Читать книгу Kill City Blues - Richard Kadrey - Страница 14

I GET A pack of Maledictions from a box under a table in the living room. Maledictions are the most popular cigarettes in Hell. The only brand I really like. The taste is, well, unique. Like a tire fire in a candy factory. With luck, the angel part of me is immune to cancer. If it isn’t I’m going to be a solid two-hundred-pound tumor.

Candy gives me a faint smile as I take her hand and we step through a shadow into the Room of Thirteen Doors. I open the door to Hell but I don’t take her through. I hold her there looking at the place.

“Wow. It really does smell like sulfur,” she says.

“Don’t worry. When you get inside, between the sewers and the Hellion stink, you’ll forget all about the sulfur.”

“You know how to show a girl a good time.”

“Nothing but the best for you.”

“Whoa.”

This is what I’ve been waiting for.

“What do you see?”

“It looks just like L.A. A more fucked-up L.A. but still L.A.”

“It’s called a Convergence. A kind of magical fuckup where one place gets layered on top of another. When I first landed in Hell, it was all dark palaces and cobblestone streets. Now it’s L.A. None of that changes what Hell is. It just makes it easier to get around.”

“Somehow, none of that is very reassuring.”

“That’s Hell in a nutshell. You ready?”

“Yes. No. Yes. I think so.”

“Before we go in, here are a couple of rules. And they’re nonnegotiable. Stay close to me. Close enough for me to grab if things get weird. If anyone starts anything let me handle it. No Jade stuff. You see any damned souls, don’t look them in the eye. They’re used to me but another live human could freak them out.”

“I’m not human.”

“You look human. That’s enough. Also, don’t talk to anyone but Mr. Muninn.”

“Who?”

“The current Lucifer.”

“Right. Mr. Muninn. You told me about him.”

I squeeze her hand. She squeezes back.

“Banzai,” I say, and pull her inside.