Love in Troubled Times

by Gayle Riley

  Sighing, Crowley raised a hand. From beneath the scaly partitions of his horns, light could be seen, red light. Infernal light. Looking at the wife, he spoke a word, one of the words that had wrought creation, the true name of Sleep. On her bed, naked and glistening in sweat, filled with demon seed, the wife was helpless to disobey, and she collapsed into a loose-limbed slumber. Crowley spoke again, a spell of recalling and repairing, that whispered to the shattered masonry that had once been the wall of the wife’s home, reminded it of what it had once been, and what it must be again. In a whirl, the stone and plaster and dust picked itself up and placed itself, seamlessly, back into position. It looked as though nothing had happened at all.

  “I’ll never understand why you bother doing that,” Eo shook his head, as though he were witnessing something foolish. “No human is worth the effort you expend on these spells of yours.”

  “In her mind, what happened tonight was that two handsome human men tempted her, and she cheated on her husband,” Crowley replied patiently, still concentrating on the magic as he placed the last few pieces of stone and glass back into the house. “If she wakes up to find us gone—which she will—and her home destroyed, then what lesson will she take from this? She tried infidelity, walked on her dark side, and it got her a momentary spasm of pleasure and a wrecked wall. Which her husband will no doubt see the next day, and she will, no doubt, be unable to satisfactorily explain. Cue large, blow-up fight. That’s the kind of thing that has people getting introspective and changing their ways, my friend. Better it be something she can easily keep hidden, where the knowledge will take root, and the guilt of it will rot. Give her time to think, not an angry husband in the morning.”

  “If you say so,” Eo grunted. “And you let the angel escape. We could have taken her head as a trophy, Crowley! The Queen of Cups!”

  “We could have done that, yes,” Crowley nodded, ritual decapitation being as second nature to demons as, indeed, the temptation of souls. “But I have better things in mind for her. She’s seen us, what we did in there… I suspect we’ll be seeing her again very soon.”

  Shaking excess magic from his hand, like one working a kink from a muscle, Crowley turned to look up at the moon, something one could not readily see from the Lower realm. He made it a point to take in what he could of the human realm’s pleasures whenever he came here.

  “Yes,” he said solemnly, pale light washing over his features. “I don’t think I will have to do much chasing to get that one.”

  Chapter 2

  For a water angel like Ambriel, Paradise offered one place in particular to truly center the mind: The Astral Ocean.

  In the eastern reaches of Paradise, further than the halls of the departed, beyond the outer gates of the populated zone, there lies an immense stretch of water, in a place where it is always night. The surface of this boundless lake sits in perfect stillness, a mirror of the stars above, and it is here that Ambriel ventured in search of peace, notions of Crowley and what she had seen in the mortal realm dancing in her mind. She set out across the Astral Ocean, footsteps sending out ripples over the featureless surface of the water as she walked upon it. Once she had walked far enough that she could see neither the opposite shore nor the one she had set off from, Ambriel lowered herself into a seated position, hovering just an inch above the water, legs crossed.

  She closed her eyes, and set her mind to finding inner peace, the place beyond temptation.

  Concentric ripples expanded outward from her as she breathed out, and returned to her as she breathed in. Keeping the pace steady meant a perfect, circular pattern washed constantly across the surface of the ocean, disrupting the stars above for a moment, before returning to place. Ambriel loosened the constraints of her form somewhat, allowed her wings to emerge, three pairs in all. The lower and upper pairs, extending from her lower back and her shoulder blades respectively, stretched out, so used to curling inward and covering her body that the new position was a relief, a delightful pleasure. Her middle wings, the flight wings that grew from her waist, bent forward, wrapped around her torso, the eye-tipped feathers just barely brushing the water at their tips.

  She parted her lips and spoke, just two words, whispered to the water. A smile touched the angel’s lips, for they were old words, spoken to the first of the humans the angelic class had appeared before, words that had been needed. A greeting, and a portent.

  “Fear not,” she said, allowing the sentiment to fill her.

