Читать книгу The Kill Society - Richard Kadrey - Страница 8

SO FAR, BEING dead is about as much fun as a barbed-wire G-string.

Yes, there is such a thing. They invented it in Hell, which is where I am. I already said I was dead. Where else would I be? Try to keep up.

Where was I? I was talking about fun. First off, there’s the fact that I’m really, no shit, for sure, not coming back dead. I mean, I’ve been dead before, but now my body is stone-cold back in L.A., I’m in Hell, and I don’t see any angles to play. So, that’s a lot of laughs. As is the view. Up here on this spiky cliffside, Hell stretches out in all directions like the pockmarked belly of a gator with a bad case of just about everything. Acne. Psoriasis. Cancer. From the smell, gangrene and probably gingivitis, too.

Insult to injury: I’m stuck here with no weapons, no wheels, no fucking idea where exactly I am, and, oh yeah, there’s a dust storm the size of Texas headed straight for me. It rolls and thunders across the hardpack in the valley below. This leaves me with exactly two choices: I can sit up here on this nameless mountain and get ripped to shreds, a speck of chickenshit on the rocky tip of nowhere. Or I can go down into the valley and look this dust devil in the eye.

Not a lot to think about there.

I kick a rock down the slope and follow it as it tumbles ahead of me into the valley. As it goes, I spot something on the trail ahead. Bend down to pick it up. Okay, I might not know where I am, but I know I’m being fucked with. What I’m holding is a dusty pack of Maledictions. But no lighter. Someone somewhere is having a good laugh. With luck, they’ll choke on their good time while there’s still a little piece of me left to feel it.

The dust cloud reaches up into the bruised Hellion sky. It looks miles away, but sand and grit already sting my face. I walk straight at it for a while, then start to run. If Hell is going to shred me, let’s get it over with. I’m not even angry that Audsley Ishii murdered me right in front of Candy. Why would I be angry? I got to see Candy go Jade one last time as she ripped him to pieces. One last glimpse of her being exactly who she is. A gorgeous, perfect monster. My monster.

Good-bye, Candy. You made a stupid world hurt less and a place worth fighting for. And we broke a lot of furniture, the two of us. When this storm finishes me off and I fall into Tartarus—the only place lower than Hell—you’ll be what keeps me from going crazy in the dark.

All right, maybe I am a little mad about being taken away from her. But it’s too late now. The dust swallows me and Hell goes from a perpetual twilight to a rusty glow, the color of dried blood. My ghost nose closes with grit and my throat is rasped raw. I close my eyes and they instantly cement together. There’s nothing to look at anyway. I’ve seen my skin peeled off plenty of times in the arena. I know what my bones look like.

After a few minutes of running, I stop and listen. There’s a rumbling in the storm that’s more machine than wind. I swear, I can smell diesel fumes. And as much as the dust boils and tears at me, it isn’t nearly the storm I thought it was. It’s not a cocktail party, and I’ve been to some bad parties. The storm isn’t even what’s sending the dust into the sky. It’s something inside the storm.

I do a slow three-sixty. The rumble and smell of fumes get closer. When I’m facing it, I stop. Wipe as much grit from my eyes as I can. I can feel the sound in my chest, a deep shudder like someone running a drag strip through my ribs.

I’d do all kinds of depraved things right now for a smoke.

A second later, the rumbling stops. I don’t mean the noise dies down. I mean that whatever is causing it stops dead in its tracks, but it’s still growling and grinding as loud as ever. I stand where I am. Where am I going to go? Whatever it is, is a lot bigger than me, and if I’m about to get eaten, I’m going in facing the fucker. If I get lucky and it breathes fire, I might even get to smoke one last cigarette on the way down its gullet.

Choking dust billows around me, but I continue to remain uneaten. If whatever is out there wants to play games, it better be ready for a round of “Stark runs away and hides under a rock until the bad thing goes away” because without weapons, I’m not about to play Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots with a Hellbeast.

It’s a good minute before the dust thins out and I can see well enough to look for a weapon. All I find nearby is a baseball-size rock. I pick it up and weigh it in my hand. Fuck. It’s pumice. Light as a feather. I might as well throw marshmallows at the thing. I toss the rock back where I found it. I’m not sold on the concept of death with dignity, but I’d rather not be a story monsters tell each other around the watercooler.

The dust finally settles down and I get a look at what’s coming.

Huh. I didn’t think of that.

Turns out it isn’t one giant thing. It’s really a lot of big things growling and shuddering at the fucking sky. More than fifty of them.

The simple way to describe it is that I’m face-to-face with a smoke-belching desert rat parking lot of semitrucks and pickups, passenger cars, construction equipment, and motorcycles. There’s even a few hellhounds with saddles and riders. Maybe I should have kept my rock. At least I wouldn’t look quite so much like a deer caught in the headlights.

No. I’d look like a deer with a rock. Forget it.

We stare at each other just long enough for me to, one, notice that no one is offering me a ride, and two, get bored. So, I head over in their direction. I’m maybe twenty yards away when a Hellion in a jeep up front holds his fists over his head. The sound of the engines dies away. He’s a big, spiky bastard, like a horned toad in a doorman’s uniform.

“Stop,” he says. “Where are you from and where’s the rest of your group?”

“At the day spa at the Bellagio. Come on over. We’ll have a shvitz and get to know each other.”

The Hellion talks to a short, baby-faced damned soul in the jeep with him. The soul shrugs and points at me. The Hellion frowns. It doesn’t improve his looks.

“What’s a shvitz?” he yells.

“Really? You’re driving up Hell’s asshole with these Grease rejects and that’s the first thing that falls out of your skull?”

The Hellion stands up a little straighter.

“What did you say?”

“I said, does Baby Face dress you? ’Cause from where I’m standing, I bet you don’t know how pants work.”

The Hellion gets out of the jeep. The damned soul starts to hand him a rifle, but Horned Toad shakes his head and starts in my direction.

Well, I got his attention. Everyone’s attention. Now for the second part of my well-thought-out plan to get a vehicle and get out of this dusty shithole. If I stand still, I’ll look scared, so I head straight for Horned Toad. Along the way, I look around for weapons, but all there is around me is dust and more of those light stones. Halfway there, I spot some animal bones sticking up out of the hard ground. Something the size of an elephant died out here and the wind scoured it clean. I need to think of something fast or my bones are going to be the next thing on display.

The real problem isn’t that I don’t have weapons, though; it’s that I don’t know anything about myself right now. Am I still strong? Am I fast? Can I still do hoodoo or manifest my Gladius and if I can, do I want a hundred or so Leatherface grease-monkey types knowing it?

I guess for now, part two of my plan is stay alive—so to speak—see what I can get away with, and go from there. Yeah. That should work. No problem.

Another question that just occurred to me: In my present condition, am I still hard to kill? Will I heal if I’m injured or will I bleed out like any other sucker down here and wind up in Tartarus? Whatever the answer is, I think I’m going to have it in a few seconds.

Horned Toad stops about ten feet from me. I spot a gun on his hip and he catches me looking at it.

“Scares you, does it?” he says. “Don’t worry. Got to conserve ammo these days, and anyway, I don’t think you deserve a bullet.”

“No. What I deserve is to be back in L.A. with my girlfriend, her girlfriend, and a bunch of other nice people who don’t look like they eat bugs in a West Texas gulch.”

Horned Toad pulls a knife the size of a labradoodle.

He says, “What I like to eat are eyes. I’m going to eat yours one at a time. Let you watch me swallow the first one before I cut out the other.”

“It’s good to pace yourself. You don’t want to fill up before dessert.”

“I know about your type. Talkers,” he says. “Talkers are all cowards.”

I check my sides, and while the ground is flat and even, there’s nowhere to run to except the mountains. Besides, I’ll never outpace all these trucks and bikes.

I point at Horned Toad.

“You look like an apple-pie guy. Me too. Except when they put cheese on it. Do you like that? Can toads even eat dairy? Is that why you eat eyes? Have you tried Lactaid?”

“Kill him,” yells the baby-face guy from Horned Toad’s jeep. Other voices join him, chanting for Horned Toad to gut me.

He lunges at me with the giant knife. I dance back and he misses me by a mile. He lunges again and I jump to the side this time. Okay. I can still move. That’s the first piece of good news since I woke up here. I wonder what else I can do?

He lunges at me again, but it’s a fake-out. Instead of going for my gut, he does a second lunge down low. I move out of the way, but he still gets a piece of my left leg. It burns like hell and the sight of my blood gets the peanut gallery going with whoops and catcalls.

When Horned Toad comes for me again, instead of moving back, I dive under his arm and drive a knee up into his lower ribs. I hear him suck in air when the pain hits, but the fucker swings his blade down and slashes me across the back.

“Watch the coat, asshole!” I yell at him. “They don’t make these down here anymore.”

“Maybe I’ll leave your eyes and eat your arms and legs first. Would you like to watch me gnaw your bones?”

“I’d rather watch you do the backstroke in lava.”

He smiles and I smile right back at him. I’m the one bleeding, but he’s the one who just gave me an idea.

We go on like that for a couple more minutes. He lunges and I dodge the blade or the lucky prick gets a piece of me. I knock him back with some decent kicks and a few elbows to the head. The important thing is that I don’t stand still and I keep him moving in the direction of the animal bones nearby.

By the time we make it there, Horned Toad is leaning a little to his left from all the shots I’ve given him to the ribs. On the other hand, every time I move, my blood does a Jackson Pollock mural on the sand, so maybe we’re even at this point.

We trade blows a little more until I’m near enough to the bones that I can make my move. I let him get close and swing at my head. When he does, I give him one more quick kick in the ribs that knocks him back and leaves him open. As he rocks back, I grab one of the half-buried ribs to smash him with.

And nothing happens. The rib is solid in the ground. It isn’t going anywhere. Not with me yanking on it like a mouse trying to uproot a redwood.

I’d like to say that the laughs that go up as I pull on the rib don’t hurt, but they do. Though not as much as all my knife wounds and the feeling that I’m running out of options.

Horned Toad is really feeling good now and runs at me like a lizard-skin freight train. On the ground next to the rib I can’t budge is a big canine tooth from whatever died here. Just as he reaches me, I fall to my knees, grab it, and throw all of my weight behind a lunge at his legs. I drive the tooth deep into his thigh and twist it on the way out. Black Hellion blood splatters on my hands and coat. I roll away as Horned Toad drops to his knees. While he’s down, I jump at him, swinging the tooth down at his neck.

I guess fucking up Horned Toad’s leg in front of his friends really pissed him off because he does what every Hellion does when he’s losing: he cheats. To be fair, I’ve cheated in plenty of fights, too, but he grabs his pistol when I thought this was a knife fight, and, well, it’s a very upsetting moment.

I kick sand in his face, jump, and roll off to his right side. Horned Toad fires blind and ends up popping off a couple of shots at his own people. They scramble out of the way like dusty roaches. I want to scramble, too, but I know that with a crowd like this watching, it’s more important to stand my ground and risk being shot than to back down. With luck, I’ll still heal fast. With all the slices Horned Toad has taken out of me, I’ll know soon.

His Hellion Glock has an extended clip, and with the way he’s shooting, he’s bound to get lucky and hit me. It’s time to take action. It’s time to get strategic.

It’s time to do something really stupid.

I work my way around behind Horned Toad, with just a few feet between him and the skeleton. From what I figure, I was able to get away from most of his attacks, so I have a little speed left. And I was able to hurt the fucker, so I’m still strong. I hope that’s not all that’s left of the old me. But I’ve got to be careful and not give too much away until I figure out all I can do and who this Wild Bunch really is.

While he’s firing in the opposite direction, I run for the skeleton and grab one of the ribs. Like the first one, it doesn’t budge. This time, though, I use the noise of the gunfire to cover me as I whisper some Hellion hoodoo.

