Mercury Revolts (25 page)

“Are you sure that thing is
working?” he whispered to Perp.

“If it wasn’t working, you
wouldn’t be able to move the rock at all,” answered Perp. “You’re probably
getting closer to the Balderhaz Cube. Most likely they’ve got it underground,
somewhere near the center of the cave.”

Mercury grunted in response.
He was sweating from the effort of breaking up the rock.

They had to hunker down twice
more as one of the guards passed by, but finally Mercury managed to hollow out a
tunnel that connected to the cavern below. Cool air flowed out of the opening.

Without waiting for further
advice from Perp, Mercury slid down the tunnel, dropping to a cold stone
surface some eight feet below the bottom of the shaft. Perp followed after,
falling to the floor of the cave with a thud.

“Damn it,” grumbled Perp.
Perp hated not being able to fly. He never walked anywhere if he could help it;
his chubby little legs weren’t built for it. But inside the Balderhaz field,
neither of them could perform any miracles without the help of the
Anti-Baldherhaz Field Gun, and flying counted as a miracle, Perp’s vestigial
bird-like wings notwithstanding.

They now found themselves in
the complete darkness of the cave. Angels have extremely sensitive vision, but
even they can’t see in total darkness. Unfortunately, neither of them had
thought to bring a flashlight. One of the drawbacks of ordinarily being able to
count on violating the laws of physics was that you tended to overlook certain
mundane necessities.

“Point the thing at me,” said
Mercury.

“It won’t work,” said Perp.
“You have to be like thirty feet away.”

“OK, then back up thirty feet
and point the thing at me.”

“Back up where?” Perp cried.
“I can’t see where I’m going! I could fall into a chasm!”

“OK, fine. I’ll try moving
forward.”

Mercury took a step, tripped
on a rock, and fell face-first onto the stone floor.

“I’m going to try crawling,”
he said.

A dim light appeared in front
of them. “Can I be of assistance, gentlemen?” a woman’s voice asked.

“Oh, no,” groaned Mercury,
getting to his feet.

“What kind of greeting is
that?” asked the woman. She was holding a small flashlight in her hand. She was
flanked on either side by a large demon. It was too dark to identify either of
them, but Mercury couldn’t mistake the one in the middle.
Tiamat.

“Look, Tiamat,” said Mercury.
“We’re just looking for some friends of ours who got thrown in here by
mistake.”

“By mistake!” cried Tiamat.
“No one gets thrown in Possum Kingdom by mistake! There’s a very strict process
for vetting new occupants, consisting of that insufferable little harpy
Michelle deciding whether you’re a big enough threat to take up some space in
her precious secret prison. Let me guess, you’re looking for that twerp Ederatz
and the chick with the purple hair.”

“Are they here?” asked
Mercury.

“They’re here,” said Tiamat.
“Good luck finding them, though. This place is like a maze. Speaking of which,
how did you… oh!” She had spotted the hole in the ceiling. “Does that lead…
outside?”

“Yes, but…” Mercury started.

“Gamaliel!”
Tiamat barked to the demon on her right.
“Round everybody up.
We’re getting out! And do it quietly.
If we alert the guards, we’re screwed.”

“Wait!” said Mercury. “Get
Suzy and Eddie too, or I start yelling for the guards.”

“If you do that, we’ll all be
stuck here. Not a smart move, Mercury.”

“Your choice,” said Mercury.
“Either we all get out or we all rot in here forever.”

Tiamat regarded Mercury with
a bemused look on her face. “How did you get in here? There’s no way you drilled
through twenty feet of solid rock without somebody noticing, unless you used
interplanar energy. But that’s impossible inside the Balderhaz field.”

Mercury said nothing. Perp
remained standing quietly behind him, holding the hair dryer behind his back.

“Unless you found some way to
counteract the field,” said Tiamat, peering around Mercury and shining her
flashlight on Perp.

“I’ll tell you whatever you
want to know,” said Mercury. “Just get my friends out of here.”

