“Kehena puka hamama!” Jovienne whispered, and then repeated it louder and louder. Her palm came up, aimed at the smaller circle. Her temples began to burn. The world rumbled beneath her feet.
“Do you feel that charge building, Damnzel? That fire in your brain? That’s my power. My power answering my summoning.” Jovienne felt hot like a fever. Geist appeared, gathering to watch, their numbers multiplying rapidly. “Do you feel the quintanumin flooding you with warmth, preparing you for this fight?”
Damnzel did not answer.
The ground fell beneath the offered blood. When the small hole appeared next to her red-booted feet and yellow light shone upwards, releasing the sulfur scent of Hell, Damnzel stared at it for a long second, before her auburn head snapped up.
Jovienne was certain that Damnzel understood what was happening. “If you’re too much a coward to fight, just ruin the inner circle. That will stop them from coming up.”
And the demons were coming.
Damnzel spread her wings and tried in vain to fly.
“Damnzel!” Jovienne shouted her name again, but the red abhadhon was in too much of a panic to listen. Recognizing that this situation had taken a terrible turn, Jovienne ran around the circle to where Damnzel was, but Damnzel avoided her.
“Listen to me! You can stop this,” Jovienne shouted. “Use your boot to scratch out the inner circle. That will stop them!”
But Damnzel fluttered around the space like a trapped bird. She wasn’t listening, or couldn’t hear over the snarling of things crawling up from Hell. Seeing shadows around the circle, Damnzel dropped down, sword drawn, and stabbed it into the hole. Something screamed within.
The geist cheered.
This wasn’t what Jovienne had meant to do. “Ruin the circle! Kick the flames with your boot and it will go out!”
Damnzel kept the demons at bay. Every time one neared the open hole, she cleaved its head or stabbed its heart. Then, a trio of possessors in mist-form slipped through while her sword was in an imp.
The trio attacked her. She tried to fend them off with a dagger, but she made the mistake of bringing the sword out of the hole.
“Damnzel, no!”
A demon surged up with the long, furry muzzle snapping. Its black skeletal body had short legs but thick arms, and it shuffled swiftly across the alley pavement, backing Damnzel into the barrier.
Another head rose through the hole. “Damnzel, listen to me!” Jovienne cried.
“Return to Hell and burn!”
The second demon leapt into the circle. Behind it, demons surged from the Hellgate.
Damnzel rallied and lobbed off three heads. She stabbed another pair with the dagger even as they clung to her legs. They swarmed endlessly from the open doorway, replacing the lost triple-fold.
Jovienne couldn’t move. Her limbs had become leaden, her body a rock filled with heat crashing within her. She would have helped Damnzel, but she couldn’t. The circle barrier between them would only open when all the demons in the circle died, or when Damnzel did.
This wasn’t what Jovienne had meant to do. She’d only meant to show Damnzel what she could do, and hoped that Damnzel would show her some respect afterward.
Damnzel screamed as the demons bled her. They caused only tiny scratches at first, nothing fatal, but they worked at intimidating her. When they had knocked her weapons away, the demoralization began. They taunted and shamed her. They toyed with her terror by wiping their muzzles across her skin and lapping hot tongues over her wounds. Soon, it was not enough to taste her blood. They tore at her skin, flaying a piece here and there.
Damnzel shrieked piteously as the demons ripped her limb from bloody limb.
Jovienne could make no sound. She could only watch as this horror transpired. She had caused it. Not purposely, but the fault was hers.
TWENTY
EPHESIANS CHAPTER THREE, verse sixteen says: I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Amen.”
Nathan had complimented Father Everly on how scrumptious the crock-pot potato soup smelled as it was ladled into bowls, and listened patiently as the priest said a moving prayer over their dinner. But the ending scripture quote left a sour taste in his mouth. Now, having gotten his spoon halfway to his mouth, he was frozen, blinking, and wondering where his appetite had gone.
Father Everly busily crumbled crackers into his soup. “Eat, young man! Eat.”
