Текст книги "Aloha from Hell"

Автор книги: Richard Kadrey

Соавторы: Richard Kadrey,Richard Kadrey,Richard Kadrey
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

“You’re ridiculous. Crippled. Locked up by idiots and robbed by a dead psychopath.” He kicks some loose rocks from near his feet and uncovers a pair of crushed reading glasses. “We’re tired of waiting. We’re coming in now.”

“Be my guest.”

He picks up the glasses and holds them over his eyes, squinting through the lenses. They must not be his prescription. He makes a face and tosses them out over the wall.

“Aren’t you going to try and talk me out of it?”

“No. Be my guest. Pandemonium is that way and ighhat wayso are about ninety percent of Hell’s legions. If you and your friends think you can take on a million or so Hellion soldiers all by yourselves, be my guest.”

He leans in close, bringing his stink with him.

“You don’t think we can handle these Hellion idiots?”

“Maybe when there weren’t enough in one place for a decent tailgate party, but these boys have just about put the original rebel angel legions back together.”

“So? They lost their war in Heaven and now even Lucifer is gone. They’re weak.”

“Yeah, but there’s the other thing.”

“What?”

“Do you have a cigarette?”

He reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a pack of regular human cigarettes. Never count on a Kissi to give you what you really want. I light the cigarette with Mason’s lighter and pull the smoke deep into my lungs. It’s better than nothing and it helps cover up Josef’s smell.

“You said there was something else,” Josef says.

“Do you ever watch the Discovery Channel? They had a show on where a colony of little tiny red ants all got together and killed a full-grown wolf. See my point?”

“No.”

“Just because you’re the wolf at the top of the food chain doesn’t mean you’re bulletproof. You and your pals might be able to wipe out the Hellions, but they won’t go down easy, and by the time you’re done, you’re going to be blind and crippled. That doesn’t sound like the big win to me.”

Josef takes a deep breath and turns his head to the sounds from the street.

“How much longer are we supposed to wait?”

“Just a few more hours. I need to get up this hill and then get General Semyazah. He’s the one guy who can turn this whole thing around.”

“He’s in Tartarus.”

“I know.”

“You think you can help him? How?”

“I’ll tell them I’m the pizza delivery boy. They’ll never suspect a thing.”

“Don’t be cute. No one’s ever returned from Tartarus.”

“Maybe they were going the wrong way.”

His expression changes to genuine interest.

“You know a secret way out?”

I drag off the cigarette. After Maledictions, regular human cigarettes are like inhaling the steam off a cup of herbal tea.

“If you’re so concerned about winning this thing, why don’t you go and do your job and let me do mine? If I’m not back in Pandemonium in, say, twelve hours, you’ll know I’m stuck in Tartarus and I’m not coming back. After that, you can do what you want, but give me the time to do this the smart way.”

He gets closer, picks a bit of lint off my shoulder, and tosses it away.

“This is the last time. The tide is rising and you can’t hold back the sea. Besides, you’re not an easy man to trust.”

“Yeah, but nobody else wants to play our reindeer games, so we’re stuck with each other.”

Josef fingers my empty coat sleeve.

“How are you going to pull this off with only one arm?”

“I’ll manage.”

“Meaning you’re going to let your ego ruin everything.”

“It’s my plan. It’s mine to blow.”

“No, it’s not.”

It’s easy to forget that Kissi are a kind of angel. A factory-second, thrown-in-the-Dumpster-and-left-in-a-landfill angel, but still an awesomely powerful creature.

When Josef grabs me there isn’t a damned thing I can do to fight back. I’m one-handed, off balance, sick, and dizzy. He throws me onto my knees, pulls off my coat, and takes out the black blade. I try to back away, but he grabs my empty left sleeve and pulls me back like a fish on a reel. He slices through the cauterized stump of my arm, reopening the wound. My knees buckle. I hold on to him with my one good hand, trying to get my fingers around his throat or push him off. Something. Anything. He shrugs me off and pins me against the wall. With the black blade he cuts an X on the palm of my right hand and presses my bloody palm to the arm stump.

