"Want some? It's freeeee~sh!" the cannibal nearby said. Sam just stared at her, where she squatted in the gore of her victim and devoured the poor bastard's still warm entrails with her long clawed hands.
"No. Thank you," he said. He hated the very notion of this place. A part of him twitched to burn it all down and shovel the ash into the Abyss so it would be lost forever. A whole section of True South Pentagram dedicated to the negative-sum-game of cannibalism, dolled up in the pageantry and signifiers of 1940's middle-income Americana. It was hideous and grotesque and it took all Sam had not to let the scowl he felt in his heart loose across his face. Because a frowning face was one that people started hunting, in a shithole like this.
"You don't look like you've been to Cannibal Colony before. Do you need a guide?" the woman gamefully asked.
"No. Thank you," he said again.
She narrowed her blood-red eyes at him, but he kept walking and was soon at a distance where she would have to yell to converse with him, and that just wasn't genteel. So she returned to her habit of devouring the slaughtered Sinner on the pavement, a wholly unsanitary proposition that Sam wished she would get food poisoning from. Hell was not so kind.
He rounded a corner just in time to have a catch-hook snag in his jacket. Sam rolled his eyes, then allowed his anger to slip. Even as the pair of cannibals launched themselves at him, the air around him superheated to roughly two thousand degrees Celsius, instantly igniting their clothes, hair, and skin. They flopped to the pavement, rolling round, unable to stem the flames, as Sam walked past them, adjusting his now slightly mussed jacket that was woven out of tungsten and moonsilver. Fucking expensive, but with a melting point so high that he could wear it walking on the surface of the sun, it meant that he wouldn't have to go through so many clothes when idiots like this assaulted him.
He could have let that split second of blaze be his warning. But no. Not this time. This time he was not dealing with people driven past their breaking point by privation. He was dealing with bipedal monsters who literally consumed the flesh of the damned. Fuck 'em. Let them burn.
And he didn't even feel bad for doing it.
When he left the screaming, burning cannibals behind him, the others who had been waiting in the wings for him to be taken down that they may feeding-frenzy upon him instantly got very interested in various uninteresting things nearby, very clearly and pointedly not looking in his direction as he walked the streets. He didn't fit in here. Luckily, he didn't have to.
"There you are," Sam said. He hastened his pace, people who'd a moment ago wanted to eat him now skirting him wide, as Sam reached the cafe that let its tables spill out onto the sidewalk. Sitting at one of the tables was Alastor, drinking a cup of something black, steaming, and definitely not coffee, a newsreel in his hands. One of the servers talked to him amiably, blood down his chin from a recent consumption. How fitting, that this place where people were literally fucking eating each other for no good reason did Alastor find people who wouldn't run in terror at his presence.
Sam walked up to the table, looming behind the server despite being a foot shorter than him. He paused in his conversation about his shoes to look back at Sam with a mildly annoyed expression, as though Sam were intruding upon his time. Sam let his face remain blank. "Leave us," he said.
"Pardon me? I was in the middle of a conver–" the server said with a crisp, Transatlantic accent.
"You'd better do what he asks, Jerome," Alastor said, not looking up from his newsreel. Jerome's eyes flit to Alastor then to Sam, before he cleared his throat, gave a nod, then moved back into the establishment. "Charlie is beside herself with grief, you know. Keeps thinking that she failed you somehow. She honestly thinks that you're coming back."
"There's a chance that I might," Sam said, sitting in the chair opposite the Radio Demon. "So you know why I left."
"To kill that hopelessly pedestrian Proxy of the King of All Hell," Alastor said, folding his paper and turning his monocled eye toward Sam. "I had to steal the letter after Charlie put it aside. I was a bit distracted during your 'big reveal'."
"I imagine you were," Sam said, not having a clue what would 'distract' him away from juicy drama. "You know what I am. I was what I am even when I met Birch the first time. Which means that even now I have a critical shortfall in my defenses."
"Everybody has shortfalls in their defenses. I've made sure mine are as obtuse as possible to even find, let alone exploit, but between sorcerers, I will admit to you that they do in fact exist," Alastor said. He then turned his eye to Sam for a moment. "You certainly are coming up in the world, Samuel. Have you finally gotten rid of that pesky doubt and morality of yours?"
"I don't think I ever will. I'm just choosing to give out fewer chances, and reserve the fucks that I give," Sam said. "How do I avoid Birch's Compelling Voice?"
"Do you know how I'd compare Birch to all of Creation?" Alastor asked.
"Is this germane?" Sam asked.
"Of course it is. Everything is germane, because everything expands your knowledge and power as you experience it. But true, this is more germane than that. If I were to compare Nathan Birch to all of the beasts in Creation, I would say that he is the very most like a beetle," Alastor said. His smile was distant, staring at the clouds which hung but today at least didn't disgorge their mass of rain. "He is a hyperspeciallized organism that has only one thing it does very well, and can only exist in one very specific ecosystem. Taken out of its narrow biological niche, it will swiftly die, either to starvation because its single trick no longer works in this new niche, or to the boot-heel of somebody who saw something disgusting finally naked before the light."
"Well, Birch's specialization is one that I need to get past. You managed to," Sam said.
"Because I swore the 37 Oaths when I was alive," Alastor said. "It was a transformative experience. As a result of that covenant, I am now the most real iteration of myself in all reality. And there are so many other realities, you should realize. Realities before us and behind us and beside us. Realities where the Prince of Flowers is already dead. Or realities where you never existed, let alone came to Hell. Such as the Reality where I was killed not by an imp and his Hellhound adoptive daughter, but instead by a hunter mistaking me for a deer after his dogs chased me away from my Summoning Circle. That is the power of reality, of making myself the most real. Some of the unreal... simply cannot touch me."
"And if I were to swear those Oaths?" Sam asked.
Alastor paused, thinking, then leaned across the table. "Don't," he said, his smile minimal and his tone very serious.
"Why shouldn't I?"
"Do you trust that I know rather a lot about magic and the powers of Creation?" Alastor asked.
"You've made your brand on it, so yes," Sam said.
"So you know that I have a dizzying array of information about what you're asking, some of which would take days to adequately explain."
