Ezrael stared in horror as Lucy screamed in pain and fell onto her knees, clawing at the fire that enveloped her from head to foot. He had not expected Nisroc to loose the Fire upon a deathling. These were not the worldly flames that burned down houses and reduced mortal flesh to ash, but the fires that burned souls and scorched minds. This was the divine punishment that, in ancient days, had once been known as the Fire of Righteousness—and there was only one thing that could save her.
Ezrael grabbed Joth and shook the angel so hard its wings trembled. “Tell it you don’t want to go back!”
Joth smiled at Ezrael. The angel recognized the stranger’s blue halo from earlier in the day. “I saw you in the subway—are you Lucy’s friend?”
“Tell Nisroc to go away!”
“But—”
“Do as I say, Joth!”
Joth looked at Nisroc, who was watching Lucy writhe on the ground, then back at the white-haired stranger with the blue halo.
“Go away, Nisroc!” the angel said.
The seraph halted its scourging of the deathling and turned to stare at Joth as Ezrael hurried to help Lucy got to her feet.
“I was on fire,” she mumbled, staring in stunned disbelief at her unburned clothes and skin.
“What did you say?” Nisroc demanded.
Joth trembled as the seraph’s fierce gaze was turned onto it. The elohim glanced at Ezrael, who nodded in approval. “I-I said ‘go away.’ I don’t want to go back.”
The seraph fixed a disapproving eye on Ezrael as it smoothed its mane. “So be it.” Nisroc opened its mighty jaws and issued a roar that shook the building to its foundations. Lucy clapped her hands over her ears at the sound of the seraph’s voice. The whole bar trembled as if it was in the grips of an earthquake. She looked up just in time to see the crystal chandelier overhead detach itself.
“Joth! Look out!” she shouted, pushing Ezrael aside as she dove forward and knocked the angel out of the way of the three-hundred-pound light fixture as it came crashing to the floor.
When Lucy dared open her eyes again, she was astonished to see that the walls, floors and furnishings of the Seventh Circle that had once been black were now whiter than a swan’s wing. Nisroc and Preil were nowhere to be seen.
“You’re a brave woman, I’ll give you that,” Ezrael said as he helped Lucy to her feet. “Foolhardy—but brave. Not many humans would dare use a Celestial for batting practice.”
“I couldn’t just stand there and let it sting you, or whatever the hell it was doing. Are you okay?”
“I’ll live—what about you?”
“I guess I’m okay. It hurt like hell while it was going on—kind of like getting tattooed all over my body at the same time—but now the pain’s completely gone. What the hell was that shit, anyway?”
“The Wrath of God.”
“Remind me not to piss him off like that again.” Lucy looked around. “What about Joth? Is he okay?”
“Well—it depends on how you define ‘okay.’“
“What do you mean?”
Ezrael took a deep breath and turned to point to at the angel, who was poking at what was left of the chandelier.
“Joth—show Lucy your wings.”
The angel did as it was told, obediently stretching its wings to their full span. The brilliantly colored feathers lining the inside of the wings were losing their vibrant color and starting to molt. And in the bare spaces where the feathers had fallen away, she could plainly see the leather of a bat’s wing.
Chapter Eleven
John Madonga hopped out from behind the wheel and hurriedly opened the passenger-side door as Ezrael and Lucy emerged from the club with Joth. The angel was on the verge of another fugue, so its companions were forced to support its body between them like a drunken sailor.
“Is he okay?” the cab driver asked. “Does he need a doctor?”
“Our friend will be fine once we get away from this place,” Ezrael assured him. “And the sooner the better.”
John Madonga nodded his understanding as he shut the door behind Lucy. The taxi wasted no time leaving the scene and losing itself in one of the city’s major traffic arteries. As they headed back downtown, the cabbie glanced into the rearview mirror to check on his passengers.
“If you do not mind my asking, sir, what was going on back there? The moment I lost sight of you, there was a great rush of people out of the club. One strange gentleman attempted to jump inside my cab, but I was able to lock the doors in time. He was most curious indeed—it looked as if he had no ears or nose. I was very frightened.”
