Plague of Angels (2 page)

“Yes?”

“I will tempt him,” Nyx said. “And when I’m done, I’ll have God’s son bending to my will. I guarantee it.”

Chapter 1

Nyx, wearing the
form of the mortal woman the people had come to know as Mary Magdelene, stayed in the crowd until the sky went dark, weeping with the others.

He had said the sky would turn black, and she knew him well enough to know that if He said so, it would happen. And so she had stood in the throng of people gathered together to weep and watch Him die, just as He had foretold.

Many of those who had gathered were utterly destroyed. Some wept, not just for the man, but in the understanding of their own fates, in despair of their ultimate mortality. Some watched the grim spectacle in awe, seeing him as a paradox of weakness and strength. A few watched the scene numbly, with no expression at all. Others kicked around blame as if by shunting responsibility they’d be absolved for their part in His death. Whatever their reaction, none of them could look away. So they stared as their savior, bloody and exposed, writhed on His cross. The hot wind that stirred the dust at their feet blew grit into His wounds and His eyes. Nyx pretended that was what was making her cry, even though she knew it wasn’t so.

Then the sky went black.

Not the black of an eclipse, or dark clouds obscuring the sun, though those were certainly rolling in from the edges of the desert. No, this was the darkness of night, the darkness of mourning and death, as He had predicted.

Nyx stole away from the crowd of mourners and found a place where no one could see her. There, she transformed, letting the clothes she wore melt into her body. She exchanged false warm blood for false cold blood, false flesh for scales, false legs for a long, slithering body that would glide, unnoticed, up the small mount to where He hung.

Nyx’s forked tongue licked at the air. She could smell Him, even from this distance.

Nyx wasn’t supposed to go to Him. Not now, and certainly not in this form, but she could not let Him pass from Earth without touching Him one last time. The guards that surrounded the place had not been letting anyone get near and would kill a snake as soon as look at it. But now, with this thick, unnatural darkness descending, they were as blind as anyone else in the horde, and Nyx could slip through unnoticed.

The coarse, hot desert sand rolled underneath her sinewy body as she slid her way up the mount, between two of the guards, and up on to the hill of execution. There were three of these so-called criminals crucified there. The two on the outside were thieves and probably murderers. He was hanging in the middle, supposedly to signify He was the worst of all. Nyx would have laughed, but her form did not allow it.

The worst of all, she thought. Hardly. He would have been the best of them, had He not seen how unworthy they are of him.

In the darkness she slithered to the base of his cross and looked up. He hung like a trophy, suspended before the crowd, high on the wooden cross. His hands and feet were nailed through with blunt shards of iron, torn flesh hanging from the edges of each wound. His feet pressed against their little platform, holding him up even as the nails pinned them in place. A crown of woven thorns, made to mock Him, had been forced onto his head, tearing at his scalp and adding to the blood running down his body.

His flesh was mortal, despite the spirit that lurked underneath it. It could only take so much before it collapsed entirely. He had been on the cross for hours now, and while Nyx knew that He could easily have lasted days, if He allowed it, she also knew that His time was growing short. Even in the darkness it was clear that the strong carpenter’s muscles on His arms and chest were stretched nearly to their breaking point and torn open from the many lashes he Had received. It was barely noticeable beneath the blood, sweat and dirt that covered His face, but the hanging man was crying.

He is so light, now,
she thought.
He could fly up to heaven still in his own flesh.

But not yet. Please, not yet.

Somewhere, beyond the clouds, God was looking down on His suffering with approval. God had been the author of this tragedy, and Nyx hated Him for it, even more than she hated Him for her own downfall.

Light flared and she coiled in on herself, ready to strike. The soldiers had lit torches, and by their light she could see one of them readying a heavy iron club. The thief on the left started babbling, pleading for them not to use it. He tried to push himself away, tearing the flesh on His feet where they were nailed to the cross. The big soldier ignored Him, took aim and swung.

There was a horrible crunch, and blood spurted from where the studs on the club had ripped into the man’s flesh. The thief’s cries turned into high-pitched screams. A second crunch, more blood, and the screams diminished. It wasn’t because He was unconscious, Nyx knew. He simply had no breath to scream. When a crucified man’s legs were broken he could no longer support himself, and the body’s weight drove the air out of his lungs. Though the thief did not know it, the soldiers were giving him mercy. He would suffocate soon, and His suffering would be over.

