My flesh still burns.
It’s been a day, at least, and I can still feel the shadow magic burning under my skin where Elyon marked me. Angels of the light forbid us from defiling our bodies with tattoos, saying our forms are holy representations of God’s love for humans. We may not alter them. It’s partly why angelings wear so little clothing compared to humans as well—we are not to cover that which God has created. That, and the angel burns bright in us, making normal human clothing uncomfortably hot.
But I’m in shadow now.
Listless. Dark winged. Marked and claimed by Elyon’s Regiment. My legs hang over the side of my cage, which swings above the darkness below. I’m no longer locked in, physically or by magic. I could return to Markos’s Dominion at any time—only he would rightly slay me as a threat to every angeling of light in his domain. I peer over my knees at the welcoming dark—I have no idea what’s down there or how deep it goes. If it were deep enough, the fall could kill me. But maybe not—angelings are hard to kill.
But apparently easy to turn.
My hands grind against the bars of the cage on either side of me. I was so naïve. Innocent of the entire idea of trickery, in a way only a stupid angeling of the light on walkabout for the first time could possibly be. My Fall was so easy to orchestrate, it could arguably be sourced to Pride not Lust. Why did I trust Terah? Did I think I knew so well how to read an angeling’s face that I couldn’t be taken in? That I couldn’t be made a fool?
A dark, magic-inked fool.
A rush of feathers beats the air, alerting me just before an angeling arrives and clings to my cage. It’s another female.
“Go away,” I say, still gripping the bars. I give her a glare.
“Elyon’s gone,” she says, flashing me a lascivious smile, just like the last three. “But he’s given permission show you the way of the shadows.”
“You mean have sex.”
“I mean you need a good fuck, fresh meat.” She glares back at me.
“No, I do not.” I turn my back on her and pray she’ll leave. The last two did, but the first one forced me into battle to convince her. Apparently, I am the new toy that Elyon has given every angeling license to play with, and she felt she was due her turn.
The current angeling must feel the same, for she is crawling across the bars toward me. She swings down, suddenly in my face—
I scuttle back in my cage, away from the open door, narrowly avoiding contact with her. She grips the bars on the sides of the door and arches her back, thrusting her breasts toward me. She is beautiful, as all angelkind are, and I think she means it to be some kind of seduction, but all I see is the Lust burning in her eyes. More Sin.
I am made of Sin now.
“I could change your mind, Tajael,” she says with a leer.
“How do you know my name?” I flick a worried glance at the tight space of the cage. I’ve trapped myself if she brings the fight inside.
“Everyone knows your name, light boy.” She grins.
Her words surge up a level of Wrath I can’t contain. “I am not of the light.” I lurch toward her, and she leaps back. Then she gives a short blast of angelsong as she takes flight.
My ears ring, and I stumble back with the shock—her song was a weapon—but she’s already leaving. And the burst of Wrath has drained me. I stumble to the side of the cage and cling to the bars to stay upright. Every fear I had growing up in Markos’s realm has come true. That I was born of Sin. That to Sin I would return. All the training, all the lessons, all the fervent attempts to master the Virtues in their infinite complexity and nuance… all of it, for nothing.
A cascade of Wrath spills from one thought to the next. Markos ought never have rescued me. Had I grown up here, I would at least have a chance to survive. I would know nothing but Sin. But now… now, I know what I could have been and the torment of that…
A scream of frustration works its way up from the depths of my chest, and I can’t contain the anger any more than I could stop the pleasure Terah made erupt from my body. I open my mouth and release it, a full angelsong of fury, then I take a running leap from the cage. I soar and sing, the power of my song buffeting those nearby, clinging to the walls, fucking and fighting, one long orgy of violence and sex that apparently defines this place. Having announced my exile from my self-imposed prison, I cut the song and just glide, joining the slow churning hordes, the constant stream that circles the cavern.
But they keep a distance from me now.
Most are done with sex—sated, I suppose. They’re engaged in skirmishes or what look like organized bouts, or they circle or cling to the walls. I let my mind fall blank as I skim the edges of the cavern, a vast slightly oblong shape that disappears into darkness both above and below. I go around and around, doing nothing, seeing nothing, and most especially, feeling nothing. The horror of my situation is abstracted out into a single-minded drive to just fly. After more circuits than I can count, I come to a slow realization.
This place is not only made of Sin… it is boring.
There is no joy. No spark of life. No challenge to be met, no goals to be strived for. Sin is not just debauchery and pain… it is terribly banal. A dullness of the mind that only the sharpest of feelings—pleasure and pain—can break through. As I glide by the couples who are fucking and the mobs fighting… their eyes follow me. At first, I thought they might come after me, attack the way the females had tried. And their eyes shone with that intent. But it was more than that.
I was new. I was interesting.
Even Terah spoke of it, staking the claim to my defilement. Saying it was fun.
Not merely depravity for depravity’s sake… it was an alleviation of the boredom.
