The Angels' Pride

by Steven Lindsay

  “Michael cursed our father?” it seemed so unimaginable. Michael was honourable. Wasn’t he?

  “It is very possible, those of Divine blood are capable of anything.”

  “I do not find that comforting, that blood runs in me.”

  “Yes very strongly. Your lineages are quite remarkable. Lilith was the daughter of Anu, a Mesopotamian Sky God, who was born from Primordials. Her mother is unknown, presumably some Angel or another, nevertheless Angels usually carry strong bloodlines. Your mother was an Angel but started out as a Handmaiden of the Goddess Inanna. Over the centuries, she has been many things, Angel, demigoddess, Mother Goddess, the first wife of Adam, and an incredibly powerful Demoness not constrained by Hell. She is considered to be the first Succubus, Vampire, and Demon by many mortals. And she is actually the Sacred Mother of the Lilin as well as being believed to be the mother of Leviathan and many other Demons.” He paused “it would seem she was more fitting to Samael than I had first thought. They are actually well suited to each other.”

  “My mother is a Demoness? She was a Goddess?” she staggered backwards until she collapsed in a chair. Painfully catching her wings in the process. How had her mother become a Goddess and then a Demoness? Did that mean she had Demonic siblings? She shuddered at the thought.

  “Samael was much the same thing, belonging to both Hell and Heaven, Life and Death, Light and Darkness.”

  She just stared at him appalled. Her father had been an Arch Angel, who had been friends with the Arch Angel Lucifer, both of whom where Fallen Angels. He had been the son of a Greek God and had married her mother who was some sort of Mesopotamian demigoddess Demon who for unknown reasons had then married Adam the first pure Angel Human. She had been an Arch Angel at the time. Now she was hearing that her own brother and his wife had Cursed them both and been solely responsible for the Fall. She didn’t know what to believe anymore, or if she wanted to hear any more about her family.

  “Look on the bright side, there is great power on both sides of your family. Lilith was the demigoddess daughter of Anu. He was once the King of Heaven, he also was one of the oldest Mesopotamian Gods and extremely powerful. I do not know who her mother was, but she inherited great power over the skies and death. Perhaps her mother was a Death Daemon or Lampade.

  As for your paternal side, there is me, the God of Death. I do not remember your grandmother but she was an Angel and as such probably the daughter of some God or another. Most likely Zeus, who was the King of Heaven when the War broke out. Then there is my mother Nyx, the Primordial Goddess of Night, and my father Erebus, the Primordial Darkness. Both were born from Chaos. Great power runs through our bloodlines, power you have inherited but as of yet not used.”

  “Wait. Erebus is your father, but is he not Nyx’s brother?”

  “Yes, all the Primordials are brothers or sisters of some degree. It is a complicated system that only they seem to understand.”

  She gagged “my family is inbred?”

  “Different times my dear. It happened a lot among the Primordial Gods, after all, all they had was each other. It was also reasonably common among their offspring. Persephone is Hades’ niece, the daughter of his sister Demeter and their brother Zeus. You will find a lot of the Gods have parents who are siblings.”

  “That is disturbing in so many ways.” She stared at him horrified.

  He walked towards her, making no sound as he moved, before gently kissing her on the forehead “Be at peace Sariel, it is all in the past. Only a handful of the Primordials remain, most of the Gods have been killed or imprisoned, and most of their offspring hunted to extinction with only the Angels to carry on their bloodlines.” Then he walked out of the room, the door sliding silently behind him. Did he make no noise at all? He reminded her a great deal of Azrael.

  Cerberus sat down next to her, and she absently stroked his heads while her mind was racing at a million miles per hour. She finally knew some of her family secrets, but she gathered there would be much more. Probably far worse. But things finally made sense about her own powers and nature. Was it any wonder that both she and Michael were Angels of Death when their mother had been a Demon of death and their father the Son of Death? But there were also other powers she was likely to have inherited. Thanatos had said she was likely to have powers over air, and she had felt at home in Heaven, but she equally felt at home in the Underworld, the realm of darkness. She belonged to death and darkness but also to the light and sky. It made her wonder what else she was capable of. What powers were uniquely her own?

