by Nazri Noor
Quilliam’s fear turned to anger, his lips curling back as he hissed. “Show yourself. I know who you are.”
“Do you, now? Too little, too late, young princeling.”
Quill flinched. Princeling. There was that word again. Why did the witches call him that? The air left my lungs, my chest heavy enough with the weight of the sealing circle. I gasped with realization, with bleak understanding. Was Quilliam a nephilim, too?
And then it happened. The charred, undying remains of Leonora decomposed within seconds into a pile of red and black slime, her skeleton nowhere to be found within the ruination of her disintegrated corpse. Monica screamed as she threw her head back – and back, and farther back, until her neck snapped, lolling horribly off her shoulder. But her screaming never stopped, even when her body melted like candle wax sitting in an oven. The terrible sound of her wailing only ended when her lips fell away into sludge, joining the rest of her body in a pile on the floor.
This shit only ever happened with demons. This had their stink all over it. I gagged as the revolting smell of burning, decomposing meat filled the air. But I couldn’t look away, even when the twin puddled purees of the Rodriguez witches’ remains began to swirl on the ground like a whirlpool, their molten bodies joining and coalescing. Even worse was the changing smell of the air, no longer the stench of rotten flesh, but something paradoxically beautiful and elegant, like flowers, like the inside of a perfumery.
I looked on with aching bones and body as the storm of flesh churned faster, lifting higher and higher into a slowly thickening spike, rising finally to the height and shape of something humanoid. My heart swooped as the dead flesh began to pulse and bloom with young blood, as alabaster skin stitched its way over newly made muscle.
The creature that stood before us was a familiar and unwelcome sight. Its hair was styled into a severe, black coif, its body clad in a red suit so sharp that it could have been cut from rubies. Gold dripped from its earlobes and its fingers, and the characteristic green of its eyes glimmered with malicious glee.
“You,” Quill murmured.
“Indeed,” the creature said, its bare feet settling in a pool of liquid gold.
“Then where are the Rodriguez witches?” Florian asked, stammering.
The creature’s laughter rang as devilish music through the house of the dead witches. “They are long perished, and the Prince of Greed has been wearing their skin for sport. There are no witches here. Only Mammon.”
33
I knew it. I fucking knew Mammon was going to track my ass down to look for the sword that I’d lost. What was it called again. Duskfang? Damn it. Damn it all to hell.
Green eyes like venomous stars swiveled in my direction, twinkling with dark laughter. “Mason Albrecht. It has been such a long time since Mammon has seen you.”
I fought to arch my back off the ground, the sealing circle still pinning my body and spirit to the floor. “Can it, Mammon. I don’t have your sword anymore. We lost it in the ritual, and now you’re just going to have to deal with that. Besides, we never took it. Belphegor tricked us. He stole it from you.”
Mammon bowed its head. “Ah, yes. Mammon’s wayward sibling, always opting for the easy way out. Look what trouble he has caused you. Your relationship with him has not been a productive one, surely you must confess. Such a liability. And now you owe two princes a debt.”
“Not fair,” I grunted. “We didn’t know. Didn’t steal from you.”
“Why, never to worry, nephilim noble, little princeling. There are other ways for Mammon to profit from this unfortunate incident. The sword is no longer of concern.”
My blood chilled as I wrenched my head to look Mammon straight in the eye. I knew where this was going, and I didn’t like it.
“You’ve tried before,” I said, “and you can keep trying, but you’ll never drag me into your stupid little zoo. Fuck you and your menagerie, Mammon.”
The Prince of Greed laughed, the sound of it filling the room so loudly that my ears rang. I thought the walls were trembling. “Such harsh words you have for the high nobles of the infernal courts. Mammon wonders if you would have the confidence to speak to the other princes so brazenly.” The demon moved its head ever so slowly towards Quilliam, giving him a pointed look. “Especially if you knew of their tremendously varied temperaments.”
Quilliam’s lips pursed in anger, but if he meant to say something, he managed to keep it to himself. Did these two know each other? What the hell was going on?
