Devil Said Bang
Good-bye, Teddy. So long, Lula. I hope Lamia and the ghosts of those kids don’t let your souls get to the afterlife too quick. I hope they give you a good long tour of the Tenebrae. Welcome to the Hell you made, assholes.
By the time we hit Hollywood, the sky has stopped puking ocean down on our heads. The streets are choked with dying fish and colorful stones. I don’t think there’s a car windshield or store window left intact anywhere in Southern California. Traven steers around the worst of it as well as he can with a cracked windshield, heading for Allegra’s clinic.
“I thought you had a falling-out with the woman who runs the clinic.”
“Allegra might be pissed but she won’t let anything happen to Candy.”
Traven carries her out of the car while I pound on the clinic door until they open it. Fairuza looks out and lets Traven inside. I stay in the parking lot.
Traven comes out a few minutes later.
“They say it’s a common drug. She’ll be fine,” he says.
“Thanks.”
“What happens now?”
“You mean what does a person do after car chases, arson, and their first kill?”
Traven looks out into the street. Some of the fish are still alive, gasping for breath on the sidewalk. He’d like to save every one of them.
“Even if you’re in the right, how do you cope with it?”
I shrug. It hurts.
“Drinking helps.”
He looks at himself in the clinic windows. I know the move. He’s checking to see if he’s still him.
“You jumped on a flying saucer today, Father. You’re on a whole other planet now.”
“That’s exactly how it feels.”
“There’s no going back. You know that, don’t you? You can’t unsee or unknow any of this.”
“I wouldn’t if I could. I didn’t just translate books because I had an aptitude for it. I did it hoping that one or two might reveal some deeper truth. That somehow my work would benefit people. These last few days . . .”
“I know. Truth can kick your ass. You know the Greek word for ‘revelation,’ right?”
“Apokálypsis.”
“Apocalypse. The truth shall set you free, but not before blowing your brain to Rice Krispie Treats.”
“Would you like to get a drink?”
“Yeah. But tomorrow. I have one more stop to make before this thing is over.”
“Are you going after Aelita?”
“No. She’ll be long gone with the 8 Ball. I’m seeing someone who owes me a favor.”
“Do you want some company?”
“This one I have to do on my own. But I’d be grateful for a ride back to the Chateau.”
The Metro’s windshield is too far gone. Traven and I kick it out of the frame and throw it in a Dumpster at the back of the lot. We don’t talk on the ride across town. My chest hurts like I was hit by a cruise missile, but I’m not spitting up blood. Kasabian is asleep on the couch when I get back. A big metal dog curled up and surrounded by beer cans. I lie down and nap in bed for a couple of hours. When I wake up, I change clothes, get on the Hellion hog, and head downtown.
The Bradbury Building is an Art Deco beauty in one of the amnesic parts of town that can’t remember whether it wanted to be a neighborhood or a tourist wasteland and now isn’t quite either. Once upon a time I killed a vampire named Eleanor near here. Her family was the one I locked in the Chateau Marmont with a roomful of zombies. Now I’m back here again, not starting trouble but trying to end it.
I park the bike on a pile of dead fish. The sky flickers like a lightning storm but there’s no thunder.
The Bradbury Building is closed up tight but I jimmy the lock with the black blade. Silent motion-sensor alarms will go off the moment I’m inside. I’m sure the cops will rush right over after they dig out their squad cars from under all the rocks and carp. Even if they come, they’ll never find me where I’m going.
I get in one of the ornate wrought-iron elevators and press the buttons for the first and third floors simultaneously. The elevator rises to the thirteenth floor in a building that only has five.
I get out and walk to Mr. Muninn’s antiques shop. The door is unlocked. Go through the store, out the back exit, and down hundreds of feet of bare stone steps into a cavern below the city.
“Mr. Muninn!” I yell. “Olly olly oxen free.”
Mr. Muninn comes out from behind a Russian icon-style portrait of a king from a country that hasn’t existed for two ice ages.
“I didn’t expect you to come in that way. I’m so used to you appearing out of the shadows.”
“That’s Saint James’s trick these days. I just break into buildings and ride the Wonkavator to places that aren’t there.”
“It sounds like more fun when you say it.”
Muninn’s cavern is maybe the biggest antiques shop, curiosity cabinet, and junkyard in the universe. Shelves and tables sag under his crazy trinkets. Helmets and ancient weapons enough to take on Hannibal. Acres of old coins and endless galleries of paintings, jewelry, potions, karakuri, and old books. Piles of what look like dinosaur bones beside a moored zeppelin. Like a raven, he’s been plucking shiny pieces of this and that and hiding them in his lair for aeons. Maybe that’s why he goes by a raven’s name.
“I thought you might come to see me before this.”
“That was the plan but there was this ancient god and a whole Apocalypse thing happening. Maybe you heard about it.”
“I wouldn’t worry. You saved the dreamers. In a few days, they’ll take control of reality from the safety of their slumber and the sky will be blue and the world will be made beautiful again.”
“Make that brown skies, panhandlers, and things getting back to passable and I’ll believe you.”
“Always the optimist.”
I lean on a table and knock over piles of Confederate money.
“Sorry.” Then, “You lied to me, Mr. Muninn. This whole time. And I trusted you.”
“I know. And I have no excuses, just an explanation. I was afraid. To break down from one mind to five is troubling enough but then my own brother, Ruach, let Aelita kill brother Neshamah to save himself. It was too much to take. I don’t even know where my other two brothers are.”
He picks up a pile of gold Minoan coins and tosses them through the eye socket of a pterodactyl skull. A nervous tic.
“I’ve been down here and away from family squabbles since the world was young and I had hoped to stay here for eternity. But that’s not going to happen, is it?”
