Sacred Cups (Seven Archangels Book 2)

by Jane Lebak

  Gabriel kept his smile secret.

  Belior said, “If you can point us toward the seal she’s using, I might consider breaking her hold.”

  Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “I’m sure you’d hand it right back to me, too.”

  “Of course I would.” Belior’s black hair settled over his forehead as he leaned toward Gabriel with a concern that looked genuine. “Just out of respect for our choir, you understand.”

  Gabriel said, “Respect?”

  Asmodeus said, “Are you calling him a liar?”

  Here Gabriel couldn’t fake it anymore and laughed out loud, bringing steel to Asmodeus’ eyes and an added brilliance to Belior’s. “You can’t fool him,” Belior said. “He knows we’d be passing the seal around for the next four thousand years, or at least until Lucifer took our toy away and decided to play with Gabriel himself.”

  Asmodeus leaned closer. “We’re watching her. Eventually she’s going to slip, and we’ll know how she did it. After that, we own you.”

  Belior nodded. “Even better, eventually we’ll convince her to listen to us, and she’ll hand you over without a second’s hesitation.”

  Asmodeus said to Belior, “What you haven’t explained yet is how she snared him without losing her soul.”

  Belior shook his head. “It’s an enigma, but she’s got some natural power of her own, given the guardian assigned to her.” He looked back at Gabriel. “So you can plan on it—eventually you’ll be working in thrall to one of our men.”

  Gabriel swallowed hard. “Charming.”

  “I was thinking of that magician in China,” Belior said to Asmodeus. “The one who sacrifices babies to preserve his youth.”

  “The witch in Rome who predicts the future would be better,” Asmodeus said. “Sometimes she looks too far into the future, and it scares her. But give her Gabriel and she won’t have to look any longer. He could tell her what she wants to know, and she won’t find out the things she doesn’t.”

  Gabriel thought, God, allow me at this moment to express my thankfulness that I’m not actually in thrall to any of these humans they’re describing.

  The Holy Spirit replied with agreement.

  Gabriel turned away. “Thank you for your concern, but I’ll be going now.”

  “Maybe you can help her weed her vegetable garden,” Belior called, and Asmodeus laughed aloud.

  Gabriel flashed to Heaven, to the Ring of Seven Archangels, and he dropped to his knees.

  I really dislike them, he prayed.

  It had worked, though—absolutely their deception had worked, and it was evident in Raphael’s relief, as well as in Uriel’s concern for Mary every time they tempted her, attacked her prayer life, whispered self-doubts into her heart, or tried to sabotage her work. Jesus was growing up shielded from the worst of their weaponry, at least for now. Someday he’d have to cope with their whispering, their lures, the attractions of a world gone dusky, but for now he could have childhood.

  As for himself, Gabriel would accept any amount of mockery and harassment. Besides: now it appeared he’d also get to enjoy the occasional hour of algebra.

  He learned that so quickly, Gabriel prayed.

  God smiled at him.

  We’ll work on quadratic equations when I get a chance, Gabriel prayed. And I want to see what he can do with geometry. Joseph is a carpenter, so at some point Jesus will need to learn about lines of force and potential energy, and geometry will be a good complement to the physics he’ll need.

  God reminded Gabriel that Joseph himself hadn’t learned physics so much as he’d learned about life, about gravity, about stability.

  Stability is the bare essential, Gabriel replied, but geometry is reality.

  God smiled at Gabriel, who returned it with enthusiasm, already planning the next impromptu lesson.

  Are we doing all right? Gabriel asked.

  God replied, Perfectly satisfactory, and Gabriel laughed.

  Four

  Year Five

  Gabriel appeared in response to Mary’s summons.

  She was tucking a cloth into a basket, and as he appeared, she swept her hair back from her forehead. Gabriel reached out to find Raphael shepherding in a field a mile away with Jesus.

  “I’m going to give you an unusual assignment,” Mary said, “and if God has any objections, please let me know.”

  Gabriel inclined his head.