“My point stands, Mammon,” I said. “You aren’t taking me alive.”
“Such brave words you speak, for someone caught in such a vulnerable position. Surely even you, in your foolish inexperience and youth, understand that this is a losing proposition, Mason Al – ”
The crack that Florian’s enormous fist made against Mammon’s jaw filled me with deep satisfaction, making it my first real sensation of relief from the sealing circle’s intense aura of pain. I thought I saw something gold fly out of Mammon’s mouth, sail through the air, and clatter to the floor. It rolled and rattled for a while, finally settling at the edge of the blood pool on the ground. A golden fang. I laughed hoarsely, proud of Florian’s opening blow, then suddenly deathly afraid of how Mammon would counter.
With claws, apparently, huge, long talons that gleamed with an edge of golden menace. They left glittering trails of light as they arced through the air, swiping closer and closer towards Florian’s torso. If even a single one of them connected, I knew that he would be in grave danger, and very likely a hell of a lot of pain, to boot. I didn’t know much about the demon princes, but I could safely guess that even magic-infused aloe vera wouldn’t be enough to save Florian from Mammon’s claws.
Something, or someone, appeared out of the corner of my peripheral vision. I blinked, forcing my eyes to regain focus, finally identifying the shape huddled just at the edge of the sealing circle.
“Quill?”
He knelt there, touching his finger to the ground, nearly but not quite poking at the blood circle.
“Hmm. It wasn’t meant to go down like this, you know. Really threw a wrench in the works. The Rodriguez witches were supposed to kill each other. Then I could scoop you up, whisk you away without a fight.”
“What? What do you mean whisk me away? You got some kind of crush on me, Quilliam? Geez. Buy a man some dinner, first.”
He shook his head and chuckled. “I should’ve known better. I don’t know how I didn’t see Mammon’s hooves all over this. But I guess now we have to stand our ground.”
Quill wrinkled his nose, placing his hands just a hair’s breadth away from the circle of blood. In a voice like the chill breeze that comes through the window in the first crack of winter, he spoke.
“Glacia.”
A wave of unbearable cold guttered out of his palm, sending me shuddering, traveling in a whispering gust across the floor. From the ground, I could hear the faintest crackling as the ring of blood instantly turned into ice. Quill stood up, then stomped one heel hard against the outer rim of frozen blood. The impact and the reverberations broke the sigils, shattering them utterly.
Within moments I could feel the heaviness and pain draining from my bones and my body. I blinked rapidly, alarmed at the sudden surge of energy and strength, flinching when Quilliam stepped into the circle and offered me his hand.
“Who are you?” I said. “Really?”
“It’s complicated.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but Quilliam wouldn’t have heard me. A force lifted him off his feet, as if he’d been punched by a massive, invisible fist, and he went sailing across the room, crashing into a bookcase. He sat there, groaning in a crumpled heap, covered in books and loose paper.
“Holy crap,” I mumbled.
“Indeed.”
Powerful fingers grasped me by the throat and carried me off the ground. I kicked at the air, choking, my eyes rolling down to connect with the emerald glare of the Prince of Greed.
My gaze flitted around the room, searching desperately for Florian. Like a mirror image of Quill, he was slumped against the kitchen counter, unconscious.
“You can have me,” I croaked. “Fine. But spare my friends.”
Mammon cocked its head, then chuckled. “Goodness. Do you truly believe that you have anything left to offer the Court of Greed? Once, perhaps, you would have been a prized acquisition. But Mammon has grown tired of pursuing you. Such a fruitless lead.”
The prince waved its fingers, and something tugged its way out of the recesses of my jacket. I panicked for a moment, wondering what the hell was wriggling around in my clothes. I caught the familiar gleam as the little metallic triangle floated out into the air.
“Mammon’s continued supervision of your potential has brought some interest at last, nephilim. You are in close contact with – nay, a trusted ally of a certain goddess. A certain goddess who is presently vulnerable as she works to rebuild her domicile, to replenish her stores of power.”
