Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim 4)

I can hear his fiend’s heart beating like a bar band doing a cover of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” He stinks of Aqua Regia and some kind of Hellion speed I haven’t smelled before.

“Did Vetis kill Ipos or did you? I’m guessing Vetis. Ipos would crack you open and play Jenga with your bones.”

“Among the many reasons I hate you is that you only drank enough to be infuriating. Just a little more and the possession key might have worked and then none of this would have been necessary. You would have appointed me the new Lucifer and killed yourself on the palace steps. You don’t even want to be Lucifer and it’s impossible to stop you from doing it.”

“But you won’t be Lucifer. Marchosias will. Wise up, Tom Swift. She gets the power and all you’re getting is a desk and new stationery.”>First no cigarettes and now I realize I left my Aqua Regia back at home base. My neck hurts. My chest burns. My right hand aches from picking up books. I’m sore and sweating like a fat man chasing a taco wagon across the Mojave.

Sitting here and closing my eyes feels good.

Then it comes back to me.

“Right in front of you. Stop looking. Sit down and you’ll see.”

I open my eyes and see I’m sitting in the middle of a huge section on magic. Samael takes the subject more seriously than I ever did. Because I was born a nephilim, I never learned much real magic. Even as a kid I had enough power to improvise my own hoodoo. The first and only real magic I ever learned was down here killing in the arena and later as Sandman Slim. There’s probably a lot of useful information in these books. Too bad the whole reading thing is starting to give me hives.

A book lies facedown on the other side of a reading lamp. I didn’t notice it before. It’s a paperback with a bright yellow cover, the first paperback I’ve seen down here. I pick it up. The title is in big block letters.

ANGER MANAGEMENT FOR DUMMIES

Like I said, Samael always leaves me something to work with and a cheap joke is better than no clue at all.

I flip through the book looking for highlighted passages or dog-eared pages. I even read most of a chapter. It’s all the usual straight-arrow self-help babble. No clues. No codes. Just sensible advice for sensible people, which leaves me out in the cold. I throw the book across the room. For all I know, Aelita brought it down so Mason could use it to mess with my brain.

I need a drink. Many drinks. And I need them now.

I kick over the chair as I get up, knocking over the table and sending the lamp flying.

There’s something on a shelf that had been hidden behind the table. On a bottom shelf all the way at the back of the magic section is an old book whose cover is the same shade of yellow as Anger Management for Dummies. I kneel and pull it out.

It’s musty and a little mildewed and the leather binding cracks when I touch it. The lettering and illustration of a kid on the front looks Victorian. Gold lettering reads A Magic Primer  for Little Gentlemen. Magnificent Feats and Rousing Conundrums for Boys of  All Ages. I open it. Inside, the pages have been hollowed out. Lying at the bottom of the empty book is something wrapped in purple linen. I unroll it. And find a golden thunderbolt. Bingo.

I stand up and clip it into place.

Nothing happens. Zero. Zip. Nada. I didn’t think I was going to roll around the floor growling like Lyle Talbot sprouting Wolf Man whiskers but I was hoping for something. I’m so jacked up on adrenaline that all traces of exhaustion are gone, but that’s still a letdown when you expect to feel like the second most powerful being in the universe.

Then something hits me like a baseball bat to the kidneys. My guts knot up and my body temperature shoots up a hundred degrees. Darkness spills out of me, rolling onto the floor and spreading like black Hellion blood. I’m spewing darkness from every pore of my body. The darkness isn’t solid. It’s a cold dead void like a drop into a bottomless pit. Things curl up from the nothingness, icy and sharp, like freezing rattlesnakes. Suddenly I’m a supercharged nitro-burning Hell beast with teeth the size of the Rockies and hands the size of Texas. If I bend down, I can lift all of Creation onto my back.

And then, like a supersonic orgasm, the feeling is gone. There’s nothing left and I’m back on the floor gasping for air.

What the hell just happened? Does this mean I had Lucifer’s power for a second but my human body couldn’t contain it? Or did it just feel like it passed into me?

There are voices. They don’t come through clearly. Whispers of Hellions all around me in the palace. Even though I can’t hear individual words, the meaning still filters through. Most words are nothing. Empty compliments or straight-up information. Other things hang in the air. Faint wisps of vapor like steam coming off hot coffee. They’re veiled threats and lies. The half-truths, evasions, and bullshit that’s the blood in the arteries of this place. They float in through the walls like a ghost mist.

Okay. Right. This is new. It’s not much more than a trick from one of those shitty amaze-your-friends-and-half-wit-relatives magic kits you buy off late-night TV but it’s something. Maybe the superhero stuff will kick back in later. I like the darkness thing that just happened. I hope I didn’t blow all my power in one big death-dive money shot. Maybe being Lucifer isn’t about power but just being more aware of your Luciferness. That would be a hell of a letdown. I swear on every pointy little Hellion head if I start to grow bat wings and a tail, I’m going to cut them off and feed them to Samael through the wrong hole.

There’s one supertrick I want more than anything, and even if I still have the power, I don’t know how to get at it. How did Samael leave Hell? I never got a chance to ask. Maybe a hoodoo chant? Something you do in a Magic Circle? Walking through a waning arch? Maybe he just had a pair of ruby slippers like Dorothy.

I can’t stand this. Get me out of here. Take me home.

The roar and the wind hit like a hurricane. Things shoot past me, shrieking like tracer rounds. All metal and leaving trails of lights. A blue-brown twilight sky hovers above gray clouds. I smell diesel fumes and scorched engine oil. A green sign trimmed in white catches my eye. It reads CRENSHAW BOULEVARD EXIT.

I recognize this. I’m on the I-10 freeway above where I did the Black Dahlia and splattered my brains and bones on a freeway support. I can’t help it. I laugh and laugh like a lunatic way off his meds.

This is L.A. I’m home.

Mustang Sally, the beautiful sylph and goddess of the roads, is perched on the hood of a silver Mercedes 550 convertible in the breakdown lane, smoking like she’s been waiting for me the whole time I’ve been gone. She smiles and crooks a finger to my right. I turn.

A sixteen-wheeler is bearing down on me going seventy. The driver is laying on the air horn as cars flash by all around me. Right. Cars. Fuck. Standing on freeways is bad even if you’re magic.