[33] Mayfair

The church was called Believe. Or rather it was called Believe., with the period included. That combination of word and grammatical mark, scrawled in seemingly careless, albeit legible, cursive upon the façade of the momentous structure, seemed with its pure white glow to breach the black cloak of night for any approaching from the parking lot, which was large enough that the entirety of Whitecrosse Castle might be placed within its boundaries.

"Why is the period included in the church's name?" Mayfair asked the senior pastor, Justin "Just" Vance, when Styles introduced them.

"Because," said Just Vance, a startlingly young man or at least a man who looked startlingly young, with every element of him sleek and clean and confident, his hair and eyes shiny black, "that's the end of it, isn't it? Belief. Without it, you've got nothing, huh?"

"Belief is what it's all about tonight, that is most definite." Styles smiled and smiled and shook Just Vance's hand emphatically as though they were old friends finally reunited, but Mayfair detected something cringingly subservient in his demeanor—she had an eye for such things, given the officials at court—and suspected Just Vance stood an echelon elevated. Even when he smiled at Mayfair and gave her his explanation for the name he stood aloof. Not a cold aloofness. It was as though he already had one foot in the Kingdom of Heaven.

And why not? Compared to Styles' church, this "Believe." church served a true testament to God's glory. Styles described it as a "megachurch," and no neologism might have fit better the sprawling expanse of pure edifice that rose out of the flat terrain of the parking lot and the moonlit lake behind it. They were in a suburb of Cleveland called Lakewood—"a smidge more upscale," in Styles' words—and instead of the rusted profusion of twisted and incomprehensible metal that swarmed the lakefront in the city proper here all was pristine and beautiful. In the past two weeks Mayfair had come here time and again for rehearsals and practice. She knew her speech by heart, as well as when to begin speaking and when to end. A trained dog someone kept whispering in the back of her mind and could not shake the sensation. Yet doggedly she continued onward.

Tonight was the night. Not solely for her speech to the people of Earth. In Whitecrosse great happenings occurred. She might have timed everything differently but the frank explanation was that she procrastinated. Not out of sloth but uncertainty, a constant oscillation on the question: Did she want to bother with Whitecrosse anyway? Yes, no, maybe, back and forth she caromed all while the deadline for her performance inched closer on the calendar until its inevitable encroachment made her say to herself: It's now or never! That sense of finality spurred her into action and she set everything moving. It wouldn't hurt to try, she told herself. If it all goes wrong—and let's be honest with ourselves, given your stellar ability to convince people to do anything, it will—you'll at least have put in an effort to save them.

Except it didn't go wrong. In her pocket she kept folded the relevant papers so she might assess the situation even as she prepared for her performance (and what preparations! The powders and glosses they applied to her face, pbbbth!), and all went somehow exactly as anticipated. Temporary reached Whitecrosse and created the portal for the Elf-Queen. Mayfair's mother went down to the vault to arm herself. Flanz-le-Flore, spurred by jealous ire, joined the combat. A few slight interventions here and there, no more than a couple strokes of the pen, were enough to keep the situation from spiraling awry, and during the more banal moments of empty waiting when Mayfair was not needed for makeup or anything else she could even intervene to keep deaths to a minimum. (Of course some still died. It was impossible to prevent all death. But Mayfair acted without malice, with only thoughts of hope and mercy. Even those she hated she endeavored to save.)

Now an anxiety gripped her: What if things went right? What if Mademerry delivered to her the Mustard Seeds, and used her specially-chosen animus on them, and no unexpected hidden rule made it impossible? How far was Mayfair truly willing to go? What if everything here at the megachurch went well too, and the people adored her, and then she immediately stomped that goodwill by warping their world entirely? She realized she had allowed things to progress to this state due to ambivalence, a sort of hedging of her bets, a way to strike against fear of failure by presenting herself with contingencies. Could all her contingencies exist simultaneously, though?

If she got them to love her then they would accept Whitecrosse. It had to be so. If she made them accept her then that too must be part of the acceptance.

(Besides. Which is more important: That they love you or that you save an entire world from perdition? It rent her to pieces that instinctually she wanted to say the answer she knew to be wrong.)

She went to the toilet and vomited. Afterward her stomach settled and jumpy animation left her: Mere nerves.

The relief she felt immediately dissolved when Dalton came to her and communicated in his voiceless way: The elf is here.

The elf. With her head so set on her schemes Mayfair at first thought he meant Temporary. Then she remembered: that damnable Sansaime. Some part of her suspected something like this might happen, but now...

Now what? Sansaime knew no tact or manners. If she snuck into the church (and it was so large and had so many entrances she assuredly would), it would be trivial for her to cause a scene and ruin everything. Even attempting to apprehend her could cause a scene. Besides, if Mayfair sent Dalton after Sansaime, and Sansaime slipped past him in the massive crowd—again a trivial feat—then Mayfair herself would be undefended.

Her stomach churned again but she tamped it down. Agitation never led to intelligent action. She took a deep breath and slowed the racing of her heart and realized a simple solution. Retrieving a paper from her pocket she scribbled: The corpse of Charisma shall return through the Door. That would give her additional protection. She could have Charisma hide in the rafters of the gigantic church, where nobody could see her, to scan the entire area. She'd spot Sansaime well in advance and coordinate with Dalton to prevent mischief.

The Door was key to her current plan and so she had instructed Styles to move it from his residence to the megachurch. However, Styles' relationship with Just Vance was not ironclad enough to explain to him what the Door was or its purpose, so instead he rented a trailer in which he placed the Door. The trailer was parked in the smaller lot behind the church, where there were spaces for employees. The other corpse under her command, the old man she revived on Thanksgiving, could open the Door to let Charisma through. (The old man was otherwise worthless, with brittle bones, sluggish movements, and poor eyesight.)

She calmed. After such a repeated string of failures her plan in Whitecrosse was working, so why wouldn't this plan too? Really she kicked herself for not expecting Sansaime sooner. Those advertisements Styles made broadcasted Mayfair's position on every television in the city, so of course Sansaime would figure it out. There were so many things to track it wore her thin... Anyway, Sansaime ought to have realized she was pregnant by now. Wouldn't that stop her from attempting anything reckless?

"Ah. Mayfair."

She turned. She'd been walking down one of the passageways behind the megachurch's main stage, filtering from her mind the stagehands and production staff who passed her one way or another. Dwight J. Styles approached, done up as meticulously as Mayfair, although he wore a smart suit that slimmed his waist and a soft, salmon-pink tie that reduced his overall edge. He smiled—he'd been practicing his smile all week.

"Hello, Pastor Styles."

"I heard from the makeup crew you ran off to the bathroom."

"Oh, I, um, it was simply..."

His hand fell on her shoulder. He looked down at her warmly. "Are you nervous? It's okay to say yes. I'm nervous too. I've been preaching a long time, but never to a crowd this big. It's natural to be nervous."

Her first instinct was to lie, but what would be the point? "Yes. I'm quite anxious." Though she couldn't divulge the full reason why. Styles knew about Sansaime already. If he became aware she was in the area, he would cancel the event, wouldn't he? Of course. He was a kind man, and although he held a certain degree of ambition, he would not risk her life. Or, from a more rational perspective, if she died, his ambition would be thwarted. Nonetheless she knew, although he hadn't told her, that he had staked his reputation and perhaps his entire career on this event.

Just Vance possessed power, gauged from certain metrics, that exceeded that held by any person in Whitecrosse, even Mayfair's mother. Though he seemed fair with that power, he doubtless did not grant any random person use of his megachurch's stage, nor even an old acquaintance. Styles had needed to do much to convince him. Part of that involved the sermons Mayfair gave at Styles' church, which had been watched by Vance's associates. (Not Vance himself. Never himself.) After she passed this oratory "test," she was brought to a cold, clean, gray building with several cameras and instructed to revive another dead old man similar to the first. With the Staff of Lazarus, she did so, and then Vance's associates took the reanimated old man away for "questioning."

Though Mayfair was not present for this questioning, she was able to discern via her control over the man what they asked and puppeteer him to give answers. General questions, such as the day of the week, the year, and so forth, she could answer accurately. Then they asked personal questions regarding the man's original identity; that she could not answer. They also took samples of his blood and tissue. Mayfair thought she must have "failed." They would certainly know the truth: the man remained dead. Nonetheless, the next day, Styles and Mayfair were officially invited to give a sermon at Believe.

But Vance would not be presenting them personally. He would not appear on stage at all, though he was present behind the scenes. Why? Mayfair suspected: He, like her, was hedging his bets. If everything went well, he could claim credit for giving them a platform. If things went poorly, he could distance himself personally, perhaps using his associates as scapegoats. For Styles, then, everything hinged on tonight. A sudden cancellation would ruin him.

Sansaime attacking, even in the middle of the sermon, would not. No. Just the opposite. When the police apprehended and unmasked her as a hideously disfigured creature with long pointed ears, would it not appear as though a devil from Hell was the culprit? It would lend credence to Mayfair's claims as a prophetess. For many, it would cement belief even more. As long as Sansaime didn't kill Mayfair—and with Charisma and Dalton she shouldn't be able to—Sansaime's intervention was a good thing. Yes. A good thing, not a bad one.

Sensing that Mayfair was still not fully calm, Styles softened his stiff smile into a lesser but more real one. "If you don't want to do this, it's fine. I know I've pushed you. But you can walk away. I'll give a sermon on Lazarus and look foolish—that's fine. I don't mind. I've looked the fool before. Vance will hate me, but what can he do? He can't take away my humble little church. He wouldn't even want to, he's not spiteful for everything else about him. No, don't feel compelled—"

"I want to feel compelled," Mayfair said.

"What's that?"

"Compel me. Push me. Tell me it's important," she said. "Say you rely on me. Say you need me. That's what I want."

Styles chuckled. His smile broadened. "Well now. Alright. I need you, Mayfair. I need you more than you know. And I think, more than what I need—this world needs you. What you're gonna show them tonight. This is a hurt world, Mayfair. A hurt country. Deeply hurt, deeply fractured. We can—we can give them something to unite them. To make them feel whole again. To make them smile again. And most of all, to make them believe in God again. You think you can do that?"

Her nod accompanied a slowing of her heart's pulse; she too smiled. A man in a headset leaned near the end of the passage and said: "On in ten!"

Styles shot the man a thumbs up. "Come on Mayfair, let's get where they need us to be."

Mayfair hurried to keep up with his brisk trot. Heal this world—yes. That was it. This world and hers too. Two worlds in one night. She did it all for everyone. And she was calm.

—

The stage was set. A small, semicircular stage, lit from below by a line of shining squares, adorned with only a simple pulpit more like a podium on which a few blank sheets of paper sat. The stage was meant mainly for a single speaker, and the shape of everything around it funneled toward it, drawing the eyes of all within the vast expanse of seats inexorably onto that speaker, though he or she may appear quite small for those far in the dark and cavernous back. For those who could not see, gigantic television screens hung from the ceiling, showing the speaker in multiplicative magnification. His or her voice was broadcasted out an audio system that traveled through the stadium like a series of veins, and metal scaffolding shone brilliant floodlights to bathe everything important in glorious illumination.

The church had a maximum capacity of 10,000 worshippers. Tonight, every single seat was filled.

As Dwight Jeremiah Styles stepped onto the stage, raising a hand high in a friendly wave, the rows upon rows fanning before him into black oblivion erupted in applause.

"God bless you," he said. "God bless you all." The applause quieted.

"Now I know many of you have come to see something special tonight. And you'll see it, that's for sure. Consider my speaking here just a way of introduction, and I promise I won't take long. I just want to talk to you fine folks today a little bit about—Belief. Ain't that the long and short of it, folks? Believing in the Lo-o-rd Jesus Christ." He shook his head as he accentuated the "Lord," drawing it out, and receiving in response scattered amens from the crowd. Mayfair, backstage, instantly noticed that Styles did not speak how he normally did. The usual erudite precision gave way to a more rustic enunciation. But in that single word, that "Lord," she heard him exude an animation and passion she had never heard in his previous sermons.

"And that's why you're all here, huh? Because you believe. It's the name of the church after all, this fine church where my good friend Pastor Vance—who many of you know—has let me speak for a turn."

He paced the stage rapidly, his hands gesturing at proper intervals, his face always changing. Now it went somber, tilting downward, and he kicked his feet shyly.

"But I must be honest with you folks," he said. "Sometimes in this world, it can be hard to believe. It can. I'll admit. Even me, a man of the cloth so to speak, can feel this—this doubt, creeping, crawling. Have you ever felt this doubt yourself? And I don't mean open rejection here folks. Nonono. Nothing like that. Just a question there, in the back your mind sometimes. Sometimes you'll be watching the news and think: How can God let this happen? Or sometimes you'll feel angry, or sad, because the world has dealt you some injustice, and you wonder why God saw fit to inflict this injustice upon you. Of course those types of things are all common topics for a sermon, and I'm sure you fine folks have heard them before, by better speakers than me to boot. Seeing this is a special occasion, however, and how we have something particularly special planned after I hurry up and speak my peace, I thought I might try you with a little doubting question of my own I've had from time to time in the past. Maybe I'm alone in thinking this way, just an old man who gets too bent into pretzels mulling things over, but in case any of you fine folks have thought it too, I figured I'd go ahead and say it:

"Where are the miracles?

