Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim)

by Richard Kadrey

  Brimborion makes a break for the door. I sweep his feet, cutting him down at the ankles so he falls on his face. Lahash shrieks like a banshee in a blender and throws himself across the bed, crawling toward us.

  There’s a good twenty feet between Lahash and me. I shove Brimborion back in the corner with one hand and pull the Glock’s trigger with the other. The bullet hits Lahash above his left eye. He freezes, arms stiff. Like I caught him in mid-push-up. A second later his eyes lock back on me and he’s crawling again. Faster this time.

  I put two more shots into his head. He doesn’t slow. He stands on the bed, knees bent like he’s going to jump. I put five shots into his chest dead center.

  I should have stuck with head shots.

  Lahash doesn’t fall. He falls apart. His bones seem to crack and separate under his skin. Holes in his chest sag into slits and open like a plastic sandwich bag, only it’s not egg salad on wheat inside. It’s bugs. Lots and lots of bugs.

  Behind me Brimborion alternates between hyperventilating and doing a passable impression of Little Richard’s falsetto. I’m kind of at a loss myself. I never tried to beat up bugs before. Do you work the body or rope-a-dope them?

  With nothing better to do, I fire off a few rounds into the writhing pile. No reaction from the bugs, but I’m pretty sure I murdered my bed.

  The only thing that’s kept Brimborion and me alive these few seconds is that when the bugs burst out of Lahash, they began eating him. Now the first wave is getting bored with his dead ass and wants fresh meat.

  I throw some arena hoodoo at the swarm, a simple slam-down move that feels like someone driving a knee into your solar plexus. The middle of the swarm stops like it smacked into an invisible wall, but the other billon little bastards flood around it.

  I could do an airburst and explode all the oxygen in the room. That would kill the bugs, but in an enclosed space like this, it would blow out my lungs and turn my organs into cat food. Some kind of fire is my best weapon but this is the wrong terrain. I go for the next best thing.

  I crawl to the corner of the room with Brimborion. Bite down as hard as I can on my right hand until I draw blood, and splatter it on the floor between the bugs and me. The blood is like slop to pigs. They head right for it, lapping it up. I keep flicking my hand, throwing out as much blood as I can between the bugs and me. That sucks but it’s the next part that’s really going to hurt.

  Whispering some bad black Hellion hoodoo, I punch through the wall above a wall socket. Feel for the wires with my bloody hand and grab the bare copper leads where they touch the wires going to the plug.

  The average human body doesn’t react well to having 120 volts blasted through it. In fact, it tries really hard to get away, so when you force it to do something as stupid as grab live wires and not let go, you get to experience the twin thrills of excruciating pain and a total revolt by your skin and bones because your body doesn’t understand what your mind is making it do. It’s pain on every level of your being. Nerves, muscles, and skin all trying to crawl away from each other. But you hold on because it’s the only thing keeping you alive and your body can goddamn well cowboy up and deal with it.

  The hoodoo kicks in just as I’m starting to black out. Blood kick-starts dark magic like nothing else, and when the hoodoo hits, my bedroom turns into the Fourth of goddamn July as the electricity flowing through my bloody hand explodes from the splattered patches of blood on the floor. Writhing drifts of bugs fry instantly. Thousands are blown into the air by the force of the blast. The bugs spin like pinwheels, each trailing a tiny lightning bolt from its head to the bloody floor. It’s all skyrockets and flare guns in here. And when the bugs fall, they’re as crisp and dead as autumn leaves.

  I pull my hand out of the wall and fall flat on my back. My knees are vibrating. My jaw aches from being clenched so hard. I look down at my hand. Have you ever started cooking bacon, gotten a phone call, and forgotten about it until you smelled charred pig? That’s me. I am bacon. Hear me roar. On the upside, the bite is nicely cauterized.

  Behind me, I hear Brimborion push back the table he was hiding behind. He crawls over to me. There’s a neat, clean bandage wrapped around one of his hands.

  “You saved me,” he says.

