by Meg Collett
Her vision wavered from the sickness. She fought to stay conscious, forcing herself to focus on what the Seraphim were doing now. They set down the pail of freezing water. A seraph stepped forward, placing himself at Michaela’s back.
It went against every instinct she had to let someone stand behind her when she was defenseless. She hated it to her very core. Twisting and struggling, she fought until she was out of breath. When she was still, the seraph lifted his hand and let grit tumble down the length of her back.
It felt like dirt, sticking to her drenched back and clumping in her open wounds from yesterday. She only wondered for a moment what the grit was before she knew. She knew when the pain hit.
Gold dust.
Michaela screamed, the sound guttural and broken from her inverted position. She writhed, but with her back wet, the dust scabbed in her cuts and gashes, sending stabbing pain deep into her back. It worked down her side and found the once-healing stab wound and lodged deep inside the cut.
Her mouth hung open to gather breath as she tried to calm down. This was nothing, she told herself. There’ll be more coming.
“Are you ready to confess now?” Abel asked. His voice was a weak excuse for a leader’s. He sounded pubescent and drunk with power and bloodlust. Michaela understood now that he disgusted the other angels. She saw it in their tight, pained faces and the way they shifted as far away from him as possible. Yet his madness terrified them into submission.
Michaela didn’t answer; she couldn’t speak. She willed herself to hold on, because this wasn’t the end. This was infinitely worse than yesterday. With the gold chains biting into her numb ankles and the golden rope tight around her wrists to hold her in place, Michaela hung completely powerless in her submissive, upside-down position.
There would be no fighting out of this, no escaping out the door if she could fight off the Seraphim around her. There would only be enduring. Michaela gritted her teeth and prepared. She hoped the Seraphim would think she was defenseless afterward and leave her someplace where she could escape.
The dust spilled down her back once again. Most of it landed in the cuts around her left shoulder, pooling into the deepest wounds. Even her littlest scratches were coated with tiny grains of gold dust that sent the muscles in her back convulsing like an electric shock.
She was weaker today, the pain much worse. The sickness made her tremble as she waited for the pain to subside. Michaela felt gutted, like her insides were flayed. The desire to beg for it to stop threatened to spill from her mouth. She bit her tongue hard to keep it from moving.
“And now?” Abel asked. The bench beneath him creaked as he leaned forward, the ancient wood weary under his weight. His voice already sounded strained with his obsession to watch her pain, his passion to make everyone hate her as much as he did.
Dust coated Michaela’s back until no new grains found purchase in her wounds. They were all packed in thick golden scabs, sending ripples of fiery pain down Michaela’s arms and legs, pooling to the very tips of her body.
Her skin was slick with sweat. The pounding in her head had reached an all-time high. The sickness from her incomplete transition made the pit’s floor feel as though it sloped up to meet her. It felt so real that Michaela ducked her head to avoid hitting it on the slick, hard floors.
Abel demanded she recount her sins for the angels in the room. He sounded an inch away from begging her to confess just like Michaela felt an inch away from begging him to stop. She saw their similarities then. They were both unwavering in their sense of justice, their hue of right and wrong. In a sickening moment of clarity, Michaela realized neither one of them would ever break. They were going to keep crashing head to head until everyone had died and it was the End of Days. They were both obsessed, Michaela understood now. They were both crazed.
Abel was despicable and cruel in his madness, but they were two sides of the same coin.
Michaela didn’t answer him this time. She knew her words would only fuel his wildness, but she couldn’t speak even if she wanted to. The only sounds she made were whimpers of pain and anguish.
She didn’t try to stop the tears when they fell.
Abel was done with her silence. He reared up from his bench, his sweat sending a disgustingly sweet scent wafting through the air. The other angels shifted on their benches, leaning as far away from him as possible.
“More!” he screamed, his voice a shrill cry. “Make her confess!”
“Sir,” a quaking seraph said, “what would you have us do? Her back is coated in dust.”
