Seven Archangels: Annihilation

Jane Lebak

Chapter 17

Forced away from Gabriel's room, Remiel walked through Creation wearing a demi-human body she didn't want to heal. The left ear felt inflamed, but she concentrated on putting her feet one in front of the other.

The noise in her mind. The questions.

She took a step and was on a mountain. Another and she was on a beach. Another and she was walking through rock walls in a medieval castle. Still another and she was slogging through the surface of a gas giant.

She wanted to pray, but then she remembered demons didn't pray, so she stopped herself.

Uriel said she might hurt Gabriel. But she'd killed him, hadn't she? No, he'd survived. She'd sent him into harm's way, and then she'd gone into Hell in order to finish the work Satan had decreed.

Didn't that make her a demon? Therefore, why bother asking God?

Come to me. Come to me.

Remiel tried to spread her wings, only she hadn't any, which made no sense. No, wait, it did in a way. But there was a calling. Someone wanted her.

No, no one wanted her. Not even Gabriel.

Come to me. Come to me.

No one wanted a demon, so she ought to make sure she was one, and the best way to figure out which one she was would be to compare side by side.

Come to me.

Side by side.

Remiel took another step and arrived on top of a cellblock, a concrete cube atop a mountain, guarded by six Principalities. She sat on the rooftop and talked to the Guard. It was Raguel's. Raguel didn't like her—didn't trust her—well, who would? But she had asked Raguel if he was going to lock her up, and Raguel had said no, and that meant she could head inside.

Come to me.

Remiel pressed her hands into the roof to go desolid through it. The Guard didn't want to admit her, just like the one around Gabriel's room, but then abruptly it yielded—again the same. She wriggled a bit and slipped through the roof, landing lightly on the floor of the cell.

Inside was airless despite numerous windows. A faint smoke tinged the atmosphere, and Remiel could drink the power out of the area—her own power.

"Come to me," said the occupant, her twin.

"I came." So foggy. She glowed a bit to dispel the oppressive feeling of a room that didn't look oppressive enough.

Camael hadn't been restrained within the room. While the Guard wouldn't let him out, he had complete freedom to move within, and he'd been provided a few comforts: books (at least one of which seemed to have been burned) and music and art materials. Camael had been drawing, but Remiel wouldn't look at what he'd made.

He stepped back. "You're wearing a body!"

She looked over herself.

"And you're reeking of smoke." His nose wrinkled. "What have they done to you?"

She blinked.

He moved closer. "Why are they making you turn into a monkey?"

She shook her head. It was like trying to read through a kaleidoscope. "What did you want?"

"I wanted you to come to me."

"I'm here."

He looked just as horrified as she felt. "But why are you like this?"

"You— I don't remember." Her eyes watered. This wasn't right. "I tried to see Gabriel, but they said I can't. I killed him. I slipped my hands into his heart, and I ripped him to pieces and unhooked him and unstrung him one little bit at a time, and I want to tell him I'm sorry, but they said I can't."

Camael's eyes glowed. "We succeeded?"

She fought the tears. "You made me do it. You sent me messages."

He stepped toward her as if he would touch her but then recoiled from her physical form. "We're still connected. You may be enslaved, but I'm free, and they found a way I can call to you. It's still possible to come with me." He let out a long breath. "We don't have to be apart."

"You used me!" Remiel pivoted away. "You got into my head and sent me messages, and I did the things you said! How can you call that freedom?"

Camael folded his arms. "We've won a huge victory this time. No one's ever destroyed an angel before, not even God."

"Rahab," Remiel said.

"Rahab came back because God didn't want it done in the first place; therefore he didn't really destroy him. But we did it!"

"How can you be proud of that?" She whirled to face him, took a step toward him and watched him reflexively retreat from contact with her body. "How can you brag about punching a hole right through the heart of creation?"

"No one else ever did."

Remiel's eyes went gold. "That's not a reason to do something! You took—you broke apart—you planned all this—"

She covered her mouth with her hands and choked on the words.

"I made you come to me." Camael stood taller. "I'll make you come to me again."

Remiel felt the blood draining from her head.

"You'll feel an impulse and never know if it's your thought or mine, something you want or I, a good thing or a bad, and always-always-always you'll have that nugget of doubt in your soul."

"No!" Remiel wrapped her arms to her shoulders and tore at the skin with her nails. Nothing could ever hurt enough, not now. "I won't allow you to!"

"It's not a question of allowing." Camael's voice was a thready whisper. "I already made you the Judas goat to lead your prince to his end. Think of what I can do next."

Eyes closed, Remiel flashed out of the Guard, flashed away to the hottest sun in the midst of the most crowded galaxy she could think of. Fully an angel again, she let the fusion and the plasma wash through her, and she grabbed fistfuls of liquid hydrogen and tried to scrub herself clean. Her clothes incinerated immediately, but the rings she made a part of herself so they stayed, and she let the heat surge through her heart, burn out the evil, the memory, the voice: Come back to me. You're mine.

I'm not yours. I'm no one's. Nobody's. Not even God wants me.