For a second, nothing happens and I’m sure that I’ve reached a new level of fucked. Then the hardpack around the rib shatters and I haul it out of the ground like a deranged Fred Flintstone.

Horned Toad stops firing.

“Where are you, mortal? Come and fight me like a man.”

From behind him, I say, “No.”

And swing the rib over my head, crushing Horned Toad’s skull like an anvil landing on a soft-boiled egg. It’s messy, and bloody, and I get toad juice all over my boots, but he’s sure as shit not firing his gun at me anymore. I grab it and his knife as his body blips out of existence and starts the long, nasty fall into Tartarus.

I stand there, breathing hard, but with a dumb smile on my bloody face. I can still throw some hoodoo. That’s the best news since I arrived here. Now I just have to keep all these creeps from finding out until I know how much I can do.

My little ego fest is cut short by bullets tearing up the ground around my feet.

Horned Toad’s pal, the baby face in the jeep, is running at me, firing the rifle. I guess he’s upset because he hasn’t grasped the fact that it’s really hard to hit anything when you’re running and your gun is bouncing around like a rubber duck in a typhoon.

This time, I don’t stand my ground. I run toward the fucker. The way he’s shooting, he couldn’t hit the sky from a weather balloon. When I’m close enough to see his pearly whites, I throw Horned Toad’s knife, and nail Dobie Gillis right through the throat. He falls on his face, gurgling into the sand. It’s an unpleasant sound, so I steal his rifle and drop to one knee.

More than Dobie, what I’ve had my eye on is another Hellion, this one a bit more human looking, in the flatbed of a small pickup truck, swinging a sixty-caliber machine gun in my direction. He has a good position and stable footing and I have a bad feeling that he knows what he’s doing. I can’t take a chance on missing him when I shoot. So I don’t shoot him.

I shoot a jerrican of fuel strapped to the side of the truck.

It explodes with an extremely satisfying whoomp. Satisfying to me, at least. It would be nice to think that the screams from the burning Hellion are him cheering me on for making such a great shot, but that’s probably too much to hope for.

I get a bead on the human torch while a group of Hellions and souls rushes to him with blankets and water to put out the flames. They’re not going to make it in time. I squeeze the trigger.

“Excuse me,” says a very human voice nearby. “Before you shoot.”

I glance over and there’s a small man in a white duster standing on the roof of what looks like an armored ’69 Charger with tank treads instead of wheels. He’s out in front of the pack, like maybe he’s the one leading them through the desert.

“Excuse me,” he says again through a megaphone.

I keep the rifle trained on Johnny Storm and yell, “What?”

“We would all appreciate it if you didn’t kill Megs.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I’m not aiming a gun at you. And I’m asking you politely.”

I take quick stock of my situation. There are maybe a hundred idiots out there in those vehicles. My guess is that every one of them is heavily armed and eager to kill. There are more high-caliber guns mounted on other vehicles and other Hellion weapons that I don’t recognize. If everybody opens up on me at once, hoodoo or not, I’m going to look like a flank steak shooting out of a wood chipper. Plus, I don’t know where I am. I still don’t know if I’m going to stop bleeding. I’m not sure that I can do hoodoo more complicated than yanking dead things out of dirt. I’ve swallowed enough sand that I’m going to shit cinder blocks. And I stubbed my toe on Horned Toad. It really hurts.

I lower the rifle and let the burning fucker’s friends put him out.

“Thank you,” says the man on the Charger.

I point at the pickup truck.

“I want that prick’s water. And his ammo.”

After a slight hesitation, he says, “That’s fair.”

“No, it’s not,” someone shouts. I look around and spot a leather-clad woman on a tricked-out Hellion Harley. I can’t see her face, but she has her goggles pushed up to her hairline. “That’s not how things work. He’s not one of us. He obviously doesn’t know anything. Just kill him.”

Doesn’t know anything? Doesn’t know what?

She kicks her Harley to life and revs the engine. I raise the rifle again as she gets ready to charge me.

From behind her, a man riding a small hellhound cuts her off. She pulls her gun and sticks it right in his face. The man puts his hands up. Like her, he’s wearing goggles, but he also has a rag around his nose and mouth.

“What the fuck are you doing?” says the woman.

“Don’t kill him,” shouts the man. “I recognize him. He can be useful.”

I get to my feet and squint in the hellhound rider’s direction. I can’t make out a goddamn thing through his bandanna and goggles.

The man with the megaphone says, “You’ll vouch for him as a reasonable man?”

“I will,” says the rider.

I put the rifle back to my shoulder. “Reasonable? Call me that again and you’ll do it without a head.”

The rider turns to me, pushes up his goggles, and pulls down his bandanna.

I almost call out to him, but catch myself in time.

The man riding the hellhound is Father Traven.

I lower the rifle.

“Ah. So, you do know the father,” says Charger Man. “What’s your name, friend?”

I look at him.

“ZaSu Pitts.”

That gets some laughs. Traven doesn’t laugh, but he doesn’t give me away either.

I look back at Charger Man.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“He’s the Magistrate,” says Traven. “He leads the havoc.”

“Havoc? You assholes sound like more fun every minute.”

“Are there others with you?” says the Magistrate. “Back on the mountain from where you came down?”

So they could see me. They knew I was here all along. That makes them more than a pack of Hellion one-percenters. And then there’s Father Traven. He wouldn’t throw in with a useless group no matter how bad things were.

I shake my head.

“No one I know about.”

The Magistrate nods.

“Then that is where we will camp.”

“You can’t be serious,” says the woman on the Harley. “He’s killed two of us and burned another.”

“Yet Father Traven says he’s reasonable and I’m inclined to believe him.” The Magistrate glances off in the directing of the mountain. “A lone traveler out here, confronted and attacked. What would you have done, Daja? Personally, I’d like to talk to Mr. Pitts.”

Daja. Got to remember her. She backs down, but I can see it in her body language and hear it in her voice. No matter what the Magistrate says, she’s not done with me.

“Just talk?” says Daja.

“Of course. And he will be judged just like anybody else,” says the Magistrate.

“And if he’s found guilty?”

“Then his fate will be that of all the ignobles.”

Cheers. Fists pumps. It’s a goddamn pep rally. All we need are cheerleaders.

The group around the burned Hellion steps back as he dies and his body pops out of existence. They all look in my direction. That’s me. Making friends wherever I go.

The Magistrate points.

“We will camp at the base of the mountains. He said no one is there. That will be his first test.”

I raise my hand like I’m in the third grade.

“Excuse me. What if I’m not in the mood to get tested?”

I prop the rifle on my hip, but Traven calls out, “Pitts. Calm down. It’s going to be all right.”

“Is it?” I say to the Magistrate.

He opens his hands.

“I cannot guarantee that. But consider this: Father Traven has vouched for you. That means he, too, will be judged. If you are not a reasonable man, if you are a stupid man, he will die with you.”

Slowly, I let the barrel of the rifle drop so it’s pointing at the ground.

The fucker called my bluff. He points to the half-burned pickup truck.

“Can you drive that vehicle?” says the Magistrate.

“I usually steal better, but yeah.”

“Then ride with us when we make camp tonight. If you try to leave the havoc or attack anyone else, I will personally kill the good father. Understand?”

“Yes.”

Daja looks around at where her dead friends used to be. “And what about the two, now three, dead?”

“We will have a memorial service tonight,” the Magistrate says.

He calls to a patched-together ambulance.

“Mimir, come and ride with me. I will need an oracle tonight.”

A woman in a ratty fur coat, with some kind of plastic mask over the lower part of her face to filter out the dust, steps from the ambulance and goes to the Magistrate’s Charger. Without another word, he points to the mountains and the vehicles rumble to life.

I walk to the charred pickup truck as Traven rides his hellhound up beside me. Dressed in boots and a ragged leather duster, he gives me that sad smile of his and I shake my head at him.

“It’s good to see you, ZaSu,” he says.

“You’ve got some explaining to do,” I tell him.

“So do you.”

I start the truck.

“Do those bastards have anything to drink?”

“Of course.”

“And food?”

He nods.

“Good. At least I’ll get a last meal.”

He takes off the rag that was covering his face and wipes the blood from some of my worst wounds.

“Don’t talk like that,” he says. “It’s going to be fine.”

“Yeah? If Ahab up there has a real oracle, he’s going to find out I’m lying about who I am.”

“We’ll deal with that when the time comes. Have a little faith.”

I look at him.

“When you died, faith got you sent to a frozen gulag at the ass end of Hell, remember?”

He nods.

“And it got me rescued. By you. You’re who I have faith in.”

Some riders nearby signal us forward.

“These days, Father, I’m not worried about dying. I’m just worried about doing it hungry.”

Traven and I pull out, joining the havoc convoy heading for the mountains. The only thing I’m wondering about besides what time they’re going to kill me is the thing at the back of the havoc. It’s under a giant tarp and being hauled by the construction equipment on a double-length sixteen-wheeler bed. People like this, they don’t take anything with them that they don’t need. So, what do a bunch of Hellions and damned souls need with something the size of a Saturn V rocket? Maybe I’ll live long enough to find out. The way the day is going, though, I’ll be lucky to make it through the appetizer course.

WE DRIVE TO the base of the mountains, a herd of lumbering, smog-belching dinosaurs. Maybe ten yards away, Daja is riding parallel with me on the Harley. I’d rather be on the bike than this trashed pickup, but I don’t think she’d trade me.

When we reach the mountains, the vehicles fan out in a semicircle, forming a defensive perimeter. That means they know what they’re doing and they’re worried that someone out there might be gunning for them. Whoever thinks they’re hard enough to take on this crusty bunch, I don’t want to meet. I stay put in the jeep while the others set up camp. It’s a cruel joke. This thing was on fire a few minutes ago, but now I can’t find a damned thing I can use to light a Malediction.

Father Traven leaves me and disappears into a small teardrop-shaped camper being hauled by a rusty tow truck. I wonder if I hopped on his hellhound and headed straight up the mountains, how many of these assholes could follow me? Hellhounds can climb like goddamn apes and go places no ordinary vehicle would dare. On the other hand, I spotted plenty of Hellion Legionnaires on the drive over. All it would take is one good sniper and off I’d go to a time-share in Tartarus. No thanks. Mason is still down there and I couldn’t stand his gloating if we ended up roommates. I’ll stay put, play dumb, and see what happens next. Besides, being murdered made me hungry. If these clowns are going to stone me in the public square, I’m going out with a full stomach.

While they set up camp, most of the mob goes out of their way to ignore me. I wave my unlit cigarette to a couple of the ones that dare look at me, but I get the finger, not a light. I settle back looking bored, but watch them while they work. They’re fast and efficient setting things up. Everybody knows their job. That means they’ve been doing this for a while. Daja doesn’t do any heavy lifting, but moves from group to group answering questions and moving people around when there’s a group that needs help. We lock eyes for a second and I give her a little wave. She turns away and gets back to work. Okay, she’s smarter than I was hoping. Not so easy to provoke. That means I’ll have to go for someone else.

Everyone in the camp is armed. While that sounds bad, it works in my favor. It means all I have to do is find someone weak enough, hurt enough, or stupid enough that I can kill them and grab their gear. While I’m scoping out the rabble for easy pickings, Traven comes over. He smiles like he can read my mind.

“Relax,” he says. “You have business with the Magistrate. No one is going to bother you.”

“Meaning, I won’t be stuffed like a turkey and cooked until afterward. That’s a comfort.”

“No one’s resorted to cannibalism, yet.”

“Unless that’s why they’re in Hell.”

Traven smiles.

“True. But as long as they’re part of the group, there are rules of conduct that everybody follows.”

“Even the Magistrate?”

“Even him.”

I nod and look back at his trailer.

“I never took you for a ramblin’ man. When did you decide you didn’t like Blue Heaven?”

