The Prison of the Angels

by Janine Ashbless

  “Show me the sunlight,” groaned Gabriel’s deep voice from behind us.

  We turned. He was most of the way to standing; his hands were braced on his slablike thighs. Like all angels he was shockingly handsome, but I was glad to see that he had somehow managed to fashion the clerical robe into a kind of loincloth. It made it easier for me to look at him.

  His eyes were blankly golden.

  “Not much sunlight up there at the moment,” said Egan tightly. “More rains of blood.”

  “I will put a stop to that.”

  “Feel free.” Egan gestured at the door.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. Azazel had been weak and dizzy after I’d released him, his memory a near-blank. “Can you walk?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Give me your hand.”

  I could feel Egan’s reluctance as I left his side and offered my hand to the archangel. His was huge, of course; my palm seemed to disappear into his grasp.

  Gabriel sighed and stood up straight, looming over me. He shook back his heavy hair and then fixed me with a considering look. “Milja Petak,” he said, indicating Egan with a flick of his golden eyes. “You love this man?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “And the Scapegoat has let him live?” His lip lifted from his teeth. “Truly we are at the End of Days.”

  It took a moment for me to realize that he was making a joke. A pretty grim one, but he was recovering a lot faster than Azazel nevertheless. “Yeah,” I squeaked.

  “Let’s go,” said Egan warily.

  He retreated into the passage to the church of Santa Francesca and Gabriel followed, leading me in his wake like a child. I noted that he had to duck beneath the low ceiling. He seemed to be a good seven feet tall.

  “How long was I incarcerated?”

  “About two thousand years,” I said. Not even half as long as Azazel and the other Watchers.

  “I remember being brought to Rome,” he said, trailing fingertips curiously over the painted bricks. “Being paraded through the streets. Does Rome still stand? And her Empire?”

  Vidimus hadn’t exactly been keeping him abreast of the situation, that much was obvious. “Rome is…huge,” I said cautiously. “But there’s no more Roman Empire. It’s, like, the heart of the biggest Christian sect instead.”

  “Denomination,” corrected Egan curtly.

  “Christian?” he rumbled. “Denominations?”

  “There’s a lot of history for you to catch up on,” I said weakly.

  We reached the bronze door at the head of the stairs and Egan held up a finger for quiet before unlocking it. Then he drew his gun again.

  “What’s that for?” I whispered.

  “If there was anyone left conscious after the last fight, they’ll know where we were headed. Someone will be on their way.”

  “Let me,” said Gabriel, not dropping his voice at all.

  Raising an eyebrow, Egan squeezed obligingly aside to let him go through first. We followed the archangel up into the belly of the church.

  It was empty. A sullen red light suffused the place from the few windows. I breathed a sigh of relief, allowing myself a moment’s respite from dread. I’d had more than enough of fighting. Egan turned to lock the stair door behind us.

  “Best to obfuscate our tracks,” he muttered.

  “What is this?” Gabriel asked. He was turning on his heels, staring all around us at the religious paintings and statues. He looked perplexed. “Who is this goddess?”

  Oh boy. “No goddess. That’s her. You remember? Mary. The virgin.”

  His face dropped with incredulity.

  I couldn’t help remembering what our guide, Eskinder, had said in Ethiopia. “How old was she, Gabriel?”

  “I did not hurt her. I made sure of that.”

  “You piece of…” I muttered.

  He whirled on me, his eyes lambent. “It was not my choice, or hers! But she was chosen. The One you seek to blame is not here. Perhaps you should forgive Him.”

  Beneath our feet the ground shook, and the rafters over our heads creaked, shedding flakes of paint.

  “Okay, I think someone heard that,” said Egan in a level voice. “Whatever you’re planning to do, you need to be fast.”

  “Does the Flavian Amphitheater still stand?”

  Egan blinked. “Yes. It’s changed a bit, but…”

  Gabriel sank a hand on my shoulder and held out the other to him. “Then let us go.”

