Plague of Angels (6 page)

This one I will not wait on. This one betrayed my Tribunal, and I will kill him.

She slipped into his mind, and found it a whirlwind of chaos.

Even as he thrust into the girl beneath him, in his mind Judas was standing at the base of the hill, looking up at the crowd and the men crucified there. He could not take his eyes off the One who he had called his leader, his master, and his friend, who was now hanging on the cross because he, Judas, had betrayed Him.

The purse on his hip felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. The thirty silver coins—enough to hire a skilled laborer for four months—burned against his thigh with the heat of his own guilt.

Judas tried to focus on the girl beneath him, on the fleeting pleasure she provided, but in his mind he could see only the bloody, beaten, thorn-crowned face of the man whom he had claimed to love, the suffering in his master’s eyes.

He growled with frustration, pulled out of the girl, and turned her on her stomach. He pinned her face down hard against the mattress and mounted her again. The girl cried out in pain, but masked it as sounds of lust, begging him for more in the hopes it would bring him to the end sooner.

Nyx entered Judas’ mind, and allowed herself to be seen. To Judas’ eyes she was Mary Magdalene, the one their master loved, the woman who walked with the disciples and who comforted their leader when He was in pain. She stared at him, summoning all her grief and rage, and let it loose in him. Her emotions, so much more powerful than those of a mortal, overwhelmed him and filled his head so that it threatened to explode.

In the real world, Judas swore and cried out in pain. The girl beneath him was startled and tried to pull away. In his anger, he grabbed her, forced her back down on the mattress and rammed himself into her backside. Her cries turn to shrieks of pain, her feigned pleasure vanishing. He fucked her harder and harder, willing himself to finish, willing himself to the orgasm that would drive all thoughts from his brain, even for a moment.

In his mind, tears running down her face, Mary Magdalene whispered, “How could you, Judas? He loved you. He made you one of the disciples. He was the light of the world and you snuffed Him out like a candle.”

Mary vanished and in her place stood his master. His body was torn and broken from the scourging and the crucifixion. His eyes were clouded over with death, and He had holes in his hands and feet. His face was stained red from the blood leaking down from the crown of thorns.“This is what you have wrought, Judas,” He said.“I was to lead the men and women of this world to freedom from Rome, from sin, and from pain. And you destroyed it all.”

Judas screamed and reared back, pulling himself from the crying prostitute and burying his face in his hands. The girl scrambled away, watching in fear as he doubled over, screaming himself hoarse and beating at his temples.

Outside, against the wall, the man finished inside Nyx with a groan and a series of hard thrusts. He pulled himself from Nyx’s flesh and walked away. She barely noticed him go, for she was still in Judas’s mind, and she had only begun her revenge.

Judas’s eyes were locked with his master’s. He was afraid, more than he had ever been, for his master had begun to glow with a brilliant white light, so bright and powerful that it laid open Judas’s soul, making him relive the betrayal, the moment he accepted the money for his master’s death, the trip through Jerusalem leading the soldiers, and the kiss that let the Romans know who to kill.

In the real world, Judas’s bowels and bladder both released at once. The prostitute cried out in disgust, and a foul smell filled the small, closed room. The brothel guards ran in and, seeing the mess, hauled Judas out, kicking and slapping him as they dragged him down the narrow corridor to the door.

Judas wanted to run, to hide from himself, but there was no place to go; he was still trapped in his own tormented mind as he was trapped in his quaking, filth-covered body.

The brothel guards tossed him into the streets, and he landed on his own filth. They kicked him repeatedly and Judas curled into a ball, hoping to protect his flesh, while inside his mind there was a different and much worse pain. In his head, his master loomed larger, the light grew brighter. “I was the son of God,” He said. “Brought here to bring the light to mankind. And you snuffed out that light!” The white light flared bright and was gone.

Judas opened his eyes and found himself, bleeding and crying and lying in his own waste. Passing men walked around him, eyes averted in disgust. Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet, and stumbled away from the well-lit street.

