Текст книги "Aloha from Hell"

Автор книги: Richard Kadrey

Соавторы: Richard Kadrey,Richard Kadrey,Richard Kadrey
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

One of the boys who’s gone even paler than when he came out of the club waves a bony arm in the air like a drunk praying mantis.

“It’s Hunahpu,” he says. “He runs the cookers.”

“Where can I find him?”

“Shut your fucking mouth, Jonas.”

It’s Cale, still on the ground, but still in command. His latex glistens with blood. He’s gone from platinum blond to I Love Lucy red.

Candy moves behind him in case he freaks and takes a runner.

Jonas says, “I don’t want to die here.”

Cale shouts, “Say another word and I’ll kill you myself!”

“Who do you think is in better shape to kill you, Jonas? Cale or me? Tell me where to find Hunahpu.”

“I’ll tell you if you don’t kill anyone.”

I nod.

“Good boy. That’s reasonable. Tell me. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“Hunahpu works out of a lab in West Hollywood. Bio-Specialties Group.”

“What kind of lab is it?”

“I don’t know. There’s test tubes and shit. It’s a lab.”

“Will he be there now?”

“How should I know?”

“You got a number for him?”

Jonas’s hands are shaking so much he can hardly get the phone out of his pocket. The hoodoo I threw earlier should have just fried the part of the phone that makes calls. The address book and calendar still ought to work. Maybe.

Jonas nervously thumbs through a couple of screens. Cale’s girl is up on her feet. She tries to grab the phone from Jonas’s hands, but he shoves her back down in the blood. Candy kicks her hands out from under her when she tries to get up again.

“Jonas, you cocksucker, don’t tell him anything,” shouts Cale.

“and00">I don’t want anyone getting killed.”

Jonas holds up the phone so I can read the number off the screen.

“Good boy. You are not a completely useless human being. Now get the fuck out of here.”

“Cale? You okay? Cale?” calls his girl.

Jonas’s chest explodes with wet red holes. The blood on his shirt is real and it’s his. He collapses onto his knees and falls over onto his face.

I spin and see Cale pointing a .38 snub nose at me. Probably loaded with .357 rounds. He must have had it tucked in his boot. He has to use both hands to steady the gun enough to aim. The hammer is already halfway down. He gets off one shot. A body blurs by me. Candy has shoved one of the boys from Cale’s crew in front of me. He catches the bullet just below his right ear and is dead before he hits the pavement.

Cale manages to get off one more shot. It goes through my right sleeve. I feel some heat and blood, but the bullet does more damage to the coat than to me. Cale doesn’t know that, and too bad for him, neither does Candy.

She is on him and the blood isn’t my hoodoo spell this time. She’s gone full-on Jade and is tearing him apart.

“Candy, that’s enough,” I yell.

She turns to me. Her eyes are red slits in black ice. Her nails have grown out into curved claws and her mouth is full of sharp white shark teeth. Someone screams. Then a whole lot of people start screaming, which is the way it usually goes when people see a monster for the first time.

“Come on. He’s not going to get any deader.”

It takes her a minute to register my words. The beast is in control now and it takes a few seconds for the human part of her to get back online.

She walks over to me, her human face slowly replacing the Jade’s. I put my arm around her, whisper, “Thanks for looking out for me,” and kiss the top of her head.

Most of Cale’s crew is long gone. Only his girl is still there. I walk over to his body and push his head to the side. He’s a mess. When I wipe the blood away, I can make out the tattoos on his scalp and the rusty gears in my brain go click, click, click.

“What the hell is that doing there?” I ask Cale’s girl.

The girl says, “That’s the symbol for Sister Ludi. She’s a protector spirit.”

“I know what she is. What is she doing on Cale’s scalp?”

“What do you noWhat domean?”

“Sister Ludi is fake. A gaff. She’s something Sub Rosa touts made up to sell fake idols and potions to tourists. What’s her symbol doing on the head of someone who had to know that?”