"Does anyone ever ask themselves that?" A few polite murmurs. "Now I admit, it's a bit of an unfair thing to ask. Isn't this world just full of miracles? Look around you. Look at this. There are 10,000 people in this room worshipping God, and they're joined by hundreds of thousands more watching in their homes across the United States and even beyond. Isn't that a miracle, folks, so many people united in their love of God and Jesus Christ?" Some amens. "But that's not what a miracle means, is it? After all, we can explain television. We know exactly how it works. We can explain modern medicine, we can explain the airplanes up in the sky, we can explain skyscrapers and the internet and your smartphone. But if you went back in time and showed a man in Israel any one of those things, he'd sure think it was miracle. And if this were one of those misled Israelites who came to worship the golden calf, he might even bow down and start praising your smartphone like it was an idol. After all, what can a true prophet of the Lord do that your smartphone can't, huh?"

Styles laughed, showing this question was in friendly jest, and the crowd chuckled politely alongside him.

"And that's where my little doubting question creeps in. In this world where every miracle can be explained by some scientist, some textbook, some Wikipedia article, where are the true miracles? The things that science can't explain. The things that prove God is alive and well in this world and continuing to watch over us his children as he watched over the Israelites marching out of Egypt. But no, we can't have those kinds of miracles nowadays, can we? And those sneering nonbelievers out there say: Look! If your God is so real, then where are the miracles? Or—even worse—if your God is real, what can he do that humans haven't figured out to do themselves?

"Now you may not believe it, but these sneerers have been around since the beginning of time. They were around even when Jesus Christ walked the Earth. Some of these fools are so blind that even if they saw it—a miracle I mean, a true miracle—even if they saw it with their own two eyes they wouldn't believe it. None of you are sneerers. I know that. Else I'd have been sneered off the stage already for talking so much." A louder, more genuine laughter from the crowd. "But doesn't the question sometimes sneak up on you? That question, that needling little question: Oh Lord, why don't you make your presence known in this world? Why don't you show us a miracle?

"Now God, he has a plan. He doesn't just do things without thinking it over very carefully, and he's not here to show us parlor tricks just cuz we asked. But in the Bible, in times of great strife, in times when the heart of the world is hard, God sometimes sends a sign. A sign to his true believers that he is here, and he will protect us. And perhaps no sign he ever sent was stronger than the one shown by his son Jesus Christ when he brought the dead back to life.

"It's a simple story. You may know it. A man named Lazarus, who was the brother of Mary and Martha and who was a friend of Jesus, fell ill while Jesus was away—and died. Mary and Martha, distraught with grief, said to Jesus when he came: 'O Lord, had you only been here, Lazarus would not have died.' They were believers, they knew Jesus to be the true son of God and they knew his power was absolute, just like you and me. But in that moment, in their grief, they doubted. 'If only you were here,' they said. Implying that he couldn't make things whole again now that he was here. They believed, yet they doubted.

"Jesus said to them, 'Your brother will live again!' Mary and Martha thought Jesus meant that Lazarus would be raised to life on Judgment Day. Jesus Christ himself told them—your brother will live again. And even then they doubted what he meant, they thought he was speaking metaphorically, or referring to something that would happen many, many centuries later. That's how easy it is even for a true believer to forget the power of miracles. And in that doubt, they grieved, when they ought to have rejoiced. You see, sometimes God tells us things in the plainest possible language, and we just don't get what he means!

"Jesus went to the tomb of Lazarus. Martha said to him, 'Lord, Lazarus has been dead four days—there will be a terrible smell!' She still doubted what Jesus was about to do, when he was right there about to do it! Jesus said, 'Didn't I tell you that if you had faith, you would see the glory of God?' The tomb was opened, and Lazarus emerged—alive! It was a miracle! Yet it was exactly what Jesus said he would do.

"Today, fine folks in the audience, fine folks watching from home, you'll see a similar miracle to what Jesus Christ performed that day. God remains among us, even in this day and age, and when the faith wanes, he sends signs to his believers to prove to them his existence. Today this world, where everything seems to be explained, will see something even the smartest men and women would call fantasy. Make no mistake though, folks. What we will show you now is no fantasy. I've spoken enough. May I introduce to you a young woman possessed of true faith in God and Jesus Christ: Miss Mayfair R.L. Coke!"

Mayfair's cue. She stepped onto the stage, carrying with her only the Staff of Lazarus, and behind her several assistants pushed a closed casket. The casket contained a man who had tragically died some days prior of sudden disease. The show would go through the motions of proving his identity, proving the fact that he was dead, and so forth. Mayfair would speak a few words. Then she would bring the man back to life. Vance's people had briefed her on the man's identity ahead of time. She knew what answers to put in his mouth to the questions Styles and, later, the man's family would ask. All had been done with eager permission from the family, of course, and they would be part of the performance. Perfectly simple.

The people applauded for her, but they were kept behind shadow, even those in the front row whose faces she made out clearly. It was her mind that pressed the shadow upon them, as her head was deep within thoughts. During Styles' sermon, Mayfair managed to open the Door and let Charisma through. Then, she snuck Charisma inside and hid her in the dark apex of the ceiling, where no lights shone. All according to plan. Charisma had since scanned the venue, and indeed she discovered Sansaime, seated near the back, seemingly placid. A woman sat beside Sansaime and continuously whispered frantic things to her, though Charisma could not hear what. Mayfair figured from the description the woman was Jay and Shannon Waringcrane's mother.

Their mother. In some ways, she weighed more heavily on Mayfair's mind than Sansaime. She shut out such thoughts, though. The mother was harmless—perhaps better than harmless. Sansaime was seated very far back in a very large arena. If she made any movements, they would be clear far in advance. So why choose that location? Did Sansaime intend to let Mayfair perform her miracle and stalk her afterward? Or was she divided on the question of whether to attack Mayfair at all? Could that woman be convincing her to stay her hand? Mayfair kept a few key sheets of the Whitecrosse papers, but due to poor preparation didn't bring Sansaime's page. She knew no specifics.

What she did know was that everything in Whitecrosse continued to run smoothly. Mademerry successfully negotiated with Flanz-le-Flore; the deal concluded. Flanz-le-Flore kept one of the Mustard Seeds for herself, but that was fine, since the nuns managed to procure more of them than Mayfair expected when she drew up the plan anyway. Meanwhile, Pythette had successfully driven Wendell's vehicle to the castle, so they would be able to reach the Door quickly. Even now they were en route. With so many scrutinizing eyes on her in these minutes before her big moment, Mayfair hadn't a chance to write anything to Mademerry, but it was fine if Mademerry interpreted that silence as danger and made Pythette drive faster. At the speeds a vehicle of Earth could reach, they might even arrive to reinforce her before Sansaime made her move. If she made it at all.

Essentially, everything was going perfectly. The few hiccups resolved themselves in quite simple fashion. As Mayfair walked onto the stage, as the lights flared and the faces of the people became clearer, brighter, as their warm smiles fell upon her, the tension vanished entirely. The stress, the anxiety. The words of her speech resounded clearly in her head, ready to be spoken with absolute eloquence. Savior of Whitecrosse, savior of Earth—all in one night.

That was when Charisma spotted the girl with the sniper rifle.

—

God let this be over fast. What a fucking dump, Earth. Filthy and unclean and not in the way of dirt. Kneeling here on this ledge high above the stadium, looking down at these humans in their holy house. Seething and teeming and god she felt so exposed in this place, like the air itself hated her, like it ate at her skin—the slowest-acting acid in existence. She constantly felt cold, insecure, like she was being watched, even though there were a few thousand eyes in this place and not a one was turned toward her. She knew who was watching—or who could be watching. The Eye of God was a Panopticon.

So using her powers was absolutely, one hundred percent out of the question, which was fine because to kill a single human she didn't need one ounce of ability. She raised the scope of the hot pink sniper rifle Master loaned her. Her target had finally stepped onto the stage after eons of the gasbag gassing. One shot and then Kedeshah could go home to get fucked by Fidi as Master watched, god now that was a thought. Since Master sent the other girls away to pay their quotas it'd been the world's most Lustless succubus den, Dog Bitch just wanted to rip everything to shreds and Master was—well, Master was Master. Fidi came back and Kedeshah thought for a second there'd be some fun but Fidi was changed now too. What the fuck. Was Kedeshah the only one actually horny anymore?

When Fidi got her end of the bargain Kedeshah would make her rape her whether she wanted to or not, and that thought sent a chill of excitement through her she forced herself to still. Into the headset that connected her to Master waiting safely outside, she said cheerily: "Target spotted! Taking the shot!"

"You got this, girl," Master's voice crackled back. And she did! She totally had it!

She quit pretending to breathe, something her hastily-made, first-time-worn human disguise forced her to pretend in the first place. The rifle went still in her hands. In this arena there was no wind, no obstruction. A clear and simple shot trained directly on the triangle of the target's chest. Normally Kedeshah would opt for the flair of a headshot. But the guaranteed hit was better now. Anything to ensure she escaped this accursed God-created shitrealm faster. (How the fuck did Fidi stand it up here? No wonder all her sex drive got leached out.)

Her finger tensed on the trigger.

A giant fucking BAT dropped out of fucking nowhere directly into her line of sight. She had zero time to process this intel because it was shooting straight at her and it wasn't a bat but a human woman with giant bat wings. Nobody said anything about this! She could blast it out of the sky but—no, no, that'd spook the target. Or maybe spooking her was good? It'd at least delay the event, and they'd get another crack at her later. Just a human, after all.

Nah. Kedeshah wanted this done NOW. Wanted off Earth NOW. Wanted Master and Fidi NOW NOW NOW. Let this shitlord bat crash into her. Even without her powers Kedeshah was as close to immortal as you could get. Its whole body would crumple just by slamming into her. Then she'd brush it off and take her shot—

The bat didn't slam into her. It wrapped its talons around her back—the shards of its claws shattered against her skin but it didn't even flinch—and lifted her up. Kedeshah was a first-generation offspring of one of the Seven Princes of Hell. Strength, power, agility, all of it existed within her body beyond what humankind could accomplish without the absolute height of their ceaseless machinery. But her body was also adorably petite and mind-numbingly alluring. She weighed less than ninety pounds. She was easily pulled into the air.

An instant later they smashed through a small window and shot into the open air of a night sky whose thick sheen of pollution and unseeable stars did little to assuage the agoraphobic terror that gripped her staring over the bat bitch's shoulder into the dominion beyond.

Oh god. Oh God. Don't see her. Don't see her—

The bat was flying at breakneck speed and carrying her up into the sky. It planned to carry her to God huh, that was its plan? It somehow knew what she was and wanted to bring her closer and closer to Him, did it now? In her ear her headset was fizzling, crackling: "What's going on? Kedeshah? Kedeshah!" That voice pulled her back.

Her arms and the sniper rifle were pinned to her body by the bat's embrace, but that was only because of her inaction. With the minutest possible movement, little more than a rippling of her svelte musculature, a tiny flex, she burst the bat's arms straight through the bone, splitting them apart completely and releasing herself from its grasp. In the brief moment when momentum continued to carry them the same direction, Kedeshah managed to note the bat gave no reaction whatsoever to the utter obliteration of its arms. Not even a grunt in pain. She realized the bat was not alive at all.

Reanimated corpse.

Gravity pulled her away. Shooting at a furious speed, unwilling to summon her wings to right or stop herself, she let herself be a body-shaped missile. She shut her eyes and braced for the impact she knew would not put a scratch on her, praying to herself: Please don't let Him see me. Please don't let Him see me.

Her body crashed through the window of a convenience store, destroyed four rows of shelves, obliterated another window, blasted into and out of a parked SUV, bounced against the pavement, and flatted the roof of a second car as it finally came to rest.

The empty black sky above watched.

—

"Kedeshah, Kedeshah girl, the fuck's going on?" Ubik shouted into his headset. Perfidia gripped her face in one hand and thought: Of course. Of course! The Dog Bitch whined and rolled on her back, held fast by her leash.

They were in the megachurch parking lot, hidden under a tree planted in a lonely island of green. The amplified sounds of the sermon within continued. Though they'd managed to briefly spot Kedeshah hurtling out a window, whatever happened hadn't caused enough of a disturbance to even slow things down inside.

"Kedeshah! Say something!"

The headset that looked way too military to match Ubik's huge fur coat crackled to life. "Oh, oh, oh, oh no!" It was a voice clearly distressed and yet even still it retained some shred of cute charm.

"Kedeshah, what just happened. Come on, talk to me."

"Nobody said anything about a bat woman. There was a bat woman, she lifted me up and now—Master I made a mess, if He sees me—"

"He's not gonna see you Kedeshah. Bat woman. What's this about a bat woman?"

Bat woman. With a sinking pit of feeling Perfidia pieced it together: Charisma. Mayfair must have brought over some of her friends from Whitecrosse to protect her.

