"Yes," No-name whispered. "And you're standing in the middle of that trap right now, right this instant."

When Walter looked up the street, he saw a regiment of armored demons standing there in total silence. Some of the demons had chains, others had nets. Then he turned around and saw a similar regiment behind him.

"We're trapped," No-name observed.

"And there's no way out," Walter added.

Two wedge-faced demons broke from their ranks and approached, armor clattering. One dragged a net, the other carried a mallet so large he needed both hands to hold it. The mallet's head was as large as a microwave oven.

No-name's head was grabbed from Walter and placed on the ground. "The head is an enemy of the state," the first demon proclaimed, and to the other he ordered, "Destroy it. I'll bring the Etherean in." The demon eyed Walter with amus.e.m.e.nt. "An Etherean with no power. It takes a man to be an Etherean. I see no man here."

The other demon-the one with the mallet-laughed. "Our lord's diviners were right. This boy is harmless."

No-name's head looked up at Walter from where it lay in the street. "Your test is upon you, Walter. Only faith can save you now."

"Faith in what?" Walter asked dismally. "In G.o.d?"

"No, in yourself. If you fail your test, you will be taken in chains to the Mephis...o...b..ilding, and there they will drain all your blood-your Ethereal blood. In your blood there is a monumental power to be tapped. That power exists nowhere else. And Lucifer wants it. He doesn't want you, Walter. He just wants your blood. It will enable him to change the world. Whether you give it to him or not ... well ... that's all up to you."

"I don't understand."

"Choose. Now."

Walter looked absurdly at the two ma.s.sive demons. "I can't fight these guys. And even if I could, there's a hundred more of them in front of me and behind me."

"Choose," No-name said. "Now."

"Send this soothsayer's spirit into the body of a worm," the first demon ordered. The second demon began to raise the mallet over No-name's head.

"Leave her alone!" Walter shouted.

The demon exploded. It sounded like a howitzer going off. In a split second, the demon flew away in black bits, in a tornado-like rise. Even the mallet exploded.

The same thing happened to the other demon, the instant it lunged and tried to throw the net over Walter. The street shook in another cannon-like bang.

What the h.e.l.l? Walter thought. His knees wobbled, and his cars hurt from the sound. No-name, below, smiled up at him.

"Get ready," she whispered.

"Seize him!" a black voice barked, then a wave of rallying shouts rose. Walter peed in his pants when he saw both regiments of demons charge at him.

"Walter," No-name said. "They think they're bad? Show them what bad really is."

Walter put his hands over his eyes, and his voice cracked like a boy entering p.u.b.erty when he shrieked. "f.u.c.kin' DIE!"

Both ends of the street exploded in encroaching stages, as if carpet-bombed. The concussion knocked Walter down, and the buildings on either side trembled. The street broke apart into great chunks, like an instantaneous earthquake. The demons were engulfed by the rubble and ground up to pulp. Arms, legs, and heads, boots, helmets, and breast-plates, flew up into the air and then rained back down, along with a torrent of demonic blood.

Then: total silence.

The only part of the street that hadn't been destroyed was the immediate area of s.p.a.ce that Walter and No-name's head occupied. Walter sat huddled over the head, teeth chattering, sh.e.l.l-shocked.

"You can get up now, Walter," No-name said.

Walter did so, shakily. Both sides of the street were now a ma.s.sive pile of rubble and gore.

"Did I do that?" he peeped.

"Yes."

"Did I pa.s.s the test?"

"Like every other test you've ever taken in your life, Walter-you got a hundred. Congratulations. You're a walking meat-grinder."

He peered at the mounds of wreckage and carnage. Body parts twitched, while corpses lay crushed. Steam rose off the piles of rubble. That's the secret, he wondered. The secret to unlocking his Ethereal Powers. Confidence. In that last fragment of a second, he'd released his fears and terrors and believed in himself.

Walter, stupefied as he gazed at the destruction, considered this. "I could do some serious damage down here."

"Yes, you could. But is that really your destiny?"

"I guess not, since you put it that way."

"Destiny is like fate, Walter," No-name informed him next. "You don't have to go searching for it. It finds you."

Embrace your destiny, the words kept ringing in his head. With No-name safely tucked under his arm, Walter began to climb over the heaps of rubble and bodies, back toward the main road. From the windows of the surrounding buildings, citizens of h.e.l.l leaned out, hooting, whistling, applauding. "G.o.d be with you, Etherean!" a voice trumpeted.

Walter looked up, awed at the demons and Humans waving at him, wishing him well.

"Look at that, Walter," the head said. "You're a star." Yeah ... He waved back at them, then continued climbing over the rubble. "So I guess I don't even have to ask you where we're going next, huh?"

"Wherever it is we're supposed to go, it'll find us," No-name replied.

Chapter Thirteen.

(I).

"They're hybrid Armilus," Angelese said. They'd closed the Nectoport, and were hiding behind the barbican a block away from the windowless limestone castle known as the Infernal Archives. The structure loomed, hundreds of feet tall, and occupied most of the largest block of Nero Square. Ca.s.sie and the angel were staking the place out.

"Hybrid ... what?" Ca.s.sie squinted around the rampart edge.

"Armilus. Hybrid offspring of Lucifer, sort of like a genetic mutation where the base subject was one of Lucifer's sons. There's only two of them here, but they're very powerful. They guard the entrance to the Archives."

