The Angels' Pride Read online

  She suddenly remembered the Demon. How had she forgotten him! She was instantly relieved to find him still unconscious and in his Angel form. But her relief was short-lived and tinged with fear. Splotches of grey-black armour were slowly growing across his bronze skin. One of his wings was shedding its feathers.

  It seemed that Hell reclaimed its possessions.

  She was nearing starvation, but now she feared to eat anything in Hell. Was that how one became trapped, by consuming part of Hell? It turned you from within. She had to keep moving, she had to find some sustenance otherwise she would start to lose her physical body to wasting. She was not going to be trapped down here, to be lost forever.

  “The transition will not last for long. You have not broken the spell, Arch Angel.” Was it just her or did he spit that out with contempt? It was hard to tell with his harsh grating voice.

  “Do you know what will break the spell?” she asked as she turned to face him. It was unnerving meeting his gaze. He held one Angelic eye while the other was losing its blue and starting to burn red. The skin around it was corrupting into its shadowy exoskeleton. It was a bizarre fusion of Heaven and Hell.

  “All the spells are connected to Lucifer. All of Hell’s bindings are tied to him in his corrupted form. Until it is ripped out of him and broken then not one citizen of Hell will ever be free. We are forever trapped in the forms Michael and Gabriel gave us.”

  He turned his unnerving gaze over her “And who are you Arch Angel and why are you in Hell? What trickery is Heaven using to win the war?”

  “Win the War? The War ended a long time ago.”

  He laughed humourlessly as he turned pitying eyes back towards her “When did Heaven start deluding its own children? The Elders let alone the Arch Angels were always overly knowledgeable about the affairs of others. How is it that you are so naïve and clueless?”

  She looked away, out across the spirit river feeling even more vulnerable than she had been. Even the Demons laughed at her naivety. How had her brother been so cruel?

  “All my life I was raised in the palace and with the rarest exceptions never allowed to leave. My parents were killed not long after I was born so I was raised by my brother and his wife. They bound my powers and raised me as their personal power source. I escaped with the help of a Goddess and had thought I was merely stuck underground until you attacked me. It was then I realised I was in Hell.

  He gave her a scathing look, made all the more scathing by its burning red glow “and they think they can win the War with the likes of you.” He laughed cruelly, as he did so both his canines grew longer and turned black. He spat his black-silver blood out onto the ground when he bit himself. It sat smoking on the rock, slowly corroding it away. “You had best leave soon otherwise, I will revert back to my Forsaken form. And from the looks of you, you wouldn’t put up much of a fight.”

  “Can you tell me the way to the Surface please?”

  “Fly downstream following the Acheron until you reach the Crater. From there you just have to access the Portal at the centre. But be careful to avoid the Guardians Leviathan, Ziz, and Behemoth.” He unconsciously rubbed his heart.

  She smiled at him as she turned to take off “Thank you. Are you sure you will be alright?”

  He smiled, but it was now a sick parody of a smile. Black teeth poking out of a mouth unsuited to them, blood running down his jaw. “I will exist as I have done for millennia. Go quickly, Heaven’s Child, Hell is no safe place for you.”

  With a quick nod and an awkward smile she launched herself off the rock spire and flew as quickly as she could downstream. She did not want him following her.

  Kokabel watched her go, rubbing his heart again. He felt a twinge of pity for his lie, but it was soon consumed by the Curse, leaving satisfaction instead. She was now headed straight for the Beast’s lair, a place where even the Greater Demons feared to go and not even a God would dare venture. If she somehow survived Hell’s Demons, then the Beast would feast on an Arch Angel’s blood.

  It seemed only fitting for an Arch Angel to meet Heaven’s greatest injustice, it was about time they paid for their sins.

  Chapter 9

  Brigid wondered where she was. She couldn’t seem to move, her limbs all seemed impossibly heavy and were trapped about her in weird angles. Her eyes were sealed shut, and her mouth was completely dry.

  She was underneath the earth. Somewhere hot and dry. She could feel the land’s parchedness, greedily sucking out what she had only to lose it to the heat. Was she in the Egyptian or Mesopotamian Deserts? Not a place the Angels would initially look. She sent silent thanks to Hera.

  She used a small amount of magic to transition herself closer to the surface before scrambling out the last bit by hand. She wanted to leave as little a trace as possible for the Angels to track.

  The first thing she noticed as she cleaned out her eyes was that she was in neither Egypt nor Mesopotamia. She wasn’t anywhere she had been before. Perhaps it was the lands south of Egypt, she had never seen any other part of Africa. The earth was a strange red-brown colour that she had never seen before, and while the land was dry, she was not in a desert. Scrub and spiny grasses covered the land as far as she could see. On the horizons sat some unusual rock formations, her senses told her that they contained residual power.

  She was somewhere the Angels had conquered.

  It was a strange place. Nothing like her beloved Isles, there the plants had been so green, here they were greyish and nothing she recognised. The strangest thing perhaps was the dryness of the land and yet its abundance of life.

  There was a noticeable lack of people, she felt them at the edges of her senses, but they were so few. Even all those millennia ago Britain had been a populous island heading towards development and change. The Angels had told her of its power rise, she could only imagine the population now. But this land was so empty of people.

