by Edward Lee
“These are pretty,” the Maémaè whispered, running her slim finger up Angelese’s arm, over the gridwork of scars etched by the Umbra-Specter. Then she drifted around to Cassie 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,” Cassie 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 Cassie’s head like a stream of moths. “Never take what you have for granted.” Like the voice, now the woman herself was drifting around Cassie, her finger moving along with her, across Cassie’s shoulders, her back, across the top of her bosom. “Yes, an angel...”
Cassie grew flustered, 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 Cassie’s bare arm and played over her hand.
Please, Cassie thought, biting her lip, please tell me that the librarian of Hell is NOT putting the make on me!
“Providence, infinity, resplendence, and hatred,” the Maémaè whispered next. Her hand came off of Cassie’s. “It’s all the same, in a way.”
Cassie didn’t understand, nor did Angelese, or if she did, it was clear she didn’t care. But when Cassie 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 Maémaè 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 hell do, Cassie thought, and then she remembered what Angelese had said earlier. When Cassie had implied that the Maémaè 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 Maémaè’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 God. I’m one of His emissaries.”
The Maémaè 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 Maémaè 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 fuck with me.”
The Maémaè 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 God ...”
But Cassie 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 bitch ...”
Angelese gawked at her. “Cassie, what’s wrong with you?”
“You BITCH!” Cassie shouted, and the words hit 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 Cassie ran to the rail and glared down, a very dazed Angelese was trying to drag herself up.
“Let me HELP you up!” Cassie 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 God’s earliest codices. I can free one damned soul every thousand years ...”
“Then free my sister! Send my sister to Purgatory!”
The hands clamped down harder.
“I can’t,” the angel choked. “If I could I would, but it’s not possible.”
“But you just said—”
“Your sister isn’t eligible ...”
“Why?”
“Because she committed suicide!”
Cassie’s spirit plummeted, and Angelese almost did too when Cassie nearly lost the telekinetic grip. What have I done, what have I done? She let Angelese down as gently as possible, then she fell to her knees.
“I’m sorry,” she begged. “I don’t know what came over me.
Angelese took deep breaths, rubbing her throat. “It’s all right.”
“No! I’m really sorry!”
“Forget about it. You’re human. Humans are fucked up.”
Tell me about it, Cassie thought.
Angelese picked up the book of Appendices. Then she looked inside again.
The Maémaè had drifted down from the platform, standing off, her perfect body a sleek curvy line. Her smile burned into Cassie’s eyes. In spite of the tiny fangs, it was a smile of good-will, not the opposite, not a smile born in Hell.
“Not all angels have wings,” she said to Cassie. She closed her scarlet eyes again, and raised her arms.
“Cassie,” Angelese said. “I have to keep my part of the bargain. Destroy her.”
Cassie understood. She liked the Maémaè, so she tried to think of something painless.
“Please,” the Maémaè whispered through the smile. “Send me out of here ...”
“Smoke,” Cassie said.
There was a faint PUFF! and the most beautiful woman in Hell dissipated into black dust. Within the dust, however, a glittering mist swirled, very faintly. It hovered, then rose.
Then disappeared.
The dust of the Maémaè’s Spirit Body settled like soot to the wooden floor, leaving a ghostly, diaphanous outline, but within it the woman’s features could still be deciphered, especially the tiny-fanged smile. The smile of bliss in the midst of misery.
The light which now filled the Repository was nearly blinding. Cassie shielded her eyes when she approached Angelese, who was reading the book with wide-open eyes. “I haven’t seen this language in ages. Even the Archangels have forgotten how to speak it.”
“What language?”
“It’s called Zrætic, the first protodialect of the Tabernacle of God. This language predates the Enochian alphabet; it’s wha
t was spoken before Adam and Eve.”
The text was stiffly handwritten. Had it been the Maémaè who had written it? Cassie glimpsed the first incomprehensible lines:
Eeaan nesaaa sen fø Brud de Liaat ...
The same strange language that R.J. had spoken in back at the clinic during the Merge: the Paresis Incantation he’d put on her. Was this the language that all angels once spoke in? It scarcely mattered, though. I’m not an angel, she thought. I could never understand it.
