The room was dark and hot. Theo stifled a yawn, regretting the long night and ill-spent morning after. She checked her watch and resolved to wait a little longer. Her father was always late, a fact that Theo, who was always early, had trouble understanding.

He arrived about two minutes later, in no kind of hurry, brushing imaginary dust off his immaculate black clothes.

Theo eyed him critically. “You could use a haircut,” she observed.

“Thanks,” the Templar said drily. “Are you ready to get down to business or shall we continue to make comments?”

She tossed her long hair back. Her father might frighten just about everyone else in the city, but she was used to him. “What can I do for you, Daddy?”

“I want you to get something for me,” he replied. “Ever hear of the Elder’s Stone?”

“Sure,” Theo replied, “black diamond about the size of a big man’s fist. Flawed by veins of adamant, but has great historic value – as well as legendary magic powers.”

“Not legend. Fact. The Elder’s Stone is connected to the Labyrinth, and you know that’s an arcane place.”

Theo pursed her lips. “Let me guess. You want it.”

“Good girl.” The Templar leaned forward. “I have reason to believe it can be found in the High Rise.”

“Which section?”

“Angelis.”

Theo swore, then dug into her jacket for cigarettes and a lighter. Once she’d lit up and passed another to the Templar, she said coolly, “Could be worse, I guess. Could be Central Park.”

“I wouldn’t send you there,” her father said. “As far as the Archangel goes, you should avoid him. Get upstairs as fast as you can.”

“Sure. Got any message for your brother if I do see him?”

“I told you not to talk to that psycho, Theodora,” the Templar said firmly. He rarely used a tone of authority with her. Nonetheless, it didn’t seem to have much effect.

“Okay,” she smiled at him. “Back to business. How do you want me to obtain the stone – lawfully?”

“I don’t care. The Princess undoubtedly has it, but I doubt she uses it. If she’ll sell it, trade it, or give it, fine – if not, do what you have to do.”

Theo nodded. “Then there’s only one more thing to discuss. The price.”

“Damn you’re mercenary, asking a price from your dear old dad,” the Templar grinned.

“Hell, your job’s dangerous, Daddy – I’ve got to have some candy.”

“Well, what do you want?”

“Get me to the Labyrinth.”

The Templar whistled low through his teeth. “I don’t think so, kiddo. That place is dangerous, and you know it. It’s wild.”

“If it comes to that, so am I,” Theo replied quietly. “I have to go, though, Daddy.”

“Why?”

Directness. She might have expected. She hadn’t, so her answer was not prepared. Danger there. “I… dream it, almost every night. It’s like the last place left in the world I have to go… It’s like it’s in my blood, like electricity, fueling me, driving me… A need, and she said… when I was ready, I would feel something but I didn’t think it would be like this.”

He was pensive, he didn’t know what to say and it showed. Finally he said, “Because of the blood. But even with that blood you could die there, Theo.”

“I know. But if I don’t try and I end up dying someplace else, it will be as if I were someone else’s daughter. And I couldn’t bear for that to be true.” She shook herself. She didn’t like the closeness of what she had just said. Even with her father, the only one in the world she loved except for memories, she didn’t like to share, and she especially didn’t like him to know that she loved him so much. “We can argue about it after I’ve gotten your stone,” she said then, and got up, smiling.

The Templar looked troubled, but he responded to that smile. She figured she knew why.

“You be careful, Theodora,” he said to her.

“In Angelis? Bet your ass,” she replied, clasped hands with him, and fled. Emotion was still high in her, and that was dangerous. As dangerous as anything in Unreal City.

She didn’t know why talking about her mother hurt so much, but it was private. It was something that she didn’t want to share with anyone, even the man who also mourned for Deirdre. He had loved her, it would have been impossible for him not to love her, she had told Theo, but the blood connection felt truer, it felt as if nothing could ever be more true, more binding. As if part of her soul had died on that night when the Silver Lady had fallen into darkness.

