Chapter 49
49
SAMMAEL
S ammael had done everything for his Vila, and still it was not enough.
He had recreated Kalach in his own realm, complete with the cobblestone village square, quaint shops, and rolling fields, which were not blighted here, but rather ripe with wheat. Even the accursed chapel in which his Vila had married her Shadow. Much to his minor demons’ annoyance, he had commanded them to take the forms of Kalach’s villagers, not pinched and starved as they had been since their crops had failed, but healthy and hale. He’d recreated every detail of Elena’s small cottage, the one she’d shared with her friend Alyona, down to the runes that were meant to keep demons such as himself out.
Of course, no matter how they looked, the runes here spoke of different things: temptation and trickery, lust and craving, eternal hunger for power. But those were not such bad things, were they? After all, they had brought Elena and Sammael together. She had called out, there in the ruins of the abandoned chapel in the woods, and he had answered.
Not the Saints. Him.
He had given Elena everything she had asked for, and more. Had made of her a shining, burning thing that blazed up with infernal fire, sending his Grigori essence twining throughout her body, wedding his Dark gifts with her allegiance to the Light. She was meant to bear fruit, just as years ago, his congress with the demon Lilith had given rise to Asmodeus, prince among demons. Elena had been so beautiful, burning with their shared power as her hellfire licked at the form of the fallen Shadow. But there had been something else within her then, a power greater even than his own. He could sense it: the Darkness that had consumed Drezna and Satvala. It had poured from her, even as it fed on her. He had never felt anything like it.
He sat on a chair in the replica of Elena’s cottage, listening as she cooed to the shade of her Shadow. What remained of Niko Alekhin lay curled at her feet, in the form of his black dog. Sammael watched as Elena reached down and ran a hand through its fur. “Change for me,” she urged him. “Change, and then we can be together.”
The black dog flinched from her touch, as it did every time. And as it did every time, Elena’s lovely face contorted with rage. “You should be grateful,” she hissed at the dog. “I saved you from her. But you still want her, don’t you? Even now, when you lie at my feet, you think of her. Well, I will cure you of this ailment, if it’s the last thing I do. You will worship me, as you should, for I am your wife.”
She raised a hand and struck the dog across the muzzle once, then again. “Change,” she shrieked. “Or, much as it pains me to do it, you will spend the night in chains. For your own good.”
Sammael watched as the dog raised its head, defiance clear in the depths of its gray eyes, and bared its teeth. A low growl emanated from its chest, and Elena straightened. The hellfire that had consumed her in the clearing began to heat her once again, until she blazed with it.
“You dare to growl at me? Me, Elena-of-the-Void, beloved of Sammael?” She waved a hand at the black dog, clenching her fingers into a fist, and tugged. The dog let out a desperate yelp, but there was no resisting: Elena pulled his human form from within, like a butterfly being forcibly dragged from a chrysalis.
“Elena,” Sammael warned, but she ignored him, her attention trained on the crumpled form at her feet.
Sammael was all for employing violence when necessary. He’d had his fun with the Shadow when the creature had first arrived; he made a most amusing plaything, what with his ability to withstand pain. Sammael had enjoyed testing his limits. But no such thing was required here. The Shadow was already at Elena’s mercy. She gained nothing from this show of force. And after all, she belonged to Sammael now, did she not? They were each other’s. It was infuriating that she still harbored…feelings…for this pathetic creature.
And pathetic he was. Sammael had seen Shadows shift before; it was a natural, seamless transformation. This was different; it was slow, and agonizing. The dog fought it, but his power belonged to the Light, and here in the Underworld, there was precious little of that. It was no match for Elena’s Darkness. She pulled, and he growled, and when she was done, the Shadow lay naked, panting and bleeding on the wooden floor of her cottage, in his human form.
“You see,” Elena said to him, her voice laden with satisfaction. “You are mine. You do as I say. And now you will serve me, as you should have done when you took me to wed.”
The Shadow didn’t speak. He just glared at her, and in his silver-gray eyes burned an unmistakable, burning hatred.
“You will do as I wish,” Elena said, each word imbued with the force of her power. “As I deserve. And you’ll see. We belong together, Niko. You were always meant to be mine.”
