During the telling of Alain's tale, George woke and quietly joined them. Kurt had no doubt that he already knew the story and had heard it many times before, but he sat, listening with as much attention as Albert or Kurt paid.

"So," Albert said, being the first one willing to speak, "how does that story end with you being here?"

"I found out Dante wasn't just creating a flight of fancy when he wrote his Divine Comedy. Turns out it is possible to get to Heaven by passing through Hell and Purgatory first. I just have to pick up that piece of soul they took from me, get through Purgatory, and make my case to stay once I get to Heaven."

"And your odds of that working are...," Albert asked, trailing off at the end.

Alain nodded grimly. "Somewhere between slim and none. But what are my chances if I do nothing? Where do I end up if I do nothing? I end up here."

"I'm not saying you're wrong," Albert countered, "but let me play Devil's advocate for a moment." He paused and made a chuckling grimace, as if he realized he'd just made a bad joke. "So you end up here. But if you fail, you end up here soon. If you stayed on Earth, you could put it off for decades, possibly centuries."

"No," Alain said, shaking his head. "You're assuming that those years on Earth, living alone and knowing she is gone forever, would be better enough to make it worth accepting the inevitable. Even if my chance of being with her again is one in a trillion, I'm willing to bet those years on it. If I lose, the heartbreak is the same either way."

"They say if you loved once, you can love again," Albert said, posing a counter argument.

"Not like this."

Kurt stood up. "'Not like this,'" he said, mocking Alain. "Oh, come on, cut the mopey emo shit. You're what, 88? This isn't 'The Princess Bride'. You're not the Dread Pirate Roberts. You're acting like a 15-year-old who thinks that their love is like no love ever before seen in the history of mankind and that no one understands it."

"I understand it," Albert said.

George raised his hand. "Me too."

"Oh, come on," Kurt said, exasperated. "Fairy tale love? We're believing in fairy tales, one true love, soulmates forever?"

Alain looked at Kurt, not with anger, but with a mixture of pity and concern. "Kurt, before you got here, didn't you believe Hell was a fairy tale?"

"Yeah but..."

"But now you know it's real. Isn't there a possibility true love is real too?"

"You're asking me to accept that true love is as real as Hell?"

"I wouldn't use those exact words... I'm not asking you to believe anything, Kurt. Just accept the possibility it's true instead of dismissing it out of hand."

Albert broke in. "'There's no use trying,' Alice said, 'one can't believe impossible things.'"

"'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen of Hearts," he continued, affecting a mock British accent. "'When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'"

Kurt, George, and Alain all looked at him, confused expressions on their faces. "Alice in Wonderland," Albert chuckled. "I consulted on the Apollo Program. When people would ask me how I could believe that men could ever step foot on the moon, I'd pull out that quote."

Albert's interruption seemed to have taken the wind out of the sails of Alain and Kurt's debate. "Look," Kurt said to Alain. "I'm sorry. It's just that my sister went through one of those 'but I loooove him' phases in high school when she was dating some total creep who treated her like crap. I just have a bug up my ass about 'true love' and I took it out on you. I didn't mean..."

During Kurt's monologue, George had walked up behind him. "Quit while you're ahead," he stage-whispered in Kurt's ear.

Kurt shut up and offered his hand to Alain. Alain shook it, and that was the end of things.

Albert rubbed his chin in consideration before seeming to make a decision. "Let me show you something."

He walked to one of the tables and motioned to George to come over. "Help me move this."

George took one end and Albert took the other, sliding it up against its neighbor. In the concrete floor, there was a sheet of metal with holes at both ends. As Albert bent down and grabbed the sheet through one of the holes, George did the same on the other end. With small grunts on both their parts, they lifted it and slid it aside, exposing a deep hole in the floor.

"It's a tunnel," Albert said, slightly out of breath. "It leads to a man-made cave in the side of the cliff wall between this ring and the 8th. In the cave there's a... well... I call it a slingshot chair."

"What's it do?" Kurt asked.

"I found out that Dante was right too. You pick up information here and there. The portal to Purgatory is somewhere in the 9th ring. The chair should be able to shoot a few men to Pandaemonium. I would have tried it already, but I wanted to get a better bead on the portal's exact location, so..."

