"The sharpest thorns are upon the rose
where one can still see the beauty
past the wilted edges."
-Bryn

Pajama Pockets was restless. She hadn't been able to get back to sleep for the last several hours, and she didn't feel like going outside for some reason. This was bad.

The radio statons and televisions weren't working, either. The only thing that came through was static, and something high-pitched that sounded unpleasantly like screaming. She didn't have windows to look out, but she had a firm conviction that whatever she might see, it wouldn't be good.

The red alert klaxons had been particularly annoying while they were going on, the massive SLJ Tower rocking in its foundations, as though a giant had decided to use it for a punching bag. All the same, the thing that scared her most was the silence that had come after the sirens, the gradual sensation of wrongness that crept through the air, even though she had no reason to think there was anything wrong at all. Hexxjo wasn't home. She had tried his house already, and his offices at the JLA Headquarters, even though he didn't technically work there any more. Nobody else was answering their phone, either. Or, at least, they hadn't been. An hour and a half ago, someone had cut the Tower's hardline. All she got now when she picked up the white, smooth Bakelite of the telephone was a woman's tinny voice: "This call cannot be completed as dialed, or the number has been disconnected."

So she curled up on her bed, knees tucked under her chin, her pillow clenched firmly in both white-knuckled hands as she waited, trembling, although she did not quite know for what.

In the distance, there was a muffled thud, and the lights went out, buzzing as power left them. For a second, her room was shrouded in darkness. She let out a little squeak of terror, but light returned immediately, backup power supplies kicking in. The walls glowed with a soft, red phosphorescence, highlighting every curve and corner in her small room with the radiance of old blood. The yellow and orange Pokemon on her dark blue sheets stared out at her, dark eyes suddenly hungry, their smiles hiding something deep and bloody. The Sailor Moon poster on her far wall soaked in the red light, becoming a single, black, hungry monolith, a hole in the fragile reality of her once-cozy room. Shadows danced on the walls, growing and changing form. A lamp became a great, tentacled serpent with red eyes and fangs that glistened like obsidian. Her chair was a hunting tiger, prowling through a jungle of lesser shadows. A few glow-in-the-dark toys on her shelf sent out small puddles of sickly green light against the red tide, small and pathetic by comparison.

Behind her, she heard a slithering, hissing sound, like something climbing up out of a deep, dark well. Pockets felt the shadows oozing up from under the bed, covering the walls, reaching for her...

She screamed and leapt forward, falling out of her bed and onto the soft carpet. One of her shins struck the strong wood of her bedside table. She grunted with pain and, uncomprehending, spared a glance back.

She didn't see anything wrong with her foot. It looked as small, as white, as unharmed as ever. Under her bed, though... Thousands of gleaming specks stared out at her, from the shadows beneath the dust ruffle. Eyes. And they needed meat.

With another scream, she scrambled to her feet, holding her pillow out before her like a shield, yet, at the same time, knowing that there was no shield strong enough to hold out these enemies, nothing to ward off the terrible stairs of those eyes.

There was a knock on the door of her apartment, small, polite, the knock of a woman who does not want to disturb the person dwelling inside. Pockets turned halfway around, still holding the pillow out, against the bed, against the eyes, eyes staring out from every shadow and corner. Her voice was high-pitched and tremulous, as if she was afraid what she would awake if she called out in full volume. The knock came again.

"Who's there?"

"It's your mother, dear." There was no mistaking the voice, her mother's voice, quiet and calm, the same voice that had taken her from the cradle, the same voice that had woven through her thoughts as she lay asleep at night, that first night, so many years ago. An image ran through her head, an impression of colors and feelings - green eyes, dark hair, the touch of a fire-white hand on her cheek... Protection.

Pockets was running before she turned all the way around, jumping past the chair and through the open door into her small living room. The light here was dimmer, a genuine red, not the living thing that rubbed and undulated over the fragile walls of her room. There was a scrabbling sound behind her, a thousand tiny claws catching and tearing at her carpet as they crawled out from beneath the bed, climbing out of the black pits of shadow and into her own world. Her bare feet slipped on the laquered wood of her living room. She stumbled forward, slamming into the far wall in her confusion. It felt warm, eager, like something alive. With a squeak, she pulled back, hands scrambling to find the door, to find the handle. There was another knock, closer, and the squeaking, slithering, scrabbling noises grew louder, pouring across her floor, reaching for the living room.

"Pockets?" Her mother's voice.

She found the handle then, in the darkness, and swung the door open so quickly that it slammed into the wall, which cringed in pain.

A woman stood there, tall, slender, and beautiful, her face open and smiling, dressed all in white. Pockets fell into her open arms, sobbing, and felt herself infolded in a powerful, gentle embrace, felt her mother's breath on the back of her neck, warm and comforting. She returned the hug, breathing fast and panicked, muscles going slack as careful fingers massaged the back of her neck. The white fabric of her mother's dress was smooth as silk, glowing like the walls of a maternity ward, with life and love.

But the touch of the fingers on her neck was not warm. It was cold.

Daring what she would find, she pulled away from the embrace and looked up, her eyes searching the achingly beautiful, achingly familiar face, taking in the raven-dark hair, the skin, the green eyes...

The skin was as white as the core of an icicle, the same color as the flashing, razor-sharp teeth bared by that meager smile, and the eyes gleamed with ancient hunger. Pockets screamed, high and shrill, and brought her arm around hard, her pillow slamming full force into the face of the thing that looked like her mother.

When the pillow struck, it hissed against the thing's skin, and when it staggered back, crying out in pain and rage, it sounded nothing like her mother at all. It slammed into the wall, a small hole burned in its cheek where the pillow had touched. There was no blood, and something dark writhed beneath the false flesh. It straightened, the smile widening, the skin of its face splitting and tearing to reveal something entirely other as its eyes lost all semblance of humanity.

It reached out, and Pockets turned and ran, breathing hard, through the basement of the SLJ building. She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, she needed to go to the bathroom. The hallway was dark around her. Water dripped from cracks in the exposed brass pipes. The cement floor was cold beneath her feet as she ran.

Her mother's voice called after her.

The world swam around Sarah. One moment, the demons were there, all spines and teeth and claws and ravaging fangs, and then... nothing. Darkness, and quiet, stretching on forever. She felt her mind sink into the sea of blackness, becoming numb, with every second more distant from Khazan, from her shattered home on Mabel Street, from Carl and Baby Sue and Lilah and Matt and their children... Pain stung her mind, briefly, but the numbness soon returned, as if someone had shot anaesthetic through her mind.

Light flared around her, stinging her eyes. She shrunk away from it, throwing one hand up to shield her face, and felt its warmth against the deep, still-bleeding gashes in her arms. Strange, she thought dimly. In the darkness' embrace, she had forgotten all about her wounds, about the scars and the blood that soaked her woolen dress, sticking it tight to her aging frame. There was a deep pain in her stomach, and she knew that she was still bleeding, bleeding badly. It was dangerous to bleed this much.

