Broken Halo (21 page)

      
She
sighed with fulfillment, nearly jumping with a start when she saw someone waltz
around the corner. It was Jude's other slave, Hope. She wore rags and her hair
had grown in enough that the short, tangled strands flopped in her eyes. It
looked untamed and frizzy, framing the dirt streaked across her pale face.

      
“Hope,”
was all Sonya could say.

      
“Hope?
Hope.” There was an absent look in her hazel eyes. She saw Sonya, but seemed to
be seeing into another dimension, or a distant memory of happier times, “I saw
hope once. It was in the soft, fragrant pink and white blooms of spring, the
sweet, powdery essence of innocence - flowers.”

      
Sonya
felt a chill when Hope giggled while she stared off into space and traced the
wooden surface of a nearby table. Pity and evil were at play here.

      
“I
used to wear a crown of daisies in my hair...like a halo of innocence. Did you
ever wear a halo, angel?”

      
Sonya
had goose-bumps on her arms. She wasn't aware Hope knew what she once was.
Angels didn't wear halos as mankind often depicted in art, but the symbolism
she referred to was unmistakable. “No.”

      
“Flowers,”
Hope whispered. Her eyes darkened and her smile became cynical, “But then the
winter came, not for me, though. I died of thirst in the drought of summer. The
heat of cruelty burned me to ashes. Hope died.”

      
Sonya
couldn't tell if she had lost her mind, or was now incredibly enlightened by
her dire circumstances.

      
“But
you survived the heat of summer,” Hope continued. “It wasn't the merciless heat
that brought you down; it was the fires of ecstasy. Then the changes of autumn
came, but you didn't see the cold, darkness of winter coming. How could you
when you were so distracted by the pretty colors of change? The colors they
wanted you to see.”

      
She
felt shivers slithering up and down her spine like serpents of fear.

      
Hope
smiled wickedly, but there was bitterness in her countenance. “You would have
noticed winter had it struck right away back in the spring. You would have
fought the darkness that accompanies the dead of winter, but they knew this;
thus the seasons of subtlety were sent first to disarm you. Even now that the
sun has set and the cold nights have begun, you see only the snowflakes. You
dance in the snow while the life has been raped from every living thing. Those
strong enough to survive go into hibernation, sleeping until the return of
spring. But little do they know their slumber is an eternal one. No more than
you can see past the snowy landscape into the frigid darkness ensnaring you.
Spring will never come again. Hope is dead.”

      
Tears
pricked Sonya's eyes at her words. Advice came too late. The mocking word
scrawled across Hope's forehead was the opposite of what was written in her
haunted hazel eyes. The light was gone from them, but this wasn't an evil
darkness, it was a tormented one. Her innocence and sanity were gone, yet her
insight into Sonya's downfall was a remarkable one.

      
“No
more flowers or birds singing,” Hope walked so lightly she practically floated
toward her. “No warm sunshine or new beginnings.”

      
“I'm
so sorry they did this to you.”

      
“They?
But they didn't. Hope wasn't killed by demons; she was killed by an angel. The
sky wasn't darkened by evil, it was darkened by love.” Hope's expression turned
hostile while her voice sounded calm and sweet, “Two women and one angel left
to defend the children against a band of vampires and demons. The angel was
injured and the two women murdered. There at the gates of hell they stood. They
were given a choice.”

      
Sonya's
scalp crawled with horror when it hit her. She struggled when Hope lifted her
dress and touched her mound, but she grabbed Sonya's wrists and held her still.
She seemed stronger than Sonya recalled her being.

      
“You
must hear, Sonya. You must know how Hope died.” Hope massaged her clit slowly,
smiling when she flinched, “They were presented with a choice: to be tormented
in the underworld, or to become the slaves of demons on the earth. They chose
the lesser of two evils, knowing that their final destination would be the
same. One wonders sometimes whether or not these women would have survived the
attack on the orphanage if a second angel had been present guarding them.
Perhaps she might have helped ward them off, or dissuaded the fiends from
initiating such an attack in the first place.”

      
Sonya
wept and tried to free herself from Hope's grip, cursing how sensitized and
vulnerable her tiny bud was in lieu of the prior stimulation there. “Hope, I'm
so sorry.”

      
“Hope
is cake. There is no cake. I am dead.”

      
“Please
let me go. I want to comfort you.”

      
“Do
you have cake?”

      
“I...no,
but I can bake you one if you like. Please stop touching me like that.”

      
Her
grin was ruthless. “I thought this was what you wanted, angel. You gave up
heaven for pleasure. If it had been me, I would have given up sex for an
eternity of light and cake, but we always want what we can't have, don't we?”

      
What
was this obsession of hers with cake? Sonya tensed and struggled as her body
was led toward the finale she dreaded. “Please stop. I don't want to -”

      
“Finish?
But you did before,” Hope sneered. “What changed? Now you see the cost of
unbridled passion. I want you to finish. I want you to look into my eyes and
take your damned pleasure, knowing what it cost. I want you to come the way I
do, knowing hope is dead. Even with your eyes opened I want you to see
darkness.”

      
Sonya
stifled her sounds as her body was delivered over to abandon. Her womb
shuddered as she had shivered earlier in horror at the sight of a destroyed
version of Hope. The spasms in her pussy evoked wetness in the region to match
her saturated eyes.

