Devil Said Bang

I gun the bike and swing into the street. I don’t worry about traffic. The streets are still a bombed-out wreck in this part of town, so most of the traffic is trucks hauling soldiers and supplies. Almost everyone else is on foot. I rev the engine, turn, and blast down a side street, taking the long way back to the palace.

Block after block, streets are buckled and houses are knocked off their foundations. But now there’s food in the markets and the burning buildings aren’t the only lights in the streets. I steer around a panel truck where Hellion soldiers are dragging cuffed and shackled looters. The troops aren’t gentle about it. The looters are a bloody limping mess. Fuck ’em.

It wasn’t always like this Downtown. I spent eleven years trapped down here, so I got to know the place pretty well. But a mortal named Mason Faim and Lucifer’s generals (Semyazah was the lone holdout) tried to start a war with Heaven. Bad idea. The city burned. The sky turned black. Earthquakes opened sinkholes that swallowed whole neighborhoods.

When I look at Hell, I see L.A. It’s a funny kind of magic. A Convergence. An image of each place dropped over the other. It’s weird but it makes it easier for me to get around. Hellions still see old Hell. They don’t need a Fatburger at 2 A.M. If they did maybe they wouldn’t be such 24/7 dicks.

I’m going slow putting the place back together, but I can’t stall forever. I want to keep these devils, plotters, and knife-in-the-back bastards busy. But sooner or later they’re going to finish rebuilding. Until then all I want is to not get assassinated and to figure a way back to the real L.A. and back to Candy, a girl I left behind.

There’s a bottleneck up ahead where two collapsed buildings cover most of the street, their roofs almost touching. There’s a slight incline between the buildings and smooth road beyond. If I hit it just right, I can get the bike airborne a few yards on the other side. I twist the throttle and I’m doing around fifty when I hit the incline.

They’re waiting for me at the top. Two of them.

The one on the right catches me across the chest with a piece of rebar, and instead of a nice smooth flight on the back of the bike, I’m airborne all by myself, doing a backflip onto the asphalt.

I slam down on my gut and look up just as the second attacker gets to work. He runs up a big pile of rubble and launches himself off at me, an armored gorilla in SWAT-team coveralls and hobnail boots. I roll onto my back and try to get up.

Too slow.

He lands feetfirst on me like he thinks if he stomps hard enough he’ll get wine. Hobnails isn’t finished yet. He kicks me in the side. Long, careful, well-aimed kicks. This guy’s had practice. A second later the guy with the rebar joins him in clog-dancing on my ribs. This isn’t the quiet ride home I’d hoped for.

If I was a normal mortal, I’d be dead by now or at least a four-way gimp after Hobnails landed on me and snapped my spine. But I’m not a normal mortal and this isn’t a normal situation. I’m hard to kill any day of the week and I’m even harder now that I have on Lucifer’s armor under my shirt.

One of the goons has gotten bored with kicking and is looking around for something to drop on me. These assholes are having more fun than if they were at Chuck E. Cheese.

I push myself up onto my knees. Going to throw some crazy monkey-style Bruce Lee moves on these guys. Any second now. Soon.

But I just kneel there, letting the two idiots kick me. My mind goes blank. I have the sick, dizzy feeling that I forgot something. There’s something I’m supposed to be doing or somewhere else I’m supposed to be. It feels like there’s something crawling around behind my eyes. Maybe I’m just supposed to wait until these guys kick the living shit out of me.

Then the feeling is gone. It must have lasted all of ten seconds, but it was long enough for Hobnail and his friend to knock me back on my face. I reach into my pocket, get a handful of the drytt crackers, and throw them. The kicking stops. I push myself back onto my knees.

You know how young vampires without any training can be so twitchy and compulsive they have to organize anything you throw in front of them? The same goes for brain-dead Hellions, and these two don’t look like they could run the fryer at McDonald’s. When I tossed the crackers, they went for them like zombies after a one-legged blind man.

After all the body shots, I have to crawl a few feet before I can get up. I take off my helmet and set it on the pavement, getting out the black bone blade I always keep hidden in the waistband of my pants.

