Redemption (A NOVEL OF THE SEVEN SIGNS) (47 page)

Voices slithered in his veins, fighting, shouting, whispering, a cacophony he couldn’t understand.
You shall know the truth… Avenge yourselves not… My name is Legion, for we are many… Give them blood to drink, for they deserve it… The power to scorch men with fire… You shall know the truth
…

He shook it off.
Let me be! I’m sorry. It’s over.

Avenge yourselves not
…The glory pulsed harder, bleeding into his brain like long-lost memory, flooding warm sunlight over his heart…and a single, ineffable whisper sliced the dissonance like a crystal blade.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Light stabbed deep inside him, piercing the empty blackness where his Tainted soul once lived.
Avenge not, beloved,
it whispered.

Avenge not, but give place to my wrath, for vengeance
…

He gasped, drinking in the hallowed sunshine, and for the first time in fourteen hundred years, the Voice thundered in his brain.

…for vengeance is mine.

CHAPTER 43

He reeled, stunned. And Michael reared on flashing ice-blue wings, and dived through the leaping flames.

Japheth hurled himself backwards. Their bodies collided. The archangel’s feathers razored his skin bloody. He crushed the vial tightly in his fist, flexed his head back, bared bleeding fangs to strike…

…conjured his rippled dagger from glittering ash, and stabbed.

The point struck flesh, and sank deep. The hell-spelled steel flashed, ugly purple flame. And Michael somersaulted backwards, rich scarlet blood spraying from his throat.

The knife ripped from Japheth’s fingers. Michael crashed on his back into the stones. His sword cartwheeled from his hand, and fell into the burning chasm.

Michael screeched, and tore the burning knife from his flesh.

Japheth hurled a spell, and the knife dissolved to ash and reappeared in his own hand. And he jumped, and landed with a thud astride the archangel’s chest.

Breath squeezed from Michael’s lungs. Blood splurted. His flesh was already healing. It didn’t matter. Japheth jammed a
sharp knee into each of the archangel’s massive shoulders, pinning him down, and jabbed the bloody knifepoint under Michael’s chin.

With the other hand, he forced the burning golden vial to Michael’s lips.

Michael fought, powerful wings and muscles straining. His lethal glare scorched Japheth’s skin raw. But he didn’t care. Didn’t shift. The heady light invigorated him, fired his strength to impossible heights. He slammed Michael’s body back into the quaking stones. “You want to drink this? Do you?”

He thrust his knife harder, drawing blood and fire. He shuddered and sweated with evil lust for revenge.
The power to scorch men with fire
…His flesh swelled, aroused. Christ, he wanted to pour this shit down Michael’s throat and watch him burn in agony. “Hell, I’ll swallow some if you will. Let’s see who the Lord favors. I’m up for it.”

The archangel snarled, his own bloody vengeance frosting the air white. “Try it. You’re the one who’s cursed.”

Japheth laughed, rich and awful in his chest like thunder. “Don’t be too sure. Heaven sees into my heart, Michael. Something you never did.”

Light erupted behind his eyes. The Voice and the demon’s curse howled in his veins as one, and he exulted, his blood glittering with energy like a million stars. Hellflame. Heavenlight. Glory, damnation. He didn’t know.

It didn’t matter.

What’s done is done. Heaven sees into my heart. And I believe I’ll be forgiven.

I believe.

Trembling, he leaned closer. Brushed a flaming kiss over Michael’s cheek. He inhaled, that sweet ice-fire scent. Tasted that brilliant, terrifying beauty.

And for the first and last time, he let it go.

“I could have killed you,” he whispered against Michael’s bleeding lips. “But you just don’t matter enough to me. Live with that.”

And he flung a sweet prayer to the darkness, and it swallowed him.

*   *   *

The elevator doors hissed apart, and Rose Harley stole out onto the 103rd floor of One World Trade Center.

Into the midst of a shrieking, balls-to-the-wall party.

Music thumped, electric melody and thudding bass. Wild laughter and screams drifted above the din. The glass-walled room stank of alcohol and sugar, sweat and expensive perfume. Waiflike women danced stoned in tiny, ten-thousand-dollar cocktail dresses, chugged opium-laced shots of tequila or absinthe, had those dresses peeled off by drooling men old enough to be their fathers. Their bared limbs and nipples shone, sweat and spit and other body fluids.

Rose crept in further, sickened. On a red velvet sofa, a skinny girl with supermodel cheekbones gave a blowjob to some groaning old white guy in a suit. A pair of underage girls kissed and fondled each other’s breasts on a heap of crumpled cash, cheered on by a drooling audience. Three guys gang-banged a redhead on the bar, leaving no cleft unfilled. A girl in a tight rubber suit licked white powder from a naked twink’s chest and did nasty things to his straining private parts with her spike-ringed hand. Blood oozed. The dude was so out of his mind, he just whimpered.

Freedom Tower.
The old name still made Rose shudder. Precious little freedom in Babylon since this glass-and-iron monstrosity was built. The one percent who owned had ruthlessly crushed the ninety-nine percent who didn’t, and this was the result. A glittering, degrading, disgusting porn film. Snorting hellcry and fucking on the coffee table. Classy.

No one paid her any mind as she sidled through.

Neither had the terrified passengers on her nightmare subway ride from Madison Avenue, where she’d seen two knife fights and a gunshot murder. The rent-a-cops at the base of Freedom Tower certainly hadn’t noticed her. Too busy screaming, and running, and dying.

Vampires, even fledglings, ran a lot faster than humans.

The lobby had been splashed in blood, littered with bodies.
Fluvium’s curse was spreading. And it would only spread further.

