Mercury Falls (23 page)

Mercury cradled his head in his hands and moaned.

He and Izbazel sat on a series of gray boulders that littered an otherwise featureless dull brown plain. The dim light of a twilight sun was dulled further by a brown haze that hung in the sky. Occasionally, snowflake-sized chunks of debris would drift delicately to the ground. Mercury was vaguely aware that the dusty haze was all that remained of Anaheim Stadium and its occupants. The anti-bomb had torn a massive hole in the Mundane Plane, instantaneously sucking everything in range through a portal to this place—whatever this place was.

The material forms of the two angels had also been torn asunder, but their bodies had, within a few minutes, reconstituted themselves, and they had found themselves in the vacuum of space, falling toward the gloomy landscape below. Neither of them was in a condition to summon interplanar energies to break their fall, so they had taken the full brunt of the impact. Reconstitution is excruciatingly painful in itself, and to have it followed up with a fall of several hundred miles to a rocky plain just seems excessive, in any teleological framework.

They had more or less pulled themselves together—Izbazel quite literally, as he had been torn in half by a particularly unforgiving rock formation—and now were doing their best to assess their current situation.

"I don't get it," Izbazel said. "Why would Gamaliel help Karl to escape? Is he secretly working for Heaven behind my back?"

"Not Heaven," said Mercury.

"It has to be," said Izbazel. "Who else would want to stop me from killing him?"

"Not Heaven. Not Hell. Turns out I was wrong after all," Mercury said. "There is a third faction."

"Don't be naïve, Mercury. Those Heavenly seraphim aren't as pious as you make them out to be. Maybe they're pretending that Gamaliel is on his own, but I have no doubt they would intervene if they thought they could get away with it."

Mercury groaned. "
If
they thought they could get away with it. But they couldn't. They knew everybody would be watching. It wouldn't have been in their interest to intervene."

"OK, so then who?"

"Look, he's your sidekick, not mine," grumbled Mercury. "You're the one who's supposed to know what he's up to. OK, let me think this through. . .

"One possibility is that Gamaliel is acting on his own. If that's the case, though, I can't imagine what his motivation would be for tagging along with you. Nobody would put himself through that unless it was for some greater purpose."

"Listen, Mercury, I've had about enough of your—"

"Another possibility is that he really
was
on your side but had a change of heart at the last minute. But if
that
were the case, you would expect him to try to stop you from setting off the bomb and save all those people in the stadium. Why save just one person when you can save tens of thousands? Especially when the one person is Karl Grissom, Dickweed Extraordinaire.

"So let's assume that Gamaliel has some ulterior motivation, that he's been scamming you all along. That presumably means that either Gamaliel is far smarter than I thought, or. . ."

"Or what?"

"Or you are
even dumber
than I thought," said Mercury. "Wow, I need a moment to recalibrate here."

"Dammit, Mercury. If you're not going to—"

"Either way, Gamaliel could presumably have grabbed Karl right out from under your idiot nose anytime he wanted to. So he intentionally allowed your plan to proceed, right up to the denunciation. He wanted Karl to be officially denounced as the Antichrist. But he didn't want Karl dead. So the question is, who wants a live Antichrist?"

"I'm telling you, it's those Heavenly bastards. They'll do anything to—"

"Holy crap, Izzy, it's
her
!"

"Her who?"

"Lucifer's chief rival on the Mundane Plane, that's who. She double-crossed the king of double-crossers."

"You mean. . .?"

"Tiamat. That conniving bitch. She's going to kidnap Karl and use him to blackmail Lucifer!"

"Blackmail Lucifer. . ." repeated Izbazel, trying to make the words mean something.

"Man, you really need to get a job as a middle school librarian or something," said Mercury. "You're really not cut out for diabolical scheming. Lucifer's got a horde of demons hanging out on the Floor, just waiting for his signal so they can wreak havoc on the Mundane Plane. But before he can give them the go-ahead, he's got to withdraw from the Apocalypse Accord. . ."