Well, there was a job to do, and he hadn’t helped much, so it was best to start with that. She plugged into the wall-port on 15th and Star. Her lips moved as she thought Elder’s Stone.

The information scrolled past. Dworkin… now there was an old name. Weather-control, coercion, psychokinesis… Interesting… She finally found what she was looking for, at the very bottom of the blurb. Stupid of the Princess to make it so obvious, but not particularly out of character nonetheless. Museum replica, the caption under the picture said. But it wasn’t a replica. Obvious, obvious. Because the veins of adamant formed the picture she saw in her mind every night, and something like that could not be replicated so perfectly, nature itself would cry out against it. Because it had to do with blood…the most powerful blood in the Universe.

She had dreamed… of a … A place of darkness. A cavern, possibly. Impossible to see the walls, the ceiling. And in the center a labyrinth of silver-blue faery-fire, like a spider’s web or a cat’s cradle. The soft, heart-wrenching chords of a harp. A woman with black hair and blue eyes and a sad, sweet smile. A woman she had known, and loved, and the loss cut into her with a greater force than any blow she had ever received. And then she stood beside that woman as she gazed on the blue network again, and she thought she heard Deirdre say her name. The music swelled, the beauty struck her as impossible, and mixed with some unimaginable desire that stirred in her to see, to truly see those places, that pattern, the woman in black and silver.

Not possible, that last wish. Even in dreams she knew that, and yet, and yet… With the music playing so, and the blue burning into her, it seemed possible. It seemed right.

Then, as always, the image would change, distort, become silver, then neon, bright and blinding and treacherous. It would move, or seem to, and she would be lost in a tuneless hum like electricity. The woman would also distort; Theo would turn, crying out in silence, “Mother!” just as it became perfectly obvious that it was not her mother. This was a golden-haired woman, impossibly beautiful, but with petulant, spoiled eyes, the eyes of a woman who might have once been intelligent, but who has squandered that wit and no longer uses it. She knows this woman as well.

“Will you walk?” the woman says, gesturing to the Labyrinth.

“It will kill her,” a man’s deep voice says. It is her father, but he does not seem overly bothered by his admission.

“Not necessarily,” another man argues. He is blond, like the woman, his face is perfectly made up. He looks, briefly, like another man, and then goes back to being the Archangel. “There is a power in her blood.”

There is a fourth there as well, silent as the grave. She does not turn to look for him. She knows who he is, and what he wants there, that night. He is death personified. It is all he represents. Once, possibly, there was something else, but not anymore. She doesn’t need that reminder. She knows the danger of the place.

She sets her foot on the neon line, and begins…

To wake.

Theo knows where she’s going now… the Museum of Angelis. A long walk if she wants to play by the rules, but she doesn’t much feel like it. She unplugs her mind from the circuits of the city, and looks around for a Doorway…
There. A neon sign reading Girls X4 cuts brilliantly through the grey of midafternoon in winter, forms the top of a lopsided archway whose sides are formed by the corners of buildings. She takes a deep breath, spirals the magic through her, feeling, as it always does like a mild electric current, and makes for the Doorway… she imagines the High Tower of Angelis, makes certain the image is perfect in her mind and steps through.

There is a disorientation, a discomfort. She waits it out and it passes. After a time her head and eyes clear and she is where she expected to be. She checks both ways for the Archangel or his Barbie dolls, sees no one and hurries to the right. Only a block to the nearest entrance to the High Rise. No one in sight… Not a good sign, but not a bad one either.

She doesn’t run. It doesn’t seem right that she should have to. She makes the entrance without incident, hotwires the codebox and slips in. There are no guards, yet. She probably has ten minutes before someone ambles down to check on the system glitch she caused. She makes her way down the hallway carefully, watching for lasers, for traps, for anything out of the ordinary. She doesn’t expect much of anything on the first floor. She isn’t wrong, either. There’s a cheap little laser-grid right in front of the elevator. It’s a cinch to turn it off and the elevator codebox is almost as easy as the front door. She punches the highest button this elevator offers – it looks like a pi sign. She doesn’t have the faintest idea what it means and swears a little, but in good humor.