She stood, the skirts of the diaphanous, iridescent gown Sammael had had made for her swishing as she made her way toward the bedroom. Then she perched on the side of the bed, her legs coquettishly crossed at the ankles, and beckoned. “Crawl to me, my Shadow,” she said, her voice soft and deceptively gentle. “Now.”
The Shadow didn’t want to do it; Sammael could see the resistance in every fiber of his body. But Elena beckoned again, and even he, the Venom of God, could feel the pull. “Crawl,” she said, and now there was nothing gentle in her voice at all.
The Shadow crawled, his eyes straight ahead, looking not at Elena but into the distance, at whatever thoughts occupied a being such as him. One caught between worlds, chained to the Dark but sworn to the Light. And Elena watched him, her gaze hungry and avid, as if the man came to her of his own free will.
Perhaps, it occurred to Sammael dismally, she could no longer tell the difference.
He had thought, when he first encountered Elena Lisova in that abandoned chapel, that her gifts came from the union of her Vila heritage with his own power. It had been everything he had dreamed of, when the Watchers fell; that he would find a woman to lie with who was aligned with the Light. She would want him as he wanted her, and from their union would come a power to best all others. Not merely the minor demon spawn of Watchers and human women, but a queen among Grigori, a warrior who would fight at his side and defeat Gadreel once and for all. He, Sammael, would rule once again below as he had ruled above.
But he had been wrong. Elena had grown so powerful, so quickly. And he had come to believe that her gifts came not from her ability to give birth to Vila and Shadowchildren, but from the Darkness that had been unleashed upon their land. The very things he’d come to love most about her—her innocence, her supposedly open heart—had been compromised. She treated the Shadow’s shade like a possession or a pet. And though she claimed to love him, how Sammael saw her treat him wasn’t love.
This wasn’t the woman the spark of humanity inside Sammael had fallen for. But his demonic nature still drew him to her, like a glossy, crisp, red apple full of poison. It was a terrible, addictive thing.
And yet it wasn’t him she wanted. It was the shade of this broken, desperate man.
“Rise,” Elena said to the Shadow at her feet. “Rise, and serve me.”
Niko Alekhin rose at her command, all of his natural grace gone. It was as if his body was being yanked to its feet by a pair of uncoordinated puppeteers. But Elena didn’t notice. She was too busy smiling up into his face, tucking a lock of hair coyly behind her ear.
“First, tell me you love me,” she demanded. “Say it now, so Sammael and I can hear. In front of a witness, declare your love for me, Elena-of-the-Void, beautiful even among Vila, sworn Queen of Darkness.”
Sammael cleared his throat. This was a terrible waste of time, especially now, with Darkness devouring two of the Seven Villages and showing no sign of slowing. He had a realm to attend to, and a mystery to solve, but truth be told, he didn’t trust Elena alone with the shade of her Shadow. She had shown herself to be capable of dreadful things. And increasingly, Sammael was beginning to believe he would need Niko Alekhin as a bargaining chip. It wouldn’t do to have Elena damage him.
“Elena, you’ve had your fun,” he told her, getting to his feet. “Let the Shadow be. We have more important things to attend to.”
But she shook her head, eyes fixed on Niko’s. “Tell me you love me,” she said again. “I know you do. She corrupted you. Despoiled you. But here, with me, we’ll make it right. I’ll save you. You’ll be pure again.”
Not for the first time, Sammael began to wonder if Elena had lost her mind. After all, she had been the one to wield the knife that had brought the Shadow down. He had never seen a creature of the Light converted to the Dark, not since the Watchers and the Archangels fell. Maybe her soul had been unable to withstand the transformation.
“Say you love me!” Elena insisted. “Say it!”
But the Shadow remained stonily silent, his gaze fixed somewhere over Elena’s shoulder and his face expressionless. Even when Elena’s hand cracked across his cheek hard enough to leave an impression behind, still he did not speak.
“I’ll make you tell me,” she snarled at him. “You’ll howl it when I’ve finished with you.”
The Shadow curled his lip, his eyes refocusing squarely on Elena’s. And then, at last, he spoke. “I’ll never love you,” he said, each word tipped with venom. “You can force me into the form of my black dog and back again, but I’ll never protect you. No matter what you do to me, what lengths you drive me to, my heart will never be yours.”
