“Help me with the lacings,” she demanded, as if she was the goddamned queen of France.
He thought, hell no, but hesitated. Did he want her clothed or not? He turned, cautiously eyed her, saw the creamy skin of her naked back under an unlaced corset. Gulping, he stepped forward. Then began a game of lacing the corset without allowing his massive knuckles to brush her bare skin.
The red ribbon in his hands was achingly intimate.
If Maggie asked me to do such a thing, I’d die of pleasure.
Lilith, the snake-summoning monster, remained as aloof and still as marble.
“Why you?” Haniel asked, wondering why he hadn’t interrogated her on the point sooner. “Why is heaven after you, specifically?”
She stiffened, spine straight as an arrow. “Why do you think?”
“I didn’t think about it,” he admitted. “If I did, I suppose it’s only natural for a holy angel to want to annihilate you. Your entire species is an abomination of dark magic.”
Lilith snorted. “Imagine if you weren’t so bigoted. You might actually have to form an opinion of your own.”
She was wrong; he had opinions. He’d always had them, but he wasn’t weak enough to let those interfere with his heavenly business. Well, not until the end of his service. Then he’d utterly betrayed himself and heaven.
He knew from experience that faith didn’t negate thought, and he opened his mouth to say so, but he’d grown wiser in her presence. Wise enough to sense her deflections.
“They’re hunting you because you’re a witch, right?” he asked. “Witchcraft is detestable in the eyes of the Lord, and those who practice magic arts grow as arrogant as idols—”
She pulled away from him. “You’re an idiot.”
He watched her squirm: the flattening of her mouth, the slight tilt of her body to the side, as if she’d physically dodge the conversation altogether. She prattled on about stubborn ideology and mindless soldiers, trying to distract him from whatever it was she didn’t want him to know.
Naturally, a witch wouldn’t want anyone poking at her secrets.
He frowned.
She wasn’t a witch though, was she?
Despite preparing some newfangled spell, she didn’t know witchcraft. Didn’t have the religious undertones true devotees had. Didn’t pray, cleanse, preach, or practice. She wasn’t a believer.
All this time he’d been thinking she was a witch turned vampire, stuck in her old ways, keeping the company of familiars and communing with evil.
Maybe he’d been wrong.
If she wasn’t a murmurer, an herbalist, a diviner or witch, then what?
Pieces shuffled, bits and scraps of what he’d witnessed.
“Holy,” he breathed.
His knees gave out, and he plopped down hard on the mattress.
Lilith clutched a pillow she’d been fluffing and stared wide-eyed.
He pointed to her chest. “Where’d you get that?”
She patted the pillow and set it on the bed and said, “Thank goodness for small comforts! At least Catherine isn’t a total bitch, right? Now, rest your weary little head—”
“Lilith!” he shouted, frustrated and angry that she seemed to be deliberately misunderstanding him. He jabbed his finger at her. “How do you do that thing with the snakes? How—what—where did you get the magic?”
She folded her arms, hugged herself. Mumbled, “What do you think?”
He was thinking crazy, that’s what he thought. Heaven didn’t just lose power, didn’t fling bits and pieces of itself down into monsters so they could wander around and use it. And she’d been using it alright, taking heaven’s magic. Dozens of times. Every damned day.
“Oh, God,” he whispered.
He hadn’t felt it because he wasn’t an angel any longer. Until she came along, he hadn’t even thought about heaven anymore. He’d been falling for years, tumbling and floundering, unable to grasp onto anything but Maggie.
Somehow he’d stumbled into a holy war.
He levered himself off the mattress, wobbling at first, and began to pace.
“The Black Spark?” he asked, “That’s what you have?”
She shrugged, wringing her hands. “How should I know? Heaven’s your area of expertise, isn’t it? I never even heard of the Black Spark until you mentioned it. But—”
“But what?” he demanded, his brain churning.
“It doesn’t feel dark,” she mumbled. “The magic that brought me back, the Black Spark as you call it, felt distinctly different from what I carry inside me. The necromancer’s power fashioned life that wasn’t really life, but my spark—”
“Is that what you call it that?” he interrupted. “A spark?”
