumos takes his arm and leads him away.
The Hellion hog rumbles to life. I slip out the back of the hotel and head north on Rodeo Drive. There’s always a pang of nostalgia here. Once upon a time I got into a kaiju smackdown with Mason’s attack dog, Parker, and almost burned the street to the ground. But that was almost a year ago and I’ve forgiven it for being so crowded with rich assholes. And for being so flammable.
I blow up Sunset heading north. My burned hand aches from working the throttle but that’s just how it is.
Off the Boulevard, the road is a mess. Earthquakes tore up the asphalt. Fires melted what was left, and when it cooled it was like a lava bed, full of frozen waves and sudden dips. There aren’t a lot of repairs going on up here. No percentage. There’s nothing but scorpions and lost Tartarus ghosts out this way.
People don’t go where I’m going for fun. It’s not smart to take the direct route, so I turn off the main street onto winding two-lane roads that circle scorched hills and abandoned movie-mogul estates before dropping off into hidden canyons. It’s midnight in a coal-mine dark out here except for the bike’s headlight. I open up the throttle and the roadbed shakes and cracks under my wheels. Lines spread around me like thin bolts of black lightning. The edges of the road sag. Chunks break off and fall into the dark. Most roads north of Hollywood are suicide roads, streets so fucked up by underground blood tides and quakes that they could collapse into sinkholes at any minute. This is my way of keeping things interesting for whoever is following me.
I’m working from the idea that coming out to no-man’s-land will encourage my assassin to make his or her move. And being in the boonies will give me a better chance of running the hell away without any freelance shooters or red leggers in town taking potshots at me when I go down. I might have spooked my assassins by not lying down and dying. If I give them a head start on the deed, let them get to me half dead, maybe it will encourage them to come out in the open to finish the job.
That’s the idea. Truth is, I’m not even a hundred percent sure that I’m being followed. I hope I am. I better be. I don’t want to have to do any of this again. I’ll know soon enough.
There are lights ahead. I kill the bike’s headlight and ease off the throttle.
Back home, Coldwater Canyon is a pretty green slice of Heaven where nice parents take their happy kids for weekend hikes to expose them to the joys of nature, rabid coyotes, and Lyme disease. In Hell, the canyon walls are hundreds of feet high and impossible to climb. Twisted spires of wind-smoothed granite are the only things that break up the bare landscape. Millions of shadows swarm across the valley and up the sides of the spires and walls. They beat, slash, shoot, and boil each other in open lava pools again and again and they’ll do it until the end of time. Butcher Valley. This is where I found Wild Bill.
A couple of hundred yards around the valley is a guard station. We have these all over Hell. I have no idea why. No one has ever done a dine-and-dash out of any of Hell’s punishment territories. My theory is that the stations are for the guards. You have to be a real fuckup to get dumped out here. The legions don’t have brigs or courts-martial. They have babysitting dead assholes for ten thousand years with no days off. Worse, every year in Hell is a leap year.
Considering tonight’s itinerary, I didn’t bother putting on a shirt. Why throw good clothes after bad? I heel down the kickstand and cut the bike’s engine before the lowlifes at the guard station notice me.
I’m wearing the leather jacket that prick Ukobach ruined with his sword. It seemed appropriate. I unzip it and toss it on the ground by the bike. All the way up the canyon I’ve been debating whether or not I should take off Lucifer’s armor. It would make what happens next more dramatic. On the other hand, without my angel half, Hell’s fetid air is like Kryptonite to my lungs and the armor is the only thing that lets me breathe. Without it I’ll probably choke to death before anyone finds me. Which brings me to the other point I’m going over. In a life full of dumb stunts, am I hitting a new level of idiot behavior? I’m alone and trusting my life to people who had me in a barbecue pit a couple of days ago.
The burns on my right hand are just about healed but I’ve never tried invoking a Gladius with an injured hand. I take a half-empty bottle of Aqua Regia from one of the bike’s saddlebags, have a long drink, and decide to keep my armor on. There’s going to be drama galore even if I’m in my Tin Man zoot suit.
I could use just a little help right now, Saint James. I swear to God if I live through this, we’re going to have a frank and honest talk about our feelings while I cut the Key to the Room of Thirteen Doors out of your chest with a chop saw.
I’m feeling light-headed. Fear will do that. I got it sometimes in the arena when I knew they were going to throw something special at me but I didn’t know what. I pick up my leather jacket and bite down hard on the sleeve. It would be a shame to live through this having bitten off my tongue.
I don’t know what to say, Candy. We only had a couple of days together but they were a hell of a couple of days. Sorry for letting myself get stuck here. Talk about a long-distance relationship. If I live through this, I’ll tell you all about the new big stupid thing I did. If I die, just add it to the long list of bullshit you don’t need to hear.