“They were having a costume party, that’s all,” Ezrael explained. The Muse met and held the cabbie’s eyes in the rearview mirror, his voice very deliberate as he spoke. “Somebody set fire to a wastebasket as a joke, and it got out of hand. Our friend here got a little too much smoke, that’s all—he will be fine once we get him back home.”
John Madonga nodded his head, as if in agreement, and returned his attention to driving. Once they reached their destination, the taxi driver left his cab running at the curb to hurry ahead to hold the door of the building open for Ezrael and Lucy.
Lucy paused and looked at Ezrael over the top of Joth’s nodding head. “You think you can get him up the stairs okay?”
“Sure. No problem,” replied the Muse. “He’s not heavy.”
Lucy nodded and handed Joth over completely to her companion. She turned back to face the cabbie. She didn’t have much on her, but she couldn’t stiff the guy after he’d been so helpful. But the moment Madonga saw her reach in her pocket, he shook his head.
“I cannot take your money, Miss,” he said solemnly.
“Please—at least let me give you something—won’t you be in trouble with your supervisor for not turning your cab in on time?”
“What does that matter? Your friend is of my village and he needed help. If I could not do more, then I could certainly do no less.”
Lucy blushed and shifted about awkwardly. “Thank you, Mr. Madonga. I really don’t know what to say...”
“If you wish to repay me, Miss, then you can do it by looking after my kinsman,” the cab driver smiled. “See that no more harm comes to him.”
Lucy nodded. “I’ll do my best.”
“That is all anyone can promise,” John Madonga agreed as he shook her hand. “Good luck to you, Miss.” With that he hurried back to his waiting vehicle, pausing only long enough to wave one last time from behind the wheel before disappearing back into Manhattan traffic.
There were feathers on the stairs, at least three or four brilliantly colored plumes per landing. While it was nowhere near as bad as finding the contents of a down pillow leading to her door, the sight did not ease Lucy’s mind.
Ezrael looked up from his gym bag as Lucy entered. She held up the fist full of angel feathers she’d collected. “He’s molting,” she said. “That’s bad, right?”
“I’m afraid so,” sighed the muse.
Joth was perched on the far end of the living-room sofa, its forearms locked about its knees, staring off into space. There were feathers on the cushions.
Lucy pulled her espresso machine out of the cupboard and blew the dust off it. It had been a Christmas present to herself a couple years back, when she still had time to waste grinding beans and brewing coffee before going to work. It was a pain in the ass to set up and work, but something told her that freeze-dried Folgers was simply not going to cut it tonight.
“Can I be of any help?” Ezrael asked from the kitchen doorway.
“Yeah—just stay out of my way,” she grunted. “Thanks for the offer, though. There’s not enough room in this kitchen for anyone to be helpful in here. But there is one thing you can do...” She glanced up at the old wizard as she worked. “Tell me where you know this Meresin asshole from. It’s clear you and this guy—or whatever he is—have got history.”
Ezrael sighed and shook his head. “Are you sure you want to know? It’s a long story
.”
Lucy smiled crookedly as she took a half-pound bag of Arabica out of the freezer. “Look, if I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t have asked.”
“Fair enough,” Ezrael smiled, pulling up a chair at the kitchen table. “It all started a thousand years ago. No! Don’t laugh! It’s the truth! It was during what is now called the Dark Ages. Those were years when the Machine’s influence was indeed strong upon the hearts and minds of humankind, even those who believed they served the Clockwork.
“Printing with type had begun in China only sixty-seven years earlier. The horse-collar wasn’t a century old. Hell, the horseshoe was still relatively new-fangled! Leonardo would not be born for four hundred and fifty-three years, Michelangelo another twenty-four beyond that. Shakespeare and Marlowe would not take their first, squalling breaths for five hundred and sixty years. Milton would not enter the world for six hundred and ten.
