I DRIVE ACROSS town and beach the Bonneville in a no-parking zone in front of the Bradbury Building, that old art deco ziggurat and one of the few truly beautiful constructions in L.A. A group of schoolkids is on a field trip and I let them pass by before stepping into a shadow. I'm pretty sure a couple of the kids saw me. Good. Kids need their minds blown every now and then. It'll keep them from thinking that managing a McDonald's is the most they can hope for.
I don't come straight out into Mr. Muninn's cavern. I lean against the wall in the Room of Thirteen Doors. This is the still, quiet center of the universe. Even God can't text me here. In here I'm alone and bulletproof.
I've had one ace up my sleeve since this whole circus with Mason, Aelita, and Marshal Wells began. The kill switch. The Mithras. The first fire in the universe and the last. The flame that will burn this universe down to make way for the next. I told Aelita about it but she never believed me. She couldn't. I'm an Abomination and I could never get anything over on a pure-blood angel like her. So what good does that make the Mithras? A threat only works if people believe in it, which leaves me alone in this eternal echo chamber, not sure what to do. I can get behind Mustang Sally's beauty-in-darkness idea. That's half the reason Candy and I have been circling each other all these months. We're each other's chance to find some black peace in the deep dark.
Burning the universe was a lot more fun to think about when Alice was somewhere safe. Some puny hopeful part of me imagined that Heaven would still stand even if the rest of the universe turned to ash. But Alice is Downtown now and I know she was right and I have to let go of her, but I can't let her die down in Mason's crazy-house hellhole, and that's what will happen if I throw the kill switch.
I grab a heavy glass decanter from the floor and step out into Muninn's underground storeroom.
I yell, "Mr. Muninn. It's Stark."
He sticks his head out from around a row of shelves overflowing with Tibetan skull bowls and ritual trumpets made of human femurs decorated with silver. He wipes his brow on a black silk handkerchief as he walks over.
"Just doing a bit of inventory. Sometimes I think I should hire a boy like you to put this all on a computer, but then I think that by the time he's finished, computers will be obsolete and we'll have to do it all over again with brains in jars or genius goldfish or whatever other wonders scientists come up with next."
He sighs.
"I suppose in a place like this, the old ways work best. Besides, I know that while it looks like a jumble to other people, I know where each and every item is. I only do inventory as an excuse to revisit doodads and baubles I haven't handled in a century or two."
He sees the glass container in my hand.
"Oh my. You've brought it back. Let's sit down and have a drink."
Muninn's desk is a worktable covered in the kind of junk that would give the staff at the Smithsonian nuclear hard-ons. An early draft of the Magna Carta that included the emancipation of ghosts. Little floating and whizzing matchbox-size gewgaws from Roswell. Cleopatra's lucky panties. For all I know, he has Adam and Eve's fig leaves pressed in their high school yearbook.
I set the decanter on the table between us. If you look hard enough into the glass, you can see a flickering match head of fire. It doesn't look like much, but neither do the few micrograms of plutonium it takes to kill you as dead as eight-track tapes and with a lot more open sores.
"You've changed your mind, have you? You're not going to set us all ablaze like the Roman candles on the Fourth of July?"
"When you put it like that, it sounds fun. Giving this back might be a mistake, but I don't think it's mine anymore."
I pick it up and look inside. I've had the Mithras all this time, but I've hardly ever looked at it. It's beautiful.
"I don't want this sitting in the Room in case Mason manages to make a key and can get in there."
"No. If there was anyone even more unsuitable than you to hold the Mithras, it would be him. No offense, of course. I would never have traded it to you if I thought that you were capable of using it."
"But I am. I was. I almost pulled that plug a hundred times."
"But you didn't. And that's why I let you have it."
I push the Mithras across the table in his direction. Muninn picks it up carefully, like a preacher who just found a Gutenberg Bible at a garage sale, and puts it on a nearby shelf where he can keep an eye on it.
He says, "If you see any of my brothers when you get to Hell, please give them my regards."
"Your brothers are in Hell?"
"One or two, I expect. I'm the only sedentary one. The others are restless sorts. They're bound to pop up anywhere. Some of them pass through Hell on occasion and send me trinkets for my collection."
He points to a shelf with Hellion weapons, a cup I recognize from Azazel's palace, and a chunk of the same kind of black bone that my knife was carved from.
"How will I know if I meet one of your brothers?"
He laughs.
"You'll know. We're twins except that there are five of us, so I suppose we're two and a half twins."
"I'm going to be moving pretty fast, so hello is about all I'll have time to say."
"You won't even have to say that if you're busy. Here," Muninn says.
He pulls a metal strongbox from under the table and takes a set of keys from his pocket. I've never seen so many keys in one place at one time. He flips through them, makes a face, and tosses them on the table. He gets out an identical set from his other pocket. A lot of the keys on this ring are bigger and older. He finds one that's so thick with rust, it's more like a twig that's been laying in the water and is covered with barnacles. He jams the thing into the strongbox lock and turns. It scrapes, groans, and whines, but after a minute of really laying into the thing, the box pops open. He reaches inside and pulls out a twelve-sided crystal and hands it to me. I hold it up to the light and look inside. Two pinheads, one white and one black, circle around each other in the center.
"What is it?"
"A Singularity. An infinitely hot, infinitely dense dot. Well, the two halves of it. Apart they'll circle eternally, but when they come together . . ." He raises his hands and makes the sound of an explosion with his cheeks. "In common parlance, it's the Big Bang. You gave me the end of the universe, so I'm giving you the beginning. I spirited it away with me when I left the family."
I heft the thing in my hand. It's light. Maybe half a pound. It seems kind of light for a universe.
"This was your hedge, wasn't it? In case you were wrong about me and I did set off the Mithras. If I killed off this universe, you could start it up again."
He closes the strongbox and puts it back under the table.
"I have a great deal of faith in you, but I've learned that it's always smart to have a backup plan."
"If you set off the Singularity, would it restart this universe or start another?"
"There's no way of telling until it happens. And in the end, does it really matter?"
"Not to me. Though I might miss cigarettes."
He points at the crystal in my hand.
"If you run into one of my brothers down there, give it to him. Do me this favor and I'll owe you a favor down the line."
He gets out a bottle of wine. Muninn always likes to seal a deal with a drink. It's one of the reasons he's good to do business with.
"In the meantime, keep the crystal safe. There's only one. Now, is there anything I can give you to help you on your journey?"
He pours us wine in two highball glasses with dancing girls etched into the sides. I feel like I'm in the Rat Pack.
"What have you got? I don't know what I'm going to be walking into down there."
Muninn rummages through a box of random junk on the corner of the table and pulls out something the size of an acorn. He sets it on the table and drinks his wine. The thing is small and speckled.
I say, "It looks like an egg."
Muninn nods.
"It is. The creature it comes from doesn't live in this dimensional plane, but don't worry. It's no more exotic than an archaeopteryx, so the egg is completely edible."
"Does that mean if I keep it warm, I'll get a flying lizard?"
Muninn's eyes brighten.
"Wouldn't that be lovely? No, the egg has medicinal properties. If you're hurt, it will help you heal and dull the pain. It has a very tough shell, so don't feel you have to be delicate with it. Just toss it in a pocket. If you need it, put it between your teeth and bite down hard. I've heard they taste rather sweet. Like white chocolate."
"You've never tried one?"
"I've never been hurt."
If I had more time, I'd definitely want to hear more about that, but I don't.
"By the way. There's a tasty '55 or '56 Bonneville parked outside on Broadway. I don't need it anymore and the people I took it from don't deserve it. It would look good in your collection."
"You're too good to me," he says, and comes around the table. "I'll be sure to collect it before it's towed away."
I drop the egg in my coat pocket and get up.
"I have some packing to do, so I should get going."
Muninn takes my hand and shakes it warmly.
"You keep my crystal safe and I'll keep the Mithras for you. I hope to see you back here very soon."
He waves at me as I step into a shadow by the stairs . . .
. . . AND COME OUT in the shadowed and semidiscreet entrance of the Museum of Death across from the hotel. It's technically getting toward evening, but only technically. The sun won't go down for another three hours and I'm very tired.
When I step out into the sun, the desert heat slaps me hard. It's funny. I've lived here most of my life, so I hardly ever notice the heat. Maybe I'm feeling it now because I'm coming out of Muninn's cool cavern. Maybe I'm noticing it the way someone with terminal cancer notices every leaf, every snatch of a song, every breeze from a passing car, and the color of smog over the hills as they wheel him to the hospice.
When I get back to the room, Candy has pushed and kicked most of the broken furniture to one side, leaving a minimalist scattering of chairs and lamps filling the cleared space.
"You got it real homey in here. Like a twister came through, not a full-on hurricane."
She uses the toe of her sneaker to push a couple of legs from a broken table under the pile of debris.
"I wanted to make a good impression on the hotel so they could admire all the stuff we didn't break."
She's looking at the junk and not at me.
"There's no reason you have to leave. You heard what Mason said. However this thing turns out it can't last more than three days."
She looks at me over her shoulder, kicking splinters and broken glass into the pile.
"You want me to just hang around here like you've gone out for cigarettes?"
"I'm coming back," I say.
She turns and faces me, arms folded and staring at her feet.
"Are you? You're not going to find something more important to do? Save the whales in Narnia or start a Hellion homeless shelter?"
"If you think I'm going to get back with Alice, you're wrong. I'm going back to save her. Those are two different things."
"Easy to say standing here when you can't see her and aren't all dewy-eyed. She's the love of your life and I'm just some girl with fangs you like to fuck."
I hate shit like this. This is when I want to be Downtown and stay there. This is what regular people call real life and I can't stand it. Give me a thousand Hellion throats to cut. It's better than this.
I say, "It's not like that and you know it."
There's a long pause.
"I want to think that."
"So do it. This is what it's like being around me. I don't get a lot of downtime."
I go over to her. She's still staring at her feet. Her arms are still crossed, but she doesn't move away. I rest my hands on her shoulders.
"Ever since I got back, people having been getting bloody because of me. Parker almost killed Allegra and Vidocq. A Drifter took a bite out of Brigitte. Doc Kinski is dead. Alice was dragged off to Hell. Now it's this Hunter kid and you."
She unfolds her arms and lets them drop to her sides.
I say, "I can't fix what's already happened, but I can goddamn well kill it at the source, and that's what I'm going to do. I'm not doing this for Alice or you or Doc or anyone else. I'm doing this for me because I'm tired of waiting to see what kind of heinous shit Mason dreams up next and who it's going to take down."
I move a hand up behind her head, feeling her shaggy Joan Jett hair.
"Don't stick around if you don't want to. Hell, I never even bought you the breakfast I promised. It'd be great if you're here when I get back, but I won't blame you if you're not. I don't know if I'd stick around this half-assed horse opera. So if I don't see you again, thanks for playing monster with me for a while. It felt good."
I turn and head for the door, but stop before I get it open. I don't turn around.
"You got a taste of blood when you bit that dealer back at Dead Set. Promise me you'll go to Allegra and get some of the potion that helps you control the craving."
"I promise."
I go out onto the balcony, closing the door behind me.
IN THE PARKING lot, foreign exchange students are playing basketball and eating burritos from a taqueria truck parked on the street. A couple have their laptops out and are video-chatting with their families back home.
I head to my room with Kasabian.
Someone taps me on the shoulder.
"Hey."
Candy comes around in front of me.
She says, "When you're born in a burning house, you think the whole world is on fire. But it's not."
"What is that?"
"It's something Doc told me. I didn't get it at first, but later on it made sense. I thought maybe it could help you."
"Thanks."
I nod at the door.
"You coming in?"
She smiles a little and nods.
We go in.
Vidocq, Allegra, and Father Traven are inside talking. Vidocq and Allegra are sitting on the bed and Traven is on a chair across from them. Kasabian is by his computer listening to them and smoking. Candy goes over and sits by Allegra.
There's a small single bed in the corner. It never gets used, so junk just gets piled there. Magazines. DVDs. Dirty clothes. A few bottles of Jack Daniel's. I sweep it onto the floor and think about sitting down, but it doesn't quite happen.
"Is this my going-away party or a wake? 'Cause if it's supposed to be a party, you're doing it wrong."
"We knew that you being you, you would just creep off into the night like a thief," says Vidocq. "So we decided to force our company upon you for a little while before you left."
I look at Vidocq.
"Yeah. You're right. I would have---so you don't have to watch me twitch until sundown."
"What happens at sundown?" asks Allegra.
"I make like Robert Johnson and go down to the crossroads."
Candy says, "Is that what Mustang Sally said?"
"Yes. I can find a back door to Hell there."
"Who's Mustang Sally?" Allegra asks.
"The patron saint of road rage."
Vidocq puts a hand on her arm.
"A significant local spirit. I'll tell you about her later."
I'm standing in the middle of the room like an idiot. They're all gawking at me like I'm made of peanut brittle and might fall apart any second. I want to toss everyone out. I need to get my brain wired tight for Hell. And the Black Dahlia. I'm trying not to think about that. I've been nearly killed a hundred ways, but never in a car, and I never had to actually die to pull off any hoodoo before. What if it all goes wrong? What if I end up just another tangle of ground meat and chrome on the side of the freeway? I'd get a great obituary. "A suspect in the murder of his longtime girlfriend Alice, a man who was declared legally dead seven years ago, finally turns up really and truly dead in a stolen car wrapped around a freeway support while rushing to have tea with the devil."
Mason would love to have me stuck in Hell. Just another damned dead asshole. So would all the generals and aristocrats I didn't get a chance to kill and the friends and families of all the Hellions I did kill. If I end up dead down there, it'll be one long endless Dante gang bang. Get out the chain saws and pass the mint juleps. It's party time down south.
"Why don't you sit down for a while?" says Candy.
Allegra chimes in, "Even Sandman Slim can't make the sun go down faster."
"I was going to stamp my feet and hold my breath, but you're probably right."
I sit down on the small bed.
"What happens now? Did anyone bring cake? Or is it a sleepover and we're going to do each other's nails?"
"Don't be like that," says Candy. "Your friends are just worried, is all."
"I appreciate that, but if you want to help, we should switch beds. I need to get some stuff from under that one."
Candy, Allegra, and Vidocq come over to the small one and I go around them to the big bed. It's a clumsy little square dance, but we make it. Candy squeezes my arm as she goes by and whispers, "Don't be a little bitch," in my ear.
That's the best advice anyone's given me all year.
I take off my coat and throw it on the bed. I pull everything out of the coat and my pockets. I toss the cash aside. It won't do me any good Downtown. A key to this room and Candy's. Toss those. My phone. Toss. A pencil-thin piece of lead I sometimes use for drawing magic circles. Another toss. I carry a lot of crap.
I pull a silver coin and a smooth pea-size piece of amber out of my pants pocket. The silver coin is about the size of a quarter and is old. Like ancient old. The kind of thing Doc would have carried. And there's the amber. It's not big enough to be worth anything. I've never seen either of them before. Someone must have slipped them into my pocket. I get it. Silver is protection from evil. Amber is for healing. I don't look over at Candy. I just put them back in my pocket.
Vidocq says, "Let me be sure I understand this. Your great plan is to do exactly what Mason told you to do?"
"Pretty much. I sneak in, grab Alice, stab Mason in the head, and I'm back in time to catch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan."
"Mason is a born liar and he hates you. Why would he possibly tell you the truth?"
I push the mattress out of the way and start pulling out weapons from where I hid them in the box springs.
"Because the truth is worse than a lie. He took Alice away once when he killed her. Now he wants to show how much better he is than me by doing it again. It's playground stuff, but that's all this has ever been."
It's funny seeing the guns and other toys all laid out. The old Navy Colt revolver, great-great-granddad Wild Bill Hickok's gun. The LeMat pistol. Kind of huge and useless, but I like it. There's a cut-down Clyde Barrow--style "Whippit" gun. There are souvenirs I've taken off Lurkers and lowlifes. A farmers' market of pistols. Tasers. Brass knuckles with valentine hearts on the business side. Chinese butterfly knives and weirdly shaped Lurker daggers shaped for nonhuman hands. A sharpened goat horn. My favorite is a silver stake made by a wannabe high school vampire slayer. She made it by sharpening a flat-head screwdriver and dipping it in a pot of melted dimes. The perfect weapon against shroud eaters. Only the little idiot didn't know that modern dimes are mostly copper covered in nickel. All she did was ruin a perfectly good screwdriver and prove that L.A. schools truly suck.
"You have nothing but his word. It isn't possible."
"Of course it is. Mason has Hell and now he wants Heaven. Aelita wants to murder God. Neither of them wants me stumbling around and maybe getting in their way."
"Searching for Alice will keep you busy while they carry out their plans."
"Right."
Traven says, "I understand how a mortal man might come up with a mad plan to rule the universe, but how does an angel fall so far from grace?"
"You're the preacher. You tell me."
He shakes his head.
"I suppose if I knew the answer, I'd still be part of the Church."
"Come on, Father. Angels have been going crazy since the beginning of time. They're another one of God's great fuckups. Look at me. I wouldn't even be in this world of shit if an angel hadn't fucked my mother."
"They didn't cover any of this at the seminary."
"It's comforting to know that God's schools are as rotten as the regular ones."
As fun as my weapon collection is, most of it's useless where I'm going. I have my na'at and the black blade. They kept me alive Downtown for eleven years. They'll probably do it again. I always feel better with a gun on my belt, but getting shot with any of these would just make a Hellion giggle.
I look at Kasabian.
"You want to jump in here sometime with any new info?"
He looks at the bed and says, "I'm going to have a motherfucker of a garage sale if you don't come back."
"Thanks for your support. Is it possible that Mason is armed up enough to attack Heaven in the next three days?"
"Troops are still coming in from all over. There are a lot of deserters, but not enough to make a difference."
"You said Mason couldn't attack without Semyazah's troops. Did he go over?"
Kasabian shakes his head.
"He's not there, but that doesn't mean some other general hasn't been able to turn his troops. Like I said, there's enough fallen angels in Pandemonium to start a thousand boy bands."
