HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (8 page)

Angelique wearied of
Nisroc’s continual pestering of her, asking that she rescind
her decision. He wanted back, back into the world, another chance to
rule. Given the chance, he would even rule her. Along with her, he
had been one of the few who had stood up to the Creator and
overstepped the boundaries. She must never forget that he was almost
as powerful as she. But not quite.

“
Go,”
she said, waving him away. “Leave me alone. Go back into the
darkness where you belong.”

Refusing her
command, he began to move carefully around the large study. He
touched the sill at the window and stared out at the rising city
facing the shining dark blue sea. He returned to the sofa and ran
his hand over the expertly carved arms. He turned to face her once
more.

“
Please.”
One word. One he had not spoken before. Ever.

It caused Angelique
to pause in the translation she had returned to and lift her head. He
meant it. This was no trick. “You beg me?”

He was a mystery,
this angel--old, full of pride, brimming with intelligence. And now
he was contrite? Perhaps he had learned these things while living as
a man. It was sure he did not know them when merely angelic spirit.
If he had known how to apologize, he would have knelt before his god
and begged forgiveness before ever being banished from God‘s
presence. Therefore this ability was new; it was something he had
learned since and it struck Angelique as the strangest thing about
Nisroc. It was too human. None of The Fallen possessed conscience
or empathy or remorse. It is what made them Angel and above man.
Yet here was an angel who displayed human emotion. She could not
decide if this was a horror or a blessing. She suspected it was the
former.

“
I beg you,”
he replied, standing perfectly still before her. Behind his blazing
eyes she could detect sincerity. And hope.

“
You have
changed,” she said at last. “You confuse me.”

She expected him to
smile and when he didn’t, she felt a thrill of worry pass
through her. What manner of thing was this? It was a new thing.
What had occurred in the Outer Darkness where he had remained alone
so much of eternity that he could bend his pride to ask her
forgiveness?

“
I only want a
chance,” he said.

She nodded,
examining him closely. “I think that could be true. Then I
say this…” She paused, still considering her decision.
“I say that when I find the right body, I’ll summon you
forth. That’s the best I can do. I don’t know when it
will be. I will have to have great need of you. But when the time
is ripe, I’ll call you down.”

Nisroc, who had no
need to blink, blinked. This too caught Angelique off-guard and the
worry she had felt earlier encapsulated her brain like a snake
furling into a striking pose.

“
Thank you,
Angelique. I can wait.” His wings folded, narrowing his form
to one of a column of smoky blackness. Still he did not smile.
There was no indication that he was making a fool of her.

When he vanished
from the room, returning to the Outer Reaches and beyond her
knowledge of him, Angelique sank back against the chair and stared
into the empty room.

It was she who held
the power over all The Fallen; she who allowed each of them to take a
human form. They were forbidden unless she gave permission. Yet it
seemed that just now it was Nisroc who had been in command.

Maybe she would keep
him in limbo. Maybe she would continue to deny him. She did not
like being confused and surprised. Surprise was a terrible thing and
something that seldom happened to an angel.

“
I am thinking
of you, Nisroc,” she muttered as she took up the quill and bent
over the scroll. “I am thinking hard. I don’t yet know
your game.”

CHAPTER 10

IN THE
NETHERWORLD

In that frigid dark
void, the angel calling himself Nisroc settled his wings against the
broad span of his back. He hovered motionless, nothing but the
flicker of his pale gray eyes moving. He first stared into the great
beyond before him. Then his eyes rolled left then right, taking in
all of the nothingness that surrounded him. Who would not go mad
being in this unholy place, alone, so terribly, irrevocably alone?

He was really
neither male nor female, but decided after his fall to be recognized
as male. His name was not Nisroc, this too being something he
claimed for himself. The angels Michael and Gabriel, curse them!,
had names uttered by the creator of those devoted creatures. But when
Nisroc, Angelique, and the hordes of other lost servants had
rebelled, they were not only stripped of their given Forever names,
but even the memory of those names had been erased.

Nisroc sighed and
stared ahead of him into impenetrable darkness. He wondered idly
what his real God-given name had been. Was it Daniel? Was it
Jebidiah?

He also wondered
what kept him warm in this blasted frozen wasteland of nothing unless
it was hatred, pure and simple. Vitriol flooded his veins and
swelled his heart. He hated Angelique. She was no more female than
he was male, but she had taken the reins of power in the NetherPlace,
proclaiming herself Queen of the Damned. And she had said to them,
the horde of cast out angels, “I am woman. I am your queen.”

His lips curled into
a smile so brutal and sarcastic that it could have turned a neutron
star to dust sifting through the galaxies. How quaint a title she
gave herself. She should have called herself Angelique, Whore Dog of
the Universe. Or Angelique, Foul Monster of All Creation. Something
more appropriate to her real character. How dare she call herself a
queen.

When Nisroc thought
of Angelique, as he often did because she was the most powerful among
them and because he had centuries of time in which to think, he felt
a curious fury churning in the deep cauldron of his chest. She held
the power of Earth life over him. She gave it and she took it away.
She had only gifted him with that beautiful life twice and the second
time she had sorely found him wanting.

For that one
mistake--though he agreed it was a large one--she made him suffer.
Alone, cut off even from his brethren, the other Fallen Ones. He
lived in solitary while the stars died and birthed, while galaxies
spun into extinction, while the Earth filled with more and more
humans, some of whom still had hope and faith and goodness and souls
that strived toward perfection.

