I stood there for a long time, letting the tears fall down my face, but eventually I made myself shower and dress. I hated upsetting Gabriel, but as I had told him, I wasn’t going to let that stop me from helping Sebastian. I resolved that if I made it through the situation intact, I would find a way to make it up to the angel. He couldn’t stay mad at me forever.
And if I didn’t make it through, as he was so concerned would be the case, then I would have other things to worry about.
Dwayne and Madame Zarita had opened the diner for me, but if there were any customers to notice my absence, they were gone by the time I went downstairs. I expected to be feeling even more miserable that day than I had the day before. After all, I had since managed to drive away both of my friends, and the jukebox had moved onto more obscure break-up songs like Magnetic Fields’s “I Thought You Were My Boyfriend.” But I suffered through well enough, and after I closed the diner for the day, I trudged up the stairs to make another journey into Hell.
As I pulled my way out of the nothingness toward the domain of the fourth archdemon, the first sensation I experienced was that of a hideous, high-pitched scream. There were not words to describe how unspeakable the noise was. I could compare it to a hundred children scratching their fingernails down blackboards or a thousand first-year violin students striving to make the worst sounds they could imagine, but these descriptions could not even begin to approach the unspeakable wretchedness that assaulted my ears. The sound merged with the voices of the souls in Hell, adding a discordant descant to their litany. As soon as I recognized my hands, I pressed them against the sides of my head, but the gesture was insufficient to shield myself from the worst of the ghastly keening.
Keeping my hands over my ears, I looked around at my surroundings. I appeared to be inside a chapel, attached to the same mansion in which I had found Mephistopheles and Beelzebub. However, while the previous two areas I visited had been clean and orderly, the chapel was in appalling disrepair. All of the stained glass windows were shattered, and the faded fragments were littered all over the floor. Half of the pews were swathed in dusty sheets, and wax-covered candelabras lay fallen on the floor. As I gazed around, the scene shifted to other scenes of religious worship—the temple of Isis where I met Bedlam, a shrine to Demeter in Greece, and even the Catholic church down the street from the diner. All were in poorer condition than when I had last seen them. I looked up and found gaps in the ceiling, and through them, I saw the source of the wailing: dozens of demons, floating through the night sky.
I spotted what seemed like a pile of cloth in front of the altar and walked down the center aisle to examine it more closely. As I approached, the rags seemed to be moving slightly, and I worried that the room had somehow become rat-infested as well as dusty.
I heard a noise coming from the same direction and realized that the movement was a chest heaving with gut-wrenching sobs. When I was close enough, I automatically reached out to smooth the white-blond hair on her shoulder, but as soon as I touched her, she lifted up her head and let out a scream that put the cries of her banshees to shame. As soon as she looked at me, I knew that I was staring into the black eyes of the archdemon Lethe, leader of the banshees who glided through the air above our heads.
It took me a moment to notice that the sounds emerging from Lethe’s mouth were not empty screeches and were, in fact, meaningful phonemes. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“I’m Carrie.” She looked so small and pitiable, the tiny blond girl looking up at me with tears streaming down her face. She was one of the rulers of Hell, but looking at how sad she was, I couldn’t resist reaching out to her. “Can I… Can I help you?”
She let out her loudest scream yet, and a burst of wind blew me across the chapel and into the wall. I was dizzy for a moment, and when my vision cleared, she had stood up and was walking toward me.
“Can you help me?” She let out another ear-shattering wail. “No one can help me! I have been forsworn by everyone I ever loved.”
No help, whispered the souls of the damned, and the wails of the banshees drifting above my head echoed the tidings.
I considered getting up but decided it was better not to startle her with any sudden movements, thereby getting myself thrown against a wall again. Based on my level of dizziness, I suspected that I already had a concussion. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you. If you could open the door for me, I’ll be on my way.”
“Do you know who I am?” She seemed not to have heard me. I was not even sure that she knew I was there anymore. She didn’t look at me, and given her apparently loose grip on sanity, she could well have forgotten me or thought I was an illusion. “I am Lethe, Betzalel, once beloved of Michael the archangel, once one of the most powerful angels in the Heaven. No more.” She punctuated her words with another scream and then snapped her head around to look directly at me. “Would you like to hear my tale?”
