The aproned monster paused. His great ridged forehead creased as if sensing something. Then, with a grunt, he jerked his gaze right at the window, right at Cassie.
Cassie shuddered. “Angelese!”
The Troll was opening the window now, the cleaver in his knuckly fist.
More of the room was metamorphosing around them. The hot stench of rotten meat blew in when the butcher had raised the window all the way. “I’m coming for ya, cutie. Gonna make a meat loaf out’a ya ...”
“I think you better do something,” Angelese said. “Now might be a good time.”
“What do you want me to do? Spit on him? My powers don’t work in the Living World! Only in Hell!”
“Cassie,” Angelese pointed out. “Right now you’re standing in the middle of a Merge between your world and a sector of the Mephistopolis. As far as your powers are concerned, this
is
Hell.”
Cassie, in the avalanche of her terror, hadn’t even thought of that. She let her fear turn to rage and shot a glare at the Troll. The stout creature howled, lurched backward as if shoved, staggering. In her mind, Cassie pictured two big hands grabbing the Troll’s head. She focused the thought more sharply, thinking,
The grinder. Put him in the grinder,
and then the Etheric hands hauled the Troll back into the butcher shop and shoved his head into the grinder. The motor’s metallic whine degraded to a sputter for a moment, as the blades bit into its new chore. The Troll convulsed, disappearing inch by inch as the invisible hands fed him into the machine.
“Good,” Angelese said. “Now let’s get out of here.”
“Not through there!” Cassie insisted, pointing to the hellish window. She turned to the dorm unit’s door. The door was locked from the outside but she knew she could knock it down simply by projecting a thought. However ...
“Any time now,” Angelese said.
“Who knows what’s on the other side of it—”
“Sure, but we can’t stay here. Don’t you understand anything I’ve told you? The sole purpose of this Merge is to capture you. So use your powers and open that—” The angel’s shoulders slumped. “Too late ...”
Cassie looked at the door again. The gap around the frame seemed to blur—then it disappeared. The door and the frame were now one piece. “What the hell happened?” she asked.
“A Psychic Weld. So you can’t escape. When the Merge peaks, they’ll send a Nectoport in here to get you. Come on, this way!”
The angel was climbing into the butcher’s window.
I do NOT want to do this,
Cassie thought, but what choice did she have? She climbed into the window, holding her breath against the stench.
“What about you?” she asked, coming up behind. A young Imp paid them no mind as they passed. He was cracking bones on a table, scooping out the marrow. “You’re an angel. What about
your
powers?”
“Mine are all Masochistilated.”
Cassie frowned. “What?”
“They take too much time to initiate.”
“What about
your
Nectoport? When we were Dream-Channeling, you had one. Couldn’t we use it to get out of here?”
“It’s too limited a perimeter. We don’t have the power to energize a Nectoport during a Merge, but they do. Just trust me, and do what I say.”
This, too, was not encouraging.
Wooo!
she thought when her flip-flops touched the edge of something. She looked and saw what she’d almost fallen into a bottomless pit in the floor with a sign that read: DROP ALL ORGANIC WASTE HERE.
Great ...
Angelese’s hand grabbed her and pulled her away. “This way!”
A wall made of horned skulls set into black mortar stood before them, and in it was another window. Behind them, though, three more Troll butchers were racing after them, all bearing boning knives and cleavers.
Chop each other up,
Cassie hurled the thought at them. Suddenly the Trolls were skirmishing amongst themselves, sinking blades into each other, cutting chunks out. “This is too easy,” she said. She couldn’t believe how effectively her powers had developed. How hard could it be to get safely away from the clinic when her thoughts could achieve such feats?
“Who are you?” someone shouted when they climbed through the next window. A family of Imps—mother, father, and small son—sat on a couch before an oval, grainy-pictured television. On the screen was what appeared to be a sitcom: giggling children machine-gunning parents at a PTA meeting.
“Sorry to intrude!” Cassie exclaimed.
When Angelese opened the front door to the family’s house, she sighed. They stepped out into the in-patient corridor of the clinic. It was very dark, and much of it had transformed via the Merge, but from here they’d at least be able to find their way out.
“Get down!” Angelese whispered. She pulled Cassie behind a desk in front of the med station. They ducked.
“What is it?”
“A Flamma-Trooper ...”
Cassie peeked around and saw it. This particular species of Terrademon was hybridized exclusively for special operations, usually in Extermination Squads. It had three legs but no arms, and had a humanoid head sprouting horns through an asbestos helm. It wore a shiny state-gray uniform whose breastplate was crisscrossed by heavy black straps. On either side, hooked to the straps, were metal tanks, like scuba tanks, and tubes from the tanks led up under the thing’s jaw. The organic igniter in its mouth was what lit the pressurized napalm.
Flamma-Troopers vomited fire.
Its jack-booted third foot kicked down each patient door, then it leaned its head in and belched a crackling orb of fire the size of a beachball. Screams resounded from inside each room.
It’s coming our way,
Cassie realized. She shot upright, shouted, “Hey, fireface!”
The Flamma-Trooper glared at her. It adjusted a knob on one of its tanks, then inhaled in preparation for the next heave of flame.
“Get tiny!” Cassie yelled next.
Just as the Trooper would incinerate them, it ... shrank.
“Oh, that’s great!” Angelese celebrated, springing up next to her.
The Flamma-Trooper was now three inches high. Cassie picked up a telephone book off the desk and dropped it—
splat ...
A minuscule puff of smoke drifted up from the book.
The act gratified Cassie, but then she looked up at another, more resonant sound—
Ssssssssssss-ONK!
