“Brave talk for a man covered in blood.”

“The blood belongs to the dead ambulance guy. You can’t get anything right, can you? You blew it bad with bug boy. And that phone call? What was that, you fuckwit Ghostface wannabe?”

He stares at me.

“So what’s this all about? You and your crew want a raise? How about two weeks’ vacation while I pull out your intestines with an oyster fork?”

He lowers the knife close to my eye and wiggles it around. The shiny blade glints in the headlights. It looks brand-new. I’m flattered.

“You mortals love to hear yourself talk, don’t you?”

It’s hard to shrug gracefully flat on my back.

“In Hell, I’m usually the most interesting person in the room, so it’s kind of inevitable.”

He glances away for a second like he’s thinking and then jams the knife deep into my cheek, twisting the blade before pulling it out.

“Was that interesting enough for you?”

“Would it help if I said yes?”

He takes a breath and his mood changes. Tense lines of anger soften to something else. Not sadness. More like bone-deep exhaustion.

He says, “Why did you come back?”

“I ask myself that every day.”

He pokes my cheek with the knife again.

“I came here to kill Mason Faim, you ungrateful motherfucker. I saved your ass.”

He lets his head sag for a second. Uses his sleeve to wipe my blood off the knife.

“That’s the problem,” he says. “If you’d just stayed away, we’d be gone.”

I try to sit up. Vetis puts his forearm on my scorched armor and pushes me down. He doesn’t have to push hard.

“Jesus fucking Christ. Are you stupid? Do you really think the legions could have taken on Heaven’s armies and won?”

He looks out the back of the ambulance and then back at me.

“Of course not. They would have slaughtered us. And all of this”—he stretches out his arms to take in all of Hell—“would be over.”

I’m so dumb sometimes I’m surprised I’ve never used dynamite for a toothbrush.

Now I know how Mason got so much of Hell and got so many generals and their troops working with him so fast. The war with Heaven wasn’t a war. It was a suicide pact. Death by cop. Provoke the guy with the gun so he’ll shoot. Storm the gates of Heaven until the golden army burns you in a rain of holy fire. Bye bye Hell. And they wouldn’t have to worry about being sent to Tartarus because I destroyed that. A perfect setup for the biggest suicide cult of all time.

Semyazah was the only holdout. One of the few Hellions left that still believed in Lucifer’s argument with Heaven. Semyazah isn’t stupid. Of course he doesn’t want to be Lucifer. How do you lead an entire civilization of wrist cutters?

No wonder Deumos and her shiny happy church popped up. She’s the only one offering an alternative to dog-paddling around God’s toilet forever. Even if it’s New Age bullshit wrapped up in a Hellion wet dream.

Is this why God broke into a million little pieces? Before Aelita murdered him, Neshamah said Hell was never supposed to be like this. I thought he meant the fires and sinkholes and earthquakes. Now I know what he meant. He put the rebel angels in an eternal time-out and never came back. The Lord’s just and wise punishment inspired millions of his children to mass suicide. No wonder the old man had a nervous breakdown.

“What happens now? You going to slit my throat? With no Lucifer, this place is going to get real interesting real fast. Maybe the whole thing will collapse into one big sinkhole. Won’t that be fun, wading knee-deep in blood and shit for a trillion years, waiting for the universe to end?”

He taps the knife against my Kissi arm like he’s trying to tell if a melon is ripe. He moves the blade to the gauze on my chest, trying to work the tip of the blade underneath so he can lift it and take a look.

“Don’t worry about us. You need to be worried about yourself right now.”

“Why? You’re going to kill me and I’m too hurt to fight back. I’d only worry if I thought there was something I could do and maybe I’d fuck it up.”

“See? Talk. Talk. Talk. That’s all you humans do.”

“At least I don’t get other people to do my killing for me. If I wanted to die, I’d do it myself and not trick Heaven into doing it for me.”

He sighs.

“We must be such a disappointment to you, Lucifer.”

He lays heavy sarcastic emphasis on “Lucifer.”

“This whole dump is one big disappointment. Maybe that’s why God forgot about you. You’re so fucking boring.”

Vetis presses the knife into the burn on my neck. I try not to wince.

He says, “Let me put you out of your misery.”

“Give me the knife and I’ll put you out of yours.”

Outside someone yells, “Hey!” Someone else curses. There’s the sound of running feet. A lot of them. More shouts. Guns go off and something hits the ambulance hard.

Vetis looks up as a dozen hands drag him out of the ambulance. One of them twists Vetis’s wrist until it pops and he drops the knife. They drag him around the side of the ambulance and I lose sight of him. A moment later, a woman steps inside and looks around for somewhere to sit that isn’t covered in blood. She finds a foam pillow pinned to the wall by the gurney and sets it on one of the cabinets.

“That worked out nicely, if I do say so myself,” says Deumos.

“It would have worked out even better if you’d gotten up here five minutes ago.”

She holds up her hands in a what-can-you-do gesture.

“Getting through the canyons without being seen took more time than we thought.”

I sit up and lean back against the wall. Grizzly’s blood soaks through my pants. I don’t care.

“I wasn’t sure you’d show at all.”

“But here we are, keeping our part of the bargain.”

“And I’ll keep mine. Just one thing. Did you bring a doctor or nurse?”

“We have a doctor and a nurse. Why?”

“The EMT they pulled out of here is probably pretty out of it. Someone should have a look at her. Also, can someone come in here to dig around for painkillers? I want to lie in a kiddie pool full of OxyContin.”

She pats me lightly on the shoulder.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

There’s no Oxy or Hellion Vicodin around, but Deumos comes back with someone’s flask full of Aqua Regia. It’ll do. We sit on the shoulder of the road looking back toward Pandemonium. Even falling apart, the place looks enough like L.A. to make me feel homesick.

The side of the hill where we sit crunches under our feet where the vegetation burned. But the place isn’t entirely dead. Scrubs of ghost thistle and even a few asphodel flowers have made it up through the layer of ash.

“You don’t look well,” says Deumos.

“With a month’s vacation, a face-lift, and a crate of Ecstasy, I might work my way up to feeling like shit.”

“General Semyazah isn’t going to be happy about any of this. Running around the hinterlands with weapons. Attacking his troops. And especially you conspiring with me.”

“He’ll be fine. I’ll send him a fruit basket.”

We sit for a minute, neither of us saying anything. There’s the kind of warm breeze that if you didn’t know you were in Heaven’s sewer you might find almost pleasant.

“So tell me, how does someone invent a new church in Hell? You run out of Sudoku?”

“I had a vision.”

“Of course you did. All you prophets do is have visions. And burn heretics. That’s like catnip to you people. Why don’t you take a pottery class or learn Japanese?

She frowns.

“You don’t believe in oaths or revelations. What do you believe in, Lord Lucifer?”

“I believe we’re going to be dead a lot longer than we’re alive, so anything you like you should do to excess. I believe America lost its soul when they took the big-block V-8 out of Mustangs. I believe Hollywood should stop remaking A Star Is Born.”

She looks at me and slowly shakes her head.