“How?”
Nyx pushed off the wall and hacked another chunk out of the creature’s mouth. More tentacles grew from it in an eye blink. She spun in the air, severing them all, and once more bounced off the thing’s remaining teeth. “Make a big enough hole that we can squeeze by!”
Persephone growled and dove down, hacking through another pair of teeth and part of the tunneler’s jaw. More tentacles sprouted and Persephone followed Nyx’s example, spinning and cutting her way through them all. The creature’s howling grew louder, threatening to take down the tunnel with the strength of the vibrations it created.
“Is there any way to shut this thing up?” demanded Persephone as she bounced off the beast’s head and scored another hit on its body with her blade.
“None that I’ve found. Get ready!” Nyx’s sword slashed out once more, into a space where they’d cut all the teeth away. The flesh was soft enough that with a single swipe, she could carve a space sufficient for her body to drop through. As black ichor sprayed, and the creature howled, Nyx dropped through the space and let herself fall, turning it into a skidding slide down the length of the chute. She glanced up and saw the hole she’d cut grow even bigger as Persephone dropped through the chute behind her.
“I thought you said we wanted to go slowly down this chute,” sent Persephone. “To avoid the pit of demons at the bottom.”
“That was before we had something to feed them!” sent Nyx as she skidded downward. “When you hit the bottom, jump and grab the ceiling as fast as you can!”
The two skidded down the remains of the rock slope, debris and dirt from above raining down on them and the tunneler’s noise drowning out everything else. Nyx risked another glance upward and saw the thing chasing them. More than fifty yards of long, segmented body had already squirmed out of the hole, and it was still coming. Worse, it was moving faster than they were.
Nyx turned her eyes back down the chute. The bottom was racing up at them. It was going to be a near thing, but…
They slid out of the tunnel and into a high-ceilinged cavern. The floor below immediately fell away into a yawning black pit that was filled with millions of foot-long, millipede-like demons.
“Now! JUMP!” screamed Nyx in Persephone’s brain as Nyx pushed off the ground with all her strength and flew upward toward the ceiling. The cavern was huge, and it should have been a simple matter of spreading her wings and flying up, save that every few feet stalactites hung down from the ceiling. Unlike the stalactites of Earth, formed by thousands of years of water carrying limestone and minerals, these ones were the excrescence of thousands of tiny demons that crawled over the roof of the cavern, chewing the rock and shitting it out. They had no desire for flesh, however, and ran from the sound and vibration of Nyx’s clawed fingers digging into the rock. Persephone ricocheted off one of the stalactites, dug her fingers into another, and hurled herself to the ceiling beside Nyx through sheer brute force.
The tunneler came out of the chute, the speed and force of its movement propelling it over the pit below. The demon millipedes swarmed upward, faster than seemed possible. The first ones dug into the flesh they had found with razor-tipped claws and began feasting. The ones behind swarmed over them, moving up the length of the creature’s body. More and more of them kept coming out of the pit, scuttling higher and higher. The tunneler’s noise grew even louder.
“What the Hell do they eat when they don’t have one of those?” asked Persephone in Nyx’s head.
“Each other, as near as I can tell. This way.”
Swinging from stalactite to stalactite like a pair of black, short-armed monkeys, the two Angels traversed the length of the cavern while the demon millipedes continued to swarm out of the hole. Nyx found the tunnel she was looking for on the other side of the cavern. It began as a hole in the ceiling, and she and Persephone crawled up into it. The noise from the tunneler and the feasting demon millipedes immediately faded.
“That was….” Persephone shook her head. “I don’t have words for what that was.”
“I know,” said Nyx.
“At least we don’t have that thing to worry about anymore,” said Persephone.
“We don’t have that one to worry about,” corrected Nyx. “There are others.”
“After this is all done, can I take an extended trip to Earth?” asked Persephone. “Say, in the Greek Islands with pretty boys and girls and no fucking demons?”
“Granted,” said Nyx. “Assuming we survive.”
“Thank you. Where next?”
