by Jane Lebak
Michael chuckled. “Because they’re master manipulators.”
“That would be my first task if I were manipulating someone.” Saraquael let him go and offered a smile. “I’ll get two teams of questioners together. Do you want to stay involved with Hastle?”
Not Hastiel. Not anymore.
“No,” said Michael. “Right now, though, we’ve got other concerns and no clear direction. How safe are Remiel and Zadkiel?”
“Not very.” Saraquael’s feathers went dull again. “The area is isolated, so I’m not concerned about other humans as much as I am the demons.” Walking to the window, Saraquael said, “Two humans out in the middle of nowhere with no means of support and no obvious reason to be there is going to attract attention from the enemy. We need them moved.”
Michael sat on the edge of the table. “Raphael?” he said into the air.
An answering spark blossomed in his heart.
“Any further thoughts on whether we can transport them?”
Another answer: still unclear.
Meeting Saraquael’s eyes, Michael shook his head. “Thanks. Keep working on it.”
Saraquael said, “Is that No, it’s dangerous, or No, we haven’t established its safety?”
“The latter. It’s just too uncertain until Gabriel comes up with what that weapon did.” Michael folded his arms. “In an emergency, sure, I’d try it, but right now it’s not an emergency. Leave them where they are.”
Zadkiel spent her time meditating. While Remiel paced the area where they’d taken shelter, she kept her attention on God’s life in her heart and the taste of wine on her tongue.
A human body: a weird little machine, clumsy and limited in so many ways and yet in other ways such a marvel. If she touched her skin in the thinnest places, she could feel her own heart beating. She could manipulate her sensations by holding her breath or concentrating on one limb or another.
The only thing she couldn’t affect was her vision, so instead she directed attention to her other senses. She focused on the heat and cold on her skin from the sunlight as it slanted. She absorbed all the information about her body’s position and how heavy it felt versus where it felt most energetic. A few stretches seated her mind a bit more in her own positioning, and slowly she became more comfortable moving. She listened to the stream passing nearby and wondered about the volume of water, something she’d never fully considered before but which continuously came from somewhere and moved to somewhere else.
Remiel’s footsteps circled again. “Are you patrolling?” Zadkiel asked abruptly.
Zadkiel’s cheeks heated up. She was a soldier. She ought to have been on patrol, or at least set one up.
“What? Oh, no, well, I guess maybe.” Remiel gave a nervous laugh. “I can’t stay still. I tried, but I want to be moving.”
Zadkiel said, “Stress hormones.”
“Oh. You think so?” Leaves rustled as Remiel came nearer and sat. “That would be a relief. I didn’t consider that the body might be doing it to me. Maybe it’s not as bad then.”
“You’re not used to body chemicals. Neither am I, really, but I’ve felt them before.” Zadkiel reached for where Remiel should be, failed to find her, and finally Remiel clasped her hand. Nice job, Seeker. “It’s a lousy situation, but I don’t think we need to panic.”
“I keep wanting to run. I’m not leaving you,” Remiel added quickly, “but even though there’s nowhere to go, I want to escape.”
“That’s what physical bodies do when they feel trapped.” As she said the last, Zadkiel’s mouth tightened, and she steadied herself.
“It’s okay.” Remiel squeezed her hand. “You’re more trapped than I am. But if it’s just the body doing this to me, it’ll be okay. It’s not real.”
It was real, of course. Saraquael maybe hadn’t needed to scare them quite as much as he had, but the truth behind his words was still in force: if they were stuck in a body, and the body died, what would happen to their spirits? Did Asmodeus know where they were? With the entire army of Hell at his disposal, was he now combing the Earth one blade of grass at a time to locate them? But Saraquael had wanted Remiel to be more serious, and Zadkiel wouldn’t argue with success.
She tensed the underbrush rustled with the passage of an animal, but it sounded small and quick. She’d already had to deal with the fear that insects were crawling all over her; she didn’t relish the idea of rodents or snakes.
Remiel said, “It’s also not real that I’m hungry, right?”
Zadkiel fought a grin. “That’s entirely an illusion.”
