Falling Into Darkness

by L. M. Brown

  “Do you include yourself in that number?” Michael waited for Lucifer to say no or of course not, but he didn’t. “Well, how would you go about getting me the promotion?”

  “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”

  Michael scowled. “Are you being deliberately evasive?”

  “I’m offering you your dreams.”

  “What do you know about my dreams?” Michael asked.

  Lucifer ran his index finger down Michael’s cheek. “I know more than you think. Do you accept my offer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does it tempt you even a little?” Lucifer asked. “Or is there something else you desire instead? I can give you anything you want, all you have to do is ask.”

  “How about true love and happiness?” Michael replied.

  “I’m your true love.”

  “But can you make me happy?” Michael questioned quietly.

  Lucifer leered at him. “I can make you very happy indeed.”

  “Be serious,” Michael said. “I’m not talking about sex. Do you really think you can make me happy for the rest of my life?”

  Lucifer frowned, as though he didn’t quite understand the question.

  Michael stood and smiled at Lucifer. “Let me know when you figure out the answer. Maybe then I’ll consider your offer.”

  * * * *

  Michael expected Lucifer to return within a couple of days, with reassurances about how he could indeed make him happy. He was quite disappointed when he didn’t show. He was tempted to ask Gabe if he had seen him, but he couldn’t manage to work up the courage. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

  He spent a ridiculous amount of time wondering where Lucifer was, even going so far as to try to track him down on the Internet. Unfortunately, with a name like Lucifer and no surname to go on, Michael struggled to find anything that wasn’t about the original fallen angel, which didn’t help him at all.

  Sometimes he thought he sensed someone watching him, but he never saw who it might be. He put it down to an overactive imagination, especially when the feelings lingered while he was alone in his house.

  Lucifer might have found a way to enter his home and join him in his bed, but he had been very much present at the time. Unless he had the power to become invisible, Lucifer certainly wasn’t hanging around now.

  “I’m going to be leaving town,” Gabe told him a couple of months after Lucifer had made Michael his offer.

  “Yeah? How long for this time?”

  Gabe took a deep breath. “Permanently, I think.”

  Michael opened and closed his mouth. “Oh. You don’t intend to come back at all?”

  “No. My new job is on the other side of the world.”

  “Well, that’s, er, great.” Michael tried to sound enthusiastic but failed miserably. “We’ll keep in touch though, yeah?”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I’m settled. Maybe you can fly out and visit?”

  “I’d like that.” Michael wasn’t lying, but he couldn’t afford the life of a jet-setter. He felt as if he were on the verge of losing his best friend.

  At first he heard from Gabe every week, before the calls became monthly, then every few months, until they tapered off to holiday calls. It was hard to maintain a friendship over such a long distance, and, although Michael tried, he found himself talking to Gabe’s answering machine more than he did Gabe.

  He missed him, but life moved on. He worked and eventually earned the promotion he wanted. He dated, though he never found someone he wanted to move in with or marry.

  Michael enjoyed life, though sometimes, particularly at night, when the creaking of the house was the only sound he heard apart from his own breathing, he wondered what would have happened if he had accepted Lucifer’s offer. Would Lucifer be with him now, sharing his bed and home, forever?

  He guessed he would never know.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Michael lived a long life, something that constantly surprised him, considering how accident-prone he had been from the age of twenty onward.

  He suspected the end must be near when he began hallucinating. Gabe, his old friend, whom he hadn’t laid eyes on in sixty years, stood at his bedside, looking just as he had the last time he had seen him.

  “Hello, Michael,” Gabe greeted him with a smile. “I’m here to take you home.”

  “I think the doctor might have something to say about discharging myself,” Michael replied, every word an effort to speak.

  “Not that home,” Gabe said as he took his hand.

  Michael felt strength he hadn’t experienced in years flooding his body. He rose with ease, no longer feeling the ache in his back and joints. He wanted to look behind him, and yet at the same time he didn’t. Curiosity won out and he glanced over his shoulder. He saw himself, eerily still, and knew his life had ended.

  “I guess you were right,” Michael said.

  “About what?” Gabe asked.

  “There is more after death.”

  “Of course there is.”

  Michael frowned. “When did you die?”

  Gabe shrugged. “I haven’t died.”

  “Then how…?”

  Michael gasped as wings appeared on Gabe’s back, spreading out behind him, pure white and beautiful.

  “I’m here to take you home,” Gabe said again.

  This time Michael didn’t try to argue with him. He let Gabe guide him to whatever came next.

  Heaven was just as the stories described, beautiful and bathed in eternal sunlight. Angels walked around, as well as others like Michael, the newly deceased, staring at everything with wonder. Everyone appeared young and beautiful, and when Michael studied his own hands he saw that they too showed no signs of his advanced years.

  “I have a confession to make,” Gabe said.

  Michael raised an eyebrow and waited.

  “I was never human,” Gabe admitted. “This is what I’ve always been.”

  “An angel?”

  “An archangel, actually,” another angel said. “Welcome home, Michael.”

  Michael smiled at the second angel. “It’s nice to meet you…er?”

