by Edward Lee
Then a hitch caught in her chest and she nearly screamed. Elevated slightly before them, on a rock ledge, stood a rhinoceros-sized beast with multiple cyeclusters and a great depending belly the size of a small sports car. The belly squirmed from something alive inside, and Cassie grimly suspected that there were actually several Humans in the beast’s gut. From its slavering, toothy maw a woman hung, her legs swallowed to the waist, but her arms, head, and bosom exposed. Her drool-slimed head hung upside-down as they passed, and she looked right at Cassie and said, “I hope you’re sorry for your sins ...”
Then the woman was gnawed some more, her screams firing like rifle shots throughout the cavern.
“You can’t help her, it’s not allowed,” Angelese urged and pulled her along.
“How can God let this happen to people?”
“He doesn’t. It’s the people themselves that do. And remember what she said.”
I hope you’re sorry for your sins, Cassie reflected. This cavern dizzied her, and she suspected far worse things to come. They must be going to the place Angelese just referred to, the place for very special treatment.
Some women stood waist-deep in little pools of lava, so used to eternal agony they didn’t even bother screaming any more. Others were pitoned naked to the rock walls as Griffins and other, worse vulture-like birds picked at them with their beaks.
Angelese kept rubbing the small stone in her hand, seeming annoyed.
“Is that another Obscurity Stone?” Cassie asked.
“It’s a Nephrilene. The best way to describe it to a Human is to say that it’s been magically encoded with a tincture of your mother’s spirit. It’s like a direction-finder. It should lead us to her.”
“It just did,” a soft voice flowed from the dark.
The voice paralyzed Cassie. She hadn’t heard it in so long but she recognized it at once. Angelese took down one of the torches and brought it around, for light. Its endless source of pitch-tar crackled and threw roving shapes of illumination forward.
A head looked at them, and at first, Cassie thought it was severed, but then she could see that her mother’s body seemed to be embedded, to the neck, between two smooth rocks pressed together, each rock tall and wide as a refrigerator.
“Hello, Cassie,” said the smiling face thrust up between the rocks. Short blondish hair with fashionable gray streaks, pearl-white teeth, bright aquamarine eyes. She was still pretty, even here.
“So, your father’s dead? Believe it or not, I’m sorry about that. And Lissa’s here, do you know that?” The woman’s smile brightened. “It’s your fault.”
Cassie wilted.
“Shut up!” Angelese said. “Don’t listen to her, Cassie.”
The eyes flicked to Angelese. “Ah, a little broken angel, scarred and torn. You seem a bit used, don’t you? Why didn’t they send someone important? I’ll tell you why. Because they already know in advance that you will fail, so they don’t want to risk losing someone valuable.”
“Fuck off,” Angelese said.
“Such eloquent words from a sister of God.” Now the eyes flicked back to Cassie. “I never loved you, and I never loved Lissa. I wanted to get an abortion but your father wouldn’t allow it. I didn’t want to rock the boat and risk being taken out of the will.”
“I don’t understand,” Cassie wept. “Why are you being like this?”
“Because I’m a horrible person.”
Angelese put her arm around Cassie. “You know the Rules. Any question I ask you in the presence of your daughter, you must answer.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. Really. Like why is the Constabulary filling up the Atrocidome again?”
Cassie’s mother smiled. “I’m ... not going to tell you.”
The defiant smile seemed to float before them, but then it vanished. The woman’s face began to puff, as if great pressure were being exerted on her body between the rocks. Instantly she looked nauseated.
“Fine,” Angelese said, smiling cruelly. “Don’t answer the question.”
Cassie’s mother’s head drooped. “They’re going to keep doing Merges. They’re doing them non-stop.”
“Why? Cassie escaped and the Etherean is already in the Mephistopolis. It doesn’t make sense for them to keep doing Merges.”
“They’re going to Merge with every known Deadpass.”
“Why?”
“To destroy them.”
