Dancing on the Head of a Pin Read online

  Suddenly there was a terrible, high-pitched, earsplitting feedback, and then silence. He kept playing, but his fingers only managed dull thwacks against the dead strings of his guitar.

  “’Lees! I should have known it would be you,” Cael cried, hovering above the stage.

  “No!” Mephistopheles roared. He turned toward Nybras. “Get those amps back online! Now!”

  She scrambled toward the nearest speaker stack, but just as she neared it, it began to topple over, landing on her with a crash that rocked the stage beneath their feet.

  “Asmodai warned me about you, demon! Do you really think you can stop me?” Mephistopheles raged, as the other speaker stack dropped to the stage. He spotted an angel behind the downed amp, dressed in old-fashioned chain mail, carrying a sword. “Please, how pathetic! Is this how Heaven seeks to stop me? By sending a single angel? I don’t need amplifiers to take you out, Heaven spawn!”

  Running toward the angel, Mephistopheles’s fingers raced over the strings, plucking out a stanza of evil that even without amplification made his demon band members drop to their knees, clasping their ears.

  Amazingly, the malevolent music had no effect whatsoever on the angel. Instead Malak flew at Mephistopheles, sword raised above his head.

  “No! No!” Mephistopheles cried, backing away, holding his guitar in front of him like a shield. “Lucifer promised! He promised!”

  “Don’t you know anything?” Cael said softly from behind Mephistopheles a moment before relieving Mephistopheles of his head with a single movement of the sharp knife. “Lucifer lies.”

  Malak went after the guitar, hacking at it with his sword, ignoring the way it screamed as if alive. He and Cael half suspected that it was alive, another demon perhaps, and he didn’t stop slashing until it had been reduced to a pile of blood-red fragments.

  Stepping back, they watched the remains of Mephistopheles and the guitar burn, enveloped in a foul-smelling, greasy ball of smoke and flame, until there was nothing left but a small pile of malodorous ashes.

  Behind them the crowd had fallen silent, people blinking and rubbing their faces, looking at one another in confusion, as if unsure of where they were or why. In the distance, sirens sounded.

  “Time to fly, my angel,” Cael said, sheathing his bloodied knife.

  “Huh?” Malak said, cocking his head at Cael.

  Cael shook his head, laughing. He reached over to Malak, plucked two bright orange earplugs from Malak’s ears, and tossed them onto the pile of ashes on the stage. “I said, ‘Time to fly.’”

  “Oh, yeah. Two down, two to go,” Malak answered, returning his smile. He stretched his wings, cracking his neck at the same time. “Those earplugs were a good idea. Couldn’t hear a single word he said.”

  “Yeah. That was Mephistopheles, by the way. I would have never thought Lucifer would allow him out of the Pits again, not after what happened with Faust, but I guess he’d managed to redeem himself somehow. Man, I’d hate to be in his shoes right now. Lucifer is going to have kittens when he finds out ’Lees lost again.”

  “I somehow doubt that Lucifer would have anything as cute and cuddly as kittens,” Malak laughed. “Basilisks, maybe. Cockatrices, perhaps, but not kittens.”

  “Cockatrices?”

  “Cockatreeses? What’s the correct form for more than one cockatrice?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care. Let’s go home.” Cael laughed, pulling on Malak’s arm as he beat his powerful wings, lifting both of them from the stage. Holding hands, they flew away, leaving the police to sort out the mess on the field.

  BOOK FOUR: THE BLACK HORSE

  And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

  —The Bible, King James Edition, Rev 6:5

  Chapter Fifteen

  ASMODAI QUAILED before Lucifer’s fury, huddled prostrate on the floor before his throne, all three heads kissing the cold stone. He’d never seen Lucifer so angry, not since the Fall. The very walls of Hell shook with his rage. The screams of the damned rose in an unholy chorus as his wrath sent bolts of searing red lightning shooting through all nine circles.

  Nearby, the remains of Mephistopheles bubbled where he had been reduced to an oily spot on the floor. A temporary state, to be sure—he would spend eternity in the Pits, or perhaps in some special Hell Lucifer conjured up for him. Liquefying him first had been Lucifer’s welcome home present.

