by Mason Sabre
"The Human project, huh?"
"Yeah ..." The boy squirmed under the priest's grasp, pushing away.
The Human project was run by families like the boy’s—families that sought the eradication of Others. "All God’s creatures are sacred. Do you know that?"
"No. Humans ..."
He didn’t get to finish. The priest raised his hand and, this time, pushed his fingers into the boy’s temple, pushing right in so that the tips of his fingers broke the bone, pushing into the soft membrane and hooking it until the boy’s body quaked and shook. The life of him nothing but a vibration. He let the boy go. He would live … perhaps. If living could be defined as in a wheelchair for the rest of your life, being spoon-fed baby food and needing someone to mop up the drool and wipe your ass. Yeah, he would live.
***
For whatever reason, Nina loved the sound of her shoes as she walked along the marble floor. There was something in the sound as it echoed through the vast emptiness of the place. A click as she walked. Like it brought a kind of rhythm to the emptiness of the great halls. They were cold and white, yet there was something warm inside them. Something comforting that was only added to with the sounds of the clicking. It eased the loneliness that threatened to pull her inside and throw her down the vast chasm of despair.
Loneliness—the hardest punishment for anyone to face. The darkness that comes even in the busiest of moments. The clutching inside her chest with a longing where the heart weeps and no one can hear. The song we all sing—wishing, wanting, seeking fulfilment from the many corners of our lives.
Nina inhaled deeply—inhaling the soothing scent of Jas. His embrace could reach in and quash away a thousand days of pain ... sometimes, at least. Not today, though. Today there was a longing in there bigger than anything. Bigger than her ... than him. An ache inside her chest for something more than just being a guardian. Oh, her job was grand—important even—but maybe once, they could just wake and she could talk to someone ... something. It wouldn’t matter. The encased souls upon her watch.
Demonic tombs lined the room before her—all of them with names, plaques. Words that would spill fear into the heavy heart of many mortal men.
Their stories were all written. Documented over time by the Humans. Tales that were told around campfires—fables of creatures that had once been so evil, so bad, that the Earth had spat them out and now they lived here, in the place that Humans thought of as heaven. But it was nothing more than a pristine, gilded cage, where Nina was trapped.
She watched the Humans below. The magnificent creatures with everything they ever wanted. Their purposes were not always set at birth, their duties not engraved upon their souls. She wondered often how others of her kind didn’t feel the wistful thoughts she had, the wishful sense of freedom that Humans had.
If she could only walk amongst them.
She spanned her wings out behind her, six, white, large glistening separations—three a side, all pure, beautiful and powerful in their creation. The only sound in the vast cavern was the sound of her wings as they brushed the floor, but even that was almost a vacant whisper of nothing.
She trailed a finger along the stones, carvings of creatures held in the cages, stone eyes looking out at her, mouths that didn’t move nor talk, minds wandering, thinking, watching the world, creating a madness within from the years of captivity. Nina bent to one of them so she was eye-level and staring into the blackness. The eyes were like jewels of glass. "I wonder if you can hear me." She leaned closer, nose to nose with the stone and then back again. She ran a hand down the carved face, feeling each line, every single detail in her fingertips. Then she leaned in closer again. She blew a raspberry, falling away laughing at herself. "Yep. I've gone mad."
She tossed her head back, arms out, turning as she walked away like someone dancing at a ball. "I'm so bored."
The souls in the stones must have been bored too. She had asked once why not just end them, put them out of their misery and hers. She wouldn’t have to watch them if they weren’t there. It wasn’t God she had asked, but Aboas. He was like God, the highest order of her kind, of the Seraph, the one who showed no mercy, but ruled with intelligence and vigour. The respected one of their kind. He knew what had to be done, and he ensured it all came to be, no matter the protests.
"If we kill them, they come back," he had said simply. They could be reincarnated and sent back to the pool of souls, ready to be brought back and freed of their crimes. This way, they were stuck, cursed to rot inside their malevolent tombs perched on the table as a reminder for all to see.