The Seraphim swung her around, turning her ruined back toward Abel to illustrate their point. The angels on the bench gagged, their retching sounds filling the space. “Turn her around!” Abel howled.
The Seraphim did as they were told, their motions frantic and hurried as they murmured their rushed apologies.
“Rip her shirt,” Abel said. Michaela hated the renewed thrill in his voice. “Open her back.” His words were short and clipped, dripping in animation. “Cut her down to her wings.” Another bloom of his disgusting scent made its way to Michaela. “Then pour in the dust on her bones.”
Michaela didn’t have the energy to be frightened as the other angels reacted with revulsion. Their anxiety clouded the air in the room with a dank humidity coating the inside of her nose. She clung to her consciousness like she was adrift at sea. Her survival was her silence.
“Sir….” a seraph started, the question a tremor in his voice. She even caught the slight defiance hidden deep beneath the submission. His one reluctant word sent a quake through the room that passed through every angel. Michaela felt it fluttering in her stomach. Someone had stood up to Abel.
“Do it!”
The Seraphim jerked into the motion at Abel’s wild squeal, defiance forgotten under his crazed look. The top of her shirt was ripped to expose the deepest, most permanent scars on her back. Along those scars, Michaela felt the press of steel, but the pain from the cut was a mere whisper. Her skin peeled open traitorously easily for the Seraphim, the scars weak and thin. Michaela had bled so much in this room that surprise registered through her numbness as fresh blood dribbled down her neck. One drop rolled into her mouth.
The Seraphim worked to cut through her healed muscle and down to the ragged, twisted remains of her wings. Lucifer had ripped them from her, but the bones deepest inside her had snapped off from each of her wings, leaving behind their bitter ruins. The air hit the raw bone, and Michaela’s body convulsed.
Fresh pain tore through her numbness and spread an icy clarity through her, and she recalled the war Iris had spoken about in the tombs below the Nephilim’s shelter. She’d talked of choosing a war to win back the peace and Heaven, but Michaela had thought she’d been fighting the war all along. When Lucifer died and Gabriel took his place, she assumed they were enacting a new kind of war, a civil war within the holy ranks. But that wasn’t the right one.
The war was between Michaela and Abel, two immovable forces crashing against each other. They were meant to end this together, just them, only them. It was a war that would claim them both, Michaela knew. Iris had spoken of Michaela’s death, but she wouldn’t be dying unless she took Abel with her.
Her oldest injury was open and ready, and the Seraphim hesitated once again. Michaela wanted to tell them this was desecration. An angel’s wings were prized, even if Michaela’s were only figments of what they once were.
“Now!” Abel screeched.
The Seraphim jolted into action, their reluctance overruled once again. They sought only to obey Abel and to not have their own wings ripped from them. In their hurry to please their new General, they dumped all the gold dust they had into Michaela’s back.
Michaela had no control of the scream. The sound was one long, tortured sound until she had to gasp for breath. She choked in her effort to breathe, another one already building out of her mouth. She screamed until she passed out.
36
Michaela had missed her deadlin
e, and the night had passed tensely and anxiously for the angels. Gabriel never moved from his position at the gate, scanning every inch of Heaven’s courtyard for the first sight of her. She hadn’t come.
Gabriel didn't move from his spot. His body transformed from its Earthly manifestations. He didn’t need food or water or sleep. He just needed Michaela.
“You don’t think….”
Gabriel gritted his teeth at Raphael’s words. He didn’t look away from his vigil to glower at the Archangel. “No, I don’t.”
He wouldn’t entertain the idea that something had already happened to Michaela. It wasn't that he couldn’t or wouldn’t believe it. The thought of her death was a concept so foreign that Gabriel didn’t even recognize its shape. It didn’t fit in Michaela’s place inside his heart. It was like repeating a word over and over until it became senseless. Michaela’s death was senseless to him.
“What should we do?” Raphael asked, casting a quick look over their shoulders where the fallen milled about restlessly, awaiting orders and never straying too far.
