Mary was frightened, more frightened than she had ever been in her life. But she would not allow this demon to see it. “You are a monster!”
Nyx’s first instinct was to tear into Mary’s flesh, to disembowel and punish this mortal for daring to judge her. Nyx suppressed the instinct ruthlessly. She knows nothing, Nyx reminded herself. She is innocent. She didn’t want any of this.
To Mary’s surprise, Mary Magdalene smiled at her, and the smile was gentle and filled with pity. “I’m an Angel.”
Then the world went black, and Mary was back on the hill in the rain.
The snake was before her again, its fanned, hooded head swaying rhythmically back and forth as if dancing to an unheard flute. Around them, time slowed. The raindrops, near-invisible before, became slow-moving diamonds, shining bright in the lightning that had come so close to killing them all. Mary felt that she could reach out and catch each single drop of water and drink them one by one before they hit the ground.
And as she watched, a feeling of peace and joy crept over her. She was drunk without an ounce of wine; she was in rapture without the touch of a man. And yet even in this peaceful trance, she was still afraid of the snake before her. Part of her wanted to flee, to escape the snake that was smothering her will.
Then the urge to flee, too, was smothered, and all she could do was stand in diamond rain, watching the snake’s muscles rippling beneath its glossy scales.
Please, thought Mary. Please don’t hurt me. My son has just died and I…
I am so tired.
The snake transformed, and Mary Magdalene stood before her. And even though it was only a dream—it could only be a dream—Mary Magdalene’s hands were as warm and strong as they had always been.
And then Mary Magdalene shimmered again, and she was suddenly so much taller and wearing a crown and clad in black scaled armor and her serpent eyes burned with a fire that matched the flaming glow of her black wings. She was a Dark Angel, and she wrapped Mary in her power.
Mary tried to call out, to scream for help against this being who had claimed all her senses, but she could not make a sound. She remembered the nightmares she had had as a child, in which she had tried to speak but no matter her effort, couldn’t.
Maybe this is a nightmare, Mary thought. Maybe it’s all a nightmare. Maybe there is no serpent, no storm, and maybe they didn’t murder my son. Please God, let me wake and find Him alive again.
For the briefest of moments, she saw them. She saw Joseph—her Joseph—lying in his bed, asleep after a long day’s work, and heard her children laughing and saw her son standing among His brother and sisters, His shining face untouched by age or pain.
Please, God. Please.
She blinked and the vision was gone, and she was on the hill with the snake/Mary/Angel in front of her, and her son was dead again. Her whole body sagged with anguish.
The body of the Angel began to sway, mimicking the hypnotic undulations of the snake. The hands that held Mary’s were tipped with silver talons, sharp and deadly and beautiful. The woman’s eyes were still the eyes of the snake, and they bore into Mary’s soul.
The Dark Angel smiled, and Mary’s breath went away. Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to be this creature’s friend, to serve it and to be with it, to be lost inside those serpentine eyes for eternity.
And then the Angel was gone, and Mary Magdalene was standing there, tears flowing down her face. “I loved Him, Mary,” she said. “I loved Him, but I had to leave.”
The memory of Mary Magdalene turning into the snake faded to nothingness, and scattered from Mary’s mind. All she remembered was poor Mary Magdalene, fleeing in her grief as the storm raged around them.
Her eyes opened and she was alone in her room. A gentle breeze had picked up, cooling sweat that the day’s heat had brought to her skin. She sighed, and then straightened. There were things to be done, preparations to make.
He had told her, before He left that fateful night, that He would rise again. And though she had shaken her head at the time, and worried about Him, now the words gave her hope, and she allowed herself to dare dream of seeing her son again.
He said three days, Mary thought, rising and heading for the kitchen. Surely there was some task she could do while she was here. He will rise. He gave me his word.
Nyx waited, and brooded.
Tribunal had said that she would know when God’s judgment had come. That she would feel it. Night had fallen, Tribunal was dead, and still there was no change in the world, no sign that He had made a decision.
