Chapter 13 #2
“We only asked her to come speak with us,” Uriel protested, straining against the grip of whoever held his arms.
“Right, right, because Jehovah would be especially cool with you letting her return to Hell afterwards?”
There was a tense moment of silence, and then Uriel sighed.
“Can we at least speak without being restrained?”
Judas hesitated, then lowered his blade from Michael’s neck. He kept it at the ready as he moved a half step apart from the angel, frowning. “Alright. For old time’s sake, I’ll trust you won’t try anything stupid.”
The hold on his arms disappeared, and Uriel blinked in disbelief when he saw that the one who had been restraining him was a monkey skeleton with flaming hair and bat wings.
He wore a three-piece suit of burgundy velvet and a surprisingly clear expression of distaste despite his lack of skin and tissue.
“Sorry…what are you?”
“Rude,” the demon huffed in a strangely accented voice. “I’m a Dirge, if you must know.”
“Shapeshifting skeletal demons,” Judas clarified. “Great for recon missions like this one, especially because they have natural glamours. Mortals see him with skin and particularly posh hair, like a little businessman.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m some charming pet,” the Dirge scowled, the flames of his hair dancing higher with annoyance.
“Do you have a name?” Uriel asked.
“What kind of question—of course I do! My name is Zaj.”
“What kind of name is Zaj?” Uriel furrowed his brow.
“The kind that’s short for Zajezjahval,” the response was blunt, thrown out with the air of someone tired of repeatedly answering the same question.
Uriel recoiled. “Did your mother not love you?”
“I’m not even dignifying that with a response.” Zaj turned away with haughty sniff.
“Zaj is one of the highest ranked demons in Hell,” Judas deadpanned, and Uriel winced.
“I didn’t mean to offend.”
“Can we call a truce and resume our discussion?” Michael cut in, exasperation clear in his strained tone.
“Oh, sure.” Judas smiled. “Here’s the discussion. I say ‘go back to Heaven’ and you say ‘okay’ and that’s it.”
“You know we cannot do that.” Michael frowned.
“Well, you also cannot take Mags to Jehovah.”
“She’s given a valuable artifact to Lucifer,” Uriel argued. “She stole it.”
“Technically, Jehovah never had sole dominion over the book,” Judas shrugged. “It’s meant to be public property for the Divine.”
“Semantics are irrelevant.” Uriel frowned. “It was in a secured vault and she violated Jehovah’s hospitality. He’s calling for a trial.”
“Yeah, and those are always so fair,” Judas snorted. “No go, dude. She stays in Hell.”
“Then allow us to speak with her there.”
Judas jabbed a finger towards Michael. “That is also not happening. After what you did to Luce, you think we’d let you anywhere near him?”
Michael tried to conceal his recoil, but Uriel saw it, and he bristled. “You don’t have to be a dick, Judas.”
“It’s kind of my thing,” the young man retorted. “Just ask my brother.”
“So you’re saying that Lucifer makes a habit of surrounding himself with slimy traitors.”
Judas’s eyes went stormy, and he grabbed Uriel tightly by the bicep.
“Say what you want about me,” Judas growled, “but do not ever speak poorly of Mags in my presence.”
There was a snapping sound that echoed in Uriel’s ears before his body processed what had happened.
A second passed in blissful confusion, and then white-hot pain lanced through his left arm.
Uriel bellowed, sagging hard against Judas for a moment as his body registered the clean break in his humerus.
The Fallen pulled him close before shoving him away, and the pain increased tenfold at the rough handling and the inevitable collision with Michael’s chest.
“Bastard,” Uriel growled, unable to conjure a more devastating insult as the pain lanced his senses and Michael did his best to keep him upright.
The demon made a noise curiously similar to a boiling tea kettle and dug at his own eye sockets with clawed finger bones.
“Judas!” he groaned. “Why do you always do this? Now we need to fix that one!”
“We don’t have to do anything,” Judas huffed.
“If we send him back damaged, it’s an act of war.”
Uriel whimpered. He wasn’t looking to give Jehovah more fuel for his fire, but he wasn’t as keen as Michael on going to Hell. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like they were going to be given very much choice.
Michael was out of his depth. The strange little demon had insisted on blindfolding them to protect the location of the Gates to Hell.
He had no idea where they had been taken, which was a tactician’s nightmare.
He tried to time their travel by counting his footsteps but gave up somewhere around twenty minutes.
