Dancing on the Head of a Pin (30 page)
Read Dancing on the Head of a Pin Online
Authors: Thomas E. Sniegoski
Tags: #Fantasy, #Occult & Supernatural, #General, #Contemporary, #Fiction
“Hey,” he said, giving the fallen a gentle shake. “Are you still with me?”
Madach’s eyes flickered open, looking into Remy’s fearfully.
“It’s all right,” Remy reassured him. “I think we might’ve actually averted the disaster.”
Remy chanced a look toward the sarcophagus; though large chunks were missing from its surface, none of the blows had actually managed to break through to the inside.
He felt Madach’s body stiffen in his arms.
“No,” the fallen angel stated, shaking his head. “No, it’s not all right at all.”
The explosion immediately followed upon Madach’s words. Remy watched as the blood-covered form of Suroth rose from the rubble of the broken ceiling.
Steam wafted up from his soaking robes, his features twisted in a combined grimace of rage and agony. In his hand he still clutched the hilt of the Pitiless katana. The blade had been snapped about midway down, but Suroth had still managed to hold on to his weapon.
Twisting away from the still-thrashing Madach, Remy scrambled for the battle-axe. Maybe this was what Hell was for him, one countless battle after another, feeling his humanity slipping away inch by inch.
Suroth opened his mouth to speak, his jaw hanging crookedly. It looked quite painful as he forced the words from his mouth.
“With the end . . . I bring about the beginning,” the Nomad croaked and extended the sword, pointing the broken blade at Remy.
Remy tensed to fly and was shocked when Suroth changed the direction of the blade, pivoting to point it at the sarcophagus.
Snaking arcs of angelic power emerged from beneath the angel’s wet and tattered robes, tentacles of magick that snaked down the length of his arm, flowing into the hand that clutched the broken sword.
A blast of angel fire, far stronger than anything the Nomad had conjured yet struck the front of Lucifer’s personal prison.
The chamber was filled with a searing blue light, a magickal energy continued to flow from some vast reservoir within the Nomad leader.
Remy knew what was happening, and that it was now too late to stop it.
Suroth was sacrificing his angelic life force and adding it to the magick his kind had mastered so many millennia ago. The once-mighty Nomad leader had begun to wither, his body mass dwindling away to nothing before Remy’s eyes.
Lucifer’s pall had begun to glow white, the intense heat radiating from the stone prison causing the moisture from the melting ice to evaporate, filling the chamber with a roiling steam that made it nearly impossible to see what was happening.
Remy was drawn to the sarcophagus, flapping his wings aggressively to disperse the hindering mist. He was at least three feet from the pall when the magick pouring from Suroth abruptly ceased. A thunderous blast followed as the case exploded, lifting him off his feet and tossing him through the air.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Knowing that the unthinkable had occurred, Remy stood.
The steam had begun to fade, a roiling layer of fog undulating like something alive close to the chamber floor. He moved toward where the stone coffin had once stood, broken pieces now scattered about the floor.
As he moved closer, he saw kneeling amongst the fog and rubble, the form of a man. Remy froze, staring at the shape that suddenly stood and turned to face him.
It was Madach who stood in the remains of the sarcophagus.
Remy’s angelic instinct was immediately on alert.
Something is wrong—horribly, horribly wrong,
he thought as he strode closer, ignoring the pain that attempted to cripple his body.
Something is wrong—horribly, horribly wrong,
he thought as he strode closer, ignoring the pain that attempted to cripple his body.
Standing beside Madach, Remy scanned the ground, finding only the broken pieces of the Morningstar’s imprisonment.
Lucifer was nowhere to be found.
Remy felt their presence just as the screaming began.
Horrible shrieks and wails echoed through the prison chamber, and he turned toward the cries of misery.
The Thrones hovered in the air, their round, roiling bodies crackling with repressed Heavenly power. Tendrils of humming energy leapt from their bodies, lashing out at any and all who dared come too close.
The fallen screamed as they died. They came en masse, unable to stop themselves from rushing toward the creatures of Heaven, hands outstretched, desperate to once again touch the light of the Almighty.
