Authors: Richard Kadrey
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Urban, #Paranormal, #Horror
Devil Said Bang (43 page)
Cherry turns her hollow eye sockets up at me.
“And the point of your eloquent speech?”
“I don’t exactly know. Maybe we need to be more
careful about the messes we leave behind. Try to tidy things up a bit when the
bullets stop flying.”
“Maybe you could cut off fewer heads.”
“That too. Muninn told me to forgive part of
myself, and as much as I hate that healing-your-inner-child yammer, I’m trying.
You need to let go and move on. Look at you. You were a sad sight when you were
in one piece. Now you’re not even a skeleton. Just a sack of random bones. Come
out of there. Even if you don’t want to pass on entirely, have a little dignity.
Be a ghost and not a burrowing bug.”
“I am a ghost.”
“I mean a real ghost. Ditch the skeleton and do a
regular haunting. How about the Lollipop Dolls store? Think of it. A high-end
J-pop place with its own ghost. It’ll be like
Kwaidan
with pigtails.”
She’s quiet for a minute. If she had a face, she’d
look lost in thought.
“I couldn’t just move in. I’d have to ask the
girls.”
“I hardly know anything about that anime stuff but
Candy has a Ph.D. I bet she’d talk to them for you.”
“Why are you going out of your way to help me?”
“Because you and me have a past too. You thought I
could save you when you were alive and I didn’t. I figure getting you out of
that hole might make up for that a little.”
“Maybe it will,” she says. “Have your friend talk
to the girls.”
“I will. See you around, Cherry.”
But she’s already gone.
I throw the rest of the cigarette into the hole and
start back inside when my phone rings. It’s a blocked number. Sure, why not?
It’s a man voice this time.
“I haven’t seen it myself but I hear you ruined
Lucifer’s armor.”
“God dinged it with a thunderbolt. I put a few
bullet holes in it. It gives it character. Like scars.”
“From what I hear, you must have some new ones. Did
striking yourself with the Gladius leave a mark? Did King Cairo shoot you in the
face? Are you terribly disfigured?”
“I’m not Lucifer anymore. I thought that would get
me off the hook with your bullshit.”
“You hurt me. You’re not on the hook. These are
fireside chats while I bring you news from far away.”
“Thanks, but you can shove your news. I’m done with
Hell. I don’t care anymore.”
“I hear you broke the priest. Poor thing. They’re
so delicate, aren’t they? So confident in your world but they come apart so
quickly down here. Still, it’s nothing for you to worry about. A mad priest.
It’s like a gothic romance. Add his to the list of lives you’ve ruined. But the
priest is still walking the Earth, isn’t he? So he’s only half a demerit. God
must be very proud of you. You keep filling our houses with new playmates.”
“Here’s my final thought to you. Kill yourself. All
of you Hellions should kill yourselves. Or murder each other. You’re Muninn’s
problem now.”
“How long will it take you to break your new
girlfriend? What’s her name? Something sweet and simpleminded. Does she know how
gruesome you can be?”
“I told her all about what happened in Hell.”
“And she’s still with you? She must be an
exceptional woman.”
“She is.”
“So was Alice, I suppose. You do seem to go through
a lot of them. Exceptional women. Murder isn’t your greatest sin. It’s being as
careless with others’ lives as you are with your own. You need to watch that or
sooner or later all that will be left are women who’ll run from the very sight
of a monster like you.”
“If you’re calling to threaten me, hurry up. I’m
going inside and I won’t be able to hear you being scary.”
“I’m getting better with bodies in your world. I
can do more than talk now. Soon I’ll walk and drive and look just like anyone
else and I can pay you a visit.”
“You better get to it, Merihim. When the Angra come
back, you’re as fucked as the rest of us.”
“Clever guess.”
“That’s exactly what it was. Don’t make me tattle
on you to Muninn.”
I hang up and head back inside.
Candy is dancing to Les Baxter’s “Balloon Waltz”
with Vidocq. I cut in and he graciously takes a powder just like a real
Frenchman. I have no idea how to waltz but I can count to three and I can rock
back and forth, and with the bar so packed, that’s pretty much what everyone
else is doing too.
It’s been raining on and off for the last couple of
weeks. Not fish rain. The regular stuff. Between the storms, the sky is even
blue sometimes. Catalina is back and no one has reported any floating streets or
volcanoes in days.
Sometimes I step back and look over everything and
wonder how the hell I got here. According to Uriel, my real father, I was always
destined for this land of bloody laughs. I’m not human or angel or Lurker or
demon. I’m just a natural-born killer. What I don’t know is if I’m attracted to
places where the worst things are happening or if I bring the shitstorm with me.
Until I know, all that matters is that I’m still breathing and I’m dancing with
a pretty girl.
The world is going to end when the Angra Om Ya come
back. They’ll eat the planets and stars. When they hit L.A., they’ll get a movie
deal with points and a percentage of the merchandising. They’ll learn to surf
and practice Transcendental Meditation. One of them will OD in the bathroom at
the Whisky a Go Go and another will be on the cover of
People,
caught having an affair with the new mayor. The others will
develop depression and go home to their gloomy universe. One more set of
suckers. One more one-hit wonder. It’s a nice little universe you built but what
have you done lately? Leave your head shots and our people will call your
people. This is L.A. There are so many Apocalypses around here that most don’t
even make the paper, so be happy yours got any press at all. By the way,
Strawberry Alarm Clock is a cool name. Angra Om Ya sounds like a brand of
Chinese dog food.
With luck, the Angra won’t pass through these parts
for another million years. I don’t usually get that lucky but I’ve got Candy, a
place to crash, food, and the Key. L.A. might be a tourist-trap province on the
outskirts of Hell, but that’s okay. At least in this Hell, I’m not alone.
Thanks to Patty for the art and Wil for being an excellent guy. Thanks to Elsabeth Hermens for anime advice and to Tim Holland for French guidance. Thanks to Dino, Martha, and Lorenzo for letting me tag along. Thanks to Pamela Spengler-Jaffee, Jessie Edwards, Will Hinton, and the rest of the team at HarperCollins. And thanks as well to everyone on Twitter and Facebook who sent in song suggestions. As always, thanks to Nicola for everything else.
R
ICHARD
K
ADREY
has published seven novels, including
Sandman Slim
,
Kill the Dead
,
Aloha from Hell
,
Butcher Bird
, and
Metrophage
, and more than fifty stories. He has been immortalized as an action figure, and his short story “Goodbye Houston Street, Goodbye” was nominated for a British Science Fiction Association Award. A freelance writer and photographer, he lives in San Francisco.
www.richardkadrey.com
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This book is a work of fiction. The
characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and
are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEVIL SAID
BANG
. Copyright © 2012 by Richard Kadrey. All rights reserved under
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FIRST
EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-209457-5
Epub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN:
9780062094582
Version 08312012
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OV/RRD
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