by Aya DeAniege
“It was a sign of solidarity,” Michael snapped. “That’s why we did it.”
“Please. Sam pulled his out, you lost yours, and Gabriel, he was the one who pulled his grace out so that he could go to Hell and save Sam, forcing you to go with him. When you went down to drag him back, you realized that you couldn’t pull them through the spells he created while you were still touched by Heaven. It had nothing to do with solidarity. You only tried to get Sam back because you fucked up and lost a feather to a mortal, and he was the only one who knew anything about the dark arts.”
“This whole time, you could have gone to Heaven, and you just let it all go wrong? You could have brought Sam’s weapon to him.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
“We could have closed the gates of Hell a lot sooner if we had the fires from the lamps of Heaven. If we had all been armed.”
“But I can’t go back to Heaven.”
“Why not?” Michael demanded. “Because you’ve been sullied? Please. If fucking every whore between here and the beginning of time had sullied you, you would have had your grace ripped out of you a long time ago. Damn it, that means I could have been having sex all this time? Doing drugs? Drinking?”
Father had never said those things were wrong. He had said hurt against another was wrong. He had said denying oneself was wrong. He had even told a group in Heaven that I was privileged to be a part of, that denying another of that which they love for selfish or petty reasons was wrong.
He never meant for alcohol not to be enjoyed, with some moderation. Drugs existed because they were fun. Even these things humans created which hurt them, they existed because they would result in something better. Murder was wrong, but the owning of an object that could be used as a weapon was not. Prostituting one’s daughter for meth was wrong, but smoking the meth and keeping to oneself was not.
We’d always think humans who did that were kind of stupid to piss away their lives, but, hey, it takes all kinds.
But at some point, for some stupid reason, Michael had started talking about how everything was sinful.
“You’re the only one who thought those things.”
“You could have ended all my questions!”
“If you couldn’t follow your own heart to Father, that’s your problem, not mine,” I said.
“Then why can’t you go back to Heaven?” he demanded. “What imaginary slight did you do that might keep you from re-entering Heaven?”
“I…”
“And where are your wings?”
“They’re in Heaven,” I said.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Michael said. “Even if you did rip off your own wings, because no one else did it for you, and even if you—somehow—didn’t pass out from the pain and wake to the guardians stitching them back onto you and slapping you in manacles to keep you from hurting yourself. And, I don’t know, by a miracle, you made it dripping blood through Heaven… how did you make it past the guardians of the gates? Just as one cannot enter with your wings, you cannot leave with another’s.”
“You can,” I said. “And yes, it hurts to rip them off, but if you set off a bomb of glitter and giggles in the cherub territory, then everyone goes there to watch them play, and their mirth keeps everyone else from feeling your pain. And yes, there was a great deal of blood, and at first, they wanted to come down and blame you, you three, but then they found me, on Earth, bleeding and I told them what I did.”
“Why? You could have been blessed among the angels, among all angels. Above even Samael.”
I had never wished to covet the position of my brother. Samael had shared that place with Father. Their relationship was not one that could be slipped into easily. Samael was the eldest son. I was but the youngest and weakest. One the leader, one the baby. We were not interchangeable.
“I didn’t want that. I wanted to be here, on Earth, helping you three fix what you broke.”
“It’s not your thing to fix.”
“Just because you broke it, doesn’t mean that you have to carry that burden alone.”
Overhead there was the beating of a helicopter’s blades. We both removed our wings immediately and looked up as a helicopter moved up over the trees.
Michael looked around, as did I. We both swore at once.
The car was little more than a husk. Burned out and melted from the inside. Likely it had gone up when I had let my wings loose in the physical realm.
“Car blew up,” he muttered. “Humans in the air. Burned ground all around. How do we get out of this?”
“Don’t tell the others.”
“What?” he asked.
“Don’t tell the others.”
“Fine, I won’t tell the others, now what?”
I scratched the back of my neck and glanced around us.
“All right, I haven’t tried this with anyone who didn’t have grace.”
In the blink of an eye, we were in the gardens of the estate. Michael stood still for a moment, then bent over and was thoroughly and violently ill.
“An amusing side effect,” I said as I slipped my hands into my pockets. “Don’t tell the others. You can win physically, but I can do that at the drop of a hat and don’t have to hide it anymore. Even with a full set of wings, you cannot outfly me.”
News broke the next morning of the event out in the field, except thankfully no human saw us. Or if they did, Raphael used his grace to erase their memories, which was something angels could, and were allowed to, do. We weren’t caught on video and Sam did a time jump back to an hour or so before the fight, and reported the car as stolen.
No human would think that one of us was out in the field. They believed some criminal had gone out there, or perhaps a gang had some turf war.
Human technology hadn’t quite reached the point of knowing that we were lying, and the cars we drove as personal vehicles were not advanced enough to have GPS inside. We were not the sort of rich people concerned with being kidnapped or something. I, personally, would have welcomed a human who attempted to kidnap me. Could be fun, like those escape rooms, except on a more difficult setting.