I always wondered what Lucifer felt when God hit him with the final thunderbolt. The one that scorched and dented his theoretically invulnerable angelic armor.
This should be interesting.
I manifest the Gladius. It burns my injured hand but not enough to stop. I hold it out and count to three. Then swing it.
Whatever it is I feel when the Gladius hits my chest, it’s not pain. It’s something so far beyond pain that my human brain can’t register it. The only way I know I’ve made contact is that I’m knocked flat on my back with a heady bouquet of burning skin and seared metal in my nose. I don’t think the Middle Way smells like this. Missed it again, Bill.
I’m done fighting and looking for answers. I got mine.
What did that last thunderbolt feel like?
Nothing at all.
Good night, moon.
I drift for a million years. I’m in Mr. Muninn’s cavern. Samael is with him. They’re playing Operation. The buzzer goes off when Samael tries to take out the funny bone.
Muninn doesn’t look surprised to see me.
“Would you like a drink, son?”
“Sure. Am I dead?”
He just smiles and wags a finger at me.
I look at Samael.
“No wonder you never went up against Aelita. You can’t even work tweezers.”
He nods and sips from a crystal champagne glass.
“Lovely to see you too, Jimmy. How’s tricks?”
“Is this real? Am I here? Are you there?”
“Real is a relative thing for people like us. What’s real? What’s here? What’s there? Things are as real and as where as you want them to be.”
“I’m not like you or Muninn.
My celestial half is gone. I’m just another human asshole.”
Over my shoulder I hear Muninn laugh.
Samael sets down his glass and tries for the funny bone again. He misses.
“You’re not a regular human any more than we are.”
I look around the cavern piled high with junk from every earthly civilization that ever was. Everything from cave paintings to a Higgs boson trapped in a magnetic bottle.
I turn to Samael. He raises an eyebrow.
“I went to my enemies.”
“And how did that work out?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“That’s the downside of working with enemies. You seldom do.”
Mr. Muninn brings me a glass of Jack Daniel’s. He has to put it in my hand. I can’t move it.
“Cheers,” he says, and clinks his glass against mine.
“I think I’m just dreaming and all this is me talking to myself. Except it’s a little like a phone call I got. It didn’t make too much sense either.”
Muninn shakes his head.
“I’m afraid we can’t help you with those,” he says.
“Let me at least ask Samael a question.”
“Of course.”
“All I’ve done down here is shuffle papers, try not to get killed, and now I’ve completely fucked myself up. When do I get to do the Devil stuff?”
He leans back in his chair.
“This is the Devil stuff.”
“I was afraid of that. I need the rest of your power. Where is it?”
“Exactly where it should be.”
“Don’t riddle me, you bastard. Tell me where it is.”
“East of the sun. West of the moon. Right in front of you. Stop looking. Sit down and you’ll see.”
“I can’t stop. I have to get out of here.”
“Then that’s where it will be,” says Muninn.
“Fuck you. Fuck you both.”
I open my eyes. Standing over me is a girl with too much skin. It’s in piles around her neck and hangs like dirty laundry from her arms. Her eyes are thin slits under a curtain of flesh.
She’s dressed in a lizard-green Hellion EMT uniform. She adjusts an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth. I’m breathing, so I must be alive. Or this is another dream. But if it’s a dream, why does it feel like Mike Tyson has been pounding on my chest with a bulldozer?
The EMT moves quickly. Her expression and gestures alternately resemble a cool medical professional and a nervous babysitter who just caught the cat’s tail in the refrigerator door. Maybe she has a hot date waiting back in Pandemonium. Or she’s never worked on the Lord of the Underworld before.
There are other people standing around. Some of them look worried. Others puzzled. A couple more EMTs. Some soldiers. From the guard station probably. Filthy Hellions in clothes like grimy rags. Some of the ones who lit out for the hinterlands. A few others I recognize from Deumos’s procession through the marketplace.
It takes me another minute for my sluggish brain to put it all together. Someone besides my assassins saw me go down. None of them would imagine Lucifer would hurt himself. To them I’m the victim of an unsuccessful attack. Perfect. Word will get out that I’m vulnerable. If my killers are ever going to move, it’s now.
The EMTs lift the gurney I’m on high enough to slide me into the back of an ambulance. I’d feel a lot better if it was a troop truck or Unimog. Hellion ambulances look a lot like garbage trucks. Not a comforting look.
I’m strapped to the gurney with heavy nylon across my waist and legs. My burned chest is covered with a heavy gauze dressing stained bloody orange with Betadine. There’s a cool salve on my neck where the Gladius struck above the armor.
When the gurney is locked down, the EMT with the sagging shar-pei skin goes up front and starts the ambulance’s engine. As we start to move, the other EMT, a big son of a bitch with crustacean eyestalks sticking out over a bushy Grizzly Adams beard, checks my pulse.