“Good, because when people get hungry, they get snappish.” Remiel sounded more relaxed now, as if she were smiling. “I distinctly recall Gabriel bringing food to Elijah in the wilderness when he needed it. I should pester Saraquael. I bet he’d bring us something good.”
“We’re in a forest, not a wasteland.” Zadkiel gestured around her. “It stands to reason there may be something edible nearby. Let’s go foraging.”
When Remiel didn’t reply, Zadkiel started to stand. “I’m pretty good at finding hidden things.”
“No, it’s not that.” Remiel let go of her and got to her feet quickly. “You stay put. I’ll look.”
Zadkiel said, “I’m not helpless.”
“You’re not helpless, but there are tangles of vines and rocks and roots jutting up out of the ground. You stay here.”
Then she was gone, and Zadkiel stung with uselessness.
Dead weight. Remiel didn’t even want to leverage the one talent she actually had.
In the quiet, Zadkiel returned to meditation and that strong pulse of God’s love inside her. Remiel did have a point: she’d gotten hungry too, and her regard for the marvel of the human body lessened in proportion to the inconvenience of having to feed it. But that didn’t mean she was an infant who needed food handed to her before she could eat it.
She came back to herself at Remiel’s touch. “Here, I found this this.” Remiel pressed receive some leaves, into her hands, rounded and thick, still dripping with stream water. “It’s a bunch of broadleaf plantain plants I found not too far away. I’ve seen people eating them before. I think they taste green.”
They said a blessing over the leaves, and then it had to be done. Tentative, Zadkiel nibbled a small one, and she decided that green tasted a little bitter but not inedible.
“I’ll keep looking,” Remiel said, and again she made crunching noises as she headed off into the wilderness.
Zadkiel moved on to eating the larger leaves. They were more bitter, less green.
Before she was done, Remiel crashed back into their clearing at a run. “I found the perfect food,” she sing-songed. “Hang on. You’ll love this.”
Larger splashing sounds came from the stream. Then as Zadkiel swallowed a bite of her last (and most bitter) plantain leaf, Remiel laid something else into her hands. It felt like a stalk of some sort, rigid and smooth. “Bite into it,” Remiel said. “It’s not what you think.”
Zadkiel ran her fingers up to the nubbly edge, then snapped it off and bit into it. “Oh!” It tasted nuttier than the leaves and had a juicy center. “What’s this?”
“Asparagus. There’s a whole stand upstream, so eat as much as you want.”
They stopped speaking while they ate, although every so often Remiel would dump more of the asparagus stalks onto the last large leaf in Zadkiel’s lap. The bottom of the stalks was tough, but even that wasn’t inedible.
“Thank you,” she said at last.
“I’ll get some more in a few minutes so we don’t have to forage after it gets dark.” Remiel sounded abruptly worried. “I hope we’re not here overnight. We’ve got that coat, but I don’t like the idea of being exposed to wildlife while we sleep.”
Rodents. Zadkiel shuddered. “They’d stay away from us, right? Animals don’t like people.”
“I’m going to guess that’s true, but usually they don’t like the implements people have with them. Po
inty things or burning things. We have neither of those.” Remiel stood. “I should figure out how to start a fire.”
Sparks flooded Zadkiel’s mind, and in the next instant her heart hammered: high alert. The angels guarding them had spotted demons.
Zadkiel fought her body’s useless urge to freeze, as useful to her in this situation as Remiel’s urge to run. Instead she steadied her voice, and as she got to her feet, she spoke in Bactrian so they at least had a chance of passing for people who belonged in this part of the world. “Bring me the rest of the asparagus and the plantain leaves. I’ll wash them in the stream while you get a fire started.”
Remiel sounded surprised. “Oh, I guess you could.” She’d answered in the same language.
“I’m not helpless.” Not totally helpless, and it was best to be doing the things demons thought humans did rather than looking like a pair of angels waiting for a ride home.
“I didn’t say you were. I just wasn’t thinking about it.”