  Fear not, for there was nothing to fear. Righteousness was on her side.

  Ambriel stayed atop the ocean for some time, perhaps longer than any human had lived, perhaps a span of seconds; time did not necessarily function in Paradise the way it did on Earth. She sat in silence, close to motionless, only the rhythmic pulsing of her breathing across the ocean even suggesting that she was still alive out there. For a time, that was all. She focused. Below the surface were trillions of water molecules, each drifting in an endless, aimless dance of physics, just as beautiful in their creation and design as any other form of the Creation. Ambriel could sense every one of them, the constant motion, the churn, the flow of it almost hypnotic, and a part of herself dripped down through her wings and into the Astral Ocean, flitting down through the atomic bonds that held it all in place, her mind a dancing quantum impulse writhing amid the microscopic storm. She was One, part of All, just as the All was a part of her One.

  “We do not see you here at the Astral Ocean as much as we should, O Ambriel.”

  Though the voice was gentle and the words kindly, delivered in a pleasant lilt, the suddenness of them jarred Ambriel from her reverie, nearly made her lose balance entirely. Without thinking, her eyes opened and cast themselves to the source of the sound, and there she found a face, youthful and impassive, sticking through the surface of the water in the space made by her crossed legs. Hovering above the figure became impossible the moment she caught sight of him, Ambriel cried out and swung backwards, unmoored from gravity and wheeling. She tipped entirely over, falling into the ocean with a dull thunk, a splash that disrupted the perfect reflection upon the surface of the water completely. Still sinking, she righted herself and stood within the water, looking over the interloper.

  “Taliahad,” she said, slowly, the water offering no difficulty to a being such as her. “I would have thought you busy. I wished to be alone here.”

  “Then I am sorry to have interrupted you,” the Angel of Water and Emotional Healing said, dropping a low bow. “I am busy, but I am also here. We are as this ocean itself, Queen of Cups. We contain multitudes.”

  “So I speak to an aspect of you,” Ambriel nodded, now understanding. Taliahad was second only to the Archangel of this particular element, separating his consciousness to go about Paradise’s work would be as child’s play to him, even as Ambriel herself struggled to perform the same feat. “What can I do for you, Healer?”

  “You are troubled,” Taliahad said, his tone bespeaking certainty in his conclusion. “Your Descent did not go as planned, and so I understand why. I have done the same many times, perhaps I could be of service in contextualizing your experiences for you?”

  “I do not know if I would be of use in even describing what I saw, Healer,” Ambriel said, and returned to her cross-legged repose, now below the surface of the ocean. “There were demons, the creature Crowley and his manservant. They preempted me, tempted the human I was there to parlay with—”

  “Tempted her with sex,” Taliahad nodded sagely. “Do not look so askance, Ambriel. You would not have such difficulty describing the sin involved were it otherwise. I know how it is, for those whose virgin feet first touch mortal soil. It is the thing that would trouble one such as yourself. Did you see it?”

  “In detail. The hulking thing that accompanied Crowley did not see fit to stop his congress as we spoke,” Ambriel frowned.

  “So you saw, and by the expression you wear, I surmise that you felt, too. Is this what troubles you, Ambriel? That w
hat you witnessed held some temptation for you?”

  “It does trouble me, Healer,” she nodded. “Are we not supposed to be above such things?”

  “Above indulgence,” Taliahad replied, “not temptation. You object to the wrong act. Regardless, it is not sex that is sinful, but infidelity. The latter is what you were dispatched to stop, was it not?”

  “Yes—”

  “Precisely. And the First Among the Humans were required to breed, despite being sinless in their original state. Sex is not the issue.” Taliahad shook a hand vaguely, causing bubbles to rise due to the motion. “Thus, thinking about it cannot be problematic for you. You worry for nothing, Queen of Cups.”

  “Healer, I worry because the woman invited me to join them and for a moment I considered it,” Ambriel said, her words gabbled and pushed together. “It… exerts a pull, Taliahad. A pull that has not completely left me.”