A better question is what does a demon have to do with a fake goddess? I recognize it now. Sister Ludi’s sigil is the same symbol that was burned over the bed in Hunter’s room.

“Oh, that. It’s for Hunahpu. He’s really into Sister Ludi. He thinks saying she’s fake is some kind of Anglo conspiracy. Cale wore it to show respect and Hunahpu gave him a cut rate on product.”

She keeps looking at Cale’s body with no way to process what just happened. I feel a little sorry for her. But I feel sorrier for Hunter.

“Was it Hunahpu who gave you the special Akira for the Sentenza kid?”

“I don’t know who it was for, but yeah, Cale said there was a special batch for someone.”

“That’s all I needed to know.”

I take her by the arm and walk her to a cab that’s been waiting outside the club. Like everyone else, the driver is standing and gawking at the mess. I put Cale’s girl in the backseat and close the door.

“Listen to me,” I say, leaning in the window. “It’s hard and nasty what you saw tonight, but you’re lucky it happened now. Cale was never going to last doing what he does. There are people out there ten times harder and a hundred times meaner than Cale was ever going to be. He was always going to end up on his back with holes in him. The difference is if you’d stuck around much longer, you’d be lying in blood next to him, another dumb dead girl in a place that spews out more dumb dead girls than smog. Go home. Be sad for a while. When you’re over it, fall in love with someone who has better tattoos.”

I go around, give the driver some money, and tell him to take her home. Before he can get in the cab, I take out the .460 and pop a few rounds over the crowd’s head. The cut-down shotgun shells I’d loaded it with aren’t filled with pellets, but with one of Vidocq’s memory powders. It will scrub away the last hour from everyone’s brain. I might have a bad temper and be dating someone who eats people, but I’m not stupid enough to leave witnesses.

Someone’s dropped a coat on the ground. I pick it up, take Candy by the arm, and walk her around the corner. When we’re out of sight of the club, I use the coat to wipe Cale’s blood from her face and hands.

I say, “Thanks for saving me back there.”

Her eyes are a little vacant.

“Wow. I haven’t done that to a person for a long fan for a time.”

“How are you feeling?”

“A little spacey, but okay. Are you okay? We should get you to see Allegra to get the bullet out.”

“I’m fine. It barely grazed me and I’ve already stopped bleeding.”

She leans against the wall, a little out of breath.

“He shot you. I wouldn’t have done what I did if he hadn’t shot you.”

“I know.”

She stares at me, her eyes still a little unfocused, but she’s coming back to earth.

“Did I go too far?”

I shrug.

“Technically he did shoot me. And he did kill his friend, so we can assume he would have kept shooting until he killed me or I got him. So, yeah, you saved me, and from my point of view that’s a good thing.” I pause. “Next time, though, maybe you can just snack on the bad guys a little until we see just how much fight they have in them. We probably don’t need to kill all of them.”

“Don’t kill everyone. Got it. You sure you’re okay?”

“The arm’s fine. The coat took most of the damage. It was brand-new. Now it’s like all my damn clothes. Shot up and bled on.”

She cups my face in her hands and kisses me hard. I kiss her back.

“What happens now?” Candy says.

“We go see Hunahpu. I know where the address is. We can leave the bike.”

“How are we going to get there?”

I pull her away from the wall.

“Have you ever walked through a shadow?” I ask.

“Uh, no.”

“Want to?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t let go of my hand.”

I step into the ripe black darkness in the recess by a loading-bay door, pulling Candy with me into the Room of Thirteen Doors.

I take her out again near the address the kid gignss the ave me. It’s on Fairfax a little north of Beverly Boulevard.

As we step from the shadow, Candy says, “Holy fucking goddamn fuck, that’s cool. What was that room we went through?”

“It’s called the Room of Thirteen Doors. I can go anywhere in the universe through those doors, even to Heaven and Hell.”

“Why did we drive to the club? If I had something that cool, I’d be running in and out of it all day and night just to mess with people.”