  Ophaniel returned to Michael. As he piled a stack of books and a chess set into Michael's arms, he explained that while art and music and nature abounded at Uriel's, there wasn't anything for a Cherub to do. Michael bundled them all together with a Guard and flashed to Gabriel's room.

Uriel sat spinning solid streams of light between both hands, shaping the light into curled strands to be woven together. Three similar fixtures already hung in the window where Gabriel sat.

He was colorless but seemingly stable as he ate a bowl of risotto. Michael enjoyed the aroma for a moment, then showed Gabriel the books and the chessboard, only Gabriel didn't react with joy. Instead he flinched.

Uriel looked up abruptly. "You can't read?"

Michael felt Gabriel emanate a deep discomfort as he flushed.

"I'm sorry." Uriel sighed. "I ought to have realized, given the other visual difficulties."

Michael felt Gabriel project that it wouldn't have made a difference.

Michael offered to stay for a while, and Uriel departed. He pulled up a chair and produced a small table. "At any rate," he said, "we can play chess."

Gabriel shook his head, then handed Michael the letter Ophaniel had delivered.

"Oh, sure." Michael went to break the seal and realized Gabriel had already opened it, and from the frustration woven through the paper, it felt as if he'd tried for a while to decipher the words. Why hadn't he asked Uriel?

"Raphael, to Gabriel," Michael read. "I'm sorry I lost control before, and I hope I didn't hurt you with the fire. Uriel had warned me, but now I see I'm not safe to be around you right now, and I guess I owe you another apology. It seems like every time I try to help it's a disaster for you."

He glanced up to see Gabriel frowning. "Don't look at me. I'm just as confused as you are." He returned to the letter. "I'm going to stay away until you're healed up fully. I'm sorry, and I hope you're not angry with me. Always in God's service, Raphael."

Gabriel folded his arms.

Michael said, "The only thing I can think of is that he'd absorbed your heartstring, and we didn't realize. Maybe that's the other apology he thinks he owes you." But then Michael remembered Raphael defeated, giving Gabriel permission to leave them, and he wondered if there weren't something more.

He handed Gabriel back the letter, which Gabriel kept on his lap.

Michael set up the chessboard while Gabriel finished the risotto. Gabriel opened with the king's pawn, which Michael responded to with a classical defense. They played in silence, Michael trying not to probe into Gabriel's thoughts because he didn't think it fair to uncover his strategy, but all the same, he realized quickly that Gabriel wasn't at top form. When two moves in a row were surprisingly shortsighted, Michael wondered how good an idea chess had been in the first place. Finally, after ten moves, Gabriel closed his eyes: he couldn’t keep track.

Michael puzzled at him.

He received a disconnected series of images. Gabriel couldn't visualize the board.

Michael sat back. "You mean I might actually be able to beat you?"

Gabriel laughed silently.

"See, God brings good from all things." Michael chuckled. "We can put it away."

Before he could clear off the board, he felt Gabriel put a hand on his hand, and a nonverbal negation. He wanted to try again, but he'd need Michael to tell him where all the pieces moved. Michael reconstructed the game in algebraic notation and recited it back to Gabriel, who winced about five moves in: he'd left a bishop hanging.

"You want to try it from that point?" Michael reset the board to the fifth move. "Go again."

Gabriel looked back at the board, frustration swirling about him.

Michael swept one wing between Gabriel and the board. "Don't look at it. Just move."

Gabriel blinked at him.

"You've got the board in your mind. Don't try to make it fit the board you see."

A high-pitched tension streamed from Gabriel, followed by paralysis. Michael wanted to tell him it was all right, that he'd take away the game, but then Gabriel sat up suddenly. He had the perfect move…and no way to convey the information. When he looked back at the board, he got lost again.

"Hey," Michael said, "we'll find a workaround. We've gotten this far."

Gabriel's eyes had gone from silver-grey to the olive of a thunderhead. Workarounds: if he couldn't move, couldn't read, couldn't play chess, couldn't play music, couldn't talk, what good was he?

"You'll keep improving," Michael said.

Gabriel's eyes flashed, leaving one word in Michael's mind: Now.

"You're a lousy patient."

Gabriel huffed.

Michael tilted his head. "You really can't play music?"

Gabriel shrugged. If he already knew the song, he could.

Michael frowned. "Can you still learn new music?"

Probably, but he couldn't extemporize.

"Yeah, but Gabriel, you were nearly dead yesterday!" Michael sat back. "Cut yourself some slack for once."

Gabriel sent him an accusing look.

"No, I don't know if I would do the same, but I may never find out, so let's assume I wouldn't be as tough on myself as you are." He opened his hands on his lap. "Let's pray about it. I know you can still do that."

Gabriel's mouth softened, and they did.

  Beelzebub was disciplining an arrant underling while singing a lewd version of "Amazing Grace" when Lucifer summoned him. He dropped—of course—everything to respond as he had no choice, and arrived inside Lucifer's office in the pitch black. He found a stool and sat waiting.

After a time, Lucifer said, "Have you experienced any side effects since the annihilation?"

"No, sir. Nothing other than the normal strain of having defended my Guard against the Archangel's full power."

