by D B Nielsen
‘Sage Woods,’ Belladonna said in her high, tinkling voice. ‘What a Passion you shall endure – a trial and torment like no other – an eternity of pain which I have prepared for you alone.’
Summoning the power of Mizrael, calling upon my intrinsic bond with the Seed, I was ready to strike down Belladonna and rid the world of this blight. But before Mizrael could do more than stir in my firm grasp, the figure upon the altar must have shifted slightly as the worn edge of the filthy rags covering its tense frame slipped down to reveal a myriad of scars; a spider web of criss-crossed, fine white lines which marred the perfection of golden skin.
Shocked, I hesitated, faltering.
This was no female human in labour. No breeder chosen by the Grigori. It was St. John. My beloved.
‘Ah, now I have your undivided attention. Your fiancé has performed admirably under my influence, finally giving me what I want.’ Belladonna laughed, caressing her swollen belly. It was a sound so openly – genuinely – elated with her cruel efforts that I was cast into horrified silence.
The figure did not move. It was as still as a statue, carved in muted endurance and woe. I drew a shuddering breath to calm myself and heard the shaken gasps echoed by Pen and Sariel without needing to turn and see their expressions mirror my own.
‘Isabella. What have you done?’ I finally spoke in a voice that was little more than a whisper.
Smiling, Belladonna said in her sweet, piping voice, ‘Poor Sage. I am afraid the Keeper of the Seed does not recognise you now. It was necessary to give him a higher dose to make him ... co-operative ... I needed him amenable to my ... suggestions.’
I was to understand that St. John had dwelt in a state of poison-induced nightmare. What must have seemed an endless, bleak unravelling of his mind, had been accompanied by physical degradation and suffering, imposed to coerce him into submitting to Belladonna’s demands.
‘Foolish man. He just wouldn’t behave properly. But I would have none of that. And now – just look – he is as docile as a lamb for me.’ She turned her head, following my gaze as it rested upon my beloved. ‘Of course, I do miss the screams – though I will give him credit, he fought for much longer than the others, remaining defiantly silent for as long as he could. He even forgave me his torture – he said he pitied me. He. Pitied. Me.’ Rage flared in her face. For the first time, Isabella showed true emotion, almost snarling the words in her ire.
But then her face cleared as she looked down on her passive, broken victim again, and continued in a more sedate manner, ‘So, you see, I had to teach him a lesson. And everyone has their breaking point.’
I gaped at her. ‘You’re insane. How could you?’
I thought there was nothing worse she could say, but Belladonna had one more thrust of the knife. Her vicious smile was nearly my undoing. ‘You think I did this? But I didn’t, Sage. St. John has no recollection of me. He only knows that you did this to him.’
‘What did you do? How–?’ I asked, bewildered. Then, distraught, ‘Finn!’
And I understood everything. And it was under the burden of this revelation that I truly felt like crumbling, felt that I could so easily fracture and break.
She laughed delightedly. ‘Clever Sage. Yes, my half-brother, Phoenix. His poisoning was purely experimental – but I needed him. I needed his power. How else was I to impose your face, your voice upon St. John’s mind?’
Holding back the tears which threatened to stream down my anguished face, I looked upon his still, crumpled form. ‘You poisoned him. You tortured him. You pretended to be me ... all this ... so that you could use him as a ... a glorified sperm donor? That’s ... truly sick.’
Belladonna did not intend to break St. John like a horse that needed taming – no, she had not wished to crush his mind because she had further use of him; a more intricate malice planned. She wished for him to believe it was me – that I was his torturer. Yet, paradoxically, I would also be his saviour. I could make the pain go away. I could make it stop. As easily as I inflicted it.
And if by some miracle he survived – if his mind did not unravel completely – he would never be able to trust me again. Love and trust had been fused to suffering and torment.
And if he did survive – as it was his duty to be the Keeper of the Seed – every moment he must spend in the company of the Wise One would trample his sanity and continue to drive him deeper into madness.
It would be unendurable. For both of us.
