Seven Archangels: Annihilation (34 page)

"Which you do just fine."

Touché. "But eventually we'll have to deal with one another, and it's no good if you're angry and I'm unsure how you'll work with me. It's in our best interests to at least work out some ground rules."

Israfel crossed her legs and leaned back in the chair.

Gabriel's head swam, but he sat up on the bed. "I respect your decision not to re-bond. I'll talk to Sidriel about a way to form a tertiary bond—"

"I don't want any level bond."

"If you'll let me speak, we have to form a tertiary if you don't want a primary, otherwise at some point one or the other of us is going to reach out at the wrong time and we'll have a primary once more because our souls were made for that level. Either we fill the slot with something else, or else you're going to be stuck with me again."

Israfel's frown eased a bit. "All right. Thank you."

Gabriel averted his eyes. "The next thing is, I know I can't make amends, but I at least want to offer you this: there's nothing wrong with you. I get my head in the clouds and get consumed by ideas, and I only end up with Raphael because he drags me away. If he didn't do that, I'd never see him either, so it's not that you're unworthy or a bother."

No protest from Israfel.

"I didn't want to hurt you," Gabriel said, "and I'm sorry I already have, because you didn't deserve that."

She sounded tentative. "Do you think we can re-make a tertiary?"

"I'll have to work on it. Deliberately under-bonding has never been done before, but that doesn't mean it's impossible."

She nodded.

He felt God prompting him, but he froze inside. A peek at Israfel showed her so— He couldn’t describe it.

Talk,
God told him, and he knew he had no words, so he said, "But—"

There was hesitancy in her eyes.

"Maybe," he said.

"You're not going to do better," she said.

"What if," he said, "we work on the tertiary problem, but—" His head hurt. "What if I made time for you in the meanwhile? And then when we have a way to make a tertiary, you decide what level to re-bond."

Her eyes narrowed. "Don't pity me."

He opened his hands, but he looked only at his lap. "You're right that we used to spend time talking and going places, although I dispute that I only ever tagged along on your missions to criticize you."

After a moment of silence she said, "It happened so gradually. But we used to have fun, and—" He looked up in time to see her eyes go from sky blue to hard like a dagger's silver. "What do you have in mind?"

"We set up a schedule," he said, "iron-clad so I don't go wandering off into research. And you come get me if I forget."

She recoiled. "That's patronizing."

He squinted. "To me or to you?"

"I guess to both of us, but mostly to me. I have to be scheduled into your life?"

Gabriel blinked. "There's nothing wrong with a schedule. Schedules exist to make sure important things get done."

Smirking, she tilted her head. "Do you schedule prayer too?"

His ears felt hot. "Yes."

She stared, open-mouthed.

"I pray at other times too." He had the distinct impression she was laughing at him. "But I've scheduled the minimum acceptable amount."

Dead silence reigned for a minute. Moderately dizzy now, Gabriel reached for God, who sent back reassurance.

Israfel said, "You are one-hundred-percent a Cherub."

Gabriel quirked a smile.
Thank you for noticing.

"If it's good enough for God," she said, "I'll take it too. So you were thinking one hour a week, pushed off to the 167th hour when your alarm went off and you realized you were about to blow the deadline?"

"Actually," Gabriel said, "if I wait until the 167th hour, it would be more efficient at that point to spend two hours together and take care of the next week's obligation as well."

In the next second, Gabriel wished he hadn't said that.

But Israfel laughed out loud, and her fire sparkled, and Gabriel let out a long breath.

"I think that's okay," she said. "Then we'll decide later."

Feeling distanced and hazy, Gabriel let Israfel touch her wingtips to his. When she flashed away, he collapsed gratefully onto the bed.

I hope there's nothing more right now,
he prayed.

Sleep,
God said, and Gabriel obeyed.
 

Chapter Twenty-One

The Lake of Fire lay at the bottom of a cavern with its ceiling a mile in the air. Fingers of rock jutted from the bare beaches, reaching like the petals of a chrysanthemum that had yet to unfold fully, the effect being that the only opening straight down was right at the lake's center where the cavern yielded to dark. On one of those projections stood Mephistopheles.

