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Belphegor smiled. “Nothing drastic. They’re only going to take advantage of his ripeness – bring him to the fullness of his bloom.”
The first witch poured the contents of her phial over Florian’s brow, clearing away the blood. He moaned softly, his gaze distant and empty. The second witch picked up the tweezers, collecting what looked like a seedling from the tray. Then she brought it towards Florian’s head.
“No.”
My legs pumped harder as I ran for the redhouse. Belphegor’s laughter boiled my blood, forming the awful soundtrack for the horror movie playing out just inches away from him. The witch was inserting a small, wriggling seedling into each of the wounds Belphegor had punctured into Florian’s skin. I couldn’t believe how quickly her hands moved, how fast she finished.
By the time I was within slashing distance, the whole process was over. I raised my sword, prepared to take off Belphegor’s head in a single blow.
Again the witches acted with preternatural speed. As one, they turned to face me, one palm held out, the tips of their fingers radiating a deep, red light that coalesced into a translucent bubble. My sword clanged as it struck the surface of the force field, the impact reverberating painfully up my arm, thrumming through my muscles as violently as if I’d struck a huge metal shield.
“This is where we leave you, nephilim. We have much work to do.” Belphegor chuckled and gestured lazily towards the toolshed. “There. Collect your reward, straight out of hell’s armories. Some pitchforks should suffice, I trust? Just like your precious Vestments.”
The hags joined Belphegor in his crazed laughter, their symphony of cackles rising to a fever pitch as they rose off the ground. The bubble around them lifted Belphegor, the witches, and poor Florian into the air. I watched helplessly as he blinked at nothing with glassy, mindless eyes, as he drooled out of the corner of his mouth. What had they done to him?
I raised my hand at the fleeing villains in defiance, raising my sword as well, a threat, a promise. “I’ll track you down, Belphegor. And your witches, too. I’ll cut out all of your hearts, one by one. I’ll kill you all.”
Belphegor cast off his hood and shook his hair to one side, revealing the burning crimson of his third eye. “We look forward to it, Mason Albrecht. Catch us if you can. We’ll just be topside, taking over the city.”
The globe of force hovered up into the clouds, the laughter of Belphegor and his servants ringing in my ears as they sped into the reddened sky. I gritted my teeth, fingernails biting into the palm of my hand now that my sword had been dismissed back to the Vestments. What was I supposed to do? What could I have done? I needed to help Florian. But topside, Belphegor said. I needed to save the city, and to do that, I had to leave Sloth’s hell.
I turned on my heels and started to race towards the sacrificial bed that led back to the Beauregard, only hesitating when the force of the thing in the toolshed pulled on me once more. It made no sense, and it drove me mad with anger that I was giving in to Belphegor’s manipulations. That was why he enchanted me the way he did, so that he could make a clean getaway while I wasted my time exploring the toolshed. Hell’s armory indeed. Yet even while I knew with all my heart that I was only mesmerized, ensorcelled, my feet carried me towards the shed anyway, unable to resist.
The same, it seemed, was true for Box. Just moments ago he’d been barking his not-a-head off at the sphere that was imprisoning his Uncle Florian. Now he was yipping as he sprinted towards the toolshed, looking so unwieldy yet moving at top speed as he hopped and clattered jerkily with the four corners of his boxy body.
I stumbled after him, my mind wanting to focus on the problem of Florian and whatever Belphegor had planned for Valero, my body sweating and lusting for the toolshed’s mundane, worthless wonders. Box shoved the door open on his own in his excitement, the wood creaking. I followed a close distance after him, looking around at all the pitchforks and scythes, what I only then realized were tools that really had no use in Sloth’s gardens. These were meant for farming. What were they doing there?
A bright glow caught my attention, so lustrous and radiant that I had to bring my hand up to guard my eyes. And what exactly was that sword doing there?
Did Belphegor know about this? In place of the rusted hoe was a golden blade, its point planted and stuck in the floor, its hilt a gleaming cross. This thing hadn’t been here on any other trip we’d taken to the shed, but immediately I recognized it as the source of my desire, its voiceless call and tuneless song trailing sensuous fingers along the back of my mind, stroking at my skin with its wordless promises of power, conquest, supremacy.
Box sat at the foot of the sword, gazing up at it in wonder, finally calm and quiet as he bathed in its silvery-golden presence. I approached slowly, my cells quaking with want, but with reverence, and fear. This was no ordinary sword, so alien in its beauty and craftsmanship, yet so familiar. With a deep breath, with a sudden surge of confidence, I reached out and clasped its hilt, and at once I understood.
I’d held this thing before. Once, a little time ago, when I promised to help my friend with a ritual, one that required several blades representing the greatest supernatural forces that walked the earth. We found a sword that belonged to demons, another from a fallen paladin, one wielded by a god himself. But this, I remembered stealing this sword myself, calling it out of desperation from what I thought were the Vestments. It hummed in my grasp, recognizing my touch even as I recognized its warm, divine metal.
This sword belonged to an archangel.
21
I could feel it in the steel, hear it in the way the blade sang as it cut through the air. This was the same sword I’d stolen from an archangel.
All the swords we collected scattered to different corners of the cosmos when the ritual to help Dustin Graves save the world was completed. Arachne somehow found Laevateinn, Loki’s personal blade, and Mammon’s beloved Duskfang was never tracked down. But I never once believed that we’d find an archangel’s sword buried in the back of a toolshed, of all places – a toolshed in the garden of a demon prince, at that.
It had been hiding there all this time, reaching out to me, perhaps out of familiarity. I should have recognized Box’s behavior around the blade when it was wearing the shape of a rusted hoe. Beatrice did say that mimics had a way of seeing through glamours and magical camouflage. But what discomfited me was its eerie influence, how it probed at my mind and told me that it was okay to push back harder, to get into scraps, to rebel. To live a little.
Even as I held it tightly in my grasp, racing through the streets of Valero all the way from the Beauregard, I could feel the sword whispering its sweet temptations to me. And I knew more than anyone that running with sharp objects, much less in such a public and criminally punishable manner, was a great way to get into trouble, but I couldn’t bear the thought of the sword’s touch leaving my skin. Every few steps I took my gaze would fall back to adoring it, even knowing that it was right there in my hand. I just wanted to make sure it was still there.
Night had fallen on Valero, the darkness shrouding the city taking on an uncharacteristic malevolence the more I thought about Belphegor and his unspoken plans, how he meant to take over “topside.” How was he going to use Florian to accomplish that? More importantly, where were they?
I wish I knew where to start, who to ask. My body’s plan was to rush all the way back to the Nicola Arboretum, to penetrate the wall between worlds back home to Paradise and alert my friends. I needed to prepare myself, sift through the notes I’d taken from Carver to find any sigils that might protect us, and beg Artemis to help. We needed to save Florian, but again – how?
As I turned the corner, my heart thumping with anticipation at the thought that I was getting closer and closer to the very people who could actually help – entities, more like – another less savory entity made himself known. Standing there on the sidewalk, flanked by four of his attending bodyguard meathead angels, was Raguel, the angel of justice.
I skidded to a stop, staring at the hand he held out in front of him, poised like a traffic cop. “Halt, nephilim. You and I have some unfinished business.”
“How did you possibly find me?” I tapped my wrist in anger, feeling for the leather bracer hidden there, melded with my skin. Was this thing even working? God, I was going to give Beatrice such a talking-to.
Raguel scoffed. “Don’t flatter yourself. We weren’t drawn by your spirit – which, come to think of it, seems to have dampened.”
