The Magistrate gives her an enthusiastic round of applause, but everyone else is too exhausted and sore to even pretend they’re excited. A few relieved groans is all she gets.
Someone up front yells, “Where is the bloody thing?” It’s Johnny. Ever the gentleman.
Vehuel points up the road to her left.
“In a nearby stronghold called Henoch Breach.”
Now. That’s weird. I swear I know that name from somewhere. It’s on the tip of my tongue. Why does something in an area this obscure, even by Hellion standards, seem so familiar?
The Magistrate says, “We might need assistance in retrieving the sword. I wonder if Daja and Mr. Pitts would care to join us?”
We join him and the angel crew. Daja stares up the dark road. She looks nervous. I don’t blame her.
“You have six armored angels,” I say. “Why do you need us?”
“It was Vehuel’s idea,” the Magistrate says. “Is that not right?”
“It was,” Vehuel says. “Let’s get started and I’ll explain along the way.”
I tilt my head toward the havoc.
“What about them? What makes you think they’re not going to run off or kill each other while we’re gone?”
The Magistrate shakes his head. “Let them. There is little use for the havoc anymore.”
“What do you mean?” says Daja. “Those are our friends. Members of the crusade.”
“And God will remember the worthy ones. The others will have to fend for themselves.” He takes Daja by the shoulders and says, “Try to understand. The crusade itself is what is important. Not the crusaders.”
And there it is. The voice of a true believer. Nothing matters but him and his obsession. The people that followed him for how long through the desert don’t mean anything more to him than the slaves he captured in the towns he burned along the way. I met freaks like this everywhere. Everyone has. Not just in Hell and not just in wars. They’re people you pass on the street. A preacher, a grocery-store manager, a parent. Anyone with a vision and enough of a vicious streak to make it come true no matter what they have to destroy or who they have to chew up and spit out along the way. Even Mr. Muninn was like that in the old days. There were older gods than him, but he tricked them out of this universe and then locked them out forever. That was the plan, but they found their way back and almost destroyed Creation. And sometimes that’s the only small satisfaction you can hope for with someone like the Magistrate. Sometimes there’s something they missed, or something they thought was dead, or someone they were sure was on their side, but they were wrong. That one small mistake can bring them down, but not until they’ve burned and ruined everything around them. I wonder if Vehuel understands that about him? He’ll kill her angels, too, if he doesn’t get what he wants. I touch my coat and feel Samael’s amber knife where I left it. I won’t use it on him if I don’t have to, but if I do have to, I’m going to enjoy every second of it.
Daja says, “You can’t mean that about everybody. What about Wanuri and Doris? What about Gisco?”
“The Almighty will look after them.”
“What about me?”
He pulls her close and says, “You are different, Dajaskinos. You will always be with me.”
I want to tell her, Until you’re inconvenient or ask the wrong question so that the messiah questions your faith. Then we’ll see how different you are from the rabble he’s throwing on the fire.
I shake my head and look at Alice. She sees exactly what I see, but she stays quiet and for the same reason as me. The Light Killer is too important.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” says Daja.
“You will,” says the Magistrate. “Soon. But for now, we must make this last, short journey to the sword. Once we have it, our real work begins.”
“All right, Father.”
“Good girl.”
He keeps an arm around her as Vehuel leads us to Henoch Breach. It’s almost painful to watch Daja so manipulated, and it’s all I can do to not plunge Death’s knife between the Magistrate’s wing scars.
Instead I just grit my teeth and keep walking.
It’s not long before we come to a deserted town. It’s old, as old as anything I’ve seen Downtown. No one has lived here in a long time. In places, the buildings are so overgrown with the skeleton trees and tough weeds that they look like something that sprouted from the dead soil. The style of the buildings looks Hellion, but not quite. Simpler. Less ornate than the elaborate Hellion designs on the buildings and vehicles in Pandemonium.
I don’t notice that Vehuel has fallen back to walk with me until she says something.
“You’re staring.”
