I try to put my hands on her shoulders but she bats them away.
“I’m sorry about everything but this is me and I’m not dead.”
“Well, fuck you and your good news. You’re probably just a different stupid monster they sent up. What’s your gimmick? You going to macramé us to world peace?”
“I’m my own monster and I sent myself up.”
“Why?”
“To find you.”
She looks away. Digs the toe of her Chuck Taylor into a squashed piece of gum by the door, trying to loosen it. Inside, the Ludere and a couple of patients watch us like a flesh-and-blood reality show.
She says, “I let Stark go because he was being all noble and I wanted to be noble too so he would remember me when he found Alice. Dumbest thing I ever did.”
I get closer.
“How could I forget about you and you torturing me with those stupid robot sunglasses? If you think I was playing house with Alice all this time, you’re wrong. I sent her home the day I found her. It’s me here. Not that other guy. Alice and Hell and all the rest is over and done with.”
She crosses her arms.
“How do I know it’s you?”
“When I said I came back to find you? I lied. I came back for the knife I loaned you. Hand it over.”
She looks at me and furrows her forehead. Her eyes get a little red. Not like “Oh, my God. Godzilla is going to step on me.” More like tears red. But she doesn’t actually cry. She’s a monster and a killer like me. We sometimes tear up but leave the crying to the suckers we hit.
She comes over and puts her hand on my chest. Then slides it over to hug me. Through the armor I feel her body as she lays her head on my chest. She punches me in the side. Lightly this time, so it’s barely a punch at all.
“You ever take off like that again, you take me with you.”
“Deal.”
She takes a step back, looking at the armor.
“What’s the story with the Iron Man gear?”
Then she smiles.
“Oh my God. Stark. It all makes sense. You’re really Tony Stark. You’ve been Iron Man all along.”
“Oh God. I can see this joke isn’t going to die anytime soon.”
“You can count on that.”
I put my arms around her and just hold her there.
“Things got weirder Downtown than I ever counted on. I got hurt pretty bad. The Pat Boone clone you met is a part of me that escaped. And he took some of my strength with him. The armor belongs to Lucifer and brings some of it back.”
She looks up at me.
“Hurt like how?”
“If you’re not sure which Stark you’re talking to, ask him to show you his arm.”
I push up my sleeve.
The Ludere and patients peeking over Candy’s shoulder make little gasping sounds. Candy is the only one who doesn’t look like she’s going to be sick. She touches my robot bug hand and runs her fingers up the length of my sleek black arm until she gets to where it attaches to my shoulder.
“This is so fucking awesome.”
If you ever need to confirm that a girl is worth coming back from Hell for, show her your monster arm and see what she says.
Allegra comes out of the treatment room with a bunch of purple plant bulbs in her hands. She smiles in a kind of rueful way when she sees me and comes over and gives me a hug. Unlike the others, she knows it’s me right off.
“I’m sorry about that stuff that happened before. Please tell me there’s no hard feelings. I’m just glad to see you alive.”
“No hard feelings at all. I’m just happy to be back. You know, on the way over I was going to ask you to look at my jaw ’cause it hurt. Then I remembered I’ve been speaking nothing but Hellion for three months.”
“You’ll get plenty of practice at people talk when you tell us everything that happened.”
I’m not talking to anyone about everything that happened, but that still leaves a lot to tell.
Candy turns and steps away from me. I hear her heart rate jump. Smell the faint beginning of tension sweat.
“Stark, this is Rinko.”
Rinko is a couple of inches taller than Candy. Like her, Rinko is pretty, with dark almond eyes and black hair down to her waist. On her right shoulder is a tattoo of a rainbow-striped Oni. Lower down she has Astro Boy wearing a leather biker cap and chaps.
At least Candy hasn’t been alone all this time.
Candy motions Rinko over and I shake her hand. There’s a certain coolness to her skin.
“You’re a Jade,” I say.
Her eyes get hard.
“Something wrong with that?”
“No. I just never met any besides Candy. It’s funny finally running into one.”
“Hmm.”
If Rinko could breathe fire I’d be crispy bacon by now. The girl can’t stand the sight of me. It’s probably how I would have been around some of Alice’s exes.
Candy takes Rinko by the arm and walks her to the back of the waiting room. They have a fast, intense conversation. All stage whispers and hand waving.
Inside the clinic it’s both familiar and not. There’s the same cheap plastic chairs in the waiting room but the walls have been painted a pale blue. The same overflowing bookcase. The rickety old desk has been replaced with a shiny IKEA one.
Candy’s conversation ends with Rinko throwing up her hands and stomping away into a back room, keeping her eyes down and away from me. Candy gets a jacket off the desk chair and says to Allegra, “I’m gone for the rest of the night. That cool?”
“Très cool,” says Allegra. She gives us a little wave on the way out.
“Let’s go,” she says. “Are they still holding a room for you at the Beat Hotel?”
“I doubt it but cash is the magic anyone can do, and tonight I’m Houdini.”
She stops when she sees the Hellion hog.
“Yours?”