She waited, surrounded by the explosion of light, overtaxed muscles trembling, as the calm darkness faded away into memory. Just as she felt that she could not hold up her hand for a second longer, a voice came like a shining silver bell, resonating through the newfound brilliance.

"Mamma?"

Sarah's face split into a wide smile. Unnoticed, her hand dropped to her side, and she looked about her, laughing so hard that tears sprang to her eyes. She trembled, breathing hard of the warm air, and was glad, for there was Baby Sue, wearing her summer dress, the one with the daisy print, on the red field. Short, curly blonde hair framed the smiling, pink-cheeked three-year-old face, and white teeth flashed as she laughed.

An image rose in the back of Sarah's mind, against all her attempts to push it down: Baby Sue lying on the front steps of the house on Mabel Street, her head lying upon the floor at an unnatural angle, her white blouse torn open as easily as the skin beneath it, blood raggedly pumped from ruined arteries, to form a swiftly spreading puddle of ebony and rust around the small, perfect form. Sarah swallowed hard and pushed the image down again, the smile not even wavering on her face.

"Sue!"

The others were there, too, radiant, the brilliant light pervading their skin and clothing, although perhaps it was the other way around. Matt and his wife Lilah, arms around one another, looked at her with soft, knowing smiles. They were beautiful together, better than she had ever seen them before, Matt's slender face beaming, the light of true joy shining like a star in Lilah's sky blue eyes. They squeezed each other still more tightly, and both their glistening eyes turned to her. Matt spoke, slender lips forming the words. "Hello, Mother."

And there was her own Carl, spectacles pushed down to the tip of his nose, his soft smile twisting his face into a mess of premature wrinkles. The two wings of gray at his temples shone blindingly. "'Ello, luv."

"Carl? Matt?" Blood and acid rose out of her stomach, vomiting out of her mouth and fell gleaming into the darkness. She floated in midair, hacking and coughing, for a long moment before she turned her mind returned to her family. Her blood-sodden dress rubbed hard against torn, bleeding skin as she struggled to stand upright. "Help me..."

They seemed farther away now, yet at the same time terribly present, as if they were fading away into the light, becoming one with it. She held out one hand, clawlike, blood and bile dripping from her fingers as she pleaded. The light was everywhere, almost burning in its intensity. "Please... Help me..."

Carl's gentle, kind smile widened ever so slightly. The tone was the same one he had used to rock Matt to sleep all those years ago, but the words... They were not Carl's words. Or, at least, never Carl's words as she had understood Carl. "Sorry, luv. Nothing we can do."

She shook her head, not daring to understand. Iron-gray hairs clung sweaty to her brow as she struggled to take another step forward. "Please, Carl! Mat!" An urgent gurgling noise rose in her throat, and warm blood ran out her mouth, down her chin, hissing against the light.

Matt, one arm still twined around Lilah's slender shoulders, shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mother. No fighting the Judgement."

Baby Sue nodded eagerly, her blonde head bouncing up and down as if to emphasize the point. "We have to go now, Mother. You get to stay behind."

Sarah stared at them, eyes rolling in her sockets like those of a frightened horse. When she tried to speak, blood almost strangled her. A few coughing seconds later, she regained enough control to speak, but the words were almost obscured by her sobs. "Please! Carl! You can't leave me like this!" She leapt forward, imploring, seeking purchase on his gray Carhart overalls, but she could have as easily gripped the sun. Her arms passed through his luminous form, and its light seared her flesh, scarring and roasting. She screamed and pulled back, the skin half-charred off of her forearms. Beneath dark meat and pulsating, bloodless veins, she could make out the white of bone and cartelidge. Strangely enough, there was no pain.

They were nearly gone now, and the light itself was beginning to fade. The warm comfort of void reached out to her, its slithering tendrils far more terrifying now than they had been some scant moments before. Her vision blurred with overdue tears, to the point where she could no longer make them out as anything other than small imperfections in the fading light, rising, sinking, but most definitely leaving her. They were leaving her, leaving her alone to the void, to sink and die in the darkness. Every bit of fading brightness felt like a meathook being pushed into her soul, and then ripped out, dripping with blood and fat. She screamed, and screamed, doubled up in the middle of a vast, private nothing.

She began to sob, as the light faded away completely, and the pain returned. Her voice was shrill and high as she shrieked through the dark silence. "COME BACK!!! COME BACK!!!"

For a long time, there was nothing. No sound pierced the silence, no light came to the darkness, no movement troubled that which could not be moved. Not even the bleeding scarecrow of a woman that had once been Sarah moved, or spoke, or troubled the perfect chaos.

As sorrow and screams, and even tears, gave way to the quiet of the grave, Sarah remembered Carl's smiling face as he faded away into the light, and hate, like a deadly, brilliant-colored flower, blossomed in her heart.

Light blossomed within the war tent, the skull lamps and burning skeletons springing into their full furor with a suddenness that would have blinded any mortals who beheld it. Fortunately, this was not a problem.

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then the applause began, seven hands clapping in frenzied unison. It was a cultured round of applause, but not so cultured as to remove all signs of appriciation. It was, in truth, the kind of applause that only a group of very close, and very old, friends can give to one another, and even then, only when one of them has done something of particular note.

Six pairs of perfectly normal feet, three women and three men, planted themselves on the elegant, oriental carpet, not even singed by the fires that danced in its weave. The applause from six pairs of hands lasted for quite some time, by their standards. This particular group was not used to giving such prominent approval of anything, but, after all, this was quite a special case.

The applause continued for a moment as the artist took his place on stage, his black leather shoes not quite touching the ivory dais. He bowed his head, and the fires that nestled within his eyes glimmered a deep, gratifying pleasure. His suit was as black as midnight, as black as coffee, as black as the soul of the most evil man who ever lived. The performer knew this. After all, he had spent a boring year once extracting all the various strands and shreds of evil soul from particularly old tyrants, despots, mass-murderers, priests, and just about anything and anyone at hand, and weaving them into the whole-cloth which had later become the impeccably-tailored suit he now wore. It had been the artistic triumph of the decade, but nothing to compare with what he had just accomplished.

Beelzebub beamed with pride and bowed deeply to the other Maskim.

"Szzzzzzzzo, what did you thinkssszzzZ?"

"Most inspiring, my dear." The purring, gentle voice belonged to a woman, or, rather, to one who chose to be a woman. She was of medium height, blonde, and beautiful, with perfectly white skin all but begging for the taint of blood to match the red of her lips. A long crushed-velvet gown clung to her body like the serpent's skin, crying out to be shed. Astarte's eyes were brimming with joyful tears. Of all the group, saving perhaps Beelzebub himself, she was the most artistic. In their own ways, of course, they were all artists of the highest order, but she was the one whose skills ran closest in parallel to his. "The bit with the child denying the parent - genius. Pure genius."

