I wake up in our bed in the old apartment. I hear Alice showering in the bathroom. My head is a little fuzzy. I drank too much again last night. I’ll cool it tonight. We’ll stay in and watch the Argento marathon and order pizza.
Alice comes out of the bathroom toweling herself off. She’s naked. She comes over to the bed and hands me the towel.
“Do my back, will you? And my hair?”
She asks like it’s a burden to run the towel and my hands over her. I bend her forward and pull her against me, carefully toweling her from the small of her back to the nape of her neck. I start rubbing the towel through her hair and she leans back into it like a puppy being scratched.
“Kasabian called,” she says. “Your little magic Circle is supposed to meet at Mason’s place at ten.”
I say, “They’re going to have a long wait. I’m not going back. I’m quitting.”
She turns around and hugs me to her naked skin.
“Really?” she asks. “I was hoping you’d say that. I don’t like those people. Mason gives me the creeps.”
“Me, too. I’m going to call some Sub Rosas I know and see if they can help me find a legit job. Nothing behind a desk, but not like the apocalyptic power stuff we’ve been playing with in the Circle. It’s giving me bad dreams.”
“That and the beer.”
“You’re right. We should buy better beer.”
“You always know how to fix everything.”
Alice pushes me down and climbs on top. She leans down to kiss me and her wet hair brushes my face. When she sits up again, her face isn’t right. She morphs into a small brunette and we’re not in the apartment, we’re at the Beat Hotel in a room filled with broken furniture. Her face changes into a distorted combination of Candy and Alice. There’s pressure in my head, like hands are pulling me apart from inside. I try to make sense of the woman’s contorting face but I can’t.
My vision explodes into different spectrums of light. I fall a long way, no longer seeing light, but separate photons working their way through the air.
My eyes snap open. I’m lying flat on my ass. The angel took control and pulled me out of Mason’s hallucination. For the first time in a long time, I’m glad the angel is there.
I say, “Damn. Can I get a six-pack of that stuff before I go? That was more fun than trucker speed.”
The prayer hands caught me off guard the first time, so when Mason curves his fingers into a new configuration, I throw up a defensive shield.
His hex flies past me and hits the office’s big double doors. They turn bone white and fall apart, the dry wood turning to dust before it hits the floor.
That prick almost hit me with a ball of time. I’ve never tried that. I’m going to have to steal the idea.
I hit Mason with a quick series of hexes, alternating ice and fire, freezing and heating his skin so it splits open like the fault lines in the street. Follow it up with shots of pure pain to make his nerve endings sing. I finish by tossing a dozen pit vipers Mason’s way. Their venom dissolves skin, turning blisters into what look like third-degree burns. They swarm Mason. I hear Alice gasp.
Mason isn’t moving. The vipers haven’t hit him that many times, but he seems out of it. I can’t hear a heartbeat or his breathing. It could be anaphylactic shock.
Standing over him, I should at least be able to read that he’d had life in him once. When I touch his body, it falls to the floor like candy glass. Touching the phantasm broke the illusion. I spin around, looking for the real Mason.
Something crunches through my left shoulder. The pain turns off my brain. When I’m thinking again, I realize I’ve been stabbed three more times. I mumble a healing spell, but Mason is ahead of me, delivering a counterspell before I’ve finished mine. I’m suddenly exhausted. The angel reaches down and reads my body. There’s something funny in my blood all of a sudden, but it’s a Hellion brew he doesn’t recognize. I fall to my knees and Mason pushes me down onto my back.
“I always admired your black knife. So, when I couldn’t make a key to the Room, I made myself a knife. I think I even made some improvements. Let me show you.”
He jabs the blade into me just under the collarbone and makes a downward cut to my sternum. He does this again on the other side so there’s a big V sliced into my chest. He carefully puts the tips of the blade into the bottom of the V and pulls down my body, heading south of the border. Even through the pain I can tell he’s not trying to kill me. He’s looking for something. He drags the knife down my chest and something clinks. He’s found the key. If he’s going for my heart, I’ll return the favor. I shoot my hand out and through his skin and bones, feeling around inside his chest cavity.