"It shouldn't matter," Perfidia said, leaning toward the microphone although she addressed Ubik as much as Kedeshah. "Okay sure, we didn't know they were here, but there's nothing special about them, I designed them so a normal guy with a baseball bat could beat them—"

"Baseball bat? What are you talking about Fidi?" said the voice on the other end.

"It doesn't matter. Run back over here with your super speed or whatever."

"Are you crazy? I just plowed through a building and you want me to do even more? When He could be looking right at me?!"

Perfidia shot Ubik a look she hoped communicated "What the fuck." She'd lived on Earth four hundred years, it wasn't like God had lasers trained to detect all devil activity whatsoever. If Mayfair reviving a dead body hadn't set the big man off, moving fast for five seconds wouldn't either.

But Ubik's expression was annoyingly patient, almost Buddhist in its calm as he gave a devil-may-care shrug. "You gotta understand Fidi. Not much can hurt Kedeshah. She's not used to fear. She needs some time to process—"

"We don't have time!"

The same awful, exasperating, obnoxious shrug, this time with a douchey snaggletooth grin tossed into the mix as he pulled an enormous gold-plated pistol out of his coat. "Then Plan B. I do it myself."

That smug Greedy bastard, he fucking liked it this way. Before Perfidia could call him the first five insults that popped into mind he was sprinting out from cover and into the open ground of the parking lot toward the church, yanking once on Dog Bitch's collar before she snapped to attention and shot off even faster than him. Perfidia glanced left, right, hoping vainly she might see anything of use to bring with her, but there was nothing, and hissing under her breath she followed as fast as she could.

This was bad. Ubik, though apparently low on funds, possessed enough Humanity to do whatever they might need in a pinch. He'd even lent a bit to Perfidia, Kedeshah, and Dog Bitch to give them human disguises (not that the disguise helped Dog Bitch blend in whatsoever). Humanity became exponentially more costly to use the more humans witnessed it, however. Anything no human witnessed could be explained. Anything one human witnessed could be written off as insanity. Two or three might be a confederacy, more a conspiracy. There were ten thousand people in that church. It'd be prohibitively expensive to use Humanity to even light a cigarette, let alone anything actually useful. Ubik was charging straight into the worst possible terrain for him to fight. Did that stop him? Of course not!

They rushed through a lobby devoid of life but spanned by banners promoting upcoming events, featured speakers, or arbitrarily-chosen Bible verses. Then the doors were thrown open by Dog Bitch and Ubik aimed his pistol to the air and fired one cataclysmic bang to cut off Mayfair's all-pervading microphone and make his presence immediately, irrevocably known.

What Perfidia honed in on was the casket on the stage: Opened to show a cold pale dead man. But nothing else. He wasn't moving. So Mayfair hadn't shown them her "miracle" yet and that meant there was still time. That was good. It was a good thing.

What wasn't good, what actually fucking sucked, was that Ubik had entered the unfathomable vastness of the church at the complete opposite end from the stage. They were so far away that Perfidia could only actually make out the casket and its corpse in enough detail via the massive television screens suspended from the ceiling. They had a football field's worth of ground to cover and ten thousand instantly panicked humans in their way, let alone whatever other surprises Mayfair brought over from Whitecrosse.

In short: Ubik was fucking everything up.

Not that he cared. Of course not! He cackled in wild-eyed glee as he drew a submachinegun from his coat and fired pointlessly, worse than pointlessly into the crowd. The seated bodies rose in a screaming mass only for the bullets to tear through a swath of them and Perfidia screamed: "YOU IDIOT! YOU FUCKING MORON! SHE BRINGS BACK THE DEAD. WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING?!"

To grab the second gun he dropped the leash and Dog Bitch, though blindfolded, shot straight down the aisle toward the stage and at least somebody had a functional conception of the actual plan. Her brother though? Not a fucking chance!

He tossed off his headset and pulled a new hat from his coat, covered in zebra-print fur, which he let bounce on his head as he fired this way and that. Perfidia scooped the fallen headset in case Kedeshah snapped out of her bullshit and beat her fist against his chest, which did nothing because it sank into the endless expanse hidden under his coat. "Move!" she screamed at peak volume simply to climb over his gunfire. "The stage. The stage, before she gets away!"

Insensible. Drunk on himself, seeing a horde before him and wanting it all. In the few seconds since he began most of the nearest group of seats cleared but a few stragglers remained, elderly or wounded or people playing possum. One flabbergasted woman with bright red hair was rooted to her seat, staring with an open mouth that made her look like a dolt. Perfidia glanced at her and a strange wave of familiarity swept over her that she could not logically process, as she knew she'd never seen this woman before. But there was something about her. Something. What? What did it fucking matter?! She was about to be paste anyway. Perfidia shoved her hand in Ubik's coat and grabbed a random weapon. A medieval-looking mace. Whatever. Better than nothing—

A strange metal chunk noise irritated her ears and the sound of gunfire went dead silent in a moment. Ubik's smile evaporated as he stared down at his gun to see what looked like a butter knife embedded within it. His bullets had ceased firing right before he blasted the redhaired woman to kingdom come, and she continued to stare with the same flabbergasted expression as though nothing had changed. Then who threw the knife?

The answer came in the form of a ripple that swept out from the nearest row of seats and swerved in an acute arc to bring itself rising before Ubik. One quick flash of silvery metal and Ubik's blood flicked straight up and came down in a line of droplets.

Perfidia dropped back onto one knee, raising her mace in a ready stance to strike, but her eyes boggled as the light angled down on the face of Ubik's attacker half-hidden within the hood of a Cleveland Browns-branded sweatshirt.

"Sansaime?!" she said.

Obviously. It was not a face easily mistaken. But it made no sense. Why would she be here? Sansaime was designed to remain fiercely loyal to Makepeace. Perfidia had wanted Makepeace social and outgoing to draw Jay out of his perpetual skulk—that idea sure worked by the way!—but she didn't want a situation where Makepeace stole all of Jay's potential female partners, so she'd saddled Makepeace with the ugliest woman possible by default to ensure Jay never felt jealous, and would in fact get to feel smugly superior when he bagged a much more attractive woman down the line. For that setup to work, though, Sansaime needed to remain at Makepeace's side constantly. So was Makepeace here? He wasn't the kind of person to hide himself away. Besides, Makepeace's goal was to drag Mayfair back to Whitecrosse, and that wouldn't change given new circumstances. In fact, he'd want to drag Mayfair back all the more if he knew she'd escaped to Earth. So what? Sansaime wasn't dead, that was clear from the naked fury locked into her eyes. What reason did she have to be helping Mayfair if Makepeace wasn't here?

"Sansaime, no, it's dangerous, wait," the redheaded woman shouted.

Sansaime didn't wait. She flicked the kitchen steak knife around in her hand and drew back for a coup de grace to Ubik's throat. However, her initial cut had been to Ubik's chest. A lot in there was void and the delay in Ubik's movements was due to surprise, not serious injury. When he registered the incoming attack he twisted the hand with the golden pistol and brought it point blank to Sansaime's face. Sansaime rerouted her stance immediately and batted Ubik's hand with the back of her own to jerk his aim roughly to the side. The gun exploded, sending its bullet whizzing past her face but the full brunt of the sound struck straight into her ear and she recoiled wincing in pain despite not even suffering a graze. Before Ubik could fire again, Sansaime's foot swept out and knocked his legs out from under him.

As her useless douchebag brother dropped to the ground Perfidia decided to stop pondering over Sansaime's presence and act. Sansaime was still reeling and her sweeping kick had put her even further off balance, so it was a perfect time for Perfidia to run up and bop her on the head.

The mace went up but before Perfidia brought it down something flew into her from the side and barreled her over. Her weapon hurtled into oblivion as she came to rest sprawled over several empty seats and looked up to see the redheaded woman on top of her. "You can't," the woman screamed. "You can't, not to her, not to her!" Pungent familiarity discombobulated Perfidia's mind like déjà vu and for a few seconds she stared senselessly as the woman's fists came down against her face.

Whatever! She hefted the woman and cast her flailing into the space between the seats before pulling herself back into the aisle. Both Ubik and Sansaime were slowly getting up. Ubik remained bleeding from the initial knife strike, but more importantly, a few of his stored items spilled from his coat. Among the baubles and doodads Perfidia scooped up a musket that looked like it belonged in the Civil War, bayonet and all. She left Ubik to writhe and rushed toward the stage. All this shit was distraction. Someone needed to kill Mayfair or it didn't matter what else happened. If the musket fired at all—it might just be an antique Ubik kept for collectible value—it would only fire one shot. She needed to make it count.

Mayfair remained on the stage. Dog Bitch was there too, snarling and snapping at Dalt's corpse, who blocked her way. The enormous glut of spectators were blocking the exits as they funneled in a mad dash to escape, but Mayfair should've been able to dip backstage if she wanted. Perfidia glanced over her shoulder; the humans Ubik stupidly gunned down were already rising, so Mayfair wasn't remaining because she still needed to animate them. Once revived, she would be able to direct her forces from anywhere.

So why'd she remain? Her enemies had guns, remaining exposed on the stage was a major risk. Was she overwhelmingly confident in her victory? Such Pride at the expense of strategy ill fit her character as Perfidia wrote it. Mayfair might espouse lofty ideals but when pushed she would abandon them in favor of pragmatism. She must have a tactical reason to avoid fleeing, even as she noticed Perfidia rushing up the aisle.

Perfidia thought she knew why. She hoped it wasn't a thought born out of wishful thinking.

If Mayfair fled, she would need to abandon Dalt to handle Dog Bitch. Normally, that would be logical. But Mayfair did not know the numbers and strength of her enemies. She did not recognize Perfidia due to her human disguise, so she wouldn't have the faintest idea who was attacking her or why. She already gambled once before by attempting to continue her ceremony as though nothing had happened after she efficiently removed Kedeshah. But that gamble had gone poorly, and now she was loath to repeat it. If that were true, it meant Mayfair had no more dead bodies to protect her.

There was the group of Ubik's victims in the back, Dalt on stage, and Charisma out wherever Kedeshah was, assuming Kedeshah hadn't obliterated her entirely. Sansaime wasn't dead but she was in the back of the arena too. If Mayfair fled through the stage, none of her corpses would be in position to defend her if she chanced upon another enemy. Then she would die for sure. She needed to remain close to Dalt no matter what.

That gave Perfidia an opening.

She couldn't overpower Dalt. But Dog Bitch, fast, ferocious, utterly insane, frothing at the mouth with whatever mind rabies Ubik used to break her psyche, could at least match him. His massive body kept attempting to restrain her in tackles that used his full weight and like a whirlwind she kept slipping out to sink her fangs into his throat or face. Enmeshed as they were, he couldn't draw and use the handgun Perfidia assumed he still carried. The front of his shirt turned to slashed ribbons with cottony bits drifting in the air and without even a grunt he flung Dog Bitch off him only for her to charge right back. It took all his power to keep her at bay.

Behind Perfidia, a bright light flashed with a fwoom. She glanced back; Ubik held a flamethrower and sprayed it at the zombie horde he helped create. Smart choice of weapon at least. If he turned the bodies to ash they wouldn't be able to keep coming. Where was Sansaime? Chasing Perfidia? No. She'd gone to help the redhead woman. That was the true person she sought to defend—not Mayfair. Perfect.

Perfidia reached the edge of the stage and jumped onto it.

Mayfair saw her. But what could she do? With nobody else at her beck except Dalt, she had to choose who he prioritized. If he switched to Perfidia that gave Dog Bitch an opening. Perfidia decided to leave nothing to chance. Instead of firing the ancient musket, she rushed forward, brandishing its bayonet. Mayfair backed up into the sleek black casket—

The casket! She forgot the fucking casket!

An instant before it burst open Perfidia realized Mayfair's strategy. The body of the man inside threw himself between her and Mayfair, blocking the attack. No—not between her and Mayfair. Between Mayfair and Dog Bitch. Because at the same moment, Dalt turned away from Dog Bitch and drew his handgun to aim at her.

The man in the casket was nothing special physically. An upper-middle-aged man, maybe fifty. He also wasn't especially weak, though. All he needed to do was stall Dog Bitch for a few seconds. Because Dalt was going to kill Perfidia in one close-range shot.

Fuck—Mayfair lured her in!

If Perfidia had only realized this plan after the man was out of the casket it would've been over. The two corpses moved in flawless synchronization, so there was no single moment when Mayfair was exposed. Just like when she dragged Perfidia to the Door, she prioritized her defense above all else. Had Mayfair moved more recklessly, having Dalt turn his attention slightly before the casket opened (under the assumption it'd take Dog Bitch time to capitalize on the discrepancy), Perfidia would've died for sure. But Perfidia sniffed the scheme at the last possible moment.

Everyone in the arena was fleeing. The television broadcast would've been interrupted by now. Sansaime was focused on the redhead. And the man bursting out of the casket was leaping in front of Mayfair's view. That left nobody looking at Perfidia. She put to use the slight Humanity she'd saved from slumming with the homeless guys. What'd she need. A weapon? No. Defense.

