Plague of Angels (9 page)

“Will you be my sword and my Queen? Will you?”

Nyx found herself shivering at the thought. To be free of God on Earth was one thing, but to no longer serve Him in Hell? For though she was Queen of Hell, she was still God’s servant, sentenced to punish his wicked for all eternity. What if she was free of it? What if there was no longer a need to serve Him? She could be free, and have a place in Paradise and rule at Tribunal’s side. But still… “What if we fail?” she asked. “If your Father decides that He will not abide His bargain, and comes to see what we are doing?”

“He will not,” said Tribunal. “He does not know I am here, and I have set events in motion to prevent His other Angels from ever arriving on this Earth. There will be no Angels to send Him a message, and surely you can deceive His mortal servants so they cannot report you after they die.”

“I can,” said Nyx.

“There is no time left,” said Tribunal. “Will you be my sword?”

There really was no other answer. “Of course I will be your sword. And I will drive the very memory of God from this world, until there are none to speak His name.”

“Then listen, my beloved,” said Tribunal. “It will be a thousand years before we can speak again. By then, you must have Mankind’s eyes open, and your followers must outnumber His.”

“Oh, they will,” said Nyx. “Don’t you worry about that.”

“At the end of the thousand years, you must empty Jerusalem of Christians. God has made it their holiest of places. To drive them out will weaken them and Him further at the time when I am strongest. Then we will begin the next phase of our plan.”

“I will,” said Nyx. “I’ll destroy them long before a thousand years are up.”

Tribunal’s voice began to grow faint. “We will speak again, my love, my beloved, one thousand years from now.”

Time started again. The sigils broke apart and melted into the air until the night was once more dark and the last echoes of Tribunal’s name died into silence. All traces of her beloved were gone.

Nyx looked at the land around her, branching out in all directions: none of it was any different. Rocks, dead earth, and sky. The night was warm and around her she could hear the animals moving, hunting and being hunted, eking out their tiny existences. It was beautiful, but it was not Paradise. It was not even Hell, with its familiar comforts. Still, she’d make it her home for as long as she had to in order to be with her Tribunal.

In the distance, she could sense humanity, huddled in their cities and towns and little encampments. They worshipped what they could see, what filled their needs, nothing else. It would be easy enough to be that which they saw, to make them think she was filling their needs, and to take them away from the God who had abandoned them to her.

She smiled, and her next words came out as a purr. “And so it begins.”

Chapter 4

Hell was far
below the Earth. Not in the geographic sense, for no hole, however deep, went deep enough. But even so, Hell was
down
, and when you were sent there, you fell.

Lucifer, Prince of Hell, sat on Nyx’s throne, watching and listening to the screams of the soul being tortured in front of him. Outside the palace, the landscape of Hell echoed with the hollow screams of tortured, entombed souls of mortal sinners, condemned by an unforgiving God.

Lucifer was beautiful. He was the Angelic ideal of masculinity, taken to its zenith. His silver-white skin was free of signs and sigils. His body was a study in how muscles should be proportioned. He was huge, from the biceps on his arms to the thick muscles on his thighs and the bulge between them, from his wide slab of a chest to the perfectly shaped calves below. The black wings that stood out from his back were longer and stronger than any other Angel’s.

Lucifer wore black silk pants, the threads woven from the stretched souls of fornicators and sodomites. His chest he left bare, enjoying the envy and desire it brought into the faces of the other Descended Angels. On his head, he wore an ornate jeweled crown of gold. His face glowed with a cruel charm—one that other Angels found nearly irresistible, though the damned souls grew to see it as nightmare—and from within he burned with a light like that of a dying lantern. It was bright enough to light the air just around his skin, but no more than that. There was a time when he would have lit up the sky for a mile around, but that was long ago.

He was stronger than any other Angel in Hell, save Nyx herself, and he knew he only sat on her throne at her sufferance while she cavorted over the Earth she had forbidden him. It was not enough.

He turned his eyes to the two incubi amusing themselves with the new soul in front of him.

The soul’s flesh was not mortal flesh: that was left to rot on the earth. The condemned were clothed with new flesh as they fell so they could experience pain and torment in all its forms. This was their punishment, and the Angels of Hell had learned to revel in it. The souls’ new bodies continuously healed, even if they were torn limb from limb, and never went into shock so the souls would never be able to retreat from the pain they had earned.

This soul had been a man. He had been very rich and very powerful and very, very corrupt. He had been strong and tall and forced his will over everyone. He had stolen, he had raped, he had murdered, he had abused his wife and children; and he had ordered men tortured for the joy of it. He had died screaming when one of his daughters poisoned him to keep him from beating her younger brother to death.

