Jack had his reasons for going to Devil's Point, but the drive with Rhea would have been enough. The four-hour trip from the Triangle to Pender County was passing all too quickly. He had all the windows down as the faithful Camry negotiated the back roads towards the coast. It was a beautiful day, and the stereo was blaring through a special tape of traveling music he'd put together. Rhea had seemed a bit uncertain at first, but now she chatted easily as they made happy talk about nothing in particular. He told a few more stories from his childhood and she laughed appreciatively. He'd given up asking about her past. From the number of times she'd slid away from the subject, and the way she had never mentioned her parents in any context, he'd concluded that maybe she had been an abused child.
I'd like a few minutes alone with anyone who laid a finger on her. It was an ugly thought, and he pushed it aside with the story of how his father had climbed the big pine tree to string an antenna for Jack's first crystal radio, and had gotten stuck.
"So after the hook and ladder were dispatched," he said, "it got out on the police band somehow that he was going to jump. A news crew showed up then. He'd had the antenna wire fastened through his belt loop so he wouldn't have to hold it while he climbed. When the big branch broke it got caught in the wire, and he had to shuck his pants to keep from going with it. So he's up here in this tree in his underwear, on live TV with firemen scurrying around below wrecking my mother's garden, and newsmen yelling up questions about his motive. Then my grandmother shows up, hysterical, to talk him out of jumping. Then Mom and the rest of us get home from the mall and can't park closer than a block from home . . ." Jack stopped for a moment as he passed a huge Cadillac land yacht going about forty. Naturally a man with a hat was driving.
"So what happened?" Rhea prompted.
Jack shrugged. "Oh, not much," he said. "The firemen put up a ladder and Dad climbed down. Then he went over to the news crew and told them that if they weren't off his property in one minute, he would shoot them for trespassing, and that if they couldn't believe that from a suicidal man in his underwear, who could they believe it from? He took Grandma inside and got her quieted down, hugged Mom really hard, then looked at me and told me something I've never forgotten.
" 'Son,' he said, 'for two dollars I can buy you a better radio than you'll ever build. And next time you get the two bucks!' Then he hugged me too."
"He sounds like a neat man," Rhea said.
"He is," Jack agreed. "Just don't ever call him Pinetop Halloran."
Traffic picked up as they neared Devil's Point. As he'd told Rhea, the number of people allowed in each day was carefully regulated, but even the Unchained couldn't build a hundred square miles of amusement park and not have urban sprawl blight the surrounding area. Still, the roads had been carefully reworked to handle the flow, and the signs marking the way to the entrances were well laid out. Jack had no trouble getting past the inevitable religious protesters and finding a place in the vast parking lot. He grabbed the picnic bags from the trunk, hesitated a moment, then added a small Super-Soaker to one of them. This should be the perfect place to try it. If something went wrong again, at least he wouldn't have the fallout of his mistake wreaking havoc in his office. They walked over to the tramway and caught a tram to the main gate. Or almost to the main gate—there was a state police checkpoint in front of it.
"I hadn't heard about this," Jack told Rhea.
"From what I've heard, it makes sense," she said.
They got in the long line threading past the checkpoint. A bored-looking trooper sitting at a folding table looked up and handed each of them a sheet of paper. "Read and sign this," she told them.
Jack looked. The sheet read:
Due to the unusual circumstances surrounding the area known as Devil's Point, it has proven impossible for any Federal, State or local authority to enforce its laws within the area, to provide any emergency medical services to the area, or to guarantee the safety of people within the area in any way.
Although this notice does not constitute any waiver of sovereignty, and no passport is required, your entry into the Devil's Point area is essentially equivalent to entering a foreign country, and your signature absolves all State, Federal and local government and private entities from any liability that may result from your entry into the area, and forswears any legal action that you or your heirs may bring against those entities for events that transpire while you are inside.
"Boy," Jack said, "you're not pulling any punches are you?"
The trooper shrugged. "No one's making you go in," she said.
"Have you been in?"
"Yeah," she admitted. "I'm not allowed to give you my opinion while I'm on duty, though."
"Well, we know at least one person came out, then," Rhea said. She hesitated a moment, then signed her sheet with a flourish.
Actually, it was more like tens of thousands of people, Jack reflected as he signed his. Going into Devil's Point appeared to be much safer than driving a car. There were rumors on the Internet about a section called Desire's Point, but everything else was as clean and wholesome as Disney World, or as wholesome as a Disney World with fetish and sex-change shops anyway. The line moved on and he and Rhea passed through the main gate.
