“Before Christmas, please.”
When he moves, it’s fast. He pins the scorpion’s tail with the cuffs, and before it can rear back and get him with its pincers, he grabs the paper. Then slams the cup down on top of it.
“What the fuck, man? You cheated.”
He sets the paper down between us.
“What was it you said when I complained about you putting a bullet in my head? My game. My rules.”
“We’re even now, asshole.”
“Not even close.”
He reaches for his paper, but I put my hand over it.
“Before we count up the points, tell me this. Whose skull is that in the cavern?”
“Mine, of course.”
“I burned your body after I chucked your soul into Tartarus, so unless there’s a rewind button on your bones, that skull isn’t yours.”
I lift up my hand and he slides the paper back to his side of the table.
“It’s metaphorically mine. Putting it there was just a bit of fun. Give you a clue as to who Saint Nick might be.”
“It’s fucking hysterical. Who did you shoot in the head to make your joke?”
“No one. The skull is sugar, like one of those Día de los Muertos candy skulls. Der Zorn Götter had some local artisan make it and then put it in that lovely reliquary.”
“Just to fuck with us?”
“Just to fuck with you.”
“And to make you out as a saint.”
He moves his hands in the sign of the cross.
“Santa Muerte.”
“You’re having such a good time.”
“I am. Shall we add up the scores?”
I hold up my brutalized hands.
“Why bother? You didn’t get stung once. You’ve already won.”
“Not necessarily. A black dot on the paper is an automatic loss. Who knows what I drew?”
Mason opens his paper. Printed on it is the number ten.
“See? Ten points,” he says. “You were only stung, what, six times? You’re in the lead.”
I unfold my paper. It’s a black dot. Mason tsks.
“You lost even before the first sting. What a shame.”
“Fuck you.”
I can feel my pulse in my swollen fingers.
Mason says, “We’re just about done for today. You don’t get any information. Ready for your spanking?”
“You already got me half stung to death. You going to set my hair on fire too?”
“Don’t give me ideas. Here’s what you get for losing: the poison Candy drank has a side effect. Like liquor, it’s a disinhibitor, meaning people will say and do things on it they wouldn’t normally do when they’re in control. You understand what I’m getting at?”
I lean back and cross my arms.
“You mean that whatever Candy says through the poison is the truth. I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t have to lie. You talked to her. Did she seem woozy or drugged? You know I’m not lying. Like your hand, it stings, doesn’t it?”
“Let’s play another game.”
“When you win you can decide when we play, but you lost, so go away until tomorrow.”
I slam my fist down on the table hard enough that I knock over the cups. They’re empty. The scorpions are gone.
“There’s no time to fuck around like this.”
Mason stacks one cup inside the other and pushes them to the side of the table.
“Fucking around is part of the game, or haven’t you figured that out by now?”
“Who poisoned Candy’s medicine?”
“You’re being boring, James. Keep it up and I’ll hurt you again. Do it twice and there won’t be any game at all tomorrow.”
Were the scorpions phantoms? A hoodoo hallucination? I look at my hand. Whatever just happened in here, my fingers really are swollen and they really hurt. I go over and knock on the cell door. It opens and a guard lets me out.
“Where’s my gear?” I say.
He hands me the Colt and my knife.
“I unloaded the pistol. It’s an unauthorized weapon. Rules.”
I put it in the waistband at my back and put the blade in my coat.
“I want to see Candy.”
“I’m not authorized to let anybody into those cells.”
I look at him. His heartbeat goes up. I’m tempted to lean on him. Or I can go into the cellblock through a shadow. But they’ll have surveillance in there. If I go breaking the rules it could mean they’ll move Candy somewhere I can’t find her. I could try taking her out of here, but with the mood she’s in, who knows if she’d go with me?
Wells comes out of an office and walks over to me. He’s the last person I want to talk to.
I say, “Where did you go?”
“I had to deal with a phone call from Washington. How did it go in there?”
I hold up my swollen hand.
“We played. I lost. He didn’t tell me a goddamn thing.”
“Language. What happened to your hand?”
“Scorpions. I think. You might want to be careful who deals with Mason. He had two of them. Or maybe I just imagined it.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I lost and I have to come back and do this all again tomorrow.”
“Didn’t he tell you anything?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“It’s good to be king.”
I go straight home. In the end, it doesn’t matter if those scorpions were real or not. I just had my ass handed to me on a silver platter. A wasted day means I brought the Angra one step closer to Earth. I look out the window. I swear the rain is coming down harder than ever.
I TRY SOME healing hoodoo from the arena days, but I’ve always been better at breaking things than fixing them, so my improvised spells don’t work. Between the swelling from the scorpion and the last ragged remains of the scab from where I punched out the van window, my hand looks like I stuck it in a wood chipper and set it on frappé. I go downstairs to see if Kasabian has any aspirin.
He and Fairuza are sitting on some of the boxes outside his room, sipping beers. She sets hers down when she sees me.
“How’s Candy?”
I shake my head.
“Everything’s fucked. Candy’s crazy and I’m playing Chinese checkers with a psycho. Oh, Kas, you’ll be amused to know. Mason Faim is back from Hell.”