I get out Muninn's Singularity and the funny bird egg, Mason's lighter, and the small white stone Lucifer gave me back at Max Overdrive and set them with the na'at and the knife.
Father Traven says, "If all this is true, then you can't go down there alone."
I look at him and then at Kasabian.
"You're having a weird day, aren't you?"
Traven's eyes flicker to Kasabian and away again.
"It's hard to say. I think I'm becoming immune to weird."
"Damn. You're one of us already. Well, welcome to the Grindhouse Rodeo, Father, where it's monster triple features all the time. The popcorn's stale and the drinks are watered down, but we're open all night and deities have to sit in the balcony with the winos and rubber-raincoat types."
Traven does his half smile.
"Thank you, I suppose."
"There used to be a secret handshake, but only Kasabian knows it and he's not talking."
"Fuck you, Susan Vance," he calls from across the room.
"One more thing," I say. "Nobody starts with the you-can't-go-alone stuff. That subject is dead and buried."
The angel in my head is telling me to be calm, but it's not trying very hard. It always wants me to slow down and consider all the angles, but it knows that the clock is ticking on Alice, and now that I'm tying up loose ends on earth, I need to move faster than ever. Momentum is my best strategy. Slowing down and considering the consequences of what I'm doing is doom.
Vidocq and Allegra are holding hands on the small bed. I don't need to listen to their hearts or breathing. They're radiating tension like a microwave oven. Kasabian has gone back to his computer, trying to ignore all of this. Traven looks a little lost. Candy's not much better.
I know carrying a gun is stupid, but I feel naked without one. For sentimental reasons I'd like to take great-great-granddad's Navy Colt, but it's too big. I look back at the pile of guns on the bed and find a small-frame .357 revolver. I can't even hit the ground with the thing if I'm more than ten feet away, but it's better than nothing. I get a roll of duct tape from a drawer and pull my pants leg up a few inches.
"Want to give me a hand?" I say to Candy.
She comes over and I hand her the tape.
"Wrap it around my ankle a few times to hold the gun. Don't be shy. Make it tight."
She squats down in front of me and runs the tape around my leg a few times. Tests to see if the gun is secure and tears off the end with her teeth.
She slaps me on the ankle.
"You're ready to go, Wild Bill."
She leans up, puts her hands on my face, and kisses me. It feels good and it's a relief. I was half expecting a gone-baby gone-death kiss, like the kiss you give a corpse before it rolls into a crematorium. But it's a normal kiss. A have-a-nice-trip, see-you-soon kiss. For once, even the angel in my head is happy.
"Can you hold on to the stuff in that pile?" I ask her. "The phone and keys and cash and whatever."
"Sure."
In the closet there's a box of Alice's things that I took from Vidocq's apartment. I pop the top and start taking things out. What's the appropriate trinket from a murdered girlfriend to wear to a suicide?
From the bed Candy asks, "What are you looking for?"
"I'm supposed to bring something from a murdered person with me. Alice qualifies there, and I figure if I bring the right thing, it might help convince her it's really me. I have a feeling they'll have been messing with her brain by the time I get to her."
"I wasn't murdered, but I'm a girl. Maybe I can help."
"Okay."
She sits down beside me as I pile Alice's things onto the floor. There's a pair of her favorite shoes. Some dime-store bracelets and necklaces from when she was a kid. An Altoids tin with fortune-cookie fortunes and buds of eleven-year-old pot. I set everything on the floor and Candy examines each object. I don't know if she's helping me or trying to figure out who Alice is.
I hear Kasabian putting a DVD into the player by his computer.
"What are you putting on?"
"The Wizard of Oz," he says. "It's about a dumb broad who flies off to somewhere weird and dangerous so she can wander like an asshole down a road she doesn't know and get attacked by monsters and fucked over by a magic man. It sounds strangely familiar."
I pull out more of Alice's things. A brush. A Weirdos T-shirt. Photos of a ruined motel by the water, part of Salton City, an abandoned town in the desert. We were going to take a trip there.
From behind me I hear Traven say, "I wanted to thank you for saving me today and taking me to Allegra's extraordinary clinic."
"How's Hunter doing?"
"Much better. He can go home tomorrow."
"Good for him."
"Is there anything I can do to help besides tape things?"
I get a pen and paper off Kasabian's desk and scrawl lines and shapes. My memory isn't a hundred percent on how the seven symbols Alice was writing looked, but I draw them as well as I can. I hand Traven the paper.
"Do you know what these are?"
He carries the paper over to a lamp and stares at it for a minute.
"This is a very rare script. It's a kind of cipher combining pictograms and letters. Each letter has a numeric value, but their meaning changes in relation to their position in relation to the other characters. Where did you see this?"
"A friend showed it to me. What is it?"
"It's the secret language the fallen angels used to plan their rebellion in Heaven."
"Do you know what it says?"
"May I borrow your pen? I'll need to do some calculations."
I toss it to him and he starts scribbling on the paper.
I'm on my knees next to Candy with Alice's life spread around me on the floor. It's like I've fallen into a Hank Williams song. I push the T-shirt, underwear, jewels, and address books around like I'm looking for the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks. Candy upends a pair of green dress shoes with one broken heel and something falls out. It's a small toy, a plastic rabbit with beard stubble and a cigarette jammed between its lips. Candy holds it up.
"What's this?"
"Alice said it was me in a former life."
Candy smiles.
"I think we have a winner."
"Eleusis," says Traven.
I look at him.
"What's Eleusis?"
He raises his eyebrows.
"I thought you'd be the one to know. It's a region of Hell."
"Never heard of it."
He comes over and hands me the sheet of paper. It's just chicken scratches and his calculations.
Traven says, "Dante wrote about Eleusis in the Inferno, though he didn't call it by that name. Some translations described it as the woods given to the virtuous pagans. Dante described it as a green and pleasant place for pre-Christian men and women who weren't sinners but couldn't get into Heaven because they weren't redeemed by Christ's sacrifice."
"Wait, Heaven is punishing those for being born too early?"
"It's not punishment. It's like Limbo. A work-around invented by the Church centuries ago. If humanity can only be redeemed by Christ's death, what happens to the virtuous prophets of the Old Testament? Eleusis in Greece was the site of ancient mystery rites and therefore a vaguely mystical region as good as any to dispose of the pagans."
I hand the paper back to him.
"Then Eleusis is where Mason has Alice."
"From what I recall, it's a long way from Pandemonium. Halfway across Hell in fact."
"Does going across Hell get me frequent-flier miles?"
I take my coat off the bed and load in the na'at, the knife, and the other gear.
It's still two hours until sundown.
"We can sit here and stare at each other or we can have a drink and send for some food."
"Food," says Vidocq, and the others agree.
Kasabian turns around. Suddenly we have his attention.
"What kind of food?"
"Chicken and waffles," says Candy.
"From Roscoe's?" says Allegra. "I don't think they deliver."
"Everyone delivers if you pay them enough," says Kasabian. He types something into the computer and a phone app opens on the screen. "Watch. I'm the king of overtipping."
I say, "As long as you're wasting my money, get Donut Universe to send over a wheelbarrow-ful of whatever's fresh."
Traven is staring at the paper with the angelic cipher.
"What's up, Father? Not a waffle fan?"
He says, "I'm horrified by what you're about to do, but I'm also a little envious. Hell is waiting for me when I die, but I don't know what it is, and that scares me. But you can walk its streets without being afraid. I'd give anything for that."
"If anyone ever makes you that offer, don't take it. It's a sucker's bet. And I told you. I'll show you around if you end up Downtown."
Traven taps the pen against the paper nervously. He doesn't even know he's doing it. He's picturing flames and oceans of boiling blood. If I tell him it's not like that, he won't believe me. No one ever really believes what you tell them about Hell.
"You and your friends have shown me more of the universe in the last couple of days than the Church did in years. I wish I could do more to show my gratitude," he says.
"Do you have a car?" I ask.
"Yes."
"Is it insured? Like, well insured?"
"It was my late mother's car. She was a careful driver and had every kind of insurance there is."
"Can I borrow it?"
Traven takes out his keys and hands them to me.
"How long will you need it?"
"Just tonight."
TWO HOURS GOES a lot faster with whiskey and food than it does without either.
By the time the sun's gone down, everyone is pretty much acting like a person again and not a mourner in training. Candy catches me looking out the window.
"You probably need to get going soon."
"Yeah, I do."
We get up from where we've been eating on the floor and I put on my jacket. I'm very aware of its weight on my body. Nervousness is all about heightened senses.
Traven is the closest to me. I shake his hand and he nods. Vidocq grabs me in a massive bear hug.
"No good-byes. I'll see you soon."
"Sooner than that."
Allegra comes over and pecks me on the cheek. It's sweet and she means it, but I don't think she's ever quite forgiven me for working for Lucifer a couple of months ago.
Candy loops her arm in mine and walks me to the door.
"Do you want me to walk with you to the car?"
"You should stay here with the others. From here on out, I need to not be Stark. I need to be Sandman Slim and a very bad person."
"You mean more so."
"Yeah. That's what I mean."
Candy puts the plastic rabbit in my hand and we kiss.
Before I go outside, I look at Kasabian. He's gone back to the beginning of the DVD and the opening credits for The Wizard of Oz are playing.
"See you soon, Alfredo Garcia."
He doesn't look up.
"Shut up. The movie's starting."
I open the door and look at Candy.
"Three days."
She nods.
"Three days."
I close the door and get out the car keys.
TRAVEN'S KEYS ARE for a Geo Metro, a glass-enclosed gum wad of fiberglass that's like a car the same way movie-theater nachos are like food. Holding the keys out in front of me like the world's most pathetic magic wand, I push the lock button. Something a few cars up chirps. The Geo is exactly like the kind of car that a preacher's mother would drive. It's blue and looks like something that should come free with a kid's meal at a burger joint. This isn't how I imagined I'd be leaving this world, but I don't have time to hunt and kill a real car. The only thing worse than driving a car like this is having someone see you driving a car like this. Naturally, that's when I see Medea Bava strolling over from across the street. I already have the door open, so I can't even pretend I was going to steal something else. I get the Maledictions out and light one. Going back to Hell may be the worst thing I ever do, but at least I'll be able to get decent cigarettes.
"Why are you bugging me, Medea? I'm leaving town and may not be coming back. Go buy yourself a new crown of thorns. You win."
Medea stops in the street so that cars have to drive around her. She just looks at me, her face sweeping through the phases of the moon, turning her from a beautiful young woman to an old crone and back again.
"You're as constant as the stars in a few things, Sandman Slim. For example, your stupidity and selfishness."
"I also steal cable. What's your point?"
"What you're planning is reckless beyond belief. War is coming from below and above. And you plan on inserting yourself into the middle of it? And for what? A personal vendetta. You've even involved the Kissi. That alone has made the situation a thousand times worse."
"What I'm doing is a lot more than a vendetta."
A minivan full of frat boys goes around her, hooting and flipping her off. Medea flicks her head at them and the van's windows explode inward. You can hear the frat boys screaming as the van rolls to a stop at the corner.
"The last time we met, who were you with? Ah yes, the Czech whore."
"Watch your mouth. Her name is Brigitte and the proper term you're looking for is 'porn star.' You're just jealous of her because you never had a three-way with a cosmonaut."
"And now you're debasing yourself with that rabid dog in your room."
"Candy and I are only at the shock and awe stage. Debasing is penciled in for next Thursday."
Medea glances up the street as the bloody frat boys stumble out of the van. She turns and looks at me.
"Now you're sacrificing yourself for dear sweet Alice."
"You already know that, and I want to be dead before one, so I'm leaving. Have a nice time playing pranks on civilians."
I get into the car, but suddenly she's next to me with her hand on the door.
She says, "Are you really going to sacrifice yourself to save your great betrayer?"
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"You and Alice didn't find each other by chance. We sent her to you."
She lets that sink in for a minute. It doesn't. It just sits there staring at me, ugly and cold.
Medea says, "Do you think the Sub Rosa is so blind that it wouldn't notice a child as powerful as you being raised by ordinary parents? You were dangerous when a child and became more so as you grew. Then you chose to distance yourself from the Sub Rosa, its codes and bylaws."
"Codes and bylaws? What are you? The Rotary Club? Fuck off."
Medea leans in closer. A faint smile plays around her mouth as it morphs from a young woman's full lips to a crone's, as dry and cracked as a desert plain.
"When you left us we needed to know what you were up to. A simple spell wouldn't do. You would have broken it. So we sent something you would accept wholeheartedly. The girl."
"Alice wasn't Sub Rosa. She didn't have any magic. I would have known."
"You're right. Poor Alice was an invalid. But her parents had the gift. They're Sub Rosa, which makes her Sub Rosa, too. Alice's infirmity is what made her the perfect operative. With no magic of her own, you would never suspect her. And keeping watch over you was the one way she could contribute to her people's welfare."
Alice flashes in my memory. A thousand snapshots of her face. Her hands. Her body. There's nothing that reads as magic or lies.
"I don't believe you."
"The truth doesn't require your belief. Alice was never yours. She belonged to us."
"Did Mason put you up to this? Aelita? Maybe both of them. What did they promise you, Baba Yaga? Your own Kentucky fried-chicken-leg house?"
Medea laughs. Up the block frat boys are pulling glass fragments out of each other's faces. One sits on the curb staring at the phone in his hand. He can't think of who to call.
"I'm the Inquisition and the Inquisition is beyond the sort of desires that make bribery possible."
Medea takes something from an inside pocket of her coat and tosses it into the car with me. Wolf teeth and crow feathers bound in linen with horsehair. An Inquisition death sign. She even went to the trouble to dribble a bloody X on top.
She says, "You've used up your nine lives. Go back to your room and be with that animal you rut with. Be happy and ruin yourself quietly the way you should have done years ago. If, however, you continue on the course you're planning, the Inquisition will deal with you permanently. This is your last chance for redemption."
I toss the death sign over my shoulder and take a puff of the Malediction.
"Redemption? I want redemption about as much as I want to be one of the blue-blood Ren Faire masters of the universe you report to. Lucifer chose me to deal with this. Not the Sub Rosa or you or the Golden Vigil or Mickey Mouse. Me. I'm the one who can stop Mason. You get in my way and he wins. That will be the end of everything and it'll be your fault. So why don't you go back to your gumdrop house in the forest and eat some lost children, witch?"
Medea walks to the curb and swings out her arm like a maître d'.
"I won't stop you, but remember this. When your final judgment arrives, I won't come for you. You'll be the one who comes to me, and of your own free will."
"So no hug good-bye?"
I pull the door closed and turn the ignition. The Geo coughs a few times, but the engine finally catches. Medea knocks on the passenger window and I push the button to lower it.
"We'll see each other much sooner than you think," she says.
"Super. You bring balloon animals and I'll hire clowns. It'll be a party."
I steer the Geo around the wrecked van. The frat boy on the curb finally figured out someone to call. Blood runs down his forehead and drips onto his phone, but he looks relieved. There's a siren in the distance.
I turn right at the corner and steer the Geo onto the freeway.
THINKING ABOUT DEATH makes a ride go by fast. Thinking about your own death---even if it's supposed to be temporary---makes it fly by like a cheetah with a jet pack. I've done the grand tour of Hell. I've seen pieces of Heaven in God's parade of divine fuckups. Jackboot angels. Deranged Kissi. Hellions. Ex-archangels. And me, too. I'm about the biggest gag on the geezer's holy blooper reel.
You'd think that with all my connections to the celestial sphere, I'd have a better handle on death. But I don't know anything. I didn't die in Hell and since then I've lived through every kind of attack, abuse, and humiliation Hellions, humans, and hell beasts could pile on. After you've been shot, stabbed, slashed, burned, and almost zombified and survived it all, death gets kind of abstract. It's like valentines and diplomas. Something other people have to deal with. But now it's my turn to ride the pale horse and I have serious reservations about it.
Every day I walk down Hollywood Boulevard and see civilians making themselves crazy worrying about the meetings they're late for or did they put the rent check in the mail or is their ass starting to sag and I think, "I've seen the creaky clockwork that turns the stars and planets. I've gotten drunk with the devil and body-slammed angels. I've seen the Room of Thirteen Doors at the center of the universe. I know the taste of my own blood as well as you know your favorite wine. I've seen so much more than you'll ever see. I know so much more than you'll ever know." And then it hits me like a runaway semi. I don't know anything that matters. Here I am thinking how much better and smarter I am than all the stuffed-shirt meat puppets wandering L.A. and I remember that there's a billion people who haven't done a tenth of the things I've done but who know the big answer to the big question: What happens when you die? I've seen fragments of it. I stood in the desert of Purgatory with Kasabian after he died and before Lucifer brought him back. But that doesn't count. That was someone else's death and Purgatory was just a projection of the afterlife created by my spell. Not the real thing. I've seen death a thousand times, and almost snuffed it myself, but I've never made it through all the way, and that scares me.
Are sex and death connected? Hell yes. They're the two things in the world you can't explain. You only know them by experiencing them. Maybe that was my mistake. I should have asked Mustang Sally if I could trade this death trip for having to relose my virginity at the crossroads. Easy. Any fun girl would be up for that. Instead of driving to my doom in a mom's powder-blue shit wagon, I could be back in Hollywood, stumbling down the street with a grin, a beer, and a frustrated boner, trying to lure drunken dollies into a night of black-magic freeway lust. But no, I didn't think of that and now I'm stuck on a backed-up interstate with what Medea said about Alice banging around in my head and wondering what this steering wheel is going to taste like when my face smashes into it at a hundred miles an hour.
IT HAPPENS ON West Adams as I'm closing in on the crossroads underpass at I-10 and Crenshaw.
The light bar on top of a cop car flashes in my rearview mirror.
Maybe he's looking for someone else.
His siren bleeps twice.
"Pull over."
The cop's voice comes out of the car's bullhorn sounding like a bigger and angrier version of the robot in Candy's glasses.
"Pull over."
The one time I don't steal a car this is what happens. That's the lesson for tonight. Anytime I try to do something like a regular person, I get fucked for it. Never again.
