In my heart of hearts I’ve always known I wasn’t finished with the place. It’s like a drunk who goes on the wagon but decides to pitch his tent in the Jack Daniel’s parking lot. Yeah, he cleaned up, but he didn’t run very far from what made him a lush in the first place.

Once I’d killed the other members of my old magic Circle and sent Mason Downtown, I should have walked away from the whole hoodoo world and become just another brain-dead civilian. Take a mail-order course in taxidermy or sell maps of the stars’ homes to tourists. Instead I hung around with Lurkers, renegade angels, and Jades. I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to get back here. If the Bamboo House of Dolls didn’t have such a high-quality jukebox and Carlos didn’t make such good tamales, I would have been back here months ago and this would all be over with.

All those dreams about tests and being lost and being back in the blood and the dust are just lines on a map. The elevation marks reveal that no matter how low you get, there’s always somewhere lower to fall.

Some of the Hellions from the flatbed go right up to the fence to get a good look at the current fight, trying to convince themselves they’re not seeing what they’re seeing. Others, the ones with a firmer grip on reality, are at the far end of the pen puking and shitting themselves. They’re not in denial about what’s coming.

The arena isn’t much to see. Just a flat soccer field with semis parked a hundred feet apart to mark the boundaries of the killing floor. Hellions and even a few pagan collaborators fill the stands between the trucks, drinking, cheering, and throwing bottles and rocks at the Hellion prisoners forced to fight each other. I shake my head. Lucifer woulHouLuciferdn’t have put up with the peanut gallery getting his arena floor messy. These small-time bullies have no class.

I look around the stadium, not really paying attention to the current fight. There’s the unmistakable sound of metal smashing into meat and bone. The crowd cheers. The bone crunch comes again. A cheer. Then a bigger cheer. I go to the fence and look through. It looks like the Hellion who was to be chopped into McNuggets got the other fighter in the throat with a knife when he got too close. They both fall over and disappear. Cue the crowd. People drink and pay off wagers. It’s a party and they take their time about it.

A few minutes later armored guards grab more prisoners from the pen. Berith is with them. He looks at me like he thinks I’m going to do something about it. All I do is stay by the fence to watch. The guards walk the group out to the middle of the killing floor and hand them weapons. Every Hellion was a soldier once. They were all part of the rebel legions in Heaven, but that was a long time ago. In the arena the prisoners look at the rusty swords and shields in their hands like they’ve never seen anything like them before. That’s the lousy thing about shock. It makes you look stupid.

I remember my first time in the arena. It wasn’t like this bumpkin retrofit. The arena in Pandemonium was built for blood sports and nothing else. It was like the Roman Colosseum, but clad in plates of bronze and ivory and hung with sculpted bone chandeliers over each entrance. It was full of false walls that could be moved to change the fighting floor. There were trapdoors and chutes where beasts and fighters could be lifted or shot into the arena in a few seconds. The crowds were connoisseurs of pain.

My first fight was against a human soul. The arena bookers thought it would be a hoot to put the one living guy in Hell up against one of his dead brethren. The thing is, the guy I was up against was from one of the lowest regions, one reserved for child killers, so I didn’t exactly think of him as one of my brethren.

I’d been in Hell long enough to have built up a thick skin of fury. I was still a circus attraction back then. The living freak to be passed around and used and gawked at like a pickled punk. And I was sure as shit a long way from being Sandman Slim.

I went into the fight all teeth and claws and righteous idiot fury. It was the first time I used a na’at and I had no idea what to do with it. I can’t say I was scared going up against a real killer. I was too crazy for that, and when I did think about it, more than anything I was amazed at where my life had taken me. The unreality of Hell became even more unreal. That’s probably what saved me.

The Kid Killer knew how to use blades and I didn’t. He gave me my first scars. Later they changed me, made me stronger, and I became a kind of living body armor. But that night in the arena, the slashes just hurt.

I tried using the na’at the way I’d seen Hellions use it, but I mostly bounced it off the ground and hit myself in the face when it sprang open into different configurations. That routine went for big laughs.

I wish I could say I finig fd say Ished the Kid Killer with a flashy na’at move, but the blood and pain nudged me from crazy into Norman Bates territory. And the crazier I got, the more the crowd cheered. When I managed to knock the Kid Killer down, I climbed on top of him, pinned his arms, and choked the fucker until his eyes bulged out like twin eight balls. You haven’t seen surprised until you’ve seen a dead man realize he’s about to die again. Later, one of my guards explained to me about Tartarus and the double dead.

I’d never killed anyone before and knew I was supposed to feel bad about it, but I didn’t. I felt just the opposite. These geniuses were training me to kill, building up my strength and turning me into the monster I was always meant to be. Later, when Azazel made me his assassin, I thanked every Hellion I killed for their contribution to my schooling. The looks on their faces when I cut their throats never got old.

I’m glad Alice never saw me in the arena. I hope Kasabian has the brains not to show Candy.

What none of the Hellions except maybe Lucifer understood was that when I stepped onto the killing floor, I wasn’t fighting an opponent. I was fighting all of Hell. When I killed a beast or a soul, I was killing every leering, putrid Hellion in existence. The nouveaux riches in the stands came for a fight. I was there for extermination, and every time I murdered them, it felt like Christmas morning. That’s what I don’t want Candy to see. Back in L.A. we talk about being monsters together, but it’s not the same thing. I don’t have any problems with my L.A. monster side, but I don’t want her to see the kind of monster that comes out when I’m the real Sandman Slim.

I don’t want to watch Berith and the other lead-footed fighters. I know how this is going to go. I don’t want to see it again. The angel wants me to shout some strategy or encouragement to Berith. But it’s already too late for him. He’s down in the dust and disappears less than a minute later. The crowd cheers the winners, but cheers even harder when the guards knife each of them in the back. Hellion humor isn’t what you’d call sophisticated.

I want out of here, but I don’t want to get stomped by a hundred armed Hellions. I look around for a good shadow. There’s one on the ground at the far end of the pen. I walk over, trying to look like I’m going over to puke. When I stick my foot into the dark, the ground is solid. The posse has thrown up an antihoodoo cloak around the place. I can’t use any decent magic in here. What’s Plan B? Hiding is my favorite choice, but everyone in the holding cell is trying to hide behind everyone else. It’s like the saddest square dance you ever saw in here.

I still have on my coat and hoodie, so my human arms are covered up. I feel inside the coat. The na’at is still there. So’s the knife, Lucifer’s stone, the plastic rabbit, and Muninn’s crystal. I check my leg. The pistol is still taped to my ankle. The posse must have just tossed me into the flatbed. Good. That means they’re drunk or just plain stupid. I like stupid. There are lots of possibilities in stupid.