The fabric of reality shifted ever so slightly. The stage rippled and a chunk of it tore upward, curling like a burnt piece of paper. Tomorrow the humans would explain this as the result of some bomb used by the terrorists who attacked the church. Its expenditure was the negligible amount her negligible spare Humanity allowed. But it threw up a wall between her and Dalt the exact moment he fired his bullet, which bounced off with a zing.

At the same time Dog Bitch, set on the scent of the living, detached from Dalt and zipped toward Mayfair. The man from the casket intercepted her, but imperfectly, unable to fully resist her strength as she dragged him several inches out of position. Dalt could not continue to fire on Perfidia, not with her perfect cover. Nor could he fire at Dog Bitch, who was now between him and Mayfair—one mistake and he'd shoot his ward. So he sprinted to tackle Dog Bitch from behind, and that left Mayfair exposed to Perfidia.

No time or chance to go in for the bayonet kill. She had to hope Ubik kept his antiques in operational order, which wasn't the worst hope because he liked his things and always made sure to maintain them. The barrel of the musket trained on Mayfair's body and at this range even someone like Perfidia, with only basic firearms experience, could hit her. No mistakes. She breathed in, focused, aimed carefully within the narrow timeframe allowed. Mayfair, still bouncing off the casket, twisted toward her. Saw her. Those pretty blue eyes went wide in terror. That terror was everything. It surged through Perfidia's brain and body like cocaine. With absolute confidence Perfidia pulled the trigger.

It was the cover she'd erected that made it impossible to see the black man until it was too late. He flew out of her blindside and wrapped Mayfair in his arms right as the musket's kick jerked back Perfidia's body. The ball sailed into his back shoulder and he emitted only a loose grunt as he held Mayfair in his arms. The priest. He wasn't even hit badly. He pushed Mayfair past the casket, dragging her to the backstage exit as Dalt and the other corpse fought Dog Bitch. Mayfair clearly remained reluctant but even shot—maybe because he was shot—the man was far stronger than her and forced her to move.

WHY DOES NOTHING EVER GO RIGHT?! Perfidia wanted to scream. She didn't. Dog Bitch still had Dalt occupied. Like a good dog she'd gotten the wrist that held the handgun between her gnashing fangs, ignoring the man from the casket entirely as he limply hung onto her back. Perfidia pushed out of cover and sprinted past them, carrying the empty musket in her arms. It wasn't too late. If Mayfair truly had no more bodyguards, it wasn't too late.

She escaped the stage and all sound behind her swept at her back like a funnel, strange and echoey and immediately distant in the corridor she entered. She reached it in time to see the glass doors ahead swing shut. The black man had fallen in the center of the corridor, lying on his side as he groaned in pain, but Perfidia paid him no mind—thinking only, If Mayfair finished him off she coulda used him better. Perhaps such an idea was too pragmatic even for Mayfair. Perfidia pushed through the doors and entered the small staff parking lot behind the church.

Compared to the front parking lot, this one had only a few cars, but given how many people it took to run such a massive establishment, the number wasn't negligible. It didn't stop her from spotting Mayfair immediately, running between rows of cars toward a large rental trailer near the edge. Lake Erie in its ink-black midnight glory formed the backdrop, and the sound of police sirens rapidly approaching filled the cold air.

Perfidia ran. She wasn't especially fast or strong, but she could outrun a fucking 14-year-old in a fancy dress. A few people were out here, hiding between the cars, having fled the carnage inside, but they wouldn't dare lift a muscle, their fear was so palpable. Nothing was in her way.

Stupid little piece of shit. Perfidia made you. You ruined so much for her and now you'd die. Dammit you'd die, please just fucking die! Let this endless nightmare finally fall apart.

Rapidly she gained on her target. Ten steps away. The trailer ahead neared, but Mayfair didn't try to run around it. She kept going straight toward it. She was doing something else, too, something that made her even slower. She kept looking down to check something in her hand. What the Hell was it? Perfidia wanted to say it didn't matter. Wanted to say fuck it and run Mayfair through without a care. But she knew after everything that happened she couldn't afford that luxury. Her eyes strained to see what was in Mayfair's hand. A paper. Some sort of small, old, yellowed parchment.

Perfidia recognized that parchment.

It came from—

Mayfair threw herself aside at the exact moment the trailer burst open and an orange jeep honking its horn ceaselessly flew out of it. Perfidia got one instant to see the open Door inside, then with an almost resigned thought of God dammit the front of the jeep plowed into her.

—

Ah. Now everything was aflame.

Sansaime held Avery steady. She appeared unharmed—Merely dazed. Sansaime suspected Avery had been dazed her entire life.

The male assailant used a weapon Sansaime knew from television to be called a "flamethrower." An apt name. Lines of fire shot across the seats, into the bodies of the shambling dead. Sansaime knew from Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave which she saw on the Syfy Channel (truly terrifying! A struggle to sleep afterward) that in this world scientific potions existed to bring corpses back to life, but clearly Mayfair was behind these particular "zombies."

The other two assailants had rushed the stage. So their true goal, like Sansaime, was Mayfair. A waste of effort to fight them—She'd only done so because Avery was in danger. She was deaf in one ear for the trouble. Not quite deaf. Deafness would have been a blessing compared to the painful ringing she still felt from the sound of the gunshot. Otherwise, though, she was unharmed. And she needed to get Avery to safety.

In seconds she scanned the area. Exits lined the sides of the church, but all of them were congested with bodies scrambling to escape the mayhem. It'd be dangerous to be caught at the back of those crowds, especially now that the fire quickly spread through the seats and sent plumes of smoke into the sky.

That night at the monastery returned to her, even through the sharpened and focused senses brought upon by danger: She and Makepeace fighting in the burning study. She pushed the thought down and instead thought only of useful, utilitarian things. She must get Avery to safety above all else.

The closest exit, through which the assailants came, was consumed by fire as the man with the flamethrower sprayed and cackled madly. Then where was escape? Could Sansaime scale the sheer sides of the church and exit through a window? Not while carrying Avery. Her flitting eyes caught the stage and she saw Mayfair; seeing Mayfair, her attention stuck, and she watched a few sluggish seconds as supported by the black priest she escaped through a passageway behind the stage. There—that was the best way out.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Only once she tugged sharply on Avery's wrist and began pulling her down the aisle did she second-guess her initial assessment. One of the assailants pursued Mayfair, but the other one, the strange bestial one, remained on the stage tearing and biting at Mayfair's corpses. To flee that way, one risked a fight. Maybe it truly was the best way. But something danced into Sansaime's head, a thought that perhaps she opted for this direction because it would take her closer to Mayfair.

It'd been nearly twelve hours since Sansaime saw the advertisement on the television and resolved to find Mayfair. In that time her head somewhat cooled. She was not an emotionless woman. But she had deadened enough of herself via repeated pain and tragedy to render herself emotionless much of the time. The knowledge that Makepeace's baby was inside her, the confession she gave to Avery—these extreme events had pushed her past the threshold and she settled rashly on certain decisions. Avery, the entire time, pleaded with her. Not to go, not to throw her life away. Please, Avery said, think of the baby. Well Sansaime wanted to think of the baby less than anything else. But combined with a natural cooling Sansaime had begun to be swayed. She entered the church no longer fully convinced of her path. She sat at the back and thought: Either seeing Mayfair on that stage incenses me to the point I will be firm in my decision, or I will not do it.

As the black priest gave his longwinded sermon (was this truly what the humans did when they went into the giant cathedral by the castle?), restlessness surged through Sansaime. Avery's entreaties turned to mush in her ears. Yet when the moment finally came, and Mayfair stepped onto the stage—

Nothing.

Sansaime felt nothing.

The agony and hatred she experienced when Makepeace died—that too had cooled. Telling Avery about her mother released something.

She knew then and there it was over. She would hear the speech to its conclusion, watch Mayfair's sham miracle, and go home with Avery. Home. That she could even call it that...

Into that thought cleaved the interruption of the three assailants. Now her mind was sharp. Danger set it upon paths that two weeks of sloth had dulled. Her heart pounded, her blood pulsed, her movements were that of a hunter. Sharpness and awareness pervaded. And her mind kept seeing the flames rising up the walls and remembering that night. That night he died.

So why now did she decide to escape the same way Mayfair did? Coincidence? Because it was the best route? She sucked in a breath suddenly sooty with the skyborne ash. Her palm gripped Avery's slick with sweat, a point of tactile connection. No. Mayfair was nothing. Avery must escape—That was what mattered. She kept saying it to herself, but she kept moving toward the stage.

Part of the stage was ripped up and peeled to the side as though it were paper. On what remained was the Dalton man and the dog-like assailant. The corpse who had come from the casket lay dismembered, all four of his limbs having been ripped off by the slobbering bitch, who now attempted to do the same to Dalton with less success due to his greater size and strength.

"Oh, no... Dalton," Avery said as she became aware.

Much of his front was slashed to ribbons, though no blood came out. His left arm hung by tendons and his right foot was obliterated, leaving his movements torpid. As such, the bitch-woman was beginning to gain the upper hand. It was not that she had taken no damage herself, but she somehow matched his insensibility to pain and far exceeded his ferocity.

If she was still distracted, though, then Sansaime and Avery could slip past.

She pulled Avery closer, sliding a hand around her face to pull her head close to her chest and more importantly shield her from seeing the destruction of Dalton's corpse. Onto the stage they climbed. Avery stumbled on the steps—she was always stumbling. Though keeping her blinded didn't help.

The corpse from the casket was trying to wriggle his body toward his severed limbs, perhaps to reattach them—"zombies" sometimes did that. With only stumps, though, his progress was slow. He didn't matter. They stepped past him, keeping on the edge of the stage as they circled toward the exit.

The bitch-woman took no note of them as it ripped Dalton apart and before long they reached the passage out, empty save for a single figure lying against the wall. The priest. Mayfair and the other assailant were already gone. Gone, so don't bother thinking of them. Best to keep Avery's eyes averted until they passed the fallen priest too.

They were a fourth of the way down the passage when Sansaime heard the snarl behind them. She did not need to look. She anticipated this. Once the bitch-woman dealt with Dalton, what direction would she go? But this was fine too.

Sansaime shoved Avery forward. "Go. Get out. RUN!"

She said it so fiercely Avery followed without hesitation, though not without stumbling. Sansaime wheeled to face the bitch-woman and drew two sharp knives from Avery's kitchen. It was better this way. Forget all about Mayfair and focus on this one thing.

The bitch-woman looked different now. Her human skin was melting off her, revealing a bright red sheen. Horns sprouted from her head and a whiplike tail with a spade-shaped barb lashed out from her backside. She remained on all fours and prowled forward growling.

Sansaime was no murderer. Not in the sense that she refused to do it, but it was simply not her specialty. Viviendre de Califerne hired her because she could infiltrate Makepeace's confidence and get close to the target, not because of her skill as a cutthroat. But Sansaime was a hunter. A hunter of fae and a hunter of beasts—both paid, and the latter sustained. She was glad then that the creature in front of her saw fit to shed its human disguise. It made it easier to think of the foe as alike the things she hunted in the wood of Flanz-le-Flore. That it retained a human-shaped body was no matter—so did the fae. This is like home, she told herself. Slay this thing as you know how.

"Sansaime!" Avery's voice was farther away. Halfway down. So she was moving. Good. Sansaime did not respond.

Only an amateur believed all creatures act identically. Only a fool said, "All bears do this, all wolves do that." Each creature possessed its own temperament, shaped by its experience in the wild. This wolf in front of her was young in mind, overeager, not yet chastened by failure. That made it ferocious, but it was not clever. It wore a broad leather blindfold but that was surely no impediment. It—

Sansaime received no further time to assess her opponent. It, apparently, had finished sizing her up—and that overeager temperament led it to rush blindly baring fangs for her throat.

One knife lashed out but in its blindness it neither saw nor cared and it did not mind when the blade sliced its cheek. Damn it was fast! At the last moment Sansaime realized she wouldn't be able to stave it off and threw up her other arm to catch the jaws before it sank them somewhere more vital. A hundred jagged teeth drove into the flesh and Sansaime grimacing through the pain knew if she let the teeth stay locked there for long she'd lose the arm entirely—Like the corpses.

Her other knife, misaimed, had passed the bitch's head merely grazing her. In one fluid movement Sansaime flipped it around in her head and drove it into the bitch's back. It got caught between strange bones but it prevented the bitch from shaking her which would have caused her to lose all control. The bitch did not loosen her grip though. It was mad, feral in its ferocity. It was not a creature that would flee even if it believed itself outmatched. Only pain could teach it.

Sansaime dragged her caught arm up at the same time she slammed her head down. Her forehead collided sharply with the bitch's and a spray of starry light swelled her vision—but the attack had its intended effect. The bitch was stunned a moment, the briefest moment, its jaws loosening, and Sansaime wrenched her arm out and passed the knife it clenched to her other hand to go for the jugular. The bitch shifted her shoulder and the knife stuck in it instead. Sansaime's wounded arm was already reaching for another knife but it was slow. Not enough time.

