I shrugged, trying to ignore the agonised screams of Canterbury’s last survivors on the wind, the glow of blazing buildings that turned the night into a weak dawn.
“It’s...a little odd, hearing you talk so freely about love,” I told her, and she smiled weakly at me.
“You forget, my son, that to be a fallen angel one must first have been an angel,” she explained. “I know far more of love than you might think, my child.”
We stopped on the grass, and Celeste stretched languidly, her spine popping as she arched her back. She spread her burning wings out to their fullest, almost twice her own height and comprised of the most intense flames I had ever seen. She seemed to be luxuriating in the general atmosphere of a city in its death throes.
“I...have other questions,” I told her quietly, and she turned a gentle smile towards me.
“Of course you do, my love, and you must never be scared to ask them,” she told me. “You can ask anything you wish, at any time.”
I paused for a moment, weighing up the question I most wanted to ask. She said I could ask anything, but what I was most curious about could be potentially unpleasant for her.
I thought for a moment longer, then took the plunge.
“Why did you Fall?”
I tried to emphasise the ‘F’, because an angel’s Fall was far more than the fall of a clumsy child.
However, it seemed my concerns had been well-founded for once. Celeste’s smile died on her lips, and her wings folded flat against her back again, as if in sympathy to her sudden sadness.
Her response, when it came, was delivered in the soft tones of someone lost in memory, and filled with emotional pain.
“Have you ever heard the story of Lucifer’s fall?” I nodded silently, but she continued anyway. “Lucifer fell because he refused to bow to mankind when God first made them. His belief, and that of many of us, had been ‘why not us?’ We had been made first, and yet it was humanity who had been his prized children, loved beyond all measure.” She paused, finally turning to look at me again.
“I fell, along with many brothers and sisters, for the crime of simply wanting to be loved.”
It was a strange thing, to see so much vulnerability in a creature who spoke so easily of mass genocide. And yet, the worst part of it wasn’t the fact that I agreed with her, or even that I sympathised.
The worst part of it was that I actually...I actually started to like her then. Perhaps I even began to reciprocate her love at that point. I’m honestly not sure any more.
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again she smiled, as if banishing her melancholy.
“Anyway, what’s done is done,” she said, more cheerfully. “However, I have a question of my own.”
“What is it?”
“Why were you so intent on destroying me?”
I stared at her in numb shock. She knew the plan, knew my true purpose for being there...and yet I was still alive.
“Oh don’t look so surprised, sweetheart,” she told me, amusement colouring her tone. “I’ve tasted your blood, remember? I saw how you were all but banished by your own people, those you claim to care about. So I ask...why?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. I had to find something to say that wouldn’t end with my death, but my mind drew a blank.
“I...I don’t know, mother,” I told her finally, further shocked by the fact that it was true. “It just seemed to be...I don’t know...right.”
Celeste said nothing more, merely making a slightly amused “hm” sound. A brief moment of silent passed between us.
“So...why didn’t you kill me as soon as you found out?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“Three reasons, my love,” she answered, turning to face me fully. “One, regardless of what you believe, you are my son, at least in any way that matters. Two, I have seen in your blood the truth that even now, you try to deny to yourself - you want to be here.”
I looked at her in confusion, and she giggled at me again.
“See? Even now you try to tell yourself I’m wrong, but I’ve seen it in your memories. With your father disowning you and your blood-mother dead for several years, you’ve missed that parental bond. My love for you fills a hole in you that you weren’t even aware of, you just feel too afraid to admit it.”
I did deny it, of course. Adamantly, and at great length, desperately trying to ignore how right she seemed to be.
“Also, you may cringe and feign disgust at my desire for you, but sex is not a solo act,” she said with another wicked grin. “You were just as involved as I, and your disgust at the act only makes you want it more.”
I couldn’t speak. I was too busy swearing blind that everything she was saying was a lie, even as I hated myself for knowing it wasn’t.
“You said....you said there three reasons,” I managed, speaking through gritted teeth.
“Ah, yes. The third reason is that your friends are doomed to fail, since they have no idea that the ritual they are attempting requires one other thing - the blood of the one they wish to kill.”
She laughed, a dark, vile laugh that was entirely in keeping with someone who lived in Hell.
“That, of course, is an ingredient they will never obtain, and without it, Midnight’s Sorrow is just another blade, one that shall break as surely as any other against our skin.”
She turned and looked back out at the dying flames of the city, seeming to come to a decision.
“It is time we moved, my love,” she told me firmly. “I have finished my work in this city, and now we must move to the next.” She held her hand out to me, and I simply stared at it. “Naturally I will want you at my side, where you belong - not here, and not with those thin-blooded fools you care for.”
I continued to stare at her hand for a moment, then back at her. She looked back at me, her expression still surprisingly gentle.
“Deimos, this is no time for divided loyalties,” she told me. “Not anymore. You know what I have said is the truth. You know that my love for you is as real and pure as that of Lorelei or anyone else, only greater. You know that you belong with me. But the choice is still yours. You can either take my hand, accepting your place as my child, my lover and my heir, or you can stand against me and ultimately pay the price for your defiance. There is no middle ground.”