  17

  THE LAST TRUMP

  We appeared in the Colosseum. I would have recognized it even if I hadn’t done the Rome tourist trail earlier; its great jagged oval like a staved-in ribcage, the black bones of its construction laid visible by centuries of ruin. The original arena floor had long since collapsed to expose the warren of cells where prisoners and gladiators and beasts awaited their fate, but we’d landed on the temporary modern floor that created a platform across perhaps a third of the gap. The sky overhead was an open wound weeping blood upon us.

  Four hundred thousand people had died here over three hundred years, we’d been told on the tour; the victims of Empire and religion—including many Christian martyrs. What more appropriate place for angels to gather?

  “Summon the Scapegoat,” Gabriel commanded me as he deposited us. He crouched to touch the scattering of sand strewn across the boards. Egan took several paces backward to put himself out of ground-zero, scanning the empty tiers where crowds had once bayed over their murderous entertainment.

  I swallowed. Summoning Azazel was the last thing I could be relied upon to pull off; he responded very badly to any attempt at domination. Even begging him didn’t always work, as well I knew. I found myself gaping at Gabriel as he drew the sand toward him as if it were a sheet, yellow scattered with red. He lifted and stretched and whirled the impossible fabric about him, until it settled and clung and became an ankle-length robe, tight in the sleeve and full in the skirt, cloth-of-gold scattered with blood-red rubies. When he stood up and shook out the folds the outfit loaned him an unmistakable dignity, while not in the least disguising the breadth of his shoulders and chest.

  They’re all so vain, I thought over the seethe of my self-doubt.

  “Go on,” he prompted me sharply.

  I took a deep breath, trying to focus on the urgency of my request and my desperate need for it to succeed.

  “Azazel,” I said, soft and hoarse, “please come here now. To me. Believe me, it’s more important than anything else.”

  We looked around us. The bloody rain splashed in my eye and I wiped at it, wincing, as I turned to Gabriel. “He’s not listen—”

  There was a whumph and a crack as Azazel landed behind me. I whipped about, just as Egan dived for cover.

  I’d summoned a devil. A crimson, smoking devil.

  Azazel was covered in blood from a thousand little wounds, literally red from his head to the bare tips of his feet, his hair clotted with gore—and he was wreathed in flames that hissed upon the sand. A sword blade burned in his clawed left hand. He still wore the ragged remnants of his black sarong, though it was in charred strips now, and there was a bit of my brain that thought that in a day of many miracles, the most extraordinary of all was that the casual twist of cloth still clung somehow below his hips. His eyes were like lava pools, and as they fixed on Gabriel his jaw fell open in confusion.

  I think that confusion maybe saved my life. If he’d been fast enough to make the leap to She has freed my enemy, then he might have swatted me out of existence. But as it was I had a moment’s grace to hurl myself inside the compass of his arms, screaming, “Don’t fight! He’s on your side!” as my fingers slithered through the blood painted all over his skin.

  Azazel looked down swiftly at me and drew back his lips to bare teeth like a wolf’s.

  That was when Michael arrived. The Commander of the Heavenly Host didn’t bother looking about; he just swept his crystal sword around in an arc and lightning cracked across the sand straight toward us. Azaz
el threw up curved walls of flame like wings to encompass me, and I felt the heat spit and spark around us and the tips of my hair frizz to ash.

  I heard myself scream.

  “STOP!” boomed Gabriel’s voice, shaking the ground and collapsing arches high in the ancient walls. “BOTH OF YOU STAND!”

  That got their attention. As Azazel lowered his flaming wings I saw Michael clap eyes on the other archangel for the first time, and he staggered back as if he’d taken a blow to the diaphragm. He wasn’t in any better shape than Azazel anyway; he too was drenched in blood. To be absolutely honest, if it hadn’t been for Michael’s longer hair and Roman-looking armor, it would have been hard to tell the two of them apart.

  “Gavri’el!” he spluttered. “What?!”

  From thin air Gabriel drew out—not a sword, as I half-feared, but—a horn. A spiral horn as long as his arm, from some sort of antelope. “I declare a parlay,” he announced, his voice deep enough to make the dirt dance. “Lay down your weapons.”

