Surrender the Dark

by L. A. Banks

  “Whatever,” she muttered, folding her arms. “You at least owe me an explanation, then, about how all this got so screwed up and why I’m supposedly special.”

  “It is our shame in the angelic hierarchies, but I guess you have the right to know.” He returned his gaze to her and released a frustrated breath. “When the Source of All That Is created this particular universe billions of years ago, the scientists and those that argue religion are both right. It was not a case of either or—it is both and...integrated. Some call it the big bang theory. Some call it Creation. It is both. The best term for it is sacred science. And it was a time when the Source even separated us out of itself, first as androgynous cocreators—or what you call angels—then we became both female and male, first the female and then the male . . . hence why all old cultures revered the goddess . . . Eve came before Adam, so to speak and—”

  “So there are female angels? And Eve came before Adam?” The tone of her question seemed less defensive.

  “Of course. Eve is an XX chromosome, Adam is an XY—the rib is a metaphor for the piece taken from her to create him. But the politics of male domination are a discussion for another time. What is important is that you know there is a complete set of all there is. There are also opposites that got created—light and dark, positive and negative poles. There was no exception. As above, so below. Then once placed in this faraway habitat of pristine beauty called earth, evidence of Creation was allowed to evolve . . . the Kemetian record keepers and the Mayans have the most accurate measure of the days of Creation, each one lasting several billion years down to several million and then down to several thousand, to hundreds, and so forth. They have nine steps on their pyramids, representing ages, and—”

  “Okay, okay, I feel like a kid who just asked where do babies come from and you’re giving me a lesson on cellular division. Can we stick to the point?”

  He released a sigh. She was right. But he hated this topic.

  “It is complicated, Celeste . . . and it requires that you understand in context.”

  “Okay, my bad,” she said with renewed attitude in her tone. But at least she was talking to him.

  “Like I was trying to explain, thousands of years ago, twenty-six thousand to be exact, just like the Kemetian and Mayan calendars forecast now for an alignment on December twenty-first, 2012, the planets aligned to the galactic center. And please keep in mind that there’s a reason for all the occurrences of twelve in the date, just like in your DNA—it’s a Divine number. But anyway, the galactic center that the planets will align to is what some humans call the throne of God. It’s not a black hole there, but dark matter in the center of the Milky Way—matter so dense that humans have no instruments to measure it. Beyond that point is the gateway to Heaven. That is where the Source of All That Is resides.”

  Azrael paused and looked up the street for the trolley that wasn’t coming fast enough, then returned his gaze to Celeste. “We helped all ancient societies . . . Atlantis, Kemet, Lumeria, the Mayans, and many others . . . those of us who were trapped once the alignment ended stayed behind and helped humankind. When the planets align to the galactic center of the universe, there is no gravitational pull or energy fields to block the direct access to earth from either the side of the Light or the dark. That is when we say the door or veil or gateway or star gate opens. And it is a perilous time for the earth and humanity, because there are forces that would love to take over this free-will zone.”

  He stopped speaking and dug into his gym bag, needing water, but she patiently waited, obviously latched onto the subject.

  “All right,” she said once he’d taken a deep swig of water. “So, the planets aligned . . . and?”

  “And the one thing that made it difficult to travel through the densities opened. The gravitation alignment simply rips open the veil between worlds so the fallen Legions of Darkness as well as the Warriors of Light can come here to do battle.”

  “Still doesn’t answer how I was made, and you’re beating around the bush.”

  He sipped some more water. “I should have done more research on the tenacity of human females,” he muttered, but at least his comment made her smile.

  “Brother, you don’t know the half of it.”

  “All right, all right,” he said, offering her a new bottle of water from his gym bag. “The edict was that no angel, male or female, was to lie with the sons or daughters of humankind. There, are you satisfied?”

  “Wait . . . like that stuff about the Titans—”

  “Yes, it’s true. Disturbing but true. Not just regimes from the fallen disobeyed . . . some from the Warriors of Light fell in love with those they protected . . . and in this density, well, weaknesses prevailed.”

  Celeste opened the bottle he’d given her and took a long sip of water. “Not being disrespectful or anything, but . . . what was the big deal, if loving is natural and cool and whatever?”

  “Because the progeny would be half-angel and half-human . . . something stronger than what was bestowed on humanity at the inception of your kind.”

  “But I thought you said all of us can do what angels do. And wasn’t there even a thing in the Bible about that?”

  “Yes,” he said, trying not to lose patience. “But wisdom is required to have that much power. Knowledge and power without wisdom can be catastrophic.” He paused, trying to find a way to make her understand. “Think of it this way, Celeste . . . if you have a group of five-year-old students in a class together—and they all have the potential to study their letters and grow smarter and more mature together, there is balance, even in their little schoolyard squabbles. No one child is that much stronger that he or she can force their will upon the entire group. However, if it did somehow become thoroughly unfair with a bully terrorizing one smaller child, there is still a parent or a teacher who can intervene in the group of five-year-olds—that would be us. Angels, or the Source itself. But imagine having a class of five-year-olds and then there’s an unruly teenager in that class, an adolescent that is stronger, faster, more aggressive, more sexual, more—”

  “Whoa, I get the picture,” she said, holding up her bottle of water to stop his disturbing imagery. “And that teenager could be dangerous to even the teacher.”