  “Temptation, added to curiosity, is a powerful thing,” Taliahad replied. “If we alleviate the curiosity, perhaps we will lessen the temptation.”

  Ambriel said nothing. The Astral Ocean’s tides pulled them slowly back and forth, a gentle ebb and flow that carried with it a slight rushing sound. She stared at Taliahad. Taliahad’s handsome face remained expressionless, itself a mirror onto which others could project whatever they wanted. Still waters, running deep.

  “You seem to be suggesting something there, Healer.”

  “I am. We are angels, Ambriel. We share sensations all the time.” Taliahad swam closer, took hold of Ambriel’s gaze with a penetrating look. “This one is not inherently different. Come to me. Let me show you that what you fear you are missing is not something to be missed.”

  With that, the angel of water reached out, stroked one hand along the curve of Ambriel’s jaw, cupping her cheek, and in that moment, she realized the painfully physical nature of their bodies in this place. Angelic nerves pinged, skin heated up beneath Taliahad’s touch, and as he leaned forward, Ambriel felt her lips part thoughtlessly, water rushing in to fill the space. They kissed, a tentative, small thing, a brush of the lips, the two of them approaching the act they had set themselves to do as though from a great distance. For a time, nothing else entered into Ambriel’s mind, but like all things, this passed. In time, she felt the wrongness of it all, the subtle differences between this person in front of her, and who she knew Taliahad to be.

  “Perhaps next time,” she said, reaching up to grasp the impostor by his hair. “You could do a better job of making your illusion convincing up close.”

  “You’re right,” Taliahad shrugged, his voice changing mid-sentence, and his appearance with it. In a moment, he was something far more terrifying; Ambriel felt her guts seize inside her.

  “Gabriel,” she breathed, flailing instantly away from the Archangel of Water, her lord and commander. “My liege!”

  “But then,” the Archangel stared down at Ambriel, the water of the ocean swirling around him. “The point of tests is that they be completed, Queen of Cups. You uncovered my ruse, but you did so at the point that you failed the test. Would Taliahad truly have offered to lay with you? And had you not been confused in mind and in soul by the temptation of that, would you have ever truly considered it?”

  “Deceit is a sin also, Archangel, yet one we permit if it comes with a purpose,” Ambriel felt her voice shaking, even though that made no sense underwater. She tried to force composure, but it was an attempt doomed from the start. “If familiarity breeds an end to temptation, then Taliahad’s offer was one of comfort, not sin.”

  “Tawdry justification, nothing more,” Gabriel shook his head. “Remove your clothes, Ambriel.”

  Shivering, Ambriel paused. It was clear, from the expectant look in the Archangel’s eyes, that this was merely another component to his test. Nudity was not, in itself, sinful. The First of Man had been naked at the beginning of Creation, after all. His difficulties had not begun until knowledge had turned his nakedness suggestive. Connotation was the source of sin, not bared flesh. To one not already thinking of sex, being naked would be no great thing. Modesty belonged to those with a conception of what they should be hiding, after all.

  It seemed, therefore, that Ambriel ought simply to obey, without hesitation or shame.

  Doing so didn’t take much more than a thought, an angel’s raiment being little more than an extension of their physical form anyway. Her robe faded from her body all at once, leaving Ambriel clad in pink and pale skin alone. She had an obviously female body, exactly as anatomically correct as she needed it to be at any given moment, and in that particular moment, much to her distress, it was anatomically correct with a degree of accuracy that Ambriel had not, previously, thought herself capable of. She knew she was blushing, but she also knew that every part of this was not something Gabriel had to know. Forcing herself to her full height, Ambriel positioned her wings correctly, put her hands to her side, and assumed as close to a normal posture as she could get.

  She looked the Archangel in the eye, somehow challenging him even though she knew such defiance was both unwarranted and deeply dangerous. Yes, she was naked: nudity was just what one did, it carried no inherent moral alignment, one way or another.

  But there was always the flush to her cheeks, the fact that her breasts had nipples and the place between her legs contained a functional hole, things that were unnecessary to her current form and spoke only of what she was really thinking of, commanded to strip before an authoritarian male presence. In that moment, bare and looked down upon by the Archangel of her element, Ambriel had never felt more exposed, the weakness of her thoughts laid bare.

