Semyazah says, “Lower your weapons, both of you. Sandman Slim fights with us, and whatever happened in the past can be dealt with after the battle.”
Baphomet sheathes his knives like a kid who has to put back the cookies he stole before dinner.
Shax says, “I still don’t trust him. You said he’s involved with the Kissi. They don’t have a stake in this fight. Why would they come?”
I look up at the sky.
“Why don’t you ask them yourself?”
Shax and the others follow my gaze.
Something bursts through the burning clouds. It comes in a long solid line that snakes from the clouds. It spreads out, staining the air black. Then the dark breaks apart into a thousand pieces and settles to the ground like a plague of giant locusts. One bug heads straight for us and lands on the edge of the balcony. Josef steps down and bows. Not Aryan supermodel Josef. Kissi Josef.
He looks like an unfinished insect angel. His features are half melted, like sculpted wax. Josef glows faintly with a blue-white light that makes him look like a bottom-of-the-ocean predator. He’s so awful he’s almost beautiful.
He walks to the circle of officers. Stops and waits when he reaches the line. A hole opens up and Josef steps through. When he reaches Semyazah he gives a bow small enough to be a head bob.
“I’m honored to meet Tartarus’s destroyer, General Semyazah.”
Josef offers his hand to shake. Semyazah reaches for it. It’s a pure act of will. It will be inexcusably rude if he doesn’t arninȁnd Josef will read it as fear, not disgust. The general barely gets through it.
“Did you get the battle plans to the right people?” I ask Semyazah.
He nods, trying to make the comment look casual.
“As best as we can spread the new strategy to so many in so little time. We’ll know soon enough if it’s worked.”
“A new plan?” asks Josef. “Why have you changed your attack so close to battle?”
He’s suspicious. I don’t have to be able to touch his mind to see that.
Semyazah says, “Because Mason Faim is no longer a part of this battle. You are. That changes how we deploy our troops.”
“And how is that, General?”
“Heaven knows we’re coming, but they don’t know about you. As the Kissi’s leader, you will ride point with Sandman Slim and myself. Your troops will travel in tight formation behind a legion of our infantry. This will hide the Kissi until the last minute. Before we reach Heaven’s gates, our legions will part to reveal you. The shock will allow us to flank Heaven’s battlements and crush its armies between us. Is that clear?”
“As the pristine vacuum of space.”
Semyazah turns to his men.
“And to the rest of you?”
Heads nod. There are noises of agreement.
Semyazah goes to the edge of the balcony. The legions are spread out below him in every direction.
He shouts, “Release the hellhounds!”
There’s a whir like prop planes and clanking like all the garbage cans in L.A. are being pounded on the ground at once. A mechanical hound the size of an elephant walks across the hotel lawn. Soldiers move back and leave a lane for the hounds to pass. Behind the elephant hound, the regular hellhounds come pouring from their pens in the underground garage. They paw the ground and snarl. Brains slosh in spinal fluid within the glass globes that are their heads. That’s how you motivate your troops. Get them anxious to start the war just so they can get away from the dogs.
Out in the street, Unimogs and flatbeds arrive. In regular Hell it would be the big hounds pulling carts loaded with trebuchets, siege towers, and Hellion versions of Roman ballistae. Here it’s trucks pulling cannons, rocket launchers, and mortars. The vehicles have huge animal horns on the front and metal barbs around the body and over the top. I wouldn’t want to have to attack one.
“Itȁght01C;It&9;s time to go, gentlemen,” Semyazah says. “Our fall from Heaven took nine days, but our rise will take mere hours.”
He looks at Josef.
“I’ll meet you downstairs with your army.”
Josef nods, spreads his wings, and launches himself from the balcony.
Semyazah pulls me aside.
“Are you sure your people are going to go along with this?” I ask.
Semyazah watches Josef go.
“We’ll know soon. If not, we’ll both be dead. Even if we win, we could be killed, so what does it matter?”
“You didn’t get the pep-talk badge in Hellion Boy Scouts, did you?”
