LITMIR.BIZ

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throw back the cup of tea. It tastes like hot swamp water filtered through a baboon’s ass.

      “Okay,” the Shonin says. “Now you meditate. You need a zafu to sit on? What kind of meditation do you do?”

      I pull a flask from my back pocket.

      “The liquid kind,” I say, unscrewing the top and downing a long drink of Aqua Regia, the number one booze in Hell. It goes down like gasoline and hot pepper and washes the taste of baboon out of my mouth.

      The Shonin says, “Drink all you want, dummy. You won’t find God in a bottle.”

      “I already found God,” I say. “That’s why I drink.”

      I hand Candy the flask and she takes a quick gulp before putting it in her pocket. I’m used to Aqua Regia’s kick, but down enough at once and it’s going to turn anyone’s cerebral cortex into chocolate pudding. I let it and the tea do their work. They fight it out in my stomach. The Hellion hoodoo wrestling whatever kind of magic Mr. Bones uses. My stomach cramps and for a few seconds I want to throw up. But I hold on and the feeling passes. The room gets thin, like it’s made of black gauze. I put the crow feather between my teeth just as I fall out of myself.

      I’m standing on an alkali plain stretching out flat and cracked in all directions. In the far distance is a shaft of light, but it never moves. The sky is dim, like just before sunrise or after sunset. Flip a coin to decide. The air is thick and hard to breathe. I wouldn’t want to have to run a marathon here.

      The dead man wanders around shivering. Probably from being on ice for so long. I’m glad it worked and I didn’t have to come halfway to Hell for nothing.

      The dead man stumbles back a couple of steps when he sees me. A second later he recognizes me and starts over, a little cautious.

      I say, “Joseph Hobaica.”

      He stops.

      “How do you know my name?”

      “We’re standing in fuckall limbo and that’s your first question? It’s just a little trick I can do.”

      He looks around, hands across his chest, holding on to his shoulders, shaking.

      “Where are we?”

      “I just told you. Limbo. Halfway between Hell and Heaven. You’re dead. Remember?”

      His face changes. Things start coming back to him. Death can be a real kick in the ass, especially a death like Hobaica’s. Sometimes it takes awhile for spirits to come back to themselves.

      “This isn’t right,” he says. “This isn’t where I should be. Where’s the Flayed Heart?”

      Now we’re getting somewhere.

      “I know that name. It’s a nickname for one of the Angra Om Ya. A big goddamn carnivorous flower. Her real name is Zhuyigdanatha, right?”

      He drops his hands to his sides. Narrows his eyes at me.

      “You know nothing about the Flayed Heart.”

      “I know it’s easier to say than Zhuyig-fucking-danatha.”

      “Don’t blaspheme her name.”

      “You can knock that off right now. I’ve already got one schoolmarm worrying about my language. I don’t need two.”

      Hobaica turns in a dazed circle.

      “I don’t understand. Where’s the fire? Why is my body still intact?”

      “Maybe you blew your ritual. Remember that? It’s where we met.”

      “You were the witness to our sacrifice. An ordinary, mortal man shattered by such a holy rite was our way to paradise.”

      “And yet here you are. Downtown Nowheresville. Like the view?”

      Hobaica comes at me.

      “You did this.”

      He tries to grab me. I sidestep, give him a little shove to throw him off balance, and stomp on the back of his knee. He goes down on his face, hurt but in one piece.

      “You got that out of your system and now you’re going to be smart, right? Good. First off, who told you I was following you?”

      Hobaica nurses his hurt knee, but manages a smile.

      “A little birdie. Der Zorn Götter has friends in many places.”

      I’ve heard of them. An upper-crust Angra sect. They have connections in money and politics all over the Sub Rosa and civilian world. Could they have connections to the Vigil?

      “You made a mistake asking me to be your witness, genius. First, I’m not exactly mortal, and second, I spent eleven years in Hell. You think a bunch of nitwits sawing their own heads off is going to shatter me? In Hell we called that ‘Wednesday.’”

      I go over and pull Hobaica to his feet.

      “This is a trick,” he says.

      “Show me what’s in your head. I want to see what you expected when you died. Show me the Flayed Heart.”

      “Never.”

      “Listen, man. I know you don’t mind a little pain, but you’re dead now. You don’t need to have to do that anymore. Show me what I want or it’s going to hurt.”

      He stands up straight. A moron with scruples.

      “I won’t tell you a thing.”

      I nod.

      “No matter what the old mummy said, I knew I wasn’t getting through this without losing some blood.”

      “What?”

      “Hold still,” I say, and pull my knife.

      Hobaica tries to run, but his gimpy leg collapses and he goes down on his face. I kneel on his chest, pinning his arms to the ground.

      “I should probably feel worse about this, but you hack up people to decorate your playpen, so I don’t.”

      I grab his chin with my free hand and cut a sigil into his forehead. The mark of Nybbas, the Seer. He stops thrashing for a second when the blood flows into the eyes. I take that moment to run the knife over my own forehead, making a deep gash. Grabbing Hobaica’s face, I push my forehead to his until our wounds touch. As our blood flows together, I get a dirty, low-res image of his mind.

      This is what Hobaica expected. What he wanted.

      An endless sea of fire and bones, and floating there, as big as the sky, is a lotus made of rotting human teeth. Bodies pour into the flower’s fanged maw and are ripped apart. Zhuyigdanatha swallows some of the bodies, but there’s so much falling into its stinking gob that limbs, heads, torsos, and feet cascade down the side. They crawl together in the fire, forming new, weird creatures. A couple of arms merge at the shoulder with an eye attached under each armpit. Torsos with six, eight, ten legs bob along on the flames, swimming in one direction and then another as the legs compete with each other. A few piles of limbs have pulled together enough pieces to form a complete body. These climb up the sides of the tooth lotus, pushing back bodies that miss the Flayed Heart’s mouth and try to get away. Others swim through the fire into caverns at the base of the lotus.

      Since he’s dead, I can’t gauge Hobaica’s mood by the smell of his sweat or the sound of his heartbeat, but being in his head, I can feel his excitement. This is what Hobaica hoped for when he cut his head off. To be one of those bodies falling into Zhuyigdanatha’s mouth, feeding his master.

      The old Angra moves as it chews its lunch, twisting this way and that to catch the choicest bodies. If you see it from different angles, Zhuyigdanatha changes. It becomes a slimy lizard, snaring falling bodies with a prehensile tongue a thousand miles long. A baobab tree, with razor foliage and a trunk made of rheumy eyes. A crawling fungal mass plucking bloating corpses from a sea of sewage. At

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