The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

Shaky looks a little bruised after his fight with Ruach.

“Don’t waste any more of my time or I’ll kill all of your loved ones and make you watch,” he says.

I toss the 8 Ball one more time.

“You know, I think I can pull Deumos out with this thing. I wonder if I can do any other tricks?”

I touch it to Deumos’s body. The ball glows for a second and stops.

“You see?” she says. “Nothing.”

“I’m not so sure. I think you’re stuck in that body now.”

“What difference does that make?”

“You won’t die like an angel. You’ll die like meat. Like a mortal.”

I check my phone. It’s ten o’clock.

Shaky puts out his hand.

“Now, Abomination. Give it to me or see the young Jade die.”

“Okay.”

I toss it to him. The 8 Ball bounces off his chest and he catches it. Stares at it for a second like he doesn’t quite believe it’s real. Then he smiles, a wild, ecstatic thing. A smile that’s been coming for a billion years.

Shaky holds up the 8 Ball and it sort of unfolds, becomes a hundred different shapes at once. Some alive and some inert. It writhes, spins, flaps, swims, burns, melts. Grows wings, eyes, spines like icebergs, and limbs like dead trees. It does all this at once. I can’t look. It hurts my eyes. It hurts my head, trying to take it all in. But I can see the sky. Lightning flashes and the rift opens again. The rip blacks out stars. Something comes through, and this time it’s not just smoke and bones. It’s fully formed things that are as wild, unidentifiable, and painful to look at as the thrashing 8 Ball. It hurts, but I keep looking.

Shaky takes off like a rocket to meet his asshole buddies. Something huge and yellow streaks after him. It’s Ruach, blown up as big as Shaky was when he was a building. But it doesn’t do him any good. By the time Ruach catches up, Shaky’s friends are close enough to grab him. The twelve of them go wild with their first taste of God-­flesh gumbo. They take their time ripping him apart. The Angra’s squeals of delight and Ruach’s screams of pain are like overlapping claps of thunder.

Nearby, Muninn appears, flanked by Samael and Chaya. I go over to them, wishing Ruach hadn’t pulled his little stunt. It’s not going to make this any easier.

I open the one remaining door to the Room.

We don’t say anything to each other. Just watch.

Deumos loves it. I bet she was a big fan of the arena in Hell, even if she hid it well. I take out the Colt and shoot her in both legs. I don’t want her dead just yet. While she’s still stunned in her new body, I carry her to the door and toss her in.

“Ladies first,” I say.

She just lies there looking around the Room, amazed at how much having a body can hurt. I go back to the carnage in the sky.

By the time I get back, the Angra have finished with Ruach. L.A. becomes Hell for a minute as Ruach’s holy blood mixes with the rain, staining the streets red. Where drops touch the flesh cathedral, it and the hanging bodies shrivel up and disappear.

Watching his brother being killed, Muninn walks forward so the Angra can see him. He’s a brave son of a bitch. Samael keeps a hand on Muninn’s shoulder and Muninn doesn’t seem to mind. Chaya looks like he’d like a one-­way ticket to Zanzibar or wherever the farthest place from Pershing Square is.

The Angra spread out across the sky.

Shaky looks down at us, his lunatic smile smeared with God blood. It’s easy to tell when he spots Muninn because he lets out a shriek that deafens every bird and sets off every car alarm from L.A. to downtown Tokyo.

All thirteen of the Angra Om Ya, pissed, crazy, sporting vengeance hard-­ons the size of Mount Rushmore, dive for Pershing Square.

Muninn moves closer to the door. He can’t let them get him. He has to draw them inside for this to work.

It’s hard to figure out the exact timing on everything. Staring up through the rain at flying elder Gods, it’s not easy to get a sense of scale and distance. We’re going to have to do this free jazz. Try to find a melody and a beat in the cacophony, and improvise our way to the end.

Samael walks Muninn closer to the door.