Aloha from Hell

“Just because you’re the wolf at the top of the food chain doesn’t mean you’re bulletproof. You and your pals might be able to wipe out the Hellions, but they won’t go down easy, and by the time you’re done, you’re going to be blind and crippled. That doesn’t sound like the big win to me.”

Josef takes a deep breath and turns his head to the sounds from the street.

“How much longer are we supposed to wait?”

“Just a few more hours. I need to get up this hill and then get General Semyazah. He’s the one guy who can turn this whole thing around.”

“He’s in Tartarus.”

“I know.”

“You think you can help him? How?”

“I’ll tell them I’m the pizza delivery boy. They’ll never suspect a thing.”

“Don’t be cute. No one’s ever returned from Tartarus.”

“Maybe they were going the wrong way.”

His expression changes to genuine interest.

“You know a secret way out?”

I drag off the cigarette. After Maledictions, regular human cigarettes are like inhaling the steam off a cup of herbal tea.

“If you’re so concerned about winning this thing, why don’t you go and do your job and let me do mine? If I’m not back in Pandemonium in, say, twelve hours, you’ll know I’m stuck in Tartarus and I’m not coming back. After that, you can do what you want, but give me the time to do this the smart way.”

He gets closer, picks a bit of lint off my shoulder, and tosses it away.

“This is the last time. The tide is rising and you can’t hold back the sea. Besides, you’re not an easy man to trust.”

“Yeah, but nobody else wants to play our reindeer games, so we’re stuck with each other.”

Josef fingers my empty coat sleeve.

“How are you going to pull this off with only one arm?”

“I’ll manage.”

“Meaning you’re going to let your ego ruin everything.”

“It’s my plan. It’s mine to blow.”

“No, it’s not.”

It’s easy to forget that Kissi are a kind of angel. A factory-second, thrown-in-the-Dumpster-and-left-in-a-landfill angel, but still an awesomely powerful creature.

When Josef grabs me there isn’t a damned thing I can do to fight back. I’m one-handed, off balance, sick, and dizzy. He throws me onto my knees, pulls off my coat, and takes out the black blade. I try to back away, but he grabs my empty left sleeve and pulls me back like a fish on a reel. He slices through the cauterized stump of my arm, reopening the wound. My knees buckle. I hold on to him with my one good hand, trying to get my fingers around his throat or push him off. Something. Anything. He shrugs me off and pins me against the wall. With the black blade he cuts an X on the palm of my right hand and presses my bloody palm to the arm stump.

I’m sicker than ever. Not blacking-out sick or throwing-up sick, but lost in space. Like my body and brain have given up trying to register things like up and down or sane or insane. I keep waiting for the angel in my head to jump in and handle things, but he’s as floored as I am. The stump itches and the nerves that feel like they’re still connected to fingers feel even more li. Aeven moke that. I look to see what’s happening and find something white and pulsating hanging off my body like a giant maggot. Great. Now I’m going to have to change my online dating photo.

The maggot grows veins and arteries. Five twitching tentacle-things wiggle out the end. The maggot shrinks and turns almost black. The veins and arteries toughen until they’re cables within thick dark muscle. Shiny skin glides over and around the growing structures. It shines like metal or a scarab’s carapace. My fingers are delicate but strong, half organic insect and half machine. They flex when I tell them to. I touch each fingertip to thumb, counting one, two, three, four. They move easily. Josef is back by the MINI Cooper wiping my gore off his hands with a white handkerchief.

“That should give you a decent chance of not fucking things up entirely.”

He folds the handkerchief and puts it into a back pocket.

“I could lie and tell you that I can’t make the arm look any more human than that, but we both know I’d be lying. Wear that and don’t forget who your friends are.”

“You’re a Georgia peach.”

The pain and nausea are gone. I stand up. Josef comes over and helps me get my coat back on.

“Get used to your new arm quickly. You have twelve hours from now or we go without you.”

He walks down the ramp and disappears before he reaches the bottom.

I flex and move the arm. Pick up a piece of concrete. Toss it from my good hand to my new one and back again. The biomechanical hand feels pressure, heat, and sharpness, but not like my regular one. It’ll take some getting used to, but it’s better than a burned stump.

The arm isn’t the only thing I have to work out. I don’t know a secret way out of Tartarus. I don’t even know the way in. But I’ll find it, and if hoodoo and bullshit won’t get me out, I’ll hold my breath until I turn blue. That always worked on Mom.