Brimstone Angels

by Erin M. Evans

  “There is not another devil in the Hells as useless as you,” she snarled.

  Lorcan started to protest, but then a dark shape fluttered past the lamps.

  “Useless?” a voice as mellifluous as an angel’s said. “We are nearly there. He is in my grasp.”

  Invadiah surged onto her feet—hooves that had crushed demons and broken souls into dust—and bellowed up at the rafters, “Your grasp? And what is that worth?”

  Her eyes tracked the graceful female form that dropped to the ground, her dark wings raised. Red hair curled around the creature’s lovely face, as if the strands were alive.

  “Much, much more than what you have without me,” the succubus said. “Every other agent has fallen or been discovered. I’m all you have, because I’m the best.”

  The erinyes growled. “You are replaceable.”

  “By whom?”

  Invadiah towered over the succubus. “By anyone. By my daughters with their swords flaming.”

  The succubus chortled. “The time it takes to draw a breath, and the whole of Neverwinter would be screaming if your lovely daughters appeared. Trust me. You need one who can pass unnoticed.”

  “You’re taking too long with your skulking and secrets. I would be rid of you gladly.”

  The succubus shook her head, setting her ruby ringlets shivering. “I know too much,” she said saucily. “I might tell someone.”

  Invadiah moved like a striking serpent. She seized the succubus by the neck, her long black nails pressing into the creature’s pale throat, and slammed her against the wall. The succubus squawked.

  “Do you think that wise?” Invadiah purred.

  The succubus struggled and kicked her long, lovely legs, but the erinyes didn’t flinch.

  “You may be the archduchess’s only agent in Neverwinter, but you will always be replaceable, Rohini,” Invadiah hissed. “You don’t threaten Glasya. You don’t threaten me. And you don’t fly in my presence. Ever. Again.” She let the succubus fall to the floor and Lorcan’s stomach dropped.

  Rohini.

  Hells, he thought. He wondered if his mother knew just who she was picking a fight with.

  Rohini stood, rubbing her neck, her chest heaving. “I … beg your pardon, Lady Invadiah.” She made a tidy little curtsey. “I will press forward. The priest will have the proper connections within a few days.”

  “When you get back,” Invadiah corrected.

  Rohini’s red eyes flickered. “That will be dangerous. He isn’t Anthus. We cannot risk the Old Ones—”

  “Do not tell me what we cannot risk!” Invadiah said. “This is my undertaking. I know where we stand. If your initial target is dead, then you must make do with what you have. There is a reason Glasya chose you.”

  It was as close to a compliment as Lorcan had ever heard an erinyes bestow upon a succubus. Rohini’s eyebrow twitched—as close as he’d ever seen a succubus come to acknowledging the compliment of an erinyes.

  Unattractive succubi didn’t exist—as mutable as their forms were, how could they? Succubi were the consorts of archdevils, the infiltrators and spies of the lords themselves, corruptors of many on the mortal planes.

  Fantastic lays, Lorcan thought.

  But long ago, before Lorcan was born, the Hells had been at war against the demons of the Abyss … and in that time, the succubi fought on the demons’ side, the polar opposites and sworn enemies of the erinyes.

  That mad, demon spark, as far as Lorcan and most of the Hells were concerned, still lingered. You could see it in their eyes. It didn’t matter if they’d turned traitor just as Asmodeus rose to the godhood, ceding their blood and their offspring’s blood to the lord of the Ninth’s control, and—the rumors went—giving Asmodeus the last bit of power he needed to hurl the Abyss to the very farthest reaches of the Elemental Chaos, ending the war for good.

  Lorcan had his doubts about that—everyone claimed to have been the lynchpin of Asmodeus’s ascension. Sycophants, all of them.

  A slow smile curved Rohini’s lovely lips.

  “You have a visitor,” Rohini said softly, “Lady Invadiah.”

  His mother stiffened and looked over her shoulder. “Lorcan.”

  “Mother,” he said, stepping into the room. “And Rohini.”

  Rohini gave him a long, appraising look, as if she were assessing a cut of meat. No, he thought with a suppressed shudder, as if she were deciding which of his bones she should pluck out and suck the marrow free of first.