Mammon nodded, slicing off the end of a fat Cuban cigar with the razor-sharp edge of his long, wicked thumbnail. The cigar end struck the carpet with a soft pop. The flames tamed within the threads of the carpet's intricate design lashed out once, and suddenly there was nothing left of the confectio but a slowly expanding cloud of stron-smelling smoke. "The bit with the husband was pretty good, too."

"Pretty good?" Astarte turned halfway around, one slender, dark eyebrow raised daringly. "You sound like a fishwife. It was inspired."

"Inspired? Perhaps. But by whom?" The voice, like its owner, was slender and small, hardly more than a whisper. "You persist in your notion that it is possible for creatures to achieve salvation, my friends. The pain of heaven is nothing better than that of Hell."

Beelzebub bowed his narrow head, eyes gleaming brilliantly. "Ah, but it issszzzz perczzeption that is important here, Leviathan. There need be no true ssssalvation, and no true damnation, but that the mortals believe it isssssszz sszzzo."

"Which is why the piece is so successful." Astarte nodded, turning to Leviathan, his slender, almost spindly form crouched in one corner. "She does not know whether or not the souls she saw ascended to Heaven or simply vanished into light. If she were to really consider, she would have no proof whatsoever that they were those of her own family, or that they were really there at all. But she believes that they were." Her red lips curved upwards in a delicate, luscious smile. "She has assisted in her own fall. Which is why, after all, this is art."

Leviathan raised one hand in a small gesture of aquiescence. "Your point is well taken."

The figure on the stage nodded again, openly smiling. "I mussst confesssszzzz, although the art isssszzz of courssse wonderful in the makingsssss, it isszzz sszo refreshing to use truly mortal soulsssss, and thosssse pledged to Heaven. The Good peoplessss - they are sssso much fun, and," a tongue of flame licked his slender, carved-lava lips, "ssssso much more interessssting to play withsss than the damnedsssss. The qualitiesss of emotion are so much..." He trailed off, snapping his fingers in the air as he searched for an appropriate word.

Before he could come up with one, another voice interrupted him. "Rarer, I think, dear boy."

The Seven swiveled slowly around, their faultless eyes finding the speaker without trouble. It was not one of their number. They knew this. Even though they could change form, shift appearance, and pour from one voice and mortal seeming into another with little trouble, the Maskim could also see through such alterations in others. That, and the fact that none of them would be so foolish to try and pass themselves off as another within the confines of their own private tent.

Of course, it should have been equally incomprehensible for anyone, mortal, angel, or demon, to be so downright foolish and stupid as to approach the Maskim's private tent unannounced, and surprise them while they were in the midst of private discussion. The task itself was nearly impossible, and going through with it was such folly as to earn the attempter any punishment he received in return. But here stood a man. Or, at least, Beelzebub thought he was a man.

He leaned against one of the soul-forged iron tent poles, his body halfway through the glimmering door. Tortured light from the setting sun screamed off of his white trenchcoat and the white three-piece suit beneath, casting short black hair in distinct rivers of highlight and shadow. Apparently mindless of the fact that seven of the most powerful beings in all creation were staring straight at him with definite ill-will, he fished a pack of Lucky Strikes out of his trenchcoat pocket, smacked out one cigarette with the back of his hand and replaced the pack. With the careless ease of practice, he tore the filter off the end of the cigarette, stuck it in his mouth, and snapped his fingers with a sound like a gunshot, echoing in the perfect silence. A momentary point of heat and brilliance flared on the edge of his thumb and faded away, absorbed quickly by the now-darkly glowing tobacco.

They stared at him in open amazement for a long minute before he removed the cigarette from his mouth with two long, spindly fingers, and blew a smoke ring. It floated outwards, glowing green and purple by turns, before it faded finally into the mist of whispy memory.

"Hello, boys." The new arrival's smile widened laviciously as his gaze fell on Astarte. "And girls. How's tricks, then?"

"Azaquiel." Beelzebub no more responded than answered the question. Their two gazes met across the tent, and a momentary spark of recognition passed between them.

"Beelzebub." Azaquiel bowed his head slightly and pulled his forelock, never once dropping the slight smile from his face. With a flourish, he took another drag of the cigarette, smoke coiling through the tent like the Worm Which Dieth Not. "Long time no see."

"Azaquiel." The speaker this time was Astarte, and the tone of voice was entirely different, low, lush, and tempting, with just the barest hint of a fond memory, in addition to a fond future. "You really shouldn't smoke, you know. Bad for your health." He laughed at that, bending very nearly double in his mirth. "Something amusing?"

He recovered admirably, wiping a small tear from his right eye. "I'm sorry. I never thought the Devil would warn me against smoking, for my health, of all things."

"Oh, I'm just trying to have some courtesty, some sympathy, and some taste." She arched one eybrow delicately, and his smile widened.

"And I bet you're in need of some restraint, aren't you Asty my love?" He nodded slowly, his misty hazel eyes staring into her orbs, green like a cat's. "We'll have to see about that later." When she nodded in response, it traveled all the way up and down her body, sliding beneath that crushed velvet dress through every curve and carefully defined muscle. Azaquiel laughed again. "Damn, I knew I'd been away from this crowd for too long."

Mammon was not to be outdone. When the next smoke ring floated gently through the air, it was intercepted by another one, much larger, and formed of perfectly black smoke. The heavyset Maskim leaned back in his mahogany chair, glaring at Azaquiel with small, red eyes. "Speaking of which, perhaps you would care to explain why you have returned to our little grouping? Especially considering the... circumstances under which you left."

For a second, Azaquiel did not respond. Then, like an uncoiling serpent, he straightened and stepped inside the tent. Behind him, the flap swung closed with all the weight of a cast-iron door. With a single, quick stride, he reached one of the many weapons racks scattered randomly around the canvas meeting hall. After a moment, he picked up a single throwing star, no larger than the palm of his slender hand, carved entirely out of diamond. He held it for an instant, no longer, before putting it down and twisting his upper body to face Mammon, if only in the most oblique manner possible. "A good laugh."

The bushy eyebrows forced Mammon's forehead into a field of earthquakes and furrows. "A good laugh?"

"I wanted to see how shoddily you lot were handling this whole thing. Maybe give you a few pointers, you know...." He shrugged.

Beelzebub straightened slowly, his eyes blazing with the fire hotter than ten million suns. "And a lowly half-breed would presssssszume to tell ussssssszzz how to do our job? You presume too much." As if to emphasize his point, he carelessly sent a crackling hail of fire coruscating across the space between himself and Azaquiel, the darkest hungers of the pit burning at its core, consuming space, time, thought, soul...

