Which gives me a great view of my friends. Candy is halfway to me and Audsley when I hit the deck. As she runs she transforms. Her nails curve into claws. Her mouth is full of white shark teeth. Her eyes are red slits in black ice. Audsley doesn’t stand a chance.
As she’s tearing him apart, I see the shock on Alessa’s face. I guess Candy didn’t tell her about being a Jade after all. She’s going to have a lot of explaining to do.
Allegra kneels down next to me.
“Stark. Can you hear me?”
All I get out is “Only got me one time. It could have been ten.”
And then I’m dead.
NO, REALLY. I’M dead. I’ve been dead before and I know what it feels like. Except this is weird.
The last time I died, the angel half of me—the immortal Heavenly bit—broke away and ran off to play Robin Hood without human me. That doesn’t happen this time. I feel around for him and he’s there, at the back of my skull, and he’s as pissed off and puzzled as me.
I was right. That sure as shit wasn’t an ordinary knife. Wish I’d gotten a better look at it.
I’m flat on my back on parched ground, but at least I can move now.
I sit up and look around.
Gravestones. A dried-up fountain. A big iron gate out front. I know exactly where I am.
Hollywood Forever Cemetery. My home away from home. Only, this isn’t my Hollywood Forever. There’s only one place this ragged, broken-down version can be. The Tenebrae.
I get to my feet. Nothing to do but what I always do. Walk out the front gate and head for Hollywood.
I don’t get far before I notice Samael next to me.
He’s in an immaculate suit. I’m in my usual ex-con finery.
“I sort of feel like I’m dead. But I can’t be dead.”
“Sorry, but I’m afraid you are.”
“But the angel half of me is still here.”
“I didn’t say it was a natural death.”
We turn up Gower Street. I stop and jab a finger at him.
“I have some serious questions for you about Hesediel.”
“No. I didn’t know she was going to do what she did. But, let’s walk as we talk.”
We take our time getting to the Tenebrae’s open plains.
“I wonder why Abbot didn’t mention the possibility that Ishii would come after me? He’s a scryer. He must have seen the possibility. Did he rat me out?”
“You’re always looking for enemies. Maybe it’s simpler than that. Think.”
I light a Malediction.
“Want one?”
“I can’t. No smoking during working hours.”
“That stinks.”
“Another reason I never wanted to be the angel of death. All the protocol.”
“Maybe you can shake the job up. Loosen your tie. Wear a tracksuit.”
“And have people think they’re being taken to the afterlife by an Eastern European mobster? I don’t think so.”
We turn east on Sunset.
“Have you thought more about Abbot and Ishii?” says Samael.
“Yeah. Maybe Abbot didn’t set me up. Maybe Audsley threw in with Wormwood. Abbot said they were protected from his seeing. Shit. That means they might come for him.”
“That’s not your problem right now.”
“Yeah, but they might go for Candy too.”
Samael stops. Looks at me.
“There’s nothing you can do about any of that at the moment. You really need to concentrate on your current situation.”
“The one where I’m dead.”
“Yes.”
“Well, fuck me.”
We walk out onto the Tenebrae’s endless cracked plains. On one side are the ruins of the ghostly L.A. where I woke up. On the other side are the mountains. Decision time. I have to choose to be nowhere or somewhere.
“Any wisdom you care to throw my way would be much appreciated.”
“Just be yourself. It’s what you do best.”
“That’s it? You sound like a high school guidance counselor.”
Samael sighs.
“Death has never stopped you before. Why should it stop you now?”
The door to Hell opens in the side of the mountain.
Nowhere or somewhere?
My Malediction went out on the long walk over. I take out the pack to get another one.
It’s empty.
I ball up the pack and toss it away. Samael watches it roll to the horizon on the light breeze.
“Littering. What a classy way to start eternity.”
I look at the mountains.
“I guess I’ll be seeing you around.”
“You’re going in, then?”
I shrug.
“Can’t spend eternity without smokes.”
“I’ll walk you over.”
