Then the last few lines chilled his blood. After a long list of queries about how to stop, slow down, thwart Sam, the text suddenly changed. Instead of the simple black bold text that Gabriel’s responses had always come in until then, the text turned spidery. Sinister. It seemed to drip blood inside the computer screen, and the words it drew were unintelligible. Sam could almost hear a whisper in his ears as he stared at the monitor, and the spindly lines of text began to draw themselves together, the whispering getting louder and louder as Sam’s eyes watched.
“No!” He ripped his tearing eyes away from the screen, holding his head in his hands to make sure he didn’t look again. The whispering subsided, fading away like a sound echoing through a long tunnel.
Sam stood, keeping his gaze off that particular monitor, and, hands shaking, opened the door down to Gabriel’s prison. His hand on the doorknob, he took one more look around to make sure that no one was following him or about to attack him. Seeing no one, he sighed and took the step through. He felt a shudder, like a diver passing through a temperature shift in the water, and then he was on the other side of the doorway. He ran to Gabriel, and reached up. Unlike in his nightmares, the chains came loose easily under his spells, and he was soon holding the waif in his arms, setting her down and removing the IVs and electrodes which covered her body. Sam reached into his pockets for something she could eat when she awoke, but he found nothing.
Do angels even eat? The absurdity of the thought made him laugh, the stress of his journey and of the expected confrontation making the laugh louder and stronger.
Sometime during the course of this laughter, Sam glanced down to see the open eyes of Gabriel looking up at him. His levity vanished and Sam knelt down next to her. “Are you all right?”
Gabriel smiled up at him, then realization seemed to hit her. “Samuel?” Her speech was sleepy, slow. “Is it you? Am I dreaming again?”
Sam smiled. “No, Gabriel, this isn’t a dream.” The Archangel relaxed, then her body stiffened and her head whipped around, looking at the doorway Sam had used to enter.
“No. No! No!” She struggled, rolling over as best she could and trying to stand; unable to gain her feet, she crawled toward the entryway until Sam helped her up and supported her on his shoulder.
“What’s wrong? What is it?”
“No. Trapped. Tricked. No.” She repeated the same three words over and over again until the two of them reached the door. Gabriel reached out her hands toward the door, running them on the invisible barrier that prevented her from leaving. Sam shrugged.
“Of course you’re trapped, but I can just break the binding sigils and that should get you out, shouldn’t it?”
Gabriel’s head began to roll again like it had when she was up on the wall. “Can’t. Can’t.” Her eyes spun in her head for a moment, then she closed them and made an obvious attempt to compose herself. “Samuel.” She ran her hands through her hair. “Those sigils…look at them.”
Sam did. As always, the script unraveled itself before his eyes, translating into his native English instead of Qabbalic Hebrew. Still, understanding the words was different than understanding the concepts, and he scratched his head. “It says these are…sephirot? Sounds like a character from an old video game. What’re sephirot?” He turned back toward Gabriel.
“Eleven of them.” She hugged herself, hands on her upper arms. “Eleven symbols, eleven sephirot, all concepts to link the Creator to the Created. Reversed. Perverted against you. These do not keep me here; other bindings do that.” For the first time, Gabriel’s voice steadied, and she leveled a meaningful stare at Sam.
“These are here for you, Samuel Buckland. My jailer has trapped you here as well.”
“What?!” Sam reached for the door. A flash of white light threw him back a full ten feet, banging him against the wall and causing him to skin his elbow. He shook himself off, jogged back over to where Gabriel stood, leaning against a wall, and examined the doorframe.
Sam could now see the sigils that Gabriel was speaking of. They were small, and there were eleven, as she had mentioned. They were carved in a repeating pattern on the door and, as he looked further, the window frames as well. A moment’s testing showed Sam that, yes, the wards on the windows were just as strong as the one on the door, and, by the way, some ice would probably be good for that swollen shoulder.
This is not in Solomon’s book.
Sam returned to the door and spun his hands in the air in a quick counterspell, seeking to bring down the wards so that he could pass. A few seconds later, the magical energy washed over the doorway…and left the inscriptions unscathed, physically and magically.
