Seven Archangels: Annihilation (12 page)

"But there's no bond between them," Ophaniel said. "There's no bond between the other pair of twins."

"The Qaddisin aren't separated," said Sidriel.

"But we determined—"

"You were wrong," Saraquael said with a shut-them-down firmness. "He sent her suggestions, and she acted according to them. And before you point out what Gabriel already would have, that positive correlation doesn't necessarily indicate causality—" (both Cherubim chuckled) "—that doesn't mean the two happenings are necessarily connected. She might have decided she wanted to play a game at any time, and for no reason other than she wanted to play a game. Her nature leads her toward spontaneous action. I felt it necessary to mention this only because Camael believes it, and Camael was one of the abductors."

Everyone remained silent for a moment, and then Ophaniel said, "Does the feedback go both ways?"

"Do you mean, could Remiel send him a command?"

"That too, but more importantly, can he scan her thoughts?"

Saraquael's mouth tightened. "I didn't ask. It didn't seem as if he could."

"It's not her fault," Israfel said. "Even if this connection exists, we couldn't punish her."

Michael raised a hand. "Obviously she was used, if it happened at all. The difficulty is, what if Camael can learn our plans through her?"

Raguel said, "Camael is chained and Guarded."

"And later?" Michael said.

"We deal with it later. There's enough immediate worry to handle now."

Michael tilted his head. "Fair enough."

Saraquael took a seat, and Michael met his eyes as the Dominion project,
Back to you.

Thanks.

"Does anyone have any more ideas about possible responses?"

Raguel stood. "Zadkiel was right about what we should do. This isn't our crime to pay back. We have to let God do it."

Michael fought the urge to stare open-mouthed, something a number of the other angels were unable to do.

Israfel stood so quickly she knocked over her chair. "We can't just ignore what they did!"

Raguel folded his arms. "We're not ignoring it. We saved him, we discussed it and prayed over it, and we're taking some sort of action, even if that action is leaving it to God."

Michael noticed Uriel looking satisfied, and then he noticed Ophaniel nodding too.

Israfel, on the other hand, had flames in her hair. "We're the tools of God's justice! If he's going to strike, it must be through us!"

Mary said, "God can act however he chooses, and that might not involve any intermediaries whatsoever."

The air shimmered around Israfel. "I refuse to go along with that. I still say we have to invade and let the lower orders know with full certitude that if Satan does it again,
they
will suffer, and then let them put pressure on him to keep his filthy hands to himself!"

Zadkiel said, "But it won't be a full passivity on our part." She reached a hand toward Israfel, who shed sparks as she recoiled from contact. "We should mitigate our non-involvement, and the best way to do it might be the stern warning we discussed before."

Even as he responded to Zadkiel, Michael couldn't take his eyes off Israfel and her fellow Seraph, both ablaze. "What would you put in the warning?"

Zadkiel also had her gaze on Israfel as she answered; in fact, everyone in the room was having a hard time looking away from her. "That Satan is in serious violation of spiritual law, and that if he repeats himself, we'll beat the living daylights out of him."

Michael said, "Rough paraphrase?"

Zadkiel snickered.

Israfel flared with a whoosh that pulled all the air in the room toward her, causing the angels nearest her to flash a distance away, excepting the other Seraph and the two Cherubim. "We don't need to wait for him to repeat himself before we beat the living daylights out of him. This needs to be answered with force."

Uriel said, "You want to match power for power."

"We have the power," Israfel said. "We need to bring it to bear."

Uriel said, "If you don't mind, what would it accomplish?"

The flames decreased a little, and Michael looked to Ophaniel to see if he was the one drawing it down, or whether Israfel was calming herself. She said, "It would show them we won't take murder lightly, as if it were graffiti."

Uriel linked eyes with Israfel, speaking and projecting simultaneously. "What should we do when we invade? We can't annihilate Satan or we'd be in violation of the same law."

"We can chain down the ringleaders in the nether levels for a hundred years, or a thousand," Israfel said. "We did that after the Resurrection."

