by Jenn Stark
Forgiveness.
Gregori set his feet wide and braced himself for the wave of demons, his hands held at his waist, palms up, as he dropped the last of his barriers against the onslaught rushing toward him. There was the pain that he expected—human and demon alike, twisted and frightened and confused—that pounded through him with a strength that took his breath away. How could humans, in their frail and fragile bodies, feel so much? How could their hearts grow so full, their minds so frantic, their eyes peeled wide to see everything that was real and so much that wasn’t real, but which loomed so large in their imaginations? How was it possible for them to withstand day after day of this pain, anxiety, and terrible, overwhelming worry?
But it was the second wave of pain that caught him off guard.
Why?
With the humans overtaken so completely by the demons, it was only because there was an amalgam of them in such a tight space that the word could even be pieced together, a hundred thousand shards of pain and misery coalescing into that startling, agonized word. Why? What had they done to deserve this painful path, where had they fallen from the grace of God, what was it about them that was so miserable, so base, that the Father had so completely abandoned them. Why were they being punished?
Gregori staggered back.
He didn’t have the time to explain to the humans how their paths had been initially set, how they’d walked once among the stars and chosen tests to raise them in their own power, to fill them ultimately with grace and goodness and joy. This was not the time for those conversations, and they were in no place to understand them anyway. In truth, if any words like that were directed at the humans, the demons within them would scramble and snarl, their own jealousy and rage blocking all light intended for the fragile souls they drove forward.
Instead, Gregori’s words were not for God’s children. They were for the creatures of the damned. He caught the first human as he flailed toward him with eyes peeled wide in inarticulate horror, and Gregori saw the demon within immediately. With the ability accorded to all the Syx and every Fallen, he could name that demon as well.
Then he did something not accorded to the Syx. That was forbidden, in truth, the violation of an ancient creed older than Gregori himself.
“Morkadelei,” he murmured. “I forgive you.”
The effect was immediate and devastating on both sides. The power of grace that surged from Gregori’s own broken body, beneath the veneer he still maintained, ripped through him like a jagged knife. Morkadelei, deep within his human host, gasped and shuddered, but he was an old demon who had seen the Fall, and had swept into the world under the wings of the condemned. His place among those banished souls was never to be forgiven, and yet with these simple words, Gregori did exactly that. Morkadelei burst from the human with a blinding, golden light, and was gone.
The screaming took on a new tenor almost immediately, with the demons and the mortals in their thrall recognizing that something very unexpected had just happened. With the second demon Gregori forgave, his knees buckled. With the third, he fell to the ground, kneeling as he lifted his hands, bowing beneath the assault only long enough that he could feel the tattered remnants of his half-remembered wings once more spread across his back. It was an illusion, a false memory, but it gave him the strength to lift his head and meet the eyes of his oppressors. They seemed to think his wings were real as well and approached him from the front, as his unassailable armor blocked him from the back and the sides.
And so they came, and so they stared full into his eyes, and so he forgave them one after the other, each forgiveness driving a nail through his hands, his temples, his guts, his heart. He was convicted over and over for the crimes of these creatures, and not only the demons’ crimes, but those of God’s children as well, some petty, some grave, all contributing to the weakness and separation that had led to their possession. No demon could attack a human uninvited, after all, even if the mortals didn’t understand the opening to darkness they’d provided.
“I forgive you,” he gasped again and again, and it was as if the waves of his oppressors flowed more quickly with each given grace, until they were little more than a blur in front of his eyes. And still they kept coming. Gregori could hear the wail of sirens, the loud orders ripping over the speaker system, but he couldn’t make out the words. He had eyes only for the mournful stares of the afflicted, ears only for the cries of the oppressed and the damned. At first attacking him, then, almost pitifully stumbling toward him to receive the grace they didn’t deserve, the grace that killed Gregori a little more with each approaching soul. It was the only way he could save the mortals and destroy the demons at once, each new ray of light signaling their departure from this plane.
Where they went, he had no idea. Their judgment remained a contract between them and the Father that would have to be reconciled. But they would go to that confrontation with the knowledge they’d been seen, they’d been heard, they’d been forgiven, their sins transferred to Gregori’s own shoulders, their horrors stripped away to blacken his soul.
It was enough to clear them from their human hosts, and the bodies of the afflicted either collapsed around him or staggered away, confused and dazed, rushing toward the doors, where men with guns flinched from their pressing panic.
Until, at last, it was done. No more demons came forth, Possessed or otherwise. No humans remained with the screams of the damned ringing from their throats.
Of course, that didn’t mean there wasn’t any screaming.
But it was only Gregori’s voice raised high unto the heavens.
When Gregori’s vision cleared again, he no longer saw the lobby, the piles of humans, the unnaturally bright light surrounding them, all that was left of the demons who’d been torn from their mortal hosts.
Instead, he saw a desolate wasteland.
