I open my eyes and look out the window. It’s around four o’clock. Clouds tumbleweed across a bruised sky. A few fires have flared up again south of the city. The backlight looks like a slow-motion nuclear blast. My Golgotha L.A. has never looked more beautiful.
I don’t hear from Brimborion all day. I wonder if he got someone to sew the finger back on. I don’t even know if they do that kind of thing down here. Probably they think if you’re dumb enough to lose a finger, you deserve for it to stay lost.
Vetis comes by to check on me later.
“You were burned in effigy in the market last night, lord.”
“I heard. And don’t call me ‘lord.’ ”
“I’ve doubled your personal security and stationed more legion troops downstairs.”
Ms. 45 pokes her head around the door. Vetis takes a step back. She waits a couple of beats and moves down the hall.
“Thanks. I’m feeling pretty well protected these days.”
It’s the middle of the night when the bedroom phone rings. It’s never done that before. I’ve never used it. I pick up the receiver on the fourth ring.
“Hello?”
“Still alive and kicking, I see.”
“Who is this?”
“Puddin’ ’n’ Tain. Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same.”
“Fuck you. I’m hanging up.”
As I put down the receiver the voice comes again.
“You’re always so serious. So linear. You’ve got to get into the spirit of things.”
I almost recognize the voice but not quite.
“What spirit is that?”
“That you’re nothing. You’ve been flailing at the universe your whole life, and where has it gotten you? You’re not really the Devil. You’re not Sandman Slim. You’re not a man and you’re not an angel. Some people live in gray areas but, friend, you are a gray area.”
“Am I supposed to understand any of that?”
“You could always kill yourself now and save us the trouble.”
“What would that solve? I’d just end up right back here. Did Brimborion put you up to this?”
“What do you think?”
“I think he’s hiding somewhere nursing his hand with whiskey and a Valium chaser.”
“There you are.”
“Am I supposed to be spooked by this? You sound like someone’s dad hard selling Girl Scout cookies.”
“You’re not the only one with peepers, you know. Don’t think because you watch the world, the world doesn’t watch you back.”
“I’m going to find you, you know.”
“I’m counting on it.”
There’s a click and the line goes dead.
Crank calls? Is this how things work from here? This isn’t Hell. It’s junior high.
I wake up hurting. The hangover is gone and now I can feel every bit of the beating I took last night. My jaw aches and my ribs are bruised. Every time I move, the armor presses on them and makes me wince.
Something shatters down the hall. Glass and metal. Something heavy hits the floor, like a car falling through the ceiling. I grab my knife and run toward the sound.
Ms. 45 is lying on her side by one of the big picture windows in the front room. The glass dome holding her brain is smashed. Pink meat and spinal fluid leak onto the tile floor. I stand by the body listening. Ready for whoever got to her to come for me.
I don’t hear a thing. It doesn’t make sense that someone could get in here but they did. The peeper by the hall is gone, so I can’t play back whatever happened.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to ditch the Glock.
Making a pass through the rest of the penthouse, I don’t see anything out of place. I need to get someone to clean up the hound before it stinks in here like Mason’s lab. There’s a phone in the bedroom. I get the Glock from the library and head there.
A shadow flickers across the bedroom.
Looks like Brimborion has a second passkey after all. Good. First I find out what he’s looking for in my room and then I get to kill him.
But the moment the thought forms, I know it’s wrong. Brimborion isn’t the creeping-around-smashing-hellhounds type. Especially not when he just lost a finger. Whoever’s in the bedroom has much bigger balls and a lot fewer brain cells than him. But he’ll know who’s after me and he’s going to give me a name if I have to repaper the hallway with his skin.
With the Glock in a two-hand TV-cop grip, I shoulder open the bedroom door. No one in sight. I go inside, sweeping the room with the gun. The closet door is open, the space empty. If Mr. Soon to Be Dead is in toddler freak-out mode, he might be under the bed. More than likely he’s in the bathroom trying to squeeze himself down the shower drain.
I start across the room but only make it to the end of the bed.
Behind me, the door creaks open the rest of the way.
“Here are your fucking messages.”
No question about the voice. It’s Brimborion.
I turn around. He sees the Glock in my hand and in an inspiring display of self-preservation lurches back, cracks his head on the door, and falls onto his knees. I grab his shoulder and pull him to his feet.
“How did you get in here?”
He looks at me like I’ve gone insane and stupid all at the same time.
“The door was open.”
“Not the goddamn bedroom. My apartment.”
His eyes go to the gun and then back to me.
“I have another key. Are you going to kill me for doing my job?”
Glass breaks in the bathroom. Something hits the wall. Over and over. Someone is going nuts in there.
I shove Brimborion over to the corner of the room. He’s not going anywhere until I know if contestant number two is someone he sent. If he’s looking for some payback because of his finger, he’s going to be disappointed.
The bathroom door swings open slowly and a Hellion walks out. You could mistake the guy for human if his arms and legs weren’t half again as long as they should be. And if his skin wasn’t the color of a dead fish on the ocean floor. He’s wet too. I hear running water. Sounds like he ripped the sink out of the wall.
“Lahash?” says Brimborion. “What are you doing here?”
Lahash takes a couple of uncertain steps out of the bathroom. He looks up but barely registers us. I’m liking Lahash less and less. The guy is on some major drugs or some heavy hoodoo. The bedroom is huge by normal non–Lord of the Underworld standards, but if it was the size of a zeppelin hangar, I still wouldn’t want to be in it with this guy.
“Lahash. I’m talking to you,” says Brimborion. “How did you get in here?”
I shove Brimborion back against the wall.
“Shut up. There’s something wrong with him.”
Lahash stiffens. Turns his milky-white eyes in my direction. He recognizes my voice. No point in playing church mouse now.
“Who sent you here, Lahash? Are you looking for me or something in here?”
He swings his head to the other side of the room like he’s trying to remember where he is. There’s a brain working somewhere in his skull but it looks like the wiring is a little frayed.
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 e
yes 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 easi
er 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.
Devil Said Bang ss-4 Page 9