  “Oh,” said Michael. “No. You can’t be here. Not now.”

  Azazel straightened up and took a step backward, panting hard. With a hiss, all the blood on his skin burnt away. I stole a glance at my own limbs, but though my Norwegian clothes were charred to holes there was no sign I’d taken any hurt from the lightning or the flame. “What is happening?” he snarled, still all fangs.

  “This,” said Gabriel, lifting the shofar to his lips and blowing.

  The note was pure and sweet and it belled out from the arena where we stood, boiling away the clotted red clouds, burning up the bloody rain, spreading out in an unfading call that I knew must lap around the world. Every other sound—distant wails of fear, the omnipresent honking of Rome’s traffic, the faint sigh of the wind—stopped as suddenly as if a door had been shut on it. Blood thrummed in my ears, and the air was as dry as dust in my throat. The filth besmirching Michael’s armor vaporized, revealing platinum and gold and crystal that gleamed like the sun. The note went on and on, and I saw to my unspeakable horror the red sky above open like a vast iris to reveal a night full of brilliant unglittering stars. By the time Gabriel lowered the horn from his lips, the sun shone like a spotlight from a firmament as naked as the vacuum of space. I imagined I could feel the UV crisping my skin. Every shadow at our feet seemed to be cut out of black paper. The curved walls of the Colosseum seemed to stretch upward until we were trapped in a bowl under the glaring gaze of Heaven.

  This is it. Gabriel blows his trumpet. Heimdall sounds the horn to summon the gods of Asgard to the last battle. This is Ragnarok.

  I was amazed I could still breathe.

  And into this terrible, unreal arena, the Host of Heaven dropped one by one.

  First the archangels, down with us upon the flat platform. Uriel, back in his sharp Italian suit and looking rather more suave than when I’d last seen him, one hand over his mouth in cogitation or dismay, and Penemuel lynx-eyed at his shoulder. Raphael, on hands and knees, the spear of Saint George still rammed through his ribcage, his shoulders shaking with effort. Then all the other angels, one at a time, like columns of golden light falling from the stars to stand on the tiers all around us, rank upon rank up to the high horizon. Some looked human, or humanoid, from where I stood gasping; others were etiolated to the form of feathered serpents; still others were no shape my brain could parse; Fractal eyes, I thought dimly: wheels and wings and eyes.

  Four hundred witnesses to the endgame.

  “What have you done, Milja?” Azazel asked softly, his chest still heaving for air. He seemed to have returned to his normal human shape for the moment.

  I don’t know.

  “I made a deal with Gabriel,” I breathed. “To save you.”

  Azazel shook his head, disbelieving.

  “Gabriel,” said Uriel, eyes wide. “You’ve…returned to us. How unexpected.” His voice wasn’t raised, but it carried on that unnatural stillness to the utmost walls.

  “We are now in Conclave,” Gabriel rumbled. “No hand will be raised by brother against brother, until I declare this parlay ended in accord.”

  “NO!” bellowed Michael, jabbing a finger at Gabriel. “You will not do this! You do not command me! I am the Captain of the Host, remember!”

  “I do remember. I do not command the Host. But if you will not parlay, I will still speak—and when I have finished speaking there will be no more Host left to command. Is that what you want?”

  It sounded like a death-threat, and I guess only six or seven of us there—depending on whether Uriel had initiated Penemuel into their secret conspiracy—knew that it was not. It was instead a hundred thousand times more destructive: the threat to reveal the Truth. God Himself fucked up. We are alone. We are abandoned. There is no one in charge. It would bring chaos to Creation.

  “Michael,” said Uriel pointedly, his teeth gritted. “We can talk with our foes.”

  His words meant more than the heavenly audience around us knew, I thought. There was more personal ire in our little circle than just Watchers versus Host. Uriel had unjustly shouldered so much of the public opprobrium since the Incarnation, and the other archangels had not tried to vindicate him; Penemuel had ditched Azazel to fuck one of his bitterest enemies; Gabriel had suffered millennial torment as a result of the panic of his three peers. I’d stabbed Uriel, and Egan had stabbed Raphael. And as for Michael—well, he’d been in a pissing contest with Azazel since the first days of Creation.