      
Hope
smiled. Her hazel eyes were vicious. “I see your pleasure, but it doesn't touch
me. You on the other hand, cannot see my suffering and escape untouched. My
face will haunt you when you close your eyes to take your pleasure.”

      
Sonya
kneed Hope to push her away so she could free her hands and reach out to the
victim. Hope hissed at her and reached into a drawer for a knife. “Hope, I'm
sorry. Put that away.”

      
“Hope
is dead! You killed her and now death is coming for you!” Hope yelled and ran
at her.

      
Sonya
screamed and bolted away as fast as she could. The woman snarling like a beast
behind her seemed more animal than human. She was knocked to the ground and
tried to keep the dagger at bay whilst Hope held it over her.

      
“You
shall go to the abyss before me!” she yelled. She shrieked when she was yanked
up from behind and the knife was forced from her.

      
Jude
handed her over to a maid. “I told you to keep the bitch locked away.”

      
“I
wanted to take her out so she could stretch. I'm sorry, sir.”

      
“Lock
her away and see that it doesn't happen again.” Jude turned to Sonya, “Were you
harmed?”

      
She
shook her head. “No.”

      
“Glad
to hear it. The broad is a menace.” He walked off as though the disturbance had
been a minor nuisance rather than a lunatic crying out for freedom and justice.

      
Sonya
stole away and fell to her knees bawling. Hope was only a shell of the woman
she had been, but there was no longer any light in her. Hope was gone and she
was responsible.

***

      
Nimbus
was burning incense in the temple when the earthquake struck. There was only
one reason such powerful tremors would occur in the underworld. The first and
last time this had happened a succubus had been drawn to a man who turned out
to be a messenger angel in disguise. Tzuriel resisted Delilah's wiles, which
irked her. She laid a trap for him and eventually caught him and dragged him
down to the underworld. They barely made it past the gate when he regained
consciousness and pummeled the asses of the two guards.

      
The
entire duration of the brawl, the earth around them rumbled and shook, jostling
its inhabitants below. The people above were unaffected; it was a tremor
targeted directly at the kingdom of darkness. The angel escaped and laws were
laid down that no holy thing should ever enter the underworld as the ground
trembled from the sacrilegious union of the holy in a place of darkness.

      
That
was back in the age of the Roman Empire and now this earthquake seemed twice as
fierce. Sonya was human, so Nimbus knew that wasn't the reason. The magnitude
of this one when no angel or sacred artifacts were present seemed to suggest
that someone was offering a prayer to God, or quoting scripture. It didn't take
a genius to figure out whom that someone was.

      
He
found Sonya being beaten by a chaos demon in his true form. She looked scared
out of her wits and while she struggled, her defensive reflexes were more to
keep the beast at bay than to actually delve him any harm. Nimbus pulled the
brute off before he did her any serious damage.

      
“She
was making holy utterances!”

      
He
slammed the creature up against the wall. “I will take care of it.”

      
“She
should be killed! What is a believer doing down here?”

      
“She
is not a believer. That is Sonya.”

      
“The
fallen angel turned human?” The demon shifted back into his human counterpart,
“Why have you not killed her?”

      
“I
have other plans for her.”

      
“She
is not even dead. Unless you kill her or claim her, a person with that much
light in them has no business down here.”

      
“What
I do with my property is none of your bloody business.”

      
“She
has too much hope in her; too much goodness. You must destroy it, or they will
demand you kill her.” The demon left in a huff.

      
Nimbus
sighed, knowing he was right. Sonya seemed distressed about something, but it
wasn't enough. She had enough hope in her to stave off despair. And apparently
enough of a soul still left inside of her that God heard her prayer and the
earth shook in fear because of the sacred offering of an answered prayer being
uttered in the most lawless of places. What had she prayed for?

      
It
was no longer enough to subdue her body and will; he needed her soul. He must
break her spirit so she would taste of despair and hopelessness and do anything
to relieve them. With the entire underworld soon to be outraged at her audacity
once they learned of what she had done, she would need a protector, a hero.
They would demand her death, or that she be offered as a sacrifice and he would
provide her a way out. He hoped she possessed the good sense to take it.

      
His
heart felt heavy and his body tense with rage and jealousy as he led her into a
dungeon and stripped her. He shackled her to a pole with her back to him and
cracked the whip against the stone floor so she would know what was coming. The
loud echo ricocheting off the solid walls sounded ominous even to him.

      
Anger
surged through him when he sensed a communion of sorts. She was praying
silently again. The cries of the dead were one thing. They were damned so their
pleas were of no consequence, but Sonya was very much living and as long as she
was there was still hope. As long as she had hope she was unreachable to him.
He delved her a mean blow with the whip as a penalty for her treachery.

      
“Stop
doing that!” he yelled.

      
She
screamed when the punishing instrument made contact with her back. He didn't
strike her hard enough to draw blood, but it left a nasty mark on her lovely
skin. She wouldn't scar permanently from this flogging, he would see to that.
Her skin was too flawless to be marred irreversibly by such marks of brutality,
but if she didn't stop crying out to God, he would see to it that she bled from
this encounter.

      
“What
happened to her?” Her voice was as shaky as her trembling body. She was scared
and possibly in shock from the force of the blow.

      
“Who?”

      
“Hope.
She is so altered. What did they do to her?”