by Matt Turner
“Just how old are you?” Vera demanded.
Seth frowned in thought. “Two…three hundred thousand years, I think? After a certain point, there’s not much sense in keeping track.”
“Holy shit,” Vera muttered. She felt a little faint at the thought of so vast a life.
“Now Vera, let me do what I should have done from the very beginning.” Seth extended his hand to her. “Let me explain everything.”
She started to reach for his hand, and then hesitated. “What about the guards? If they see I’m free—”
“Sleeping.” Seth smiled.
Something about his warm smile made her feel immediately more at ease. Not a bad face for a two-hundred-thousand-year-old, she thought as she took his hand.
Seth must have sensed her thoughts in her gaze, for he slightly blushed as he wrapped his fingers around hers. “Let me show you the glory and horror of the Second Rebellion,” he said. “The first civil war in Hell, where my brother overthrew Satan.”
15
Vera blinked and suddenly found herself in the midst of a great battlefield. All around her, drums pounded, men screamed, and the clash of steel rang. She spun around, trying to find her bearings, and inadvertently yelped as a rush of armor-clad soldiers bristling with swords and spears charged at her.
“No need for fear, Vera,” Seth said reassuringly. He appeared beside her and waved his hand up in the air. An arrow passed through it like mist to slam into the ranks of the mighty host instead. “This is nothing but a vision.”
“Oh,” Vera said sheepishly. She still found it difficult not to wince as the screaming, charging men passed through her like wraiths. “Where are we?”
Seth took her by the hand and they gently floated up and over the ranks of the army. “These are the early days of the rebellion,” he said. “You are witnessing the battle for the Second Circle.”
A great wind passed through the army below with the force of a hurricane; Vera saw soldiers and trebuchets hurled like ragdolls by the sheer violence of the storm. Their bodies crashed back down into the army’s ranks like artillery fire, tearing great holes of blood and pulp into the lines of soldiers. “What is causing that?” she asked. “Some sort of demon?”
“No. The storm comes from the Second Circle itself. Those unfortunate enough to be damned here are trapped in the howling darkness.”
“Keep advancing, you dogs!” a fanatical voice bellowed from below, and the army roared its assent. The winds howled even harder, tearing men apart with their sheer force, but somehow the armored ranks continued to march forward.
Vera had never been one to admire discipline, but even she was impressed. “What are they fighting?”
A dark cloud appeared on the horizon and rushed toward the marching army with the speed of a locomotive. As it came in closer, Vera let out a curse of disgust at the thousands of vulture-sized winged beasts that made up the great flock. The army of shrieking demons slammed into the armored ranks below with so much force that the air briefly turned red with blood.
“It was mostly harpies in the beginning,” Seth explained as man and demon screamed and hacked at one another with sword and claw and tooth.
The battle below was not going well for the humans. Vera winced as one soldier was carried up into the air by a dozen harpies and dropped down onto the blades of his comrades, crushing them underneath his weight. Still others collapsed from the sheer pressure of the demons, and panic quickly began to spread throughout their ranks. One of the catapults in the mass of the army misfired, spraying dozens with a leaking barrel of flaming oil, and the army’s advance became a halt, then a retreat, then teetered on the edge of a complete rout. Even over the clash of fighting, Vera could hear the howls of despair as another cloud of harpies descended from the skies and crashed into the army’s vulnerable flank.
“Not even the discipline and steel brought by his new recruits were enough for Cain’s victory,” Seth explained. “But my brother never liked to lose.”
A small flock of harpies coursed over the heads of the panicking soldiers, defiant shrieks coming from their unnaturally human faces. Out of the corner of her eye, Vera saw a blur as something rushed through the ranks toward them—and then, in an instant, the harpies were nothing more than scraps of meat and feathers that tumbled to the ground. A space opened up in the center of the army, and a single man stepped forward. From his tan skin to his dark hair, his resemblance to Seth was uncanny.
“We fight for freedom!” he bellowed in a voice that echoed through every corner of the battlefield. “Now fight, you damned! FIGHT!”
