"EeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEE-eeeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeEEEEEEEumumum-away-"

As nobody else was around to rock out of tune with him, Jim leaned his head back and kept yelling at the top of his lungs, "Uh-weema-way, uh-weema-way, uh-weema-way..." Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. "In the jungle ... the mighty jungle..."

He was a really fucking bad singer. Worse even than Adrian had been back in the beginning-before the angel had come clean about the fact that far from being tone-deaf, the bastard could actually give a choirboy a run for his money on the Hallelujah Chorus. Jim, on the other hand, was the real deal when it came to being the anti-American Idol.

His repertoire also sucked ass. He'd been drafted into the XOps system shortly after he'd murdered the rapists who had killed his mother-so it wasn't like he'd had a typical late-eighties high school experience steeped in Van Halen dances and AC/DC delivered into the ears by a Sony Walkman. He did know the words to "Jingle Bells," but that reminded him of his mother, so it was a no-go. He'd already run through "Happy Birthday" a couple of times. Next up after this one? He was weighing the pros and cons of either that thing you were supposed to sing on New Year's Eve or the Twix commercial.

Talk about needing a break.

"EeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeeeee-uh-umum-away..."

He'd tried flat-out yelling Nigel's name for how long? But he'd had to give that up-not that his vocal stylings were fixing the sand problem, but the songs kept him going better than just the name.

"...darling, don't fear"-a spasm of coughing cut the verse off-"my darling..."

Shit, his voice was drying up.

Gray, powdery ground. Relentless dusty wind. A never-ending horizon where the sky was one with everything else. Jesus Christ, this brought new meaning to the word hell, but as long as he didn't sit down, as long as he didn't let the cold whip his legs out from under him, as long as he kept going ...

Yeah, what, he thought. What then.

It was impossible not to wonder how many of the souls before him had motivated themselves into exactly this kind of aimless amble. And in all the distance he'd covered, he hadn't seen one goddamn sign of life ... or Nigel.

To keep himself from going completely insane, he pictured the only thing that could bring him back from the brink: his Sissy. Her long blond hair. Her eyes that reminded him of the blue snapdragons his mother had grown around their farmhouse. Her voice that had this freaky way of grounding him and sending him flying at the same time. Her clean scent and the mole on the side of her neck and the fact that she had a wonky fingernail on the pinkie of her left hand.

He pictured the way she tended to fiddle with the collar of whatever shirt she was wearing, as if maybe she'd forced herself to stop chewing her lip or the quick of her nails and needed to burn off the twitch.

He remembered how straight her two front teeth were, and how crooked her bottom six were.

When he thought about her, it was as if he recalled every breath she had ever drawn and expelled, even before he'd known she existed.

Great. After all these years, he finally grew a romantic bone in his body ... and his girl was on the far side of the moon for all he could get to her- Oh, come on, what was he going on about? Even if she were walking side by side with him? It wasn't like that was the way things were going to go for them.

The saddest thing about ending up here, apart from the fact that he'd fucked up the war, potentially lost his mother's place in Heaven, and was going to spend eternity blowing around a Star Trek set like some red shirt left behind by the Enterprise, was that he'd never told Sissy he loved her.

Then again, maybe he'd done her a favor. Like she needed his bullcrap?

He stared up at the gray sky as his boots sank into the ground one after the other, as his legs strained to keep the stride up, as his body yearned for a sit-down. The isolation made him feel everything so much more deeply ... until the loneliness and the regrets were as though the sun itself had settled in the center of his chest.

Burning him. Singeing him.

Keeping him both warm against the cold and in utter agony.

For the love of God, was there nothing here, he thought- At first he ignored the sound, but eventually, the persistence of it registered more than its volume. He stopped and clapped his mouth shut.

Instead of looking at whatever it was, he turned so that his better ear, the left one, was pointing in that direction.

Rhythmic. That was all he got, but it was enough to get him motivated: Even if it was an enemy, at least fighting would give him the sense of getting somewhere, doing something. Dear God, the monotony was almost as bad as the sense that time was running out.

