All the heat vanished from the globe of fire. It was replaced by the bone-chilling cold of the blue flames. And inside, as they consumed Tribunal’s flesh, he relived all of his deceptions, his actions, his tortures, and his murders, as if he were the one to whom the actions had been done.
Nyx was still standing, watching, when Michael landed beside her. “The field is ours,” he said. He looked at Tribunal. “That’s a bit much isn’t it?”
“Have you ever been in Hellfire, Michael?” Nyx asked.
“No.”
“I spent a thousand years in the Lake of Fire because I wanted free will. That bastard tried to destroy Creation. He can damn well sit there until I’m good and ready to let him out.”
Michael frowned at the screaming, burning figure inside the globe of Hellfire. “And when will that be?”
Nyx turned her back on Tribunal. “Not for a fair while, yet.” Nyx walked across the battlefield, dodging bits of bloody Angel flesh, wings and feathers. “There are some things I have to do first.” She looked back over her shoulder. “If God asks, I’m keeping my promise.”
“Don’t worry,” said Michael. “He knows.”
Persephone opened her eyes as the sun was rising. She blinked in surprise and looked around. She was standing on the beach on their island in the Pacific Ocean. She smiled at Nyx. “Well, so far being dead looks good.”
“You’re not dead,” said Nyx. “Not anymore.”
“That’s a relief.” She looked Nyx up and down. “You’ve changed.”
“So have you.”
Persephone looked down. Like Nyx, she was no longer pale as snow. There was color in her flesh. She spread her wings and was surprised to find them gray instead of black. “Well, this is interesting. Now what?”
“Well, that’s up to us.”
“But we’re not Descended anymore.”
“No.”
“So we don’t have to go back to Hell.”
“No.”
“Good. Can we visit Heaven?”
“I don’t know,” said Nyx. “But since we’ve both faced the wrath of God and been unmade…”
“Then we should be allowed back for visits.” Persephone smiled. “I missed the gardens.” She stretched out, rubbed her hand down her body. “Mmmm… death makes me horny.”
“Everything makes you horny,” said Nyx, grinning. “Hold out for a while. We have some other stops to make.”
Persephone sashayed toward Nyx, putting some extra swing into her hips. “Surely we can take a few minutes.” She wrapped her arms around Nyx and gave her a long, deep kiss. Their tongues wrestled for a bit, then separated. “What do you say?”
“Not with the children watching.”
Persephone spun around, saw Epiphenia, squealed in delight and ran to her, throwing her arms around the Earth Angel. “You’re back, too!”
Epiphenia hugged her and smiled. “Apparently I am,” she said. Unlike Nyx and Persephone, she had returned to her true self, with her bright red hair and her green dress. “Thanks to Mother.”
“Thanks to God, actually,” said Nyx. “I never thought I’d hear myself say that. He gave me the power to deal with Tribunal and to find you two.”
“Find us?” Persephone’s eyebrows rose. “We were unmade!”
“You were still there,” said Nyx. “You were just too scattered to come back.”
“Oh.” Persephone thought about it. “That means Ishtar is out there, too.”
“Yes.”
Persephone bit her lip. “Are we bringing her back?”
Nyx looked out at the ocean and sighed. “We are. But not here.”
Persephone smiled and spread her new wings wide. “Then let’s go!” She jumped into the air and soared in a wide circle. “Hey! Can I kick her ass again?”
Nyx grinned but didn’t answer. She had her own plans for Ishtar.
Ishtar opened her eyes in darkness to the sounds of screams. She was in black armor, with her sword and whip in hand. She looked down at herself. She was unchanged and everything looked to be as it had been before she had died.
I’m alive, she thought. I’m alive and in Hell. How did…?
“Too bad it didn’t leave a scar,” said Persephone. “That would have taught you a lesson.”
Ishtar spun and saw Persephone, Nyx, and Epiphenia standing behind her. Nyx and Persephone had changed. The cold white of their skin had become as warm as if they were alive. Persephone smiled at Ishtar. “Hello, asshole.”
Ishtar’s hand went for her sword and froze in place as if the air around it had turned to amber.
“Be nice,” said Nyx. “Persephone, you too.”
“How am I alive?” demanded Ishtar.
“I put you back together again,” said Nyx.
“In Hell.”
“In my palace in Hell,” said Nyx. “Your palace now.”