“What do you mean?”
Gabriel’s eyes fell on the Tree of Knowledge and the stairs he knew were there. He would have bet anything they had Michaela in the Antechambers. He’d been down there once before on his way to judgment. There was one door and lots of guards.
“I mean,” Raphael said, answering Gabriel’s question, “how long can we stay up here? What about the fallen?”
Gabriel finally turned away from the courtyard, his gaze finding Raphael’s. “We’ve already broken all the rules. We’ll stay until Michaela comes. As for the fallen, those holy angels inside these gates are no better than the angels behind me. They have just as much right to be up here as we do, as they do.” Gabriel pointed inside the gates, surprised he truly believed his words. His fallen deserved a second chance.
He would fight for them.
“It’s a sad day when I actually believe that,” Raphael said, his hand grasping Gabriel’s shoulder.
“Maybe these angels were judged too harshly, or maybe they deserved forgiveness a long time ago,” Gabriel said, his eyes roaming the fallen’s ranks. They felt his gaze and looked up, ready for orders. Their loyalty was obvious. “It was probably a sadder day for them when they were denied their repentance.”
“That would have been Michaela’s decision. She always said once an angel chose, there was no change.”
“Perhaps she was wrong. We all were. Maybe this,” Gabriel waved his hand toward Heaven and its dark, undulating clouds, “was the best thing that could have happened. We needed to wake up. Things needed to be rethought.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Raphael said, but he didn’t sound completely convinced.
“After this is taken care of—”
A scream cut through the air. It shattered the silence in Heaven’s courtyard. It swept to the gates and pierced Gabriel straight through. He surged back to the gates, his grip tightening around the bars as the sound staggered him. A silence befell the fallen angels in Purgatory. Every head turned to Heaven. No one moved and no one breathed as the sound died down. A stiff emptiness filled its silence.
Another scream came. And more and more. Gabriel thought it would never end. He bowed his forehead against the metal and pressed his eyes closed. Please end, he prayed. Don’t hurt her anymore.
The screams died away until they were completely silenced. It was over. Gabriel lifted his head and looked back into Heaven.
The scarred limbs of the Tree of Knowledge twisted in a growing wind. The clouds roiled and heightened, turning a greenish bruise color. Behind Gabriel, a whipping wind built out over Purgatory. Gabriel looked back, seeing a building storm of swirling clouds. The hinges of the gates rattled in front of him, drawing his attention. In the sky high above them, lightning forked like slashes of steel in the darkness.
“That was Michaela?” Raphael asked, his eyes wild.
Gabriel nodded. “We have to get in there.” He turned to Raphael. “We can’t wait for her any longer. We have to send a group of fallen to get Obil from Hell.”
“Can we get him up here in time?” Raphael asked, his eyes flashing between the fallen and Gabriel.
“We have no choice now.” Gabriel spun away and called out to his three strongest and fastest flyers. His commands were rapid but clear: fly faster than ever before and haul Obil back to Heaven. The fallen angels nodded once before they took off, racing back to Hell to retrieve the Aethere angel.
“Should we have sent for him earlier?” Raphael asked, his voice quiet as Gabriel turned back to the gates.
“I just knew she would make it….” Gabriel held his head in his hands.
“Gabriel, we’ll get him and go inside. Michaela’s tough; she can take a little pain.”
Gabriel raked his hands through his hair, fighting the urge to scream. The foreign shape of Michaela’s death wasn’t so abstract now. He recognized it all too well, and it was all he could see.
“Unless they’ve already killed her.”
37
Clark waited outside the night the Archangels and fallen swept into the sky. He thought he might see something, anything, to indicate that Heaven was won and the whole mess was over. He sat on the stairs, watching the sky and hoped it would all be over as quickly as it began.
It was a long, cold night, and nothing happened. No great boom or flash of blinding light or even trumpets bellowing Michaela’s triumph across the skies. No one came back. Not even Michaela.
She could be dead.
