Devil Said Bang by Richard Kadrey Read Free Book Online Page A

works nights,
weekends, and holidays, and if she’s indisposed, Ms. 45 has a few hundred
colleagues downstairs. In fact, the hounds now have the run of the palace, so
watch your step. I hear stainless-steel turds stain bad.”
    No one says anything. Besides the hellhound, the
only sound is people restlessly moving their feet.
    “Now get to work and leave me the fuck alone.”
    All twelve of them file out, right into the other
two hounds I stationed outside. It would have been a hoot programming them to
eat each Council member as they left. A little counterproductive, though. I need
them to do the work I’m sure not going to do. But if I can’t have a little fun
being the Devil, why bother?
    Now I can get back to figuring out the rest of
Lucifer’s power so I can get the hell out of here.
    I ’ve
made circuit after circuit of the empty parts of the hotel. I know Lucifer won’t
leave me hanging on half power forever. He likes games. I know there are clues
for me around somewhere. But I don’t know all the rules of the game, so I might
be looking right at one without knowing it.
    When he left he said he’d come back if I ever
really needed him. I haven’t heard a goddamn word since. I’ve tried to get a
message through to Mr. Muninn. He’s the one guy on Earth I know could come down here if he wanted. I guess he doesn’t. I know
why and we’re going to have to have a long talk about it when I get home.
    Saint James would have a plan but I’m just prowling
relentless, hypnotic halls, floor by floor looking for clues. The windowless
corridors could be anywhere. In space on a rocket circling the edge of the
universe. Or Donald Trump’s diamond-encrusted submarine at the bottom of the
Marianas Trench.
    Hellhounds glance up when they see me. I scratch
the underside of their glassed-in brains and they growl contentedly. They’re
like temple dogs guarding a royal tomb, only here the altars are unused Jacuzzis
and Hellion minibars. I don’t even want to think about what’s in those.
    Fun as it was busting up the meeting, something
real kicked in for me. Something I sort of already knew but couldn’t put into
words.
    They’ve gone insane down here.
Every fucking Hellion has gone mad.
    They can’t lay a finger on Heaven and they can’t
leave. They’ve been stuck in this hole for what? Thousands of years? A million?
Time doesn’t move for angels like it moves for us. They’ve turned inward and
created a rat-maze culture. All bureaucracy, schizo rituals, and murderous
deadfalls.
    Do you think God had a business plan when He
created the universe? Did He worry about the invention of light or gravity
running over budget?
    Meetings and infighting. Made-up ceremonies and new
religions and Noble Virtues. This is how you fill up eternity when all you have
to look forward to is the clock running down and the universe collapsing in on
itself and starting over.
    There’s something up ahead. I can’t see it but I
can feel it. There’s a set of double doors leading to a meeting room. The
opposite wall is blank but there’s something funny about it. It isn’t solid. To
these Lucifer eyes, the plaster and paint are cheap sideshow effects. Change the
light and you can see right through them. At least the wily bastard left me
something useful.
    Sooner or later even the nonstop rituals aren’t
going to hold and these assholes are going to turn on each other. The biggest
baddest civil war ever, until none of them are left. What would Heaven think of
that? Probably get a real chuckle out of it. A Hell without Hellions. A
real-estate developer’s wet dream. They can sell time-shares, “This
two-and-a-half-bath beauty is close to schools, shopping, and on a clear day you
can see the dismembered devil corpses floating in the lake of shit.”
    The ghost room reminds me of Vidocq’s apartment in
L.A. He put hoodoo on the place so no one can see it or remember it, so he
hasn’t paid rent in years. But whoever conjured up this