She nodded, asked, “Is that bad?”
He threw his arms wide and shouted, “This whole fucking thing is bad!”
“Okay, okay, that’s fair. But what does it mean?”
Haniel stomped over to her and stared. She shrank under his scrutiny until she looked small and befuddled and helpless. He squinted at her as if he could see deep inside, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t an angel anymore, didn’t even want to be, considering the colossal fuckup that’d occurred.
“Maybe,” he said, “I mean, I don’t know, but maybe…”
“Spit it out, cherub.”
“Somehow, possibly, you can siphon the Light of Creation.”
“That sounds crazy,” she whispered.
“I agree wholeheartedly.”
He examined her, thinking fiercely.
Had Yeshua done this on purpose? Was the ‘necromancer’ capable of tapping into the power of creation? Maybe, but probably not while he was dying, which meant someone else had to be involved. But why would God permit the Light of Creation to escape heaven? Why divide the Powers That Be and permit God’s magic to walk the earth?
Scales, he decided. “Elohim must have been balancing the scales.”
“How’s that?”
“The Black Spark and the Light of Creation are similar. They’re both the power of life, only one directs heavenly life and the other doesn’t.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “What makes the two different?”
“Intention.”
“Intention,” she echoed. Her brow creased with confusion. Then her nose wrinkled. “That’s it?”
“One does God’s will, the other doesn’t.”
“Therefore, the other is evil by default,” she said. “I’m evil?”
He smirked. “Surely you must have considered the possibility, vampire.”
“Oh, shut up—”
“But that wasn’t what I meant. When Elohim directs the power, it becomes the Light of Creation. When Yeshua used it to raise the dead, it became the Black Spark. Essentially, it’s from a singular source, the Pneuma of God.”
“The what now?” she asked, but her eyes glazed over like she knew what he was saying and didn’t want to believe it.
“The Spirit of God,” he whispered, though the confession felt like a betrayal, a blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.
She rubbed her face. “If the Light of Creation and the Black Spark are drawn from the same source, what does the power become when I use it?”
“How the hell are you using it?” he asked. “That’s the real question.”
“I don’t have a choice,” she wailed. “The spark wants to be used. It’s ever present and all-encompassing and goddamn pushy—”
“Don’t say goddamn when talking about the Holy Spirit.”
“No, you know what?” She put her hands on her hips. “None of this is my fault. I didn’t ask for it. Hell, I was happy being dead. Okay, maybe not happy, but I didn’t go pick a fight with heaven and try to squirrel away its power—”
He stopped listening because he was thinking hard about what she’d just said. A terrestrial, once-deceased creature—a woman no less—had a direct line to the Spirit of Elohim. Of course Shamayim would protest. They’d stop her, kill her, anything to plug the leak.
Haniel wasn’t surprised that angels wanted her dead. No, the amazing part was they hadn’t destroyed the planet to get the job done.
Still an option, he realized.
If angels tired of pursuing her on foot, they might obliterate the globe. They’d hesitate because such a move would put them on Elohim’s bad side, and no one wanted that, but if push came to shove, in order to spare the heavens, Shamayim would end the world.
The world Maggie occupied, the place where his pretty martyr’s gentle smile and sensitive soul lived.
His hands lifted of their own accord and reached for Lilith’s throat. He should kill her, if not for heaven’s sake, for Maggie’s. He might be able to manage it if he caught her unawares, except he could barely stand and knew he didn’t stand a chance.
Haniel’s hands dropped down to rest on his thighs.
They had time. Heaven had only sent one angel, as far as Lilith had reported, and he had to believe Shamayim wouldn’t take drastic measures without trying harder to resolve the situation quietly.
I’ll think about this later, he decided. There’s no fixing it now.
When Maggie was safe in his arms, he’d find a way to hobble Lilith and leave her trussed up for the angels to find. Oddly, he felt bad about the idea. Lilith had tried to help him—for her own benefit, but still—she’d kept him safe so far. He understood now why she’d go to such extremes for a trinket and a spell.