As the fallen were killed, their once-divine forms exploding into clouds of ash, the Thrones paid little attention to their demise. All eyes—each and every one of the large, piercing orbs that covered the seething masses of power—were fixed upon Remy.
He could feel their gazes burning into his flesh and then he heard their roaring command.
“End his life.”
Their voices were overwhelming, like every sound in existence—the beautiful and the harsh, the melodic and the earsplittingly painful, all combined to give them voice.
Remy immediately dropped the battle-axe at his feet, bending forward, covering his ears with his hands, though it did him little good, for the Thrones spoke inside his head as well.
“I . . . don’t understand,” Remy cried. It took every bit of strength he had remaining to stay on his feet.
“Do as we command before it is too late,”
the Thrones cried. It was like having an atomic weapon set off inside his skull.
the Thrones cried. It was like having an atomic weapon set off inside his skull.
Still bent over, Remy looked up into the multiple eyes of his tormentors, squinting through their radiance as he attempted to understand what they wanted of him.
“I don’t . . .”
The orbs of divine power surged closer, tentacles of energy moving across the ground, bodies of dead fallen exploding to drifting bits of nothing at their pernicious touch.
“There was always a fear that something of this magnitude would occur,”
the Thrones announced.
“So he was removed. Placed where he would no longer be a threat . . . where he could do no harm.”
the Thrones announced.
“So he was removed. Placed where he would no longer be a threat . . . where he could do no harm.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Remy screamed, the coppery taste of blood filling his mouth. His nose and ears were leaking from the Thrones’ assault, and he wanted it to stop, but most of all he wanted to understand.
“He was never supposed to return here.”
“Tell me who you’re talking about!” Remy cried, lurching toward the emissaries from Heaven.
“There is no time!”
the Thrones wailed, one of the snaking appendages of fiery energy touching something on the ground and hurling it at him.
the Thrones wailed, one of the snaking appendages of fiery energy touching something on the ground and hurling it at him.
Remy caught the object, surprised at the sudden wave of familiarity he experienced on contact. He gripped the pistol tightly in his hand, the familiar voice of the weapon present inside his head again.
Kill him!
The eyes were looking past him, focusing on the object of their obsession, and Remy slowly turned to gaze at the pathetic form of Madach. The fallen angel stood slump shouldered, his body beaten and lacerated, his clothes hanging from his broken shape in bloodstained tatters.
He seemed to be in a sort of trance, staring down at the shattered remains of Lucifer’s pall.
“Him?” Remy asked, turning back to the Thrones. “You want me to kill Madach?”
The Colt became euphoric, not because of the why or whom it was to be used upon, but because it had the opportunity to do what it had been created for. It urged Remy on, telling him in a hissing voice like radio static to do as he was told.
Remy ignored the Pitiless, waiting for some sort of answer, something that would make sense of the murderous act that the Thrones were demanding of him.
And then Madach began to chuckle.
Remy turned away from Heaven’s emissaries to look at the fallen angel.
He was hunched no longer, standing perfectly straight, with his hands hanging down at his sides.
“Madach?” Remy questioned, not seeing the humor.
“It’s all clear to me now,” Madach stated, smiling so wide that it seemed to split his face.
“Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!”
the Thrones shrieked inside his head. Through eyes tearing with pain, Remy watched Madach.
the Thrones shrieked inside his head. Through eyes tearing with pain, Remy watched Madach.
“I’m free,” he said, his eyes glinting a golden yellow.
A million questions filled Remy’s head, but he knew that there wasn’t time for a one of them.
The wounds—the cuts and abrasions—that the fallen had received during his tribulations in the underworld had begun to glow. An eerie white light starting to seep from somewhere inside him.
No longer trusting Remy to do what they asked, the Thrones made their move. Their spherical bodies began to glow like miniature suns, as they merged their masses to form one enormous globe of eyes and fire.
A tentacle of fire grew from the burning surface, lashing out like a whip. Remy barely avoided the ferocious attack, his wings smoldering with the intensity of the heat as he leapt from harm’s way. He rolled onto his back, extinguishing the unearthly fire eating at his wings.
