Devil Said Bang (18 page)

“I’ll have someone send one to the bar.”

“And covers and such. These sheets are as soft as a
widow’s bottom.”

“They’ll send the works.”

I tuck the Glock in the waistband behind my back.
Semyazah has gone to the window to look over his temporary kingdom.

“When you were talking to Brimborion, I was
impressed that you figured all that out.”

“Half of it was guessing. After the Lahash thing it
was just figuring out who could pull off a coup on short notice. Marchosias is
the only one smart and ballsy enough and with the right connections.”

He looks over his shoulder at Brimborion.

“I’ve never seen a man so cheerfully confess his
crimes.”

“You let a man hold a gun to your head long enough
and he’ll tell you all his secrets. Isn’t that right, Bill?”

“I wouldn’t know. Not having guns pressed against
my head was among my utmost goals when I was among the living.”

“Can you people trace phone calls, General? Vetis
crank-called me, but when I asked him about it, I could tell he didn’t know what
I was talking about. I think he was possessed when he made the call. Where he
called from could be a clue to who has the possession key.”

Semyazah nods.

“I’ll look into it.”

“And keep an eye on the Bamboo House of Dolls. And
Bill.”

Bill throws down the pillow he’s been fluffing and
stands up straight.

“I don’t need a goddamn demon looking over my
shoulder.”

“I bet that’s what you said in Deadwood.”

He sits back down.

“I suppose you’re right but that’s an unkind way to
put it.”

“I told you the search party would come back
empty-handed. I don’t have a good side to find.”

Semyazah looks a little dazed. What I’ve done to
Lucifer’s beautiful room. How I let a damned soul talk back to me. Maybe
imagination and rolling with the weirdness of the moment is what humans have
over angels.

“Let people know if Bill or the bar get scratched,
I’m going to cut so many throats they’ll think I’m getting paid piecework.”

“Always the diplomat.”

“Oh. If you feel like overthrowing me while I’m
gone, please do.”

“Thank you for your permission but, no, I prefer
soldiers to politicians and madmen.”

I weigh the duffel bag in my hand. It’s just a few
pounds. Not much to show for three months as God’s redheaded stepchild.

“If Deumos breaks her neck or chokes to death on a
ham sandwich, you’re going to have to do something about it.”

“I won’t send troops into the Tabernacle.”

“Then make sure there’s no reason to. You have
spies in the church?”

“I’m a general. I have spies everywhere.”

“Good. Give them a kick in the ass and tell them to
keep their eyes on Merihim and his sky pilots. One more thing. I want someone to
make a list of all the current punishments for damned souls. We’re going to be
making a few changes there.”

“Is that all, Lucifer?”

I walk to him and put out my hand.

“Good luck, General.”

Semyazah stares at it and then at me before putting
out his own hand.

“I won’t see you off, if you don’t mind.”

“Until we figure things out, the farther you stay
away from me the better.”

Semyazah nods curtly and goes off to polish bullets
or give the troops a sponge bath, whatever it is generals do between wars.

Bill is on his feet. He has his hat in his hand and
he’s looking at the floor.

“What can I say, Bill? You’re my Abilene
Bodhisattva. I’m trying to pick and choose my fights better. All those people
that got killed in the market, it wasn’t me. It was the Magic 8 Ball. I swear on
Lee Van Cleef’s grave.”

He shakes his head, smiling.

“I don’t understand half of what you just said but
that’s all right. We never had royalty in the family before.”

Bill isn’t the hugging type, so we shake hands.

On his way out he says, “Don’t forget the bed. I’ll
owe you a drink when you get back.”

“If things go right, everyone in Creation is going
to owe me a drink.”

When I’m alone I go to the phone and push the
PISSANTS
button.

A female voice picks up.

“My lord?”

“Who is this?”

“Malabraxas. I’m assistant to Brimborion.”

“He isn’t coming to work for like forever, so you
get to steal all his Post-its. But before that, I want you to call down and
clear out the garage. I don’t want anyone down there for an hour.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Don’t call me ‘lord.’ ”

“Yes, Lucifer.”

