Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists

by Edited by Adrian Collins

  Another word, another glyph, but this time, Diago’s finger trembled as he traced the ward.

  Alvaro lowered his voice. “He is angel, but he is like you, Diago—he is daimon too. Our song would kill Ysabel, but not Rafael. We can help him. Besides, he is twelve. He is old enough. Let it be his decision.”

  “He doesn’t understand what he is asking you to do. He doesn’t realize—”

  “Realize what? His true nature?” Alvaro sidled forward another step, the scorpion at his side. “Listen to yourself. You sound like them.” He flicked his hand dismissively in Ysabel’s direction. “Would you have him living in fear of himself? Doubting himself?”

  Diago made no sign he heard. He formed a viridian glyph and watched the colors dance against his son’s dark skin.

  He hears me as a god, not as his father. Alvaro needed to establish intimacy with his son, and the only way to do that was to pretend he was once more Alvaro, a Nefil like any other.

  “Diago, think, my son. Isn’t that what I did to you? Didn’t I try to teach you to despise your angelic nature? And what did I accomplish? I only drove you to seek the thing that you thought I hated. Now look at your own son and know this: the only way he can be whole is to embrace both sides of his nature—both the angelic and the daimonic. But he can’t do this unless you let him know his heritage.” He squatted and reached out to Diago. “Don’t make my mistakes. Don’t instill in him the angels’ prejudices against the daimons. Don’t teach him to hate the colors of his soul.”

  “Papa? Let him do it.” Rafael met his father’s stricken gaze. “You always tell me to follow my instincts. This is the right thing. I know it.”

  Diago opened his mouth, and Alvaro leaned forward. Before either of them could speak, a crash resounded overhead. The sound of feet thundering across the wooden boards descended into the basement. Someone shouted. Another faraway voice answered.

  Although she looked up at the ceiling with everyone else, Ysabel’s song never wavered.

  Diago ignored the noise and continued to contemplate his son. “Is this truly what you want?” he asked.

  Rafael nodded. “Yes.”

  Diago moved his blood-covered hand away from Rafael’s wound. “Do it,” he whispered.

  Careful not to smile, Alvaro sent his song forward. The scorpion scuttled across the floor and scrambled onto Rafael. Its claws scorched his flesh. Rafael sucked air between his teeth, but he didn’t cry out. The scorpion crawled through the hole left by the bullet, and the youth bit his lower lip until it bled.

  As the shouts of other Nefilim grew closer, Ysabel reached for the rifle.

  Alvaro edged around the trio. He went to the stairs leading upward and hummed a low note. When the basement door burst open, Alvaro released his song of scorpions. The arachnids rushed up the stairs in a glistening flood, swarming over the first Nefil. He never had a chance to scream. The other Nefilim simply ran.

  Alvaro saw through the scorpions’ eyes: ten thousand times ten thousand, a song of death whose notes rained black upon his enemies. He exulted in their agony and fed their anguish to the daimon in his soul.

  Gunshots blistered from the street. Xyrus’s descant rose over the sounds of the melee. Diago formed a sigil and sent it flying through the open door so the others would know their location. Somewhere within the chaos, Alvaro detected Guillermo’s wards, burning like the sun. Ysabel answered her father with her bright clear notes.

  Time to go, Alvaro had time to think just as his body ruptured into a million scorpions. His song scattered into the cracks, into the crevices, and deep beneath the earth. But one note paused by the basement door...a single scorpion that turned back and looked down the stairs to see Diago, pressing his forehead against Rafael’s brow. He gave his son a healing kiss in the form of golden snake with ruby eyes.

  * * *

  Beneath the city Alvaro gathered his song around himself and regained his mortal form. He didn’t need his dark glasses in the subway tunnel so he placed them in their case. His eyes glowed like twin moons in the darkness. Humming a nonsense tune to himself, he strolled the tracks while Moloch slept deep within him, content from feeding on the angel-born Nefilim.

  Alvaro memorized the image of Diago leaning over Rafael, and when the darkness pressed down on him, he conjured their faces into his bleak heart. After a week went by, he sang a summoning song to the scorpion that was surely embedded in Rafael’s heart by now. He had not lied to Diago. The chord he had sent into Rafael would heal the boy, and then it would proceed to embed itself in Rafael’s heart. There it would live, a requiem that would ensure the youth’s obedience to Alvaro’s every whim. The boy might resist at first, but when he did, the scorpion would sting, and in the end, the agony would force Rafael’s compliance.