But whatever is in my blood is making it hard to keep my eyes open. Mason is playing operation, cutting me up like a weekend surgeon, but it doesn’t even hurt anymore. I have my hand in his chest, but when I find his heart, I don’t have the strength to grab it. My hand falls out of him as my muscles decide it’s break time. I can’t even keep my eyes open. It finally occurs to me that this isn’t sleep. I’m dying.
The last thing I see before I’m gone is Mason pulling a piece of glowing metal from my chest. Then the lights go out.
AND I’M REALLY no-shit, no-fake-outs-or-take-backs, no-paralyzing-spells-or-glamours dead. I don’t know how I know I’m dead, but I do and all I have are questions. Like, where’s all the light coming from? I thought death would be a lot blacker than this. Also, it feels like I’m stuck in someone else’s death because this one is two sizes too small. Death doesn’t feel much like dying. More like being on a crowded bus. And what’s with all the jagged edges that keep poking me? Maybe I’m still stuck in my dead body while it’s on ice. Fucking great. My body’s gone because one asshole stabbed me and now my soul is going to get the flu because another asshole stuck me in a morgue deep freeze. I fucking hate Mason. He can even make death a pain in the ass.
Somewhere far, far away, Alice is screaming. Then Mason screams. A pattern is developing. I don’t know what’s going on, but someone’s moved my body. It’s dark again, but I’m not on ice anymore. There’s more screaming. It hurts my ears and I would really appreciate it if whoever’s doing it would shut the fuck up and let me be dead. I sit up to tell them that, but it feels like I gained a thousand pounds since I died. My head and arm weigh a hundred pounds each. I open my eyes to see what’s wrong with them, but they’re fine.
Why are my eyes open if I’m dead? And why is there a second me standing there with Mason in one hand and a Gladius in the other? Alice kneels down in front of me.
“Are you all right?”
I try to tell her yes but all that comes out is, “Being dead is stupid.”
Did I say that? I’m not sure, but it’s true. I’m pretty sure I’m alive again because there’s a big hole in my chest and it hurts like I got shot with rock salt and porcupine quills.
The other me drops Mason, kneels down, and puts his hand against my chest. I feel the hole closing, the bone, muscle, and skin knitting back together. I stare at the other me and my face stares back at me.
“Goddammit, did someone cut my face off again?”
The other me helps me to my feet. This close I see that he’s exactly me. He’s me without the scars and eleven years younger.
“How do you feel?” asks the other me.
“Like Lazarus if Jesus brought him back to life by having Mike Tyson use him as a speed bag.”
“He’s all right,” says the other me.
Mason is on his back where the other me dropped him. I go for him, but I’m still a little limp, so I don’t so much attack him as fall on him like a cow thrown from a blimp. The other me pulls me to my feet.
“I know who you are,” I say to the other me. “It’s quiet all of a sudden. You’re the Boy Scout who’s been squatting in my brain. You owe me back rent, fucker.”
“Why don’t you take it out of Kasabian’s beer money? Or yours.”
I look at Alice.
“Is this real? Or am I back in Mason’s hallucination?”
She shakes her head and comes over like she wants to put her arm around me but remembers she can’t and ends up standing a few feet away looking awkward.
“It’s real. He appeared the moment you died and took the key back from Mason.”
“Is Mason still alive?”
“Unfortunately. He’s playing possum now,” says the angel. “First he was afraid of me and now there are two of us.”
“What just happened?”
“You died. The mortal part. But I’m not mortal. Cutting us like that wasn’t going to kill me, so I brought you back.”
“How?”
The angel smiles and picks up something small and black from the floor. It’s about the size of a robin’s egg and smells like cordite.
“It was Lucifer’s stone. That stupid white rock we’ve been carrying around for months. It’s a soul trap. When Mason killed you, it released me and sent your soul into the stone.”
“He put it in your chest and touched your heart with his Gladius,” says Alice. “It released your soul back into your body.”
