I whistle. There’s a low roar and the sound of razored steel on concrete. Shadows lumber up the driveway walls. When the hellhounds reach the surface, they spread out around me, pawing the ground impatiently. They scan the troops, pink brains sloshing in the bell jars where their heads should be. They settle around me in a protective semicircle.
The potion the palace witches whipped up for me we used to call a Sheol Sucker Punch. Technically, it’s a kind of poison, but a very selective one.
When most people see hellhounds, all they see is the machine part. They forget about the brain, usually because when they’re that close, it means a hound is gnawing off their leg. I don’t know where hellhound brains come from, but I know that brains are brains and they need food to work. And any brain that needs food is a brain you can dose. A Sheol Sucker Punch burns out the parts of the brain that control memory but skates around smarts and motor functions. Mostly it resets a brain’s emotional clock back to when it was a newborn. And like every good duckling, the newborns wake up looking for something to imprint on. I made sure it was me. I’m Mom now and the hounds, their gears whirring and pistons pounding, are a loyal pack.
The legions back off but stand their ground. They know not to run. Running makes you prey and no one wants to be prey to a hundred metal hounds.
Some of the troops want to cut my throat. Others stare at me like wounded children. Neither are good looks for crazed killers. I should probably say something, but what am I going to say? “Sometimes the Devil needs a little me time”?
The best I can come up with to say is, “Hell needs a Lucifer and Hell will always have one. Just not tonight.”
The wind changes and brings new smells with it.
The gibbet holding Ukobach holds a bloated corpse. By the street, scalps and fresh skins are tied to the ornamental fence, flapping and drying in the breeze. Guess I know what happened to Vetis’s men. I wonder if Vetis’s hide is up there with them?
As the smell of rotting Hellion meat drifts across the lawn, whatever little guilt I’ve been nursing for running out on these poor slobs evaporates. Why did I ever think mass suicide for these murderous hellspawn hyenas was a bad idea? Let them all burn.
The lousy thing is maybe I deserve a seat in the frying pan right next to them. I dragged Ukobach behind my bike when I could have just snapped his neck. But Lucifer needs to put on a show and I never get tired of killing Hellions. Maybe I should send the hounds back to the kennels, go to my rooms, and die down here with these assholes. Maybe that’s the real reason why Samael marooned me here. His way of teaching me one last lesson. The one he wouldn’t tell me because I had to figure it out for myself. That I don’t deserve to go home.
I thought I could skate and cheat and finesse my way around the worst parts of playing Lucifer but I was fooling myself. You can’t play the Devil without becoming the Devil. That’s why Saint James abandoned me. He knew what was coming and he didn’t want to see it happen. He also didn’t stick around to help me through it, so a few of those scalps belong to him.
I really was planning on coming back when I found some hoodoo that would let me stay in real L.A. while saving Hell from burning. Now I know I can’t ever come back. If I do, I’ll never leave. I won’t grow horns or hooves, but if I come back, I’ll never stop being Lucifer and it will prove what I’ve always secretly suspected. Hell didn’t make me a monster. It just confirmed all my worst fears about myself.
I rev the bike, pop the clutch, and burn rubber down the driveway, past the gates, and onto the street. The hellhound pack sprints behind. After a couple of blocks, they catch up and fan out around me. We blitzkrieg traffic off the roads and pedestrians off the streets. We tear up the asphalt, burst store windows, and rip the bumpers from idling trucks. Unlike the troops at the palace, these haven’t figured out I’m deserting their sorry asses. They scream and fire their weapons into the air like it’s New Year’s as we blow by.
I head to the 405 entrance at Wilshire. There’s less than a mile of freeway left but that’s plenty. I crank the throttle until the bike’s engine glows cherry red. The hellhounds can’t keep up. They begin to fall back. I hear them howling and baying above the noise of the engine. They’ll be okay. They have the run of the palace now, and if no one feeds them, well, they’ll just have to dine on whatever meat they can find.
This is it. The end of the road. A hundred yards ahead, the city spreads out below the thicket of jagged rebar that marks where the freeway has collapsed. I get low in the saddle. Every time we hit a pothole, Lucifer’s armor collides with the gas tank and kicks sparks into my eyes. I’m blasting down a broken road toward the heart of a half-dead city with fireworks burning my face. Whatever happens next, it’s a hell of a trip.
Jetting off the end of the freeway, the universe goes quiet and a ghost melody fills my head. “The Girlfriend of the Whirling Dervish” by Martin Denny. Carlos’s favorite song on the jukebox at the real Bamboo House of Dolls. I picture home but I’m still in Hell. What am I doing wrong?
The front of the bike noses down toward the rubble.
Did I use up all the armor’s power on Brimborion?
Wouldn’t that be a hilarious goddamn end to everything?
The ground comes up fast. “The Girlfriend of the Whirling Dervish” mixes with the rising sound of the engine. What did I expect? Fucking up is my true home and I’m heading there fast.
I wish I had a cigarette.
Then there’s nothing at all.
Then there’s something.
The front wheel hits pavement. A rush of vertigo. Lights. Smeared and jittering. The nothing parts like heavy curtains. Or a trapdoor.
The rear wheel drops. The impact is like being rear-ended by a battleship. I can’t hold the bike. So I lean it to the side. Lay it down and let it slide. Ten or twenty yards. The asphalt grinds against my legs but the leathers hold. I’m not so sure about the coat. Have I mentioned I’m hard on clothes?
When the bike finally stops, it’s sliced a deep groove in the roadbed. I grab the handlebars, get my weight low, and tilt the bike upright. It’s not even scratched.
Welcome home.
It feels good to say it and mean it. How do I know? The place doesn’t smell like bad meat and misery. The sky is clear and full of stars. Clue number three: the bike’s stopped right in front of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Tombstones never looked so good.
A big screen is set up by the columbarium. People sit and sprawl on blankets among the dead. Movie night at the cemetery. It’s not as weird as it might sound. On Día de los Muertos, families offer food and eat meals with their dead. In Hollywood, we show up with offerings of cowboys and show tunes.
Tonight we’re entertaining our favorite stiffs with a pristine print of The Bad Seed. Pigtailed moppet Patty McCormack just set Leroy the janitor on fire and her mother and best friend watch him burn from an upstairs window. How are you enjoying the movie so far, dead people? We could have shown The Sound of Music but we thought we’d scare the last few scraps of coffin jerky off your bones.
I’m back on the bike when I notice a kid by the cemetery gates. A girl in a frilly blue party dress. Maybe nine or ten years old and she’s all alone. Who brings their kid to a murder movie in a graveyard drive-in and lets her run off alone? Hell, who brings their kid to one of these things at all? The place is half stoners and speed-freak hipsters. The moment the show is over the whole block will turn into one big bumper-car ride.
The kid doesn’t move. Just stares at me until she realizes I’m staring back. Then she turns and runs through the cemetery gates. I can hear her laughing all the way across the street. With an attitude like that, she’s going to grow up and start a mind-blowing band or become a serial killer. I flash on Candy: that could have been her years ago bouncing into Hollywood Forever, a tombstone Disneyland for kids too carnivorous for teacup rides and cotton candy.