If I wanted to get out of there, I was going to have to calm Lethe enough that she would open the door out, so it was important that I answer her correctly. In most circumstances, I would think that she was offering to tell me her story because that was what she wanted, but she had reacted badly to an offer of help and might feel similarly about another attempt at kindness. Since I had no powers over demons in Hell, I could not look into her mind and see what she might feel.
Only chaos.
I opted for encouraging her to talk to me, if only because any type of engagement increased the possibility of her remembering I was there. “Yes, please. Tell me your tale.”
She seemed pleased and moved closer to me, crouching down so that she could meet my gaze. “No one ever wants to hear my tale.” Her eyes were bright, like those of a child desperate for attention. “’Be quiet, Lethe,’ they say to me. ‘Stop your wailing, woman!’ No one understands my pain!” She screamed again.
No one cares.
“I’m here, and I want to hear your tale.” I said it in part to calm the crying child, but I did want to hear what had happened to Lethe. It had always seemed unfathomable to me that Michael could love anyone, much less a demon.
She stood up and walked a bit away from me. Suddenly, she was no longer a child but a world-weary old woman. “I was beautiful once, in Heaven. I remember being there, being glorious. And I had my Michael there, by my side.” She sighed, momentarily overcome by the happy memory, and for a moment, I saw the part of her that was the benevolent angel.
She snapped her head around to me again, with the petty, manipulative demon part of her in control. “Do you know my Michael?”
I was again unsure of the correct answer and therefore elected to tell the truth. “Yes, I have met him.” I tried to keep my voice as neutral as possible. I knew from my experiences with Bedlam that spurned demons tended to react badly when someone criticized the angels that they still loved, no matter how hateful those angels were.
She smirked at me, again a child with a love of secrets. “You don’t like him. I can tell.” She turned away from me again, still smiling. “That’s all right. Lots of people don’t like him. ‘How can you love him, Lethe?’ they would ask. ‘He’s so hard and cold and unyielding. And you are not any of those things.’ But they could not see how I needed those things, like he needed me. Michael helped me be strong, and I helped him see the value of mercy. I knew that we were meant to be together forever and ever and ever…”
Cold forever.
She was silent for so long that I began to wonder if she remembered what she was doing. I couldn’t tell which part of her was in control—the angel or the demon—and I was about to break the silence when the demon returned. “I didn’t do anything wrong, you know. Not really. I only did what I had to do. You know that, right?”
As I tried to determine the proper response to that, she answered her own question. “No, of course you don’t. Michael runs the universe now, and he has cast me as the villain.”
“He doesn’t tell the story at all. I think it’s too painful.”
She smiled with a level of cruel satisfaction greater than any I had ever seen. “Then he suffers. He suffers like I do. He deserves to suffer. He deserves to burn for eternity for what he did to me.”
Burn in Hell.
She screamed again, and I realized that I needed to get her back on track or I might well be stuck there, listening to the noise, until Lucifer came to get me. “So tell me. Tell me what he did to you.”
“I fought for Heaven.” Again she became the tired old woman. “I fought for God and Michael, and I helped subdue Lucifer.” She looked at me, and the demon peered out of those eyes. “I didn’t have to, you know. Azrael didn’t. She said she was the angel of love and, as such, could not participate in a war. Raziel wouldn’t have fought if he had still been around. Maybe. And me, I am the angel of mercy. To harm my fellows, it went against everything that I believed in. But I did it anyway. But it wasn’t enough. Why wasn’t it enough?”
Never enough.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
Suddenly she was crouched beside me. “You do know!” Her eyes were as hard and cold as any of her fellow archdemons’. “I know who you are, little girl! Lucifer’s pet. Bedlam’s keeper. You think you’re so innocent, but you hold all our secrets. You know like Lucifer knows. You know because you are crawling around in my head!” Her screams became louder and higher as she stood up and clutched her hands to her temples.
My head ached, from some combination of my injury and the wailing of both the banshees and the damned, and I needed to do something to diminish the yelling. “I’m not. I have no powers here. I couldn’t see inside your head even if I wanted to.”
Never understand.
She cocked her head to the side, considering me. “Okay,” she concluded with all the capriciousness of a child. “I believe you.”