She gave me a soft smile, untouched by the malice she was capable of.
“Decide wisely, my sweet. This is the last time you will get such a choice, and there is no changing your mind afterwards.”
I closed my eyes, torn apart by all the thoughts that filled my head - thoughts of Lorelei, thoughts of George and his plan to give me to Celeste, thoughts of everything my ‘mother’ had told me.
As much as I tried to deny it, I felt I could do so no longer - she was right. She was a twisted creature, certainly, but I had forgotten what a parent’s love felt like until she arrived. She could have killed me any number of times, and yet still she showed me only love and affection. Sometimes a little too much of both, but even in that she had been right. I hated myself to the core for what I felt, but God help me, I was addicted to her. Everything about her was so wrong, she had ruined everything about me that I felt good about...and yet, on some deep, dark, instinctive level, I craved her.
I felt sick. Whatever I had once been, whatever decency I once had, I was now a broken shell of a man. I didn’t know who or what I was any more, and my concept of morality was becoming less clear with every minute.
I don’t know how long I stood there deciding, or even if time had any relevance in the presence of an angel, but eventually...eventually my resolve broke, and the last piece of the man I was died with it.
After what seemed like an age, I stepped closer to her, placing my hand in hers. She smiled as her fingers closed gently over mine, pulling me closer still.
“That’s my boy,” she said quietly, and I placed my other hand on her hip as I leaned in and kissed her willingly for the first time.
>
The last thing I sensed before she took us away from Canterbury was her vast wings, curling around us in a gesture of protection I hadn’t known for several years.
After that, everything became a blur. The things I did in her name, the acts I committed...they are too terrible to put into this account. In the service of my mother, nothing was ‘too much’ - each place we visited was first bathed in the blood of its populace, then drowned in unholy fire through Celeste’s rituals.
At first I thought there was no real pattern to the places she chose, but she eventually told me that she chose the sites very specifically.
“Mortals have no idea the power their faith has,” she told me once, while standing in a church in the ancient city of Sepphoris. “You and I are vulnerable to the old weapons, the ones made powerful through faith - holy water, crosses, can’t cross hallowed ground and all that - but even they have their flaws.”
I had looked at her questioningly, staying silent as she prepared yet another firestorm.
“Places like this are steeped in the power of faith. But if a sacred place becomes tainted by the blood of the faithful, it perverts that faith and gives it a somewhat different power.”
“How do you mean?” I asked, as she cut open another, still-living innocent.
“Take Canterbury cathedral, for example. A veritable centre of faith, it was a place of immense power for the faithful - until Sir Thomas Beckett was wrongfully assassinated in its halls. A nuisance to his king, he might have been, but he was also a devout man who had done no true wrong. His blood still marks the stones there, and that in turn renders the entire building poisoned. It is no longer the sacred place it should be, leaving creatures such as us to enter it freely.”
The human near me screamed in agony. I didn’t care.
“And here?”
Celeste laughed callously.
“There was a Crusader camp not far from here, all of whom were killed to the last man.” Another scream from the human. “I never liked Crusaders anyway.”
“But Crusaders weren’t exactly innocent,” I countered, and she gestured at me with her sacrificial blade, another construct of darkness.
“You’re still doing it - applying the wrong set of morals. By modern standards, yes, they were vile people, but by the standards of their day, they were just doing God’s work.” She laughed again, turning back to the bleeding wreck of a person before her.
“Bringing the word of God by the sword,” she chuckled. “The very hypocrisy of it is still so amusing.”
Shortly after that, the ancient city and its small populace was just another smoking ruin, further sacrifices offered up in my mother’s grand plan.
Nothing she did fazed me any more. And just as I had stopped feeling anything, so had I also stopped resisting Celeste’s advances. I still couldn’t give myself to her willingly, but I knew whether I resisted or not, she would have her own way, so I gave in. I let her do as she willed, because I knew there was no way I could stop her.
That had been four days after leaving Canterbury, and the sixth site to suffer for Celeste’s plans. Another three days, four cities and countless innocent lives later, we arrived in Novgorod, Russia. Our next site was the St. Sophia cathedral, a place tainted by being pillaged and bombed during the second world war. As before, the intent was to bleed the population, use the cathedral for Celeste’s ritual and move on.
However, Russian cities are not small places, and even with our combined efforts, it took time to do what was needed.
Time that ran out at long last.
During our time together, Celeste had taught me the nature of her peculiar abilities, and how to use them myself. “Nocturnomancy,” she had called it. She said, “some would call it ‘night magic’, although that is a grossly inaccurate term. It is not magic - it is command over darkness itself.”
An ability fuelled by shadow and a lack of light. How utterly appropriate for a fallen angel. During the day, we could draw on the “inherent darkness in our souls,” as Celeste put it, to create weapons and the like, even a form of armour or clothing - such as the dress Celeste had appeared in before. During the night, however, almost anything was possible, and it was unfortunate for my friends and allies that they found us at around midnight, Russian time.
