A Kiss Before the Apocalypse (28 page)

The normally expressionless faces of the pair began to show signs of wear—a slight twitch around the eyes of one; the beginnings of a frown on the other.

“You seemed smarter than that,” Francis continued, aiming his tarnished blade at one and then the other. “You’d think that after the business with the Morningstar . . .”

He’d struck a nerve.

Haniel was the first to attack, wings opened to their full extent as he leapt into the air. Francis stumbled back, keeping one eye on the soaring warrior and the other on Haniel’s partner.

And as if on cue, Zophiel lunged from the ground, crackling blade aiming for the Guardian’s chest. Francis swatted the Seraphim’s blade aside with his own, and flicked blood from his still-bleeding stump into the face of his angelic attacker.

The angel screamed, stumbling back as if he’d had acid thrown into his eyes. It wasn’t acid, but the next best thing.

The blood of a fallen angel.

Haniel swooped down from the sky with a roar. Francis barely avoided being cleaved in two as the arc of the Seraphim’s blade bit a chunk from the shoulder of his already injured arm. Francis dropped to his knees, his head beginning to swim. Losing as much blood as he had usually had that sort of effect.

Haniel touched down, going to the aid of his brother, helping him to wipe the noxious blood from his eyes.

“Well, isn’t that sweet,” Francis chided, jamming his bloody stump into the ground, the jolt of excruciating pain keeping him from falling forward, unconscious.

The Seraphim cursed in a language older than creation, and they started toward him again.

Something rumbled and flashed in the fog-enshrouded sky above his head, and on reflex Francis turned his eyes to the Heavens. At first he saw nothing, only the roiling clouds and whipping rain, but then he saw it, an area of the sky above him, growing steadily brighter.

Something was coming.

He looked back to the Seraphim, almost upon him now. They had smiles on their twisted faces. They thought they had him.

He didn’t have the heart to tell them otherwise.

“Heads up,” the fallen Guardian said, as the Seraphim ignored his warning, raising their weapons to hack him to bits.

The Angel of Death knew that it was wrong.

As he knelt upon the sand, holding the last sacred scroll, the cold, wet dampness seeping through the knees of his jeans, he knew that it had all gone terribly, terribly wrong.

It had been an experiment, a flight of fancy to help him better understand the Creator’s favorites. How was he to know it would come to something like this?

Israfil had merged with Jon Stall, and everything that the college professor had been became a part of him. How exciting it was to feel things the way humans did—to be so deliciously fragile.

He held the parchment in his hands, his thumb tracing the uneven surface of the waxen seal.
So fragile,
he thought.

They were beautiful creatures, filled with so much love and feeling, and yet capable of such savagery. It was as if God had taken every characteristic imaginable and rolled them into one complex life form.

It’s obvious that humans are what He was working up to,
Israfil mused, barely noticing the wind and heavy rain that fell upon his kneeling form.

Thunder rumbled, and he chanced a quick glance behind him. Through the thick, roiling mists he caught a glimpse of them, the beings created by the Lord of Lords to end it all. He could sense their impatience. Never had they been so fully awakened.

All he had to do was break the last seal.

In a way, it would be a blessing for the world and its inhabitants, he told himself. There was just so much chaos and suffering here. He’d never realized that until he had become a part of Jon, and Jon a part of him.

His eyes strayed to Casey, lying on her side, eyes wide open, her soul crying to be released. If he listened—
truly listened
—he could hear others like her, millions of souls begging to be free.

I should do it for her—for Casey,
he thought.

Nathanuel believed they were being merciful by extinguishing their grievous lives, taking away their despair, for they could not do it themselves.

All he had to do was break the last seal.

At first, Israfil believed it to be just another sound created by the raging storm, but when he heard it again, it captured his attention, distracting him from his tortured thoughts.

The sound . . .
the word,
was soft yet firm in its conviction, and there was no mistaking where it had come from.

