"If you're lying to me, I'm going to cut out your eyes and cut off your balls. Then I'm going put your balls in your eye sockets and staple your eyes in your ball sac. So, let me ask you one more time, are you absolutely sure you're telling me the truth?"
The skinhead tries to nod. "He said he just wants to meet you and that no one will bother you."
I take off the Veritas and flip it. It lands showing a burning cross and Sieg Heil in phonetic runes.
"Okay, Princess." I put the knife back in my waistband under the hoodie. "But remember-no tongues on a first date."
THE NEW REICHSTAG is an abandoned furniture warehouse near Sunset and Alvarado. A dozen American junker cars with white-power bumper stickers are parked outside. Another dozen chop-shop Harleys are lined up just beyond the cars. At least now I know who rides in this town.
My Nazi best friend knocks on the door and a girl skinhead with a Luger in a shoulder holster lets us inside the clubhouse.
No one has opened a window in this place for ten years. The room stinks of beer, piss, and sweat. It's packed with roid rage Hitler Youth, but I can't take my eyes off the girl who let us in, fierce and skinny, sporting a wife beater, shaved head, and a gun. I want to tell her, Baby, you're my punk-rock dream date. Let's get drunk and break stuff. Then I remember that she's not like the girls I knew way back when. Proud to be scum. She's waiting to be swept off to Valhalla by goose-stepping Dolph Lundgren look-alikes.
She asks, "What the fuck are you staring at, asshole?" and moves a hand to the gun.
I smile at her. "Spank me harder, Eva Braun."
She spits at my boots but misses. My Nazi pal says, "Shut up, Lisa." He leads me to an office door marked private. He knocks twice and we go inside.
While the main room is a piss-soaked junkyard of broken furniture and overflowing garbage cans, the office is as clean and organized as an operating room.
Behind a gray metal desk, a blond man is writing with a fountain pen on a yellow legal pad. High forehead. Sky-blue eyes. Cheekbones like the prow of an icebreaker. A perfect Aryan wet dream. Hell, even I want to have this guy's babies.
His desk is surrounded by neat piles of white power pamphlets, slim books on how Jews and blacks are really extraterrestrial invaders, event sign-up sheets and CDs with pictures of bare-chested bands covered in swastika tattoos. At one corner is an impressive pile of weapons, knives, knuckle-dusters, and pipes wrapped in electrical tape. Mixed in the pile of metal, I'm pretty sure I see a couple of Hellion weapons that I used in the arena.
He looks up at me and gives me a smile that would melt a car salesman's heart. "Sorry. Just making some notes for a speech I have to give this weekend. Please, sit down."
I sit on a padded metal folding chair. My weight makes it squeak. Only the Fuhrer gets the good furniture. I've gotten used to being able to read people, their breathing and heart rate, but I can't get a fix on this guy. He's not even too calm to read. It's like he's not there at all.
"What's the story, Siegfried?" I ask. "Why are they all shorn sheep out there, but you get to have hair?"
"In the group, I'm called Josef. I'm the face of the movement. It's all about media these days, isn't it?" He points to a box of recruitment DVDs and tapes. "Tattoos and shaved heads scare people. Looking like the prom king brings the newspaper and local TV around, and gets our message out to more potential recruits."
"I know about your message and don't want to hear more. I've had enough crazy talk for this lifetime."
"I'm sure you have. They don't think much of the human race down in the pit, do they? I know Azazel doesn't." He watches me when he says it, waiting for a reaction. I don't give him one.
"How do you know what Azazel thinks?"
"Because I've talked to him. He's not happy with you killing him with his own knife. Tartarus is a bleak place compared to Hell."
"How could you talk to Azazel? You can't do a summoning on anyone as powerful as Azazel, and only Lucifer can walk in and out of Hell on his own."
"Who says I'm on my own?" He opens his hands in an expansive gesture, like something a preacher would do. "What's that old line from Luke? 'My name is Legion: for we are many.'"
"Who's 'we'? Not those idiots out there."
"Of course not." Josef gets up and walks around the desk. He's wearing chinos and a polo shirt. He doesn't look any more dangerous than a salesman at RadioShack. "Who we are doesn't matter. You matter. You got out of Hell and that makes you special. But why are you special? You don't even smell like other humans. What are you?"
"I'm no one. I'm just me."
"I think you're being modest. Let's see."
Before I know what's happening, Josef has one hand on my shoulder and the other inside my chest. I'm not bleeding and my bones aren't cracked. He's just got his hand inside me. I can feel his fingers moving over my ribs and between my organs. I try to throw him off. Punch or kick him. But I can't move. He finds one of the bullets. Turns it between his fingers.
"Oh," he says. "That shouldn't be there. You should have that looked at."
Josef's human facade cracks like old paint, drops in flakes, and peels away in long sheets, falling on the floor. There's a black void beneath his skin, but the blackness doesn't hold and I can see what's inside him. Josef is the hands and eyes of the operation, but he's not alone. There are other creatures in there, too. Their outlines aren't entirely solid. They're vague, like ghosts. Like Josef, they glow from the inside, a pale blue white, like a slug crawling across the bottom of the ocean. They remind me of angels, if angels were candles that you left in a locked car in Texas in August. Their faces are fish-belly white and soft. Half formed. The fact that the creatures are almost beautiful makes them even harder to look at. I can't read them the way I can a person, but I don't have to. They remind me of insects. They might pounce on your next move, or they might wait for a million years, until they think the moment is right. It's all the same to them. They're patience and hunger with a side of fury.