by Kim Wilkins
“I shall finish this business with you, angel,” she said, under her breath. They would have latched the door, with no doubt. But through the ruined side of the building she could see the remains of a small room, a broom closet with a sagging door exposed to the elements. It would lead under the stairs, and it would not be barred for only a fool would fit a latch to a broom closet.
Deborah edged up the alley, cleaving to the shadows of the half-ruined houses, sinking into crevices to hide and peer, then moving slowly, slowly up the alley. At last she dashed across and into the side of the house, among the blackened wood and fallen beams. The remains of the closet still retained their shape. She picked her way carefully towards it, misjudging the height of the lintel and striking her head on it. The wound reopened, and blood once again began to trickle from it. Deborah bit her tongue to control her cry of pain, and paused to still her dizzy mind. She pressed her hand to her head, and when she brought it back to check for blood, she saw her fingers were black with soot. She was filthy from head to toe. The door was less than two feet away and she paused to catch her breath.
Show him no fear. Show him no mercy. Make him believe you would sooner see your sisters dead than in his thrall.
She stilled her trembling hand and opened the door.
“You must repeat exactly what I say.” Lazodeus positioned Anne by grasping her shoulders and moving her to the first point of the triangle. She nodded, then watched as Lazodeus positioned Mary similarly.
“Very well,” Lazodeus said. “Listen carefully and repeat.” He grabbed their hands and indicated they should do the same. “Rimmoneus, angel of the order of virtues, come to us and stand within this triangle so that your brother may be saved.”
“Rimmoneus,” the girls intoned with him, “angel of the order of virtues …”
Anne felt a warmth growing in her bound feet. As they reached the end of the first chant, it had grown to a sharp heat.
“Rimmoneus,” they began again, and this time the heat flared to such an unbearable intensity that she had to jump from her place.
“What are you doing?” shouted Lazodeus.
“I am sorry,” Anne cried wretchedly. “Something burned my feet and they are already so sore.”
“Get back in your place,” Mary said imperiously, and Anne did as she was told.
“Rimmoneus, angel of the order of virtues …” She saw Mary shift from foot to foot, and anxiety gripped her. Nothing like this had happened when they called Lazodeus, but then there hadn’t been an angel in the triangle. Anne endured the heat as long as she could, and this time Mary jumped.
“Ow!”
“What is wrong?” Lazodeus snapped.
Anne moved from her place and saw that the floorboards were beginning to smoulder. “Something is wrong, Lazodeus,” she said. “A terrible heat radiates from the points of the triangle.”
“And you will allow that to stop you saving me?” Lazodeus cried. Anne had never heard him sound so desperate and it terrified her.
“I —”
“What matter is it if you should both be burned to ashes? Will you not save me? Will you not save the angel you love so greatly?”
Mary stood across from her, agape. Anne shook her head. “I … of course I will save you. I would die for you.”
“Then stand in your spot.”
“Must we die for you?” Mary asked, and Lazodeus turned on her.
“Why do you plague me with these questions? Can you not simply do as I ask?”
“We shall do as you ask, my love,” Anne said. “Here, I stand again upon the point. I shall suffer the very flesh to be burned from my feet if only you will —”
“Quiet, Anne!” Mary called. Then to Lazodeus, “Must we die for you?”
The question remained unanswered when a sudden thump from under the stairs drew their attention. Deborah emerged, smeared with soot and blood, brandishing a fire iron.
Lazodeus shrank from her, pulled Mary and Anne in front of him. “Your chances of success are not improved,” he said. “You see, your sisters have decided to stand by me.”
“I care not for my sisters,” Deborah spat.
Lazodeus cowered behind them. “You will not see them harmed. I know what you are, Deborah Milton, and you know what you are, and you will not see your sisters harmed.”
“See you not this wound?” Deborah said, pointing two fingers at the gash in her forehead. “My sisters did this. See me covered in soot? ’Tis not the first time my sisters have seen me like this, but last time they were locking me in a burning church.”
Anne had never heard Deborah sound so furious. All her usual cool reason appeared to have burned away.
“So you’ll forgive me if I now believe that my sisters should have their lives forfeit for my father’s life, and for the pleasure of destroying you.”
Lazodeus shook his head, and Anne felt his fingers drill harder into her shoulder. “I do not believe you.”
Deborah merely pulled out the chain around her neck and dangled a silver rod in front of her. “Do you not? It will hurt you no more or no less to be annihilated should you not believe me.”
Anne felt his fingers tremble and could bear his fear no longer. She sprang forward and made to snatch at the angel key, but Deborah raised the fire iron and grazed it across Anne’s shoulder. Anne braced herself for the pain, but when she looked down, her dress had been torn and the wound was very shallow. She understood immediately that Deborah was bluffing. If she were serious, she could have run Anne through completely.
“She is lying,” Anne said, turning to Lazodeus. “She will not harm us.”
Lazodeus and Deborah locked stares across the room.
“Look you, she has barely grazed me,” Anne said.
