Chapter 16 – Sariel
The Malebolge: The Trench of Hypocrites
O ne moment I’m looking at Ithuriel’s beautiful face, scrunched up in concentration, the next, he lets go and disappears. Fuck yes.
Jessica begins to plummet toward the boiling black below, her scream catching on a choked inhale, and I burst into action. Lana would castrate me if I got her friend stewed. I eye the rate at which she’s falling and blink underneath her, my good arm ready to sweep her up. Plus, I have to admit, she’s quite… cute. My wings burst out, and I extend them wide, capturing the air and stopping at a hover. Got her. Before the curse could retaliate for my wing use, I transport us to where I hope Ithuriel is waiting on the other side of the cliff above us.
As the world solidifies around me, I see the silver angel pacing the ledge, a hand mussing up his gleaming hair in obvious worry. Seeing how agitated he is, I get the irrational urge to push him off. He’d just transport himself back and be fine. Probably. But how fucking dare he show this much fear for us now, when he abandoned me so thoroughly a thousand years ago?
Before my dark side makes angel Shakshuka out of him, he spots me and my Nephilim cargo.
“There you are,” he breathes, approaching us hurriedly. Stopping just a hairsbreadth away, he places a hand on my shoulder. Voluntarily. He’s touching me while the mortal is sandwiched between us like a delicious-smelling lemon drop. I should have pushed him off. I shouldn’t have taught him how to travel with the ether, let him charbroil a bit. I want to hurt him. But I also want to fuck him.
Is this cute aggression?
“We’re fine,” Jessica says to the angel who’s looking at me with his face all scrunched up.
I place the human between us and give her a little nudge until she has no choice but to brace herself against him. With that, I turn around and step onto the path, then pop my shoulder back into place with a merciless yank.
“Let’s go,” I say. “We’re almost out of here.”
I don’t turn around to see if they’re following.
∞∞∞
“Why are they grimacing?” Jessica asks as we weave between more rows of endlessly matching sinners.
“Their cloaks are lined with lead,” Ithuriel answers. “It is their punishment.”
The sinners around us don’t moan and wail in pain like in some of the other trenches. They bear the weight of their punishments – both literally and figuratively speaking – in silence, their hunched backs and pained expressions the only testament to their hardships.
“What did they do to deserve it?” Jess whispers. Trying to spare the sinners’ feelings? Hah. Kindhearted mortal.
“This is the bolgia of the hypocrites, poppet. They avoided the weight of consequences in life, so they carry it in death.” I enjoy the way her cornflower-blue eyes widen with whatever emotions my statement brought to life inside her. Bet her eyes will pop open like that the first time she takes my cock.
Oh, I’m in a mood. One moment I want to toss the mortal to the ground and rut her, right in front of all these sinners while the angel watches in shock and horror. The next I feel guilty for using the Nephilim to get a rise out of the angel like that. I’ve never felt guilty for fucking anyone; maidens, widows, females who belong to other males. Why should I start now?
“These sinners acted all high and mighty, holier than thou, but in reality, they were much more corrupt than those they judged,” I continue, a note of bitterness invading my voice. Whyever could that be? “You know who we could find here?” I nudge her with my elbow.
“Who?” she asks, rapt and waiting for the tea.
“Caiaphas,” I say, lifting my eyebrows dramatically.
She chews on her bottom lip for a second before her eyes turn round again. “Isn’t he the priest who put Jesus on the cross?”
I scoff. “Trust me, love, he didn’t dirty a finger. But he did make it happen.”
“Woah,” she breathes, stepping up on her tiptoes and looking around.
I snicker. “Would you even know him if you saw him?”
She deflates, her shoulders dropping as she falls back onto her heels. “Oh. Right.”
I can’t help wrapping an arm around her shoulder and pulling her close until we walk in tandem. I must be schizophrenic or something.
“Nah, I don’t think so. My uncle had schizophrenia and he’d go around doing things he had no memory of later.”
I frown down at Jessica’s head, the strawberry blonde of her hair looking dull and gray in this desolate lighting. Did I say that out loud? Ithuriel’s looking back at me over his shoulder, a frown on his unblemished face.
Great.
“Did you ever meet him?”
It takes me a second to register Jessica’s question.
I look back down at her. “Who?” I ask, bewildered.
“Caiaphas?” Her voice is careful, unsure.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. I really am acting like a complete lunatic.
“No, dove. He died centuries before I was created.”
I realize I’ve been gliding my hand over her arm as we walk together. Having her near has been surprisingly comfortable.
“Which was when?” she asks.
“The fifth century,” Ithuriel speaks for the first time in a while.
“A while before he was,” I tell the mortal.
“No,” the angel denies and a grin spreads over my face at the familiar argument.
“Why don’t you check with an archivist next time you’re in Elysium?” I tease. We always said we would but never did.
“It is a shame Syriniana perished before we came into existence,” Itha says next. “She would have accurately corroborated.”
I snort and Jessica looks up at me with curiosity. “Who was Syriniana?”