I slow down, but I don't pull over. Every nerve in my body is vibrating, telling me to jam the accelerator and leave these shitbirds in my dust. But I can stomp this accelerator from now until the sun burns out and there still won't be any dust. This three-speed rowboat would lose a drag race to a crippled monkey on a Big Wheel.
I pull over and cut the engine. The patrol car stops behind me. The driver aims the car's outside spotlight at my side mirror, blinding me. I unclamp the angel a little and its eyes cut right through the glare.
Two cops in the car. Both male. One is young and wiry with a close-cropped flattop. He's more excited than he should be at a simple traffic stop. Probably a recent cop school graduate.
The driver, the one getting out, is heavier. A bit of a donut gut, but he's got at least fifty pounds of muscle over his partner. The older cop showing a young pup the ropes. Shit. I'm probably one of his life lessons. Any other night, this Romper Room scene would be playing out somewhere else. I should have pulled over when I saw the lights go on.
I roll down the window. The cop comes up on me sticking close to the car. Smart. If he came in wide, I could reach for a weapon and shoot before he had a chance to get his gun out. Sidling up like he is, I'd have to turn around in my seat to get a shot off and he'd put six slugs in the back of my head before I could say, "Ouch."
The cop has his flashlight out, held in an underhand grip so he can swing it like a club. He shines the light in my face then lowers it a few inches, leaving me temporarily night-blind.
"Evening, sir. Did you know that your left taillight is out?"
"No, I didn't. Thank you. I'll get it fixed first thing tomorrow."
He's unmoved by my diplomacy.
"May I see your license and registration, please?"
"This isn't my car."
"Whose is it?"
"A friend's. He's a priest."
"Is he? May I see your license, then?"
Here it comes.
"I don't have a license."
The light goes back into my eyes. I turn my head this time so I won't go blind. When I look back, the cop has backed away a little from the car. He's lowered the flashlight and his other hand is resting lightly on the grip of his gun.
"Have you been drinking tonight, sir?"
"Nope."
"Please step out of the vehicle."
"I told you already. I don't have a license. None. No bank account. No credit cards. No insurance. No library card. No magazine subscriptions. I'm legally dead, so technically I don't need a goddamn license."
His hands close on the pistol grip. His breathing and heart rate are rising, but his mind is calm and focused. I can't read it, but I can get a feel, and he's all concentration. The young cop could do worse than learning from this guy, but I don't have time to compliment either of them on their keen professionalism.
"Step out of the vehicle, sir."
He says it with a lot more gusto this time.
I say, "Listen, man." But that's all I get out. The cop goes flying over the hood of my car and into the weeds on the other side.
I get out. Josef is there with his perfectly coiffed Nazi hair.
"Why are you wasting time with these people? Kill them and go on," he says.
"I wasn't going to kill them. I was going to knock their heads and lock them in the trunk of their car."
"You enjoyed killing Kissi so much before, but when you had nowhere else to go, you asked us for our help. Now we're on the same side and you won't kill a couple of humans who would happily shoot you."
I flick the burning Malediction butt at him. He looks more surprised at that than he did when I cut off his head.
"You and your whole race were off floating around in the universe like dust. You wanted my deal. And I killed Kissi before because you're unreasonable psycho fucks and you were on Mason's side."
I look over at the cop lying in the weeds.
"These guys I could have handled without anyone having to go to the emergency room."
Which reminds me.
A door opens and slams. The rookie cop is out of the patrol car, his gun cocked and ready. Josef heads right for him.
"Stop where you are!" the rookie shouts. "Stop or I'll shoot!"
Josef is almost on him.
"Stop!"
The rookie fires twice. Exit wounds punch fist-size holes out of the back of Josef's designer shirt, but he never stops moving. I can hear the rookie's neck snap from all the way over here. I go over to the curb to check on the older cop. He's unconscious, but his heart is beating.
"Get away from him and do what you came here to do!" shouts Josef.
He heads for me, but he's been shot and he's a little slow. I get to him first. Squeezing his throat with one hand and his balls with the other, I flip him up and over the front of the cop car. He rolls and smashes the windshield. Before he can scramble off, I grab his ankle and spin, tossing him into the back of the Metro. He bounces off it and takes a swing at me, but he's off balance. I slip his blow and punch him in the throat. He falls to his knees.
"Don't ever just walk in and take over a situation I have in hand. Understand?"
He nods, trying to remind his throat how to breathe.
"And don't tell me how to do what I do. I invited you here, but it's still my tea party. It might not look like it to you sometimes, but I know what I'm doing. Got it?"
Josef nods. Resting his elbows on the Metro, he pulls himself to his feet. He's still unsteady, so I lean him back against the car, playing concerned dad now that the kid's been put in his place. The truth is I don't know what I'm doing two-thirds of the time, but I'd never admit that to a Kissi. What I need to do is calm Hermann Göring down.
I say, "You're going to get to do a lot more killing soon. And against a lot more fun and interesting opponents than these two. When it's over, you'll have Hell and your own kingdom again. That is if you don't get trigger-happy and Fuck. Up. Everything. Do you know where Eleusis is?"
Josef nods.
"When I get Downtown that's where I'm heading. Wait for my signal there. Got it?"
"Yes," he says. If his eyes could walk out of his head, they'd march over here and strangle me with my own intestines.
I take his hand and drop Traven's car keys in them.
"Do you remember the hotel where you came to see me?"
"Yes."
"Drive this car over there and leave it on the street. Leave the keys under the driver's seat."
He looks at the keys like I just shoveled dog shit into his hand.
"Why would I do that? I'm not your errand boy."
"Because it's not an errand. It's a loose end and loose ends are what ruin plans and get people hurt. Understand?"
He takes the keys and gets into the Metro.
Before he closes the door he says, "Go to Hell."
"Why didn't I think of that?"
As he heads out I check on the older cop. His heart and breathing are on the low end, but steady. I take the car keys off his belt and go back to the patrol car.
Inside, I reach across the laptop bolted between the seats and unhook the mike from the dashboard.
"Officers down at the corner of Adams and Eleventh Street. One is alive but hurt and the other is pretty much dead. For the record, I didn't do either one of them, but you wouldn't believe me if I told you who did."
The cop's communication unit crackles. I look for an off button but can't find one, so I kick everything on the dashboard until the noise stops. While I'm in Hulk mode, I punch the shattered windshield out of the way. The safety glass comes out in one piece. I shove it across the hood and let it fall on the side of the road.
Sorry, boys. I really wanted both of you to go home tonight. But sometimes pianos really do fall from the sky and sometimes you're the Coyote and catch it in the teeth. I've been there plenty of times. If I see you on the other side, I owe you a drink. If not, maybe it'll help knowing I'm about to do something that's really going to hurt.
I start the patrol car and the Crown Vic's V-8 engine screams. This is what I need for a Black Dahlia. This is the right way to leave, like Vidocq likes to say, le merdier. I slam the car into drive and floor it, smoking the tires and fishtailing down the street before I get hold of the thing. Suicide is still a goddamn scary idea, but burning rubber in a cop car at least makes it a little more fun.
Crenshaw is up ahead.
Candy flashes in my head. Red-slash eyes in black ice. Mad-dog teeth in my shoulder. Yes, I'm leaving you for another woman, but she's dead and it's only for three days and I'm coming back. I promise.
Shut up. Not the time for that. I push her back with the angel.
When Alice's face rolls up, I don't run from it. I examine it from a dozen different angles. Was Medea telling the truth? Is it possible Alice lied to me the whole time we were together? To my surprise, the angel comes up with an answer: "Who cares?"
It's right. Even if she's Lizzie Borden, am I going to leave Alice down there?
No.
Am I going to give up a chance to twist Mason's head off when he sees I've rescued her?
No.
Don't think. Just go. There's no time. No thought. No consequences. Just a bright flash of pain and then I'm home. There's nothing but the rush.
When I can see where Crenshaw passes under I-10, I stop, shift into reverse, and drive back a half a block. I can see cop lights in the distance, heading for the officer-down call.
Fuck Bava. Fuck doubt. Fuck everything.
I stomp the accelerator and aim the car for a freeway support midway under the roadway, in the center of the crossroads. I take the plastic rabbit from my pocket and hold it in my teeth.
I hope you're up there, Mustang Sally. I never prayed to God, but I'm praying to you right now. Please know what the fuck you're doing.
I'm doing just a hair over a hundred and ten when I hit. Time slo-mos as the car jumps the curb and takes the last few yards airborne.
It doesn't really hurt when we hit. It's more like a supersonic body blow as all the air and fluids in my body explode out of me like butcher-shop fireworks. My eyes can't focus. The world is a liquid blur. I hear the scream and groan of metal as the Crown Vic pancakes against the support. The steering wheel twists upward and turns my skull to cake batter. The front of the car comes apart and a million metal and plastic razor blades rip my skin off the bones. My arms break as I flip over the dashboard and out the window. One knee catches and is torn apart on the way out. I glide over the car hood like an Olympic figure skater and into a whirlpool of flame as the engine explodes.
Time shifts again. Shoots back up to normal speed. I slide through fire and gas and come out the other side a limp ball of flame. My eyes focus long enough to see the freeway support. Funny thing. It doesn't look like I'm flying at it. It's like it's coming for me.
And the world goes away.
THERE'S GRIT IN my eyes. When I try to brush it away, I just grind it in more. I roll over so my face is to the ground and run my hand all over my face so whatever's there falls down and not back onto me. The grit is all over me, like I've been rolling around in kitty litter. When my eyes are clear, I work up a little saliva and spit, clearing more grit from the back of my throat.
That's it. That's as much as I can do right now. Did I save everything yet? Guess not.
The world goes away again.
WHEN I WAKE up things are a little better. It feels like this thing weighing me down might be my body and not a bag of wet cement. I open my eyes.
The world is a fuzzy indistinct place, like I'm looking at it from inside a vodka bottle.
From what I can make out, I'm still under the freeway. Sunlight streams in from both sides of the underpass. I roll onto my back. My left foot rests on the crumpled front bumper of the cop car. I focus my eyes on that one image. My foot and the car. Slowly, the world comes back into focus.
The car isn't a car anymore. It's a big metal cigarette butt a giant stubbed out in a six-lane concrete ashtray. I pull my leg off the bumper and let it drop to the ground. I was expecting a lot of blood, but there isn't any. I check my arms. No bones sticking out. I feel for the knee I left behind in the car. It's on my leg right where it should be. My clothes aren't even ripped. The plastic rabbit is laying in the grit by my head. I pick it up and wobble to my feet. Mustang Sally was right. I went through the Dahlia and came out me again. But where am I?
I'm still at the crossroads. Sort of. This isn't the underpass from last night. This one is an underpass and nothing else. There isn't any freeway on either side of it, just cracked hardpan in both directions. The concrete support and the car are half buried in sand, like they've been there a hundred years. The sun is so bright out in the open that I can't see anything. The only thing I'm sure of is that this isn't L.A. and it sure as hell isn't Hell.
I go out the far side of the underpass into the light. I have to close my eyes until my eyes adjust to the glare. When I can see, there's nothing to see, just sand and more sand. Big rippling dunes curving down to little dunes. They go on forever. There's a miserable path of compacted dirt leading between the sand hills. A few parched and poisonous-looking weeds stick up along the sides of the path. I go back through the underpass and check the other side. It's the same. I'm in the middle of a goddamn desert. And this side doesn't even have a little path, so I head back out the other.
When I'm out I grab hold of the rusted guardrail and pull myself onto the Twilight Zone slice of freeway. A road sign is suspended across all eight lanes. One of the support legs has fallen, but it's still readable. Big white letters studded with reflectors on a green background. Typical California freeway stuff. The sign reads:
WELCOME TO NOD
POPULATION 0
A second smaller sign points to where an exit might have been a million years ago. It reads:
EDEN 10 MILES WEST
The arrow at the bottom points in the same direction as the dirt path. I climb down and start walking.
IT'S AS HOT as a dragon's balls. I have my coat off and thrown over my shoulder before I've gone fifty yards. I don't do outdoors. I'll take the arena any day over this Miami damnation tanning contest.
Bava showing up and sticking her bony fingers in my skull really threw me at the end. If something has gone wrong and I'm stuck in an afterlife cow town somewhere between Nowhere and Fuck All it could be my fault.
Alice was a mole feeding the Sub Rosa intel about my life and me? I don't buy it. That's exactly the kind of psyops party trick Mason would come up with. Then he'd get Aelita to tell Bava because she's security and security believes anything a superior or a halo tells them.
I don't believe it, but the angel won't shut up about it. I think the Black Dahlia might have shaken something loose in its head. I'm the unreasonable one in this Laurel and Hardy act, but it's jabbering away in a frantic stream of What if? Could it be? And that explains everything.
Maybe the angel can't deal with being on this side of death or whatever this is. Have I blown its tiny feathered brain? This treasure hunt was going to be hard enough with Little Mary Sunshine whispering to me, but it's going to be a whole lot worse if I end up with a crazy person trying to claw his way out of my skull.
The simple truth of it is that Alice couldn't be a mole. I would have felt it if she was Sub Rosa. Alice is the only person I never bullshitted or lied to. She's the only person I ever really trusted. That means if she was what Bava says and I missed it, everything I've ever believed about my life or myself is wrong.
My human father, the one stuck with the lousy job of raising me after a certain angel called Kinski knocked up my mom, hated me. He even took a shot at me once when we were deer hunting. So much for the father-son three-leg race at the church picnic.
My mother loved me, but was lost at sea most of the time when I was growing up. The drinking and pills didn't help. I don't remember a single moment when she didn't seem lonely. She jumped at every sound in the yard or at the door like she was expecting someone who was never there.
There's Vidocq, who's been more of a father to me than my civilian father or Kinski. He's the only other person I trust as much as Alice. Trusted.
I don't see how Bava's bullshit could be true, but Alice did hold out on me at least once. One night she told me that she was rich and that she came from heavy money. She never said much else about her family, but I always took that to mean she was as far from hers as I was from mine. Was she about to confess that all that filthy lucre came from Daddy's late-night infomercial magic-wand business or youth potions from Elizabeth Báthory's blood?
Goddammit. How could I let Bava get to me like this? Was she throwing some hoodoo at me when we talked? No. I would have felt it, and if I didn't, the angel in my head would. It has to be a mind game and I'm ashamed that it's worked. Or maybe the bitch was telling me the truth.
And where in the goddamn middle of for fuck's sake am I? Is Mustang Sally in on Mason's cosmic scam? If there even is a scam.
Calm down. Deep breaths. Go to your happy place. Oh, wait. I don't have one. Slow down and think, but thinking is supposed to be the angel's job. Nice time to stop taking your pills, Saint Acid Test.
Fuck me, it's hot here.
There isn't even a decent enough shadow so I can slink into the Room and go home.
Maybe I'll get lucky and there will be a postcard stand somewhere. "Dear Everyone. Hope you don't mind being doomed. Xoxo Stark."
The road disappears ahead. A dune has blown across it like the wall of a sand fortress. If the desert has eaten the rest of the road, things are about to get really interesting.
The dune is soft and loose. I can't walk. I have to crawl up it. It's slow and hot with the coat draped over my shoulder. I move one hand. One foot. The other hand. The other foot. If this is a joke and Sisyphus is waiting at the top to hand me his boulder, he can kiss my ass.
Halfway up and I'm getting very pissed off. The angel is freaking out and the clock is ticking. Even if Mason is lying about having Alice and just wants me chasing my tail all over Hell, I need to know. It means that he's ready to make his move on Heaven.
If I ever get out of here, I'm going to find whichever angel invented sand and make it eat this fucking desert while getting a Tabasco enema.
I reach up and get a handful of air. I'm at the top of the dune. I was right. The road is gone. But it doesn't matter.
Holy shit.
I think I just found the Garden of Eden. There's probably a soda machine and I left all my cash in L.A.
I stumble down the side of the monster dune toward the acres of cool green grass and sparkling waterfalls.
The gates in front are dazzling in the desert sun. I don't know what they're made of, but they shine brighter than anything I've ever seen on earth, but the reflection doesn't hurt my eyes. It's like the gates have an internal glow that evens out the sun. Even the chains holding them shut are glowing.
There's a lone angel to one side of the gate. He's like one of those Buckingham Palace guards. He stands like an idiot statue staring straight ahead at attention, like a filthy, sweating madman didn't just stumble in off the Mojave. I wonder how long he's been there. I put my coat back on to cover up some of the dirt and walk over to him.
"My GPS is out, but the AAA guide said there was a Denny's around here. Is this it?"
The angel doesn't move. I get in front of him and stick my face right into his. Close enough that our noses touch. Nothing. If I wasn't trying to stop the destruction of the universe, I could waste some time giving this guy a hotfoot or starting a tickle contest, but duty and getting out of this sun calls.
Mom always told me that God helps those who help themselves, so I head for the gates. I grab hold of the chains holding them closed and take out the black blade. Before I can swing it, the angel turns into a speeding blur and slams his shoulder into me like a supersonic linebacker. I go flying back to the dune.
He looks a little surprised when I get to my feet, but manages to stay in character, spreading his wings and pointing at me in that superior my-shit-smells-like-blueberry-muffins way angels have. His armor glows with the same light as the gates. His voice is low, louder than the cop bullhorn, and echoing. I wonder if heaven issues every angel its own reverb unit.
"Halt. Your kind may not enter the Malchut of Atzilut."
I walk back to him, brushing the sand off my coat.
"Did I get turned around? The sign said this was the way to Epcot."
The angel drops his hands to his side. He's a head taller than me with Josef's chiseled übermensch cheekbones, only his hair is jet black.
"If you mean the road to Gan Eden, then yes. But you are not permitted to enter the place that God gave to man and was lost to him. This is a holy place and only the righteous shall pass through the gate."
I get out a Malediction and light up.
"Here's the situation. I was dead a few minutes ago and woke up a little way over those dunes. That tells me that this is where I'm supposed to be. I'm not looking to hang around and track dust all over your daffodils. All I want to know is if there's a freight elevator or a crawl space or something? I'm trying to get to Hell."
