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.
I dragged a plush red sofa trimmed in gold, a big partner’s desk, and a few chairs over to my squat. Sometimes I even let people in to use the chairs. Not many and not often, but anyone who comes in is on my turf. I know which carpets cover binding circles. I know which books are hollowed out and stuffed with knives and killing potions.
The desk and nearby shelves are covered with books, paper, pens, and weird little machines. Stuff you can only find at an Office Depot doubling as a night school for amateur torturers. There’s a spongy red clamshell that growls when you squeeze it and spits out what I think pass for Hellion staples. They’re sharp and thick, like they’re designed to punish the paper and not just hold it together. There’s something that looks like a set of brass teeth. The teeth chatter sometimes. Sometimes they don’t do anything for days. There’s a gyroscope that when you spin it talks in a deep monster-movie voice in a language I’ve never heard before. On one of the bookshelves is a gold armillary sphere. When I touch any of the golden rings, I feel like I’ve fallen out of myself. Like I’m nowhere and being pushed through empty space by a freezing hurricane. There are stars far away and beyond them a mass of pale boiling vapor streaked with lighting. I think it’s the chaos at the edge of the universe and that this is the deep void that separates Hell and Heaven. Wherever and whatever it is, it’s a lonely and desolate place.
In L.A., I lived with a dead man named Kasabian who worked for Lucifer and could see into parts of Hell. I don’t know if he can see me here, but sometimes I scrawl notes and leave them on the desk for days. Some are to friends. Most are to Candy. We’re a lot alike. Neither of us is quite human. And we’re both killers. We try to forget about the first as much as possible and try to avoid the second as much as we can, which, the way things are, usually isn’t long.
There’s a click behind me. I put my hand on my knife and turn.
Two Hellions come in through a false section of bookcase that slides away like Japanese paper doors.
Merihim, the priest, bows. He’s in sleeveless black robes. Every inch of his pale face and arms is tattooed with sacred Hellion script. Spells, prayers, and, for all I know, a recipe for chicken vindaloo.
The guy with him, Ipos, is big and blunt. Like a walking fire hydrant in gray rubber overalls. The heavy leather belt around his waist holds tools that range from barbarian crushers to delicate surgical-quality instruments. From a distance you can’t tell if he’s the palace’s maintenance chief or head torturer. His job in the palace makes him a useful agent. No one pays attention to the janitor.
“Did we interrupt playtime with your toys, my lord?” asks Merihim.
“Go harass an altar boy, preacher. I’m working.”
On a table near the sofa there’s a line of peepers projecting images from around the palace onto an old-fashioned home movie screen I found in a storeroom. I pop out my right eye, drop it into a glass of water, and stick a peeper in the empty socket, rolling back the images the eye picked up like a video rewinding. Like I said, I have a few of Lucifer’s powers but mostly Vegas magic-act stuff.
“What are you looking for?” asks Ipos. His voice is a low rumble, like an idling sixteen-wheeler.
“The front of the palace where I dumped the bodies of three bushwhacking assholes. I want to see what happened after I came inside.”
Merihim and Ipos are the only two Hellions who can walk in here on their own. They were Samael’s confidants and spies and I inherited them with the gig. I don’t think Samael would have lasted as long as he did without them. I know I wouldn’t still be here.
I roll back to where I came inside and let the peeper play. The officer I talked to barks orders at the troops who are about thirty seconds from a soccer riot trying to get a look at Ukobach and his dead friends. The officer orders most back to their duties and others to take the three bodies to the gibbets. A young officer comes over. They walk along the gory trail where I dragged in the bodies. I try to read their lips but they’re too damned far away.
“I see by your hands you were hurt in the attack,” says Merihim. “I’ll send for a healer from the tabernacle. I daresay they’re more discreet than the palace medical staff.”
“I’m fine. All the bastards did was murder my jacket. It was a nice one too.”
I switch my eyes back, pour myself a shot of Aqua Regia, and hold out the bottle. Merihim shakes his head and walks away. He does that. Prowls the room when we meet. I’ve never seen the guy sit down. Ipos nods for a drink and picks up a glass with his big bratwurst fingers. When I start to pour, he flinches.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and nods in my direction.
“The arm, my lord. Would you mind? It’s . . . distracting.”
I flex my prosthetic Kissi hand. The Kissi were a race of deformed, half-finished angels that lived in the chaos on the edge of Creation. One of God’s first great fuckups while creating the universe. Kissis give Hellions the shakes. I think they see themselves in those other failed angels. It reminds them that even in Hell you can always fall lower.
I dig around in the desk and find a glove. This time he takes a drink. He carries it to the sofa and sits down. I sit on the desk. Merihim prowls.
“Thank you, my lord,” says Ipos.
“Stop with the ‘my lord’ stuff. It bugs me.”
“Sorry.”
Merihim smiles, leaning over the peepers. Projected images from around the palace flicker on the screen like a silent movie.
“What’s up with you?” I ask.
“Nothing. It’s always amusing watching you pretend you’re not who you really are.”
“I’m only interning in Hell for college credit. When I find the right replacement, I’m gone, Daddy, gone.”
“Of course you are. Why would you want any influence over the creation of a new Hell? Or care about the welfare of the millions of mortal souls you’ll be leaving behind? I wonder if Mr. Hickok will be allowed to keep his tavern or will he be thrown back into Butcher Valley? But what do you care? ‘All are equal in the grave.’ Isn’t that what you living mortals say?”
“Keep talking, smart guy. I’ll fake a heart attack and make you Lucifer. Let’s see how you like whitewashing this outhouse with a target painted on the back of your bald head.”
Ipos glances at the priest.
“It would probably look better than all the scribbling.”
Merihim gives him a sharp look, flips through the pages of an ancient Hellion medical book, and sets it down.
“Someone has found out about your habit of riding alone and what routes you take. You can’t ever ride like that again.”
“I know. There’s something else.”
I take out the Glock and set it on the desk.
“Where did these pricks get guns? Only officers get to carry weapons these days.”
Merihim frowns and crosses his arms.
“We need to find out—very discreetly—if there are any officers who can’t account for their weapons.”
“There are merchants who sell stolen weapons in the street markets. I can get people on the road repair crews. They might see or hear something,” Ipos says.
Merihim nods.
“Good.”
“Wait. It gets even better. I checked the attacker who lived. He’d been hexed. He might not have even known what he was doing.”
“An enthrallment?” says Merihim. That gets his attention. He comes back to the desk. “That’s not a power many in Pandemonium would possess. I doubt that any of the officers could do it.”
“Maybe the bastard bribed one of the palace witches,” says Ipos.
“I think whoever set up the attack tried to hex me too. After I dumped the bike, I couldn’t think or fight or defend myself. I’ve been in plenty of wrecks and it didn’t feel like a concussion. It felt like someone was trying to get inside my head.”
Merihim starts wandering again.
“It makes sense. One, Mason Faim created a key that allows him to possess bodies. Two, the key is missing. Three, according to you, it works on mortals. Four, there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t work on Hellions too. That means whoever arranged your attack either has the key or is in league with whoever does.”
Ipos says, “I suppose if any of us would be hard to possess, it would be Lucifer. They probably won’t try it on you again.”