“Even though the age was dark, there were still glimmers of light to be seen on the horizon, promising rebirth: the Bridge of the Ten Thousand Ages was on the verge of completion in Foo-Chow; Sridhara was on the cusp of recognizing the importance of zero; the Lady Sei Shonagon was beginning the journals that would become, in time, The Pillow Book. European peasantry was on the verge of replacing its wooden plows for ones of iron, and the Vikings were striking across the frigid Northern Sea towards Greenland and beyond, discovering new lands, and new worlds. And then there was Constantinople, seat of the Byzantine Empire, gateway to the East, the first and last bastion of Greco-Roman culture.
“Constantinople was as New York City is now—a thriving, bustling metropolis, home to nearly five hundred thousand souls. Its people were proud—and rightly so—of upholding the standards of Ancient Rome and Hellenic Greece. While Rome had fallen to the barbarians, the long walls of Constantinople had stood strong. Where the light of civilization was all but extinguished in the West, literacy and the arts burned bright in the heirs of Byzantium.
“That is not to say that cruelty, barbarity, and inhumanity were unknown to them. Indeed, the elaborate bureaucratic system created to strengthen and maintain the empire bred bloody thoughts and bloodier deeds in those who sought power. Nor was the city free of the religious strife that pitted Christian against Pagan, Christian against Jew, and, finally, Christian against Christian.
“A year before I fell into your world, all Christendom—Catholic and Orthodox alike—was swept into a frenzy, fearing Judgment Day was at hand come the new millennia. Peasants left their fields, nobles abandoned their castles, and merchants closed their shops to travel to Rome and Antioch in hopes of begging final favors before the return of Christ. Some were so confident the end was at hand they burned all their worldly goods in huge bonfires. To the immense relief of many—and the chagrin of some—it so happened that Judgment Day did not come with the Second Millennium. But none were considered fools for having thought it would happen. This was the world into which I fell—a world that held angels to be as real as bread, and just as necessary to Mankind’s survival. It was a world that saw God and Satan manifest in every aspect of Nature.
“I crash-landed in the courtyard of an artist named Miletus, who served as apprentice to a master iconographer working for the imperial family and other nobles. In time, he would take over the workshop and assume his master’s clientele. I guess he was what you’d call an up-and-comer on the art scene of the day. He had no trouble accepting an angel in his courtyard, given the beliefs of the time. But being of artistic temperament, he saw me as more female than male.
“I know what you’re thinking! How could anyone see me as anything but a man? I realize it’s hard to picture me as anything but what you see before you today, but a thousand years ago I was as Joth is now—perhaps even more androgynous in appearance. In those days my hair was golden red and hung between my wings, like a horse’s mane. I was delicate of frame, fair of skin, soft of feature, and with a light, honeyed voice. When Miletus first looked upon me, his heart was lost for good—or so he always insisted. It was his love that gave me the strength to renounce the Host in favor of mortal existence.”
The muse sighed and leaned back. “But it is useless to tell you my story. There is so much that is different—so much that has changed—between that world and this. How can you hope to comprehend?”
“No, go on,” Lucy pleaded. “I really want to hear what you have to say.”
“Then perhaps it is better I show you, rather than tell you,” he smiled.
“How so?”
“Permit me, if you will,” the Muse said. “Close your eyes, please.” He placed the index and middle fingers of his right hand on Lucy’s eyelids.
Suddenly she was no longer sitting in her kitchen but somewhere far away and long ago. It was as if she were watching a movie, yet at the same time was part of it as well. She was looking down from some occult vantage point as a burning body contorted on the stone floor of a cluttered workshop. The figure was without sex and had wings like Joth’s. It had long auburn hair that hung to the small of its back. Standing nearby, watching the angel burn, was a human male with dark hair, dressed in a knee-length tunic, tight-fitting wool tights and leather sandals.
The angel cried out in pain and fear, throwing back its head to reveal a decidedly masculine jaw and Adam’s apple as it reached out towards the dark-haired man. The onlooker’s face contorted in horror and disgust, as if Ezrael was some sort of vile insect.
“Abomination!” Miletus shouted, fleeing the workshop, cursing and wailing like a thing gone mad.
