Demon

"Gaea gave we the right to take the child," Luther thundered.

Kali gobbled even louder, and her fingers flew.

"Shesez Gaea dint give you no right to get it lessen you got to it first," the boy chattered. "Shesez you was too fuckin' late. Shesez you is a prodisint-" Kali slammed a hand across the boy's bruised face.

"-shesez you is a prod-"

Again he was slapped.

"-protisent-"

And again.

"-prot... is ... tent ... shesez you is a protestant muh-fuckering ig ... ig ... ignor-a-mouse shitheaded buggerin Christian. Shesez you is too ugly to live. Shesez whyn't ya go suck on the Pope's prick."

"Whore of Vavylon! Harlot of Gommorah!"

"Shesez damn straight. Shesez she go

Kali hit him again.

"-sebila-sela-cellba-celili-li-li-li-celibin-celiba ... cy."

The boy sighed his pleasure and relief when he got it right and Kali stopped hitting him.

"Celibacy, celibacy, celibacy," he muttered. He would get it right for the next time, no question,

"Fofery!" Luther hissed, meaning popery. Arthur Lundquist, whose faint ghost informed the actions of the thing he had become, would not have known popery from plenary indulgences, being a thrice-Reformed Lutheran and a spiritual ally of most of the Catholic sects. But it amused Gaea for all her Priests to be fundamentalists, and she had a long memory, and so Luther was further enraged.

"Fofery!" he repeated, and his Apostles fuffed and fawed sympathetically in his wake. "Fofery! Vy what right do you take the child?"

"Shesez Gaea told her to. Shesez she did a hell of a lot better job than you and your fuckoffs did."

"Vut the angels, I ... " Luther stopped, enraged but unable to do anything about it without the possibility of blasphemy.

Why had Gaea given her angels? Luther had no angels. He had never had any angels, had never been told he might even get angels.

"It won't work," he tried. "Your angel can't reach Fandewoniuh."

The boy watched the hands again.

"Shesez it will too work. Shesez she's got a shitload of angels. Shesez she's got enough to relay the little muhfucker all the way to Pandemonium. Shesez howdja like to take a big juicy bite outta her big juicy-"

Luther shrieked, and hit the boy. The boy absorbed it, as he had absorbed everything for the last two years, never taking his eyes from Kali's hands, never pausing in his vile curses. He had learned that nothing that could come from anywhere else could ever rival the things that came from Kali.

He was wrong. Luther swung his cross and the boy was instantly dead. He turned on Kali and his Apostles followed. They all tore at her. She did not resist. She lay on her back and gobbled contentedly, and her laughter enraged Luther further ...

Until he noticed that all his Apostles were dead.

TWELVE

They gathered in the room from which Adam had been taken.

Conal watched them come in, one after the other. His head still hurt something awful, but it was minor compared to the feeling of fear that was stealing over him.

The three Titanides were wet, and ignoring it. Cirocco was wet, and didn't seem to notice. Chris had a towel and was drying himself off. He seemed exhausted, and distant. Conal didn't know the special hell Chris was going through, but he could see some signs of it.

Robin was wet, and shivering. Chris handed her his towel when he was through.

Nova ...

She still wore Conal's coat. She was holding it over her shoulders with one hand, shivering almost as badly as her mother. And, though she wore the coat, and though she was holding it in place, she was making no attempt to cover herself. It only reached to her waist, anyway, so it wouldn't have done her much good, but she held her injured arm out for Rocky to work on, and was unconcerned that one breast was revealed.

Nova seemed to have no body modesty. Conal was used to that in Cirocco, and saw it frequently in long-time residents of Bellinzona. But it was unusual in new arrivals.

He remembered her pressed against him up there in her bedroom.

It was a moment he was not going to forget. And now he couldn't seem to take his eyes off her.

"This is going to hurt badly," Rocky said.

"Doctors don't say things like that," Nova said. "They promise you it isn't going to hurt much."

"I am not a doctor. I am a healer, and this is going to hurt a lot."

Rocky poured the antiseptic solution over Nova's cuts and started to clean them out. Her face froze, then turned very ugly, but she didn't scream.

Conal thought she was foolish. He had been treated for zombie wounds. Rocky had to probe deep to be sure he got out every particle of corruption. To have a zombie breathe on you was enough to put you in bed for a week. To be torn up like Nova ...

He had to look away. He'd never had a strong stomach.

Cirocco had been waiting like stone for everyone to assemble. Now that they were all here, she wasted no time.

"Who was in the room with Adam when he was taken?" she asked.

Conal's heart froze.

He saw Chris looking around, frowning, trying to put it together.

"Me and Robin were out in the Witch room," he said. "When I got here-"

"I'm asking a simple question," Cirocco interrupted. "I just want to know who was in here. We need a place to start."

"Nobody was in here," Conal said, and swallowed hard.

Cirocco turned to face him.

"And how do you know that?"

"Because when I heard the scream, I ran upstairs..."

Cirocco kept looking at him. She was not in the mood to waste time, so her look couldn't have gone on much more than two seconds, and those seconds didn't take much more than twenty years to go by.

"I told you to protect him, at all costs," she said, tonelessly. For an instant the doors were open over the twin blast furnaces. Then she looked away and Conal could breathe again.

Chris spoke up.

"That's not fair, Cirocco. What was Conal supposed to do when he heard Nova scream? Ignore it? There's no way he-"

Then Cirocco was looking at Chris, and he didn't have anything more to say.

"Don't waste my time, Chris. We can debate fairness some other day."

That's right, Conal thought. Nobody told you it was going to be fair. You walk up to the oldest, meanest, most paranoid human in the solar system ... and you try to make a man out of what is left.

"Cirocco, what about Nova?" Robin asked. "Chris couldn't have-"

"Shut up, Robin."

"Captain," Rocky began.

"Shut up, Rocky."

Several people tried to speak at once, including Nova.

"Shut up."

Cirocco didn't precisely raise her voice, but she put something into it that nobody could argue with. And she didn't wait for silence. It came, but she was already plunging ahead.

"I know how fast an angel can fly," she said. "I couldn't see this one well enough to know which clan it was. There are twenty-five species of angel and they all dislike each other, so it's possible we can get help from other flights. Their range is limited. We can assume it's headed for Pandemonium, so-"

"Why don't we just let him go?" Nova muttered.

Cirocco took two quick steps and slapped Nova's face so hard the young woman was thrown to the floor. She sat up, her mouth bleeding, and Cirocco pointed at her.

"Kid, I've taken all I'll take from you. This is your first and last warning. You will grow up, damn fast, and you will join the human race, or I'm likely to kill you accidentally, and I'd hate to do that because Robin is my friend. We will now discuss how to save the life of a human being who happens to be your brother, and you will speak only when spoken to."