Angelese nodded as Cassie stared. “If they destroy every Deadpass,” the angel informed her, “then you’ll be trapped in the Mephistopolis. There’ll be no way for you to get out because all the Rives will be gone.” She turned her next question to the head between the rocks.
“Our intelligence has it that the Hexology Institutes, the Houngan Re-Animation Offices, and the entire Department of Voudou Research have all been moved out of the Industrial Sectors and relocated to the Mephisto Building. Is this true?”
“No,” Cassie’s mother defied.
“No?” Angelese turned the word.
More agony and nausea ballooned the woman’s face. “Yes, God damn you! Yes, it’s true!”
Cassie could scarcely watch any more of these ministrations. It didn’t matter that her mother had never loved her—she couldn’t stand witnessing this.
“One more question, then we’ll be out of this literal hell-hole,” the angel promised. “Several nights ago, there was a Merge in Maryland, some kind of a state document library. A Fallen Angel named Zeihl incarnated himself there, and then he committed suicide in order to effect a Power Exchange, so that a physical object in that library could be taken back to Hell. There’s no other reason why a Fallen Angel would do that.”
Lines of hatred drew deep into the woman’s face. She hissed at Angelese, displaying a long thin tongue like a snake’s. “I’ll never tell. I don’t care, but I’ll never tell.”
“Sure you won’t change your mind?”
The woman’s face was already going sick again. She began to gag. “Never. I’ll never tell.”
Angelese stepped back, urging Cassie with her. “So be it.”
Eyes squeezed shut, face swelling, turning yellow, Cassie’s mother violently whipped her head back and forth.
Then the pair of rocks she’d been embedded in ... began to rise.
What in God’s name? Cassie thought.
“Don’t get too close,” the Angel warned. “It’s an Intestisaur ...”
Like I knom what that is, Cassie thought.
She’d see exactly what it was, in a moment.
The two smooth rocks weren’t rocks. When they rose, they did so by two stout legs, each a dozen feet long, that had been folded beneath them. Cassie saw now that it was some demonic living thing that her mother was embedded in.
It stood up completely and turned around. It was massive, hairless, fleshy, with great slablike folds of skin hanging off its stunted physique. It had no arms, just the sumo-like legs it had been squatting on, a protuberant belly with multiple navels. No visible neck; instead the beachball-sized bald head grew out of its narrowed back, sitting on more folds, under which great flesh-satchels for breasts depended.
Cassie almost fell over when she looked up at its face in the firelight. Two inlets, like bolt-holes, for ears. No eyes, no nose. Just a big thick-lipped mouth. And now that it stood up, she discerned its true function. The two “rocks” from which her mother’s head jutted were actually the thing’s buttocks.
“It’s considered a supreme punishment,” Angelese said. “All the Intestisaur exists for is to eat. It’s a lower-grade species of Cacodemon. The Teratologists at the Office of Transfiguration surgically implanted your mother’s Spirit Body into its bowel. She is now part of its digestive system. Her mouth serves as its anus.”
Cassie couldn’t handle this, even with all she’d seen thus far during her ventures to the Mephistopolis.
“Your mother’s a very strong woman. She’s going to take it rather than answer my question—it’
s unbelievable.” Even Angelese was queasy in what she anticipated. “We’ll have to find out somewhere else. Let’s get out of here. You don’t want to see this ...”
No, Cassie did not, but she’d put two and two together and that was enough. She couldn’t even speak. Angelese led her back out of the heinous cavern as the Intestisaur, behind them, began to massively excrete. Even a hundred yards away, they could hear the vocal blasts of Cassie’s mother screaming intermittently between the monstrous voids of the demon’s bowel.
When they were back in the Nectoport, and sailing away, Cassie lay nearly paralyzed against the curved wall. The Port’s egress was crossed completely as they folded hellish space.
Angelese sat in contemplation. “It must have something to do with organic replication, or Hex-Clones.”
Cassie looked at her through slitted eyes. “What?”
