HarperVoyager
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First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2017
Copyright © Richard Kadrey 2017
Cover designed by Crush Creative (www.crushed.co.uk)
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Richard Kadrey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008219062
Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780008219079
Version: 2017-05-15
For David Pomerico, who keeps the trains running on time
Thanks to my agent, Ginger Clark, and my editor, David Pomerico. Thanks also to Pamela Spengler-Jaffe, Jennifer Brehl, Caroline Perny, Shawn Nicholls, Angela Craft, Priyanka Krishnan, Owen Corrigan, and the rest of the team at Harper Voyager. Thanks also to Jonathan Lyons, Sarah Perillo, Holly Frederick, Nicholas J.L. Beudert, and Tess Callero. Thanks also to Genie Casillas for Latin advice. As always, thanks to Nicola for everything else.
It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.
âJoseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
I got a paper cut writing my suicide note. Itâs a start.
âSteven Wright
SO FAR, BEING dead is about as much fun as a barbed-wire G-string.
Yes, there is such a thing. They invented it in Hell, which is where I am. I already said I was dead. Where else would I be? Try to keep up.
Where was I? I was talking about fun. First off, thereâs the fact that Iâm really, no shit, for sure, not coming back dead. I mean, Iâve been dead before, but now my body is stone-cold back in L.A., Iâm in Hell, and I donât see any angles to play. So, thatâs a lot of laughs. As is the view. Up here on this spiky cliffside, Hell stretches out in all directions like the pockmarked belly of a gator with a bad case of just about everything. Acne. Psoriasis. Cancer. From the smell, gangrene and probably gingivitis, too.
Insult to injury: Iâm stuck here with no weapons, no wheels, no fucking idea where exactly I am, and, oh yeah, thereâs a dust storm the size of Texas headed straight for me. It rolls and thunders across the hardpack in the valley below. This leaves me with exactly two choices: I can sit up here on this nameless mountain and get ripped to shreds, a speck of chickenshit on the rocky tip of nowhere. Or I can go down into the valley and look this dust devil in the eye.
Not a lot to think about there.
I kick a rock down the slope and follow it as it tumbles ahead of me into the valley. As it goes, I spot something on the trail ahead. Bend down to pick it up. Okay, I might not know where I am, but I know Iâm being fucked with. What Iâm holding is a dusty pack of Maledictions. But no lighter. Someone somewhere is having a good laugh. With luck, theyâll choke on their good time while thereâs still a little piece of me left to feel it.
The dust cloud reaches up into the bruised Hellion sky. It looks miles away, but sand and grit already sting my face. I walk straight at it for a while, then start to run. If Hell is going to shred me, letâs get it over with. Iâm not even angry that Audsley Ishii murdered me right in front of Candy. Why would I be angry? I got to see Candy go Jade one last time as she ripped him to pieces. One last glimpse of her being exactly who she is. A gorgeous, perfect monster. My monster.
Good-bye, Candy. You made a stupid world hurt less and a place worth fighting for. And we broke a lot of furniture, the two of us. When this storm finishes me off and I fall into Tartarusâthe only place lower than Hellâyouâll be what keeps me from going crazy in the dark.
All right, maybe I am a little mad about being taken away from her. But itâs too late now. The dust swallows me and Hell goes from a perpetual twilight to a rusty glow, the color of dried blood. My ghost nose closes with grit and my throat is rasped raw. I close my eyes and they instantly cement together. Thereâs nothing to look at anyway. Iâve seen my skin peeled off plenty of times in the arena. I know what my bones look like.