“One more place to go through,” said Nyx. “Then we can get to the other exit. Assuming we don’t get attacked along the way again.”
“And the chances of not getting attacked?”
“Are very slim,” said Nyx. “If you want to feel better, think about what’s going to happen to whatever’s left of the 666th once Lucifer gets hold of them.”
When Morrigan, Lieutenant of the 666th, emerged from the tunnel in the pit, she sent the Angel watching to entrance to tell Lucifer they had failed, then worked on pulling out the rest of the survivors.
Not one of them came out unscathed. Some emerged as merely heads, carried by their comrades. Even so, they had all come out, and they had managed to inflict enough damage that the creatures had fled from them. Morrigan was pissed off beyond all singing of it.
“Well,” said Mantus, looking at his missing arm. “We’re fucked.”
“Temporarily,” said Morrigan. “Everyone who is able! Get to your fucking feet!”
Three thousand Angels struggled upright.
“Dig me a pit that opens onto that tunnel, then dig a trench to the nearest Hellfire river. I want the place flooded before those bitches escape! Now move it!”
The Angels flew off to do what they’d been told. Morrigan looked over the two thousand, bloodied, broken Angels who lay on the ground. “As you heal, join the crew. I want those fucking tunnels flooded so full that Persephone and Nyx float out.” She sighed. “I’m going to Lucifer. No sense in making him wait.”
“Hope you’re able to sit when you come back,” called Mazur, who was missing both legs and one of his wings.
Morrigan kicked him in the face, then flew off. Given Lucifer’s tastes in torture, Morrigan thought, I won’t be counting on it.
She opened her mind to Hell and found Lucifer. He was in Nyx’s palace, and she winged her way there as quickly as she could, knowing that nothing good was going to come of making him wait longer.
Lucifer was working his way through a line of souls as she came up. From the speed of his decisions and the brutality—even by Lucifer’s standards—of his responses to the souls he judged, Morrigan could tell that Lucifer was very, very angry.
Lying on the floor, twitching and covered in silver ichor were the stomped, slashed, and smashed bits of Morrigan’s messenger. Morrigan swallowed convulsively, then stepped forward into Lucifer’s line of sight.
“Well,” said Lucifer. “Did you suddenly recover your courage and find her?”
“We’re preparing to send one of the Hellfire rivers into the tunnels,” said Morrigan.
Lucifer’s blade came out so fast that Morrigan didn’t have time to move before it sliced through her neck and sent her head flying. She saw her body collapse as her skull hit the wall and bounced off.
“Eat that,” said Lucifer, pointing to Morrigan’s body. A swarm of small demons immediately descended on it, tearing away the flesh and feathers and devouring them with gusto.
“There is an entire world beneath the ground, you stupid bitch,” said Lucifer. “One river isn’t going to fill it. All the Hellfire in Hell won’t fill it.” He stomped over to her. “I’m sending in ten legions this time. And whichever one comes back with Nyx doesn’t get to spend a thousand years in the lake.” He raised his cloven-soled boot high. “Unlike you.”
Then Lucifer’s foot came down hard and everything vanished into darkness and pain.
Nyx, after hours of crawli
ng on her face through tunnels lined with sharp stones and thousands of midge-sized, biting demons that loved the taste of her flesh, pulled herself up to her feet and into a small cavern. A demon—skinny with a dozen leather wings and a long sharp needle of a proboscis—flew at her. Nyx caught it and crushed it in her hand without thinking. Another flew the other way, heading deeper into the cavern. Nyx’s whip came out and chopped it in two before it could get out of range. Then she reached down and helped Persephone to her feet.
Persephone proceeded to slap every midge demon on her body and then send the tips of her whip flying down the tunnel a half-dozen times to kill as many others as she could reach. “I hate bugs! And those things really, really hurt!”
“I was there,” said Nyx. “We need to move fast now.”
“Because we weren’t before.”
“Listen, Persephone,” said Nyx. “We’re nearly at the end. There’s another gate to Earth on the other side of the cavern, but there’s something we have to get past before we get there.”
