by Aya DeAniege
“There is only one pair of free-floating wings in Heaven,” I said. “Which means there’s only one way to get an angel’s wings without technically stealing them. No angel parts with their wings willingly. Surely you know that the wings will not get you into Heaven.”
“We know,” she said. “What’s it matter to a fallen angel such as yourself?”
“Let’s say you ‘borrowed’ the set of wings that are free floating. Why would you do that? Whatever could you hope to accomplish with them?”
“To put them to use,” the witch. “They have simply been hanging around Heaven all this time.”
“Put them to use, how?”
“They are angry with their angel.”
She talked like the wings had a mind of their own, and I didn’t appreciate it in the least. If wings took on a form like Samael’s heart had, we would have known about it before we had left Heaven.
“That’s not true. The wings of an angel are the one part that can be cut off or removed without them becoming something else. They simply exist as wings that continue as wings until they attach back to the angel. Therefore, the wings could not be angry with their angel.”
“We will bring them into the real world, calling the angel down to the Earth and capturing his grace to use as we see fit. Put it to use making the world a better place, fixing the mistakes that God has made on the Earth. Starting with all men, and you four.”
“Us four?” I asked.
“The so-called arc angels who have done nothing but leave destruction in their wake.”
I took another step forward, feeling that pull strengthen. As it did, I reached into the astral plane just enough to look around us. Dark witches were standing in the astral plane, waiting to jump. For them to get there without being absorbed into the plane, they had to use grace to do so.
It was my understanding that dark witches didn’t do that unless they were certain they could win.
I then dropped back into the physical realm and focused on the woman behind the counter.
They were planning on jumping me. They wanted to overwhelm me and take me down, probably to pluck my wings the way they had Michael’s so many years before. To use in their bitter, dark magic.
I would never allow that to happen.
“What about the host?” I asked. “Angel wings are not meant to mesh with a human soul. She’ll explode before the process is complete. Quite literally.”
“No, we shopped all across the world, we followed her for years. She is the one. She was born for this, to be this thing for us. To carry the wings into our world. She will do.”
“You mean she’ll live just long enough to make it happen,” I said. “And then what? Bring the wings into the real world and rip them from her back?”
“What’s it matter to you? Even if they were your wings, them being brought into the real world would not matter. If your wings were brought here, they would be useless to us, no grace inside of them. They would be as devoid of the Heavens as you are.”
“True,” I said with a little nod. “An angel’s wings carry their grace within, that is one of the ways the guardians know whose wings belong to who, and which grace exists or does not exist.”
The wings were dangerous.
The witches were also dangerous because they knew they had the wings of an angel whose grace was still intact. They would have all the power Michael had accidentally given them, and more.
That feather they had taken from Michael had all the grace of a feather. The rest of Michael’s grace had been taken from him when he had been banished from Heaven. All the witches had done had been a feather’s worth of grace. If they took on the full grace of a set of wings, the world would surely end.
“Well, I’m here to stop you,” I said.
“You cannot stop us.”
I waved my blade around as if motioning around us. That blade would push off the witches waiting in the astral plane, who were all holding just a little of Michael’s grace to be able to exist in the astral plane without exploding or being consumed by it. If I was fortunate, I would startle them into releasing the grace and end them while taking just a little more grace from the dark witches.
An angel weapon did not need to have an intended target for it to kill or harm. Anything on the astral plane as the weapon moved was damaged. For that reason, the angel blades let out a ringing sound that tended to scare off all creatures. Only the most stubborn demons dared to stay near an angel blade.
“Guess I’m just going to fail then,” I said with a shrug as I dropped the blade.
On purpose, but I looked the fool. My weapon clattered to the floor, and for some time, I glared down at it, my hands clenched at my sides. I gave the blade the exasperated look of someone who had just made a claim and then fumbled in public.
Then I reached down and grabbed the handle. I felt the weight of someone standing on it in the astral plane, and I shifted a thought into the blade.
The head flooded down the shaft and turned, arching upward as an inhuman scream seemed to echo in my ears.
I pulled the blade upward, sliding it over the floor and behind me as I glared at the woman behind the counter.
“How do you intend to stop us? You are only the weakest of the Lord’s children. Even among the cherubs, there are stronger than you.”
“I imagine that’s true,” I said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that this needs to be done and you need to be stopped.”
“Where are the other three, then?”
“I beg your pardon?” I asked.
“The other three,” the woman said. “Surely they did not send baby brother in to do the deed. They must be nearby, readying themselves for an attack even as you attempt to distract me. It will not work. None of you pose a threat to us.”
I shrugged. “They’re around, you’re right, we’re all ready to attack, and I’m just a distraction.”
Her eyes narrowed as she considered me. I practically saw the steam coming from her ears as she tried to figure out if I was lying, or if I had been distracting them from the fact that the other three were sneaking up on the shop.