Nyx hissed in frustration, and for a brief moment the eyes in her mortal form burned red. She snuffed the light out at once, even though there was none to see it, and stepped out into the streets of Jerusalem.
If there is nothing to do but wait, I will wait, she thought.
Nyx changed her form to that of a young, handsome man and walked the streets of Jerusalem. She was female, and preferred the form of a woman most of the time. But this night she wanted not to be disturbed, and a young woman walking the streets of Jerusalem at night was not likely to go unmolested. So she became he, for a short time. And she/he wandered the streets, past the houses of the rich and of the poor, through the empty market and dark alleyways and well-lit streets where men reveled far into the night.
Nyx could feel every mortal around her. She sensed them sleeping, eating, talking, fucking, crying, laughing, fighting, and abusing one another, these humans her Tribunal had been sent here to judge. In one of the alleys she could sense thieves, waiting to kill her. She smiled at them as they came close, and they fled from her red serpent eyes and mouth full of gleaming, razor-sharp teeth.
Nyx listened to the sounds coming through the walls of the houses. She heard quiet conversations, arguments over money and parents singing to their children. She heard cries of joy, pain and outrage. She amused herself by marking in her mind which of these mortals she would see again after they died. So many of them were Hell-bound. If they knew what horrors awaited them, she wondered, would they be able to control their impulses?
At one house she heard the cries of children in pain, one after the other, and the grunt of the man who was taking his pleasure on them. Nyx stopped on the street and listened. The noise angered her in a way she couldn’t understand. She had little but contempt for the humans, but a child was innocent. It had no power to help itself…
I will look forward to seeing this man in Hell, Nyx thought. Assuming that bastard Lucifer hands Hell back to me.
Part of Nyx hoped he wouldn’t. She was still enraged by the death of her Tribunal, and was ready to lash out and kill. She would tear the entire mortal world to pieces, if she could, and then go back to Hell and rain fire and destruction on Lucifer and all those who opposed her.
She heard another child in the house cry out and heard the man’s breath quicken.
I am the Queen of Hell, Nyx thought. It’s my job to punish the wicked.
She kicked in the door of the house and stepped inside. The child’s cries of pain turned into screams of horror. A shutter shattered as the man flew through it, to land broken on the street, his life bleeding out through the hole where his genitals had been.
He said wait, Nyx reminded herself, as she stepped back into the street. He didn’t say I couldn’t punish the wicked while I did.
In a street known for its prostitutes, a man came up to Nyx and, seeing her as an attractive young man, gave her a proposition. She smiled at him, accepted his coin, and let him lead her into an alleyway. She leaned back against the wall as the man knelt before her and took the male part of her mortal flesh in his mouth. She tried to concentrate on the feeling of pleasure, but it was nothing compared to that searing ecstasy she had felt in the arms of Tribunal.
The rage she’d been trying to hold back flooded her. How dare these humans kill my beloved? How dare they even walk the face of this Earth?
The man rose to his feet and grabbed Nyx’s shoulders, turning and pushing her
face first against the wall before shoving her robe up to her slim, narrow hips. Nyx let the man penetrate her, even as her teeth changed to razor sharp fangs.
This human will die first. And when Tribunal comes, the rest of them will die, too.
The man thrust harder, trying to make Nyx cry out. She didn’t oblige him. Her fingernails turned to talons, digging into the clay wall of the building. She would wait until the man was near climax, she decided, then rip his manhood off as she had the pedophile’s. Only this one’s she would shove so far into his ass that it would burst out his mouth.
Then I’ll kill everyone else in the streets.
A familiar scent wafted into Nyx’s nose, a familiar sound floated in the air. It caught her whole attention, and the man pounding into her false body was forgotten.
Judas.
