The Troll Queen's Bride

"The Dead travel fast, but Death travels faster."

Prologue:

This is what I remember:

He stands by the howling void. Chalk white cliffs plummet downwards to the raging sea. The blue-blackness froths beneath him. Wind screams. It is absolute zero.

Shadows fall like dolls into the abyss. There are no cries of pain. Merely silence.

The Legion stands before him. Michael brandishes his flaming sword. His face is raw with suffering.

"Don't do this, brother," he pleas.

His cry falls on deaf ears. It is a corpse that stands before him. Razor thin. Pale as winter snow. He towers over the archangel, still as the grip of death.

He opens his hollow eyes. All Heaven holds its breath. The void yawns, grating its jowls. Its master smiles wretchedly. His flesh cracks like ice as he speaks:

"Either way, I win." His voice is like bitter wind.

The pull of the Pit wraps around the Host like a vise. The weakest crumple like smashed mica. Their shards plummet into the abyss.

Michael's bones shake. His sorrow turns to wrath. He roars, then delivers the killing blow. The serpent is crushed beneath him.

The corpse laughs as the sword pierces him. "Come with me, my brother," he whispers. He takes him by the heel. Lightning strikes fire as they embrace. Michael surrenders himself to his adversary. Finally, the Host is freed.

The brightest stars blaze into the darkness. The void is sealed shut. They leave a graveyard of angels behind them.

Time begins.

Death is born.

"You should run, human girl."

Chapter 1: Disposable Teens

I woke in a sweat again, screeching. Running my hands through my hair, I bolted upwards, struggling for breath. The same dream again, probably spurred on by the chili corn dog of questionable origins the cafeteria had served up for dinner. "Holy frappacino," I whispered as a slamming headache hit me. My stomach rolled, whether from fear or indigestion, I couldn't tell.

My roommate flipped on the lights, groaning: "Again, Fianna?" She tossed her pillow at me, eyes bruised like a racoon's.

I clutched it to my chest and collapsed. "Yeah," I sighed. "I'm so, so sorry." I glanced at the alarm: 3:00 AM. Just the latest in a string of witching hours I'd awakened to in the past month. Perhaps it was the darkness of winter that drew out the strange visions each year. The unyielding cold that dug into one's marrow weighed heavily on us all, stirring upsets that lay buried in the subconscious.

"Quinn? Quinlan?" I asked, tossing the pillow back at her. She caught it drearily.

"What?" She lounged on her bed, eyes dead. "Was it them again? The twins?"

"Yeah. I think the caf's food was laced with something. Roofies. Crack..."

"Holy water? No offense, but you have religious wing-nut dreams."

"But I'm an Atheist-"

"Zip! I've had to put up with this for..." she glanced at her hands. "Three, four, five weeks. And girl, early morning wakings do not bode well for beauty. I've had to change foundations three times for these skull hollows under my eyes."

I flinched, reminded of the dream. "He was bones in the end. Charred bones. Like those medieval plates of villagers dancing with the dead."

"Never seen 'em," Quinn said flatly. "Look, I have an organic chem test in the morning, which we both know I'm going to fail. You now owe me dinner at Peter Chang's and a seriously large shoulder to cry on."

I pulled at my PJs, distracted. "I do have man shoulders, don't I? Moulders. Crap."

"That wasn't the point, Fee. I need your empathy, not your masculinity."

"I am not a guy! See? No five o' clock shadow."

"Every girl has an inner dude. It's your animus. Embrace it."

"Like a spirit animal?"

"Sure. Your inner hot man totem. It's for balancing your psyche-"

There was a soft knock at the door. I paled. "Oh crap, it's Phoebe. Come in!"

Our RA stood in her Amish-worthy nightgown, bleary-eyed. "Everything alright, girls?" she asked, voice cloying with concern.

"Just a nightmare," I said flippantly. "It was... nothing."

"Nothing?" Phoebe cocked her brows. "Because it sounded like murder. Are you sure you don't want to go to the Health Center?-"

"Yes," Quinn and I said shortly.

"Right. Well, maybe cold water. There's medication for this, you know."

"No, and thank you, Phoebe!" Quinn said sunnily. "And a good night to you too." With that, she closed the door. Face flashing grimly, she glanced back at me. "She's right, you know. You can end up in the hospital for this stuff. Nightmare syndrome. I Googled it."

"Which totally makes it legit," I said, sardonic. "It's just stress, or the weather, or- oh, I don't know, Quinn! Maybe I'm the reincarnation of some fire and brimstone preacher."

