The Dirty Streets of Heaven

around like a pinball, and then suddenly everything went dark.

How do I know the explosion was down in the ballroom? Because if you were going to make sure the summit conference didn’t continue, where else would you put a bomb except in the room where it was happening, the only room big enough in the hotel? Eligor’s own hotel.

He blew up his own fucking hotel! I remember thinking as I stood very still, trying to figure out if there was structural damage to the elevator and shaft or if it had only stopped because the power went out. But I came as close to admiring a murderous bastard of a demon-lord as I can get. Eligor the Horseman had cojones, I had to give him that. There was a lesson in this for me, too; I’d been trying to imagine how he’d get it done and hadn’t even considered that he might just blow the shit out of his own joint and kill a few dozen people at the very least, not to mention seriously inconveniencing hundreds of his closest allies. I’d seen how crowded that lobby was and couldn’t even imagine the scene now. I would never underestimate him again.

Eventually, I pushed up the emergency hatch on the top of the elevator and climbed out, then reached up in the dark. I seemed to be only a short distance under the next floor, so I braced myself against the walls of the shaft and worked my way upward until I could perch close enough to the door to work on it. It was hard to find leverage, but at last I got my fingers into the crevice and pulled it far enough apart to risk scrambling over and out. The escape was a lot hairier than I would have liked-it was pitch black, and even though the elevator was blocking the shaft, that was only in the spot just beneath me. If I didn’t manage to stay on top of my particular elevator I could have a straight drop to the basement. Anyway, I managed at last to clamber out onto the floor, covered with greasy carbon stains, the muzzle of my gun causing a permanent groin bruise through the inside of the pocket.

Some emergency lights came on now, casting a dull red-dare I say hellish? — glow over everything, so that even with my better-than-average sight I had to get real close before I could be certain I was on the third floor. Sam’s room was on the next floor up so I headed for the stairs. The stairwell was crowded with overstimulated people, most of them hurrying down toward the lobby before the hotel fell over or something, others in just as much of a hurry to get away from the lower floors where the explosion had happened. I smelled smoke but hadn’t yet seen any sign of fire, though the other guests looked and acted like terrified animals. There’s nothing like sudden disaster to deliver humans back to their original state of being, and even if you’re a demon or an angel vacationing in a human body, it works pretty much the same way.

I found Sam sitting in the open doorway of his room pulling his loafers on. I dropped down beside him because I wanted to tie my own shoes properly. I had a gun, yes, but no socks, no flashlight, no shirt, and no wallet. It’s hard to be prepared for a major explosion in your hotel, but I’d definitely dropped the ball.

“So, you don’t need a new body yet?” Sam asked.

“Not yet, but give me another ten minutes. Eligor’s men are going to be looking for me and I’m sure they’d like to change that.” Actually, I thought they were more likely to want to capture me if Caz had been telling the truth, and their boss still didn’t have the feather, but I didn’t want to waste time explaining everything.

Sam had the good grace not to ask any difficult questions, just climbed to his feet and slapped the place under his coat to let me know he was armed. “They might get an argument, then.”

I felt ten times better just knowing he and I were together. Not only wouldn’t I be worrying about what had happened to him, I knew from long, firsthand experience that he was exactly the right kind of guy to get into and out of trouble with-good thinker, good shot, good liar.

“So I’m guessing we want to go down where the other people are, if someone’s after you,” he said.

It took me a second to answer. “Yeah, sort of. Follow me to the stairs…”

Flashlight beams were now sweeping the wall at the far end of the corridor. The hallway had cleared in the half a minute since I’d gotten there, so whoever was coming with all those lights had deliberately forced their way upstream against the fleeing guests. In other words, they were almost certainly bad news.

Even as I yanked at Sam’s sleeve they appeared around the corner at the end of the hall; big, hunched figures wearing heavy gear and some kind of night-vision goggles that protruded from their faces like the eyestalks on a snail. Sam and I legged it the opposite direction, back to the stairwell I had used to get there. We opened the door as quietly as we could, but Eligor’s men must have been using amplification devices, or else they just had extra-good hearing. Muzzles flashed in our direction and we heard the stuttering, ripsaw noise of automatic fire as we dove through the door and slammed it behind us.

“Hold on a second,” I said.

“Not a good idea,” Sam replied.

“Just let me…” I finally got the extended magazine out of my gun and thumbed the silver slugs out of it, back into my pocket. Then I leaned out into the stairwell and tossed the empty magazine onto one of the steps above us “They’ve got infrared goggles-they’ll spot it. Maybe they’ll think we went that way.” And they would also take note that I had a large hand gun, which couldn’t do anything worse for us than make our pursuers a bit more cautious.

As we sprinted down the stairs past the third floor and heading for the second, I said, “We need to get out of this building fast. The next floor down’s the mezzanine, right over the ballroom, and if it’s even still standing it’ll be full of firemen, and who knows what else.”

“So why do you want to go that way?”

“Because we’re going to sneak out the back.” I fought to get my breath. “Out to the marina.” The hotel had its own little harbor, because more than a few of the Ralston’s guests liked to arrive in expensive watercraft.

“Why?” Sam was panting, too. Our conversation sounded a bit like we were both being strenuously massaged. “We going to steal a yacht?”

“Better. Now shut up. I’m trying to read my phone.”

We dashed out onto the second floor, which was empty but full of hanging dust and the smell of burning. I hoped it was all from downstairs and that we wouldn’t suddenly find ourselves caught between Eligor’s security goons and a wall of fire. The only good thing was that the group chasing us had been comparatively small, no more than half a dozen men. Twice that number had probably gone to my floor but they would find out pretty quickly I wasn’t there. If the Grand Duke hadn’t been so busy making a point, watching Caz tell me off without even bothering to intervene, he might have called his men and told them I was out in front of the hotel. At least, that was the only reason I could see that he’d let me walk away when I was right there for the taking.

We sprinted through the second floor’s wide hallways past various meeting rooms and got to the end and the other fire stairs just as someone kicked open the stairwell door we’d exited. A spray of gunfire spattered the wall just to our right and petered out across the ceiling.

“Stop!” someone shouted. “This is the police! You can’t escape! Drop your weapons and lie down.”

“If that’s the police,” Sam grunted as we wrestled open the door to the stairs, “then I’m the Little Drummer Boy.”

I plunged down the stairs with my big buddy right behind me. “We have to find a way out to the marina without going near the lobby, ‘cause everything there’s blown to shit.”

“There’s an escalator on this floor that leads to the pool,” Sam said. “We can get to the boats without having to go near the lobby end.”

I heard the stairwell door open above us, a spatter of gunfire, then curses. The shots must have been accidental. One of the bullets actually pinged down the walls past us, kicking up gouts of plaster, shredding the wall hangings.

The first floor wasn’t damaged at this end, but the smoke and dust were even thicker, and the far end at the front of the hotel was clearly on fire, flames gleaming through the gray haze. I could hear screams now, and not just the agitated voices of rescue crews, but honest to God screams of pain and terror. I did my best to pretend that it wasn’t my fault-all this destruction and carnage just so Eligor could catch me.

But had Eligor really set off a bomb just so he could catch me off guard? Surely there were easier ways he could have done it-waited until tomorrow then thrown a cordon around the hotel being one obvious way. Why blow up the place?

Because he wants the conference stopped, I realized as we hurried toward the escalator. Bobby Dollar was only part of what was bugging the Grand Duke. The whole discussion was getting too close to things he didn’t want discovered-especially if he had made a deal with someone in the heavenly hierarchy. His fellow demon lords would forgive any kind of murder or treachery but they would never forgive a deal with the enemy.