Next the vendor opened a metal box beside the grill; steam floated out. "This is even better, and it's only two Eichmann Quarters per order." Walter saw the ramekinlike containers, crusted around the rims and bubbling with something that could've been melted Muenster cheese. "This is Baked Meconium Imperial, my own mama's recipe."

Walter was choking but his curiosity wouldn't let up. "What-what's meconium-"

"Fetal bowel contents. In this case, a third-trimester Cacodemon fetus. Dee-lish!"

Walter staggered off and threw up on the sidewalk. His vomit glowed as if he'd thrown up on the lens of a flood-lamp. The vendor was laughing, and he heard a scurrying. He leaned against a steam-car parked at the curb, catching his breath, but the scurrying got louder, and now he heard murmuring too.

Stomach still flinching, Walter looked aside. Several young Broodcn-half-breed demon children-congregated with enthusiasm around, of all things, Walter's vomit.

Walter stared, revolted. What on earth- But this wasn't earth, was it? The Brooden were all scooping up Walter's luminous vomit and racing away with it in their cupped hands, their faces alight. Several got into a fight over the remaining smears.

Then it made sense, and it was proof that he truly was an Etherean as the books had said. Any material object or substance from the Living World was of immense value in h.e.l.l. Including vomit. Especially an Etherean's vomit. It was as good as cash here.

You learn something new every day, he thought, dejected.

"There he is!" piped a nasally voice. Weird b.u.mpy little faces peered at him-the remaining Broodren.

"Look!"

"Yeah, right there!"

"An ETHEREAN!"

This was not the welcome Walter imagined. When they began to give chase, Walter ran off down another alley. The little b.u.g.g.e.rs followed him intently as a pack of rabid terriers, chortling, and Walter knew they were much faster than he. What would they do when they caught him? It wasn't hard to figure. If his vomit was worth money, wouldn't his body parts be worth even more? Those little psychos'll tear me apart!

Some Etherean. What a joke. He had no power. He hadn't even been in h.e.l.l ten minutes, and he was about to get killed.

His heart almost stopped when he looked to the end of the alley.

Something stood there still as a chess piece, in silhouette. Nine feet tall, wide-angled shoulders, and a head like a lump.

A Golem.

Walter had read about them, and all the inhabitants of this place. A Golem was akin to a brainless police officer. They were made of clay from the tidal beds of the River Styx, for the Agency of the Constabulary. They moved slowly but were nearly indestructible.

If Walter turned and ran in the other direction, the chattering Broodren would get him. He could only suspect that this thing in front of him would be much more efficient.. Either way, Walter knew he would die, and it wasn't that terrible a prospect since he was already a suicidal basketcase.

His teeth chattered. "Please don't make it hurt much," he pleaded to the Golem.

The thing approached clumsily but steadily. It did not raise a mitten-like hand to Walter but instead looked down at him with the featureless lump of its face. Walter squeezed his eyes shut and prepared to die.

The thudding of its footsteps rumbled off. Then-Squealing, screams, howls of terror.

Walter turned around and looked. Behind him the Golem was stomping the Broodren, crushing them, pulling them apart.

Walter ran.

Why did it save me? It could've killed me in a second but it didn't.

Then he remembered a little more, some of the last things Colin had told him before he'd redecorated the ceiling of his penthouse with his brains. The Prince of Lies wants you, brother ... Walter had little confidence in the man's t.i.tle but still-There was the implication. The power circles in the Mephistopolis wanted Walter and that was difficult for him to dismiss since he'd essentially lived his entire life unwanted. There'd been promises of great things to come, of power like that of a king. That last straw-blond prost.i.tute, too, had implied as much: that in h.e.l.l Walter would be something great, and would reclaim the woman he loved.

So he dreamed on.

He cleared his head and walked, found another smoking intersection. A steam-car, driven by an Imp in a Yankees cap, soared out of the low-hanging fog. A Griffin circled lazily overhead, appraising him, then was off. From distant, lit windows he heard laughter, moans, and shrieks.

The next street sign snagged his attention: CHYME RESERVOIR AVENUE. It rang a bell, then more pieces of memory kindled. The dream, he recalled. But it was just a dream, wasn't it? And he recalled the pretty girl in the punkish clothes who'd been beheaded by the Golems: No-name was her name. A Dactyl-cla.s.s sorceress for the court of King Mursil the First, she'd told him, whatever that meant. And he remembered one more thing: in the dream, the Golems had thrown her head in a garbage can.

