Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3)

by Brian J Moses

  “Damn it to Hell,” Birch muttered.

  Unarmed, Birch nevertheless approached the Angel of Death from his left side even as Danner closed in from the right. They were almost on him when, at the last possible second, the gray angel spun face-up and abruptly veered off straight toward the ground, then curved to double-back the way they’d come.

  Birch wheeled in the air and plummeted after him a half-second after Danner.

  Somewhere inside Birch, he felt something awaken and he realized it was Kaelus himself. The encounter with the angel was stirring the demon from his partial confinement inside Birch, and the Gray paladin couldn’t decide if this would be a good thing or not. Certainly, Kaelus’s power might be of some help in tracking down and stopping the angel, but Birch couldn’t afford the distraction of having the demon’s consciousness competing for his attention.

  Abruptly the Angel of Death shifted direction again and dropped like a stone, vanishing between two buildings. Danner chased after in mindless pursuit, but Birch wheeled to the side and approached from another direction, trying to anticipate the gray angel’s moves.

  “Thanatos!” Danner called in challenge as he turned a corner to where the angel had disappeared. “Come face me!”

  The death angel didn’t respond. Not that Birch actually thought he would. It was the height of arrogance and stupidity to respond to taunts and challenges such as that.

  Birch turned a corner and tumbled end-over-end as he twisted desperately to avoid an attack. An ethereal, crystalline sword slashed out from the shadows and nearly took his head off; instead, it scored a hit on Birch’s right wing, and he bit back a cry of pain as the blade struck into the demonic āyus growing within him. He crashed into a nearby building and nearly went through the wall as a large chunk of stone broke free and shattered on the street beneath him.

  “A demon!” the Angel of Death hissed in sudden hatred, then launched himself after Birch, sword ready for another attack.

  Just then Danner struck like a bolt of blue lightning. He crashed into the gray angel and the two careened out of control toward the city streets below. Birch braced himself on the building and launched himself down after them.

  Danner and the death angel had both lost their weapons and were now lashing out with fists and feet, heedless of the quickly approaching ground. Birch saw Danner land a few solid blows, including a head-butt to the other’s chin, but it was clear the Angel of Death was on the winning end of the aerial battle.

  They separated long enough for Danner to peel off to the side and the Angel of Death to arrest his break-neck descent, which gave Birch a clear chance to attack.

  He struck the gray-winged Seraph from behind and quickly twisted the other’s arms behind him before he could react. Birch wrapped his legs forward and locked up the angel’s legs, immobilizing both of them. The angel threw his head back trying to strike Birch, but he twisted out of the way. Six angelic gray wings writhed beneath Birch like a nest of serpents, and his skin burned everywhere he touched the angel’s flesh, but he held on grimly.

  Birch pumped his wings like mad, trying to single-handedly halt their descent, but he was still unfamiliar with the nuances of flight, and trying to concentrate on the motions only made it harder for him to do. Thus far, he’d been relying solely on instinct.

  “Danner, help!” he shouted.

  Immediately, his nephew was there, but there was little he could do besides hold on to Birch and try to slow their descent. Too distracted by their flight, Birch took his attention away from his grip for the barest of seconds to focus on his wings, but it was enough for the death angel to exploit.

  The gray angel twisted in his grasp, breaking Birch’s hold as he quickly dropped out of sight below them. Birch and Danner parted and touched down to the ground, only to have the Angel of Death suddenly appear right behind Danner, sword miraculously back in-hand and raised to strike. The crystalline blade swept toward Danner’s unprotected neck.

  The demonic stirring inside Birch intensified, and he felt a burning sensation in his throat as Kaelus suddenly assumed control of Birch’s body and voice.

  “Mikal, no!” Kaelus-Birch screamed.

  The death angel’s sword stopped a hair’s breadth from Danner’s throat, and he looked at Birch in shock.

  “Who are you?” the angel asked. “I know that voice.” Danner quickly twisted out of the way and retreated, watching the interaction in confusion as he stared warily at the Angel of Death.