But Nina needed something else. An eternity spent watching these ... she might as well have been cast in her own stone.
Sometimes, the stones hummed with life, the throbbing of the power inside them reaching out to find a host. Nina crushed that, blocking the signal with her own powers and sending the demonic energy back into the stone. The whispered cries of protest fell upon deaf ears, piercing her very own soul and creating a longing inside her for something more.
She had committed no crime, yet she was caged in this room just as they were. She didn’t have stone to clip her wings, but she was bound with a heavy weight inside her chest.
There were one hundred and thirty-six stones in this room alone—a small number by any measure. But these were chaos demons, the creatures whose creation was to ensure the balance of the world. Where there is good, there is always bad. Yet their power turned sour inside them, the greed causing festering corruption inside every single one of them. Maybe one day they could learn their lesson and be freed. Maybe the teachings would work.
Nina doubted it. She had seen three demons caught within her existence. Not chaos demons, but demons that cause just as much pain and heartache for the Humans.
She wondered often what would happen if there were no Humans. If the race just ceased to exist. Oh, there would be Others. No matter how the Humans tried to cull them, they grew stronger, more powerful. The evolution of nature. They could not be touched by demonic hands. Their minds were too strong for that—too strong to be twisted the same way a Human’s could.
She bunched up her dress with one hand and let her head fall back as music swam in the room, a gentle song that made her move—made her dance and touch the part inside that was craving something. She danced with an invisible partner, eyes closed, head back, filling her soul.
A crash brought her to her senses—big, loud—echoing through the halls, making Nina stop, her heart hammering in her chest. “Oh, dear God.” She grabbed her skirt and raced to the end the hall. On the floor, shards of rock and stone spread out, the pedestal where the demon had stood now empty. “No. Please, no.” She sank to the floor, wings splaying out behind her. She scrambled to get each piece, holding them together … But the eyes, those jewels, they were gone.
So was the demon.
Chapter 2
“Shit.” Nina scrambled for the most jagged piece of the stone she could find—the sharper the edge, the better. She’d never done this before. Not needed to, thank God. But she knew what to do; they all did. Something ingrained within them. She found one palm-sized piece of stone, and without a second thought, she dragged it along her palm like a knife, splitting open the skin. She sucked in a sharp breath at the sting, and blood pooled in the cracks. She clenched her fist into a ball, squeezing the blood out until it dripped down the side of her hand. The blood dripped slowly from her hand onto the shattered stones, staining them red. “Come on. Come on. Hurry.” She thrust her hand out over it, almost shaking the blood out as bile-laden panic rose in her throat. She was in so much trouble. She clenched her eyes closed, pulling strength from inside of her and sending out the call to find the missing demon. Her mind was like a surfer on the top of a huge wave, riding the world of thoughts and minds out there on the earthly plane. So many of them.
Her blood landed on the stones, soaking in, the very demon prison absorbing part of her so that for a moment, they became one and she could c
all to it. “Tell me where you are.” As she passed every mind, every person, her panic hitched up a notch, reaching levels that threatened to send her mind into chaos. She held her breath, riding the waves from one world to another. Searching …
All she came across was a vast pit of nothing—darkness, the heaviness of the world threatening to take her down if she didn’t find him soon. “Come on, you bastard. I know you’re there. Show me where to find you.”
He was one powerful demon. Maybe that was why he was at the back and hardest to reach.
“God damn it.” She slammed her hands down on the stones, her shoulders sagging. Nothing. Not even a whisper of where he was. She let herself relax as best as she could. She would not find anything in this state. Her mind was too scattered for it. “Focus, Nina.”
She clapped her hands together, then rubbed them, bringing out more blood as it dribbled down her arms. Leaning forward, she placed her hands on the stones, moving her hands around, swishing them as if they were water, and covering them all with her blood. She closed her eyes once again, sending out her consciousness into the world. She had to race past the angels—bright lights on the horizon. Aboas would flay her in front of them all if he found out what she had done. He had done worse, for less.
