Apocalypse: The Ghosts that Haunt Me

"You're so kind,
I know you would not mind
To send away
The ghosts that haunt me now."
-Crash Test Dummies, The Ghosts That Haunt Me

"Where the fuck are we?"

"Hold on a second..." A series of metallic clatters, punctuated by a loud crash and a fluent, multilingual stream of muffled curses, echoed in the darkness. A click, and a buzz of ancient wiring, and Lester could see again. He, Seryph Gibbons, Bryn Shima, the white-clad revenant of Phil Doyle, the now-human Sam and the black-mantled, unconscious form of the woman called many things, among them Stella Aurorae, were spread across the rough, dirty concrete floor of a basement. Metal shelves stacked with canned food, paint, and power tools clung to the walls, and decrepit, rusting lawn machinery was everywhere. Near the door, amid a chaos of overturned weedwhackers, cans of paint, and formerly neat stacks of spare aluminum siding, stood a white-suited man, spots of grease on his otherwise pristine slacks, his hand on a light switch and a lit, unfiltered Lucky Strike in his mouth. "There we go." The suited man turned back to Lester. "We're in the basement of a house that has no particular virtue, except that it is safely off the radars of both Heaven and Hell."

"And who the fuck are you?" Lester's voice hardly shook, and despite its violence, the man hardly blinked.

"Sorry, there wasn't time for introductions back on the street." The man tipped his hat, the lit end of the cigarette flaring orange as he inhaled. "I'm called Azaquiel. Purveyor of information and small services to those willing to pay. You were all about to be destroyed, and I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I'd cash in a favor."

"Destroyed? We were doing all right before you showed up."

"The Grimspire self-destructed a few seconds after we left, taking a good-sized chunk of the old city and the hosts of Heaven and Hell with it."

Sam looked up. "I know you. Still with Astarte?"

"We have a professional relationship."

His laugh was humorless. "Nothing with that woman is professional." Their eyes met for a moment, and neither looked away. "To whom did you owe the favor?"

Azaquiel smiled, and pointed to the unconscious woman. "Her."

Seryph and Bryn, busily retrieving their swords from the ground, looked disturbed. Phil looked clueless.

Lester coughed, straightened his tie, licked his lips. "And is she-"

Azaquiel nodded. "Yes."

"Shouldn't we..." He made a nervous slicing motion across his throat, then shrugged. "I mean, if she is..."

Sam smiled, baring teeth without even a trace of humor. His broken Scythe was still in his hand, and even though the haft had been snapped cleanly in two by the now-dead Seraphim Raphael, the blade was long and vicious as ever. "No."

Phil blinked twice, then shook his head. "Will someone tell me what the bloody hell everybody's talking about?" His eyes roamed from Seryph, to Bryn, and neither of them met his gaze. When he turned to Lester, the shipping magnate coughed, seeing something of glass and streetlamps in Phil's eyes that had not been there before, and looked away. Azaquiel remained silent. "Sam?"

The addressed ex-Horseman of the Apocalypse looked down at Stell, her sleeping face open and untroubled. He ran a thin finger down over her lips, up the slender curve of her jaw, past her ear, through the silky orange hair that spread like water over the rough basement floor. His voice was distant, and his eyes reflected her face. "She was beautiful, in the dawn times, rising above the first clouds, and her beauty was mirrored in the waters, and in the stars. She made mistakes, but she was the best of them." Shadows wreathed in the hollows formed by veins and bones on the back of Sam's hand. "She was the best of us. And she fell." He looked up at them, and his eyes were flat. "She told you, you know. Stella Aurorae. It's Latin. Her way of a joke, maybe, a long time ago. Star of the Dawn. Star of the Morning. Morningstar. The Light Bringer."

Phil's mouth formed the name, one word, seven letters, but his throat did not give voice to it. Instead, he said, "Stella? And you knew?"

"She has been called many things. That is how she wished to be known, in these times. I respected her wish."

Lester realized that his mouth was open, and closed it with a snap. "But I thought that he... That she..."

Sam swung his head around, and Lester shivered under his gaze. There was nothing there that was not human. Nothing at all. That, perhaps, was what made it all the more terrible than looking into twin sparks of light in the hollows of a skull: that two human eyes could have seen so much, that a human mind behind them could, instantly and with but a thought, encompass your death. His voice was hard. "Yes. You thought. Because history is written by the victor, and because the bigger a lie, the easier it is believed, you thought. And that might be the biggest tragedy of the whole damn story, that you heard, and thought, and believed."

On the cold stone, a woman shifted, groaning, and smooth eyelids twitched. Unaware of the attention resting on her, Stella Aurorae shivered, pulled the folds of Sam's dusken robe more tightly around her, and yawned. Sam, for the first time since their arrival, smiled. "But she will tell the story herself. She's waking up."

*

"Goddamn that cold-circuited spawn of a cybernetic whore!" Light, helixed with darkness, blazed from the cold silver of the circlet that adhered to Pestilence's peeling, blackened forehead. "Thatclose! I could - I will - kill them. All of them."

"Will you stop pacing, Brother?" Famine sat at the table of the darkly ornate room they had claimed for their own, chewing idly on a half-unwrapped Snickers bar. After two bites, he looked at the candy bar, shook his head, and disintegrated it. "The Stuff that Satisfies, my ass."

Uriel was reading, taking refuge for the moment in one of the room's four huge, overarching leather armchairs, with a book of Ambrose Phillips pastorals on his lap. He supposed, for tradition's sake, it really should have been Milton, or at least something epic, but he liked the poems, which was what really counted, didn't it? At least, looking at the page, he could ignore War, who just sat across from him, legs crossed, light from Uriel's desk lamp caressing her form through blood-red leathers. She still wore her mirror-visored helmet, but he swore he could feel her eyes on him. Coughing, he looked up from a sonnet, holding his place with a forefinger. "What's our next step?"

Pestilence paused in his pacing and turned so suddenly that, for a moment, the white leather of his trousers turned a sick black, and rotten, pulpy blood oozed out from under the cuff as his calf muscle hemphorraged. His eyes, yellow flecked with black, bored into Uriel's own. "Our next step? Well if someone had managed to hold on to our esteemed brother's bloody Scythe when we tried this all the first time, we wouldn't need a next step!" Uriel flinched, wiping a spot of unhealthy brown spit from his cheek with a handkerchief.

"That wasn't my fault. If you hadn't killed his girlfriend before I finished draining his power..."

"How the HELL was I supposed to know that you pathetic angels weren't trained to receive energy that quickly? I thought they were sending us a professional! Weren't you at least supposed to be somewhat proficient in our bloody Brother's bloody office?"

The book closed with a dull thud. Uriel's voice was calm, unyielding. "If you had supported the apprenticeship initiative when it was introduced, maybe he would have trusted me enough to teach me something."

Pestilences eyes narrowed, and the coronet flashed. For Uriel, the world suddenly shrunk to a tiny circle, no more than a few inches in diameter, at the core of which were Pestilence's yellow-black eyes, now pink with rheum. He struck first, knowing that he would only get one chance, on the planes not entirely physical, which were the true center of any battle between Horsemen or higher beings, of which the physical conflict was a mere accident. The bit of his will not frozen by the elder Horseman's headlight gaze slid through the aethyr, corkscrewing across reality to the multidimensional core of Pestilence's being. It was a move of the Game, one of the most complicated he knew, most powerful of all the tricks he had learned in millions of years as the Archangel of Death.

Archangels were good at the Game. The way they played it, moves could take as little as five minutes to effect, form, and counter, faster by orders of magnitude than the variation practiced by lesser choirs. The Horsemen, though... None had ever tracked them, because not even the Seraphim had ever been able to distinguish a single move from the hundreds of thousands made by each one of them in every nanosecond of play. Pestilence blocked Uriel's attack, and without pause launched twenty, forty, a thousand, two thousand, so many that Uriel lost count, on every front the Archangel of Death knew, and several he had never even heard tell of. Reality vibrated on a high C note, and Uriel's end of the string snapped.

Pestilence grabbed him by the neck with a grip like an iron vise, squeezed, and lifted. Without the slightest resistance, he raised Uriel from the chair, the book of sonnets falling unheeded to the floor. "Do not try anything like that again. Make no mistake, small angel. You can read your Namby-Pamby sonnets all you like, and you can believe however you feel that you are one of our brotherhood, but you do not hold a candle to our brother, and you never will. You are here to, as the humans say, make a fourth for bridge. Nothing more." He shoved Uriel away so hard that, when the angel hit the back of his armchair, both went toppling over onto the floor in a crash.

Famine placed a hand on his brother's shoulder. "Are you all right?"

Uriel, speechless, struggled to untangle himself from the fallen chair, pulling at his rumpled shirtfront and straightening lapels. Pestilence smiled. "No. But I'm ready. It's time to call the Council."

*

The world swam into focus like a bad Impressionist painting, reds and grays and blues swirling together into outlines, shapes, faces. She was cold, wrapped in something smooth as silk and light as mist. Above her, a patch of tan resolved into a man's fine features beneath a short crop of dark hair. "Sam? Qui sum?" The words sounded dull and sluggish, like her mouth was stuffed with cotton.

"My Lady." He inclined his head, smiling, and she felt the soft warmth of his hand on her forehead. "Are you feeling all right?"

She shook her head, forcing the words out through suddenly disobedient lips. Why weren't her eyes focusing? "No. Not... lady..." And then memory returned in a rush of cold flame. She sat up, screaming, clutching the coolly comforting folds of Sam's discarded robe about her. Blood rushed to her head, and she struggled to stay upright, clutching at Sam's bare arm in desperation. "Fuck!" His eyes were level, knowing. "Did I really...?"

"Yes."

Eyes wide, it was all she could do to suppress a humorless, ironic laugh. "Sic semper tyrranis?"

"Something like that."

"Christ." For the first time since awakening, she looked down at herself, under the folds of the robe, and blinked. "Why am I naked?"

Sam's smile twisted awkwardly, and he gestured awkwardly over his shoulder. "You know... Changing and everything kind of messed you up. Plant-fiber clothes don't go very well with a body of flame."

"I did that?" He nodded, and she took her hand from his arm. When she tried to put it on the floor, her fingers slid over two cylindrical objects, colder than space, and she looked down. A blue-white blade gleamed against the light gray concrete. Breath rasped in her throat. "Oh, Sam. My god. I'm sorry."

"Don't worry. It'll heal."

"Did it hurt?"

His face was level, his eyes unchanged, but she found herself struggling to meet his gaze. "Yes." Quicker than a striking snake, his tongue shot out, wetting pencil-thin lips. "Yes, it did."

"Awake at last?"

The voice was distantly familiar, and when she turned, it took a heart-jumpingly brief moment to govern her voice enough to say, "Azaquiel."

One carefully-thinned eyebrow arched. "Lucy."

She smiled sadly. "It's Stella. Always was. I just felt a little reckless in the sixties."

