by Cate Corvin
I found myself saddled with an emotion I was unfamiliar with feeling towards archangels: sympathy. He hadn’t abandoned humanity in our time of need; he’d just been screwed over by the same guy as everyone else.
I came to a decision as he sat there, shaking his head in dejection.
“Michael. I’d like to propose to a trade.”
He looked up, his golden eyes hollow. I took that as an encouraging sign to continue.
“We’re hunting several people right now. It’s going to take everything we have, and, as you can see-” I glanced at Tascius, giving off his moonlit glow- “One of our number is going through some unprecedented changes. If you could be the one to guide him into this new form, then… we could help you search Hell for Raphael. After we’ve accomplished our mission, of course.” Michael just gazed at me steadily, his eyes slightly narrowed.
Despite his foul mouth and mood, there was something I trusted about him. The sense of his power didn’t give me the same chills of trepidation I’d always gotten from Gabriel and the others.
And with Tascius no longer guessing at the changes the transmutation might force on him, perhaps we’d stand a much better chance at finding Lucifer and Vyra soon.
Michael finally stood straight up, walking as far as he could. The chains holding him there clanked with every step. “Deal. Now where are we going and who are we hunting?”
I glanced at Azazel, who shook his head minutely and made a tiny little ‘get on with it’ motion behind his back, out of Michael’s sight.
“We’re searching for Lucifer Morningstar and a succubus named Erisvyra D’ailani. They’ve been captured by Satan… who we will be killing, of course. He went on the run after our first attempt, but once I’ve repaired the Sword of Light, I intend to try again. Driving him out was how we found you at all.”
Michael nodded, his wings rustling. “Excellent. Lovely plan. Now get these bracelets off my legs. The sooner we find them, the sooner I get to return home and make these bastards sorry they were ever born.”
I had to give him points for enthusiasm. One of the Chainlings unlocked the manacles, and Michael stepped out and stretched his wings, nearly filling half the cell for forcing Azazel to lean back.
Then his gaze landed on the empty tankard. “But first, is there any more whiskey?”
8
Belial
“Are you sulking?”
One of my ears twitched backwards towards the sound of Melisande’s voice. She was perched between my shoulder blades, so light I barely felt her, but she had an iron grip on two handfuls of my mane.
I felt the tiny vibration of her laugh. “You are sulking. Poor baby.”
My answering growl rolled through the air like thunder. Immediately afterwards, several piercing shrieks cut through the air.
Right. I’d forgotten the undignified contraption Melisande had come up with last night, a harness with two large baskets that rested on either side of my ribcage. Each basket was packed full of female demons. They must’ve thought I was growling at them.
Most of them were injured, but not life-threateningly enough to prevent them from being transported in the baskets. My angry angel had offered me up as a courier service, carrying displaced demons to their respective Circles, or to the succubi temple for healing. Not all of them were enthused about being in this close of a proximity to me.
Me. The Prince of the Seventh Circle. Carrying around demons like a pack-mule.
All while that archangel sat on his ass and drank all my whiskey.
He’d just had a hundred-year nap; he should be out here carrying demons around. But Melisande had gotten him settled into a new room, then a messenger had arrived from Pytho, asking for aid… and the next thing I knew, a pair of big golden eyes had looked up at me pleadingly.
I’d said yes.
Then the baskets had happened.
I grumbled and shook my head, carefully enough that I wouldn’t dislodge the little angel on my shoulders.
Melisande leaned forward, stretching herself out and stroking my fur in long, soothing motions. “I promise I won’t let him drink it all. And I’ll make it up to you for all this.”
Hell, I’d carry demons in baskets all day as long as she and Sarai were safe, no matter how undignified it was.
She continued to murmur in my ear as we brought them up to the Second Circle and left them in the care of the succubi, promising all manner of interesting things when we returned home.
I was picturing all of those things as we descended through the Sixth Circle, but the scent of incense, oil, and herbs filled my nose along with the smell of smoke.
I felt Leviathan’s presence before I saw him, his slick yet thorny magic permeating the air and land of his princedom. The Prince of Heresy had risked more than many of the others in our attack on the Pit- his Witches and Cursed Men had been instrumental in ripping away the magical veil that protected Satan from attack, but they’d suffered heavy losses.
Despite the need for haste in setting up the pyres, the people of Heresy had put as much love and care into their funeral pyres as time allowed. Of all the Circles, they had the most elaborate funeral rituals, each one often corresponding to the corpses’ paganistic alignments.
“Should we help?” Melisande asked quietly. “We’re responsible for a lot of this, after all.”
I paused and turned towards the pyres. Demons were neatly stacking the wood and weaving garlands of flowers, bones, and coins over the constructs.
Leviathan looked up, his eyes gleaming red under his skull mask. He held a pitcher of anointing oil, his fingertips stained red from the paint he’d been using to draw symbols on the skin of the dead.
“Prince Belial,” he said tonelessly, inclining his head. “Princess Melisande.”
I felt my angry angel stiffen on my shoulders. She was going to need to get used to it; she’d come a long way from the bottom tier of my arena. The moment I’d accepted her as my consort, she’d joined the hierarchy of Dis.