  “Precisely. And my brothers and sisters of the Light who were here to battle the darkness lost focus, some of them. When the planets lost their alignment and went back into their normal positions, the gate between worlds was closed. Any of them trapped here who violated the edict are permanently to remain here.”

  “You mean they can never go back to Heaven?”

  “Correct,” he said quietly, for the first time beginning to feel how tragic a sentence that was. “So, to busy their minds and keep from going insane with boredom, they helped build civilizations, whispered cures into the ears of scientists and doctors, helped inspire art and beauty and all that is good...But they have also lain with humans and have sired offspring.”

  “Now that’s deep,” she murmured, staring at him.

  “It is.” He took another sip of water. “The gate opens roughly every twenty-six thousand years. Some of my brethren have been here for that long. Some have chosen to be Balance Keepers and to forsake human contact or temptation by going to live in remote places as Tibetan monks high in the Himalayas, or shamans deep in the rain forests, or medicine men deep in the Australian outback or African interior. They are from every culture and hide all over the world, forsaking physical contact or temptation. They have the appearance of old men in the vast wilderness who can take you on spirit walks. Those are the ones who have waited twenty-six thousand or more human years for the planets to align again . . . and they can go home.”

  “So, shit...” She ran her palm over her hair. “Like, some angels are just in constant prayer vigil for humanity, waiting to go home?”

  “Yes. And when they leave, there will be a void, but who could ask any more sacrifice of them than they’ve already endured?”


  “Seriously.” She took a long swig of water, looked down the street for the trolley, then turned back to him. “So, what about the ones who, you know . . . got in trouble because their willpower broke?”

  He shook his head, hoping the trolley would hurry up and come. “These Sentinels must stay, and they fight the temptation of excesses here. They experience pain, heartache, loss, lust, rage, everything humans suffer, but they cannot die. Even beheaded, their body will shrivel and turn to dust, but they will be reborn and have to continue here. They are not fallen, and they fight on our side of the Light, but they cannot return home to find ultimate respite. That makes them dangerous, as their temperaments are . . . often challenged by anger and bitterness.”

  “Now that’s fucked up.”

  He nodded. “True, and I’m not judging you when I say this but, words have power, Celeste. I’ve noticed you use a lot of euphemisms that have low vibration quality attached to them. Everything in the universe is about vibration and harmonics. Certain words have certain vibrations and tones associated with them. Even the sun and each planet have a sound, like I’ve mentioned before. As you elevate your frequency, you have to at some point also elevate your use of language because words have power—curse and you are emitting low frequencies that attract petty darkness; use more positive words and it attracts the Light...I hope that makes sense?”

  He was prepared for her to react with indignation, but, instead, she smiled.

  “That is the nicest way I have ever had anyone ask me to stop cursing.” She chuckled softly and drank the rest of her water. “My aunt Niecey says just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should . . . so I’ll try to clean up my potty mouth around an angel—even though this whole thing is really hard for me to accept.”

  “Thank you,” he said quietly, truly glad that he hadn’t offended her.

  “No, really . . . thank you,” she said, now looking up at him with wide, expressive eyes. “Thank you for saving me from whatever was inside Brandon. Thank you for the wildest adventure I’ve ever been on in my life. Thank you especially for bringing me home to Aunt Niecey and making her feel better and helping her spirit to rest easy . . . and thank you for these beautiful gifts of soap and perfume and clothes, all of it was so thoughtful, Az . . . and all I’ve done since you found me is—”

  “What you should have done,” he murmured, stepping in closer to her. “Your inner voice, the voice connected to the Source, said not to trust me, said to be sure. That was right.”

  “Trusting you means I have to wrap my head around an alternate reality . . . and it scares me, man. You know?”

  He nodded. He did know. He was terror-stricken when he fell to earth.

  “But why me?” she asked, just above a whisper. “What is it about me?”

  He reached out, unable to withstand separation from her soft cheek any longer, and he cupped it as he looked down into her wide brown eyes. As sure as he was standing there, he was addicted to her skin, to her voice, to her scent, to the depth of her deep brown eyes, and that was the last thing he was supposed to be.

  “Somewhere in your lineage, an angel sired one of your ancestors . . . and that recessive gene got passed on and secreted away in generation after generation of DNA until it appeared in you.”

  “So, doesn’t that make me one of the bad guys by birth . . . a love child of an angel and a human . . . like some kind of cosmic freak?”

  “Oh, no, Celeste,” he murmured, feeling the density, feeling her honesty pull him in like a moth to a flame. “You are so rare . . . angels will battle over you. That is why you must stay close to me.”

  “What? I don’t understand?”

  He backed up a few inches and removed his hand from her cheek. “Those who have been here since the last alignment or those new to this density desire to lie with a Nephilim more than you can imagine. To speak of it amongst ourselves is taboo, the topic is so volatile.