Ca.s.sie looked at the atrocious things, thinking of the most overdeveloped body-builders. Bulbs of muscles growing over more muscles, tree-trunk-stout legs bowed and tensed from all the muscle ma.s.s they had to bear. Veins like ropes beat beneath mottled caramel-brown skin that shined as if oiled. When they walked, their flat feet and the huge b.a.l.l.s of their heels thumped on the brick pavement. Their bald, horned heads were divided by still more muscles, and their eyes, too, were barely visible through their facial bulges.

"You'd think that there'd be more of them," Ca.s.sie ventured. "If the Infernal Archives is such an important, sensitive place-how come there's only two of them?"

"They're so strong they can punch through stone walls," Angelese warned, "they can break iron bars and kick though iron plate. They can lift several hundred times their own weight, and they're impervious to fire. They don't need more than two of them to guard the Archives, because they're very, very powerful."

Ca.s.sie frowned at them, then shouted "Rigor Mortis!"

The two things jerked their attention toward Ca.s.sie. They began to thump forward but only for a few steps before their flexing unwieldy muscles began to spasm. Ca.s.sie's Etheric command caused the creatures' muscle fibers to expend all of their myofibrillar proteins at once.

Two great THUMPS! resounded when both Armilus flopped over onto the pavement. They convulsed a moment, then went stiff as statutes.

"They're not that powerful," Ca.s.sie complained.

Angelese smiled at Ca.s.sie's creativity. "Don't get overconfident. When you use too much of your energy too fast, you can deplete yourself."

Ca.s.sie remembered what had happened at the clinic. Her last command had caused her to lose consciousness, and the angel had had to carry her out. "I'll be careful," she tried to a.s.sure.

"Good, because you'll need a little more in a minute once we're in the Archives."

Ca.s.sie didn't understand. "But you just told me there were only two Armilus guarding the place."

"Guarding the outside of the place."

Ca.s.sie didn't feel particularly challenged by more Armilus. "You mean there's more inside?"

"No," the angel said. "Inside there's something worse."

Hmm, Ca.s.sie thought. We'll see.

They approached the front steps of the Archives, the pair of Armilus frozen on their meaty backs. Ahead, the Archives stood strangely as if in wait for them, like a citadel, a medieval fortress with garrets, turrets, and unscalable flat outer walls. "So this is like h.e.l.l's library?" Ca.s.sie asked.

"That's exactly what it is. And there's only one person inside running it. She's known as the Maemae."

Ca.s.sie wasn't fearful. How tough can a librarian be?

"But to find her, we have to go through the Labyrinth. It's the only way to get to the Main Doc.u.ment Repository, and the Labyrinth is inhabited by two Necrotiks. They're already dead, so they can't be killed."

Ca.s.sie's confidence waned a bit. She didn't even like the name: Necrotiks. It sounded ... disconcerting.

She thought of Greek mythology's Theseus and the Minotaur when they entered the Labyrinth: a series of narrow pa.s.sageways. Irradiated moonstones were all that lit the corridors-Ca.s.sie could barely see at certain points, and it was around one such very dark corner that she b.u.mped into something.

"What the-"

A hand that stank and felt skeletal opened over her face.

"Get back get back get back!" she shrieked. She and Angelese retreated.

"What was it?"

"Something..." was all Ca.s.sie got out.

"Did it stink? Like a rotten corpse?"

"Yes!"

Angelese took one of the moonstones down from its sconce and shined it forward like a flashlight.

"Jesus Christ!" Ca.s.sie complained.

A stick figure stood before them at the corner. A skeleton with a patchwork of corpse-skin grafted over its bones. No internal organs, no muscles or tendons, just b.u.t.termilk-white skin stretched over bone. The empty eye sockets were looking right at them, seeing them.

It just stood there, holding up one bony hand like a cop directing traffic.

"That's really bizarre," the angel observed.

"Yeah, a friggin' skeleton covered with dead skin? Bizarre is right!"

"No, I mean its actions. Necrotiks are animated by Enchantment Spells and are motivated by Satanic vengeance. It should be attacking us by now. Instead it's just standing there, blocking our way."

Fragments of language cracked from the rotten hole that was its mouth. It said, "Do not attempt to pa.s.s. Retrace your steps and leave. Please."

Ca.s.sie grabbed Angelese's arm. "Maybe we should do that. I mean, come on, it said please."

"We can't, Ca.s.sie. We're here for a reason. We have to find out what your mother refused to tell us. If we don't, we fail." Angelese peered queerly at her. "What happened to all that Etheric confidence? You act like you're afraid of the dark."

"I am!" Ca.s.sie exclaimed.

Up ahead, the second Necrotik appeared, standing at the other's side. It, too, held up its skin-tattered hand.

"I don't understand this," the angel went on. "They're acting like they're afraid, but they're not capable of feeling fear, just wrath. They're unkillable, and we're just two chicks. What the h.e.l.l are they afraid of?"

"I don't know, and I don't want to know. This place creeps me out. There's gotta be another way in."

"There isn't."

"Let's go around to the other side of the building. I'll knock down a wall with a mental projection-we can get in that way."

"The walls are all protected by Indemnity Hexes. Not even the strongest Etheric thought can crack them. But I think I know what the Necrotiks are afraid of."

"What?"

"You. You're an ent.i.ty of innocence in a place where no innocence exists. In their eternal death, they sense your living spirit. They've never seen anything like you before; you're not what they're used to."

Ca.s.sie winced. "Am I supposed to be, like, encouraged by that? I don't know what to do. Tell me what to do."

"Try something," Angelese threw out. "Project something at them."

All right, Ca.s.sie thought. Think. If I were a reanimated corpse, what would I be afraid of? Her thoughts paused. I know ...

"Cremate!" she yelled down the corridor.