Fell the Angels, Joslinne Morgan [free novel 24 .TXT] 📗

doing this to me? I don’t want to be here, anymore than you may want me here! I hate you!
“Now go away,” Marianne said dismissively with a wave of her hand. “I am tired. Dinner is at seven; make certain you are on time. In the meantime, I highly recommend a bath. I will have clothes bought for you until you are decent enough to go out into society on your own.”
“Yes, mother.” I hate you more than anything.
Once Linda had been exiled from the living room, she had been left to herself to think. Vivid memories of only a few short hours ago still rose unbidden to the surface of her mind. Was it only a few hours ago that she had found her daughter, the child whom she had sacrificed everything for, dead in the trailer’s little bathroom? Was it only a few hours ago that the paramedics and the police had arrived? The police had drilled her with questions, asking her where she had been at the time of death, and what time did she get home from work? Did she know that Heather was entertaining thoughts of suicide? She answered tearfully to all these questions, and then the paramedics had announced that the presence of rigor mortis indicated that Heather had been dead for at least three hours prior to the time Linda claimed she arrived home. Linda had burst into fresh tears at the news, and said something about not being able to stay in the trailer another nice. The police calmed her, and told her they would take her anywhere she needed to go. She had nowhere else to go. There was only one place she could think of …
Her mother’s.
She didn’t think for one minute that her mother would take her in. She had fully expected to be directed towards the nearest homeless shelter. But Marianne, as vindictive as she was religious, took a special pleasure in condescending to forgive her daughter and give her a second chance.
And still the memory of fifteen years ago was all too vivid. When Linda was seventeen, and had dropped out of school. Heather wasn’t much more than a fetus at that time, but Keith had left her for another woman, and Linda was devastated. Her mother had physically hit her, calling her a slut and a whore, damning her to hell with every breath. She claimed that it was the devil that resided in her, and the devil’s child in her womb. She jabbed her finger accusingly at her daughter’s growing stomach and proclaimed its contents the fruit of all sin. Days later, Linda left the house to go and stay with a friend. She had heard from her mother only once again after that. Marianne called and told her daughter that she needn’t bother coming home at all.
“God!” Linda screamed, digging her fists into her weeping eyes. “God! Why aren’t you here? Why aren’t you with me? What have I done to deserve this! What did Heather ever do? She was just an innocent child, she never did a thing to make you hate her!” she paused to take in a shaky breath, and sighed. “If my mother is right, and you are what she says you are, then I want nothing to do with you! A god who allows innocent children to cut open their wrists and then condemns them for it is not a god that I want to worship! Do you here that?!” she stood up and proclaimed to nobody in particular. “I renounce you!”


“Dreadful, dreadful,” the slithering, serpent-like voice whispered sympathetically. “Poor, broken child. Where is her Almighty when she needs him the most? Hmm? Sitting on his golden throne in the midst of his Heavenly host? Too high above for her to touch?”
Raziel clenched his jaw, his face set in an expression of stony nonchalance as he allowed the speaker to finish their tirade.
“Because he doesn’t want you,” the voice addressed Linda now, surely as if he were a lover, whispering sweet nothings in her ear. “He has never loved you. Why should he pay any attention to you? You are a mere mortal. And he is God. He doesn’t have time for everyone, least of all a low-life wretched slut such as yourself.”
It was as if all of the thoughts were being pulled out on a string. Raziel’s fist clenched, his long fingernails digging into the flesh of his palm, but he said nothing still.
“But do not despair, my sweet,” the voice continued to croon. “I am here. I will be the god who cares for you.” With a melancholy sigh, the voice did not speak again for a while. The two onlookers waited and watched as Linda finally went back into the house. The day grew longer and the sun began to set, and still they waited, and they watched.
Finally, the silence was broken; hours into the night long after Linda had fallen asleep.
“The Almighty wishes a compromise,” Raziel spoke, his voice quavering with anger.
“A deal, a deal?” laughter, softer than satin. “Very well, Raziel, pet angel. Tell me what it is the Almighty wishes to propose. I may or may not condescend to accept.”
“You will like this one,” Raziel hissed, fighting to keep a firm grip on his patience. “Both of you win.”
“I admit that you have piqued my interest,” the voice relented. “Well, go ahead. Shatter me. What does the Almighty want?”


