by Michele Hauf
She bolstered her bravery with a deep inhale and asked what she wanted to know. “If I cannot carry my own child, how can I carry an angel’s child?”
“Your womb was designed exclusively for the Fallen’s progeny. As are the wombs of all muses. I would offer an apology for the personal pain you’ve been forced to take on, but everyone has their own burden to bear, eh?”
Gasping out her breath, Eden struggled not to fall to her knees. The realization she’d been born into this world for such a task was too large and shocking to wrap her brain around.
And yet it made bizarre sense. All her life she’d been drawn to angels…
“So you’ve become attached to my Sinistari, have you?”
“Ashur? I wouldn’t say attached.” She couldn’t look at the angel. Was she a pawn set down on the board decades ago? A piece in a game played by greater forces? “He’s a friend.”
“Of course. And love would be ridiculous. Forbidden, actually. But is the muse interested? Desirous? Does she want to do the nasty with the angel slayer?”
She would not dignify those accusations with a reply. Besides, he likely knew the answer already.
“I do,” he replied to her unspoken thoughts. “You seek safety, Eden Campbell. Safety in the arms of a lover who will be true. But you mustn’t dally in love with the Sinistari.”
“Why is love off-limits to the demons? Ashur said it was their only sin. Love should be the greatest gift.”
“Without evil there can be no good. You know how that whole balancing of the scales works. Angels are innately good and cannot hate. Demons are innately evil and cannot love. If demons were allowed to embrace love then we’d have a real problem with lacking evil, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s…just wrong. Especially when the angel I’ve met seems to have mastered evil. Ashur told me love was why he was banished Beneath,” she said.
“Indeed. I was the one who banished him. What more is there to know? And why is that particular tidbit so important to you?”
“I’m…” I care about him. Too much, already. “…curious.”
And she was angry at the injustice Ashur suffered simply because he had succumbed to an emotion everyone deserved to know. Did she seek some human part of the demon? Some means to justify her attraction to him? Because she was attracted and Raphael was more right about her wanting safety than she cared to admit.
“Why torture him?” she asked. “Why not allow him to keep his memories? Wouldn’t that have ultimately been more cruel?”
The angel clucked his tongue admonishingly. “You are offended by the use of torture?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not punishment unless it hurts.” Raphael smiled, but the curve of his lips smoothed away as if it had only been an illusion. “I observed Ashuriel following the slaying of thirteen Fallen. Released of his task, he tracked the world, experiencing all it had to offer. Thievery, adultery, bearing false witness, murder.”
“Murder?” Eden gasped.
“But of course. Ask him about it some time. He hasn’t only murdered angels. Ashuriel revels in all sin, as Sinistari are wont to do. It is their nature. And yet, love is not permitted a demon. Well, we had no idea the Sinistari were capable of it, you understand. It was offensive one of his breed should embrace love. Utterly abhorrent.”
“Some might say an angel stalking innocent mortal women was abhorrent.”
“Exactly. Which is why the Sinistari were forged.”
“Maybe you should have warned them before you sent them out into the world that love wasn’t allowed?”
“Look at you, all about the rules and nicey-nicey. It was a learn-as-you-go situation. It’s not like we’d had angels fall previously and had written up a rule book on how to manage them. Please.”
She’d offended him, yet Eden lifted her chin. One point for the mere mortal. But he quickly snuffed out her pride.
“I knew the moment Ashuriel felt love for the Macedonian woman. When it was seen the Sinistari master could love, it was decided love must not be allowed their breed. As I’ve said, one must maintain the balance. But I did not banish him then. I waited.”
The angel made a skipping step, hands still behind his back, as he marked the grass bordering the limestone path.
“I was there when he committed himself to the woman with his body and heart. He could not marry her. He was not allowed, for she was huge and ripe with another man’s child. Score one point for adultery.” He notched the air with a long finger as if marking the scoreboard. “Yet still, I waited.”
Eden clasped a hand over her mouth. Ashur had loved a woman who was pregnant? Could she have been…?
