by S. M. Reine
Metaraon didn’t care for one dead angel. But when he found the second farther along the path, worry hardened in his core.
This one still held her sword gripped to her chest. She had obviously killed by another blade, and the burns on her stomach made Metaraon think that the deadly wounds must have been delivered by the missing sword.
He pried her weapon from her stiff fingers and ignited it.
Two of Eden’s guards, gone.
“Eve!” he cried again, more desperately than before. He pumped his wings, flying over the black corpses of the other cherubim. Almost a dozen of them were scattered over the grounds. But there were no demons, nor imprints of cloven hoofs to show where they had trodden.
Between two roots, where Mnemosyne should have flowed, the ground was barren.
That was where he found her.
“Eve!”
Metaraon fell to his knees beside Eve. He dropped the flaming sword before pulling her into his arms. Her head hung over his arm, muscles limp. Those beautiful eyes were closed. Her right wing was bent. The feathers were loosed from their moorings, forming a blanket around them.
Eve’s gown was ripped down the neck, baring her skin to the navel. Her heart had been cut from her chest, much like the other dead angels in the garden.
This was not Lilith’s work at all.
His hand hovered over her lips, seeking breath that wasn’t there. When he didn’t find it, Metaraon pressed his mouth to hers, his eyes squeezed shut, and imagined breathing life back into her. He prayed to a higher god that didn’t exist.
Her absent heart did not beat, and neither did his. He could feel it shriveling within his chest.
“Eve,” he moaned to the burning Tree.
It groaned in sympathy, roots shaking deep within the earth.
Angels were eternal. Metaraon and Eve should have been together until the universe blinked out of existence, and beyond. He had been making plans for everything they could do together after Lilith’s war ended.
Without Eve, those plans meant nothing. It felt like Metaraon had died, too.
He was so lost in his grief that he didn’t feel Adam’s approach.
A hand settled on his shoulders, impossibly heavy, and hotter than the sun at noon. “My son,” He said in a gentle, benevolent voice. “I felt your misery from deep within the Tree. Why do you grieve?”
Metaraon lifted his eyes to Adam. The man was completely unrecognizable now as the humble, newly immortal man that Metaraon had met after his birth; godhood had turned Him into a blur of radiance. His latest physical form was again a decaying shell that could barely contain His light.
Eve had been working on a solution. A way to heal Adam, and restore Him to His former grace.
That future, too, was dead.
“You killed her,” Metaraon said, voice ragged.
Adam frowned, and the garden frowned with Him, sky darkening and branches bowing. “Who?”
He didn’t even look at the body that Metaraon cradled in his arms. It was as though Eve’s corpse didn’t exist.
Metaraon considered plunging the flaming sword into Adam’s heart, but there was no point—destroying His fragile body would do nothing about the immortal soul or the insane mind.
“Are you all right, my son?” Adam asked.
Metaraon kissed Eve’s cooling corpse again, then gently placed her back on the earth before facing Adam.
“Yes,” he said, barely able to speak through the tears. “I’m fine, Father.”
COLORADO – MAY 1933
Metaraon arrived at the White Ash Coven’s enclave with no fanfare. He never made a show of arriving, nor did he ever warn the high priest and priestess that he planned to visit; he simply arrived one day, expecting everyone to be prepared, and God help the coven if they were not.
Hermann Faulkner had been expecting this day since he had first met Metaraon fifteen years before. His mother had introduced him to the angel.
Even though polio had long since stolen Dorothy Faulkner’s ability to walk, she had insisted on being carried outside to greet their visitor. “Never let him inside the house if you can help it,” Dorothy had told Hermann after Metaraon left again. “And pray that you never meet him again.”
Hermann had a lot of respect for his mother, who had run the coven with a tight grip for forty years. If she told him not to let the angel into the house, then by God, he wouldn’t let the angel into the house.
