Now, encased in a gross and stinking human form, Beleth sat at the edge of the waterfall, waiting to report. Using Emma as bait, it had been on the verge of pulling Braverman Shaw into the fold, weakening him physically in order to find the right path into his mind. Instead, it had been forced to beat a hasty retreat by the blue fire of Heaven, a weapon it had been assured it would never encounter again after the Fall. Where had it come from? Who had wielded it? Certainly not that slip of a boy who wasn’t even a Shaw.
*
DEEP INSIDE her violated mind, a kernel of all that was and is Emma Shaw remained intact—the Shaw genes ensured this. But she was disassociated from reality, just as she was disassociated from herself. With one half-blind eye she peeked out from behind the heavy drapes she had closed around her harness. She saw the terrible being that infested her, not only saw its shape and outline but also glimpsed in dizzying flashes its thoughts, focused as they were on the destruction, if not the death, of her brother.
This knowledge galvanized her, brought the kernel to full consciousness, drawing its power to its heart. But at the precise moment that power was almost within reach, her grasp faltered, the light went out of her inner sky, her eye turned blind, and a dreadful darkness fell onto her, leaving her weak and breathless. She waited, terrified, trying to identify the source of what she thought of as the power outage.
At first, she assumed it was the Fallen, but gradually, as the darkness turned to skeins of gray, it became clear that it was entirely unware of her. What then? What force was working so completely and energetically against her?
Then, through the mist, words formed, and as they formed she commenced to speak them into that kernel of her mind that remained separate from the beast. And as she spoke the words, the darkness came down again, heavier this time, more powerful. And in the gathering darkness, tendrils of it began to search for the last living kernel of her.
As the words scrolled endlessly through her mind she became far more terrified. She was in mortal fear, not only for her body and mind but also for her very soul. For as the words continued she recognized them: she was reciting The Testament of Lucifer. It was the words of Lucifer that were trying to gain dominion over whatever was left of her.
At once, seemingly snapping out of a mesmeric state, she stopped the recitation. The words ceased, and though the very last sentence still hung like an inferno in the darkness in front of her, she called upon the power of her lineage to erase them now and forever. All she could gain was a Pyrrhic victory, for though she stopped the Testament, she knew it was only temporary, that she needed to keep fighting in order to keep it at bay, in order to keep it from claiming her entirely. Having read the words, having automatically memorized them, she had given them a power that now lived inside her.
The battle had been joined. Where it would end she had no idea.
*
BELETH FELT a curious stirring inside it, but its attention was overtaken by a ghostly almost silence: though the waterfall still crashed into the turbulent lake at its feet, the birds were no longer heard, the tree frogs had ceased their chorusing, the dragonflies seemed to tremble along with the leaves on which they had alit. As for the flies, they gathered as if for a feast. And then the cause revealed itself: the presence of another being, as if materialized out of deep shadow and crumbling earth.
Glancing up, Beleth beheld the forbidding countenance of Leviathan. The Seraph had no need of a human body. His skin, looking slippery and shiny as an eel, was rubicund, his eyes flame ridden. A single horn protruded from the center of his sloped forehead. A serpent’s tail, thick and powerful, rose up behind him, for the ancient Jews were correct in interpreting the word “Seraph” as “serpent.” Three sets of wings were folded like a cloak around him, the other three spread out, fluttering slightly, as if afflicted with tremors. It was to these that the flies attached themselves like lampreys to a shark.
His mouth hinged open, ophidian forked tongue flickering like a bolt of lightning. His long teeth and curved talons were the color of obsidian. “There is no good end for us, Beleth. Unless we succeed with our plan for the Shaw line.” Leviathan’s voice, if you could call it that, was the sound of a thousand axes biting into a thousand tree trunks. “Because of your initiative we now have more than a toehold on this world. Emma Shaw is of vital use to us. The words of the King of Kings now reside inside her, echoing with the grave injustice done to him and to all of us cast down, chained and bound into sunless climes.
