Satan tightened his grip around the man’s throat to stop him from saying anything untoward. He leaned in, his face side-by-side with the Tank’s, and whispered into the man’s ear. “What you’re doing here, to these old people, it’s wrong. And you know it,” he said. “You insult and sadden the Lord with your wickedness.” There was an abrupt shift in the tone of his voice, from evil and Satanic to Las Vegas showman or circus announcer. “Which is why I’m here!” he said with a grin.
Meanwhile, back in the world inhabited by more normal weirdos, Eli wore an expression of alarm and utter surprise. This might have been because nothing he’d seen that morning had given him any reason to suspect that the gentleman in the ratty suit would suddenly break out a Latin-dance/Jiu-Jitsu move on this random jerk. Of course, it might also have been the fact that his newfound amnesiac friend was glowing slightly.
“Fuck,” the Tank managed to choke the word out. He followed up with a gurgled, “you.” He wriggled and twisted, trying to wrench himself free.
The Devil lifted his head back away from the Tank’s ear to look him in the face. When he spoke, his voice had changed. It had grown, expanded, and multiplied, as if the guy at the sound board had cranked up all the knobs for reverb and echo, and then punched the button labeled “Demonic Backing Vocals.” The fact that he spoke in Latin just made it sound that much more evil and scary. “Mens est suus locus, et verto olympus ut abyssus.” The Tank gaped and shuddered. “Iam proficiscor vos pro somnus.”
There was a popping sound like an oversized champagne bottle being opened, and a flash of brilliant, white light. And where before there had been a corpulent guy with a nasty disposition, there was now just a faint cloud of sparkly gray dust spilling out of the track suit and streaming toward the ground.
Satan stood and tossed the track suit aside. He brushed the dust off his hands and turned to Eli with the pleased expression of someone who has just bowled a strike.
The prophet’s eyes bulged and seemed to want to crawl out of his head to find somewhere safe to hide. “I saw— I saw something like that in a movie once. Robots exploded Los Angeles. It was—” He seemed suddenly to be having some trouble with the ground, like he was in the middle of his very own private earthquake.
Satan, still glowing a bit, stepped toward Eli and held the man’s face in his hands. “It’s all right,” he said. He stared hard into Eli’s eyes, like he was trying to see right through them to look at the man’s amygdala or something. “Relax, my friend.”
Eli seemed to regain his composure. At least, he no longer looked like he was about to have an unpleasant, cranially-damaging encounter with the concrete. Satan stepped back, put his hands on his hips, and grinned.
“How—” the prophet breathed like he’d been running. “How? What?” His hands seemed to be doing an independent run-through of all the gestures they knew. “How did you do that?
“Oh.” Satan laughed casually and gave a dismissive wave. “I don’t know.”
“Well, that was definitely—” He shook his head. “Who are you?”
“I,” said Satan, “am an avenging angel.” He beamed. “I just remembered.”
Eli’s eyes grew wide again. “It really is the end of the world!”
Satan cocked his head and squinted at Eli, unsure if he was really willing to make that kind of inferential leap.
Eli stepped back to look at the Devil. “Where are your wings?”
The Devil attempted peer over his shoulder at where his wings should be, turning around in kind of a tight circle like a dog chasing his tail. He stopped and looked back at Eli. “They’re gone,” he said, his eyes wide.
They stood in contemplative silence for a moment, and then Satan perked up. “I need a sword, preferably a flaming one. I seem to have lost that too.” He patted Eli’s cheek, and strode off past him toward the old man who’d so recently been moving furniture.
Eli seemed to deflate. “What?”
But Satan’s attention was now focused entirely on the old man, who sat on the little porch of the apartment building, next to his wife. Satan squatted down and put his hand on the man’s shoulder. The old man shuddered a little at the touch, but looked up into the Devil’s eyes, unafraid.
“It’s okay,” said Satan. “Everything will be just fine.” But the old man looked confused, and maybe even a little bit angry. It wasn’t okay. Everything, apparently, would not be fine.
