Devil Said Bang (Sandman Slim 4)

“Are you going after Aelita?”

“No. She’ll be long gone with the 8 Ball. I’m seeing someone who owes me a favor.”

“Do you want some company?”

“This one I have to do on my own. But I’d be grateful for a ride back to the Chateau.”

The Metro’s windshield is too far gone. Traven and I kick it out of the frame and throw it in a Dumpster at the back of the lot. We don’t talk on the ride across town. My chest hurts like I was hit by a cruise missile, but I’m not spitting up blood. Kasabian is asleep on the couch when I get back. A big metal dog curled up and surrounded by beer cans. I lie down and nap in bed for a couple of hours. When I wake up, I change clothes, get on the Hellion hog, and head downtown.

The Bradbury Building is an Art Deco beauty in one of the amnesic parts of town that can’t remember whether it wanted to be a neighborhood or a tourist wasteland and now isn’t quite either. Once upon a time I killed a vampire named Eleanor near here. Her family was the one I locked in the Chateau Marmont with a roomful of zombies. Now I’m back here again, not starting trouble but trying to end it.

I park the bike on a pile of dead fish. The sky flickers like a lightning storm but there’s no thunder.

The Bradbury Building is closed up tight but I jimmy the lock with the black blade. Silent motion-sensor alarms will go off the moment I’m inside. I’m sure the cops will rush right over after they dig out their squad cars from under all the rocks and carp. Even if they come, they’ll never find me where I’m going.

I get in one of the ornate wrought-iron elevators and press the buttons for the first and third floors simultaneously. The elevator rises to the thirteenth floor in a building that only has five.

I get out and walk to Mr. Muninn’s antiques shop. The door is unlocked. Go through the store, out the back exit, and down hundreds of feet of bare stone steps into a cavern below the city.

“Mr. Muninn!” I yell. “Olly olly oxen free.”

Mr. Muninn comes out from behind a Russian icon-style portrait of a king from a country that hasn’t existed for two ice ages.

“I didn’t expect you to come in that way. I’m so used to you appearing out of the shadows.”

“That’s Saint James’s trick these days. I just break into buildings and ride the Wonkavator to places that aren’t there.”

“It sounds like more fun when you say it.”

Muninn’s cavern is maybe the biggest antiques shop, curiosity cabinet, and junkyard in the universe. Shelves and tables sag under his crazy trinkets. Helmets and ancient weapons enough to take on Hannibal. Acres of old coins and endless galleries of paintings, jewelry, potions, karakuri, and old books. Piles of what look like dinosaur bones beside a moored zeppelin. Like a raven, he’s been plucking shiny pieces of this and that and hiding them in his lair for aeons. Maybe that’s why he goes by a raven’s name.

“I thought you might come to see me before this.”

“That was the plan but there was this ancient god and a whole Apocalypse thing happening. Maybe you heard about it.”

“I wouldn’t worry. You saved the dreamers. In a few days, they’ll take control of reality from the safety of their slumber and the sky will be blue and the world will be made beautiful again.”

“Make that brown skies, panhandlers, and things getting back to passable and I’ll believe you.”

“Always the optimist.”

I lean on a table and knock over piles of Confederate money.

“Sorry.” Then, “You lied to me, Mr. Muninn. This whole time. And I trusted you.”

“I know. And I have no excuses, just an explanation. I was afraid. To break down from one mind to five is troubling enough but then my own brother, Ruach, let Aelita kill brother Neshamah to save himself. It was too much to take. I don’t even know where my other two brothers are.”

He picks up a pile of gold Minoan coins and tosses them through the eye socket of a pterodactyl skull. A nervous tic.

“I’ve been down here and away from family squabbles since the world was young and I had hoped to stay here for eternity. But that’s not going to happen, is it?”

I shrug.

“That all depends on you. You asked me to take the singularity to one of your brothers in Hell. You said you’d owe me a favor. I made the delivery and now I’m calling in the favor. That’s if you’re willing to keep your part of the bargain.”

“Do you have the singularity with you?”

“No. It’s somewhere safe. I’ll keep it for now. If I get bored, maybe I’ll start a new universe, just like the Angra Om Ya.”