"I'll grant that point," Sam said.
"And I am therefore saying that you ought not," Alastor said. "It would end very badly for you. And even if it didn't... you would only be made lesser by it."
"I don't see how. Look at what it did to you," Sam said.
"When I was alive, the only remarkable trait I had to my name was my lust for knowledge. In every other way, physically, socially and intellectually, I was bog-standard. The Oaths can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, by simply adding a little 'extra' onto you. You? You're innately extraordinary."
"And I'm waiting for the horrifying reveal that you're reeling in toward," Sam said.
"Oh, there's no more revelations, I'm afraid. Or at least none that you'll get from me," Alastor flapped his newsreel, and turned away from Sam. "What comes next, you'll have to learn for yourself. I would only spoil the surprise."
"This isn't over, Alastor," Sam said.
"Nothing is ever over," Alastor agreed.
Chapter 28
Keep Your Head Down
Blitz sat on the corner of Loona's desk, counting out money that he'd been handed for massacring that philanthropist, trying to think about what to do now. He knew he wasn't the best for long term planning. That was Moxie. He wasn't even the best for Mass Casualties, because that was Millie. He had a notion, though, that whatever this fight was going to bring would require both. And right now, they were literally out to lunch.
The door opened to the sound of a strangled scream. And when Blitz looked up, he saw Tilla entering.
"Hey! Tills! Welcome to the headquarters of the Immediate Murder Professionals (trademark pending)! What brings you to my neck of the woods? Did'ja finally chuck those sprats of yours into an orphanage?" he asked. Tilla did not look impressed.
"They are in the care of Raleigh and Des," she said.
"Who the fuck are those guys?" Blitz asked.
"Your neighbors across the hall? A decent couple, they have children of almost the same age as mine," she said.
"Didn't know those people had names," Blitz admitted. She scanned the room, taking it all in.
"This isn't what I expected, honestly," Tilla said. She moved to Loona's chair and sat in it, looking more fitting there than even Loona did. "I expected more... dilapidation."
"Come on, I'm doin' fine up here."
"Until today, I didn't really believe it. I have been living in your apartment, after all," Tilla said. She stared at the computer, which was still showing a clip of that Hound, Maelstrom, killing idiots in the Bleeding Pits. "Why don't you have any pictures of Barbie in your home?"
"Yeah ah..." Blitz scratched at his neck. "That... we didn't exactly... we don't talk anymore."
"Why?" Tilla asked, tone obviously disapproving.
"She stole," Blitz bit out before he stopped himself, calmed himself just a bit, then tried again. "Not long after you... died... me and her had some 'professional' disagreements. Dad picked her side 'a things, which was odd, 'cause he was specifically ordered by Gramma-ma to leave Barbie in a fuckin' garbage can as a baby."
"He wasn't told that," Tilla said with a roll of her eyes.
"Barbie's a dull-blood. Duller than fuckin' me!" Blitz gesticulated wildly at himself.
"You're not that dull, actually," Tilla said, giving his hand a squeeze.
"Then why the fuck did they brand me like one?" Blitz shouted, stripping his gloves and brandishing the white that braced both of his wrists.
"Because you were right about Gramma-ma. She was, indeed, full of shit. And she was so disappointed to have a dull-blooded grandaughter and anything less than a miraculous Thaumaturge for a grandson, that she took it out on you. And I'm sorry, Blitz. I should have done something, but..." Tilla went quiet for a moment, probably remembering the powerlessness that she must have felt being a 14 year old trying to protect a pair of babies from an Arch Crone.
"What could you have done?" Blitz's back slumped as he admitted a truth. "You were a kid when you had... when that happened. A fucking child with her own children. She would'a listened to you exactly as much as she did to me."
"Maybe. And maybe saying something would have made it easier to live with myself," Tilla muttered, looking so deeply unhappy. "I was never a good m... I mean... I did my best. But I don't think my best was good enough. Not for you or for Barbie. I wasn't ready for you. Fuck... I was barely ready for Morgan."
"Krieg," Blitz said.
"Right. The only person in my family who's keeping the name Gramma-ma gave them is probably me," she said. "You might say I've gotten rather attached to it."
"You should sell that shit and become somebody that the old constipated bitch in Lust could never dream of being. I did it, and my life's great!" Blitz said.
"Blitz, you literally scratched your own face out of every picture you have of your friends, lovers, and family. You can lie to yourself, but you can't lie to me," Tilla said.
"That's..." Blitz tried to come up with a decent deflection, but was interrupted when the door gave another strangled scream, and in walked his workers, back from lunch. "Hey M&M! Get up to any naughty business while I was distracted?"
"We had lunch, sir," Moxie said with no humor whatsoever.
"They like to keep me up to date on all of their sauciness. Makes up for their boring as fuck monogamy."
"Monog... oh, right. Actually sticking to one romantic partner," Tilla said. "I don't have a lot of experience with that."
"You have none, 'cause your partners were all picked by a dusty old bitch who should have died two generations ago but was to vile for a grave," Blitz said.
"Not entirely true," Tilla said with a subdued smile. "I know what it feels like to be cherished."
"See? Thank you, somebody in your family actually gets it," Moxie said pridefully as he took his place at his desk, pausing only to scoop his and Millie's cut of the job from earlier and pass it off to his bride. "I had a thought about the runes I saw engraved onto Wretch's skin; they're protection runes that are empowered by his own blood."
"Really?" Tilla asked. "That sounds like Mud Magic."
"You know about Mud Magic?" Moxie asked.
"I come from the most mystically obsessed clan of imps in all of Hell. I learned a lot about the magic that I was forbidden to use," she said. "I would not make the mistake of waiting for the Crones to teach Mor... Krieg... the same way that they failed to teach me."
"Well fuck me looks like something's on the way up, at long last," Blitz said. "Tills, you wanna help us kill a festering cock-canker almost as evil as Gramma-ma?"
"Who could possibly earn that position in your books?" Tilla asked.
"Nathan Birch," Blitz said. She looked slightly baffled.
"Lucifer's Proxy," Millie added, tucking the money from their work somewhere into her coveralls.
