[37] Coming Back Is Difficult

Viviendre couldn't walk to the monastery, even if Jay supported her the entire way. They needed a carriage. Despite Jay's status as hero and the British funny money Viviendre tossed around liberally, nobody in town was interested in crossing Flanz-le-Flore's enchanted wood to pay the archbishop's twisted women a visit. Eventually, they bought a farmer's cart and a pair of tired old horses. They'd have to drive themselves.

They left at assumedly noonish. Following the line of trees Flanz-le-Flore created, Jay held the reins while Viviendre leaned with her back to his and watched the city shrink slowly behind them. The black tower's light bleached all. Everything was paler: the leaves, the grass, the surfaces of the small lakes. Other than the fight with Pluxie, Jay had never handled a horse before, but the stoop-headed duns they bought were pliant, resigned. They blinked away the flies that feasted on their cataracts. But that was all.

"I should like to write a story, once we're there and nobody's around to bother us," Viviendre said at one point like any other point. "For so long we've only had two stories: The Bible and John Coke. I'll write the thrilling tale of Jay Waringcrane."

It felt like a sarcastic joke. But if it were, she would've fehfehfehed.

At another point: "Do you think we're allowed to be happy, Jay? Or will some thunderbolt come down the moment it starts to happen?"

Jay said nothing.

"Sorry," said Viviendre, "I haven't a fucking clue what I'm talking about."

Around when Jay's internal sense of time told him it was night, the line of trees dropped away and the road forked around a dilapidated wooden structure. From this direction, Jay didn't recognize it at first. Then he realized: It was the abandoned inn, where he first met Makepeace and Sansaime.

Viviendre had been yawning the past hour, so Jay said, "Let's rest here. We'll reach the monastery tomorrow."

He stabled the horses without difficulty and left for them the same bucket of oats Sansaime tried to feed her and Makepeace's horses the morning they embarked for the woods. In the inn's main room they dined on what they'd brought with them, simple stuff, bread and apples. Only enough to last the trip. Jay assumed the monastery had food. He'd seen the nuns eating at the mess hall, at least. Did they grow it themselves up in the mountains, on terraces or whatever, or did Perfidia not think about it and simply cause food to manifest in their storeroom?

"I feel begrimed," Viviendre said as she dropped an apple core onto her plate. "Suppose that's to be expected, the pampered princess on one of her rare excursions into the country. But ugh that cart is filthy. Look at my hands. Caked with dirt."

She held up her palms. They were small and smooth.

"I see nothing," Jay said.

"Of course you wouldn't. You're you, after all. But I dislike the feeling and I wouldn't want to feel like this if we... Well, you know."

He understood her real concern. Though he wasn't sure what he thought about the implication.

"There's a pond not far from here," he said.

So would that be how it went? Him and her bathing in that pond surrounded by wind-swishing trees, then back to the inn to finish it off? Retreading the steps of Prince Mack. Things ended poorly for him when he finally reached the monastery.

Viviendre spared him the déjà vu. "You are not allowed to peep." Standing on the sandy shore where Jay and Makepeace had once fought, her peg leg sinking slowly, she jabbed a finger at his chest. "Maybe you've got some perverted ideas since we spent the night in the same bed. However! I still have some dignity."

She spoke with prim fury, the veneer of an uppity noblewoman, but Jay knew her well enough. She wore those clothes and jewels and perfume for a reason. Oddly, it nicked him that there remained some barrier of trust between them, but he supposed he was distant too.

"You'll be okay on your own? You don't look like you can swim."

"I'm not a fucking imbecile Jay. I won't go deeper than I can sit. Now shoo!"

He strolled back to the inn, tapping his baseball bat against the tip of his shoe. So what would happen after she finished bathing? Would they sleep in the same bed again? This time not so exhausted? Just like Mack and Sansaime? He wouldn't be able to get Makepeace out of his head. Well. She'd be nervous. She was nervous already. When they started to kiss right before her funny "fake" assassination plot she'd been nervous too. He'd play it off. Say something like, "We're not ready yet." Maybe he'd tell her the truth and say he didn't want to do it there. Best not to bring up Makepeace though. He wondered if she still felt anything about him. She hadn't mentioned him at all in days, as though she'd replaced Makepeace entirely in her mind with Jay. She seemed different in many ways. Shyer. Less foulmouthed. Presumably no absurd and mislaid schemes to deepen his affection for her because of innate self-loathing that made her feel unworthy of being loved...