His beer goes down the wrong way. He coughs and it takes him a minute to catch his breath.
“Mason? I thought you buried him under the floorboards.”
“He’s a roach. He got out.”
Kasabian gets up and starts for his room.
“Bye.”
“Who’s Mason Faim?” says Fairuza.
“I’ll tell you about him from my fallout shelter.”
“Calm down,” I say.
Kasabian points his beer at me.
“I’ve got some good news for you too. Someone just took a potshot at one of the God brothers.”
“Muninn?”
“No. One of the others. I can’t remember which is which.”
“Is he alive?”
“The rain’s messed up all kinds of stuff down there. I can’t see everything.”
“I might have to go Downtown. Maybe Muninn will have some ideas on dealing with Mason.”
Kasabian disappears into his room.
“Good luck with that. If you don’t see me for a while, I’ll be in here having a stroke.”
“You could come to my place,” says Fairuza.
I shake my head.
“No, he can’t. And don’t let anyone know you’re hanging around with Prince Valiant over there. If Mason finds out, he might send someone after you.”
“Who the hell is Mason Faim?” says Fairuza.
“You know all that stuff I told you about Stark?” says Kasabian. “Mason is worse. One time when he was still in school he used magic to blow the top off a mountain in Thailand, all to get back at a magic man that did him wrong. He killed a whole village. All the men, women, and kiddies and didn’t blink an eye. That’s who Mason is. And on a personal note, Mason is the guy who killed me.”
“I thought Stark cut your head off.”
“Yeah, but that was just my head. He didn’t, like, kill me. That was Mason.”
Fairuza picks up her bag and gets her raincoat off the peg by the door.
“I’m sorry. I’m leaving.”
“No. Wait,” says Kasabian.
She holds up a silencing finger.
“Listen. I could maybe deal with the robot thing, but more crazy killers from Hell? Forget it. Sorry, Kas. I’ll see you around.”
She goes out into the rain. The wind slams the door behind her.
“You happy?” says Kasabian. “Fairuza was as close to a love life as I was ever going to have.”
“Relax. She’s just freaked out. Give her some time to calm down.”
“You just told her not to have anything to do with me.”
“Until things settle down. Then go and bring her flowers and chocolates or drumsticks and scorpions, whatever it is she’d like. It’ll work itself out.”
“Nothing’s going to work itself out as long as Mason is back. And what the hell happened to your hand?”
“Nothing. It’s just a paper cut.”
“Mason did it. Oh shit. How fucked are we?”
“Get a grip. The Vigil has him. He can’t pull any heavy hoodoo in a prison protected by angelic tech.”
“I hope you’re right.”
I don’t tell him about the scorpions disappearing. I don’t want to think about it myself.
Kasabian says, “Not to sound selfish or anything, but do you think he’s going to come after me?”
“Probably. But he has a pretty busy schedule fucking with me right now, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Okay. Thanks. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m going to go inside and lie in a fetal position for a while. Call me if the world doesn’t end.”
“You’re top of the list.”
He goes into his room, pulling the boxes back into place, leaning the door against them. It’s a sad, small gesture, but I understand it. I’d like to hibernate for a few years myself, but I’m stuck in the middle of this thing. I need to see Mr. Muninn, but Hell is the last place I want to go right now.
ONCE AGAIN I have to ask myself, Do I just show up at the worst time at the worst places or am I a shit magnet dragging all this horror down on everyone? Once again, I have no answer.
I used to curse God for deserting me when I was in Hell, and, oh yeah, deserting the world the rest of the time. Now I know him and, okay, I might have a little sympathy for his situation. But what does that get me? Me or anyone else? We’re still stuck in this second-rate carnival where the rides that don’t rip off a limb will sure as shit kill you. I’m not saying that the Angra would have built a better Earth or smarter or kinder people, but if Muninn and his brothers hadn’t butted in, maybe things would at least make sense. Like teeth. Whose idea was it to stick us with little porcelain mouth bones that chip, rot, and fall out? That’s not intelligent design. That’s your-boss’s-dumb-ass-nephew-intern-smoking-a-bowl-the-Friday-before-spring-break design. And there’s aneurysms, shopping malls, lawn furniture, cancer, Mickey Mouse, clinical depression, jellyfish, the Vigil, the Kissi, ambitious Hellions, all angels, and tofu.
Could the Angra have done worse? Yes, technically. They could have. But would they? We’ll never know because a grabby little shitbird shanghaied the entire damned universe. We get to live with all of his mistakes. Hell, we are his mistakes. The idiot dropped a glass sphere full of divine light on one of his half-formed worlds and life just sort of happened. We’re not God’s stepchildren. We’re the cigarette burns in the living room carpet.
And with all that, I’m inclined to cut the fucker some slack because he knows exactly how badly he’s fucked up. We’ve got that much in common. He thought he locked out the Angra and I thought I buried Mason. Maybe Muninn and I can go halfsies on a few sessions with a life coach. Learn to set goals. Visualize our success. Take over a Denny’s franchise in Fresno. Cash in on the hungry truckers. Easy money and no one gets hurt.
