Devil Said Bang

The ghost room reminds me of Vidocq’s apartment in L.A. He put hoodoo on the place so no one can see it or remember it, so he hasn’t paid rent in years. But whoever conjured up this blind isn’t ducking bill collectors. This is a lot heavier magic than that.

“I’ve been looking for you, lord.”

Fuck me harder, God. Seriously.

“I’m kind of busy now, Brimborion.”

“I can see. Another busy day of wandering the halls. I hear there are some brick partitions on the third floor where if you stare just right you can see animals and fluffy clouds. Maybe you’d like to wander down there?”

“What do you want? Wait. How did you find me?”

“I stopped by your summer home in the library and had a peep at your peepers.”

I make it to him in half a second, get my fingers around his throat, hoist him off his feet, and hold him against the wall.

“You went into the library without my permission?”

“It was unlocked,” he croaks.

He starts turning blue. And he isn’t lying. I can’t remember setting a sealing spell on the place when I left. Besides, he probably could have walked in anyway with the opening talisman of his. I drop him to the floor and head back down the hall.

“What’s so important you had to dog me down here?”

He gasps for air and waves a crumpled piece of vellum at me. He wants me to come down there and take it but that isn’t going to happen. I wait until he can breathe again.

“It’s the banquet tonight, my lord.”

“What banquet?”

“To celebrate the laying of the City Hall cornerstone.”

“Tell them I can’t make it. I have the flu or the clap. Whatever it is you cloven-hoof types get.”

“But, my lord. You have to bless the banquet.”

More rituals.

“Get Merihim to do it.”

“It’s not his place, my lord.”

“Okay. Then cancel it.”

He scrambles to his feet. The vellum isn’t crumpled anymore. He’s holding on to it like a life preserver.

“You can’t.”

“Then don’t cancel it. I’m putting you in charge. If Merihim can’t do it, find someone who can. I’m busy.”

I walk back in the direction of the fake wall.

I hear him come after me.

“You’ve been obstinate in the past, my lord. But refusing the banquet is beyond acceptable. And I heard that you dismissed the planning committee today.”

He’s right about one thing. I was having so much fun I forgot about politics. Lies and promises. It was goddamn stupid to let that slip.

I turn and he comes up short.

“And you know who Marchosias and a few others think put me up to it?”

“Who?”

“You.”

He takes a step forward.

“Me?”

“Everyone knows you’re paying off half the staff to spy for you. Let you know who’s gaining power and losing power. I’m your power. You control my schedule and who gets to talk to me and see me. You must make a fortune selling my time. Of course, you can’t go too far. If I’m too hard to get hold of people start thinking you’re making a power play. A dangerous move for someone in your position.”

I look at him. He wants to say, I’m not to blame. You’re the one who doesn’t want to do anything or see anyone.

I say, “Don’t take it so hard. Marchosias has been yammering about you ever since I got here. She keeps bringing up people on her staff she says could replace you. Some of them have pretty good credentials. You didn’t know any of that? Maybe you ought to run another background check on your staff.”

He squints at me the same way the committee did when I came in late.

“With all due respect, my lord, I’m not sure I believe you.”

“One, quit with the ‘my lord’ stuff. And two, I don’t care.”

He turns like he’s going to walk away but he just stands there.

“You still here?”

“I was wondering what you’re doing down at this end of the palace. Is it for something you’ve lost or something you’ve found?”

I go over to him, tear open his shirt, and rip the talisman off his neck. The chain leaves a nice red mark on his throat.

I get in close and whisper, “I cut off my own face once because it seemed like a good idea at the time. What do you think I’ll cut off you?”

He gives me a tiny nod and steps back, rubbing the red mark where the chain broke.

“It’s nice to see you with your energy back. I’ve been worried.”

“What does that mean?”

He waves his hand up and down me.

“Just an observation. Since you replaced our other Lucifer, you’ve seemed so wan and … what? Weak? It would be awful if people thought your armor was the only thing keeping you alive.”

How does this little shit know these things? I should snap his neck right now.

“I tell you what. Maybe you should keep this after all.”

I hold out the talisman.

He hesitates.

I hold it by two fingers and waggle it at him.