“Does this bus stop at the Sands?” I say. “I hear the Rat Pack is even funnier now that they’re all in Hell.”
Grizzly Lobster jumps a little. Guess I’m not supposed to be awake yet. But seriously, I’m Satan, asshole. Time is money. The Devil doesn’t nap.
I push myself halfway up on my elbows. Grizzly shakes his head and puts his hands on my shoulders to hold me down. Message received. I relax and lie back down and wonder if he has a mouth under the beard.
The driver is running us through the hills at a nice clip. I crane my neck enough to see the glow of a GPS on the dashboard. Ipos told me they have them programmed with all the safe routes through the L.A. badlands. What he didn’t say is how GPS works down here. Unless Hellions have their own satellites. That would mean they have their own space program and can I get a ride out of here on a sulfur-powered Saturn V? Do Hellion tots grow up and want to be demon cosmonauts? The old Greeks believed the stars and planets carouseled around the sky in celestial spheres. Megasize glass globes made of a mysterious something called Quintessence. It would be fun to go target shooting with Wild Bill and blow them to crystal kitty litter.
Plato and his pals are as full of shit as everyone else who ever thought they had it all figured out. Deumos especially. The universe doesn’t revolve around Earth. No goddess is going to come along with milk and cookies for Hell’s lost lambs. We’re so fucked.
The ambulance crunches and jerks hard to the right like we hit something. The rear end fishtails. Feels like it’s skidding along the soft edges of the road. Then it catches again and we straighten out. I hear the engine rev as the driver punches the accelerator. But ambulances are built for stability. Not speed. A second later we’re bouncing to the right again. This time we didn’t hit anything. Something hit us.
Grizzly Lobster is on his feet, pressing his big hands against the ceiling to hold himself steady, and leans down to look out the rear window. There’s a pop and Grizzly’s head explodes. One eyestalk hits the wall and ricochets hard enough to knock bags of saline and bandages off the storage shelves. I unbuckle the gurney straps and haul myself to my feet, still wobbly and a little seasick.
Something hits us again and this time the driver can’t hold it. She curses in a grunting Low Hellion growl while jerking the wheel one way as the wheels slide the other. We’re tossed around like socks in a malfunctioning dryer. When we stop, the floor is the ceiling and the ceiling is the floor. We’re upside down a few feet from a sheer drop off the road.
The engine sputters out and things go very quiet. The driver has fallen over onto the passenger side but her legs are moving. She’s alive but pretty out of it. Voices come through the wall. Four? No. Three. A by-the-book Hellion hit team, just like back when Ukobach and his friends pile-drived me.
Grizzly Lobster’s blood is everywhere. I slip on it and fall back, banging my head hard on the wall. The outside voices stop. A shot comes through the wall. More follow. I throw myself down on the ceiling, about knocking my teeth out on a light fixture.
The rear doors creak open, metal grating against metal. One falls onto the ground. Someone locks the other in place so it won’t fall closed. All I can see are silhouettes framed in headlights. Two are way back from the ambulance. Lookouts. One hovers by the entrance for a minute then comes inside. He kicks Grizzly Lobster a couple of times, and when he’s satisfied the big man is dead, he looks up front where the driver is starting to thrash around. He yells back to the two covering
him.
“One of you get up front and pull her out. Keep her quiet. This is a private audience.”
He turns back to me. Makes a big show of pulling a curved skinning knife from a sheath on his hip and waits for one of the grunts to get to work.
There’s a lot of cursing and heavy breathing. The sound of feet slipping and someone being pulled to her feet against her will. The assassin in the ambulance pushes the driver to the assassin on top of the ambulance, who hauls her out the window.
The one running the show hasn’t moved the whole time. He’s the strong, silent type with his knife. I can see he’s wearing standard-issue legion boots and pants. The pants are camo-colored, so he’s not a red legger.
From outside someone yells, “All clear.”
He kicks Grizzly’s body out of the way and kneels with the knife right over my face. Light coming through the door outlines one side of his face.
“Do you know who I am? It’s important that you know who I am. I know you’re hurt. I can wait a minute while you work it out. We’ve got all night.”
I can almost place the face but it’s the voice that gives him away.
“Vetis. Look at you all grown up and slick as pig shit. You’re finally doing your own dirty work. Of course you waited until I was in an ambulance. Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“Brave talk for a man covered in blood.”
“The blood belongs to the dead ambulance guy. You can’t get anything right, can you? You blew it bad with bug boy. And that phone call? What was that, you fuckwit Ghostface wannabe?”
He stares at me.
“So what’s this all about? You and your crew want a raise? How about two weeks’ vacation while I pull out your intestines with an oyster fork?”
He lowers the knife close to my eye and wiggles it around. The shiny blade glints in the headlights. It looks brand-new. I’m flattered.
SS 04: Devil Said Bang: A Sandman Slim Novel Page 12