I believe her. I’m glad I have the key and she doesn’t.

“It feels weird using it in the city when I’m going somewhere the first time. Like the club tonight. I didn’t know where it was or what was going to be there when we arrived. I like to drive because I like to get a look at a place the first time I go there.”

“Why don’t you just get your own car?”

“Are you kidding? People steal them.”

UP THE STREET is a white two-story office building plastered together to look vaguely colonial. It’s as bland and forgetful as any real-estate office.

The first floor is dark, but there are lights behind the windows on the second. It’s almost three and there’s barely any traffic in either direction. Candy and I walk across the street to the glass-and-aluminum front doors. BIO-SPECIALTIES GROUP is painted on the door in a reassuringly scientific-looking serif font.

In theory, I could step into a shadow here and come out on the second floor near the lights, but I don’t want to do that. Drug cookers tend to be on the jumpy side and I’ve already been shot at once tonight. I take Candy around the side of the building and we use a shadow to get into the lobby. No alarms go off, so they don’t have motion detectors down here. So far so good.

There’s a locked wooden door at the top of the stairs with the company’s name on it. I stand there for a minute.

“What are we doing?” asks Candy.

“Shh.”

Light leaks from beneath the door where it doesn’t quite touch the floor. I watch for moving shadows to see if people are moving around and how many there might be. Nothing moves past the door. I let the angel’s senses expand.

There are voices off to my right. Seven, maybe eight. The clinks and taps of metal and glass. The whir of machines and whisper of small gas flames. That will be the lab. Off to my left, closer to the street, I get nothing. Probably offices, unoccupied at this hour. Everyone seems to be beeneems tounched up in the lab.

I say, “Keep your head down when we get inside.” Then I take her hand and we slip inside through a shadow on the wall.

Behind the door is a reception area with a desk, computer, and phone. Wrought-iron letters spell out BIO-SPECIALTIES GROUP on the wall above the receptionist’s desk. Either the company deals with a lot of amnesiacs or they really, really like the sound of their own name.

The office at the front of the building overlooking the street isn’t set up to impress, but at least it looks like the lab is a legit business. It must do everything by courier or pickup them. There’s a plain wooden desk that you’d see in any high school principal’s office, piled with receipts, schedules, and undelivered lab results. A business phone with about ninety buttons, most unlabeled. A combination fax and copy machine. In the corner is a plant with shiny green leaves. It looks like the only thing in the office the occupant cares about.

We go into the next office. Hallelujah. This one is decked out for a bank president. Dark green walls with light trim. Very Victorian. An oak desk with inlaid leather, big enough to land cargo planes. A plasma TV on one wall and a glass-fronted cabinet on the other filled with framed certificates and trophies. It’s all very nice and respectable looking and copied straight out of an executive furniture catalog, I bet. The wall to the left of the desk is why the nice office is back here and not up front with a view. This one has a window looking right into the lab.

I was right. There are eight people on the night shift. A collection of clean-cut MIT types and scruffy old-school meth cookers who have enough brain cells left to move up the food chain to the exotica market.

What’s really interesting isn’t the people but their gear. It isn’t ordinary college-surplus Bunsen burners and Dr. Frankenstein bubbling flasks. The place is decked out like a TV starship. Smooth, sexy, and at times translucent Golden Vigil gear, a collection of advanced human tech tweaked by angels recruited by Aelita, the Vigil’s psycho angel queen. The last time I saw her, she was quitting the Vigil so she could return to Heaven and, no shit, kill God, the dead-eyed neglectful dad who she thought had outlived his usefulness. Aelita might be the most vicious and craziest thing with wings I’ve ever met, but you’ve got to give her credit for ambition.

The window looking into the lab must be one-way glass because no one in there has noticed us. Candy has probably seen drug cookers and I know she’s never seen anything like Golden Vigil tech. She’s got her nose pressed against the window like it’s her first visit to the zoo.

