The Morning Star

by Debra Dunbar

  They shot me again. And the wings that I’d thought would clue them in that I was on the good-guy side of things did nothing but cause me excruciating pain as bullets slammed into them. I screamed and everything slowed. The Iblis sword appeared in my hand, sucking bullets into itself like a pointy metal vacuum. My wings extended with a snap, and suddenly the sound of gunfire ceased to be replaced by human screams.

  The humans threw red-hot guns to the ground, peeling off helmets and riot gear as quickly as they could, kicking them aside. Swarms of insects rose from the vests and helmets. Within seconds I was facing six half-naked men, shouting and cursing as they swatted at themselves.

  “Stop fucking shooting me,” I snapped before dismissing the insects I’d somehow summoned or created without conscious thought. “Next time you shoot my wings, it’s gonna be scorpions and snakes. Got it?”

  The men faced me, red welts and bite marks forming on their skin. Eyes widened as they took in the wings they’d somehow not noticed when they were spraying bullets at me. It’s a sad commentary on the state of human law enforcement training when they don’t notice that someone has a sixty-foot wingspan before they open fire.

  “Thank God you’re here,” one stuttered. “Grand and Broadway are nothing but ripped-up asphalt and tossed cars from here to Ninth, and all of Chinatown and the Stadium are on fire. There’s some flying lizard-hyena that is exploding buildings apart and shooting lightning bolts at cars from the top of the Westin.”

  “How many of them are here, and where’s the leader?”

  “We’re guessing three to four thousand in the city limits. There’s others north of town and up the coast into Vancouver.”

  I winced. That many demons running amok in Los Angeles would take forever to corral. Hopefully once I took care of Samael, I could get control of this mob, otherwise this was all going to fall apart. But that was step two. Step one was finding the youngest archangel and killing him.

  “There’s more of you, right?” The guy glanced at my wings again. “I mean, I don’t want to insult you or doubt your abilities as an angel, but there are thousands of them. So unless you can just shout some holy word and smite them from here…”

  “This is a delicate diplomatic process,” I managed a completely straight face as I described me killing Samael as if I were heading into a meeting. “These aren’t some monsters that came through a rift. They’re demons—the product of Fallen angels. They’ve come from Hel with a powerful leader. I need to deal with him before I handle the demons he’s got running all around your city.”

  Three of the six gasped. One crossed himself and started praying. I’m pretty sure one wet his pants. The guy who’d been talking to me swallowed hard a few times. “Demons. Demons from hell have invaded our city?”

  “I know. It totally sounds like one of those Marvel franchise movies, doesn’t it?” Here comes the part these guys were going to like even less—being the subjects of a real-life dystopian situation. “These demons might be here to stay if I can get them to stop killing people and throwing cars around. It’s kind of a new world order thing. Eventually I’d like to have some demon-controlled areas, but until then they’re just sort of visitors. We’ll try to make it so they don’t kill you all off or blow up all the buildings though.”

  “The angels are allowing demons to remain here, with us?” There was an edge of anger to the man’s voice that made me think he was two seconds from picking up his gun and blowing more holes through my wings. “We’re going to have to live with demons in our cities?”

  “Trust me, it won’t be any worse than living next to angels. Those guys are no fun at all. Bunch of assholes with their rules and endless meetings and stale pastries. No fun. Demons are fun. Kinda violent and you might wind up dead, but fun.”

  “Wishing they’d all go back to where they came from and leave us alone,” the praying one muttered. “Heaven. Hell. Don’t care just as long as they get out of here.”

  I shot him a sympathetic glance. “The angels have been kicked out of heaven, and you guys are their pet project, so sadly you’re just going to have to suck it up with that one. The demons aren’t so bad. Well, except for this pissed off Ancient who’s taken your city. He wants all the humans and angels dead, and the planet salted and burned into a dead lump of rock.”

  “Given that choice, I think we’ll take the angels,” praying guy responded.

  The leader narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re talking about them in the third person, but you’ve got wings. And they’re not the leathery bat wings or rotting mangy looking ones these demon guys have. Are you an angel or not?”