  “Have the eons dulled your senses?” Kaelus-Birch asked, and Birch was surprised to hear the demon laugh. “Or perhaps it’s merely this shell you don’t recognize. Look within and see the one you once called friend.”

  The Angel of Death looked deep into Birch’s flame-filled eyes, then suddenly he gasped.

  “Kaelus!” he said in surprise. “It can’t be you. You were destroyed eons ago.”

  Kaelus-Birch chuckled.

  “I’m not so easy to destroy as that,” he said. “I wasn’t naive enough to follow in Abdiel’s footsteps, but neither was I smart enough to get away in time.”

  The two immortals stared at each other for a long moment.

  “By the Almighty, it is you, Kaelus!”

  “Indeed, it is, Mikal,” Kaelus-Birch said. With no control over his body, Birch could only watch passively as the demon within him strode toward the gray angel. Despite everything that had already happened that night – the revelation of the Angel of Death among them, Birch’s demonic wings, the harrowing flight through the city – the greatest shock of all came when the angel and the demon within Birch embraced.

  There was a sizzling of energy, and they both flinched at the contact but held on anyway. Kaelus-Birch clapped the Angel of Death soundly on the back one last time, then held him at arm’s length and grinned at the angel.

  “Speaking of the Almighty, what in name of all that’s holy and damned do you think you’re doing here? Shouldn’t you be leading the front lines and defending the Throne?”

  Chapter 9

  Faith is not assent to the propositions of a creed, nor belief in an orthodox opinion. Faith is a leap in the dark toward a reality based solely on trust.

  - Ventuveris,

  “Modern Faith” (1027 AM)

  - 1 -

  The presence of an honest-to-God angel among them, much less the Angel of Death, left most of the assembled mortals in a sort of shocked awe. By now, all of Shadow Company was used to Danner’s immortal heritage and the abilities and appearance it gave him, but Danner was also one of them. He was their friend, their comrade. This gray angel was something else entirely.

  The six-winged Seraph had an otherworldly beauty about him, a sort of perfection in his shining blond hair and finely chiseled features that had the effect of making him look almost too good.

  There’s no such thing as a “perfect” human appearance, Marc thought to himself. Interesting then that his perfection becomes more of a parody.

  The gray angel turned and looked at Marc with a knowing smile, and Marc hurriedly clamped down on his thoughts.

  Can he read my mind? Marc wondered in spite of himself. I know some demons have that ability, but I don’t know if I’ve ever read anything specifically about angels.

  Living amongst mind-readers had taught all the non-denarae in Shadow Company to guard their thoughts closely and even to shield them somewhat from casual mental probes. A denarae with any ability and an ounce of determination could punch through their mental barriers easily, but practice had at least enabled them to keep their thoughts from screaming out constantly as most other humans’ thoughts did.

  Just in case, Marc ran himself through a series of mental exercises designed to help reduce the “mental noise” – as Brican put it – emanating from his thoughts.

  “Never in my entire life,” Michael whispered distractedly in Marc’s general direction without taking his eyes off of the Seraph, “did I imagine I would meet my namesake. My family has a tradition of naming
sons after angels. My father was Gabriel, and his father was Raphelus, after the Seraph Raphael. I was named after… him.”

  “An ill omen, to name your children after the slain,” Mikal said, and even his voice sounded perfect: rich in timbre, a deep baritone, and a sense of lingering power under every syllable.

  “The what?” Michael asked, surprised the Seraph had heard him.

  “My brother and sister angels, Gabriel and Raphael – both Seraphim – fell during the Great Schism,” the death angel replied. “Raphael fell during the war to a demonic ambush. And Gabriel… Gabriel was by far the most powerful of all the immortals, and it was his influence that kept hostilities to a minimum for eons. Gabriel was the first to fall, and it was his death that touched off the war in Pleroma. They were both…” Mikal hesitated, “friends of mine.”

  “We were close, the six of us,” Birch said, his voice husky and filled with hidden power. Marc now knew this signified that Kaelus was speaking through Birch, shunting the Gray paladin’s awareness to the side.