"The fuck is 'Mud Magic'? Didn't Mox say it was based on blood?" Blitz then asked.
"If you're attacking Lucifer's Proxy, I hope you have a good plan, because that seems a fantastic way to get murdered by Lucifer," Tilla said.
"We've already got what we need to have Lucifer fire him. We just need to find a way to actually kill him," Moxie pointed out.
"Good. And to your question: Mud Magic is a pejorative, mocking it as a form of low-magic that is rooted in the Living World instead of Heaven or Hell. Imps aren't capable of using most of it, but most everything else is, including humans," Tilla said.
"So we've gotta deal with more human bullshit? Fuckin' typical," Blitz muttered. The door then let out another strangled yell, and he turned. "Oh what'd'ya fuckin' want now!"
Standing in the door was a man in a fucking expensive looking jacket and slacks, his eyes burning a steady electric blue and his hair casting light in the same shade. Oh hell Blitz knew this guy! This was the hand-grenade guy! What was his fuckin' name again?
The Sinner who broke all the rules looked like he was about to answer, then stopped, eyes narrowing briefly on Blitz. Blitz felt in that moment like somebody'd just taken a cast of his dick for blackmail purposes, but couldn't explain why. He then turned that burning gaze onto the others, who were silent for his entrance. He let his gaze come to a halt on Tilla. Watch yourself, big man. Don't fuck with my family, Blitz thought.
"Good afternoon," the Sinner said, pulling off his jacket and hanging it on a coat-rack that had survived all of the madness that I.M.P. had put the office through. "My name is Samuel Scailes. I believe you remember me."
"We..." Moxie began, only to immediately trip over his own hooves and faceplant onto the carpet. He then darted up then grabbed the ceiling tile. "How is this possible?" he said, pointing it at Samuel. Sam looked at the design, and recoiled as though somebody socked him in the face. After a moment, he turned to look at it again, and one of his eyes had gone dark, the electric blue replaced with blood-saturated red.
"As a professional courtesy, please warn me next time you show me some active Thaumaturgy," Sam said, blood leaking from the corner of his eye and the nostril on the same side. He then turned to Blitz, ignoring Moxie for the moment. "You're looking for a way to kill Nathan Birch."
"Says who?" Blitz demanded. Sam answered by pointing at the crudely drawn caricature of Nathan Birch that was pinned to the wall of the lobby, which currently had tomahawk embedded in it.
"You haven't changed your decor, so... common sense," Sam said flatly, wiping the blood away. "Don't be too surprised, you haven't been the most subtle about it. And fortunately for you, I'm here to assist."
"Say what now?" Blitz asked.
"I've decided that Nathan Birch is a danger to Hell, Earth, and potentially even Heaven," Sam said. "Coupled with the fact that he is directly responsible for my death, and possibly even my damnation, I did the math and decided that Hell could stand to have one less monster in it. And I know you're looking to nail his skin to a doorway, so instead of flounder on my own and get in each others way, I decided that it would be smoother to work with you."
"So you're just... going to help us kill Nathan Birch? For free?" Moxie asked.
"Some things are beyond price," Sam said. "For me, this is one of them."
"That... I'll take it, I'm glad, but that still doesn't explain how I have this!" Moxie motioned with the panel again. The door let out another yell, and Sam had to move aside as Loona entered, followed shortly after by Krieg. Krieg took one look at Tilla, and gave a very teenaged-girl scoff of dismay at having her mother intrude on where she was supposed to be having fun.
"Time travel, obviously," Sam said. Then he paused. "Is there a maintenance closet around here?"
"Come into my office!" Krieg said with beaming ego. Unlike her mother, who tried to get her to 'stop this foolishness at once', Sam took her offer at face value and exited I.M.P. to go to the tiny room next to the elevator that had a clap-board sign hanging above the door that read 'Blitz-Krieg, Inc'. She opened it, and Sam immediately leaned in, grabbed something, and came back out. When he did, he was holding another ceiling panel. "Wait; why needed you that?"
"A moment," Sam said. He returned to Blitz's office, the wonder-worker trailing behind him in confusion, as Sam held the barren panel up to the bewitched one. Same size, obviously. The one with the spell on it looked a little more ragged, though. "Huh," Sam said.
"What is it?" Krieg asked, trying to see what he was seeing, but since there was nothing, she was outta luck.
"This panel was here for at almost two decades," he said.
"Really?" Moxie asked.
"And the blood that it's written in is hers," he said, nodding toward Krieg.
"You can tell that at a glance?" Moxie asked, obviously suspicious.
"Closer to smell, actually," he said. "Thaumaturgy depends on blood purity for imps. Humans can do it without it, but," he then twisted his jaw and his obscured eye burned back to electric blue life. "it's a nightmare for humans to learn it, and it's painful as fuck to do it. This blood is pretty damned 'pure'. And the one in this room with the 'purest' blood right now is her," he then nodded toward Krieg once more, before setting down the bewitched tile.
"So what's this all matter, anyway?" Loonie asked.
"Because this spell," he tapped the old panel, "was scribed onto this panel," he tapped the one he'd just gotten, "this afternoon."
"Wait... is that... You're saying that that tile is the same as that one, just displaced through time?" Moxie said.
"Exactly. Eat your heart out, Heinlein," Sam said. He then quietly asked if Krieg was willing to offer the blood needed for the spell.
"So we're going to Break the Arrow too? Why am I not even surprised?" Moxie seemed to deflate at that.
"Quite the contrary," Sam said, as Krieg jabbed open the white patch on the back of her left hand and started to let her blood dribble into an unused coffee mug. "If we do nothing, and try to ignore this, then and only then do we Break the Arrow."
"Explain," Krieg said, brow furrowed.
"Breaking the Arrow is a specific offense, namely trying to alter the flow of history, to make it move in other directions than it 'is supposed to'. Alastor proved that when he and I were beating the hell out of each other. But the thing is, this," he thumped the tile, "has already happened. At this point, it is part of history that this afternoon, we go back in time twenty years and put this panel into the ceiling of what will eventually become your office, a spell writ in blood of somebody who isn't even alive when we deposit it. Not doing that is changing history."