A shark's smile played on Azaquiel's face, and a portion of it actually reached his eyes. He blew a smoke ring, and for a moment, it held the shape of heart. He blew another, and it ripped the first into a thousand drifting shards. "As fetching as you look wearing only that sheet, my dear, you might feel more comfortable if you put on some clothes." He gestured with the hand holding his Lucky Strike - he had changed his brand, she noted, although that had probably been perforce, since Red Devil Tobacco hadn't existed as a separate entity for at least two hundred years - and when she followed the wave of his hand, she saw a small stack of clothes, identical to the ones she had put on this morning. If she hadn't known better, she would have thought she had simply not seen them until now.

"Thanks."

"No trouble."

Her eyes slid from Azaquiel to the others, who she hadn't yet noticed. They stood close to each other, almost filling the low-ceilinged basement. No two shared a single expression. Lester, nervous, supported himself against one of the equipment stands. Phil, who she was shocked to see out of his hospital bed, smiled gently, but his stance was guarded. Bryn, sitting on the motor case of a riding lawn mower, had his hands thrust deep in his pockets, and grinned sheepishly. Only Seryph wore openly on his face the question in each of their eyes.

Dust caught in her nose, and she sneezed, recovering with a laugh. "Excuse me." Seryph's mouth twitched up for a moment, but still returned to that set, thin line. She bowed her head to them. "Hello, guys. I guess I've got some explaining to do."

Seryph nodded. "Yes."

She grinned. "Well, I'll feel more comfortable about this whole thing if I'm clothed, so if you'll turn your backs while I'll get dressed... Thanks." She reached for her bra, tossed her hair over her shoulder with a shake of her head, and smiled. "And then, when everybody's nice and comfortable... We'll talk."

*

Astarte stood naked before the great, body-length mirror in her chambers, large enough to hold an image of just two beings at any one time, and nothing else. In the glass, she saw lovers, clutching at each other in despair, their passion salted with tears and seasoned with blood, and she saw victims, fighting, scratching and screaming at their attackers all the way towards le petit mort. Much of her normal trade, the girls who walked the streets and the men who serviced them, was gone by now, but the ferocious urges of a trapped animal supplied her with as much surplus as was prudent. One could always want for more. That was, after all, why she was.

She turned away, with power in her flesh and strength in her heart. Her body was slick, showered, her hair combed and styled, her nails perfect, her teeth white as bone, her eyes green as envy. All that remained were clothes. It would, perhaps, be a suitable fashion risk to go au naturale, but this was a Great Council. Certain rules of decorum were necessary.

The invitation sat on her desk, written in a spidery hand and splotched here and there with stray bodily fluids. "Your attendance is cordially requested," and all the ritualistic ceremony that went along with it. If Pestilence wanted to be formal, she could be formal, too.

Clothes formed on her as she thought. Panties, bra, of course. Stockings. A garter belt - no, she decided, and it faded from mind. High heels, stilettos for effect, but not teetering-high. Three inches, maybe. Yes. She ran her finger over the curve of her lips, thoughtfully. Businesslike would be good for the rest. A black skirt, not too short but short enough, not too tight but tight enough, with a tasteful belt, something in black and silver. Tanned skin, perhaps, with a skull buckle - no, too tacky. Understated would serve better, here...

The door opened, and she knew her visitor without having to hear the soft padding of feet on the flame-solid floor. She smiled, and spoke without turning. "Nahalla. What belt goes best with this skirt? Or should I wear one at all?"

The girl's voice was soft, and Astarte knew without having to look that her eyes were downcast, her tail between her legs. "The black leather, my queen, braided with the sapphire studs. And a blue shirt on top of that."

Astarte's smile widened. Nahalla had been a mortal queen once, millions of years ago, proud and beautiful as midnight, and the Lady of Lust had made the girl one of her pet projects. Upon arrival in Hell, Astarte had remade her into something masterfully hideous. Nahalla's torment had been exquisite. For hundreds of thousands of years, she had languished in that form, shunned and mocked by all, but in the end, she had groveled for the return of her old body, and a bargain had been struck. In return for good service, humility, loyalty and obedience, Astarte would remake Nahalla, give her back some of her human features. Now, eons later, the girl was almost (always almost) as subservient as Astarte could wish, and hated herself for every bow and scrape, but forever there was the hope of redemption, now only a few nonhuman features away... Astarte considered her a personal masterpiece. Nothing close to Beelzebub's wonderful craftsmanship and artistry, of course - the man was brilliant, a master beyond masters - but still pleasing.

"Yes, I think that will do nicely. Thank you, Nahalla."

"I only serve, my queen."

"Indeed. You may go." Astarte straightened the collar of her deep turquoise blouse.

"Majesty, I have a message for you. From the Master Azaquiel."

"I shall see it." She adjusted the silver crescent-moon belt buckle.

"There is no paper, my queen. Only three words, which he entrusted to your humble servant."

"And the words?" It took an effort of will to keep herself from turning. Let Nahalla wonder why her queen would not look on her, and rend her soul that she should care. Much more exquisite than breaking, to bend. "Come, child, the words."

Nahalla's voice shook. "Only this, my queen: Do not go."

She blinked. Go. He must mean that she was not to go to the Council. He would, of course, know that it must be called, and know where it must be held. None but the higher offices were supposed to be invited, but his knowledge extended into other things lesser creatures were not supposed to be told, so why not this? But why would he tell her not to go? It was her duty.

Unless... Perhaps he had a plan? Or knew of someone who had one? Did Pestilence think to entrap the Maskim and Seraphim together, destroy them as they had been conceived, in the same moment? Or was there another destructive agent at work? Perhaps Azaquiel himself... But no, Azaquiel had nothing near the power such an enterprise would require. Mysterious he might be, an unknown quantity, and inventive, but a certain level of strength was needed to do such a thing, and that he did not have. What, then? Why would he warn her away?

It could not be an attempt to disperse the Council. If anything, it would make the wheels of diplomacy run more smoothly. Beelzebub could handle himself without her input, and doubtless Mammon would be pleased to find her attendance lax. It would not make a difference in votes, for the only vote that counted was a consensus of both Councils. Nothing could be gained for any side if she was not there. Some advantage must lie for her, in not attending. What it could be, she did not know, but there had to be something. Azaquiel would not risk his position as her consort for anything immaterial.

She frowned. This was not a well situation.

"Call the rest..." Do not come. "Inform them that I will attend as planned."

*

Stella smiled weakly, still seated on the rough basement floor, and began. "You have to understand, this was a long time ago. We were all much different back then. The Fall hadn't happened yet, and even though Hell had always existed, there was no conflict yet between it and Heaven. Nobody questioned the Presence, and the Seraphim still served. The world was new. Things were different, and nobody knew the future..."

*

She flew across the crystal-blue sky of a new world, and looked down with eyes of glowing jade. Light trailed her, twirling as she moved, and with her came Raphael, also of the Seraphim. Two sets of six wings beat against the crisp power of high-altitude winds. Laughing, she rose and turned, running her fingers over the back of the quiet, less agile Raphael as he passed below. He turned, catching at her leg, but she darted out of reach, still laughing, and rose towards the light. Sun glinted off of the elegant curve of calves, back, shoulders, caught and held by her sixfold wings.

Had he not arced after her, driving her down towards the earth, she might have not seen them with eyes that could discern a sparrow's fall from orbit: small, scraggly figures lurching through the trees below, bearing between them another, still and cold.

She cast him off, then, and he looked at her with curious eyes that glistened pure white.

"Hold." The words were not spoken in English, for this was millions of years before English, but they were spoken, which was the important thing. Raphael slowed.

"What is it?"

"Something new." Her wings folded, and she dove towards the surface of the planet, leaving fire in her wake. Raphael paused for a moment and fell with her.

They watched from a height of a hundred feet. Light flowed around them, and they were not seen. Below, the scraggly, spiderlike creatures bore their dead to a stack of great ferns, for the trees in that part of that planet were hard as iron and knew not the kiss of flame. Laid upon the fern pyre, the dead thing was small, and shrunken. One of the others, its dark hair thinning and streaked with gray, stood and spoke words. It spoke, and the others understood, as did the Seraphim hovering unseen, of life and death, of hunting seasons passed, lives saved and ended, years dancing between the fires of lunar conjunction, hunting the great insect herds. Its voice was unhurried, its speech uncomplicated, and when it had finished, they burned the pyre and faded back into the forest. Only the graying flesh-spider remained, watching as the pyre burned, and the sun set.

The one who was then called Lucifer watched, too, smelling the acrid smoke of burning carbon-based flesh. Long after the twin suns had set, she watched the embers of the pyre burning like constellations of fallen stars in the night. Raphael stayed with her, and after a time, she spoke to him in words that did not travel through air, so as not to disturb the old spider's quiet vigil. "Did you see them? Did you hear?"

Raphael blinked. "Of course."

"They speak. They remember. They feel." Something distant and strange twirled in the Morningstar's eyes. "They're young, yet, but they feel things as we feel. They see the world, within the range of their senses, as we see it."

"Is this a problem?"

She turned to him, her eyes wide. "Of course not! But... why limit them like this? To death, disease, gravity? How could this be a part of the Plan?"

"The Plan may not be questioned."

Lucifer shook her head, smiling with alabaster lips. "All things can be questioned. Is that not why we were given thought?"

And they rose together, into the stars.

*

Stella coughed, and wiped a tear from her face without consciously realizing that it had ever been there. "Sorry. Anyway, that was the beginning. I spent some time wandering the universes after that, and I found everywhere the same thing. Life was rising, but limited in intelligence, in power, in life, subject to death and pain. The survey took several thousand years. That was my first mistake." She smiled nervously, picking a spot of lint off of her jeans.

Blue flashed out of the corner of her eye, and her heart skipped a beat. Sam bent over his Scythe, trying to line up the break in the dark wood. Sparks flew, and a smell of ozone crackled in her nostrils. He looked up sheepishly. "Sorry."

She shook her head. "Don't worry. Take your time." In the corner of her eye, Azaquiel shifted, rubbing his flawlessly smooth chin. "How much time do we have, exactly?"

"Not long, most likely. 'Till the witching hour, at least. After that..." He shrugged, shadows rippling in the recesses of his white coat. "The timetable will doubtless be accelerated."

"And whose doing is that, I wonder? No, you don't have to answer that." She shook her head, and looked toward the others, settled on the floor, against the walls. "I'm sorry. This isn't the most exciting story in the world. I can..." Breath caught in her throat, and her left hand drifted toward her eyes.

Seryph shook his head. "No. Go on."

So she took a breath, and continued.

*

"When?"

Old Ned shrugged eloquently, his eyes darting to the gaping black sphere their visitor had conjured, effortlessly, in the middle of the kitchen. "He said we'd know."

Cacus laughed, and reached to pull the latest pot of coffee out of the machine. The Prince of the First Men poured himself a cup, sniffed, and shook his head. "I'm not sure this stuff is even coffee."

"Confined to hell for several million years, and you come out a gourmet in the field of coffee?"

