Shattered Walls (Seven Archangels Book 3)

by Jane Lebak

  Startled, Zadkiel said, “Jesus served.”

  “Your desire to do likewise shows your devotion,” he said while guiding her in a different direction than the kitchen; she guessed it was back toward the front room, but she’d lost her orientation. “Please consider yourself my guest.”

  He guided her to sit on a low couch, and he brought the net-making rope to her.

  Zadkiel said, “You’re letting Remaya wait at table.”

  But John didn’t answer, and Zadkiel fingered the net shuttle. She worked her hands around the rope until she found the last knot, and then she started making more. The only good thing about being blind was that the tears in her eyes didn’t blur out the world. She could work with her eyes shut and no one would notice. Assuming they even would have.

  Empty spaces. That’s all a net was, really: just a bunch of empty spaces demarked by something solid and flexible. Kind of like her own pointless existence: God had made her and you could tell where she was in the world by the empty space she made.

  “Hey,” said a voice, tentative. It rang more in her head than in her ears, giving her a not-unpleasant feeling like drinking a little too much wine in too short a time. “It’s okay.”

  Zadkiel swiveled her head. “Nivalis?”

  “The same.” Joy prickled behind the words, and Zadkiel felt a smile come unbidden her face. “You looked so upset.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?” Zadkiel turned her face back toward her lap. “I want to do my part, but I’m too slow and too awkward.”

  Warmth settled over her, as if Nivalis were hugging her. “John wasn’t criticizing you. He didn’t want to see you struggling when you didn’t have to.”

  Zadkiel’s fingers crept to the next loop, then repeated the wrapping, twisting, pushing motion until she had another firm knot under her fingertips. Another empty space. She tugged and went on to the next. “You’re here, and you don’t have to be. You could be reclining on a couch in Heaven, meditating on the song of the Seraphim.”

  Nivalis sounded unphased. “Your situation is temporary. You’ll be at work again as soon as you’re able.”

  “Or before,” said Remiel’s voice. “Here, John wanted me to make sure you had something to eat. Beloved.”

  Zadkiel put down the net and felt Remiel put the warm loaf in her hands. Remiel said, “There’s a bowl of olive oil for you to dunk it in, too.”

  “I’m just going to have the bread, if you don’t mind. Mary makes this so well.”

  “She’s had a lifetime of experience,” Remiel said. “I think that counts for something.”

  They shared the loaf. Zadkiel said, “Nivalis, are you hungry?”

  Nivalis laughed. “No, thanks.”

  “You’re missing out.”

  “No doubt.” Again the warmth passed over her, and Zadkiel turned her face toward it, as if toward the sun. “Saraquael wanted me to let him know when you awakened. Should I do that now?”

  Zadkiel shrugged. “What did he want?”

  “Gabriel figured out what the weapon was while you were sleeping.”

  Zadkiel straightened. “We can go home?”

  Remiel said, “Nope. He figured out what it was. He didn’t figure out how to reverse it.”

  “Yet,” added Nivalis.

  “I got examined and probed a lot during the wee hours because I’m an easy target, and I got a heartfelt apology from him for my own misbehavior, but now it’s your turn to be his experiment.” Remiel snickered. “He’s going to examine Belior too, and I want to be there for that.”

  Zadkiel groped for Remiel’s hand. “Did you get any sleep at all?”

  “I’m not going to. You don’t need to keep asking.”

  She ruined the effect by yawning. Zadkiel said, “I can tell.”

  “I’m fine.” Remiel sounded miffed. “Everyone keeps saying I’m cute. Am I cute?”

  “How would I know?” Zadkiel sighed. “Sure, we might as well call Saraquael now.”

  The world felt emptier suddenly, as if Nivalis had flashed away. A moment later she returned, projecting success.

  Remiel handed Zadkiel the rest of the bread. “Here, you finish. I’m going to help Mary clean before morning prayer.”

  Zadkiel said, “Will you let me help?”

  “I’m not sure you can.” Remiel yawned again. “Mary was up most of the night, though, and I’ll let the other women know so they can convince her to rest today.”

