by J. L. Myers
Driving the dagger down, Lucifer cleanly cut the deep wound wider. Ribs broke and spread apart as he twisted the blade, cracking her open like a walnut. More blood. So much blood. It welled and streamed, pouring from her as if trying to escape the offending object.
For a moment he saw the time he’d stabbed her through right up to the hilt of his sword. He had been a monster then. Despicable. Unforgivable. His inadequate reasoning to protect her from disobeying God’s orders to see him were weak. Yet Gabriel had forgiven him. She had understood.
“Lucifer, you are running out of time.”
Snapping back to this horrific moment, Lucifer blinked rapidly. There was too much blood to see through. “Where the hell is the shard?”
With only one way to find out, Lucifer made a choice. He shoved his hand into her chest, snaking around her cracked ribs, seeking with his fingertips to find the hard and jagged fragment. Something stabbed at his forefinger and he hissed, stopping his retraction as burning heat attacked the bones in his hand.
“Found it.” Tunneling his fingers deeper into the gory softness of her insides, he pinched the offending shard and pulled back. Gabriel’s hammering heart pulsed so hard against his hand as he retracted from her chest cavity. Her eyes flung open with a wet gasp. Then he was out.
And Gabriel collapsed into quiet stillness.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The stairs up into Heaven seemed to stretch on forever, a new one appearing each time Michael expected to reach the landing. He wanted to get this over and done with. He wanted to hear the news from God’s own mouth—or at least, the glowing sphere he was sure to be met with. The task had been set, and now enough time had passed for the dead hybrid to carry out his murderous order.
Perhaps he’d be rewarded for his cold ability to act when God merely watched from Above.
But Michael knew that could not be the reason for his summons. Being cloaked in hybrid blood had hidden his actions from anyone Above, especially God.
Finally reaching the landing, the vast expanse of light stretched out before him. God’s throne was the first thing he saw, and Michael’s forward steps faltered. God was in his human form, that of a young and innocent-looking boy. His finger pointed at the ground and had Michael’s feet stepping faster despite himself. And then he was right before his God, knees giving way to force him to the ground. Michael’s head bowed and the rest of his body froze as if set in ice.
“You have disappointed me, Warrior of Mine.” Although the young voice was soft, it batted against him like blasts of power that rippled the atmosphere. The light all around intensified, bringing beads of sweat to the angel’s skin. “Show me the sword.”
Mobility rushed back, and Michael grabbed the hilt of the angel sword. He wanted to question what God was so enraged about, but questioning was not his place. Neither was refusing a direct order. Besides, he could guess that it at least had something to do with his actions. Why else would God demand to see the sword he had damaged for his cause?
Reaching up over his head and through his sheltering wings, Michael sliced the sword free of the scabbard strapped to his back between his shoulder blades. He held the weapon before him, balancing it at each end on his elevated hands. God’s milky eyes, though free of any iris or pupil, blazed as they narrowed at the sword’s tip and the missing piece Michael had snapped off.
“Tell me, Michael…” God vanished, reappearing right before the angel in the blink of an eye. His small hand forced Michael’s chin up, demanding his eyes meet his maker. “Pray tell…how a fragment of this weapon, the one I entrusted you with, came to infuse a dagger with Heavenly power in Hell? How it ended up embedded in none other than my messenger Gabriel?”
Michael’s heart thundered in his chest with a mixture of accomplishment as well as another unexpected emotion. Morbid shock. Ripples inundated his body, making his hands that held up the heavy sword tremble. Was it fear for the wrath in God’s glowing eyes that made him shake…or something entirely different?
Clearing his throat, Michael reined in control of his extremities, clenching his muscles to still the shakes. God had seen the aftermath, but his demand for answers proved he had not seen his actions that set this plan on course. Lying was an option, but not a good one. He would not be here if God weren’t sure he was somehow responsible. Michael’s voice was gruff but level, sure of his response, “I know the child to be is the cause of our downfall. Your own power gifted to the vampires delivered this truth. A truth that was within my power to prevent. Your hands are clean, my God. I did this for you.”