When he reaches for it, I let it drop. His gaze follows it down. I slam my shoulder into him, pinning his right hand against the wall. Grab the blade from behind my back. One quick slash and I cut off his little finger. He howls and falls to his knees, cradling his mutilated hand against his chest. Black blood oozes down his shirt. I pull off the glove that covers my Kissi arm, pick the talisman up off the floor, and drop it in my pocket. I grab him by the hair so he gets a good look at my prosthetic.

“The next time you threaten me, I’ll take your whole arm.”

First rule of threats. Always threaten big. Second rule. Always mean it, even if you don’t particularly want to do it.

He looks up at me.

“You pig. You human filth.”

“What do you expect from the Devil? A note in your personnel file?”

He’s wearing a collarless gray jacket. He manages to slip one arm out and wrap it around his bleeding hand. Leaning his good hand on the wall, he slowly gets to his feet, grimacing and cursing, and starts away down the hall.

I lean against the wall and light a Malediction.

I’ve got to remember not to drink anything I don’t get myself, preferably from outside the palace. It might not be poisoned but it will definitely be pissed in.

I guess now there’s another thing Candy doesn’t get to know about. I should start keeping a list.

I stay put until I finish my cigarette and everything is quiet but the air-conditioning. Closing my eyes, I try to reach out. Feel if there’s anything or anyone hiding nearby. I don’t get anything.

I take a long look at the false wall. Sometimes objects can pick up residual magic when someone throws powerful hoodoo nearby. When that happens, a lamp, a chair, or that massager mom keeps in her bedside table that you’re not supposed to know about can give off the same vibes as a genuinely enchanted object. That can happen to, say, a wall if someone was doing heavy spell work around here. There’s no absolute way of knowing without going forensic and that was Vidocq’s area, not mine. I wish he was here.

I step back and take a good look.

You’re not really there, are you?

I charge at what I hope is a door and not a crossbeam. It’s harder to menace people when you’re gimping around with a broken nose.

I pass through the wall like it’s air. And hit something hard. It cracks open. Wood splinters. Something heavy falls behind me. I think I found the door.

I’m in the middle of a dark, cluttered room. Behind me is the hoodoo wall, rippling like water on this side. The door is on the floor, in pieces. Someone isn’t getting their deposit back.

Wherever the hell I am, it’s dark. All I can see in the feeble pool of light through the wall is something that looks like a cluttered garage. Somewhere Dad keeps his tools for the weekend projects that help get him out of having to talk to the family.

Crates are piled all over the place. Scraps of cut and hammered metal on the floor. Tables with vises and C-clamps. Someone forgot their lunch. It stinks in here.

I feel along the wall. Find a light switch and flick it on.

Turns out it wasn’t lunch after all.

Five body bags are stacked in the corner. A sixth body wrapped in plastic is strapped to what looks like an old wooden electric chair. There’s a tear in the side of the shrink-wrapped shroud, leaking Hellion juice and exposing a black, bloated hand. It gets worse when I uncover the body. It’s the kind of stink that would turn a buzzard vegan.

It’s a woman. She’s in a legion uniform but I can’t read her name or tell what regiment she’s from. The top of her skull is missing. It looks like someone was dissecting her brain. Clamps and sutures still cling to the rotten meat.

This is new. I never heard of Hellions vivisecting their own. They do it to some of the more heinous dead souls in the House of Knives, but not to each other.

Whatever this is, it doesn’t look like torture. This was an experiment and this soldier was the lab rat. I bet if I checked the body bags I’d find more head-bone excavations. What kind of Dr. Moreau shit was going on in here? And who was doing it? Only one name comes to mind.

Mason.

What the fuck was he looking for?

You’d think with all the Hellions I’ve hacked up over the years, manhandling a dead one wouldn’t be so disgusting. But I just killed them. I didn’t stick around to watch them rot. Mason must have encased this room in heavy magic armor. Before I destroyed Tartarus, dead Hellions blipped out of existence like soap bubbles and ended up in the Hell below Hell. But Mason managed to keep these corpses intact even after they were dead. You have to admire the pure psycho will it took to pull off something like that. Admire it and then kill it. That last is the important part.

So what was he looking for?

