Seven Archangels: Annihilation (31 page)

"I nearly killed Camael!"

"I stopped you." He put his hand on her knee. "Trust me that I won't let you fall. I will never allow you to fall. You chose me, and as far as I'm concerned, you have chosen me for all time."

Remiel's expression didn't change.

"You are mine, and I will defend you." He nodded. "He cannot take you by force or by sin. You're safe."

Her eyes enlarged to full moons.

"As for the connection between the two of you, removing that would mean your ceasing to be yourself, and his ceasing to be himself."

Remiel's spine straightened. "But—"

He raised his palm. "What I
can
give you is the ability to recognize when influence is being exerted and to send communication in both directions."

"What good is that?" Then realization dawned. "Oh!"

He rubbed his hand over her hair. "The next time he sends you a suggestion, send him one in return. The war will end there."

She laughed out loud.

Jesus roughed her shoulder. "You're all right, Priceless One."

"Thank you." She looked suddenly cautious. "I have one more request, if I haven't already bothered you too much." When he nodded, she said, "I need to apologize to Gabriel for the way I behaved when I was Camael."

He nodded. She said, "I'd like—no, I need for you to come with me."

Jesus said, "He's not going to draw his sword on you, you know." He stood. "But yes, I'll go with you."

- + -

Gabriel shifted to sitting upright with no vertigo.

"He's sounding out." Excitement rang in Raphael's voice as he examined Gabriel. "A bit hollow, but the tone is right."

Michael and Uriel exchanged a relieved glance. Gabriel pivoted toward Raphael, but before he could make it there, the Seraph smothered him in a hug.

"I don't ever want to have to do that again." Raphael buried his head in Gabriel's shoulder. "From now on, you stay in one piece."

Smiling, Gabriel projected that he'd do his best.

He looked around the cinderblock room, oddly emptier than he remembered from when he'd arrived to stop Remiel. The only thing on the floor was broken glass—what looked like pounds of it. All the windows were shattered. "Did a bomb go off in here?"

"In a way." Michael leaned back, hands thrust behind him. "You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice."

Uriel sat, heels tucked beneath, hands folded. "What we've been calling the string is the same part that would have to be disengaged during an exorcism, and as we've now come to learn," the Throne added dryly, "throwing things around during one of those is actually a reflex action."

Gabriel started. Michael winced as he said, "I think you shattered every pane of glass in a fifteen-mile radius."

Gabriel turned pink. "I'm sorry about that."

"I'm just glad you weren't anywhere near full strength." Uriel looked aside. "There were a couple of times I thought the roof was coming down on our heads."

Raphael said, "I thought it was fun." When Gabriel glared at him, he added, "I don't often get to see you really unleash yourself."

"I didn't have a choice," Gabriel said, sounding mortified.

"It was rather impressive," Uriel said, "but we ought to get you back to my place and check you over thoroughly."

Raphael pulled Gabriel to a stand, and he staggered before Michael caught him but didn't experience vertigo. At least, not until they transported him back to Uriel's—when he utterly lost track of where he was, pushing back from Raphael before he realized whom he was with and where.

Raphael looked surprised, Uriel just grim.

The room was hot—stifling. Gabriel was about to ask if they could lower the temperature when Raphael started the process. Gabriel settled himself on the edge of the bed as gingerly as he could, and this time he didn't lose his sense of place. "At least I can talk."

Uriel summoned a black duffle bag and held it up. "Remember this? We're about to find out what else you can do."

So while Gabriel ate cookies, Uriel pulled out the 24-piece puzzle, and he solved it one-handed while Uriel set up the stacking shapes (Gabriel did these with a wave of his hand while finishing the puzzle.) He was able to read, add, multiply (here he lost patience and did calculus until Uriel pronounced him mathematically enabled) and speak any language they tested.

Raphael sparkled more as the tests went on and Gabriel was able to do all the things he hadn't before. "Give me a challenge," Gabriel said, so Uriel produced a three-dimensional five-thousand piece puzzle, all black on all sides, and Gabriel set about reassembling it during the remainder of the tests as the long rows of check boxes on the clip board got filled.

