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much like the ones Florian and I had to ward off every time we visited Sloth’s hell. Speaking of Florian – speaking of Belphegor, for that matter – where were they?
Artemis’s bowstring twanged tightly as she nocked her first arrow, surveying the rooftop with hawklike eyes. Royce signaled in silence, indicating that he would move around the left side of the gardens with Maharani, letting me and Artemis take the right.
I paced as softly as I could, avoiding the undulating mass of blood-red tentacles along the ground, the whole time thinking that there was very little point to keeping a low profile. Belphegor knew we were coming. He’d summoned and taunted us, after all.
The first sign was the petal that drifted down gently from above us.
Artemis struck as quickly as a snake, loosing her arrow towards the sky, piercing the petal before it could even reach our heads. And the arrow kept on zinging in flight, heading towards the source of the little intrusion: Belphegor himself, suspended several feet in the air, his body pulsing with a crimson glow.
I was so hoping that the arrow would take out an eye, pierce his heart, do something, anything – but instead Belphegor reached out lazily with one hand, catching the arrow as if it was a paper plane in mid-flight. Artemis grunted, disappointed that she had whiffed her shot, likely even more annoyed that she’d missed out on an opportunity to maim or kill someone.
“And so the prodigal son arrives. I thought you would come alone, heir of Samyaza, but who are you without your friends? Just a boy, helpless, grounded, weak, and – ”
Belphegor’s words were cut short by the whistling of another arrow, then a second, then a third, loosed by Artemis in such rapid succession that I barely saw her hands move. This time Belphegor held his hand out, red light gleaming in a translucent bubble around his body. The arrows pinged against his shield, three glassy, futile sounds as they were deflected and fell uselessly away. Again Artemis cursed under her breath.
Belphegor stared at her hard, the wind shifting his hair so that it exposed his third eye. All three of them burned crimson as he took in the sight of our motley crew.
“A half-baked nephilim, two hedge wizards, and a crippled goddess. Pitiful. Is that really all you’ve managed to muster against me? Unsurprising. Everyone always underestimates Sloth. The most harmless of the sins, the least of the Seven, yes.” Belphegor brushed his hair up and away from his face, his expression hard as he regarded the city below us. “They won’t say that any longer.”
The prince’s body rocked gently with the wind as he levitated above us. Maharani tugged on my sleeve, her voice uncharacteristically wavering when she spoke.
“Mason,” she murmured. “Look closer.”
What I hadn’t immediately noticed were all the vein-like appendages trailing out of Belphegor’s limbs, pulsating and throbbing like arteries as they fed him power. I followed the tendrils to their natural endpoint, and my heart did a mournful tumble.
Florian. He was half-buried in the earth, hands and fingers pressed into the soil, the holes in his forehead connecting his mind and his soul to Belphegor’s through those same veiny tentacles.
“What the fuck are you doing to him?” My voice quaked and cracked as I screamed. “Let him go. You let him go now, Belphegor, or – ”
Belphegor’s cruel laughter filled the air, rumbling across the gardens. “Or what, nephilim? What could you possibly do to stop me? Try to free your friend from my link and he dies. Harm me and he withers away, a mindless vegetable. Either way, his death will be slow, painful, as what’s left of his persona screams and suffers from the inside of his skull. Is that what you’ll risk to save your sweet Florian, Mason Albrecht? Is stopping me worth his demise?”
My fist was balled so tightly that I felt my fingernails cut deep enough into my skin to draw blood. In my right hand, the archangel’s sword called to me in a wordless siren song, beseeching me to kill, to draw the demon prince’s blood instead. The consequences didn’t matter, the sword said. Only justice, only rebellion.
Behind me, Maharani and Royce were strategizing in hushed tones. She couldn’t stop time around someone as powerful as one of the Seven. He couldn’t condone calling down the full fury of the Heart, a blast of fire from the sky itself, because it would destroy the building utterly and set off a massive chain of collateral damage. And now there was talk of reinforcements, of Royce calling on more Wings to transport mages to the rooftop so we could fight Belphegor on more even terms.
And yet – and yet everything would end with Florian dying anyway.
Talk. All talk and useless bluster, the sword said. My sword. Not an archangel’s. The Lorica could help if they ever came up with a plan, but what we needed were results. Quick, immediate results.
“He doesn’t deserve this,” I cried out, understanding that I needed to buy the Lorica time, barely resisting the urge to murder, to smash and destroy. “Let him go. You have your stupid fucking flowers. Let him be.”
Belphegor’s eyes burned with red fire as he acknowledged me, the same light emanating from his mouth when he scoffed. “And then what? How will I finish what needs to be done?”
“This is hardly original,” I said, resorting to mockery. I watched with pride as Box ate endlessly away at the flowers, like he was trying to help prove my point. “Someone tried to overgrow the world before, choke it out with plants. Is that your plan? If so – it’s not a very good one.”
Again Belphegor scoffed. “That’s where you’re wrong, nephilim. You can’t possibly believe that these plants are normal. My hags were very sure to see to that.”
Wait. The hags.
Where were the witches?
25
Maharani was the first to go down, tumbling in a swirl of silks and the first witch’s snow-white hair. The hag hissed and raked with her claws, and I would have rushed to help Rani if the second hag hadn’t burst out of the foliage and leapt directly for my throat.
I rolled out of the way just in time, sword at the ready, though ready for what, I couldn’t be sure. Royce was helping Maharani up off the ground, his cheek welling with blood from three shallow scratches left there by talons. The hags were gone again, nowhere to be found, and I hadn’t even spotted the third one yet.
Artemis pivoted on her hips, machine-like in her precision, yet ever fluid and graceful. She let an arrow fly towards what looked like a topiary sculpted in the shape of a large wolf. The air blurred as the arrow met its mark: a witch’s forehead. The hag’s eyes crossed as they focused on the arrow protruding from her brow. She collapsed to the ground, instantly dead.