  “Where are they? Where? I want to know, Asmodai.” Lucifer’s voice was like a thunderclap resonating in Asmodai’s heads. He paced before his throne, each step sending a cold finger of dread down Asmodai’s spine.

  “O-on the beach, sire. I told you! On the b-beach in Islamorada, there’s a house, in F-Florida, that’s where they—”

  Lucifer stopped pacing. Asmodai could see his boots, golden leather tanned from human skin, stop right before Asmodai’s six sets of eyes.

  “Gather your legion. Go to Islamorada and kill them. I do not want them interfering again! Do I make myself perfectly clear? Destroy them, Asmodai, and I will make you Grand General of all my legions. But do not fail me. I guarantee you will not like the consequences.”

  “Yes, sire. I will not fail you! I swear it!”

  “Good. When their souls arrive here, it will give me great pleasure to torture them myself. Go.”

  Dismissed, Asmodai scuttled backward across the throne room floor, too terrified to stand until he was well out of Lucifer’s sight. Tortured by Lucifer’s own hands? For the briefest moment, he almost felt sorry for Cael.

  Almost.

  Then his weak moment passed—temporary insanity stemming from his distressing meeting with Lucifer—and he assembled his legion of demons.

  Balam and Mephistopheles had been fools. He was not. He would not fail.

  “I DON’T want to leave here, Cael. I love this house,” Malak said sadly, as if there might be any other way. He knew there wasn’t, but he really did love the house and the beach and the ocean. Besides, this was the place where they’d first made love, where he’d given Cael a part of his soul. It was special. It was theirs. No matter where they went after this, no other place would feel the same.

  “I know, baby. Neither do I. But Lucifer isn’t stupid. He might have been too arrogant to accept us as a threat against Balam, and his pride might have blinded him to the danger we posed to Mephistopheles, but even Lucifer can be taught, hon. He’s going to send someone after us, and since Asmodai knows where we live, you can bet that an attack is coming and coming fast. Lucifer is the master of overkill. He won’t send one or two demons to do the job. He’ll send a legion. They’ll raze this place to the ground looking for us. No way can we stand against that many, Malak.”

  “I know. I just wish we didn’t have to leave.”

  “Might not have the house anymore, but you still have me,” Cael said, and oh, wasn’t that just his most charming smile spreading across his face?

  Malak couldn’t help but smile back. God, he loved Cael. No matter how low or empty he might feel, one smile from Cael filled him up with light, as if Cael were the sun shining into even the darkest corner of Malak’s heart.

  “Take only what you can carry, Malak. We have to fly,” Cael said as they ran up the stairs toward the bedrooms. “Five minutes, no more, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Malak answered, wondering how in the world he was supposed to decide what to take with him. How do you sift through three thousand years of mementos and memories in five minutes?

  When he met Cael in the hallway, his arms were laden with trinkets, clothing, and a large plaster bust of Mozart’s head. The eyes had been colored in as if they were crossed, and someone had drawn a handlebar mustache on it in magic marker—that someone having been Cael.

  “Malak! What are you doing? You can’t take all that!” Cael said, shaking his head. “Be reasonable, Malak. How are you going to fly with all t
hat junk?”

  “It’s not junk. It’s treasure, and it’s my treasure. I’ll be damned if Lucifer is going to make me leave it all behind!” Malak answered, lifting his chin defiantly.

  “Damned might just be the key word there, Malak. That stuff’s going to weigh you down, and we’re going to be sitting ducks for the army Lucifer is sending.”

  Malak did love Cael, but he hated it when Cael was right.

  “Fine,” he said, depositing most of the stuff, including Mozart’s poor defiled head, on the hallway carpet. He slipped his hands behind his back.

  “What have you got in your hands?” Cael asked, trying to move behind Malak to see what he was hiding.

  “Nothing. Just stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Angels don’t lie, remember?”

