Covenant

by Sabrina Benulis

  Lilith stared him down harder. “Spare me your preaching,” she said with sudden and dangerous softness. “I could say the same about you concerning his sister. Look at you. My son’s handsome face disfigured by a Jinn.” She walked closer and cradled Python’s cheek, caressing the wound with motherly tenderness.

  Python turned away from her, but she persisted and he gave in, closing his eyes and swallowing.

  Lilith stopped her caresses and tapped his cheek harshly. “You are just what the Book has called you—a fool who will fall victim to his own ambitions. And all because Naamah succeeded in so many ways where you did not.”

  Python opened his eyes, a truly wounded and angry look tightening his face. “What I do—I do for all demons,” he hissed under his breath. “Now what have you done for us lately? Besides throwing your affluent pleasure parties?”

  Lilith shook her head and laughed. “Parties that you consistently crash uninvited,” she said smoothly. “How dare you use my chambers as part of your little rat maze. How dare you spy on my servants, and on me. Do you think I don’t notice you? Do you think I don’t feel your eyes on me at every silent moment? Or hear your pleading voice, begging for my affection?”

  Python’s face became even tighter. He breathed hard as Lilith leaned in closer.

  She was tall, strikingly beautiful, and if only for the fact that she was his mother, completely beyond his reach.

  “I will win,” he said at last, with eyes suggesting he was sure of himself.

  “How?” Lilith demanded.

  Python didn’t smile, but his tone sounded confident. “Do you understand what the Archon’s visions meant? She is more powerful than Lucifel. She is one step below the Father. No—perhaps equal to him. And I needed to know what I was dealing with, because I proclaim right now with complete faith in myself that I will watch the Archon destroy Lucifel. I will see Angela Mathers ascend to the Throne of Hell. I will nurture her, and the trust she has in me, and then I will kill her when she’s past her pitiful usefulness and rule Hell. With you, Mother, as my chief slave.”

  Lilith drew back, a disappointed expression washing over her face. “You’re insane,” she murmured. “Why didn’t I kill you when you were a chick? I always knew you were an abomination.”

  Python closed his eyes, wounded even more than before. But his face was as steely as ever. “Don’t count Angela Mathers out just yet. With her, I will show you a new world. Starting NOW.”

  Sophia couldn’t help herself anymore. She had to watch, she could do nothing, and for either her or Angela, it was the end.

  Python knew too much.

  “ANGELA,” she screamed in a piercing voice, her soul shuddering with pain. “ANGELA!” Sophia turned to Python, her soul burning with anger. “STOP IT!”

  Python must have had enough. He grabbed Sophia, ripping off the fabric that had tied back her wrists. Clasping Sophia’s white sapphire star pendant, he regarded it with a cold smirk. He let it drop back against her chest. “Demands from a prisoner aren’t quite so intimidating, my dear. How long has it been,” he whispered to her, “since you’ve seen what Hell is really like? Do you remember your old master? She’s been waiting for you. Perhaps it’s time for a family visit?”

  Lilith stepped back into the shadows with a sigh of ludicrous disgust. Something in her had given up on her son, but it wasn’t wicked enough to kill him. She was just leaving him to his fate as she saw it.

  Sophia screamed one more terrible time.

  Python’s triumph was in his words. He dragged Sophia out of the room. “Lucifel awaits.”

  Thirty-two

  Traveling through that meager portion of Hell, I realized something sorrowful. With the odds against them the demons had worked to capture whatever light was left to them in a world of endless darkness. —ANGELA MATHERS

  The Kirin continued on until Angela thought her entire life was nothing but dust, hunger, thirst, and pain. Her body ached and throbbed in the saddle, and her leg muscles screamed with stiffness. Yet Kim galloped ahead without any signs of weariness, riding his Kirin like he owned it. Well, his foster father was a demon. Kim had probably experienced many things Angela would never know or completely understand. Just like how she didn’t know or completely understand Kim himself.

  He was risking his life to take Angela to Lucifel and put her on Lucifel’s Throne. That demanded some kind of gratefulness on her part.