Sam blinked, then rolled up his sleeves. “Okay.” He spread his feet and braced himself. “If you need more, then…” He began a complicated spell, invoking Solomon’s authority over all ephemeral creatures and demanding that they break the wards. Wind spirits, fire spirits, and those from the earth came and flung themselves against the barrier on both sides, sizzling and sparking as they vanished. Jann pulled on the door frame to break both it and the sigils; efreeti appeared to burn them in the frame itself. None of them succeeded. Sam ran his hands over his forehead in frustration; sweat covered his fingers. What could he do?
Then he heard a cough from behind him. He turned to see Gabriel suppressing more coughs.
Then he saw what was behind her: most of the place was on fire. In his haste, Sam had relaxed his control of the efreet and they had run wild before disappearing, spreading chaos and burning as flame spirits do. Flames crackled through the experimental laboratory, creating large plumes of billowing black and grey smoke. While there were ventilation systems open to the outside, the smoke was still thickening in the room itself.
“Damn it!” Sam whipped his hands around to summon the undines, spirits of water…but there was no water here to form them. He wrapped his face with his shirt to stave off the suffocation while he tried to figure this out. There has to be a way. God wouldn’t have let me get this far just to fail now! There has to…
A cough from the side distracted him. Gabriel had sunk down again, and was holding her mouth against her shoulder and the ragged cloth that still hung from it. Sam swept down and pressed his shirt against her mouth, ignoring the intake of smoke into his lungs as best he could.
Gabriel shook her head and said something in the shirt, probably trying to protest, but Sam shook his head. “You…cough…you need it more than I do. Now hold on…cough…I’ll get us out of here.”
Gabriel was weak; her eyes said no but she couldn’t act on the feeling. Sam squinted through the smoke and carbon monoxide, trying to breathe as little as possible while he tried to think of a way out. The heat was making it more difficult to think; the flames were getting closer. Spells weren’t working, the doors and the windows were warded…
Sam’s eyes were drawn to the ventilation system. We could hide under there. He saw the smoke flowing through the vents and heading outside. That’s probably the freshest air…
Wait a minute.
Ventilation system.
Would Caitlin have warded the ventilation system?
God, I hope not! He stumbled his way to the nearest vent. It was up in the ceiling, and the smoke was being drawn through it. Sam pulled a smoldering, but not burning, table over and stood on it.
Damn it! Sam could see the signs of the Sephirot carved into the plastic around the vent shaft. He covered all his bases, the bastard. What do we do?
Gabriel shook with her coughing. Sam spared her a glance, wishing she could transform into her angelic glory and save them both…but no. The other wards kept her human, here. It was up to him.
Leaving Gabriel where she sat, Sam ran to one of the flaming curtains. Grabbing a wooden table leg, he wrapped the curtain around it to create a makeshift torch.
“What...what are you…” Gabriel was hit by another bout of coughing and couldn’t finish.
“Magic fire doesn’t work.” Sam l
eaned, holding the torch underneath the plastic which held the Sephirot. “But maybe plastic…”
Sam’s eyes were watering, but it looked like, maybe, just maybe, it was working; the plastic was melting, dripping down onto his face, making small burns like chicken pox on his skin. He scrunched his face against the pain.
Once one of the symbols was gone, Sam felt something like a metaphysical wind rushing out through the ventilation shaft. He dropped the torch and raised a hand toward the grate.
His fingers touched it.
A coughing fit paralyzed Sam for several seconds, but he swallowed the last bits of the cough down and stood again, knocking the vent cover off the ceiling.
“Come on!” he called. “We…cough…we need to get out of here now!”
Gabriel hobbled over to Sam’s makeshift escape route. She uncovered her face to ask, “What if it doesn’t lead out?”
Sam laughed, then coughed, then laughed again. “Then we’re dead. But we’re definitely dead in here. You first.” He put her hands on the girl’s slender waist, boosting Gabriel up through the opening in the ceiling.
