by Izzy Shows
My eyes flashed with anger for a minute. “Do you have a point?”
“I am only expressing proper brotherly concern, Malphas. You have always been the calmest of us, the most controlled.” He had been smiling before, but now he sobered. “I am worried about you.”
Why was everyone worrying about me? Lilith was always nagging me that I needed to be careful or I would do something I would regret. And now my brother was at it as well, though he didn’t know the reason for my behavior.
“There is nothing to worry about,” I said.
Then I realized that I had the perfect excuse.
“That isn’t entirely true,” I corrected myself. “There is an explanation, though I had been hoping to deal with it before I brought it to everyone’s attention.”
Relief etched itself into his face. “You’re finally going to tell us what’s going on? Fabulous.”
“Indeed. There is a problem in my army. In fact, there may be a problem in yours, as well. I do not know.”
His relief had been short-lived, for now he appeared very concerned.
“What problem? Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“Because, as I said, I wanted to dispense of the problem first.” I let out an agitated sigh. Asmodeus had never been the best listener. “Do you recall Lilith?”
He frowned. “Yes, but I fail to see what she has to do with our armies.”
“I am getting to it. Some time ago, it came to my attention that she was afflicted with an illness that corrupted her nature. She became crazed, as if she was addicted to the energy of magical creatures, namely mages. She could not do without their essence for even a day, and she did not care about the danger she put herself in to get her fix.”
“That is not like Lilith at all.”
“No, it is not. As I said, the affliction corrupted her. We have determined that something tainted her soul, and we were able to remove the taint. It has come to my attention that this taint may have reached the army.”
He swore. “How?”
“Lilith believes it may have come in through a soldier who was given surface leave. They would have been tainted while on Earth, and when they returned, they brought it back with them.”
“And you’re certain of this?”
“As certain as I can be. Ten soldiers left Hell without permission the other day. I had to hunt them down. At first, I believed it to be a rebellion. I served their heads to the other soldiers in the mess hall as a reminder of what happens when they step out of line, and I thought the matter would be resolved in a matter of days when whoever had been leading it stepped up to the threat. However, no one has done that, and when I spoke to Lilith about what was going on, she determined from the behavior I described to her that it was possible they had been tainted. It twists the afflicted’s nature and causes them to behave as they would not otherwise. There is little doubt in my mind that this is what we are dealing with.”
For a moment, he was silent, absorbing the information I had given him.
“How did you cure Lilith?”
I shifted my gaze to the side, cursing myself for mentioning that. I couldn’t very well tell him about Blair, and I also could not claim that I had done it myself. If I said that, he would expect me to cure the afflicted today, and I couldn’t do that.
I did not know how.
“We worked with a human healer,” I said at last. “They were disposed of afterwards.”
He nodded. “Makes sense. No loose ends. But what will you do now?”
“I will attempt to recreate the spell that was used on Lilith, and if I cannot do so, then I will dispose of the infected. It is the only possible way of ensuring that the taint does not spread, if they cannot be cured.”
“A pity. If you find that the taint has run deep, it could be detrimental to dispose of so many soldiers.”
“I have identified seven I am reasonably certain are infected. There is a possibility that there are more, perhaps some who are capable of hiding the taint within themselves, but I am certain I can root them out if that is the case. It was simply a priority to find as many as possible as quickly as possible. Now that I have quarantined the obvious ones, I can begin a search for the others. Meanwhile, I will have some to experiment on and attempt to cure myself.”
“It sounds as though you have a plan in place.”
I narrowed my eyes. Asmodeus had been awfully cooperative throughout this entire conversation. Not once had he intimated that I was failing in my duties by allowing this to happen. He had not insulted my prowess even once. And now he was commending my plan of attack. What had come over him? Why had he not attacked when the opportunity presented itself?
“What?”
“Your behavior is concerning, Asmodeus,” I said. “You have not insulted me.”
He barked out a sharp laugh. “You are always so suspicious, Malphas. I understand, though. Normally, I would not, but this is too serious. I will have to look into this in my own army to make sure that the taint has not affected my own. We cannot risk losing what we have been building for so long. It is too important.”
I hadn’t expected that from him, though it made sense. Perhaps I had underestimated my brothers’ ability to assess the gravity of the situation. It was no childish prank that could be ignored, but rather a problem that could quickly destroy everything.
If we did not handle it soon, we would lose all that we had accomplished. None of my brothers would want that to happen.
“I will, of course, inform our other brothers so that they can do the same,” he said.
I nodded. “I can see now that that is the proper course of action. I am sorry that I did not come to you with this sooner. I did not expect you to understand.”
“Of course you didn’t. Why would you? We have never dealt with something like this, and because of that, our past behavior would not have left you with any indication that we would take this seriously. But I see no reason why the others would not recognize this for the dangerous situation it is. They will take it seriously. I am certain of that.”
