is he going to blow back into town looking like Steve McQueen driving the Batmobile? If he does, I’ll shake his hand and thank him. Take the place back over. Pretend you fixed it all yourself and suck up the applause. Just let me go home and stay there.
I heel up the kickstand and wait, feeling the weight of the Hellion hog against my body. Letting it rattle my bones.
The only thing I’m sicker of than philosophy is philosophers. I bet Epicurus is living free and easy in Eleusis, the province of Hell reserved for righteous pagans. Next time I’ll trade places with him and sip wine with the vestal virgins while Epicurus runs Bedlam’s outhouse for a while. Then you tell me how easy it is to roll with the terrible, you goat- cheese-salad asshole.
I put the bike in gear and roll by the kennels before heading for the garage gate.
I’m leaving by the front door this time. No sneaking out the back. There’s no reason to be subtle. In a palace, rumors are like flying monkeys. Annoying as vegan desserts and hard to stop once they’re airborne. Besides Bill and Semyazah, no one is supposed to know when and where I’m leaving. But of course people do. Everyone in the fucking palace.
Troops from ten Hellion legions are spread out across the lawn when I roll up to street level. They’re dead silent. Dead still. They’re not blocking Lucifer’s way, but they’re not happy to see me rolling out on my own. Someone is going to twitch first. It might as well be me.
I whistle. There’s a low roar and the sound of razored steel on concrete. Shadows lumber up the driveway walls. When the hellhounds reach the surface, they spread out around me, pawing the ground impatiently. They scan the troops, pink brains sloshing in the bell jars where their heads should be. They settle around me in a protective semicircle.
The potion the palace witches whipped up for me we used to call a Sheol Sucker Punch. Technically, it’s a kind of poison, but a very selective one.
When most people see hellhounds, all they see is the machine part. They forget about the brain, usually because when they’re that close, it means a hound is gnawing off their leg. I don’t know where hellhound brains come from, but I know that brains are brains and they need food to work. And any brain that needs food is a brain you can dose. A Sheol Sucker Punch burns out the parts of the brain that control memory but skates around smarts and motor functions. Mostly it resets a brain’s emotional clock back to when it was a newborn. And like every good duckling, the newborns wake up looking for something to imprint on. I made sure it was me. I’m Mom now and the hounds, their gears whirring and pistons pounding, are a loyal pack.
The legions back off but stand their ground. They know not to run. Running makes you prey and no one wants to be prey to a hundred metal hounds.
Some of the troops want to cut my throat. Others stare at me like wounded children. Neither are good looks for crazed killers. I should probably say something, but what am I going to say?
