Wraith, page 25
And I realise that that’s exactly what she’s doing — everything living that dies here tonight is somehow feeding her. She’s found a way to survive in this world that even Lucifer — in his state of desperate, soul-jacking symbiosis — may not yet have worked out. She’s stealing this man’s electricity, taking it from him while he still lives. She’s evolved into some kind of demonic predator that can survive, above ground, outside a human host.
Over me, a howl of anguish shatters the air.
‘Go,’ she hisses as the man’s body begins to topple forward off her blade. ‘You are confined to the lake of fire until such time as you are called again, Peter Allen Masters. Go to the place you have prepared for yourself.’
For a second, I think I see him, Peter Allen Masters — such an ordinary name, unbefitting of a monster — now as grey and insubstantial as mist. He’s just a suggestion of a man rising to stand, lost and confused, over his own mortal remains.
Then time seems to restart, or speed up, and the spectre blows apart, scattering. Blood fountains from the lifeless body onto me. Writhing, I turn my face from the iron heat of the torrent as the man’s body falls across mine. Blind blue eyes are turned in my direction as I push frantically at the heavy corpse, shoving it off me in a fever of nausea. I surge out from under it, rolling away to lie retching in the scorched grass under a blood-red sky.
Beyond me, the roiling, shrieking cloud of energy that Nuriel identified as Caymhas grown denser, more manlike in aspect.
The other one — the female — turns sharply from where she’s standing over Masters’ dead body, the vicious sword of burning matter still grasped in her right hand. She strides towards her shrieking, boiling brethren…taking all the fire with her.
Fire comes down from the trees, pulls up out of the ground. The flames climb the trailing feathers of her wings, the billowing hem of her gauzy, sleeveless gown. They play within her outstretched fingers, the ice-blonde coronet of her braided hair, leaving only ashes all around. She is incandescent now, wreathed in flames. I’ve never seen anything so terrifying — not even when Ryan doused Lucifer with petrol, setting him alight beneath the dome of the Galleria — because the demon and the fire are one.
Around me, the landscape is now still and blackened; just a smoking terrain littered with twisted human forms, burnt beyond recognition. All harvested, I realise, sickened to my core, by this creature for her personal use.
She stretches again, the vanes of her wings momentarily extended, caressing the air, secondary and axial feathers streaming in the fiery updraft of her own passing, as she walks away from me on pale bare feet. She crosses through the heavy drift of ash on the ground towards her demon brother, Caym, leaving no footprint, trailing tendrils of fire.
Recognition tugs at me again. Something about the way she moves, the way she does her hair. Her unearthly blue eyes. But the way she burns yet is not consumed is hypnotic, and the memory of where I first saw her in this world will not come.
Over her shoulder the demon hisses at me, ‘You carry the “sword” that will sever Lucifer from this life, Gia Basso. Leave Astaroth, Balam, Beleth, Amon and Caym to me. All that is required of you is to deliver accursed “Mercy” unto him. Arise and go now, as swiftly as you can. I will clear your path of those who would do evil unto you. But I would deal with this one first. There are matters…outstanding.’
Dark laughter fills the space inside my head as she croons wordlessly, her stride never slowing for a moment, Caym, my love, I am coming.
Pushing myself up off the ground and tugging frantically at my clothing to cover my nakedness, I see her reach the male demon who is moments away from pulling his fractured light together.
Caym wears nothing but a loincloth that rides low across his narrow hips and everything about him is awesome in scale. He rolls his head of shoulder-length mahogany curls from side to side, ready to lift his chin and open his eyes. His bare torso, heavily muscled and tattooed all over with a dark looping script that I can’t read, is marred by a giant’s gleaming handprint upon his right breast.
It is the mark of the exile. Proof he is a first-order demon. One of the very first who fell. One of the strongest.
Two giant, glorious wings, taller and wider than Caym himself, unfurl behind him to sweep the ashes that lay thick on the ground. He gleams with that sickly grey-silver light that cannot help but draw, and unsettle, the eye.