And the memory of everything he'd left behind ...

Man, if he had the chance to do it all over again, he'd tell her he loved her. He wouldn't make the same mistake again. He wouldn't ... not tell her.

That was all.

Well, shit, he thought. Guess he wasn't making it out of here, was he. Because a man like him made a vow like that only when he knew he'd never have to live up to it.

In the meantime, he needed to get moving again.

When he went to take a step forward, his heels seemed to have become nailed to the fluffy ground cover. Gritting his teeth, he leaned into his legs and yanked so hard that when shit came free, he actually looked behind to make sure his foot and the stub of his ankle hadn't been left behind.

Nope, he was walking. But there wasn't going to be any stopping again.

Following the only noise other than the wind, he made as much time as he could toward that rhythmic sound, passing by statues of the dead that crumbled as he strode by, holding the bottom of his shirt up to his mouth so he could breathe without having his larynx sandblasted.

"Nigel, where the hell are you..."

He asked the question out of habit. Not because he thought he was going to find the guy.

As Sissy watched the demon fawn over Jim's remains, that explosive anger came back, clawing into her chest and giving her heartburn along with the urge to kill. But who was she going to go after? They needed Devina for this miracle idea.

Which might not in fact work. And might end up with the four of them in trouble with God Himself.

Plus, based on what they'd said? If things did go as planned, the parlor, if not the whole house, might be incinerated in the process. Maybe they'd create another Grand Canyon.

The Dead Sea being the starter set, as it were.

As the demon bent down again to whisper something in Jim's ear, Sissy turned away. It was either that or go Real Housewives on the bitch. And with the heavy book still in her hands, she opened things up just to give her eyes somewhere to go other than all the really-frickin'-creepy across the way.

The words were so easy to read now, the sentences flowing together, the logic behind the topics making more sense than it had. She was in what she thought of as the inventory section-it was page after page of objects arranged by date and type of metal. After the inventory came a list of places all over the world. There were dates for the locations as well as precise coordinates- "Yo, Sis."

Startled, she twisted around toward Adrian. "Yes?"

"You might as well stand over here with me by the window. If shit gets critical, we can Hollywood-stuntman it out of the line of fire."

"Maybe that should be 'when,' huh?"

As she followed Ad's lead and settled in beside the angel's heft, she closed the book and put it against her chest. There was comfort in having the weight against her heart, like the thing might act as a shield or something-and then Devina finally got up on her ridiculous high heels and stepped away from Jim. Not exactly something to jump up and down with joy about, but better than the show the demon had been putting on.

And when Colin got to his feet as well, Sissy was reminded that he actually was a good-looking man-not that he was a man. He was slightly leaner than Adrian, but he had the quick eyes of a fighter who was comfortable playing dirty, and the confidence of someone who was rarely, if ever, surprised.

Jim had been able to get a rise out of him, though. All it had taken was that blade across his throat.

The memory was enough to make her nauseous, and every time she blinked, she saw Jim just before he did it, staring at her, his eyes fixated like he was taking her image over the divide and into eternity with him.

"I just want to go back," she whispered.

"To where?" Ad asked.

"Normal." She shook her head and wanted to cry. But refused to let herself. "I just want to worry about school again. And whether my mom will give me her car. I want to get excited about my birthday. Goddamn it ... I should have enjoyed all of that more."

As the inside of her chest struggled to keep up with the waves of her emotions, she thought, Jesus, this was like she had the worst case of PMS in the world. Infuriated. In mourning. Out of her mind. All in the space of minutes.

Then again, it was hard to believe any of this was really happening. The horror was too much, the new rules of existence too many, the fear and the anger spiking in such rapid rotation now, she couldn't label them anymore.

"Do you think this is going to work?" she asked hoarsely as Colin took one side of the parlor and Devina the other.

"I don't know. I really ... don't fucking know." Then Adrian spoke up loudly. "Wait, the blood! We need the blood."

