The Armies of Heaven (27 page)

When Belphagor tried to interrupt, Kae barreled on in his scratchy voice as he led him into his tent. “One of our strengths now, thanks to your efforts, is that we have a fair number of Fallen on our side, and I think we ought to be able to capitalize on that, try to siphon off some of those who may be disillusioned with the SLP.” He turned and paused at the sight of Loquel hovering behind them.

Belphagor took advantage of the pause. “There are upwards of ten thousand Exiles waiting to enter the breach as soon as it can be reopened. And an untold number of terrestrial nature spirits who have volunteered their services.” He was pleased to see he’d rendered Kae speechless. “That’s assuming it can be reopened. I’m not certain how it closed. We were expecting to bring all our troops through in a series of waves.”

Kae stared a moment longer and then glanced at Loquel, obviously unnerved by the presence of the Virtue he’d tortured so mercilessly. Belphagor felt a rush of pride to see Loquel seemingly unaffected, where previously he’d been unable to meet the field marshal’s eye and had fairly quailed before him. The angel had learned his lessons well in such a short time.

Kae cleared his throat. “You may go now, Loquel.”

The Virtue looked to Belphagor first before obeying.

“He seems…different,” Kae said after the angel had gone. “Not so jumpy.”

“I’ve been training him.”

Kae gave him a look of disdain. “Like a dog.”

“Very.”

The angel shook his head as he sat down on his trunk. “I must confess, I’m astonished that even angels debase themselves with you. I thought only demons were subject to such perversions.”

Belphagor startled him with a hearty laugh. “Your Supernal Majesty, you are without a doubt the most perverse individual I have ever met.”

“Don’t call me that,” Kae snapped. “I’m not the principality. I am not even a grand duke. I am nothing.”

“I rest my case.”

Kae observed him. “I don’t think I’ve understood a single word you’ve ever uttered. You are a strange little man.”

“You’re barely two inches taller than I am.” Belphagor smirked. “And I’m not so little where it counts.”

“You see, now why do you feel the need to bring bawdiness into it?” Kae protested. “I’m not the least bit interested in the size of your cock.”

“What makes you think I was referring to my cock?”

“Oh, for the love of Heaven!” the field marshal sputtered. “I didn’t bring you here to be mocked and ridiculed.”

“Didn’t you?”

Kae was speechless with exasperation.

“I only ask because you do seem to crave insult.” Belphagor spoke a touch more kindly. “You call me in here to discuss strategy and then you obsess over my relationships of power with other angels. You sit down while I remain standing, which may be simple rudeness on your part, but feels more deliberate, as if you wish to relinquish your power when in private with me. It’s as if you’re jealous of my ‘boys’ and are desperate for a bit of correction yourself.”

“You’re absolutely mad.”

“There’s no shame in it.” Belphagor stepped closer so Kae had to look up. “I mean, there’s shame in what you’ve done, of course. Shame I can’t even imagine. But there’s no shame in admitting you’re in so much pain you’d debase yourself before someone you hate to silence the voices of self-loathing in your head.” He grabbed the field marshal’s bob, yanking his head back as if he intended to violate him, and Kae swore and struggled, but not hard enough. “You’d actually let me do it,” Belphagor said softly, struck with the inexplicable sliver of compassion he sometimes felt for the miserable angel.

“Get your hands off me!” Kae snarled and made a move to stand up, but when Belphagor twisted the hair in his fist and shoved him onto his knees before the trunk, the field marshal didn’t fight.

Belphagor whispered in the angel’s ear as he crouched over him. “This is what you want, isn’t it?” He slid his free hand beneath the fabric of Kae’s shirt and stroked his fingers down the soft skin of the angel’s spine.

Kae shivered, not with need, but something closer to horror, yet still he didn’t resist.

“This is what you desire.”

“I have no desire for your kind.” Kae spat the words against the trunk and jolted as if he’d pull away, but didn’t.

“Well, of course you don’t,” Belphagor murmured against his ear. “You’re in love with Anazakia.”

The angel jerked with sudden violence beneath him, but Belphagor held him down, his arm around Kae beneath the shirt, almost embracing him, and his grip firm in the pale hair.