I can barely breathe as Caym lifts his chin. His beauty is breathtaking — both ascetic and primal. Something about his strong-boned features reminds me strongly of Mercy.
Caym’s pain-filled gaze begins to clear and I see that his eyes are a fearsome dark red in colour, like drying blood. He struggles to focus on the burning vision standing before him, the hand holding the lethal sabre drawn up behind her back, hidden in the bright, constantly shifting feathers of her flaming wings.
Caym’s cruelly beautiful mouth tilts up at the corners in recognition, widening into a smile of admiration. It strikes me how absolutely unafraid he is of her, of anything in his physical environment. He doesn’t flinch or step back from the burning figure that fills his vision. Instead, he moves towards her and murmurs, ‘Gadreel.’
It’s a deep, thrilling sound, like a caress, and I actually shiver at the name, which sounds like a snatch of ancient music. Caym’s lips draw away from his long, inhumanly pointed, razor-sharp teeth, rendering him even more monstrous-beautiful. ‘You have returned at last.’
‘As I promised to, brother,’ she purrs, a smile playing about her full lips. ‘I have thought long upon his betrayal and made my peace with it — and with you. With all of you. I have returned with my final reply. I have returned to be the empress of you all once more.’
‘The offer stands,’ Caym growls. ‘They —’ he indicates me in the distance with a lazy tilt of his head, and I shrink back instinctively to kneel among still-warm ashes, ‘are not our equals. Among their many faults, they are too easily broken. To take possession of such weak vessels, the way Luc insisted we must, has rendered us slow, powerless, limited, earthbound, nothing more than mere golem: creatures of clay howling at the gates. But you have only grown in power and beauty — the air thrills with it. Tell me your secret.’ He opens his palms mere millimetres from the burning, shifting flames pouring off the surface of Gadreel’s skin as if warming his eternally cold hands.
‘Share with me how you are able to hold this much power around and about you so far from the lake of fire and we, together,will rule our fractured, scattered, lessened people. Let you and I take this world for ourselves and turn the old order on its head. It was a mistake to leave the dark places and clothe ourselves in flesh; many of us told him this — you, loudest of all. And for that dissent, were you were banished from his presence, sent to wander the earth in penance. Despite all his worldly “power”, however —’ Caym indicates the smouldering ruins behind him dismissively, ‘Luc is the weakest he has ever been. The time to strike him is now.’
Fire plays in Gadreel’s wide, sardonic smile. ‘This I have already perceived.’ Her murmur is as low, thrilling and seductive as Caym’s own. ‘And I would be your consort, as I was his? Place my hands below my husband’s foot? Is that it? On the same terms as before — you to be “king”, I to be “queen” and subject to your whims, however perverse they might be?’
Gadreel’s laughter has a painful biting edge to it and I flinch as she drawls in a parody of Lucifer’s voice, ‘Thou must be married to no man but me. For I am he am born to tame you?’
Caym’s blood-red eyes narrow. ‘Is it not the natural order? Man to be the head of the woman? Is it not written? It was the reason he so easily sacrificed “Mercy”. She would not abide by his terms the way you would. You will be my queen — that is true — as you were his. To rule under me.’
It’s the wrong answer; even the dumb, powerless creature of clay that I am can tell that.
Gadreel’s reply is very quiet, but no less piercing for it. ‘But that is where you — all of you, my people — are so very wrong. We are not men — who were not made in our image, and stand separate and entire from us. We were created equal. We were not tasked to bring forth life, but to govern it. The rules as they were set for this accursed sphere by unlearned men of old do not apply to our kind. I refuse to abide by your terms as I refused to abide by Lucifer’s in the end. I grew tired of them. The secret I have learned, my foul and murderous brother, in my travels through this lonely world, is that no one stands above me. I rule with no one. I — and I alone — am enough.’
Gadreel moves so swiftly that all I see is a fiery lash — like the tongue of a whip unfurling — and then a blur of flame. Caym’s voice bursts forth in a howl of indescribable anguish as Gadreel buries the blade of her sabre deep in the shining scar over Caym’s right breast, holding it there. Drawing on him. Hers forever more.
