by Dante King
“Come here, baby,” Maddie said, pulling me into an embrace. Together, we crossed the lobby, putting as much distance between us and the murderous angel as we could. Our defense turned out to be for naught. A few moments after we got out of his reach, Holofernes turned and flew out of the lobby without so much as a goodbye. Judyth and her guards watched him go.
It took me a bit to realize where I’d seen their expressions before. Back before I went into the IT business for myself, I’d spent a summer during college managing one of those terrible retail stores where people brought their computers to have them cleaned of viruses or get their hard drives replaced. The other employees were perfectly nice and fun to work with—except when the regional manager made one of his twice-weekly visits to the location. Everyone hated the guy, but he was so many steps above us on the ladder that we were careful never to let a bit of that hate show in his presence. He’d been the subject of many thumbed noses and stuck-out tongues behind his back, though.
That’s what Judyth and her guards reminded me of. People watching someone they desperately wished they could take down a peg, but who could ruin their lives and their careers with a single word. I had no doubt after fighting Holofernes that he could have taken Judyth and her guards down without breaking a sweat. Hell, he probably didn’t sweat.
“I should have returned earlier,” Judyth explained, making her way over to Maddie and me. “I was giving Madeleine a tour of the women’s dormitories. She explained to me that, since the two of you are together, she’d probably spend the semester in your subspace rather than experience the dorms. I’m given to understand your personal domicile is more than large enough for the task…”
She sounded surprised. I only vaguely remembered Xora telling me most people’s subspaces were nowhere near large enough to live in—demons like myself and Karl were special that way.
“She definitely will,” I said, throwing an arm over Maddie’s shoulder. “Especially with that thing running around your campus. What the hell was he?”
“He’s scary,” Maddie said, her eyes meeting mine. “But also... he’s sad, isn’t he?”
Judyth sighed, and I knew Maddie was right on the money. “That was Holofernes,” she said, gesturing around her helplessly. “You know how I told you I’m the second highest-ranking angel in the Celestial Academy?”
I nodded.
“Well,” she said, “he’s the first. He’s not officially a member of the faculty—he’s kind of a free agent. Does his own thing. Honestly, I didn’t expect him to take much notice of you…”
“You were wrong on that front,” I said, rubbing my neck. Though the injuries had been magically healed, the ghost of the feeling remained. “He seemed pretty obsessed with me, to tell you the truth. Gotta say, I’m not a fan.”
“I will... have a talk with him,” Judyth said. It sounded lame, and she knew it. Both of us understood—there was very little anyone here could do to influence Holofernes. He seemed to only answer to the Almighty. “Did you check in with your other Academy, by the way? I’m assuming everything is fine and understood?”
“Yeah,” I said, giving Maddie a squeeze. “Christina and Mareth send their love by the way.”
“I just bet they do,” Maddie said with a giggle. Somehow, she knew exactly what I’d been up to in my subspace a short while ago—and she liked it. “I miss them already. Did they give you the cell phone?”
Huh? Maddie had been in on that the whole time?
“Yep,” I said.
She grinned from ear-to-ear. “Excellent,” she said, practically rubbing her hands together. Oh no. What mischief were my girlfriends up to now?
Judyth coughed, eager to change the subject. “Well, I apologize for that... unpleasantness,” she said, gesturing for her guards to make well and truly sure Holofernes had gone. “I was going to hand you over to one of my student officers to give you a complete tour of the Celestial Academy, but under the circumstances, it might be more prudent for me to accompany you myself. If you wouldn’t mind, that is.”
What—and give you more chances to flirt with me? Absolutely. “We’d love that, actually,” I said.
“Yeah, you’re super fun,” Maddie said, with just a hint more feminine interest than was necessary. Judyth must have caught the implied offer in her tone as well, because she quickly stepped aside.
“Excellent. Should Holofernes try to interfere with the tour again, I’ll do the best I’m able to restrain him. But I don’t imagine he’ll be bothering us. If you’ll follow me, I’ll begin the tour. The Cardinal Virtues await.”
