Thief (40 page)

Finally the fallen had reached the far walls and were forced to stop, their withered forms pressed against the stone and each other, while their eyes all stared at him. Mikel understood that they were afraid, and a raft of mixed emotions went through him. He knew relief and triumph at the thought, and the terrible reality that he was hurting them. He would never in his entire life have imagined feeling sorrow for a demon, but he did. Still it was necessary, both for the plan, and for them. It was the only way they would grow.

“Would you like to release the prisoners now? Or would you like me to stay?” The words just flowed out of him, a mix of his own and Sherial’s thoughts. Logical and direct to the point, he almost knew hope from the start that they would surrender. That they would do anything to make him leave. But it wasn’t to be.

Another larger form moved into his vision and he knew without even looking, who or what it had to be.

“Dear God.” The words were torn from his throat by the sight of the fallen. Yet he hadn’t broken the Lords commandment. He meant it as a prayer.

He stared at the dark man, and the foulness that it was stared back at him.

Mikel was afraid. Terrified would have been closer to the truth, but even in the centre of this hell hole he still felt Sherial’s love in him where it counted, and that gave him strength. Her strength coupled with her vision gave him the ability to see the dark man much as he might not want to, and what he saw was putrid beyond his understanding.

For he was neither a man, nor an angel. He was more a puddle of putrescent slime that had somehow managed to hold itself together in a roughly human shape. How in heaven’s name could he have managed to continue living like this, Mikel asked himself? If you could call it living. How could it endure? His thoughts weren’t the only ones echoing that question.

In one hand, though it wasn’t really a hand, the demon held some sort of mechanical device, of a design Mikel had never seen. He understood from the way he held it, that it was a weapon, but not an Earthly one. No doubt it was something Hermen would understand, and maybe just maybe, his deflector would work against. In the other the creature held something else, a glowing orb turned black with his evil. It too he was certain, was a weapon, but this time he had no idea whether it was something technological, magical or psychical. Or it could be something completely other. Again he just had to hope that his comrades, their angels and the entire choir of other young angels, had been prepared for this thing. It seemed like a good risk.

The creature was surrounded by others of his kind, each more revolting than the last, each larger than their kin against the far walls, though all of them smaller, much smaller than him. In a flash of intuition he understood that these creatures were feeding off each other, and that the dark man was merely the strongest of them. Therefore he was the largest. The others against the wall were simply at the bottom of the food chain.

‘I will not serve.’ As he truly saw the dark man, those words came to him. For this was either Satan, or a close relative, and that was his original sin. That was his lie. He who Jesus had called a ‘murderer from the beginning’, had been shown the glory of the Lord, yet had turned his back on it, somehow daring to believe in his own perfection instead. Now he stood before Mikel, and Mikel could see no sign of perfection. Nothing of all the gifts the Lord had bestowed upon him. He had truly lost everything.

“Why?” It was the only thought that could come to his mind.

But even as he asked, he knew the answer. Hunger. This creature fed on the power and glory of lesser creatures so that it could survive. Far from the demigod status it claimed, it was in fact a bottom feeder, finding the weakest prey it could catch, and devouring their life. Through Sherial he felt pity for this foulness, for he knew now that once this creature had been an angel, one of the many that had fallen. And it had fallen farther than most.

“Why would you have given up so much to become this?” The question came from his mouth almost without his thought. Perhaps it wasn’t truly his. He couldn’t understand how the darkness could have thrown away so much for so little, neither could Sherial, for which he knew he should be eternally grateful. To be able to understand this thing’s reasoning would be to be able to become it. Yet he had the feeling that others, many others guided his words, the question so basic to all of them.

“For power.” And the creature spoke in the tongue of mortal man, unable to speak as it once had. Mikel through Sherial, suddenly understood why this creature could no longer use the tongue of heaven. For the mortal tongue could lie while the language of angels held no such room for untruth. And this creature lied. It lied to everyone. Most especially it lied to itself.

“To be a God.”

“Have you looked in a mirror lately?” The quip sprang out of him almost by itself, the stress of looking upon the monstrosity almost beyond his ability to bear. But surprisingly it brought no real rise from the foulness. Either it had looked and not seen, or else it hadn’t dared look at all. He suspected the latter, for how could any creature lie so terribly to itself?

“Silence, mortal. For I am Belial. I am the end of the world, the end of mortal man and the end of your futile existence. You will obey me in all things or you will die in screaming agony after a million years in Hell.” And the creature meant it. But while Mikel knew the foulness could kill him, he understood now it could never do anything more. Not while Sherial was with him. His soul was clean. He laughed, the sound only slightly hysterical.

“Try it slime. You have no power over me. You have no power over anybody who does not grant it to you.”

On cue a blast of pure hatred left the creature’s decomposing body. It was blacker than black, stank like a million sewers gone bad, and screamed like a billion banshee’s wailing their dead. Mikel’s skin crawled, and his tongue tried to flee back into the safety of his throat, and he wanted to curl up into the tightest foetal position possible. But even as it encircled him he knew it could not harm him. Sherial’s love told him so, as did the goodness of heaven which permeated him. He stood his ground and the evil vapour evaporated leaving nothing but air.