He gives me his stern face, all steely eyes and smoldering passion. He could get a job as a romance-novel cover model.
"Once, only Heaven was here, but the sin of man befouled it."
"So I can get to Hell through there?"
"Yes. The serpent brought the seeds of Hell into this place, man tended it, and here it stays like a festering wound."
"Would you mind pointing out the scar tissue? I need to get going."
"What matter is Eden to you? No mortal man or woman may enter."
"How many mortal men do you get around here? Do you rent the place out for pool parties during spring break?"
The angel doesn't say anything and his smoldering act is starting to get old. I blow smoke in his face.
"Listen up, Hawkman, I'm going in there even if I have to pluck off all your feathers and stuff you like a teddy bear."
The angel waves the smoke away. He stretches and rubs the back of his neck. His voice rises to a normal octave and doesn't echo anymore.
"Listen, man. It's the end of my shift. I'm really tired and the sun's giving me a migraine. I can't let you in, but I don't want to get into a whole thing about it with you. Can you just hang around and work this out with my replacement?"
"I'm in kind of a hurry."
"He'll be here tonight. Tomorrow at the latest."
"I really can't wait."
He sighs.
"Yeah. I figured."
He manifests his Gladius, his angelic sword of fire, and takes a swing at my head. The attack is slow. Completely for show. Why shouldn't it be? He's an angel and I'm just a lost spirit who wandered in from nowhere. I manifest my own Gladius, block his blow, and cut a nice diagonal slice through his chest plate. He falls back, eyes wide.
April Fool, motherfucker.
His Gladius is on the ground, but I'm mad. He made me drop one of my last cigarettes. I move in fast and get my sword under his chin.
"What's your name?"
"Rizoel."
"Well, Rizoel, you know that I could kill you entirely here and now, right? I know fallen angels go to Tartarus when they die, but I'm not clear on what happens to nice angels. Given my natural inclinations, I'd like to slice and dice you just to see where you end up. Lucky for you there's a little angel that lives in my head and I know he won't shut up about it if I turn you into chum. So to sum up, this is your lucky day. Understand?"
Rizoel gives me a mininod, making sure not to let the Gladius touch his chin.
"Here's the deal. You can walk away but you have to do something for me. What do you think? You ready to come on down off your high-and-mighty for a second and make a deal?"
"I don't seem to have a choice."
"Sure you do. But one of them isn't pretty."
The angel nods.
"All right."
I let my Gladius go out. The angel tries to stand, but he's favoring the side where I slashed him. I take his other arm and help him up.
"You're him, aren't you?" he says. "The nephilim. The monster who kills monsters."
"I'll give you an autograph, but if it shows up on eBay, I'm going to be mad."
"You are an Abomination and will not pass through these holy gates."
I should have seen that coming. Never trust an angel.
We both fire up our Gladiuses and go at each other. Even hurt, the angel is inhumanly fast and strong, but so am I. He's not going to fall for the same trick twice, so I stay in close to him. He can't get a good swing at me, and with his injured arm he can't push me back enough to put me in dissecting range. But he figures out what I'm doing and kicks my leg. When I stumble he gets an overhead shot at my back. I see it coming and turn my shoulders so he only gets a piece of me. Still, the blow burns like nothing I've ever felt before. It feels a lot like a magic flaming sword.
I snap my head up under his chin and knock him back. I swing at his shoulder, but the prick has been playing possum. He grabs my throat with what I thought was his injured arm, raises his sword with the other, and brings it down at my head. I kick out my feet and fall backward, pulling him down with me. As we fall I swing my sword up between us. The angel lands on top of me and my Gladius goes out.
He's big, and with all that armor it feels like chorus line decided to do a show on my chest. It takes all of my strength to roll him off me. Once he starts moving, he goes easily. In fact he loses some weight in the process. His left arm falls off where I sliced through it in the fall.
I manifest my Gladius again and swipe it lightly across his face, giving him a scar like one of mine. He stays on his back, staring up at me. Angels don't bleed, but something thick and clear is leaking out from where his arm used to be, closing the wound.
"You're lucky. I want you to do my favor more than I want to kill you. This is your second chance to stay alive. No one gets a third."
He closes his eyes for a second then turns his head to where his arm isn't.
"I agree."
"Swear, angel. Swear a holy oath you can't break."
He blinks twice. Stares into the sun. He's thinking, Father why have you forsaken my ass? Because he can't choose you over the other angels bootlicking hosannas. Or like the rest of us, you're just another bug on his windshield.
"I swear and make a holy pledge as a servant of the Lord to abide by the bargain we make."
I let the Gladius go out, grab his chest plate at the neck, and pull him up. Toss him back against Eden's gates and get up close to his face so he won't miss a word.
"Tell Lucifer I'm coming for him."
Rizoel looks at me.
"Lucifer was his name in Perdition. In Heaven, he's Samael."
"Call him Travis Bickle for all I care, just tell him I'm coming. And I'm bringing all of Hell with me. Got it?"
"What kind of man are you that you'd wage war on Heaven?"
"It was this or stay home and watch The Wizard of Oz, and I hate musicals."
I leave him where he is, flame on my Gladius, and slice through the chains on the gates. One kick and Eden is open for business.
Rizoel staggers back.
"I'm going to get written up for this, you know. It'll go on my permanent record."
"Shouldn't you be on your way somewhere?"
Rizoel is horrified at seeing an Abomination in the garden. One step. Two steps. He doesn't move. I think he was expecting me to turn into a pillar of salt. I turn, and when he doesn't move, I drag my Gladius through the rosebushes. They burst into flame.
He takes a couple of steps back, shaking his head. "You are such an asshole."
"Don't forget our deal. By the way, how do I get to Hell in here?"
The look of disgust fades as his lips draw up into a big Cheshire-cat smile.
"It's easy. Exactly the way the human part of you did it the first time."
Before I get a word out, Rizoel spreads his wings and throws himself into the ridiculously bright blue sky.
I take a look around the garden. It's just a fucking garden. Rizoel was too gleeful to just be mocking me. He was giving me a clue. Hell is in here somewhere.
I stroll around the garden like a tourist in the kind of flower prison that florists dream about. After a while all the plants look the same to me. Leaves. Got it. Stems and flowers. Got it. Bark and fruit. Got it. I'm Steve McQueen and the Blob is after me, only it's made of dandelions and begonias.
Where is Hell in here? I stomp through the rosebushes and under pine trees. Climb up snaky vines and dig up screaming mandrakes. That was a bad idea. I thought they might be carrots. I'm getting hungry.
There's nothing here. No doors. No rabbit holes. No hoodoo portals or sci-fi transporters. I'm stuck in a feed-store calendar and I'm getting just a little pissed off.
Fuck you, angel, and everyone who's been spewing cryptic crap at me. The way you did the first time. "Be a rock." "Click your heels three times and think of flying monkeys." The next thing that quotes me a fortune cookie gets turned into a novelty paperweight.
Time is passing. Tick tock. Tick tock.
There's nothing left to do. Hey, Heaven. I let your angel live, but you don't understand the concept of cutting someone slack, huh? Fine by me. When this is over, just remember that you set the rules. Not me.
There's only one thing to do with a garden if it won't give you what you want. Get rid of it.
I drag the flaming Gladius along the ground as I stroll through the winding path that curves from the entrance through the orchards, the redwoods, the pines, the thorny jungle foliage, and the crayon-colored flower beds, cutting a flaming red scar behind me. God must have yanked all the animals out of here when he gave Adam and Eve the boot. Good. The life of one flea-bitten squirrel means more than one inch of this pussy-willow paradise.
Fuck this place and fuck your games. This is where you first failed us. You gave us minds and told us not to think. You gave us curiosity and put a booby-trapped tree right in front of us. You gave us sex and told us not to do it. You played three-card monte with our souls from day one, and when we couldn't find the queen, you sent us to Hell to be tortured for eternity. That was your great plan for humanity?
Whatever your reasons, you won't have Paisley Park much longer. All you gave us here was daisies and fairy tales and you acted like that was enough. How were we supposed to resist evil when you didn't even tell us about it? You wanted us innocent. But when Lucifer found a way around your rules and we weren't innocent anymore, you blamed us and tossed us out into the wasteland like garbage.
You lounge upstairs on your golden throne like you're the greatest thing since "Johnny Be Good," but to me you're just another deadbeat dad.
I hope you can smell Eden burning. I hope you choke on it.
Alice wasn't a spy. She wasn't part of the big lie. She was real and she was mine.
Eden is an inferno. Some of it went up so fast the foliage is already gone. I kick through the cinders, looking for a way Downtown, but I don't find anything. Stay calm. This is important. It's worth waiting for.
I follow the course of the fire as it eats up the plants. I kick through the dirt behind every burned hedge and blackened bush. I don't find anything. There's nothing here.
I go to the big tree at the center of the garden. The one that started all the trouble. It's the only thing that hasn't burned. I've been saving it for last. I reach up to the lowest branch and snap off an apple. Shine it against my coat and bite into it.
It's good. It's sweet and juicy, but it's not worth losing paradise over. For that, you'd think the man upstairs would make the fruit taste like the greatest thing ever. Your tongue should have an orgasm and drunk-dial old girlfriends to tell them about it. Still, the juice is refreshing. It clears the smoke and sand from my throat. I toss the core into the fire and reach for another apple but can't reach one. They're all on the higher branches. I swing up the Gladius and slice off a limb. The wood collapses when I pull off the apple. I push at the cracked bark with the toe of my boot. The branch is hollow. I cut another branch. It's hollow, too. I hack off more. They're all the same. The branches are like props in a high school play. The tree is a fake.
I concentrate and it calms the angel in my head. He's been quiet since we entered Eden, and now that he's seen what I've seen, for once he's on my side.
I swing up the Gladius, concentrating. It burns bigger and hotter than it's ever burned. The tree trunk is big. I have to start the cut way back, like I'm batting in the World Series. I swing the blade and it goes through the tree like a bullet through a chocolate sundae. The tree creaks, cracks, and falls over.
I was right. Just like the branches, the tree is hollow. Inside, the two halves of the tree are different. Inside the top half is a winding silver staircase that winds up to Heaven. In the stump is what looks like a grimy diamond-plate-metal staircase going into an industrial subbasement.
The angel told the truth. I get to Hell the way we did the first time. At the tree. You could have just said that, Tweety Bird. Then I wouldn't have had to burn Dad's prize marigolds. But I probably would have anyway.
I climb into the stump and walk down the rusty stairs.
IT ISN'T A long walk to Hell. Shorter than the walk to Eden. No surprise there.
The stairs lead to a long passage that looks like an abandoned maintenance tunnel. Someone needs to sweep up down here. Here and there whole sections of the ceiling have crashed onto the cement floor. I have to half walk, half hopscotch around it to keep from tripping. In the flickering fluorescent light, I swear some of the rusted rebar looks like bones.
After an hour of wandering I come to another set of metal stairs. It's not the best feeling being this close to Hell again. But it's what I signed up for. If Mason has a Hellion bike gang with chains and knuckle-dusters stationed at the top of these stairs, I'm going to be pissed. I could have stayed home and let Medea Bava kill me while eating hundred-dollar chicken and waffles with Candy.
There are double doors at the top of the stairs, the kind you see in front of old buildings for deliveries. I push with my arms, but can't budge them. I go up a few more steps, brace my back against the doors, and push.
The doors feel hot against my back. I can't tell if it's the metal or if I still hurt from where Rizoel tagged me. I ignore the pain and keep pushing. Nothing seems to be happening, but then light shines down through a space between the doors. I bend my knees and spring straight up, knocking both doors open.
And I'm instantly on fire. I roll off the pile of burning trash and keep rolling until all the flames are out. I get to my feet and look around.
Fuck me.
I'm back in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and it's on fire. All of L.A. is on fire.
EVERYTHING IS WRONG. This is exactly where I was when I crawled out of Hell eight months ago. Now I'm back. Only I'm not. Everything is wrong, from the smells to the sounds to the light.
The cemetery looks like it was worked over by drunk bikers with garbage trucks for feet. Tombstones are knocked over or snapped in two. A lot of them are just dust. Some of the graves are open and spouting fountains of blue flames, like a gas line exploded beneath them. Clothes are strewn across the blackened lawn from bodies nearby that were blown out of the ground when the line broke.
I walk to the cemetery gates but don't step outside. The last time I walked out of here, a Beverly Hills crackhead tried to mug me. I mugged him instead. It was quite a welcome-home party. This time I stay put and take in the situation from my own comfy Sheol.
To my right I can see the giant Hollywood sign hanging over everything like a promise to a dead man. The hills and the tops of all the buildings are on fire. Someone must have thrown some hoodoo on the Hollywood sign. It isn't catching, but the hills behind it are glowing orange ash.
The fires haven't reached this neighborhood yet, but they're on the move. From here it looks like the whole horizon is burning. The sky Downtown used to be all bruised purples and bloody reds. A mean perpetual twilight. Now it's a solid mass of roiling black smoke. Lit from below, it looks like the belly of a black snake the size of the sky crawling over us.
So, where the hell am I? I was pretty crazy the last time I crawled out here. Wasn't even looking for home this time, but I got it anyway. And it looks like someone broke it when I had my back turned.
How long was I unconscious after the Black Dahlia? Am I Rip van Winkle? Was I semidead for so long that Mason won and the universe thought it would be a hoot to wake me up just in time for the Apocalypse?
I get a fistful of graveyard dirt and scribble runes on my forehead while growling Hellion hoodoo. A death glamour. With any luck, no one will notice that I'm alive. I drop my coat on the ground and grab a corpse's hoodie dangling from a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe. I put on the hoodie and the coat over it. I do a last quick check outside the gates for muggers. Satisfied the street's clear, I pull up the hood, covering as much of my face as I can, and head toward the big cookout.
A CRACK RUNS up Gower Street starting at the cemetery. A deep slash, as ragged as a lightning bolt and wide as a bus. What looks like a pool of bright red blood bubbles at the bottom. It smells like sewage but worse. Rotten eggs and dead fish.
I keep moving north, skirting a sinkhole at Fountain Avenue. Hellion bodies bloat at the bottom. Broken clockwork hellhounds writhe and twitch, leaking spinal fluid. I kick in a few pebbles. Watch them sink into the cherry muck.
Trees have collapsed on roofs and cars, like the ground simply couldn't support them anymore. Cracks have ripped homes in half. A deep geologic rumble shakes the ground under my feet and the two broken halves of Gower move a few inches in different directions. Fuck me. These aren't cracks. They're fault lines. Have I mentioned lately how much I hate everything?
On the side streets some of the new faults must have been exposed for a while because locals have strung them together with half-assed rope and plank and bridges. Idiot militias toss rocks and spears across the chasms, fighting to see who gets to take the crossing tolls.
Sunset Boulevard looks like it was blowtorched from below. As far as I can see everything is gutted, fried, or melted in both directions. The only things still standing are the palm trees. They burn like votive candles in a dark nave, throwing more shadows than light. Smoldering fronds fall like burning snow.
THERE'S A RIOT on Hollywood Boulevard.
When I crawled out of Hell eight months ago, I'd been surprised at how the boulevard had become a monochrome wilderness. The street was dead quiet, like someone had dropped a blanket over it. All empty-eyed street kids and vacant storefronts. There'd been plenty of traffic, but even the cars sounded like they were running on cotton candy instead of gas. Something had sucked the life out of the place. Maybe the Kissi. I still don't know. This version of Hollywood Boulevard is livelier, but I'm already longing for the muffled gray-and-white version.
The mob is a punch-drunk mix of Hellions and damned souls. This isn't fun, let's-turn-the-Dumpster-over rioting. It's the kind where you go at each other with knives and pipes, fighting over food and water and drugs.
I've only walked a quarter mile from the cemetery and I can already tell that the place is as bad off as Kasabian said. Lucifer would never let this happen. If Mason had any goddamn sense, he wouldn't either. When you're riding herd on a kingdom of killer Hellions, the first thing you do is make sure they're well fed and at least half hammered most of the time. The way this bunch is tearing up butcher shops and stores, they're neither. (Yes, Hell has stores and bars. It might be Hell, but it's better than a dry county in Mississippi.) And who let all the damned souls run wild? I saw some crazy shit when I was trapped Downtown, but this is the first time I've ever seen a soul in Pandemonium that wasn't tortured, locked up, or on a leash. If this really is Pandemonium. If it's not, where the fuck am I?
A couple of hundred Hellion gendarmes take positions at opposite ends of the street, surrounding the crowd. Hell is all about power games and influence. Lucifer didn't like too much power concentrated in anyone's hands, so Pandemonium has two police forces with overlapping territories. And they hate each other. Instead of slowing the riot, the cop gangs smash into it like two hundred icebreakers. With their riot guns and heavy body armor, they rip through the crowd to claim as much of the swag as they can for their side.
I don't stick around to see which side wins because I couldn't possibly give less of a fuck. I hope they slaughter each other fast and get out of my way.
I hunch my shoulders, tug the hood, and head back to Gower. Maybe if I grabbed a cop, I could twist him around in interesting ways until he told me where Eleusis is, but seeing as how there are two hundred of them, that'll have to wait for later. What I want now is to cut back to Sunset and do an end run around this particular shit storm. If this is really a fucked-up version of L.A., then Max Overdrive isn't far from here. I can hole up until the riot blows over and figure out a next move.
"Where you going?"
A hand shoots out from the alcove of an out-of-business sex-toy shop and latches onto my arm. The Hellion the hand is attached to is dressed in layers of ragged coats, tunics, and greasy shirts. A Hellspawn hobo.
I don't say anything. I stare and hope the death glamour holds.
The bum says, "Got anything from the shops you want to share?"
"Nothing for you, rummy."
He grins and licks his lips, showing off a jumble of craggy gray teeth, like someone hammered broken cement into his gums. Maybe that's how God keeps Heaven's other angels in line. A better dental plan.
"Got a smoke?" he asks.
