Aloha from Hell
By Richard KadreyHarperCollins Publishers
Copyright © 2012 Richard Kadrey
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-171433-7
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
"Tell me," says the Frenchman. "How long has it beensince you last killed anything?"
He's fucking with me. He knows the answer, but he wantsto make me say it. Father Vidocq taking confession.
"I don't know. What time is it?"
"That long, then?"
I shrug.
Vidocq and I are in a very dark room in a very large housefull of very fashionable furniture and we're stealing somethingvery valuable. I have no idea what and pretty muchdon't care. It's just nice to be hanging out and doing somecrimes with the old man. Crimes where no one ends upzombie meat, shot, or annoyingly decapitated.
"It's been a while," I say. "Six. Eight weeks. Somewherearound there."
I slipped us into the house through a shadow. Vidocq isworking on the wall safe. He's good with safes. He's had overa hundred years of practice.
"So, no crusades? No great wrongs that need to berighted?"
I reach into my pocket for a cigarette, then remember theremight be smoke alarms.
"Nothing worth killing for. I'm no cop. The Sub Rosa hastheir own Mod Squad to deal with the small stuff."
I like watching Vidocq work over a safe. He has hands likea surgeon. Nimble. Precise. He could thread a needle whilebeing shot out of a cannon.
"Incroyable. Perhaps you're reaching something ofa rapprochement with your angelic half and it's having amoderating effect on your disposition."
Right. I'm part angel. Half, if you want to get picky aboutit. It's great. A halo and five bucks will get you a cup of coffeein L.A.
"Maybe. The angel screams at me sometimes, mostly atnight when I'm tired and he can ambush me with one of hisGive-Peace-a-Chance, no-smoking, veggie-bacon sermons.But he isn't trying to run the show single-handed anymore.We reached a kind of MAD pact the other day."
Vidocq looks at me.
"MAD?"
"Mutually Assured Destruction. I told him that if he evertried to push me out of my brain and turn me into a cleanliving choirboy again, I'd have to do something, you know,unreasonable."
"Such as?"
"I told him I'd get hammered and go through the Room ofThirteen Doors to the Pearly Gates. Then I'd find the ArchangelGabriel and thunderbolt-kick him in the cojones in frontof all the other angels."
"Whereupon the other angels would draw their swordsand kill you."
"Exactly. Mutually Assured Destruction."
"That sounds much more like the old you."
"Thanks."
Technically, I'm what you call a "nephilim." Half human,half angel. And I'm the only one. The others are all dead.Suicides mostly. Some people call my type freaks. If you're oneof heaven's lapdogs, you'll probably call me "Abomination." Isay, call me either of those things to my face and you'll get tosee what your lungs look like as throw pillows.
The angel half of me got shaken loose a while back whena High Plains Drifter—that's "zombie" to you—bit a chunkout of my hand. The human half of me almost died and theangel half thought that was its chance to take over. It wasfor a while, but then I got my strength back and I lockedthe angel upstairs in the attic like Joan Crawford in "WhateverHappened to Baby Jane?". It still bangs on the door andshouts, but I've learned to ignore it most of the time. Some ofthe time. It depends on the day.
Vidocq goes back to work on the safe. Over his clothes,he's wearing a tailored gray gabardine greatcoat. Looks likehis girlfriend Allegra's been dressing him again. He lookslike the doorman at a speakeasy in the Kremlin. The greatcoattinkles gently when he moves, like he's smuggling windchimes. The sound of the hundred or so little potion bottleshe has sewn into the coat's lining. I have my guns, my knife,and na'at. Vidocq has his potions.
"What exactly are we stealing?" I ask.
"A golden brooch or device in the shape of a scarab. It'squite ancient. There is a clockwork mechanism inside.Perhaps it's God's pocket watch."
"He doesn't need a watch. He needs a compass so he canfind his own ass."
There's a click and the front of the safe swings open.Vidocq moves his hands in a graceful TV-spokesmodel arcin front of the safe.
"Et voilà."
"You are the man, Van Damme."
He squints at me.
"Jean-Claude Van Damme is Belgian, not French."
"There's a difference?"
"Fuck you."
I like how Vidocq pronounces "fuck": "fock."
He whispers, "C'est quoi, ça?"
"Anything wrong?"
"No. It's very interesting. The owner of this safe is a veryparanoid man. The inside is etched with spells and runes."
"Can you still get the swag?"
He flashes a small LED light around the inside of the safe."I don't see anything in here that should stop us. Theymostly seem to be containment spells. He must have beenafraid of this shiny scarab walking away."
He reaches into the safe and pulls out a polished ebonybox the size of a cigar box and pushes up the lid. A beautifulgold scarab lies on blood red silk. He hands me the box andbegins packing his tools. I slip it into my coat pocket.I say, "I have to admit, it doesn't feel bad, but it feels a littleweird not raising a hand in anger this long. I can pretty muchjust talk humans and Lurkers out of doing stupid shit to eachother these days."
"See?" he says from the floor. "By embracing your angelichalf, the mere force of your personality is enough to keep thepeace."
"I think killing all zombies in the world in one nighthelps."
"Yes, that could be a factor."
"And Lucifer and the Vigil aren't around paying me to bea hit man rent-boy bitch."
Vidocq scrolls his gear into a leather tool roll and stands up.I ask him, "Are we cool?"
He smiles and says, "As the North Star on Christmas Eve.
But we aren't quite done."
He takes two potion bottles from inside his coat and pourstheir contents onto the floor where we were standing and onthe safe door, trying to shampoo away any magic or forensicdandruff that might lead back to us. When he tosses thecontents of a third bottle into the safe, I hear the scratching.
"You heard?" he asks.
"Get out of the way, Eugène."
He doesn't. Vidocq has a scientific mind. Instead of gettingout of the way, he looks inside the safe.
