Devil Said Bang. Richard Kadrey

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      “I would, but it would just make your girlfriend over there jealous.”

      Damn. Did I say that out loud? Maybe some of these fights are my fault after all.

      The expression on Dirty Boots’ face lets me know he’s exactly dumb enough to get bent out of shape by such an obvious bait line. I know what’s going to happen next but now I know that these are just infantry blockheads and not ninjas in disguise.

      The trick in this kind of situation is to move first and keep moving no matter what. They’ll think you’re crazy and hold back maybe long enough for you to get away. But they’re still six trained killers. Even in Lucifer’s armor, they can kill me, but not before I take out a few of them first.

      I sprint straight at them. Five of them peel off out of the way. The sixth, a bearded Hellion who’s gone hungry long enough that his uniform is too big for him, pulls a KA-BAR from his boot and lunges at me.

      Even drunk, I’m twice as fast as this backwoods bench-warmer. When he misses with the knife, he leaves himself wide open. I put my boot into his balls, and when he doubles over in pain, I bring my knee up to break his nose. He goes down spewing black blood, and right on cue, his five friends wake up and bum-rush me.

      There’s not much to do when you’re on the bad end of this kind of pile-on except to keep punching and wait for an opening.

      I duck, get my hands up in front of my face. Bob and weave. Throw the occasional jab just to remind them that I’m in here somewhere. Half the time they’re smacking the armor, so the beating could be a lot worse. What I don’t want is for them to get me on the ground, where they can take turns doing Olympic high dives onto my face.

      The terrible truth is that I kind of like the beating. It’s not like when I got ambushed on the bike. This I saw was coming. It’s more like training in the arena. I’m not going to lie and say it doesn’t hurt, but it’s a familiar kind of pain and it’s better than another quiet night in, just the Greeks and me.

       Don’t fear God

       Don’t worry about death

       What is good is easy to get, and

       What is terrible is easy to endure

      Fuck you, Epicurus. You stand here with a bunch of inbred mouth breathers looking to cut some payback for their shitty existence out of your hide. Do that and then hit me with some cool, cool Hellenic logic. Convince me and I’ll buy you all the ouzo and microwave moussaka in Athens.

      This might actually be fun if Candy was here. By now she would have dropped her human face and let her inhuman Jade side out. Eyes like red slits in black ice. Claws and a shark-tooth smile. A gorgeous killing machine in ripped jeans and worn Chuck Taylors. The perfect girlfriend.

      We’ve been dancing around for a couple of minutes and the beating slacks off just a bit. The brain trust is punching itself out. I’m supposed to be facedown getting kicked to death by now. The idiot with the KA-BAR is back on his feet but he’s hurt and punching like his hands are packing peanuts in a bunny-fur muff. I’ve drawn blood from at least two others. Another is down on his face and isn’t getting up.

      The punching stops. Then everything stops. Everything. The leggers’ cursing. The sounds of the hawkers. Catcalls from people betting on the fight.

      The whole market is looking up the street. The smell of incense mixes with the smells of hot fry oil and garbage. Voices sing softly. Not quite a song. More of a chant. It’s a lot prettier than most Hellion music, not that that’s hard. Hellion music mostly sounds like a wood chipper falling down an elevator shaft.

      Then they come into view. Everyone bows their head. It’s a religious procession but not from Merihim’s church. The march is almost all women. Obyzuth is up front in her mask and the other women all wear similar masks. The woman at the head of the procession isn’t masked. Her face is scarred and battered, like she saw plenty of action in the war Upstairs. She wears her long black hair up, wrapped around a set of heavy, yellowed horns that stick out straight in front of her, the steel-wrapped tips pointing the way for her flock. She has to be Deumos.

      Deumos is the head priestess of Hell’s other church. From what I’ve heard around the palace, it’s some kind of hard-ass goddess worship. Seems like Merihim and his boys got the giant tabernacle in the center of town and the girls got a piece-of-shit garage down by the railroad tracks. Everything is politics.

      On the rare occasions her name comes up, the secret police and Merihim’s Tabernacle representatives have a good laugh. Talking about Deumos and her bunch like an old Haight-Ashbury peace-and-love cult. A handful of harmless babes with love beads and delusions of hippie grandeur.

      I’m not so sure they should write them off. The crowd seems to take them pretty seriously, including the men, so whatever Deumos is selling it isn’t just to the women.

      The chant turns quiet. Not quite a prayer. More like if you get close enough they’ll tell you a secret. I can make out a few words here and there.

      “The being and the becoming …”

      “… hand that sweeps clean the way …”

      “… cold that burns like black flame …”

      I’m so caught up watching them that it takes me a minute to remember I’m in the middle of a fight. Then someone reminds me.

      A gun goes off and it feels like a pickup truck just planted its front bumper in my right kidney. I fall to my knees, holding my side. Then it dawns on me that I’m not hurt. The only pain is where my knees hit the pavement. The bullet didn’t even dent the armor.

      The procession takes off at the sound of gunfire, with half the market right behind. The idiots sticking around probably have bets on the fight.

      I get to my feet and turn to find Dirty Boots holding his Glock on me. He’s surprised I’m standing and now he’s waiting for me to fall over. Shooting a second time would spoil his gangster-movie moment. So will killing him in front of his friends but he doesn’t know that yet.

      When I reach into my pocket for my na’at, it finally dawns on him that I’m not going down. He raises the Glock to fire again. Too late. I whip the na’at out at his arm.

      Only it isn’t the na’at that hits him. And it doesn’t hit his arm.

      The Magic 8 Ball from the ghost room. It slams into Dirty Boots and disappears inside him, leaving a gaping black hole in his chest. He leans forward a little but doesn’t fall over. He shudders. And five metal spider legs burst from his back, skewering his friends.

      The legs go through the men like a harpoon through Velveeta. The legs curl back and spear them again. And again. Curling and spearing over and over. When the barbed legs retract, his friends are ripped apart in a spray of bone and gristle like they were hit by chain saws fired from cannons.

      The spider legs burst from the hole in Dirty Boots’ chest and bend back on themselves, latching onto the edges of the hole. With a sudden jerk, the legs rip Dirty Boots’ chest open like cracking a lobster. The legs don’t stop pulling until they’ve bent back to touch themselves, practically turning him inside out.

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