The Armies of Heaven (24 page)

“You’re really not going to let this go.”

“Belyi, I’m offering our help. If you want to say it’s the help of the woodspirits of the Unseen World, that’s fine with me. I don’t really care what you call us. Just know that you have another army at your disposal. A rather…infinite army.”

“Infinite?” Belphagor raised an eyebrow. “I hardly saw anyone in the Unseen World when I was there.”

Misha smiled, clearly trying not to laugh. “Did you hear what you just said?”

Belphagor glared. “I thought you were supposed to be unseen in the mortal realm, not your own.”

“When we want you to see us, you’ll see us, whether in the world of Man or in our realm. The advantage of being an airspirit.”

“Really,” said Belphagor. “I don’t seem to have that ability.”

“You’re diluted, Belyi. Hence the fact that
you
have wings. If you were a pure airspirit, you wouldn’t have been substantial in Raqia.”

Belphagor regarded him. “So as an omni-carnate, you must remember my airspirit ancestor who ‘inspired’ the Fourth-Choir angel who bore my Fallen lineage. Perhaps you can explain to me exactly how that worked.”

Misha shuddered. “Where do you think the concept of immaculate conception originated? I try never to think of it, Belyi. Any more than I wish to think of my own conception, thank you very much.”

It was a rather unpleasant notion, Belphagor conceded, to think one could “remember” impregnating one’s own mother. He stretched his arms along the back of the couch and relaxed against the cushions. “So what is it your infinite leshi hordes plan to do for us? March on Heaven like Birnam Wood?”

“Something like that. If you take us with you through the breach, we can camouflage the breach itself, and once in Heaven, we can turn the very air against your enemies.”

Dmitri looked perturbed. “How do you know about the breach?”

Misha smiled. “The Unseen see everything.”

§

Love was somewhat miffed that Loquel continued to be the conduit for messages from Belphagor. He seemed to have entrusted the Virtue with all kinds of information she wasn’t privy to; she was used to being the one in the know. But with Belphagor’s warning and the work he’d done with Loquel in St. Petersburg, they were prepared for the Malakim.

The Messengers weren’t expecting the welcome awaiting them on the Baikal Express. The train arrived at Sverdlovsk station in Yekaterinburg at one-thirty in the morning. Love, on lookout as the least conspicuous, spotted the four Malakim easily in their expensive suits. They gained entry to the train under the pretext of belonging to some government agency, flashing badges at the
provodnik
. Love hurried back to the Virtues’ compartments to give the word before locking herself into one of the adjoining washrooms to keep out of the way.

Through the crack in the door, she could see Loquel pretending to sleep, while Gereimon lay in wait on the opposite bunk. She held her breath as the Malakim broke the latch on the compartment door and stole in, knives raised to stab the Virtues in their sleep. She knew it was part of the plan to let the Malakim think they’d succeeded in surprising them, but it took all she had not to shout a warning. The surprise on the Malak’s face when his knife snapped in two as it met the solid stone of Loquel’s Virtuous radiance was worth the anxiety.

Belphagor had worked with him to find the Virtues’ strengths, discovering that as he was able to briefly utilize his element to allow objects to pass through him, so the Virtues could manipulate theirs, becoming as solid as marble. They had released their wings to access this elemental power but kept them tucked beneath them to hide the pure, white radiance of the alabaster surface.

Recovering from their surprise, the Malakim were quick to release their own radiance as the Virtues leapt from their bunks, slipping through the hands of the Virtues like water. The angels charged at one another, wings tight at their shoulders; extended, the wings of either pair would have torn the roof and the walls from the tiny compartment. Love wished she’d had a chance to see them fly.

Loquel managed to land one solid blow against his opponent, connecting with the Malak’s jaw just as the angel re-solidified, and once he had, the Malak seemed too stunned to defend himself. Love couldn’t understand why he continued to stumble back, taking blow after blow from the smaller angel, until one of Loquel’s fists struck the washroom door and went right through it, just missing her. It seemed the ability to turn to marble could be concentrated within a single limb. She nearly suffered an inopportune and inappropriate fit of giggles at the thought.