What if Perfidia changed her? Could she do that? Rewrite her character on the fly to make her more affectionate, more demure, more in line with traditional conceptions of a romantic partner—

No. He was done thinking like that.

And it was that easy. Suddenly he felt peaceful.

The inn was ahead. He managed to smile. Makepeace wasn't a ghost haunting him. What'd it matter what Makepeace did in that inn? It had nothing to do with Jay Waringcrane—the modern Napoleon, emperor of nothing!—who was living his own life, by his own rules, the way he wanted. It only took one other person. Maybe that was the trick. Fantastic insights for Viviendre's biography.

"Hey-ho there dearrr," said a voice.

Jay stopped. He stood amid a stretch of sun-bleached grass waving listlessly to and fro, fifteen feet from the back of the stable, with the inn a little further beyond. The voice came from directly in front of him, it sounded so close, but nobody was nearby. Nobody was anywhere. The hills stretched in one direction, Whitecrosse in another, and Cleveland another still. Each of them dry and whitened. A rustle came from the stable, but it might've been the horses.

He flipped up his bat and caught it in both hands, readying his stance.

"Awwwh don'tcha wanna talk... to meee?"

A woman's voice. Which was weird. Jay might've believed in the manifestation of a generic bandit. All his games were rife with those, though Perfidia hadn't seemed interested in doling out random encounters so far. But bandits were usually grizzled men and this voice wasn't simply female, it was lilting, reedy, wind whistling through grass.

"Come out," Jay said.

"As the dear asks, I am bound to oblige..."

It rounded the side of the stable, stuttering its steps awkwardly, swinging its hands at its sides, with its head at a tilt so severe it looked like someone had snapped its neck. A woman. Almost comically large tits, barely contained within a crisscross of leather straps tied around a silver ring. The skin—there was a lot of it—red. Curved horns on its head. And behind it swished a long, thin, barb-tipped tail.

"You a friend of Perfidia," Jay said.

"Perfidiaaa..." The devil woman snapped her head the other direction as she approached. Her jaundiced eyes were like amber. Her long, forked tongue tapped her upper lip. "Don't know no Perfidia dearrr, but I could get to know you! Very well."

"Don't come closer." Jay pointed the bat.

"What if I like it painful!"

"Stereotypical," Jay spat.

"Awwwh don't be so mean. The last dearrr I saw coming this way shot all my friends with his crazy gun. I barely got away myself... But you don't got a gun, do ya? Unless it's what I see in your pocket..."

She kept advancing, slowly, stopping whenever Jay adjusted his bat, but always resuming, always finding a way to inch closer. Jay stepped back, fixing his eyes on hers, watching as she slowly circled him. He decided he didn't want to wind up between her and the stable. She might not be alone.

Then he noticed. Her odd steps weren't without purpose. She favored one side of her body. Her hip, bared under a leather thong, was wounded. It was difficult to tell because her skin and blood were the same color.

"Come onnn dear, don'tcha know? Lucifer is God now. Devils got Divinity. You humans aren't shit to us. But I'm a nice girl. I won't kill ya just for fun... No, no. You're a cutie. I'd like to keep you as a pet. I'd like to suck your cock till you shrivel up like a prune, sweetie pie..."

"This is hackery Perfidia," Jay said, theoretically to the sky though he didn't take his eyes off her. "Cleveland? Devils? What are you pulling here? This isn't even close to what our contract's about."

"So you'll talk to other girls but not me." The devil pouted. "You'll even talk to that hideous crippled little bitch... Left her so she could wash out her festering cunt. What if I paid her a visit? Split her open and crawled into her skin? Would you like me then, if I looked like that?"

