“Jim, can you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
She waves her hand in front of me.
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
I squint.
“When did you get thirteen fingers?”
“He’s all right.”
I stand on my own. The dizziness is gone. I feel better than I do 90 percent of the time. Sharper, stronger, and better focused. Lucifer wore this armor in Heaven. He fought in it. Killed in it. Bled in it and almost died in it. He’s left a part of himself in it. I feel as strong and clear as I felt when the angel was running things.
“It feels good. Like someone put a V-8 in a MINI Cooper.”
Alice says, “I don’t think you should take the armor off while you’re down here.”
“Hell, I may never take it off.”
The angel clears his throat.
“We’re not done here.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Mason is dead. Isn’t it over?” asks Alice.
“You might want to stay here and skip this next part,” I tell her. “One of us has to put on a show for the wolf pack outside.”
“I’ll do it if you aren’t up to it,” says the angel.
“No. I’m the killer, not you. And I have the armor. It should be me.”
I look at Alice.
“Stay with her. Don’t let her get grabbed by any angels or gods or elves.”
The angel nods.
“What are you going to do?” asks Alice.
I pick up Mason’s body and toss it over my shoulder. It hardly weighs anything. This armor is definitely coming home with me.
“Got to go out and become a god, baby.”
Alice looks at me. I shift Mason so his blood runs down my armor.
“There are so many at this point, what’s one more?”
I start to go out through a shadow, but bump into a solid wall. Ow. I forgot I don’t have the key right now. Allegra can put it back when she splices us back together. It feels funny not having someone inside me looking over my shoulder.
In the elevator I take the Singularity from Mason’s pocket and put it in mine. At the lobby, I go out onto the hotel’s wide lawn.
The Infernal legions, fresh from slaughtering the Kissi, are spread out in every direction. Soldiers show each other fresh Kissi pelts and wings. For all the fallen angels have built down here, at heart they’re still a bunch of morons pulling the wings off flies. Someone needs to work on that. Maybe I can set up a time-share for the angel. He can come down and teach them table manners and I can take care of business upstairs. Right now, though, I’m in wolf-pack country and this million or so killers are wondering who’s the alpha dog.
I climb on top of Semyazah’s Unimog and hold up Mason’s body so everyone can see him. A cheer goes up. It’s decent as cheers go, but it’s not a Steppenwolf playing “Born to Be Wild” to a sold-out crowd cheer.