"If it were so simple to avoid Lucifer's wrath in time-traveling, doubtless many would have before," Krieg said.
"A few probably have," Sam said. "The ones who succeed aren't going to be the ones you hear cautionary tales about, after all. And following their lead, so will I. Do you still have that grimoire, miss?"
"What? Of course," the hellhound plucked the book from where it hovered invisibly behind her and handed it toward him, only balking before he could take it. "You're not gonna run off with it, are you?"
"No, I'm proving a point," he said. She then handed it to him, and he flipped it open to a page near the back that Blitz was pretty sure nobody ever used. "Exactly as I thought. Time loops are an allowable feature of Creation. Angels do it all the time, so it's just Lucifer who gets pissy about it; even he can't punish it fully, otherwise he'd have to get rid of nine tenths of the Ars Goetia in the process."
"That's fascinating... okay it's actually boring as fuck, so can we start to wrap this up and get to how you expect to help us with this Birch thing?" Blitz asked.
"Sir... he is helping," Moxie pointed out.
"Our interests are aligned," Sam said. He then closed the book and handed it back to Loona. "Now. Answer me something if you don't mind."
"Shoot," Blitz said. Sam leaned back and thumped his finger on the spell-weaved ceiling panel.
"Why is there a dead human kid in this thing?" he asked.
The grunting and straining ordinarily would have been an annoyance to Lucifer, but when it came down to it, he needed to replace his desk top, and the only way to get sladestone in was through manual labor. Thus he repurposed his waiting room into an ad-hoc office, unenthusiastically reading through another report as his peons tried to shift a slab of inch thick stone which was denser than uranium.
"The last time somebody wasted my time with pointless miscellany, I split his face open. I trust you know me well enough that this need not have been a singular occurrence," Lucifer groused. Purson said nothing, simply standing beside the door. He was clean shaven now, if that mattered, but his ear was still wrapped in gauze which faintly glimmered with gold.
"I assure you, this has a point," Purson said.
"I'm failing to see it," Lucifer pointed out. He continued reading through the dry recitation of events in his city. "Yeah, so there was some Angelsong in a karaoke bar. That just means my daughter got drunk and kicked out of a club."
"Page four, my liege," Purson said, undeterred.
"Where is your stone faced other half? Fucked off back to heaven on you already?" Lucifer asked. "Don't worry. She'll be back. I didn't give her a choice."
"She has decided to remain within Hell," Purson said, rather flatly, a twinkle in his eyes that was quite uncommon to him. He didn't smile. The two of them were fucking made for each other, it seemed like. "I imagine there is some uproar in heaven, and that some shall complain. If you care not, then I care not."
"So Michael's going to come down and pound on my door making pointless demands that he can't enforce? Why Purson, you're finally doing your part in my hierarchy and giving me delectable gifts. Would you like to be present when I tell the Taxiarch that he can go fuck himself?"
"If you would allow me the honor, I would be pleased," Purson said.
Lucifer continued to try to read, but the subject matter was so, so very dull. Yes, Charlotte Sang. She had it in her from his side of the family. He still had the raw footage of her little escapade on the news squirrelled away somewhere in his palace. Anybody who asked, he'd tell them he was delighting in the schadenfreude of her non-infernal ambitions being flatly rejected by Hell's populace. He wouldn't mention that he was actually proud that she managed to beat that blonde bimbo in her warform without even sprouting her own horns.
Things would be so much simpler if her apple fell straight down instead of being caught in a freak tornado and hurled to the other side of the fucking planet. He honestly had no idea where her queer ideas came from. He certainly hadn't given them to her. Hell was a festering pit, the only use of it was to extract what you could use and to hold what luxury you could accrue close to your heart, while fucking over everybody else, who were without exception trying to take it away from you. One day, Charlie would finally see that. She would see that there was no negotiating with the Deadly Sins with anything less than savage violence as a bartering chip. Most of them were traitors to Hell even when they took their thrones. Only Asmodeus had been at Lucifer's side from the first battle until the ceasefire in the frustrating Pontifex's front yard. She would come to learn that Satan would run roughshod over her the instant she showed the slightest sliver of weakness. She would learn that Belphegor would see her works run to rot and ruin. She would see Mammon speak through both sides of his mouth, promising heaven and delivering parasitic decay.
He didn't sigh as he glazedly read the report, flipping the page and continuing to the next. It was good that Lucifer had no intentions of abdication or vacation, because Hell would fucking eat his daughter alive. And he'd been thorough in trying to find who had sewn that weakness into her philosophy. The only person he hadn't pressed to the breaking point was Satan, but Lucifer was fairly sure that Satan would rather kill the Morningstar's Daughter than try to corrupt her. However Charlotte ended up how she was, it was beyond Lucifer's omniscience to see.
Then he fell upon the second song in the file.
Unidentified male.
Lucifer sat up in his chair, instantly snapping his eyes to the top of the page and rereading the entire thing. Near the end of the night, an unidentified male performed Angelsong. The reports differed on who the male was, but that alone made it not Charlie who performed it.
"There's another fucking angel in Hell," Lucifer snarled. "And he's fucking around with my daughter."
"Page five, my liege," Purson said coolly, continuing to watch as the laborers tried to get the desk-top into place, only to have it shift and crush one of them to death. They paused for a moment, muttered to themselves, and called in another pair of fiends to hoist that bitch. Lucifer furiously flipped the page, but upon reading it, leaned back.
"...What do you mean, persistent?" Lucifer asked, forcing his tone to be completely even. Purson reached into his robe's inner pockets and pulled out a plastic baggy that was filled with golden sand. He set it down on the table next to the King of All Hell. "It's sand. Why are you showing me sand?"
"Look upon it with your true eyes, my liege," Purson said.
Lucifer wanted to slap the man for telling him what to do, but with only a glare against impudence, he turned the greater of his senses upon the baggy. It was terrifically mundane. Just a plastic bag, with a bunch of utterly normal sand inside of it. And that made him a little bit annoyed. With a snarl curling his face, he turned to Purson. "Is this a joke?"
