by Cate Corvin
The chimera prowled the ring, circling Tascius. The giant held his ground, sword-tip pointed at the ground. Every time the demons cheered the snake-headed tail jerked, and they were so loud they almost drowned out the lion’s roars, still stomping their feet.
Lady Savage appeared at my side, leaning on the wall with a cruel smile. “Ready to see your lover get his guts ripped out?”
“I’m sure that’s an issue for you, but he can handle it. Thanks for your unasked-for concern.”
The serpent struck out as Tascius and he stepped back, just out of reach. I slammed my fist on the wall, raising a cheer for him.
“You really don’t believe us.” Lady Savage sounded smug. “He always throws every other sixth. This time will be no different. But now that he’s got you to suck his cock while you tend his wounds, perhaps he’ll throw it every time.”
The hot flush that rose along my neck was pure rage. There was nothing I wanted more than to dump her over the wall to face the chimera herself.
A breath of cool wind touched my naked back, cooling some of the fury. I chose to direct it towards screaming for Tascius, encouraging him to cut its heads off.
The lion lunged forward and he whirled aside, strangely graceful for a man that size. The sword flashed, and the crowd hissed in a collective gasp as the lion lowed. The goat head of the beast bleated once, then slid to the floor, leaving a gushing stump behind.
“See?” I cast Lady Savage a triumphant look.
She just shook her head. “You poor, besotted idiot.”
The snake lashed out and Tascius sliced it away neatly. The length of it spasmed on the floor like a twitching livewire in its death-throes.
The arena was a literal bloodbath. It was amazing Tascius didn’t slip in it, but he seemed to have some preternatural sense for keeping his balance. I screamed his name until my throat hurt.
When he circled to the far side of the arena, he looked up at me, that horribly dead expression in his eyes.
I knew what he was going to do. A stone dropped into my stomach, weighing me down.
My fists slammed down on the wall so hard the pain shot through my arms. “Don’t you dare, Tascius! Fucking kill it. Make the kill!”
My black pinion brushed his chest as he faced the remaining chimera.
“I gave you my feather, god fucking damn it! Rip its heart out!”
God didn’t respond to my usage of his name, and Tascius didn’t, either.
Another gust of cold wind touched my shoulders as the chimera charged at him. Tascius fumbled the sword and dropped it as the creature’s mass hit him.
He’d done that on purpose. I bared my teeth in fury, ineffectually pounding on the wall. “Get the fuck up, Tascius, get up.”
Lady Savage laughed and sat down, leaving me to rage alone. “What did I say, heavenspawn?”
Nephilim and chimera rolled across the bloody floor, and I winced as fangs flashed, digging into already-scarred flesh. They were painted scarlet. It was almost impossible to tell man from beast, but I knew who was losing.
An arm snaked around my waist and I flung an elbow out, but a hard hand caught my arm and stopped me. Tiny pinpricks played over my skin like electricity.
I tore my eyes from the carnage and looked up into the face of the glittering ghost, Lucifer Morningstar’s left-hand man.
That was why Belial was so distracted. It was the sixth day of the week.
“Twilight, angel.” His baritone voice rumbled through me, and then my hands passed right through the wall. I held them up, watching them disappear into the same sparkling smoke he was made of. “Time to go.”
“No-!”
My entire body went weightless and ephemeral as the ghost wrapped himself around me, dissolving the two of us into a million tiny stars.
The last thing I saw before he tore me away from the Seventh Circle was the Nephilim trapped beneath the chimera, and the look of regret on Belial’s face as he watched us go.
14
Melisande
We rose through the ceiling and burst into the night sky like a swarm of fireflies.
I blinked misty eyelids at the sight of the bloody sky, the void of a sun casting long shadows over the descending obsidian towers of Dis. After so long inside the lamp-lit confines of the arena, the sight of the open sky was breathtaking.
I stretched my wings as we rose into a thermal and flapped hard, anticipating shooting away from the Grigori into the open air.
Nothing happened.