Traven glances at the ground. The last time I had seen him, I was hiding him in a funny little burg called Blue Heaven. It isn’t Heaven or Hell, but exists in a funny limbo zone between each. It’s a kind of sanctuary for people with nowhere else to go.

“It’s gone,” he says.

“Blue Heaven? What do you mean it’s gone?”

Traven looks around the mob like he’s nervous about someone listening.

“The Magistrate and the havoc appeared there a few weeks ago. They told the ruling council they were looking for something he called the Lux Occisor.”

“I learned a little Latin when I was in Lucifer’s library. I know lux is ‘light.’ What’s the other word?”

“‘Slayer.’ ‘Killer.’ Take your pick.”

“Fun. Do you know what it is?”

Traven runs a hand through his hair. I swear he has a few gray ones he didn’t have before.

“If we did, maybe we could have given him … something. The Magistrate doesn’t talk about it in specifics.”

“And when Blue Heaven couldn’t come up with the light killer?”

“The havoc killed anyone who ran. Then they burned Blue Heaven to the ground.”

So much for my former life as a savior. A lot of the people I try to save have a bad habit of not staying that way.

I look over my shoulder and across the camp.

“This all has to do with whatever is under the tarp, doesn’t it?”

“That would be my guess,” Traven says.

“Do you know what it is?”

“‘Salvation.’”

I give him a look.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s all the Magistrate will say about it.”

“You’re hauling around a ten-ton leap of faith.”

“Isn’t a leap of faith what salvation is?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

I feel stupid holding an unlit cigarette, so I put it back in the pack.

“Let me see if I have this straight,” I say. “The Magistrate and his party boys show up in Blue Heaven and have a barbecue. So, how is it you ended up joining them?”

He looks back at the tarp, too.

“When the Magistrate found out I was the librarian and Blue Heaven’s historian, he strongly encouraged me.”

“And who’s going to say no to King Kong?”

He draws a breath.

“I wish I could say that I was brave enough to refuse. I took some of the most important books, my pens and ink, and I’ve been with the havoc ever since. The Magistrate wants a record of the crusade. He thinks it will be important. So do I, but not for the reasons he thinks.”

I’m still bleeding and my left leg hurts. Horned Toad got my quadriceps and the meat isn’t healing fast enough for my taste. I shake blood off my boot onto the sand.

“They don’t have Nuremberg trials in Hell, Father.”

“No. But perhaps they do in Heaven.”

“Always the optimist,” I say, and he shrugs. “As for the other thing, I would have joined him, too.”

He turns his head toward me.

“That’s nice of you to say, but I know you wouldn’t.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. When a tidal wave washes out the luau, you surf it and look for land.”

“Thank you,” he says. “I’m sorry. I know this is a strange moment for you, but I have to ask …”

I put a hand on his shoulder.

“Brigitte is fine. She’s working. Doing auditions. She got a part on some cable-TV series.”

He puts his hand over mine for a minute.

“Thank you.”

“She misses you.”

He takes his hand away.

“It’s mutual.”

Brigitte Bardo and Father Traven were an item back in the world. A defrocked priest and an ex-porn-star zombie hunter. A Hollywood love story if there ever was one.

“And how are the others? How’s Candy?” he says.

Now it’s my turn to get awkward.

“Everyone is fine. Candy’s doing good. But she goes by a different name now. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Of course,” he says.

We stand there in awkward silence, and I think about all the life leaking out of me. There’s only one thing that’s going to take my mind off all this blood.

“I don’t suppose you have a light, do you?”

Traven goes to his camper and comes back with a match. I take out a Malediction and he lights it for me. Breathe in a big lungful of the beautiful poison.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

“Then you’ll fit in just fine around here,” he says.

He nods to the camper.

“I have some work to do. I’ll come back when the Magistrate calls for you.”

“Don’t worry about me. I bet I’m the only one here with cigarettes. The rest of these assholes are smoking locoweed and pocket lint.”

Traven gives me a small smile and then heads back to his camper.

“Enjoy the smoke,” he says.

I sure as hell will. It might be my last.

I COOL MY heels in the burned-out pickup for an hour. Smoke one Malediction and light a second off it. But I stop there. Got to ration myself, which isn’t in my nature, but these are weird times.

The good news is that while I was bleeding when I started the first cigarette, I’ve pretty much stopped by the time I flip the butt of the second away. That’s means I still heal quickly. Good news there.

The cigarette arcs through the air in the direction of the mountains and almost hits Daja, who’s headed my way. She doesn’t even flinch. Just tracks the flying smoke’s flight with her eyes and watches it miss her by a couple of inches. Nice.

She crooks a finger at me.

“Let’s go,” she says.

“Where to?”

“The Magistrate wants to see you.”

“That’s okay. I like the view right here.”

She rests her hand on the grip of her pistol, cop-style. She’s packing a Colt 1911. Not a new gun, but it still blows nice holes in things.

“The Magistrate wants you with a clear head, so I’m not going to shoot you anywhere that’ll kill you. Just where it hurts.”

“Fine. I’ll go to prom with you, but you’re paying for the limo.”

I swing my legs down out of the truck and yell, “Father! We’re up.”

Traven comes out of his camper, putting on the ragged duster.

We follow Daja to a Hellion motor home. It looks less like something your grandparents would drive to the Grand Canyon and more like a Gothic mansion on wheels—one designed by insects and decorated by something with more tentacles than taste. Hellion chic. Daja opens the door and we go in.

The light inside comes from glowing glass globes that seem to float above the furniture. A cramped sofa along one wall and a small table with chairs in the center of the claustrophobic room finish off the nightmare.

The Magistrate sets down a book he was reading when we come in. He points to chairs at the table for me and Traven, then sits down across from us. Daja doesn’t sit. She stays behind me doing her best to loom. At another time and place I’d say it didn’t work and I’d mean it. But right here and right now, I’m a little off my game and I don’t like her and her gun behind me.

The Magistrate says, “Thank you for coming without causing any more trouble. I somehow think it’s not in your nature to so graciously respond to a summons.”

I shrug. “It beats bleeding in a truck. Do you have anything to drink around here?”

The Magistrate turns around, takes a glass off a small table, and sets it in front of me.

“I had a feeling you might be thirsty.”

I sniff it. No smell.

“Water?” I say.

He nods.

I squint at him.

“You wouldn’t try to roofie a guest, would you?”

“Do I strike you as that sort of man?” says the Magistrate.

“No. But I’ve been wrong before. And we are in Hell.”

Back in the world, I can usually tell when someone is lying. I can hear their heart, watch the pupils of their eyes and micro-expressions on their face. But most of that doesn’t work on the dead. No heartbeat. Micro-expressions dulled by death. And it’s too dark in here to see the Magistrate’s eyes.

I down whatever’s in the glass, though, because at this point I’d drink paint thinner out of a hobo’s galoshes.

What I swallow seems like water. There’s no weird aftertaste and my eyes don’t start spinning. So far so good.

“Feeling better?” he says.

“Okay. But I’d feel great if you had something stronger.”

The Magistrate moves his head from side to side. “We shall see,” he says. “Now that you’re feeling better, are you still Mr. Pitts in here or can we start off on a friendlier footing?”

“Are you still the Magistrate in here?”

“Of course.”

“Then I’m still Mr. Pitts.”

Traven gives me a look, but I give him one right back.

“As you wish,” says the Magistrate. “What were you doing on the mountain?”

His speech is clipped, like English isn’t his first language. But I can’t identify his accent.

I say, “I have no idea.”

He cocks his head.

“You weren’t spying on us?”

“Until you stopped I thought you were a dust devil come to pick my bones clean.”

“Who else is on the mountain?”

“No one that I know of. I told you that when I fried your friend.”

I hear Daja move behind me, but she stops when the Magistrate holds up his hand.

“How did you get onto the mountain? Where did you come from?” he says.

“I was busy getting murdered on Earth.”

“You’re dead?” blurts Traven.

I hold up my left arm to show him that it’s my old human arm again and not a biomechanical Kissi prosthetic.

The Magistrate looks to him, then me, then back to Traven and his big goddamn mouth.

“Why would Mr. Pitts being dead surprise you, Father?” he says. “Hell is a place of the dead.”

Traven mumbles, “It’s just that …”

“This isn’t my first time in Hell,” I say.

The Magistrate leans back.

“I see. Another mortal foolish enough to make a deal with the Devil. Did he send you back with promises of immortality? How did it feel when you realized you’d been tricked?”

“It wasn’t like that,” I say. “In fact, Lucifer and me are pretty simpatico these days. The old Lucifer. The retired one. He’s the one who thought it would be funny to leave me on the fucking mountain.”

The Magistrate continues to lean back, but he doesn’t look so smug anymore.

“You mean the Lucifer who has become Death?” he says.

I upend the glass and get a few more drops of water.

“Do you know a bunch of other Lucifers?”

He leans forward and rests his arms on the table.

“You are friends with Death. My, how special you must be.”

“We don’t go to karaoke or anything, but we’ve had a cocktail or two.”

“I find it hard to believe you, Mr. Pitts.”

I push the glass back to his side of the table.

“I don’t give a single fuck what you believe. Unless it means I don’t get a drink later. Then I care a lot.”

The Magistrate takes the glass and puts it back on the small table.

“Why would your ‘friend’ Death leave you here in the middle of nowhere?” he says.

“Isn’t it obvious?” says Traven.

“No. It is not. Why do you think he was there?”

Traven opens a hand to the Magistrate and then to me. “For this. This moment. This meeting. This is why Mr. Pitts was on the mountain. Death wanted us all to meet.”

“To what end?” says the Magistrate.

“To help with the work, of course.”

“You’re so sure?”

Traven leans forward, speaking quietly, but intensely.

“Death could have left him in Pandemonium or at the gates of Heaven with the other refugees. He could have left him in the wilderness where no one would ever find him. But no. He left him right here in the Tenebrae, directly in our path.”

“Perhaps Death left him so that we could dispatch him to Tartarus,” says the Magistrate.

“Perhaps he has something we need.”

“Or perhaps Death was having a joke on all of us.”

“I vote for that,” I say. “Death loves a joke. Pull my finger he says and poof, you’re gone.”

Traven lays his hand on the table.

“I’m telling you. Death has sent us a gift. This man is useful to the cause. I don’t know exactly how, but it will reveal itself.”

“How do you know that he isn’t lying about everything?” the Magistrate says. “From where he came from to his alleged friendship with Death?”

“Because I knew him.”

“When you were alive.”

“Yes.”

“How do you know he is the same man you knew then? Perhaps he’s gone mad. Perhaps he’s a spy.”

“Excuse me,” I say. “What time does the buffet start? The service here it terrible.”

“Stop it, Pitts,” snaps Traven.

The Magistrate shakes his head.

“Yes. Stop it, Mr. Pitts. We will know everything when Mimir gets here,” he says.

Fuck. The oracle. I’d forgotten about her.

“But for my own curiosity,” the Magistrate says, “what is the new Death like?”

“Is this part of the interrogation or are we just dishing?”

“It is simply a question.”

I look at him for a minute. He didn’t poison me and he could have. He also hasn’t let Daja shoot me and I know she’d love to.

I say, “Death is pretty much like he was when he was Lucifer. He didn’t much like that job either, but he was good at it. Truth is, I haven’t seen him much since he’s become Death. It’s like being a cabby. Long hours.”

“You were friends, then?” says the Magistrate. “Confidants?”

“Why not? I’m a people person.”

The Magistrate aims a finger at me.

“The Devil had many secrets. What was his greatest?”

“Now it’s twenty questions? Fuck you,” I say. “That’s his secret and mine.”

Daja moves again. I’m getting really tired of this.

“Please answer the question,” says the Magistrate.