"What is the nature of matter made by Angelsong? It is superlative, and transitory," Purson said. "What you see before you was gathered from venue. What use has a karaoke bar for desert sand?"
"Are... you saying that this was created by Angelsong? Because it wasn't. This is just sand."
"What is capable of creation ex nihilo, my liege?" Purson asked. Lucifer thought of the obvious. Then he thought of the blasphemous.
"...Oh... you little shit of a goat," Lucifer found a smile coming to his face. "The Demiurge isn't just in Hell, he's living in fucking Pride."
"There is a Grand Protection upon him," Purson said. "I have not seen its like in many centuries. You could ask each of the witnesses and they would offer a different visage, a different name, and believe with all their hearts that they spoke truth. No torture could break them of this delusion."
"And at last the Goat's true play is revealed. He wasn't just whetting my appetite for the Demiurge to knock on my door, he was telling me that he was impossible for me to find him until he was damned well ready. Well, fuck that Goat. I'm going to find him anyway. Purson, find me the identities and whereabouts of every fucking person who was in that dive for the entire week. I'll find him by process of elimination if I have to."
"You ask what I believed you would; my scribes labor toward that ends even now," Purson said.
Lucifer settled into his chair, a superior smile on his face. "I like you, Purson. Despite your occasional intransigence, you don't waste my time."
"Your will is my command, my liege," Purson said.
"And don't you ever goddamned forget it," Lucifer said.
"Ya wanna get drinks later? This shit-hole is probably gonna fall down a couple weeks after we finish building it, and I wanna get one on before the check bounces," Romeo said, steadying Sam's ladder as Sam continued to put the ceiling panels in place. The entire building was more or less up, with the walls almost finished but unpainted, the rooms all empty. The landscape outside was similar, but not identical, to the Imp City that Sam had come here two weeks ago from. It was a long slog to get to this point, but he'd finally reached it. Honestly, two weeks of simple labor almost served as something of a vacation for him. A chance to work his muscles, rest, and think. With a deft bit of prestidigitation, he swapped the panel he was going to put into place for the one he'd made thirteen days ago and popped it into place at the foot of where I.M.P.'s table would be in roughly two decades.
"Nah. I've got places I need to be," Sam said. Romeo was a good sort. If he was still alive in the present, Sam was going to have to look the imp up, make sure he was doing alright. "But I appreciate the offer."
"I look after the ones who don't have their heads up their asses. You're one of the only Sinners who never comes to work high. Look after that shit," Romeo said. Sam began to descend, and on the floor bent his back to the crunch of his vertibrae popping. He then reached into his pocket and hit the screen of his Hellphone, causing a second, far older Hellphone to buzz in his breast pocket. He pulled it from his coveralls, flipped it open and gave an exaggerated sigh.
"Well, fuck me," Sam said. "They're trying to kick me out of my apartment."
"Those assholes. You want me and the crew to knock some teeth out?" the imp said, looking honestly willing to pursue violence on Sam's behalf.
"I think I need to deal with this one myself," Sam said with a chuckle.
"Well, don't say I never did you any favors," Romeo relented. Sam frowned for a moment, puffing out a sigh, and glanced over the cityscape of Pride's Second City.
"Don't mind if I dip early, do you?" Sam asked.
"Go for it," Romeo gestured toward the door. Sam nodded, and began to briskly walk out. Instead of heading for the stairs, he ducked into what would be the maintenance closet. He closed the door behind him, cleared his mind, and then swept his hands through a pair of broad arcs, fingertips barely touching the barren wall. There was a deep bloop sound. A few seconds later, the portal flared into being, showing Krieg in her office of sorts.
"I would ask if you were successful in a matter of moments, but the answer comes in that you are unshaven, dressed like a worker, and time travel is involved," Krieg said. Sam gave a shrug and departed 2002 to return to the present. As soon as he was back in the now, he pulled his coveralls off and burned them beyond ash in his hands. No reason to have more temporally displaced matter than he absolutely needed to.
"The trap is set. Now," he said, then opened the door, to Moxie still walking back toward the office, "we should talk about that manuscript you have."
Moxie made a strangulated sound, turning back to see Sam coming out of the tiny room and the past almost as soon as he'd left it. "How did you get back so fast?"
"Time travel," Sam said. "If I wanted to, I could have arrived before I left."
"That..." the bookish assassin said, then paused with a growl. He composed himself. "The office?"
"Of course," Sam said. A couple of weeks doing his old kind of work was actually a fantastic breather. Despite being physically tired from doing his part in constructing this goddamned building, he actually felt sharper now. Not having to constantly worry about... well... everything. Just do your job, smoke like a chimney, and laugh at the other workers' dumb jokes, and spend the nights planning. Well, back to the shit, as it were. Once Sam returned to the office, Blitz turned to him.
"So when are you doin' your shit?" he asked.
"Already done. Time travel," Sam said.
"This is fantastically illegal," the remarkably tall imp woman at the hellhound's desk said.
"This is Hell, Tills, nobody cares," Blitz said.
"We're all already damned. There's only so much worse it can get, and we're heading towards that anyway," Sam added. "So I've set up your Soul Jar in the past. Now it'll just sit there, doing nothing, until a human child dies in your boardroom. Speaking of which, why did you kill a human child in your board room?"
"Target," Loona said, not particularly invested.
"They wanted to kill an actual child," Sam confirmed.
"Seemed like," Loona said.
This was Hell. Why should he be surprised? He gave his head a shake and then turned to the whiteboard that was tucked into the corner of the room. On it was a complex paramathematical formulae. The only reason it didn't slam into his brain like a sledge-hammer between his eyes was because it was broken and wouldn't work. He stared at it for a moment, then to the Soul Jar on the ceiling tile. "You're trying to get around child sacrifices," Sam said.
"I don't like killing children. It's not proper," Moxie said.
"And you say that having done it," Sam said. Moxie didn't look cagey or even shameful. He looked deeply sad. So kids died and it either was his fault but not by his will, or because he could have prevented it as he wished to and didn't. He turned to the formulae again. "This won't work unless a child dies. And... three of them. Three human children, in particular. Christ, Alastor, how many people did you off to get this done?"