“God Almighty,” Angelese whispered.
“What’s it say?” Cassie asked.
The angel had never appeared more troubled. Her lips moved in silence as she continued to read.
“Whatl” Cassie snapped, twisted in suspense.
“Well, the first part is something that we already know, but it’s not complete. It’s something to do with Retrogations. Astral Retrogations.”
“You told me about that,” Cassie recalled. “Sorcery-based time-travel.”
“Um-hmm. Lucifer’s had the power to do that for a while, from something he stole from Heaven. He can go back into different time-segments, for very short periods of time.”
“And whatever this big plan of his is, it’s got something to do with that?”
“Evidently, but this entry isn’t complete.”
This miffed Cassie. They’d come all this way and gone to all this trouble, and they still wouldn’t get the whole story? “I thought every secret in Hell was kept here?”
“Complete secrets. There must be a final part that they’re working on that isn’t complete yet, so that’s why it’s not here. And I think it has something to do with you.”
“The reason that Lucifer wants me,” Cassie guessed.
“Yes. He doesn’t want you, he wants your power, for something else. Same reason he wants the Etherean I was telling you about earlier. Lucifer always likes options, and he’s well-versed with failure. If he can’t get you, he has a back-up.”
“The Etherean?”
“Right. And that’s probably who he’s gunning for now, since we escaped the Merge at the clinic.”
All this just frustrated Cassie more. She’d never been known for patience. “What else? What else is in the book?”
“The second entry is a summary of the Spatial Merge in Maryland, where—”
“I know, I know, you told me. A Fallen Angel named Zeihl committed suicide, at some ... map library or something.”
“Yes. And why?”
How could Cassie forget the angel’s previous explanation—when the Umbra-Specter had tortured her with its talons for divulging it? “Zeihl incarnated himself during the Merge at the map library, then he committed suicide to generate a Power Exchange. It’s because of a Rule. If an angel sacrifices himself, then material objects can be exchanged. Zeihl took something from that library in the Living World, and through his suicide had it transported back to Hell.”
“Right.”
“So what was the object that he exchanged from the library? Was it a book?”
“No, that place wasn’t really a library. It was a front.”
“You mean a place that they wanted people to think was a library, but it really wasn’t?”
“Correct. They made it look as unassuming as possible.”
Cassie thought about it. “Who are ‘they?’ ”
“The Pope’s security contingent.”
“The ... Pope’s?”
“Yes. The Catholic Church has its Power Relies just like Lucifer does, and just like God.”
“So they were protecting some kind of object in the fake library? ”
“Yes.”
“And Zeihl’s suicide provided the necessary occult power to—”
“To transfer that object from the Living World to Hell,” Angelese grimly affirmed. When she closed the book, the Repository, as well as the entirety of the Infernal Archives, snapped back into its former moonstone-lit darkness.
Cassie didn’t like the vibe. “What was the object?”
Angelese stared a Cassie, eyes propped open in dread.
“What was the object?” Cassie repeated.
“The Shroud of Turin.”
The ... Then Cassie frowned. “The Shroud of Turin is at the Vatican, everybody knows that, and everybody knows it’s fake. They tested it. It’s phony as a three-dollar bill.”
The angel’s voice grated. “Not that Shroud of Turin, Cassie. The real Shroud of Turin.”
Chapter Fourteen
(I)
“I wish you’d stayed in school, Walter,” No-name’s head remarked. “Get your doctorate by twenty-one. One day you might’ve won the Nobel Prize.”
Walter considered the comment. No-name was a soothsayer. Is she implying that might have happened, or will happen? “I thought you weren’t allowed to reveal the future.”
“I’m not.”
“So why did you just say that? Are you suggesting that if I abandon whatever it is we’re doing here, I win a Nobel Prize someday?”
The head smirked. “Sorry. No. I was just daydreaming about your potential. You do have a lot of potential, you know.”
Walter took it as a compliment. “You’re the nicest severed head I’ve ever met.”
“Oh, thanks a lot!”
But it was clear what she really meant. I’ll never win the Nobel Prize... “So ... does this mean I’ll never get my doctorate, either?”