  There were also powers she didn’t recognise and had not encountered before. It felt akin to her own earth powers, as twisted as hers had become. This land was ancient, but it had only recently been touched by civilisation. The edges of her senses told her there were settlements, but her powers were so rusty she couldn’t sense any more.

  She felt relieved, this land had very little feel of the Angels, but their touch had tainted the ancient feel of the land. Now both of them were fading, not gone but not strong either.

  The Lifestream of the planet held a similar feel. The planet was not healthy, something was affecting its ability to flourish. The world felt aged and weakened. It had never felt like that. It had always been vibrant and powerful.

  She was weary, so very weary. She had anticipated being restored by the Lifestream but in this state, it needed more help than she did. It was well overdue that she slept in the Lifestream. She summoned her powers, slowly remembering the transition into the Lifestream. She gradually lost her physical sensations, becoming aware of new sensations.

  Life was all around her, flourishing and developing as it was always want to do. Life was a miracle, it was incredible and so often overlooked. Life was one of the children of Gaia, it was manipulated by the Gods and their offspring, but it was not their creation. They were as much its tools and servants as it was to them. But life could exist without the Gods or Angels. Earth was a testament to that. The War and the Angels neglect had not impeded life’s ability to flourish, even the waning Lifestream was not holding it back.

  Though if it were to cease so too would Life. She embraced the Lifestream losing her conscious mind into the collective sensations of life.

  She breathed in deeply as she clawed herself out of the red earth once again. She hadn’t shifted back successfully, instead ending up underneath the dirt. She turned to face the sun, feeling it beat down on the land around her. She smiled at it, feeling the power of it flow through her. She wondered what had happened to the Sun Gods and Goddesses.

  She stood up shaking off dirt and leaves, laughing at her new found f
reedom. She still had no idea where she was. She didn’t think it was Egypt or Mesopotamia. Perhaps it was Judea or the Gobi Desert, or perhaps she was in the lands of the long dead Aztecs. She didn’t know.

  But most importantly she was not in Avalon or any of the other Celtic lands.

  She suddenly realised just how out of sync with reality she was when she sensed sentient life behind her. Three black skinned and haired women stood there. They were of short stature with very wide noses, they were dressed in a strange combination of clothes and plants. Her first instinct screamed Africa, they were the only people with skin so black, but they did not look like any of the Nubians she had seen before.

  She spread her wings wide using Angel magic to mesmerize them. They were transfixed and defenceless. With great care she probed through each of their minds, following through every synapses and memory. They had no term for her, no notion of her type. To them she looked like a white woman, but with wings. They had never seen an Angel, they did not belong to them but instead to the long dead spirits that had once roamed this land.

  Australia. She was in Australia, not that that helped her much, the name meant absolutely nothing to her. She had never heard of it until now. But she did learn that it contained cities. Not of these people, but others who built buildings reaching into the sky. Strange things she had seen in their mind, most of it incomprehensible.

  But the most useful thing she had learned was that the largest nearby settlement was a city called Alice Springs, there she could hopefully learn something more valuable.

  She released them as she took flight. The Angels had not touched these people, there was hope yet. Perhaps this country held promise until she was strong enough to return to her home. She was no fool, Europe would be under close guard as the Angels hunted her and Hera.

  Alice Springs turned out to be a small city in the middle of Australia. Its size was hardly impressive compared to Babylon or Persepolis, but it looked nothing like any of the ancient cities. There were no walls, no soaring palaces or temples. No Human made mountains of rock. Nor was there the squalor she remembered. Streets were not made of stone, buildings were made of metal and glass. Glass! So much of it, it was an utter decadence to the age she remembered.

  There were no monuments to the Gods or kings. No temple precincts and only a handful of churches. There were no horses, livestock or agricultural fields to be seen. Only these strange machines called cars. They moved on energy the car produced itself. Incredible! The car took oil and turned that into energy to propel itself forward. The amount of energy flowing over the place was incredible, and the strangest thing was that it was all Human made. The Lifestream was as weak here as anywhere else. There were no mages, Demons or priests to channel various magics but there was electrical energy flowing through every building, under the roads. The people even had it in their pockets or plugged into their ears.

  And the people!

  She couldn’t comprehend just how much things had changed. Everybody was clothed. Not in furs or even leathers but in synthetic materials they had created themselves, blended with natural fibres. Women walked around on miniature stilts, men looked like women and women looked like men. Most people had some form of jewellery, such an abundance of gold and silver just scattered over the populace. And as for the clothes the variety was incredible, the colours- purple and blue!- the styles varied from nearly all skin covered to women parading around in very little at all. Not that that was surprising, the hotter climates had often had nudity but never had there been such a variation.

  And that wasn’t all most of these people were descendants of her Britons, but there were also other Europeans, Asians, and Mesopotamians. Not that they were called that anymore. Middle Eastern was their modern name.

  Unfortunately, the Angels’ presence was noticeable here. People wore crosses or concealing headdresses. But she did not sense any Angels nearby.