Something squirms under his grimy face. It looks like my glamour isn't the problem. It's his. Too bad I'm so slow on the uptake. By the time I recognize what he is, he has something very pointy and very sharp against my throat. It's double-pronged. Probably what on earth they'd call a Heretic's Fork. This fucker isn't a regular Hellion. He's a Malebranche, one of thirteen horned bastards that Lucifer kept as his private gestapo and interrogation squad. Even other Hellions hate the Malebranche. My back still hurts from Rizoel's sword. The last thing I want is to go one-on-one with a professional flesh ripper.
I say, "Looks like you've hit hard times."
"You've hit worse unless you have something I want."
The riot seethes along in its merry way behind us, but the Malebranche and me are in our own cozy little world in the alcove. A bottle breaks above us and we both reflexively turn our heads to avoid the flying glass, but it was random. Even though no one is paying any attention to us, I keep getting hit from behind, which pushes my throat down onto the fork. I hope not enough to break the skin. Human blood would be a dead giveaway.
I look at the Malebranche's dirty face. His skin is bright red under the grime.
"Which one are you? Rubicante?"
His laugh is high and a little frantic.
"Oh my. Am I still that famous?"
"It's your pretty face," I say. "Maybe I have something for you after all."
I reach into my pocket, feeling Rubicante push the sharp prongs harder against my neck.
"Easy, friend. I wouldn't want to slip."
He gives a quick flick of his head at my hand.
"Bring that hand out slowly and bring out something tasty with it or I'll have to pop out one of your eyes for a snack."
The alcove is a dim place and the riot is reflected clearly in the glass behind Rubicante's head. I feel around in my pocket for a minute, trying to buy some time.
"Any day now, friend," he says.
I have to do this just right. Or completely wrong. That sometimes works.
I come out with the half pack of Maledictions and Rubicante's eyes go wide. I hold them out and he takes his eyes off me. I drop the pack and he watches it fall all the way to the ground. I glance at the reflection in the glass door and throw myself out of the way.
A riot cop tossed from the crowd smashes into the Malebranche and they go flying through the shop's glass door.
I leave Rubicante and the cop playing Twister in the sex shop, grab the Maledictions, and run for Sunset.
It feels like the fall reopened the wound on my back. I don't want to smell even vaguely alive, so I whisper a little hoodoo and crank up the fumes from my corpse hoodie until I stink like the Dumpster behind a used-ass store. This is going to be a pleasant way to travel.
I'm going to have a hell of a time finding Eleusis if the whole place is as twisted as it was back then. Not that that matters if I've been napping for twenty years, Mason has already won, and this really is L.A.
Sunset is as scorched and sterile as a nuke test site. Some of the burning palm fronds fall and others float over the buildings, carried away by weird convection currents.
I stand on the corner and let the angel out of the attic long enough to expand my senses and do a kind of quick minesweep to see if there's anything alive or lurking in the burned-out buildings. Sunset is dazzling through the angel's eyes. The smoldering street with its torched trees is like a line of suns down a glory road of trembling atoms and subatomic particles.
The first time I saw Hell, it was a very different story. I was dragged down through Mason's floor and landed in a naked heap on a main street in Pandemonium. I must have been out cold for a while, and when I came to, the first thing that hit me was the stink. Nothing human smelled like that. It wasn't just waste. It was filth that had been packed, compressed, and locked away for a million years. Hell is the bottom of the universe and Heaven isn't going to let Lucifer pollute the rest of existence with Hellion shit and candy wrappers. So they still bury it in the deep, deeper, deepest caverns in their craptacular kingdom, where it sits, cooks, and festers in its own juices until the end of time.
The angel gives the all clear. I shove it out of the way, but I don't lock it up. Unfortunately, I'm going to need all of me to get through this, and that includes my divine squatter.
I head west down Sunset so I can cut up Las Palmas to Max Overdrive. The angel better be right that it's clear down here. I'm not above self-trepanation.
I can still see the Hollywood Boulevard riot when I cross Vine Street. And Cahuenga.
Getting down Sunset is harder than the road by the cemetery. The fault lines are wider and the broken pavement is pushed up higher and at steeper angles. Sinkholes have opened around whole blocks, forming skyscraper islands with sewage moats. Maybe that's why everything feels so wrong. I've only gone a couple of blocks but I swear it feels like I've been walking for-fucking-ever. Who or whatever built this L.A. got the proportions all wrong. The buildings are right, but some of them are in the wrong place. The Cinerama Dome still looks like a giant golf ball dropped to the earth by aliens, but it's on the wrong side of the street. Some of the side streets that used to cut across Sunset have twisted around like asphalt taffy and now run parallel.
That is not good news. It means that even if someone tells me where Eleusis is, I might not be able to find it in these deranged goddamn streets. And I can't even use maps. Lucifer was such a control freak that most of the maps you find Downtown are wrong. He didn't want the riffraff knowing exactly which roads led where or which were wide enough to hold rebel troops. That means I'm going to need a tracker who can walk and take me to the doorstep of Alice's asylum.
A hell of a quake must have hit the concrete island ahead of me. An entire block of gleaming new office buildings has fallen in on itself and half disappeared down a massive sinkhole. The acres of broken glass and steel reflect the burning street like the last ice floe at the end of the world.
I check out Hollywood Boulevard at the next corner. It looks clear and there's no noise that way. I run the whole way.
Seeing the Boulevard here, it's easy to understand why the crowd is tearing things up down the street. The place is picked clean. The ground floor of every building is gutted and burned. Bloody Hellions with broken limbs wander through the rubble looking for food, potions, or pills to make the world stop hurting. Damned souls are scattered all over the street staring into space like shell-shocked children. Finding themselves free but still in Hell was too much for their already tortured minds. They don't react when I walk by, but the Hellions see me and scatter like roaches into the empty buildings. The universe has entered a new level of weirdness when Hellions are the ones afraid to be caught out after dark.
Half a block ahead is the only intact, well-lit building on the whole street. When I get closer I understand why.
Praise God and pass the ammunition. Now I understand. Now I know everything.
Peter Murphy was wrong when he said Bela Lugosi's dead. He's not. I just found his retirement home.
It stands where Grauman's Chinese Theatre should be. I mean it's still the Chinese Theatre---all supersaturated reds and golds---but it's a different version. It's twice as big as it should be. It's so wide that it takes up half the block and the golden pagoda roof looks like it's high enough to rip open stray blimps. A fifty-foot metal electrified fence marked every few yards with lightning-bolt warning signs surrounds the place.
I know this place. It doesn't look anything like it looked like in my Downtown. There it was a kind of King Arthur's castle, but with soft and twisted, almost organic lines, like it hadn't been carved from the rock but had grown there. This place might not be General Mammon's palace the way I'm used to seeing it, but his standard is suspended between the pagoda spires so everyone in Hell or L.A. or Mordor or wherever the fuck I am can see it.
This is what I've been looking for. The answer to all of life's little questions.
When Mustang Sally said that using the Black Dahlia to cross over was easy but hard, I thought she was talking about the dying part. Now I think she was really talking about this. It's why I woke up under that strange version of the freeway. Crossing over with the Black Dahlia isn't a true one-hundred-percent-normal crossing. It's a Convergence. A psychic melding of the place the traveler left and the place where the traveler is going. It's a smart work-around to keep Mason from noticing me tiptoeing Downtown, because even though I'm truly in Hell, it's not exactly the one where he's expecting me. Yeah, I know. These metaphysical states and dimensions of being give me a headache, too.
If you know the Convergence is coming, it can be pretty useful. Say you want to travel fast through another city or parallel dimension. You do a Convergence and you can find your way around the new place by following the layout of the city you left. Unless the new place has decided to sprout fault lines, rearrange its streets, and generally fall the fuck apart.
Right this second I don't know if being in a Convergence is a help or more bullshit in my way, but I'm sure of one thing. Someone inside knows where Eleusis is and I'll kill them one by one until someone tells me.
I get out the na'at and eye a nice shadow at the corner of the palace. Chances are that Mason is expecting me to use the Room to get into Hell and not move around inside it. I'll know in a minute. I step into the shadow and come out just inside Mammon's palace.
No alarms go off. I'm alone in a giant movie-theater lobby. They must buy carpet by the mile to cover this floor. The concession stand is the size of Vegas. I bet the screen is as big as the Rockies. Wish I had time to catch a feature.
It hits me right about now that even though my old slave master Azazel brought me to Mammon's tree fort plenty of times, this mutant version might not be laid out exactly the same way. Only one way to find out. This new version is too weird to navigate normally and I don't feel like going on walkabout. I step back into a shadow. I'll take my chances with the Room and open the Door of Fire, the door that always leads to chaos and violence.
I come out behind a pillar in a circular room that looks like what I imagine the Oval Office is like, only bigger and with meaner monsters. Across from me are floor-to-ceiling windows with a Cadillac-size wooden desk between them. There's a fireplace to the right and expensive-looking couches and coffee tables scattered around the place. I halfway expect Remington cowboy sculptures and a giant flat-screen playing football or wrestling or some other macho backslapping good old boy to inject just a little more testosterone into the place. I don't know if I'm in Hell or the CEO's office at Halliburton.
Mammon and five of his officers are clustered around a worktable in the middle of the room. All of them are in sharp suits, but none of the officers is stupid enough to have a suit sharper than Mammon's. The general wears a large gold inverted cross on a chain around his neck. It's probably a war medal, but it makes him look like Sammy Davis Jr. in his late Rat Pack period.
The worktable in front of them projects a floating 3-D map laying out different routes around the universe from Downtown to Heaven. It looks like a schematic of the coolest ride since Space Mountain.
I want to go right at them, but I need to lay out a little hoodoo first. Unfortunately, a good hex needs to be spoken out loud. Black juju likes to be mixed in with a little sputter and spit. However, it's easy to toss off white magic inside your head. Instead of wishing Mammon's backup band ill will, I do the opposite and throw a protective shield up around the entire room. Aside from saving them from torch-carrying peasants, it'll soundproof the place and keep any nosy guards from getting in.
Quiet as I can, I get out the na'at, snap out the business end like a bullwhip, and give it a little twist so it goes rigid. It hits the closest Hellion at the base of his skull and comes out his extremely surprised mouth. The officer next to him goes for his shoulder holster. Bad idea. He's left his front exposed. I bounce the sharp end of the na'at off the worktable and flick it up, catching him just above his crotch, slicing him open to his chest. He has an excellent view of his Hellion guts spilling onto the floor before he follows them down. I step back into a shadow as the rest of the crew tries to process what just happened. In a brilliant tactical maneuver, the three remaining officers decide to rush the spot where I'm standing just as I'm not there anymore.
I come out of a shadow behind Mammon, pull the black blade, and pig-stick him in the spine about six inches above his waist. His legs suddenly stop working and he smacks onto the floor like an Easter ham.
One of Mammon's brighter officers figured out my shadow trick and stayed close enough to Mammon to jump me.
She's a huge red-haired Hulk Hogan beast trying to get the barrel of her .50 pointed anywhere on my body. She gets off a couple of shots as we wrestle, but she can't hit me without hitting herself, so she's just blowing holes in the floor. I drive the na'at's pommel into her temple and knock the gun out of her hand while she's still cross-eyed.
Two officers, one in a slick black Hugo Boss and one in a white ice-cream suit, take potshots at us, but they can't really open up without hitting Mrs. Hogan. She lunges at me. I kick out at her, but she tagged me hard enough that I trip over a pricey antique chair and smack the back of my head into the wall. My brain feels like a Shamrock Shake. Mrs. Hogan is on her hands and knees, pulling a knife the size of a leg of lamb from under her suit jacket. Hugo Boss and the ice-cream man come in behind her, closing the distance so they can shoot me a hundred percent dead. I flick the na'at at the ceiling, knocking out one of the overhead lights. There's a feeble shadow behind the chair I tripped over. It's not much, but I dive for it just as a wave of bullets blast fist-size chunks of polished wood and plaster from Mammon's office wall.
I stay in the shadow for a minute, letting my head clear, when I hear Mammon say, "The battle plan, lady and gentlemen, is simple: Do better."
The officers go back-to-back, forming a protective triangle around Mammon, which means they're stuck there while I can move around. I'm lucky that none of them can manifest a Gladius. Besides Lucifer, only a few of the heavyweight fallen angels still have the power. None of this crew has or they would have used it by now.
I duck into the room, moving from shadow to shadow, swinging the na'at at the overhead lights. I take them out one by one, creating more shadows for me to work from. The white suit shoots at me, but Hugo Boss is busy reloading. I feel two shots go through my coat just above my leg and dive back into the dark.
Half the room is in shadows and Mammon's officers are nervous. Mrs. Hogan doesn't have her gun, so I go for her first. Keeping most of my body in the shadow, I snap out the na'at, leaving it loose until it wraps around her ankle, then I pull it tight like a snare. I fade back into the wall while retracting the na'at and it pulls her across the floor like she's tied to a freight train. When she hits the wall I grab her lapels and pull her upright. The sight of even just my hands gets Hugo Boss itchy. He blasts away, only I'm back in the shadow and his redheaded teammate is suddenly full of holes. I pull back my hands and let her fall. The ice-cream man checks her body and I get the distinct feeling that he had something going with Mrs. Hogan, because when he sees her back full of smoking craters, he levels his pistol at Hugo Boss and blows his brains out.
Now it's just the ice-cream man and Mammon. He grabs Mammon by the back of his collar and drags him into the biggest pool of light, shouting for the guards. No one shouts back. He keeps shouting until Mammon backhands him from the floor.
"Stop shouting in my ear. If backup were coming, it would be here by now. You might consider shooting him yourself before he kills us."
I step out behind the pillar where I first entered the room and shout, "He's right. No guards get in here without a permission slip from me."
The ice-cream man blasts into the dark.
"That's a clever ploy. Use up all your bullets shooting at nothing. Did they teach you that at military school?" says Mammon. But the ice-cream man isn't listening. He's not a soldier anymore. He's an angry boyfriend looking to get back at someone who got his girl killed. Join the club, fucker.
The ice-cream man shouts, "Show yourself!"
"I am," I say. "Don't look at the shadows. I'm right out in the open with you. Come and get me."
He's pissed enough about Mrs. Hulk that he lets go of Mammon and prowls around the edges of the light, listening, trying to figure out where my voice came from.
"Get back here," shouts Mammon. "He's goading you."
I take out Mason's lighter from my pocket and toss it onto the nearest couch. The ice-cream man spins and blasts the enemy furniture.
I throw the black blade. He sees it at the last second but can't get out of the way, and the blade buries itself in his right eye. He's dead before he hits the floor.
Mammon finally sees me as I step out from behind his floating map of the universe. The room is empty except for us. Mammon's dead officers have all winked out of existence and are on their way to Tartarus, the Hell below Hell.
I get Mason's lighter off the couch and put it back in my pocket.
From the floor, Mammon gives the room an expansive wave like he's addressing the multitudes.
"Lo, the prodigal coward returns. It's been a long time, assassin. How have you been? Enjoying your life upstairs? That's a breathtaking tan."
I take my time getting to him.
"You'll notice I'm not rushing over. I want you to get used to seeing the world from floor level."
He looks me over.
"Nice coat. But I hate the shoes."
"I like what you've done with the place. Is that why you threw in with Mason? He got you a good decorator?"
"I'm with Mason because I appreciate winners."
"Like the five I just slaughtered? Or was it that time when you threw in with Lucifer to take over Heaven. Face it. You're completely shit in the picking-winners department."
Mammon's legs are splayed at funny angles. He's propped on his elbows, trying to look comfortable. I circle him so half the time he's talking to empty air.
He shrugs.
"We were young back then and swept up in the excitement that we could throw out the old ways and rebuild the world. I'm older now and understand. Our plans weren't thorough enough back then. This time they are."
"I've got my fingers crossed for you, doughboy. I have a feeling if you fuck up one more time, there's nothing left for you but Tartarus. Unless you know somewhere lower than that?"
He keeps smiling, but his lips do a little involuntary micro-twitch. Tartarus is the only thing that truly frightens all these Hellion bastards. Even they don't know what's down there. Maybe Lucifer does, but he's not around to ask.
Mammon manages a little mocking laugh.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing. It's a private joke. You wouldn't understand. There's wine and Aqua Regia on my desk. I hear you're quite the drunkard these days."
"Did you hear that when Kasabian was still spying for Lucifer? That intel is out-of-date. I'm strictly a social drinker these days."
"That's what all drunks say. In any case, enjoy yourself."
I give the bottles on his desk a sniff. They don't smell poisoned, but it's hard to tell with Aqua Regia since it's already mostly poison. I start going through his desk.
"Where are the Maledictions? I'd strangle the Pope for a smoke."
"Sorry. I quit."
"You're a Hellion. All you do is torture and smoke."
"You're right. I lied. But I'm out of cigarettes. Maybe if you let the guards in, one of them could bring some."
"How's the view from the carpet, Tom Thumb? Does the world smell different down there?"
I go through the rest of the drawers. There's a silver flask in a bottom one. I take it out, admiring Mammon's family crest on the front. I hold it up and he says, "Be my guest."
While I'm pouring Aqua Regia into the empty flask, Mammon says, "You're going to be dead tomorrow, you know."
When the flask is filled to the top, I tighten the cap and slip it inside my coat.
"Dead, huh? That sucks. How are your legs? Any pain yet?"
Mammon shakes his head.
"None, thank you."
"It'll start soon."
Metal scrapes near the wall.
I snap out the na'at to its full length and twist it so barbs sprout along its length. A scared, muffled voice screams where the na'at is pointing. It sounds like it's coming from a weird metal sculpture across the room. It's about six feet tall and covered in hand-hammered silver in roughly the outline of a human body. It looks like something from Muninn's discount bin. I get closer, letting the na'at keep some distance between us.
There are openings in the sculpture, like eye slits. There's movement behind them. I shove the na'at right up to the opening. The muffled screaming starts up. When I get closer I can see eyes inside the helmet. They're brown. The pupils wide and dilated with fear. They're human.
I point at the caged man.
"Who's the gimp?"
Mammon pushes himself up a little higher on his elbows.
"That's Mr. Kelly. Say hello, Mr. Kelly."
The Hellion upper classes love to talk about the damned with mock formality.