So far too good. It gets tricky outside of the elevator. There are guards, in the Princess’ livery, and they aren’t bad. One of them even catches her with a roundhouse before she can knock him out. She tugs them into the elevator and sends it to every single floor on its way down.

Popping her jaw back and forth, she surveys the corridor ahead of her. Neat, she thinks, knowing there is at least a laser-grid and probably some very advanced booby-trap, but not able to see anything. She centers herself, plays with her jaw one more time for good luck, and sends her lighter spinning down the hall.

Nothing. No sensors alerted, no… No way. Theo swears for real this time and hustles down the hall. No point in being quiet anymore. The Princess put an AI on the ceiling of the hall, and it might not have made any sound, it might not have looked like anything other than a ceiling tile, but it was working, transmitting its information deep into the High Rise, and Theo was screwed.

Not paying good enough attention maybe. Or maybe the f___s were getting good. No way to tell. Her quick scan with the Technomagic hadn’t even shown the blasted thing until it began to work, and by that time it was really too late.

She snagged her lighter and began to run. The Museum entrance, maybe three floors up, seemed deadly far. She dropped two more guards, left them where they lay and began running stairs. An alarm sounded, far below.

She burst through the door at the top of the stairs, and stopped abruptly. The room was not the one she had been expecting. Either the Princess had moved or Theo had taken the wrong stairs. It didn’t matter now.

“Theo,” the Princess purred, raising a hand languidly to forestall her officers. “What a pleasant surprise. I trust you haven’t inconvenienced too many of my guards?”

“Maybe five,” Theo admitted. “Wouldn’t have to do it, either, if you’d give me a working password, Princess.”

“I can’t do that,” the blond woman said regretfully. She was breath-takingly beautiful, possibly the most beautiful person Theo had ever seen. Her gown was tight and low-cut and of cream-colored silk, and her hair was the most perfect pale gold Theo had ever seen, with just a hint of tropical reds and pinks sparkling in its luster. She took a deep breath in, on cue, noticing Theo’s glance.

Theo turned away very quickly, studying the paintings on the wall… it did not help, she had turned right to a nude portrait of the woman she had been trying to avoid. Stirred against her will, Theo said, “I’m sorry to intrude, Princess. I have an offer for you.”

“An offer?” the woman laughed delightedly. “I thought you had come to steal from me. I am most pleasantly surprised.”

“No, you were right. I will steal it, if you won’t sell or trade. An object called the Elder’s Stone. Is there anything you will have in return for it?” Theo sat down in one of the leather chairs in front of the divan on which the Princess lounged. It made her look at home, even though she didn’t feel that way, yet.

The Princess leaned forward, straining nearly out of her dress. “That’s a tall order. It is a very valuable thing. There is one thing I will take for it, however. That ring.” She pointed to the cameo ring Theo wore on her right index finger. It was a long oval, cut out of stone, and it bore the face of a woman who resembled Theo in many ways.

“My mother’s ring?” Theo said involuntarily.

“I always liked to look at her,” the Princess said maliciously. “She was very beautiful. It is the only thing I will take for the stone. Is it a deal?”

The ring wasn’t worth anything, it was paltry, cut of marble. But it was all Theo had of her mother. That, and the memories.

“It’s too big,” she had said when her mother had given it to her. She had been six.

“No it isn’t, dear,” the Silver Lady had said quietly. “It is the right size for when you will need it.” But now… No stone, no Labyrinth… No Labyrinth… Theo slipped the ring from her finger. “It is a deal,” she said, and rose to pass the ring to the Princess. She paused just as the woman’s fingers reached out to snatch it, and pulled it back slightly. “The Stone, Princess,” she said. “Where’s the Stone?”

