by J. L. Myers
Remiel’s hand came up fast, glowing with hot intensity as he placed his palm over Lucifer’s heart. Absorbing the power his brother was infused with, Lucifer’s body heated, light beaming from every inch of his skin in blinding intensity. This was it, his last moment to behold her, to be near her. And this time, he didn’t fight it. He accepted his fate.
Lucifer threw a glance over his shoulder to see her one last time. “Gabriel.” Her name from his mouth was a whisper, something too quiet for her to hear. Yet, somehow she did. Her face tilted up and her saddened eyes settled on him. As he became nothing but light and air, she smiled.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lucifer slathered the tar-like substance over the exterior of the ark with tufts of bound grasses, coating the wet planks to strengthen its wooden-pegged structure and secure the vessel from ingress when the waters rose high enough. Even now, water lapped at his heels as it continued to fall from the ashen sky, eating its way up to the front of the great wooden structure. The wildlife gathering in the field grew restless, lions snapping out and flightier animals growing fearful with nowhere to run.
Dressed in battle leathers like Lucifer was, Remiel weaved among them, using the light from his hands to calm their nerves. It had taken years to prepare, to gather the pairs and complete the ark. And still, his sentence was not complete.
Noah and his sons exited the ramp hurriedly, waving to Remiel to start guiding the animal pairs aboard. “Hunters first,” he called out.
Remiel nodded, then glanced up at the undulating horizon and back at Lucifer with a hike of his chin.
Lucifer spared a moment to look around, peering through his drenched hair that stuck to his face and neck. He knew what encouraged the nervous look on his brother’s face. They were surrounded now, half the village submerged in the distance. Through the sound of the rain that sheeted down, he heard murmurs as well as the chatter of weapons being forged and sharpened. The sounds had been growing for weeks now, the village humans planning their attack to take the ark for themselves. Though Lucifer understood their need for survival, he could not let them achieve it. Much of his motivation lay in wait of seeing all the surviving men who had attacked his Gabriel be drowned by God’s own doing. The rest of his motivation had been to follow the orders he’d been sent here with in the hopes that it would grant him reentry above. Grant him the possibility of seeing her once more. But his wish was not to be, at least, not anytime soon. The beginning of this day had begun with an order to remain below as the earth flooded.
The gravity of his prolonged stay resurrected and strengthened his sense of loss. Letting himself think of Gabriel now, he knew that no matter what happened, he could never forget her. Yet picturing her every detail in his mind in the months and years that had passed had started to fail him, like the crisp clarity of beholding her beauty was being taken from him. Like the memory of how she felt in his arms and how she tasted in his mouth was purposely being stripped from his mind. Maybe it was. But he refused to let it be. Somehow he had to reach her, to tell her that not a day had passed without him thinking about her. That he had not forgotten her and never would. That he would return to her one day.
Rain continued to pour down as a plan started brewing in his mind, the water creeping ever closer as each of the animal pairs were led onto the ark by Noah and his sons. The wives remained inside the structure, and their voices of direction and calm to the sequestered animals reached Lucifer through the stomp of hooves, paws, and feet of all kinds. When Noah appeared on the external level above, birds took to the air from the canopies of submerging trees, creating a swirling mass of flapping color and descending birdsong as they circled their new land.
Now hovering without even realizing, Lucifer had finished sealing the ark. From this height, he could not miss the bobbing of many heads that appeared over the hill from the village. The humans were about to make their move. Armed and ready, their women and children trailing behind, they were coming to take the ark.
“Remiel!”
The angel responded to Lucifer’s bellow, swooping out from the ark’s opening by the grace of his white wings. He met Lucifer’s side, hovering as he beheld what marched their way. “Today we live up to our commands. Today we purify mankind.”