‘You will fail.’ My voice was soft and calm, though my muscles were rigid with the tension of holding myself together for this one painful duty. She did not know that I had resigned myself to the task at hand. And I would not let her feed on my love and grief and rage.
At my words, she appeared slightly annoyed. Her lips twisted in a moue of displeasure before she smoothed over her complexion with a new thought and smug smile.
‘I think not. You see ... the mind is an interesting organism. To think the Creator gave human beings the ability to reason. To exercise conscious choice. Free will. Fascinating.’ Belladonna’s cruel, clear voice seemed to float on the air, insidious and merciless. ‘It is a curious thing to think of the mind as an instrument which can be tuned to perfection. And I am a Maestro.’
She crossed to St. John’s prone figure. He did not react to her approach. Fascinated, as a serpent about to strike, she reached a slim, white hand to lift his heavy head where it lay upon the hard stone. She was like a child automatically grasping at a toy yet there was something feral and sinister in her movements. She examined him as a collector would – with a possessiveness and pride – like he was a rare specimen; an insect spread and pinned upon the spreading board.
St. John still did not respond, did not stir, and so she disdainfully removed her hand and let his head drop back upon the crude altar. His skull hit stone with a loud crack and I prayed that he had not been injured.
I knew she was surreptitiously watching me, waiting for me to react – to wince, flinch, cry out in protest – and it took every bit of my willpower to school my expression and deny her the response she demanded, even knowing that she might inflict worse suffering still.
Yet, with contempt, she turned away. Hair pale as moonlight spilled over her shoulders and ebony-feathered wings, swaying gently as she retreated from the crude altar.
‘You see, Sage? He feels nothing. He is nothing. There is nothing left of the Nephilim you love. And nothing left of his humanity. He is simply an instrument to be played upon ... if you know the right tune.’ She laughed delightedly as she half-turned towards me to glance at me over her left shoulder. ‘Let me prove it to you.’
Belladonna folded both arms and wings with a loud, sharp snapping sound as if rapidly closing a hand fan and faced St. John.
As if invisible strings were being pulled, slowly and yet inexorably, St. John threw off his covering of filthy rags and rose from the stone altar. There were no fresh scars on the golden skin of his back and I breathed a sigh of relief at the thought that they did not have the means to torture him with a seraph blade. But my relief was short-lived when he turned around.
Briefly, I closed my eyes; willing myself not to go to him. Every hair on my body stood on end and I gripped the hilt of the sword of the Archangel tighter as if it was the only thing anchoring me to sanity in this terrible moment.
Belladonna had spoken true. Psychological torture and poisoning was, by far, worse. St. John had been stripped of his humanity. In the flash of an instant when I gazed upon his beloved self, he looked right through me. Blank-faced. There was nothing behind his dilated pupils. Only a black vacancy. Those beautiful green eyes now held a shiny, mirror reflection which blocked his grace and soul.
I could not bear it. I did not want to look.
I had to look. I looked.
St. John tripped and stumbled as he shuffled forward, standing between me and Belladonna, lacking all of the Nephilim’s usual poise and grace which was testament to how badly he was affe
cted by the poison in his blood. His longish locks were matted and plastered to his head with sweat, so that his hair had turned a dull, lank, ash brown. His golden skin looked sallow in the dim light and I could see that his muscles twitched and spasmed involuntarily due to the contagion.
My Nephilim companions made no further sound after their initial disbelief. Battle-tried ... war-hardened ... they knew, better than I, what to expect from their foe. And so, as much as I wanted to draw in a long, ragged, sobbing breath of grief and rage, I refrained.
‘Oh dear, it must have slipped my mind,’ Belladonna taunted silkily as she caressed her ballooning belly once more, ‘but I should tell you that, just as my father’s altruism is often seen as excessive – after all, he plans his altruistic acts in cold blood and, some would say, that it is presumptuous, perhaps even profane, for such a one as he to imagine that he can transfigure the world – yet empathy can lead to one’s own disenfranchisement.’
Shaking my head in disbelief at her vindictive madness, I asked again, ‘What have you done, Isabella?’