  I look up at him sitting above me.

  “What?”

  He sits back on his haunches. Rests his back against the wall.

  Brimborion says, “I don’t understand you. Yesterday you cut off my finger and today you save my life. What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m just really tired.”

  “You could have thrown me to those things and gotten away.”

  “I’ll have to remember it for next time.”

  He leans over me and makes a face like he smells spoiled milk.

  “Your hand looks awful.”

  “ ‘Awful’ is a kind of relative term. I mean, it looks better than Lahash.”

  Brimborion lifts his head to get a better look at the smear of bone and gristle on the bed.

  “You knew him. Who was he?”

  “An herbalist,” Brimborion says. “He worked with the palace thaumaturgists. I used to buy . . . things from him.”

  “You mean he’s your dealer.”

  “If you wish.”

  “Did he have access to the good stuff?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like maybe hypnotics. Something that would loosen him up enough for psychic control.”

  “Do you think that’s what happened to him?”

  “I don’t know. What kind of persuading would it take for you to sit still while someone pumped you full of carnivorous bugs?”

  Brimborion crosses his arms. Uncrosses them. Leans his head against the wall and looks at the ceiling.

  I roll over onto my Kissi arm, the only part of me that doesn’t hurt, and push myself into a sitting position. I try to move my burned fingers. When they flex, flakes of black skin drop off, revealing blistered red flesh underneath. At least there’s enough good skin left to heal.

  “Would you like me to get you something?” Brimborion asks.

  “What?” I say, my brain and body not quite on speaking terms yet.

  Brimborion points to my hand.

  “Would you like me to get you something for that? The palace witches make some powerful healing potions.”

  “Yeah. Sure,” I say. “And some cigarettes. I really need a cigarette.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  He pushes himself to his feet.

  “Don’t tell anyone about this. Especially not Vetis. I don’t want to be up to my eyeballs in security,” I say. “Act like nothing happened. That should give whoever set this up something to think about.”

  “You don’t even want the room cleaned?”

  “Leave it just like it is.”

  “I understand.”

  He starts to leave.

  “What did you say when you first came in?”

  He goes to the end of the bed, picks up an envelope and a rectangular box from the floor, and brings them to me.

  “I had your mail.”

  “That all came today?”

  “The box yesterday. The notes before. I don’t remember when.”

  “You wouldn’t have given me any of this if we hadn’t had our little talk in the hall last night.”

  “No.”

  “Why these particular letters?”

  He shakes his head.

  “They weren’t the usual official correspondence. Holding them back would make sure you stayed isolated.”

  “People pay you off to hold back certain messages and to give me others.”

  Brimborion shrugs.

  “Everyone in the palace has something on the side. It’s the generals who get rich. Not civil servants.”

  “Who paid you to hold on to these?”

  He looks at the bed.

  “Lahash.”

  That’s a nice way of covering your trail. Don’t just kill the guy who
knows too much. Turn him into a suicide bug bomb.

  “If someone wants to assassinate you, there must be easier ways,” says Brimborion.

  “They tried easier. Now they tried this. Watch your ass. You work for me, so sooner or later you’re going to be on the bug list too.”

  He touches his hand to his chest, about where Lahash burst open. He turns and goes out, pulling the doors closed behind him.

  I use my teeth to pull the glove off my Kissi hand. I’ll be using it a lot the next few days.

  I undo a couple of buttons on my shirt and slip my burned hand inside like it’s a sling. The feeling is starting to come back, meaning it already hurts like hell. I growl Hellion hoodoo and the blackened skin on my hand lightens to its skin color. I’ve never been great at healing magic but at least I can make the hand look normal while it heals. I just won’t be penning Candy any sonnets over the next few days.

  I pull the black blade from my waistband. It feels weird doing it lefty. Prop the box between my knees and slice it open. It’s what I thought. The bottle Bill sent me. I stick the point of the knife in the floor, twist the cap off the bottle, and take a long drink. Bill was right. It’s not half bad by Hell standards.