It always takes a while to reach the mountains.
I look at Samael in his suit.
“Just the two of us walking along like this, it would be a perfect time to make a Casablanca joke.”
“Please don’t.”
“‘Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’”
“I take back what I said. Don’t be yourself. You’ll make everybody else in Hell miserable.”
“That’s the idea. And when they’re good and sick of me, they’ll kick me out and I’ll go home.”
“See? You always have a plan.”
“Death can’t hold me.”
“I never said I could.”
Samael gives me a sympathetic pat on the back and I go inside.
The door to Hell rumbles closed behind me.
Home sweet home.
Only it isn’t.
Where are the sorting pens for new souls? For that matter, where are the other new souls?
And where the hell is Pandemonium?
I turn in a slow circle, looking for familiar landmarks, but come up empty.
Where did Samael leave me? Is this a favor? Mr. Muninn’s punishment for wrecking his playpen? Or is it someone’s idea of a joke?
Cupping my hands, I yell, “Olly olly oxen free.”
Nothing comes back, not even an echo.
There’s nothing but jagged lava peaks overlooking a dusty valley. My boots crunch on razor-sharp stones as I walk around the ledge where I came out.
Something hisses behind me.
I whirl around, my hand going under my coat for my na’at. But it’s not there.
Right. I’m dead. All of my weapons are back with my body. It doesn’t matter. The sound behind me was just a fine rain of black stone slipping down the face of the mountain.
I pull up my left sleeve. My Kissi arm is gone too. It’s all me in here, just one more asshole soul out for a stroll in paradise.
Far across the valley, a dust plume rises into the dim sky.
My hand goes in my pocket for my phone, but it isn’t there either. Dumb move. A stupid reflex. I’ll have to watch that if I’m going to be here for a while, and I have a bad feeling I’m going to be.
To my left are the remains of an old trail cut into the lava stone. It looks steep and slick and dangerous, but from what I can see, it’s the only way down.
Unless my eyes are playing tricks on me, the dust plume is heading in my direction, which raises all kinds of fun questions. Is it a storm? A lost pack of stampeding hellhounds? Maybe it’s the damned souls of old Rockettes rehearsing a new show.
Yeah. Let’s go with that.
A couple of steps in the direction of the trail, my foot comes down on something soft. It’s a pack of Maledictions. I pick it up and put it in my pocket. Now I know someone is fucking with me. They left me smokes, but no way to light them since my lighter is back with my na’at in L.A. Nothing I can do about it now.
I head down the trail.
The dust plume is definitely moving toward me. It looks less like the Rockettes and more like a hurricane with every passing second. Nothing else moves. Everything in the v
alley is dead except for that roiling dust. It’s hypnotic. Kind of pretty in an End of Days kind of way. I suppose I could stay up here on this peak and be nowhere or take another chance and be somewhere. Maybe I’ll get lucky and the wind will carry me home to Dorothy and the Tin Man.
I walk down the mountain, heading straight into the storm.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
New York Times bestselling author RICHARD KADREY has published eleven novels, including Sandman Slim, Kill the Dead, Aloha from Hell, Devil Said Bang, Kill City Blues, The Getaway God, Killing Pretty, Dead Set, Butcher Bird, and Metrophage, and more than fifty stories. He has been immortalized as an action figure, his short story “Good-bye Houston Street, Good-bye” was nominated for a British Science Fiction Association Award, and his novel Butcher Bird was nominated for the Prix Elkaban in France. The acclaimed writer and photographer lives in San Francisco, California.
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ALSO BY RICHARD KADREY
The Everything Box
Metrophage
Dead Set
Sandman Slim Novels
Killing Pretty
The Getaway God
Kill City Blues
Devil Said Bang
Aloha from Hell
Kill the Dead
Sandman Slim
CREDITS
Cover design by Crush Creative (crushed.co.uk)
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE PERDITION SCORE. Copyright © 2016 by Richard Kadrey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition JUNE 2016 ISBN 9780062373281
ISBN: 978-0-06-237326-7
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