He suppressed a smile. This devil didn't realize what Viviendre could do with just a word. But Jay disliked the idea of not settling this himself.

Sprinting at a modest arc with his bat swinging in from the side, he charged. No Viviendre, no Lalum, no Olliebollen. Nobody here but him and this devil.

His attack looked wild. A screaming attack while sprinting, something that relied on momentum alone. Her amber eyes glinted hungrily and she dove the opposite direction of his swing with a feline movement that seemed to compress all bones in her body to a single undulation, her claws bared to rip into his thigh. Jay didn't know shit about this devil, didn't know what she'd do in a fight, but given she seemed like a literal whore he guessed she wasn't smart about combat. His attack had been a feint all along, never intended for follow-through, and he'd specifically made it to force her to jump the direction of her wounded hip. He stopped his sprint short, planted his feet, and quickly swung out a kick.

It wasn't a strong kick. He'd lacked time to wind it up, after all. And even with her wound she moved faster than expected. His boot caught only a glancing blow against her face but it was still a blow; her neck wrenched sharply to the side and she twirled into the dirt. Somehow though she'd gotten ahold of his kicking ankle. Jagged nails tore through the jean denim and into his skin, drawing warm blood and wrenching him off-balance. He dropped hard onto the packed-down path and kicked his legs furiously to break from her.

He scrambled to his feet within a plume of dust. She backed up as well, rising slowly, and they stood apart, facing one another again. His ankle hurt but not so badly he couldn't walk. No more crazy sprint attacks though—not that he'd expect even an idiot to fall for the same feint twice.

"Awwwh, you're smiling," the devil said, her face wreathed in dust. "No fair! I finally find a cute dearrr all for myself and he's like this. I'm the unluckiest devil in the whole of Hell!"

"You can still leave," Jay said. Though it was true—he was smiling.

"You're such a bastard!"

Her foot, which was bare, with long jagged toenails similar to claws, scraped the dirt and kicked up a fresh spray of dust before she crouched low and pounced. Jay thought—she's doing my move, she's trying to trick me—but she wasn't, her body drove into him headfirst and flung him onto his back and he barely got the bat between him and her before she started swinging her claws screeching ferally and dripping viscous drool onto his face. Her barbed tail angled for an attack—and not at his face. He put everything in his body into sliding back along the ragged dirt as the barb came down, missing its intended target by inches and digging deep into the empty space between his thighs.

She was surprisingly strong, her claws got around his bat and kept him from using it to lever her off, and now her mouth was opening wide to reveal twin rows of fangs, so wide he thought—she's gonna bite my face off. For an instant he blanked on what to do. This was her element, body pressed to body. Her legs split to match his and her toes drilled into his ankles, spearing him down painfully, while her claws slid from the bat to his wrists. His eyes squinted, he suppressed an open-mouthed cry, her drool would only get in his mouth, but he needed to think of something, he must have an option available—

The ghost of Makepeace whispered in his ear. A phantom memory resurfaced, this same inn but a different night, a night that was actually black. Two bodies shuffling in the sand.

Jay rammed his head straight up. The brim of his Cleveland Browns hat jabbed into the bridge of her nose.

Her head snapped back with a boneless neck motion, she cried out, her grip loosened, the weight of her chest left him. He broke his wrists away and slammed the tip of his bat into the underside of her chin. Her gnashing teeth sprayed blood. She fell off him. He climbed to his knees and swung the bat into her head, and when she fell down he swung again, and rising painfully on ankles that barely functioned he swung another time.

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"Owowow, owie, please dear, please, I was just joking! Just a joke!" Her body thrashed as he kept the blows coming quickly, not giving her enough time to recover. One of her feet or maybe it her tail lashed out and his leg buckled, somehow he only fell to one knee, he continued striking. The bat's metal sound echoed in the dry air, bat against bone, against bone. Her voice kept crying: "Sorry, I'm sorry, so sorry, I hate fighting anyway, please I don't want to die," begging him, pleading for her life, and Jay only thought: Christ it's taking a lot of hits. It'd only been a few for Charm and Charisma.