  Sycophants or not, succubi were dangerous. Especially—if the rumors were true—Rohini. Lorcan had heard the archduchess had sent Rohini alone into Stygia, the layer of Hell ruled by one of Glasya’s most hated enemies. What the succubus had found or done on those frozen plains, Lorcan didn’t know, but he’d heard she’d returned to Malbolge covered in blood and carrying the severed hands of one of Archduke Levistus’s prized commanders. There might be a spark of madness in her eyes, but she had to be devilishly clever to manage something like that.

  Lorcan knew better than to let her more obvious charms sway him. Rohini would eat him alive just to irritate Invadiah.

  Invadiah glared at him. “Where have you been?”

  “Toril.”

  His mother raised an eyebrow. “Out playing with your warlocks?”

  He didn’t react. “Something like that.”

  “Warlocks?” Rohini said. “How interesting.” Lorcan tensed.

  “He has a set,” Invadiah said, and as ever, Lorcan couldn’t tell if she was proud or mocking or enjoying putting him in a little peril. “A full thirteen.”

  “Well, well,” Rohini said. “A Toril Thirteen? How ever did you manage that? I’d thought the Kakistos line was all claimed or dead.” Lorcan tensed—Rohini didn’t collect warlocks, he was almost certain. But much like Sairché, she might very well collect secrets.

  “You really don’t expect me to tell you, do you?” Lorcan said and immediately regretted it. Her eyes took on an especially predaceous glint.

  “Oh, I expect you’d tell me anything I liked.”

  “Rohini,” Invadiah said. The succubus stopped, but the force of her charm hung in the air like a thousand darts caught midflight. The room was silent but for the screams of the damned outside. Lorcan held perfectly still.

  “You interrupted us,” Invadiah said.

  “My apologies,” he said. “I was merely coming to visit—which I see you don’t have time for; a pity—and to see if I might borrow one of your baubles.”

  “What do you want?”

  “The Rod of the Traitor’s Reprisal.”

  Invadiah frowned. “Are your toys fighting?”

  He shrugged. “I do have a rather rare heir to protect.”

  Invadiah stared out the window a long moment, drumming her nails against the armrest again. “Fine. Put it back when you’re done.”

  “Of course,” Lorcan said. He turned to go. Invadiah reached out and seized his arm in her iron grip.

  “What did you hear?” Invadiah asked.

  He cleared his throat. “I merely overheard you giving Rohini here, ah, lessons of etiquette.”

  Invadiah and Rohini both fixed him with burning eyes, and it was only the training of his entire life that kept him from flinching. He returned the gaze, if a little more insouciantly.

  “What benefits us, benefits Asmodeus,” Rohini said.

  “And what benefits Asmodeus benefits us all,” Lorcan said. A common enough saying in the Hells. “I’ll leave you to your … studies of the hierarchy, Rohini. Mother.”

  He left the room as swiftly as he could, not looking back and listening with particular intent to the chorus of screams rather than another word of the conversation coming from the softly pulsing room.

  Whatever Invadiah and Rohini were up to, they did not want him to know about it—and that was fine by Lorcan. He was no status seeker. With a human father, the hierarchy of the Hells was closed to him. While Rohini might please Glasya and earn her way to a tr
ansformation into an erinyes, and Invadiah to something greater still, Lorcan would always be a cambion, no matter whose boots he licked or whose schemes he chased.

  Luckily, it suits me, he thought, striding through the hallways of Osseia. His mother might think him a dabbler and a dandy, but at least he’d managed to never become her pawn.

  His path crossed a balcony that overlooked the Court of the Sixth, and Lorcan paused a moment. The archduchess herself perched on the throne, carved from the ivory that had been her predecessor’s teeth, her batlike wings curved around her like an icon’s niche. Coppery skinned and dark-haired, Glasya made Rohini look common. Glasya made everything look common. If corruption had a form, it was Glasya, and not a soul looked upon her that didn’t feel the urge to throw itself headlong into that corruption. She radiated like a star and she swallowed up the light around her. To look upon Glasya, Lord of the Sixth and Princess of the Hells, was a special sort of madness.