  She looked down at Cerberus, doing his darned best to look sad and woeful, though his red eyes gave it a strange cast. “Wait aren’t you the son of Echidna? Does that not make you a relative of mine?”

  He whined softly. She laughed, kneeling down to hug him. You’d think he was neglected by his expression. He might be a three headed Monster that guarded the Gates of Hades, but he was still a dog through and through.

  “Well it’s just another thing I suppose I will get used to” she muttered to herself as she looked out of the window at the fiery landscapes that held the Gate of Tartarus. So many things had changed, her naivety had been stripped clean, and her powers were actually her own. If unknown to her.

  She wished she could tell Michael about their family and everything she had learned about them. They had known so little about their parents. Or had he just kept it from her? She realised she didn’t know her brother anywhere near what she thought she had. Had he really cursed their father?

  Samael was trapped in Hell, but what of Lilith? Where was their mother?

  She had circled around New York feeling the different hearts, it had so many. Times Square, The Statue of Liberty, The Empire State Building, The Rockefeller Centre, Grand Central Terminal as well as several others she had left alone. There was the Empire State building, no longer the tallest building in the world, but it was iconic and still retained a place of pride for New York. Times Square symbolised the bustling lifestyle of New York, its dynamic strike forwards.

  The Rockefeller Centre had called to her because not only was it iconic, a symbol of the world’s richest man, but its ice rink particularly captured the hearts of young and old. It also happened to have statues of Atlas and Prometheus. Fitting places.

  Grand Central Terminal was a thoroughfare of thousands, a good place for her magic to spread not only throughout Manhattan but to the rest of New York and the other states and cities.

  Her final decision of its biggest heart had been torn between two. The Statue of Liberty was iconic the world over, stained with the hopes of hundreds and thousands of migrants coming to New York. It had been a symbol of hope and dreams. But for New Yorkers, it was beaten by the largest Heart; Central Park.

  It was perfect, not only spiritually by physically the heart of Manhattan, it was a place of many aspects. But most of all it was a special symbol for New Yorkers, it was somewhere to escape the city and its hustle and bustle. A place to unwind and relax. It was a place to escape the environmental ruin of the world, somehow the city had kept it remarkably alive. It was a beautiful place that called not only the people of New York but to her own nearly forgotten Mother Earth powers.

  It was the final heart she would claim, it also contained some of her oldest and dearest animals. Central Park Zoo, and also the Bronx Zoo had peafowl, and they called to her. The eyes of Argus continued to look at the world, her gift to one of her most loyal servants. There had been escapes from both Zoos, but now Central Park would have more than just a stray peafowl here and there, it would be her gift to them. And her statement of ownership to the world.

  She walked across the red pavers surrounding Cleopatra’s Needle, running her hands along the surrounding barriers before walking through them. This seemed a fitting place to claim the Heart of New York. One hand on the past the other grasping out for a new future. It was remarkable really to find an Egyptian Obelisk in the middle of the park, but New York was continuing to surprise her w
ith its dynamics.

  She raised one hand flaring violet. Across the night came the distinctive call of the peafowl. With that one act, she had broken the displays containing them in not only the Central Park Zoo but the Bronx Zoo. Though the latter would take a while to get to Central Park.

  She closed her eyes as she heard the call again, answering it with her perfect imitation. These were thankfully hers and did not belong to any of the Hindu Gods. Then again they might simply be responding to a void left from the War.

  It felt liberating to make the call, so basic and animalistic. It was apparently time that she had to get back to her roots. Her greatest successes so far had been using her initial Mother Earth powers. She had only used her Queen of Heaven powers on the Daemon Races. And that was still a work in progress. Though the Maenads were eager to please and currently had several projects in the works.

