Devil Said Bang by Richard Kadrey Read Free Book Online

here.
    No wonder Samael took a powder. For all his talk
about going home to make up with the old man, he was really running away from
eternal damnation as a salaryman. I didn’t figure out until I was doing it that
this is Lucifer’s damnation. The Light Bringer reduced to riding herd on bank
clerks. It was worse than any torture.
    I get up and pour myself a drink. Throw the robe
over the back of a chair and slip the black blade behind my back. I leave
through the fake bookshelves and head downstairs to the kennels.
    I t’s
afternoon and the senior planning staff is waiting in the palace meeting room.
The place looks like Bring Your Clown to Work Day at a Masonic lodge. The slick
suits and Hellion power dresses aren’t the problem. It’s everything else they’re
wearing. Ceremonial aprons covered with old runes. A morbid rainbow of colored
scarves and gloves showing everyone’s place in the food chain. Blinders.
Gaggers. Masks.
    They’re all giving me the pig eye as I roll in. I
take my time getting to the head of the table. The dirty looks aren’t just
because I’m late. I’ll always be that sheep-killing dog Sandman Slim to most of
them, and now, just to rub their ugly noses in it, I’m their boss. At least the
armor is doing its job. No matter how much they hate me, they keep their hex
holes shut with my devil armor shining like the mirrored belly of a chrome
wasp.
    There are twelve on the planning committee. With me
there’s thirteen. A cozy little coven. Buer is there. So are Marchosias and
Obyzuth. Semyazah would be here but none of the generals will put up with this
shit.
    Technically I’m supposed to be in ritual drag too
but I have a hard time picturing Samael dressed up like a Brooks Brothers Pied
Piper, so I follow his example and skip the wardrobe call.
    There’s a silver circle in the center of the table.
Lines radiate out to the edges, cutting the table into twelve sections. Each
trick-or-treater steps up and sets down a different ceremonial object. The junk
looks like leftovers from a Goth-club garage sale.
    Obyzuth sets down a green rock, like a Templar
meditation stone. The Hellion next to her sets down an athame knife that cuts
through ignorance or butters magic toast or something. Buer drops a snake carved
from the leg bone of a fallen Hellion warrior. It goes on and on like that. I’m
supposed to light a red candle at the end of the ritual but things are going too
slow. I fire it up now and light a Malediction off it.
    “Don’t take it personally, but if I have to sit
through one more of these meetings, I’m going to gut every one of you like
catfish, shit in your skulls, and mail them to your families. This isn’t Hell.
It’s a PTA meeting. Maybe all we need to save Hell is a bake sale.”
    I flick my ashes over the candle.
    “Here’s how it is from now on. Do your projects any
way you want. Fuck the budgets. Fuck the schedules. When it’s done, you get one
minute to tell me about it.”
    The room is silent. It’s not like regular silence.
More like the kind you get with a concussion.
    “In case anyone thinks letting you off the leash is
a license to steal or stab me in the back, let me introduce the newest member of
our team.”
    I go to the doors and open them. A hellhound clanks
in on its big metal claws and looks over the room. The hound is bigger than a
dire wolf, a clockwork killing machine run by a Hellion brain suspended in a
glass globe where its head should be. They’re terrifying on a battlefield but in
an enclosed space like this, the whirs and clicks of its mechanics, its razor
teeth and pink, exposed brain, are enough to give a tyrannosaurus a heart
attack.
    The hound follows me around the table, folds up its
legs, and settles down on the floor next to me. A dutiful guard dog.
    “This is Ms. 45. The new head of HR. Any of you
upstanding citizens that do less than your best work, conspire against me, or
sell supplies to the black market can explain it to her. She