The Crystal Lake

by L. J. LaBarthe

  “Fuck!” Gabriel parried a sword thrust from a demon and decapitated it with his next swing. “Sorella’s all right, but she said Naamah’s daughter set fire to the whole country. It looked like a quarter of Africa was burning.”

  Michael made a choked sound. “No!”

  “I’m afraid so, solnyshko.”

  Michael growled and lunged, his wings beating in the air. He propelled himself forward, right into the middle of a group of demons and a Cerberus, and began to slaughter them. Gritting his teeth, Gabriel marched into the melee, swinging his sword as he went.

  From the rear of the monstrous host there came a loud wail of fear, and Gabriel felt tremendous satisfaction as he saw Shateiel and the Seraphim methodically killing their way toward Gabriel. He heard another cry, this time of alarm, and turned to see Uriel, leading more Seraphim, charging into the fight, using his power and his sword with equally brutal efficiency. Working together, the Archangels led their armies and began to crush their foes in a three-way deadlock.

  Prepared to grind them up against the mountains, Gabriel was disappointed when the demons lost their courage and vanished, taking those surviving monsters with them. He stood, panting, his sword blade dripping blood and gore, and looked over the field of battle.

  “We must cleanse this abomination,” Michael said.

  Gabriel turned and looked at him. He hadn’t realized that Michael had joined him. “What do you suggest?”

  “Holy fire.” Michael wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Are you uninjured?”

  “Aye, I’m fine. How about you?”

  “I am well. I am angry, but I am well.” Michael looked around the bodies littering the ground. “They destroyed the village, killed the rest of Jihu’s family, and mortally wounded him. In his dying breath, he told me that Arthur, Naamah’s son, had taken his firstborn son.”

  “Was he sure it was Arthur?” Gabriel asked.

  Michael nodded. “The individual introduced himself. I tell you, Gabriel, there will be no forgiveness for this family. Naamah is beyond redemption, and she has made her children join her. Jihu told me that this Arthur was gleeful about what would be coming.”

  “And what’s that then?”

  Michael took a deep breath. “The end of everything.”

  Gabriel looked again over the dead. “Not if I can fucking help it.”

  “Language.” Michael paused to spit a mouthful of blood onto the ground. “And I agree.”

  “Are you sure you ain’t hurt?” Gabriel said, looking at Michael suspiciously.

  “I am. A blow to the jaw is nothing to fret over.” Michael shook his sword, splattering the ground with blood. “Let us burn these.”

  “All right.”

  Gold flames and silver burst forth as Gabriel and Michael held their hands out, directing their powers to burn the dead bodies. The fire ate up the detritus of battle but did no damage to the land, and it only took a few minutes for the battlefield to be cleansed. As he lowered his hand and extinguished the fire, Gabriel felt very tired indeed.

  “We should head back to Yerevan,” he said. “Regroup and plan.”

  “As you say,” Michael said.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “WHAT ARE you doing?”

  “I’m looking at the dish.” Morgana pushed back her hair and straightened. “It looks the same.”

  “That’s because Mother hasn’t done anything yet,” Arthur said. He glared at his sister and reached out, grabbing her arm and pulling her away. “She’s still talking to the angel.”

  Morgana wrenched her arm free of his grasp. “I don’t know why. Angels are evil.”

  “So are demons. But this angel’s been helping us, so he’s not all bad.” Arthur looked toward the glass case that held the Holy Grail. “I still don’t understand why Mother’s so insistent about these things. They’re pretty ugly. And old.”

  Arthur looked at his sister seriously. “Do you think Mother’s right about all of this?”

  “All of what, Arthur?”

  Arthur waved a hand. “You know. Destroying the borders between realities and turning everything to chaos. Getting rid of the angels and the demons and letting Purgatory take control.”

  Morgana looked at him, her face wreathed in puzzled fear. “What would you suggest she do instead?”

  “I don’t know. I just… look, I just don’t like the whole murdering people thing. I think that’s bad.”

  “I do, too, but it’s necessary. She says it’s necessary.” Morgana didn’t sound convinced of the relative necessity of their mother’s plan as she looked at the glass case. “I get a funny feeling when I get too close to those things. I don’t like them. They feel… unnatural.”