The wrath Michael expected not only for his candid words but for the act itself never came. A burdening sigh blew through God’s rosy lips as his small hand fell from Michael’s chin. His head hung as he stepped back. “I thought instilling my will, my control, would set things right. That removing your weak emotions would serve our cause and all of Heaven for the better.” Now God looked up, a shadow of silver irises and black pupils showing in his eyes that welled with moisture. “I was wrong.”
“Wrong?”
God’s hand glowed as he planted it over Michael’s forehead. Light warmed and then burned his skin, blistering before a shock of power ripped downward through his body. A sudden gush of imagery flooded in, reforming and solidifying in Michael’s head. Gabriel, so depressed yet so strong, disrobing before him. Her reclining back on a bed of furs and soft, colorful materials. Him hovering above and then pressing inside her. The feel of her warm skin against his. Him lingering longer and longer after each time. The kiss he had stolen. The one she’d pushed him away for. Michael had been falling for her, his heavenly sister. And he had…sent an assassin to Hell to end the life that blossomed inside her belly.
Michael felt ill.
He rose up too fast and stumbled back, grasping at his throat as if that would relieve the spike of bile that wanted to escape. The sword clattered to the ground, the noise echoing so loudly despite the infinite expanse of light as it hit the hazy veil behind the throne. After all Michael had done to save Gabriel, helping Lucifer not once but twice to get to her…and now he’d endangered her. Sent a hybrid monster after her with the only weapon that promised to end not only the life she carried, but that could also end her own.
Part of Michael stood by the decision to go after her unborn child. He had already risked too much in the past, so much so that she’d ended up in Hell with the one being that was the key to all their destruction. Now that end was wrapped up in their combined creation. A child of Heaven and Hell. The key to bringing down all that was good and light. The key to destroying Heaven itself and all the angels, and maybe even God.
The child—Lucifer’s child—needed to die.
But he had never told the hybrid to let Gabriel live.
Michael fell down to his knees, fat drops sliding from his eyes. If he’d killed her too…
“Gabriel lives…” God’s voice was deadpan, devoid of any emotion to hint if he was pleased or not at the fact. “For now.”
Michael’s heart leaped in his chest, the slow pounding racing faster and faster.
“So does the child, thanks to Lucifer. Your assassin is no more.”
Gabriel lives…for now. Michael dared to ask the question that swirled through his mind and turned his stomach with so much unknown. “What will you do?”
“I will handle this as I have always planned to. By my own hand. By my own command.” The sword appeared in God’s small hand. Flashing right in front of Michael in an instant, the boy’s slight hand under Michael’s chin lifted him to his feet with the power of a towering man. Those eyes were milky white again, any emotion long gone as they tunneled into Michael’s own. The angel sword met the place over his pounding heard. “Take this as a warning…”
The angelic weapon burst into a rain of blue sparks that burned out as they hit the glowing ground. God caught hold of Michael’s biceps, delivering devastating power from his touch and into every cell in Michael’s body. Mouth gapi
ng as the light turned to searing pain, no sound escaped his mouth, only a choked gasp did—as the explosive sensation burned its way through his heart and shot out in twin projectiles from his back. Black sprouted with the escaping power, staining his pure white wings and driving down each downy length until every feather was raven black.
Banned from Heaven.
Michael was being banned from Heaven.
Locked in place by God’s small hands as his maker levitated before him, keeping them eye to eye, Michael felt his insides twist and coil. He couldn’t be here. Up here. Remaining would rip him apart if he didn’t flee right now.
“I will leave you with your feelings,” God said the word as if it were the bane of his existence. “But do not tempt me, Michael. Do not push me. Trust in my infinite wisdom and fall in line.” The glowing ground beneath Michael’s feet became intangible, but instead of falling, God kept hold, dangling him like a puppet. “You are getting off easy this time. But do not confuse my leniency for weakness. Act against an angel of mine again, and you will suffer Lucifer’s fate. I will burn your wings from your back and cast you down to Earth.”