  Even so, she couldn’t help worrying about him. Angela had slapped Kim across the face, but in reality she’d been slapping her old self reflected back at her. They were too much alike. He was making the same mistakes she had made in her past, and might even be throwing his life away for a dream she couldn’t share.

  Under better circumstances, maybe they could have lived happily side by side. But this was a different world, and no matter what Kim believed, peace wouldn’t come for either of them just because Angela sat on a Throne she never wanted.

  He was too much of a dreamer.

  Angela tried to breathe away the tightness in her chest. There was no denying it. The connection between their souls was there. She felt for Kim, and perhaps in some way loved him. So the next thought struck her with horror: what if that connection went wrong and her ascent in any particular direction meant Kim’s fall?

  Fears she couldn’t fight any longer attacked her mind from every direction, and as they did, Angela’s soul threatened to bleed away. She tugged on her Kirin’s reins in terror, desperately trying to spring ahead while more ghostly riders caught up to them again. The idea of finding Nina among those ghostly riders was like a knife to the heart, but Angela couldn’t help glancing at the riders who swerved in closer. At times, she clutched at her pendant so fiercely it cut into her palm. With her awful luck, the pendant would break off and disappear beneath thousands of thundering Kirin paws.

  Finally, an enormous stone bridge tipped by spires and lights loomed ahead of them. It spanned in an immense arc reaching from one corner of the city to the other. Angela held her breath and waited for a trap, but their Kirin galloped beneath the bridge without meeting any resistance. No demons walked across it. No guards stood watch. Perhaps the army pursuing her was enough.

  Angela swallowed nervously as the bridge’s black shadow passed swiftly over them and dropped back into the distance.

  She tried to steal more glances at their surroundings, but they were clearly speeding into the lowest part of the city, and between their pace and the darkness, it was becoming harder to see. Kim continued to navigate without any difficulty, steering his Kirin and Angela’s in the direction of a great tunnel marked by enormous pillars, directly at the forefront of Babylon. Now what little signs of civilization there had been dropped off dramatically. The Styx River flowed right through the tunnel’s center, but he and Angela were able to gallop along a rocky bank bordering the river on its right.

  Angela coughed. Every breath of this awful fog was like inhaling thousands of pins.

  They continued, and familiar hieroglyphic writing covered the walls. The symbols grew more arcane and terrible looking with time. Pentagrams glowed everywhere in brilliant, pulsing red.

  More pillars flanked Angela and Kim, and the ground sloped down steeply.

  They halted beneath an obsidian arch, and Angela grunted as the saddle’s pommel dug into her stomach. Kim turned his Kirin around, his pale face looking bloody in the dim light. Angela’s Kirin did the same. She parted her lips, already feeling a question on them.

  The army was gone.

  Noise and cries of frustration echoed from far away near the tunnel’s opening. But no ghost or demon appeared willing to cross the barrier between Angela and the beginning of what had to be Lucifel’s Altar. Kim dropped from his Kirin and let go of the reins, and the beast snorted and pawed at the ground. Its lean flanks dripped with sweat. Cold blue light flickered along its body and streaks of blood stained the sides of its horn.

  Angela’s Kirin responded to its mate by stamping the g
round impatiently. Angela slid off its back and dropped to the rocks, shouting as her sore feet met the ground.

  Her hand burned.

  Angela dropped the blue dagger she’d been grasping and it collapsed into a puddle on the stone. Blue liquid trickled through the dirt in rivulets. She cradled her hand, covering the throbbing Grail with the other, wincing at the pain. Her mind flashed to Camdon’s relieved face after she struck his ghost with the blade, and a scream threatened to work its way out of her. But it wouldn’t bring him back, and there was no point in letting Kim see how awful she felt. Angela leaned against the rocks, trying just to breathe and stand. Her head pounded, her heart ached, her entire body sighed painfully.

  Angela’s Kirin cantered nervously, pawing at the ground. Suddenly, it gave a fierce cry and raced back toward the army, far away from Lucifel. Its paws thundered against the earth, kicking up dust. Soon, it disappeared with its fearsome mate in a haze of fog.

