Pop the top of Alice’s plastic sarcophagus. Her ashes are in a plastic bag, like something you’d put your lunch in. I hold out the bag so that the bottom is about an inch underwater. Pull the black knife and slit the side.
The waves lap at the bag, washing out her ashes. Alice floats on the surface of the ocean, a white cloud spreading out in all directions. When the bag is empty, I drop it and the box into the water. I wade out, following the ash cloud as it’s drawn away with the tide.
I want to follow her all the way out, over my head, and keep on going. But she wouldn’t like that, either.
I stop when the water is up to my chest and watch Alice spread out into the black Pacific. Scoop up a handful of her ashes, but they wash away when the water runs between my fingers. That damn song is stuck in my head again.
“It’s dreamy weather we’re on
You waved your crooked wand
Along an icy pond with a frozen moon
A murder of silhouette crows I saw
And the tears on my face
And the skates on the pond
They spell Alice.”
My legs are good and numb when the last of her drifts out of sight. I’m not even cold anymore, but I can’t stop shaking.
Good-bye, Alice. I know you probably don’t like the idea of me killing, but it’s all I have left to give you. And I’ve gone too far to stop now. When I’m sure about Mason, this thing is done. I’ll go back down where I belong and dream about you in Hell. Till then, sleep tight.
WHO WOULD HAVE guessed that Kasabian had his act wired tight enough to have accident insurance? Allegra found the papers in the bottom of the safe when she was closing up the one night a week she still works at Max Overdrive.
Drop cloths, ladders, and paint cans are stacked along the edge of the staircase leading to my bedroom. The broken walls and ceiling have new drywall. In the morning (not too early; I tipped the foreman not to show up until after eleven), the crew will start plastering one end of the room and start painting the other.
I’m lying in bed after a shower, staring up at streaks of drywall tape and mud, the long white scars that hold the new ceiling panels together. I’m trying to talk myself into getting my ass out of bed and down to the Bamboo House of Dolls for some decent food.
“Knock. Knock.”
I have the Navy Colt up and cocked in a fraction of a second. Lucifer is standing in the doorway, holding a red-and-white-checkered bowling bag. I lower the Colt’s hammer and set it back down on the bedside table.
Lucifer says, “Don’t get up. This is just a social call.”
The Prince of Darkness is dressed in a tailored charcoal-gray suit that looks like it cost more than this building. He sets down the bowling bag on the bootlegging table and leans back against the door frame.
“Careful. That might not be dry,” I say.
“Thank you.” He stands up and checks his jacket for spots. “I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d drop by and congratulate you on outfoxing Mason. I honestly didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Up until he was gone, neither did I.”
“It was clever how you tricked him into following you to Hell. It’s just too bad that when you locked him in, you probably gave him exactly what he wanted. You don’t really think that ritual at Avila was to let me or my kind out of Hell, do you?”
“No, it was to let him in. I didn’t figure that out until later. So, the mob didn’t rip him to shreds?”
“Of course not. Mason won’t die that easily. And now he’s free to crawl around down below, like a viper at my bosom, and conspire with my generals to overthrow me.”
“It’s going to be a lot harder for him now that he doesn’t have the Kissi to back him up.”
“Maybe.”
“You telling me that the Prince of Darkness can’t handle one lousy human? You’ve done it before.”
“Not when he’s protected by my entire general corps and the aristocracy. Things were chaotic enough before his arrival. I could gather the troops who remain loyal to me, find and kill him tomorrow, but I’d have to destroy half my kingdom to do it.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“Not yet.”
Lucifer takes out a pack of thin black silver-tipped cigarettes.
“Do you mind?” he asks.
“Damn. Are those Maledictions?”
“Right. You can’t get these up here.” He tosses me the pack. “Keep them. I have more.”
“Thanks.”
I tap a Malediction out of the box, fire it up, and puff. It tastes like a tire fire in a candy factory next door to a strip club. The best cigarettes in the universe.
