“With a thunderbolt.”
“Yes. It left Ruach blind and partially deaf. His anger and fear of us grew to the point where the rest of us knew we couldn’t stay.”
Candy says, “So there’s a God in Heaven, only he’s just a little piece. And there’s other pieces of God running around. And you’re a piece of God and Lucifer at the same time.”
“In a nutshell,” says Mr. Muninn.
Candy pats my arm in mock sympathy.
“Now I understand why you are the way you are. The universe is a lot more fucked up than I ever imagined.”
“Can your brothers help?” I say. “Where are they?”
Muninn waves a hand at the window.
“Here. There. Anywhere. I haven’t talked to them in a long time.”
“Okay. So, anything new with Merihim and Deumos? Are they at war yet?”
Merihim is a big wheel in the old official Hellion church. Hell’s Vatican. Strictly an old-boys club. No girls allowed. Deumos and her sister Hellions had a little problem with that. They started their own church, worshipping a kind of goddess that’s supposed to be the new post-God deity. A fairy godmother to kiss all the scraped knees and make everything all right again. One of the last things I did when I was Lucifer was give the women their own church. After I left, Merihim and his crew burned it down. What are little boys made of? Snips and snails and rotten little assholes that don’t want to share their toys.
“Not quite at war but far from peace. Deumos and many of the other sisters have gone into hiding,” says Muninn. “You might be amused to know that Medea Bava went into hiding with them.”
Medea Bava was the Sub Rosa’s Inquisition. Their ultimate enforcer. The lone-wolf cop who handed out life sentences in a little place called Tartarus, the Hell below Hell, where souls were burned to stoke the celestial furnaces. It was a place no one ever escaped from. Only I escaped and I took all the other lunatics in the asylum out with me. After that, Medea disappeared. I hate her almost as much as Aelita.
Muninn sighs.
“She lost faith in me—the God part, at least—when you destroyed Tartarus, so she joined Deumos and the sisters. Another voice lost in the wilderness.”
“Fuck Medea. She’s not a voice anyone needs in their head, especially you. She’s as crazy as Aelita. Deumos is the only one of the bunch who’s sane, and she’s completely deluded. And Merihim is just a power-hungry prick. He’s long overdue for a hard fall down a long flight of stairs, if you get my drift.”
“I’m afraid I do.”
“I don’t know how he did it, but Merihim used to crank-call me in L.A. after I left here.”
“He was upset with how you left things.”
“Cry me a river, pal,” I say. “Isn’t there something you can do to get Merihim and the church under control and off Deumos’s back?”
“That would be taking sides.”
“Fine. Then stop them both and make them play nice.”
He looks around, uncomfortable. Slams his fist down on the arm of the chair.
“It’s not that simple,” Muninn shouts.
It’s the first time I’ve heard him raise his voice about anything.
“You never understood how being a ruler works, James. And you have no idea what a deity is. You want me to make myself known and manifest to humankind. Do you really think that would solve anything? Or would it make things worse? You, like Samael, want total free will for the angels.”
Muninn sweeps his arms out to the broken landscape of Hell.
“Behold. That is what angelic free will looks like.”
“That’s not fair. You took the worst of the worst, the losers and the rat-fuck crazies, and locked them at the shit-pit bottom of the universe. There was no way they were ever going to build anything but this.”
“That’s also Samael’s argument. You two are so much alike.”
“I’m not anything like Samael.”
Muninn leans forward in his chair.
“Really? Does that wound in your side hurt?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Of course it is.”
He looks at Candy.
“Samael walked around for millennia bleeding from a wound I gave him during the first Heavenly war. All he ever had to do was ask and I would have healed him.”
Candy gives me a look.
“That does sound familiar.”
“Samael and I aren’t anything alike.”
Muninn looks at Candy.
“He’ll bleed with that bullet in him until the end of time before he’ll ask for help.”
“What if I ask?” Candy says.
Muninn raises his eyebrows.
“Ah. Here’s someone unburdened by the sin of pride.”
“Don’t you dare,” I say to Candy.
“Too late,” says Muninn. “Here.”
He puts something in my hand. The bullet.
Candy leans over to look at it.
“And what do we say when someone magically heals us?”
“I didn’t ask him to.”
She smiles at Muninn.
“He says, ‘Thank you very much, Mr. Muninn.’ ”
“I hope you’ll forgive me for snatching away your martyrdom, James,” Muninn says.
“That’s okay. You I can forgive but the idiot who put it in there and whoever he works for I don’t. Or his bastard brother.”
“Will you be seeing Wild Bill while you’re here?”
“Next visit. When I’m not on the clock.”
Candy holds out her hand.
“Can I have the bullet?”
“What, are you a crow all of a sudden? You want all the shiny things.”
“I wanted the money clip because it was pretty. I want the bullet because you’re going to conveniently lose it somewhere and I want to keep it.”
“What for?”
“Who knows? Maybe when you get shot again I’ll make you cuff links.”
“For all the times I wear dress shirts.”
Dress shirts. Clothes. The bullet in my gut. I almost forgot the whole reason I came down here in the first place.
“Mr. Muninn, I’m looking for a new damned soul. His name is Trevor Moseley. Is there any way I can find him?”
“You say he’s new down here?”
Muninn shakes his head.
“I’m afraid our intake procedures aren’t what they should be. Why do you want to speak to him?”
“I want to know why he was so happy to walk in front of a bus.”
“That is unusual. I can put out a notice for him and let you know when he pops up on my radar.”
“Thanks. I’d appreciate it. We should go. We’ve taken up enough of your time.”
Muninn gets up.
“I’m sorry I raised my voice.”
“Don’t apologize. I probably deserved it.”
“You did,” says Candy.
“Feel free to come or go through any of the shadows in here,” says Muninn. “I don’t think you’ll be wanting to take the long way next time.”
“Not even a little. See you around, Mr. Muninn.”
“It was nice meeting you,” says Candy.
“Good-bye, my dear. I hope we meet again.”
“Me too.”
I pull Candy through a shadow and a wave of nausea and we come out in the living room in the Chateau.
Kasabian looks up from his computer.
“Where have you two been? You smell like something a dead raccoon horked up.”
I look at Candy.
“Told you so.”
“WHO ARE YOU calling?” says Candy.
I’m dripping on the carpet and she’s still toweling off from the shower. I’m turned away dialing the phone so she doesn’t have to look at the new scar I picked up from Garrett’s lucky shot.
I say, “Manimal Mike. He might know who made the fake 8 Ball.”
She comes out of the bathroom, takes the phone from my hand, and tosses it on the bed.
“Stop it,” she says.
“Why?”
“Because you just got shot. Because you just got blown up and we just came back from Hell.”
“I had a donut this morning.”
“See? I didn’t know that.”
“You were sitting right there.”
“I wasn’t paying attention.”
I know what she’s getting at even if she doesn’t want to say it. Days like this I can maybe catch a bullet, she can maybe get her laptop murdered, and maybe we can go to Hell, but doing them all the same day isn’t exactly normal, even for someone as fierce as Candy.