The army cheered and surged forward with a newfound confidence, cutting into the harpies with such savagery that the demons were completely taken aback. The man fought with them all the way, leading his men in a wedge that cut a bloody swath through the enemy. The harpies cawed and spat at him, bit at him, and finally tried to flee from him in a blind panic, but he fought with the strength of thousands.
“My brother,” Seth said.
The army was nothing compared to him, Vera realized in awestruck wonderment. The rest of the battlefield were mere spectators to the single man and the great mountain of bodies he was building. His skill with a sword was beyond human; it was as if he were an Angel of Death and his opponents blind, slobbering idiots. Even from this distance, Vera could see his golden eyes constantly flashing and flickering, planning out his attacks a hundred moves ahead as he nimbly danced among the orgy of carnage. Cain moved so quickly that he became cut off from his army, encircled by a hurricane of harpies that he was trapped in the eye of, but his attacks did not slow—on the contrary, he became even more ferocious, and Vera saw the shadow of a smile form on his dark face. He’s loving every minute of this.
“He’s incredible,” she said in awe.
“The man invented killing.” Seth sighed. “And he has had a great deal of practice at it.”
Cain hurled his sword into the air, impaling a dozen harpies on it, and for a moment it looked as though they were going to finally swarm him. He openly laughed as a hundred harpies swooped down at him, and then began to rip and kill the demons with his bare fists. His speed was so great that they could barely lay a claw on him; he nimbly leapt and jumped about like an antelope, crushing demons under his feet with every leap. At one point, he landed near where his sword was embedded in the dirt; he glanced at it, minutely shook his head, and turned back to killing the harpies.
“He was bored,” Vera realized. “He threw away his sword because he was bored.”
“Cain always liked a challenge.” Seth pointed to the center of the human army. Most of them had stopped in their tracks to watch and cheer on their leader. “And now the demons are about to give him one.”
For a moment, nothing happened, and Vera was just about to ask Seth what he had meant when there was a great shuddering crack. Thousands screamed as a massive section of earth gave way, swallowing them up into darkness—and then they reappeared again, flaming, screaming soldiers who were hurled thousands of meters in every direction as a massive explosion rocked the very ground and the largest thing that Vera had ever seen emerged from the hole like a bat out of the deepest cave in Hell.
“Witness Moloch,” Seth said in a voice tight with tension. “The horrid king, besmeared with blood of human sacrifice and parents’ tears.”
The demon towered over the battlefield—it had to be fifty meters tall, at least—and spread a pair of vast wings in either direction. The shadow cast by them completely covered the army of humans that trembled before it. “TARTAREAN SULFUR AND STRANGE FIRE CONSUME THEE IN PERPETUAL TORMENT,” Moloch bellowed. It had the head of a bull, with three jet-black eyes on its brow that ceaselessly wept bloody tears. Fire lashed from its fanged mouth, scorching dozens in the hungry flames. With one sweep of its arm, the demon smashed a score of catapults to pieces, scattering their pieces to dust and rending entire lines of men into pulp.
“That’s a demon?” A shudder of fear p
assed down Vera’s spine.
“Normally they’re a bit more subtle.” Seth shrugged. “Even when he dwelt in Heaven, Moloch had a tendency to be loud.”
The remaining harpies retreated to Moloch and landed on his shoulders, his coarse black hair, and even on the tip of his bull-snout. Vera was unable to make out any of the individual words over the cacophony of shrill caws they emitted, but the mocking, exultant tone was all too clear. The army melted before the terrifying sight, fleeing in every direction. Only one remained.
Cain stared down the hulking behemoth that spat fire and gorged its snout with scraps of armor and man that it had gouged out of the army. Gone was the look of joy on his face; instead, his dark features became stern as he knelt and wrenched his sword out of the pile of bodies he created. With one hand, he tore away the harpies that he had impaled on the blade. Cain pointed the bloody steel at the monster that opposed him. “Horsemen!” he called out. “To me!” He charged toward the demon.
“HELL’S FLAMES AND FURY TAKE THEE,” Moloch boomed. The demon opened its jaws wide, and a burst of fire exploded outward, consuming everything in its path as it rushed toward Cain.
