Shaky takes off like a rocket to meet his asshole buddies. Something huge and yellow streaks after him. It’s Ruach, blown up as big as Shaky was when he was a building. But it doesn’t do him any good. By the time Ruach catches up, Shaky’s friends are close enough to grab him. The twelve of them go wild with their first taste of God-flesh gumbo. They take their time ripping him apart. The Angra’s squeals of delight and Ruach’s screams of pain are like overlapping claps of thunder.
Nearby, Muninn appears, flanked by Samael and Chaya. I go over to them, wishing Ruach hadn’t pulled his little stunt. It’s not going to make this any easier.
I open the one remaining door to the Room.
We don’t say anything to each other. Just watch.
Deumos loves it. I bet she was a big fan of the arena in Hell, even if she hid it well. I take out the Colt and shoot her in both legs. I don’t want her dead just yet. While she’s still stunned in her new body, I carry her to the door and toss her in.
“Ladies first,” I say.
She just lies there looking around the Room, amazed at how much having a body can hurt. I go back to the carnage in the sky.
By the time I get back, the Angra have finished with Ruach. L.A. becomes Hell for a minute as Ruach’s holy blood mixes with the rain, staining the streets red. Where drops touch the flesh cathedral, it and the hanging bodies shrivel up and disappear.
Watching his brother being killed, Muninn walks forward so the Angra can see him. He’s a brave son of a bitch. Samael keeps a hand on Muninn’s shoulder and Muninn doesn’t seem to mind. Chaya looks like he’d like a one-way ticket to Zanzibar or wherever the farthest place from Pershing Square is.
The Angra spread out across the sky.
Shaky looks down at us, his lunatic smile smeared with God blood. It’s easy to tell when he spots Muninn because he lets out a shriek that deafens every bird and sets off every car alarm from L.A. to downtown Tokyo.
All thirteen of the Angra Om Ya, pissed, crazy, sporting vengeance hard-ons the size of Mount Rushmore, dive for Pershing Square.
Muninn moves closer to the door. He can’t let them get him. He has to draw them inside for this to work.
It’s hard to figure out the exact timing on everything. Staring up through the rain at flying elder Gods, it’s not easy to get a sense of scale and distance. We’re going to have to do this free jazz. Try to find a melody and a beat in the cacophony, and improvise our way to the end.
Samael walks Muninn closer to the door.
I go to Chaya.
“Aren’t you going to say good-bye to your brother, you chickenshit?”
He looks like he wants to strangle me again, but he’s too freaked out to do it. I shove him and he lets me. But he looks at me hard.
“Tread lightly, monster. I’ll be the God of this universe soon.”
I look over at Muninn, then up at the sky. The Angra are almost down on us.
Samael puts his arms around his father.
The Angra can’t be more than a hundred feet above us.
I gut-punch Chaya. He doubles up, then chokes when I take something from my pocket and shove it down his throat.
Samael lifts Muninn into the air as I shove Chaya as hard as I can into the Room.
Samael throws Muninn on the ground and I hit the deck as the Angra fly overhead, chasing the only God brother they can see into their precious Room. Then I close the door.
And wait for the universe to explode.
But it doesn’t.
There’s just a soft thud and a mild earthquake, like a nuke going off a hundred miles underground. Then all I can hear or feel is the rain. And the pain in my chest because throwing your dumb ass on the ground with bullets in your chest is a poor escape plan. By the time I push myself back up to my feet, Muninn is heading my way. If he was another kind of God, he’d be spitting fire and locusts at me.
“Was it your plan all along to sacrifice Chaya?” he shouts. “You made a promise to me and you didn’t keep it.”
I hold up my hands in case he thought of the locusts on the way over.
“The universe needs you more than it does your idiot brother.”
He turns on Samael.
“And you,” says Muninn. “You were in on this together.”
“No,” says Samael. “But to be fair, Father, if Stark hadn’t done it, I would have.”
Muninn sits on a bench, his hands balled into fists.
“You’ve given them the Room. You’ve unleashed the Angra on all of creation.”
I pull the Mithras out of my pocket and show it to him.
“Relax. Chaya bravely volunteered to swallow the Singularity. With all the doors locked, the Angra either died in the Big Bang when it went off or they have a whole new universe to play with. Whichever it was, they’re stuck in the Room and they’re not coming back.”
Muninn looks at me.
“You killed my brother. You killed part of me.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Muninn. You killed off all those other parts of yourself when you stole the universe and started this fight. I just made sure you were the last man standing.”
Muninn puts his hands flat on his knees.
“You understand that you can never use the Room again.”
“Maybe we can chip in and get him a bus pass,” says Samael.
I look over at him.
“If your stupid brother hasn’t killed my bike completely, I’ll be fine.”
Muninn stands up, looking into the sky, blinking against the rain.
“I have to go and think about things.”
He vanishes.
Samael and I look at each other. He follows me under a tree and I light a Malediction.
“I’m kind of fucked, aren’t I?”
He furrows his eyebrows.
“You he might just kill. I have to go home and live with the man. Which one of us is truly the fucked one?”
I puff the cigarette like it might be my last, because it might.
“I can’t take the hellhounds back now. You’ll have to do it.”
Samael nods.
“Another mess I have to clean up for you.”
“Probably the last.”
I offer Samael a cigarette and he takes it. I give him mine and he lights his off it.
“With the Room gone, I suppose we won’t be seeing each other very much anymore,” he says.
“Good riddance. You never returned your videos anyway.”
“And I never rewound in the VHS days.”
We don’t talk as we finish our smokes.
When we’re done I say, “Think you can give me a ride home? My bike’s in Hollywood and I can’t shadow-walk anymore.”
He rolls his eyes.
“Come along, Abomination,” he says.
I stand next to him. And in the next instant I’m alone in front of Max Overdrive. I go in the side door and straight upstairs.
Candy is asleep in the bedroom. Kasabian is under a blanket on the sofa. Destroy All Monsters plays silently on the big screen. I turn it off, strip naked, and slide into bed.
I wake up a few hours later when I hear something strange.
Silence.
I go to the window. The rain has stopped. The war in Heaven is over. Muninn is taking charge there and in Hell.
I go back to bed. Muninn has it in for me and the bullets are still in my chest. I’ll either wake up dead or I won’t.
I COME AWAKE with someone shaking me. I expect Candy, but when I open my eyes I see Samael. He hands me my clothes and puts a finger to his mouth telling me to be quiet.
We go out into the living room and I close the bedroom door.
“What are you doing here?”
“I got you a black shirt to hide your wounds.”
I take the shirt and start dressing.
“Did Mr. Muninn send you here to kill me?”
He looks out the widow and doesn’t say anything for a minute.