With spread hands, Uriel said, "But did it have any long-term effects? When Satan does get free, assuming we don't get leave to keep him chained until the Final Judgment, won't he act even worse, with a century of humiliation and time on his hands to plan? We need a plan of our own that ensures he'll never try it again." Uriel took a deep breath. "That sort of security is providable only by God."

Israfel folded her arms, but the fire had retreated to only flamelets around her eyes and wings. "We can get God into position to provide that security. We can push Satan up against the wall and keep him there."

Uriel said, "God works in his own time. You know that."

Ophaniel said, "As for your treatment of annihilation in comparison to graffiti, by which I presume you mean the slightest sin, the fact is that even the slightest sin merits damnation. Annihilation and carving one's name in a tree differ only in degree."

Israfel glanced at the other Seraph, and both exchanged a look that Michael could read easily: "Cherubim."

Sidriel said, "We leave justice in the small matters to God. We could logically justify leaving this to him as well."

Israfel said to Ophaniel, "Backstabber," but her eyes had become resigned.

Michael tried to unkey himself as Israfel sat and said nothing further, but she and Ophaniel had their eyes locked, and they were probably talking through their bond.

Peter, at the far end of the table with Mary, said, "What does Gabriel want?"

Uriel said, "He isn't in a position to want anything right now, unfortunately."

Michael said, "But it's a good point."

Saraquael said, "You can bet that whatever he wanted, he'd have a good rationale for it."

Michael smiled wearily. "Probably so. But right now, we're all we've got. So let's take a preliminary vote and see where that gets us."

Chapter Eight

Raphael slow-danced through Uriel's house, singing the song of the Seraphim.
Holy, holy, holy.
Rocking Gabriel to the rise and rush of the song, he kept his head bowed and voice hushed, arms around the sling bundle made from one set of wings, another set cupped over him, the final one relaxed. The song lent itself to a waltz, but he didn't dance any formal step as much as he moved where it led.

A touch had transformed Gabriel's room into a greenhouse, windows for walls, windows for ceilings. The Angels Michael sent had summoned trees outside the windows and then birds for the trees, dragonflies for color, chipmunks and squirrels for warmth, a stream for vitality. They didn't omit any detail they could think of trying to make it more pleasant.

The birdsong wasn't enough, though, nor the rustling of the trees, so Raphael had listened for his choir's ever-present song, and he sang too.

Every so often Gabriel shifted, but only a little, just enough to be comfortable. It was something.

When Raphael made his way back into the transformed room, he found Jesus there, and he inclined his head with a smile.

"You need a break," Jesus said.

"I'm fine."

"Rapha'li."

Raphael said, "I'm not fine, but he needs me, and I'll cope as long as I'm helping him."

"That's more accurate, but not entirely." Jesus moved up behind him and stepped through the angel so he and Raphael were in exactly the same place. Raphael noted again how he and Jesus were the same height and build, but then Jesus said, "Now step out of the sling."

He froze.

"I'm not going to hurt him."

Raphael exhaled, then went insubstantial and stepped out of the sling so Gabriel was cuddled against Jesus's heart instead of his own.

Jesus had one arm around the bundle. "You need a break. I'll stay with him the whole time you're gone, but you need to recharge."

"Can't you just heal him?"

Jesus said, "I'm not going to abandon him, but I'm also not going to interfere."

Raphael said, "You can heal him if you will."

Jesus said, "Yes, I can."

Raphael looked him in the eyes. Jesus returned the look.

"Go." Jesus waved him off. "He'll need you to be strong when the time comes. And I'll need you to be thinking clearly."

Raphael indicated the amber healing glow around Gabriel. Jesus chuckled, and with a gesture, he detached the glow from Raphael and left it self-sustaining around Gabriel. "I made the universe," Jesus said. "I know how to provide for him."

Raphael vanished, reappearing on Earth.

A moment later, Jesus joined him, although not with Gabriel. This didn't strike Raphael as odd, since Jesus wasn't limited to a singularity of place. Jesus flagged over the three Angels Michael had sent to follow Raphael, and he assured them they could wait back at the bungalow, as he would see to Raphael's safety himself. It amused Raphael that they argued they would stay anyhow, but only on the verge of sight, and Jesus laughingly agreed they could.

