Seven Archangels: Annihilation (5 page)

Beelzebub said, "Why don't you shine a bit so we can have this talk face-to-face?"

Turning his head, Gabriel projected that darkness was just fine for now.

Gabriel knew how to set Guards, and this wasn't the way to do it. Having it set piecemeal could leave chinks for an enemy to exploit. It could be squeezed until one buckled because they were all of different strengths.
It makes no sense
. If Mephistopheles had arranged this—a good assumption, considering which demon stood here now—he knew better. Gabriel would have expected such shoddy work only from a minor demon, not from one who pre-winnowing had been among the smartest Cherubim.

Beelzebub shook Gabriel. "Don't take your brain away. Stop thinking. If you have questions, ask me. I'm standing right here."

The way the room was Guarded made sense, Gabriel thought, if this room wasn't really a room, just an unused space carved from the rock by omission rather than intention. Yes, this theory worked, with the wall to one side reeking of Beelzebub and the one on the other tingling of Mephistopheles. At his back it felt like Satan's own offices, his secrets so tantalizingly close but unable to be broken open. Personal notes, plans, perhaps even a private conference taking place, and no other options remained for Gabriel other than reconnaissance.

This theory meant they'd been preparing for his capture as long ago as the age of the youngest Guard: about a week.

"Pay attention!" Beelzebub sounded frustrated. "Mephistopheles is going to annihilate you!"

Gabriel focused abruptly.

"That's what it takes to get you to look?" Beelzebub folded his arms and shifted his stance so he leaned back on one leg. Like most Seraphim, he was tall. "Mephistopheles figured out how to annihilate an angel. We're starting with you. I can let you free. Are you willing to listen?"

The sudden glow from Gabriel's spirit illuminated Beelzebub's dark eyes and square jaw. "I knew there was something to Ezekiel 28:18! How is he going to annihilate an angel?"

An infinite exasperation passed over Beelzebub's face. "Who cares? We have to do this fast if you want to escape."

Gabriel said, "Do what?"

Beelzebub erupted in flames, and his Seraphic power surrounded Gabriel like a cloud of swarming bees. He rested the heels of his hands against the wall on either side of Gabriel's head, and he smirked.

Gabriel's heart recoiled from the energy. "I'm not going to bond with you!"

Beelzebub was looking right into his eyes, and Gabriel extinguished his light, but the demon was so close he could feel eddies from his eyelashes as he blinked. The heat crawled over him.

"Even if I agreed to, I'm not sure we'd be able to cross-bond. All the pre-existing bonds between angels and demons were broken by the winnowing."

"Give it a try," the Seraph murmured.

"I think—" Gabriel swallowed. "I think I'd rather die."

Beelzebub hit him. Gabriel gave a relieved sigh as the Seraphic energy let off.

The demon said into the air, "Mephistopheles, he's awake."

Was it true? Was it even possible? Certainly it fit with his suspicions about the demons, that they'd devised something tremendous. This information helped it make more sense that they'd keep their discovery quiet, just in case the attempt failed. But to make the attempt at all, their theory must be sound. Mephistopheles was generally sober.

At that moment, Mephistopheles appeared, and Gabriel heard him gasp. The energy in the air vanished as the fallen Cherub pulled it all inside. Gabriel geared up his light in time to see Mephistopheles turn toward Beelzebub, vibrating into an angry blur. "What are you doing? He's going to die! Why would you bond with a thing that's doomed?"

"If we could access his power—"

"In fifteen minutes he won't have any power left to access, you idiot! If Lucifer finds out what you—"

Mephistopheles froze, then turned to face Gabriel, who wore a tremendous smile.

The fallen Cherub's almond eyes narrowed.

"I'll tell him whatever I like," Gabriel said. "I don't stand to lose anything more, unless you're all bluster."

Mephistopheles and Beelzebub stood frozen for a moment, and Gabriel envisioned their bond, soiled but a bond nevertheless, and abruptly he realized that if they were telling the truth, how horrible his loss would be for Raphael.

Beelzebub said, "He'll never believe you. You'd say anything to save your life."

"Shut up!" Mephistopheles snapped, startling Gabriel. "You've said enough already." He turned back to Gabriel. "He's right, of course. You're going to die regardless."