“Please answer,” says Traven. There’s something in the bastard’s eyes. It takes me a while, but then I recognize it: now that he’s seen a familiar face, he doesn’t want to be alone again. I can’t blame him.

“There are a couple of things it could be,” I say. “But what I think you mean is the wound. The one Dad gave him during the war in Heaven. The one that never healed. Until recently, at least.”

“You are saying the wound is healing?” says the Magistrate.

“Healed. It started getting better when he went home.”

The Magistrate stays silent for a minute. Then he whispers, “Interesting,” and looks at Daja.

When no one else says anything, I say, “Now I have some questions for you.”

“I am sure you do. Father, would you bring in Mimir?” the Magistrate says.

“Of course.”

He gets up and goes outside. I lean my head back and look up at Daja. She doesn’t look any better upside down. Her dark, dusty hair is long and she wears it tied back. Her leathers are light and worn. She’s strong. She could wear heavier leathers, but she likes the light ones because they let her move faster, so she’s down for a gunfight, a knife fight, or fists. I smile up at her wondering which one she’d like to start with on me. She scowls back.

Traven comes back in with Mimir in tow. She’s still in her ratty fur coat, but she’s taken the bandanna off her face. Turns out it was hiding a respirator attached to a small oxygen tank under her coat. She sits across the table, next to the Magistrate. I can hear her labored breathing all the way over on my side.

The Magistrate gently takes her hand.

“Thank you for coming, Mimir.”

“Of course,” she says, her voice muffled by the oxygen mask. “How can I help?”

The Magistrate looks at me.

“Mimir, I am concerned that Mr. Pitts here might be a spy or intend to harm us in some other way. He says that he found himself on the mountain and that he was placed there by Death himself. Is he telling the truth?”

“Do you mean, did Death leave him or that he believes Death left him?”

“How did he get onto the mountain, Mimir?”

She opens a canvas Safeway shopping bag (Have I mentioned recently that they bootleg a lot of our stuff in Hell? They steal cable, too. Don’t tell anyone.) and lays a whole spook show on the table. At the center is a bowl made from the skull of a Hellion with three horns that make three perfect little legs for it. She pours in powders, a few drops of a potion, a seed pod, and a lot of other crap I can’t identify. As she grinds it all together, I wish Vidocq was here. I bet Vidocq wishes he was here. The alchemist in him would be going nuts right now. He’d know what kind of moonshine Popcorn Sutton here is brewing. All I know is that I don’t want to drink it when she’s done. Things might get tense soon.

When she’s finished, I put my hands on the table, ready to push back and try to knock Daja off balance before she can shoot me.

But Mimir doesn’t come up with the glass. She pulls a match from her bag and lights the mess in the bowl. Just as it starts to stink, she unhooks her respirator from the oxygen tank and puts the tube over the Dumpster fire she’s started.

I start to say something stupid, but Traven’s hand closes on my arm in a goddamn death grip.

Mimir sucks in the smoke and suddenly I want another Malediction. Her eyes roll back in her head. She begins to shake. She mumbles something unintelligible, like she’s chanting or speaking in tongues. It’s your basic oracle carny act. I’ve seen a million of them. They always look like they’re about to have an aneurysm. If they didn’t, the rubes wouldn’t think they were getting their money’s worth.

After a long moment, Mimir pulls out the tube and puts a lid on the skull bowl. She blows a long trail of smoke from out of the tube, clearing her wheezing lungs, and hooks her respirator back to the oxygen tank. She takes several long, deep breaths.

“What did you see?” says the Magistrate. He looks at me. “Is he telling the truth, Mimir?”

I get ready again to bash Daja.

Mimir takes one more long breath and nods her head.

“He is not a spy?”

“He is not,” she rasps.

I hear a rustle of leather behind me and the quiet click of a small hammer being lowered onto a small gun. Daja was playing me all along. She knew what I’d do if things went bad. I was ready for her to pull her pistol, but she had a little pocket gun—a Derringer or something—on me the whole time. Suddenly I hate and like her even more all at the same time.

“How did he make his way up the mountain?” says the Magistrate.

“Death placed him there,” says Mimir.

“Why?”

“Death’s reasons are his own. To look too closely is to risk having his gaze fall upon you.”

“I understand,” the Magistrate says.

He pats Mimir’s shoulder as her breathing returns to its normal wheeze.

“I have one more question for you,” he says, and looks at me. “The gentleman that Death so graciously brought us calls himself Mr. ZaSu Pitts. Is that, in fact, who he is? And if not, who is he really?”

I tense again. This time Daja pulls her big pistol. The barrel brushes my ear. It tickles, which pisses me off. I don’t want to go to Tartarus giggling.

Traven looks at me and I look back at him. I’m stuck between a witch, a dime-store desert prophet, and a gunslinger who wants me extremely dead. And I can’t even reach my cigarettes.

Mimir takes the bowl and tosses the burning herbs outside. She comes back to the table and, lucky me, begins mixing a whole new brew that this time is going to reveal that not only am I a big fat liar, but so is Traven. I wonder if I should tell the Magistrate who I am. But that would make us liars. We’re fucked either way. Better keep quiet and play this out.

When she gets her hoodoo herbs piled up nice and high, Mimir sets them on fire. A dull yellow smoke drifts from the bowl, filling the camper with a smell like boiling cabbage in scorched motor oil. I start to say something when the contents of the bowl flare up, sucking the smoke back inside. An orange flame rises from the bowl, kicking up sparks. When it’s about a foot high, the flame begins to turn until it’s a miniature tornado, twisting and writhing above the upturned skull.

I say, “If you’re trying to make fondue, you’re doing it wrong.”

Mimir waves a hand in my direction. I stare at her.

“What do you want? Applause?”

“She wants you to put your hand in the fire, asshole,” says Daja.

“Yeah. That’s not happening.”

“I am afraid you must,” says the Magistrate.

I look at Traven.

“What do you say, Father?”

“You were brought here for a reason,” he says. “Do as they say.”

I shake my head. “You people have a shitty way of treating guests. I’m never staying at this hotel again.” But I put out my left hand. The heat hits me at the edge of the bowl. I hesitate.

“Daja. If he does not put his hand into the flame, please shoot the father.”

I hear her pull back the hammer on the pistol.

I push my hand forward.

“Mr. Pitts,” says the Magistrate. “I believe that you are right-handed. Please use that hand.”

I look at him.

“Is Magistrate your real name? Why don’t we both put our hands in the fire?”

Daja grabs my shoulder.

I put out my right hand.

“At least I’m not going to die in Fresno.”

And in I shove my mitt into the tornado.

I’ve been burned before. I’ve been shot, stabbed, poisoned, beaten, chewed on, and called rude names. I want to say that because of my vast experience in getting my ass handed to me that the fire is no big deal. But that would be a lie. This fire is a big deal. A huge deal. A giant, flaming, goddamn, piece-of-shit, agonizing, I-want-to-rip-my-own-head-off deal.

I lower my head. Close my eyes and grit my teeth. I’m sweating like a hog tap-dancing in a sauna. I want to scream the paint off the fucking walls. But I don’t make a sound. If I’m going to end up Captain Hook at the end of this, at least they won’t get that little piece of satisfaction.

I open my eyes. The flames are more intense than before and have changed color from a deep orange to a pale blue.

I lock eyes with Mimir. She nods and waves her hand again. I start to pull my hand back, going slow because I’m not looking forward to the sight of my charred stump. The moment I move, the Magistrate leans across the table, grabs my wrist, and shoves my hand back into the flames.

I’m close enough that I could lunge across the table and shove his smug face into the tornado until his eyes burn out. But Daja has the gun on Traven. I really want to do something, but I don’t know what. The pain is really getting to me and I think about Candy and everything I’ve lost and left behind, and it’s all so goddamn sad it’s like a Roy Orbison song, so I do the only logical thing.

I start singing “In Dreams.”

The Magistrate’s face shifts to somewhere between pissed and puzzled. But I keep singing, staring into the fire. Mimir sees an opening and snatches the bowl off the table. She douses the fire and slams the bowl down hard. The Magistrate lets go of my wrist and sits down, staring at Mimir. Fuck ’em both. I pull back my hand and look it over. Not a scorch mark or even a blister. The Magistrate’s oracle has some good hoodoo.

Mimir slaps the table. “If you wish to keep my services, do not interfere with my work again,” she shouts at the Magistrate.

He holds up his hands.

“My apologies, Mimir. It will not happen again,” he says. “But what did the flame tell you?”

The oracle gets up and dumps everything outside again. When she sits down she looks at me.

“He is who he says he is.”

I feel Daja shift her weight. I don’t have to look to know her pistol is now pointed at me.

“He is Mr. Pitts?”

“Yes.”

That was unexpected. Leave it to lunatics like this guy to hitch himself to a third-rate seer. Still, it’s nice for me. I don’t have to start killing people right away.

“Thank you, Mimir. Again, my sincere apologies.”

I take a big breath and let it out, happy me and Traven are still in one piece.

The oracle gathers her gear, wheezing in the respirator. As she gets up, she gives me a look. I have no goddamn idea what it means or why she lied or why Traven and I are still alive. When she leaves I look from Daja to the Magistrate.

“I think your pet monkey is getting tired. Why don’t you throw it a banana and send it home?”

Daja smacks me on the side of the head with the gun barrel.

“Daja. It is over,” says the Magistrate. “Put your gun down. Mr. Pitts has passed his first test. He will be staying with us for the time being.”

I rub the side of my aching head and raise my eyebrows.

“First test? I am going to crucify you people on Yelp.”

Traven gets up.

“Pitts passed the test. May we go?”

The Magistrate shakes his head.

“No. Mr. Pitts I would like to leave. You I would like to stay,” he says. He looks up at Daja and frowns. “And I would like a word with you as well.”

Traven pulls me to my feet. I’m a little light-headed from the pain and it’s hard to stop rubbing my hand. The father gives me a little shove to the door. I look back at the Magistrate.

“What’s under the tarp, Roy Bean?”

“The future,” he says. “Ours and now possibly yours.”

“I’ve got my own future. I don’t need yours.”

The Magistrate gives me a tiny smile.

“Thank you, Mr. Pitts. We will talk again soon.”

On the way out I bump my shoulder into Daja’s like an annoyed sixth grader. She’s already in trouble with Dad, though, so she doesn’t say a word.

Outside, I have to lean against the side of the motor home for a minute. The fire test took more out of me than I was ever going to let those assholes see.

The camp is weirdly quiet. A handful of Hellions attend to cook fires. A few others move trucks and construction equipment around. But the vast majority of the havoc is gathered by a hill of burning crosses erected on the other side of whatever is under the tarp. Their heads are down as a group of robed creeps perform some kind of ceremony.

So, this really is a crusade after all. And now I’m part of it. Hallelujah.

I listen at the motor-home door, trying to hear if Traven is all right. But if the Magistrate got the answer he wanted from the oracle, he has no reason to hurt the father. Anyway, I can’t hear a damned thing.

I walk back to Traven’s camper thinking that maybe I’d’ve been better off if there had been a storm and it snuffed me back on the plains. It would be simpler than dealing with this sideshow.

THE SERMON BREAKS up a few minutes later. Hellions and damned souls straggle back to camp. They’re pretty buddy-buddy for a bunch of torturers and torture victims. I guess there have been weirder alliances Downtown.

Grating Hellion music blasts from a tricked-out Impala lowrider. When you get down to it—mysterious religious services aside—the havoc is like any camp. The cooks start filling dinner plates. Damned souls and Hellions argue, while others laugh or barter. Shooters load up on ammo from a Hellion APC. It has massive bullhorns on top and iron shark teeth welded on the front. Someone strapped broken mannequin parts in between the jaws. Cute gag, but where did they get dressing dummies way out in the Tenebrae? They must make runs into Hell itself, maybe even Pandemonium. That’s good news for me. If I have to make a run for it, I can disappear in ten seconds flat there. All I have to do is survive until then. When I get back to Hell I can start figuring out a way to get back home.

