Angel of Ruin

by Kim Wilkins

  “Your beauty is greater.” He slid around to stand in front of her. Picked at the laces of her bodice.

  “I do not believe you.”

  “You need not believe my words. But you must believe my caresses.” He pushed up her skirts, his fingers gliding up her inner thigh.

  Her head fell back and jealousy and anger began to fade. “I believe I am addicted to your touch,” she said.

  “Then have your fill of me,” he said, dropping to his knees and burying his face between her legs. The hot touch of his tongue on her core was a scalding silken pleasure. His fingers moved inside her and she was awash with bliss. She only lived in such moments.

  “Do not prefer anyone to me,” she whispered. “For I cannot bear the thought.”

  Deborah realised, as she walked up towards Amelia’s house, that she now possessed a stronger ability with the demon key than Amelia herself: Deborah now knew two extra demons and their roles, and the angel magic left on the key made its use flawless. She had to admit, she was unsure how Amelia would deal with this news and so she decided not to hurry in mentioning it. Impulsively, she pulled the key from around her neck and tucked it into her placket. If Amelia asked for its return, she wanted a little more time to experiment.

  The tall, dark house waited on the corner. Light summer rain fell, making her hair damp and the cobbles slippery. One of Amelia’s cats — she thought it might be Tuesday — cowered on the doorstep from the rain.

  “Hello, what are you doing out here?” she asked as she knocked. When Gisela opened the door, the cat dashed in.

  “Are you wet?” the old crone asked.

  “A little. ’Tis only a light rain,” Deborah replied, as she came in, pulling off her gloves and hat.

  “Amelia is expecting you,” Gisela said. “Go through.”

  Just as Deborah was about to open the door to the sitting room, Gisela said, “And I’m expecting you later. I have a floor to be scrubbed.” She smiled her toothless smile and Deborah felt her heart sink. One of the things she despised about Amelia’s tutelage was performing household chores. Even at home she didn’t have to scrub the floor — that was Liza’s job. More and more, she felt such tasks beneath her.

  “I shall be pleased to help,” she muttered.

  Amelia was waiting, sitting proudly like royalty, surrounded by her cats.

  “Tuesday was outside,” Deborah said.

  “I wondered where she had got to. Where’s your key?” Amelia gestured towards Deborah’s throat.

  “I left it at home. By accident.”

  “You must be more careful with it. What if one of your sisters took it?”

  Deborah’s memories of the awful night with Father Bailey returned. “I have so many questions to ask you, Amelia.”

  “Go on then.”

  Deborah sat down. Weary from the last few days, she slumped into a chair and put her head down on a cushion. “First, why can I not see Lazodeus in the scrying mirror?”

  “He might have blocked you.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Of course. Why do you want to see him?”

  “I don’t trust him.”

  “Immerse the mirror in water. You will see and hear him, but the water will cloak your viewing. What other questions?”

  “How can I stop Lazodeus from knowing things about me? He knew I had the demon key.”

  “He can only know about you by looking at you when you are physically in his presence. All you need do when you are with him is hold your hand over your forehead. Like this.” Amelia demonstrated with one of her pale hands. “What else?”

  “Can an exorcist hurt Lazodeus?”

  Amelia laughed scoffingly. “Of course not. If it were that easy, I wouldn’t have a business.”

  “You are certain?”

  “Absolutely. Why?”

  Deborah took a breath and told Amelia the story of Father Bailey.

  “I don’t understand,” Amelia said when she was finished. “An exorcism should have no impact on him at all. Yet, what reason would he have for pretending it did?”

  “I think he is trying to divide our loyalties,” Deborah said.

  “Surely not. I can see no purpose for it.”

  Deborah sighed and sat up. “Amelia, he has my sisters in thrall. They would do anything for him. They nearly killed for him.”

  “Angels are enchanting by nature.”

  “I doubt his motives.”

  Amelia waved a dismissive hand. “You doubt everything. That is why you cannot move forward. Less doubting and questioning, and you may find your magical practice expanding.”