It wasn’t until Sam began lending Grace cars that we had a vehicle smart enough to know where it was and who was driving it at all times.
Just in case.
Raphael could have gone back in time and reported his own damned car stolen, but apparently, he really didn’t want to tell the others. I hadn’t come forward because he had threatened me. Or maybe it was because he had asked me, maybe. He had never asked me to do anything before.
We all had our little secrets.
Like Gabe, who kept a house and I was fairly certain a woman. Separate from us all and always. I knew because I had seen the bills and caught him a time or two. I should have reported it to Sam, but it was one of those secrets. That you never shared, that you let them keep no matter the trouble or loss to yourself.
So, perhaps, I had kept Raphael’s secret out of love and respect.
In the end, him having grace changed nothing. He was still stuck on Earth, unable to return home. He had used his grace very little, what he had done, had likely been used to create our flesh. Without his grace, we might have been ethereal beings with no bodies.
After fixing our mistake, Sam just paced in front of us. That was all, just walked back and forth as Raphael and I sat on opposite sides of the couch, refusing to look at one another.
“What were you thinking?” Sam asked. “A…. a fight? A fight. I just, I cannot believe that you would fight. In a field. Near a city. In this day and age? Are you crazy? I thought you told me it was a small misunderstanding!”
He was apparently flustered because if he weren’t flustered, he would have spoken in a calm, even tone and taken a strip off of us like he usually did. Typically, when he got like that, he was worried about us, and I could entirely understand his worry.
The car exploded, we were almost caught, and we still hadn’t told him how we had gotten home. The strange thi
ng was that he hadn’t asked how we got home. He had just shaken his head and gone to bed. The next morning he was still flustered.
Or maybe that was confusion. Maybe he was turned all around because he had grey hair, and Grace was pregnant. Perhaps he didn’t know what was going on and that was affecting his judgement.
“What were you thinking?” Sam demanded, looking between the two of us for an answer.
“He started it,” Raphael said.
Raphael sounded like he was still pouting over it all. I didn’t know why he was. I was the one who had puked the night before, and again this morning when I got up. I was the one being blackmailed into silence.
He was the one who could make me explode with a thought.
Literally.
Without my grace, Raphael could have pulled his at any moment and taken me out, but he hadn’t. All of our fights had been fair. What power I had, he had matched me but hadn’t exceeded it. He could have ended our ‘war’ centuries before but hadn’t.
Instead, he had tried to match me physically. He had taken his beatings and the mud in his mouth, with a kind of patience that I surely did not have.
“I don’t care who started it. No one ever cares who started it!” Sam roared. “Neither of you should be fighting.”
“It’s not like we can take our fight to another plane of existence,” I said.
And I really didn’t want to attempt that. Raphael would beat me on those other planes until I had my grace back.
“No, you can’t,” Sam said. “However, you shouldn’t be fighting at all. It’s unbefitting of arc angels to be fighting amongst themselves. Your vanities are getting in the way. Your egos are so massive that you both think you are untouchable. Morons. That’s what you are. What if there was someone out in those woods? Hm? What then?”
“They would have stepped into our wings,” Raphael said with his head lowered.
“Yes, yes they would have. What happened the last time your wings were on the physical plane, Raphael?”
“Someone got nailed to a cross, and you were written into a bunch of books as a bad man,” Raphael said to his lap.
Because he still had his grace.
If a human walked through my wings, I had to wonder what would happen. We had been told since the beginning of time to keep humans out of our wings. Whether they believed or not was up to them, not up to us. But that warning had been created for those with grace. If I had no grace…
Could I weaponize my wings?
That was a thought that entertained me for a few minutes.
On the astral plane, actually on most planes of existence, angels could use their wings as weapons. It was just on the physical plane that we had yet to figure out how to do it.
“Michael,” Sam barked at me. “Pay attention to the present.”
“Sorry,” I said, giving myself a shake.
“You two made a mess. Again. Why are you still fighting? What could be so damned important? Well?”
“Nothing,” we both said at the same time because we knew that was the answer he wanted.
“Something is still being fought over. What was the fight last night over? Sera, again? Michael, you had lead for an hour, and something blew up. How can I head off on my honeymoon, when I can’t even trust you while I’m in the same city as you?”
“You can trust me to lead,” I said.
I turned to Raphael for help. Just because I kept his secret, didn’t mean that he could throw me under a bus, or to the wolves, or any other version of that saying. Our fight did not affect my ability to lead us. Raphael glanced at me, then focused on Sam.
“You can,” Raphael said. “We weren’t fighting over Sera.”
“Then what were you fighting over?”
“Nothing,” I said with a shake of my head. “Just, we were talking about possible things that might have caused Sera’s wings, and then it escalated.”
“We know what caused Sera’s wings,” Sam said. “Witches tattooed them on her back, that was what Raphael was sorting out. What we haven’t sorted out is what the witches are planning to do with the wings.”
“Really?” Raphael asked.
“It’s pretty evident to me, anyhow,” I said. “They want to harvest the wings the way they did my feather. Wings are a lot more powerful than a feather.”
