I'm sick and freezing. It's like I'm icing up from the inside. There's a bitter smell and taste. Like a mouthful of vinegar. I want to throw up, but I can't move.
"What's this?" The question comes from far away and in a thousand discordant voices.
Josef takes my heart in his hand. His fingers glide through my flesh and touch Azazel's key. Josef goes rigid.
All those voices again. "What is that? Is that your secret? I want it!" He leans forward and pulls on my heart. This time I scream. He's trying to pull it out through my chest and it feels like he just might make it. But it's not my heart he wants. It's the key inside. He gets his fingers around it and tries to pry it out.
I don't black out. I don't scream. My vision collapses to a small point and settles on the floor, which opens up beneath me. I can see the outlines of Lucifer's palace, Pandemonium, and the city around it. The smaller generals' palaces and the arena where I fought. Individual Hellions drift up through the chaos at the edges of Hell, flying toward me. I know what this is now. I'm dying. Until now, I wasn't even sure I could die. Now I know better.
The Hellions are getting closer. Soon I'll fall right into their waiting arms. I hope they let me fight in the arena again. What else am I good at?
Josef screams and pulls his hand out of my chest. The human fingers are black and charred.
"What did you do to me? What is that thing? I want it."
The floor is suddenly solid beneath my feet. He's let go. I'm not dying anymore.
Josef grabs me with his good hand and pulls my face close to his. He looks human again. "A man couldn't do that. Tell me what you are."
"I'm the Gingerbread Man. I'll run and run as fast as I can."
Josef swings me around and throws me, one-handed, over his desk. Books, papers, and CDs scatter around the room. I slam into the wall. Some of the knuckle-dusters and knives that had been on his desk now dig into my back. I roll over on my belly knowing that I'm useless. I have a demonic knife under my shirt and I'm lying on a pile of shiny killing toys, but I couldn't go two rounds with a kitten right now.
When I try to get on my feet, my hand comes down on one of the taped pipes. It feels familiar and heavy, like Hellion metal. It's a na'at. Of course. Josef said that he's been to Hell. He definitely knows dark magic. He's the one who gave the Devil Daisy to the skinhead in Carlos's bar. I stay on the floor, slip the na'at inside my shirt, and wrap my arms around myself so he won't see it.
I say, "Don't stop now, sweetheart. It was just getting fun." Then I puke.
I hear Josef open the door and bark orders at someone. My Nazi pal and some of his friends come inside and haul me to my feet. I stay bent over so that they can't see the na'at. Not that I can stand up straight yet. I still feel Josef's fingers inside my chest.
The skinheads perp-walk me to the door, but Josef stops them. He leans over and whispers, "My name is…" and he makes a sound like a snake getting ready to strike. "Remember me. We're going to meet again."
This trip through the skinhead's playhouse isn't as fun as the first. It feels like every one of them spits on me or bounces a beer can off my head. My punk girlfriend at the door grabs my balls and squeezes until I collapse and get my first chance to admire the warehouse's lovely linoleum floor.
That's it, honey. We've officially broken up.
The trip back to the Bamboo House of Dolls is a blur of elbows and knees as the skinhead boys play Frisbee with me in the backseat. The good news is that the meth head driving gets us to the bar in record time. The bad news is that he barely slows down when we get there. The boys push me out of the backseat while the car is still going thirty miles per. I land like a sack full of Silly Putty, rolling and bouncing down the street until I hit the curb in the front of the bar.
Before anyone can call the cops, I crawl under a parked car, drop into the shadow, and stumble through the room back to Max Overdrive.
I don't even get into bed. I lie on the cool floor. Try to catch my breath and shake off the feeling of those fingers scrabbling around in my chest. I take the na'at out from under my shirt, feeling its familiar weight in my hand. If I was a better liar, I'd say that scoring the weapon was worth the beating, but I'm not and it wasn't. On the other hand, coming away with a working na'at and leaving a demonic skinhead with nothing but a burned hand and a pile of puke can give you a feeling of accomplishment at the end of a long day.
I WAKE UP with Mount Rushmore lying on my chest. My body feels like it weighs about a million pounds and it's telling me that I shouldn't move until at least the next ice age. Then I could forget all about L.A., get a job sweeping up Muninn's labyrinth, and live in the dark and the silence forever. Or, more likely, until Baphomet or some other Hellion redneck finds a loophole in the universe's cosmological rule book and wiggles his way out of Hell for the simple pleasure of gnawing my head off.
I think I might have gone a little too far down this road to call a press conference and announce my retirement. But what would I say? Ladies and gentlemen, I'm hanging up my key and my guns and will follow my bliss to lead a quiet life, devoting myself to my nonprofit organic-vegetable farm cooperative, where I plan on going slowly out of my mind and strangling every goddamn human being and chicken within one hundred miles. I really hate chickens.
THE BURNS ON my hands and face are gone, but my chest is a Jackson Pollock mess of black and purple bruises. Every time I take a breath, the tissue around Kasabian's bullets feels like someone is trying to check my oil level with a cattle prod. If I'm still alive when this is over, I'm definitely going to see Kinski.
My phone is beside me, blinking. I thumb the on button and find a text message from Cherry, with the address of a little taco place called No Mames on Western Avenue and a time when she wants to meet. The good news is that I have a few hours to get cleaned up and pull myself together. I want a cigarette and a drink, but I can't smoke in the shower (trust me, I've tried), and if I started drinking now, I'm fairly certain that my brain would finally give up, get a new roommate, and move to Redondo Beach without me.
I can still feel Josef's fingers inside me. I dreamed about that room in the back of the Nazi playhouse. And the arena in Hell. About the black and empty creature that Lucifer once ordered to leave the arena. For all I know, it could have been Josef or one of the legion I sensed was there inside his body with him. If it even was a body. When he split open, his insides felt more like an empty portal than a real entity. I don't want to ever meet him or any of his friends again.
I strip down to take a shower and see that I've ruined another set of clothes. This time it isn't my fault. Those Nazis owe me a new pair of jeans for shoving me out of that car. I'll have to go collect on that sometime. That will be fun.
The shower feels so good I almost faint. I can't get over how these little things still thrill me. If I was the spiritual type, being so pleased by little pleasures would mean that I was one of those penitent saints who live in a cave and only eat gruel once a week. In my case, it's my secret shame that the most exciting thing I can think of is clean socks.
After I get cleaned up, I put on the last pair of unshredded jeans I own. I put on the trashed motocross jacket figuring it will keep tourists from asking directions to Disneyland.
None of my guns will fit under the jacket without sending waves of pain through my body. I don't think Cherry is going to get cute about anything, but if she does, the knife ought to be enough to take her down. I take off the Veritas and toss it. Should I go? No words this time. Just the image of a winged bug on a small hill. A fly on shit. That's how I'm attracted to these things. In Hellion speak, it means that the answer to the question is inevitable, so why bother asking? It's right. Why bother?