“Cute.” I caught a hint of a smile in the glittering smoke where the ghost’s face should have been. “But it won’t work.”
I couldn’t even struggle against him as we drifted over Dis, spectral figures riding a swirl of glittering wind. He seemed solid enough, but my ephemeral limbs had no power behind them. As soon as this Grigori put me down, I was going to take one of his ears as a souvenir.
We’d see how badly he wanted me every sixth day after that.
My struggles ceased as we passed over the gaping pit in the center of Dis, passing from the bright side to the dark side.
Something flared in the bottom of the pit, blue-white flames that paradoxically looked as cold as ice, and an icy breath of wind flew right through me.
The Grigori felt me shiver and tightened his arms. “He can’t have you,” he whispered, like that was supposed to make me feel any better. That was Satan down there in the cold-fire abyss, the Father of Lies, the Red Dragon.
Just flying over it made me feel like Satan would look up and see me.
The other side of Dis’s circles slowly approached. Unlike the half with the arena, all obsidian and gold statuary, this half had glittering electric lights winking in windows, and twisted black trees with drooping canopies grew between buildings and spilled over the descending Circles.
It was like a dark fairy-tale version of the Gardens of Babylon, the trees lit with tiny ivory and lavender lights.
“Welcome to the better half of Dis,” the ghost said. “The shade of Hell, the Nightside.”
We ascended, swooping up over the tiers of the city. When we passed over the second Circle into the first, my trepidation was finally waning, and cold, hard anger took its place.
The first Circle, a tangled garden of poisonous plants and buildings so grown over with flowers they looked like living houses, gave way to misty fields. The shades of dead humans wandered in the fog, reappearing and disappearing behind curtains of white as they mindlessly ate the flowers growing there. It was Limbo, the very edge of Dis.
I knew Blackchapel the moment I saw it. It perfectly suited the name.
The massive cathedral was made of obsidian, but it floated in the air three hundred feet above Limbo, looking out over the city. Chunks and shards of the black stone spiraled in a slow tornado below, and the Grigori flew easily between the aimlessly roaming pieces.
I reached out and touched a shard of the obsidian as we passed, but my fingers passed right through it, and the stone continued floating along.
The Grigori swooped up above the rim of the cliff-like edge that dripped with more black-leaved plants, and we landed in a quiet courtyard in a swirl of midnight smoke.
I pushed myself out of his arms and fell to my knees as the normal weight of my body returned, gasping for breath as I dragged in air against rib muscles and lungs that protested the sudden weight on my chest.
I needed to get back to Tascius. Whoever the Grigori was, he had no right to steal me away like a thief in the night, not when my only friend was being gored by a chimera down there.
My wings fanned out and I jumped to my feet, sprinting for the edge.
Tendrils of smoke wrapped around me, pinning my wings to my back. My feet left the ground as the Grigori pulled me along like a balloon on a string. He waved a hand and the massive ebony doors of Blackchapel swung open on silent hinges.
I struggled against the smoke, but without my magic, there was no breaking free of his power. I tried to level a glare at t
he Grigori, but as I drifted through the doors, the mournful beauty of Blackchapel stole my gaze.
It was just as dark as the outside, but the stained-glass windows were all in shades of gray, casting milky light through the cathedral. A massive sigil was etched in the floor in silver wire, glowing like moonlight.
He floated me right into the middle of that circle and the smoke released me. I fell back to the floor, flapping to keep myself upright. “You absolute a-”
I broke off when the sigil lit up, and a glowing wall of silvery power rose around the perimeter. I watched the ghost pace the outside as the wall rose to meet an identical sigil set in the ceiling, closing me off.
“When Belial agreed to give me up for a day, I don’t think he had imprisonment in mind.”
You dickhole, I added in my mind, but something told me the Grigori might not find my foul-mouthed resistance as amusing as Belial did.
I honestly had no idea what Belial had actually agreed to. For all I knew he’d conceded letting the Grigori keep me in a dungeon for the full twenty-four hours.
