by C. Gockel
She was the first to take a life.
Her arm pulsed. It drew her attention in the same way someone tapping her on the shoulder might. Deep within, she saw a dark stain on her soul. That mark, borne of a single second, an unconscious decision, an accident, rid her of her purity. Her actions were solely self defense, and she had never meant to kill Molloch. But no matter her intentions or the amount of guilt she felt, Molloch was still dead. The snake seemed to have found a new resting place inside her. It nestled around her spine and slithered its tail against her gut.
Another sob broke loose. She didn’t know who she cried for: Molloch or herself. She looked up at the cave’s dark ceiling and tried to imagine Heaven beyond the cavern—but she couldn’t. Now, more than ever, she needed to remember she was the Archangel Michaela, General of Heaven, and she knew how to fix this.
But she didn’t feel like herself anymore. She opened her mouth to pray for forgiveness, but the words never came.
Chapter Five
“Oh, how the mighty fall. But I have to say, it was interesting to watch.”
Michaela whirled around, springing to her feet with barely a hint of pain from her injuries, which were already healing. Her first thought was to hide Molloch’s body—until she remembered it was impossible to hide what had already disappeared. Her shoulders slumped, her overtired body sagging back to the floor.
Lucifer stepped out from the shadows of the cave. Michaela wasn’t surprised to see him. One of his fallen, one of her Archangels, had just died. She stared at him, feeling as empty and hollow as Molloch had looked lying on the ground. Lucifer’s black eyes gleamed at her.
“What was that?” Michaela asked. She trembled. Her eyes settled on her arm that still throbbed painfully despite the healing in other parts of her body.
“I honestly don’t know. I’ve never seen that before.” Lucifer drummed his fingers on his square chin. “The snake must have been the darkness of Molloch’s soul. He may have died, but his soul lives on inside you, unfortunately. Everything has to go somewhere, right? Nothing can ever really disappear. Of course, this is all wild speculation, because an angel has never died before.”
The snake slithered inside her, flicking its tongue at the base of her spine. Michaela cringed.
“Nothing to say? I understand.” Lucifer clucked his tongue in false sympathy. “Your first murder can be straining.”
“It wasn’t murder!” She surprised herself. The words came before she stopped them. The tears continued to fall. She had no right to justify her actions, but the words spilled out anyway. “It was an accident.”
“There, there, Michaela. Everything will be okay. You just saved me some trouble down the road.”
She blinked at him, spilling more tears down her pale cheeks. “How can you say that?”
“Please. It’s me, Lucifer. Of course I can say that. It’s who I am, who I was created to be. I was made to bring evil into this world. Save your breath.”
Michaela opened her mouth, but instead of words coming out, tears dripped in. Lucifer sighed heavily and ran his hand lightly over his perfectly styled, dark hair, smoothing imaginary strays back into place. A few gray hairs were sprinkled above his ears.
“That’s what I thought. How can you go home after all you’ve done? Do you really think they will allow you to come back as a murderer? The one you killed was an Archangel, Michaela. Granted, not a very good one, but still, you killed your own. Think of the darkness that stains your soul.”
Michaela wrapped her scrapped arms around her shaking body. She thought nothing of forgiveness or Heaven, only of her soul. Lucifer was right. She had fallen into darkness, far from grace.
Oh, Gabe, she thought. Gabe, I’m so sorry. I’ve failed you.
Lucifer walked up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. Before, his very presence had sickened her, yet now she didn’t even shy away from his touch. His hands massaged her aching shoulders. She closed her eyes and let the tears fall freely.
“Do you know who will win this silly war between your holy angels and my fallen? I didn’t know either. Until now. I will. Do you want to know who is going to win this for me, Michaela? Not you. Not your fallen archangels. Not all the fallen angels in the world. None of you. The humans will win this war. They will be my army. I will take your Earth and your Heaven from you. Everything will finally be mine…” His voice trailed off wistfully.