“
You ruined it
all,” she had said.

As if he didn’t
know. As if he was stupid as an animal or a human. He knew at what
cost he’d lost the life of Caesar. He knew they might have
been able to take full control of the entire world. He knew he was…

A failure.

He looked left and
right, as if expecting a blast of light to penetrate the unfathomable
dark that embraced him. A light that would remark on his
truthfulness and then ask him questions he could never begin to
answer.

He said it aloud,
just to hear himself speak. I am a failure, a miserable failure.
His voice was mellifluous and captivating, the voice of an angel.

Yes, he’d
failed, but hadn’t he suffered enough? Didn’t Angelique
make drastic mistakes herself, like taking over the dead body of a
child? Yet she went without chastisement. Only he was punished,
forced into spending eternities in the void.

Alone.

He didn’t
expect justice. That was one thing that would always be denied him.
But he did yearn with every fiber of his being to be flesh again, to
feel the wind on his skin, to savor the chill of water cascading over
his face, to walk in the sun and lie naked beneath the moon. He
wanted flavor on his tongue like he remembered from before. Cherries,
red and juicy, figs brown and meaty, the mouth-watering taste of goat
roasted with garlic cloves and the heady scent of wine sweet with
honey. He wanted all of it, everything, Every Thing, that could only
be experienced on Earth. On the perfect planet.

Men. Oh the men and
women who had been given the Earth as their home, never once
realizing how precious it was! His envy was so large it was like a
boulder on his wide shoulders. Men were stunted, powerless, and
without a shred of worthiness; they lived short and ridiculous lives.
Why had all of it been given to them? He, on the other hand, once
incarnated, could conceivably live for hundreds of years, thousands!
He’d never make the mistake again of turning his back on friend
or foe; he would never be tricked again. As human, an angel was
frail and could lose the body he possessed. But if he had another
chance, he would be powerful, worthy, and drink in every atom of
pleasure the planet extended to a living being. He would know
paradise and worship it.

If only Angelique
would allow it.

So he had begged
her. And in so doing the hate he felt rose to white hot flame,
almost to the brink of consuming him, but she had not known that,
hadn’t even suspected what it cost him. It might have taken him
a thousand years, he had no idea of time passing, but it had taken a
long time for him to perfect an empty mind his queen could not read.
So when he sounded contrite and apologetic, she would not know how
very much he despised her and how unapologetic he really felt.

He tried to remember
why she was the ruler of the lost servants. Certainly it wasn’t
because she was the most perceptive, for she wasn’t. Or
because she was the most brilliant, since she wasn’t that
either. Maybe it was because she was the most determined. The
strongest willed. It had been so long since the fall that how she’d
come to be his master was lost in the long silvery wisps of time. She
had probably just been the most opportunistic angel among
them--taking control while others wailed and gnashed their teeth at
being separated from God.

He stared ahead of
him again, into nothing, into darkness, into the bowels of Hell. He
felt time trickle by so exasperatingly slowly that he knew soon he
would have to close down his mind and hibernate. The instant
Angelique relented and called him to Earth, he would hear the siren
call and come completely awake.

But for a while,
despite how it scourged him and made him want to fly apart into a
billion particles, he continued staring into the deep, into the far
reaches, into the nowhere prison that was neither space nor
non-space, neither here nor there, neither dead or alive. He let the
Nothing fill his eyes, fill his mouth, fill his mind, and allowed it
to devour his soul.

And then he was at
one with it, drifting into dreamless oblivion, a being without regret
or yearning. And in this way, the only way possible, he waited.
Waited.

CHAPTER 11

ANGELIQUE IN
SPAIN

When it was time to
go, she was ready. She was given a few days warning and was able to
make plans. She had a small woven bag filled with food--dried fruit
and meat and various nuts natural to the island. What she couldn’t
carry was sufficient water for drinking. She would have to find the
supply on board the ship and secret it away in a pigskin bladder she
had fashioned to hold liquids. She also had stolen a small tin pot
with a screw type lid from the kitchen. It was a fine piece of work
brought on shore by the Spaniards, along with other pots and pans
fashioned from metal. She could use the pot for relieving herself,
and she would later find a way to dispose of those excrements
overboard once on the ship.

The most important
item she carried with her was the cloth drawstring bag of gold coins.
They were her ticket to a new life. Had she not put the thought
into the Spanish priest’s head to favor her with gold coins for
the work she did, he might never have come to think of it on his own.

She had thought of
everything. Not that the voyage would be easy. She knew it would
take a very long time to reach Spain. The ordeal before her was
monumental, but not impossible. Once she was determined to succeed
at a task, nothing could stop her.

One day before
Columbus revealed he would be leaving with crews for his ships, she
waited until after midnight, gathered her things, and walked into the
calm surf beneath a dark, moonless sky. She could not take one of
the soldiers’ outriggers. She had to swim out to the massive,
waiting ships.

It was a long way
for anyone to swim, much less a child burdened with supplies, but
Angelique was no ordinary child, and her entire future depended on
making it.

A little over half
way to the ship, she tired and let herself float on her back, buoyed
by the tightly woven bags she hauled with her. She stared into the
sky, salt water sliding from the corners of her eyes. This would be
the last time she would ever see the sky from this part of the world.
When next she saw the sky, she would be in a new country, one she
knew nothing about except for the few things her friend, the cleric,
had told her of his home.