Fury overtook Elena’s features. “Even still, you’re under her spell! Even here, with me, she wields her power. But I’m stronger than she can imagine. And I have all of eternity to outlast her.” She caressed Niko’s cheek. The Shadow flinched from her touch, but Elena grabbed his chin and held him still. “Say you love me,” she said again as the Darkness poured from her, curling around every syllable, rich with compulsion. “Speak.”
The Shadow’s jaw worked, the expression in his gray eyes furious. Then his mouth opened and his voice came, reluctant and low, as if ripped from his throat the way his human body had been torn from the form of his black dog. “Elena, I…” he began, choking on the words like it poisoned him to speak them.
Sammael could watch no more of this. He strode from the cottage, pulling the door open and stalking toward his palace, the place he’d called home before Elena had come to the Underworld. It was made entirely from black stone, with tiny silver chips that glinted in the light of the white-hot sun that lit his realm. On the way, he passed demons impersonating farmers, healers, artisans, butchers. He wanted to pulverize them all, and they shrank from him, turning nervously to their appointed tasks.
Sammael strode past them, past the administrative offices that dealt with the everyday responsibilities of running his realm—requisitioning of wayward souls for purgatorial labor, recruitment of minor demons into his armies—and down the road that led to his palace. He nodded at the bird-headed guards who flanked the entrance and stomped inside, letting the doors slam behind him. They were studded with the eyes of his vanquished enemies, which blinked balefully as he disappeared into the cool darkness of the place where he felt most at home.
He drew a deep breath, settling himself. And then he squared his shoulders and made his way down the hall, to his scrying room. Much as he hated to admit it, he needed to talk to Gadreel. As the two most powerful Grigori, they needed to discuss what was becoming of the world above ground, and why the veil between the Underworld and Iriska was thinning. The implications could be dire, and ultimately, the two of them were on the same side. It would do neither of them any good to see the realms they’d so carefully built sucked into the Void. Especially now that Sammael had Elena to look after, such a thing would be disastrous. It would take millennia to rebuild.
He made his way down the opulent hallway of his palace, past the room that he had hoped one day to make Elena’s. It was befitting of a queen, with its canopied, four-poster bed, mosaic tile floor, and lush, sweeping murals. Perhaps, when she tired of her plaything of a Shadow, when she ceased grieving for her old life, he could bring her here. Together, they would start anew. He would rule with her at his side.
At last, Sammael came to his scrying room. He pressed his palm to the door, which swung wide, and stepped through, locking it behind him.
The room was just as he had left it. The floor was covered by a thick burgundy carpet, inlaid with an intricate pattern of vines. Bookshelves lined the walls. And in the middle of the room stood a fountain, the water flowing downward from a pitcher held by the nude statue of Lilith that stood in its midst. Lilith, Sammael’s first love. He wondered what she would think if she could see him now.
Crossing to the fountain, which served as his scrying pool, Sammael lifted both hands. He passed them across the water, and it rippled in response. “Show me Gadreel, Dark Angel of War, Wall of God, Silent Sentinel, among the first of the Fallen Watchers,” he said. It was quite a mouthful, but then that was Gadreel for you. Never one accolade when four would do. “Invite me into his sanctum, where I will come, bearing assurance that I mean him no harm.”
Typically, this was like knocking on a locked door; Gadreel could choose whether or not to answer, and frequently ignored Sammael, just for sport. At the least, he often chose to keep Sammael waiting, like a peon relegated to lingering in His Majesty’s antechamber. Sammael had resigned himself to this, and was examining his nails in an effort to manage his impending boredom when the water in the fountain flickered, rose in a wave, and then reformed, allowing him entry into Gadreel’s tower.
Well, this was new. Perhaps Gadreel had, for once, realized that the threat that confronted them was more significant than their mutual enmity. Wonders, indeed, never ceased.
The water stilled, growing transparent, and Sammael cleared his throat. “Gadreel, I need to speak with you,” he said. “There are pressing matters, and we need to put aside our differences for once and discuss them.”
The Wall of God didn’t deign to reply, and Sammael sniffed, irritated. “The least you could do is answer me,” he said. “Why bother to let me in if you’re not going to be polite enough to speak?”
