The street is crowded with civilians and Lurkers. I go around the side of the building far enough that there’s no streetlight and fire up a Malediction. I feel a little earthquake under my feet. A hole opens in the concrete a few feet away.

“Hi, Cherry,” I say. “Thanks for helping out with Teddy.”

I go to the edge of the hole and look down. Cherry is a mess. She’s lost an arm and a lot of teeth. There are a couple of bullet holes in her skull.

“Thanks for whatever you did to the Imp. She’s gone.”

“I didn’t do anything to her. I set her free and let her make her own choice. My guess is she went home.”

“As long as she’s gone.”

“Agreed.”

“Are you fishing for compliments?”

“No. Just thinking about things. Back in Hell, Great-Great-Great-Granddad told me to pick and choose my fights. I agree with him but sometimes it’s hard to pick which fights because you don’t know what they are until you start. I thought I was Elvis on Ice when I stopped Mason’s war with Heaven. But I left all those Hellions worse off because they thought they were going to get free from Hell. Then I come back to L.A. to find Candy off with someone else, Aelita is back, there’s a murdering ghost on the loose, and a scar-faced skinhead’s looking to kill me all because I cut off a Kissi’s head a year ago. He deserved it but that doesn’t matter in the big picture. What matters is everything down the line that killing him triggered. But how do you know what bad juju you’re shaking loose before you start shaking things up?”

Cherry turns her hollow eye sockets up at me.

“And the point of your eloquent speech?”

“I don’t exactly know. Maybe we need to be more careful about the messes we leave behind. Try to tidy things up a bit when the bullets stop flying.”

“Maybe you could cut off fewer heads.”

“That too. Muninn told me to forgive part of myself, and as much as I hate that healing-your-inner-child yammer, I’m trying. You need to let go and move on. Look at you. You were a sad sight when you were in one piece. Now you’re not even a skeleton. Just a sack of random bones. Come out of there. Even if you don’t want to pass on entirely, have a little dignity. Be a ghost and not a burrowing bug.”

“I am a ghost.”

“I mean a real ghost. Ditch the skeleton and do a regular haunting. How about the Lollipop Dolls store? Think of it. A high-end J-pop place with its own ghost. It’ll be like Kwaidan with pigtails.”

She’s quiet for a minute. If she had a face, she’d look lost in thought.

“I couldn’t just move in. I’d have to ask the girls.”

“I hardly know anything about that anime stuff but Candy has a Ph.D. I bet she’d talk to them for you.”

“Why are you going out of your way to help me?”

“Because you and me have a past too. You thought I could save you when you were alive and I didn’t. I figure getting you out of that hole might make up for that a little.”

“Maybe it will,” she says. “Have your friend talk to the girls.”

“I will. See you around, Cherry.”

But she’s already gone.

I throw the rest of the cigarette into the hole and start back inside when my phone rings. It’s a blocked number. Sure, why not?

It’s a man voice this time.

“I haven’t seen it myself but I hear you ruined Lucifer’s armor.”

“God dinged it with a thunderbolt. I put a few bullet holes in it. It gives it character. Like scars.”

“From what I hear, you must have some new ones. Did striking yourself with the Gladius leave a mark? Did King Cairo shoot you in the face? Are you terribly disfigured?”

“I’m not Lucifer anymore. I thought that would get me off the hook with your bullshit.”

“You hurt me. You’re not on the hook. These are fireside chats while I bring you news from far away.”

“Thanks, but you can shove your news. I’m done with Hell. I don’t care anymore.”

“I hear you broke the priest. Poor thing. They’re so delicate, aren’t they? So confident in your world but they come apart so quickly down here. Still, it’s nothing for you to worry about. A mad priest. It’s like a gothic romance. Add his to the list of lives you’ve ruined. But the priest is still walking the Earth, isn’t he? So he’s only half a demerit. God must be very proud of you. You keep filling our houses with new playmates.”

“Here’s my final thought to you. Kill yourself. All of you Hellions should kill yourselves. Or murder each other. You’re Muninn’s problem now.”

“How long will it take you to break your new girlfriend? What’s her name? Something sweet and simpleminded. Does she know how gruesome you can be?”

“I told her all about what happened in Hell.”

“And she’s still with you? She must be an exceptional woman.”

“She is.”

“So was Alice, I suppose. You do seem to go through a lot of them. Exceptional women. Murder isn’t your greatest sin. It’s being as careless with others’ lives as you are with your own. You need to watch that or sooner or later all that will be left are women who’ll run from the very sight of a monster like you.”

“If you’re calling to threaten me, hurry up. I’m going inside and I won’t be able to hear you being scary.”

“I’m getting better with bodies in your world. I can do more than talk now. Soon I’ll walk and drive and look just like anyone else and I can pay you a visit.”

“You better get to it, Merihim. When the Angra come back, you’re as fucked as the rest of us.”

“Clever guess.”

“That’s exactly what it was. Don’t make me tattle on you to Muninn.”

I hang up and head back inside.

Candy is dancing to Les Baxter’s “Balloon Waltz” with Vidocq. I cut in and he graciously takes a powder just like a real Frenchman. I have no idea how to waltz but I can count to three and I can rock back and forth, and with the bar so packed, that’s pretty much what everyone else is doing too.

It’s been raining on and off for the last couple of weeks. Not fish rain. The regular stuff. Between the storms, the sky is even blue sometimes. Catalina is back and no one has reported any floating streets or volcanoes in days.

Sometimes I step back and look over everything and wonder how the hell I got here. According to Uriel, my real father, I was always destined for this land of bloody laughs. I’m not human or angel or Lurker or demon. I’m just a natural-born killer. What I don’t know is if I’m attracted to places where the worst things are happening or if I bring the shitstorm with me. Until I know, all that matters is that I’m still breathing and I’m dancing with a pretty girl.

The world is going to end when the Angra Om Ya come back. They’ll eat the planets and stars. When they hit L.A., they’ll get a movie deal with points and a percentage of the merchandising. They’ll learn to surf and practice Transcendental Meditation. One of them will OD in the bathroom at the Whisky a Go Go and another will be on the cover of People, caught having an affair with the new mayor. The others will develop depression and go home to their gloomy universe. One more set of suckers. One more one-hit wonder. It’s a nice little universe you built but what have you done lately? Leave your head shots and our people will call your people. This is L.A. There are so many Apocalypses around here that most don’t even make the paper, so be happy yours got any press at all. By the way, Strawberry Alarm Clock is a cool name. Angra Om Ya sounds like a brand of Chinese dog food.

With luck, the Angra won’t pass through these parts for another million years. I don’t usually get that lucky but I’ve got Candy, a place to crash, food, and the Key. L.A. might be a tourist-trap province on the outskirts of Hell, but that’s okay. At least in this Hell, I’m not alone.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Patty for the art and Wil for being an excellent guy. Thanks to Elsabeth Hermens for anime advice and to Tim Holland for French guidance. Thanks to Dino, Martha, and Lorenzo for letting me tag along. Thanks to Pamela Spengler-Jaffee, Jessie Edwards, Will Hinton, and the rest of the team at HarperCollins. And thanks as well to everyone on Twitter and Facebook who sent in song suggestions. As always, thanks to Nicola for everything else.