Jack didn't know what he had expected, exactly; he'd seen pictures, but nothing really prepared him for the impact. The people in front of him were even less prepared—he almost ran into them as they stopped dead in their tracks. The park laid out under the crystal sky was exquisite. The walkways and buildings were as scrupulously clean as Disney World, but there was no similar feeling of a jumble of styles—everything seemed to have been conceived as a single organic whole, and this despite the fact that a fourteen-story castle towered over clusters of modern buildings and a monorail circled silently beyond. He saw several artists set up off to the side, sketching and painting intently. Devil's Point was a masterwork of architecture and landscaping that put to rest the old claim about Hell's lack of creativity—perhaps it was meant to.
Apparently that first look wasn't having quite the same effect on Rhea that it had on him. She looked around quickly, almost furtively, then grabbed his arm. "Come on, Jack," she said, "it's lunchtime." She pulled one of the courtesy maps from the stand by the front gate, and guided Jack away from the crowd that was still milling about, deciding where to go first.
The monorail track rode elegantly between cleanly sculpted support pillars, some of which were also boarding stations. They took an elevator to the top of the closest station, and waited until one of the small fleet of trains glided to a silent stop. The doors on the far side slid open and a little cluster of people debarked—the train rising slightly as the load dropped.
"Is that maglev?" Jack asked, intrigued. "There are a lot of people still trying to make that work."
"All of whom have now ridden on this train several times, I'm sure," Rhea observed as the doors on their side opened and they stepped inside. "Probably with as much sensing equipment as they could carry."
He could barely feel the acceleration as the train eased away from the station. "Impressive," he admitted, "but we've got it beat."
Rhea squeezed his arm. "Believe it!" she said.
The train traveled counterclockwise, out over an impossibly wide beach strewn with sparkling white sand. The Atlantic lapped at the edge. Further back, he could see water slides, wave pools and a lagoon with miniature tall ships tacking back and forth. One ocean-side section was set off with high dunes and palmetto trees.
"What's that?" he asked, pointing. Rhea followed his glance and squinted slightly.
"Nude beach," she reported. "Maybe I can do some comparison shopping later, hmm?"
Jack felt himself flush. He'd been working out at the Y a little lately, when he could fit it in with everything else, but he didn't think he was quite ready for prime time. He sucked in his stomach and sat up straighter. "Sure," he said, "but remember—you'll never go wrong with a name brand."
"You've cornered that market," Rhea reassured him. She pointed out the other side of the train. "Oh, look at that!"
That was a huge structure that seemed to be three long wings connected by a single cross-corridor. "It looks like the five-speed shift diagram for my Camry," Jack observed. "What is it?"
Rhea consulted her map. "It's the Library of Lost Books," she said and showed him the schematic. "Everything from Neolithic cave paintings in first gear to lost classics of the 1980s in fifth."
"That leaves reverse," Jack said. "What's there?"
Rhea looked at her map. "It doesn't say. Something appropriate, I hope. Great lost texts of post-modern deconstructionism, perhaps."
The monorail glided to a stop over a verdant swath of rolling hills set with picture-postcard shade trees, brooks and ponds. "Picnic park," Rhea said. "All ashore that's going ashore."
Considering that the whole trip was his plan, Rhea seemed to be finding her way around a lot better than he was, Jack reflected as they rode the elevator down.
Lunch was perfect. They sat under an ancient live oak on the bank of a crystal brook. Spanish moss stirred lazily in the hint of breeze, and cloud shadows crisscrossed the grassy expanse of the park, accenting the sunshine like black pearls among the white. Although Jack knew they couldn't really be alone, no other picnickers were visible. Apparently in Devil's Point you only had as much company as you wanted. He spread out the heavy paper picnic cloth and set out the food.
"Are those real tomatoes?" Rhea asked as he started loading a sandwich bun.
"Almost," he replied. "They didn't come from anyone's back yard, but at least they came from the farmer's market, not the grocery store." She took several slices. "And this," Jack said, "is real Vidalia onion." He put a thick, sweet slice on top of the tomatoes, then piled on three different types of cheese and some pepperoni. Perfect. Rhea built sandwiches to a less heroic scale, but hers looked as eminently edible as she; she leaned back against the tree trunk with her sandals kicked off and stray flashes of sun sparkling from her hair as the breeze opened momentary pathways through the leaves above, and he wished he knew just how alone they were.