  She lifted the basket. “I’d like you to bring this to a man in prison. Last month my cousin’s son was apprehended by the Romans for theft, and my cousin is convinced they’re not feeding him enough.”

  God’s answer flickered in Gabriel’s heart, along with a sense of amusement. “It’s allowed, my lady.”

  A smile ghosted her lips. “That will be satisfactory.”

  Gabriel took the basket from her. “I’ll need his name, of course, and I ought to sneak it in so no one suspects what we’ve done.”

  Mary gave him the name. God told him the man was awake, but his guardian would work on correcting that.

  While he waited, Gabriel leaned against the wall. “It’s generous of you to do this for him.”

  Mary said, “It’s just a loaf of bread and some fruit.”

  “Even so.” Gabriel paused as he realized he’d made a faulty assumption. “Is he unjustly accused?”

  Mary bit her lip. “I assume he really committed the crime.”

  Gabriel started. “And your cousin talked about it with you?”

  “Of course she did.” Mary shook her head. “No matter the dumb things he’s done, he’s still her child.”

  Gabriel didn’t reply.

  Mary looked abruptly shocked. “Do you think she’d disown him?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Perhaps not disown him so much as not disclose his failings to others.”

  “It’d be hard not to, since he’s not around. She can’t pretend for a couple of years that he’s hiding in a closet.” Mary chuckled. “Besides, she still loves him.”

  Gabriel’s eyes widened. “That must make it even worse for her. One assumes she finds his actions embarrassing.”

  “Probably.” Mary shook her head. “You know how the gossip mills work.”

  Gabriel remained alongside the cooking fire, silent.

  Mary picked up her spinning. Over the past few years, she’d grown to treat the angels like frequent guests rather than visiting dignitaries, and he’d gotten used to her working in his presence. He watched the motion of the spindle, taking comfort in the rotation and the twist. “Okay,” Mary abruptly said, “this is bothering me. What do you know that I don’t?”

  Gabriel squinted. “Quite a bit.”

  “I mean about my cousin. Did God tell you she hates him?”

  Gabriel’s wings flared. “Absolutely not.”

  Mary gave the spindle another spin. “So why would you think she’d cut him off?”

  Gabriel shrugged. “It just makes sense.”

  “To whom?”

  He opened his hands, and the implication was clear: To me.

  Mary sounded forceful. “Not to me. It’s one action. He’s still her son.”

  Genetics made human relations so much more complicated. The ties of family and heritability and marriage made for more conflict and yet more loyalty than Gabriel had ever understood. “I have no children. I’ll take your word on it.”

  Mary cocked her head, and Gabriel recognized someone about to make a definitive point so she’d win an argument. “If you got into trouble, Raphael wouldn’t walk out on you.”

  Gabriel flinched. “I did get into very serious trouble.” He stared at the floor. “To this day, he thinks it’s a disgrace.”

  Mary stopped her spindle and stared at him. “Really?”

  Uriel in the corner was staring as well.

  Gabriel closed his eyes and wished the prisoner were asleep so he could just bring the bread and end the conversation. Since that hadn’t happened, he spoke in a lower voice. “Raphael didn’t walk off, but he�
��s also an angel, and we’re permanently bonded; under the same stresses, I assume a human would feel free to dissolve the relationship.”

  Mary sounded heartbroken. “I didn’t realize that. He seems so friendly with you.”

  Gabriel nodded. “He is.”

  Mary leaned toward him. “But how can something that huge not change the way you interact?”

  “Should it?” Gabriel’s wings raised. “We ignore what happened in order to continue our friendship.”

  Mary wound more yarn onto the spindle, but she did it slowly. “What happened?”

  Gabriel’s shoulders tightened. “It doesn’t matter. The important point is how he got punished too because of me, and the blowback on him just worsens my offense. He shared the disgrace at the time, and now he wants it buried.” Gabriel tightened his fists. “The fact that he ignores it is a testimony to his charitable nature.”

  Uriel radiated confusion, and Gabriel perked up. “I'm glad to know it isn't obvious.”