I wonder who Daja has spying on me? No way this bunch is letting an outsider stroll around without surveillance. There’s probably a rifle sighted on me right now. Or am I just being paranoid? Being dead has thrown me off my game. I need some privacy to figure out how much of me is left. I have some hoodoo and I didn’t bleed out. Good news there. But how strong am I? How fast? Is the angel part of me powerful enough to manifest a Gladius? And yet, for all those questions, the one that’s truly bugging me is this: Why the hell did it have to be Audsley Ishii who killed me?

I’ve fought Hellions, slimy monsters, armed-to-the-teeth mortals, scary little girls, and forgotten, pissed-off gods. And it was a third-rate shitbird I got fired from his lousy job who finally did me in. Maybe it was poetic justice. Maybe it was me getting soft. Every time I decide to take things easy or deal with my PTSD, something rotten happens. There won’t be any of that down here. Hell is a Zero Slack zone. No one gets a second chance from me down here. Which means I need weapons. But first I need something to eat and a little sleep. Dying is like the worst jet lag you’ve ever had.

Rubberneckers from the havoc wander by, but none of them will meet my eye. They just want to sniff the new meat. That’s okay. I’d do the same thing. I keep still and look as oblivious as I can. Today’s lesson, kids, is to not look for trouble until I have a better handle on the situation. I’m perfectly prepared to look a little dumb if that’s what it takes.

Just as I’m getting bored and cranky, Traven comes out of the Magistrate’s motor home.

He gestures and we head to his camper.

“You were in there for a while,” I say.

“These things take time.”

“Complaining that no one responded to his birthday Evite, was he?”

Traven nods to someone.

“I was taking his confession.”

“You’re back in the priest game?”

“I don’t think excommunication counts for a lot down here,” he says.

That actually makes me smile.

“Did you do the other thing?”

A bug-headed Hellion in a sombrero and dirty serape glowers at me. I smile like a dummy and keep walking.

“You want to know if I ate his sins,” Traven says.

“Did you?”

“Of course. It’s always been part of what I do.”

I look at him.

“Even in Hell? What does anyone care about sins down here?”

“It’s an individual thing. The Magistrate’s job is difficult.”

“Believe me, I know.”

Traven looks surprised.

“You know the Magistrate?”

I shake my head.

“I know a killer when I see one and he’s one cold Charlie Starkweather motherfucker.”

“It’s not that simple,” says Traven.

“That isn’t criticism. I’m just trying to figure out how things work down here.”

“I told you. It’s a crusade.”

“Because the Crusades worked out so well back home.”

“I’ve pointed that out, but he isn’t interested in mortal history.”

What a shock.

I look at him.

“But you sound like you believe in this guy’s half-assed jihad.”

Traven puts his hands in his pockets.

“I’ve believed what I’ve had to in order to survive. And even then, I’ve questioned his methods.”

“I’m guessing a guy travels with his own personal havoc isn’t the candy-and-flowers type.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“So, you’re raiders. How bad is it?”

“Bad. When it happens … just don’t try to stop it.”

We reach the camper and Traven opens the door.

“There it is,” I say. “I came all the way to here just to be the biker trash my mom always warned me about.”

“Death does have its fun with us,” he says. “Would you like some food?”

I lean against the side of the camper with the open desert at my back so I can keep an eye on the camp.

“Does that mean I’m not being executed?”

“Not tonight.”

“Food sounds good, but what I really want is another light.”

I take out the Maledictions.

Traven points to the pack.

“Could I have one of those, too?”

“Sure.”

I tap one out and hand it to him. He lights mine, then his.

I say, “I found them on the mountain.”

“A good omen.”

“Or bad housekeeping.”

“Let’s go inside,” he says. “You’re not a popular man around here.”

“I’m getting that impression.”

He hesitates in the doorway.

“You know, I can do it for you, too.”

“Eat my sins?”

“Yes.”

I shake my head.

“Thanks, but sometimes I think my sins are the only thing holding me together.”

“That’s not true. You have a higher calling, Mr. Pitts.”

“I’m God’s special little snowflake. You don’t have to tell me.”

I take a pull on the cigarette. Watch Daja moving smoothly through the havoc, a wolf watching over her flock.

“What’s Daja’s story?”

“Her name is Dajaskinos,” says Traven. “She’s the Magistrate’s second in command. She’s very devoted.”

“They lovers?”

“No. More like father and daughter.”

“Was the guy I fried her lover?”

“I don’t know.”

“She really hates me.”

“She’s suspicious. You didn’t come to us in the usual way. Usually, we pick up new members from volunteers among groups we encounter.”

“The ones that survive the havoc.”

“That’s usually the way it works.”

I watch Daja until she steps into a city bus blaring smoke and music. The smoke from whatever they’re cooking doesn’t smell bad.

I look at Traven.

“Am I going to have to kill Daja?”

“Please don’t,” he says, his eyes going a little wide. “And don’t talk that way around here. She is powerful and respected.”

“I was afraid of that. The worst kind of boss: a good one. Don’t worry. I’m not killing anybody. I’m just making conversation. It would put you on the Magistrate’s shit list and me back where I started.”

“Which is?”

“Dead, lost, and with only half a pack of smokes. The dictionary definition of Hell.”

“Amen to that,” Traven says. He goes into the camper and I follow him.

IN A FEW minutes, he goes out and comes back with a couple of plates heaped with Hellion meat and something that’s sort of like gluey mashed potatoes. The meat is a little gamy, but I dive in headfirst and don’t come up until I’ve finished every scrap on the plate. Traven offers me some of his dinner, but I wave a hand at him.

“I don’t want you eating my sins and I’m sure not eating yours.”

He laughs and goes back to his food.

When he’s through, we smoke and talk. I tell him more about Brigitte. Everything I can think of. Later I explain how we had to fake Candy’s death and how she’s Chihiro now. When Traven asks about my murder I tell him what little I know. Ishii. Me letting down my guard. The funny hoodoo knife he used.

“If Ishii is the lowlife you describe, where would he get a knife like that?” says Traven.

Why the hell didn’t I think of that?

I sit there like a dummy trying to come up with an answer. Did he buy it off some witch with a grudge? Maybe from the White Light Legion? There was also one of the Augur, Thomas Abbot’s bodyguards, who didn’t like me. What was his name? Maybe he could come up with a weapon like that. Then something else occurs to me.

Wormwood.

I lay it out for Traven as simply as I can.

Wormwood is like a mob-run bank if the mob was a Hellion horde and the bank was the world. They make money when the stock market goes up and when currencies collapse and a few million poor slobs starve to death. They make money on terrorist bombs, and where and when the next Ebola outbreak kills the most people. They make money on who is or isn’t damned.

And they make money on me.

Who I kill. Who I don’t. Whether I’m a good boy or bad, they make a profit. And it pisses me off. I can’t say for sure that they’re behind my murder, but I know this: someone just made a fortune off my currently decaying ass.

MY EYES HAVEN’T completely focused yet, but I can make out a silhouette in the door of Traven’s camper. It’s a man and he has a knife in his hand. I kick him with my good leg and he bounces off the camper’s roof and comes down onto me.

The guy stinks. Like a T-bone steak that’s been left out in the sun and gone maggoty. He wheezes while he tries to shove the knife through my throat. He doesn’t feel that strong, but he’s on top of me with all of his weight centered on the blade.

My eyes finally focus, but it’s too dark in the van to see who it is. This seems like as good a time as any to see how strong I am and toss the killer’s ass outside. Of course, if my aim is off, he’s just going to land on me again, and maybe get lucky with the knife and my throat.

I shouldn’t have had that Hellion wine with Traven. Between it and my murder jet lag, my reflexes are all off. There’s nothing subtle I can do from this position, so I just work on pushing the fucker off me.

I’m able to move Mac the Knife’s body without too much effort. Good news. I’m still strong. Bad news. There’s something wrong with the guy’s skin. A big piece of his left arm slides off like a snake shedding its skin and the bastard comes down hard, knocking the wind out of me. While I’m trying to catch my breath, he rears back with the knife, ready to pig-stick me.

Instead, he stays up there and just twitches. A couple of big shudders. Then he sighs and does a backward swan dive out of the camper. By now, Traven is awake.

“What’s happening? Are you all right?” he says.

Mac the Knife is gone. There’s someone else silhouetted in the door, and she’s holding a knife. I’m sure it’s Daja, but instead of attacking me, the silhouette pulls off a respirator mask and says, “Jimmy, you are such an asshole.”

I squint at her through the dark. Something about the voice …

“Cherry Moon?”

She glances around and steps into the camper. Still wrapped in the ragged fur coat, she drops onto her knees and slithers over me like a shaggy snake.

“Seeing as how we’re both dead, can we finally fuck?” she says. “Right here. In front of the preacher.”

I push her off me.

“Thanks, but I’m busy bleeding right now.”

She glances back at the stab wound in my leg.

“I’ve seen you with worse. Now get that ass in the air and call me Mommy. And don’t pretend you’re not a bottom. I knew it the first time I met you.”

She climbs back on top of me, jamming her stupid knee into my knife wound. I reach up to push her off and she slides my hands over her breasts. She’s laughing when I notice Traven’s head looming over us in the dark. He looks confused.

“Wait,” he says. “You know the oracle?”

“She’s no oracle,” I say. “She’s Cherry Moon. A lunatic from my dim, dark past.”

Cherry was part of the magic circle I was in when Mason Faim sent me Downtown. She used the hoodoo he gave her to turn herself into an underage Lolita manga fuck doll. And alive or dead, she’s been screwing with me ever since.

Traven stares at Cherry grinding away on my crotch. He looks like the most puzzled holy man since Jesus saw Judas order fajitas at the Last Supper.

“No. She is the oracle,” he says.

“Oh, all right,” says Cherry. “Everybody get their pants off. You too, choirboy.”

She pinches Traven’s cheek.

“Me love you long time.”

I finally shove her off me. Cherry slams into the wall, shaking the camper. She’s still laughing.

“If the house is rocking, don’t bother knocking!”

I sit up and check my leg wound. It’s deep, but not too wide, like the knife went straight in. It’ll heal in no time.

“Stark, what is going on here?” says Traven, then corrects himself. “Pitts.”

“Don’t bother, Father,” I say. “Cherry knows me. She’s known it was me this whole time. What I don’t get is why she didn’t give me away.”

Cherry sits up, takes her time adjusting her miniskirt and coat. I pull the camper door closed.

“ZaSu Pitts. That’s the best you could come up with?” she says. “And why the funny name at all? Every asshole in Hell is afraid of Sandman Slim. Don’t you want that? Fuck, you could probably kick the Magistrate out and take over. We could ride the havoc all over Hell. One big party till the end of time.”

Traven looks at Cherry.

“You’re not a real oracle?” he says.

Cherry rolls her eyes and shoves one of her high heels into my leg. Like all my dealings with her, it hurts.

“You have any smokes left?”

I find my coat and give her a Malediction. She sparks it with a gold lighter in the shape of a Crucifix. Cherry looks at me, then turns her eyes to Traven.

“Did prickless here tell you that he killed me?”

Traven starts to say something and I cut him off.

“I didn’t kill her. I just didn’t get to her in time to save her. Mason’s attack dog—a guy named Parker—killed her.”

“Details, details,” says Cherry. “I’m still dead and it’s still your fault.”

“I’m sorry. If you were any less annoying, I’d be even more sorry.”

She looks at Traven.

“See? He admits it’s his fault. And I just saved his worthless ass. Doesn’t he owe me one quick fuck for that, Father?”

Traven takes a breath. This madness is way above his pay grade.

“So, you’re not a real oracle? Does the Magistrate know?”