“I don’t think it’s just the set that they’re after,” Raphael said. “They know something is coming from Heaven for the wings. I think they’re going to bring the wings into the real world and hope to snag themselves a Heavenly Host. Can you imagine what they’d do if they could ride one of them to Heaven? Or to slip into their shape?”
Even Heavenly Host had grace, just not to the extent that we did. One of them would have more grace in their entire body than I did in a single wing. Not by much, but they would. Gaining that, the witches would grow bolder.
“How long do we have before the wings start emerging into the physical plane?” Sam asked. “Are we talking a ritual and forcing them out, or could the infusion of the wings into the soul-slash-grace of Sera’s being cause the wings to emerge?”
Raphael was quiet for a moment. He looked down at his lap and massaged the middle knuckle of his right hand with the thumb and forefinger of his left. I saw the blank sort of look as he struggled to figure it out.
“Wings plus grace equal angel,” I said. “Right, that’s the basics of it. Wings plus grace equals angel. You can’t wear the halo unless you have both, right? It’s the only way into Heaven.”
“The, no,” Sam said. “You can get into Heaven with just a set of wings or just grace. It depends on a lot of factors.”
One could get into Heaven with just magic, technically. If they wanted to die, being erased from the universe entirely.
There were guardians of the gate, who knew which wings belonged to who, and which grace belonged to who. If anyone was found to be in possession of the weapon, grace, wing, or halo of another, they were immediately attacked. One had just enough time to flee before death.
Heaven might be vicious, but it was not entirely without mercy.
But the way Sam said it, it sounded like he knew of another way. One that he must have been holding back, despite all our time on Earth.
“So, we don’t need our grace, wings, and halos to get back into Heaven?” I asked. “Because I thought we did.”
“A halo is an object of Heaven powered by our grace,” Raphael said. “So, no, you don’t need it to get in. It’s… it’s kind of like a phone?”
Sam pointed at Raphael, then stuffed his hands into his pockets as he turned to me.
“He’s got a point. A halo is a bit like a phone. But, let’s say they want the feathers and not the angel. If Sera turned into an angel, we’d all be in for an ass kicking because she’s the type of woman to not take stupid as an answer to a question. Means the witches won’t risk the wings getting too deep into her.”
“They’re going to rip the wings into the physical plane and harvest them,” Raphael said. “To practice, to bring one of us down.”
“We have no grace, but our wings are still useful without it, as was proven by Michael’s feather.”
When I ripped out my grace, I disconnected it from all that I was. Even the feather that the witches still held would have been without grace. In theory, it should have been utterly useless to them. It should have been the end of the dark witches, but still, they went on.
I swore. As I did so, Raphael pulled out his phone and sent off a message. I assumed it was to Sera and asking her where she was.
“If you two hadn’t been fighting last night, she would already be here,” Sam said. “Safe and away from the witches.”
“We know we messed up,” I said.
“Good,” Sam said. “It’s good that you know that you messed up. Now, what were you fighting over? Truthfully this time, or I’ll have your heads.”
“He tried to force my wings out,” Raphael said.
“And?” Sam asked, drawing
out the word. “Why was that a fight? Just pop them out, let him figure it out and put them away. Wings are an important part of our being. Human hair, it’s like human hair.”
“That’s what I said,” I said.
“Some humans cover their hair,” Raphael protested.
He said it loudly and at a higher pitch than normal. He should have known that Sam wasn’t going to fall for that nonsense.
“Some do,” Sam said. “But that’s because of religious reasons, not because they’re ashamed of their hair. Ease up on that a little, Raphael. I tell Michael to ease up all the time.”
The last was said because Raphael had huffed, folded his arms and glared at Sam. That didn’t change how accurate the words that Sam spoke were, only how Raphael perceived them. There had been more than once when I had been told to leave off when I had wanted to continue.
“Yeah, apparently the sex, drugs, and pornography haven’t affected his chances of getting back into Heaven,” I growled.
Raphael gave me a look that should have cut me to the bone. It was filled with that fury and hatred I had only seen in his eyes once before. In that time we didn’t speak of, didn’t dare think of.
When the Healer had taken up the mantle of Warrior and had changed the world.
“We all knew that before,” Sam said. “But I’m happy that you’re seeing it that way now, Michael. Even if it took this long. We aren’t bad people. We had a bit of addiction in our pasts, we got over it and made amends with the world. That doesn’t explain why you wanting Raphael’s wings out resulted in that kind of destruction.”
Raphael glared away from both Sam and I. From the tension in his body. I wondered if he expected me to tell Sam precisely what had happened. I looked at Sam and gave my head a shake.
Sam’s head moved just slightly to the side. He frowned at me, eyes narrowing as he seemed to sum me up. His jaw even set to one side, like a human trying to puzzle something out.
“Raphael,” Sam said, turning to him. “What the hell happened that Michael won’t even tell me? You two tattle on one another like schoolyard children, but no one wants to tell me what’s so damned important about last night that you fought like that?”