"Well I know
that
part. . ."

"All Lucifer is waiting for is confirmation from you that Karl is dead. Presumably the plan was for you to send a message over Angel Band as soon as you had reconstituted. But now you don't know what to do because you can't be sure Karl is dead. In fact, assuming that Gamaliel knows about Tiamat's old hiding place under the stadium—"

"Her what?"

"Her secret lair. Sorry, I assumed you knew. I guess Lucifer doesn't tell you much. You know that Tiamat and Lucifer are enemies, right?"

"I thought that Tiamat worked for Lucifer."

"Technically, yes. But she's never been a true believer. You remember her little coup attempt in the first century AD? When she tried to seize power from him on the Mundane Plane?"

Izbazel's brow furrowed. "I thought they made up."

Mercury sighed. "Again, for a diabolical schemer, you're not very good with the subtle nuances of intrigue. I should get you some flash cards or something. Lucifer and Tiamat didn't 'make up.' Yes, technically Tiamat works for Lucifer. But she's more like a slave than an employee. They hate each other. And I mean
hate
. He's had her doing his grunt work down there for the past two thousand years. Spreading plague, burning witches, breaking up Van Halen. . .there's no telling what he's got her working on now."

"So what's this about some kind of hideout under Anaheim Stadium?"

"Lucifer won't let her leave the Mundane Plane. He's got a tracer on her, so he can check up on her anytime he wants. If she removes the tracer, he gets alerted. But it doesn't work perfectly, particularly underground. If she gets more than fifty feet or so underground, there's enough interference that it becomes difficult for Lucifer to pinpoint her location. So she got it in her head to create a secret network of tunnels under Los Angeles, starting under Anaheim Stadium. She and her minions were plotting another rebellion against him. She got pretty far before he figured it out and closed her hideout."

"How do you know so much about Tiamat?"

Mercury shrugged. "I still know some people in her organization. I thought this stuff was pretty much common knowledge at this point. Hell, even the Charlie Nyx books have a reference to those tunnels. Somebody at the publishing company is obviously in touch with Lucifer. It must drive Tiamat crazy to know that every fourteen-year-old in the country knows about her secret hideout."

"You think Gamaliel helped Karl and Christine escape through these tunnels?"

"It's a reasonable assumption. If Gamaliel really is working for Tiamat, he must have known about them. And if he got them down there in time, there's a pretty good chance Karl is alive."

Izbazel did not look happy to hear this.

"So," Mercury observed, "now you're sitting here hoping that I'll tell you what to do next. Do you lie and tell Lucifer that you saw Karl die—risking the chance that Karl will reappear at some point—or do you tell him that you screwed up and bear the price for being a scheming dumbass who is completely out of his league?"

"That implosion must have taken out some of the tunnels," said Izbazel hopefully. "I really don't think it's very likely that Karl survived. In any case, I'm sure Lucifer will take into account. . ."

"Oh yes, Lucifer is a very understanding chap, as I recall. Maybe you'll get some kind of runner-up medal for getting
really close
to killing the Antichrist. The answer, in case you're wondering, is that you tell him the truth."

"Tell him that Karl might be alive? That's suicide!"

"Well, you can't lie because I can guarantee you that if Karl is alive, Lucifer is going to find out about it."

"How?"

"She's going to tell him," Mercury said. "Tiamat. That's the whole point of this double-cross. She's going to use Karl as leverage, threatening to expose Lucifer's plan. This is her way back to power."

"So what do I do?"

"You tell Lucifer the truth."

"He'll crucify me."

"Not if he thinks you're his only chance to get Karl back."

"But I have no idea where Karl even is!"

"That's OK," said Mercury. "I do. Call your boss."

Mundane scientists have never found any evidence of the existence of interplanar energy channels. Furthermore, if they
were
ever to come across evidence of the existence of such channels, the scientists would, of course, insist that the channels are simply another natural phenomenon that has not yet been fully explained. They would patiently explain that the existing model of the Universe simply needed to be updated with this new information and that the rules governing the channels would eventually be discovered.

