“Shit,” she says.
I lead her back to the manhole and we climb the ladder out.
I WALK ALICE up the garage ramp, skirting the crazies and the squatters. She can’t take her eyes off them. I get the feeling Aelita dropped her straight into the cell, so she hasn’t seen much of Hell. Lucky girl.
Neshamah is on the roof looking through Muninn’s crystal like a jeweler checking a diamond for flaws. He shoves it back in his waistcoat when he sees us.
“The prodigal son returns. I wasn’t sure you had enough fingers and toes to count to three hundred. I see you’ve brought back a friend and that you have a hole in your chest. Just another day at the office,” says Neshamah. He turns to Alice. “Was he this clumsy on earth or is all this blood a Sandman Slim thing?”
“A who?”
“Alice, this is Neshamah. Neshamah, this is Alice. Neshamah is the one who told me how to get into the asylum.”
“Thanks for helping Jim get me out of that place. I would have gone crazy if I’d been in there much longer.”
Neshamah holds out his hand to Alice. She looks at it like he’s holding out a dead squid. But out of a kind of doomed sense of politeness, she puts her hand out, too. She looks at their hands and then at him when they touch. She starts to say something, but Neshamah cuts her off.
“If it’s any comfort, you wouldn’t have been in there much longer. Probably just a few hours. A day at the most. Wouldn’t you say?”
He looks at me.
“If I don’t get to Pandemonium in about seven hours, the Kissi are going to come down hard on the place. The way Josef is acting I don’t know if they’re going to start a war down here or join up with Mason’s boys and make a play for Heaven.”
He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. The angel in my head squirms like something is trying to get inside. I think he’s losing.
“I noticed Kissi lurking about. What exactly are they getting out of all this?” Neshamah asks.
“They’ll get what I give them. Nothing more and nothing less.”
His eyes narrow.
“Do you think it was a good idea to ally yourself with such, let’s say, touchy creatures?”
“I knew I was going to need help to stop Mason and I never got anything but the silent treatment from your bunch, so who was I supposed to go to? Besides, Aelita wants you out of the way, and for all I knew, she was the new CEO of Heaven Inc.”
“Boys? I’m new here,” says Alice. “What are Kissi? Why did Mason bring me here?”
I say, “Kissi are like angels, only worse. I’m not sure why you’re here now. I thought it was just to get rid of me, but with what Aelita said to you, there might be something more.” I look at Neshamah. “You want to jump in here with any insights?”
He shrugs.
“Mason wants to get into Heaven. She’s from Heaven. Maybe he thinks she hid a key under a flowerpot.”
“I don’t even know how I got here,” Alice says. She notices the sky behind Neshamah’s head and it must have just registered that the darkness isn’t night, but a coffin lid of smoke blotting out the sky.
Alice looks at me.
“Did you just say you’re friends with Lucifer?”
“Not friends really. We’re more like professional assholes who play golf occasionally and get drunk at the clubhouse before talking business.”
Neshamah smiles and addresses Alice.
“Actually, there is no Lucifer at the moment. The old one is retired. Your friend James here is up to replace him. As is Mason.”
Alice gives me that I-don’t-know-who-you-are look again. Wraps her arms around herself.
“Is that really why you’re back? You’re finally going to whip them out and see whose is bigger?”
I look at Neshamah.
“The Gnostics were right about you after all, you evil motherfucker.”
I turn to Alice.
“I came back here because I love you. But I’m also here to kill Mason because he needs killing. He’s not going to be Lucifer or this sack of shit,” I say, nodding at Neshamah.
“What does that mean?”
“I have to go. Let Rain Man here explain it to you.”
Alice stares at Neshamah.
“Do I know you from somewhere?”
“You might have run into one of my brothers.”
“Do you think you could possibly not be a prick long enough for me to go and finish this?” I ask.
“Are you running off to Pandemonium alone? That’s magnificently stupid.”
“I’m going to Houdini someone out of Tartarus, but I don’t even know where it is. Do you have a map of the stars’ homes or something I could borrow?”
Neshamah scratches his chin.
“I have to hand it to you, kid. You’re a pain in my ass but you’re not boring. Tartarus is in the Badlands.”
Alice reaches for my arm but her hand goes through me.
“Wait. We finally see each other again and you’re dumping me here with a stranger?”
“I know this stinks. But trust me, getting you out of the asylum wasn’t rescuing you. What I’m about to do is.”
She turns to Neshamah.
“Who are you? You’re part of this, aren’t you?”
“He can explain it to you after I go.”
Neshamah pats Alice’s shoulder.
“And indeed I will.”
“So how do I get to the Badlands?”
“Are you sure you want to do this? Once you’re in Tartarus, there’s nothing I can do for you. It’s not my domain. It belongs to my brother Ruach. And if you think I’m a bastard, you should meet him sometime.”
“If he’s around, I’ll give him a peck on the cheek for you. How do I get there?”
“The same way you got to the asylum. Three hundred and thirty-three paces, but in the opposite direction.”
“You really like that number.”
He nods.
“Actually I like nines. Sacred numbers. You’ve got to love them. If you people were better at math, you’d be as smart as me.”
I nod in Alice’s direction.
“You can take care of her while I’m gone, right?ȁx20right?&D;
“She was taken from her place in Heaven, so unlike some people, she’s one of mine. No one will hurt her.”
I start down the ramp. Alice follows me a few paces. I stop.
“Can you for sure stop Mason?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then promise me this. If you can’t win and everything is going to fall apart, you come back here so we can ride it out together.”
“I promise.”
“Okay, then,” she says.
I half turn away then pivot back.
“Did you spy on me for the Sub Rosa?” The question just charged out on its own. I can almost feel the angel trying to reach into my mouth and snatch the words back.
