The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

She shrugs it off and hands it to me. When I take it she leans forward and gives me a quick hug. I think she’s still a little shell-­shocked.

“Take care, both of you. Look after her, Bill.”

“That I will,” he says.

I turn to the legionnaire. He’s barely moved since we came in. My first instinct is to blow his head off just to make sure he won’t talk to anyone. But Cindil is still skittish and has seen enough death, and the last thing I want to do is send her screaming into the night. I take out the black blade and go over. When the legionnaire looks up, I stick it under his throat.

“My name is Sandman Slim. I’ve killed more of you Hellion pig fuckers than I can count. You breathe one word about what’s happened here today to anyone . . . well, you know what Tartarus is?”

Everyone in Hell knows what Tartarus is. It’s the Hell below Hell. The resting place for the double dead.

The rummy nods.

I wrecked Tartarus once, but I had it rebuilt for just one man. Mason Faim, the mortal man I killed to become Lucifer. I hated him more than all the Hellions put together. He’s the only soul in Tartarus these days.

“There’s plenty of room in Tartarus for a dumb guy with a big mouth. Especially a deserter. No one would notice or care if you disappeared. So you didn’t see anything today. And if anyone asks, that girl over there has been working here since the day the place opened. Got it?”

His eyes are wide. When he tries to nod he sticks himself on the tip of the knife.

“Ow.”

“I’ll take that for a yes.”

I put the blade back under my coat and head for the nearest shadow.

“And you didn’t see this either, fucker,” I say, and step into the dark.

I COME OUT in Mr. Muninn’s cavern under the Bradbury Building. The shelves are crammed with books, ancient weapons, and scientific instruments. Animal teeth and dinosaur bones. Paintings cover the walls and sculptures fill every empty corner. In the distance is a drive-­in movie screen. Who knows what else? You could spend a ­couple of lifetimes down here trying to inventory the place.

I go to where Muninn’s fortress of solitude opens onto the main tunnel that used to be home for L.A.’s dead. Kneeling, I pour the potion across the floor. A wall quietly assembles itself from the surrounding stones and fills the gap. It only takes a few seconds to form and it looks like it’s been there since T. rexes used the Rockies as a skateboard ramp.

There’s a new war in Heaven. Angels eating their own. What a surprise. I don’t have a good history with angels. They’re bigger control freaks than Wells and crazier than manic-­depressive cobras. Aelita, the loon. Rizoel, who made me take his arm when he tried to keep me out of Eden. That tricky bastard Lucifer. And my father. He was technically an archangel. Uriel. He went by the name Doc Kinski when I knew him and I didn’t even know he was my father until after Aelita murdered him. The one good thing he ever did for me, that any angel ever did for me, was take care of Candy. He pulled her off the street and got her the Jade potion that keeps her from eating ­people. A ­couple of points for Doc Kinski, then. But the rest of them? I can’t wait for the rain to break in L.A. because it will mean the blood has stopped in Hell, and that will mean there aren’t any angels left in Heaven. Of course, we’ll still have Ruach upstairs and the Angra knocking at the back door. Once again, the powers that be have completely fucked us. They play out their family traumas on a cosmic scale and we’re caught in the middle, like we’ve always been. We’re just bugs on God’s windshield.

I try calling Candy to let her know that I’m back and everything is all right, but I can’t get a signal this far underground.

I check on the new clothes that Muninn gave me, but Hell’s red rain has soaked through my jacket and ruined them. I toss them on the ground and step through a shadow.

Come out on Hollywood Boulevard a few blocks from Max Overdrive. I walk the last five minutes home in the rain trying to wash as much of the blood off me as I can.

I’ll have to remember to give Kasabian his hat.

IN THE MORNING, way too early in the goddamn morning, I’m back in a Vigil van moving through Hollywood. The streets are empty except for a ­couple of homeless ­people huddled asleep in the doorway of the wax museum near Highland. The traffic lights have stopped working, which doesn’t matter since there’s no traffic. Most stores are deserted, though a few places forgot to lock the door. Water sloshes up over the curb to soak their carpets. But the merchandise stays where it is. There’s no one left even to loot the place.

An LAPD cruiser riverboats past us, too smart to slow or do anything but stare at our blacked-­out caravan.

We pull over at the Hollywood and Vine underground metro stop. The place is locked down tight. There’s a big “Closed for Maintenance, Sorry for the Inconvenience” sign on the gate blocking the stairs. Julie Sola jumps out of the second van, unlocks the gate, and pushes it out of the way. Just like at the funny farm, Wells’s crew starts unloading personnel and forensic gear for our trip down the rails. The Shonin is back at headquarters, warm and dry. Mummies don’t much like wading through ankle-­deep water, and when we’re downstairs, let’s face it . . . the jerky on the guy’s bones is going to attract rats. Best for everyone if he stays at the HQ sipping his poison book.

“Stark, stay close to me,” says Wells.

“I didn’t know you cared.”

“I don’t. I just don’t want you making up your own mission and wandering off.”

Someone gets the lights turned on below and we head down.

The Hollywood and Vine subway is a themed stop, a municipal tourist trap, trying to keep travelers out of their cars while they’re in town. The concrete support columns below are tiled to resemble shiny palm trees. The ceiling is covered in empty film reels and along the walls of the tunnel are decorations that look like lengths of movie film.

The trains had been running less and less the last few weeks, and with no one left to ride them, they’ve stopped completely. A shallow channel of water flows from the surface all the way down to the platform and falls onto the tracks.