They would be wrong. There are no rules governing the interplanar energy channels.

This can't be proven, of course, because to insist that a phenomenon follows no rules is to define a rule for that phenomenon. In other words, proving that a phenomenon follows no rules is to prove that it does follow a rule, thereby disproving the statement that it follows no rules. The interplanar energy channels seem to obey only one rule—and that one only intermittently. The rule is known as Balderhaz's Tendency, after the angel who discovered it. Balderhaz, the rare angel with an interest in scientific pursuits, posited that the interplanar energy channels act in a way to deliberately avoid scientific analysis.

This was, after all, the only way to explain the fact that Mundane science has never found any evidence to support the belief in the existence of the channels, despite the fact that they clearly do exist. Balderhaz theorized that the channels essentially hide from scientists. Balderhaz's Tendency can also be phrased thus: "The more likely a miracle is to be subjected to scientific analysis, the less likely it is that the miracle will occur in the first place."

Balderhaz tried to prove this rule—which he had originally planned to call Balderhaz's Law—by observing scientists trying to replicate miraculous phenomena on the Mundane Plane, but he fell victim to his own hypothesis. The channels, while under observation, refused to consistently follow the rule of following no rules. In addition to the discovery of Balderhaz's Tendency, this chain of events had two other notable consequences:

First, Balderhaz gave up science to become a well-respected tennis instructor.

Second, a phenomenon known as the Mundanity Enhancement Field was discovered.

Balderhaz, before abandoning his research, discovered that by assembling certain Mundane minerals into a cubical form, one could create a mysterious field that would interfere with interplanar energy channels on the Mundane Plane within a limited area. The Balderhaz Cube, as it was called, essentially brought into being a "no miracles zone." In violation of the rule that the interplanar energy channels refuse to follow any rules, the channels warp themselves around the field created by the Cube. In essence, the Cube ensures that the physical laws governing the Mundane Plane act predictably, without any extraplanar interference. For this reason, the affected area is known as a Mundanity Enhancement Field.
¹⁰

Now, angels are notorious for relying on their ability to manipulate interplanar energy to bend reality to their respective wills—particularly on the Mundane Plane, where the laws of physics are unusually restrictive. Occasions do arise, however, when it is useful to level the playing field by preventing unwanted extraplanar interference. One such occasion would be if there happened to be a renegade demon who was attempting to subvert the plans of both Heaven and Hell so that she could become the unquestioned despot of the Mundane Plane.

It was due to the scheming of just such a demon that Christine and Karl found themselves inside a one-hundred-yard diameter sphere where miracles were even less likely to occur than usual, just when a miracle might have come in handy.

Gamaliel had driven the Explorer a good hour east of Anaheim, well into the San Bernardino National Forest. He had navigated down increasingly narrow and primitive roads until finally they followed only the faintest hint of tire tracks through the hilly woods. Eventually they reached a chained gate bearing a forbidding sign that read "PERMITTED USE ONLY." Gamaliel got out and unlocked the padlock.

Christine thought about making a run for it, mainly because she thought that thinking about making a run for it was the thing to do under the circumstances. The truth was, she had nowhere to go and no hope of getting there. Having some idea what cherubim were capable of, she knew better than to try to get away from Gamaliel.

Gamaliel got back in the Explorer and drove it another half mile to a small clearing. In the middle of the clearing was an oddly well-kept cottage. Guards wearing camouflage gear and bearing assault rifles kept watch outside.

At Gamaliel's command, Christine and Karl got out of the Explorer and walked to the door of the cottage, with Gamaliel following closely behind. The guards nodded respectfully as he passed.

