by Edward Lee
“Did I pass the test?”
“Like every other test you’ve ever taken in your life, Walter—you got a hundred. Congratulations. You’re a walking meat-grinder.”
He peered at the mounds of wreckage and carnage. Body parts twitched, while corpses lay crushed. Steam rose off the piles of rubble. That’s the secret, he wondered. The secret to unlocking his Ethereal Powers. Confidence. In that last fragment of a second, he’d released his fears and terrors and believed in himself.
Walter, stupefied as he gazed at the destruction, considered this. “I could do some serious damage down here.”
“Yes, you could. But is that really your destiny?”
“I guess not, since you put it that way.”
“Destiny is like fate, Walter,” No-name informed him next. “You don’t have to go searching for it. It finds you.”
Embrace your destiny, the words kept ringing in his head. With No-name safely tucked under his arm, Walter began to climb over the heaps of rubble and bodies, back toward the main road. From the windows of the surrounding buildings, citizens of Hell leaned out, hooting, whistling, applauding. “God be with you, Etherean!” a voice trumpeted.
Walter looked up, awed at the demons and Humans waving at him, wishing him well.
“Look at that, Walter,” the head said. “You’re a star.” Yeah ... He waved back at them, then continued climbing over the rubble. “So I guess I don’t even have to ask you where we’re going next, huh?”
“Wherever it is we’re supposed to go, it’ll find us,” No-name replied.
Chapter Thirteen
(I)
“They’re hybrid Armilus,” Angelese said. They’d closed the Nectoport, and were hiding behind the barbican a block away from the windowless limestone castle known as the Infernal Archives. The structure loomed, hundreds of feet tall, and occupied most of the largest block of Nero Square. Cassie and the angel were staking the place out.
“Hybrid ... what?” Cassie squinted around the rampart edge.
“Armilus. Hybrid offspring of Lucifer, sort of like a genetic mutation where the base subject was one of Lucifer’s sons. There’s only two of them here, but they’re very powerful. They guard the entrance to the Archives.”
Cassie looked at the atrocious things, thinking of the most overdeveloped body-builders. Bulbs of muscles growing over more muscles, tree-trunk-stout legs bowed and tensed from all the muscle mass they had to bear. Veins like ropes beat beneath mottled caramel-brown skin that shined as if oiled. When they walked, their flat feet and the huge balls of their heels thumped on the brick pavement. Their bald, horned heads were divided by still more muscles, and their eyes, too, were barely visible through their facial bulges.
“You’d think that there’d be more of them,” Cassie ventured. “If the Infernal Archives is such an important, sensitive place—how come there’s only two of them?”
“They’re so strong they can punch through stone walls,” Angelese warned, “they can break iron bars and kick though iron plate. They can lift several hundred times their own weight, and they’re impervious to fire. They don’t need more than two of them to guard the Archives, because they’re very, very powerful.”
Cassie frowned at them, then shouted “Rigor Mortis!”
The two things jerked their attention toward Cassie. They began to thump forward but only for a few steps before their flexing unwieldy muscles began to spasm. Cassie’s Etheric command caused the creatures’ muscle fibers to expend all of their myofibrillar proteins at once.
Two great THUMPS! resounded when both Armilus flopped over onto the pavement. They convulsed a moment, then went stiff as statutes.
“They’re not that powerful,” Cassie complained.
Angelese smiled at Cassie’s creativity. “Don’t get overconfident. When you use too much of your energy too fast, you can deplete yourself.”
Cassie remembered what had happened at the clinic. Her last command had caused her to lose consciousness, and the angel had had to carry her out. “I’ll be careful,” she tried to assure.
“Good, because you’ll need a little more in a minute once we’re in the Archives.”
Cassie didn’t understand. “But you just told me there were only two Armilus guarding the place.”
“Guarding the outside of the place.”
Cassie didn’t feel particularly challenged by more Armilus. “You mean there’s more inside?”
“No,” the angel said. “Inside there’s something worse.”
Hmm, Cassie thought. We’ll see.
They approached the front steps of the Archives, the pair of Armilus frozen on their meaty backs. Ahead, the Archives stood strangely as if in wait for them, like a citadel, a medieval fortress with garrets, turrets, and unscalable flat outer walls. “So this is like Hell’s library?” Cassie asked.