Albert was interrupted by a loud buzzing. One of his video monitors flipped on automatically. It showed Ty, very disheveled and looking as if he had been beaten. Apparently, though souls could not bleed, they could bruise.

Albert ran over to his bench and flipped a switch as George ran toward the door. The door opened, letting Ty fall through. George grabbed him before he hit the floor and dragged him from the doorway. "Clear," George shouted. Albert flipped the switch back and the door swung shut quickly.

Before Albert could run to the boy, the buzzer sounded again. Looking at the monitor, Kurt could see a group of men in Albert's stairwell. A large, burly one seemed to be their leader and he looked up in the direction of the camera. "You know what we want, old man," a voice came over the loudspeaker, rich, Russian, and full of anger.

Albert ignored it, running over to Ty. The boy lay on the floor, his head at the knees of George, who knelt next to him. Albert kneeled at the boy's side and ran a gentle hand over his forehead. "What happened?" he asked.

"Kolya," the boy said, his breathing ragged, his words coming in individual short breaths, "found out I lied... No demon drop... Hurt me... Made me tell him about the lifers."

"Damn," Albert said, "they must have let him escape so they could follow him. He wouldn't lead them here on purpose."

"Send them out," Kolya's voice came over the speakers. "All of them."

"What does he want with us," Kurt asked.

"Ransom," Albert said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "The demons sometimes drop weapons and ammunition onto the roofs so the angrier souls can keep up the level of violence in their turf wars. Matter of finders-keepers. But if a gang can catch someone passing through and hold onto them, sometimes they can leverage a couple of direct shipments, maybe even bigger or better guns. One of the gangs that caught a black mage got themselves a rocket launcher. Pretty much leveled one of the buildings in the third district before they ran out of rockets."

"I'm giving you to the count of three, old man," the menace in Kolya's voice came through loud and clear on the speakers. "One..."

"We've got to get you out of here," Albert said. He rose, grabbing George's arm, trying to pull him off the floor. George rose to his feet and followed, Alain behind him.

Kurt hesitated. Ty had risked his life... no, that was bad thinking... he'd risked a lot of pain for them and already suffered quite a bit of it. Kurt put his hand on Ty's forehead.

"Two..."

"You're a good kid, Ty," Kurt said softly. "Get better."

"Three..."

Kurt got up and ran to the hole as the clanging sound of bullets peppering Albert's steel door rang throughout the basement.

Albert waved the three men into the hole. "The catapault is simple. Press the green button to wind it. Pull the lever to release it. Go!"

George ran to the corner in which their packs lay and dragged them all over. George and Alain quickly shrugged on their frame packs while Kurt put on his smaller backpack. "Good luck," George said to Albert before dropping into the hole.

"You're next," Alain said to Kurt.

Kurt looked at Albert. "Thank you," he said, then dropped into the hole.

The clanging of the bullets against the door stopped and was replaced by a loud thumping sound, as if they were trying to break the door down with brute force.

As Alain prepared to drop into the hole, Albert grabbed his arm. "That kid you're with... Kurt. There's something special about him."

"I haven't known him all that long," Alain said, "but yeah, he seems like a good guy."

"No," Albert said, shaking his head. "When he glows, it's not like George. He is significantly brighter. It's not normal." Albert paused. "Keep an eye out for him. I've got a feeling you're going to need him."

Alain clapped his hand on Albert's arm. "Thank you... for everything," he said, and then dropped down the hole.

Albert grabbed the metal plate and started dragging it back into place. It was slow going, until suddenly it got lighter. Albert looked up and saw Ty at the other end of the plate, helping him shift it into place.

Silently Albert and the boy got the plate settled and the table back over it, and then went back to Albert's desk to watch Kolya's men trying to break down his door.

"It'll hold, won't it?" Ty asked.

Albert nodded. He looked at Ty incredulously. The boy was whole and healthy again, only some tearing in his clothes showing the beating he'd taken. "How did you..."

"That guy," Ty said. "He put his hand on my head, and he was glowing, glowing real bright. Just about hurt my eyes. He said 'get better' and it was like... BAM! The bruises started getting smaller, the pain started getting smaller, and then all of it was gone."

Albert looked over at the metal slab under the table. Lot had sheltered two angels from an angry mob and proved himself worthy of being saved from the destruction of Sodom. He didn't know exactly what Kurt was, but suddenly a visit to Heaven didn't seem as far-fetched or as impossible as it once had.

