Devil Said Bang (6 page)

Hellhounds glance up when they see me. I scratch
the underside of their glassed-in brains and they growl contentedly. They’re
like temple dogs guarding a royal tomb, only here the altars are unused Jacuzzis
and Hellion minibars. I don’t even want to think about what’s in those.

Fun as it was busting up the meeting, something
real kicked in for me. Something I sort of already knew but couldn’t put into
words.

They’ve gone insane down here.
Every fucking Hellion has gone mad.

They can’t lay a finger on Heaven and they can’t
leave. They’ve been stuck in this hole for what? Thousands of years? A million?
Time doesn’t move for angels like it moves for us. They’ve turned inward and
created a rat-maze culture. All bureaucracy, schizo rituals, and murderous
deadfalls.

Do you think God had a business plan when He
created the universe? Did He worry about the invention of light or gravity
running over budget?

Meetings and infighting. Made-up ceremonies and new
religions and Noble Virtues. This is how you fill up eternity when all you have
to look forward to is the clock running down and the universe collapsing in on
itself and starting over.

There’s something up ahead. I can’t see it but I
can feel it. There’s a set of double doors leading to a meeting room. The
opposite wall is blank but there’s something funny about it. It isn’t solid. To
these Lucifer eyes, the plaster and paint are cheap sideshow effects. Change the
light and you can see right through them. At least the wily bastard left me
something useful.

Sooner or later even the nonstop rituals aren’t
going to hold and these assholes are going to turn on each other. The biggest
baddest civil war ever, until none of them are left. What would Heaven think of
that? Probably get a real chuckle out of it. A Hell without Hellions. A
real-estate developer’s wet dream. They can sell time-shares, “This
two-and-a-half-bath beauty is close to schools, shopping, and on a clear day you
can see the dismembered devil corpses floating in the lake of shit.”

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.