Seven Archangels: Annihilation (19 page)

Saraquael flashed after her, Raguel at his side projecting more than a little awe. But who cared how tricky it was to find her, as long as they did? Their results weren't being graded on degree of difficulty.

They located her in a jungle on Earth, lost in blackness and wrapped around herself like a fetus in the womb. Shaking with her every sinew taut as a violin's strings, she huddled against the moss on a tree.

Saraquael said nothing, just sat beside her. Raguel kept watch.

For half an hour she remained cocooned, her thoughts cycling but always rapid. Saraquael tried not to travel down the delusions that streamed from her mind like ribbons of roads. She still wore Camael's armor and half the time she still wore Camael's thoughts—until momentarily Saraquael wondered if maybe this weren't Camael trying to play-act Remiel after all.

"Sing with me," Saraquael whispered.

"I can't sing. No angels can sing now."

Saraquael hummed.

"We can't sing," she repeated. "Silent Earth. Silent Heaven. So quiet. Terribly, deadly quiet."

Raguel put out a soundproof Guard.

Saraquael sang, and she cuddled around herself again, head down, losing tears expensive as champagne. Saraquael could feel her soul reaching for the song without grasping it. But at least she was paying attention.

Raguel joined with his bass, and Remiel focused further. Saraquael could truly feel her beside him now, not just the emptiness where he knew she was and the terror of the small lives peeking from the infinite nooks the jungle offered. Snakes and mice and birds watched in sympathy, near enough that all three angels could detect them.

Remiel raised her head and looked around, discerning the pairs of eyes, the scales and softness and light breathing.

She reached her hand to Saraquael's on her shoulder, drew an unsteady breath, and joined the song.

Together they sang for another five minutes. When the last notes ended, Saraquael said, "Now will you believe me?"

Tear-stained, Remiel nodded. She dragged some errant strands of hair from her face.

Saraquael glanced at Raguel, who redoubled the soundproofing on the Guard.

"He's alive for now, but we're not sure how much longer." Saraquael swallowed. "When Raphael rescued him, the job was nearly complete."

"But Raphael should be able to heal him."

"Raphael and Uriel working together couldn't fix him. Parts are missing, and I guess they're important parts. That was why we wanted you to search the cell. We need something like a rope."

Remiel gasped. "I know what you're talking about. That was there when they started, but when I went back into the chamber I didn't find anything like it."

"Uriel said the parts can't survive on their own for more than about a day, so the beads you found were a quarter the size of the one we found right afterward."

"But no heartstrings." Remiel dropped her head. "And without heartstrings, there's no way to attach them to one another."

Saraquael said, "They didn't explain it all to me, but that's the rundown."

"I don't suppose we could all donate a bit of our heartstrings and spin them together?"

Saraquael said, "If we can, no one's mentioned it."

Remiel rested her head on her forearms. "He's really going to die. After all that." She leaned into Saraquael and drew up her wings. "Oh, God, why?"

God did not answer, so the three angels remained in place, silent, until Remiel shifted away from Saraquael. "I can't be alone." She tilted her face toward him. "I was alone there the whole time, even when I was with them, and then I wished I was alone. Don't leave me alone."

"Let's move." Saraquael felt around until he found a better place, and he flashed the three of them to Heaven.

In a clearing with picnic tables, Israfel and Zadkiel had set up a game of chess on a picnic table surrounded by pines. Beneath a threatening sky, they huddled over the board and didn't at first notice the newcomers.

Raguel looked over Israfel's shoulder. "Checkmate in four."

As Zadkiel dissolved into giggles, Israfel snapped, "You too? It's bad enough when Ophaniel does it. 'Checkmate in twenty-five, unless you resign in ten moves when he takes your rook."

Zadkiel had her hands over her mouth to cover the grin. Israfel got up from the table and conjured a small harp to her hands.

"Glad you're back," Zadkiel said to Remiel.

"I'm glad to be back."

Zadkiel gestured to her uniform. "You can relax a bit. I'm not going to barbecue you."

Glancing at Camael's armor, Remiel tensed.

"Unless," Zadkiel added, "you'd like me to pummel you in chess too."

"Those are fighting words." Remiel wished away the armor to wear a pair of jeans and a cotton turtleneck. The gauntlets took longest to vanish.

