Plague of Angels

  “Don’t overdo it,” advised Persephone. “Too much divinity and they become complacent. Keep the miracles few and far between and they’ll worship you all the more when they come.”

  “This isn’t about miracles,” snapped Nyx. “The money he was taking could build new temples! I could gain more followers.”

  “Followers aren’t everything.”

  “They are for me!” snapped Nyx. “Have you forgotten what this is all about? Have you forgotten that we have a chance at Paradise, if we can defeat the Christians?”

  “We haven’t forgotten,” said Persephone, her voice gentle.

  “Send a vision to the priests telling them to bring you more followers. Tell them to give the money they have to the poor and raise more for a temple in the poor areas.”

  “Which ones? There are poor all over the world!”

  “All of them!” Persephone shook her head. “Your problem, my Queen, is that you are used to being in charge instead of being worshipped. Your priests do the work, and you supply the miracles, punishments, and protection. And you have as much fun as possible.”

  “Fun doesn’t get me followers.”

  “But it does get you laid,” said Ishtar, coming closer. “Especially when you visit me.”

  “Hey!” said Persephone. “What am I? Chopped meat?”

  “You certainly look like it after your ‘wedding night’ ritual,” said Ishtar.

  “At least I don’t have to geld my High Priests to keep them in line.”

  “No, you just have to fuck them.”

  “Behave,” snapped Nyx. “I’m going back to Rome. The last Bacchanalia was a success against the Christians and I can use it again. Meanwhile, I’ll have my priests build a new temple to Nyx in the area. Every time we take one of his off the map, we replace it with one of mine.”

  “Well, I can certainly help with that,” said Ishtar, spreading her own wings. “I’ll let you know which areas I’ve killed all the Christians in.”

  130 A.D. – Egypt

  In private cabin of his ship, Emperor Hadrian finished fucking the beautiful Antonius with a loud moan and collapsed onto the other man’s smooth back. A moment later he rolled off, though his hand stayed on the younger man’s body, caressing him as the gentle motion of the Nile beneath them rocked the ship.

  “You give me such pleasure,” he whispered to Antonius. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Nor I without you.” said Antonius, kissing him back. “My Emperor.”

  The door to the cabin burst open and Nyx, in full battle armor, with wings widespread to cover the walls of the small room, yelled, “You pitiful excuse for an Emperor!”

  “My lady Nyx!” protested Hadrian, his guts tightening with fear. “My goddess, what have I done?”

  “You dare issue an edict protecting the Christians?” yelled Nyx. “You dare say that they cannot be harmed?” She grabbed Antonius, her taloned hands digging through the flesh of his leg. “I will destroy everything you love, old man, then I will destroy you!”

  “No, please,” begged Hadrian, as Nyx dragged the screaming Antonius off the bed, crimson blood smearing the sheets. “Don’t hurt him! Please don’t hurt him!”

  Nyx, dragging the wounded boy by one foot, walked out of the cabin and straight into the attack of ten legionnaires. She drew her sword and made one wide sweep with it, cutting through armor, weapons, shields and flesh, and sending a wide splatter of blood over the deck. Four of the legionnaires died. The others retreated, horrified. They stopped when they heard their Emperor’s ragged pleas, and prepared to advance again. Nyx kept walking. Her next swing decapitated two more of the legionnaires, their blood spraying from their still-standing bodies as their heads flew into the air. She reached the edge of the deck, and turned back to Hadrian. “You pissant! I should fuck you the way you fuck your bitch here, but I wouldn’t dirty myself with your flesh!” She raised Antonius in the air with one hand and sheathed her sword with the other. “The river is full of crocodiles, tonight,” she said. “I brought them here just for this occasion.”

  “I beg you, Lady! I’ll do anything.” The Emperor was on his knees, not caring who saw.

  Nyx thrust the talons of her now-empty hand into Antonius’s groin, tearing off his still-damp genitals and ripping open his belly and chest in a single swipe. Antonius’s screams went higher and louder as his guts coiled out into the water below. Hadrian jumped up and ran forward. Nyx let him come almost close enough to touch his lover, then threw Antonius over the rail. He splashed into the water below and the air was filled with the roar and hissing of the crocodiles. Hadrian fell to his knees, covering his face and wailing as the roars and growls of the crocodiles feasting filled the air.