“I heard a funny story the other day. Doc Kinski told me one about angels and human women and something called a nephilim. He says I might be one. You know anything about that?”
“I know all about Uriel and his disgrace. Do you think an archangel could fall without me knowing? I’d hoped that Heaven would cast him all the way down to me. I would have thrown him a ticker-tape parade.”
“So, he was telling the truth?”
“Of course. I’d heard stories about the nephilim over the centuries, but I’d never seen one. I wasn’t sure they even existed. When the Kissi dropped you down with us, I wasn’t terribly interested. Unlike my brethren, I’d seen more than my share of humans. Then days passed and you refused to die. That’s when you got interesting. I moved you from household to household. Put you in direct conflict with powerful Hellions. Decided who you would fight in the arena.”
“I was your science project.”
“You still are.”
“What does that mean?”
Lucifer looks away and picks up an import DVD of Lucio Fulci’s Zombi.
“This looks fun. May I take it?”
“Happy New Year. It’s yours.”
He throws back the drop cloth and starts going through the stacks of discs on the table.
I say, “I’ve been wondering, just how much of everything since I got back was your doing?”
Lucifer keeps going through the stacks of movies.
“The Veritas aimed me straight at Kasabian. Then some mysterious buyer wanted Muninn to get something for him, only Muninn needed my help and that sent me to Jayne-Anne and Avila, which led me to the Golden Vigil and Mason. Don’t you think that’s an awful lot of coincidences?”
He holds up a copy of To the Devil a Daughter.
I shake my head. “Don’t bother.”
He makes a disappointed face and tosses the disc back onto the pile.
“You’re too hard on yourself, Jimmy” he says. “I’m sure you’re simply a much better detective than you give yourself credit for.”
“Really, I’m not.”
He holds up a copy of L’Inferno, a 1911 silent version of Dante’s Inferno.
“You’ll love that one,” I say. “Why would you tweak things so they ended up with me still alive and Mason in Hell? Either you never saw it coming or you were lying before and you really wanted him Downtown.”
“Why would I want Mason where he’ll cause me the most trouble?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“Don’t overthink things. It’s not your strong suit. I do have an ulterior motive for coming here tonight, besides raiding your movie collection. Now that you’ve beaten Mason and the Kissi, there’s really no reason for you to be concerned with the Room of Thirteen Doors. I’d like to buy the key from you.”
“How much?”
“Name a figure and don’t be shy. You can be the richest man in the world. The richest man ever.”
“No thanks. Sounds like there’d be a lot of paperwork.”
“If you’re worried about getting hurt, I’m not a butcher like the Kissi. I can take the key out and you won’t feel a thing.”
“But I have a feeling I might need it again sometime. You just said that Mason’s busy conspiring with your generals. I might have to do something about th
at, and the key came in handy when I had to to kill a few of them. Besides, I’d still like another shot at Mason, so, thanks, but I think I’ll hold on to the key for now.”
“Suit yourself.”
Lucifer turns away. Starts flipping through another pile of discs. I wish angels weren’t so impossible to read. I know that he’s got to be pissed, but I can’t tell how much.
“But I’ll work for you, if you want.”
Lucifer turns and looks at me.
“Strictly freelance. On a case-by-case basis. Cash up front. And I have to not object to the job.”
“Is this the same deal you offered to Aelita?”
“Exactly.”
“All right. But I’d still rather have the key.”
I go to the bathroom and take some pebbles from a pot in the window holding the remains of a dead flower. I take the stones back to the bedroom and hand them to Lucifer.
“You can have these.”
He looks at them and gives me a big, toothy Prince of Darkness smile.
“Seven stones. Seven stones to chase away the devil. Are you trying to prove that you’re not afraid of me, Jimmy? That’s adorable. And how very Old Testament. Don’t tell me that you’ve gone and read a book?”
“I saw it in an old monster movie.”
“Phew.”