Maddie and I shared a look. “Cardinal Virtues?”
Judyth let out a knowing snicker. “You have vices, we get virtues. Kind of like a game of Viceroy, no? Don’t worry, you’ll take to them easily. All you have to do to be good at them is do the exact opposite of everything you’ve done so far. So just ask yourself: would Luke Bell do this? And if the answer is yes, don’t do it.”
“Hmm.” Would Luke Bell slap Maddie’s ass right now? The answer was yes—so I did it. Maddie giggled, and Judyth looked like she wanted to slap me in response. “It’s not as catchy as WWJD?, but I gotta say—not bad. Lead the way. I can’t wait to get started.”
I really couldn’t. I was going to have as much fun at the Celestial Academy as I could, and no one was going to stop me. And, although Judyth hadn’t figured it out yet, I had a new goal at the top of my agenda. One I’d just decided should go right to the top a few minutes ago.
I was going to kill Holofernes.
Chapter 6
The Cardinal Schools were located at the center of the Celestial Academy, at an intersection near the top of the realm’s tallest, most splendid hill. Climbing it would have been a major pain in the butt and taken all day, so Judyth and Maddie unfurled their wings and took to the skies, gamboling and diving like fighter planes against the brilliant blue sky. A few moments later, charged with demonic energy, I joined them on my long, leathery wings.
It didn’t take long to realize how plainly I stood out. The sky was as full as the student commons in the Infernal Academy, with puffy clouds used as convenient seating for angelic picnics, hacky sack, and gossip. I counted at least three games of Viceroy going on near the Cardinal Building, ranging from a casual pickup session to what appeared to be two tournament-level teams practicing for the next season. Everywhere I looked, angels were staring at me.
They probably couldn’t help it. Their brilliant white wings seemed carved out of ice, bright and downy and clearer than a summer morning. In contrast, I looked like some kind of demon fresh from hell. Never had a transfer student been easier to spot—or more horrifying to the student body.
The Cardinal building buzzed with activity, angels as thick as flies around it. Judyth led us down to one of the platforms surrounding the enchanted edifice, dropping from flight to walking as smoothly as thought. Maddie and I had a bit more trouble with the transition.
“You’ll be spending most of your time right here,” Judyth said, leading us up the steps. “The four wings of the Cardinal Virtues—North, South, East, and West—make up the four schools of thought within the Celestial Academy. Mastery of each is required to graduate to a full-fledged angel. You’ll select a Major school and a Minor one, just as you do within the less-savory institutions known to us.”
I nodded. “I’m a Pridegreed down below,” I said, remembering my designation. A major in Pride—the school of command, of the Demonic lords—and a minor in Greed. I wasn’t a terribly greedy person, except maybe when it came to sexual partners, but I did have a better than average talent for binding demons to me. “So those are my two vices. How do those map onto your virtues?”
Judyth stared at me blankly. “They don’t,” the Headmistress said, shaking her head. “Things are different up here, Luke. We answer to a higher authority.”
I’ll bet you do, I thought, sliding an arm around Maddie’s waist as Judyth led us into the vestibule. I wonder what he has to s
ay about all of this?
I couldn’t have attended the Celestial Academy without the tolerance, if not the acceptance, of the Almighty. I’d never been a terribly god-fearing man, to be fair, but upon my first arrival at the Pearly Gates, I’d felt... something staring at me through the clouds. Something that made everything I’d ever seen or experienced feel like a single grain of sand across an endless beach, not even worth remembering to forget.
Had that been Lucifer’s foe? The Almighty? The ‘man upstairs’?
I still wasn’t sure. But by the time I made it to the top of the Celestial Academy, I’d have to find out.
