Wallonia Region, Belgium - December 15, 1944

International borders are easy to miss when you're chasing two vampires through a forest over the course of many nights. For a couple of weeks after Alain decapitated and burned Reese, he thought he'd done it in France. Turned out it was a Belgian barn that burned down around Reese's corpse and reduced it to ash.

The barn was in the French-speaking region of Belgium and Alain, being from Louisiana, was no expert on regional accents. The barn-owner's daughter, Marie, was born and raised in Paris. On her 19th birthday, the first day of spring in 1940, her French mother pulled her out of her university studies in Paris and sent her to stay with her Belgian father, reasoning that being out in the forests was safer than being in a big city...

Alain shook his head as he crept through the forest. He was letting his thoughts get muddled and he needed to be sharper as he circled around the periphery of the campsite. The soldiers had come through a nearby village in an American military WC-6 truck, wearing American uniforms, so it was obvious that Father Lamont would be excited to tell Alain about them. He was one of the few in the village who knew about "Marie's American Husband," having secretly performed their wedding last year. In general, though, Alain's identity and even his existence, were kept under wraps. The Nazis had better things to do than set up a permanent presence in an area with such a low population density, but they had a regional force that swept through periodically to keep the residents in line.

It was dusk when Father Lamont arrived, and shortly thereafter, Alain lit out after the Americans. He'd heard they landed in France during the summer, but they really hadn't pushed this far in, even ten days before Christmas. The four men father Lamont saw would have been foolish to alert so many people to their presence when they were technically still behind enemy lines, but they didn't seem concerned. Something was fishy.

Alain came from downwind, catching them setting up a camp by the side of the road. They smelled like they'd been eating American field rations, but only recently. Underneath it was the smell of nutmeg, and garlic, and vinegar, smells he associated with German mess halls. The American rations were on their breath, but the vinegar and spices were in their sweat. It was snowing lightly and there was a good ground cover, but the exertion of putting up a tent in their cold weather gear still worked up a lather.

They moved about quietly as they set up camp. When they did talk, their English was perfect. But as one was hammering a tent peg, his hammer slipped and Alain heard him mutter "scheisser" under his breath. The guy could have had German parents, maybe that was how his dad cursed, but it just didn't add up for Alain.

Alain walked slowly into the periphery of their campsite, his arms raised. He wore civilian clothes; a pair of pants Marie had sewed for him, a coat and sweater of her father's, a shirt she'd bought after selling the meat of a boar Alain trapped. He wore his general issue boots with some thicker socks. In one hand, he held his dog tags. "Hey fellas," he called, trying to be loud enough to get their attention without startling anyone enough to shoot first and ask questions later.

The one who'd banged his thumb with the hammer was the first to notice Alain. His hand immediately went to the knife on his belt. He didn't pull it, but he kept his hand on the hilt while he stood, sidestepped over to his rifle, and picked up the gun. He whistled for the attention of the others as he slung his rifle over his shoulder. Seemingly secure with the rifle in his possession, even though he hadn't yet pointed it at Alain, he took his hand off his knife.

One of his squadmates came around from the other side of the tent. He had his rifle on his hip. One, who had been unpacking some supplies from their truck, looked up and took an interest, heading over. The last, who was working on getting a fire started needed two more whistles before he looked up from his task and saw the meeting happening over by the tent.

The sergeant was the one who'd been unpacking the truck and he looked to be in his late twenties. The other three were within a year or two of Alain's 25 years. The sergeant had been smoking a cigarette. He took a last drag, then pinched off the end, letting it drop into the snow and fizzle out. "You speak English," he asked, stashing the butt in a pocket.

Alain tried not to stiffen. This was going to be the first of many questions and he hadn't given a whole lot of advance thought to his answers. He'd never planned on what he'd say to American soldiers if he ever ran into them, because he figured he'd either get shot as a deserter or taken in as if everything was okay and then killed to cover up the Army's mistake. The Army had declared him and the other four men in his squad dead months before they shipped them to Europe. They'd held funerals and notified families. There wasn't going to be a magic resurrection if he survived the war. For those many reasons, he'd just planned to avoid American soldiers.

But the moment he heard about American soldiers nearby, all that went out the window and he was running at top speed through the snowy evening straight toward them. "Yes, sergeant," Alain said, trying to breathe what looked like a sigh of relief. "'Sokay if I put my hands down?"

The sergeant looked him up and down. "Suit yourself. You American?"

"Yes, sergeant."

"You keep sayin' 'Yes, sergeant.' You military?"

"Yes, sergeant. U.S. Army. Sergeant Alain Beaudreaux." Alain followed it with a salute just to add a military feel to it, but then felt like an idiot. Enlisted men didn't salute each other and salutes between sergeants were rare.

The other sergeant waved the salute away. "Where's your unit, sergeant?"

"Dead."

"And your mission?"

"Classified."

"And was being out of uniform part of your classified mission?"

"I can't say, sergeant." Alain tried to throw a conspiratorial wink, but he'd never been good at winking and it came out more as a palsied blink.

The sergeant looked down and raised his helmet slightly, rubbing his forehead and then running his hand down his face. "Taylor," he said, nodding to the thumb basher, "and Johnson, with me. Henry, you keep sergeant Beaudreaux company."

The one with the rifle on his hip was apparently Henry and he hadn't lowered it. The other two walked off with the sergeant, heading about thirty feet away. Generally that would be far enough away to muffle their conversation, but they were upwind and Alain's hearing was uncommonly good. It wasn't so good, however, that he could carry on a conversation with Henry and pay attention to another conversation thirty feet away. Despite the uncomfortable silence, Alain made no attempt at small talk, just smiling and nodding to Henry as he tapped his foot.

"What in hell," the one apparently named Johnson exclaimed in a loud whisper as the three men huddled together. "There weren't supposed to be any Americans this far east!"

"Keep it down," the sergeant counseled. "Anyway, we don't know he's American."

"I don't remember him from training," Taylor said. "You think he could be ours?"

"Stielau," the sergeant asked, using a German word Alain didn't know. "I don't think so. I think he's really American."

"So what do we do with him?"

At this point, Henry decided to strike up a conversation. "You like Jimmy Cagney," he asked Alain. Alain looked at him quizzically, trying to hear the conversation in the distance.

"You think that's the best..." Johnson said.

Henry's chatter drowned him out. "I love Cagney. 'Angels With Dirty Faces'... 'You slap me in a dream, you better wake up and apologize.'" Henry snickered as the group turned and walked back toward them.

Taylor and Johnson split off from the sergeant as they reached the tent. Johnson went over to Henry, put a hand on his shoulder and pulled, guiding him away and back toward the other side of the tent. Taylor went back to his tent pegs. The sergeant walked up to Alain and nodded away from the tent, back the way Alain had come. "Walk with me."

As Alain turned, the sergeant put his left arm around Alain's shoulders. "Where you from, sergeant Beaudreaux?"

"Little town in Louisiana you never heard of."

"Probably right," the sergeant said, following it with a genial laugh. He led Alain deeper into the woods, away from the road, away from the camp site. "I'm from North Dakota, myself. Williston."

"So this is summer weather for you," Alain said jokingly.

The sergeant laughed again. "Yeah."

They walked on silently a bit farther when the sergeant stopped, pivoted on his left foot, swinging his right arm up. His arm-around-the-shoulders pose had effectively blocked Alain's right arm from use. If Alain had been ordinary, he would have been slumping to the ground with a knife buried in his throat. Instead he caught the sergeant's right wrist with his left hand. The sergeant's momentum brought him around and Alain was able to bring his right arm up, wrapping it around the sergeant's lower back. For a moment it almost looked like they were dancing, and Alain was leading.

He squeezed the sergeant's wrist, applying just a fraction less pressure than it would take to break it, causing the sergeant to drop his knife. Alain's right foot swept around and hooked the sergeant's left foot while he grabbed the sergeant's coat from the back and pulled, taking the sergeant down to the ground. Before the sergeant could shout an alarm, Alain was on him with a hand muffling his mouth.

"You're not American, are you," Alain asked as he leaned in close, staring at the sergeant's eyes and trying to get a sense of the man's emotions. The man began to sweat, the sweat carrying the scents he'd smelled before mixed with a new one... fear. Fear had a smell sort of like brown gravy in a diner; a little savory, a little greasy. Alain had only ever really smelled it before he fed, and as if by a Pavlovian response, his fangs dropped and he felt hungry.

Alain hadn't been expecting that. He'd buried himself under six feet of dirt for eight days to ensure he was free of the blood thirst. In the early days after that, when Marie would snuggle up close after sex, and the smells of their sweat mingled, he'd felt a brief pang of desire, but it had been mild and it got milder as time passed until he stopped feeling the hunger altogether. It had been at least 6 months since he'd even had a twinge. This, though, was different than those twinges of desire. He didn't just feel like he could do with a snack. He was hungry.

Alain could hear the whoosh-whoosh of the sergeant's blood pumping through his veins and his mouth began to water. He tried to will his fangs back up, but they wouldn't go. He opened his mouth wide and reached up to touch his fangs, forgetting that he sat on top of an enemy soldier who had just tried to kill him.

"Achtung," the sergeant yelled. The hand Alain had brought up to touch his teeth was clenched into a fist and came down sideways on the sergeant's nose. The sergeant had lifted his head up when he yelled, so besides hitting the sergeant's nose with enough force to break it in 4 places, the blow also pounded the back of the sergeant's head into the lightly frozen ground. Even with his helmet on, the jarring impact from the front and back did the trick. The shout cut off immediately as the sergeant lost consciousness and blood flooded to his nose, some of it trickling out.

Alain leapt backward off the sergeant as the smell of the blood hit his nose. Back in the Army's locked infirmary ward, when he, Vinnie, Reese, and Sampson had been given an object lesson in the pain of blood withdrawals, the scent of the fresh blood had relieved their cramping long enough for them to crawl to the tin mugs and drink. But the smell of blood provided no relief this time. It intensified an ache in the pit of his stomach that he hadn't felt in a year and a half. All he had to do was bite in and drink as the beating heart pumped blood out of the open vein. It would taste so good, feel so good.

The rush when he tasted real blood, fresh human blood... Imagine if you'd gone through your entire life with a hangover and hadn't realized it. Imagine that up until now the headache, the grogginess, the nausea were just how you thought being alive felt. And then someone gave you a hangover cure. Just the taste of blood on a vampire's tongue was like that. It was benzedrine, steroids, and a B-12 shot with a little heroin mixed in for a euphoric sense of well-being. It showed you how much background noise you'd become accustomed to in your normal, everyday life, because it all just stopped and you had this moment of clear thought, perfect quiet, and absolute strength. It felt better than good and Alain wanted to feel it again.

He shook his head. "No," he muttered to himself under his breath, not entirely convinced he meant it.

He was rudely torn out of his self-absorption when a bullet kicked up dirt and snow by his foot. He turned and saw Taylor, Johnson, and Henry running toward him, firing their M1 rifles. Those rifles were hard enough to control when you had time to aim. On the run, they were about as useful as clubs.

Forgetting the sergeant beneath him, Alain focused on the immediate threat. His first instinct was to charge the closest one and tear out his throat, and he was already in motion before he caught the desire to draw blood and got a rein on it.

None of the men had been expecting his speed and he was on Taylor before the man had time to reorient on the nearly-blurred human figure rushing toward him. Taylor clutched his rifle, which suited Alain perfectly. He grabbed it, using it to swing Taylor into Johnson, and the two men went down in a heap as Alain wrenched the M1 from Taylor's grasp. He leapt forward in a twirl, swinging the stock of the rifle into the side of Henry's helmet like DiMaggio swinging for a home run.

Henry dropped limp while Taylor and Johnson struggled to get untangled. Taylor was on top of the pile and Alain pounded the rifle stock into his helmet, three quick and powerful impacts in rapid succession. Taylor fell still as Johnson struggled to move the other man off of him.

Alain moved around to the side and aimed the rifle's barrel at Johnson's head. "How about you tell me what's going on here?"

"Ficht dein mutter," Johnson said quietly, his hand going quickly to his mouth. Before Alain figured out what was happening, Johnson had clenched his jaw and swallowed.

"What did you do?!" Alain watched as Johnson smiled at him, pain slowly filtering into his face. He gasped repeatedly, shuddered violently for about a minute, and then died. Alain watched in horror as it happened, a macabre fascination not letting him turn away. He'd never seen a suicide or a death by poisoning before. As horrible as it was, he couldn't stop watching until it was over.

He heard Johnson's heart stop, but he still had three live hearts beating on the forest floor and he had absolutely no idea what to do with them. Whatever appetites had been stirred by the sergeant's fear and blood were killed by watching Johnson's suicide. There was no more hunger. Alain's fangs had retracted. All he felt now was a mild nausea accompanied by an urge to panic. He was miles from nowhere in a snowy forest with three Nazi prisoners who had almost passed for Americans.

Alain could almost imagine the cliche angel and devil on opposite shoulders. "Kill them," his devil said. "Any Nazi, pretending to be an American and heading toward the front, is obviously up to no good. No one will know. Kill them and go home to your wife."

"These are human lives," his angel said. "If you'd kill them for the sake of convenience, you might as well just drink their blood."

That's how, twenty minutes later, Alain found himself driving a stolen U.S. Army truck over a maliciously uneven road through the Belgian woods, three German prisoners hogtied and bouncing around in the back with their cyanide pills confiscated, heading west.

Two of the prisoners woke up about 30 minutes into the trip, but he'd had the foresight to gag them. When they made too much of a fuss, Alain drove through the roughest parts of the road and gunned the engine, making them flop around like fish on a dock. A couple of those experiences and they settled down. Alain doubted that they were going to accept their fate with grace, but they were quiet.

Alain questioned what he was doing. If these Nazis had come so close to his home, he needed to get back to it. He had a life here in Belgium, if you could call it that. He had a wife and they lived on a small farm her father had owned before one of Alain's squadmates fed upon and killed him... before Alain killed that squadmate. Alain took up her father's profession of hunting and trapping to get skins and meat they could sell, keeping a few barnyard animals for milk, eggs, and a little more variety in the meat they ate. They were young, they met under traumatic circumstances, they were in the middle of a war, and he was a vampire. But somehow they were happy.

The road smoothed as Alain entered the outskirts of a large town. It was absolutely dark, no lights on anywhere. He was pretty sure it was Saint-Hubert, though in the craziness of everything, he'd mostly lost his bearings. A compass told him he was heading generally westward, but that was it. He sped through the town. The wan moonlight reflecting off the snow was enough to make the way clear.

Alain skidded the truck to a stop as he spotted the Abbey of Saints Peter and Paul, the three men in the back sliding forward and thumping against the forward row of seats, grunts of protest rising from them. He knew for sure he was in Saint-Hubert now and he knew how to get home from there. He gunned the engine and drove the truck up to the front the abbey.

