“Thank you, Uriel,” Johnalyn said, swimming up alongside Uriel. He glanced at her and was struck – not for the first time – by how beautiful she was. Dark eyes and hair, midnight-blue wings, a strong will, and a perfectly muscled body clad in form-fitting steel made Johnalyn one of the most formidable and fetching angels in the immortal plane. Had Uriel not been an angel, he might have suspected himself of being enamored of the female commander. Fortunately, he knew such complications were only inherent in mortals, and his appreciation was therefore nothing more than admiration.
Johnalyn caught his appraising glance and smiled at him.
“Do you have anywhere you need to be just now?” he asked her. She shook her head, and her long hair drifted wildly in the water. “Stick around then.”
“What did you have in mind?” she asked him archly.
Uriel wondered why his mind suddenly went blank. Finally he ordered his thoughts and kythed, “We could use a hand in the fourth empyrean. Molekh seems to be the worst danger, and I want to see if I can’t go saw his horns off.”
“If we do, I get to keep one.”
Uriel grinned at her.
- 2 -
Brad and Anolla manned one of the nozzles that sprayed holy water onto the oncoming demons, and the twins shouted in glee as another attack wave was repulsed by the water cannons. At the adjoining window, a pair of men who’d been farmers in life (a thousand or so years ago) manned another cannon. They, too, whooped in joy at the sight of the retreating demons.
“Thema demons is gonna rigret today they never came ‘gainst us!” one of the dead men shouted.
Anolla looked at Brad and fought back a laugh. “Did you…”
“Not a word,” Brad replied, hiding his own grin.
“Must be from Melis,” Anolla said.
“Har they’s comin’ agin!” the farmer shouted. He activated his cannon and unleashed a stream of water aimed at another wave of demons charging toward their building.
“I think he said to start shooting again,” Brad said, twisting the nozzle on their cannon to start the water flowing again. Anolla grabbed the handles and pivoted the nozzle on the tripod, directing the stream into the demons while Brad pumped a special type of bellows-cramp that kept the water coming. He didn’t understand all of the science that went into the invention, he just knew it worked as long as he pumped the bellows, and that was enough for him.
They’d been in the building for over two hours, ever since their last one had been overrun by demons and they’d had to evacuate. They broke down the water cannons into manageable pieces, then carried them to a new building and set up again to continue their defense of the city. It was the same routine they’d followed since the demons first made it to their section of the city – an angel had called it the fifth empyrean, but the name meant nothing to the twins.
The demons were thrown back by the combined effort of the water cannons and the angels firing arrows from a different floor of the building, but another wave followed, then another, until the demons began to swarm the building and break apart the angelstone walls.
“Time to go,” someone shouted.
Brad stooped to disconnect one of the hoses and was thrown to the ground as something crashed through the wall behind him. An angel lay crumpled and bleeding on the floor amidst a pile of stone, and a stream of demons soared past the hole in the building.
“Help me!” Anolla cried, rushing to the angel’s side. Brad thought the angel was a Cherub, but he couldn’t really be sure; they were the only angels he’d seen wearing such full, form-fitting armor. He knelt and lifted one of the angel’s arms over his shoulder while Anolla ducked under the other arm. Together, they carried the angel to the far side of the room toward a door that led outside.
Brad ducked his head out quickly to verify there were no demons lurking out of sight, then the twins hurried outside. They were two stories above the surface of the lake, but burdened by the angel they didn’t have the luxury of escaping to another building using the walkways the others were using. They’d move too slowly and be easy pickings for marauding demons.
“Let him go in,” Anolla said, and Brad nodded. They leaned the angel over the edge, then let him fall toward the waters below. Something roared in the room behind them and, without bothering to turn around, the twins jumped from the ledge and plunged into the water.
- 3 -
For once, Trames was not smiling. This one time, he found nothing amusing, curious, or interesting about his surroundings. He had been alive longer than he cared to acknowledge or even consider, and he was at a loss to recall the last time he’d been so completely subdued by events around him. Mortals and immortals – blessed and damned, angels and demons – were dying all around him, and he mourned the loss of every one of them, even the demons. Kala kept a close eye on him and had already defeated one group of imps that had attacked them.
As was his custom, Trames was unarmed and had no intention of ever lifting a weapon.
“More coming,” Kala said grimly, raising her katana again. She stepped forward to block the doorway as a group of gremlins approached, driven by a whip-wielding balrog. The demon cracked his lash over the gremlins’ head and bellowed a war cry as they leapt at Kala.
Trames kept an eye on the back door of their little room, which was down a few steps and half-submerged by the waters of the Philion that blanketed the city. He didn’t think any demons would be coming through the water-filled entrance, but some inner warning prevented him from turning his back to the opening. His ganashir had the other door covered, so Trames felt he was doing his part by guarding their back.
Kala cut the gremlins to shreds and faced the balrog, who nearly lost his whip when he tried to ensnare her katana. The sharp blade, blessed by a paladin and marked with the holy symbol, cut through the lash easily and shortened the demon’s reach by a good foot. He gnashed his teeth and pulled a black broadsword out of thin air, then charged forward.