  I toss the box over by the dead bugs and look at the first envelope. Printed in a perfect, precise script on the first envelope is the single word Stark. The envelope is made of something almost transparent. Like rice paper, only tougher. Barely visible angelic script is woven into the paper’s fibers. I hold it in my teeth and, using the black blade like a letter opener, shake the envelope until the letter falls out.

  Dear James,

  I know by now you must hate me and you have every right to.

  I only have to read a sentence to know who sent it. Mr. Muninn.

  I should have been truthful with you from the moment you talked about returning to Hell. For that I’m sorry. You have my best wishes, my prayers, and my full confidence that you’ll make a safe return home. I wish I could say more but time is short. By now I’m sure you know that my brother, Neshamah, is dead by Aelita’s hand. She and my other brother, Ruach, the part of us that still rules in Heaven, seem to have come to some sort of vicious understanding. Aelita means to kill the rest of us and Ruach has agreed to let her, leaving him alone to rule. I should leave Los Angeles, in fact this world, but I’ve come to love it so. For now I’ll lose myself in the tunnels where the dead once roamed under the city. I suppose it’s a pathetic fate for a deity but one I probably deserve for deserting my brothers and not doing my part to stop this madness long ago.

  Take care of yourself, my boy. I’m sure we’ll meet again.

  Protect the Singularity.

  With warmest regards,

  Muninn

  I guess it’s nice that one of us thinks I’m getting out of this alive but it’s annoying how wrong Muninn is. I don’t hate him. I’m pissed. I want to strangle him, but only until he turns some funny colors. Not until he’s dead. The guy is scared to death and I understand that. Plus, he apologized, which is more than I can say for Saint James.

  There’s nothing written on the second envelope. I turn it over. It’s closed with a red wax seal imprinted with twisted, angular lines like a piece of rusty bailing wire in an old barn. Samael’s sigil is as crooked as he is.

  Dearest Jimmy. Or, if you prefer, your Infernal Majesty,

  I bet you’ve had a few chuckles when you found out that all my plans and machinations designed to return me to Heaven returned me to one ruled by a bastard and a fool. I’ve laughed about it a few times myself, but only in private and very, very quietly.

  Have assassins given you any interesting new scars? Murder is unsettling when you’re on the receiving end, isn’t it, Sandman Slim? Worst of all, it destroys your ability to trust, which is the point of this note. When you have no allies to go to for help, there’s only one logical solution. Go to your enemies. When your back is against the wall, ask yourself this question: which bastard has the most to gain by helping me?

  Here’s hoping this note finds you as charming and unmurdered as ever.

  Yours in Christ,

  Samael

  I don’t know whether to be madder at Samael or Brimborion. It would have been really nice to know that someone out there was thinking about me, even if it was the asshole that stuck me here. And it would have been really goddamn helpful a few weeks back to get strategic advice from someone who has more reasons to want me alive than dead.

  Squatting in the middle of a hundred pounds of dead bugs loses its charm fast. I put the knife in my waistband, shove the letters in my pocket, and tuck the bottle under my arm. With my good hand I close the bedroom door and head down the hall. Brimborion will know where to find me.

  I’m sacked out on the library sofa when he knocks a half hour later. I open the door, and when he sees my bare Kissi arm, he doesn’t try to come inside. He hands me a widemouthed clay jar sealed with an old cork stopper.

  “I told the witches someone on my staff was hurt. I think they believed me. They said this will help but it might stain your sheets.”

  It’s not really funny but I can’t help but laugh a little.

  “Keep it,” I tell him. I hold up my apparently healed hand.

  “We can’t pretend nothing happened if I’m slathering that stuff all over me. I’m a pretty fast healer, and when the pain gets too bad, well, I’ll probably be drunk a lot for the next few days, so you don’t want to schedule me for any banquets or ballet lessons.”

  Brimborion nods.

  “I can tell them you’re working on the new sewage project.”

