Richard Kadrey - Devil Said Bang

“Too bad you can only see the place and not smell it. It’s memorable.”

“You think this is Mason Faim’s work?” says Merihim when we come to the first close-up of a dissected brain.

“Unless this is what Hellions call ‘playing doctor.’”

He shoots me a look. I distract him by holding out the Magic 8 Ball.

“Ever seen one of these before?”

Merihim is too smart to grab things the Devil finds weird but Ipos is more impulsive. He grabs the ball, turns it, and immediately gets his hand skewered by a barb.

He curses in lower-class street Hellion, which sounds even worse than regular Hellion. Like a shop vac sucking up sewer sludge.

On the screen I’m moving the soldier’s body around while the pile of body bags forms a pastoral slaughterhouse tableau in the background.

Merihim bends to look at the ball in Ipos’s bleeding hand but doesn’t move to take it.

“Whatever this is, it reeks of unnatural power. You should let me take it and bury it deep in the Tabernacle vaults.”

Everyone is on a power trip here, the church included.

“Thanks but no thanks. It stays with me.”

“This isn’t something to be left lying around.”

“Which is why it stays with me and not buried somewhere I can’t see it.”

“And where will it end up if something happens to you?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. If whoever knows how to work this gets ahold of it again, my guess is that we’ll all be dead by morning. Another good reason to keep me on the unkilled team.”

On the screen I’m poking at the psychic amplifier. I watch them closely. Neither has ever seen one before. Neither reacts to the Vigil logo either. At least I don’t have to worry about them working with whoever has the key.

“Either of you come up with any new information?”

Ipos nods and his church tattoos move like a flag promising salvation.

“I might have,” he says. “The soldiers who attacked you were from Wormwood’s legion. There are an unusual number of suicides and murders among his troops. Apparently it’s been going on for some time, but since the dead no longer disappear into Tartarus he can’t hide it anymore. My spies in other legions found that the same thing is starting to happen in other parts of the legion.”

Merihim says, “Red leggers have been caught delivering bogus potions to physicians and hospitals. The real ones end up on the black market.”

“Okay. Maybe bad drugs get them to kill themselves, but what do they have to do with killing me?”

Merihim shrugs.

“Well, no one likes you very much.”

On the screen I’m examining the weird weapon. Ipos watches closely, safe from slicing himself open.

He says, “General Semyazah controls the distribution of vital goods. That gives him access to you and to a lot of power. There’s a long list of generals who would like to replace him.”

Damn.

“We’re back to generals stabbing generals in the back? I thought that shit was over with when I killed Mason.”

“In peace or war, there are always men who want power for its own sake.”

Ipos has given up pretending to look at the peeper projection and has gone to my desk to fix the wobbly leg.

“You think Semyazah is letting his own trucks get ripped off?”

From under my desk Ipos says, “It’s possible. Being smart doesn’t exempt you from corruption.”

He hammers a wooden spacer under one of the desk legs. Between taps with a small hammer he says, “Of course it could be another general earning some extra money while making Semyazah look bad.”

“Why not just kill him? That seems to be a quick way to get promotions down here.”

Merihim shakes his head.

“Murdering Semyazah risks an all-out war among the generals. Legion against legion. No one wants that.”

Ipos says, “If someone could possess Semyazah and have him, say, attack you, then he could be killed and you would have to appoint another supreme general.”

Merihim opens his hands in a weary gesture.

“We’re back to speculating. We know more than we did but not enough to come to any reasonable conclusions.”

I go to my eye and start the projection over again in case I missed something the first time through.

Ipos comes out from under the desk. He wipes dirt from his knees and says, “Even without war we’re still trapped in chaos and fear. It reminds me of waking up here after the fall from Heaven.”

He looks at Merihim.

“Do you remember? How many brothers and sisters cut their throats or threw themselves off the high mountains?”

“And the ones who turned on each other. I remember. It was a terrible thing to see.”

Ipos looks at me.

“Lucifer saved us. The first one. Like you, he had us work building Pandemonium. It took our minds off those … other possibilities.”

Neither of them looks at each other or at me. Their eyes are glazed in an ex-soldier’s thousand-yard stare.

I never thought of Hellions this way. They always seemed so full of Fuck You spirit when it came to the war in Heaven. It never occurred to me that being thrown here was as terrible for them as it was for me. When Heaven started shipping in damned souls, it must have been a nice distraction, but only for a while. Guarding passive, broken ghosts can’t be that exciting. And maybe they reminded the fallen angels too much of themselves. The damned minding the damned. If Hellions hadn’t tortured me for all those years, I might even feel sorry for them. But they did, so I don’t.

I take a picture from my pocket and hand it to Merihim.

“While we’re on the subject of lousy deaths, this is a girl from L.A. She had dyed green hair and worked at a donut shop on Hollywood Boulevard. She was murdered by two Kissi sometime between last Christmas and New Year’s. I don’t know if she’s down here, but if she is, can one of you find her?”

Merihim hands the photo to Ipos. He wipes the blood from his hands before taking it. “There can’t be that many pretty mortals killed by monsters in donut shops at Christmas. If she’s here, we’ll find her.”

“When you do, get her a job. Something safe. Away from the craziness. I’d do it myself but being near me is what got her in trouble in the first place.”

Ipos puts the photo in the breast pocket of his work overalls.

“She’s a friend of yours?”

I shake my head.

“I don’t even know her name.”

On the screen I watch myself unwrapping the soldier’s body.

Merihim cocks his head.

“I can’t help but be curious: you want us to find a complete stranger to ease the burden of her damnation but you’ve never once asked about your mother or father.”

“I don’t have to. Believe it or not, I’m capable of doing a few things on my own. They’re not here. It turns out being drunk and miserable are only venial sins after all. Lucky them.”

Ipos says, “Didn’t your father try to shoot you? Shouldn’t he be here with us?”

“I suppose by Heaven’s standards, killing an Abomination isn’t the same as killing a regular human,” says Merihim.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

I look at the screen, not really watching it.

I say, “I think we’re done here for now. Don’t you?”

As they head for the fake bookcase, Merihim says, “Yesterday I said that I’d bring you a protective potion. That will have to wait until I can check that they’re not bogus.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m not sitting around waiting to get my brain cut open. I’m going to do something.”

“What exactly?”

“I have no idea. Something, you know, subtle.”

Merihim says, “Like when you burned Eden? I only ask because I’m still trying to gauge your definition of ‘subtle.’”