  Arthur pursed his lips and moved to stand beside his sister. “How do you feel about her having killed Aunt Eisheth?” Changing the subject was far more productive, he thought. And this particular subject was something that had been bothering him a very great deal.

  “I didn’t like that much.” Morgana’s hand slipped into his, and Arthur gave it a gentle squeeze. “I don’t think Aunt Eisheth was evil. She was Mother’s sister, wasn’t she?”

  “So’re Aunt Lilith and Aunt Agrat, and we’ve never met them,” Arthur said.

  “We never met Aunt Eisheth, either,” Morgana pointed out.

  “At least she’s not killing our Purgatory family again,” Arthur said. “I’m scared, Mor,” he admitted.

  Morgana leaned into him. “So am I, Art. I don’t know what will happen. The spirits won’t talk to me now. They hide from me. They keep talking about some Necromancer on Earth who can protect them, but I don’t see how a human could do that. Humans don’t have much in the way of strength, do they? How could a human have so much power to protect all the spirits of the dead?”

  “I don’t know,” Arthur said. “The trees and plants won’t talk to me, either, so we’re both missing our friends. I hate that.”

  “I wish Mother had let us get to know our aunts,” Morgana said softly.

  “Me too.”

  There was a commotion behind them and the two spun around to see their mother, Naamah, entering the room with her retinue: a Cerebus, a vampire, a demon, and a minotaur. Of the angel, there was no sign.

  “Hello, Mother,” Arthur said. “How did your meeting go?”

  “It went well, my beloved son.” Naamah glided toward them, and Arthur took a small step back. Her expression was ferocious and terrible, and it made him want to run away and hide under the largest rock in Purgatory that he could find. Beside him, Morgana pressed closer, leaning against his shoulder, and he could feel her shaking.

  “I am glad,” Arthur said perfunctorily. “The angel didn’t stay?”

  “No, he had to return to Earth. He can’t linger here long, or they’ll get suspicious. Archangels are a paranoid choir, and he’s known to all of them, so he has to be very careful.” Naamah looked at her daughter. “Don’t hide behind your brother, Morgana. I’m not going to eat you, child.”

  “Sorry, Mother.” Morgana took a step forward, and Arthur tightened his hold on her hand.

  “Now, we’re about to begin the second ritual,” Naamah said, looking at the glass case and the Holy Grail. “As you can see, the corruption of the trencher is complete. It is blackened and burned by the blood from Eisheth’s sacrifice. Soon, it will begin to rot and crack. Now, it’s time for the second sacrifice.” She turned to the demon. “Bring in the boy,” she ordered.

  The demon bowed low. “As you command, Mistress.” It scurried out.

  “Not all demons are useless. I wish I could say the same for angelkind, but only one has proven himself of any worth.”

  “When will you tell us his name?” Arthur asked.

  “When the work with the Grail is complete. What you don’t know, you can’t reveal, and the Archangels and Archdemons have powers, my son, powers that can leech the thoughts from your head as easily as picking up a pebble from the ground. Then his name wi
ll be revealed and you will be able to rejoice and call him brother.”

  “Yay,” said Morgana. Arthur hid his smile—he knew his sister was being sarcastic, but Naamah appeared not to notice.

  “I’m glad you’re happy, daughter dear,” Naamah said. “Come closer, my children. I want you to witness the rite.”

  They took several cautious steps closer to their mother, each twin gripping the other’s hand so tightly that it hurt. Arthur didn’t think this was going to be a good ritual, not the least because the sacrifice was a human man who appeared to be the same age as Arthur himself. But he couldn’t disobey his mother; she had, after all, been working toward this goal for a very long time. Longer than he and Morgana had been alive.

  The demon returned, dragging the young man with him. The young man came from a place called North Korea and his father was something called a shaman. Naamah had told Arthur and Morgana that she needed the firstborn son of a shaman or wizard for the second part of the corruption of the Holy Grail, so she had ordered the fire started in the place called Congo. Kidnapping the son from his father’s house had been down to the demons, and Arthur had no doubt that a lot of his friends from Purgatory had died as a result of the arrival of angry Archangels.