Ishtar’s eyes went wide. “Bullshit.”
“Nope.”
“You’re Queen of Hell.”
“Not anymore,” said Nyx. “I don’t want this place anymore.”
“Just like that?” sneered Ishtar. “You’re done and I get to be Queen of Hell? Bullshit! Fucking Bullshit, Nyx! I betrayed you. I stabbed you in the back. And I get to be Queen of Hell?”
“Yes,” said Nyx. “You get to be Queen of Hell.”
“What do you get out of it?”
“Heaven, if I want it.”
Ishtar’s eyes flashed red. “How come you get Heaven?”
“Because I went there, and God unmade me. Persephone fought Tribunal, who is also God, and was unmade by him. So when God brought me back, and I brought Persephone back, we were no longer Descended, having faced God’s wrath.”
“You, on the other hand,” said Persephone, “just got destroyed by me. So it doesn’t count.”
Ishtar took a moment to process that. When she had, she spat onto the spiked earth of Hell. “Who the fuck wants Heaven, anyway?”
“Lucifer and his followers are waiting in the Lake of Fire,” said Nyx. “I had Michael chain them up and dump them in. You can get them out when you want. You’ll also have to deal with the Mother of Demons.”
“Lucifer?” Ishtar’s face brightened up. “Oh, I’ll have such fun with him.”
“You do that,” said Nyx. “Goodbye, Ishtar.”
“I’ll come to visit,” promised Persephone. “I won’t stay, but I’ll come visit once in a while.”
“Why the fuck would I let you visit?” demanded Ishtar. “You killed me.”
“You’re just sulky because I won,” said Persephone. “At least you don’t have to spend a week taking it like a boy this time.”
“Fuck you, bitch,” said Ishtar, but there was the ghost of a smile behind the words.
Nyx opened a gate to Earth right above them and spread her gray wings. With two quick strokes, she was in the air. Persephone and Epiphenia flew up right behind her.
“Hey!” yelled Ishtar. “What about Tribunal?”
“Don’t worry,” said Nyx. “He’s next.”
“Good,” said Ishtar. She watched them disappear through the gate to Earth. Then she smiled and walked out of the throne room into the plains of Hell. “Get me a harpoon,” she ordered the first Descended she saw. “It’s time to fish Lucifer out of the Lake.”
Seeing the look on Ishtar’s face, the Descended did exactly as she was told.
Michael raised a hand in greeting to Nyx and the others as they came up from Hell. “Welcome back.” He smiled at Nyx. “I have to say, I expected you to take longer.”
“I know,” said Nyx.
“Are you ready to deliver Tribunal back to God?”
“Part of him.”
“What?”
Nyx grinned at Michael’s confusion and let the ball of fire around Tribunal subside. Tribunal collapsed at the sudden cessation of pain. Nyx waited until his eyes had grown back and most of the flesh had returned to his bones before saying, “Hi, Tribunal. How are you feeling?”<
br />
He growled at her, and tried to gather power. Nyx smashed her own power down on him hard enough that he was knocked flat and driven six inches into the rock beneath where he lay. “Don’t even try it,” she said.
“Fuck you,” gasped Tribunal. “Just kill me and be done with it.”
“Kill you?” repeated Nyx. “Oh, I’m not going to kill you. I promised God that I wouldn’t.”
Tribunal pried his head out of the stone and glared up at her. “Then let me go.”
“Oh, I will. Both of you.”
“What?”
His expression of confusion was nearly identical to Michael’s. It made Nyx smile, and lasted just as long as it took her to grab the top of his head with two suddenly clawed hands. He yelped in pain as her fingers drove into his skull. Then he began screaming as she slowly, deliberately, tore him into two.
“Nyx!” Michael’s horror was clear in his voice. “What are you…?”
“Stay out of it!” snapped Nyx. She began pouring power into Tribunal even as she ripped him in two. His screams of agony became two screams of agony, and as Michael, Persephone, and Epiphenia watched, the two halves of his body became two identical-looking men.
Nyx released them both, and they collapsed to the ground. “Tribunal,” said Nyx, “meet Jesus.”
Both men blinked and stared in shock and surprise. The one that Nyx had called Jesus bowed his head and wept. Tribunal rose to his feet in anger. He tried to summon power and discovered that he had none at all. “What have you done to me?”