  “’Tis not in my nature to be reckless,” Deborah replied smoothly. This much she knew of herself and would not change.

  Amelia caressed her pale hair imperiously. “Then perhaps you shall never be a great magician.”

  Deborah took a moment to think about this. Was Amelia right? She was so tired all of a sudden. Weary with worrying about the angel and the demons in her walls. She wished them all to be gone from her life, to be a girl again with two sisters who were friends and a father whom she adored. She said, “I have become a woman I suppose. That is why I am so unhappy.”

  “What are you unhappy about?” Amelia asked, leaning over to touch her hair.

  “The demon key has changed. Since Lazodeus used it, it has more power.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whatever I ask for comes to me immediately.”

  “It is not possible.”

  “Lazodeus, whether wittingly or not, has affected it.”

  Amelia withdrew her hand and sat back to stare at Deborah. “And is this why you didn’t bring it? Did you think that I would try to take it from you?”

  “No. I simply forgot it.”

  “Yet you have never forgotten it ere today.”

  “I assure you, it is coincident. Though I understand how you may suspect otherwise.”

  Amelia glanced around at her cats. Without meeting Deborah’s eye she said, “Still, you should bring it back for me to examine.”

  “Yes, I shall. Next time.”

  “Come back tomorrow with it. You needn’t scrub the floor today.”

  Deborah kept her voice even. “I shall not be able to get away from home until our usual meeting day next week. My father is returning and he will have dictation for me. Travelling stimulates his imagination.”

  Amelia narrowed her eyes slightly. “Are you certain you cannot?”

  “There is more,” Deborah said.

  “Go on.”

  “Lazodeus called on demons I had never heard of.”

  “He did?”

  “Did you not know there are others? Beyond the table that we have?”

  Amelia frowned. “No, I did not know. Should we believe it?”

  “We must believe it. He called on them and they complied.”

  “I am most perplexed.”

  Deborah felt such a sinking disappointment inside her. Amelia seemed to know very little indeed for one who was supposed to be so versed in magical knowledge. How was she to learn if every teacher she turned to failed her?

  “I must go,” Deborah said, getting quickly to her feet. “I have just remembered I am expected home.”

  “Come back tomorrow with the key,” Amelia said. “I should very much like to see it and try it for myself.”

  Deborah smiled weakly. “I shall do my best.”

  She walked home by a long route, giving herself time to think things through. Once, knowledge had seemed such an admirable goal, but all she saw around her at the moment were problems. Mary and Anne barely speaking to her; Betty terrified; Amelia unable to answer her questions; Father no longer worthy of her veneration. Was this the lesson she was destined to learn? That people were horribly, horribly fallible and there was no security to be had at any port?

  Perhaps it was time to be done with this magic. What could she do with it anyway, but command demons to do little things: open doors and find lost
objects. Not healing, or protecting, or providing joy. Not changing the world enough for her to be allowed to travel alone on the continent, or study medicine. It all seemed so petty, somehow. For an activity that was supposedly of the highest spiritual importance, it reduced too easily to satisfying conceit or pecuniary interest.

  With heavy feet she turned into Artillery Walk. Betty was home alone.

  “Liza has taken your sisters to the markets. We are preparing a great feast for when your father returns. I have invited some of his friends.”

  Her sisters were not home. A good opportunity, she supposed, to turn her scrying mirror on Lazodeus.

  “I shall look forward to his return,” she said, and scooped some water from the bucket near the fire into a deep wooden trencher. Betty seemed about to ask what the water was for, but stopped herself. “I am going up to my room,” Deborah said. “I shall be down for supper.”

  Safely in her closet, she closed the door. She lit a candle and it sputtered in the stuffy darkness. From her trunk, she pulled the scrying mirror out of hiding and laid it in the bowl. The water closed over it. Her own reflection, distorted through the water, looked back at her. Was she sure she wanted to do this?

  Yes, absolutely. Her sisters were in too far with the fallen angel.

