[28] Backflipping Offa Tony Hawk's NOSE
They hurled her into a courtroom on the lower levels of Pandaemonium and guess who already sat in the witness bench? John Verschrikkelijk. She'd already guessed it, although she didn't quite know how he knew about her "performance of acts that may draw God's eye upon devilry" (did they make up that charge on the spot?) until with a gleeful giggle he pulled from—somewhere—a rolled-up newspaper that he gradually unfurled and opened to large advertisement promising a televised miracle.
"In fifty years I'll be fodder huh?" John said. "That so Fidi? I'll be fodder? I'll see your blood paint the walls first. COVER THE EARTH! Yihihihihi!"
"You petty shitgobbler, that's why you ratted me out?"
He shrugged. "Plus the perks."
Right. Devil judges were all Pride guys. They craved a public theater in which they could demonstrate their ineffable power not merely as judge, but also jury and executioner. Except devil cops were all Wrath guys who loved extrajudicial killings, so the two ends of Hell's justice system were at perpetual odds. Hot tips on crimes that led to a live arrest went well-rewarded.
Even so a few things didn't add up. Even if John sniffed out her connection to the newspaper ad, the crimes with which they charged her were extremely specific. No way they discerned everything from the ad alone. Somebody must have scried on Earth to figure out the truth. Not just any devil could do that, which meant somebody powerful took John's accusation seriously enough to waste their precious time on it.
On the flip side, they wasted zero time hauling her to Pandaemonium, processing her through the system, and chucking her in court. No more than an hour must've passed since her arrest. For Hell that was extraordinarily fast. Why were they taking this so seriously? If Mayfair did something to "draw God's eye," wasn't Perfidia already the convenient scapegoat? What could "devilry" be doing in secret that even God's briefest, most tentative glance might unveil, that would provoke his ire more than any other ordinary devil activity? Kedeshah mentioned a reason behind the tightened quotas—Divinity. But that had to be impossible. Had to be.
Perfidia glanced back at the accumulated mass of spectators clumped atop one another, awaiting the trial to begin. She hated to rely on him, but Ubik wouldn't let them take her lying down. Pandaemonium was a difficult place to enter uninvited, but he had Kedeshah and sooner or later he'd find a way. She hoped. It was, essentially, her only possible hope.
A servant of the court, more ruffle than devil, plodded to the fore. Calling attention to itself via thunderous clearing of phlegm, it held up and unraveled a gilded scroll. Eyes closed and nose high, it began: "All assembled! Please rise for the Grand Judge of this most illustrious and dignified court—" Its eyes opened, read the name, blanched, and with all pomposity dead stammered: "Prince—Prince Beelzebub, Lord of Envy."
The crowd went dead quiet. Not a sound, not a whisper, not even a gasp. The servant of the court, blank in the eyes, unconsciously rolled up the scroll and tottered away on uneven legs. On the witness bench, John lost his smile—and his color. Let alone the havoc wreaking itself upon Perfidia's thudding heart.
In the dark, cavernous expanse behind the podium where the judge was supposed to preside, a slow but heavy clicking sound emerged. A wisp in the shadow: a gigantic, scythelike arm extended, then lowered to strike the floor before the carapace of the creature behind it dragged itself forward. The glint of tremendous compound eyes shone before the insect face emerged: the face of a fly. Soon afterward shimmered incandescent wings, too small to carry the preponderance of exoskeleton that comprised the full form.
Beelzebub. Lieutenant to Satan himself. Second of the Seven Princes. Once cherubim, traces remained of his former structure, lurking deep with the rounded edges of his shell, but now he was terrible to behold. Beelzebub. They sent Beelzebub. Grand judges were usually venerable old devils, older than Perfidia at least, but one of the Seven Princes? That was an extreme measure, more than an extreme measure. Perfidia's case truly reached the tippy top.
The grand judge's bench was parodically tall because grand judges always had to elevate themselves as much at possible, but Beelzebub towered over it nonetheless. He almost reached the arched ceiling, the top of his slowly tilting head scraping insensibly against the ornate gargoyles set to harangue any unfortunate defendant who dared look up. The two scythe arms slid out and curled around the bench as Beelzebub's head lowered and the segments of his bulbous eyes focused upon her.
