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“You can dance naked around a maypole if you want. Me? I’m just walking in.”
She gets up.
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
“Don’t wear anything you really like.”
“Why?”
“You’re won’t be springtime fresh when you get back and I’m not sure the stink of Hell comes out in the wash.”
I WENT DOWNTOWN when I was nineteen. I was thirty when I came out. I’ve only been back on earth for around eleven months. Sometimes it seems as long was the previous eleven years.
Another magician, Mason Faim, sent me to Hell in a deal to supersize his hoodoo power. He also wanted me out of the picture. We were a pair of Sub Rosa golden boys. Way too clever and powerful for our own good. The difference between us was that Mason had to work and study his ass off to stay on top of the hoodoo heap. Me? I could always improvise a spell or hex and have it fly. That was my angel half at work, only I didn’t know that at the time. When Mason got rid of me he was top dog in L.A. He murdered my old girlfriend, Alice. He tried to take over Hell and start a new war with Heaven. You have to hand it to the boy. He knew how to dream big. So I killed him.
But in a way, Mason won. He wanted to destroy me, and the one who went to Hell sure isn’t who came out. I was James Stark going down but Sandman Slim when I left. Eleven years of torture and fighting in the arena to entertain monsters will alter your perspective on life.
Most nights I still dream about Hell. I can feel it inside me. It’s in the stink of my sweat. Flashing on the place even for a second makes me furious and sometimes afraid and sometimes ashamed of both those things.
On the plus side, I got up close and personal with the killer inside me. I learned I was good at taking lives. Doc Kinski called me a natural-born killer, so now it’s what I do. But I don’t always like it, and when I do, I don’t always like myself for liking it. That’s what Hell is. It’s the shithole bottom of the universe, but it’s a place where you’ll learn more about yourself than you ever wanted to know.
I GET A pack of Maledictions from a box under a table in the living room. Maledictions are the most popular cigarettes in Hell. The only brand I really like. The taste is, well, unique. Like a tire fire in a candy factory. With luck, the angel part of me is immune to cancer. If it isn’t I’m going to be a solid two-hundred-pound tumor.
Candy gives me a faint smile as I take her hand and we step through a shadow into the Room of Thirteen Doors. I open the door to Hell but I don’t take her through. I hold her there looking at the place.
“Wow. It really does smell like sulfur,” she says.
“Don’t worry. When you get inside, between the sewers and the Hellion stink, you’ll forget all about the sulfur.”
“You know how to show a girl a good time.”
“Nothing but the best for you.”
“Whoa.”
This is what I’ve been waiting for.
“What do you see?”
“It looks just like L.A. A more fucked-up L.A. but still L.A.”
“It’s called a Convergence. A kind of magical fuckup where one place gets layered on top of another. When I first landed in Hell, it was all dark palaces and cobblestone streets. Now it’s L.A. None of that changes what Hell is. It just makes it easier to get around.”
“Somehow, none of that is very reassuring.”
“That’s Hell in a nutshell. You ready?”
“Yes. No. Yes. I think so.”
“Before we go in, here are a couple of rules. And they’re nonnegotiable. Stay close to me. Close enough for me to grab if things get weird. If anyone starts anything let me handle it. No Jade stuff. You see any damned souls, don’t look them in the eye. They’re used to me but another live human could freak them out.”
“I’m not human.”
“You look human. That’s enough. Also, don’t talk to anyone but Mr. Muninn.”
“Who?”
“The current Lucifer.”
