Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel by Richard Kadrey Read Free Book Online Page B

you’ll learn more about yourself than you ever wanted to know.
    I GET A pack of Maledictions from a box under a table in the living room. Maledictions are the most popular cigarettes in Hell. The only brand I really like. The taste is, well, unique. Like a tire fire in a candy factory. With luck, the angel part of me is immune to cancer. If it isn’t I’m going to be a solid two-hundred-pound tumor.
    Candy gives me a faint smile as I take her hand and we step through a shadow into the Room of Thirteen Doors. I open the door to Hell but I don’t take her through. I hold her there looking at the place.
    “Wow. It really does smell like sulfur,” she says.
    “Don’t worry. When you get inside, between the sewers and the Hellion stink, you’ll forget all about the sulfur.”
    “You know how to show a girl a good time.”
    “Nothing but the best for you.”
    “Whoa.”
    This is what I’ve been waiting for.
    “What do you see?”
    “It looks just like L.A. A more fucked-up L.A. but still L.A.”
    “It’s called a Convergence. A kind of magical fuckup where one place gets layered on top of another. When I first landed in Hell, it was all dark palaces and cobblestone streets. Now it’s L.A. None of that changes what Hell is. It just makes it easier to get around.”
    “Somehow, none of that is very reassuring.”
    “That’s Hell in a nutshell. You ready?”
    “Yes. No. Yes. I think so.”
    “Before we go in, here are a couple of rules. And they’re nonnegotiable. Stay close to me. Close enough for me to grab if things get weird. If anyone starts anything let me handle it. No Jade stuff. You see any damned souls, don’t look them in the eye. They’re used to me but another live human could freak them out.”
    “I’m not human.”
    “You look human. That’s enough. Also, don’t talk to anyone but Mr. Muninn.”
    “Who?”
    “The current Lucifer.”
    “Right. Mr. Muninn. You told me about him.”
    I squeeze her hand. She squeezes back.
    “Banzai,” I say, and pull her inside.

W E COME OUT on the front gates of Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The Hellion version is a train wreck. Open graves. Smashed headstones. Statues and tombs swallowed by flames. It looks like it was looted by the Golden Horde and shit on by King Ghidorah.
    I lead her out the front gate, where a block-long street market has set up. It wasn’t here the last time I was Downtown, but a lot of things are probably different now that Mr. Muninn is ringmaster.
    We’re noticed immediately. A couple of living beings, one of whom used to be Lucifer, tend to stand out down here.
    Candy digs her nails into my hand, but she doesn’t show any actual fear. Hellions are fallen angels. Some of them look almost human. Others are walking, talking nightmares. Like mutant versions of fish, reptiles, or insects, or all three. The crowd in the market is a nice assortment pack of all the different Hellion types.
    The chatter and the hawkers’ calls trail off as the crowd turns its rheumy eyes on us. The only sound is the thin Hellion breeze, the sizzle of cooked meat, and grating Hellion music from a windup player. No one moves toward us. What are they seeing? Some version of Lucifer or Sandman Slim with a dangerous Lurker on his arm?
    I’m not waiting around to find out. I’ve seen Hellions riot and I don’t need to see it again. Not with Candy here.
    I head to a stall where a merchant has mugwump meat turning on a spit. The smell is somewhere between filet mignon and coffin liquor. The fire throws up some nice fat shadows. I pull Candy into one and we go back out through the Room.
    My aim is better the second time and we come out in the lobby of Lucifer’s palace. Back inside the Beverly Wilshire for the second time today. This time I’m not accepting any mystery packages from the front desk.
    I can see a dozen guards in the lobby. I don’t wait to see if Muninn has posted more. I pull Candy over to Lucifer’s private elevator. Like the crowd in