Scorn of Angels Read Online Free PDF Page B

until she was certain she stood a fighting chance.
    Then there’s the Son of God to deal with.
    Tribunal was going to destroy the human race. He had said he was going to wipe the humans from the earth and make it a playground for the Descended. Then he was going to create for the Descended and himself a Paradise in place of the Heaven they had lost.
    That had been his promise to Nyx. And he had broken it.
    He had asked her to create a faith to rival and defeat Christianity, and she had. He had asked her to kill all the Christians in Jerusalem, and she had. He had asked her to bring into being an Angel, and he had given her the WORD of Creation so she would have the power to do it. And she had done that, too.
    He had also asked her to kill that Angel, and she could not.
    And that bastard knew I wouldn’t be able to kill her. He had to have known. Why else would he have had Lucifer’s legions standing by to destroy me?
    Sorrow, having nothing to do with the tortures of the Lake of Fire, filled her mind . He killed my Angel. He killed Epiphenia. The image of that fresh-faced and ravishing creature filled her mind .
    Angels could not die in Hell, neither Ascended nor Descended. But Epiphenia was an Angel born on Earth, of the Earth. Lucifer had kidnapped her and brought her to Hell, and Tribunal had killed her in a place where nothing was able to die.
    Nyx, imbued with all the power Tribunal had given her, and with her favorite Descended Angels, Persephone and Ishtar, at her side, had fought against Lucifer’s 666th Legion on Earth when they tried to take her. And when Nyx had failed there, and Ishtar had been captured, Nyx and Persephone together made the journey to Hell to raise an army and fight for Epiphenia there.
    They had lost. Persephone had been cut down and Nyx, though she had made it to Lucifer’s palace, had been crushed by Tribunal, the Son of God, whose power outweighed hers as Nyx’s power outweighed any human warrior’s.
    After having suffered what she’d put humans through for a thousand years, Nyx understood her grief over Epiphenia differently now. It was the same pain, but it had more depth and resonance as she experienced a sort of empathy with human mothers. The Angel had been her daughter—the only daughter ever born to Angelic kind. She belonged to Nyx, and Tribunal had taken her, had killed her. The agony of that was something new to Nyx. It was worse than anything Hellstone could do to her.
    I will not let them win. I will find a way to destroy them. I swear it. Nyx drifted along the bottom of the Lake of Hell, her body writhing in agony, her mind filled with the pain and suffering she had caused others to feel. The only question is, how?
    She was not in a position of strength. She was alone in Hell, and Lucifer had an army of Descended Angels to fight against her.
    While she had been Tribunal’s lover, he had poured power into her body, giving her strength beyond imagining so that she could survive using the WORD to create Epiphenia. She had used all that strength in her battle through Hell to rescue her Angel. When her small force had been destroyed and she was all that was left, Nyx had used the WORD once more to clear a path. All the power that she had been given was ripped away then, when she’d used the WORD in battle, and afterward she was no more than herself. When she had finally faced Lucifer she was only Nyx.
    Against Lucifer, that should have been enough. She had fought him before and she had broken him. Nyx would have done the same again had not Tribunal, Son of God, part of God, and an embodiment of God, used his power to crush her.
    The bastard. The betraying, monstrous son-of-a-bastard. How the fuck am I going to fight Tribunal ?
    Wrong question, Nyx decided. Too soon. First, I have to get out of here. I need to escape Hell. Then I can take on Tribunal.
    So how do I escape Hell?
    Angels could sense each other’s presence, whether in Heaven, Earth, or Hell. If Lucifer decided to