The Armies of Heaven (16 page)

Dvenadtsataya
: Alliances

There was still no sign of Love by the time full dark approached. Belphagor had spent the afternoon and evening asking around in the neighborhood. Though one employee at the Internet café remembered seeing her early in the day, no one else had seen anyone matching her description.

They couldn’t keep the Night Travelers waiting. Belphagor left the Virtues outside the cemetery to wait for his signal and used the only method he could think of to get inside without a fuss: he flew.

It had been a long time since he’d stretched his wings. He drew his opaque radiance around himself like a movable darkness that bent the light of the night sky if one happened to look at it straight on, flinging the wings of solid air out upon the stream of the more natural air around it. Like a warm current, he rose and let the flow take him, careful not to go too high where he might be noticed. He circled the cemetery twice, not seeing any sign of Night Travelers, but on the third revolution he spied them. Dressed in dull gray tones, they blended in like the tombstones of the dead among the crowded statuary of angels and reclining souls.

Belphagor descended smoothly, if a bit reluctantly, shrugging his wings back into place in the unseen plane between Heaven and Earth.

An elderly man stepped forward from the shadows. “You are Belphagor of Raqia.” He spoke as if informing Belphagor of an indisputable fact.

“I am.” Belphagor bowed slightly, uncertain of the protocol among this group. These were no ordinary contacts in the gypsy underground, but the leaders of the secretive sect itself. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

“We didn’t agree to meet with you.” A woman stepped out from behind a crypt, slipping back the hood that covered her silver-streaked ebony hair as she approached. “We agreed to meet with Lyubov Andreyevna Ivanova.”

It took him a moment to realize she meant Love. “And I would very much like for her to be here to meet you, but she was unable to join me.”

“This is precisely what I warned you about.” A younger man scowled beside her. “You can’t trust a demon.”

“Pyotr,” the older man scolded, waving his hand dismissively.

“And I suppose you think you can trust the Malakim?” Belphagor tried to keep his temper in check. “They’re the very ones who’ve stirred up the recent antiziganist sentiment against you. They’ve been doing it for centuries.”

Pyotr regarded him with disdain. “They are the messengers of the queen of Heaven. The Night Travelers have long awaited her coming. She is destined to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to the world of Man.”

“Oh, for the love of the devil,” Belphagor swore. “If you’ve been waiting for the queen of Heaven, it’s Anazakia Helisonovna you’ve been waiting for, not Aeval.”

“Bloody Anazakia?” Pyotr scoffed. “Yes, we see how well she’s received by Heaven. And is she not the one who left your Romani friend Knud to bleed to death when he came to rescue her?”

“Where did you hear that?” demanded Belphagor. “She did no such thing.” He was allowing the Travelers to set the tone of this meeting and letting his emotions get the better of him. If this were a game of cards, he’d have lost his shirt by now. He breathed consciously for a moment to center himself. “Listen. You say Queen Aeval is going to bring Heaven on earth. That may be so”—Pyotr raised a triumphant eyebrow at him and the woman folded her arms with a look of resignation—“but it isn’t the Heaven you’re thinking of. Since you seem to know so much about me, you must know I’m well acquainted with Aeval. While I was her slave, she boasted about some of her plans. One of the ways she gained the cooperation of the Second Choir was by promising the Seraphim she would abolish human immunity.”

The woman unfolded her arms with a small gasp of surprise.

“He’s lying, Elena.” Pyotr was unmoved. “They don’t call him the Prince of Tricks for nothing.”

Belphagor ignored him, addressing the woman. “They were to be given the freedom to ‘purify’ the universe as they saw fit. And trust me when I say you do not want their purifying hands upon you.”

Elena addressed him reproachfully. “We have all dealt with the Seraphim. It was one of the arguments for breaking the alliance with the Fallen. We’ve grown tired of having to serve as go-betweens for those unpleasant creatures and yourselves. The Malakim promised if we allied ourselves with Heaven we would never again have to deal with the Seraphim. And they’ve been gone from our world ever since.”

“They’ve been gone because Aeval changed her mind and bound them to the Empyrean for secretly helping the Social Liberation Party in a conspiracy against her.”

She studied him mistrustfully. “Why should we take your word for this?”