I sit down at the desk and dial Hunahpu’s number from his office phone. That ought to get his attention. I look through the lab window, hoping Hunahpu is inside with the techs. I hear the cell ring, but none of the techs pulls out a cell phone. After the few rings, Hunahpu’s phone cuts off. No voice-mail message. Nothing. A minute later the desk phone rings. I wait. A few rings and a recorder built into the phone kicks in. An amplified voice comes through the unectrough tit’s speaker.

“Stark. Pick up. I know you’re there.”

Damn.

I pick up the receiver.

“Who is this?”

“It’s who you wanted to speak to. So speak.”

“How did you know I’d be here?”

“I know you saw Carolyn. And I know you’re the kind of persuasive person who would get her to talk about Cale. If you have my cell and are calling from my office, something tells me you found him, too. Is he dead?”

“Entirely. Have you ever been to Donut Universe? They’re open twenty-four/seven. Why don’t we meet for coffee?”

“Let’s not and say we did.”

“I’m looking at your lab.”

“Of course.”

“You’re what’s left of the Golden Vigil, aren’t you? I mean, any idiot could have bought stolen lab gear from when the Vigil closed down, but how many people would know how to use it?”

“We’re not all of the Vigil. There are other cells scattered here and there. But we all lost our dental plans and 401(k)s when the government shut us down. It was either find a way to earn a living or go on food stamps, and like you, we hate filling out paperwork. ”

I’m trying to place his accent, but there’s nothing to get hold of. It’s like he learned to speak phonetically. The Vigil or Homeland Security sent him to speech classes to erase any regional traces.

“Do I know you?” I ask.

“I saw you at the Vigil offices, but we never had any heart-to-hearts.”

The angel in my head talks to me. He’s a little Sherlock Holmes, which, I guess makes me Dr. Watson. I’m not wild about that. Better that he’s Starsky and I’m Hutch. At least I get a cool car that way.

“Why do I get the feeling that somehow Wells is involved in this? He’s coming back to L.A. and he wants his own private army. Maybe he wants to start a panic with a drug associated with hoodoo and get them to send him back.”

Hunahpu makes a sound. At first I think it’s a sneeze, but realize it’s a little laugh.

“Don’t be stupid. Wells flunked Vills fluout because he was and remains a Boy Scout. He can’t see the big picture. He doesn’t want to because it’s so big there isn’t even anyone to arrest.”

“There’s you and your people in the next room.”

“If he was coming, we’d know it. If he grabs us, he won’t keep us long.”

It’s not a boast. I can read it in his voice. This guy is connected to something or someone higher than the clouds and probably just as hidden.

“So you’re off on your own, causing trouble after your boss takes a bullet. What does that make you? Do you think you’re the forty-seven Ronin? Are you making a samurai movie in Grandma’s backyard?”

“Fuck the feds. Sister Ludi set us up. We work for her now.”

“You mean Aelita, don’t you?”

I lean back in Hunahpu’s chair. He hasn’t said anything for a few seconds. I hit a nerve.

“Call her what you want, white boy. Sister Ludi came to me in a vision and I saw who she really was.”

“You mean Aelita got inside your head and showed you what you wanted to see. She’s good at that kind of thing. She’s a fucking angel. And she’s crazy. You know that, right?”

“She’s doing the work that needs to be done, just like we are.”

“Are you crazy, too, or just stupid?”

“You’re hurting my feelings, Stark. If you really feel that way about Sister Ludi, I suppose you don’t want what she left for you.”

I sit up straight in the chair.

“I take it all back. Aelita is Florence Nightingale, Patti Smith, and Miss America all rolled into one. Now, what did she leave me?”

“A message. Listen. ‘If you’ve made it this far, it’s already too late.’ ”

I lean my elbows on the desk.

“What does that mean?”

“I assumed you’d know. It’s pretty fucking funny that you don’t, don’t you think?”

“Why did you go after Hunter Sentenza?”

“She told us to.”

;I used to think Wells was a lapdog and a true believer, but this little shit’s got a Ph.D. in celestial bootlicking.