  “Raphael,” the angel replied. “And you’ve already met Gabriel, of course.”

  Gabriel shrugged. “I thought Gabe sounded more modern.”

  Michael laughed. “The archangel Gabriel. No wonder you were so convinced there’s life after death.”

  “Well, I did have some inside information,” Gabriel admitted. “Now, about my confession.”

  “It’s not that you’re an angel?”

  “No. There’s something else.”

  Michael waited while Gabriel glanced shiftily at Raphael. “What is it?”

  “I stole something from you,” Gabriel finally said.

  “What?” Michael frowned in confusion. “Everything I ever had is back on Earth. I don’t think it matters anymore.”

  “Oh, it does,” Gabriel replied. “I stole your memories, Michael.”

  “What?” Raphael beat Michael to it with the question. “Oh, Gabriel, you didn’t?”

  “I don’t understand,” Michael said. “What are you talking about? I remember everything. I don’t have any gaps or lost time or anything.”

  Gabriel took his hands in both of his. “Michael, it’s extremely rare for an archangel to go to Earth to bring a soul here. We only do so on special occasions, and for very special people.”

  Michael didn’t think that described him, but he sensed more to come.

  “Michael, you were—are—an archangel, just like us.”

  Gabriel appeared nervous as he waited for Michael to react to his statement.

  “You can’t just blurt it out like that,” Raphael scolded. “Michael, come on, let’s go somewhere quieter. Gabriel has some explaining to do.”

  They ended up sitting on a beach that Gabriel and Raphael told Michael was his. He liked it and felt maybe this could be his home.

  �
�You decided to give up your wings and be reborn,” Gabriel explained. “When a person steps through the archway they lose all memories of their life before that moment. I stole your memories from you, right before you took the final step.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I thought you were making a hasty decision, and this way I could return them to you when you came home.”

  “You mean now?” Michael said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why did I give up my wings?” Michael asked.

  “You thought it for the best,” Gabriel said. “Here, let me give you your memories back. Then you’ll have the answers to many of your questions.”

  Michael waited as Gabriel leaned in toward him and kissed him for several long minutes. The kiss wasn’t sexual, and there was no desire there, it was something else, though Michael couldn’t say what exactly.

  When Michael pulled away his memories had been restored to him, just as Gabriel had promised. There was so much inside his head, he felt overwhelmed and didn’t know quite what to think about first.

  “Michael?” Gabriel said. “Are you okay?”

  “You’ve seen my memories,” Michael replied, unable to meet Gabriel’s eyes.

  “Yes.” Michael could hear no judgment in the quietly spoken word.

  “You saw what happened in the Underworld, the last time I went there.”

  Gabriel took Michael’s hand and squeezed his fingers. “Lucifer was drunk on power. He wasn’t himself.”

  “Don’t make excuses for him,” Michael said. Knowing that Gabriel had seen him kneeling at Lucifer’s feet, sucking his cock in front of a room full of demons, embarrassed him even more than the event itself had. “And don’t excuse my behavior either.”

  “I’m not,” Gabriel replied. “I saw everything that happened, through your own eyes.”

  “Then you saw how easily he manipulated and used me. All he has to do is hint someone will take my place in his bed and I agree to anything he asks. How long do you think it would have been before I fell from grace?”

  “I don’t believe you would have,” Gabriel replied. “You chose to be reborn rather than risk falling. Your will is stronger than you think.”

  “I was running away and we both know it. Not that it did any good. He still found me.”

  “Lucifer is most persistent,” Gabriel said.

  “We hid you as long as we could,” Raphael explained. “Unfortunately, as suspected, the older you grew, the more of a beacon your angelic aura became, until it shone so brightly we could no longer hide you.”

  Gabriel nodded and picked up the story. “We hoped we wouldn’t have to interfere directly, especially when you made it clear you weren’t interested after he first approached you. You saw Raphael and me warning him off too—we hoped our threats would be enough to keep him away. Unfortunately, as you know, he decided against leaving you alone, and when we spotted him watching you again, it was decided I would go to Earth to protect you, as your guardian angel. We made a deal with Lucifer that he could only go to Earth to see you when I was in your presence.”

  “Please tell me you weren’t in my bedroom the nights he came to me there,” Michael begged, his face heating with renewed mortification.

  “No, of course not,” Gabriel assured him. “Lucifer never did stick to the rules. After you told me about your dreams we realized what he was doing.”

  “Do you know why he didn’t come back to me again?” Michael asked.

  Gabriel and Raphael exchanged a glance.

  “What is it?” Michael questioned. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Gabriel spoke first. “After you told me he had been visiting you, in what you thought were dreams, we brought him before us. It was agreed that, as you were human, we couldn’t stop him from making you a legitimate offer, just as he would any other human. I admit we encouraged him to do so, since it seemed fairer than the way he was using sex to lure you to him. What we don’t know is why he stepped back. He told us you refused his offer, but we don’t understand why that would have kept him away. When he usually recruited and an offer was rejected, he’d just make a new one, until he got what he wanted. Not that he’s actively recruited humans in centuries, not since relinquishing the ability.”