Would've been easy to die of fright right then and there. Perfidia blinked once, though, and thought: It's not that much worse than Kedeshah. Not that much. And sure, Kedeshah was owned by Ubik, but Beelzebub was owned by Satan. Which was the only reason he could be here: Satan ordered it. This thought wasn't super reassuring in a vacuum but Perfidia had seen Satan once before and survived; somehow the logic worked and her breathing settled to a semblance of normalcy.
"Perfidia... Bal... Berithzz," Beelzebub buzzed. His voice was falsetto pitched and marred by lisp. Of course, if you laughed, you died. "You are charged withzz... Crimezz againzzt Hell. Hm. How very vague. Oh I zzee. There'zz more. Zzuch zzmall print..."
The compound eyes strained and Perfidia realized they were not looking at her but some paper on the judge's bench. Eventually Beelzebub produced a pair of tiny spectacles and held them over his eyes.
"Irrezzponzzible uzze of devil magic... performanzze of actzz that may draw—Unnamable'zz—eye upon devilry... and lying to a cuzztomzz agent. Verily? Thezze are your chargezz? Alazz."
The buzzing made him occasionally incomprehensible, worsened by the accompanying buzzing of flies that swarmed around his hulk, building into a thicker cloud every moment he remained in the same spot, until he exuded a flickering black aura that John—the one closest to him—had to crouch and cover his head to avoid.
"Many may azzk why I, Lord Beelzebub, am here. The way I zzee it, there izz nothzzing a trumped-up hoity-toity judge can do that I cannot... I zzuppozze it izz befitting zzat I wazz zzent here today to prezzide over this mozzt important trial. Perfidia Bal Berithzz, your guilt izz not in quezztion. We have more than enough evidenzze for your immediate annihilation. Already we have dizzpatched an elite team to Earthzz to eradicate all trazze of your... error."
So they sent somebody to kill Mayfair. That made sense. Then why—
"What we muzzt know, what thizz trial is intended to anzzwer, izz how you created that error in the firzzt plazze... and whethzzer there zzhall be any furthzzer errorzz."
Okay. Perfidia started to piece it together. The Seven Princes were up to something, something big, something they couldn't risk God seeing. Her fuckup with Mayfair threatened to bring God's attention to what devils were doing, so it needed to be fixed as soon as possible. From John's testimony and their scrying, they'd learned about Mayfair and her staff. But they didn't know how Perfidia did it.
Somehow, within this vortex of shit and the flies that feasted on it, Perfidia managed a real, genuine smile.
They didn't know how she did it. This trial was an interrogation to figure out how, because they were worried whatever she did might happen again. She discovered a loophole they had to close.
She did. She! Perfidia Bal Berith. Casually, in no grand manner. Simply to accommodate some old British guy's wish in the 1600s. He wanted a world of knights and kings and righteous chivalry and she provided. To her, it'd been simple logic: If it costs too much to make these changes in the real world, then make a fake world where she could do whatever she wanted free of charge. Suddenly, stepping back, viewing exactly what had happened from this new angle, she was aware of her genius. Imagine! All this time, devils were spending fractions of their take to produce the wishes humans demanded: fame, love, health, but also physical things like money and fortune. Every devil knew the lottery loophole but what devil had the smart idea to build a whole other world where they might create a metric ton of gold for nothing and then transport it into the real world? (Honestly, not even Perfidia realized she could use her fake world in such a way until now.) All you needed was the initial startup cost of creating the Door between Earth and the other world—And here she'd introduced something impossible to Earth, a staff that reanimated the dead.
No other devil thought this way in all of history, apparently. She'd considered the idea so rudimentary she never considered it a point of Pride, but now—here—in this court, with the Seven Princes themselves called forth to persecute her...!
"Eradicate that zzmug exprezzion thizz inzztant!" Beelzebub buzzed. "What are you pozzibly so pleazzed about?"
"My method. My novel method, that only I—"
"Pah! We know all about your methzzod already. We zzaw that 'Door.' Nothzzing zzpecial! Otherzz have been created before... Zzzz! You Prideful typezz... alwayzz believing yourzzelvezz zzuch unparalleled geniuzzezz... Conzzider it wazz Pride that left our kind deprived of divine bounty in the firzzt plazze! Novel methzzod... novel. All of you in the crowd, laugh at thizz idiot!"
Silence.