Michael said, "When you have a moment, I need to debrief you."

Raphael said, "You're going to take off his shorts?"

Gabriel burst out laughing.

"Sense of humor," Uriel said. "Check."

Michael brightened "You added that in?"

"He does so have a sense of humor!" Raphael exclaimed, even as Gabriel turned back to the puzzle he'd already half-completed.

Michael turned to Uriel. "Why couldn't he do all this before?"

"I messed up." Eyes averted, Uriel seemed to fade. "Right before Raphael forced me to take a break, I found myself faced with two identical pieces that looked like they might fit in one spot. I was exhausted, and I just picked one." Uriel's gaze turned to Gabriel. "I'm sorry. I caused a lot of problems by doing that."

Gabriel shrugged. "I imagine it was like assembling this puzzle in the dark. During a tornado."

Raphael said, "You forgot to add while the house is on fire."

"Point taken." Uriel's hands knit. "But the misplaced pieces interrupted your sensory integration."

"It wasn't all bad," Gabriel said, fitting the 3000th piece. "You gave Michael a chance to beat me at chess."

Michael crossed the room and beat Gabriel at chess again, rapping him on the head with the board while Raphael laughed out loud.

"All kidding aside," Michael said, "I need you to answer a few questions."

Uriel cleared away the duffle bag. Michael pulled his chair across the room, then sat, knees apart, leaning toward Gabriel. "Can you give me a recap of whatever you remember?"

Gabriel spread his hands to create a light prism the size of a shoe box. "As far as I can determine, this was where they held me."

Michael studied the landmarks on the three-dimensional map of Hell. "That correlates."

"This," and a second light appeared beside the one indicating his prison's location, "was Satan's private office."

Michael's eyes bugged. "Really!"

"I could feel it at my back. They'd anchored me with chains at my wrists and ankles, and the chains themselves were embedded in the Guard of his office."

Raphael hummed uneasily, but Gabriel looked only at Michael. "Once they started, it took maybe four minutes until I wasn't conscious of fighting any longer."

Michael frowned. "What about before they started?"

"I was unconscious when they brought me in. I awakened long enough to realize where I was, and then Beelzebub approached me." He glanced at Raphael. "He offered to set me free if I consented to a bond with him."

Raphael vibrated, and sparks glinted in his eyes.

"I've never before had the opportunity to actually choose 'death first.'" Gabriel paused. "Mephistopheles realized what was going on, threw him out, and then explained what they were going to do."

Michael looked puzzled. "Why would he do that?"

Gabriel seemed equally puzzled. "Why wouldn't he?"

"It's generally bad practice to talk to your prisoner about how you're going to kill him."

Gabriel shrugged. "He was desperate to share it with someone. You just know Beelzebub doesn't care, and Mephistopheles would forget the whole thing before he'd discuss it with Belior. I got the impression," he added softly, "that I was the first person to work on it with him."

Uriel projected something that Michael echoed by saying, "Please tell me you didn't help him refine his technique."

"But the making of an
angel
," Gabriel said, sitting forward and opening his hands, "the way God fit us all together and sustains us—"

Raphael put a hand on Gabriel, who turned and found his eyes wide. "There's theory, and there's practice. Theory has its place, but in practice, he was trying to kill you, so it might have benefited you not to help him."

Gabriel sighed. "He already knew how to do it. There was no way I could stop him. I wanted to find out more, and he wanted someone to tell."

Michael was fighting a grin. "How did they actually do it? Not the specifics," he added when Uriel was about to speak. "The general procedure."

"Mephistopheles and Beelzebub put up the Guard," Gabriel said. "Satan used Camael as a focus and reached into me—" he felt Raphael wince, and he dropped a hand onto his, "—and that was pretty much it. I wasn't sure what to do, and I couldn't do more than protect myself." He turned to Raphael. "It's okay. I'm safe."

Raphael was shaking. "It's not okay! What they nearly did is frightening."

Gabriel said, "Anyhow, right at the end I realized there wasn't any way I was getting myself out of there alive, so I started dumping power into the chains around one wrist. I thought my only chance was to leave enough of me somewhere that you could find it afterward, and the only way to do that was to leave an object behind that they wouldn't necessarily search."

