by Debra Dunbar
“I’m not casting my children into Hel,” Raphael snapped. “How can we possibly sit here as angels, supposedly the most enlightened and balanced of all beings, and even consider such a thing?”
“Of course not!” Tura said indignantly. “ There are other realms. We can have dwarves brought over to assist in their development; we can journey there to visit. It would be a neutral territory, outside the confines of the treaty. And all this is merely conjecture—the box is guaranteed to only produce Angels of Order.”
Perhaps he would make a good Ruling Council candidate, Gabriel thought. They all had their skeletons. If they excluded every angel who had plotted and schemed, who had bent or broken the rules, there would be no one left on the Council. With some minor rehabilitation, perhaps this angel would make a good addition.
Or not.
“No,” the eldest said, tossing the vial of green back to Tura. “There is too much chance for corruption and evil actions couched under benign motives from beginning to end. This project ends now.”
“No!” Uriel’s voice was shrill. “We can make it work. We’ll form a committee to explore options, investigate a way to structure acceptable procedures.”
“I think we should at least look into it further,” Baradel agreed.
“Although I am sympathetic to your views, dear brother,” Raphael interjected. “You are only one member of this council. We should put this to a vote.”
“Vote away. This project will never see the light of day.”
“Too late.” Everyone turned in surprise to Tura. “So convenient that you chose to have your meeting here among the humans. While you all nattered on about how many of us could fit on the head of a pin, my colleagues were announcing the availability of our services. Right now, Aaru is a seething mess of violence and anarchy as every angel tries to claw their way up to the top of our ‘list’.”
The eldest glowed in fury. “I’ll have your wings for this, Tura.”
The other angel smiled. “I think I’ll have yours instead.”
A light strong enough to penetrate his subdued visual senses blinded Gabriel, and he suddenly felt the presence of many angels. The room erupted into action.
Raphael stood and launched the huge conference table on its side as a makeshift shield, nearly crushing Gabriel on the other side. He dropped and rolled, pummeled by the bound reports and the vials of demon essence. Two broke, filling the room with a green haze. It was nearly impossible to see with human vision, so Gabriel reached out with angelic senses to perceive what was happening.
Bolts of white energy flew about the room as Tura’s angels and the Council battled. Rising, Gabriel was again knocked to the floor as the conference table exploded into flying debris. What the heck was he doing in the middle of this? He was a messenger, the Angel of Truth, not a warrior.
Staggering to his feet, Gabriel saw how outnumbered they were with nearly a hundred of Tura’s angels crammed into the small room. Normally it would take an army to go against the strongest angels in Aaru, but here, among the humans, they were vulnerable in their corporeal forms. Tura’s forces were hampered by the close confines of the conference room, but they were also prepared with physical weapons.
An explosion filled the room, and the walls around them vanished, allowing for greater maneuverability for both sides. Gabriel ran for the action, trying to determine who was friend or foe in the blinding light and dust. A blaze of white scored his side. He tripped, landing face down on a human. He stared into dead, shocked eyes then looked down to see the lower half of the man was nothing but a pile of sand. Once again they’d brought their problems into the human world. When would this stop? Filled with anger, Gabriel blindly shot out at everything around him. It didn’t matter. They were the horrors in this world. There was no good, only evil as far as their impact on the humans. He’d wanted to wash the world clean of humans, but it was the angels who had brought this to their doorstep. Samael had been right, but what was done was done. Gabriel couldn’t change the past, but he could change himself, and, hopefully, the future.
He dove at the nearest angel, taking him by surprise. The angel blocked Gabriel’s blast, and jammed cold steel against his chest, firing off ten rounds from the human weapon. The impact drove Gabriel backwards a step into the sharp edge of a table, but he managed to keep a firm hold on the angel, wrestling to grip his spirit self. The angel twisted to get loose, hammering Gabriel with both his fist and bolts of energy. He might not be a fighter, but Gabriel was old, and he was strong. He put a hand back on the table to stabilize his physical form as he fought the angel for control, and felt something soft and sticky under his palm.