Alain jumped out and ran up to the door, his vampire strength enough to make the sound of his pounding bounce throughout the building. He was sure the monks would fear the worst and he suspected he might be delivering it, but he couldn't spend days driving around a U.S. Army truck full of German prisoners pretending to be Americans, trying to find Allied forces he could transfer them to while German forces might be moving toward his home with Marie. Despite what the Army had done to him, turning him into a vampire against his will, he was still an American and he felt an obligation to his country and the war effort. But if he lost Marie, none of it meant anything.

As he paused his pounding, he heard soft footsteps approaching the door from inside. A voice called out in French from behind the door. "Are you trying to break our doors down?"

"I beg your pardon," Alain called back. "There is a truck in front of your abbey. In it, three soldiers are tied up. They are German soldiers pretending to be Americans. I trust the good people of Saint-Hubert to deal with them accordingly."

Alain waited for a reply, but there was nothing. "Did you hear me," Alain called.

Slowly, the large door opened. In the opening stood an older monk, dressed in a nightshirt, robe, and nightcap, carrying a candle. "Germans pretending to be Americans, you say?" As the old monk peered out, the stairs were empty. He looked down at the American military vehicle at the bottom of the stairs. "Pierre," he called back into the abbey, "get young Michel dressed and send him to wake up Monsieur Colbert at the constabulary office."

"We must tell him," Vikiel whispered harshly. The two angels stood opposite each other in the small bedroom of Lot's house that was normally occupied by his daughters. Tonight the girls would sleep on the floor in the kitchen so that their guests could sleep in beds.

Shemhazai had been about to pop out to Olympus, but Vikiel felt that this conversation could not wait. "What shall we tell him," Shemhazai asked. "Shall we tell him we have brought an ancient war between angels to his home? Shall we tell him we have put the lives of him, his family, and perhaps all his countrymen in danger?"

Vikiel raised a hand, about to make a point, when he was interrupted by an unusually loud voice outside the house, yelling a single word. "Lot!"

Shemhazai and Vikiel rushed to the front room where Lot, his wife, and daughters stood by the door. The late spring nights could still carry a chill, and Lot was putting on a coat to venture outside. "What would Gali want with you at this hour," Lot's wife asked.

"Perhaps there is a great mess that needs a crew to deal with it immediately," Lot said. The look his wife gave him in return showed she did not believe that. Lot placed a hand gently on her cheek and spoke softly. "I must answer his call. He is the paymaster."

"His tone scares me," she said, looking pleadingly into Lot's eyes. "And why does he have those men with him? They are not the ones from your crew."

"I will be safe," Lot reassured her.

Lot took his hand from his wife's face, opened the door, and stepped through it. Gali stood by the well in the plaza. Flanking him were six men Lot had never seen before, but he had seen their type. They were ruffians who frequented the pleasure palaces and the inns where strong drink was served. They were the types who could be hired to protect a caravan or to rob it. They weren't picky so long as the money was right. Four of them carried torches, providing a flickering illumination to the silent plaza. No one stirred in any of the other houses. The only sound was the braying of an approaching donkey, pulling a donkey cart.

"Lot!" Gali seemed a tad drunk as he swaggered forward and raised his arm, pointing a finger at him. "We have come for your houseguests. Hand them over to us and there will be no trouble."

Lot crossed his arms before his chest. "What do you want with them?"

"We're going to have a little fun with them," one of the ruffians shouted, following it with a laugh. Lot cringed at the thought of what the ruffians considered "fun."

Gali swung an arm back toward the man who had shouted, and despite being a good ten paces away, the man reeled as if Gali had struck him. "We mean them no harm," Gali called. "I recognized the scholar Samyaza among your group and my master Shemhazai would like to speak with him."

Lot thought briefly and then called back to Gali. "No."

"What? You would dare refuse an invitation from my master?"

"If it was an invitation, you would have sent a servant to knock on my door and extend it politely. Despite my current circumstances, I come from a good family and know how things are to be properly done. Bringing a band of ruffians to a man's house and demanding he surrender his guests is not an invitation. It is a kidnapping and I will not stand for it."

Gali shook his head sadly. "If my men have to enter your house by force, Lot. I will see to it that they rape your virgin daughters while you are forced to watch."

"I would rather see my daughters raped by your men," Lot said, glaring at Gali, "than defile the home they live in with so base a betrayal of those I have granted my hospitality and protection."

"What if they wish to come with us? Would you hold them prisoner in your home in the name of hospitality? We both know they have stood by the door, listening to us shout. Go inside and ask them for their decision. I will wait... for a brief while."

Lot paused a moment, then reached back and knocked on the door. It opened and he backed through it, never taking his eyes off Gali until the door closed in front of him. "You will not go," he said, still looking at the door.

"Lot," Vikiel said soothingly, "there is something you should know."

"Vikiel," Shemhazai shouted.

"Bless it, Shemhazai! The only way to shut my mouth is to bind me. You may be stronger than me, but not that strong."

Lot turned and looked at Shemhazai and then at Vikiel. "Shemhazai? But you've always called him Samyaza. Shemhazai leads the League of Merchants."

Vikiel waved his hands before Lot's face. "None of that is important. What is important is that we are angels of the Lord God. This city is wicked and has become offensive in His sight. More angels are on their way to help cleanse it of its evil. The Shemhazai you know is really a demon of the desert named Azazel who has taken on mortal guise to corrupt this city. His man Gali is a demon too. He demands us because he seeks to stop us from reporting back to our fellow angels that we have found him."

Shemhazai pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head as Lot's eyes went wide with panic. "What are we going to do," Lot cried.

"Go to Olympus," Shemhazai instructed Vikiel. "Alert them, then bring back Adrizal with you as fast as you can. Fly!"

Vikiel closed his eyes and disappeared. Lot and his family all turned to stare expectantly at Shemhazai. "Now we wait," he said. "With luck, Vikiel will return before Gadreel out there loses his patience."

As if on cue, Gadreel, a.k.a. Gali, shouted from the courtyard. "My master will not wait all night, brothers. I will count the number of years since we last met, and if you have not come out, I will come in. One... Two... Three..."

Lot looked frantically at Shemhazai. "How many years has it been?"

Shemhazai thought a moment. "We have a while yet. Vikiel should return before he is done."

Lot's family slowly relaxed as the years ticked on. "Forty... forty-one... forty-two..." As Gadreel crossed one-hundred, they began to look quizzically at each other and at Shemhazai.

"We're angels," he said with a shrug. Gadreel kept counting.

Somewhere around two-hundred and thirteen, Vikiel reappeared in the room accompanied by a slight, bookish angel. Shemhazai clapped his hands. "I am going to cast a glamour on Gadreel and his men. It will make them blind to your presence. When I go out to talk to him, you will come out behind me and Adrizal will lead you out of the city." Shemhazai nodded to Adrizal who nodded in turn to Lot and his family.

"Whatever you hear, whatever you see, do not turn back. Things are about to get very dangerous in a very short time. Follow Adrizal as quickly as you can and stay focused on the road ahead of you. Sodom is no longer your home."

Lot and his family numbly nodded their acceptance, Shemhazai opened the door and stepped out far enough in front of it to clear room for Adrizal to lead Lot's family out behind him. When they were clear, Vikiel stepped out and closed the door, going to stand beside Shemhazai. Lot expected Gadreel, a.k.a. Gali, to spot his family at once and send one of his ruffians toward them, but Gadreel and his men only had eyes for Shemhazai.

Lot, his wife, and his daughters were led out of the plaza, but before they would let Adrizal lead them out of the city, Lot's daughters wanted to go collect their fiancees and Lot's wife wanted to go collect her parents, her two sisters and their husbands. "We cannot do this," Adrizal said.

The women were adamant. "You will not leave without your sisters," he asked, addressing Lot's wife. She nodded. "And what about their husbands?"

"We must save them too."

"And their husbands' parents? Their husbands' brothers and sisters?"

"Yes, of course."

"And their husbands' brothers and sisters want to bring their spouses, and their spouses have families they want to bring, which ties them to more families that must be brought, and by the time we alert those relatives, everyone is dead." Adrizal shook his head and offered his hand to Lot's wife. "Come with me if you want to live."

Lot's wife shook her head and ran off in the direction of her parents' house. Lot started after her, but Adrizal stopped him. "You have to look after your daughters. Once I have you out of the city, I will come back for her."

Lot looked after his wife, watching her turn a corner and disappear. Each daughter grabbed a hand and pulled, coaxing him to follow Adrizal. Reluctantly he let them lead him through the city gates and onto the road to Zoar.

---

"How long has it been, Gadreel? Would you like to keep counting?" Shemhazai waved his hand and the six toughs around Gadreel were knocked unconscious, slumping to the ground. "You always were overly theatrical. Are you going to take us to see Azazel?"

Gadreel surveyed the collection of unconscious toughs and shrugged. "This way," he said, bowing and gesturing toward the exit to the courtyard. Adrizal and Lot's family had just left and Shemhazai did not want to risk encountering them. He had no idea how long the glamour would remain effective on Gadreel.

"Vikiel, go inside and get our things."

Gadreel looked annoyed. "You should come now. Azazel awaits your arrival."

Shemhazai made a show of brushing dirt off his sleeves. "Azazel has waited over 300 years. He can wait a few breaths longer. Vikiel..."

Vikiel scrambled back inside the house. The Angels had not unpacked their bags, which had been carried more for show than utility, but he waited, counting pieces of furniture and singing himself a song before he picked them up and walked back out, casually, taking his time as he sauntered up to Shemhazai and handed him his bag.

"Shall we go now," Gadreel asked, tilting his head and sounding exasperated.

"Yes, I think we shall. Lead the way Gadreel."

Gadreel gave them a vision of Azazel's house, then disappeared. The two angels envisioned themselves in the house, blessed the vision, and found themselves there.

The room they arrived in was a large, lavish sitting room, decked out in silk pillows with gold embroidery. The varied hues of the pillows did more than display a color scheme. They displayed their owner's wealth, showing that he could afford the rare spices to create the expensive dyes from which these colors came. "Azazel will join us shortly," Gadreel said and then walked out of the room.

Shemhazai was trying to stall for time as his supporters rallied. Azazel's attack on Atlantis, his threats against the families of opposing angels, and the extensive flood-related death among humans had resulted in the eradication of the "peace through negotiation" camp. It had become obvious to all the Nephilim that they must pick a side, and the majority picked Shemhazai's. Many of the Nephilim had lost children to the petty, jealous, superstitious nature of humans. But after seeing what becoming bitter over it had done to Azazel and what it led him to, they had resolved to forgive and to try to help humans be better rather than eradicate them.

Still, while over a hundred and fifty angels expressed their support, he could only rely on forty to help him conquer and bind Azazel. And of the more than forty angels who had thrown in with Azazel, Shemhazai could not predict how many would join Azazel in battle.

His question was answered when Azazel entered the room through the grand doorway, flanked by twenty-six angels, including Gadreel. The angels filled and blocked the doorway as Azazel went to sit on some pillows opposite Shemhazai and Vikiel.

Blocking the doorway was, of course, no way to prevent an angel from leaving the room, but the sheer physical presence of the angels was meant to create an intimidating effect. Instead, Vikiel got up and walked over to them, wrapping his arms around one in a joyous embrace. "Karazal, it has been forever since I saw you. I have missed you my old friend."

The angel named Karazal stiffened uncomfortably, looking pleadingly at Gadreel as he suffered through the hug. Vikiel released the hug, put his hands on Karazal's shoulders, and kissed him on both cheeks. Then he stepped back, a contented smile beaming from his face. "It has been too long. Too long. After this we must catch up." Vikiel looked across the assembled group and his smile grew brighter. "Akimal," he shouted as he opened his arms and walked toward another angel who was resisting an urge to cringe.

"Enough," Azazel shouted, his voice like a thunderclap echoing through the room. He wore the same red and black silks with gold embroidery that he had worn the night Shemhazai came to see him outside Baghdad. He manifested the full beard that was in fashion among the men of the Jordan river valley, and his long hair was weighted with oils, turning its angelic curls into a low-frequency wave. In his eyes, pain and hatred burned.

Vikiel put his arms down and went back to sit next to Shemhazai, walking like a chastized schoolchild. "So," Azazel said, peering intently at Shemhazai, "just the two of you come to beard the lion in his den? Or should we be expecting reinforcements?"

"You've known the answer to that for centuries," Shemhazai said casually, laying back on the pillows and staring up at the ceiling. He closed his eyes a moment and a bunch of grapes materialized in his hand. He bit one off the bunch and chewed.

"What is to stop us," Azazel said, looking at Shemhazai who refused to sit up and meet his eyes. "What is to stop us..." He looked at Vikiel who smiled at him and winked knowingly. "What is..." he seethed with impotent rage. Azazel stood from his pillows, walked over to Shemhazai, walked up in the air as if climbing an invisible staircase, and lay down on the air directly above Shemhazai, facing down, meeting Shemhazai's eyes again. "What is to stop us from binding you two here and now for a thousand years," he said, pronouncing each word clearly and carefully to prevent his anger from forcing him to rush through his threat. "We outnumber you more than ten to... urrrk."

While Azazel had been speaking, Shemhazai had plucked a grape and tossed it into Azazel's mouth. As Azazel gagged on it, Shemhazai sat up, then stood up, and paced over to take the seat Azazel had vacated, leaving Azazel staring down at an empty pillow. Azazel lowered himself to the pillows and sat up to find Vikiel staring at him. Vikiel smiled and raised his arms. "Hug?"

Azazel slapped away Vikiel's closest hand and stood, walking over to the group of angels in the doorway and taking up a position next to Gadreel, crossing his arms over his chest haughtily. "And what, I ask again, is to stop us from binding you?"

Shemhazai chewed another grape and swallowed. "Binding requires a great expenditure of energy, as you and I both know. To bind us both would weaken you and the majority of your men so much you would be easy pickings when my reinforcements arrive."

Azazel rubbed his beard. "So you came as a sacrificial lamb? You and Vikiel would let yourselves be bound to weaken us? But perhaps that is just what you want me to believe. Perhaps you have no reinforcements coming and you only want me to believe that binding you would put me in a position of weakness so that I will not do it."

"Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."

Azazel pointed a finger in the air. "Wait til I get going! Now, where was I?"

"A position of weakness," Shemhazai said as he smiled and leaned back into the pillows, feeding himself another grape.

"Yes, you would have me believe that binding you would put me in a position of weakness, and thus you create a quandary. I cannot bind you, for fear it will leave me vulnerable, but I cannot release you to lead your reinforcements into battle. This leaves me with one option."

Vikiel raised his hand, waving it to get Azazel's attention. "Retreat," he asked as Azazel looked his way.

Azazel was spitting mad. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? The two of you defeat me and my brothers, make us flee, all with a simple trick?" He calmed, making a visible show of regaining his composure, relaxing his shoulders and posture. "I think not. Our option is to wait. Once we know if you truly have reinforcements, the decision will become clear."

