Seven Archangels: Annihilation (9 page)

"How could you forget the fish? I was still morning sick all the time, and the fish reeked like crazy."

Uriel chuckled behind one hand. "That's the thing I never expected about being a guardian angel—the way humans push yourselves rather than admit defeat."

"Someone had to cook the fish." Mary cocked her head. "Well, fair's fair. I never expected angels to be anything like you are either." When Uriel looked puzzled, Mary continued, "I figured that beings with a perfect understanding of God would never disagree and would live in perfect harmony all the time."

Uriel squinted. "And when you find those creations perfect enough to have a perfect understanding of God, let me know!"

"Of course only God is perfect." Mary fiddled with the handles of the basket. "I knew it said in Job that God finds fault even with his angels. I knew the Yom Kippur liturgy actually says angels sin. But even hearing in Daniel that the guardian of Persia fought with Gabriel for twenty-one days and had to be called off by Michael didn't prepare me for the idea that angels might disagree with one another."

"Don't God's people disagree with one another?"

"We're not angels," Mary said.

Uriel's hands opened, forming a faceted gem which revolved slowly, splintering the light to scatter tiny rainbow dots over the walls. "None of us is big enough to contain and understand all of God, even with unclouded reasoning abilities. God designed us all a little differently from one another so that spread out over the whole of creation, eventually one of us amplifies each aspect of himself. But given that, doesn't it make sense that the angel of justice might argue with the angel of mercy? Or," Uriel added, winking, "that an angel embodying God's creativity might argue with God over a schedule?"

The Throne made the lighted jewel disappear.

"It makes sense. I just never expected it." Mary handed over a cookie. "Please?"

Uriel tried a bite, then radiated approval.

"Thanks." Mary looked at Raphael. "He pulled Gabriel out of Hell, and you helped put him back together, and I baked cookies."

Uriel said, "Cookies solve all the world's problems."

Mary paused. "That's not true. Some problems can only be solved with brownies."

"Aren't brownies are a type of bar cookie?"

"Oh, dear," Mary said. "All the world's problems
can
be solved with cookies." She sipped the tea and finished her cookie. "This is so much like when Jesus was a baby. You guarding me, Raphael guarding him."

Uriel had a wistful smile. "Gestation is a hazy time. I wasn't expecting that either."

"I've gotten to realize we're never really prepared."

Uriel squinted, projecting assurance that God had prepared them, then added, "We just never realize it until afterward." Setting the empty cup on the bed, Uriel said, "Raphael figured out how to toughen up Gabriel's spirit to survive death. I think he was able to do that because as Jesus's guardian angel he'd witnessed him doing the same thing to himself from the inside. No one else had ever seen it done."

Mary took a deep breath. "But what's next?"

Uriel's fingers knit together. "We have to find the rest of Gabriel. I'm not positive we got everything. Especially not after you found that residue in the field."

"There wasn't anything else, though." Mary got another cookie. "We checked."

Uriel gestured with one hand. "
That
can't be all there is of him. If it's not in the field, then it's got to be back in Hell. Or else it's gone forever."

Mary bit her lip. "Can we send in a search party?"

Uriel emitted a small cloud of frustration, worry for the ones they'd send, fear of a baited trap.

"Have you asked Michael?"

Uriel's eyes lowered again, and another cloud of frustration: no time to have mentioned it already, and uncertainty. Finally words, "I won't be sure until I try putting him back together."

"You could try now," Mary said.

"He's too dehiscent." When Mary squinted, Uriel added, "You know, thin. Ready to pull apart. Imagine trying to cover a pizza pan with only a handful of dough. What would happen when you rolled it out, and kept rolling it?"

"How thin can you pull a soul?"

"Not that thin," Uriel said. "I've never done anything like this before, and even so, I know it can't be pulled that thin."

Raphael stirred. Mary sat back from the edge of the bed to give him room.

