The Sandman Slim Series Books 1-4. Richard Kadrey
stun gun from my pocket and zap him in the ribs, just for old times’ sake. He goes down like a sack of lug nuts and I drop the stun gun on top of him. It won’t do much good against what I know will be here in a second.
I’m not entirely stupid. I start back for the office when security comes tearing around the corner before I can get very far. Five or six of them. Buzz-cut heads and necks as wide as manhole covers. They look as stupid in their suits as I do. But they have more guns. They all draw down on me, but don’t make a move. A woman walks around them and heads right for me. She has no idea who I am. Until she does.
“You’re dead,” she says.
“Not as dead as you’re about to be.”
Jayne-Anne backs off, yelling, “Kitty! Bennett!”
A starlet-skinny blonde in an off-the-shoulder designer schmata and a fop who looks like Ziggy Stardust in a purple velvet suit come around from behind the guards.
They reek of magic. It comes off them like heat ripples over desert asphalt.
So, to recap: we have five or six guns, a couple of hoodoo hipster killers, an old friend who wants me dead, a lot of drunks and naked showgirls, and me in a borrowed suit. I’d duck through a shadow, but with the crazy lighting in this place, there’s nothing dark or deep enough for me to dive through.
Even my stupidity has its limits. I turn and run.
Fire and lightning explode behind me. Burning golden sparks rain down on me like a thousand lit matches, burning through the suit and into my skin. Best of all, ducking and bouncing off the walls to keep from getting hit is making the bullets in my chest very angry. They scrape my ribs and prod my lungs. I can already feel blood in the back of my throat. I’m never going to outrun these idiots.
I drop to my hands and knees, breathing hard through the froth in my throat. Blondie and the fop stop and look at each other, a couple of good hunting dogs who just ran down the fox and are about get their reward.
I’ve got their reward.
I shout guttural Hellion syllables, coughing up blood with every word. I push every ounce of power I have down through my arms and legs. I spit and my blood soaks into the expensive carpet that lines the hallway. Then it’s gone. So is the floor. But I knew that was going to happen. Jayne-Anne’s magicians and her armed linebackers didn’t. They fall straight through where the hall floor used to be, roll down the hillside and into the trees. Jayne-Anne’s and my eyes meet just long enough for me to give her a little wink. Then someone grabs me from behind and drags me back into the office that I wasn’t supposed to leave in the first place. Plenty of shadows in here. I grab Vidocq’s shoulder and we walk out through a photo of Jayne-Anne glad-handing the pope.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
WE STEP OUT of a shadow and into Muninn’s cavern. Vidocq turns and punches me in the gut. I go down on one knee.
“You fucking child! You could have gotten us both killed.”
This isn’t the first time Vidocq has been mad at me, but it’s the first time he’s ever gotten physical. Good job. I’m about to lose one of the few friends I have on this rock.
When I don’t get up he says, “Don’t play with me. I didn’t hit you that hard.” Then he must see the blood. “What happened to you?”
“You hurt me bad, Pepe LePew,” I say.
“You child,” he says, and helps me to my feet. The bullets are rattling around inside me like gravel in a tin can.
Muninn looks like a little kid on Christmas morning when Vidocq hands him a small golden box with what looks like delicate grasshopper wings on top.
“Perfect. Beautiful,” he says over and over. He takes the box over to what looks like solid rock. But with a few touches and turns to specific stones, the rock face swings away, revealing an enormous vault in the side of the cavern. Muninn takes the golden box inside, comes back out, and seals the vault so that it’s invisible again.
“You’ve done a splendid job, gentlemen.” He gives me an indulgent smile. “Well, one of you has been splendid. The other has ruined his suit. Don’t worry. I have a million of them. Literally.”
“You didn’t tell us that they were using magicians as security at Avila,” I say.
“Are they? That’s new. But you rose to the challenge and completed your mission. I look forward to doing more business together.”
“What else do you know about Avila? You know what they’re hiding in that blank spot in the blueprints. Don’t you?”
Muninn looks troubled.
“You don’t want to know about these things. I don’t want to know about them and I’ve seen whole civilizations turned to salt or buried in ice.”
“What’s in there?”
Muninn shakes his head.
“A bordello. The secret one. A celestial bordello full of creatures seldom seen here on Earth. But the real reason those so inclined go there, risk their lives and their souls, is for the pleasure of abusing captive angels. These are the injured ones who fell to Earth during Lucifer’s uprising and new ones that they’ve captured since, though I have no idea how one goes about capturing an angel.” Muninn looks at me. “There. Are you happier knowing? Will you sleep better tonight? Young man, there are some things in the world so profane that their only real value is in not knowing about them.”
I wipe blood off my lips with my tuxedo sleeve while Muninn brings over a bottle dusty enough to have been on Noah’s Ark. He pours three drinks in three crystal glasses. When he raises his, Vidocq and I follow.
“To God above,” he says, and tosses the drink over his right shoulder. Vidocq and I do the same. He pours three more drinks.
“To the devil below.” He tosses the drink over his left shoulder. So do we.
Muninn pours three more drinks, each twice as full as the first two.
“To us. The ones who did real work tonight while those other two were off playing tiddledywinks with poor fools’ souls.” He raises his glass and knocks the whole thing off in one gulp. The stuff burns like rose-flavored battery acid, but I don’t taste blood anymore.
Muninn sets down his glass, takes a blue bottle from the end of the table, and sets it in front of Vidocq.
“Spiritus Dei, my friend.”
Vidocq beams. “Thank you. That’s more than I was hoping for.”
“If you have extra, can I have some?” I ask. “I want to put it on my bullets. I might have to shoot things that don’t die easy.”
Muninn goes to a shelf and comes back with a smaller version of the bottle he gave Vidocq.
“On account,” he says.
“Thanks.”
“And I owe you some cash, too, I believe.”
“That would be nice. Do you have an ATM down here under all these clocks and bones?”
Muninn walks to a corner of the room piled twenty-feet high with boxes of bills and chests overflowing with gold and silver coins. The little man pokes through the pile like an old codger trying to choose just the right ripe peach at the grocery store.
“Ah.” He pulls down a box marked U.S. TREASURY and hands me a neatly banded stack of brand new bills. I riffle the stack, enjoying the feel of money in my hands. The bills are all hundreds. Next to the counter girl at Donut Universe, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen since coming back to Earth.
Over Muninn’s shoulder there’s a glass decanter with a small blue flame, not much more than a match head, hovering at the center.
“Is that what it looks like?” I ask.
“What