I loosen the corpse’s straps and let it fall forward onto its knees. The corpse leaves scraps of hair, rotten uniform, and skin on the back of the chair.

There’s a long shallow divot cut into the wood where the soldier’s head was held back. Whatever was in the shallow hole is gone now.

I undo the straps holding her arms. They’re kind of glued to the chair with bodily fluids. I have to yank off each one, making sure to keep them wrapped in plastic so I don’t have to touch them.

There are divots on each of the armrests where the dead woman’s bare hands would rest on them. I pull her bare feet off the footrests. Divots there too.

I’ve wandered deep into the realm of What the Fuck.

Turn and scan the room for clues. Body bags. Rolling metal tables with drills, saws, and surgical instruments. A blackboard covered with what looks like machine schematics. A pile of empty bags. Rows of potions. Bet most are dope so the guinea pigs wouldn’t squirm while Mason worked on them with a chisel. I keep scanning the room but stop when I see myself pinned to the wall.

The last twelve years of my life are spread across fake wood paneling.

Photos of the dozens of Hellions I murdered. There are notes about how and when they died. There are shots of dead people on Earth too. I didn’t kill all of them. Everyone in the Magic Circle. Parker dead in a motel room with half his face missing. Doc Kinski. A shot of Josef the Kissi wearing his human übermensch face. A young vampire named Eleanor, her bitch of a mother, and her suicide father. Cabal Ash and his sister. Simon Ritchie, the movie producer. Snapshots of anonymous, well-groomed blue bloods, rich assholes that died during the New Year’s Eve raid on Avila. Mug shots of bald young teenyboppers and worn-out middle-aged White Power morons who probably died when I torched a skinhead clubhouse a few months back. Like the Hellions, they have date and death notes.

There’s a photo of Alice, the girl I left behind when I was dragged Downtown eleven years ago, off to the side by itself. I take it down and put it in my pocket. I’m not leaving her here in this madhouse.

There’s a shot of another young girl. I’m ashamed that it takes me a minute to recognize her. Green hair and pretty eyes. She isn’t wearing her uniform or ridiculous wire antennae in the shot. I like to think that’s why I missed her, but the fucked-up thing is that she’d slipped my mind. She was a counter girl at Donut Universe. Two Kissi murdered her right in front of me. She hadn’t done anything and wasn’t a threat to anyone. She’s dead for no other reason than that she happened to sell me coffee. And I forgot about her.

I take her photo and put it in my pocket with Alice’s.

Near the photos of the dead are shots of people who so far have managed to stay out of pine boxes. Candy. Vidocq. Allegra. Mr. Muninn. Carlos. Even Kasabian and Wells.

What the hell is this? How do a stalker photo album and a bunch of mutilated soldiers go together? Was Mason stone-cold crazy by the end, staring at my life while slicing up the only victims who’d willingly come into Norman Bates’s rec room?

I go over to the blackboard schematic. On a nearby table are wire cutters, soldering irons, a voltmeter, and other electronic hobby gear. Something like a computer or an elaborate radio lies gutted on the table, circuit boards and bits of fiber-optic cable scattered around it. It looks like someone was scavenging for parts. The device is vaguely familiar but I can’t place it. I push one of the circuit boards out of the way and find something I was hoping I’d never see again.

A Golden Vigil logo. It fell off the device when it was pried open. Now I remember what it is. It’s angelic tech—a psychic amplifier. I saw a few around the Vigil’s L.A. warehouse. Their Shut Eye psychics used them to supercharge their powers for interrogations and remote viewing experiments. As much as I want to be surprised, I’m not. Mason was working with Aelita, the old head of the Vigil. Maybe she dropped this off with a basket of blueberry muffins as a housewarming present.

I pick up a curled metal shaving from the table. Turn it over in my hands. It’s a dull silver and dense. Not like something that would go into a machine as delicate as the amplifier. There are more shavings and half-melted ingots on the floor. I kick through them and there, lying by the toe of my god-awful, shiny dress shoe, is what I’ve been looking for.

I pick up the metal and go back to the chair with the dead soldier. The metal fits perfectly into the divot behind her head. The same thing for the holes in the hand- and footrests.