Oddly, he realized he didn’t want to kill her, not even hurt her. Didn’t matter. He had no other choice.
The world depended on it.
Chapter 16
Lilith stepped outside the room to feed.
The manservant’s cheeks wobbled, fat and fearful, eyes bright and wide.
When Lilith began her pilgrimage (and she saw her trips from the desert as pilgrimages, trials undertaken at the highest inconvenience), she was most excited about new hunting grounds.
That had quickly changed.
First, she’d visited a war-torn land that stank of shit, bombs, and charred bone. Ash rained from the skies, radiation stained the blood. And then she traveled to Siberia to meet Arachne, her oldest and most hostile friend, but the blood tasted of scurvy and borscht. When she dove into the Vatican’s opiate and child-trafficking rings, the harvest was bitter, drug-addled and wan. The third palate was an ongoing failure: Boston.
Fuck Boston, she thought, snuffling at the fat cannibal’s neck. She licked his skin, and the taste reminded her of lard cooked at too high a temperature for too long, rank and rancid.
Inciting perfume flowed through the house, rife with blood, mold, rank smoke, and rat nests. A scratching, rousing scent prevailed over the rest: vampires. If Catherine’s claims were true, then Lazarites filled the nooks and crannies of the basement and attic.
The last thing she wanted was to run into more vampires. Making conversation with Catherine was exhausting enough.
The man shivered and backed away from her, pulling the collar of his dinner jacket tightly around his throat. Snakes slunk wide around him, corralling him and cutting off his escape.
Any other eve, she wouldn’t mind chasing down her dinner, but tonight, games demanded more energy than she was willing to expend.
Lilith wanted to punish the man for the inconvenience Catherine had caused, for every snarky comment she’d uttered. Also, he deserved to suffer for being one more predator she’d have to guard Haniel against.
On a healthy day, she wouldn’t worry about the larger Haniel being overcome by a portly unfit beast. But smaller, hungry creatures find wily ways of bringing down prey. Poison. Knives in the dark, throats slit mid-slumber. Fire.
She ran her finger down his neck, pushing with her nail, drawing a white line that made him tremble. A hairy, mole-splattered neck made robust by illicit meals.
The servant preyed on his fellow man, ate of their flesh. He turned on his own kind, and she hated that.
Punish him.
He shied away from her finger, and she grinned. The carnivorous smile scared him stiff, and he froze. She lunged, latched on. Blood filled her mouth, saturated her tongue, and offered the rich flavor of pork fat with an odd gingivitis chaser. Her mind slipped, happy, fixated, and her teeth became greedy. She tore deep, imbibed heartily.
Oh, god, oh yeah, oh…
She drank him down, intending to stop before he died, to leave him weak, wasting, and on the brink so she could stand back and say, let that be a lesson to you.
When she neared that point of no return, she didn’t stop.
She was still hungry, so unfulfilled and worried that she forgot about the blurry morality she’d wanted to teach him. She gulped every last drop of him and still felt like a glass half full, half parched.
Her wet heart throbbed pleasantly, quickly.
His body dropped, and she left it where it landed. The Lazarites in the basement could still make use of it. They often entertained themselves by chewing flesh, even if it was nutritionally void for them. Like pacifiers appeasing hungry infants.
Lilith didn’t mind giving the scraps to Catherine’s ‘lessers’.
Waste not, want not. Maybe that’s the true lesson here.
She wiped her gluttonous, wet mouth on her arm.
Oh, hell, who am I to preach anyway?
She’d been hungry, so she ate. Nothing more. That’s all the lesson nature offered, and it was enough. Hanging out with an ex-angel and listening to Catherine’s lecture tricked Lilith into feeling petty and overly concerned with notions of justice.
If I don’t give up these soft feelings, soon I’ll be trying to reunite the two would-be lovers instead of performing the ritual.
