“I still don’t know why he wants me. He had Succubi burn down my father’s house—the Deadpass—because he wanted to keep me
out
of the Mephistopolis. Now he wants to abduct me to bring me back in?”
“Yes. He only wants you back in during conditions he can control. You’re too dangerous on your own. He wants you for your power, he wants to
use
you for some aspect of your power. What aspect, I don’t know. Or maybe he just wants you for a trophy. In the Living World, you’re just another girl, but in Hell, you’re the most powerful Human to ever set foot there.”
This sounded impressive—and ultimately terrifying. “I just want to find my sister, that’s the only reason I’d ever want to go back there. I just want to find her and talk to her and tell her I’m sorry about what happened to her. Then that’s it. After that, I’ll never go back.”
Angelese’s smile seemed to float before her face. “Yes, you will.”
“Shit on that noise,” Cassie said. “I don’t care if you think I’m selfish or scared—”
“Everybody’s scared, Cassie. You want to know something? Even
God
is scared. You’ll meet your sister again. I’ll see to it. If I have to sacrifice myself and a thousand more of my order, I’ll do it. But you have to help us too.”
Cassie wasn’t the sort who appreciated being told what she must do. “The only thing
I have
to do is stay Goth and die.”
“It’s providential, Cassie. You’d say no to God?”
Cassie chuckled. “Until God docs something for me, why should I do anything for Him?”
“He’s saving you from being imprisoned by Satan.”
“That’s what you say. And it sounds to me like it’s a pretty even deck. You haven’t even told me exactly why Lucifer wants me. Why’s he want my power? What’s he going to do with it?”
“Something diabolical, something monstrous. Beyond that, we don’t know. That’s why I was sent here. I’m going to escort you back to Hell to find out.”
“That’s great, that tells me a lot.” Cassie felt steeped in sarcasm now. “I should be jumping up and down to go on this trip, huh?”
Angelese just smiled. “You’ll see.”
Cassic’s eyes shot to the blot of shadow at the angel’s feet. “And how come that thing’s not doing a number on you? I thought any time you broke the Rules, any time you told me something secret, you’d get punished.”
“I can’t be re-tortured for elaborating on information I’ve already revealed. I’ve got plenty more to tell you, and when I do”—her eyes flicked down on the shadow—“that thing’s gonna rake me over the coals.”
“Then don’t!” Cassie exclaimed. “Don’t do it. Don’t tell me anything and you won’t be hurt.”
The angel’s voice went coarse. “I exist to be hurt. I am God’s unworthy servant forever.”
“I don’t want to watch you get torn up by that thing again!” Cassie insisted.
“Whoever said life has anything to do with what we want or don’t want? Life’s a gift, Cassie. Sometimes we have to give something back. You will see me tortured again before our plight is finished.” Angelese didn’t seem the least bit daunted by the prospect. She casually crossed her legs, diddling with the pendant around her neck, the strange gem she’d called an Obscurity Stone.
“Why can’t God just
know?”
Cassie countered next. “He’s omnipotent, right? He’s all-knowing. Why can’t He just
know
what Lucifer’s planning and then stop it?”
“It’s doesn’t work that way. The same reason he doesn’t just put His hand down and stop wars, stop disease, stop poverty. And all that. He gave humans the world as their own. It’s up to them, it’s up to
their
free will. Yours too, Cassie.”
Cassie slowly paced the room. She didn’t like guilt trips, and usually they didn’t work on her anyway. But now she didn’t know how she should feel. Was she being selfish? It was easier to cop out, to change the subject. “I don’t understand about this Merge thing, this Atrocidome. How’s it work?”