  “Damn it, Cael! Okay, fine. Here,” Malak said, thrusting his hands out. In his fist was a neatly rubber-banded stack of photographs, taken with the kind of camera that took a picture then spat out a square of paper, which developed as you watched.

  They were all of Cael, lying in bed, fast asleep. Malak blushed as Cael’s eyes widened at the evidence of Malak’s secret vice. All along—at least as long as instant cameras had been on the market, Malak had been taking photos of him. Nude photos.

  “Guess I’m a visual sort of guy too, huh?” Malak whispered, feeling his face heat and his ears burn.

  “Don’t worry about it, Malak,” Cael said when his laughter had died down. “I’m flattered. And I don’t want to have to tell you what I did while you were sleeping.” He grinned lasciviously. “I would have taken photos too, if I’d have thought of it.”

  He was enjoying this far too much, in Malak’s opinion. “What are you bringing?” Malak asked, trying to change the subject. He felt like a pervert, which in retrospect he realized he was, which didn’t help his burning ears at all.

  “Just this,” Cael said, holding up the small painting Malak had found hanging in the back of Cael’s closet. “I know you threw it away, but this was always my favorite of your paintings. I stole it from the beach where you’d tossed it.”

  It was a small work, no more than eleven by fourteen inches, painted with Malak’s usual bold color and brushstrokes. It showed a cowering angel amid a maelstrom of fire, with a single hand reaching out to him.

  “I’m glad you saved it,” Malak whispered. Then photographs and paintings were forgotten as he melted into Cael’s arms. One kiss from Cael’s sweet lips sent every fear and worry flying from Malak’s mind, and he realized he didn’t need mementos or busts or photographs. All he needed was Cael, and Cael wasn’t going anywhere without him.

  He took a last few moments walking through the house, reliving memories of their years there. Standing in the middle of their bedroom, he stared at their bed as he remembered the night he’d given himself to Cael. He remained there, lost in his memories, until Cael came and took him gently by the arm.

  “Come on, angel. We have to go,” Cael said. Malak gave Cael credit for not calling him on the tears he couldn’t seem to stop shedding.

  “Where are we going to go?” Malak asked as they stepped out of their house for the last time.

  “I spent a few minutes online—there’s a small farmhouse for rent up in the mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania. No view of the ocean from there, I’m afraid, but it’s pretty, and more importantly, it has a satellite dish. We’re going to need the Internet if we’re going to find the next Horseman.”

  “I don’t even know where to begin looking, Cael.”

  “We’ll figure it out when we get there. C’mon, darlin’. Time to fly.”

  THE LUSH green mountains and deeply shadowed valleys of Pennsylvania were a far cry from the wide, sunny beach they’d left behind. The house stood on over fifty acres, of which only a handful were flat enough for building. The rest was mountain, heavily forested and teeming with wildlife.

  Shaded by immense oak and pine, the house was a two-story farmhouse. Other than having a roof and walls, it was completely different from their beach house, and it felt as if he were living in a stranger’s home.

  Cael had secured the place for them by using what he called “creative financing,” which meant that he’d either conjured the money or had spelled the minds of the humans involved in the transaction. Probably both.

  Malak sat on the sofa—which had been covered over in thick plastic sheeting—watching Cael at the computer, scouring the Internet, looking for some sign of the third Horseman.

  “We were lucky the first two times, Malak,” Cael said, after several hours of fruitless searching. “Balam was a media hog, and Mephistopheles used the ’net to further his fame. I have no idea of where to look for the third Horseman.”

  “Well, let’s think about what we know about him. The third Horseman is pestilence. He rides the black horse, which is desolation.” Malak peeled himself off the plastic slipcover, trying not to notice the sweaty marks his thighs left behind, and began pacing across the small living room, hands clasped tightly behind his back. “Could be someone who’s into biological warfare, working for the government.”

  “Could be, but which government?”

  “Don’t know. Could be one of several dozen, I suppose.”

  “This is impossible!” Cael cried, banging his fists down on the keyboard. “How the Hell are we supposed to track this one down? Even if I knew which government, I’d have to hack into their network—and even I’d have trouble with that. I’m not Nybras. I don’t have that sort of connection with modern electronics. I can surf the Web. That’s about it.”

