by Cate Corvin
I left them to go check the pyre and be absolutely sure that Gabriel was gone. Even though I’d seen his head torn clean off, there was still a tiny seed of fear in my heart that we’d never really be free of him.
But the logs had been reduced to ashes. I approached the pasture, unable to tell where Arcturus’s volcanic plain ended and the remains of the pyre began. The smell of woodsmoke still hung thick in the air.
Squatting in the dust, I reached out and touched the remains of a log with the tip of my finger. The scorched wood crumbled into pieces, revealing tiny, blackened pieces of what could only be bone.
I picked one up and rolled it between my fingers. It was impossible to tell which part of Gabriel it was, and left black streaks of soot on my hand.
“The only thing I’m sorry about is that I didn’t kill you myself,” I murmured, peering at the porous texture of the bone shard. I squeezed hard, and it crumbled into dust, falling to the ground. “You deserved every part of this. Not just for me, but for what you did to Tascius and… and God.”
It was still hard to believe just how evil Gabriel had really been. I hoped wherever his soul was now, that his shade was suffering. He didn’t even deserve the peace of total oblivion.
The twisted part of me that had wanted him tortured wished he was still alive to be kept in the dark, but there was no torture we could inflict on him that would equal what he’d done. It was for the better that he was gone now.
He’d once told me he was my everything. When I’d been raised from death, I’d had no idea that the archangel had already killed God, and was doing everything in his power to take God’s place.
“You’re nothing now.” I brushed my fingers together, ridding myself of the feeling of charred bone on my skin. “Nothing but dust.”
Arcturus picked his way to the fence, leaned his head over, and began rummaging through the remains of the pyre with his nose. I watched him pick up a bit of bone and casually crunch through it.
“You’re eating Heaven’s former prime archangel, you know,” I told him. Arcturus flicked his tail and bit down with a particularly hard crunch, a satisfied look in his fiery eyes.
“Melisande?”
I stood up and brushed ash off my dress, turning to see Azazel waiting for me. He glanced at Arcturus, who was steadily destroying a blackened thigh bone, and his features softened.
“Did you get what you wanted?” he asked, reaching out to me.
I took his hand, not sparing another glance backwards for Gabriel’s remains. “I suppose I did. I’ve spent so long wishing he was dead, and now I can finally be at peace about it. I just wonder if I should feel bad that I wanted him to hurt more before he was freed.”
Azazel glanced down at me, leading me to the doors of the arena. “No. I don’t think you should.”
A smile crossed my face, but it was humorless.
I’d always thought I was on the side of goodness and light. Instead, Gabriel had made a dark creature of me, an angel better suited for Hell than anything else. At least I had the satisfaction of knowing he’d had time to see what he’d made before he died. A mockery of his ambitions. Ruined by his own creation.
I released a breath as we stepped inside and Belial’s imps barred the doors behind us. The Grigori had left, and Lucifer and Belial were nowhere in sight.
“Where’s Vyra?” I asked. I needed someone with a level head on her shoulders right now.
“In the room Belial gave her. Close to your old one.”
Azazel didn’t protest when I kissed his cheek and pulled away. “I’ll be back soon. I just need some time to absorb everything and think over some things.”
He shimmered, became mist, and floated up through the ceiling, presumably to return to his self-appointed guardian duties.
I followed the familiar corridors I’d once tried so hard to escape, treading on thick carpet and up the stairs. The common room for the named champions was exactly as I’d left it, the fire crackling in the hearth.
I paused outside my old door. My name was still emblazoned on it, and I ran my fingers over the metal plate before moving on.
Vyra’s name was on the door next to mine. I pushed it open, quietly poking my head in. “Vyra?”
The succubus was sprawled across a massive bed draped with sheer veils. She looked up, her eyes wide. An open sketchbook was spread in front of her, along with several charcoal pencils.