—as a familiar blob of green light suddenly appeared at the end of the hall. Cassie knew it at once: the egression orb of a Nectoport. The green light darkened; the orb floated, growing, then it began to widen forming a fluctuating aperture in mid-air.
When the Egress finally solidified, a dozen Ushers stormed out onto the corridor’s floor, raising axes and spiked bludgeons. Their slug-brown skin shined in slimy sweat. Once in place, they fell silent for a moment, looking at Cassie and Angelese through chisel-slit eyes. Then their fanged mouths all opened at once and they howled, charging.
By now Cassie wasn’t even afraid. Why should she be? She repeated her fun with the Flamma-Trooper, and yelled, “Get tiny, you ugly bastards!” and that was all it took. The Etheric Power behind her command shrank the entire Mutilation Squad down to doll-size. They scampered around on the floor in disarray. Then Cassie and Angelese proceeded to stomp on them all.
“God, this is fun!” Cassie announced, squishing.
“Yeah?” Angelese countered. “See how much fun you have dealing with
that
...”
The floor vibrated. A nine-foot-tall Golem trudged toward them, its stout three-fingered hands of clay opening and closing in some mindless anticipation.
“Get tiny!” Cassie shouted.
Nothing happened.
“Shrink, damn you!”
It wasn’t working.
“We’re screwed!” she shouted to the angel.
“Air, fire, earth, and water,” Angelese said. “Only those elements will work against a Golem, because it’s not really a living thing.”
Oh.
Cassie shifted through ideas.
A Golem’s made of clay. Heat bakes clay, and fire produces heat ...
She closed her eyes and thought solely of heat. A wave of intense, searing heat.
As the Golem walked through the wave, its movements began to retard. It was baking, like a giant clay mannequin in a kiln. When it stopped completely, smoke floated off its features. Then it fell over and shattered like porcelain on the floor.
“Maybe we can get out through this window,” Angelese suggested.
They ducked into the office beside the med station. Cassie was relieved when she looked out the window. The Merge hadn’t progressed much past the clinic’s grounds. Outside she could see the garden and courtyard, and beyond that, the road into town.
“Come on!”
“Wait,” Cassie said. She saw the property locker, yanked it open and rooted around in the small boxes until she found the one with her name.
“What are you doing?” Angelese griped.
“I want my locket. Lissa gave it to me.” Finally! She found her box and tore off the lid.
“Cassie, we’ve got
Hell
coming down on our asses, and you’re fucking around looking for a locket?”
Cassie’s smirk drew lines in her face. “I can’t
believe
that angels are allowed to cuss like that.”
In the box was her locket, her watch, and her onyx ring. She scooped them all up, then said, “ “All right, I’m ready— ”
“Too late ...”
More rumbling, like an earthquake. More shards of Hell grew up the walls around them, and outside—
“Holy shit,” Angelese muttered.
Cassie’s eyes were glued to the window. Outside, through ember-like light, fog like green steam floated by, but through it she could see the face of a building. It seemed to be made of lusterless black metal, with gash-like windows. Things barely discernable seemed to scamper back and forth on narrow ledges, and some of the ledges sprouted iron spikes on which severed heads had been planted. The face of the building extended further than she could see, and when she looked up—
It was Cassie’s turn to mutter, “Holy shit.”
The building must’ve spired a mile into the air.
“I can’t believe it,” Angelese said, incredulous. “They Merged the Mephisto Building ...”
“What does this mean?” Cassie asked.
“It means we’re not going out that way,” the angel answered and shoved Cassie away from the window. They ran out of the office, were about to turn back down the hall ...
The phone on the desk was ringing.
They both looked at each other. Given the circumstances, the logical reaction would be to FORGET about the phone, but...
Both Cassie and Angelese got the vibe at the same time.
“I guess you better answer it,” Angelese said.
Cassie picked up the phone, paused a moment, then put it to her ear.
“Hello, Cassie,” greeted the voice at the other end. The simile was impossible but the voice sounded like light. “Do you know who this is?”
“I ... think so.”
“Look at the end of the hall.”
Cassie’s eyes flicked up.
Oh, no ...
Sadie, the clinic chaperon, quivered with eyes wide as coasters. A thin, pale-white forearm braced across her neck; standing behind the heavyset woman stood a gaunt, waxen figure in a scarlet cloak and hood. Within the hood came suggestions of a face: sunken eyes, skin so sheer she could see veins. But the figure’s mouth was sealed shut by rivets.
“That’s one of my Mutatos,” the voice on the line seemed to sift. “He’s from an imperial class of stewards that starve themselves for centuries to prove their service to me. And they don’t talk, as you can see, so they can’t tell anybody what they see in my abode. I want you to go with him. If you do, he’ll let the woman go. If you don’t, he’ll dig a hole in her head with that tool, and swizzle it around in her brain.”
Now she noticed the flat-metal implement in the Mutato’s bone-thin hand, something like a screwdriver with a large grinding-burr on the end, which he held against Sadie’s temple.
“Whatever he’s telling you,” Angelese advised, “don’t do it. Don’t listen to him.”
“Plus, I’ll guarantee your safety and the safety of your little angelic friend. I just want to talk, that’s all.”
The voice was radiant. It was the most trusting voice she’d ever heard.
“I want to make you a deal,” the caller went on. “If you don’t like the deal, you can go back to your precious Living World and do whatever you want to do.”
“Nnnnnno,” Cassie managed.
“And there’s someone here who wants to talk to you—”
The pause switched. Then another voice came on.
“Cassie? It’s me, it’s Lissa ...”