"Laugh! If Zzatan commanded you to laugh, you'd laugh... laugh for me too!"
A few dry, forced, nervous chuckles. Beelzebub was nonetheless satisfied. Perfidia's incipient, sheltered little bead of Pride got smooshed. This was becoming a trend, she thought morosely.
"No, the izzue izz thuzz: Your 'Door' hazz two keyzz. We looked into your hizztory of Humanity expenditurezz... you created one key when you firzzt made the Door and a zzecond key only two weekzz ago. If your error came to Earthzz uzzing one key... then where is the zzecond?"
That made a lot more sense. They couldn't account for the second key, which meant they were worried something else would come through the Door—or that something already had. Mayfair possessed the key Perfidia created recently. Shannon Waringcrane possessed the older key. Or at least she did two weeks ago. Perfidia knew nothing past that.
They didn't know Perfidia knew nothing past that.
"Ah." She spoke with as much confidence as she could muster, mingled with the right amount of performative falsity to suggest she still rightly feared the penultimate devil before her. (She did.) "Were I to provide information on this second key and who holds it, could I be given some sort of amnesty for my crimes?"
So that was why they were doing this as a trial instead of a torture session. Devils were the best torturers in the business, but they were also the most immune to torture. No doubt the Seven Princes could eventually crack her, but the question was time. They wanted this resolved now. If Shannon still had the other key, that gave Perfidia real bargaining power.
"...Yezz. That izz the order from Zzatan."
"Well then!" Perfidia said. Confidence was key. It wasn't Satan in front of her, just his lapdog. That made it better, the notion that Beelzebub was beholden to Satan, that he was a servant. Like Kedeshah. She put on her performance: "I can certainly help with that. I'll need it in writing of course. I assume since ya want this done quick you'll have a contract prewritten. For your sake I hope you won't waste my time with loopholes. I do contracts myself y'know, I'm aware of the tricks—"
A dynamite cluster went off behind her, behind the spectators in the stands, blasting open the flesh-leathery doors that sealed the courtroom from the veiny system or corridors that infested lower Pandaemonium. Through the smoldering rubble hurtled a whale-sized jazz-purple Cadillac convertible that Perfidia knew belonged to Ubik before the windshield split the smoke and his leering snaggletooth grin emerged smug and sooty. From his coat was already manifesting the rotating turret of a heavy-duty machine gun and the bullets crackled in a sweeping line through the stands. Blood, limbs, heads, bits went flying, while others were churned into the Cadillac's unstoppable wheels as its immense breadth was too much to fit down the aisle and it gleefully ate at the outermost layer of chairs and bodies. Dog Bitch, hunched in the backseat, gnawed on the throat of a devil that got flung onto the car. Kedeshah, wearing a beret and gigantic aviator sunglasses, drove.
Perfidia frantically waved her arms, screaming no no it's fine no wait you don't gotta—all lost under the suppressive fire of the machine gun. The Cadillac crashed in front of her and came to a stop as Ubik pulled a rocket launcher out of his coat and tossed it casually to Dog Bitch, who aimed in a random directly (still wearing her leather blindfold) and tongue lollingly fired squealing combustive death into another section of the stands.
"She's mine, Stalin!" Ubik shouted at Beelzebub, tossing up twin middle fingers. "Fuck the redistribution of wealth! I'm reclaiming personal property in the name of the bourgeoisie!" He drew from his coat a fishing rod, whipped it, and hooked Perfidia by the collar, reeling her in as Kedeshah put the Cadillac into reverse and stepped on it.
"Hey," said Beelzebub. "Hey you can't do that! Hey!"
Tires churning over debris and viscera, the car made much slower progress backward than forward, and the devils that remained in one piece clambered over one another at them, spilling like a gush of water from both sides. "Bootlickers! Bootlickers of Stalin!" Ubik howled as he fired tides of bullets to stem the flow.
"Stop trying to make Stalin a thing Ubik!" the crowd yelled back. One devil hurled itself at Kedeshah, who flicked a finger into their forehead and erased the upper half of their skull in a plume of red mist.
Perfidia struggled and twisted and pushed her arms and rolled into the space between the front and backseat while a madhouse of sounds erupted above her, most notably the whirr of a chainsaw that Ubik probably produced despite its terrible efficacy as a weapon.
