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It spreads out straight across the whole horizon, a monster parody of L.A.’s southern refineries. God’s little acre in the gleaminck the glg industrial skeleton of a prehistoric beast. Mountainous burn-off towers, catalytic crackers, and soaring distillation units are steel spines along the beast’s back. Heaven’s steel-pipe bones glow gold, illuminated by a thousand sodium-vapor lights. And on every catwalk, crow’s nest, and gantry, armed angels are waiting for war.
I hold my breath and wait for something to go wrong. Slowly let the air out of my lungs. Don’t think too much. Don’t jinx it. Just drive. I tick off the seconds, imagining Heaven’s golden pipes exploding and the place burning. It turns to rivers of molten metal that flow down the Glory Road to flood Hell and then the rest of Creation.
We’re right at the refinery’s gates. I can’t believe how high they are and how close we are to them.
War whoops blare from loudspeakers mounted on the trucks. Fireworks explode overhead. The signal.
Semyazah and I peel off from the point of the attack. It’s like when I spooked the Kissi at the hotel. I crank the Testarossa’s wheel hard, hit the brakes, and use the hand brake to send the car into a hundred-and-eighty-degree spin. Then I floor it, following Semyazah back the way we came, staying close to the edge, inches from the guardrail. The Kissi army blasts straight at Heaven’s gates as the Infernal legions close in behind them.
There’s a noise like a nuke going off. Heaven has opened fire. With the halo polishers in front and the Infernal legions at their backs, the Kissi are the bologna in a death-row sandwich. Adios, Josef. Send me a postcard from the Big Nowhere.
Something slams into my rear bumper, knocking me into the guardrail. I scrape along it for half a mile, peeling metal off half the side of the Testarossa. I’m swallowed in blackness as something huge jumps over the car, heads down the freeway, and turns to face me. It’s one of the giant hellhounds. It bellows and lowers its head until I can see Mason on its back wearing Lucifer’s golden armor. Momentum carries me toward him, and the hellhound raises one of its front feet to stomping position. I hit the accelerator. The hound is strong but it’s not as fast as a Ferrari.
When I’m about to go under the stomping foot, I spin the wheel right, slamming into the other leg. The hound wobbles. When I pull away, the car is making nasty sounds and shudders every time I pick up speed. I think I just broke the frame. I should have bought the rental insurance.
I’m almost clear of the hound when one of its legs kicks the rear end. The car almost stands on its nose and flips. Now it’s making a brand-new bad sound. The rear axle might be cracked. Nothing to do now but see how long this heap holds together.
Every time I try to get up speed, the car shudders like it’s going to fall apart. I can’t get it over sixty. A grinding and thumping comes up through my feet. The rear axle is definitely cracked. No way I can outrun the hound.
It charges me again. When it gets close enough to flatten me, I hit the brake and slide underneath it.
The hound gets one of its paws under the hood and rips the top off. I stick my Kissi arm out the window and slash at the hound’s leg as I go by. Something splashes over the windshield. Hydraulic fluid.
I keep running. Mason’s hound is still in my rearview mirror, but it’s slowing down. The hydraulic line to one of the hound’s front legs spews fluid all over the freeway. It can’t get enough pressure to bend the leg. The hound sways from side to side, looking like it’s about to fall.
As a group of Semyazah’s Heaven-bound hellhounds passes us, Mason throws a hoodoo power bolt, knocking the rider off a medium-size hound. He jumps onto it as his dog stumbles off the edge of the freeway and crashes in a burning ditch. Mason turns the hound around and heads down the freeway back toward L.A.
He pushes the dog hard. I try to catch up, but he’s way ahead of me and soon disappears. I keep the Testarossa pegged at sixty. Metal grinds against metal. Please hold together just a little bit longer, just until we get off this road and I can find somewhere with deep fat shadows.
As the Testarossa closes on the collapsed freeway section, I get a bad feeling. It won’t make it up to the top. The rear end screams and drops. The car is still moving, but suddenly I’m dragging an Italian precision-engineered plow, kicking up sparks and digging a deep furrow as I go. Up ahead is a minefield of broken pavement the trucks kicked up. I can’t steer clear in time. The car’s cracked frame bottoms out and the shudder nearly shatters my teeth. I hit the brake and let the car roll to a stop.
I have to kick the door open to get out. Fires burn along the freeway. I’m back by the furnace in Tartarus again, except this time there’s enough light to make deep fat shadows. I dive in.
At least one thing has gone right today. The Kissi are being taken out of the picture. They did their job. They made me look strong enough and crazy enough to be part of the war. Now I have to move on to the hard part, but all I want is a cigarette, a drink, and a nap. I probably should have just blown the universe up with the Mithras when I first got back to earth. This caring about stuff is too much goddamn work.
I GO THROUGH the Door of Fire and come out in Mason’s office. It’s the last place he should come, but I know he’ll be here. People are funny. When they’re dangling at the end of a rope, they head back to where they feel most secure, even if it’s the dumbest thing they can do. But Mason is a bit smarter than your average thug. He has one thing none of those others have. He has Alice.
Mason is perched on the edge of his desk trying to affect exactly the kind of cool he doesn’t have or he wouldn’t be here. Alice is sitting in his desk chair. Her eyes are red like she’s been crying. There’s a black bone knife sticking point first into the top of the desk. It’s hard not to charge him. I can probably get him before he throws a hex. Who am I kidding? The angel in my head points out that I’m not exactly in prime shape and that attacking Mason is what haveon is we wants. I go for him. Mason grabs the knife. Alice dies again and I get to watch.
I’m not even sure I want to kill Mason anymore. I want to force-feed him Vidocq’s immortality potion. Then I’ll do to him what he did to Jack. He can hang from the chain on the balcony, a chunk of raw red meat turning in the wind for a million years.
“Are you okay?” I ask Alice.
She nods.
“Where’s Neshamah?”
She shakes her head.
“He’s dead. Aelita came with raiders. She killed him and took the crystal. Then she brought me here.”
Mason tosses the Singularity back and forth between his hands.
He says, “Do you know what this is?”
“No,” I lie. “But I have a feeling you don’t want to break it.”
He smiles.
