Richard Kadrey - Devil Said Bang

I pick up a curled metal shaving from the table. Turn it over in my hands. It’s a dull silver and dense. Not like something that would go into a machine as delicate as the amplifier. There are more shavings and half-melted ingots on the floor. I kick through them and there, lying by the toe of my god-awful, shiny dress shoe, is what I’ve been looking for.

I pick up the metal and go back to the chair with the dead soldier. The metal fits perfectly into the divot behind her head. The same thing for the holes in the hand- and footrests.

I weigh the key in my hand. It’s heavy and solid and comforting. I never realized until now that I miss the weight of the key in my chest. This isn’t like my key. It won’t get anyone out of here but this possession key has its own charms, and with the psychic amplifier, I bet it’s how Mason got the thing to work and let him ride people back on Earth like a voodoo Loa.

I thought Mason’s workshop was upstairs, but the forge and tools were just for show. This is the real lab. And the dead soldiers were his first experiments as he tried to make the key work. These aren’t Lucifer’s clues and none of this gets me any closer to getting out of here, but it’s still useful. Whoever has the key must also have a working psychic amplifier, the one Mason was scavenging parts for. That means I don’t necessarily have to find the key. If I can find and smash the amplifier, it might kill the key’s power. Better yet, if I can find the key and the amplifier, I might be able to talk to someone back in L.A.

This is good news. Not break-out-the-champagne-I’m-coming-home good news. More like open-a-six-pack-of-malt-liquor-I-didn’t-drop-my-keys-down-the-toilet-at-work good news. But after the last three months, I’ll take any good news I can get.

The dissected Hellion is really starting to stink up the place. I want to go back to my room and sandblast my skin off but there’s one more thing.

By itself, in the corner of the room, is an ornate wooden table holding a black lacquered box. The box is perfectly square and featureless. When I touch the top, I can feel faint vibrations from inside.

I feel along the edges and find a subtle seam. Then others nearby. I push on one and nothing happens. Others move an inch or two. The damn thing is a puzzle box, but I’m not in a puzzle mood. I take out the black blade and bring it down hard, slicing off one side. No explosions or poison gas or snakes with machine guns. That’s a good sign. I hack off the other side, get my hands inside, and push. A second later, the box rips apart in a shower of splinters and black velvet lining. It’s kind of a pretty sight. Like an exploding ventriloquist dummy.

Something heavy and metal hits the floor. I try to pick it up, and rip the tip of my middle finger. Getting down on one knee, I slip the blade underneath it, raising it up like balancing an egg. In the light, I can’t see any sharp edges. Carefully, I rest it in the palm of my hand. It’s definitely a weapon but I’ve never seen one like it. When I turn it side to side, something weird happens.

As the light hits it from different angles, the thing changes shape. It’s a spiked ball the size of a tangerine. It’s a long silver dart with barbs at each end. It’s a spinning cone of fire. It’s ice knuckle-dusters. A parang. An elaborate Balisong, with six hinged joints that move at 180-degree angles to each other. Whatever kind of slice-and-dicer this is, it wasn’t made for human hands.

Fighters liked to tell tall tales around the arena. Stories about ultimate weapons they’d heard about that would make them impossible to kill. Over a few jugs of bitter Hellion wine (our prize for having survived the day), we came to the consensus that the ultimate weapon would be the one that killed all your enemies and then flew you away to Heaven or Valhalla or anyplace where when you said the word Hell the locals would say, “What’s that?”

One fighter from some Hellion backwater said that he’d seen the real ultimate weapon. Only archangels had them and only Gabriel was brave enough to use his.

“No rebel angel could defeat him because each time he used his weapon it was different. There was no way to attack or defend yourself against it. Before the battle was over, thousands of our rebel brothers and sisters lay dead at his feet. These other fools think it was God who defeated us, but the few of us who survived the battle know it was Gabriel.”

I remember something Alice said before Samael took her back to Heaven. I’d left her alone with Neshamah, one of the five entities that have made up God since His nervous breakdown. Alice said that Aelita killed Neshamah with a weapon Alice had never seen before. I wonder if that’s because what she saw was really a million different weapons. That would be pretty damn hard to describe at the best of times and even harder if it was only for a few seconds while someone gutted God in front of you.

Among the lacquered splinters is a kind of leather sheath that roughly corresponds to the shape of the weapon when it’s configured like circular-saw blades. Carefully, I slip the thing into the case and lock the top flap closed.

I wonder if Aelita left the weapon for Mason to use on me or if he was just holding it for her while she hunted down the other four God brothers? Either way it’s mine now. I drop it in my jacket pocket and get the hell out of Mason’s butcher shop.

I HEAD TO THE BEDROOM but stop at the library to leave red “get your ass over here now” signal cards in front of a couple of peepers for Ipos and Merihim.

In the bedroom I strip off the suit and give it a sniff. The abattoir-fresh aroma all the kids love is deep inside the material. That’s never coming out. I toss the suit over with the dead motorcycle jacket. It’s sort of comforting seeing the growing pile of ruined clothes. I’ve killed off a lot of men’s casual wear while getting shot and stabbed. Now all I have to do is decapitate someone and I’ll feel like I’m home sweet home.

I grab an overcoat from the closet and toss it on the bed. I feel enough like me that I put on the leather bike pants and boots I wore when I came down here. They feel good. A little stiff with dried blood, most of it mine. I put on my hoodie. It’s blood stiff too and one of the sleeves is missing from when the red legger relieved me of my left arm. I sliced him in half like a side of beef with my Gladius, my flaming angelic sword.

I keep the glove on, but leave my prosthetic arm bare since no one is going to see it under the coat.

Back in the library I smack the gyroscope like Merihim, making it spin backward. The monster-movie voice chitters like a groundhog that’s burrowed into a meth lab. I check the peeper images on the movie screen. Brimborion is prowling his office, smiling at his staff. Trying to play it cool. He’s almost pulling it off, but if you look hard enough you can see the wheels whirring in his head. Is one of these fuckers selling me out? Maybe better to kill them all and let God or the Devil or Oprah sort them out.

In other parts of the palace, people do funny little square dances when they come around a corner and find a hellhound. Maintenance guys on break in the basement check out my motorcycle. Staff witches sort through piles of dried bugs and plants. Outside, a couple of officers are kicking the shit out of a low-ranking Hellion while another officer uses his long leather sap to poke the dead bikers in the gibbets. Guess the book club let out early.

Ipos and Merihim show up a few minutes later. I tell them about the secret room while taking out my eye. I drop the other peepers into their saline storage jars so that mine is the only one showing on the screen. They watch the show like a couple at a drive-in movie. Bored during the dark part but starting a little when the lights flick on, giving them a full frontal of Ed Gein’s rumpus room.