The Kill Society. Richard Kadrey

just won Best Supporting Asshole.

      The Magistrate is off talking to the rest of the town. In ones and twos, they drift over to the havoc looking miserable. Reluctant new recruits to the cause.

      I walk to the truck and drop back into the driver’s seat. I don’t want to let Traven see me feeling the way I feel. Did I just cross a line I can’t uncross? I know the doll man was a bad guy. I know it. This isn’t the first time I’ve executed someone. I murdered a whole houseful of Wormwood bastards just a few weeks ago. Still. This feels different.

      The next time the Magistrate tries to rope me into a dog and pony show like this, I’ll kill him, no matter what.

      Daja rides up on her Harley. She pulls a couple of Hellion beers out of her saddlebags and hands me one. Clinks hers against mine and takes a long drink.

      “We’ll be moving out soon,” she says. “When we get settled I’ll see about getting you better wheels.”

      “Don’t bother.”

      “It’s no bother. Brother.”

      She drives away.

      I sit there for a while looking out at the desert, not thinking. Letting my mind go blank for a few minutes.

      Then I drink the beer.

      THAT NIGHT IN Traven’s camper, neither of us has much to say. I hear a motorcycle stop outside and go to see who it is.

      It’s Daja with another woman as big and bad as she is. Her hair is buzzed almost skinhead short, her face is fine-boned and graceful. Her skin is dark and heavy with Downtown warrior sigils. She almost looks like someone I could have met in the arena. She and Daja are on spidery Hellion Harleys.

      I close the camper door and say, “It’s late and we need our beauty sleep. What do you want?”

      They get off the bikes.

      “Nothing,” says Daja. She throws me a set of keys. The other woman gets on the back of her Harley.

      “Leave that piece of shit,” she says, pointing to my burned-out dream car. “This is yours from now on.”

      I look the bike over. It’s a beautiful, horrifying machine, screaming power.

      “And it’s not even my birthday.”

      I look at both women.

      “What if I don’t want it?”

      Daja shrugs.

      “No sweat off my ass, but the Magistrate would take it hard. You don’t want to upset him now that you’re best friends, do you?”

      I weigh the keys in my hand. Put them in my pocket. When the time comes, it will be a lot easier getting away on the bike than the burned-out shit box I’ve been driving.

      “Anything else?” I say.

      “A thank-you wouldn’t hurt.”

      “Yes, it would. I’d have bad dreams all night.”

      Daja kicks her Harley awake and revs it a couple of times. Before she pushes up the kickstand, she takes something small from a jacket pocket and holds it out.

      “Here,” she says. “The bike is from the Magistrate, but these are from the havoc.”

      I go to her and take what she’s holding. It’s two packs of Maledictions.

      “For these, I’ll definitely say thanks.”

      Daja leans back to the woman behind her.

      “What did I tell you? Ugly, but at least a cheap date.”

      The other woman laughs as they start away. She blows me a kiss and spits at my boots, but misses by a mile. No sharpshooter there. As they peel out, I go back inside the camper.

      Traven looks up from a book. He’s been reading it all night. It looks holy. Probably trying to figure out a loophole in salvation.

      “What was that about?” he says.

      “Blood money.”

      He makes a face and I put the Maledictions on a table well away from me. He goes back to reading and I curl up on the floor. For about five minutes. Then, without getting up, I grab one of the packs and rip it open.

      Fuck it. I was headed for Hell the day I was born. A nephilim Abomination and natural-born killer. Where else was I going?

      I take one of Traven’s matches and light a cigarette. Hold it out to him. He hesitates, doing calculations in his head. Sins versus cigarettes. How many wheezing angels can smoke on the head of a pin?

      Finally he takes it and I light one for myself.

      “We shouldn’t be doing this,” he says.

      “Yep.”

      “It’s a sin.”

      “Smoking is part of God’s great plan, Father.”

      “Did he tell you that?”

      “I inferred it.”

      “I’m not sure that’s how it works,” he says.

      “He forgave Cain for cracking open Abel’s head.”

      “No. He didn’t.”

      “No? I thought he did.”

      “No.”

      “Funny. He said he did.”

      Traven coughs.

      “You knew Cain?”

      “Yeah. He was the doorman at Second Death. Nice guy.”

      Traven taps some ash into an overturned jar lid.

      He says, “Lying is a sin, my son.”

      “I’m an angel. Sin washes right off.”

      “Half angel. Part of you is still human.”

      “Not the fun part.”

      “I wish I could say the same about myself.”

      “We’ll get through this and you’ll have a billion years to repent.”

      “I’m not sure that’s enough time.”

      I tap some ash into the lid.

      “If Brigitte was here, what would she say?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “She’d say shut up and smoke.”

      He thinks about it.

      “Yes. I suppose she would.”

      So he does and we do. I lie down on the floor when I finish the Malediction. He blows out the lamp.

      In the dark he says, “Do you think we could burn that gallows truck before we leave?”

      “I was just thinking the same thing.”

      WE STAY ON the ley line the Magistrate plotted. It’s nice to be on a bike again.

      Travel is like Traven said. What happened in the little town isn’t an everyday thing. Sometimes we travel for days without seeing anything, and even if we find a town, chances are it’s deserted. The Magistrate, Cherry, and Traven check the map each morning, but I think it’s all for show. We’re just going to follow this line until the Magistrate changes his mind or we fall off the edge of Hell into a deep, dark void. Some days, that doesn’t sound half bad.

      Then we hit a string of populated ghost towns along a range of mountains so dark they could be piles of black powder ready to explode everything in sight. Not a bad idea.

      In some of the towns we even find a few Hellions, fallen angels who’ve run away from the chaos of Pandemonium to the monotony of the desert. But it doesn’t matter who’s there. Each town is