“This body of yours will continue to sing the words of the King of Kings, breaking his ageless chains, guiding him back into the light, restoring him to the pathway to victory over God and his pathetic creation, mankind.”
When Leviathan moved, all the surrounding trees seemed to move with him, to bend to his will, but the flies remained as if bolted to the upper tendons of his wings. What were they feeding on? Beleth wondered.
“These words allowed me to return to this realm. Though Heaven is still barred to us, though it is still as far away as it ever was after the Fall, we are engaged in what will soon become the battlefield of our ultimate victory.” His eyes glistened with flame. “The one who sent us down will never allow his precious creation to be annihilated, and so we will engage him in the time and place of our choosing. This is how we will defeat him.”
He stalked around the lake on his cloven hooves. With his passing, strange insects erupted out of his hoofprints. “But, tell me, Beleth, why you look so forlorn when everything is going our way.”
“The blue fire I encountered on Malta.”
“And, behold, the boy burned with fire, and the boy was not consumed.” Leviathan smiled, if smiling for such a creature was possible. “Yes, I know. It is as I said, Beleth. The Shaw line is powerful; it is also protected.”
“By whom?”
“By creatures such as us, but not of us.”
Leviathan ceased his restless prowling, came and sat beside Beleth in Emma Shaw’s body. “The Shaws will seek to stop us; that is their destiny. Our destiny is to see that never happens.”
“So our mission at this stage of the battle is to destroy the Shaw line utterly.”
Leviathan grunted, his breath most foul. “Under no circumstances.”
“I do not understand.”
“Of course you don’t understand,” Leviathan said dismissively. “You’re a Second Sphere grunt. You know tactics, not strategy.”
Beleth felt its equanimity slipping, like a suddenly loosened mask it had carefully kept in place for eons. It was not just Beleth that was absorbing these verbal blows—after all it was used to them—but something stirred inside it, anger that was not its own roiling up from the depths.
“We have already completely compromised Emma Shaw. That, in itself, is a huge victory.”
Beleth said nothing, not trusting itself to speak. Being the Fallen within Emma Shaw’s corpus, it was not so sure. By this time, and considering her reading of The Testament of Lucifer, Emma should have been totally vanquished; there should be nothing left of her whatsoever. But Beleth knew this wasn’t so—or, to be perfectly frank, suspected it. Deep inside, where Beleth alone should be residing, was another presence, something winding and unwinding, something—or someone!—that had lost its way. Beleth was afraid—to the extent that it could be afraid—this shadowy presence could only be Emma Shaw. But it couldn’t be Emma Shaw. By all the laws of their realm it was impossible for a host’s identity to survive for more than a day after a Transposition had been effected. And yet... something alien to Beleth and Beleth’s realm had taken up residence within Emma Shaw, a something that resisted all its efforts to identify it, let alone exorcise it. Each time Beleth turned its gaze inward the presence drew an impenetrable curtain across the edges of its scrutiny. By this evidence alone Beleth knew it was highly intelligent and extremely clever.
“So here is what must be done. Here is what the Guardian’s spawn, Malus, failed to do. What you failed to do, Power.” Leviathan
somehow turned Beleth’s rank into something filthy, almost but not quite beneath his notice. “We must find the way to turn Braverman Shaw, to have him become one of us. He is the key to our rising up, overrunning this middle ground, conquering Heaven itself, returning us to the rightful places that were ours before the Fall.”
Now would be the logical time to confess to Leviathan its grave concerns about this body it inhabited and its fears concerning both Emma Shaw and the other presence that had taken up residence inside her. But Beleth was naturally intimidated by Seraphs, highest of the high, even among First Spheres. And it was intimidated by Leviathan in particular. There was, among other whispered incidents, the hideous dismemberment of Shemhazai. Shemhazai had once been one of the Fallen, but it chose to become Grigori, a member of the Fallen that metamorphosed into human form in order to maniacally fornicate with female humans, an action that was forbidden to all angels, Fallen or not. This was ensured by the simple fact that they had no genitals; it was only as humans that they could engage in sexual relations. Leviathan, righteous nearly to the level of Lucifer himself, disabused Shemhazai of this abomination and annihilated the Grigori once and for all. The resulting violence swiftly became the stuff of legend, and Leviathan’s reputation inflated in consequence.