Persephone frowned. “How bad is it?”
“You know how nothing dies in Hell?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s only true for souls and Angels. Demons can die.”
Persephone thought about it. “Good.”
“Which means they can be born.”
“What?” Persephone looked down the length of the cavern. “We’re going to see a bunch of demons making babies?”
“No,” said Nyx. “There’s only one.”
“Oh.” Persephone wrinkled up her face in disgust. “Is this going to be as awful as I think?”
“Much, much worse,” said Nyx. “So stay close to me, kill anything that attacks you, and stand ready to be eaten at any given moment.”
Persephone sighed. “Always.”
Nyx drew her sword and whip and ran the length of the cavern, Persephone hot on her heels. A thousand creatures of different sizes slithered, crawled, stalked or flew around. A score or more demons attacked, from small, fast, nimble creature the size of dogs to long snake-like things with spiked bodies and jaws that unhinged large enough to swallow either of the Angels whole. Nyx and Persephone hacked, lashed, and stabbed their way through the attackers. As soon as one fell, its brethren descended to eat its flesh, whether it was still alive or not. Nyx and Persephone reached the far end of the cavern where a tall, thin hole in the wall allowed them to squeeze out one at a time and onto a narrow ledge overlooking a massive cavern.
The air was thick with flying demons; the walls crawled with them; and on the floor of the cavern, hundreds of thousands of them milled about. And in the midst of them, quivering and roiling, sat the oversized, oozing, slimy mass of flesh that was the Mother of All Demons.
It had no defined shape, save that it was enormous, rising as high as the cavern itself, and easily a quarter-mile to a side. It was continuously giving birth, and with each birth a part of its body shifted to accommodate. Hundreds of small creatures erupted from its skin every second in little pustules that burst with spurts of viscous liquid before pushing out their contents. Larger creatures came slower, tearing and gouging their way out of their mother’s flesh with teeth and claws, leaving black-bloody rents in her body that healed slowly into a mass of pus-covered scars, only to be ripped open again and again as more of them escaped.
And from below, the greatest of creatures—the tunnelers and other monstrosities—were pushed slowly out of its body like infected, diseased infants rejected by their mother’s flesh.
“That,” said Persephone, “is disgusting. Now what do we do?”
Nyx raised her voice loud enough to shake the entire cavern and shouted, “Mother of All! The Queen of Hell will speak with you!”
Every demon in the place was instantly facing them, some looking with bright, angry eyes, others twisting back and forth, trying to sense her location despite their blindness.
“We’re going to die,” whispered Persephone.
“Probably,” said Nyx. Then she shouted. “Mother of All, do you hear me?!”
“I HEAR YOU.” The voice was loud enough to shake the very walls of the cavern, and sent a shiver through Nyx and Persephone that threatened to knock them both from their narrow perch.
“Fuck. It talks?” Persephone’s mouth fell open with surprise.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT, QUEEN OF EVIL?”
“Passage from this world to the next one, Mother of All.”
The creature made a noise that could have been a laugh or a cry of pain. At its base, the Mother of All disgorged a six-legged thing twice the size of an elephant, with a mouth full of teeth, each as long as a man. “YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE, QUEEN OF EVIL.”
“I know,” said Nyx.
“YOU SAID YOU WOULD NOT RETURN.”
“My need is great.”
“I COULD KILL YOU HERE AND NOW.”
“That’s what your predecessor thought,” said Nyx, her voice grim. “Do you remember what happened to her, or has so much time passed that you’ve forgotten?”
There was silence for a time, then, “I REMEMBER.”
“Then you’ll remember that when that happened, I didn’t have anyone with me,” said Nyx. “It was me, alone, and I killed the Mother of All that was here before you. And this time, I have a companion.”
“I HAVE MY CHILDREN HERE.”
“So did she,” said Nyx.
“I CAN DESTROY YOU.”
“I have fought the armies of Heaven and stood unflinching before the face of God, who created us all. Do you really think that you stand a chance?”