‘What have I done? No, Sage ... It’s what I am about to do.’ Her onyx wings extended slowly. ‘I intend to create a better world.’
And then, in the blink of an eye, the world shifted around us.
The viscous yellow fog, which hung from the museum ceiling and dribbled down the walls, churned and fumed insidiously as Belladonna raised both her hands in a clap that resounded like thunder. At the same moment, the ground shook and the world shrunk into a dense yellow haze.
The entities within the miasma seethed and slid and strained, and finally split to reveal the coldly inhuman and lifeless, glassy pale eyes of the Rephaim locked upon me. Manlike in form, their enormous wings and rapier-sharp, poisoned talons were ready to tear and shred and slash. The Lamassu leapt forward protectively and I heard a shout reach me from behind, ‘Forget the girl. The Fravashi traitor is mine. The others you can have.’
Raising Mizrael so that its point pierced the air, bearing towards heaven, I felt its fluid light flow into me and, tensing, I began to move, to sweep into an ever-widening circle, to seek the swift, sure opening.
Belladonna’s jet-black wings extended fully, and I perceived how they arched marginally, as if she meant to push off the ground again but, this time, seeking the obvious advantage of height to dance just beyond the reach of my blade.
But I was seriously mistaken.
The puppet mistress pulled the strings and her marionette danced to her tune. That was when I heard the low rumbling of an animal; a low growl which turned into a vicious snarl.
That was when I realised how securely my hands were tied.
Should I have used the heavenly light of Mizrael against our foe, I would doom the man I loved – I would be responsible for his unmaking, I would be responsible for his true name being erased, I would be responsible for annihilating his very existence and purging it from all record. Not even the Tree of Life would bear witness to his being.
I swore to myself that I would save him. I did not come here to annihilate him.
To liberate. Not to obliterate.
I whispered his name, hoping to reach him. Hoping beyond hope that somewhere buried deep, he had retained one small atom of his essential self, his being, his soul.
But the sound of my voice only seemed to madden him and he hurled himself at me with reckless abandon and aggression. I cried out – in warning, in horror, in anguish, I didn’t know which, or maybe all. Yet I did the only thing I could to protect myself; the flash of Orichalcum in my hand brief, the blood and light that suddenly gushed from the savage wound in his upper arm less so.
St. John gave a howl of inhuman pain, reeling backwards as the blade bit into his arm. Yet, in the blink of an eye – less – I looked into the clarity of jade green eyes flecked with gold and there was recognition. And love. And forgiveness.
But all too quickly the leaden apathy washed back over his cherished features.
Feeling as if I was the one who had been cut and was bleeding, I wanted to sob in trammelled distress. Even if St. John survived this day, where I had managed to slice him would take time to heal and leave a lasting reminder of both our actions.
‘St. John,’ I said sorrowfully.
His eyes fixed upon me – bottomless black like an abyss and intense in their insanity – and his face distorted with some undefinable but violent and wild emotion. He snarled at me again, making Isabella laugh with glee, enjoying our perverted pantomime.
I gazed through tears ready to stream down; his dear form blurred. Blinking them away, I sought the power of the Seed to provide the inner peace I so desperately needed to hold onto my convictions.
Time slowed ... pooled ... trickled ...
... like dust motes floating aimlessly, briefly illuminated ... sounds receded ... shadows moved ...
...the gummy, elastic air turning silver ... blown like grey cloth over the sea ...
...their small figures sharpened under the dim light with seemingly fragile, stitched bits of book muslin as wings ... like children, they raced fan-shaped and as wild as sunlight piercing thin, swift waves ...
At once I saw the battle from outside myself – a vision of the present and not the future; the real and not imagined...
... Sariel locked in combat with his former Fravashi brother – bitter, unceasing blows raining down, one after the other, as beautiful and graceful as a macabre fandango where each partner fought to gain the upper hand ...
... one of his men lying motionless on the ground, beneath the weaving talons of the Rephaim ...
... another slumped sideways; the blood-soaked side of his tunic ...