  Zadkiel made a mental note that while sleep was optional for Remiel, apparently it wasn’t for everyone else. She didn’t think Remiel would appreciate that observation, though, so instead she made another knot in the net.

  Three knots later she felt Saraquael’s presence as he projected a greeting. She projected a greeting back at him, then realized she couldn’t do that in human form. Instead she whispered, “Hi,” feeling her cheeks grow hot with embarrassment. Stuck. Blind. Utterly useless.

  A momentary vertigo washed over her as she felt that Gabriel was with him too, and Gabriel wanted to conduct a couple of tests on her (she felt it as “challenges,”) so she should just relax and keep working.

  As she registered this, the vertigo intensified, then withdrew. It pulsed like this periodically, so Zadkiel avoided thinking about it and just stayed seated, eyes closed because that made the most sense under the circumstances. With nothing else to hold her attention, she kept making knots. Wrap the rope. Wrap the shuttle. Pass it through. Wrap again. Tug. Wrap. She concentrated on her hands, and then when she ran out of loops, she turned it around and started going back.

  The vertigo intensified through one of its regular pulses and then kept going, stronger, longer, and Zadkiel clutched the shuttle. She couldn’t finish the knot, couldn’t even remember where she was in the process. She didn’t move, her body numb and distant, the sounds around her a muffled whine, and then she felt Saraquael urging Gabriel to stop.

  It took a few minutes for feeling to return to her fingertips and her lips. When finally she could detect herself breathing again, she leaned on her knees and gasped until her ribs hurt. Her hands stung like needles pushing through the skin, and her muscles ached as if she’d climbed a mountain.

  “What did you do to her?” Remiel was asking. When had Remiel come back? But there she was, kneeling in front of Zadkiel, arms wrapped around her waist. “I left her alone with you for five minutes! Aren’t you the ones saying we can’t chance what happens if these bodies die? Well maybe then the thing to do is not to kill her for crying out loud!”

  Zadkiel leaned into her. “Are you okay?” Remiel said, pressing Zadkiel’s head to her shoulder. “What do you need me to do for you? And if you suggest I give these two a good thrashing, trust me, I’ll give it a try.”

  Remiel smelled like olive oil and flour, and Zadkiel breathed it in. This was earthy. This was home. Everything about Remiel was solid and true, and she could lean on her.

  I never wanted it to be like this, she prayed. I should be able to do this on my own. I shouldn’t have to be depending on her all the time for everything, but it’s like I’m her child and I can’t do anything to help myself. I can’t bring bread to the table, and I can’t mind the children, and I can’t do anything other than make nets they can sell to maybe cover the cost of feeding me while I’m here. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You made me to be better than this.

  The despair felt overwhelming. She reached for the taste of wine, and it steadied her.

  “I’m not going to try that again,” said a voice Zadkiel recognized as Gabriel’s tenor.

  “No, you’re not going to try that again because I’ll have fifty thousand Virtues standing between you and her before you get a chance!”

  “I’m not going to try again,” Gabriel said, “because something’s blocking me from being able to extract the shrapnel from her heart, and any method of extraction won’t make any difference until we clear the blockage.”

  Zadkiel rasped, “What’s the blockage?”

  “I c
an’t determine,” Gabriel said.

  “Are you okay?” That was Saraquael, and he was very close to her. “I didn’t think it was going to affect you that way. The stuff slid right off of Michael without any problem. In fact, that demon had been drawing it off him without him even noticing, so I figured it would work on you about the same way. You should have said it was hurting.”

  “I didn’t realize it wasn’t supposed to.” Zadkiel tried to sit up, but her head still rang from the vertigo.

  Gabriel said, “Anything affecting you that much isn’t something I intended to accomplish. Feel free to ask me to stop or slow down if you’re uncomfortable. I know,” he added sharply. “You don’t want me to try it again. I’ve already said I won’t.”

  “You’d better not.” Remiel sounded unamused. “Okay, so since you’re here, talk. What’s going on?”

