Infinite

by Erica Crouch

  Pen was a scribe and I worked with souls. Neither of us had any experience with weaponry beyond a theoretical understanding. But still, we were pulled out of duty and shoved into the armory. The angels fitted us for provisional armor, they handed us weapons, and then they sent us on our way. Thousands of other angels followed behind us, outfitted just as we were, strapped with whatever weapon was closest.

  It was simply luck that Pen was given a set of daggers, that I was handed a scythe. They were the first weapons our hands knew, and if we did not familiarize ourselves with them quickly, it would cost us our lives. We weren’t ready to pay a price for a war we didn’t really understand, so before our garrison was stationed on Earth, Pen got to work in the library. She pulled out dozens of books about form, fighting, and war strategy. She read aloud from books about how to fight with different types of blades—long blades, short blades, curved blades. We learned. We sparred with one another, stopping our blades just short of actually hitting each other and causing real damage. Neither of us knew what we were doing.

  No one knew what they were doing, really. But in war, you learn quickly or you die. Our survival instinct coupled with the paltry knowledge of battle we had from the books Pen has stolen was enough to make it through our first fight. And then our second. We wanted to survive, so we continued to practice clumsily until we got better. Until it wasn’t awkward for us to wield our weapons; until the movements became instinctual, the blades we held an extension of ourselves.

  The first life Pen took was during the third battle we saw. Until then, she had managed to avoid actually killing anyone. She fought them off, leaving them for me to cut down. She didn’t look back to see how I dealt with them.

  I don’t think she wanted to know how many I killed in those first few weeks. Denial was convenient for her, too, and she found it easier to look at me if she didn’t know how stained with the enemy’s blood my hands were. But, eventually, the fighting became so intense that it wasn’t enough to simply defend herself against the onslaught of thrashing blades and gnashing teeth.

  There’s always that tipping point for a solider in war, when the drive for survival pushes you over the line you’d drawn in your mind. The line Pen paced behind in every battle, the line she’d barely brushed with her toes. She wouldn’t take a life. But when faced with the question of living or dying—with the reality that, in an instant, your enemy will take you down unless you take them down first—the line disappears. We rush over it, disturb the dirt in which we drew it, erasing it for good. The line ceases to exist, and a new code of morals is mentally written.

  It was her friend. Well, not so much friend as acquaintance. But she was the closest thing Pen had to a friend. Kokabiel. Back before Heaven was wrapped up in this war—back when the most interesting thing happening was who was sharing whose bed or which names the new angels were given—they used to observe the stars together. Pen would name them, point out new clusters, and Kokabiel would plot them. She was determined to map every star and every galaxy, and she knew that Pen understood the night’s sky better than anyone else. So they’d gather when the sky was clear and dark to graph a new quadrant of the universe.

  I don’t think Pen heard that she had fallen. Kokabiel fell shortly after Lucifer, in the first wave of angels, but I never told Pen. She didn’t need to know, and there wasn’t time to map the stars anymore, so I figured she’d never find out. Chances were Kokabiel would have died in battle anyway, and Pen would have been none the wiser. We lost so many during that time that it was easy to write off an absence as combat having claimed another victim—the side they fought for was rarely remembered in the early days.

  What were the odds Pen would run across her during her service in the war?

  In that third battle, she came face-to-face with Kokabiel and saw her violet eyes. What had happened wasn’t a secret anymore, and I saw the way it shook Pen. That someone she had thought she knew had done something so unexpected. She nearly dropped her daggers to the ground, her arms as slack as her jaw.

  Before either of them moved toward one another, Pen started shaking her head. Denial returned, sweeping her up in another warm embrace. It was better to pretend that it hadn’t happened, that she hadn’t even seen her. It must have been a mistake.

  Then Kokabiel’s eyes flashed, and she began advancing on her. Pen tried to run. Better to flee than battle against someone she still considered a friend. She didn’t want to fight her, but Kokabiel didn’t seem to share the same hesitation. She charged Pen, faster with her staff than anyone I’ve ever seen.