Lucifer picks up a stone between his thumb and forefinger, takes my hand, and drops the stone into it.
“Keep it. You just might need it someday, Sandman Slim.”
I don’t know what that means, but the way he says it makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
He looks at his watch.
“I’ve got to run. Thanks for the flickers.”
He gives me a wink and starts down the stairs.
I yell down after him, “You forgot your bowling bag.”
Lucifer looks up at me.
“That’s for you. I wasn’t entirely sure I was going to give it to you, but after you gave me this lovely gift”—he holds up the stones—“I think you deserve it.”
That doesn’t sound good. But if he wanted me dead, he could have done it without me even knowing he was there. I open the bag. Kasabian’s head looks up at me from inside.
“Hello, asshole.”
I slam the bag shut.
“I can’t make these personal calls all the time,” Lucifer says. “Kasabian here will be my voice when I want to get in touch. Of course, you can also relay messages to me through him.”
“And the rest of the time he’ll be your spy.”
“O ye of little faith.”
Lucifer vanishes from the stairs.
I can hear Kasabian’s voice from inside the bag. I open it about an inch.
“Come on, man. You think I wanted this gig? You told me to ask for a job.”
I open the bag the rest of the way and take Kasabian out. Clear a spot on the table and set him down.
“Is that a Malediction?” Kasabian asks. “Can I have one?” I take mine, put it between his lips, and let him puff.
“So what’s being dead like?” I ask.
“Eh. I’ve felt worse.”
“You know. I thought I’d be dead now. That’s how I always pictured it. When the Circle was gone, I was supposed to be gone, too.”
“Aw. Dying didn’t work out for you? Boo hoo. Shove your James Dean wet dreams up your ass. At the end of the day, you’re still Sandman Slim and I’m still a head in a bag that smells like someone used it to store an extra ass.”
“I miss Alice.”
“I miss my balls.” Kasabian looks around. “Who fucked up my room?”
“It’s my room now and you did. When you blew yourself up.”
“Oh, right. That sucked. I heard you got Parker.”
“Yeah. Back at the old motel.”
“I haven’t thought about that place in a long time. You think it hurt when you killed him?”
“Definitely.”
“Good.”
I take a puff of the Malediction and let Kasabian finish it off.
I say, “Maybe us being stuck here isn’t the worst thing imaginable.”
“No, it is. It really is.”
“I felt so guilty about everything that’s happened. Then I remembered that half of this shit is just because humans are jokes to Heaven and Hell. We’re the punching bags in their family psychodrama. I know I can’t change that, but I can make it more fun. A mosquito can’t kill an elephant, but it can drive it crazy. Maybe that’s enough. Fucking with Lucifer’s bullyboys and God’s Pinkertons. Maybe that’s a good enough reason not to be dead.”
“That’s really beautiful. Why don’t you go and knit that on a sweater, Heidi? Here’s an even better idea—don’t talk anymore. Put on a movie.”
“What do you want to see?”
“Porn.”
“There’s no way I’m watching porn with you.”
“You’re such an old lady. What’s on top of the player?”
“Master of the Flying Guillotine and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly first. Then The Flying Guillotine.”
I take Kasabian to the bedside table, hit on, thumb play on the remote, and lie back on the bed. The no-copying warning comes up.
“Can we order in pizza later?” asks Kasabian.
“Can you eat?”
“I can chew.”
“I’ll put a bucket under you.”
“Shut up. The movie’s starting.”
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Ginger Clark, Diana Gill, Emily Krump, and Holly Frederick, and Jack Womack who dodge CHUDs everyday. Thanks to Nicola Ginzler and Pat Murphy, who continue to ignore the missing cemeteries. Thanks to Dino De Laurentiis, Lorenzo De Maio, Ed Wacek, and Igor De Laurentiis, who are the ham in a dinosaur-andporn-star sandwich. Thanks also to the guys at Night Shade, the Liminals, Gus, and Kathy.
