SANDMAN SLIM

"I don't want your money, Kas. I want your soul," I say, stepping into better light to give him a clear full frontal.

It gets exactly the reaction I was hoping for. His mouth opens, but he doesn't make a sound. One of his hands comes up to cover his open yap, stifling a silent scream. He steps back from the counter, his eyes wide.

Forgive me, God and Lucifer and all you angels high and low, but this is fun. This is an e-ticket roller coaster.

"Shut your mouth, Kas. You look like one of those blow-up sheep in the back of porn zines." I stop about ten feet from the counter, just letting him feast on me. "What did you get me for Christmas? Right, you gave it to me eleven years ago. Damnation. The gift that keeps on giving."

His hands are down now and he's leaning on the coun-ter like a drunk trying to decide whether to fall on his face or his back. I thumb on the stun gun.

"It's okay. I know you don't have anything for me. But I sure as hell have something for you, Kas. Climb up on Santa's lap and I'll show you."

I take a baby step closer to the counter and Kasabian takes one back. Then he does the funniest thing. He raises his hands and there's a gun there-a .45-caliber Colt Peacemaker. Wyatt Earp's favorite gun. He gives me five of the six slugs in the chest and belly, completely ruining my moment.

I drop to my knees, vision going black. The stun gun falls to the floor and I follow it down. I can feeling my lungs drawing in air. I can feel my heart beating. Both organs seem more than a little confused by what's happening. Death is settling over me, soft and warm, like a down comforter fresh from the dryer. My heart stops.

SOMETHING FUNNY HAPPENED to me when I was Downtown. I got hard to kill. When I first arrived there, I was the first and only living human to ever set foot in Hell. I was a sideshow freak. Pay a dollar and see Jimmy, the dog-faced boy. Later, when they got tired of slapping me around, examining me, and displaying me like a pedigreed poodle, they thought it might be fun to watch me die. They made me fight in the arena and they made a big deal out of it. Imagine the Super Bowl every week or two.

Naturally, the location being Hell and the setting being an arena, there was a lot of cheating going on. Hellions don't like losing bets any more than humans. Before almost every fight, a bribed trainer or attendant would show up with a sneaky little gift. They slipped me special weapons. They gave me diabolical drugs. They whispered fiendish spells into my ears. It all helped, though it didn't make me Superman. I was knifed and speared. I was burned. I was almost torn in half by a giant crab-thing that bled fire and screamed in the anguished voices of all the souls it had devoured. My ribs and skull were beaten to Silly Putty.

But I didn't die.

I don't know if it was the spells, the drugs, the Aqua Regia, or just clean living, but I was changing. Every time I should have died but didn't, I got stronger. That meant that the next attack had to be harder, faster, even more ferocious than the one before. After a while, I actually looked forward to the beat-downs. Each one changed me and that change meant that I was immune from a similar attack next time. By the end, I was a flesh-and-bone, armor-plated Dirty Harry.

By the time the ruling-class, old-school Hellions and nouveau celebutante fiends decided it was time to get rid of me, it was too late. I was too strong and by then I was doing more interesting things than killing in the arena. I was freelance-killing Hellions out of the arena, and that meant I was protected from on high by forces far darker than your run-of-the-mill tail-and-pitchfork type.

On the other hand, I'd never been shot before.

"Stark?" says Kasabian from a million miles away. "Is that really you?" He laughs quietly, nervously. "Mason is going to shit himself."

My left hand shoots to the side, grabbing the .45's still-warm barrel and driving it into the floor. Kasabian's fat finger is still looped in the trigger guard, so he comes down with the gun. Meanwhile, my right hand flickers to my boot and tears free the black bone knife. I twist my body toward Kasabian and bring down the knife in a smooth arc. Kasabian's head tumbles to the floor and rolls away like a pumpkin. His body flops to the floor.

From beneath the Disney new-releases rack, Kasabian's head begins to wail.

"Oh God! Oh Jesus, fuck! I'm dead!" It's quality wailing. Downtown, I became kind of a connoisseur of wailing and this is prime stuff.

"I'm dead! I'm dead!"