“I’m not trying to bust your balls, Mr. Muninn. You know I like you. You’re a nice guy and you took care of the dead under L.A. for all those years. But you’re wrong on this and you know it. None of us here ever wanted to be Lucifer. You can make sure there are no more Lucifers ever again.”
“This isn’t the time for that discussion,” he says.
“I might have an idea,” Samael says. “A compromise for you both.”
Mr. Muninn says, “I’m listening.”
“Stark, as we’ve both pointed out, Heaven isn’t the place to send anyone anymore, so your rescue of Father Traven, while brave, was ill-timed. And Father won’t permit him going to paradise. So, what do you do with a soul one party won’t let into Hell and the other won’t permit into Heaven?”
“What?” I say.
“Blue Heaven.”
“Limbo, you mean?”
“The pleasantest limbo you’ve ever seen,” says Samael.
Blue Heaven is a place out of time, literally. Its real name translates as “the Dayward.” It’s a part of the universe that broke away from normal time and space in 1582 when Pope Gregory switched from the old Julian calendar to the Christian. Fifteen days were suddenly wiped out of existence. But they never really went away. They exist on their own as the Dayward. Blue Heaven.
“Have you ever been there?” says Samael.
“You know I haven’t. The angel part of me has, but the rest of me can’t remember what it was like. I guess I have a general sense that it was a decent enough place. I don’t even know how to get there.”
“Through the Room, you idiot,” says Samael. “The Door of Drunken Eternity, I believe.”
“How do you know that?”
“When your angel broke loose of you, he talked in his sleep.”
“What, and you used to crouch over him and listen? You pervert.”
“You can take the boy out of the Devil but not the Devil out of the boy,” he says.
We both look at Mr. Muninn. He seems lost in thought.
He says, “If I was to agree to let Father Traven leave, would you give me the Qomrama Om Ya?”
That stumps me. I don’t know what to say at first. I don’t think Nefesh wanted to get near the thing.
“No,” I say. “But I promise I’ll use it against the Angra and fight them until the end.”
“Then the answer is no.”
“Let me throw you another compromise,” I say.
“All right.”
“Let Father Traven go and I’ll come back to Hell and stay. I’ll be Lucifer again.”
“Ha!” says Samael. Mr. Muninn opens his eyes a bit wider. I wish I could read angels the way I can read humans. I never know what these fuckers are thinking. That goes double for God.
“You’d really do that?”
“If I can bring Candy with me, yes.”
Mr. Muninn shakes his head.
“You’re the definition of a troublesome child.”