by A. Catherine
“Smells like baptism in here, fuck, we must be in the right place,” she chuckled.
Gabriel recognized them both from an older encounter. She was Seere, a lower-level demon with unparalleled weapon and combat skills, and right hand to one of Gabriel’s least favorite beings in the universe. Kaleus.
“I feel like I’m about to be exorcised.” They both laughed.
Gabriel flexed his fists at his sides to avoid glaring directly at the new additions to their party.
The demon, Seere, eyed Iaoel and moved towards them.
“I suppose hello is in order, especially for such an attractive specimen. I’m Seere, but I’m sure you knew that.” Iaoel grinned, unafraid of her, and perhaps more intrigued than anything.
“Iaoel. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.” They extended their hand, Seere took it and shook once, holding it for a moment longer than necessary.
“If this is your idea of pleasure, then I think a thorough education is in order.” She winked. “Don’t worry, I’m a great teacher.”
Iaoel choked back the startled chuckle that threatened to escape their lips. Instead, just held Seere’s suggestive gaze.
Gabriel cleared his throat. “You’re late,” he said to Kaleus.
“Well you know, traffic is a bitch.” Kaleus took off his jacket and hung it on the old coat rack. “It’s been a while, featherbrain, how’s daddy?” he asked, popping down into the creaky rocking chair.
The air in the room went taut.
“Could ask you the same question,” Gabriel retorted.
Kaleus gave him a crooked, knowing smile. Gabriel, with the angels still behind him, watched Seere walked over to Kaleus and stand just behind his shoulder.
Ever the obedient general. Kaleus cataloged it.
“I certainly missed that expression on your face, wonder-boy.”
Before Gabriel could growl at him Duma asked, “Anyone else going to show?”
“Why? Feeling lonely?” A sultry female voice wrapped its silk elegance and arms around Duma’s waist from behind.
Her hot, enchanting lips close to his ear. “I’d be more than happy to keep you company.”
Duma stilled the second she touched him. The angel straightened his back to maintain his composure, even when the very feeling of her hot breath on his neck made his skin shiver.
Lillith, mother of demons, and the thing that motivated Lucifer to rebel against heaven. Her serpentine powers of temptation helped bring about the fall of humanity, and even angels struggled against her allure.
She leaned in closer to the nape of his neck. “What do you say we break down some of that purity?” Lillith’s hand began to move down Duma’s chest, towards the belt of his pants.
Brazen, that’s what she was, and shamelessly in front of everyone.
Duma’s hand caught hers and held it firmly against his belly to stop her downward motion.
“Go any further and you’ll have to manage without your hand.” His voice calm but firm.
She giggled under her breath.
“Who said I needed my hands? I prefer to use my mouth anyway.” Lillith bit the lobe of his ear.
Duma’s shoulder’s stiffened further, but he couldn’t stop his eyes from clenching closed. The others assumed his reaction to be of disgust, but Lillith knew better, his pulse had increased against the vein in his neck, and she could feel heat of his body shifting with the arousal.
“A little pain, a lot of pleasure, lover.” She ran her tongue along his neck.
“Lillith,” Kaleus commanded, his voice dropped low with authority.
She shot a sharp glare towards him but relented. Duma relaxed only a little when Lillith released her grip and moved past the group of very tense angels over to stand next to Kaleus and Seere.
“It’s too bad, I almost had him.” She smirked.
Duma lifted his chin, steadying himself both physically and mentally. “I was completely in control.”
She delicately and sensually moved her hair to one side all while looking him up and down.
“Challenge accepted,” she mumbled.
Duma hid his returning challenging smirk. He may not like the mother of demons, but if she wanted to challenge him, he wouldn’t shy from the trial.
When he saw Gabriel’s disapproving gaze, his cheeks burned a bit in shame, but he righted himself.
“Nothing like carnal temptation to start this little shindig,” Kaleus cooed with a lazy sigh.
The final demon, Daevas, was the last to show. The ginger demon was quieter in his approach, having simply walked in the door and took his place behind Kaleus’ other shoulder, his eyes monitoring the desert outside. His own weapons strapped to his back.
“We’re all here now, featherbrain, can we get on with it?” Kaleus twirled a small karambit dagger in his hand, knowing full well there was a glare pointed in his direction from the archangel.
“I suppose the first thing to discuss is what you already know.” Gabriel eyed the group, mostly towards the demons.
Seere spoke first, “We heard about the Guardian’s death, and we’ve heard rumors here and there but nothing concrete.”
“Lucifer said after he spoke with the big guy that no angels are to blame, and none of us obviously had any involvement,” Lillith added.
“Obviously?” Jophiel snarled.
Lillith rolled her eyes and went on, “So as far as we’ve been told, we’re all here to figure it out, be a rag tag team of angels and demons.” The others nodded along, agreeing with her statements.
