Angelese could tell that Ca.s.sie was noticing this, so she took the Nectoport even higher.

The shapes and diagrams below were all integrated, collectively forming a much larger mural. Ca.s.sie couldn't see it all, even at this alt.i.tude, but she could see enough. Lucifer is his own patron of the arts ... The pattern criss-crossed into a configuration that seemed to show an outspread arm below an immense wing. An angel's wing, Ca.s.sie realized. But she was grateful that she couldn't see the rest. She never wanted to see the face ...

They soared further, and Ca.s.sie noticed a strange black edifice. "Is that a-"

"A pyramid? Not exactly."

"It looks like black gla.s.s, but, this far away? It must be huge."

"It's the Bastille of Otherwise Souls," Angelese explained. "It's the vessel that holds the soul of every person who committed suicide, souls that otherwise would've gone to Heaven. "

Ca.s.sie gulped. "Is ... my sister's soul trapped there?"

"I'm not allowed to say."

Ca.s.sie smirked. Next she noticed one district that seemed uniform in color, a brick-red. "What's that?"

"The Panzuzu District," Angelese told her. "Every single building there is painted with blood. It just happens to be the place I'm taking you to. I want you to see it with your own eyes.

The port began to lower again, like a fighter plane taking a dive. Ca.s.sie's belly did flip-flips. This sure beats Busch Gardens...

"Look..."

Ca.s.sie could see it, the thing that Angelese had previously described as something like a colossal football stadium.

"The Atrocidome."

Jeez, that thing must cover an entire square mile. She squinted then. An immense circular black blot. She could see the outline of the place, she could even see the grand-stands, like those that would surround a sports field. But ... where was the field?

"We can't see every detail," Angelese said, "we're too far away, and I don't want to get close enough to be spotted by observers. The black circle is the Killing Plate. It's hovering over the field as we speak, that's why you can't see the field itself. Archlocks are keeping it levitated until they can pack as many people in as they can."

"And when they do-"

"The Archlocks release the Levitation Spell, and the plate falls. It crushes everybody on the field at the same instant. All that Deathforce surges at once, and Satan's Biowizards use more Necromancy to contain and manipulate the energy-through those Energy Converters-" She pointed toward the farthest edge of the dome, where black skeletal towers at least a mile high pitched in the wind. "It's all that energy that allows them to cause the Spatial Merge."

Ca.s.sie couldn't imagine it. Who could even think of it? Who could devise such a thing, even in a world where wizardry functioned as science?

"Originally Lucifer built the 'dome to serve as an entertainment field for the demonic elite. His version of gladiators. But eventually his Wizards found a better use for it." Angelese made the Nectoport veer off sharply. It whizzed across the sky, across the shape of the black sickle moon.

"Where are we going now?" Ca.s.sie asked, gripping the rim for all she was worth.

"The Satan Park Zoo," Angelese said.

Zoo? Great. A zoo in h.e.l.l. "Why are we going there?"

Angelese didn't answer. Instead, she looked out at the evil spectacle that was the city. Her snow-white hair danced around her head, the wind pressing the fabric of her gown against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Through the thin material Ca.s.sie could see the webwork scars. At one point, the angel's pendant-the Obscurity Stone-Mew back behind her neck, and while it was no longer in contact with her skin, her aura raged. The emanation of intense, lime-green light projected from the Nectoport's dimensionless rim. "d.a.m.n it!" she exclaimed and pulled the stone back to her bosom. "That was real smart."

"What's wrong? Your aura's beautiful."

"Here it's deadly. If Spotters see it, they'll report it to the Agency of the Constabulary."

"But we don't have anything to worry about," Ca.s.sie reminded. "Like you said back on the street. We're just dream-channeling. We can't be hurt or captured because our physical bodies aren't really here."

"That's right, but if someone saw us, that would tip the Constabulary off. Lucifer would know that someone's getting ready to f.u.c.k with him."

Ca.s.sie's jaw dropped. "Angelese! You're an angel! You can't talk like that."

The angel grinned. "That's just a misconception. Angels can talk any f.u.c.kin' way they want."

Ca.s.sie was shocked.

Then: "d.a.m.n it!" Angelese yelled.

Before Ca.s.sie could ask what was wrong, she saw it. Four Griffins, like a squad of attack planes, could be seen soaring up toward them through wisps of ill-colored clouds. Ca.s.sie had never seen Griffins so large-with twenty-foot wing-spans. Their wings moved too fast to be seen.

"Do something!" Angelese shouted.

Ca.s.sie was dumbfounded but then she thought, Oh! That's right, I'm an Etheress ... Below, the flock disbanded into different directions; several disappeared into clouds. They flew so quickly it was hard for her to focus. Come on, come on, she sputtered to herself. Then she saw one, much closer, and thought: Decapitate ...

The Griffin didn't even have time to shriek. Its beaked, scale-plated head flew off mid-flight at a perfect line along its neck. Ca.s.sie didn't even see any blood. When another of the beasts turned out of a cloud and approached the mouth of the Nectoport, Ca.s.sie thought, No feathers, and suddenly the thing was plummeting helplessly. Its cover of scaled feathers fell off its twisted body, dispersing in a confetti-like cloud. The Griffin was gone.