I’m sicker than ever. Not blacking-out sick or throwing-up sick, but lost in space. Like my body and brain have given up trying to register things like up and down or sane or insane. I keep waiting for the angel in my head to jump in and handle things, but he’s as floored as I am. The stump itches and the nerves that feel like they’re still connected to fingers feel even more li. Aeven moke that. I look to see what’s happening and find something white and pulsating hanging off my body like a giant maggot. Great. Now I’m going to have to change my online dating photo.

The maggot grows veins and arteries. Five twitching tentacle-things wiggle out the end. The maggot shrinks and turns almost black. The veins and arteries toughen until they’re cables within thick dark muscle. Shiny skin glides over and around the growing structures. It shines like metal or a scarab’s carapace. My fingers are delicate but strong, half organic insect and half machine. They flex when I tell them to. I touch each fingertip to thumb, counting one, two, three, four. They move easily. Josef is back by the MINI Cooper wiping my gore off his hands with a white handkerchief.

“That should give you a decent chance of not fucking things up entirely.”

He folds the handkerchief and puts it into a back pocket.

“I could lie and tell you that I can’t make the arm look any more human than that, but we both know I’d be lying. Wear that and don’t forget who your friends are.”

“You’re a Georgia peach.”

The pain and nausea are gone. I stand up. Josef comes over and helps me get my coat back on.

“Get used to your new arm quickly. You have twelve hours from now or we go without you.”

He walks down the ramp and disappears before he reaches the bottom.

I flex and move the arm. Pick up a piece of concrete. Toss it from my good hand to my new one and back again. The biomechanical hand feels pressure, heat, and sharpness, but not like my regular one. It’ll take some getting used to, but it’s better than a burned stump.

The arm isn’t the only thing I have to work out. I don’t know a secret way out of Tartarus. I don’t even know the way in. But I’ll find it, and if hoodoo and bullshit won’t get me out, I’ll hold my breath until I turn blue. That always worked on Mom.

I walk up to an open level at the top of the garage and look out over the city. On top of a hill less than a mile away is the asylum. If Eleusis is as weirdly laid out and fucked up as the rest of this L.A., Alice might as well be on the moon. I don’t know if I can even get to her in twelve hours, much less get her and Semyazah. I should have asked Josef for a jet pack instead of an arm.

Escaped lunatics are warming themselves around a fire of old furniture and my wanted posters.

Maybe I should steal a car and take my chances on finding a road to the Observatory somewhere.

“Still trying to get up that hill, eh?”

I look over my left shoulderI heft sho and then my right. There’s a small round man in a red tailored suit sitting on the edge of the wall with his feet dangling over the edge. I look at him and he glances at me.

“Is he gone?”

“Who?”

“Your pal Josef. Is he gone?”

“He’s not my pal and yes, he’s gone. Who are you?”

“I’ve had my eye out for you and then I see him fitting you out with a bug claw. I just naturally assumed that you two were buddies.”

I circle around behind him, trying to get a better look.

“Who are you?”

He shrugs.

“Who is any of us really?”

“Don’t get cute.”

“I was born cute. You’re the monster.”

I get out the na’at and hold it where he can’t see and walk over until I’m close enough to get a good look.

It’s Mr. Muninn. Only not. It’s one of his brothers. They’re not just twins, they’re the same in every detail including the clothes, except that where Muninn is all black, this one is all red. The angel in my head makes a sound I’ve never heard it make before. I put the na’at back in my coat.

“What’s your name?”

The round man bounces his heels off the side of the building.

“Kid, you couldn’t pronounce my name with three tongues and a million years to practice.”

“Muninn told me his.”

“Did he?”

“Didn’t he?”

The red man holds up his hands, the fingers spread wide.