Israfel's fingers flew over the harp strings so quickly they blurred.

Zadkiel cleared the board and started sorting pieces.

Remiel recoiled. "Why are you making me black?"

Zadkiel shrugged. "I didn't think about it. I don't care." She scooped the black pieces back to her side and turned around the board. They set up, and Remiel went first.

Saraquael relaxed, listening to Israfel's music, feeling the strength of Raguel, knowing both of them prayed constantly, as did the chess players, offering the very game as prayer.

Remiel didn't look up from the board. "What's that song called?"

Israfel said, "It's the tune to Psalm 51 the way David did it originally."

"It's a strange range."

"Part of it is the limitations of this instrument, but you're right. It's huge."

Zadkiel laughed as she moved a piece. "Gabriel could handle it."

"Gabriel is insane to sing with," Israfel said.

"I know." Zadkiel sat back as Remiel studied the board. "I'd be there struggling along, and I'd see the notes ahead of me are just going up and up and up, and I'd get this message in my head from him,
let's switch parts,
and he nails this note that would curl my hair while I'm trying to figure out what the tenor part is supposed to be."

"That's my fault," Israfel said. "The angel of music can just switch parts without notice, so he got used to snatching the very high parts I couldn't hit."

Zadkiel laughed as Israfel added, "Show-off."

Remiel moved, and Zadkiel returned her attention to the game.

Zadkiel took one of Remiel's pawns, and as she lifted it off the board, she said, "Where does the flame go when it's out?"

Saraquael flinched. Israfel's song hesitated.

"You put a pawn to the side of the board," Zadkiel said, "but what happens when God lifts an angel off the board?"

Remiel took the pawn from Zadkiel's fingers and set it on the table. "It's out."

Raguel stared at the board as if trying to predict checkmate in ten. Saraquael closed his eyes, smelling the richness of pines, but he had nothing to say. Remiel touched the pawn with one finger over its bald head.

"I know there's nothing after this," Israfel said, "but—maybe there should be."

"That's why what they did was so wrong. It would have been completely over for Gabriel, everything, and we'd have lost him forever."

Israfel said, "It's going to happen anyhow."

Remiel said, "I saw what they did to him. That kind of damage you can't survive."

"God could recreate him," Raguel said. "He'll have to."

"I doubt he will," Israfel said. "We live with the consequences of our choices."

Remiel's eyes flashed. "Did I miss Gabriel making a choice?"

"Satan's choice," Israfel said. "Mephistopheles' choice."

Zadkiel wove her fingers together. "And it seems so arbitrary, too. Michael I could have understood, but Satan doesn't especially hate Gabriel. It could have been any of us."

Remiel scrutinized the chess board even though Zadkiel seemed to have forgotten it was there.

Israfel said, "I'm just not sure how we're going to deal with it afterward. How can anything be the same, with one of us missing forever?"

Remiel said, "Humans do it."

Israfel stared up at the pines dark against the sky as if she didn't see them, only an eternity with one fewer light to say he loved God. "We all lift and embody different aspects of God. Without Gabriel, does that mean some aspect of God will go forever non-illuminated?"

Saraquael shivered.

Raguel paced. Saraquael projected at Zadkiel, who noticed Remiel's concentrated stare at the board and made a quick move with a pawn.

"We're eternal," Israfel said. "Or we're supposed to be. We've always known we were eternal. Even Rahab got re-created."

Raguel said, "It's going to be worst for Raphael."

Saraquael noted Israfel's sudden lost look. He said gently, "Israfel's a primary bond for Gabriel too."

Raguel flinched. "I'm sorry."

Israfel grimaced. "That's okay. No one else acts as if I'm losing him, so why should you?"

"Israfel, I'm—"

She blew an errant strand of hair from her eyes. "It makes me wonder if Gabriel would even notice if I were the one chained in Satan's basement." She looked over at Raguel and offered a smile. "But you're right: even for primaries, he and Raphael are exceptionally close."

Zadkiel said, "Raphael will feel like an angel torn in half."

Saraquael winced, and Zadkiel's eyes flew wide. Remiel only said, "Don't worry. It's an accurate metaphor."