Maybe I should have gone to the shop with the others, but tangling with dark witches wasn’t a smart thing. Only those with graces, who were well versed in magic, should have tangled with them. They were just as dangerous as the Knights of Hell, if not more dangerous because their entire magic was based on the grace of an angel.
Once they were in battle with an angel, a dark witch only had to tap into the grace of that angel to use bigger and more explosive magic.
Thankfully, I was well versed in magic.
“You haven’t the balls or the grace to back you, boy, why don’t you run home to your pimp?”
I reached up and scratched the tip of my nose, keeping my eyes on the woman as she scowled at me. We stood there, in that standoff as her face seemed to crinkle in a rage.
“How do I remove the wings?” I asked.
“Once the inking has begun, it must be complete. There is no way to remove them. They are bound to her very soul. Removing them would kill her and open a portal to another dimension, something that you angels are not allowed to do.”
“Right, so she’d have to die,” I said. “And the processes of Heaven would separate the two of them.”
And, technically, I’d have to flay the skin off her back to remove the magic ink. I was pretty certain it was not the type that one could use a laser on and have it eventually work out of the body.
There was no possible outcome of those events that did not result in me being either beaten on or rejected entirely.
I could tell Sam what to do, because he’d do it and he didn’t need to be near her. With his skill he could flay the skin off her back from a distance away, probably kill her too.
That might work. It might also start a war between Michael and Samael, but I think the world could survive such an explosion.
I did not think I could survive in a world where I had been
the one to cause Sera pain on purpose, even if it was to save the world.
Or…
Hadn’t Gabe said something like that once? How did it go?
Kill a witch, end her magic.
All I had to do was kill every dark witch there was. There might have only been one specific witch I had to kill to end the magic that wound through the ink in Sera’s back, but I wanted to make sure.
Somehow that was a better option than all the others.
“What are you going to do? Go on, boy, run home to daddy.”
I turned for the door. Walking to it, I set my hand on the doorknob and stood there a moment as I weighed my decisions.
I already knew what I was going to do in that shop, but I wondered how many dark witches I had to kill before Sera would be safe. Heaven wanted them all gone, and I could understand why, but I wasn’t certain I could find them all before Sera exploded.
My hand drifted up to the lock, and I slipped it into place as I made my decision. Turning from the door, I looked at the woman behind the counter. She scowled back at me as if I could be scared off so quickly.
“See,” I said as I raised the tip of my blade slightly, “there’s one thing you keep repeating, yet somehow keep forgetting.”
“What’s that?” she demanded.
“I am an angel of the Lord,” I said.
“Pfft.”
That was her response, a sound as if I was telling a tall tale.
“I am Raphael. I am a fucking arc angel of God. I am patron of healing, marriage, sanity, physicians, the sick, guardians, and nightmares.”
“Is this where you threaten me with my worst nightmare?” the witch demanded.
I was going to, but then as she sneered at me, I realized how stupid it had sounded. I wanted a clever last word, damn it, was it that difficult for someone to give me something?
“No,” I said with a slow shake of my head. “This is where I show you what an arc is capable of and send you to Hell. Where you will relive your worst nightmare over and over.”
I was sitting on the couch after seeing Sera out, watching the news when Gabe sat beside me. The moment he did, our phones went off. It was the second warning in less than twenty-four hours. That also meant it was the second warning we had received in the last six months.
That, in itself, was suspicious, but to also have met Sera and all her oddities awoke a wave of concern as I pulled out my phone and frowned at the screen.
It wasn’t demon sign. The kind of power that was required to do what the notice was trying to tell us wasn’t possible from a demon or even a fallen angel. That sort of explosion needed a white-hot rage and a Heavenly born skill.
I swore and looked up just as Sam walked in, his phone out and a frown creasing his brow.
He looked up at me, then back at the phone, then back and forth in apparent confusion. I would have been confused too, considering that kind of notification was usually followed by a text from me saying I was sorry and didn’t mean to do it.
The alerts were also nearly immediate.
Walking into the living room to find me seated there, and the room not on fire or a gaping hole in the Earth was understandably surprising. The fact that Gabe sat beside me about summed up who had caused the alert.
A random Heavenly Host could not manage that kind of power on Earth. Heaven would never allow it. An angel may have chosen to leave Heaven, ripping out their grace and wings in the process, but if that had been the case that notification would have been followed by about fifty demon activity notices, and probably several Heavenly Host appearing in the living room demanding for help.
Like they had five hundred years before.
“Did you talk to him before he left?” Sam asked.
He meant to ask if I had spoken with Raphael. I hadn’t even realized he was up and about after the drinking. Raphael might have recovered quickly, but that didn’t mean he would get out of bed unless he absolutely had to.
“He left?” I countered.
