The black blade had changed like the rest of her. Glowing silver and green patterns now raced up and down the length of it, and the black flames that had come from it before were laced with a brilliant green that glowed brighter than anything else in Hell.
Persephone looked up and her jaw dropped open. “Nyx? What the fuck…?”
It was as far as she got before Nyx descended on her, sword swinging. Three precision strikes smashed the Hellstone on Persephone’s leg and wings. Nyx grabbed her hand and spread the don’t-notice-me field she had created over them both. “Shut up,” said Nyx. “Come on!” She pulled hard, yanking Persephone into the air. Persephone flapped awkwardly for the first few moments as her wings, still healing, struggled to bear her weight. Then, as the feathers grew back, Persephone flew with more and more confidence.
Nyx! Persephone said in Nyx’s mind. How did you get out? I thought you were gone for sure!
That’s two of us. Nyx winged them away from the Pleasure Palace to the mountains beyond. She knew a cave where they could retreat to, temporarily. They’re going to be after you soon. And then, they’re probably going to start looking for me.
No chance they’re going to blame my escape on crappy engineering?
Nyx could hear the humor in Persephone’s voice and grinned. Glad you’re feeling better.
Nyx felt Persephone shrug. It was only pain, Persephone sent. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Nyx looked behind them and saw Descended Angels circling the Palace of Pleasure. They were waiting, and Nyx didn’t need to guess for what. Lucifer would be coming soon, and then the search for Persephone would begin.
And then he’ll wonder how Persephone got out and start looking for me.
Nyx spotted the cave and dove the two of them down. They landed at the mouth and slipped inside. Persephone wrapped her arms around Nyx and kissed her hard, her tongue driving into the other’s mouth. Nyx accepted the kiss for a minute before pushing Persephone away. “Not the time.”
“Not the time?” Persephone sounded anguished. “I’ve been forced to watch everyone else fucking for who knows how long, and you’re telling me now is not the time? For fuck’s sake, give me some relief!”
Nyx would have laughed if timing hadn’t been so bad. “Later! Right now, we have to get Ishtar and get out of Hell.”
“Screw that,” said Persephone. “We get Ishtar, we raise an army, and we crush Lucifer like an insect!”
“We can’t,” said Nyx. “Not yet.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Tribunal,” said Nyx. “We need to defeat him first.”
“That asshole.” Persephone looked closely at Nyx. “You do agree he’s an asshole now, yes?”
“Oh, yes,” said Nyx.
“Good.” Persephone nodded in satisfaction. “I’ll enjoy seeing him get a little of what we just suffered. Where’s Ishtar?”
“Lucifer’s palace,” said Nyx, wondering if it were possible to punish Tribunal as Angels were punished. She hadn’t thought it through yet, what she could safely do to the Son of God.
“Well. Fuck.”
“Yep.”
Persephone sat down. “So how do we do it?” She looked over Nyx. “And apropos of nothing, Nyx, why do you have green veins running all over your body and green hair?”
“Green hair?”
“Emerald green,” Persephone confirmed. “It looks kinda sexy.”
Nyx rolled her eyes. “I knew about the veins… the green is because I’ve got Epiphenia inside my skin.”
“What?” Persephone’s eyes went wide with disbelief. “Epiphenia died. I felt her die. It shook through Hell like an earthquake. Her presence just vanished.” She shook her head. “That’s the last thing I remember feeling before they took my head. I think my last thought was, ‘Well, we’re fucked,’ and then things went dark for a while. When I came back together, Lucifer was putting me inside that statue.”
“It was Lucifer’s work?”
“Asmodeus.”
“Ah. He never could sculpt for shit.”
“True. But that doesn’t explain how Epiphenia is alive.”
“Nothing dies in Hell,” said Nyx. “Remember?”
“Yeah, but…” Persephone looked confused. “The whole purpose behind bringing her to Hell was to kill her.”
