Aloha from Hell

The street is full of stalls, and raiders make the place almost look like regular Hell. But it’s not and I still don’t know where I am. It looks like Eleusis’s wall goes all the way around Griffith Park from the 101 on one side and the Golden State Freeway on the other. I can still see the Observatory asylum dead north. If someone around here had a cannon, they could shoot me straight up the hill and I’d be there. I need to find one of the tourist roads. If I tried climbing the damned hill through the trees, I’d still be going an hour after the universe ended. I need some elevation to get my bearings.

A few Kissi wander through the crowd. They trail raiders, making them jittery and paranoid and looking for a fight. They whisper to merchants who start screaming arguments with their customers. There’s one on a side street tossing lit matches into empty windows. Nothing’s caught yet, but give it time. I don’t dare try to scare them off. I don’t want to give myself away and I’m too weak to threaten them.

Right now the hard thing is keeping my head straight andv> straigh my thoughts focused. Muninn’s egg isn’t going to last forever. I can feel an edge of pain in my arm already. Maybe that’s normal and maybe it’s a sign the egg is wearing off. This is the first time I’ve been dismembered. I’m not an expert. I stumble against a table. Booze, cigarettes, and bottles of potions clatter against each other. A few fall. I bend down like I’m helping pick things up, but I’m really trying to pocket a pack of Maledictions. The owner comes around the stall and yells at me, punctuating his point by kicking me on the left side, where I can’t do anything about it.

I come to a large intersection. Eleusis isn’t burning, but L.A. glows like coal and spits fire into the sky. I duck into a four-story parking garage. The bottom floor is set up like a squatter camp. There are pagans and crazies from up the hill, cook fires and tents. The place stinks from bodies and waste. I go up the ramp to the second floor. There are fewer people and no one bothers me. I keep climbing.

The third floor is trashed, almost like a bomb went off. Every inch is blackened and scorched. It doesn’t look like a bomb. More like a fire, one big enough and hot enough so it didn’t leave anything but half-melted car frames. I’m exhausted after walking from the stadium. I find a spot in the dark back by the elevators and lie down. The cool concrete feels good against my head. I’m glad Alice isn’t here to see me like this. It might shake her confidence in my knight-in-shining armor act.

The air is relatively clean up here, but I still get whiffs of the body stink from down below. One smell doesn’t belong—the overwhelming vinegar reek. I tilt up my head and Josef is standing on the melted frame of a MINI Cooper.

“This isn’t exactly the progress I was hoping to find,” he says.

“Get out of here, man. Someone’s going to see you.”

“So? Do you think any of the mob out there would be willing or able to do anything about it?”

“My point is, I don’t want to find out. No loose ends. Remember?”

I sit up and lean my back against the wall. Josef looks at my empty sleeve and shakes his head.

“You’re ridiculous. Crippled. Locked up by idiots and robbed by a dead psychopath.” He kicks some loose rocks from near his feet and uncovers a pair of crushed reading glasses. “We’re tired of waiting. We’re coming in now.”

“Be my guest.”

He picks up the glasses and holds them over his eyes, squinting through the lenses. They must not be his prescription. He makes a face and tosses them out over the wall.

“Aren’t you going to try and talk me out of it?”

“No. Be my guest. Pandemonium is that way and ighhat wayso are about ninety percent of Hell’s legions. If you and your friends think you can take on a million or so Hellion soldiers all by yourselves, be my guest.”

He leans in close, bringing his stink with him.

“You don’t think we can handle these Hellion idiots?”

“Maybe when there weren’t enough in one place for a decent tailgate party, but these boys have just about put the original rebel angel legions back together.”

“So? They lost their war in Heaven and now even Lucifer is gone. They’re weak.”

“Yeah, but there’s the other thing.”

“What?”

“Do you have a cigarette?”

He reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a pack of regular human cigarettes. Never count on a Kissi to give you what you really want. I light the cigarette with Mason’s lighter and pull the smoke deep into my lungs. It’s better than nothing and it helps cover up Josef’s smell.

“You said there was something else,” Josef says.

“Do you ever watch the Discovery Channel? They had a show on where a colony of little tiny red ants all got together and killed a full-grown wolf. See my point?”

“No.”