The thought plagued him as the night wore into morning. This could all be over, Clark thought. Over as in over. End of Days over. Over as in they failed.
So what was he supposed to do? He’d sat outside and waited like a good puppy. He’d done all he could, and it wasn’t much. If Michaela never returned, who was he? What would he be without her?
She was his best friend, but she’d pulled him out of his cave just like he’d pulled her out of hers. He’d been angry and lost then, just as he was angry and lost now. What had changed?
Everything. Nothing.
He was part Nephil, part secret-book-of-Watcher magic. Were these the sum of his parts? When he laid all of himself out on the table, what did he have?
He was nothing but broken, mismatched pieces. Somewhere at his core, he was missing something. Without all the distractions, he could see that he’d been incomplete for a while. He’d turned his back on the Descendants in the hope of finding something more.
Well, he’d found something more. But Michaela didn’t make him whole. He was still missing a piece of himself.
When he stood from the stairs the next morning, Clark hadn’t discovered anything new about himself. The self-examination was exhausting. He either needed a drink or a lobotomy.
Iris, Ophaniel, and Zarachiel were at the table, their faces grim as they picked through a breakfast of beans. Their food supplies had run low, and they’d cleaned out all the nearby resources. They couldn’t stay at the cabin much longer.
Iris looked up as he came in and took a seat at the table. “It’s too quiet here,” he said, the silence like a finger jabbing itself between his ribs.
“Do you know what’s happening up there?” Ophaniel asked. “I can’t reach Simiel or Raphael telepathically.”
“I know the possible outcome, but even that’s uncertain,” Iris answered, shaking her head. “If it’s any consolation, I believe they’ll take back Heaven.”
“At what cost?”
Iris met Clark’s steady gaze. “The greatest.”
“So what now?” Clark asked Ophaniel and Iris. “Do we wait for word of Michaela’s death?”
“What else can we do?” Ophaniel asked quietly.
Clark spread his fingers across the table, feeling the sticky laminate beneath his palms. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t feel right to just wait. The world has fallen apart, and we have two of the strongest communities on Earth doing nothing to repair it. What does
that mean?”
“That something needs to change,” Zarachiel said, surprising them all. He’d been staring at the floor the entire time, but now he looked up, his gaze meeting Clark’s. Clark was shocked at the strength he saw inside the broken angel.
“Who are you talking about?” Ophaniel asked, looking between Zarachiel and Clark. Iris watched only her son.
“The Nephilim and the Descendants,” Iris said quietly.
“But they hate each other,” Ophaniel said.
“For now.” Clark studied the table, thinking out loud. “But when Michaela takes back Heaven, the Descendants will fall back in line.”
“And she’ll clear the path for the Nephilim to come out of hiding,” Iris added.
“They could be united,” Clark finished. “We could repair the world while the angels fix Heaven.”
“You could do that?” Ophaniel asked, her eyes wide.
“Humans follow the most convincing leader.” Clark shrugged. “I think we’re the only ones left to offer leadership. We could give them shelter and food. We could use our magic to heal and repair. A new world formed around angels, where everyone is a Descendant.”
“The angels were created to guard the humans, to guide them between their life and their afterlife,” Zarachiel said, his words quiet. “But we’ve done a lousy job lately. Maybe someone else should try.”
They were all quiet for a long moment, letting his words sink in. They sounded awful but eerily true. The humans had been left behind while the angels fought their war.
“I think,” Ophaniel said, her hand sliding across the table to take Clark’s, “if anyone could do it, you can. You can heal and kill with one word. What’s saving the world to a man like that?”
“You were always meant for more, Clark. You saved Michaela, but you have a whole life ahead of you to live,” Iris said, smiling at her son. Her words sound eerily similar to Michaela’s. Save yourself, too.
Clark blushed under their encouragement. His mother took his other hand. Holding onto them and listening to their words, Clark believed in himself. He believed he could fill the missing spot inside him. Zarachiel met his eyes and nodded, his support possibly meaning more than any others’.