“When the child was born, I witnessed Ashuriel’s joy. It was the first time he felt that emotion. Still, I waited.”
Not joy, Eden thought, but true love. She knew it now.
“You are correct. Love embodies joy. You basically cannot have one without the other. So, where was I? Ah, yes, only when the woman was days away from death—she had a cancer in her body—and I knew the child was yet too young to fend for itself, only then did I step in and banish Ashuriel to Beneath. I left him to my assistant, Ariel, who is a master at punishment. Or if you prefer, torture.”
Malicious glee curved the angel’s smile. He skipped again and danced down the path.
Eden lunged before him, halting his giddy jig. “You bastard! You are crueler than Ashur will ever be. You’re…you’re worse than a demon!”
“Demon. Angel.” Raphael bent over her and Eden felt the heat of his presence burn in her throat. “Those are names. Titles. Words bandied about by humans to label a thing they can never truly know. You humans put wings on our backs, shining halos over our heads and paint us on greeting cards. We are a symbol of hope and grace to you all. Yet is that the truth?”
“Apparently not. Are you saying demons are the good guys?”
“I cannot say. It is all in the perception.”
“Then the balance shouldn’t be entirely weighed upon Ashur’s head. You can have some good demons if you also have bad angels.”
Raphael offered a dismissive gesture. “Now I will leave you. I feel this conversation was unnecessary.”
“It was necessary. I needed to sort out some things.”
“I did not help that.”
“No, but you did bring other things to light. And much as you don’t want to discuss what you’ve done to Ashur, I know you feel regret. It was wrong to torture him.”
“Is that so? And was it so right he be allowed to steal souls? He would not accept a human soul for his actions. He was the one who chose the darkness. He chose it!”
“I don’t understand all of that.”
“You never will, and should not concern yourself with it. Eden Campbell, listen to me. If you care one iota for the Stealer of Souls, Ashuriel must not fall in love with you.”
“Don’t worry about that. Love is stupid.” She winced. She thought she’d stopped lying to herself.
“Ah? Who tore your heart to pieces, mortal?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“The ex-fiancé.” He nodded knowingly. “Shall I smite him for you?”
She whipped her head around to gape at him.
Raphael shrugged. “Angel humor. But you know that wasn’t real love the two of you had. You’re not a stupid woman. A child does not ensure matrimonial bliss.”
She clasped her arms across her chest. Indeed. She wasn’t stupid. And she would not be stupid about what she expected from Ashur. If he did fall in love he would be banished again—and tortured. She would not be the instigator of such pain.
When she turned to Raphael he was gone.
Chapter 15
The gold-plated cross on the altar was cracked and had been fixed with Krazy Glue. Ashur grabbed it and tucked it under an arm. Now for some holy water. He found the font at the back of the church and dipped the cross in it. The water splashed onto his skin and sizzled into steam. It didn’t hurt, bu
t he got a kick out of the reaction.
He stepped out of the church, but a scream alerted him. It was not heard by any but him for it echoed in his brain much like the vibrations the Fallen put out scurried through his marrow. Instinctually he knew a Fallen one had found its muse.
He could flash to the scream, dispatch the angel and return to Six’s side in no time. He risked Zaqiel finding her while he was gone, but if that should happen, he should hear her cry for help, as he heard this one. Besides, he couldn’t resist the call to real danger.
Flashing to a neat hillside neighborhood in Andalusia, he landed on the courtyard of a red-tile-roofed home. The screen door hung loosely on its hinges. Spike-leaved agave plants clawed for space along the wall.
Another scream tingled across his brain. And now the Fallen’s distinctive vibrations shuddered through his steel marrow.
Ashur raced through the house toward the screams, drawing Dethnyht and raising it above his head.
The scrape of metallic wings growing out a bedroom door focused his determination. The wings, designed of twisted black and copper wire twenty to thirty feet long, would obliterate anything in their path as they grew.