Even though blind, Beelzebub blistered under the scalding glare Lucifer awarded his self-aggrandizement.

"Nothing else?"

"No, sir."

Beelzebub practically glowed with a realization: Lucifer had been weakened after disassembling Gabriel! Lucifer, weakened—and possibly defeatable!

"Don't even think it," Lucifer said. "I'll fight you. We'll see how I do."

"Yes, sir."

Lucifer's resonance bounced back from the walls with a psychic scent Beelzebub would have recognized anywhere in Creation. This signature sparkled with its own beauty, a lively thing always extending itself, curling its light letters into everything it met and absorbing it into the whole.

"Now," Lucifer said, "tell me about Mephistopheles."

"Mephistopheles?"

Silence.

"He—yes, I wondered if he's had some reaction to it."

More silence.

Beelzebub swallowed, but the silence continued, and finally he said, "It's frustrating. You know how he normally is. But since Gabriel died, he springs unworkable ideas at me, and then either he forgets them or else he prattles nonstop until I have to tell him to shut up."

This Lucifer acknowledged.

"He's gotten morose. He dampens everyone's energy. He isn't around anymore. If I want him, I have to go find him, and then he'll only say something dismal and retreat back into himself."

Lucifer moved in the room, but Beelzebub had no idea where. "When he goes into himself, what is he thinking about?"

Beelzebub closed his mouth.

Still more silence.

No, no. This was all wrong. He would not answer. Not acknowledge.

Silence.

No answer.

More silence.

Beelzebub said, "Gabriel."

"All the time?"

He nodded, and the gesture carried. "And sometimes Raphael too."

"Do you know he went to Heaven specifically to speak to Raphael?"

The fire in Beelzebub's heart flared.

"Ah, you didn't. I'd hoped you might explain."

"I'll kill him!"

"Are you afraid?" Lucifer said, suddenly so close that Beelzebub could perceive his glow. With their faces inches apart, Lucifer's green eyes made his stomach hurt. "Any punishment would be visited on him, not on you. Or were you afraid of what he might have done with Raphael?"

Beelzebub turned his head and spit into the darkness.

"As long as it doesn't bother you," Lucifer said with a hint of amusement. "He was right there within two hours after we finished, possibly directly from the debriefing. Michael turned him back at the gate. Did Gabriel ask him to courier a message?"

Beelzebub said nothing.

Silence.

Lucifer faded off into the dark again. More silence.

"I'm not aware of a message."

Lucifer sighed. "I suspect he's shocked. I've seen this before, monkeys who take a while to get past their first kill. If they come to terms with death, they often go on to become excellent soldiers, but some find the first one tough."

"If we get through two or three more—"

"But he's stuck, and until he devises a better method, there won't be another."

Lucifer, weakened.

No, not to think it.

"Don't," Lucifer said. "By the way, are you aware he asked Asmodeus for a favor?"

Heat surged in Beelzebub's throat, and his eyes narrowed.

"Why didn't he ask you to find Camael?"

Camael was missing? Beelzebub's fists clenched so hard he might have been bleeding. "I— I'm not sure."

"Don't be too hard on him," Lucifer said. "He's not himself. I'm sure he's not deserting you for a new alliance."

Pounding heartbeats. Fire inside. Mephistopheles.

Lucifer's voice sounded very matter-of-fact. "You need to enliven him."

"How?"

"You're a Seraph. Use that ridiculous bond of yours—isn't that the reason you have it? He can calm you when you get irrational and you can invigorate his depressed soul. I'm relatively sure you can still do it."

Beelzebub's hands shook in his lap. His throat burned.

"And if that isn't enough, do whatever you have to. Use your imagination, how does that sound?"

"That sounds—" Beelzebub's wings were vibrating, and at his side his sword had grown hot. "I'll take care of him, sir."

"I'm glad you feel that way. If you run out of ideas, you could come back to me for a few more, but I don't recommend that you do."

Like an inferno, his heart crackled. "No, sir."

"You may go," Lucifer said, and Beelzebub flashed from the room before the sound had a chance to travel from one end to the other. Like a heat-seeking missile, he had his target.

 

Copyright 2008, Jane Lebak

Cover

Copyright 2008, E. J. Mickels

E.J.Mickels II—aka 'Hisart'— a multi talented artist, has a BFAA in Drawing with Minors in Illustration and Graphic Design from the University of Akron. A veteran of the USAF, he has traveled through Europe and most of the USA.

E.J. ventured out as an Illustrator and has appeared in The Sword Review as well as Ray Gun Revival and in Dragons, Knights and Angels. He also wrote and keeps his own web-site-< www.Hisart.us >—which contains a small fraction of the art he has produced. He works in any medium and is just as comfortable setting at a PC with pen and tablet as he is with a chainsaw, airbrush or welder. He has done custom motorcycle and helmet work, as well as in the distant pas,t worked as a tattooist. He is also a writer, he participated in NaNoWriMo 2005, and maintains his own blog 'Sword and Pen' at < www.hisart777.blogspot.com >.

E.J. is currently the ArtWrangler at Double-Edged Publishing's Fear and Trembling magazine: < www.fearandtremblingmag.com >.