The Bleeding of Carthage

4. The Proposition

"And so, Gabriel's Knife has finally sniffed us out." Samael sneered at Enoch as the he lay face down on the floor before the Fallen archangel.

They'd dragged Enoch to the Throne Room, held beneath the arms, unable to get to his feet. They threw him to the ground before the Skull Throne and pinioned him there with a spear to the middle of his back. Esme stood behind a smirking Samael, one small hand raised to her mouth, her red vampiric eyes wide and unblinking.

"I've come here alone," Enoch said.

"Yes, at the plea of your sister," Samael smiled. "'Please, dear brother, return to me in Carthage.' We gambled on the fact you would not tell your superiors of a sister you suspected was one of my Children. The gamble paid off, it seemed. They know not your location, I presume. No need to answer, I can see it on your face. All for the good. We have need of you, your sister and I."

Enoch craned his head to look awkwardly up at them. He saw a bloody tear run from the corner of his sister's eye; wondering if it was from a guilty conscience. He very much doubted it. Behind her and Samael was the towering Skull Throne, the giant bird-of-prey skull looming over them all atop it. The blackness of its hollow eye-sockets seemed to look into Enoch's soul, biting. His eyes dropped to the veined marble floor. He could hear the quiet murmur of the five Suffete vampire-lords in the echoing Throne Room behind him and felt their predatory smiles on his bowed back.

Gritting his teeth, Enoch lifted his head defiantly. Gilded torches encircled the room in their sconces, filling the hall with flickering golden light, but the glow emanating from Samael was unmistakeable. Not as bright as Gabriel's angelic glow but impossible to mistake Samael's angelic origins, not taking into account his monstrous facial features.

"You think to turn me against Gabriel?" Enoch asked, incredulous.

"Nothing so vulgar," Samael smiled, fangs glinting. He paused for a moment before continuing. "I have worked hard for centuries to make Carthage the trade empire it is now. When first I arrived in Africanus I was fleeing a lost war with Azael..."

"I know the history of the Fallen Two Hundred. From Gabriel himself." The battle between the two Fallen Archangels would have been titanic. Neither he nor Elijah alone or together would ever have a hope against an Archangel - Fallen or otherwise, not without a lot more help. They are another breed entirely to their Fallen followers and other supernaturals like vampires or werewolves, like the difference between lions and house cats, "I learned nearly as much from the lips of some of those two hundred, at the point of my sword, before I killed them."

"No doubt deserving. I knew them all. There's a goodly number of the Fallen I'd gladly kill; none more so than Azael. He was ever a thorn in my side, even when we were Ascended. He and I cannot even live on the same continent it seems, as that hundred-year war proved. And so I came to Carthage."

"So, why was I brought here then?" Enoch asked, his eyes rarely leaving his sister.

"I have reigned here secretly in Carthage for four hundred and fifty years," Samael said, ignoring Enoch's question. "When I came here it was little more than a fishing village, recently taken over by aristocrats fleeing an unsuccessful rebellion in Tyre. They were haughty, arrogant and penniless, led poorly by Queen Elissa. They thought me a Persian prince which suited my purpose. It was not long before I'd glamoured the entire court and then turned the highest among them, beginning with poor stupid Elissa. I tired of her a century or so ago. Then I met your sister."

Enoch watched Esme look up at Samael longingly. The bounty hunter blinked once. A vein pulsed deeply along his jaw line as he listened to Samael continue to beat his chest.