Gereimon soon subdued the other Malak in a similar fashion and the Virtues dragged their stunned visitors into the corridor. Love opened the ruined door and peered out while they escorted the Malakim to the rear of the car to kick them from the train.

As they headed back, the Virtues from the adjoining compartment emerged with their defeated opponents, but one of the Malakim managed to break away and bolted for the door to the next car toward the train’s interior. Loquel and Gereimon joined the Virtue he’d given the slip and darted after the Malak, and when he saw he was outnumbered, he turned and slipped back through them and jumped from the car himself.

The Virtues hauled the last of them to the door and tossed him out the back after his comrades. The four Malakim picked themselves up and stared after the train from the tracks as it began to move away.

The Malakim sent to ambush them at Omsk and Novosibirsk were no more successful, and by the time the train reached Lake Baikal, they had apparently given up. In the meantime, Loquel had heard from Belphagor, who told them to go on without him. It was some comfort that it was indeed the Grigori’s change of heart that had kept him, but it didn’t make the climb up the “Hell Staircase” without him any easier.

The most difficult part was finding the portal itself. Belphagor had assured them that because they’d come down through this portal, they should be able to recognize it when they came to it. But they almost went right past it, and when they realized they’d overstepped it, the infernal thing moved. They spent a few harrowing hours going in what must surely have been circles before it suddenly opened before them and they tumbled into the back room of the apothecary’s shop.

The apothecary was as gruff and rude as Love remembered, and she felt a twinge of sympathy for Lively, who’d grown up here as his apprentice and a virtual slave. They paid him his fee—Belphagor had railed at him for it when they’d fallen, since he’d shown the apothecary the portal himself, but paying was easier than arguing—and filed out into the back alley.

The safest way to Elysium, he claimed, was down this same alley. It could be taken all the way to the Acheron. With Anazakia a prisoner, Love had no idea what they’d do when they got there, but without Belphagor’s guidance, they had little choice but to head for Elysium and try to blend in with the allied troops.

§

As the angel promised, Kirill’s bonds were loosed and the doors were opened. He’d only just received his morning dose of firedust. It had become a pleasant ritual and he felt quite awful whenever the shopkeeper forgot him. The demon had unbound his feet and led him to the washroom before his daily meal, as had also become ritual—his days here were really not so different from being in seclusion at Solovetsky—and had returned him to the storeroom with his hands unbound so he could eat. Before Kirill had even taken a bite of his bread, however, the latch popped on his storeroom prison and the door hung open, with no shopkeeper on the other side.

He sat and stared at it. He didn’t much feel like moving. Truth be told, he felt more like lying down and listening to the dust. He hadn’t even noticed he’d closed his eyes until he heard a soft voice.

“Ki’ill.” The sound was tentative and familiar.

He raised his eyelids with effort and saw Ola standing before him.

“Ki’ill,” she said with more certainty. The little boy stood holding her hand, peculiarly solemn.

“Ola!” Kirill reached out to her.
“Allo, devochka.”

She let go of the boy’s hand and climbed into his lap, and Kirill gathered her up and kissed her dirty cheek. He closed his eyes again and the firedust crackled. There was something he was supposed to do.
You will find your bonds loosed and the doors opened. You will take the children and flee from here, and you will receive a sign.

“Come, Ola.” He stood with her in his arms and held his hand out to the older child.

“I’m going to Elysium.” The boy’s statement was almost defiant, so clear and precise for such a young child.

“We’ll go there, too,” said Kirill, though he vaguely recalled the angel had said something about keeping the boy from the city.

The boy took his hand as if the matter were settled and Kirill walked with them into the hall. The shopkeeper was nowhere about and a back door stood open. They went through it and into the alley with no pursuit.

There ought to be a sign
, Kirill remembered. A burning bush. He looked about but saw nothing. “Which way?” he asked the boy.

The child pointed and he went in that direction. They walked for some time, with Kirill having to be prodded forward by the boy every so often when his mind wandered and he stopped still, thinking of nothing.