I eyed the approaching Osprey dispassionately, feeling a familiar presence growing in my mind. As I felt Lorelei and my people getting closer, a small spark of something lit within me again, some small remnant of the man I had once been.
I held onto that dearly, hoping it could be my salvation from this nightmare.
I had no idea if I could still get a psychic message to Lorelei after the changes Celeste’s blood had made to my body, but I tried all the same. I told her she needed to trust me, that what was to come would be unpleasant to witness, but it would be necessary.
Surprisingly, I got a response. Weaker than it should have been, but it got through, and I smiled inwardly.
I’ve always trusted you, Eyathehn. Just make sure we gut the bitch.
That much I swore would happen. However, even I was unprepared for the toll it would take.
“I was beginning to wonder if they would ever catch up to us,” Celeste told me with a smirk, as we watched the small group approach from the Osprey. We stood in the grounds of the old Novgorod Kremlin, a huge semi-circular building surrounded by beautiful grassland and forest areas.
Well, once. After being in the presence of a fallen angel and her chosen scion, there isn’t much left of either the grass or trees.
Sadly, George wasn’t among those who approached us - I had looked forward to punching the ever-living crap out of him for sending me into the hell I had endured. I was, however, surprised and amused to see Tyr and Remus, two people whose fates I had little interest in either way. Lorelei walked ahead of them, Midnight’s Sorrow slung across her back, and Markus walked beside her. That intrigued me - I had always wondered exactly where his loyalties lay. Perhaps I would finally find out.
Behind those two, several members of Corvus Team flanked my family members, along with Kalin and Seraph. I definitely didn’t expect them.
I just hoped I wouldn’t have to kill them.
The whole group stopped a short distance from us, at the foot of the small rise Celeste and I stood on. While I had used my new ability to cover myself up, Celeste showed no such modesty, choosing to stand before them in her pale, naked glory.
“You certainly took your time,” my mother told the group, smirking again at her own humour.
“So you’re her, huh?” Lori replied with obvious disdain. “The angel who wants to take my man away.”
Celeste laughed again, and the sinister note was back that awful sound.
“I think I rather succeeded, don’t you?” She moved closer to me as if to prove the point, her hand caressing my shoulder. “You would just die of envy if you knew of the nights we’d shared together,” she crooned to my girlfriend. “Nothing bonds a mother and her child like a week of bloodshed and atrocities, coupled with some truly vicious sex.”
I could feel Lori’s rage bubble to the surface with alarming speed, the black blade seeming to simply appear in her hand.
“You lay another hand on him and I will split you in two!” she snarled, and Celeste only laughed at her again.
“You are welcome to try, girl. All of you are. It will do you no good. Deimos is mine now, and there is nothing that any of you can do to change that.”
Lori never made a sound. To her credit, she spent the energy others would have wasted on a shout of anger far more productively - fuelling her run up the rise to get at Celeste. As she came close she swung the blade in an overhead strike, aiming straight for my mother’s unprotected head.
It never connected.
I raised my left hand and struck the blade, turning it aside and snapping a good six inches off the tip. Using the momentum of that movement I threw my weight into an open-palmed strike, dealt directly to Lorelei’s chest.
The impact stopped her in her tracks, cracking her sternum and dropping her to the floor.
I clenched my right hand, forming a dagger of shadow as I looked down at my beloved girlfriend. I still felt so little, but looking at her brought something back, at least - but it was a something that I had to hold at bay for just a little longer.
“Deal with those other dregs, mother,” I told Celeste, not taking my eyes from Lorelei. “I want to deal with this one personally.”
“As you wish, my sweet,” she told me, ignoring the sudden retreat of my allies to give me another kiss. “Make it lingering, my dearest,” she said softly. “I would so love to come back and enjoy her final moments with you.”
At that she spread her massive wings and leaped after the others, leaving me with Lorelei at last.
As soon I was sure Celeste was out of the way, I dismissed the short blade and dropped to Lori’s side.
“I’m so sorry, hon, I really am,” I told her, helping her to sit up. “Thanks for trusting me.”
Lori said nothing, instead looking straight at me, fixing me with her emerald eyes.
“By the Goddess, Deimos,” she half-whispered, “what the fuck has she done to you?”
I hung my head, squeezing my eyes shut as if that could block out the horror of the previous week.
“You truly do not want to know,” I told her, and she stroked my face gently.
“You’re going to have to tell me one day, Eyathehn,” she said weakly. I’m certain she didn’t actually want to know, but she needed me to talk about it as some form of...emotional healing. Maybe. I don’t know, it was hard to know anything at that point.
“But first, tell me what the bloody hell is going on,” she told me, in a much firmer tone of voice. “Why did you break the sword? We’ve got nothing to use on her now.”
“It was useless anyway,” I answered, picking up the remaining piece of the sword and examining it. “She told me it needed the blood of its intended victim to work properly. I’m gambling here, but I have to hope that enough of the...I don’t know, ‘functional’ part remains to do the deed - and that my blood will be enough.”
Of Angel's Blood (Chronicles of The Order Book 2) Page 19
