"Please," begged the minion who had spoken earlier. "If we don't leave now...."

"I'm well aware of the nuances of the situation!" snapped Tiamat. She turned to Mercury. "You realize the kind of trouble you're in, don't you? You can't just kill the Antichrist. They'll exile you for all eternity."

Mercury shrugged. "Extenuating circ.u.mstances," he said. "I'll argue that Lucifer selected Karl in bad faith. Once I get him posthumously disqualified as the Antichrist, he's just another unlucky mortal who got caught in the crossfire. And we both know that Heaven doesn't give a d.a.m.n about the death of one mortal in the scheme of things."

Christine was suddenly overcome with rage. Mercury, it seemed, was no different from all the other callous, bureaucratic angels. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she screamed, leaping upon Mercury and pummeling him with her fists. "You killed him! You really killed him!"

Tiamat turned away in disgust. "Let's go," she said her minions.

She fled through the woods, away from the quickly advancing forest fire, with Gamaliel and her minions in tow. The valley was enshrouded in darkness save for the orange glow of the burgeoning inferno.

FORTY-TWO.

Christine continued to pummel at Mercury for another good minute before collapsing in exhaustion.

Mercury said, in a strained whisper, "That was really good. I think it may have been your performance toward the end there that really sold it."

"Performance!" snapped Christine furiously. "Karl is dead. He's really really dead!" dead!"

"Yes," said Mercury, "That was a lucky turn of events, wasn't it?"

"Lucky? You killed him!"

"Hang on," said Mercury. "That's a bit of a leap, isn't it? Just because he's dead, that doesn't mean I I killed him. Now drag him over there a ways, would you? I need him further away from the M.E.F." killed him. Now drag him over there a ways, would you? I need him further away from the M.E.F."

"The what?"

"The Mundanity Enhancement Field. It interferes with my ability to do miracles. And Karl needs a miracle, pretty darn quick, if we're going to prevent damage to that unique brain of his."

Bewildered beyond the capacity to resist, she began to drag Karl by his feet further away from the cottage. "Are you going to help?" she said.

Mercury shook his head slowly. "Not feeling so good. Give me a minute." He crawled slowly after them on his hands and knees.

"That's far enough," he finally said.

"Now would you mind telling me what the h.e.l.l is going on?" Christine demanded. "If you didn't kill him, then who did?"

"Act of G.o.d," said Mercury, taking a deep breath. Some of the color was coming back into his face. "Although I'd wager cholesterol had a little something to do with it as well." He put his hand on Karl's blood-soaked chest and closed his eyes. After several breathless seconds, Karl's eyes opened. He clutched his chest. "Ow," he said. "What the h.e.l.l...."

"You did great, Karl," said Mercury. "We fooled her, just like in the book."

Karl smiled. "Why does my chest hurt?"

"You had a bit of a heart attack back there, which was a nice touch, by the way. Thank G.o.d for all those Charlie's Grill cheeseburgers. I'm repairing some damage to your aorta now. In a few seconds you'll have the circulatory system of a forty-year-old."

"I'm only 37," Karl said.

"Yeah," replied Mercury. "There is a limit to what I can accomplish with minor miracles. You may want to check out the salad bar next time."

Karl nodded. Charlie's Grill had a salad bar salad bar?

"Wait," said Christine. "So did you actually stab him or not?"

"Of course not," said Mercury.

"So it was a trick knife?"

"No, it was a very real knife. The trick is to let the knife slide alongside your wrist so that it looks like you're really stabbing him."

"But isn't that dangerous, if you're using a real knife? You could cut your wrist open."

"Yeah," said Mercury. "That's where all the blood comes from."

"So that was your your blood?" blood?"

Mercury nodded. "It's alright, I can make more. Hurts like a son of a b.i.t.c.h, though."

"So you stabbed yourself to make it look like Karl was bleeding?"

"Yes," said Mercury. "Kind of stupid, I know. Okay, Karl. Feeling better?"

"," said Karl.

"Good. We have a little trip to take. I have a surprise for you."

"Really?" said Karl. "Cool."

"So this was your plan all along?" asked Christine incredulously. "To pretend to kill Karl so that Katie... Tiamat would leave him alone?"

"Certainly not," said Mercury. "My plan went sideways about five minutes in. I didn't really have anything figured out beyond getting Uzziel to incinerate Izbazel. The rest was pure improv. Fortunately, I ran across a stray guard in the woods and managed to tie him up against a tree inside the M.E.F. and appropriate his weapons."

"That sounds more like the Mercury I know," said Christine. "Always planning five minutes ahead."

"Yeah, well, it's still four and a half minutes ahead of just about everyone else, so it works out."

"But if you can bring people back from the dead, why not really stab him? Make it convincing. No offense, Karl."

"I can't bring people back from the dead," Mercury said. "I mean, I can restart someone's heart, but I can't resurrect someone who has bled to death. Tiamat knows that."

Something was still troubling Christine. "Hang on, if you two were acting out a scene from one of the Charlie Nyx books, why didn't Tiamat figure it out? She would have known if Charlie didn't really kill his friend, what's-his-name."

"Simon," said Karl. "Charlie and Simon have been best friends since they met in the lair of the Lizard King in chapter six of Book One, Charlie Nyx and the Flaming Cup Charlie Nyx and the Flaming Cup. You see, Simon's parents were "

"She would would have known," Mercury said, "if she had ever read any of the books." have known," Mercury said, "if she had ever read any of the books."

"Read them?" said Christine, "I thought she them?" said Christine, "I thought she wrote wrote them." them."

"No way," said Mercury. "She doesn't have the patience to sit down and write an entire book. h.e.l.l, she got bored halfway through the construction of the Tower of Babel. She can blame outsourcing all she wants, but the real problem was the management."