Though his voice was strong, something behind his eyes shone as his gaze glided back to the women and children tailing the angry group. Lucifer felt no sympathy for those who would soon be no more. The innocent would be welcomed above with open arms. And the rest…
For a moment he wondered something he never had before. Were the unworthy snuffed out like an angel culled by the angel sword, or were they sent elsewhere?
With no answer available, Lucifer plunged to the ground with Remiel close behind. “Haul the ramp up!”
With heavy rope attached, the wide ramp began to lift, Noah’s sons heaving the thick wood higher and higher. Lucifer and Remiel met the edge, using all their strength to help it higher faster.
“Stop them!”
The leader’s shout preceded the stamped of running feet as the village men sprinted for them. There were hundreds of them, all brandishing stone-tipped spears and primitive daggers. Some even held sharpened rocks designed to crack skulls open.
Lucifer and Remiel released the rising ramp and faced their attackers. “The waters will take their lives soon enough. Tell me again, dear brother, why we cannot put them down ourselves?”
Remiel smiled at Lucifer, standing equally ready and weaponless. “It is not God’s will.”
And then Remiel was away, running through mud and splashing puddles toward the men with naught but his primed knuckles. Lucifer let out a shout, clenching his fists as the rage he held for these men bubbled to the surface. Orders or not, this was going to be satisfying. Human life was so fickle it could be spent even without the final blow being delivered from his own hands.
Like Remiel, Lucifer met the sprinting horde with gusto, leaping over jabbing spears and wielded rocks. In the thick of them, his war dance was a thing of speed and beauty among slower mortals as he ducked and weaved, using only his body to knock men to their knees. Fists swinging, feet sailing, and wings lashing out as mud spurted around him, he floored men before they could understand what was happening.
More and more fell as the battle forged on, all injured but not dead. Still, the numbers were not on their side, and as more men fell, earlier ones recovered.
Fast becoming surrounded, some got in lucky strikes. A slicing dagger met Lucifer’s cheek as he flung another man through the air to knock his comrades back. Then a spearhead jabbed his ribs. Lucifer roared, wings flinging out to throw eight more men down. Pain bloomed at the base of his wings with each fresh stab, and Lucifer dove and rolled through the mud to escape the assault.
Rising up again, Lucifer felt the first of fatigue settle in. Being stuck down here and unable to venture above, his strength was waning. But he would never give up. He would never give in. Seeing Gabriel was the one thing that drove him on, the one thing that made his obedience and every sting of cut flesh worth it.
Keeping to head and gut shots, the men continued to fall, spraying mud with their sudden landings. With the pelting rain and his drenched hair obscuring his sight, they kept getting more and more stabs at Lucifer too. For every few dropped men an earlier one would awaken enough to lash out, adding to the growing slices that spilled silver from his body.
Not killing these men was beginning to test Lucifer’s patience. And even if he did keep to his orders, could he really expect what he hoped for to come to fruition? Deep down, Lucifer knew that no matter what he did here, no matter how much he followed orders, he would not be allowed to see her. When he was finally invited to return above, he would be chained away from her again.
The thought lit ire within him even as he dropped the weakening men around him. The plan he had already decided on cemented in his mind.
Breathing hard, Lucifer took to the sky and scanned the field of limp bodies. His soak
ed leathers were stained silver, but only a few stray drops of red married with his spilled blood. Among the quiet bodies, a few twitched. Another tried to regain his footing, using a long spear to push out of the squelching mud.
The same burly man who had led the attack last time.
Tucking his cold, saturated wings in tight, Lucifer plummeted. Flattening the man, his fist caught the leader’s neck, squeezing to disable his flying fists. He intended to break the man’s jaw—for starters, before bringing his plan to life.
But then something caught his eye.
Closer to the ark, Remiel was battling back a smaller group of men. Behind him, three men were hanging from the ramp that continued to rise up to its closed position. One of the three had his leg up and was holding a cutting rock that he grated across the levering rope.
Lucifer released his intended victim with a head-rattling punch to the face—to stun him until he returned to complete his plans.