“Because the conspiracy the Seraphim were involved in was the plot to take my little girl from me. She was stolen so Aeval and her Malakim wouldn’t get to her themselves. So thanks, in no small part, to the alignment of the gypsy underground with the Malakim, I haven’t seen my Ola in eleven months.” He struggled to keep the anguish inside him from rising to the surface. “Why would I want to lie about any of this? I’m all out of tricks. You’ve seen to that.”

Even Pyotr looked a little ashamed.

Alexei spoke after a moment of respectful silence. “That is why some of us have objected to the alliance with the Malakim from the beginning.” He looked at Pyotr and Elena. “No good can come of doing harm to a child.”

“What about the other heir?” Pyotr said, changing the subject. “The Malakim have told us the demons intend to use him as their puppet. Do you deny that?”

“Of course I don’t deny it. The madwoman at the head of the Social Liberation Party has abducted both Anazakia’s daughter and her nephew to the same end. The SLP is no more a friend to the Fallen than Aeval is. Anazakia is the rightful queen of Heaven. Beneath her, angels, demons, and the creatures of this world alike will receive justice.”

“So now Bloody Anazakia is Saint Anazakia. Does she also drip honey from between her thighs, as your kind like to say?”

Belphagor resisted the impulse to punch the little prick square in the jaw. “She will at least make an honest attempt at ruling justly, rather than lying to you as Aeval does to get you to do her bidding. As for honeydripping,” he added dryly, “you’d have to ask Grand Duke Vasily about that. Our relationship isn’t quite that open.” This last seemed to be lost on Pyotr.

“I apologize for my son.” Alexei scowled at the younger gypsy. “You may be a voting member of the Parliament of Night Travelers, Pyotr Alexeyevich, but racial slurs are not welcome in our negotiations.”

Pyotr continued, somewhat subdued. “You may not have noticed, but no one is behind Anazakia Helisonovna’s bid for the throne. It’s one thing to say she’d be the better ruler, but the Roma have no desire to be on the losing side of this celestial war. If we decided to re-ally ourselves with the Fallen, we’d have to support whomever they support.”

Belphagor took this as a positive sign that at least he was making some headway. “It might surprise you to know who’s behind Anazakia. She isn’t alone. There’s a significant faction of the Host at her side in battle even as we speak.”

Elena raised an eyebrow. “We’ve heard nothing of the kind.”

Belphagor smiled. “If you’ll indulge me a moment.” From his pocket, he slipped a prepaid cell phone he’d purchased this morning and dialed the number of the companion phone. Along with certain tones, he’d been using the vibrate function as part of Loquel’s training. Some technological innovations in the world of Man were really quite ingenious. “It’s time,” he said brusquely when Loquel answered, and snapped the phone shut.

Loquel hadn’t been the only one he’d trained today. Within the confines of their rooms, he had carefully—very carefully—introduced the Virtues to their terrestrial wings. It was rather astounding to see the evidence of their earthspirit nature. Unlike their choral cousins, the Powers, they didn’t give an impression of earthiness. Belphagor had been somewhat doubtful that they’d even have wings, since their physical natures were so unique among the lower choirs.

Naturally, he’d chosen Loquel for his demonstration, and had tested him first in private to be certain of the outcome. With a leather belt secured around the pale neck as a makeshift leash and collar, he’d led the naked angel about his room on hands and knees, and then ordered him to bow low. Loquel had assumed it was for the purpose of obeisance. Already quick to respond to any command from Belphagor, he’d bowed forward with his forehead to the carpet. Belphagor had stretched Loquel’s arms back at his sides and bound his wrists to his ankles with torn pieces of the bed sheets, ensuring the Virtue was completely incapable of moving his limbs—at least those he was aware of.

“
Milochki malchik
,” he’d whispered at his ear. “You must trust me in what I do next, and do what comes naturally to you, but don’t cry out, and do
not
raise your head.”

When Belphagor slipped the belt from around his neck, Loquel trembled but didn’t lift his head from the carpet. Belphagor stood before him and placed one boot against the angel’s head for extra measure. He doubled the belt in his fist and brought it down with a sharp crack against Loquel’s upraised behind. Loquel jerked beneath his boot and a gasp of pain escaped him, but Belphagor didn’t count this as crying out. He struck him again on the other side, and Loquel jerked again.

Belphagor increased the strength of his blows, this time striking each of the angel’s shoulders in turn. Loquel shook and his back rose with a sharp intake of breath at each stroke, but still he remained silent.