  She positioned the bowl between her knees on the bed and passed her hand over it. “Show me Lazodeus,” she said softly. Steam began to rise from the water, and she was puzzled. Amelia hadn’t mentioned —

  Suddenly, a blinding beam of light shot up from the mirror. She shrieked and put her hand in front of her face to protect her eyes. A burning sensation drilled into the palm of her hand, where the beam met her skin. What on earth was happening?

  Of course. He was an angel, and he had only appeared to her in mortal form. The mirror was reflecting back his true appearance. She quickly said, “Show me Lazodeus in his mortal form.”

  The blinding light instantly disappeared. She checked her hand, and saw a red welt of scorched skin. She brought her palm to her mouth and sucked the wound to take the sting away. Through the water, in the mirror, she saw Lazodeus’s familiar form.

  He was not wearing his dark layers of beautiful clothes. Rather, he was clothed in a plain white robe, and appeared much more angelic, even vulnerable. He sat on an elaborately carved stone seat on a street she did not recognise. It seemed too dark, and a faint warm glow reflected on the dark stone walls and gleaming cobbles.

  She drew a quick breath. Perhaps he wasn’t in London. Perhaps he was in Pandemonium.

  “Let me hear him,” she said. But he was not speaking, merely sitting as though he were waiting for someone or something. She watched for half an hour while he sat unmoving, then grew bored and sat back on her bed. She idled with the demon key, flipping it over and over on its chain. Just as she was considering going downstairs to help Betty, she heard noise from the scrying mirror. She sat up and peered into the water. Lazodeus had stood, and a great elaborate iron door was opening in front of him. The door was carved with similar gargoyles and looping designs as the scrying mirror. A disembodied female voice said, “Come in, Lazodeus. His Majesty is ready to see you now.”

  His Majesty? That could only be one angel. One very fallen angel.

  Lazodeus strode into a vast hall. It was dazzlingly lit with thousands and thousands of candles positioned against mirrors. A long fireplace ran to shoulder height along the wall. Her breath was tight in her chest; would she see Lucifer? He approached a black marble table which gleamed in the light of the flames.

  “Greetings, your Majesty,” he said as he approached. Deborah realised he was apprehensive. His gait was not so confident as when he was with mortals.

  “Greetings, Lazodeus. You may approach.”

  His Majesty came into view. Lucifer was a perfect ruined beauty, with the same masculine dignified bearing as Lazodeus, in similar white robes. His face, however, was more exquisite, his hair black and his eyes green, an unimaginably perfect symmetry and proportion of features. A scar ran from one side of his face to the other, diagonally from forehead to chin. But it wasn’t his physical characteristics which made him beautiful — though he was most certainly beautiful. It was something about his eyes, some addictive thrill cleaving to his brow, some dark promising kiss waiting in his glance. She held her breath. Lucifer sat behind the table in a carved chair and spoke.

  “Why are you here?”

  “It is about leaving guardianship behind and moving ahead.”

  “I understood that you were destined to remain a guardian because of your indolence.”

  “I am trying much harder, Majesty.”

  “You have not provided this realm with a single soul in hundreds of years. My Principalities and Thrones must be far more aggressive than that.”

  Deborah felt as though she had been kicked in the heart. Souls? After all this time, after convincing herself that this was not what Lazodeus wanted, was it really so simple? She composed herself, determined to remember every detail.

  “I have found three girls … sisters …” Lazodeus began.

  “Sisters? Decent girls? Pretty?”

  “Yes, all three.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I was called as their guardian by an idiot witch who did not know what she was doing. I have been waiting their whole lives for them to call me. The eldest two trust me … love me. The youngest is wiser.”

  “Forget her. Tell me of the others.”

  “I want to seduce them to our party. If I can do it, will you elevate me to the position I rightfully deserve?”

  Lucifer shook his head. “Too easy, if they are already in love with you —”

  “Name me a sin, then. Any sin. I believe my sway is such that I can get them to do anything. In time.”