  Nyx grabbed Hadrian, pinched open his mouth and poured a disgusting concoction down his throat. The Emperor gagged and choked, trying to vomit it back up. Nyx clamped her hand over his mouth, forcing him to swallow or choke to death. “That,” she hissed in his ear, “was made of the blood, shit, piss and puke of an old man who has been dying by inches, in indescribable pain, for the last ten years.” She rose up and let Hadrian drop, writhing, to the deck. “You will come to my temple every month and you will kneel in worship. You will persecute the Christians and, if you do so, I my consider taking the disease from you.” She kicked him hard enough to send him skidding across the deck, knocking over the remaining legionnaires. “Asshole.”

  Nyx flew off into the night, leaving the gasping, vomiting Emperor on the deck.

  A.D. 165 – Rome

  “It is true,” said the strong young soldier kneeling before Emperor Marcus Aurelius. “Again and again I see these Christians coming to our classes, challenging our teachers. They claim stoicism is a fable! They claim our teachings of virtue and the denial of vice are nothing compared to that of their petty little desert god.”

  “Please, Caesar,” said the middle-aged man beside him. Like the young soldier, this man was strong and fit. He carried the scars of several battles on his flesh, and had a tattoo from one of eastern legions on his arm. Unlike the soldier, he was dressed for teaching. “They dare to claim that their teachings are equal to the Stoics, and are insinuating themselves into the great families of the empire. They must be stopped.”

  “They will be,” promised Marcus Aurelius. “Let the word be spread. Christian teaching will not be allowed to contaminate our empire. They will not corrupt our children with their preaching of weakness. They do not understand true virtue, and therefore cannot understand the avoidance of vice. They may pray as they like, but will not be allowed to spread their teachings.” He sighed. “Rome is weak enough already. We will not have it weakened further.”

  “Thank you, O Caesar,” said the young and old man together. They kissed the hem of his robe and backed away before leaving.

  “That was well done,” said Persephone, once they left the audience chamber.

  “It was necessary,” said Nyx, who was wearing the older man’s flesh. “He has no vices, as near as I can tell. He doesn’t believe in any of the Gods and he wouldn’t believe in me even if I showed myself. So if you can’t appeal to a man’s vices to corrupt him…”

  “Appeal to his virtues,” finished Persephone. “Very good indeed.” Inside Nyx’s head, she added, “My Queen.”

  “Good enough for now,” said Nyx. “Let’s see how many he kills.”

  313 A.D.

  As the sun set, Nyx screamed in fury and hurled herself again at Milan. Once more, the divine wind caught her, and when she crashed to earth, she was in a forest in Western Gaul. She rose and charged forward again, not heeding the bruises and lacerations on her body, or the missing feathers on her wings. Faster than sound she winged forward, determined to reach Milan and stop Constantine.

  Fucking Constantine!

  It was the first time in the 280 years that she had been fighting the rise of Christianity that she had not been able to reach an Emperor. It was the first true reversal in close to 15
0. Nyx had been guiding emperor after emperor, urging worse and worse persecutions. Septimus Severus had begun executing Christians and encouraging the same across the provinces. Maximus the Thracian continued the tradition, cutting them down whole communities and burying their corpses in pits. Decius and Valerian had continued, killing even more and driving the movement underground.

  And Diocletian—Ah, Diocletian, thought Nyx—had been a true follower. He had set out to exterminate the Christians, and Nyx had encouraged him all the way. She had even let him fuck her in her temple as reward for all he had done. Christians were slaughtered by the hundreds: crucified, burnt, thrown to the animals. She had actually been making progress.

  Then along comes fucking Constantine, snarled Nyx to herself. And fucks up everything!

  Constantine’s mother had been Christian, which made him lenient. He had been raised in the East, away from Nyx’s direct influence, and had become ruler in the West. And then, as his armies marched on Rome, Constantine had a vision.