In a darkened alley, Nyx transformed, leaving her false human flesh behind for her true form. She rose into the air, and as she did, black armor flowed over her body, covering her and cloaking her. Her boots, normally diamond, turned black, and a black mask covered her face. A thought transformed her three-headed, flaming whip to a single lash of darkness, as invisible in the night as Nyx herself. She silently flew above the city until she hovered over Judas.

Judas stumbled into an alley and reached up under his robe to remove his filth-covered loincloth. As his hand touched it, the first stinging lash came out of the air, ripping the shoulder of his robe and cutting into his flesh. He yelled out in pain, and looked desperately around to see who had hit him. There was no sign of anyone.

The lash cut down again, ripping open his back. He screamed and ran, the mess on his body forgotten as he tried to escape his invisible tormenter. In the sky above, Nyx followed, her whip in her hand. She watched Judas run towards the bright streets. A pair of quick lashes sent him stumbling back to the darkness.

For the rest of the night she drove him, lashing his body with a thousand small cuts, leaving him a bloody mess but never damaging him so badly that he could not run. With an expert eye she scourged the clothes from his body until he had nothing left but the soiled loincloth and the girdle that held his purse. By the time dawn began to break the horizon, he had run the length of the city three times. As the sun began to rise, he saw a possible hiding space, a small outdoor oven. In desperation, he crawled, weeping, inside it.

The flogging stopped. Judas closed his eyes in relief.

He was back on the hill. Only this time, there was no crowd, no guard, no others on crosses. There was just him, standing before the cross on which his master’s body hung.

The master looked down on him, His face filled with disapproval and disappointment. He made no sound, save for His blood hitting the earth where it dripped from His body, soaking into the parched desert sand. Judas knelt before the cross and began babbling, begging forgiveness. His master’s eyes went to the small bag on Judas’s waist. Instantly the coins inside began to burn into Judas’s flesh, making him howl with agony. He grabbed frantically at his waist, trying to pull the purse free. His hands caught fire and he screamed.

“Return the blood money!” His master’s mouth did not move, but his voice filled Judas’s head.“Return it to those who ordered my death!”

Judas’s eyes snapped open, and he realized that the oven was on fire. Though there had been no wood inside it, the stones themselves were burning. Smoke was filling the air as flames licked up from the ground, and he could smell his own scorched skin. Screaming in agony and fear, Judas crawled out and onto the ground, frantically battering at his bubbling flesh. The fire died, but the agony went on. Blisters formed on the flesh of his back and legs, on the bottom of his feet, and on his hands. It should have been enough to make Judas lose consciousness—but Nyx had Judas in her power and would give him no such reprieve.

At his waist, the girdle with its pouch remained untouched by the flames. Judas staggered away as fast as he could on his ruined feet, toward the Hall of Hewn Stones, and the Sanhedrin who had paid him to betray his master.

Nyx, now clothed in the flesh of an older woman, sneered as Judas hobbled away. He would be forced to walk through the city’s center to reach the Hall of Hewn Stones. She followed, watching with amusement as the people scattered from the sight and stink of him. The blisters on the bottom of his feet had ruptured and he left a trail of blood and pus. He should have collapsed, screaming on the ground, but Nyx used her power to keep him upright and moving despite the agony. Nyx followed him, delighting in his suffering.

He reached the Hall of Hewn Stones and pushed his way in to see the Sanhedrin. Nyx stood outside and waited. Soon the guards threw him into the street. He hit hard, splitting open more blisters and howling in pain. Still in the guise of a housewife, Nyx came forward and helped him to his feet.

“You poor dear,” she said, in her kindest, most solicitous voice, her nostrils delicately flaring to take in the scent of roasted meat, still faintly recognizable behind the stench of Judas’s filth. “Here, let me help you.”

Judas wept as she led him from the main square, babbling, “I gave it back, I gave it back, please forgive me.”

She let him blather until they were away from the square. There was a large home nearby that had once belonged to a very rich man. It was empty now, though its furnishings remained. Its residents had died of contagion, and no one yet dared to venture in save those assigned to bury the dead. She led him there, and brought him inside.

