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He's working on the dark-haired one now, as he briefs them on their mission. The first part should be easy enough, even for idiots like them. The boy got away, but Phreedom has left a trail as hot and rank as burning rubber. She must have been planning this all along. Find whoever helped her brother escape, then sell them out for her own hide. Full immunity for both her and her brother. That was the deal offered by the answerer, that extension of Phreedom, more Phreedom than Phreedom herself, in fact, after what the hatchling girl let Eresh do to her. He had to take the sprite apart to get at Phreedom's graving, but he has it now, he has the Messenger girl, this scrap of code, all that is left of her. He could just wipe it out like erasing chalk marks from a blackboard, and the only thing that would be left of her is a lump of meat in a tattoo parlor in Asheville. But there's something far more valuable that he can buy with it.

Eresh, thinks Metatron.

“There you will find her,” Enki said, “the queen of the underworld, Eresh of the Greater Earth, moaning crying like a woman giving birth. No linen shroud will be wound round her body. Both her breasts are bare; she will be naked, naked but for her dark hair that swirls about her head like reeds, queen of the city of the dead.”

“The target's name is Eresh,” says Metatron. “She's dangerous. I've seen her kneeling before an angel, naked, tearing at her breasts and sobbing, ripping her hair out by the roots, only to shatter him to dust with a single word when he got close enough.”

It goes against everything the Covenant stands for, letting the hatchling and her brother stay unsigned, unbound, but Eresh is too great a prize to miss. For all that the unkin of the Covenant call themselves angels and their enemies devils, Metatron doesn't really believe in good and evil, or at least not
Good
and
Evil.
Reality, unlike the stories, unlike those dark stains printed onto bleached paper, is never black and white. In fact even those marks, like the marks he rewrites on the angel's souls, are made in an ink that's not truly black but only the very darkest purple.

But.

If anything can be described as black that isn't the true black of an utter unlit void, it's whatever construct of emptiness passes for the soul of Eresh. If anything in the world can be described as evil, it's Eresh.

“When she cries, O, my inside, cry with her, O, your inside,” said Enki to the
kurgarra
and
galatur
. “When she cries, O, my outside, cry with her, O, your outside. She will be pleased. Eresh will look at you and she'll be glad to see you.”

“But you're
not
going to kill her,” says Metatron. “Not right away. You're going to tell her that you feel the same pain she does, the same hatred, the same rage. You're going to tell her that you want to join the host of hell.”

The dark one nods, and there's the faintest hint of a cruel smile on his lips. He's well suited to this; even before Metatron started working on him there was precious little empathy in his soul. His graving was already all straight lines, sharp angles, and Metatron only works what is already there into a finer, darker hatch work, sketching the suggestion of shadows into a solid form of menace. The other one was different, fire to Pechorin's ice, but Metatron, ever the craftsman, knows he's done a good job there as well. It might not hold, but for the moment the creature that used to be Jack Carter has a feral grin on its face, as wild and crazed as Pechorin is cold and merciless. A
kurgarra
and a
galatur,
a shatterling and an impiteous gaze, a psychotic and a psychopath.

Eresh will love them.

“When she is relaxed,” said Enki to the
kurgarra
and
galatur,
“her mood will lighten. When she offers you a gift, get her to swear the oath by the great gods.”

Metatron steps back to look at his work. All he's really done is made them more themselves, for a little while anyway. He doesn't want to send a pair of permanent recruits hell's way, after all. No, after a while the binding should wear off and their own gravings reemerge, but this should last long enough to fool her, to make her think that these are every bit the sort of damaged souls she needs to help her bring down the Covenant.

“Eresh is old school. If you can get her to offer hospitality, there's nothing she can refuse you if you ask for it.”

“Raise your head,” said Enki. “Look to the wineskin that hangs from the hook on the wall, saying my lady, let me have the wineskin, that I may drink from it.”

“You'll see…well, something that was once the Messenger girl. You ask for that. You tell Eresh the girl is all you want. You're…thirsty. She understands that sort of thirst.”