Shemhazai plucked a grape and tossed it to Vikiel who caught it in his mouth. Shemhazai fed himself a grape and the two chewed as the situation clarified. The first reinforcement to pop into the room was Kokabel, followed by Amazarak, Shamsiel, and Penemue. By the time Ertael popped in, Shemhazai's reinforcements crowded the room, numbering twenty-five in all. He had expected more, but at least it was now an even battle; three times three times three angels on each side.

Azazel lowered his head for a moment and then raised it, a gleam in his eye. "If it is a grand battle you desire, I cannot disappoint you old friend." He waved his hand at the ceiling of the room and the bricks of his home dissolved into sand, falling like a light rain at the feet of the assembled angels. The two sides moved apart from one another, giving themselves space to unfurl their wings. Moments later, the sky was filled with angels and the clash of their swords was heard for miles.

Azazel flew upward and backward, putting space between himself and Shemhazai before he threw a bolt of angelic fire aimed straight for Shemhazai's heart. Shemhazai raised his sword and deflected it. The bolt, instead, smashed into the roof of the home of Azazel's Gomorrite neighbor, turning half of the grand home into rubble in an instant. Shemhazai risked a look around and saw more of the same, both sides spread out across the skies over Sodom and Gomorrah, both sides wielding bolts of angelic fire, both sides deflecting them, and fire raining down upon the cities as the people screamed and fled.

He did not have much time to mourn for the humans once again sacrificed to the battle as another firebolt came in. He swung his sword and tried to bat it back toward Azazel, but the other angel dodged and it flew in an arc off into the distance, losing power and brightness as it grew farther from the angel that threw it. Shemhazai oriented himself in the air and closed the distance between him and Azazel, batting bolts of fire away with his sword as Azazel goaded him forward.

So intent had he been on Azazel, that he did not sense Gadreel coming up from behind. Gadreel had always been one of the fastest fliers, and he overtook Shemhazai, slashing with his sword and clipping the top of Shemhazai's left wing. Before he could slash again, a firebolt from Vikiel took Gadreel below the ribcage on his right side. Gadreel fell toward the ground.

The pain from the wound was excruciating, but Shemhazai couldn't afford the time or energy to heal it, and he could still fly. He continued closing the gap with Azazel and their swords met with such ferocity that they both shattered, showering the plain below with scraps of burning metal. But with all the firebolts that had already been thrown and deflected downward, the cities were mere piles of burning rubble. Anyone who had not been able to escape within the first couple of minutes of fighting was gone.

As Shemhazai manifested a new sword, he felt a floor materialize beneath his feet. His sword was extinguished. Shemhazai and Azazel found themselves holding cold swords at the foot of God's throne in the Celestial Palace of his newest Heaven. "You boys about done?"

God rose from His throne and slowly descended the stairs to the floor where the angels stood. He was a handsome man, but not beautiful like an angel. Instead of robes, He wore pants made of a blue cloth He called Denim with a white shirt made of a lighter weave of cotton. Instead of sandals, He wore hard-soled, hard-heeled boots made of the skin of serpents. He wore his salt-and-pepper beard and moustache closely trimmed, framed by shoulder length hair of the same color.

As He reached the floor He waved a hand and an image of the two burning cities floated in the air. "Look at that," He told the two. "Are you happy now? How many humans are going to die because of your fighting?"

"I have tried to protect the humans," Shemhazai protested.

God looked dourly at Shemhazai. "It was a rhetorical question." God tapped at the side of Shemhazai's head with His forefinger. "Omniscient, remember?"

God stepped away and stood between them again, looking sadly at the image of the burning cities in the air. "I sent you boys down to live as men, to father children, and you started putting on airs. Shemhazai, you keep trying to create a great society. Azazel, well, we know what you were trying to do."

God waved His hand and the image disappeared. "This is the end of the fighting between you two. This is the end of you meddling in broader human affairs. You were sent to live as men, not as angels among men, and that is what you are going to do. You will not use your powers to build great societies or start great wars. And most importantly, you will not fight each other. This binding I place upon you and your brethren for sixty times sixty years."

The jaws of both angels dropped. "In other words, boys. You're on one serious time-out."

Azazel stared daggers at Shemhazai. "And what, my Lord, happens when sixty times sixty years has passed?"

"Well," God said, stroking his beard, "I guess we'll just have to wait and see. You two are dismissed."

Shemhazai and Azazel found themselves outside the crumbling western gate of Sodom, the city burning beside them, Gomorrah completely engulfed in the near distance. All the battling angels stood on the plain between the cities, their wings retracted, their swords gone. Slowly Azazel's brethren limped up to flank him as Shemhazai's brethren limped up behind him.

"A truce then," Shemhazai said, reaching out his hand to shake on it, "for sixty times sixty years."

Azazel looked down at Shemhazai's hand contemptuously and disappeared, his brethren following his lead. In a matter of seconds all were gone.

Vikiel placed a hand on Shemhazai's shoulder. "What just happened?"

Shemhazai sighed. "I will tell you after a long bath and a long nap. Let us go home." Shemhazai disappeared and his brethren followed his lead. The plain was silent, but for the crackling of the flames of two cities burning in the moonlight and the sobbing of the few who escaped, slowly diminishing in the distance as they made their way to Zoar.

---

Some historians would set the date of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the spring of 1655 B.C. And 60 times 60 years from the spring of 1655 B.C. would bring us to the spring of 1946 A.D.

But the rest of this story begins a bit before that. It begins in the Ardennes forest in the winter of 1944...

The death caused by the collapse of the island's base was widespread. That much mass, moving that quickly and violently, disturbed the sea. Massive waves rippled out from the sinking island and battered every coast for a thousand miles. Towering tsunamis lapped deep inland and wiped out villages and cities. The great flood would become part of the lore of countless cultures.

Shemhazai expected God to take action after Azazel had caused such rampant death and destruction, but God was oddly silent. As he toured the devastation, trying to render aid where he could, Shemhazai ran into men who had built boats just in time, who had moved to high ground just in time, and they told of how the gods or the spirits spoke to them. Some had even been warned of the Nephilim's part in causing the flood. But in traditional human form, they had confused the message. One man, Noah, told people that God caused the flood to rid the earth of the Nephilim and their progeny. Shemhazai was not going to correct him. Better the people thought that the Nephilim and their children were gone.

Each sentient race in God's universe existed to produce special souls that manifested an extreme level of holiness, but the gene for this holiness could not be woven into the building blocks of life on a planet. It could not be chanced that it might manifest too soon or in an inappropriate animal. Thus, when the sentient race reached a certain level of development on a physical and sociological scale, God introduced the holiness gene. Two hundred angels would go to live among the race, take their forms, and take wives from among their females. They would father children, and those children would become the patriarchs and matriarchs of bloodlines that would produce kings, saints, and madmen.

In every instance, whether by chance or design, 200 of God's angels would find themselves irresistably drawn to the females of that species. Shemhazai himself had been smitten with human women. He found them not only surpassingly beautiful, but he was fascinated with their capacity for deep and powerful emotions. He had seen no being that could love as deeply as a human woman. Yet her capacity for love was matched by her capacity for anger. Her capacity for joy was matched by her capacity for depression. Humans were an emotional tightrope act, trying to balance on thin wires of equilibrium, and they fascinated him. When God requested angels to volunteer to go live among the humans, Shemhazai was among the first.

As Noah and those like him spread the word that the flood had killed the children of the Nephilim, it protected all those who survived, ensuring that they passed the holiness gene to continuing generations, and that it spread out throughout the human population. Gradually it would become so diffused into the human genome that the only way to truly eradicate the descendants of the Nephilim would be to eradicate humanity itself. Although, if Azazel had his way...

The one benefit of the flood, if it could be called that, was that Azazel and his cohort of disgruntled angels had chosen to keep a low profile, at least for the time being. Word got back to Shemhazai that Azazel had not intended all of the collateral destruction the sinking of Atlantis would cause, and God's unusual silence on the matter induced more fear than relief. Azazel and his accomplices saw nothing wrong with not attracting attention for a century or two while this whole thing blew over.

---

In recent years, the city had become debauched. Following the unfortunate military campaign that resulted in the death of its king and the kidnapping of prominent citizens, the new leaders of the city turned their attentions to building their power through wealth, and they had no ethical or moral boundaries in their pursuit of it. The city grew in reputation and lucre by the year. Men and women from far and near flocked to it, seeking to make their fortunes. Whatever weakness a man might have was catered to here, whether it was for wine, or gambling, or fleshly desires that most dared not even put into words. And the constant influx of new residents provided fresh meat for Sodom to grind.

The wealthiest residents lived outside the city in the nearby kingdom of Gomorrah; also defeated in the past military debacle, now joined with its nearby city-state by a king from the royal houses of both Sodom and Gomorrah who united the two in commerce but kept their populations separated by walls and wealth.

Gomorrah was pristine. Only the wealthiest of merchants, the priests of the most powerful gods, and the most noble families lived there. If a resident of Sodom were found on the streets of Gomorrah without a special chit from his master, he would be beaten.

Sodom housed the caravanserai, the pleasure palaces, the gambling halls, the abbatoirs, and the market spaces. The gates of Sodom enclosed the modest houses of the higher workers and lesser merchants, the temples of the small gods, and the offices of the tradesmen's guilds. The remaining residents of the city lived in a haphazard tumble of shacks and tents downwind of the city's eastern wall.

In Sodom, everything not wanted in the buildings was dumped in the streets, and the League of Merchants paid a crew of men to patrol daily, removing the worst of it. Primarily the crews removed the carcasses of animals and people that had been tossed into the street or had just crawled there to die. The foreman of one of those crews was a man named Lot.

He had brought his family to Sodom years ago after a conflict with his uncle, Abraham. He did well for a while, until the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah joined with the kings of Admah, Zeboiim, and Bela (also known as Zoar) in a war against five other city-states including Elam, Shinar, and Ellasar. When the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah both fell on the field of battle, and the men loyal to the other kings were in retreat, the enemy kings swept through the cities, taking Lot as a hostage to ransom and as much as his flock as they could drive with them, because an army needs to eat.

Lot's hands and feet were bound, and he was driven through the plains like a slave. Word got back to his uncle Abraham, who raised an army and pursued Lot's captors, harrying them until he finally won a decisive victory, reclaiming the hostages and what little of their goods remained. But rather than try to make Lot whole and help him regain his standing, Abraham turned Lot over to the new king of Sodom along with the other rescued hostages and the meager reclaimed goods. The king had been so grateful to Abraham that he promised to Lot that he would never be without food or shelter so long as he lived. And that is how Lot found himself working on a city crew, removing the worst of the filth and bodies from the streets and dumping them outside the city's eastern gates.

Lot liked to take his supper at the western gates, watching the sun begin to fall behind Gomorrah, because he believed that someday he might still rebound, might somehow find success as a merchant and build a great walled estate in Gomorrah. Despite the low station he now found himself in, he would look upon Gomorrah and promise himself that a walled estate was not yet out of his grasp, that an opportunity would arise.

Sodom and Gomorrah lay on opposite sides of a caravan route. The horsemen, camel tenders, guards, and stewards could stop and partake of the wares of Sodom, while the masters of the caravan could stop over in Gomorrah and be entertained in the homes of the merchants. That day, as Lot looked out upon the caravan path, he saw two lone travellers walking upon it. He watched with interest as they approached the gates of Sodom, wondering what kind of men might undertake such a journey by foot. His question was answered when he saw he knew both men.

Vikiel was an old friend of Lot's family. He had hunted often with Lot's father, Haran. When Haran died while Lot was still young, Vikiel shared the duties of surrogate father with Lot's uncle Abraham, helping to teach Lot the skills of hunting, or caring for animals, of building and repairing tents, and those other things a man needed to know. When Lot married, each man had given him three pregnant ewes as a wedding gift, and Lot had built his flock from there. Of course, Abraham had only promised Lot a single ewe, but when Vikiel promised him three, Abraham was not to be outdone. He would not let someone who was not blood, not even of their tribe, give his nephew a greater wedding gift than his own.

Vikiel travelled with Samyaza, a wandering scholar Lot had met three or four times in Vikiel's company. Lot got up from his seat and walked down to the gate, waving to the two men. Vikiel smiled and waved in return.

---

Shemhazai had mixed feelings about Vikiel. The angel didn't tend to think ahead and often made what seemed to be bad decisions, such as impregnating the wives of old Terah three times over a period of sixty years and letting the ancient man think the babies were his, even the boy Abraham, who was born when Terah was 130 years old. If he had been caught, it would have been yet another of his messes for Shemhazai to clean up. But he wasn't caught, and not only that, Abraham had manifested the greatest level of holiness yet seen among humans. Abraham had eventually discerned the nature of God and they had spoken a few times. Unfortunately, besides being abnormally intelligent and abnormally holy, the man was also abnormally mad in a frighteningly functional way. As his holiness manifested and he discerned more truths about the world, he delivered his interpretation of those truths as commandments from God, often in ways that made being around him something of a gamble.

Circumcision, for example, did provide certain health benefits in a culture where water was not plentiful and bathing was infrequent. But when Abraham realized that, he pronounced it was a commandment from God and immediately ordered the mass circumcision of himself, his son, and all his male household slaves. That was not a day of joy in the house of Abraham.

"Lot," Vikiel called, smiling as they approached the gate. Lot was a handsome man in his forties, though he appeared to be a decade younger, and stood a few inches taller than the average Sodomites around him. He looked more like a patrician than a garbage collector. Being the grandson of an angel had some advantages.

Whenever Shemhazai saw Vikiel with one of his descendants, he tried to look for the family resemblance. Aside from being a bit taller than average, maybe being a bit sprightlier around the eyes, he couldn't see it. If he looked closely, he could see the holiness gene manifesting in their DNA, but there was little about them that specifically said Vikiel.

Once they passed through the gates, Lot approached and hugged Vikiel, giving him a hearty thumping on the back. "What are you two doing here," he asked with joy in his voice.

"We were travelling to Zoar. There is a caravan there leaving for Uruk and Samyaza plans to join it," Vikiel said, indicating Shemhazai and using the name he preferred to use among mortals. "They are building a great library in Uruk and have called for scholars to come contribute knowledge. We planned to stop here for the night and rest at Barhalomech's famed inn. It is said Baharlomech gets all the best spices from the caravans, and his food is unmatched."

Lot smile disappeared. "I thought you would come stay at my home. It is modest, but we would make you comfortable. My wife is a good cook."

"Is she as good as Barhalomech?"

Lot's features drooped further. "No."

Vikiel put an arm around his shoulders and gave him a friendly squeeze. "Then we shall lodge with you, but dine with Barhalomech!"

That seemed to raise Lot's spirits, and despite a questioning look from Shemhazai, Vikiel kept a genial smile plastered to his face. "Show us to your home so we may wash, then Samyaza and I shall buy dinner for you and your family at Barhalomech's."

"No, no," Lot protested. "You are my guests. We shall buy dinner for you."

"If you say so," Vikiel said. "Show us to your home!"