Exhausted and dazed, the newly transformed Ezrael sat up and looked down at the penis between his legs, blinking in confusion. For some reason, this piece of flesh had something to do with driving away Miletus. Struggling to his feet on legs as wobbly as those of a newborn fawn, he picked up an old robe to cover his nakedness and set out in search of his lover.
Ezrael wandered the winding streets of Constantinople, harried by dogs and rebuffed by strangers who thought him a beggar. The newborn Muse wept and wailed openly, as would a frightened child separated from its parent, but no one came to his aid, thinking him drunk or mad. As he continued to wander, Ezrael eventually found himself outside the relative safety of the city’s tower-studded walls. Hungry, cold and alone, he stumbled through the surrounding countryside, completely unaware of the dangers that might befall a solitary traveler. Ezrael walked in the ditches along the road, shivering and wracked by hunger, until he came to the walls of a monastery, from which hung a rope attached to a bell.
Ezrael rang the bell and after a time a monk stuck his head out of a hole high in the wall and looked down at him. “What is it you want of us, my son?” he asked.
“I am looking for Miletus,” Ezrael replied.
“There is no one named Miletus amongst our cloister,” said the monk, hoping this would be good enough to send the stranger on his way.
“I am very tired and very cold, and my belly burns with fire. This world is strange to me and I have never known these things before. All I want is to find Miletus.”
The monk stared down at Ezrael for a long moment, and then said, “I shall fetch the abbot.”
A few minutes later a different head stuck itself through the hole in the wall. The abbot was older than the monk, and his eyes seemed to shimmer like gold coins in the fading daylight. Something like recognition flickered across the older man’s features.
“Unlock the gate. I would speak to this man, for he is known to me,” the abbot announced.
There was a sound of a huge bolt being drawn aside, and the heavy metal door in the monastery’s wall swung open, allowing a glimpse of orderly gardens tended by robed men. The abbot stepped forward, a large wicker basket covered with a rough cloth hanging from one arm. He smiled when he saw Ezrael, despite his tattered clothes and the filth caking his limbs.
“Come, my brother,” the abbot said, gesturing for Ezrael to follow him inside the walls. “Come and sit with me.”
Ezrael fo
llowed without hesitation, although there was consternation on the face of the monks who accompanied the abbot. “Your Grace,” murmured one of the brothers. “Do you think this wise—?”
The abbot turned to his subordinate and waved him away. “I have nothing to fear from this man. Now leave us, Brother Jokannan; I would speak to my kinsman alone.’
The abbot led Ezrael to a bench set beside a pool, in which was reflected the likeness of the Virgin Mother, her arms lifting high her precious burden so that His father might bless Him. The abbot set the wicker basket down between himself and threw back the cloth, revealing a loaf of bread, a jug of water, and a small wheel of cheese.
“Tis a horrible thing to die of starvation and yet not know how to eat,” the abbot observed quietly. “Even worse to die of thirst, yet hold water in your hand, unaware that it will save you.” He took the loaf of bed and broke it into two sections, handing Ezrael the larger piece. “What is your name, my brother?”
“Ezrael.”
The abbot smiled and nodded knowingly. “Do as I do, Ezrael, late of the elohim.”
The former angel watched as the abbot placed the bread in his own mouth and chewed it, then followed suit. The moment Ezrael’s teeth closed on the crust, saliva filled his mouth and he proceeded to devour it voraciously.
“Slow down, friend Ezrael,” the abbot warned, placing a gentle hand on his arm. “Or you will soon discover the pain that comes from filling a shrunken belly too fast.” He then uncorked the bottle and took a drink from it, then handed to Ezrael, instructing the Muse in the basic elements of survival that most mortals learn at their mother’s breast—how to eat to fill his belly and drink to slake his thirst. “You are most fortunate, little brother, that your wandering brought you here,” said the abbot. “There are not many of our kind in this world. The Machine is in ascendance, and its spawn are everywhere. Should they come across a newborn Muse—well, you are lucky you are not already lying in a pile of your own intestines. Now, may I ask you what brings you here?”
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