  The call came again closer as they came running through the vegetation and others even flew in their eagerness. They came out of the darkness, their blues and greens reflecting the lamplight brightly.

  One landed on the barrier in front of her, she reached out and stroked its’ neck remembering times past. They had been a symbol of her ever since Argus had died, it was the symbol mortals had come to associate with her, to fear and revere. It was time their memories were refreshed.

  She reached down into the earth with her powers, reaching for both the earth and the oceanic powers surrounding the city, pulling them back up, feeding their strength through the park.

  New York City shook violently as the magical backlash washed through the earth. Hera smiled to herself. She hadn’t claimed the land formally, but it knew who controlled it. To further confuse the Angels she summoned a tempest to descend on the city, growing around and above the city. She would stain the city with her magic, covering all trace of her being here.

  The Angels would come, but they would leave empty handed and none the wiser. The rush of magic would cover all trace of her smaller acts, hiding the fact that she was laying claim to the city.

  Besides she had her eyes on the whole of the United States not just its crowning jewel. She would leave and make her mark on other cities. Washington D.C. for its political control, New Orleans for its high level of Daemons (it was an army waiting to happen), San Francisco for its high level of homosexuals (another army waiting to happen), as well as the various regional centres. There was so much to do, much of it very time-consuming. But she couldn’t come back to New York for a while.

  She cast a protective spell over the peafowl “Hide my little ones the storm will be fierce.” Violet lightning rent the sky as the ground shook again. The rains started to fall even as the sea began to swell. Let the rain cover the city with her essence, let it wash away all the pollution and taint of the Angels.

  She disappeared as she sensed the eyes of Heaven turning towards the city. She laughed as she went, they wouldn’t understand, and they would not be able to tame the storm. It was feeding on the natural powers of the planet.

  Chapter 13

  Michael stood on the bottom Terrace of Purgatory ignoring the Excommunicate and the Angels purifying them behind him. Instead, his attention was solely focussed on the great crater below, stretching away as far as he could see. He could see the souls trapped in Limbo, or those desperate enough to throw themselves into Hell. The great stalactite reached down from the Surface Gate, stabbing into the thick cloud banks of the Lust Level. Towards where Lucifer was trapped in his lair.

  All was as it should be.

  Heaven’s greatest enemy was still trapped. They could easily overcome two weakened Goddesses. Even if they couldn’t track them down. Brigid seemed to have completely disappeared while Hera seemed to be playing a very different game. First the flaring of the Grand Canyon now the tempest that had savaged New York. Why had she done it? Had someone offended her in New York or had she encountered an Angel? It might be impossible to tell, Nuriel had said the amount of magic she had unleashed on New York would make it damn near impossible to notice other spells. The Demons could be having a field day, and they wouldn’t be able to tell.

  Perhaps that was why. Well, the legions of Angels in New York would stop that.

  How far the Gods and their brethren had fallen. Two stray Goddesses struggling to avoid the gaze of Heaven. Their kin lay imprisoned in Heaven or trapped in the Underworld, hidden from Heaven but scrabbling around in the dark.

  The only true threat to Heaven were the Fallen Angels, they had access to the same powers as the Arch Angels, and unfortunately, they had been empowered by Human fear. But thankfully Lucifer and all his followers were trapped in their twisted forms, savaged by madness, unable to escape Hell. Lucifer suffered the most, his mind was shattered across the seven heads of the Beast. There was no chance of sanity ever returning to him.

  His father was also trapped in a similar form in Hell. He absently wondered what form his mother now wore. She would be Demonic, but so had she been before, would it be one of her old shapes or a new one imposed by the Curse. It still seemed odd to him that she had become Adam’s first wife. For some unfathomable reason, the Governing Council had insisted that one of the Arch Angels was to be his wife for his short life. She had rebelled against him, refusing to be submissive to him, even though he had been taught his wife was his. It had been the first fracturing of the Council when she left Eden and did not return to Heaven.