“And somehow she survived,” said Nyx, looking at the green under her skin. It reminded her of the young moss that grew on the stones of her temples. Cool, quiet, dense with life. “Or, at least, part of her survived. There’s a lot of power in me that wasn’t there before, except when Tribunal put it into me…”
Persephone sniggered. Nyx glared. Persephone tried to change her expression. “Sorry. Giddy with freedom.” She coughed twice and arranged her features into a more serious expression. “So, what do we do now?”
Nyx shook her head. “I was thinking something sneaky, but now that Lucifer knows you’re gone, he’s going to be looking for you.”
“Well. There’s no way to hide down here…”
“But there is a way to disappear,” said Nyx. “I can make us invisible to any Angel’s mind, including Lucifer. And I can make them not notice us physically, as long as we don’t do anything to attract attention.”
“Like breaking Ishtar out of Lucifer’s palace.”
“Like that, yes,” agreed Nyx. “Once we do that, the ones who saw us will keep seeing us, and can call others, even if our minds are invisible to theirs.”
“Then we leave no one alive,” said Persephone. “A quick strike in, take the heads of anyone who sees us, and run like Hell. By the time they heal, we’ll be out of sight and out of mind.” Persephone grinned. “So to speak.”
Nyx nodded. It was as good a plan as any.
“All right.” Nyx grinned. “Ready to have Lucifer completely lose his shit?”
Persephone grinned back. “Always.”
Nyx took Persephone’s hand and with a thought made them invisible to every mind in Hell.
Chapter 4
A.D. 1120
Arcana sat on the Dome on the Rock, looked over Jerusalem, and despaired.
In the mosque beneath her, she could hear the seven men who had volunteered to be Knights Templar setting up their possessions. Arcana wasn’t sure it was right to use the mosque as a base for the knights. But then, she wasn’t sure about much anymore, except that she couldn’t find a way back to Heaven, and that she desperately needed to get there.
It doesn’t make any sense, Arcana thought as she watched the sun rise. She could hear the light moving across the earth, could hear the music of the world and the worlds beyond the atmosphere. She could sense the movements of the humans below as they began their days in the city, and the ones on the other side of the world as they went to bed for the night. She could hear and see everything except for the entrance to Heaven.
None of it makes any sense.
A.D. 1105
“Are you sure?” demanded the merchant for the tenth time.
“Yes, by all that is holy, I am sure,” said Arcana with some asperity.
The two of them were in a small, airless room where the only light came slipping in between the string of beads that served for a door. Outside, they could hear the noisy market they had come through to meet a man who claimed to have treasures of the ancient world.
Jerusalem had become a home of sorts for Arcana. There was still so much to be fixed, even though the city was much improved from two years ago. The Christians had done as Arcana told them, which was good, because a cleansing fire would have been the logical next step if they hadn’t, and Arcana was pretty sure God wouldn’t have approved of that.
But as she had nowhere else to go, Arcana had rented rooms there, paid for with precious metals she’d dug from the ground and shaped in her spare time. And there was a lot of spare time, here. Arcana had never thought she would grow bored, but time moved differently on Earth, and there was no way to make it go faster, even for an Angel.
; Arcana had searched for Caelum and Orion a hundred times, crisscrossing the deserts and hills near Jerusalem, flying into caves and through woods, then taking herself around the world, looking for some sign of their essences. There was nothing. Whatever was left of them had long been scattered to the winds, so that finding even the smallest particle was impossible.
Every month, Arcana tried reaching back up to Heaven, flying upward by the light of the full moon, and stretched her wings toward Heaven. And every month she’d come back down, unable to locate the Gates. She’d even followed souls upward, to the place where they disappeared into Heaven’s realm. Arcana could not follow, no matter how much of her will and power she bent toward the effort. For an instant—as the soul passed through—she would be blind and deaf, impervious to the chill glory of the celestial regions. When she returned to herself, the soul would be gone and the sky seamless.