“A legendary archivist of old,” Ithuriel says wistfully before I can even open my mouth. She’s always been a role model for him.
“She died on the battlefield in Hell eons ago, during the peak of the Celestial Conflict,” I continue. “Just before corrupt mortal souls began entering Hell as their final place of unrest. Around the time Ash offered what’s now known as Purgatory as a place of in-between.”
I see Itha’s lip curl in my periphery. He needs to get over this reaction to anything Father .
“Can angels be killed then?”
I nod at my poppet. “If catastrophic damage is dealt repeatedly, the bindings holding us together don’t have the energy to reform. And since we don’t have souls, there’s no afterlife for us. We return to the ether.”
Her face falls and I squeeze her against me in answer.
“There was one being with a particularly large death toll,” Itha continues the story, oblivious to Jessica’s discomfort.
“Ah, yes. Good old Nephithar. Ash was never a fan.” I don’t know why I’m avoiding addressing him as Father in front of the angel. “Then again, Father is a fan of exactly one and a half people, the half split up between me, my cousin Naamah, and Uncle Asmo.” Why do I feel a bit nauseous?
“Why did you call him a being instead of a demon?” Jess asks, distracting me from the expression on Ithuriel’s perfect face.
“Demon wasn’t a word that was thrown around a lot around the inception of this place. It came later. Besides, Nephithar was something… other.”
Itha takes over. “He was Lucifer’s attempt at making his own angel. He made Nephithar in his image and called him his son.”
“Though, according to Ash, he’s never mentioned him since his death. And he hasn’t made another like him.” I shrug. “Maybe he considered it a failed experiment.”
“It merely shows us that you can call someone Son but that does not make them one,” Ithuriel mumbles.
I groan. “Don’t be a fucking hypocrite or you’ll get a cloak of your own. Or did you stop addressing God as Father? Ash hasn’t.”
It brings me such pleasure to see the flush spread over the angel’s marble-pale skin. Yeah, you little two-faced feather duster.
“So, this Nephithar killed a lot of angels?” Jessica interjects, ever the knight in shining armor – though that’s more Itha’s appearance. I snicker to myself and earn an appalled look.
“I was thinking of something else, jeez, don’t skewer me with those pale eyes of yours,” I say to both.
“Any eyes are pale compared to yours,” she says from the corner of her mouth. Itha moves his surprised glare onto her and my laughter echoes in the oppressive silence of the trench.
“He had a thing for hacking off angel wings,” our angel says, clearly attempting to salvage the conversation with the facts of history. “It has been recorded that it was out of jealousy for not receiving any of his own upon his creation.”
Jess forces herself to sober up. “When was this? Was it recorded in hieroglyphs or something?”
“Cuneiforms were used to record words at the time,” Itha says so pompously that I roll my eyes. He was always good at remembering things. “Though the mortals had only just begun to write properly, us angels already had our own established written word, one that Syriniana expanded as well.”
I roll my eyes. “It was about five thousand years ago, poppet. The dominant human civilization were the Sumerians, later Akkadians, though other civilizations began emerging then as well.”
“Bet Lana would love to pick your brains about that,” Jess giggles.
“Trust me, she tried,” I grumble. No idea why Father’s main squeeze doesn’t want to talk about more fun things, like Roman orgies.
Jessica taps a finger against her lips. “Did anyone see Nephithar or Syriniana die?”
Ithuriel frowns. “Not that I know of. I never thought to ask how they died and it wasn’t in any records I’ve read. There were so many casualties on both sides.”
The petite human rolls her lips together. “And did Syriniana ever write about Nephithar?” she asks.
“Why, yes,” Ithuriel replies, obviously surprised at the question. “In fact, her last entries were solely about that demon. We know what he looked like and how he fought in astonishing detail for someone who had perished eons ago.”
The Nephilim waggles her eyebrows. “Uh-huh.”
“What?” I drawl. Where is that mind of hers going?
“Don’t you find it a bit suspicious that two notorious beings perished at the same time, no one knows who killed them, and one was obsessively writing about the other?” There’s a glint of superiority in her eyes.
Ithuriel seems taken aback. “I would not say she wrote about him obsessively. She was merely a devoted archivist.”
The puzzle pieces she was putting together click and I scoff. “I’m with Itha, poppet. You think an angel and demon fell in love on the battlefield and ran away together, faking their deaths? And no one knew about it? You read too many romance novels.”
She ducks out from underneath my arm and rounds on me, her hands braced on her hips. Sexy.
“And why not?” she asks with her cute nose up in the air. “Lana’s grandparents were an angel and demon and they fell in love.”
I look at Itha at the same time as he looks at me and we both avert our gazes.
“That is so extremely rare, poppet,” I murmur.
“For an angel to forsake Heaven for a demon,” Itha says incredulously.
“For a demon to care for another being above everything else,” I add.
Jess’ eyes bounce between us as we avoid looking at each other.
“Uh-huh,” she says again. “Completely unheard of.”