I shrug.
“That all depends on you. You asked me to take the singularity to one of your brothers in Hell. You said you’d owe me a favor. I made the delivery and now I’m calling in the favor. That’s if you’re willing to keep your part of the bargain.”
“Do you have the singularity with you?”
“No. It’s somewhere safe. I’ll keep it for now. If I get bored, maybe I’ll start a new universe, just like the Angra Om Ya.”
“I know Father Traven told you the story. Would you like to hear my side of it?”
“Yes. But not right this minute. I took some bullets today, and don’t tell anyone, but they still hurt.”
“Would you like me to take them out for you?”
“Sure. Later. Right now I want to get the other thing settled. Are you willing to do me the favor you promised?”
“Yes.”
“I think you know what it is.”
“I suspect so.”
I walk over to him, passing a table piled with old Hollywood head shots and shattered pieces of the Druj Ammun seal.
“I don’t care if you didn’t really create the universe. You still made the souls. There are a lot of them Downtown that could use someone to keep an eye on them better than Hellions can. The Hellions aren’t doing all that well themselves. They’re killing each other when they aren’t killing themselves. Hellions are your children too, right? They can both use the kind of help a half-assed Lucifer like me can’t give them.”
“And you think I have the right experience to be Lucifer? I’m not sure if I should be flattered or hurt.”
“You’re a deity. At least you have something to work from. I was just playing free jazz. You really need to take the job. If I go back to Hell, I’ll never leave and Hell will burn without a Lucifer.”
He looks away and throws the last of the coins in the air. They hang there before falling on the table in a neat stack.
“Of course I’ll go. A bargain is a bargain. But you must do something for me first.”
“What?”
“Forgive the part of you you call Saint James.”
“Forget it. He’s a useless Pat Boone twerp with a bad case of poor poor pitiful me. I’m always the bad guy and he’s always the victim. Forget it. He left. He can stay left.”
“Are you sure that’s how you want it?”
“I have the armor. I don’t need him.”
“But you just appointed me Lucifer. The armor is mine.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“He left. I don’t beg favors.”
“You don’t have to. Just tell me, would you like to be whole and complete again?”
“Are you God or Dear Abby?”
“You’re avoiding the question because the answer is yes and you’re too proud and hurt to say it.”
“Bullshit.”
“You can’t lie to me, James. I’m God.”
“Fine. Sure. I’d like to be one big slice of apple pie but I’m not kissing Saint James’s ass.”
“You don’t have to. While you were talking I reintegrated you.”
I look at my hands.
“Bullshit. If he was back in my head, he’d be screaming. I don’t feel any different.”
“Which is exactly as it should be. When you’re whole, it’s not necessary to think about yourself as whole. You simply are.”
“Cool it with the koans. Wild Bill is my Buddhism adviser.”
I look at myself in an old mirrored shield.
“I don’t know how I feel about this.”
“Of course you do. You’re angry. You’re always angry with me. God tricked you again. But let me remind you of something. I still am God and there are certain things I can and will do for the good of my children, including you. You’re whole because it’s necessary for you to be whole and there’s nothing you or Lucifer or Sandman Slim can do about it.”
“See? You do have the right attitude to be a good Lucifer.”
Mr. Muninn walks to an old L.A. Red Car and steps inside.
“I’ll miss my collection.”
“It’s not going anywhere.”
“I’ll miss my solitude.”
“I got very big on delegating Lucifer’s duties at the end. Keep the same policy and have all the solitude you want. Trust me. You don’t want to sit around working out budget projections for the next thousand years.”
He steps out of the Red Car and perches on a Persian hoodoo carpet hovering three feet off the ground.
“One last thing before I go. Do you forgive me for deceiving you all this time?”
“Sure. Do you forgive me for being a loudmouth asshole Abomination?”
He holds up a hand. Shakes his head.
“You’re only an Abomination to Aelita and her ilk. You’re simply James Stark to me. Not nephilim or monster. Just Stark.”
“Your brother Neshamah told me his name. What’s yours?”
“Can’t we stick with Muninn? It’s the name I prefer.”
“Muninn it is.”
“I suppose it’s time for me to be going.”
I touch my chest. Lucifer’s armor is gone. I look at Mr. Muninn and he’s wearing it. It looks funny strapped to his round body.
“That’s a good look for you,” I lie.
He raps his knuckles on the metal.
“I haven’t worn armor since the war with Lucifer. Now here I am wearing his, preparing to become him. Even I couldn’t have predicted that.”
“It’ll get the groundlings’ attention when you walk in like that.”
He looks strange. Like he’s made of dense smoke.
“Will you come and visit?”
I feel a familiar weight inside my chest. The Key is back inside me.
“I’ll come down. Take care of yourself and Wild Bill for me. One last thing. If you were going to hide a stolen soul, where would you put it?”
He thinks for a few seconds.
“The Guff. The hall of souls. Where new souls wait to be born into bodies.”
“Someone stole Tuatha Fortune’s. Normally I wouldn’t care about the Augur’s family troubles but that seems kind of harsh even for rich bastards. If you happen to find Tuatha’s soul under the sofa cushions, maybe you could send it home.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Take care, James.”
“You too, Mr. Muninn.”
The smoke drifts apart like parting fog and Mr. Muninn is gone. There’s something in my hand. Three deformed bullets. I open my shirt. No holes. No pain.
I step through a shadow and into the Room of Thirteen Doors. It’s as cool and silent and perfect as I remember. I go through the Door of Ice, the portal to neutral places, and out into the street. I push the Hellion hog into Muninn’s cavern for safekeeping. I don’t know if I can ride it once reality gets back to normal. If I can’t, I think Mr. Muninn would like it in his collection.