  An hour passed, and then two, with no sign of Rafael. Unperturbed, Alvaro continued his refrain. Patience was the key to finessing a job of this magnitude, and time...it was nothing to Alvaro. Let Rafael struggle. It was important that the boy understand the pain and futility of denying a god.

  Another hour crawled by before the faint glimmer of Rafael’s wards touched the subway’s darkness. Amber notes, sparked with silver, filtered through the air. A circle of jade flames erupted in the darkness ahead, and Alvaro noted that the boy’s glyphs now carried a hint of black.

  The fire died down to become smoldering coals burning at Rafael’s feet. He stood in the center of his circle. One arm was raised over his head in a classic flamenco pose, the other at his side. He held the position as a single black curl settled on his cheek.

  Alvaro examined him. The youth didn’t appear to be in pain, but deep shadows lingered under his eyes and around the edges of his glyphs. He clenched his right fist in an attempt to hide the trembling of his hand. Yet his confident gaze left Alvaro feeling apprehensive. Something was not right.

  Rafael lowered his arm, but not his wards, and that too was wrong.

  Alvaro pretended nothing was amiss. “You look well,” he said. “We are pleased.”

  Rafael opened his shirt. Three centimetres beneath his heart, the faint shadow of a scorpion rested on his chest, like a birthmark.

  Even a centimetre is too low. Alvaro frowned. Somehow the scorpion had not reached its target.

  Rafael said, “I know what you tried to do.”

  Alvaro disregarded the hard edges around his grandson’s voice and kept his tone light. “I healed you. That is what I did.”

  Rafael’s dark green eyes flashed almost black with his anger. “I know what you did to Papa.” It was an accusation. “We always knew you abandoned him, because that is all he will say. He won’t talk about what you did to him. Not even to Miquel, who adores him and knows his soul more deeply than I. When we ask him, Papa turns away and changes the subject, pretending it’s all in the past and doesn’t matter, but it does. He carries the pain deep within himself, and he thinks we do not see, but we do.”

  Alvaro feigned a contrition he didn’t feel. “I know I didn’t do everything right as a parent. I admit that. But the fact remains that what I did for your father, I did from love.”

  Rafael snorted and looked away. When he met Alvaro’s gaze again, it was with an inner strength that Alvaro didn’t like at all. “And now I know what happened to him. When you tried to embed this tiny piece of your heart song in my soul”—he gestured to the shadow of the scorpion—“everything became clear. What you did to Papa...that is not love.” Rafael opened his hand and dropped the dead scorpion to the tracks. “You don’t understand us. We are not like you. Papa and I are born of angels.”

  The sight of the dead scorpion kindled Alvaro’s fury. How dare this insolent child defy their heritage? “You are daimon. Our father is Moloch. Do you understand what that means? Your great-grandfather is Moloch. That is why he chose to merge his soul with mine, just as I will take Diago’s soul when he dies.”

  “You cannot!” Rafael’s rage ignited the malachite coals at
his feet into cold flames that licked the air between them. “I knew about Moloch. Papa has never hidden my daimonic nature from me. When I was barely six years old, after you revealed yourself to him, Papa wanted to know why Moloch chose you as the new vessel for his soul. He researched Los Nefilim’s records and discovered his lineage.” Rafael lowered his voice so that it no longer echoed in the tunnel. “He told me daimonic secrets and taught me to sing the colors of my soul.”

  He kicked the dead scorpion to the other side of the flames. “You placed a piece of your song within me—you wanted to latch onto me the same way Moloch dragged you down. But that is not how this is going to work. Papa helped me unravel your spell.”

  Alvaro judged the colors of Rafael’s sigils and noted that weaker shades of pale green moved alongside an almost transparent glimmer of amber. The edges of his glyphs dulled as he grew tired.

  It’s cost him, this unravelling. Although Alvaro was sure Rafael wouldn’t admit it. “You make it sound easy. I don’t think it was.”

