“How is Allegra?”
“Well. She has trained two competent assistants.” He looks at Candy. “She misses you working beside her.” He looks at me. “And believe it or not, she misses you.”
Allegra didn’t take it well when she found out that I’d become Lucifer. She accused me of all kinds of nefarious shit. Mostly Sunday school stuff, which I didn’t expect from her. We haven’t spoken much since.
“Maybe we ought to keep it that way,” I say. “Whenever we get near each other, someone says something stupid.”
“Someone?” asks Candy.
“Okay. Me.”
“And yet her desire to see you both remains unchanged,” Vidocq says.
I toss him Garrett’s cash.
“Give her this.”
He nods and puts it in the pocket of his greatcoat.
“We both thank you for this.”
Candy says, “Can I have the clip?”
I say, “Why? We don’t have any money.”
Vidocq takes the clip off the cash and hands it to her. Her eyes light up.
“I just like it,” she says. “It’s shiny. I’ll find something to do with it.”
I take off the robe. The bullet wound stings a little, but the blisters hurt like a son of a bitch. I put on my leather bike pants and boots. Find an old Maximum Overdrive video-store T-shirt that’s not covered in bullet holes or blood and put that on too.
“I don’t suppose you’d consider taking me along,” says Vidocq.
“To Hell? I don’t want to take her. Why would I subject you to it too?”
“I’d like to see the afterlife. With my condition it’s doubtful I’ll ever see it legitimately.”
A hundred and fifty years ago Vidocq made himself immortal. It wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t trying to do it. Just one of his alchemical experiments took a wrong turn and left him with a condition most people would kill for. Me, I’d rather have X-ray vision. At least it would be fun at parties.
I say, “Forget it. Allegra would truly kill me dead if I took you.”
He sighs, knowing I’m right.
“And she’d be right, of course. You’re a terrible influence on us all.”
He nods to me and blows Candy a kiss. He holds up the cash.
“And thank you for this,” he says before leaving through the grandfather clock, the real entrance to our secret hideaway.
“He’s right. You are a terrible influence,” says Candy.
“I thought that’s why you stuck around.”
“There’s also the free food and movies.”
“Free computers too.”
“And getting blown up and shot at.”
“Yeah. I’ve got to work on my ducking skills.”
“Please do.” She doesn’t say anything for a minute. Then, “So, we’re really going?”
“You’re the one who wanted to.”
“Yeah, but now I’m a little scared.”
“Good. That means you’re sane.”
“So, we just go there? No spells? We don’t have to sacrifice chickens or pray to any hoary overlords of the deep or something?”
“You can dance naked around a maypole if you want. Me? I’m just walking in.”
She gets up.
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
“Don’t wear anything you really like.”
“Why?”
“You’re won’t be springtime fresh when you get back and I’m not sure the stink of Hell comes out in the wash.”
I WENT DOWNTOWN when I was nineteen. I was thirty when I came out. I’ve only been back on earth for around eleven months. Sometimes it seems as long was the previous eleven years.
Another magician, Mason Faim, sent me to Hell in a deal to supersize his hoodoo power. He also wanted me out of the picture. We were a pair of Sub Rosa golden boys. Way too clever and powerful for our own good. The difference between us was that Mason had to work and study his ass off to stay on top of the hoodoo heap. Me? I could always improvise a spell or hex and have it fly. That was my angel half at work, only I didn’t know that at the time. When Mason got rid of me he was top dog in L.A. He murdered my old girlfriend, Alice. He tried to take over Hell and start a new war with Heaven. You have to hand it to the boy. He knew how to dream big. So I killed him.
But in a way, Mason won. He wanted to destroy me, and the one who went to Hell sure isn’t who came out. I was James Stark going down but Sandman Slim when I left. Eleven years of torture and fighting in the arena to entertain monsters will alter your perspective on life.
