BACK AT VIGIL headquarters things are settling down. Agents are cleaning up the wreckage from the earthquake. Rain still pours through the hole in the roof. It’s gotten worse since I was gone.
I head for the Shonin’s lab.
The door is off the hinges and a -couple of agents stand guard. They stop me when I try to go in.
“Shonin. It’s Stark.”
“Is your belly too big to fit through the door, tubby? Come in here.”
The agents give me a look that tells me I won’t get on the group insurance plan anytime soon. I go into the lab.
The Shonin is looking a little better than when I first found him. He’s sitting upright in a desk chair holding a cup of tea. He sets it down when he sees me.
“Your friend. The young Jade. She’s gone, isn’t she?”
“Must have escaped in all the excitement.”
“Marshal Wells won’t be pleased.”
“He’s got his own problems.”
“Like me,” he says, waving around his crushed arm.
“A little while ago, you told me I was the 8 Ball’s uncle. Is there some way we can use that?”
He picks up the teacup and studies it.
“You have something that the Angra need. And I don’t mean the Qomrama.”
“I have a gun, a knife, and a video store. What the hell do they want with me?”
He sips the tea.
“Tell me about your old Hellion master, Azazel.”
“He bought and paid for me when I was still in the arena. I still had to fight sometimes, but from then on I also had to play slave boy to one of the most powerful Hellions Downtown.”
“You were his assassin.”
“Yeah. Mainly other upper--crust Hellions. Anyone with pull. Anyone who pissed him off or got in his way.”
“His political enemies.”
“Right.”
“He told you this?”
“No. But it was obvious. I was only killing off other generals and blue bloods. Hellions that had Lucifer’s ear. Hellions are like Sub Rosas. Heavy into social status. Azazel wanted to be number one. Right behind the boss himself.”
“And all the years you were killing for him you had the key to the Room of Thirteen Doors inside you. You could have escaped Hell at any time.”
“He told me that my old girlfriend Alice was safe as long as I stayed. Then she was dead and I knew he’d been lying. So I killed him, came home, and went after Mason. What’s this got to do with anything?”
He tries to pick up the tea, but his hand is shaky. He bumps it and the cup lands on the floor.
“Shit,” he says.
“Don’t cling to things,” I say. “That’s Buddhism 101.”
“Fuck you, fatty. Talk to me about clinging when the last of your tea is gone.”
“Why do you care about Azazel?”
“The universe is a very big place,” he says. “Even Gods need roads to cross it. Do you understand?”
“What? The Angras need a good deal on a rental car? Let them join AAA.”
The Shonin tries to pick up his broken teacup. I get it for him.
He says, “Think about it. Thirteen Angra. Thirteen roads. Thirteen entrances and exits. Now does it make sense?”
“The Room of Thirteen Doors? The Angra want it?”
“The book implies that it was the Angra who built it. It’s their crossroads. They lost control of the key when God, your friend Muninn and his ilk, banished them. In the long aeons since, the key ended up in Hell.”
“And then it ended up in me.”
The Shonin wipes his cup on his torn robes.
“I wonder if Azazel knew what the key really was.”
Things are falling into place. My whole past.
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Hell, he might have started the whole Angra cult in Hell. He put the key in me to keep it from his enemies. Used to me to kill off all the Hellions who fought him on his plan to commit mass suicide.”
The Shonin looks at me with his big empty eye sockets.
“He invented you. He invented Sandman Slim to destroy the universe.”
I feel a little queasy inside, like when I was looking at Mason’s game board.
“It would probably have worked if Mason hadn’t killed Alice.”
“Now Mason has brought down the Angra to destroy us all. And he used you to do it. Quite a revenge.”
“Mason was right all along. He was the better magician.”
“That’s all you have to say, fatty? No bluster? Nothing clever?”
“How do I stop it?”
He sets the teacup on the desk. There’s a fine crack running from the lip to the base.
“Lock yourself in the Room and blow your brains out so no one else can use it. You can’t stop the Angra from coming, but you can stop them from spreading across the universe.”
“As long as I can burn all of creation with the Mithras, I’m not offing myself.”
I look up at the rain coming down through the ceiling. The clouds open to reveal the stars beyond. The twinkly bastards look kind of ominous to me right now.
“On the other hand, your stupid idea gives me a good one.”
“Tell me,” says the Shonin.
“Later. If you eat all your vegetables. Right now I need all the protective wards and sealing charms you have.”
The Shonin waves a bony hand at me.
“Idiot. You can’t seal the Room. You need it to fight the Angra. Or are you going to barricade yourself in and let the rest of us die?”
“Crawl back in your tomb, Imhotep. As long as Candy is alive, you assholes get to live. But I need something else now that Mason is dead.”
“What?”
“I stopped the 8 Ball from letting all the Angra in. That was a mistake. The only way to beat them is to get them here. How do I do it?”
“I won’t help you do something that insane.”
I reach across him to the vials sitting on his desk.
“Fine. I’ll drink the rest of your damned book. I hope it doesn’t kill me before I find what I need.”
The Shonin reaches for the potions.
“Tell me your plan and maybe I’ll help.”
I hold the bottles out of his reach.
“First you tell me: Who are you working for? The Vigil or the world?”
He looks at me.
“I didn’t sit in a tomb for four hundred years to be a dog for bureaucrats. I work for the world.”
I give him back the vials and tell him my idea. He isn’t happy, but he doesn’t say no.
Another tremor shakes the building. -People scream. Rubble shifts. I have to grab the Shonin and the book to keep them from falling on the floor. The lights go out.
I look up at the cracked ceiling. Lightning rips across the dark and something huge tears the sky open. Stars flutter and wink out. The sky around the rip is pitch black. It doesn’t last long, but something like smoke and bones slips out of the breach before it reseals itself.
The lights come back on.
“You’re with me on this?”
“Go. Do what you need to do,” says the Shonin.
With all the rubble around, there are plenty of nice shadows. I step through one and head Downtown.
I COME OUT by the elevators in Mr. Muninn’s penthouse. Lucifer’s penthouse. I’ll always have a hard time thinking of him as the Devil. I should never have guilted him into taking the job. He’s not cut out for it and now I might have to ask him to do something worse.
Chaya is by the big picture window watching the red rain fall. I clear my throat and he turns my way.
“How dare you break in here?”
“I didn’t break in. Mr. Muninn said I could come in whenever I wanted.”
“Muninn. You don’t even know his real name.”
“He goes by Muninn and that’s good enough for me.”
“Not for me.”
Chaya sweeps his hand across the room and I’m Peter Pan doing a clumsy air pirouette, before slamming into the far wall and hanging there like a mounted moose head.
“I’d say this is what all you ungrateful mortals deserve, but you’re not a mortal, are you? Still, you’re good practice.”