  “We have abundant time, Lazodeus.”

  “Name me a sin, and if I can get their souls that way —”

  “You will become one of my Principalities. I suppose it is fair. I’d like to meet them.” Lucifer took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Are they pretty? Are they soft? Do they shed tears and tremble?”

  “They are all that we adore about mortals.”

  Lucifer opened his eyes and smiled. “Go on, then. See what you can do for me. I shall be watching you closely.”

  Lazodeus stood, bowing obsequiously. “Thank you, Majesty. But you have yet to name their sin.”

  “Their sin?” Lucifer idled with the scar near his chin. Deborah held her breath, realised she was clutching the bed covers in anxious fingers. “Let me see … Ah, yes, I have it.”

  “Majesty?”

  “Patricide,” Lucifer said. “Their sin shall be patricide.”

  16

  Sweet Reluctant Amorous Delay

  Deborah’s skull seemed suddenly made of granite. The shock froze her solid for a full minute. Then she pressed her fingers to her eyes and rallied her thoughts.

  What to do? How to proceed? Her sisters would never believe her. She had declared Lazodeus her enemy just a few short days ago. To approach them with this story was to be destined to fail.

  But she could not let Lazodeus have his way. Tempt them with …

  Surely, he did not hold them so much in his spell that they would murder their own father. Her father.

  Once more, she peered into the mirror, but Lazodeus had left the great hall and returned to the gleaming black streets of Pandemonium. She watched him as he began to wander silently through obsidian alleys indistinguishable from one another, twisting sickly into lonely places. Occasionally he would pass another white-robed, scarred creature and exchange greetings, then keep moving. Walking, as Father did, to contemplate a problem. The problem of patricide. For a long time she watched, and her heart would not still. Finally, she passed her hand over the mirror and it lay silent.

  “Think, Deborah, think.” Long since, she had heard Anne and Mary come home, take the rugs up for beating, call her angrily, then leave her alone when she claimed illness.

&
nbsp; A terrible illness of the soul. My sisters; my father.

  It would take time. Lazodeus had much hard work ahead of him to convince Anne to kill Father. Mary … no, even Mary was not so completely without conscience.

  “So I must not rush into warning them,” Deborah said, falling back on her pillow and taking a deep breath of the stuffy closet air. “I must be prudent.” Watch and wait a little while, and ask Amelia for help. Though Amelia was to blame for all this according to Lazodeus. Amelia and her reckless magic. So much for her exhortations to spontaneity. How was Deborah to know, now, whether or not the demon key was endangering her own soul? All Amelia’s talk of amorality was now in question. Every instinct shrieked that she should destroy the key, but she needed it to protect Father. And herself.

  She picked up the key and hung it round her neck again, tucking the bar of tarnished silver between her breasts. When all this was over — when her sisters were returned to their senses and Lazodeus was banished and Father was safe — then she would melt it and cast it into the Thames.

  Until then, necessity dictated she consort with demons.

  “How much do you love your father?”

  Mary propped herself up on one elbow. “I love him not. You know that.” She sipped her drink: spiced wine served in an ivory tusk, gold tipped. A special gift brought for her velvet room, from the exotic depths of the east.

  Lazodeus smiled up at her from amongst the velvet cushions. His hand languidly caressed her bare thighs. “How much do you hate him?”

  “He is an irritant rather than a blight. An itch rather than a pox. Why do you ask?”

  “Some of those I affiliate with in Pandemonium are unhappy with his great poem.”

  “Unhappy with it? Why?”

  “Will it be published?” he countered.

  “I expect so. He publishes many things.”

  “The fear is of its influence, that its fame may live long after him, that the true story of our nobility as a race will never be known.”

  “That tedious ordeal of a poem famous?” She sniffed. “I scarcely believe that to be possible.”

  “Still, these are our fears …”

  Mary shrugged. “I should not mind if they wish to burn all the pages. But do not ask me to do it, for Deborah and I are at war, and I know the foul girl is watching me.”