A garbage can stood right in front of him.

There better not be a severed head in this garbage can, Walter thought, looking in.

There was a severed head in the garbage can.

"h.e.l.lo, Walter," the head greeted, tilted in the trash. A flesh-colored bug crawled across her face as she aggravatedly twitched her nose to get it off.

"No-name," Walter whispered down.

Just that moment something occurred to him. No-name was essentially the only girl who'd ever been nice to him. Just my luck, he thought now. She's a severed head.

He picked her up by shimmering jet-black hair.

"It took you long enough."

"But you were only a dream-"

"You're an Ethercan, Walter. In your dreams you can leave your physical body and come here, or anywhere in the Netherplanes."

"What exactly are the Netherplanes?"

"We don't have time to talk about it. Let's get out of here before another Mancer Squad pops up."

Walter, flummoxed, headed down the street, carrying No-name by the hair. "I feel ... unsettled ... carrying a severed head down the street. Especially... a talking severed head."

"Don't worry about it, Walter. You're in h.e.l.l. Heads talk. But you have to be strong. There's a lot we have to do."

"Like what?"

"Time ... will tell."

Walter could've done with a more specific answer. "I know that Lucifer wants me. Are you going to tell me how to find him?"

"No, my purpose is to make you aware of things, to make sure you see what you're supposed to see. It's all about free will, Walter, and it's very important that you understand that. You're forgetting the details of my curse-my eternal d.a.m.nation. I know the future but it's impossible for me to reveal it to anyone."

This fl.u.s.tered Walter. Women always did. "But what you just said-your purpose. That indicates to me that you're here for a reason, and that reason corresponds to me somehow."

"Correct," the pretty severed head replied. "I was waiting for you. I was specifically sent here, to elucidate your options."

"Great. G.o.d sent you?"

"No."

"Who did then?"

The head sighed. "Intermediary agents representing an ant.i.thetical design."

"Ah, that," was Walter's best effort at sarcasm.

"You're hurting my scalp. Could you please put me under your arm?"

Walter obliged. He felt let down by the whole scene. Etherean? He was walking around with a head. "I thought I was supposed to have powers, like it said in the book."

"You have powers, Walter. It'll just take some time before you're evolved enough to use them. Or that may never happen-I can't tell you. You have to learn to control your emotions. Self-oriented emotions-like fear, and despair-impede your gift. You're in a new place that's strange to you. You have to get used to being here. You must overcome distractions, overcome all mental barricades. You must de-obstruct your senses."

Walter shook his head. "De-obstruct. Fantastic. Is that even a word?"

"If you want the truth, Walter, you're probably too messed up in the head to ever develop your powers."

"So I'm a powerless Etherean?"

"Yes."

Another rip-off. Another kick in the chops. It didn't matter which world he went to, he was a loser that n.o.body noticed. He turned another corner, sneakers scuffing. "Wait a minute, if I'm powerless, why does Lucifer want me?"

The head was getting more and more illusory. "You're Plan B, Walter. Plan A failed."

"I'm gonna put you back in the garbage can," he said, disgusted. He could make nothing of what she was saying; it seemed as though she was doing it on purpose, to confuse him, to frustrate him.

Now she sounded sad, or disappointed. "You don't even have the mettle for that, Walter. The more people hurt you, the less aggressively you defend yourself. You're a pushover. You're too nice a guy to make it, here or anywhere. I'm not telling you what you need to know-you should put me back in the garbage. But you don't have the capacity even for that."

Only the vaguest impulse flickered, to turn back around and throw her away. But she was right. He couldn't throw anyone away even though people had been throwing him away his whole life. No-name was his only friend. Granted, she wasn't much of one-but she was a friend nonetheless.

A metal sign on a brick wall read PDA MANDATORY ZONE. A male and female Imp strolled hand in hand down the lane. The female was holding a flower, and they both looked at each other with the deepest love in their eyes.

"Public displays of affection are mandatory?" Walter asked, miffed.

Suddenly the male Imp was howling over a wet thwack-thwack-thwack! sound; Walter was horrified at what he was seeing.

