The part of town that surrounded The Mound seemed abandoned, run-down salt-boxes mostly, and dilapidated cars in sun-scorched yards. But as they approached, Ca.s.sie could feel something invisible crawl on her skin. Angelese paused as if sensing something.

"Someone's already been here, through the Deadpa.s.s," she whispered.

Ca.s.sie remembered what the angel had told her a few nights ago. "The Etherean," she guessed.

"Yes. He's already on the other side."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Bad," Angelese said.

Ca.s.sie couldn't fathom it. A sudden breeze broke the heat and humidity. As she stared at the top of The Mound, in total silence, she thought she could see something in between blinks.

Lights.

Lights in a very dark city.

A police car was turning down the street. It stopped, shined its spotlight on them.

"Let's give this guy something to talk about back at the station," Angelese said. She took Ca.s.sie's hand and led her to the top of The Mound. That's where they disappeared.

Something rough, something hot and cold at the same time, licked Ca.s.sie's skin. A moment ago the scope of her vision had been filled with stars spread across the night, but when she stepped through the Rive, everything went black. Her legs moved as though she were walking on air, she felt she might plummet. Static glittered in her hair, and then she was through.

Smoke and a stench burned her eyes. The black was gone, replaced by sickly yellow streetlight.

A sudden scream overhead froze her heart, then there was a loud crash off to one side. "JESUS!" Ca.s.sie shouted.

"Get out of the way," Angelese said and pulled her back. "Someone's throwing people off the top of the building."

Ca.s.sie looked up the side of a crooked skysc.r.a.per that must've been a hundred stories. In the alley where they stood, a Human woman hauled herself out of the dumpster she'd just landed in. Her face was collapsed, most of her bones broken in the fall, yet she was alive. In h.e.l.l, the d.a.m.ned could never die. Another scream, then, and two more bodies. .h.i.t the pavement just yards away- SPLAT! SPLAT!.

Ca.s.sie and Angelese ducked out, the angel perturbed. "d.a.m.n it! There's supposed to be one waiting for us..."

"One what?"

Angelese didn't answer. She was staring down the street. The ever-present mold-green fog was rising, and in it Ca.s.sie could see- "Are those faces?"

Half-tangible shapes formed in the fog, suggestions of long-fingered hands, suggestions of eyes and malformed mouths full of teeth.

Suddenly the fog began to move forward very rapidly. Its twisted mouth-shapes began to bellow.

"s.h.i.t!" Angelese exclaimed. "Djinn!"

It was coming too fast to react. Two Constabularies brandishing p.r.o.nged nightsticks stepped unaware into the street. When the fog swooshed over them, first their uniforms, then their skin eroded away.

Ca.s.sie tired to project a thought to counter the ma.s.s, but her fear was still cresting.

"d.a.m.n it!" Angelese spouted again. "Where is it?"

"Where is WHAT?"

Sssssssssssssssss-ONK!

The lit, throbbing orb of a Nectoport appeared just behind them. It shuddered and began to open.

"It's about f.u.c.king time," Angelese muttered. "Climb in! Hurry!"

The living fog moaned forward, abrading even the pavement, like a sand-blasting. The Nectoport hadn't fully matured but Ca.s.sie and the angel climbed in anyway, their hands slimed green. It was through some mode of enchanted telepathy which enabled Angelese to maneuver the Port; it shuddered and pitched, then took off and upward like a reckless kite. Below them, the swell of fog convulsed, howling its rage at them.

Ca.s.sie slumped against the inner wall of the port, her heart slowing. "I tried to stop it with a projection but I was too afraid. It happened so fast, I couldn't control my fear."

"You're going to have to control your fear," the angel said, settling down herself. She was peering down. "You're going to have throw it aside. We won't last long if you don't."

Ca.s.sie simmered now. "What about you? You're an angel. You're telling me you don't have any powers yourself?"

"In Heaven, I have great power, but in h.e.l.l? Just basic sorcery. Witch-stuff. I'm outcla.s.sed here. In the Mephistopolis, my only useful power is in the secrets I know."

"Oh, that's useful. Secrets you can't reveal without getting torn up by that shadow thingie."

"Umbra-Specter," the angel corrected. "But there are a lot of secrets I don't know, and we're going to start off by getting to the bottom of some things."