The Glimmer Twins are crouched on the street, pushing the eggs into neat piles. I wrap my arm around Hobnail’s head, pull it back, and drag the blade across his throat. Black Hellion blood oozes down over my arm like leaking engine oil. His friend is concentrating so hard on stacking eggs that he doesn’t see the blade until the last minute. I swing and his head pops off and rolls away, coming to rest against my helmet.

I go over and look at it like maybe I’m going to have the head stuffed and mounted like a big-mouth bass. I’m waiting for a sound. And there it is. The tiniest tick as a boot comes down on a pebble behind me. I spin and toss the head like a scaly bowling ball. Hellion assassination teams usually work in threes. Seeing as how the first two had the combined IQ of waffle batter, whoever is left has to be the squad leader.

He’s taller than the other two, with the same not-bright lizard look you see in a lot of the legion’s grunts. His SWAT body armor is heavier than the others’, so the head just knocks him off balance for a second. He has a Glock strapped to his hip, but he’s making flashy fighting moves in the air with a couple of nasty-looking serrated long swords. He could go for the gun, but he wants to make himself a name by slicing up Lucifer old school. Fucking devils and their fucking rituals.

I take a step back like I’m dazzled by his video-game moves. I fought in the arena down here for years. Swords hurt, but after you get cut a few hundred times, they’re about as scary as road rash. Meaning they’re something to avoid if you can but they’re nothing to lose sleep over. Still, they hurt and I’m already hurt. And I lost my snack.

He takes the bait and charges. I step forward and catch his wrist with my forearm, deflecting the blade as it comes down on my head. Now that I’m in striking range, the textbook step two of an attack like this is simple: while your opponent is busy blocking your downward attack, you step in with a forward thrust of your second blade, skewering him like a cocktail wiener. The only problem with it is that every sentient being in the universe knows it and is ready for it. Instead of attacking, I let him plant a powerful shot in my solar plexus. His blade kicks sparks when it hits the armor and snaps in two. It startles him long enough for me to move a couple of steps and plant a foot behind my helmet on the ground.

When he comes back at me, I kick, sending the helmet into his face like a cannonball. I hear bones crunch and he spins around before landing on his face. I stand over him, kick the sword out of his hand, and shove his pistol in my pocket. I grab him by the lapels, spin and slam him headfirst into a pile of rubble. While he’s busy trying to breathe through a crushed face, I rifle his dead friends’ pockets. Empty. They don’t even have dog tags, so I can’t tell what part of the legion they’re from.

Their boots and body armor are the heavy kind issued to frontline infantry who are basically cannon fodder. But since the war with Heaven is over, clowns like this aren’t supposed to have time on their hands. Avoiding this kind of fucking mess is why I’m going slow with the rebuilding. Why aren’t these pricks with the rest of the grunts, clearing rubble or rebuilding roads? Did they think if they killed me, one of them would be the new Lucifer? Maybe they were going to share the title—Moe, Larry, and Curly, the Three Infernal Stooges. But not one of this bunch had the imagination or balls to try something like that on their own. Someone put them up to it. The one I clocked with the helmet is coming around, so I go back to him.

I pick up the unbroken long sword and press it against his throat.

“You awake, sunshine?”

He grunts. Shakes his head, trying to clear it.

“Who sent you?”

“No one. I don’t need permission to slaughter mortals.”

I lean forward, using my weight to press the tip of the sword into him until he bleeds.

“This mortal signs your paychecks, ugly. Guess who’s not getting a Christmas bonus?”

He grimaces and spits.

“A mortal will never be the true Lucifer. Mortals are spirits, good for nothing but torture and chores you could teach an animal. I curse you and the mortal Mason Faim. At least he promised us Heaven. What have you given us?”

“I haven’t cut off your arms and legs and made you into a throw pillow. How’s that?”

He tenses. Even with the sword at his throat he wants to lunge at me. This guy is the real deal. A true believer. His type built Auschwitz and had lynching parties back home. Who knows what games he and his friends are playing with souls down here?

I take the sword away from his throat and smack his mangled face with the broad side. He groans and doubles over. Lucky bastard. I’d like to be lying down groaning too. My bruised ribs hurt. I toss both of his swords into the nearby sinkhole.

“You still haven’t answered my question. Who sent you here?”

He catches his breath and says, “We came on our own to kill the false Lord of Perdition.”