She swats away the question.

“No. I’m a real oracle. I learned the whole seeing thing from a Hellion street swami. He did it for cash back in Pandemonium, but after everything went to shit because of this one.”

She digs her heel into me again.

“The swami took off and left me high and dry. Of course, I’d already learned the tricks by then … and helped myself to enough of his toys to set myself up when some bleeding hearts gave me a ride out of the city.”

“Where did you meet the havoc?” says Traven.

“We left Hell altogether and lit out for the Tenebrae. I’d spent some time here, so I knew my way around.”

“But you didn’t count on the Magistrate showing up,” I say.

She sighs and puffs the Malediction.

“Everyone who didn’t join up … well, the pope there can tell you all about it.”

I nod to the oxygen tank.

“What’s with the wheezing gaff?”

Cherry puts the respirator over her mouth and makes a silly face at me. She lowers it and says, “I’ve been a few places and done a few things since the last time we saw each other, Jimbo. I couldn’t take a chance on anyone recognizing me.”

“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t rat me out to the Magistrate today.”

She frowns.

“I’d never do that, ZaSu. The world—even this one—is a lot more fun with you in it.” She taps her ash onto Traven’s floor. “Besides, if things go belly up here, maybe Sandman fucking Slim can step up and actually save me this time.”

She blows smoke at me. I wave it away.

“As much of a pain in the ass as you are, you know I would.”

She points at me, but looks at Traven.

“Is he all right? What’s with the Boy Scout act?”

“We’ve been talking,” says Traven. “He’s trying to be a better person and deal with some of his mental issues.”

Cherry stares at me, a little horrified.

“He’s nothing but mental issues. You can’t fix him. You do and you’ll fuck us all. But especially me. I killed for this piece of shit today. He owes me.”

I limp to the camper door.

“That reminds me. If it wasn’t Daja who tried to kill me, let’s see who it was.”

“It’s Megs,” says Cherry. “Didn’t you smell him? You burned him up good, Jimmy. He looks like a s’more that fell in the fire.”

I get out of the camper and look at him. Cherry and Traven follow me.

We’re at the far edge of the camp, away from anything important. A nice place for an ambush. I look at the pile of meat on the ground.

“It’s Megs all right.”

He moans quietly, leaking blood.

The ground leading back to the main camp is a flat surface, and the desert floor is too hard to leave footprints. Nothing useful there. I kneel down and look Megs over.

“You two have been around. Does Lobster Boy look like he could get here under his own power?”

“I doubt it,” says Traven.

“Definitely not,” says Cherry. “I saw him at center camp. He was a goddamn basket case.”

I reach back in the camper and pull out the piece of Megs’s arm that came off in my hand. Toss it down next to him.

“That means someone helped him here. Carried or wheeled him over. We would have heard a vehicle.”

Cherry gives Megs a light kick.

“Making friends wherever you go, eh, Jimmy?”

“It’s Mr. Pitts,” I say. “If you want rescuing when the time comes, that is.”

Cherry drops the Malediction and crushes it under her shoe.

“Speaking of the time,” she says, and pulls the respirator up over her chin. “Time for me to get back to the peanut gallery. There’ll be rumors about you by now.”

She winks and pulls the respirator up over her face.

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone what a shy flower you were in the face, so to speak, of free pussy. A rare commodity in Hell, Jimmy, but you’d remember that if you hadn’t gone soft living the good life back home.”

“I’m bleeding and I just got murdered, Cherry. Give me a fucking break.”

“Keep an eye on him for me, Father,” she wheezes in her mask. “If anyone’s going to kill him down here, it won’t be Daja.”

“It will be you?” says Traven.

Cherry gives us a fingertip wave and heads back to camp.

Traven looks at me.

“Well. That was unexpected.”

“That’s one word for it.”

He looks down at Megs. “What are we going to do with him?”

I reach down and snap his neck. He blips out of existence a moment later.

Traven turns away.

“Please warn me the next time you’re going to do something like that.”

“Sorry.”

He looks back at where the body was a second before.

“There’s a lot of blood.”

“We’re going to need to cover it up.”

I look around.

“We’re close to the base of the mountain. I remember loose soil down there,” I say. “I’ll bring some over and cover the blood when things settle down.”

“You’ll need help.”

I look around for something else to cover the blood with, but there’s nothing.

“You’re in good with the Magistrate,” I say. “I won’t fuck that up. If things go wrong, it should be me they come after.”

“That’s not fair.”

“We’re in Hell. I just got knifed by a charcoal briquette and molested by a witch. Talk to me some more about fair.”

“At least let me be your lookout,” says Traven.

“Fine. But not now. When most of them are asleep.”

We go back into the camper. Traven settles back down on his cot and I lie on my coat on the floor with a couple of pillows. It’s not exactly comfortable, but it beats sleeping anywhere else at this crummy summer camp.

He says, “This has been an unusual day.”

“And we’re just getting started.”

“I know.”

“Good night, Father.”

“Whatever happens, it really is good to see you.”

“You too. Now shut up and let me rest awhile.”

A minute later Traven sits up.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier.”

“When I broke Megs’s neck? Don’t sweat it. Think of it like someone putting a dog out of its misery. Only he really, really hated the dog.”

“Maybe I was wrong earlier,” he says. “Maybe I can get excommunicated in Hell.”

“Pull that off and I sure as shit will let you eat my sins.”

AT LEAST ONE thing goes right. We get enough dirt to cover the blood without anybody seeing us. The rest of the night, though, Traven tosses and turns.

A few hours later, I wake to the ground shaking and a roar like Mechagodzilla. I run outside, but it isn’t an earthquake or a metal Kaiju invasion. It’s just the camp waking up and getting ready to move out. Vehicles gun their engines. Trucks maneuver out of the camp to clear a path for the cars. The semis and construction equipment get chained to the double-length flatbed carrying the tarp. It looks like complete chaos at first, but the moves are smooth and practiced. The havoc is one big, well-oiled machine.

Traven comes out of the camper and stands next to me.

I say, “Is it like this every day?”

“Not every day. We’ve camped for as long as three days while scouts have gone out surveilling the territory.”

“Hell’s own alarm clock.”

“We’re not in Hell, remember?”

“Right … I’ve been wondering about that. Why search the Tenebrae?”

He sits in the camper doorway with an old book in his lap.

“We go where the Magistrate leads us and whatever it is he’s looking for led us out here.”

He’s holding a book.

“Doing a little light reading?”

“I wish. This is an old Hellion treatise on ley lines, holy sites, and places of power down here.”

“If it points out any Dairy Queens let me know. I could sure go for a sundae.”

He gets up and heads to where Daja, Cherry Moon, and the Magistrate are studying a map spread out on the hood of his Charger.

I shout after him.

“The Magistrate seems like the Holy Roller type. Could the tarp be some kind of church on wheels?”

Traven stops.

“I doubt it. From what he says, it has to do with the war in Heaven.”

“Which side is he on?”

Traven pauses.

“Sometimes I’m not sure. He’s so full of righteous anger. Still, I like to think that, despite some of his methods, he’s one of the good guys.”

“Define ‘good guys.’”

“I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

“That’s not a comfort, Father. You could at least give your flock comfort.”

He makes the sign of the cross and ends it by giving me the finger. It actually makes me smile.

“That’s more like it,” I say.

“I’ll see you in a little while.”

“A little while” is relative—the four of them go over the map for a long time. Cherry throws stones. Traven consults his books. The Magistrate plots a course using a pile of shiny Hellion tools that make it look more like he’s dissecting something than reading a map. After a half hour of good old-fashioned geomancy, the Magistrate hops onto the hood and then the roof of the car like a goddamn gazelle. As he scans the horizon with a telescope, the others gather up the map and tools he scattered all over the ground. A minute later he jumps down just as gracefully as he got up. I didn’t expect that. I’d pegged him for a desk warrior. Serves me right for assuming too much too fast. I wonder what other tricks he can do?

By now, all the vehicles are ready to go. Traven heads back in my direction while Cherry goes back to her ambulance and Daja fires up her Harley. The Magistrate guns the Charger. As it belches black smoke a small cheer goes up. He pops the clutch, turns a donut, and blasts out into the desert at the head of the havoc. When Samael was Lucifer he could have learned some tricks from this guy. The prick knows how to put on a show for his people.

As the rest of the vehicles pull out, a Mohawked Hellion woman heads straight at me. I shift my weight, ready for a fight. Instead, she walks right past me and unlocks the cab of the pickup truck. When Traven makes it back, she comes around and locks his old book in the camper. She tosses me a set of keys, then she peels out after the others.

I look at him.

“I might be in charge of the library and records, but it doesn’t mean I’m trusted with them,” he says.

“He thinks you wouldn’t run off without your books.”

“Exactly.”

“Would you? Run off? I need to know if you’re with me when I see an opening to get clear.”

“Do you think that’s possible?”

“I don’t know, but I want to be ready. You with me?”

“Yes,” he says, but he’s not exactly excited about the prospect. I’m worried, but this isn’t the time for a heart-to-heart. Most of the havoc has already moved out and the half-dozen members left as our watchdogs are looking antsy. Traven wraps his bandanna around his face and steps onto his hellhound. I go back to the burned-out pickup and try the key.

Damn. It starts.

We head out after the others with our babysitters hot on our heels.

WE TRAVEL FOR hours across the Tenebrae’s monotonous plains. Imagine an optical illusion where you’re on a flat, endless road. There are mountains in the distance on both sides and low peaks in the far distance. And nothing ever changes. Nothing moves. Nothing gets any closer or farther away. You know you’re moving because you can feel the motion, but nothing ever fucking changes.

I’ve heard of souls who refused to enter Hell getting lost in the Tenebrae and wandering for years before going flat-out crazy. That’s a whole new level of fucked. Dying, escaping Hell, then finding yourself someplace worse. If the Church had afterlife travel agents, they could make a fortune. Pay now, then later see the most colorful views of damnation from a double-decker, air-conditioned tour bus. Stop for lunch at the damned soul deli, where you can try Phil, your racist neighbor, on whole wheat. Or roast hot dogs over the lava pits where crooked politicians and show-business accountants do synchronized-shrieking shows every … well … forever. Don’t forget to tip your driver on the way out or you’ll end up with the other stingy bastards, growing gold teeth and pulling them out with pliers for eternity while other stingy dumb-asses pound them into coins with their faces. Where do you think Hellion money comes from?

The other part of this Bataan death march across nowhere: I’m still in this goddamn fried truck. There’s no material left on the seats, so I’m riding bare springs all day. My bruised ass feels like it’s welded to a demon pogo stick.

I’m a little worried about Father Traven. Has he gone a little too native? There’s things you have to do to survive, but that doesn’t mean you have to believe whatever mad shit your torturer is feeding you. I don’t think he’d rat me out, but I’m worried that maybe he’s got a bad case of Knights Templar and has actually bought into the idea of a holy crusade. I’ll have to keep an eye on him. When I make a break for it, I’ll drag him by his heels if I have to.

But Cherry is the one I’m really worried about. She’s too crazy to predict what she’ll do. I mean, she wasn’t exactly stable when she was alive, but after she died she did a deep dive into unstable. She refused to leave her dead body for a long time and lived as a jabber—an animated corpse—clawing her way through the dirt and filth under L.A. When I finally got her to leave her body, she lived in the bombed-out version of L.A. in the Tenebrae. She played a sexpot ghost for a while and I don’t know what else since I’ve last seen her. And now she’s here with a whole new act. I don’t think she’d deliberately let on who I am, but who knows what twisted stuff she might blurt that could make things a lot more difficult for me.

When my mind drifts back to Candy and home, I push the thoughts away as hard as I can. I’m dead. There’s no going back now. None that I can figure, at least. But fuck everyone down here if they think I’m staying. All that matters is getting through this mess and figuring out what to do after that.

