Devil Said Bang (10 page)

Dirty Boots collapses in a wet heap and the spider
legs disappear inside his body. A second later the 8 Ball rolls out and launches
itself back into my hand.

The only Hellions that aren’t already running are
the ones who fell and are crawling under market stalls. I turn and walk the
other way.

My hands are covered in Hellion blood. I wipe the 8
Ball and my hands on my coat. The 8 Ball I shove into the pocket of my hoodie. I
throw the coat into an oil drum full of burning trash. I snatch a heavy peacoat
off the hanger in a hawker’s stall and get it on fast, moving the 8 Ball from
the hoodie into the coat. I want a little more material between it and me.

There’s no fast way back to the bike without going
through the market, so I get lost in the crowd trailing the procession.

Exactly what the fuck just
happened?

I swear I left the 8 Ball back at the palace. But I
can’t remember where. I’m sure I put the na’at in my pocket, but obviously I
didn’t. Did the 8 Ball trick me into taking it?

Exactly what the fuck just happened?

I’m glad I didn’t let Merihim take the 8 Ball to
the Tabernacle. I don’t want anyone getting their hands on it. Even me. When I
get back, it gets locked up. The damned Glock too.

My head is spinning with Aqua Regia and exploding
bodies. I’m not going to figure out anything now. Best just to keep my head down
and look for a chance to disappear.

The marchers bunch up a few blocks farther on. It’s
the women’s church, if you can call it that. It’s two stories tall. Not much
more than one of the Holy Roller places you see scattered all over the poorer
neighborhoods in L.A. Tiny congregations of true believers worshipping in what
used to be nail salons or the Elks lodge.

Four banners hang in front of the church. The first
three I recognize. Merihim’s church gospels and the ceiling of Lucifer’s
library. The Thought. The Act. And the New World. But I don’t recognize the
fourth banner. There’s a shape on it, but it’s vague like a face lost in TV
static. In between the banners is a wicker figure. I can’t tell if it’s a man, a
woman, or André the Giant. The wicker whatever is as tall as the church.

I didn’t know that Obyzuth was in Hell’s rebel
church or that she was such a big wheel in it. That makes it extra interesting
that Lucifer recommended her for the Council.

She and the other higher-up churchwomen are holding
burning torches. Women move through the crowd, handing out lit candles. Deumos
is whipping up the crowd with a pretty good Elmer Gantry impression.

“The old must burn to make way for the new. Not
because it is old, but because the ancient wounds it worshipped and that it
believes define it have become diseased and the disease threatens to spread
everywhere and to everyone and lay them low.”

A murmur of agreement rolls through the crowd.

“You have to burn beliefs when they become
convenient lies solely for the purpose of gaining and holding power. Isn’t it
interesting that when the entire city shook to its foundations and bled, the
Tabernacle was barely scratched?”

More murmurs. She has a point.

“The city burned and they want to turn back the
clock to the way it was. We will not permit that.”

This time she gets cheers.

Deumos picks up a torch from the ground. Obyzuth
brings over hers and lets Deumos light hers from it. She tosses the torch into
the wicker figure as Obyzuth tosses hers. The other big-time churchwomen toss in
theirs. The crowd tosses the candles and lurches forward. I go with it.

From this distance I can tell it’s a man they’re
burning. God the Father blew it, so let’s give Him a hotfoot and hope Mom will
come down and set things right. I hope you ladies brought lunch because you’ve
got a long wait ahead of you. Dad’s broken into more pieces than Humpty Dumpty
and Mom doesn’t exist.

A young Hellion woman hands me a candle and
automatically lights it.

“Are you part of the movement, brother?”

I look around at the crowd.

“I don’t really know what it is. I just wanted to
see.”

She nods.

“That’s all right. We all started from where you
are. Throw a candle and take the next step.”

I expect her to move on but she doesn’t. She has
candles in one hand and a cup in the other. There’s a small pile of coins at the
bottom.

“If you can help at all, brother.”