“Like I said, it’s an immense coliseum. They put a million inhabitants out on the field at once. They can’t escape ‘cos they close all the gates. Hovering over the ’dome is an iron plate that weighs hundreds of thousands of tons. It’s able to hover because a regiment of specially trained Biowizards put a Levitation Spell on it. More incantations and spells are needed, too, of course, to direct the Merge, but when everything’s ready, Biowizards terminate the Levitation Spell and the giant iron plate falls, squashes everybody in the ‘dome field at the same time. Like dropping a cinderblock on an ant hill, only here the ants are living inhabitants of Hell. They’ll use anyone they can round up, Trolls, Broodren, Imps, any class of demon, but it’s mostly damned humans ’cos they have souls. More juice. You know all about how that works—when the Spirit Body of a damned human is destroyed, the soul descends into a lower life form, but there’s a lot of necrotic energy that’s released during that transfer. All those lives ending at once creates a massive energy flux, and then Lucifer’s engineers tap that energy. It’s the power that’s used for the Merge. It allows a district of the Mephistopolis to exist in the same space with a chunk of the Living World, and it just goes to show you what lengths Satan will go to to get what he wants. Kill all those people just for a magic trick, just to keep offending God.”
Cassie tried to picture the macabre event in her mind, but really couldn’t; even with all the impossibilities she’d previously seen in the Mephistopolis, she couldn’t quite fathom such a spectacle. But her biggest question—Why? What did Lucifer plan to do if he was able to kidnap Cassie?—was beyond even Angelese. Without thinking, Cassie asked: “When is the next Spatial Merge going to occur? Do you know?”
The Umbra-Specter instantly elongated on the floor, its black arms and claws gleefully outspread.
Damn, I forgot about that thing!
Cassie’s mind raced. “Forget it, don’t tell me!”
But Angelese just sighed, a strangely casual resignation.
A voice, like the etchings of two insect appendages abrading, seemed to say, “Please, please! Tell her! Let me tear your pretty body up...”
“We know,” Angelese began, “that it’s going to happen within the next few days,” and then the shadow’s claws lengthened and reached forward, slowly sliding up the angel’s white legs but leaving luminous-red thread-thin slashes. The thing moaned in some demented ecstasy. Angelese just shuddered, braving the pain.
“—yes, within the next few days, and when that happens I’ll be ready to get you out of here and show you to the other Deadpass, there aren’t many Deadpasses beyond the nearest Migration Point in this area but I know where one is”—she flashed a triumphant grin through the rising agony—“ I know because the Archangel Gabriel told me!” and now she screamed, shuddering on the bed. The Umbra-Specter’s vitality and physical form grew nourished by what was being said. Its ink black configuration slid forward and up to embrace Angelese and haul her linen gown up over her hips, the ebon awl-sharp points of its claws rending slow, delicious grooves up and down the inside of her thighs. Blood poured freely as water from a faucet.
Cassie sat down in the corner, in tears, pleading, “Stop stop stop!”
Angelese was panting, though, laughing as she defied the Specter’s meticulous torment. “There’s something else, too, Lucifer’s backup plan—”
“DON’T TELL ME!” Cassie shrieked.
“Lucifer knows that he might fail in abducting you, so he’d need another Etheress but there isn’t one. You’re the only one in history—”
Now the shadow’s black hands were up Angelese’s chest, racking line after bloody line across her breasts. The talons began to dig just under the sternum, clawing a hole until the claw disappeared. The Specter whispered, “Sweet little angelic bitch, let me play with your immortal heart, let me tickle it with cuts—”
“But there’s something else coming too,” the angel gasped out, “It’s called an Etherean—”
“What’s that?” Cassie cried.
“The male version of you—” and that was all Angelese could stand as the shadow’s claw hand molested her beating heart. The scream exploded from her throat and she collapsed flat on her back on the floor, liquid red light spraying from her wounds. The Umbra-Specter chuckled like someone who’d just had a greedy orgasm, and its form retreated back into the shadow which outlined Angelese’s very still body.
Cassie’s mind was swimming, her cheeks wet and teeth chattering from the spectacle of atrocity. Bright red blood glowed all over the walls and formed a shallow pool on the floor.
The words replayed in her mind like a whisper in a dream:
Etherean, Etherean ... The mak version of you
...
Cassie fainted dead away.
