A few miles farther into their walk, George was at point, Junior was in the middle, and Kurt silently pulled up the rear. George couldn't imagine the burden that Kurt carried as they passed along the rows of body bags, each enclosed soul a silent accusation. He shouldn't have pressed Kurt to do something. The kid had been taking everything in stride only because he'd somehow minimized it, only because he had been able in all the confusion and activity to ignore it and concentrate on the task at hand.

George felt guilty. When he'd asked Kurt to do something for all those souls, he'd forced Kurt to confront it all at once, to let everything come up from whatever pit he'd held it in. He hoped the kid would get over it soon. Whether Kurt was still the leader of this expedition was in doubt, but whether he was necessary to it was clear.

One hand running along the railing, George looked over the edge of the mezzanine at the pool below. Something seemed different. It looked like they were farther above it than they'd been a mile back. "Hold up," he said, stopping, Kurt and Junior stopping behind him. Slipping off his backpack, he opened the main pocket and pulled out one of Kurt's ballpoint pens. It was a cheap plastic thing, but when you took off the cap it was a round cylinder that would roll fairly well. Putting it on the floor, he sent it rolling back the way they'd come.

Normally it would have rolled a few feet and stopped, but it went farther, rolling nearly twenty feet before the small bumps from the caulked gaps between the tiles bounced it enough out of alignment to turn it and cause it to stop. They were on a slope. Very gradually, almost imperceptibly, the mezzanine was rising. They'd only gone up about twenty feet over the last two miles which would make the slope less than one percent, but they were going up.

He saw Kurt staring at the pen, then Kurt leaned over the railing. "Well, shit," Kurt said quietly, not so much in amazement as in mere observation. George smiled, waiting to be complimented on his discovery, but Kurt took Junior's hand and walked forward, leaving George standing behind them, wearing a fading stupid grin.

---

Twisting as he fell, Nybras saw a pool a few hundred feet below him. Some small boat, or one that looked small from his height, had stopped at its edge and things were rising from it.

The fall wasn't like the slow drop in the rings. This place had a gravity similar to the world's and Nybras was dropping quickly, gaining speed as he did. It would hurt when he hit, and he looked for something to grab onto.

He was in the center of the giant ring. He'd never be able to swoop far enough to the sides to grab onto one of the ledges. He was in a near panic, but he retained enough lucidity to notice that many of the things that were rising up from below were ceasing their ascents, getting caught by sudden winds that blew them to the sides.

Nybras looked for one that was getting close and tried to angle his fall toward it. Growing closer at an increasing velocity, he saw now that the thing was a soul. Grabbing the corners of his coat, he tried to increase his wind resistance, allowing him a little more rudder control, swooping toward the soul. As he grew near, the soul stopped in its ascent and began to shudder. Nybras closed his coat and tried to go perpendicular, falling as fast as he could. He wasn't directly above the soul, but that became an advantage as it began flying off to the side, right into his path. He hoped that his timing and position were correct; that hope being confirmed within hundredths of a second as the soul smacked into him, its force carrying both it and Nybras over the railing and into a jarring impact against the level's wall.

A demon could not be knocked unconscious, but as Nybras slumped against the wall, every inch of his flesh aching from the hit, he closed his eyes and tried to fake it.

---

Kurt walked almost unconsciously, like driving on autopilot, but rather than letting his thoughts consume his attention, he had let himself go blank.

Kurt stumbled. He'd put his foot out to step, but suddenly the ground wasn't beneath it. He would have toppled forward if George hadn't grabbed his shirt and pulled him back. Kurt shook his head, re-orienting himself on the situation around him. Ahead of him sat a wide gap, stretching on perhaps a mile or more, and below him there were steps leading about twenty feet down into it.

The floor of the gap was hidden mainly by tree tops; short, stunted trees, though mercifully green in the few places they had leaves. They were half-barren, each looking sickly and frail, the visible branches and trunks thin and grey. And among the trees there were flashes of movement.

