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“And chokolade is exactly what it sounds like. Chocolate. Panzerschokolade. Tank chocolate.”
“You’re feeding angels metal bonbons?”
“In a sense, yes. Panzerchokolade was a treat the German high command gave their tank drivers back during the war. It kept them awake for days. Made them brave. Even reckless, but able to accomplish remarkable things and win battles they should have lost.”
“You’re talking about speed. Black milk is speed for angels.”
He glances at me.
“The angel who paid you a visit on Hollywood Boulevard, what was her name?”
“Hadraniel,” says Hesediel.
“That’s it.”
He glances at me.
“Did she seem a bit different to you? Not like other angels you’d met?”
“Yeah. She was out of her fucking mind.”
“Oh, she was in her mind, but her mind had been transformed by Panzerschokolade into something more formidable than before. You must be acquainted with the word ‘berserker’?”
“Crazy fucking Vikings who worked themselves up into a screaming lather and ran straight into a fight. You’re saying that black milk turns angels into berserkers.”
“Precisely.”
Keeping my gun pressed into Quay’s side, I look at Hesediel.
“Does that sound right to you?”
“I’m afraid so,” she says. “Their strength and courage is unexplainable by any normal standards.”
I turn back to Quay.
“You’re keeping the war in Heaven going. Why?”
“One secret at a time, Sandman Slim. One secret at a time. Now, you wanted to know how black milk is manufactured.”
“Stop stalling.”
“The raw materials
for black milk are found only here in Hell. Isn’t that interesting?”
“Fascinating. Now I’ll win next time I’m on Jeopardy!”
He steers us around a line of overturned school buses. There are no bodies anywhere. All the dead Hellions and damned souls are in Tartarus.
“We use rebel angels to move the raw black milk to Earth, where it’s transformed from a poison into a miracle drug.”
“How is it done?”
“Geoffrey Burgess was about to cook us a new batch, but you ruined it.”
“I didn’t see any potions in his house.”
“Of course not. It hadn’t been manufactured yet. Think hard, Sandman Slim. I know that’s not your best quality, but it’s important.”