“Metaraon, my friend,” Hermann greeted with all the gentility he could muster, stepping carefully over a pair of children racing through the long grass. He offered his hand for a shake. “It’s been too long.”
Though his plus fours and white shirt were as casual as possible without stripping naked, Metaraon still managed to seem uptight beside the coven. The angel stood aloof from them, obvious disdain shadowing his pale blue eyes.
Everyone was outside to prepare for the night’s esbat. The women’s tanned calves flashed under loose skirts as they chased their children, pin curls falling loose around their shoulders, smiles on their faces. Golden pentagrams gleamed on rings. Magic sparkled through the air when they laughed.
“This is probably somewhat different than you’re used to, uh, up there,” Hermann went on, dropping his hand when Metaraon failed to take it. “I like to let the children have fun on full moons.” He had to jump aside to allow a leggy toddler rush past, giggling at top volume. “You should see us at harvest. It’s all work.”
“Yes, I imagine so,” Metaraon said.
That was probably when Hermann should have stopped talking, but the raw energy vibrating from the angel’s skin was unsettling. He saw Erna pass with a baby and snagged the child from her arms.
“Go start tonight’s brew,” he said. “And, uh, get us some drinks. What do you want, Metaraon?”
Metaraon’s eyes narrowed at Erna. “Nothing. Thank you.”
She hurried away. The angel turned to watch her leave.
“This is my nephew, Landon,” said Hermann loudly, to distract Metaraon. “Erna can’t have children of her own, so unless we can bring Margot over, this fine young man will succeed me as high priest.” He lifted the infant in front of Metaraon. Landon was a plump baby with wrinkled thighs and a roll of chin fat that vanished his neck. “Cute as a bug’s ear, isn’t he? Look at those peepers!”
“Yes, very well,” Metaraon said. His tone made it sound like merely being in the presence of a baby offended him. “Show me the girl.”
Hermann hesitated. “About the girl…”
“Is there a problem?”
“No, not exactly.”
He passed Landon off to one of the older children, then led Metaraon away from the sunlight to the shadows behind his house. The herb garden was in full bloom; the air smelled of sage and oregano.
With his mother’s warning in the back of his mind, Hermann didn’t dare dismantle the wards to allow Metaraon inside. Instead, he rapped a knuckle on the window. Erna leaned out of the kitchen.
“Send Josephine out,” Hermann said.
Erna glanced at Metaraon. He could see the question hovering on her lips unasked. Hermann had told her about the coven’s duties, if not the exact details, and she knew what was coming.
She ducked back inside without speaking. Smart dame.
Josephine emerged a few minutes later. She was a woman at the peak of young adulthood—beautiful, by any definition of the word. The black Faulkner hair hung over her shoulders, straight and even. One of the children had braided white flowers into a lock by her ear. The apples of her cheeks were pink and her lips had a perfect bow curve. She was the best that the White Ash Coven had to offer.
“We’ve never let her work the fields,” Hermann said. “She’s got a strong back, smooth hands, great legs.”
Her eyes widened with alarm at this assessment. But she only looked more alarmed when Metaraon pushed his face into hers with a frown.
“This one’s too old,” he said.
“She
wasn’t old when we started grooming her. But she’s good. We even got her teeth fixed up, like it said in the instructions.”
“Hermann—” Josephine began.
“Silence, girl,” Metaraon said, and her mouth snapped shut.
He grabbed her chin and tilted it left, then right. He thumbed back her lips to look at her teeth. He checked underneath her hair, the texture of her palms. Metaraon handled her casually, impassively, as if she were no more than a cow at auction.
“Are you fertile?” he asked her.
Josephine’s eyes widened. “I don’t know.”
“Sir,” Hermann prompted. “Show some respect.” He gave the angel an apologetic look.
“I don’t know…sir,” she amended, plucking a flower out of her hair and plucking petals off in her fingers. Her tone was still anything but respectful.
Metaraon didn’t seem to care. “Do you menstruate, girl?”