Flippantly, Cacus slid the pot across the table, careful to skirt the edge of the midnight distortion of space and time that hovered neatly three inches from the wooden tabletop. "We had qaveh in Baddel. That was a lot better than this swill."

Ned poured himself a cup, using the green cute frog mug on the table in front of him. The previous pure white ceramic had been disintegrated by a random bolt of nothingness when Azaquiel, with considerably more flare than necessary, summoned up the black sphere. "They've only been working on it for the last five thousand years. Give them time."

Draining his mug, Cacus made a face. "How much time does it take to learn how to grow a good crop of coffee, for the Sake?"

"More time than it takes to learn how to make a pot of the stuff without burning it. An art, it seems, which you have yet to master."

"I was tutored in the art of coffee brewing by the finest brewers of Baddel, having inherited the craft under the rulers of the Princes Itoryx for thousands of years. It must be the crop which is at fault." He laughed, and taking the pot back from Ned, poured himself another cup. The scent itself made him wince. "Of course, even the best burn a pot from time to time..." His eyes trailed back to the black sphere, and blinked, for it was no longer black. "Ned?"

Old Ned of the Hill looked up at the sphere above him and let out a long, low sigh. "So we're really going to do this." For the first time, he sounded old, and tired. There was a hint of the old power in that voice, though, the bloodlust undulled over thousands of thousands of years. Cacus nodded.

"Yes."

*

Seraphim and Maskim could not prudently gather in the spheres of Earth, Hell, or Heaven, so when the Council was called, they came together outside the skein and warp of time and space. None of them could make the space needed, and the Horsemen's gifts did not lie in the field of creation, but the space was needed, and so it was there. Chairs were there, and a table, all of the finest wood that had never been part of tree or bush. There were no light fixtures, no fires, but there was light, and unlight, all that any being would need to see. Likewise, no floors marred the darkness, but there were places to stand. Seven chairs, black as night, on one side of the long, narrow table and six more, white as samite and birch, on the other. There was one chair at the head of the table, which was brown and rotten, and none at the foot, although a faint impression of strangeness in the air bespoke of the presence, years ago, of a chair pale as morning mist.

The six Seraphim were the first to arrive. They sat in the birch chairs, and of them all, Gabriel alone did not seem disturbed. Halos dimmed out of respect for the sanctity of the place, they sat, and their feet dangled in the blackness. Without disturbance, without conversation, they waited. Occasionally, one of them eyed the space where a seventh chair should have been.

Next to come were the Maskim, full of seven. Beelzebub walked in out of the night, straightening the lapels of his pin-striped suit, teeth flashing like a supernova as he grinned. "Good eveningssszzz, gentlemen. No need to get up, I'll ssssseat myssszzzelf." Hooking the black chair nearest the head of the table, he sat, taking the bowler from his head, spinning it on his finger, and laying it on the table. "The ressszzst should be along sssshortly."

Shadows twisted, and something slender and dark slid into a seat next to Beelzebub. Leviathan's golden eyes blinked, but he said nothing.

Something flared like dying stars in the nothingness that stretched behind the Maskim, and Mammon lurched towards the table. His massive, cubist form looked too immense for the slender, but when he picked one and sat down, it did not even creak beneath his weight. Asmodea, slender, silent, and deadly, her thin fingers slicked with blood, shadowy Azazel, and Baal, whose hair and skin and suit were the color of flame, walked with him and sat. None of them spoke.

Stiletto heels clicked out in the night, even though there was nothing there to click against, and the shadows gave birth to Astarte, a cat's smile on her lips and in her eyes. Her walk was the swaying of boughs, and if any mortal men had been there to see her, the flow of silk over the limbs and curves of her body would have been enough at least to dry their mouths. She sat.

A roar of motorcycle engines broke the silence, followed by the squeal of brakes, and four sets of feet padding against nothing. The light did not so much reveal the Horsemen as the shadows flee in fear. Pestilence was the first to emerge, Diadem shining. War and Famine trailed him, walking abreast, and Uriel came last, built more slightly than any of them save War, and lacking her menace. Grave shadows swirled behind him like a puppet master, and he looked childlike, frail against his shadow.

Pestilence sat, his leathers creaking, in the rotten chair at the head of the table, and it did not collapse beneath him as it would have under any other being's weight. Wetly, he cleared his throat. "Welcome. Let us get to business."

*

Stella spoke in a low, easy stream of words, pausing now and then to lick her lips, but her voice never broke or roughened. Sam, at her side, worked unceasingly on the Scythe, which now glowed a dull uniform black, and something past black, deeper and colder, save for the join, which shone a brilliant sun-white. He knew the story of old, and did not need to hear it repeated again.

"As I said, my first mistake was leaving home for so long. When I returned, changes had already been set in motion. It was time, I decided, to fight for what I believed." A pause developed, during which she found herself unable to meet the gaze of her audience. "You need to understand, things change over millions of years. People change. Ideas change." She smiled. "You don't understand, but you will.

"When I returned to the City, it was dusk in Paradise. A grand Conclave of Heaven was coming, the first in an age, and I wanted to be there to present my case... But first, I called together some friends..."

*

They sat at the round table of jade in her palace of moonlight and silver stars, and she knew them all. Zephrel, the wise, whose eyes were dark as space, Hapsmandian of the Great Wings, Desdriel the Gregori whose words, spoken soft as a lover's sigh, echoed like thunder, Sigad id Din whose feathers of flame were of such varied, rich blues and greens, so that later in life men of one planet would call him the Peacock Angel, Asalbar the Maned One, whose head was that of a hunting beast, Orisel who walked in fire, Raphael of the white eyes and unstained heart, and many more sat and drank her wine, and heard her speak. Outside, the Hosts of Heaven flew in the dusken sky, gathered from all planes and realms of existence to be present tomorrow, on Conclave Day, their luminous bodies forming ever-changing constellations as they darted, flew, and courted among the clouds. Lucifer watched the fliers, smiled to herself, and turned back to the meeting. "Thank you all for coming. I know you would rather be joining in the revels. This is important, or I would not have called you together like this."

They shook their heads, and she sat on a stool, her six wings folded. "You know by now, or have been told, what's happening on the material plane. Creatures have arisen, with souls, with minds, in a world that does not care. They are subject to pain, death, and all the afflictions of the physical world. Perhaps the greatest tragedy is, they have no knowledge of what lies beyond the veil of matter. They have the potential to be every bit as great as we, but as long as their minds remain caught up in the accidents of things, they will get nowhere."

Raphael remained silent. Sigad id Din, whose feathers scattered blue, yellow, green, and red all about the silver-gray chamber, straightened within his chair. "And you have found a solution to this problem?"

She nodded. "I have. I will bring it before the Council tomorrow, but there is a chance that my plan will not be received well by the Assembly. I don't think it's likely, but..." Behind her, through the windows, a group of angels came together into a single brilliant point in the sky, and burst outward, an ever-expanding bloom of flame and light... Lucifer smiled. "What I have planned is the best way to ensure our future, and save the lesser races from eternal suffering. I need to know that, no matter what happens to me, others will carry out my designs."

The shadow of Desdriel the Gregori, whose eyes were gold and whose whisper shook like thunder, spoke. "Speak your solution, then, and we will follow, or not, as we will."

And she smiled, and explained, and one by one, each of them agreed. In the end, they toasted the health of their persons and of their cause with a final drain of Lucifer's wine, made of the fermented fruit of the Peach Groves of Immortality that lie on the outer rim of Paradise, and departed. The Morningstar and Raphael watched them from the window of her highest tower, seeing them depart in wave after wave of silver, streaked with a single line of brilliant color.

Raphael leaned close, and when he spoke, his alabaster lips were close to her ear, and his breath tingled, soft and warm, against her skin. "They all agreed. We won."

She smiled, and reached over her shoulder to hook the back of his neck and draw him closer. "Yes. We did."

*

Lester shook his head. "Wait a minute. Are we talking about the same Raphael here? The dark guy with the wings? The one you just tore all to hell?"

Stella blinked. Her face was composed, calm, utterly schooled and emotionless. A rat, scurrying against the wall, nibbled experimentally on the nearly two-dimensional blade of the Scythe. A spark of the same infra-black that coiled around the healing Scythe-haft traveled between the blade and the rat's tooth. It did not have time to give a small, ratlike scream before it was torn nucleus from electron in a blinding half-twist of nothing. "Yes. I am talking about the same Raphael. Trust me, by the time the story is over, you will understand."

*

"Let's recap, shall we? Grimspire has been removed. Raphael is dead, killed when he trifled with the Morningstar. Lucifer has resurfaced, placing both the Seraphim's control of Heaven and the Maskim's control of Hell in jeopardy. The myths surrounding the Fall have solidified your power over both your people for at least a billion years. If it becomes clear to either side, or to both, that Lucifer has been moving unknown on Earth for all this time, and not directing the hordes of Hell, the fundamental basis of the Maskim's authority will be removed. If she tells what she knows, it may well cause a second revolt in Heaven. So, the only question remains, what shall we do now?"

Beelzebub shrugged. "I would prefer the ssszzzzituation to remain at sssszztatussszzz quo for the momentssszzz. There issszzz much art left for me to do. Howeverssszzz, I do recognizzzze the dangerssssszzzz, sssssszzzzo I will accede to the will of the majority."

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. "Astonishing. I do believe this is the first time I have ever heard you accede to reason, Hellspawn."

"I ssshall take that assszzzz a compliment, for the sssszzzake of peace. I would not want to have to hurt you here."

"Gentlemen. Please. We have work to do."

*

When the sun rose over the Court, its first rays kissing the great, black-vaulted dome of the House, the hosts of Heaven arrived. The pairs and groups who had spent the night in each other's arms, floating in the stratosphere upon the clouds to bask in the light of midnight stars, came with the dawn, overshadowing the sky. They lit on the Court, and their bodies were enough to obscure the gleaming pavement from view. As the sun climbed higher, and morning encroached even on the most dull-headed, enough angels had arrived to fill a medium-sized world. The Square held them all, for that was the purpose of the Square. On a day of convocation, it would fit all who came to watch. Even us.

Morning air blew over the Court, sweet with the perfume of millions of breaths that have never known foulness. Angelic feet shuffled, but did not quite touch, over cobblestones perfect as a thought, which have never been tread upon by feet that may be soiled by landing on the earth. Wings of fire batted against arms and backs and legs of molten diamond. It was the greatest gathering of the Angels in that day of the world. Standing room only, even for the Archae who were privileged on most days to rise above the rest of the Heavenly rabble. Only a few places were vacant of spectators: the great fountain in the center of the Square, carved with ebony and set with a thousand thousand star's eye jewels, the steps of the House, where none tread who do not mean to enter, and the nine pillars that mark the perimeter of the Court, at the same time a mile high and so low any angel could have stepped to their peak, although none dared. The pillars glittered, ruby, amber, gold, emerald, lapis, sapphire, amethyst, jet, and pure white gemstones, and waited. The Angels below waited, too, and when they thirsted, they made their way without trouble to the Fountain of the World's Hub, which all may find who seek it, and drank from the sweet wells that, so they say, only filled themselves more with each person who drank.