  Michael huffed and snorted and stomped in a circle now, glaring at everyone, even the injured Raphael, who looked like he was mostly trying not to cough up any more of his lungs. Azazel smirked, just to annoy him. His burning red eyes were cooling to lava-black.

  “Scapegoat,” growled Michael, “just wait your turn.” He spun on his heel and looked up at the ranks of angels arrayed around us on every side. “Leave us!” he roared, throwing out his hand. “Go to your guard posts and wait!”

  Which they did. I guess the Host of Heaven is nothing if not obedient.

  As the last of the multitude vanished, Michael turned his attention to Raphael. “And what is to be done about this?” he demanded. “Who did this thing?”

  “One of you two, pull out the spear,” Gabriel said softly.

  “Of course,” I answered, full of guilt.

  “Looks like your modus operandii, Milja,” Uriel commented. “Why am I not surprised?”

  That made me balk and flush. Crossing to Raphael meant moving out of Azazel’s reach and into Uriel’s. I didn’t like being the object of his cold regard. We’d been shamefully intimate, and then I’d, well, scorned him. The agony he’d suffered must be nothing compared to the bruising of his pride.

  I didn’t want to think how vengeful he must be feeling.

  Egan stepped up to the plate for me, strolling across the little circle of archangels as if he did such things every day, warning me off with nothing more than the tiniest twitch of his fingers. He stood over Raphael’s slumped form, grasped the spear-shaft in both hands, and wrenched it out sideways with one brutal heave that I certainly wouldn’t have been able to manage. Then he started to retreat, but he got no further than a few steps backward before Raphael lurched to his feet, spraying blood, and grabbed his jacket, hauling him clear of the ground.

  As Raphael snarled into Egan’s face I realized that all the rules I’d come to rely on, like Don’t kill humans, were nothing more than antiquated traditions now, without any actual Divine Sanction behind them, and my heart leapt into my mouth.

  “Put him down!” Gabriel ordered. “There will be no violence here! The man and the woman are here to represent their race, and are under my protection!”

  Raphael dropped Egan from about three feet up. “I have been trying to save their race,” he rasped and spat, his lungs still expelling as much blood as air. “They have begun to launch their great weapons. I’ve was trying to disarm them all but there are so many, in so many places… And then I was waylaid by this pair.”


  I went cold, and thought my legs would give out. Were some of those frozen points of light over our heads missiles, on their way to Washington or Moscow or Beijing? Were there mushroom clouds already billowing over strategic targets? Oh no, I thought as the arena seemed to spin about me. What have I done?

  We’d interrupted Raphael’s last-ditch attempt to save us. We’d let World War Three start. I’d pulled the trigger on the entire world.

  That decision under the mountain in my homeland—that moment of compassion or weakness or infatuated desire, or all of them together—had brought us here, to the End of the World. To this moment borrowed from eternity, with Egan backing across the arena toward me, and the stars overhead waiting to fall.

  “The humans aren’t the issue,” said Michael.

  “You’ve made that much quite clear!” Raphael coughed bitterly. “Your idiotic vendetta will destroy them all!”

  Michael shrugged in an irritated fashion. “We will save a breeding population.”

  “We are in Conclave now,” said Gabriel calmly, as if Raphael’s announcement was an irrelevance. “No one shall leave from here on. No one shall lift a hand in anger against any other. We will stay until we have reached an accord as to what is to be done with the Watchers.”

  “That is easy, then!” Michael paced with impatience. “We return the Scapegoat to his prison. Now.”

  I wasn’t aware that my knees were folding until Azazel’s hand caught me roughly. But he didn’t pay me more attention than that, he just off-handed me into Egan’s arms. “You’ve been trying,” he sneered over our heads. “How’s it working out for you?”

  “Oh, Egan,” I whispered into his chest as he held me tight. “Shit shit shit.”

  “And you, Gabriel, would do well to help us if you seek redemption!”