The Kill Society (Sandman Slim)(98)

“What do you say, Mighty Joe Young?”

“I’m head of maintenance. Your palace would fall apart without me.”

“Well, I’m not Sir fucking Galahad out looking for adventure. I’m a schmuck who wants to go home.”

“You have to be alive to do that,” Ipos said.

“Not all of Hell is willing to accept a mortal as Lucifer. Considering that you are going to be with us for quite some time . . .”

“Forever maybe.”

“You might want to consider ways to minimize your chances of being murdered.”

“Not being killed is pretty high on my agenda. What kind of quest are we talking about?”

Merihim idly picked up a book from a nearby table.

“It’s really more of an exorcism. Not much more than clearing out a haunted house.”

“Maybe a bit more like a fortress,” Ipos said.

“With a coterie of unpleasant residents doing mischief with travelers.”

“What’s a coterie?”

“A somewhat large group.”

“How large?”

“Some say an army,” said Ipos. “But a minor one.”

“Why didn’t you say so? It sounds completely reasonable.”

“Good.”

“No, it doesn’t. I was being sarcastic.”

Merihim frowned.

“You don’t do it as well as Samael.”

“My wise balls are telling me to pass on the offer.”

“But they know you can’t.”

He was right. If I’m going to survive I need some juice, and the fastest way to get that down here is to kill something.

So now here I am, bouncing along in a truck with concrete shocks surrounded by a Hellion legion that smells like a fish-market Dumpster. I’m not usually the dragged-along-for-the-ride type. Usually, I’m the one doing the dragging, but I’m a little out of my depth here. Like Marianas Trench out of my depth. I fought in the arena long enough to know that sometimes the best strategy is to shut up, go along with the game, and make sure that someone is standing in front of me when the tentacles hit the fan. So far though, all my Cool Hand Luke plan has gotten me is a numb ass from sitting and a ringing in my ears from the engine noise. Worst of all, the unicorn is starting to smell good.



Up ahead, the whole world is on fire. Our three-truck convoy is off the freeway and in open desert plains following a narrow winding road to fuck-all.

“Ah. The first ring of suffering,” says Geryon, the scholar. “Henoch created three before we reach the Breach. They’re designed to break the spirit of anyone approaching.”

“I thought we made the suffering. We don’t do the suffering.”

“If you think Hell isn’t Hell for every creature in it then you’re blind, False Lucifer.”

“That’s getting annoying.”

“No more so than being ruled by a usurper.”

“A usurper has to want the job. I want to be home, drunk and breaking hotel beds with a girl named Candy.”

“Of course, False One. You merely fell into the lordship of Hell. It’s happened to all of us.”

“Then you admit I’m head of the pit crew down here.”

He looks away. Geryon loves me. The conversation has been like this all the way out from Pandemonium.

“If you’re unhappy you can walk back to Pandemonium. It shouldn’t take more than a week.”

“Merihim should be doing this,” says Geryon.

“Merihim and Ipos are too chicken to leave the capital, so they gave me you, sweetheart. Start talking or we’re going to see if you can dog-paddle through fire. I wonder if fried Hellion tastes like spicy or original recipe?”

Geryon looks at me like I’m a moldy ham sandwich someone forgot in the back of the fridge at work.

“What is it you want of me?”

“The rest of the story. You were telling me about Henoch Breach.”

Lucifer got me into this Hell mess and deserted me. Then Merihim and Ipos got me into this haunted house bullshit and they deserted me, too. If you can’t trust a fallen angel, who can you trust? Geryon is supposed to have the lowdown on where we’re going but he hates me more than Aelita and Marshall Wells combined. Maybe Merihim and Ipos are smarter than I thought. Maybe they stuck me with Tiny Tears here to show me how much some of the townies despise me. Maybe I can even learn something from this guy if I don’t get bored and make his guts into a new fan belt for the truck.

“Before the Breach there were the beasts. They were here when God threw us from Heaven’s walls. Few remember them and those who do think of them as nightmares. Nightmares from the terror of landing in this place. Some of us though, we still remember the truth. Great, fat obsidian snakes like blind worms and rats with fur like steel spikes.”

I look out the front window. The air shimmers over the heat like waves on a lake. Molten rock flows in thick streams around burning boulders. Blackened bones of hellbeasts stick up from black patches of cooled lava like slaughterhouse stalagmites.

“How in fuck’s sake are we supposed to get through that?”

Geryon glances at the window and looks away. He’s scared but he doesn’t want to look bad in front of the mortal. Cry me a river.