“Yes, but—”
“No,” Metaraon said, turning back to Hermann. “She is too old, and she will not suffice. Send her away. Summon your wife, Erna.”
Josephine didn’t need to be sent away by anyone. She left immediately, shooting a mistrustful look at Hermann, and vanished among the children playing in the fields.
Hermann laughed nervously. “What do you want with Erna?”
“Summon her,” Metaraon said.
He glanced into the kitchen. His wife was working over the cauldron, sweat gluing her hair to her neck. And what a long, beautiful neck it was, swooping into delicate shoulders, a tiny waist, and pleasantly wide hips that would never bear a child.
There was no reason for Metaraon to want to speak with Hermann’s wife, who was not high priestess, and did not possess an ounce of magic beyond what she could squeeze from herbs and crystals.
“Metaraon,” Hermann began, turning back to the angel. He stopped speaking when he realized that Metaraon’s form had changed.
His wings had appeared as pale, glossy lines at his back. His skin looked unnaturally smooth and as hard as marble.
And his clothes were drenched in blood.
It was black and drying, with handprints smeared down the thighs, the socks. Hermann imagined someone with bloody hands grabbing at Metaraon, begging him for mercy, and receiving none. There was no mercy in the glass shards of his eyes, the frown of his inhumanly pale lips.
Hermann stepped away from the kitchen window. The instant he moved from the wall, the blood and wings vanished.
The angel looked like no more than a man again. Casual, unassuming, normal.
When Hermann had walked up to the window, he must have entered the house’s wards, allowing him to see Metaraon’s true appearance. He was never meant to see the blood staining Metaraon’s shirt and slacks.
His mother’s warnings not to allow the angel into the house echoed through Hermann’s mind. What would Dorothy Faulkner have said if the angel demanded to see her husband? Her daughter?
“Why do you want Erna?” Hermann asked. “You don’t want to…to take her, do you?”
“That is of no consequence to you.”
“I’d sure say it’s of consequence to me—she’s my wife!”
Metaraon loomed over Hermann, suddenly impossibly tall. He seemed to fill the sky. “You would give Him a daughter of your coven, but not your bride? Don’t defy me, Faulkner, or I will kill every single one of your women, Erna included.”
Hermann believed every word. The angel would surely kill more than half of the coven if the whim struck, and it would bother him no more than poisoning a nest of ants.
“But why?” Hermann asked. “Why Erna?”
“He prefers red-haired women,” the angel said with a hint of a smile.
Was he…joking?
Before Hermann could make a decision, Erna emerged from the back door carrying a tray of drinks. She had brought several glasses and was smiling with relief. She must have seen Josephine leave. She had no idea what was coming.
Metaraon took the tray from her hands and set it on the grass.
“Look at me,” he instructed Erna, taking hold of her chin. His wife stared into Metaraon’s face, as if she could see the true form behind the illusion. And, again, Metaraon tilted her chin from side to side. He looked underneath her hair and felt the skin on her hands. “You are infertile, yes?”
Erna began to tremble. “I should work on tonight’s brew.”
“No, that won’t be necessary.” Metaraon caught her wrist when she moved to step away. “I’ll take this one.”
Hermann gaped, heart pounding, knees weak. “But she’s already married,” he whispered.
“Inconsequential.”
“Too old.”
“Her merits outweigh her age. She’ll be replaced soon enough—she only needs to last a few decades.” Metaraon lifted an eyebrow. “Will you comply?” The question that followed was implicit: Or will you let the coven die?
The laughter of children drifted on the breeze. It drove straight into Hermann’s heart like spikes of ice.
“My love, please,” Erna said, leading with her eyes.
But Hermann didn’t know what to say or do that could save her. He could only gaze at his wife a final time—his beautiful wife, with her cascades of red hair in pin curls, her thick eyelashes, the lips that he had kissed after promising to be with her until death do they part.
Metaraon put his arm around her shoulders. “Your compliance won’t be forgotten, Hermann.”