  Rafael shrugged as if it was no matter. “It was worth the effort, because now I hold a measure of your heart song”—he tapped the scorpion shadow on his chest—“that I control.”

  Alvaro’s scorpions shivered around him in a rippling wave of black as the implication of what the child had done suddenly hit him. Within Los Nefilim he now had a new enemy...one of our own, one that possesses a few precious beats of our heart song. He had thought he’d succeeded in subjugating Rafael to the daimons’ cause, but instead, Rafael had tricked him into revealing a piece of his soul that was best kept secret. And if he learns to compose our song, he might decide to give us the second death—the final death from which no supernatural creature could survive.

  “How long has this plan been in the making?” Alvaro demanded. “Antonio and the others—were they a part of your strategy?”

  “No,” Rafael admitted. “Antonio and his Nefilim were after Ysabel. I had no intention of getting shot. But Papa taught me never to waste a good crisis.”

  Alvaro barked a short hard laugh and realized he sounded exactly like Diago. Or my son sounds like me. He thought back to Rafael’s hurried whisper to Ysabel as she dragged him into the alley, and the respect with which Diago had regarded his son. Rafael had hissed his plans to them while Alvaro’s attention was elsewhere. For a Nefil in his firstborn life, the boy was quick-witted and lethal.

  As if he sensed the trajectory of Alvaro’s thoughts, Rafael grinned, but the wicked rage never left his countenance. “Now you see.”

  Moloch stirred. We see what he has done. We see a new enemy before us. A low, dangerous hum filled the tunnel as the daimon’s song passed through the scorpions. We will not tolerate his insolence.

  The colors around Rafael grew stronger in response to the threat. Coppery shades infiltrated the youth’s spinning sigils. Ysabel. Her fiery wards deepened into the vibrant orange strands of Guillermo’s melody as her father joined his voice with hers. The lines of silver and jade grew more intense, and Alvaro recognized Diago’s glyphs, which were soon joined by the pearlescent hues of Diago’s lover Miquel.

  That is why the boy took so long to respond to Alvaro’s summons. He was weakened by the battle with Alvaro’s song, and the summons had affected him, but he’d waited until his friends and family were nearby to lend him their strength.

  “You deceitful child,” Alvaro said around a mouthful of pride.

  Careful, warned Moloch. Don’t praise him for his cunning until he is brought to heel.

  “Aren’t you proud, Grandfather? Have I not proven my daimon nature?” Rafael threw the questions like a challenge, and then he raised one finger. “But I am angel too.”

  And with those words, Rafael summoned an amber snake with carmine eyes marbled by veins of ochre. Deep within Alvaro, Moloch cowered at the memory of another angel’s magic. Alvaro recognized it: this serpent belonged to Rafael’s mother.

  A second snake, this one the deeper gold of Diago’s magic, joined Rafael’s serpent. They entwined and merged to form a deadly circle of light.

  Alvaro cried out from pain as their radiance washed over him. He shielded his face.

  Rafael shouted, “We have a saying in Catalonia: cada cabell fa sa ombra. Every hair casts a shadow. There are no little enemies, Grandfather.”

  No. No there are not, Alvaro thought as Moloch roused the scorpions. Together, they created a glyph of agony and sent it spinning toward Rafael’s wards. Cripple him and bring him down, and then we will punish him for his arrogance.

  Rafael lifted his arm again. The flames of his family’s sigils shielded him. “Adios, Grandfather. We will meet again one day—on my terms.”

  Alvaro’s answer was a shriek of rage that joined Rafael’s wild cry of triumph. The youth brought down his arm, spinning amber chords filled with silver and black around his body, a whirling tornado of sound that turned into the distant rumble of an oncoming train. Then he was gone.

  The scorpions flowed over the tracks, where Rafael had stood, but their prey had vanished. They surged up the walls in a discordant wave.

  Alvaro’s boot heels crunched through the gravel as he approached the dead scorpion Rafael had left on the tracks. He picked it up and cradled it in his palm.

  “I know you can still hear me, Rafael!” Alvaro shouted up at the ceiling. His voice echoed along the tunnel, bouncing off the walls as the scorpions returned to him. “There is another saying you should know. A mal nudo, mal cuño. You must meet roughness with roughness. And so we will!”