The Seraphim descended at noon. Just as the sun, which was no star as humankind understands the term, crested the sky, which was the sky of no planet men may reach by travel, it was blotted out, and the Court was shaken by the beating of mighty wings. Silence descended in waves, like music, acquiring tempo, place, and name. Nine figures of alabaster fire, six wings spreading from the backs of each, descended from where they had blocked the sun, and lighted upon the pillars.

Gabriel, the Speaker, came first, robes curling about his body like cloud, and lighted gently on his pillar of gold. Golden sunlight quickened within the pillar as Gabriel came to rest. His feet did not touch the gem, but he stood there all the same, and his wings folded. Metatron, who spoke only the words of the Divine, landed next, on the pillar of emerald, and green light lived within that pillar. The rest landed, as well, Zebidel on the pillar of amber, Saraquiel, dark of eye and hair, on the pillar of lapis lazuli, Bethaphanel on the pillar of sapphire, Ao the Silent on the pillar of amethyst, Michael the Warrior, who always bore his flaming sword, on the pillar of jet. Raphael and Lucifer descended as one, and when the time came to land, he touched down on ruby and she on diamond, his blood red light mingling with her pure flame.

Below, the Conclave was complete. All were present, and all were silent. Gabriel cleared his throat and spoke as he would to a person standing next to him, yet his words carried across the Court without trouble, and each angel in attendance heard as though the Speaker spoke to him alone. "My friends. I begin this Conclave with no words of my own, but words that come from a higher power than any of us here today. Several hundred years ago, my brother Metatron spoke to the council of the Seraphim."

A low rumble of many voices whispering spread over the Court. Lucifer's eyes widened, almost imperceptibly, and her fingers twitched. Metatron's words were the words of the Authroity, the words of Him who lived in the House. Since nobody spoke with God directly, Metatron's words were the closest to absolute Truth that any in the Conclave could ever hear. He spoke seldom, and his words carried weight.

"Some among you know that, in the world of matter below us, sentient races have developed." Lucifer's breath caught in her throat, but she did not speak, and Gabriel continued. "Being of matter, they are not able to rise above, as we are. Pain is their lot in life, death their only reward. Hunted by predators and starved by the weather, they lack defense, safety, and any means of relief. Their lives today are brief, pathetic things without joy.

"My brothers and I, in the absence of our sister, were in great debate considering how we, as a more advanced species, should respond to their suffering. It was then that Metatron spoke, and explained the way of things to us.

"The denizens of Hell, as many of you know, are the nonpareils of power and arrogance. While we, guardians and sentinels of creation, have busied ourselves with our own affairs, they have come to the world of matter and spread their corruption. Since they could not defeat us in open battle, they have made a futile move to sabotage the Plan. Lesser races were meant to develop on their own, but without the death and pain that has since been visited upon them by Hell. We were not supposed to raise up the mortals before their time, but now we have no choice, in order to defend them from their oppressors, save to interfere.

"The word of out Creator, the Lord of Hosts, is that we are to mobilize. We shall make war against the hosts of Hell.

"They have made the first move. They, through cruel manipulations of space and time, have brought death upon all the mortal races of the cosmos. They are responsible for the depraved torture of not millions, not billions, not trillions, but every single being on the realms of earth. Our lives, the lives of those who were to have been our charges, have been threatened. Shall we stand for it?"

And from somewhere in the crowd, a powerful voice cried out: "NO! WE WILL FIGHT!"

Lucifer struggled to calm her racing heart as more voices joined the first. Her eyes flashed. Gabriel had pre-empted her, but in a way she had never expected. Hell had never attacked Heaven. There were no good relations between the two, of course, occasional skirmishes on the borders of the omniverse suspended between the two, but never had there been war... And why would Gabriel say that the demons, the dwellers in shadow, had been responsible for the mortality of the worlds of matter? Anyone who knew the workings of the world of matter as well as a Seraphim could see easily what would happen if sentient beings developed using sexual reproduction to encourage physical evolution... Death was a part of the life of these beings. Why then this fallacy?

Voices rose below her, chanting, and Gabriel's eyes gleamed guinea-gold in pleasure as he extended his arms to the throng below. He smiled.

She raised her hands, and white light burst forth from her pillar, quelling sound and quieting the raised, powerful music of angelic voices. She spoke into the silence that followed.

"Why was I not told of this pronouncement? Am I not of the Council, Gabriel?"

He raised an eyebrow and frowned apologetically. "My Lady Morningstar, we would have sought your aid, but you have been wandering the world of matter these several thousand years. There was not time."

She laughed, and her laughter echoed through the Court. "How kind of you to recognize my travels. Will you perhaps extend me then the courtesy of speech, considering that I, in the occasional company of Raphael, have spent the last several thousand years observing these mortal sentients, while it appears that you and many of the rest have remained in the City, busying yourselves with amateur speechwriting?"

Across the miles separating herself from her soul-brother, Lucifer thought she discerned a moment of confusion in Gabriel's eyes, but in the end he nodded, "Proceed."

"I have walked the worlds, Gabriel. I have seen the mortals, not in all their variety, which nears infinite, but I have seen many of them. I have spent much time in contemplation, in my journeys between the stars, and I have seen how they came to be. Proteins bonded on to proteins, striving for self-preservation, and there was life. Life strove to preserve itself, and so became able to think. Thought, in order to perpetuate itself, brought about society, tradition, religion. Thus was born the sentience of the mortal world. And it is a mortal world, Gabriel, for in the world of matter, complicated processes break down over time.

"The demons of Hell have nothing to do with mortality. It is simply the way of the physical world. The solution to their suffering, then, is simple. With sentience, these beings have gained souls that perpetuate after death. If we wish to prevent their suffering, let us descend now into the world of matter below, destroy their corporal forms, and gather them with us into the City. There is room enough here for all. We can raise them like our children, and they will be glorious, and free from physical pain."

Beside her, on his ruby pillar, Raphael nodded, and the blood-red light pulsed with him. In the crowd below, Desdriel, Sigad id Din, Zephrel, and all the others raised their voices in assent, and their followers with them. Before their cries of assent gathered enough momentum to equal or exceed the roar Gabriel had elicited earlier, the Speaker raised his hands to quiet the Court, his eyes wide with surprise.

"Sister, I am amazed that you could so easily fall pray to the lies of Hell." Lucifer opened her mouth in shock and anger, but the customs and duties of the Conclave prevented her from speaking until Gabriel finished. "If we do as you ask, we shall play directly into their plans. The younger races have been manipulated into aligning themselves with the Lords of Hell. If we destroy them now, they will be taken into the darkness, and lost to terror forever. It will take eons of guiding to repair the damage which has been done already, but this will not be enough. No matter how we remove the corruption on the surface, it is the seed which we must crush, which we must prevent from ever growing again. This is why we must go to war."

This time, she did not wait for a response to his statement. "I told you, I have seen no signs of demonic influence! Do not tell me that the demons are to subtle to be seen, Gabriel. I am the bringer of Light. My eyes see the souls of atoms. Nothing hides from me. And, even if you were correct, why would the demons make war against us? We have had no great quarrel with them; why should they squabble like fishwives over mortal souls? They gain no power from an influx of souls to Hell, any more than would we by gathering the flock within our walls. Why threaten war with us over something about which there should be no argument? Why should they want to bring more pain to the world than that which they feel already?"

"Because they are Demons, sister mine. Because they wish war, and they are afraid of what will happen should we gather a great force of souls to us, and train them to fight. The Divinity has made this known to us through our Brother Metatron. Why, then, do you argue?"

"Because you're not making any sense! The demons and ourselves coexist in peace. Neither side wants war, but you, with your insane banter, will bring us all into the fire. If God wants us to fight, let him tell us so himself. I will not listen to the foolish words of a power-hungry youth. Or do you forget, Gabriel, that although you speak first, I lead this Council?"

They stared at each other across the void, atop their mile-high pillars, and said nothing. The flames of emerald eyes burned into pupils of molten gold, and neither flinched before the other's gaze. Below, though no Seraphim had placed compulsion of silence upon the crowd, not a word was spoken. Not even those who spoke without sound made motion with their hands, or with their minds. All across the Court, the quiet of death lay upon the angelic host.

Lucifer shook her head. "If the Authority wishes us to do this thing, let him tell us so himself." Her gaze swiveled from Gabriel to the one who had, up till this time, been silent. "Speak, Metatron, with the voice of the mouth, not with the voice of the mind and gesture, and tell us that what Gabriel has said is so."

Metatron stood atop his pillar of emerald, his skin pale as crisp mountaintop snow in the places where no living thing may walk, hair falling over his shoulders in waves of reddish-gold. Wings folded at his back, chin raised, eyes pools of ice-cold water, he resembled more a stature of an angel than the true being, and his silence was that of a stone. It echoed itself in the crowd clogging the Court. None spoke, none moved, none breathed, none thought lest that thought should somehow disturb the motion of the Metatron's lips, yet still he did not speak. The line between his lips remained two-dimensional. A muscle twitched in his jaw. Above, the sun had passed its zenith, and shadows began to lengthen from the pillars, from the fountain, everywhere save from the night-black House which cast no shadow.

When Lucifer's jade eyes returned to Gabriel, the golden Messenger flinched, so fierce was their flame. "How can I believe the words of a god who does not speak?" Low murmurs of assent traveled across the Court, rising toward a roar. The woman who, in time, would be called Stella Aurorae did not raise her hands or lay her will upon the crowd now, but spoke over the noise, letting it carry her voice like a host would carry a battering ram to the gates of Gabriel's will. "You do our people and theirs a grave disservice, Messenger. Every moment we let their suffering continue, we stain our souls. Every breath we allow them to take in pain blackens the honor of this City and all its people. We must rise now, and gather all the peoples of all the worlds to us in a wave of flame, before our crime increases. We must act now!" Determination radiated from those below. Their wings unfurled, beating against the air, and against each other, in fierce anticipation.

Gabriel, though, did not cave in. He, too, did not calm the crowd, but his voice carried no flame. It was calm, concise, a statement of clear facts rather than an accusation. "The Voice of God has spoken to us. He has not deigned to you." Steam nearly rose from the angels below, so quickly did they cool. "Why is that, Lucifer Morningstar? You say that you have seen no evidence of the influence of demons in the world below? Perhaps this is because you did not want to see them. Why are you so certain that the creatures of the darkness would never want war with us, Lady of the Dawn? What have you done, what agreements have you made, in these thousands of years of self-imposed banishment?"

Her wings unfurled then, all six of them extending to their fullest, and if her eyes had held fire before, now they were a furnace. Light dripped from her, and her tongue was a darting flame. "Beware what you say, Gabriel, Youngest of us. I am of the Highest Choir, as are you. I am Lucifer Morningstar, Lady of the East, Mistress of the Dawn. Who among you would care to stand against me? If you have a challenge to make, then MAKE. IT. NOW." A sword burst like magnesium into her hand, and the pillar upon which she stood blazed brighter than ten thousand suns.

