Kill City Blues. Richard Kadrey

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Kill City Blues - Richard  Kadrey

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       Copyright

      HarperVoyager

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.couk

      First published by HarperVoyager 2013

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2013

      Copyright © Richard Kadrey 2013

      Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014

      Designed by Crush Creative (www.crushed.co.uk)

      Richard Kadrey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780007446063

      Ebook Edition © August 2013 ISBN: 9780007483877

      Version: 2017-09-18

      To JLK, who should have been around a little longer

      It is evident that we are hurrying onward to some exciting knowledge—some never to be imparted secret, whose attainment is destruction.

      — EDGAR ALLAN POE, “MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE”

      You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.

      —AL CAPONE

      Table of Contents

       Title Page

       Dedication

       Epigraph

       I’m in a window

       Maybe happy isn’t the right word

       When we reach Santa Monica

       I find a bottle of Aqua Regia

       Keep Reading

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       Also by Richard Kadrey

       About the Publisher

      I’M IN A window seat at Donut Universe eating heart-crippling lumps of deep-fried dough with the Devil. Ex-Devil technically, but then technically we’re both ex-Devils. He was Lucifer before I was. Now he’s Samael and I’m back to just plain Stark.

      I take a bite of an apple fritter.

      “How’s your donut?”

      Samael eyes his glazed old-fashioned suspiciously, like maybe it’s haunted.

      “Charming. Did I invent these? They taste like something designed to destroy mortals from the inside out.”

      Candy says, “Nope. We came up with them all on our own.”

      “How wonderfully suicidal you people are. Donuts must be the very essence of free will.”

      As for the Devil job, I stuck another poor son of a bitch with that. Mr. Muninn. Some days I feel bad about it. Some days I don’t. Today the sun is out, I’m eating donuts with my girl and another ex-Devil, and it’s all pretty goddamn heartwarming.

      Samael says, “That blond woman buying coffee. She sold me her soul for a 1956 Les Paul Goldtop. I don’t think she ever learned to play it. The man behind must be a pious bore. He’s virtually free of sin sign.”

      The Devil can see people’s sins. They’re like streaks of black tar on skin. Since I quit the damnation biz, I can’t see sin sign, but as an angel, Samael can still pull that rabbit out of the hat. I don’t miss doing that trick.

      I say, “This is why I don’t take you to Bamboo House. I don’t want you taking an inventory of my friends.”

      “Sorry. It’s a hard habit to break.”

      Candy is sitting next to Samael, trying not to let on how thrilled she is to meet the original Devil. I haven’t seen her this excited since we met a furry, six-foot-tall Pikachu at the Lollipop Dolls store in Beverly Hills.

      She has

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