Aloha from Hell. Richard Kadrey

“I have my own library, if you would like to see it.”

      “Thank you. I would.”

      “You two can play librarians. I’m going to make some calls and break some people’s toys until one of them starts giving us answers.”

      “Cool,” Candy says.

      “Father, I know you must use the university library. Have you ever heard anyone talk about a drug called Akira?”

      “Of course. It’s popular among some of the students. Artists. New Agers. Those sort of thing.”

      “Do you know anything about the drug itself?”

      “Not really. All I remember is that it seemed like it was harder to get than other drugs. That there were only a few people who sold it.”

      “Thanks.”

      I shake Traven’s hand and I let Vidocq and Candy go out ahead of me. I start out, stop, and turn. It’s an old trick.

      “One more thing, Father. Julia never told us why you are excommunicated.”

      He’s thinking. Not sure he wants to answer.

      “I’ll tell you if you promise to talk with me about Hell sometime,” he says.

      “Deal.”

      Traven goes back to his desk and picks up the book he’d hidden earlier.

      “I don’t like other people to see this particular book. It seems wrong for it to be a mere curiosity.”

      “I saw you cover it up.”

      The spray of red on the front of the book nearly covers an ancient sigil.

      “I don’t recognize the symbol.”

      “It’s the sign of one of the Angra Om Ya cults,” says Vidocq, looking over my shoulder.

      Traven nods.

      “You’ll understand why the church was so angry with me. They have an unswerving policy that there is no God but their God. There never was and there never will be. But there are some who believe that there’s more to Creation than what’s in the Bible and that the stories in this book are at least as convincing as those.”

      “You translated the Angra Om Ya’s bible. No wonder God doesn’t want you whacking his piñata anymore.”

      “Certainly the Church doesn’t.”

      “It isn’t all bad, Father. I own a video store. Come around sometime. The damned get a discount.”

      He gives us one of his exhausted smiles.

      “That’s very kind of you. Since leaving the Church, I’ve come to believe that it’s the little, fleeting pleasures like watching videos that mean the most in this life.”

      “Amen to that.”

      WHEN WE’RE BACK in the car I call the Sentenzas. K.W. answers.

      “K.W., it’s Stark. Did Hunter ever tell you where he got his drugs? Maybe give you a name?”

      A slight pause.

      “It was a girl. Not a girlfriend exactly, but someone he spent time with. Hang on a minute.”

      Over the phone comes the sound of things being moved. Furniture scrapes. K.W. curses. Then he’s back on the phone.

      “I knew he’d written it down somewhere. Her name is Carolyn. Carolyn McCoy.”

      “Is there an address?”

      He reads it to me.

      “Okay. Thanks. We’ll be in touch.”

      I call up the phone’s map app and punch in the address. It’s off the Golden State Freeway in Sun Valley.

      Vidocq is in the backseat. I turn to look at him.

      “How did you hear about Akira? Did you ever try it?”

      He shakes his head.

      “No. What Hunter’s father said at the house was wrong. Akira is nothing new. Like all drugs, it goes in and out of favor. I haven’t heard it mentioned for perhaps two years. It sounds as if it’s coming back. I’m a bit surprised.”

      “Why?”

      “It’s not an easy thing to fashion. The chemistry must be precise. Even a small mistake and you will not have synthesized Akira, but a very potent neurotoxine. Also, many of the elements are not readily available. Some of the plants and herbs required can only be cultivated in native soil. A mountaintop in China. A rain forest in Brazil. You must find a reliable source of the pure ingredients even to attempt to formulate Akira.”

      “How is it you know so much about it?”

      “I was once asked to manufacture it. I was offered quite a large sum of money, in fact. I refused, but they asked again. Each time they asked, the amount of money increased, but I still refused.” He turns and looks out the window. “Finally I said yes. Not because I wanted the money, but because I’m a coward, and when they grew insistent, I was afraid to keep saying no.”

      “Was it Mater Leeds? I heard that she and her people are big dope suppliers to the Sub Rosa.”

      He shakes his head and looks at me.

      “No. It was Marshal Wells. The Golden Vigil wanted Akira.”

      I frown and look at Vidocq. He nods.

      “What would a bunch of Homeland Security Bible-thumpers want with Akira? Were their office parties better than I thought?” I ask.

      “I suspect they were interested in the drug’s psychic aspects. They had many staff psychics, but mind reading has never been a precise art and subjects can resist. Now imagine that you had a drug that made a psychic link pleasurable. A drug that made the subject being interrogated feel as merry as New Year’s Eve.”

      “Wells would love that. It sounds like something Aelita would love. Or Lucifer.”

      They tried something like that on me Downtown. For a while I was fighting in the arena so much that they gave me quarters in the basement. They made a big deal of it. Really it was just another holding pen, but it had four walls and a door and I had it to myself. I was so grateful I kicked and punched my guards harder than ever when they came for me. It was worth taking a beating to keep them from knowing that the filthy room made me happy.

      When I was in Hell a funny thing happened. Every time I got beaten, burned, stabbed, or impaled in the arena, it just made me stronger. When I discovered I was a nephilim, it all made sense. But at the time I didn’t know why it was happening. The Hellion fight masters and soldiers wanted to know why I didn’t have anything useful to tell them and they beat me more. Which only made me stronger. Hellions aren’t always clear on cause and effect.

      Then they started the mind games. They’d spike my food with a kind of Hellion Ecstasy and send in the damned soul of a pretty murderess to play concubine. We’d work each other for a while, and when I was good and relaxed the questions would start. I didn’t even realize I was being interrogated, it felt so good talking to another human. But I still couldn’t answer their questions because I didn’t have any answers. They tried young women and old ones, boys and oiled-up beefcake. They still didn’t get any answers and by then my body had grown used to the drugs. But I could fake it. When the last devil doll didn’t get any answers, a gaggle of disappointed guards bum-rushed my cell and did the hokeypokey on my head. I’d been in my Folsom Prison mansion a few weeks by then. I’d found the weak bolt in the iron door on my second night. I’d worked it out with my nails and teeth and had been sharpening it on the stone walls ever since.

      I shoved it through one guard’s ankle and kept going north, peeling off his calf muscle. That caught the other guards by surprise and they stopped kicking me for a second. Just enough time for me to get hold of one and shove the bolt into his thigh, opening up an artery