“But the child? The prophecy?”
Michael could hardly believe he’d spoken, that he’d questioned God.
Light burst from the boy’s small form, engulfing his entire body and replacing it with resplendent white power. “I will take care of it. Not you.” His final words were telepathic and punched inside Michael’s head like spiked fists. “Do you hear me?!”
Still battling the feeling of being on the brink of bursting apart, Michael could only nod. God’s hold released and then he fell, air rushing up to bat his war clothes and wings as they failed to extend.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Michael’s feet hit first, diving down into water that erupted as the rest of him followed suit. Tucking up, he barely missed the bottom of the looking glass—barely kept from shattering the base wide open and falling below. Michael pushed up with less force, the weight of his black wings like lead hanging from his back. His face broke the surface and he gasped, swiping his long black hair from his face to open up his airways. Still in the Realm of Light, that sensation lessened, leaving only a small yet sinister burn in him that hinted at how close he had come to falling from grace completely. Floating on his back with his wings stretched out to brush the pool’s curved edges, Michael worked to control his breathing.
God had vowed to take action.
But he never had before now.
Despite the threat, Michael could not stand idly by and wait for the end to come. But he could not, would not, endanger Gabriel again. Disgust tainted his heart the color of his black feathers. Knowing God had blocked his feelings didn’t alleviate his guilt. There had to be another way, some other way he could give Heaven a better chance at defeating what was to come. But first…
Tipping upright, Michael waded from his dip in the water and climbed out of the pool. Water dripped and pooled, but as he raced through the bright corridors and sped through the dead end to Gabriel’s garden, the trail to his destination thinned and dispersed.
Cleansed of hybrid blood from his dip in the pool, he took to the glowing sky, flapping his heavy black wings. And then he speared through the waterfall so fast the water barely added to his damp leathers. The deep, sheltered cave contained his secret stash—a seemingly endless supply of clay pots—and in a moment he was once again lathered in sticky hybrid blood.
Slipping around the fall of sheeting water, Michael stepped off the rocky ledge. Landing on one foot and one knee, he stood tall, taking his first full breath since his expulsion from Heaven. Michael had visited this blackened garden of dead trees and nil life so often since Gabriel fell to Hell. But today was the first day he felt anything. As if transported back in time, he imagined the moment he caught Gabriel wrapped in Lucifer’s arms. Seeing them fully bared and Lucifer hard had killed him, sending fury coursing through his heart. He blamed Lucifer for it all. He still did. But although it now broke Michael on the inside to remember and feel the devastation of that day and losing her, he knew that what he did today was worse. He had sent an assassin after the woman he loved, and nothing he could do now would erase that fact.
The last thing he deserved was forgiveness—and that was one of the two things he needed from her.
Reaching a hand behind his back, Michael plucked a silky black feather free. Raising it to his face, he fell to his blood-smeared knees, holding the soft vanes between his palms like a prayer. He imagined Gabriel in the darkness of Hell, carrying a monster’s child, a child that she would be powerless not to love. Emotion was her downfall, one he was beginning to understand all too well. If only she knew the danger.
Michael cracked his palms open a fraction, and his words fanned over the vanes, a piece of him praying for understanding, even though he knew he did not deserve it. “Gabriel, please understand. I did this for us all. I never intended to harm you. To betray you. Though I know I did. I am sorry. So deeply sorry. I hate what I did—what I felt I had to do. Cherish the time you have with that precious new life. Though not by my hand, I promise you it will never be long enough. The prophecy looms over us all.”
The feather vanished with the completion of Michael’s honest words, and he slumped with a sigh. He had wondered if the change to his wings would prevent his message from being delivered. Now his only worry was for Gabriel’s wellbeing, her reaction when she learned the truth…
And the danger he may have instigated by warning her of God’s promised plans.