Casey continued to stare at him, her eyes wide from the intensity of her trauma. A dark line of blood oozed from the corner of her mouth to be absorbed by the sand beneath her face. And though her mouth barely moved, he heard the word slip from it again.

He tore his gaze from the woman he had loved, sensing that he was no longer alone, to look upon the frightening visage of Nathanuel as he drifted down from the turbulent sky.

“What are you waiting for?” he asked, touching down in a crouch, voice dripping with impatience. “The time has never been more right.”

And as if on cue, there was a cacophonous roar of thunder and something fell from the sky, hitting the ground in an explosion of brilliance that could only be described as divine.

Remy allowed himself to fall, feeling his body change as he dropped from the sky.

The closer he got to the earth, the less human he became. Engulfed in Heavenly fire, the facade he had worked so hard to build dissolved away to reveal what he’d tried to conceal.

What he’d worked so hard to forget.

He should have known better; he should have known his true self would always be there, patiently waiting for a time when it would be needed. He couldn’t hide from what he was, even after all these long years on this planet.

There was a little pain as the flesh of his masquerade burned away to reveal the truth beneath, but it had less to do with the physical and far more to do with the emotional. Remy loved what he had become, what he had made for himself over the millennia, and was sad to see it go.

The angel Remiel hit the waterless ocean floor in an explosion of fire, the heat of his transformation so intense that the sand around him crystallized. He emerged from the smoldering crater wearing his combat armor of gold, the same armor he had worn when fighting the last of his battles against the legion of Lucifer Morningstar.

When he had decided to give up Heaven.

The rain hissed and steamed as it fell upon him, and he stretched his wings of creamy white, fanning air. If there was one thing he didn’t mind about the transformation, it was having his wings back again.

“Looking good, pal,” he heard a familiar voice say weakly, and he looked to see Francis emerging from beneath the smoldering bodies of Haniel and Zophiel.

Remiel extended his hand, sensing an aspect of the Creator nearby, and called it to him. The sword that he had carried down to the beach leapt up from where it had been dropped, spinning through the air, casting off flecks of Heavenly fire as it came to him.

The grip of the sword nestled neatly in the palm of his hand as the beating of his powerful wings carried him across the beach toward what he was sure would be the final confrontation.

Praying to a God to whom he had not spoken in quite some time that he was not too late.

T
he angel Remiel emerged from the storm screaming the name of his enemy.

The Seraphim chief crouched over the limp form of Israfil, the Angel of Death seemingly protecting the final sacred scroll with his body.

“Nathanuel!” Remiel raged, the fury of his voice carried on the moaning winds of storm.

He saw it all in a bizarre form of slow motion, Nathanuel tearing his gaze away from the beleaguered Angel of Death, a look of such extreme hatred on his normally emotionless face, shockingly morphing into a twisted smile.

“Remiel,” he said, stepping over Israfil, his awesome wings flowing open from his back. And from within his coat he produced a sword. “How nice it is to truly see you again.”

Touching down upon the sand, Remiel studied his foe. It was all coming back to him; everything that he’d tried for so long to forget.

The violence he and others like him were capable of.

“I’ve waited too long for you to be able stop me,” Nathanuel growled, springing at him with blurring speed. His blade cut the air, glancing off the shoulder plating of Remiel’s armor, a spray of sparks shooting into the air as he sidestepped the attack. “I’ve been patient—till now.”

Remiel reacted in kind, spinning to attack, swinging his blade toward the Seraphim chief’s side. The angel twisted his body, angling it in such a way that only his raincoat’s flap was cut by the passing of Remiel’s blade.

Nathanuel jumped into the air, a raptor’s scream upon his lips as he brought his sword down in a hacking motion. Remiel jumped back, narrowly avoiding the crackling blade of Heaven as it gouged the drying ocean floor.

The storm raged around them, the intensity of their conflict seemingly reflected in the intensity of the weather. And as they fought, their Heavenly blades casting flecks of godly light, a jagged hole was torn in the thick curtain of fog to reveal the Horsemen, moving closer still. The four giants sat upon their colored horses, as if drawn toward the struggle playing out beneath them, as if looking for a little entertainment before beginning the work of ending the world.

