I cut the last few pieces of armor off the soul and pull him out of the cage. There’s a metal restraint around his head holding a leather bit in his mouth. I slice through the lock and the restraint falls to the floor. I go back to Mammon, leaving the soul to rub his aching jaw.
“When is it happening?”
“When is what happening?”
I want to kick him in the throat but I don’t want to kill him, so I just give him the toe of my boot in the jaw.
“That was me being nice. The next thing that happens is I start cutting off the parts of your body you can still feel, starting with your fingers.”
Mammon rubs his jaw, considering his answer. When he answers, his voice is lo yo voice w.
“The troops are already massed. All that remains is to agree to the final details of plans and bring the troops under a single command. From there, Mason will lead us to Heaven.”
“Do you really think you’re going to win this time? Heaven has the high ground and they know you’re coming. Lucifer will have told them everything.”
His eyes narrow when he smiles.
“Lucifer is far from omniscient.”
“So you have a secret. What is it?”
“What is what?”
I grab Mammon by the collar and toss him across the room onto his desk.
He waits until I’m close before he attacks.
I’m walking around the desk when he moves his arm in a very particular way. He’s angel-fast, but I recognize what he’s doing because these days I can do it, too.
Mammon swings his Gladius back over his head, trying to slice me in half as I come around the desk. I dodge it just in time. Feel it burn through my coat sleeve.
He swings again but I’ve already manifested my own Gladius. I block the strike. Mammon is flat on his back, not a prime defensive position. When I block his next shot, I slip my Gladius under his, shift my weight, and flip his sword over and down onto his chest. He screams and I stab my sword into his fighting arm as far as it will go. I hold it there until his arm blackens and his Gladius goes out. Hellions smell bad at the best of times. Burning Hellions are like a bonfire in a garbage dump.
He lies on the desk blinking at the ceiling.
“You still with us, General?”
He doesn’t say anything. He just holds his burned arm with his good one. I don’t have time for him to lie around and go into shock. I open the bottle of wine, lift him up, and hand him the bottle. He takes it in his good hand and drains half the bottle. I pick him up off the desk and sit him in his leather executive chair.
He’s looking at me, but his eyes have the vacant stare of someone on a bad acid trip.
“What doesn’t Lucifer know about?”
It takes him a few seconds to focus on me.
“The key. The key Mason was building to get into the Room of Thirteen Doors. It will never open the Room, but it will do something else. It will open Heaven to us.”
“Maybe you„igbe you&9;ve made a passkey, but how can you break through all of Heaven’s defenses and get close enough to use it?”
“There’s a weak spot. One of the protective seals is missing.”
“You mean the Druj Ammun?”
His eyes go wide.
“How do you know about that?”
This time I laugh at him.
“Because I had it. Back in L.A.”
He grabs my coat sleeve with his good hand.
“Where is it? Name any price.”
“Too late. I traded it for some magic beans.”
He drinks more wine.
“This isn’t anything to joke about.”
“I took the Druj Ammun off a dead vampire. A young girl. The only one of her kind I ever felt bad about killing. When I found out one of the Druj’s powers was to mind-control Hellions, the plan was to come down and get you assholes to rip Mason to pieces for me.”
“Where is it now?”
“I also found out that it controlled zombies, and as it happened, we had a substantial zombie surplus in L.A. right then. Instead of letting everyone get eaten, I destroyed the Druj. That killed every single zombie in the world in one night. By now your secret weapon is in a million little pieces clogging up the L.A. sewer system.”
Mammon stares at the floor. I can’t tell if he’s listening or getting drunk. He lifts his head.
“It would have been good to have. We could have built a great weapon from it. Made it control the other angels,” he says, and looks up at me. “Baphomet said if anyone was going to ruin this for us, it would be you. But you’d been gone so long many of us thought that you wanted to forget all about this place and wouldn’t get involved. We should have erred on the side of caution.”