She rolled her head around a few times. “When it was all over, when Michael had won, he called us all in, one at a time, to face judgment, even those who had fought at his side. God would tell him who had been true and who had fallen. And Michael had to do it alone. I begged him to let me help him, to take some of the burden, but he said I could not. I felt so badly for him then. How could he bear it, casting out the angels who had been his brothers? I ached at the thought and believed he must feel the same. But I forgot that he was not like me. ‘He’s hard and cold and unyielding,’ everyone told me, but I didn’t believe, not really, not until that day.”
No mercy.
“One by one, he called us all in, starting at the bottom and moving up to the top. I was near the end. For then, once, I was glorious and powerful, and I was not worried, not for me. I knew that no matter what, my Michael would not harm me. I pitied them, pitied the ones whose screams I heard as they were cast upon the flaming sword. Then it was my turn.”
“Michael smiled at me first, smiled as he always did when he saw me, me who would always be by his side. But then he stopped, and I didn’t understand. He grabbed my arm, and he yelled, ‘What did you do?’”
“’Nothing!’ I said. I told him nothing, but he knew the truth. That I’d known, even before the war. I’d known it was coming, and I promised—had to promise—Lucifer that if it all ended badly, I would help. I would not let Michael cast them out. I would plead for mercy. ‘I had to plead for mercy,’ I told him. ‘It’s who I am—all I am.’”
Never mercy.
“He didn’t understand, my Michael. He said I could have prevented everything, all the suffering, if I had warned someone of Lucifer’s plans. He said that God had ordered me cast out. And I told him he did not have to obey this one time. He could let me stay. God would understand love. But he said, ‘Azrael’s gone, too.’ And he pulled out his sword, and I said I wouldn’t go. I tried to flee, but he struck me with his flaming sword. My Michael struck me down, and I woke up here, and here I’ve stayed.”
She dropped to her knees and crawled over to me again. “You see, don’t you?” She stared at me with widened eyes, pleading with me to understand. For a moment, she laid bare—to me and to herself—the truth of what she was, and more than anything, she wanted me to tell her that things were different than they were. “How I had to promise to help Lucifer. How I’ve had to do everything I’ve done ever since. All the people in the world, they believe in their God and their love, and I have to tell them that it isn’t like that. They have to know that their fears, their darkest doubts—these are what will come to pass. Heaven has no mercy for them. No mercy, no love, no hope.” Again she began her high-pitched keening, a lament for the life she had lost.
No mercy. No love. No hope.
I let her cry for a time. It had likely been a long while since she had made herself face the truth of what had happened that day. I imagined that she preferred to live in the hazy fog of her own broken mind rather than face the world for what it was.
After a while, I realized that the only screams were the ones high above me. Lethe was staring at me, curiously. “Why are you here, little Carrie pet?” The conniving archdemon cocked her head to the side, as if considering ways that she could use my presence to her advantage. “You are not dead, for you are not as hopelessly abandoned as I am. The Morning Star looks out for you still. You are not supposed to be here.”
I worried that if I told her the truth, that I had come in error, that she would resent it and refuse to let me leave. Her grip on sanity was so tenuous that I could not count on her to realize that Lucifer would not want her to hold me indefinitely. I also hesitated to lie to her, in part for the same reason and in part because I so rarely bothered to lie that I could not immediately think of a plausible one. “I did not mean to come here. I was searching for Azrael’s domain.”
All a mistake.
The plotting of the demon was replaced with the sorrow of a neglected child. “Of course you did not come for me. No one ever comes for me.”
“But I am glad I came. I’m grateful that I was able to hear your story.”
She gave me a little smile. “The door is over there.” She pointed at a portal that had opened behind the altar at some point. “I could let you go, I suppose, but… no, I think I must ask something of you. There must be a price.” She considered again. “I told you a story, so you must tell me a story.”
Part of me wanted to run to the door and hope I got through it before she could stop me, but I have never been able to ignore the needs of someone suffering right in front of me. Besides, I did not want to leave myself in the debt of an archdemon. “Okay. What kind of a story?”
Only suffering.
She leaned forward and rested her head on her hands. “You know my Michael. It has been so long since I have seen him. Please, can you tell me of him? Anything, anything at all.”