“You’ve guessed already, baby,” the Princess replied lightly. “In the Museum, behind glass next to a plate saying ‘replica.’ Let’s go there and we can exchange, if you won’t trust me any further than that.”

“I won’t, baby,” Theo said. The Princess looked as if she might laugh, but she didn’t, and instead rose gracefully and moved to a far archway.

Theo hadn’t been very far off. The Princess, it seemed, had been waiting for her. The museum she had been expecting was through the archway and down the hall. The Elder’s stone glittered on its silver chain as the Princess handed it to Theo.

“This had better be real,” Theo said, passing the woman her mother’s ring.

“It is. You know it is.” The Princess pursed her lips. “Besides, what would you do if it weren’t? In my territority, surrounded by my guards?”

“Why ask questions when you don’t want the answers?” Theo said, patting the Princess’ cheek. “Always a pleasure doing business with you.”

“And you.” The blond woman had already turned away from Theo and was engrossed in studying the line of Deirdre’s profile as it was cut out in the ring. Maybe she had really wanted it. Maybe it hadn’t been just to push, but Theo doubted it. The Princess only wanted things because other people wanted them. It was one of her most interesting traits.

On her way out, then, searching for another Doorway and the way back to the Sin Strip and home… it would have been too easy, though. Things were never quite that clean, not in Theo’s life.

He was huddled up against the wall of an alley and two of the Archangel’s Barbies from hell were beating him. One had an aluminum baseball bat, which she had used to shatter his right wrist. Theo could see the bone sticking out from where she stood.

She should leave it. He shouldn’t have come to Angelis, and he certainly shouldn’t have come alone. She should leave it.

She caught the bat as it whistled through the air toward the man’s head and neck. She wrenched it from the woman’s grip and sent it spinning away down the alley. The Angels were tall, perfect women, as plastic as dolls, with manic expressions and dead, drugged eyes. Theo hit one in the stomach, then brought her head down hard against Theo’s knee. The second one pulled a knife and died with it in her chest.

“Thanks,” croaked the man.

“Don’t mention it.” Theo knelt next to him. He didn’t look too bad, except for the wrist. “F___, man, what are you doing here?”

“Getting my ass kicked. I was in the High Rise, got lost. I meant to come out in the Outskirts.”

“Hell, you are lost. I can’t take you home, either, but we’d better get out of here. I had to kill one of those girls, and the Archangel isn’t going to like that.”

The man nodded and got to his feet. Theo went to the alley mouth and checked both ways. A string of curses escaped her lips and she ran back the other way. The alley didn’t go anywhere else though. It was a dead end. Funny choice of thoughts, as a matter of fact.

“What’s the matter?” the man asked her.

“Archangel himself is coming up the street. Don’t know why. Guess I’m just not lucky. You’ve got to go, though. I’ll distract him, but you run hard. Turn left and keep running and you’ll end up in the Sin Strip. When you get there, look up a big man with a beard. Green eyes, called the Templar. Tell him Theo’s got it, but she’s been held up. If he sees my signal, he’d better haul ass to Angelis. Got that?”

“Yeah, but-“

“Shut up and do it.” Theo checked the alley again, took a deep breath and began walking toward the figure that was approaching. “Run,” she said, once, and heard the wounded man take off.

Ahead of her were the figures of maybe a dozen of those doll-like women, surrounding a delicate-looking man, shorter than any of the women. His soft butter-blond hair was pulled back with a black ribbon, and he wore a lot of makeup to make his face seem perfect.

At the sight of the running man one of the Angels made a fierce cry like a hunting hawk and started after him, but the Archangel raised his hand lazily and she stopped.

“Theodora,” the Archangel said loudly. “An unexpected pleasure.” He took a long time to look her up and down as she approached, and then said, in his slow, drawling way, “We don’t see enough of you anymore.”

“You’ve seen it before,” Theo said carelessly. “Anyway you know I didn’t come for pleasantries.”

