Scorn of Angels by John Patrick Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page A

inside, frowning. Then he spun and backhanded Andromalius across the face hard enough to send him flying to smash against the wall. “Idiot! This one has already been here!”
    Nyx breathed a sigh of relief.
    “She was in the lake,” protested Andromalius. “I fished her out!”
    “Get over here and get on your hands and knees,” said Lucifer, stroking his outsized erection. “I need to finish.”
    Andromalius, anger and resentment burning in his expression, did as he was told.
    Nyx crawled away from them, muttering, “My children? Where are my children?”
    Demons laughed and bounced off of her, knocking her onto her face as they once more attacked her flesh. Nyx kept crawling, kept moving ever so slowly forward, crying out the names of the three lost children. The demons found it all hideously amusing and attacked her again.
    Nyx reached the flash of green.
    It was a small, delicate plant, a single thin stem and a tiny round leaf, straining upward for life where no plant had ever—could ever—grow. Nyx stared at it . It’s not possible. Not here, not ever.
    There’s no way…
    One of the demons kicked her forward and she landed face-first on the plant. Touching it sent a burst of power into her body. In a flash the plant ripped itself from the ground and embedded into Nyx’s skin. She screamed from the pain of it (a pain like the light of a thousands suns) and went unconscious—which was not possible in Hell either.
    When Nyx awoke, the demons were capering about her, screaming and laughing and hacking at her flesh. Behind her, Andromalius was doing his own screaming.
    The wounds in Nyx’s body were healing almost instantly, far faster than even her Angel flesh did. She ruthlessly suppressed the healing to keep her outer body bloody and damaged and began crawling once more, going out the back door of the throne room and into the corridors of the palace.
    She could feel the power moving inside her, unconscious, unthinking, but still living, bearing the signature Nyx would recognize anywhere.
    It was Epiphenia. Her daughter. She was alive. Somehow, something of Epiphenia had survived. And when it had found its creator, it had rejoined her, giving Nyx all the power that had been poured into her Angel of the Earth. Tribunal’s power.
    And with it, the certain knowledge that, if Nyx could not break free of Hell, the entirety of Creation was doomed.
    I have to get out of here, Nyx realized. I have to get out of Hell.
    And I’m going to need help.
    Nyx rose to her feet and, still crying the names of the dead children, went in search of Persephone and Ishtar.

Chapter 3
    W andering the palace where she once ruled was a study in pain. Nyx mostly crawled, though sometimes she managed to stumble to her feet. The demons followed after her, making themselves invisible to mortal eyes so they could strike her unexpectedly. Nyx could see them perfectly, of course, but had to pretend she didn’t. She cowered and cried out as they leapt at her, slicing or biting into her flesh or grabbing her and slamming her against walls, floor, or ceiling to make her bones break.
    Nyx screamed with each attack, just as the soul would have. Bodies did not go into shock in Hell. There was no relief from pain, no oblivion one could sink into. Even when the physical forms had been tortured so brutally that nothing remained but black, burnt Hellstone, the soul’s agony would continue. And so Nyx had to scream and wail in pain, and struggle to get away every time one of the demons grabbed her.
    She kept moving forward, kept crying out the names of Aleyd’s children as she crawled from room to room. She made her body heal more slowly than it should.
    Suddenly, the demons were knocked away by Angelic feet wearing black Hellstone boots that kicked them against the walls, stomped them on the floor, and broke their bodies open. The demons squealed and fled. The Angel knelt down beside Aleyd/Nyx and took her chin in her hand. She was tall, blond,