The fire never reached its intended target. Less than an inch away from the ivory buttons on the front of Azaquiel's coat, it sputtered, weakened abruptly, and died. The new arrival smiled and reached into his coat pocket. When he removed his hand, it held a plain, ancient-looking wooden box. Azaquiel cradled it delicately in the palm of his hand, as if it were the most important thing in all the world. He spoke calmly, in conversational tones, not hinting at all that he had just survived an attack, however half-hearted, from one of the Lords of Hell.

"Funny, the things you pick up along the way, you know, when you're just passing through. Take this, for instance." He motioned towards them with the box. "I was coming through Israel, and my old hash box burned up in a fire outside of Jerusalem. I didn't have time to replace it until I got to Nazareth, but the carpenter there was busy. His son wasn't, though. Made me this little thing, oh, must be a bit under two millennia ago now. Nice boy. Good carpenter. Shame they ended up nailing him up on one of those damn cross things." Sliding the box back into his pocket, Azaquiel shrugged.

"Sorry about the touch of baiting there, but I needed a bit of an occasion for a demonstration. I'm not trying to do anyone's job, or anything like that. I was just passing through, available, well, bored, really, and looking for a little excitement. You all remember me, no matter how tainted the memory, so I was wondering if there was anything I could do to lend a helping hand... in one way or another," he added with a wry smile, and Astarte writhed sinuously beneath his gaze. "I don't take orders from anybody, but, what the hell, this is the last time anything exciting's going to be happening for quite a while, isn't it? If there's anything... out of the way... you all need doing, something big, something quiet, something that calls for a little subtlety..." He shrugged eloquently. "I'm your man. In the meantime, I get a bit of a retainer, room and board, five hundred thou per day, general spending money, and cigs. You'd never believe the problem I had finding an open drug store in this place. I mean, you'd think that they'd heard the Apocalypse was coming on or something." Azaquiel's laugh was full, hearty, and possessed of a shockingly abrupt, pointed end. "So, do we have a deal?"

Far below Khazan, DragonFang was having a relaxing evening. He sat in a high-backed chair, upholstered in red velvet, by a wide, roaring fireplace, and thought. He was in human form, now. Or, at least, he was in a form as close to human as any he had yet succeeded in adopting. Some of his friends had suggested he try and get more used to the human body, so that he wouldn't be quite so noticeable in public places, and he was willing to try it out, even if the point didn't make any sense. The human body was so much more effective when it was eight feet tall, with perfect musculature. Anything less felt so small. In reflection, he wondered why the humans didn't try out being taller. It was certainly much more... liberating.

He chalked another point up for general mortal stupidity, and bowed his head once more to the ragged, shoddily covered first edition copy of Ulysses. In the last day, he had read it three times, forward to back, then back to forward again, from "Stately, Plump Buck Mulligan" on through, and damned if he understood more than three words together. The damned book made more sense read sideways! And what on earth possessed the man to stop using quotation marks? It's not as if his typewriter didn't work or anything...

There was one thing to say for crazy Human Irish writers, though. They made antimatter cross-elimination physics seem much simpler by comparison.

With a long-suffering sigh, he laid the book down on his short, oaken coffee table and pushed himself back, deep into the soft cushions of his chair. The antimatter cannon still had a few bugs to work out, the book wasn't coming along, he didn't feel a bit more connected to the general human condition, and he had the most singularly distinctive hunger. Maybe he had been taking too much on himself. It was about time he took a break.

The fire crackled, sending a shower of brilliant sparks raining across the cold, stone floor. They shone where they fell for brief instants, like falling angels, before burning into blackened ash.

He spoke without turning, his preternatural voice sliding over rustling flames and silent stone like a silken sheet. "I don't recall inviting anyone down here."

A chillingly satisfied smile spread across his slender face as he heard the sharp intake of breath from behind him. Several intakes of breath, he amended. And one particularly notable silence.

His nostrils flared, scenting the air. Fire, of course. There was always fire here, in one form or another. From the workshop down the hall, towards the teleporters, a hint of seared metal, and the inescapable aroma of ultimate destruction. Closer, closer... The hall outside his study...

There. Seven figures, all told... Three of them carried an acrid scent, all blood and barbed wire, burning roses and plague-infested thorns. The other three were different, alien but no less foul, like a stainless-steel operating table just waiting for blood. And the seventh...

Dragon.

The newcomers replied in two voices at once, and a third voice wove through them, a voice that was silence, space, cold, burning, predator, prey, undying, dead, timelessly Dragon.

"I do not customarily wait to be invited. Father."
"I do not customarily wait to be invited. Father."
"I do not customarily wait to be invited. Father."

"I am not your father, little one."

"Ah, but the same blood runs through our veins, yours and mine..."
"Ah, but the same blood runs through our veins, yours and mine."
"Ah, but the same blood runs through our veins, yours and mine."

DragonFang's laugh was sharp and humorless, like splintering steel. "Not quite. You were to be my nemesis, my bane, my undoing, but whomever put you together, whomever framed your symmetry, made a mistake." He shook his head. "You are a copy of me, a lesser instrument, the tool of a jealous rival, nothing more." Slitted pupils narrowed in glistening red eyes, eyes that could burn holes in solid stone. "Do not presume."

"I do not presume, Father. I was less. This is true. But now I am more... so much more than you could dream..."
"I do not presume, Father. I was less. This is true. But now I am more... so much more than you could dream..."
"I do not presume, Father. I was less. This is true. But now I am more... so much more than you could dream..."

"Why? Because you gained a voice? Because you bound some little angels and too-proud demons to you? In your greed, you bound yourself with powers beyond this world, little one. Angels are for Heaven, Devils are for Hell. Dragons are creatures of Samsara. We are the stuff of this world, no more, and no less." He rose, each inch of his eight-foot frame unfolding from the cushioned armchair as he turned. Firelight played across the glistening, blue-white skin that sheathed lean, lithe cords of bone and muscle. Twin slitted, ruby eyes rolled towards the door, and fell upon the three angels, the three demons, and, in their midst, cape flaring behind him like twin, batlike wings, Lil' DF. "You are not a thing of dragons any more."

The little one's face twisted in a snarl, echoed on the perfect visages of the angels, and on the twisted snouts and muzzles of the demons. Before Lil' DF could take more than a step forward, however, DragonFang launched himself at the group, slamming into their midst with all the force his legs could impart. Angels' wings beat at him, and a burning sword swung down, cleaving through the bedrock where he had been an instant before.

He twirled then, a blur of skin and bared teeth, grabbing one of the demons by the throat and bashing it hard, face-first into the rock wall of the passage. Its head broke apart in fragments of bone and glistening, steaming ichor, eating pitted holes in the granite as it oozed over the floor. From the den, he heard Lil' DF groan in wordless agony as the demon's soul, torn and shattered, gave way, flitting out into the endless aether.