"What!" Beelzebub's voice droned over the mayhem. "We—you—you already own enough! Let zzomeone elzze own zzomething! Hey!"
It sounded pathetic. Sure. But that growing buzz was a far more fearsome noise than the roar of the crowd. Same went for the rumble that spread across the floor, corresponding to a trembling visible in the arched ceiling as it spewed trails of millenniums-undisturbed dust. Perfidia lifted her head in time to see Beelzebub shivering his mythical bulk into movement. John Verschrikkelijk, who had forgotten his own fear and howled laughter at the chaos from the safety of his witness bench, realized from the growing swarm of locusts the encroaching danger and managed to dive away instants before his seat was obliterated by a single swiping motion of Beelzebub's long scythe. "Down!" Ubik shouted, throwing himself onto Perfidia and Dog Bitch and pushing their faces into the cushions before the scythe swept overhead and left the entirety of the tide of devils above decapitated or in more gruesome states of dismemberment.
The second scythe came from above, slicing cleanly through the ancient roof of Pandaemonium, crafted by the grandest architect of the ancient devils Mulciber, spilling the building's guts in a deluge of marble and limestone and other fine materials dredged from the deepest pits of the Earth. It also split the Cadillac's grill as Kedeshah put some elbow grease into the controls and jerked the car backward just in time. Overcoming a particularly high mound of body parts the Cadillac reentered the grooves it'd carved upon entry and rocketed back through the door fast enough to unbalance Ubik and Perfidia the moment they started to lift their heads.
Backward the Cadillac burst into a lobby and swerved in a gliding circle, the tires still slick with gore, while Beelzebub bounded across the courtroom and clawed a bigger aperture with politely frantic slashes of the scythes. Secretary type devils, Envious sorts themselves who liked to attach themselves to the Prideful and seethe at their comparative lack, saw Beelzebub coming and tossed up their papers to sprint in any other direction. Those who were too slow were caught in the buzzing swarm of scavenger bugs that swirled about Beelzebub perpetually, lifted into the air by the force before being skeletized through a billion tiny bites.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
"You idiot!" Perfidia screamed at Ubik as the Cadillac shot straight through a gigantic circular window, fell three stories onto the street below, and bounced off a much smaller car to hit the street with momentum conserved. "You absolute idiot! They were gonna cut me a deal Ubik. I was gonna get a deal!"
Ubik stood in the backseat with one leg raised, his coat flapping all around him as he once more flipped off with both hands the bug-eyed face of Beelzebub who stared down at them from the window, reluctant to leave Pandaemonium, and only after Perfidia kept shouting at him for several moments more did he look at her with a scrunched nose and parsed what she said. "A deal?" He glanced at the stalactite-ridden sky. "Well—who cares about that. That's not what it's about Fidi."
"You stupid fucking idiot! You absolute dumbass! Do you understand what they're gonna do to us now? You think they'll let something like this go?! Oh, you are so fucking stupid Ubik, you're the biggest dipshit of all time and I've seen a lot of time to know that for a fact. FFFUUUCK!"
He pulled down his sunglasses. His eyes bit into her: they were cold, sharp despite the silly grin he wore. "Fidi. Fidi. Listen. I let those Seven Princes grind my nose into the dirt once before. I let em take something that belonged to me, dig? Nah. No more. I had to send those shits a message." He surveyed the burnt-out facades of the oft-looted buildings that lined the road as Kedeshah deftly weaved them through oncoming traffic. "A deal. A deal! A deal means they get something too. Nah. Fuck that. I get all of you Fidi. I'm not letting you go again. Not a single part. This time, the Seven Princes lose. What they want, I want, and I'm gonna take—"
Overhead a siren pealed, so loud it stooped them with their hands clamped over their ears. Even so it could be heard clearly: ALERT. ALERT. THIS IS A DIRECTIVE FROM THE SEVEN PRINCES. ALERT. ALERT. STOP THE PURPLE CADILLAC. ALERT. ALERT.
"Aww shit it's gonna get crazy real quick," Ubik said, cutting off any further delving into his previous topic, although Perfidia found her jaw twisting into a painful clench remembering that brainless possessive demeanor, that general oafishness that would've gotten him killed or worse five hundred times if he didn't have Kedeshah to clean his messes, and why was Kedeshah going along with this now? He might own her but she had her ways of shifting his demeanor when she wanted.