Poised a mile up on rock baked to glass, he had his wings extended and his eyes closed. The heat scalded him even this high, but still he remained. While his heart pounded, he waited for the fear to rouse him, knowing at the same time it would not.

He remembered: Rahab—oh, God, Rahab!—the sixth member of the Maskim and the demon-guard of Egypt who had watched Moses defeat Pharaoh ten times and had lost his grip on Israel; Rahab who had caused Pharaoh to pursue and then watched as a whole army's bloated bodies floated on the Red Sea.

Mephistopheles looked at the red sea flaming beneath him and closed his eyes again.

And Rahab, Rahab had reported to Lucifer, who had publicly humiliated him and stripped him of his rank. In a desperate attempt to regain favor he had tried to prevent Moses' receiving the Law from the Lord. He had failed. So he'd returned to this pinnacle and leaped.

Rahab had been destroyed by God once. He'd sought a different annihilation for himself under the flames, and to all intents he had succeeded. His whole spiritual form had dissolved after a month. Nothing remained to fish out now, even if they should find him, just a will that lingered and burned.

Under that flaming lake, one could lose his identity, suffer a name-change like the first—when their falling bodies had impacted on Hell's floor and each had tried to remove all traces of God from himself forever. Asmodeus from Asmodiel. Belior from Beliel. Mistofiel had become Mephistopheles; Belazael, Beelzebub. And now Rahab was nothing.

He could be nothing.

To suffer without remembering why.

The Cherub dreamed as he stood with closed eyes, tracking the sweat beading down his cheeks and against his nose and around the corners of his mouth. It lay in his power to forget that he had spat in the face of God. He, who had whored his mind to worse tyranny than the one he had refused to accept long ago, he himself had ripped one of the bright swords from his Creator's hand and shattered it against the stones.

And in a month, he could forget what he had done and know only that he endured eternal reparation.

Mephistopheles knew it would take a month because Rahab's primary Seraphim had screamed for a little over four weeks after their Cherub had submerged. Mephistopheles had stood on the beach among the rest of the higher-order demons (all but Lucifer) dragging the lake, one at a time flashing under the flames tethered to someone on shore; the diver would search the plasma for five minutes and then be reeled out when the pain became dangerous enough to dissolve the will.

Beelzebub will suffer, he realized.

He smiled wryly.

"Why are you doing this?"

The voice of Lucifer, smooth as the lava chugging over the edge of the waterfall.

"I asked a question, Cherub."

"I want to stop thinking."

Lucifer behind him sat on the rock spike and wordlessly ordered Mephistopheles to do the same. He did, still keeping his eyes closed, then turned so he straddled the stone facing Lucifer.

"Are you going to honor God by finally handing over your intellect? Is thinking so bad that you'd lose your freedom to halt it?"

Mephistopheles slumped forward.

Lucifer's tone never wavered. "You can't exchange your life for Gabriel's in some perverted form of justice. There is no justice. It's only us in this world. You can't satisfy any spiritual scales."

Mephistopheles opened his eyes enough to glare at him. "I'm not after justice."

"Then what do you want?" Lucifer said. "I can give it to you."

Fixing famished eyes on Lucifer, Mephistopheles said, "
Nothing
."

Lucifer sat a little taller, his eyes wide.

Flattening his palms to the spike, Mephistopheles slid forward until his chest pressed against the stone. He crossed his arms and laid down his head.

Mephistopheles understood enough of the future to know that when the world ended, when the Word flooded Hell with uncreated light for the final time, they all would be chained beneath that lake. Their will to do more than endure would be dissolved by the God of their creation—not the god of their rebellion—the one to whom was truly reserved that right.

But even then, not completely. They would know they were no longer self-aware. They would know what they had relinquished.

"I think it's better that way," murmured Mephistopheles, and Lucifer, who had felt the general turn of the Cherub's thoughts, said, "
He
won't ever do what's better for us. You're an idiot to think otherwise."

To silence the voice in his mind, the voice that night and day accused him—

"Mephistopheles," Lucifer said sharply, "use Beelzebub for this. Make him give you fire of a different sort."

Snapping his wings tight to his shoulders, Mephistopheles only shook his head.

Lucifer studied him, his green eyes piercing. After a minute, he murmured, "He used to care about you."

