Walter, in his Krazy Kat form, had come up with something just as I parted from him and Riprash and the rest. “I remember something about the voice that asked me about you!” he’d called as I climbed into the landing boat. I’d had no idea what voice he was talking about, but what if he’d remembered something from when he was still an angel? What if that was what got him sent to Hell in the first place?
I was so caught up in these questions I almost brained myself on a low-hanging ceiling, which wouldn’t have done my throbbing head any good. I was tired, stumbling, but I couldn’t shut off the thoughts.
What had Walter told me? Why hadn’t I listened more carefully? Yes, I had been worrying about a lot of other things just then, like fang jellies and hogsquids, but I was furious with myself now. The answer to everything, maybe—or at least the answer to who’d sent Smyler after me—and I’d let a few minor things like hellhounds and self-surgery flush it out of my memory.
I came out of the last stony passage a mere hundred yards or so from the gate and that ugly, glorious bridge. As I hurried toward it I struggled to remember everything from that moment I’d left the Bitch—the rotting smell of the Bay of Tophet, Riprash’s huge hands passing me the cannonball that was going to weight my descent to the bottom, Gob’s interested, skeptical face, and Walter in his damned form, looking like something that could only be found living in trees on Madagascar.
What had he said?
And then it came to me. “It was a child’s voice,” he’d shouted as I lowered myself into the dinghy, desperate to let me know, to help me, even though I was leaving him stranded in Hell. “A sweet, child’s voice!”
A hunting horn blared behind me, as startlingly close as a crow screeching on my shoulder. I turned to see the first of the hellhounds plunge forward out of the mist with its two dark, eyeless brothers right behind it, and beyond them the complicated shadow of a company of armed demons.
I sprinted toward the bridge, cursing the usual Bobby Dollar shitty luck. I was really irritated that I was going to be caught just when I finally had the answer to the riddle of Walter’s banishment.
Anaita had a voice like that. Anaita, alone among those of Heaven’s most powerful angels I knew, often spoke in a voice like a little girl. Wouldn’t she disguise it? Not necessarily, not if she didn’t realize the sound of her voice would be significant later. Perhaps she had merely asked Walter some questions about me in her normal role as an important heavenly officer, questions that he’d found odd. Perhaps that was what he meant to tell me when Smyler stabbed him. If so, Walter’s earthly body had been murdered and his soul sent to Hell just to keep him from telling me that Anaita had been asking about me.
Wow. I knew the higher angels were different than me, but Anaita aka “Kephas”—ephor, Heavenly Principality, and Holy Guardian of Fertility—was evidently fucking ruthless.
It didn’t matter, though, because I was never going to be able to do anything about it. Niloch and his Ugly Boys’ Club were right behind me, and I hadn’t even reached the bridge. It looked like my friends weren’t going to get those souvenir Tshirts after all.
forty-three
mr. johnson and me
APPROPRIATELY, ROBERT Johnson’s infamous blues song kept running through the back of my mind as I raced the last yards toward the bridge.
One of his very best songs. I don’t know anyone who loves the blues who isn’t fascinated by Johnson; his strange, short life and his haunted voice. And at the moment it was literal truth for me—hellhounds baying just behind me, Hell-soldiers and ratbat-crazy Commissar Niloch behind them—and that made it an odd time to have any song going through one’s mind instead of one of the standard variations on Oh my God I’m going to die run run run fucking run!
Still, even an angel can have feelings of inferiority, and as I sprinted for my life and soul across the ashy, stony ground of the last inner cavern toward the gate and the Neronian Bridge, a part of me was actually pleased that I could finally consider Johnson without feeling like such a white-guy poseur. At last I could say, without reservation, “Yeah, I know just what you’re talking about, Robert—I’ve had those blues. I know just what you mean.”
Stupid, I know, especially at a time like that, but if I hadn’t been stupid I wouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place, would I?
I plunged through the gate tower, forgetting how close it was to the end of the Bridge. A couple of steps later, when I crashed into the first ashy, Pompeii-victim Purgatory creatures trying to force their way into Hell, I almost slid right off the bridge into that unimaginable abyss. Getting past them was like forcing my way through rotting Styrofoam. The silent shapes created just enough resistance to make things difficult and blocked my vision as well, not to mention that any damage I did to them left their soapy scum on the Bridge itself. Now try to imagine fighting your way through literally dozens and dozens of the things on a bridge less than six feet wide, with nothing beneath you for miles except screams floating up from the deeps.
I still had Riprash’s giant knife in my belt, so I yanked it out and began to hack my way through the things. I know I’m an angel, and I’m supposed to be sympathetic by nature, but after having just spent a really long time in Hell, the thought that the only thing these horrible, mindless shapes wanted was to get into the place made me far less patient with them than the first time through. I shredded them like a cluster bomb in the middle of Smurf Village, sending bits flying everywhere like dirty suds. The hellhounds were roaring behind me as they encountered the first of the Purgatory refugees, and I fancied I heard a note of doggie surprise at how difficult it was to get through them.
As the throngs of faceless shapes thinned, I was able to pick up speed, but that meant the hellhounds were able to do the same. I heard their talons clank against the stone behind me, louder and louder, so I pushed my blade back into my belt as carefully as I could while running flat out, then pulled out one of my revolvers.
I still had plenty of loose bullets, but couldn’t think of any foreseeable sequence of events where I’d get a chance to reload, so I slowed just enough that I could make sure every chamber of both guns was full, then dumped the remaining shells back into my pocket. Maybe my luck was turning, because that awkward movement caused me to stumble just a little, which saved me. A harpoon flew past my shoulder, trailing rope that burned the side of my neck before it curved away into the abyss.
I had wondered briefly why Niloch and his men hadn’t been shooting arrows or guns once they were in range, but I realized now that they didn’t want to lose my body off the bridge. They clearly had much more elaborate plans for me than just to shatter me on the rocks impossibly far below, or have me melt away to nothing in a fumarole of molten shit. Thus, the harpoons. Bullied office temps and grumpy commuters, trust me: you haven’t really had a bad day until someone’s tried to harpoon you.
I was already slowing down, exhausted but with hours yet to go, so I decided I should try to improve the odds a little. When I encountered another of the crawling Purgatory-things grubbing its way across the span, I vaulted over the obstruction, then stopped and crouched behind the humanoid shape and aimed both revolvers back at my pursuers. The grubby, wispy little thing wasn’t going to shield me from anything, but I hoped it would at least obstruct my pursuers’ view and create a second or two of confusion.