The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

“This is Cindil and this is Wild Bill. Take care of them, will you?”

Samael graciously offers his flask to his guests. Both decline.

“Of course I will. And then I’ll wash your car, shall I?”

“You know I ride a bike these days. But it could use some detailing.”

I nod toward the cages.

“You three might want to get out of here. I’m letting the hounds out.”

Samael leads Bill and Cindil to the elevator.

As the doors close Samael says, “Love you in red, James.”

ONCE THE HOUNDS are happily prowling around the kennels, I head back for Vigil HQ.

Shot and bloody, I need a moment to myself, so I come out into the parking lot with a lovely view of the golf course. It’s flooded now, so they’ve given up playing games. Abandoned golf carts still loaded with clubs sit out in the rain with water up past their wheels. I wade out into the deep and steal a club. I always wondered what those things feel like. The weight is strange. All on the end, like a morning star. Maybe we could have used these in the arena. Play a quick round of eighteen holes and the winner beats the loser to death with a putter. I take a swing and the bullets in my chest grind against bone.

Ow. That was stupid.

But the pain pulls me back into myself and I toss the club out into the rain. When I turn to go inside I happen to notice that I’m standing next to a God.

He’s in an ordinary chop-­shop body, but it’s obvious he’s not an ordinary demon. He’s naked. Rain pools and trickles down the thick scars where his mismatched limbs go together. A blue-­eyed blond head perched on an olive-­skinned chest, one muscular nut-­brown leg and the other white and flabby with the Addams Family tattooed down the calf. His form isn’t entirely solid, but transdimensional like Ten Thousand Shadows. With the slightest movement, like when he looks up into the night sky, his body morphs from male to female, to something like a sea anemone with eyes on the ends of its stingers, to an ice-­blue light encased in a living glass cage shaped like one of Mason’s polyhedral dice.

The rain stops. It doesn’t end. It just stops. Drops suspended in the air like a million Christmas lights.

“It is good to finally meet, Sandman Slim. I heard so much about you from Aswangana.”

“How is Lamia? She looked better in a party dress.”

“You could have killed her when she was in such a vulnerable form. Why did you hesitate?”

“I guess I felt sorry for her. Fucked over once by God and again by the ­people controlling her earthly form.”

The God cocks his head. It goes from the blond man to a bird’s skull to something dark and gelatinous.

“Sympathy for a fallen God,” he says. “That is why we respect you. You have a better sense of us than most. That is why I’m here. The nephilim and Angra are outcasts together. Join us and be an outcast no more.”

“What’s your name?”

He looks at me like it’s a strange question.

“I do not have a name. My name is the sound of the trembling void between the stars.”

“Listen, Shaky, some of your friends already tried the sales pitch. I told them no and I’ll tell you no. I understand how pissed off you are. I’ve felt it too. It isn’t easy being the only one of me in a universe where everyone hates you. But I can’t let you destroy the place. All my friends are here, and so’s my stuff. I mean, I just got Bullet for the General on Blu-­ray.”

“I know you cannot use the Qomrama Om Ya. Give it to me. Only a portion of me came through the rift. I will summon myself and then the other Angra. You will see. It will be glorious.”

“It’s not just me, you know. The Vigil will fight you. The Sub Rosa too.”

He laughs and I get a little hint of what he means by the void between the stars. The sound is deep, lonely, and cold.

“The Sub Rosa will come to us when the moment is right. They are part of us. Why do you think their portion of humanity is

more powerful than the rest? Able to manipulate the forces of nature? What you call magic.”

“They ate all their vegetables when they were kids?”