“At least I don’t get other people to do my killing for me. If I wanted to die, I’d do it myself and not trick Heaven into doing it for me.”
He sighs.
“We must be such a disappointment to you, Lucifer.”
He lays heavy sarcastic emphasis on “Lucifer.”
“This whole dump is one big disappointment. Maybe that’s why God forgot about you. You’re so fucking boring.”
Vetis presses the knife into the burn on my neck. I try not to wince.
He says, “Let me put you out of your misery.”
“Give me the knife and I’ll put you out of yours.”
Outside someone yells, “Hey!” Someone else curses. There’s the sound of running feet. A lot of them. More shouts. Guns go off and something hits the ambulance hard.
Vetis looks up as a dozen hands drag him out of the ambulance. One of them twists Vetis’s wrist until it pops and he drops the knife. They drag him around the side of the ambulance and I lose sight of him. A moment later, a woman steps inside and looks around for somewhere to sit that isn’t covered in blood. She finds a foam pillow pinned to the wall by the gurney and sets it on one of the cabinets.
“That worked out nicely, if I do say so myself,” says Deumos.
“It would have worked out even better if you’d gotten up here five minutes ago.”
She holds up her hands in a what-can-you-do gesture.
“Getting through the canyons without being seen took more time than we thought.”
I sit up and lean back against the wall. Grizzly’s blood soaks through my pants. I don’t care.
“I wasn’t sure you’d show at all.”
“But here we are, keeping our part of the bargain.”
“And I’ll keep mine. Just one thing. Did you bring a doctor or nurse?”
“We have a doctor and a nurse. Why?”
“The EMT they pulled out of here is probably pretty out of it. Someone should have a look at her. Also, can someone come in here to dig around for painkillers? I want to lie in a kiddie pool full of OxyContin.”
She pats me lightly on the shoulder.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
There’s no Oxy or Hellion Vicodin around, but Deumos comes back with someone’s flask full of Aqua Regia. It’ll do. We sit on the shoulder of the road looking back toward Pandemonium. Even falling apart, the place looks enough like L.A. to make me feel homesick.
The side of the hill where we sit crunches under our feet where the vegetation burned. But the place isn’t entirely dead. Scrubs of ghost thistle and even a few asphodel flowers have made it up through the layer of ash.
“You don’t look well,” says Deumos.
“With a month’s vacation, a face-lift, and a crate of Ecstasy, I might work my way up to feeling like shit.”
“General Semyazah isn’t going to be happy about any of this. Running around the hinterlands with weapons. Attacking his troops. And especially you conspiring with me.”
“He’ll be fine. I’ll send him a fruit basket.”
We sit for a minute, neither of us saying anything. There’s the kind of warm breeze that if you didn’t know you were in Heaven’s sewer you might find almost pleasant.
“So tell me, how does someone invent a new church in Hell? You run out of Sudoku?”