“It’s me, baby. What are you doing?”
I’m dizzy and nauseated.
“Doing just what you said. Getting myself away from le merdier.”
I flick out the na’at but I can’t go for her. I lunge and put the blade into the jukebox. Denny sputters and dies. I turn and hack the bar in half. Swing again and slice through the bar stools. Vault the bar and start in on the bottles. I take out a row of booze with each swipe of the na’at until I’m ankle deep in the stuff. Back over the bar, I push a candle over. The booze goes up in one big whoosh.
I’m feeling it now. That old arena feeling, where nothing feels better than something breaking under the na’at or my hands. Candy backs against the far wall. I stab it over her head, pulling out big chunks of plaster. I hack at the windows and floor. I slice apart the pillars by the door and the whole thing collapses. The decorations over the bar are burning and patches of the ceiling glow cherry red. Once it catches we all go down together.
“Right, Henoch?” I yell.
I hack at the beams in the walls. They start to sag. I hack at the floor until it starts to buckle beneath us. The ceiling catches. The air is sucked out of my lungs as all the oxygen in the room cooks off. I look at Candy. I pull out the black blade to throw through a window. She knows a flashover is coming.
“Enough.”
She screams it over the sounds of the flames. I don’t have to throw the knife. The window cracks. The air explodes, enveloping us in flames as thick as molasses. Then stops. The room goes black.
“Enough.”
It’s not Candy’s voice. It’s a man’s.
“What in Lucifer’s name is wrong with you?”
Light slowly comes up. I’m standing in a dimly lit stone room with an old man. Splintered pillars and support columns lean haphazardly against the walls and across the floor.
“You mean my name, don’t you, Grandpa? I’m Lucifer.”
Henoch Breach has wet rheumy eyes set in a sagging face. Scraggly white whiskers that might be the remains of a dead beard. His teeth are black and crooked, like fallen dominoes. He’s dressed in robes that probably looked regal about a thousand years ago. Now they look like a gaudy bath mat in a Tijuana flophouse. He looks around the room.
“Look what you’ve done to my home.”
“What was I supposed to do? No one told me there was a ring inside the house. Only this one wasn’t suffering. Did you really think the ‘it’s all been a dream’ gaff was going to work? Does anyone ever fall for it?”
He laughs and it breaks down into a wet cough. He finds a chair in the wreckage, rights it, and sits down. His voice is surprisingly deep and strong.
“You’d be surprised. Offer mortals or angels what they really want and the first thing they’ll give up is doubt.”
“Not me. Not down here. Doubt is my best friend. Doubt that I’m stuck here. Doubt someone like you is going to off me.”
“I have no interest in offing you any more than you have in offing me.”
“You just murdered a hundred of my troops.”
He shakes his head.
“They’re not your troops. They’re Lucifer’s troops and you’re not him. You might have the title. You might be hiding that you wear his armor under that coat but you’re no more Lucifer than the other one.”
“How do you know, Henoch?”
“I’m not Henoch, you young fool. There is no Henoch. I’m Lucifer. The first Lucifer.”
On any other day I might not believe something like that. Today is different though.
“If you’re the real Lucifer then the guy I know as Lucifer is Henoch?”
He leans his elbows on his knees and shakes his head.
“I told you. There is no one named Henoch. Henoch is the town. I’m Maleephas. And before you ask any stupid questions, yes, I said I was Lucifer. Remember that the Lucifer you know was once Samael. Just as you…”
“Stark.”
“As you, Stark, are now Lucifer.”
I hear something from above. I can’t tell if it’s screams or someone singing “Close To You.”
“What’s happening to my people?”
“I assume they’re being slaughtered just as anyone who comes here is slaughtered.”
“Why? What’s so special about this place that everyone has to die if they come near it?”
Maleephas shrugs.
“You’ll have to ask Samael. He built it. He made the city. He constructed the road. He made the rings you passed through and the Vorosdok that attacked your men. If you’ve been in Hell for any length of time you’ve probably noticed that he’s quite clever and has a good sense of suffering.”
Is this another illusion? Am I talking to myself or does the roadkill have hallucinogenic saliva and they’ve bitten me and are tearing me apart?
“Why would Samael do any of that?”
Maleephas stands and crooks a finger for me to follow him.
We go down a corridor with windows that look out over the front of the Breach. Roadkill and dead soldiers are spread out in all directions.
“Don’t feel badly,” says Maleephas. “This is his doing. Not yours.”
“Why? Why would he build this? Why are you here?”
He opens his arms wide, turning in a circle. He laughs with more strength than I thought he had in him.
“Because this is Hell. The first Hell. The first after the fall. The one we made together and he took and then abandoned.”
Maleephas looks out the window. A few last roadkill wander up the hill. A lot of them are missing heads, arms or legs.
“What stories do they tell about me now? That Henoch Breach is a rebel Hellion’s hold? What do they say about this Hellion?”
“That he’s crazy. That he slaughters travelers along his road. That he fucks snakes and rats and makes monster babies that do his dirty work for him.”
He grips the bars and presses his face to them.
“At least I’m colorful in this version. These myths about the place, they change over time. Very few in Hell recall what really happened in the early days. Remember what I said about offering beings what they really want? Why would they want to remember that this world began with a betrayal as thorough as the one in Heaven?”
“You’re saying that you and Samael were bosom buddies and he turned on you. Why? Why would he care about taking over this shithole?”
“For one thing he likes power.”
“So do you, if you were Lucifer.”
“Touche. The difference is that I had doubts about the argument with Father. He didn’t. When a group of us tried to go back, well, you see the result.”
The little gears clank in my brain. I look out the window.
“The roadkill that attacked my men. They’re Hellions, aren’t they?”
Maleephas nods.
“The ones who wanted to return with me so we could throw ourselves at God’s feet, hoping to receive his infinite mercy. What they received was what you saw in the grove. I received this prison.”
I take out a Malediction. Light it and offer it to him. He takes it and sniffs, hands it back to me.
“It smells awful. Is that what you do in Pandemonium these days? Pollute yourselves with that?”
“We have all kinds of pollution. You should try Aqua Regia. Or there might be some unicorn salad left in the truck if you want to try it.”
He shakes his head.
“Such a stupid world we made together. It was going to rival Heaven but it turned into more ruin.”
“You know what’s funny?” I say. “Guess where Samael is these days.”
“I’m afraid I’ve lost my appetite for games.”
“He’s back in Heaven. He had doubts about the argument too. At least the part about the war. He’s back upstairs trying to make it up to the old man.”
A smile spreads across Maleephas’s face. He leans against the wall and chuckles.
“And it only took how many eons and another fool to play Lucifer.”
I puff the Malediction and think.
“Maybe it’s not as bad as you think. I thought Samael was playing me for a chump when he blew town and left me this job. Maybe meeting you is what’s it’s all been about. Maybe he couldn’t face you or maybe he knew you wouldn’t want to see him. Maybe I’m here to blow up the myth. Let you out and remind everyone what really happened here.”