Xeke chuckled. "It used to be-several thousand years ago when Lucifer was cast out of Heaven. But just use your common sense. Take New York City, for example. What was New York City several thousand years ago?"

"Woods, I guess," Ca.s.sie said, still not getting the point. "Just ... land."

"Right, undeveloped land. So was h.e.l.l when Lucifer first arrived; it was just a hot plain, a wasteland."

Then Via put it this way: "Just as human civilization has evolved over the past three or four thousand years ... so has h.e.l.l."

Xeke: "And just as G.o.d's creatures have developed here on Earth, Lucifer and his dominion have developed equally. Progress and technology don't just happen in your world, Ca.s.sie. They happen in ours as well. That sulphur pit is now the biggest city to ever exist."

Hush pulled Ca.s.sie along by the hand, pointing. Xeke said, "Here's the Pa.s.s. Just walk a few more steps..."

Ca.s.sie walked out ahead of them now, her flipflops crunching over the trail's carpet of twigs and fallen leaves. But as she progressed, she felt something strange, something that could only be described as variants of pressure and temperature. Vertical layers of hot and cold, an annoying strain in her ears. Then came a sensation like dragging her hand through dry beach sand, only the sensation encompa.s.sed her entire body, through her clothes right to her skin.

For a moment, all she saw was utter blackness.

Then- "My G.o.d," she muttered, looking out.

That's all it took. One more step.

Now Ca.s.sie stood at the foot of another world.

Overhead the sky churned in gradients of scarlet. An exotic, sweet-smelling heat caressed her. A sickle-shaped moon hung in the horizon: a moon that was black and whose black light impossibly lit her face. Indeed, a scrub, smoking wasteland extended from her feet over what had to be the next fifty or even a hundred miles. She could see everything, every detail in a crisp macrovision. And beyond this intricate wasteland stood the Mephistopolis.

The scape of the city-with its buildings, skysc.r.a.pers, and towers-seemed forged against the scarlet horizon. It truly was immense. When Ca.s.sie looked to the left, the city's face extended farther than she could see, and the same to the right.

Smoke-more like black mist-rose from the city into the sky, and so did myriad spears of multicolored lights, which she could only equate to spotlights. Birds-or winged things-could be seen sailing away in the distance.

The sight of it all stole her breath.

The others had stepped through the threshold and now stood behind her. They seemed to marvel at Ca.s.sie's speechless awe.

"Pretty cool, huh?" Via bid.

"Kind of makes Chicago look like a pup tent."

"I couldn't believe it, either, the first time I saw it. Couldn't believe it's where I'd be spending eternity."

Finally Ca.s.sie was able to speak. She glanced again to the left and right. "It ... never ends."

"Actually it does," Xeke explained. "Ever read the Book of Revelation? In Chapter Twenty-One, St. John reveals the actual physical dimensions of Heaven, so Lucifer deliberately used the same dimensions when he produced the original blueprints for h.e.l.l. Twelve thousand furlongs square. That's, like, 1500 miles long and 1500 miles deep-the surface area is over two million square miles. If you took every major city on Earth and put them together... this is still bigger."

Ca.s.sie couldn't really even envision these dimensions. "So, since Lucifer fell from G.o.d's grace, he's been building this city?"

"That's right. Or, we should say his minions have. Most entrants into h.e.l.l become part of the workforce in some way. And in a sense, the Mephistopolis is just like any other city. It's got stores and parks and office buildings, transportation systems and police and hospitals, taverns, concert halls, apartment complexes where people live, courthouses where criminals are tried for crimes, government buildings where politicians rule. Just like any city, er, well ... almost."

Via explained further. "In the Mephistopolis, people aren't born-they arrive. And they live forever. And where the social order on Earth is the pursuit of peace and harmony amongst the inhabitants-"

"The social order in h.e.l.l is chaos," Xeke informed.

"You have Democracy, we have Demonocracy. You have physics and science, we have black magic. You have charity and good will, we have systematized horror. That's the difference here. Lucifer's social design must function to exist in a complete opposite of G.o.d's. Lucifer has built all of this to offend the ent.i.ty that banished him here."