Then the others closed around him, and the fight began in earnest. As he spun away from the slash of a flaming sword and ducked under a vicious, backhanded claw swipe, DragonFang thought that perhaps this had not been such a good idea after all. He was trapped in a narrow passage underneath thousands of tons of rock. If he were to change form, the only thing that would happen would be for him to get squished. The only disadvantage to being able to transform into a three hundred foot long living engine of mass destruction, he reflected, was that such creatures required quite a lot of room.

One of the burning swords swung out of nowhere, ripping through shirt, skin, flesh, and bone to come out the other side. Pain obscured his senses in a flash of blissful oblivion, and he heard a laughing cry of angelic triumph.

It didn't last long after he grabbed the sword hilt, ripped it out of the angel's hand, pulled the blade free of his body, and impaled the winged creature with it. The angel screamed for one long moment, its face full of pain and shock, before the light emanating from its skin faded, rainbow blood gushing out of the wound opened by its own sword.

He turned swiftly, crushing a demon's skull with his hand, and twisted his hips into the spin, claws unsheathing from his fingers just in time to tear out an angelic throat.

Four down. The wound in his chest healed quickly, organs knitting back to organs, flesh to flesh, bone to bone, skin to skin. All that was left was the blood, and there wasn't even much of that.

Three to go.

The last angel came in high, bringing her sword overhead for a cleaving blow. It descended in an arc of fire and holy light, but DragonFang was no longer there. One hand shot out, gripping the teetering angel by the back of her neck, forcing her head down into his own rising, blade-like knee. Her pretty face caved in with a sickening crunch.

Which left the demon.

It came howling out of nowhere, a furred streak of teeth, claws, and bony spikes. Blood running hot through his veins, DragonFang grabbed it out of midair and slammed it up against the wall. The thing squealed as his lips curled back, revealing long, glistening teeth. Dragon's teeth ripped through carapace and sinew, tearing and digging. A caustic rip echoed through the passageway as he pulled his head back and spat the demon's windpipe onto the floor.

Six down. He already felt a little winded. Damn. Out of pratice. Newbies were too easy targets, obviously.

They had pushed him back, ten, maybe fifteen yards down the hallway. Ten paces behind him were the teleporters. On his left, the door to the laboratory gaped, a cavern of gleaming equipment, spigots, wheels, consoles and dials. And, there, on a bench next to the door... His latest project.

Lil' DF stood at the doorway to his study, surrounded by the corpses of his followers. His skin glistened, scales bursting out from beneath the fragile, meat-puppet human form, face elongating into a fanged muzzle. The cape billowed outwards as the little one advanced, bones forming within the voluminous black folds. The eyes deepened, glittering, slitted diamonds piercing into DragonFang's rubies. The little one sped up his advance, moving faster, and faster, a streak of scales and gleaming eyes...

Dragonfang's hand shot through the door to his lab and pulled back, bringing with it something long, cylindrical, and silver, what a gun would look like if the gunsmith had eaten a bucketload of LSD before sitting down to make it. It was DragonFang's baby, his new brainchild, his Biatomic Intermolecular Gyroscopic Antimater Stable-Sited Gun. Only enough charge for one shot.

His eyes met Lil' DF's over the silver-gunmetal barrel. He shook his head.

"Not a thing of dragons."

The B.I.G. A.S.S. Gun spoke once, and the hallway was bathed in the light of a thousand miniature suns. Enough energy to light all of Khazan for ten minutes found itself concentrated into a single point, and fought like hell to get out.

When the light faded, there wasn't enough left of the hallway to pack into a snuffbox.

DragonFang sighed, gently placed the BIG ASS Gun on its table, and turned for the teleporter. Apparently there was something going on upstairs. It would probably do him good to see exactly what.

As the blue-green mist of teleportation closed around him, he tried to ignore the little part of him that cried, ever so softly, "Son..."

Cacus Itoryx, Prince of the First Men, slid snake-like into the crystalline darkness of the tiny apartment. He had claimed it for his own in the first few hours of the invasion. Lesser Demons had seen his mark and known better than to trouble with it, and it was far too impoverished for a Lord's residence. All in all, a good fit, and he didn't mind the poor accommodations. After Hell, anything was a relief.

He did not bother with opening the door. Doors made noise, and he hardly wanted to attract anyone's attention, especially since he needed some rest. He was a human, after all, and even if souls technically didn't need sleep, he certainly felt tired. Strange, that someone could feel tired after millennia of slumber, but it was true.

So, tired as he was, he twisted his body, controlling movement, his senses peering down through the thin veil of matter to the haze of bubbled possibility that formed the world of men. Subatomic muscles twitched, fibers of energy linking his cells and atoms together in a careful net, asserting itself into reality with every passing moment. He took a deep breath, adjusted his position by a fraction of a nanometer, and stepped through the empty spaces between the atoms of the door.

The apartment's interior was dark. Shadows stretched out from the hat rack next to the door, painting Cacus' slim, black-and-white silhouette a pattern of accusing crosses. He walked forward, eyes noting the comfortable, not-quite-lush surroundings with tacit approval: the cotton-upholstered sofa, 48^3 inch trivision, bad prints of inferior paintings by superior artists hanging here and there on the walls, everything surrounded by its own pool of shadow. As he passed the living room door, he noted with disapproval the streak of dried blood on the white paint. The previous owner of this particular apartment had been somewhat incensed about its repossession. Unfortunate.

Cacus walked into the gleaming white kitchen and opened the refrigerator, his almond-black eyes scanning over the bottle of milk, the packages of processed meat, the chocolate bar, and finally settling on the beer. Kneeling down, he reached into the fridge and brought back a single, green bottle, the label frosted and illegible. He tore the cap off easily, index finger pressing down hard on the tin and twisting. The hiss of escaping gas slid through the kitchen's stagnant air.

Unhurriedly, Cacus rose, stepped back, and closed the door, bringing the bottle to his lips. The liquid was delicious, not quite a Ryxian wyne, but most likely the best alcohol he'd had in over a hundred thousand years. Bubbles played and prickled against his throat, the beer burning his mouth as it sunk down into a stomach shrunken by aeons of hunger and thirst. Bringing down the bottle, he let out a long sigh of relief, and then, still without turning his head, spoke. "I hope you know what you're doing. I don't take very well to people breaking into my house."

The response was as cold and measured as it was expected. "This isn't your house, Cacus."

The presence had been known, but not recognized. As the words reached his ears, Cacus turned a blur, the force of his spin sending beer sloshing over the rim of the half-empty bottle to splash on the tile floor. "Ned." The voice of the Prince of the First Men was cold, thin, and disapproving.

Nedarion Aleketh Tai'ban, whip-slender, his thin face framed by a mane of long, black dreadlocks, sat comfortably in a high-backed, wooden chair at the kitchen table, his blue eyes locked on Cacus, although whether in question or accusation Itoryx could not discern. "What are you doing here, Cacus?"