---

Lot's home clustered in with 10 other homes to form a U-shaped plaza around a well. He raised twenty buckets of water that late afternoon so his guests could not just wash, but bathe and clear the dust of the road from wherever it had gathered. He brought them fruit oils for their hair and a salve for their feet. While they bathed, he washed himself from head to toe with a cloth, liberally annointing himself with oils to erase the smells of garbage.

When everyone was cleaned and refreshed, Lot led his guests -- along with his wife, his two daughters, and the two boys they would marry at the spring festival -- to Barhalomech's. The family walked in a large group, Lot and his guests leading and talking, while the women and the young men trailed. Lot's wife and daughters talked quietly among themselves, but his future sons-in-law would not be seen making small talk with women in public, and they had not been asked to join the conversation with the older men, so they walked in silence.

Barhalomech's inn was one of the few inns in Sodom that Lot felt comfortable taking his family to, although he could rarely afford it. Unlike the dark enclosures where rough men took strong drink, the public area of Barhalomech's was a large open courtyard with tall canopies and long tables. Even some of the patrician families of Gomorrah would come to dine there, though Barhalomech had a special section reserved for such clients.

Lot and his guests were seated at one end of a long table which was already half full. A jug of a honeyed lemonade was brought with enough cups for the party. Baharlomech had been a customer before the war, buying lambs from Lot's flock, and he always treated Lot as a friend. When the party raised their glasses, they found they had been given a jug of Baharlomech's special rosewater lemonade, normally only served in the special section reserved for the Gomorrites. Lot would have to find Baharlomech and thank him personally for this little extra luxury.

Baharlomech's cooking technique was to use a secret spice rub of his own concoction and then cook the meat slowly for hours, not over the smoking fire, but next to it. Even the toughest cuts came out tender and infused with the flavors of spices, smoke, and the meat's own essence. It truly was the best food in Sodom. And as the inn's courtyard filled, so did the special section reserved for Baharlomech's most favored clients.

Neither Vikiel nor Shemhazai had been paying it much attention. They had little use for the social stratifications humans created and thought those who self-segregated based on an overinflated opinion of themselves weren't worth the energy to despise. But as happens with any diner at any establishment, Shemhazai's eyes wandered around the courtyard, and as they passed over the exclusive section, his attention was grabbed by the neck. Sitting in plain view, eating and socializing with a group of humans, was Gadreel, Azazel's second-in-command. He wore a blood red tunic, his hands, wrists, and neck adorned with gold and silver jewelry. If Azazel was not in Sodom, Gadreel would know where he was.

Lot and Vikiel sat next to each other, opposite Shemhazai. "Lot," Shemhazai called, "be inconspicuous if you can, but peek over your left shoulder very briefly and tell me if you recognize that man in the red tunic."

Rather than peek over his shoulder inconspicuously, as requested, Lot turned in his seat and stared openly. "That's Gali. He is the right-hand of Shemhazai, the president of the League of Merchants."

Shemhazai clenched his fists. Gadreel was too proud to work for a human, and even if it was possible he had changed in that respect, no human he worked for would coincidentally have the name Shemhazai. It was almost flattering that Azazel had been hiding out under his name, but more importantly, it was gratifying that Azazel had been found... sort of. Azazel was not in the courtyard, but if Gadreel did not recognize them -- and why would he bother to pay attention to commoners -- they would be able to follow him to Azazel.

That thought had not been finished in Shemhazai's mind for more than a blink of an eye when Lot waved. "What are you doing," Shemhazai barked through clenched teeth.

"Oh, don't worry," Lot said, waving again. "He is the paymaster for the crews employed by the League of Merchants. He likes me because I laugh at his jokes."

"Are they funny," Vikiel asked. Shemhazai looked daggers at him, but he just shrugged.

"No," Lot said, still smiling and waving, "but he is the paymaster. Oh, look, he saw me."

Shemhazai tried to duck his head down as if absorbed in his plate, but before he had, he was sure Gadreel had seen him. The look of recognition on Gadreel's face had not just been that of an inconvenienced employer seeing an underling outside of work. There was more than mere contempt in it. There was outright hatred. Slowly, Shemhazai raised his head again to see Gadreel looking directly at him. Gadreel nodded slowly in his direction, then a smile broke through the baleful look and Gadreel was engaged with his companions as if none of it had ever happened.

Lot turned back to the table, pleased with the acknowledgement he believed "Gali" had given him with the nod. Shemhazai raised an eyebrow at Vikiel, silently sharing with him a vision of the man in red. Vikiel's face fell. There would be no chance of surreptitiously following Gadreel to Azazel now. When the meal concluded, Gadreel would make his excuses to cut the night short and go running to Azazel.

Shemhazai was sorely tempted to return at once to the colony of Nephilim he had assembled atop Mount Olympus in Greece. But running off now would only make matters worse. Azazel would now know they had found him and the ball would be in his court. Shemhazai and Vikiel would accompany Lot back home, and when the family had settled in for the night, one of them could pop back to Olympus to alert the others.

Shemhazai tried to settle back into his meal, but knowing Gadreel sat just yards away took all the joy out of Baharlomech's most excellent roast meat.

The biblical book of Genesis and the writings of the Prophet Enoch speak of the Nephilim, two hundred angels God let descend from Heaven and settle among mortals on the earth. They were not expelled like Satan and his cohort, but left of their own accord. They tried to blend in and not attract attention, but their children were special. The translators of the ancient writings have called them "giants" and many have taken that literally. They were not 9-foot-tall misshapen beasts ads some have conceived. They were giants among men -- powerful, talented, charismatic -- but they were susceptible to our venal flaws as well.

Ananias, the son of the angel Azazel, was a mighty competitor, even at the age of 15 summers. He threw a spear farther than any grown man in his village, could run circles around all the other boys, and all of the girls sighed wistfully as he walked by. Azazel believed that no father could love his son as much as he loved Ananias. His love for his child was an emotion he had never felt before, something more powerful and overwhelming than anything he had known since the beginning of time, even greater than his love for God.

It came to pass that Ananias and his best friend Jubal both loved the same girl, Keziah. But no matter how hard Jubal tried to gain her favor, Keziah only had eyes for Ananias. Jealousy festered in Jubal's heart.

It was tradition in their village that all boys of fifteen summers, at the time of the autumnal equinox, would venture into the mountains and hunt wolves. Those who were successful and brought back the corpse of a wolf would be allowed to marry a girl of suitable age. The boy who brought back the biggest wolf got first choice.

For three days, Jubal and Ananias tracked the wolves through the mountains. Wolves had learned to be wary of men and tried to give them wide berth. To hunt a wolf took more than strength and speed, it took great cunning and the ability to move through the woods like a breeze. Ananias did this with ease, but Jubal clomped through the forest like a bull. No amount of coaching Ananias gave him could lighten the boulders Jubal swung at the end of his legs. And thus for three days, Jubal and Ananias found fresh wolf droppings and fresh wolf markings, but they never saw a wolf.

On the morning of the fourth day, Jubal woke face-to-face with a wolf. He gasped in fear and scrambled backwards. A laugh rang out, the laugh of Ananias, and as Jubal's shock faded, he saw the wolf was dead. "What is this," he demanded of Ananias as he stood.

"It is your wolf. Let us go home so you can be married. I believe Bilhah would make a good wife for you. You should choose her."

Jubal looked at his wolf. It was large and impressive. He would have a hard time carrying it down the mountain to their village, but he would find a way. Then he looked at Ananias and saw that the wolf at his feet was larger. It did not dwarf his, no one would compare them unfavorably, but when it was time to determine who would choose his wife first... "So you will choose Keziah?"

"Who else?" Ananias thumped his chest with his fist.

If there was no Keziah, Ananias and Jubal would have competed for Bilhah. But Keziah's lips were just a shade fuller, her eyes were just a shade brighter, her cooking was just a hair more flavorful. Just as the wolf Ananias had claimed for himself was just a little bit better than the wolf he gave Jubal, Keziah was just a little bit better than Bilhah. And in both cases, it was that little bit that made all the difference.

"If Bilhah is so wonderful, why don't you marry her and let me marry Keziah?"

Ananias laughed again. "Because I have the bigger wolf."

Jubal burned inside. "I do not want Bilhah!"

Ananias thought for a moment, then smiled as if a great idea had come to him. "Take Keilah then. She is too smart for my tastes, too headstrong, but perhaps you could tame her."

"I do not want Keilah," Jubal shouted. "I want Keziah."

Ananias's smile disappeared. "No."

And that seemed to end the discussion. Ananias lifted the wolf carcass, slung it over his shoulder, took his spear in his other hand, and began the long trek back to their village.

"But," Jubal said. Ananias cut him off by shaking his spear as he walked away. Jubal packed up his meager belongings, slung his wolf over his shoulder, nearly stooping beneath its weight, took his spear, and rushed as best he could to catch up to Ananias.

To reach the village before nightfall, they took a treacherous and narrow path down the side of the mountain. Ananias, as was his way, walked down quickly, so confident in his skills and strength that he did not exercise caution. When his foot slipped, Jubal was a good 20 yards behind him. As Jubal rounded the corner, he heard Ananias call. "Jubal, my friend! Help me!"

Up ahead, Ananias's wolf lay in the path, but there was no Ananias. Jubal heard him call again and looked over the edge of the path. Ananias hung from the roots of a bush, scrabbling to try to climb up the side of a perilously steep incline. "Jubal," he shouted with relief, "help me up!"

Jubal put down his wolf to ensure it did not fall off the path, then went over to the place in the path above where Ananias hung. He lay down and tried to reach to Ananias, but he was mere inches too far away. "Lower your spear," Ananias yelled.

Jubal went back and got his spear, and as he began to lower it, he paused. "Swear to me that you will not select Keziah. You will leave her for me."

"Are you mad, Jubal? Lower the spear. I fear this bush will not hold."

"Swear it or you can fall to your death!"

"I swear," Ananias shouted. "Now lower the spear!"

Jubal gripped the spear below the point and lowered the blunt end to Ananias. He braced himself and pulled, helping Ananias climb up the steep mountainside and finally get a handhold that allowed him to raise himself up onto the path. As he raised himself to standing, Ananias shoved Jubal back so that he slammed against the mountainside behind him. "You would let me die so you could steal Keziah from me?!" Jubal bounced off the wall back toward Ananias, who shoved him again. "You stone-footed fool! You would die a bachelor if I had not caught your wolf for you, and you repay me like this?"

Bouncing forward again, Jubal brought up the end of his spear, striking Ananias squarely in the loin. Ananias gasped and stumbled backward. His arms pinwheeled as he teetered precariously on the edge of the path, and as he regained his balance, Jubal placed the butt end of his spear in the center of his best friend's chest and pushed.

The next day, Jubal led the men of his village to where the body of Ananias lay. His tale was true for the most part, because Ananias had first fallen on his own. He merely failed to include the part about rescuing and then pushing Ananias himself. He helped the men carry the body back to Azazel's tent. Azazel had not come with them, unable to bear the site of his son's broken body.

When they reached the tent, Azazel was not there. His wife, Calah, told them he had gone. She and her sisters prepared the body of her son for the funeral.

Just before dawn, as everyone slept, Azazel returned to the village. He had torn his clothes, cut his hair, slashed at his flesh with knives. This pain was unlike anything he had ever felt and nothing he did could diminish it. There was a great void in his being, a space Ananias had occupied before being torn out, and into the hole that remained poured rage and anguish. He blundered into the funeral tent the men of the village had erected and looked at his son, laid out on the funerary table. The women had straightened his limbs, mended his wounds, and dressed him in the robe his mother had prepared for his wedding day.

Azazel had seen mortals stand by the deathbeds of their loved ones and curse whatever powers they believed in. He had always looked upon it dispassionately not understanding how a simple death could provoke such incredible and intense anger. Now he knew.

Azazel knelt by the funerary table and took the hand of Ananias, holding it to his cheek. Every angel has the power to touch a corpse and see its last moments of life. Azazel had not intended to invoke it, but the images came flooding in uninvited. He saw the first fall, the demand made by Jubal, the conflict, Jubal's defense, and Jubal's betrayal.

Azazel's first act was to kill Keziah, then Jubal's parents, then his older brothers, then their wives, then their children. After that, he could not stop. These mortals, every one of them, were cheap and imperfect, jealous and base. Every one harbored in its heart the capacity for murder, betrayal, duplicity, and cruelty. And he killed every mortal in the village, save for one. He left Jubal alive, because someone had to bury the dead, and Jubal owed it to them all.

---

When the two-hundred descended from Heaven, God had placed Shemhazai nominally in charge. He and a few of his closest friends had settled on a volcanic island about 250 miles west-southwest of Cyprus, known as Atlantis. Much of the rest had spread themselves around the Mediterranean, down into Africa and up into Eastern Europe. The island was lush and the angels had helped the residents recreate a bit of paradise, teaching them of agriculture and architecture, helping to found a university, and inviting scholars from far and wide to come teach or learn.

Now Shemhazai was concerned. Angels who travelled the world came back with tales of new armies, new military tactics and techniques, and new weapons that men would have been centuries away from inventing on their own. Shemhazai sent out trusted lieutenants to investigate. As he waited, he was concerned that somehow this knowledge had come out of the university on Atlantis, but as new reports came in, he discovered the true culprit... Azazel.

He went to visit Azazel. He found the angel naked in a lavish tent outside Baghdad, laying drunkenly among five naked mortal women. "Azazel," he shouted as he appeared in the tent, "what is the meaning of all this?!"

When an angel shouts, it is nothing one can ignore. The five women scrambled back, their hands over their ears, grabbing pillows and cloths to cover their nakedness. Azazel opened one sleepy eye and peered at Shemhazai, then closed it and frowned. A look of concentration flowed across his face and he was dressed in princely robes. He raised himself slowly, but gracefully from the bed of pillows, and clapped his hands, commanding attention. He reached into his pocket and removed a jingling pouch, throwing it to one of the women. "Get them dressed and be gone before I return."

A smile appeared quite suddenly on Azazel's face. "Shemhazai," he called fondly, opening his arms wide. Shemhazai grudgingly accepted Azazel's embrace, returning Azazel's hearty back-thumping with a non-committal pat. Azazel put an arm around his shoulder and guided him toward the tent flap. "Walk with me while the ladies clean up and make themselves scarce. It has been at least four or five generations since we last visited. We have much catching up to do."

Outside the tent, Shemhazai saw many others as well as cookfires, watchfires, and the machinery of war. "Is this your army," he asked, waving a hand across the vista.

"No, no. I am just a consultant. I advise."

Shemhazai looked at Azazel's robes as they walked. These were not the white robes of Heaven nor the coarser robes or tunics adopted by the angels with whom he had settled. They were made of richly colored silks in reds and blacks, embroidered with golden threads. Angels did not grow facial hair, but they could manifest it, and Azazel manifested a close-trimmed moustache and a pointed beard that just covered his chin. "Why are you involved with all this my old friend?"

Azazel stopped and stroked his beard, turning away from Shemhazai. "Would you believe I am pursuing justice?"

"For whom?"

"Myself."