“And then you spackled me shut. You’re a lot better roommate than Kasabian.”
I go over to Mason and kick him a couple of times.
“Where’s his knife?”
“Over here,” says Alice.
I go over and pick it up.
“Good. I think it’s time to wrap things up. Don’t you?”
“The faster the better.”
Angel me gestures at Mason.
“He’s wearing Lucifer’s armor. He can’t die as long as he has that on.”
“Get him out of it, will you?”
“My pleasure.”
While angel me strips Mason, I get Mason’s desk chair and roll it to the middle of the room. I get a chair from his worktable and set it facing the other.
“When you’re done, bring him over here.”
The angel drops Mason into his chair and I spin his knife in my hand.
“It’s been a hell of a day,” I say.
Mason nods.
“A little busier than most.”
He keeps an eye on the knife. I’m tempted to tease him with it, but this whole thing has been about us playing kid games with each other, so I let it go.
I shrug off my coat and the hoodie, giving Mason and Alice their first really good look at my Kissi arm.
I look at Alice and what she said to me in that last dream comes back to me. “I love you, but I’m over your moony guilt trip. Dream about that girl you’re lying next to for a change.” She was right. I love her but that part of our lives is over with. Besides, Alice can’t stand looking at the Kissi arm. Candy would love it.
I pull up my pant leg and cut the duct tape that’s holding the .357 snub-nose in place. I toss the knife and it sticks into the floor between us.
I say, “I finally know why you left the lighter for me to find in your basement. It was so no matter how lost I got, I could always find my way through the dark and get right here, right now. It’s taken a few twists and turns, but here we are. A couple of little lost lambs who finally found their way home.”
Mason nods at the pistol.
“That was real poetry. If you shoot me with that thing, you’re going to spoil the moment.”
“I used to think we were connected because we’re badass hoodoo men. But it’s because we’re losers. We can’t kill the universe, and after all the shit we’ve pulled, we can’t kill each other. And we can’t keep doing this forever. So let’s just do what we’ve both been wanting to do since we met.”
“What did you have in mind? One of those retreats where men sit around in drum circles and talk about their fathers? Or take your gun and male-bond while knocking over some liquor stores?”
I open the chamber and tilt the pistol so the shells fall out. I put one back in, spin the chamber, and slap it closed.
“Let’s keep it simple,” I say. I pull back the hammer. “Since we can’t seem to kill each other, we’re going to let the universe decide which one of us dies. I’ll go first.”
Alice turns away. The angel has his arm around her.
I put the pistol to the side of my head. Pull the trigger.
Click.
I’m still alive.
I hand Mason the pistol, butt end first. The angel comes up behind him and grabs his shoulder. I toss the angel the knife. He holds it to Mason’s throat.
I say, “Here’s the thing. I didn’t use magic just then, so neither are you. That angel on your shoulder can look inside you all the way down to your atoms, so he’ll see if you try to throw any hexes. If you cheat or even think about cheating, Johnny Angel there is going to cut you a new blowhole.”
Mason sits for a minute, both hands on the gun, letting it dangle between his knees, barrel to the floor.
“Before Christmas, please,” says the angel.
Mason sits up. He doesn’t like being told off by a halo polisher. But he still doesn’t move the gun.
I hold out my hand.
“If you’re that chicken, I’ll take another turn.”
That hits him where it hurts. He puts the gun to his head and cocks it. He looks straight at me. And blows his brains out.
Of course he blows his brains out. I’m not stupid. I said he couldn’t use magic. I didn’t say I couldn’t.
The palace sways under me like it’s a cruise ship. This isn’t hoodoo or regular tired. I slide from my chair to the floor. The carpet is soft and comfy.
“What’s wrong with him?” yells Alice.
“He’s mortal now that I’ve left him. Get him into Lucifer’s armor.”
Someone straps big slabs of metal over my chest and back. When did we get to the Ren Faire?
Alice is in Mason’s chair.