  “Mikal…”

  “Huh?” the Yellow paladin said, shaking his head slightly as he shifted his attention from the Seraph to Birch.

  “Not you, that one,” Kaelus-Birch said, pointing to the gray angel.

  “Oh.”

  “Mikal, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Abdiel, and I were all close friends in Pleroma,” Kaelus-Birch said, lingering over the final word as though tasting it.

  “What is Pleroma?” Flasch asked. The Violet paladin was reclining against the wall near the fireplace, a mug of steaming cahve in hand.

  “Pleroma is… was the name of the immortal plane before it was sundered during the Great Schism,” Kaelus-Birch said. “Originally, we all lived in the same plane of existence, more or less peacefully. Good and Evil were mere abstracts then, not the earth-shattering moral imperatives they have since become. To us, who had and still have no true free will of our own, they were a curiosity almost, concepts we discussed in our free time the way poets discuss love and war.”

  “They were a sort of political distinction to us,” Mikal added in his rich voice. “The way you mortals call yourselves subject to this king or that. Our kings were the Almighty God and the Dark One, Shaitan.[14] For a time, it didn’t seem to matter which you followed.”

  “What happened?” Garnet asked softly. His legs were stretched out in front of him on a bench turned perpendicular from the table he was leaning against. Perklet had gotten to him in time to heal all of the physical damage he’d suffered, but Garnet was still weak from his brush with Death.

  “No one really knows,” the gray angel replied, shaking his head.

  “God and Shaitan looked into the future and saw the possibilities of what would happen if the two actually came in conflict,” Kaelus-Birch said, and the gray angel looked at him sharply in surprise. “They saw the life, the sentient life that would result from the recombination of the two and agreed to allow the Great Schism.” He frowned. “Perhaps agreed is not the right word. There was no conversation, no accord between them, they simply reached the same conclusion and willed the enmity to build, independent of any input from their counterpart, but still knowing the other was doing the same.”

  “How do you know this, Kaelus?” the Seraph asked.

  “I spent eons trapped in Hell, old friend,” Kaelus-Birch replied with a fierce sort of smile. The smile showed more teeth than Birch’s usual, more-reserved expression, and it looked odd on the paladin’s face. “For centuries at a time, I was trapped in isolation. Every so often, though, I’d have a visitor.”

  “Who?” Danner asked. He leaned against a support pillar near the door, the same pillar where he’d earlier seen the Angel of Death standing. Alicia was at his side, an arm encircling his waist as he draped one over her shoulder.

  “None other than Shaitan Himself,” Kaelus-Birch replied with a wry smile.

  “You spoke with the Dark One?” Mikal gasped. His wings rustled restlessly at his back, and the uppermost pair half-spread in alarm.

  “Not that I had a choice, but yes.”

  “You may know more of the mind of our enemy than anyone, then.”

  Garnet shifted uncomfortably against the table and reached for a nearby mug of cahve, which turned out to be empty. All of the housekeeping staff of the Iron Axe had been directed to stay in the denarae camp outside the city walls for the night, so Garnet raised his mug slightly and looked for who was closest to the kitchens.

  “Michael?” he said softly.

  “Yes?” the Seraph said, turning to regard him.

  “Sorry, my Michael, not you,” Garnet said. The Yellow paladin nodded and disappeared into the kitchens for a moment. He reemerged with a large pot of cahve, which he set over the common-room fire so they would have more of the potent, bark-colored liquid on-hand. This promised to be a long night.

  “Can we call you something other than Mikal?” Flasch asked. “I don’t mean to give offense,” he said hastily, “it’s just that, well, we’ve known our Michael much longer than we’ve known you, so the name sort of sticks to him. It’s going to get really confusing, otherwise.”

  Michael was closest to Flasch, and he looked at Garnet questioningly, one hand half-extended toward Flasch. Garnet shook his head, hiding a smile.

  The Seraph smiled slightly to show he took no offense. “You may call me Thanatos, if you must,” he said.

  “Death,” Marc murmured.