"Then why should I care what happens afterward?"

Mephistopheles flinched. "He's my Seraph."

Gabriel wished he could smirk the way Beelzebub could, but instead he stayed deadpan. "He was nearly mine too."

Mephistopheles glared at Beelzebub in time to stop him from charging toward Gabriel. "Get out of here."

The fallen pair locked gazes, and then Beelzebub vanished.

Silence continued for a moment.

Mephistopheles went to Gabriel and searched his pockets. "Lucifer won't spare you no matter what you say, and at this point, I daresay he wouldn't expect anything else from Beelzebub. Nor from you. It would be easy enough to counter that you'd offered to bond him to save your own life. Oh…?" He pulled Michael's sigil ring from Gabriel's jeans, and his eyes glimmered. "I thought I detected something. I would have believed you'd know better than to allow Michael to divide his power." He slipped the ring onto his finger, then returned his full attention to Gabriel. "Lucifer will initiate the proceedings as soon as he's ready, whenever that is. Timing is a game for him."

Gabriel said, "Did you really figure out how to annihilate an angel?"

Mephistopheles assented.

"And you're certain it's possible?"

"We haven't actually performed one yet," Mephistopheles admitted, "but the theory checks out. You're our test case."

"That makes sense," Gabriel said. "If God's going to punish you for annihilating someone, you ought to make sure it's someone important."

"Exactly." Mephistopheles rubbed his chin. "When it came time to select a subject, we settled on a few targets, but I argued for you, and now you're here."

Curiosity sparkled inside. "But how do you intend to destroy soul material? It regenerates."

Mephistopheles' eyes glistened. "It's not destruction so much as it's disconnection. If you disunite a soul's parts, they continue drifting away from one another until they can't regain any sort of cohesion."

Gabriel's head raised. "Oh! So one would still exist, only in an infinite number of pieces!"

"With entropy drawing those further apart."

Gabriel tried to brush that aside with his hand, but he was still chained, so he only shook his head. "Entropy belongs to the fallen world. With a celestial creature, the parts might well reconstitute themselves. That's why dismemberment isn't permanent."

"The soul-fragments would try to reunite," Mephistopheles said, "but lacking cohesion, how would they adhere?"

Gabriel's eyes widened. "You've discovered how a soul is more than the sum of its parts?"

Mephistopheles opened his hands and created a screen of light, on which he illuminated a series of filaments and dots. "Consider this a model of a soul, extremely simplified for purposes of instruction. The various attributes are these dots, and this—" he changed the color of the filaments, "—is the string which binds them all together, fastening them to one another and giving them order."

Gabriel struggled to lean closer. When he tried to point, his hands hit the end of the chain again, so he created a light pointer of his own and selected parts of the diagram. "You unhook it from one end and begin unraveling—"

"It's not raveled," Mephistopheles said. "The knitting reference in psalms is a metaphor, although maybe human souls are knit. I haven't tested theirs. Ours resemble beadwork."

Gabriel frowned. "What anchors the ends?"

"Nothing, ironically. The ends of the 'string' coil around themselves. The soul parts do have a natural attraction to one another, but it's not terribly difficult to pinch them apart."

"I wouldn't have guessed that." Gabriel hummed. "Have you mapped which parts of the soul are which?"

"It wasn't necessary for our purposes."

Gabriel's pupils widened. "If I were you, I'd attempt inactivating them one at a time to determine what attributes the test subject failed to manifest."

"That's an idea." Mephistopheles took a step closer, one wing inadvertently brushing the light image so it rippled like a reflection pool. "Prior to now I'd only stimulated them individually to test for a reaction, but the results were difficult to interpret. It would take a prohibitive time to deduce by attrition because there are so many aptitudes one would need to screen to detect an absolute lack of one."

Gabriel leaned back, breathing hard and still riding a wild joy. "You've proposed a microfilament binding together these beads. You cut the string, but wouldn't the structure just reform?"

"Maybe." Mephistopheles's face transformed with a slow but unstoppable grin, blue eyes bright beneath his curls. "But if one were to reach inside and slide the beads one at a time off the severed string, they'd scatter."

