AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I don’t want either of them to see the Room, so I blindfold them both and take them downstairs through a shadow.
MAMMON’S BARGE TURNS out to be a pristine early-sixties Lincoln Continental limo with a drop top and suicide doors. I think more than a little of this world is put together straight from my unconscious. I’ll know for sure if I end up in a motorcycle race against Steve McQueen.
The Lincoln isn’t like a modern limo. The car is wide open on the inside. No partitions or sliding windows separating the passenger compartment from the driver. It’s like a club or a prison cafeteria. Candy would love this heap. I can see her in the passenger seat with her feet up on the dash hitting the button on her robot sunglasses in time with the radio.
It still feels strange to have left her behind while I go chasing after another woman even if it’s not for a romantic kind of love, but the kind that says if you’ve ever been deeply connected to someone, you don’t let them get snatched to the underworld without doing something about it.
When this is over and if the universe is still standing, maybe I’ll bring her down here. I wouldn’t take her to the Hell I knew, but I could see her getting off on a weekend in the Convergence. It would be like the adventure vacations yuppies go on where they get to experience the great outdoors from air-conditioned buses and ten-thousand-dollar tents. We’ll take over a floor of the Roosevelt Hotel and shoot paintballs at the wildlife.
I take Mammon from his chair and belt him in behind the driver’s seat. Kelly and I get in the front. He starts the ignition and drives us smoothly through the garage to the gatehouse, where a guard is waiting.
I show Mammon the knife in my hand.
“Be cool or you lose the other arm.”
“Of course,” Mammon says.
We pull up and Mammon rolls down his tinted window just low enough to show his face. He nods at the guard and the guard pushes a button that rolls away the gate. Kelly steers us out of the palace and on to Hollywood Boulevard. It looks like even in Hell I’m destined to travel in stolen cars.
“Turn right,” I tell him. “Things are messy the other way.”
He makes the turn.
It’s funny seeing Mammon sitting calmly with his bad legs and crispy arm. I got lucky back at the palace. I had no idea he could manifest a Gladius. Azazel didn’t bother to mention that when he sent me to kill Mammon more than ten years ago. I don’t know why he wanted me to do it and I don’t know why he changed his mind. Maybe his TiVo was out.
“To the Phlegethon, Mr. Kelly,” Mammon says.
Sinkholes and fault lines slice up the streets, making them impassable. Kelly cuts down La Brea and takes a roundabout route through residential streets and apartment-building parking lots to the 101.
Mammon tells Kelly to head south. The breakdown lanes on both sides of the freeway look like sets from old driver’s-ed films. They’re a solid mass of twisted and burned-out vehicles.
In regular Hell, the Phlegethon is a river of fire that flows and ebbs like water. The flames are just a light breeze from on board a barge. You don’t get burned unless you’re in direct contact with the river.
The Phlegethon does double duty in Hell. It’s one of the big five rivers, so it carries a lot of traffic, mostly barges, passenger boats, and freighters. It’s busy enough that it needs docks, buoys, depth markers, and all the other Moby-Dick bric-a-brac I don’t understand. This is Hell. Why get artisans to make all that stuff when you have millions of dead souls lying around? Down the length of the Phlegethon, the damned float in the eternal fire as channel markers and buoys showing depth readings. Entire docks are made from spirits lashed together. There’s similar creativity in this Hell. The freeway guardrails and the median fence in the center are staked-out souls. The reflectors separating the freeway lanes are the heads of souls who’ve been buried up to their necks in Hellion concrete. What happens if you blow a tire down here? Hellion AAA probably comes out and ties a few souls around your axle so you can get to a damned garage.
>I cut the last few pieces of armor off the soul and pull him out of the cage. There’s a metal restraint around his head holding a leather bit in his mouth. I slice through the lock and the restraint falls to the floor. I go back to Mammon, leaving the soul to rub his aching jaw.
“When is it happening?”
“When is what happening?”
I want to kick him in the throat but I don’t want to kill him, so I just give him the toe of my boot in the jaw.
“That was me being nice. The next thing that happens is I start cutting off the parts of your body you can still feel, starting with your fingers.”
Mammon rubs his jaw, considering his answer. When he answers, his voice is lo yo voice w.
“The troops are already massed. All that remains is to agree to the final details of plans and bring the troops under a single command. From there, Mason will lead us to Heaven.”
“Do you really think you’re going to win this time? Heaven has the high ground and they know you’re coming. Lucifer will have told them everything.”
His eyes narrow when he smiles.
“Lucifer is far from omniscient.”
“So you have a secret. What is it?”
“What is what?”
