Read Online Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel by Richard Kadrey - Free Book Online

amused to know that Medea Bava went into hiding with them.”
    Medea Bava was the Sub Rosa’s Inquisition. Their ultimate enforcer. The lone-wolf cop who handed out life sentences in a little place called Tartarus, the Hell below Hell, where souls were burned to stoke the celestial furnaces. It was a place no one ever escaped from. Only I escaped and I took all the other lunatics in the asylum out with me. After that, Medea disappeared. I hate her almost as much as Aelita.
    Muninn sighs.
    “She lost faith in me—the God part, at least—when you destroyed Tartarus, so she joined Deumos and the sisters. Another voice lost in the wilderness.”
    “Fuck Medea. She’s not a voice anyone needs in their head, especially you. She’s as crazy as Aelita. Deumos is the only one of the bunch who’s sane, and she’s completely deluded. And Merihim is just a power-hungry prick. He’s long overdue for a hard fall down a long flight of stairs, if you get my drift.”
    “I’m afraid I do.”
    “I don’t know how he did it, but Merihim used to crank-call me in L.A. after I left here.”
    “He was upset with how you left things.”
    “Cry me a river, pal,” I say. “Isn’t there something you can do to get Merihim and the church under control and off Deumos’s back?”
    “That would be taking sides.”
    “Fine. Then stop them both and make them play nice.”
    He looks around, uncomfortable. Slams his fist down on the arm of the chair.
    “It’s not that simple,” Muninn shouts.
    It’s the first time I’ve heard him raise his voice about anything.
    “You never understood how being a ruler works, James. And you have no idea what a deity is. You want me to make myself known and manifest to humankind. Do you really think that would solve anything? Or would it make things worse? You, like Samael, want total free will for the angels.”
    Muninn sweeps his arms out to the broken landscape of Hell.
    “Behold. That is what angelic free will looks like.”
    “That’s not fair. You took the worst of the worst, the losers and the rat-fuck crazies, and locked them at the shit-pit bottom of the universe. There was no way they were ever going to build anything but this.”
    “That’s also Samael’s argument. You two are so much alike.”
    “I’m not anything like Samael.”
    Muninn leans forward in his chair.
    “Really? Does that wound in your side hurt?”
    “It’s nothing.”
    “Of course it is.”
    He looks at Candy.
    “Samael walked around for millennia bleeding from a wound I gave him during the first Heavenly war. All he ever had to do was ask and I would have healed him.”
    Candy gives me a look.
    “That does sound familiar.”
    “Samael and I aren’t anything alike.”
    Muninn looks at Candy.
    “He’ll bleed with that bullet in him until the end of time before he’ll ask for help.”
    “What if I ask?” Candy says.
    Muninn raises his eyebrows.
    “Ah. Here’s someone unburdened by the sin of pride.”
    “Don’t you dare,” I say to Candy.
    “Too late,” says Muninn. “Here.”
    He puts something in my hand. The bullet.
    Candy leans over to look at it.
    “And what do we say when someone magically heals us?”
    “I didn’t ask him to.”
    She smiles at Muninn.
    “He says, ‘Thank you very much, Mr. Muninn.’ ”
    “I hope you’ll forgive me for snatching away your martyrdom, James,” Muninn says.
    “That’s okay. You I can forgive but the idiot who put it in there and whoever he works for I don’t. Or his bastard brother.”
    “Will you be seeing Wild Bill while you’re here?”
    “Next visit. When I’m not on the clock.”
    Candy holds out her hand.
    “Can I have the bullet?”
    “What, are you a crow all of a sudden? You want all the shiny things.”
    “I wanted the money clip because it was pretty. I want the bullet because you’re going to conveniently lose it somewhere and I want to keep it.”
    “What for?”
    “Who knows? Maybe when you get shot again I’ll make you