Richard Kadrey - Sandman Slim

Mason blurs across the room at me, faster than I could ever move. He knocks me out of the way so that he can rescue the papers I've set on fire. He's working really well for a few seconds, but then the black knife that I stuck in his side when he cuffed me away really starts to hurt. He reaches around to take the knife out. But I'm pretty fast, too. I leap and roll, jam my boot heel into the knife hilt, plunging it another six inches into his side. Mason groans and falls on his face.

I climb on top of him and rip the knife out with my left hand. Get my right arm around his throat and stab up, slipping the blade between his ribs and into his heart. Mason shudders and so does the house. The walls and ceiling crack. Bricks, lath, and plaster rain down on us. I push the knife in farther and hear the upstairs collapse.

A bookcase comes loose from the wall and crashes down on me. Mason throws an elbow and knocks me onto my back. Then he's on top of me. I get the knife up in time and jam it right back between his ribs. But Mason does a trick I didn't know he could do.

He's been doing more with the Kissi than exchanging sea stories and brownie recipes. He slips his hand through my body and right into my chest. Instantly I'm cold and nauseous, remembering what it was like in Josef's office. With every wave of pain and sickness, I twist the knife deeper into him.

The mansion walls are dust and the floor is sagging under our weight. A great, black dome of nothingness hangs over our heads. Then even the floor is gone and we're in the dark, surrounded by the chittering, scuttling noises of the Kissi, the only reminder that we haven't fallen out of the universe completely.

I shout Hellion control curses and poison hexes into Mason's ear. He digs his hand into my chest and gets his fingers around the key. The whole universe shifts, like a car sliding on black ice. I drag the black blade between Mason's ribs. Throw attack spells. Mason chatters in Kissi, trying to fill my head with dread and confusion. Luckily, I'm already confused and full of dread, so the spell is kind of redundant.

The darkness shreds around us. Streaks of something leak through the opaque wall of nothing. A billion Kissi scream as light burns into their hiding place.

We're falling. Or things are swirling past us. I can't tell which. I catch glimpses of the Room of Thirteen Doors. Every time Mason tries to rip the key from my chest, the room shifts at the center of time and space, warping the universe.

Time flows like lava. Mason pulls on the key and the pain lasts a million years. The room swirls by, larger than the whole universe. One door. A dozen. A million. A blinking zoetrope as doors open, close, appear, and disappear.

We're crushed to the size of atoms. We expand to fill the Milky Way. I jerk the blade from Mason's side and sweep it through the center of a star. Slash the white-hot blade through the thin fabric that separates the Kissi's chaos realm from ours. The Kissi scream and scatter as light floods inside. They try to patch the holes, but I keep slashing new ones. The Kissi's bubble of nothingness swells and explodes, scattering their burning bodies away from the light and into the frozen void on the far edge of the universe.

The next time the room appears, I raise the knife and slice down through Mason's arm. His screams shake the nearby planets. I pull his severed hand from my chest and dive for the room. Get one hand around the edge of the Door of Shadows and pull myself inside. Mason hangs on with his one good hand. I have to drag him inside with me.

We collapse on the stones. I catch my breath and get to my feet. Mason is on his back, cradling his severed arm to his chest. He's pale and shaking, shirt soaked through with blood. I've been looking forward to killing Mason for so long and now he's spoiling it. In my fantasies, I kill the bullyboy, arrogant Mason. But this little guy on the floor, shivering like a goldfish that's fallen out of its bowl, isn't the monster I came to slay.

Mason says something, but I can't hear him. He says it again, but still too low to hear. I lean my ear to his mouth when he says it again. It's Kissi. I can't understand the word, but there's a crunch that I heard enough in the arena to know that it's either the sound of a bone breaking or being magically knit back together. This being Mason, of course, it's a bit of both, with something worse thrown in just for fun.

Something white and larvalike protrudes from where Mason's right arm used to be. Sounds come from beneath his skin, like termites eating glass. A final crunch and Mason's arm rips from his shoulder as a faintly glowing Kissi arm emerges to take its place. Mason's eyes pop open. Suddenly he's back to being the monster I've dreamed of killing. However, there's something about this new Mason that makes every cell in my body decide simultaneously that it would like to be at least a continent away from him.

Mason sits up and smiles. He knows exactly where he is. The space is too small and he's too fast for me to try taking his new arm off. There's an old saying among fighters in the arena, "A retreat is a good as an advance, especially if your opponent just grew an angel's arm."

I open the nearest door, slam it shut, and start running. I hear Mason behind me a second later. There's a sort of town square up ahead. I keep running, knocking people out of my way. At the far side of the square is a makeshift bar selling Aqua Regia. I jump on top and kick the drinkers' glasses in their faces. A Hellion infantryman lunges at me with his spear. I sidestep him and snap it in two with the black blade. Thanks, man. Anyone who wasn't sure who I was before, just saw Azazel's knife and now knows for certain.

"Hello you shit-sucking sulfur monkeys. In case you haven't guessed, I'm Sandman Slim and I crawled back down to perdition's ball sac for just a moment of your time. And if you don't believe I'm Sandman Slim, step up closer and I'll take a lot more than a moment from you.

"Now, I know what a lot of you would like to do to me, but I want you to think about this first: I might be the monster who kills monsters and the biggest bastard in existence, but that's your real enemy right there. The man who followed me here. Look at his arm. He's Kissi. And he's been chasing me all over Creation because he wants me to help him bring a Kissi army down here to turn you into the slaves you refused to be in Heaven. I didn't bring his army, but I brought him. And I'm giving him to you. A New Year's gift from Sandman Slim."

By now, most of the crowd is fixated on Mason and his arm. He transforms it to look human, but that just pisses them off even more. They press in on Mason from every direction, but no one wants to make the first move. I pick up one of the Hellion beer mugs and, just when I feel a wave of tension pass through the crowd, smash it. There's something magical about the sound of breaking glass. Especially around a mob. It works for both humans and Hellions. If you want to start a riot, throw a bottle.

The moment the mug shatters, the crowd surges forward, banshee-howling, crushing Mason at its center.

Hellion gendarmes are heading toward the square. That guarantees a full-scale devil's night party riot. I duck, stay low, and move from table to table until I'm out of the square. Then I take off running for the Door of Fire.

I make it through and just about have the door closed when someone grabs it from the other side.

A skinny Hellion adolescent in a uniform I've never see before gets as close to the door as he can.

"You killed my master, Abaddon. I'll get to your world somehow someday, and I'll avenge him."

"Why don't you come out here and tell me all about it, sweetheart? Oh, wait. You can't come out here, can you? Magic is such a tease. When you figure out how to get yourself on the other side of this door, be sure to look me up. Until then, stay in school. Say your prayers. And just before you fall asleep tonight, pucker up and kiss my ass."