To leave one’s mortal body in spirit form was easy for an Angel, even if her body was standing face first against a wall, subjected to a man’s vigorous thrusting. Nyx floated out of her flesh. Her spirit form was that of her true, female, white-skinned, black-winged self. She flew through walls, unseen by human eyes, past busily engaged couples and trios and more, to the room where Judas was rutting on the body of a girl who had just entered womanhood. The girl cried out and moved beneath him, her ecstasy almost convincing as she wrapped her arms and legs around him and bucked her hips in an effort to make him finish faster.
This one I will not wait on. This one betrayed my Tribunal, and I will kill him.
She slipped into his mind, and found it a whirlwind of chaos.
Even as he thrust into the girl beneath him, in his mind Judas was standing at the base of the hill, looking up at the crowd and the men crucified there. He could not take his eyes off the One who he had called his leader, his master, and his friend, who was now hanging on the cross because he, Judas, had betrayed Him.
The purse on his hip felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. The thirty silver coins—enough to hire a skilled laborer for four months—burned against his thigh with the heat of his own guilt.
Judas tried to focus on the girl beneath him, on the fleeting pleasure she provided, but in his mind he could see only the bloody, beaten, thorn-crowned face of the man whom he had claimed to love, the suffering in his master’s eyes.
He growled with frustration, pulled out of the girl, and turned her on her stomach. He pinned her face down hard against the mattress and mounted her again. The girl cried out in pain, but masked it as sounds of lust, begging him for more in the hopes it would bring him to the end sooner.
Nyx entered Judas’ mind, and allowed herself to be seen. To Judas’ eyes she was Mary Magdalene, the one their master loved, the woman who walked with the disciples and who comforted their leader when He was in pain. She stared at him, summoning all her grief and rage, and let it loose in him. Her emotions, so much more powerful than those of a mortal, overwhelmed him and filled his head so that it threatened to explode.
In the real world, Judas swore and cried out in pain. The girl beneath him was startled and tried to pull away. In his anger, he grabbed her, forced her back down on the mattress and rammed himself into her backside. Her cries turn to shrieks of pain, her feigned pleasure vanishing. He fucked her harder and harder, willing himself to finish, willing himself to the orgasm that would drive all thoughts from his brain, even for a moment.
In his mind, tears running down her face, Mary Magdalene whispered, “How could you, Judas? He loved you. He made you one of the disciples. He was the light of the world and you snuffed Him out like a candle.”
Mary vanished and in her place stood his master. His body was torn and broken from the scourging and the crucifixion. His eyes were clouded over with death, and He had holes in his hands and feet. His face was stained red from the blood leaking down from the crown of thorns.“This is what you have wrought, Judas,” He said.“I was to lead the men and women of this world to freedom from Rome, from sin, and from pain. And you destroyed it all.”
Judas screamed and reared back, pulling himself from the crying prostitute and burying his face in his hands. The girl scrambled away, watching in fear as he doubled over, screaming himself hoarse and beating at his temples.
Outside, against the wall, the man finished inside Nyx with a groan and a series of hard thrusts. He pulled himself from Nyx’s flesh and walked away. She barely noticed him go, for she was still in Judas’s mind, and she had only begun her revenge.
Judas’s eyes were locked with his master’s. He was afraid, more than he had ever been, for his master had begun to glow with a brilliant white light, so bright and powerful that it laid open Judas’s soul, making him relive the betrayal, the moment he accepted the money for his master’s death, the trip through Jerusalem leading the soldiers, and the kiss that let the Romans know who to kill.
In the real world, Judas’s bowels and bladder both released at once. The prostitute cried out in disgust, and a foul smell filled the small, closed room. The brothel guards ran in and, seeing the mess, hauled Judas out, kicking and slapping him as they dragged him down the narrow corridor to the door.
Judas wanted to run, to hide from himself, but there was no place to go; he was still trapped in his own tormented mind as he was trapped in his quaking, filth-covered body.