"So ... it's not underground like in the legends?" Ca.s.sie asked. "It's not on Earth someplace?"

"It's on a different Earth that occupies the same s.p.a.ce," Xeke informed her. "It's just on another plane of existence that G.o.d created. So is Heaven."

"So," Ca.s.sie began, "when you die-"

"You either go to Heaven, or you come here. Just like it says in the Holy Bible. Just like it says in most religious systems." Xeke c.o.c.ked a brow. "Not really much of a surprise when you think about it."

As Ca.s.sie continued to stare at the distant cityscape, her mind turned over a thousand questions. How could she ask them all?

"Let's just go," Via said, as if deciphering her thoughts. "Your questions will all be answered."

Eventually, they were.

Ca.s.sie dreamed of it now-a year later. Not in the confines of a normal bed but on little more than a cot in the precaution ward of a private mental hospital. Indeed, she entered the Mephistopolis with Via, Hush, and Xeke, all for the purpose of finding Lissa. All Ca.s.sie wanted in the world was to be able to tell Lissa she was sorry for what happened, and her new-found powers as an Etheress would enable her to do that-or so she thought. Down a hundred different alleys and a hundred different smoking streets, through one district and prefecture after the next, wielding spells, hexes, and the most arcane charms, Ca.s.sie and her friends had invaded h.e.l.l time and time again, hara.s.sing the authorities, striking down Lucifer's agents, destroying power plants, Constabulary stations, and evil tabernacles like a squad of guerilla fighters. During these visits, she thought it best to maximize her time: while her search for Lissa was perpetual, Ca.s.sie and her friends felt it only appropriate to wreak a little havoc along the way-terrorism, by any other name. Once, they'd scaled the Industrial Zone's hundred-foot iron walls and managed to shut down the Central Power Plant by closing a pressure-relief valve at the exact same time the furnace was being stoked. It hadn't taken the outflow gases long to skyrocket, and the Plant's exterior structure-the size of a football stadium-to spectacularly explode. The detonation rocked the entirety of the district, flattened the Foundry, and toppled all the Bone-Grinding Stations, all during peak hours. Lastly, the explosion had triggered a seismic shift which caused an impressive h.e.l.lquake, opening a thousand-foot long fissure across the Zone. Not bad for three girls barely out of their teens. Last fall, Ca.s.sie had entered the Mephistopolis alone-she'd been bored and her CD player was broken-and she'd cast an Enchantment Spell on an entire garrison of Constabularies-Satan's police. She'd ordered them one by one into Boniface Square's Flesh-Processing Terminal where they'd each calmly and willingly lie down on the primary conveyor belts. The terminal's sweatshop of thousands of workers didn't bat an eye as the Constabs were submitted to "processing"; they were fileted alive, muscles promptly shorn off bone, organs removed, skin flensed-all to be tossed into the constant parade of rolling hoppers. It was in these terminals that most of the city's food came from; Ca.s.sie liked the idea of demons unknowingly feasting on police officers. She wondered if they tasted like chicken. Time and time again, either with her friends or without, Ca.s.sie had returned to that primeval city, racing through its crimson alleys, blasting any demon, Usher, or Golem with a mere thought, offending Lucifer at any opportunity, using her powers as an Etheress to simply do her part. But even as her powers accelerated, so did those of her adversaries. h.e.l.l's resistance movement-the Satan Park Contumacy-had been her greatest ally in the early days-an entire army of anti-satanic terrorists-but they'd all been wiped out by a single Faith Plague engineered by Lucifer's Biowizards and Arch-Locks at the College of Spells and Discantations. Millions strong, the Contumacy was destroyed overnight, each and every member succ.u.mbing to one of Lucifer's favorite afflictions: Karyolysis, h.e.l.l's equivalent to nesh-eating disease. The pus and putrefactive slime from all those Contumacy members rotting to death 43 at once had actually formed a lake in the middle of Satan Park. Lucifer had immediately inducted the lake as a national landmark, and often ordered convicts and vagrants to be publically executed in it, via drowning.