George put the pistol in his belt and checked the straps on his pack before unslinging the Uzi. Kurt watched him preparing for battle or whatever oddness lay ahead. "George," he said quietly. George didn't respond. "George," he said with more volume. George turned his head and looked up at Kurt. "I'm sorry," Kurt said.

George nodded solemnly. "Why don't we take a break first," Kurt suggested. "Eat, get some rest, then we can head down." George agreed with another nod.

They'd been supplied with some imported provisions before leaving Hell, but nothing better than MRE's, sodas, water, candy bars, and trail mix. Kurt and George each hungrily consumed a pack of almost-food and washed it down with a Coke while Junior nibbled quietly on a Snickers. The silence was amazing.

Kurt sat, licking the last bits of gravy off a finger he'd stuck inside the pack, trying to figure out some method of breaking the silence without it feeling awkward.

A noise caught his ear. Off against the wall, now thankfully bare of body bags, Junior sat with his knees up, picking at the candy bar with little bites, savoring each one, and he was humming. Kurt concentrated on the sound coming from the boy, trying to pick out the tune.

"Da, da-da, da-da, da-da..." It came slowly, but it was familiar. Kurt wrapped his mind around it, trying to put words to the notes. There was a syllable for each one.

"Up above the world so high," the words came into Kurt's mind. "Like a diamond in the sky." Kurt began humming quietly as well.

When the song ended, Junior didn't start again. Instead he looked at George. Kurt followed his gaze and saw George looking at Junior. "Row, row, row your boat," George began in a low voice, still looking at Junior, "gently down the stream." George's voice picked up some volume. "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream."

George stopped and turned his head as Junior's gaze oriented on Kurt. Kurt immediately felt the spotlight of their gazes and racked his mind for a song. "I'm a little teapot, short and stout," he sang tentatively, raising one arm while bending the other and placing his hand on his hip. "Here is my handle. Here is my spout."

He looked expectantly at the two, first Junior, then George. As his eyes met George's, the man's face began to contort, then George broke into laughter. Kurt felt puzzled as George snickered, but then realized how he looked, imitating the teapot, and began to laugh too. "When I'm hot and ready, hear me shout," Kurt tried to sing through his laughter. "Tip me over and pour me out."

By the time he was done, George was on his side, laughing. Kurt looked over to Junior to see what his reaction was, but the boy only smiled at him and went back to his candy bar and humming.

---

Nybras recalled the first time he had fallen.

The banners lay strewn among the wounded. Michael and his armies, victorious, had bound the rebels hand-and-foot and hung them on spits, like game. For every rebel, two angels shouldered the spit and carried the defeated to the edge of a giant portal, opened on the highest mountaintop in the ranges surrounding the blessed valley that was Heaven.

Like a volcano, green magma glowing still just beneath the edge, each spit was staked into the ground, the bindings cut. The thrones of Satan, Beelzebub, and Belial had been torn from the walls of the celestial palace and mounted on pyres of stones where Michael, Gabriel, and Ariel sat in them and cast down judgement.

Raphael stood defense for each rebel, singing the praises of his past, singing his glory and his right to salvation. But each time the judgement came down. "Guilty," said three times from three mouths. And even though they could not die, Azrael placed his hand against their heads, letting them each know the touch of Death before they were pushed through.

Nybras had felt the cold of that touch suffuse his body, saw a tear fall from Raphael's eye, as he toppled backwards into the abyss.

It hadn't been evil that warped their bodies. It had been rage... anguish. Their ears grew large and pointed listening for the forgiveness that would never come. The anger at its denial thickened and gnarled their skins. The gnashing of teeth sharpened them. The weeping in contrition turned their eyes red. And even Satan had grown ugly. He had been loved best among all angels and thus he missed that love more than any other. All the denizens of Hell, they hated God for this abandonment. And this was the true source of Hell's evil — not amorality, not pride, not greed — but the most deep-seated and dutifully harbored spite, because God no longer loved them.

Nybras' eyes shot open, his entire body shuddering from the memories. For a moment he didn't remember where he was, but a look around quickly reminded him. The two mortals and the portion of Beaudreaux's soul were coming and he had to prepare their reception.