“Your mother confirmed our intelligence reports, that the Hexology Institutes were all recently moved out of the Industrial Sectors and relocated to the Mephisto Building. You know about those places, right?”
“Not really,” Cassie answered, numbed. “I’ve heard of them, occult science stuff, I think.”
“It’s where they make Hex-Clones for the Constabulary. They’ve moved all those facilities to the Mephisto Building for a reason.”
“What do you think the reason is?”
“Security, is my guess. All we know is that Lucifer’s plan is something that, if it succeeds, could be the most devastating thing to happen to the Living World, but beyond that? We can only guess. He moved the Hex-Clone agencies to a place where they’d be safe from you, in the event that you weren’t successfully captured.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You’re an Etheress. In theory, you’re powerful enough to destroy those facilities.”
Was she? The prospect daunted her. But at least Cassie felt she had a purpose now—anything to get her mind off what she’d witnessed in the caverns. “So that’s why you want to get into the Mephisto Building? Well, I’m all for it. If I have the capability of destroying all the stuff—and wrecking his plan, whatever it is—then I’m game. But I don’t think there’s any way to get inside.”
“There is one way.”
Cassie perked up. “Really? What?”
“Trust me. But there’s more we have to do first anyway.” Angelese stood up and re-opened the Nectoport’s threshold. They were very high up now, frighteningly so. The black sickle moon in its perpetual phase was close enough to reveal surface details. The clouds up here looked like billows of mold.
“What do we have to do first?” Cassie asked, looking grimly out onto the scape of the city.
“We have to find out what your mother refused to tell us. We’ll have a better idea exactly what Lucifer plans to do once we find out what was taken out of that library in Maryland.”
“How do we find that out?”
“Hell is full of secrets, Cassie,” the angel explained, her pure-white hair dancing in the wind. “But all those secrets must be written down—Satanic Public Law, Number One—and those secrets are kept in the most secret place in the Mephistopolis. It’s a library, too, of sorts. The Infernal Archives.”
“Hell’s library,” Cassie responded. Then she tried to joke, “I don’t have a card.”
Angelese didn’t laugh. She seemed focused, preoccupied—and worried.
“So you know how to get to this place?” Cassie asked.
“Yeah.”
“But you just got done telling me that it’s the most secret place in the Mephistopolis. If its location is such a big secret, how can you possibly know where it is?”
“God told me,” Angelese said.
Chapter Twelve
(I)
The purple neon sign out front read: KEDESHAH’S HOUSE OF SIN. This could’ve been Bourbon Street in New Orleans, but it was actually the Annwyn Avenue in Boniface Square, the city’s entertainment hub. Saloons, live sex shows, massage parlors, and gambling joints.
And bordellos. Like this one.
“It’s the biggest whorehouse in Hell,” No-name said. “It’s named after the first whore of the earth, who was actually a subcarnate fertility goddess.”
Walter looked up at the enormous aircraft-carrier-sized building. Lights blinked hypnotically; neon burned. Walter, without knowing why, walked toward the closest entrance—a pillar-sided, jewel-studded door, guarded by spike-fisted Licentogres, heavily muscled hybrid sentries each with a line of black stitches where their genitals used to be.
“Why are we here?” Walter asked in a death-like drone. “Please don’t tell me that Candice works in there.”
“She doesn’t,” No-name began—
Relief overwhelmed him.
“Not inside,” she continued. “Candice is just starting out, so she’s working the streets, you know. A streetwalker.”
Walter’s relief died, as phony as just about everything else that had been told to him in his life. “So we’re not going inside, I take it,” he murmured.
“No. We’ll just walk around the tenderloin until we find her. Just keep walking.”
She’s getting a little bossy, Walter reflected. Oh, well. A change of subject seemed in welcome order. “Tell me more about the Plan A, Plan B thing.”
“Plan A failed,” No-name repeated. “You’re Plan B. It’s something I’m surprised you’re not thinking about.”
