by Nazri Noor
“A pair of demons,” said the golden-haired angel, his voice musical and lilting, his features twisted with revulsion.
“A duo of abominations,” spat the darker angel. “No better than filth and feces.”
The two approached, extending their arms and closing their fingers around swords that materialized within their grasps, one gold, one black, each matching its wielder. Seeing then side by side made them look like two copies of the same man, two brothers born in light and in darkness. They practically wore the same face. They certainly wore the same murderous expression.
A glint of silver sped through the dark, followed by the unmistakeable sound of sharp steel sinking into flesh. I held my breath, looking from Pierce’s outstretched hand to where he had thrown the dagger: straight into the dark angel’s chest.
The angel looked down at his torso, grimacing at Pierce’s dagger like it was just some inconvenience, like a mosquito. He tutted.
“It will take more than your blasphemous metal to bring down Baradiel,” the angel growled. Without missing a beat, without flinching, he wrapped his fingers around the pommel of the dagger and plucked it out. Blood gushed out of the wound, dark red against the weapon’s blade. I only caught a glimpse of it before Baradiel hurled it directly back at Pierce’s face.
Pierce gasped. I threw myself in the dagger’s path, blinking in sudden fright when its point connected with my forehead. My shielding spell shattered, dispelled in an instant by a simple throwing knife when it had previously withstood a bullet.
The other angel clapped, his laughter musical and sweet. “Wonderfully thrown, Baradiel.”
For the first time, the dark angel named Baradiel allowed himself a smile. “You flatter me, Nuriel. Now, to the task at hand. We kill the demons.”
“And what of Adriel?”
The ruined angel named Adriel flinched when his brothers looked at him, whimpering. “We’ll deal with him later,” said Baradiel, stalking ever forward, blood still spilling in a slow dribble from his chest.
I gripped Pierce by the edges of his vest, pulling him close, shaking him out of his stupor. “Do you see now, you stupid bastard? Run. It’s time to run.”
“Agreed,” he said, bending down shakily to collect his bloodied dagger, then taking off with me into the darkness. “The trees,” he said. “Remember where we arrived. We need to hit the node.”
We ran for our lives, not even turning to check on the angels, our escape route taking us past the farmhouse, past a barn, and just beside the lone grain silo. Freedom, I thought, focusing on a point past the bushes on the edge of the farm. We just had to access the gate there, helleport out, and we’d be home free.
But a sudden gust of freezing cold stopped me short. Pierce hugged his shoulders, my warming spell no longer bringing him comfort. It wasn’t just the drop in temperature that halted our retreat, though. There was also the matter of the thick sheet of ice that had just formed in our path.
“Punch through it,” Pierce said, shuddering.
“With what?” I hissed. “It’s too thick for my magic to penetrate.” I slammed my palm against it, looking left, then right, seeing that it stretched into a semicircle around us. We were trapped in some frozen prison. I had to resort to Inscription. Maybe if I conjured some of my spell books, then used them like turrets by channeling fire through them –
“Libris grandia,” I whispered.
Five tomes from the Repository appeared in the air around me, rotating in a slow orbit. I focused my mind on a second spell. I just had to reorient the books, face their pages towards the wall of frost. But even then, would my magic be enough to bring it down?
The beating of huge wings called my attention. The angels were right there behind us, though their wings weren’t in any way visible, no doubt tucked away because of what was said of their power. These fuckers were clever. Most angels had one pair of wings, but the further up they were in the hierarchy, the more pairs they had, to signify both their status and their might. There was no way to tell how powerful Baradiel and Nuriel were, apart, of course, from the massive fucking wall of ice they’d just erected.
Nuriel, the blond one, dusted his hands, flakes of frost drifting to the ground from his fingers. “How lovely to see that we can still use our gifts down here,” he said, smiling cheerily. “And look, flying books! How novel, and yet, how utterly pointless.”
I grimaced, but said nothing. It was better that they didn’t know.
