Trapped

"I think we might be in a hurry after all," I told Annah. "We should wake Sebastian and get back to Niagara fast. Sebastian can use his powers to cage up the Lucifer… or destroy it outright, now that it's turned bad." I paused as another thought struck me. "Even if the Lucifer isn't raising havoc, we have to remove that dam across the river. By now, it's surely causing a flood-in the middle of a big city. People could die."

She met my eyes, then nodded. "Any ideas on how to break through the boy's trauma?"

"No. I tried and got nowhere."

Annah gave me a reproachful look. "You weren't working under the best conditions… but if you don't want to talk to him again, I'll see what I can do."

"He's all yours. He might respond better to a female voice."

She held my gaze a moment longer… then turned to Sebastian and called his name softly. I stood and walked away-as if my very presence could hamper Annah's progress. Ridiculous to feel self-pity at such a time; but as I stared at the Earth in the big black sky, the only thing on my mind was the leaden weight of failure.

The good Lucifer had believed that some force-the League of Peoples or someone else-recruited me to preserve the angel's soul. I'd been brought to Niagara Falls by the haunting and the prophecy because I supposedly had some strength, some skill, some gift which would let me save the day. Part of me had wanted to believe the myth: that I was special, a hero with hidden depths who could turn defeat into victory.

But I hadn't got through to Sebastian. The laser cage had flickered out. The good Lucifer was gone forever, its consciousness swallowed by evil. And if Sebastian eventually came to his senses, the credit would be Annah's-Annah, who'd rescued herself quite handily without any help from me.

I hadn't rescued a single person. Hadn't died in noble sacrifice. Hadn't used my scientific knowledge to conquer the foe. Hadn't used anything except my friends and my money-purse… as always.

A surge of disgust swept over me. I reached into my pocket, pulled out the purse, and cocked back my arm-intending to hurl the damned thing away from me, a symbol of my perennial uselessness. But before I completed the throw, I stopped. Something wasn't right. The purse: it was heavier than it should have been. Much heavier. And bulging tautly, like a rubbery black soccer ball inflated to maximum pressure.

I opened the purse. A rush of gunpowder grains spilled dryly onto my hands.

For a moment, I stared stupidly at the dark sandy flecks. How could a shovelful of cellules get into my purse? Only one answer: it must have happened while I was mindlinked with the good Lucifer-while I was surrounded by the mound, blind to the outside world. And it couldn't have happened by accident. The purse always sealed hermetically shut, airtight, watertight, impenetrable. The angelic Lucifer must have shaped itself into fingers, opened the purse, deliberately crammed the interior with cellules, then closed it up again… all while I was oblivious.

I turned toward Annah, intending to tell her about this strange development; but I never opened my mouth. All around the cage, the blobs that had been blundering blindly were now slithering my way: moving with sudden purpose, converging on my position. Cellules rasped against each other and the moondust beneath them-a hiss like the sound of the great black heap when the lasers had winked out and evil poured in.

Uh-oh. I dropped the purse, then ran to Annah and Sebastian, vowing I'd protect them from whatever happened next.

The closest blob reached the purse and flowed over it, merging with the cellules that had been inside. A ripple went through the dark mass, like a shudder of pleasure. Then another blob arrived and the process repeated: a melding, a ripple, the sounds of grain on grain.

"What now?" Annah asked.

"I had a stowaway. It seems to have given the other cellules a new lease on life."

"Was it a good stowaway or a bad one?"

"That's the question, isn't it?"

More blobs coalesced in the center of the cage-like tumbleweeds blown into a rock niche and massing in a single snarl. When all those cellules finished coming together, they'd create a mound as big as the one in Niagara… and judging by the purposeful way the blobs were moving, I was sure the mound would be intelligent.

Intelligent, yes; but good or evil? It had to be evil, didn't it? The good Lucifer's consciousness had been erased as soon as the laser cage lost power.

Unless…

Could my purse have kept the angelic Lucifer safe? The angel had stuffed its cellules into my purse before the protective field collapsed. Therefore the little black grains had been angelic when they went in. Could the purse have kept them isolated from the onslaught of Satan?

A normal purse couldn't… but this purse was a gift from the Sparks to my grandmother… who bequeathed the purse to me…

I suddenly found myself laughing. Laughing freely out loud-not with hysteria but truly appreciating the joke.