Hellfire, Vera recognized. He’s done for.
Just meters away from Cain, the pillar of fire abruptly slammed up against an invisible barrier and broke like a wave crashing against a rock, spraying flaming pieces of Hellfire everywhere.
Vera leaned forward, utterly perplexed. “What’s happening?”
Even Moloch seemed confused; the massive demon hesitated for a single precious second.
Seth clapped his hands together, and the scene about them suddenly paused. Moloch, Cain, and the watching armies were all completely frozen in place like a painting—or more accurately, like unnaturally lifelike statues. “Look there.” Seth pointed down at Cain. “See that?”
Vera squinted, and she did see something—there was a faint shimmer of light where the Hellfire had come to a sudden stop, as though there was an invisible barrier present. “A glass wall?”
“Good guess, but not quite,” Seth said. “You’re looking at a nearly transparent, super-dense crystalline structure, formed by countless particles locked in a self-reinforcing matrix.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a wall made of salt crystals, Vera. All formed in seconds by one of Cain’s original Horsemen.” He took Vera’s shoulder and nudged her to look at another section of the battlefield, where a single woman stood, her arms crossed and her red hair frozen in mid-gust, as she watched the Hellfire smash against the salt wall. “There she is, right there. Edith.”
“And her powers use salt?” All of a sudden, John’s strange plants seemed relatively normal.
“She was Lot’s wife,” Seth said drily. “My brother has a liking for those who disobey God’s commandments.”
“I never heard of her,” Vera said defensively. “Not in life and not in Hell. What happened to her?”
“You’ve already met her,” he said in a voice that oddly dripped with disgust. “Edith no longer appears as she did then, but that part of the story comes later. For now, let’s watch.”
He clapped his hands once and the vision resumed. In an instant, Cain leapt over the invisible salt structure in a single bound, neatly evading the pools of Hellfire scattered about the ground. He nimbly landed on his feet and continued toward Moloch, his sword still drawn. The demon let out a roar of rage at the sight of the approaching man and spewed forth a lake of fire once again.
This time, Vera could just barely make out the crystal structure springing out of the bloody earth to once again intercept the Hellfire and scatter it an instant before it would have incinerated Cain. But Moloch had learned; even as the torrent of fire from its mouth died, the demon sprang forward on all fours, shaking the ground with every step as it raised a great clawed hand and smashed the crystalline wall to bits.
Cain was only barely able to dance away from the blow that would have reduced him into a red mist. “War! Death! Flank it!” Cain called out.
As though they had been waiting for his words, two dark figures sprang out of the disjointed chaos of the battlefield. Each held at least a score of swords in their hands and strapped to their backs, and as they rushed up Moloch’s legs with the speed of cheetahs, they buried blade after blade into the thick skin of the demon.
In seconds, the two men had impaled the demon’s oddly human calves a dozen times over, leaving a trail of broken swords and bleeding gashes in their wake. A flock of the harpies flew down to stop them, but they barely even slowed their progress; they were hacked down by the dozens. “Cassius Longinus and Marc Antony,” Seth explained. “You’ve met Longinus before, haven’t you?”
Vera watched in awe as Longinus head-butted a harpy, killing it in an explosion of feathers, then stabbed a spear into the back of Moloch’s knee, causing the massive devil to buckle forward. How did we ever beat him?
But the demon was not done; Moloch spun its head around with a bellow of pain and snapped at the two men, clearly intending to swallow them whole. One of Edith’s crystals tore out of the ground like a spike, meant to impale the demon’s head, but the tip of it weakly shattered against the monstrosity’s thick skin.
Cain rushed forward and neatly severed one of Moloch’s claws that the beast blindly swiped at him. “Famine!” he bellowed as the demon opened its mouth wide, about to consume Longinus and Antony.
Something long and whip-like shot through the air and wrapped around one of the demon’s bloodstained teeth. It pulled, and for an instant, Moloch was jerked off-balance—just enough time for Longinus and Antony to leap away from its gaping maw. The demon clashed its teeth together in a fury, ripping the rubbery thing in half and causing it to whip away.