  Glasya regarded the prostrate barbed devil in front of her with a stony face, while a swarm of hellwasps swooped around her, enforcing the audience’s distance with their sword-length stingers and bladed legs. A pair of pit fiends the size of small hills flanked Glasya’s throne, all muscle and whips. Devils of a hundred sorts stood, perched, or hovered in audience, giving the unfortunate barbed devil a wide berth.

  Glasya tapped her scourge against the side of her throne as if counting time, while the creature before her shivered to the tips of the spikes that covered its black, muscular body. The barbed devils were the spy-hunters of the archduchess—tasked with hunting down intruders and agents of the other Lords of the Nine, the rulers of the layers of the Hells.

  This one had failed in its task apparently. If it was lucky, Lorcan thought, riveted, Glasya would demote it. If it wasn’t … Well, it had heard the intruder’s screams as well as Lorcan had.

  “May I never be so foolish,” he muttered to himself once more. You did not fail a Lord of the Nine—and if you did, you did not get caught holding the bag.

  I know too much, Rohini had said. I might tell someone.

  Do you think that wise? his mother had said. You don’t threaten Glasya.

  Lorcan shivered. Whatever they were up to, those comments made two things certain. First, it was on Glasya, the lord of the Sixth Layer’s orders. Whatever Rohini and Invadiah were doing in Neverwinter, the archduchess wanted it so. Getting in the way of Glasya was suicide. Second …

  I might tell someone.

  You don’t threaten Glasya.

  No one posed a true danger to Glasya except her father, Asmodeus, the lord of the Ninth Layer and the Risen God of Evil. The king of the Hells. The other lords might threaten her, other devils might pretend to her throne, but Glasya was Asmodeus’s only child. To threaten Glasya at this juncture, was to threaten him.

  “What benefits us, benefits Asmodeus,” Lorcan murmured. “And what benefits Asmodeus, benefits us all.” No devil—no sane devil—would stand against Asmodeus directly, but such a statement could cover up quite a lot of schemes.

  Lorcan shook his head. He wasn’t suited to being a pawn. He didn’t know anything. He didn’t need to know anything. He would simply stay out of it.

  Glasya waved her hand and the barbed devil’s muscles all contorted at once. It screamed as if Glasya were pulling its intestines out with tenacity and a single hooked finger. It twisted and howled, and finally with an explosion of energy—burning hot and thick as soot—the barbed devil tore itself apart with a sick, wet rip. Lorcan flinched against the burning wind.

  When it subsided, he looked back to the place where the barbed devil had been. There, in the tattered, bloody midst of its former body, a smaller form twitched. It jerked against the spent frame, tearing muscles, until it finally broke free and stretched delicate batlike wings. The shorter, softer quills that covered its body bristled, flinging gore over the assembled audience.

  “Let that be a lesson to you,” Glasya said. She spoke to the newly reborn spined devil, but every other creature there took the warning for their own: the Lady of Malbolge was not to be crossed.

  “You are most kind and generous, your grace,” the diminished creature gasped.

  Lorcan shuddered again, and moved away from the balcony. The archduchess had been generous. She’d only demoted the devil, which meant it could earn its way back to the rank it had previously held—if, that is, the assembled audience forgot its failure. He left the palace and headed across the field toward the armory.

  Something dripped on him from above as he passed under the overhang of the entryway. Red spots smattered his already filthy sleeve. He glanced up in disgust.

  Above, the sharpened fangs that fringed the gates of Osseia impaled a pair of humans in robes. They weren’t foolish enough to wear their allegiances on their sleeves, but these were almost certainly Glasya’s intruders—and just as certainly, they had been cultists of another Lord of the Nine. The one on the left, a man of middling years, twitched, his body not quite finished dying.

  Should Lorcan ever be so stupid as to displease the Lady of Malbolge, here was his fate. There was nowhere in the hierarchy for a half-devil to fall.