  Rearing back with effort, she threw the spear aimed directly at Pen’s back. It would have pierced through her chest, skewered her heart at the speed it soared, but Kokabiel had miscalculated. Pen dodged sideways and the blade only caught her right under the ribs. Still, it took her down, and Kokabiel was there to keep her pinned to the ground before Pen had a chance to pull the blade from her side.

  Though I was locked in battle with a tall demon with skin so tan that it was practically orange, I saw everything. I saw Kokabiel push into the fresh wound, twist the spear hard before pulling it out—and I heard the way my sister screamed. I watched as she rolled Pen over and tried to take the daggers from her hands, but Pen held on. She held on and fought, kicking her legs, flailing about in an attempt to throw the newly fallen angel off her.

  Kokabiel didn’t budge. She just leaned back to get her spear again, no uncertainty in her eyes as she prepared kill her former friend. There was no conflict raging internally; Hell had claimed her, and all angels were her enemy. She might as well have been blind to faces. Pen was as good as a stranger to her. Soon, a dead stranger.

  Pen must have caught the fierce determination that set her eyes on fire—that lit up her voice when she let out a loud battle cry—because something changed. She didn’t try to escape anymore. Her feet stopped kicking across the ground; her arms stopped flopping at her sides. No longer was she trying to push her away.

  Kokabiel brought the point of the spear to Pen’s chest. She leaned in and whispered something to her, right against her ear. It was strangely intimate, a frozen moment in the center of the maelstrom of war. She was so close to her face that she didn’t see Pen’s hand move. She didn’t notice as she raised her arm, her dagger held tight.

  Pen closed her eyes and dragged her dagger across Kokabiel’s throat. She firmly shut her mouth, cinched her eyes against the dark blood that spilled from her friend’s throat and washed over her face. And then, when Kokabiel was finally still, after the gurgling and convulsing had ceased, she pushed the body off her and stood up.

  A bloody disaster.

  That is the image I recall when I think of my sister. A warrior and a fighter, drenched in the blood of all who are foolish enough to believe they can kill her.

  Over the years, I believed Pen had gotten better. I thought she had come around. In the beginning, she pushed back against Hell. She murmured her discontent and executed orders at a speed fast enough that she didn’t have time to consider them—or stop herself. But, eventually, her disapproval seemed to fade away. She didn’t look away as much; she didn’t rush. She grew used to the number of lives we took in a day, in a week. There were even a handful of times she appeared to not only tolerate it, but enjoy it. Truly, fully revel. I no longer had to pretend I didn’t notice her lack of appetite for death and destruction, because it was there. She was ravenous for it.

  Pen couldn’t fake that. No matter what she said, no level of threat from Lucifer would have driven her to act like she did, dancing in the blood she spilled.

  She must have been lying to me back in the chapel. Her poison words, her pitying look. Of course she’d try to deceive me. Pen is a very convincing liar when she chooses to be, and she’d want to throw me off balance now—when I have power, when I’m a threat. If ever there were a time to shake my confidence, it would be now. My smart, deceitful sister.

  Lucifer never saw me as something disposable. He couldn�
�t have; I was an asset to him from the beginning.

  Pen is a liar. She wants me to lose myself in doubt, to stop fighting her. Because she knows I’ll win. There’s no way around it; I have an army behind me, and she has a band of unfocused, unpracticed rebels. I doubt all of them have fought much since the war. At least Hell’s provided its demons with hunts for fresh meat. The revolution of New Genesis probably has a lot of useless angels on its hands—the most action they’ve seen in the past century a particularly tricky fate to translate.

  It will be like fighting Gus: all too easy.

  I’m anxious to hear from Raum. Jeremy says that he hasn’t checked in yet, and I don’t know if I believe him. His mental state seems to be deteriorating, which I didn’t think was possible—yet he’s hearing more voices and he can’t stay still. He claims the ghosts aren’t letting him sleep. I think he’s just acting out because he believed Lilith would be more involved in this mission. But she’s another voice in his head, a quiet conversation he can’t confirm is actually her every time he thinks they’re conversing.