Cough cough. “Move fast!” He hoisted himself up. “Smoke’s…cough cough…probably pretty bad…cough…in here.” He could hear Gabriel hacking as she struggled through the narrow ventilation shaft. The smoke made it hard to see, stinging the eyes and the throat and obscuring vision.
Sam had no more breath left for directions; he kept his head low as the shaft turned toward the outside walls and inhaled as shallowly as possible. His muscles were weak and he could hear his heartbeat in his ears as he pulled himself along the warming metal. He couldn’t even hear Gabriel ahead of him anymore, and the thought crossed his mind that, if she didn’t make it and he came across her body stuck in the pipe, he wouldn’t have the strength to push her out of his way.
Sam’s vision began to swim, such as it was; strange colors seemed to float out of the grey billows of smoke, and figures formed in the mist before being consumed by it. Sam’s thoughts were similarly distracted.
I wonder if Gabriel’s going to tell God that I got her killed? Hope not; He might be angry at me.
I wonder if anyone’s going to eat me after I’m smoked. Seems a waste if they don’t. Hope I’m not too greasy.
Hey, looks like it’s sunny out…hey, ow. Who put this metal thing…
The metal thing swung outward. A gust of fresh air hit Sam’s lungs.
Outside.
Sam pushed his hands through the aperture, gave one last pull…and tumbled down into the grass 10 feet below him.
It hurt.
Sam didn’t care. He hacked for what felt like hours, his body clearing the bronchial tubes of smoke and making way for life-giving oxygen. Black ropes of mucus poured from his mouth, and his red eyes stung in the breeze. He squinted his eyes and looked upward at the building he had just fallen out of.
The SRD complex had turned into a pillar of flame straight out of the Bible; easily a hundred feet high, the inferno raged, consuming the buildings in their entirety, leaving no trace of the blasphemies worked there. Sam was in awe; never had he seen a fire so…so self-directed, so purposeful. There was no random flickering, no chaos here. Only the fire and its obvious intent to destroy.
“Come on,” croaked a female’s voice. Sam’s weary eyes glimpsed the frail form of Gabriel as she took him by the shoulders and began pulling him away from the building as it began to collapse in on itself. Sam had time to marvel at her strength for a few seconds before she set him, propped, against a tree and sat beside him.
Sam gave her a tired smile, then his eyes widened, which only hurt them more. “Michael!” The effort of speaking set off another fit of coughing which he tried to talk through. “We need to…”
Gabriel shook her head; her eyes had cleared, Sam noticed, and the whites were a sharp contrast to the soot coating her face. “My brother is in no danger from a fire. His physical body was not restrained as I was. And I believe that his prison was in an underground portion of the facility; I have already released him.”
“Shouldn’t we…” started Sam, but his coughing interrupted again and he could not continue. Gabriel, however, nodded as if he had finished his statement.
“Michael cannot help you now.” Sam’s eyes narrowed and he searched the Archangel’s face. “He has returned to Heaven already, as will I once I leave you. Your concern is your enemy and the Seals.”
“I…I…I need…”
Gabriel’s eyes widened and she ran off. Sam looked at her go, confusion
(did I say something wrong?)
giving way to understanding as he saw her open the trunk of a small blue car and grab several of the water bottles that were kept within. Returning to his side, the 12-year-old Archangel opened a bottle and handed it to Sam, who drank it down, tossing it aside to take a second, and then spending several moments coughing his lungs out again before sipping the other more slowly.
“My enemy?” Sam wiped his mouth. “Not yours?”
Gabriel shook her head, her mouth drawn tight under the soot. “Humans are not the enemies of the Host.”
“Not even ones that trap angels and use them like…Magic 8-balls?”
Gabriel cracked a smile. “There are those who disagree, but most fell with Lucifer in the beginning times. Myself, I do not hate Gregory Caitlin for what he has done, nor for what he may still do. I simply know that it is the Almighty’s will that he be stopped.”
Sam pulled himself up; his strength was beginning to return and he could hear the now-too-familiar sound of emergency vehicles speeding to the fire’s location. A few murmurs and the air spirits drew a shimmering barrier around the two, shielding them from sight.