Seth clapped his hands again, and the nightmarish vision went still. “See that?” He pointed at the whip-thing.
Vera squinted at it, trying to understand what it was, and groaned in disgust when she realized that it wasn’t rubber at all, but flesh—a pink, bleeding tentacle of meat, that reached down into the battlefield, where it connected to—
“I know that face,” she breathed.
“You do,” Seth said grimly. He stared down at the beautiful, long-haired woman from whose arm the tendril of flesh emerged from. Her features were slightly different; her face was adorned with exquisite makeup, and her eyes surrounded by intricate waves of darkness. But it was still the face of Vera’s deepest nightmares, there was no doubt of that. “Famine the Horseman, with powers of manipulating the human body. She was once a queen called Jezebel, before her hunger consumed her and thousands more. You now know her by a different name.”
“The Prophet who came for us,” Vera realized. The main face that the abomination showed was a grinning, drooling face underneath a mat of greasy black hair…a twisted reflection of the beauty that Jezebel still possessed in this vision, but somehow still the same. “That’s what she became.”
“Does Jezebel still exist somewhere in there, I wonder?” Seth mused. “Or is there nothing left but the monster?”
Vera forced herself to say the name, despite the disgusting, horrifying images it brought to mind. “Legion.”
16
Lao’s last night with Salome was like all the others: bland, predictable, and ultimately unsatisfying. The hole in his heart always felt darker and emptier after the Prophet used him to sate her carnal urges. He had long since learned to suppress that hollow feeling, but it was especially poignant as he quietly slipped out of her bed for the last time.
Little fool. He gazed down at her slumbering form. By now he knew her every flaw: the tiny mole on her back, the creases of her stomach, the needle tracks on her arms that she had thought she had hidden so well… He even knew the combination to the secret stash that the bitch kept hidden in a lock-box beneath her bed.
It was so tempting to slide a blade across her throat and watch her eyes bulge out in fear and hurt, so tempting to tell her what he had kept
hidden in his heart for decades and to crush her will beneath his. But Salome was a Prophet, and she never slept alone; Leviathan the demon-king slumbered in her chest even now. I would have no chance against that thing.
Lao crept to one of her many closets and withdrew a simple outfit of a shirt, pants, and a pair of leather boots. He was done with empty vanity, he thought as he spat a gob of phlegm on one of Salome’s priceless diamond-studded dresses. The future held only one thing for Lao Ai, and that was power. I won’t be a whore anymore, Salome, he swore to himself. Not for you—not for anyone.
He mentally debated whether or not to leave a note at her bedside, but ultimately decided against it. Even a mocking farewell would give her some sort of closure, at least; he wanted her to be filled with anxiety and self-doubt, going back retroactively over all their interactions to see whether there was something that she had done, some way that she was at fault. I know the way your pretty little mind works. Two thousand years in Hell and you’re still just a spoiled brat.
Lao slipped out of her bedroom, made his way through her incense-scented chambers, and finally emerged into one of the main halls of the Hall of Mammon. The two Praetorian guards nodded at him as he passed them by and strode down the lonely, echoing hallway.
He couldn’t help but feel a rising tide of fear in the back of his throat as his pace quickened and the echoes of his footfalls came faster and faster. It was not what he had left behind that made him nervous; it was his destination. Just nerves, he tried to tell himself, but he still found himself jumping at every shadow cast by the flickering torches.
Lao smelled Legion’s chambers long before he saw the bloodstained iron door that led to them; the stench of spilled guts and rotten meat was so disgusting that he had to raise his shirt over his mouth and nose before he softly knocked on the door. “Legion, it’s Lao,” he muttered as quietly as he could. “Open up.”
No response came from the iron door. Damnit. Lao gingerly reached for the doorknob, trying to ignore the thin fleshy string-thing dangling from it, and slowly creaked the door open. Unlocked? he wondered in surprise. Then he remembered that it was Legion’s quarters; the freak probably prayed every night that an idiotic burglar or lost guard would come wandering in.
