It didn't take long. The stick-like figure quivered in place as the burr ground through the skull and into the brain. He flopped over.

The real Sadie, uncomprehending, ran away in the opposite direction.

"Oh, Ca.s.sie," the voice regretted over the line. "I'm so tired of this. I just don't understand what's wrong with people. Now I'm going to have to-"

Angelese took the phone and slammed it down. "Ca.s.sie, you're wasting your time talking to him. I told you before, we'll find your sister on our terms, not his. Everything he says is a lie."

Ca.s.sie stood dazed. The catastrophic reality of what was going on around her finally got the strange, hypnotic voice out of her head. Yes, she knew who she'd been talking to, and he wasn't far away. He was in the impossible black skysc.r.a.per that had just materialized outside the clinic. The putrid fog was oozing into the hallway now, half-shrouding the new, atrocious features that the Merge was incorporating into the clinic. Past the hall, by what used to be the nurse's station, was the door to the office wing, partially Merged with a statue of a split-faced demon on which fanged pigeons with worms in place of feathers squatted. But there was enough left intact of the door for them to get through. "There's our way out," Ca.s.sie said.

She took off, expecting Angelese to follow, but she immediately sensed something wrong. Through the fog, she looked back. Angelese was standing there. Each time she moved forward, something invisible pushed her back.

"What's wrong?" Ca.s.sie shouted.

"d.a.m.n it," the angel muttered. Nothing looked amiss, but when she took her necklace off-her Obscurity Stone-the aura from her halo lit her up like spotlights.

In the light, Ca.s.sie could see a webwork of wires surrounding Angelese.

"Just go!" Angelese shouted back. "Somebody's put a Warding Spell on me, and it'll take me a little while to unhex."

"We don't have a little while!"

"Just go! I'll meet you outside!"

Ca.s.sie didn't like it, though she had no choice but to obey. Her own powers hadn't developed enough to combat advanced sorcery. Gagging in the fog, she ran down the rest of the hall, squeezed through the next door, and continued running down the office wing. A spider web, with threads thick as spaghetti, spread across her face; she screamed when she saw the attendant spider, something about the size of a gerbil, but with a beak like a parrot. The beak clipped at her face as she edged away, but when she turned she was screaming again, and ducking at a silver blur in the air.

Swoosh!

A Conscript, faceless save for the eyes glaring through the black helm, swiped at her with a long double-edged dirk. His black armor had veins pulsing through it, and an emblem on the breastplate depicted saints being boiled in oil-the emblem of the Asmodeus Legion. Behind him on the floor lay a freshly cleaved corpse: Dr. Morse, the psychiatric chief of the clinic.

Ca.s.sie tried to project a violent thought at him but it never got out of her eyes. Only anger charged her powers, fear inhibited them, and at this moment she was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with fear. A second swipe of the shining dirk nicked her arm, and she toppled. Tendrils of the sickly green fog turned in the air. Above her, the Conscript raised the dirk again. A final scream exploded from her throat.

Then the Conscript collapsed. The dirk clanged against the smoky floor.

R.J. lunged forward and yanked her up. "Are you all right?" he yelled.

Ca.s.sie pressed her hand to the wound on her arm, blood leaking between her fingers. "I think so-" Then she looked down at the Conscript, who was twitching on the floor. A hypodermic needle jutted from his throat. "What did you do?"

"I shot him up with a enough Stelazine to kill ten men-" Next he pulled her into an exam room, slammed the door, terrified. "Ca.s.sie, what is happening here?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you ..."

More otherwordly features merged into the room. The floor became a brick-laned street, only the bricks were composed of crushed bone matter and teeth. There was a gutter clogged with blood and nameless waste, a sewer grate spewing smoke, an iron man-hole cover; imprinted in the metal were the words SALOME COUNTY PUBLIC WORKS-WASTE & SEWAGE REFLUX DEPT. R.J. had never appeared more disconcerted, which was understandable. "Ca.s.sie, at this point, there is nothing I won't believe."

"There's no time, we have to get out of here-I'll explain later-" Her words seared off with the sudden pain; she yelped. R.J. was applying an antiseptic wipe against her wound. "At first I thought it was an earthquake but," he talked as he worked. "But-s.h.i.t!" Now a tree slowly merged into the room, half embedded in the wall. Red snakes coiled about its twisted branches.

"This is no earthquake," R.J. said. "Are you seeing that?"

"Yes."

"Then I don't know what this could be. Chemical leak, or something. Maybe somebody put psychedelics in the water. We all seem to be having the same hallucinations-"

"Ow!" Ca.s.sie yelled next.

"I have to disinfect," he said. "G.o.d knows what was on that knife-if there really was a knife." He sprayed rubbing alcohol on next, and after that-clack-clack-clack He closed the cut with a surgical stapler.

"Jeez! That hurts like s.h.i.t!"

