One fighter from some Hellion backwater said that he’d seen the real ultimate weapon. Only archangels had them and only Gabriel was brave enough to use his.

“No rebel angel could defeat him because each time he used his weapon it was different. There was no way to attack or defend yourself against it. Before the battle was over, thousands of our rebel brothers and sisters lay dead at his feet. These other fools think it was God who defeated us, but the few of us who survived the battle know it was Gabriel.”

I remember something Alice said before Samael took her back to Heaven. I’d left her alone with Neshamah, one of the five entities that have made up God since His nervous breakdown. Alice said that Aelita killed Neshamah with a weapon Alice had never seen before. I wonder if that’s because what she saw was really a million different weapons. That would be pretty damn hard to describe at the best of times and even harder if it was only for a few seconds while someone gutted God in front of you.

Among the lacquered splinters is a kind of leather sheath that roughly corresponds to the shape of the weapon when it’s configured like circular-saw blades. Carefully, I slip the thing into the case and lock the top flap closed.

I wonder if Aelita left the weapon for Mason to use on me or if he was just holding it for her while she hunted down the other four God brothers? Either way it’s mine now. I drop it in my jacket pocket and get the hell out of Mason’s butcher shop.

I head to the bedroom but stop at the library to leave red “get your ass over here now” signal cards in front of a couple of peepers for Ipos and Merihim.

In the bedroom I strip off the suit and give it a sniff. The abattoir-fresh aroma all the kids love is deep inside the material. That’s never coming out. I toss the suit over with the dead motorcycle jacket. It’s sort of comforting seeing the growing pile of ruined clothes. I’ve killed off a lot of men’s casual wear while getting shot and stabbed. Now all I have to do is decapitate someone and I’ll feel like I’m home sweet home.

I grab an overcoat from the closet and toss it on the bed. I feel enough like me that I put on the leather bike pants and boots I wore when I came down here. They feel good. A little stiff with dried blood, most of it mine. I put on my hoodie. It’s blood stiff too and one of the sleeves is missing from when the red legger relieved me of my left arm. I sliced him in half like a side of beef with my Gladius, my flaming angelic sword.

I keep the glove on, but leave my prosthetic arm bare since no one is going to see it under the coat.

Back in the library I smack the gyroscope like Merihim, making it spin backward. The monster-movie voice chitters like a groundhog that’s burrowed into a meth lab. I check the peeper images on the movie screen. Brimborion is prowling his office, smiling at his staff. Trying to play it cool. He’s almost pulling it off, but if you look hard enough you can see the wheels whirring in his head. Is one of these fuckers selling me out? Maybe better to kill them all and let God or the Devil or Oprah sort them out.

In other parts of the palace, people do funny little square dances when they come around a corner and find a hellhound. Maintenance guys on break in the basement check out my motorcycle. Staff witches sort through piles of dried bugs and plants. Outside, a couple of officers are kicking the shit out of a low-ranking Hellion while another officer uses his long leather sap to poke the dead bikers in the gibbets. Guess the book club let out early.

Ipos and Merihim show up a few minutes later. I tell them about the secret room while taking out my eye. I drop the other peepers into their saline storage jars so that mine is the only one showing on the screen. They watch the show like a couple at a drive-in movie. Bored during the dark part but starting a little when the lights flick on, giving them a full frontal of Ed Gein’s rumpus room.

“Too bad you can only see the place and not smell it. It’s memorable.”

“You think this is Mason Faim’s work?” says Merihim when we come to the first close-up of a dissected brain.

“Unless this is what Hellions call ‘playing doctor.’ ”

He shoots me a look. I distract him by holding out the Magic 8 Ball.

“Ever seen one of these before?”

Merihim is too smart to grab things the Devil finds weird but Ipos is more impulsive. He grabs the ball, turns it, and immediately gets his hand skewered by a barb.

He curses in lower-class street Hellion, which sounds even worse than regular Hellion. Like a shop vac sucking up sewer sludge.

On the screen I’m moving the soldier’s body around while the pile of body bags forms a pastoral slaughterhouse tableau in the background.

Merihim bends to look at the ball in Ipos’s bleeding hand but doesn’t move to take it.

“Whatever this is, it reeks of unnatural power. You should let me take it and bury it deep in the Tabernacle vaults.”

Everyone is on a power trip here, the church included.

“Thanks but no thanks. It stays with me.”

“This isn’t something to be left lying around.”

“Which is why it stays with me and not buried somewhere I can’t see it.”

“And where will it end up if something happens to you?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. If whoever knows how to work this gets ahold of it again, my guess is that we’ll all be dead by morning. Another good reason to keep me on the unkilled team.”

On the screen I’m poking at the psychic amplifier. I watch them closely. Neither has ever seen one before. Neither reacts to the Vigil logo either. At least I don’t have to worry about them working with whoever has the key.

“Either of you come up with any new information?”

Ipos nods and his church tattoos move like a flag promising salvation.

“I might have,” he says. “The soldiers who attacked you were from Wormwood’s legion. There are an unusual number of suicides and murders among his troops. Apparently it’s been going on for some time, but since the dead no longer disappear into Tartarus he can’t hide it anymore. My spies in other legions found that the same thing is starting to happen in other parts of the legion.”

Merihim says, “Red leggers have been caught delivering bogus potions to physicians and hospitals. The real ones end up on the black market.”

“Okay. Maybe bad drugs get them to kill themselves, but what do they have to do with killing me?”

Merihim shrugs.

“Well, no one likes you very much.”

On the screen I’m examining the weird weapon. Ipos watches closely, safe from slicing himself open.

He says, “General Semyazah controls the distribution of vital goods. That gives him access to you and to a lot of power. There’s a long list of generals who would like to replace him.”

Damn.

“We’re back to generals stabbing generals in the back? I thought that shit was over with when I killed Mason.”

“In peace or war, there are always men who want power for its own sake.”

Ipos has given up pretending to look at the peeper projection and has gone to my desk to fix the wobbly leg.

“You think Semyazah is letting his own trucks get ripped off?”

From under my desk Ipos says, “It’s possible. Being smart doesn’t exempt you from corruption.”

He hammers a wooden spacer under one of the desk legs. Between taps with a small hammer he says, “Of course it could be another general earning some extra money while making Semyazah look bad.”

“Why not just kill him? That seems to be a quick way to get promotions down here.”

Merihim shakes his head.

“Murdering Semyazah risks an all-out war among the generals. Legion against legion. No one wants that.”

Ipos says, “If someone could possess Semyazah and have him, say, attack you, then he could be killed and you would have to appoint another supreme general.”