Sandman Slim

"You simple son of a bitch. The basement's still there. You've got to go underground." Kasabian gives me an appraising look. "What, did you just drive up and leave? Pretty tough, tough guy."

Beautiful. Now I have to burrow like a groundhog into Mason's basement to the same room where he summoned those things to take me Downtown. Nothing can possibly go wrong with this plan.

When I turn to leave, Kasabian yells at me.

"Hey, asshole. I gave you information. At least let me have a cigarette."

"I'm out, so tonight we both suffer. I'll pick up more tomorrow."

I step out of the closet, and just before I close the door, I say, "I almost forgot. Your car was parked in a two-hour zone and I was afraid you were going to get a ticket, so I gave your car away."

"You what?"

"Sweet dreams."

I SIT ON the edge of the bed wanting a cigarette, but unable to summon the will to go out and find a store that's still open. The bullets in my chest ache, almost like someone shot them in there. I think one of the slugs is scraping against a rib. I get up and scrounge around the room, moving furniture, opening cabinets, and digging through piles of empty DVD cases. Finally, at the bottom of a box filled with mangled porn tapes - I don't want to even think about how they got that way - I find a bottle of cheap, no name vodka in a plastic screw-top bottle. In high school, we called drinks like this Devil's Rain after an old horror movie. That strikes me as pretty funny, under the circumstances. I screw off the top and take a drink. The vodka burns my throat, and tastes like Windex and battery acid.

I can't believe that some small, ridiculous part of me feels kind of sorry for a pig like Kasabian. To spend your whole life brownnosing and riding on the coattails of smarter and more talented magicians, then having them dump you like the prom date who wouldn't put out right as they become infused with who knows what kind of power, has to sting. It has to be the final confirmation of all your worst fears, that you really are the chump you were always afraid you might be.

I, on the other hand, was exactly the prick Kasabian said I was. While he was struggling with kindergarten levitations and Mason was compulsively showing off some new spirit conjuration or fire blast, I bullshitted my way through magic the way I bullshitted my way through everything else, pretty well.

Magic really was always easy for me. At my fifth birthday party, I floated the family cat over to Tiffany Brown, a redhead I had a crush on, and dropped it on her. Tiffany didn't get the joke and that was the end of my first romance.

When I was twelve, the teacher had us make clay animals in art class. I squeezed together some fat little birds. Then I made them fly around the room and out the window. I got suspended for a week for that one, though no one could explain to me exactly why.

I didn't even know I was doing magic back then. All I did know was that I could do funny tricks and make the other kids laugh.

My family never talked about it, but they knew what I could do. I was dangerous when I got sick. I'd break windows with a look. My fevers started fires. I only learned that what I was doing had a name when my father gave me an old, leather-bound book titled A Concise History and Outline of the Magickal Arts. I knew right away what I was. Not a warlock or a wizard. That was Disney stuff to me. I was a magician. A few years later, I found out there were other magicians and some invited me into their tight little Circle. Then they tried to kill me.

Sitting on Kasabian's bed, drinking his lousy vodka, I can picture Jayne-Anne, Cherry, Parker, and Mason sitting high above the city in one of those houses that hangs over the side of a hill on spindly spider legs, daring the earth to throw an earthquake their way. Each of them knows they'll survive. Even without magic, they'll survive, because that's their greatest talent. And soon they'll be up on another hill, looking down on us losers. They're strong and we're weak because we won't do the things they did to get up to the top of the hill.

They're right, of course. We won't crawl through the shit, and over the bones and bodies of the dead. By their definition of the word, we really are weak, no matter how much we'd like to imagine ourselves being as cold and hard and determined as they are.

On the other hand, it might be fun to crawl up the hill one night and strap some dynamite to the spider legs holding up their houses. We'd jump on the roofs, like kids jumping on sleds in the snow, and ride down the hill until their bright, candy-colored mansions crash into the sea.

Between the bullets in my chest and the talk with Kasabian, sleeping isn't going to be easy tonight. Kasabian's vodka is pretty much poison, but it'll quiet the noise in my head and that's good enough.