Raphael said, "Maybe that's where the beads came from."

Gabriel sat straighter. "Beads?"

Michael explained about finding bits of Gabriel's essence afterward to help him make up substance ("but not efficiently," Michael said while Raphael stayed very quiet.)

Gabriel glanced at Uriel, whose visage had darkened.

"Remiel searched the chamber and didn't find anything. She might not have checked the chain, though. She was looking for beads." Uriel's head jerked up. "Can you show me how the room was laid out?"

Gabriel remade the light box and set up images of himself chained at one wall, then Camael kneeling between him and Satan, and finally Mephistopheles and Beelzebub behind Satan. "That's pretty close."

"Can you make it exact?"

Gabriel flinched as he thought back to the darkness, the moment. Raphael behind him said, "Is this necessary?"

Gabriel rotated the image so he could see it from his own vantage point, then tilted Camael forward a bit (interesting—that position would have deflected Satan's power without Satan realizing what Camael had done) and then adjusted Mephistopheles' position to the left and moved Beelzebub more toward the center. Odd: he hadn't been able to see Beelzebub during the procedure—

Oh, dear God!

Beelzebub had stepped toward the center of the room to touch Mephistopheles. Maybe they'd woven their wings together, maybe just a brush. Maybe he'd grabbed Mephistopheles' hand as they put up a combined Guard. And how horrible to think about, because what could be more normal, more natural, than for a Seraph feeling fear and anticipation to reach out for his primary Cherub?

"Gabriel," Raphael said.

There was still something of them left inside there, underneath all that hate, beneath the rebellion—

"Gabriel." Raphael rubbed his shoulders. "It's over. Come back to us."

Gabriel shook his head as if to scatter the images, and he tried to swallow past the knot in his throat.

Uriel was studying the box. "Raphael said Remiel was 'spattered' with parts of Gabriel, but I didn't find any less substance in him now than before. In fact, given that Gabriel was healing in the meantime, there was far more."

Raphael's voice had steel. "I wasn't mistaken."

"I'm not saying you were."

Gabriel said, "So it must have been from before."

He detonated the light-Gabriel in the picture, drawing a cry from Raphael. Uriel scrambled nearer. "Now, single out the figure of Camael."

Gabriel faded the rest of the picture and made Camael stand up.

Raphael pointed over Gabriel's shoulder. "That's it! The front of the wings, shoulders, thighs, outside of the forearms, face. That's where she had it all."

Gabriel said, "This is just a model. I don't know what actually happened."

Michael shifted to look from the side. "Bring back the rest of the image and show me where Satan would have been impacted."

"He'd get the full force of it." Satan's figure changed color along its front. "We were practically on top of one another."

Kneeling up and leaning over Gabriel, Raphael squinted at the picture. "Beelzebub didn't get hit."

"Definitely not if Satan had his wings flared and Beelzebub didn't," Gabriel said. "That was an incredibly crowded room. Mephistopheles probably got hit too, but not as much as Camael and Satan." He opened his hands. "Why is this important? You can't go wring them out."

As he sat back, Raphael sent an impulse through Gabriel: He'd like to.

Michael said, "But I told you Remiel's report about Mephistopheles' new assignment." He turned to Gabriel. "Satan asked him to find a means of doing it
from a distance.
"

Gabriel gasped. "I hurt him!"

Michael grinned. "I can't imagine how his substance would react to being doused in yours, but you've got nearly as much power as he does under ordinary circumstances."

Gabriel gave a dismissive wave. "We're not even close here—the difference between me and him is only slightly less vast than the difference between him and God." His eyes shifted. "The only one who truly scares him is Uriel."

Uriel smirked. "Boo."

Gabriel shrugged. "That's my take on it, at any rate. Still, the implication of the evidence is that I hurt him—and he didn't like that. Hence no new attacks. Not until Mephistopheles comes through."

"And Mephistopheles got hurt too," Michael said, "according to this scenario."

"But what damage could I have done?"

"It's still soaked into Remiel after three days," Raphael said. "She went mad after posing as Camael, but maybe the residue had something to do with it."