The inside of the Cardinal Building resembled a museum. A long, rectangular hallway stretched before us, angled slightly downward. Marble floors gave way to red-and-gold carpet, so thick I was glad I wore boots. Portraits hung on the walls, praising former mortals for their ‘great services’ to the cause of the Celestial Academy. I recognized a few, but most I only knew by name—Thomas Aquinas sat smugly working with a quill within one canvas, while Martin Luther held a long scroll and a hammer with which to nail it to a door. Some of the names I’d have expected to be present weren’t, and more than a few people seemed utterly humble in their origins—not the great and mighty actors of history I’d expected. One woman’s portrait had a tiny note beneath the plaque explaining that she’d saved several hundred children from a massacre outside of Ypres; another was simply a large bald man with a walrus-like mustache, inviting the viewer to guess at what acts he’d performed to be pictured here.
But it was the absent square that caught my attention. Right at the beginning of the line up, the outline of where a painting had once been hung still remained affixed to the wall. Whoever had torn it down had done so with a great and terrible rage, leaving deep marks behind.
“You’d think someone would have cleaned that up,” I said, pointing at the space with a lopsided smile. “You all too high and mighty to play janitor up here?”
Judyth coughed politely. “That space is where Lucifer’s portrait once hung,” the Headmistress explained. The Almighty himself tore it down after his Fall.”
My jaw hit the floor as I stared. I tried to picture God himself ripping the painting down; found I couldn’t. My brain simply refused to process the mental image. How deeply had Lucifer turning bad wounded the Almighty?
Well, I thought. It’s only one of the most written-about subjects in Western Literature. Milton didn’t have to embellish much, I guess…
“That’s so sad,” Maddie said, shaking her head. “I understand why you’d leave it up like that. It’s a kind of memorial all its own, isn’t it?”
Judyth looked utterly gobsmacked. Clearly, she hadn’t expected Maddie of all people to cut to the heart of the matter. “We shouldn’t spend too much time here,” she said, hustling us down the hall. “It’s unseemly. Our first stop in the Cardinal Schools will be Fortitude—you have to pass through it to reach the hallways to the rest of the schools, in fact. In that sense, it’s a bit of a test in itself.”
“I see,” I said, catching sight of a large set of double-doors near the end of the hall. “Hey, wait a second…”
I paused, then executed a turn on my heels. “Are all the schools of roughly equal size?”
Judyth thought the question over. “They’re housed in identical buildings, if that’s what you mean. Although time and space inside of them are somewhat flexible, depending on the needs of the lesson plan and the students.”
My brain formed a mental picture of the floorplan. I started to chuckle. “So you’re telling me,” I said, the corner of my mouth curling in a smirk, “that the place where angels are trained looks exactly like a cross?”
Maddie put a hand over her mouth and began to giggle. Judyth looked far less amused by my discovery—I got the sense she’d had to go through this with many a new recruit, and it never got any less grating.
“You’d be surprised if you ever got a topographic look at your own Academy, too,” the Headmistress groused. Her long blonde locks brushed my shoulder as she walked past me, smelling faintly of lavender and cinnamon. “Come on, I think you’ll like this one best of all. It has plenty of violence. Righteous violence, that is.”
I was about to go off on some corny spiel about how violence is never the answer, the way I’d always learned in school. But, honestly? Fuck it. Nobody in the room would have been fooled by it in the least—and besides, that was no longer my style. I hadn’t punched Karl’s lights out and saved Maddie by being a non-violent guy; I’d just charged in and done my thing. With my harem of babes at my side.
Judyth, however, was right on the money. As we walked through the double doors, we found ourselves stepping into an arena straight out of a gladiatorial movie. High Roman columns held up several tiers of circular battlegrounds, stacked on top of each other like a layer cake. A set of stairs provided access to each floor, with the top level open to a roiling purple sky unlike anything ever seen on Earth.
“The Arenas of Courage,” Judyth explained. “As you can see, we keep the sigils of each school nearby to remind our students of their purpose and valor.”
She nodded behind her. The word FORTITUDO had been engraved above the door we’d just stepped through, along with a depiction of a suit of armor and a roaring lion. Both stirred something within my breast, a vague tingly feeling that faded the moment I reached out for it. What was that?
“Very cool,” Maddie said, her eyes lighting up. I could tell this was exactly where she wanted to be. “So this is where angels learn courage, then?”