"Well, Miss Billy Graham. If that's the case, I must have lived on the island of Cyprus, like a priestess of Aphrodite! A slave to beauty and piña coladas, not a dredge to chemistry." She made the sign of the cross against her textbooks. "Can you damn them for me, preacher?"

"By the power invested in me by God, burn, unholy tomes!"

We giggled, ominously fanning the flames.

"Twin psychos through and through," Quinn observed sagely. She flipped the lights. "Back to bed, Fee. And the General Tsao's chicken tomorrow better make up for this lovefest."

I tossed her pillow back at her, smiling. "Pinkie-swear, roomie," I said, voice dripping with sweetness.

She harrumphed and promptly began to snore. So much for beauty sleep.

The bones of winter soaked in the light snow that dusted campus, trees painted black by the melting water. In the distance, Colonial Williamsburg smelt of woodsmoke and confections from the sweet shop. Further down the cobblestone road pranced horses drawing sleighs full of tourists, decked out gaily for the Christmas season. Single candles shone in the colonial windows like souls. Bruton Parish church rose above the masses, a brownstone majesty confectioned in white. Surrounding it rested a graveyard in the vein of old English burial places, fenced by iron gates.

A brick wall rounded the perimeter, forbidding passerby from glancing inside.

The graves rested below the silent firs. Inside lingered a murder of crows, absently pecking at worms. A wind picked up, and a lull fell over the streets.

Evening service ended as the Parish bells rang. The church emptied of congregants, shuffling off into the snow. One lingered, clad in a white trench coat, with a shock of black hair. His fingers traced the gates as he smiled quietly, humming a hymn off key. The snow fell in small white globes around his figure. When the streets emptied, he hopped the iron fence, coming to a rest near a headstone.

His face was a study in severity, too sharp to be handsome, with a hooked nose that offset the slyness of his flame-blue eyes. He lit a cigarette. The sparks danced in his irises as he settled onto the headstone. He nodded gravely to the crows pecking at the ground. They bobbed back, cawed, and returned to their avian business. He proceeded to stare at them intently until his cigarette disintegrated. He let it burn til the end, charring his fingers on the ash. The weals disappeared. He smirked and lit another. Smoke, finish, burn. Repeating the process until dead cold iced the sun to a premature burial. A thin layer of snow settled over his clothes.

The streets of Colonial Williamsburg were empty. In the blackness of the night, two over-large, mangy crows alighted on the cross that crested the church. They croaked, a burble like trolls with indigestion. The man cocked his head then crushed the cigarette in his hand. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver charm. It glinted in the moonlight, catching the birds' attention. They darted toward the trinket, hopping onto the slab on which he rested to nuzzle his hand.

He laughed, a rich sound the umber of loamy soil. "Gog, Magog," he said respectively as they crept onto his shoulders, pecking his hat off his head. "Where have you been, you little bastards."

Gog held its clawed foot up in offering. In it was clasped a red silk ribbon with stray bits of auburn hair knotted in. Its master took the present, sniffing it as if testing the ribbon's origins. He pried a bit of the hair off and crooked his lip as he examined the strand. "Well I'll be damned. It's her's." He fondled Gog's feathers. "Good job, you mangy worm."

Magog, sullenly forgotten, pecked its owner's cheekbone. In its beak was a cockroach.

"Ah," the man said, "a snack. Why thank you, maggot." He popped the roach into his mouth and with a crunch swallowed it. The man grimaced. "Tastes like the fraternities. You found this at the dorms, didn't you..." he sighed, petting Magog idly.

"That's what happens when corvids cater to you," a dry voice came from behind a copse of firs.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't Bub himself. Done whoring in Pandemonium for the day?"

"As always, your humor runs black. Truly, Sam, the evening's too young for your jesting. If you had any idea how harrowing today had been while you've been off carousing on the mortal planes, you'd bite your tail like an ouroborous and swallow your own ass."

"But as you've informed me a myriad times, my mouth is my ass, so what does that make me, Bub?"

"A snake, as always." Bub stepped from the trees. He was a well-muscled figure with ice blond hair and a visage reminiscent of Alexander the Conqueror. A thick scar ran crosswise across his face, marring his beauty. He wore all black: a midnight turtleneck cinched in by belted cargo pants and combat boots. Their darkness offset the sharp pinprick pupils of his eyes that swam in seas of red.