Rose stalked towards the glass door to the observation deck. Outside, storm clouds rolled in the black pre-dawn. The doors eased open. Hot stormy wind buffeted her face. Blood and excrement, the telltale stink of curse.

She strode onto the metal platform. They nearly hadn’t built this part, she remembered—too unsafe—but the mega-rich demanded an outdoor deck, and an outdoor deck they got. Gave ’em somewhere to jump from when Wall Street dropped a few thousand points.

Thunder rumbled. Raindrops stung her face. The height dizzied her. She peered cautiously over the waist-high railing, light-headed. City lights glittered like bloody jewels. Four hundred meters above ground level and then some.

But her keen vampire eyes still saw the carnage. Her ears still rang with horrible screams. She still smelled death.

With a flex of powerful thighs, she vaulted up over the parapet onto the floor above.

Her bare feet slammed into a metal catwalk that hugged the side of the building, railed in steel and six feet wide. Powerful floodlights stabbed upwards into boiling storm clouds. Bats flapped and whistled. Above, three hundred feet of glimmering knife-edge steel pierced the roiling sky…

Fluvium leaned over the parapet, laughing like a madman. His eyes blazed with crimson glee as he watched the screaming city, and he capered and clapped. He’d changed his clothes, again, and now he wore a red top hat and a long red tailcoat like a fucked-up circus ringmaster. He threw his head back and howled at the boiling black sky, and it answered with a deafening roll of thunder.

He swept his hat off, and his devilish grin crackled his purple hair electric. “Good evening, my pretty slut. Have you come to beg forgiveness?”

Vitriol burned her mouth. She itched to run at him, claw his evil eyes out and swallow them whole. Tip him over the edge, watch him fall…

Bridie poked her little head from under Fluvium’s elbow, clutching his long coat. He’d dressed her in a little clown
suit, and the white frill around her neck was blotted with blood. She spat out the bone she was gnawing on. “Hello, Auntie Rosie.”

Rose clenched her fists. Forced her voice strong over the rolling thunder. “Hello, Bridie. Everything’s going to be okay, sweetie. I promise.”

Fluvium swept Bridie up, and sat her on the parapet railing. She giggled, legs swinging. He pointed down, and kissed her plump cheek affectionately. “Look, darling. Aren’t the dying humans funny?”

Bridie squealed in delight, teetering wildly on the edge.
Oh, Jesus.
Panicked, Rose stumbled for her, reaching…

“Stop there,” Fluvium ordered carelessly, and her leg muscles froze solid.

She strained, but his spell glued her feet to the catwalk. Shit. She needed to stay calm. Get close to him, and strike… “Let me go,” she said, coolly, though her heart sprinted at the sight of Bridie on that precipice. “I don’t mean any harm.”

Fluvium grinned. “You didn’t answer me. Have you come to ask my forgiveness?”

Bitterness stung her mouth. Forgiveness. What a sadistic lie. “Yes. I want you to love me.” Just saying it made her sweat cold. “I want it to be like it was before.”

“Then get on your knees, whore,” he snarled, “and beg.”

Fresh compulsion made her stomach crawl. Her skin dripped, clammy with sweat. But she obeyed, falling to her knees on the slick catwalk.

“Better. Come here.” His gloating tone licked her skin. Lightning flashed eerily over his face, and his fingertips crackled with dark static. The tiny hairs on her arms prickled tight. The storm loved him.

Woodenly, she shuffled over to him. His ashen scent choked her. But the fat cursed slug in her guts writhed in contentment… Bile forced up into her mouth, and she swallowed it.
Just a moment more. Hold it together
…

His red eyes glinted, jubilant. “Now say it. And you’d better make it good.”

She clasped shaking hands behind her back. “Please. I’m sorry I defied you, master. Can you forgive me?”

“Hmm. Not sure I should. Your angel did a much better job of humiliating himself.” He prodded her chin up with one sharp finger. “But that’s okay. I’ll help you along. Tell me what you are to me, minion.”

“I’m…nothing, master.”

His mouth twisted. “C’mon, you can do better.”

“I’m less than nothing,” she forced out. “I’m…meat. Food. Like an animal.”

“Good! Now tell me what can I do with this meat of yours.”

“You can…drink me. Touch me. Use me however you want.”

“Mmm. And you’d like that, would you?”

“Yes.” Her voice dissolved, and she coughed. “Yes, I’d like that.”

“So you’ll obey me in everything.” Lightning forked, reflecting like cracked red glass in Fluvium’s eyes. “I can fuck you. Eat your flesh. Crucify you and watch you scream. Anything I feel like.”

Closer, asshole. Just one more step
…“I’ll obey you in everything.”

“That’s nice. I like that.” Thunder rolled again, a brilliant flash, almost close enough to touch. “Now show me you mean it.”

She stared, dumb with shock.
Oh, Jesus
…

He gave a gloating smile. “I know, it’s sad we don’t have time for any proper fun. But all this love talk has made my dick hard. Take care of it. No need to get up.”

She licked dry lips. Leaned forwards. He stepped closer, triumphant.

And Rose ripped her demon-spelled knife from the back of her jeans, and stabbed Fluvium in the heart.

Thick demon blood erupted over her hands. The storm thundered in fury. The demon’s eyes flared black, pain and shock. He yelled, ash raining from his lips, and stumbled backwards.

Rose leapt up, and plunged the knife deeper into his chest. It pierced bone, flesh, soft organs. An exultant scream tore her lips raw.
Die, you evil motherfucker. Just die
…

Fluvium dissolved, a glittering black ashcloud that stank of blood and fire. And a deep, hellish chuckle clanged like evil bells, vibrating through her body until her guts bubbled wet. “Oh, Rose. Did you really think you could kill me?”