Baradiel’s fist was sheathed in a layer of glimmering ice. “It’s been a while since we’ve visited, but our bodies haven’t forgotten.” His gauntlet of frost shattered as he opened his hand and flexed his fingers. “And I haven’t forgotten how good it feels to kill a demon.”
“Fat chance, fly boy,” Pierce said through chattering teeth. Good old Pierce. We were seconds from dying and he still wasn’t easing up on the sass.
“Brave words from someone who can’t stand a little bit of chilliness.” Nuriel laughed good-naturedly. “I’d consider wearing a sensible jacket next time you assault a conclave of our servants.”
Servants? Did the Thirteenth Choir only think they were worshipping Adriel? What did the twins have to do with the cult?
“I wish everyone would shut the fuck up about my clothes,” Pierce muttered. “But yeah, fucking whatever. A jacket, next time.”
Baradiel raised his arm at us, flecks of ice and snow swirling into a frozen orb in the palm of his hand. “Pity that there won’t be a next time.”
I raised my hand to mirror Baradiel’s pose. “I beg to differ.” I swiveled my body towards the granary, projecting every last drop of heat within me into a point at the center of my palm. Like soldiers, obedient and precise, the five books at my side flipped open, facing their pages to the silo.
“Ignis grandia.”
A tremendous gout of flame surged from out of my palm and from each of the books, six streams of demonfire roaring towards the silo. They ate at the wood within moments, licking hungrily for anything to burn, including the grains – and the millions of flammable particles suspended in the granary’s air.
The silo exploded into an unholy fireball, the force of the blast and the ensuing salvo of splintered wood and debris throwing us all on our asses. I was sprawled on the ground, my eyes focusing on the figures of Baradiel and Nuriel. One was clutching at a sliver of wood embedded in his stomach, as long and sharp as a sword. The other groped at the side of his head, his hand coming away thick and red with blood and brain.
I laughed to myself softly, laughed into the grass as Pierce tugged on my arm. We were miraculously unharmed, and the earth was cold and wet. I turned my head to check on the wall of ice. It was broken, melting. Either the explosion had destroyed it, or the twin angels’ injuries had diminished their control over the structure.
“Come on,” Pierce said, his breath ragged and hot. “We gotta go.”
But the huge release of magic had ripped the life out of me, worn out my cells and my spirit. He pulled me to my feet, and I stumbled along after him, laughing madly as ice crunched and mud squelched with my every labored step.
Forget subtlety and stealth. This was about dominance, about fighting fire with six times more fire. Ice. Whatever.
I almost tripped when Pierce took a moment to slash his dagger through the air, cutting a gate into reality to let us access the Hexus. He shoved me in, murmuring obscenities over why I couldn’t stop giggling. It was the rush of power, really, and the triumph. Always the rush, thrumming through my body. The gash in reality closed behind us as we helleported, like paper unwrapping in reverse. I peered through the gap, grinning – but then my heart dropped.
The two angels were gone.
12
“Then they survived,” Pierce said, nibbling on the back of his thumb. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. Did you see how that Baradiel guy just plucked my dagger out of his body? Like a splinter.”
I shook my head, pacing up and down my bedroom. It was
where I came to unwind, where I felt most at ease, next to the Repository. But creature comforts and Pierce’s anxiety were not a great match.
“Just a splinter,” I said. “Like it was nothing. I’ve seen you throw blades before. That should have brought him to his knees.”
“Cool. Cool, cool.” Pierce was gnawing his nails ragged. He was always so cool-headed and confident, except when he wasn’t, and those were the times when I knew I had real reason to worry. “The dagger should have done a number on him. But you skewered him with a whole shaft of wood. By accident, sure, but that should have killed him.”
“Appreciate the backhanded compliment, but what the hell else were we supposed to do? I could have melted the wall, but going with the nuclear option felt like the right choice at the time.”
Pierce blinked at me, too busy chewing at his nails to say anything, but his eyes were expressive enough. Had it been the right thing to do, though? I wondered if I could have killed the angels at all.
