Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim 4)

“Even with the Lord’s mark on him, Samael was so anxious to play the tragic warrior king that he added the thunderbolt crest.”

She pats a blank spot in the center of the breastplate.

“I’m happy to see you removed it.”

I touch the armor where she had her hand. There’s a tiny divot where a bolt might have been removed. Suddenly I want to get back to the palace.

“I think I’m going to head out before someone realizes I’m gone. You can handle Grand Funk Railroad back there?”

“You’ll release the rest of my people?”

“I’ll make the call as soon as I get back.”

“We’ll drop off the prisoners when they’re returned.”

One of her crew, a tall silent woman with spiders branded into her arms and cheeks, drives me to the bike in the jeep Vetis took up here. She barely slows long enough for me to jump out before she’s tearing back up the road. So much for Hail Satan.

I start the bike and head out, keeping the speed subsonic. Between the Gladius and the ambulance crash, I’m feeling a little rough. Deumos and her people are just about to leave when I catch up. When I slow the bike, I can feel tension ripple through the air. People holding guns thumb off the safeties. Ones without guns get theirs out. I wait, gunning the throttle and waiting for something to happen. Deumos comes over slowly. Stands an arm’s length away, straight and defiant. I take the flask from my pocket and hand it to her.

“Tell the owner thanks.”

She takes the flask and I pop the clutch, burning rubber out of there.

I take the secret stairs up from the garage straight into the library, careful to step around the hexes in the floor. I pick up the phone and hit PISSANTS. Brimborion picks up.

“It’s me.”

“You’re alive.”

“Surprise. Release Deumos’s crew.”

“Security isn’t through questioning them.”

“You mean torture? They’re done. If any of them have a problem, tell them Lucifer said to put it in writing and shove it up their ass.”

“I’ll just say the order came from you.”

“You’re leaving out the best part but okay.”

“How did you . . . ?”

“Got to go.”

I hang up.

Samael knew I needed the armor to survive, so if I lived he knew I’d always have it with me. He was smart enough to hide the thunderbolt so that even if Mason won, he’d never have all of Samael’s power. Not telling me any of this stinks like more of his “figure it out for yourself” Socratic horseshit. Or did he tell me something more? I have a vague impression of talking to him about it and him telling me something else. What was it?

The more immediate question is this: where would I hide if I was a missing piece of armor?

Samael told me to read the Greeks, so that seems like a good place to start, which is exactly why I’m not going to do it. I’ve pawed through every Greek book on the shelves. I liked one book I found, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, but then I found out he was Roman and not Greek and that just pissed me off. For a while I thought that might mean something but probably someone just put it on the wrong shelf.

If the thunderbolt is anywhere, it will be anywhere but where Samael told me where to look. Aside from actuarial tables, Hellion tax law, and sports stats, what section would I be the least likely to look in? What other sections are there in libraries? I’m not exactly an expert on book jail, and when I walked around before, I didn’t pay much attention to what books were where or how they were arranged. Time to get rigorous and organized.

I hate this already.

You know how when you drive somewhere new it always seems longer the first time? That’s how it is the first time you walk through an entire library trying to figure out how it’s put together. I could have done this when I first got here but I didn’t give a fuck what was on the other shelves and mostly resented everything beyond my little pied-à-terre for not having more, meaning any, movies. If Samael really wanted me to pay attention, he’d have stuck Herodotus between piles of Howard Hawks and John Huston.

Twenty minutes of looking and my eyes are already glazing over. There are no section markers. No Dewey decimal system or card catalog. (Yes, I know about the Dewey decimal system. I didn’t spend a lot of time in libraries but I’m aware of their existence.) Just rows of books with titles in Hellion script. And I was just in a crash. My neck hurt before. Now it’s aching from holding it sideways to read the titles.