Then he took flight, wings driving him up and over the floored muddy men. Arriving in seconds, he caught the man by his neck and tore him back. He went to fling him through the air, not caring if the landing killed him—but the man smashed the cutting rock into his face.
Blinded by silver, Lucifer fell to the ground. But his strangling hold held tight, bringing the man down with him as he managed to land on his feet. His hand around the man’s throat squeezed tighter, rage at the interruption taking over. Irritation at his throbbing head and stolen vision made him forget their order not to kill.
“Lucifer, look out!”
Lucifer heard the splashing a second before Remiel called out, and he spun. The man in his grasp was flung in front of him—taking the group leader’s spear straight through his chest cavity. Lucifer smiled as he dropped the dying man that croaked and spluttered blood. He couldn’t have executed the result better if he’d tried, the death of a man at someone else’s hands. The leader’s face was a mask of shock and horror, and Lucifer punched the expression away before the man could react.
As Remiel continued to disengage the last of the villagers from the ark’s ramp, Lucifer worked quickly. Shielded behind his wings, he plucked one of his dirty feathers. Holding it in his palms as rain pattered down to wash it clear, he whispered into its delicate vanes. “Eternity without you is meaningless. I cannot abide this distance forever. Our time will come.”
Azrael appeared with a burst of light—as anticipated—the only archangel with the ability to instantly traverse between realms. Kneeling down to the man who’d been speared and was now unmoving in the mud, his eyes frozen open, Azrael glanced up. His darker wings tucked in close to his back as rain pattered his face. “Lucifer, why?”
The Morningstar smiled and shook his head. “It was not my arm that brought about this end. The human’s own leader delivered his fate.” Standing closer, his own wings acting as a shelter to obscure them, Lucifer held up the feather. “And now I must ask you a favor.”
“I cannot give that to her—”
“You can and you will.” He tucked the feather into Azrael’s sleeve with a look that challenged refusal. With his ability to traverse and deliver messages blocked, this was his only choice, his only way to reach her. “Unless you wish for your infatuation with Ariel to be brought to light.”
“I have no infat—”
“I am not blind, Azrael, and neither is God.”
Remiel appeared behind Lucifer and Azrael drew away, tightening the material at his wrist with his fist. “I must deliver this soul for judgment.” He knelt, and with his other hand suddenly glowing, he placed it on the dead man’s forehead as the water lapped at their feet. Then they were gone, disappearing in a flash.
Remiel landed with a frown but did not question their interaction. Instead, he looked to the field of bruised and battered men that twitched and groaned. Then his eyes cast across to the weeping women and children huddled back by the trees. “Let us complete what we came to do.” Flying up, he planted his hands into the side of the boat, and as Lucifer joined him, the enormous structure shifted, sliding downhill on the soft, marshy ground until it met deeper water.
Hovering in the unrelenting rain, Lucifer watched as the ark was carried away on a swirling current, seeing Noah and his family retreat inside with farewelling waves as the flurry of birds that looked like a long ribbon of color swooped inside. Their task was completed.
And his message was sent.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Alone on her knees, Gabriel beheld the expanse of her scarred garden. Now mottled black and brown, shades of vibrant green dotted with the purple and white from wildflowers no longer colored the rolling field below the endless glowing sky. The once aquamarine water was now a plunging waterfall of murky gray that pooled into the even darker depths of the seeing pond. Sadness weighed her down like a physical presence, a weight at her back that was so much heavier than the plumage of her wings. Though her upset was not at the lost beauty of her once majestic garden.
She sighed deeply, sweeping a hand over the rough brown grass and feeling the scrape of each blunt tip across her fingers and palm. She should have been watching the world below, seeing the acts of humans that she would then record for God. Yet she could not bring herself to still the waters and gain sight below. For one, the loss of sound from the dirty plunging water would leave only her internal thoughts to fill the void. Thoughts of the face, voice, and touch of one angel that was too painful to unleash, too dangerous to linger on. Even more than that, she knew glimpsing below would not show her the one being she longed to see.