“If it’s any comfort, L.A. is completely zombie-free these days, so you can bring the wife and kids to Disneyland.”
“It’s too bad you killed your patron, Azazel. I would have enjoyed torturing him to death for creating you.”
“So, even without the Druj, Mason has a backup plan he thinks will still get him into Heaven. How?”
“I don’t know. It’s the#x2019; one thing he’s kept secret from everyone, including his generals.”
It’s hard to read Hellions, but the angel and I agree that Mammon is telling the truth. Damn Lucifer for not being here. He might be able to figure out Mason’s secret.
The Kissi stole the Druj thousands of years ago and dropped it on earth just to see what would happen. They like to create amusing chaos. It’s their main nourishment. But Kissi are hit-and-run types, not known for their long-term planning. We always thought of them like a bunch of ADHD kids with superpowers. Always playing games and breaking things for the dumb joy of breaking them. But when they stole the Druj and dumped it on earth, did they have a secret of their own that no one ever considered? Maybe we’ve underestimated them this whole time.
Mammon finishes the wine and I set the bottle back on the desk.
“You’re being awfully cooperative,” I say.
“You’ve already crippled me. Torture is the next logical step. Why shouldn’t I skip all the messiness and tell you what you want to know since none of it will help you?”
While we’ve been talking, Mammon’s enslaved soul has been creeping over to the desk.
“We’ll see. The truth is, the war isn’t the main reason I’m here. I want you to take me to Eleusis.”
He raises his eyebrows slightly.
“Don’t be stupid. I don’t drive, and even if I could . . .” He holds up his one working arm. “I’m not in racing shape.”
Drive? In the Hell I remember, Lucifer’s generals have their own private barges for getting around Hell’s five big rivers. I guess a nice luxury car is about the same as a barge in L.A.
I turn my head and find the soul staring at me. He’s a medium-size man with dark hair and brown eyes. He has rough workman’s hands and his cheap shirt and thin black pants say he wasn’t all that high in whatever trade he was in.
I point to him.
“Can the gimp drive?”
Mammon brightens at that, getting back some of his old high-and-mighty look.
“And dust and sing songs, too. All the menial things humans are so good at. Isn’t that right, Mr. Kelly?”
Kelly nods.
“Give me the keys,” I tell Mammon.
He opens a drawer, takes them out, and tosses them thtosses on the desk. I hand them to Kelly.
“You’re the wheelman, Kelly. I’m riding shotgun and Dr. Strangelove here can sit in the back and navigate. Got it?”
Kelly just stares.
I look at Mammon.
“Does he speak English?”
Mammon nods.
“Quite well. He needs my permission before speaking to you.”
“Give it so we can get moving.”
“You may talk to him, Mr. Kelly, but be careful not to get too friendly. He’s a monster. Isn’t that right, Sandman Slim?”
I look at Kelly.
“You really can drive, right?”
Kelly nods. His gaze flickers from the floor and back to me.
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I never operated an automobile when I was alive, but I’ve been well instructed since then.”
He sounds English. Cockney maybe. Michael Caine playing Harry Palmer. A working-class guy.
“Good enough. And don’t call me ‘sir.’ ”
“What should I call you, sir?” He cringes when he says it like he thinks I’m going to hit him. “My apologies.”
“Stark’s fine.”
“Why not Wild Bill?” says Mammon brightly. “I hear he likes that even less than Sandman Slim.”
Mammon turns to me.
“He’s here, by the way. Your great-great-great-granddaddy, Mr. Hickok. I could arrange a tête-à-tête.”
There’s no wheelchair in the room and there’s no way I’m carrying this charred creep to the car, so I push Mammon into his office chair.
“Introduce me, and when this is all over, I might let you keep the other arm.”
Mammon brightens.
“You see what I mean, Mr. Kelly? He wants us to see him as human, but what’s the first thing he does when he gets in here? He takes my legs. And I didn’t even attack him. Then he takes my arm and threatens me with further mutillefurther ation. That sounds much more Hellion than human, doesn’t it? I don’t think you’ll be wanting to turn your back on this one. Not for one minute.”
