I was cleaning my sawed-off shotgun when I heard the unmistakable sound of a motorcycle engine. I leapt up and switched off the lights in the kitchen and listened as they killed their motors some way up the alley. And now they're rolling downhill in neutral, just how I would do it, but I’d have been smarter and killed the motor earlier. I put my shoulder against the wall and peeked out of the blinds, wanting to get a count of the number of rival gang members that were about to attack my place.

  To my surprise, there were only two, and they stopped behind my neighbor's house. Old Mrs. Ramirez was pretty much only person I liked. She knew exactly what I was, an enforcer for the Hell's Paladins motorcycle gang, and yet never missed an opportunity to invite me over for tea and cookies. Tea and freakin' cookies. The first time, I secretly laughed at her for inviting me in. I had meant to use the opportunity to case her house so that I could come back later and steal her stuff.

  "I know what you are, Carlito," she had said with a smile while I was sitting at her kitchen table, scanning the appliances and thinking about how I needed a new microwave and, come to think of it, I'd been wanting to try an air fryer too. "But there's a good man under all that thug stuff. I know it. I can tell these things."

  I smirked openly at the comment. "Oh? And how do you know that?"

  "Tengen told me," she said as her small tabby cat nearly made me jump out of my skin as it rubbed against my leg. "Tengen's never wrong about the true nature of people. She says that you're like a churro that's been fried for too long. Hard on the outside but tender within."

  Well, dammit, she was right. Somehow, between the beatings I had taken as an orphan, my time in and out of reform school, and my inevitable landing in organized crime, there was still an ember of a good person within me that I hadn’t managed to snuff out, and the old bat knew how to make it grow. Damn her. It made my life harder.

  Before long, I was helping her with minor repairs around the house, cleaning her gutters, and whatnot. I even helped her plant flowers along her front walk in the springtime. It must have been the cookies. Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever baked me cookies before, and they were the best I'd ever had.

  I knew she wanted to ‘save’ me. It was easy to see with all the religious icons around her place. She’d even gotten me to run out to the Mexican supermarket to buy her a veladora religiosa—a candle with a picture of Jesus on it—one time when she wasn’t feeling well. Still, she never once bent my ear about it. For that alone, I respected her. If I wanted to be bothered with God and all that stuff, I'd go to church.

  When I saw the two thugs climb over her back fence, I knew what I had to do. "Not on my watch, you sons of bitches." I grabbed a box of shells and jammed two into my sawed-off before considering the mess that it would make inside Mrs. Ramirez's house. The image of her scrubbing blood off her hardwood floors, with her arthritic knees hurting all the while, was all I needed to change my plan. Shotgun blasts tend to get the neighbors calling for the cops as well, and that was no bueno for me.

  I put my enforcer down and grabbed my 'close kisser' instead. I'd stolen it off some Star Wars sandpeople cosplayer because it looked cool, a long shaft with a flanged head and spike. Why he'd made it out of solid metal I'm not sure, but I'd split open a motorcycle helmet with it once, so I knew how effective it was. "Time to go medieval on these guys." I smiled at the thought of the cash I'd get for selling their bikes and started thinking about which of the club’s prospects I would get to move the bodies.

  I looked through the blinds once more to see where the men were. I didn't want them to see me coming. I was tough. I'd been beaten, stabbed, and shot before and hadn't stopped fighting. It hurt, though, and I liked dealing out the pain, not taking it. I happened to spot Tengen sleeping in a cat hammock in a second-floor window, stretched out and belly-up to the sky. Wake up, you stupid cat! Your mistress is about to get attacked.

  To my surprise, it was as if she'd heard me. She suddenly snapped up and looked straight at me, then rocketed out of the hammock. I guess Mrs. Ramirez must have been opening a can of Herdez in her electric can opener, which I’d stolen for her, and the dumb thing thought it was dinnertime.

  I slipped out my side door and around the fence that divided our lots. I wanted to move quickly but knew I needed surprise on my side if I was to get through this unscathed, so I moved slowly and carefully up her driveway. I was about to climb over her gate to get into her backyard when I heard gunshots. Gunshots! I prayed for the first time that I could remember that Mrs. Ramirez had a gun and that she was doing the shooting, but I wasn't hopeful. Abandoning stealth, I ran onto her porch and kicked in her front door.

  The thug inside with the gas can had eyes the size of saucers when he saw me. Silhouetted in the doorframe with the moon at my back, I must have looked like the devil himself as I charged in and swung my war club at him. I caught him on the bicep and am pretty sure I heard his bone crack beneath the meaty thwack of the flanges. He dropped the gas can and, with lightning speed, drew a revolver and put two bullets into my chest. I swear his eyes glowed red as he did it. "Wow, that was fast," I said as I staggered two steps down the hall before my legs gave out, my war club falling from my senseless fingers.

  The thugs ignored me after that as they continued spreading gasoline around the house. I don't know what Mrs. Ramirez did to them, but whatever it was, they deserved it a hundredfold. I found her on the kitchen floor, in no better condition than I was. She smiled when she saw me, said something I didn't catch, and reached out. I crawled over and took her hand. I must have passed out.

  The next thing I knew, I woke up to Tengen swatting my face. The twit was using her claws! The house was engulfed in flames except, miraculously, where Mrs. Ramirez and I lay. I managed to drag her out of the kitchen door and onto the back porch. Spent, I looked at her and evaluated if she'd die if I pulled her down the steps to the backyard. Her lips were moving, but I couldn't hear what she was saying. I leaned in and put my ear next to her mouth.

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  "Carlito, if you could do it all again, would you be a good man?"