As he sat up and checked on Gabriel, Mary felt from him the same shock she'd felt, as if Gabriel's form were an insult; it was bad enough he'd been damaged and mangled, but why did he have to look that way so they remembered it anew every time they looked?

"Cookies," the Seraph said, blinking away the sleep. He wasn't looking at the cookies, though, only at Gabriel. "I still can't feel him. It's as if he's not there."

Mary clasped her hands. Uriel said, "Give him time."

"Time for what?" Raphael began to vibrate. "He's had time. It's not doing any good."

"We can't say that for certain," Uriel said, "and he's not any worse, so that's something."

Raphael tried to adjust Gabriel on the bed. "He looks so small."

Uriel flinched.

Mary moved to the head of the bed. "Here, can I try something?" She grasped the fabric that had been Raphael's wings, adjusted it beneath Gabriel, then tucked him up so he seemed even smaller. She paused. "This isn't hurting you, is it?"

"Not at all." The Seraph squinted. "What are you doing?"

"Remember how I used to carry Jesus?" She tied a firm knot at the base, then pulled the ends up tight. "Come closer and bend over him."

It took a lot of adjusting of the fabric (thick, silky, warm on its own) around Gabriel's form, but when Mary was done, Raphael had Gabriel bundled up at chest height, and he had his hands free.

"That way you can carry him easier," Mary said. "It gives you mobility."

Uriel quirked a smile. "Where is he going to go?"

"Wherever he wants," Mary said, "although it might be best if he stays here."

Raphael looked down at Gabriel's featureless face, the limp hair, the way he'd seemed to lose his shape. "I don't want to risk anything."

"But he's with you," Mary said.

Raphael's eyes glistened, and after a hard swallow, he nodded.

Chapter Six

Still in the form of Camael, Remiel lay with her legs draped across the arm of a chair in the great hall at Hell's entrance. While dark, it wasn't the lab area, and while hot it wasn't the Lake of Fire. It didn't have the preternatural cold of the ice fields. It was just an annoying place to be—noisy, crowded, smelly, and prickly with the presence of souls who all wished the rest would just leave already.

So why am I still here?

Because she'd failed. Returning to the surface meant seeing the hollow affect on the faces of the angels working throughout Creation, hearing angels crying, seeing the blank empty of Raphael's heart when she so well remembered the same feeling immediately after the winnowing.

All the demons were chattering like seventh graders on amphetamines washed down with espresso. Telling about angels dressed in black, angels without songs, angels constantly armored—and angels grim, so terribly grim.

Around her, demons laughed and pretended to be Gabriel being ripped limb from torso until Remiel wanted nothing more than to rise from her chair and start stuffing parts of them down one another's throats.

But the disguise had to hold, particularly now, so Remiel put on Camael as best she could and scowled, keeping her eyes closed.

A demon bumped Camael's head as he passed, and Camael growled so the interloper skittered away.

The air had a fug Camael detested—give him the open air of Creation any day, the freedom of wide spaces; even the darkest alley in Sodom seemed preferable now. The continuous noise—less sound than static feedback—could drive anyone to frenzy with its whine. From the pits and the ice fields it was possible to hear the tumult of the human damned. At least this room had only a few columns to support the weight of everything above—a weight anyone could feel just waiting; the deeper levels had more columns, smaller chambers, no room even to open your wings.

Another pair of demons launched into an Amos-and-Andy style production of "How I Killed Gabriel" when Camael decided he'd had enough. Looking off to the western side of the room he saw it vanish into the thick air of the lab area. He pushed aside a demon and started walking. That was the place to go to be alone, but being there, near where it happened… Even if the real Camael did have chambers there—and who would want to see the contents of a demon's privacy?—being there would only bring it back, the memory of standing with Beelzebub and Satan in a darkness hungry to devour any light they shed. Neither had tried. Gabriel alone had shone there, and Camael could have given away the game by doing the same. For all the good his presence had done, he might as well have.