Sam appraised Bub. "You're dressed to the tens, as usual. Allow me to guess: you rolled out of your labyrinth, reached into your closet, where perfectly matched garments lay folded like corpses on gurneys-"

"-no corpse analogies, Samael. Not this early in the evening-"

"-donned your perfectly dreary attire, and attended to your equally dreary work drinking coffee black as your garments, the same coloring of your day, then let the ink leak into your soul-"

"The ink from my ledgers, or metaphorical blackness of my soul?-"

"Both, Beelzebub, both! Devil, you're dry as Prohibition and twice as dapper."

Bub pursed his lips. "I'm not sure I approve of the hat, Samael. This is official business. Where is your formal attire?"

"Official business my scaly derriere. You mean that louse of a girl? Oh please let me terrorize her- let me drive her mad. She already shrieks like a banshee in heat from the nightmares."

"Your robe, Samael," Bub said steely. "We have dinner with the archangels in order to broker peace, or have you forgotten that too?"

"I have forgotten nothing," Sam snapped. He shooed Gog and Magog away, muttering. His clothes morphed into dripping shadows and formed themselves into a severe black robe with a heavy cowl and hood. "Especially not how this blasted vestment itches! Now back to the girl. Are you thinking slow torment or a quick death?"

Bub inspected his nail beds. "You know as well as I the girl is harmless."

"Innocent, you mean," he spat, shuddering at the word. Sam splayed across the headstone. "All the more riddling as to why she is having these visions." He rubbed his temple and cursed. "She is there in my dreams, observing me like the Fates as the past plays out across my memory like broken skeins. It is so- damn- infuriating. Like this little tick embedded in the square of your back: you can't reach it, it itches like hell, and it sucks the life-blood from you. We must annihilate her."

"No, we must discover why she has the ability, then deal accordingly. Prophets haven't appeared for centuries. The potential problem this incident poses if the phenomenon radiates is thorny, to say the least."

"What? Are you suggesting the human's ability will spread like a cancer? That all the archangels will soon have human noses probed so far up their asses that their secretest thoughts are divulged?"

"In a sense, yes."

"Hmm, that is indeed, if I may say, grim." A scythe materialized in Sam's hand. He continued to bench-press it, back against the gravestone. "Haven't you ever wanted to get that intimate with a mortal, Bub? Devil knows you need a good lay."

Bub proceeded to file his nails. "Sexually, yes. But intellectually? To twist the guts of my mind up with an inane girl's? If that is the question, then I answer with a resounding no."

"Hmm," Sam drawled between bench-presses, "well, it does have advantages. I now know all the current fashions for the winter season. Scarves are in, cravats are out-"

"As they have been for what, a century?-"

"Damn. I was trying to impress you with my modernity. The truth is, I get tangles of her world in slumber. Flashes of mundane dreams and glimpses into her life. It's more intriguing than one would think."

Bub manicured his nails, unconvinced.

"Could you stop it with the nails and at least attempt to feign interest in this conversation instead of acting like my warden?"

"But I am your warden."

Sam hurled his scythe like a shot-put, lodging it in Bub's chest.

"The reason I wear black," Bub's said, removing it with uninterest, "is because of you."

"Oh, poo, bloodstains, Beelzebub. It's called summoning new clothes."

"Do you replace a good woman for another, just because they are of the same sex?"

"That is completely inapplicable-"

"I like my clothes," Bub said steely.

"Fine, you old rag. I'd apologize, but I'm in too much of a temper. This maggot of a girl has been niggling at the back of my mind all evening. Last night was not pleasant for either of us."

"Another nightmare?" Bub returned to his nails. "Perhaps the two of you shall become blanket buddies."

Sam made a snow angel on top of the headstone. "Or I could decapitate her and use her breasts as a pillow. Perhaps then I'd sleep better."

"We must study her, Samael. To do so, she must be alive."

"What do you think I've been doing? Carousing with stinking twenty-somethings?" Sam laughed darkly. "If only we were bloody all-knowing like the mortals wish. I wouldn't have to resort to underhanded means like this." He withdrew the ribbon from his pocket. "An item, given freely, with traces of the bearer. A potent trinket, to say the least."

"Given freely?"

"To the ground, at least."

"And what will you do with it, plait her to death? What knowledge can possibly be gained from such a thing?"

"Feel it, Beelzebub."

He did. His eyebrows rose. "She has such an attachment to such a plain object. But why?"

"Who knows? It's old. Family heirloom? A gift from her grandmother? A pity she let it slip from her hair. Whatever the case, it will lead me to her. I can track her from the ends of the earth with it."

"Show it to the archangel council over dinner. We will make plans accordingly."