They all watched each other waiting for the other to make an unexpected move, conscious of every shift and look exchanged.
They were all highly trained and skilled in their fields. Lethal weapons to be used if necessary.
“I’m not so sure we should believe any of you, a demon seems like an obvious suspect to me. Wouldn’t be surprised if it were the mother of demons herself,” Jophiel muttered.
Lillith smirked and turned towards her. “Maybe it was me, you never know. All things considered, if I had a way of killing angels, I wouldn’t start with a Guardian.” Her disgusted emphasis on the word set Duma and Jade’s teeth on edge.
“What’s a mere foot soldier compared to the glory of slicing up a delectable specimen such as yourself?” Lillith continued, pointing to the archangels. Lillith’s gaze shifted to Duma with a wink. “Not you, sweetie. I have other intentions for your deliciousness.”
Jophiel couldn’t contain her deep growl this time.
“When in doubt, be seductive. Honestly, Lillith, do you have any other qualities?” Jophiel gestured to Gabriel. “This is the best that hell could offer? A succubus, an angsty prince, and a couple of inbred demons? Really? Gabriel, you and I both could do the job better on our own.”
The responses that concluded her statement came all at once.
“Hey, what about us?” Jade chimed.
“Well that was rude…” Seere said.
“Did she just call me an angsty prince?” Kaleus chuckled.
“Inbred?”
“Arrogant archangels...”
“Jophiel, you know this isn’t my decision.” Gabriel’s voice rang over the others.
“We’d be happy to do our own investigation, featherbrain. There’s really no need for your involvement anyway if you feel you’re not up to the task,” Kaleus retorted.
Gabriel sighed, a test of patience, that’s what this was going to be.
“Look, we are all here because this isn’t just about the death of an angel. If something out there can kill a Guardian, then they can easily kill demons too, and all immortal beings for that matter.”
The collective silence was reluctant.
“We may not like each other, and this may be a disaster, but we are all obligated to keep the Balance. Whoever did this tipped it, and we’re all at risk.” Gabriel sighed. “We have a job. Let’s get it done, and then we can go on hating each other for all of eternity.”
“I thi
nk it could be fun,” Jade chimed in.
Everyone turned at the sound of her cheerful and optimistic voice.
Voicing a particular elephant in the room. “Who are you again?” Lillith asked, clearly annoyed by the situation.
Jade stood up straighter, though it didn’t help her height any.
“Jade. I’m the Guardian Master. I trained the Guardian that was killed and was a part of assigning his post. In the grand scheme of things, I was the last angel to see Mason alive, and was the closest to him among those of us here.”
“So you can tell us a bit about him?” Duma asked.
She started to nod when Lillith yawned loudly. “Who cares about the stupid Guardian? His death was a message or a fluke, either way, who he was doesn’t matter, who the killer is matters.” She leaned against the window.
“For once, Lillith, just shut your fucking hole,” Kaleus sternly warned. Gabriel noticed a difference in Kaleus when he addressed Lillith. He was cold, harsh. But with everyone else he was comical and relaxed.
She giggled. “Which one?”
Kaleus only lifted his hand signaling her to stop, she backed off in a huff. Everyone watching the encounter slowly turned back to Jade.
“Go on, Jade,” Duma encouraged.
Jade moved more to the middle of the room, her size seeming so much smaller in comparison to the high-level beings surrounding her.
“Mason wasn’t new, he was made a Guardian about two-hundred years ago. Before that he helped new angels-in-training, his guidance abilities led us to agree that he would make an appropriate Guardian.”
“Who were the humans he was guarding when this happened?” Daevas asked, a trained warrior cataloging potential key information.
“He had a few, some of them were already transitioning to their new Guardians. The main one in question, the one that is of concern is named Heather Coleman. She’s a graduate student at Arizona State University,” Gabriel answered.
Jade nodded. “He’s been her Guardian for about 8 years.”
“Wait,” Kale stopped her, “I thought Guardian angels are supposed to be for life. Why was he only guarding her for 8 years?”
“Not anymore, we’ve made some major changes in the recent millennia to our system to accommodate for the mortal’s population growth. Every human goes through different stages of life, and therefore need a variety of guidance depending on their stage of life. Our Guardians are specialized for specific maturity groups, so as a human moves to a different stage of maturity, they are assigned a different Guardian angel. Mason took over when Heather was seventeen, as she began moving into young adulthood. We estimated that he would only stay with her until she was into her mid-thirties to early forties when she would move into the next stage of maturity,” Jade explained.
“So any given human would go through like eight Guardians in their lifetime? That sounds like a lot,” Seere chirped.