  The young man was babbling something, but Arthur had no idea what. He looked furious, though, and Arthur thought that if he was in the man’s shoes, he wouldn’t be too pleased, either.

  “Bring him closer,” Naamah ordered, and the demon dragged the now-shouting young man to her.

  Naamah smirked and muttered a few words, and the young man was suddenly silent, cut off mid-tirade. “Much better,” she said. “Now we can all hear ourselves think. Morgana, bring me the dagger.”

  Morgana let go of Arthur’s hand and shot him a miserable look. But she went over to a shelf on the far wall and took down a polished wooden case. She carried it to Naamah, who took it and placed it on top of the glass cabinet to open it. From within, she pulled a long-bladed dagger, the steel of the blade glinting in the soft light of the room.

  “Hold him,” she ordered, and the demon and vampire gripped the young man’s arms. Although his eyes bulged in fear and his mouth worked, the young man made no sound and could not break free of the creatures holding him.

  Naamah held her dagger in her left hand, and with her right, she opened the glass cabinet and pulled out the bowl. The interior of it was plain wood, a light brown color with the rings of the tree still visible. It was a simple bowl, unadorned and ordinary. Naamah closed the cabinet and set the bowl down on the top of it.

  “Hold his head over this,” she said, and the vampire and demon hauled the young man, whose struggles were intensifying, over to the cabinet. They held his head, and as Arthur and Morgana watched, Naamah raised her dagger and began to incant.

  With studied calm, she slowly slit the young man’s throat. His struggles grew weaker as his blood dripped out of the cut and into the bowl, and it was only a few moments until he was motionless. Naamah pushed his body out of the way and stared at the bowl.

  The Holy Grail’s second piece began to smoke as the blood bubbled and seethed. Naamah’s face became filled with glee and Arthur watched, repulsed, as his mother’s expression became one of inhuman pleasure.

  “You can run, Archangels,” Naamah yelled, looking up at the roof of the chamber. “And you Archdemons, you can hunt. Lucifer, you can hide—for now, and so can you, Hashem. Soon, the walls between our realities will come down, and I will come for you, with chaos behind me!”

  Arthur and Morgana looked at each other. Arthur bit his lip, and Morgana shook her head. Arthur had no doubt that anyone who heard their mother’s announcement would be enraged.

  “Dispose of the body,” Naamah said then.

  “May we eat it, Mistress?” the minotaur growled.

  “By all means, if you wish. Just get rid of it.” With that, Naamah returned the bowl to its place inside the glass cabinet. Then she locked it. “One more to go,” she crooned.

  “Yay,” Morgana said again.

  “It will be a glorious celebration when the rituals are complete,” Naamah said. Then she looked at Arthur and his sister critically. “Arthur, take Morgana outside to get some sun. She looks absolutely dyspeptic.” Before he could say anything to her, Naamah turned on her heel and swept from the room with all the regal bearing of an empress.

  “Let’s go, Art,” Morgana said. She pressed close to him again. “I think it would be better outside.”

  “I think you’re right,” he agreed. He led the way out of the chamber, his thoughts awhirl. Anger and fear warred in his mind, and as he and his sister reached the stairs, Arthur admitted to himself that he hated his mother. He hated what she was doing, hated how she treated his sister and hated how she dealt with the residents of Purgatory. Most of all, he hated how she had decided for all of them what was to happen, and Arthur felt that he and Morgana should have been at least consulted on the subject of the Holy Grail and Naamah’s grand designs. He felt helpless, too, and he hated that, the sense of inevitability of a fate he did not want being decided without his consent or refusal. He and Morgana were close and usually their relationship was full of laughter and cheerful conversation, not this stilted, fearful chatter in hushed voices in dark corners.

  Arthur glumly concluded that he, Morgana, and all of Purgatory were in for a very bad future and there was nothing he could do to stop it. So it was that with dread lying heavy in his stomach, Arthur led his trembling sister out of the building and into the pale, wan sunlight of Purgatory.

  “I WILL obliterate her from the face of existence! I will rend her soul from her flesh and devour it! I will entomb her within the Sea of Frozen Souls and then burn her in the Lake of Eternal Fire!”