"I'm sorry dear, I'm sorry..."

He swung once more and the wind went out of him, he could barely breathe, he fell on his ass and looked down and realized he'd utterly obliterated her head, brain and skull and blood in an unrecognizable soup, spewing up a smell like feces with only the ring of a jawbone and a few teeth remaining. Yet he still heard her voice: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Even as, seemingly by magic, her body shuddered and began rapidly decomposing, turning the grass where it lay brown and then black as the blades crumbled to ash, he still heard her begging.

He sagged back against the ground and stared at the faded sky.

Everything inside him deflated. He turned into a flat skin drying under the sun. Yet a restful flatness. Pain oozed out of him, alongside everything else. He felt only his lungs, heaving. Active. Useful.

Some time later a voice cried out: "Oh fuck. Oh Jesus Christ Jay, what the fuck?" Viviendre tottered into his view. She reached for her eyepatch. "You're bleeding. Why the fuck didn't you yell for me or something, I didn't even realize—Hold on. I'll put you back—"

His hand reached out and grabbed her smooth fabrics. He lifted his head off the dirt. "No."

"No? Jay you're hurt. What even happened? I mean, no, fuck, we can worry about that later. Jesus my chest. Fuck." She placed a palm to her heart and wheezed in a rasping breath.

"It's okay. Viv. It's okay Viv. I'm fine. See? I'm okay."

And it was true. He felt—okay. He sat up and inspected his wrists and then his ankles. A few cuts, some deeper than others, but nothing serious.

"Viv. Don't have an asthma attack. Come on."

Her breathing had risen to hoarseness, her eye was wide, but he pulled her close and held her and patted her back. She retained her pungent sweetness despite her still-damp hair. Did she keep perfume bottles with her? Whenever she moved she jangled; she had many fine things that might make such a noise.

He held her until her breathing returned to normal. "I'm sorry," she said. "You scared me is all. You're sure you don't need me to return you back to the way you were?"

"No. That devil said something. Something I shouldn't forget." Lucifer. Divinity. God. He turned and looked past the inn, down the road, at the far distance. The black tower, Cleveland. He thought about the nuns who had piled into Wendell's car. The lizard one especially. The one that looked like Mayfair and Makepeace.

This wasn't Perfidia's new plot, was it?

No. This was something else.

"Something you shouldn't forget. Meaning what. Tell me Jay."

The fight had ended, his breathing returned to normal, but an electric feel remained, even as he continued to hold Viviendre. A thought: It could be something real. After all these fakes and facsimiles, games either on his computer or under Perfidia's design.

Something real.

"Jay. Jay, talk to me. What did it say? What do you mean, devil?"

Some ember still remained. An image of greatness projected inside himself, a thought trending Napoleonic...

"Nothing you need to worry about," he said idly. "We'll get you to the monastery. Then I'll decide what I want to do."

"You—you bastard!" Her frantic disposition grew intense. "I see you looking that way. What did it tell you? What?!"

"Calm down."

"Calm down?! I can tell. You'll leave me again. I can tell!"

"No, I—I mean—"

"Oh you can never stay. Of course. Why would I think otherwise! Something always—to take you away—I cannot have a single fucking thing can I? Can I?"

"Viviendre. Viviendre."

"No. No. Not this time. I will not allow it. Not now. Not when we're so close to happiness!"

"Hey—"

The eyepatch was off. Shit. He held her still, he could do something—do what? Hurt her? Her lips were moving and—

Nothing new under the sun.

Jay blinked. He glanced around. What—where did...? Viviendre was with him. Didn't he just leave her at the pond? What happened? She quickly replaced her eyepatch. Oh.

"You used your eye on me," he said dully.

Worry embodied her manic expression. Her face was haggard and gaunt even though her hair glistened and her sweet scent pervaded. She shook her head slowly, then bit her lip. "You—I had to, Jay. You were—you were hurt. Hurt bad."

"Hurt? How?"

"You got in a fight. With that, that thing, whatever the fuck it is! I don't know. Look at it!"