Part of me was still suspicious, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but I forced the feelings away.
I had heard that in many human families, brothers were meant to be people you could count on. That they were dependable, and you could trust them with your innermost secrets.
That was not how it was with me and my brothers. Even in Heaven, there was no trust to be had. Everyone did what they were told, and there was no fondness among any of us. We were all brothers and sisters of one another, and a family of that size could not possibly be close.
My brothers—those who had Fallen with me—had grown closer in a way, more so than any of us had ever been in Heaven. But they were not people I would trust with secrets, and I doubted that I could rely on them for anything other than keeping our realm in order.
That was only because we all stood to gain. If something went wrong in Hell, it would spread from my people to theirs, and that wouldn’t do for any of them.
We all wanted to keep things going as they had. That was all there was to it.
Asmodeus stood up, apparently done with the conversation. “I wish it had been a better conversation, brother,” he said.
I frowned. “When is it ever?”
His smile was tired. “Exactly.”
Did he wish for the familial bond that the humans had? I wondered about that. It would have been a pleasant thing, but not one I ever expected to have with my brothers.
“Oh, one last thing.”
“Yes?”
“The human girl.”
I stiffened but otherwise did not react. I couldn’t. I couldn’t let him see that his question bothered me.
“Did you care about her?”
I raised an eyebrow. “What in Hell would make you think that, brother? I care for no one.”
He snorted. “As always, brother. I don’t know why I would think you’d changed.”
And then he left, leaving
me to ponder his last statement.
That was the second time someone had remarked on my ability to change; Lilith had said something similar a few days ago.
Why would anyone think me capable of change?
Eighteen
The day had been long and tiring, but at last it was over.
Hell was mostly under control again, at least as much as it could be, and I felt at last that I could leave for the night without it all falling apart in my absence. It had been days since I had last visited my apartment, and I missed it.
I knew Lilith was going to give me an earful about my absence, but for once I didn’t hate that thought.
In a way, I had almost missed her nagging.
But I wasn’t going straight home. There was something else I wanted to do. Something that would allow me to blow off some of the steam I had built up over the past few days, dealing with this shit.
As soon as my feet landed on Earth, a vicious smile took hold of my lips, and my eyes gleamed with excitement.
I was going to go on the offensive with Cassiel. Hunt her down, turn the tables on her, and see if I could get a good rise out of her. Another battle was exactly what I needed to get my mind off of everything.
I only hoped she would be accommodating, but I could see no reason why she wouldn’t. She would offer forgiveness to me again, and I would refuse it, and then we would battle.
She would fight me in the hope that she could eventually overpower me and return me to the fold, though I was certain she knew that that would never happen. We were too well-matched for either of us to vanquish the other, and that wasn’t really the point of it.
Cassiel would never admit it, but I knew she enjoyed the hunt as much as I did. She wasn’t really trying to vanquish me, not in her heart.
In a twisted sort of way, this was our form of friendship. Our fights were our way of catching up, of saying “Hey, I missed you.”
Neither of us could exchange kind words with the other. It wouldn’t work. The words would taste odd on my tongue and ruin everything we had built between us.
I allowed myself to walk through the city—Los Angeles; I recognized it a minute later—drifting from one block to the next as I sought her scent.
She had been here recently; I was certain of that. Her touch was on the city, though something seemed a bit odd about it. It didn’t ring with the same light that I was accustomed to, although perhaps that was simply because her visit hadn’t been as recent as I’d thought, and her touch had begun to wash away as the sinful walked over it.
The streets were crowded, but the humans moved out of my way as I approached.
They didn’t realize it, but they sensed something wrong and dangerous about me. There was an instinctual fear of me inside of them, something that had been passed down through their evolutionary memory to keep them safe. One woman shivered as I passed her by, looking rather confused.
It was a warm summer day. It didn’t fit that she should be cold.
It was me that caused her to shiver—not from the cold, but from fear.
Later, she would reflect on the sensation, and would possibly understand what she had actually felt. Then she would feel grateful that nothing had happened to her, and soon her memory of it would fade. Humans were terrible about that sort of thing. They refused to acknowledge what was in front of them. They closed their eyes to anything that didn’t fit in their world.
Magic didn’t make sense to them, so they pretended it didn’t exist. Anytime they came face to face with it, they came up with some ludicrous explanation for what had happened and convinced themselves that it hadn’t really happened at all and that everything was fine.
They did the same thing with demons. They looked into our eyes and saw death, and then pretended that they had imagined it all, rather than admit that a predator had walked the streets with them and there was nothing they could do about it.
That was the real root of their folly: they could not live with the concept that they were helpless against the true dangers in the world. If they allowed themselves to acknowledge that, they would drown in misery.
It was a coping mechanism, and a pathetic one at that.
