"Are you him?" she said. Her voice was frail with exhaustion. "Are you De Amour?"

"I'm D'Amour, yes." Harry was already uneasy. He could smell the woman from where he stood; sour sweat dirt. "How do you know who I am?" he asked her.

"She said-2' the woman replied, opening the door a little wider.

"Who said?" "She's got my Stevie upstairs. She's had him there for ffim days." Tears were pouring down the woman's cheeks as she spoke.

She made no effort to wipe them away. "She said she wouldn't let him go till you got here." She stepped back from the door. "You gotta make her let him go. He's all I got."

Harry took a deep breath, and stepped into the house. At the far end of the hallway stood a woman in her early twenties. Long black hair, huge eyes shining in the gloom.

'This is Stevie's sister. Loretta."

The young woman clutched her rosary, and stared at Harry as though he was an accomplice of whatever was upstairs.

The older woman closed the front door and came to Harry's side. "How did it know you were coming here?" she murmured.

"I don't know," Harry replied.

"It said if we tried to leave-2' Loretta said, her voice barely a whisper, "it'd kill Stevie."

"Why do you say it?"

"Because it's not human." She @ up the flight, her face fearful. "It's from HeH," she. 'Vm't you smell it?'

There was certainly a foul smell. This wasn't the fishmarket stench of the Zyem Carasophia's chwnber. This was shit and fire.

Heart cavorting, Harry went to the bottom of the stairs. "You stay down here," he told the two women, and started up the flight, stepping over the spot on the fifth stair where Father Hess's head had been resting when he expired. There was no noise from upstairs, and none now from below. He climbed in silence, knowing the creature awaiting him was listening for every creaking stair. Rather than let it think he was attempting to approach in silence and failing, he broke the hush himself.

"Coming, ready or not," he said.

The reply came immediately. And he knew within a syllable what thing this was.

"Harry-" said Lazy Susan. "Where have you been? No, don't tell me. You've been seeing the Boss Man, haven't you?"

While the demon talked, Harry reached the top of the stairs and crossed the landing to the door. The paint was blistered.

"You want a job, Harry?" Lazy Susan went on. "I don't blame you. Times are about to get real bad."

The door was already open an inch. Harry pushed it, lightly, and it swung wide. The room beyond was almost completely dark, the drapes drawn, the lamp on the floor so encrusted with caked excrement it barely glimmered. The bed itself had been stripped down to the mattress, which in turn had been burned black. On it lay a youth, dressed in a filthy T-shirt and boxer shorts, face-down.

"Stevie?" Harry said.

The boy didn't move.

"He's asleep right now," said Lazy Susan's curdled voice from the darkness beyond the bed. "He's had a busy time."

"Why don't you just let the kid go? It's me you want." "You overestimate your appeal, D'Amour. Why would I want a fucked-up soul like yours when I could have this pure little thing?"

"Then why did you bring me here?"

"I didn't. Sure, Sabina may have planted the thought in your head. But you came of your own accord."

"Sabina's a friend of yours?"

"She'd probably prefer mistress. Did you fuck her?"

"No.

"Ali, DAmour!" the Nomad said, exasperated. "After all the trouble I went to getting her wet. You're not turning queer on me, are you? No. You're too straight for your own good. You're boring, D'Amour. Boring, boring@'

"Well maybe I should just piss off home," Harry said, turning back to the door.

There was a rush of motion behind him; he heard the bedsprings creak, and Stevie let out a little moan. "Wait," the Nomad hissed. "Don't you ever turn your back on me."

He glanced over his shoulder. The creature had shimn-fied up onto the bed and now had its bone and muck body poised over its victim. It was the color of the filth on the lamp, but wet, its too-naked anatomy full of peristaltic inotions. "Why's it always shit?" Harry said.

The Nomad cocked its head. Whatever features were upon it all resembled wounds. "Because shit's all we have, Harry, until we're returned to glory. It's all God allows us to play with. Maybe a little fire, once in a while, as long as He isn't looking. Speaking of fire, I saw Father Hess the other day, burning in his cell. I told him I might see you@'

Harry shook his head. "It doesn't work, Nomad," he said. "What doesn't work?"

"Me fallen angel routine. I don't believe it any more." He started towards the bed. "You know why? I saw some of your relatives in Oregon. In fact, I almost got crucified by a couple of them. Brutish little fucks like you, except they didn't have any of your pretensions. they were just in it for the blood and the shit." He kept approaching the bed as he talked, far from certain what the creature would do. It had disemboweled Hess with a few short strokes and he had no reason to believe it had lost the knack. BuL stripped of its phoney autobiography, what was it? A thug with a few days' training in an abattoir.

"Stop right there," the creature said when Harry was a yard from the bed. It was shuddering from head to foot. "If you come any closer, I'll kill Little Stevie. And I'll throw him down the stairs, just like Hess."

Harry raised his hands in mock-surrender. "Okay," he said, "this is as close as I get. I just wanted to check the fainily resemblance. You know, it's uncanny."

The Nomad shook his head. "I was an angel, D'Amour it said, its voice troubled. "I remember Heaven. I do. @s though it were yesterday. Clouds and light and-2' "And the seat'

"Me sea?"

"Quiddity." "No!" it yelled. "I was in Heaven. I remember God's heart, beating, beating, all the time@'

"Maybe you were born on a beach."

"I've warned you once," the creature said. "I'll kill the boy-,,

"And what will that prove? That you're a fallen angel? Or that you're the little bully I say you are?"

The Nomad raised its hands to its wretched face. "Ohh, you're clever, D'Amour," it sighed. "You're very clever. But so was Hess." The creature parted its fingers, exhaling its sewer breath. "And look what happened to him."

"Hess wasn't clever," Harry said soffly. "I loved him and I respected him, but he was deluded. You're pretty much alike, now that I think about it." He leaned an inch or two closer to the entity. "You think you fell from Heaven. He thought he was serving it. You believed the same things, in the end. It was stupid to kill him, Nomad. It's not left you with very much."

"I've still got you," the creature replied. "I could fuck with your head until the Crack of Doom."

"Nah," Harry said, standing upright. "I'm not afraid of you any longer. I don't need prayers-2'

"Oh don't you?" it growled.

"I don't need a crucifix. I just need the eyes in my head. And what I see-what I see is an anorexic little shit-eater."

At this, it launched itself at him, shrieking, all the wounds in its head wide. Harry retreated across the filthy floor, avoiding its whining talons by inches, until his back was flat against the wall. Then it closed on him, flinging its arms up at his head. He raised his hands to protect his eyes, but the creature didn't want them, at least not yet. Instead it dug its fingers into the flesh at the back of his neck, driving its spiked feet into the wall to either side of his body.

"Now again, D'Amour-" the creature said. Harry felt the blood pour down his spine. Heard his vertebrae crack. "Am I an angel?" Its face was inches from Harry's, its voice issuing from all the holes at once. "I want an answer, D'Amour. It's very important to me. I was in Heaven once, wasn't I? Admit it."