  Here comes the part where I might get shot again. “Technically yes. I’m an Angel of Chaos. I’m the leader of the Fallen, the Iblis, the Ha-Satan and I sit on the Ruling Council of Angels to represent the interests of the demons and Hel.”

  “You’re Satan.” The leader confirmed in a firm voice. They weren’t shooting at me again, but the one guy had resumed praying.

  “Yep.”

  “And you’re here to…?”

  I looked around to make sure there were no Lows or other demons to overhear what I was about to say. “I’m here to kill the asshole in charge of this invasion, then have a chat with his demon army about what’s considered to be acceptable behavior if they want to remain here. Then I’ll spend the next gazillion years dealing with committees and meetings and representatives and governance frameworks to make all this work in a way that satisfies the angels, keeps the humans from getting their panties in a knot, and makes the demons happy, but not too happy.”

  Shoot me now. My future wasn’t looking too bright. It was a shame Samael was such a revenge-obsessed dickhead because I’d love nothing more than to hand this sword back to him and resign my duties. That bowling with minivans had looked kinda fun. I could totally spend eternity doing stuff like that.

  But no. I needed to kill Samael and face a lifetime of meetings and stale pastries.

  The other guys looked to the leader. He shrugged. “Above my pay grade,” he told them before facing me once more. “What’s the leader guy look like? The one you’re searching for? Bear-lion? Snake-chicken? Grasshopper-poodle?”

  “White-blond hair. Eyes so light blue they’re practically colorless. Golden skin. Ratty wings with patchy black feathers. He’s super good-looking. Totally hot. Well, until he rips the heart and lungs out of someone’s chest, that is.”

  His eyes widened. “That guy? He’s been tearing through clubs over off Santa Monica and the Strip, killing people left and right. Said he’s looking for something iconic to call his home base and set up his empire.”

  Huh. If I’d decided to take over LA, that’s exactly where I would have gone. Probably would have chosen something edgy and cool like The Snake Room, or The Abbey. The Roxy or the Whisky, maybe. That’s what I would have done, but I’ve spent over forty years living among the humans. I knew their cities. I kept reasonably abreast on what was trendy and hip. I wasn’t some demon who’d only been here on vacation a total of twenty days in the last eight hundred years. And I certainly wasn’t an Ancient who’d spent pretty much the last two-and-a half-million years in pouty, simmering hibernation. Was Samael taking advice from a younger, more well-traveled demon? Had he grabbed some human in the course of his rampage and asked him where to find the cool clubs?

  Or…

  “You guys got a car or a SWAT van or something?” I asked the leader.

  He nodded slowly, giving me the side-eye.

  “Can I get a lift?” West Hollywood and the Strip was a bit of a hike on foot, and I wanted to get there sooner rather than later, and I wanted to get the lay of the land rather than teleport and risk dropping right into the middle of some really bad shit.

  He eyed my wings. “Don’t those things work? Can’t you just fly there?”

  “Yeah, and get shot out of the sky? I’d hoped for a more stealthy arrival.”

  His eyebrows went up. “And a SWAT van is steal
thy?”

  I nodded. “To demons a SWAT van is far more stealthy than me flying in with my big, feathery angel-wings. Now let’s go before this guy decides the mansions in Beverly Hills are more his style than expensive stores and nightclubs.”

  The SWAT team declined to drive me down Sunset Boulevard right into the heart of West Hollywood, instead dropping my ass off at an In-N-Out Burger just past Highland with some flimsy excuse about having to deal with some issue at the wax museum. There was no one at the In-N-Out Burger to prepare me a snack, but I grabbed a large fountain drink anyway and hoofed it to the club where Samael was most likely to be setting up court—The Snake Room.