“Thank you,” he rambled. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. You have saved me.”

“No,” said Nyx. “I haven’t.” She reached into his mind and twisted it. To Judas’s eyes, she once more became his master, bloody, broken and dead, though standing before him. Judas screamed and stumbled back.“No one can save you, Judas,” she said, and Judas heard his master’s voice speak the words. “No one will ever come to save you.”

He broke free and ran out of the room, into the courtyard. Nyx slipped ahead of him, and when he arrived it was not her, but Peter that Judas saw in his mind. He tried to open his mouth to plead for his life, but Nyx took away his power of speech with a thought. She slashed out with a talon, opening a long narrow slit in his cheek that quickly filled with blood. His mouth wide in a silent scream, Judas fled, leaving bloody, oozing footprints behind. She smiled and followed.

The house was not large and had been kept in immaculate condition, but Nyx used her powers to create an illusion of a filthy, putrid labyrinth filled with biting vermin that tormented his already-burning flesh. Every time he turned a corner, one of the other apostles was there. Each delivered a stinging attack that opened his skin. Never was he allowed to sit down or hide. The apostles kept driving him from room to room, across the courtyard and back again, until night fell.

With the final light of the sun gone, Nyx at last allowed Judas to find the door and escape the house. His weeping had long since stopped, though the terror remained. For a brief moment, there was silence, and stillness, and Judas began to hope that maybe the nightmare was over.

With a flick, Nyx sent her whip lashing into his flesh again, tearing open one of the huge blisters and sending its fluids spinning out to decorate the nearest wall.

For another night, she drove him through Jerusalem, this time ripping away the girdle and loincloth, leaving him naked. In his mind, she put a desperate imperative: RUN. He could not stop, no matter how tired he became or how much pain wracked his body. No matter how desperate he was for it to end, he would always pick himself up and stumble forward once more, and every time the whip chased him, lashed him until his body was a bloody unrecognizable mess.

She drove him back and forth across the city three more times before the sun rose. And when it did, he found himself back in the courtyard of the house. He cried out in despair.

Huge hands grabbed him. A sharp-toothed, gaping mouth leered at him. Nyx had many forms. This one was male and enormous, with horns on its head and red, saw-toothed scales that covered every inch of its flesh, including that which jutted up, erect, from between its legs.

She dragged him to the bath houses and immersed him in salt water, shaking him to wash away the filth and leaving him screaming voicelessly as the salt filled the wounds. And when his body was cleansed enough that she could stand it, she took him to the middle of the courtyard, threw him on his stomach and used his body for her pleasure, driving her saw-toothed cock into him for hours at a time, using her power to keep him from going into shock so that the pain remained fresh and new with each serrated thrust.

By the time night fell and he was turned out into the streets, he was bleeding so badly he could barely stand. Still she drove him forward, watching as every step he took sent agony through his body, from the torn blisters on his feet to the ruptures in his bowels, from the open lashes that covered his body to the ripped and bleeding flesh of his mouth and throat. Blood leaked from his ears, his nose, his mouth, and his anus. He would not last much longer, she knew, and that was fine with her.

She drove him through an open gate and out of the city, towards a high hill. And when they were far enough from Jerusalem that he could not be heard, she gave him his voice back so she could enjoy his screams.

The hill had been covered in fig trees, but the storm that came with Tribunal’s passing had decimated it. Only a few trees remained standing, and one entire side of the hill had been washed away, leaving a jagged, sandy cliff.

Once more invisible and in black, she drove Judas up the hill. Her lash seemed to come from every direction, leaving him bewildered and in fresh torment with every step. Still she would not let him rest. The compulsion to run drove him to keep moving long after his body should have given up and collapsed.

And when he reached the top of the hill, he found a single fig tree still standing at the edge of the cliff, with one of its branches stretched out over the void.

Nyx let the compulsion leave him then and he collapsed to the ground, screaming and begging for his life. Hovering above him, she made her armor disappear, and let the fire that lit her black wings come back to life. The horned tiara sprung into being on her head and the jewels around her neck gleamed.