Rhea divined his thoughts. She grinned widely and made a teasing erotic act out of eating, but shook her head at his raised eyebrows, "Not here," she said, "this park is all ages. I've looked on the map and found another park for . . . this evening."
Just as they finished eating, an Irish setter ran up holding a Frisbee in its mouth and looked at them expectantly.
"I think," Rhea said, "we've just been issued a dog."
It was, Jack had to admit, the perfect way to end a picnic. The dog was very friendly in that bumbling, dumb, enthusiastic Irish setter kind of way, and an expert jumper. He made catches that Jack could hardly credit, completely leaping the stream once while making an airborne grab. Finally he looked at Jack and Rhea, wagged one last time, took his Frisbee and left.
Jack and Rhea looked at each other. "Time to go," Jack said.
Jack left everything but one small bag in the recycle bins at the entrance to the park.
"What next?" Rhea asked as they left.
"Well, I'd like to see the Library of Lost Books. I hear it's got the Greek scholars in a tizzy. The complete texts of the Alexandrian Library, Homer's Triumph, and lots of new Aristophanes. And most of that sucks. I'm interested in smaller stuff though."
Rhea consulted her map. "Well," she said, "I think we can just walk there. We don't need the train."
There were no crowds by the library. In fact, like Picnic Park, there didn't seem to be anyone else around. It was a good trick—Jack knew the Library of Lost Books got thousands of people a day. A tall, thin devil met them as they stepped through the huge front doors. He was the first of the Unchained Jack had seen since coming through the front gate. The devil looked out over his half-frame glasses at Jack, and Jack could almost feel the appraisal and dismissal. His look at Rhea, though, was anything but dismissive. There was a speculative gleam in his eye that Jack didn't like. Rhea was not available. Jack put his arm around her.
The devil smirked knowingly. "Welcome," he said, "to the Library of Lost Books. I am Lucien, your guide to the stacks. I sense that you, sir, are a man of many interests, and that you, madam . . . well, hmmm, perhaps your interests are less easily discerned, but nonetheless broad, I'm sure. How may I assist you?"
Rhea looked at Jack and shrugged. Was she a bit pale? She hadn't seemed at all squeamish about the gremlins. Well, devils were considerably more unnerving than little, squeaking gremlins. He tightened his arm around her reassuringly. At any rate, their destination was up to him.
There was very little that didn't interest him at least somewhat. He could have just started with the first book on the first shelf and worked his way through the stacks a book at a time . . . but he and Rhea were on a day trip, not a camping expedition. First things first. "Science fiction," he said, "from the last two hundred years."
"Very good," Lucien said and steepled his fingers in thought for a moment. "This way, please."
They had entered through the doors in what Jack still thought of as first gear. The demon lead them south to the central corridor, then east towards the last wing. He didn't offer any running commentary; in fact, he didn't look back at them at all. Jack and Rhea were left to make what guesses they could about all the statuary and exhibits they passed in the spacious hallway. "Fertility goddess?" Jack speculated about a blatantly immodest little statue perched lustily on an otherwise somber table.
"Or a prehistoric business card," Rhea responded. "Maybe the glyphs on the tummy say 'For a good time, call Basheeba, third cave on the left past the mastodon skeleton. I'll make you Homo Erectus.' "
As they left the sections of rock carvings and clay tablets, the smell of musty paper and parchment gradually became overpowering. It seemed to Jack that they had been walking much further than was possible given what he had seen of the building from the outside. "TARDIS," he murmured to Rhea.
"What?"
"Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It's bigger on the inside than the outside." He considered. "Like my mother's pocketbook."
Finally Lucien brought them to the end of the hall, and ushered them north into the fifth gear area. They passed countless rows of shelves arrayed with every type of book, from leather-bound Victorian volumes to CD-ROMs and chips. Their guide opened the door to a side room and waved them ahead. "We have arrived," he said.
Jack looked around. The room was divided into two parts by a center aisle. Across the aisle to the left, poorly lighted shelves stretched on almost as far as he could see, while to the right a compact group of well-lighted, dust-free shelves beckoned invitingly.
"What's the difference?" Rhea asked, pointing to the left.
Lucien took off his glasses and wiped them meditatively. He pointed into the dimness. "Those books are lost because they were unpublishable, unsubmitted or didn't find the right editor."