---

Albert had apparently taken great care and great time with his tunnel. It was tall enough that none of them had to stoop and wide enough for two men to walk abreast without crowding each other. It was reinforced with metal poles or latticework every 10-20 yards and electrically lit. And it was long.

Judging by where they landed and the tunnels Ty had taken them through, Albert's place wasn't more than a couple hundred yards from the wall down from the sixth ring. And the 7th ring was at least 15 miles wide. In however many years Albert had been in Hell, he'd established his workshop, established its defenses, established an independence from the gangs that ruled the ring... It was quite an achievement. As a matter of fact, to get the materials and dig the tunnel, either Albert had recruited a lot of help, or he just happened to locate his workshop right above a tunnel someone else had dug.

There were some things about Albert that just didn't add up, but Alain wasn't planning to go back and ask about them.

The trio went down the tunnel, single file, at a slow jog. Alain and George, being non-smokers and in much better shape than Kurt in general, allowed him rest stops every mile or two or slowed the pace to a brisk walk for him. They were small favors, to be sure, but even Kurt felt a sense of urgency. The possibility of armed men behind them was, at least to Kurt, not as powerful as the possibility of the portal ahead of them. It didn't represent the way home, not directly, but it was a major step in the right direction.

There was little talking as they moved along except to communicate rests and changes of pace. Between the jogging, walking, and rest breaks, the trio made it to the end of the tunnel in around 4 hours. They ate and drank from Alain and George's provisions, leaving Kurt's supplies as "emergency" rations.

At its end, the tunnel widened into a cave mouth, about 25 feet wide by 15 feet high and 30 feet deep. Bolted into the rock of the cave floor was a contraption looking like Albert had ordered it from the same ACME company that sold Wile E. Coyote all his gizmos. At the back, there was a large box, ostensibly containing a motor that cranked two grooved wheels. Cables led from the wheels to a bench on a sliding track, and the bench was connected to the box by a very large spring.

As per Albert's instructions, there was a lever on the chair and a green button on the box. Alain pressed it and the wheels started turning, cranking the chair farther and farther back. compressing the spring until it almost quivered.

The bench was wide enough for the three of them, but just barely. Kurt headed over to sit down. "Wait," Alain said, heading over to the mouth of the cave. At its edge, he picked up some dirt clods and crushed them to dust. Kurt and George walked over, trying to figure out what he was doing. Alain took his canteen, opened it, and poured some water into the pile of dirt he'd just made.

"What are you doing," George asked.

"You boys need to fix your makeup."

---

The one thing Albert hated about these calls was the voice. Just the sound of it made him feel like things were crawling on him.

"You are sure it was them," the voice asked.

"A vampire and two mortals. They fit your description. How did you know they would come to me?"

"We did not," the voice replied. "Why do you think your competition was so interested in them as well, Mr. De Santos? We just count ourselves lucky you were so uniquely poised to guarantee their safe passage."

Albert cringed. They knew about his tunnel. On the other hand, they'd done nothing about it.

"Anyway," he said, trying to draw the conversation to a close, "they're on their way."

"Thank you, Mr. De Santos. Your assistance is most appreciated. We will deliver your shipment in a few days."

The line went to a light static hiss, indicating the party on the other end had severed the connection. Albert had never seen the demon that he'd just spoken to, only hearing its voice on a rare occasion, and he was glad of it. If the demon looked anything like it sounded, he'd probably tear his own eyes out.

He'd actually liked Alain, Kurt, and George. They seemed like nice guys. He sort of felt bad about the heads-up to Pandaemonium. On the other hand, Pandaemonium was offering three shipping containers of assorted equipment, delivered directly by armed demonic guards to prevent hijacking.

He got them through the ring safely. He earned the shipment. The heads-up was merely a courtesy. There was little that happened in Hell without the princes of Pandaemonium knowing about it.

---

The three men squeezed onto the bench, their packs on their laps, hugged tight to their stomachs with their arms through the straps.

Alain sat on the left side, next to the lever, Kurt sat in the middle. "Ready," Alain asked.

Kurt adjusted himself in his seat. He nodded. "All systems are go," George said from Kurt's right.

"Then we're off to see the wizard," Alain said and pulled the lever.