Gamaliel directed them toward the main room of the cottage, where a bookish but not unattractive middle-aged woman sat in a leather easy chair. Across from her was a matching leather couch, and in between was a rustic pine coffee table, on which lay a stack of several hardcover Charlie Nyx books. What caught Christine's attention, though, was something that resembled a cube-shaped bowling ball sitting on the mantle above the stone fireplace. It was featureless and black, and it seemed to Christine to have been formed of some sort of otherworldly material. It was too large and plain to be any kind of decoration. It presumably had some sort of practical purpose, but what?

The woman smiled at them.

"I suppose I'll be released from that damned contract
now
," she said.

Christine was dumbfounded. "What. . .where. . .who. . .?"

"Please, have a seat," the woman said. "I'm Katie Midford. This is my little mountain retreat. Nice, huh? My home in Beverly Hills is much more spacious, but as you know, it's not a great time to be in Los Angeles."

Not feeling like they had much of a choice, Christine and Karl sat on the couch opposite her. Looking out the window, all Christine could see were massive redwoods—and several armed guards patrolling the perimeter of the cottage.

"You're
the
Katie Midford?" said Karl.

"Indeed," said Katie.

"The author of the Charlie Nyx books?" Christine said.

"I'm afraid so," said Katie. "I'm sorry they aren't very good. Trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator, you know. And those god-awful movies, with the warlocks and the trolls. . ."

Any number of questions screamed to be let out of Christine's head. She opened her mouth and one of them spilled out at random. "You don't like your own books?" Christine asked.

Katie shrugged. "A necessary evil," she said. "Would you care for some tea?"

Neither of them particularly wanted tea.

"In any case, it's done now. No more Charlie Nyx books."

"But the series. . ." gasped Karl. "It's not finished!"

"No," said Katie. "And it won't be. For one thing, the setting for the books is now just a gaping hole in the ground. And for another, when Lucifer finds out that the Antichrist is alive and well and sequestered in my mountain getaway, he'll release me from my contract."

"So that's what all this was about?" Christine said, flabbergasted. "You scheming to get out of a book contract?"

"Don't judge me," said Katie. "You haven't seen the contract. And if it weren't for me sending Gamaliel to rescue you, you two would be in a million pieces."

"This makes no sense at all," said Christine. "You sent Gamaliel to rescue us from Izbazel's anti-bomb at the stadium?"

"I did."

"So that you can get out of a book contract?"

"That's oversimplifying things a bit, but yes."

"And how is it that a waitress from Los Angeles has the power to command demons?"

"Ah," said Katie. "That's going to take some explaining. Are you sure you don't want some tea?"

"I'll take a Dr Pepper," said Karl.

"I have Mr. Pibb," said Katie.

"Nah," said Karl. "I've got a reputation and stuff. I don't think the Antichrist would drink Mr. Pibb."

Katie nodded understandingly. "It's good that you're finally embracing your identity," she said. "Now, where to start. . .

"First off, my real name is Tiamat. I'm a demon—a fallen angel, if you prefer. I rebelled against Heaven shortly after Lucifer did, several thousand years back. The Almighty took issue with the size of the ziggurats I was building. Anyway, Lucifer was convinced that the best way to keep Heaven at bay was to plague the Hebrews at every opportunity. They were supposedly God's chosen people, so he reasoned that if he could keep them down, Heaven's influence on Earth would be minimized. After a while, they started calling him 'the adversary,' or Satan. Frankly, I thought he was wasting his time. I didn't think Abraham's little flock was ever going to amount to anything, so I focused on the Babylonians. I did my best to build Babylon into a sophisticated modern society—as well as a powerful military entity, of course. Hell, we nearly wiped out the Hebrews entirely. If I hadn't gotten cocky and kept them as slaves rather than finishing them off like I should have. . .

"Anyway, I eventually lost my grip on the Hebrews, and things went downhill from there. Meanwhile, Lucifer was growing ever more powerful, and I ended up working for him. The situation for the Hebrews looked hopeless. After a while only two of the twelve tribes were left, stubbornly resisting Roman rule. Prophets hardly ever appeared anymore, and when they did, they'd be executed pretty quickly. Lucifer was especially proud of how he handled John the Baptist. Then this Jesus of Nazareth appeared, and Lucifer decided to make a public display of his execution, to let the Hebrews know once and for all who was in charge. Well, as you know,
that
went horribly wrong.