“No,” I said, my heart slamming against the inside of my chest. “Don’t. I’ll find your sword. Duskfang. I’ll find it. And you can keep me in your menagerie. Just don’t – ”
Mammon gestured and the arrowhead drifted of its own accord, landing in the palm of my hand. Mammon gestured once more, and my fingers began to clamp shut, moving against my will, squeezing harder and harder. I screamed as the arrowhead’s razor edges bit into my skin, as warm blood welled up and trickled past my fingers, down my wrist.
“Forget the sword. And forget a nephilim.” Mammon grinned with a mouth full of sharp, gilded teeth. “Why settle for a mongrel when Mammon could have a god?”
34
The shaft of moonlight spilling in through the window was the first sign of the goddess’s coming. It formed into a pool of silver as it struck the kitchen floor. Artemis came floating down the moonbeam, the wavering silhouette of her body only solidifying when her feet touched the ground.
She looked around, a hand on her hip. “What’s up, losers? Priscilla and I were halfway through the second season of – oh, shit.”
Artemis didn’t miss a beat. She whirled in a circle, the air flashing as she produced a dagger in one hand, shoving it straight into Mammon’s chest. In her other, she held an arrow, which she stabbed right into Mammon’s neck. The demon shrieked, golden blood pouring in dribbles from its wounds.
But a little flesh wound had never stopped Mammon before.
The prince’s claws released me and I came crashing to the ground. Then it thrust its open hand at Artemis, the nails of its fingers extending into golden wires that wound like molten metal around her body, each grotesque, pulsating tentacle taking hold of one of her limbs, the last tightening around her neck.
“What the hell is – Mason, Florian, get me out of this.”
I coughed as I struggled to push myself off the floor, my throat and my back aching like dull fire. Artemis’s eyes were searching around the room wildly. I’d never seen her frightened, but she had good reason. Certain entities – demon princes, archangels, seraphim – could survive even if killed outside of their domiciles, to reform in their respective home planes once more. But a goddess, especially a weakened one like Artemis? Perishing outside of her domicile meant permanent, true death.
“Let go of her,” I cried out.
“An unwelcome proposition.” Mammon glared at me briefly, then stared back into Artemis’s terrified eyes. “Now, goddess. Shall Mammon siphon your power and become stronger than any of the Seven, to have devoured the soul of a deity?” The prince tilted its head, pressing one taloned finger into its chin. “Or shall Mammon bring you to the menagerie, where you shall languish for all eternity as a specimen in a collection of wonders?”
“If Apollo hears about this,” she cried out. “If my father Zeus does? You’ll have no kingdom to return to, demon. The Court of Greed will be in shambles. My pantheon will destroy you, and – ”
“Hush.” Mammon’s voice was like a soft breeze through reeds, and it punctuated the command by wrapping its golden wires around her mouth. “You’re coming with Mammon.”
“Over my dead body.” Florian leapt from the floor, aiming another punch at the side of Mammon’s face, but this time was stopped dead. The prince raised its free hand, more of its talons forming into a golden shield that solidly absorbed Florian’s blow.
But that, apparently, was exactly what Florian wanted to happen.
The huge floor to ceiling windows leading to the Rodriguez garden shattered all at once, showering the house in a hail of shards and broken glass as massive vines snaked in from the foliage. As one, the vines raced for Mammon’s body, pulling the same trick I remembered Florian using at the Nicola Arboretum.
With each limb caught in the iron grasp of a different, python-thick vine, Mammon was lifted into the air. The shock canceled out its own hold on Artemis, who collapsed to the ground, gasping and groping at her throat. She faded into another shaft of moonlight, escaping. Good. Best for her to be far away, and safe.
But the battle clearly wasn’t over. Mammon was roaring, its talons growing to ridiculous proportions as it used them to cleave at the vines holding its limbs hostage. More and more vines burst into the house from out of the Rodriguez garden, but Florian was going to run out of ammunition eventually. I had to help. I turned to the Vestments, calling for a weapon, when Quill’s voice made the room tremble.