  "What?" I couldn't process what she had just said.

  "If you could do it all again, would you be a good man? Would you choose to do good with your life instead of evil?"

  Well, what would you tell a shot-up old woman who was dying before you as her house burned down around her? Same thing as me. "Yes."

  "Say it. Say it in a full sentence."

  "If I could do it all over, I'd be a good man."

  "Swear it."

  "What?"

  "Swear it to me. Make it an oath."

  The only oaths I'd ever sworn were to my gangmates, where going against it meant getting beaten to within an inch of one's life. If you were lucky. I didn't have much life left, I realized, as the color had faded from my vision and my field of view was narrowing.

  "I swear to you, Maria Ramirez, that if I could do it all again, I would be a good man. I would do no evil. I would undo every bad thing that I've ever done. I'd fight against the Devil himself." I couldn't see her face anymore, but somehow I knew she was smiling.

  "I always knew you were a good boy at heart, Carlito. I always knew you were worth the effort." I felt warm and comfortable as my soul prepared to leave my body. I even saw the fabled bright light at the end of the tunnel. More than anything, I felt relieved. This life had sucked. It was always hard, and I was always miserable. If I did get another chance, it couldn't be worse than this one, right?

  * * *

  I pushed myself up to my elbows only to realize that I was buck naked—not even a stitch of clothing to hide my manhood. I'd seen it enough times that it didn't surprise me, but I didn't want to embarrass Mrs. Ramirez. The rest of my body, however, did surprise me.

  My beat-up, scared, and tattooed 47-year-old body was unblemished. I didn't have any stubborn middle-aged fat. My skin was taut over my flesh. I thought I had more muscles, but whatever. My injuries were all healed. Even my crooked finger, the one that had been broken as punishment for screwing up after I first joined the 'Paladins, was fixed. My body looked like it had when I was 18.

  "He rises, Master. He rises!"

  If you want to get snapped out of introspection, that's a pretty good line. I looked around me and noticed where I was—not where I expected to be, certainly, and not where I wanted to be. I was no longer on Mrs. Ramirez's back deck. I was in Hell. Not figurative hell, actual Hell. Full of hellfire and screams of pain. And the sulfur smell? Worse than the clubhouse on burrito night. Trust me, the stories you’ve heard have nothing on the actual place. That alone might have been manageable, but dozens of robed and hooded figures surrounded me, and they were all looking at me. I was suddenly back in high school and hoped I wouldn't get a woody.

  Chalk another one up in the Chuck was wrong column. This was definitely worse than where I'd come from.

  I only realized that the figures that surrounded me were chanting when they suddenly stopped. By this time, I was on my feet and ready to kick some ass despite the impossible odds. I didn’t know what these perverts wanted, but they’d only get it over my dead body.

  Wow! I had no idea how much I had slowed down with age, as my body had gone soft. This me was smooth and powerful. I smiled at the thought of the thrashing I was about to deal out before this mob took me down, but they didn't advance.

  They stood around me, swaying and mumbling under their breath. I looked around and saw that they were parting as someone moved through them. Someone big. Someone—my God! I felt his aura as he approached. I'd been around some bad dudes in my time. Some of them even scared me. But this… This was on another level. Hope died in this aura, never to return.

  The sea of robed figures split, and through them came something that shouldn't exist.

  He stood twice human height, composed of living shadow wreathed in flames of cold blue fire. His body drank the light from the chamber, and where he walked, reality itself seemed to bend away from him.

  Horns swept back from a skull that shifted between states—sometimes almost human, other times a thing of pure nightmare with eyes of burning ice. Just when I thought I understood what I was looking at, it changed. Massive wings unfurled behind him, shadow-stuff edged in blue flame that cast no light. Nobody in the chamber looked at him except for me. I couldn’t not look. He was terrible and beautiful.

  My knees buckled, but I caught myself before I fell to them. The thing's presence pressed down on me like a physical weight, squeezing my chest until each breath came sharp and painful. I willed myself to remain standing. I kneel before no man.

  "My champion rises." The voice shook my rib cage and my sanity. "How impressive. Look at you. Magnificent. You will be perfect for my cause. The perfect champion for Hell."

  The Demon King gestured, and the cultists parted further, revealing a second stone altar I hadn't been able to see before. Tied to it was a girl—an elf, though how I was so sure I did not know, her blonde hair matted with blood, her once-graceful clothing reduced to rags. Each limb was shackled to a different arm of the X-shaped altar. Her wide, terrified eyes, the color of the sky on a spring day, shot between the Devil and me even as she struggled to escape her inevitable doom.

  "Sacrifice her," the Demon King commanded. "Spill her virgin blood and bathe in it. Take her spirit and make it your slave. Take your rightful place as my champion. My anti-paladin." With a gesture, one of the robed figures dashed forward, pressed an obsidian dagger into my hand, and retreated before I gathered my wits enough to stab him in the neck with it. I mechanically walked towards the girl on the sacrificial altar. I had to obey the command I was given, just as the sun has to rise in the east. I had no choice in the matter. I was compelled.

  "Defile her, then cut out her heart, my champion. Do this and take the power I offer you."

  I stood between her legs, prepared to follow through with the evil act, when suddenly a thought fought its way to the surface of my consciousness, defying the demon's compulsion. I saw Mrs. Ramirez holding my hand as we bled out. I heard her talking to me as I died. The pressure on my being suddenly blew away in a psychic wind.

  I turned to face the demon, dagger held high above my head. I threw it down where the ancient volcanic glass blade shattered against the stone floor with an immensely satisfying crash. Every voice in the room went silent.

  "Up yours, demon."