Brushing her hair away from the mangle of her healing wings, Lucifer ran his hand down the center of her back to the broken junction of her wings. One wing sat limp and useless at her side, the other tucked awkwardly beneath her feet. The pain hummed in her bones, building and building.
“Do you remember the day you cast me out of Heaven? I do. I’ll never forget. It’s not the fall to earth that haunts my dreams. No, it’s the moment you held me over the edge of Heaven. Do you remember? You had my wings in both hands like this.” Lucifer picked up her wings, one in each hand. She cried out. The bones of her wings went deep into her back, grinding and scraping together as Lucifer adjusted his grip.
“I dangled over the edge, half in Heaven, half in space. You stood above me, like this.” He eased her forward until all she saw was her reflection in the stream.
There was a stranger staring back, blinking dull eyes at her.
“And then you placed your foot in the center of my back.” He pulled her wings tight as he put his booted foot on the most broken part of her. Her body bowed, and her head lolled back to once again stare at the missing sky. The pain exploded in her bones, searing her insides raw until she was freezing cold. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and bit her lip to keep the screams inside. She couldn’t stop the tears that leaked through or stop her mind from begging for Gabriel. In the most painful moment of her life, all she wanted was him, and it made the pain even harder to endure.
“You whispered something to me. Do you remember what you said, Michaela?” He leaned so her ear grazed his mouth. “You said, ‘you will never belong.’ And then my body split in half as you tore my wings from my back. Half of me went over the edge of Heaven, and my better half, my wings, stayed in your hands. I didn’t understand what you meant at first. Then I realized. Our wings are our only connection to our fellow angels, to Heaven. Without them, I couldn’t sense anyone. It was a permanent telepathic block. I was completely alone, which I guess I’d asked for when I decided to leave Heaven forever. But you know the worst part—the part that will be torture for you? Everything you were will be gone. Who are you without your Archangels? Without your role as General? Without your precious Gabriel? They’re all gone.”
He licked her ear, his breath heavy on her face. She closed her eyes and waited. “Gabe,” she whispered, but Lucifer didn’t hear. Inside her, Gabriel’s awareness flashed like a strobe light. He was coming, but it would be too late.
“I can’t tell you how much pleasure it gives me to bring you down to my level. We’ll have matching scars. You will forever be broken—just like me. Forever cast out. Never able to return home. That will haunt you, eat at you.”
His grip tightened around her wings as he repositioned his leg against her back. Her eyes reared open. The scream, a gasping sob of a sound, finally escaped her mouth. Michaela wished she could take her punishment in wretched silence, endure it, suffer through it, but she couldn’t. Her hands flailed in front of her, clawing the air. Her struggling only wrenched her wings in Lucifer’s grip more.
“Please!” she screamed, begging. “Don’t do this. Please…” Her voice broke, her throat sticking around the mucus of her tears. She closed her eyes. “Oh, God. Please don’t do this.”
“Everything you once were is no more. Everything you can be isn’t much. Michaela, you will never,” he bent one final time and whispered in her ear, “ever belong.”
She didn’t feel anything when his swift kick tore her wings from deep within her back, splitting apart newly solidified muscle and bone, tearing her in two different directions
. Her vision went white, a light like the wings of a thousand holy angels shining behind her eyelids, and the pain ended. It was the sweetest relief as her broken body fell into the stream with a thick splash.
Please let this be the end, Michaela thought. Let it be over. Let me die as Molloch has died. For all Earth’s beauty and Heaven’s light, I won’t miss them. The lies, betrayal, and pain will finally be over if this is the end. Let this be the end…
Her last thought was she missed Gabriel most of all. She imagined his arms wrapping around her. Gabe… She smiled into the water lapping at her lips.
And then everything went black for good.
Gabriel, something is wrong.
Fueled by those words and the fear in Michaela’s thoughts, Gabriel ran blindly through unknown woods with the smell of pine burning his sensitive nose and twigs snapping beneath his feet. The pull of Michaela’s soul guided him through the darkness. There was nothing else but the night and the blur of trees between them. The other Archangels struggled to keep up.