Ca.s.sie's hair blew around in a tumult from the wind blowing into the Nectoport. She looked over and saw Angelese peering out with the pair of Ophitte Viewers; the bloodshot eyes for its lenses blinked. "They're filling the Atrocidome again. I don't get it."

"I guess they're going to do another Merge," Ca.s.sie said.

"Yeah, but why? We know the Etherean's already here, and the Merge they initiated to try and capture you at the clinic failed. There's no reason for them to do another Merge, at least none that I can think of."

But Ca.s.sie's own thoughts began to interfere with the matters at hand. She couldn't stop thinking about Lissa. Where is she now? What are they doing to her? Was she still at the Mephis...o...b..ilding? Did they put her back in that pit in the zoo? Guilt piled up upon guilt.

"We'll find her," Angelese a.s.sured. "They'll make it easy for us. Remember, she's the bait they're going to use to try and catch you."

This didn't comfort Ca.s.sie.

"But we've got a few other things to do first," Angelese added.

The Nectoport was descending again. "Step back. We're going inside."

Ca.s.sie didn't know what was happening. The orifice-like oval of the Nectoport began to suck shut, like a camera aperture. When it was shut completely Ca.s.sie could only see the angel in lines of dim green light. She sensed the port's variable solidity pa.s.sing though objects, walls perhaps, as its occult technology impossibly shortened the distance between two points.

But where was their current point?

Sssssssssssssssss-ONK!

The aperture snapped open, hovering. Good Lord, Ca.s.sie thought, peering out past the gelatinous green light. They weren't in a building, they were in some sort of subterranean cavern.

"What is this place?" she asked.

"The Mater Sequestrum ..." Angelese climbed out of the port, then helped Ca.s.sie down.

"The what?"

"It's a special place where the mothers of great people spend their eternal d.a.m.nation."

"Great people?"

"Great in the sense of historical importance. They can be evil people or very benevolent people-it doesn't matter. Hitler's mother is here, for instance, and so is Herod's. This place is sort of like a trophy house for Lucifer."

Ca.s.sie followed her escort down a trail carved out of black pumice. It was hot and lined with torches set into crude sconces to either side. Occasionally she'd see a head pilloried in the rock, then she looked up and gasped. The cavern's ceiling seemed a hundred feet high and suspended overhead were more Human women in iron cages. "This part of the Sequestrum is kind of dull," Angelese was explaining. She was holding a shiny stone in her right hand, rubbing her thumb over it as she talked. "The very special mothers get very special treatment."

Ca.s.sie scuffed onward through the foul air. "But whose mother are we here to see?"

"Yours."

The response bolted Ca.s.sie. She and Lissa had never been very close to their mother, who'd divorced her father for another man a long time ago. I'm the great person? she wondered. It seemed inconceivable. But something much more obvious popped into her awareness. If my mother's here, then she must've died and gone to h.e.l.l. "How did she die?" she asked, her flip-flops smacking on the rough stone.

"Well, as I understand it, the guy she left your father for caught her with yet another man. So he shot her, shot the guy, and shot himself. You can't feel bad about every tragedy, Ca.s.sie, just because of a blood-bond. You want the truth, most people in the Living World aren't very cool. They're selfish and dishonest. You mother was just a gold-digger. She got what she had coming."

Ca.s.sie couldn't relate to that. A gnarled black tree twisted over their heads, and from a stout branch hung another woman by a noose around her neck. Her bare legs kicked in the air while her hands fisted around the noose. Eternity, Ca.s.sie realized. She'll be like that for eternity ... Did this woman get "what she had coming?" What could she have done to deserve this? What could anybody do?

Then a hitch caught in her chest and she nearly screamed. Elevated slightly before them, on a rock ledge, stood a rhinoceros-sized beast with multiple cyecl.u.s.ters and a great depending belly the size of a small sports car. The belly squirmed from something alive inside, and Ca.s.sie grimly suspected that there were actually several Humans in the beast's gut. From its slavering, toothy maw a woman hung, her legs swallowed to the waist, but her arms, head, and bosom exposed. Her drool-slimed head hung upside-down as they pa.s.sed, and she looked right at Ca.s.sie and said, "I hope you're sorry for your sins ..."

Then the woman was gnawed some more, her screams firing like rifle shots throughout the cavern.

"You can't help her, it's not allowed," Angelese urged and pulled her along.

"How can G.o.d let this happen to people?"

"He doesn't. It's the people themselves that do. And remember what she said."