"If there's a workaround for it, I'll take it," Moxie said.
Sam pondered for a moment, then turned to him. "How many other human children died because of you since you started working as an assassin?"
"I... uh... two," he said.
"In the human world, though?" Sam confirmed.
"They were the children of our target. A cannibal. And the mortal authorities just... killed them."
Sam stared at him. "What was the target's name?"
"D'you really think he'd remember after all this time?" Blitz asked.
"Martha," Moxie said.
"Husband Ralphie? Children Betty Lou and Szandor?"
"Yes," Moxie said.
Sam scratched at the stubble on his cheeks, putting thought to this. Three targets meant three sacrifices. If Moxie was unwilling to kill more – which was a welcome surprise for a denizen of hell, in Sam's eyes – then they were going to have to use the ones that were already dead. Which meant... Sam sighed, then gave his head a shake.
"You're not going to like this, but I can get you the souls of two children without killing anybody who's not already dead. It just involves a bit more time travel," Sam said.
"This is very unwise," Moxie said.
"Look, I can either go up top and check whether I'm right then have to go and actually do it, or get it all done in one trip. Which do you think will cause less of a fuss?" Sam asked.
"You're a madman," Tilla said.
"We're doing something fundamentally insane. I'm in good company," Sam said. "Krieg, do you mind if I use a bit more of that blood of yours? I need to make another Soul Jar on Earth."
"Wait, Earth? The Human World?" Tilla asked. "You're a Sinner. You can't go back to Earth. It's against the laws of Lucifer and God alike!"
"One of them doesn't have to know and the other can't do shit to stop me," Sam said.
"As long as you don't need more of my taxed veins. Only so much blood courses in me," Krieg answered his question.
"The amount I have will have to be enough, then. But I'll need to do some research," Sam said, kneading his brow. "Does anybody here have a SinLink? I need access to the mortal internet."
"Why would we have that shit? We don't need no human bullshit to keep us amused," Blitz claimed.
"I do," Moxie said, raising a finger. Everybody but Millie turned a baffled look to him. "Playbill is made on Earth. I need to keep up to date."
"Password?"
"My married name, all lower case, no spaces," Moxie said. Sam tried putting it in, but it didn't work. He turned his Hellphone around, and Moxie rolled his eyes.
"You spelled my name wrong," he said. "Two X's."
"Oh," Sam said. The second time it worked like a charm. He was quiet for a moment as he zipped through the Platt family's purchases. They'd been living in a cabin for most of the children's infancies, not the spot that they'd died. They'd had that house only for a couple months, pretty much taking it... okay, from reading between the lines, they probably murdered the old owners, then bought it from the estate sale... yep, he only needed to go back eleven years this time.
"Alright. I'll be back with your second Soul Jar. Moxxie, would you be so kind as to go to the Platt residence ruins as soon as I'm gone and go to..." Sam scrolled through the listed floor plan, and pointed out a point in the foundation, "this point under the floor. Bring a jackhammer."
"Well, look who's lucky I bought one now, huh?" Blitz preened, while Moxxie rolled his eyes with a disgusted groan.
"What sorcery is that around you?" Krieg cut in. Sam turned to her.
"I make strange plans that solve strange problems. People get used to it," Sam said.
"No, I mean there is a literal sorcery around you," Krieg seemed to be staring at the edges of where Sam ended and his proximity began. "It is an obstruction hex of some kind, I believe, but of no make that I have ever seen."
"You're able to see non-thaumaturgical magic?" Sam asked.
"You can't?" Krieg asked.
Sam was silent for a moment, then turned to the girl's mother. "Can you?"
"See what?" Tilla asked. Not her, then. Back to the teenager.
"An... I don't know. Does it look like an aura, chains, a strand leading away somewhere, give me some specifics," he said to the teenaged imp.
"A cloud around your face that tried to reach out to me when you walked into this office, and recoiled when you announced yourself," Krieg said.
"...Odd," Sam said. He turned to Krieg. "I'm going to try something a bit invasive. Do you mind if I try looking through your eyes?"
"I'm not comfortable where this is going," Tilla said.
"I, however, am," Krieg defied. "Do your strange sorcery, strange Sinner."
Sam then Looked Within on the imp. And like every time he tried using this ability on imps, the impressions he got were muddied and indistinct, like looking through a camera with way too much vaseline rubbed over the lens but the subject matter was not images but instead drives. They were alien in a way that no other creature that Sam had ever tried to Look Within was. But then, he'd had little chance to Look Within to Angels or former Angels, so there was a gap in his knowledge.
He focused further, as though narrowing a baseball bat into a sewing needle through sheer pressure. Then, he found the sensation root, a portion that he had discovered in Sinners before. Not to find their reason, their drive, but instead to gain their perspective. There was so much to the power of Looking Within, even beyond what Sam knew. And Sam was very swiftly expanding his knowledge, to crush to death the God of the Gaps.
When he saw what Krieg saw, he saw...
"Fine. You caught me," Apoc said at Sam's side, interrupting his focus. Sam turned to him leaving Krieg's perceptions to waft away. "Does it surprise you that I put safeguards on you, considering how many people would seek to bring you to ruin?"
"Define 'safeguard'," Sam said.
"A divine obfuscation," Apoc said. "It interfaces with any who look upon you through any medium, be it with their eyes, listening with ears or ear-like devices, video, recordings, or other such things. And it gives them random input."
"So you made it so people can't record me? So why is it that I'm definitely in pictures in Wendy's phone?"
"Because I know what I'm doing, and I'm not an amateur. Also, because you said to that person, 'I am Samuel Scailes'. I can't just obscure you from everybody. That would leave you in a terribly lonely Hell where nobody could ever recognize you. I wouldn't damn you to that. I made it so that it disengages whenever you choose to. So that you could have relationships beyond the one with me."
"How thoughtful," Sam said. "So why didn't the imps recognize me the second time?"
"Because they're imps," Apoc said with a slow shake of his head. "Angelic Magic seldom works exactly as expected on those things. They're just so... alien. Compare how they reacted to how the Hound did; she knew you immediately, without need for introduction."