IN FRONT OF the hotel trainers gather the smaller hellhounds into packs by the giant hounds. Weapons specialists with faces like children’s nightmares do last-minute adjustments on their equipment. A lot of them recognize me. Their eyes go a little wide when they see my new arm and all the dried blood on my coat. I was expecting more hostility, but they know I’m here with Semyazah, so maybe having Sandman Slim on his side gets him extra brownie points. I’ll be his beard if it gets the job done.
Semyazah says, “My men are bringing up your transport. Which would you prefer, a male or female hellhound? The males are stronger, but the females are faster.”
“Fuck you. I didn’t sign up to be Tarzan. Get me a truck or a Harley or anything else, but I’m not riding one of those things.”
One of his officers drives up in a red Ferrari Testarossa. He gets out and hands the keys to the general.
“This is Mason Faim’s vehicle. I thought you might be more comfortable in it,” says Semyazah.
I walk around the car, running my hand over the nearly frictionless surface.
“Damn, General. I think you almost made a joke a second ago.”
Semyazah tosses me the keys.
“If both you and the car survive the battle, I suggest you use it to get away from Pandemonium. When the fighting is over, Sandman Slim will be the next target for a lot of my men.”
I rub my shoulder where the new arm is attached.
“Let’s hope there’s enough of us left to worry about that.”
Semyazah walks around the car. His lips are drawn and thin. He hates the mortal stink on it.
“You’ll be able to keep up in that. You, Josef, and I will be in separate trucks at the front. Can you handle a vehicle like this?”
“Just keep the trucks and hellhounds off my back. I’m not looking to pull a Jayne Mansfield down here,” I say. “One question. This isn’t a convertible. If I’m tucked up in here, how is anyone going to know it’s me?”
“Mason Faim might have driven this, but he wouldn’t have taken it into battle. You’re the only one stupid enough to do that.”
“Cool. That’s even better than vanity plates.”
As Semyazah goes he calls over his shoulder.
“Meet me where the Kissi are massing on the other side of the palace.”
It feels a little weird using keys to start a car. I turn them in the ignition and the engine roars like a stealth fighter. I give it some gas and pop the clutch. Hellions scatter as I blast across the lawn straight at Josef and his big boys.
The Kissi formation wavers and falls apart as I drive right at them. Josef doesn’t move.
At the last minute I downshift, crank the wheel, and grab the hand brake, spinning the car in a one-eighty and stopping in front of him.
“Very funny,” says Josef. “You always were the king of comedy.”
“And I don’t work blue. You’ll play the big rooms if you work blue.”
Semyazah, in full battle armor, rides shotgun in a Unimog. The armor is dented where it was hit with bullets and crossbow bolts and slashed with heavenly swords. Another truck pulls up next to it for Josef. He doesn’t try to hide his disgust when he sees it. Kissi fly into battle. He must feel like an invalid having to ride. I just hope he doesn’t do anything clever and fuck things up. I gun the Ferrari and wait for the order to move.
Climbing on top of the Unimog, Semyazah gives the signal to fire up the vehicles. The growl of a thousand engines and gears shifting is something you feel as much as you hear. Your rib cage shakes and your heart bounces around in your chest. I could do this every night.
Fireworks burst overhead. Skyrockets burst in spiderwebs of green, gold, and red across the sky, lighting the bottom of the roiling clouds. That’s our cue. I pop the clutch and we roll forward.
Good night, moon. Good night, world. Whichever way this turns out, nothing is ever the same again.
You’l b>Youll never know how stupid I feel, Candy, fucking off to war in this four-hundred-horsepower road rocket when I should have stolen one back home and taken you to Mexico or Vegas or even the real Venice Beach. I wish we’d had more time and gotten a chance to bust up more hotel rooms. Vidocq once told me that you can’t judge your life by the moments you missed, but only by the ones you got. We didn’t get many measured against eternity, but it’s better than nothing.
I hope Lucifer is Upstairs and knows what’s coming. He’s known how my head works for a long time. Fingers crossed I know something about how his works, too.
I hope Neshamah is taking care of you, Alice. This is going to work or it’s not. It’s that simple. I’ve never strung together so many strands of bullshit before. If God won’t save us, maybe tall tales and lies will. Maybe all the crap I’ve pulled my whole life will turn out to be useful for something besides cadging drinks and pulling girls, and my still being alive will mean something. I let the world kill you once and I’m trying like hell not to let it happen again.