  I let Proserpine and Zepar know that reinforcements will be supporting us as we descend on Pen’s rebel group. They’re just waiting for a location. We’re all waiting on a location. I make it explicitly clear to them that, once we’re in the middle of the fight, the first to find Pen brings her straight to me. I don’t care if they have an easy shot to kill her. I don’t care if it takes five others to capture her and haul her away from the fight. She is to come to me, and I am the one who will deliver the death sentence. They can do whatever they want with Michael, but I will deal with my sister.

  It’s late when we hear from Raum. He has coordinates, and I tell Jeremy to immediately share them with Lilith. He’s all too eager to contact her again, and in the span of an hour, we’re ready to leave.

  Lilith projects once more, Jeremy’s nervous nature dropping away to a sudden stillness only Lilith possesses. “Give my regards to your sister,” she says, and then she’s gone. It’s enough for me to know that Jeremy did speak to her—that she knows where to send the army.

  “Take whatever weapons are left, but nothing else,” I instruct. “No bags, no extra clothes. We are walking into a war, not an overnight camping trip.” I look at Jeremy pointedly.

  Proserpine winds her whip around her arm. She finds a second barbed rope to tie around her calf, and then she’s ready to depart. Zepar straps his medley of blades on, and Jeremy remains empty-handed.

  I leave them to redress in my armor, to go through the process of becoming a commanding officer of Hell again, ready to lead an army of demons into battle. Once more, the King of Hell will fight, and then he will take his crown and his throne. Then no one will touch him. I tuck Pen’s amulet under the hard, black metal of my armor. Its chain twists around the chain of my own pendant, and if I were the sentimental type, I’d see it as some kind of sign. A convoluted metaphor. Instead, I just see an annoying knot. The chains will probably have to be broken in order to separate them.

  Finally, I secure the vial with Michael’s soul. I don’t know if she’s yet figured out that they left here all but empty-handed. But if she has not realized that they did not retrieve Michael’s soul, she’ll find out soon enough. Maybe I won’t need someone to bring Pen to me during the battle after all. She will find me on her own.

  Bring your best, sister.

  I survey what’s left of the cold stone room and secure the last of my weapons before I head out.

  My remaining soldiers disappear one by one into the gray sky. The city spins beneath us as we fly on through the relentless wind, and eventually, the land is swallowed by the ocean. Soon, this will all be over.

  Pen

  THERE’S NOWHERE FOR US TO hide out in the open like this. We keep close to the exterior wall of the compound, Eli on my right and Michael on my left. Eli’s dog winds his way through our legs like he senses my nervousness. Maybe he does. I can’t help the fear that pinches my stomach. If this isn’t a drill, it could mean Azael’s found us. That we’re going to be facing off sooner than I thought. I’m not ready. Not yet.

  As closely as we can, we press against the wall and hope that whatever triggered the lockdown doesn’t roll our way. It may be just another human crossing too close, or it may be the first warning of Azael’s army. I glance to the sky, waiting for the clouds to be blotted out by wings, but if it is him, he’s still too far out to see.

  “Maybe it’s a drill,” Eli says. His words loudly bounce off the ice and I hiss at him to shut up. He lowers his voice, but only slightly. “No one really comes out here. There’s nothing around. It’s too far from the city and in the wrong direction from anything useful. There are refugee camps run by the army set up to the east of here for shelter. No one comes west. Or not many, at least.”

  “Will you shut up for a few seconds? Could you manage that?” I lean out from the wall and try to look around the south side of the compound to see if I can make anything out.

  The wind is too loud—and too cold. It’s cutting me to the bone and my wet hair is freezing stiffly. I pull my hood up and tuck in my ears, the bottom of my messy braid, and then move closer to Michael. The snow has stopped, but the wind is kicking it up, and it screams across the ground. If the alarm was sounded for something large like an army, we’d have to be hearing them by now. Whether they were in the sky or on the ground, they’d be loud: wings or boots.