But every time Lucifer and his agents struck, Ca.s.sie struck back. Since she'd been granted these Ethereal Powers, she knew that it was her obligation to use them, against the very ent.i.ty that imprisoned her sister. Via and Hush were gone now, either destroyed or captured, and Xeke had turned out to be a traitor. Ca.s.sie was alone but she wouldn't let that fact stop her.

Instead, something else did. The reason she was in this mental hospital in the first place. Little more than a month ago, unknown envoys of Lucifer had burned down her house and killed her father. The fire had destroyed the Deadpa.s.s. Now, understanding more than she ever had about the true nature of h.e.l.l and her powers as an Etheress, Ca.s.sie had never been more helpless. She wanted to go back, to keep going back, until she found Lissa in that endless city of the d.a.m.ned.

But she couldn't go back now, could she?

She woke up, sweating on her cot, hemmed in by the padded canvas walls of her room.

Even if she found a way to get out of this locked psychiatric ward, the Deadpa.s.s was destroyed, her only doorway back to the Mephistopolis closed.

I'll never get back there, she realized.

Then a voice seemed to answer her regret.

The voice said: "Yes, you will."

Ca.s.sie's eyes widened in the dark. So now she was hearing voices? Makes sense, she thought. People in psych wards hear voices, don't they? Crazy people ... hear voices ...

"But you're not crazy, Ca.s.sie," the voice returned. It was light and feminine; it even sounded kind of perky. The voice was in her ears, as anyone's voice would be, anyone else who might be in the room, which presented a problem, of course, because there was no one else in the room. At least, though, she knew it wasn't a voice in her head, like a hallucination, and Ca.s.sie knew this too: she wasn't talking to herself. What she was hearing was clearly not her own voice.

"Get up."

"What?" Ca.s.sie dared answer.

"Go on, get up. Don't be afraid. Go to your sink and turn on the water."

Now Ca.s.sie chuckled at herself. "I guess it's settled. I am crazy. Some girl just told me to go to the sink and turn on the water. What does she want me to do? Wash my face? Brush my teeth?" But all she did was shrug. If she was crazy, what did it matter?

She got up and went to the little sink beside the toilet. She turned on the water.

"This'll sound a little weird but now I'm going to transfer my image to you."

"You're right," Ca.s.sie said. "That sounds a little weird."

"Cup your hands under the water."

Why not? Maybe it was just a dream. She was an Etheress, she'd literally been to h.e.l.l and back. Plus all the psych drugs she'd had to take during her teen years? I'm ent.i.tled to have weird dreams. That's all this is.

"It's not a dream."

Ca.s.sie cupped her hands under the running water, whistling "Living Dead Girl," by Rob Zombie.

"Keep the water in your hands and step away."

Ca.s.sie did so.

The voice seemed pleased. "Now. Look in the water. Do it from an angle, don't look down into the water directly.

Make it so you don't see your own reflection."

Boy, Ca.s.sie thought, I can't wait to tell R.J. and Dr. Morse about this. They'll love it. Nevertheless, Ca.s.sie did as instructed. She looked at the water in her cupped hands as some of it dribbled through her fingers.

Ca.s.sie stood very still. There was a reflection in the water: a face. Not her face but the face of a pretty girl with long, flowing snow-white hair. The hair looked as though it were submerged in water itself, floating around the girl's head as though she were lying back in a bathtub or pool. Ca.s.sie could make out this face with an alarming detail; she could even see the girl's eyes, so beautiful yet so strange. The irises of her eyes were beige, surrounded by the thinnest rim of bright violet.

Yeah, Ca.s.sie told herself. This is a dream, that's all.

"Hi, Ca.s.sie," the face said, smiling softly. "My name is Angelese."

Ca.s.sie's lips trembled before she could respond. "Yeah? Well ... that's fine but..."

"What am I doing in the water in your hands?"

"Well, yeah. For starters."

"It's just a basic Transference Charm. All you need is a medium that's pure-snow, prism light, running water.

You could even do this."

"I don't think so," Ca.s.sie said, still not believing she was having a conversation with a reflection.

"Sure, you could. You're an Etheress."

Ca.s.sie could hear her heart thudding. What should she ask next? When someone else's reflection is talking to you-in a psych ward, no less-what exactly do you say?

