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When I start walking, the wall of Kissi bodies parts like the Red Sea, then closes in behindstill feels like asking for trouble But every direction looks exactly the sa solid or just the idea of so One minute, it feels like I’ into sponge cake I don’t stop or slon I keep walking, like I know exactly where I’ hand on els every day Its face is half-baked dough I can’t quite bring it into focus

"I told you we’d es itself for a second Turns into Josef’s Aryan poster-boy ht ahead We’ve all been so looking forward to this"

"Hang around, ugly When I’et sohs, turns his sluglike head, and dissolves into the writhing h and it spreads out across the colony, so that in just a few seconds the sound surrounds me Thunders down on me from a billion throats like a stored with sound I turn and shove the lighter straight into the heart of the closest group of Kissi They shriek and scatter Shove the lighter in another group And another They still surroundanyht ahead is the Faim fa in a universe of nothing I don’t bother knocking

Head straight downstairs to the baseic roohter

I open the door at the bottoo

The room is exactly the way I remember it Even the circle drawn on the floor in lead is the saic type

"I know you’re not going to believe ood to see you, Jimmy"

Mason sounds exactly the same He looks the sa with ic or if time works differently here

"When you’ve spent as many years as I have with no one to talk to but Parker or the Kissi, it’s a real thrill to run into someone with some brains Who isn’t here to kiss ht you and Parker were best buds Not Vlad and Renfield"

"You used to call hi it A dog is oing to talk to it about anything i You put it out back to guard the henhouse Reward it when it’s been good Punish it when it’s been bad That’s pretty reat, if your plan was to sit out here in an e arenius I never saw that one cole by now But noise like that Criticis from you Because I respect you You really are the only other Sub Rosa I thought had any real talent and style"

"That’s why you had to kill me"

"I didn’t kill you, did I? I could have and you wouldn’t have seen it co"

"You can’t even say it? You sent me to Hell Say it"

"I don’t want to reopen old wounds That’s not why I brought you here And before you tell me that you found me on your oe both know that I h about where ere to help you finally figure it out"

"If you wanted me here so bad, why didn’t you just send up a flare or have one of your Kissi forward le map link?"

"Because I had to know that you could do it I haven’t seen you in eleven years Maybe the air in Hell or all those knocks on the head in the arena turned your brains to butterscotch pudding I had to see you work it out and here you are And since you got rid of Parker, I have a staff opening right now A nice midlevel executive job Good hours Terrific benefits Possible deification Interested?"

"Keep talking The more you yammer, the more I want to kill you That’s the only reason I’ot about what you did toI just wanted toto one He took it too far"

"He was your dog You sent him out to hunt Your responsibility"

"What if I told you that you could get her back? Exactly as she was And the two of you could live together forever What would you say?"

I’ance and bullshit What’s so strange about Mason is how young he seems Like he’s exactly the sao Has he really been sitting here alone for eleven years? That’s worse than what happened to s I didn’t just crawl up ine eleven years, sitting in a dollhouse version of your childhood ho to anyone but your pet thug and talking roaches If Mason wasn’t crazy before, he’s definitely joined the banana aret back Alice?"

"That’s why I had to et here I had to know if you could keep up once the project got rolling Stage one is why I formed an alliance with the Kissi To take control of the world"

He sot all A’s on his report card

"Why would anyone want to run the world?" I ask "It sounds like a huge pain in the ass"

"That’s just stage one If all I wanted was to take over the world, believe me, the Kissi and I could have done it already"

"What do you want the world for?"

"In any s Troops Equip Earth is the perfect staging area for that"

"When I knew you, all you wanted was to prove that you were the best little ician in Candyland Now you want to be Patton, too? What is wrong with you?"

He goes to a large ebony desk, piled high with books, writing paper, anddown and frorabs an old book about the size and weight of a bag of cele word crosses the two pages of the spread: L’Infernus Below that is a detailedHell I have the troops and the plan You know Hell’s strengths and weaknesses You’ve already softened the place up for invasion How enerals have you killed? A dozen? Two? More?"