“I don’t really know what it is. I just wanted to see.”
She nods.
“That’s all right. We all started from where you are. Throw a candle and take the next step.”
I expect her to move on but she doesn’t. She has candles in one hand and a cup in the other. There’s a small pile of coins at the bottom.
“If you can help at all, brother.”
She’s a Hellion monster. But I’m a monster too. She was tossed over Heaven’s walls like trash thousands of years ago but she looks and acts like a kid with her first summer job. Goddammit, for a second she reminds me of the Donut Universe girl and I’m digging in my pocket looking for something to give her. And come up with one big coin. The Veritas. I look at her one more time. No. She’s never had green hair or dished up day-old apple fritters.
I drop the Veritas in her cup. You need advice more than I do right now, kid. Momentum and the power of Bible bullshit will carry me safely home to shore. Or not. Anyway, maybe you can trade the Veritas for some decent black-market food.
She doesn’t see what I drop in her cup but nods her head in thanks.
“Don’t forget your candle.”
I follow the line of true believers up front. It seems the polite thing to do. Besides, I just paid for the candle. It might look funny if I dropped it and headed the other way.
People are laughing and singing like a high school pep rally up front by the flames. I should have a camera. Hellions laughing at a tower of fire. Now, this is the Hell I’ve been looking for. Flames. Mad cheers. And the tingling feeling of things right on the edge of getting out of control.
The fire is up over the wicker man’s waist. I have to admit, he’s staying upright better than I am. I toss the candle and watch as it tumbles into the flames.
Turning away, I duck deep into the crowd. And I can’t help but laugh. This has got to be the strangest day of my whole damn strange life.
It’s me in the barbecue pit. They’re burning Lucifer.
I circle around the market and back to where I left the Hellion hog. I tweak the glamour one more time, giving myself a new Hellion face. I don’t toss off the glamour until I’m back in the palace heading up the secret stairs to the library.
I’m not in the mood to deal with assassins, Brimborion, or arsonist Joan of Arcs, so I use Vidocq’s friend’s trick of stacking furniture against the bedroom door.
In the morning I kick the bloody clothes I left at the end of the bed into the pile I want cleaned instead of burned.
I seriously don’t like the idea of Brimborion being able to walk in here anytime he likes. Just because I took his passkey doesn’t mean he doesn’t already have a spare squirreled away somewhere.
My whole life is ruled by magic keys and the assholes who do or don’t have them. I found a key in Mason’s room, but unless I want to start prying open Hellion skulls, it’s not going to do me any good.
Hell’s carved enough meat off me that there’s no way I’m touching the Magic 8 Ball with my real hand. I use my Kissi hand to move the ball from the pocket of the peacoat to the bottom dresser drawer with the revolver. Until someone can tell me what the thing is, I don’t want it near me. Which means no one down here. Not after what I saw it do in the market.
My head pounds from all the Aqua Regia last night. I let the pulsing pain behind my eyes take over, an old arena trick. Dropping down into the center of the pain means I don’t have to think, and not thinking means I don’t have to find answers, and not needing answers means I might be able to get through the day without homicide.
I don’t feel one bit bad about killing those leggers last night. But I don’t know how it happened or how that thing got in my pocket. Down here in the pain, I don’t have to know. I just note the question and move on. Answers are rare and come in their own time but hangovers are reliable and never in short supply.
After a while the pulse of the pain syncs with my heartbeat. Some old Greek philosopher said there’s nothing but atoms and empty space. My head is one very big empty space right now. I take the bottle of Aqua Regia from the nightstand and swallow a short gulp. Hair of the dog. Got to balance the humors. Hippocrates said so. Blame him.
I open my eyes and look out the window. It’s around four o’clock. Clouds tumbleweed across a bruised sky. A few fires have flared up again south of the city. The backlight looks like a slow-motion nuclear blast. My Golgotha L.A. has never looked more beautiful.>The terrible truth is that I kind of like the beating. It’s not like when I got ambushed on the bike. This I saw was coming. It’s more like training in the arena. I’m not going to lie and say it doesn’t hurt, but it’s a familiar kind of pain and it’s better than another quiet night in, just the Greeks and me.
Don’t fear God
Don’t worry about death
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure
Fuck you, Epicurus. You stand here with a bunch of inbred mouth breathers looking to cut some payback for their shitty existence out of your hide. Do that and then hit me with some cool, cool Hellenic logic. Convince me and I’ll buy you all the ouzo and microwave moussaka in Athens.
This might actually be fun if Candy was here. By now she would have dropped her human face and let her inhuman Jade side out. Eyes like red slits in black ice. Claws and a shark-tooth smile. A gorgeous killing machine in ripped jeans and worn Chuck Taylors. The perfect girlfriend.