“Hell, yes, I do,” he replied in a completely different voice. “You’re only BSing here with me so that jerk can run away… Why?”

She had cause to rue her bad luck again. If he were firmly set in either of his personalities tonight it would be easier. She knew how to deal with either, but unfortunately the ways that worked on one were likely to piss off the other. She said, “Your Barbies were killing him and I don’t like to see that.”

“So you killed one of mine?”

“She didn’t give me much choice.”

“F___ that, I know you didn’t try that hard. I was right here watching.”

Theo went cold but pretended not to be frightened. “So what are you going to do? Kill me?”

“Of course I am not going to kill you until I know what you are doing here,” the Archangel replied evenly. He was switching almost every time he spoke. He must have been very angry.

“I was in the High Rise obtaining an item for my father,” Theo replied. It was dangerous to lie to this man.

“What item? Let me see it.”

“I can’t do that. You know you’ll want it if you see it.”

“I want it already. Now let me see the f___ing thing or I’ll break you.” His right arm came back and around in the warning of a blow and she pulled the Elder’s Stone from inside her jacket. The Archangel didn’t hit as hard as the Templar or the Scarecrow, but he often couldn’t stop once he’d started. Theo doubted she could take him in a straight fight, even alone, and certainly not with his bitches all around her. If she had to, she’d shoot him, but she didn’t like her odds.

“Well, well, well,” the Archangel purred, looking at the Stone. “So Corwin’s finally making his move. You know, a hundred years ago I would have said ‘Amen, God bless’ and even helped him. Now I’m so f___ed up I like this city. Maybe I should take this and use it.”

“You can’t have it,” Theo said flatly. “You can beat the s___ out of me until he gets here – and he is coming – but you can’t have it. How do you want to play?”

He threw back his head and laughed. He looked like a tiger. Or a vampire. “That’s what I’ve always appreciated about you, Theo. We’re both gamblers. You bluff more, but I guess that’s because your hand is always so s____y. Fine. Give me a present and I’ll let you go.”

“Gimme, gimme, gimme,” she teased. It felt safe now. He was securely in his more benevolent aspect. “What do you want?”

He wrapped an arm around her and drew her very close to him. He smelled strongly of aftershave and hair lotion and a thousand other perfumes, all making a musky haze, clouding her mind slightly. His eyes were intoxicatingly blue and he had covered over all his imperfections. She felt his gloved hand drift past her breast and it took a second for her to register that he was going into her pocket. He took his sweet time letting her go, as well, and she saw that he’d taken her cigarettes. He put one in his mouth.

“Got a light, sweetheart?”

“Of course I do.”

“Someday we’ll have to talk about that girl you killed. You won’t like the conversation.”

“Okay.” She lit his cigarette. “It’ll be a shame, though, since you like looking at me so much.”

“Hell, kid, you aren’t that great looking. Your mother was probably twice as pretty. Her body wasn’t quite as nice, though.” The Archangel took a slow pull on his cigarette, exhaled in her face and waved his hand imperiously. “Shoo, before I become that other guy and steal Dworkin’s stone.”

“Thanks, Uncle Random.” “F___ off.”

Theo started running once she got out of sight, wanting to get a couple of blocks between the Archangel and herself, just in case he changed his mind. He changed his mind a lot. Then she looked for a Doorway.

Gotcha! A low-hanging branch from someone’s garden cut across a narrow street, just like crosspiece to a doorway… She pictured her father, bearded, immaculate, probably angry by now. After a moment the makeshift arch filled with him, face smoothing in his relief. She caught him in a rough embrace and was with him.

“Your messenger arrived maybe fifteen seconds ago,” the Templar said. “He said you had the Stone.”

“I do.” Theo reached into her jacket and handed him the black stone on its chain. “I almost got killed by the Archangel for it, but I talked him out of it.”

“Hell, you could talk the sun into setting in the north,” her father said, inspecting the jewel. After a moment he put it down and looked at her. “I worried.”

