“So much for them,” Angelese remarked.
“Gross,” Cassie added, looking down. The Necrotiks sloshed as they struggled, but it was clear: they weren’t going anywhere. “Try Weight Watchers,” she added, then she and Angelese climbed over the obese things and continued down the corridor.
The angel held the moonstone, both of their faces uplit in the musty darkness. “So where are we going now?” Cassie asked.
“The Main Repository. That’s where Hell’s greatest secrets are kept.”
“And this person we’re looking for, the—”
“The Maémaè,” Angelese pronounced the arcane name. “She’s the Archivist. In life she was the curator of the Library of Alexandria, she maintained the royal files of the Ptolemies, the great kings of Egypt.”
“Why is she in Hell?”
“She sold her soul to Lucifer in exchange for the love of Alexander the Great.”
“He fell in love with her?”
“Yeah, and then he died a week later. The Maémaè wasn’t happy; she sold her soul for nothing. But Lucifer’s always had a thing for her so he let her keep her old job. In the Living World, she was known as the most beautiful woman in Alexandria. Now she’s known as the most beautiful woman in Hell.”
That’s some tagline,
Cassie thought.
The moonstone’s light led them up winding stone steps that seemed to never end, but when they did, they were standing in a great vault of books. Shelves upon shelves, piles upon piles. Some books were huge, some tiny. The wan light from countless moonstones made the books look like uneven bricks forming an infinite edifice.
Cassie picked up one black-bound book. The title read
Terra Dementata,
but when she opened it, the pages were all blank. She picked up another one—
The Confession of Judas Iscariot—
and its pages, too, were blank. More books, then, with the strangest titles:
The Synod of the Aorists, The Recant of St. John the Divine, The Proclamation of the Red Sect ...
All their pages were blank.
“A Sorcery Encryption,” the angel explained. “It protects the secrets here, plus it serves the basic function of Hell. All the secrets of history are here, but you can’t find out what they are. Lucifer won’t allow it. Only he and the Maémaè know.”
“So that’s why we’re here?” Cassie said. “To ask Maémaè?”
“In a sense. We’re going to ask her for permission to read.”
“But the books are all blank!”
“Not if she casts the Unbinding Spell.”
Cassie was getting irate. “And why would she do that? She won’t! We’re wasting our time! There’s no reason for this—this
Maémaè
to help us.”
Angelese smiled faintly. “Maybe I can give her a reason.”
Through one vault after the next they proceeded, through more veritable mountains of books.
They walked for hours.
Cassie felt wobbly, buzz-headed, like the one time she’d smoked pot. (She’d never smoked it after that because it made her eat like a pig.) Was the air thinner here, or was it something else?
“It’s knowledge,” the angel said, again sensing her questions. “There’s so much buried knowledge here, unknown, unread, it sort of ferments and releases something into the air.”
“It makes no sense for this place to exist,” Cassie complained.
“Of course it doesn’t, and that’s precisely
why
it exists. And guess what? We’re almost there.”
Woozy, Cassie walked on. Off to the side she noticed one small cove indented against the wall. It contained one moonstone and a single teetering wooden bookshelf. A curiosity forced her to stop and look at the spines of the dozen or so books stored there.
The Gospel According to Mary, The Restituta of Sister Anastasia, The Book of Dictums, The Second Book of Exodus, The Epistle of Timothy to the Philippians IV.
“What is
this
weird place?” Cassie asked.
“Lucifer’s greatest achievement—the Cove of Expurgation.”
“It’s not very big.”
“Doesn’t have to be. These are all books that should’ve been in the Holy Bible, but Lucifer got them expunged.”
Now the floor canted upward as they entered another vault whose ceiling was a hundred feet high. All the walls were lined all the way to the top with laden bookshelves, yet the floor of the vault lay empty save for a raised desk and platform at the very center, like a judge’s bench. Cassie noticed the figure of a woman sitting in the high chair behind the desk. The woman looked interminably bored.
The clatters of their footsteps echoed loudly, and inch-thick dust on the floor puffed up as they approached.
A soft voice lifted above the echoes: “In our endless darkness we weep, but even our smiles we keep—at the beckoning of angels.”
Cassie and Angelese stopped before the great risen desk, looking up.
The Maémaè looked down.
Surrounded by this massive open space, she appeared tiny, svelte. When she stood up from the desk to appraise them, she displayed the body of a Ford Agency model—long sleek perfect legs, tiny-waisted, a willowy merge of curves and flawless body lines—but Ford Agency models didn’t have horns in their heads. A corset of human black leather compressed a further perfection of breasts that—even nearly spilling from the confines of the intricate brassiere-seemed buoyant and erect. Delicately carved black glass had been fashioned by some infernal artisan into spiked stiletto heels, and the panties beneath the garter straps were made from some kind of abyssal dark-maroon lace. The earthen-blond hair cut in a sassy bob seemed too human for this unfathomable creature, as did her skin when she stood at the right angle in the moonstone light. It was impeccable skin, poreless, a nut-brown tan, until she changed positions to reveal its next hue: a meld of chartreuse streaked with salmon-pink. The Maémaè’s face was as beautiful as something painted by Raphael, and she had a smile full of wonders, not horrors. The whites of her eyes were cognac-red, the irises azure.
“What are a pair of angels doing in this place?” came the question. The Archivist’s voice drifted like a breeze; it seemed to come from everywhere but her mouth.
“I’m not an angel,” Cassie countered. “I’m an Etheress, and if you don’t tell us what we need to know, I’ll destroy you.”
The smile drifted just like the voice. “You can’t destroy anything here. The ill-will you bring from your world matches the ill-will here. I hope you will think about that.”
Cassie kept looking up at the petite, fascinating woman.