  It must be something less than that, then. Another human. A small group of them or something. They’d be more difficult to hear in the thrashing wind until they came close enough to see us. I can only hope they will go around the east side instead of the west. We won’t know they are past us until the second alarm sounds and the gates unlock again.

  After about five minutes, Eli steps out from the wall and spreads his arms. “Just a drill, then.”

  I pause, waiting for the siren to signal that it’s safe. That whatever it was—drill, human, other—is gone or finished. But it’s quiet except for the rustling sound of snow sliding across snow and the whistle of the wind curling around the compound. Michael starts to move, but I pull him back to the wall when I hear a crunch. Boots on snow.

  There’s a small sound from our right—the north. We assumed whoever it was would be coming from the south. From any sort of civilization.

  Eli has his axe off his back in seconds, and I’m ready with my own daggers. Only Michael’s unarmed, as he thought it would be safer to leave his sword within the compound instead of bringing it out here. I subtly hand him one of my blades and he nods.

  “Retreat or advance?” Eli asks me without looking over his shoulder.

  “Stay,” I say. “They could still go a different direction.”

  He laughs. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  The three of us—our muscles tight and alert, ready for a fight—wait. The footsteps come closer, crunch crunch crunching over the snow and skidding over the patches of ice. Coming around from the north side of the compound is a kid. He’s running his hand along the cracked stone and plaster, kicking his feet out far to take wider steps in the deep snow.

  The thin frame of a young boy is hidden, stuffed inside a giant, puffy jacket, layered with scarves and sweatshirts. He’s wearing worn gloves and boots that look like they’re a few sizes too large. Big, goofy ears stick out from under the flaps of his hat.

  The kid doesn’t look up at us right away. He just keeps walking next to the wall, an arm’s length away, kicking his feet out and humming to himself.

  Eli lowers his axe a little, and the kid looks up, the movement having caught his eye. He stops in his tracks and takes us in. First, he notices Eli’s eyes, and then mine. I catch the way his gaze snags on our weapons. He glances behind himself, checking to see if he’s surrounded, and I half expect him to run. But then he drops to his knees, hangs his head. Like he’s suddenly too tired to keep walking and this seems like a good place to stop and rest.

  The dog barks at the boy, but he
stays at Eli’s heels.

  “Go ahead,” the kid says to the snow beneath him.

  I replace my blade in my belt and take the other one back from Michael. None of us moves toward him.

  “Are you alone?” Eli asks.

  He nods. “I won’t run. I know better than to run.” The kid raises his chin at us in a stubborn way, his cheeks burned red from the cold wind. There’s a wateriness to his eyes—a type of sad acceptance. Or maybe it’s just the violent wind stinging his eyes to tears.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I know what you are,” he says, raising his hands. He looks at me and Eli carefully. So he’s seen demons before—he’s been close enough to make out the color of their eyes and, I’d suspect, witness the kind of terror they’ve caused. “I’m unarmed,” he says. “Just do it quick.”

  Eli glances back at Michael and me, his eyebrows raised.

  Michael steps around us. “We’re not going to hurt you. What’s your name?”

  The kid lifts his face to him and notices Michael’s eyes now. Not violet, but blue. Like his. “Asher. Are you a human? And they’re letting you live?” He regards us suspiciously and lowers his voice to a whisper I’m assuming only Michael’s meant to hear. The kid’s terrible at keeping quiet. “Or are they holding you for something? Did they torture you?”

  Michael takes a few steps closer to Asher, careful not to spook him off. “I’m not a demon. I’m not a human either.”

  There’s a moment before understanding breaks across the kid’s face, and the terror returns. He backs up in the snow, kicking in front of him to get as far away from Michael as possible. “Angel!”

  Michael takes a step away, lowers his hands.

  “You’re just as bad!”

  I come up next to Michael. “Look, if we wanted to kill you, you’d be dead by now.”

  Eli lets out a low laugh behind me, and I turn around to glare at him. “Not exactly comforting words, Pen.”