  The ground beneath Alvaro began to vibrate with the thunder of the train. He closed his fingers gently over the dead scorpion and turned away from the tracks. As the light of the train rounded the corner, Alvaro slipped into a side passage. Black notes of a dissonant song swirled in his wake.

  “Be vigilant, child,” Alvaro hissed to the tunnels, knowing his grandson would eventually hear the resonance of his refrain on the wind. “Beware, because I will listen for your song. Life is dangerous, Rafael. You simply never know when you might be taken down by a sniper’s bullet, or assaulted by angels...”

  Or accosted by daimons.

  The Divine Death of Jirella Martigore

  - The Crimson Empire -

  Alex Marshall

  On a moonless summer night, long after all the sisters were asleep, Jirella and the other novices sneaked up to the roof of the convent and tried to summon a devil. Maybe their sacrifice, a sparrow chick Yekteniya had stolen from the nest in the window of their dormitory, was insufficient. Or maybe the ritual failed because they weren’t actually witches, just bored teenagers eager for an excuse to strip naked and guzzle communion wine beneath the thousand glowing eyes of the heavens.

  Unlike the others, Jirella hadn’t been disappointed when the pin-riddled little bird bled to death in the centre of the pentagram to no result save an awkward silence from the would-be sabbath. She had been relieved that her silent prayers to the Fallen Mother had been answered and the Deceiver had not actually materialized to tempt them. Even still, she lay awake all night, her heart pounding in her breast, tears running down her cheeks as she shuddered with silent sobs, her crushing guilt compelling her to be the first in line for confession the next morning.

  They were assigned a penance that Jirella felt severe but fair. Her roommates agreed on one of these points but not the other, and several nights later they held her down and beat her mercilessly, gagging her screams with a bar of soap and a stocking. Despite their hissed accusations that Jirella was a rat she never reported them, for this or any of their later attacks. After all, vengeance and hatred were virtues of the Burnished Chain. For all their outrage and the way everyone but Yekteniya shunned her ever afterward, Jirella believed one of the others would have confessed, if she hadn’t. She had faith in her fellow mortals.

  That reckless transgression on the convent roof was all Jirella could think about after the Abbotess informed her of the Black Pope’s summ
ons. She must have embarrassed her uncle terribly, for him to bring her all the way to the capital. She deserved whatever punishment he would assign, she knew that. Even if it meant her life.

  Rather than fearing his judgment, she welcomed it. Before entering the coach that would take her to the Voice of the Allmother, she had secretly donned a hairshirt under her robes and cinched her rosary so tight around her throat every breath was a tribulation. She kept them in place every agonizing day of the long journey. Jirella prayed constantly, and wept not for herself but for the Shepherd of Samoth, whose own niece had rejected the path of righteousness and attempted to conspire with the enemy of mortalkind (only out of peer pressure, but still).

  Yet when they climbed the final ridge of the Black Cascades and arrived in Diadem, capital of Samoth and former seat of the Crimson Empire, the papal guard took her not to the public stocks for crucifixion but to a tasteful study. The Black Pope’s chambers were situated in the upper reaches of Castle Diadem, which was itself nestled into the walls of the dead volcano that cradled the city. Climbing the endless stairs to this sanctuary of oaken bookshelves and warm hearth proved an agonizing ordeal for a girl whose collar choked and hairshirt scratched.

  In her imagination, Pope Shanatu was forever wreathed in the light of the Fallen Mother, his features blurred—for no mortal sinner could look full upon the face of grace. When the guards ushered her into the study and shut the door behind them, she saw not a radiant figure of divine wrath, but a kind-eyed old man sitting at a sumptuously laid table. He rose as she stood worrying her rosary in the doorway, struggling to catch her breath.

  Instead of glowing robes and a hat as high as a steeple, he wore a brocade housecoat trimmed in sable. Silver shot through his dark beard and tonsure, making him appear disarmingly mortal. His slippers glided across the Ugrakari rug, and Jirella fell to her knees. He did not look so very much like her mother, but when he smiled it was the same warm expression, his wrinkles deepening at Jirella’s tears. She lowered her face and he stroked her head as if she were his dearest hound. It was the happiest moment of Jirella’s hard life, and when she pressed her lips to his black opal ring, Jirella felt such love as she had never before known.