I wonder if Neshamah has the crystal out, ready to break it if Heaven burns and Hell cracks open and swallows itself? Be cool, old man. Wait till the credits roll. No twitchy trigger fingers tonight.
We’re heading south toward the port and the refineries. The trucks, APCs, and tanks spread out across the empty freeway, ripping the roadbed to pieces. It trembles and cracks, kicking up a hailstorm of concrete and rebar and tossing it back at the trucks in the rear. I keep up the Testarossa’s speed. I don’t want to end up in that rolling shit storm. The hill fires have rolled down through the city and flames rise up around us on both sides of the road.
A couple of miles ahead, the top deck of the freeway has collapsed and one end is lying on the street below. Semyazah and Josef either don’t care or don’t notice. I do. I’m goddamn concerned that my kidneys don’t end up as hood ornaments. If I stop, the trucks riding my bumper will crush me. There’s no shoulder to pull off on and no detours. Fuck it. I jam the accelerator to the floor. Let’s see how far this little red wagon can fly.
The collapsed slab shudders and pieces of roadbed follow the Testarossa over the edge. It’s not a fall. It’s more like shooting down from the top of a roller coaster. The car plummets and gradually levels out on a pristine lower freeway level a hundred lanes wide. The road is stained with thick patches of solvents and petrochemicals, but in this twisted light they shine like jewels and fallen stars. The Glory Road to Heaven.
It’s not long before we see a glow ahead, like the sun has set the other side of the world on fire. But there’s no sun here, just smoke and the glow, and I know the moment I see it that the light ahead is Heaven. I look around for Semyazah and Josef. We have to stay together for this.
Finally I can see Heaven itself.
It spreads out straight across the whole horizon, a monster parody of L.A.’s southern refineries. God’s little acre in the gleaminck the glg industrial skeleton of a prehistoric beast. Mountainous burn-off towers, catalytic crackers, and soaring distillation units are steel spines along the beast’s back. Heaven’s steel-pipe bones glow gold, illuminated by a thousand sodium-vapor lights. And on every catwalk, crow’s nest, and gantry, armed angels are waiting for war.
I hold my breath and wait for something to go wrong. Slowly let the air out of my lungs. Don’t think too much. Don’t jinx it. Just drive. I tick off the seconds, imagining Heaven’s golden pipes exploding and the place burning. It turns to rivers of molten metal that flow down the Glory Road to flood Hell and then the rest of Creation.
We’re right at the refinery’s gates. I can’t believe how high they are and how close we are to them.
War whoops blare from loudspeakers mounted on the trucks. Fireworks explode overhead. The signal.
Semyazah and I peel off from the point of the attack. It’s like when I spooked the Kissi at the hotel. I crank the Testarossa’s wheel hard, hit the brakes, and use the hand brake to send the car into a hundred-and-eighty-degree spin. Then I floor it, following Semyazah back the way we came, staying close to the edge, inches from the guardrail. The Kissi army blasts straight at Heaven’s gates as the Infernal legions close in behind them.
There’s a noise like a nuke going off. Heaven has opened fire. With the halo polishers in front and the Infernal legions at their backs, the Kissi are the bologna in a death-row sandwich. Adios, Josef. Send me a postcard from the Big Nowhere.
Something slams into my rear bumper, knocking me into the guardrail. I scrape along it for half a mile, peeling metal off half the side of the Testarossa. I’m swallowed in blackness as something huge jumps over the car, heads down the freeway, and turns to face me. It’s one of the giant hellhounds. It bellows and lowers its head until I can see Mason on its back wearing Lucifer’s golden armor. Momentum carries me toward him, and the hellhound raises one of its front feet to stomping position. I hit the accelerator. The hound is strong but it’s not as fast as a Ferrari.
When I’m about to go under the stomping foot, I spin the wheel right, slamming into the other leg. The hound wobbles. When I pull away, the car is making nasty sounds and shudders every time I pick up speed. I think I just broke the frame. I should have bought the rental insurance.