A melted, rank mass of rotten flesh. Plus the smashed remains of a skull. Jay's eye twitched and he blinked a few times before rubbing the corner hard. He thought the skull just said something: Sorry. I'm sorry.

"Huh?"

"You killed it, whatever it was. But it hurt you bad. You begged me Jay. You were screaming in agony. I had to—You know I wouldn't use the eye on you if I didn't absolutely have to."

"Of course," he patted his chest as though he expected to find phantom wounds. Nothing. "Yeah."

"We—we have to go. Look. More of those creatures are coming."

Viviendre indicated the distance, where the fields of grass gave way to a horizon from which the black tower and Cleveland rose. Red dots, like fire ants—fifty, maybe a hundred.

Red. Why red. "What was it I killed again?"

"I don't know! Okay? I don't! Whatever it was, one of them nearly killed you. Let's get the horses and go to the monastery, okay? Alright?"

"The horses are tired—"

"I'll use the eye to turn them back to this morning, fresh as tulips. Please Jay. Please! Let Mallory deal with whatever those things are. Remember our plan?"

Of course he remembered. She held him tight, peered up at him with her one eye. Begging. Confusion lingered, but he supposed... if she'd seen him dying, her distress made sense. And revitalizing the horses—clever trick.

Something seemed off still. Had Perfidia sent some new monster to entice him into her next plot? Obviously that would never work. He was long finished playing her game. Why were they all red though?

He returned Viviendre's embrace and patted her back. "It's okay, Viv. We're going to the monastery. Come on."

As they went to gather the horses and supplies, Jay took a last glance at the inn and thought to Makepeace's ghost: I've eluded you again.

—

Shannon latched long nails into her forehead. Her wrists compressed her shrieking eyeballs back into their sockets. Like ibuprofen wearing off it all ebbed back. These silk blankets around her, this fine feathered mattress under her bare back, a morass into which she sank irrevocably.

Beside her Mallory fucked the hornet girl. She'd already finished with Shannon. Soft cries intermingled with bizarre buzzes that stirred the sickness in the pit of Shannon's stomach.

Why? Why did she have to—she could never resist. The stress, the compounding horror of it all, those were the times she needed it most, yet also the most inappropriate times. In an ordinary world she acted as a machine, a perfect operator, processes and facts. If she divorced that half of herself from the other, the one that always wound up in beds like these with some body or another beside her, then it became a logical deviation. Simply an extra process, something running in the background when the computer went to sleep for self-maintenance, unseen and unknown by all.

Mother was dead.

"Ah, oh, my queen, my queen, God I never want to be a nun again...!"

Windy day, everyone all in mourning arranged around the pit into which they lowered the man that ruined her life, and she sobbed more than anyone. Jay twirling in the background, six years old, arms outstretched: I'm a sail! I'm floating away like a sail!

Mother always blamed Shannon. She never said it, not once. But Shannon knew. It oozed out Mother like slime. A silent home. Jay with his toys in his room and Shannon creeping quietly to snatch something from the refrigerator while Mother deliquesced on the couch watching a movie she would never remember. Nobody ever talked again in that house. Shannon couldn't have killed him though. She was just a kid then. But Mother blamed her. Mother and daughter, a happy family. When Shannon got her first period she had to look up online what to do. A silent home, all shadows and black.

No. It couldn't be real, how could it be real, what? A voice of a stranger said so and hung up? A prank. Mother misplaced her phone, some delinquent acquired it. A logical skepticism founded on a reasonable bar for burden of proof and yet she believed it not for a moment. She saw the black tower, she heard what Gonzago said about devils crawling over the countryside.

Out the bed she slithered anyway, falling from it more than any dexterous mechanical motion of limbs in a natural pattern, while Tricia came loudly throbbing her long stinger into the empty air while Mallory petted and shushed her through the throes. Kneeborne slouching with only a single sock for clothing to the pile of garments she'd cast off or rather Mallory cast off her and rummaging rummaging rummaging until the phone with its smooth perfect surfaces spread tactile pleasantness across her palm. Mallory cooed sweet nothings to a Tricia who was sobbing now too, muttering about the dead too, dead friends, dead nuns, Obedience and Cinquefoil and Charm and all those who died in the fire that night at the monastery, demanding to nobody—to everybody—why it had to happen, what sense of holy judgment condemned them who'd hurt nobody, done nothing truly wrong! Mallory whispered: "My pet. My little toy. My cherry."