It wouldn't be my fault if the back of his stupid Frenchskull blew out like a five-dollar retread, but I pull Vidocq outof the way just before the demon cannonballs out of the safeand hits the far wall.
The demon's carapace gleams like blue-black gun steel.The big bug doesn't have eyes, just two sets of jaws at anangle to each other and two huge hooked front claws. Themoment it hits the wall, it starts tunneling through it. That'swhat this particular type of demon does. It's a digger. A greeddemon. It'll protect anything it thinks it owns. Like the contentsof a safe. It's why the safe had containment spells onthe interior. To keep the demon inside. Smart. Your basic badguys—us, for instance—will maybe test for eaters, but who'sgoing to worry about a brainless digger until it's excavatingthe Panama Canal through your intestines?
Vidocq bumps against the desk when I pull him to his feet.The digger freezes and turns. It's blind but it has great hearing.I can slow my heart and breathing, but in a few secondsthe demon's going to zero in on Vidocq. I step back from him,leaving him exposed to the digger. He turns and looks at mewith wide horrified eyes.
Sorry, man. This is how it has to be.
The digger turns. It has Vidocq's heartbeat. It hooks itstwo huge digging claws into the wall and uses them to sling-shotforward. A metallic blur, four glittering jaws, and armsize hooks going right for the old man's chest. He doesn'tlook at it. He never takes his eyes off me.
As the digger's body blurs across the desk, I whip the na'atout. Twist the grip out from the body into a hair-thin serratedwhipsaw.
The digger hits the na'at like a meteor with teeth. I twistthe na'at's cutting edge into its body and the bug splits in twolengthwise. The halves come apart and smash into the wallon either side of Vidocq, embedding themselves deep into thewood and plaster.
Vidocq swivels his head, checking out the giant insect shanksthat flank him.
I say, "What do you know? I do remember how to killthings. Good news for our side."
"Fuck you, boy."
An alarm goes off when a naked fat man kicks open theoffice door. I'm going to roll the dice and guess he's the homeowner. He points an exquisitely made-over-and-under shotgungun at us. It might even be a Tullio Fabbri. A hundred andseventy-five grand worth of etched steel with a carved walnutstock and accurate as a cruise missile. I'm almost tempted toask him, but his pupils are dilated and I smell the excitementin his sweat because he thinks he's finally going to get to usethat Fort Knox popgun on actual human beings.
Through the angel's senses I hear the infinitesimal scrapeof metal over lubricated metal as the fat man applies pressureto the shotgun's trigger. I grab Vidocq in a bear hug and jumpthrough the window just as the gun goes off.
Davy Crockett here isn't Sub Rosa, but he must knowsome because he has an anti-magic cloak over his house andthe grounds outside. What that means is no one's supposed tobe able to throw any hoodoo or hexes around here. Whoeverbuilt the cloak probably pegged him for a mark right off. Ifigure they got him to pay a bonus to build it big enough tocover the whole estate, the perfect way to turn a cloak intosomething as reliable as a marshmallow condom. Antimagicshields are powerful things when you do them right, and partof that's knowing they can only be so big. Blow them up toomuch and the skin stretches thin. Keep blowing and they canpop right out of existence. That's what Davy the Rube paidfor: a one-hundred-thousand-dollar soap bubble.
The cloak is stretched so thin I can throw all kinds ofhoodoo in here. Like when we climbed the fence onto thegrounds, I could take us into the house through the Roomof Thirteen Doors. But I can't get us off the grounds thatway. Of course, I could have used some hoodoo to wrap DavyCrockett's shotgun around his neck like a mink stoleand swung him around like a carousel pony while I shot theshit out of his office, but I didn't do any of that. Someoneelse might think that would earn them karma points downthe line, but I know better. Karma is just loaded dice on acrooked table. Celestial pricks with wings and halos makethe rules and the house always wins. Always.
So Vidocq and I are falling. Tinkling glass falls with uslike razor-blade snowflakes.
When you're jumping two floors with a civilian whosebroken bones won't heal overnight like your own, you needto remember a couple of things. One, cushion the fall as muchas you can, and two, be prepared to use your body as anair bag. That means controlling the fall enough so the other,usually extremely startled, person lands on top of you. Doesit hurt? Go outside, get a friend to drop a garbage can full ofbacon fat on your chest, and see.
Trying to control a fall is no tea party when you're holdingon to someone who's thrashing around like a Tasered octopus.But it's not impossible. The trick is to grab them justunder the ribs and squeeze so they can't breathe. Then you letgo just as you hit the ground so they breathe out hard whenthey hit. It helps absorb the shock, though it still hurts.Especially if you're the one on the bottom.
There's a tree below Davy's window. I aim for it, rollingus into the branches, hoping it'll slow our fall a little. It does.Coming down into the hedges helps, too. We still have somemomentum to burn off, so I keep rolling and we end up onthe lawn that Davy was kind enough to lay out with fresh softsod in the last few days. Thanks, man. I'll send you a honey-bakedham for Christmas.
I pull Vidocq to his feet and we run for the wall like acouple of spooked raccoons. I look back over my shoulderand Davy is standing in the broken window with the shotgunat his shoulder. Wishful thinking. We're too far away for himto hit anything but the air.
Don't sweat it, Davy. Vidocq and I aren't going to touchyour safe or wreck your office again. But I might have tocome back some night for that Tullio Fabbri and you can tryto shoot me with something else. I am in severe need of some-thing like that. It's so quiet and peaceful out here I'm gettingbored with breathing. Maybe we'll get lucky and the worldwill go to Hell again. Fingers crossed.
(Continues...)Excerpted from Aloha from Hell by Richard Kadrey. Copyright © 2012 by Richard Kadrey. Excerpted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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