“Ask only for the body of Inanna. Crush the food of life over it. Splash the water of life upon it. And Inanna will arise.”

“And when she gives it to you…”

Metatron picks up the vials from the dresser, hands them to the angels, one in each hand, like some father of ancient times giving his sons their swords.

“That's when you use these.”

THE THRONE ROOM OF THE QUEEN OF HELL

The
kurgarra
and
galatur
listened to Enki's words, and started out toward the underworld. The seven gates opened for them and they slipped in like flies, right through the cracks, entered the throne room of the queen of the underworld, of Eresh of the Greater Earth. They found her moaning, crying like a woman giving birth. No linen shroud was wound around her body. Both her breasts were bare; and she was naked, naked but for her dark hair that swirled about her head like reeds, Eresh, queen of the city of the dead.

The two fallen angels stand silhouetted in the doorway, the beaded curtain drawn apart by the left hand of one, the right hand of the other, hands of gods, of fate, of destiny, hired hands. Their postures mirror each other exactly, like they're two parts of the same being and, in a way, that's exactly what they are. The servants of the Covenant get only limited autonomy. Ask any Catholic priest and he'll tell you that they're mere extensions of their master's will; that's why they call them angels, after all, from the Greek
angelus…messenger.
Anna, Inanna, Phreedom Messenger, recognizes them even though she can't see their faces, feels a cold hatred run down her spine. She had her plan, but she's not sure whom to betray now, Eresh or Enki. She'd like to bring them all down, in a way. She'd like to make them all pay.

Eresh looks at the two for a second, then smiles, silently beckons them in.

The outer door of the tattoo parlor is still swinging slowly shut; it hits the bell as it settles against the doorframe, not quite closing.

Ting.

O, my inside, Eresh of the Greater Earth was moaning, and they moaned with her, O, your inside. O, my outside, moaned Eresh, and they moaned with her, O, your outside. O, my stomach, groaned Eresh, and they groaned with her, O, your stomach. O, my back, she groaned, and, O, your back, they groaned with her. Ah, my heart, she sighed, and, Ah, your heart, they sighed with her. Ah, my liver, sighed Eresh, and, Ah, your liver, sighed Enki's
kurgarra
and
galatur.

The blond one rants; he raves like a madman, stalking the room like he's searching for something, high or low, in the bottles of ink or the designs on the wall. He turns, rails on Eresh. There's fire in his eyes, flame in his words, as this burning boy tells the queen of the dead of every horror and atrocity he's carried out in the name of the Covenant, of every soul he's snuffed out, every trembling infant unkin whose skull he's smashed, whose bloodstains he can never wash from off his hands. At times he makes no sense, spitting incomplete, incoherent phrases, trying to express a meaning too intense to be articulated in a sentence. He rakes his fingers through his hair till it's as wild as his words, grinds the palms of his hands against his temples like there's something in his head he can't get out. And Anna realizes that it's sorrow. The other just stands there, head bowed, eyes in shadow. It's not regret that brought
him
here, she can tell. He can keep his head down, dark hair hooding him; she still knows that sadist's face.

“I'm just—I feel so fucking—everything is—”

The angel stops, goes quiet.

“Lost,” he says.

Eresh eats it up, bathes in the raging torrent of a fallen angel's grief, so much like her own, like everyone's.

The Wineskin on the Hook

Eresh of the Greater Earth stopped. She looked at them.

Anna stands at the back of the room, at the wall, like a maidservant waiting for her orders. She's passive now; there's nothing that she can do except wait to see if the end game plays out the way she'd planned. She's a schemer, by nature, as Phreedom or as Inanna; in either life, she was always looking for a way to beat the game of fate, looking for loopholes in time or space as Phreedom, looking for loopholes in the laws set out by Enki as Inanna. That's why she stole the Tablets of Destiny all those millennia ago; she knew Enki would get them back; she only wanted a little look at them to see if she could find…a way out. She's waited for three thousand years. So, now, she lets the angels and the queen of the dead play out the moves that are so deeply written into them there's little else they could do.