“Five brothers. Each of our names and consciousness corresponds to a color. Yellow. Blue. Green. I’m red, as you might have noticed. Muninn is black, the sum of us all.” He ticks off each color with a finger. “Now, if you were the literary type or had ever read a book in your life, you might know that the mythical Nordic deity Odin traveled with two black ravens. One was called Huginn. Guess what the other was called?”

“Muninn nng.01C;Munamed himself after a bird?”

“It’s his idea of a joke. Don’t hate him. He’s the youngest.”

The angel in my head stops making the funny noise and finally gets out a single word: Elohim.

The red man is looking at me. I get the feeling he can read me a lot better than I can read him because I can’t read him at all.

“Are you . . . ?”

“Yep.”

“All five of you are?”

“Yep.”

“Mr. Muninn, too?”

“I think we established that when we established that he’s one of us five brothers.”

My head is going funny again. My stomach twists. I’m swamped by a fascination and anger that I’ve been carrying around a lot longer than the eleven years I spent Downtown.

“Muninn lied to me. I thought he was one of the few people I could trust.”

“Calm down. He didn’t lie to you. He just didn’t come up and say, ‘Hi, kid. I’m God. How’s tricks?’ Would you have believed him? I wouldn’t, and I’d know he was telling the truth.”

“At least I can call him Muninn. What am I supposed to call you? Santa Elvis?”

“How about Neshamah? That’s one I think you can pronounce without breaking your jaw.

“What are you doing down here?”

He holds out his hands.

“Surveying my handiwork.”

I lean on the wall with him and look out over the city. Something explodes a few blocks north. A fire starts in a building down the block. I guess the Kissi with the matches got his wish.

“If this was my Erector Set, I’d return it and get my money back,” I say.

Neshamah shakes his head and shrugs.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this, you know. Eleusis was a beautiful place once. The whole universe was. We . . . well, it was still I back then . . . were building perfection, but it went wrong.”

"0"r="#000“Did you invent understatement back then or did you come up with it later?”

“At least we, I, dreamed big. What do you dream about?”

“You know exactly what I dream about. It’s why I’m here.”

“A dunce on a white horse tilting at windmills. Very original. You know what my brothers and I did? We invented light. And atoms. And air.”

“If you get the credit for light, you deserve the credit for skin cancer, too, so another bang-up job on that one.”

He puts his head in his hands in an exaggerated gesture.

“Cancer. Damn, you people are a mess.”

“You made us, so what does that make you?”

He watches smoke rising from the nearby fire as it drifts up to meet the burning cloud of the sky.

“We were so sure we got you right the first time. Then there was the whole Eden debacle and it was all downhill from there. But don’t worry, the new ones are a lot better.”

“You’re done with us and on to Humanity 2.0?”

“Oh, we’re way beyond 2.0. The new ones are nearly perfect. Nearly angels. You’d hate them.”

“Fingers crossed I never have to meet one.”

He leans over to me and speaks in a fake conspiratorial whisper.

“You won’t. I put them far, far away from you people. Why do you think space is so big?”

He sits up and laughs, pleased with his vaudeville act. I always wondered if I’d run into him sometime. I’m not sure what I was expecting. A muscle-bound Old Testament Conan Yahweh. Maybe a pothead New Testament love guru. Something. But not Muninn. And especially not a bad Xerox asshole version of Muninn.

“Why did you leave me down here all those years?”

“You mean why do I allow human suffering?”

“No. What I mean is why did you leave me down here?”

“You don’t belong anywhere, so what difference does it make where you are?”

“You really hate me, don’t you? I’m every fucking mistake you ever made all rolled into one.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Aelita murdered Uriel, my father.”

“Yes.”

“Did you tell her to?”

“Aelita and I aren’t really on what you’d call speaking terms these days.”

“Is my father stuck in Tartarus?”

“No.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s gone.”

“Where?”

“He’s just gone.”

“The other dead nephilim, are they gone, too?”