“You got it on the first try. Congratulations. You
just got Brimborion’s job. Let Semyazah know. Also, send a cleanup crew to my
room. There’s a couple of bodies. They can’t miss them. But don’t call them
until after you clear out the garage.”

“Yes, Lucifer.”

I go to the closet and get out my bloody leather
bike pants and hoodie. I found it in a cemetery when I first got back from Hell.
Yeah, that’s kind of disgusting but I’m the only one who knows where it came
from and it doesn’t smell any worse than anything else down here. After
surviving the market, the Magic 8 Ball, being burned in effigy, and getting my
arm cut off, it feels kind of like a good-luck charm.

I take a quick look around at the room. Nothing I
need or want. I pick up the duffel, step over Brimborion’s body, and head back
to the library.

I step around the hexes in the floor. I should have
told Semyazah about them but he’s a smart guy. He’ll send in another smart guy
to check the place out first. With any luck, he’ll be smart enough to look
before he leaps. If not, it will be just one more Hellion watercooler story. Did
you hear the one about Phil’s head exploding in the library?

I open the false bookshelves, lock them from the
inside, and go down the stairs.

T
he
garage is empty. The sound of my boots echoes down to deep, deep sublevels. A
B-movie Halloween spook show. I could make a fortune selling weekend Hell
junkets to the movie biz. Nonmortal ones, of course. Vampire sound techs. Nahual
film editors. Jade cinematographers. Give them the full tour. Where I first
landed down here. The arena. The palace where I murdered my first Hellion. The
field where the red legger cut off my arm. I wonder where it is now? I should
check eBay.

I go to the bike, secure the duffel on the back,
and do a quick walk around checking for oil leaks, a flat tire, or a broken
chain. It looks fine. I swing my leg over the bike and kick it to life. It
sounds good. Like it could crack the foundations of the palace.

I get a glove out of my coat pocket and put it on
my Kissi hand. Better get used to it. I’ll be hiding it a lot more soon. I
hope.

Time to let go of a lot that happened over the last
hundred days. I got ruthless and I got lucky. On the upside, I stayed alive this
whole time. I found the 8 Ball. I even figured out Marchosias’s game. On the
downside, Samael tricked me into cleaning up his mess again. Creating the
Council so I could put the right people in the right places and take the heat
for everything that went wrong. Kick Buer’s ass into building a City Hall that
doesn’t look like skinhead porn. Get Semyazah on board with keeping Lucifer, any
Lucifer, alive at all costs. Draw Marchosias out and almost take the bullet that
sooner or later would have been aimed at Samael’s head. Obyzuth was the real
ringer, though. She led me to Deumos and something that will change Hell
forever. Whether or not that’s a good thing we’ll find out when the place
becomes something new or blows itself apart. Samael handed me a leaf blower and
left me to clear off the driveway, and for what? So he could stay in Heaven? Or
is he going to blow back into town looking like Steve McQueen driving the
Batmobile? If he does, I’ll shake his hand and thank him. Take the place back
over. Pretend you fixed it all yourself and suck up the applause. Just let me go
home and stay there.

I heel up the kickstand and wait, feeling the
weight of the Hellion hog against my body. Letting it rattle my bones.

Don’t fear
God

Don’t worry about
death

What is good is easy to
get, and

What is terrible is easy
to endure

The only thing I’m sicker of than philosophy is
philosophers. I bet Epicurus is living free and easy in Eleusis, the province of
Hell reserved for righteous pagans. Next time I’ll trade places with him and sip
wine with the vestal virgins while Epicurus runs Bedlam’s outhouse for a while.
Then you tell me how easy it is to roll with the terrible, you goat-cheese-salad
asshole.

I put the bike in gear and roll by the kennels
before heading for the garage gate.

I’m leaving by the front door this time. No
sneaking out the back. There’s no reason to be subtle. In a palace, rumors are
like flying monkeys. Annoying as vegan desserts and hard to stop once they’re
airborne. Besides Bill and Semyazah, no one is supposed to know when and where
I’m leaving. But of course people do. Everyone in the fucking palace.

Troops from ten Hellion legions are spread out
across the lawn when I roll up to street level. They’re dead silent. Dead still.
They’re not blocking Lucifer’s way, but they’re not happy to see me rolling out
on my own. Someone is going to twitch first. It might as well be me.