“I am dizzy from the blow to my head,” Deborah said stonily. “I had aimed for your heart. But fear not, Lazodeus, I have not forgotten a word of the command for your annihilation.”
Lazodeus shook his head. “Anne is right. I do not believe you would do it in the presence of your sisters.”
Deborah raised the key. “I command —”
Lazodeus fled, nearly knocking Anne and Mary over. He dashed to the stairs and Deborah was fast on his heels. Anne heard a door slam above; she and Mary were on the stairs in moments, running up, arriving at the door and pushing it.
Deborah had latched it.
“Don’t hurt him!” Anne screamed. “Don’t hurt him!”
Mary pelted the door with her fists. “I hate you!” she shouted. “I hate all of you!”
“We must break the door down,” Anne said, grabbing Mary by the shoulders. “Calm yourself, we must find something with which to break the latch. A stone, or a piece of hard wood.”
Mary shook her head. “It is over.”
“I will not see him destroyed,” Anne said, racing down the stairs. “I shall save him.”
27
Eternity, Whose End No Eye Can Reach
Deborah dropped the latch behind her and turned to see Lazodeus cowering in a corner. He had run into a windowless bedroom, and now she had him trapped. The only light in the room came from under the door, and from the angel himself, and Deborah waited a moment for her eyes to adjust.
“You are not so magnificent now,” Deborah said to him.
“Please, Deborah, show me mercy.”
She held out the key. “I intend as much mercy to you as you intended my father.”
“Then listen to reason!” he begged, dropping to his knees. “Please, put the key away a moment and listen to reason. You are rational, you are clever, you must be swayed by reason.”
Deborah did not drop the key, but she was curious. “What reason will you offer me?”
“You have been to Heaven. I know you have for you possess an angel key.”
“That is correct.”
“You know, then, that your father will proceed to that place upon his death.”
“Yes.”
“But I have no hope beyo
nd my destruction if you choose to proceed with it. Once I am annihilated, I cease to be. I am no more.” He began to sob. “Do you not understand what a terror that is to me? Where will I be? What will happen to the spark that I am now? I cannot contemplate such a profound darkness. Will everything I am be gone? My memories, my aspirations, my desires? I cannot bear it, can you not see? Can you not imagine such a terror?”
His fear was a cold spark in the room. She felt it keenly for she had known such questions in her life: What if nothing awaits me after my demise? But now she knew for certain that something did await her, and Lazodeus knew equally for certain that nothing awaited him.
Her hesitation encouraged him. He stretched out his great length full on the floor. “Deborah, you are wise and you are reasonable. Please do not assign to me such a fate.”
“You lied to me, you betrayed me. You’ve poisoned my sisters against me and sought to kill my father.”
“I am that which God made, just as you are that which your Father made. I have been banished for countless millennia from my homeland, from that perfect world which you call Heaven.” He looked up at her, his blue-green eyes gleaming. “Deborah, you have seen it. You have felt his love. Is it not punishment enough that I am so irrevocably separated from him?” Tears coursed down his face and she felt herself moved. “I beg you, I beg you.”
“Yet if I exercised my mercy, how could I ensure you stayed away from my sisters?”
“Use the angel key to banish me back to Pandemonium under condition. It is easy and it is binding. The Seraphim within that key must do as you say to the last letter.” He drew himself up to his knees. “Please, Deborah. I do not want to be nothing.”
Moments ticked past, and Deborah felt herself to be very young to make such a decision. Yet if he was forbidden from interfering with her sisters and Father, who was she to take the last essence of such a creature? She flinched from killing spiders; she hated the sound of a pig being slaughtered or the mad flapping of a fish in the markets. And yet, these creatures may very well also proceed to that kingdom of peace, of which Lazodeus would have no hope.
“Lazodeus, I will grant you the mercy you ask,” she said quietly. “But you must go with the Seraphim, and not look upon me more.”
His head bowed forward and she could no longer see his face. “Very well, Deborah. I await my fate.”
Mary waited at the top of the stairs, her ear pressed against the door. She could hear nothing. The wood was heavy and thick.
“Out of the way, Mary.”
She turned. Anne trudged up the stairs with her bandaged feet, a large rock held in both hands.
“Tell me, sister,” Mary said, “why were you naked with Lazodeus?”
“There isn’t time for such a conversation,” Anne said, averting her eyes.
“Do you know that I have laid with him?” Mary said.
“I believe you not.”
“Why do you not? I have laid with many.”
“Out of the way, Mary. I shall break the latch.”
“He says he loves me, Anne.”
Anne paused, her fingers white as they gripped the rock. “You lie.”
Mary cocked her head and gave Anne an inquisitive look. “Are you certain?”
“Yes I am certain,” Anne said softly. “For he says he loves me.”
“And after we killed Father, you and he would be together eternal?”
“Yes.”
“And has he laid with you? Has he touched your body and made you sigh?”
“Yes,” Anne said more forcefully. “Now, out of my way.”