"What wrong could you have suffered that it warrants the raising of an army," Shemhazai asked, placing a hand on Azazel's shoulder.

Azazel whirled, shoving Shemhazai away with much greater force than his form seemed capable of producing. Shemhazai flew backward and the earth rose over him, burying his body and hardening around it, but leaving his head uncovered.

"I don't raise armies," Azazel hissed, "I merely encourage their formation. I whisper in the ears of kings and generals. I turn scuffles into bloodshed, and insults into wars. I train the troops to be more efficient and brutal killers, and I train artisans to provide them with more efficient and brutal weapons. I don't care who wins. I only care that the fights happen."

Shemhazai knew he could burst out of the flimsy prison Azazel had built around him, but he also knew Azazel did not want to imprison him. He just wanted to be heard. "And why is that?"

"Because these mortals are slaves to their baser instincts. They're vermin. If I tried to exterminate them all by my own hand, God would stop me. But if I talk them into exterminating each other, if I merely give them the encouragement and knowledge they need to hack each other to bits, they have the choice to ignore me. Because it is their choice, the blood is spilled as a result of 'free will' and God does not interfere."

"Of all the self-serving sophistries," Shemhazai said, gently dissolving his earthen prison and standing up. He brushed the sand from his robes slowly, looking at Azazel the whole time. "This will not be tolerated."

Azazel placed his hands on his hips and laughed defiantly. "And what are you going to do about it? Killing me isn't as easy as it is these fragile mortals. Do you have the power and will to end me?"

"It is not for me to decide," Shemhazai said, and disappeared.

---

"It is to a vote, then. Shall ten of us bind Azazel and imprison him until his heart is changed or God intervenes?"

Shemhazai addressed the gathering of Nephilim. It was less crowded than he expected. Azazel had been travelling, talking to other members of the two-hundred. A handful had been swayed to his side. They too had lost children, and like Azazel, had apparently gone mad with grief. More importantly, that handful was enough to convince many Nephilim that this was an affair they should sit out.

They wanted to live among mortals, peacefully. They had fought in the armies under Michael's command. They had defeated Lucifer and his cohort. And many of them had no further stomach for war. When Shemhazai contacted them, they did not offer their support, nor did they offer it to Azazel. They believed Azazel should be stopped with negotiation and diplomacy, not open conflict. And since God had named Shemhazai their nominal leader, it was his problem, not theirs.

So, instead of 199 angels meeting on the island of Atlantis, filling the great hall of the university, there were 67, including Shemhazai. Just one in three of the original two hundred were willing to even come to discuss the matter, and of those, many had been proponents of peace through diplomacy. No matter, though. It was enough for a quorum. "How vote you," Shemhazai called.

Hands raised and various angels began counting. He needed 34 votes and he'd only been able to confirm thirty during their last recess. He knew the other side only had 27 definites. Ten were undecided. When he reached thirty, including his own, he saw four more hands still raised. Most of the undecideds had gone the other way, but he had eked out a victory. He looked around and tried to determine which of the other angels would be selected to be in the party of ten with him, when he heard a loud whistling noise, followed by a loud boom. The ceiling of the meeting hall came tumbling down in large blocks of stone.

Angels scrambled out of the way of the falling rubble. It wouldn't kill them, but the impact would be a definite discomfort. Through a large hole in the roof, thirty feet wide, Azazel descended, flanked by Kasdeja and Gadreel. Kasdeja had been teaching poisons while Gadreel had been teaching the smithing and engineering of better weapons.

As Azazel landed, he clapped his hands with a crack louder than lightning ripping through the sky. It got the attention of the sixty-seven angels in attendance. "You would dare judge me? You would dare decide a fitting punishment for me? I will demonstrate what happens when you take sides against me!"

The ground began to shake as a loud rumble filled the room. Azazel easily shouted above it. "The volcano upon which this island sits just blew out a large chunk of its side... under the water... with a little bit of help. It has already begun to collapse. The great society you have built upon this island, Shemhazai, will sink quickly beneath the waters. And those of you who do not run to your loved ones, on this island or off, will soon find them in peril. Live your lives and I will live mine. Stand against me and you will suffer."

Azazel, Kazdeja, and Gadreel looked upward and flew out. Many of the angels in attendance disappeared, teleporting to their loved ones to protect them from this attack-in progress.

Shemhazai's vision showed him that Azazel had told the truth. Furthermore, a geologic event of this magnitude was beyond his powers to repair. He was prohibited against returning to Heaven to beg God's intervention directly, so he took a page from the book of the humans he had come to love. He fell to his knees and prayed. When that did not work, he got down to the business of organizing the few angels that remained to help him evacuate the island before it sank.

Kurt woke up to the sound of his iHome playing a random song off his phone. The clock said it was 7:30 a.m. He had an hour to get showered, get dressed, and get to work.

His bed in the shared apartment wasn't any great shakes, especially not compared to the bed in Marie's house... Did he dream all that? He was tempted to try to make a miracle, but he decided not to. It was going to be so disappointing if it didn't work. This way he could hold onto the possibility that he hadn't dreamed it all. Plus, he thought, it seemed almost wasteful to perform a miracle for such a minor reason.

As he sat up and scratched himself, his iPhone beeped a calendar reminder. "8:30 a.m.: Coffee with Deuce at the Starbucks on the corner. Don't worry, you can be late to work this one time."

With an hour to get himself 2 blocks, Kurt took an extra 5 minutes in the shower, just enjoying the hot water. He washed every bit of himself to make sure that no speck of supernatural dirt remained on his body. Then he scrambled an egg and ate it on toast. He drank a glass of lowfat milk to wash it down. He'd have to give Henry a dollar for drinking his milk, but so what? He didn't have to worry about whether it was imported or whether it might leave him stuck in the apartment.

At 8:21, he put his keys, his wallet, and his iPhone in their respective pockets. He decided to leave the backpack at home today. At 8:23 he was on the street and at 8:29 he was walking into the Starbucks.

For a moment he didn't see Deuce and he feared he really had dreamed it all, perhaps programming in the calendar event in some half-asleep state. He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around to see Deuce's smiling face. The long hair had been replaced with a shorter cut. "Get a good night's sleep?"

"Yup," Kurt said. "Like the hair. Why the change?"

"Too many copycats. Coffee?"

Deuce bought Kurt a grande Mocha and got a venti Americano for himself. The place was packed, but miraculously a table opened up just as they were ready to sit down. Kurt raised an eyebrow, but Deuce shrugged. As Kurt sat, he silently wondered if anyone in the coffee house knew God was in their midst. "I'm always in their midst," Deuce said.

"You know, it's kind of creepy when you do that."

Deuce hung his head, but smiled. "Sorry." He took a long draw from his coffee, finishing off with an "aahhh," and then looked at Kurt. "So what's the plan for today?"

"Go to work, dinner with Mom and Dad, drinks with friends. Get back in touch with how human I still am before I make any big decisions."

"Wise," Deuce nodded. "No plans to rush out and save the world?"

Kurt laughed. "It's your world. I just live in it. I figure if you want me to save it, you'll arrange it so I'm pushed through a portal or roped into an adventure of some sorts somehow."

"Good," Deuce said. "But don't think it's one-sided. I'll be listening for your prayers. You probably won't need much now that you're Miracle Max, but just call to say 'hey' now and again. Okay?"

"You got it," Kurt replied.

Deuce stood up from the table and set down his coffee cup. "Well, I just wanted to check up and make sure you were gonna be able to adjust to being a civilian again. Looks like you've got a level head on your shoulders."

"Would the multiverse have picked me if I didn't," Kurt asked.

Deuce smiled a sly smile. "You'd be surprised." He turned and walked out, the crowd parting before him.

---

Kurt went into work. Apparently everything had been taken care of. There was a record of his approved vacation request and he'd had just enough time off banked to cover it. He got to his desk, loaded up Outlook, found he had a meeting in 4 minutes, grabbed a yellow pad off his desk and rushed up to the 7th floor.

He fired on all cyllinders in the meeting and got some positive feedback on the way out. The rest of the day went his way as well. He just felt capable of meeting whatever challenges the day threw at him, and he did it without any miracles, big or small.

Dinner with his parents was a little more challenging. They too knew he'd been on vacation and thought it had been planned for a while, but his mother was miffed that he hadn't called the entire time he'd been away. "We thought you fell off the face of the earth," she said.

Drinks with his friends was much the same way, but with less guilt... "How was the trip? Why didn't you call?"

Everyone seemed to have something to do in the morning. By 11 p.m., Kurt was alone at a table in the little pub they'd decided to hit. He wasn't quite ready to go home and be alone in his room yet. He still wanted to be in the presence of living people, even if he just sat back, nursed his beer, and didn't talk to a one.

A man in a grey overcoat entered the bar and Kurt watched the guy make a beeline directly for his table. "Can I help you," he asked as the man sat down.

The man put a photo of two couples on the table. As Kurt looked at it, he saw one couple was Alain and Marie, the other couple was the man across from him and a strikingly beautiful woman with jet black hair. The photo was in black and white, a bit frayed, and looked like it had to be around 50 years old. The man, on the other hand, didn't look a day older than he did in the picture.

"My name is Avery Stark," the man said. "I believe you may know the other man in the photo. A little under 2 weeks ago, he and George Miller entered a portal into Hell to save you. I know because I was there. Today, you showed up back in Manhattan without them. I'd like to know what happened to my friends."

Kurt leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his beer. "You might want to take off that coat," he said. "It's a long story."

As Kurt ran toward the throne, two figures appeared before it, a breeze emanating as the air rushed away from the space they filled. Kurt recognized one as Alain, the other... "My lord," Michael shouted, dropping to his knees.

Kurt stopped, looking at Michael, prostrated on the floor 20 feet away, then looking at Alain who looked as dazed as Kurt felt, then at the man who turned, walked up two steps, and sat down in the throne. Kurt sort of expected his jeans and white sport coat to turn into a robe, the neatly trimmed beard to morph into something more flowing, but nothing about him changed. He just sat there. "Michael," he said, "you have shown great pride and arrogance in the way you have governed my Heaven in my absence. Redeem yourself. Kill this arrogant mortal."

Michael rose to standing, a slow menacing rise, displaying an angry smile on his face. "Gladly," he said, raising his sword and stalking forward.

Kurt raised his sword, his mind racing for something he could do to turn this around.

"No," Alain shouted, running down from the throne's platform and getting between Kurt and Michael. "You can't kill him! He wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me! Give me the sword, Kurt!"

Deuce stood up from his throne. "Alain, you have nothing to prove. Step out of the way."

Alain turned to face Michael. "No! I got Kurt into this!" He reached back toward Kurt. "Give me the sword!"

Alain disappeared from his place and appeared back on the throne platform with Deuce, a straightjacket around his torso, his feet shackled. Kurt looked up at him sadly. "No."

Kurt circled as Michael approached, sword raised. "Let me get this straight," Kurt shouted up to the man he assumed to be God. "I win and Alain's saved? He spends eternity with Marie?"

"Not quite," Deuce said, "you'll still have to deal with me."

Kurt kept circling, keeping his distance from Michael. "But I gotta get through him first?"

Deuce nodded.

"Fair enough," Kurt said, taking a defensive stance. Michael came in, his sword raised for a powerful blow, and stopped. The flame from his sword ran down the blade, down the hilt, and engulfed his hands. Michael dropped the sword, but the flame continued to advance, creeping up his arms, licking at his elbows. He didn't scream. He didn't panic. Michael lowered his arms, lowered his head, clasped his hands, and the flames gradually died. A smile crossed his face and he raised his head just in time for Kurt's flaming sword to take it off cleanly at the neck. Michael's body crumpled to the ground.

Kurt closed his eyes briefly and his flaming sword disappeared. "I guess I've got to deal with you," he said, turning to the throne.

Deuce walked toward him. A quick wave of his hand and Michael's body disappeared. "I guess you do. Alain, please tend to our visitors. I've got some business to handle."

Alain found himself free of the restraints Kurt had put him in as Deuce and Kurt disappeared. Feeling a rush of air at his back, he turned just in time to catch Marie as she leapt into his arms.

---

The universe shifted and Kurt found himself in Nowhere again. He tried to figure out how he was going to fight God mano-a-mano when he was distracted by someone whistling off to his left. He turned his head and saw Jack sitting at a table with three seats in front of an empty cafe. Jack waved them over and Deuce walked toward the table. "You coming," he asked. Kurt followed, a bit confused.

"I thought I had to fight you," Kurt called after him.

Deuce stopped and turned back to Kurt. "No, I said you had to deal with me. But really, who doesn't?" Deuce turned and walked over to the table, taking a seat next to Jack.

Kurt's confusion deepened. "You mean I'm not in trouble?"

"No, son," Deuce laughed. "You were perfect. If you'd lost, the universe would have been destroyed, but I knew you had it in you. Now come sit."

Kurt walked slowly over to the table and sat in the remaining seat. His head hurt. One of his ears rang. "But I killed your favorite angel."

"It takes more to kill an archangel than a simple beheading," Deuce said, his tone casual. "He's just on an angel time-out. Anyway, I needed to see that you had it in you to win that fight. Beers all around?" Jack nodded and tall frosty mugs appeared in front of them. Deuce and Jack took swigs from theirs, but Kurt just sat there and stared at them.

"He seems a bit shell-shocked," Jack said before taking another pull from his mug.

"I seem to recall someone running around here naked for three days when he found out why he was here."

"Hold on a second," Kurt said, waving his hands. "The universe would have been destroyed?!"

"Okay," Deuce said, "here's the summary in a hundred words or less: This universe is part of a multiverse. In our universe, once per century, sometimes twice, the multiverse creates a special soul. At body-death, that soul comes to Nowhere and learns how to create and run a universe. Then it gets a job like mine with its own universe to run. If a universe doesn't spawn a new one on schedule, the multiverse assumes it to be defective and recycles it. If Satan won your soul, you wouldn't have come here, and eventually... poof."

"So if Michael had killed me, I would have lost the bet and... 'poof?'"

Deuce took another sip of his beer, the delay making Kurt clench his fists. "More or less."

Kurt put his head in his hands and rubbed it vigorously, as if he was trying to shake something loose. "How can you be so calm about this? Satan almost destroyed the universe! You gambled the fate of mankind on me! Me! I wouldn't bet five bucks on me!"

A TV appeared on the table, playing highlights from Kurt's meeting with Mammon in the dungeons of Pandaemonium. "Mammon told you that you were free to go. You'd even tilted your balance to Heaven. You gambled the fate of mankind... and Thuriskind, and Vilkind, and Ekekekind, and about 6,000 other sentient species that currently inhabit the universe. I just didn't do anything to stop you."

"But they would have killed Alain and George," Kurt protested.

Deuce leaned over at put a reassuring hand on Kurt's shoulder. "I know. Now take a sip of your beer. You'll feel better."

"But why did you let me do it? Why did you let me bet your whole universe?"

"Evil exists to test Good."

Kurt frowned.

