"I only ask because it seems to me that you've been having a lot of fun. Cutting people's heads off. Beating up people in bars. Blowing up whole shopping districts. Shooting people on the street in the middle of the day. It sounds terribly fun to me. The kind of fun that I'd expect to appeal to someone like you."
"Is snatching people off the street your idea of fun? God gave you wings, so you have an everlasting get-out-of-jail-free card. You can do anything you want because everything you do is holy. Is that it?"
"Yes. As a matter of fact, it is."
"Is everything your army does holy, too? They didn't all look like angels to me. Was Marshal Wells sweating holy water? I must have missed that."
"Marshal Wells is a good and dedicated man who is willing to give his life in the cause of good. What are you willing to die for?"
"To kill the people I came here for. And to not be fucked with along the way."
"What if I told you that I could help you find what and who you're looking for?"
"I wouldn't believe you."
"Why?"
"Because I rode here with a gun to my head."
"Have you ever heard of the Golden Vigil?"
"Sounds like a community-college Goth band."
"We're an ancient order. A coalition of celestial beings and humans dedicated to protecting the world and mankind from its greatest enemy."
Get ready for the Garden of Eden Sunday school lecture.
"Don't try and sell me the snake oil you fobbed off on your Ghostbusters out there. I've met Lucifer. I've killed his generals. Those idiots are too busy stabbing each other in the back to be much danger to mankind."
"You're right. I agree completely."
Aelita walks to a long wooden table and picks up what looks like a piece of thick brown cloth. When she gets closer, I see that it's vellum.
"Lucifer is a eunuch and his armies are buried at the bottom of Creation. No, our real concern is the world's true enemy, the Enerjik Kissi." I'm not sure I catch the first word, but she pronounces the second one "Kee-shee." She holds up the vellum and a sigil has formed there. One I've never seen before. It's not like the usual angelic or even Hellion symbols. It's practically a Rorschach blot, like someone spilled ink on the vellum, and then tried to wipe it off.
"Let me tell you a story," she says, and goes and sits at the wooden table. "All little boys like stories."
As much as I want to get out of here and away from this crazy angel and her mercenary zealots next door, I'm still feeling too ragged to bolt or put up too much of a fight. So I do the next best thing, and surrender. I go to the table and sit down across from her. She spreads the vellum on the table between us. As her hands pass over it, the sigil fades away.
"At the beginning of time, the Lord God made a mistake. Frankly, to some of us, He made two mistakes, but since He likes you talking monkeys, we can't fix that one. So we turn our attention to the first great mistake."
She passes her hand over the vellum and images of rough glass globes appear, like pen-and-ink drawings. As Aelita talks, the drawings begin to glow.
"When the Lord bought life to the universe, He did it by spreading His divine light throughout the dark. He breathed His light into glass vessels that He hung in the sky like the stars that would come much later. We, the angelic order, were born from this light. And we helped to spread it throughout Creation. Once, as the Lord blew light into a vessel, He blew in a bit too much and the vessel shattered. His divine light fell into the void and onto the worlds we were building. That falling light was the beginning of life in the universe."
Like a Disney cartoon, the vessels on the vellum crack open, turning into squirming little one-cell organisms.
"But not all of the divine light landed on the worlds. Some fell into the deep unformed void that was nothing but boiling chaos. Since the Lord was now enchanted by the life growing on His worlds, we never bothered to put anything into the far void. We all now regret that decision."
She waves her hand and the vellum images disappear, like lines on an Etch A Sketch. She lays her palm on the vellum, and a roiling, crawling blackness seeps across it.
"As both angels and lower life," - she nods in my direction - "were born from divine light, so was something else. In the chaos grew another sort of life, very much like angels, but different. Wells and some of his men describe them as 'anti-angels,' which is as good an explanation as your little brains can grasp."
I put my hand on the black vellum that's now roiling and writhing like liquid obsidian. It looks like the knife I have under my coat. The knife is supposed to be bone, but I never found out what kind of bone.
I say, "The anti-angels are the Kissi."
"Yes." She moves her hand again and the bubbling black is gone. As she talks, other images appear from under the hand resting on the vellum.
"The Kissi don't hate life. Life fascinates them. The energy. The unpredictability of it. The chaos of life. When they found early humans, they settled right in, creating more chaos. Helping one tribe create weapons. Teaching language to another. The Kissi were born in chaos. It's what they're made of. It's what they consume. Humans create a particularly appetizing sort of chaos to the Kissi.
"Eons ago, there was a war between us angels and the Kissi that raged from the earth all the way to the gates of Heaven. Neither side won."
"Was Lucifer already in Hell? If you'd asked for his help, he might have come through. I don't think he'd like a bunch of mad dogs eating up Earth, either. If we were gone, who else would he screw with?"
"No one would ask the Prince of Lies for help. Don't be stupid."
"So, it was an option? But you didn't go for it. Isn't pride one of the seven deadly sins?"
She looks at me like my mother used to look at me right before she smacked me on the ear. Like Mom, she gets hold of herself before the big explosion.
"As I said, there was a war. Neither side could defeat the other, so we struck a bargain with the Kissi. They could stay and, since humans were naturally chaotic creatures, the Kissi could satisfy their appetites for chaos and destruction within certain specific limits. The Golden Vigil was created to monitor this truce.
"The truce has held for millennia. But lately things have changed. The Kissi activities are becoming more bold and reckless. They openly attack humans. They are involved in wars. Terrorism. Drug and weapons trading. Something has upset the balance." She takes her hand off the vellum and starts folding it up. "When we heard that Sandman Slim had come to Earth, naturally we thought that he might be the cause of the trouble."
"Wells called me that name in the car. What the hell was he talking about?"