"After that debacle, there was a big shakeup of the bureaucracy in Hell. I seized what I thought was my opportunity to take control of all the Fallen, but Lucifer was more stubborn and resourceful than I gave him credit for. He assembled a coalition of demons against me, and I was defeated. Lucifer cast me down to the Mundane Plane, where he's had me doing petty errands for him ever since. So when Lucifer needed someone to assume the identity of Katie Midford, Los Angeles waitress turned best-selling author, he came to me. Of course, he didn't tell me that I'd have to actually work as a waitress for twelve years before he even put the Charlie Nyx part of the plan into motion. And even after the first book was published, he made me wait tables for three more years, just out of spite, the insolent bastard."

Christine's head was reeling. Karl sat in confused silence.

"So," Christine said, "Lucifer put you up to writing a series of children's books?"

"Young adult fantasy," corrected Katie.

"For what purpose?"

"Well, to promote Satanism, for one thing," said Katie. "Although its effectiveness in that regard has been limited. But that was just one motivation behind the Charlie Nyx books. Lucifer also needed a distraction from what was going on in the Middle East. Or, should I say, a distraction from the distraction, because the Olive Branch War was a feint as well. He wanted people thinking that the Olive Branch War was the beginning of the Apocalypse, and to do that, he had to frame it as part of a larger context. A skirmish in the Middle East is hardly news anymore, but Lucifer saw his opportunity with that Olive Branch incident. He used his agents to manipulate the news media into imparting that little scuffle with symbolic significance. And to cement the illusion, we played our ace in the hole. First, you get the religious folks worked up about the relatively minor threat posed by Charlie Nyx, and then, while you have their attention, you introduce Karl Grissom, the Antichrist."

Karl smiled, evidently pleased with himself.

Christine said, "So you get the fundamentalists up in arms about Armageddon in the Middle East and the Antichrist appearing in California. . ."

"Not just the fundamentalists. Anyone who spends their time looking for such signs and wonders. That includes most of the angelic bureaucracy. The idea was to convince everyone that things were going according to plan, like clockwork. So the Council releases the Four Attache Cases, and things predictably escalate."

Christine interjected, "And then Lucifer knocks off Karl, blames it on Michael, and withdraws from the Accord. While Heaven is still trying to get its boots on, he attacks without warning from his portal in Los Angeles. Humanity is basically wiped out." Christine thought for a moment. "But why?"

"Why? Why does Lucifer want to destroy humanity? Beats me. He's a sore loser, I guess. You'd have to ask him."

"So you don't want to wipe out humanity?"

"Not at all," said Katie. "I want to subjugate humanity with an iron fist."

"Ah," said Christine. "That's actually not, from my point of view, a huge improvement."

Katie shrugged. "Your race was destined to exist at the whims of higher beings. The amount of attention that Heaven lavishes on you is absurd. Eventually they will realize that you're not worth the trouble. And then this whole plane will be mine."

"And how does Harry figure into this?"

"Harry is plugged into Angel Band. At least to some degree. Most prophets are. That's where he's been getting his information. He is able to receive fragments of communications between angels. His rather fatalistic outlook seems to have arisen from his contact with this Eddie Pratt, a rather morose cherub." She added, "All sentient beings have some sensitivity to Angel Band, of course. That's how demonic corruption works. Lucifer has a whole plane dedicated to demons planting ideas in the minds of other sentient beings."

"I've been there," said Christine. "Not a pleasant place."

"I would think not," said Katie. "We took advantage of this same channel of communication to deliver certain information to Harry. Specifically, we used Eddie to convince him that Karl is the Antichrist and that it was Harry's destiny to denounce him. The risk with Lucifer's plan was that people would see Karl and realize that he couldn't possibly be the actual Antichrist. Because, you know. . ."