“This is why the demon knows me, right? What demon is she using? At least tell me that.”

“I’m a pharmacist. I don’t know anything about demons.”

Goddammit. He’s telling the truth again.

“Aelita does. Do you think you’re going to click your ruby slippers together and she’s going to whisk you off to Heaven? She isn’t going to kill God, and when she fails she’ll drag you down the toilet with her, right down to the bottom of Hell.”

“If the choice is you or her, I choose her.”

“Answer one personal question. You’re supposed to be a lab that analyzes things. DNA and AIDS tests, but you spend all your time cooking Akira and whatever else brings in money, right?”

“Close enough.”

“Are you at least sending out the blood to a real lab so people know if they’re sick or are you just letting them all die?”

“Of course we do,” says Hunahpu. “We’re not monsters. You’re the monster, Stark. Or are you so comfortable with that now that you’ve forgotten?”

“I guarantee you I’m not going to forget your voice. We’re going to run into each other down the road sometime, and when we do I’m going to pop you apart one rivet at a time.”

“There’s the monster. Hello, monster.”

“I hope you have another lemonade stand stashed out back because this one is going out of business.”

He sighs.

“With everything you know about the Vigil, you don’t think we’d put our whole operation in one location, do you? Do your worst. We’ll be up and running again by the end of the week.”

“My worst is a lot worse than you remember. Be sure to check the papers tomorrow. It’ll be on the front page.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you, Abomination.”

Candy is looking at me when I hang up.

“What was that all about?”

“This place isn’t just a drug lab. It’s God’s little terrorist angel army on earth. That was yoh. Thatone of them on the phone. You know how you said not everything is about me? Well, this is. Aelita sent a demon after Hunter because she knew I’d find out that he’s TJ’s little brother. I bet it’s one of these pricks who sent me the text knowing it would piss me off and get me on the case.”

She raises her eyebrows.

“They sound like they have their shit wired tight. How can you go after people like that?”

“I’m not. Come on. We’re getting out of here.”

I take Candy outside through a shadow by a bookcase.

When we’re on the street, I dial a number on my cell. No one answers. I don’t leave a message. A second later the phone rings. There’s silence on the line.

“Do you know where I am?”

“Yes,” says Josef.

“The building and everything inside is yours. Be sure to make a mess.”

“We’ve been waiting so long for something to do, a mess is inevitable.”

The line goes dead.

We walk to the other side of the street and into an alley hidden from view. Normally I’d cut and run from a scene like this, but Candy will want to see it.

“Who was that?”

“A guy who’s head I once chopped off.”

“What is it with you and cutting off heads?”

“It’s an old habit. The crowd loved it in the arena. If you do it right, the body does a twitchy little dance before it falls over.”

“It’s pretty fucked up that you know that. I like it.”

“I know. I’ve been saving that one up for you.”

She kisses me on the cheek.

A warm wind swirls down from the sky, kicking up garbage and whirlpooling it away. There’s a roar behind it. Like the wind, but lower in pitch. Like a billion hungry locusts. Or a jet flying low. Maybe both.

I say, “Among God’s many fuckups at the beginning of time was this. When he created the angels he created something else, too. They’re called the Kissi. Watch close because we’re not staying long.”

The Kissi come down on tligme downhe building like a black boiling fog. At first they look like a solid mass. It isn’t until they start tearing the building apart that you can see individual ones. I’m behind Candy with my arms wrapped around her, not because it’s cold but to prevent her from doing exactly what she’s doing now. Trying to leave the alley to get closer to the carnage. She only does it for a few seconds then settles down against my chest. I can hear her heart beating like a speed-metal-band encore. Something explodes and she jumps back against me. One of the Kissi must have hit a gas line. The building already looks like Pompeii. Broken walls. Cracked stones. And everything on fire. The horrible-beautiful faces of individual Kissi are visible in the flames. That’s enough fun for one night. I pull Candy back farther into the dark.

We come out by the hotel. She’s holding on to my hands, which are wrapped around her.