Shannon called Mother's number. Her back propped against the wall, her legs splayed randomly as she watched the mounded forms of the other women in the bed shuffle about each other. The phone rang. It rang. It rang. It rang. It rang.

It answered. "I told you. She's dead."

The same graveled voice as before, mired in static.

"Tell me it different," Shannon whispered. "Tell me it's a lie. A stupid prank. Please. Anything."

"You know it's not different."

Yes. Shannon knew. Her eyes squeezed shut.

"Who are you," she asked.

Some sound was playing in the background. Hard to discern. It bothered Shannon to hear it and her head twitched.

"Who are you," she asked again.

"You know me."

The sound played again, louder. A little jingle. Happy and optimistic even fragmented.

Shannon did know the voice on the other end. That raspy voice. "You're the one who took the key from me. You're Sansaime."

"Oou-oou-ouh! That's a bingo!" Sansaime said, in the exact same tone and inflection as the German gestapo in the film Inglourious Basterds [sic] by director Quentin Tarantino, such an uncanny dead ringer that Shannon actually saw the actor—who won an Oscar for the role—imprinted onto the back of her eyelids. Did this medieval fantasy elf actually watch the movie, is that what she's done since stealing the key to the Door?

The bafflement of it sliced through Shannon's stupor. Her brow furrowed and into this clarity of mind she realized what sound was in the background. A video game. One of Jay's moronic video games.

"Did you kill her?" Shannon asked.

"Maybe I did," said Sansaime. "Our worlds are connected now, so how about you come over to get your revenge? Bring that brother of yours as well. He can break me open with his bat like a pinata. I've a wonderful surprise to spill out of me if he does!"

A wheezing, manic laugh followed until it cut off abruptly as either she ended the call or the service dropped it due to spotty signal.

Shannon lowered the phone believing herself to be more upset than she was before and only after careful consideration realized that was not true. No. Instead the inner mechanism of her brain began to churn again and hopeless bloblike sorrow gave way to industry.

From the bed Mallory rose. Pale slats of light showed through the shutters behind her nude form. She'd removed the Armor of God for the first time since the fight; her wounds were now scars. Some larger, redder than others—the hooked smile at the corner of her mouth most apparent of all—but simple scars.

"The sole problem with females," she said, "is the tragedy they attract to them ineffably. You two dry your eyes now. I've need of you to command my army as my generals."

Buzzing, Tricia turned over. "And what do I know of military tactics?"

"Nothing, but neither do any alive in Whitecrosse. You, at least, I trust. Rise. Rise, you both!"

Shannon gathered her clothes and rose, her eyebrows sharpening to a point as she blinked and rubbed her eyes and thought again about Sansaime swallowed in a sea of static, saying "That's a bingo!"

"Well then." Tricia's tone grew detached, carelessly effete and purged of all dismay in an instant. "Those devils are coming, and in great waves. My first order of advice is to prepare the town for siege."

"Hm." Mallory's eyes scoured Shannon's body as she shuffled into her undergarments and shirt. "Dreadfully dull, but I suppose sensible—"

"No," said Shannon. One arm went into the same white button-up shirt she'd worn since she departed Earth, then the other. "Sieges became obsolete the moment mankind developed guns and artillery. Those devils are coming from Cleveland. That's the modern world. They'll punch through stone walls sooner or later. Probably sooner."

Mallory tilted her head, smiling without smiling. She hooked her foot under the discarded tatter of Tricia's white habit and with one deft flick threw it onto the bed. Tricia crawled with her four arms to pull it toward her. "You have the Trumpet of Jericho, do you not?" Mallory said. "If they destroy my walls, make me new ones."