  Angela licked her dry, cracked lips. Her chest felt hollow. She was about to find Sophia—or so she hoped—but too much still stood in her way. For Sophia’s sake, she couldn’t allow it.

  She and Kim stared at each other.

  Why did he have to look at Angela like she was so cruel? Kim was the person in the wrong. Not her.

  “I won’t sit on Lucifel’s Throne,” Angela said after a long pause. She stumbled, still trying to catch her breath and get used to the ground staying firm beneath her feet again. “I won’t, Kim. You can’t persuade me or change my mind. So I’ll let you choose. Help me rescue Sophia and get out of here. Or . . .”

  “Or?” he whispered, his gaze piercing through her.

  Angela shook her head. “You know I won’t kill you. I can’t. I’m not like . . .”

  “Me?” he finished for her again. Kim’s starkly handsome face actually looked gaunt in the terrible light. He rubbed his forehead, his temples. “Angela,” he said, pacing in anguish. “You don’t understand. This is your chance to change things.”

  A deep groan shuddered through the earth. Pebbles dribbled from the ceiling.

  Kim stopped and they looked at each other again. “There isn’t much time,” he said. “A month or two—maybe less. If you kill Lucifel and open Sophia, we can start here. Change things from below, and work up. Python promised me he would help you, Angela. He is on our side. He doesn’t believe in Lucifel’s role as a god anymore either. I once did—when I was young and foolish. But I can’t be led like a child anymore. Things need to change.”

  “A new revolution?” Angela said. “That sounds too much like a repeat of Lucifel’s destiny. I don’t see how it will change anything. Besides—I don’t know how to open Sophia.”

  “Lucifel does,” Kim whispered. “Why else do you think she wants you down here?”

  “You don’t know that for sure,” Angela shot back. Pain cut through her soul like a rusty saw.

  What would it mean for Sophia to be opened? Angela never considered that enough.

  “That poem I left for you,” Kim said. “It’s the truth, Angela. You will be the Ruin. The Ruin of one universe and the beginning of another. It’s only humanity’s fault that it can’t understand the necessity of change.”

  “Raziel chose a human as the Archon for precisely that reason,” Angela shouted. “Because we look at things differently than angels or demons! Sophia is not a ‘thing,’ Kim. She has feelings. She should have a say in her own fate.” Angela caught her breath. Words should have been helping her, but they only made everything feel more hopeless. “In that poem, the Archon is also known by the word ‘Covenant.’ Isn’t a covenant a promise between friends? Well, Raziel made a promise to the Jinn, to everyone. He died for that promise. I intend to keep it. And I intend to keep my promise to Sophia. It’s the bonds between people that change everything. Not war and bloodshed. Not petty rivalries where a throne passes from one damaged soul to the next.”

  Kim shook his head. He wasn’t quite putting faith in her words, obviously struggling with the validity of her argument.

  “I won’t let you free Lucifel, Kim,” Angela said with finality. “Let her stay caged. That’s the punishment she deserves, after all.”

  “For what?” he shouted back at her now. “For believing in a different world?”

  “No,” Angela said. “For turning her back on it. But I’m not like her. I’m not running away anymore, or chasing after dreams. Angels or no angels. Raziel told me once that I was living for someone else. I have to believe him.”

  Kim paused. He looked at Angela with surprise.

  “You love her, don’t you?” he whispered with real pain in his voice. His eyes widened.

  “Who?” Angela shouted.

  “Sophia.”

  Lightning could have struck Angela. Pain, and fire, and a clear light passed through her all at once. She paused, her heart galloping faster than a Kirin. “There are all different kinds of love,” she said after a while. “You can’t equate my friendship with Sophia to what we—”

  “If you say so,” he said, smiling sadly. He ran his fingers through his long black bangs.

  Angela breathed hard, grasping for her necklace. The tiny pendant rested against her skin like a cold star. Her loyalty to Sophia wasn’t at all like the feelings she had for Kim or Israfel. It was something completely different, even if she couldn’t quite explain how. There was also no use in trying.