"And you knew the whole time that she didn't write them?"

Mercury shrugged. "I always figured she had a ghost writer."

"Wow," said Christine. "And you knew all along that Katie Midford and Tiamat were one and the same?"

"I suspected. The parts in the books about the tunnels under Anaheim stadium were too accurate. I figured that Lucifer had put that part in as sort of a joke. It was meant to remind Katie Midford, bestselling author of the Charlie Nyx books, who was really in charge. She got to take credit for the books, but Lucifer was the one holding the strings."

Christine thought for a moment, trying to process all of this information. "So we did it? We stopped her? And the plan to smuggle the anti-bombs through my condo?"

"Almost," said Mercury. "First we have to pay a quick visit to Lucifer."

FORTY-THREE.

Meanwhile, in an unremarkable two bedroom condominium in Glendale with shiny new linoleum in the breakfast nook, Uzziel the seraph tried to get Christine's DVD player to work.

He was sitting on the couch, randomly pressing b.u.t.tons with names like PROG and INPUT, and quietly cursing whatever demonic ent.i.ty was behind the creation of this device. He had it in his head to watch something from Christine's impressive Hugh Grant collection, but thus far had had little success changing the channel from something called "World's Ugliest Pets."

Just when his frustration with Christine's audio-visual components not to mention his horror at a particularly ghastly hairless border collie was beginning to make him doubt the existence of intelligent design in the cosmos, another angel shimmered into existence in the breakfast nook.

"Hey," said Uzziel. "Do you know how to work this thing?"

"What in the h.e.l.l...." said the newcomer, a hulking gray figure.

"I'm trying to watch Two Weeks' Notice Two Weeks' Notice, but I can't get it to good heavens, what is that? Some kind of dwarf albino pig?"

"Uzziel. What are you doing here?"

"I might ask you the same thing, Malphas. I believe we had you a.s.signed to Krakow."

"Ah yes, the hotbed of intrigue and kielbasa," said Malphas. "Can't imagine why anyone would want to leave that that post." post."

"You were given that a.s.signment because we thought it was the most we could trust you with. Evidently we overestimated you."

"Or perhaps you short-sighted bureaucratic fools don't recognize real talent when you see it."

"Tell me," Uzziel said, trying to avert his eyes from some sort of malformed flightless bird, "Is this your talent on display now? Skulking through a secret portal in some poor woman's condo in Glendale?"

Malphas smiled, an ugly gray smile in the middle of his ugly gray face. "You want talent? Here's your talent." He held a gla.s.s apple in his outstretched palm, his thumb on the trigger.

"A housewarming gift?" said Uzziel. "How thoughtful. I brought something for you as well."

Uzziel continued to press b.u.t.tons on the remote control. "Oh for Heaven's sake, if I could at least get this thing to change the channel..."

"I'm waiting," said Malphas.

"Yes, yes, hold on. Will you look at the teeth on that thing? Oh thank goodness, a commercial. Where was I? Oh yes. Here we are."

Uzziel set down the remote control and pulled a silvery box about the size of a Rubix Cube from his pocket. Flipping the latch with his finger, he opened the lid to reveal a cubical lump of obsidian.

Malphas' face gray visage shifted a few shades toward white. "Is that...?"

"A Balderhaz Cube. Your anti-bomb won't work within fifty feet of here."

Malphas' eyes darted around, looking for a place to run.

Uzziel brandished a pistol in his other hand. "And this won't let you get more than fifty feet from here."

"A bullet isn't going to stop me."

"No, but I bet if I hit you with several of them at just the right angle, I can knock you back onto the linoleum."

"This is your plan? To send me back to the Floor where I can warn Lucifer to send the first batch through with AK-47s?"

"Look behind you," Uzziel said.

"Please," said Malphas. "Don't embarra.s.s yourself."

"I have to admit that it was actually Mercury's idea, putting a temporary portal on top of your portal. It's not really an original idea, of course, portal-stacking, but it generally has so little practical application that it never occurred to me."

"A portal on top of another portal?" said Malphas, looking back at the breakfast nook to see a second glowing pattern superimposed on the first. "But then...."

"Anyone coming through the Linoleum portal gets immediately transported through the temporary portal on top of it. Rather than being loosed on Los Angeles, your demon brigade finds itself on an unexpected layover at the planeport."

"Then we'll just "

"Take over the planeport and then use the Mundane portal to transport to Megiddo, where Michael's army is waiting for you? Capital idea. Except that the planeport has security systems that prevent unauthorized portal openings including the sort of rifts created by your anti-bombs. So you'll have a brigade of morons threatening baggage handlers with ornamental gla.s.s apples. And even if they somehow managed to cow the planeport security into submission by threatening to upset the aesthetic balance of the baggage claim area, they will still have to deal with Michael's better-trained, better-prepared, better-armed, and in pretty much every other way better force at Megiddo. Give it up, Malphas. You've been outmaneuvered."

Malphas stared weakly at the impotent gla.s.s apple in his hand, gradually coming to terms with the hopelessness of his situation.

"If what you say is true, then why am I here?" he asked finally. "Why didn't I transport to the planeport?"

"The temporary portal activated only after you came through. That's why I had to keep the Cube shielded until you got here. Now that both portals are open, they are temporarily at least part of Mundane reality, so the M.E.F. won't affect them. I a.s.sume that Lucifer sent you through to check things out and give him the all clear, correct?"

Malphas remained silent.

"Don't make this difficult, Malphas. You know how this works. We can do things the hard way or the excruciatingly hard way. So what'll it be? Answer quickly, please. The show's about to start back up. I'm finding it has a sort of morbid appeal."