  Malak placed his hands on Cael’s broad shoulders, trying to massage some of the tension out of them. “I know, Cael. You’re doing your best. Look, we haven’t eaten yet. How about we take a break and fly into town for some burgers?”

  “Burgers? You? The Patron Saint of Healthy Living?”

  “Not funny. I don’t mind fast food once in a while. Come on. It’s a long way into town, and I’m hungry.”

  DEPOT, PENNSYLVANIA, was a bucolic little hamlet in Sullivan County, whose main claim to fame was that it was home to the county’s one and only traffic light and the annual outhouse races.

  Cael had paused in front of the post office, reading an advertisement for the upcoming Founder’s Day celebration. Evidently, actual outhouses were built, put on wheels, and raced down Main Street.

  Leave it humans to make even shithouses into a competition.

  Human beings were the most competitive creatures Cael had ever known. Build it bigger, build it faster, bigger homes, bigger bank accounts, bigger televisions, bigger… everything. If there were a false idol the modern world worshipped, its name would be “Excess.”

  The folks from Sodom and Gomorrah would feel right at home here.

  Case in point, the fast food industry. Burger and chicken joints took competition to the nth level, and they used every trick in the book to get people in through the doors. Toys, contests, and dollar menus… the newest trick was to throw a few salads on the menu and advertise their food as being healthy. What next? Wheatgrass milkshakes and pine nut burgers?

  But the companies’ biggest competition was location. Take any tiny town across the country. There might not be a museum or a library or a movie house anywhere within town limits, but Cael was willing to bet that there would be a McDonald’s, a Burger King, and a Wendy’s all within a block of each other.

  Even here, in Depot, sitting close enough to bathe in the red and green glow of the infamous traffic light was a Cowboy Roundup, with its trademark fiberglass cowboy hat perched on the roof of the building and its gigantic rearing black stallion out front—

  Whoa. It couldn’t be that easy, could it?

  “Malak, look over there,” Cael said, tugging on Malak’s sleeve. He pointed toward the towering sculpture of a black horse that sat outside the restaurant’s doors.

  “Burgers again? Doesn’t this town have a pizzeria?
Or a salad bar, maybe?” Malak asked hopefully.

  “No, Malak. Look at the horse! It’s a black horse, Malak! Do you think…?”

  “What? That the Horseman works in a fast food joint? Do you think he’s going to bring on the End of Days with ketchup, mayo, and a sesame seed bun?”

  “Famine, Malak. Remember? The third Horseman isn’t only Pestilence. He’s Famine too.”

  “Come on, Cael! Are you serious?”

  “As the grave. Let’s get home. I need to get online.”

  “Fine, but let’s at least pick some food up at the Piggly Wiggly. We can’t save the world on an empty stomach,” Malak said, dragging Cael in the direction of the supermarket.

  As they passed under the shadow of the giant black stallion, a finger of foreboding raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ASMODAI’S OUTRAGED howl drowned out the crashing of the waves as he stalked out of the empty house to the beach.

  Gone. They were gone.

  He’d missed them by mere minutes. When he’d first arrived with his legion of leathery-skinned, malformed demons, he’d knocked politely on the front door, thinking it would be quite amusing to see the look on their faces when they answered and saw a thousand demons on their beach.

  Asmodai had had it all planned. First he would make Cael and Malak watch as his legion tore their precious house down, board by board, until there was nothing left but kindling and dust. Then he’d make Cael watch as Asmodai fucked Malak, again and again until Malak too was nothing but dust. Finally, Asmodai would give Cael over to his legion. Oh, his screams would make such lovely music! Asmodai would waltz over the sands in time to the melody.

  But no one had answered, and when he’d broken the door down they’d already gone.

  Their scent lingered on the furniture, on the clothes they’d left behind, the smell of angel and demon and sex. Oh yes, sex. Their musk was everywhere. They must have fucked like rabbits. He absently fondled his snake cock.