City Infernal by Edward Lee Page B

too long, the Constabularies get wise to us. We wouldn’t last very long if we tried to stay in the city limits.”
    Via could read the confusion on Cassie’s face. “Believe me, it’s easier to just learn as you go. You still do want to go, don’t you? Remember, you don’t have to.”
    “I still want to go,” Cassie said testily. “I just want to know exactly where it is we’re going. Hell? Hell isn’t supposed to be a city. It’s supposed to be a sulphur pit, a lake of fire, stuff like that.”
    Xeke chuckled. “It used to be—several thousand years ago when Lucifer was cast out of Heaven. But just use your common sense. Take New York City, for example. What was New York City several thousand years ago?”
    “Woods, I guess,” Cassie said, still not getting the point. “Just ... land.”
    “Right, undeveloped land. So was Hell when Lucifer first arrived; it was just a hot plain, a wasteland.”
    Then Via put it this way: “Just as human civilization has evolved over the past three or four thousand years ... so has Hell.”
    Xeke: “And just as God’s creatures have developed here on Earth, Lucifer and his dominion have developed equally. Progress and technology don’t just happen in your world, Cassie. They happen in ours as well. That sulphur pit is now the biggest city to ever exist.”
    The information quelled Cassie’s irritation; she was growing fascinated again.
    “Just wait till you see it,” Via said and then began leading them down the hill.
    Cassie thought about that. “Wait a minute. I have seen it. From the oculus window.”
    “Um-hmm,” Via casually responded. “And I’ll bet you’ve had dreams about it too. Living in a Deadpass, and you being an Etheress, it’s inevitable.”
    She was right.
    Cassie remembered the awful dream she’d had just last night. She’d dreamed of a city raging in chaos and atrocity. And now something else confused her. They were heading down the wooded trail where she and Via had first met. This trail led down the south side of the hill, the front of Blackwell Hall behind them. “Last night, when I looked out the oculus window, I saw it. I saw the city. It was south of the house, and we’re walking south now.” She peered down the trail. Beyond her gaze, where the city should be, she only saw the expected rolling farmland and woods. “How come I’m not seeing it now?”
    Hush pulled her along by the hand, pointing. Xeke said, “Here’s the Pass. Just walk a few more steps....”
    Cassie walked out ahead of them now, her flipflops crunching over the trail’s carpet of twigs and fallen leaves. But as she progressed, she felt something strange, something that could only be described as variants of pressure and temperature. Vertical layers of hot and cold, an annoying strain in her ears. Then came a sensation like dragging her hand through dry beach sand, only the sensation encompassed her entire body, through her clothes right to her skin.
    For a moment, all she saw was utter blackness.
    Then—
    “My God,” she muttered, looking out.

(III)

    Just wait till you see it, Via had told her moments ago, just a few yards up the hill. Now, a few moments and a few yards later, Cassie stood at the foot of another world.
    She couldn’t talk, she could scarcely even think.
    All she could do was see.
    Overhead the sky churned in gradients of scarlet. An exotic, sweet-smelling heat caressed her. A sickle-shaped moon hung in the horizon: a moon that was black and whose black light impossibly lit her face. Indeed, a scrub, smoking wasteland extended from her feet over what had to be the next fifty or even a hundred miles. She could see everything, every detail in a crisp macrovision. And beyond this intricate wasteland stood the Mephistopolis.
    The scape of the city—with its buildings, skyscrapers, and towers—seemed forged against the scarlet horizon. It truly was immense. When Cassie looked to the left, the city’s face extended further than she could