Scorn of Angels Read online

  Her children were in Heaven, Nyx was sure. The woman was a cursed murderer, and Lucifer had placed within her a driving compulsion to be forever hungry, forever cold, and forever searching for the children she had killed. She had wandered Hell for a hundred years already, searching.

  She would do nicely.

  Nyx carefully applied her power to the Hellstone, not to heal, but to separate. Bit by bit she peeled the woman’s soul from the box and took it into her hands. It came off in a jagged chunk.

  Nyx took the stone in her hands and began stretching it. She could feel the agony of the soul within, could sense the unending torment and pain. Because Nyx was at the bottom of the Lake of Fire, she herself felt the pain of what she was doing to the woman.

  She ignored it.

  She reshaped the soul until it became a thin, flexible sheet. It wasn’t thin enough, but Nyx knew she couldn’t do more before putting it where it needed to go.

  The interesting bit will be seeing if I can do it and still stay sane.

  With one taloned hand, Nyx ripped open her own belly.

  Hellfire flooded in, and for a moment the pain nearly drove Nyx back into madness. She clung to her sanity with a will stronger than the Hellstone box she had been caged in. Moving as quickly as she could, she slid the sheet up inside her body, under the rib cage.

  Now… for the tricky… bit.

  She focused on the soul. Since she couldn’t use her hands, Nyx used the force of her mind alone to stretch the thin sheet that was the woman’s soul around the inside of her ribs, encasing them, top and bottom. It would cover her heart, which was the seat of the soul, so that when Lucifer looked inside her body, all he would see was the child-murdering woman. It was a start, but she needed to do more.

  Yeah… because that… didn’t hurt… enough…

  Carefully, Nyx reshaped the soul further, spinning it like thread, and sending a thin line up her spine and into her own skull. The touch of it was agony of a peculiar kind—wretchedness, weakness—and Nyx convulsed. How do they bear being themselves, these lowly souls?

  Still… hurts less than being in that box…

  Nyx stretched out the soul of the murdering mother even more—a slow and delicate process that made the woman shriek and Nyx shriek with her as she accepted each pathetic remnant of the woman’s being into her own Angelic core. When Nyx was done, the woman’s soul also buffered Nyx’s mind inside her skull. Now, any Angel looking inside her mind or soul would see only that of the woman, suffering as she was meant to.

  Nyx’s Angelic flesh healed the hole in her belly, and the pain of having Hellfire inside her stopped. The pain of having another soul woven into her flesh became a dull ache, one that Nyx could manage as long as she simply did not care. The outside of her body and her mind still burned with the punishing pain of the Hellfire, but it was nearly time to end that.

  And now I get to see if this will work…

  Nyx examined the soul inside her more closely. The soul, conscious for the first time in years of something other than loneliness and pain, cowered beneath the scrutiny.

  “Please.” Nyx heard the woman begging from her Hellstone prison. “Please, let me go. I need to find my children…”

  Her name was Aleyd. Her children were from three different men she’d fucked in exchange for food and a place to sleep. She’d stolen food from others like a dog stealing bones. She’d managed to keep herself and her children alive for half a dozen years before the situation in her village became so desperate that no one would give them food or a place to stay. It had been mid-winter when, driven mad from grief and hunger, she lit the fire that killed them all, and burned the feed for half the village’s livestock. Her actions had resulted in the deaths of twenty other people.

  “Please?”

  Nyx winced at the soul’s desperate plea only for an instant. With an effort of will, Nyx crushed the momentary empathy she felt for Aleyd, a woman who had done as Nyx herself had done—who had risked eternal suffering for the chance to save her offspring.

  Not the same, though Nyx, and so she answered the soul’s plea for mercy by allowing it to share in all the pain the Lake of Fire was inflicting on her.

  The soul screamed and collapsed in on itself.

  “Speak to me again,” Nyx lied, “and everything I do to you, I will do to your children threefold.”

  Aleyd fell silent.

  And now for the last step.