“Merc!” hissed Perp. “You
can’t…”

“Deal,” said Tiamat. She
turned to Gamaliel. “Get the twerp and the girl too. And hurry.”

Chapter Thirty-two
                       
 

East
of Dallas, Texas; August 2016

“I
can’t believe you made a deal with Tiamat,” said Perp.

“What choice did I have?” asked
Mercury. “It was the only way of getting Suzy and Eddie out of there.”

“Remind me who Tiamat is
again?” asked Suzy.

She, Perp, Mercury and Eddie
were sitting at a picnic table at an otherwise deserted rest stop on Interstate
20, just east of Dallas. Well, three of them were sitting at the table. Perp
was sitting cross-legged on top of the table, which was the only way he could
remain at eye level with the others without levitating. Tiamat and Gamaliel
were sitting at another table, kitty-corner to them, presumably plotting the
resurgence of Chaos Faction. The rest of Tiamat’s minions, and whoever else had
been in the prison—there were a lot of prisoners, and it had been pretty
dark—had scattered to the four winds. Evidently Tiamat had instructed them,
wisely, to split up in case of an escape, to rendezvous at some predetermined
place and time in the future.

“The one sitting over there,”
said Mercury.
“The one who looks like she’d steal the
silverware from your wedding reception.”

“She’s a demoness,” said
Eddie.
“A bad one.
She’s come pretty close to world
domination a few times. If there’s anybody on Earth more dangerous than
Michelle, it’s Tiamat. She’s the leader of Chaos Faction.”

“And we just let her out?” asked
Suzy.

“Like I said, no choice,”
said Mercury.

“Uh, you could have left us
in there,” replied Eddie. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, that place was awful.
Dark and wet and cold and filled with terrifying characters, but I’m not sure I
want Tiamat’s release on my hands.”

“It’s not on your hands!”
Mercury snapped. “It’s on mine. It was my decision, OK? I couldn’t let Suzy
spend the rest of her life in that place. No offense, Eddie, but you’re immortal.
You’d have gotten out eventually. But if we didn’t break Suzy out, she was
going to die in there. That’s not OK in my book.
Also?
Whatever you think about Tiamat and her gang—and I’ll admit she’s a malicious,
hateful bitch who deserves to be thrown into a dank pit for the next thousand
years—the fact is that it’s not Michelle’s job to decide who gets thrown in
prison forever. Nobody in Heaven or Earth gave her that responsibility. I don’t
even know who most of those people in that prison were, or what crime they were
supposedly guilty of. I mean, obviously they were never convicted of anything
in a court, or they’d be in a regular prison. If we give Michelle the power to
lock up anybody she wants, sure, she’ll start with loathsome, putrescent maggots
like Tia…” He paused as uncomfortable looks came over the faces at everyone at
the table. “She’s standing right behind me, isn’t she?”

“Don’t stop on my account,
Mercury,” said Tiamat. Gamaliel, who had been talking with Tiamat a moment
earlier, was nowhere to be seen. “Other than some regrettable rhetorical
flourishes,” Tiamat went on, “you were doing quite well. You’re exactly right
about Michelle. She’s a usurper and a tyrant. And while I’ll admit to
occasionally acting on some dictatorial impulses of my own in the past, my goal
in forming Chaos Faction was not world domination, but the precise opposite.
I’ve come to the sad conclusion that I’m simply in no position to take over the
world, given the current disposition of angels on this plane. Michelle now
commands not only her own army—the bulk of which was trapped on Earth along
with her—but also Lucifer’s intelligence structure, and by extension, most of
the U.S. government. We can’t beat her on her own terms. The only solution is
asymmetrical warfare.”

“You mean terrorism,” said
Suzy.

“Terrorism is a word used by
the strong to denigrate the only tactics available to the weak,” said Tiamat.
“But let’s not get into a semantic discussion. My point is that we are all on
the same side.”

“We’re not terrorists!”
yelled Suzy.

“That’s not what I’ve heard,”
said Tiamat.
“But again, semantics.
We all want to see
Michelle’s security apparatus disbanded, correct?”

There was general agreement
around the table.