The man had spent his first day—though truly, time had no meaning here—in the Lake of Fire. Hellfire burned cold, not hot, though it consumed flesh as a true flame did. Worse, when the flames touched flesh – soul, Angel, or demon – the being it touched was forced to relive all their evil deeds as if they were being done to them. Even as the flames consumed their flesh and made their bodies writhe in agony, it burned through their minds, making them feel every bit of pain they had ever inflicted, again and again, and again.

In their everlasting pain, many of the souls cried for death, as if that were still available to them, as if death were an end for sinners. Lucifer found that the most amusing of all.

The incubi—male demons of sexual torture—who pulled this man from the Lake and let his flesh grow back had lied to him, saying that the better a display he gave Lucifer, the better his chances of a lesser punishment. And so, as Lucifer stretched back in Nyx’s throne, the man, his newly-regrown flesh already a mass of gashes and welts, was on his hands and knees servicing the two incubi—one in front, one behind—while a pair of smaller demons danced around him, pinching, biting and slicing him with their talons. The man’s whimpers and occasional screams when the demons cut into a particularly tender point were muffled by the incubi’s gray, scaly penis in his mouth.

A small red bird flew down and landed on Lucifer’s shoulder. Lucifer brushed it off without thinking. It flew back, calling, “From Tribunal!” Lucifer, quicker than one so large should be able to move, lashed out and caught the bird, crushing it.

“Enough,” Lucifer said, and the incubi stepped away. The man immediately bowed and groveled before him, begging Lucifer for mercy as his slaves had once begged him. Lucifer spat on him. “Take him from my sight. Use him, as you will, then tie him to the rack. We’ll see how far we can stretch him while we peel his skin off.” He smiled at the man on the ground, enjoying the horror in his eyes. “Then we’ll begin your real punishment.”

The man screamed and pleaded, offering wealth and riches that he no longer had as the incubi dragged him away. The demons followed, hacking away at his flesh and eating it.

Lucifer opened his hand and looked at the squished bird within. It re-formed, until it was once more a small, red shrike. “What message?” demanded Lucifer.

“The son of God is dead,” said the bird. “He has ascended with Angels to Heaven.”

“And I care, why?”

“He has partnered with Nyx to destroy the humans and take the world from God.”

Lucifer squished the bird into paste in his fist and threw it from him. A nearby demon laughed. Lucifer rose and kicked it, the force of the blow shattering bones before it smashed against the wall and fell into a pile. It would come back to life, of course. Nothing died in Hell.

The bird reformed and flew back, hovering just out of Lucifer’s reach. When it spoke, the voice was not that of the bird.

“Lucifer,” said Tribunal’s voice, coming from the bird’s beak and resonating through the air. “I have need of you.”

Lucifer lunged forward and grabbed the bird out of the air. He stalked from Nyx’s seat of judgment and out her castle into the landscapes of Hell.

Nyx’s castle stood by the Lake of Fire. It was made of black Hell-stone, formed from the souls of the damned that had been drained so badly that they were little more than husks. Nyx’s chair, the braziers and torches, the spiked walls of the castle where impaled souls writhed, and the many implements and devices of torture were all made from Hell-stone, which the Angels molded and shaped with Hellfire, changing the souls’ consistency as they saw fit. It was a torment for the souls trapped within. With their flesh reshaped and their feeling of the outside world gone, the souls were left in darkness and agony, screaming silently from the re-shaping of their flesh and their minds constantly reliving their sins, thanks to their forging in the hellfire.

The souls would stay part of the Hell-stone—whether as rock or road, walls, floor or furniture —suffering this unspeakable loss and loneliness until a bored Angel would allow the soul’s flesh to reform for new, more physical tortures.

The only thing the Angels could not make the Hell-stone do was change color. And so Hell remained black, the only colors in it the red of blood and the green, gray, and brown of organs and brains and guts.

Lucifer stomped through the castle, ignoring the calls of the insatiable succubi, and out the front gate of the palace. Torches of Hellfire on either side of the door to Nyx’s Palace licked out flames at any who passed, giving them a reminder of the Lake they had been in. There was a line of souls, each with its accompanying succubi, incubi, demons, and Angels, awaiting his judgment. Lucifer ignored them, too. The demons and Angels would amuse themselves with the damned until he returned.

If I return,
Lucifer thought.
Maybe Tribunal needs me on Earth. Maybe I can finally put paid to that bitch, Nyx.

