Edge of Heaven

by Rhiannon Leith

  “No!” Hopkins shrieked, splashing through the water towards them. “No, she’s unclean. She’s tainted. She has to die to be saved. She has to die.”

  Lily forced her eyes open. Hopkins stood in the water, drenched and raving, screaming at her, and at her angel.

  “Rachel, Todd,” she called with her mind. And they heard her.

  Hands surged up from the water, clawing at his legs. His cries turned inarticulate and he fought back, struggling to free himself.

  “Father!” he cried, as they dragged him lower. “Father! Save me. Father!”

  The black waters of the Acheron closed over his face, flowed into his gaping mouth and still he cried. The number of hands multiplied in response to his struggles, more and more pulling him down. And then everything fell still. The lake stretched out, an endless black sheet, reflecting only the lights on the shore.

  Lily looked up into Micah’s face. He was just visible inside the column of fiery magnificence that held her. And yet the flames didn’t burn. Rather it felt like sitting in a pool of sunshine. She smiled and saw him smile in return. Behind her other figures moved, hurrying towards them or rushing to the shore.

  A man in white threw himself towards the water but fell to his knees before he reached it, keening in grief and pain. Another bent towards him, placing a hand that was not quite comfort enough on his shoulder.

  “Enoch,” he said. “It’s over.”

  “He lives,” Enoch sobbed. “He lives on in there. Draw him out, Raphael. Please, I beg you. Draw him out.”

  But Raphael shook his head. “I may not. His victims have him now, as is their right. Forever. It’s their salvation, my friend, to punish him. There are so many of them.”

  “And only one of him.”

  “I know. But he threw away his chance of Heaven when he slew them. Time and again.”

  A woman stepped forward from the ranks of the damned, her golden hair tumbling around her frail, bruised body. She wrapped her arms around her chest and fought to make herself approach the angels, terrified but determined. “Enoch?”

  Lily stared as the woman who had taken part in the abuse of Micah stumbled forward.

  “Enoch? That—that thing was our son?”

  Enoch and Raphael spun around as she fell to her knees, keening and weeping, her whole body shaking with grief and remorse. No one went to her aid. Not a single one of them, angelic or demonic.

  Lily’s heart twisted for her, but she couldn’t move. It hurt too much to move.

  Sam dropped to his knees before Lily, blocking them from her view. “You’re all right. Are you? All right? Lily?”

  She tried to draw in a breath and everything hurt, all at once. She took it in with a sob and a cough which developed into a racking agony that shook her. Blood filled her mouth again and her sight wavered, darkening.

  “Lily,” said Micah, directly into her struggling mind. He glowed from head to foot, her angel, so much more powerful than she had ever imagined. “Lily, stay with us.”

  She was trying. Couldn’t they see she was trying? But it hurt. It hurt so much. And she felt so tired. Blackness welled up around her, from within and without, as if she too was falling into the dark water, pulled down by dead hands.

  She curled against Micah, her head on his burning shoulder, and her hands reached for Sam. He wrapped his fingers around hers and called her name, over and over, trying to draw her back.

  Her eyes fluttered one last time, exhausted, heavy, drained, and she saw another figure bearing down on them, beautiful and terrible, a dull and vicious blade raised in his fist. Her fingers tightened on Sam’s hand and she tried to cry out.

  “Micah!”

  But it was Sam who moved, Sam who rose like a shadow, so quick, so supple, Sam who stepped between Micah’s back and the Nameless’s blade.

  Sam who folded over, who fell.

  And Lily found her voice, in a scream.

  The knife slid through his skin, in between his ribs and deep inside him. Sam stared at it, detached, unable to believe that it was really happening. The knife was created to destroy the Creator, and instead, it was inside him.

  The last few times he’d been stabbed like this it had hurt. Damn, it had hurt. But not this time. This time he felt nothing but bewilderment.

  Of course, the last few times he’d been stabbed, his body had reacted instinctively, beginning the healing process immediately.