“Come to me. Honor your pact.”
A dozen men and women teleported into the room, some clutching weapons, some cupping arcane flames in their hands. Were these Quill’s friends? Badass. I liked these odds a lot better.
“Nicely done,” I called out to Quill. “Evens the fight out a little.”
The impassivity on Quill’s face, the total absence of emotion, that should have been the first clue. The second, which I noticed far too late, was the smell of brimstone.
“Shit,” I muttered.
Quill pointed at me. “Seize him.”
Twelve demons rounded on me, a tightening ring of bodies. I clenched my teeth, turning in a circle to watch for the first signs of attack. To one end of the room, Florian was battling a demon prince. To the other, Quill leaned against the far wall, turning the pages of some book he’d picked up off the ground, looking almost bored. My gaze shot past the circle of demons, connecting all the way with Quill’s eyes.
“You fucking traitor,” I shouted. “It was you all along. You sent those demons from the start.”
Quill chuckled, then shrugged. “Guilty.”
“Then you’re also a demon prince?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then who the fuck are you?”
He shut his book, then returned it neatly to the destroyed bookcase on the floor. Quill grinned, his smile seeming sharper. “I told you already. It’s complicated.”
I bared my teeth, accepting the golden sword that appeared in my hand from the Vestments. “I’m going to collect your head for this.”
Quill shouted. “What are you idiots waiting for? I told you. Seize him.”
One of the demons closest to me rolled his eyes in Quill’s direction, holding his spiked baseball bat tight. “Wish I could smash this right in that mama’s boy’s mouth,” he said to the knife-wielding demon next to him.
“What?” I hissed. “Mama’s boy? Who’s his mother?”
The demon’s head whipped towards me. Apparently he hadn’t expected me to hear. “Uh, nothing. That was nothing. I mean, death to the princeling’s enemies!”
The whizzing of the bat came suddenly, and I twisted away in time as it zinged through the air and smashed into the ground, cratering the kitchen tile. As for princeling – did nephilim even work with demons? I knew we were the products of sin, but would we ever fall that far?
I slashed with my sword, once, twice, taking out the guy with the baseball bat and the lady with the knife next to him. They fell to the ground, shuddering as their husks began to decompose. The most logical conc
lusion was possibly the worst one yet: Quill was the son of a different demon prince. I glared at him, hating that I had a circle of ten more demons to break through, wishing I could plunge my sword directly into his chest.
But I’d missed my chance. One of the demons, who very well could have been a dominatrix fresh out of a play session, cracked her whip at me. Not a simple toy, either, but the real deal, flicked with a certain amount of practiced skill. The whip lashed around my sword hand, seizing tightly around my wrist, then squeezing so hard that I cried out. My fingers twitched as she pulled on the whip, my sword slipping out of my grip, clattering to the floor, then vanishing into a puff of nothing.
Ah, nuts.
35
“Now,” Quill shouted. “Seize him!”
“Again with this shit,” I yelled, struggling and kicking as more and more of the demons fell upon me. Powerful hands fought to restrain me, but when that wasn’t enough, the demons dumped onto me in a dog pile. Assholes. “I’m so sick and tired of you rat bastards, always up my ass with your bullshit and – ”
“Mason!” My head turned towards the sound of Florian’s voice. “Suit up,” he shouted, riffling momentarily in one of his pockets, brandishing a handful of tiny pebbles.
Wait. Not pebbles. They looked like – lima beans? Were those the seeds that Dionysus gave him? I didn’t intend to find out the painful way. Suit up, he said. I gritted my teeth, hoping against hope that I could do just as well as Raziel when it came to protective divine magic. I squeezed my eyes shut. Here goes nothing, I thought.
Warm light enveloped my body, though not with the familiar balm of sunshine. This was different. Sunshine didn’t shape itself around the contours of your body, bending and molding. Sunshine didn’t harden into durable plates all over your torso, your legs, into an entire suit of armor.