Most nights I still dream about Hell. I can feel it inside me. It’s in the stink of my sweat. Flashing on the place even for a second makes me furious and sometimes afraid and sometimes ashamed of both those things.
On the plus side, I got up close and personal with the killer inside me. I learned I was good at taking lives. Doc Kinski called me a natural-born killer, so now it’s what I do. But I don’t always like it, and when I do, I don’t always like myself for liking it. That’s what Hell is. It’s the shithole bottom of the universe, but it’s a place where you’ll learn more about yourself than you ever wanted to know.
I GET A pack of Maledictions from a box under a table in the living room. Maledictions are the most popular cigarettes in Hell. The only brand I really like. The taste is, well, unique. Like a tire fire in a candy factory. With luck, the angel part of me is immune to cancer. If it isn’t I’m going to be a solid two-hundred-pound tumor.
Candy gives me a faint smile as I take her hand and we step through a shadow into the Room of Thirteen Doors. I open the door to Hell but I don’t take her through. I hold her there looking at the place.
“Wow. It really does smell like sulfur,” she says.
“Don’t worry. When you get inside, between the sewers and the Hellion stink, you’ll forget all about the sulfur.”
“You know how to show a girl a good time.”
“Nothing but the best for you.”
“Whoa.”
This is what I’ve been waiting for.
“What do you see?”
“It looks just like L.A. A more fucked-up L.A. but still L.A.”
“It’s called a Convergence. A kind of magical fuckup where one place gets layered on top of another. When I first landed in Hell, it was all dark palaces and cobblestone streets. Now it’s L.A. None of that changes what Hell is. It just makes it easier to get around.”
“Somehow, none of that is very reassuring.”
“That’s Hell in a nutshell. You ready?”
“Yes. No. Yes. I think so.”
“Before we go in, here are a couple of rules. And they’re nonnegotiable. Stay close to me. Close enough for me to grab if things get weird. If anyone starts anything let me handle it. No Jade stuff. You see any damned souls, don’t look them in the eye. They’re used to me but another live human could freak them out.”
“I’m not human.”
“You look human. That’s enough. Also, don’t talk to anyone but Mr. Muninn.”
“Who?”
“The current Lucifer.”
“Right. Mr. Muninn. You told me about him.”
I squeeze her hand. She squeezes back.
“Banzai,” I say, and pull her inside.
WE COME OUT on the front gates of Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The Hellion version is a train wreck. Open graves. Smashed headstones. Statues and tombs swallowed by flames. It looks like it was looted by the Golden Horde and shit on by King Ghidorah.
I lead her out the front gate, where a block-long street market has set up. It wasn’t here the last time I was Downtown, but a lot of things are probably different now that Mr. Muninn is ringmaster.
We’re noticed immediately. A couple of living beings, one of whom used to be Lucifer, tend to stand out down here.
Candy digs her nails into my hand, but she doesn’t show any actual fear. Hellions are fallen angels. Some of them look almost human. Others are walking, talking nightmares. Like mutant versions of fish, reptiles, or insects, or all three. The crowd in the market is a nice assortment pack of all the different Hellion types.
The chatter and the hawkers’ calls trail off as the crowd turns its rheumy eyes on us. The only sound is the thin Hellion breeze, the sizzle of cooked meat, and grating Hellion music from a windup player. No one moves toward us. What are they seeing? Some version of Lucifer or Sandman Slim with a dangerous Lurker on his arm?
I’m not waiting around to find out. I’ve seen Hellions riot and I don’t need to see it again. Not with Candy here.
I head to a stall where a merchant has mugwump meat turning on a spit. The smell is somewhere between filet mignon and coffin liquor. The fire throws up some nice fat shadows. I pull Candy into one and we go back out through the Room.
My aim is better the second time and we come out in the lobby of Lucifer’s palace. Back inside the Beverly Wilshire for the second time today. This time I’m not accepting any mystery packages from the front desk.