The slaved soul in the metal restraints squeezes out what I guess is a muffled greeting.
"Why's he locked up? Is he dangerous?"
"Only to your kind. He's a murderer."
"Is that what's in this year? Collecting killers instead of baseball cards?"
He tightens his lips in a look of mild disgust.
"It was Mason's idea. He issued senior officers 'interesting' souls so we might become more acquainted with human minds. The one he gave me was a bore, so I put him in storage."
The soul is in something like a Hellion suit of armor welded inside an external cage. I put away the na'at and start slicing through the bars with the black blade. With a little force the bars come off easily. When I get the front clear, I start slicing off the armor.
"Just out of curiosity, where's General Semyazah these days? I know he's on the run, but I also know you have spies. Where's he hiding?"
"You admire the fool, don't you? 'Semyazah, the lone Hellion general brave enough to hold out against Mason Faim, the dread usurper of Lucifer's throne!' "
"I just asked where he was. I don't need a campaign speech."
Mammon pulls himself around so we're looking straight at each other again.
"Remember the private joke I mentioned? I'll share it with you after all. When you so subtly threatened me with Tartarus, I laughed because that's where your hero is. Semyazah is Tartarus's newest and I daresay most famous guest."
If Mammon is telling the truth then the game is over. There's no game at all. With Semyazah out of the way, another general will have claimed his troops and there won't be anyone to stop Mason from launching his war. It was a long shot that Semyazah could do anything anyway. Now even that slim chance might be gone. Mammon could be lying, but the first thing I have to do is find Alice. I don't have time to run all over Hell checking out Mammon's bullshit. I wonder what happens to a non-damned soul if it's killed in Hell? If I can't find Alice in time and Mason murders her again, will she end up in Tartarus? Or worse, she might be saved from Tartarus but end up too far from Heaven to find her way back, and wander in the Limbo between them forever.
"Who killed Semyazah?"
Mammon shakes his head.
"That's the best part. You inspired Semyazah's fate. He wasn't killed. Mason said that we should send him to Tartarus alive, and so we did."
What a bunch of gold-plated idiots we are, Hellions and humans alike. Somewhere God is laughing at us. We're his private joke with himself. Why didn't he just wipe us all out and start over? Maybe it's more fun watching us run around bouncing off the walls.
"What? No more jokes, Sandman Slim? Here's an idea. Run back to your cozy home upstairs. Drink. Watch movies. Fuck whomever it is you fuck these days and let the grown-ups get on with their work. We're really awfully busy."
I cut the last few pieces of armor off the soul and pull him out of the cage. There's a metal restraint around his head holding a leather bit in his mouth. I slice through the lock and the restraint falls to the floor. I go back to Mammon, leaving the soul to rub his aching jaw.
"When is it happening?"
"When is what happening?"
I want to kick him in the throat but I don't want to kill him, so I just give him the toe of my boot in the jaw.
"That was me being nice. The next thing that happens is I start cutting off the parts of your body you can still feel, starting with your fingers."
Mammon rubs his jaw, considering his answer. When he answers, his voice is low.
"The troops are already massed. All that remains is to agree to the final details of plans and bring the troops under a single command. From there, Mason will lead us to Heaven."
"Do you really think you're going to win this time? Heaven has the high ground and they know you're coming. Lucifer will have told them everything."
His eyes narrow when he smiles.
"Lucifer is far from omniscient."
"So you have a secret. What is it?"
"What is what?"
I grab Mammon by the collar and toss him across the room onto his desk.
He waits until I'm close before he attacks.
I'm walking around the desk when he moves his arm in a very particular way. He's angel-fast, but I recognize what he's doing because these days I can do it, too.
Mammon swings his Gladius back over his head, trying to slice me in half as I come around the desk. I dodge it just in time. Feel it burn through my coat sleeve.
He swings again but I've already manifested my own Gladius. I block the strike. Mammon is flat on his back, not a prime defensive position. When I block his next shot, I slip my Gladius under his, shift my weight, and flip his sword over and down onto his chest. He screams and I stab my sword into his fighting arm as far as it will go. I hold it there until his arm blackens and his Gladius goes out. Hellions smell bad at the best of times. Burning Hellions are like a bonfire in a garbage dump.
He lies on the desk blinking at the ceiling.
"You still with us, General?"
He doesn't say anything. He just holds his burned arm with his good one. I don't have time for him to lie around and go into shock. I open the bottle of wine, lift him up, and hand him the bottle. He takes it in his good hand and drains half the bottle. I pick him up off the desk and sit him in his leather executive chair.
He's looking at me, but his eyes have the vacant stare of someone on a bad acid trip.
"What doesn't Lucifer know about?"
It takes him a few seconds to focus on me.
"The key. The key Mason was building to get into the Room of Thirteen Doors. It will never open the Room, but it will do something else. It will open Heaven to us."
"Maybe you've made a passkey, but how can you break through all of Heaven's defenses and get close enough to use it?"
"There's a weak spot. One of the protective seals is missing."
"You mean the Druj Ammun?"
His eyes go wide.
"How do you know about that?"
This time I laugh at him.
"Because I had it. Back in L.A."
He grabs my coat sleeve with his good hand.
"Where is it? Name any price."
"Too late. I traded it for some magic beans."
He drinks more wine.
"This isn't anything to joke about."
"I took the Druj Ammun off a dead vampire. A young girl. The only one of her kind I ever felt bad about killing. When I found out one of the Druj's powers was to mind-control Hellions, the plan was to come down and get you assholes to rip Mason to pieces for me."
"Where is it now?"
"I also found out that it controlled zombies, and as it happened, we had a substantial zombie surplus in L.A. right then. Instead of letting everyone get eaten, I destroyed the Druj. That killed every single zombie in the world in one night. By now your secret weapon is in a million little pieces clogging up the L.A. sewer system."
Mammon stares at the floor. I can't tell if he's listening or getting drunk. He lifts his head.
"It would have been good to have. We could have built a great weapon from it. Made it control the other angels," he says, and looks up at me. "Baphomet said if anyone was going to ruin this for us, it would be you. But you'd been gone so long many of us thought that you wanted to forget all about this place and wouldn't get involved. We should have erred on the side of caution."
"If it's any comfort, L.A. is completely zombie-free these days, so you can bring the wife and kids to Disneyland."
"It's too bad you killed your patron, Azazel. I would have enjoyed torturing him to death for creating you."
"So, even without the Druj, Mason has a backup plan he thinks will still get him into Heaven. How?"
"I don't know. It's the one thing he's kept secret from everyone, including his generals."
It's hard to read Hellions, but the angel and I agree that Mammon is telling the truth. Damn Lucifer for not being here. He might be able to figure out Mason's secret.
The Kissi stole the Druj thousands of years ago and dropped it on earth just to see what would happen. They like to create amusing chaos. It's their main nourishment. But Kissi are hit-and-run types, not known for their long-term planning. We always thought of them like a bunch of ADHD kids with superpowers. Always playing games and breaking things for the dumb joy of breaking them. But when they stole the Druj and dumped it on earth, did they have a secret of their own that no one ever considered? Maybe we've underestimated them this whole time.
Mammon finishes the wine and I set the bottle back on the desk.
"You're being awfully cooperative," I say.
"You've already crippled me. Torture is the next logical step. Why shouldn't I skip all the messiness and tell you what you want to know since none of it will help you?"
While we've been talking, Mammon's enslaved soul has been creeping over to the desk.
"We'll see. The truth is, the war isn't the main reason I'm here. I want you to take me to Eleusis."
He raises his eyebrows slightly.
"Don't be stupid. I don't drive, and even if I could . . ." He holds up his one working arm. "I'm not in racing shape."
Drive? In the Hell I remember, Lucifer's generals have their own private barges for getting around Hell's five big rivers. I guess a nice luxury car is about the same as a barge in L.A.
I turn my head and find the soul staring at me. He's a medium-size man with dark hair and brown eyes. He has rough workman's hands and his cheap shirt and thin black pants say he wasn't all that high in whatever trade he was in.
I point to him.
"Can the gimp drive?"
Mammon brightens at that, getting back some of his old high-and-mighty look.
"And dust and sing songs, too. All the menial things humans are so good at. Isn't that right, Mr. Kelly?"
Kelly nods.
"Give me the keys," I tell Mammon.
He opens a drawer, takes them out, and tosses them on the desk. I hand them to Kelly.
"You're the wheelman, Kelly. I'm riding shotgun and Dr. Strangelove here can sit in the back and navigate. Got it?"
Kelly just stares.
I look at Mammon.
"Does he speak English?"
Mammon nods.
"Quite well. He needs my permission before speaking to you."
"Give it so we can get moving."
"You may talk to him, Mr. Kelly, but be careful not to get too friendly. He's a monster. Isn't that right, Sandman Slim?"
I look at Kelly.
"You really can drive, right?"
Kelly nods. His gaze flickers from the floor and back to me.
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I never operated an automobile when I was alive, but I've been well instructed since then."
He sounds English. Cockney maybe. Michael Caine playing Harry Palmer. A working-class guy.
"Good enough. And don't call me 'sir.' "
"What should I call you, sir?" He cringes when he says it like he thinks I'm going to hit him. "My apologies."
"Stark's fine."
"Why not Wild Bill?" says Mammon brightly. "I hear he likes that even less than Sandman Slim."
Mammon turns to me.
"He's here, by the way. Your great-great-great-granddaddy, Mr. Hickok. I could arrange a tête-à-tête."
There's no wheelchair in the room and there's no way I'm carrying this charred creep to the car, so I push Mammon into his office chair.
"Introduce me, and when this is all over, I might let you keep the other arm."
Mammon brightens.
"You see what I mean, Mr. Kelly? He wants us to see him as human, but what's the first thing he does when he gets in here? He takes my legs. And I didn't even attack him. Then he takes my arm and threatens me with further mutilation. That sounds much more Hellion than human, doesn't it? I don't think you'll be wanting to turn your back on this one. Not for one minute."
"Where's the garage?" I ask Kelly.
"Directly below, Mr. Stark."
"Mister." It's better than "sir."
I don't want either of them to see the Room, so I blindfold them both and take them downstairs through a shadow.
MAMMON'S BARGE TURNS out to be a pristine early-sixties Lincoln Continental limo with a drop top and suicide doors. I think more than a little of this world is put together straight from my unconscious. I'll know for sure if I end up in a motorcycle race against Steve McQueen.
The Lincoln isn't like a modern limo. The car is wide open on the inside. No partitions or sliding windows separating the passenger compartment from the driver. It's like a club or a prison cafeteria. Candy would love this heap. I can see her in the passenger seat with her feet up on the dash hitting the button on her robot sunglasses in time with the radio.
It still feels strange to have left her behind while I go chasing after another woman even if it's not for a romantic kind of love, but the kind that says if you've ever been deeply connected to someone, you don't let them get snatched to the underworld without doing something about it.
When this is over and if the universe is still standing, maybe I'll bring her down here. I wouldn't take her to the Hell I knew, but I could see her getting off on a weekend in the Convergence. It would be like the adventure vacations yuppies go on where they get to experience the great outdoors from air-conditioned buses and ten-thousand-dollar tents. We'll take over a floor of the Roosevelt Hotel and shoot paintballs at the wildlife.
I take Mammon from his chair and belt him in behind the driver's seat. Kelly and I get in the front. He starts the ignition and drives us smoothly through the garage to the gatehouse, where a guard is waiting.
I show Mammon the knife in my hand.
"Be cool or you lose the other arm."
"Of course," Mammon says.
We pull up and Mammon rolls down his tinted window just low enough to show his face. He nods at the guard and the guard pushes a button that rolls away the gate. Kelly steers us out of the palace and on to Hollywood Boulevard. It looks like even in Hell I'm destined to travel in stolen cars.
"Turn right," I tell him. "Things are messy the other way."
He makes the turn.
It's funny seeing Mammon sitting calmly with his bad legs and crispy arm. I got lucky back at the palace. I had no idea he could manifest a Gladius. Azazel didn't bother to mention that when he sent me to kill Mammon more than ten years ago. I don't know why he wanted me to do it and I don't know why he changed his mind. Maybe his TiVo was out.
"To the Phlegethon, Mr. Kelly," Mammon says.
Sinkholes and fault lines slice up the streets, making them impassable. Kelly cuts down La Brea and takes a roundabout route through residential streets and apartment-building parking lots to the 101.
Mammon tells Kelly to head south. The breakdown lanes on both sides of the freeway look like sets from old driver's-ed films. They're a solid mass of twisted and burned-out vehicles.
In regular Hell, the Phlegethon is a river of fire that flows and ebbs like water. The flames are just a light breeze from on board a barge. You don't get burned unless you're in direct contact with the river.
The Phlegethon does double duty in Hell. It's one of the big five rivers, so it carries a lot of traffic, mostly barges, passenger boats, and freighters. It's busy enough that it needs docks, buoys, depth markers, and all the other Moby-Dick bric-a-brac I don't understand. This is Hell. Why get artisans to make all that stuff when you have millions of dead souls lying around? Down the length of the Phlegethon, the damned float in the eternal fire as channel markers and buoys showing depth readings. Entire docks are made from spirits lashed together. There's similar creativity in this Hell. The freeway guardrails and the median fence in the center are staked-out souls. The reflectors separating the freeway lanes are the heads of souls who've been buried up to their necks in Hellion concrete. What happens if you blow a tire down here? Hellion AAA probably comes out and ties a few souls around your axle so you can get to a damned garage.
"So, who are you?" I ask Kelly.
He doesn't say anything.
"Tell him to talk to me. Tell him he doesn't ever need your permission to talk again."
Mammon says, "Talk to him, Mr. Kelly. Talk to him to your heart's content. But first take this exit and merge left."
Kelly says, "I'm Master Mammon's servant and resident human. I do whatever he asks, from talking about my life to performing whatever tasks I'm instructed to do in a way that best exemplifies human habits and behavior."
"I told you he was a bore," says Mammon. "You remove creatures like this from their environment and they wither. He might still be interesting if we let him loose as a killer down here like you."
"I wasn't a killer until I got down here."
Mammon makes a dismissive gesture with his good hand.
"Just because a baby spider hasn't bitten anyone yet doesn't make it any less of a spider."
Kelly steers us down the fire road. Mammon occasionally tells him to change lanes or follow a road that splits off from the main one. We're driving for at least an hour but we don't seem to be anywhere yet. If Mammon is leading us anywhere but Eleusis, I'm going to tie him to the back bumper and drag him to Mexico. If I can find it.
"What makes you so special that of all the souls down here, you rate being handed off to a general?" I ask Kelly.
"I don't know, sir. Stark, I mean. I'm sorry. It's a wretched habit to break."
"Don't sweat it."
"There are so many people down here more accomplished than I. I've accomplished nothing compared to some I've met."
"Don't be so modest, Mr. Kelly. Mr. Kelly was a murderer, and after some practice he became quite adept. More than even his pursuers knew," says Mammon. "But it was only dumb luck that kept you unincarcerated after those first few, isn't that right?"
"Yes, Master Mammon. Just as you say, sir."
We drive for what feels like another hour. Every now and then I see a flash behind us, like a light going out or a reflection off a mirror, but when I turn there's nothing there.
I've driven the 101 south to San Diego a hundred times, but I don't recognize this road at all. We could be driving to Oz or right into a trap.
"We're getting off here," says Mammon.
I look around, trying to get my bearings. All the road signs have been torn down or hacked to pieces. More of Lucifer's paranoia or just another example of L.A.'s ever-expanding nervous breakdown?
The exit sign has been torched and lies in a little slag heap at the edge of the road. I swear I see another flash behind us, but then I'm bracing myself against the dashboard. Kelly takes the exit too fast and has to tap the brakes hard when we come to a hairpin curve. That's when Mammon stabs me.
I should have stripped the fucker down at the palace, but the angel in my head felt sorry for all the maiming and frying I did. I went easy on him and this is what I get.
The inverted-cross medal he's been wearing comes apart and the lower half is a razor-sharp golden blade. He was probably going for my neck, but when Kelly hit the brakes, it ruined Mammon's aim. The knife went into my left cheek. A little higher and it would have hit my eye.
Mammon pulls the knife out of my face and slashes me in the shoulder before I can turn and grab him. He stabs me a second time in the cheek before I can pin his good hand. I have one hand braced on the roof as we turn under the freeway. Mammon lunges at me and buries his teeth in my hand that's holding him. I pull back reflexively and he gets his hand free. He swings the blade at me as the car fishtails, but ends up slashing Kelly's arm.
Kelly screams and we plow through a guardrail and down an embankment. The car flips and rolls. When we stop moving I'm not sure which way is up or down, but when I elbow open my door, my foot touches the ground, so I'm guessing we're right side up.
I step out and fall onto the dry dead grass. When my head stops swimming, I go around to Kelly's side and pull him out. His arm doesn't look too bad. I don't bother with Mammon. His neck is twisted 180 degrees, so he's looking out the back window at the road we just left. Probably nostalgic for when he wasn't dead. I guess he's technically not dead since he hasn't blipped out of existence to Tartarus, but if I was his secretary I'd cancel all his appointments for tomorrow.
I carry Kelly around the car and set him down leaning against the car.
Human souls don't breathe or have beating hearts, so I don't know how to check if he's okay. The angel in my head can see souls, but the dead are all soul, so that doesn't help much. But a double-dead human soul will end up in Tartarus as fast as any Hellion, so Kelly still being here is a good sign.
The side of my face burns. I touch it where Mammon stabbed me and my hand comes away bloody. Shit. Exactly what I don't need right now.
Kelly moans and starts to move.
It takes him a few minutes to get his bearings. He rubs the back of his neck and stares at the ground. When he sees the car, he sits up straight.
"You bloody berk!" he yells into the car at Mammon's broken body. "This is fucking perfect."
"Get a grip, man. This really isn't the moment to freak out."
"Of course. I'm sorry."
He holds his arm where Mammon stabbed him. It clearly hurts, but is more of a shock than a wound.
I say, "Wait here while I look around."