Sissy had to turn away and stare out the window as that little detail was arranged. Leaning her forehead into the bubbly old glass, she watched a lone car go down the lane, its headlights two beacons that disappeared all too soon in the dimness: The crush of midnight dark that had arrived with Devina and those gruesome creatures had lifted only slightly, the residual gloaming outside as if the demon's presence continued to strip sunlight from the air.

Or maybe it was just later than she thought? God, that was another thing to mourn: the days when fifteen minutes had actually felt like fifteen minutes. Now time was either going like the wind or not moving at all.

Adrian shuffled back over to her. "It's done."

As she turned around again, he was keeping something out of sight. "Let's do this," the angel called out to the two ... well, combatants. Devina had braced herself, which was ridiculous in those heels-although somehow she managed to look like Wonder Woman, capable of withstanding all assault even in fuck-me pumps and that black leather jumpsuit thing. Colin, likewise, was in a defensive crouch, looking as grim as death.

Maybe this will all be over, Sissy thought, holding her book right against her chest. And man, having died once, she was not looking forward to a repeat-especially as she didn't know if she had any destination left.

Wasn't going to be Hell this time. At least, that's what Jim had told- "Shall we?" Colin said, raising his palms.

"I'm ready to dance." The demon put her hands facing outward. "Are we going on one, two, three-"

"No," Colin drawled.

The archangel let loose something out of a Batman movie, the rays of brilliant light shooting from his palms and training on Devina. As her brunette hair was stripped back from her face, she cursed and threw out her version of the same, twin black blasts powering across the parlor.

It was either that or she was clearly going up in smoke.

And talk about atmospheric change: Sissy could feel the warmth and the bitter cold, as well as the powerful electric charge that sparked where the positive and negative met. Hair lifted off the top of her head and all down her forearms-and then things got even more intense. Brilliant flashes of light began to pop free as if from friction, and she felt a strange sensation underneath her skin-like her blood was threatening to boil.

We gotta get out of here, she thought as she glanced at the window. And yet the forces were so great, she wasn't sure even a trip out of Caldwell would be enough.

Maybe this time they were going to create another Atlantic Ocean.

As the ionizing charge increased still further, a hum began to weave through the room, subtle at first, then growing louder and louder until it became like a jet engine, until her ears registered it not as sound, but as pain. Beside her, Adrian took a step back, but it wasn't to jump through the glass. He was bracing himself against the wall of the old house.

"You're going to want to hold on to something," he yelled. "It's going to start rotating."

As Sissy looked around for a good place to lock onto, Ad just reached out and grabbed her, dragging her against him.

"I can give us some extra coverage," he barked. At least, she assumed that was what he'd said-she couldn't hear a thing.

Trapping the book between them, she wound her arms around his hard torso. "How are you going to-"

All at once a shimmering came down over the both of them, the glittering shower cutting the noise and leaving a pattern in the air that she had to look through-like you'd move your eyes into one of the diamonds in a chain-link fence to see out of it.

"Nice trick," she muttered.

"I can also crochet."

Just when she was sure Colin and Devina couldn't throw out any more energy, when she was certain that one or maybe both of them were going to be knocked off their feet-and likely blast the roof off the damn house-a subtle shift occurred.

Instead of hitting straight on, the two opposing forces began to slide past each other. Except there was no reason to duck and cover. Just before the two beams were going to end up breaking free, some kind of elemental force kept them tied-and with no other place to go, they began to bend around and start to circle. But it wasn't easy. The sound was like a huge piece of metal being twisted, a great high-pitched grind that made her wince even with Ad's spell in place.

Transfixed by the magic and the power, all she could think of was the show Storm Chasers. Reed Timmer and his Dominator had spent a number of seasons hunting down spring tornadoes and getting right in the middle of them-and to help the viewers understand what was going on, there had been illustrations on how twisters formed thanks to countervailing cool/dry and warm/humid fronts colliding out over the flat Midwest.