Itoryx blinked, once, and shrugged eloquently. "Trying to decide whether I should kill you now, or wait for later. For one."

Old Ned's lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line. "Come now. I thought we had put all that behind us."

"I didn't see you showing up when Baddel fell."

"That..." Ned paused, and shook his head once. "I was detained. But, as always, you bring me to my point."

"Which is?" Cacus' eyes ran over Nedarion's deceptively fragile form, searching for some kind of opening, and found none. Ned had been as fine a practitioner of the Old Ways as had ever lived, perhaps the finest, and he had been practicing his skills almost every day of the last four hundred thousand years since Baddel fell, while Cacus himself was imprisoned in the deepest levels of Hell. Itoryx knew he was stronger, but how much stronger? And was it enough to make up the difference? A thrill of excitement, of challenge, burned through his bones.

"Why are you fighting this war, Cacus?" When Itoryx just looked at him blankly, Ned leaned forward in his chair, eyes piercing blue into black, and tried again. "This is not your fight. You were locked away in Hell for millennia, and when you receive your freedom again, you come out for your tormentors. Why?"

Cacus shrugged once more. "They let me out of Hell. And I fight well."

"They threw you into Tartarus. The Angels destroyed your city, for the Sake!" Ned's voice snapped out like a whip. "And the demons have been violating your mind every day for the last thousand thousand years. Why are you fighting for them, Cacus?"

Outside, in the distance, a building exploded in a cacophony of light and sound. Out of the corner of his eye, Cacus could see angels silhouetted like moths against the sudden gout of flame. Bat-winged demons swooped in from overhead, on the prowl. Behind them, the sky was a mixture of fire and smoke, burning and broiling over the embattled city. He shook his head. "Because the battle's there." Ned's stare did not let up, and licked his lips before speaking again. "Because I don't have anything else to do, you pointy-faced bastard. What am I supposed to do? Fight on the side of these..." At a loss for words, he waved his hand at the window, encompassing the entire city and the dimensions beyond. "These weak-willed igantchien who don't even know how to defend themselves? Not one of these people has a sense of honor. None of them would have been fit for manual labor in Baddel. They are nothing." Angrily, he stalked across the room towards the window. Ten stories below, a mob of embittered, crazed civilians fled wildly through the streets, dodging burning cars and overturned trashcans, a pack of Imps leaping fast on their trail. "They are less than nothing. They're letting this happen."

Ned rose so violently that the chair he had been sitting in toppled over on its back. "You son of a bitch!" Before Cacus had time to react, Ned was across the room, has grabbed the Prince of the First Men by the back of his neck and shoved him into the window, hard, so that Cacus' cheek pressed up against the glass. Itoryx struggled to shake off the hand, but Ned's grip was implacable, the nearly-lethal pressure on his nerve centers keeping the Prince's body paralyzed. Cacus' heart pounded. "Look down there, Itoryx! Look at what you're talking about for a second!"

Cacus looked, just in time to see two of the Imps catch a second wind and bound forward, grabbing a slender, reedy-looking old man from the rear of the fleeing pack. He screamed high and shrill as one of the demons tried to pull him away from the other, who responded so violently that the man's midsection gave way, skin and cartelidge tearing, bones popping off and twisting away. Blood spattered onto the concrete and onto the Imps' already-matted fur.

"I'll let you in on a secret, Itoryx," hissed Ned, his lips no more than an inch from Cacus' ear. "Do you remember little Prince Adam? Miranee's son?"

The pressure lightened just enough for Cacus to speak through clenched teeth. "He was my son too, wasn't he? Until you and your dupes let us down at Baddel. And he died."

"You think so?" Ned's voice was soft, quiet, and indubitably deadly. "I didn't get there in time for the battle. Your First Men were scattered throughout the multiverse, sewing your own little civilizations where you could find purchase on the dimensions, thrown into Tartarus if you couldn't. I arrived too late for you. But," his voice dropped even lower, "I didn't alive too late for Miranee and her son."

Cacus fought his way through the pressure, forcing feeling back into his still-numbed nerves. The glass was cold against his cheek. "Wh-wh-what?"

"I found them in the ruins of the Tower, and I brought them away, found a nice, secluded dimension for them, out in the middle of nowhere. A place called Earth. Four hundred thousand years ago."

Cacus blinked, and remained silent.

"Now, any man alive four hundred thousand years before present, on Earth, if he survived long enough to produce children - and Adam did, I promise you - is, genetically speaking, an ancestor of every living Earthman, and Earthmen have been filtering into this place for the last hundred thousand years, spreading their blood through Khazan's own populace. Do you understand?"

Silence.

"You are related to every single bloody human fucking being out there, you stupid git! You have been killing your children!" Ned's fingers tightened in rage, coming dangerously close to crushing Cacus' spinal cord, barely letting up at the last minute. "And they have been making you do it. The Maskim. The Seraphim." Without the slightest bit of ceremony, he let go of Cacus' neck and stepped back as the Prince collapsed into his kitchen sink, struggling to stand, struggling to breathe. It took the Prince of the First Men all of ten seconds to regain his footing.

His eyes met Ned's across the empty kitchen. For an interminably long minute, neither of them spoke.

Finally, Cacus' mouth opened, and words slid out like nightshade flowers blooming. "So. How do I kill them?"

Ned smiled. "Good. That's the kind of talk I like to hear."

DragonFang moved like a shadow through the darkness below the SLJ headquarters. His clothes were ripped, his flesh slick with sweat and blood. The sweat was his own. The blood was not. Deep within him, the beast stirred. He quenched a rising growl, his eyes burning ruby in the subterranean darkness.

So far, since coming to the top level, he had seen three angels, and four demons. They were dead, now. His muscles swelled with power, an adrenaline rush more powerful than anything a human could survive. Everything around him drifted by in slow motion. He moved like a ghost, like a wraith... like a dragon.

Around the corner just ahead, someone screamed, high and shrill, a little girl's voice. He flowed forward, the muscles of his long legs working like pistons. Shrouded in shadow, he pressed his body up to the damp, rotting concrete wall and turned his head, trying to see just what he was about to get into.

A child, thirteen or fourteen, dressed in blue striped pajamas, crouched trembling at the far wall of a dead end. She looked terrified, fingers clutching a small, white pillow in a white-knuckled death grip, as if it were the most precious thing on Earth. Over her loomed a great, shaggy beast, all muscle, talon, and fang, advancing slowly, step by step through the darkness. Behind it, almost completely obscured by the shadows, stood something... else, slender as a whip, all hard edges and antennae, arms jointed with an insect, glowing with a deep red light. It shook with laughter, low and hissing.

The Imp stepped forward.

The demon laughed.

And the girl swung her pillow straight into the Imp's crotch, tearing through hide, skin, flesh, and bone in an arc of crimson blood. The imp squealed in pain with a voice like ebon razors scraping across the chalkboard of the universe. Before it could react any further, the girl reversed her grip on the pillow and brought it around again, impacting in the Imp's chest with a sickening crunch of breaking bone.