The monstrosity was silent, save for the continuous sounds of ripping, pulsing, popping and oozing as it gave birth to more and more creatures. Nyx waited. Yes, she had defeated the previous Mother of All, but it had been sheer luck as much as anything else. And the moment she had killed it, the other demons had descended en masse to feast on its flesh, which had allowed Nyx to escape. While it was likely that the same thing would happen this time, she couldn’t be sure.
“How do we fight this?” asked Persephone in Nyx’s mind. “Assuming it comes to that.”
“We fly down its throat and cut our way into its heart.”
“Ah. Well, as long as it isn’t anything disgusting.”
Nyx flashed a grin in Persephone’s direction, then turned her attention back to the Mother of All and waited.
After an interminable time had passed, the thing said, “YOU MAY PASS.”
“Thank you, Mother of All.”
“BUT KNOW THAT OUR AGREEMENT IS BROKEN AS OF NOW. I AND MINE SHALL HUNT AND KILL YOU WHEREVER WE OUTNUMBER YOU.”
“Wrong,” said Nyx. “We have no agreement. I said I would leave you alone below the ground as long as your demons obeyed my Angels on the surface. And you will continue to do so until I tell you otherwise. Or else I will come back, and I will kill you.”
“UNFAIR!”
“Sucks to be you,” said Nyx. She jumped off the ledge, spread her wings and flew. Persephone followed right behind, and the two winged across the cavern. The flying demons got out of the way. The ones on the walls and floors and ceilings followed her with their eyes or their senses, but not one attempted to attack them. The Mother of All continued erupting with births and quivered as they came near, but said and did nothing.
Directly above the Mother of All was a great hole in the cavern roof. Unlike the Pit, this one did not lead to the surface, only to darkness. Nyx flew up into it and drew her whip. Persephone let her go ahead so she would have enough room. Nyx’s whip leapt up and, with a CRACK louder than the Mother of All’s voice, tore open the gate between Hell and Earth.
“Come,” said Nyx. “Time we saw some sunlight.”
“Damn right,” said Persephone.
Together, the two of them winged up out of the cavern and into the darkness of the portal.
Chapter 7
Most of the time, Michael didn’t think of the Earth, except in passing, or while listening to the stories
of the Angels who went there. He had a job to do, and he did it well. He led God’s army, trained them to be the most powerful and dangerous force in God’s universe, and when required, led them into battle. There had been five so far. The first had been against Nyx and her rebel Angels. The next three were against powerful beings that had found the plane where Heaven existed and attempted to enter it. All three had the misfortune to not be God’s immortal and divine creations, and in short order were sent packing with orders not to try it again on pain of extinction. They had all complied. The fifth had not been a species, but a single entity that was nearly as large as the galaxy in which Earth resided. It ate energy, and when it crossed through the planes to Heaven, it had gone straight for God’s mountain. That had taken a bit of work, and the cleanup afterward had been rather impressive.
It had been quiet since then, save for the time one thousand years before, when he’d been sent down to tell Nyx that God was being born of a woman. That had been fun. And thirty-six years later, Tribunal had returned from his journey through the world of men and joined the ranks of Angels. Then God had closed the Gates between Heaven and Earth to the Angels, and Michael had not thought of the Earth since.
Except that he should have.
Three Angels were allowed to be on Earth: Caelum, Orion and Arcana. Caelum and Orion were nice enough, though not too bright and rather full of themselves. But Arcana was Michael’s friend. She had been his lover many times throughout the eons, and they were bound closely together by a love of battle. He had faced her a dozen times in contest and in training, and though she had never bested him, she came closer than any other had, save Nyx.
So while he was not likely to think of Earth, he should have thought about Arcana and wondered how she was doing, how far Caelum and Orion had tested her patience.
One day he found himself thinking of Earth and Arcana and wondering why he hadn’t done so for a thousand years. Then he stopped. He wanted to think of Arcana, of her flowing hair and muscular physique, of her gentle yet fierce nature. But every time he tried to bring her to mind, something stopped him from continuing the thought.