"My God," Jack said, "it's the grand, cumulative slush pile of SF!"
Rhea grabbed his arm. "Be afraid," she said. "Be very afraid."
"Indeed," Lucien agreed. "It's the largest such for any of our genres. Seemingly, of every two people who read science fiction, one of them has a book he hopes to contribute to the field."
Fascinated, Jack walked to the first shelf and picked up a dusty folder. Inside, the cover page was dated May 7, 1843, in precise early Victorian handwriting. He turned to the last page and read:
"Whereat the man said, 'Good lady, I call myself Adam. And how might I politely address myself to you?' Upon which words the woman responded, 'Good sir, I have no other name than Eve.' "
Jack shuddered and put the manuscript down. "Not a book that should be put aside lightly," he quoted, "but rather one which should be hurled with great force."
"And on the other side?" Rhea asked.
"Books by known authors," Lucien said, "or good ones. Lost due to fire, war, the post or what have you. Not nearly as big a set." He put his glasses back on and settled them firmly on his nose. The lenses magnified his distinctly demonic square pupils. "Now then," he said, "there is a bellpull in the wall by the door. Do pull it when you are done here, and I shall escort you out, but for now I must attend to other business."
"Thank you," Jack said automatically.
"No thanks are necessary," the demon said primly, and disappeared with a puff of imploding air.
"Well," Rhea said, looking around, "I guess we're on our own."
Jack was already rifling through the good stacks. "Yep," he agreed happily. "Hey!" he pulled a book and leafed through it rapidly, then turned back to the first page and started reading. Before long, he was chuckling, then laughing out loud.
Rhea moved to look over his shoulder. "What is it?" she asked.
"It's the sequel to The Witches of Karres," Jack said. "The one Schmitz lost when he moved."
Jack looked up eventually, and saw Rhea looking at him in amusement. "How long have I been reading?" he asked.
"A little over an hour," she said, "but who's counting? Was it good?"
"Great! See what the Leewit does here?" He pointed, and soon Rhea was laughing too. He put the book aside with regret: so little time. One day he, or someone, would have to come in with a scanner. "But we've got to move on."
He put the book back and yanked on the bellpull. It rang with a vast sepulchral thrummm that he could feel down to the soles of his feet.
Lucien popped back into view. "Yes?" he said. "You're done?"
They nodded. "Very good, follow me." He led them back into the main stacks. "I believe we shall exit through the east doors if that is satisfactory."
"What's on the east side?" Jack asked.
"The Village," the demon answered. "Fine lodging, dining and entertainment. And," he looked over his glasses at Jack again, "Lover's Point—a spot for the most discreet of assignations. And here we are." He opened a massive door for the two of them. The sound echoed through the cavernous spaces behind. "Good day."
"I wonder if he's the image they're trying to project," Jack said as they strolled out the doors and away from the library. The afternoon was beautiful and the sun bathed Devil's Point in a wash of light, lathering it occasionally with the shadow of a passing cloud. Ahead of them, the buildings of the Village gleamed like jewels, each one cut in a different style.
"He was awfully stuffy," Rhea said. "Maybe he was trying to project a scholar/librarian sort of air." She didn't look convinced.
Jack considered. "He wasn't like any librarian I know. They're always glad when anyone gets some use out of the library—and I didn't like the way he looked at you." Music began to fill the air as they entered the outskirts of the Village. Jack could hear snatches of show tunes from several different eras. "Look at this," he waved a hand at the scene. "This is where the Unchained put their best foot forward, show us all what great guys they are, and the first one we interact with is a pompous ass."
"They are fiends from Hell, Jack," Rhea reminded him.
He looked at her; she wasn't smiling.
"Well, yes, I'll grant you that. So they say, anyway. I still think there could be other explanations. But isn't the road to Hell supposed to be attractive?"
"You didn't enjoy the picnic, or our tour of the library?" Rhea asked.
"I did. There were hundreds of books in the library I'd like to read just in the SF section—and I can't even imagine all the other things I could find there." He stared off into space, thoughtful. "I was already thinking about the next time I come here. After a few trips, I might even want more . . ." He looked over at her and nodded. "Point taken."
They stopped by an electronic you are here board, and he studied it with interest. The "you're all alone" illusion gave way in the Village, and they were once more amidst the press of humanity. Unchained street vendors hawked their wares from quaint carts, catering to the steady stream of people filling the curving thoroughfares. "What do you think?" Jack asked.
