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.
“You mortals love to hear yourself talk, don’t you?”
It’s hard to shrug gracefully flat on my back.
“In Hell, I’m usually the most interesting person in the room, so it’s kind of inevitable.”
He glances away for a second like he’s thinking and then jams the knife deep into my cheek, twisting the blade before pulling it out.
“Was that interesting enough for you?”
“Would it help if I said yes?”
He takes a breath and his mood changes. Tense lines of anger soften to something else. Not sadness. More like bone-deep exhaustion.
He says, “Why did you come back?”
“I ask myself that every day.”
He pokes my cheek with the knife again.
“I came here to kill Mason Faim, you ungrateful motherfucker. I saved your ass.”
He lets his head sag for a second. Uses his sleeve to wipe my blood off the knife.
“That’s the problem,” he says. “If you’d just stayed away, we’d be gone.”
I try to sit up. Vetis puts his forearm on my scorched armor and pushes me down. He doesn’t have to push hard.
“Jesus fucking Christ. Are you stupid? Do you really think the legions could have taken on Heaven’s armies and won?”
He looks out the back of the ambulance and then back at me.
“Of course not. They would have slaughtered us. And all of this”—he stretches out his arms to take in all of Hell—“would be over.”
I’m so dumb sometimes I’m surprised I’ve never used dynamite for a toothbrush.
Now I know how Mason got so much of Hell and got so many generals and their troops working with him so fast. The war with Heaven wasn’t a war. It was a suicide pact. Death by cop. Provoke the guy with the gun so he’ll shoot. Storm the gates of Heaven until the golden army burns you in a rain of holy fire. Bye bye Hell. And they wouldn’t have to worry about being sent to Tartarus because I destroyed that. A perfect setup for the biggest suicide cult of all time.
Semyazah was the only holdout. One of the few Hellions left that still believed in Lucifer’s argument with Heaven. Semyazah isn’t stupid. Of course he doesn’t want to be Lucifer. How do you lead an entire civilization of wrist cutters?
No wonder Deumos and her shiny happy church popped up. She’s the only one offering an alternative to dog-paddling around God’s toilet forever. Even if it’s New Age bullshit wrapped up in a Hellion wet dream.
Is this why God broke into a million little pieces? Before Aelita murdered him, Neshamah said Hell was never supposed to be like this. I thought he meant the fires and sinkholes and earthquakes. Now I know what he meant. He put the rebel angels in an eternal time-out and never came back. The Lord’s just and wise punishment inspired millions of his children to mass suicide. No wonder the old man had a nervous breakdown.
“What happens now? You going to slit my throat? With no Lucifer, this place is going to get real interesting real fast. Maybe the whole thing will collapse into one big sinkhole. Won’t that be fun, wading knee-deep in blood and shit for a trillion years, waiting for the universe to end?”
He taps the knife against my Kissi arm like he’s trying to tell if a melon is ripe. He moves the blade to the gauze on my chest, trying to work the tip of the blade underneath so he can lift it and take a look.
“Don’t worry about us. You need to be worried about yourself right now.”
“Why? You’re going to kill me and I’m too hurt to fight back. I’d only worry if I thought there was something I could do and maybe I’d fuck it up.”
“See? Talk. Talk. Talk. That’s all you humans do.”
“At least I don’t get other people to do my killing for me. If I wanted to die, I’d do it myself and not trick Heaven into doing it for me.”
He sighs.
“We must be such a disappointment to you, Lucifer.”
He lays heavy sarcastic emphasis on “Lucifer.”
“This whole dump is one big disappointment. Maybe that’s why God forgot about you. You’re so fucking boring.”
Vetis presses the knife into the burn on my neck. I try not to wince.
He says, “Let me put you out of your misery.”
“Give me the knife and I’ll put you out of yours.”
Outside someone yells, “Hey!” Someone else curses. There’s the sound of running feet. A lot of them. More shouts. Guns go off and something hits the ambulance hard.
Vetis looks up as a dozen hands drag him out of the ambulance. One of them twists Vetis’s wrist until it pops and he drops the knife. They drag him around the side of the ambulance and I lose sight of him. A moment later, a woman steps inside and looks around for somewhere to sit that isn’t covered in blood. She finds a foam pillow pinned to the wall by the gurney and sets it on one of the cabinets.
“That worked out nicely, if I do say so myself,” says Deumos.
“It would have worked out even better if you’d gotten up here five minutes ago.”