He raises one hand and drops it back in his lap.

I ask, “What’s in Tartarus?”

He doesn’t say anything for a while.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d put that cigarette out. It bothers my allergies.”

“You have allergies?”

“Only down here.”

I flick the cigarette over the side into the crazies’ bonfire below.

“What I don’t get is the disappearing act. You hate me. That’s a given. But if you were done with all us mortal slobs and moving on to 2.0, why didn’t you just kill us? Or didn’t you care enough to put us out of our misery? Is that who you are? One of those people who forgets their kid in the car on a hot day until it has a stroke?”

He doesn’t move or speak for a while. He just looks down into the street. A couple of raiders walk by, passing a bottle back and forth. Neshamah leans over the edge and spits, hitting one of the raiders on top of his head. He laughs.

“You broke my heart. Not you in particular. All humanity. And then there was the incident in Heaven with Lucifer and his juvenile delinquent friends. I had to throw a third of my children into the void. I think the ones that stayed, the quote ‘loyal ones,’ were just as bad if not worse. So puffed with their importance and self-righteousness. The funny thing is, I never really believed that Lucifer wanted my throne, but I think a few of the angels who stayed did. They saw my failure and felt entitled to it after they fought and won."leght and”

He shakes his head. Looks down while he bounces his heels off the building.

“Like any decent God, I willed myself into being. I created time, space, and matter and set out to construct a universe. When I was finished, nothing quite worked the way I wanted. The angels rebelled. The Kissi wreaked havoc. And all of you on earth, well, you were just you. Then one day I realized I wasn’t me anymore. I’d gone from one big me to five smaller ones. I never bothered trying to put myself back together. What was the point? Some of me wouldn’t want to do it and I didn’t want to fight with myself.”

“You know, I’m sure if you asked nicely, they could find a bed for you at the pretty hospital on the hill.”

“Watch your tone. I could turn the rest of you into an insect to match that arm.”

Just what I need. For this whole thing to turn even more Kafkaesque.

Adjust course.

“I’ve been wondering, who would build an asylum in Hell and who’d it be for?”

“Ah, that’s the first interesting thing you’ve asked,” says Neshamah. “Originally it was for the Fallen. Some of them went mad when they realized what they’d done and gave up. Occasionally damned human souls develop a similar condition, so when I took back this portion of Hell to create Eleusis for the heathens, I left the asylum intact. It’s pointless to punish the insane—they don’t understand what’s happening or why. Treatment helped them come back to themselves so they could properly resume their suffering.”

I rub my new arm where it meets my shoulder. The contrast between soft flesh and hard chitin is startling.

“You are one cold fucker,” I say.

“Coming from someone who blissfully hacked another sentient creature to death not an hour ago, that’s quite something.”

“Father Traven said something interesting about you. He used a word I’d never heard before, so I looked it up online. There was this Greek bunch called the Gnostics . . .”

He rolls his eyes.

“Not the fucking Gnostics, please.”

“They didn’t call you God. They called you the demiurge. They didn’t believe you’re an omnipotent übermensch. You’re more like one of those dads who tries to build a barbecue in the backyard only you can’t follow the instructions, so you lay out the bricks wrong and the cement dries too fast and the thing comes out as crooked as poker in Juarez. Then, around sunset, you announce it’s finished even though it looks like a onooks librick cold sore. You throw some T-bones in the fire and pretend it’s what you were going for all along. That’s what you did to the universe.”

He swings his legs back over the wall and hops down onto the garage roof. He smiles at me.

“You actually read something? There’s evidence of a true miracle, right up there with the loaves and fishes.”

“Why are you such an asshole when Muninn is such a good guy?”

He throws up his hands in disgust.

“Everyone is so in love with poor sweet Muninn. It’s why he’s always gotten his way. He hides down there in his cave collecting toys, holding on to the past because he doesn’t want to have to deal with any of this.” Neshamah gestures to the burning city. “But he’s part of our collective being, and as responsible for this disaster as any of the rest of us.”