Rhea pursed her lips. "Well," she said, "it's been a while since I saw a Ziegfeld's Folly. How about that?"
"Pretty girls, song and dance—how could I object?"
Jack pushed the button by the description. On the screen, a glowing red line traced the path to their destination. "It's not very far, either." Where in the world, Jack wondered as they set off, had Rhea seen a Ziegfeld's stage show?
They were about halfway to the Ziegfeld theater when Rhea grabbed his arm. "I think we're being followed," she whispered. He could hear a note of urgency in her voice.
Nobody had ever told Jack that before. It wasn't something people said in real life. Not in his life anyway. "What do you mean?" he whispered back.
"There are four people behind us—" He started to turn his head and she dug her fingers into his arm and whispered, "No! Don't look! They haven't let us out of their sight since we got to the Village."
Jack stopped walking, but Rhea tugged him back into motion. "I don't have any enemies," he said. "You don't have any enemies. Are you thinking something industrial?"
"Maybe." She glanced at a sign they were passing, pretending to point it out to Jack. Voice low, she said, "Between the two of us, we're ninety-five percent of Celestial's intellectual property."
Jack looked at her sharply—there was something unconvincing about her tone. He'd assumed she didn't have any enemies . . . but maybe he'd assumed wrong. Her unwillingness to talk about her past could be a lot more than indications of an unhappy childhood.
"Well, it doesn't matter," he said. "Let's find a cop."
"No! There aren't any real cops here. This place is policed by Hell, and we can't trust Hell's police force." She peered intently into the crowd. "Follow me," she said, and ducked into a Scandinavian tour group coming out of a production of West Side Story. Most of them were still humming "Tonight"—badly. Rhea cut through like a lumberjack in tall wood, pulling Jack in her wake.
"Sorry," he said as blond heads turned and the humming broke off in confusion. "Got to run. Left the dog in the dryer!"
Rhea feinted left, then pulled a hard right into and then through a coffee shop. Walking at top speed, keeping in the center of crowds, they shot along the walkway at a painfully fast clip. At last they ducked in the doorway of a small, definitely nonkosher deli, and Rhea peered out cautiously. Jack was panting and sweat rolled down his back. As he concentrated on breathing, he noticed Rhea looked as cool as ever. He knew, intimately, how well toned she was, but this was just totally unfair. It was as if running for her life were an everyday occurrence. Well, maybe it was. He wondered if he ought to be more afraid. He wondered if he'd feel more afraid when he could breathe again.
When Rhea turned and looked into his eyes, he got his answer. She was terrified. Her fear was completely out of proportion to anything he could imagine—and in that instant, he became afraid, too.
"I think we lost them," she said. "Jack, let's get out of here. Now."
Jack nodded. "No argument," he said and looked at his courtesy map, calculating rapidly. "I think we're on the southeast side of the Village, here," he pointed. "Our best bet is to cut down the footpath past the Mall and catch the Monorail—You're sure we can't call security?"
"I'm sure," Rhea said, and her tone brooked no argument.
"Then let's go!"
"Wait," Rhea stopped him. "Have you got a rubber band?"
Jack searched his pockets, bemused. He finally came up with a thin red band that looked like it had been through the wash several times. "Here," he said.
Rhea took it, looked at it doubtfully, then pulled her hair back in a ponytail and secured it.
"That's a disguise?" Jack asked incredulously.
"All I have time for."
Rhea stepped out into the street, walking rapidly. Jack sprinted to catch up with her.
"Don't run," she said. "Keep pace with me. Look happy, and try to look like you're not in a hurry."
Jack was sweating again, already. He resolved then that finding more time for the Y would have to move to the top of his list. "How do you propose . . . to do that . . . when we're walking . . . twice as fast . . . as anyone else?" he panted.
"Point out the sights," Rhea said. "Talk casually to me."
"Talk? I . . . can't even . . . breathe."
But he managed. They moved out of the Village and past the Mall in full tourist mode. Jack pointed out each little change in the scenery, and Rhea nodded in seeming rapt appreciation. Once, a group of fifty tourists gathered around a bush he pointed at. He had no idea what it was, but they were still taking pictures of it when he lost sight of them.