“Walter, you know I can’t tell you thatl” No-name almost seemed scolding. “Sometimes I think you deliberately try to make me slip up.”
“Is that possible? Can a damned soothsayer accidently break her vow?”
“With me, it’s not a vow. It’s a curse. If I disrespect the curse, then I’m destroyed.”
“What about the angel you were telling me about?”
“The guardian of the Etheress,” the head recited. “What about her?”
“You said she was like you in a way. She can’t reveal secrets either.”
“No, she can’t. But with her, it’s a vow. With me—a curse.” No-name smiled under Walter’s arm. “The angel and I serve a similar function. She’s the Etheress’s guardian, and I’m your guardian. But at least I’m lower maintenance. I’m just a head.”
Walter didn’t quite connect with the levity. He just kept thinking. “I’m Plan B,” he remembered. “I could really screw everything up, simply by leaving. I could go back to the Deadpass, go back to the Living World.”
He waited for a response.
Nothing.
She’d said that everything was already mapped out, she’d said that the future wasn’t mutable—it couldn’t be changed. “With my brains? I could get a big job with a big research company, make millions.”
“Yes, but—” No-name bit her lip. “Walter, it’s not like you to be deceitful.”
“What do you mean?”
“Stop trying to make me slip up! I’ll admit, I’m easy to fool. I’m not as smart as you—it’s not fair. Don’t take advantage of me. It’s not nice, and you’re a nice person, so be nice.”
Walter shrugged. Can I help it that I want to know what’s going on? I don’t even know where I’m going but according to her that’s how it’s supposed to be. I won’t find my destiny. My destiny will find me.
“This is the district’s Steamworks,” No-name said. They were walking down what seemed to be a service lane paved with ground skulls, and to either side were factory-sized networks of pipes fifty feet wide. The giant pipes vibrated, hissing. They seemed endless.
“What’s the function?”
“Heat regulation. Lucifer doesn’t want any area of Hell to be cooler than another. He wants everything hot.”
And hot it was, like Texas in August. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” he remarked, gazing up at the ranks and ranks of pipes. “It’s all useless. It’s an affront to logic. With all these resources, and all that power? Lucifer could turn this place around in a heartbeat.”
“Of course he c
ould. But he doesn’t. You know why?”
“No.”
“Because he’s vain. God’s better than him and he knows it but he can’t ever admit that. He can’t ever admit that he’s inferior because of his pride. So all these resources, and all his power, he uses to offend God. You’re right, it’s the dumbest thing, but Lucifer’s very insecure. So he’ll just keep doing what he’s been doing.”
Something snagged Walter’s thoughts. “Wait. Did you just slip up?”
A pause.
“No, Walter, what are you talking about? I was being ... conjectural.”
“Yeah. And I’ll bet you were being abstruse too, huh?” Walter allowed himself the smile. “I think you just slipped up.”
“Shut up, Walter. Just shut up and walk.”
Walter walked. He was dehydrated and hungry, but when they passed another Man-Burger vendor, he declined the offerings. Every so often, a far-off scream could be heard; above them, a demonic worker would lose his footing on the giant pipes and fall. The scarlet sky shifted, like a mirage. Fanged rodents with wings sat perched on power lines, as crows would in the Living World.
Walter didn’t know where he was going as he trudged further through steam and murk and awful odors. But for the first time since he’d arrived in the Mephistopolis, he felt content.
He’d never really felt content before.
A mile distant, something tinted the sky. At first he thought of swamp gas, an eerily glowing fog, but soon he saw that this was different. A diffuse silver light hovering in the sky in something akin to a pyramid shape.
He thought about what No-name had said, about the nature of destiny.
“That light. Is that where we’re going?”
No-name didn’t answer.
“That’s where we’re going,” Walter said.
(II)
They hid, high in the air, within a reef of clouds the color of bile. Cassie’s fear of heights was quickly being dealt with by default. A mile in the sky, what choice did she have but to get over it? She thought of the Nectoport as a flying carpet of sorts, or, better, a flying cave. She was starting to get used to this mode of transportation, she was even beginning to enjoy it.