He laid his spoon in to bowl. “Why that verse?”
“Because, Nathan, I pray that out of those glorious riches He has strengthened you with, Christ will be rejuvenated in the hearts of my parish.”
The manner of the old priest was the most genuine Nathan had ever experienced. It conveyed the kind of reassurance and steadfastness that typical churchgoers sought. Yet Nathan found his stomach turning. “Father, I mean no disrespect, sir, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Father Everly calmly put his spoon down as well.
“I know you think it’s special—-”
“It is special.”
Nathan’s jaw trembled. “People think they want God to ‘take the wheel,’ because their life will be so good when He’s in control. But when He does, my consciousness sinks away from me without warning. I don’t wake up happy and satisfied. I wake up in a pool of blood! How would you feel if you did that for years, without pattern? I have no life.” His tone escalated and the words spilled faster. “I can’t get a license to drive. I’m considered a seizure risk. Perfect attendance and excellent work aside, I can’t keep job because, after forcing every employee to sit through mandatory classes on bloodborne pathogens, management VIPs won’t stand for their customers being freaked out by that guy hovering in the air and bleeding on his cash register.”
Father Everly rose from his seat and rounded the table to put a hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “Colossians chapter one verses twenty-six and seven: The mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, has now been manifested to His saints, to those whom God has chosen to make known the wealth of the glory which is The Messiah, who is in you, the hope of our glory.”
Nathan scooted his chair back and stood. They shared a look that, while not confrontational, was quite troubled. Father Everly released Nathan. Nathan walked away from the table, but stopped in the doorway. “I’ll do what I can to help your church, Father, but not because I’m charitable and saintly. It’s because God uses me to remind people His son was brutalized. And that’s all I’m good for.”
Nathan entered the guest room on third floor. He knew he should’ve felt bad for being rude to the old priest, yet he didn’t. He’d been honest. Aggressively honest. He laid on the bed and rubbed his forehead. What’s gotten into me?
His body began to tingle. Aware that he was about to lose control, he sat up and threw the covers to the floor, hoping that they weren’t sentimental and that the blood would wash out.
But this sensation was different. Waves of heat and cold flowed over him. His wrists and ankles didn’t itch like they usually did. Afraid, he tried to scream, ‘Help me!’ but, like a waking nightmare, he couldn’t.
His mind darkened.
Araxiel took over.
Jovienne had opened another Hellgate. He’d felt it. Urgent to find her, to persuade her and offer her the sword, he had to get to her while he could feel the energy of her magic.
He looked down. The bedcovers lay half on the floor. He jerked them up and across the bed, and then fell to his knees and shoved his arm under the floral bed-skirt.
There, he felt for the rip he’d made in the fabric and the underside of the box spring. Retrieving the golden sword from its hiding place, he regained his feet and grinned.
JOVIENNE DREW HER sword.
Damnzel wasn’t dead yet, but, surely, she would die soon. When she did, the circle would fall. Jovienne meant to slay these demons and ruin the
inner circle so others couldn’t come through.
But the demons had a different plan.
They shoved Damnzel’s torso—she was still screaming—into the Hellgate. Before the last demon stepped into that doorway, it winked at Jovienne. When they had gone, the hole backfilled, ending the rite and closing down the weaver’s circle.
Jovienne remained immobile, her body numb and her mind staggered by guilt. This isn’t what I meant to happen. Then, as if a bubble burst, the noise of cheering geist broke through.
They had seen it all.
And they would talk.
She sheathed her sword, desperately crafting a speech for when the seraph came. While she wanted to be clear that hurting Damnzel had not been her intention, she would submit. This time, she’d take the punishment. She was guilty.
“Nice to see you again.”
Jovienne spun to see the nameless man.
“You.” He pointed at her. “You are the shit, do you know that? Wow. Just wow. Fucking wow!”
She said nothing.