She holds up her hands in a what-can-you-do gesture.
“Getting through the canyons without being seen took more time than we thought.”
I sit up and lean back against the wall. Grizzly’s blood soaks through my pants. I don’t care.
“I wasn’t sure you’d show at all.”
“But here we are, keeping our part of the bargain.”
“And I’ll keep mine. Just one thing. Did you bring a doctor or nurse?”
“We have a doctor and a nurse. Why?”
“The EMT they pulled out of here is probably pretty out of it. Someone should have a look at her. Also, can someone come in here to dig around for painkillers? I want to lie in a kiddie pool full of OxyContin.”
She pats me lightly on the shoulder.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
There’s no Oxy or Hellion Vicodin around, but Deumos comes back with someone’s flask full of Aqua Regia. It’ll do. We sit on the shoulder of the road looking back toward Pandemonium. Even falling apart, the place looks enough like L.A. to make me feel homesick.
The side of the hill where we sit crunches under our feet where the vegetation burned. But the place isn’t entirely dead. Scrubs of ghost thistle and even a few asphodel flowers have made it up through the layer of ash.
“You don’t look well,” says Deumos.
“With a month’s vacation, a face-lift, and a crate of Ecstasy, I might work my way up to feeling like shit.”
“General Semyazah isn’t going to be happy about any of this. Running around the hinterlands with weapons. Attacking his troops. And especially you conspiring with me.”
“He’ll be fine. I’ll send him a fruit basket.”
We sit for a minute, neither of us saying anything. There’s the kind of warm breeze that if you didn’t know you were in Heaven’s sewer you might find almost pleasant.
“So tell me, how does someone invent a new church in Hell? You run out of Sudoku?”
“I had a vision.”
“Of course you did. All you prophets do is have visions. And burn heretics. That’s like catnip to you people. Why don’t you take a pottery class or learn Japanese?
She frowns.
“You don’t believe in oaths or revelations. What do you believe in, Lord Lucifer?”
“I believe we’re going to be dead a lot longer than we’re alive, so anything you like you should do to excess. I believe America lost its soul when they took the big-block V-8 out of Mustangs. I believe Hollywood should stop remaking A Star Is Born.”
She looks at me and slowly shakes her head.
“I have to apologize for burning you in effigy. I thought you were our enemy. Now I see that your greatest enemy is yourself.”
“Don’t get your panties in a twist, Mary Magdalen. Aside from a couple of paper cuts I’m doing fine.”
“Of course.”
She pulls a folded piece of paper and a pen from inside her robes and hands them to me.
“Before we left, I took the liberty of drawing up an agreement. There’s nothing in here we didn’t discuss earlier. My church gets its own Tabernacle and funding not less than but not exceeding that of the old church.”
I sign the papers and hand them back to her.
“You’re not going to read them first?”
“You saved my ass. I’m fine with whatever’s in there.”
She puts her hands on my shoulders and turns me toward her. Looks at my scorched armor and the wound on my neck.
“You did that to yourself? You’re mad.”
I shrug.
“I had to be out of it enough that the killers would make their move. It was either the Gladius or a bullet, and I’ve been shot enough for one lifetime, thanks.” I say, “Tell me about your vision.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t believe in anything. To tell it to you would be to cheapen it.”
“I just gave you a church.”
“I just saved your life. And we both did what we did for the same reason. We wanted something from each other.”
“You know I’ve only been Lucifer for like three months, right? I’m not the one that made you ride in the back of the bus all these years.”
She waves to one of her men. He comes over and she hands him the agreement. He goes back to wait with the others. Smart woman. She wants the paper away from me in case I change my mind.
She says, “It suits you, you know. Armor for the man who is always armored.”
“Visions and fashion tips? You do it all, sister.”
She leans back like she’s sizing up her kid for his first big-boy pants.
“I mean it. You look better in it than the other Lucifer. Look at the damage God’s final thunderbolt did to the metal.”
She touches the battered part of the armor.
“Even with the Lord’s mark on him, Samael was so anxious to play the tragic warrior king that he added the thunderbolt crest.”
She pats a blank spot in the center of the breastplate.
“I’m happy to see you removed it.”
I touch the armor where she had her hand. There’s a tiny divot where a bolt might have been removed. Suddenly I want to get back to the palace.
“I think I’m going to head out before someone realizes I’m gone. You can handle Grand Funk Railroad back there?”
“You’ll release the rest of my people?”
