Kill City Blues (Sandman Slim 5)

“The bullet’s out. I’m all healed up inside.”

“I know that in my head, but it doesn’t feel that way yet. And I see you trying to hide the wound, so don’t bother. Can we please just be here for a minute together without weird weapons or old gods or monsters between us?”

“Come here,” I say, and pull her down on the bed. She curls around me with her leg over mine.

“I know I’m not always easy to be around,” I say.

“No. You’re fine. It’s just everything you do.”

“I should have listened to my high school guidance counselor and studied air-conditioning repair.”

“Then you’d have all those sexy jumpsuits I could wear around the place.”

“Jumpsuits aren’t sexy.”

“They are when you’re not wearing anything under them.”

She gets up and turns off the light, then comes back to bed. A few minutes later her breathing is shallow and regular. She’s asleep. I close my eyes and drift off. In my dream, I’m in the arena in Hell with the mad little ghost, Lamia. We circle each other, looking for an opening.

“Are you here to kill me?” says Lamia.

I tell her the truth.

“Only if I have to.”

Part of me feels like an idiot. Lamia looks like a little girl, nine or ten years old, wearing a blue party dress. She also has a knife as big her forearm. And the only thing keeping her from sticking me with it is that I have the 8 Ball. It’s the only thing that’s ever seemed to scare her.

But this isn’t right. This isn’t how I met Lamia. It wasn’t in the arena. It was in the Tenebrae, the limbo land of lost and desperate ghosts too afraid to move on to Heaven or Hell.

Lamia was there, radiating crazy like a Chernobyl straitjacket and stalking the place like a Sherman tank in kneesocks. She knifed ghosts in the Tenebrae and killed people back on earth, laughing the whole time.

When I asked who she was and what she wanted, all I got was schizobabble about the world before it was the world. Eventually she told me her name.

“I’m Lamia. I breathe death and spit vengeance.”

Try having a ten-year-old tell you that and knowing they mean it. It’s a Hallmark moment.

Father Traven is our resident mystical trivia expert. He used to translate books for the Church, but then he translated the wrong one. The Angra Om Ya’s bible. He got the boot for that. Excommunicated. A one-way ticket to Hell.

Father Traven thinks Lamia is a demon. A “Qliphoth,” he calls them. Not a little imp with a pitchfork and anger-management issues. A real demon is a broken thing. A mindless fragment of the old gods, the Angra Om Ya. But demons are basically morons, with about as much brainpower as an underachieving maggot. Some eat. Others dig. Others curse. But none of them choose it. It’s what they’re programmed for.

What makes Lamia special is that she’s relatively smart and chatty. You might think that’s a good thing, letting us get into a demon’s mind so we can see how the gears work and all that forensic horseshit. But it’s not good news at all.

You don’t want to get anywhere near a smart demon. A smart demon is a bigger, more powerful piece of the Angra. Lamia means that more of the old gods are leaking into our universe. How long until other smart demons break through? How long before a complete Angra?

And even though I know it’s wrong, Lamia and I are back in the arena, only she’s not slashing me. She’s slashing Candy. But I can’t protect her because even though I have the 8 Ball, I don’t know how it works. I’m helpless and useless.

I really want to ask Mr. Muninn about Lamia, but I haven’t figured out where to even start a question like that.

“Hey, Mr. Muninn, back when you were one big God, did you steal the universe from another race of older gods, lock them away somewhere, then pretend that you created everything and proceed to screw it all up for the next few billion years? Was that your plan? ’Cause if it was, mission fucking accomplished.”

CANDY IS STILL asleep when I wake up. I say her name and shake her, but she doesn’t budge. She gets like this sometimes. Some combination of being exhausted and her Jade metabolism. It’s more like she’s hibernating than sleeping. This can go on for hours. I’ll go out of my mind if I sit around that long.

I turn on the light and put on new leather pants and boots. No more button-down shirts for me. I don’t dress up for anyone. The only clean T-shirt I can find has a winking Japanese schoolgirl on the front over “I ♥ TENTACLES.” Guess who gave me that. I also grab my coat. It’s still too hot for it, but after the party at Garrett’s room I’m not going anywhere without my na’at and a gun.

Going to Manimal Mike’s place is a no-sweat trip I can do without anyone holding my hand. I leave Candy a note telling her where I am. She’ll be pissed if she wakes and finds me gone, but it’s better than lying around in the dark or watching Kasabian walk around on all fours like a Hellion windup toy.

I take the fake 8 Ball and go out through the grandfather clock. Take the elevator down to the lobby and wait for a second before going any farther.