Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

Robert’s screaming turned into laughter.

Oh this is good this is really good Hell is here and here is its cavalry!

Off to his left, devils the size of towers killed soldiers.

He would almost prefer to face them than this living desecration.

No. I must run! I must live!

He ran with others, trying to get into the chapel, but the door was barred. Stone angels and devils looked impassively from the arch.

He was pressed in, smothering.

He turned to see where it was.

It stood alone in the courtyard, near what remained of the girl. The girl from the vineyards. She really was holy, then.

It picked her up, meaning to assimilate her.

That was a mistake.

Her goodness was lethal to it.

As soon as its inverted limb-corpses wrapped the nubs of their arms around her, those corpses fell away, as did all the others in that limb.

It was unraveling.

The light in the middle of it went out.

It toppled, gratefully.

Its dead all sighed at once, released.

Just another pile of dead in a dying world God had left behind.

And then.

And then.

A light came from the girl.

It shone into the sky, up and up, as warm and heartbreaking as the first finger of dawn.

She split down the middle and the light got bigger.

A wing came from her.

It was not hers.

It came through her.

An angel of God was born into the world.

Her blood on its wing.

The devils tried to stop it. They screamed their mind-killing scream, they flung blocks of rubble that would have sunk warships at it. They closed with it, the three of them, biting and lashing, desperate to block the gate by killing it.

They could not.

The glowing one absorbed their blows, but did not strike back at them.

It did wrestle them back, though, to make room for the others.

It was one of the strongest.

Zephon

Muscled and without need of muscle, ancient and exuberantly youthful, full again of the heat of stars and the patience of pushing mountains.

It shone its warm, moonish light all over the courtyard.

The horrid noise that broke minds was itself broken.

Another came.

Uriel

Its name in Robert’s head as beautiful as a lost lover’s name.

The light in the courtyard of honor redoubled.

Tripled as another birthed itself through the girl’s ruined body.

And another.

And another.

The most perfect one yet, larger than the others and bearing a sword too bright to look at, a shard of the sun, now flew up and perched on the tower of the angels, the tower topped with a chapel.

The chapel named for it.

St. Michel

Robert could not see it where it landed, but he saw it fly brilliantly past on white eagle’s wings the size of sails, prisms in its wake, prisms of new colors that made the old ones look gray.

Michael I’m seeing the archangel Michael.

It sang from its place on the roof, and it was the most beautiful thing Robert had ever heard. Now those who had survived in the courtyard made a noise of relief and thanks, a hoarse shout that lay beyond the power of words to contain. Some clasped hands and knelt, crying; some embraced one another.

And still the angels came, a host of them.

Their light casting wild shadows.

And yet the people were not safe.

The Archangel Michael, breaker of Lucifer’s back, swooped down at the lion-faced devil, who feared it so that he flew blindly into the top floor of the great chapel, toppling the building and its wall on those pressed against its door.

On Robert Hanicotte.

Darkness and pressure.

The uncompromising weight of stone.

A noise like a squeal escaped him.

This was it.

Something had his hair.

A hand squeezed his as his life left him.

He thought it was Matthieu’s.

I’m sorry, Robert-of-the-bushes.

I’m sorry.

The light of them was so bright it made a wildly careening amber day of sorts all over the city. Maître de Chauliac watched what he could of it from the windows of the pope’s study, the pope himself raving that this was his fault, ordering his ermines burned. Ha! Who could carry all of them, enough of them to carpet the palace, and what would they be burned with? The candles, hearth, and brazier were out, so the men and women in this room huddled together in panting near-darkness, striped at times by lights from outside swinging as though on pendulums. The doctor ordered his men to keep the pontiff here, in this smallish room in the Tower of Angels. The singing from the roof had given him the idea that it, at least, might not fall.

A horrible noise came from the direction of Villeneuve, across the river. He could not see from his angle, and he was glad. He looked out the window, trying to control his breathing.

The spectacle he beheld was less a battle after all, and more an ineluctable pushing back of darkness, the habit of the sun, the birthright of light. More devils came, streaking down like stones on fire, trying to hold this earthly redoubt since the war in Heaven had soured. In their anger and impotence, they ruined the cities of Avignon, Villeneuve, and Carpentras, and killed men in the thousands, but their position against the angels was hopeless. They raged and bit at beings so calm, beautiful, and deliberate that it seemed they and the devils occupied two entirely different realities. One scene stayed with de Chauliac forever, obsessing him, even though, mercifully, the rest would blur; he saw a devil with wide black wings gripped by two angels, who drove it down and seemed to speak in its ears as they fell; they hit the bend of the Rhône, sending up a great, illuminated plume of water visible from Orange.

Two angels and a devil had tumbled into the water.

Three angels came up.

Forgiveness, then, was possible even for the worst.

Thomas went to his knees. The world swam with black. He knew he was dying, that unmooring feeling came again, and still he tried to see where the girl was, if she was safe. He could not see past the devils, their wings fanned out behind them, though he knew they were killing. Making more like him. Dead men. Ruined bodies. His vision failed him and a curtain of blackness fell; he felt the bricks of the courtyard flat beneath him now, his face on them. Cold. He smelled the stink of the wicked angels, brutal and nauseating. He listened for his heartbeat but heard only silence in his chest. His arm was off, that he remembered, but he could not feel any of his limbs. He had the impression that his stomach emptied itself through his mouth, but he was not breathing, so he had no fear of choking. Then he felt his bowels and bladder voiding. Then he ejaculated, barely feeling it, his body’s final, muted pleasure. Images and words came to him in an urgent jumble, inside his head but louder than the sound of shrill madness that rose up outside, a sound that he had heard before, but now it was distant, receding, unimportant.

That’s how the poor bastards sing

He smiled at that, or thought he did, but he was beyond the power to move any part of himself, even the tiny muscles that pulled his mouth. His hearing winked out, leaving only thoughts.

Is this it?

When does even this stop?

Is this how it was for the ones I killed?

Something in him broke free, and he got his vision back. He saw himself as if from above in a spreading pool of blood. His eyes, which he had thought were closed, were not.