The Gates to Hell, interestingly enough, were wide open, though no one and nothing came out. If God himself had not forbidden the Angels of Heaven to enter Hell, Arcana would have flown down, grabbed Nyx by the scruff of the neck and squeezed until Nyx told her what was going on.
And still, there was so much time.
Arcana, not sure what else to do, had begun exploring humanity. Sometimes she would talk to the women in the market, other times sit in the taverns. Two days before, she had been talking, and a merchant of antiquities had asked her to serve as bodyguard while he searched for items of worth to sell to the Christians who were beginning to come as tourists. She had said yes.
Now Arcana sat in this market in Jaffa, dressed as her warrior self, with long hair braided behind and a grey surcoat over her chainmail. Her sword was sheathed beside her, and a crusader’s shield was on her back. She was female—Arcana didn’t often change her sex—but she had cast a glamour on herself that caused anyone who looked at her to only think “Knight,” not to question her sex or to wonder which country she was from.
The merchant, Arcana had discovered, was stunningly dishonest and extremely rude. His company made Arcana better understand the human saying, “Idle hands do the devil’s work.” Because she had been idle, she had agreed to work with this man. And in the course of the last two days, she had seen him cheat his customers, lie to his suppliers, steal from whomever he could, and abuse animals and people with the same zeal.
Arcana had been ready to inflict a lesson on him when they’d come to this place. Now, staring at the scroll in front of her, she was almost willing to relent. If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have seen this.
It was at least a thousand years old. The papyrus it was on was weak and broken in many places. The Muslim man who was showing it to them had opened it with the greatest of care, but even so, Arcana could hear more of the papyrus crackling apart.
“It is truly an antique thing?” asked the merchant. “Of great value?”
“It is written in Latin,” said Arcana. “In the style of the Romans. It is on papyrus, as the Romans would have used, and it is dated as the second year of the reign of Caligula Caesar.” She gently touched the cracked papyrus. “It is the order for the building of a new temple to the Goddess Nyx in Ptolemais, now called Arca, in what was once Galilee. What its value is depends on the reader.”
“Does it have anything to do with our Lord?”
“No,” said Arcana. At least not as you know him.
Arcana stared at the scroll, confused. It did have to do with the one they worshipped as Jesus, just not by that name. The words were well written, the language perfectly clear, and it did not make any sense at all:
Let there be, on the south wall of the temple, inscribed in the brick and inlaid with precious stones, the story of Nyx and her consort, known as Tribunal.”
“Tribunal.”
“What?” said the merchant.
Arcana realized she had said his name out loud. She shook off her reverie. “Apologies, merchant. The scroll is about pagan gods, Nyx and Tribunal, not Jesus.” What in the name of GOD himself was she playing at?
“Then it is valueless!” declared the merchant. “Worth nothing to me. No one will want it, and no one will buy it!” He glared at the Muslim man who was holding the scroll. “You’ve wasted my time! You drag me here to this hovel, and this is what you show me? You thief! You flea-ridden cheat!”
“I have not!” protested the man. “You said you were looking for ancient relics!”
“Of Jesus, you idiot!” The merchant rose and waved at the man. “Kill him.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Arcana, rising to her feet.
“The infidel dog tried to cheat me. Kill him!”
“No,” said Arcana. “He has done you no harm.”
“I have hired you, and you’ll do as you are told. Kill him!”
“No, I won’t,” said Arcana. She reached under her surcoat, pulled out the pouch he had given to her, and tossed it to him. “Consider me no longer in your employ.”
“What?” The merchant stared, turning an interesting shade of magenta. “You can’t do this!”
“Go away.” Arcana pointed. “Straight out the door, turn left, run. You’ll be at the edge of the market in less than the time it takes you to say the Lord’s Prayer. Which I suggest you do. Maybe he’ll keep you from being murdered before you reach the Christian Quarter.”
“But… But…”
“Go,” said Arcana, and this time the power of her voice made the merchant quail. He grabbed his bags and dashed out the door. Arcana listened to his rapid footsteps retreating down the alley. Then she looked again at the scroll in front of her.