“Like I said, you have no power.” The dark man gave no sign that it feared his words, or its own failure to defeat him. It just stood there like a statue made of black goo.

“Now you will release the prisoners.” Still the creature did nothing, perhaps trying to frighten him, perhaps unable to do anything. Its weapon of hate and evil had failed, the human was untouched and still glowing unbearably in front of it. Perhaps it truly had no idea where to go from there.

“The robots are at the first of the dungeon walls.” The message came to him via Sherial and faced by Hell itself he still knew sudden joy. The robots, Hermen’s of course, were carrying the delicate equipment that would allow them to break open that last of the walls between the dungeons and the tunnel, and also enough of the same artefacts he wore to hopefully avoid all detection from every system the demon’s had acquired.

Best of all, they were close.

“You threw away everything that you were, everything that you could have been for the illusion of power?” It was more a question he directed at the empty air, for the creature he knew, would not listen, could not understand. To acknowledge what it had become would be suicide for it.

In his mind Mikel suddenly saw how it had been. How the angels had been divided when mortal man had come upon the scene. How many had felt rejected, bitter and hurt, fearing that the lord had finished with them and that the humans would take over as his favourites. And from that early jealousy had come hatred. They had slowly stopped hearing the voice of God, knowing his glory and love, and had left or fallen out of heaven. They hadn’t been cast out. They had simply left of their own pride and stupidity. Pride and hurt feelings went before their fall. And from there it had all been down hill.

Once living in the world of mortals, they had disintegrated. Physically, spiritually, mentally, and in every possible way. For their powers had always been at the behest of the lord. Without him, they could be nothing.

No longer hearing or knowing his love, they learned hatred, greed, lust for power, corruption, fear and misery. And as their souls had blighted and withered, so their bodies had decomposed around them, while the hunger for what they had once been grew and grew like an out of control cancer. And at the same time the lies the creatures told had become a part of them, so that they themselves didn’t fully understand what they had become. They had no way back to their former glory, no hope, no chance, largely because they had cut themselves off from it.

So they learned to hunt. Finding the weakest and the greyest. Those who had distanced themselves furthest from the glory of Heaven. And the fallen had started preying on them, their own brothers and sisters. Feeding off the remnants of what they had once been, the only food they could ever know. And it wasn’t enough, Mikel knew, not nearly enough. For even if they had fed off every angel in creation, it wouldn’t have made them any more powerful. It would only have made them hungrier and more desperate.

While they learned to feed off the weakest of their brothers and sisters, their hatred of man had also grown like a cancer, as they blamed him for their predicament. The lies of their nightmares were all they had between themselves and insanity and death. They turned their anger into revenge, because revenge even against someone powerless against them was the best thing they could know. Mikel understood that need to hit back only too well, and had always managed to steer clear of the trap, for which he suddenly found himself truly grateful. Had he given in to it, this was what he might have become.

The demons had started playing games with human kind, corrupting some, frightening others, and generally trying to play god. For mankind’s terror of them was their greatest and perhaps only pleasure. But as with the angels, they could only frighten or corrupt the weakest. Those who were good, those who believed, those who loved, were beyond them, as he was, now. Perhaps he always had been, had he simply been able to believe it.

For while Mikel had not truly believed he realized, he had always loved, and he had practiced goodness. While he had denied God, he had always appreciated God’s handiwork, whether nature or life and love. And he had tried to preserve it. That little was still enough to foil this monstrosity’s evil. Only his lack of faith and trust, and his stupid belief in this creature’s power had let him down. Sherial’s love would always be enough to destroy it beyond repair. Even his own meagre faith would have been enough to protect him had he let it.

The angels could not come here because they were too good, he knew. For unlike positive and negative magnets, goodness and evil repelled each other. Only weaker, more distinctly grey creatures with both good and evil could enter here. Humans and angels much too far from home.

Sherial wasn’t allowed to use her divine power as a weapon against these monstrosities either. It was a simple rule of life. The more power a person or creature had, the greater the care they had to take to control it and use it wisely. They could not use their divine power as a weapon because they could not countenance even such slight deviations from what was right. Fighting was wrong. Mortals being weaker were permitted to act in this way, until they learned, much as a baby learned to crawl.

Yet it wasn’t a silly rule, he understood. It was rather, he saw, as a loving father would indulge a younger child’s failings more than those of another old enough to know better. Angels were simply older and more powerful. One day perhaps, his people too would be too grown up for this wrongness as well.

When their power had no longer been enough, the fallen had used their agents in the world of men, mortals who had fallen for their lies, and at their whim had spread terror and mayhem. Having lost the power of the lord, they had learned to use mortals and mortal weapons for their ends.

Belial carried two such devices in his hands now. He believed they would give him power. He should have known better. The weapons could do no more than kill him. No weapon born of the created whether angel or man, could ever undo the power of the creator. How could they? They too were part of creation. Thus technology for the Earth was merely a new version of the Tower of Babel; an attempt to reach the glory of heaven, but one with no chance of success. As was magic for Mya’s people, and psychic power for Grould’s.

The fallen, he realized, had made the same unbelievably stupid mistake he and the others had made, believing the created could ever stand against the power of the creator. And committed the same sin; that they should even want to.