Kill City Blues (Sandman Slim 5)

“Lucifer didn’t make Hell. God did.”

“Yeah. I thought that sounded funny.”

“It makes more sense when you know that before he was Lucifer, Mr. Muninn was God.”

Candy looks at me to see if I’m joking. Then she looks at Muninn.

“I’m afraid he’s telling the truth,” Muninn says. “And the reason I don’t, as you said, kill the bitch is I can’t.”

“Why not?”

I say, “He’s not as strong as he used to be. See, God isn’t exactly God anymore. He had sort of a nervous breakdown. Instead of one big God, there’s five little ones.”

“Four,” says Muninn. “Aelita has already killed Neshamah.”

“Word is your brother Ruach is tearing it up in Heaven.”

Muninn unconsciously squeezes the easy chair’s arms.

“Yes. You see, Ruach is the oldest brother. The oldest fragment. He covets the power the rest of us have. He’s a little mad, I think.”

“Was he always that way?”

“He was always a bit fragile. Then my brother Nefesh did what he did.”

“What does he do?” says Candy.

“Our quarrels became more and more violent. Finally Ruach flew into a rage. He demanded that the rest of us relinquish our powers or he would kill us all. When we wouldn’t he attacked us. Nefesh was the one who finally stopped him, in much the way I cast the first Lucifer out of Heaven.”

“With a thunderbolt.”

“Yes. It left Ruach blind and partially deaf. His anger and fear of us grew to the point where the rest of us knew we couldn’t stay.”

Candy says, “So there’s a God in Heaven, only he’s just a little piece. And there’s other pieces of God running around. And you’re a piece of God and Lucifer at the same time.”

“In a nutshell,” says Mr. Muninn.

Candy pats my arm in mock sympathy.

“Now I understand why you are the way you are. The universe is a lot more fucked up than I ever imagined.”

“Can your brothers help?” I say. “Where are they?”

Muninn waves a hand at the window.

“Here. There. Anywhere. I haven’t talked to them in a long time.”

“Okay. So, anything new with Merihim and Deumos? Are they at war yet?”

Merihim is a big wheel in the old official Hellion church. Hell’s Vatican. Strictly an old-boys club. No girls allowed. Deumos and her sister Hellions had a little problem with that. They started their own church, worshipping a kind of goddess that’s supposed to be the new post-God deity. A fairy godmother to kiss all the scraped knees and make everything all right again. One of the last things I did when I was Lucifer was give the women their own church. After I left, Merihim and his crew burned it down. What are little boys made of? Snips and snails and rotten little assholes that don’t want to share their toys.

“Not quite at war but far from peace. Deumos and many of the other sisters have gone into hiding,” says Muninn. “You might be amused to know that Medea Bava went into hiding with them.”

Medea Bava was the Sub Rosa’s Inquisition. Their ultimate enforcer. The lone-wolf cop who handed out life sentences in a little place called Tartarus, the Hell below Hell, where souls were burned to stoke the celestial furnaces. It was a place no one ever escaped from. Only I escaped and I took all the other lunatics in the asylum out with me. After that, Medea disappeared. I hate her almost as much as Aelita.

Muninn sighs.

“She lost faith in me—the God part, at least—when you destroyed Tartarus, so she joined Deumos and the sisters. Another voice lost in the wilderness.”