Part II
Suicide
Chapter Eight
(I)
“Straight 4.0 student with a 170 I.Q. He’s never taken a test in his life that he hasn’t aced. Eighteen years old and he’s already in grad school, but, look. Look how dumb he really is. How can somebody so smart be this stupid?”
Each word seemed like the bite of a shovel digging down into Walter’s grave and grudgingly unearthing him. But Walter didn’t want to be unearthed, did he? What was happening?
He’d just blown his head off with a Remington 870 that had a 12-gauge deer-slug in the chamber.
“What an asshole. What a shit-for-brains blithering moron.”
The person berating him was his twin brother Colin who sat next to Walter’s bed, reading
MAD
magazine. Colin’s kinky tumble of fire-orange hair—identical to Walter’s— glowed around the shape of his head from the lamp beside his chair.
Where am I?
Walter thought.
“You’re in the hospital, Brain-child, in case you haven’t figured it out,” Colin told him. “And, no, you didn’t die. Jesus Christ in a hot-dog stand, Walter. Where’d you get that shotgun?”
“What difference does it make?” Walter finally spoke through a throat drier than beach sand. He’d failed. He’d survived his own suicide—the ultimate humiliation. But how could that be? He leaned up in the raised, side-railed hospital bed, on his elbows, cringing at a twinge of headache, and looked at Colin. “How could I possibly survive the impact of a 12-gauge pumpkin-ball to the head? The cranial trauma would’ve been absolute. The man at the gun store said there’d be no head left on my shoulders.”
“Walter, you are a prime
ass,”
Colin replied. “I was at the dorm when the ambulance came. You should’ve seen yourself, you looked ridiculous.”
“What?”
“You looked like Moe in the episode about the organ grinder’s monkey. You didn’t shoot yourself in the head, Walter. You weren’t holding the shotgun right, it must’ve slipped up when you pulled the trigger. The pumpkin-ball just grazed the top of your head, dickbrain. All you did with that pumpkin-ball was part your hair.”
Walter felt the top of his head. He had a hat of bandages. Then he fell back in the bed, almost in tears.
I can’t
do
anything right...
“You should’ve called me,” Colin continued to berate. He got up, went across the room, and was turning a wheelchair around the side of the bed. “I had no idea you were suicidal. It’s my fault. You almost fucked
everything
up.”
Walter didn’t get the meaning of Colin’s last statement, not that he was paying much attention. He’d tried to kill himself because of Candice, and look what happened.
“Come on, Buddy-bro. It’s time for Walter to leave the building.”
Walter looked at the wheelchair, duped. “I can’t leave yet, can I? Will the doctors let me leave this soon?”
“Sure.” The strangest smile. “I’ve already talked to the doctor. I checked you out.”
This didn’t sound right, but who was Walter to argue? It just seemed odd that they’d let him out without even a final checkout. He’d just attempted suicide. Wouldn’t they want him to see a counselor or something?
“Get your ass in the chair. The limo’s waiting. You’ll probably have one motherfucker of a headache for the next few days so ...” Colin gave him a pill and cup of water. “Take one of these.”
Walter didn’t argue. His head did ache, which was understandable. After he swallowed the pill, he clumsily let Colin help him into the chair.
He felt woozy at once, light-headed. Suddenly he just wanted to sleep. As Colin wheeled him out into the hospital’s main corridor, Walter groggily said, “Hey, Colin? Are you sure the doctor said it was all right for me to leave the hospital this early?”
“Sure, Buddy-bro. It’s all taken care of.”
“But ... aren’t there release forms to sign, and health-care forms?”
A pat on the shoulder. “All taken care of. You just relax and let me get you out of here. We have a lot to talk about.”
“Mmmm,” Walter said. That painkiller was making him nod out. “What ... what do we have to talk about, Colin?”
“Your destiny,” Colin said back.
The words shocked Walter’s eyes open but only for a moment. The drug was dragging him down into a sweet lulling unconsciousness. He was almost asleep again before he could see anything of consequence in the hall but when the evidence snagged his vision, he saw that it was a considerable consequence, indeed.