I grab his head and press it back into the rubble. I’ve always been good at telling when people are lying, but Lucifer can see things I can’t and the armor gives me bits and pieces of his powers. It’s mostly sideshow-level tricks so far but I can tell if someone is wearing a glamour to conceal themselves or if they’ve been hexed. I look all the way to the back of the assassin’s eyes. There’s a fluttering inside, like a microscopic strobe light. That’s it. He’s hexed. Someone sent him and his friends out hunting for me and erased their memories so the fuckwits would think it was their idea. I let go of him and sit above him on the rubble.

“What’s your name?”

He looks at me hard. He really hates being questioned by a mortal.

“Ukobach.”

I could take Ukobach back to the palace, hand him over to the witches, and let them take his mind apart. They might be able to find something useful inside, but I’m not sure about this guy. Whoever picked these three chose them because they didn’t have an overabundance of brain cells. With an intelligent Hellion or human, even after a memory wipe there’s usually some residual impressions left. Sometimes you can find it if you dig deep enough and aren’t worried about killing them or leaving them a vegetable. But with the power of the hex I saw in Ukobach’s eyes, there isn’t going to be anything useful inside him. I can’t throw him in the asylum or jail. I’m Lucifer, after all. Whoever sent him needs a statement.

“Okay, Ukobach, here’s where things stand. You ambushed me and you blew it. Your friends are dead and I don’t think you’re much use for information. Plus, your goddamn sword ripped my jacket.”

He stares at me.

“I’ll make it simple. I can kill you now or I can let you live, but it’s going to hurt. You choose.”

Ukobach shifts his weight. He wants to take one last kamikaze shot at me. I finger the rip in my jacket sleeve. It’s not too bad. I can probably get it fixed. I’m kind of hard on clothes. It’s all the stabbing and shooting.

“I’d kill you and every mortal in the universe if I could,” he rasps. “When your souls reached Hell, I’d spend eternity weaving your guts into tapestries of glorious agony and hang them from every wall and parapet in Pandemonium.”

“If wishes were horses we’d all have shit on our boots. Choose, Chuck. A quiet death or a messy life.”

“I choose life. Any chance to return and kill you for murdering my comrades is worth whatever feeble punishment a mortal can muster.”

I nod.

“I thought so. If I were you, I might have gone the other way.”

He kicks low, trying to sweep my ankle. I take his Glock from my pocket and shoot him in the knee. He howls and rolls around, holding his leg. It gives him something to do while I get to work.

I cut six long strips of material from Hobnail’s overalls. I use four around his and his dead friends’ wrists. Then I get the Harley on its wheels and roll it back so I can tie the dead men to the rear shocks. I take the last two strips and tie Ukobach too. He kicks at me and swings his fists as I haul him to the bike, but when he moves, it hurts him more than it does me. I loop my arm through the front of the helmet so I can hold it while I ride. There’s no sense in hiding who I am now. Before I get on the bike, I look down at Ukobach.

“This isn’t the kind of thing I normally do, you understand. Back home I’m a bad person but I’m not this kind of bad. Before he left, Samael told me I was going to have to be ruthless to survive, and he was right. People have to understand that if you dance with the Devil you better not step on his toes.”

Ukobach looks up at me. I don’t know if it’s pain or fear or general boneheadedness but he has no idea what I’m saying. I get on the bike and start the engine.

“And away we go.”

The bike creeps forward like it wants to tip over in quicksand. Even a Hellion motorcycle isn’t geared to drag three full-grown bodies behind it. I give the bike some throttle. It straightens and moves forward. Slowly at first, but it picks up speed as I twist the throttle. When it feels stable, I kick the bike hard and we shoot down Santa Monica Boulevard to the palace. I don’t turn around. I don’t want to see what it looks like behind me.

THE CLOSER WE GET to Beverly Hills, the more Hellions there are on the street. They stare and point as I cruise by. I’m tempted to stop and make a joke about how this is how I always tenderize meat, but I keep rolling without meeting any of their eyes. I don’t have to. Seeing their ruler covered in blood and dirt, hauling a few hundred pounds of bleeding bologna behind him, is all they need. The story will be all over town in an hour. By tomorrow there will be rumors that it wasn’t three. It’ll be a dozen men. Fifty. I killed them with a bitch slap and dragged them with my pinkie.

