The Devil's Shadow | The Empty World Sequence

Seven

Rome, circa 37 AD.

Rome was almost large enough to get lost forever in, but not quite. It was just for a while Paris was able to forget he'd been charged with strange tasks, or that he'd been told to plague mortals in the name of the Satan Seraphim. He never forgot the Angels altogether; Diana was always there to remind him. And if not she then Athen with that emerald hanging just below his ribs.

Athen was going by the name Antoninus; and Paris by Lucian its resemblance to Lucifer not lost on him, nor the irony of the fact neither walked in the light much. The girls had let Athen, Toni as he had become to all on familiar terms, pick their names. He hadn't worked hard on them, or his, they became Faye and Miranda.

Kills were never hard to cover up in Rome, never were they at loss for people who might not be missed. In all the commotion of Rome it should have been so easy to be forgotten.

Lucy was the first to find Paris; there was an Isis cult thriving in Rome which had not, as yet, been replaced by Christianity. So all their prayers and rites made it easy for Lucy - who had long ago usurped the name, though all the deeds done by the brave young goddess in Egypt's myths were rightly Israfel's - to come from the world beyond the world. The beliefs of Humans worked subconsciously to give Angels the power needed to come across the void between.

They met in her temple. Lucy thanked Shade for doing his duty, for living to remind the Humans of horror, of the blood sacrifices of olden times every time he drank, of the eternal cycle of death and rebirth from the earth every night he waked.

But Lucy complained then. She was jealous of That Halfangel who had been made Queen of Heaven in the Human's eyes. Secretly Paris could have no sympathy. Lucy had never been Queen of Heaven. In the first moments of creation it had been that Queen of Planets, which became the Earth, and then Venus had shone down on Earth's first twilight. But Lucy had been only that first intelligent creature to walk the Earth.

Lucy complained that Lucifer was depressed. It was as if he were impotent, she said. "Not even all the pagan rites can strengthen him."

"Not all the pagan rites are meant to strengthen him," Paris said, but Lucy knew this, whatever she said and Paris decided it would be best to just listen.

"He is faced with this: that he is expected to do evil and now can only rebel by being good. To do good would utterly destroy him. He can't be as good as he once was, he can't go back like that. And I Am will always be more good. He is overwhelmed."

Of course this was the same sort of thing an enlightened Christian might say, talking of good and evil. But Paris didn't believe it had so much to do with that. It made him pity the Earth Mother. Compared to the ignorant masses of Humans she was ancient and wise, but she knew nothing. It made Paris pity Earth and everything on it. Made Paris feel this creature would have been so much better off if not so enamoured with Lucifer who had been the first Angel her eyes had ever witnessed.

Even when he'd been Human he hadn't felt Human.

"You are not afraid to speak any truths, are you?" Lucy asked.

"No," said Paris.

"Ah, you could melt the heart of the Angel of Death."

"Zerachiel?"

"You know her?"

"Of her," said Paris.

Lucy nodded then. "She is also the one with the terrible task of punishing the others. That and the separating of the living from the dead have made her cold. But she would melt for someone like you, not afraid to speak like Duma was."