A pastry.
His hand curled around it, digging through the icing shell, the sweet caramel center, and the roped bands of bread. Grain, strands of delicate gluten, dairy fat, and sugar. Far more sugar than any human should ever consume. Raising his hand, Gabriel crammed the pastry into the angel’s face, crushing it deeply into his eyes and nostrils. The angel sputtered, hesitating in his surprise and giving Gabriel the opening he needed. He seized hold of the angel’s spirit-self and tore through it, blasting it directly. His opponent realized the danger and struggled, hitting Gabriel repeatedly in the face with the metal human weapon. Gabriel grunted in pain, ignoring the tickle of blood running down his face, and the burning agony in his chest. He shook the angel like a terrier with a rat, letting go as the last bit of flesh and spirit dissolved into sand.
One down, one hundred or so to go.
Without pausing to heal his wounds, Gabriel looked around for the area of greatest need—Uriel frantically battled two angels, hampered by the crystal box clutched in her arms. Raphael was gleefully whacking angels with chairs, blasting them as he knocked them to the ground. Baradel had crawled behind the table, desperately healing his tattered flesh.
Gabriel saw a flash of light and turned to see his eldest brother, sword blazing as he single-handedly fought nearly the entire rebel force. Of course they would target him, the one who had always been the strongest, their leader in spite of the alleged equality of the Ruling Council. Take out the eldest, and the rest of them would be scrambling for power. Anyone with enough force could take Aaru with the strongest angel gone. Gabriel paused. How many times had he wondered what life would be like without him? How many times had he been ridiculed, humiliated, mocked? Perhaps Aaru would be a better place without him.
Then he thought of his brother’s expression as he looked at the Iblis, his pain and sorrow as he’d held her broken in his arms. Suddenly Gabriel saw a whole different view of his childhood than the bitter one he’d clung to all these eons. He remembered feeling protected. He remembered Micha encouraging him as he pulled the seas into his embrace, creating intricate globes of water and ice. Most of all, he remembered his brother’s empathy during his own darkest moment. It had been too late when he’d realized how much he’d loved Samael. There was no way he was going to let that happen again.
Angels crowded close. The swinging sword slowed, unable to gain advantage in close fighting. Gabriel saw Tura and ran toward him even as he felt the sizzle of human magic from a device in the angel’s hand. A light shot from Tura’s hand, and Gabriel slammed into him, knocking him to the floor. As Tura fell, the beam of light glanced off its intended victim and cut in a wild arc across the room, instantly dusting a dozen rebel angels and disintegrating the back half of the hotel. Tura snarled and twisted, swinging the weapon toward Gabriel. It seared along his left wing, the smell of melted feathers filling the air, but it was the agonizing pain as sections of his spirit being burned away that occupied Gabriel’s mind.
I’m dead, he thought, realizing the trajectory of the magic would slice him in two.
“Four!”
A wooden chair leg smashed into Tura’s hand, and the light spun away, sputtering out as a small metal object flew from his hand and bounced across the room. Gabriel had only a moment to look into Raphael’s gleeful face before Tura threw him a
side to land painfully on his damaged wing.
“I’m benching you for the quarter.”
Gabriel felt his younger brother’s hand on his arm, dragging him to a spot next to Baradel behind a sofa. He took one look at the other angel, still trying to heal his physical wounds, and pulled himself upright. He’d held back two and a half million years ago, but there was no way he was going to let his brothers and sister fight this one alone.
But by the time he’d managed to make it to the center of the room, the fight was over. Bodies and piles of sand littered the floor—most of them angels, but quite a few of them human. There were too many to count, but Gabriel quickly realized that many angels, including Tura, had escaped. Five angels stood around him, all bloodied and damaged. Uriel put the crystal box gently on one of the unbroken chairs, and went to Gabriel, hovering a hand over his mess of a wing.
“You’re hurt,” she said.