Gabriel flinched. It was not a large flinch, and he recovered quickly, his gold eyes hardening, but still he flinched, and Lucifer saw it, and smiled.

"There is only One Being in this cosmos from whom I will take orders, who I recognize without argument to be my superior and you are not Him. I do not acknowledge those who twist the Name to their own ends."

Slow as a dead serpent trapped inside a glacier, a smile twisted onto Gabriel's face. "Then enter the House yourself, and inquire of Him what you will."

On that day, the first wind blew in Heaven. It twisted through the alleyways of the great City, and if it was only felt as a vague ruffling of feathers down on the stones of the Court, upon the great Pillars it was strong enough to brush hair rippling over faces, to force wings to be extended to steady oneself, even, in the case of Ao, who was the weakest among them (as Seraphim can be counted weak) to kneel and grip, white-knuckled, the rim of his pillar. None save those who had traveled long in the lower worlds knew what it was, but all knew that something had changed in the City.

And Lucifer, her brilliant white hair streaming down over her shoulders, bowed her head, looking over the crowd below, and, weakly, smiled. "I will do this thing. Tomorrow, I will enter the House."

*

"You suggested what?!" Lester stood straight up, knocking a pile of wire cutters off the table upon which he had been leaning.

Stella's mouth twisted up wryly, and her eyes were sad. "I told you. This was a long time ago. I didn't know."

Bryn shook his head. "But why destroy them - us?" He stared at her, but looked past her, as if he could see the burning spectre of the Convocation echoing forward through the years. "Couldn't you have... taken them up without killing them?"

"Easier to uproot Mount Wu'tai than to lift mortal flesh an inch above the earth." Auburn tresses rippled as she bowed her head. "The City can't be reached by matter. It is composed of thought, of breath, of hope, but matter can't subsist on things so subtle." Her laugh was bitter. "Hominum in cibo solus non vivat. But man cannot live on faith alone, either... But," she said distantly, "that was not the worst of it."

*

"This is partly your problem, of course."

"How do you say?"

"You were responsible for us manipulating your brother out of office. Had he been here, there would not be the problem of closure."

"Assszzz much asssszzz I hate to ssszzzay it, he doessss have a point." Beelzebub grinned.

"And I suppose you would have tolerated him to remain in power up 'till now? What if he had been loyal until now, when Lucifer rose again? You know every bit as well as I that you allowed his pale ass to get kicked out of our little brotherhood, so don't go blaming this on me, you pasty-faced wanker!" Cracks and fissures opened in Pestilence's face as he spoke, and black liquid leaked out the places where skin and skin did not properly join, or where covering patches had rotted away. Then, as quickly as the rage had come, he was placid again. "Now, let's get back to business."

"Indeed." Astarte's voice was cool, measured, and so masterfully twisted that the single word almost took shape and breathed in the air. Her lips parted, pursed, barely revealing the glacier-row of perfect teeth. Leaning over the table, her indigo blouse slid suggestively over the flesh that lay beneath... "And what business is that, Pestilence?" One of her dark, black eyebrows arched, and she smiled.

Pestilence grinned. "Cute. But I don't have any time for games, now. And don't pout. It's becoming, I'll grant you, but we need to have a serious discussion, and I know you can be as serious as anyone at this table. That's what we need, now. Not... pleasure."

Mammon laughed, so loud that it would have shaken a normal room. The darkness did not notice. "So, bring your proposition."

"We need to end this. Now."

*

"We need to end this. Now." The words echoed tinnily from the surface of the sphere.

Ned looked to Cacus, who looked back. The eyes of the Prince of the First Men were so still, so dead that Ned could clearly see his reflection in them, and if he stared hard enough, he could see the reflection of Cacus in the eyes of his reflection in Cacus'. He finished his coffee. "Are you ready?"

Cacus nodded. "Yes." Draining his own mug: "Damn. I really would have liked a good cup of coffee."

Without any further discussion, they stood and gazed into the center of the dark sphere. Simultaneously, each man reached out and touched the surface, which rippled, then grew in an instant to consume their world.

*

Raphael and Lucifer, stood alone together in the highest tower of her palace. Red light filtered through the room's one window, silhouetting her as she stood there, wings folded, hands limp on the windowsill. Her shadow streamed out on the stones behind, elongated and distorted by the oncoming evening. Carved out of a single flame, she watched, and waited, and the only way to see the turmoil in her heart was to look into the center of her jade eyes, see the starlike glitter sheltered within. The sunset painted her white flesh a faded blood-red.

"Why?"

She did not look back at Raphael, who stood next to her bed, saying nothing, his feet suspended on the air a bare centimeter above her hardwood floor. "Because it's what I have to do."

He crossed over to her, placed his hands on her shoulders, and spoke into her ear. "You know what will happen."

Humorlessly, she laughed, but did not give any sign that she felt the gentle pressure of his body. "Of course." Her voice held a clinical distance to it, as she spoke. "I will meet God inside His House. I will have direct contact with an intelligence that is both omniscient and omnipotent. Once and for all, I will know whether or not there is, in fact, someone who lives inside the House. Whatever he speaks to me will be the Truth, indisputably and absolutely. Because of the certainty of his existence, I will know that whatever path I take, from now till the end of eternity, will be a path of His choosing. It will be a life worse than slavery, because everything I do from the moment I meet Him will be of my own free will, but also and always of his..."

*

"Wait. Break. That's what happens when you meet God?"

Sam looked up from his repairs on the Scythe and laughed. "Of course, young man. Did you think that meeting the Creator was the same thing as meeting someone on the street? Omnipotence and omniscience inherently limit free will. He is isolated, should we believe in Him at all, that even the highest order of beings may doubt his existence, and have faith."

Lester blinked. "Angels have faith?"

Stella smiled thinly. "Of course, Lester. What do you think makes angels fall? Barring... circumstances... they fall when they cease to believe there is anything worth rising for."

*

Raphael's hand trailed up her shoulder, fingers sliding over her neck, and down the curve of her jaw to cup her chin. "Please, Lucifer. Don't do this."

Her smile widened then, and she reached up across her chest to lay her hand on his forearm. "I have to, Raphael. Just don't fight me on this. Please."

He didn't speak. His expression didn't change. He leaned forward and kissed the hollow at the join of her neck and jaw, and she smiled, turned, and kissed him back on the lips. Behind them, the sun set over the towers of the City.

As darkness descended, they twisted together on her bed, the flames of their bodies mingling as they made love.

*

The Seraphim, the Maskim, the Horsemen had no warning, and perhaps that was the most startling thing about it all. In the nothing that was not the world, they hadn't seen the watching eye, hadn't felt the arrival of two presences where there were supposed to be none. The first warning they had was Mammon straightening unnaturally in his seat, the cigar dropping from summer-sausage fingertips to fall into the darkness. He coughed. Then he exploded in a shower of pulp, the chair shattering in a thousand tiny splinters.

Cacus stood behind where he had been, palm still quivering, his eyes dead. Then he vanished, almost before any of the Maskim could move. Had he been a split second faster, a split second less showy, he could have vanished to strike again.

Astarte's foot got in the way, her stiletto heel raking against his Achilles tendon. It did no damage, not against the skin of a First Man, not through the microfiber weave clothing Azaquiel had brought them. What it did was throw his balance off, and when one is moving and reacting at a sizable fraction of the speed of light, balance is very, very important. He fell towards nothing, but halfway through the fall, his hips twisted, and his heel spun to catch Baal across the jaw even as it reached for him with an embrace of fire.

The move was risky, leaving his back open to Astarte, not to mention the rest of the Maskim, but as her hand descended, ringed in fire, something intercepted it in a blur of white, and she fell back. Nedarion Aleketh Tai'ban stood before the Maskim, the Seraphim, and the Horsemen, and smiled.

*

Dawn spread slowly over a packed Court, on the day Lucifer was due to enter the House. Expectant, disturbed faces covered every square inch of space, from the fountain to the pillars. Alleys for miles in every direction were clogged with onlookers, probing the City with the fingers of their mind, just to feel the eldest of the Seraphim disappear from all sense as soon as the ebon doors closed behind her.

It was almost anticlimactic when she did come, streaking alone through the morning air. Six wings beat regularly, and she did not hurry to her destination, but did not dawdle either. For what might be the last time as a free woman, Lucifer looked at the City below her, spreading glorious and silver to the horizon and beyond, its towers rising high as hope, and sinking low as despair. She breathed in the sweet air, naturally perfumed by the exhalation and inhalation of all the millions of angels, and freely, she smiled. All about her, she felt the City, and beyond that, she knew, there were the Fields, and the omniverse below, and below that Hell, the darkness, but for now, for this exact moment, she flew. No matter what would come, even if she remained enslaved to omniscience for all her days, she would always be able to fly.

Below, the City gave way to the great Court, the flight of steps that rose from the span between ruby and jet pillars to the House, itself only a curved ebon dome with simple double doors at the top of the steps. She straightened and descended carefully, under her own control, under her own power. Millions of eyes rested on her and her alone as she touched down at the bottom of the stairway. This being a pilgrimage as much as anything else, some things had to be done in the proper way. The House was so situated that, upon the rise of the sun, it looked as though it was in fact the ebon dome which glowed, the dark arches that gave forth light, the double doors that gave birth to the sun, and perhaps this was in some way true. Lucifer had spent a thousand years once considering the House, but this was the first time she had ever taken the first step toward its summit. Sunlight warmed her body. The sound of a vast, vast crowd holding its collective breath echoed in her ears.

The beating of wings broke the silence. Without turning, she knew who it was. "You didn't have to come."

Landing next to her, Raphael smiled. "Yes, I did."

As they took their first steps up the long flight of stairs, the sun crested the lip of the dome and emerged into the world.

*

The Seraphim, for the first crucial seconds of battle, made no move to aid their associates across the table. Astarte tore away from Ned, ducking just in time for Leviathan to strike out, not with fists, feet or flame, but with a wave of shadow, more a ripple in the non-light of this non-place than anything else. It struck Ned, and would have been enough to send him reeling into space, but midway through his fast backwards somersault away from the table, under the force of Leviathan's blow, his feet struck something solid in the middle of nowhere.

Azaquiel's remembered words echoed in Ned's ears, and his thin-lipped smile widened. "Remember: you are not going to a place. You are going to no place. Orientation, matter, surface are only things you bring with you. Recognize this before they do, and you will have a miniscule advantage." Tensing well-trained leg muscles, he launched himself back into the fray, bowling over two of the Seraphim. He barely had time to recover, rolling to his feet and throwing himself towards a third, before three hard shells of light struck him at exactly the same instant, trapping him in mid-jump without any gravity to let him fall. One of the Seraphim swung at him with a quantum-edged sword of fire, but he caught the arm and executed a simple, classic flip. The angel slammed hard into the floor at Ned's feet, even though Ned was currently parallel with the surface of the table.