When I finally drift off into alcohol dreamland, I'm back in Hell, lying in the dirt on the floor of the arena. My belly is slashed open and I'm holding my innards in with my hands. The beast I'd been fighting, a silver bull-like thing with a dozen razor-sharp horns, is lying dead a few yards away. They always had me fighting weird animals. I didn't know for a long time that it was another Hellion insult. They made me a bestiari. It was a Roman thing-a fun way to use their dumbest, gimpiest, most cross-eyed fighters. Bestiari weren't good enough to fight people, so they fought animals. Why waste a human gladiator on someone who had just as good a chance of cutting off his own leg as stabbing his opponent? Plus, it was fun watching bears eat retards. Still is, really.

A couple of Hellion arena slaves roll me onto a stretcher and take me backstage. In the fighters' quarters, a wizened old Hellion gladiator trainer shuffles over and hands me a bottle of Aqua Regia. That's medical care in Hell. A hospital in a bottle. Later, the same old Hellion comes by with a needle and werewolf-hair thread and sews me up.

Later that night, Azazel, my slave master, sends for me. Fresh wounds or not, when he calls, you go. At least he's reasonable enough to send a couple of burly damned souls to carry me to his palace on a litter.

None of the palaces in Hell come close to Lucifer's in size or beauty. Lucifer lives at the top of a literal ivory tower, miles high. You can't even see the top from the ground. The joke is that he built it that high so he can lean out the window and pound on Heaven's floor with a broom handle when he wants them to turn down the choir.

Lucifer's four favorite generals have their own palaces.

Azazel is Lucifer's second favorite general, so his palace is second only to Beelzebub's in size and beauty. Beelzebub is Lucifer's favorite general. While Azazel's palace is made entirely of flowing water, Beelzebub's is mud-and-dung bricks covered in human bones. Not what you'd call pretty, but it makes a statement.

Inside Azazel's palace it's all Gothic arches and stained glass, laid out in classic cathedral style. A carpeted nave leads to an altar at the far end where a mammoth clockwork Christ buggers the Virgin Mary every hour on the hour.

"You're going to use those arena skills of yours to kill Beelzebub for me," says Azazel.

"Don't I rate a night off? I'm held together with Silly String and good wishes."

He smiles, showing his hundred pointed teeth. "Perfect. Then no one will suspect you. More importantly, they won't suspect me." He hands me something, a sharpened piece of spiral-cut metal, like a long ice pick. I've seen it before. It's General Belial's favorite weapon. "Leave that behind, but be sure to dip it into Beelzebub's blood first." He pauses. "And wear gloves. I don't want your human taint all over it. They have to think that Belial did it."

"Beelzebub's palace is a fucking fortress with about ten times more troops and guard animals than you have. And he knows I work for you. His guards will never let me get near him."

Azazel shows me his teeth again. He likes doing that. It used to make me want to pee my pants. Now it's just a ritual, like a dog biting another dog's throat to remind it who's the alpha.

Azazel reaches into his robes made of shimmering golden water and pulls out a heavy brass key. "Have you ever heard of the Room of Thirteen Doors?" he asks. "This key will take you there. The room leads to anywhere and everywhere in the universe simultaneously. Including Beelzebub's bedroom."

He hands me the key. It's heavier than it looks and weirdly soft. I realize that it's not made of brass after all. It's living skin over bones.

"In one hour, you'll enter the Room of Thirteen Doors through a shadow behind this altar. From the room, you'll go out through the Door of Fire. That's a killing portal. It will take you right to your prey. Once you've killed Beelzebub, leave Belial's weapon and return here."

I turn the key over in my hands. I should be horrified by it, but I'm not. There's something animal-like about the key, like it's a pet that wants to please its master.

"You're thinking that I've given you your means to escape, aren't you?" Azazel asks.

"Me? I love it here, boss. Why would I ever want to escape?"

He touches the edge of the key with a fingertip.