  But not this time. No, this time even his body let him down.

  Heal, he told his body. Heal!

  The Nameless jerked his blade out and blood followed it, bright red, glossy, pumping through the hands Sam pressed against the wound. His legs jerked and he fell, all strength flowing out of him with his blood.

  The Nameless cursed and backed away, retreating to the demons as the angels closed ranks in front of Sam.

  Angels, he thought. Protecting me. What a joke!

  Lily called his name, the sound high-pitched and desperate.

  “It’s all right,” he wanted to tell her. “It doesn’t hurt.”

  And then it did.

  Holy shit, it hurt. Fire and ice warred inside him, stretching barbed wire through his veins. His breath burst from his lungs and he arched his back up off the rock floor. Micah and Lily were with him, trying to hold him, comfort him. Even hurt as badly as she was, Lily struggled to pull him into her embrace, telling him she loved him over and over again.

  “Raphael,” yelled Micah, and the voice was not entirely his own. Sam felt it roaring through his mind, and through his tortured body. He remembered that Voice from long ago, knew it as intimately as he knew anything, and he wept to hear it again. The tears felt like acid on his face. “Raphael, you have a sacred duty.”

  The Angel of Healing bent over him. “But he’s one of the fallen, Lord. One of them.”

  Micah’s face didn’t change, implacable, carved of stone. “No. He never fell. He was ever mine. He just did not remember until he saw the threat to my existence. Now, perform your sacred duty.”

  Raphael shuddered and looked into Sam’s face with his endless golden eyes. With a touch that fell like morning raindrops, he laid his hands on Sam’s stomach, his face stilling in concentration.

  Everything fell still around him. The encroaching cold fled at the golden touch and Sam breathed again, a deep breath of relief. The pain faded with his exhalation and he slumped down in Micah’s arms, Lily holding his hands, the sweet darkness of rest rising around him.

  Micah smiled, and it was not just Micah’s smile. “I am pleased,” said the Voice. “I am well pleased.”

  The shadows weren’t so frightening anymore. Sam closed his eyes and slept.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Micah floated in the nexus of power and light, a distant observer of the events unfolding. His horror rippled out when Sam took within his own body the knife intended for the Creator, changing the world, changing reality, and the Spirit with him reacted with detached surprise.

  “You care.”

  Of course he cared. The thought was bitter and sharp with shock at the expectation that he would not.

  “For a demon?”

  For him. For her. Of course he cared. He loved them.

  Micah closed his eyes, but that couldn’t hide him from the Light, from the Word, or the Voice. The Creator surrounded him, cradled him, filled him. He was a vessel filled to overflowing.

  “I have need of you now, Micah. Enoch will be banished. I have need of a Metatron.”

  An image came to Micah’s mind of Enoch walking a rain-drenched street while the lights cast yellowed puddles of light back up at his stricken face. Banished to earth, to walk amongst mortals. Banished as Micah had been.

  “You were never banished.”

  And yet, he was never called home until it suited the angels. He was left to guard and defend mankind, left to his own devices until he was barely an angel anymore, let alone the highest among them. Even the other angels forgot who he had been.

/>   “You served. You did your duty.”

  “I fell,” Micah said. “I did what I did for love.”

  “Of course. That is your primary nature. So did Enoch. And Lara. It’s just a different kind of love. One which I better understand than yours.”

  “And because you don’t understand it that makes it wrong?”

  Micah felt the presence waver, searching for something. It couldn’t be found in Micah’s hostile mind, that much was certain, so it stretched out further. Searching and finding, drawing back what it needed. A way to communicate. A way to plea the case.

  “I never said that,” said the voice of a young woman. Her hair ran in silken lengths of gold down her back and her eyes were violet. Light spilled from them now, light and love instead of fear and hunger. Lara drifted closer, swathed in light, but he knew it wasn’t Lara. Just her form. Lara as she should have been. She too was a vessel.