A vampire servant scuffled by, and Lilith paused, mildly embarrassed by the corpse behind her heel. As soon as the vamp cleared the corner, she ducked into the room and closed the door.
Haniel was still on the mattress, his breath sawing in and out with a subtle rumble. Asleep.
Good. She didn’t want him to see how ruddy her cheeks had become.
Downing an entire pudgy pitcher of blood would knock out an injured vampire, and Lilith was no different. She slipped right into a vast, cavernous hibernation.
Pain chased her through a dreamless sleep and prodded her with short bursts. Snip, snap, snip.
Snakes coiled tight around her, swaddling her, but they were dying. The cold. Their age—they never lasted long, no matter how many or how few she made, or how hard she concentrated. Even the strongest, the meanest, the smartest of them faded too fast. Sparks flickered out, squashed by slow-bleeding internal injuries from the day's violence.
They tightened and fluttered, hugging her as they died.
Chapter 17
Lilith woke, ill at ease, immediately overwhelmed. A steady hum filled her ears like a whispering ocean, like blood coursing through veins.
Something bad has happened.
The putrid stink of sewer pipes and clogged drains stung her nostrils. Musty straw, sodden leaves, rotting rats, an insect colony large enough to occupy Rome.
Her heart hardened with magic, but she didn’t release an ounce of it.
The last scales of sleep fell from her eyes and her sight sharpened. Darkness caught on a shape beside her bed, on a figure cloaked with pitch. Tall as a tree, round and sturdy.
Someone was in the room with her.
“My, my, missus,” the stranger said. “Whatcha doing here? Having a nice nap, are ya?”
“Obviously not, if I wake to such company,” she said.
He slapped his thighs and hooted like he’d never encountered sarcasm before.
She sucked her teeth and peered at him. “Who are you? Never mind. I don't care. Get out of my room.”
“Ah, well, I can't do that, ya see.” He took off his hat and twisted it between his meaty hands. Eyes black as the wet skin of a leech. “Sister says to round y'all up, get ya together-like, so that's what we'll do. Surely a lady such as yourself doesn't mind coming along, no fuss, yeah?
Struggling is so…undignified.”
He didn't so much as blink at the snakes, which were all—down to the last—dead as belly-up goldfish.
Haniel slumbered, unaware, but the smoky scent of imps began to fill the air.
The stranger didn’t give any indication he smelled it. He lowered his chin, opening up his peripheral. His core sank slightly, balance settling.
She froze. The last time she’d seen someone do that, the practiced murderer hadn’t left a room until he’d dropped two dozen bodies.
He’s assessing, strategizing, and preparing.
His fingers worked the cap in his hands, wringing it like a kitchen towel, like a chicken's neck, like he couldn’t wait to get his hands on her.
The combination of eagerness and competence scared her. The more proficient an assailant he was, the fewer chances she’d have to catch him by surprise.
The air hummed continually, and she finally realized what the sound was: the shuffle of a hundred feet whispered through the halls, like rats scrambling inside the walls. She was surrounded, trapped in a windowless room and the only door was behind a killer. And Haniel—the hapless imbecile—hadn’t even woken yet.
She raised her hand to the stranger. “Help me up.”
He chuckled, slapped his cap on his knee, and then plopped it back on his head. When he extended his elbow, she touched his forearm. No tricks. His skin wasn't as warm as she'd like. Hunger would affect his judgment.
She eyed the vampire, thinking his suspenders and the rope belt around his waist would make nice asps. He toed aside dead serpents as if he'd seen all her tricks a million times before. His arm braced her delicately, as if he was leading his elderly mother through the park, and not a hint of hostility rolled from him.
“Can I leave my slave here?” she said. “He hasn't had a wink of sleep for days. He's practically dead on his feet.”
The newcomer chortled as if she'd cracked a hilarious joke.
“Dead on his feet!” he echoed. “Better not leave him behind, sad to say, missus. Sister said to bring everyone together in the library, whether they be breathing or no. In fact, my brothers are stacking bones as we speak. If the slave be too sick to move, I'll be happy to have him carried about.”
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