For the time being that didn't matter. Every devil in Hell heard that alert. The terse, robotic voice blaring over an omnipresent speaker system promised glorious rewards to tickle the fancy of every aspect, kingly gifts of riches or food or slaves or power, an unneeded addendum because every devil knew the worth of having done a favor for the Seven Princes. Now all of Hell was descending upon them and none of the streets were straight so Kedeshah kept jerking them in crazy hairpins swiping sideways through whole crowds of pedestrians while Ubik passed Perfidia a shotgun and Dog Bitch an M16 and drew for himself twin Uzis while over the rooftops passed a wave of devils tumbling toylike to kamikaze careen onto the car from above. Perfidia gingerly aimed the shotgun patting her hands all over it to try and figure out where she was supposed to hold it and then she spent a bunch of time trying to find the safety only to realize that the gun had no safety because why would a gun in Hell have one? As a strikingly globlike devil dropped toward her she fired the shotgun and the kick launched her into Dog Bitch whose bullets reoriented in an arc to blast off half of the car door and prompt a sharp "Hey!" from Ubik.
But Ubik couldn't care for long because one devil, hulking huge in a Swaino-esque way, wearing only a green t-shirt with the word "SHIT," landed on the hood hard enough to dent it and push the carriage deep into the street to cause screeching sparks to fly. Despite the devil's size his huge furred gorilla arms gripped a comically tiny submachine gun which he fired the same time Ubik did and Ubik and the gorilla both dropped spurting blood except the gorilla fell off the car. Ubik twirled into Perfidia's arms.
"My hat!" Ubik said. His huge hat had fallen off; Perfidia glimpsed it whipping away over a pursuing crowd and various vehicles that ranged in style from earliest locomotive to contemporary sportscar. "My hat—we gotta—we gotta go back for my hat...!"
"Fuck your hat, FUCK you!" Perfidia tried to figure out where exactly he was wounded but from his perforated coat both blood and bullets streamed in equal measure. The temporary slowdown had caused more devils to successfully grip onto the sides of the car and with only Dog Bitch currently pruning them one floppy-titted old hag with a giant warty nose wrapped sticklike fingers around Perfidia's ankle and tugged her back with surprising strength. Perfidia seized Ubik's body to stop from being thrown off but his body was seemingly all coat and her fingers slipped through the bloody plush fur before striking something hard and withdrawing from the space a sword—a ninja katana—that she swung down at the hag's head, missed, cut open her own foot, and then swung again to hack off half the wrinkled face. A rapid pulse of kicks and Perfidia knocked the bag of bones overboard.
She passed the katana off to Dog Bitch who swung it once at a devil's skull and broke the blade in half (she continued to swing what remained) and then flopped between the front seats to put a hand on Kedeshah's shoulder. "Ubik's hit," Perfidia said. "We're overwhelmed. Let me drive—you defend." With the unspoken implication that Kedeshah could heal Ubik if, you know, he was dying or something.
"Hmmmmm... Nah," Kedeshah said cheerily. Her long scarf flapped out in the breeze and slapped Perfidia's face. "You don't know the streets, Fidi, they've changed since you've been here last. 'Sides, women are terrible drivers, didn'tcha know?"
"Kedeshah. This is serious—"
Kedeshah shot out her hand to grip the face of a rhinoceros-horned devil climbing over the passenger seat and with the slightest twitch of her fingers crumpled its skull into a tiny wad. The horn burst through her palm, causing a rush of bright white blood to run down and instantly dissolve what remained of the devil to dust before her wound closed spontaneously afterward. Her face retained its pleasant, amenable, I-live-to-serve smile. "I'm being very serious right now, Fidi. If Master wants me to do something, I'll do it. But you? Right now, you're simply someone I abide."
Yeah. She was still pissed about the bathhouse.
Shoulda been Ubik driving from the start, if Kedeshah weren't distracted this wouldn't even be a situation as long as nobody actually important felt the need to get off their ass and go after them, but nooooo, Ubik had to show off all his shiny toys, typical! As Perfidia pulled herself into the backseat he wasn't even thinking about getting help, he'd yanked Dog Bitch's leash hard enough to get her attention and forced her to hold him steady as he rose to lob grenades on either side of the road. He remained laughing, even though out of his coat dropped guns and blades and a whip and a nutcracker doll and a stuffed rabbit and several sex toys and gold coins and rubies and emeralds and diamonds and glass marbles and beads—no wait those were another sex toy—and a solid gold lighter and a sleek modern wristwatch and the skull of some antlered creature with the antlers dragging with them several lacy sets of lingerie. Perfidia grabbed a good-looking gun from the pile, sighed, and went back to keeping the sides of the car clear.