"I'm a Caliginaut, Ca.s.sie," the reflection-Angelese-said next. "I know you don't know what that is, and I don't have much time. The charm only lasts a minute or so. So I'll make it quick. I'm from an Order of the Seraphim, a very special order. Those from my order willingly descend from the Rapture."

"Seraphim," Ca.s.sie repeated the word. "You're a-"

"I'm an angel," Angelese said, and suddenly her face began to stress as if in pain. "I've been sent here to help you."

"Help me do what?" Ca.s.sie asked, eyes blooming.

"I'm here to help you find the other Deadpa.s.s. I'm here to take you back into h.e.l.l-"

The water in her hands had turned to blood, and Angelese's words barely registered when suddenly Ca.s.sie was deafened by a high, shrill noise that filled the padded room like a fire alarm. Ca.s.sie thudded to the floor as if knocked down. The blood in her hand flew away and spattered the canvas walls, and that's when she realized that the sound that was piercing her eardrums-that high, shrill, alarm-like noise-was actually Angelese screaming.

Chapter Three.

(I).

"Heydon, I think," Officer Cooper said behind the wheel of Dannelleton PD Mobile Unit 208. "Ca.s.sie Heydon, er, Ca.s.sandra or something."

They'd just pa.s.sed the little-talked-about Dannelleton Clinic, where said Ca.s.sandra or something was currently undergoing psychiatric evaluation on a pre-trial order for an arson charge. And here were two Dannelleton cops speeding back to town on a suspicious fire call that was starting to sound a lot like arson. Correction, they weren't speeding anymore; Cooper, who had a penchant for pegging the speedometer at any reasonable opportunity had by now slowed down to ten miles per hour due to the sudden limited visibility.

Ryan poked his head out the shotgun window. "Jesus, you're right. It's not fog, it's smoke, and-" He tensed at a sudden fit of coughing. "And that stink? It's ten times worse now."

Cooper could smell it too; he could even taste it as his face wrinkled up. It was a smell like meat cooking, but not good meat. Rotten meat. Like the time when he was a kid back in Brackard's Point and they'd set that dead-for-four-days German shepherd they'd found at the dump on fire.

The most atrocious stench ...

"Dispatcher said west end, right?" Ryan was peering out, seeing essentially nothing now.

"Yeah, and we're almost there ... I think." Cooper had had to decelerate to a crawl by now. The smoke had thickened to the point that it was like driving through pea soup. Ryan keyed the radio mike again. "Still dead," he said. "When was the last time that happened? Sure, the f.u.c.kin' phones go out every now and then, but when was the last time the radio went out?"

"Never," Cooper muttered, then stomped the brakes and shouted "f.u.c.k!" when a sudden rapid thumping began to beat on the windshield. Both cops fumbled for their guns until they noted the old man leaning over at the open driver's window.

"What the blamed hail's goin' on?" his cratchety voice asked them.

"Sir, do you know where the fire is?" Cooper asked.

"Hail no, but there sure as s.h.i.t's a fire somewhere." The old man stood in pajamas, his dentures were out, which lengthened his lined face. "Where's the blamed fire department ? How come there ain't no phone service? I can't even get the local news 'cos the blammed television ain't workin'."

"Hey, pappy, pipe down a minute and let me ask you something," Ryan said next, squinting over. Now the smoke was even seeping into the car, tendrils of a sickly greenish-gray. "Our dispatcher told us that there were complaints of people screaming out here. You hear anyone screaming?"

The old man needn't answer. In the distance, like fog-horns sounding across the bay, they could hear it: a uniphon of moans, muttering, and screams.

Cooper said: "This is four shades of f.u.c.ked up."

"It's coming from the town square near as I can tell," the old man offered.

Ryan checked the cylinder of his service piece, then checked his speed-loaders. "Wait here, keep trying the dispatcher," he said to Cooper. "I'm gonna check this out."

Cooper just gulped and nodded.

Ryan got out. "Come on, pappy. Show me what the f.u.c.k's going on," and from there the two men ventured forward into the souplike smoke. Ryan could see through periodic breaks, and his suspicions were validated when he first heard the crackling and then spotted the shifting. Bright blossoms of what could only be fire.