The demon's laughter stopped. It was never determined whether it stopped because it was surprised, or because DragonFang's hand suddenly existed where its own larynx (or what passed for a larynx) used to. With a shake of his head, he pulled back his arm and wiped the black, viscous ichor off on the concrete wall, where it bubbled and hissed, pitting the gray, pebbly surface.

The Imp fell at the same time as its master, collapsing to the ground with a dull thud. The girl straightened, her fear vanished in an instant, and fixed DragonFang with an icy blue, confident stare. "Who are you?"

When the dragon smiled, he did not show any teeth. "Who are you?"

The girl glared at him suspiciously, one blonde eyebrow arched half in question, and half in threat. Her shaking death-grip on the pillow was the only sign that she was anything other than perfectly composed. The pillow gleamed in the darkness, looking particularly white, fluffy, and comfortable, not at all the glowing weapon of destruction she had just wielded against a member of Hell's own vanguard. At the least, she was worthy of some respect.

Then, his brain began to catch up with his eyes. Pajamas... The pillow... Because he was a dragon, his face did not convey the spurt of recognition that burned across his mind. The curve of the jaw... No wonder that face looked familiar. It had nearly carried the Contest of Champions, after all. "You're Seryph's girl, aren't you?" He paused, thinking. "Pouches?"

She grinned in response, an earnest schoolgirl's grin, spreading from dimple to dimple unimpeded by suspicion or fear. "Pockets."

"Right." He paused for a second, thinking how best to introduce himself. 'DragonFang, Eater of Newbies' probably wasn't the best idea in the world. That pillow looked like it would hurt, and anyway, he would really like to avoid any unpleasantness. "I'm a friend. My name is DragonFang. I know your..." Pause. Again with the thinking. 'Creator' wouldn't work, and 'father' was just plain inaccurate. For lack of something better, he finished, "Agent." She looked at him strangely, but whether that was because he was phrasing things so oddly, or because he was an eight foot tall humanoid with glowing red eyes that, for all intents and purposes, seemed about to help her instead of try and eviscerate her, he did not know. For lack of a better idea, he tried again. "Seryph?"

Her cold blue eyes softened markedly, and she let the pillow drop slowly to her side. For the first time, he saw something under the hard exterior, a young girl pressed to the limits of her abilities, lost, alone, and afraid. Pockets swayed on her feet and slumped back to the hard concrete of the wall, her slender shoulders shaking softly beneath the blue and white fabric of her pajamas. Her breath came heavy and fast in the post-battle silence.

DragonFang stood there for a second, not quite sure what was happening. Then, tentatively, he moved forward, taking great care as he did so to avoid splashing any of the pools of black, steaming ichor and blood upon his trouser leg. When he got close enough, he could see that Pockets' pale, freckled Irish face was contorted into a quiet sob. She was trying hard not to cry, and losing. Bright, ice-blue eyes sparkled with barely-restrained tears.

The millennia-old half man, half dragon, bent forward and hesitantly laid one hand on Pockets' shoulder. It was not a hard touch, not a restraining touch, but it was a touch,and slowly, her shuddering began to cease.

"Are you all right?"

"It..." She broke off, wiping her eyes on a pajama sleeve, and tried again. "Back in my room... One of them came to me. It looked... It..." Her voice cracked, and she stopped, but a second later she began again, stronger and more self-assured. "It looked like my mother."

"A trick of the mind. That is how these things work. They pray on your fears. It was not your mother."

"But what if-"

"It was not your mother, young human. Only something pretending to be, passing itself off in a form pleasing to the eye."

Pockets nodded, but did not speak. The silence held for some time.

DragonFang cleared his throat, a low cough more designed to remind than to interject. "This place is not safe. Are you well enough to travel?"

At her nod, DragonFang took the small child's hand and pulled her to her own feet. "Then take my hand, small one. We travel."

The Horsemen ride through downtown Khazan, sowing chaos in their wake like the seeds of Oblivion. Flames lick at the wheels of the four motorcycles as they vault over a twenty-two car pileup, a relic of the riots not twenty hours earlier. The four motorcycles hover in the air for a moment, before touching down amidst the huddling crowd of frightened, emaciated humans with the force of a thunderbolt.

There is Uriel, the tagalong, the least filling the place of he who was once great. He wears a black suit, impeccably tailored, and his skin burns with the brilliance of the righteous. Only now, his glory burns the faithful and the apostate alike, and his gaze severs souls from their bodies. He grabs a young woman, a prostitute, and stares at her with those eyes. She screams and falls silent in his grip, writhing beneath her once-pretty clothes as the soul leaves the body, destined for torment. The babe in her arms cries out in pain and panic as it falls from lifeless hands to the ground, where an errant, terrified foot ends its life even as it had begun, with a sudden cry and a sharp pain to the midsection.

Famine, too, is there, his black leathers creaking as he lashes out with hands and mind. With his hands, he grabs out at people, at he already-fleeing crowd. They shie from him, but he is too fast, and those talonlike hands close around arms, legs, shoulders. In less than a second, the grabbed body falls, drained of health, youth, life, body disintegrating into dust before it hits the ground. And even as the black, bottomless pit of Famine's body devours the life forces of those about it, so too does the endless darkness of his mind stretch out over the city, over the multiverse, devouring hope, devouring time, devouring love. For at the end of hope, at the end of time, at the end of love, lies the one thing more, the one thing you wish, the one thing more you dream, that hunger which can never be filled. Across an omniverse, creatures great and small feel Famine's touch, the creeping death, the mind-death, and dispair.

See the beauty of War, amazing, astonishing as she stands astride her motorcycle, not moving, not fighting, as conflict spreads out from her. Impassive as a statue carved of marble and red gold, she watches behind the mirrored visor of her helmet as violence spreads itself outwards, leaping from mind to mind. In the panicked rush for an exit, two men trip over one another, and turn against themselves. Others join in, dragging in their friends. It moves like a whirlwind, spreading from body, to mind, to soul, and from soul to body once more. Blood hits the ground as men and women go for their neighbors' throats. The screams of the dying and the roars of the triumphant echo through the chaotic square, as War sits upon her own red steed, gloved hands wrapped around handlebars, saying nothing.

And Pestilence. Of course, Pestilence. He stands at their head, the Diadem of Conquest gleaming upon his brow, all the blazons of Heaven and Hell rolled into a single small, unearthly jewel. He laughs, and skin splits off of his face, revealing the seething mass of maggots and creatures of rot that feed on his putrid flesh. Drops of runny blood and ichor stain his immaculate white clothing a thousand shades of disease, and yet it remains always white. He laughs as around him those not already taken by hunger, or by panic, writhe on the ground, blood clotting in their veins, souls curdling and turning to so much aetherial jelly. For, the power of Pestilence lies not only in the realm of this world, but in the realms beyond. Corruption sickens the mind as well as the body, and reduces the mightiest civilization to dust and bad memories.