"Great. I'm dealing with an edge case where I have to keep telling these people who I am," Sam said. "Good thing it works properly on the Hotel, otherwise I'd have had unkind words to say to you."
"They also knew your name before I put it on you. Column A, Column B," Apoc made a weighing motion with his hands.
"Hello? Hell to Sam?" Millie said, waving her hands in front of Sam's face. "You alright there buddy?"
Sam blinked a few times, then turned to the others. So he spaced out when talking to Apoc? That was better than him carrying on a one-sided conversation, at least. "It seems I'm still being protected by a dead, lonely friend," Sam said.
"What is the magic?" Krieg asked.
"A Prospagnosiac Obscuratism. One that keeps people I don't want to from recognizing me," Sam said.
"That is a strange way to keep safe someone," Krieg said.
"My friend was a strange man," Sam said. He frowned at the magical theory in front of him. Alastor had certainly waxed poetic about what it took to make him him, but some of the language had double meanings. And the more he looked between what was in the stack of paper and what the imps were sketching on whiteboards, the less the two fit together. "You're treating this screw like a nail."
"Excuse me?" Moxxie asked.
"It's completely understandable," Sam quickly said with a placating motion. "You don't have a lot of access to other forms of magic, so when you're given something that's blatantly magical, you view it through the lens of Thaumaturgy. It does give you some insight into things, particularly the nature of sacrifice and the inner nature of change... but Thaumaturgy is a hammer. When you have a hammer, you can solve 'nail' problems. And any problem that you face that isn't a 'nail' problem, you either have to do the uncomfortable thing and build a new tool, or you do the simpler one and turn that problem into a 'nail' problem.
"This isn't thaumaturgy? Then what is it?" Moxxie asked, motioning broadly at all the work he'd done.
"Something... else," Sam said.
"It's lucky we ain't payin' you, because that kinda woo-woo bullshit would make me consider firing you," Blitz said.
Sam sighed and rubbed his brow. "I'm sorry, I'm not being clear. This is not magic that as any place in creation. It's not from Hell, or from any denizen of Hell. It's not from Heaven. It didn't come from God. This is..."
"This is magic from Outside?" Moxxie prompted.
"That's the thing, I'm not even convinced that this is actually magic," Sam said, continuing to leaf through the pages. "Yeah, I know, it's a spell that does things, but the fact is the same could be said of cordite in your rifle rounds. You follow steps and turn chemicals into a portable explosion that you can set off whenever you want, to whatever ends you can imagine. It's almost like this is..." Sam trailed off.
Despite not looking, he could practically sense Apoc smiling delightedly from whatever terra incognita he now dwelt within.
"...a way to access the debug-menu for reality," Sam finished.
"...why would reality have such a thing?" Krieg asked.
"Ever hear of simulation theory?" Sam asked. The unworldly imp could only bunch up her face in confusion. "Short version, there is a thought that all reality that we perceive is just a projection from a higher reality, that all we experience is simulated. And if it is, then there's some sort of computer running that simulation."
"I watched that movie. Cool special effects but the philosophy was boring as fuuuck," Blitz cut in.
"Whatever the case is, there's still things I need to do my own research on," Sam said, putting the pages back into proper order. "Too much important stuff is left unsaid. And this is using magical theories of every description. I know a few different wellsprings, granted, but we'd need an expert in the Powers From Outside to be able to actually make heads or tails of the deeper mysteries."
"We could raid Purson's Library again. This time we have a much better idea what we're looking for," Moxxie said.
"Won't that be dangerous, what with all the bodies we left last time?" Millie asked.
"I might have another solution for that. Just let me finish the Soul Jar, and I'll start to put out feelers. Goddamned, its good that I got a good night's sleep yesterday. Otherwise I'd be pooped."
"We're all going to die, aren't we?" Tilla asked her daughter.
"Gloriously!" Krieg agreed. Tilla could only sigh.
Charlie was not in a good mood.
"Alastor, we need to talk," She said. The red suited demon turned to her, his ever-present smile wide and a little condescending. "You're the only person around here who's in good spirits since Sam left. Which means you know something that we don't. I know you're not just riding the high of 'oh, the stupid princess thought she could help the Elemental and he decided to leave anyway'. You don't even believe in altruism, so I know you wouldn't care about that!"
"I do believe in altruism, my dear," Alastor countered. "It is a very effective way of pulling rubes close enough that they don't realize a trap is about to spring."
"That's not altruism, that's conning them. What happened to Sam?"
"He is doing exactly what he said he would do, my dear. He is throwing himself foolishly into harms way out of a sense of responsibility which is wholly unearned," Alastor looked just too pleased with himself.
Charlie's jaw tightened, and her brow drew down. "And what about Wendy? Did you do something to her? Because I can't find a trace of her anywhere in the Hotel."
"There are plenty of traces of her up on the fortieth floor," Alastor said.
"I don't have time for your trickster-games!" Charlie said, her annoyance starting to melt down into actual anger.
"You've been up there, yes? Then you know exactly as much as I do about her current whereabouts," he said.
She then grabbed him by the collar and dragged him down to her level. She glared at the Radio Demon, whose smile had grown a small degree brittle. "Where. Is. Wendy?"
"Very well. If you're going to be a pill about this, we'll do the grand tour," Alastor said. He swept his arm down, leaving an array of floating runes in his wake, before there was the loud metal snap of True Teleportation, and they were in Wendy's abandoned room. Alastor tried to pull himself out of her grasp, but with a spike of her anger, she d̷̮̅͘ê̵̮̻̥n̸̖̉̅̌͜ḯ̶̻̖̦̽͝͝e̷͇̺̰͍͂̀̂͝d̶̗̈͆̂ him. "I can't show you the whole story with my back stooped like this. It's risking lumbago!"
"Talk," she demanded, letting him go to stand back to his eight foot height.
"You know, this kind of treatment might make me wish to withdraw my 'generous offer of help' to this Hotel?" Alastor said.
"Ţ̶͇̼̇Ả̴͔̠͊̊L̸̖͌̈́K̸̼̈́̄̽.̷̡̪̳̄́" she said again.