Raphael chose to visit a number of the angels under the umbrella of his command, all of whom asked how he was doing, gripped his hand, and conveyed an understanding that they knew how Gabriel was but were pretending he'd died in order to maintain Hell's ignorance. One at a time, Raphael met with guardian angels in charge of travel and transportation, his secondary purview. After helping an Archangel straighten out a snarl on the New York subway system, he moved on to checking his primary command, healing and health.

"You're right," he told Jesus between stops. "I needed to get out of there."

"What a surprise," Jesus said, and Raphael laughed as he spread his wings.

In a London hospital, a woman labored with her first baby. Raphael spoke to the guardians of the woman and her baby, who admitted to being at a loss. "It's hurting her," the woman's guardian said, "and her contractions are powerful, but she's not making any progress."

Raphael laid his hand on the woman as she rested between contractions, noting as he did the bright lights, the nurse with a studious expression as she regarded the monitors, the hovering new father. The baby felt safe for now, although Raphael made one quick adjustment and encouraged the baby to tuck his chin further. Then he felt the different energies flow through the mom as another contraction overtook her.

"There," Raphael said to her guardian. "Did you feel that?" The angel nodded but projected that he didn't know what it was he'd felt. "The uterus is a basket-weave of muscles. The up and down ones are contracting to deliver the baby, making the uterus shorter. They don't have pain receptors."

The angel nodded. "Go on." The woman was resting again.

"The horizontal muscles are ordinarily tense to keep the baby in, except during labor when they need to relax—and they do have pain receptors. Unless the horizontal lower segments relax while the vertical segments contract, she's pushing against herself."

The angel's eyes widened. "Oh! Once she's relaxed and can let go, the rest of the system can do what it's supposed to?"

Raphael waited until he and the guardian rode through another one of the mom's contractions. Then, "She's fighting herself. That's making her more scared and less willing to relinquish control."

The angel nodded. "Thanks. I think I know what to do now." He turned away, then turned back. "Oh, and I'm sorry about Gabriel. I'm praying for you."

Raphael looked down. "Thanks. It helps."

Jesus brought Raphael to another birth, this one in a private house in the Netherlands. A midwife played guitar while a mother labored in a tub surrounded by her three children and husband, all singing. The mother would drop out of the song during contractions.

The angels all looked up when Jesus and Raphael arrived. "Is something wrong?"

"Not at all," Jesus said. "I wanted to show him something."

The baby's guardian relaxed, and the other angels all returned their attention to the family. They should have joined in the song; they didn't. The baby's guardian took Raphael's hand and said how sorry she was about Gabriel.

"This was what I wanted to explain before," Raphael murmured to Jesus. "She's working hard, but it's effective because she's not fighting her own body."

"He understood," Jesus said, "and I can see you understand too."

Jesus brought Raphael to a hamlet in Zimbabwe where Raphael consulted with the guardian of an old man dying of tuberculosis. The angel had his hands on the man's chest to give him some relief from the wracking cough. More condolences, more reassurances of prayers from the man's guardian.

Raphael and Jesus walked outside.

It was midnight on this part of the planet. Had the attack come only four hours earlier? How could someone's world change so quickly?

"I want to go back."

"Not yet," Jesus said. "There's no rush. He's still the same."

"I just want to be with him," Raphael said, but he didn't protest. He didn't want to hear another condolence message either, though, so instead of going to the next stop on his rounds, he walked into the jungle. Jesus kept pace. After a few steps, Raphael found himself solid and wingless, nearly human. A stick cracked beneath his feet, and the rich scent of rotting detritus enfolded him. Night insects sang, and even the air had a gritty flavor. Raphael looked over his shoulder at Jesus, who was now dismissing the three Angels. Jesus gestured he should move forward.

The path, such as he could follow one, headed eastward, presumably to another small collection of homes in another jungle clearing. The canopy of trees hid the starlight, and Raphael quickly found himself knee-deep in underbrush without a trail to follow.