Ca.s.sie was an invisible eye in the air, seeing everything, her own personal volition somehow allowing her to turn about at will. She saw two more figures near the center of the hall. One, the tall one, stood with his back to her vision. The other, much shorter, in an odd, squirming cloak. His hood was down about the neck, and Ca.s.sie could see his facial features: skin as black as anthracite, pointed ears and curved horns, sunken eyes. At first she thought he was bald but then she noticed that he'd been scalped. He walked around the second figure as if in apprais.e.m.e.nt.

"I see two men. One's got black skin, black as coal."

"What's he wearing?"

"A cloak that-" Ca.s.sie squinted through the visionary's sight. Her stomach hitched when she noticed the true nature of the cloak. She noticed why it was squirming ...

"Ca.s.sie, is the guy's cloak made of baby snakes?"

"Yes," she nearly gagged.

"He's a Hounganite, an upper-echelon Voudou Technician. It's all true. Lucifer really did move the Hexology Inst.i.tutes and the Re-Animation Department into the Mephis...o...b..ilding. But you said there were two figures in the room. Describe the second figure. Is it a demon?"

"No, Human." she could see from here. The man stood with his back to her. Tall, slim, naked, well-toned. Ca.s.sie wheeled the mystic vision around to see him from the front.

Long dark hair and beard. A face that seemed tranquilizing.

Ca.s.sie snapped out of the visionary trance, shuddering. "What? Can you describe the second figure?" the angel asked, leaning over.

Ca.s.sie just sat shuddering as if in the middle of a devastating chill. Eventually she looked up at Angelese and said, "It was Jesus. It was Jesus Christ..."

Chapter Fifteen.

(I).

The light was impossible to describe. Darkness that somehow glowed? If despair had a color, that was the hue of what radiated above the edifice that loomed before Walter and No-name. It was a pyramid, larger than that of Cheops, but made entirely of black quartz.

"Why are we here?" Walter droned, staring up at the huge creation.

"I can't answer your question."

"Did fate bring me here?"

No-name smiled.

Walter could never imagine such a structure; it was fascinating yet depressing to look at. It projected a certain feel that reminded him how he felt on the night he tried to kill himself. He couldn't escape his own immediate premonition: This is it. This is my destiny, this place. Walter's destiny no longer awaited him. It was here, before him, now. All that remained was to embrace it.

He couldn't take his eyes off the ma.s.s of black gla.s.s and its ghostly shroud of incalculable luminosity. "I don't know how to explain it but it looks ... sad."

"It should."

"What is it? What is this place?"

"It's the Bastille of Otherwise Souls, Walter. It's a prison, for spirits. There are millions of souls held captive there."

"Every d.a.m.ned soul in h.e.l.l?"

"Oh, no. There are billions of d.a.m.ned souls in h.e.l.l. This place is just for the special ones."

"Special in what way?"

"Souls that really shouldn't be here. Otherwire souls."

Walter scratched his head in confusion, then winced at the pain from the pumpkin-ball st.i.tches. "I don't get it."

"Think of it as a sepulcher, Walter. It contains the souls of people who otherwise would've gone to Heaven, had they not committed suicide."

Walter's eyes remained fixed on it.

"It's another of Lucifer's greatest achievements, his greatest slight to G.o.d. Being able to keep people here who really shouldn't be here."

"Then why am I here?"

No-name just smiled again. "I can't tell you. You know that. But what have I been telling you all along? Use your head. Use the smarts that G.o.d gave you. Be deductive."

Walter's powers of deduction weren't exactly feeling up to snuff tonight.

"You can go back to the living world if you like," No-name continued. "But I can't tell you if things will be any different or not."

"They won't be," Walter a.s.serted himself. "I know they won't be. Maybe that's my fate. I know that I will never be accepted. I know that people will never like me, some might pretend to but it's all a veneer. Am I right?"

No-name just looked at him.

"If I go back to the Living World, I'm pretty sure I'd walk straight back to my dorm and blow my head off, only this time I'd do it right. And what happens then? My soul is d.a.m.ned for eternity and I get sent straight back here but this time with no powers. My soul would come to this place. Am I right?"