“I know.” She reached up to pat his cheek. “Don’t stop yet. Your price is to take me to the Labyrinth, remember?”

His overdone mock groan was almost as loud as the sound of her silvery laughter.


The Templar formed the Doorway. He’d been there before.

She stepped forward into… blackness that hummed, a strangely organic sound, not like machinery. A neon maze cut the darkness like a knife, its labyrinthine tangles the same curves that had haunted her dreams.

It took a second to register that they were not alone. The presence, dark, alien, cut into her mind. It was as if the maze itself were a person, hostile and treacherous. But that wasn’t quite it.

“What are you doing here?” the Templar said coldly.

“Guarding the holy place,” the tall man replied in his curiously dead voice. “And waiting for you.”

“If you mean to kill me, I must remind you of your own words. This is a holy place.”

“I am not here to kill,” the Scarecrow said, “Although death is always a possibility here. But this is your daughter, and you are not to cheat.”

“And how,” the Templar replied with an acid slowness, “could I cheat?”

Theo said, “Just show me where it starts. She didn’t like their presence here. This felt private, almost as private as the old pain that was being unearthed with every second the two men remained in the same room.

The Templar took her to the entrance to the maze. “Keep moving, whatever happens,” he said. “It will try to mess with your mind. Ignore it. There will only be physical pain if you stop or try to turn around.”

Theo nodded and set her foot on the neon line. There was only a mild resistance, like walking on a sticky floor. The sensation was mildly irritating, but only that. She kept moving forward and it was like walking waist-deep in water. She knew what she was trying to do, knew the movements she made, but everything felt slow, dragged. She was reaching the outside edge, the first curve. The resistance was intense.

All of a sudden the light shut off and she laboring in total and complete darkness. Panic filled her. What if she stepped wrong? She slowed her efforts, searching for some light with which to see… Nothing. It was like trying to move in one of those spinning rides where the G-forces plastered you against the walls, and she couldn’t see her own hands stretched out ahead… Don’t stop moving though, she told herself. Stop moving and you’re dead.

The light came back, the resistance lessened slightly. She was on a straight path for an instant. For some strange reason she could smell the Archangel’s odd mixture of colognes. Was he here, too? Someone was screaming, very far away. The air felt hot, stuffy… She felt…

Jesus, was that what he had meant when he said it would try to mess with her mind? This was… the place she’d gone at nineteen to convince herself nothing mattered – the touch of a leather glove, someone’s breath on her neck… there was no one there, there was only…

Memories. The woman in Angelis she hadn’t tried at all not to kill. Why? She hadn’t liked her eyes.

Further back to the man she’d killed in the Sin Strip for making a joke about Deirdre’s death… Not a very funny one, as it turned out. Not sorry about that. Not sorry about much of anything.

Forward and back, her first night with a man. Carnival. Both masked, but he reminded her of… that dead-eyed man who had undone her so completely the night her mother had died.

Forward and back, the old woman teaching her magic. “Will you cut off your right hand for the evil in it?”

“No. I will use it… Use it for my purpose.”

The second curve, the light almost blindingly bright, the sound of a woman singing a lullaby rising in her ears. Tears rising in her eyes. Not fair, when she had endured everything else, to take this too and corrupt it by associating it with everything else. The sweet arc of her mother’s voice.

A rainy night. An empty bottle. A carved ring. Blue eyes and a sad, sweet smile, aching loneliness.

“No,” Theo choked out, her body lurching forward at broken instances, like a marionette, “No, you may not have this…”

Too personal even to share with her father, whom she loved, and yet this – this thing would take it – take it all – the anger, pain, hatred, longing and love so tied and tangled together it was one emotion – Deirdre’s. Because it all came down to that one night when her mother abandoned her.