It was clear by the expression on his face that the doctor/ scientist in him was being thoroughly challenged; the denial of what he was seeing stacked against simple observation.

"The smartest thing for us to do is just stay right here-"

"We can't do that!"

"-and wait for this hallucinosis or whatever it is, to pa.s.s.

Then we'll get tox screens and see what turns up in our blood. This has got to be a hallucination, Ca.s.sie. There's no other explanation."

Oh yes there is ...

"Now let me get a bandage over these st.i.tches," but he frowned, noticing that the supply cabinet now appeared to be merged into a brick wall on which a service sign had been mounted: PLEASE RECYCLE ROTTEN BLOOD. He managed to pry the cabinet door open, and retrieved a bandage. "Let me get this on you, then I'm going to call poison control."

"No! We have to get out! I'll tell you what's going on once we're out of here-"

A familiar weird pressure rose, and a chill. She squinted at R.J., saw him rubbing something between his fingers. A dried leaf.

"What's that you're ...," she began. She stopped, noticing something else now. In the fracas, R.J.'s medical tunic had come open a few b.u.t.tons. She could see his bare chest but something else too.

A pendant around his neck, from which dangled a dark-purple stone shaped like an upside-down V.

An Obscurity Stone, she realized very grimly. Just like the one Angelese has ...

He'd seen by her eyes that she'd noticed, and he touched the small odd stone. "s.h.i.t. Looks like you made me pretty fast. Doesn't matter now, anyway. There's only one way Angelese can break the Warding Spell, and believe me, she doesn't have the fort.i.tude to do it."

His voice had shifted down as he spoke, octaves blended with other octaves that clearly weren't human. He continued to touch the stone, as a woman might unconsciously diddle with a necklace she was fond of. "You wanna see? Oh, h.e.l.l, why not?"

He took off the pendant.

It would be impossible to describe the color of the light that poured off of R.J.'s head, except to say that it was bright and dark at the same time: the halo of a Fallen Angel. Without the Obscurity Stone, his wings bloomed into full view, angled high and spanning some twenty feet, all bones, though, not feathered at all. The feathers had all burned off during his plummet from grace so long ago. The webwork of bones were charred black and etched with glyphs and numerals and the oddest letters of some para-human language, the same way people have names signed to casts on their arms.

Ca.s.sie stared up into the light of this terrible being.

"G.o.d sends His agents, we send ours," R.J. said. He was still crushing the leafy substance in his fingers, letting flecks fall to the floor. "And here comes our cab."

The pressure in the room rose steadily, and then came the sound she was very familiar with: Sssssssssssssssss-ONK!

The phosph.o.r.escent-green orb, like a blob of light, appeared in a snap and hovered in the room. A Nectoport, Ca.s.sie realized with the lowest feeling in her gut.

R.J. showed her what he'd gotten out of the supply cabinet, four small sterilized packages of something but she knew they weren't really bandages.

"They're pre-packaged tourniquets," he told her, "for emergency amputation cases."

And now he was holding something else: a bone saw. "I'm not allowed to kill you-even though I'd like to very much," his corroded voice flowed on. "I'd like to drink your Etheric blood, I'd like to cut your skin off and hang it off my wings as decoration, and suck the meat off your bones. But I can't. My mission is to take you into custody, and when that Nectoport opens, that's just what I'm going to do."

The hovering orb was growing, spreading out to a squirming, oval shape that would soon form its entrance.

Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, don't be afraid, Ca.s.sie thought over and over again. She must lose her fear and turn it into rage; only then could she harness her powers. Hate, hate, hate, hate ...

"But I can't have you carrying on," the Fallen Angel continued, "can't risk letting you escape-you've been very cunning and elusive in the past. You won't be escaping to anywhere-not without your arms and legs, hmm?" He ran his finger along the bone saw. "Don't worry, you won't die. The tourniquets will stop you from bleeding to death."

An impulse goaded her to try to flee but she knew that such an instinct would only reinforce her fear. Fear was her enemy now, she knew she must banish it to survive. She must stand here and fight him ...

Then he spoke words from an unknown language-his native language perhaps: "Enw nalde flavelaaiz me staadpa stilluadte," and Ca.s.sie collapsed.

She'd fallen flat on her back. She couldn't move.

"Pretty good Paresis Incantation, huh? Fallen Angels know their s.h.i.t. We've had a long time to practice."

Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, don't be afraid, her thoughts raced. True, she couldn't move, but she could still think, and it was with her mind that she would summon her powers.

He picked her up, his wings constricting, and placed her limp body on the counter. "You know, I just thought of something. After I dismember you, I guess I should bring your arms and legs back to h.e.l.l too. I'm sure the Son of the Morning would love to have them as souvenirs. The arms and legs of an Etheress! He'd put them on his mantle, or put 'em on display in the Grendel Corrupted Arts Gallery."