She looks up at me.

“I don’t have the words,” she says. “You’ve seen a lot of that kind of stuff, haven’t you?”

“Way too much for my taste.”

She steps out from my arms and takes my hand.

“Let’s go upstairs and finish off the furniture.”

“I can’t right now. Every bit of information I get makes this whole thing more confusing. I know Aelita is doing this to fuck with me, but that can’t be all there is to it. She thinks too big for that. And what does ‘If you’ve made it this far, it’s already too late’ mean? I need to talk to Kasabian. Want to come with me?”

She shakes her head.

“He talked my ear off before. He doesn’t get out much, does he? I think I need to take a break before I dive back in.”

“Okay. I’ll see you upstairs in a little while.”

She heads for the room.

“Take as long as you want. I’m starting without you. You’ll just have to catch up.”

“I’ll bring my Jet Ski.”

INSIDE, KASABIAN IS drinking a beer and watching Las Montañas del Gehenna, an obscure seventies Mexican spaghetti western. Kind of a cross between Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Jodorowsky’s God-is-a-Freudian-shootist epic, El Topo. After a long drought hits their village, the residents decide to sacrifice a young girl to the ancient Mayan rain god. The girl’s father and lover shoot up the village and rescue her. Later, a priest visits them at their hideout in the desert. He tells them that they have to find the gods and make it up to them for stealing their sacrific" aeir sace. Midway into the movie, the girl and the two men ride their horses up a mountain of bleached human and animal bones to a cave that’s the entrance to the Mayan underworld. The gods’ minions grab the girl and lay her out on a stone altar while a priest holds an obsidian knife over her, ready to cut out her heart. The girl’s father and lover have to play the traditional to-the-death Mayan ball game to see if they’re all going to be sacrificed or they get to return to earth. I was watching Las Montañas del Gehenna the night Mason sent me Downtown, so I never got to see if any of them survived.

“Is that blood on your jacket? You got shot again. Are you a bullet magnet or just have a fetish for never wearing the same clothes twice?”

I don’t want to see how Las Montañas del Gehenna turns out. I decided a long time ago that the girl makes it home and I don’t want to find out I’m wrong. I turn off the set.

“Hey! I’m watching that.”

“You can finish it later. I just found out that Aelita is mixed up in this Hunter thing.”

He nods.

“I’m not surprised. I think she’s got something going with Mason, too. An angel’s been sneaking in and out of Hell, coming in from way out in the badlands where even Hellions don’t go. Who else is crazy enough to deal with Mason but her?”

“They’re the ones that probably sent the Qlipots or whatever they’re called. But why go after Hunter? And why get me involved? Maybe they’re trying to railroad me into a trap.”

“Were you just trying to say ‘Qliphoth’? Look at you. You learned a big-boy word.”

“Aelita can’t have hit God already. That would shake the whole universe. They’re not ready to invade Heaven, are they?”

“No way. Generals are still arguing over plans. Troops are still coming in from all over Hell. No way they’re ready.”

“Why would she be tiptoeing down to Hell?”

“Mason just got hold of something that’s got him pretty excited. It’s big, too. Like an oversized gold coffin carved with all kinds of binding runes and hexes. Aelita might have smuggled something out of Heaven. Maybe a weapon.”

“Or something to help Mason make a new key to the Room of Thirteen Doors?”

“More likely something like the Druj Ammun. A passkey to a secret back door in Heaven. She’s supposed to have allies upstairs, so it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“What if she didn’hol didnt come straight from Heaven? If she sent that demon after Hunter, maybe she has more demons. Could she and Mason be raising a demon army?”

Kasabian smirks.

“Even Lucifer couldn’t do that. Training demons is like herding cats on acid.”

My gut is churning and I really want to hit something.

“This is all on me. I got too clever. I should have killed Mason when I had the chance. That proves my theory that thinking’s overrated.”