“And if I’m not mistaken, you
possess a device capable of counteracting the effects of a Balderhaz Cube,
correct?”

Perp glanced at Mercury, who
nodded. Perp pulled the Anti-Balderhaz Field Gun from his diaper and set on the
table. Mercury and Suzy both shuddered.

“A hair dryer?” asked Tiamat.

“It’s had some modifications,”
replied Mercury.

“Balderhaz,” said Tiamat.

Perp was looking at the
ground. Mercury said nothing.

“Come on,” Tiamat said. “It
has to be Balderhaz. Nobody else could do something like that.”

“So what if it was?” asked
Mercury.

“If you know where Balderhaz
is, I know how we can stop Michelle.”

“Bullshit,” said Mercury.
“Hey, where’d Gamaliel go?”

“I sent Gamaliel on an
errand,” replied Tiamat. “I’ve got a lot of demons to look after. He’s tying up
some loose ends. Now answer my question. Where’s Balderhaz?”

Mercury and the others
regarded Tiamat dubiously.

Tiamat laughed. “I don’t
blame you for being skeptical, but you have to believe me. This is the only
chance we have to stop Michelle. Balderhaz and I built the MEOW device that
used to keep the angels and demons out of Washington, D.C., you know. The place
is only overrun now because that plane hit it. All we have to do is build
another one. Balderhaz and I can do it.”

“Even if you could,” said
Mercury. “And we could get it to Washington, D.C. and activate
it,
all it would do is chase Michelle’s agents out of D.C.
This isn’t the eighteenth century. They have phones and email now. Michelle can
run the government just as well from the suburbs in Maryland.”

“Sure, she probably could,
eventually. But her hold over Lucifer’s agents is already tenuous. And don’t
forget that these demons are undercover as advisors and secretaries. What do
you think will happen when they all run screaming from their offices
simultaneously and are never seen in the city again? That’s a career-ending
move, even in Washington, unless you’re Dick Morris. Even if nobody ever
figures out what actually happened, Michelle’s shadow government will be
ruined. She’ll still be a threat, of course, but she won’t be running the
federal government anymore.”

“What’s in it for you?”
Mercury asked.

“I told you, I don’t want
Michelle in control of this plane any more than you do.”

“Because
you want to be in control of it yourself.”

“Well, obviously,” said
Tiamat.
“But first things first.
We can go back to
being enemies as soon as we’ve dealt with Michelle.”

Mercury glared at Tiamat,
ruminating on her words.

“Merc,” said Perp. “You can’t
tell her where Balderhaz is. He trusted me. I’m one of the few people who
knows
about his hideaway. If I had known you were going to—”

“Will you pardon us for a
moment?” Mercury said to Tiamat. He grabbed Perp around the waist and carried
him far enough from the group for them to have a private conversation.

“Stop that!” Perp spat, as
Mercury set him down.

“Sorry,
Perp.
Can’t have you flying in
public, and we don’t have time for niceties. We have to bring Tiamat to
Balderhaz.”

“No!” Perp cried. “He’ll
never forgive me!”

“Perp, the fate of the entire
world is at stake here!”

“You’ve already played that
card like three times, Mercury.”

“Because
the fate of the world keeps being at stake!
It’s not
my
fault! How long do you think he’s
going to be able to hide anyway? You know what Michelle’s capable of. She’ll
have this whole continent under martial law within six months. How long do you
think it will take her to get to Costa Rica? You know she’s got to be looking
for him right now. And what happens when she finds him? Michelle holds all the
cards,
that’s
what. She’ll have her army, Lucifer’s
intelligence network, the U.S. military, and Balderhaz, all in her pocket.”

“Balderhaz would never…”

“I know you like the guy,
Perp, but he’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic. I don’t think it will take
that much for Michelle to convince him to come to work for her. And even if
you’re right, and he holds out, they’ll just lock him away for the next ten
thousand years. I don’t trust Tiamat any more than you do, Perp, but we have no
choice. If there’s any chance she and Balderhaz can build another MEOW, we’ve
got to take it.”