  The building used to house a gangster-frequented nightclub, but like all retail spaces, it had changed hands more than a few times since I’d hung out in the city. There were a few things that put this club on the top of my list. One, it was in West Hollywood. Two, famous people hung out here and famous bands played here. Three, it was painted solid black on the outside. Yeah, the whole snake theme and history of heavy drug use by patrons was another plus, as was the sweet collection of pricey whiskies said to be stashed in a back room for the big spenders, but the main draw was that it was dark with the whole vibe that humans associated with demons and their ilk. We dug that. It made us feel special, like we had worshipers or at the very least admirers. The fact that these admirers were the pet project of the angels appealed even more.

  I encountered a few demons on the way from the In-N-Out Burger. They ignored me, but as I got within a few blocks of The Snake Room, I noticed a whole lot more bear-lions and beetle-bunnies hanging around and these demons were eyeing me with some interest. I made no attempt to hide my wings, and transferred my giant cup of soda to my left hand, freeing my right one for the sword.

  It appeared promptly, shiny and bright and humming with energy. Color me shocked.

  The Snake Room looked pretty much like it had in that entertainment magazine I’d read a few years back. Black. Industrial. Plain white letters on the dome over the entrance and a big-ass ugly sign propped on top announcing the acts for the week. Some demon had rearranged the letters so the sign proclaimed that Die Ratbirds was the band.

  Actually, maybe a demon hadn’t done that. I could totally see humans forming a band and calling it Die Ratbirds.

  A demon with the top half of a rooster and the bottom half of a tiger stepped forward and swung his barbed scaled tail at me. I held up the sword and the guy had enough sense to pull the tail back, out of reach of my blade.

  “I need to see Samael,” I told him.

  He eyed the sword with unblinking, chicken eyes. “You that angel demon I heard about?”

  Moron. “I’m the Iblis. An Angel of Chaos.”

  One of his eyes shifted to my wings, giving him a truly psychotic expression. “How come your wings aren’t falling apart?”

  “’Cause I’m not even a thousand years old and up until a year or so ago, I was an imp. Are you going to let me in to see Samael, or keep me out here talking until my wings really do rot and fall apart?”

  “How’d an imp get to be the Iblis?”

  Seems he was going to keep me here until my wings fell apart. “This.” I jabbed the sword through the eye staring at my wings. He screamed and jumped back, but not before my weapon had turned his one eye into a smoking crater. With paws flailing he attempted to recreate the eye and failed.

  Interesting. I knew the sword could cut through a physical form and do damage to a being’s spirit-self. I knew it could choose to kill or choose to maim, or choose to do nothing at all, but this was the first time it had done exactly what I’d wanted it to do.

  “Samael. Now,” I told the demon in my most calm, bored voice. “Or I’ll take out your other eye.”

  It wouldn’t be as horrible as it sounded. He was a demon. He could still “see” even without eyes. And if he wanted he could always form additional eyes somewhere other than the burned-out sockets. But this guy didn’t seem smart enough to figure that out, so he danced backward a few steps, still pawing and trying to recreate the damaged eye as he waved me in.

  Just as on the outside, it was hard telling what on the inside was original and what had been an addition or embellishment by the current owner/occupiers. The hallway entrance was full of lewd graffiti and symbols on a chipped concrete wall. Everything was black and red lights and neon, looking as through the club had recently hosted a party that involved swinging sledgehammers and shooting off flamethrowers. Huge Marshall amplifiers had been thrown into the glass shelves behind the bar and across the floor. I had to climb over one to get into the main club area.

  The place was filled with demons, some of them fucking on the leather bench seats, some playing the band instruments on the stage and shouting out songs in a guttural roar, some swilling the bottles of booze that hadn’t been smashed by thrown amplifiers. I felt a sudden stab of nostalgia and longing to join them. They were having fun, just like demons should be doing. Just like I used to back before I had the sword and these wings.

  I hid my wings, more to keep them safe from painful injury than any desire to go incognito, and pushed my way through the demons, occasionally using the sword to clear my path. As I reached the stage it became clear that Samael wasn’t here.