As I slowly circle, I realize I cannot possibly exist here for long. It’s too contrary to my nature. I will find the depths of the cavern and dash my skull against its bottom. Or I’ll tempt a mob of the shadow ones to break me irrevocably with their blades and their magic. I was born of Sin, and now I am nothing but Sin… but I can still choose.
I can choose how it ends.
I’m so deep in my thoughts, with the hot rustle of cavern air across my wings, that I don’t notice Terah alongside me until she’s already there.
“Flown the coop, baby bird?”
“I am not a child,” I say, my voice still rough from the angelsong blast.
She makes an obvious gesture of looking at my sex. “No, you are definitely not.”
“And I will not have sex with you.” We’re gliding past the platform end of the cavern, circling back toward my cage.
“Not even a little?” she asks hopefully. “I mean, I think you owe me. I did give you an orgasm. Pretty sure it was your first as well.”
“I owe you nothing but Wrath.” I bank to avoid a skirmish of feathers and blades and give thought to acquiring a weapon. Not that I would have to fight my way out of here—I have nowhere to go—just so I might invite a level of attack which might end me.
“You’d better park that attitude before Elyon gets back.” There’s enough concern in her voice—genuine concern—that it draws my gaze. She grins. “I’d like you to live long enough to figure out you really do owe me a few mind-blowing orgasms.”
That sparks my interest. “And how might I die?”
She frowns. “Any number of ways, if you’re not careful. Look, you’re in a good position here, sweet thing. Elyon’s got a thing for you, and you turned quickly. He’s all primed to offer you a spot in one of the higher squads. Maybe even work your way up to Magis.”
“Like you?” I ask, eyebrow lifted.
She smiles. “Yeah. Like me.”
“Does he often kill his Magis?”
Her frown returns. “That thing with your father was unusual. Most Magis are too smart to fuck up that badly.”
“Then I have no interest in becoming Magis.” I bank again, coming back toward the black crystal platform. My side still burns with the tattoo Elyon gave me, claiming me for his Regiment. If they tore apart my body thoroughly enough, maybe there would be no sign of it when they were done. Then again, no one outside the shadow realm was likely to ever find my body.
“Wait,” she says, surging ahead then coming up short, forcing me to stall out in my flight or crash into her. We’re hovering near the platform. “It’s a little early to get all Death Emo on me. Come on, kid. It’s not that bad.”
“I am not a child,” I repeat.
She gives me an exasperated look then moves to block my attempt to fly around her. “Hey! Listen up, asshole. I’m trying to help you.”
“Help me?” I ask, incredulous, giving up for the moment my attempt to get past her. “By turning me into this?” I beat my wings against the air with such strength it creates wind and makes her lift.
“There are worse things,” she says, but she’s scowling now.
I’m not sure who she’s trying to convince—herself or me. “Not to me.” I’m about to move to evade her blocking, but a boom sends us both tumbling in the air.
When I recover, I see Elyon has returned. With a human.
“What is this?” I demand of Terah.
She sighs. “Looks like you’re bumped from Top Attraction, sweet thing.”
The human on the platform is a woman. She’s dressed like Beatrice—high necked blouse, thick woolen stockings—but it’s not the woman I spent days watching. I swing sharply to Terah. “What do you mean, attraction?”
“I mean, you’re about to see how there are worse things than getting a blow job from a top angeling and losing your white wing cherry.” She’s snarling at me now, but my gaze is transfixed by the woman.
She’s terrified. I’m fifty feet away from the platform, and I can still see her shaking. Her shoes have thick heels which are tap-tap-tapping against the platform while she holds herself tight across the chest, arms folded, hands gripping each trembling arm. Her brown eyes couldn’t be any more wide with fear.
Elyon steps back from her, leaving her isolated on the platform, but there’s already a dozen angelings gathering around. By now, I know—they’re waiting for a signal. In a perversion of what an angel of light would do—guide, nurture, challenge to Virtue—this angel of darkness urges his angelings to greater acts of depravity.
“Will they kill her?” My voice is a whisper.
“The mothers always die,” Terah says just as quietly.
I feel it coming again—a volcano of Wrath wanting to erupt. This woman is not with child yet—I would sense the soul within if she were—which means they will force themselves upon her. Elyon might pick one to do the violence. He might let the horde have her for their sex orgy, then see which seed takes. Either way, she will bear another dark angeling for his troops. Then her purpose will be at an end, and he will slaughter her like all the other innocents he’s destroyed.
Like my own mother.
I have a jolt of realization. My father, whatever his faults as a lieutenant in Elyon’s unholy army, wished to spare my mother this. He seduced her. He wanted to live in the human world—her world—if only for a while. Maybe he was as evil as Elyon… but there had to be some decency buried under all the Sin.
He made a choice.
I do not have to choose Sin.
The volcano of Wrath turns righteous inside me, and then there is no holding it back. My wings flex, and my mouth opens wide to scream as a Warrior does, but prudence traps the sound in my chest. I beat the air with my wings and surge magic, shooting my body through the air toward the woman on the platform and Elyon’s gathering horde.
“Tajael!” Terah hisses behind me, but she’s warning me, not alerting the others.