“At least he’s not a whiner.”

“Take away his toys and see how long that lasts. Why do you think he’s hiding? He never learned to share.”

Neshamah takes a flask from an inside pocket. He unscrews the top and takes a long drink.

“Do you think I could have a hit off that? It’s been a long weird day.”

He shakes his head.

“You wouldn’t like it.”

“I drink Aqua Regia; how bad can this be?”

He shrugs and hands me the flask. I upend it and spit out everything that touches my tongue. Neshamah takes the flask away and bursts into belly laughs.

“What is that shit?”

“Ambrosia,” he says. “Food of the gods.”

He takes another sip and puts the flask back in his coat.

“So, if you’re down here and Muninn is on earth, where are the others?”

“Around. We travel a lot.”

“Are any of you in Heaven?”

“Always. At least one of us.”

“Lucifer knows you’re broken, doesn’t he?”

He nods.

“Lucifer was always the smart one. That’s why he and the kid never got along. One’s all heart and one’s all head.”

“This all happened after Lucifer left. Why don’t you send him down here to fix it?”

“It wouldn’t help. You’re right about one thing. I didn’t build everything as well as I might have. This was going to happen sooner or later.”

“Do the five of you know what the others hear and see?”

“Not everything. We like some privacy, too. Otherwise we’d all still be together.”

“Do they know about us talking right now?”

“They can hear every word.”

“Then you got the message I sent back with the angel from Eden?”

“We got it. You didn’t have to cut him up like that.” He nods at my new metal bug arm. “But I guess you’re even.”

I look away. The building the Kissi torched is really roaring. I can feel the heat all the way over here. I wonder if we should move, but Neshamah doesn’t seem worried, so I decide not to be.

“Maybe I was a little harsh. I’d just gotten over being dead. And he threw the first punch.”

“I guess that makes it all right, then.”

Neshamah walks across the parking lot and looks out over another part of Hell. The view isn’t any better from over here. I don’t say it because I can see it on his face.

He says, “He’s not Lucifer anymore, by the way. He’s Samael.”

“So I heard. Speaking of your kids, what’s the story with Aelita? She makes Lilith look like Mother Teresa. Didn’t she get enough face time with Daddy?”

“You’re not a parent. Don’t tell me how to raise my family.”

“I don’t know if she has Electra complex or Oedipus complex or diaper rash, but she really wants you dead. You need to get her some Prozac.”

We walk all the way around the roof. The sky remains a solid mass of smoke. Earthquakes rumble on the horizon.

“I knew that Lucifer was a troublemaker, but I also knew he’d grown out of it. But I never saw this coming with Aelita. I’ve tried talking to her, but she might be a lost cause.”

“You could always kill me. That’s what she really wants.”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it. And that’s not what she wants. You’re just a symptom of what she sees as a larger condition.”

“Sounds like she’s gone Gnostic on you and thinks Daddy’s the demiurge, too.”

He turns and looks me in the eye.

“Who the hell are you to talk about misbehaving kids? Your whole life has been about breaking things. You’re not a dumb kid. Why do you go looking for trouble?”

“ ’Cause one of your angels ruined my mother and father’s lives and made me an Abomination. When I finally found my real father, he told me that all I was and ever will be is a killer. Not exactly Leave It to Beaver, is it?”

“We’ve all got our troubles. Look at this mess.”

Neshamah leans his elbows on the low wall. I do the same.

“Some of those old Greeks thought that the world couldn’t be such a cruel mess without it being on purpose. They said that who or whatever made it deep down inside had to be evil.”

“What do you think?” he asks.

I feel in my pocket for a cigarette my brain knows isn’t there, but my body has to check for it anyway. I flex my new hand and run it over the concrete, feeling the rough surface.