  The transformation of her body was simple enough, but reshaping the soul she was holding inside her took more effort. At the end of it, though, she had the appearance of a large-eyed, emaciated woman, whose breasts, once full, were now flat and hanging down from years of starvation. Nyx made sure to create mortal organs inside her, and made sure her blood was red.

  It’s time.

  Nyx let go of the bottom of the Lake and let the currents carry her. They pulled her body toward the shoreline and buoyed her up until she broke the surface.

  Nyx screamed and flailed her head desperately.

  It was a human scream of agony that did not even come close to expressing the amount of pain Nyx was in. But then, that wasn’t the point. Nyx kept screaming as long as her head remained above the Hellfire, and took the time to have a good look around. A hundred demons were on the nearest section of shore, surrounding a dozen of the Descended. The Descended were fishing, using a barbed Hellstone spear on a chain to catch souls and pull them to shore. Nyx screamed a little louder, then allowed herself to sink into the waves again.

  The spear slammed into her flesh, impaling her and sending Hellfire into her body. Both she and the soul trapped inside her jolted with the pain, then again as the chain on the spear went taut, hauling her backward through the Hellfire toward the waiting Angels and demons. Nyx kept up her screaming and writhing as they pulled her to the shore. Rough hands grabbed her and hauled her out of the lake, throwing her five hundred meters from the shore. The demons raced after her and the Angels laughed.

  Nyx hit the ground hard and let her body break as a mortal body would. Bones snapped and blood spurted. The demons howled in delight and fell upon her, biting and clawing and tearing away flesh. One of her breasts was ripped off immediately. The demons began fighting amongst themselves for the right to eat her, and Nyx crawled away, letting her body show Aleyd’s terror and pain.

  The nearest Descended—a brute named Andromalius—picked her up by the leg and smashed her against the ground, destroying her face and spattering her blood and guts everywhere. Then he drew his flaming whip and applied it to her body, ripping the already-torn flesh as he yelled, “Get up, sinner! Get up and be judged! Get up or I’ll cut your legs off!”

  After what Nyx had been through, it was no worse than mosquito bites. Still, she put on a proper show, screaming and struggling to rise, knowing that Andromalius was deliberately making it impossible for her to do so.

  “I’ll teach you to do what you’re told!”

  His sword came out and hacked through both of Nyx’s legs just below the knee. He grabbed her hair and pulled her upright, forcing her to walk on the bloody stumps of her knees. “You’re going to see Lucifer now, bitch. And if you think this is bad, wait until he gets done with you!”

  Nyx/Aleyd cried, and Nyx forced her body to slow down its healing so it wouldn’t give the game away.

  It was a half-mile to Nyx’s palace by mortal terms. Andromalius whipped, cut and beat her every step of the way. Demons scampered in and out, tearing at her flesh, never giving her a moment’s freedom from pain or suffering.

  But then, thought Nyx, that is the whole purpose of Hell, isn’t it?

  They came to the line and Andromalius dropped her to the ground. The rocks cut into her flesh. He stopped beating her and drove the demons away. “You should be whole when you meet Lucifer,” he said.

  Nyx started babbling her thanks, and Andromalius smiled. “I said whole, not free of pain.”

  He kicked her facedown and held her there with one nail-shod
boot. He took the barbed spear and rammed it into her backside. He lifted her with it and shoved the end into the stony ground to hold her upright until her feet could once more touch. Demons laughed and danced and cut and bit at her flesh. One sat on her shoulders and shoved its clawed fingers repeatedly into her eyes, laughing every time they burst.

  When Nyx/Aleyd’s feet finally regrew, she pushed hard against the razor-sharp stones of the ground, trying to free herself of the barbed spear that ripped open her guts. She bent over and tried pulling at it, but the barbs ripped at her flesh from the inside.

  Two demons jumped on her and shoved her facedown on the earth. They grabbed the shaft of the spear and began ramming it in and out of her.

  All the way to the palace the tortures continued. Demons tortured and violated her, and visited a hundred other evils upon her flesh. And when Nyx reached the door of Lucifer’s palace, Andromalius ripped the spear from her body, leaving a gaping hole.