  “Yes, what happened to Uriel? Why did he relinquish his position to you as the Angel of Death?” Kaelus-Birch asked. He glanced pointedly at the crystalline sword hanging at Mikal’s side, which the Seraph immediately drew for them all to behold. The hilt gleamed like polished silver and was intricately crafted like spread angel wings, but masterfully designed to be functional in its beauty. This was no prop or show piece, it was made to be used in battle. The transparent blade looked fragile, but they’d all seen the wounds created by the sword and knew it could shear through steel like so much paper.

  “He refused to do it,” Mikal said, staring fixedly at the scintillating sword as he slowly turned the blade in his hands. “He cast down his sword and stormed out in anger. I was appointed in his stead. Death. That has been my title ever since I accepted this unhappy and terrible mission,” the Seraph said, his voice melancholic. “It is not a position I relish, but it must be done, for the sake of the higher good.”

  “You were there when we were attacking the demons,” Garnet said warily. “You slew those paladins then.”

  Mikal nodded. “Ease your thoughts on one point, young paladin, for I had nothing to do with your father’s brush with mortality.”

  Garnet stared at him, then nodded and some of the tension went out of his body.

  “Wait,” Danner said with an angry frown, “unless I’m mistaken, your mission here was to murder virtuous warriors.” Mikal nodded. “Why?”

  “Their souls!” Flasch said, snapping his fingers. They all looked at him. “Good men go to Heaven, right? When they die, I mean. So if you want to reinforce your ranks in Heaven, how do you do it? You kill off good men, and I imagine warriors are preferable to common shepherds, so when they die, you get a fresh new soldier ready to fight.”

  They turned to Mikal, who nodded grimly. Their expressions all darkened – they had known some of the men who’d died, and they had nearly lost one of their best friends to this morbid doctrine of necessity. Marc had already reached this same conclusion, as had many of the others, he suspected, but he’d shied away from tackling the thought head-on and confronting the angel with his mission. One didn’t simply accuse an angel of murder.

  “What I don’t understand is why it should be necessary,” Flasch said, frowning. “I don’t think there’s that many more men with evil hearts than good in this world, so why…” he trailed off, deep in thought.

  Brican cleared his throat as if to speak, but Garnet waved him quiet for a moment.

  “Shhh,” Garnet said, “don’t interrupt hi
s strain of thought.”

  Still apparently lost in thought, Flasch calmly stood and crossed the room to Garnet. Before anyone could say anything, Flasch deliberately reached out one hand and smacked the Red paladin upside the back of his head, then calmly walked back to his seat at the fireplace and sat down again.

  Danner, Michael, and the other officers of Shadow Company stared alternately at the two men for a long moment, then abruptly burst out laughing. Alicia and Moreen – who was sitting near, but not next to, Birch – joined in the laughter, while Birch, Perklet, and Mikal looked on in silent bewilderment.

  “Now, if that’s out of your system,” Flasch said, and they all quieted, “I’d like to hear from our new friend, the Angel of Death, why it is Heaven feels it necessary to slay paladins to fight in their war.”

  There was no hint of mirth or playfulness in Flasch, and his words leeched the warmth from the room brought about by his turning the tables on Garnet.

  The members of Shadow Company, who knew Flasch best, stared at him in surprise at the tone of hostility in his voice. No one could think of a time when they’d seen the Violet paladin lose his temper, or even show more than minor annoyance at something. His perpetual light-heartedness made Flasch almost as unflappable as Michael, who as a Yellow paladin exuded the virtue of temperance.

  With a flash of insight, Marc realized it had everything to do with the fact that Flasch was a Violet paladin. The Violet Facet embodied the virtue of piety – proper respect for God. They had all just learned that the powers-that-be in Heaven, the incarnations of Goodness, had authorized the wholesale slaughter of virtuous mortals in order to strengthen their armies. They had ordered a Heavenly assassin to come to the mortal plane and murder soldiers who had devoted their lives to protecting the virtues and ideals of God and Heaven. Such a betrayal would hurt all of them when it truly sunk in.

  How would it affect the faith of their friend Flasch?