Trames glanced toward them for just a moment, and of course that was the instant another balrog swooped through the doorway and entered the room. The demon’s toes sizzled as they dragged in the water, but it landed in the room without suffering serious injury.
The balrog wielded a long-bladed knife in each hand and grinned maliciously when it saw Trames standing before him, apparently helpless. Kala saw the demon and shouted in alarm, but she was too occupied with her own demon to try and help Trames.
Trames watched with a neutral expression as the demon charged toward him, and when the balrog swung one of the knives at him, the old man neatly side-stepped the attack and tripped the demon. The balrog crashed head-first into the wall, then rebounded quickly and approached Trames more cautiously. He backed him toward the watery doorway, then apparently realized Trames might escape and came at him again.
This time, Trames waited until both weapons were stabbing down at him, then he moved with the speed of a much younger man and stepped forward, just to the side of the downward-plunging knives. Using the demon’s own momentum against it, Trames shifted his weight and turned, pushing just enough with his arms and forcing the balrog to overbalance and tip precariously forward. The demon spun to avoid diving head-first into the holy waters and its wings flared as it twisted almost comically off balance.
“I’m sorry,” Trames said as he pushed the balrog backwards. It toppled into the water and quickly sank out of sight, thrashing in pain as the Heavenly water of the Philion quickly began to destroy its demonic āyus.
Kala finished off her demon and spun to help Trames, but all she saw was the demon fall into the water and disappear.
“How did you…” she trailed off in amazement.
Softly, Trames sang:
“The demon tried to give a hug,
Now he’s going ‘glug glug glug,’
And all he’s got, the poor lost dove,
Is just a bit too much of love.”
He smiled halfheartedly at the song and looked wearily at
Kala.
“I’m tired of being in Heaven,” he said in a sad voice. “I did what I needed to do and found out what I wanted to know here, and I think you found what you needed, too. After tomorrow, can we go back to Garnet’s farm and get some honey? I ran out.”
Kala stared at him. Somehow, what he said didn’t strike her as funny or insane in the slightest. She just nodded.
“Of course we can.”
- 4 -
Angels and demons roared their mutual hatred as the two immortal enemies clashed overhead, tearing into each other with an enmity predating the dawn of Creation. Weapons forged in the fires of Hell sliced through holy armor and left blackened flesh behind; demonic claws grappled with angelic hands that sprouted wickedly tipped nails. Heavenly blades clove through accursed flesh while angelic wings buffeted demonic foes to drive them from the skies.
Paladins on dakkan-back wheeled through the air and destroyed any fiend foolish enough to come within reach of claw, tooth, or sword. Flights of angels unleashed waves of glowing arrows that decimated the ranks of their victims, and they were in turn lashed by volleys of cursed arrows and crossbow bolts fired from the hands of both demons and damned souls.
Molekh watched in satisfaction as a new threat arrived onto this scene of aerial chaos. More than half a hundred long tentacles – six hundred, three-score, and six, to be exact – writhed on a monstrous body clad in black steel plating and supported by four wings that blackened the sky. The Heavenly Hosts called it a behemoth, a flying monstrosity.
To the demons, it was simply the Beast.
The last and greatest of Arthryx the Bender’s creations before his untimely destruction, even Molekh was awed by the destructive power the demonic creature possessed. Unlike many of Arthryx’s creations, the Beast was crafted not from the flesh of the damned – which was all too vulnerable – but rather from the combined flesh of thousands of low-ranking demons of all sorts. One balrog of reasonable intelligence and strength was chosen to serve as the mind that governed the Beast’s existence, but most of the individual tentacles were controlled by the demons whose flesh had been used to create them. Several ended in snarling snouts and slashing teeth. The Beast’s demonic flesh was further protected by plates of steel melded to the unholy skin. Since it was constructed from demonkind, rather than from the flesh of the damned as had been Arthryx’s abominations – which had failed spectacularly while attacking the Barrier in the mortal world – the Beast would not fall victim to one well-placed Tricrus. Were it to be marked with the holy symbol, only the demon inscribed by the Tricrus would be destroyed, and the Beast itself would continue on, unaffected by the minor loss.
He grudgingly gave credit to Malith for having conceived of the Beast, but Molekh would prefer to have his eyes burned out by holy fire rather than openly admit any respect for the Black paladin. To Molekh, he was a lackey and would always be a lackey, no matter if he served God or the demon king. The bull-headed demon followed Mephistopheles’s leadership reluctantly because of the dictates of shaishisii, but he did not serve the demon king.
Molekh served no one but himself.
The Beast flew over the city and immediately began to wreak havoc on the angelic defenders, who could no longer fly at will through the air. The Beast effectively created a no-fly zone of death over a large portion of the city, and the demons used this to their advantage as they fired arrows from under the monstrous demon’s shadow or from its back. Angels fired hundreds and thousands of their arrows at the Beast, but none of their attacks seemed to have a noticeable effect on the demonic conglomeration.
With the skies now effectively under demonic control, Molekh focused his attention on the ground. For hours, the demons had been making steady progress toward the heart of the city, but they still had a long ways to go, and resistance was becoming more concentrated and desperate. Soon they would have the angels bottled up and waiting to be slaughtered.