As Gabriel drew closer, her feelings flared inside him; her agony was as his own. His name was in her thoughts like a desperate plea. Someone was hurting her, and a bitter acid filled his mouth, turned his vision gray. She was out there—hurt and afraid.
A violent growl ripped from his lips. He sprung from the edge of a bluff, leaping into the sky. His wings hammered at the air with long, crushing flaps. The gorge was far below him, the trees small, the lake a shining nickel in the moonlight. Gabriel flew up and over the tree line on the other ridge before crashing through the branches and sprinting away.
It was slower, but he had to run. If he flew too much, the power of his wings would drown out his connection to Michaela. And their link was already too weak, limited by their human bodies. He pushed his legs faster.
He ran for what could have been hours, but it was likely only minutes. Sweat poured down his naked chest. His bare feet were sliced from rocks and roots, but he paid little attention to the pain in his fervor to reach Michaela.
She was so close he almost heard the beat of her human heart, yet he slowed. His steps faltered. The other Archangels pulled up behind him, circling out, watching him, waiting.
Her pain hit him fully then. He heard her screams, and his mind shattered. He crumpled over, stumbling, and falling to the ground. The Archangels surged forward, arms out, reaching for him. Clawing at the soft earth, he tried to drag his body forward. The creatures of the woods fell silent. The other Archangels shrank back, unsure as to what was happening.
Gabriel realized it was he who screamed. Michaela’s presence had disappeared inside him.
She was gone.
Chapter Six
In those same woods, Clark St. James needed directions. Since early that morning, he’d wandered through Kentucky’s Mammoth National Park until he’d wandered himself lost. But he had a bottle of Jack Daniels, and that made being turned around in the dark almost an adventure.
His pink hair tickled his face in the night’s stiff breeze. The wind caused the branches of the pine trees to tilt below the gleam of the moon, dancing the shadows across the path. The sight, or maybe the whiskey, made him dizzy and slightly nauseous. Twigs broke beneath the feet of Kentucky’s nocturnal animals. Clark took another shot of Jack for luck against hungry bears.
Clark didn’t hike much. Actually, he hated nature. He wouldn’t be out there, surrounded by trees and bugs, if he didn’t have a good reason—and he did. For over a year now, Clark had dreamed the same nightmare over and over. He woke countless nights with his chest heaving, vomit thick in his throat, and a scream on the tip of his tongue. Every night he dreamed of his mother, which wouldn’t be so bad if she hadn’t died twelve years ago. More than anything, he needed the dreams of his dead mother to stop.
“They better,” he warned the woods, his words slurring slightly.
They might, Clark hoped, if he proved to himself that Michaela’s body wasn’t in a cave deep under Kentucky bluegrass. He knew all about Michaela and the angels, because he wasn’t a typical human. He was a Descendant of Enoch.
The Descendants of Enoch were like the mythical tiny mice that cared for lions. Since the beginning of man, they’d been the angels’ Earthly caretakers. Long ago, Enoch had written the story of the Watchers in the Book of Enoch. He had been the first man to witness the angels, the first to be confided in, and the first to be trusted. His sons and daughters had carried on the tradition ever since.
Clark spit on the ground and took another shot. He didn’t give two shits about Enoch.
Thinking about the angels and Michaela reminded Clark of the dream. Visions sprang uninvited into his mind before he could burn them away with another gulp. He shivered and stumbled on a root; but when he looked down, there was no root. His mother’s body lie face down in a stream.
Her pale skin shone, giving off its own sort of moonlight in the dark space around her. He heard water crashing in the distance and the soft trickle of the stream next to him. He stood close enough to see that every strand of her flaxen blond hair was wet and plastered to the side of her face. Though her eyes were closed, a soft smile set the curve of her delicate lips. She wasn’t breathing.
Blood ran heavy and thick across her bare back from unseen wounds. The blood mesmerized Clark, because it wasn’t red; it was gold, a bright, brutal richness. He knew what angels’ blood looked like, and his mother was not an angel.