He had said, “Why are you crying, little girl?” and she’d looked up and seen him. He had worn rags of orange and black and his hair was raggedly cut and he painted his face a little. She thought, with a flash of insight, he did it so he would look different in the mirror than he had before. His eyes were pale in the darkness, an indeterminate color. They were very direct though.

Her father had told her never to come here, that this man would kill her, because of who her father was. She thought he could kill her, without much difficulty. He didn’t look as if he wanted to. All the same she didn’t feel like telling him – that Mama’s neck had looked funny on the pillow, her eyes had looked funny, and the pill bottle had been empty and she knew what that meant. Knew, but didn’t want to know, as if knowing would make it true, so she hadn’t touched, had turned and ran and kept running until her lungs gave out on her, never looking, never pausing, not caring if the streets were dangerous, if it was night and dark, if she knew where she was. But then it had all hit her at once, and she’d sunk to the ground, defeated. But she didn’t feel like sharing, so she lied.

“I’m lost,” she had said, and then her chin rocked back, her teeth clicked together hard at the impact. She supposed he’d hit her but she hadn’t seen him move. Even her father couldn’t move like that.

“I am accustomed to being treated with respect,” the Scarecrow had said then, in that dead, strange voice of his – not intonation, no emotion, no inflection. Suddenly she knew things about him – things she did not want to know. She knew he could break a man (or a woman) in that same dead way. She knew he killed almost everyone who ventured into his territority – not because he hated them, but rather because it was the right thing to do. He determined that most of them deserved to die and then dealt out that death.

She knew that he had once been bright and knew that those bright edges could only cut now, only destroy…

The knowledge was too personal – it was like touching this man, and she hated him for it. What the hell was she supposed to do with knowledge like that? Pity the man who hated her father, who had just slapped her for not telling him her mother had committed suicide?

She had spat the answer at him, despising him because it was easy, expected. “My mother is dead.”

And he had turned away, under the groping branches of a leafless tree. “Get out,” he’d said, but she couldn’t. Hate was a fire in her now.

“Aren’t you going to kill me?” she’d snapped, realizing she wanted to die, to get that awful image out of her head. “My name is Theodora, daughter of the Templar and the Silver Lady. Don’t you want me dead for being my father’s child?”

He’d whirled, murder in his eyes and said, in that same, flat, emotionless voice, “Yes, to the last question. And I knew who you were. But I can’t kill my sister’s child on the night my sister died. Even I can’t quite do that.”

So it all came down to that night… To the way she’d looked, the way she’d left and all of a sudden things were complicated. The men, even the Archangel, had been revenge, just like the slutty clothes, the dyed hair, the makeup. So Theo would never be as much like Deirdre as she might have been otherwise.

The woman in Angelis with her dead, drugged eyes as blue as sapphires or a volcanic crater lake.

Through the curve and back on straight road, stumbling, tears everywhere, resistance increasing until every step was like running a marathon.

In her numbed condition Theo noticed that Deirdre was still singing, although the words were subtly different, but for some reason the Archangel’s scent hung again in the air. It was suddenly very cold.

Breathing hard now, sweat mixing with the tears, each movement forward one separate goal. Place the foot before the other. Right. Left. Right. No room for thoughts. No room for music, and that was a blessing, if a small one. Maybe a foot and a half to go as she entered the final curve. Too much. Too far. She could never get there. Her lungs were a desert, her breath a crucifixion.

Right. Thinking she will move was as important as moving now. Will was all. The actual movement proceeded at a crawl. Left. She was the moment, the striving… A tiny voice inside her hissed, You will make it through. After all that, you have to. Right. Will, energy, strength were all sapped, used to their fullest. She was moving on malice now, and her final step was one of pure revenge. If this Labyrinth had to know all her secrets, she would be damned if she did not know all of its turnings, its twistings, its tests. She would survive it. For Mother.

A breath in, a foot placed… Finished… Tears streaming down her face, body feeling as if it will collapse at any moment, Theo raised her head to her father and said, “Thank you.”

It was over.

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