She’s a Hellion monster. But I’m a monster too. She
was tossed over Heaven’s walls like trash thousands of years ago but she looks
and acts like a kid with her first summer job. Goddammit, for a second she
reminds me of the Donut Universe girl and I’m digging in my pocket looking for
something to give her. And come up with one big coin. The Veritas. I look at her
one more time. No. She’s never had green hair or dished up day-old apple
fritters.

I drop the Veritas in her cup. You need advice more
than I do right now, kid. Momentum and the power of Bible bullshit will carry me
safely home to shore. Or not. Anyway, maybe you can trade the Veritas for some
decent black-market food.

She doesn’t see what I drop in her cup but nods her
head in thanks.

“Don’t forget your candle.”

I follow the line of true believers up front. It
seems the polite thing to do. Besides, I just paid for the candle. It might look
funny if I dropped it and headed the other way.

People are laughing and singing like a high school
pep rally up front by the flames. I should have a camera. Hellions laughing at a
tower of fire. Now, this is the Hell I’ve been looking for. Flames. Mad cheers.
And the tingling feeling of things right on the edge of getting out of
control.

The fire is up over the wicker man’s waist. I have
to admit, he’s staying upright better than I am. I toss the candle and watch as
it tumbles into the flames.

Turning away, I duck deep into the crowd. And I
can’t help but laugh. This has got to be the strangest day of my whole damn
strange life.

It’s me in the barbecue pit. They’re burning
Lucifer.

I
circle around the market and back to where I left the Hellion hog. I tweak the
glamour one more time, giving myself a new Hellion face. I don’t toss off the
glamour until I’m back in the palace heading up the secret stairs to the
library.

I’m not in the mood to deal with assassins,
Brimborion, or arsonist Joan of Arcs, so I use Vidocq’s friend’s trick of
stacking furniture against the bedroom door.

In the morning I kick the bloody clothes I left at
the end of the bed into the pile I want cleaned instead of burned.

I seriously don’t like the idea of Brimborion being
able to walk in here anytime he likes. Just because I took his passkey doesn’t
mean he doesn’t already have a spare squirreled away somewhere.

My whole life is ruled by magic keys and the
assholes who do or don’t have them. I found a key in Mason’s room, but unless I
want to start prying open Hellion skulls, it’s not going to do me any good.

Hell’s carved enough meat off me that there’s no
way I’m touching the Magic 8 Ball with my real hand. I use my Kissi hand to move
the ball from the pocket of the peacoat to the bottom dresser drawer with the
revolver. Until someone can tell me what the thing is, I don’t want it near me.
Which means no one down here. Not after what I saw it do in the market.

My head pounds from all the Aqua Regia last night.
I let the pulsing pain behind my eyes take over, an old arena trick. Dropping
down into the center of the pain means I don’t have to think, and not thinking
means I don’t have to find answers, and not needing answers means I might be
able to get through the day without homicide.

I don’t feel one bit bad about killing those
leggers last night. But I don’t know how it happened or how that thing got in my
pocket. Down here in the pain, I don’t have to know. I just note the question
and move on. Answers are rare and come in their own time but hangovers are
reliable and never in short supply.

After a while the pulse of the pain syncs with my
heartbeat. Some old Greek philosopher said there’s nothing but atoms and empty
space. My head is one very big empty space right now. I take the bottle of Aqua
Regia from the nightstand and swallow a short gulp. Hair of the dog. Got to
balance the humors. Hippocrates said so. Blame him.

I open my eyes and look out the window. It’s around
four o’clock. Clouds tumbleweed across a bruised sky. A few fires have flared up
again south of the city. The backlight looks like a slow-motion nuclear blast.
My Golgotha L.A. has never looked more beautiful.

I don’t hear from Brimborion all day. I wonder if
he got someone to sew the finger back on. I don’t even know if they do that kind
of thing down here. Probably they think if you’re dumb enough to lose a finger,
you deserve for it to stay lost.

Vetis comes by to check on me later.

“You were burned in effigy in the market last
night, lord.”

“I heard. And don’t call me ‘lord.’ ”

“I’ve doubled your personal security and stationed
more legion troops downstairs.”

Ms. 45 pokes her head around the door. Vetis takes
a step back. She waits a couple of beats and moves down the hall.