I pick up speed, quickly closing the distance, and just as I descend on the platform, a straight arrow headed for the woman, I let the tightly-held energy of my angelsong rip loose from my chest. The shock of it runs like a shockwave through the nearest angelings, and even Elyon seems startled. I swoop in and snatch the woman off the platform and into the air.
Shrieks of protest go up, and I’m sure they will kill me for her. I am dead anyway—lost to Sin, doomed to depravity—but my final act will be secreting this woman away, a righteous rescue from Elyon and his depredations.
Just as the first angeling nips at my wings, I twist through time and space, taking the woman with me.
Reflexively, I bring her back to Chicago. The same alley where Terah first found me. I glimpse my angel blade on the ground, lying half under a refuse bin, but I leave it. Anything of the light is toxic to me now, and once Elyon’s Regiment figures what I’ve done, this is the first place they’ll look. And my blade will bring them as it did before.
The woman is screaming and beating me with her fists. She’s in a panic, but I’ve no time to soothe her. I turn my face from her clawing fingers and twist us again, this time bringing us high above the city. She shrieks, now clutching hold of me, lest she fall to her death. But of course, I’ll allow nothing of the kind. The question is where to take her.
I decide the city’s bustle is the perfect place to lose a human soul, under cover of a thousand others. So, I twist once more, bringing her back down to earth, decloaking us both in an alley next to a boarding house. Beatrice has friends here she visited once, and I sensed the pure souls within. It is a place of safety.
The woman can’t decide whether to let go of me or not. She clings as if still suspended above the city, yet she leans away, her eyes wild with things her mind cannot possibly comprehend. Or perhaps it is already telling her all she saw was illusion.
If only it were true.
“Fear not,” I say, gently extricating her thin fingers from their grip on my shoulders. “I mean you no harm.” Although it’s clear that I am not of this earth, and there are others who look like me, and they just as clearly did mean her harm. “You’re safe now.” Although I cannot tarry—Elyon’s forces will follow me, and in following me, find her.
She’s stumbled back from me now, but she doesn’t go far, just stares at me with open astonishment. “You… you aren’t one of them. The demons.” Her voice is shaky but getting stronger. Good. She’ll need her senses about her to move back into her world. And stay hidden for a while. And not speak of angels lest her world decide she is mentally unfit.
“They’re not demons. They are angels of darkness.” A distinction that hardly matters, but it will serve as an explanation. I need to give her something to make sense of it.
“But you’re not.” The fear has banished, and something like hope lights her face.
I grimace. How to explain that I’m recently Fallen, and while I look like those in shadow, I choose not to join in their depravity? It’s too much explanation, and she needs to get on with rejoining her kind so I can leave her in good hands.
“No, I’m not,” I say simply. I can’t help glancing at my wings, expecting the question to rise to her lips about why they are midnight black like the others—and I startle so bad, I literally jolt within my own skin.
My wings are white.
I flex them forward and marvel. Holy angels of light… how is this possible?
The frank disbelief must be on my face, for the woman says, “I saw them. They changed while we were… when you took me…” She’s stumbling for words.
“While we were traveling?” My mouth still hangs open in wonder, so I shut it.
“Yes.” She edges forward and tentatively reaches for the tip of my wing, running her fingers along the snowy whiteness. “Did I…” She turns back, eyes luminous and wide. “When you saved me… did I save you?”
Her words smack against me. I’m so stunned, I don’t even react when she edges forward again, now close enough to reach with my arms and not just my wings. But they hang at my side, and I’m dumbstruck. A righteous act restored me to the light. I blink and stare, and my mind is racing. This should not be possible. There is nothing in all the Dominions, in all my lessons, in all the history of what I know to be Truth, to say this is possible.
And yet here I stand.
The woman leans into me, clutching me again, this time to bring my cheek down to her lips. A kiss. “Thank you,” she whispers even as I startle and stumble back from her.
She frowns, so I rush to reassure her. “It’s all right,” I say.
But it’s not.
I feel the imprint of her kiss, hot on my skin, and it flushes the memory of Terah’s lips on my body. On my sex. Pleasuring me with her touch and her mouth and her…
I take another step back. “I must leave,” I say hoarsely. For my sake and hers. I gesture to the white stone wall of the boarding house. “Go inside. There are souls of righteousness there. They will watch over you. Do not return to wherever you were taken for a good spell of time. Let them forget you.”
She’s standing in the alley, blinking like she might cry. “I won’t forget you.”
I swallow, and the temptation of this woman rears up again. “You must not speak of any of this. For your own good.” And then I turn and twist away, taking the danger of my presence with me.
My first impulse is to perch.
I stand on the tallest tower in Chicago. I’m cloaked again, so I can flex my now-snowy-white wings and marvel that this is possible, but I cannot stay here. The city below me offers too much temptation. Too much that could tumble me right back down into a Fall, and now knowing fully that dark place…
But I cannot return to Markos’s realm, either.
My wings might not show it, but I am tarnished.
Weakened.
I twist once more and exile myself to an empty realm. A place between, that’s neither light nor shadow.
Purgatory.