Aloha from Hell. Richard Kadrey

monster; only he wasn’t born that way. I made him one when I cut off his head with the black bone knife I brought back from Hell. The blade that didn’t let him die. Now he’s a chain-smoking, beer-stealing pain in my ass. To get specific, Kasabian is a head without a body. And he won’t shut up about it. He gets around on what to a civilian would look like a polished mahogany skateboard with a couple dozen stubby brass Jules Verne legs underneath. Really, it’s a hoodoo-driven prosthetic for a guy who’s wandering around with nothing but a bad attitude below his neck. It’s his own fault. When I came back from Hell, the idiot shot me, so I cut off his head. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now I’m stuck with him. We’ve gotten as used to each other as a couple of monsters can be. But I’ll never get used to a roommate surfing around on a magic plank like a beer-swilling Victorian centipede.

      And that’s the other reason we’re at the hotel. I don’t want some schmuck carpenter wandering upstairs and getting an eyeball-ful of Kasabian’s disembodied cranium. When the guy’s brain explodes, our insurance would go through the roof.

      I go right to the game room set up for the guests. There’s an “Out of Order” sign outside. I rap on the door using the secret knock Kasabian insisted on. (He’s been watching too many spy movies.) Knock. Pause. Knock. Knock. Pause. Knock. A second later I hear something scrape behind the door and it opens a few inches. I look around to make sure no one can see me and slip inside. When I get in, Kasabian uses his little legs to wedge a wooden chair under the doorknob, then tells me to throw the lock.

      I say, “You’re riding the paranoia pony pretty hard today, Alfredo Garcia.”

      “Blow me, biped. I have to be security-conscious or I’ll end up freak of the month on YouTube.”

      “Don’t sweat it. We’re both going to end up a couple of pickled punks in the Museum of Death someday.”

      “Yeah, but I’m not looking for it to happen tonight.”

      He clambers on top of the pool table and gives me a sometime-today-asshole look. I roll the cue ball and we lag for break. Kasabian wins. I rack the balls and step back to light a Malediction, Lucifer’s favorite cigarette. You can only get them Downtown, and since I haven’t seen Lucifer in a while, I’m running low. It might almost be worth chancing going back down to snatch and grab a pack or three. Almost.

      Kasabian shooting pool is as graceful as a lobster playing soccer. He scuttles around the green felt tabletop, lines up his shot, and kicks the cue ball with his stubby metal legs. I’m not sure if him playing like that is fair, but you’ve got to pick your battles, so I let it go. Besides, it gets him out of the room and makes him happy and that makes him easier to live with.

      “What’s that smell?” he asks.

      “Me. I got parboiled by a demon when I was out with Vidocq.”

      I shrug off the rifle frock coat Muninn gave me and show him the burns on my arms. I’m doing my best to ignore the pain, but I’m going to need a drink soon. Getting tossed in a meat grinder every now and then is part of what I do. I came back to earth to kill things, so I have to expect things to fight back occasionally.

      “Nice. New scars to add to your collection. You collect getting fucked up the way old ladies collect state spoons.”

      Kasabian takes a shot and sinks the nine, eleven, and four. Two stripes and a solid.

      He says, “I’ll play stripes. Thirteen in the corner,” as he lines up the shot. He sinks it.

      I puff on the smoke. I get the feeling he’s not going to leave me much else to do.

      “So what kind of a demon was it?”

      I shake my head.

      “Damned if I know. I’d never seen one like it before.”

      He creeps around the table, not looking up.

      “What did it look like?”

      “Not much. I mean, from a distance it looked like a guy in a cheap suit. But when it got closer, it was all Jell-O and acid. When it grabbed me, bang, I was burning.”

      He takes one of the blue chalk cubes from the side of the table and uses it on his stubby legs.

      “Sounds like a Gluttire.”

      “A what?”

      “Gluttire. A glutton. He wasn’t burning you. He was trying to dissolve you. Gluttons are pretty rare and mostly eat other demons. You been around any recently?”

      “Yeah. The guy whose house we hit had a digger in the wall safe.”

      “There you go,” he says, and sinks the fourteen. “He smelled the digger.”

      “I need to start bringing cologne on robberies.”

      “There’s a ton about demons in the Codex. There’s a lot more kinds of them than you think, but Gluttires are the rarest. Most people never get to see one.”

      “Lucky me.”

      Things get quiet for a minute. He knows what I’m going to ask.

      “Talk to me about Downtown. Got any gossip? Marilyn Monroe dating the Antichrist? Is Lovecraft being tortured by sexy octopuses?”

      “What makes you think Monroe’s Downtown?”

      “Wishful thinking.”

      Kasabian lines up another shot and sinks it. I’m not even paying attention to which balls anymore.

      I say, “So?”

      Kasabian doesn’t look up when he answers, keeping his eyes down on the table.

      “The weather’s hot with a chance of chain saws and bullshit blowing up from the south.”

      I walk over and put my hand over the cue ball. Kasabian looks up at me, not at all happy.

      I’m bugging him about the one thing he controls. His one little domain. The Daimonion Codex. It’s Lucifer’s Boy Scout manual, Google search engine, and secret angelic ball-buster cookbook all in one. The most valuable thing in Hell besides the horned one himself. It contains every bit of dark, esoteric-stuff-you-don’t-want-to-know-about-if-you-ever-want-to-sleep-again knowledge in the universe. As far as I know, Kasabian is the only one on earth who can read it.

      He glances down at my hand and I take it off the cue. He sinks another ball. The little prick has been practicing when I’m not around.

      Kasabian used to look things up in the Codex for Lucifer when he was too busy, which was 90 percent of the time. Of course, nothing in Hell works the way it’s supposed to. That’s why they call it Hell. The magic gear down there is like buying Russian souvenirs. The samovars are pretty, but you know they’re going to leak all over your mom’s chintz tablecloth.

      What that means is that Hell’s half-assed gear hacks pretty easy. Take the Codex. Kasabian’s supposed to get a peek Downtown just wide enough to read the book. But it doesn’t work right. He’s like one of those traffic surveillance cams that catch you running red lights. If he squints just right, he can see a lot more than the book. He’s like a whole series of traffic cams wired together and he can spyglass all over Hell. Not all of it, but a lot. It’s the one thing he has over me and he never lets me forget it.

      He says, “The usual Chuck E. Cheese ball pit-party games. Since Lucifer pissed off back to heaven, Mason’s completely taken over. Lucifer’s generals are having slap fights over battle plans. Mammon and Baphomet have been sabotaging each others’ troops. Poisoning their food and shit like that. All so they can suck up to Mason. Semyazah is the only general who refused to kiss Mason’s ass, so he’s had to blow town.”

      “Smart move.”

      “Mason’s getting ready for something. He’s pulling troops in from everywhere, but they’re scattered all over Hell, so it’ll take a while. In the meantime he’s got some other game going, but I haven’t figured out