  Mary returned to spinning, avoiding his eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry for. It’s just something that is.” He paused. “Your cousin’s son is asleep. Will there be anything else?”

  Mary shook her head, and Gabriel departed.

  Mary turned to Uriel.

  “I had no idea,” Uriel said. “But he and Raphael are bonded, so if Gabriel said it, you can accept it as true.”

  “That’s sad.” Mary twirled her spindle again, turning a sheep’s unwanted hair into something useful. “But we’re not perfect. Maybe every friendship has something like that inside.”

  #

  Gabriel balanced on the outer wall of the Roman prison, Mary’s empty basket in his hand. The cousin’s son had dozed off just long enough for Gabriel to make the delivery, and then the guardian had awakened him to eat before the guards saw. Gabriel had requests from five other guardians to send food for their charges as well, and he debated whether Mary ought to hear about this, because doubtless she would.

  Below him were the prison gates. He watched a group of men being released, watched as one was joined by his family, all of whom were thrilled to see him. One young man was escorted by his father, both silent. The rest trudged away without talking, an assortment of firm and discouraged, talkative and brooding, but all of them alone.

  Remiel appeared beside him, sunlight in her golden eyes. “Hey, storm-cloud. How’s it going?”

  He handed her the empty basket. “Would you mind taking this back to Mary for me?”

  Remiel said, “Sure. Oh, wait, I forgot—I’m an angel.” The basket vanished from her hands even as she snickered. “Do you have any other insurmountable tasks?”

  Gabriel shrugged.

  “Ooh. This looks serious.” She put a hand on his arm and brought one of her gold wings up against his grey ones. “Are you knee-deep in theory, or is something bothering you that I could understand?”

  Gabriel bit his lip. “Do you ever find yourself suddenly troubled by something you’d thought settled?”

  Remiel huffed. “That’s pretty much my life.”

  Gabriel pulled his wings tighter. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s not as if I ever forget that I used to have a twin, only he fell.” She looked up for the sun. “But if you want to talk about ghosts from the past, I bet I’m the best listener for you.”

  When Gabriel remained quiet, she said, “You’re thinking about when you got thrown out of Heaven for a year?”

  Pivoting to stare at her, he took a step back.

  She said, “Let’s see: you’re brooding, you’re asking me about old hurts, and you’re hanging around outside a prison. I didn’t need the entire second choir of angels to help me figure it out.”

  Gabriel’s wings sagged.

  Her eyes glinted. “What about it? The fact that it happened at all, or is it something specific?”

  He nudged the wall with his foot. “I dragged down Raphael with me.”

  “He coped with it okay.” In the next moment she giggled. “You didn’t have to deal with him. At some point he determined the exact minute of the day when God put the hammer down, and for the next several months it was a comedy as we all tried to avoid him at that hour, except that then he’d seek out some unlucky victim in order to announce exactly how many days left until you returned.”

  Gabriel forced a smile. “I can picture that.”

  “Ophaniel realized that if he foisted him off on Israfel, she would be just as happy to hear it, only then she got as bad as he was.” Remiel tilted her head. “He didn’t tell you that?”

  Gabriel shook his head.

  She said, “He’s probably embarrassed.”

  Gabriel shifted to long-distance vision to track the silent father and son on the road.

  “But it’s okay,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t use the term okay,” Gabriel said, “if he’s still mortified.”

  “I wouldn’t use the term mortified either,” Remiel said. “Look, at some point, just tell him you know how he feels about it and that you’re sorry, and he’ll probably be shocked that you’re even bringing it up, and he’ll tell you not to think about it again.” She leaned against Gabriel’s shoulder. “You don’t need to keep ruminating over it. It’s done, and it’s over.”

  Gabriel said, “I let him down. I can’t make that up to him.”

  Remiel kissed him on the cheek. “I love you, but you’re being dense. Go talk to him. You’ll feel better afterward,” and Gabriel flashed away, but not to Raphael.

  #

  Two nights later, Gabriel appeared to Mary shortly after Jesus had gone to bed. Mary wove cloth at her loom while Joseph sanded wood.