  “Lucifer….” Lilith paused as her beloved began to swear in four dead languages simultaneously. “If nothing else, I suppose you’re eloquent,” she said drily.

  “She is your sister, Lilitu,” Lucifer snarled. “How could you not have foreseen this?”

  “Because I haven’t had anything to do with her since the day Eden was built, and people change in a week, let alone several millennia,” she said. “Lucifer, beloved, please. Calm down. I have an idea.”

  Lucifer frowned. “And what idea is that?”

  Lilith looked at him. “Agrat and I will go to Purgatory and call for Naamah. We will tell her we want to join her and beg her forgiveness for not spending more time with her. And then we will spy on her and find out where the Grail is, and open up Purgatory to the forces of Hell and Heaven.”

  Lucifer gaped at her. Then he rushed to her and hugged her so tightly that she squeaked. “Lilitu, I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too, Lucifer, but I can’t breathe,” she gasped.

  He let her go. “Forgive me,” he said.

  “Of course, Lightbringer,” she said. “You like my plan?”

  “I do. I’ll talk to Adramelek and get him to relay it to the Archangels. You call Agrat and we will get the ball rolling, as they say.”

  “I’m happy to help.”

  “You have, Lilitu. Thank you.”

  “I’M GOING to skewer her on my sword,” Uriel raged.

  “No, I’m going to rip out her spine and make a rain stick with it,” Haniel growled.

  “You’re both wrong, because I’m going to damn well tear her heart out,” Tzadkiel snarled.

  “I’m going to rip out her ribs and turn them into a xylophone,” Gabriel spat.

  “I will gut her and make her drink her own blood,” Metatron cried.

  “I will tear out her heart and feed it to Hellhounds,” Raziel gritted out.

  “You’re all wrong, because I’m going to drown her in a pool of her own stomach acid,” Raphael declared.

  “Hey now, no, you’re all being too kind. I intend to impale her forever on a stake made of her own tibia,” Remiel said.

  “I will imprison her soul in a stone in the deepest pit in Purgatory,” Samael said in
a voice like ice.

  “Enough!” Michael’s shout cut them all off. “Enough,” he repeated. “I am as furious as you all,” he said, beginning to pace the palatial boardroom of Ondrass’s hotel suite. “Indeed, I am so angry that I do not know what I will do. But I know one thing. We cannot act in haste.”

  Gabriel took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. “All right,” he agreed, “that’s fair. So what do you suggest?”

  “I suggest that—”

  “I don’t mean to interrupt,” Adramelek said then, “although I am interrupting and your rage is really rather beautiful to witness. I wish I could enjoy the spectacle more instead of being as furious as you all.”

  “I concur,” Ondrass said. “Listen to Adramelek, though. He has received word from Lucifer.”

  “And”—Adramelek turned to look at Agrat—“I assume you have now heard from Lilith?”

  Agrat was pale, Gabriel saw, and her eyes were wide. She held Shateiel’s hand, and hovering behind her and her husband were the Venatores, Liam, Declan, Lyudmila, Piotr, and Eleanora. Vel, Asaf, and Camael were nowhere to be seen. Gabriel hoped that they were far, far away and somewhere happier than that room was at the present.

  “Splendid. This is Lucifer’s suggestion.” Adramelek paused and took a deep breath. Gabriel had a sudden feeling he was not going to like this one little bit.

  “Lucifer suggested that we follow Lilith’s plan. Which is that Lilith and Agrat go to Purgatory and ask Naamah to forgive them for neglecting her and ask her to include them in her plans. They’ll be very convincing as they play traitor to us all, betraying both Heaven and Hell. Once they gain her confidence, they will be our spies. And then they will open a door into Purgatory for us.”

  Silence so absolute fell, that Gabriel would later swear that he would have heard a feather drop. It was Agrat who broke it, stepping forward to stand beside Adramelek.

  “I agree with Lilitu,” she said. “I think we need to take desperate measures.”

  “Beloved Agrat,” Michael said, “I am moved and grateful that you are willing to make this sacrifice, but we cannot ask this of you.”