I hope you're sorry for your sins, Ca.s.sie reflected. This cavern dizzied her, and she suspected far worse things to come. They must be going to the place Angelese just referred to, the place for very special treatment.

Some women stood waist-deep in little pools of lava, so used to eternal agony they didn't even bother screaming any more. Others were pitoned naked to the rock walls as Griffins and other, worse vulture-like birds picked at them with their beaks.

Angelese kept rubbing the small stone in her hand, seeming annoyed.

"Is that another Obscurity Stone?" Ca.s.sie asked.

"It's a Nephrilene. The best way to describe it to a Human is to say that it's been magically encoded with a tincture of your mother's spirit. It's like a direction-finder. It should lead us to her."

"It just did," a soft voice flowed from the dark.

The voice paralyzed Ca.s.sie. She hadn't heard it in so long but she recognized it at once. Angelese took down one of the torches and brought it around, for light. Its endless source of pitch-tar crackled and threw roving shapes of illumination forward.

A head looked at them, and at first, Ca.s.sie thought it was severed, but then she could see that her mother's body seemed to be embedded, to the neck, between two smooth rocks pressed together, each rock tall and wide as a refrigerator.

"h.e.l.lo, Ca.s.sie," said the smiling face thrust up between the rocks. Short blondish hair with fashionable gray streaks, pearl-white teeth, bright aquamarine eyes. She was still pretty, even here.

"So, your father's dead? Believe it or not, I'm sorry about that. And Lissa's here, do you know that?" The woman's smile brightened. "It's your fault."

Ca.s.sie wilted.

"Shut up!" Angelese said. "Don't listen to her, Ca.s.sie."

The eyes flicked to Angelese. "Ah, a little broken angel, scarred and torn. You seem a bit used, don't you? Why didn't they send someone important? I'll tell you why. Because they already know in advance that you will fail, so they don't want to risk losing someone valuable."

"f.u.c.k off," Angelese said.

"Such eloquent words from a sister of G.o.d." Now the eyes flicked back to Ca.s.sie. "I never loved you, and I never loved Lissa. I wanted to get an abortion but your father wouldn't allow it. I didn't want to rock the boat and risk being taken out of the will."

"I don't understand," Ca.s.sie wept. "Why are you being like this?"

"Because I'm a horrible person."

Angelese put her arm around Ca.s.sie. "You know the Rules. Any question I ask you in the presence of your daughter, you must answer."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah. Really. Like why is the Constabulary filling up the Atrocidome again?"

Ca.s.sie's mother smiled. "I'm ... not going to tell you."

The defiant smile seemed to float before them, but then it vanished. The woman's face began to puff, as if great pressure were being exerted on her body between the rocks. Instantly she looked nauseated.

"Fine," Angelese said, smiling cruelly. "Don't answer the question."

Ca.s.sie's mother's head drooped. "They're going to keep doing Merges. They're doing them non-stop."

"Why? Ca.s.sie escaped and the Etherean is already in the Mephistopolis. It doesn't make sense for them to keep doing Merges."

"They're going to Merge with every known Deadpa.s.s."

"Why?"

"To destroy them."

Angelese nodded as Ca.s.sie stared. "If they destroy every Deadpa.s.s," the angel informed her, "then you'll be trapped in the Mephistopolis. There'll be no way for you to get out because all the Rives will be gone." She turned her next question to the head between the rocks.

"Our intelligence has it that the Hexology Inst.i.tutes, the Houngan Re-Animation Offices, and the entire Department of Voudou Research have all been moved out of the Industrial Sectors and relocated to the Mephis...o...b..ilding. Is this true?"

"No," Ca.s.sie's mother defied.

"No?" Angelese turned the word.

More agony and nausea ballooned the woman's face. "Yes, G.o.d d.a.m.n you! Yes, it's true!"

Ca.s.sie could scarcely watch any more of these ministrations. It didn't matter that her mother had never loved her-she couldn't stand witnessing this.

"One more question, then we'll be out of this literal h.e.l.l-hole," the angel promised. "Several nights ago, there was a Merge in Maryland, some kind of a state doc.u.ment library. A Fallen Angel named Zeihl incarnated himself there, and then he committed suicide in order to effect a Power Exchange, so that a physical object in that library could be taken back to h.e.l.l. There's no other reason why a Fallen Angel would do that."