Sometimes, the level of violence in this story is hard to live with. We urge you to heed this warning, because we will only give it once. Enter at your own risk.

Summary: ...and there will come a ghost whose broken heart will infect the hearts of others, whose madness will consume the lives of all around him, and no one will be safe from him... then, the inseparable partners will be cut apart, the traitor will betray once more, the long-lost woman with the mind of a child will be a prize in the tug of war, and the old man who thought his soul was gone will be proven wrong... but the rivers of blood will never be deep enough for the fire eaters.

The Fire Eaters
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"Hey! Dancer, juggler, fire-eater, clown!
The crippled mirror stops you where you stand
The mirror has just stolen your left hand
And the whole glass house comes tumbling down."
-- Gwendolyn MacEwen, _The Carnival_

"MORMON MOTHER: I smell a salt wind
HARPER: From the ocean.
MORMON MOTHER: Means he's coming back. Then you'll know. Then you'll eat fire."
-- Tony Kushner, _Angels in America: Perestroika_

0. PROLOGUE

"Georgia Lee" by Tom Waits, from Mule Variations

Central Park
New York City

The fountain is silent, turned off for the winter, and a light dusting of snow outlines the head and wings of the stone angel against the foggy darkness of the sky. At her feet, in fleshy mimicry of the solid, cold form, a woman shivers, bent over, clutching her knees to preserve what remains of her body heat. She has been there long enough for the snow to have gathered in her hair, for the wind to trace patterns of red into her pale cheeks.

Uncurling, she stands, taller than she first appeared, and turns to face the statue. She raises her hands like wings and turns her face to the sky. The back of her neck throbs, a painful sting.

They will not want her back. Not now, not ever.

If she had a name, she does not remember it. They should have given her one, as a parting gift.

Instead they left her here, alone, in the cold. A whimper, a mewl escapes her lips, and she frowns, unwilling to show weakness, even now.

She is grateful for winter. Were there water, her own reflection would be too much to bear. She can imagine, for the moment, that her face is as calm and unaffected as that of the angel's, and she will go on believing this, until someone finds her.

Madness is not a disease; it is salvation.

Her wings are crucified arms. She brings them to her head, runs thin fingers through her long, wavy hair, draws them over the sharp angles of her face and covers her eyes.

Home.

She lets her hands fall, slack at her sides. Not home. Never home. But, perhaps, as close as she will ever come.

She turns again, and she starts to walk. She will find a new home. Someone will find her; someone will take pity. Someone must.

The world has grown cold over twenty-five years.

As has she; a voice whispers to her, warns her to keep moving, to keep going. Not even an angel will protect a woman, alone and lost in New York City.

She casts a glance backwards at the Angel Bethesda, who once made a fountain flow with a single touch. Who descended to earth to heal it of its misery.

The woman touches her face again. There is no fountain as she descends, only a single tear.

She wipes it away, and she keeps walking.

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