The female Imp was chopping into her mate's groin with a small hatchet. Green blood shot up as the male thrashed on the pavement. And, next: thwack-thwack-thwack!

-she was hacking into his chest, right through his ribs. More blood looped up. Her intent was clear: she was chopping out his heart.

"Not affection, Walter." No-name rolled her eyes. "Public displays of atrocity. Oh, and take a look over there. See her?"

A skinny Human girl wearing canvas rags for clothes lay spread-eagled and bug-eyed in a doorway across the street. She was pregnant yet her swollen belly seemed to deflate in abrupt stages, and out from under her ragged skirt things that looked like tadpoles-but the size of squirrels-scampered away on little hands and feet. The girl was birthing a litter of the creatures, and when Walter got a grim look at one he saw that it had suggestions of a face that mirrored the girl's own features.

Oh, lord! Walter thought, winded just by witnessing the scene.

"In h.e.l.l, Humans can't reproduce amongst each other," No-name explained from under his arm, "because they have souls. But Human women can get pregnant from interspecies s.e.x. That girl's got it bad, probably got raped by a Troll. Those things coming out of her are called Pollihoppers, the product of the latest STD-Condylomo Abhorrius. The infection produces cervical tumors that suck up any s.e.m.e.n that enters the v.a.g.i.n.a, then it mutates each sperm cell with its own DNA and releases it back into the womb."

"I'm gonna be sick, I'm gonna be sick!" Walter insisted.

"Don't be sick again, Walter. You already know, your Etherean vomit glows in the dark. It'll give you away."

Walter staggered onward in this h.e.l.lish urban quagmire. He wanted to cry he was so disheartened. This place was so cruel and disgusting-how could it really exist? Here the psychological cruelties of the Living World were made flesh, the symbols and subtleties becoming physical and real.

All of this, created by one person to punish people for their sins?

"Let me tell you something, Walter," the head said next. "I understand your confusion, I understand how you feel. You don't know what purpose this place really serves-you're a scientist, an academic, and it seems illogical. But illogic is a logic of its own. Do you understand?"

"Not at all. Not one bit," Walter groaned.

"If you take the impulse behind the conscious desire to be good, and you take the impulse behind the conscious desire to be evil-if you put them both together and look at them very closely, you'll see... they're the same."

More esoteric gobbledygook. Walter just groaned some more, his despair rising. Each step seemed to double his confusion. "What did you mean when you said I was Plan B?"

"Plan A failed."

"You just told me that!" He was getting testy. "What does it mean?"

"Lucifer has a vast plan. He's kind of like you, actually-"

"Thanks."

"I mean in that all he wants is to be loved. But the one he wants to most be loved by cast him out. So now he exists for vengeance. You already know what an Etherean is. What about an Etheress?"

Finally, a linear conversation. "Yes, I read about them in the Evocations of Lucifuge. An Etheress is a female Ethercan."

"Correct. And there's one living as we speak. She was Plan A. Lucifer needs either an Etheress or an Etherean, for his plan. He tried to capture the Etheress but she got away. Plan A failed. Which leaves Plan B. You are Plan B. Lucifer couldn't catch the Etheress, so now he's going to try to catch you. He wants to use you."

Walter staggered on. Lucifer wants to use me, came the blandest thought. He didn't want to hear any more; he didn't want to even try to understand. He scuffed down the road as Caco-Rats chittered.

"Where are we going?" he asked. His voice sounded dead.

"To Candice's," No-name said.

(II).

The Mound lay south of the city. That's what it was called, simply The Mound. It was four hundred feet long and thirty high, just a long gra.s.s-covered rise. No one talked about it, but local historians knew exactly what it was: a ma.s.s grave for hundreds of Muskogean Indians who were slaughtered by adjutants of Andrew Jackson in the early 1800s. Rumors had it that The Mound was haunted. This rumor was true, but that was beside the point.

The Mound was a powerful Deadpa.s.s.

"I can feel it," Ca.s.sie said under her breath.

"Oh, yes," Angelese replied.

They crossed town on foot, slipping away through darkness from the wreckage of the clinic. After the Merge had ended, and all of h.e.l.l's components had spatially relocated themselves, the clinic and its property lay in shambles, smoldering. The news would report another catastrophic gas leak, but that was beside the point too.

The point was that the forces trying to abduct Ca.s.sie had failed in their efforts.