  While Zadkiel got back her bearings, Gabriel talked about Sheol material and weaponization, about death and about some strange kind of stickiness. “I’ve interviewed all the Cherubim who worked with me to clear the field of Sheol debris, and we’re analyzing the material we drew off Michael. Any material the demons had in their lab is gone, but we’re searching for more. We’re also mining for any other Sheol raw material still in existence.”

  Zadkiel frowned. “There was a planet-weight of that stuff. What happened to it?”

  Saraquael said, “That’s exactly what I asked. Apparently they transformed it into the building blocks of the Heavenly Jerusalem.”

  Remiel said, “And you didn’t even keep a small sample of it for memory’s sake in a museum case in your library?”

  “It’s Death,” Gabriel said. “It’s not something that should have existed in the first place, so we changed it all. It’s remarkably plastic,” he added, a little more energetic than before. “I’m not surprised Belior and Satrinah were able to weaponize it.”

  “Oh, about Satrinah,” Remiel said. “She approached us last night. She demanded entrance to the house so she could examine Belior and potentially free him.”

  “Oh, now that’s intriguing. I’d love to see her notes.” Gabriel sounded thoughtful. “Did she sound confident she could do it?”

  Saraquael said, “She didn’t actually gain entry to the house, did she?”

  “Mary refused her flatly. Satrinah got all stroppy about that and threatened us and everyone we love. Then she tried to at least have us bring Belior into entrance so she could see him from the courtyard, but Mary walked inside and stripped her off.”

  Gabriel said, “Satrinah wouldn’t be able to reach through the entrance, so she just wants to examine him. That means she’s no further toward a solution than we are.”

  Remiel huffed. “It’s not a race. She wouldn’t fix us even if she did know how. In fact, she recognized me. She wanted to examine me too.”

  Gabriel said, “I wonder if we should give her a chance.”

  “What?”

  Zadkiel trembled. “A chance to do what? Examine us? Enter the house?”

  Saraquael said, “No. A thousand times, no. We do not grant her access to any of them.”

  “But we might bring Belior to the entrance and let her look him over while I observe her actions. I suggest we have him talk to her. He must be dying to compare notes.”

  “Dying isn’t the right word.” Saraquael had gotten a sterner tone. “He’s homicidal to compare notes with her so he can eviscerate the body he’s in and get free again. He killed his first host already, and I’m not interested in taking that kind of chance with the second.”

  Zadkiel offered, “I know nothing about that magician other than the rumors people carried to us, but given that Belior went into him so easily and that the magician doesn’t seem to be fighting for control, his soul might be in jeopardy if he were to die now.”

  Remiel said, “That’s a given.”

  “Not always,” Gabriel said, “but I agree that with what we know, it would be risky to the magician’s soul to let him die in this state.” He paused. “I wonder if human minds retain any awareness while possessed.”

  “I wonder if we can stay on the subject,” Remiel said. “Zadkiel and I are stuck in human form.”

  “The more correct phrasing,” Gabriel said, “is that you’re avoiding angelic form, and yes, it’s an important distinction because the object of the research in light of this discovery isn’t to get you to shed your human bodies. It’s to get your souls to accept your angelic forms the way they ought to.”

  Zadkiel tightened her fingers on the net shuttle. “We’re actively resisting angelic form?”

  “I can’t figure out why, but yes.” Gabriel’s form must have touched hers because she felt a bit warm, and she called the flavor of wine into her memory to ground her senses. “The closest metaphor I can come up with is an auto-immune response, or an allergic reaction. When your souls in their current state interact with angelic energy, they automatically resist it. That’s why you can’t access your subtle bodies and why we can’t implant information or transport you without passing through the intervening space. This reaction is extreme and total. Again, I don’t know why. Your souls therefore had to take refuge in a material form because the material form mitigates the effect of whatever reaction is taking place.”

  Zadkiel trembled. “Wait, is this a progressive reaction? Does it increase over time?”

  Gabriel didn’t even hesitate: “I haven’t determined that yet.”