My door swung open to a flurry of parchments and paper, Dantaleon noisily announcing his arrival as he burst in. I glowered at him. “Doesn’t anyone knock anymore?”
He flew across the entryway, through the living area, then into the bedroom proper, taking his sweet time. “This isn’t a time for etiquette. At least not from me, Master Quilliam. I’m afraid that this does not bode well for you.”
“Sure doesn’t,” I grumbled. “I didn’t know angels were going to be involved. I don’t fancy the idea of having them breathing down my neck everywhere I go, now.”
“Mine, neither,” Pierce said, glancing uncertainly at Dantaleon. “Did you manage to look up the names, Big D?”
The book shuddered, like he was bristling with offense. “I’ve told you not to call me that. And I didn’t have to look for long. Baradiel and Nuriel are angels of hailstorms.”
“Angels?” Pierce folded his arms. “As in plural. How many angels does it take to make a hailstorm?”
“Very funny,” Dantaleon murmured. “It’s how things work for those celestials. Multiple angels working under the same portfolio, some handling different facets, others working on the same aspects of the things they are meant to herald and represent. The way, for example, that this Adriel is, or rather was, an angel of death.”
“Not ‘the’ angel of death,” I added. “That much I know. I already dislike the idea of us fighting angels, but to be up against an archangel, someone like Azrael? Pass.”
“Correct. Then you have been paying attention to your lessons. Color me surprised. Though again, it is most unfortunate that you let all three of them survive.”
“Again,” I said evenly, staring Dantaleon down, as best as I could stare down a book with no eyes or other discernible features. “I repeat. We didn’t know angels were going to be involved.”
“And how does that matter in the least?”
My blood froze. That voice had come from my mirror. I turned towards it slowly, already knowing that Asmodeus would have a few choice things to say to me about my failures. She glared at me from out of the polished silver, wearing the same skin as before, the rubies dripping down her chest somehow more menacing this time, redder than blood.
“Leave us,” she commanded, her voice a chilling rasp as it echoed around my bedchambers. Pierce sprang to his feet and went for the door wordlessly, his head lowered. Dantaleon followed, fluttering in his wake.
“Mother,” I said, my voice hoarse, the sweat already cold on my palms. “I can explain.”
“Very well. Explain why you allowed not one, not two, but three angels to survive. Did I not tell you to eliminate the Thirteenth Choir?”
“You did, yes, but Pierce and I didn’t realize that – ”
“No. Do not get Pierce involved. This was your responsibility, your mission. When I told you to wipe out the cult, I meant for you to exterminate them. How was that not made clear?”
I burned to scream at her, to smash the mirror with a spell, but instead I fell back on old behaviors. I could be a total bastard in any other area of my life, come out smelling of roses, entire orchards of them. But with Asmodeus, I knew I wouldn’t ever win.
“They outnumbered us,” I muttered.
“The humans didn’t count,” she said. “Mere fodder, kindling for your fire. So that leaves three angels against two demons. And one of those angels was crippled, wingless, and you still couldn’t finish the job.”
I still didn’t know how that hung together – two ice angels not merely working with, but seemingly ordering around an earthbound angel of death.
“Then we underestimated them. Mother, you must understand. You didn’t even tell us that angels were going to be involved. I could have been prepared.”
“How was I to know, Quilliam? Am I an oracle, am I all-knowing? No. Anticipation and preparation were meant to be part of your education. When will you ever learn to adapt? Have Dantaleon’s years of lessons been for nothing? Do you think that we will have foreknowledge when the day comes for you to mount an assault on everyone who opposes us?”
“I didn’t think – ”
“No,” she said coldly. “Of course you didn’t. You never do, Quilliam.” She lifted her nose, looking at me down the bridge of it. “You have disappointed me for the last time.”
“Please, Mother. Don’t.”
The tips of her hair rose, as if the air around her had suddenly turned to water, locks and tendrils drifting menacingly like the snakes on a gorgon’s head. When Asmodeus spoke, it sounded like the very end of days.