“It’s a ghost town. Why shouldn’t I look? Besides, maybe there’s something valuable in the houses. Maybe something to eat. Or smoke. I’m almost out of cigarettes.”
“You won’t find any Maledictions in these buildings.”
“Yeah? Why not?”
“I’ve read about this place,” says Traven from a few feet away. “Maledictions didn’t exist when Henoch was built. They didn’t exist until centuries later in Pandemonium.”
Traven is limping, but he keeps pace with us.
“You sound like a tourist brochure, Father. Is there a souvenir shop? I might need a snow globe.”
Vehuel smiles when she looks at me, not taking anything I’m saying personally. It bugs me. What does she know?
“None of this looks familiar?” says Vehuel. “Maybe you saw it in a dream?”
“Some of it, I guess. But all old, dead towns are the same, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t know. There are no ghost towns in Heaven.”
“I get it now. It’s a real-estate scam. You take us to the middle of nowhere and we can’t go back until we sit through a time-share sales pitch.”
The angels all laugh, all except for Alice and Traven. They look worried, but not because I refuse to kiss the boss angel’s ass.
“What do you know about the first war in Heaven?” Vehuel says.
“Lucifer rebelled. God threw him out. End of story.”
“When you say Lucifer, of course you mean Samael.”
“Of course. Who else?”
“I’m talking about the first war in Heaven. The one led by Maleephas. Samael’s petulant conflict was the second.”
Maleephas.
There it is again. That annoying feeling that I’ve been here and heard that name before.
“It’s frustrating, isn’t it? To be so close to remembering, but unable to make the connections?”
“Please, Vehuel. Just tell him,” says Alice.
“Tell me what?”
Vehuel says, “You’ve been here before.”
“No. I haven’t.”
“You were here and you killed an old man. The angel Maleephas. The first Lucifer.”
I stop in the road.
“Samael was the first Lucifer. I was the second.”
Vehuel shakes her head.
“Samael was the second to hold the title of Lucifer. You were the third. Maleephas was the first.”
“Henoch Breech. I wasn’t sure it was real,” says Traven. “This is where the first war in Heaven ended. This is where Hell began. Not Pandemonium.”
Something scratches at the back of my skull.
“That’s a nice bedtime story, but I don’t believe it.”
“Wait a minute,” says Daja. “You’re Lucifer?”
“Was Lucifer. Past tense. I was tricked into the job. I was lousy at it. And I didn’t do it long. That’s why Mr. Muninn—God—took over.”
She looks at the Magistrate and Traven.
“Is any of this true?”
Traven nods.
He says, “Yes, my dear. You see, the ways of Heaven and Hell are more complex than most realize. Lucifer is merely a name. A title that can be handed down to anyone as qualified or unqualified as Sandman Slim here.”
“Then he’s not the Devil a
nymore.”
“No he is not. He was barely the Devil when he held Lucifer’s title.”
“I was Lucifer down here for one hundred days and not a second more. Look it up. It’s probably in a history book somewhere, right?”
I look at Vehuel.
“It’s amusing that you should mention history,” she says. “Yours is missing a few days, isn’t it? The memories of them, I mean.”
“If I don’t remember them, how should I know?”
Vehuel stops. I stop with her. She looks at me with a mix of amusement and pity. It’s not a look I enjoy.
“Trust me—you’ve been here before. And not that long ago,” she says. “You killed Maleephas and burned his palace, such as it was. You did all these things, but the memory was taken from you.”
“Why?”
“Because even among the Hellion, the myth of Lucifer was strong. By the time Samael fell, few among the angels even remembered Maleephas. The only way the fallen could build a new Perdition was to believe that they were the true rebels, the glorious first ones.”
We continue up the road and come to a large, burned-out mansion. I can’t do anything but stare.
Bits and pieces are coming together for me.
What did Samael say in the desert? Something about how things had to change or there would be another war in Heaven and another after that? Is Henoch Breach what he was talking about? He’d already lived through one war, started one himself, and was now caught in a third. He was trying to tell me about this, but with the same twisty logic that he always uses, he couldn’t come right out and say it. He probably thought I needed to see it to believe it and understand. And now I do.
