The verb turned into a wedge of hissing flame-white-blue hot-that bulled down the pa.s.sageway and collided with the two figures. It hovered there, engulfing them, hissing, the heat so intense that a reactive wave swept back and burned Ca.s.sie's face. On either side of the pa.s.sage, the black stone walls turned red like burners on a stove.

When the fire died, Ca.s.sie said, "s.h.i.t."

The Necrotiks remained unaffected, unscorched, their hands still upraised.

"s.h.i.t is right," Angelese said.

It worked before, maybe it'll work again, Ca.s.sie thought next, and yelled, "Boneless!" Christ, that's practically all they are is bones. She repeated it: "Boneless, boneless, boneless!"

Nothing happened.

"Armless! Legless! Now!"

No effect.

"You're trying to take away from them," Angelese suggested. "They're fleshless corpses; symbolically there's nothing you can take away ..."

When the angel said that, the pair of Necrotiks rushed forward, howling like nails across slate.

You can't take away from them, Ca.s.sie thought, steeling herself, so try adding TO them ...

"Obese! Fat! Adipose tissue!"

Their howls fluttered as their movements forward ground to a halt. When Ca.s.sie looked at them again, they were immobile in fat, the patchworks of dead skin stretched to such an extreme they appeared fit to burst. Hundreds of pounds of fatty tissue now filled the s.p.a.ce between their skin and bones. The things could do nothing now but churn face-down on the stone floor, like quivering balloons.

"So much for them," Angelese remarked.

"Gross," Ca.s.sie 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?" Ca.s.sie asked.

"The Main Repository. That's where h.e.l.l's greatest secrets are kept."

"And this person we're looking for, the-"

"The Maemae," Angelese p.r.o.nounced 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 h.e.l.l?"

"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 Maemae 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 h.e.l.l."

That's some tagline, Ca.s.sie 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.

Ca.s.sie picked up one black-bound book. The t.i.tle 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 t.i.tles: 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 h.e.l.l. 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 Maemae know."

"So that's why we're here?" Ca.s.sie said. "To ask Maemae?"

"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."

Ca.s.sie was getting irate. "And why would she do that? She won't! We're wasting our time! There's no reason for this-this Maemae 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.

Ca.s.sie 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," Ca.s.sie complained.

"Of course it doesn't, and that's precisely why it exists. And guess what? We're almost there."

Woozy, Ca.s.sie 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 Rest.i.tuta 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?" Ca.s.sie 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. Ca.s.sie 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."

Ca.s.sie and Angelese stopped before the great risen desk, looking up.

The Maemae looked down.

Surrounded by this ma.s.sive open s.p.a.ce, 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s that-even nearly spilling from the confines of the intricate bra.s.siere-seemed buoyant and erect. Delicately carved black gla.s.s 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 sa.s.sy 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 Maemae'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," Ca.s.sie 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."

Ca.s.sie kept looking up at the pet.i.te, fascinating woman.

"I can tell you nothing," the Maemae 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."

Ca.s.sie and Angelese walked behind the risen desk and mounted some short wooden steps. Thousand-year-old wood creaked like a witch's t.i.tter. The Maemae's golden hair seemed to flow even though there were no drafts in this windowless place, no breezes. Once up, Ca.s.sie 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s moved too, sliding minutely in the devilish bra.s.siere, 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 Maemae'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 Maemae whispered, running her slim finger up Angelese's arm, over the gridwork of scars etched by the Umbra-Specter. Then she drifted around to Ca.s.sie 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," Ca.s.sie 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 Ca.s.sie's head like a stream of moths. "Never take what you have for granted." Like the voice, now the woman herself was drifting around Ca.s.sie, her finger moving along with her, across Ca.s.sie's shoulders, her back, across the top of her bosom. "Yes, an angel..."

Ca.s.sie grew fl.u.s.tered, 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 Ca.s.sie's bare arm and played over her hand.

Please, Ca.s.sie thought, biting her lip, please tell me that the librarian of h.e.l.l is NOT putting the make on me!

"Providence, infinity, resplendence, and hatred," the Maemae whispered next. Her hand came off of Ca.s.sie's. "It's all the same, in a way."

Ca.s.sie didn't understand, nor did Angelese, or if she did, it was clear she didn't care. But when Ca.s.sie 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 Maemae 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 h.e.l.l do, Ca.s.sie thought, and then she remembered what Angelese had said earlier. When Ca.s.sie had implied that the Maemae 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 Maemae'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 G.o.d. I'm one of His emissaries."

The Maemae 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 Maemae 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 f.u.c.k with me."

The Maemae 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 G.o.d ..."

But Ca.s.sie 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 b.i.t.c.h ..."

Angelese gawked at her. "Ca.s.sie, what's wrong with you?"

"You b.i.t.c.h!" Ca.s.sie shouted, and the words. .h.i.t 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 Ca.s.sie ran to the rail and glared down, a very dazed Angelese was trying to drag herself up.

"Let me HELP you up!" Ca.s.sie yelled, and then she pictured giant hands, and those hands grasped Angelese by the neck and lifted her twenty feet into the air. The angel squealed in terror, feet kicking, arms flailing. "What are you doing?" she gagged.

"I didn't know you could revoke condemnations!"

"I can," Angelese struggled, her face darkening from the invisible stranglehold. "I can, any angel in my order can. It's one of G.o.d's earliest codices. I can free one d.a.m.ned soul every thousand years ..."

"Then free my sister! Send my sister to Purgatory!"

The hands clamped down harder.