“I can tell you nothing,” the Maémaè added. “Both of you know that. This room is filled with all the knowledge of every world, but none of that knowledge can ever be revealed.”
“It can be revealed by you,” Angelese said. “You can let us read.”
“I will never let you read. I will never let anyone read, ever. That is my eternal pledge. You know this, and what you pursue is futile.” Then the Archivist’s smile turned even brighter, like someone musing in ecstasy. The sleek, finely nailed hands opened to them. “But come up if you like. I long for guests, I long for those who seek.”
Cassie and Angelese walked behind the risen desk and mounted some short wooden steps. Thousand-year-old wood creaked like a witch’s titter. The Maémaè’s golden hair seemed to flow even though there were no drafts in this windowless place, no breezes. Once up, Cassie could see more of the Archivist, more of her physical perfection in a world built upon error. When she moved, she drifted, like her voice, something like total elegance, total grace. The orbs of her breasts moved too, sliding minutely in the devilish brassiere, the outlines of her distended nipples betrayed by the sheer material. The fishnet stockings covering her coltish legs were not fabric but a meticulous lattice of preserved demonic veins and arteries. The Maémaè’s hair continued to shift on its own, and so did the tint of her skin, which at the next moment appeared mulberry-dark, and the next white as frost and dusted by some crystalline mist. But there was nothing demonic about the She-Demon’s scent; it was another opposite. From the shining, shifting, flaxen hair came an essence like the scent of a green field in the summer, after rain.
“These are pretty,” the Maémaè whispered, running her slim finger up Angelese’s arm, over the gridwork of scars etched by the Umbra-Specter. Then she drifted around to Cassie and ran the same finger gently down the center of her throat where it stopped on the silver locket containing Lissa’s picture. “And so is this...”
“What would happen if you let us read?” Angelese interrupted.
“I would lose my position here at the Archives.” The scarlet eyes flashed behind the impossible smile. “And I will never jeopardize that.”
“What’s the big deal? It doesn’t look like much of a position,” Cassie commented. “You get to sit here for eternity and guard a bunch of books that no one can ever read.”
“I like complacency.” The voice swirled around Cassie’s head like a stream of moths. “Never take what you have for granted.” Like the voice, now the woman herself was drifting around Cassie, her finger moving along with her, across Cassie’s shoulders, her back, across the top of her bosom. “Yes, an angel...”
Cassie grew flustered, and off-guard. “I told you, I’m not an angel. I’m an Etheress.”
Now the Archivist’s elegant finger traced a line down Cassie’s bare arm and played over her hand.
Please, Cassie thought, biting her lip,
please tell me that the librarian of Hell is NOT putting the make on me!
“Providence, infinity, resplendence, and hatred,” the Maémaè whispered next. Her hand came off of Cassie’s. “It’s all the same, in a way.”
Cassie didn’t understand, nor did Angelese, or if she did, it was clear she didn’t care. But when Cassie thought about it a moment, she guessed that the woman meant people, and their aspirations, were the same everywhere.
Then she thought:
I wonder if they’re the same in Heaven
...
“I have something to trade,” Angelese told the librarian.
“You have nothing I want.”
“Are you sure?”
“I should say, there’s nothing I desire that you can give me.”
The angel repeated: “Are you sure?”
When the Maémaè moved closer, her skin diverged again, to a brown-black, like a chameleon on dark tree bark. “Go back to Heaven, and be grateful.”
“Don’t you want to know?” the angel goaded.
I sure as hell do,
Cassie thought, and then she remembered what Angelese had said earlier. When Cassie had implied that the Maémaè had no reason to help them, Anglese had answered with the strangest confidence,
Maybe I can give her a reason.
“No, I’ll just be disappointed,” the Archivist said, her cryptic smile hanging in the air. “That’s what my home thrives on, that’s the blood of its heart. Disappointment.”
Angelese looked right back into her eyes and said, “I have the power to revoke your Condemnation.”
The words echoed for a long time.
Tiny tears, like diamond dust, glittered at the rims of the Maémaè’s eyes. Her lips parted a few times, as if to speak, but she could summon no lilting words. Instead, a long dark tongue, like a monitor lizard’s, slipped out between her lips and tasted the air. “I don’t believe you,” she eventually declared.
“Your home?” Angelese challenged. “What it really thrives on are lies, all the lies of history. My home thrives on truth.”
“If you’re trying to convince me that angels don’t lie, I must take exception. I know an angel who’s been lying quite effectively for five thousand years.”
“I can release your Spirit to Purgatory,” Angelese said.
The silence bloomed before them.
“You put your trust in Lucifer,” Angelese went on, “and look what you got. Try putting your trust in God. I’m one of His emissaries.”
The Maémaè just stared, her fanged smile open in awe.
“You’ve got nothing to lose,” Angelese finished.
On the desk lay a single, rather dully bound book. Gold leaf on the cover read APPENDICES. The Maémaè daintily picked up the book and handed it to Angelese, but when she opened it in the wan light, she frowned. “The pages are still blank. Don’t fuck with me.”
The Maémaè sighed like someone who’d just been embraced by a lost love. Her smile kept beaming, and then she closed her eyes, looking up, and raised her arms.
Suddenly the Repository was filled with the brightest sunlight.
Angelese looked at the book again, and croaked, “My God ...”
But Cassie stood horrified. Her mind reeled, her thoughts like teeth grinding, and when she glared at the angel, it was with pure hatred. She hissed, “You bitch ...”
Angelese gawked at her. “Cassie, what’s wrong with you?”
“You BITCH!” Cassie shouted, and the words hit Angelese in the chest like a machine-gun blast, blowing her over the platform’s railing and slamming her to the floor. The book flew away into bright light. When Cassie ran to the rail and glared down, a very dazed Angelese was trying to drag herself up.