“That’s exactly what it is. And there’s only one person inside running it. She’s known as the Maémaè.”
Cassie wasn’t fearful. How tough can a librarian be?
“But to find her, we have to go through the Labyrinth. It’s the only way to get to the Main Document Repository, and the Labyrinth is inhabited by two Necrotiks. They’re already dead, so they can’t be killed.”
Cassie’s confidence waned a bit. She didn’t even like the name: Necrotiks. It sounded ... disconcerting.
She thought of Greek mythology’s Theseus and the Minotaur when they entered the Labyrinth: a series of narrow passageways. Irradiated moonstones were all that lit the corridors—Cassie could barely see at certain points, and it was around one such very dark corner that she bumped into something.
“What the—”
A hand that stank and felt skeletal opened over her face.
“Get back get back get back!” she shrieked. She and Angelese retreated.
“What was it?”
“Something...” was all Cassie got out.
“Did it stink? Like a rotten corpse?”
“Yes!”
Angelese took one of the moonstones down from its sconce and shined it forward like a flashlight.
“Jesus Christ!” Cassie complained.
A stick figure stood before them at the corner. A skeleton with a patchwork of corpse-skin grafted over its bones. No internal organs, no muscles or tendons, just buttermilk-white skin stretched over bone. The empty eye sockets were looking right at them, seeing them.
It just stood there, holding up one bony hand like a cop directing traffic.
“That’s really bizarre,” the angel observed.
“Yeah, a friggin’ skeleton covered with dead skin? Bizarre is right!”
“No, I mean its actions. Necrotiks are animated by Enchantment Spells and are motivated by Satanic vengeance. It should be attacking us by now. Instead it’s just standing there, blocking our way.”
Fragments of language cracked from the rotten hole that was its mouth. It said, “Do not attempt to pass. Retrace your steps and leave. Please.”
Cassie grabbed Angelese’s arm. “Maybe we should do that. I mean, come on, it said please.”
“We can‘t, Cassie. We’re here for a reason. We have to find out what your mother refused to tell us. If we don’t, we fail.” Angelese peered queerly at her. “What happened to all that Etheric confidence? You act like you’re afraid of the dark.”
“I am!” Cassie exclaimed.
Up ahead, the second Necrotik appeared, standing at the other’s side. It, too, held up its skin-tattered hand.
“I don’t understand this,” the angel went on. “They’re acting like they’re afraid, but they’re not capable of feeling fear, just wrath. They’re unkillable, and we’re just two chicks. What the hell are they afraid of?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. This place creeps me out. There’s gotta be another way in.”
“There isn’t.”
“Let’s go around to the other side of the building. I’ll knock down a wall with a mental projection—we can get in that way.”
“The walls are all protected by Indemnity Hexes. Not even the strongest Etheric thought can crack them. But I think I know what the Necrotiks are afraid of.”
“What?”
“You. You’re an entity of innocence in a place where no innocence exists. In their eternal death, they sense your living spirit. They’ve never seen anything like you before; you’re not what they’re used to.”
Cassie winced. “Am I supposed to be, like, encouraged by that? I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do.”
“Try something,” Angelese threw out. “Project something at them.”
All right, Cassie thought. Think. If I were a reanimated corpse, what would I be afraid of? Her thoughts paused. I know ...
“Cremate!” she yelled down the corridor.
The verb turned into a wedge of hissing flame—white-blue hot—that bulled down the passageway and collided with the two figures. It hovered there, engulfing them, hissing, the heat so intense that a reactive wave swept back and burned Cassie’s face. On either side of the passage, the black stone walls turned red like burners on a stove.
When the fire died, Cassie said, “Shit.”
The Necrotiks remained unaffected, unscorched, their hands still upraised.
“Shit is right,” Angelese said.
It worked before, maybe it’ll work again, Cassie 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, Cassie thought, steeling herself, so try adding TO them ...
“Obese! Fat! Adipose tissue!”
Their howls fluttered as their movements forward ground to a halt. When Cassie 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 space 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,” 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 sk
in, 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.