“I just asked you about it!” Walter raised his voice, a rarity for him. “I must be thinking about it if I asked you about it.”
“Calm down. I mean, you don’t appear to be thinking about it in a transitive manner. Be deductive.”
Women, Walter thought. They’re all nuts.
“The Etheress was Plan A. Lucifer wanted her but he failed to get her—”
“Yes.”
“And she’s here now, in Hell.”
“Yes. On her own conditions, and I can tell you that Satan and his agents aren’t pleased about it.”
“But I’m the male equivalent of her, and I’m here under my own conditions.”
“Are you?”
“I don’t know. I think so. I want to meet the Etheress. Can I?”
“I can’t divulge that.”
Walter frowned, something he’d been doing a lot lately. “Where is she?”
“I can’t say.”
“Is she alone?”
“No, that I can tell you because it doesn’t involve a inference to the future. She’s with an angel, a mid-order Seraphim. You can think of her as a tainted angel. She’s a Caliginaut. They’re all whacked out of their heads. Some are even insane.”
The Etheress has an insane angel for an escort, Walter thought, and I’ve got a talking head. He wondered who was better off.
“The Caliginauts are like Heaven’s commandos. They do deep cover, in Hell, in the Netherspheres, and on earth. They have to have their wings cut off to prove their faith. This one’s a lot like me.”
“You’re not an angel,” Walter asserted.
“No, I’m a damned soul, a mystic in Hell.”
“Then what did you mean when you said the angel’s a lot like you?”
“She can’t reveal any Heavenly Secret, without suffering great pain. I can’t reveal what I know about the future, without losing my spirit body—and as you can see, I don’t have much of one left.”
Walter made little sense of this. An angel without wings, and a seer who can’t tell what she sees. He was tired of being confused, which seemed, by now, a perpetual mental state. “I don’t know why you can’t tell me what to do, or what’s going to happen. Some soothsayer.”
“I’m sorry, Walter, it’s my curse.”
“You know all these universal secrets but you can’t tell them. What good does that do? What purpose does that serve?”
“They’re not universal secrets, Walter. They’re preternatural. They’re abstruse.”
Abstruse. Walter sputtered to himself. Wonderful.
“Re
member one of the first things I told you,” No-name continued from under his arm. “The future isn’t mutable. It just is. I am part of it and so are you. We are both an integral component of what could happen, what might happen, or what might not. You’re smart. Think about that.”
“I’m not a philosopher. I’m a physicist and a mathematician.”
“And an Etherean,” the head reminded.
“Yeah, big deal. An Etherean with no power.”
“Walter, I never said that you’ll never harness your powers. I only suggested, without violating any abstruse codices, that you probably won’t because you’re not strong enough. You don’t have the resolve, or the confidence.”
Walter was walking aimlessly. He was just as depressed here as he was in the Living World, so what was the point? The only reason he didn’t want to blow his head off here was because there was a chance of seeing Candice. And he’d already been told—by a friggin’ Dactyl-class soothsayer for King Mursil the First—that Candice would never love him.
What’s the point? What’s the point in anything?
“Look,” No-name said. “The Wall of Skin.”
Now they were walking by a long section of the bordello that was composed not of bricks or board but of smooth sweating flesh. Yet in the flesh were lead-lined windows where various prostitutes sat for display to passersby. There were all manner of demonian species in the windows—Mongrel, City-Imp, Troll, Succubus, Hybrid, etc., along with some Humans—all naked and poised voluptuously. When ugly, butt-faced demons strolled by, the girls would enthusiastically raise their windows and whistle at them, urge them to come over, with corny lines like “Hey handsome, where you been all my eternity?” and “Take me, I’m yours.” Others were much more direct: “Come on! Let’s get it on!” and “I’m the best trick in Hell! What are you waiting for?”
Sadly, though, none of the girls so much as noticed Walter. A few of them even looked at him and laughed.
He trudged on, with the inexplicable head tucked under his arm.
“Are we getting close to where Candice works?”