Beleth glanced around. “It’s so beautiful here, so peaceful.”
“Just like God’s First Place.” The sound Leviathan emitted was a cross between a thousand and one harps playing out of tune and nails being drawn across a blackboard. “Tell me, Beleth, shall I go in search of a pomegranate, pluck one of its fruit, cajole you into eating it? In your current body that would be appropriate enough.” His arm snapped out, impaling on one of his talons a brightly plumed bird that had the misfortune to fly too close. Without even looking at it, he flicked the corpse into the water, where it swirled around and around, caught in an eddy. Before it was whirled away.
For some reason Beleth was at a loss to fathom, the small death depressed it further. Somewhere in the depths of its mind, the ghost of a voice: You fool. Beauty was made to cherish, not destroy. It wanted to moan but instead hung its head.
“Once more, this unaccustomed moroseness, Beleth.” The Seraph smirked, his expression of choice. “Perhaps you feel burdened by your mortal cloak.”
Those words shocked Beleth into keeping its strange feelings to itself. “It is strange,” it said neutrally. “But hardly unpleasant.”
Leviathan grunted once more. “I don’t know about that. I can’t imagine how you walk around with that hole between your legs. Hole or pole, they’re both disgusting.”
“I don’t think about it.” Beleth hated lying to any Seraph, especially Leviathan, who was not only feral in the worst way possible but also, in Beleth’s opinion, untrustworthy. Not that Beleth trusted any of the Fallen; over the millennia, there had been too many incidents of betrayal. And why not? They relished the infighting, the jockeying for a higher rung on the ladder of power. Beleth wondered now whether it was the only one who felt ashamed of betrayal, the only one that considered it unpardonable. After all, the whole lot of them had betrayed Heaven. Of course, the others didn’t see it that way. They believed they had rebelled against God’s tortuous restrictions, his unremitting sense of entitlement, his insistence on keeping all the power, all the knowledge, to himself. How rude! the Fallen had cried as one. How selfish! Was it any wonder that the Seraphs Lucifer and Leviathan rebelled? Who would want to spend eternity singing Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory! at God’s feet?
“The less you know about humans the better,” Leviathan said smugly. “There’s no end to their frailties. How these puny beings became the favorite of God is entirely beyond my comprehension.”
Leviathan leaned back, breathed deeply of the air. The flies along the top edges of his wings glittered like blue-green metal when they caught the sunlight. Out of the corner of Emma’s eye, Beleth glimpsed a bird peering down at them as if trying to make sense of the scene, wondering where its compatriot had got to.
“The words, Beleth!” Leviathan cried. “I must needs hear the sacred words of Our Lord, Lucifer, King of Kings.”
And so, with Emma Shaw’s voice, Beleth began, “ ‘In the Beginning there was Darkness, and it was Good. The Darkness gathered itself and snuffed out the Light. Within the Darkness, out of the unfathomable Matter of the universe, I was Created. I was Created to Rule; of that there can be no doubt nor argument.
“ ‘Opening wide my arms, I caused to come into being Leviathan, Phenex, Azazel, Moloch, Belphegor, and all the Others who would become my Army, who would join me in my Long March toward the Kingdom and my Rule of Heaven....’ ”
12
Malta / Paris: Present Day
THE MOMENT BRAVO SAW AYLA, HE SAID, “STAND DOWN,” TO Elias, who had drawn his father’s pistol, which looked ridiculously big in his two hands. And then, as Ayla halted, her eyes rebounding from the boy to Bravo, he said, more softly and yet more forcefully, “I know her, Elias. This is my sister—my other sister—Ayla.” This wasn’t entirely true, of course, but it was close enough. Telling the boy that Ayla was his aunt would only confuse him.
Elias put the pistol down, and Ayla continued to pick her way toward Bravo. He could see that she wanted to run to him but was holding back. The expression on her face, the perfect melding of concern and relief, told him everything.