"Are they undifferentiated enough that you can't—"

"—keep them together once they're off the string? That's the theory. If someone were sufficiently dedicated—"

"Yes, but can the beads even retain their shape once separated from the string, which one assumes is their sustenance?" Gabriel shook his head. "Based on what happens after an angel gets injured, I would hypothesize the residual parts would dissipate after about twenty-four hours anyhow, leaving only a narrow window of time to reconstitute the angel in the first place." He frowned as he thought. "The string is our subconscious cohesion?"

"And the beads are personality traits fitted together seemingly at random."

"With the various admixtures determining the choir—"

"—so that God could manufacture an infinite variety of creatures with a very few base components."

"And presumably no one is entirely lacking any single trait—"

"—but with different angels amplifying differing aspects of the Almighty—"

"—meaning that spread out over all creation, every aspect of God is illuminated by at least one soul—"

"And also, in theory, if one could 'harvest' these traits form already living angels and somehow restring them—a new angel!"

They both stood breathless, eyes burning.

Gabriel raised his hands again and clanked against the chain ends, but he didn't seem to notice he was still anchored to the wall. "What makes the string? What material makes the soul itself? Is the string what gives it awareness and animation?" he blurted, even as Mephistopheles was urging, "Tell me how it feels—tell me everything. I'll record it for study, and I'll even share the results with your choir-mates."

Mephistopheles lunged closer and grabbed him by the forearms. "Gabriel, if it has to happen, the least you can do is make sure it's properly documented."

With a bang, the chains tightened again, slamming Gabriel into the wall. Gasping, he closed his eyes.

"Shall we begin?" said Lucifer.

Help me,
Gabriel prayed, and at the same time he instinctively reached for Raphael's heart.
Satan's here.

Gabriel wriggled his wrists around so they fit better in the cuffs, and he tried to look at Lucifer without Lucifer meeting his eyes in return. The leader of the rebel angels, Lucifer seemed to move as if every gesture were calculated and captured for study; he had a Seraph's height and chiseled features. Gabriel watched as Lucifer cleared the room of the excess contents: a chair; the paper cup with a coffee logo on it. Even tucked at his back, his twelve wings all but filled the room, and his platinum hair lifted Gabriel's light so naturally that it seemed to glow of its own accord.

Mephistopheles said, "I'll summon the others," and momentarily Beelzebub and Camael stood in the room.

Gabriel turned away from Camael, who glared at him with Remiel's wild eyes but an abrasive edge that scoured the air around him.

"Fasten him." Mephistopheles checked the chains for tension, and abruptly Gabriel felt another Guard form over his chest, crushing him into the rock. His glow wavered, or perhaps it was his vision blackening.

"Back off," Mephistopheles said. "He has to remain conscious. We discussed this."

The pressure eased. Gabriel tried to sneak in a breath, praying as fervently as his logic-based Cherub soul could manage.

Lucifer straightened his sleeves. "Any last requests?"

"Once a year," Gabriel panted, "remind God that I loved him."

Lucifer paused. "I don't think so."

Gabriel chilled as icy fingers probed his soul.

Lucifer caught the lifeline about his heart, tugged it, and lifted it free of its fastenings.

"God!" Gabriel screamed, his spine trying to arch against his restraints, his wings snapping out, but with him unable to move because he was so tightly bound to the rock.

With Camael kneeling like a makeshift altar, Lucifer channeled all his power through the twin and fine-tuned Camael's larger strokes while Mephistopheles and Beelzebub together wove a perfect living Guard with their bonded souls.

Absolutely immobilized, Gabriel foundered as he tried to retain whatever those beads were that composed himself. The last thing he saw was the intensity of Camael's eyes—horrified and helpless and grim. Then Gabriel's glow winked out, plunging the chamber into blackness.

"They're attacking," Mephistopheles and Beelzebub said simultaneously. "Michael's hurling himself at the Guard."

All around the chamber, rock shivered like a space shuttle at T-minus-one.

"Stay strong," Lucifer said. "He's mine."

Gabriel felt his personality slipping apart. There were tears on his face, but the drama enfolded him. Gritting his teeth, he chanted in his mind,
God is strong, God is strong, God is strong.

Energy from Raphael and Israfel empowered him from within. He soaked it into his heart as quickly as he could to fortify what Lucifer had not yet breached.