I caught a bare glimpse of what she’d been drawing before she shut it, and my heart ached. Vyra pushed the sketchbook under a pillow and sat up, dragging a hand through her white hair.
“Hey,” she said. She was far more subdued than usual, no smile tugging at her mouth, faint circles engraved under her eyes.
I stepped in and closed the door behind me. “How are you feeling?”
She pulled her legs in and wrapped an arm around them, patting the bed next to her. “Come sit. I’m doing fine. How are you holding up?”
I obediently sat next to her, grabbing a pillow to hold onto. “Also fine, I guess.”
Vyra rested her head on her knees, looking at me sidelong. “It’s okay to not be fine. You don’t have to pretend you’re hard as obsidian every minute of the day.”
“You don’t have to pretend everything is glitter and rainbows,” I countered.
She gave me a real smile this time. It was faint, but genuine. “No. I suppose blood and glitter are the only ways we know how to cope.”
“What were you drawing?”
Vyra shifted uncomfortably, reaching down to toy with one of the charcoal pencils she’d failed to hide. “Nothing important. I just find it’s sometimes best to get my darker thoughts on paper and out of my head.”
I thought about pushing harder, but she’d hidden the sketchbook and clearly had no desire to talk about it. Given how often I’d wished for privacy to sit with my own thoughts, it didn’t seem right to pry or force her into talking. “Whenever you want to talk, I’m here.”
“I know.” She poked me with the pencil playfully. “But you’ve got much more to worry about than I do. The baby, for one.”
As if in response to her words, my stomach seemed to flip upside down. “It doesn’t feel real yet.”
And that was the gospel truth. Except for the odd bout of dizziness, I was just me.
But I was deathly terrified of the months to come.
When I was further along, would I be able to fly? Hold a weapon? Would they always push me behind them like a porcelain doll unable to take care of herself?
I was afraid of what becoming a mother might mean for me. If I wouldn’t be myself anymore, just a walking incubator never to be given a sword again.
“Don’t let it get to you,” Vyra said, patting my back. I smiled wryly at my too-perceptive friend. “It’s natural to be afraid. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who wasn’t at least a little bit terrified.”
“It’s a different kind of terror,” I admitted. “I’ve been terrified before, but at least I could do something about it then. With this, all I can do is wait. And…”
“And what?” she prompted when I fell silent.
“I’m an angel, and not even a pure-blooded one.” My voice came out as a strained whisper. “Belial is a pure demon. The baby will be Nephilim. What if it’s like… like Yraceli?”
She’d been twisted, but I could overlook that. What I couldn’t overlook was the animal hunger or primal destruction of her nature.
What if our baby was a danger to everyone, including us?
“Do you want me to extend you a lifeline?” Vyra asked, raising her head. “Maybe this will make you feel a little better. Belial is old blood. Like, really, really old blood. One of the purest bloodlines out there. And the older the blood, the more likely the Nephilim child is to take after that parent.”
I frowned at her, unwilling to grasp at false hope.
“Like Tascius,” she said. “Gabriel was old blood, and look at him. You can’t tell the difference until he loses
his shit. Nephilim like Yraceli… they’re the product of newer demons and angels, mixed with some corrupt or inbred bloodlines here and there. Acheron is a more-or-less enclosed city, so they’ve all interbred over the centuries. I’d say Belial’s child has a pretty damn good chance at life.”
I expelled a slow breath. “Okay. That does make me feel a little better.”
So the child would be Nephilim, but it would resemble its father. I could live with that.
“I guess the key to having viable Nephilim children is to make sure you’re getting knocked up by the pure-blood old geezers of the demon world,” she said thoughtfully, and I started laughing.
“At least he doesn’t look like an old man.”
Vyra wiggled her eyebrows. “Gray and decrepit, that’s the way to go. Everything else is just too risky.”
I buried my face in my pillow, still laughing. The idea of Belial being an old, gray geezer… and he’d still find a way to make it look hot.
“Feel better?”