The edge of the city approached, the red aura rising from the lava that surrounded it a palpable dimension to the distance, and the skyscraper at the end with the surface-spanning billboard of Satan with the word BELIEVE. Satan seemed to stare down at them from that billboard, and as Perfidia hesitated a moment to reload her weapon, one of his dazzlingly brilliant eyes shut in a simple wink. She glanced again, the wink having come at a time her head was turning, but then both eyes were open and the poster was as it was, as it had been when she first entered Hell. The castles and tenements parted and the grand moat swelled before them with its single stone bridge across.
A goliath languished upon the bridge, stretched on its side with one arm propping up a yawning head as its legs restlessly, slowly, crossed and uncrossed. It spanned the entire breadth at the center, lava still sizzling off its skin after they dredged it up from the depths of the moat, and the cranes and rigs of wire they used remained around its bulk like discarded toys, objects that tumbled out of Ubik's coat. Like Lilliputians an entire platoon of devil cops crawled along it, aiming their guns over its flesh at the end of the bridge. Probably a hundred goons total and an unstoppable lump of Sloth as their barricade.
"Baalpeor," Kedeshah muttered.
Baalpeor. So that's who it was. Baalpeor or Belphegor, suggester of ingenious inventions, who nonetheless sought and cared to do nothing. An original Fallen Angel, thrown down by God and who was happy to remain where he fell, so stunned and pained by the falling that he decided never to make another movement that might lead to that agony again. In the early centuries of Hell he would whisper ideas to those who asked so that they might enrich themselves with minimal effort, but Hell always expanded outward and upward and eventually his tremendous bulk was in the way and enough devils got together to roll him into the lake of fire. There he must have remained for millennia—until now. Until they needed him for a roadblock.
The Cadillac roared toward the bridge, toward Baalpeor and the mustered forces around him.
"That's insane," Perfidia said. "That guy's older than Kedeshah even. We won't stand a chance. Turn away. Turn away!"
"He shan't raise a hand," Kedeshah said.
"Where are we even going anyway!"
"Earth, babe, Earth," said Ubik between coughs of blood. "Isn't that where you wanted us? Don't be a little bitch!"
Somehow Perfidia had entertained vain delusions that Ubik, so well-connected, knew of some place, some safe hideaway—where else would he keep all his excess junk without it getting nicked?—where they might hole up, regroup, consider a plan. A plan that involved extending an olive branch to the Seven Princes, repairing the damage done by Ubik's theatrical entrance into the courtroom, and resuming the pathway proposed by Beelzebub. That pathway was life, that pathway was her way out, that pathway would have fixed everything, all of it, in one dramatic sweep of the pen, she wanted to believe it was true, she wanted to believe there was a way out of this constantly worsening horrorshow in which she found herself, a nightmare that seemed to seize upon her worst fears the moment she feared them. But she knew. She knew with a shuddering thought at that half-glimpsed wink Satan's poster may or may not have sent her. Satan sent Beelzebub as his envoy and they rejected his offer in the most contemptuous way possible. Satan was kind, even benevolent to those who bent the knee. It was why he didn't summarily execute Ubik during his visit to the brothel, why he even bestowed upon Perfidia the gift of self-awareness that let her be the thing "Perfidia" she was today. But those who stood against him?
Forward was the only way out. The Seven Princes could not travel to Earth personally; God would not permit evil of that caliber to walk freely there. They could still send assassins, but maybe given enough time they'd forget, or stop caring, or become distracted with some new object of ire. Maybe if what Kedeshah whispered about Divinity was true... If the Seven Princes got their hands on a Divinity, managed to somehow collect enough Humanity to cobble one together, then surely they would forget all about Perfidia Bal Berith. Or perhaps with the power of a true God they would obviate her from existence instantaneously.
The Cadillac drove onto the bridge.