The angel vanished, taking Erna with him.
She never came home.
COLORADO – JANUARY 1995
Many years later, Metaraon returned to Earth to check on Erna’s replacement at the Faulkner house. He immediately determined that there must have been a mistake.
This ugly little bitch looked nothing like Eve.
Metaraon walked around the girl as she did drills in a meadow, studying her from every angle.
She was certainly the product of Isaac Kavanagh and Ariane Garin’s union. She shared their physical features and bore the type of scars he would expect to find on a kopis trained by Isaac. But aside from her hair color, she didn’t resemble Eve in the slightest—in either form or function.
Instead, Elise Kavanagh fought with the fury of a demon. Her movements were whiplike in speed and as deadly as a gunshot. She ripped apart invisible enemies in her drills, and Metaraon could easily imagine her tearing through entire armies with that fury.
Eve had not been a killer. She had been a giver of life. That dissimilarity was a deliberate part of Metaraon’s design—the Godslayer was meant to be lethal, after all.
Yet there was a subtle draw to Elise. Metaraon couldn’t take his eyes off of her, as much as she appalled him. The Godslayer was meant to be endlessly fascinating to ethereal creatures. They would all need to love her, because that meant that He would also be compelled to love her, even though she was, otherwise, nothing at all like Eve.
She would have to be good enough.
“You can’t have her,” Pamela said when Metaraon came to retrieve Elise that night.
Metaraon was surprised by the witch’s recalcitrance. He had expected resistance from the girl herself, but not her handlers—not after the coven’s centuries of obedience.
He did not bother arguing with the witch for long.
Pamela Faulkner died quickly.
Metaraon seized the girl, dragged her to the garden, and surrendered her to the cherubim. She struggled against him, of course, but he had taken her in the night, when she was unprepared for the assault. He could only hope that she would be better at assassination than self-defense.
“Pathetic,” he muttered, tossing the girl to the grass in front of the gateway. Moving between universes was difficult for mortals. She was unconscious.
“Is that her?” asked one of the cherubim who had arrived to greet them. “Is that…Eve?”
“No,” Metaraon said sharply.
The cherub blinked and rubbed his eyes. “I see that no
w. My mistake,” he said. But he still stared at Elise as though she were Eve, returned to them so long after her death, and Metaraon wasn’t sure if he was proud of himself for having crafted a convincing replacement, or if he was disgusted by it.
Metaraon didn’t wait around to see how the Godslayer would be received by Him. Adam would probably take some weeks to realize that a new bride had arrived anyway. The old one hadn’t had the courtesy to die yet.
“Guard her and guide her,” Metaraon told the cherubim. “She is more important than any of you know.”
Destiny was set into motion. Adam’s death was sealed—or so Metaraon hoped.
It was the least he could do for Eve.
PART FOUR
Bishops
VI
Betty looked like she belonged in the garden. She still had the apple-cheeked beauty of a fairytale princess, even a year after she had been shot and killed. “If you keep staring at me like that, I’m going to start thinking you want my hot body,” Betty said, venturing a smile at Elise.
They were alone in the apartment above Motion and Dance. Elise could have believed it was a normal, quiet afternoon in James’s living room with her friend if the last time she had seen Betty hadn’t been when she was a rigid corpse.
Now Betty wore practical tan slacks and a blouse with a loose neckline that framed the mounds of her breasts, of which she had always been extremely proud. There was even a black clip over one ear to hold back her bangs. Elise had given her that clip for Christmas. Betty looked like she was ready to go to her job at the university.
Elise ripped one of the bottles of wine off the rack, uncorked it, and sniffed the mouth. It didn’t have any smell. One more detail missed by Adam when He was constructing the illusion.
She turned the bottle so that she could look at the shape of her reflection in the side without a label. Elise’s hair was curly, just below her shoulders, probably red. She was in her human form.
This was still a dream. Betty wasn’t real.