Time was fleeting, and Remiel knew that what little sanity Israfil maintained was a fragile thing indeed.

“Look at them, Remiel,” Nathanuel shrieked above the relentless clanging of their striking sword blades. “Have you ever seen a more awesome sight?”

“It’s not their time, Nathanuel,” he responded, driven back across the beach by the Seraphim chief’s relentless onslaught. “That will be a time of His choosing, not yours.”

Remiel lowered his sword, inciting his brother to come closer.

Nathanuel lunged, as Remiel allowed the fiery blade to pass dangerously close, skimming along the side of his breastplate, before lowering his arm and trapping the blade against his side.

The expression upon Nathanuel’s face was priceless.

“You let me get too close,” Remiel said, driving his forehead into the Seraphim leader’s face. “A big mistake.”

Remiel swiped the balled pommel of his own sword across the Seraphim’s face, knocking him backward to the ground.

Nathanuel’s grip torn from his sword, Remiel now stood above the chieftain of the host Seraphim, a blade forged in Heaven in each of his hands.

“If you’re smart, you’ll stay where you are,” Remiel raged, doing everything in his power to keep the angelic fury that raged within him at bay.
It would be so easy,
Remiel thought.
To let it out, to satisfy its voracious hunger.

Remiel pulled back upon the rage, painfully repressing what had once been second nature to him.

But not anymore.

“Listen to me,” he warned, turning away from the Seraphim chief, hoping—praying—that he was wise enough to stay down. That this could all be brought to a close with a minimal amount of violence.

And someday pigs would fly.

The hideously disfigured creatures that had once been Seraphim surged from the shifting fog. Haniel and Zophiel’s burnt and blackened bodies, scarred by his fiery descent, rasped and rustled as they grappled to restrain him.

Remiel roared, one of his swords arcing down, taking away one of Haniel’s arms. He brought his other sword up and across, slicing through Zophiel’s midsection, causing steaming entrails to spill out onto the ground. But still they came at him, taking hold of his arms, preventing him from using his blades further.

The Seraphim tried to speak, to whisper ominous threats in his ear, but all he could hear were choking rasps.

Prying the weapons from his hands, they turned him roughly around to face the approaching Nathanuel. Twin lines of blood trailed from each nostril of the Seraphim leader’s nose. He held a dagger in one hand while dabbing at the blood that streamed from his nose.

His fingers stained crimson, Nathanuel’s eyes grew wide and his entire body began to tremble.

“What will it take for you to understand?” the Seraphim leader asked, bringing the tips of his fingers to his mouth, tasting his blood. “The travesty of this world has gone on long enough. It ends here and now. . . . Despite your actions.”

“It ends when I deem it over,” said a voice that froze the Seraphim where he stood.

Taken aback, Nathanuel turned to see the form of Israfil emerging from the fog. In one hand he held the still-unopened final scroll, in the other a vintage Colt pistol. “What is this?” Israfil asked, his expression of surprise turning to one of absolute revulsion as he caught sight of Francis looming behind the linchpin of his plans.

“With them all dead and gone . . . He’ll love us best,” Nathanuel said, attempting one last time to convince the Angel of Death that his plans were just.

Israfil aimed the pistol, firing off a shot before the Seraphim could speak again. The Hell-made bullet hit him in the center of his forehead, his eyes turning upward as if attempting to see the extent of the damage that had been done to him.

Nathanuel fell backward to the ground.

Remiel flexed his wings, shrugging off the injured Seraphim soldiers, and was about to put them down when further shots rang out. Jumping aside, he saw that Francis had snatched the pistol away from Israfil and was firing with coldhearted efficiency, taking out those Seraphim loyal to Nathanuel.

“Not dead yet, but they will be,” Francis said as his legs grew unsteady and he dropped down to the ground. “Think I’ll take a seat.”