She abandoned the motion and instead brought her knee up into the bitch's chin. At the same time something drove into Sansaime's hip—the barbed tail. Her good hand wrenched it out and took a chunk of flesh with it and blood streamed down her leg. It hurt but this was nothing. After her mother died she had to fight for her life like this. She was young and alone and if she didn't fight she'd have died.

"Sansaime!" that distant voice shouted.

Run Avery. Run! Don't you get it? It's best this way. If you're not gone before it finishes—

She dropped onto her back. The bitch was on top of her, neither hand held a knife, and her legs kicked the floor uselessly. Flecks of slobber or blood or both fell on her face. This thing was no wolf or bear. It was something far stronger—Sansaime had been outmatched from the start. Damn. Damn! There had to be something she could do from this position. Her hands were almost to her knives but the bitch was simply faster. She must protect her throat. If she shifted her head so the jaws clamped onto her face instead—

But it anticipated that. One of its hands—a human hand with a soft palm, but with a long and jagged claw at the end of each finger—pressed down on her face and shoved it back, slicing her cheeks and forehead as it stretched out her neck. Sansaime's hands gripped a knife each but they weren't moving fast enough. No—it wasn't going to end like this.

The alarm went off.

Actually, an alarm had been going off in the church since the flamethrower was first used. But that was distant—an echo. The alarm that went off now was sharp, localized, near. It assaulted Sansaime's already assaulted ears. But she had heard this alarm before. She knew what it was.

When she first came to Earth and met Avery. When she fought against Mayfair. The exact same sound. Then, it had startled and surprised Mayfair, who hadn't known what it was. It had startled Sansaime too, and though she said nothing at first, as they headed to Avery's house afterward Sansaime asked her: What was that thing. What was its purpose.

Avery had said:

"To scare off dogs."

Blinded, the bitch must've been stricken by the sound more strongly than even an ordinary dog. Her head reared back and a dismayed yelp escaped her. Merely a yelp. Her weight did not lift off Sansaime, and in a moment, Sansaime knew, the bitch would recover and resume its business.

But Sansaime already had her hands around her knives.

Both hands went up. The two blades drove into the blindfold wrapped around the bitch's face, spearing straight into where the sockets would be. The bitch screamed—a shockingly human scream. Blood whipped from its face in torrents and Sansaime pushed up her legs and threw it off her without resistance.

The bitch thrashed. Flung out its claws. It was not dead. Sansaime had driven those knives in deep—only the hilts remained—just how tenacious was it? Had Sansaime not thrown it off when she did she would've been torn to shreds by the frantic, rapid lashings of every sharp component of its body. It was no longer acting aggressively, though. These motions were defensive—protecting itself from anything that might be trying to finish it off.

The effort it took Sansaime's slashed arm to strike had essentially ruined it—it now hung limp at her side. The wound in her hip made her slower, too. She hoped the bitch was hurt enough to stay put and ran.

Or rather limped. Her hip hurt horribly, the wound sizzled even worse than her shredded arm, as though the tip of that creature's tail injected some sort of poison into her. More aggravating was Avery. Sansaime expected since the alarm went off that Avery lingered behind instead of fleeing, but the situation was way worse.

Avery had stopped for the injured priest. She had lifted him up and now supported him as he groaned.

"Leave him," Sansaime said.

"No!" Avery said. "Help me!"

No time to argue. She considered drawing another knife and ending the priest but that'd make Avery argue even more. Instead Sansaime shimmied under the priest's other arm—he'd been shot in this shoulder, so he cried out in pain—and helped Avery lead him toward the exit at as fast a gait as their combined strength could muster.

"God bless you." The priest's voice was a dry gasp. "God bless you. God bless you."

Somehow they made it through the doors and into the open air. On a shelf of land before the lake there were scattered vehicles and people. Distant flashing lights and sirens. In the middle of it though was a bright orange vehicle that Sansaime remembered, how could she not, it was from that night at the monastery too. Mayfair had exited into it after she bade her dragon murder Makepeace. The pain in her arm and hip gave way to nausea.

Around the orange car were nuns. Not many. A ferret, a hornet, a frog, a rabbit. Before Viviendre's mission, Sansaime often traveled to the monastery and delivered to the archbishop or that praying mantis that worked for him captured faeries for their experiments. She knew most of the nuns by sight, though few of their names. These were changed, though. More intense in their corruption. She sensed danger emanating from them the same way she sensed it on that bitch-woman. They were becoming more animal than man.

And there—beside a ruined trailer inside of which was the Door—stood Mayfair. She conversed animatedly with two more nuns. One was the feather-winged twin. Charm. The other Sansaime had never seen before, a lizard of some sort, and something was strange about her, not necessarily a malice but—there was something about her. Her look. Sansaime's skin went cold but that might have been from blood loss. Faintness overtook her, she stumbled, righted herself and held the large priest steady as he winced in his own pain. Who was that lizard. Why did she look so much like—No. No, put it out. Put it out. There was one other figure, Sansaime focused on it, and focusing on it did her mind no favors for it too was a troubling sight. An elf. One of her lovely kin. It was as though they were doing everything in their power to break her down with this cast of characters arrayed before her.

She mustered the strength to tell Avery that they should set the priest down to rest and go elsewhere—anywhere else—but before the words left her parched lips the excitable rabbit nun spotted her and started shouting: "Hey! Isn't that Sansaime? Why's Sansaime here? Isn't that so strange?"

Though the rabbit was chipper, her fellows immediately went on guard.

"I thought she'd died in the fire," said the frog.

"Utterly brainless, Obedience," said the hornet. "Cinquefoil saw the prince carry her out of the fire. Don't you remember anything?"

"Ah... I'm sorry, Tricia," said Obedience.

"No matter," said Tricia. "We mustn't let her get close to Princess Mayfair. Not after what she tried to do last time!"

"What'd she try last time?"

"You are hopeless!"

"She started the fire, didn't she," said the ferret, who had the nastiest look of them all, who was the most reminiscent of the bitch-woman and with claws and fangs to match. "Eh? Didn't she? She ran off to go kill the princess and then everything went up in flames. It's her! She's the one who murdered our sisters!"

"What's this all about?" Mayfair strode forward, looking first at the nuns and then up at Sansaime, at which point her eyes narrowed. Though Charm and the elf stayed where they were, the lizard nun remained close to Mayfair's side. Too close. Nearly pressed against her. One claw lightly gripped Mayfair's shoulder and her eyes riveted on Sansaime.

"Why is another elf here," the lizard said. Though what kind of lizard had wings? And what did those black scales look like, truly? The black scales and the blonde hair.

Sansaime wanted to vomit.

The priest moaned: "Mayfair... Mayfair..."

"Why do you have Pastor Styles," Mayfair said.

Sansaime felt too ill to speak so it was Avery who said: "He was hurt. We have to get him help. Sansaime needs help too. I know—I know you two don't like each other. But right now this isn't about that, okay? This is serious!"

"Why do you not like her," said the nun who was not a lizard but a dragon. "Why don't you like her, Mayfair. Why doesn't she like you?"

"That elf tried to kill her, Mademerry," Tricia said. (Mademerry. Why was her name—Mademerry.) "Tried to kill her and set the monastery aflame in the attempt. It seems she followed the princess all the way here to finish the shameful deed."

"She's dangerous," Mademerry said, moving forward to shield Mayfair.

"This is ridiculous, she's clearly injured." Mayfair glanced around impatiently. The sirens were growing louder. "We have other things to worry about. And if she's saved Pastor Styles—Look. That's a friend of mine she's saved, okay? Pythette. Pythette!"

The rabbit snapped to attention. "Aye!"

"You're not one to hold a grudge, are you?"

"N—no, Your Highness!"

"Take Pastor Styles and Sansaime and lay them down somewhere. Treat their wounds as best you can, will you? There's no need for further violence now."

"Mayfair. Mayfair," said Mademerry, and Sansaime noticed she did not refer to her as "Your Highness," but by her name, as though they were personal friends. "Mayfair we cannot let those who would do you harm live. We must snuff them out—"

"I said there is no need for further violence!" Mayfair shouted. "All of that is a trifle. I need your help for something far more important. I need your animus. Pythette, do as I ask—now!"

The rabbit zoomed forward. She moved startlingly fast, so that she was beside Sansaime before Sansaime could even react. But her face wore an obliviously amiable smile. "Here, let's go this way." She took Styles and hefted him on her back as though he weighed no more than a sack of flour, then beckoned Sansaime and Avery to follow her to a spot she indicated behind some parked cars.

"It's not about what she did to the princess," said the ferret. "This is revenge for our sisters, eh?"

"No. I said no! You will listen to me, all of you will do as I say!" Mayfair looked from face to face. Her gaze settled on Mademerry, twisted in a mask of pure rage. "You especially. You more than anyone will listen to me. I've already been nearly killed and this close. I will not have things fall apart now because you act on your own! Do you understand?"

"All I do I do for you—"

"You do what I tell you to do! Nothing more! Do you understand?"

"Mayfair..." Mademerry's voice trailed off—it was not an objection, though it lacked the finality of agreement. Her reptilian eyes shot straight to Sansaime, and in that glance was an enmity of unadulterated murderous intent. Though the others, even the ferret, seemed cowed by Mayfair's shouting, that one—that one held different thoughts. But Sansaime was growing too faint to care. She only hoped Avery would...

"Now be good girls, all of you, like Sister Pythette." Mayfair's voice remained sharp enough to pierce the haze. "Charm, Mademerry, the two of you are with me. We must go down to the lakeside. Charm, bring the elf."

Sansaime wondered why she ever wanted to murder Mayfair in the first place—before Makepeace even. Wasn't there a reason she went to the monastery? Right—right. So Viviendre would turn back her time. Remove all her scars, all her memories, make her a child again... How foolish. How foolish.

"What shall the rest of us do, Your Highness?" asked Tricia.

"Deal with him," Mayfair said.

Her arm flung out in a sharp point. There, exiting the same doors as Sansaime and Avery, was the final assailant. The one in the large fur coat. Though he smiled, he appeared quite unhappy.

It wasn't Sansaime's problem now. As Pythette set down Styles with Avery's help, Sansaime leaned against a car, vomited down its side. Her vision went black.

—

Ubiquitous Bal Berith got bored roasting zombies and headed to the stage where all the fun was happening except funtime was over by the time he got there and only a coupla dismembered corpses were around to meet him. Yowza! On the stage he looked back and took in his handiwork. God's House getting nice and toasty now, and wasn't that just the biggest middle finger right where it needed to go most? Forget the Seven Princes. Fuck em. When ya think of all the Stalins and Hitlers and Maos and Pol Pots and Napoleons of the world, who's the biggest of em all? Yeah, that's obvious. Big God in the sky, big Mister Exert-All-Laws-and-Rules-and-Regulations-and-If-I-Am-Not-Praised-In-Perpetuity-Die. There was this new guy on Ubik's radar, this Kim cat in Korea. Rumormongers said he made all the people of his country hang a painting of him in their houses. They said he might just be the worst yet, if not in bulk, in the intensity of his misrule. But if that guy was the worst, then what the fuck was God who had places like this in every city in half the world designed solely for his exaltation?

And Satan. And Satan telling him, that day he did whatever the fuck it was that fucked up Fidi: You have never known war. You have never encountered an angel. You have never fought against God.

Ubik had prestige, power, material wealth in Hell. If he wanted a thing, he could get it one way or another. He could even get into Pandaemonium. But that was one thing those assholes on the top floor would always have and he wouldn't. They were heroes. They risked it all to take a strike against God and thanks to them all the devils in Hell had their independence if nothing else. Well here Ubik was, waging war in God's own house, how do ya like that Satan?

Satan did not respond. He wasn't there. God wasn't there either. It was just a fucking building.

His attitude was already souring when he entered the tunnel leading to the exit and then it went to complete shit when he saw his Dog Bitch. What the fuck did they do to her? And who did it? That little uptight bitch with the necro staff? Huh? Who? WHO?

Dog Bitch whimpered. She was curled up and shivering weakly. She had the knives straight through her eyes and—damn! FUCK! It hurt to even look at. They had the audacity to fucking do this? She wasn't even fully trained yet! She was nothing more than a ball of pure Wrath and they thought that was worth doing THIS to her? He knelt beside her and stroked her hair. "It's okay girl. It's okay." Where the fuck was Kedeshah? At first he thought her freaking out about being under God's eye was cute and all but now it was getting real fucking obnoxious. He needed her. Where'd his headset go? He patted his head but it was just his funny furry top hat. Where'd his headset go?

"Here girl. Here you go." He opened his coat and pulled her inside by the collar, closing the coat after so at least she'd be somewhere warm. Dammit. FUCK. He didn't tend to collect stuff that healed because he always had Kedeshah around. Hadn't been fucking Greedy enough can ya believe that? He was running low on guns and ammo too after the escape from Pandaemonium and now this. Well. He still had some valuable stuff. He wouldn't want to lose some of those things but whoever hurt his girl had to pay. Had to pay it all.