  Micah knew that he should be glad it wasn’t Lily. No mortal could have survived such a joining. But Lara? All he could remember were the things she had done to him, the things she had helped Asmodeus and the Nameless do. And all the others.

  And something else. I had an angel once.

  An angel who had failed her. She had been like Lily, but she had been damned. But first of all, she had been like Lily. A perfect vessel. Who loved an angel and was ruined because of her love.

  Something sharp and painful wrenched within him and he recoiled.

  “I never said it was wrong, Micah. Love is all. But you are damaged too. I can help her heal. I want to help you heal.”

  “You can’t,” he snapped. “Nothing can. Look at them, at Lily and Sam. They almost died for me. And now you want me to leave them. To desert them for you.”

  “I am your Creator.”

  Tears stung his eyes. Micah tried to hold them in, defiant to the last. And they burned.

  “I have saved Sam,” the Creator continued. “I have wiped away every sin, every ill deed he ever did. I will send them back together, to comfort one another. But I have need of you. First of Angels, Eveningstar, come and stand on my left-hand side as is your rightful place.”

  The tears broke free. Ever since the war in Heaven, when he had been forced to side against his brother, Micah had been excluded from the Holy Court. The forgotten angel, the wanderer, the one they never mentioned. Even the other angels forgot about him. His place was on earth, his role guiding mankind, guarding those who could make a difference, until it reduced from guarding them all, to a nation, to a group, and finally a single individual. Lily.

  The thought of her sent a pang through his shattered heart.

  “You didn’t trust me,” he said, unable to keep a sob out of the words. “When Lucifer betrayed you, you lost your faith in me as well.”

  Lara’s hand touched his cheek, gentle, tender, her skin soft and aglow with light. “No. I trusted you.” An image of him cradling Lily came to mind, an image of him kissing Sam. “I trusted you with the most important task of all. Saving her, and giving him the opportunity to come back from the shadows. Who else could I have trusted, Micah?”

  “And now you’d take me from them?”

  Lara’s face showed confusion and Micah felt the light within him withdraw, the golden waves of sunset drifting to purple night.

  “No. Perhaps not. Perhaps your task is not yet done. But I still have need of a Metatron, one to speak for me and be my Herald.”

  Micah frowned, staring at the face he had hated, listening to the voice he had never ceased to love. “If you will redeem a fallen soul, I think you might have one more deserving than me. She should never have fallen. It wasn’t her fault that the imbalance was created. Yet she has had to pay for it. Because the angels punished Enoch for telling her the truth and made him leave.”

  “It was the law. Divine law.”

  “Which can’t be wrong, can it?” Micah couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

  The Creator didn’t laugh. “No. It cannot. So what are we to do, Micah?”

  “You’ve saved the damned before. Rescued them, raised them. The Magdalene, Saul, Lazarus. You harrowed Hell. There’s an imbalance, isn’t there? A mortal walks in Hell, so there must be an imbalance. Step in. Right it.”

  Laughter rang through the air, the type which lifted the soul, which made all who heard it smile as well.

  “You would command me, Micah?”

  Micah’s lips drew up. He felt more joy than he had since the dawn of time.

  “Do as you will, my Lord.”

  Darkness flowed over him, not the black cold of fear and terror. This was the warmth of sleep and comfort, the sense of being cradled and held safe in the night.

  The light that was Micah, and yet was not Micah, glowed, arms enfolding Lily and Sam. It pulsed and then surged in sudden brightness. Micah pulled away, lifting from her embrace, rising into the air. Lily cried out and, on the far side of the cavern, so did Lara. The damned woman convulsed and threw back her head when the light engulfed her. For a moment the two of them hung above the earth, their feet not quite touching it, their bodies totally relaxed. Lily struggled to her feet, but Raphael’s touch stilled her. Ancient beyond his appearance, the golden eyes told her to be still, to wait.

  Damn it all, she didn’t want to wait. “Micah!”

  Sam stirred fitfully beneath Raphael’s hands, and the Nameless began a string of curses, his demons shying back from Lara and her glowing form.