"Lucifer can leave Hell and travel easily through the cosmos, while the rest of us are bound here, cursed by the heavenly enemy. I've found a way out. Not for me, but for someone like you. However, you should remember not to go too far. Though I can't leave Hell, I have some influence in your world, among those humans dedicated to Hell. Cross me, try to escape from me, and something awful will happen to the one you love. That pretty girl you left behind. Do you understand me?"

"I understand."

"You're not leaving here. Someday maybe, but not right now and not for a good long time." Azazel turns and starts away. "Keep the key next to your body. That way, it will know to open the room to you. Wait an hour before you go. I need to be somewhere public when it happens."

An obedient little slave, I do as my master tells me.

I wait an hour and slip into a shadow behind the altar. Passing into that utter blackness feels like falling through cool air.

I find myself in a semicircular room that, surprise, contains thirteen doors. Each door seems to be made from a different material. Wood, water, air, stone, metal. More abstract things, too. The Door of Dreams moves and writhes, reshaping itself from second to second. There's a sound from the far side of the room. I go to the only unmarked door and listen. There's something moving behind the door and it knows I'm here. Something growls and scratches to get at me. Then there's a shriek, a long, keening, furious animal sound that hits me like a knife dragged through my skull. Right then and there I know I'm going to do whatever Azazel wants and kill any damned Hellion he tells me to. I'll be his servant as long as he leaves Alice alone and never, ever asks me to go through the unmarked door.

I wake up with the taste of Hell in the back of my throat. I know it's just the bad vodka, but that doesn't help. My head is full of monsters and I'm one of them. I sit up smelling sulfur and I want to kill something. I want a Hellion to burst through the window so I can take this bone knife and cut its black heart out. There are so many questions left. It feels like I've been doing nothing but talking since I got back. I need to do something. I need to hurt something. I need to kill Azazel, but I've already killed him.

I'm afraid. I'm so fucking afraid. I don't know what's worse, Hell or this stupid world where I'll never be at home. But I need to keep talking to people. I need to keep asking the right questions. And I've already missed maybe the most important question of all.

I roll out of bed and slam the closet open, nearly tearing the door off its hinges. Kasabian lets out a yelp and turns his eyes up at me. I pick up his head in both hands and hold him so that we're eye to eye.

"I have one question for you and I swear to God and the devil and everything holy and unholy that if you fuck me around for even one second, I will drop you in the ocean right now. Do you understand me?"

"Yeah." He barely whispers the word.

"Where's Alice's body?"

"I don't know."

"Don't lie to me!"

"I swear, I don't know. Jesus, even I'm not that fucked up. Parker would know. He killed her. Parker's the one that can tell you."

There's real terror in Kasabian's eyes. I'm still holding him up, squeezing him tighter than I thought. His cheeks are red and starting to bruise. I set him back on the shelf and lean against the wall.

Kasabian stares at me like he's never seen me before.

"What are you, hypoglycemic or something? Go eat a muffin, for shit's sake."

"I'll bring by some cigarettes later," I tell him, and close the closet door.

At least I got to ask the big question, but I'm not any less agitated. Kasabian was telling the truth a minute ago; I could see in his mind that he would have made something up if he could have thought of a convincing enough lie. That means I can't find Alice's body until I track down Parker. I'm still so wound up from having Hell in my head all night that I need to break something, and soon. I hate it when I get this way. Do they have anger-management classes for hitmen?

Allegra's voice comes from downstairs. I didn't hear her come in. She's talking into her BlackBerry. I look around for a clean shirt and realize that I forgot to buy some yesterday. I steal another Max Overdrive shirt from the box and go downstairs quietly. I'm not in the mood for this, but I need to do something now so that I don't have to do something worse later.

Allegra is still on the phone and has her back to me. She doesn't hear me come up behind her. When she turns around and sees me, she jumps a little.

"Jesus, you're quiet," she says. Then, into her Black-Berry, "No, not you. Let me call you back." She takes off her coat, stashes it behind the counter, and begins setting up the money and register for the day. "I thought you were upstairs. I heard noise." ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">