Page 95 of The Malevolent Seven

‘What are you laughing at, fallen one?’ Alice demanded, and that made me laugh even more, because I couldn’t figure out how to explain exactly why it was so funny. Aradeus opened his mouth to attempt an explanation, but instead, the normally urbane rat-mage started sniggering uncontrollably, which turned out to be a very un-debonair look for him. Corrigan’s great belly-laugh rang out, and now Galass was giggling wildly, until even Alice found herself laughing wildly at the mess of guts hanging off her hands. The whole chamber was echoing with our preposterous mirth, as if it were its own breach between the planes, with its own laws of physics altering the world around it.

And for a while, we all just laughed at each other.

All except for Shame.

‘What’s wrong?’ Aradeus asked, suddenly seeing she was not reacting. He reached over to touch her hand, and when she pulled away, it occurred to me that keeping our bodies from altering as we’d reached into the Pandoral plane might have been too much for her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Sorry about what?’ Galass erupted, a mixture of awe and disbelief in her voice. ‘You did it– you held us together. You saved all of us, Shame. You saved the entire Mortal realm!’

The angel ignored the praise. The others were confounded by her expression of misery, all except for Alice. Unlike the two of us, they hadn’t studied under the legendary Hazidan Rosh, hadn’t been trained to discern the subtlest signs of guilt in the expressions of others. Shame’s gaze met mine, and for the first time since she’d chosen that name for herself, she embodied it fully.

No. . .

‘You bi—’ Alice tried to say. I’d never heard her swear before, nor had she succeeded in doing so now. The others had stopped laughing, and moving. I myself tried to resist, only for my body to betray me, just the way I’d made Corrigan’s betray him.

A recruitment spell, cast by an angelic, in payment for her freedom.

Too late I recalled how our path through the Infernal demesne had been purchased, and Shame’s words as we’d left that cabin beneath the pleasure barge.

I switched sides.

Chapter 52

That Which is Holy

I lost time then– not a lot, but you don’t need to lose much for everything to change. Corrigan, Alice, Galass, Aradeus and I were all frozen in place. Shame was kneeling on the floor, crying. Fidick was kissing the top of her head.

‘Bless you, sister,’ he said. ‘You have helped me to bring holiness to this world.’

‘What the fuck are you doing, Fidick?’ I demanded, gratified to find my mouth was working again. At least I was able to swear at the little bastard. Then again, maybe it amused him, listening to us vent our futile rage.

Fidick didn’t answer me, but knelt down next to the weeping angelic and scooped up some of the gore that had been the Seven Brothers before we obliterated them. He frowned at the gooey mess in his palm. ‘Well, this won’t do.’ Turning back to Shame, he asked, ‘If you wouldn’t mind?’

She rose to her feet and held out her hands.

He poured the noxious mess from his hands to hers, and as if drawn to itself, more lumps began to slide along the floor towards her. I felt an awful slithering sensation as gobs of blood and brains and intestines slid over my own skin, making their way to the angelic, who was soon surrounded by oozing, bloody piles. She blinked her eyes and the whole mass turned a glorious shimmering gold– then the dead flesh and bone at her feet began to coagulate, binding together, at first just inchoate masses, until they began to take on the shapes of men.

Seven men.

‘Shame, what are you doing?’ I shouted. ‘Don’t– youcan’tbring them back!’

‘Betrayer!’ Alice spat. ‘You claimed to have switched sides, yet now you do the bidding of the Lords Celestine?’

‘Don’t be so hard on her,’ Fidick said, and I could almost see the golden shadow of the hand of a Lord Celestine on his right shoulder, as if he were a Glorian Justiciar now.

Then I saw a second hand, on his left shoulder, this one the scarlet of a Lord Devilish.

‘There was an agreement,’ Fidick explained, as if he was doing us all a tremendous favour by sharing the truth. ‘A pact, of sorts: the angelic saved your lives on the pleasure barge by submitting herself to the command of the Lords Devilish. However, they have come to their own accord with the Celestines.’

‘I never agreed to this,’ Shame sobbed, staring at her moving hands as if they were nothing to do with her.

I guessed from the agonised look on her face that this was without her consent, an unwilling sculptor birthing works of art at the cost of her own soul. The seven bubbling masses of rendered flesh were becoming more distinct now, taking on the subtle variations of height and build of the different brothers.

‘Please,’ she begged Fidick, ‘don’tviolateme like this. My soul won’t bear it!’

‘Oh, don’t get me started on what happens when you make pacts with Infernals and Aurorals,’ the boy said. ‘It’s never quite the deal you expected. Besides, you’re an angelic. What makes you think you even have a soul?’

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