  “A Nephilim is a hybrid,” he said gently when she seemed confused. “Thousands of us angels walk the earth and battle, hidden among the billions of humans that now exist . . . and there are only seven of you left. Seven human-angel hybrids amid a sea of billions—seven that only those of us sent directly from the Source are attuned to find. Seven, whose inner light when fused with ours . . . I’m told . . . creates a level of physical ecstasy unknown anywhere else. It is the combination of the raw primal nature of the human being combined with the power of the Light also found within the hybrid that is unparalleled. We can also only sire with humans or Nephilim . . . and Nephilim can heal us, can boost our dimming Light, if that happens.”

  “But what happened to all the others like me?” she whispered, suddenly looking around and stepping in closer.

  “The dark side either brought them under their sway or had them eliminated by allowable means—broke them and made them take their own lives via excesses and addictions or outright suicide to stop the pain. Some of my brothers trapped in this density may have found their Remnant and were able to remain by their side, protecting them until we could gather the others like you . . . but some reached their target too late and their chosen was already swayed dark or dead. Those brothers teeter on the very edge of their sanity, as they have been here a long time, searching for another . . . aching for a mate—something not required when living completely in spirit within the lightness of the etheric realms, but so difficult to ignore when one is encapsulated in human form.”

  “I cannot even imagine...”

  “Nor can I, that is why I do not judge my brothers who have fallen once trapped—even though I must exterminate them. I only have disdain for those that were in the original battle and sided with the One Who Remains Nameless.”

  “But you said angels can’t die.”

  “The fallen can be beheaded, just like an original demon can. Those brothers that are still bearing Light are immortal. You can see the Light in their auras, or if you look into their eyes, you can see it behind their pupils, which is why they say the eyes are the window to the soul. Those that are lost will lose all Light in their eyes, which become pitch-black when challenged by a Light-bearer. However, the trapped, our Sentinels, are immortal, if they still bear Light and haven’t traded their allegiance to the dark side.”

  She bit her lip and her gentle brow knit as she continued to stare up at him. “Azrael . . . if I were in that position of being trapped, roaming the earth for twenty-six thousand years, unable to love, unable to enjoy the basic fundamentals of being in a body that was designed for sensory pleasure . . . even something as simple as eating what I wanted or having a drink, or whatever . . . I would go crazy. Maybe even go dark, just so that when another brother found me he could end the misery.”

  “That’s just the thing, dear Celeste,” Azrael said softly, pushing a stray ringlet that had escaped from her ponytail behind her ear. “There is no rest, then . . . only the interminable darkness, disembodied, and in the clutches of a vast, vast Hell. Some of my brothers who are here and still retain their Light are very dangerous to a rare find like you.”

  “But, wait...you said before that there were both male and female angels. Surely if two angels got together, that wouldn’t violate the big order, would it?”

  “No. It wouldn’t.” Azrael released another weary sigh, sad that he had introduced a subject that had put so much panic into her voice. “There are female angels,” he finally admitted. “But when the war cry went out and the hierarchies of Heaven emptied to meet the threat, male energy flooded the planet for war, while feminine energy held the line in the ether minimizing catastrophic events that resulted from our battle. Were it not for this critical feminine angelic energy, many more humans would have died from earthquakes, floods, tornadoes . . . I cannot imagine. Female angels ministered to the human refugees, who were confused and aggrieved from the severe clashes.”

  He looked away as shame and guilt filled him as the memories of the first war flooded back to him. “We were not concerned in th
ose days for the individual loss of human life. We warred fiercely and valiantly, but I now question the honor in all that if it wiped out a village in the process—which many times it did.”

  “Wow . . . ,” she murmured, staring up at him in troubled awe. “So, like, what you’re saying is—all the female angels stayed in the ether or on the other side of this portal, right . . . holding it down to make sure you guys who were battling the Unnamed One and his legions didn’t completely blow up the planet?”

  “Correct. And at times we came close.” Azrael raked his fingers through his locks. “This is why in all the old cultures, the goddess—just another name for female angel energy—was so revered. It is also why as the dark energy on the planet grew stronger, you had brutal systems of control and repression visited upon that gentle feminine energy, and women were stripped out of all religious texts as relevant beings except in a few mentions. The earth is a war zone, Celeste. Only through peace can you achieve true prosperity, advancement, and societal compassion. Existence cannot be dominated by war. So, the role of our sister angels was vital—is vital to this day. They brought balance then and still hold it now. Remember, everything is in balance in the cosmos, and just as above so below. There’s light and dark, hard and soft, forceful and gentle—”

  “Yin and yang, right?” She waited and he nodded, and he was rewarded with her smile. “Told you I watch cable.”

  “It has taught you a lot.”

  “Yeah, but . . . that’s like all the war movies I’ve seen . . . like you had thousands of angels, guys with unreal cosmic power, trapped down here for twenty-six thousand years until the alignment happens again—and you’re telling me with all those troops, with all those boots on the ground of physically spectacular male beings, they were supposed to just chill and not lay with a female human?”

  “It was the Order—the prime directive from a Source that you don’t argue with.” He lifted his chin, not wanting to continue the conversation, but he could tell from the look in Celeste’s eyes and the tone of her voice that she wasn’t ready to let it rest.