"No, seriously," Deuce protested. "Every soul is tested, everywhere. The greater the soul's fate, the greater the test. That's one of the rules you'll learn when it's your time to be here. Holiness is merely raw talent. It's character that molds it into a skill."

Kurt could feel his face flushing with anger. All the indignation he'd felt since beginning this journey bubbled up in a single sentence. "And if you fail the test, you go to Hell," he said accusatively.

Deuce smiled. "I love your compassion, your sense of fairness. Look, you saw The Matrix, right? Of course you did. You saw it 6 times all the way through and you've watched blocks of it on cable to kill time. What did Agent Smith say happened when the machines tried to give people a virtual paradise?"

Kurt thought for a moment. "They rejected it," he said, a glimmer of understanding dawning.

"You saw the planes of eternity when you beat the nothingness, but you don't remember them." Deuce pointed at Kurt. "Let me help you."

Images flooded into Kurt's mind... Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, then Nirvana, Valhalla, thousands and thousands of paradises, thousands and thousands of wastelands, and oceans, and jungles. There were giant waiting rooms and transfer stations, trains and buses and big cloudy bubbles traveling along routes that never ended. And not all the souls were human. Some were like Roswell aliens, some were like jellyfish, and some were like large six-legged cats. The landscapes stretched on seemingly forever with a greater variety of lifeforms than Kurt had ever imagined existed.

"Souls go where they expect to go, Kurt," Deuce said. "I just need the one or two per century and the rest I mostly try to keep content. There are a few truly bad eggs I unmake, like child molesters and suicide bombers. The rest... I don't like to see them suffer, but if that's what they truly feel they deserve, they'll just trash and try to destroy anything better. The greatest cause of suffering in life or after it is believing that you somehow deserve to suffer."

Kurt thought a moment. "What about reincarnation?"

Deuce smiled and patted Kurt's hand. "In due time, son. We've got people waiting for us to get back. You want to come along Jack?"

"Wait," Kurt asked, "doesn't he have to be here?"

"Jack moved on years ago, but his universe is mainly hot plasma now. It needs about a billion years to cool before he'll be able to do anything with it. So I asked him to hang out for a few days. Didn't want you to find the place empty." Deuce stood up from his chair. "Shall we go?"

---

While Kurt and Deuce were in Nowhere, a host of angels busied themselves in the throne room, setting up a banquet table and escorting in additional guests. Marie's thing in life had been playing hostess, and it took over. She wanted to hold onto Alain for another few centuries, but it would be rude to ignore the guests.

George and Alain took seats at the table, George giving Alain a quick summary of what had happened in his absence while busy angels bustled about and Marie got everyone seated. When all was said and done, the guest list included Nybras and Duke, George, Alain, Marie, Junior, Elvis, Eleanor, Barbara, Leonardo, Mick, and Arthur. That left three seats at the table. Marie reserved the head of the table for Deuce, seated Kurt at his right hand, and made space for the last person at the foot of the table.

A rush of air announced the arrival of Deuce, Kurt, and Jack. Everyone rose from the table and exchanged greetings with them. Jack and Alain hugged, then stepped back and looked at each other. "I always thought it wasn't fair," Jack said. "You never grew old and got fat." The two of them laughed and hugged again.

As everyone sat, Deuce raised his glass. "A toast," he said, "to the salvation of our dear friend Alain. And as a gesture of apology for the injustices he has suffered, I grant him the one thing he could never have... a child. Marie, Alain, Junior is yours to raise as your son. He will grow to adulthood and be a great joy to you."

Deuce leaned to Kurt as Marie hugged Alain and then Junior, and in a low voice he said "now you officially win your bet. Hell has no more claim on you."

Deuce sat up and raised his glass again. "Salud."

Over the course of the meal, everyone was given a gift.

Barbara got a home theater system and a complete DVD set of "Charmed" so she could see the episodes she missed.

Eleanor was tasked with heading up a council of the performing arts for Heaven and getting it back to the joyous singing and celebrating that had existed before Michael imposed his sense of order on it.

Elvis was asked to give the first concert in Heaven in 400 years.

Arthur was given a holy quest to scour the first ring of Hell and find those souls ready to accept paradise.

Leonardo got a lab where he could tinker.

Nybras got his old job back.

Duke got a promotion to full-fledged angel.

Jack got Deuce's beer recipe.

George was given salvation and a house down the street from Marie and Alain.

And Mick, once he found out that Jack was going to spend the next billion years exploring other universes, asked if he could tag along. Jack agreed.

When the meal was over and the guests had slowly drifted away home, a core of Kurt, George, Alain, Marie, Junior, and Deuce remained.

"So," Deuce said, sitting back in his chair and looking at Kurt. "What lovely parting gift do I give you?"

"Another answer?"

"Shoot."

Kurt leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of himself on the table. "What do I do next?"

Deuce chuckled. "Live. Fall in love, maybe a few times. Figure out how to become who you wanted to be when you grew up. Taste every food, smell every flower. The purpose of Nowhere is to teach you how to be a god. The purpose of life is to teach you how to be alive. Most of all, exercise your imagination. You can learn the rest, but there's no substitute for a good imagination."

Deuce got up from the table, and that was everyone's signal to say their goodbyes. Kurt hugged Marie and Alain goodbye. When it came Junior's turn, he wrapped his arms around the boy. "I think I'm gonna miss you most of all, Scarecrow," he said half-jokingly, half to try to keep himself from tearing up.

"Thank you," Junior whispered in his ear.

As Junior stepped back, Kurt looked up at George. "You watch out for our Lost Boy brother, George. Make sure those two take good care of him."

George shook Kurt's hand as Kurt stood up. "You got it, buddy. And you come back whenever you want to check up on him."

Kurt looked over at Deuce, but Deuce shook his head in the negative. Kurt understood. Heaven wasn't for the living, even if they would someday rule a Heaven of their own. Maybe he'd get to stop by while his universe was cooling, but he knew this was the last time he'd see any of these people during his mortal life, and Deuce had assured him he was going to live to a ripe old age.

As Alain and his family walked out of the throne room, Kurt turned to Deuce. "Gonna send me home now?"

"Ah, but you had the power to go home all along, Dorothy," Deuce said, smiling. Kurt put out his hand for a final handshake, but Deuce pulled him into a hug and kissed him on the forehead. "Take care of yourself, son. That's a commandment. I'll be checking up on you."

Deuce released Kurt. Kurt stepped back, envisioned himself in his bedroom, put a little love in it, said "Amen," and the universe shifted around him.

Alain stood at the slingshot chair with the nine men and Albert. For the sake of expediency, Albert did not recruit Kolya, but it cost another bottle of vodka and another case of assault rifles to get him to send his men while he stayed back.

Only two of them were Russian (both ex-Spetznaz), one was a former Somali pirate, three were former mercenaries, two were from street gangs, and the last was a P.E. coach who had apparently enjoyed the dodgeball a little too much. All of them carried an assault rifle, a bandolier of clips across his chest, three grenades, a paintball gun loaded with 110 magic whizzballs, and a backpack filled with 50 pounds of sand. The backpacks were to ensure they fell when shot out of the slingshot chair. Otherwise they'd rise and be blown back onto the 7th ring.

Alain could actually tolerate the Russians, the gang members, the mercenaries, even the pirate. They might not have been the nicest people in the world, but they were quiet and businesslike. The P.E. coach, Vic, treated this like an outing with his buddies and talked as they walked along Albert's tunnel... all 15 miles of it. He was not just an asshole, he was an asshole who wouldn't shut up. He talked about women he'd slept with, asses he'd kicked, times he'd gotten so drunk he did something stupid. When he wasn't talking about himself, he was saying incredibly pointless things about politics, discussing the relative merits of different porn movies, rattling off sports trivia, or going on about cars. It had actually built up some camaraderie between Alain and the other men as they shared looks of exasperation.

Alain had initially thought Kolya had assigned Vic to them as a "fuck you" gesture for not being included. Now Alain had a feeling Kolya had included him in the complement of men just to be rid of him. The "fuck you" gesture was an added bonus. Alain was almost ready to frag Vic himself, but Deuce had said he needed to recruit ten men.

Alain and two of the mercenaries, Peterson and Kramer, got first turn in the chair so they could secure the landing zone. While the mercenaries got themselves settled, Alain put an arm around Vic's shoulders and took him aside for a private chat.

"Look, Vic," he said, trying to sound buddy-buddy and not put the guy on the defensive. "Thanks for the entertainment during the hike, but you do understand that from this point forward, we've got to keep noise to a minimum, right?"

"Oh, yeah, sure," Vic said. "You got it."

"Good."

Alain parted from Vic, walked back to the bench, and took his seat between Peterson and Kramer. He looked over at Albert as he crossed his arms over his weapons and straps, securing them against the rapid motion about to occur. "I'll see ya when I see ya." Albert nodded.

Peterson, on the lever, counted down. "Three... two... one... go."

The bench shot forward and then abruptly stopped, flinging the three men out into the void. Peterson and Kramer had both gone through Airborne training and had themselves angled into dives before Alain had even stopped tumbling enough to begin thinking about positioning himself. He followed their lead, slowing their forward momentum so that they cleared the lip of the 8th ring with around 200 feet to spare, then angled their dives to bring them in close to the 9th ring's cliff wall, landing outside the walls of Pandaemonium.

When they landed, Kramer and Peterson jogged off to establish a perimeter as Alain waited for the other 8 men. The last mercenary and the two bangers came next, followed by the Russians and the Somali, the parties dropping in 3 minute intervals. Albert and Vic came last. Vic didn't talk as he fell, thankfully, but as he hit the ground with his knees bent, he came up from his crouch with a loud "woo-hoo" that was cut off mid-woo by Alain's hand closing around his throat and slamming him up against the cliff wall.

"What part of 'noise to a minimum' was unclear," Alain asked quietly through gritted teeth.

With Alain nearly crushing whatever passed for a windpipe in his plastic-like anatomy, all Vic could do was squeak.

"There a problem here?"

Alain turned his head to see Deuce approaching, trailed by Peterson. Although Deuce was an ally, Peterson shouldn't have let him through. Alain glared at Peterson who gave a pained expression in return. None of the weapons Peterson carried or any of his fighting skills would stand up against a real, honest-to-goodness angel, so that made Alain actually feel a bit better about trusting Deuce. It also made Alain realize that, except for the holy pissballs, there wasn't a weapon or skill among his motley crew that would be of any use against demons... unless Vic could annoy them to death.

"Small disciplinary issue," Alain said, lowering Vic to the ground and releasing his throat. Vic rubbed his throat and turned his head back and forth, lightly hacking and coughing.

"Hmm," Deuce said, looking Vic up and down. "Can't have that." He raised his hand and Vic's weapons and pack fell off.

Vic floated upward. "Hey," Vic shouted. A quick hand wave by Deuce and his jaw clamped shut, muffling his shouts as he quickly rose upward and out of earshot.

"Not that I'm ungrateful," Alain said, "but we're now a man short."

Deuce smiled a sly smile. "I'll take his place. Anyway, if you get caught again, you're going to need a lawyer."

---

Kurt spent the rest of the afternoon practicing bigger and bigger jumps. Elvis and Arthur both went home and he practiced teleporting to their houses, then teleporting back. In an in-between time, he sat down with Marie.

"Tell me about Alain."

Marie put her elbow on the table and leaned her head into her hand, her fingers rubbing her head behind the temple and over the ear. She got a look of contentment on her face, as if she were imagining it were Alain's fingers running through her hair as she called him to mind. Kurt had noticed her French accent before, but after 60-plus years in the States, it was subdued. When she spoke this time, it was deeper, richer, more relaxed and less controlled. "Sweet... loving... a little shy... a terrible singer... though you never saw any of that I would guess. Loyal and dedicated... sometimes too much. If he called you 'friend,' he would die for you."

"He has a remarkable sense of right and wrong. It could make me so angry sometimes, you know. Sometimes, when my passions got the best of me, and he would give me moral guidance... sometimes I could spit. I would think that here is a man with part of his soul already in Hell, and he is trying to tell me about what is right and good."

"He could have said 'the Devil already has my soul, so why not just do whatever feels good?' And then I'd see... being good feels good to him. He is naturally a good person. It is not just something he does out of fear of damnation, or greed for paradise, or even a logical decision that this would be the best course of action."

Marie's voice grew thick. "He just follows his heart. He is good because his heart is good. How could you not love someone like that?"

Kurt was in a half-daze, watching her, listening to her talk about the man she loved. This was what God needed to hear, and he felt very inadequate as he contemplated trying to deliver it secondhand. But the bet was that he would convince God to save Alain, not her. So he listened as she went on, trying to figure out how he was going to use mere words to do justice to 64 years of love.

---

Deuce, Alain, and Albert sat next to each other on a bench in the Pandaemonium security office, hands cuffed behind their backs. In front of them, a team of demons and damned souls worked the monitor banks and dispatch consoles that coordinated security response not only within the 9th ring, but throughout Hell. Beside them sat the closed door of the office belonging to Andromalius, a duke of Hell and chief of security.

The door opened and one of the bouncer demons preceeded Andromalius out. Alain had been expecting something on the order of Mammon, but Andromalius looked more like he could eat Mammon. He had a crocodile's head on top of a body that resembled Lou Ferrigno wrapped in snakeskin. He wore black shorts and a blue t-shirt, both sporting Pandaemonium security badge logos.

"You're an angel, huh?" Andromalius ignored Alain and Albert, focusing in on Deuce. "Well, I know every angel created before the fall, our intelligence says there ain't been none created since, and I don't know you."

"You don't?" Deuce smiled. "Take a closer look. Maybe you're missing something."

Andromalius stepped closer to Deuce, leaning in to peer into Deuce's eyes. Alain watched as it happened and saw a light burst from Deuce's eyes, like the pop of a flashbulb. The sequence of events that followed seemed to play out in slow motion. The crocodile's jaw dropped and its eyes glazed as Deuce's hands came up and touched the side of the beast's head.

While Andromalius was falling, Alain and Albert were standing, their handcuffs dissolving into the ether. Deuce spread his wings, reached up under them, and pulled out Albert and Alain's paintball guns, tossing them to the two men before grabbing his own. Within thirty seconds, three damned souls and four demons lay unconscious, two more demons lay whimpering with smoke rising off of them, and the remaining security office staff had their hands in the air.

Over the next few hours, in groups of two and three, security personnel around the 9th ring were alerted to a disturbance in the Asmodeus Arena. Upon arrival they were greeted by 8 armed souls, a pile of smoking demon carcasses, and a large group of wiser demons who had followed instructions and taken seats in section A-2 with their hands up.

---

Inside the first gate of the celestial palace sat a reception desk. All visitors had to check in with the angels Sabrael and Domiel before being allowed deeper into the palace to attend to their business. It hadn't been very busy for the past few hundred years, but the two angels held their station faithfully, even if they did find ways to occupy their hours. At the moment, Domiel was deeply immersed in a Danielle Steele novel while Sabrael knitted a tea cozy.