“I’ll make the call as soon as I get back.”
“We’ll drop off the prisoners when they’re returned.”
One of her crew, a tall silent woman with spiders branded into her arms and cheeks, drives me to the bike in the jeep Vetis took up here. She barely slows long enough for me to jump out before she’s tearing back up the road. So much for Hail Satan.
I start the bike and head out, keeping the speed subsonic. Between the Gladius and the ambulance crash, I’m feeling a little rough. Deumos and her people are just about to leave when I catch up. When I slow the bike, I can feel tension ripple through the air. People holding guns thumb off the safeties. Ones without guns get theirs out. I wait, gunning the throttle and waiting for something to happen. Deumos comes over slowly. Stands an arm’s length away, straight and defiant. I take the flask from my pocket and hand it to her.
“Tell the owner thanks.”
She takes the flask and I pop the clutch, burning rubber out of there.
I take the secret stairs up from the garage straight into the library, careful to step around the hexes in the floor. I pick up the phone and hit PISSANTS. Brimborion picks up.
“It’s me.”
“You’re alive.”
“Surprise. Release Deumos’s crew.”
“Security isn’t through questioning them.”
“You mean torture? They’re done. If any of them have a problem, tell them Lucifer said to put it in writing and shove it up their ass.”
“I’ll just say the order came from you.”
“You’re leaving out the best part but okay.”
“How did you . . . ?”
“Got to go.”
I hang up.
Samael knew I needed the armor to survive, so if I lived he knew I’d always have it with me. He was smart enough to hide the thunderbolt so that even if Mason won, he’d never have all of Samael’s power. Not telling me any of this stinks like more of his “figure it out for yourself” Socratic horseshit. Or did he tell me something more? I have a vague impression of talking to him about it and him telling me something else. What was it?
The more immediate question is this: where would I hide if I was a missing piece of armor?
Samael told me to read the Greeks, so that seems like a good place to start, which is exactly why I’m not going to do it. I’ve pawed through every Greek book on the shelves. I liked one book I found, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, but then I found out he was Roman and not Greek and that just pissed me off. For a while I thought that might mean something but probably someone just put it on the wrong shelf.
If the thunderbolt is anywhere, it will be anywhere but where Samael told me where to look. Aside from actuarial tables, Hellion tax law, and sports stats, what section would I be the least likely to look in? What other sections are there in libraries? I’m not exactly an expert on book jail, and when I walked around before, I didn’t pay much attention to what books were wher
e or how they were arranged. Time to get rigorous and organized.
I hate this already.
You know how when you drive somewhere new it always seems longer the first time? That’s how it is the first time you walk through an entire library trying to figure out how it’s put together. I could have done this when I first got here but I didn’t give a fuck what was on the other shelves and mostly resented everything beyond my little pied-à-terre for not having more, meaning any, movies. If Samael really wanted me to pay attention, he’d have stuck Herodotus between piles of Howard Hawks and John Huston.
Twenty minutes of looking and my eyes are already glazing over. There are no section markers. No Dewey decimal system or card catalog. (Yes, I know about the Dewey decimal system. I didn’t spend a lot of time in libraries but I’m aware of their existence.) Just rows of books with titles in Hellion script. And I was just in a crash. My neck hurt before. Now it’s aching from holding it sideways to read the titles.
I should have brought a pencil and paper and been drawing a map as I go over the place. I find a general-history-of-the-universe section, including Heaven and Hell. There’s a section on science, which is broken down into categories I’ve never heard of. What the hell is Quantum Melancholia?
There’s politics, which is total bullshit. All Samael needs is one book with LIE AND CHEAT LIKE A SON OF A BITCH in neon on the cover.
There’s also art. Instead of Sodom and Gomorrah clusterfucking and Giger monsters, it looks like Samael has a thing for Rembrandt and mortal portrait painters. Probably looking for the right dead soul to put his mug on a Hellion dollar bill.
Military theory. Ha. I bet he wishes he had these books back in Heaven.
Law and economics. Was he studying for his goddamn SATs? I guess the Devil needs to know things like mortal rules and money. But still. I’m learning Samael’s darkest secrets and they’re really boring.
Philosophy. Okay. He gets some slack for this one. His argument with God seems legit. Is it the sin of pride not wanting to be a slave?
I’m about to start making my own sections. Despair. Boredom. I Want a Nap. And Fuck This Shit Entirely. I’ll push them together in one big pile with a noose overhead.
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