Saraquael said, "Raphael might ask God to annihilate him too. And when God refuses, I don't know what he'll do. I imagine he'll just bury himself in the Vision for aeons. And maybe time will help. I can't imagine."

Zadkiel's eyes flew to Israfel, who lowered her gaze. "Don't worry about me." Israfel took a deep breath. "I couldn't abandon Ophaniel and Zophiel to grief in order to escape it myself. But I'm not sure what will happen to the parts of me where Gabriel's been anchored since pretty much the dawn of creation."

Zadkiel walked over to Israfel and grasped her hand, and Israfel forced a smile she couldn't reinforce with her heart.

Remiel moved a knight onto a black square.

Saraquael said, "You and Raphael will eventually recover your equilibrium and reach some kind of acceptance."

Israfel said, "I can't see it."

Zadkiel said, "Humans divorce, and humans mourn and accept, but a Cherub and a Seraph are so wound into one another's hearts that they're always going to feel it."

Saraquael noticed Remiel again, sparkling, and projected to Zadkiel, who returned to the chess board and moved a bishop.

Saraquael said, "The hardest thing will be the first time you laugh."

"No," Israfel said. "Please, you're too much a poet, Saraquael. I don't want to know what's going to happen."

Remiel traced a finger along the edge of the board nearest herself. "You'll forget yourself one day and laugh at something and feel guilty." She ran both hands along the side edges of the board. "You'll think to yourself how ungrateful a friend you are, that you're being disloyal to the memory and the pain, but it will happen again, and someday before the end of time you'll be at peace, except for sometimes when you remember a brilliant, delicious age that ended tragically."

She knocked over her king and stepped away from the table.

Saraquael nudged some fallen pine needles with a stick. "At least humans can hope in a life after death. They might delude themselves as to what that means, but they can believe they'll have a reunion. We don't have that, and we can't lie to ourselves about it. He won't be happier. He won't be watching over us. We won't meet again."

"Stop it!" Raguel slammed his hands into the table so all the chess pieces jumped. "He isn't dead yet! God might not allow it—he might re-create him! Why torture ourselves with things that might not happen?" He folded his arms. "We didn't spin our wheels like this over the damned."

"You're wrong." Remiel plucked an evergreen frond and brushed the needles against her lips. "We did mourn, and we did talk about the pain, and we hung together because we didn't know if it could happen again, but we certainly didn't want it to." Remiel snapped the twig. "And we did recover, although it took a while. Remember how broken Uriel was afterward, how Uriel cried? I remember thinking God cried too, and that the damned deserved Hell if only for those tears." She tossed the halves of the branch onto the chess board. "But that's the key. The damned deserved the Hell they're in, and even though they have no hope, that's their choice. Gabriel didn't side with them, and he's being destroyed as if he's worse than they are."

Raguel flashed away.

Israfel put her face in her hands, and Zadkiel hugged her. "I think God's going to resolve this soon," Zadkiel murmured. "We won't linger in confusion much longer, and whatever happens, God will be with us."

Among the evergreens and beneath the swirling grey of the sky, four angels remained silent.

Chapter Thirteen

Jesus appeared behind Raphael at a balcony in the Westfield Parramatta Mall in Sydney, Australia. The sunlight streamed through him as easily as it did the skylight over the interior courtyard. People passed without seeing either of them, but Jesus noted how all their guardians usually had something to say. So sorry. In our prayers.

Jesus stepped alongside Raphael, dressed for the venue in khakis and a t-shirt, hands in his pockets. The Seraph greeted him with his heart but remained with his elbows resting on the railing, his back to the crowds that strolled between stores. Jesus leaned on the rail facing the other direction, close enough that one of Raphael's wingtips brushed his leg.

Raphael continued staring into the faceless crowd. "This is a good place to people-watch."

Jesus frowned. "What do you see?"

"Everything, one at a time." Raphael singled his attention onto a woman pushing a stroller. "Boredom." Another woman with a friend. "Loneliness." An older woman carrying a cosmetics bag. "Fear of death." Three teens chattering into cell phones as they walked the mall. "Hunger."

"It's not all negative." Jesus indicated a woman with a toy store bag. "Generosity. Over there I see excitement. That man drove here as an act of charity for a friend who can't drive any longer, giving up his morning so the man would have a day out."