But Gadreel still didn’t say a word, and when Sammael peered into the water, he could see why: he wasn’t there.
A prickle of unease ran along Sammael’s spine, juddering along his shoulder blades, over the skin that concealed his wings. This wasn’t the sort of trick Gadreel played. His pranks were usually far more intricate, and involved considerable amounts of bloodshed.
But if Gadreel wasn’t here, then why had Sammael been granted access to his throne room?
Sammael gazed more deeply into the pool of water, his gaze sharpening. And then he froze. His dark eyes widened.
Gadreel’s usually-impeccable throne room was destroyed. His throne of bones and velvet still had pride of place, but at the center of the room, where his statue of lesser demons kneeling at the Watchers’ feet and his collection of torture implements usually stood, there was nothing but a massive pile of rubble, extending as far as Sammael could see. Human bones protruded from the wreckage, and the rotting carcasses of horses, and what looked like an entire village?—
Wait a minute.
Sammael stepped closer, dropping to his knees by the side of the fountain. He peered as closely as he could. And then he saw what he could have sworn was impossible: the margin of a rune of protection, etched deep into the splintered bits of a windowsill. The harder he looked, the more of them he noticed.
This was all that remained of Drezna and Satvala. He would have sworn his wings on it.
By all the infernal fires, what was the wreckage of the two villages that had been devoured by the Darkness doing in his arch-enemy’s throne room?
There was only one answer to this question: Because Gadreel had done something to make them materialize there. And whatever he had done, it hadn’t gone as planned. Gadreel was many things—bloodthirsty, faithless, vain, power-hungry. But one thing he was not was careless. His throne room, with its chair made from the bones of his victims, was his pride and joy. He would never willingly have brought such devastation upon it. Nor would he have left it this way, if he had to look at it every day.
Which begged the question…where was Gadreel?
The abomination of a demon had followed Sammael, Elena, and the Shadow when Dimi Ivanova had nearly blasted them all back into the Void with the force of her magic. Somehow, they had landed in the wasteland between the realms, and Sammael had had to conjure a collar and chain to put around the Shadow’s neck, because he’d leapt at Elena as soon as all four of his paws had touched the ground and made a concerted effort to tear out her throat.
Gadreel had laughed and laughed. And then he’d knelt by the Shadow and whispered something into the beast’s ear before rising with a self-satisfied smirk, winking at Elena— winking!— and vanishing back to his own realm.
At least, that was where Sammael had assumed he’d gone. Now, he wasn’t so sure.
He leaned closer still, almost pressing his eye against the water, scrying for all he was worth. And then he saw it, seeping ink-black and insidious through cracks in the walls, swarming like clouds of incensed bees around the edges of the massive hole that the collapse of the two villages had made in the ceiling.
The Darkness was reforming itself in Gadreel’s throne room. It had made itself at home there, as if that was where it belonged.
A sickening feeling took hold of Sammael. Because there was only one answer to this unasked question, too.
The Angel of War had called upon the Darkness, and the Darkness had come.
All of this—everything that had happened—was Gadreel’s fault. He had unleashed the Darkness, doubtless in an attempt to defeat Sammael once and for all, and he’d lost control of it. He had let loose the force that had razed the two villages, not because his gifts had grown so strong, but because he had lost his grip on a power greater than any fallen angel could ever hope to harness. He had threatened the survival of both their worlds. He had corrupted Sammael’s beautiful, innocent Vila. He was responsible for all of it.
Sammael got to his feet, vibrating with rage. He tilted his head back and howled, the sound so filled with fury, it shook the foundations of his scrying room. Paintings fell from the walls. Books tumbled from the shelves. High above, the crystal chandelier shattered, its shards falling like rain. And Sammael’s wings burst from his back, obsidian and massive, his body assuming its natural form.
He would make Gadreel pay for this, wherever the hapless Watcher might be. He would rid himself of that troublesome Shadow and gain control of the Darkness. And then he would have his Vila for himself, and together they would accomplish great things.
Staring down into the rippling image of Gadreel’s decimated throne room, his bloodied wings beating against the glass-flecked air, the Venom of God began to formulate a plan.