Angelese was taking the Nectoport lower. "Where are the other ones?" she asked with some concern. Then she was screaming. Two Great-Dane-sized heads shot over the Port's rim. One beak swiped at Angelese's face, missed, but got a length of her white hair. It was trying to pull her out.

The other Griffin was climbing into the Nectoport.

"Help!" the angel shrieked.

"No beak," Ca.s.sie said to the creature that was attacking her friend. The beak fell off, leaving a black-pink tongue roving within an agape hole. It raised a talon, but then Ca.s.sie said, "No claws." They fell off. Suddenly the thing was foundering on the rim; without claws it couldn't maintain its grasp. It fell off.

"Jesus!" Angelese exclaimed in relief.

The last Griffin made a sound like a jammed gearbox when Ca.s.sie thought, Inside-out. Suddenly its body inverted, organs hanging off its exterior, its small brain smeared like pudding around the prolapsed skull. Everything that was inside now hung outside. It shuddered uselessly.

"Out," Ca.s.sie said, and the Ethereal force behind the word jettisoned the thing out of the Port's mouth.

"That's some skill you have." Even Angelese was impressed, breathing deep in the aftermath.

"It doesn't work on everything here," Ca.s.sie said. She watched the heap-like Griffin turn end over end as it fell fast. "Lower species, mainly. The more evolved the demon, the less effect I have. Can't touch a higher-echelon Warlock or Necromancer." She grinned. "But it can be fun."

"You're evolving so well, it's amazing." Angelese narrowed her pretty beige eyes. "I'll bet you could give an entire Mutilation Squad a run for their money, and I'll bet you could give a Grand Duke a serious headache."

"I try." Ca.s.sie peered further ahead and down. They were much lower now, skimming the tops of corroded buildings, shooting through smoke. "Isn't it dangerous being this low?"

"A little. The smoke will give us cover." The angel pointed. "Look. The Mephis...o...b..ilding. See it?"

"How could I miss that?" Ca.s.sie said. Through occasional breaks in the smoke, Ca.s.sie spotted the tallest building ever constructed. 666 floors high, she thought in awe. Monolithic, the building spired high, looking out on the city with hundreds of thousands of gun-slit windows. Gargoyles could be seen prowling the stone ledges of each level; Caco-Bats nested in the iron trestle that crossed to form the structure's fastigiated antenna-mast. Even from this distance, it made Ca.s.sie dizzy just to look at. "That's where Lucifer lives," she muttered.

"It's the heart of h.e.l.l. Rumor is he hasn't left the building in a thousand years."

"Have you ever seen him?"

"Once. A long time ago."

"What's he look like?"

"He looks just like ..." Something severed the angel's answer, as her Umbra Specter began to rear. "Just ... bright light," she said instead.

At the base of the impossible edifice, Ca.s.sie could see the strange pinkish heaps, like intestines. They looked like organic ma.s.ses of something that rose several floors up. They glistened, throbbing. These were the Flesh Warrens; the only way into the Mephis...o...b..ilding was through these organic channels. It was the ultimate security system. The Flesh Warrens possessed their own immune-system.

"We have to go there, Ca.s.sie," Angelese began.

"What? You're crazy! It's impenetrable. The Flesh Warrens eat anything that enters."

"We'll find a way. Not now, later. There's something going on there. Our spies have told us that Lucifer has left the top floor."

"Why?"

"We don't know. We gotta find out what he's doing up there. Here, take these and look."

Angelese handed Ca.s.sie a pair of what she thought were binoculars, and they were ... in a sense. Ca.s.sie yelped. The odd black object hummed faintly in her hands, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with some occult energy. Jutting from the two forward lenses were a pair of huge, blood-shot eyes. Binoculars, my a.s.s! Ca.s.sie thought.

"You can see miles with those things. It's an Ophitte Viewer, the eyes of a Gargoyle charged by a Blood Spell. Gargoyles are Satan's sentinels; that's why he's got them crawling all over the Mephis...o...b..ilding, to watch for possible trespa.s.sers. They have very good vision."

The fascinating meld of technology and the occult didn't particularly impress Ca.s.sie. Every so often, the binoculars blinked. She hesitantly brought them to her own eyes and looked out, now surveying the very top of the Mephis...o...b..ilding. She's right, something's going on up there ... She could see demons working, like a construction crew. They seemed to be building something around the ramparts of the roof, cranes droning to set in place rows of what appeared to be shiny greenish pillars.

"What are those pillars?"

"Plinths made of jasper. Any gem that exists in the Four Gates of Heaven has an opposite power here. In case you didn't know-and haven't read The Revelation of John the Divine, the outer wall of Heaven is made of jasper. In h.e.l.l, symbols have power the same way that an electric generator has power in the Living World. The symbol of something holy in Heaven-such as jasper-can be used sacrilegiously in h.e.l.l. The holy becomes unholy. Get it?"

"No," Ca.s.sie said, still looking at the macabre rooftop construction.