Ironically, they didn’t behave that way when it came to angels. They were all desperate to believe in angels, though their concept of angels was rather different from the reality. They saw them as protectors, put on the Earth by God himself to keep them safe.
Safe from what? They couldn’t really think about that, but they were certain the angels kept them safe from all things.
What they didn’t understand was that the angels weren’t protectors, not in the sense they thought of it. They were soldiers, just like my cambions and nephilim were. They obeyed orders; it was as simple as that. The angels themselves did not care what happened to the humans—they were beyond that capability.
Such an emotion would pollute them.
Cassiel’s scent became stronger, and I pushed those musings from my mind. They were unimportant at the moment. What mattered right now was finding Cassiel and engaging in the fight that would provide the pain I needed.
Pain that might allow me a decent night’s sleep, or would perhaps keep me from sleeping at all.
Wouldn’t that be glorious?
You couldn’t go a night without sleep, no matter how much you want to. You need to see her face too much.
I scowled at the thought. It was apparent that I couldn’t lie to myself, but that did not mean I had to entertain that little voice inside that plagued me with its incessant nagging.
It was worse than Lilith could ever be.
I followed Cassiel’s scent through the streets and down an alley until I came to a rather ill-kept part of town.
I frowned. This had to be wrong. What was Cassiel doing here?
Still, I continued.
I came to a warehouse where her scent was strongest, and I was certain she would be inside.
Something nagged at the back of my mind that this wasn’t quite right, but I ignored it and entered the warehouse.
Cassiel was there, alone, looking as if she had been waiting for me.
“Hello, darling,” I said as I strode in. The large door swung shut behind me with a loud sound.
She narrowed her eyes at me but said nothing.
That should have been my first clue that something was wrong, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. I was too busy fending off her first attack.
She came at me with her sword flaring white-hot, and I barely managed to call my own sword to hand in time to block the blow. She bore down on me, throwing all of her weight against the sword, and I stumbled back to keep from taking a knee.
If I had gone down… No, nothing would have happened. Cassiel wouldn’t finish a fight like that.
I called my wings to me and flew back a few paces to put space between us, but Cassiel rushed to close it as quickly as I put it there. She didn’t bother with her own wings, she just ran at me.
Her next strike came dangerously close to my jugular, and again I barely managed to keep her sword away from me.
“What’s gotten into you?” I asked, frowning as I parried another attack. I struck for her leg this time, finally having gotten the opportunity to attack, but she deflected the blow with ease.
She didn’t respond to me. Instead, she kept hammering at me, blow after blow, as if she were possessed.
I didn’t have time to think about what might be going on in her head; it was all I could do to hold my own. In fact, I didn’t get another opportunity to attack.
She cut me in the leg, the arm, and opened a gash in my side. Her sword glanced off my temple once, when I was too slow to properly block her, and now my blood was trickling into my eyes, threatening to blind me.
For the first time in centuries, I felt fear in a fight with Cassiel.
Something was wrong with her.
She was trying to kill me.
Her next blow knocked me to my knees, and she stood over me, p
anting heavily, with her sword raised.
“God damn it, Cassiel, talk to me. What’s going on? Did something happen?”
Still, she refused to answer me. I opened my mouth to say something further, but she brought her sword down, and rather than risk the death I was certain she intended for me, I rolled to one side in time to get away from her.
My wings yanked me from the ground and into the air, away from her, though there was nowhere I could truly go, for the ceiling of the warehouse capped me.
I was actually thinking about leaving.
I realized that with a jolt. When had I ever wanted to leave a battle with Cassiel for any reason other than having grown bored of the fight?
But here I was, bleeding profusely, fearing her, and thinking it might be best to beat a hasty retreat.
Just until I could figure out what had gone wrong, what had possessed her to attack me like this.
It didn’t make sense. Her mission was to bring me back to Heaven—in one piece, mind you. The fight was supposed to be to submission, not to death.
And that was not the only thing that was wrong.
Cassiel was stronger than she had been even days ago.
Strong enough to defeat me?
I shuddered to think that might be the case. A bloodthirsty Cass was one thing; a bloodthirsty Cass with the ability to kill me was an entirely different beast altogether. One that I would do well to be wary of.
“Come off it, Cass. It’s me. You’re not acting like yourself,” I said, though I was careful not to come back to the ground.
I didn’t know why she wasn’t coming after me in the air, why she wasn’t calling her wings to fight me still, but at least this was providing me with the opportunity to catch my breath and figure out what to do next.
She glared up at me but refused to answer.
There was something off about her eyes. They didn’t burn the way they used to, not quite the same, but they did burn. What was it?
It was suddenly imperative that I figure out what was wrong here, instead of figuring out how to get out of this in one piece. Because this was Cass, and I couldn’t accept that she would have given up on me and decided to kill me.