I walk up the slope to the freeway to see if there's any trace of a town or a sign or wandering Boy Scout with a compass. Three strikes. I'm out. We could be in Egypt for all I know.
When I get back to the car, Kelly seems a little more coherent.
"The master is still in the car," he says.
"Yeah. He doesn't really need any fresh air, if you know what I mean."
"But he's not dead, is he? I mean he's still there."
"He's still with us, tough old bastard. Do you know where we are, Kelly?"
He gets to his knees and looks around.
"Roughly," he says.
"Can you get us to Eleusis?"
"I believe so."
"How long will it take?"
"On foot? If we cut through the flats and we don't have to detour too far around holes and faults, less than a day. But it'll be rough going."
From the freeway I hear the unmistakable sound of tires. I grab Kelly and pull him to the ground beside me. A heavy Unimog rolls slowly by, running without lights. That's what I've been seeing behind us all night. Mammon must have signaled someone before we left the palace and they've been tracking us ever since. A spotlight flashes from the Unimog, playing over the dying trees and cracked road. The car is on the downhill side of an embankment. The light moves back and forth across the exit, but I don't think they can see us down here. A second later the spotlight goes out and the truck drives away.
We've got a posse after us. More good news. Like Mammon said, it's a good idea to err on the side of caution. I need to do something in case they catch up to us.
"Kelly. Will we be passing through any towns or settlements? Anywhere someone might see us?"
"It's hard to say. Things can change so quickly here. It's best to assume we will."
"That's what I was afraid of."
I open the car and drag Mammon out.
Don't die on me now, you prick. Give me a few more minutes.
I pop the lock on the trunk with the black blade and start tossing things. It's full of the usual car junk. A tire iron, spare tire, jumper cables. But there's also military gear. I go back to where I left Mammon with a sturdy leather satchel and drop it beside him. With the knife I cut a large square of fabric from his suit jacket and lay it out flat on the grass.
Kelly creeps over closer to see what I'm doing.
"You might not want to watch this," I say.
"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather stay. This looks like it might be quite interesting."
"Okay," I say. "Here's the situation. We have to walk to Eleusis and then get all the way to the asylum and back out again. I'm wearing a glamour so I don't broadcast that I'm alive, but I'm bleeding, so I need more. And if Mammon signaled a posse, he might have told them I was the one who took him. I can't look like me. Are you getting my point?"
Jack gives me a big wolfish smile.
"If you're about to do what I think you are, I wouldn't miss it for the world."
"Okay, but if souls puke, don't do it on me."
"I'll remember that, sir."
"And don't call me 'sir.' "
"Yes. Sorry."
I close my eyes and try to remember any binding spells I picked up along the way, something to keep Mammon here with us a little longer before he croaks. My head is still a little foggy from the crash, but I come up with a minor bit of hoodoo that should hold if I work fast.
The next part I've never actually tried myself, but I saw it done a couple of times by old juju priests I met through some Dharma bums in a New Orleans Sub Rosa clan.
I try to get the words and rhythms of the old houngans in my mind before I start working. The real spell is a complex combination of Yoruba and Louisiana Creole and I've forgotten a lot of the words, so I have to do a lot of bebop improv, but bullshitting hoodoo on the fly is my specialty. As I chant, I rub my temples, and when the words are flowing fast enough and the time feels right, I grab my face just below the scalp line and pull. The skin comes off like I'm peeling a banana. It sticks in a couple of places and I have to snip them with the knife, but it's not a big deal.
I put my face, bloody side up, on the cloth I cut from Mammon's suit.
I hear Kelly gasp. It's not in horror, but in a kind of fascination and awe. He's probably never seen high-quality Merlin stuff. This must be a hell of an introduction to magic.
I do the whole ritual again. When I peel off Mammon's face, I drape it over the raw and bloody place where my face used to be. The new flesh burns as it attaches itself. I close my eyes and breathe, working through the pain. I'm dizzy and slide over onto an elbow. I feel Kelly grab me so I don't fall. The inside of my head swirls around once more and then it's over. I touch my new face. There's no pain at all. Mammon's skin feels like it's been there forever. I open my mouth. Move my lips in mock smiles and frowns.
I look at Kelly.
"What do you think? I don't look too much like Mammon, do I? It's his skin, but my bones and muscles, so we shouldn't be twins."
Kelly shakes his head.
"You don't look at all like him," he says. He stares at me with a kind of beatific smile plastered on his face, like Saint Peter just gave him an invitation to the Christmas after-party in Heaven.
He says, "If it isn't being too forward, I'd like to say that you might have just become my personal hero, Mr. Stark."
"Okay."
He looks up at the rolling black clouds that cover the sky.
"I once thought that I was a master of flesh. But I see now that you have surpassed me in every way."
As my new face settles in, I wrap my real face in Mammon's cloth, put it carefully in the leather satchel, and sling it over my shoulder.
"That's real nice of you, Kelly, but what the fuck are you talking about?"
He stands. Looks at me and then at Mammon. The Hellion finally dies and his body disappears.
"I prefer Jack, if you don't mind," says Kelly. "That's what people called me in older, merrier days when I was still alive. Jack the Ripper."
Some crazy people must stay crazy even after they're dead. I met dozens of Judas Iscariots, Hitlers, and Jack the Rippers in the eleven years I spent Downtown, but always one at a time. I always wondered if they steered clear of each other out of professional courtesy.
There's one thing that makes me think Kelly could be for real. Mason chose him. Picking a simple back-alley cutthroat with delusions of grandeur isn't a mistake Mason would make.
Jack is leading us down the embankment and into the thick woods that line the freeway. The trees stand at crazy, impossible angles. It's like we're walking through still photos of the forest in the process of falling.
"Step lightly," whispers Jack. "And don't touch anything. Tremors have loosed the land under the trees. They're barely rooted. They'll come down on us with the slightest provocation."
Suddenly I'm sorry I'm wearing big steel-toe boots. I should be in Hello Kitty slippers.
I've never seen a real forest in Hell. Not one with trees and plants. I've seen places called "forests," but they're usually tightly packed mazes of saw blades and spinning pylons studded with needlelike Hydra teeth.
We walk maybe twenty yards until the forest gets tight and dark and wild. Old-growth backwoods. It's hard not to bump into limbs and the solid trunks of the drunken trees. Each time I hit something, I feel it give, and wonder if it's going to fall and which way to run and if running will make things better or worse by bringing down even more trees. Tree trunks crack and branches fall around us, but we make it through the forest and come out onto low sand dunes.
Jack points off into the empty distance and says, "There's Eleusis."
But I'm looking down. At the bottom of the dune Venice Beach stretches into the distance. Which doesn't make sense. Venice is west of Hollywood and we've been going south. I don't know what's going crazy faster, this city or me.
I look up to where Jack is pointing. There's something in the distance, but I'm damned if I know what it is.
Venice is shuttered and looks like it's been that way for fifty years. The only light in the area comes from the fires reflected off the belly of the endless black clouds overhead. Vents in the ground belch geysers of superheated steam. Fire twisters skitter in the distance, tearing up the empty beach houses. We head down to the long tourist walk.
"You're wondering if I'm lying about who I am, Mr. Stark. Or if I'm a nutter."
"Something like that."
"And you're wondering how someone might go about proving or disproving my claim."
"Right on the money."
Even by Hell standards we've pretty much pegged the bleak meter. There's nothing more depressing than a dead beach town. It's like all the loons and extroverts and dimwit fun in the world has been boxed up and tossed on a bonfire. Of course, this isn't really Venice. It's just the Convergence projection of it. Still, something big died here and the sight of it has sucked the wind out of me. Or maybe I'm light-headed from cutting off my face. We move past empty weight-lifting areas and out-of-business tattoo parlors.
Jack says, "It's impossible for me to prove who I am. Perhaps I'm mad. Perhaps I'm a liar. If you perhaps had a book about old Jack's comings and goings, you might ask me details of my past. But you don't have a book and even if you did, Jack is a famous man. His crimes are well known and well documented. I might have read the same books as you."
"Where does that leave us, Jack?"
"In the wilderness, I'm afraid. I can no more prove to you that I'm happy Jack than you can prove to me you're Sandman Slim."
"Excuse me? I just stepped out of a shadow and killed five Hellion military officers. I took a Hellion general prisoner. I manifested a Gladius."
Jack rubs his jaw and rolls his shoulders, still trying to work out the kinks. I wonder how long he was in Mammon's cage.
He says, "Maybe you did and maybe you didn't. I'm not a magical sort like you and some of these other folk, so I don't know how it all works, do I?"
"Use your imagination."
"You appeared to kill a number of soldiers and to dash through shadows, but it could have been a trick of the eye. I've seen stage magicians make furniture dance and spirits float in the air. And I've seen this lot make people see all sorts of things. Lovers, friends, parents. Spiders. Snakes. But they were mere phantasms. Trickery meant to fool the eye and terrorize the soul. For all I know, you twiddled your thumbs and tricked Master Mammon's staff into killing each other."
"That would still be a pretty good trick."
"Indeed it would be. I've seen demons and devils that could break a man's bones on the rack or his heart with a single word. But that doesn't make any of them Sandman Slim."
"When you get down to it, I don't really care who you are. If you can get me to Eleusis, I'll call you Jack the Ripper or Mott the Hoople if you want. Just get me there."
"Of course. And what will be my payment for this service?"
I stop and look at him. Jack walks on for a few steps before looking back at me. He puts his hands in his pockets and stands up straight. The whole deferential attitude is gone. He's a killer standing his ground.
"Payment? And here I thought saving you from a tin-can coffin might cover it."
"Perhaps. Let's put our minds to it as we go and see what we come up with, shall we?"
He starts walking and I follow, staring at the thick foamy sea that looks more like tar than water. I should have tried to get the car started. But on the road the posse would have caught up with us. So no, leaving it was the smart move.
"Okay, Jack, I've got to ask. Assuming you are old Leather Apron, what's your story? Did the clap eat half your brain? Were you a religious freak? Did a talking dog named Sam tell you to kill all those women?"
"There is no God and I know nothing about a talking dog, though I'd surely like to see one."
"You're an atheist? You were a fallen angel's slave. In Hell. And you're an atheist? Walk me through that, Jack."
"Why is it necessary for God to exist for Hell to exist? The problem is that when good people imagine Hell, they imagine it as the opposite of the real world and as remote as the stars. That's their delusionment. Hell and earth are the same thing. Separated by nothing more than a thin shroud of understanding that this is so. I lived in Hell every moment I dwelt on the other earth and I made it my business to bring Hell to all God-fearing souls to remind them that horror is the fabric from which the world was made."
"You didn't date a lot when you were alive, did you, Jack?"
"I don't consort with whores, thank you very much. I rip 'em."
"Fucking hell."
I get out the flask and have a drink. The Aqua Regia burns in just the right way going down. I start to offer Jack a drink because you always offer the other guy a drink, but I screw the top on and put the flask back in my pocket.
We're off the beach and heading inland, picking our way through the dead neighborhoods. At the corner of one of the main streets, where rows of burning palms converge on it like a weird offering to a glue-sniffing beach god, is an office building with a three-story clown sculpture in front. It's in white face with dark whiskers and is wearing a top hat, white gloves, and ballet slippers. I know it's supposed to look whimsical, but whimsy in a place like this is like jerking off at a funeral. Someone might enjoy it, but you wouldn't want to know them.
"Assuming that you are Sandman Slim, tell me about yourself and your work. I've heard your name many times. Hellions talk about you like the bogeyman."
"I might be a monster but I never mailed a kidney to a newspaper."
"Half a kidney. I ate the other half."
"Mom always said it's a sin to waste food."
"How many Hellions have you dispatched, Sandman Slim? How many humans and human souls?"
"No idea."
"How many women?"
"I yelled at a meter maid once."
Soon we're in a residential area. People in Venice are sun worshippers and most of the houses have huge windows. Some of the upscale places even have one or two glass walls. The glass is all gone. Shattered by earth tremors and fucked over by looters. Houses are tagged with spray-painted Hellion gang signs. Teenyboppers are assholes here, too. I hope Heaven's teens are idiots. Going joyriding in Dad's wings and TPing other angels' clouds.
A dust devil swirls down the street, pelting us with trash and broken glass. I pull Jack behind a burned-out car and wait until the twister passes. It turns at the corner and heads down another street like it's alive and has a sense of direction. A few doors later, it goes. The neighborhood isn't completely deserted. I don't want to know who or what still lives here. I pull Jack to his feet and we get moving.
I hear a different kind of rumble back the way we came. There's a light in the distance. A spotlight coming down the dunes to the beach. The posse must have circled back and found Mammon's limo.
"Is there a faster way, Jack?"
"Yes, but it's more dangerous."
"Let's go."
We make a few turns back the way we came and run right into a dust storm. I'm practically blind, but Jack pulls me through it like I'm a poodle on a leash. When we emerge from the storm we're in a different neighborhood. Winding hill roads. The steep grades and long driveways are chewed-up, ever-widening fissures. Ghost mansions come and go in the settling dust. We head downhill, just like this neighborhood is. If the cracks in the road hook up with other, deeper cracks, one good shake and the whole side of this hill is going to turn into Surf City. Hang ten and ride the mansions, Rolls-Royces, and manicured lawns all the way down to the flats and into the Pacific.
Jack looks at me, trying to figure out how we got here.
"You're navigating with your eyes," he says. "To navigate these days, you have to think like a worm or mole. You must know what's underground. This isn't a land of right angles or streets anymore. It's purely geologic. The sand back at the beach was probably used as landfill around here to flatten sections of the hills."
"I'm lucky I have you, then."
"Yes you are." He pauses. "You were telling me about how many people you've killed."
"No. I wasn't."
"Back in London, old Inspector Abberline and the rest of the Met think I only took five. I took plenty more than that, believe you me. There were a few in the country, but south by the coast was best. Like the lovely beach we just left. Do a day's excursion to Brighton or Portsmouth. I'd find saloon trollops and rip them down by the wharfs. Toss their innards to the birds and fill their bodies with stones to weigh them down. They'd slip into the sea like it was waiting for them."
"Enough, you twisted fuck."
We walk on, Jack staring at his feet. Each step leaves a shallow impression in the thick dust that covers the sidewalk. If the posse is behind us, we'll be easy to track, but I don't have time to worry about that now. Each step is a second hand on a clock ticking away the time. Jack said it would take a day to get to Eleusis, but I've already lost track of how long we've been walking.
"None of this is a coincidence, you know," says Jack.
"Yeah. You had a great personal ad on Craigslist."
"Assuming I'm who I say that I am and assuming that you are who you say you are, do you truly believe that two such infamous killers could cross paths through simple happenstance?"
"Are you talking about divine intervention, Jack? Because that kind of blows your no-God theory."
"Not God. Some other, more subtle force that's thrown us together toward a higher purpose."
"Listen, we're in Hell and there are about fifty billion killers down here, so I was bound to meet someone like you. It could have been the Boston Strangler, Ted Bundy, or Freddy Krueger, and every one of them would tell me exactly what you're telling me now. There's nothing special about our road movie. It's nothing more than the flip of a coin."
He slowly shakes his head.
"I don't believe that. There's a reason for this. We're fated to do something together."
"Yeah. You're going to take me to Eleusis. When we get there I'm going to shake your hand and we are going to go our separate ways."
"There has to be more to it than that."
"Trust me, there doesn't."
"Maybe our doing the thing is the payment I need."
"It won't work, Jack. Look at our histories. We're lone wolves. We don't work with partners. When we get to town we go our separate ways. I'll be grateful I'm there and you'll be grateful you're not still a Hellion's paperweight."
A steam vent explodes nearby. The blast of heat and vapor knocks me back. I think I hear a rumbling behind us. There might be a truck coming or it might just be the sound of the vent. I push Jack and we break into a trot.
Jack says, "May I see your knife? I have a great fondness for knives."
"No."
I look back at our tracks in the dust. You could see them from space. Maybe Jack wants us to get caught. We need to get off this street. I take his arm and push him onto a side street that's clean of dust. The vent spews again and the street moves below us. A palm tree falls and crushes a dusty pickup truck. Jack pulls me back in the other direction.
We run to the street we'd been on before. The air is full of dust and we can't see where we're going, but we run anyway. If there are any sinkholes or faults in front of us, we're fucked. We can barely see each other. But the tremors and the noise die down after a minute and the street goes back to being solid.
Jack looks at me.
"I assume you won't stray from the path again."
"You're the boss, Jack."
"Well put."
WE'RE HEADING FOR what looks like low hills, but as we get closer, it's really an area where the streets have buckled wildly, like black icebergs jutting up from the street. Eleusis is on the other side.
We turned off the dusty street twenty minutes earlier. Most of the signs in this neighborhood are in Spanish, but the residents are the same mix of dazed Hellions and lost souls we saw in Hollywood. They sit in cars and wander between strip malls like sleepwalkers.
Where the hell are you, Alice? What are you doing right now, Candy? I'd rather be having the worst time possible with either of you than having the best with my knife-happy tour guide. I know I told Candy to take the blood cure from Allegra, but I wouldn't mind letting her show Jack here what a Jade looks like. Try to hurt this woman, you little shit.
Every couple of minutes a lone man runs across the street. He's easy to spot when everyone else is going half speed. When he's settled somewhere he whistles an all clear. Soon a group of eight or ten Hellions comes up the same way. A mix of men and women, they whoop it up, running into stores, busting the places up, and coming out again with stolen wine and food. The ones with working guns take potshots at cars and store windows.
Jack says, "Raiders."
He starts running for the back of a half-burned building off to our right. I follow. When he can't get the rear door open, I push him out of the way, jam the black blade into the door frame, and push. Metal pops and wood splinters. I shove Jack inside and we head to the front of the place. The door is open a crack, giving us a good view of the street.
The Hellions stroll by like the street is bought and paid for. Some are still in their uniforms. Others only kept half of their uniforms and replaced the jackets or pants with formal wear or stolen motocross gear.
"Where are the Raiders from?"
"As the war with Heaven grows closer, there are more and more deserters from the armies. They raid the provinces and live on anything they can find. I once drove the master on a mission to arrest a group hiding in Eleusis. That's why I know where it is."