Since being returned to her captive garden years ago, seeing Lucifer had been forbidden from her.
Trailing her hand over her folded legs, she felt the slightest sensation that reminded her of the last time she had seen him. Every part of her had been burned black and red, with silver leaking and oozing all over. And yet those wounds that were now fully healed had not been a threat to her immortality. The spear that had impaled her heart had. Gabriel clutched a fist over the organ, feeling a shock of pain thread through it. Phantom pains. Ones that had remained even after Lucifer’s actions to return her to the Realm of Light to heal in the pool of the looking glass. His actions had been against any granted permission, and they alone had saved her. Lucifer had saved her. Her heart beat faster with a growing ache that never truly left the organ since that day. The day she had been taken from his protective arms.
Since then, she had heard rumors when Michael had visited her. Lucifer was below, assisting to ready the ark on an extended Earth mission—in the field close by that same village of murderous men. His well-being was not a detail she had been granted. Now, after so long, her fear for his survival grew with each passing moment in her ruined garden where there was no escape. She feared for his life, knowing only that saving her had condemned him to Below.
“I am sorry, Luci…” Gabriel trailed off in her apology that would never be heard. She was no longer alone.
Rising to her feet fast with a flap of her wings, she readied to face the one angel she did not wish to see, but as the angelic figure materialized through the tree across from the pond, she saw it wasn’t Michael.
“Azrael?” Gabriel watched as he moved closer, bare feet and gray-flecked wings crackling as they brushed over the scorched land. The Angel of Death had never been affected by his calling to transport souls from living to Above, but the mournful look she saw as his face lifted sent a chill through her. With suddenly weak knees, Gabriel had to consciously force herself to stand. “Is it…” Lucifer’s name lodged in the back of her throat like a fist that refused to budge. “What is…what is wrong?”
Azrael glanced up as he met her around the pond, seeming to watch the flickers overhead that indicated passing souls and were so close they were almost constant. With a deep burdening sigh, he reached into the sleeve of his robe and then held out a single white feather. Not a word was spoken as he handed it over, his eyes refusing to meet Gabriel’s. She gasped at the hint o
f electricity she felt the moment the soft vanes and thick stem landed in her palm.
“What does he say?” A sharp male voice barked out.
Azrael jolted before becoming statue still, while Gabriel’s head whipped right to see the source of the voice she did not need to behold to know the speaker’s identity. Her delicate hand closed tight around the feather, even though she knew Michael had seen it. Like her, he knew who it was from. As he marched around the pond toward them, his steps crushing the dead remains of foliage, she knew he would not leave until he heard the message Lucifer had sent her.
Mouth tight, Michael nodded to Azrael, indicating the invisible door he had entered through back at the scorched, skeletal tree. Harsh lines scored his face, and his eyes narrowed as his hand hovered close to the angel sword suspended from his waist. “Leave. I will find you later.”
Azrael did not argue or utter a word, and in a matter of rushed movements, he vanished from the pond and through the tree, leaving Gabriel alone with the angel who commanded them all. Instead of regret and the need to be subservient, Gabriel felt a twinge of something else, a feeling that had been lingering below the surface since the day Lucifer had saved her. The day Michael had stood by with the knowledge of her capture and watched rather than take action. The day he had tried to keep Lucifer from getting to her before her body succumbed to earthly flames and turned to ash on the wind.
Gabriel knew Michael had followed orders, that his choice to stay away had not been his own when he’d made the confession to her. Still, she could not dislodge the hurt at his loyal actions that could have seen her cease to exist. Allowing herself to feel that hurt, she lifted her chin and met his watching silver-blue eyes. “Why does this concern you? Lucifer is on Earth. If what little you revealed to me is true, a few words when we are a world apart cannot bear harm.”