Remiel guided her to the water’s edge, then gave her the remaining asparagus before heading back into the woods. Zadkiel rubbed them under the water, trying to determine by feel when the dirt was off the stalks and leaves. She laid the wet stalks on the broad plantain leaves in what felt like a patch of sunlight, and she kept working even though her hands grew numb with the cold. When Remiel returned with more plants, she cleaned those as well, and shortly after she heard the sounds of stick breaking.
Eventually the angels signaled Zadkiel: the demons had left the area. She nodded.
Behind her, Remiel muttered, “It’s a lot easier to start fires with my mind.” Zadkiel smiled. “But I’ve got some wood together and I cleared a fire pit, so if I can get it started, we should be warm tonight.”
As it grew chilly, Remiel did her best to settle them in for the night. Zadkiel prayed but otherwise let Remiel figure it out: the fire proved to be the toughest problem, although Remiel was able to use some tools left in the pockets of the heavy coat. “Good thing my last assignment was in the frozen north,” Remiel muttered. “Do you want to maybe wrap yourself in the coat for now?”
In contrast to Remiel’s clothing, Zadkiel’s was lighter, so she took it gratefully. After a while, Remiel positioned her closer to the fire, and they said another meal blessing. The leaves were still bitter, but Remiel had rigged up some way of roasting the asparagus, and the flavor markedly improved. Thank you for making edible plants, Zadkiel prayed. These are amazing.
After dinner, the angel guarding them sent another alert, and Zadkiel knew demons were scouting again. The alert lasted longer this time, but Zadkiel stayed close to the fire while Remiel worked in silence across the clearing.
The worry and tension passed: the demons had gone.
“Glad that’s over.” Remiel sighed. “Well, I cleared out an area that looks like we can keep warm in.”
“If we huddle together, with the coat, we should be all right,” Zadkiel said. “I think.”
“I’m not sure how cold it gets here.” Remiel shook her head. “But we’ll do our best. I have to believe that if we’re about to die of exposure, Saraquael will come back and do something even if it risks detection.”
“Even so, shouldn’t he have by now?” Without being able to see the sun it was hard to tell the time, but her body told her time had passed. They’d eaten twice. The air had gotten chillier. She was tired.
“We don’t know what they discovered.” Remiel’s voice dropped in volume. “If it’s dangerous for us to intersect with the angelic plane, maybe we can’t even talk to them. We might be on our own.” Zadkiel started, but Remiel added, “Whatever they decide, tomorrow we’re not staying here. We’ll find a human habitation. We’ll insinuate ourselves into some kind of normal existence, and we’ll wait while doing something, not hiding in a hole to be discovered like baby rabbits.”
Zadkiel got a handle on the fear creeping up her spine. “I think you’re right. The scouts passed over us today, but if we stay in one place, they’re going to start asking questions.”
A moment later, Remiel added, “Let’s pray evening prayer.”
So the sun had set. Saraquael should have returned.
Zadkiel swiped her hand over her eyes, and she tried to compose herself while Remiel led off with the prayer and she gave the responses. Halfway through, though, another voice joined them: Saraquael’s.
At last. Oh, thank goodness. Answers.
They finished up because no one interrupts a conversation with God, but as soon as they ended, Remiel said, “Well? What have you got?”
The tension in her voice told Zadkiel what the answer would be. She must have detected it from Saraquael’s expression or his posture, something Zadkiel could re-create in her own mind after so many years of working with him as her commanding officer and fellow standard-bearer for Michael. He wouldn’t look defeated, but he’d be missing that hint of mischief in his eyes, and he’d look more business-like than playful.
Sure enough, he said, “Nothing yet.”
“Nothing?” Remiel’s voice broke. “What’s Gabriel doing?”
“Oh, trust me, Gabriel’s doing something. I’ve got a list as long as my arm of tests Gabriel has run on every scrap we pulled out of Hell.” Saraquael was trying to sound upbeat, but Zadkiel heard it as frustration. “Every test comes up as nothing, which he assures me is in and of itself a clue as to the nature of the weapon, but when I ask him what kind of clue, he can’t begin to guess.”
“This isn’t supportable.” Remiel got to her feet. “We can’t stay here. We’ve already been scouted twice.”