“No, if it were based on age that would be the case. But we base it off of maturity. Early childhood to adolescence, adolescence to early adulthood, full-adulthood and then after a human hits about seventy years old, they will live out the rest of their lives with one last Guardian. So really, most humans only have about five Guardians throughout their entire lives. We’ve only recently developed and integrated this method in the last millennium. Before that it was a Guardian for life, but as populations rose and the diversity our Guardians offered became more specific, it seemed the best idea to get the best out of our resources.”
Gabriel was there when Jade presented this idea, its success was the deciding factor to anointing her Guardian Master.
“Okay, back to Mason. Had he given any indication that he might be in trouble?” Duma asked.
Jade shook her head.
“I met with him only two days prior to his death. He gave me a normal status report and seemed perfectly fine. It was routine, he even met up with a couple of his training companions. From my perspective, everything was as normal as it could be.”
“And the human? What of her?” Kaleus asked.
“She seems normal; however, I did encounter something strange in her dreams,” Gabriel answered.
Their eyes turned to him. He cleared his throat.
“I was instructed to take over as her Guardian for the time being. I went into her subconscious and there was a creature there, looked to be a wraith.”
“A wraith? I haven’t seen those since…are you sure?” Jophiel asked. Gabriel nodded.
“I thought you and the other arch-assholes locked them away for good?” Lillith asked.
“The wraiths were sealed up during Kaṇṇīr, The Tear,” Gabriel clarified. “Michael, Lucifer and Raphael did most of the sealing, but my other siblings helped them. They were sealed in some of our realm prisons, like Tartarus, Nessus, Maladomini and such.”
“Can wraiths even get inside a humans mind? I thought they were just soulless spirits created from misuse of dark magic?” Seere asked.
Clearly the demons had also been taught some of our histories, even though they didn’t come into existence until after The Fall.
“Wraiths act like a parasitic entity, it’s entirely possible for them to get inside an unguarded subconscious. I believe what I saw in Heather’s dream was a wraith. However, what confused me about it was that it was able to resist—if not nullify my powers a bit. Wraiths don’t possess that capability, especially against an archangel. Our particular strength is why we were the only ones able to entrap them back then.”
Gabriel recalled the memory of the creature and its black talons slicing Heather’s neck open.
“So, it wasn’t a wraith, then. Just glamoured as one?” Daevas suggested.
Duma fidgeted with the dusty wooden beams that held the old structure up as he cataloged all this information and thought of explanations.
Jophiel broke through the contemplative silence. “Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to look at the prisons to make sure they’re still sealed shut. We could also check the different layers of hell—I know Lucifer holds a few well-enforced dungeons down there as well,” Jophiel said, pointing her eyes at the others as if suggesting which ones should go where.
“I have something else,” Gabriel stated.
“Well, don’t spill it out all at once featherbrain.” Kaleus joked.
Gabriel pointed a menacing finger at him, full of threat. “Push me, I beg you.”
Kaleus threw his hands up in playful surrender, holding his signature smirk on his face and maintaining eye contact.
“Any time, any day. I like it when we play.” Kaleus replied very suggestively.
Gabriel sighed to regain his composure and returned his eyes to the others. “Heather, the mortal, knew who Mason was.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Lillith turned.
“How?” Jade gaped. Humans were never supposed to know the presence of their Guardians, especially not who they were by name.
“I don’t know to what extent, but it was clear that she had met him before, she knew his name and…she witnessed his final moments.”
Kaleus whistled. “Dang, that’s definitely a precursor to a psychotic break if I ever saw one.” He lifted his hand to Daevas, who nodded. Confirming that he’ll look into it in his own way.
“I’ll have to observe her more to see how much more she might know,” Gabriel finished.
But observation was a slow and often boring process, and patience wasn’t a trait the hellborn easily possessed.
“Why don’t you just ask her?” Kaleus suggested.
Gabriel’s head snapped in his direction. “Did you really just ask me that?”
“She’s a human. We can’t involve her in this.” Jade chimed in.
The Prince lifted his hands, shrugging. “I’m just saying, you think she knows who Mason was, maybe she knows more about our existence than we think. Maybe trying to skate around her trying to maintain her ignorance will just make things harder for everyone. Just cut out the middleman,” he argued.
“She’s mortal, the very fabric of her mind would break apart if she knew about all of this. A mortal mind can’t fathom our existence. There’s a reason the Principalities monitor and alter religious records to reveal no more than about a small percentage of the correct information. Anymore and the stability of human life would be disrupted,” Duma explained point blank.
Kaleus let out a snort. “Is it really all doom and gloom with you guys? Seriously, you give humans so much, but heaven forbid they learn about the supernatural, pun entirely intended. Can’t you just erase her memory after it’s all solved? Your big bad almighty can do that, can’t he?” he teased.