"Please don't use profanity here." She sets the vellum aside. "The marshal was talking about you, you fool. You're Sandman Slim. The monster who kills monsters. Do you think we don't know what you were doing in Hell? Fallen angels are still angels. We notice when someone kills them. You have quite a reputation in the celestial realms. That's why you're here."
"I'm not a monster. I'm just a man."
"You're a monster to someone. In the Inferno, you're the bogeyman who frightens the bogeyman. And you've bought your talent for destruction back here to Earth. That's why you're here. In case you hadn't noticed, this is a job interview."
That's the single scariest thing I've heard anyone say since I came home. And this angel is making my skin crawl in ways that even Mason can't.
"I already have a job, thanks. I run a video store."
"You're weak. I can smell the damage from your recent injuries. That's the only reason you're here and alive. When we thought that you were in league with the Kissi, there was a death warrant on your head. But after your encounter with Josef, that seems doubtful."
"He's a Kissi."
"Of course. I thought that you would have understood that by now."
"I think I met one in Hell once. In the arena. Is that possible?"
"Unlike the Hellions, the Kissi can move anywhere in the universe, including into and out of Hell. So, yes, you could have easily met one. What happened?"
"Lucifer was pissed. He threw the thing out."
"No doubt hoping it would return to Earth to wreak havoc and leave his disgusting kingdom to him alone. How brave."
"He did walk right up to it and order it out. Have you ever walked right up and started a fight with a Kissi?" She doesn't answer. "Anyway, if something's upset the balance of the universe, it probably means that we're looking for the same person. Mason Faim."
"Excellent. We have a common enemy. You'll join the Vigil and we'll fight the forces of chaos together."
"No thanks. Your little war sounds like fun, but I have my own work to do."
Aelita says, "This is God's work."
I get up from the table and walk away across the room. I need to be careful. I don't want to say the wrong thing when she knows that I'm hurt. The bullets in my chest are playing soccer with my ribs. I'd filled Mason's lighter earlier, so I take out my cigarettes and spark one. Take a couple of big puffs and flick the ashes onto her altar. I'll admit it. I'm not good at careful.
"Where was God when I was stuck in Hell?" I ask her. "If you knew about Sandman Slim, then you knew I'd been dragged down there alive and was being tortured. But you hosanna-singing sons of bitches couldn't spare one lousy angel to help me out?"
"Maybe God thought you were where you belonged."
"He was right. You know why? Because I got to see exactly how the wheels turn in that part of the universe. Now you've given me a little snapshot of Heaven. You Heaven-and-Hell types are just the same shakedown artists in different uniforms. I've only been kidnapped twice in my life. Once by Lurkers and now by an angel."
"You understand that since none of Lucifer's fiends can leave Hell, it must have been Kissi who dragged you down, probably in league with your friend Mason."
"Thanks. When I'm done with Mason, I'll know who to go after next." I grind the remains of my cigarette into the altar and leave them. "All of you celestial pricks. Lucifer's psychos and God's lapdogs, you're out for yourselves, just like everybody else. You don't care about the world. You cut a deal with the Kissi. I wonder why?"
Aelita stands, very tall and straight, with her hands folded in front of her.
"Tell me. Enlighten me, Sandman Slim."
"Because they made it to Heaven. Got right up to the gates. So, you cut a deal. You sent the wolves down here among the sheep and asked the wolves to behave. And if they didn't, oh well. It's just a few ewes being slaughtered. But now the wolves are hungrier than ever, and you know that sooner or later, they're going to come knocking on Heaven's door."
Aelita shakes her head and gives me that creepy, benevolent-angel smile again.
"You make me so sad, James."
"Don't call me that."
"All right, Sandman."
"Don't call me that, either."
"I hadn't realized how all those years in the Abyss had warped your mind. You've completely lost your ability to feel empathy. I've told you what's coming for humanity, yet you won't lift a finger to prevent it." She's walking over to me, like a kindergarten teacher about to take the white glue away from a kid who won't stop eating it. "Don't you feel anything for anyone?"
"No. The only person I cared about was murdered. And you didn't do anything about that, either, did you?"
"I can help you heal. Your body and your soul. You were an empty vessel when you went into the Abyss and the devil filled you full of poison. Let me fill you with the Lord's divine light."
She's throwing some hardcore angel hoodoo my way. Trying to get control of my tiny, expendable monkey brain. Candy was better at the soothing talk trick-she really had me going back at Kinski's. But Aelita isn't getting anywhere. Maybe the difference is that I kind of liked Candy, but Lucretia Borgia here isn't my type.
"Let me help you, my son." She reaches out and takes both of my hands in hers. "Become part of God's great plan."
"No."
Aelita's face turns red and she screams. Tears are streaming down her red face. She takes my hand again and then drops it.
"Abomination," she whispers. Then she screams, "Abomination!"
Downtown, one of the things Hellions used to complain about was how Heaven had disarmed them before tossing them into the garbage dump. Every angel is born with a weapon. Not something they can lose, but something that's part of them. A flaming sword. They manifest it with a thought and use it like a handheld nuke. I'd never seen one before Aelita manifested her sword in the soundproof chapel.
I'm still looking at it, kind of hypnotized by the thing, when she sticks it through me. I can feel it go through my chest and come out my back, burning and freezing at the same time.
Then I'm on the floor. I have a weird hallucination that Vidocq and Allegra are standing over me. Then I'm dead.
I DREAM THAT I'm back on Earth. I dream that I've escaped from Azazel and all the pain and madness of Hell. I'm home and I'm drinking beer with Alice, sweaty and happy in bed. I struggle to open my eyes and I see blue skies. I'm waking up in a cemetery. I am home. It isn't a dream. But why is the moon out during the day?
It's not the moon. It's a light.
That's not the sky. It's a blue ceiling. I know the smell of this place, but its name is lost down some darkened detour in my brain.