“What’s it like?” He stared into her eyes, trapped by the wisdom and the veiled magnificence within them. “Receiving His Word? Being that kind of…conduit?”
Gabriel laughed. “Might as well ask the mountain what it is like to be heavy.” She shook her head. “It is what I was created for, it is who I am.”
“So…it’s just normal? Just ‘no sweat I know what God is thinking?’”
Gabriel licked her lips, grimaced, drank a sip from a bottle herself. “No. It is…consuming. Most of the time, I simply know what I need to know, and that is, as you say, ‘normal.’ When the Creator has need of me, however, then the Divine Fire sparks in my mind, and there is nothing else. There is no Gabriel, only the Word of God.”
Sam watched as the firefighters began to deploy their hoses and police cars cordoned off the area. “Sounds like quite the burden to bear.” Gabriel shook her head, and Sam added, “No? Why not?”
“Angels do not desire ‘social upward mobility.” She reached over and took a dandelion in her delicate hand. “The Lord created us to be His servants, and so we are. Those that disagree with this idea fall.”
“So you do have free will? You can disagree with God?”
“Another point of debate amongst the Host.” She glanced sidelong at her rescuer. “I believe we do; I must, for the idea that the Creator chose for Lucifer to betray us and take one-third of our number with him is…” Gabriel grimaced again. “…distasteful. Yes, we can disagree with the will of God. Most of us see no reason to do so. My purpose is that of herald for the Divine; I bring God’s revelations to those who need it.” She shrugged. “Just as you received tax documents from your superiors, I receive the Word from mine.”
Sam stared off for a moment. “I think I get that.” He tried to stand, but his legs would not hold him for more than three or four steps, and so he sat down again, laughing at his own weakness. “A few more minutes, Mom.”
Gabriel scanned him with her eyes.
“I am not allowed to heal you; this is another part of your trial. However, I can tell you that, barring further injury, you will recover fully from this ordeal.”
Sam smiled at Gabriel. “Is this…just the stuff you ‘know?’”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Sam pulled h
is knees to his chest, chuckling at the state of his clothes, turned black by smoke. “If it’s not too personal…how did Caitlin trap you?”
Gabriel cocked her head at Sam. “You already know this. He found my name, used it in a spell to compel me to where he was and bound me there. He forced me to explain how one could interpret thoughts from the dreaming. Then I was drugged.”
“What was it like?” Sam licked his lips, spat the soot onto the grass. “When you were trapped?”
For the first time since he had gotten out of the building, Sam saw a negative emotion flash across Gabriel’s face. Was it fear? Anger? He couldn’t tell.
“…It was as if I was being bled dry but could not die.” Her lip trembled. “I was aware, you see, aware of everything around me, aware of your denial of your gift and then your acceptance of it, aware of my brother’s capture, everything the Lord would show me. But I could not act on it. They had effectively paralyzed this body and placed my physical brain into a perpetual dream.”
“A dream? Do you remember it?”
“Yes, I remember it.” She sighed. “I dreamt whatever they asked of me. At first the dreams were only nightmares because I could not stop them; I dreamt of computers, and electronics, and automobiles. Petty things, small things.”
Gabriel turned her gaze back toward Sam. “Then you arrived, and I could not see you clearly. Your destiny was too entwined with mine; too many forces strove to change your course for me to see through my own suffering. My dreams became worse, tortured reflections of your life, unable to contact you, to warn you when Gregory Caitlin was planning against you.”
Gabriel bowed her head. “I am sorry that I could not protect your parents. They did not deserve to die. The Lord has brought them into His arms, and they are at peace.”
The mention of his parents caught Sam’s breath, and his eyes, only now cleared from soot and smoke, began to water again. He took one, two, three deep breaths to compose himself. “You don’t need to apologize. It wasn’t your fault.”
“No less than you feel it was yours.” Gabriel put a hand on Sam’s. “You feel guilty because they would not have died that night if you had accepted your gift; I feel guilty because it was my knowledge that led Gregory Caitlin to them.”
Chains of Prophecy: A Tale of Mythic Discovery Page 17