As they came to the end of the alley, a demon stepped out of one of the shops for a smoke, nodding to Kirill absently as they passed. When he tossed his match away, it landed near Kirill’s feet in a patch of scrub. Though the ground was damp from a recent rain, the scrub suddenly caught fire. The demon ran to stamp it out, glaring at Kirill for standing there staring.
The burning bush
, thought Kirill. It was the sign.

§

The demonic alliance had fallen through; Helga had declared it null and void. Kae was hardly surprised. Her army still numbered three times Anazakia’s. She was clearly counting on the fact that Anazakia would have no choice but to fight Aeval’s forces, alliance or not, so that either way, it went in Helga’s favor.

The Virtues—and the Iriyans, who’d remained loyal, bless them—had been pushed back toward the lower end of Elysium, camping on the banks of the Acheron. Kae had considered it a strategic blunder to let the Liberation forces push them toward Raqia where rogue demon fighters might cross the Acheron at any time and mount sneak attacks on them, but Anazakia had been unwilling to lose more men to Aeval by pressing forward. Let Helga’s men expend their resources fighting Aeval’s army, she’d argued, and weaken Aeval’s in the process.

Kae found it increasingly difficult to be near her—not Aeval, but Anazakia. Her prior coldness had been bearable, but the kindness she’d begun to show him since that night in the rain was more than he could take. She thought he was her friend, her cousin Kae whom she’d known as a girl. That Kae had been dead a long time and he couldn’t make her see it.

She didn’t understand that her insistence on believing in him made him relive those terrible hours when he’d destroyed everything he loved. If he was the Kae before that night, then he was the Kae of that night as well, and the night would never end. Every kind look or word from her made him that much more certain he must end it all, for her sake as well as his own, as soon as the war was decided.

§

When he reached the bridge, the angel of light appeared once more before Kirill, but the children didn’t seem to see or hear it. Was he touched by God or was he finally, truly mad?

“Man of God,” it said to him. “Are you prepared to make your sacrifice?”

“I am.” Kirill squinted at the apparition. “But where is it? You said one would be provided.”

“You misunderstand, Man of God. Of what use is a sacrifice if it is provided for you? You cannot sacrifice that which means nothing to you. By its very definition, that is no sacrifice.” It wasn’t his imagination. The being was becoming short with him. He must have displeased God in some way. “What you must sacrifice is what has
already
been provided. The child was delivered unto you.”

Kirill blanched. “No! God cannot ask this!”

The boy stared at him shrewdly, as if he’d seen madness before. Kirill closed his eyes to shut the vision out, praying he was dreaming, while his head swam and sparked with firedust.

The angel snarled with naked anger. “You are just like all the rest. You are called, and yet you only obey what you choose to. You are no man of God. You are a man of
sin
.”

“Please,” he begged. “Let the Lord ask something else of me. Take my own life instead!”

“You have been corrupted by temptation. You are impure. Your life is of no value.”

The words stung him. It was true he’d fallen to temptation. He had allowed his base desires for Love to control him instead of controlling them, and in truth he hadn’t tried particularly hard to do so. And God had seen. Of course God had seen. Nothing could be hidden from God.

“What must I do to repent?” he whispered.

“Take the child and bind him.”

Kirill looked down and realized the ropes of his own bonds still dangled from one wrist and an ankle. He untied them with shaking hands and knelt down beside the boy.

“You must stand still.” Tears obscured his vision as he drew the little hands behind the child’s back. “It is God’s will.”

“Who is God?” asked the boy, apparently used to doing as he was told.

Who, indeed?
Who was God that he should demand such a terrible thing?

§

Kae had ridden out this morning along the Acheron as the sun came up, avoiding the breakfast strategy session with which Anazakia liked to start the day. Despite his misgivings, her plan seemed to be working. With the demons now paying her troops little attention as they fought to retake the ground they were losing to the Supernal Army, he wasn’t terribly concerned about missing this meeting.

The waters of the Acheron, though quite polluted, looked pristine and beautiful in the pale colors of dawn as he reached the bridge, like a ribbon of silver slipping through Elysium. It was a view he’d once shared with his Ola in their Camaeline Palace.