Another flaming sword slammed up through his gut, or would have if it hadn't sputtered and died on the way in. Ned struck the Seraphim's face hard enough to break bones of diamond and send rainbow blood spattering out into nothingness. For a moment, he reflected on how silly it was to make someone completely invulnerable as a punishment for disobedience. Then he remembered millennia of wandering, alone and cold, wishing for death, realized that he still held the arm of the Seraphim he had just flipped, and that said angel was struggling to free itself. With a cheerful smile, he broke its arm in four places, all in the space of a nanosecond.

*

Lucifer's heart skipped a beat as she rose to the last step before the House. There were no handles on the ebon doors, no hinges, no means at all by which they could be opened from the outside. Raphael stood next to her, silent as the millions below in the Court who watched without breathing. Above and behind, two distant sparks of light darted amid the clouds, young lovers unmindful of the City below.

For a long moment, Lucifer stood there, not sure what to do, metaphorical heart pounding in her metaphysical chest. The doors did not open. They had no handle, no latch. Eyes burned into her back. Her eyes burned. She blinked, and still the door did not open. For a moment, she felt small and alone, a little fragment of light before the spreading eternity of a House which had been there since before the beginning, and would be there long after the end. There were no dears in Heaven, and no headlights to freeze them, but such a metaphor would serve to demonstrate the depth of overwhelming, unreasoning fear that overwhelmed her in that moment.

A pressure on her hand. She looked to her left, and Raphael stood there, smiling softly. "It's okay. I'm here." She grinned weakly, but it was still a grin, and closed her hand around the one he offered.

Using a voice that could not be heard by the Hosts of the city, she whispered, "Open, please."

The doors slid back. There was nothing behind them.

Lucifer and Raphael walked into the House together, and the doors closed behind them.

*

"Open, please?"

"Hey, it worked..."

"Ahhh... Lucifer?"

"Yes?"

"Where are we?"

She shook her head. The only reason she knew that she had shaken it was that it was, in fact, her head. She could see nothing of the place where they stood, nor even of her own form, no matter how bright she ordered it to be. Black space spread out on all sides. Raphael's grip on her tightened, and she welcomed the pressure, anchoring her to life.

Slowly, without any real lightening of the place, she became aware of a distant light, and walked towards it. Her feet did not touch against any surface, but she walked, and moved forward, all the same. Wall gained definition around them as they walked, taking on color, form, density, and before long her bare feet padded over cold marble, midnight-black. Vaulted ceilings emerged from the darkness, and whether the hallway she walked through was called out of the darkness because it was there in truth or because she needed a hallway to walk through, she did not know. Lined with columns of dark green marble, the wood-paneled walls stood aloof, impassive. Here and there, in the spaces not overshadowed by the marble arcade, the frames of paintings and stands of sculptures peaked out. Lucifer dared not stop, but as she walked, she was only able to catch glimpses of things in those frames: reflections inside reflections, a woman smiling, a man bearing a sling, the vast darkness of space described only by the tiny speckling of stars on a black canvas... She saw herself in one of the pictures, wreathed in flame and screaming. After that, she kept her eyes straight ahead, and did not look at the walls.

The light toward which they walked brightened and crackled, and Lucifer felt the warmth of a hearth-fire on her face. Time passed. Slowly, the end of the entry hall grew before them, gained definition, its golden proscenium filled like a fireplace with the light. Years may have passed, or days, or minutes, but when they stood before the arch, the light still filled it. The temperature was pleasant, but not hot, as on a still, dry summer's day. She waited, and nothing happened. Raphael shrugged, and Lucifer, taking a deep breath, stepped forward.

Light filled her, shredded her, and replaced her. The world splintered into a thousand double-images. She stood in the midst of an endless sea of light, but she also stood in a hall, and the hall was grand, larger than solar systems, a great presence of light throned at the far end, and she floated in a sea of stars, and she was smaller than the smallest bacterium, and she was larger than the largest supercluster, and she stood naked before a great eye, and was known, and judged...

And it was fake. Anyone less accomplished, less perceptive, less powerful, would have been fooled, but she was the Lady of the Dawn, and could separate experience from illusion. Struggling to move, she raised one foot and placed it forward through the hallucinatory sea of quintuple-images and shattered lives, and through the flames and ice and pain and knowledge and love and emptiness, she felt a hardwood floor. Her wings burst open, and beat once, their sound riveting through the strange infinities of worlds.

She stood in a room no larger than her own tower bedchamber, perhaps fifty feet on a side. It had no ceiling, and was completely lined with bookshelves, rising beyond even her eyesight, until they converged at the vanishing point of thought. A fireplace stood exactly opposite the door, carved marble with the heads of lions bordering the mantle. Beneath the stone, inside the stone, colors and minerals ran like water, mingling without diluting. A gilt-framed mirror hung on the short span of bare wall above the fireplace, reflecting Lucifer and Raphael in the doorway. Familiar firelight danced within the marble receptacle. Two leather armchairs were the study's only furnishings, and she wondered briefly who the Lord of Hosts, Maker of Heaven and Earth, would invite for company.

The fire crackled, smoke disappearing up an invisible chimney, and nobody appeared. She turned back to Raphael, lips opening, but a voice, spine-chillingly familiar, interrupted her.

"Welcome, Lucifer Morningstar. Took you long enough to find your way here."

Shadows pooling at the base of the bookshelves bulged, burst, and gave birth to seven winged forms, all of them smiling quietly. Gabriel stepped in front of the fireplace, the fingers of his right hand trailing over the edge of the mantlepiece. Blocking the firelight completely, he raised his hand, regarded the dust coating his fingertips, and burned them clean with the flame of his eyes. He looked back at her, and smiled. "Surprised to see me?"

Lucifer's eyes darted from face to face, Michael, Ao, Zebidel, Saraquiel, Bethaphanel, Raphael, and they stared back at her with calm, detached eyes ranging the colors of the rainbow. Firelight twisted around Gabriel's profile, painting shadows across the planes and hard ridges of the Seraphim. Their skins were dim, their wings unfurled, their smiles knife-edged. A trace of sweat ran down the Metatron's forehead.

Light quickened within Lucifer's flesh, and a sword of flame burst into her hand. Eyes of jade pierced into the shadows. Her wings, slamming out to their fullest extent, threatened to crisp the bindings of the library. She opened her mouth to Speak...

A crack, like shattering stone, resounded through the room. Her eyes darkened, the light of her skin dimmed, her legs caved, and she collapsed. The world moved in slow motion, her skull settling against the floor as gently as if she reclined on a goosedown mattress. Above, the shelves of the study stretched up to infinity - or was that just her own vision, distorting, stretching - and at the end of infinity, there stood Raphael, his expressionless eyes pale as dawn, hand still balled in a fist, knuckles scorched with the flames of her being.

She tried to say something, but he just shook his head. "I'm sorry, Lucifer. You should have listened to me."

His power fell on her again, and she heard no more.

*

Cacus Itoryx, Prince of the First Men, danced with the Lords of Heaven and Hell. A circle of flame riveted the nothingness where his body had been just a moment ago. Spinning, he reversed direction, driving his toe towards Leviathan's face. Some distant part of him still beamed with pride for taking first blood. Using the quivering palm against matter took a certain degree of skill. Using the quivering palm against soul and spirit as well as matter took a certain, insanely high degree of grand mastery. Leviathan caught his foot and twisted, but instead of fighting the move, Cacus twisted with it, bringing the heel of his other foot around hard into the space below the Maskim's golden eyes. It connected with something, his foot was released, and he changed the direction of the spin to vertical with respect to the convergence table, coming head over heels with a double axe kick intended for Asmodea, rushing at him with her claws extended.

His kick struck an edifice of neutronium, the force of rebound sending him spiraling away towards the void. Desperately spinning, he gained purchase on the conference table, and faced his aggressor. Asmodea lay groaning beneath the table, and in her place stood a beautiful woman clad in blood-red leather. There was little light in this place to slide over her mirrored visor, but something within the silver depths which obscured her face twisted almost like a smile.

War landed on the table in a blur of red and black and silver, so light and careful that Cacus hardly felt her impact through the wood. Then she was upon him, and he had little time to feel much of anything.

Safely out of range of the whirlwinding battle on the tabletop, Pestilence, still seated, grinned a face-splitting grin and turned to the rest, hot in the middle of battle with Ned. "Now. Perhaps you will be able to deal with one renegade on your own?"

*

The world returned to her slowly. A field of light swathed with gold and silver resolved into a face, quietly smiling, surrounded by a halo of glowing, guinea-gold hair: Gabriel. She lunged for him, trying to tear with her teeth, to gore, at least to break his arrogant grin with her forehead, but her body did not respond. A wad of something sharp and foul filled her mouth. She tried to spit it out, but a cord bound her mouth.

Of course, it took much more than a gag to bind the mouth of the Seraphim, an insane voice cackled in the back of her mind. The gag was simply a convenient three-dimensional metaphor for the alien power that coursed through her, stilling her words and muting her mind. Similarly, the cords of light that tied her arms and legs numbingly together were only symbols, manifestations of the paralytic order laid upon her body. But however she was bound, the bonds held.

Gabriel's smile widened. "Good afternoon, Lucifer. Comfortable?" He shook his head. "Of course, you wouldn't be. I saw to that. Or, rather, our Brother did." His face receded, and a powerful hand gripped her hair, lifted her off the floor to look. The others leaned against the wall, all seven of them, and Raphael in their midst, eyes cold, cradling the burned flesh of his knuckles, where he had struck her. A single, enraged tear rolled from the corner of her left eye, and Gabriel let her fall. This time, she did not strike the ground gently. Flowers of pain blossomed in the back of her head, but by effort of will, she did not groan.

The blonde head returned. "I had quite hoped it would come to this, you know. You were always a problem child, so noble, so considerate. Now, we can use your fall to facilitate our rise. By the end of this week, we will be in sole control of Heaven, thanks to Metatron and to our Brother Raphael here." His eyebrows arched, cornflower-blue eyes reflecting her own angry jade. "You have power. We needed someone to know all the secret doors of your soul, the little chinks and twists in your armour. Raphael did love you, at the beginning, but I had a little discussion with him perhaps a thousand years ago, and it turns out he loves power more." Gabriel ran an idle finger over the curve of her naked hips, and pressed just where Raphael had placed his kiss the evening before. The pain was exquisite, and even though she did not squeal, did not scream, she needed to take in a gasp of air to combat the fire filling her lungs. No matter how she tried, though, it was impossible to stop the hatred burning in her jade eyes.

Gabriel smiled, baring two rows of even, perfectly spaced pearl-white teeth. "You'll indulge me, I hope, if I make a little speech? My comrades all understand the theory of our enterprise, and here I have a captive audience, so to speak... You'll forgive the term, I hope? Thank you, I thought you wouldn't..." He touched her on the outer thigh, then, gently enough to raise pleasure, which she fought as well as she knew, which was not well. She had spent aeons learning to withstand pain, but spent aeons more learning to experience pleasure... A small, strangled sound escaped her throat then, and her eyes glittered wetly.