“They poisoned me, didn’t they?”
Vehuel nods.
“Yes. So you’d forget Maleephas and this place. You had to kill him to make Hell secure, but you weren’t allowed to bring the knowledge of the first Hell back to the current one. It would have destroyed it.”
Alice comes over to me.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I think so. I don’t know.”
I give Vehuel a look. She’s enjoying tormenting me just a little too much for my taste.
“Why are you telling me all this? What does it matter if I remember Henoch Breach or not?”
“I think they need you,” says Traven. “You can’t get the Light Killer, can you?”
Vehuel nods.
“It’s not for angels of the Lord to retrieve the Lux Occisor. It’s Lucifer’s job.”
“I’m not Lucifer anymore,” I say.
“I was being polite. It’s a job for an Abomination.”
There it is. A dirty job for a dirty guy. She had a good time saying it, too. “What if I don’t do it? What if I tell you all to fuck off, and find a way back to Pandemonium myself?”
“Jim,” says Alice. “Please.”
Vehuel says, “That’s an option, of course. And you’re right, but remember this. Without the sword, the war will go on. And God—Mr. Muninn, as you like to call him—will lose. The loss of Heaven, and the final and irrevocable damnation of all mortal souls, fallen, and loyal angels will lie squarely on your shoulders.”
I look around at everyone. Daja is confused and scared. The Magistrate is practically licking his lips he’s so excited. Traven looks overwhelmed seeing an obscure story in his obscure books coming true. Hell isn’t Hell. The Devil isn’t the Devil. Next you’ll tell me that Mickey Mouse is just a guy in a costume.
The looks on the angels’ faces range from bemused to angry and, in the case of Alice, worried.
“I told you this was a real-estate scam. You’re a hard-sell bastard.”
“It was necessary.”
“You enjoyed it.”
“A bit.”
“I was right. All you angels are assholes.”
“By your definition, yes,” she says.
I look around, trying to figure an angle, but I can’t find it any more than I can find a way home. It hits me hard that I’m probably really stuck here, that maybe my whole life has been manipulated to put me here at this moment.
“Fuck. Okay. I hate you celestials, you know.”
Vehuel cocks an eyebrow.
“Even Alice?”
I look away for a minute. Rub a knot at the back of my neck.
“Talk to me like that again and I’ll let Heaven and all the rest of it fall just to watch you burn.”
“Jim, please,” says Alice.
When I turn back Vehuel tries to stare me down. It doesn’t work. She needs me.
“Very well,” she says reluctantly. “Please accept my apology.”
“Fuck that. Where do I go?”
“To Gan Eden.”
“The Garden of Eden? I definitely remember burning that to the ground.”
“Not that Eden. The evil, mocking one Maleephas built here. It lies just behind the ruins of his palace. You’ll find the Lux Occisor hanging from a tree in the center.”
“Just like an angel,” I say, shaking my head. “Now I know why you don’t want to touch it. You don’t want to handle one of the big man’s great fuck-ups.”
Johel takes a step in my direction, but Vehuel holds up a hand to stop him.
“Will you retrieve the sword and fulfill your destiny?”
I give them all a big toothy smile.
“It must twist you up inside knowing trash like me can do something you can’t.”
“Then you’ll go?”
“Yeah. I’ll go. Just so I can tell you to kiss my ass when I bring it back.”
“You’ve made a wise choice,” says Vehuel.
“Careful. You’re going to talk me out of it.”
“You don’t have to go alone,” says Alice. “I’ll come with you.”
I look at the other angels, then back at her. “No. You’ll be tainted meat like me if you do. And you have to live with these pricks. I don’t.”
“Be careful.”
“I always am.”
“No, you never are.”
“Just this once, then.”
The Magistrate hasn’t said a word this whole time. He just stands there like a mantis, all insect patience and killer instincts. I wonder how much of this story he knew? Maybe all of it. Certainly enough to go along with dragging the gun all this way.