“I appreciate...” He waved his hand in the general direction of the pile of now-empty track suit. “But the landlord is going to be really upset that you … you ... evaporated his man. He’s going to be pissed off.” He shook his head, simmering. “And what about our rent? What are you going to do about that?”
Satan leaned over and picked up a length of pipe that was lying on the ground.
The old man continued. “This is a fine mess. A real fine mess.” He pointed an accusing finger at the Devil. “You tell those boys at the KW that this isn’t what we agreed to.”
“What?”
“You’re with the KW, aren’t you?”
“What? What on Earth are you talking about?”
“The KW.” The old man turned his liver-spotted, jowly face to Satan. “Aren’t you with the KW?”
Satan struck a pensive pose and scratched his chin. “I don’t think so.” With that settled, he moved on to bigger, brighter, and less boring things. “Regard this,” he said, wielding the pipe, “this simple pipe.” He waved his hand with a flourish and the pipe ignited. “Now, regard this flaming pipe of divine justice!” He wafted the fiery implement back and forth a couple of times.
The old man glared at Satan, evidently not impressed, and still very pissed.
The Devil let the hand holding the pipe drop by his side. “You shouldn’t be ungrateful,” he said. “The Almighty gets very upset when people are ungrateful. Very upset. You could even say, I suppose, that it irks Him.” Satan held up the fiery pipe again, and was just about to administer some fiery, Divine retribution when he was interrupted by the sound of squeaky brakes.
Satan turned to see an enormous Town Car roll to a stop. Almost every part of it – even the windows – was black. And the bits that weren’t black were brilliantly-polished chrome. It was immaculate, and – to Satan – beautiful.
He turned to Eli. “Ooh,” he said, pointing his fire pipe back at the car. Behind him, the old man and his wife stood, removing caps, patting down skirts, fixing mussed hair, and otherwise making themselves presentable for their overlords.
Eli shuffled over to Satan’s side in a hurry, apparently anxious about something. “Put that thing out,” he said, waving his hands. “Put it out.”
“What?”
Eli pointed at the car. “It’s the KW!”
“What’s that?”
“Kind of like the ... the mob. Or what’s that Japanese thing? The Yakuza. Bad news. Very bad news.”
“Oh,” said Satan lightly. He extinguished the flaming pipe of Almighty Vengeance and tossed it aside. “Should we run away?”
Eli stopped, turned, and straightened up as best he could. “No,” he said. “It’s too late for that.”
Chapter 31. Hells Bells
Bill Cadmon entered his office to find that the ratio of hot, young assistants to old, fat guys had got completely out of whack. The usual compliment of buxom, college-age blondes was present, of course, but there were far too many corpulent, middle-aged men – which is to say that there was one old, fat guy sitting in Bill Cadmon’s $3,000 chair, which was parked behind the preacher’s 125-year-old, $25,000 desk.
“What are you doing here?” asked Cadmon.
Dick Whitford ignored the question. Dick Whitford did not answer questions that did not serve his purposes. “You didn’t get him, did you?”
“What?”
“The body,” said Whitford.
“Oh, I—”
“You didn’t.”
“—don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to ask.”
Whitford raised his eyebrows in the way that Big Deals sometimes do when they want to signal that all questioning, gainsaying, or other forms of uncooperative conversational behavior should cease immediately. “You didn’t get the body.” Having made his point, Whitford returned his attention to a folder of papers he’d spread out on the desk.
“Okay,” said Cadmon, flummoxed. He tried a different tack. “How do you—?”
Whitford did not look up. “He burned down the Mansion.”
“He?”
“The one you were supposed to take care of.”
“How do you know it was him?”