Their mouths are inches apart as he gasps her name aloud one last time, absolute bewilderment etched upon his face. She twists the blade deeper, her savage grin never wavering. She leans in towards him, pushing down. And I imagine, sickened, that she might even kiss him.
There is a blinding instance of light then, a blast wave of intense, lung-searing heat as the heretic energy of which Caym was made returns not to God — but into her.
Huddled on the ground, my forearms thrown up over my face, I don’t have to look to see that she has somehow absorbed him into her — increasing her own power. She is monstrous with it, bloated with energy. In this moment, she possesses the strength of two demons.
Power thrums in the air between us, as I look up.
Gadreel seems so tall now against the star-littered sky, as powerful as a burning stone colossus.
I draw breath sharply, seeing her at last for who she is. ‘I know you,’ I whisper, recognising her as the woman I once knew in Milan as Gudrun, Mastro Giovanni Re’s immaculate, red-lipped personal assistant. She’d been with Lucifer when the roof had caved in that night at the Galleria.
Gudrun — Gadreel — raises her hand, levelling the tip of her burning sabre at me, and her words are like a dagger between my eyes.
Did I not tell you to get to your feet, woman? Her voice issues from everywhere, and nowhere, all at once. It’s outside me and inside me; in the ground, the sky. The sonic afterfeel of it is shocking.
Divine ‘Mercy’ — there is that harsh, dark laughter as she says the name — is all that matters now. Deliver Azraeil’s revenant unto Lucifer. I will clear the way.
Reeling, I reach for the bloodstained baton on the ground beside me. Barely able to stand in my torn and burned clothing, I follow Gadreel across the charred lawns in the direction of the grey bunker that overlooks the sea, my weapon gripped tightly in my right hand.
26
In the half light, I see a hint of turbulent dark water and open ground in the distance, the farthest edges of the island that face the open sea. Gadreel and I are about to step out of a forest of flame-blasted trees, when a luminous streak falls out of the sky above us, screaming her name.
Gadreel’s wings open with a clap and rush of air that seems to shake the ground, and she soars upwards to meet it with an answering scream that splits the sky.
Beleth!
Gadreel and Beleth meet in a fiery burst of energy, twisting and grappling high in the air. They rise in a series of ragged spirals through the stark, charred canopy of dead trees, gripped in a parody of a lover’s embrace. One is a creature composed entirely of a living, corrosive flame, the other of a silver-grey, nacreous light, their faces and torsos — his muscular and unclothed, a shining handprint on his lower back — only inches apart. Two sets of wicked blades are trapped between their straining bodies, so far off the ground now that they might be distant stars.
I’m looking up, so I don’t see the third one — the third demon — until he’s already on top of me. There’s just a glimpse of large, cat-like eyes the colour of verdigris, an onrush of air almost strong enough to knock me off my feet, and then — crack, a fleeting moment of intense silver-blue light at the point where the demon’s outstretched fingers meet the soft skin of my throat.
His touch feels like an instance of eternity; of absolute power.
But it’s the demon — not me — that is cast down to the earth.
It’s as if he hit an invisible wall, or some kind of force-field, that’s around…me.
I blink in shock to see the winged titan sprawled on open ground. The force of the impact with me has propelled him back beyond the tree line. His wings are tangled beneath his body and he’s lying directly between me and the grey bunker in the distance.
Somehow I put him there — simply because he touched me.
In a flash, he’s on his feet again, his luminous wings outspread like the hood of an enraged cobra as he comes at me a second time. He’s so big, and moving so quickly, that I’ve got no time to do anything except scream and throw the baton I’m holding up in front of my face as if it will do any good.
But there’s another crackle of live energy as he is repelled again, falling to one knee fifty, maybe one hundred, metres away.
He leaps to his feet immediately, shrieking, ‘What are you?’
The demon’s muscular chest rises and falls as if he is in the grip of some wild emotion; pointed teeth bared and glistening.
‘There is something,’ he spits, ‘— written in your flesh. A complex signature I do not recognise.’