“No!” Kae growled, but his voice held panic. “No, I am not!”

“The hell you aren’t. And it’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.” There was no mockery in his voice. “So I’m going to give you something else you asked for.” He took the leather
pleti
from inside his coat. “Though Heaven knows why.”

With a step back, he yanked up Kae’s shirt and brought the leaded flogger down on him without warning—and without mercy. Admirably, the field marshal held his tongue, though his body shook with stunned agony. Belphagor waited several seconds to let the intensity sink in before striking him again. Kae gripped the edges of the trunk like a man lost at sea, holding onto it for dear life as Belphagor brought the
pleti
down in heavy, rhythmic strokes, splattering blood across the pale, angelic skin as it tore, and leaving immediate blue-black welts where the lead balls struck.

With his eye closed and his head against the trunk as if he were waiting to die, Kae moaned something Belphagor couldn’t understand and didn’t think he was meant to. Belphagor had given him ten brutal blows, probably as much as the virgin flesh could stand, but in his head, he heard the words the former Principality had once forced him to say after far worse beatings at his own hand:
I am His Supernal Majesty’s eternal slave.
It had been the echo of what Aeval had compelled the angel himself to say when under her power.

“
I am
,” he prompted as he brought down the
pleti
once more.

Kae didn’t need an explanation. “I am,” he gasped from his damaged throat.

“
Her Supernal Majesty’s
,” said Belphagor with the next blow.

“Her Supernal Majesty’s!” Kae cried out.

“
Eternal slave
,” growled Belphagor with a vicious strike.

Kae’s body shuddered and twisted in pain and Belphagor thought the angel might scream before he breathed out at last and whispered in a tone of utter defeat, “Eternal slave.”

“
No longer
.”

The angel seemed to be waiting for another blow, but Belphagor didn’t deliver it.

“Say it.”

“No longer.” The words choked out of him and his body began to shudder, wracked with silent sobs.

Belphagor watched him with pity as he put the flogger away. Blood skittered down the sides of the angel’s torso from the speckled impact marks of the leaded balls knotted into the
pleti
’s leather thongs.

“Forgive me,” Kae pleaded.

Belphagor shook his head. “That wasn’t even the
knut
.”

The angel choked back a strangled sob. “Then use the
knut
!”

“And then what? Nazkia runs you through with a sword so you can earn her forgiveness?”

What was visible of Kae’s face twisted with anguish. “I can never be forgiven for that.” His white knuckles still grasped the edges of the trunk as if he were adrift, yearning for another blow.

“Of course not. Any more than you can be forgiven for gleefully tearing the flesh from my back with the tools Aeval gave you. But they
were
tools Aeval gave you, and you, in turn, were her tool, used against your own loved ones to serve her aims. As insufferable as you are, I cannot believe you’re the sort of man who enjoys causing others pain—not even in the prurient way that I enjoy it. Which is precisely why you were the tool she wanted for the job—just as I was the one she chose to do the job that went most against my nature.”

Startled when Belphagor uncurled his tight fingers from the leather trunk, Kae opened his rheumy eye to stare up at him.

“But maybe you can be forgiven for being such a tool,” said Belphagor, enjoying the pun, though it was clearly lost on the angel. “You have the rest of your life to prove yourself to Nazkia, to serve your sovereign unfailingly—provided you stop being a coward and begging people to kill you. Because she really would find that unforgivable.”

Kae looked away from him. “I don’t deserve a life.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake. Do you expect me to beat you again? I have better things to do. Just stop feeling sorry for yourself.” Belphagor observed the angel a moment, admiring his work. He followed the path of the blood from one of Kae’s welts with his thumb along the sublimely smooth skin that would now bear permanent marks of him, then curled his fingers in the loose blond hair that had lost its tie and pulled Kae up onto his knees. “Though I must admit.” He shook his head with a wry smile. “I really would love to have fucked you.”

He left the field marshal kneeling, stunned and speechless, as he opened the tent flap, and then spoke over his shoulder. “She doesn’t hate you, you know.”