  “How did he get the power back anyway?” Michael asked.

  “Well, I didn’t give it him back,” Raphael muttered. “I voted against it.”

  Michael turned to Gabriel. “What happened?”

  “When Lucifer discovered what you had done he was furious. He declared all previous agreements between himself and the archangels null and void. He demanded his power to convert humans back.”

  “And you just gave it to him?”

  “No, of course not. As Raphael said, we took a vote.”

  “I can’t believe that vote passed,” Michael said.

  “Lucifer made it clear he would do a lot more damage if we didn’t give him the ability back,” Gabriel explained. “With the power boost he received from the second fall of angels, we have no doubt he could have carried out his threat.”

  “Has he recruited many new demons since the vote?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “Not a single one, at least that we’re aware of. As far as we can tell, the only one he has tried to recruit is you.”

  “And he didn’t exactly try too hard to win me over,” Michael muttered. “I don’t understand why he gave up so easily.”

  “You’ll need to speak to Lucifer directly about why he didn’t make you a new offer,” Raphael said. “Only he can answer all your questions.”

  “And it’ll have to wait, I’m afraid,” Gabriel added. “The rest of the archangels wish to speak to you first.”

  Michael nodded and followed after his friends. He wondered what Lucifer would have to say when they finally came face to face again.

  * * * *

  The archangels’ chamber was just as Michael remembered. Even his seat was there, though he wondered whether it was actually his, or if he had lost his place amongst them forever.

  “Welcome back,” Metatron said as Michael hovered in the archway between Gabriel and Raphael. “I’m Metatron.”

  “He knows who you are,” Gabriel interrupted. “Unbeknownst to Michael I held his memories in safekeeping for him. They have now been restored to their rightful owner.”

  Metatron gaped at Gabriel while the other archangels began to whisper. It seemed Gabriel had told no one what he had done.

  Metatron recovered his composure and waved them into the room. “In that case, we won’t keep you long. I’m sure there are others you’ll want to speak to soon.”

  Michael nodded. He hoped his parents, the humans who had raised him, were here, as well as his daughter.

  “Michael, please take a seat,” Raguel asked, pointing to the chair in the center of the room.

  Michael cast a quick glance at his former place but didn’t approach his old seat. When everyone had sat down he was relieved to see that his old chair remained empty. At least he hadn’t been replaced entirely.

  “You’ll no doubt wish to know whether you have earned your wings back,” Raguel said. “I’ll tell you quite plainly, the answer is no.”

  The words were a punch to the gut.

  “You lived a good life,” Raguel continued, “and you resisted temptation, but so do many humans. To earn a set of wings, you must do more.”

  “Not all of us agree with this,” Gabriel interrupted. “Many humans earn their wings over time, without the extraordinary acts of courage and self-sacrifice you seem to think are necessary.”

  “We each recruit in our own way,” Raphael added. “Not everyone follows the same criteria. Some of us aren’t quite so selective as to who we believe will make a good angel.”

  “Nevertheless, the majority have spoken,” Raguel stated. “Michael has lived only one life, during which he performed no great acts of bravery or selflessness. He was almost lured to the darkness by Lucifer himself. And, perhaps mo
st importantly, we have to take into consideration that Michael was not an ordinary angel. If his wings were to be restored he would be a powerful archangel again, with far more powers at his disposal than a newly winged human.”

  “As you point out, Michael is an archangel. He gave up his wings for a reason, and he deserves to have them restored to him now that he’s returned to us.”

  Raguel smiled. “Michael was an archangel, and the reason he gave up his wings is still as relevant today as it was the day he chose to be reborn. Even if we were minded to agree on whether he deserves them, he must still make the choice between his demon lover and his wings.”

  “I think he should speak to Lucifer before he makes his decision,” Gabriel said.

  Michael recalled why he hadn’t discussed the matter with Lucifer prior to being reborn, but perhaps Gabriel had been right. The hurt on Lucifer’s face when he had found out Michael truly didn’t know him could have been avoided.

  “Very well,” Raguel replied. “If he wishes to speak to Lucifer, so be it.”

  “I’d like to talk to him,” Michael agreed. “But I’d rather not speak to him today, if that’s all right.”

  “Of course,” Gabriel assured him with a smile. “Your home is still your home. Why don’t you go there and think things through.”

  Michael nodded and rose to leave. He felt as though he had come full circle, and perhaps he had. Gabriel had been right, as always. Michael should have spoken to Lucifer before being reborn. After all their years together, he had deserved that much.

  * * * *

  Michael made one stop before he went home. With Gabriel’s assistance, since he could not work it himself without his powers, he made use of the pool of visions.

  He looked in on his parents and other family members from his life on Earth, seeing that they had all been reborn to new lives.

  He also checked in on his daughter. At first he thought she too had been reborn, but on closer inspection he realized this wasn’t the case.

  “We noticed she stopped ageing not long after you were reborn,” Gabriel explained. “We’re not sure yet if she has stopped completely, or whether she is merely ageing at a much slower rate to humans.”