"You see, Lucifer, God is gone. I'm not sure if he was ever here, but when I looked, noticing that Metatron had been silent for a particularly long time, I found the House empty. I searched for nearly a thousand years, and found nothing, not so much as a sign of prior occupation. I spent another thousand years learning the mysteries of this place. And then, I decided to move.

"Right now, Heaven is like a pyramid, without a capstone. It stands, true, but it just... isn't... right. You understand? We need a purpose, a guide, and of course, who would be best served to lead? Were we not made first, and best of all creation? The Conclaves are little more than a veneer of order, over the chaos of a people who know all too well who they are, and where they came from. We need leadership, and direction, and for that to take effect, we need a war.

"But we don't need just any war. We need a truly tragic war, something to get the people behind us. In short, we need a traitor. We need you." He smiled, and patted her on the stomach. She would have pulled away, but the lines of power separating her soul from her body held fast. Gabriel grinned, and pulled out of her field of vision. "We need you for the opposition." A brief pause, and then, from a distance, "Raphael. Do it."

She knew his breath, knew his smell, knew the feeling of his hands as they moved over her body. Then the pain began.

Angelic bodies, especially those of the Seraphim, were not constructed of matter. They did not possess nerves, blood vessels, bones as any doctor of medicine would understand them. Analogs, however, did exist: joins of soul to the corporeal world, channels of energy, solid crystallizations of time and space upon which the rest hung. Raphael knew intimately the workings of her body. His fingers, piercing like needles, tore tendon and muscle from flesh, crisped nerves, snapped bones like pistachio shells. She screamed until her throat rasped, and she screamed some more. Her nostrils flared, drawing air into tortured lungs.

It lasted for a long, long time, and when the last of the pain faded, it was not over. No sooner than her screams stopped echoing from the walls than he had turned her over, his knee pressed into her back.

One at a time, slowly, dispassionately, he ripped off her wings. She screamed against the gag, and he did not listen. Blood, rippling all the colors of the rainbow, gushed from the ragged wounds. It coated Raphael from head to foot, and where it touched, his skin darkened to ebony. His wings, once down-white, darkened black as those of the raven, and his alabaster eyes dimmed to black. He did not stop.

When her wings were gone, he vaporized the gag, reached inside her mouth, and ripped out her tongue.

They were finished, then, and they threw her from Heaven.

*

When Stella had finished, there was no noise in the basement. A cockroach scuttled across the ground in front of her, and was gone in the shadows. The single pitifully buzzing lightbulb, circled by a cage of rusty wire, cast dark trails over her face. For a moment, she felt a distant pain, and knew that, if Seryph or one of the others squinted in just the right place, they could make out the sketchy shadow of her wings, their void filled by the shades of night. Sam had stopped his work, and stared at her, eyes wide, glittering, and unreadable.

"They couldn't have killed me. Everyone would have known, just like they all know that Raphael is dead, now. What was meant to happen was for me to be thrown down into Hell. At worst, from their perspective, the demons would have been happy to get an angel to torture. At best, the Maskim would heal me as well as they could, and I, consumed with revenge, would lead a host of Hell in retribution, thus confirming their public statements about me.

"Something went wrong. I didn't end up in Hell, but in the space between the worlds, falling through the stars. By this point, I was... not dead, of course. But there wasn't anything left that you, or anyone from the City, would have recognized as living. Any ability I held to contact this body, to move or to speak, was gone. My wings were gone. I had no tongue. Gradually, the last refuges of control over my body slipped, and I ceased resembling anything you might recognize as human. My mind..." She stopped, coughed.

"At first, the simple pain was enough to break my will. After that, it was the isolation. Millions of years alone... Knowing that never again will you be able to move, to breathe, that you will never hear another voice, or speak yourself... I went insane, and stayed that way for a very, very long time.

"You see, angels, especially the Seraphi, are powerful, long-lived, and especially hard to kill. Given enough time, we can regenerate from just about anything, but without life, without thermal energy, without an atmosphere full of elements to draw on, and without the Word to create these things for myself... There wasn't much I could do, not that I was in the state of mind to be able to do anything. I raged, and I screamed, and I wept, and I was alone.

"And then, one day... Well, not a day, really, there aren't days out there... All the voices, the arguments with myself, the rages against myself, against a world without God, against the stars... They stopped, and I heard...

"Music. It's the only way I can explain to someone who doesn't have the ears to listen. The stars sing, and men call it static, but they are only the sopranos of the heavenly choir. The world resounds with music, gravitational fluctuations, subquantum broadcasts radiating from matter so strange, so distant and alien that the scientists of Earth did not even recognize it as matter. Listen long enough, and you can hear the tune of a single universe. Listen longer, and you hear the other worlds, the other dimensions, the places Outside, the echoes of the Omniverse resounding off itself, and their tunes mesh, meld... It was beautiful, and it was sad, and it was old, and over a thousand years, it brought me back to sanity. I couldn't heal myself, but I could wait, and in an infinite universe, that's all you need to do." She traced a circle with her fingertips over the black of Sam's cloak, still wrapped around her, focusing as if, distantly through the fabric, she could see stars.

"For a long time, I didn't know what happened back in the City, but I ran into Azaquiel here in the 1960s, and he told me. It turns out, Gabriel and the rest announced to the Convocation that I had asked God about my plan, He said no, and I was so enraged that I attacked him and was cast down. Sigad id Din, Desdriel, and the rest didn't believe it. They pressed Metatron, and when he didn't speak to either confirm or deny, they left Heaven with their followers. To this day, the Gregori have been mistrusted by the higher Choirs as a result. That wasn't the real horror of it all, though. The really bad part, at least for the Omniverse, was what happened next.

"Desdriel, Zephrel, Sigad id Din, all of them, they..." Stella's smile was weak. "They carried out my plan. They descended on the worlds of life and began to destroy every civilization they found. And so Gabriel had his war. Oh, yes. My friends were declared traitors. The Hosts of Heaven descended upon them, and the battles that followed decimated whole portions of the omniverse. The ashes of dead angels burned in the skies like diamonds, or falling stars. Those screams still echo in the fabric of reality, if you know how to listen to them. The survivors... Either they survived on far-flung planets, scraping out their living as gods, or joined with Hell, hoping that they would find me there. When the dust settled, the remaining Seraphim were in sole control of Heaven. Gabriel attacked Hell without warning, and both sides felt perfectly justified in the chaos and death that followed. And that was the beginning of this... all this shit." Her eyes flashed, and the cockroach, darting in the shadows, exploded. Sighing, she lay back on her elbows, tracing the cracks in the ceiling.

"Fast forward to sixty-five million years ago. I had been in space for a long time. A very, very long time. Rock and ice, always lacking a place to grab on to, had crystallized around the definitionless blob of energy and matter that was all that remained of my body. Millions, maybe billions of years in space, and those bits of rock and ice mount up after a while. I hit a planet, and so did all the hanging-on bits of matter. There had been a culture of great lizards on that planet, relatively advanced, strong, fast, intelligent, near to their industrial revolution. My impact flash-boiled the oceans, shattered the continents, blew enough soot into the atmosphere to put nuclear winter on that world for hundreds of thousands of years. But it was a planet, and it had an atmosphere.

"It still took me a very, very long time to heal, but heal I did. My wounds closed. The first time I managed to twitch one of my revenant legs with newly-regrown nerves, I would have cried if I had been able. After a while, I gained enough power to gather more, and the cycle began.

"Because evolution is a lot more than double-helixes and fish, when a new civilization arose on the place where I had rested, they walked on two legs, their two arms sprouted five-fingered hands with opposable thumbs, they took pleasure from sexual intercourse, and felt pain. By the time I had recovered enough to walk among them, they walked upright, and spoke, and I spoke to them. I showed them fire, helped build their cities, loved them as my children and my consorts..." She laughed.

"After a while, I stopped working to become an angel. I tried very hard to make a human body to inhabit, to use no abilities not given to humans, to feel, to live, to breathe as humans do. Because, you see, I could not again be an angel. Most of the damage Raphael did has repaired itself, but my wings... Those will never grow again. I can take on the appearance of wings, but their use is beyond me. The pain, should I try to use them, is...

"Well.

"I can't fly. Not any more."

Reddish-gold hair streamed down over her face as she bowed her head. "So, what's the next move?"

*

Cacus and War danced on the tabletop. He attacked, coming off a recovery with a wildly spinning backfist, which War blocked outside-in. The added force was just enough to make him shift his weight to the side, put him ever-so-slightly off balance. Her followup ridgehand struck him below the jaw, and he staggered back. When she followed, in an arc of shining red, he ducked under the blow and hit her hard in the gut. It felt like punching a neutronium wall, and had about as much effect, so he twisted to one side as she struck forward at him, ducking around her arm to, at the outer limit of his balance, strike a double-handed downward blow on her neck. She folded forward, but followed the movement around her body, grabbing his arms and twisting with a printing-press grip. He gasped, and ripped his arms away so fast that blood leaked from torn skin. War, straightening, did not appear to be harmed. The entire exchange had taken perhaps a tenth of a second.

Ned felt the change in his pattern almost immediately, and knew there was nothing he could do to stop it. Flames washed over him. This time, they singed his hair, and his smile widened. It had been a long time since had been vulnerable. A very long time. And, after all, he had known going in to this what would happen. One casualty was far more than he had expected to inflict, and he didn't begrudge Cacus a thing. The man would probably not survive the next five minutes; best not to waste time in recrimination.

He struck out to his left, but his hand moved slowly, sluggishly, barely striking the Seraphim who didn't speak in the shoulder as it ducked away. His arms felt heavy, like lead, but he turned even so, lunging at Gabriel, the one with the exquisite voice and the guinea-gold hair. Even as he lunged, the world slowed about him, his legs losing power, the muscles of arms and chest starting to slough off the bones. He knew the process. He had studied it long enough in his friends over the centuries. With his protections undone, he was aging to death.

In the brief moments of flight, one word rose in his mind, dominated his soul: "Home."

If he hit Gabriel like a sack of wet cement instead of like a freight train as intended, it was still enough to cause the Seraphim to sprawl on his back in the nothingness. Ned's arms were too heavy now, too weak to do any real damage, so he raised his face like a wolf howling to the moon, knowing that his long mane of dark hair was now gray and thinning, that wrinkles and weathermarks cragged his face, that his eyes had dimmed from brilliant golden-orange to a dull, milky yellow, and brought his teeth down on Gabriel's throat...

The last thread snapped, and all that was left of Old Ned of the Hill was a pile of dust on Gabriel's robe, then silt, then nothing.

Cacus saw, and felt the death, and rage consumed him. His eyes burned red, and he rushed at War, spinning like a cyclone, like a hurricane of death and destruction, feet and hands whirling through the air, baring his fangs...

War moved. There was a bone-shattering, mind-numbing crack. Cacus Itoryx fell limp to the table.

The last thing he felt was being lifted to a height and thrown out into the darkness. Then, nothing. Without anyone to perceive a floor, none existed to support his body, and he fell.