“I thought I might find you here.”
Michael’s head snapped up and he rolled up from his knees fast. Walking his way quickly through the rough dead grass, the tingle of Remiel’s sudden presence finally registered. So trapped in his guilt and actions, Michael hadn’t felt the tingle. Now he eyed the gray winged angel, studying his features to discern if he had seen Michael send his message.
The concern that creased Remiel’s brow suddenly created deeper furrows. He stopped short right at the edge of trees that dotted the field. “Your wings…” The angel’s interlaced hands stopped moving in a dance of twisting and untwisting tension. “What happened?”
Michael dropped his head forward, ashamed of his actions. “The child…I endeavored to end its life.” He looked up at Remiel’s gasp, seeing the morbid shock across the other angel’s face. Michael waved a hand that was too dismissive given his heinous assassination attempt. “I failed…and then God returned my ability to feel and blackened my wings as a warning.”
Remiel remained quiet for a moment, sad eyes becoming distant as he stared at the pond that swirled with a constant flow of murky water. He sighed deeply, and as his mouth moved, the words were a whisper that Michael almost didn’t hear. “I should never have told you.”
“It would not have mattered.” Michael came around the pond to stand in front of Remiel. “It was not your revelation that spurred my intent. It was the vampire with The Sight.”
“The child’s link to the prophecy. You know…” Remiel breathed out fast as his head twisted sideways, loosening his sandy hair to shield one side of his face. “I should not have come. Perhaps God—”
As the angel turned, Michael grabbed his arm to stop his retreat. And that’s when he noticed the bright glow that shone from one of Remiel’s fingers. “You know something. You have a message for me.” He rubbed his bloodied hand down the angel’s arm, then repeated it on the other side as Remiel frowned.
“What are you—”
“Protecting you, brother,” Michael said, cutting him off as he collected more of the tacky blood from his own arms to smear it across Remiel’s cheeks, chin, and over his shoulders. “I regret what I set in motion, but I am not blind to my feelings any longer. If what you came to share with me involves the safety of our Heaven and even Earth, then you must tell me. God cannot bear this threat alone.”
Remiel sighed with resignation. “I learned of this development before your arrival a
bove. I was ordered to deliver it upon your return…” He shook his head and raised his finger. “And that order has not changed…”
The moment Remiel’s finger connected with Michael’s forehead, his legs gave out. Blunt twigs stabbed into his knees, ripping skin and assaulting him with stinging pain. But what he saw was worse. The world below flooded with red-eyed men and women and gnarled monstrous creatures of all shapes and sizes. Black feathers flittered about on the moonlit air. And then light invaded his sight like a blinding beacon. Heaven. As the intensity lessened, there was movement all around. Wings of light and dark fluttered as angels lashed out—against those same Earth invaders. Younger humans shifted amongst the fray, wielding swords at unimaginable speed—
The images cut off and Michael sagged, his straight arm against the dirt somehow keeping him off the ground. Ideas coalesced in his mind after all he had seen. “A war in Heaven—invaded by Hell dwellers.” Remiel nodded, but Michael didn’t need the confirmation. He barely noticed the other angel’s presence as Remiel caught Michael’s free arm and hoisted him to his shaky legs.
Now Michael finally had a use for all his stockpiled hybrid blood. He had a plan to give them a shot at winning this war to come. “We need to boost our numbers, more than what the creation of light allows. And I know exactly how to do it.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lucifer waited at Gabriel’s bedside as minutes bled into one another. Each second felt like a lifetime as he kept one hand on her chest, feeling the sluggish but constant beat of her heart. His other hand stroked her cold face as he fought to hold himself together. “I will wait as long as it takes. I will not leave your side until you come back to me. And even then…” He sniffed as Zallina whined, nudging Gabriel’s limp hand. Laying dead still on their bed, her fingers suddenly twitched. “Gabriel?”