  “Good. That sounds so fucking boring no one is going to bother me wanting to help with that.”

  I get a piece of paper from the desk, write a note, and hold it out to him.

  “I need you to do one more thing. Give this to Vetis.”

  Brimborion plucks the note from my hand with his fingertips, trying to keep his distance from the Kissi hand.

  “Go ahead and read it. I know you’re going to.”

  He unfolds the paper. I watch his eyes as he scans it a couple of times before putting it away.

  “You want to arrest Deumos.”

  “And everyone who works with her.”

  “Do you think she had something to do with Lahash?”

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “It’s like what that famous Greek philosopher Bugs Bunny once said: ‘I don’t ask questions. I just have fun.’ ”

  He blinks at me like he’s waiting for a translation. I nod good night and close the door.

  Back on the sofa, I take a swig from Bill’s bottle of Hellion moonshine. This stuff could grow on me. I’ll have to get him to send more.

  I look around for a Malediction and realize Brimborion didn’t bring me any cigarettes.

  See? One thing goes right and everything else falls apart.

  Should I tell Vetis about the crank call? What am I going to say that isn’t going to make me sound weak? Maybe I’ll have him keep a closer eye on Brimborion.

  Hell really blows.

  I have a pretty good idea of what’s coming the next day when Brimborion tells me Semyazah is on his way up. The only good thing is that it will be direct and contained. For now.

  Semyazah bangs on the library door but he can’t get in. After bug man’s visit, I’ve laid even heavier hoodoo on the place. Sulfur and arsenic above the door. A line of iron filings across the entrance.

  I get the door halfway open and Semyazah shoves his way into the room. Merihim and Marchosias come in behind him. Merihim has red patches on his face and arms where he’s added some tattoos. More protection spells. Marchosias is dressed like Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS’s stunt double.

  They notice my bare Kissi arm. They try not to make faces. None of them succeeds.

  “Exactly what do you think you’re doing?” says Semyazah.

  I walk back to my desk, leaving them by the door. Let them follow me into my territor
y.

  “I’m being Lucifer. I was ambushed. Someone with heavy magic possessed the idiots who attacked me. Last night I get a crank call telling me to kill myself or get murdered. It must have come from inside the palace, or are your people selling Satan’s private number on Craigslist? On top of that, Deumos burns me in effigy. A trifecta of bullshit. So Lucifer is retaliating.”

  I pour myself a drink. Semyazah follows me back to the desk. If looks could kill.

  “Retaliating against those pathetic witches? They couldn’t have attacked you. Or called you. They’re rabble with no resources. Deumos’s followers are as lost as any damned mortal soul in Hell. By attacking them, you’re making those fools more important than they have any right to be.”

  Merihim is just listening. He picks up random books and objects from the shelves. The same above-it-all bullshit he always pulls when he’s trying to figure out who has the upper hand in a discussion. Sometimes he reminds me of Medea Bava, the head of Sub Rosa inquisition. Marchosias looks at me like I’m barbecue ribs and she’s trying to decide between a Texas red sauce and Carolina mustard.

  Merihim says, “I’m not so sure. Our lord’s tone is boorish but he might be right to stop this false prophet with one short swift blow. Deumos wants to weaken our true church and divide the people.”

  “I agree,” says Marchosias. “Are we going to stand around like those sheep in Heaven as she transforms herself into a new Lucifer and leads a rebellion against us?”

  The general isn’t happy his two compadres disagree with him. How far can I push him?

  “Semyazah’s just mad he missed raiding Deumos’s church with Vetis. Don’t worry. I’ll wake you the next time so you can join the fun.”

  He takes a couple of steps in my direction.

  “Don’t you dare speak to me like that.”

  I push myself up off the desk.

  “Like what? Your boss?”

  “Like a fraud and a coward who plans to desert us the moment he finds a way out of Hell.”

  “Damn right. Your war landed you here. Me, I just slipped on a banana peel.”

  Marchosias taps a fingernail on the bookcase to get our attention.