"Domiel," Sabrael asked, his voice rising, "do you smell smoke?"

"No," Domiel answered, not looking up from his book. "Why?"

"Because the desk is on fire."

The two angels stepped back from the desk and stared at it incredulously. The desk burned with fire, and the desk was not consumed. No smoke rose. No wood blackened. Yet heat radiated as if it was engulfed.

Now things in Heaven aren't normally flammable. Flammability was one of those physical laws that Heaven seemed to get around, much like Hell got around gravity. About the only thing that burned in Heaven was Michael's flaming sword. If nothing burned, there was no need for fire alarms, and the security alarm switch was hidden under the desk... within the fire. Left with no other options, the angels resorted to a tried and true method that had been utilized by mankind for thousands and thousands of years: they yelled "FIRE!" at the top of their lungs — and the top of an angel's lungs can pretty much be heard for miles.

Offices around the celestial palace emptied. Angels, archangels, seraphim, and cherubim flooded out into the reception lobby, but didn't evacuate the building. They gathered around the desk, reaching out hands to feel the warmth of the fire before dropping to their knees and praying.

In the throne room, a small breeze blew as air was shoved out of the way to make room for a human body. Kurt turned to find the alarm box. As he raised his hand to smash it open, he heard a voice behind him.

"Nice burning bush you did out there. Very impressive. Not distracting, but impressive. Now why don't you turn around with your hands up?"

Kurt turned to see an angel, one of the most beautiful beings he'd ever seen, sporting flowing blonde hair, wings, a halo, and a huge flaming sword. "My name is Michael," the angel said.

Kurt stepped back, acting as if he were backing away in fear, then brought his elbow down and back in a fast motion, shattering the glass and pounding the button, setting off a very loud alarm.

"I really wish you hadn't done that," Michael said, shouting over the alarm. "It's a pain to reset the alarm and replace the glass!"

Michael raised his sword and took a step forward. "I was hoping we could have settled this peaceably!"

Kurt got a vision, loved it, blessed it, and Michael's hands were empty, the flaming sword now clasped by Kurt. He raised it, stepping toward Michael, and his hands were empty again. He dove out of the way as Michael swept the sword down at him. Kurt scrambled into a wary crouch as an annoyed Michael shoved the tip of his sword into the alarm box, turning the loud klaxon into a fizzling sputter and then silence.

"I know you're stronger than me," Michael said, moving cautiously toward Kurt. "But I've been training to use my holiness since God created me at the beginning of time. You've been training since when? Lunch? I don't care what your holiness rating is. I'm going to kick your ass, noob."

The shock of hearing an angel say "noob" paused Kurt almost long enough to take a flaming sword to the neck. He ducked just in time and he could hear and smell the flames of the sword fry the ends of his hair as it passed over his head. He came out of the crouch leaping in the same direction the sword had passed, flying under it on the back swing and running to put some distance between himself and the angel.

He was panicking and that was making it hard to concentrate enough to get a vision and do something with it. As Michael stalked forward, Kurt stared at the flaming sword and said "Amen." Once again, he had a flaming sword in his hands, but this time it wasn't Michael's. Michael's swing came in and Kurt raised his sword in time to deflect the blow. The two holy instruments came together with a shower of sparks and a clang like a church bell, gouts of flame erupting as Michael's blade slid along Kurt's.

Michael stepped back and poised himself for another blow while Kurt grimaced. Michael's blow may not have connected with Kurt's flesh, but the impact of the sword had sent compression waves pounding through Kurt's arms and shoulders and into his torso. It felt like his ribs were wobbling. He warded off three lighter blows in quick succession as Michael tested the strength of his defenses, which weren't much. Kurt's experience with swordfighting was pretty much limited to when he was 13 and he and Jimmy Hill discovered Highlander, watched it obsessively, and play-fought with plastic swords for a summer. Michael was going to pick him apart in short order if he didn't do something.

Where the Hell is God, Kurt thought as he turned and ran.

---

Alain and Deuce walked down an ornate hallway. Kramer and Peterson had double-timed it over from the arena to help Albert run the security office while the remaining six stood guard over dozens of demons. Deuce offered a brilliant idea to help the six men retain control over so many prisoners, telling them to have the demons sit in each others' laps. It demoralized the demons, shrunk the boundaries of the physical area that needed to be guarded, and made leaping into action that much more difficult.

At the end of the hallway stood a giant golden door, fifteen feet high and ten feet wide, covered in ornate scrollwork and crusted in gemstones. A giant L, composed of rubies as big as your fist and as red as new blood, made it clear who they were going to see.

Deuce didn't have to do any hand waving to gain entrance. The door opened of its own accord and Alain followed Deuce in. The throne room was composed of stone, like a medieval castle, the only light coming from torches along the walls. The smell of burning pitch was thick in the air. At the end of a long red carpet, a handsome man in a Versace suit sat in a giant golden throne that threw off pings and glints of reflection in the torchlight.

"Hello, Lou," Deuce said, breaking the silence.

"I thought you'd come," Lucifer replied. He had long, brown curls, pulled back into a ponytail to match Deuce's do. Now Alain knew who Vinnie had patterned his hair style after. He was clean-shaven and there was no hint of horns. He had high cheekbones, full lips, and smoldering eyes. Alain wasn't gay, but even he had to admit the man was beautiful.

"Of course I came. You worked awful hard to get my attention."

Lucifer smiled. "Haven't I always?"

Deuce frowned. "But this time you went too far. I can't allow this anymore."

"Then punish me," Lucifer laughed. "What are you going to do that's worse than this?"

Alain watched as a tear ran down from Deuce's eye. "I'm sorry, Lou."

The smile disappeared from Lucifer's face as he burst into flames. The inferno was mercifully short. Lucifer didn't even have time to scream. Within seconds nothing was left on the throne but a small pile of ash.

Alain turned to Deuce, his mouth agape. Another tear rolled down Deuce's cheek followed by a sniffle. Deuce pinched his nose and sniffed again, shaking his head sadly from side to side.

"I prefer to think of it as 'unmaking,' not 'killing,'" Deuce said, seeming to read the question Alain was too shocked to ask. Deuce held out his hand and a small urn appeared in it. A slight wave of his other hand and the ashes on the throne disappeared.

"You're not my guardian angel, are you," Alain asked.

A flick of Deuce's finger mounted the urn at the top of Lucifer's throne. "What makes you say that," he asked, turning to Alain and smiling a strained smile. Deuce put his hand on Alain's shoulder. "Thank you for all your help, but we have one more thing to attend to."

When Mick settled down — and it took a while — Marie brought him a glass of water. He sat in one of the garden chairs and drank while Kurt and Marie watched.

Mick smiled blissfully and stretched his arms out turning his face to the sky. "I know it's not Sol, but it's infinitely better than that giant rocket exhaust that passed for a light source back in... well, you know."

Kurt wanted to get down to business, but he didn't want to break into Mick's joy. Take a sunny summer morning on the streets of Manhattan and people would still be bulling along, their heads down, their eyes bleary, joylessly sipping at complicated coffee drinks. But Mick's joy in simple things like sunlight and clean water was so pure and unabashed that not letting it fade at its own pace felt almost sinful.

Kurt motioned for Marie to follow him and led her back into the house. "Let's give him a little time to acclimate," he said. She nodded her assent and preceeded him back into the living room where everyone was trying to pretend they weren't interested in what was going on in the garden.

"I guess you're all wondering what just happened." Ten heads nodded in unison. Kurt quickly described how Mick saved him in the second ring, leaving out the jucier details since Junior was one of the 10 heads. Then he told them about his latest trip to Nowhere, the big red emergency button by God's throne, and how Mick was going to be his instructor in miracles, although he realized he hadn't yet informed Mick of that pertinent fact.

"See," Leonardo said, raising a hand and pointing a finger in the air. "I told you we needed miracles. Now we shall have them."

"So be it," Arthur said, "but how shall they manifest? Curing a leper or turning water into wine will not get us into that throne room."

"Well, hey now," Elvis said, "if there's one thing I know about, it's drawing a crowd. If Kurt did it on the steps of the Celestial Palace, it might just pull out enough angels to watch that one of us could sneak in."

"And if my mother had wheels, she would have been a trolley car," Eleanor interjected. "We cannot formulate a plan that relies on a number of unpredictable factors to go our way. If there is an angel posted at the throne room doors who does not abandon its post, or better yet, they're simply locked, what then?"

"Maybe he could 'orb,'" Barbara said.

Everyone looked at her, puzzled. "My daughter got me hooked on this TV show, 'Charmed', before I died. So, in the show, angels are called 'white lighters' and they basically do a sort of dematerializing in one place and then materializing in another called 'orbing.'"

Leonardo leaned forward. "So you are saying he could teleport into the throne room, right in front of the box, and push the button before any angels could stop him? The simplicity of it is pure genius."

"But could I do that," Kurt asked?

"If you can perform miracles, why not teleportation," George asked. "Come on. This is one of those no-brainers like 'why doesn't the bad guy just shoot James Bond?' If this was a movie, wouldn't you be asking yourself 'why doesn't he just miracle himself into the throne room?' We can come up with a thousand 'I Love Lucy' schemes to get in there, but give me one good reason why you can't just miracle yourself into the throne room."

The room was silent. George looked over at the two angels. "You guys know any reason?"

Nybras shook his head in the negative while Duke held up both hands. "Hey," Duke said, "I'm just an assistant angel."

"Then it's settled," George's face took on a deeply satisfied look. "Kurt has a few lessons with the professor out there, miracles himself into the throne room, pushes the button, God comes running."

"And what do I do when He gets there," Kurt asked.

George scrunched up his face and raised a hand. "That part I haven't figured out yet."

Eleanor stood up and walked over to Kurt, putting a hand on his shoulder. "You talk to Him, dear. Tell Him why Alain deserves to be saved."

"How do I do that? Tell God he's a good guy, not bad for a vampire?"

Eleanor lifted her hand from his shoulder, put it on his head, and turned his gaze to Marie sitting in the chair with Junior in her lap, George standing next to them. "You have his family right there. Between miracle lessons, maybe you could ask them why Alain is worth saving."

---

Albert walked away from the bucket with an eye-dropper in one hand and a new beer in the other. He'd filled the eye dropper from the bucket, but the beer was still sealed. "Don't worry," he told Alain, "I filtered out the nasty bits. I was only going to evaporate it for the chemicals, but after Kurt healed Ty, I decided to experiment."

Over in the corner there was something that looked to be a box with a blanket over it. Albert lifted the blanket to reveal a wire rabbit cage with an imp in it, seemingly asleep.

Alain had never seen an imp before. This one was about 5 inches tall, a miniature version of Nybras or Mammon, but with no horns and no clothes. It lay curled up, a thumb in its mouth, and it kicked a leg as the light hit it. The whole thing might have been cute if the imp itself wasn't so ugly. Albert dripped a single bead of liquid from the eyedropper onto the imp and the placid scene erupted.

The little demon leapt up into the air with a screech and ran circles around the cage, trying to outrun the smoking pit on its rear end. Somehow it manifested two voices, one howling, the other cursing as it climbed the sides and hung from the cage's top, rattling the structure and screaming steaming bloody murder. While the little demon screamed, Albert popped the top on the beer. He smacked the top of the cage, knocking the imp loose, and it fell to the cage floor where it lay on its stomach, whimpering loudly.

Albert poured a little bit of the beer on its smoking wound and the sizzling stopped, the imp breathing a sigh of relief and visibly relaxing. He put the beer down, picked up the blanket, and covered the cage. "Sleep now," he said, then picked up the beer, taking a sip as he walked back to the table where Alain sat.

He sat at the table. "I've got the equipment to make acid-filled paintballs. If a drop does that to an imp, we can do a cubic centimeter per ball. I'm betting it'll only take one or two direct hits to put one of the big thugs out of commission, and I've got enough filtered urine to make up about 1,200 paintballs. So, as long as we wouldn't have to fight off more than 500 demons, we've got the ammunition. I can also get us the men."

"Through Kolya," Alain said with an undisguised hint of disgust.

"You've got a problem with Kolya?"

"He beat up a kid." Alain thought of Ty falling through the door, battered and bruised. Beating up kids had a very special place on Alain's shit list.

Albert shrugged. "Who hasn't on this ring? You think Ty didn't intimidate and beat up smaller children when he was alive? This is a ring for people who hurt people. Now, we can get nine men, capable of following orders, with skill in the controlled and practical application of violence... or I can get you a lamp and you can wander the seventh ring, searching for 9 altar boys who got sent here by mistake."

"Don't you mean ten men?"

"You're looking at number 10." Albert's eyebrow raised. "You thought I'd miss this?"

---

"I don't know how many times I can say 'thank you,'" Mick said as he and Kurt sat at the garden table. "I am forever in your debt."

"Good," Kurt said, "because I need another favor."

"Name it."

"Teach me how to perform miracles."

Mick looked puzzled. "You seem to be doing a pretty good job of it without my help."

"Yeah," Kurt said, shifting in his chair, "see, the thing is... I have no freaking clue what I'm doing. I don't perform miracles so much as stumble along and let miracles happen. I need to get a handle on it, and I was told you wrote a story where a guy learned how to perform miracles."

Mick stopped lounging and sat up in his chair. "Who told you that?"

"Jack Kerouac."

"Jack Kerouac?"

"Long story. But he said you wrote a story about a guy who got to be God for a week and had to learn how to do miracles."

Mick thought for a moment, smiled for a moment, then got a look on his face like he'd just smelled a fart. "That piece of crap? It was terrible. I wrote it while tripping, thinking I was having amazing metaphysical insights. And then, when I read it sober, I wanted to cry. It was so hokey."

"Apparently it wasn't, or I wouldn't have been told to summon you."

"Oh come on," Mick said, laughing derisively. "You know what I came up with for how you do a miracle? Get a vision of it happening in your mind's eye..."

"Yeah," Kurt said, leaning forward.

"Then bless the vision." Mick snorted. "'Envision it and bless it.' That was the story's mantra. 'See the miracle, bless the miracle, make the miracle.' It's like some new age self-help seminar."

Kurt wanted to agree with Mick, but he had it on good authority that Mick knew the process, even if Mick apparently didn't believe it worked. But what was a good test miracle to try? Who was he going to heal? The whole burning bush thing was tempting, but he didn't like the idea of frying Marie's garden. Maybe manna... not manna.

Kurt looked at the table and envisioned his wish. But how did he bless it? He tried blinking and thinking "bless it" like a sort of "I Dream of Jeannie" move. Nothing happened. He got the vision again and wiggled his nose "Bewitched" style while thinking "bless it." Nothing happened.

Mick peered at him. "You're actually trying it?"

Kurt nodded. "Well," Mick said, "there's a sort of trick to blessing the vision. You have to reach down into yourself, find a little bit of love, push it into the vision, and then say 'Amen' in your head."