“Thanks. I’m feeling pretty well protected these
days.”

It’s the middle of the night when the bedroom phone
rings. It’s never done that before. I’ve never used it. I pick up the receiver
on the fourth ring.

“Hello?”

“Still alive and kicking, I see.”

“Who is this?”

“Puddin’ ’n’ Tain. Ask me again and I’ll tell you
the same.”

“Fuck you. I’m hanging up.”

As I put down the receiver the voice comes
again.

“You’re always so serious. So linear. You’ve got to
get into the spirit of things.”

I almost recognize the voice but not quite.

“What spirit is that?”

“That you’re nothing. You’ve been flailing at the
universe your whole life, and where has it gotten you? You’re not really the
Devil. You’re not Sandman Slim. You’re not a man and you’re not an angel. Some
people live in gray areas but, friend, you are a gray area.”

“Am I supposed to understand any of that?”

“You could always kill yourself now and save us the
trouble.”

“What would that solve? I’d just end up right back
here. Did Brimborion put you up to this?”

“What do you think?”

“I think he’s hiding somewhere nursing his hand
with whiskey and a Valium chaser.”

“There you are.”

“Am I supposed to be spooked by this? You sound
like someone’s dad hard selling Girl Scout cookies.”

“You’re not the only one with peepers, you know.
Don’t think because you watch the world, the world doesn’t watch you back.”

“I’m going to find you, you know.”

“I’m counting on it.”

There’s a click and the line goes dead.

Crank calls? Is this how things work from here?
This isn’t Hell. It’s junior high.

I
wake
up hurting. The hangover is gone and now I can feel every bit of the beating I
took last night. My jaw aches and my ribs are bruised. Every time I move, the
armor presses on them and makes me wince.

Something shatters down the hall. Glass and metal.
Something heavy hits the floor, like a car falling through the ceiling. I grab
my knife and run toward the sound.

Ms. 45 is lying on her side by one of the big
picture windows in the front room. The glass dome holding her brain is smashed.
Pink meat and spinal fluid leak onto the tile floor. I stand by the body
listening. Ready for whoever got to her to come for me.

I don’t hear a thing. It doesn’t make sense that
someone could get in here but they did. The peeper by the hall is gone, so I
can’t play back whatever happened.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to ditch the
Glock.

Making a pass through the rest of the penthouse, I
don’t see anything out of place. I need to get someone to clean up the hound
before it stinks in here like Mason’s lab. There’s a phone in the bedroom. I get
the Glock from the library and head there.

A shadow flickers across the bedroom.

Looks like Brimborion has a second passkey after
all. Good. First I find out what he’s looking for in my room and then I get to
kill him.

But the moment the thought forms, I know it’s
wrong. Brimborion isn’t the creeping-around-smashing-hellhounds type. Especially
not when he just lost a finger. Whoever’s in the bedroom has much bigger balls
and a lot fewer brain cells than him. But he’ll know who’s after me and he’s
going to give me a name if I have to repaper the hallway with his skin.

With the Glock in a two-hand TV-cop grip, I
shoulder open the bedroom door. No one in sight. I go inside, sweeping the room
with the gun. The closet door is open, the space empty. If Mr. Soon to Be Dead
is in toddler freak-out mode, he might be under the bed. More than likely he’s
in the bathroom trying to squeeze himself down the shower drain.

I start across the room but only make it to the end
of the bed.

Behind me, the door creaks open the rest of the
way.

“Here are your fucking messages.”

No question about the voice. It’s Brimborion.

I turn around. He sees the Glock in my hand and in
an inspiring display of self-preservation lurches back, cracks his head on the
door, and falls onto his knees. I grab his shoulder and pull him to his
feet.

“How did you get in here?”

He looks at me like I’ve gone insane and stupid all
at the same time.

“The door was open.”

“Not the goddamn bedroom. My apartment.”

His eyes go to the gun and then back to me.

“I have another key. Are you going to kill me for
doing my job?”

Glass breaks in the bathroom. Something hits the
wall. Over and over. Someone is going nuts in there.