“Jim, can you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
She waves her hand in front of me.
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
I squint.
“When did you get thirteen fingers?”
“He’s all right.”
I stand on my own. The dizziness is gone. I feel better than I do 90 percent of the time. Sharper, stronger, and better focused. Lucifer wore this armor in Heaven. He fought in it. Killed in it. Bled in it and almost died in it. He’s left a part of himself in it. I feel as strong and clear as I felt when the angel was running things.
“It feels good. Like someone put a V-8 in a MINI Cooper.”
Alice says, “I don’t think you should take the armor off while you’re down here.”
“Hell, I may never take it off.”
The angel clears his throat.
“We’re not done here.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Mason is dead. Isn’t it over?” asks Alice.
“You might want to stay here and skip this next part,” I tell her. “One of us has to put on a show for the wolf pack outside.”
“I’ll do it if you aren’t up to it,” says the angel.
“No. I’m the killer, not you. And I have the armor. It should be me.”
I look at Alice.
“Stay with her. Don’t let her get grabbed by any angels or gods or elves.”
The angel nods.
“What are you going to do?” asks Alice.
I pick up Mason’s body and toss it over my shoulder. It hardly weighs anything. This armor is definitely coming home with me.
“Got to go out and become a god, baby.”
Alice looks at me. I shift Mason so his blood runs down my armor.
“There are so many at this point, what’s one more?”
I start to go out through a shadow, but bump into a solid wall. Ow. I forgot I don’t have the key right now. Allegra can put it back when she splices us back together. It feels funny not having someone inside me looking over my shoulder.
In the elevator I take the Singularity from Mason’s pocket and put it in mi
ne. At the lobby, I go out onto the hotel’s wide lawn.
The Infernal legions, fresh from slaughtering the Kissi, are spread out in every direction. Soldiers show each other fresh Kissi pelts and wings. For all the fallen angels have built down here, at heart they’re still a bunch of morons pulling the wings off flies. Someone needs to work on that. Maybe I can set up a time-share for the angel. He can come down and teach them table manners and I can take care of business upstairs. Right now, though, I’m in wolf-pack country and this million or so killers are wondering who’s the alpha dog.
I climb on top of Semyazah’s Unimog and hold up Mason’s body so everyone can see him. A cheer goes up. It’s decent as cheers go, but it’s not a Steppenwolf playing “Born to Be Wild” to a sold-out crowd cheer.
I manifest the Gladius and hold it up high. And swing it down. Mason’s body drops and I kick it off the truck. When I hold up Mason’s head, that’s when the Thank-God-Bruce-is-finally-playing “Born to Run” roar hits. When I stick the head onto a set of longhorn antlers mounted on the truck, the screams get even louder. I stand there in Lucifer’s armor with the Gladius burning, shining like a blood-soaked star.
A group of generals comes across the parking lot. I keep the Gladius burning but lower it to my side. If they’re looking to pull an Ides of March thing, I have no problem whatsoever with running away.
General Semyazah is up front with Baphomet and Shax behind. Other officers spread out around them. Halfway to the truck they stop. Time for the bum rush. I should have kept Mason’s head. I could beat a couple of them stupid with it before it fell apart.
The officers don’t attack, but I still have a significant urge to run away. Semyazah kneels and one by one the other officers get down on one knee.
He shouts, “Hail horrors! Hail Infernal world! Hail Lucifer!”
The air is full of the thundering of the “Hail Lucifer!” Shit. No wonder rock stars go crazy. A mob like this can love you or rip you to pieces in a hot minute. And I don’t have a tour manager to tell me what to do next. Time for one more slice of bullshit.
I hold up my hands and the crowd goes quiet.
“Tonight was a great victory against a great enemy. In the coming weeks and months you’ll see some changes around here. Tonight, though, forget about war and blood and be happy that we’re still where we should be and Heaven is still where it should be. Both could be gone now, but they aren’t and it’s because of your fearlessness. So tonight Lucifer bows to you.”
Aloha from Hell (Sandman Slim) Page 36