I nod to Traven and look around for Cherry, but she’s gone. Probably off rattling cookie jars looking for pennies in empty houses.
I walk into the ruins.
For a palace, the place isn’t that impressive. I’ve seen bigger mansions in Beverly Hills. Still, considering it was probably the first thing the first fallen angels built after their nine-day tumble from Heaven, it’s all right. I step over fallen beams and a few blackened sticks of furniture. Half a door on my right. Melted glass from the windows. It glazes a pile of blackened bones like a thick coating of ice. I kick through the debris to get a better look and uncover a whole skeleton. Is this what’s left of Maleephas? Why is there anything left at all? He should have blipped out of existence here and slid down to Tartarus. Unless it’s not him, but the remains of whatever hapless fallen angels first built the palace, long before Tartarus even existed. If that’s true, this place is even older than I thought. Maybe old enough that, like Vehuel said, even angels could forget about it.
Most of the grounds around the palace are as fried as the house. There are more bones out back. Maybe I was right. It could be a graveyard back here, an honored burial place at the first palace for the workers who built it. What a way to end up. From sitting at Mr. Muninn’s right hand to a pile of bones in a barbecued condo in the heart of Nowhereville. At least the beetles got a good meal out of the whole sad wreck of a rebellion.
Okay—no more maudlin shit until I find the Light Killer. I wonder if it would be all right to kill the Magistrate when I hand the sword over to the angels. I might have to. He isn’t going to let it go easily. At least there’s that to look forward to. Now I just have to find the damn thi
ng.
Finally, at the top of a blackened hill, I come to a fence. The fire from the palace came most of the way up here, but it didn’t get past the big iron gate sealing the place shut. The lock is so old and rusty that it shatters with one good kick. I go inside, and sure enough, I’m back in Eden. Of course, the plants here aren’t as Hello Kitty bright as the other Eden. The stunted trees are gnarled and bent. The few flowers left look like living razor blades and little meat grinders where the scattered remains of beetles fertilize the fetid soil. Pale vines follow me as I walk, cooing and sighing, hoping I have oatmeal for brains and will get close enough that they can drag me off and eat me at their leisure. And at the center of all this treacherous merriment is a skeleton tree. It’s sturdier than the others we’ve seen. Taller and thicker. Its branches are as big around as my leg.
And hanging from one of them is a golden sword.
It’s a little hard to believe at first and, honestly, a little disappointing. I mean, after all we’ve been through, all the attacks and traps, I was expecting a Sphinx to ask me some riddles or at least a few shambling zombies. But there’s nothing here but me and a dumb tree.
Fuck it. Let’s get the pigsticker and get out of here. I’ve got people to kill.
The tree is in a little bed of purple and puke-yellow flowers. I stroll through them and reach up to grab the Light Killer when a stabbing pain shoots up both legs. I jump back and check myself. There’s no blood, but the bottoms of my leather pants are shredded. I squint at the flower bed, looking for the razors and meat grinders from earlier, but what I find is even better.
It’s a whole plot of flowers ranging from a few inches to a foot high. They have petals like roses, but in the center of each blossom is a bright white set of teeth. They snap and snarl at me when I get close enough to give them a once-over.
The front teeth are sharp with big canine fangs at the edges. The big ones are like Rottweiler flowers, while the little ones bark and nip like Pomeranians with an attitude. There’s a good six feet of them between me and the tree. I look around for something to smash them with, but everything in here is as mean as these mutt posies.
Think, goddammit.
I have to go all the way back to the palace and carry an armload of unburned chair legs and arms. I toss them carefully among the fleabag flowers, and they land in a rough rectangle about eighteen inches wide and long enough to reach from where I am to the base of the tree. When I’m satisfied with the shape, I get out my plastic bottle and splash Aqua Regia all over the wood. The little dog mouths lap the stuff up. Enjoy the drink, puppies. It’s going to be your last.