“Look at you, all serious. You should be rejoicing! No other abhadhon has ever done the things you’ve done. None of them ever opened a Hellgate. None ever struck a seraph.” He strolled closer, but stopped well out of reach. “The shiny ones only know how to obey orders.” He assessed his nails. “Trained. Like dogs, really. Here boy, sit. Roll over. Sit up.”
The charisma that infected his tone made her want to smile…until he added, “Soon you will have them begging.”
“I told you to leave me alone.”
“I remember.” He gazed around the alley, hands sliding across his stomach and down into the pockets of his tailored pants. “I also remember how you felt in my arms. How you trembled.” He inched closer, tongue flicking behind his parted teeth. “And I told you that I would not leave you all alone.”
Gazing on his beauty and listening to his alluring voice stirred dangerous sensations within her. She believed his affections were fake, but believing her demise would soon be at hand, she indulged in the distracting fantasy.
He strolled past behind her, pausing out of reach. Over his shoulder, he said, “Like your other extraordinary achievements, no abhadhim has ever offered one of their own to the demons.”
“That was not an offering!” Jovienne felt sick at the word. “It was a mistake.” She wanted to run and hide, but she couldn’t escape the truth of what she had done any more than she could evade what she had become.
“Regardless of your intent, Lucifer is pleased. He sent you a gift in return.” He pulled something from within his peacoat and extended his arms toward her. Stretched across them was a length of black fabric. A wide, decorative golden hilt peeked from the end.
The moment her eyes beheld it, she ached to touch it.
“Your sword broke, did it not?”
She fought to keep her hands at her sides. “I was given a replacement.”
He shrugged again. “Those blades will aid you as you slay hundreds of thousands of my brothers during your long service to Yahweh. But He has no one who can make a blade able to sever your ties to Him.”
She squinted, suspicious.
“This sword can do that.”
Forcing her gaze away from the swathed sword and up to his eyes, she detected only sincerity. Although instinct warned her to go, her body did not want to. It required an effort to make her leg shift backward. Her heel dig into the gravelly shore.
“Don’t go,” he whispered. “Hear me out.”
“That would not be wise.” She retreated another step.
“That is what Yahweh would have you say. But what do you say?”
Jovienne stopped. Her focus returned to the golden sword.
“Hear me out. Then think about it and make your own choice. That’s all I ask of you.” He paused. “Make your own decision… after you’ve heard all the arguments. Don’t be naïve. Please.”
It was the ‘please.’ Her gaze rose to those lips. “I am not so naïve. You’re about to tell me what I want to hear and hope it entices me.”
“I’m not hoping to entice you, Jovienne. You’re already enticed.” His charming half-smile appeared. “I wouldn’t be here if He knew how to satisfy you, but He doesn’t. I do.” He put the sword under his peacoat. “I know how your heart yearns to explore all you can be. I know how it burns when His limitations confine you.” He emitted a sad sigh. “There was a time when what He represented was best for mankind. Many of His ways still have value, but people have evolved beyond His earliest expectations and now…now there’s room for other ways.”
Double talk. Lies. Untruth. “I get it, evolution is your way. Creation is His. But a perfect creation doesn’t need to evolve.”
“Perfect?” The nameless man chuckled and regarded her fondly. “I so want you with me, Jovienne. There’s so much to teach you.” He reached for her.
She shied from his touch. “I told you before. You don’t get to touch me.”
With an expression of disappointment, his hand lowered. “We could explore the semantics of how carbon dating ages this Earth at trillions of years while Biblical scholars believe the planet has known life for only a few thousand years. The answer that fits both sides of the equation, however, is quite simple, though it hurts mortal ego.”
“I think I can take it.”
His hands slid into his pockets. “Time is a mortal construct. All mankind experience it from the confines of their flesh and therefore cannot fathom what it is to be separate from it, let alone to be deified.” His tone picked up an irritable edge. “Imagine being aware of each of the roughly one-hundred thousand beats of your heart in a twenty-four-hour period. Imagine knowing that count exactly at any given moment. Now multiply that until your awareness knows the beat of every heart in every chest for its entire existence. Did you know that if a person lives to eighty, that fist-sized muscle will contract over three billion times…?”