  Zadkiel went cold.

  “We could end up stuck in statues,” Remiel said, her voice pitching upward, “and you’re worried about how much awareness a possessed human soul retains?”

  Saraquael said, “Remiel, stand down.”

  “We need to stay focused!”

  “He’s working on it,” Saraquael said. “He’s tackling every aspect of the problem, and he’s made progress.”

  “Here,” Gabriel said. “Look.”

  Silence for a minute. Zadkiel said, “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

  Saraquael chuckled. “The shrapnel he drew off Michael pulled itself into a group of little metal triangles.”

  “They’re cute!” Remiel said, and Zadkiel burst out laughing.

  “Like you?”

  “Far cuter.” Remiel actually sounded amused. “They’re all lined up pointing in the same direction, like a school of fish.”

  “To be exact,” Gabriel said, “when I hold them near Zadkiel, they’re pointed at her. And when I bring them near Remiel…”

  “Oh! They swivel,” Remiel said. “They’re pointing at me, Zadkiel. Like a compass magnet.”

  “Exactly. And that’s telling me something. Sheol material had a natural attraction to itself.” Gabriel’s voice had taken on that fascinated tone again, as if he couldn’t possibly have thought of anything better to do than puzzle out an unsolvable mystery. But for the moment, Zadkiel found his wonder comforting. He’d see it solved not because he needed to save them, or rather not only because he needed to save them, but also because for him it felt good to be solving a problem. Every little discovery was a victory that fueled him enough to reach the next one. Cyphering was his taste of wine.

  “The fact that the shrapnel orients toward the two of you when it’s near serves as confirmation that there’s additional material embedded within you. I attempted to use this material to draw out the shrapnel in Zadkiel, but it didn’t work, which leads me to believe there’s more of it embedded in her than there is within this Guard. That’s why we need to either obtain more of the raw material or else we need to draw the substance out of Belior in order to have a greater mass outside than inside.”

  “Can’t you go grab a brick out of the New Jerusalem?” Remiel said. “Transform it back?”

  “I can’t,” Gabriel said, “but I’ve got a team working on it.”

  Remiel said, “Fair enough. Have you tried extracting it from Belior?”

  “I’ll do that next, as much as I would rather not deal with him.” Gabriel si
ghed. “But bear in mind that it came off Michael with no concentration on the outside. That leads me to believe there’s another undetermined mechanism keeping it bound to you, other than just magnetic attraction.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Michael put a hand on Hastle’s cell wall with no energy in his heart, and his wings sagged.

  Danel leaned against him, his presence warm and comforting. He was again wearing blue, and Michael kept his eyes closed. I know, Danel was projecting. I know. It’s difficult.

  He didn’t want to go back in there. Knowing…no, it wasn’t Hastiel anymore. It never had been Hastiel. It was just Hastle now.

  The interrogation team stood at the ready, and Michael longed to send them away. They hadn’t figured out Hastle’s multilayered deceptions any more than he had. They’d been sending Michael directions through the wall, but they hadn’t realized any more than he had that Hastle hadn’t wanted anything more than Michael’s presence. Hastle had intended to keep the interviews going as long as he needed to get all his weaponized material back, and the team had played along with it, but who took the blow? Not them. They were on the outside.

  The Principality said, “You shouldn’t have gone in there before without us.”

  Michael’s head snapped up. “This is my detainee and my operation. I’ll make decisions as to strategy and the advisory committees I require.”

  The Angel straightened even as Danel put a hand on Michael’s arm. Michael continued, “He’s been asking for me, and I’ll head back in now with your guidance, but I’m the one who determines whether your team is called in. Thank you.”

  The Principality said nothing else. The Angel said, “I understand what you’re feeling, and I hear your frustration. We appreciate remaining involved, and we’ll try to lower his resistance level to make him more cooperative for you.”

  Michael wanted to fire back that he understood de-escalative language as much as she did, but instead he turned to Danel. His friend watched with a haze over his eyes: praying while being supportive. Danel touched a wing to Michael and said, “I’ll be right here.”