Maybe the average citizen wouldn’t know, or care, who she was, but every Prince would afford her the respect she deserved, whether she liked it or not.
Melisande took the title in stride and slid off my back, walking around to stand near my head and rest her hand on my nose. “Prince Leviathan. Is there anything you need? I’d be glad to help you in any way I can.”
He looked at her, and I felt her trepidation through our mate bond. I hadn’t forgotten the jolt of fear I’d felt from her the first time she ever laid eyes on Leviathan and the endless scars on his face.
After a fraught silence, he finally handed her a brass pitcher. The scent of oil and herbs drifted up to my nose. “The dead must be anointed before they can pass on. The pyres to the east still need to be attended to.”
Melisande clutched the pitcher and nodded. She opened her mouth like she was going to say something else, then shut it and turned away.
I followed her, careful not to plant my paws too close. She turned her head to the side as soon as we were out of earshot. “Sometimes with the way he looks at me, I’m convinced he’s planning on using me for his next sacrifice.”
I snorted and shook my head a little, unable to speak out loud without half the Circle hearing me. Leviathan just hated talking to people. If I had to put Melisande’s life in another Prince’s hands, he’d be at the top of my list for the most honorable and trustworthy.
We found the eastern pyres with the dead arranged in a neat row atop it. They’d been cleaned and dressed in shrouds, but they were unanointed, and the pyres were still undecorated.
I remained in the middle of the main road as Melisande circled to the other side, carefully tipping the pitcher and letting the pale yellow oil pool over their still faces and hair.
“I’m surprised he let me do this at all,” she said quietly, moving down to soak the shrouds. “So much of this is my fault, Belial.”
Sitting back on my haunches, I stared at her, willing her to hear the words
in her head: it’s not your fault at all.
“All I think about is what could’ve happened if I’d just been faster, if I hadn’t hesitated… and when I’m not thinking about that, I think about what must be happening to them right now.”
Her lower lip trembled, and she bit down on it hard. When she moved on to the next body, her face was still.
“I wonder if Lucifer feels pain from the soul-bond, or what Satan is forcing him to do. I wonder if Vyra is safe, if maybe there’s still some small part of Lucifer that remembers who she is and wants to protect her, or if…”
She trailed off, her lips flattening. “I shouldn’t think about it. All of our energy should be focused on tracking them down and finding them, not worrying ourselves sick over it. I can’t help anyone if I just sit around and cry about it.”
Melisande looked up at me, her golden eyes hard. “We’re going to get them back,” she said. “I already know this. I don’t have time to waste entertaining bullshit nightmares about it; we’re going to do what we need to do.”
I growled in agreement, padding down the street to remain parallel to her as she moved on. A small line had appeared between her brows, growing deeper as she became lost in thought.
A gentle breeze kicked up, blowing a cloud of smoke away from the Circles and letting a hint of the Brightside sun peek through. The sunlight caught in the violet strands of my angel’s hair, and for a moment I was distracted by the shine of it.
The brass pitcher in her hand sparkled, sending out blinding rays of light. I blinked, realizing that wasn’t the only light shining.
In one of the tall buildings behind her, an obsidian tower listing slightly to the side, the sun gleamed off something silver in one of the windows. A tiny pinpoint of light, catching the bolt of a crossbow.
All of my senses reached out as the bowman pulled the trigger, the tiniest audible click.
There was no time to move. I roared, blasting Melisande with the sound.
She flinched, dropping the pitcher and splattering oil everywhere.
And gasped as the bolt missed her heart and ripped over her shoulder, opening a line that spilled gleaming red over her front and sent several dark feathers flying off the edge of her wing.
The bolt buried itself in my foreleg, a pain I didn’t feel at all as I jumped over the pyres and stood over her, gently pressing her to the ground.
A panic of thoughts blared through my mind. I needed to shift, to hunt down the assassin- but while she was under me, she was shielded from all sides.
To leave her defenseless, or stay here? The question gnawed at me for several tense seconds.
The assassin vanished from the window. The breeze carried the faint sound of a crossbow hitting stone as they abandoned it, but the aura of the Sixth Circle was suddenly dangerous, power rising from the stones and from the skulls that hung everywhere.
Leviathan was looking through them, searching through the empty eye sockets of the bones for the intruder.
I took a deep breath, intending to catch their scent and commit it to memory, but the fresh coppery scent of blood filled my nose: Melisande’s blood. I heard her gasping breaths beneath my chest.
Prince Leviathan’s aura grew closer, furious power rippling from him. The demon Prince came into sight, accompanied by several Witches who trailed behind him. The tang of magic drifted from them, but Leviathan took one look at the bleeding angel beneath me, and his eyes darkened behind his mask.
He closed them, tilting his head upwards. The sun gleamed off the bright bone of his mask, and another cloud drifted by, casting us into shadow again.
He raised one hand and opened it, then snapped it closed.
A strangled scream came from the tower. The would-be assassin floated through one of the lower windows, twisting and writhing in midair until he came to a halt in front of the Prince.
Leviathan held power over blood. He gripped every drop of it in the demon’s body, contorting the assassin into terrible shapes as he controlled the ebb and flow of the blood in his body.
