Scorn of Angels (26 page)

“Then someone has to tell him,” said Nyx.

“Arcana tried,” said Persephone. “Look how well that worked out.”

“Michael tried,” said Epiphenia. “With a half-million Angels. Tribunal stopped them all.”

“Shit,” said Nyx. “Shit, fuck, piss, and bugger them all.” Her eyes glowed fiery red in the darkness as she contemplated what she would do to Tribunal if she ever had him under her control. She thought hard about it. “What would happen if Tribunal left Heaven? Would we be able to reach God then?”

“Maybe,” said Epiphenia. “It depends whether we can break through the barrier.”

“Which we can’t do unless he’s distracted,” said Nyx, as much to herself as to the others. “So what would distract him?”

“Having all his plans go to pieces?” suggested Persephone.

“Which would be easier to do if we knew his plans.”

“But we don’t,” said Persephone. “So what do we do?”

Nyx frowned and thought, and eventually sighed. “We wait.” She looked around the room. The dome of power did not block her view of the room, though she could see it shimmering. Tentatively, Nyx tried to send out her mind to feel the world, but it bounced off the dome. She frowned. “Epiphenia, can you feel the world?”

“Of course,” said Epiphenia. “I can feel all of the world, all the time.”

“Really?” Persephone said. She reached out with her mind and was blocked. “I can’t.”

“You’re made of the stuff of Heaven,” said Epiphenia. “I’m made of the stuff of the world, and I can feel it even here.”

“Then we wait here,” said Nyx. “You listen to Creation and watch for signs of Tribunal and we…” She looked at Persephone, who shrugged. “We will wait. We know how to do that.”

Tribunal appeared in Rome, just for the fun of it. He had not walked in the Eternal City in his human life. It was filled with squalor and pain and the hatred humans had for one another. Even in the churches dedicated to Jesus, he could sense humans praying for the death of their enemies or the ruination of their neighbors or worse. He let his senses wander through the city. There were places where women and their daughters stood side-by-side, selling their bodies for what coin they could earn. There were others where boys did the same, and greedy, rich men and women took a portion of the money and left their charges desperate and on the edge of starvation.

He walked down the street, fascinated and repulsed. Humanity, for all it had learned new ways to build and to write and to kill, had not changed since he had last been there.

“Spare some change, sir? Please?” asked a young boy, whose face was scarred by disease and covered in dirt. “Please, sir, my father is too sick even to beg.” He pointed to a man wrapped in a filthy cloak, shivering in a doorway. “Please, sir, he needs medicine.”

Tribunal reached out his senses. The man had gonorrhea, tuberculosis, and pneumonia. He would be dead in a matter of weeks. “Medicine won’t help,” said Tribunal. “He’s dying.”

“No, sir! Please, sir! I’ll do whatever you like, sir! Just please spare a little money for us?”

Tribunal stared at the child a moment, and then waved a hand at the boy’s father. The man screamed and convulsed, his body flailing as the organs inside him ruptured and turned to liquid. The boy ran over to him, screaming his father’s name and calling for help. Tribunal watched in amusement as the man’s flailing limbs caught his son on the face and knocked the boy over. A moment later the man died. Tribunal smiled as the man’s soul sunk down toward Hell.

“Problem solved,” said Tribunal. He looked down at Arcana’s head and turned the eyes to face him. Arcana was glaring. “They’ll all be dead in a matter of days, anyway,” said Tribunal. “His was probably a better end than the boy will have at the hands of the Descended.”

He left the boy crying at the feet of his dead father and transported himself to the remains of the Coliseum. He sat down on the top of the wall, chuckling as Arcana’s head, tied to his belt by its long hair, bounced against the stone. He set it facing the city. Then Tribunal closed his eyes and began searching for Nyx.

“He’s here,” said Epiphenia, bringing both Nyx and Persephone out of their trances. “Tribunal is on Earth.”

“He is?”

“In Rome,” said Epiphenia. She squinted slightly as if looking at something far away. “Searching for you.”

“And?” asked Nyx. “Can he see us?”

Epiphenia continued squinting at the vision only she could see. “I don’t think so.”

“Can we try to reach Heaven?” asked Persephone. “Now while he’s busy?”

Nyx shook her head. “He’ll catch us as soon as we leave here and kill us both.”

“Wait,” said Epiphenia. “There’s someone with him…”

Where is that bitch?
Tribunal wondered. He concentrated harder. He could sense where she had been. He could feel the places where her Angelic blood had fallen, though they were several hundred miles away. He could see the dust of her victims. He could sense the ichor and dust, all that was left of the nine Descended, buried beneath the streets of Rome.