Kurt got his vision, reached down into himself, found a little bit of love, pushed it into the vision, and thought 'Amen.' The next moment there were two glasses of cold Bass Ale on the table. Mick jumped in his chair, then leaned forward to peer at the glasses. Kurt handed one to Mick and took one for himself. "A toast," Kurt said, smiling, "to little miracles."

Mick held up his glass of ale, looking at it. "Well, I'll be damned."

"Not anymore," Kurt said with a wink, then took a sip of the ale.

---

After the experiment with the ale, Mick was a true believer and set himself to the task of helping Kurt learn how to teleport. Kurt started off with small jumps of a foot or two, seeing where he wanted to be, creating a mental snapshot of being there, and blessing it, but soon enough he was bouncing around the garden. He even shuffled Mick around the garden in his chair. There was no momentum acquired by teleporting. It was sort of like one of those stop-motion movies where something just shifts from one place to another, then another.

But teleporting to places you could see was easy. The trick was teleporting somewhere you couldn't. How was he going to teleport into the God's throne room, right next to the button if he couldn't get a vision of it in his mind?

"Envision yourself seeing that place, then bless that vision," Mick suggested. "Maybe it will allow you to see the place you need to see. Try a room in the house, then we can go to the room and see if you got it right."

"Which room?"

Mick scratched his chin. "Guest bathroom?"

Kurt stood and envisioned himself envisioning the guest bathroom, found a bit of love, pushed it into the vision, and said "Amen." The vision was replaced by a view of the guest bathroom. There was no toilet, but a nice sink and mirror provided a place for guests to freshen up. Kurt wondered what he was going to do about the lack of a toilet because he was starting to feel the need for a wicked dump. Kurt took his vision of the guest bathroom, altered it to add a toilet, and blessed it.

He must have given off some physical cue that he'd performed another miracle. "What did you do," Mick asked.

Keeping the vision in his head, Kurt added himself to it. "I'll tell you in a few minutes," Kurt said, then blessed the vision.

A few minutes later, he envisioned a roll of toilet paper.

Kurt woke up in one of the most comfortable beds he'd ever experienced in his life. The mattress was soft, but not too soft, the sheets and quilt were heavy enough to make him feel cocooned in pleasant warmth. Despite the gentle nudging and calling of his name, he really didn't want to leave his little pocket of bliss. Then someone reached under the sheets, grabbed his feet, yanked them out from under the covers, turned him perpendicular to the bed in the process, pulled his feet farther out, and set them on the floor, pretty much forcing him to sit up on the edge of the bed. As he sat up, he came face-to-face with George. "You've got visitors," George said, smiling.

Kurt, did a groggy physical inventory. They hadn't undressed him, but they had removed his boots. "Boots," he said to George.

"Entryway closet, by the front door. Everyone's got their shoes off downstairs. You'll fit right in."

Kurt took that statement with a grain of salt. Fitting in because he was shoeless might be one thing, but being 23, scared out of his wits, responsible for multiple lives and souls, and possessed of enough power to turn a demon back into an angel... he didn't think he was going to find that club gathered around the punchbowl. "How long have I been out?"

"Couple of hours." George tilted his head toward the door.

Kurt continued sitting on the bed. He didn't want to go downstairs and face Marie's friends. He was sure they were nice people, but he'd had enough reaponsibility heaped on him in the last few days, so much so that his mind seemed to be crumbling and he was having to be knocked out to keep from hurting himself. He'd go, of course, and face whatever came along as best he could. He just wanted to delay it a bit more. "How you holding up, George?"

"I'm okay," George said, raising an eyebrow.

"No, seriously," Kurt protested. "Everyone's all worried about me, but I'm still alive."

"Oh, that," George said, shaking his head. "Yeah. For some reason I can't get too worked-up about it. Maybe I got too used to the idea of dying in Afghanistan, maybe it's some defense programmed into soul bodies to keep people from freaking out all the time. Dunno. My parents were mighty pissed I died without giving them grandchildren."

"Your parents?"

"Yeah, since you were gonna be out a while, Marie had Duke take me over to my mom and dad's place. It's not too far from here." George paused, seeing the conversational paths before him, and realizing they all led away from the reason he'd been sent to get Kurt out of bed. "Look, we need to get downstairs."

Kurt figured his delaying tactics had hit a wall and motioned to the door. "After you."

As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Kurt felt a craving for some caffeine and some calories. He gave George a pat on the shoulder. "Can you get me one of our Cokes?"

George gave him the high sign and headed off to the kitchen as Kurt followed the sound of conversation into a room of mostly unfamiliar faces. He knew Duke and Nybras, of course, Marie, and then there was Elvis... Kurt stopped. Elvis — the young, Jailhouse Rock Elvis — was teaching Junior how to play "Blue Hawaii" on a ukulele.

When Junior saw Kurt, he dropped the ukulele, hopped out of Elvis's lap, and ran to Kurt, leaping into his arms and hugging him fiercely. Kurt held him tight, fighting back tears. "I thought we lost you there for a bit, little man." Junior squeezed tighter. Nobody disturbed them as they just hugged, needing a couple of minutes for the joy of reunion and the pent up anguish of the separation to ebb to manageable levels.

When Kurt was finally able to put the boy down, or more when Junior would let Kurt put him down, Marie took Junior's hand and led him to sit with her in her chair so Kurt could give his attention to the others who had come to see him. Kurt looked around. The other people in the room were... "I'm sorry," Kurt asked. "Are you the Elvis?"

The man looked him up and down. "Actually," he said in a nasally voice, "my name is Herman Borowitz. You see they let us pick how we want to look when we get here. Oy, there are more Marilyn Monroes than you could shake a stick at."

"Really," Kurt asked incredulously.

"Of course not, son," Elvis said, slipping into his normal voice as he reached out a hand. "Elvis Presley, pleased to meet you."

Kurt shook Elvis's hand as other visitors turned it into a sort of receiving line, passing by and introducing themselves. The four other visitors included Leonardo Da Vinci, the King Arthur, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Barbara Greenstein.

As Barbara introduced herself, Kurt paused. All of the other visitors were famous. "And what are you famous for," he asked her.

"My noodle kugel," Barbara said, smiling demurely, and went back to her seat.

With everyone sitting again, all eyes were on Kurt and the silence was oppressive. He had no idea what to say, how to start, but everyone seemed to be expecting something of him. "Thank you all for coming," he said, unable to think of anything else.

George arrived with his Coke and handed it to him. Kurt stood there and sipped it, hoping someone would jump into the fray. George did.

"They're all up to speed, buddy."

"The way I see it," Arthur said from his chair, "is we all need to find God. This is the common cause that draws us together. I propose a quest..."

Eleanor rolled her eyes. "Not another quest. This is not the round table, dear."

"Yeah, man," Elvis concurred, "how are we gonna go lookin' for him anyway? I can look behind the couch, but unless there's a guy back there who says 'hey, I'm God, nice to meetcha,' I got no idea what he looks like or where to look."

"Look inside your heart," Barbara said, smiling sweetly. Kurt couldn't tell if she was being sincere or making a joke, but Elvis frowned.

"What we need," said Leonardo, staring directly at Kurt and waving a hand as he spoke, "is a miracle. A few miracles, perhaps. This is what Mr. Gray brings to the table, eh. Armed insurrection is doomed. No war machine I could design can stand up to Michael's flaming sword. We need miracles. Force is not an option."

Leonardo's repeated insistence on miracles made Kurt remember the conversation in Nowhere. He was the young padawan to Mick's Obi-Wan. He was Daniel-san to Mick's Mr. Miyagi. But last time he saw Mick, he was crucified upside down on a walkway through the Asmodeus Arena. How could he get him here? From a little acorn, a mighty oak grows, Jack's voice echoed in his mind's ear.

As the rest of the group argued, Kurt put down his Coke, then quietly found his way out of the room and out of the house into the walled garden. The garden consisted of a red brick patio surrounded by a foot-and-a-half wide border of dirt between the patio and the wall. Most of the dirt was planted with low white-flowered shrubs as ground cover with taller rose bushes spaced every few feet. The flowers perfumed the air and Kurt was tempted to go sit in one of the chairs by patio table, luxuriating in the warm sun and beautiful smell.

Kurt remembered his mission, and in a corner of the garden, he found a patch of dirt that seemed big enough. He dug a small hole with his hands and put the severed soul finger in it, shoving dirt over it and patting it down.

He watched it... nothing happened. Why wasn't something happening? He racked his brain for any clue as to how you'd make a planted bit of soul grow. In every sword and sorcery book he'd ever read, when you planted something magical into the ground, you had to invoke it, usually by moonlight. He didn't have moonlight, but he was a wordsmith-in-training on Madison Avenue. He could come up with an invocation... "Michael Barlow, I command you to rise."

Nada.

"We welcome you into the embrace of Heaven, Michael Barlow. Use this connection between its soil and your soul to find your way to us."

Nope.

"By the powers vested in me by a sick and perverse universe, I forgive you, Mick. I give you my love. I give you your freedom. Come join us in this heavenly garden."

Not really.

By now a crowd had gathered in the French doors into the garden to watch Kurt perform his latest miracle.

Kurt didn't know what else to say. "Mick," he mumbled under his breath, "stop fuckin' around down there and get your ass up here, now!"

"You need to water it," a small voice said. The crowd in the doorway parted and Junior walked out into the garden, followed by Marie who held a pitcher of water. Jack had said that a mighty oak would grow from an acorn, so it made logical sense. Kurt took the pitcher from Marie and poured some of its contents on the spot where he'd buried the pinky.

Nothing happened. Kurt felt Junior tugging at his shirt. When he looked at him, Junior beckoned him downward. Kurt knelt so he was on Junior's level and Junior leaned in. "Holy water," he whispered in Kurt's ear.

Kurt closed his eyes and put one hand over the pitcher. He'd done a half-assed blessing in Duke's office and it had worked, but he really wanted it to work this time. The problem was that the only Hebrew blessing he could remember was the blessing over the sabbath wine. It would have to be good enough. "Baruch ata Adonai, elohenu melach haolam, boray p'ree hagofen. Amen."

Kurt looked down at the pitcher and the water had turned dark. He sniffed it. It smelled like Manischewitz. He quickly poured it out on the dirt, hoping no one would notice he'd just accidentally turned water into wine. On the other hand, he thought, there was probably no better way to invoke the soul of a bartender than with an alcoholic beverage.

It only took a few seconds before a pink shoot rose from the soil. Quickly, like watching a stop-motion animation of a plant growing, more shoots rose, twining into vines, growing upward. The stalks split, becoming legs, intertwining again at the pelvis and growing into a torso, sending out small shoots from which leaves unfurled. Stalks split at the shoulders to form arms as the main stalk became a skull, the leaves fleshing out the exoskeleton of branching vines, creating a man-sized topiary. As the leaves expanded and their edges touched, they fused together, gradually creating a seamless skin. More leaves sprouted from the skin and fused to become pants and a shirt.

Over the five-or-so minutes this took, everyone watched, transfixed, including Kurt. Despite it being a miracle — his miracle — he couldn't avoid feeling like he was watching some reimagining of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and that instead of it becoming Mick, he was growing the pod-person version of himself. He stood up to peer at the face, and as he watched, he kept willing himself not to fall asleep... just in case.

But when the fusing stopped, the eyes opened, the mouth opened, and Mick gasped, falling forward. Kurt caught him and steadied him. "It's okay, Mick," he said. "Breathe. Breathe."

Mick leaned against Kurt, panting, gradually gaining control of his legs and arms. When he could stand on his own, he gently pushed off of Kurt and stood back. He stared at Kurt for a moment, then grabbed Kurt's head in his hands, kissed Kurt on the cheek, and still holding Kurt's head in his hands, an incredulous look on his face, Mick laughed. It started out light, but grew in intensity and joy. Mick let go of Kurt, leaned back, raised his arms toward the sky, and just stood there, laughing until tears ran down his face.

---

"Have a seat," Albert said, waving Alain toward a stool in his lab. "Can I get you anything? I should have some imported beer available shortly."

Alain sat, watching Albert like a hawk as he kept his other senses at peak sensitivity so he could be sure where Kolya and his boys were. "And what earned you three whole cargo containers," Alain asked, figuring he already knew the answer.

One of Kolya's men walked in with a styrofoam cooler and put it down on a low table. Albert walked over, opened it, and pulled out a bottle of vodka. "Kolya, why don't you share this with your men? I'll be safe with Mr. Beaudreaux here."

Kolya wasn't a loyal soldier, and the way he licked his lips, it seemed he hadn't had either vodka or a cold beverage in quite some time. He took the bottle and went back down the hall toward Albert's garage area, his men following behind.

"They move pretty well for blind men," Alain said.

"There are different grades of blind," Albert replied. "They're not so blind they see nothing but black, but they'd be considered blind for all legal purposes. Everything's a blur with moving blobs, but most of them have had time to adapt to it and they can still be pretty effective. Camouflage works really well, though."

Alain realized they were getting off-topic. "Back to my original question..."

Albert paused and dug in the cooler, pulling out a bottle of Canadian beer with a twist off cap. He popped the cap and took a long drag off the bottle before turning his attention back to Alain. "Someone in Pandaemonium was quite interested in making sure Kurt arrived intact. Word was put out that there'd be a big bonus for whomever found him and got him across the seventh ring safely."

"So you knew who we were when Ty brought us to you. Was he looking for us?"

"Yes and no," Albert said, settling down on a stool and taking another sip from his beer. "I knew there was a reward for getting a vampire and two mortals through this ring safely. But there's a little over 3,000 square miles of seventh ring and about 8 million souls here. Putting out lookouts would be futile. Ty brought you to me because he thought Kolya would hold you for ransom and torture you for fun."

"And where is Ty?"

"Sleeping. You know Kurt healed him before he left, right?"

"Had no idea."

Albert put his beer down on the table and stood up from his stool. "Look, I'm not your enemy and I'm not your Judas. You're obviously not here with Hell's blessing and you wouldn't come back for fun. If you're just passing through on your way back up, I've got some rock climbing gear I'll be glad to give you. If you're here for another reason, maybe I can help."

Alain crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back as fas as he could on a backless stool. "And what would be in it for you if you helped?"

"What part of he healed Ty was unclear to you? He beat that pit thing!"

Alain raised an eyebrow. "They broadcast the fight everywhere in Hell," Albert said with a dismissive wave. Albert began pacing. "They talked about the bet in the pregame show, how souls were on the line, how Kurt would get a chance to try to get through Purgatory to Heaven if you won... how he has to convince God to save your soul or he loses his. They played up how souls were on the line to boost the drama."

Albert stopped pacing, standing rooted to one spot. "If he loses, I don't think it's just a matter of Hell getting another soul. I think if Hell gets him, it's a game changer, and it's going to change things in a very bad way. I'm offering to help you because I honestly believe that if I don't, we're all going to suffer."

Alain thought for a moment. "So let's say I decide to believe you. Let's say I let you help. All your guns are going to be no use against demons. What can you do to help?"

Albert smiled and walked over to Alain. "Well, first off," he said, smiling, "did you know that your friend Kurt pisses holy water?"