Thanks especially to Tom Waits for letting me carjack some of his beautiful lyrics. If I die first, you can have my bones for a xylophone.
Thanks to Sergio Leone, the Shaw Brothers, Werner Herzog, David Lynch, Takashi Miike, and Richard Stanley for killing pretty.
Kill the Dead Excerpt
KILL THE DEAD
RICHARD KADREY
For G and K
Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things Abominable, unutterable, and worse . . .
—PARADISE LOST, BOOK 2
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
—WOODY ALLEN
Begin Reading
IMAGINE SHOVING A cattle prod up a rhino’s ass, shouting “April fool!”, and hoping the rhino thinks it’s funny. That’s about how much fun it is hunting a vampire.
Personally, I don’t have anything against shroud eaters. They’re just another kind of addict in a city of addicts. Since most of them started out as civilians, the percentage of decent vampires to complete bastards is about the same as regular people. Right now, though, I’m hunting one that’s trying for a Nobel Prize in getting completely up my ass. It isn’t fun work, but it pays the bills.
The vampire’s name is Eleanor Vance. In the Xeroxed passport photo Marshal Wells gave me, she looks like she’s about seventeen. Probably because she is. A pretty blond cheerleader type with big eyes and the kind of smile that got Troy burned to the ground. Bad news for me. Young vampires are all assholes. It’s part of their job description.
I love older vampires. A hundred and fifty, two hundred years old, they’re beautiful. The smart ones mostly stick to the El Hombre Invisible tricks that urban monsters have worked out over centuries. They only feed when they have to. When they’re not hunting, they’re boring, at least to outsiders. They come off like corporate middle management or the guy who runs the corner bodega. What I like best about old bloodsuckers is that when you’ve got one cornered and it knows it’s coffin fodder, they’re like noble cancer patie
nts in TV movies. All they want is to die quietly and with a little dignity. Young vampires, not so much.
The young ones have all grown up watching Slayer videos, Scarface, Halloween, and about a million hours of Japanese anime. They all think they’re Tony Montana with a lightsaber in one hand and a chain saw in the other. Eleanor, tonight’s undead dream date, is a good example. She’s got a homemade flamethrower. I know because when she blasted me back at the parking garage, she fried one of my eyebrows and the left sleeve of my new leather jacket. Ten to one she found the plans on the Web. Why can’t vampires just download porn like normal jailbait?
It’s Sunday, about a quarter to six in the evening. We’re downtown. I follow her along South Hill Street toward Pershing Square. I’m about half a block behind her. Eleanor is wearing long sleeves and carrying an umbrella to keep the sun off. She strolls along happy, like she owns the air and everyone has to pay her royalties whenever they breathe. Only she’s not really relaxed. I can’t read a juicer’s heartbeat or breathing changes because they don’t have them. And she’s too far away to see if her eyes are dilated, but she keeps moving her head. Microscopic twitches left and right. She’s trying to look around without looking around. Hoping to catch my shadow or reflection. Eleanor knows she didn’t kill me back at the garage. Eleanor’s a smart girl. I hate smart dead girls.
At the corner of Third Street, Eleanor shoulder-butts an old lady and what’s probably her grandkid into the street, in front of a flatbed truck carrying a backhoe. The driver slams on the brakes. The old lady is on the ground. Cue the screaming and squealing tires. Cue the sheep who stand around pointing and the Captain Americas who run to help. They pull the old lady and the kid back onto the sidewalk, which is great for them, but it doesn’t do anything for me. Eleanor is gone.
But it’s not hard to find her. Fifty people must have seen her pull the stunt and half of them point as she sprints down Third before cutting right onto Broadway. I take off after her. I’m fast, a hell of a lot faster than the flat-footed civilians trying to chase her down, but I’m not quite as fast as a vampire. Especially one who’s lost her umbrella and wants to get out the sun before she turns into chicken-fried steak.