But nowhere could he find Nyx or Persephone.

Frustrated, Tribunal rose into the air.
Maybe the bitch is
dead.

He scanned the world with every sense, reached out with his mind to the farthest corners of the world and still found nothing.

And while he did that, Epiphenia reached out.
“Arcana?”

Arcana’s head would have twisted around on her neck in surprise, had it not been hanging from Tribunal’s belt. As it was, her eyes bulged and darted around.
“Epiphenia!”
she sent.
“Get out of
here!”

“I am safe,”
Epiphenia sent back. “
We are
safe.”

“Open your mind,”
said Arcana.
“There’s no time for talking. He may notice any second
now.”

She felt Epiphenia open her mind, and Arcana poured into her everything that had happened after her attempt to reach Heaven. She could feel Epiphenia’s sorrow at what had happened to her.
“Don’t be sorry for me,”
Arcana snapped.
“Avenge me. STOP
HIM!”

“And what are we talking about, my little Angel?” asked Tribunal. “And who are we talking to?”

Epiphenia’s presence vanished, and Arcana was engulfed in pain. She could feel tortures and abuses all over her body—even though she didn’t have one anymore. She could hear Tribunal chuckling in pleasure as her mouth opened in a long, silent scream. Desperately, she closed off the one small part of her mind that held the conversation. Tribunal ruthlessly rooted through the rest of her memories, tearing them out and throwing them away, threatening to leave her with nothing but a blank, empty space where eons of years in Heaven had once been. The pain she was feeling grew more and more intense. Tribunal hammered against the barriers in her mind, adding a new, deeper level of agony she had never felt before.

Still she kept the walls of her mind firmly shut around the memory of the conversation. She would not last long, she knew, but maybe she could last long enough.

Deep in the Earth, in the dome of power that kept them hidden, Epiphenia opened her mind to Persephone and Nyx, sharing all that had been. Both Descended soon wore expressions as grim as her own.

“Well,” said Persephone. “Now we know he’s not going to destroy Creation until most of the humans are killed, in case God notices what’s happening.”

“And we know Lucifer won’t commit the full force of Hell until he’s sure God won’t punish them all,” said Nyx. She bit her lip, and her eyes unfocused, and she thought about it.
There just might be a
way…

“And that Ishtar is leading the first wave of Descended,” said Persephone. “I want to kill her. Can I?”

“As soon as Tribunal is sure God is distracted, he will come to Earth and wipe out all of Creation.”

“Does he really have that kind of power?” asked Persephone.

Epiphenia nodded. “He does.”

“Fuck.”

“Yes.”

“I think,” said Nyx, then she stopped. “No. We can’t. None of us can get into Heaven.”

“Why not?” asked Epiphenia. “Why can’t you go into Heaven?”

“It’s forbidden,” said Nyx. “When God cast us out and sent us to Hell, he declared that all Descended Angels were forbidden Heaven for all eternity. That for any of us to set foot on Heaven’s soil was to blaspheme against all that was good and holy, to go against God’s law. The offender would face God’s wrath and be unmade.”

Epiphenia tilted her head. “Is Heaven’s Gate closed to you, then? Or are you just forbidden?”

“I…” Nyx stopped and thought about it. “He said nothing about the Gate being closed.”

“He said that if we were to touch a foot onto Heaven’s soil, we’d be unmade,” said Persephone. “That’s close enough.”

“But that means that we could set foot on Heaven’s soil,” said Nyx.

“If we want to be instantly unmade,” said Persephone.

“You’re going to be unmade anyway if Tribunal gets his way,” said Epiphenia.

“I don’t want to be unmade,” said Persephone. “It would hurt.”

“He didn’t say we would be instantly unmade,” said Nyx. “He said we would face the wrath of God and be unmade.”

“Same thing.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Nyx. “In order to face the wrath of God, God has to come to you. He has to pay attention. There may be a chance to speak. ”

Persephone whistled. “That is a dangerous game you want to play.”

“It is,” agreed Nyx.

“You’re willing to face being unmade?” Nyx knew what Persephone meant. She was facing that anyway, but facing it by choice, not fighting…was different. Nyx had seen thousands of humans sacrifice themselves for their families or their causes over the years and had never had a clue what would impel someone to do that. She had assumed that since they were mortal anyway, it just didn’t matter as much to them…. She saw it otherwise now. She felt an immense sadness, remembering her eons of life, of pleasure and awareness and power. To give it all up… no, she didn’t want to. Not at all.

“Yes,” she said. “I am willing. The question is how do we get it to work?” Epiphenia beamed at her and Nyx had the uncomfortable sense that her daughter was proud.