Mephistopheles' head whipped up. "Why don't you shut up and leave me alone? I'm no concern of yours!"

Lucifer leaned back, knees up on the rock, wings spread for balance. "He used to love you, back when he could look into your eyes and give you his fire and you could give him that inner focus he longed for."

Mephistopheles was on his feet now. "Who cares? He's not your concern—you never bonded!"

"I can only assume it was love." Lucifer gazed off into the dark. "Not a crazed need to feed on one another like paired parasites—"

Mephistopheles lunged at Lucifer and slammed him into the cavern wall, a crash that resounded through Hell like the clapper of a gong. They grappled in balance for an instant when it seemed both would plunge to their torments. Then the Cherub gathered himself to emit a concussion blast that filled the top of the chamber, bringing down tons of rock and collapsing the pinnacle on which they stood.

Lucifer snatched him out of the air and flashed him to the ice fields.

"I'll rip out your throat if you go on!" Mephistopheles was screaming. "I'll drop you into the lake!"

Lucifer shimmered until wind and wings merged in the blinding snow. "I'm pointing out the obvious, Cherub, things you already know."

Mephistopheles blasted him again, fire around his eyes and a geyser of snow filling the air. Lucifer batted it aside. "Do you want to kill me?" he yelled over the wind. "Would that silence my voice, or is that in your mind too?"

Mephistopheles rose into the air, six wings spread like the limbs of a mutant sea star, Michael's sigil on his hand streaming spangles of light. He grabbed Lucifer with his will, encircling his heart in chains that pinned his arms to his side, enwrapped his throat and bound his legs together. The Cherub sent power flooding through the web of his will, electricity that struck Lucifer with a crack-boom like a lightning bolt.

Lucifer flexed all twelve wings, doubled up under the web, and blew it off.

Fully armored now, Mephistopheles called his sword to his hand. He flew at Lucifer, who raised an empty hand only to materialize his sword the moment before impact. Mephistopheles hurled himself at him, striking twice a second, throwing all his will and power into the attack. Lucifer parried, dodged, pivoted. The tips of several feathers blew away in the wind.

Mephistopheles broke off the attack and flashed to a nearby ridge, chest heaving.

Surprised and thrilled, Lucifer flashed right in front of him.
There's my Cherub!

Engaged in battle with Michael's enemy, the ring on Mephistopheles' hand was on fire. Mephistopheles flung himself at Lucifer, crashed him into the side of the hill, stabbing at him with a dagger, hurling energy from the ringed hand, fire and light hemorrhaging from his entire form. With Michael's power supplementing his own, he drove Lucifer a step at a time until finally Lucifer had his back to a snow bank. Mephistopheles aimed for his heart.

Lucifer brought up his hands and bound Mephistopheles with his will.

Frozen, Mephistopheles tried to thrash, tried to flash away, tried even to close his eyes and scream, but none of himself responded.

"You have your own fire." Lucifer's hair was buffeted by the wind as ice crystals formed on his outermost wings. "You don't have to smother yourself."

The Cherub couldn't break his gaze from those eyes, those eyes.

Without a movement, Lucifer transported them inside a frozen cave, blue-white with internal refractions from Lucifer's own glow. Out of the wind, Mephistopheles could hear his own heartbeat, feel his frenzied breathing.

Lucifer released him enough that he could stand, not enough that he could move. As he settled to the frost-glistened floor, Mephistopheles averted his gaze.

"Remember your power and your independence." Lucifer crooned into Mephistopheles' ear like a lover. "Think of what you accomplished, the accolades you deserve because no one else was even close to being able to figure out the things you did. Not even Gabriel knew the secrets of a soul's construction. Am I correct?"

Mephistopheles agreed.

"I will again make you the offer." Lucifer took a step backward and spoke clearly. "Since they appear to do you no benefit, would you like me to break all your bonds?"

A long stillness in Mephistopheles' mind. Then, almost without thought, a refusal.

"As you will. However, from a practicality perspective, I cannot allow you to stay depressed." Lucifer shook his head. "You're impeding our next move, and you're causing a morale problem. Belior is maneuvering to replace you, and I have enough to do without shoving him back into his box."