  But the most confronting of all things was Humanity’s development of technology. The things they had done was incredible, all without magic. She was currently sitting on an aeroplane. An invention that allowed lots of people to fly, without magic. It was mind-boggling, but that was not the only thing, they had the upper hand against disease, they made light without fire or magic, they turned oil and coal into energy, they could communicate over vast distances with things called phones. They could travel immense expanses with relative ease, they had ventured into space and landed on the moon, and they had submarines to navigate under water. They had hospitals to heal the sick, no slaves only free people, there were no swords or spears or arrows, but they had learned to make bombs, some so powerful as to destroy whole cities. The amount of power they had at their disposal was amazing and horrifying at the same time.

  Life had changed as it was want to do, Humanity had advanced without guidance or magic. They had excelled and destroyed, their nature reflecting all of evolution and Divinity.

  She turned her head from such vast notions instead looking out the window at the clouds soaring by, before she took another bite of an amazing creation. Chocolate. It was like an orgasm in her mouth, the chemical rush of endorphins running over her akin to sex. It was miraculous what Humans had come up with.

  “Another coffee miss?”

  She looked up at the stewardess smiling “Please” another miraculous delicacy. The buzz it gave Humans. They had such variety of foods and drinks, and their tastes were so varied.

  “Certainly miss” the young girl gushed. Brigid had read her mind already, she thought that she was a model or movie star. Her Divinity made her a rare beauty to them. She continued to skim others’ thoughts, amazed at the differences and similarities. People were still stressed, not about food on the table but money to live. These people were so vain in this day and age, and sex wasn’t just on their minds it was in their magazines and shows. It was everywhere. The thoughts that she alone was inspiring in others minds was shocking. It had been so long since she had immersed herself in Humanity. They had changed so much, the things they got up to and the secret fantasies they actually lived out were incredible.

  It was too much to take in, but she would be in Sydney soon, and she had decided to stay there for several weeks until she adjusted to the modern age. She had so much catching up to do. Especially with the food.

  Once she grew bored of mind reading she turned to normal reading, she couldn’t believe the availability of books and paper, picking up the Da Vinci Code, a story about the lies of the church. It would be a pleasant way to bring her up to date on one of the Angels’ religions and the problems plaguing it. She smiled, Humans so easily mimicked their masters.

  There were so many things to discover, and there was very little chance of her being found by the Angels. Australia was literally on the other side of the world.

  She wondered how Hera and Sariel were faring.

  Hera turned her violet eyes over the statue of herself. While it looked very little like her at all, she did like the power and strength the artist had captured in stone. She idly wondered how the artist would feel to know that she now looked over his statue of her. She turned away from the window and continued down the snowy streets of New York, it was a bitter winter in the city that never sleeps.

  What a city! She never would have thought it possible, one city containing more people than all the city-states of Achaia and Thrace. It even made Rome, Alexandria and Carthage look small. Well the ancient ones, she didn’t know if the modern ones had changed or not.

  But the most interesting discovery for her was not the sheer amount of Humans but the vast numbers of Daemons living in the city. She sensed Vampires, Werewolves, Sirens, Maenads, Incubi, Succubi and a couple of species she hadn’t encountered before. She saw straight through their pitiful illusions, designed to hide from each other and Angels. Their spells did not hold up under her eyes, she smiled at them knowingly.

  She got looks everywhere she went. Mortals turned towards her because of her Divine beauty, mortals always unkn
owingly craved Divinity. The Daemons eyed her up warily, sensing her powers flowing all around them. Her powers were so vast she couldn’t contain them within her skin. But their senses were so diluted they had no comprehension of what she was. She had not been forgotten, and she lacked the imbuement of faith, but she was still powerful and still the Queen of Heaven. Though that was currently an empty title.

  She loved New York, she felt strangely at home in it. But then it was barely touched by the Angels, not a single Angel, not even a Lesser could be sensed in the whole city. Their absence was keenly noticeable by the sheer diversity of decadence within the city. There was such extreme vanity, pictures of beautiful mortals abounded everywhere selling all sorts of products, there was so much greed; powerful men and women owning vast tracts of the city with its monolithic towers stabbing into the sky. The sheer abundance of resources and luxury items was surprising. Then there was the blatant sexuality of the city, something completely at odds with any of Michael’s commands. This was a city that had legalised homosexual marriages, had hundreds of brothels, strip clubs, fetish clubs and porn stores. Everyday life was hyper-sexualised from the nearly naked models plastered all over the city, to the TV shows and movies. Trawling through people’s minds showed an abundant craving for sex.

  That alone was the highest indicator that the Angels’ control of the world was severely slipping. Then there were the scientific advancements going on in the city. Genetic Engineering, Stem Cell Research among the most prominent Human manipulations of life. Gabriel’s domain. While she was very good at manipulating life and creating new species, she considered it something exclusive to her family. Most of her creations had long since been hunted to extinction, and she apparently had not made anymore but she had been very active in keeping the control of life in her hands only.

  New York was a city abandoned by the Arch Angels. A refuge of the Daemons, and a bastion of Human development and advancement. It was the perfect place to become her power base.