“Get a grip. We can rule out Mason having a key. He’d have used it by now. He’d have come back himself or sent a Hellion hit squad. No. This is something else.”

“It’s got to be the thing I’m too late to stop. I need to talk to the Sentenzas again. I freaked out and left last time when I realized that Hunter is TJ’s kid brother.”

“TJ? Our TJ? That’s fucking insidious.”

“I missed something with them. I’ll go back in the morning. You keep watching Downtown. Consider it self-defense. If Mason gets back here, it isn’t just me he’s going to snuff.”

“Now you’ve piqued my interest.”

I think about things for a minute.

“You know, you could have told me some of this before. And saved me a lot of bullshit time.”

“Right. I never know how you’re going to react to information. I don’t need you going batshit and throwing me out or pulling a gun.”

It’s true. I’ve thrown the little weasel out and I’ve taken a few potshots at him. It’s not like I didn’t have my reasons. He was spying on me for Lucifer, and then there was that time he tried to kill me. But that was a while ago, and since then the angel has been whispering sweet nothings in my ear about not killing people when they get annoying. And it was before I figured that I need all the friends I can get in this world. Not that Kasabian is exactly a friend, but he has good taste in movies and we both want Mason drawn and quartered.

He scuttles over to the set and turns it back on.

“If you’re going to shoot me, I want to finish my movie.”

On the monitor, the two vaqueros are playing the Mayan ball game. They’re slow and clumsy, falling all over each other.

“All right, man. Sure. Mea culpa. On occasion I’ve been known to express myself in uncouth ways, but I’m on the wagon for pulling guns on people I know.&000ple I k#x201D;

He turns his eyes from the monitor and looks at me for a minute.

“So that’s my apology?”

“I guess so.”

He turns off the movie, picks up his beer, and drinks. A trickle leaks out from the bottom of his neck and into his bucket.

“Ever since Lucifer left, the place has been falling apart, and I don’t mean the trash isn’t getting picked up. I mean Old Testament falling apart. Earthquakes. Wild fires. Hellion food riots. That’s something you don’t want to see. No one’s in charge. Mason has the army and local Pinkertons tied up with his war plans. It’s like he doesn’t give a rat’s ass how Hell is going to . . . you know. Hell.”

“Who’s working with him?”

“Most of Lucifer’s generals have defected. Abaddon, Wormwood, Mammon. They’re all in Pandemonium. General Semyazah is the only holdout. He doesn’t like the idea of being pushed around by a mortal. And he commands a shitload of troops. I don’t know if they can pull off the attack without him or his troops.”

I get a Malediction from my coat and pour myself a drink from a bottle of Jack on the nightstand.

“You know what’s weird? This whole thing between me and Mason—I can’t even remember what started it.”

“Aside from the fact that you’re exactly alike?”

“Fuck you.”

“The truth hurts doesn’t it, Tinker Bell?”

I rub my arm where the bullet grazed me. At least it helps me forget about the burns on my arms.

“I don’t get this Heaven and Hell thing of his at all,” I say. “It’s stupid enough wanting to grab Hell, but why would Mason want Heaven, too? The dry-cleaning bills on all those robes must be murder.”

Kasabian swigs his beer. It sounds like distant rain as it drains from his neck into the bucket.

“I don’t think Mason wants to be God. I think he just wants to be in control,” says Kasabian. “Look, man, just because you don’t want anything doesn’t mean the rest of us feel that way. You always hid or fucked around with your power. Mason took his seriously because he had to. He was part of a heavyweight Sub Rosa clan and Daddy wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Boo-hoo. The rich kid had it rough.”

“He was raised to take magic as seriously as anyone alive. He had to. He went to Hell, too, when he was a kid. He used to joke about it.”

I stare at him. Kasabian widens his eyes and nods, pleased he caught me off guard.

“What do you fucking mean, Mason was in Hell?”

Kasabian rolls his eyes.

“Not that Hell. Metaphorical Hell. Christ, how can you not know any of this? Mason was famous when he was a kid. His parents were even more famous.”