“Show me where you are. Come on.” Nina spanned her wings out, raising them up and reaching in every direction she could possibly manage. She leaned forward, resting her head on the stones. The stones held a sweet, musky scent. It was thick and hot and so tempting. Her mind cleared as she inhaled deeply … like a stage and the curtains rise for the very first time.
There he was.
She bit her lip, locking onto him. The connection wasn’t that clear, but enough she could see. A store … Screams ... Chaos upon chaos raged as Arioch rose above them—an image in her mind as he summoned his powers to them. Little black creatures running across the ether, leaping into him, filling him up with their bleakness. “Oh, dear God.” Someone had summoned him … someone had summoned a demon.
Idiot.
Nina opened her eyes and rocked back so she was sitting again. She let her palm heal, the wound closing with no effort at all. The advantage of being immortal. The stones had soaked up all the blood. There wasn’t a trace of it left. Just plain, white dust. Now that was a problem. She pushed them together into a pile to hide behind the pedestal where the stone prison had stood. Hopefully, no one would find it, but then, no one came here. That was part of her boredom. They just left her to this job, alone. “Stop it.” She hated whining when others did it—more so when it was herself. It would do no good.
She arched her back, pulling in her wings as she rose to her feet. They tucked in neatly behind her, only the tip of the tops showing above her shoulders. She had a long way to go yet. The bigger the wings, the older the angel. Bunching up her skirt, she walked to the centre of the vast room. It really was vast, magnificent with it, stone and marble spreading out around the room. A beautiful home to hold the not so beautiful souls that resided there.
There was a flat stone in the very middle of the room. It gleamed where the light hit it from large windows above. There was a ball in the centre of it, laden with glass spikes. Anyone looking at it would think it was a weapon to swing at people, but it was a stone where every spike reached out to the demons housed in the room. Nina bent to it, resting her knees on the edge of the stand. She placed her hands on either side of it, pressing the spikes into the palms of her hands, the tips biting into her flesh.
“Sleep.” She sent out signals around the room, pushing a wave of power out to every demon like a wave of heat that spread over her, sucking the pain, energy and power from her. It made her sway as if she were drunk, a dangerous thing to do. To drain oneself in such a way was leaving herself vulnerable, but she had to do it. She had to silence them before anyone could call them too.
Nina could hardly let go of the rock when she felt every single mind in the room quieten. Her arms were so heavy, she didn't have the strength or even the motivation to lift them. She had to force herself. Pushing herself up, her wings sagged behind her, no longer having the energy to hold them up, either. But she had to break the contact, or risk waking them again.
There was no one in the corridor when she left the hall and the sleeping demons. She had bought herself some time. Usually the silence and the emptiness bothered Nina, ripping open the lonely pit inside her chest each time, but for once, she was grateful that there was no one there. She bunched her skirt up and dashed toward the big, grey double doors, but they opened just as she got there, bringing her to a stop.
“Darius,” she said as a guardian came through—the son of Aboas. The sight of him sent her heart and mind skyrocketing.
Shit.
“Everything okay?” He eyed her with suspicion, tilting his head to look at her, making him look even more stunning than he already was—but then that was the case with all the angels. So stereotypically beautiful, it was like they walked in fresh out of a modelling shoot—even Nina, with her darker than natural red hair that fell down in curls around her shoulders.
“I’m good,” she said. He could probably see right through her. He was handcrafted by Aboas himself. No one could be created by someone such as Aboas and not wield the strongest of all the powers. “See you later,” she called over her shoulder as she hurried past him, which was probably a mistake and no doubt raised every damn suspicion he had that something was not right. Well done, Nina. Set off all the alarms. But time was pressing in on her. The demons would wake soon, unguarded.
She raced to her room without looking back at Darius. Maybe he had thought nothing of it and wandered off to wherever he had been going. Maybe he is looking at the broken stones right now.