Rhea was keeping an eye out for people behind them, looking back as though casually every couple of minutes. Apparently she hadn't seen anyone so far, and the relief on her face made him almost mad enough to quit being scared. Anyone who made Rhea that glad not to see them deserved some major grief. Unfortunately, he was in no position to dish it out.
They made the monorail station without incident and dived through the elevator door just as it closed, plowing ahead of a group of waiting Japanese students. Jack was sure that would spawn a spate of Rude American stories. "Au revoir," he called on impulse, waving at them as the door shut. Rude French stories were just as stereotypical, but he thought he could live with that. Rhea looked at him intently, and he shrugged. They observed standard elevator etiquette the rest of the way up in the crowded car—both stared straight ahead at the light display over the door, and neither of them said anything.
There was a train loading on the platform. Rhea pulled them out of the natural flow leading to the car across from the elevator, and guided them to the last car of the train; except for the two of them, it was empty.
The monorail left the platform smoothly before anyone else joined them and Jack breathed a sigh of relief. "Now," he said, "can you tell me what the hell is going on? And don't give me that industrial angle. I don't buy it, and I can tell you don't, either."
The monorail sped over the Streets of the Past section of Devil's Point. Below them, the thatch roofs of a Medieval village lined narrow footpaths where rats the size of Chihuahuas scurried between piles of rubbish. Jack wondered if that section of the park got many repeat visitors.
Rhea looked as though she were wrestling with something. She stared ahead vacantly for a moment, then snapped back into focus. "Okay," she said, "I don't really think this is industrial espionage or sabotage as such, although they certainly wouldn't mind that as a by-product." She waved out the window. "This is Unchained home base on planet Earth—I think we were being followed by devils."
The territory below them shifted to Classical Greece.
A knot of men was debating excitedly beside a huge right triangle sketched on the ground. There were no women in sight. Jack felt he could use something as certain as the Pythagorean theorem. Not much else was making sense. "Well, why in the world would they do that?" he said. "And if it's demons, why are we running? Devils can't hurt us any more than the gargoyle on my roof can."
"Usually," Rhea dropped the word like a bomb. "There are exceptions to everything. And that's devils, not demons."
"But—" he started to say when a blast of displaced air almost knocked him from his seat. Suddenly there were four devils in the car with them. Devils with switchblades.
Jack had never been in fear of his life before. He'd had his share of close calls on the highway, but those were usually over before he realized it. This was different. These were beings who meant him harm. He'd heard of being paralyzed with fear; now he experienced it. He was trembling so hard he couldn't move voluntarily at all and his gorge was rising—he was going to be sick.
One of the devils, a female, moved slowly towards them. She looked at him contemptuously and slid past him as she advanced on Rhea.
"Well, Avy," she said, "there's someone who wants to talk to you." She motioned with the knife. "But aside from your being able to talk, they don't much care what shape you're in."
Rhea's face twisted with strain—then she blanched. The devil chuckled, "That's right, we've got a standing tap into three fallen angels to enforce a dead zone around you, and we're drawing on it now. Not a thing you can do. Okay, guys," she motioned the other devils forward. They grabbed Rhea's arms and legs. She struggled, but couldn't shake them. The first devil took her knife and slowly, deliberately traced a line across Rhea's cheek. It crimsoned with blood. Rhea screamed.
The fear paralyzing Jack imploded into a white-hot ball of anger. He was moving almost before he realized it, throwing himself at the devil with the knife. "Leave her alone, you bitch!" he yelled. He'd never been any good in a fight and he was way out of his class here. Two of the male devils tried to catch him, but their hands slipped off of his as if he'd been greased. He slipped past them, too, unable to get hold of either one. He sprawled facedown in the aisle, and his face and the palms of his hands lit up with pain.
Rhea was screaming behind him. They were hurting her. Cutting her. His anger cooled—cooled until it was arctic, until his pounding heart pumped ice water through his veins. Suddenly, he could think and his brain raced. He crawled towards his seat. One of the male devils eyed him and dismissed him. The female began to score Rhea's other cheek. Jack grabbed the picnic bag. He fumbled, and willed his hands not to shake; he had no time for clumsiness. He grabbed the Super-Soaker inside. A child's toy. He wished he had a bazooka. He'd only hoped he and Rhea might cross paths with some gremlins so he could test his theory before he shot the Super-Soaker into the innards of his printer.
The female saw him. Her lips drew back in a smirk.
He pulled the trigger.