  Gabriel remained silent for a long time, an elongated moment that seemed fashioned to test Ambriel further, to allow her to marinate in the tension she was sure he knew she was feeling. His gaze pierced her for the duration, and Ambriel did her best to look back, unperturbed, but the longer she did so, the more she noticed things that did not add up. The Gabriel she knew would know how to keep a steady gaze, for instance, without the darting, furtive looks down her body that the man in front of her gave, nor the predatory twitching of the lips that this Gabriel seemed unable to stop.

  “Is this a further test, I wonder?” Ambriel ventured, tentatively, hedging her bets as best she could. But she caught the twitch of Gabriel’s lips, the first smile she had ever seen him wear appearing momentarily on a face that simply had not been made for it, and in that moment, she knew. “It is, isn’t it?”

  “Come here, Ambriel,” was all the Archangel said in response.

  “But—”

  “Come here, Ambriel.”

  She obeyed. Of course she did; as… off as everything had been since Taliahad had first shown up, there was a deep, divine instinct within Ambriel that compelled her to do as the Archangels commanded. Her flight wings fluttered through the water, stirring bubbles as she propelled herself across the space between her and Gabriel, stopping just a few inches from him. Wide eyes took in the Archangel—this close, he looked deeply imposing—but there was no hesitation on his part, and with a wide sweep of his hand he pushed her wings aside and slid in between them, right into her personal space. His hands moved through the water, one up, one down; one reaching out to clasp her throat, the other sweeping in between Ambriel’s legs.

  A moment of silence, and then:

  “As I thought,” Gabriel said, his voice quiet, tone clipped. A finger moved. There was no way that he could not feel the hole down there. His eyes narrowed.

  “You really are too easy,” said Crowley, his voice issuing from Gabriel’s mouth. “I thought I would have had to work harder, Queen of Cups. A little challenge, at least.”

  He didn’t move, continued to grasp Ambriel, but the illusion that had wrapped around the demon unfurled, faded away into nothing. Crowley stood below the surface of the Astral Ocean, somehow having breached the gates of Paradise itself, a smug, victorious smile on his face. Ambriel, for her part, didn’t move either, shocked into stillnes
s by this brazen trickery and stunned, in equal measure, by the strange sensation of pleasure caused by the pressure of his hand between her legs. What could be said, in such moments?

  “You.” Nothing particularly cogent, apparently.

  “You seem shocked, Ambriel,” Crowley shrugged. “Lies-within-lies, remember? It is in my nature to conceal my plans under further deceit.”

  “I-I am mostly surprised that there would be anything you would want desperately enough to risk sneaking into P-Paradise to obtain, demon,” Ambriel was helpless to stop herself stammering, as strange new feelings bloomed for the first time within a body not equipped to feel them. Her thighs clenched uselessly around the demon’s palm, though she knew she should be fighting, not merely twitching.

  A demon had infiltrated Paradise.

  “Would a demon need much to break the rules, angel?” By the tone of Crowley’s voice alone, Ambriel could tell he had an escape plan already lined up. Of course, his simple presence here was proof of that. Crowley was many things, but unprepared was not one of them. Nobody spoke as confidently as he did without knowing where their exits were. “Would I? You give me a rule, I probe it for weaknesses. Stay out of Paradise, I’m told. The day hasn’t ended before I have three or four back entrances figured out, just in case. It’s in my nature.”

  “So is dying, Crowley,” Ambriel growled. “Remember what happened to the last demon to step upon these grounds.”

  “I don’t need to,” Crowley shrugged. “I’ve met him. You Paradise people do like to speak of mortality in metaphors, don’t you?”

  “Why did you come here, demon?”

  “An invitation,” his smile pierced the water. “One I know you won’t pass up. I’ll be waiting at the bridge between our two worlds. The closest thing to neutral ground that we have. Come find me at the riverside, Mayflower.”