The scene stuttered, flickered like an old, grainy film. When Clark focused again, Iris St. James’ sweet blond curls were replaced by a wild, wind tangled black mane, and Clark saw the body of an angel with her back shredded to bits. But it wasn’t just any angel, it was Michaela—he knew this with dreamlike certainty. He watched as she took a tiny, shuddering breath.
This was the part where a scream would build in his throat, and Clark would wake up.
No matter how hard Clark fought sleep, fought his father, fought to the bottom of a bottle, he couldn’t keep the images of his mother’s dead body away. It was the reason he had come to the park, to convince himself nothing extraordinary was out there.
Not Michaela. And not his mother’s dead body.
He took more than a couple shots, and when he pulled the bottle from his lips, he gasped, and whiskey dribbled down his chin.
Clark refused to think of anything but the sweet tingling of whiskey in his blood and the belly-warming swirling in his mind. No more Mom. No more dream. He started humming the theme from Mission Impossible.
“Oh man, I’m drunk.” Clark drew the words like that was a great revelation.
Suddenly, a scream ripped through the woods like a freight train, and it wasn’t his. It was too loud to be a wolf—the agony in the sound was too human to be a bear. With the scream, the woods grew deadly still, silent as a grave.
Even the breeze stopped. Goosebumps prickled Clark’s skin. His ears rang, and a soft clicking started from the back of his head.
The clicking grew to a steady hum. Clark turned in a circle, looking for the source when the scream pierced the forest again. Clark’s whiskey-tinted vision saw the shifting, boiling shadows grow fangs as the loud humming vibrated the earth beneath his feet. The leaves rustled in the trees without the aid of wind.
Clark gulped. He stood frozen, clenching the neck of the empty whiskey bottle, unable to decide if he should run or hide. It didn’t help that the ground tilted from too many shots of Jack. He was trying to decide when a few bars of “Welcome to the Jungle” erupted from his jacket pocket. His satellite phone’s ringtone was deafening in the dark woods.
The humming turned into screeches as thousands of little animals surged into the sky. Too large for bats, the birds’ furious flapping pummeled Clark with gusts of wind. He covered his ears and clenched his eyes.
Finally, the birds flew far enough into the sky that the distant humming calmed again. The earth stilled except for Clark’s shaking legs. His phone beeped to signal he had a missed call. He opened his e
yes and looked around.
“Holy shit. Did anyone else see th—?” Clark started.
With a soft, sucking crumble, the ground beneath his scuffed boots let go.
At first, Clark thought he was fainting, but he never lost consciousness, only the solid feel of the forest floor.
His stomach ripped upwards and threatened to empty its contents as he flailed in the open void. It seemed as if Hell itself had gobbled him up. The cold moisture of the air whipped by him. Somehow, with his bad luck, Clark had fallen through the roof of a massive cave.
Clark was crashing toward a rock floor, falling to his death, and all he could think about was that he had dropped his whiskey.
Chapter Seven
Clark was petrified of dying, which was ironic given his birthright to fight in a war of angels. He always drove the speed limit, overdosed on vitamins, and never ran with scissors. But no matter his precautions, he was going to die.
It was also inescapable, especially if one’s body was plummeting straight toward a face-to-face meeting with it. But Clark didn’t want to die.
His body hit a wall, but it wasn’t the wall he expected. The air seemed to gel around him, slowing his trajectory until he completely stopped and hovered above the rock floor of the cave. He looked down in confusion. He reached out a hand and brushed the rough stone two feet away. His hand resisted, like he was moving through water.
“What the hell?”
His voice broke the spell, and he was released. The rock smashed into him from its short distance away. It hurt like hell, and Clark bit his tongue…but he wasn’t dead.
Slowly, he pushed up from the floor.
His legs wobbled, but he managed to stay standing. He glanced around, confused. Then he looked up. It was a long fall from the hole above him; he barely managed to see it. Next, he studied the exact spot where he should be splattered.