  “He can’t do this,” Asmodeus shouted. “She’s mine. I won her. She will always be mine.”

  But he didn’t try to pull Lara down, nor did the Nameless attack. They stared, rooted to the spot by whatever was occurring. The light pulsed once more, bright as a supernova, and Lily hid her eyes.

  When she looked again, when the glare had left her vision, both Micah and Lara were gone.

  “No.” The strength seemed to weep from her body and she sank back to her knees beside Sam. Raphael’s solemn expression did nothing to comfort her. “Where is he?” she asked.

  “That I do not know.” He sighed. “Neither you nor Sammael can stay here, not once we leave. The balance has been restored now and you are no longer safe. The Nameless and his followers will want revenge, on both of you.”

  Lily glanced down. Sam looked so pale, but his face was still and free from pain.

  “The knife has done its work, but I believe I have saved his life.” Raphael reached out one elegant hand towards her. “Let me take you home.”

  Unthinking, she slid her hand into his. “But where is Micah?”

  Raphael shook his head slowly. “That has not been shared with me. All I know is we have a new Metatron, one to replace Enoch.”

  “Micah?”

  The world shifted around her, swirls of light and colour weaving together until, quite suddenly, it resolved into her bedroom. Sam lay on the bed, and Raphael, his white-gold hair looking slightly less perfect than it had when she first saw him, stood on the far side.

  “He will need rest,” said the angel, looking down on his patient with a curious expression. “And he will need love. He is not what he was and he will find that hard to deal with for a time. I trust you will undertake to care for him.”

  “Of course,” she said, trying to shake off the dreadful feeling of numbness. Micah was gone. Gone forever. Taken from her, and from Sam.

  Raphael shimmered, his form moving like morning mist evaporating in the sun, and then he was gone.

  Lily stood there for a long moment watching Sam sleep. Satisfied all was well, she limped to the bathroom, shedding her clothes as she did. Raphael’s touch had cured her ills as well, every bruise and scrape banished from her body. But he couldn’t help what scars remained inside. She washed, drenching herself in hot water, and dried her hair. But she never felt a thing. Satisfied at last that every last trace was gone, she crawled under the duvet and curled up against Sam, holding him, watching him.

  His eyelids fluttered the moment before he awoke, h
is thick lashes trembling against his cheekbones. Lily smiled as his eyes opened, the deep brown of dark chocolate or black coffee. They reflected her face, much as his exhausted smile reflected hers.

  “You’re alive.” She pressed her hand against his chest to feel the beating of his heart.

  “Am I? Should it hurt this much?”

  “I think it’s generally a good sign.”

  He tried to smile. “Where’s Micah?”

  Her face froze, and answering panic filled his. Beneath her hand his heart rate increased.

  “They said—that is, Raphael said there was no Metatron, not after Enoch was banished. So—”

  “So Micah volunteered?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. But he’s gone.”

  Sam rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling. “I guess it makes sense. I never realised who he was. If I had…”

  “Would you have been nicer to him?”

  He grinned that same old wicked grin. “Christ, no. I’d have been even worse.”

  She gaped at him. “Sam, you said Christ. You’ve never said Christ before.”

  “’Course I have.” But he hadn’t. She was certain. She was about to say so, when Sam said, “The bloody Eveningstar. How did I miss that?”

  “I’ve never heard of the Eveningstar.”

  “I’d say no mortal ever has.” He rolled back towards her, stroking her hair as he spoke. “In the beginning—I mean, in the very beginning—God created only two angels. The Morningstar and the Eveningstar.”

  “Lucifer and Micah?”

  “Yes, as it turns out, the strongest, the most beautiful, the closest to Him, designed to be his sons and his vessels. Even when He continued to create others, they were the closest, his Beloveds. But Lucifer wanted to be more. When the Creator brought mankind into being, he couldn’t understand why. What need did the Almighty have for such paltry beings as these? And worse, they were given free will, something Lucifer believed they did not deserve.”