A disturbance in the water to Molekh’s right warned him an instant before a wave of angels erupted from the lake and charged into the ranks of his army. He had a brief glimpse of the angel leading the charge, but it was enough.
“Uriel,” he growled in anticipation. The Seraph was at the top of the list of angels Malith wanted destroyed at all costs. His Archangels were responsible for some of the heaviest losses in the war, and Uriel himself was responsible for the death of Aesthma and possibly Azazel as well. He was certainly a force to be reckoned with, but Molekh looked forward to the confrontation.
The Archangels dragged steel ropes through the demons trying to cross the bridge they’d created out of toppled buildings and swept an entire platoon into the waters below. Two angels flew on either side of Molekh, but when the āyus-forged-steel touched his flesh it melted and left only a mild welt behind on his chest.
An Erelim flew too close, and Molekh reached out and grabbed the angel by the foot to drag him back. He used his free hand to dig his claws into the angel’s face and all but tore his head in half before casting him aside. An arrow pierced his shoulder and elicited a grunt of discomfort, but he drew the missile out and cast it aside.
Molekh looked around for the commander of the Archangels.
“Face me, Uriel!” he bellowed.
“Turn around, demon,” a voice said behind him, and Molekh turned just in time to see Uriel sweep by. Fire and agony erupted in the demon’s head, and he howled in rage as he saw his severed horn in Uriel’s grasp. A female Dominion charged at him from the other side, but Molekh knocked her sword aside and crashed a massive fist into the side of her head. The angel spun out of control, splashed into the lake waters, and disappeared from sight.
He turned and saw Uriel speeding toward him again, wings alight in white flame and a murderous gleam in his eyes. The spear he carried was outthrust and within seconds of piercing Molekh’s flesh, while the raised crystal sword in Uriel’s hand glittered with the promise of destruction. Helpless to avoid the attack, Molekh braced himself for the impact, which never came.
In between one second and the next, he found himself removed from the battlefield and in a dark tent. He glared about furiously until he recognized the inside of Malith’s tent, but the mortal general was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he saw Azazel standing cockily against the center pole.
“Greetings, Molekh,” the demon prince said, sweeping him a low bow.
“Traitor,” the bull-demon growled, taking a step forward.
“A moment before you try to dismember me,” Azazel said, placing only the faintest emphasis on the word try. “He said it would be useless to ask you, but I thought perhaps for the sake of our mutual respect for each other, I should at least make the offer.”
“What offer?” Molekh rumbled. “You have been branded a traitor by the demon king himself.”
“I no longer serve Mephistopheles, true,” Azazel allowed, “but I serve a greater master, and I give you one chance to join me. Lotan has just joined us, and you are the last of the demon lords here in Heaven.”
“Joined who?” Molekh asked. “The other traitors? What is this madness?”
“Not madness,” the other demon said, shaking his head. He smiled sardonically. “It’s a ploy – a gambit, if you will – and through it we will gain more power than any of us ever dreamed. We have all sworn our service to a different master, our rightful one, and as I said, I give you this one chance to swear as well. Serve with us, and glory in power.”
“I serve no one,” Molekh said.
“Think on this, demon lord,” Azazel said.
“I serve no one!” Molekh bellowed. “Now be gone from my sight or face the penalty of your apostasy.”
Azazel shook his head in regret. “Very well, Molekh. He knew you would refuse, but I hoped you had better sense. A pity.”
The demon prince vanished immediately, leaving Molekh alone in the tent. He stormed outside and grabbed a nearby gremlin by the throat and lifted it up to his face.
“Where is General Malith?” he
asked, squeezing slowly for the sheer pleasure of watching the lesser demon squirm.
“He said he received a summons from Mephistopheles, and the demon king translocated him back to Abaddon,” the gremlin choked out. “He left not five minutes ago, my lord.”
Molekh kept a hold of the demon as he stormed through the remnants of the demon camp. His severed horn burned with an agony he’d never imagined possible, and even touching the sheared-off surface left a burning sensation in his fingers where the Seraph’s heavenly blade had cloven his horn. The remaining stump was only a few inches long, and Molekh supposed he was fortunate the Archangel commander hadn’t taken his head.
He raised the gremlin in his hands to eye-level and calmly ripped off one of the demon’s arms. Molekh pressed the bloody stump against the burning surface of his horn and nearly sighed in relief as the pain abated. Demon blood poured down on his head and on his face, and he drank the stuff in as it touched his lips.
In an act of uncharacteristic mercy, Molekh tore the gremlin’s head off rather than letting it suffer in agony. Casting aside the corpse, he turned his footsteps back toward Medina and hurried back to the besieged city. If Malith was indeed gone and Lotan had turned traitor, then command of the army fell to Molekh, as would the glory of capturing the holy city of Heaven.
Chapter 41
I cannot, in truth, regret my life or the decisions that have led me here, because I am here. I once told Hoil I would change things if I could – as much as it pains me to admit it, this is not true. Had I done anything at all differently, I may never have survived, and I might not be where I am now.
- Birch de’Valderat,
“Memoirs” (1013 AM)
Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) Page 58