He’d never been here before, but he recognized it all the same. It was the field of the lost, the hell that was set aside for those fallen from God’s grace. Not a plane of fire and brimstone as so many mortals needed to believe, but far, far more hopeless. Empty, forsaken, with a howling wind that never ceased, a chill that never tired, a bleakness that was worse than either of the other two torments combined. The wind seemed to wail his punishment in ever-expanding waves. Forgotten, abandoned, cast out.
Gregori collapsed to his knees, and tears flowed from his eyes. He had given all. He had remembered, and he accepted what was to come. It was worth it to have saved the demons from their own perfidy. They would be judged, yes. But they would go to that judgment knowing the power of grace along the way. It would likely not be enough to turn them from their path. That was not his to say. Just as it was not his job to have done what he did.
Though he’d paid the ultimate price, he was glad he’d done it. And he prayed that God in his grace would bring Gregori’s own end soon. He was close, he thought. Very close to that end. His bones remained alight with fire, his blood had dried to dust, his skin had burned away. There was nothing left of him but the tattered memory of wings and shattered hope.
He bowed his head, once more dying a thousand deaths for each act of grace, remorseless waves crashing on an empty shore.
“Pónos.” The voice was quiet and seemed to come from a far distance. Gregori lifted what was left of his face, as the wind scoured over his sunken eyes, ruffling the tattered rags of his skin. He couldn’t see anyone. There was no one here. He dropped his head again.
“Pónos.” Again the voice came, more insistent this time, and Gregori did not see so much as feel the presence beside him, turning him over, cradling him in his arms. He slit his eyes open to see the archangel gathering him close, but an archangel like he had never seen before—his skin warm and filled with life, his eyes no longer pale and ghostly but flashing with fire. He stared down at Gregori a long moment.
“Pónos, you have done the unthinkable, taken power not yours to take and poured it out for the children of God and for creatures beneath disdain. You
gave a life that wasn’t yours to give. You gave the ultimate grace that wasn’t yours to grant.”
Gregori drew in a ragged breath, disgrace lancing him anew. “I—” He struggled to speak, but no more words would come.
The archangel lifted his hand to Gregori’s brow and bent, his forehead touching his thumb as his small finger brushed against Gregori’s ravaged skin. With a graceful flap, the archangel’s magnificent wings spread wide, bathing them both in radiant light.
“Blessed warrior of God,” the archangel murmured, his words as soft as a sigh. “I forgive you.”
27
Angela watched with wide, horrified eyes as Gregori disappeared, then whirled on the dark-eyed blonde beside her.
“Where did he go?” she demanded. “What have they done with him?”
“No time!” the woman shouted, shoving Angela into the throng of stumbling, shuffling humans. “Go, go, go!”
Together, they ran back into the same corridor they’d recently exited, the place still slick with black demon goop and mortal blood. The woman pushed Angela into the nearest trashed laboratory, then pointed frantically at the back of the room.
“There!” she said, and a moment later, they were stuffed into a supplies closet barely larger than a cabinet.
“What are you doing?” Angela asked, bewildered.
“Buying us some time,” the woman said. “They’ll come for us almost immediately. If we’d stayed in that lobby…”
Angela nodded, understanding. But she couldn’t get past the last image she’d seen of Gregori. Her throat ached from unvoiced sobs, her eyes burned. She’d never felt so lost. “What happened?” she finally asked again.
The woman merely stared with her strange, haunted eyes, her expression implacable. “I don’t know. There was so much light. I’ve never seen that kind of light when demons are returned to their creator. It’s not supposed to happen that way.”
“Did somebody return Gregori too, somehow?” Angela persisted. “He was there, then he wasn’t. Did we miss something?”
The woman flinched, then her eyes cleared, a flicker of hope springing to life in the charcoal depths. “I can’t help you. Not with that.”
Something in her voice made Angela’s focus sharpen. “With what, then?” she asked.
The witch straightened her narrow shoulders, tilting her head. Her close-cropped hair looked roughly cut, Angela realized, old wounds still visible at her nape. Had she been shorn? And if so—what did that say about her…and her captors?
The woman’s hard gaze never wavered. “There are over two dozen of my sisters being held in thrall to these monsters, forced to order demons to perform whatever AugTech wants. If we leave now, AugTech will simply rebuild. Their technological infrastructure is astounding. The money it must’ve taken to assemble this facility…” She shook her head. “I don’t know how it was ever possible.”
Angela set her jaw. She knew how it was possible. All it took was an open-ended black box budget that never saw the light of day, certainly not the light of congressional oversight. Whether it originated with the President, the Pentagon, or some office she didn’t know about, it was all too easy to see what was going on here. And to think she’d likely been complicit in all this, had helped to ensure safe passage for the money to keep flowing…
But if she wasn’t involved, if she walked away, it would happen all over again. AugTech would simply start over, with no oversight, no awareness. Or worse, they could go overseas to someplace completely unregulated. They wouldn’t have the credibility of a US installation, but there would be plenty of buyers on the international stage. Which meant Angela not only needed to stop what was going on here, she needed to control it going forward.
She studied the witch. She looked a little too fried, too traumatized to take on the next task, but they had no other choice. “What do we need to do to release your sisters?”