“We’re all hurt,” he answered. “And we’re going to face even worse back in Aaru. But the big question on my mind is how did Tura know where we were meeting? He had to have known beforehand to plan an ambush like this. No communication came or went from this room once I gated him in. Someone tipped him off.”
They all took a step back, looking at each other with suspicion.
“It has to have been one of us,” Raphael said. “We are the only ones who knew, and we were all aware of how confidential this was. We have a traitor in our midst.”
“Tura is in Uriel’s choir,” Baradel noted, edging away from the angel. “She was clearly in favor of this project—perhaps she tipped him off to gain advantage in his presentation.”
Gabriel felt the sharp scrape of Uriel’s power. “Plus Furlac was also in Uriel’s household, and he was working with Tura when he was killed.”
Uriel spun around, glaring at each of them in turn. “The other angel involved, Vaol, was in Raphael’s choir and you’re not accusing him. You all saw the rebel angels that attacked us today—there were members of every choir involved in this.”
“But Tura was clearly the leader,” Baradel continued. “I wonder if you weren’t behind this entire breeding project from the start. It wouldn’t surprise me.”
Uriel’s gaze drifted to the box of crystal.
“You had been supporting this project through Furlac,” Gabriel said. “You had to have known about Tura’s involvement. How deep is your connection in this, Uriel?”
“I’ll admit to supporting and funding the project secretly,” she said, looking toward Gabriel in appeal. “I contributed whatever resources to it I could, but it was Tura that approached me, not the other way around. And I was absolutely not behind the coup attempt or the rebellion going on in Aaru. I only wanted to see creation in Aaru once again.”
“At all costs?” Sidriel chimed in. He’d been oddly silent throughout the entire meeting, his obsequious behavior absent. Gabriel frowned, remembering something.
“Tura wasn’t always in Uriel’s choir. He used to be in yours, Sidriel.”
Sidriel shrugged. “He was angling for a Ruling Council spot and felt it would better serve him to change choirs. It’s not uncommon.”
“Vaol was also in your choir before moving to mine,” Raphael noted. “As was Furlac before going to Uriel’s.”
“And you were the one who enlightened me about this little project,” Gabriel said, moving closer to the angel. “You were the one who had the ‘connections’ to put me in touch with the angels in charge. Why me? I’ve never expressed any burning desire to create, and Uriel was already a strong supporter. Could it be that you felt I’d be supportive of your other ‘project’? The one to take our eldest brother out of the picture and completely re-arrange the power structure in Aaru?”
Sidriel remained silent, but his aura shifted, twisting with black hate. Gabriel reached out, but his younger brother was quicker, snatching the angel’s arm.
“Let me, brother,” Raphael grinned. “You’ve only got one and a half wings right now. I’m in better shape to make sure our friend enters his rehabilitation with a calm and centered demeanor.”
The pair vanished in a flash and Gabriel turned to his eldest brother. “Aaru. We need to get there.”
“Not yet.” The sword vanished from his hand, and the ancient angel turned to face the small crystal box on the striped cushion of a chair.
“No!” Uriel shrieked, throwing herself over it protectively. “You can’t. Micha, don’t do it!”
“It’s not right, Uri. You know it’s not,” he said gently, crouching down to look directly into her face.
She sobbed. “You don’t know. Every waking moment I see the look on Marax’s face as I left him. I turned my back on my life partner, on my child, and for what? Empty, meaningless rules, and philosophies I never fully believed in. I walked away from the most important parts of my life, too afraid to stand alone as an Angel of Order in favor of the rebels.”
She looked up at them all, very human tears streaming down her face. “I know you all think I desperately want a child to replace Haka, but this box isn’t for me, it’s for Aaru. I want every angel in Aaru to feel the joy I once had. I made a terrible choice and lost all I held dear. This box can heal Aaru and maybe allow me to finally forgive myself.”
The eldest cupped Uriel’s cheek, his eyes full of sympathy. “I recognize the hand that went into the making of this box, and I can assure you that every being it creates will be a twisted monster. Maybe not at first, but it will happen. I agree that things must change in Aaru, but this isn’t the way to do it. There will be no quick fix for our problems, and no easy redemption for you, Uri. You are the Angel of Prophecies. Surely you see this yourself?”