I whistle. There’s a low roar and the sound of
razored steel on concrete. Shadows lumber up the driveway walls. When the
hellhounds reach the surface, they spread out around me, pawing the ground
impatiently. They scan the troops, pink brains sloshing in the bell jars where
their heads should be. They settle around me in a protective semicircle.

The potion the palace witches whipped up for me we
used to call a Sheol Sucker Punch. Technically, it’s a kind of poison, but a
very selective one.

When most people see hellhounds, all they see is
the machine part. They forget about the brain, usually because when they’re that
close, it means a hound is gnawing off their leg. I don’t know where hellhound
brains come from, but I know that brains are brains and they need food to work.
And any brain that needs food is a brain you can dose. A Sheol Sucker Punch
burns out the parts of the brain that control memory but skates around smarts
and motor functions. Mostly it resets a brain’s emotional clock back to when it
was a newborn. And like every good duckling, the newborns wake up looking for
something to imprint on. I made sure it was me. I’m Mom now and the hounds,
their gears whirring and pistons pounding, are a loyal pack.

The legions back off but stand their ground. They
know not to run. Running makes you prey and no one wants to be prey to a hundred
metal hounds.

Some of the troops want to cut my throat. Others
stare at me like wounded children. Neither are good looks for crazed killers. I
should probably say something, but what am I going to say? “Sometimes the Devil
needs a little me time”?

The best I can come up with to say is, “Hell needs
a Lucifer and Hell will always have one. Just not tonight.”

The wind changes and brings new smells with it.

The gibbet holding Ukobach holds a bloated corpse.
By the street, scalps and fresh skins are tied to the ornamental fence, flapping
and drying in the breeze. Guess I know what happened to Vetis’s men. I wonder if
Vetis’s hide is up there with them?

As the smell of rotting Hellion meat drifts across
the lawn, whatever little guilt I’ve been nursing for running out on these poor
slobs evaporates. Why did I ever think mass suicide for these murderous
hellspawn hyenas was a bad idea? Let them all burn.

The lousy thing is maybe I deserve a seat in the
frying pan right next to them. I dragged Ukobach behind my bike when I could
have just snapped his neck. But Lucifer needs to put on a show and I never get
tired of killing Hellions. Maybe I should send the hounds back to the kennels,
go to my rooms, and die down here with these assholes. Maybe that’s the real
reason why Samael marooned me here. His way of teaching me one last lesson. The
one he wouldn’t tell me because I had to figure it out for myself.
That I don’t deserve to go home.

I thought I could skate and cheat and finesse my
way around the worst parts of playing Lucifer but I was fooling myself. You
can’t play the Devil without becoming the Devil. That’s why Saint James
abandoned me. He knew what was coming and he didn’t want to see it happen. He
also didn’t stick around to help me through it, so a few of those scalps belong
to him.

I really was planning on coming back when I found
some hoodoo that would let me stay in real L.A. while saving Hell from burning.
Now I know I can’t ever come back. If I do, I’ll never leave. I won’t grow horns
or hooves, but if I come back, I’ll never stop being Lucifer and it will prove
what I’ve always secretly suspected. Hell didn’t make me a monster. It just
confirmed all my worst fears about myself.

I rev the bike, pop the clutch, and burn rubber
down the driveway, past the gates, and onto the street. The hellhound pack
sprints behind. After a couple of blocks, they catch up and fan out around me.
We blitzkrieg traffic off the roads and pedestrians off the streets. We tear up
the asphalt, burst store windows, and rip the bumpers from idling trucks. Unlike
the troops at the palace, these haven’t figured out I’m deserting their sorry
asses. They scream and fire their weapons into the air like it’s New Year’s as
we blow by.

I head to the 405 entrance at Wilshire. There’s
less than a mile of freeway left but that’s plenty. I crank the throttle until
the bike’s engine glows cherry red. The hellhounds can’t keep up. They begin to
fall back. I hear them howling and baying above the noise of the engine. They’ll
be okay. They have the run of the palace now, and if no one feeds them, well,
they’ll just have to dine on whatever meat they can find.