About them whirl the winds of chaos. Watch, and see, and tremble. The storms of chaos dance at their heels, and what comes in the wake of those storms, nobody knows.

But always, at the heart, no matter how hard you try and see something else, you will find the laughter of Pestilence, and the cold, unmoved silence of War.

The Seraphim regarded the city below, and planned the course of the war. They needed no language. The power of Heaven stood behind them, and brethren need have no secrets from one another. Now, in these late nights, few remembered that they had ever been anything other than the Highest, and of those few, all that survived sat upon the Thrones themselves.

They contemplated Khazan, with its Arenas, its slums, its ghettoes of industry and science, of poverty and debauchery, and they contemplated the demons, the Maskim, their fallen brethren and those risen out of pure will, or out of the corrupted souls of a thousand million worlds. They contemplated war, and they contemplated the plan, and they contemplated how they should spend the eternity following the Final Victory. They spent a momentary instant dispatching troops to deal with the troubles in Victor Street, as their minds traveled outwards, considering the war on other planes, overt and covert, grand and small. They conversed for a time about the siege of the Just-Us League headquarters, and moved on once more. Their minds covered the universe, from the infinitesimal to the infinite.

Some surprise, then, that they did not notice the intruder to their sanctum until he lit a match and brought it, orange flame oddly out of place in the heavenly radiance, to the tip of a Lucky Strike cigarette, the filter expertly ripped off. Azaquiel took one long puff and blew a slender, swiftly widening smoke ring out into the glowing eternity of the Seraphic Council Chamber.

The one called Gabriel, Appointed of the Highest, glared at the Azaquiel with eyes like the cores of a million suns, and brighter still. He spoke quietly, yet at the same time with a voice to shatter worlds. Behind him, six immense, gleaming wings fluttered in time with his speech.

"Why have you returned, wanderer?"

Azaquiel smiled like a shark whom the minnows have just asked to come out and play. "Well, mate, I have a small proposition for you."

They stood near the window, the streets of Khazan far below lit by explosions and the orange flares of burning buildings, like sadistic Christmas lights. Angels swooped through the inferno, bright with their own fierce inner radiance. Black shapes moved through the shadows as well, ragged, bat-winged silhouettes against the smoke, visible for a second, then fading away again into the darkness. It was the first night.

Angie shuddered, and turned away from the sight. "How long?"

Whisper shrugged, his thin face inscrutable in the half-darkness. "What do you mean?"

"How long can this go on?"

"As long as they want it too, I think." With a sweeping gesture of one slender, musician's hand, he took in the burning, war-torn city, the ongoing battle, the flare of combat as three of the dark silhouettes fell upon one of the gleaming angels in a fury of claws and teeth. "They've been waiting for this a long time. Wars of brother against brother are the most fierce, and the most violent."

Angie's tongue wet her delicate, pink lips. "And what happens when one of them wins?"

Firelight rippled off of Whisper's raven-black hair as he turned to face her, his own pale, pale eyes looking into hers, dark gray rimmed with a catlike corona of yellow. "Then..." He trailed off, and the silence of the darkened hotel room rushed in to fill the gap, like a cold, drowning sea.

She turned away from his gaze, looking back out at the war. Angie hugged herself, arms wrapped tightly across the front of her black tee-shirt, squeezing so hard that her knuckles turned white. Off in the distance, the rolling ball of angel and demons exploded in a burst of flame, consuming all four figures, leaving nothing but ash behind. Reflexively, she jerked her eyes away. They fell upon a small vase of flowers set upon the windowsill, white roses, petals an elegant mixture of light and shadow, changing as the fires leapt and danced outside their window.

Her eyes burned. A river of fire wound its way down her ivory cheek, following the curve of bone and skin. Before the tear reached her jaw, she brought one hand to brush it away. She had to stay strong. She had to...

The touch of Whisper's hand on her shoulder was like an electric shock. Her first instinct was to shrink away, but, slowly, she forced herself to stand. His voice, like his name, danced softly in her ear. "It's all right, Angie. We... I feel the same way."

She twisted in his grip then, turning so that she could face him, their bodies almost, but not quite, pressed against one another. She saw the pain in his eyes, barely held back by a will as old as the first mother's lullaby, and she understood. Another tear followed the first, and she let it fall, darkening the faded black cloth of her tee-shirt. "I just don't feel like being alone tonight."

Whisper nodded slowly, and, after a pause that dragged on forever, leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. And, as if in a dream, she leaned forward in return, and kissed him. They clung together, each one desperately looking for support, and neither of them could tell who was supporting who. The Muse of Music smelt ever so faintly of cedar trees and mountain mornings. Angie breathed in the fragrance of him, felt his hands moving slowly over her body, like a musician working on a delicate instrument, each touch burning through her mind, and she wept, and she knew that he was weeping too.

Blind to the world, and at the same time all too aware, they staggered together, towards the doorway into the darkened bedroom, with its floor to ceiling windows and the great, king-sized bed. Clothes fell from them as they moved, peeled away by soft, questing fingers: shirts, pants, jewelry. Angie's fingers caught in the elaborate, golden tie of Whisper's flowing cape, and the Muse's own long fingers slid back, guiding her through the knot, until at last the cloak fell in a discarded heap to the elaborate, navy blue carpet. Whisper's skin was nearly alabaster, stretched taught over a wiry, slender body. Her mouth twisted up in a wry, sad half-smile. Beneath all the divine finery, he wore plain, simple white boxer shorts. Then he pressed her close again, and the thought faded away.

As they crossed the threshold to the bedroom, he undid her black, lace-fringed bra. It fell. A few buildings away, a skyscraper exploded, burning like a torch, the light of its destruction flickering over the ivory swell of her breasts, the taught skin of arms, legs and abdomen. The light faded in an instant, leaving only the glisten of a salt tear as it ran down her face and splashed upon her breast. He wiped it away with one hand, and whether she gathered him into her arms, or he her, neither of them was able to remember it in all their days afterwards.

They made love upon the silk sheets of the king-sized bed at the end of the world, clutching at each other more like mourners for a departed friend than lovers. Whisper's hands burned as they moved over Angie's skin, and she returned the favor, rising to meet him at every turn. Tears commingled in their mouths, bitter and brilliant all at once. He moved in her, and she moved through him. Silence pressed down on both of them as they tried, desperately tried, to leave behind the darkness.

Time stretched out, like a single, tremulous high D on a violin, and then, as if of its own accord, drew together in a brilliant explosion of sensation. For the first time since they came into the bedroom, a sound hung on the air: a sigh, delicate, sorrowful, and soft, and whether it came from both, or from one, or from neither, was impossible to tell.

And there, at the end of the world, they slept.