The guards around the palace see me coming and step out of the way like the Red Sea parting for Charlton Heston. I stop the bike by the palace lawn, heel down the kickstand, and get off. A hundred Hellion soldiers watch me in dead silence.

I say, “This is what happens to assassins.”

Soldiers crane their necks or climb onto jeeps and Unimogs for a better look at what I’ve hauled in.

An officer walks over. I don’t know his name and I don’t ask. He looks scared.

“I killed two where they jumped me. One was alive when I started back. Gibbet all three. If the live one is still alive after two days, let him go. Alive and skinless, he’ll still be an object lesson for others.”

“Yes, my lord,” says the officer.

I start into the palace but turn after a few steps. I can’t tell the condition of the bodies from here. There isn’t much of a blood trail behind the bike. That’s probably not a good sign for Ukobach. The guards stare at me.

“One of you take my bike into the garage and have it cleaned and polished.” Not that I’m ever going to get to ride it again now that everyone knows what it looks like.

I head inside wondering what Candy would think about what I just did. I’m pretty sure she’d understand. She might even approve. She won’t have to, though, because this goes on the long list of things I’m never going to tell her.

IN THIS FUNNY CONVERGENCE HELL, Lucifer’s palace is the penthouse of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. I’m not saying my digs are nice, but I am saying that my rooms make Versailles look like an outhouse.

Palace security guards ring the inside of the lobby. I give them a nod while tracking dirt, road grime, and blood across the carpets. I head straight for my private elevator. Slap my hand over a brass plate on the wall and the elevator doors roll open. Inside I touch another plate and whisper a Hellion hoodoo code. The car starts up, the pulley and wires humming overhead, gently rocking the compartment. It feels good. A Magic Fingers motel massage loosening the tension knots in my shoulders. I move my arms and legs. Rotate my head. The palms of my hands are scraped raw from the fall off the bike, but there’s no real damage to anything but my damned jacket.

The car stops at the penthouse. I touch the brass plate again and step out onto the cool polished marble floor. The penthouse is a sight. Like Architectural Digest climbed to the top of the hotel roof and shit out a Hollywood movie mogul’s château. Windows everywhere. Expensive handmade furniture. Pricey art. And enough bedrooms and bathrooms for all the cowgirls in Montana to stop by for a pillow fight.

I kick off my boots by the elevator. Fuck the lobby carpet. Wash it. Burn it. I don’t care. But I don’t want blood all over my apartment.

My apartment.

It still feels funny to say, but I have to admit that after the three months the place is starting to feel like home. I used to run a video store in L.A. If I could move the inventory and a wall-size TV in here, I might go totally Howard Hughes and never leave. If I got Candy a day pass, I could definitely get used to the Hellion high life. Up here, surrounded by tinted glass and silk-covered furniture, I’m Sinatra with horns and Pandemonium is my boneyard Vegas.

I go to the bedroom and glance at the peepers I’ve scattered around the apartment. None are twitching and nothing looks out of place. I can relax. The truth is, I’m less worried about getting into another fight than I am about snoops. I need one place in Hell where I don’t have to look over my shoulder 24/7.

In the bedroom I strip off my clothes, dropping them in a heap at the foot of the bed. The ripped jacket I ball up and throw into the closet. I could get it fixed but I’m goddamn Lucifer. I’ll tell the tailors to run me off a new one.

I lock the bedroom door and run my hand over the top of the lintel. The protective runes I carved are still there. I get under a hot shower and stay there for a long time.

I might have gotten used to the apartment but I’ll never get used to showering in Lucifer’s armor. I never take the stuff off. The moment it’s gone, I’m vulnerable to any kind of attack. Knife, hoodoo, or a squirrel with a zip gun. I know I look schizo soaping down in this Versace tuna can but I don’t have to look at me.

When I’m done I pull on black suit pants, a silk T-shirt, and a hotel robe thick enough to stop bullets. The black blade goes in one pocket and Ukobach’s gun in the other. Then over to the dresser for a quick check of the bottom drawer. There’s the singularity, Mr. Muninn’s secret weapon to restart the universe if Mason or I broke it. There’s my na’at, my favorite weapon when I was fighting in the arena. And there’s the little snub-nose .38 I brought with me from L.A. One bullet is missing from the cylinder. The one I tricked Mason Faim into blowing through his head three months ago. That’s when Saint James, my angel half, took the key I need to leave Hell and left me stranded here. To tell the truth, I’m glad the goody-goody prick is out of my head. But I’d take him back in a second if it would get me the key.