“Do… do you want it?” asked the Muslim man.
“No,” said Arcana in flawless Aramaic. She handed the man a silver coin. “This is for the trouble of showing it to me. Do you have any like it?”
The man shook his head. “No. Only this one.”
Arcana nodded, thanked the man again, and stepped out of the small shop. Minutes later she was far above the city, winging north for Arca, which had once been Ptolemais.
Arcana circled the city from above, studying the layout and trying to guess where the temple had been. The description in the scroll had been fairly exact, so if it still stood, it would be obvious. Of course, the chances of it being unchanged after a thousand years were slim. But it had been one of the grander buildings in the city, and that meant it might still be in use in some form or another.
I still don’t understand why she would want a temple. Nyx had never wanted to be worshipped. Arcana had been her friend for eons before the Fall. Being a goddess had never interested Nyx. Even when Nyx was leading the Angels in the rebellion against God, she had no desire to replace him. She thought of humans as nearly mindless, short-lived grubs without the dignity of animals. “Why make them look like us,” Nyx had said, “but so imperfect and weak?” Arcana remembered an argument one day when Nyx declared the tiger the high point of creation. She had rebelled not out of pride, but from a desire to be free of rules.
So why did she claim to be a goddess and take Jerusalem? wondered Arcana. To deny it to the Christians and spite God’s will?
There.
The large, round building was now part of a mosque. Arcana willed herself to be unseen and landed in front of it. A thought changed her clothes to that of a devoted Muslim man, and another made her sudden appearance in the mosque’s courtyard unnoticed and unremarkable. Anyone there who was asked would just say she had walked in.
Arcana took off her shoes at the entryway and stepped inside. The prayer hall was mostly empty, as it was between prayers. The carpets on the floor were soft and felt nice on her feet, and the air was clear of the incense that the Christians used in their places of worship. There were a few people praying in the main space, and Arcana walked behind them. She looked hard at the walls, trying to see which were parts of the original.
“Women are not allowed in this part of the prayer room,” said a stuffy voice from behind her. “And they should not be dressed as
men!”
The man had a long, neatly kept beard and long, clean hair. Like her, he wore a loose robe and hat, and like her, his feet were bare. Surprisingly, he had seen through the glamour that fooled most others. His eyes were clear and seemed free of malice and anger. He was most certainly disapproving of her but was not angry or hurtful. His soul blazed brightly with righteousness.
Interesting.
“You are blond,” he said. “Not from here, then, though we have a few blonds. I do not know what the rules are in your mosque, but you come away from here, woman, before you distract the men.”
“I am not a woman,” said Arcana.
“You are not a man!” said the man. “That leaves only one other choice.”
“No,” said Arcana. “It doesn’t.” She turned her attention back to the walls. “How much of the old temple is left?”
“Temple?” the man practically spluttered on the word. “This is a mosque. It has always been a mosque!”
Arcana smiled and walked toward the far wall. “No, it hasn’t.”
The man spluttered again but followed her. “I am the imam of this mosque. The twenty-fifth imam and I tell you this has always been a mosque.”
“There,” Arcana pointed. “That stonework is older than the rest.”
“Where?” The imam peered at it. “How can you tell?”
“Different way of putting the bricks together,” said Arcana. “Different materials.”
The imam peered at the brick, which had been painted over in a geometric pattern, then back at Arcana. Again he asked, “How can you tell?”
Arcana stepped back beside the man. “There’s something underneath it.” Her eyes narrowed, and her Angelic vision saw through the new to the old. The mural was worn down long before it had been painted over, but she could still make out images of men and women dancing, playing instruments, and lying in congress with one another. The inlay had been there, but it had been pried from the walls even before the painting had faded. Still, parts of the words remained. Arcana read of how Nyx was goddess of plenty, of fertility, of strength, and of vengeance, and was beloved of…
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