I weigh the key in my hand. It’s heavy and solid and comforting. I never realized until now that I miss the weight of the key in my chest. This isn’t like my key. It won’t get anyone out of here but this possession key has its own charms, and with the psychic amplifier, I bet it’s how Mason got the thing to work and let him ride people back on Earth like a voodoo Loa.

I thought Mason’s workshop was upstairs, but the forge and tools were just for show. This is the real lab. And the dead soldiers were his first experiments as he tried to make the key work. These aren’t Lucifer’s clues and none of this gets me any closer to getting out of here, but it’s still useful. Whoever has the key must also have a working psychic amplifier, the one Mason was scavenging parts for. That means I don’t necessarily have to find the key. If I can find and smash the amplifier, it might kill the key’s power. Better yet, if I can find the key and the amplifier, I might be able to talk to someone back in L.A.

This is good news. Not break-out-the-champagne-I’m-coming-home good news. More like open-a-six-pack-of-malt-liquor-I-didn’t-drop-my-keys-down-the-toilet-at-work good news. But after the last three months, I’ll take any good news I can get.

The dissected Hellion is really starting to stink up the place. I want to go back to my room and sandblast my skin off but there’s one more thing.

By itself, in the corner of the room, is an ornate wooden table holding a black lacquered box. The box is perfectly square and featureless. When I touch the top, I can feel faint vibrations from inside.

I feel along the edges and find a subtle seam. Then others nearby. I push on one and nothing happens. Others move an inch or two. The damn thing is a puzzle box, but I’m not in a puzzle mood. I take out the black blade and bring it down hard, slicing off one side. No explosions or poison gas or snakes with machine guns. That’s a good sign. I hack off the other side, get my hands inside, and push. A second later, the box rips apart in a shower of splinters and black velvet lining. It’s kind of a pretty sight. Like an exploding ventriloquist dummy.

Something heavy and metal hits the floor. I try to pick it up, and rip the tip of my middle finger. Getting down on one knee, I slip the blade underneath it, raising it up like balancing an egg. In the light, I can’t see any sharp edges. Carefully, I rest it in the palm of my hand. It’s definitely a weapon but I’ve never seen one like it. When I turn it side to side, something weird happens.

As the light hits it from different angles, the thing changes shape. It’s a spiked ball the size of a tangerine. It’s a long silver dart with barbs at each end. It’s a spinning cone of fire. It’s ice knuckle-dusters. A parang. An elaborate Balisong, with six hinged joints that move at 180-degree angles to each other. Whatever kind of slice-and-dicer this is, it wasn’t made for human hands.

Fighters liked to tell tall tales around the arena. Stories about ultimate weapons they’d heard about that would make them impossible to kill. Over a few jugs of bitter Hellion wine (our prize for having survived the day), we came to the consensus that the ultimate weapon would be the one that killed all your enemies and then flew you away to Heaven or Valhalla or anyplace where when you said the word Hell the locals would say, “What’s that?”

One fighter from some Hellion backwater said that he’d seen the real ultimate weapon. Only archangels had them and only Gabriel was brave enough to use his.

“No rebel angel could defeat him because each time he used his weapon it was different. There was no way to attack or defend yourself against it. Before the battle was over, thousands of our rebel brothers and sisters lay dead at his feet. These other fools think it was God who defeated us, but the few of us who survived the battle know it was Gabriel.”

I remember something Alice said before Samael took her back to Heaven. I’d left her alone with Neshamah, one of the five entities that have made up God since His nervous breakdown. Alice said that Aelita killed Neshamah with a weapon Alice had never seen before. I wonder if that’s because what she saw was really a million different weapons. That would be pretty damn hard to describe at the best of times and even harder if it was only for a few seconds while someone gutted God in front of you.

Among the lacquered splinters is a kind of leather sheath that roughly corresponds to the shape of the weapon when it’s configured like circular-saw blades. Carefully, I slip the thing into the case and lock the top flap closed.

I wonder if Aelita left the weapon for Mason to use on me or if he was just holding it for her while she hunted down the other four God brothers? Either way it’s mine now. I drop it in my jacket pocket and get the hell out of Mason’s butcher shop.