Alice stands still. I can read faces pretty well. If she had a heartbeat, it would be spiking right now. That’s all I need to know.
There’s a crack like a cannon going off as the building the Kissi set on fire collapses. I wave to her once and go.
I COME UP in the Badlands, though I don’t see how this parcel of the L.A. shit-scape is supposed to be worse than any of the others I’ve seen. In fact, I’d find the area downright restful if it wasn’t for all the blood.
I’m in a deserted industrial area surrounded by collapsed warehouses and bent and twisted railroad tracks following the L.A. River. The river’s concrete banks are stained the color of old bricks from a rushing river of blood, a tributary of the Styx. I guess this is the source of the blood bubbling up out of the sinkholes.
There’s nothing here that points to Tartarus. No signs, burning bushes, or sphinxes playing Jeopardy! for clues. The one time a sphinx tried that with me, I held it down and shaved it until it looked like one of those hairless cats you see in Beverly Hills pet stores.
I’m not far from a burned-out, crumbling version of the old Fourth Street Bridge. It’s all big Roman arches with a few out-of-place Victorian streetlamps to class up the thing because you don’t want your industrial wastelands to look tacky.
There’s something strange under the bridge. A bright patch of green. There are palm trees on either side and they’re not on fire. The green looks like fresh, healthy grass. In the middle of the little oasis is a white stucco forties bungalow. It has red slate shingles and it’s styled with the vaguely hacienda look you see on the older places. I go up the pristine walkway out front and knock on the door. It opens and the woman inside sibuman insmiles at me. Her face shifts and re-forms, showing the phases of the moon.
“I told you that in the end you’d come to me,” says Medea Bava.
“So this is your dirty little secret. Tartarus is the Inquisition.”
“No. I’m the Inquisition. Tartarus is your fate. The Dies Irae,” she says, and recites, “ ‘Just judge of vengeance, grant me the gift of forgiveness before the Day of Judgment.’ ”
“I like the sound of that forgiveness part.”
“And some receive it, but I’m afraid you’re a bit too late for that.”
I step out of Bava’s way, tromping on her perfect lawn with my bloody-sewage-waste boots.
“Then why don’t you scoot us on over to the Club Double Dead and let me in?”
She comes out, locking the door behind her.
“Seriously? You think someone’s going to steal your stamp collection all the way out here?”
“You’re not the only one in Hell with a chip on his shoulder. I don’t believe in taking foolish chances.”
“That sounds boring.”
She leads me to a rickety-looking metal staircase leading up to the bridge through a hole chiseled in the roadbed. Medea gestures for me to go first. I take hold of the railing and shake it. The stairs wobble a little, but it looks like they’ll hold. I start climbing.
“You know, I’ve been waiting here for you your whole life.”
“I hope you’ve got cable, or you’ve missed a lot of good TV.”
When we reach the top, she heads for the far side of the bridge and I follow. She stops abruptly halfway across and looks at me.
“You know that once you get inside, you can never leave.”
“That’s what Angie Summers said in the back of her daddy’s Cadillac on prom night. If I can get away from her, I can get away from you.”
“It’s refreshing to meet a man so anxious to embrace annihilation.”
“Okay. You’ve had your supervillain moment, now can you show me to the front door?”
Medea steps back a few paces and holds out her arms.
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“We’re here. Behold Tartarus.”
I turn around, looking for something.
“We’re nowhere. Behold fuck-all.”
“Look down,” she says. “Then jump.”
I look over the edge. We’re right over the Styx.
“In your dreams, Vampirella.”
“Is Sandman Slim afraid of a little blood?”
“He’s afraid of how deep that is. You want me to jump and crack my head on the bottom.”
She shakes her head. Shadows make her shifting features even more disturbing.
“This is the way in. You can keep a little dignity and jump, or I can push you.”
“Try it.”
I start for her and suddenly I’m airborne. When I land I slide about twenty feet. Medea just smacked me with a hex that felt like a tornado giving birth to a hurricane. I climb to my feet and brush the dust off my coat.
“If you put it that way, maybe I’ll just go ahead and jump.”
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since you’ve been here.”
I climb onto the wide concrete railing and tightrope-walk down to where Medea is waiting.
“You’ve got the home-field advantage here, but I bet you can’t throw hoodoo like that back on earth.”
“We’re not on earth, and whatever power you have in this place, I will always have more. Now jump.”
“I’m going to look you up when I get back to L.A.”
“You’re not the first person to say something like that.”
“Yeah, but I’m the first one who means it.”
She gestures impatiently toward the river.
“Go.”
I glance down at the bloody waves and turn back to her.
“I don’t have time for one last smoke, do I?”
“Jump or I’ll throw you.”
I put my arms out and take a breath.
“As a great man once said, ‘I should never have switched from scotch to martinis.’ ”
I lean back and let myself go over the edge, tumbling through the air and slamming into the red river.
I hit flat on my back. It feels just as good as falling fifty feet into blood sounds. I hold my breath and try not to breathe in anything.
I sink and keep sinking, like the gravity in the river isn’t the same as the gravity outside. I’m pulled down into soft mud at the bottom. At least I hope it’s mud. Another gladiator once swore to me that he’d sailed to Pandemonium on a river of shit. I hope there wasn’t any backwash down here.
I’m instantly engulfed in the muck. My lungs want to crawl up my throat and hitch a ride back to Hollywood. The angel in my head chants a serenity prayer. If I could punch my own brain, I would. The angel stops long enough to remind me that everything has a bottom, even Hell.
I’m being squeezed down through sediment that gets harder every inch I go. The sucking soon turns into pushing, like a hydraulic press is pounding me down into the riverbed. This must be what pasta feels like coming out of a spaghetti extruder.