A pause: Saraquael must have been conferring with their Angel guards. “You’ve got a point. You’re a curiosity.”
“So we need to get out of here. Extinguish the fire.” Her voice had dropped in pitch. “Zadkiel, take this.” The coat settled over Zadkiel’s shoulder, still warm. “Saraquael, you’re going to have to move us. Now.”
“It might be dangerous.”
“So move me first and come back for her after you know it works. Or, if it doesn’t work, then at least you know for sure.” Remiel’s voice grew insistent. “This is my fault to begin with.”
Saraquael’s voice pitched upward. “I’m not willing to take the risk.”
“You’re not risking anything.” Remiel’s eyes would be tight, and Zadkiel knew she’d be standing with her hands clenched. “It’s my risk to take, and I’m willing to take it. Move me first. Come back for her. It’s better than freezing out here or getting discovered and kidnapped into Hell.” Her voice sharpened. “How many seconds do you think Satan would hesitate before transporting us once he knows who we are? Do you think he’s going to worry one jot about our safety?”
No answer from Saraquael.
“So help me, I need you to do this.” Remiel sounded more intense. “Extinguish our fire. Take me away. Come back for her if it works.”
More silence.
Zadkiel raised her head. “Where would we go?”
“We’ve already figured that out.” Saraquael sounded subdued. “Raphael suggested we take you to one of the Christian communities in Greece. They’ll shelter you and feed you, and if you do get attacked, they’ll have the authority to fight back demons as well.”
Remiel sounded outraged. “Why aren’t we already there?”
“The risk of moving you.”
“Then do it.”
The silence stretched so long that Zadkiel wasn’t sure if they’d gone. “Guys?”
“I don’t like this.” Saraquael was barely audible. “I want to register my objection. If something awful happens, I don’t want to regret participating forever.”
“This isn’t your fault. I’m the bully. It’s my fault.” Remiel sounded steady, relieved. “Let’s go.”
An abrupt scent of smoke told Zadkiel the fire had winked out. “I’ll be back for you in a minute,” said Saraquael, “no matter what happens.”
Zadkiel forced herself to sound brave. �
��I’ll be right here.”
A chill settled over her, and she huddled beneath Remiel’s coat. With the fire’s sounds gone, she could better hear the small motions of the forest: leaves and little creatures and insect calls.
Then Saraquael’s voice. “We can do it. Barely. I want you to hold tight to me, and keep your eyes closed.”
“Keep my eyes closed?”
He laughed. “Oh, right, that shouldn’t matter as much to you. Remiel’s really disoriented, but she’s intact, so if you want to take the chance, I’ll move you as well. Be prepared for a monstrous headache on the other side.”
Zadkiel reached forward, and Saraquael’s subtle hand met her own. “I remember what Remiel said before.” She forced a smile. “That only means it’s going to hurt. It doesn’t mean I can’t do it.”
SEVEN
“It’s called a migraine,” Raphael was saying, “and I’m doing my best with it. You’re still a bit of an enigma.”
It had been dark when they left their hiding spot, dark and silent. Remiel wanted the darkness back.
She lifted her hands from her eyes, squinting in the blinding sunlight and harsh gleams off every random piece of metal in the city of Ephesus. The entire city seemed to be talking at once, and her every movement made her feel numb. She was bathed in sweat.
“But the good news is, it’s not going to leave you blind too.” Raphael crouched before her. “Stay still a little longer. Take some time to regret being brave.”
She forced a small smile. “And regret eating dinner.”
“You got rid of the dinner just fine on your own.” Raphael put his hands against her head, and she could feel the pressure from his subtle body as a series of tingles that threatened to make her vomit again. “Next time you go somewhere, you walk.”
She wasn’t sure she walking right now was an option either. Gingerly she turned her head to check on Zadkiel, who was also in bad shape but hadn’t been as effected by the transfer. Fortunately. Maybe Saraquael had done something to help her transition more easily because she hadn’t thrown up. Beside Zadkiel, Saraquael sat with his wings over her while she lay curled on the ground.