I HEAD TO THE BEDROOM but stop at the library to leave red “get your ass over here now” signal cards in front of a couple of peepers for Ipos and Merihim.

In the bedroom I strip off the suit and give it a sniff. The abattoir-fresh aroma all the kids love is deep inside the material. That’s never coming out. I toss the suit over with the dead motorcycle jacket. It’s sort of comforting seeing the growing pile of ruined clothes. I’ve killed off a lot of men’s casual wear while getting shot and stabbed. Now all I have to do is decapitate someone and I’ll feel like I’m home sweet home.

I grab an overcoat from the closet and toss it on the bed. I feel enough like me that I put on the leather bike pants and boots I wore when I came down here. They feel good. A little stiff with dried blood, most of it mine. I put on my hoodie. It’s blood stiff too and one of the sleeves is missing from when the red legger relieved me of my left arm. I sliced him in half like a side of beef with my Gladius, my flaming angelic sword.

I keep the glove on, but leave my prosthetic arm bare since no one is going to see it under the coat.

Back in the library I smack the gyroscope like Merihim, making it spin backward. The monster-movie voice chitters like a groundhog that’s burrowed into a meth lab. I check the peeper images on the movie screen. Brimborion is prowling his office, smiling at his staff. Trying to play it cool. He’s almost pulling it off, but if you look hard enough you can see the wheels whirring in his head. Is one of these fuckers selling me out? Maybe better to kill them all and let God or the Devil or Oprah sort them out.

In other parts of the palace, people do funny little square dances when they come around a corner and find a hellhound. Maintenance guys on break in the basement check out my motorcycle. Staff witches sort through piles of dried bugs and plants. Outside, a couple of officers are kicking the shit out of a low-ranking Hellion while another officer uses his long leather sap to poke the dead bikers in the gibbets. Guess the book club let out early.

Ipos and Merihim show up a few minutes later. I tell them about the secret room while taking out my eye. I drop the other peepers into their saline storage jars so that mine is the only one showing on the screen. They watch the show like a couple at a drive-in movie. Bored during the dark part but starting a little when the lights flick on, giving them a full frontal of Ed Gein’s rumpus room.

“Too bad you can only see the place and not smell it. It’s memorable.”

“You think this is Mason Faim’s work?” says Merihim when we come to the first close-up of a dissected brain.

“Unless this is what Hellions call ‘playing doctor.’”

He shoots me a look. I distract him by holding out the Magic 8 Ball.

“Ever seen one of these before?”

Merihim is too smart to grab things the Devil finds weird but Ipos is more impulsive. He grabs the ball, turns it, and immediately gets his hand skewered by a barb.

He curses in lower-class street Hellion, which sounds even worse than regular Hellion. Like a shop vac sucking up sewer sludge.

On the screen I’m moving the soldier’s body around while the pile of body bags forms a pastoral slaughterhouse tableau in the background.

Merihim bends to look at the ball in Ipos’s bleeding hand but doesn’t move to take it.

“Whatever this is, it reeks of unnatural power. You should let me take it and bury it deep in the Tabernacle vaults.”

Everyone is on a power trip here, the church included.

“Thanks but no thanks. It stays with me.”

“This isn’t something to be left lying around.”

“Which is why it stays with me and not buried somewhere I can’t see it.”

“And where will it end up if something happens to you?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. If whoever knows how to work this gets ahold of it again, my guess is that we’ll all be dead by morning. Another good reason to keep me on the unkilled team.”

On the screen I’m poking at the psychic amplifier. I watch them closely. Neither has ever seen one before. Neither reacts to the Vigil logo either. At least I don’t have to worry about them working with whoever has the key.

“Either of you come up with any new information?”

Ipos nods and his church tattoos move like a flag promising salvation.

“I might have,” he says. “The soldiers who attacked you were from Wormwood’s legion. There are an unusual number of suicides and murders among his troops. Apparently it’s been going on for some time, but since the dead no longer disappear into Tartarus he can’t hide it anymore. My spies in other legions found that the same thing is starting to happen in other parts of the legion.”

Merihim says, “Red leggers have been caught delivering bogus potions to physicians and hospitals. The real ones end up on the black market.”