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Chapters (60)
  1. DAW Books Presents
  2. HAPPY HOURINHELL
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. prologue
  8. one
  9. two
  10. three
  11. four
  12. five
  13. six
  14. interlude
  15. seven
  16. eight
  17. nine
  18. ten
  19. eleven
  20. twelve
  21. interlude
  22. thirteen
  23. fourteen
  24. interlude
  25. fifteen
  26. sixteen
  27. seventeen
  28. eighteen
  29. nineteen
  30. twenty
  31. twenty-one
  32. interlude
  33. twenty-two
  34. twenty-three
  35. twenty-four
  36. twenty-five
  37. twenty-six
  38. twenty-seven
  39. twenty-eight
  40. twenty-nine
  41. thirty
  42. thirty-one
  43. thirty-two
  44. thirty-three
  45. thirty-four
  46. thirty-five
  47. thirty-six
  48. thirty-seven
  49. thirty-eight
  50. thirty-nine
  51. forty
  52. forty-one
  53. forty-two
  54. forty-three
  55. forty-four
  56. forty-five
  57. forty-six
  58. forty-seven
  59. forty-eight
  60. epilogue

A hunting horn blared behind me, as startlingly close as a crow screeching on my shoulder. I turned to see the first of the hellhounds plunge forward out of the mist with its two dark, eyeless brothers right behind it, and beyond them the complicated shadow of a company of armed demons.

I sprinted toward the bridge, cursing the usual Bobby Dollar shitty luck. I was really irritated that I was going to be caught just when I finally had the answer to the riddle of Walter’s banishment.

Anaita had a voice like that. Anaita, alone among those of Heaven’s most powerful angels I knew, often spoke in a voice like a little girl. Wouldn’t she disguise it? Not necessarily, not if she didn’t realize the sound of her voice would be significant later. Perhaps she had merely asked Walter some questions about me in her normal role as an important heavenly officer, questions that he’d found odd. Perhaps that was what he meant to tell me when Smyler stabbed him. If so, Walter’s earthly body had been murdered and his soul sent to Hell just to keep him from telling me that Anaita had been asking about me.

Wow. I knew the higher angels were different than me, but Anaita aka “Kephas”—ephor, Heavenly Principality, and Holy Guardian of Fertility—was evidently fucking ruthless.

It didn’t matter, though, because I was never going to be able to do anything about it. Niloch and his Ugly Boys’ Club were right behind me, and I hadn’t even reached the bridge. It looked like my friends weren’t going to get those souvenir Tshirts after all.

forty-three

mr. johnson and me

APPROPRIATELY, ROBERT Johnson’s infamous blues song kept running through the back of my mind as I raced the last yards toward the bridge.

“. . . Got to keep movin’

Blues fallin’ down like hail

Blues fallin down like hail . . .

And the days keep on worryin’ me

There’s a hellhound on my trail

Hellhound on my trail . . .”

One of his very best songs. I don’t know anyone who loves the blues who isn’t fascinated by Johnson; his strange, short life and his haunted voice. And at the moment it was literal truth for me—hellhounds baying just behind me, Hell-soldiers and ratbat-crazy Commissar Niloch behind them—and that made it an odd time to have any song going through one’s mind instead of one of the standard variations on Oh my God I’m going to die run run run fucking run!