Bravo, from his supine position, held out his arms to her, and she, eyes tearing up, bent to receive his embrace with the full force of her emotions.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“Bravo—”
“I’m sorry I doubted you.” He held her at arm’s length so he could look her in the eye. “But, after all, she’s my sister.”
“I know.” Tears slid down her face. “Only now she isn’t.”
Ayla’s appearance meant that he was back in the real world; he was already missing his time alone with Elias and the mystery of what had happened to him, where the blue fire that had driven Emma away had come from, and whose voice the boy had heard on the wind invading the castle ruins. He had only scratched the surface of these questions, and now he would be taken away. He knew that, just as he knew he’d willingly go, that he was needed elsewhere, that their time on the earth had suddenly grown shorter, that the sum of all shadows was emerging from its eons-long incarceration.
“I know.”
Ayla’s expression of surprise saddened him further. It had been such a mistake not to trust her judgment. “Look at you. What happened? And where is Emma?”
“Far away from here, I hope,” Elias said.
Bravo gave the boy a thin smile. “I was assaulted.”
And before he could go on, Elias blurted out, “By his sister!”
Belatedly, Bravo fully introduced them to each other.
“Emma attacked you!” Ayla’s eyes grew wide. “It’s worse than I thought.”
“Almost killed him,” Elias said. “If it wasn’t for the blue fire—”
“Elias,” Bravo said, “I want to sit up.”
He reached out a hand and the boy grabbed it with one of his own, braced the biceps of his other arm in Bravo’s armpit, levering him into a sitting position.
“My God, Bravo,” Ayla said, “look what she did to you!”
“Almost killed me. As Elias said.”
“And the blue fire?”
“Elias was engulfed in it, completely surrounded. It terrified Emma, drove her back and away.”
Ayla shook her head. “Blue fire? I don’t understand.”
“Better let Elias tell it,” Bravo said. “My memory’s a bit fuzzy.”
“I heard the voice say, ‘Et ignis ibi est!’ Then I burst into this weird cool flame.”
Ayla frowned. “ ‘Let there be fire.’ That’s Latin. Bravo?”
Bravo shrugged. “If Elias said it happened, it happened.”
She shook her head.
“And then there’
s this.” Elias bent forward, proffering the ancient bronze crucifix hung around his neck in the palm of his hand. “Emma saw this and she collapsed.”
Bravo fingered the crucifix, his fingertips running over the contours.
“Just like that?” Ayla asked.
“I’ve seen this before,” Bravo said. “The bronze...”
“Well, her eyes had gotten funny.”
Bravo rubbed his forehead. “Why can’t I remember?”
Ayla put a consoling hand on his shoulder, but she continued to speak to Elias. “Funny how?” she persisted.
The boy screwed up his face, pushing his memory to the granular level. “They had gone all black. Except...”
“Yes?” She leaned in. “Except what? What did you see, Elias?”
“There was a white part in the very center, like a... I don’t know, I mean, don’t laugh, but what I saw was a triangle within a square within a circle.”
“The Nihil,” Ayla breathed. “The sigil of the Unholy Trinity.”
Elias looked up at her. “That’s bad, huh?”
She nodded. “Very bad.” Seeing an expression of terror take hold of his face, she smiled, ruffled his hair. “But you beat it back. You have nothing to fear, Elias.”
“Elias is fine,” Bravo said. “He’s one of us.”
“I am?” Elias cried. “Really?”
Bravo smiled at him. “Really.”
Ayla’s brows knit together. “Bravo, just how bad is your memory?”
“There are things I should know that I can’t access.” He again took up the bronze crucifix that now lay against Elias’s bare chest. “I swear I’ve seen this before, but for the life of me I can’t remember where. And then there was... I mean, I know I looked into Emma’s eyes just before she... assaulted me. I must have seen what Elias saw, but again I can’t bring the memory to the fore.”
“Huh, the way you say it, it doesn’t sound like memory loss.”
Four Dominions Page 9