My heart went out to her as she made that simple request, but I didn’t know what story I could tell about Michael that would satisfy her. Were she human, a tale of how her former lover had never been worth her love might have been appropriate, but Bedlam could not stand to hear a word against his precious Keziel, and I doubted that Lethe would be any different. And so I began.
In the 1790s, I lived in London, and Bedlam dragged me to the Assembly Room at Almack’s a few evenings every month during the Season, though I had a hard time convincing him to follow all of society’s rules.
“Ooh, those people look interesting.” Bedlam pointed toward a couple on the other side of the room. “Let’s go introduce ourselves.”
I pushed his hand down and gave apologetic looks to the couple next to us, whose expressions and minds demonstrated dismay for his flagrant gesture. “How many times do I have to tell you that we can’t just walk up to people and start talking to them? They’re weird about that kind of thing here.”
“And how many times do I have to tell you that I don’t care? Pick out their names from their heads and pretend we were introduced last week.” He started walking in their direction.
I grabbed the arm of his blue waistcoat and pulled him back. “Only if you promise to not go making up a dowry for me again.”
Bedlam laughed. “That was hysterical. I should tell them how much you’re actually worth. Every cad in London would want to dance with you.”
“And then who would you dance with? None of the ladies would dance with someone to whom they haven’t been properly introduced.”
“You raise a valid point, as ever.” He tugged at his cravat. “When is the dancing going to start, anyway? I’m bored of all this pointless mingling.”
A strong mind entered the Assembly Room, and I let out a curse, once again to the horror of the couple beside us. Bedlam frowned at me, and I directed him toward a dark-complexioned woman approaching the people Bedlam had wanted to meet. “Lilith.”
Bedlam scowled. “What’s she doing here?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but maybe she can introduce you to those people.”
Bedlam shuddered. “No thanks. Any friend of Lilith’s is no friend of mine. But it’s got to be killing her to be in that prim getup. I can’t let that go without comment.”
He strode toward her, and I had no choice but to traipse after him.
“… really need to return to Paris, if you want to find your cousin,” Lilith was saying.
“Oh, I long to see Cecile, to help her escape.” Her accent gave away her nationality. “But it is so dangerous. We would surely be risking the guillotine.”
“I have just come from France.” Lilith put her hand on the woman’s arm. “It is not nearly as dangerous as it was.” Mainly because they’ve already hacked off the heads of most of the nobles left there. I need a fresh infusion of aristocracy to decapitate, and you will do nicely.
I wanted to intervene and tell the couple not to return to France, under any circumstances. I had almost worked up the courage to do so when another angel mind appeared in the room, and for once, his anger was not directed at me. I turned to see Michael dressed in contemporary fashion but looking thoroughly disheveled and carrying his flaming greatsword. He pushed the crowd aside as he made his way toward us.
I turned to see Lilith, but she was moving through the crowd to the window. Her hunt might have been superhumanly fast, but on her own in ball-appropriate attire, she was no match for Michael’s speed. He caught up to her as she reached the window and struck at her with the sword. She crashed through the glass and then disappeared as his fiery blade sent her to Hell.
The beau monde gaped at the archangel, unable to comprehend what had happened.
Bedlam broke the silence. He clapped his hands and cried out, “That was amazing! Do it again!”
Michael glared at him and held up his sword. “I only see one other demon in the room. Are you sure you want a repeat performance?”
Bedlam held up his hands in surrender, still grinning. “Hey, I haven’t killed anyone in France since… before it was even France! I’m only here for the music. And the pudding.”
Michael cringed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know what? Fine. Enjoy your pudding. I have another archdemon to find.” And then he dematerialized.
“And that is the story of how Michael stopped some of the major demon-induced aspects of the French Revolution.”
I had expected Lethe to interrupt me during the story, at least with the periodic wail or moan, but she sat in rapt silence for the entire time. Even the banshees floating above the chapel had abated their shrieks somewhat, calmed by the contentment of their leader.
“That is my Michael.” Tears formed at the corners of her eyes. “So brave and strong, in spite of everyone and everything.” Then she began to wail again, and her keening for all she had lost was echoed a hundredfold by the banshees.
All is lost.
It would be some time before she regained enough self-control to speak again, and I thought it best that I be gone by then. Hoping that I had done more good than harm in telling the tale, I quietly stood and walked through the exit she had provided.