“If they’re not in charge, who do I go after?”
“Chernovog,” says Mammon.
“He was the leader of the second rebellion.”
“Where is he? I can’t see him.”
“No. You can’t. The Father took away his visible form, leaving him nothing but an empty space in the air.”
“How do you know he’s there?”
“Beelzebub. Come over here,” yells Semyazah. I remember Beelzebub. He put up a pretty good fight when I crept into his palace. 000his palI had to cut him up pretty bad to kill him. He seems to remember, too, because he’s not in any rush to get near me.
“Stand at an angle,” Semyazah tells him. “Come here,” he says to me. When I get there: “Look.”
It takes a minute to see it. Beelzebub was always a flash boy and his armor is like a gold mirror. As I stare at the reflection of the furnace, a seventh worker slowly comes into view on a platform high above the others. He’s bigger than the other Gobah. He moves well and seems to still have a mind. He climbs all over the furnace on his arms and legs like a spider monkey, making tiny adjustments. He leaves the heavy work to the drones down below.
After a minute, Beelzebub lurches away and sinks back into the crowd.
“You see? No soul, angel, or Hellion can attack Chernovog,” says Semyazah.
I think I just found out why Heaven calls me an Abomination.
“Then it’s lucky for you that I’m none of those things. I’m a nephilim.”
A few of the Hellions laugh. Mostly the military types. The rich ones roll their eyes. Most just stare.
“The nephilim are dead,” says the female general. I think I might have put the hole in her chest with the na’at. “Before we fell, I commanded one of the companies dispatched to hunt them down. The few we didn’t kill killed themselves. Temperamental children, all of them.”
“I’m the last one because I was born after you pricks played Kristallnacht with the others.”
It’s the same as before. Laughs. Eye rolls. Stares.
“I’m Uriel’s son.”
That shuts them up.
“I notice he’s not here with us. Someone is going to have to talk about that. But right now I have to kill another angel. See if it brings back any fond memories.”
I look around for Beelzebub, but he’s long gone. Just as well. His armor is as ghostly as he is, so I can’t steal it off him and use it to see Chernovog.
“General Semyazah, come with me but don’t get too close. The rest of you can follow or you can stand here and generally fuck off. I don’t care. But if you get in my way, I’ll put you in the oven myself, feetfirst.”
It’s a long way to the front of the chamber. Tartarus would be a lot more fun with Segways.
Christ. Look at the shit I do. How can I drag anyone into a life like this?
D;I’ve never tried to kill a God before, but if Neshamah has put a scratch on Alice, I’m going to try. The front of the crowd is exactly what I thought it would be. Hellion garbage collectors, street sweepers, and small-time merchants. The officers and Hellion elites are all bunched at the far end of the place, leaving mortal souls, Lurkers, and working-class Hellion slobs to be fed into the furnace first. I bet some of those Hellion heavyweights have been hiding at the ass end of Tartarus for centuries. You’d think one of the drones would break up the tedium and take souls from the back of the room once in a while. I’d volunteer to sharpen the hooks for them.
The crowd gives me a wide berth when I make it to the furnace. I walk up to the machine slowly, waiting for the Gobah to react. I don’t think they even see me. They’re drones that service the dead. I bet they can’t even see the living. They don’t even twitch when I stroll past them. I jump up, grab a valve, and pull myself onto the machine, heading to where I saw Chernovog working. I whisper some simple hoodoo as I go.
Steam bleeding from pipes rolls down and wraps the upper boiler in a hurricane of opaque heat. I reach Chernovog’s platform and hoist myself over. A few feet over my head I see him. Chernovog is a negative space in the steam. An angel-shaped ghost enveloped in burning mist. It’s goddamn hot up here. If I’d thought about it, I’d have gone for him Greco-Roman style. Oil up and take him down naked instead of wrapped in a wool coat and heavy boots. I’ll put that in my memory book for the next time I destroy one of God’s perfect creations.
Chernovog is banging on the furnace controls with a monkey wrench, trying to stop whatever is causing the boiler to bleed so much steam. I manifest the Gladius and take a swing at his leg. He screams as I burn off part of his left foot, then does his spider-monkey thing up into the mist. I go to the middle of the platform, looking for any odd movement in the steam. Listening for movement overhead and feeling for weight shifting on the platform. Chernovog drops down behind me. I pretend I don’t notice. When he’s close I drop to one knee, spin, and swing at his legs. I catch the edge of one. He screams again. But even with a leg wound, he jumps straight over my head and onto the boiler before disappearing.
Chernovog is somewhere overhead. I catch glimpses of empty spots in the steam. Sweat is rolling into my eyes. I have to keep rubbing it away with my coat sleeve just to see. The hissing of the steam makes it hard to hear his movements.
Something smashes into my left arm. Chernovog swings his heavy wrench. I dodge it and he disappears. I look at my robo arm. Not a scratch on it. I admire it just a little too long. Chernovog slips up from behind and gets a better shot at my right shoulder. The pain blinds me for a second. I fall forward and almost burn a hole in my own leg with the Gladius.