“Baalberith?” Amy could hardly believe what she was seeing. The Baalberith she had known was a beautiful entity, with a golden voice unmatched in the entire kingdom of heaven. It would appear that, as well as his sight, he had lost that too.
Both eyes were fixed on her now, boring a path straight to her core. He smiled, not very pleasantly.
“Is there any other?” he was perched at a tall writing desk, on a stool, looking more like a scribe than a grotesque shell of the creature that had once been her companion. He was like an actor, a mockery, sent to torment her with memories of centuries, millenniums long past.
Turning his head to face Mephistopheles but rolling his green eye around so that he could still look at Amy, Baalberith jabbed the end of his fountain pen in the soul’s direction. “Seventh circle, middle ring. Am I clear on that much?”
“You are,” Mephistopheles confirmed.
“Good. And her,” he jabbed his fountain pen casually at Amy without even turning his head. “What are you going to do with her until the prince returns?”
“Where is the prince now?” Mephistopheles growled.
“I don’t know,” Baalberith scoffed. “I only know that he’s gone. Asmodeus said he left and hasn’t told me otherwise since. Therefore, until I hear otherwise, you’re going to have to find a way to keep the little sparrow occupied.” He jotted a few things down in his book, and then turned a page. “And meanwhile, I am centuries behind in my work, so I suggest if you’re going to stand there and gape like a fish that you move!”
Obviously exasperated, Mephistopheles moved out of the way, and shoved Amy in front of him, dragging Heather’s soul by her wrist.
As soon as Amy had found her balance again, the world shifted around them. The trees melted into darkness. The souls, wailing and sighing, faded as well, into nothing. The colors ran together and dripped away, leaving behind a black canvas. Even Baalberith – who was ignoring the completely, now – had faded into nonexistence. Soon, even the scratching of his pen died down.
All was completely silent.
Amy glanced at Mephistopheles, but he wasn’t there. He too, had faded, along with Heather’s spirit. Fear gripped her insides and she looked wildly around, searching for any trace of life, color, sound, anything that would break this great black void.
Nothing.
Then, out of nowhere, she felt something touch her. Cold hands wandered up the back of her neck and stroked her face, while full, luxurious lips gently pressed against the bend of her neck. Amy froze with fear, her lips pressed together to keep them from quivering, her entire body shaking like a leaf.
A voice spoke to her, a voice soft like satin with an edge like a blade.
“So, little Amy, you have found your way to us at last.”
After an eternity of paralysis, Amy twisted away and turned to face her newfound tormentor. He stood there quite calmly, looking at her with dark azure eyes peering from behind thick black eyelashes. Besides his eyes, all she could see of him in the darkness was his face, pale as the moonlight. Brilliant eyes and luxurious crimson lips. That, and his hands – also pale, with every blue vein visible as if the skin itself were transparent, and they flitted about in every which direction as if they simply could not hold still.
“W-Who are you?” the words stumbled off of her tongue, even though she already had an inkling of who it was.
The voice hissed angrily, and the presence seemed to triple in size, bearing down on Amy from all directions, pressing against her, suffocating her. The face in front of her began to distort, the crimson lips drew back to bare sharp white teeth, a vicious snarl.
“Who am I? Who am I? This little angel has the gall to ask who I am?” the voice became deeper, darker. It magnified and echoed in Amy’s ears, worming its way into her mind, driving itself into her skull. She screamed in pain and collapsed to her knees, delicate hands pressed against her ears. “I AM ABBADON! I am Lucifer, the fallen star, the tragic, beautiful prince that fell from Heaven – and that the Almighty so despaired to lose!”
Amy closed her eyes; with the darkness it made no difference whether or not her eyes were closed. Her ears began to bleed, and the blood ran through her fingers, creating thin webs on the back of her white hands.
“I am the world!” the rant continued. “I am everything in it, everything they touch, everything they breathe. I am every temptation lurking around every corner, I am death, I am sin, I am vice! I am beautiful! They love me for it, for enslaving them, one by one! I am the prince, the prince, the prince!” the last word was spoken with such force, such bitter emotion, and such vindictive hatred, that Amy almost went reeling backwards. He spoke the title like it was a curse. It felt as if every syllable was being engraved into her flesh. The prince, the prince!
The fallen prince of heaven was now the prince of hell. Tears came to Amy’s eyes at the very thought. Trapped in hell, when one had known such splendor… what a desolation.
“Please,” she whispered. “I meant no offense.”
“She meant no offense,” the transformation wasn’t even noticeable, as the face was once more again serene, and the voice once more again silk. Even though every word that he had uttered in the past few moments still echoed strongly – maddeningly – off the nothingness. He was in front of her in an instant, though it was still too dark for her to see much more of him than his face and his hands. “No, no,” he hummed, stroking her hair away from her face. “You meant no harm, did you gentle Amy?”
“I did not,” she muttered, shaking. She felt his hands touch her face. She hated it, how she hated it – the coldness of his corpse-like