“Where’s the garage?” I ask Kelly.
“Directly below, Mr. Stark.”
“Mister.” It’s better than “sir.”
I don’t want either of them to see the Room, so I blindfold them both and take them downstairs through a shadow.
MAMMON’S BARGE TURNS out to be a pristine early-sixties Lincoln Continental limo with a drop top and suicide doors. I think more than a little of this world is put together straight from my unconscious. I’ll know for sure if I end up in a motorcycle race against Steve McQueen.
The Lincoln isn’t like a modern limo. The car is wide open on the inside. No partitions or sliding windows separating the passenger compartment from the driver. It’s like a club or a prison cafeteria. Candy would love this heap. I can see her in the passenger seat with her feet up on the dash hitting the button on her robot sunglasses in time with the radio.
It still feels strange to have left her behind while I go chasing after another woman even if it’s not for a romantic kind of love, but the kind that says if you’ve ever been deeply connected to someone, you don’t let them get snatched to the underworld without doing something about it.
When this is over and if the universe is still standing, maybe I’ll bring her down here. I wouldn’t take her to the Hell I knew, but I could see her getting off on a weekend in the Convergence. It would be like the adventure vacations yuppies go on where they get to experience the great outdoors from air-conditioned buses and ten-thousand-dollar tents. We’ll take over a floor of the Roosevelt Hotel and shoot paintballs at the wildlife.
I take Mammon from his chair and belt him in behind the driver’s seat. Kelly and I get in the front. He starts the ignition and drives us smoothly through the garage to the gatehouse, where a guard is waiting.
I show Mammon the knife in my hand.
“Be cool or you lose the other arm.”
“Of course,” Mammon says.
We pull up and Mammon rolls down his tinted window just low enough to show his face. He nods at the guard and the guard pushes a button that rolls away the gate. Kelly steers us out of the palace and on to Hollywood Boulevard. It looks like even in Hell I’m destined to travel in stolen cars.
“Turn right,” I tell him. “Things are messy the other way.”
He makes the turn.
It’s funny seeing Mammon sitting calmly with his bad legs and crispy arm. I got lucky back at the palace. I had no idea he could manifest a Gladius. Azazel didn’t bother to mention that when he sent me to kill Mammon more than ten years ago. I don’t know why he wanted me to do it and I don’t know why he changed his mind. Maybe his TiVo was out.
“To the Phlegethon, Mr. Kelly,” Mammon says.
Sinkholes and fault lines slice up the streets, making them impassable. Kelly cuts down La Brea and takes a roundabout route through residential streets and apartment-building parking lots to the 101.
Mammon tells Kelly to head south. The breakdown lanes on both sides of the freeway look like sets from old driver’s-ed films. They’re a solid mass of twisted and burned-out vehicles.
In regular Hell, the Phlegethon is a river of fire that flows and ebbs like water. The flames are just a light breeze from on board a barge. You don’t get burned unless you’re in direct contact with the river.
The Phlegethon does double duty in Hell. It’s one of the big five rivers, so it carries a lot of traffic, mostly barges, passenger boats, and freighters. It’s busy enough that it needs docks, buoys, depth markers, and all the other Moby-Dick bric-a-brac I don’t understand. This is Hell. Why get artisans to make all that stuff when you have millions of dead souls lying around? Down the length of the Phlegethon, the damned float in the eternal fire as channel markers and buoys showing depth readings. Entire docks are made from spirits lashed together. There’s similar creativity in this Hell. The freeway guardrails and the median fence in the center are staked-out souls. The reflectors separating the freeway lanes are the heads of souls who’ve been buried up to their necks in Hellion concrete. What happens if you blow a tire down here? Hellion AAA probably comes out and ties a few souls around your axle so you can get to a damned garage.