  I am nearly there.

  Nyx’s whip and sword were both ready to hand, though invisible. They were as much a part of her body as her wings. And all I have to do is get close enough to that bastard Lucifer and I can end this.

  She kept playing her part, kept screaming and trying to run away from her attackers, who overwhelmed her easily. She walked on bloody feet into her own palace. Around her, other souls did the same. Some were intact; others were broken. One male soul had been bent into a circle and had its own head shoved into its ass, then had its arms and legs cut off so it could be kicked around like a ball.

  Slowly, slowly, the line moved forward. And when she reached the end of it, when she stepped into the throne room, she saw Lucifer sitting on a new throne, a naked Angel on her knees before him giving him pleasure as he judged the souls one by one.

  Lucifer was as beautiful as ever. His massive chest and legs were perfectly proportioned to match his even more massive wings. His cock was outsized to the point where the Angel in front of him was hurting herself every time she took it in her mouth. He wore his horned crown upon his head, and he shone from within with a dim light like a slow-burning fire of coals.

  Nyx remembered when he had lit up the sky, but that had been before the rebellion, before all their dreams had been crushed and their lights darkened to what they were now.

  Lucifer shoved the Angel in front of him aside, changed his form into a dragon and blew a breath of fire that turned the soul before him into a crisped mass of burning flesh.

  “Throw him into the Lake again,” said the Lucifer-dragon. “That will cool him.”

  The Angels and demons in the room laughed and hauled the soul away. Lucifer looked at the male soul before him. “And here we have a rapist. Lovely.”

  He breathed fire, burning away the man’s genitals and most of his flesh. Lucifer transformed back to himself. “There’s a pole that burns with eternal Hellfire. We impale your kind there. Take him.”

  What was left of the soul screamed as it was dragged away.

  And so it went. Eight other souls were judged and tortured and thrown or dragged or mopped up and taken from the palace. Two left in the belly of demons.

  Then it was Nyx’s turn.

  All I have to do is make this work a little longer…

  Something vivid green in the corner caught her attention.

  Impossible. There were no colors in Hell, save that which spilled from the souls’ guts. Everything else was black, made from Hellstone. So what the fuck is it?

  It was small and delicate and the brilliant green of the plants that floated on the surface of a pond.

  It was the color of Epiphenia’s blood.

  But she’s dead, Nyx thought. She’s dead. They ripped her heart out and killed her, and she is dead.

  But nothing dies in Hell, does it?

  Andromalius kicked her spine, sending Nyx smashing on the floor before Lucifer. Nyx raised every mental defense she had, hid her true self behind a wall of mirrors that only showed reflections of Aleyd. Lucifer peered deep inside, frowning. Then he spun and backhanded Andromalius across the face hard enough to send him flying to smash against the wall. “Idiot! This one has already been here!”

  Nyx breathed a sigh of relief.

  “She was in the lake,” protested Andromalius. “I fished her out!”

  “Get over here and get on your hands and knees,” said Lucifer, stroking his outsized erection. “I need to finish.”

  Andromalius, anger and resentment burning in his expression, did as he was told.

  Nyx crawled away from them, muttering, “My children? Where are my children?”

  Demons laughed and bounced off of her, knocking her onto her face as they once more attacked her flesh. Nyx kept crawling, kept moving ever so slowly forward, crying out the names of the three lost children. The demons found it all hideously amusing and attacked her again.

  Nyx reached the flash of green.

  It was a small, delicate plant, a single thin stem and a tiny round leaf, straining upward for life where no plant had ever—could ever—grow. Nyx stared at it. It’s not possible. Not here, not ever.

  There’s no way…

  One of the demons kicked her forward and she landed face-first on the plant. Touching it sent a burst of power into her body. In a flash the plant ripped itself from the ground and embedded into Nyx’s skin. She screamed from the pain of it (a pain like the light of a thousands suns) and went unconscious—which was not possible in Hell either.

  When Nyx awoke, the demons were capering about her, screaming and laughing and hacking at her flesh. Behind her, Andromalius was doing his own screaming.