“Belial agreed to whatever I think is best for you,” the ghostly figure’s baritone voice said, calling my bluff.
I stepped closer to the edge of the wall of light and reached out to touch it. It slid over my fingers like fog, the sensation of absolutely nothing, but no matter how hard I pushed, I couldn’t breach it.
I looked up and realized the Grigori was just on the other side, watching me. Like Belial and Tascius, he had the height and build of one of the pure-blood demons.
The smoke wisping from him began to thin as he took on a solid form, giving me my first clear look at the Grigori, Lucifer Morningstar’s friend.
His face took form first, revealing hard planes and angles around a pair of penetrating eyes the exact shade of lilacs. Despite the harshness of his features, his lips were full, the softest part of his face. Crow-black curls brushed the edges of his ears and cheekbones.
The rest of him slowly materialized, revealing an austere black suit and a pair of silver raven lapel pins.
“Who are you?” I asked, refusing to let go of my scowl. “If you’re going to keep me in a cage, the least you can do is tell me your name.”
He examined me up and down as well, the same unsmiling expression on his face. “You can call me Azazel.”
A chill ran up my spine. He was Vyra’s brother, the one who was so concerned with how Belial cared for me.
Rich, coming from the demon who’d swept me away and locked me in a magical cage.
“Well, Azazel, you aren’t my keeper. I want to go back to the Seventh Circle now. I have business there that has nothing to do with you.”
I laid my left hand flat against the magical wall and pushed with all my might. Azazel glanced at the sigil on my palm with a look of distaste.
“If you can make it through the wall in the next five minutes, you’re free to go wherever you please, Melisande.”
He stepped back from the magical prison, leaned against a glossy black column, and held up his wrist, tapping a clockwork watch. “Time starts now.”
I didn’t waste a second, immediately turning my back on him and taking flight. The sigil on the ceiling was perfect, not a single gap or flaw in the prison’s walls. I fluttered through it like a panicked bird, searching for one weak spot, but there was absolutely nothing I could work with.
Frustration rose in me, followed by fury, but brute force wouldn’t help me here. My urgency increased with every second that ticked away.
Without my magic, I was like a warrior missing a limb, utterly useless against others who could use it.
I pushed, shoved, lost several feathers as I rammed my shoulder against the wall, and finally resorted to plunging down and punching it full-force.
The swirling magic just deflected my blows like I was made of nothing more than smoke myself.
“Time’s up.” Azazel strolled away from the column, circling my prison. I landed on the glowing sigil, my wings quivering with irritation as I turned to watch him pace. “What good is an angel without magic?”
Bitter gall rose in my throat. I couldn’t deny it. What good was I if one of the weapons I relied on was utterly useless to me?
“Look at you. Trapped in a cage like a bird, nothing more than a useless, ornamental pet. You’ll live in Belial’s gilded cage forever, little bird, because you’ll never make it past the seventh round.” He paused, his violet eyes flashing. “Does the idea appeal to you? Perhaps he’ll even make you a cage with bars for you to peer through, watching the others come and go, while you remain his little songbird for all eternity.”
The taste of bitter ashes filled my mouth and I sneered. “There’s no cage he could make that would hold me forever.”
Azazel finally gave me the ghost of a smile. “Oh, but I could. I would be doing you a favor, because the rest of Hell would eat you alive if you ever escaped.” He strolled closer to the wall, close enough to strangle but still impossible to reach.
My nails dug painfully into my palms. The sickening coil of my magic was writhing inside me, tiny beads of sweat dotting my forehead.
I didn’t dare unleash it, as much as I wanted to crush him into dust; I’d only sicken myself.
He touched the wall, long fingers spread wide, looking down at me. “You call yourself an angel? It’s an insult to Heaven-kind. I’d call you a sparrow.”
Dark fire exploded inside me, prickling my veins like thorns. My lungs felt like they were caked with ash as I slashed at the wall with my fingertips, shredding it apart like so much mist.