All Hell broke loose. The devils screamed. Rhea screamed. Fire and smoke filled the car. He felt the heat, but it didn't burn. Then suddenly there was silence. Nothing. He couldn't see anything—the smoke filled the air, dense as heavy fog. I shouldn't be able to breathe, he thought, but he was breathing just fine.
A hand grabbed his arm and dragged him to his feet, and Rhea shouted in his ear, "Come on!"
Then he was lying on asphalt. They were in the parking lot. He had no memory of getting there. His clothes smelled of smoke. Rhea braced and levered him to his feet. Blood covered her face, but the fear was less evident in her eyes.
"We've got to get out of here," she said. "The parking lot guards are coming, and we aren't going to have any explanations."
They were beside his Camry. In a daze he pulled out his keys and opened the door. Rhea walked around behind and yanked hard on something. He heard metal give. She slid into the passenger side holding the license plate and frame.
Through the gaps in the cars parked around them, Jack could see small shapes approaching. Small shapes with pointed ears and tails: Lot demons.
"Go, go!" Rhea said. "Those are lower level. Not too bright—we can lose them." The demons were within a car's length of them now. Jack turned the key. There was a hollow click from underneath the hood.
"It's that goddamn starter," he yelled and threw open the door. "I've got to hit it."
"No!" Rhea grabbed him, his legs out the door. He felt her shift and something went thunk in the engine compartment. "Try it again." There were demons on the hood now.
He slammed the door and turned the key. This time the engine purred into life. Jack ground the gears into reverse and popped the clutch. The car leapt backwards, shedding some demons, rolling over others. "You're going to get a huge bill for those," Rhea yelled. "I'll pay it."
One stuck its hands through the door and grabbed at Rhea. She kicked it viciously.
Jack hit first and sped for the main lot gate, leaping a curb and running down the sidewalk once to bypass the line of cars leaving the park. The demons gave up pursuit at the park boundary. "Standing orders," Rhea said.
Jack didn't honor a single traffic light or speed limit sign until they were thirty miles inland. Then suddenly he was shaking so badly he couldn't drive. He managed to pull into the empty parking lot of a small church where he killed the engine. He started sobbing uncontrollably. Rhea leaned over and held him close until he stopped.
"I was so scared they were going to kill you," he said finally, when he could speak again.
Rhea stroked his hair tenderly. "Scared men have stormed a lot of beaches," she said. She paused. "What did you do to them?"
"Holy water," Jack said. "You don't have to believe in it—it just works." He laughed without humor. "I was hoping to find some gremlins to try it on."
Rhea frowned. "But holy water hasn't worked since—"
"Since Church Latin started diverging from Classical Latin?" He shrugged. "Retrolinguisticians have been reconstructing lots of languages lately. I found a priest liberal enough to try the result."
Rhea nodded. "You were lucky. Holy water can drive demons, but devils, even low level ones, it only hurts. You heard those." She shuddered. "They were channeling a lot of power. You hurt them; they dropped the ball and it backed up on them. They'll probably have to be completely reconstituted."
"Just add water," Jack muttered. "My heart bleeds for them." He looked at Rhea. Her hair was blackened with streaks of soot; her once white shorts were gray and grimy, and her face was cut and covered with dried blood. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. "I've got some Wet Ones in the trunk," he said.
Rhea winced as he applied the soft towelette to her face. "Do you want to go to the doctor?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I heal fast."
She wasn't kidding. When she washed off the blood, he could see that the cuts had already closed; her cheeks bore two red lines and the palms of her hands bore more, but he was willing to bet in a few days there wouldn't even be a scar.
They could hurt her, but not him. They couldn't even touch him. She knew what they were doing, she knew what they were after, she knew they'd been channeling energy—whatever the hell that was—she knew about holy water and what it would work on and what it wouldn't.
And now he knew some things he'd only wondered about before.
It didn't matter. It just didn't matter. Jack came to a decision. After they cleaned up, he said, "I wanted to give this to you this evening." He reached into his pocket. "But I think the location is more appropriate here. And, well, life's too short to wait for perfect moments." He handed Rhea the small box.
She raised the cover to reveal a perfect band of silver. It caught the late afternoon sun and gleamed like a beacon. "Oh, Jack," she breathed, "it's beautiful!" For an instant her face was radiant, angelic. Then a cloud passed across her features and the smile vanished. She said flatly, "But I can't accept it."