Whitford tore off his reading glasses and stared up at Cadmon from underneath heavy lids. “Who the hell else could it be?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Anybody. There are a lot of maniacs running around town right now…”
“Those are your maniacs,” said Whitford, with a nod toward the door, presumably to indicate the various militia men on the church grounds, and not the nice old lady who was mopping the floor just outside the office. “Or are you trying to tell me that you think your men burned down my mansion? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Well, no. Of course not, but—”
“I didn’t think so,” said Whitford. “Besides, we have video from the security cameras. Apparently the video shows the whole thing – every surface of the building – bursting into flames simultaneously. Hard to imagine the morons you’ve hired managing that.”
“Did the video show—?”
“No,” said Whitford.
“You didn’t know what I was going to ask.”
“Yes, I did.”
“No, you didn’t. I was going to ask about llamas. You had no idea that I was going to ask about llamas. Did the video show any llamas?”
Whitford lowered his eyelids to half mast. He sat like that for a moment, and then returned his attention to the papers.
“So you think it was supernatural…” Cadmon spoke the conclusion to himself, and then stuck out his chin as he contemplated the implications. “You think it might be our guy?”
Whitford slapped the papers down the desk. “Isn’t that what I just said?”
“Right. Right.”
“And now, because you failed to take care of him, he’s burned down my mansion. And let me tell you something,” Whitford propped an elbow on the desk and pointed a meaty finger at Cadmon, “I think it’s only a matter of time before he shows up here.”
Cadmon’s eyes got big and he began to look all around him. “He’s— I— What do we do?”
Whitford stared dolefully at his partner in crime. He sighed, and pursed his lips. “I think,” he said, “that we’ve got no choice.” Cadmon cast him an inquisitive look. Whitford leaned over the side of his chair and, with a hearty wheezing sound, came back up and plonked a gas mask down on the desk. “We’ve got to speed things up a bit.”
Chapter 32. Straight into the Frying Pan
“I must say,” said Alistair Preston, “I’m very surprised by the sudden resurgence of interest in all of this.”
“What?” Liam and Lola spoke in unison.
“Oh, well, I’ve had several people telephoning me recently, asking all sorts of questions.”
“Several? Who?” asked Lola.
“Oh, who remembers such things? Not me.” He laughed the light, carefree laugh of an aristocrat. Ramón laughed too. His sounded more like “heh heh.”
Preston tossed a single manila folder down on the table. “This is everything I have.” He leaned against one of the high-backed chairs, and watched for a moment as Lola leafed through the papers.
“Why don’t you just start at the beginning?” said Lola, opening the folder and then tossing it back on the table.
“Always a prudent point at which to begin,” said Preston. He began to pace. “It started out simply enough,” he said. His teaspoon made a little clinking sound as he moved it from his cup to his saucer. “We began by looking at mind control. Part of all that LSD nonsense, you see – mind wipes, mass hysteria – but then it grew to other things, and we began investigating all manner of, well, paranormal phenomena – mind reading, action at a distance – all terribly exciting stuff really.” He smiled a conspiratorial smile, as if mind control schemes were just the sorts of things one did, you know, when one got together with the boys after dinner.
Liam and Lola exchanged glances, their eyebrows raised. Festus looked at each in turn, desperately trying to make eye contact with someone, but they both ignored him and looked back at Preston instead.
“And you were successful?” asked Lola, her voice indicating that she doubted they were.
“Oh well, you know. I don’t like to brag.” He placed one hand across his chest and looked away demurely. After a sufficiently humble pause, he continued. “We had a measure of success.” He took a dainty sip of his tea.
“Was this that thing where you guys killed goats?” asked Lola.
Preston threw up one hand in exasperation. The other stayed put, holding on to his tea un-exasperatedly. “What, my dear, do you have against goats? Why does everyone want to kill goats? The goat is a noble, willful creature that neither can nor should be killed using brain power alone.”
“Oh, sorry. Ramón said it was goats.”
Preston shot a dirty look at Ramón. “You told them it was goats? You? Oh, Ramón.” They stared at one another for a tense and sexually-charged moment, and then Preston returned his attention back to Lola. “No, no. It wasn’t goats at all. It was sheep.” He sipped his tea, calmer now.