§

Belphagor was here. Vasily simply knew—felt his energy in some way—and it made him hungry for him. He was sick of being cooped up in this room not knowing what was going on outside, not being part of it. He knew Lively had gotten Anazakia out several days ago, but this much he’d only discovered when he heard the demons discussing it in the hallway as the night guard came on duty and the other’s shift ended.

Some hours after he’d gone to sleep, he startled awake to find Lively sitting on the edge of his bed. While he fumbled for his spectacles, she put her finger to her lips and reached over him to place a small censer of powder on his nightstand and light it with a match.

When the smoke began to curl slowly into the air, her posture relaxed. “They shouldn’t hear anything now. It’s masking powder.”

“How did you get in here?”

“Same way I get in everywhere. I seem to have been born with a natural ability to fade into the woodwork.”

Vasily doubted it was quite that simple, but she’d often come and gone at Pyr Amaravati without anyone being able to recall whether she’d been there or exactly when she’d left. He and Belphagor had joked she was like a cat that could quietly appear on your lap and be sitting there for some time before you noticed. A really irritating cat.

“The Exiles have breached Heaven,” she informed him, but before he could express his delight at this news, she added, “I sealed the breach.”

“You
what?”

“Helga ordered me to. But I’ve been monitoring the terrestrial underground and they’re going to try again.”

“Well, that’s good news, then.” Vasily sensed this wasn’t all there was to it.

“I have to tell Helga everything I hear.” She looked down at her hand where a blackened ring encircled one of her fingers. He’d seen it before on Margarita’s hand. All of the Nephilim wore them, presented to them by the Grigori when they came of age.

“So why are you telling me? And what are you doing with that?”

“Margarita gave it to me.” Her voice was miserable. “She said she believed in me and wanted me to think of that every time I saw it. And I used it to close the breach.” Lively burst into tears and Vasily had no idea how to respond, but she stopped as soon as she’d started, angrily brushing them away. “Do you know who ‘Misha’ is?”

He narrowed his eyes. “What do you know about Misha?”

“He’s sent me a message. I can’t read it, because if I do, I’ll have to tell Helga what it says.” She pulled a handful of wingcasting cards from her pocket and handed them to him.

“What is this?”

“It’s the message. They’re Chora.” Lively lit his lamp and turned the wick low so he could just make out the images on the cards if he held them up.

“I don’t know how to read Chora.” He shuffled through them by the lamp.

“Don’t get them out of order,” she snapped. “And don’t show them to me. I threw the Chora spread facedown so I couldn’t see the cards, and I stacked them in reverse. The first card facing up is the end of the message.” She took a pad of paper from her pocket with a stub of pencil and handed it to him. “I’ve written down the positions. You just need to fill in what the cards are, starting with the first position, which is the card on the bottom of the stack. Then I’ll walk you through the general meaning of the cards, but after that you’re on your own. You’ll have to interpret it yourself.”

Vasily looked at her doubtfully. “And then what am I supposed to do? Assuming I can make heads or tails out of it.”

“Whatever you like. Just don’t tell me.”

Vasily sighed and looked at the card for the querent position as Lively turned her head away from him, and he almost burst out laughing. It was the Succubus. If the querent stood for the person sending the message, it couldn’t have been more accurate. The painting on the card, though depicting a female, even looked like Misha, with a pale turquoise-hued complexion.

When he’d finished filling in the rest of the positions, he handed the cards back to Lively and she shuffled them rapidly several times before looking at them. Vasily was impressed; she’d make a good wingcasting croupier.

She read out the suit and order of each card and then gave him the meaning so he could note it by the appropriate card. What resulted was baffling and he couldn’t ask her what it meant. The Succubus, of course, she translated as “one who makes mischief”; he had no trouble there. But what she called the “heart of the matter” consisted of a collection of cards so jumbled he had no hope of understanding.

The Power of spindles had been at the center, surrounded by the Aeon of facets, the Ardor of tricks, the Ardor of spindles, and the Splendor of facets. As Vasily put her translations together, that part read
successful or triumphant work; Heavenly light; Heavenly sweetness; hidden work/hidden magic; all is not what it seems.