I lose track of the time on the plains. Bits of paint flake off the truck’s crisped body and stick to my face and hair. That’s fun. Traven rides beside me. He seems like a real natural. Maybe I’m selling him short. Maybe he likes being out of the library. He used to help us track bad guys back home before he died. Maybe this is like that and I should ease up on the guy.

About the time I’m wondering which of the babysitters I’m going to run off the road so I can steal their vehicle and save my aching ass, there’s something new on the horizon. The ruins of a town. Of course, everything is ruins in the Tenebrae, but this looks more ruined than most. I wish I could get a look at the Magistrate’s map. If I could place the town, maybe I could navigate my way back to Hell. That’s something else to think about. The map.

Up front someone, probably the Magistrate, sends up a red flare. The havoc spreads out across the plain, zeroing in on the town. Me and Traven are at the rear of the joyride, between the main havoc and the trucks pulling the tarp. When the flare goes up, our babysitters peel off to join the main group. I look at Traven and point out into the open desert. He shakes his head. He’s right. I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s nowhere to run to yet. Sit tight and learn how the havoc works. Then disappear at the moment of maximum confusion. For now, though, I hit the gas. At least if we stop somewhere, maybe I can get out of this damned truck for a while.

By the time us stragglers reach the others, they have the town surrounded. But no one is going Hell’s Angels on the place yet. They’re just sitting in their cars, gunning the engines and looking like hard desert bandidos. It isn’t exactly a stretch for them.

At a signal from up front, all the engines cut off at once. I pull to a stop and shut mine down. While the dust settles, I crawl out of the driver’s seat. My ass and back ache like someone gave me a baseball-bat massage. I stretch, trying to work the kinks out, when Traven comes over.

“What now?” I say.

“It depends. It isn’t always the same.”

“But this is where the havoc gets to havocking.”

“Maybe today will be different.”

“Sure. Maybe today.”

We’re pretty far back in the pack, so I climb on the hood of the truck trying to see something. I can’t make out much besides a crowd gathered at the edge of the town. Nothing happens for a while. I think the Magistrate is having a nice chat with whoever runs the burg. After all the driving and the last day of abject terror and confusion, frankly, it gets kind of boring. Traven climbs up on the truck with me.

“See anything?” he says.

“The Wizard gave the Scarecrow a heart. I hope he has something for Dorothy.”

Traven points into the distance.

“What’s that?”

There’s a plume of dust winding its way through the havoc in our direction. A few seconds later I hear the roar of a bike engine. A sweaty soul on a dirty Hellion Ducati stops next to the truck.

He pushes up his goggles.

“You Pitts?”

“Last time I checked.”

He moves up on the seat.

“Get on. You’re riding bitch.”

“What makes you think that?”

He looks up at me.

“The Magistrate wants to see you right fucking now. So get on, bitch, before you get us both in trouble.”

“When you say it nice like that how can I resist?”

I climb down and head over to the bike. The rider is a big bare-chested sweat pig. To be clear, I mean he’s literally a sweaty, upright pig—busted snout-like nose and everything. I stand there for a minute looking over his wheels.

“You checking out my ass? Get on, faggot.”

“Sure.”

I move like I’m getting onto the seat, but instead I swing my leg around and kick him in the back of the head. He falls forward and dumps the bike. I drag his sweaty ass off and haul the Ducati upright. I didn’t hit him hard enough to knock loose anything essential, but he’s going to have a long, embarrassing walk when he comes to. Traven comes over but doesn’t say anything. He just raises his arms and drops them again like he’s exhausted. I give him a little salute, gun the bike, and head for the front of the pack.

No one tries to stop me as I weave through the havoc. When I spot the Charger, I open up the throttle and hit the brakes just right to land in a nice stoppie up front.

Daja looks at me blankly while the Magistrate frowns.

“Where is Billy?”

“Taking a nap.”

The Magistrate comes around the car.

“Then he is alive?”

“I’m not that dumb.”

“I’ll go check,” says Daja, but the Magistrate lightly touches her arm before she can get on her Harley.

“No. I want you here with Mr. Pitts and myself.”

He waves to a couple of riders in an El Camino covered in Nordic runes.

“Bring back Billy and the father,” the Magistrate says, and they peel out.

I know the Magistrate added Traven to his delivery list just to fuck with me, so I brush it off. Don’t give him the satisfaction or the ammunition.

When the car is gone, the Magistrate gestures for me to follow him over where the residents of the town are gathered. Daja comes, too, hooks her arm around mine, and—smiling like a blushing bride—drags me with her.

The Magistrate waits by a small group of the least pathetic souls in town. That said, they look like they spent the night in the drum of a cement mixer. Tattered clothes hanging off their bodies in gray rags. Dust in every crease on their desiccated faces. They sag in front of the havoc like kids who know they’re about to get a spanking. Another twenty or thirty souls are bunched behind them. They look even worse.

The Magistrate says, “I am a student of human nature, did you know that, Mr. Pitts?”

“It beats beekeeping, I guess.”

He smiles infinitesimally.

“I sent Billy to you knowing exactly what you would do.”

“You sent one of your own people to get his ass kicked? That’s not the way to build brand loyalty.”

“Everyone in the group has their role,” he says. “Some are more demanding than others.”

“You mean, me turning out Billy’s lights was some kind of prize?”

“I told you he wouldn’t understand,” says Daja. “He’ll never understand.”

“She’s right,” I say. “I never got fractions either.”

“Come now, Mr. Pitts. Everyone is a good student with the right teacher and the proper motivation,” the Magistrate says.

He pulls me away from Daja and the three of us go to the group of pathetics. The town council, local Shriners, or something.

“Hold up your hands,” says the Magistrate.

When I do, he puts a corner of the map into each of my hands and lets the rest fall open, facing the pathetics. Great. I have the damned map, but I’m on the wrong side of it.

The Magistrate pulls one of the town council over and gestures to the map. The ragged bastard raises a hand and says something in a language I don’t understand. The Magistrate answers him back in the same language. When he gets fed up with contestant one, he pulls contestant two forward. She’s dressed in a filthy evening gown like she’s heading for drinks at the Copa with the Rat Pack. Again, the Magistrate points to the map and the woman answers. Again it’s in a language I don’t understand—but different from contestant one’s—and again he answers her. How many languages does the bastard speak?

He takes a piece of parchment from a pocket of his duster and shows it to the group. A couple touch it, then point into the distance. The Magistrate speaks to each of them, switching languages when he has to without missing a beat.

Daja stands with me behind the map.

“Having fun, sweetheart?” she says.

“Always with you, dear. Did you book the cruise next year?”

She looks behind us, searching for the El Camino.

“You won’t last that long.”

I turn to her.

“Bet I outlast you, Nancy Drew.”

The Magistrate reaches over and pulls me back into place.

“You might not even make it past today,” she says.

I give her a look.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve heard that line.”

She leans over and whispers, “I didn’t say you were going to die. Just not make it.”

Before I can ask her what the hell she’s talking about, the Magistrate hands the map to Daja and she folds it up.

“Mr. Pitts, would you join us?” he says.

I go over as he pulls the town bigwigs he’s been talking to aside.

“I have tried reasoning with these people,” he says. “I have tried cajoling them and even promising rewards, but none has taken it upon themselves to be cooperative. What do you think of that?”

I look over the sad sacks. Shrug.

“Maybe they don’t know anything. Look at them. I’m surprised they can even talk. Where the hell are we?”

“On an important ley line that passes right by this town.”

“What makes you think they know that?”

The Magistrate brightens and sweeps his hand across the crowd.

“Because we are in a town of holy people. Priests. Nuns. Rabbis. Mullahs.”

I point at the woman in the evening gown.

“Then why is she dressed like Joey Heatherton?”

“She has been here so long that her vestments rotted away, the poor dear. She had no choice.”

“And you think these losers know something about your crusade?”

“I told you I was a student of psychology. I know they know something.”

“You’re a goddamn mind reader, too?”

“The Magistrate knows something about everything. He’s a genius,” says Daja, a proud kid who knows that her daddy can beat up your daddy.

“Fine. Say you’re right,” I say. “Maybe you should give these poor slobs some food or water. Then maybe they could think straight.”

“They have gone without for too long. The shock to their system might send them to Tartarus without us lifting a finger. What a waste of scant resources,” he says.

“Why are you telling me all this? Why am I even here?”

“This is my domain. What exists here without knowledge exists here in defiance.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“He’s calling them liars,” says Daja.

I look at her.

“Again I ask: What does any of this have to do with me?”

The El Camino pulls up behind us. Billy staggers out. Daja brings Traven over. An old military truck, its rear covered by a canvas awning, pulls up next to the El Camino.

“Like these people, the Father is a holy man,” the Magistrate says. “But unlike them, he is not a liar. Is that not right, Father?”

Traven nods.

“Of course, Magistrate.”

He doesn’t know what’s going on. He’s scared.

“What does the Bible have to say about liars? I believe the Revelation to Saint John mentions them,” says the Magistrate.

Traven looks blank.

“I’m not sure which passage you mean.”

The Magistrate smiles.

“Do not be shy, Father. Now is a time to shine. Come. Say it with me: ‘But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters …’”

Traven joins in.

“‘And all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone …’”

The Magistrate stops and lets Traven finish on his own.

“‘Which is the second death,’” he says.

“The second death,” says the Magistrate.

He turns to me.

“Do you see?”

I look at him, wishing for a cigarette I could grind into his face.

“I used to go to a club called Second Death,” I say. “Skull Valley Sheep Kill played there. Are we going to a show?”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, we are. And you shall be the ringmaster.”

“It’s been a tough day for Billy. Let him have a little fun.”

“Billy is a good boy. His reward will come soon enough. As will yours. Come.”

I follow him to the town’s pitiful leaders. He pulls five forward. I look around and find Cherry in the crowd. I wonder if this freak show is because she said anything about me. I need to get her alone later.

The Magistrate clears his throat and speaks to the five.

“Mr. Pitts here is a man of great violence. He proved that yesterday. He proved it a few moments ago. And soon he will prove it again.”

He repeats his little speech in several languages for the town leaders. They shuffle their feet and look at each other.

“I don’t know what you have planned, but you can leave me out of it,” I say.

“No, I cannot, Mr. Pitts. This is for your benefit as well as theirs.”

“What is?”

At the Magistrate’s signal, the canvas covering the old truck is pulled back. There are upright posts at either end of the flatbed, with a longer post connecting them. Every few feet along the horizontal post are knotted ropes. I’ve seen some shit, but this makes me blink.

It’s a traveling gallows.

“Which one?” says the Magistrate, pointing to the five losers.

I look at the gallows.

“For that?”

“Of course.”

I point to Daja.

“How about her?”

I point to the Magistrate.

“How about you? Think I can’t make it happen?”

He laughs and turns to the townspeople.

“See? As I said, man of great violence.”

He walks over to me.

“Do not pretend that you have never done something similar in the past. Decided who in the crowd, even among innocents, should die.”

For a fraction of a second, I flash back to fighting in the arena in Pandemonium. I killed everything they threw at me back then. I never asked who they were or why they were there. But this feels different.

I shake my head to clear it. The Magistrate is spookier and spookier. I don’t want to take a chance he can read something in my face that will give me away.

I say, “What if I don’t want to play?”

“Come come. We both know the answer to that.”

Daja doesn’t go for her gun. She pulls out a tanto and holds it across Traven’s throat.

“It’s all right,” he says. Traven even smiles. “Let them have me. I’m ready.”

“What a brave man. What a great soul,” the Magistrate says. “Such a shame it would be to sacrifice him because of your inaction.”

I stare at the five quaking assholes in front of me. I hate the whole town for being here. For choosing the Tenebrae over Hell. They thought their punishment would be too much and that they could run for it. But punishment doesn’t give up, and it has all eternity to find you down here.