"Yes."

"So I could just stay here as an Etherean."

"And remain an enemy of the state. You could do great damage, but you wouldn't last."

"Wouldn't, or might not?"

"Might not."

She just slipped, Walter thought.

"d.a.m.n it," No-name muttered.

Walter smiled. "So it's all up to me. I can stay or I can go."

"Exactly. But you would never fit in here, Walter. You know why?"

"Because I'm a dork."

"No, because you're not evil. Even if you survived, you would never be content here. You've never been happy or content anywhere, in your life, have you?"

"No."

"Because you're not evil. Only the evil prosper here. Is that you? Could you change yourself that extensively, in your heart?"

Walter shook his head, listening but still staring up in miserable bliss.

"Of course you couldn't. And, Walter ... you're not a dork. You're a pretty cool guy actually."

Walter released the greatest sigh of relief in his life. "Thank you."

"Now. You're a physicist and a mathematician. Be deductive."

Walter saw it at once. "Either way, I'm screwed."

"It's an abstrustion, but, yes, either way, you're screwed. Some people are victims of circ.u.mstance. Like you. And like me. That's just the way it is. It's unfair but n.o.body ever said that life was supposed to be fair. We're both screwed, Walter. I am. You are. You know what you can do, don't you?"

"What?"

"Go out in style."

Go out in style? Walter repeated in his mind.

"Think about it, Walter," No-name bid. "But think quick. There isn't much time left..."

(II).

Angelese looked stupefied as the Nectoport rose high into the air, seeking cover in the spoiled clouds. Ca.s.sie just sat there, numbed herself by what she'd seen. The thought kept replaying in her mind: It was Christ, it was Christ...

Angelese's voice was a depressed rattle. "Now it all makes sense; it's actually easy to see ..."

Ca.s.sie was too staggered to perceive the implications. "Lucifer's plan ... is what?"

"They stole the real Shroud of Turin from the Living World, Ca.s.sie. They used it to make that Hex-Clone of Christ. They will send it back in time through an Astral Retrogation. Lucifer's going to replace the real Christ with that thing."

"That's not possible. It'll never work." Ca.s.sie felt sure.

"That Hex-Clone is a perfect facsimile, Ca.s.sie. It looks exactly like the real Savior. But what's the difference?"

"It's not Christ. It's just animated meat, an elaborate dummy. It can look and sound and act like the real Jesus, but n.o.body'll believe it."

Now the Nectoport a.s.sumed a static position in the clouds. When Ca.s.sie looked down, she saw that they were hovering a mile over the Mephis...o...b..ilding.

"No," she repeated. "n.o.body would believe it. It wouldn't work. It's not a man, and it's not the Son of G.o.d. It's a bag of meat that's alive only because of spells and incantations."

The angel's eyes looked terrified. "There's something you're forgetting, Ca.s.sie. The part of Lucifer's plan that involves you."

The comment stunned her. "Me?"

"The whole reason the Morning Star needs you-someone with Ethereal Powers. The reason he tried to capture you during the Merge at the clinic. Same reason he's trying to capture the Etherean. An Etheress or an Etherean. Either will do. And for all we know, he's already caught the Etherean and is preparing him."

"Preparing him for what?"

The inside of the Nectoport turned cold as a mausoleum. "Oh, no," Angelese sighed, looking behind her. The body of the Nectoport extended into darkness, like a tunnel. Even Ca.s.sie could feel it now.

They weren't alone here.

A sudden flash of light, bright as lightning, blinded Ca.s.sie. There was a rushing sound, clatter, movement she could sense but not see. "Angelese!" Ca.s.sie shrieked, "What's happening!" but the angel's only response was to shriek herself. Large, scaly hands grabbed Ca.s.sie, and then something was dragged over her. When her vision returned, she could see what it was: a net.

Reeking of death and corded in muscles, a horned Usher held Ca.s.sie within the net, like a bundled package. She couldn't move. Foul breath gusted into her face as the slug-skinned servant of Lucifer gently traced a talon down her cheek. The knife-gash-like eyes glimmered. The grinning mouth was a hole full of broken gla.s.s.