The raiders stop in front of the building we're hiding in. Suddenly I wish I'd brought a shotgun or two. But they're not looking at us. They're looking back down the street. When they get a look at what's coming, they sprint, run, and disappear over the fence behind a convenience store.
Moving lights sweep the street. The posse has grown to several vehicles. How did they get ahead of us? They must know where we're going.
There are about twenty Hellions on tricked-out ATVs and Unimogs. They have hot-rod flames on the sides and animal skulls mounted on the roofs and hoods. Their spotlights are LAPD issue. When they hit you with one from a helicopter, it's instant daylight and you better stop and look happy about it. Jack and I duck behind the door as the light moves over the front of the building.
A ticking, whirring sound follows the posse. I don't need Jack to tell me what that is. A pack of hellhounds. There wasn't much in Hell that gave me the creeps as much as the metal hounds. Maybe my subconscious really is shaping the place. The hounds are the only things I've seen that look just as hard and awful as they do in regular Hell.
The hounds move in packs. They're clockwork war dogs bigger than a dire wolf and are run by a brain suspended in a glass globe where their heads should be. A hellhound is smart and dangerous on its own. In packs, they're like a herd of velociraptors driving tanks. The best way to fight them is to run away and hope they die of old age.
The mechanical hounds lope behind the noisy trucks, their gears ticking quietly in the dark.
"Goddammit, Jack, how much longer before we get there?"
"If we cross over to the street behind this one, with luck we can beat them all to Eleusis. I know of a wall with just a little bit of a hole in it."
"Let's get moving."
"On the other hand, it might not be a bad idea to let the raiders or the men following them get there first."
"Why?"
"You know of the asylum, but do you know that as Pandemonium has fallen apart, so has the asylum. Most of the inmates have escaped and wander the streets. The old pagans to whom the place was a paradise have all been killed or driven into the wilderness. All you're going to find in Eleusis are madmen, raiders, and thieves hiding from the war."
I go to the door to look out again, and something crunches under my boot. I reach down and pick it up. It's a little wooden umbrella.
Something has been bugging me ever since we came into this place. I look at the dusty hula girls against the wall and tiki lamps and it finally sinks in that this half-collapsed shit shack is the Bamboo House of Dolls. The roof is down over the bar, but the jukebox is where it belongs. The glass dome in front is broken. Dust lies around the interior in small dunes. The player is cued up to Martin Denny's cover of "Miserlou."
"A friend of mine is still in the asylum. Do you think there's a chance if she's still in there that she's alive?"
"I couldn't say, but it's my understanding that whatever inmates remain in the asylum are of a more benign nature. The ones with strength and will escaped long ago."
Something tickles my hands and legs. Drytts. Hell's sand flies. They're not dangerous, just disgusting. If they find you and you stay still too long, others will come and you'll end up buried in them.
"We can't stay here. You have one hour to get us to Eleusis."
"One hour or what?"
He sounds defiant, like I hurt his feelings.
"Or I'm going to think you've been fucking me around this whole time. Don't forget. I'm the one with the knife. Let's start there and let our imaginations go."
He nods at the back door.
"The quickest way is that rise a hundred yards off. It's also the steepest and most dangerous."
"Lead the way."
"Is that an order?"
"A polite suggestion."
THE RISE JACK was talking about is a whole intersection that's been punched up out of the street at nearly a forty-five-degree angle. A couple of restaurants, a small shopping center, and a gas station hang in the air over our heads. The sinkhole below is so full of wrecked cars and motorcycles that it's nearly level with the street. The junk stews in the same bloody sewage that was in the sinkhole outside Hollywood Forever.
I start climbing, hanging on to gas pumps at the bottom and moving up to the empty garage. When I make it around there, I pull myself up on metal parking-lot crash posts. I turn around to check, and see Jack slowly following me up. I don't think he's happy to be around me anymore. His whole theory about fate having a reason for tossing us into the same salad has evaporated. He looks like all he wants is to get through this without ending up in Tartarus with Mammon.
As Jack climbs, cracks form under his handholds. He's followed me through the garage and is pulling himself up the crash posts. As he puts his weight on each post, the cracks under it widen. The last two posts wiggle like rotten teeth. My arm is wrapped around the solid base of the shopping-center sign. I move up to a newspaper vending machine that's anchored in the sidewalk. Jack grabs onto the solid foundation of the shopping-center sign before the posts give way.
When he's secure I crawl into the entrance of a liquor store. If you cut through the place, the back door will take us to the top of the rise.
The liquor store stinks inside. A thousand broken bottles of wine, vodka, beer, scotch, and soda have soaked through a mountain of junk food and the whole mess is piled against the front counter and front wall. The floor is sticky with dried booze and sugar, which is disgusting but helps me keep traction as I climb to the storeroom in back. Jack is right behind, baby-crawling past the empty shelves.
I'm at the back door when the shaking starts again. It's so subtle that it's almost not there. It feels like the muscle memory of a nasty dream. I thought it was an earthquake, but I think our climbing has upset the delicate balance that's kept this slab of L.A. junk wilderness upright.
The shaking turns into a steady vibration. Two heavy bodies scraping against each other. The bottles beneath us clatter together. Softly and then like a truckload of xylophones being pushed down a long flight of stairs. It's hard to hold on to the shelves as the tremors deepen. Parts of the ceiling fall down on us. There's a sick liquid moment when the whole intersection shifts. Up ahead, the rear wall cracks and the rest of the ceiling starts coming down. The whole liquor store is sliding forward.
"Move your ass, Jack."
I scramble past the shelves and kick off the top one, grabbing onto the door frame at the top. I climb to the back of the storeroom and pull on the door. The twisting building has jammed it shut. I grab the doorknob and shove the black blade into the metal lock. It pops out and clatters against the wall like a bell. The door swings open and I pull myself up onto the rear step.
Jack is stumbling over office furniture. Cracks open at my feet. The store is breaking away from this last anchor of ground.
The building growls and creaks like an iron elephant with the bends. It lurches. Slides left and down. Jack is pulling himself up on the door. I grab his wrist as a subterranean shriek of snapping concrete and sheering metal launches the liquor store down the way we came. It crashes into the garage and both structures shatter like hundred-ton dollhouses before disappearing into the sinkhole below. The slab sways like it's bobbing in a bathtub and begins to fall. I grab Jack and jump to the roof of a dry cleaner's beyond the edge of the slab.
I tuck and roll as we hit. Jack flops like a sockful of oatmeal thrown from a speeding car. When the section of road hits, one of the cleaner's walls collapses and we slide down the roof like worn-out kids at the worst amusement park in the world.
Jack and I lie on the broken pavement until the dust settles. We only slid a floor, so our asses are spanked and bruised but we're pretty much intact.
Jack was right. Eleusis is right where he said it would be. There's a twenty-foot stone wall topped with broken glass across the street. It's exactly how I pictured it. It wouldn't be Eleusis without the wall, Heaven's vision of paradise in the abyss. Hell's only gated community.
JACK IS STILL on his back when I get up and head for the wall. A couple of minutes later I hear him behind me.
"Thank you for saving me back there."
"Don't mention it. Really. Don't."
"I still think we were brought together to accomplish something bigger."
"If everything works out, maybe I'll get a chance to stop a war. That's pretty big, don't you think?"
Jack grunts.
"Anyway it's all, as the big brains say, academic, Jack. I saved you from Mammon and you got me to Eleusis. We're even-steven."
Up ahead, a gutted city bus has jumped the curb and plowed into the stone wall. The damage is mostly blocked by the bus's body, but through the windshield I can see where part of the wall has collapsed. I glance back at Jack. He looks nervous and a little confused. Is that a good look or a bad look for a serial killer? Whichever, I want to cut this freak show loose. I climb into the driver's-side window and call back to Jack.
"Take it easy, man, and thanks for the memories."
He yells something after me, but I don't stop. I kick open the front door and head into the city.
Finally Eleusis.
Fuck me.
I wonder if Kasabian is watching me through the Codex? Is he eating pizza with Candy and giving her a blow-by-blow? He must be laughing his ass off by now.
Eleusis, God's city in the Inferno, halfway across Hell from Pandemonium, is part of goddamn North Hollywood. Light Bringer, Lucifer's biopic, was supposed to be shot in a Burbank soundstage just a couple of miles up the freeway. I'm still in L.A. This whole fucking world is L.A.
I'm almost there, Alice. I think. I hope. Who fucking knows anymore? I could walk a block and end up back in Venice or the cemetery. We seem to have come in a big circle from Hollywood back to Hollywood. But it's not the same Hollywood. And where I am can't be entirely random. Mammon was taking me somewhere and Jack has been taking me somewhere and I don't believe Mammon but I do believe Jack. He didn't have any reason to lie. He thought we were partners, Hope and Crosby on The Road to Zanzibar.
This is what I get for putting my life in the hands of a crazy road spirit. Mustang Sally would love wandering around like I have. More streets, more roads, more crazy-ass tracks in the dirt for her to claim. You're going to get a lot more salty peanuts than candy the next time we meet, Sally. No more sugar rushes for you.
I hear stones crunch and fall behind me. I'm not scared. I recognize Jack's footsteps. Don't get too close, Loony Tune. I really want to punch something right now.
On the other side of the rubble is a big intersection. Malls and parking on one side. A forties-style apartment house on another. The Scientology Celebrity Center nearby. There are bodies curled up under the dead trees and bushes where they've turned the celebrity center into a pagan flophouse. Most are dressed in hospital greens and bathrobes. A few are in straitjackets that look like they've been gnawed apart. There are even a few demented hellions with them. Refugees from the asylum. Finally something like good news. I'm getting closer.
There's faint noise in the distance. Yelling. Gunshots. Maybe even engines revving. Someone is having fun somewhere in Eleusis.
I should probably wait and get the lay of the land but one of these Sleeping Beauties knows where to find the asylum. I step down from the rubble and head across the street to the parking lot.
I don't get ten steps when Jack grabs me. I spin and come up with the knife under his chin.
"Do not even begin to try your Ripper act on me. I'm not one of your scared Whitechapel girlfriends. I'll teach you what every slash and cut you gave them feels like. I felt them in the arena and they don't feel good."
Jack looks past me, shaking his head. He raises his hand and points.
"Look at the street," he says.
I look over my shoulder, keeping the knife at his throat.
"I don't see anything."
"The sidewalks. The buildings. The windows. There are no proper joins. No right angles anywhere."
"Why would there be? Downtown is getting shaken to death like Lassie with a rat."
"It's not the tremors, sir. Look across the street at where the pavement is falling away."
"Don't call me 'sir.' "
I look to where he's pointing. The corner by the apartment building is shattered and sinking in the middle. The soil under the street is a mix of black mud and red muck.
"We're standing on a suicide road," he says. "The blood tide rises from beneath and eventually everything above drops down into it. This entire street could become a sinkhole at any moment."
I try to read him to see if he's bullshitting me. He looks as calm as can be expected with a knife at his throat.
"Then what are all these sleepyheads doing here?"
He looks at me like he's trying to teach a few first words to a particularly dumb parrot.
"These are the only safe parts of the city. Thieves and raiders won't come down here."
" 'Safe' is a pretty loose term around here."
"Not for this sad lot. It's hide here or end up skewered."
"You'd know all about that, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact. That's why I'm not anxious to go any farther."
"No one asked you to come this far."
"Have a wander on a suicide road and you could truly die down here."
"Are you still here, Jack? I didn't see you there."
I put the knife away and head to the parking lot across the street. As soon as I step into the intersection, I see that Jack was telling the truth. The pavement crunches under my boots like an eggshell suspended over quicksand. An image of Alice dead down here and stuck in the Limbo between Heaven and Hell flashes in my head. I hear Medea Bava's voice: Alice was ours.
No. She wasn't, you old witch. I would have known.
Are you really going to sacrifice yourself to save your great betrayer?
I push it all into the dark. Let the angel explain it to her. He's Mr. Sensitive. Medea will like him.
It's one thing for me to know that Jack was telling the truth and another for Jack to know I know it. I keep going. If I step lightly, the worst that happens is I sink an inch or so into the road at the weak spots. I don't look back or acknowledge Jack. The last thing I want is to owe him any more favors. Not that ignoring him means anything. Halfway across the street, I hear him behind me. It sounds like he's trying to crush wine out of cornflakes.
"Stay the hell away from me, Jack. This road won't hold if we bunch up."
That was the wrong thing to say. He thinks I'm leaving him on the suicide road. I can hear him hurrying to catch up with me.
The road goes snap, crackle, pop and drops a few inches. Cracks shoot out from under us like black lightning. I run for the sidewalk. I sink lower into the road with each step. The lower I sink, the more the sewage muck tries to suck me backward and down into it. By the time I hit the sidewalk, it's like I'm doing some kind of hick aerobics, stumbling like a pig farmer through shit while trying to get my knees up high for a real Jane Fonda workout. Feel the burn, Jethro.
The corner of the sidewalk crumbles as I jump from the muck, but a couple of steps in, it holds. I finally turn around and there's Jack. Up to his knees in blood and mud. It's where he belongs. Still dreaming of knives and all the women no one knows about because he dumped them like fish food into the drink. Fuck him. Let him go.
But I know the look on his face. It's what I looked like when I fell from the sky into Pandemonium. It's a feeling way beyond fear because your brain can't get hold of it enough to be afraid. You want to be afraid. Afraid would be a hundred times better than this. This is total fucking incomprehension at what's happening and it's all happening to you. It's being sane one second and stark raving spiders-tunneling-their-way-out-from-under-your-skin insane the next.
I kneel by the edge of the corner far enough back so I know the ground is solid and I hold out my hand. It's the least I can do. Literally the least.
Jack scrambles for it in a panicked stumbling slog, sinking faster now that he sees a lifeline. He's almost up to his waist by the time he reaches the corner.
"Help me!" he yells. I move my hand half an inch closer.
He's practically swimming when he reaches the corner. Goddammit. He gets close enough to grab a couple of my fingers. I close my hand around his and pull. It's the very least I can do. I'm amazed and a little pissed off when he swings a leg onto the sidewalk. I let go and let him get out the rest of the way on his own. I look over at the celebrity-center bushes where the asylum refugees have been passed out. They took off. They're crazy. Not stupid. The street was sinking. I lean back against the low wall around the mall and look up at the black boiling sky. Are you explaining to Candy for the five-hundredth time what an asshole I am, Kasabian? Is she pissed at me for saving this walking, talking piece of shit? Candy wouldn't have done it. She'd have put her boot on Jack's head and helped him down under the muck. And I would have loved her for it.
Panting and stinking like sewage and rotten fish, Jack pulls himself onto the sidewalk and collapses. I light a Malediction.
"Stay over there, Jack. You smell like what comes out of Moby-Dick after a truck-stop burrito."
He just lies there gasping and trembling like a trout tossed on land by a passing boat.
I smoke for a couple of minutes, until Jack stops shaking.
"You scared off all my crazies, you know. I was going to get them to take me to the asylum. Now they're gone. Do you know where it is? Be very careful how you answer. If you lie, I'll know it and I'm going to feed you back into the muck face-first."
He points to a dome on top of a hill that's mostly mud and dead grass. Huts and lean-tos made of scrap lumber, flattened aluminum cans, and drywall from the asylum flow from the top of the hill and down the sides like junkyard lava. Looks like a lot of the crazies had it together enough to escape, but not enough to cut the apron strings and leave home.
I shake my head. I smoke.
Maybe this jigsaw-puzzle L.A. is God's payback for burning Eden. In the old days, when I was killing for Azazel down here, I hardly ever thought about the guy. Now I can't get him out of my head. He's like the high school sweetheart you moan about whenever you've had a few too many highballs. You don't want to think about her. In fact, you never think about her until you've poisoned your brain with umbrella drinks. Then she's one big whiny question mark in your life. Where did it all go wrong, baby?
Only God and I never went steady. I barely thought of him in the world and only thought of him Downtown because in the brief time Mom sent me to Sunday school, they taught me that he was a God of love and forgiveness. Just what the doctor ordered. Forgive me for all the scams and games and shenanigans and rain down that love on me or at least call me a cab. Even Hitler got to die before climbing into the coal cart. Nothing. Nada. Turns out when I reached into the hat, I didn't pull out the shiny happy Sunday school God of Love. I got the Old Testament God of wrath. Cities turned to salt. Newborns killed in their cribs. Twin Peaks canceled when it was getting good again. No one came to save my charbroiled ass. Just like Mason. But ever since then I think the big man has had his eye on me, slipping me a rubber cigar every now and then. Like right now.
Where Jack is pointing is the Griffith Park Observatory. James Dean shot part of Rebel Without a Cause there. Any tourist with cab fare can visit the damn place. Back home it would take me an hour to get there and back to the hotel, where Candy and I could break more furniture. But no. I have to dodge sinkholes, earthquakes, Hellions, and serial killers to get somewhere that in any sane universe I could take the bus to. I wish I could say, "No more Mr. Nice Guy," but the boat sailed on that one a long time ago.
I take a drag on the Malediction.
"Hey, Jack. What were you before you became a monster?"
He pushes himself onto his knees, stands, and tries to wipe the mud and blood off his clothes.
"An upholsterer," he says.
"Seriously?"
He looks at me.
"Yes."
"I guess 'Ripper' sounds better in the papers than 'Jack the Ottoman Repairman.' "
He ignores me, knocking mud off his feet until you can see his shoes. Maybe he's right. Who needs Heaven when Hell makes so much more sense?
"Okay, Jack. This is where we part ways. I'm heading straight up that hill. You can go anywhere you like, but I'd stay out of Pandemonium for a while. They'll have probably noticed they're down one general."
"You can't just abandon me here."
"I think I just did. You're in paradise. It's a world of shit, but it's better than being in a sardine can for the next million years, isn't it?"
"Can I at least come with you? You won't have to take care of me."
"I just saved you a second time. I don't care what you do. You want to follow? It's no skin off my ass, but get in my way once, and I'll kill you just like I'd kill any Hellion."
He says, "Understood," but I'm already moving.