“Do you have a point to make?”
He faced her, but with the moon behind him, his features were hidden in shadow. “It’s laughable that mankind wants to dictate what constitutes a day to the god that made them. Oh, the conceit of basing it on Earth hours as if in all the vast universe that god is bound to the cycles of this one small orb.” He spread his arms. “Sounds fucking stupid when I put it like that, doesn’t it? But people don’t think like that. Hell, they barely think, even with the information right in front of their goddamn eyes.” His hand curled into fists. “So, of course they can’t comprehend how ridiculously arrogant they are. Even you, thinking mankind is perfect.”
The insult squared her shoulders and sharpened her focus.
He seemed to notice and unclenched his hands. “Did your pedagogue teach you about the nephilim?”
Jovienne fought to keep her expression neutral. “He did.”
TWENTY-ONE
I BET,” ARAXIEL SAID, “that he told you the nephilim were angels who lusted after the daughters of men, disobeyed Yahweh, and were punished.”
Jovienne flashed a mirthless smile. “I bet you’re going to deny that.”
“I am not. I freely admit that what you have been told is accurate information…according to how Yahweh saw it.”
“Ah.” Her chin lifted. “So, it’s not a denial, you just see it another way. How sanctimonious of you.” She crossed her arms, unconvinced.
Araxiel’s anger stirred. When he’d arrived in the alley and saw that she was sacrificing an abhadhon, he could hardly believe it. She hadn’t seemed that aggressive or ballsy. But then she had taken Zaebos’s blood and killed him. Maybe she was playing him. Her every action was audacious, in direct counterpoint to the meek false-face she’d shown him.
“No conflict can have only one point of view.”
Her smirk indicated she still disagreed.
“Don’t you want to know the truths being kept from you?”
At that, her expression blanked and he knew he had her.
“In the beginning…” he
mocked the Scripture’s opening lines, “He created Heaven and Earth, right? It’s written as if that happened at the same time, but it didn’t. Heaven came first and it was all about glorifying Him, obeying Him, blah blah blah. One kind of angel wasn’t enough. Yahweh made another type, then another. There were so many varieties, but He had a favorite and He simply couldn’t do better. In the Old Testament, you learn that the most exalted of angels was Lucifer. He was perfect. So perfect that he—not unlike his Maker—grew vainglorious. The others adored him, Hell, Yahweh adored him, because he was all he was meant to be.” Softer, he added, “Have you not asked the question yourself, what’s wrong with enjoying what you were made to be?”
She did not reply, which suited him.
“The real problem with Lucifer was the headcount. A self-admitted jealous god, Yahweh saw Lucifer’s followers were numerous enough that He felt threatened in His Own universe.” Araxiel shrugged. “That doesn’t sound very omnipotent to me, but, there it is.
“They were cast from Heaven, but not from His universe. That was when he created Earth, with its dirt and muck, so He could put them in the corner like naughty children. A total dick move, right? Yeah. It gets worse. In His book, He calls it ‘The Fall’ as if they tripped on the threshold and accidently dropped to Earth.” He shook his head. “He expected them to repent and beg His forgiveness. When they did not, Yahweh got even angrier. Behaving like a jealous mortal scorned by a lover, He sought to replace His former favorite. Out of spite, Yahweh used the very soil meant to tarnish and punish those He cast out, and He created that replacement with it. Behold, the wondrous mankind.” He threw his arms high and spread them wide for emphasis. “And he set this new creation down to live where? Right there. Upon the Earth! Yahweh wanted to show my Master that, essentially, the dirt would obey Him better with nothing more than a promise that good behavior would get it into Heaven. Another dick move, right?” He growled. “Without even knowing what Heaven was like, Adam and Eve adored Him more than Lucifer ever had. They dirtied their knees to pray to Him.”
Jovienne Page 23