No. She shut her mind off. Not going there. Not now. Her room was plain and simple. Another annoyance on her boredom scale. She wanted vibrancy, colour—something that would make her feel light when she woke up. But she hadn't earned such a place yet. Even the closet was nothing but two doors that covered a gap in the walls. She threw the doors open, though, reaching in and pulling a large box from under the bottom shelf. A locked box. Jas had the key. He wore it on a chain around his neck, but she hadn’t been with him that long and not learned all of his secrets.
She spanned her wings out, lifting herself up so she could reach the valance at the top of the curtains that covered the window. He might have been one of the high-ranking guards, but shit, his imagination was dire. It had taken her less than five minutes to find where he had hidden the spare key. She didn’t tell him she knew, though. Then he didn’t move anything.
Key in hand, Nina dropped in front of the box. Her skirt flapped out around it. “Damn thing,” she said as she pulled the fabric back and shoved it under her knees. The lock on the box opened with a relieving click, but inside that box was another one—a smaller one. She lifted it out delicately. It was like a small music box that little girls play with—a sweet song playing as they try on their jewels and accessories. She pushed the lid off it, but there was no musical ballerina in hers. Instead, it was another ball. It was connected to the key at the back. She turned it a quarter inch and closed her eyes, letting herself picture the store in her mind, the images, all the screaming and the chaos … searching for a vessel close to him that she could use.
“Ahh.” One in the southwest corner—a woman. Hiding. Nina turned the key another inch, pulling the image of the woman into her mind, pushing away everything from around her so it was only her and the woman. When she opened her eyes, she was on her side, hands over her head. The scent of blood and urine and faeces made Nina gag, and she slammed her hand over her mouth as bile rose in her very Human chest.
A body fell to the ground beside her, on his back, his lifeless eyes staring at Nina. Blood spilled from the corners of his mouth, frothing almost. His nose and half a cheek was missing. Shit.
Scrambling to her knees, Nina dashed behind one of the shelving units. Frightened faces watched her as she hid
from Arioch before he found her. He was bound by the vessel he wore. Bound by their needs and wants. It wasn’t like Nina’s. Nina’s vessel met all her requirements—a true vessel. Aside from her wings, she pretty much retained all her powers, but she didn’t trust that Arioch wouldn’t have his. He would sense her there if he had any power inside.
She traced his footfalls and then dashed around the back just as he came into view.
“Is someone hiding from me?” he called out, his voice like a song. The bastard was enjoying this. “Oh. Come on now. No need to be shy. We’re all friends here.”
A woman leaning against the shelves laden with bottles of wine stared at Nina, her eyes wide, her lip trembling. Dark streaks marred her face where her make-up had run. She knew Nina was in for it. Arioch was on his hunt. But to the woman, it wasn’t Arioch she saw—it was a priest.
“Come on. Come and play with me.” Arioch rounded the corner, stepping over a whimpering man as he did, not paying him one bit of attention. Nina shuffled herself out of his sight and around another corner. Shit. What she needed was to be behind him. She had to catch him off guard and get him out of the priest’s body.
Sirens blared outside suddenly—someone must have raised the alarm. They were loud and irregular, meaning there were many of them. Lights suddenly lit up the place.
Great. The Humans were here, with their police and fresh victims for Arioch to have fun with. The police would be little effect against Arioch.
The priest inhaled loudly and deeply. “Oh wow,” he chimed. “Do I? Do I really smell—?” he breathed in hard again for effect. “I believe I smell angels.”
Nina slid around the shelves, gaining her advantage on him and positioning herself so she was behind him. She stepped out. “I’ve come to take you back.”
Arioch turned, slowly, grinning as he did. “Well, hello. Nina, isn’t it?” He clapped his hands together and tapped his feet in a small, mocking celebratory dance. “Welcome to the party.” He held his arm out, hand in the shape of a gun, again. He aimed it at a woman who was cowering close by. She ducked, shrinking herself, a soft whimper escaping.