“Mr. Pitts?” says the Magistrate.

“Give me a fucking minute.”

He checks his watch.

“Exactly one minute.”

I glance at Traven. He nods to say it’s all right. The prick is way too eager to go to Tartarus, for my taste. I bet Cherry’s heart is doing backflips watching the Magistrate make me do his monkey dance.

“Thirty seconds, Mr. Pitts,” the Magistrate says.

I look over the townies’ faces. Spot someone trying to pretend none of this is happening. His hands are in his pockets. I can see their outline as he moves them around.

I walk over.

“What’s in your pockets?”

“Nothing,” he croaks.

I grab him by the collar and rip off a pocket. A collection of doll heads, large and small, falls onto the ground. He begins to shake. There’s something else. A small pocketknife. I squat down, pretending to examine the doll heads as I slip the knife into my boot. Then I drag the guy back to the Magistrate.

“Him,” I say.

“I’ve already picked the volunteers,” he says.

“You told me to choose. I chose.”

The Magistrate looks at his watch, then at me.

Traven shouts, “What are you doing? Let them take me.”

The Magistrate turns to him.

“You never volunteered before, Father. Are you embarrassed now that you have a friend here? Does it make you afraid that God can see you, too?” He turns to the city council. In several languages he says, “Do you understand what is happening? Will one of you take his place?”

None of them makes a peep.

The Magistrate comes closer to me and says quietly, “Why him?”

“He kicked my dog.”

The Magistrate grins.

“Then by all means let us rectify this atrocity. Bring him,” he tells to the crew on the gallows truck. They climb down and drag the doll man over.

“What are you doing?” says Traven. “Why him over me?”

I show him a couple of doll heads I picked up.

He says, “You think he hurts children.”

“He did something to get damned.”

“But you don’t know. They could belong to his own children.”

“They don’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Completely.”

I get close enough to whisper to him. Daja pushes the knife into his throat hard enough to draw a bead of blood, and it takes a lot to ignore that.

I say, “You’re the one who told me that when things happen not to try and stop them.”

“Not like this,” he says.

I step back.

“Then you should have been more specific.”

What happens next doesn’t take long at all.

The doll man is dragged onto the gallows, his hands are tied behind his back, and one of the crew puts the noose around his neck. The Magistrate says something to him and stands at the edge of the flatbed, a preacher addressing his flock. Charlie Manson laying out the plans for Helter Skelter.

He says, “As Father Traven reminded me, Revelation 21:8 tells us that liars ‘shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.’”

As he finishes, someone pulls the lever. The trapdoor opens. And the doll man falls through. The havoc howls and cheers, which covers up the sound of his neck snapping. Doll Man swings at the end of the rope for a few seconds before disappearing, his soul sucked into the Hell below Hell. A few last doll heads fall, bouncing out of the truck and onto the ground. Damned souls and Hellions scramble to get souvenirs.

I watch it all thinking one thing: Survive. Revenge and pity and whatever else there is comes later.

I guess my chances of getting over my PTSD just went out the window.

Daja puts her knife back in its sheath.

“Welcome to the team,” she says to me.

“I’m not on your team ever, sister.”

“You are and you don’t even know it. That’s how it was with the father. Isn’t that right, Padre?”

She smacks Traven on the ass and walks away.

I go over to him.

“Did you have to choose?”

He nods.

“In Blue Heaven. I did what you did. I picked the worst person I could find.”

“You did the right thing.”

He shakes his head. Draws in a breath and lets it out.

“I was a man of God. Now I’m just a murderer.”

“Why don’t we ask God what he thinks? Oh, that’s right. He isn’t around anymore. We’re on our own.”

“I don’t believe that and neither do you.”

“It’s done. We do what we have to do to survive and we get away the first chance we get. Right?”

“I’m not sure I can do that.”

“You can. Trust me.”

He gives me a look.

“You’re sure about the man you chose?”

“One hundred percent.”

“I want to believe you.”

“We’re in Hell. No one is innocent.”

“Especially us. Because we know better.”

“I’m getting out of here and I’m taking you with me. What you do after that is your business.”

Traven walks away as a stream of havoc members come by to pat me on the back, punch my arm, and shake my hand. I smile and nod like it’s the Oscars and I just won Best Supporting Asshole.

The Magistrate is off talking to the rest of the town. In ones and twos, they drift over to the havoc looking miserable. Reluctant new recruits to the cause.

I walk to the truck and drop back into the driver’s seat. I don’t want to let Traven see me feeling the way I feel. Did I just cross a line I can’t uncross? I know the doll man was a bad guy. I know it. This isn’t the first time I’ve executed someone. I murdered a whole houseful of Wormwood bastards just a few weeks ago. Still. This feels different.

The next time the Magistrate tries to rope me into a dog and pony show like this, I’ll kill him, no matter what.

Daja rides up on her Harley. She pulls a couple of Hellion beers out of her saddlebags and hands me one. Clinks hers against mine and takes a long drink.

“We’ll be moving out soon,” she says. “When we get settled I’ll see about getting you better wheels.”

“Don’t bother.”

“It’s no bother. Brother.”

She drives away.

I sit there for a while looking out at the desert, not thinking. Letting my mind go blank for a few minutes.

Then I drink the beer.

THAT NIGHT IN Traven’s camper, neither of us has much to say. I hear a motorcycle stop outside and go to see who it is.

It’s Daja with another woman as big and bad as she is. Her hair is buzzed almost skinhead short, her face is fine-boned and graceful. Her skin is dark and heavy with Downtown warrior sigils. She almost looks like someone I could have met in the arena. She and Daja are on spidery Hellion Harleys.

I close the camper door and say, “It’s late and we need our beauty sleep. What do you want?”

They get off the bikes.

“Nothing,” says Daja. She throws me a set of keys. The other woman gets on the back of her Harley.

“Leave that piece of shit,” she says, pointing to my burned-out dream car. “This is yours from now on.”

I look the bike over. It’s a beautiful, horrifying machine, screaming power.

“And it’s not even my birthday.”

I look at both women.

“What if I don’t want it?”

Daja shrugs.

“No sweat off my ass, but the Magistrate would take it hard. You don’t want to upset him now that you’re best friends, do you?”

I weigh the keys in my hand. Put them in my pocket. When the time comes, it will be a lot easier getting away on the bike than the burned-out shit box I’ve been driving.

“Anything else?” I say.

“A thank-you wouldn’t hurt.”

“Yes, it would. I’d have bad dreams all night.”

Daja kicks her Harley awake and revs it a couple of times. Before she pushes up the kickstand, she takes something small from a jacket pocket and holds it out.

“Here,” she says. “The bike is from the Magistrate, but these are from the havoc.”

I go to her and take what she’s holding. It’s two packs of Maledictions.

“For these, I’ll definitely say thanks.”

Daja leans back to the woman behind her.

“What did I tell you? Ugly, but at least a cheap date.”

The other woman laughs as they start away. She blows me a kiss and spits at my boots, but misses by a mile. No sharpshooter there. As they peel out, I go back inside the camper.

Traven looks up from a book. He’s been reading it all night. It looks holy. Probably trying to figure out a loophole in salvation.

“What was that about?” he says.

“Blood money.”

He makes a face and I put the Maledictions on a table well away from me. He goes back to reading and I curl up on the floor. For about five minutes. Then, without getting up, I grab one of the packs and rip it open.

Fuck it. I was headed for Hell the day I was born. A nephilim Abomination and natural-born killer. Where else was I going?

I take one of Traven’s matches and light a cigarette. Hold it out to him. He hesitates, doing calculations in his head. Sins versus cigarettes. How many wheezing angels can smoke on the head of a pin?

Finally he takes it and I light one for myself.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” he says.

“Yep.”

“It’s a sin.”

“Smoking is part of God’s great plan, Father.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“I inferred it.”

“I’m not sure that’s how it works,” he says.

“He forgave Cain for cracking open Abel’s head.”

“No. He didn’t.”

“No? I thought he did.”

“No.”

“Funny. He said he did.”

Traven coughs.

“You knew Cain?”

“Yeah. He was the doorman at Second Death. Nice guy.”

Traven taps some ash into an overturned jar lid.

He says, “Lying is a sin, my son.”

“I’m an angel. Sin washes right off.”

“Half angel. Part of you is still human.”

“Not the fun part.”

“I wish I could say the same about myself.”

“We’ll get through this and you’ll have a billion years to repent.”

“I’m not sure that’s enough time.”

I tap some ash into the lid.

“If Brigitte was here, what would she say?”

“I don’t know.”

“She’d say shut up and smoke.”

He thinks about it.

“Yes. I suppose she would.”

So he does and we do. I lie down on the floor when I finish the Malediction. He blows out the lamp.

In the dark he says, “Do you think we could burn that gallows truck before we leave?”

“I was just thinking the same thing.”

WE STAY ON the ley line the Magistrate plotted. It’s nice to be on a bike again.

Travel is like Traven said. What happened in the little town isn’t an everyday thing. Sometimes we travel for days without seeing anything, and even if we find a town, chances are it’s deserted. The Magistrate, Cherry, and Traven check the map each morning, but I think it’s all for show. We’re just going to follow this line until the Magistrate changes his mind or we fall off the edge of Hell into a deep, dark void. Some days, that doesn’t sound half bad.

Then we hit a string of populated ghost towns along a range of mountains so dark they could be piles of black powder ready to explode everything in sight. Not a bad idea.

In some of the towns we even find a few Hellions, fallen angels who’ve run away from the chaos of Pandemonium to the monotony of the desert. But it doesn’t matter who’s there. Each town is the same horror show we had the other day. The Magistrate interrogates a few bigwigs, pulling more languages than I thought possible out of his ass. Then the gallows come up, and someone—sometimes more than one—gets the rope. The only difference is that I don’t have to choose again.

When we camp, the Magistrate has a regular swami session with Cherry. I get the feeling that whatever he’s after, he’s been looking for it for a long time. What the hell could pull someone like him all the way through Hell, Blue Heaven, the Tenebrae, and who knows where else? I need to see what’s under the tarp.

Now that I can walk around more I can get my own food at center camp. Even though I’m theoretically part of the group now, no one seems to want to buddy up to me, which gives me a lot of time alone. Fine with me. It gives me a chance to watch the guards around the tarp truck.

Daja acts friendly enough, but she or the other woman—Wanuri is her name—always seems to be around. I don’t know if they’re spying on me, or now that I can sit at the cool-kids table, Daja wants to draw me deeper into the havoc. I’ll go along with whatever happens for now and see where it gets me.

THE PROBLEM WITH the Tenebrae isn’t just the monotony of the landscape, but how your sense of time evaporates. A few days in, it occurs to me that it might be more than a few days. A week. Two? Hell, months, for all I know. I wonder how long some of these bastards have been riding with the Magistrate. Maybe years and they don’t even know it. Maybe that’s what’s going on with all the funny languages. Some of the townies—and even a few in the havoc—could be goddamn antediluvian.

We pull into a town a lot bigger than the others. Not quite a city, but it’s more than the usual scattering of buildings. Around us are dead neon signs and dusty hotels sporting roulette wheels and slot machines. A post-apocalyptic Reno.

These days, I ride up front with Daja, Wanuri, and some of their dog pack. They don’t talk to me much, but I don’t let it hurt my feelings. I get to see a lot more up here. Some days more than I want to. Like today.

The routine is the same. Round up everyone—not an easy job considering the size of the place—find the leaders or the least brain-dead, then settle in for an afternoon of twenty questions. The Magistrate does a bang-up job today, playing for a larger crowd than usual. His gestures are bigger, his voice louder. He laughs like a hyena and snarls like a Bengal tiger when anybody gets out of line. He practically dances up and down the line of mopey skeletons he’s decided to interrogate.