The cops opened fire. Bullets, grenades, even missiles swirled their way. Ubik drew his guns and prepared to fire back, howling about Stalins again, immune to any concept of self-preservation. "Die pigs, die die die die die!"
"Sorry, Master," said Kedeshah, "but you've had your fun."
She stood up in her seat and extended her arms. Out of her back sprouted two long, feathered wings, purest white, so white they emitted a radiant glow as she bent them forward and used their feathers to absorb the incoming onslaught. Explosions turned to limp splatters of dust; not a shred of excess heat escaped past her.
One slim arm wrapped around Ubik's body. The other yanked Perfidia by the collar. The wings beat once and the tug of gravity dragged Perfidia's stomach to her base as the car fell away below them and they soared airborne. The Dog Bitch, suspended by a leash that Ubik held, whipped back and forth choking too hard to even yelp, while Ubik screamed: "My car! No, no, we can't leave my car—we can't—nooooo!"
The second artillery volley blasted the purple Cadillac into charred bits of machinery. An array of rockets swirled toward them trailing streams of smoke, only for Kedeshah to weightlessly flit between them as though engaged in ballet rather than evasive tactical maneuvers. Loose feathers fell and curdled into dollops of rotted milk the instant they left her body, plopping onto the heads of the cops below and the body of Baalpeor as Kedeshah soared over them and to the other side. One gentle, fluid arcing swoop lowered her through the doors of the customs office, her wingtips bifurcating the unlucky devils who had escaped the queue only moments prior, then through the Hellevator doors and up the blackened shaft. Up, up, up, faster and faster, the flaps of Perfidia's skin pulling back from the suddenly supersonic speed, and then they smashed through something above that came apart in pieces and among those pieces were a whole host of devils in more tactical gear—another barricade meant to stop them? No, they must be the team the Seven Princes were sending Earthside to assassinate Mayfair—the devils staring up at the wings that illuminated even this darkness in abject stupefaction as they hurtled back into the abyss, and then the light returned around them and they were in the same shitty warehouse in the same shitty Cleveland and the smell of sulfur switched out for the smell of rotten lakewater.
Kedeshah dropped Perfidia a few feet onto the concrete floor; the dangling Dog Bitch was already dragging across it as all momentum came to a stop equal parts elegant and abrupt. Using her other arm to cradle Ubik like an infant, Kedeshah touched down upon the ground first with one daintily outstretched foot and then the other, performing a slight girlish skip as the last dregs of speed left her and her wings went black and decayed into tatters until she at last stood only an ordinary devil girl, identical in appearance to any other.
"There there Master," she said, stroking Ubik's chin as he sobbed, "I'm so terribly sorry for losing your beloved car, but there was no other way. If it would make you feel better, you may hurl me onto the dirty ground right here and now and savagely molest my every orifice—"
"He's still bleeding, you know," Perfidia said.
Kedeshah stuck her kitten tongue out at her and then heaved her face into the folds of Ubik's coat. A few short, quick, audible kisses later and she arose, the blood on her face dissolving, as Ubik's holes sealed and he was able to once more stand on his own. Which he did, fluttering as he extended his arms with aplomb, drifting on the tips of his toes as he twirled and observed the firebombed factory around them.
"Earth! Wowza! So this is it huh? Somehow I've never had the chance to check it out. Yo? They got giant vats of toxic waste up here too?" He flitted to the window and looked at Lake Erie. "Maybe Earth's not so bad after all. Shit! I could set up shop here. Have humans eating out my palm. Run this place. How much does it cost you think? The whole... place. Area. Shit where are we even?"
He rifled though his coat, which lacked a lot of its former dimension—much of it having spilled into the Cadillac—and retrieved a candy cane, which he stuck into the corner of his mouth like a cigar before sucking on it. Something hollow lurked in the circles under his eyes, a shiver to his smile, Perfidia knew what this random outburst was truly about. The problem with Greed was that sometimes the things you wanted cost the things you had, to gain something meant to lose something, and thus no matter the prize it always tasted bitter on the tongue. Much like the pain of Pride that kept giving away bits of itself to hold onto a smaller and smaller portion of the remainder.
But who cared. Knowing everything underlying only snapped Perfidia harder, more abruptly, and with her claws hooked she screamed: "Oh! Oh that's right? Gonna own the Earth now?" COVER THE EARTH, as John Verschrikkelijk might say. "You fucked me Ubik. You might not own me yet but you fucked me anyway, right up the ass. They were gonna cut me a plea deal you worthless cumstain. I was gonna get out free! Free!"