  “It’s beyond the point,” Angela said at last. She hung her head. The temptation to sleep and block out the world forever was clawing at her, and she couldn’t let it win. “I can’t let you get farther than this, Kim. Not if you won’t change your mind, and I know you won’t.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kim said sadly. He turned aside. “You don’t really have a choice.”

  “Why not?”

  Python’s face appeared parallel with Angela’s. He gripped her firmly from behind, his warm hands locked tightly around her wrists. The demon’s voice was keen as a knife. “Because”—Python whispered in her ear—“great minds think alike.”

  Thirty-three

  I resolved on returning Heaven to its former glory. Certainly, the memories that lived within me were also my mission. —ISRAFEL

  Israfel could feel the blood drain out of his body slowly. Life escaped from him second by second. It would be a long while until he actually died, but these humans had time on their side. He gasped for air, trying to ignore the burning cuts of their knives on his wings. By now they probably resembled Raziel’s when the angel fell to his death.

  Israfel wanted to tell Raziel they would be together soon, but there were no words left inside of him.

  Besides, Raziel was protecting the Archon. How could he possibly hear?

  Instead, Israfel dreamed. His mind flashed to those moments of his life when he had gazed at the Father, seeing his Creator for the first time. Why had there always seemed to be a secret behind those burning eyes? Why had the Father always looked at Israfel with that terrible longing mixed with fear? Israfel had time enough back then to try and figure it out. With Raziel dead and Lucifel gone, the Father had caged his remaining child Israfel in Ialdaboth and done what he had pleased to Israfel so often, all sense of freedom had vanished.

  The testament to that horror lingered within him.

  Israfel wrapped his arms around his stomach, trying to protect the last treasure left to salvage everything. He had thought Angela had been crying out for him. Perhaps he had been wrong all along and the voice Israfel heard had been his own. Something in Angela’s mysterious soul had merely been reflecting back part of his.

  What tied them together? Why was it so hard for him to give up?

  You are special, Israfel, Raziel’s gentle voice said from his memories. The Supernal angel reappeared before Israfel’s mind, still dressed in his beautiful blue coat studded with gems. Raziel’s handsome face overflowed with compassion. Lucifel may not understand you. But I do. There is always more to people, Israfel. So there is more to you—ev
en if all of Heaven believes that they know you inside and out. Don’t be afraid to live as that part of yourself. Don’t be afraid of who you were meant to be.

  But Israfel was afraid. He’d wanted to be normal and whole like Raziel and Lucifel from the start. Instead, he was something in between. Neither truly male or female, he’d been cruelly destined to live in a world defined by others’ perceptions and his own desires. “He” and “she’” had become words both defining and imprisoning him, and when Israfel referred to himself as one term, the opposite half of his identity suffered. That suffering eventually taught him to live like a chameleon, favoring the identity most helpful in any circumstance. Finally, and most sadly of all, it ended with becoming what he hoped Raziel loved most.

  You are wonderful, Raziel’s voice said, echoing gently within Israfel. Lucifel and I cannot match you. Only in you is the reflection of the Father seen most clearly.

  If that was true, why did Israfel think of himself with horror? All the jewels, makeup, clothing, and fawning angels in the world hadn’t been enough to make up for the reality of how he saw himself. The mirror had always been his greatest enemy. The smiles and desires of others had been his greatest pain. There had been so few exceptions to that rule—but there were still some. Israfel thought of his guardian Thrones Rakir and Nunkir, and their fanatically loyal love. He thought of Tress Cassel’s compassion in the face of danger. He thought of Angela Mathers, who had given her heart to Israfel with so much trust.

  Had he betrayed that trust?

  He would certainly betray it by dying. The Archon’s purpose lay with him, and he was about to leave her alone again.

  Never before had such weakness swept through him. Not even when Lucifel knelt above him, cried out triumphantly, and infected Israfel with her own shadow.

  You can’t always be so selfish, Israfel, Raziel said, laughing. They were playing together in his memories as chicks. Israfel had flipped their game angrily when it became clear he was losing. It felt much better simply not to play. But Raziel put the pieces back, offering for Israfel to start their game again. He smiled gently. Sometimes, you need to lose a little before you can learn how to win.