Ubik undid his human disguise. Hated wearing that anyway. From here on out no pretensions. He was a devil through and through.

He followed the blood on the ground out the doors and into a parking lot. A bright orange jeep stood in the center and its grille was dented and covered in blood. Several meters away, as though launched from the point of impact, he saw Fidi's body lying limp on the ground. Her too... Her too huh? Oh you fuckers. Oh you guys really fucked up didn't you?

Fidi had his headset. He noticed that at least. He really should get that back and make Kedeshah hurry the fuck up to heal both his girls. But there was more pressing business first.

Three creatures. Females. Ferret, hornet, frog. Looking right at him. Looking ready to scrap. Alright!

Ubik pulled out of his coat one of his last few guns, an M134 Minigun, with its long belt of ammunition leading back into one of his many pockets. He pulled the trigger and the rotating multi-barreled chamber started pumping bullets at a rate of 6,000 revolutions per minute in a sweeping line that cut through all three of them. They dropped to the ground.

Then they climbed back up. Their bodies were riddled with bullets. Didn't stop em more than a second.

Alright, so they're hardy. Not bad. He prepared to fire another few thousand bullets, however fucking many bullets it took—he could always replace bullets, there were things however he could not replace—and stopped. He looked more closely at the women in front of him.

Ubik didn't consider himself a particularly Wrathful guy. All devils had a bit of all sin in em, at least so they said, but Wrath? He didn't know if he'd define it like that. Sure he got vindictive when he lost what was his. Sure he liked to mow down a line of people every now and then. That wasn't true Wrath, though. True Wrath couldn't be controlled and that was antithetical to his beliefs. After all if he lost control of himself then he was losing the absolute most important thing he owned, right? So despite the gruesome thing they did to his Dog Bitch, despite his sister lying facedown in a pool of her own blood over there, despite the gnawing voice of Satan in the back of his head (you have never fought against God), he controlled himself now and considered the women in front of him.

He dropped the minigun. The three women glared back with utterly hateful faces and ya know what? He loved that kinda look. His Dog Bitch used to give him that look before he broke her too.

"Sorry for the rude introduction," he said. "My name's Ubiquitous Bal Berith. As you can see, I'm a devil from Hell. I'm a pretty big deal down there. Run a little business. Now I'm thinking you girls might fit into the scene pretty fucking well. You could be real hot commodities even. Whaddya say—"

The three rushed forward, murder in their eyes, which Ubik expected, but this was the whole fucking fun of it. Dog Bitch and Fidi left his mind because those were two and these were three and he spotted a fourth who looked like a rabbit off to the side and a few others leaving toward the lake. A whole new breed of female. Not quite girl. Not quite monster. A cross between. This would be huge. Major. A whole upheaval to the succubus market. Sure there were girls who acted like monsters down there, but this was an entirely different thing. This was a new look entirely, and it wasn't just a look—this was the real deal. Those weren't disguises, those were real fangs and fur. Nobody had something like this. Nobody. So if he got his hands on them then—Yowza.

He shoved both arms into his coat. One hand retracted wearing a thick rubber glove that went up to his elbow. Attached to it by a line of rubber hooks were syringes, each with a different-colored serum inside. His other hand pulled out a long, black sword.

You see. Ubiquitous Bal Berith didn't just own stuff from Earth. Of fucking course not! Sure, Earth stuff had a certain novelty, and smuggling it past customs lent it a certain innate prestige. But humans mass-produced all their wonderful items nowadays. There were even more special things, and some of them could only be found in Hell.

The sword was a prototype. The Seven Princes designed it and had it made around 1,000 B.C. It was meant to be a blade that could kill even something immortal. They'd need a weapon like that if they wanted to get back at God, after all. Of course, the experiment didn't pan out. Killing something immortal was tough. But this sword could sure kill anything that wasn't completely immortal. It could even kill Kedeshah. It could surely kill these Neo Females.

Course, he didn't wanna kill em. The sword could be used as a last resort, but really it was a distraction. See, this thing was pulsing with devilish energy, emanating it so thick even these soon-to-be whores would be able to tell—just like how the frog girl's bright colors clearly emanated "Don't touch me, I'm poison."

If they focused on keeping themselves away from the sword, that left them open to the syringes.

The ferret struck fastest. She darted ahead of the others with two swift undulations of her body but the moment he bared the Prototype Mul Elohim at her none of her ferocious instincts were enough to compel her forward. She reared back, eyes set against the sword, pacing out of Ubik's radius of attack, and when the hornet buzzed beside her she did the same.

"Come on girls," Ubik said with a smile. "What's the matter? Do ya hate me or not, huh? I get it. I'm a hateable guy. But you wouldn't be the first girls who hated me and wound up my bitches anyway."

The more he annoyed them the better his odds. That's Wrath for you, that's what happens when you lose control of yourself. But they remained cautious. The frog kept farther back, while the ferret and hornet split up and circled around him slowly. His sword exuded a thin black miasma and their eyes remained riveted to it.

He waited until they were on opposite sides of him, spilling his spiel as though aimless. Then he lunged at the hornet. He chose her because she hovered above the ground and would have more directions to dodge. The ferret, of course, attacked at him the moment he turned his back to her, which was why his stab at the hornet had been a feint all along.

These girls were strong but they didn't know shit about fighting. Ubik barely knew anything himself but still they both fell for his clumsy feint hook line and fucking sinker. The hornet buzzed back outrageously far, as though she thought his sword was twice as long as it actually was, and the ferret left herself totally open as he revolved on his heel to face her. Those quick eyes set in the black band of fur that spanned her face figured things out as soon as he began to turn but her body could not reverse its forward momentum in time. As he swung the sword at her from her left she diverted to the right and that brought her straight into the needle his other hand held.

One thumb press and the pale white serum injected into her neck. This was no human medical invention. It was refined nectar straight from the teats of Lust's female avatar, Ashtoreth—Kedeshah's mother. Getting his hands on even this small sample was an insane accomplishment, especially since Kedeshah refused to help. It took finding one of Ashtoreth's spent paramours shortly after she discarded them, cutting them open, and harvesting what trace amounts of the fluid he could from the veins, brain, and stomach. Even with preparation and good timing he'd only been able to collect a few drops. It took forty ex-lovers to fill this syringe and now that vital fluid was being fully spent as it coursed into the ferret's veins. Ubik hated to watch it go, the sight of that empty needle hurt him as much as Fidi's body lying in the background, but Ashtoreth still possessed tits and lovers which meant it was a replicable commodity. Trading it to get his claws on this ferret woman, to make her his, to acquire for himself an absolutely unique creature who would not only be a gem of his collection but light all Hell aflame as a bleeding edge trend none of his competitors could authentically replicate—that made it a worthwhile expenditure. And when he considered that this expenditure would also help him acquire the others, it was a no-brainer.

"Cinquefoil?" said the frog. "Cinquefoil, are you okay? Cinquefoil...?"

Cinquefoil. Cute name. But it wasn't that name she'd respond to anymore. Her eyes were blank, or rather they wore heart-shaped irises. The ferret was now hopelessly, shamelessly in [L*VE] with Ubiquitous Bal Berith.

As he retracted the syringe she slid up beside him, her body as thin and lithe as a feathered boa but far more affectionate as she pawed his face and shoulder. The hornet and frog stared, aghast.

"Now that's more like it baby." He pet her head and she purred, or whatever the fuck ferrets do instead of purr, really it was a purr though. Donning his douchiest grin he sent it like a laser straight to the other two. "Now look how much fun your friend's having. No reason you guys can't join in. I'm thinking a foursome—shit we can make it a whole fucking orgy if that bunnygirl eyeing me over there wants a piece too. Come onnnnn girls. I see those nun getups you're wearing. You can't tell me none of you ever engaged in any innocent lesbianism in whatever convent you came from. I know how you girls think. It'll be just like that, one big happy—"

"Silence! Silence, you uncouth bastard!" said the hornet.

Compared to the ferret and frog she had a bit more of an aristocratic bearing, and she wielded that strikingly phallic stinger of hers like a rapier: elegant and noble. That made her, without a fucking doubt, the easiest mark of the lot of them, the easiest to melt down into a mewling slut. Still, best not to waste time. Fidi and Dog Bitch got hurt bad and he had a mission to accomplish anyway.

"Baby, how many friends you got here?"

The ferret moaned in pleasure just to hear him call her. "There's Tricia and Obedience... Pythette's the one watching... Plus Charm and the new girl Mademerry. Demny's not here yet... she wouldn't fit in the carriage, so we had to leave her behind. Thaaaaat means... five, Master!" She held up a paw and showed the fingers as proof. "Not counting Mayfair or the elf, of course."

Mayfair was his target and he could take or leave an elf, an elf was just a human with weird ears. "Alright. Let's start with Tricia."

"Yes Master!"

All that exorbitant quickness she showed in her eagerness to cut out his intestines transformed her into a dart as she lunged at the hornet. Tricia's face contorted into a mix of rage and fear as she beat her wings to ascend, but Cinquefoil leaped to follow. Tricia didn't even attack. Of course not—Cinquefoil was her dear friend. Not that attacking would've done jack dick.

Cinquefoil's arms wrapped around Tricia and their combined weight brought them down hard against the pavement. Ubik skidded to a kneel beside them, shoving the glove of syringes back into his coat and retrieving a spike-studded collar with a long leash that he unclasped delicately.

"There we go baby. Hold her down just like that. Yeah, yeah. Keep her steady."

"Let me go. Let me go! Cinquefoil, Cinquefoil what is this madness? Why are you acting this way?"

"Don't worry darling, this collar won't work as fast as Ashtoreth's milk but you'll start to feel better once it's on you. The peace of being exactly what you were made to be, y'know?"

"No. No," the hornet screamed, and there we go, there went all that hatred, now it was just fear, total terror etched into those buggy features, "not again. Not again. Don't make me do it again. It took everything to get out last time. Please. PLEASE!"

The frog's tongue shot out.

Now Ubik had been expecting this. The rabbit was too far away to intercede, so if something were to happen, it'd be from this dimwitted, slow-moving frog girl. She lacked somewhat in the looks department, but Ubik already tooled in the back of his head potentialities in which those poison glands or sacs or whatever that coated her skin received a few modifications to instead secrete potent aphrodisiacs—it could be done, Ubik knew a guy down in Hell who liked to fuck around with shit like that—then it'd be cash money. Anyway, expecting her to do something, he'd kept the Prototype Mul Elohim aimed her way. For some reason, this no longer deterred her.

Sporting a determined look that ill-suited her dull features, the frog continued not to care even as he swirled the sword around menacingly. It would've been trivial to actually strike the tongue as it came, but the Prototype Mul Elohim did not merely wound what it cut, no matter where it cut. And he had no intention of destroying his future property.

The tongue stuck fast against his throat and reeled him back immediately. The frog—Obedience—she was slow, but her tongue was anything but. Ubik didn't have time to check if Cinquefoil released Tricia to sprint after him. It didn't matter. He was being pulled toward the toxic frog who spread her arms and webbed hands wide as though to swallow him up in an embrace against her vividly colored underside. She was growing, expanding, and from her a puff of pretty colors was exuding just like the malefic aura of his sword. That aura was death to him, he knew from sight and smell alone, but the bland face of the frog with her wide open mouth only pulled him closer—and closer—and closer.

He could swing the Prototype Mul Elohim. But then he'd lose her. No. That'd be a waste, and he wanted her. He wanted her more than anything. The collar in his hand wouldn't work fast enough so he dropped it. He had enough time to yank one thing out of his coat, he simply needed to think of the right thing. He had to have a thing. He had so many things there had to be one for this situation. One. Any single thing.

The killer colors before him blunted his head. He thought of nothing.

But when he pulled open his coat, only inches away from Obedience's skin, something came out without him even grabbing it. He didn't know what it was until it threw itself between him and the frog, forming a barrier against which he bounced harmlessly. Something slashed the frog's tongue to ribbons and he fell back into the arms of Cinquefoil who yanked him into her protection and that was when he realized what had leapt out of his coat to defend him from certain death.

The Dog Bitch. His Dog Bitch.

Obedience, frowning at the poor knife-eyed thing she held in her arms, opened her grasp and let the body drop back onto the ground. Convulsing. Foaming. Then going still. Dead still.

Not like, Kedeshah-kisses-them-and-they're-fine. This was dead. He knew it at a glance. This was not coming back. This was gone forever. Though he knew she'd been hurt grievously before, he always had Kedeshah. He always had something. He gained, he never lost. If he lost it was to gain something greater, it was an expenditure, but this was—this was—

His eyes glanced to Fidi on the ground who still hadn't moved all this time. Was she dead too?

Then he was moving. Throwing Cinquefoil off him and rushing forward. He lacked thought. Lacked any rational capacity to dictate his actions. He observed what was happening as though at a distance, like it wasn't him inside his own eyes. The blinking face of the frog rose up before him and then—the sword lashed out. The still-blinking head flew off from its body. Head and body fell to the ground.

"No," some people somewhere screamed.