“Who are you moaning groaning sighing at me?” she asked. “If you are gods, I will give you a blessing. If you are mortals, I will give you a gift, the liquid gift of the full-flowing river.”

“That is not what we wish,” answered the
kurgarra
and
galatur.

“I will give you the grain gift,” said Eresh, “of the fields ready to reap.”

“Will you take us in as your own?” asks the dark angel.

He's been silent up till now, letting the other do the prep work, convince Eresh that they're both well and truly fallen. Anna doubts that the other one would be able to carry off this part. He sits on the chair where she got her tattoo now, head forward, in his hands. She wonders if he'll ever recover from the damage done to him.

“Oh, yes, little one. You're mine now,” Eresh says. “You belong here as much as anyone.”

“That is not what we wish,” the
kurgarra
and
galatur
said.

“Speak, then! What is it you wish?”

“We ask for the ancient right of sanctuary.”

“And I give you hospitality,” she says. “I offer you a river of blood to quench your rage. I offer you a harvest of souls to feed your grief. What do you want?”

It's the old deal offered by every devil to the souls that turn up at the doors of hell. The absolute power in the damnation of death, freedom from life, from sorrow, from suffering for your own pain, or from empathy, suffering from the pain of others. To transform remorse into a passion, a power that can win you—

“Anything you want,” she says. Anything.

“Only the wineskin hanging from the hook upon the wall,” they answered.

“The body is owned by Inanna,” said Eresh of the Greater Earth.

“Whether it is owned by queen or king, that is the only thing we wish.”

And the dark-haired one raises his head, slowly, turning it, to meet her gaze, and raises his hand, slowly, turning it, to point across the room at Anna where she stands against the wall.

“You have rich tastes,” says Eresh. “A pair of lackeys who would feast upon a queen.”

She has a wry, amused smile on her face as she turns and looks Anna up and down appraisingly, estimating worth or worthlessness, the degradation that these fallen angels would wreak on her and that she, in turn, would wreak on others with the vicious power of the violated. The dark angel walks across the room toward her, stops in front of her and reaches up to run his long, thin fingers over her cheek.

“She's all yours,” says Eresh.

The dark angel nods, closes his eyes with the satisfaction of the moment, of things sealed perfectly with a few simple words.

“I can do anything I want with her?” he says.

“Anything,” says Eresh.

And the dark angel reaches into the inside pocket of his black suit jacket.

“Jack,” he says—the blond one starts, looks up—“Show my lady how grateful we are.”

She gave the body of Inanna to them. The
kurgarra
crushed the food of life over the corpse. The
galatur
splashed the water of life upon the corpse.

Inanna Rose

The blond angel—Jack—leaps like a mountain lion, a flash of lightning, one arm slashing downward, cutting not with claw though but with splash of crimson, purple, almost black ink, with a Jackson Pollock splatter across the unveiled face of Eresh, in her eyes, her mouth. She staggers back like she's been struck with acid, blinded, clutching at her face and howling.

Every bottle in the place shatters. The glass beads of the curtain shatter, raining out as dust into the outer room. The glass door of the shop blows out. The vial in the dark angel's hand explodes but he's already slapping his open hand across Anna's face, splattering his master's modern medicine across her cheek, dark ink and blood, hers and the angel's mixing where the shards of glass cut into her soft flesh and his, caught between his open palm and her cheek. And the pain burns in her face, on her cheekbone, on her temple, a searing migraine splitting her skull, drilling her brain. The whole left side of her goes numb, and like the victim of a stroke she loses balance, falls. The pain splits her in two. And it makes her feel alive.

And even as the fair-haired angel clamps his hand across Eresh's mouth, his other arm locking around her neck as he slams her against the wall, using all his weight to keep her from uttering another sound, the wordless howl of the queen of the dead still rings in Anna's ears, reverberates around the room, shattering glass in the framed prints of dragon designs and celtic knotwork, all the tribal or traditional tattoos that decorate the walls. Glass dust rains down on Anna on the floor.