Who am I kidding? A month of that and I’d burn down the place for the insurance money. Hit the road with Candy and not look back. Like Doc and Carol McCoy in a cartoon version of The Getaway.
Only that’s not going to happen. And the Angra aren’t coming back to fix things. And the God brothers aren’t going to square anything with them or us. We’ll be lucky if we get out of this with any skin left, because whether it’s Muninn or Ruach or Zhuyigdanatha or Lamia, we don’t count. No matter which God is in charge, we’re bugs on his windshield. Always were. Always will be. Amen.
I step through a shadow and come out in Hell.
I don’t want to come out in Mr. Muninn’s room after tracking the place up last time, so I step out into the palace lobby. The blood rain pounds down on the windows, as heavy as ever.
The first thing I want to know is if he and his brothers are all right. The second thing I want to know is how to deal with Mason. I get part of the answer to my first question without moving an inch.
There’s blood everywhere, and not the kind tracked in from outside.
The lobby is cordoned off with iron grates, like cop crime-scene tape.
In the center of the lobby is a dried patch of rust-colored blood maybe four feet across. Crimson streaks around it from where his attackers stepped in his blood. I can picture the scene. Roman-style mayhem. A bunch of Hellions taking down a Caesar. They surround him from all sides when he comes into the lobby. The sap is one of the God brothers, which makes him Lucifer’s kin. Unreachable. Untouchable. Only he’s not. How many Hellions with knives would you need to take down a piece of God? A lot, from the look of things. Dotted round the lobby are ten, maybe fifteen explosions of black Hellion blood and gristle like shotgun Rorschach blots. Whoever killed him is as dead as he is.
I go to the elevator and touch the brass plate. Nothing happens. I’m not Lucifer anymore. Why should it? I take out the black blade and slip it under the edge of the plate. Feel around inside for contacts or hamsters in a cage. Something that runs the lift. After a few seconds I see a spark and hear something sizzle. The elevator door slides open and I get inside. I do the same trick to the brass plate inside the car and up we go to the penthouse.
I’m twitchy with that hyper adrenaline feeling like right before a fight or when you see the surgeon coming out of the operating room frowning. My fingers tingle and I want to hit something to calm down, but after seeing those exploded bodies in the lobby, I curb that quick. Still, I don’t know who or what is waiting for me upstairs, so I slip the na’at out of my coat and get it ready to spring open.
When the car reaches the penthouse, the door slides open. I listen and sniff the air for a second before stepping into the room.
“Mr. Muninn?”
When no one answers I say it again.
Footsteps click down the hall, coming my way. Then nothing. Silence for maybe thirty seconds.
“Are you going to hide in the elevator all night or are you going to come have a drink with me and Father?”
It’s Samael. At least his voice. I step out of the elevator with the na’at held high. Move around the corner until I can see the whole living room.
Samael is there. His suit isn’t quite as sharp as usual. His smile is faint and gone in a second, like he was as uncertain
about me as I was about him. I put the na’at back in my coat. There are stains on his shirt and trouser cuffs. Black blood.
“Come to comfort the bereaved? What a softie you’ve become. Everyone is in the library.”
Samael starts down the hall.
“Which brother was it?”
He doesn’t turn around.
“Nefesh.”
I follow him down the hall.
This stinks. I’m the one who wanted Nefesh to come down to Hell in the first place. I told him he’d be safe here with Muninn. We met when he was hiding in a Roman bath at the bottom of the Kill City mall. Who knows how long he’d been there, hiding in noncorporeal form? Pretending he was nothing more than a mad old ghost. Then I came along with some friends and got him to tell us where Aelita had hidden the 8 Ball. I told him to give up the ghost game. Grow a pair and head Downtown for some face time with his brother and, most of all, safety. Things were bad enough back then that a piece of God took advice from me. Things must be even worse now if all it took were a few legionnaires to bring him down.
I follow Samael into Lucifer’s enormous library. Muninn is sitting on one end of a long velvet couch I used to sleep on. At the other end of the couch is his twin, only instead of being black like Muninn, he’s blue. Everything. Clothes. Skin. Hair. The works.
“James,” says Muninn. “What a nice, if ill-timed, surprise. Let me introduce my brother Chaya.”
It’s Muninn’s house, so I want to be polite. I put out my hand. Chaya doesn’t move. In the arena, I had Hellions, beasts, and other lost souls look at me with hate in their eyes, but none of them comes close to Blue Boy. I pull back my hand.
“So this is him,” says Chaya. “The monster who kills monsters.”
“Be nice, Chaya,” says Muninn. “James is a guest.”
“I don’t remember inviting him. And I know it wasn’t you. Was it you, Samael?”
“No, Father,” he says.
Chaya looks at me.
“That’s not a guest. That’s an interloper.”
“James knew Nefesh,” Samael says. “Perhaps he’s here to pay his respects.”
“Yes. That,” I say. But no one is buying it. “Okay. Truth is, I didn’t know which one of you it was that got hurt—”