I surprise myself by stepping forward towards him, the baton in my trembling hand held out in front of my body. The moon finally breaks through heavy cloud cover as I approach the demon slowly. He is naked save for loose, silver-grey trousers that swathe his powerful legs and lower body. He bears no dark markings on his face and skin and could be elohim still with his shock of russet curls and surreally flawless beauty. But when the demon drops his stance, sweeping both hands up from the ground and over his head in a curved, wavelike-shape as he surges to his feet, I see the long, razor-sharp quills that protrude from his back and the glowing handprint that’s wrapped around the base of his neck as if a hand gripped him there just before the moment he was exiled.
Between us now there is a seamless web, a frozen, breaking wave of energy; only the faintest trace of silver-grey light plays across its surface to show that it is even there. He stands tall behind it, watching me warily, and I wonder how it is that a deadly winged titan like this — a primeval being at least seven, eight feet tall — could be the slightest bit afraid — of me.
We face each other, separated only by that humming wall of energy, while Gadreel and Beleth wheel and spiral and shriek far above our heads.
‘Exorcizo te!’ the demon facing me bellows, the fingers of his left hand outstretched in my direction. Startled, I realise that he is using ancient words of exorcism against me. It occurs to me suddenly how deeply weird that is.
Of course, nothing happens because I’m not possessed; I’m just a kind of sentient carrier. The demon goes rigid with shock as I continue to stand there, my baton held out before me shakily as if I could somehow poke him to death.
I come closer, and the demon steps back further behind his protective force field as if I could actually do him harm.
‘I’m not possessed,’ I say slowly, fascinated by him despite the terrible danger he represents. ‘There’s nothing that can be “exorcised” from this body.’
I gesture at myself with the end of my weapon, knowing every word I’m speaking is the truth. Mercy is so tiny, so hidden, as to be undetectable, even to a creature like this.
‘But you are mortal,’ the demon snarls, his face half turned away as if he can’t bear to look at me because I’m something new under heaven, and therefore grotesque. ‘What makes you proof against me — Astaroth, Prince and Duke of Hell, Commander of Legions? Your body is inviolate; it is as if made from glass. I can gain no purchase upon your flesh. I grow cold. Yet you are unassailable, inviolate — as if already inhabited by another. Yet you are not. So I say again, if you are not possessed —’ His voice drops to a piercing whisper. ‘What manner of being are you?’
I stalk back and forth before the protective shield he has thrown up between us and he raises his head, tracking my movements with his gleaming, pale green eyes as if he can’t help himself. Through the thin film of naked energy I see that his frown mirrors my own. We are struggling to comprehend each other across an unassailable divide.
‘You see that building over there?’ I ask, answering his question with one of my own. The demon’s verdigris-stained eyes flicker briefly in the direction of the concrete bunker behind him before returning to me. ‘I need to get inside it. I need to get to Lucifer. I carry a message for him.’
‘You seek…Lucifer?’ Astaroth’s frown grows heavier in bewilderment and it strikes me how strange it is that he and I are having a kind of conversation.
I nod casually, though the baton in my hand is visibly shaking. ‘If you try to stop me, Gadreel will annihilate you. She’ll annihilate you anyway. She promised Azraeil as much, and she’s very much a creature of her word.’
‘Gadreel?’ Astaroth growls dismissively, mirroring my pacing behind his protective shield of energy; his long wing feathers trail upon the ground, the outline of him curls and shifts in the night air as if the edges of him are slowly dissolving. ‘She possesses but a fraction of my power. And Azraeil is a weakling — not even elohim, so limited are his powers.’
‘Gadreel has evolved,’ I insist. ‘I saw her destroy Caym not five minutes ago, and she will take Beleth apart, too, I guarantee it.’
Astaroth’s reply is flat with disbelief. ‘You lie.’
I wince as a piercing shriek rings out high overhead.
‘Look, Astaroth, mate.’ I point upwards with the weapon in my hand. ‘That’s not the sound she makes when she’s happy to see someone. I’ve got no reason to lie. You’re about to meet your maker, whether you’re up for it or not, and you’d better have a bloody good explanation unless you walk away from me — from all of this — right now.’