  Vision! Nyx thought. Hallucination! Mindless stupidity!

  Constantine had emblazoned his army with the Christian’s Chi Rho, and he believed that is was what had led to his victory. Nyx had not even been able to approach him. In horror she watched as the successful persecutions of the last 100 years fell away as Constantine’s armies advanced from Gaul to Rome.

  Now the fucker is in Milan, she thought, talking to the fucking Christians about legitimizing their fucking fake fucking religion.

  “I WON’T HAVE IT!” Nyx screamed. She forced herself forward even faster, heedless of the pain she was in.

  Ishtar and Persephone swooped in from either side, each catching an arm in her hands and wrapping her legs around one of Nyx’s. Nyx screamed in fury and tried to shake them off. She was stronger than they, a better warrior and filled with power from her couplings with Tribunal. On any other day she would have kicked their asses. This day, with her body battered by the divine winds, her strength was not nearly what it had been before.

  Persephone and Ishtar forced her to slow down, steered her southward toward Piscae. She fought them every inch of the way, ripping at their flesh and trying to bite, claw and kick them for nearly an hour until they reached the city. Together Persephone and Ishtar slammed her to the earth, bringing her down on the roof of her own temple, and pushed her inside.

  As soon as they let her go, Nyx attacked the Angels with claws and feet, bruising and breaking them. Ishtar and Persephone fought back just as hard, scoring flesh and breaking bones in return.

  The humans within the temple ran as the walls shook with the fight. The people in the area fled as the noise of the battle echoed through the neighborhood. For three days the Angels fought, until they all lay exhausted and hideously wounded, on a floor smeared with a mess of silver blood, scattered feathers, ichor, ripped flesh and torn hair.

  Nyx lay in the middle of the floor, gasping and shaking, tears leaking from her eyes. Oh, Tribunal… she thought. I’ve failed you.

  “Now,” said Persephone, her voice strange and nasal from her broken nose, which now bent sideways across her face. “Are you through being stupid?”

  Nyx looked up, her red eyes flashing with rage. She drew herself slowly to her feet, ignoring the pain of the leg she’d broken against a pillar when she missed a kick at Ishtar.

  “Give it up,” said Persephone, pulling herself to her own feet. The movement brought silver blood streaming from a dozen wounds. Her stomach, legs, breasts and face were a mass of slashes and gouges. Her armor was rent through in a hundred places. “We lost this one.”

  “We… haven’t… LOST!” screamed Nyx, and the sound of it would have shattered any mortal’s eardrums, had they been in hearing range.

  “He’s a Christian Emperor!” screamed Persephone back. “He’s untouchable! Leave him alone and get ready to fight the next one!”

  “But the Christians will increase a thousandfold!” Nyx grabbed her leg and forced the broken bone back into place, gritting her teeth as it slid back inside her flesh. She willed it to heal and felt it slowly responding.

  “So what?” demanded Ishtar, pulling herself upright from the floor. Half her face was gone, and her left arm was flayed open to the bones and inverted at the elbow. Silver blood oozed from her crotch where Nyx had managed to plant one particularly vicious kick. Both her wings were broken in at least two places. “You’ve been going against them for 300 years. You’ve never gotten ahead.”

  “My temples are across the Empire!”

  “The Empire is dying,” said Persephone. “Rome is lost.”

  “I won’t lose Rome!”

  “You already have!” screamed Persephone. “Look around! The East rebels, the West rebels! Even Constantine won’t be able to stay here forever!”

  “She’s right,” said Ishtar.

  “How the fuck would you know?” demanded Nyx. “Either of you?”

  “Because we’ve seen it before!” snapped Ishtar. “You were too busy playing in Hell and fucking with individuals. You never paid attention to the empires. I was worshipped for millennia! I watched my worshipers grow and I heard all their voices and then I watched Babylon die! I heard my followers screams as they were killed.”

  “Well it isn’t happening to my followers!”

  “It is!” shouted Persephone. “Empires fall! And right now, Rome is the empire falling!”

  “Fuck you!” screamed Nyx.