“Such a good boy.” Belphagor struck him again. “But tell me the truth: don’t you want to leap away?” When Loquel said nothing, Belphagor pushed his boot roughly against the angel’s head. “I asked you a question. When I ask you a direct question, you answer, whether I’ve bidden you to be silent or not.”

“Yes, sir,” Loquel gasped into the carpet.

“Izvinite?”
Belphagor snapped. He always insisted on responses in the language of Men from the boy he was disciplining. It added a layer of anxiety as well as taking one’s conscious mind from the pain at hand in order to stay focused.

“Prostite mnya, gospodin,”
Loquel gasped.
“Da, ser!”

“That’s better.” Belphagor stroked the leather belt lightly across his back, then struck him again with brutal force. Loquel’s head jerked violently beneath his boot. “Then leap away,” he ordered.

“I don’t understand.”

Belphagor struck him again.

“I don’t know the words!” he gasped.
“Prostite, gospodin.”

“Ya. Ne. Po-ni-ma-yu.”
Belphagor delivered each syllable with brusque enunciation, and struck him again. “I don’t understand:
Ya ne ponimayu
.”

“Ya ne ponimayu,”
Loquel moaned and then caught himself.
“Ya ne ponimayu, gospodin.”

“I am ordering you to leap away. When I strike you with such force that your body screams to leap away, you will let your body do what it desires. To the best of your ability, you will leap away when the urge compels you. Do you understand me?”

Loquel was quiet for a moment, but a thrust of Belphagor’s boot loosed his tongue.
“Nyet, gospodin. Ya ne ponimayu.”

Belphagor could tell the angel was weeping, and it took all of his resolve to keep from kneeling down and gathering the sweet creature in his arms. “That’s all right. You will.” He moved his boot to brush the toe softly against Loquel’s cheek. “You will.” He repositioned his boot on Loquel’s head to get a solid stance and swung the belt in a rapid succession of blows against the angel’s shoulders.

Loquel’s back shook and his muscles rippled with the frustrated thwarting of the natural urge to escape. At the sixth stroke, the angel made a strangled noise of misery into the carpet—Belphagor was fairly certain he was biting it—and jerked his limbs with all the force he possessed. The angry red skin at his shoulder blades began to tear and Belphagor stepped back to watch the transformation.

From the torn flesh of his back, Loquel’s wings struggled forth and rose, and Belphagor had to leap out of the way to make room for the majestic unfurling of a substance like pliant alabaster. Unlike the massive, stony span of the Grigori’s earthspirit wings, these didn’t spread outward so much as up, and the tips of the white stone pennants struck the ceiling, scattering plaster over their heads. Loquel gasped in shock against the carpet, so good he hadn’t even raised his head to try to see what was happening.

Belphagor knelt on one knee beside him and stroked the silver hair, damp with sweat, where it had fallen from its tie across the angel’s face.

“Lift your head, little angel. Look into the mirror and see why we fall.”

Loquel raised his head, his face streaked with tears, and gazed into the full-length mirror across from him. His bright eyes widened and he jerked his head about, trying to see his own wings behind him. Belphagor untied his wrists and ankles and lifted him to his knees. He’d never seen anything to compare with the ethereal beauty of this ghostly pale and luminescent angel, naked on the floor of a St. Petersburg hotel room, discovering his own radiance.

“I had no idea,” Loquel breathed. He looked to the mirror and stretched the wings slowly above his head. He’d begun to weep again.

Belphagor pulled him gently into his arms, careful of the raw flesh where the wings had broken through, and rocked him.

“Spasibo, gospodin.”
Loquel whispered against Belphagor’s chest, his voice hitching on the tears he was trying to hold back. “Thank you.”

“It’s all right,
malchik
. You’re all right now.” He resisted the urge to smother the angel with kisses, knowing he wouldn’t be able to stop at that. He missed Vasily with an intense, physical ache. If it had been Vasily in his arms, now would be the moment he dragged him by the hair to the bed and let him make all the noise he’d been holding in. While there was a certain undeniable level of sexual satisfaction to be gained from disciplining the lovely Virtue, it couldn’t compare to the heat Vasily ignited in him. There was something essential to his soul Vasily provided, the passionate anger and resistance making it all the sweeter when Vasily surrendered to him. Finding Vasily had been like discovering after a lifetime of dining on nothing but sweets that he’d been starving.