"Lucifer's got a bunch of plans brewing. The Merges, you, the Transposition that took place at that library in Maryland the other night. And now this, the jasper dolmens. They can be very dangerous Power Relics."

Ca.s.sie didn't understand and didn't think she wanted to. She put down the hideous, blinking binoculars. "I don't care if he's got a Tupperware Party going on up there-we're not going to the Mephis...o...b..ilding."

"No, not now. But later ..."

"Have fun," Ca.s.sie huffed. "I'm not up for it."

"Calm down. The only place we're going right now is the zoo." Angelese's white hair churned around her head almost like an aura itself. "But there aren't any giraffes and koala bears in this zoo."

More confusion whipped around Ca.s.sie, with the wind blowing in. The Port slowed, cruising lower. h.e.l.l was full of abominable odors, but the odors here took the cake. Rot, offal, spoiling meat, and sweat on bodies that hadn't been washed in centuries. A winding lane was lined with cages; Ca.s.sie saw upscale Demons, humans, and other elite Mephistopolites meandering from cage to cage. The Nectoport raced along over the lane too quickly for Ca.s.sie to make out details of the creatures in the cages, and she supposed she was grateful for that. At one cage, several well-dressed Broodren cawed as they poked sharp sticks through the bars. Each jab was responded to by a thunderous roar.

"They're coming up,"Angelese said, looking down more intently now.

"What?"

"The Oubliettes."

"The-" Over the next curve in the lane, the facility's structure changed. Now all the infernal spectators, instead of looking up into the cages at either side, were looking down.

Into pits.

They were like cement cells forged into the ground, each covered by a locked frame of iron bars. And in each cell, cowering in a corner, or looking up in rage or horror, was an "exhibition." Most were fugitives of one species or another-many Human. This place wasn't as much a zoo as it was a display emporium for political heretics and convicts. Some had been torsoed, some skinned or mutilated, some infected with diseases specifically designed to increase the shock-value of their appearance. But not all of those condemned here were criminals. It was a business, after all, and visual outrage was the market. Other of the cell's occupants were accidents from the Teratology Inst.i.tutes and experiments gone awry from the Academy of Transfiguration: hexological mutations and transplantees. It's like a circus freak show, Ca.s.sie realized, getting sick just looking, only they're manufacturing their own turo-headed cows ... Spectators openly spat and urinated into the cells below, an encouraged debas.e.m.e.nt (she caught a glimpse of a sign: DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS, BUT FEEL FREE TO EXCRETE ON THEM). She also caught half-second glimpses of what seemed to be pipe-exits on either side of each cell ...

"Are those pipes?" Ca.s.sie inquired, a bend in her voice.

"Twice a day, they open the domestic sewer lines from the district-through every cell in the Oubliette Reservation," Angelese informed. "Keeps the cells neck-deep in waste during off hours. It's for the city's most exclusive prisoners. Instead of putting them on the Gacy Detention Archipelago, or locking them away forever in the City Prison or one of the Emaciation Camps-they put them here. They put them on display to the public. For money, of course. In h.e.l.l, everything is for money, just like in your world."

It was mortifying. Ca.s.sie looked away, she couldn't witness any more of this, but that's when the pertinent question finally struck her: "Angelese? Why did you bring me here?"

The question gave her so much focus that she hadn't noticed the Nectoport had stopped, its one-dimensional aperture hovering at the end of the Oubliette section.

"We don't have much time," the angel said.

"Answer the question!"

"Look. Look down."

"I'm not looking at that place anymore!"

Angelese's voice softened. "Look down, Ca.s.sie ..."

Ca.s.sie did, preparing herself for some new vision of disgust and degradation, but what she actually saw was worse than she ever could've imagined.

"Ca.s.sie?" a voice shrieked upward. "Ca.s.sie, is that you?"

Ca.s.sie screamed. Looking up at her from the demented, sewage-smeared cell, was her twin sister, Lissa.

"Ca.s.sie, for the love of G.o.d help me!" The plea shot up through the bars like arrows. "Get me out of here!"

Ca.s.sie trembled, choking. She tried to speak, tried to say something a.s.suring to her dead sister but all that croaked out was: "Lissa ..."

"We have to go," Angelese said. "We'll be spotted."

"No!" Ca.s.sie shot back, and all the emotion behind the response shoved the angel back. "We're going down there and getting her!"

"We can't. We're channeling. We're not corporeal. If we got her out, we couldn't take her with us. She'd be recaptured immediately." The Nectoport was sailing away fast as a missile.

"Ca.s.sie! No!" Lissa screamed. "Please don't leave me here! How can you leave me here?"

Ca.s.sie was on her knees, sobbing. "Why? Why did you do that?"

"I promised you you'd see your sister again."

"Yeah, great! She's in a hole in the ground in a f.u.c.kin' zoo! You show me that but won't do anything about it? What kind of a d.a.m.n angel are you?"

"A smart one. We'll go back and get her, Ca.s.sie, but we have to be incurare to do it-we have to be in the flesh. I just wanted to prove to you that I knew where she was. We'll rescue her when we go back."