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“Mason settles into the whole home-sweet-home thing. He goes to private Sub Rosa school. He has money. He has nice clothes. But no friends. Nothing. He didn’t talk to anyone, especially his new family. At school, he gets the same kind of generic magic training we all got. Only Mason is like you. Kind of a freak. He showed them the shaman’s stuff. Dark magic they’d never seen before. They graduated him early just to get him out of there.
“After graduation he disappears again. He was gone for three months, and when he came home he wouldn’t tell anyone if he’d been kidnapped or ran away or anything. But no one cares because all of a sudden he’s acting like a normal kid. They let him back into upper grade school. He made friends and generally acted the way any idiot schoolkid was supposed to act.
“A few months later stories started popping up on TV about arms smuggling along the Burmese border and how there must have been a bad accident. Like a big ammo dump or even a small tactical Chinese nuke had gone off. The land in one area was fried. And part of a mountain was gone, like it was scooped out with an ice-cream scoop. The funny thing was no one saw or heard any explosions. It all got hushed up pretty quick by the local government because whatever happened had wiped out an entire rebel army along with their village, their families, their crops, and their animals. There was nothing but ashes for miles.”
Kasabian finishes the beer and tosses the empty into an overflowing trash can.
“Mason went to Hell all right, but he got his revenge. That’s why I’m sure what Mason wants is to be in charge. This time around he’s not going to be dragged into the jungle while his family is chopped into dog food. He’s going to be the dragger, not the draggee.”
What do you know? Mason isn’t Dr. Doom after all. He’s Bruce Wayne, pining away for his long-gone Partridge Family lifestyle. I have no way of knowing if everything in Kasabian’s tall tale is true, but he got at least one thing right. From the moment we met, I don’t think it ever occurred to Mason and me to do anything but go at each other. It’s not that we hated each other. It’s more like how some people can’t help but bring out the not necessarily righteous parts of your personality. Like how you meet someone and instantly know they’re a full-time professional victim, and no matter how hard you try, something takes over and you can’t help needling them. From day one Mason and I were playing King of the Hill. It all makes a sad kind of sense now. Sending me Downtown wasn’t just Mason’s play for power. It was his way of finally winning the stupid game we’d been playing since we met. Kasabian nailed it. Mason and I aren’t anything special. Just a couple of angry toddlers out to crack the world over a playground punch-out.
“You okay?”
I look around. Kasabian looks concerned. Somewhere along the way I’d gotten to my feet. I guess I’ve been standing here for a while.
“I’m fine. Thanks for laying it all out for me. At least now I know why Lucifer thought Mason was the only other candidate to take his place.”
“Maybe you ought to sit down and finish your drink.”
“Good idea.”
I’m feeling a little dazed. A little high. Mason and I are connected at the hip and the brain stem. Isn’t that goddamn hilarious?
“Just be cool. You wanted to hear the story. Don’t go getting mad at me.”
“Don’t sweat it. I’m glad I know.”
I pick up my coat. Finger the bullet hole. It’s not bad enough to throw the coat away. Besides, I heard that blood is the new black.
My cigarette has gone out. I drop it in a half-finished drink by the bed and light another.
“I get it now. Why Mason wants Heaven and Hell.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s going to do it again. He doesn’t want to be God. He wants to burn us like he burned that mountain.”
“Why would he do that?”
I look at Kasabian. He’s as mad as any human or Hellion I’ve ever met. Why can’t he see it? It’s because he’s a lousy magician. Third rate when he gets a good tailwind. He never learned to dream big.
“Because the universe abandoned him. Mason was scared. He’d seen his family butchered. He needed help. He begged and groveled and prayed, but nobody came. Not his parents. Not the Sub Rosa. Not the army. Not God or Lucifer or one lousy angel. The little boy got tossed out like the trash and now he’s going to burn the universe because when he was lost and pathetic and needed help the universe turned its back and took a planet-size dump on his head.”
“How do you know this sick shit?”
“Because it’s exactly what I was going to do. When I got back from Hell, I traded Mr. Muninn for something I have hidden in the Room of Thirteen Doors. Something that can fry every atom in Creation. Turn this whole peep show to dust. I thought that killing the Circle and sending Mason to Hell was going to fix me and the world would be full of sunshine and pretty girls and bluebirds that shit cold beer. But it didn’t. Alice was still dead. God and bead. GodLucifer still gave me the silent treatment. And Wells, Aelita, the Golden Vigil, and everyone who worked for them still walked the streets.”
I open my left hand. It hurts from being balled tight into a fist.
“So what changed your mind?” Kasabian asks. “From where I sit, the world is exactly as shitty as it was when you left.”
“It was that night I killed the Drifters. It would have been so easy to sit down and have a cigarette and let them eat the city. But when it came right down to it, I didn’t want to. It’s as simple as that. I wanted to live and I wanted Vidocq and Candy, Allegra, and Brigitte to live. And if I murdered the world, I’d be Mason and I didn’t want to be him.”
“You’re quite the humanitarian. By the way, thanks a fuck of a lot for leaving me off your who-to-save list.”
“You’re on it, Alfredo Garcia. I just didn’t want to say it out loud and have you call me Nancy or Tinker Bell.”
“Yeah, I would have done that.”