  “You know we’re right!” shouted Persephone. “Otherwise you would have fought with your sword!”

  Nyx looked down at her hands, coated with the ichor of Ishtar and Persephone, then up at the ruined bodies and faces of the other two Angels. None of them had drawn weapons for the last three days. In fact, it had not even occurred to Nyx to do so.

  “Fuck you,” said Nyx again, though there was no anger left in her. Despair washed over her. “Fuck you both for being right.”

  Nyx collapsed to the ground again, the last of her energy spent. Ishtar and Persephone waited a moment, then slowly sat down themselves. None of them said anything for a time. Each was wrapped in their own world of pain as their bodies began the slow process of healing.

  Nyx finally looked up from the floor. “Do I look as bad as you two?”

  “Much, much worse,” said Persephone, grinning. “But then, we were always prettier.”

  Nyx managed a laugh, and felt her broken ribs grating together as she did. “So now what, my counselors of all things mortal?”

  “First,” said Ishtar, “We heal.”

  “Then, we fuck,” said Persephone. She grimaced as the bones of one win popped back into place. “After a good fight, you need a good fuck.”

  “And then,” said Nyx, “We get revenge.”

  “No,” countered Persephone. “First we build your new cult and then we get revenge.”

  Nyx grinned, and the pain of it made her realize both her cheekbones had been broken. “Now that sounds like an idea.”

  “And no more taking on the Christians head-on,” said Persephone. “You’re the Queen of Hell. Why stay here and fight in their territory when there’s a whole world of possible followers for you?”

  “True, that.” Nyx thought about it. “But I can’t go far. I have to have an army ready to wipe out the Christians when the time comes.”

  “There’s a large amount of territory to the east,” said Persephone.

  “India is already full of Hindus,” said Ishtar. “ They’ve got so many gods you can’t tell which one they’re worshipping. And the Christians have already started working there. Further east is China. Half of them worship their ancestors and the other half keep talking about the Buddha.”

  “Which Angel was the Buddha, anyway?” asked Nyx. “He wasn’t one of mine.”

  “I don’t think he was an Angel,” said Persephone. “These humans have a knack for worshipping their own.”

  “Figures,” said Nyx. “What about north and west?”

  Persephone nodd
ed. “There’s a whole big area out there, filled with tribes and raiders who haven’t even heard of the Christians.”

  “And there’s certainly worry and dissent in the North about the Romans,” said Ishtar. “Maybe it’s time to start using them.”

  Nyx stretched. More bones popped into place and she let herself revel in the agony. It had been a good fight, and it had been three hundred years years since the last time she’d had a challenge like that. “Right, then. Healing, fucking, and then fucking over the Romans.” She grinned again, her broken cheekbones flaring up with pain. “Let’s make it so their empire isn’t even remembered anymore.”

  Chapter 7

  For seven years, they flew.

  As Angels, they could speak and understand every language in God’s creation, and so Nyx, Persephone, and Ishtar, sometimes together, sometimes apart, crisscrossed the world. They visited nations, empires, tribes and villages on mountains, plains and islands; in forests, deserts and fertile river valleys. They learned a thousand different customs and beliefs, and watched hundreds of religious rituals, from grass-hut villages where a new child was carried to every house in the village to be kissed and blessed, to cities of stone where enemies were laid out on an alter, and their still-beating hearts pulled from their bodies. Some of it made them laugh; some of it made them wonder where where humans got their ideas. And always there was art, music, blood, sacrifice, hope and despair.

  The Angels disguised themselves as men and rode into battle or walked on hunts or sat in circles of elders, listening. As women they sat by fires, made pottery and tended children – save Ishtar who flat out refused. Persephone delighted in the role-playing, and took to each new bit of acting with vigor and imagination. Ishtar found it all incredibly distasteful, and would disappear for days at a time, coming back with the stench of blood on her breath and a cruel smile on her face.

  Nyx played each role, listened to all the stories and watched all the people. She was charming and polite when she needed to be, strong and persuasive when she wanted to be, and underneath it all, she was seething with rage.