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He keeps an arm around her as Vehuel leads us to Henoch Breach. It’s almost painful to watch Daja so manipulated, and it’s all I can do to not plunge Death’s knife between the Magistrate’s wing scars.
Instead I just grit my teeth and keep walking.
It’s not long before we come to a deserted town. It’s old, as old as anything I’ve seen Downtown. No one has lived here in a long time. In places, the buildings are so overgrown with the skeleton trees and tough weeds that they look like something that sprouted from the dead soil. The style of the buildings looks Hellion, but not quite. Simpler. Less ornate than the elaborate Hellion designs on the buildings and vehicles in Pandemonium.
I don’t notice that Vehuel has fallen back to walk with me until she says something.
“You’re staring.”
“It’s a ghost town. Why shouldn’t I look? Besides, maybe there’s something valuable in the houses. Maybe something to eat. Or smoke. I’m almost out of cigarettes.”
“You won’t find any Maledictions in these buildings.”
“Yeah? Why not?”
“I’ve read about this place,” says Traven from a few feet away. “Maledictions didn’t exist when Henoch was built. They didn’t exist until centuries later in Pandemonium.”
Traven is limping, but he keeps pace with us.
“You sound like a tourist brochure, Father. Is there a souvenir shop? I might need a snow globe.”
Vehuel smiles when she looks at me, not taking anything I’m saying personally. It bugs me. What does she know?
“None of this looks familiar?” says Vehuel. “Maybe you saw it in a dream?”
“Some of it, I guess. But all old, dead towns are the same, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t know. There are no ghost towns in Heaven.”
“I get it now. It’s a real-estate scam. You take us to the middle of nowhere and we can’t go back until we sit through a time-share sales pitch.”
The angels all laugh, all except for Alice and Traven. They look worried, but not because I refuse to kiss the boss angel’s ass.
“What do you know about the first war in Heaven?” Vehuel says.
“Lucifer rebelled. God threw him out. End of story.”
“When you say Lucifer, of course you mean Samael.”
“Of course. Who else?”
“I’m talking about the first war in Heaven. The one led by Maleephas. Samael’s petulant conflict was the second.”
Maleephas.
There it is again. That annoying feeling that I’ve been here and heard that name before.
“It’s frustrating, isn’t it? To be so close to remembering, but unable to make the connections?”
“Please, Vehuel. Just tell him,” says Alice.
“Tell me what?”
Vehuel says, “You’ve been here before.”
“No. I haven’t.”
“You were here and you killed an old man. The angel Maleephas. The first Lucifer.”
