has given up pretending to look at the peeper projection and has gone to my desk to fix the wobbly leg.
“You think Semyazah is letting his own trucks get ripped off?”
From under my desk Ipos says, “It’s possible. Being smart doesn’t exempt you from corruption.”
He hammers a wooden spacer under one of the desk legs. Between taps with a small hammer he says, “Of course it could be another general earning some extra money while making Semyazah look bad.”
“Why not just kill him? That seems to be a quick way to get promotions down here.”
Merihim shakes his head.
“Murdering Semyazah risks an all-out war among the generals. Legion against legion. No one wants that.”
Ipos says, “If someone could possess Semyazah and have him, say, attack you, then he could be killed and you would have to appoint another supreme general.”
Merihim opens his hands in a weary gesture.
“We’re back to speculating. We know more than we did but not enough to come to any reasonable conclusions.”
I go to my eye and start the projection over again in case I missed something the first time through.
Ipos comes out from under the desk. He wipes dirt from his knees and says, “Even without war we’re still trapped in chaos and fear. It reminds me of waking up here after the fall from Heaven.”
He looks at Merihim.
“Do you remember? How many brothers and sisters cut their throats or threw themselves off the high mountains?”
“And the ones who turned on each other. I remember. It was a terrible thing to see.”
Ipos looks at me.
“Lucifer saved us. The first one. Like you, he had us work building Pandemonium. It took our minds off those … other possibilities.”
Neither of them looks at each other or at me. Their eyes are glazed in an ex-soldier’s thousand-yard stare.
I never thought of Hellions this way. They always seemed so full of Fuck You spirit when it came to the war in Heaven. It never occurred to me that being thrown here was as terrible for them as it was for me. When Heaven started shipping in damned souls, it must have been a nice distraction, but only for a while. Guarding passive, broken ghosts can’t be that exciting. And maybe they reminded the fallen angels too much of themselves. The damned minding the damned. If Hellions hadn’t tortured me for all those years, I might even feel sorry for them. But they did, so I don’t.
I take a picture from my pocket and hand it to Merihim.
“While we’re on the subject of lousy deaths, this is a girl from L.A. She had dyed green hair and worked at a donut shop on Hollywood Boulevard. She was murdered by two Kissi sometime between last Christmas and New Year’s. I don’t know if she’s down here, but if she is, can one of you find her?”
Merihim hands the photo to Ipos. He wipes the blood from his hands before taking it. “There can’t be that many pretty mortals killed by monsters in donut shops at Christmas. If she’s here, we’ll find her.”
“When you do, get her a job. Something safe. Away from the craziness. I’d do it myself but being near me is what got her in trouble in the first place.”
Ipos puts the photo in the breast pocket of his work overalls.
“She’s a friend of yours?”
I shake my head.
“I don’t even know her name.”
On the screen I watch myself unwrapping the soldier’s body.
Merihim cocks his head.
“I can’t help but be curious: you want us to find a complete stranger to ease the burden of her damnation but you’ve never once asked about your mother or father.”
“I don’t have to. Believe it or not, I’m capable of doing a few things on my own. They’re not here. It turns out being drunk and miserable are only venial sins after all. Lucky them.”
Ipos says, “Didn’t your father try to shoot you? Shouldn’t he be here with us?”
“I suppose by Heaven’s standards, killing an Abomination isn’t the same as killing a regular human,” says Merihim.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
I look at the screen, not really watching it.
I say, “I think we’re done here for now. Don’t you?”
As they head for the fake bookcase, Merihim says, “Yesterday I said that I’d bring you a protective potion. That will have to wait until I can check that they’re not bogus.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m not sitting around waiting to get my brain cut open. I’m going to do something.”
“What exactly?”
“I have no idea. Something, you know, subtle.”
Merihim says, “Like when you burned Eden? I only ask because I’m still trying to gauge your definition of ‘subtle.’”
I look at him and can’t help but smile.
“That was a fun afternoon. Anyway, you’ll know it when you see it.”
“I have no doubt.”
They go out and Ipos pulls the bookcase shut behind them.
I go over to the screen, put my eye back in, and set the others back on their projection stands.
I open the desk drawer and shove the Glock out of the way. That needs to go in the bedroom drawer with the Smith & Wesson. The Veritas is under some papers where I’d scrawled Hellion power charms. I found the originals stuck in an old notebook Samael tossed in the trash. I copied out all the charms and tossed off hoodoo for darkness and wind. I tried getting into the heads of the salarymen downstairs. Nothing. Maybe instead of trying to be Samael, acting like me again will make me better at this Lucifer thing.
I take out the Veritas and toss it, catch it, and slam it down on the table.
Should I go out or stay here?
There’s an image of an open window and billowing curtains. In elegant Hellion script around the edges of the coin, it reads, DON’T WASTE MY TIME, ASSHOLE.
As always, the Veritas is right. I already have my coat on. If it said stay, I’d toss it in the trash and go out anyway.
I go into the false bookcase and head downstairs.
I GO DOWN BELOW street level to the garage. The door is locked but I touch the brass plate on the wall and it clicks open.
The place is full
