Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim 4)

Brimborion shrugs.

“Everyone in the palace has something on the side. It’s the generals who get rich. Not civil servants.”

“Who paid you to hold on to these?”

He looks at the bed.

“Lahash.”

That’s a nice way of covering your trail. Don’t just kill the guy who knows too much. Turn him into a suicide bug bomb.

“If someone wants to assassinate you, there must be easier ways,” says Brimborion.

“They tried easier. Now they tried this. Watch your ass. You work for me, so sooner or later you’re going to be on the bug list too.”

He touches his hand to his chest, about where Lahash burst open. He turns and goes out, pulling the doors closed behind him.

I use my teeth to pull the glove off my Kissi hand. I’ll be using it a lot the next few days.

I undo a couple of buttons on my shirt and slip my burned hand inside like it’s a sling. The feeling is starting to come back, meaning it already hurts like hell. I growl Hellion hoodoo and the blackened skin on my hand lightens to its skin color. I’ve never been great at healing magic but at least I can make the hand look normal while it heals. I just won’t be penning Candy any sonnets over the next few days.

I pull the black blade from my waistband. It feels weird doing it lefty. Prop the box between my knees and slice it open. It’s what I thought. The bottle Bill sent me. I stick the point of the knife in the floor, twist the cap off the bottle, and take a long drink. Bill was right. It’s not half bad by Hell standards.

I toss the box over by the dead bugs and look at the first envelope. Printed in a perfect, precise script on the first envelope is the single word Stark. The envelope is made of something almost transparent. Like rice paper, only tougher. Barely visible angelic script is woven into the paper’s fibers. I hold it in my teeth and, using the black blade like a letter opener, shake the envelope until the letter falls out.

Dear James,

I know by now you must  hate me and you have every right to.

I only have to read a sentence to know who sent it. Mr. Muninn.

I should have been  truthful with you from the moment you talked about returning to Hell. For  that I’m sorry. You have my best wishes, my prayers, and my full confidence  that you’ll make a safe return home. I wish I could say more but time is  short. By now I’m sure you know that my brother, Neshamah, is dead by  Aelita’s hand. She and my other brother, Ruach, the part of us that still  rules in Heaven, seem to have come to some sort of vicious understanding.  Aelita means to kill the rest of us and Ruach has agreed to let her, leaving  him alone to rule. I should leave Los Angeles, in fact this world, but I’ve  come to love it so. For now I’ll lose myself in the tunnels where the dead  once roamed under the city. I suppose it’s a pathetic fate for a deity but  one I probably deserve for deserting my brothers and not doing my part to  stop this madness long ago.

Take care of yourself, my  boy. I’m sure we’ll meet again.

Protect the  Singularity.

With warmest  regards,

Muninn

I guess it’s nice that one of us thinks I’m getting out of this alive but it’s annoying how wrong Muninn is. I don’t hate him. I’m pissed. I want to strangle him, but only until he turns some funny colors. Not until he’s dead. The guy is scared to death and I understand that. Plus, he apologized, which is more than I can say for Saint James.

There’s nothing written on the second envelope. I turn it over. It’s closed with a red wax seal imprinted with twisted, angular lines like a piece of rusty bailing wire in an old barn. Samael’s sigil is as crooked as he is.

Dearest Jimmy. Or, if you  prefer, your Infernal Majesty,

I bet you’ve had a few  chuckles when you found out that all my plans and machinations designed to  return me to Heaven returned me to one ruled by a bastard and a fool. I’ve  laughed about it a few times myself, but only in private and very, very  quietly.

Have assassins given you  any interesting new scars? Murder is unsettling when you’re on the receiving  end, isn’t it, Sandman Slim? Worst of all, it destroys your ability to  trust, which is the point of this note. When you have no allies to go to for  help, there’s only one logical solution. Go to your enemies. When your back  is against the wall, ask yourself this question: which bastard has the most  to gain by helping me?

Here’s hoping this note  finds you as charming and unmurdered as ever.

Yours in  Christ,

Samael

I don’t know whether to be madder at Samael or Brimborion. It would have been really nice to know that someone out there was thinking about me, even if it was the asshole that stuck me here. And it would have been really goddamn helpful a few weeks back to get strategic advice from someone who has more reasons to want me alive than dead.