The bedroom doors swing open and Brimborion walks in with a fistful of envelopes and messages. He’s something else I never wanted in my life. A personal assistant, which is to say a professional asshole who knows more about me than I do.

“What did I tell you about barging in here without knocking?”

“If I didn’t barge in, I’d never find you.”

“That’s the idea.”

Brimborion looks fairly human except he’s as skinny as a grasshopper, with limbs and fingers long enough to pluck a quarter from the bottom of a fifth of Jack. He dresses in dark high-collar suits like he fell out of a Dickens story right onto the stick up his ass. He also wears round wire-rim glasses. I think it’s those glasses that really make me hate him. What a weird choice for an affectation. I mean, whoever heard of a nearsighted angel?

I say, “How did you even get in here?”

He rolls his eyes heavenward.

“You mean those pretty doodads you scratched above the doors? I’m your personal assistant. I need to be able to follow you anywhere.”

He unbuttons his shirt and pulls out a heavy gold talisman hanging from a chain around his neck.

“I have a passkey. It opens any door in the palace no matter how many wards or enchantments are on it.”

“Nice. Where can I get one?”

“I’m afraid this is the only one.”

“Maybe I should take it.”

“Feel free, my lord,” he says. “And don’t worry. I’ll do my best to suppress the scandal.”

“What scandal?”

“The one about how the Lord of the Underworld, the Archfiend, the Great Beast is afraid of a glorified secretary. I hate to think what your enemies would make of that.”

I want to stack cinder blocks on this four-eyed fuckpop until he explodes. He opens his eyes a tiny bit wider behind the fake glass in his fake glasses and stares.

But the little prick has a point. Until I’m up to Samael’s full strength, I don’t want ambitious peasants storming the castle with pitchforks and torches.

I reach for the letters and messages, closing my hand around his. I squeeze. Not hard enough to break bone. Just enough to remind him I could if I wanted.

I let up and take my messages. He massages his fingers but doesn’t say anything.

“Learn to knock and we can go back to being BFFs. Got it?”

“Of course, my lord.”

He does a tiny bow and leaves.

I remember when I was out drinking with Vidocq in L.A. he introduced me to another old-time thief. He said the best way to deal with lock pickers is the simplest. You take all the furniture you can and stack it up so it’s perfectly balanced against the top of the door. Anyone who tries to get in will get a dresser or a rocking chair on their head. If you want to fancy things up, you can add a bucket of lye dissolved in water. The real trick is remembering to tell the maid before she comes in the next morning.

I take the na’at out of the dresser and put it under the pillows at the head of the bed. Stacking furniture sounds like too much work.

I toss the messages in the fireplace. Infernal bureaucrats can kiss my ass.

I head down to the library.

THIS IS MY FORT KNOX, my office, and my panic room. I’ve laid the heaviest protective hoodoo I know around this place. Of all the hideouts I ever thought of running to when things got weird, a library was right behind a leper colony and a burning garbage truck. But here I am.

I haven’t paced the place off, but the library looks about a football field long, lined with two floors of books in hundred-foot stretches of ornate dark wood shelves. The ceiling is domed and painted with scenes illustrating the three tenets of the Hellion church. The Thought: God and Lucifer arguing that if humans have free will so should angels. The Act: the war. It’s pretty but stiff and trying too hard to look noble, like a Soviet propaganda poster. The New World: Lucifer and his defeated, punch-drunk Bowery boys in Hell. He looks like a tent revival preacher selling snake oil to rubes, but in his own fucked-up way, the slippery son of a bitch is trying to do right by his people.

I’ve made myself a comfortable squat over by a wall of the Greek wall, the stuff Samael told me to read. In a copy of a half-falling-apart Reader’s Digest–condensed large-print book on Greek history, I found his notes. (It’s embarrassing that he knows me well enough that he left the info in a book written for shut-ins and half-blind grandmas.) He included names of people I could think about for the Council. If they’re the Hellions I can trust, I’m not ready to meet the ones I can’t.