The assassin screamed again, a sound of pure agony as Leviathan studied them. “One of Mammon’s loyalists,” the Prince said dispassionately. “I sentence you to death for desecrating the laws of my Circle, and for the attempted murder of a Prince’s consort.”
If I’d been thinking more clearly, I would’ve taken the assassin prisoner and questioned them until there was nothing left of them but shreds of flesh.
But I wasn’t thinking clearly. The smell of Melisande’s blood was still in the air, the copper scent coating my throat.
Leviathan’s lips tightened, and he stretched his fingers wide.
The assassin was still hovering several feet above the ground, and the first drops of blood splattered across the obsidian below him like rain. He groaned again, unable to make any other noise as the blood leaked from his eyes, ears, and nose, and finally poured out of his mouth in a river.
Melisande made a small noise of horror as Leviathan ripped the blood through the demon’s pores, creating a red mist and leaving the body nothing but a dry husk.
The Prince of Heresy lowered his hands, letting the husk drop to the street. The crunch of dry bones and skin against the wet smack of blood was music to my ears, an agonizing death for the man who’d tried to kill my woman.
“Do you need help?” Leviathan asked Melisande. His mask was splattered with blood, his hands wet with it.
Melisande climbed out from under me and stood up. She’d ripped off a length of her skirt and held it pressed against the wound in her shoulder, but the cloth was already soaked. She shook her head. “Belial was the one hit,” she said, her voice tight. “This is just a graze.”
She knelt by my paw, and I realized my fur was wet with my own blood. The bolt was still buried deep in my flesh, a slowly leaking wound.
With the danger completely annihilated, I shifted back to human form, where the pain was much more apparent. It sent barbed shafts of agony through my arm, but I had to stop myself from snorting in amusement at Melisande’s concern.
“Just a splinter, angel,” I assured her, and gripped the bolt in my forearm to rip it out.
She winced, drawing a sharp breath between her teeth as the sound of steel being yanked from flesh filled the air.
“Belial,” she whispered, but my muscles were already knitting themselves together, the skin closing over the hole in my arm.
I held out my bloody arm for her inspection. “Good as new. The bolt wasn’t poisoned or holy. But you were hit.”
I batted her hands away and forced her to hold still so I could inspect her shoulder. She frowned and gave me a look that told me I’d catch hell later, but let me lift the sodden mass of cloth off her bare skin.
The bolt had just missed her wing, only catching a few downy feathers, and had left a graze no more than a few centimeters deep. I released a breath of relief. She’d bled quite a bit, but the blood flow was already slowing to a crawl.
Her face was pale. “Belial, the other day when I was coming home, I was sure someone had been following me.”
I held back a sigh. “And you didn’t mention it until now?”
Melisande raised an eyebrow. “I was distracted. There was a lot happening.”
I wasn’t going to put the blame on her shoulders. Not when she’d just come so close to having her heart split in half, literally. “From now on, tell me when you think something is off. If anyone wants you dead, they’re going to act while Dis is in total upheaval.” I kissed her forehead, letting her know I wasn’t blaming her. “I’d rather be on defense until Adranos gets the Ninth Circle under his control.”
She nodded, her hand rising to cover the wound again. “Thank you, Prince Leviathan. I owe you for this.”
He cocked his head, and finally waved her off. “Go. Heal yourself.”
My mate carefully stepped over the puddle of spilled oil, managing to avoid stepping right into the blood of the dead assassin.
Leviathan ju
st looked at her. “Don’t even think about apologizing for that.”
I held back a snort. Leviathan was notorious for hating both thanks and apologies, or basically anything that forced him to interact with other people from outside his Circle.
Melisande just nodded, still pale, and rounded the mess of blood and oil. I followed her closely, coming down from the high-alert adrenaline rush of near death.
All I could see in my mind’s eye was what could’ve happened if I hadn’t seen the assassin, or if they’d decided to strike while she was riding on my shoulders.
I was just fortunate roaring in her face had caused her to flinch low enough for the bolt to miss her.
Lost in dark thoughts, I didn’t realize we were in the Seventh Circle until Melisande reached up and gripped my face with her uninjured arm.
“Stop that,” she said, scowling again.
“Stop what?” I replayed the scene my imagination had conjured, Melisande slumped over my neck with a bolt through her throat, bleeding into my fur as she choked her last. Her light, and Sarai’s light, going out forever.
“Dwelling on what could have happened,” she said, her tone just shy of snapping. “We’re both alive, and we’ll be more careful about watching our backs next time.”
I couldn’t help but smile despite my darker thoughts. “You’re an optimist, love. I would prefer to go down to Treachery right now and root out every last one of those cowardly worms.”
She shook her head. “Not now. Help me clean up this blood, and maybe by the time we’re done, you won’t want to start a rampage.”
“I always want to start a rampage,” I said truthfully, but she’d already taken my hand and started dragging me back to the arena. She knew that given half a chance, I’d be prowling, on the hunt and ready to kill.
Melisande bleeding. Melisande dying. The could-have-beens swirled in my head like a black storm.
For all her optimism about next time, I still had the smell of her blood in my nose.