Aloha from Hell

I let the angel loose. I need to think through this, because unless my new stump has a 007 plan to get us out of here, I’m going to have to call leaving my arm back in the arena a major setback.

I wonder if there’s a way to turn off the antihoodoo cloak around this place. I’m not too proud to crawl into a shadow and whimper in the Room for an eternity or two. Mason’s already putting up wanted posters. He knows I’m here. What do I care if one of his pet magicians detects me using the key? But I’m back in the holding area and the cloak is on, so I can’t throw any hoodoo. And there’s no way I’m fighting my way through all those guards with a wing clipped.

I need to stop for a minute and catch my breath. I don’t know how long Muninn’s egg is going to last. I need to keep moving while it does. I let the angel take over my senses. It can see right through the RV’s tin-can walls.

I expect to see Rommel and the Afrika Corps around the place, but there isn’t a Hellion within a hundred yards of me. I’m Chernobyl in a white-trash pied-à-terre. The angel does a three hundred-and-sixty-degree scan around the place. The few Hellions brave enough to be within eyesight are all on the arena side of the RV. Behind me is an empty field. But the RV is protected by the same Malebranche hex that zapped me good back in the flatbed. I cut a person-size hole in the wall and fall through. If I keep the RV between me and the posse, I just might be able to slink away into the dark with my tail tucked between my legs.

I guess this is Plan B.

JUST A FEW blocks away the streets are packed. I’m not sure where I am. I try to look nonchalant with my missing arm and the side of my coat soaked with dried blood and scorched by the Gladius. The crowd makes it easy to disappear. So does the fact that a lot of the losers lying in the street and begging around the food stalls don’t look much better than me.

I wonder if any of the big brains back at the stadium have figured out I’m not in the RV anymore. One of the brave ones is going to check out the arm I left behind, see that it’s human, and eventually figure out who it belongs to. My wanted posters are all over, so knowing the arm is mine doesn’t bother me, but I hate the idea that some Hellion cocksucker is going to stick it on his wall as a trophy.

This is the first crowded patch of land I’ve seen in Eleusis. Hard-core raider country. Instead of hitting the individual corner markets, the enterprising ones have cleared them out and set up their own stalls. It’s a county-fair midway, full of ugly Hellspawn and starving pagans desperate or brave or stupid enough to pick through the gutters and garbage for leftovers. Looking at what’s going on at the stadium and the ruthless bastards picking the city clean out here, I can’t see much difference between the raiders and the posse that followed Jack and me except who pays their salaries. It makes me wonder how many soldiers in Lucifer’s legions were true believers and how many were simple mercenaries. Another nice design job, God. You ate your roughage and shit out an angelic army that could be bought off with beer and Twinkies.

There are impressive cracks in the sides of some buildings. Like the houses, some are supported by power poles. Others by gas-station hydraulic lifts and broken-down backhoes. There are open cesspits on the side streets near piles of trash two stories high. That’s where most of the crazies and the pagans hang out, picking up and pocketing anything they can eat or trade. Cracks in the sidewalk ooze sewagey blood, but I don’t see any big sinkholes. That’s probably why everyone is bunched up in this part of town.

Being crippled like this isn’t going to make getting Alice out of the asylum any easier, but nowhere’s going to be safe when Mason starts his war. There’s no way around it. The trip is a package deal. I have to get Alice and I have to stop Mason. One doesn’t mean a goddamn thing without the other.

I keep touching my left side, looking for my missing arm, wondering if I made a mistake. Maybe I’m still lying on the street where the brick tagged me on the side of the head. Maybe Crab Man hit me with an illusion hex and my arm is still there. I swear I can feel my fingers move. But that’s just phantom limb syndrome. It’ll take a while for all the nerves that went to the arm to realize there’s nothing there and die. Maybe when I get home, Allegra can set me up with a big steel Iron Man mitt. That would scare the ugly off the baddest Lurkers. Sandman Slim, the cyborg nephilim.