Nyx rarely judged a soul herself. There were far too many, and there were many Angels, demons, succubi, and incubi all willing to take on the task. Lucifer preferred to judge as many as possible. It was a kind of art form—the cruel weighing cruelty. He liked seeing their hope vanish as he loomed over them and told them what their fate would be. He loved seeing their terror, and hearing them plead and weep. Sometimes, he would begin the tortures himself, or simply rip the souls new flesh in half, just for the joy of hearing them scream.

Lucifer walked through the inky blackness of Hell. Aside from the Hellfire, from the Lake of Fire and the many burning pits and braziers some Angels used to torture, there was no light here. The place was cold and dark and the ground he trod over was black and sharp and brittle. It was washed with the blood of the damned, who were forced to walk these roads, their unprotected skin cut to ribbons as they went.

Beyond the Lake of Fire lay his mountain, his own fortress built inside it. He had claimed it early, and Nyx had let him keep it once the dust of their battle settled. The mountain towered over the plains of Hell and the Lake of Fire, over the burning pits of Hellfire where a host of demons stood, shoving helpless souls in with pitchforks and daggers, or abusing those who tried to escape. It gave Lucifer the perfect view over that which he coveted but could not have. It was its own torture, and that was why Nyx had given it to him.

Lucifer stomped across the plains of Hell toward his mountain, his feet, now armored and shod in black iron hooves, crushing any unhappy being they chanced to step on. Souls and small demons screamed as they broke beneath his step, their cries hardly noticeable among the others around him.

Hell was never quiet, never still, and never peaceful.

Heads rolled by like tumbleweeds and spider-like creatures composed of sinners’ body parts sewn together with thorny wire blindly wandered the landscape. Along the road to his mountain were thousands of crosses, racks, stakes, and sharp edged “horses.” Souls were stretched out over them or impaled on them, hung head up or head down, facing their torturers or facing away. Each was being tortured by an Angel or demon, or several. The torture changed forms as the Angels got bored, or worse, had ideas, but it never stopped. Most days the sight gave him pleasure, and he could not stop himself from taking part, if only for a moment. But this was not most days.

And if someone notices I am not?
Lucifer thought.
If someone sees me behave differently and decides to take an interest? If someone hears what I am to doing and tells Nyx?

He brought his hand up to his mouth, tossed the bird in, and crunched it with his teeth a few times before shoving it into the corner of his cheek. It was invisible there, too flat to make a mark. Then he made himself slow down to watch the proceedings.

A man who had been a rapist stood on his toes, struggling to push his body off the thick, spiked pole that was shoved into his rectum, as a razor-toothed demon knelt to take his manhood into its mouth.

A woman who murdered her children screamed as a small demon slowly shoved its entire body inside of her. It would grow inside her, Lucifer knew, becoming larger and spikier until it forced its way back out in a grotesque parody of birth.

A man who burned down his neighbor’s house stood knee deep in a brazier of hellfire, the coals burning away his flesh and bone, slowly shortening him as they put him in unspeakable agony.

A woman who had killed a rival because of her beauty had her head locked in a vise in front of a mirror, her eyelids pulled open, as demons the size of mites ate at her face, turning it from beauty to a vision of horror.

A fat man who let his own children starve rather than miss a meal himself was staked to the earth through his chest, watching and screaming as four demons slowly ate his flesh, devouring him bit by bit, then shitting him out to reform so they could begin again.

A female Angel named Leannis, her black, scaled armor gleaming in the Hellfire, was slowly and methodically shoving hooks into the flesh of one of the souls. Lucifer smiled. He had forced Leannis to give him pleasure once before, and had enjoyed her anger and helplessness as he forced his cock, as oversized as the rest of him, into her body. Her hatred of him was like a magnet, drawing him closer. He stood behind her, pressing his body against hers as she worked. The woman she was torturing screamed with each hook shoved under her flesh. Lucifer looked closer and saw that each hook was a tiny demon that bit and scratched as it went in.

“Very well done,” he purred, taking one of her breasts in his hands. He squeezed it hard, torturing the nipples through her armor with his razor-sharp fingernails. She gasped but did not cry out, and kept putting the hooks in. She was a weaker Angel, and knew that she could not resist him.

“Give,” said Lucifer, and she handed him a four of the little hook demons. He pushed Leannis aside and inserted one of the hooks into the left eye of the soul. The screams grew even louder and the soul thrashed mightily. Lucifer grabbed her head, and slowly stabbed the second hook into her right eye. She screamed and thrashed more, and Lucifer watched for a time.

“Very nice,” he said to Leannis, and shoved the last two hooks through her armor and into her breasts. Leannis cried out in pain, but forced herself to stop. Lucifer grinned at her. “I will have to have you again, I think,” he said. “Come when I summon you to the castle. This time we’ll invite the rest of your legion to watch.”