“Yep. Like it?”
“It’s almost as cool as the arm.”
A girl to come back from Hell for.
Turns out Kasabian was right and Pope Joan is on duty. It takes $200 to get the old room but I’d rather get inside than haggle, so I give her the money and get the key.
Inside, Candy pushes me down on the bed and climbs on top.
“On the way over, I wasn’t sure I was going to fuck you but then I thought that Rinko is going to be mad at me no matter what, so I’d rather get blamed for doing something than doing nothing.”
She throws off her jacket and shirt and unzips my pants. I pull off my shirt, pants, and boots but not the armor.
“Um. You keeping that on?”
“I’m not sure what’ll happen if I take it off. I know I’ll just be a regular mortal and die if someone slips in here and shanks me while I’m asleep. Or I might choke to death from all the Hellion muck I’ve been eating and breathing.”
She raps on the armor with her knuckles, takes my arms, and pins them down to the bed.
“That’s cool. I’m into cosplay. Between the armor and the arm you can be both brothers in Full Metal Alchemist.”
“So, we’re having a three-way with only two people.”
“Shut up and kiss me.”
When Candy and I were alone together, we had a habit of wrecking rooms. Once upon a time we practically tore the walls down in here. Tonight isn’t like that. It’s slower and a lot more tentative, like Candy is still trying to convince herself I’m real.
Later, when we’re lying around and the sweat is cooling under my armor, Candy says, “This is weird.”
“Sleeping with a guy again?”
&nbs
p; “Don’t be stupid. I keep waiting for someone to yell ‘April fool’ and for you to vanish.”
“The only joke in all this was me leaving. I’m not sorry about why I left but I’m sorry I didn’t come back. Before I left, I should have thought of a way to let you know I was all right.”
“There’s that. So how was it down there?”
“Mean and sad and strange and it ends with me being crowned prom queen of Hell.”
“Sure it does.”
She leans up on one elbow and looks at the clock radio.
“Shit. I should get back. Rinko will be waiting up for me. You know how girls are.”
“Don’t keep her waiting. That doesn’t turn out well for anyone.”
She runs a hand through her messy hair.
“Listen, Rinko is an old friend . . .”
“You don’t have to explain anything to me. Not now, not ever. Whatever you do is okay by me.”
She smiles, gets up, and gets dressed. At the door she tugs up her pants leg and slides my black bone knife out of a sheath on the side of her boot.
“You gave me this to hold for you. Now that you’re home, I suppose you’ll want it back.”
“I stole Mason’s. Why don’t you go ahead and keep that one.”
She smiles.
“For real? No take-backs?”
“No take-backs.”
She slips the knife back into its sheath and pulls down her pants leg.
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Talk to you then.”
She blows me a quick kiss on the way out.
Once upon a time I saved the world and lost a girl. Then I saved Hell and lost another girl. This is getting to be a bad habit.
The hotel phone rings.
“Candy?”
The line crackles.
“That was a hell of an exit, Lord Lucifer. I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.”
It’s a man’s voice.
“Were you relieved or disappointed?”
“Relieved. Thrilled even. The worlds below and above would be much more boring without you.”
“Who is this?”
“Not Vetis. But you knew that.”
“You’re not speaking Hellion. You’re either a possessed mortal or a damned soul. I don’t think a soul could call up here even with heavy hoodoo, so my guess is a mortal.”
“Listen to you go, Deep Blue.”
“Did the hounds make it back all right?”
“The ones that didn’t follow you over the edge. More blood on your hands. You’re like death on a bender.”
“Your voice is familiar but so what? You’ll be someone different next time.”
“Chances are.”
“Then what do we have to talk about? Fuck off.”
I slam down the receiver and rip the plug out of the wall.
I should have known the moment I decided not to go back Downtown. I don’t have to. Hell will follow me here.
In the morning, when I start to go out, I reach for a gun and remember that all I have is the Glock. A sleek manly gun. Guys who love Glocks love Corvettes because Dad had one and they’re still trying to crawl out of the old man’s shadow. Glocks: the only guns that come with a side of daddy issues. I hate Glocks. But I take it anyway.
I spend the day just walking around breathing in the perfume of car exhaust, dry air-conditioned air, and greasy Mexican food. I buy a fish taco from a van on the street. It looks like the Mona Lisa and tastes like God’s own Lunchable.
I’m still getting used to a sky. And lost and frantic civilians piling up on the street corners, fidgeting, waiting for the green light. Running at the wrong time on the red and almost getting hit by a bus. They gasp like they’re all gut-punched, never catching their breath from the endless running. If they knew they had a billion billion years of Heaven or Hell to look forward to after their measly eighty on Earth, would they slow down or would they get even more wired?
No one thinks of L.A. as ever being cold, but when it’s winter and the clouds roll in and the temperature drops to sixty or below, it can feel downright chilly. But the armor doesn’t notice. It has its own heat gauge set at body temperature. I could probably go to Antarctica and feed the penguins in nothing but flip-flops and a serape and not shiver once.