  Invadiah kept her treasury in one of the tall bone-spires that rose out of Malbolge’s poisoned ground. Venomous flowers twined their way over the pitted surface, fed by the streams of shimmering effluvia that shifted and changed day to day, hour to hour. The ruddy ground, much like the halls of Osseia, lived. When they finished being an example to all, someone would throw the corpses on the fangs of Osseia to Malbolge, and slowly, the Sixth Layer would absorb them.

  Lorcan picked his way across the suppurating ground and entered the tower that held his mother’s treasury. Two erinyes perched on either side of the inner door, batting a dead lemure back and forth between them like a ball with the flats of their swords, keeping it from resting too long on the hungry ground.

  “Nemea,” Lorcan said tensely. “Aornos.”

  His half-sisters spared him no more than a glance, but he had hardly blinked before red-haired Aornos had maneuvered herself behind him, planting him between the two fierce warriors. He looked up at Nemea, who was slimmer than Invadiah and bore a ragged scar across her chest.

  “Come to borrow more of mother’s things?” she said, reversing her grip on the sword.

  “At her offer,” he said smoothly. “Let me pass?”

  “Sairché was looking for you,” Aornos said behind him. “Said we should tell her if you showed up.”

  “Sounds like our baby sister found a secret of yours,” Nemea crooned.

  Lorcan gave an exaggerated sigh. “All she found was that I don’t want to seduce a mortal with her in audience. Where did she say she’d be?”

  “She didn’t,” Nemea said.

  “You’ll have to hope she finds you,” Aornos added.

  “Or that she doesn’t,” Nemea finished.

  “Fine,” Lorcan said. “Open the doors then and let me finish my business.”

  Nemea smirked at him, thinking—no doubt—that she could crush him with no trouble at all. Invadiah might not even care.

  Might, Lorcan thought, is the important word.

  Nemea stepped aside and pulled the door open for Lorcan. As he passed, she cracked the back of his legs with the flat of her sword, much to Aornos’s amusement. Lorcan flinched, but didn’t deign to cry out.

  “Don’t forget, little brother,” Aornos called as he descended the winding stairway down to the treasury, “only what Invadiah agreed to. Wouldn’t want to have to turn your pockets.”

  Godsdamned erinyes, he thought. Better Nemea and Aornos than the elite of the pradixikai. Invadiah’s favorites chased down oath-breakers and those who deceived the archduchess. Nemea and Aornos weren’t skilled enough or intelligent enough for the pradixikai.

  Still, Lorcan was intelligent enough not to test them.

  At the base of the stairs, there was a door made of bone, and crisscrossed with bindings of a sinew strong as steel.
Lorcan laid his hand upon the seal in the center. It gave slightly and shivered at his touch before the sinews slithered out of their sockets and back toward the center, releasing the door.

  Had Sairché known he was lying? he wondered. Bedding some tiefling was nothing, after all. An heir of Bryseis Kakistos was … well, nothing to most devils. But for collectors, Farideh would be priceless. If Sairché figured out who Farideh was, there were a fair number of devils in the Hells who would pay her dearly for the information.

  They would still have to lure Farideh away, he thought as he passed rows of sharp and shining blades. And he’d been careful to make sure Farideh didn’t want to leave, even if someone explained how.

  Assuming she was safe. Assuming he got rid of that inconvenient acolyte. Assuming he was right about what Farideh wanted anymore.

  How old are you?

  Lorcan grit his teeth. He shouldn’t be rattled by a warlock or by such a stupid question. He was the one who did the rattling—and as soon as the orc caught up to them, Farideh would be plenty rattled and in no mood to be pushing him and his pact away.

  Perhaps he ought to have told the orc to leave Havilar be as well. After all, if anything should happen to Farideh, Havilar was his only possible replacement. Then again, he mused, if Havilar died, it made Farideh even more valuable.

  He shook his head. It wasn’t his decision to make, anyway—Farideh would protect Havilar to her final breath. As long as Farideh had the tools to stop the orc from harming her, Havilar would be fine. And if Sairché turned out to be too much trouble after all, well, then she might as well have Havilar instead, and good luck to her.

  “There,” he said, spotting the Rod of the Traitor’s Reprisal’s telltale quartz tip. “This one.”