  The wounds in Nyx’s body were healing almost instantly, far faster than even her Angel flesh did. She ruthlessly suppressed the healing to keep her outer body bloody and damaged and began crawling once more, going out the back door of the throne room and into the corridors of the palace.

  She could feel the power moving inside her, unconscious, unthinking, but still living, bearing the signature Nyx would recognize anywhere.

  It was Epiphenia. Her daughter. She was alive. Somehow, something of Epiphenia had survived. And when it had found its creator, it had rejoined her, giving Nyx all the power that had been poured into her Angel of the Earth. Tribunal’s power.

  And with it, the certain knowledge that, if Nyx could not break free of Hell, the entirety of Creation was doomed.

  I have to get out of here, Nyx realized. I have to get out of Hell.

  And I’m going to need help.

  Nyx rose to her feet and, still crying the names of the dead children, went in search of Persephone and Ishtar.

  Chapter 3

  Wandering the palace where she once ruled was a study in pain. Nyx mostly crawled, though sometimes she managed to stumble to her feet. The demons followed after her, making themselves invisible to mortal eyes so they could strike her unexpectedly. Nyx could see them perfectly, of course, but had to pretend she didn’t. She cowered and cried out as they leapt at her, slicing or biting into her flesh or grabbing her and slamming her against walls, floor, or ceiling to make her bones break.

  Nyx screamed with each attack, just as the soul would have. Bodies did not go into shock in Hell. There was no relief from pain, no oblivion one could sink into. Even when the physical forms had been tortured so brutally that nothing remained but black, burnt Hellstone, the soul’s agony would continue. And so Nyx had to scream and wail in pain, and struggle to get away every time one of the demons grabbed her.

  She kept moving forward, kept crying out the names of Aleyd’s children as she crawled from room to room. She made her body heal more slowly than it should.

  Suddenly, the demons were knocked away by Angelic feet wearing black Hellstone boots that kicked them against the walls, stomped them on the floor, and broke their bodies open. The demons squealed and fled. The Angel knelt down beside Aleyd/Nyx and took her chin in her hand. She was tall, blond, beautiful, with olive skin and brown eyes, wide black wings, and a ripe bod
y that sparked lust in all who saw it.

  “Poor dear,” the Angel cooed. Her name was Astarte, and she had neither sympathy nor empathy in her soul. “You’ve been so ill-used, haven’t you? And all because you lost your children.” She held out her hand and lifted Nyx to her feet. Did souls really buy this shit? “But don’t worry, my dear. I spoke to Lucifer. He promised me your suffering could end, if you could find them. And I found them!” Her voice went high, like that of an overexcited 10-year-old bully introducing a new kid to the rules of the game.

  She led Nyx down the hallway to a door that she opened wide. “There they are, the poor darlings.”

  Nyx recognized the room at once. She’d built it herself, and had made a hundred Angels crawl through it for penance. It was a hundred yards long, and the floors, wall, and ceiling were lined with jagged-bladed wheels that spun continuously. Every inch that wasn’t moving was covered in razor-sharp, pointed stone that would pierce anything. And on the far side of the room were three demons wearing the shapes of Aleyd’s dead children. Nyx snarled, though no one saw. The soul inside her shrieked with longing. Be quiet, she muttered. She knew what she had to do, and began crawling across the room, trying to avoid the blades.

  Astarte kicked her hard and impaled her on the nearest spinning wheel, ripping her guts out and spraying them across the room. Nyx screamed and thrashed her way off the wheel. Then, knowing what was expected, she kept crawling toward the demons. The only exit was on the other side of the room anyway. Astarte laughed and closed the door.

  About damn time.

  It was the first time since she’d been pulled out of the lake that there were no Angels around. Which meant it was the first time she could really search for Persephone and Ishtar without anyone noticing. She ripped her body off the wheels of blades and let it heal itself. The demons on the other side of the room called to her in piteous children’s voices, letting their bodies be cut on the spiked floor and begging their mother for help. Inside her body, Nyx felt Aleyd thrashing, trying to get free and call back.