The soldier stopped in front of the middle cross, but instead of swinging his club again, the soldier shoved the end of it into the stomach of the man there. The man on the cross grunted in pain.

“No broken legs for you, scum,” he said. “You must have really pissed someone off to be denied mercy.”

It was all Nyx could do not to rear up and sink her fangs into the soldier’s unprotected calf.

“She is inhabited by devils,” the man had been told. And He, believing them, had come.

Nyx had built the story well. She had shifted her shape to that of a young, beautiful woman, and sold herself as a prostitute. She had fucked her way through the men and women of the town, building a reputation for passion, eagerness to please, and a willingness to do whatever she was asked. One of the merchants, a fat, odious man with bad teeth and a great deal of money, had set her up as his concubine. He had given her grander rooms in his house than he had given his wives in exchange for her willingness to let him take her at any time, in any way that he chose.

When He and his disciples were in the area, Nyx became possessed by devils. It had not been easy for her to lure the little air spirits to her, harder still to force them into her body. They had fought her until they realized who she was, and then they had cowered and pleaded. She had pulled them in, and the pain it caused them came out of Nyx’s mouth as screams. And if the merchant thought those screams were hers, so much the better.

He had come at the merchant’s request and broken bread with the man and his family. They had eaten and drunk, and then the merchant had taken Him to see Nyx where she had been tied to her bed, her body writhing and screaming, and sores appearing where the air spirits within her desperately clawed at her flesh in their anguish.

“This is Mary Magdalene,” said the merchant. “And she is beloved to me.”

He recognized her, of course, but He had set her free anyway. It had been the first time she had felt His power, and it had taken her breath, and the spirits, away.

It was His power that intoxicated Nyx—more than his scent and the taste of his flesh. Even now, exhausted and covered in blood and dirt, His downcast eyes crying tears of pain that left clean streaks on his dirt-covered cheeks, His power radiated from Him. Nyx could feel it soaking through the scales on her body, and it drew her closer to Him.

A third crunch, then a fourth. More blood and more screams from the second thief, then gurgling, gasping cries as His legs and lungs collapsed. The soldier swaggered back to the line of men keeping the bystanders away from the crosses. The light faded into a shadow and Nyx wound her serpent’s body around the base of the cross. The air was heavy with His scent and she pushed forward, careful not to let her slithering be noticed by anyone nearby.

Her tongue flickered out again. She knew His taste, had loved his taste, and now her snake form couldn’t resist the temptation to know the flavor of His blood.

From her slatted eyes she watched the trickles of blood that rolled down the cross. It had soaked into the dry wood at first, but there was enough blood that the wood had become saturated. Now, tiny rivulets of His blood poured down from the man’s broken body to the dry desert earth below.

She again tasted the air with her tongue, the sweetness of His flesh sending shudders through her slender body. His smell drove her nearly mad..

She pushed her body up off the ground, climbing the wood in a slow spiral. Anyone glancing at the cross would not have seen her. Even those staring at the cross from the crowd would have had a hard time seeing her. Some of His blood streamed onto her flesh, the touch of it making her as close to rapturous as her form allowed. The reptile part of her wanted to strike, to rear up and sink her teeth into His flesh. But her true self held sway, and she kept her slow climb, knowing that something far better awaited her.

Before she had been Mary Magdalene, she had met Him in the desert.

That time she had appeared in her true form. He had been sitting alone, staring out at the setting desert sun, chewing on a morsel of bread and drinking from a skin of wine. She had appeared out of that setting sun, revealing herself just as it touched the horizon. As the flames of the sun slowly sank below the earth, the flames on her black, widespread wings had taken their place.

She had chosen this moment carefully. Her original thought had been to appear naked, to let Him see her beauty by itself, see if He would be swayed by it. But given His nature, it was not mere flesh that he would respond to.

It was power.

So she wore her armor and her sword and her whip and her crown. She appeared with wings spread wide, and she had smiled at Him as she walked forward, her full lips the same color as her skin and glistening as if kissed by frost. Her hips rolled gently as she walked forward, drawing his eyes to her long, strong legs and the cleft between them. His gaze moved slowly up, His eyes trailing over the slight rise of her mound and the concavity of her belly, past the ripe, luscious swell of her breasts to her face. He took in her wings and her serpent eyes and her crown, and nodded.