I say, “I’m not a hundred percent either way. But off the top of my head, I don’t really think you’re evil. Just out of your depth. Or like a kid who gets a note on his report card. ‘If Chet applied himself, I’m sure he could do better in class.’ ”

“Funny, that’s how we feel about you.”

“I’m a nephilim and a killer. Do you think I’m evil?”

“I’m not a hundred percent either way. Besides, there are worse things to be than a killer.”

“What about ‘Thou shall not kill’?”

“What about the Egyptian army Moses drowned when he closed the Red Sea on them? Do you think he could have turned them around with a few kind words? Do you think I could do that here?” He points to the city below. “Do you want to know the difference between a killer and a murderer?”

“Sure.”

“It’s where you aim the gun.”

That sounds more like the Old Testament guy I was looking for.

“Well, chatting has been a little slice of heaven,” I say, “but I have to figure out how to get up that hill so I can do a couple of miracles and save the universe. You wouldn’t be in the mood to help or anything?”

He looks into the distance and smiles.

“I think you have it in hand.”

“Was that a fucking joke?”

“Sorry. I couldn’t resist.”

I take a couple of steps to go when I hear him clear his throat.

“I think you have something of mine.”

“Oh, right.”

I walk over and give him the crystal.

“Muninn says that’s your insurance policy. If everything ends, you can start over again.”

“Is that what he told you? The truth is no one knows what it will be, but something is better than nothing.”

“You and Muninn, it’s like Jesus and Lucifer, isn’t it? One’s all heart and one’s all head.”

He puts the crystal in a pocket of his red waistcoat. It’s a tight fit.

“He’s the youngest. I’m the oldest. You do the math.”

“What happens if Aelita kills one of you?”

He leans over the wall and looks down at the street.

“See that manhole down there? I have a feeling if you went down inside and walked exactly three hundred and thirty-three paces west, you’ll find where you want to go.”

“Seriously? Why that number?”

“Because that’s how many it is. Not three hundred and thirty-two or three hundred and thirty-four. Count off three hundred and thirty-three and look around. You’ll be there.”

“Seriously? Thanks, man. And after all the things I’ve said about you over the years.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve said the same about you.”

“Will you be here when I’m done up the hill?”

He shrugs.

“Hard to say. I work in mysterious ways.”

I start for the ramp wondering if I’ll need something to pry up the manhole cover.

“Nice meeting you, Spider-Man!”

I look back. Neshamah is waving, a shit-eating grin plastered on his face. I have no choice. I start an old tune my mother used to belt out when she had just the right number of martinis.At the Devil’s ballIn the Devil’s hallI saw the funniest devil that I ever sawDancing with the DevilOh, you little devilDancing at the Devil’s ball

He turns back to the city.

“Yeah, fuck you, too, kid.”

THERE’S A KID’S game that goes something like this: “Don’t think of a white bear for half an hour and you win a dollar.” No one ever wins because the moment anyone says “white bear,” that’s all you can think about. Being told your life depends on walking exactly 333 steps is a lot like that. You count on your fingers, but what if you get distracted and drop a number? What if you repeat one? How do you know each step you’re taking is the same distance as all the others? I should have a calculator, a tape measure, and Rain Man as a guide. If I count wrong and don’t find a way out, maybe I should keep on walking. No. I could end up in here forever, and if it’s only one Apocalypse per customer I don’t want to miss it.

330. 331. 332. 333.

I stop and look around. Light comes through a crack in the wall to my left. I dig a finger into the crack. It feels like a service door that’s been welded shut but it was a sloppy job and the dampness in the tunnels has been working on the joins ever since. I push my new hand into the crack, gouging out layers of corroded iron and faded paint. The new hand works pretty well. It feels the shape and roughness of the metal, be tthe metut it doesn’t bleed or register pain. I might just have to keep it.

When there’s a clean clear crack an inch wide in the door, I brace my feet and put my shoulder and body into it. The metal slides away, scattering sewer fungus and oak-leaf-size sheets of rust.