On the dying edge of Hollywood Boulevard, another tourist trap is going out of business. I buy a couple of black button-down shirts with HOLLYWOOD spelled with palm trees over the breast pocket. They’re loose enough that they hide the armor without making me look like the Michelin Man.
Back at the Beat Hotel, I take the one peeper I kept with me out of its saline-filled container, pop out my eye, and put the peeper in. Nothing happens. I can’t see into Hell. Not the library, the grounds outside the palace, or through the peepers I put into the hellhounds. Lucifer is blind up here. Something else Samael kept to himself. I take the peeper out and put my eye back in.
Back when Samael was in L.A. and I was playing bodyguard, he told me that he had very little power on Earth. That’s probably why he gave Kasabian access to the Daimonion Codex. Lucifer can’t see it from here but half-dead Kasabian can.
I spend the rest of the afternoon playing around with the armor, seeing what Lucifer tricks I can pull up here. I find a few but nothing that’ll get me a Nobel Prize. As usual I’ve timed things perfectly. I hang around Hell long enough to get all of Lucifer’s power and then come home and lose most of it.
In the afternoon, Candy calls. She wants to meet at the Bamboo House of Dolls around ten. Why not? It’s that or more Brady Bunch reruns, and that’s goddamn depressing for the Lord of the Underworld, even when he’s only operating at half speed.
Before I leave, I unscrew the air vent with a dime. What do you know? Kasabian wasn’t just shining me on. There’s a carny roll of twenty hundred-bills inside. The day just suddenly got brighter. What’s ridiculous is how easy I am to buy off. Two grand out of two hundred and I want to kiss the sky? Don’t let it get around but it turns out Lucifer is the cheapest date in Hell.
Now, this is something solid and real. It smells like beer and whiskey and the sweat of the patrons and the cigarette smoke blown in through the doors by the trailing edge of a Santa Ana, which is just how it should be. It’s a bar’s job to be unambiguous. In a sea of troubles, you can hold on to a bar. The Bamboo House of Dolls is my Rock of Ages.
Everything is where it should be. Old Iggy and the Stooges and back-in-the-day L.A. punk-band posters. Behind the bar, it’s all palm fronds, plastic hula girls, and coconut bowls for the peanuts. The jukebox chips and coos as Yma Sumac warbles through a spooky “Chuncho.” Carlos the bartender is pouring shots of Jack for everyone bellied up at the bar and mine taste best because they’re free. I hold up my glass to toast him for the third time tonight and he holds up his. It’s that kind of night. I’m in my bar with my friends. Now I’m really home.
Vidocq has his arm around my shoulders. He’s hardly taken it off since he got here, like if he lets go I’ll blow away on the breeze.
“At least it wasn’t eleven years this time. You’re doing better,” he says.
“Maybe you should try not going back at all,” says Allegra.
“I signed up with Monsters Anonymous,” I tell them. “Trying to kick the Hell habit one day at a time.”
“I’ll drink to that,” says Vidocq. He holds up his empty glass and Carlos comes over and refills it.
Carlos says, “I wasn’t sure if it was you when you walked in. Even with that fucked-up face, I’m still not a hundred percent.”
He starts to pour me my sixth Jack of the night.
I put my hand over the glass.
“Let’s surprise everyone. Why don’t you give me a cup of coffee?”
“See? I knew it wasn’t you. Look at this place. It’s like a wake for someone no one liked. Your pendejo brother just about drove me out of business.”
He’s right. The bar is maybe a third full. It used to be packed every night before I took off. Civilians and Lurkers like hanging around places with criminals, even if a few of them get chewed up, like the night a handful of zombies wandered in. What’s funny is that’s exactly why people come to places like this. They want to get close enough to death to smell the graveyard dust, as long as it’s someone else’s name that gets chiseled on the gravestone.
“I’ve been drinking almost nothing but Aqua Regia for three months. I want something a human being might drink. And that little darling with my face is no brother of mine.”
Carlos nods. Looks over the crowd.
“Maybe things will pick up when people hear the real you is back.”
“If it helps, you can pour the coffee in six shot glasses.”
“Great idea.”
He goes away to get the coffee and glasses.
Candy comes in just as he sets them down. She takes one, throws it back, and makes a face.
“What the hell is this?”
“Coffee.”
She slams the glass down.
“You’re such a pussy.”
“Yeah? Pick any random stranger and I’ll punch them if you’ll stay the night tonight.”
Her posture changes. She tenses up. Looks over her shoulder to a table where Rinko sits alone.
“Don’t. I can’t. It’s complicated.”
“Sorry. That was stupid.”
“No. It’s all right.”
Candy catches me looking at Rinko.
“She said she wanted to come.”
“She wants to keep an eye on you.”
“More like she wants to keep an eye on you. I guess I talked about you a lot. You know, when I thought you weren’t coming back.”
“You talked about me?”
Carlos brings Candy a shot.
“De nada,” she says, and downs it. “I told her what an old fart you are and how you have rotten taste in music.”
Devil Said Bang ss-4 Page 17