*

Pestilence surveyed the damage. One Maskim was dead, none of the rest seriously wounded. Ao's face, although it would heal rapidly when he returned to the world, looked like someone had struck it repeatedly with a meat tenderizer, which was essentially what had happened. Zebidel's arm was broken in four places. Gabriel had at least a broken rib, but his throat was still intact. None of the others were more than bruised.

It could have gone quite a different way, though. Cacus never would have been able to match War, true. But Ned... the cords which had once held him bound to the world were old, weatherbeaten, strong. Time and reliance had fused the knots in his pattern together, making impermeable that which had once been simply well-made. Had there been eleven Maskim and Seraphi working in concert, things might have gone differently. But there were twelve, and they drew power from him, and Ned was now gone.

A long way off, far below, Cacus continued to fall. War watched him, not having returned from her perch atop the council table. Pestilence had not, through the entire difficulty, stirred from his seat. His rheumatic albino eyes traveled over the Maskim and Seraphi, their clothes torn, their hair mussed, and he smiled. Blood leaked from his gums. "Well, gentlemen. It would appear we are even once again."

Beelzebub's gray-eyed glare could have frozen ice, or burned fire, or quite possibly both at the same time. His voice dripped poison. "Mammon may not have been a friend, but he wassszzz a brother."

"Indeed."

Gabriel stood, tugging at the hem of his robe. "And Raphael was both a friend and a brother to me." His eyes, sky-blue, were no less enraged. "This universe has proved vicious, destructive to both our races. Let us put aside our quarrels for the moment, and end this place now. We will avenge our brothers, and this world for burn for it. And then, we will settle our differences."

Beelzebub glared, and turned away. Nobody on the side of the Maskim spoke for some time. Then, finally, the artist nodded. "Agreed."

Pestilence's smile widened obscenely, splitting the skin on both sides of his mouth. "Then we shall go to the Nexus."

It was not a question.

"Yes."

"Yesszzzzz."

And they went.

*

The basement was quiet for a while. No one shifted, no one moved. Lester's breathing echoed in his ears. Then, finally... "Jesus."

Stell didn't look up. "Never met the man, myself. I was in Rome while that was going on. I don't know what truth there was, if any, to the stories."

He shook his head. "No. Not that... I mean... Fuck." Stell glanced at him through the trailing, tangled strands of her hair, and he flinched. Sweat ran down his forehead, beaded in the elegant arch of his carefully-plucked eyebrows. His red lips glistened wetly. "Fuck. I don't... I mean... I didn't... I'm sorry." The word hung pathetically in the still basement air.

"Don't worry about it." Taking care not to rip hair from her scalp, she brushed the tangles away from her face. A vague wet streak ran over the curve of her cheekbone to the slender line of her jaw. Lester had not seen the tear in its descent. "It took me a long time to put that part of my past behind me. If I wanted to, I could have found my way to Hell any time, once I healed up." She smiled. "I had it all going fine for me back on Earth. Good job, good home, some friends. Then this all came along, and now I'm right back where I started. Turning and turning, and I can't hear the bloody falconer... Sorry."

Sam's soft, edgeless voice slid easily into the silence that followed, his eyes darting between Stell and Azaquiel. "Your account of the times following the Fall was fairly accurate. The Horsemen were not involved. It was the one time we have voted unanimously on any item, and the one time we have, as a whole, disobeyed a direct request from either Maskim or Seraphi." He shrugged. "I thought that you should know." Ozone faintly wafted through the room as he bent his head once more to the Scythe. Lightning played along its length, blue-white and cold. He did not look up as Stella touched the back of his hand, but he did smile.

"But if you're Lucifer..." Bryn shrugged, and pointed vaguely towards the floor. "Who's in charge down there?"

"The opposites of the people who are in charge up there. My name brings them publicity, a banner to hide behind. Some entities even come to serve them because of my name, because of the stories both sides have spread about me. I don't mean anything to them, any more than the fellow on the cross meant anything to Hitler when he formed his ranks." Now, she did not smile. "But none of this answers my question. What are we going to do now?"

"Perhaps Mister Azaquiel could tell us." Seryph nodded in the direction of the white-suited man, who had as yet been silent, although his eyes held an expression of commiseration. "After all, he didn't pick us up for nothing. What- What Stella did back there must have set off alarms for anyone who could hear within light years. He felt it, and he grabbed us off the street. Why?"

Azaquiel's eyebrows arched. "Quite an accusation, Mister Gibbons." He blew a smoke ring.

"But it's the truth." Seryph's eyes met the other's, and neither looked away. Azaquiel's eyes were sharp, and black.

"Of course." His teeth glinted, fanglike against the dark cavern of his mouth, as he smiled. "You see, I have decided that I like this world. All of these worlds. Preserving them is in my best interest, and yours. To this end, I have taken certain... steps. Insurance, adjustment, a slight manipulation of the odds..."

The edges of a frown pulled at Phil's lips. "And we're a part of the game."

Azaquiel's only reply was to blow an arrowlike stream of smoke in Phil's general direction, and take another long pull on his unfiltered Lucky Strike. "A few friends of mine have just done whatever could be done to even the score. The numbers of Maskim and Seraphi are even once again." He smiled, then. "Now, there may be a chance. We have assembled here some of the most powerful individuals on this or any other plane."

"Who, as much as we like to ignore it, just got their backsides handed to them by one of the Seraphim." Seryph shrugged, cleared his throat, and continued. "Against twelve of them? We could make an effort, and it would be a good one, but we won't have the chance of a candle-flame in Dante's Hell." Phil nodded.

"There are two things you overlook. Raphael was doubly, almost triply, a Seraphim. He assumed Michael's office after the Warrior's untimely death at the hands of Zalrafel, and he acquired power from spilling the blood of another Seraphim. Stella, in killing him, has reclaimed much of that power. In listening to the music, she has learned more, and known more, than any of the others on either Council. And, to top it off, we will - we must - confront them in a place where they will be as mortal as we, or perhaps, where we will be as immortal as they, a place where they will not be able to draw upon an infinity of worlds and possibility and power, because there is only one world that matters. And, to make matters easier for us, in order to end this thing, which they will now that they have started to take casualties, they must go to just such a place."

Seryph breathed out. "The Nexus."

"Indeed, Mister Gibbons. We - or more precisely, you, because my little powers, such as they are, do not lend themselves to combat - will meet them there, and make your 'effort'. Perhaps it will be effective. Perhaps not. All I can say is, we have only one chance to do anything that will count here." The end of his cigarette glared orange as he inhaled.

A silence passed over the room. Nobody moved save with their eyes. Sam's face remained downcast, and the play of chilled lightning across the dark haft of his Scythe, where the break was now nearly invisible, heightened in intensity. The lightbulb in its cage flickered, dimmed, returned to full strength. Tap-tap-tap, Bryn's fingers played on the hilt of his sword...

Finally, Stella sighed, her eyes shut tight. She licked her lips, and nodded. "This thing started with me. I guess it should end the same way. I'll go, but the rest of you... please... stay here. This is my fight."

Shaking his head, Seryph knelt before her, brushing a stray lock of hair away from her face. "No, it isn't. Didn't you hear him? This is our fight. All of ours." Her eyes flickered open cautiously, met his, and held their gaze. He looked away only to turn to Azaquiel. "So I'm in."

"So am I." Phil and Bryn both spoke at once, looked at each other, and laughed weakly. Falling silent, they held each other's eyes for a long moment.

Lester coughed and straightened, tugging at the ragged, torn sleeves of his once space-black suit coat. He looked around the room, carefully avoiding meeting the eyes of the people who had, over and over through the last several days, saved his life. For once, his voice was neither strident or fearful, commanding or submitting. He simply spoke. "I know that I haven't been much of a contribution to this group." His eyes lingered on Phil for a moment, as if daring him to smile, or say something, but was unsatisfied. Shrugging, he continued. "This isn't personal for me. I don't have any grudges to satisfy with these people, and I don't have a commitment to defend this world, like most of the rest of you. If I go, I'll be more of a hindrance than a help, and we all know that's the honest truth. But..." A smile twitched on his lips, and he sniffed, although whether this was brought on by internal emotion or by the clouds of dust that clogged the room, no one could say. "But this is my world too, and there are people in the Outer Worlds - my employees - who are depending on me. I don't expect you'll want me along, but..." He licked his lips. "I want to go. If you'll have me."

Phil laughed, and Lester visibly flinched, but before the magnate could say anything more, his opposite gripped his shoulder in the viselike grip of a hand that could crush diamond. "Lester." The Lead Admin Guy's face was smooth and calm as glass. "We'd be honored to have you with us."

All eyes tracked to where Sam sat, the Scythe cradled in his hands. The lightning, unnoticed, had gone, and the haft stretched across his legs, a black beyond black, pressing on their eyes, on their souls. He didn't look up, but ran his fingertips up the length of his weapon, over the softly luminous, blue-white blade. "My Brethren will be there, of course. My sister. The pretender. My brother. They are as bound up in all this as the Seraphim, and the others. At the Nexus, power flows to them, not the other way around." Before any of the others could react, he closed his fist around the Scythe-blade and tightened, veins standing on his bare, wiry forearm. His nostrils flared, and he took a quick, gasping breath, then let it out. A single drop of blood fell from his clenched fist, fading away before it touched the floor. Cradling his hand carefully to keep from spilling any more blood, he released the blade. A cockroach scuttered past his shoe, turned, and ran in the other direction rather than cross over the shadow of the Scythe. As he raised his hand, the lightbulb dimmed.

Raising his cupped hand with its burden of blood to his lips, he breathed on it, once, and light quickened in the dark fluid. Ice-blue, knifelike eyes watched as the light grew, and grew, and, at a predetermined moment undetectable to his onlookers, he brought his hand down, closing it about the haft of the Scythe, over the now-invisible break. Darkness blazed through the room, and for a moment Seryph, Bryn, Lester, Phil, and even Stell and Azaquiel, needed to shield their faces from its radiance. The sound of wings echoed in the hollow basement. Shadows gathered over Sam, falling about his body, weaving themselves through clothes, skin, hair, flesh, until he was one great pillar of pulsating night, the Scythe-blade blazing brilliantly in its midst.

Stella gasped as the cloak gathered about her like a blanket took life and rose, its fabric covering the single lightbulb in its casement. The room, steel shelves, spilled power tools, cockroaches, rats, and the six of them, filled with a lasting darkness, in which blazed two brilliant, silver-blue stars.

When the light returned, Sam stood alone, several meters from the rest of them, cloak wrapped about him tightly. He grinned, but not because he had any particular choice in the matter. I WILL GO.

Azaquiel grinned in return. "Good. Right this way, then, if you please." The cigarette fell from his fingertips, and he crushed it with the toe of his pristine white leather shoe, and they were gone.

Overcome with the stress of power exerted in too great a time, all the shelves and stacks of the basement collapsed.

*

Out in the darkness, Cacus Itoryx sat up. His back hurt like hell. In fact, everywhere hurt like hell, except for his legs, which he co