Ragged lunatics are asleep on the floor and dirty mattresses dragged down from the wards upstairs. They don’t look so different from the ones I saw on the street. Maybe these are a little farther down the road to Candy Land. The others managed to run away, but these bedlam sheep never left the pasture. They drool and stare at me as I step through the old service door.

I’m in the lobby of what back home is the Griffith Park Observatory. This version doesn’t look like Galileo would stop by for a piss. The floors and walls are bare cement. A large open ward and single cells in a circle are around the bottom floor. All the cell doors are unlocked or have been smashed open.

The loons over here watch a couple of old souls, maybe witches, spin a dust of tiny emerald pyramids into orbit around crystal glass cubes like imaginary constellations.

The second floor is for more impressive head cases. Jack said there were Hellions in the asylum and for once he wasn’t lying. There are several, mixed in with the human souls. They’re playing games that only they can possibly understand, tossing potion bottles and human or animal bones, then drawing symbols on the floor in blood and shit. When the drawing is done everyone takes a step and contorts into a strange new position. Dungeons & Dragons for actual monsters in an actual dungeon.

The third floor is the old-fashioned black-and-white Boris Karloff Bedlam I’ve been looking for. Dim, wet, and stinking. This is where they keep the one-percenters. All the cells on the lower two floors are open, but these have double-thick bars surrounded by bonding hexes. And they’re working because most of the cells are still occupied.

The good news is that the few third-floor patients who’ve escaped their cells look more dangerous to themselves than to me. Two grimy Hellions roll around on the floor, each gnawing on the other’s straitjacket. I can’t tell if they’re trying to help or eat each other. Going by the holes in the material and their broken teeth, it looks like they’ve been going at it for quite a while without getting anywhere. Still, you have to give them points for hanging in there.

A Hellion as big as Crab Man emerges suddenly from the dark and lumbers past without looking in my direction. He must have been shackled to the wall of his cell. He has metal cuffs and chains attached to his wrists and is hauling two huge carved stones behind him. Going by the deep scratches on the floor, it looks like all he’s done since getting out is drag his heavy chains and rocks around and around the third floor. As he passes each locked cell, damned souls and Hellions pound the doors and howl at him.

There’s a short hall off the main corridor. The worst of the worst will be down there. I go through the hall quietly and peer around the corner. Just two guards at the end. That’s where Alice will be. My breath cien My breatches in my throat. This is the closest I’ve been to her in over eleven years and there’s only a couple of bored doormen in the way.

For the first time I’ve been down here, I’m scared. Normally I’d get out the na’at and go completely brontosaurus on two lousy guards. But if I do anything spectacularly stupid, there might be another guard in the cell who could kill Alice. The angel reminds me that I’m also wearing a brand-new arm that I’ve never used in a fight. For once I need to think this through.

A couple of minutes later the rock-dragging Hellion makes the turn to this end of the corridor. The guards by Alice’s cell don’t even look up. They’ve heard him walk by a hundred times. The guards couldn’t look more bored.

I flatten myself against the wall. As the backwater Sisyphus passes, I get out the black blade and slice through his heavy chains while giving him a little kick in the ass. Not enough to hurt him. Just enough to push him into the side hall so that the guards will be the first thing he sees when he realizes he’s free.

At first he stands there, probably feeling off balance with the big load off his back. Then he looks at his empty hands. Sees the dark and gangrenous flesh around the shackles where they’ve been biting into his wrists for who knows how long. The guards aren’t pleased. They want him to keep dragging the stone exactly the way he always has. They don’t want him to improve himself. The boy with the wrist shackles must be picking up on the guards’ negative waves because he heads right at them for a heart-to-heart. I can’t be sure exactly what they’re saying, but I hear a lot of “ows” and “don’ts” along with the kind of crunching I’ve come to associate with smashed bones. The angel reminds me to be patient and wait for the conversation to die down by itself.