  What on earth had possessed Samael to track her down and resume their marriage? Though admittedly the result had been Sariel and despite Lilith being a Demon Sariel was born an Angel. She was still the youngest of all the Elder Angels. If she still lived.

  After she had been born Lilith was not the only one to change. She never returned to Heaven, Samael after becoming Demonic at the request of the Council tested Adam as had been asked. He had been the serpent to test man and have them cast out. If anyone could be convincing, it was Samael. But then he had mated with several Demonesses, Lilith included. He had no idea how many half siblings he might have, didn’t care either. If they weren’t Angels, he would still kill them.

  But then the worst thing happened. Samael, who had been so crucial in the overthrow of the Gods, had started talking about peace. He and Lucifer had become diplomats between Gods and Angels, they had begun brokering a peace deal. Everything the Angels had worked towards had been threatened.

  So he and Gabriel had taken their concerns before the Council and convinced them of the danger. The fear of the Gods was there, and the memories of serving them were still fresh. Many had not been convinced, they had paid the price.

  Gabriel was the most powerful Angel that had ever lived, and he was second only to her and her brother. Their control and understanding of power were exemplary. They had laid their trap well. In one act they had cast out two-thirds of Heaven making them rain down over Jerusalem. In one magnificent stroke, they had removed all the Peacemakers and Fence-sitters, condemning them to Hell or Purgatory. Lucifer in his twisted form had smashed through the Surface, creating the crater that was Hell. All the Fallen Angels had been dragged down with him. And the greatest success was that they were all sealed up in Hell and had incidentally sealed the whole Underworld.

  To finalise their success and compound their power they had unleashed the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The world had finally belonged to them. Sure the Roman Empire had been crumbling, but Christianity had spread throughout Europe. Then Islam had spread far and wide as the Caliphate conquered the Middle East and North Africa. Behind it, all the Jewish had spread far and wide through many lands, mostly ignored. As the European nations had started to conquer the world so too did Christianity. Faith had been strong, and the faithful had stamped out all traces of the Gods and their creations.

  Most of the world had been theirs except for India, China and the lands between them. They had been the only resistance against the spread of the Angelic religions. But they had been patiently undermined. The world was going to be theirs.


  But then the world had changed. Their numbers had been weakened to the point that they could not effectively rule over so much. Two hundred Elder were not a lot when it came to ruling most of a world. The Ascended helped supplement the numbers, but they were very careful how much power they were given. They needed greater numbers of the Elder with their potent magic, but unfortunately, the Elder rarely bred. While the Elders’ attention was split across so many fronts some of Humanity had started to turn away from them.

  It had seen the rise of science and the birth of the Atheists. It was also likely many of the Demons had a role in it. Magic became a quaint notion, abnormalities became explainable, and Humanity effectively sheltered the Demons. As science thundered along, giving first the Industrial Revolution, then the Electrical then the Nanotechnological. With each step up of science, each progression for Humanity more started to turn away or question their faith. Some even turned back to older religions. As tolerance and understanding progressed through Humanity, they became more difficult to control, more assured of their own power.

  Oh, they had continued to spread the religions through Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania but their original strongholds in Europe had continued to decay. Controlled immigration had not strengthened these bastions as they had thought they would.

  Their innate powers had not dwindled, and their supplemented powers were still very strong. As Sariel had matured, they had grown more hopeful of reasserting their rule on Humanity. There had been serious discussions about unleashing the Apocalypse or having the Second Coming. As powerless as Sariel had thought herself she was invaluable to both.

  Now she was lost.

  They could find no trace of her in Heaven. Nuriel and all the legions she had been given control of were scouring the Surface, but they had found nothing so far. Hope was withering. There were but two possibilities left, she was either in the Underworld or dead. He shuddered at the thought of her in the Underworld, prey for Gods and Demons alike. There was also the highly unlikely but terrifying thought she could inadvertently break some of their Curse.