Azazel laughed, his entire form shimmering and becoming ephemeral. I lunged at him, clutching the shadowed magic that tore at my hands, but he vanished and my nails raked through nothing.
“Over here.” Warm lips brushed my ear along with his whisper, but when I whirled around, he was gone.
Agony raced through my limbs, the darkness charring everything inside me to cinders. I gasped, choking on the taste, and stumbled towards the Grigori.
He vanished, and something touched my back.
No matter where I turned, he was there and gone in a second. I sank to the floor, curling my burning fingers as the pain ate away at every cell in my body, my lungs gasping for breath past the smoke and ashes.
My sight went gray at the edges, swiftly fading into darkness as the corrupted magic consumed me.
Coolness swept through me, washing away the taste of cloying cinders, soothing the agony in my veins and chest. Azazel knelt in front of me, his fingertips just touching my cheek. All the cleansing magic emanated from him.
“Not just a sparrow, then,” he murmured.
I dragged in gulps of clear air, feeling like I’d been washed clean of the tainted magic from the inside out. “I have magic, you fucker. It’ll kill me if I use it.”
“So you’re just going to let it rot inside you.” Azazel removed his hand, but the dark magic seemed to have burned itself out for now. The Grigori looked down at me disapprovingly. “When you first picked up a sword, I’m sure you stumbled, and cut yourself, and collected bruises.”
I didn’t bother to shake or nod. My fingers were still trembling.
“You weren’t perfect. You were probably an absolute mess. But every time you bled, you got a little better. This is no different than bleeding all over the arena. You’ll just be mentally bleeding until you learn to stem the flood.”
He forced my face up to look at him. I swiftly blinked away the remainders of my tears of pain, not wanting to show him any more weakness than what he’d already seen.
“I was on Earth in the beginning.” Ancient shadows moved in the back of his violet gaze. “I taught humanity magic. I taught the witches to read their bones and sticks. I brought the art of smithing to the forges. I draped women with jewelry and perfume and taught them to seduce men.”
He caressed my chin, the scent of green herbs and sea salt filling my nose. “If I can teach humanity, I can teach you.”
<
br /> I knocked his hand away. “Don’t touch me.” Azazel sat back as I climbed to my feet, my knees feeling wobbly.
Tascius had been right. The same Watcher who’d condemned humanity by giving them forbidden knowledge wanted to teach me to use my wellspring of magic, though falling from Heaven had twisted it into something monstrous.
“I suppose I don’t have a choice in the matter, do I?”
Azazel rose to his full height, dwarfing me in his shadow. “No.”
“I didn’t think so,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around myself, but I couldn’t get warm. Even though touching the dark fire sickened me, every week I’d be condemned to facing it again.
A little voice chimed in my skull. That’s just what Gabriel would expect. Weak. Unworthy of your choir. All the willpower of a sparrow.
I set my jaw. I’d suffered to learn every weapon I knew. I’d sweat and bled until I thought I would lay down and die, and then I’d gotten up and bled some more.
If I could use this ruined magic, I could break through the seventh round and shove the dark fire down Gabriel’s throat.
Azazel raised an eyebrow when I spun around to face him. “Fine. I agree.”
“Agree to…?”
“You can teach me.” I pointed at him. “But you don’t touch me.”
He just gazed at me, those ancient but bright eyes assessing. “You don’t have a choice, Melisande. We learn my way, or you don’t learn at all.”
Azazel vanished in a swirl of smoke and reappeared only inches from my face, stroking a strand of violet hair that’d come loose behind my ear. To my credit, I didn’t cringe at the speed of his vanishing act, but when I moved to knock his hand away, he caught my wrist in an unbreakable grasp.
“Agreed?” he asked.
I glared up at him, but there was no way to say no. I needed to re-learn how to control my magic one way or another.
He took my silence as assent and released my hand. The Grigori turned to wipe away the remainder of the sigil’s magical walls, and I raised my middle finger at his back.