I go over to him, tear open his shirt, and rip the talisman off his neck. The chain leaves a nice red mark on his throat.
I get in close and whisper, “I cut off my own face once because it seemed like a good idea at the time. What do you think I’ll cut off you?”
He gives me a tiny nod and steps back, rubbing the red mark where the chain broke.
“It’s nice to see you with your energy back. I’ve been worried.”
“What does that mean?”
He waves his hand up and down me.
“Just an observation. Since you replaced our other Lucifer, you’ve seemed so wan and … what? Weak? It would be awful if people thought your armor was the only thing keeping you alive.”
How does this little shit know these things? I should snap his neck right now.
“I tell you what. Maybe you should keep this after all.”
I hold out the talisman.
He hesitates.
I hold it by two fingers and waggle it at him.
When he reaches for it, I let it drop. His gaze follows it down. I slam my shoulder into him, pinning his right hand against the wall. Grab the blade from behind my back. One quick slash and I cut off his little finger. He howls and falls to his knees, cradling his mutilated hand against his chest. Black blood oozes down his shirt. I pull off the glove that covers my Kissi arm, pick the talisman up off the floor, and drop it in my pocket. I grab him by the hair so he gets a good look at my prosthetic.
“The next time you threaten me, I’ll take your whole arm.”
First rule of threats. Always threaten big. Second rule. Always mean it, even if you don’t particularly want to do it.
He looks up at me.
“You pig. You human filth.”
“What do you expect from the Devil? A note in your personnel file?”
He’s wearing a collarless gray jacket. He manages to slip one arm out and wrap it around his bleeding hand. Leaning his good hand on the wall, he slowly gets to his feet, grimacing and cursing, and starts away down the hall.
I lean against the wall and light a Malediction.
I’ve got to remember not to drink anything I don’t get myself, preferably from outside the palace. It might not be poisoned but it will definitely be pissed in.
I guess now there’s another thing Candy doesn’t get to know about. I should start keeping a list.
I stay put until I finish my cigarette and everything is quiet but the air-conditioning. Closing my eyes, I try to reach out. Feel if there’s anything or anyone hiding nearby. I don’t get anything.
I take a long look at the false wall. Sometimes objects can pick up residual magic when someone throws powerful hoodoo nearby. When that happens, a lamp, a chair, or that massager mom keeps in her bedside table that you’re not supposed to know about can give off the same vibes as a genuinely enchanted object. That can happen to, say, a wall if someone was doing heavy spell work around here. There’s no absolute way of knowing without going forensic and that was Vidocq’s area, not mine. I wish he was here.
I step back and take a good look.
You’re not really there, are you?
I charge at what I hope is a door and not a crossbeam. It’s harder to menace people when you’re gimping around with a broken nose.
I pass through the wall like it’s air. And hit something hard. It cracks open. Wood splinters. Something heavy falls behind me. I think I found the door.
I’m in the middle of a dark, cluttered room. Behind me is the hoodoo wall, rippling like water on this side. The door is on the floor, in pieces. Someone isn’t getting their deposit back.
Wherever the hell I am, it’s dark. All I can see in the feeble pool of light through the wall is something that looks like a cluttered garage. Somewhere Dad keeps his tools for the weekend projects that help get him out of having to talk to the family.
Crates are piled all over the place. Scraps of cut and hammered metal on the floor. Tables with vises and C-clamps. Someone forgot their lunch. It stinks in here.
I feel along the wall. Find a light switch and flick it on.
Turns out it wasn’t lunch after all.
Five body bags are stacked in the corner. A sixth body wrapped in plastic is strapped to what looks like an old wooden electric chair. There’s a tear in the side of the shrink-wrapped shroud, leaking Hellion juice and exposing a black, bloated hand. It gets worse when I uncover the body. It’s the kind of stink that would turn a buzzard vegan.
It’s a woman. She’s in a legion uniform but I can’t read her name or tell what regiment she’s from. The top of her skull is missing. It looks like someone was dissecting her brain. Clamps and sutures still cling to the rotten meat.
This is new. I never heard of Hellions vivisecting their own. They do it to some of the more heinous dead souls in the House of Knives, but not to each other.
Whatever this is, it doesn’t look like torture. This was an experiment and this soldier was the lab rat. I bet if I checked the body bags I’d find more head-bone excavations. What kind of Dr. Moreau shit was going on in here? And who was doing it? Only one name comes to mind.
Mason.
What the fuck was he looking for?
You’d think with all the Hellions I’ve hacked up over the years, manhandling a dead one wouldn’t be so disgusting. But I just killed them. I didn’t stick around to watch them rot. Mason must have encased this room in heavy magic armor. Before I destroyed Tartarus, dead Hellions blipped out of existence like soap bubbles and ended up in the Hell below Hell. But Mason managed to keep these corpses intact even after they were dead. You have to admire the pure psycho will it took to pull off something like that. Admire it and then kill it. That last is the important part.
So what was he looking for?
I loosen the corpse’s straps and let it fall forward onto its knees. The corpse leaves scraps of hair, rotten uniform, and skin on the back of the chair.
There’s a long shallow divot cut into the wood where the soldier’s head was held back. Whatever was in the shallow hole is gone now.
I undo the straps holding her arms. They’re kind of glued to the chair with bodily fluids. I have to yank off each one, making sure to keep them wrapped in plastic so I don’t have to touch them.
There are divots on each of the armrests where the dead woman’s bare hands would rest on them. I pull her bare feet off the footrests. Divots there too.
I’ve wandered deep into the realm of What the Fuck.
Turn and scan the room for clues. Body bags. Rolling metal tables with drills, saws, and surgical instruments. A blackboard covered with what looks like machine schematics. A pile of empty bags. Rows of potions. Bet most are dope so the guinea pigs wouldn’t squirm while Mason worked on them with a chisel. I keep scanning the room but stop when I see myself pinned to the wall.
The last twelve years of my life are spread across fake wood paneling.
Photos of the dozens of Hellions I murdered. There are notes about how and when they died. There are shots of dead people on Earth too. I didn’t kill all of them. Everyone in the Magic Circle. Parker dead in a motel room with half his face missing. Doc Kinski. A shot of Josef the Kissi wearing his human übermensch face. A young vampire named Eleanor, her bitch of a mother, and her suicide father. Cabal Ash and his sister. Simon Ritchie, the movie producer. Snapshots of anonymous, well-groomed blue bloods, rich assholes that died during the New Year’s Eve raid on Avila. Mug shots of bald young teenyboppers