Mary rose, descended two steps towards Anne, put her hands on her sister’s shoulders. “You have all betrayed me.” She felt the fury twist up through her like a storm. The only way to stop it bursting out of her body was to push with all her might. “Let him die!” she called, as she watched Anne tumble down the stairs, the rock flying from her hands. “You may all die for I care not!”
She ran down the stairs after Anne, stepped over her motionless body at the bottom, and fled into the dark.
Deborah held the key up and took a deep breath. She wanted to be sure she got it right.
“I command Lazodeus’s banishment to Pandemonium, that he may never interfere with my sisters, my father nor my stepmother for the rest of their lives and into eternity.”
Faintly, faintly …
Approaching …
Looming out of the very walls …
Music! The joyous ring of music washed through her and surrounded her, and she was once again as content and at peace as she had been in Heaven. Lights began to gather in the room. One, two, three … all the way to seven. They grew in intensity enough to blind her, but she stood and watched awestruck, protected somehow by the key, able to see all the way into the burning light to its perfect core.
The lights became larger, and Deborah glimpsed the flash of a wing, the curve of a shoulder. Yet they did not take mortal form. Their growth began to shake the walls of the room, and a loud creak sounded from somewhere below. The house, already half destroyed, began to shift precariously. Even so, Deborah did not flinch.
Lazodeus shuddered on the floor before her, began to cry out in fear.
“Let everything be as it is,” she said.
The Seraphim crowded around him now, picking him up under the arms and lifting him into the air, so that he appeared to hang suspended upon a wall of light. The music grew louder and louder, shuddering through her body and through the walls. Lazodeus looked up at her, his blue-green eyes met hers and she felt a shock to her heart for his beauty in this moment of his ruin.
“Deborah,” he said. “I shall be with you upon the day you die.”
“What do you mean?”
“I shall compete for your soul. I shall battle whichever angel is sent for you and I shall have you with me in Pandemonium.”
“What do you mean?” she shouted, but the music had grown to a deafening roar and the lights had intensified to a blinding sheet and the house began to shake.
Whiter and whiter. Louder and louder. Lazodeus’s dark figure being sucked into the perfect brilliance until he was no more than a grey speck at its centre.
In an instant, it stopped. The key dissolved from between her fingers.
The sudden absence of the music was nearly as deafening as the music itself. Her eyes saw everything blue, but she could tell that the room was empty except for her. Lazodeus was gone. The house shuddered and then stilled, but nothing could still the violent quaking of her body, the riotous course of her blood through her veins, the jumping of her heart.
“What do you mean?” she asked again in the silence. A chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling and bounced on the carpet.
No answer came.
The house on Artillery Walk was dark and silent. Mary closed the front door behind her and sagged against it. She took a moment to catch her breath, then straightened herself and strode in.
“Max? Max, little friend? Where are you?” She went to the kitchen and lit a candle. Under a cloth she found a round of cheese. Max limped in. He was recovering well from his beating, but still required delicate handling. She picked him up gently and lowered him onto the table. He licked her hand and his tail wagged.
“Dear little friend,” she said, cutting him some cheese and feeding it to him. She cut another chunk for herself. “We’re going away, Max. We’re leaving horrible Betty and horrible Father behind and we’re going back to Forest Hill. You like it there, don’t you little man? You like the big fields, I know.” She continued cutting bites of cheese, one for Max, one for herself. Max devoured them eagerly. “Mary’s going to marry a rich man, Max. Do you remember Sir Adworth? I think he shall die before you, but he has pots of money. You shall have a diamond collar and a velvet cushion to sleep upon.”
She sank into a chair and Max licked her fingers, finding every last smear of cheese. “Grandmamma will have us until Adworth invites me, but you must be good in the coach and don’
t watch Mary. She has to pay the fare somehow.”
The dog squirmed into her lap and she held him for a long time, felt his warm heart beating. Just as he was settling down to sleep, she rose. “Come, Max. I shan’t pack, for Adworth will no doubt buy me many fine dresses. I shall live a life of finery and I shall not love again, except for you.”
Max barked happily at her heels as she led him out into the street, down the Walk to the main road. She hailed down a coach and did not look back.
“Could it be true?” Deborah asked Amelia as they sat amongst the cats in her withdrawing room. “Could he have a claim on my soul?”
It was morning, but Amelia, as always, had drawn the curtains against the sun. Deborah had come early to tell the whole tale. She hoped violently that Lazodeus’s last words to her were an empty threat.
Amelia cupped her chin in her hand. “Let us go over it again. You ordered that he stay away from your sisters and your father?”
“Yes. Even Betty!” She cursed herself for the millionth time for her short-sightedness. Perhaps it had been the earlier blow to her head, or perhaps he had worked some of his magnetic magic on her. Either way, she had made a crucial error. “But I forgot to order him to stay away from me.”
“Then he can return. But I should think he will not.”
“Why?”
“Because he is afraid of you now. You have commanded an angel key. He may think you too great a risk to antagonise.”