"The Trumpet only works in one direction, one wall at a time. It'd never hold. You know that though."

"Certainly, cherry. But I do wonder what my unparalleled tactician proposes instead?"

One button after another up her shirt. All in logical, ordered procession. "Whitecrosse's standing army is small to begin with. Knights in service of individual lords and a few orders of guards. After the elves, the number's even fewer. We use that smallness to our advantage. Mallory with her sword and Wendell with his gun can devastate large numbers of enemies quickly."

"I wouldn't expect that Wendell fellow to still be here," Mallory said. "I could tell—he had other thoughts."

Shannon doubted how well Mallory could actually tell something like that just by looking at someone's eyes, but she let the point slide. "It's irrelevant. Mallory alone should be enough. As Tricia informed us, the devils are streaming out from the tower in every direction. Almost assuredly they're focused more on Cleveland right now than us. It's closer, it's more densely populated. That means a relatively small number will be headed toward us, at least in the immediate future. An offensive attack, with the overwhelming power of the relics, could work."

"I'd like very much something offensive," Mallory said.

"I know you would." And maybe that colored Shannon's advice, or maybe she truly thought this was the best maneuver. She knew nothing about military tactics whatsoever yet she spoke now with the confidence of an expert. To her surprise her words made sense. Well—what did she expect? Shannon Waringcrane was a sensible person. Ruled by logic and process. There was a rational order to all things and that interior truth could always, always be discerned, no matter within what insanity. Tornadoes and hurricanes, at their core, operated mathematically: Wind at certain velocities, progression across certain distances. "I'll have the Ruler too. I'll know the enemy's numbers as we near them. That's intelligence they won't have of us. We can steer toward weaknesses in their lines—they won't be organized in clear lines anyway—attack where they're least numerous, and punch through."

The last button slotted into its space. She popped the collar and whipped her tie through it, automatically crafting a Windsor knot with a few unconscious motions. On the bed, Tricia floundered trying to get the habit on over all her strange insectoid elements and eventually lost her balance and flopped onto the mattress. Only Mallory remained motionless, watching Shannon dress with more investment in the process than Shannon possessed herself.

"Punch through. A fine expression. But punch through to where? For what purpose?"

"To Cleveland. We punch through to Cleveland."

"Why? Is that not where the majority of the devils are, as you said yourself?"

"Are you not itching to fight more enemies anyway?"

"Oh, undoubtedly. I'm ravenous for the chance. But I seek to understand the mind of my chief tactician. For what purpose does all this serve?"

Shannon said nothing for a moment, giving Tricia space to interject after she awkwardly crammed her head through her habit and caused her antennae to bounce erratically.

"That daughter of yours told us she'd bring Whitecrosse to Earth to save us," Tricia said. "Yet it's done quite the opposite. Why shouldn't we find a way to put it back? She holds the Mustard Seed. If we find her, we can return everything to normal. And leave Earth and its loving God to contend with the devils."

Yes. That was an explanation Shannon might give. These worlds were meant to be separate, they operated on different sets of procedures, so let them be extricated. This all happened because the order of things was set arrears. Debts unpaid. Actions without opposite reactions.

Yet Shannon imagined the image of Sansaime hunched over a computer screen, much like Jay used to spend his every waking hour, staring at some pixel polygon mush as men with swords took turns whaling on goblins. Through eyes that still throbbed raw she managed a smile to match the scar on Mallory's face.

"Or," she said, "we arm ourselves with the technology of my world. Guns, phones, radar, lidar, everything we can get our hands on. We combine it with the relics. And then we take on the source of it. We storm that black tower."

"Oh, I quite like the sound of that," said Mallory.

Shannon was surprised to find she liked the sound of it too. Sending that tower crashing down to the ground, restoring Cleveland's skyline to its proper shape, flattening those devils into red mist. Yes. Oh yes.

"I shall do as you ask, Your Majesty," said Tricia. "I cannot say otherwise."

"Then it's decided," said Mallory. "Gather supplies, gather whoever is fit enough to accompany us. We march on the tower of devils. We march on Cleveland."