“He did,” Gabe said. “After Sera arrived. Did he tell either of you where he was going?”
I turned to Sam since I hadn’t been aware of Raphael leaving. Not that I was overly surprised by that, considering I was the one who had upset him to the point of drinking so much. He’d end up calling my face stupid and flinging something at my head before things settled back down again.
We never told Sam about those moments. He would disapprove of them, but it always seemed to make Raphael feel better, and his aim was just terrible.
“The tattoo parlour,” Sam said. “Turn on the local news, would you?”
Gabe reached for the remote and turned on the news. Sam settled on the couch beside me and looked stern. That was his leader look, the one he took on when I was fairly certain he was trying to cover what he was feeling.
What with just being married, and Sera appearing, and Raphael and me fighting again, Sam had a lot on his plate. He didn’t need one of us exploding in public as well.
Until we knew the what, where, and how, there was nothing for us to do but wait. Raphael may have been heading for the tattoo parlour, but that didn’t mean he had made it there. He should have texted us right away, saying that he was alive or something.
We were dealing with dark witches. We couldn’t underestimate them in the slightest. If he had found dark witches there, he should have notified us, so that we could all take them on together.
“There’s nothing yet,” Gabe said.
“There will be,” Sam murmured.
“So, how’d it go with Sera?” Gabe asked, turning to me.
“Gabe!” I snapped.
It was no one’s business what I had done with Sera in the garden. That was between me, her, and the plants.
“What, it’s a good way to pass the time,” he said. “Did your picnic go all right? I saw you brought back most of the food.”
Sam made a face at the screen, then turned to me, his eyebrows drawing down as he seemed to try to eye me critically.
“You brought back most of the food?” Sam asked. “You made that food. You never bring back your own food.”
“Would you two stop parroting one another?” I demanded. “You’re worse than pixies.”
“Little gossip never hurt anyone,” Sam said, draping his arm over the back of the couch. “So, how did it go?”
I blushed, which drew sounds from both of them.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I protested.
“That’s fair enough,” Sam said. “But you’re the one who’s blushing. We were just asking how it went.”
“That’s true,” Gabe said. “Did it go well, or did it go badly?”
“She wants to see both of us,” I said, picking at my pant leg with a nail. “It sounds non-negotiable. Humans don’t think like that.”
“Technically she’s not human,” Gabe said.
I turned to Sam for help. He was rubbing his cheek and over his lips with the back of his hand. When he dropped his hand, there was still the hint of a smile.
The help I wanted was advice, not sly smiles and all too knowing looks shared between the two of them like I’d finally decided to hop into the fray of things.
Like parents when their child announced their first crush.
“You do what you have to do,” Sam said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“Well, there is another way to look at it, I suppose,” Gabe said. He then paused as if in thought, though I think he was only trying to draw it out to tease me. “You and Raphael have bickered for a long time. You can never agree on anything.”
“What? So Father put my grace into a woman but the only way for me to be with her and get my grace back, and to go back to Heaven, is to share with Raphael?”
Gabe hesitated a moment longer then nodded several times. The motion made me swear, though Sam smiled and seemed quite amused by it all.
That did seem like something Father would do. It was well within the
bounds of His temperament. He might even find it amusing to watch me struggle with the realization that it had all been planned out just so.
“I shouldn’t have to share my grace with anyone,” I said. “Sam doesn’t have to. You won’t have to.”
“Yes, but, Sam and I haven’t started full-scale wars because Raphael wanted to take up painting and almost outed us to the mortals,” Gabe said.
I hardly thought a war between two city-states would count as ‘full-scale war’ and it wasn’t because Raphael decided to take up painting and got a little too good at it.
The war started because a man stepped on my toes and called me a whore’s son, and I simply wasn’t having it. Back then I could start a war for such a reason, and so I did.
Raphael didn’t play into it at all.
“Nor have we allowed humans to die because we were pouting and refused to come out of the bathroom for three weeks because you called him a fat pansy boy.”
I huffed out a breath.
“He was a fat pansy boy.”
“That also makes you sound like a homophobe, if you’re wondering,” Gabe said.
“He was fat and insisted I grow pansies,” I protested.
“We’ve all been fat at one point or another,” Sam said, running a hand down his slim stomach as if checking his weight. “It’s a part of the job.”
“I am not a homophobe, we’ve also all visited on males before, as males,” I said. “We rarely visit upon males with our own bodies anymore. Sam hasn’t done it in six hundred years. I did fifty years ago, how does that make me a homophobe?”
I was fine with humans loving other humans as they might decide to do. That was their business, not mine. What I didn’t understand was why the others were suddenly insisting that I had such a baseless phobia. What could I be afraid of? That they’d make me fabulous? That they’d distract me from the shallow women I had been caught up with since we entered the city?
That hardly seemed something to worry over at all.
