Scorn of Angels (31 page)

“Was this part of the plan?” asked Persephone.

“No,” said Nyx.

“Think Epiphenia can deal with all of them?”

“I don’t know,” said Nyx tiredly. “She probably can, but I don’t know if she can do it without wiping out all of humanity.”

“So we’re going after?”

“Oh, yes.”

In the place in Sheol where Tribunal kept a small part of his presence, a small, red shrike flew faster than any had ever flown before. Tribunal saw it coming and could feel the desperation in it even before it reached him. He froze it in the air with a thought. “What do you want, Lucifer?”

“Nyx has taken Hell!” the bird shrieked. “She has used the demons to destroy my armies. We are abandoning Hell to destroy humanity, as was your wish, but she pursues, and she will try to stop us!”

“Miserable failure!” hissed Tribunal. He would have stamped his feet, were there anything to stamp them on. “You dare bring me such news?”

“Come to Earth,” said the bird. “Help us defeat Nyx. If God notices, you can tell him it was a Descended uprising that you and I were trying to quell to protect humanity. And if God doesn’t notice, then we will destroy humanity, and you will have your wish come true!”

Tribunal frowned. Lucifer had failed him; of that there was no doubt. And no matter how much Lucifer tried to spin it otherwise, Tribunal was going to punish the Descended fiercely before he unmade him and the rest of Creation.

He turned his attention away from the shrike in Sheol, and back to his model of Creation. With a single thought, the last of the gaps in his illusion of the word were filled.
God is now blind and deaf and dumb,
Tribunal thought.
Now it is my
time.

Now, Creation will be unmade, and all shall be remade in my
image.

He rose from his place and with another thought, transported himself back to Heaven. He pulled his entire self there and rose from his place beside God’s throne. This would be the last time he would walk through Heaven. And this would be the last day that any souls came to Heaven. Soon, nothing would be left of it, or of Creation, or of Hell. Soon, the only thing that remained would be Tribunal.

And then all would begin again the way it should be, with all praising and worshipping Tribunal. In his Creation, there would be no rebels.

Tribunal took his time, enjoying the last view of the Heaven he hated so much, and enjoying even more the thought of how desperate Lucifer was, down on Earth.

Chapter 15

A
rchangel Michael, leader
of the Heavenly Host, General of God’s Army, and greatest warrior in Creation, watched as Tribunal walked slowly across Heaven. Michael wished desperately that he could draw his sword, or even call out to the others, but he could not. Tribunal had forbidden it. He felt tears coming to his eyes as he saw the smile on the little godling’s face. Aspect of God or not, as powerful as God himself or not, Tribunal was no longer the Son of God in Michael’s eyes. He was only a godling. An upstart and a misery to all who knew him.

The vain, miserable little man still had Arcana’s head on his belt.

No one noticed.

“Michael? Michael, can you hear
me?”

It was Epiphenia, sending to him from Earth. He could not answer back. Tribunal had forbidden it.

“Michael, the hosts of Hell are rising to the surface. Nyx is fighting Lucifer for control of all of Hell and Earth, and is trying to save humanity. Is there nothing you can
do?”

Michael, warrior of God, said nothing. He watched as Tribunal approached the Gates of Heaven. Nyx was the one trying to save humanity—Nyx!—and this one was trying to destroy it. God would be very interested, but God didn’t know and there was nothing Michael could do about that.

Tribunal smiled at Michael. “I just wanted you to be the first to know,” he said. “This will be the last day that Heaven exists. Enjoy it.”

Tribunal stepped through the Gates and off the edge of Heaven, falling to the chaos on the Earth below.

It was night when Lucifer’s gate opened in the middle of the deserted streets of Firozkoh, sending buildings tumbling down into the great open pit. No one was there to witness it or to see the red glow from the pit reflecting off the clouds above. The few surviving residents had fled from the half-destroyed city, leaving their belongings behind them. No one was there to see Lucifer crawl out of the pit and stand on the surface of the world for the first time in a thousand years, or to see him take a deep breath of air free of the stench of hellfire and human suffering.

No one was there to see the hundred thousand Descended who crawled out after him, boiling out of the pit like giant deformed ants from a hill that had been kicked, to stand on the surface of the Earth. They drew swords and whips as soon as they reached the surface and gazed hungrily at the world around them, eager to destroy all humanity and claim the planet for their own.

Then the Earth erupted around them with stone tentacles and blades of granite that sheared through Angelic steel. From above lightning and hail pounded down on them.

“Get in the air!” screamed Lucifer. “Get in the air and spread out! Kill every human on the planet!”

The Descended tried to rise from the ground, but the wind, raging before, became stronger than any seen in the world since the firestorms of Creation, pushing them flat to the ground.