"Assuming you trust their word," Kedeshah muttered darkly.
True. True, so true, Perfidia knew it was true. That was the real agony underpinning it. If the Seven Princes could find a way to screw her via some contract loophole they would. It was her own Pride that made her think she'd be able to sniff out their devious tricks as though she was anywhere near their level, but knowing only made her angrier as she advanced on Ubik's weightless form and shook his coat so hard a few more loose dildos toppled out.
"We're doomed, you and me both, all of us, you doomed us all." She motioned to Kedeshah, to Dog Bitch. The latter grabbing a dildo in her teeth and whining up at Ubiquitous.
"Doomed? I feel great Fidi. Better than great. Yeah. Okay. I lost—a good chunk of things that belonged to me. Not my girls though, they'll all come back once ownership returns—that's all contractual, automatic. And I've still got some things in here"—he patted his coat—"and what did I gain? I finally stuck it to them, those—those—"
"Don't say Stalin."
"Those Maos," grinning smugly at Perfidia's exasperated shriek, "finally told them I wouldn't stand for their shit, finally showed El Diablo himself that nobody's boss of me except me. Yeah. Yeah, that's fucking right. Yeah! Yeah. For sure. For real! Yeah!"
"Hopefully you can convince yourself better than me."
"Fidi, I'm sick of your attitude. Look. Everything's simple. We clean up your mistake, we fend off a few assassins the Seven Princes send after us, eventually they get bored, and then we rule Earthside. My girls come up to me, we'll have perfect conditions for a new enterprise..."
Perfidia gave up. He was right. No, not right. He was stating the only possible way to proceed, whether it was right or not.
"Then let's shut up and deal with Mayfair," she said. "We wasted a lot of time down there. It won't be long before she's on TV."
"Sure. Sure thing Fidi. Easy fucking peasy yo? We just blasted through half of Hell to get here. That little girl of yours can't be a threat. Kedeshah will wipe her off Earth in milliseconds flat."
Kedeshah stared skyward. Well, at the roof of the factory, with its beams and rats. But it was clear what she truly looked at. "I should not use my strength here," she said. "I can tell He isn't watching now. But He could if I'm not careful. And avoiding His eye's the whole point, isn't it Master?"
"Right. Yep. Right you are Kedeshah, that smart thinking of yours is why you're my fave. Mwah." Ubik grabbed her tiny body and laid one thick on her forehead, an act that somehow made a girl with red skin blush. Perfidia audibly gagged, remembering exactly the thought processes that led her to ditch Ubik for Earth in the first place. "Oh Fidi please it's fine," Ubik continued. "I still got shittons of weapons and gear and crap in my coat. We got this. You can trust me to have this don't you?"
She stared at him stonefaced.
"Ah well whatever, you'll see Fidi. It's just a girl you said. I can do all sorts of terrible things to a girl—hyuck hyuck. I only wonder what about this girl's got the Seven Princes so riled up. Maybe we oughtta let her live just to see how bad it fucks em over huh?"
"Don't even joke."
"Right, right. Well lead the way, my dear sister. By the way, deal's still on. You're mine after this—got it?"
He reached up to tip his hat toward her in a display of calculated assholery, realized he had no hat, and wound up looking like a total fuckboy, but it didn't matter, because his last words were true, and Perfidia could certainly not afford to reject his terms now. Without another bit of repartee she turned and led him and his cadre out the factory.
Early winter dusk was falling on Cleveland. It was Wednesday, December 13, 2017—the day Mayfair was set to appear on television. At least it wouldn't be hard to find her; the newspaper ad said exactly where to see her live. So Perfidia slouched onward, slouching no longer from her wounds but now simple shame, wondering where she went wrong, how she fucked up, what decisions she could have made better, finding a thousand, but feeling like even fixing those thousand would not have led her to a better end. So the final, most pathetic dagger twisted in the stomach of Pride: the idea that not even her failure was her own fault, that instead some cosmic fate dictated her existence more than her own selfhood, and behind her Ubik told Kedeshah a dirty joke and Kedeshah giggled and Perfidia thought if things kept up she maybe would prefer death to it all.