  Greetings, Gabriel sent to Mary, and she nodded.

  He gestured to his side, where two female angels had appeared, one golden-haired and the other with black hair, blue eyes and sky-blue wings. He indicated the golden one. "This is Remiel. She’s a Virtue and one of the Seven archangels who stand directly before the Most High, like myself.” He turned to the other. “This is Zadkiel, the Chief of the order of Dominions and Michael’s standard-bearer.”

  Mary acknowledged both of them, not speaking because of Joseph in the room.

  Raphael had come to watch, sparkling with curiosity.

  “I trust,” Gabriel said to Mary, “that you will find their combination adequate to baby-sit a sleeping five-year-old boy?”

  Beginning to smile, Mary agreed.

  “Good,” Gabriel said, “because in a moment, Raphael is going to have to chase me halfway around the world to thrash me for doing this!”

  And as he said that, he hurled a snowball at Raphael, then another, then a third, and then flashed away. Raphael let out a shout and followed him in a shower of sparks before the exploding snowballs even had a chance to flurry to the ground.

  Mary laughed out loud.

  Remiel folded her arms and leaned against the wall. “They were both so ready for that.”

  Joseph stared in surprise at the dusting of snow across the floor. Mary left her loom and picked up whatever she could, awestruck as she it melted on her fingertips. “When they get back,” she said to Zadkiel, “remind me to ask Gabriel to bring me a box of this.”

  #

  Raphael appeared at the top of the world only to get pelted with snow. Gabriel was well-armed with snowballs behind the walls of a snow-fort, and Raphael had appeared in the open. Of course—the Cherub had planned it that way.

  Gabriel managed to get in five shots before Raphael flashed into the snow fort, only Gabriel disappeared and started hurling more from a second fort that gave him an unimpeded firing line into the back of the first. Gabriel didn’t get to use the third one because Raphael knew him too well, and instead of following him into the second, tracked back to the third and commandeered that in advance.

  There were shrieks, threats incomprehensible through their laughter, and the invention of the water-ba
lloon when Raphael realized he could form a very thin Guard filled with ice-water. Gabriel fired ice-arrows at Raphael, and Raphael put up a wall of flame to dissolve them in the air. There was hand-to-hand wresting and snow stuffed down shirts, and after an hour, Gabriel’s snow-forts were quite well-redistributed along the ground. There was icy debris scattered everywhere and a Seraph-Cherub pair sprawled on the snow gasping for breath.

  Raphael rolled onto his side and looked at Gabriel, who lay on his back, arms spread from his side, his wings splayed. Gabriel had made himself slightly more solid to really feel the moment, the cold, the aching where Raphael had struck him in the ribs with an ice-ball. His breath heaved, and slightly solid he put up a little cloud of vapor with every one. A half-smile parted his lips as he lay with his eyes closed. The Cherub was exuding rings of calm, and Raphael absorbed them into his heart as only a Seraph can. They focused him, centered him both within himself and within God.

  Propped on his elbows, Raphael brushed a wing over Gabriel’s side and took care of the bruise. Gabriel sent him thanks.

  A question and then an answer arose from somewhere between them, and it could have been from either one, but it felt to Raphael as if Gabriel had been the one who asked if this had been fun for him, and he the one who responded that of course it had.

  Satisfaction from Gabriel. Pleasure because he’d planned and set up the whole thing himself.

  Raphael extended his gratitude. He loved being a guardian, and he would never complain about being with the child, but so much of the assignment was drudgery. The same daily routine, the same people and scenery, the boredom combined with a continuous alert.

  Gabriel’s eyes opened, and his peaceful aura dissipated. He hadn’t realized.

  Raphael reflected that he really admired the Angels who did this without the benefit of the thank-yous he got on a regular basis.

  Gabriel didn’t move from where he lay in the snow, but Raphael could feel him considering: maybe the other archangels could do something, maybe visit every day, maybe give Raphael a breather more often. And then behind it all vibrated Gabriel’s impression that the archangels had done as much for him during the year he’d been on Earth.