“Within the Fortitude School, angels in training engage in combat within the Arenas of Courage. Here, you’ll learn to face down the otherworldly threats and dastardly demons that will get in your way while you travel the mortal realms, attempting to thwart your attempts at doing good deeds. It’s not merely good enough for an angel to have a pure heart—they must be battle-hardened, like a good piece of tempered steel. You remember those guards you ran into outside the Pearly Gates?”
How could I forget? “I’m guessing they were Fortitude School angels?” I asked.
Judyth nodded. “Most Seraphim are,” she said. “Warrior angels. I understand you like a little bit of roughhousing as well, Luke—you might find combat in the angelic arena quite refreshing.”
I looked up and up, sizing up the various floors. The combat on the lower stories seemed fairly mundane, with angels swinging golden swords and stabbing with golden spears against phantom succubi, imps, and lesser demons of Hell. The combat upstairs got... weird, though. I watched a thing like a starfish with too many limbs whirl sideways from a great distance, spitting up a spray of dust as it sent three angels flying. A creature like that was so strange and dangerous it seemed to belong to a whole other realm entirely.
“Get up, you lazy fools!” That was an angel in crimson robes, an extra feather in his halo marking him as advanced from the other recruits. “Remember to roll when you’re knocked down, and preserve your momentum! If this were a real fight, all three of you would be dead!”
“Gee, they seem even rough,” Maddie said, elbowing me in the ribs. Then, to Judyth: “who are they?”
“Envoys from Prudence,” Judyth said, her eyes shining fiercely. “Much like the Pride School down below, Prudence forms our officer corps among the heavenly host. Tactics, strategy, long-term planning—all those things and more are required of the brave souls who devote themselves to the Path of Prudence. It’s not an easy road.”
It’s MY road, I thought. If Prudence was this Academy’s equivalent of Pride—the elite of the elite—then that’s where I wanted to be.
One of the crimson-robed angels broke from the pack upon seeing us, dropping several levels to where we stood in a flutter of wings. His ageless look had a few more wrinkles than the Seraphs around him, marking him as perhaps middle-aged by angelic reckoning. He had no hair, and his halo hung a touch lower than most of the high-ranking Seraphs I’d seen so far. He sized me u
p with a grin, showing none of the vehemence toward ‘evil’ I’d seen from so many of the other members of the Celestial Academy.
“You must be the Hellspawn,” he said jokingly, reaching out his hand for a shake. “My name’s Gordon.”
“Luke,” I said, taking it. It felt strange to be respected for a change. “This is Maddie.”
“New blood,” the bald angel said, his gaze flashing to Maddie for just a fraction of a second. Gordon showed none of the prurient interest other men displayed when looking at my girlfriend—honestly, I wasn’t even sure angels had prurient interests. He barely spared her a glance, clearly seeing in me the greater potential. “Wonderful. Heard you had a run in with Holofernes.”
“My, word does travel fast, doesn’t it?” Judyth’s tone was arch. “I’ll have to remind our students about the proscriptions against gossip in the Celestial Handbook…”
Gordon held up a hand. “No offense meant, Headmistress. I was just going to say—clearly Luke and Maddie are tough cookies. How about tossing them in the Lion’s Den for their first taste of Fortitude?”
I had no idea what the Lion’s Den was, but Judyth’s face lit up at the suggestion. “Why, that would be great fun! If you think the two of them are ready, that is?”
Gordon shrugged expansively. “Why not? If the Hellspawn could hold his own against Holofernes, he’s clearly too good for the beginner course. I think he can go swimming past the drop-off this time around.” Gordon’s smile widened. “How about it, Luke? Are you looking for a place to happen?”
“You keep calling me Hellspawn,” I said, my hands on my hips.
A chuckle issued from Gordon’s throat. “Yeah. Isn’t that where you’re from?”
Maddie moved to intervene, but I held her back. “You don’t say it like you hate me, though,” I said. “Like it’s just a statement of fact coming from you—you’re not judging me at all.”