“Yeah.” And I really did. Our child would be just fine. All of them would be. “But don’t forget you can talk to me too, okay? And you don’t have to stay here. If you want to go back to Blackchapel, I’ll bring you. Whatever makes you feel safest.”
Vyra pushed a strand of hair out of her face and shook her head. “No. Too many Grigori roaming around there, and some of them are total assholes.”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered. “Druzila hates me and I only just met her.”
“That’s the one!” Vyra rolled her eyes. “She’s had a thing for my brother for ages. I told her it was never gonna happen and now I’m on her blacklist.”
“Well, we’re on it together.” Of course she had a thing for Azazel. Honestly, who wouldn’t?
“It’d probably take less time to list the people not on her blacklist than the ones who are. She hates everybody. And Typhon doesn’t hold back on being a dick.”
I snorted. “At least we hate the same people.”
“Yeah. They’d better uphold their end of this, or they don’t deserve to be Watchers. I’ve been telling Azazel to shorten their leashes for ages.” She sat up and stretched. “But we’re going to have to deal with it, because while you were getting Gabriel’s ass killed, we determined our next move.”
“And that is?”
She gave me an apologetic look. “We’re going to go meet with the Grigori in Blackchapel to discuss plans. Then we’re going to get the Princes together.”
“Sounds great,” I said gloomily, imagining going face to face with the scythe-wielding Druzila again. “Just what I wanted.”
“I knew you’d be a champ about it,” she said fondly.
This time, I was bringing a sword and extra knives.
17
Azazel
Shadows swirled around me. The stars that lived in the mist of my ethereal magic grew and died, eaten away by the darkness.
I rose through the sky over Dis, invisible to all as I choked back the stars and forced them into hiding. No one would see or feel me pass; there was nothing to give away my presence.
Sometimes I wondered if I stayed incorporeal for too long, if my physical body would just melt away into nothing and I’d be nothing but a disembodied consciousness roaming around.
It was something I hadn’t been foolhardy enough to experiment with in recent years, but now that I felt the gaping darkness in my soul closing, there was a tinge of excitement every time I used the old magics I’d been cut off from for so long.
The dark magics, the kind that required a sacrifice to achieve. My wings weren’t the only thing I’d traded.
After all, nothing worthwhile ever came for free.
Halfway across Dis, I shifted forms: from glittering wind to a more tangible form, dark wings spreading wide and blotting out the sun for all below me.
It’d been a long time since I’d had the boldness to shift into this body. The last time I’d tried, only days after Satan had reached into my chest and ripped out the tithe of my soul, I’d nearly been trapped in it, the gaping void of my heart combining with the more savage and primal pull of this body to create a trap.
It’d taken many tears from Vyra and months in a cage to find my real body and mind again.
That was the danger of using the ancient magic. It came with its own pitfalls, shifting from one body to an unnatural one, and my mind wasn’t always the same when I crossed the divide. Having a void in my soul had made it that much harder to return to myself.
Banking into a crosswind, I relished the wingbeats, the curl of savage talons. Without the void inside me, it was so much easier to hold onto my own self while in this form.
If I’d had lips instead of an enormous razor-sharp beak, I might have smiled. Too many years had passed without a raven demon to terrorize Dis.
God of nightmares, god of ravens and sickles and stars. None of it was true, of course. Leave it to a tiny cult in the cradle of civilization to build me a temple when they witnessed the raven ripping souls from bodies, taking mortal form to teach them witchcraft by night.
Ghostly birds formed from the shadows spilling off my wings and followed me, a loyal conspiracy of ravens. Each one of their souls had been sacrificed on the cult’s altars, gifted to me by worshipful humans.
It felt damn good to be back and whole again.
I angled for Blackchapel, taking in everything through a bloodred gaze: my Watchers were home, but they’d scattered across Dis. Many of them had been independent for so long they’d forgotten what it meant to be called back.