"Master!" said Cinquefoil. He threw her off him, snarled at her as he sagged to a knee beside the body of his Dog Bitch.

"You'll die," said the hornet. She whizzed at his back and he whirled around to decapitate her too but Cinquefoil already intercepted her and his sword cut empty air. He didn't bother to watch the two fight, he turned back to the body and gripped a forehead that suddenly hurt like hell.

He didn't lose girls. That didn't happen. That was the thing he never lost. He didn't even trade girls for other girls. His girls were special. They were all one-of-a-kind. They didn't have a copy. They couldn't be replaced.

Someone was kneeling next to the headless corpse of the frog, it was the rabbit, he couldn't remember all their fucking names now. She leaned over the body and held out her paws but didn't touch it because of the poison. She sobbed.

"No, no. This wasn't—Obedience, no. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. She said we wouldn't be hurt anymore. She said none of us would die anymore. No. Oh God no, no."

Maybe killing them all would ease what he felt right now. Maybe acquiring them all would. Nah. He tried to imagine that tradeoff. Couldn't.

Past the rabbit, there was a trailer with its metal wall busted open. Inside that trailer was an archway with a rubbery, translucent skin underneath. A bubble-looking skin. His empty eyes noticed it now because it changed. Something walked out from that bubble. A great big something with huge tree branches sticking out of its head. Nah. Not tree branches. It was the sound more than sight that made it make sense—the sound of hooves clopping against the pavement, crisp and clear over the sirens that never died in this endless night. The silhouette glazed by the burning church behind him moved forward and it was there now, a deer. Broad antlers, human torso, a spear in its hands. She plodded slowly toward him, her eyes catching the firelight as she scanned the bodies on the ground.

"Demny, wait. Demny," said the rabbit. "Stay away from him. He's dangerous Demny."

Demny's expression and tone was empty as she said, "So am I."

—

Mayfair never intended for DeWint to die. She disliked him, yes. He taught her little, though they credited him for her education; she learned from books instead. Still, she was not Master of that world to enact petty vengeance. Even if she were, he would have been low on her list of recipients.

As DeWint and Viviendre walked down the corridor—and what things he had the gall to say to that accursed woman, what things!—Mayfair forestalled the elves marching toward them just long enough for the pair to reach Viviendre's chamber door. It would be simple, then, for them to duck inside the chamber to hide, and the elves wouldn't bother to search.

Call it carelessness, but Mayfair misremembered the intensity of Viviendre's myopia. After all, she was engineering these events in the long lead-up to her performance at the church, some small details escaped her notice. Regardless, Viviendre did not react to the elves in time. DeWint had to push her into her room, and he wound up dead in the process.

Indeed, he sacrificed himself to save her. Viviendre de Califerne. Her. Bad enough Jay Waringcrane cared so much about her for some inexplicable reason! Now people were dying for her too.

It irked Mayfair then, but she'd told herself some people would inevitably die and that what she did was for a higher purpose than all that. She remained focused on her goal. Yet it nagged at her, and she wondered whether DeWint—or anyone—would have thrown themselves in front of certain death for her sake as well.

Now, however, she didn't want to think about Styles.

Nor Mademerry, who remained inseparable from her, affixed nearly to her hip, sometimes reaching out to brush uneven hair from Mayfair's face. Unfortunately, she needed Mademerry now.

They had descended an incline from the parking lot, passed a recreational walkway, and reached the shore of Lake Erie: a dark and endless vat. Mayfair stepped away from Mademerry and pointed at her to ensure she maintained a fair distance.

"Now. Do you have the Mustard Seeds with you?"

"Of course, Mayfair. I would never misplace them, ever." She held up the small brown pouch.

"Then it's time to use your animus on them. You understand, right?"

"Yes! I understand perfectly. I'm here to help you realize your dreams, Mayfair. I'll not fail."

As Mayfair, Charm, and the elf Temporary watched, Mademerry undid the strings of the pouch and poured the contents carefully onto her palm. Twenty-three Mustard Seeds and one final fake mustard seed thanks to Flanz-le-Flore's trickery. Mayfair spotted the fake immediately even in the dark, plucked it out, and tossed it aside without a word. Mademerry clenched her teeth in a grimace she tried to keep concealed behind her lips.

"Hurry," said Mayfair coldly.

Mademerry retrieved a slice of Astrophicus' final fruit from her clothes and bit into it. Her narrow pointed tongue flicked out to lap at the juices that ran down her chin, wasting as little as possible. The fruit was a new subcategory of animus Mayfair manufactured after careful observation of the devil's labyrinthine rules. It imitated the effects of fae blood exactly, which allowed it to avoid tripping any of the more general restrictions on magic in Whitecrosse, and it was allowed to exist as a byproduct of Astrophicus absorbing the corpses of the nuns who had all in one way or another activated their own animus abilities. Essentially, it leeched off the existing animus ruleset in its entirety—and that meant that biting into it would let Mademerry use her own animus.

Mademerry closed her hand holding the Mustard Seeds into a fist. A bright silver light shone from within the clasped fingers, flaring her reptilian eyes into something macabre, and then the light desisted. Mademerry opened her hand and now, instead of twenty-three Mustard Seeds, there was only one Mustard Seed, although it was now the size of a plum pit.

The animus Mayfair gave Mademerry was the ability to combine identical objects. Not objects of the same type—exactly identical ones. That stipulation was necessary because otherwise the animus would be too potent. The original rules about magic would reject it.

Mayfair got the idea as she thought about that idiotic change the devil made to Makepeace's horse. How was it possible for the devil to do something so brazen when Mayfair struggled to make even basic changes to irrelevant objects? It made Mayfair realize she needed to think outside the rules. Attempting to navigate their million particularities would get her nowhere—but something inexplicable to the rules, outside them entirely, perhaps there progress could be made. Styles—Styles had in his teachings described to her this nation's Constitution, and how it was written hundreds of years prior to set rules for the nation. Yet now, in the present, people debated how the Constitution should be interpreted, because many things existed in the present world that the original Founders could never have anticipated. The Constitution was inadequate in its application to such things, and thus new rules needed to be created.

What was something new that Mayfair could introduce into Whitecrosse? Technology, of course. But no technology existed even in the real world that could accomplish what she needed, and if she could not explain how it worked, she could not force the devil's papers to accept it as "technology" instead of magic. So it'd have to be magic, and have to adhere to magic's limitations of scope... A conundrum.

Then it hit her. It wasn't a specific technology she needed, like a car or plane or computer, but a process made possible by technology.

Mass production.

In Whitecrosse, nothing existed that was exactly identical. Nothing at all. Nature abhorred such perfect imitations; even twins had subtle differences. No manmade tool could be created with the level of exactitude necessary, either. That meant the animus "Combine exactly identical objects" had a scope of nothing. There was nothing in Whitecrosse that was exactly identical, save for a few objects the heroes brought with them from Earth. Such magic was thus almost utterly useless, and thus perfectly acceptable by the devil's rules.

Now, thanks to Flanz-le-Flore's magic—which already existed—to turn one thing into another, there were twenty-three exactly identical Mustard Seeds. And Mademerry's legal animus combined them into one.

The second part of Mademerry's animus was that any power of the objects combined would be increased—exponentially. The plum pit-sized Mustard Seed in Mayfair's palm possessed the strength of a single Mustard Seed to the twenty-third power. And if the original strength was to move a mountain...

Mademerry was clinging to her again. Truly, these affections were becoming quite—irksome. They were so strangely physical. Mademerry's claws stroked her shoulder gently, she tilted her head toward Mayfair's all while staring at her, and it was really not the sort of thing Mayfair needed to have clouding her mind at this moment.

The sounds of combat continued back by the Door. "Mademerry," Mayfair said, "you've done what I needed of you. You ought to return and reinforce your sisters."

"W—what! And leave you? Of course not, Mayfair. You were nearly killed. It's unsafe. You must be attended—"

"I am. Charm is here."

"Charm is"—Mademerry looked to the lachrymose twin with a harsh glare, then softened her expression artificially—"I mean no offense Charm, but you're hardly the most appropriate for combat."

Charm said nothing, made no indication she even heard.

"Charm's animus is the only one among you that is useful for immobilizing a foe. If that devil in the coat manages to make it past Cinquefoil and the others, then it won't be brute strength that protects me. Besides, if I need strength, I have the other twin too."

As if summoned—because she was—the body of Charisma dropped out of the sky and landed beside Mayfair. Her arms were utterly obliterated, but as a corpse controlled by the Staff of Lazarus, such damage was already being repaired via magic.

Charm reacted to the sudden manifestation with an outpouring of freneticism that did little to support Mayfair's point. "Oh—oh, oh why must you keep doing this to her? Why must she be forced to suffer in death even so!" Her ordinary eloquence was cracking. Though she always cried, it seemed Mayfair was pushing her to her limit.

"Help me this one last time," Mayfair said, "and I'll release her." It at least quieted her.

Mademerry looked ready to protest. Maybe she had a point, since Mayfair was sending her away primarily because she was uncomfortable, but the more Mayfair considered the more of an intelligent move it seemed. Mayfair was situated beside the lake, meaning she could only be attacked from one direction. Being at the base of a sharp incline protected her from any long-range gunfire. She'd had Charisma scouring the area ever since the sniper escaped her grasp, but there was no sign of her near the church; indeed, as of the last few seconds, the only active assailant was the one in the coat—the devil. (So it was devils coming after her. Although the one they hit with Wendell's jeep looked human. Or perhaps that was a disguise—Could it have been the original Master of Whitecrosse? No matter.) It would be best to hold him off back at the Door, rather than letting him potentially draw closer to her. Besides, she only needed a few more minutes now.

"Mayfair. Please. I—I only want to protect you. Nothing more. You must let me—"

"Go! Your sisters might be in trouble out there." Mayfair did not mention that Charisma witnessed the devil decapitate Obedience only a few moments prior—or that Demny had finally arrived to turn the tide of the battle. "I need you to buy me a little more time. That's the way you can best serve me now. I won't take any disagreement. Go!"

"I'm sorry," Mademerry said. "If I have offended you I am sorry. I only meant—"

"Go! I've no time for this!"

Mademerry trembled. For a moment Mayfair thought she might still protest. And had Mayfair not made her to do as she asked? She'd operated so effectively at the castle, and yet now she was in constant disagreement. What changed? It could be pondered later. With only a single solemn "I'm sorry," Mademerry departed up the incline.

Now it was only Mayfair, the twins, and Temporary. The elf had seemed to sink out of herself, hardly cognizant of her surroundings, which was good because otherwise she might have eventually snuck out of the similarly inattentive Charm's clutches. Mayfair snapped her fingers in front of Temporary's face to rouse her. "Come. It's your turn to be useful."

—

Useful. Useful. Mademerry stumbled back onto the pavement of the parking lot envenomed by herself, her failure to please Mayfair, her uselessness. Ahead Demny, Tricia, and even Pythette fought with the attacker and—strangely—Cinquefoil, who seemed to be taking his side. A brief glance assessed the situation. Tricia and Pythette together were holding Cinquefoil at bay, while Demny matched the attacker one-on-one. From here, Mademerry could not see what had become of Obedience.

Her clawed feet, scratching over the black surface, were not taking her toward the battle, though. Which was odd. She ought to help Demny finish that cruel and detestable man, that obvious devil, as swiftly as possible so she might return to Mayfair's side. Yet this curse festering inside her would not let her mind settle on such a simple solution.

[Why did I waste so much time arguing with her, Mayfair thought. I could have let her stay and been done already. But something about her—]

She stood before the place where Pythette set the injured. There was Pastor Styles wounded in his shoulder and lying on his side with wheezing, raspy breaths. There was a woman with red hair who wasn't hurt and who tended to him as best she could. And there was the elf—the one who had tried to kill Mayfair at the monastery.

The elf, clearly in no shape to move, ought not to matter. Whatever she did in the past, she was no immediate danger to Mayfair, unlike the devil in the coat. So what drew Mademerry here? What caused her even now to walk slowly toward the elf with her body stretched out and her head propped against the tire of a parked car, wounds on her arm and hip bandaged (poorly) by ripped pieces of cloth? The elf's eyes glanced up at Mademerry but she did not move her head or any part of her body, as though she were paralyzed.

Sansaime.

Sansaime tried to kill Mayfair and thus she must die. Mayfair must be protected, served, loved above all. It only made sense for Mademerry to want to kill her now, when she could not fight back, before she had a chance to recover. Yet there was something else about her—

[Something about her—]

Something seething in the back of Mademerry's mind ever since she saw her—

[Something—]

Something that forced up feelings inside Mademerry she did not want to have.

[Something that upsets me. Something that ruins my focus.]

Mademerry could not focus. These feelings, they were—they were—

[None of it matters. I must finish it now.]

"Hey there," said the redheaded woman. She had risen from Styles and stepped forward to block Mademerry's view of Sansaime. "Nice to meet you... I'm Avery Waringcrane. And what's your name, dear?"

Waringcrane. Like the hero? "Mademerry," she said automatically, her name being the first thing she ever knew of herself.

"Mademerry. That's such a pretty name. I wish I thought of a name like that. It's unique, but cute..."