She nodded, and with one last glance, handed the box over with shaking hands. “I request pilgrimage, my brother.”
Gregory crushed the box, raining a cascade of sand upon the bloodstained carpet. “First, we must bring peace to Aaru, my sister, and then you shall be granted your pilgrimage.”
28
Gone. It was all gone.
I’d managed to sneak through the demon lands using the edges of the elven forests as cover as I made my way home, but there was no more home. For nearly seven-hundred years I’d owned this dwelling, and now all that remained was a smoldering pile of wood, melted metal, and rock. Portions were so hot that they were pools of lava, bubbling red with a cooling, blackened crust. I could feel the fury in the destruction, and my stomach lurched. Where could I hide? There had to be somewhere to hide.
There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere that he couldn’t find me. The longer I drew this out, avoided him, the worse it would be. If I had any hope of staying alive, I needed to go to him and beg for forgiveness. I needed to hope that the devouring ability he so desperately wanted would cool his anger and stay his hand, even though I had no intention of allowing him to breed the monster he wanted to create. If I survived the next few days, the next thousand years would take every bit of passive aggressive skill I had.
I turned and began my long walk toward Ahriman’s nearest house. I hadn’t gone far before I saw them. Ghostly shadows, like red chiffon in the wind. The Wisps rolled in from the east, separating as they spied me, each taking a strategic route to surround me for capture. I stood still, head lowered in submission as I tensed, waiting.
“I’m on my way to him now,” I called out. “I was given two weeks to put my affairs in order, and I’m ready to begin my contract.”
The Wisps swirled in close, blistering my skin where they brushed against me. They never spoke, communicating only through touch and mindspeak. These refused to do even that, taunting me with the threat of their nearness, leaving me wondering if I’d even make it to Ahriman alive. I gritted my teeth at the welts and blisters their touch caused, reluctant to fix the wounds with my limited abilities. It would be best to save my meager powers for the coming confrontation.
Prepare for transport, one of the Wisps said.
They all circled me, pressing close un
til I gasped with pain from their stinging touch. In a disorienting jolt, I found myself in a cold, dark room. The smell of mildew and damp decay filled my nose, and I squinted, trying to adjust my human eyes to the dim light.
The Wisps vanished, and I stood as still as possible. I wanted to assess my surroundings without alerting any potential other resident to my presence. Normally I would welcome a fight with another demon, but I wasn’t exactly sturdy in this human form. Dripping echoed from behind me, accompanied by a shuffling sound, as if something were dragging itself along the hard floor. I tensed, judging by the sound that the moving creature was a safe distance away.
Slowly the room came into focus. Stone and dirt walls with brown and red slime interspersed with black mildew. The room was about thirty-by-fifty, with several dark passageways on both my left and right. As silently as possible, I turned around to see the room open up far behind me in a hallway. It was dark and extended beyond the limits of my eyesight. I smelled oil and soot, rotting flesh and burned hair and knew he was near, watching me, even if I could not see his form. How could he do that? How could he exist in a spirit form within Hel, survive without a corporeal shape to house his being? Or was he possibly within the very molecules of air itself? I held my breath, suddenly afraid of where the inevitable blow would come from.
A shape materialized in front of me, sliding across the ground to rest by my feet. I jumped, letting my breath out in a rush and stared at it, alarmed. A blackened, charred husk, a torso with burned sticks for extremities lay before me. I recognized it.
The only reason I did not let the Wisps have you is that I am intrigued by this latest kill of yours.
Ahriman, his mindspeech like a whip in my thoughts. And the body before me was the high elf, formerly known as Feille. I hoped the demon didn’t recognize him. He didn’t look much like an elf right now. He didn’t look much like anything right now.
“The torture,” I stuttered. “I told you I had an enemy I was torturing. Well, this was him. I’m here now, ready to start our contract.”
