I thought back to my showdown with the bugmonster, and let out a single, barking laugh. “I’m pretty sure I understand the severity of my situation.”
“And I’m just as sure you don’t. See, Psoglav is a rare breed —a creature of such speed and singleminded focus that you’d think he’d been conjured for the sole purpose of extracting skim from souls.”
“Yeah? And?”
“And he’s the fourth such beast to hold that post.”
“I don’t follow.”
“What I’m saying, Sam, is that human souls are as volatile as they are fragile, and that for all of his talent, Psoglav, like his predecessors, is not infallible. Sooner or later, he will slip. Perhaps he’ll simply tire of his task, and his attention will wane. Perhaps one of the thousand tiny shards kicked off during the skimming process will find its way around his leather armor and send him on an unintended little trip. Perhaps he’ll simply sneeze. It doesn’t much matter what winds up causing Psoglav to slip; what matters is that when he does, he’ll take this cave and maybe half the canyon with him. Just as his predecessor did to my operation in Nepal, and as his predecessor’s predecessor did to the house I ran in Cook, Australia. It’s why I’ll only ever put a skim-joint at the ass-end of nowhere; I learned my lesson back in San Fran in ’06.”
I thought back. “What the hell happened in ’06?”
Dumas laughed. “Sorry, Sammy —sometimes I forget how pathetically short a span you monkeys get to live. I meant 1906. My skimmer cracked that one but good; between the shockwaves and the subsequent fire, over three thousand of your kind perished. Of course, they figured it was an earthquake, and I guess it was, at that —the buffoon cracked that soul so bad he disturbed the very plates beneath the ground, and leveled a city in the process. Since then, I’ve made it a policy to steer clear of urban centers, and to never, ever start a skim-joint on a fault line.”
“Big of you,” I said.
“Just good business,” he replied, oblivious to my biting tone.
A thought occurred to me. “You said three thousand of my kind were killed that day, but what about your kind? What happens to Psoglav, and to your customers, if this place blows?”
“You mean do they die? Why, Samuel, are you concerned my little tale might dent your rep as the first to kill a member of the Fallen in millennia?”
“Hardly. Just didn’t square, is all.”
“Oh, come now, you’re a resident of hell —what’s the harm of copping to the sin of pride? And anyways, your reputation is intact; a cracked soul has never, to my knowledge, killed one of my kind. It does sting like a mother, though, I’ll tell you that —the blast can strip flesh from bone and limbs from bodies, and those closest to it usually slink off to a quiet corner of the Depths for a century or so to nurse their wounds and try to grow back what they’ve lost. Even still, some of them never come back quite right; my San Fran skimmer’s blind for good, and the poor bastard’s now got the reflexes of a tree sloth.”
“A real heartbreaker, that.”
Something tickled at the back of my mind, and I found myself thinking back to the mess that was last year’s Manhattan job. See, what happened was a bigwig seraph by the name of So’enel decided to go rogue and incite a war between heaven and hell. To do so, he conspired to mark an innocent soul for col lection —a major no-no according to the Great Truce —and since it was my handler the shitweasel was conspiring with, I was the one dispatched to do the deed. Lucky, no?
But even less lucky was Mu’an, the messengerdemon who served as go-between for Lilith and So’enel. Once their plan went south, So’enel endeavored to eliminate any evidence of his involvement —and since Mu’an fell solidly into that category, the seraph sent a cadre of his angelic lackeys to shut him up for good. They caught up to Mu’an at Grand Central, and unleashed a holy fury the likes of which the modern world had never seen. Mu’an escaped with his life —barely —but the force of the angels’ attack nearly wiped the terminal off the map. To this day, the government considers the blast an act of terror, and no fewer than three dozen extremist groups took credit for it. I wondered how many would take credit for the ferry boat in Maine that foundered a couple days back after an explosion ripped a hole in the hull and killed half the passengers on board; just the latest in a growing list of angel-on-demon violence.
“The blast that results from cracking a soul,” I said, “it sounds a lot like an angel’s wrath to me.”
At that, Dumas cocked his head, and then he smiled. “I suppose you would have some experience in that regard, wouldn’t you? Quite the bit of business you got mixed up with in New York. Yes, I suppose they aren’t dissimilar —both unleash the power of the Maker’s might, His grace, His wrath. In many respects, the human soul is a far greater font of power than even the greatest seraph can tap into —after all, you monkeys are, for reasons that to this day escape me, the Maker’s most favored little playthings. But humans lack the capacity to channel such power, and even the best of you are touched by sin, which blunts the damage to my kind. An angel’s wrath,” he said, as if trying on the word for size, “is more directed, more controlled… and because it’s not occluded by darkness, far more deadly to their Fallen brothers.”
“Why are you telling me all this? I don’t believe for a second you’ve even the slightest affection for me, and yet here you are, pulling back the curtain when you probably should’ve sent me packing. So what gives? What’s your angle?”
Dumas sighed and ran a hand through his thinning hair. For the first time since I’d arrived, he looked concerned. “My angle? Same as it ever was, Sammy. I’m a businessman, pure and simple, and as such, I have to protect my interests. And right now, Interest Numero Uno is keeping my ass off the white-hat’s hit-list. I don’t know if you’ve been keeping score, but it’s open season on the Fallen out there. Our Chosen brothers are spoiling for a fight, and they’ll jump on any excuse to send a little wrath our way. Normally, that’s no concern a mine. I run a quiet operation here —keep my head down and my profile low. Only all the sudden here comes Danny Young with a yen to misbehave, and the more ruckus he makes, the worse things’re gonna get for me. See, whether or not he’s operating on my behalf, the fact remains he was once in my employ, and as such was privy to all manner of sensitive information —information that, left uncontained, could lead the feather-and-harp brigade right back to me. So when you wandered in from the desert asking questions about all things Danny, I figured shit —why not point Sammy in the right direction, see if maybe he can catch him? He does, and that’s two problems off my plate. Problem Two is you, in case you ain’t been keeping up.”
“Hold up a sec. You say you wanna point me in the right direction —does that mean you know where Danny is?”
“Would that I did, Sammy; it’d save us both a hell of a lot of trouble. But I’m pretty sure I do know what he’s planning, and more importantly, what’ll happen if he succeeds. If that happens, the stupid bastard’s gonna unleash a disaster of Biblical proportions —one that’ll make my skimmer’s slip in San Francisco and the subsequent destruction look like a goddamn kitten sneezing.”
“OK then, spilclass="underline" what the hell is Danny playing at?”
Dumas answered my question with one of his own: “Tell me, Sammy —what do you know about the Brethren?”