On a plateau on a nearby mountain, another rift opened in the ground, and Nyx’s army poured out. As soon as they were free of the pit they took to the sky. Half a million of her Descended had followed her from Hell. The others had stayed behind to bring Lucifer’s remaining followers in line and to see to it that the demons returned to their places. The sheer numbers of the demons had frightened some of the Descended, and they were determined to assert their dominance over Hell once more.

Nyx didn’t care. Her army outnumbered Lucifer’s five to one, and she had Epiphenia fighting on her side. If they could reach Lucifer, she could crush him once and for all.
I might even kill the bastard. And this time he won’t get to come back from it.

She realized that the certainty of her own death or unmaking was bothering her less and less. It was just what had to be done.

Nyx ordered her army into the air and had it encircle Firozkoh, just out of the reach of the brutal storm that was crushing Lucifer’s army. “No one escapes!” Nyx shouted. “No one gets past our line and out to attack the humans!” She grinned as she looked through the storm. Lucifer’s Descended and Lucifer himself were crawling on their hands and knees, trying to fight off the stone tentacles that relentlessly smashed into them or squeezed the life out of them.
“Epiphenia, can you hear me?”
Nyx sent.

“Mother!”
Nyx could hear the joy in Epiphenia’s voice.
“I hear
you!”

“Let the storm drop
,” said Nyx.
“We’re in
position.”

The winds and rain and hail all stopped at once. The tentacles retreated into the Earth. Lucifer’s troops, stunned as much by the sudden silence as they had been by the storm, blinked stupidly.

“Charge!” Nyx screamed.

Five hundred thousand Angels plunged down on the remains of Lucifer’s army, and Firozkoh became a killing field.

A hundred miles above the Earth, falling faster than sound, Tribunal saw the two armies clashing. He saw Lucifer desperately trying to rally his troops, and the armies of Nyx smashing down every Descended Angel that served Lucifer. And in the middle of it, screaming with rage, Nyx drove full-force toward Lucifer, her blade clearing a path through the battling Descended to get to the King of Hell.

She might just win,
thought Tribunal.
Not that it
matters.

Persephone wasn’t in the battle. She was going the other way, zeroing in on the one Descended presence she had been hoping to find. Her flight took her from the mountains of Afghanistan to the streets of Kabul, where Ishtar was sitting in a steam room in a bathhouse in the middle of the city. From the air, Persephone could smell the blood of all the men and boys Ishtar had killed in the building.

Persephone landed, not bothering to hide herself from the locals. They had all seen enough to traumatize them forever. She wondered idly what gods they believed in now. She folded her wings in and stepped inside, her sword and whip in hand.

Ishtar was naked, stretched out on a stone bench, luxuriating in the steam. Blood made the floor slippery, and the naked, broken bodies of men and boys lay around her. She didn’t bother opening her eyes when she said, “Hello, Persephone.”

“Bitch,” said Persephone. “You want to die lying down or standing up?”

“I’m not here to die,” said Ishtar. “I’m here to talk.”

“I’m not.” Persephone’s blade cleaved down in an arc of black light. Ishtar just managed to roll off the bench and to her feet before the bench exploded into shards of rock.

“I’m very disappointed,” Ishtar said, her armor sliding over her body and her own sword and whip leaping to her hands. “I thought you’d want to be friends with the new Queen of Hell.”

Nyx cut through the last of the Descended between her and Lucifer. The Prince of Darkness was fending off three of Nyx’s troops, hacking and slashing at them with lightning speed. As Nyx watched, one was cut out of the sky and sent tumbling to the Earth. Another had a wing torn from her body by the force of Lucifer’s whip and was sent spinning.

“Enough!” Nyx screamed, and her voice carried over the sound of battle and to the ears of every Descended Angel in both armies. “Lucifer! YOU ARE MINE!”

The other Descended fighting Lucifer backpedaled hurriedly away. Lucifer turned. The force of his blade meeting Nyx’s was enough to make both blades shiver. He snarled at her, and Nyx snarled back.

“You stupid fuck,” growled Nyx as her sword slid around his and the point jabbed at Lucifer’s face. “He’s going to destroy everything!”

“He’s going to give us Paradise,” snapped Lucifer, muscling his blade around to block Nyx’s and then hacking back at her hands.

“Don’t be so fucking stupid!” Nyx said, her voice loud enough to carry over the entirety of the battle. “Tribunal never did anything for anyone! And he sure as fuck isn’t going to do anything for us!”

“You lie!” screamed Lucifer. “You just want to be his pet!” He launched a complex attack, smashing through Nyx’s defenses, only to find that Nyx had used his momentum to put him in range to have his head removed. He spun in the air and let himself drop thirty feet to escape her blade. “Well, you fucked up, and now he’s going to destroy you, bitch!”

Lucifer launched himself up, whipping and slashing as he went.