“I cast you out.”
“No,” I whispered, my stomach dropping. “Please. Mother.”
The booming of her voice rumbled about the receiving room.
“You are no son of mine.”
I fell to my knees, my legs buckling, my mouth open in disbelief. Surely, this was just another one of her tests, another way for me to prove that I loved her, that I would die for her cause.
The apparition on the mirrored wall stretched its arms out, gesturing at the pentacle I knelt in. The ground shattered, my chest pounding as I slipped into a sinkhole. I groped uselessly for thin air as I dropped into the vast pit of nothing beneath me.
I thought I would be sadder, more devastated. But the inside of my chest, like the void I spiraled into, only felt empty.
13
When the world stopped spinning, I sprang to my feet. Rather, I tried to. I was sprawled on the ground – in grass, it seemed. Warm, outdoors. The moment I even tried to push myself up, my head started whirling again. I coughed into the earth, spitting out bits of grass that left my tongue feeling tinged with acrid green. A sour taste in my mouth.
“Fuck me,” I groaned, already knowing that my hair was studded with bits of twig, little clumps of earth. “Fuck me sideways. It’s over.”
Mother Nature didn’t answer.
Summoning my strength and my withering sense of balance, I pressed my palms into the ground and struggled again, a tentative pushup to at least get me sitting upright. My head spun again. Still dizzy. I fell backwards, my ass landing painfully on what felt like a bunch of rocks.
I blinked blearily, squinting at the sun-filled world around me, wondering if Asmodeus had sent me to some specially designed torture chamber, a realistic simulation meant to lower my guard and torment me when I was at my most vulnerable. I looked around at grass, and more grass, a field dotted with vegetation and dying trees.
“The middle of nowhere,” I grumbled. “Better than a torture chamber, I guess.”
I clambered heavily to my feet, swaying uncertainly as my body slowly recalled what it meant to stand on two legs. There was nothing for miles around, far as I could tell, except for what looked like a rundown building, the shattered remains of what might once have been a house. The elements had stripped it of paint and personality, now just a ramshackle stack of dead wood and exposed cement.
She didn’t actually speak, but I swore I could hear Mother’s voice in my head. “Welcome to
your new home.”
“A certified shithole,” I said out loud.
That was the thing with Asmodeus. The Prince of Lust knew her way around the pleasures of the flesh, but was even more talented in lessons of pain. Her punishments had always been very inventive. In most cases, agonizingly so. Abuse, you say? What makes you think of that?
I dragged my feet towards the ruined building, smacking my lips as I thought longingly about a drink of water. Mother was the kind of demon who knew her way around teleportation magic, sure enough, but she was also the kind of demon skilled enough to modify it to have some truly nasty aftereffects. This dizziness, the soreness all over my body, this sudden thirst? All her doing.
“Great parenting, overall,” I muttered, part of me perfectly aware that she could be anywhere out there, listening. “Just top notch.”
The babbling of water drew my attention to a stream that ran just a dozen or so feet away from the building. I shuffled faster, seduced by the promise of fresh water. I’d heard about amoebiasis and all sorts of other diseases humans could contract from drinking water that wasn’t poured by a servant from a crystal decanter. I had to hope that the demon half of me would kill any and all parasites that would try to ravage my insides. It’d be one good thing I got from my mother.
I stumbled across a rock hidden in the dry grass, falling flat on my face as I approached, one hand trying to break my fall, the other splashing as it reached the water. Cool and crisp, or so I presumed. I dragged myself the last few inches or so by my fingernails, plunging my head into the stream, gasping and gaping for water, then air as I drank too much and too quickly in one go, my face and my hair soaked to the skin and scalp.
Maybe I blubbered or sobbed into the water a little. I must have looked pathetic. If only Pierce could see me.
“Um. Quill?”
Great. Just great.
I turned my head, my cheek pressed against the earth, the sunlight warming half of my face as I slowly opened one eye. Of course. There was Pierce, standing over me, though the expression on his face was not one of mockery, but of concern.