"Move aside."

"No."

Though Avery's voice seemed to float, not fully part of the world, that last word came clear and firm. Not angry. Simply firm.

"I have to," Mademerry said. "I must. I can't—I can't feel these things—"

"It's love, isn't it?" Avery said.

Love.

Love?

No. How could it—No. It couldn't possibly. That was—so utterly absurd. It couldn't be. And how would she know anyway? How was it that after only a few words exchanged this Avery woman could pierce her so thoroughly? No—to say that was to admit—

"It's okay, Mademerry. It's okay."

Avery stepped forward. Hands held out. Her every movement slow and gentle.

"It's okay. I know how hard these kinds of feelings can be... I know how much they sometimes make you want to do desperate things..."

Love. It couldn't be. Mademerry could only love Mayfair. The word had not come to her before but now that Avery said it she could think of no other. Love. The trilling of her heart, the deep unsettling pit in her stomach, but—how? For that elf? Why? She'd only seen her a few minutes ago. She knew nothing of her besides she tried to kill Mayfair, how could she possibly—some flaw. Some innate failure. A mistake, an error, she could not be this way, she could not feel these things. How had it happened? Why did Sansaime feel so—so—familiar? They had never met before now. It was an ache, a harsh ache inside her.

"Everything has been so crazy, so scary," Avery said. "I think when you're scared it makes your feelings go all haywire..."

It wasn't that. No. Mademerry wasn't scared. She wasn't. Something else. It didn't even feel like an emotion that was hers, it was like someone else was feeling it through her, yet she felt it all the same. She had to kill Sansaime to stop it. She had to blot out that elf from existence so this feeling could never arise within her ever again, so she may love only Mayfair. Right. Right—that was it. That was why Mayfair sent her away. She sensed that Mademerry lacked fidelity. She had thoughts for another. She sensed it just as this damned Avery woman sensed her turmoil in a second's glance.

"When I was eighteen and started college for the first time I was scared... I guess that's a different kind of scared, ha? But I still did things then... And I've been scared a lot lately. I'm scared for Shannon and Jay. I love them, you know. But you know what? I get the feeling it's going to turn around soon. I don't know why. I really shouldn't feel it now of all times, ha-ha. But I can't help how I feel, same as you. Things are going to get better soon. For all of us. There's no need to hurt anyone, okay?"

No. There was a need. Sansaime had to die. Had to die. Needed to be killed. Needed to not exist. There could only be Mayfair. No Sansaime. But Sansaime—No. Don't think of that. Don't think of her. But she's—NO! She needed to die. Can't feel this way. Can't. Can't can't can't. No. Make her go away. Make her stop being. Only Mayfair. Why—who was—whose feelings were these? Who was she really? Mademerry? Was she Mademerry? These weren't Mademerry's feelings. Someone else. If Sansaime died she'd be herself again. If Sansaime died Mayfair would love her again. End it. Kill her. Kill—

Avery reached her. She was warm. Her arms enfolded her.

KILL—

Mademerry swung her claws.

—

This part didn't require exploiting any loopholes. The old Master did it for her.

From what Mayfair could tell examining the papers, the old Master intended for Jay to fight the elves at some point. She'd established them as villains via Olliebollen Pandelirium; fighting them, in fact, was the entire reason Olliebollen agreed to help Jay in the first place.

The attack on Whitecrosse Castle had, in rough outline, been prepared. Only rough outline, as it seemed the Master was too preoccupied attending to Jay's direct present, as well as the events set to transpire in the monastery. But a sheet had existed for an elf, Name: Temporary, whose animus would allow the elves to suddenly attack at any proper time. How the old Master gave Temporary the animus she did, Mayfair did not know. But the Master understood her own rules inside and out, so she had engineered a way, and now Mayfair only needed to use what already existed.

At Mayfair's bidding, Temporary ate some of Astrophicus' fruit. She wiped her lips gingerly with the back of her fair hand, abstaining from any complaint. Somehow she was more agreeable than Mademerry, though she had not been designed for it.

"And where am I to make the portal," she asked.

Mayfair told her.

Temporary's placidity snapped with a humorous boggle of her eyes. "Is—is that possible? I can do that?"

"You can."

"Then—then where is the portal to connect to? It must be someplace suitably large—"

Mayfair pointed at the lake.

Once more Temporary stared in disbelief. She shook her head, and Mayfair anticipated some futile refusal, but it was a head shake of amazement, not denial. "Wow. I can do that. Well—okay then. But you'll let me free after?"

"Of course. I've no intention of harming you."

Anyone—or at least Mayfair—in a similar circumstance may have had cause to doubt such a claim, even if they lacked any other option than to believe in it. Temporary, however, smiled. "Oh, thank you. Thank you. It's been a simply terrible day. I feel so wretched, but maybe it'll end on a good note. At least I didn't need to eat another faerie. That fruit's way better. Yep!" She balled her hand into a fist, placed it on the top of her head, and stuck out her tongue.

"Well—I'm waiting."

"Oh right! Right! Sorry, so sorry. Lost my train of thought there. Right. Okay." She considered the lake. "Yeah. I can—where was the portal supposed to go again?"

Mayfair hooked her fingers into her own skin but refused to let it show on her face as she repeated where.

"Of course! I remember now. You just said it, after all, and—"

"Please! No more talking!"

Temporary held up her hands in acquiescence and stepped to the edge of the lake. Mayfair glanced at Charm, who whispered to her dead sister, and then watched Temporary kneel down and press her palm to the water.

The entire surface of Lake Erie became a portal.

Unlike the vault, there was no need to use the paper to inject an image of the other location into Temporary's mind. Even one such as her knew it—it was the sky over Whitecrosse, where a gigantic and unbroken ceiling of stormclouds had gathered at Mayfair's bidding. The space where the lake had once been was now a vertiginous stare straight down onto the world of Whitecrosse, the continents so familiar from the maps kept in the library, with even the castle a visible speck. Temporary loosed an audible "whoa," wobbled, and would have slipped and pitched straight down to a long and unpleasant demise had Mayfair not the presence of mind to make Charisma yank her away from the edge. Keeping such presence was, admittedly, difficult, because Mayfair herself felt boiling within her the remnants of the night's emotion, the last ounce of energy such a long and dreadful day allowed her.

Only a little left. Or was that true? They would surely not let her sleep after all that had happened. Well, her nuns could spirit her away somewhere first.

Mayfair held out the Mustard Seed23. She enunciated clearly the words necessary for its activation, which as Princess of Whitecrosse she had been expected to memorize for every relic contained within the vault:

"Remove hence to yonder place."

The night-darkened twin crescents of Whitecrosse and California began to rise. Slowly, ever so slowly, terrible and awful in their slowness; the Mustard Seed23 a skittering reverberation on her palm. She expected to feel the ground beneath her tremble too but even as the continents grew larger, larger, larger still the firm land of Earth shook not one whit, as though even this substantial alteration of its core geography could not make it quake. There it grew: Castle Whitecrosse, and the fields around it, and the wood of Flanz-le-Flore, and the mountains where the monastery lay, and the forests to the west and their mountains, and the dukedoms of Meretryce, Mordac, and Malleus, and the long desert that spanned the Californian continent, and its capital city with the pyramid-shaped palace of which she had read descriptions in books but never seen for her own eyes. Seeing it all from this vantage she became aware of its limitations, its boundedness, its timidity in comparison to the sprawl of Earth, to the sprawl even of this city Cleveland.

Then the land grew so large it was impossible to see it all, so level with her line of view, rising up into the portal, and even now Earth refused to shake, refused to care as the twin continents hovered in the magical space between the two worlds. Mayfair held them steady, held them level, her fingers a cage around the Mustard Seed23 that threatened to burst out and go flying for all the power coursing through it. The land, having been plucked from the seas, dropped off at its edges into nothing, rocky slopes cracking from the tug of gravity and peeling in thin layers to careen magnificently back down to the Godless world that still wished to retain even one scrap of what it once possessed.

"Now," she said to Temporary, "close the portal!"

Temporary jerked up, wasted a few seconds, and clapped her hands. The portal closed. It became once more the surface of Lake Erie, though no longer placid as the introduction of the continents now floating atop it like islands displaced a sweeping wave of water that splashed immediately onto the shore with enough force to have washed them away if Charisma did not grip tight Temporary and Mayfair to steady them. Even so, even with so great a change, the wave did not rise up the embankment fully, and dropped back into itself with only a slight change in its original elevation, the water now rising to Mayfair's ankles. Still, it was a change. And now the Earth trembled, only a little bit, a brief rumble that toppled their balance and sent Temporary facedown to the ground despite her being held.

Mayfair regarded her handiwork with utter awe. Until the portal closed she had not been convinced of her success. But now it was undeniable. The continent of Whitecrosse sprawled before her in the lake, the castle on its hill shining in the distance from the fire that had not yet been fully snuffed. California was further beyond it, unseen but present. It was all there.

All of Whitecrosse, for the first time, existed under the care of God. No longer remained it bereft, soulless, inhuman, ignored. God could no longer ignore. He could not. Jesus Christ had died for the sins of all people on Earth and now these people—her people—all of them existed on Earth. They were saved. Before they were damned or worse not even damned, consigned to endless oblivion past death, but now they were saved. Now light shone upon them all, and she had done it: Mayfair Rachel Lyonesse Coke, Princess of Whitecrosse. She shepherded them all to this paradise where there was bountiful food and advanced technology and stable peace.

She did it.

Despite every odd against her, despite assassins seeking her head up to the very end.

She did it!

With her own will and intelligence. With her own knowledge and expertise.

SHE DID IT!

Mayfair was about to toss all her decorum and dignity aside, seize Temporary who showed a silly smile in a similar feeling of self-awe, and dance.

Then the sky opened up.

A single, thin, bright ray of pure white light shot down from the heavens.

Elsewhere, the voice of someone screamed: "DON'T LOOK INTO THE LIGHT. UBIK! DON'T LOOK INTO THE LIGHT—IT'LL KILL ANYONE WHO LOOKS!"

Ubiquitous Bal Berith, engaged in furious combat with Demny, had been about to look before the warning reached him. He recognized the voice and out of his Wrathful mind he snapped; realizing what was happening, he threw himself flat on his face and clamped his hands over his ears to blot out the spotless, distant, growing sound of a choir that floated down gently to accompany the light. Cinquefoil, in love with her Master, did exactly as he did without question.

Tricia and Demny heard the warning too and undisposed to test its veracity covered their eyes. Pythette, however, heard the pleasant singing and tried to look, but Demny swept her in her arms and pressed her face to her chest to prevent her.

Mayfair was, of those gathered, perhaps the one most aware the power God could effortlessly wreak on man, and despite her jubilant emotion, despite her burning desire to see the true majesty of the celestial sphere, she hid her face.

Temporary heard "Don't look" and her brain turned that warning into "Look." She twisted her neck but in doing so her foot flew out from under her and she slipped headfirst into the lake instead.

Charm thought: After all this time. Using her animus to present to people the fake. Now here was the real coming down to her. She looked at Charisma, the miserable state she was in. Did it hurt? Did she feel pain even if she could not express it? Charm felt pain, every moment she felt it, true pain, pain to wrench from her endless black tears and having eaten the fruit the tears only burned all the more. They were all poor sinners. If God's light was too much for them, it was still only right they look at it and die in the attempt. She seized her sister tight and held her head to force her to look, and she looked too. And it was beautiful, and it was peaceful, and in that moment all the sadness finally went away.

Mademerry did not look. She was not even aware anything was happening. She sat with her legs folded, cradling Avery's head in her hands. Blood everywhere—so much. Why did this happen. The feelings inside her now were worse than she could ever imagine and it pinned her to the spot. Why. Why did she—why did she—

The poison the bitch-woman had injected into Sansaime's hip paralyzed her. She could not move even if she wanted to. She did want to. She was still conscious, her eyes open to watch Mademerry holding Avery's body. If looking at the light would have killed her then she would have looked. She could not look.

Dwight Jeremiah Styles, with great effort and great pain, turned himself over. He knew he was bleeding to death anyway, so how could he ever miss this? Staring up at the light, his lips pressed into a smile. That girl did it. That girl made the fantasy reality once more. God was returned to this world.—And he crumbled into dust.

The angel Uriel descended out of heaven, riding the beam of light. They were, in present form, indescribable. For a human, seeing them was death, and many people in the city looked up and saw them and died. Halfway down Uriel realized: Oh! My appearance is wiping out large swaths of the populace. How terrible! They changed themselves in a moment, becoming a shape much more akin to a human's, though not without the halo and general brilliance an angel in true service to God merited. Their descent finally ended as they touched a single sandaled foot to God's ground and surveyed their fair and pleasant face across God's lake, which now had something that was not God's floating inside it. An odd creature that was not quite a human and certainly no creation of God came thrashing up out of the lake sputtering water, and a girl who looked human but was missing something stood with her eyes squeezed shut beside them.

Uriel sniffed once. Devils were about—of course. "Well~" they said, "someone's been quite naughty, haven't they?"