“God wanted you to come home,” said Nyx. “I wanted you to spend eternity in Hell. We came to an agreement. Caelum? Orion?”
Two Angels swooped down from the sky. “These two haven’t been home in a thousand years,” Nyx said. “So I’m sending them there. And they are taking Jesus.”
“I’m Jesus!” snapped Tribunal.
“No,” said Nyx, “you never were. But he—” she pointed to the man weeping on the ground “—is. He is all the goodness and light and decency God poured into you when you were born. And he will go to Heaven, where he, like any other God, will spend the rest of time listening to the calls of his followers. And who knows? He might even answer some.”
Jesus rose to his feet. His face was identical to Tribunal’s in every way, save that there was a kindness and sorrow in his eyes that had never appeared in Tribunal. “I am sorry, Nyx,” he said. “For what it is worth.”
“Very little,” said Nyx. She turned back to Tribunal. “In addition, I have left you two linked. You will always be in each other’s minds, and you will never, ever be able to let the other completely go.”
“So, what?” sneered Tribunal. “I get to look at him, sitting at God’s feet, playing the good little son?”
“Yes,” said Nyx. She smiled, and though her fangs were gone it was a more terrible smile than any she had given before. “And he will be able to see everything that is happening to you. Persephone?”
Persephone stepped up and took Tribunal’s arm. “Is it all right if I take a while? Verrine and I have a date, now that he’s a whole being again.”
Nyx grinned. “Take as much time as you want. I’ll be here.”
“Time doing what?” Tribunal demanded, panic in his voice. “What are you going to do to me?”
For an answer, Persephone opened a gate to Hell beneath their feet and let the two of them drop. Nyx smiled as she listened to Tribunal’s screams fade into the distance.
“That is cruel,” said Jesus, looking down into the pit. “No one should suffer for eternity.”
“God’s rules, not mine,” said Nyx. “Take it up with him.”
“I will,” said Jesus. He smiled at her, and there was a warmth to it that spread into the depths of Nyx’s soul. “Thank you for giving me the chance.”
“Don’t waste it,” said Nyx. She nodded at Caelum and Orion, and together the two Angels lifted Jesus from the ground and carried him up to the Gates of Heaven.
The mountains around them were silent, save for the sound of the wind.
“Well,” said Michael. “Now what?”
“Now… I think I’ll spend a century lying on a beach,” said Nyx. “Eating grapes and meat, and drinking wine.”
“And after that?”
Nyx shrugged. “God offered to let me be judge on Earth for him. To decide any debates that come up between Angels and Descended and to decide the fates of souls that are balanced on the edge.”
Michael smiled. “That sounds like it’s just the thing for you.”
“Maybe,” said Nyx. “God said I could decide for myself.”
Michael’s smile grew wider. “And that sounds like it is just the thing for you, too.” He spread his wings and rose into the air. “Goodbye, Nyx. Come visit us in Heaven.”
“I will,” said Nyx. “Goodbye, Michael.”
She watched him fly up and out of sight. When her eyes came down, she saw Epiphenia slowly spreading green throughout the devastated valley. “It will take time,” said Epiphenia, “but it will come back.”
“Good,” said Nyx.
“Now, where shall we go, Mother?”
“I don’t know,” said Nyx. “I’ll have to choose a place.” She smiled with joy because for the first time in her existence, all her choices were truly going to be her own. “Let me think on it.”
Thank you for reading Scorn of Angels!
I hope you enjoyed Scorn of Angels. It was my honor and pleasure to write for you. Of course I was only relaying the information that Nyx was providing, but I hope I did so with clarity and wonder. Thanks for joining me on this wild ride!
Who knows what the future holds in store for Nyx…
Also, if you’re so inclined, I’d love a review of Scorn of Angels. Without your support, and feedback my books would be lost under an avalanche of other books. While appreciated, there’s only so much praise one can take seriously from family and friends. If you have the time, please visit my author page on both Amazon.com and goodreads.com.
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Until next time,
John Patrick Kennedy
Copyright@2015 by John Patrick Kennedy
Cover design: Idrassi Soufiane with damonza.com
Formatting: damonza.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, establishments, organizations, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously to give a sense of authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 John Patrick Kennedy
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-0692405512
ISBN-10: 0692405518
Scorn of Angels Page 29