“And they open into my storeroom.”
“Yeah.”
Mr. Muninn nods and sips his coffee. He looks a lot older than when I saw him just a few weeks ago.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, you look like shit, Mr. Muninn.”
He smiles. No one down here normally talks to Lucifer like that.
“I suppose I don’t. Things were going badly here, and with a new war in Heaven, we don’t even need a threat from the Angra to feel a bit grim.”
“It must feel funny to be on the side of the rebel angels this time.”
“Don’t think that hasn’t occurred to me. But time and circumstances change.”
“Do you think the rebels are going to win?”
“I honestly don’t know. There isn’t the great desire for suicide among Heaven angels as there is here, but there’s plenty of bloodlust.”
“I don’t understand. If they’re not part of Merihim and Deumos’s suicide pact, what’s the war about?”
“Us,” he says. “The four remaining brothers. Brother Ruach wants the three of us dead and so do his followers. The rebel angels refuse to take part in our murder and so a war begins.”
“Is there anything you can do to help?”
“Oh my. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Sorry. It’s just, even though you’re kind of broken, you’re still a piece of God. You still have powers.”
“Not like Ruach’s. He’s the part that broke away from the rest of us first, taking most of our power with him.”
“Do you know where your missing brother is?”
Muninn fiddles with a spoon on the table.
“Chaya. He’s right here. Asleep not fifty feet from us. Ruach was keeping him in Heaven hoping to draw the rest of us into a confrontation. Samael helped Chaya to escape and brought him here.”
“Great. That’s three of you. Can you do some kind of Voltron thing, put yourselves back together and kick Ruach’s ass?”
“We tried to reunite and failed. If our brother Neshamah wasn’t dead, maybe the four of us could combine our strength and fight Ruach, but with just the three of us, it’s doubtful. I don’t know if the others want to try again.”
I’ve never seen Mr. Muninn so down. And I’m the bastard who guilted him into becoming Lucifer.
“I’m guessing you’re not working on repairing the city anymore.”
“No one is left to do the work. Every sensible Hellion is at home hiding.”
“Same thing in L.A. Some are running for the hills.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t anywhere for us to run.”
“There won’t be anywhere to run on Earth if the Angra keep making new little baby Angras.”
He frowns every time I say their name.
I say, “You don’t like talking about them, do you?”
“There is nothing but bad memories there. We—that is, I, when I was a single entity—flung the Angra from here and claimed this universe for myself. Not a noble gesture. But I was young and the young do all sorts of foolish and cruel things.”
“And you were left with a universe you didn’t quite know how to run.”
“I did my best.”
“That’s what I told Mrs. McCarthy in fifth-grade Spanish. She still flunked me.”
He sips his coffee and smiles.
“Yes. This is exactly like elementary school Spanish.”
“I guess the idea I tossed out there the last time you were in L.A. isn’t going to work. Shutting down Hell and letting everyone leave?”
He leans back, setting down his coffee.
“And let my angels go where? To a war in Heaven? To Earth, where the Angra are strongest and they’d have to hide from both them and mortals? Where should I send them? And then there are all the damned souls. What’s to be done with them?”
“Send them to L.A. We could use the company.”
“I’m sure.”
We both drink our coffee, stuck in an uncomfortable silence. I was hoping for some kind of answers here. I can do gloomy all on my own back at Bamboo House of Dolls, where the drinks are better.
“Samael’s kind of a hero these days, it sounds like.”
“Yes,” says Muninn. “I didn’t expect it of the boy. He resented having two fathers around and now he has three. It can’t be very fun for him.”
Samael was the first Lucifer, but he quit and took back his original angelic name. He went back to Heaven before things went to shit. When they did, he hightailed it back to Hell with Mr. Muninn. Samael is the prick who stuck me with the job of playing Lucifer. But we kissed and made up. We have similar tastes in Dario Argento and Takashi Miike flicks.
“Our Angra sects are cutting up humans and making chop-shop people out of them. What do you think of that?”
“It sounds horrible. Do you know why they’re doing it?”
“The theory going around is they’re going to be vacation homes for Qliphoth. Sounds like fun, huh? What’s going on with your Angra cheerleaders?”
He sighs.
“I wish I knew. I’m like Ruach when it comes to them—mostly blind and half deaf. Deumos and Merihim have disappeared. I’m sure they’re hiding somewhere in Pandemonium. They won’t want to be far from the seat of power. But they have powerful allies and remain invisible to me.”
“I got a phone call from Deumos.”
“Did you? What did she say?”
“Nothing surprising. She wanted the 8 Ball. The Qomrama.”
“No, not surprising at all. You’re not giving it to her, I assume.”
“She can have it right after she kisses my ass.”
“Always the poet,” says Muninn.
I wonder if he’d let me smoke a Malediction in here. I pat my pockets, then remember I’m not wearing my regular clothes. My cigarettes are back by the elevator, and probably soaked through.
“Let me have the Qomrama,” says Muninn. “Bring it back to Hell, where it belongs.”
“So Deumos and Merihim can grab it? I don’t think so? They might have minions on Earth, but they don’t have shit power yet. No. It’s staying where it is.”
Muninn says, “You owe me a favor, if you recall.”
I knew sooner or later he was going to try and fuck me up with fairness and logic. Good thing I’m pretty much immune to those things.
“Do you know how to use it?”
He shakes his head.
“No.”
“Then leave it with me. Believe it or not, I’m working with the Golden Vigil again. They’ve got this old Buddhist monk working on it. He seems pretty smart.”
Muninn looks at me.
“A month ago you talked about Gnostics and called me the demiurge. Now you’re spending your time with Buddhists. Your cosmological interests are broader than I thought, James.”
“Strange times, strange company.”
“Indeed.”
Damn. Looking at this ragged old man I used to know and drink with, I feel an ugly wave of sincerity coming on.
“I’m sorry I stuck you with this job,” I say. “I didn’t think about what was coming. I just wanted not to be Lucifer anymore.”
“Thank you,” says Muninn. “I appreciate that. But as you’ve pointed out, you weren’t very good at the job. I don’t know that I’ve done much better, but I’ve held Pandemonium and the provinces together so far. It’s better off this way.”
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
“Thank you. I will. In fact . . .” He gets up from the table and leaves the room. He comes back a minute later with a yellowish potion in a stoppered bottle.
“Take this with you,” he says. “Just pour it across the ground at the entrance to my sanctuary and no mortal person or device will be able to detect it.”
“I’m not sure the monk is exactly mortal. He’s self-mummified. Died four hundred years ago and came back to leap tall buildings in a single bound, you know.”
“Whatever powers he might possess won’t be enough to see through this. It will be fine.”
“Great.”
“You still have the Singularity and the Mithras?”
“Safe and sound in the Room.”