“And you killed these animals… with your—”
“With our minds.” Preston made his eyes big.
“Ah … ha,” said Lola.
“But it was just sheep,” he said, looking at them over the edge of his teacup. “Well, not just sheep. There were a few cats, and a dog. Quite a few smallish quadrupeds, actually. One time there was even a horse.” He had a good chuckle at this, sighed, and wiped a tear from his eye. When he spoke again, his voice had a gravelly, wizardy quality to it. “Alas, my dear, it was mostly just sheep.”
“So, what you’re saying is that this was a caprine shenanigan?” asked Festus. The words burst out of his mouth. He’d clearly been holding them in, waiting for the first pause to make his joke. Everyone turned and looked at him. Preston made a face like he’d just taken a whiff of three-day-old milk.
“I think,” said Preston, “that the word you’re looking for is ‘ovine.’ ‘Caprine’ means goat-like and, as I have attempted to make entirely clear more than once already, there were no goats involved.”
Ramón shook his head, disgusted.
Preston shuddered and looked back to Lola. “They were never really sure of the mechanism, you know. Of course, you give any sheep, or horse for that matter, that much LSD, and well…” He took another sip of his tea. “Sadly,” he said, “that isn’t the sort of thing that garners a lot of funding.”
“Can’t imagine why,” said Lola.
“Oh,” said Preston, peering over his cup, “you’d be surprised at what the United States government will pay for.”
“Even so,” she said, “we’d like to get copies of anything you still have.”
“I’m sorry,” said Preston, “but there’s nothing left. They destroyed everything. Burned it all.” He shrugged.
“Who is ‘they’—?” She stopped though, and turned to watch Liam, who suddenly seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. He stood up, and walked slowly toward the front door, craning his neck this way and that to look through the gauzy curtains that covered the windows on either side of the entry.
Lola left the couch, following Liam toward the door. “What’s up?”
Liam hushed her with his hand, and pulled one of the curtains to the side. Through the window he could see a pickup truck, the body of which sat perched precariously on absurdly-large tires. It was covered with lights, metal guards of various sorts, and stickers proclaiming the driver�
�s allegiance to the Republic of Texas and the National Rifle Association.
“Alistair, are you expecting additional guests?” called Liam, over his shoulder.
“None other than you, my dear.” Preston made his way toward the front door.
A car door slammed, and Liam peered back through the window.
“Who is it?” asked Festus, helpful as ever.
Outside, walking from the truck toward the house, was a man who Liam judged not to be very nice. He based this judgment in part on the amount of flannel the man was wearing, which was a lot – far more than would normally be found covering a person with whom one might expect to strike up a pleasant, polite conversation that didn’t touch on things like the alleged shortcomings of certain ethnic groups or the question of whether the South would rise again – and partly on the fact that this flannel-clad individual was carrying a shotgun.
Liam turned away from the window, and strode back into the living room. He pointed to Preston and Ramón. “You two. Go.” He waved one hand dismissively toward the rear of the house. “Hide somewhere.”
“What? What’s the matter?” asked Preston.
“There’s a man with a gun,” said Liam, “and you need to go hide yourselves right now.”
“Oh, then. Come along Ramón.” The odd couple disappeared down a hallway.
“What about me?” asked Festus.
“You can hide, too.” He gave Festus an encouraging shove, and Festus scampered off to try to catch up with Preston and Ramón. “Lola, sit over there.” He pointed at one of the fancy couches.
“What?” asked Lola.
“Sit. There.” He pointed at the couch again.
Lola shrugged, squinted, and shook her head.
“Sit on the couch. Act surprised when he comes in. Don’t let him know I’m here.” Liam stepped back toward the entryway, and crouched down behind a tall plant in the corner.
If the man had come inside at that instant, he would have found Lola, sitting on a couch, making nasty, sullen faces at a house plant. But the man didn’t come in. Instead he knocked.
What Would Satan Do? Page 20