It was easy to shift back into my usual body when I landed on the roof of Blackchapel. Wings retracted and became arms and fingers, my beak melted away, my claws uncurled and became feet.
I let my physical skin become incorporeal and sank through the roof to the chapel below.
There was a room in my fortress that many of my Watchers had never seen. It was impossible for them to enter; it had no windows or doors. Melisande had no idea of its existence, and as long as I lived, she never would. It wasn’t for people who didn’t traffic in the more stygian arts.
My ravens dissipated into mist, their souls returning to the aether until I called them again. I strolled through the dim library, ignoring the shuffle of the books on the shelves, things that moved in the corner of my eye.
They were harmless. Mostly.
There was an orb of pure onyx nestled in the middle of the library, held up by a stand made of old bones. I circled the stand, looking over the onyx orb, so smooth it reflected me back at myself.
But the reflection didn’t show my human face- it showed the one beneath it. One of the many reasons Melisande would never be permitted to step foot in here.
I reached out and placed my hand on the orb. It was smooth as silk, cold as ice… and it welcomed me in.
The orb’s consciousness crept into my own, and suddenly my mind wasn’t my own anymore.
I saw through every Watcher’s eyes at once, feeling a little like an insect with compound eyes; in one corner of my mind, I watched one of my Reapers stalk a dying demon from a rooftop; in another, a Fate wove his strings to influence the outcome of an argument.
Except there were hundreds of minds, and each of them was bound to me.
RETURN HOME, I demanded. IT IS TIME.
Every single Watcher felt me in their mind, as though I spoke to them and them alone. Almost as one, they took flight wherever they were, rising over the city and out in the Fields and wastelands. Some were here in Blackchapel; even though my physical eyes were looking at my library, I also saw the roof of the cathedral as they looked up, the stone walls of bedrooms as couples disengaged, the gleam of weapons as they were re-racked on walls.
When I was satisfied they’d heeded the call, I pulled my hand from the orb and released its power. It fell away from me with a sucking sensation on my mind, as if it were reluctant to let go.
Lucifer would be bringing Melisande here soon, but there was one last thin
g I wanted to look at before leaving the library.
I shook out my hand as I strolled the shelves and searched, my fingertips numb from the iciness of the orb. Some books grew hands and reached out, and others peered at me with eyes hidden in their bindings. More than a few were bound with skin; one was withered and old, and another still gleamed brightly as though it had been freshly peeled from its owner.
It took too long to find what I was looking for. I held out a hand and summoned it down, and the book shivered off the shelf and landed spine-first in my palm with a solid thunk. The cover was a nondescript color, worn at the edges; it was a book so old that even time itself was beginning to forget it.
My suspicions solidified into surety as I flipped through the faded pages. The Old Times were long past, but we were in a new era of unpredictability. Even amongst the oldest of demons, few would remember the changes that happened when magic was new and the laws of the universe were still being written.
We all simply lived too long to remember every detail.
But there was a cosmic balance that needed to be tended, and the universe would tend to that balance itself.
Like the sacrifices I’d made to become more than a demon, there was no such thing as gaining something for nothing. Every action had a counteraction; every force of nature had an equal and opposite force.
The balance was upset. When Gabriel’s head was ripped from his body, the cosmos had shaken, rippling outwards from the destruction of a primal force’s soul.
No one else had noticed a thing, but I’d felt the hurricane in the lines of the world until they all converged on one single point, the universe determined to right itself according to the laws it- or something else, something other- had created.
I snapped the book shut and replaced it on the shelf, staring at its binding for a moment.
Then I gathered myself and released my physical form to become ethereal, drifting down through the floor and into the cathedral.
The Watchers swarmed below, dividing into their factions, arguing amongst themselves. I’d let their leashes grow too long. Many of them had forgotten what they’d sworn when they became Grigori, that they owed their allegiance to me alone, no matter my demands. That was the price of learning death-magic at my hand.