He shifted, shrugging away the mortal coil. His true form emerged, hard, metallic and black. He charged the door and butted it with his head. His horns tore the wood frame to shreds and twisted in the Fallen’s wings.
A woman scrambled across the pillow-strewn bed, groping for the iron head rail. The Fallen easily shoved her down to position beneath his parted legs. He tore away the mortal garments yet clothing his lower body.
Ashur leaped, landing on the creature’s back. Metal collided with metal. He slipped, but maintained hold by gripping the angel’s hollow rib cage that resembled no human form. The angel bucked at him, but his intent remained on the screaming woman, who, with a slap from the angel’s palm, was knocked unconscious.
The angel roared in myriad tongues Ashur had not heard since biblical times. The noise clattered with the growls and vocalizations of all the earth’s wild beasts and languages long forgotten.
Leaping high, Ashur flipped over the top of the angel, and landed on the bed, planting his hooves to either side of the unconscious woman’s head. He saw the sigil on her forearm, shaped like a square with spikes.
With one hand he crossed himself from shoulder to shoulder, head to chest. With the other hand, he thrust Dethnyht up and into the angel’s glass heart. Shards of red glass dispersed; a few caught in Ashur’s eye. He closed that eye, growling against the cutting pain, and jammed the blade deeper.
The angel struggled and vocalized like a stuck elephant trumpeting the battle cry. Under his jaw Ashur saw a sigil to match the muse’s—it glowed blue.
The Fallen managed to knock Ashur aside the head, but his face merely dented inward. He threw off the angel, pushing it away and to the wall. Plaster flaked and cracked about the angel, fit into the wall, its wings crushed to the right and twisted metal bent over his shoulder.
Dethnyht dripped red glass droplets over Ashur’s thigh. They tinged and slid to the bed where they became liquid and melted into the torn sheets. The blade was tipped with qeres, an Egyptian poison which was the first sweet breath of the afterlife.
And the angel dropped, landing on its face with arms out-spread. Wings scraped the walls and ceiling, cutting deep gouges through the plaster. Some of the wing wires made contact with the electrical wires run through the mortal home and orange sparks snapped. It was like a bad car wreck.
The entire being dissipated. The angel shimmered into a pile of crystal dust.
As he stepped off the bed, Ashur’s hoof crushed the angel dust. In the middle of the glamorous destruction lay a single copper feather. He snatched it with his muscled black fingers. The feather marked the angel’s death, each one unique and different from all others, much like the sigils.
A satisfied growl purred in Ashur’s chest. His prize.
The angel dust rose in a fog before him, swirling and emitting a beautiful chirr of release. It was not the angel’s remains, but rather the souls it had carried within for endless centuries.
Ashur breathed in, taking the souls through his mouth and swallowing them as if a thirsty man two weeks in the desert. As each soul hit his heart, the solid black muscle sucked them in. Red-hot pain pierced through his nervous system with each glutinous gulp of his heart.
Crying out and thrusting out his arms, Ashur received the agony of his success. Souls trapped once again, but not without a torturous twist at his heart. Over and over, the electric bite of anger and rejection and terror shot through his system. He fell to his knees amid the angel dust and slapped his palms into the glassy mess. Wrenched forward and seized about the middle, Ashur took it all.
And when it was done, and the room was still and dark, he heard the woman on the bed stir.
“Sleep,” he murmured, and reached up to stroke his fingers across her forehead. Hypnos captured the woman in gentle arms and lulled her away from the sight of a Sinistari demon kneeling on her bedroom floor.
Standing, Ashur strode from the room, the feather in hand. He grabbed the knife sheath from the floor. As he walked, he shook out his shoulders and thighs, shrugging off the demon to resume mortal form. He eyed the laundry room and found a pair of men’s black jeans. They fit snuggly. No shirts, but the pants would serve until he could find something better.
Stepping out back, the setting sun made him blink. Exhaling, Ashur sucked in the fresh air. He tucked the feather in the sheath next to Dethnyht. As he did, a question formed. Raphael had not sent a Sinistari to slay this Fallen? Someone was slacking.