"Oh, very well," Alastor said in a long-suffering way. He motioned grandly toward the window. "What do you see here, little girl?"
"I'm older than you," Charlie said, but then she looked at the broken window. Vaggie had mentioned there was something weird about it, but she'd been more focused on how odd Alastor was being when the two of them shared an unwanted interaction. Charlie looked at the hole, then to the chair, which still had Wendy's discarded clothes dumped at its feet. Charlie stooped, picking up the top button of Wendy's blouse. The pants were still buttoned and zipped up, which meant they shouldn't have come off. And the neck of the blouse was stretched and torn.
Charlie gave that some thought, but she knew she was trying to do math with only half of the equation. There was something she was missing, and that hole was part of it. Charlie had a thought, and sat in the chair. She then held out a hand toward the hole, forming a line. She then paused, and pulled out her Hellphone. After flipping through a few Apps, she opened her AstroVis, which displayed what the current arrangement of stars would be if it were visible. Given the rains that pounded Pride each fall and spring, it was useful to anybody who needed to know what was going on up there. And when she turned it on, and pointed it toward the hole, then stooped down slightly to get into Wendy's eye-line, since Wendy was a bit shorter than six-foot-tall Charlie...
Framed perfectly in the hole was the pale, glowing orb with the halo above it.
Heaven's Gate.
Unlike the other stars in the sky, it didn't trace an orbit. It simply hung, at that exact spot in the sky, visible to anywhere in Hell – even Sloth, which had night skies otherwise as black as the end of time.
"Whu... why," she began, then she stood up and heard a faint grinding sound. She looked at her shoe, and found some prismatic dust ground into the sole. She picked some of it off. Even flakes half the size of a grain of rice felt heavy. Heavy and cold. The way they split the light gave birth to strange, moody colors, closer to grey and desaturated from the hues that beamed into it.
"Wages," Alastor said. He held out one palm, and trickled a stream of them from the other hand down onto it. They clacked like heavy marbles as they fell, instead of the sort of noise that a prismatic dust should have made.
"Wages?" she asked.
"Wages Of Sin," Alastor looked so very pleased with himself.
And then, Charlie knew.
"Wendy made it," she said, the smile taking over her face and threatening to squeeze happy tears from her eyes. "She got into Heaven. She's Redeemed. But how?"
"That's the great part, I don't have to care," Alastor said, palming the Wages and having them disappear. "What I gain instead, is that your ridiculous little plan now has actual stakes."
"Excuse me?" she asked.
"Before, I could simply amuse myself watching people attempt betterment and fail, knowing that there was no possible way to succeed. And that is a very hollow form of amusement. The same sort of flat schadenfreude I get when I see Sinners try their luck Skimming the Abyss for something of worth. They always fail, after all," Alastor then turned that grin to Charlie. "But now? This place? There is a win-condition now. I know it. Soon everybody will know it. And that will make the failures of the aspirants all the more sweet."
Charlie just stared at him, feeling the victory of the moment start to curdle. "Sam was right... you really are a monster."
"And here in Hell, I'm in remarkably good company," Alastor said, and walked away, laughing his head off.
After a moment, though, Charlie stood. "Fuck him. Wendy is safe now. And the Hotel works."
Alastor would not steal this moment from her. Fuck, even her Father's constant doubt faded away. She would be the Redeemer Princess. She would build Purgatory in Hell.
Not even her Dad could stop her now.
"We're closin' up, best buy yer shit quick," Ralphie barked from the aisles of the store.
"I'm not here to buy anything," the voice came from behind him. He turned, spotting the Sinner with the burning hair. It took him a long time to remember, oh yeah, this was the guy crazy and rich enough to actually buy the Davey Crockett shell. He wondered if that was related to that thing at the Porno joint?
"If yer here to rob us, you'll be disappointed," Ralphie promised, cracking his knuckles. The Sinner looked tired, his clothes spackled with concrete and white with cement dust, and he was unarmed.
"Is your wife around? She should be here for this," the Sinner said.
"Martha! We got a weird fucker up front!" Ralphie roared.
"Is he tryin' t' rob us?" Martha shouted back.
"Don't know! Want I should smack 'im a bit?" Ralphie replied at volume.
"This is regarding your kids," the Sinner said.
"It's about the young'ins!" Ralphie shouted.
There was a sound of something heavy hitting the floor, and within seconds, Martha had vaulted the cash desk and was in the aisles with the two men. "What do you know about my babies? Don't you try'n lie, now!"
"They are dead, but trapped before judgment," the Sinner said. "In something called a Soul Jar. And I am working to break that Soul Jar, amongst other things. When it is broken, they will at long last be sent through Judgment. Which is why I came to you, now."
"What'd'ya want from us?" Martha demanded.
"To help you," Sam said. "Could you answer a question for me? What happens to children's souls when they come to Hell?"
"They grow up. Usually fast," Ralphie muttered. He'd talked to other 'families' to commiserate his predicament. That was the way they described it, at least.
"And if through some strange miracle, your children ended up in Heaven, would you be alright with that?" the Sinner asked.
The two of them, husband and wife, shared a look, Ralphie staring in the shrieking abyss that lay through her crystal eye. To never see them again would be Hell. But that was what they had now. Knowing that they couldn't see them again because they literally got into Heaven?
"...I could live wit' that," Ralphie admitted.
"So could I," Martha said, sounding heartbroken.
"Nobody ever said you were bad parents. Just terrible people," the Sinner said, then pulled a felt pen from his breast-pocket. "Martha, could you give me your forearm, please?"
"What 'chu doin', stranger?" Ralphie clamped a large, paw-like hand on the Sinner's shoulder.
"Helping," the Sinner said. "This will hurt when I apply it. It will continue to hurt as long as it's there. But it will act as a magnet. If I can break the Soul Jar and they go to Heaven, your arms will fly upward for a moment, and you'll have your answer. And if they come to Hell... you'll have a chance to catch them."
"Do it," She said, rolling up both sleeves almost instantly.
Sometimes, Hell could be kind.
If you wanna last a long time in Hell, keep your head down.
If you wanna make a mark on hell, swing for the fuckin' fences.
-'Furious' George Stirling