She focused on his deception, on his lies, his conceit, and his falseness. She focused on what he stood for and what he represented. Hate, hate, hate, hate! she kept thinking.

His face hovered over her. So did the bone saw. "Better idea. I'll take your leg and beat your pretty little sister to a pulp with it, just beat her head right in, break all her bones with it. Wouldn't that be ironic?"

That last comment did it. Ca.s.sie's fear disappeared, burning away and replaced entirely by her rage, and then she looked at him and thought: Burn ...

The air stilled.

She stared right at him.

"Burn!" she whispered.

The smile spread monstrous across his face, and when he laughed, bricks shook loose from the wall.

"Ca.s.sie, I'm a Fallen Angel. Your jive doesn't work on me ..."

Then he opened the first tourniquet and deliberated over which arm or leg to cut off first.

(III).

Angelese strained against the unbreakable wires of the Warding Spell. She was trapped in a radiating cage of negative energy. Every arcane counter-measure she knew she'd used, every Reverse Hex and Repulsion Charm. Nothing worked.

I can't get out, came the futile thought. I was sent by G.o.d to protect Ca.s.sie ... and I've failed. I've totally, utterly, falled ...

In all the thousands of years that she had lived, she'd never felt so useless.

Despairing, she looked down at her feet. The shadow of her body extended a yard or so from her feet.

Wait a second ...

She took a step sideways. The corridor lights from the clinic had long-since failed, all electricity severed by the Merge. But there was still sufficient light coming from a fire that sputtered out from a h.e.l.lish wall to her left. It was that fire-light that projected her shadow.

She back-stepped, a little closer to the flame. It lengthened her shadow another two yards.

Now her shadow extended well past the outer boundary of the Warding strictures.

I don't know if this will work, but it can't hurt to try ... She chuckled to herself. Well, I guess it really can hurt to try ...

She began to speak. She began to give voice to the most crucial secret she'd ever been told, the most important utterance of knowledge in living history. She began to say aloud: "And on the twelfth day, G.o.d created-"

-and when she spoke the rest of it, her Umbra-Specter came alive in a rage, the shadows of its foot-long talons rising off the floor.

The evil glee percolated in its voice: "Thank you!" it rejoiced. "Now I get to tear you up ..."

(IV).

"You're ... very pretty," the Fallen Angel observed. He'd already applied the pre-packaged tourniquets to her arms and legs, which were now going numb. His hand smoothed over her belly, then up to her cheek. Ca.s.sie couldn't even flinch in the spell of paralysis he'd put on her. Her disgust and her hatred boiled over in her mind but she remained powerless against this obviously higher being.

Behind them, still hovering, the mouth of the Nectoport had opened fully. Through it, Ca.s.sie knew, he would take her to a secure location in the Mephistopolis, where the monarch of the city, and his lieges, would do what they would with her, expropriating her powers with their occult science, for some unknown design. She would never see Lissa again. She would never see anything again.

G.o.d help me, she prayed, but what good would praying do now? Ca.s.sie knew there was a G.o.d, but why should G.o.d do anything for her? I never did anything for Him, she regretted.

And a darker notion: Perhaps G.o.d couldn't do anything for her, even if He wanted to. Maybe G.o.d really was losing his battles.

"He is, Ca.s.sie," R.J. said, usurping her thoughts. "He's losing so bad it's funny. And He deserves it. Let's just say he's not keen on democracy. We deserved as much as He, but he threw us out."

"You turned your back on Him first, didn't you?" Ca.s.sie managed.

The Fallen Angel glared at her, teeth grinding.

"Isn't that how it happened? He gave you something but you turned your back on Him anyway?"

Veins stood out on R.J.'s forehead.

"Sounds to me like G.o.d gave you a great gift and instead of saying thank you, you gave Him the finger. Instead of being grateful, you said 'f.u.c.k you, G.o.d. I want more.' "

The Fallen Angel's hands quivered in rage as they closed around Ca.s.sie's throat. His face had turned beet-red.

Ca.s.sie smiled-a weak smile but a smile nonetheless. "I'm glad He threw you out," she whispered. "I hope your anguish and your misery and your pain lasts for a million years."

His hands continued to shake on her throat, but then they came away. "Nothing you can say will make me violate my oath. You have no conception. You want me to kill you but I will not. Instead, I will take you to him, as I promised. When he's done with you, when he's changed the Living World to what it should've been all along, and when you are drained and depleted and useless, perhaps he'll give you to me ... or I should say, your torso."

He brought the bone saw to her leg, just under the tourniquet. "I will relish this," he said, about to cut.

Suddenly his scalp was sizzling. It sounded like a raw steak dropped on a red-hot grill. He jerked back, howling, as his scalp peeled off as though he were wearing a beret and someone just slipped it off his head from behind.

The someone was Angelese.