Page 48 of The Malevolent Seven

‘But I still don’t understand why they’re being tortured!’ Galass cried out, which made the jackal in her arms whine. No doubt she was wondering what would happen to her once the blood magic Fidick’s deal with Tenebris had awakened in her drove her mad. Would she end up here, among the damned? ‘What’s the point of all this misery?’ she asked. ‘Who benefits fr—?’

‘Fuel,’ I said, cutting her off for fear she’d start talking herself into a panic, which wasnot an unreasonable concern when someone who spent their entire lives being taught the Lords Celestine would protect them from all spiritual harm was forced to take a stroll through the Infernal plane. ‘What the Aurorals claim is a soul and the rest of us refer to as consciousness is. . . well, it’s elemental. It’s not just a bunch of thoughts trapped inside our skulls, but the thing that binds all matter in the universe together. But your soul, my soul, anybody’s soul– they’re not useful to anyone else until you deconstruct them, until the soul’s own internal bonds break, and what’s left is a combination of formless spirit, which has no value, and ecclesiasm, which is what gives both the Lords Celestine and Lords Devilish their power.’

‘Why not just kill them?’ she asked, staring down at one of the open-mouthed ghasts. Its eyes followed hers as she passed it by.

‘Because souls aren’t like bones or flesh. You can’t just grind them up with a mortar and pestle. You have to induce the soul to relinquish its own form,persuade it to break apart on its own.’

‘Or torture the soul until it cannot stand to continue its own existence,’ Aradeus said with a grimace. ‘I like not this place.’

‘Well, tough shit,’ Tenebris said, picking up the pace. I guess he wasn’t getting any more enjoyment out of this conversation than we were. ‘There’s a war going on, and wars need ammunition. So unless you’re wanting the Lords Celestine to take over every single plane of reality and turn every sentient being into one big mass of goody-goodies doing exactly what they’re told, the rest of you dumb bastards better start whistling Infernal marching tunes, ’causewe’rethe only ones fighting to keep the universe out of Auroral control.’ He gave an imperious sniff. ‘Evil, they call us. We’re fucking freedom fighters. We’re thegoodguys.’

‘What the diabolic says is not entirely false, but it is not entirely true, either,’ said the angelic– or Shame, as I guess I’d have to get used to calling her.

Her appearance had changed since we’d left the ship. She was older now, late middle age, maybe. The long golden hair I’d first seen was grey and cropped short, almost a boy’s cut. Her torso was thicker, her face jowly, her nose wide and flat. Her eyes were so indistinct in colour and shape as to be noteworthy only for their lack of lustre.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘Is the Infernal demesne. . . changing you?’

‘This place has no more effect on my appearance than would an empty field of grass upon the Mortal realm.’ She spread her arms and smiled at me. ‘For a very long time I existed only as a reflection of the desires of others. I find now it pleases me to be. . . unmemorable.’

That made sense to me, in a somewhat melancholy way. Most men and women claim that growing older renders them invisible, not only to the young, but to each other, as beauty fades and age has its way with them. But if you’ve spent your life as an object of someone else’s lust, maybe having those gazes turn away from you would be something to cherish.

Aradeus came to interpose himself between us. ‘Alas, you fail in your purpose, my lady, for my eyes and heart wander ever towards you, and even more so now you have shed the distractions of false beauty.’

You had to give the rat mage credit, for he managed to sound utterly sincere. Maybe he was. Maybe the Totemic magic which bound him to the source of his abilities freed him from the normal shallow cravings for purely physical attributes. Maybe rats are just better than we are. But I had bigger questions picking at my own thoughts, and none had to do with Shame’s new form. It was her allegiance that concerned me.

‘I switched sides,’she’d told me back on the barge.

The implications of those three simple words made me shudder far more than walking a path only a few inches above a grasping sea of the damned.

‘You have to admit,’ Corrigan whispered, putting a hand on my shoulder as he leaned closer, ‘this is one weird coven you and I have put together. Can’t wait to see the client’s face when we show up with a blood mage and a fallen angelic.’

Seven, they’d asked for, which meant with me, Corrigan, Galass, Aradeus and now Shame, we still had two more to recruit before we presented ourselves to this baron who was so concerned with holding on to power that he was willing to sacrifice the children of his own subjects just to keep them in line. When I’d agreed to the job back at the Ascendant Lucien’s camp, it was from a mixture of gratitude to Corrigan for saving me, concern over how to keep Galass safe and the blissful haze of ignoring, at least for the time being, the grim reality of the services the baron would expect from us. Now, as the ugliness was getting closer and closer, I was becoming less and less prepared for what would come next. It’s one thing to take a nasty job; we’re nasty people, after all. But something bigger was going on, something set in motion by the Infernals or the Aurorals or maybe both, which left the obvious question: who was really pulling our strings?

I was so consumed by that thought that I nearly walked right into Tenebris. I hadn’t even noticed he’d stopped moving.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

He shook his head but didn’t reply, just scratched a fingernail into his wrist and shook a few more drops ahead of us. The silvery-blue dribbles drifted in the air for a second before swerving abruptly to the left.

‘This isn’t right,’ the diabolic said. He tried more forcefully, but the droplets ignored him and veered determinedly to the left.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’ Corrigan demanded. His eyes had widened, the way they did when he was in the middle of a storm spell– only he wasn’t smiling.

‘Someone is trying to draw one of us off the path.’ Tenebris took a single drop of blood onto his forefinger and held it out towards each of us. When he got to me, the drop of blood spun in the air in front of my face for a moment and then added itself to the leftward path formed by the others.

‘Somebody’s inviting you for a meeting, Cade.’

‘You have friends down here?’ Corrigan asked.

‘In the Infernal plane? Other than our current host? Not that I’m aware of.’

Tenebris was chewing on his lip. ‘It’s not one of the damned– they wouldn’t have the power to do this. And it’s not one of my kind either. This isn’t our style.’

‘Who does that leave?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’

Corrigan grabbed the diabolic by a spiny shoulder. ‘You made a pact to bring us through unharmed.’

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