A voice reverberated, like a hopeful minister's voice in an echoic cathedral: "Ca.s.sie. It's an honor to finally get so close to you-a true Etheress. In the flesh. And what stunning flesh it is."

Ca.s.sie looked right at his face ... but could see nothing.

His body looked angelic; he looked bathed in sunlight. She sensed a smile within the fog-like aura about his head. And as for his voice, she'd heard it before, on the phone at the clinic.

"You let your guard down"-now he was speaking to Angelese, who'd been similarly netted and seized by an Usher-"It wasn't difficult to locate the operating signature of an unauthorized Nectoport. I apologize for not knocking first."

More of the haze cleared from Ca.s.sie's eyes. A half-dozen more Ushers stood on watch in the Nectoport, and standing aside was a solemn figure in a black cloak and hood, which Ca.s.sie recognized at once as a high-ranking Biowizard. From black fingers, the wizard held a tiny green-glowing stone which swayed back an forth like a hypnotist's pendulum.

Then the man of light moved closer. "And I apologize, too, for not properly introducing myself." The voice fluttered like the wings of a flock of birds. "I am the Light of the Morning. Welcome to my domain of night." He knelt serenely before Angelese, and whispered, "I'm going to torture you for a hundred years, then I'll send you back to G.o.d, raped, pregnant, and ruined. It's only fitting. I owe Him a gift or two." He stroked the angel's face, tenderly as a mother to a child. "I like this." Lucifer produced a long awl, long as a knitting needle but much sharper. "Let's start with this. Oh, how I love to hear angels scream," and then he gently inserted the awl into Angelese's chest and pushed it through her heart.

The angel bucked, firing a high-pitched bellow from her throat. Each time the awl was withdrawn and reinserted, she bucked within the net like someone holding a live wire.

"Stop it!" Ca.s.sie shouted through the most powerful surge of hatred in her life, but their unglimpsible host just smiled.

"I'm a Fallen Angel, Ca.s.sie," he explained. "Your Etherea has no effect on me. You know that."

"No, no, no!" Ca.s.sie shouted. Lucifer just kept reinserting the awl, with tender slowness, into Angelese's heart. "You can't die here, can you, Caliginaut? You're so brave to have ventured to my kingdom. I'll make sure G.o.d is apprized."

Angelese shuddered at the torture, her blood oozing in tiny, neon threads. Then she gasped, "Ca.s.sie, here's another Rule, another secret I must pay to reveal. If an Etheress dies in h.e.l.l, all that energy combusts. A human with Ethereal powers-in h.e.l.l-it's like matter and anti-matter. There's an explosion of tremendous magnitude," and then her screams quadrupled as the Umbra-Specter rose, its shadow-claws reaching up and swiping back down across the angel's chest. In doing so, as it had at the clinic, the Specter's claws slashed through the net and released her.

She jumped up, grabbed the Light of the Morning about the neck, angelic blood painting his face like red fox fire. She quickly blurted another secret-"It's not you he wants, it's just your blood! Your Ethereal blood! It can be used as a Power Transfer!"-and this time, when the Umbra-Specter tried to claw her, Lucifer was in between its talons and Angelese. The result was- A sound that had never been heard before: Satan screaming in pain.

The talons, aiming for Angelese's face slashed Lucifer's instead. The Nectoport rocked, the Morning Star's howl like a rock slide on a vast mountain range.

Several Ushers broke the angel's clench at once, pinning her to the Port's floor with long, iron-bladed pikes.

Eosphoros shivered, hands to his face. The blood that poured between his fingers was black as oil.

After several deep breaths, he recomposed himself and said, "Even bad guys have bad days, yes? Nothing will ruin the jubilation of my victory. Not a lackey angel, nor a useless Etheress."

Useless? The word spiked her senses-as Angelese remained spiked to the wall, quivering. My powers won't work on him but they'll sure as h.e.l.l work on those Ushers, so she focused all her rage and shouted "Fall apart, you f.u.c.kers!"

There was no effect. The Ushers remained unharmed, twisting their pikes in Angelese's chest.