Same thing here. The first rotation appeared to be the hardest, Colin's warm force curving around Devina's cold one until the light and the dark doubled back and hooked into their original source. And ... again. A second trip around. And ... again. A third.

By the fourth time, she could see how a groove in space-time-or whatever-was being created. Nothing spilled upward or downward, as if the gathering energy were too attracted to itself to pare off willy-nilly. Instead, the circling started to happen with ease.

And then that rotation took on a life all its own.

Through the invisible lockdown Ad had put up around them, she watched as Colin's and Devina's poses changed, shifting from braced to direct their beams to leaning back like they were trying to keep from getting pulled in. And then the two of them were shouting at each other over the whirring noise.

They broke off at exactly the same second: Colin hitting the wall behind him with such force he went Bugs Bunny, his body embedding in the lath and plaster, and Devina going airborne and ending up in the far upper corner of the ceiling. Right before she hit with enough impact to shatter, the demon caught herself with a feline twist and stick, her body adhering itself high above and staying there like she was ready to pounce down.

Except Devina's gravity-defying trick was nothing compared to the storm in the center of the parlor.

The forces were beginning to spin so fast that the alternation of light and dark ceased to exist and all became a resonant thundercloud gray. And that was when the objects in the room started to vibrate ... then move. The sofas gravitated toward the energy, wadding up the tremendous rug in great bunches, bringing the Oriental along with them. Mirrors and paintings smacked against the walls before breaking free, flying toward the vortex and disappearing into it with unholy flares of blood-red light.

"Stay here," Adrian gritted.

"Wait, no!" she screamed, trying to catch him before he left the protective spell. "You're gonna get lost!"

There was no stopping him, though. And no great footing for him, either. He dropped down, as if trying to avoid the vacuum, and then fought for purchase as his body began to skid over the now-bare floor.

Up on the ceiling, like some great housefly, Devina was yelling. As her brunette hair ripped around, it flashed images of her red lips, parted, bright white teeth gleaming as she tried to communicate. But it wasn't Ad who responded. It was Colin. With obvious effort, he dug himself out of his archangel imprint in the wall-and headed for Jim's remains. When he outed a crystal dagger, Sissy wondered what in the hell he was going to do.

Raising his arm high over his shoulder, he buried that brilliant dagger right into the meat of Jim's shoulder-and then he wasted no time going back to what little shelter he had.

Of course, Sissy thought. If Jim's body were lost in there, he'd have nothing to come back to.

"Adrian! Watch out!" In spite of the fact that he probably couldn't hear her, she pointed wildly at the coffee table. "Ad!"

Whether he heard her or had eyes in the back of his skull, she didn't know-but the angel ducked out of the path of the marble-topped table as it flipped end over end and then went airborne, the gaping maw of that energy sucking it in with another blast of red light. Then it was the green velvet sofa's turn.

Meanwhile, Adrian stayed braced against the suck zone, trying to open something.

Old books vibrated in the shelves and then broke free of their orderly rows, flying through the air like crows, their covers flapping, their pale pages beating against one another until they were consumed. And Ad had to duck and cover again, especially as the heavy candlesticks hit the road for the center of the room.

The angel yelled something back at Devina.

It was a water bottle. That was what was in his hand. And as he freed the cap, the little disk flipped out of his hand.

Jim's silver blood took flight just like the books, but its path was not the same at all. Instead of a quick, messy trip, it congealed, becoming a kind of mercury, and its progression was in slow-mo, whereas everything else was on fast-forward: The distinct silver droplets tripped lazily over one another as they fell into a line and headed for the maelstrom, kept aloft by the energy in the room, attracted to the mouth of the energy swirl.

Adrian didn't wait to watch what happened when the blood reached the destination. He wrenched his poor broken body around and tried to make it back to where he'd been. Just as she'd feared, though, the current had caught hold of him-his shirt being pulled so tightly across his chest that it began to rip in half, his loose pants flapping like sails in a bad wind.