... Pen’s hands tightening on the hilt as he angled his sword and raised it ...
... the Lamassu, stonewalling the rapacious yellow fog ...
... Belladonna’s monstrous grin ... round eyes brimming with brightness ... her skin shining like the glaze on porcelain ... her shadow growing tall on the walls like great, starry purplish-black blooms; large black berries, empty and heartless ...
... and St. John whose angelic essence was seeping from his open wound ... baring his teeth and soundlessly growling like an animal, wanting to kill me ...
... St. John ... whose autonomy had been compromised ... whose will had been stolen from him, corrupted by Belladonna’s poison.
In this moment, I was given a choice because St. John had not. The paths forked out before me, leading to different futures ...
I understood. Belladonna had inherited her father’s gift. But her altruism extended only to her twisted vision of a better world inhabited and populated by the descendants of angels. A new, improved version of Adam and Eve.
Had Elijah foreseen this moment? Was that why he had tried to warn me? And what of Finn? Had he, too, attempted to make me understand?
Yet, for all their cautioning, I was the one to make this decision. I alone was given the choice. Time hung in the balance between what was and what would be ...
Now was no time to be a coward. It came to me then that there was only one path open to me. And only proof of faith would do. Only proof of love ...
I did the unthinkable. I laid down my weapon.
Thrusting the sword of the Archangel into the stone floor, Mizrael sliced the ground, penetrating to its hilt, so that only proof of true worth and pure intent would permit one liberty to wield its immense power.
A strange calm took hold and I resisted the instinctive urge to back away when time resumed. Especially as St. John’s demented, feral snarling could once more be heard in chorus with the ruckus of the ongoing battle.
‘Tu es l’amour de ma vie,’ I whispered, and let my hand fall to my side, empty.
The ringing of swords, the clash of battle slowly diminished, dwindling into silence. The men scattered like a broken pearl necklace about the room, knowing that destiny’s thread had snapped. Becoming aware of this new turn of events, one by one, they froze and pensively waited; observing t
he tableaux unfolding. And the air – or maybe it was the yellow fog – gave a hiss like an indrawn breath.
The moment swelled.
St. John surged forward; his dearly-loved face blank, pitiless, mindless. Lifting his injured arm high above his head, he meant to batter me to the ground; his fist and arm extended as a truncheon. He motioned mechanically; knuckles forcefully swinging downwards.
I did not flinch. Looking directly into his eyes, I stated firmly, ‘There is no darkness. Not in the universe. Not in you.’
He faltered. His fist skimmed my cheek, missing the intended mark by mere millimetres.
I continued determinedly, relentlessly pushing on as if I was unaware of his murderous intent. ‘Darkness does not exist; it only appears to exist. But the light is still there. It is always present.’ I inhaled deeply and said emphatically, ‘Understand this, St. John. It is always present. It is in you. It is you. You are an emissary of the light.’
For the first time, a substantial chink showed in Belladonna’s armour. Fury flared across her strikingly beautiful face. ‘Strike her down. She is the one who tortured you. She is the one who was the cause of your torment. Do it. Kill her. End it. And your pain will all be over.’
At her words, St. John lifted his fist.
‘I love you,’ I said. ‘And if I have ever hurt you, forgive me. My love.’
He hesitated. His fist shook and his body trembled from head to toe.
Without taking my eyes from St. John, I threw words at Isabella like hard pebbles to strike against her glasshouse. ‘In order to affect darkness, you must do something to the light; because the light is the only thing that actually exists.’
At my words, as if in an agony, St. John threw his other arm up and both fists connected with his head, clutching at his lank hair as if he would tear away his skull to reach his very brain. He gave a howl, a groaning moan of anguish, and staggered backwards and away from me; seeming to be at war within himself.
‘Fool!’ Belladonna scorned, ‘No matter what you do, he will never be whole again. He is tainted. You cannot save him. But you can save what is left of him. Give me the Seed and together we can create a better world.’ At this, she linked her hands beneath her grotesque belly to taunt me with the infants she was carrying. As if in response, they quickened within her.