“Ideally, we’d remove their implants, the same way you did mine,” she explained, waving vaguely at her bloodied neck. “But there’s no time. So we’ll do the next best thing. We’ll short their implants out.”
Angela blinked, startled. “You can do that?”
“Not alone. But with two witches, it’s easier than you might think. Something we were able to keep from our oppressors should any one of us escape. Sadly, they’re not complete fools. Their leash on us was kept very tight.”
Angela sighed. “Well, that’s not really going to help us out, because we only have one witch between us.”
The woman regarded Angela with her smudged-charcoal eyes, waiting.
Angela’s eyes popped wide. “No, no, no. Don’t get ahead of yourself. All I know I learned from a book that I haven’t read since I was five years old. I have a pretty good memory, and necessity proved to be all the motivation I needed, but all I know is how to summon demons, I guess, and how to defend myself against them. I don’t know how to create some sort of tech hex.”
The woman waved fingers streaked with soot, the skin blackened around the nails. She’d already suffered much. Who was Angela to deny her this? “You don’t need to. All you need is to repeat the words after me. Are you an auditory learner or just visual?”
Angela tilted her head, responding automatically. “Primary visual, secondary auditory, tertiary kinesthetic. I tested it once. Auditory is best only for short-term.”
“Short-term is all we’re going to need. I suspect I’ll have my hands full explaining even that to the coven.” She grimaced. “What’s left of the coven, anyway.”
“I don’t know how many are left,” Angela said quietly. “But we will find them, I promise you.”
“We’ll find each other,” the woman corrected. “My sisters will be enough to start over, once they break free of this place.”
“Then I guess you’d better start talking.”
The woman reached out and grabbed Angela’s hands, interlocking their fingers as they made a human circle and paying no mind to her own damaged digits. When she spoke, her words came fast and furious. She uttered several words, and Angela repeated them back, and then she started over from the beginning, each time moving further through the spell, making sure Angela knew it completely before she continued to the next section. Angela spoke the words back rapidly, and she almost thought that this layered approach charged the air around them, each pass building the spell’s power. So maybe the woman’s repetition wasn’t so much for Angela’s ability to learn, but to prepare the space for the strength of the spell to come? She didn’t know. But…maybe.
When the woman completed the last new lines, she nodded. At that moment, the sound of heavy footfalls pounded through the corridor, jarring them both.
“Now,” the woman nearly shouted. “Go.”
They began the spell. Their hands gripped tight together, they ordered the sacred words with a gradually increasing cadence, their voices lifting and falling according to a music long since gone from the world. An electrical charge swelled between them, and when the woman reached out with their joined hands and pressed them against the metal door, she jolted. Literally. The bolt of electricity that passed from their bodies into the metal infrastructure of the building created a shock wave of pain that practically lifted Angela off her toes and felt like it set her hair on fire. Then, as quickly as it had begun—it ended.
The two of them sagged against the wall, the woman grinning as the authoritative shouts of the men in the corridor beyond turned to alarm and anger, then outright fury.
“They’re fleeing,” the woman said with satisfaction. “The demons. They’re returning to the shadows from whence they came. My sisters too…gone. Flying and gone.”
Angela scowled at her. “Seriously? But won’t their handlers know how to find them? Won’t they simply catch the women and control them again?”
The woman shook her head. “We’ve been waiting for this opportunity for too long. AugTech could control our magic, they could control our conversations, but they couldn’t cont
rol our hearts or minds. We’ve worked too long together as sisters, and we felt the pain of those who came before us who were so long entrapped. Even though we weren’t broken by their service, we bowed and scraped beneath it like any animal pressed into service without hope of relief or release. But unlike those animals, we had something more. The memory of our coven and its strength and its freedom. So while we didn’t hold hope, we held a certainty of what once had been. That was enough.”
Angela took in her calm resolution, her quiet strength. She knew what she had to do.
“Teach me,” she said, the words firmer than she would have expected. “Even if I’m not a witch, exactly, teach me to control the horde like you do. Teach me what I need to know to keep this from happening again while making AugTech believe that I’m helping them.”
She saw immediately that the woman understood what she was asking. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “The horde is not a computer, no matter how much AugTech wanted them to be. Demons don’t simply take orders like a program and execute consistently every time. It doesn’t work like that.”
“Show me,” Angela said again. “I only need to know enough to make them believe.”
She didn’t explain that by them, she meant both the demons and the men and women of AugTech, but she didn’t have to. The witch took her hands again, but this time she placed them against her forehead.
“Kinesthetic may be your third preference, but think of it less as learning by touch than simply opening the channel to your visual centers,” the witch informed her. Then she bent forward, pressing her forehead to Angela’s fingers. A flood of visions assaulted Angela—images, words, ideas, symbols, history. So much information transferred so quickly, it was as if she were the computer being programmed, and yet the experience was so visceral, so emotional, no computer could hope to duplicate it. And when she was done, the woman stood back, visibly shaken.
“I don’t know who you are, Angela Stanton,” she said. “You believe yourself not to be a witch, and in truth, you’ve had no training, but there’s far more to you than you realize. Far more for you to give.”