I can see a dozen guards in the lobby. I don’t wait to see if Muninn has posted more. I pull Candy over to Lucifer’s private elevator. Like the crowd in the market, the guards look more confused than anything else.
Candy tugs on my arm.
“Are we going somewhere soon? ’Cause there’s like a hundred guys watching us through the windows.”
She’s right. A mob of the legions guarding the palace is clustered around the lobby windows. This isn’t any time to find out if they’re happy to see their old boss or if they want to flay me alive. I pull Candy to the elevator.
One of the guards all of a sudden grows a pair and yells, “Halt!”
When I look he already has his rifle leveled at us.
I let go of Candy’s hand and turn and face him. Put out my arm and manifest a Gladius, an angelic flaming sword. It’s impressive anywhere, but inside the lobby it’s like the sun reflecting off the skin of a cruise missile.
“Make your move, shit heel. I took Mason Faim’s head and I can take yours.”
He stands there for a minute pointing his gun at me. I know he’s not going to shoot. There’s a window on these things. Someone points a gun at you and doesn’t shoot in the first few seconds, they get thinking about the consequences. And the more they think, the less likely they are to pull the trigger. This clown’s been thinking long enough to whistle the long version of “Layla.”
He looks around at his Hellion buddies. None of them have their guns up. Why should they? That’s Lucifer upstairs, king high prick himself. If he can’t handle Sandman Slim with a chick civilian in tow, then what the hell good is he?
I touch a brass plate on the wall and the elevator doors slide open. The guards stand and stare. Touch the plate inside the elevator and the doors close and we start up.
“So far Hell is a barrel of monkeys,” says Candy.
“You ought to come on Halloween. Everyone dresses up like The Brady Bunch. Seriously. The show is huge down here.”
Her heart isn’t just beating fast, it’s trying to pound its way out of her chest and hop a plane to Bora Bora.
“You couldn’t have walked us into Lucifer’s living room or something?” she says.
“That would be rude. I stuck the guy here, I have to show him a little respect.”
She takes a couple of deep breaths.
“Sorry. I thought I was more ready for this. I’ve seen some crazy Lurker stuff, but . . .”
“But not a whole world of it? Don’t feel bad. No one’s prepared for this dump.”
“So this is where Sandman Slim comes from.”
“Yep.”
“You killed a lot of those guys down here.”
“Don’t be sexist. There are women Hellions too. And I killed pretty much everything down here at one time or other. And when I wasn’t doing it in the arena, Azazel, my old slave master, was sending me out to kill anyone on his shit list. Until I killed him.”
“The monster who kills monsters.”
“That’s my name. Don’t wear it out.” Then, “Nothing’s going to happen to you. I promise.”
“I believe you.”
She lets go of my hand and loops her arm in mine. We must look funny and weirdly formal when the doors open, like kids dressing up in their parents’ clothes.
“James, so good to see you,” says Mr. Muninn.
I’m not sure he means it, but he gives me a quick hug, something he’s never done before. He must really be smarting to see someone besides neurotic Hellions. Now I feel bad I didn’t come down sooner.
Mr. Muninn is entirely black. Like squid-ink black. He’s also as round as a beach ball. He’s dressed in a long brocade robe woven with a subtle fire pattern. Under it glitters Lucifer’s battle armor, the ultimate symbol of power down here. It lets everyone know who’s in charge. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to call him Lucifer or what, so I just take a shot.
“Nice to see you too, Mr. Muninn.”
He smiles. He’s already tired of being called Lucifer and all the thousand toadying variations you get with the penthouse. I know how he feels.
“You’ve brought a friend,” he says.
Muninn looks a little bemused, like I’m a neighbor kid who brought a stray cougar cub into the living room. Is that how Muninn sees Candy? I hadn’t thought about how he might react to a Jade. Maybe I’m overthinking it. I’ve dragged a civilian down with me into the worst place in existence and he probably doesn’t approve.