Not knowing the direction of travel would render his calculations essentially useless anyway.
At some point they stopped moving, and he heard Judas speaking in a low tone, followed by an affirmative noise from Zaj, and then footsteps rapidly departing. Soon after, their demonic guide yanked the blindfolds off, looking as apologetic as a skull could manage, and shrugged.
“Can’t take chances, you understand.”
Michael did. They would have done the same thing, if required to invite demons into their sanctum. Realistically, though, he knew Jehovah would let an enemy rot sooner than heal a servant of the damned. What he was most displeased about were their current surroundings.
It was a dark room hewn from rough stone that was cool and slightly slick with moisture where he touched it.
Unsuitable for climbing, even if there weren’t a low ceiling of the same stone hemming them in.
The only light came from scattered torches set in iron sconces securely bolted to the stone.
A chill wound through the air, and Michael frowned.
“This is hardly an appropriate place to treat an injured man.”
The demon stared blankly then gave a snort of derision. “This is just the foyer. You’ll follow me to the welcome center, then we’ll sort out your visitor passes and head to the estate.”
“Visitor passes?” Uriel echoed as they followed the monkey demon into the dim corridor. “What in hell?”
The demon looked at him with disdain. “Yes, Hell. I assume in Heaven you just let them wander in willy-nilly, unaccounted for and undocumented? Do you even keep records?”
“Peter keeps the ledger,” Uriel said defensively. “He confirms inbound souls are listed, and then they can enter the Gates.”
“Terrible.” The demon clicked his skeleton jaw, the sharp incisors snapping. “So casual, so unorganized.”
“And I guess your system is flawless?” Uriel was aiming for condescension, but the pain from his broken humerus had him speaking in a strained tone instead.
His arm gave an itchy throb as the muscle tried to knit back together around his bone fragments, and he cringed. This was going to be a messy healing.
“Watch your step,” Zaj ignored Uriel’s weak comeback and paused as a glimmer of light appeared around a curve in the hallway, turning to give them a grin. “There’s a few steps down coming up when we cross the threshold.”
They rounded the corner and the light grew, making Michael blink after the darkness of the passage. When his vision cleared, he kept right on blinking in stunned surprise at the sight that unfolded before them.
“Wow,” Uriel murmured, speaking for both of them. “Whatever I expected, it wasn’t this.”
Michael nodded. Hell was an entirely different beast than he had anticipated.
For starters, it was much brighter than assumptions and the dreary entrance hallway would lead one to believe.
Instead of a doom and gloom realm of mist and shadows, they’d paused on a cliffside at least two hundred feet up, with a clear view across sprawling fields of crops dotted with small clusters of buildings.
A pale winter sun beamed down over the land, giving everything a cool glow, and Michael could tell the brisk wind that tugged at them at this elevation would be a gentle breeze closer to the ground.
It was a peaceful setting, and even the massive palace in the distance was more colorful and livelier than he had expected.
A sprawling estate of cream-colored stone was enclosed by a low wall of dark shale, and the spires and rooftops were crowned with umber shingles.
Burgundy wood framed the windows and doors, and even from this distance Michael’s sharp eyesight could pick out several balconies, what looked like an observatory, and a wide courtyard garden.
It was downright pastoral, and he felt a bit hypocritical for his initial surprise.
This was exactly the kind of setting Luce thrived in, this relaxed and homey elegance.
Yet some part of him had pushed aside the things he knew to make room for biased expectation. It made sense on some level that his banishment would change Lucifer, but he should’ve known better than to think it would be extreme. A new layer of shame settled onto the familiar pile.
“Yes, it’s lovely,” Zaj interrupted his musing, flapping around to hover in front of him. “But we have places to be and an arm to repair, so maybe save the sightseeing for your next visit? We have a wonderful tour on Thursdays.”
“You... do?”
“I don’t have time to educate you on how sorely lacking Heaven must be compared to Hell. Just follow me, and try not to slip under the guardrail, alright? One injured angel is bad enough; we don’t need it happening on our turf the second time.”
Michael glanced to the side and noticed the roughly carved stone steps winding along the face of the cliff, with only a thin metal railing between them and a drop hundreds of feet. Uriel followed his gaze and groaned.
“What a time not to have the wings…”
Michael nodded. They had expected to be in the mortal realm much longer than they had been. The glamour that kept their wings tucked away wouldn’t wear off for at least another few hours.