The brothel guards tossed him into the streets, and he landed on his own filth. They kicked him repeatedly and Judas curled into a ball, hoping to protect his flesh, while inside his mind there was a different and much worse pain. In his head, his master loomed larger, the light grew brighter. “I was the son of God,” He said. “Brought here to bring the light to mankind. And you snuffed out that light!” The white light flared bright and was gone.
Judas opened his eyes and found himself, bleeding and crying and lying in his own waste. Passing men walked around him, eyes averted in disgust. Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet, and stumbled away from the well-lit street.
In a darkened alley, Nyx transformed, leaving her false human flesh behind for her true form. She rose into the air, and as she did, black armor flowed over her body, covering her and cloaking her. Her boots, normally diamond, turned black, and a black mask covered her face. A thought transformed her three-headed, flaming whip to a single lash of darkness, as invisible in the night as Nyx herself. She silently flew above the city until she hovered over Judas.
Judas stumbled into an alley and reached up under his robe to remove his filth-covered loincloth. As his hand touched it, the first stinging lash came out of the air, ripping the shoulder of his robe and cutting into his flesh. He yelled out in pain, and looked desperately around to see who had hit him. There was no sign of anyone.
The lash cut down again, ripping open his back. He screamed and ran, the mess on his body forgotten as he tried to escape his invisible tormenter. In the sky above, Nyx followed, her whip in her hand. She watched Judas run towards the bright streets. A pair of quick lashes sent him stumbling back to the darkness.
For the rest of the night she drove him, lashing his body with a thousand small cuts, leaving him a bloody mess but never damaging him so badly that he could not run. With an expert eye she scourged the clothes from his body until he had nothing left but the soiled loincloth and the girdle that held his purse. By the time dawn began to break the horizon, he had run the length of the city three times. As the sun began to rise, he saw a possible hiding space, a small outdoor oven. In desperation, he crawled, weeping, inside it.
The flogging stopped. Judas closed his eyes in relief.
He was back on the hill. Only this time, there was no crowd, no guard, no others on crosses. There was just him, standing before the cross on which his master’s body hung.
The master looked down on him, His face filled with disapproval and disappointment. He made no sound, save for His blood hitting the earth where it dripped from His body, soaking into the parched desert sand. Judas knelt before the cross and began babbling, begging forgiveness. His master’s eyes went to the small bag on Judas’s w
aist. Instantly the coins inside began to burn into Judas’s flesh, making him howl with agony. He grabbed frantically at his waist, trying to pull the purse free. His hands caught fire and he screamed.
“Return the blood money!” His master’s mouth did not move, but his voice filled Judas’s head.“Return it to those who ordered my death!”
Judas’s eyes snapped open, and he realized that the oven was on fire. Though there had been no wood inside it, the stones themselves were burning. Smoke was filling the air as flames licked up from the ground, and he could smell his own scorched skin. Screaming in agony and fear, Judas crawled out and onto the ground, frantically battering at his bubbling flesh. The fire died, but the agony went on. Blisters formed on the flesh of his back and legs, on the bottom of his feet, and on his hands. It should have been enough to make Judas lose consciousness—but Nyx had Judas in her power and would give him no such reprieve.
At his waist, the girdle with its pouch remained untouched by the flames. Judas staggered away as fast as he could on his ruined feet, toward the Hall of Hewn Stones, and the Sanhedrin who had paid him to betray his master.
Nyx, now clothed in the flesh of an older woman, sneered as Judas hobbled away. He would be forced to walk through the city’s center to reach the Hall of Hewn Stones. She followed, watching with amusement as the people scattered from the sight and stink of him. The blisters on the bottom of his feet had ruptured and he left a trail of blood and pus. He should have collapsed, screaming on the ground, but Nyx used her power to keep him upright and moving despite the agony. Nyx followed him, delighting in his suffering.
He reached the Hall of Hewn Stones and pushed his way in to see the Sanhedrin. Nyx stood outside and waited. Soon the guards threw him into the street. He hit hard, splitting open more blisters and howling in pain. Still in the guise of a housewife, Nyx came forward and helped him to his feet.