Shielding his face and eyes, he peered through the searing brightness, barely able to make out the shapes of the sunlike Throne and its enemy.
Questions raced through his mind as he watched and waited for the inevitable outcome.
Then the horrible screams of the divine erupted in the air.
Remy crawled to his feet, stumbling back, trying to escape the oppressive sound that was exploding all around and inside him.
It was the Thrones. Somehow, the Thrones were screaming. There was a burst of light. Remy reacted instinctively, looking away just in time, before his eyes could be burned black in their sockets. When he turned back, through vision obstructed with dancing black spots and expanding circles of color, he saw the most disturbing of sights.
The fire of the single, great Throne had been extinguished, and the Thrones had returned to their individual states. But no longer did they float above the ground, spinning and turning, casting off tongues of fire. Now they simply lay upon the ground like spherical lumps of cooling volcanic rock.
But most horrible was what had happened to their eyes.
Their eyes were now no more than smoldering wet craters dripping with a viscous fluid that formed steaming puddles on the cold ground of Tartarus.
All except for one.
Madach had left each of them a single eye, and those eyes watched him now, filled with something the Thrones had likely never known.
Fear.
For Madach wasn’t Madach anymore, and Remy stood paralyzed by the mind-numbing realization.
The fallen angel’s damaged skin had begun to slough away, revealing new, bronze-colored flesh beneath. He was still smiling—even wider than he had been before—wiping the old, loose skin from the new, muscular form beneath.
Madach isn’t Madach anymore.
Magnificent wings as black as the night unfurled from his back, languidly teasing the air, flexing powerful muscles that had not been used for so very long.
Remy stared with wonder. He’d always thought that the Lord God Almighty had ripped those impressive black appendages from his shoulders before casting him down to Hell.
And then Madach ripped the mask of flesh from his face, and even though Remy already knew who it was that now stood before him, he still gasped at the sight.
In awe of
him.
him.
In awe of the Morningstar.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
T
he Thrones’ cryptic words finally made sense.
he Thrones’ cryptic words finally made sense.
He was never supposed to return here.
And now Remy knew why they were so desperate for him to have killed Madach.
What he’d feared most had happened, not exactly in the way that he thought it might, but it had happened.
Lucifer was free.
Remy hadn’t a clue what he should be doing, and so he stood, frozen in place, watching as the Son of the Morning looked about him, like a new tenant surveying the empty space of an apartment, deciding where the furniture should go.
And then his golden-flecked eyes fell upon Remy.
Remy met that gaze without fear, remembering a time when this powerful being once stood at the right hand of God, but also recalling the rebellion that the Morningstar had perpetrated. The Seraphim nature remembered the battles and the bloodshed as well as who was ultimately responsible, and it would not wither before the angel’s commanding stare.
Sensing no imminent danger, Lucifer looked away, his awesome wings unfurling completely from his back. The dark angel leapt into the air. Hovering above the chamber, he raised his arms, fingers extended. Head tossed back in a cry of effort, the Morningstar began to exert control over his surroundings.
The ground began to tremble, a slight vibration at first, followed by tremors so great that it was difficult stay upright.
Remy felt helpless. Certainly he could have listened to the urgings of his angelic nature, flying up to confront the first of the fallen, but he knew that it would make little difference.
Lucifer was free, and Hell was his to command.
From beneath the dead, the Pitiless emerged. The weapons created from the Morningstar’s essence flew up into the air of the prison chamber to hover before their true owner. Their master.
“These have served their purpose well.” Lucifer’s voice boomed, and Remy watched as the weapons began to lose shape, becoming like smoke that swirled around the Morningstar, eventually being absorbed into his golden body, as he took back the power he had cast off so very long ago.
His already perfect form seemed to become even more immaculate, glowing like a star—
a morning star
—and bathing the once-icy chamber in his radiance.
a morning star
—and bathing the once-icy chamber in his radiance.
The walls began to creak and groan, large portions of ancient ice sliding from the walls to shatter upon the floor.
“They sought to keep me from . . . this.” Lucifer’s voice carried above the rhythmic beating of his awesome wingspan.
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