“Sinistari!”
Squinting, Ashur made out the shape of a man standing before the whitewashed garage, which was fronted by a cobblestone walkway. Shoulder tilted against the wall, one leg angled before the other, the man spun a black cane lazily before him. Long black hair hung straight over his shoulders. Dressed in pin-striped black trousers and a matching coat that revealed wide white shirt cuffs and black leather gloves, he glowered at Ashur.
“You have something that belongs to me,” he announced.
The man did not smell entirely human, yet a strange, deathly miasma coated his preternatural odor. In fact, he smelled of so many souls, he should be sick from the overload.
“Psychopomp,” Ashur addressed him.
The man bowed. “Blackthorn Regis, Soul Bringer.”
Ashur could guess what was coming and cared little.
“How many did you steal with that kill?” Blackthorn asked. “A couple thousand? Tens of thousands? Those are mine.”
“You want them?” Ashur spread his arms out in challenge. “Come and get them.”
The cane stopped spinning. Before he could figure what would next happen, Ashur dodged to avoid the deadly pointed cane soaring at him with ultrasonic speed. It landed in the wall but inches from his ear, cutting through the red-clay tiles with diamond-edged precision.
“Is that all you got?” he challenged, knowing it wasn’t wise. Following a shift he was always less strong than usual.
The psychopomp tugged off his coat to reveal a gold-shot damask vest beneath. Threading his gloved fingers together and cracking them dramatically, he then charged Ashur.
Ashur had only to step aside to avoid a collision with the man who was equal to him in height and likely strength. Not a wise move, however, because Blackthorn claimed the cane, and twisted around, swinging.
A cut to Ashur’s cheek drew black blood. It went in so deep he felt the tip of the cane cut his gums.
Spitting blood to the side, he grinned and swung up a foot to pummel the psychopomp aside the head. Blackthorn wobbled, but managed to stab the cane into Ashur’s bare foot.
Ashur swiped Dethnyht through the air, but pulled back before it could decapitate the man. He had no reason to kill the bastard. He simply needed to show him he couldn’t ask for what Ashur wasn’t willing to give.
“You damned Sinistari!” The p
sychopomp dodged a punch and slammed Ashur against the wall. He beat him in the chest with rapid fists. “Why steal them? You’re the only one who does it. Take the freakin’ mortal soul and have a damned life, why don’t you?”
“Not going to happen.”
“Because you are afraid!”
Ashur kicked the man off him, but maintained hold on the cane. He whipped Blackthorn around and slammed him against the wall. Winning the cane, he tried to break it across his knee but it had a steel core, so it only bent into a U. He thrust it aside.
Afraid? Preposterous. He simply had no need for a mortal soul. Because if he did not annihilate the Fallen walking this earth, who would? Apparently Raphael was sleeping on the job.
“You’ve more than enough souls to keep you satisfied,” Ashur countered. “These are mine. My reward for the ugly task I perform.”
“Oh, boo hoo. You need a reward every time you do something good? Get over it, demon. Next time I’m not coming alone.”
“You bringing the entire brigade? All with canes? You can do a little song and dance for me.”
Blackthorn smashed a fist into Ashur’s nose. The broken bone—actually, a metal shard—pierced his sinuses, and he swallowed thick blood. Spitting, he shot the black spray across the psychopomp’s face.
They offered an equal match. The psychopomp was an earthbound angel assigned here by an archangel—not Raphael—but Ashur cared little beyond his own master. They could beat on each other through the night and never get any further than broken bones that rapidly healed.
“You stop taking souls,” the psychopomp said as he leaned against the wall to catch his breath, “and I promise you I’ll make sure the muse’s soul goes the right direction when her time comes. Which, I’m guessing is gonna be soon.”
“You—”
The psychopomp’s only job was to ferry souls to either Above or Beneath, wherever they belonged. Ashur believed this one would take Six Beneath even if she was intended for Above.
“I can’t do that. I’ll take my chances with you next time. And she will not die. I’ll be sure of that.”