  Actually he was here, just not in this room. I could feel his energy—that clear, cold, bright energy that Doriel had described to me. It was unlike anything I’d ever sensed before, and surprisingly it seemed untouched by nearly three million years in Hel. I’d expected there to be some heat around the edges, a whole lot of tarnish to the brightness. Doriel had said that Samael’s spirit-being was horribly scarred from the wars and his near-death injury by his brother. Why wasn’t his energy signature different? It was too clear. Too…perfect. Was that his weakness? Was Samael trying hard to recreate the angel he was before the fall? He’d kept to that beautiful physical humanlike form. Had he somehow forced his energy signature to remain bright and clean and sharp? There wasn’t anything he could do about his spirit-being and the scars it bore, but everything else hinted at an angel who longed to recreate, to stay in the past.

  Why hadn’t he gone to Aaru with Remiel if that were the case? Maybe that was more fuel to the fire of his anger and hate. He couldn’t take back his past—he’d never be able to reclaim Aaru for the Ancients like he’d originally wanted to in the war. All that was left was revenge and destruction.

  Destruction, not transformation. I’d always believed the two were interchangeable concepts, but with the End Times looming before me, I began to wonder if this destruction Samael had planned would be a final one. If he turned the world to ash, would anything new bloom from the ruins? If I devoured all of creation, would something fresh burst from my being? These were questions I hoped we’d never know the answer to.

  I made my way through the crowd of demons unmolested, in part due to the sword I was carrying. The first few doors I tried led to offices and narrow hallways backstage. Finally, I found the right door and headed down the stairs into the room where the big-money drinkers came to get their party on.

  The noise downstairs was deafening. It took me twenty minutes to shimmy my way around all the demons, even using the sword to force my way through. I didn’t want to burn or slice anyone with the weapon, because that would start a fight and it wouldn’t do me any good to have to chop my way through fifty or sixty demons before arriving at Samael’s feet, most likely injured and already exhausted. Plus, I didn’t want to announce my arrival too early. I wasn’t afraid he’d flee—this Ancient was far too arrogant for that. I was more concerned that he’d make me fight every demon in the place to get to him.

  So I wormed my way through with lots of “get the fuck out of my way” and “let me through you stupid fuck.” Finally, I reached a clearing. Samael was in the center of a fifteen-foot empty space sitting on what looked like a chopped-up portion of one of the leather couches. It had been raised up on a huge table, elevating him enough to give him
a view of the room, without him being so high up that I could see him until I’d reached the edge of the crowd. I could see now why all the demons were wedged in so tight. The room wasn’t all that big, and Samael with his circle of personal space took up most of it.

  His eyes met mine, then traveled downward taking in my human form as well as my sword. He raised a hand and the room suddenly went silent.

  “You received my note.”

  “Yep.” Scintillating conversation so far.

  “I think that belongs to me.”

  I shrugged. “The sword seems to think otherwise. You are Samael, formerly the Iblis, formerly an Archangel, formerly an Angel of Chaos?”

  “I am Samael, the Iblis, the leader of Hel. No formerly about any of that. Now give me the sword or I’ll kill you and take it myself.”

  A figure disengaged from the shadows to his right and approached, stepping up on the table to stand beside Samael and whisper in his ear. It was Doriel. I should have known when Gregory told me about what happened at the Seattle gate that Doriel had been the Ancient to cross there. My heart felt heavy to see someone I’d hoped to count as an ally here beside the former Iblis. It would be even more difficult to kill him with this powerful Ancient by his side.

  I noticed that she was studiously not looking at me. But that guilt or regret or whatever she felt probably wouldn’t be enough for me to count on her if things went south.

  “So are you here to beg for me to be merciful? For me to spare my brother?” Samael sneered, suddenly looking very much like Gabe. “The imp with the Iblis sword. But you’re not quite an imp any more, are you? I’ve been told you have wings, that you’re an Angel of Chaos. How exactly did that happen?”

  I stepped forward into the open space and revealed my wings. The demons behind me parted, less out of awe and respect and more because the damned things were so huge they blocked their view.

  “It’s a long story. Suffice it to say I’m an Angel of Chaos. I’m the Iblis. And I’m not here to do any begging.”