Camael stopped in mid-stride. No, don't go there. Don't go in and remember how he'd been so weakened that Satan had helped him to stand, that he'd leaned on God's enemy and his friend's murderer.

Murderer. A murderer from the beginning, Jesus had said. Jesus had known Gabriel would— That this would happen.

"I hear you were around when they got him?"

Camael faced the demon with a growl. A low-ordered one, but the demon stood its ground.

"Did the poor freak scream?" it said. "Did it renounce God? Mephistopheles said it did. Beelzebub said Satan drank his blood, too."

"Get out of my sight," Camael said, but an audience had been drawn, clustering around him like maggots, and they all expected him to say something, a victory speech with an account more amazing than the ones before. He'd be the star for a moment, and then they'd move on, trying to coax a story out of Satan.

That opened up some possibilities. What couldn’t Satan top?

"Fine," Camael said, "but I'm only telling this once."

He walked into the center of the throng, reminding himself that the lower demons lived for the higher orders to condescend to them. They might as well get someone's approval and guidance, having spurned God's.

Almost at the center, Camael looked into the eyes of an Archangel that once had been a friend, and he looked at another, and then a third, and he remembered all their names, remembered happier days when they all had loved God together. Camael had to grip himself not to scream, not to cry at the stupid loss of so many bright lights, so many individuals who had played the same songs, read the same books, fought with the same weapons, and then drowned for a different god.

As the shock rippled through Camael, he realized he couldn't follow through on his original plan to play Henry V, to be one with the troops and pretend to be their friend. He had been their friend once, and what remained, these husks of spirit, repulsed him. He dreaded contact.

The low-order demons filled this whole corner of the great hall. Camael sat on a table, wings raised and feet dangling, resting his toes on a bench. He was a head higher than the hive, and that made it easier not to meet anyone's eyes. Not to see them.

What couldn't Satan top?

This was going to transgress some kind of unspoken demonic etiquette because he would include details that would prove embarrassing if Satan didn't change them and unbelievable if he did. As long as Camael could concoct it well enough.

The groupies were calling over more of their ilk and repeating Mephistopheles' and Beelzebub's stories. More time.

But was it wrong to lie? Gabriel would have objected. He'd refused to play the role of Hamlet once because he said acting was a lie, albeit small, "to purport to emotions never felt." Or whatever a Cherub said when he wanted to sound persuasive and ended up sounding confusing and geeky.

Maybe you never felt this.
Remiel had lied that she was Camael in order to come down here at all, and to no avail. Why further betray Gabriel? Camael wished he'd escaped, but probably the Guards had kept him pinned until he had dissolved in agony.

Oh, hell,
Camael thought.

"Do you want to keep telling the same stories?" Camael raised the pitch of his voice to carry over the noise of the crowd. They pressed closer, and Camel pulled up his booted legs onto the table top. "I'm going to tell you what actually happened."

The damned fell silent. Camael smirked.

"First off, the Cherub wasn't chained to a wall. Don't you think Satan would have used an altar?"

The groupies oohed.

"Beelzebub and Mephistopheles set two Guards, one around the room and one over his body so he couldn't move at all.

"What did our lord do?" asked one, and Camael hesitated until he remembered which lord it was.

"Did you drink his blood now?" asked another.

God, help me,
Camael prayed, then wondered if this wasn't being unGodly. His stomach twisted.
God, help me!

Camael cocked his head. "Our lord instructed me not to divulge all the details of how we worked on him. Apparently he has his eyes on some would-be rebels and wants to do the same to them."

A delicious frisson rippled through the room. Camael realized the details would manufacture themselves in a crowd this hungry. When this was retold, he'd be naming names and giving approximate dates for each of the accused to go under the knife.

Camael said, "Do you think any creature could withstand such pain and not renounce God? At the hands of the lord of pain?" The hall filled with glistening faces all trained on Camael's. "Gabriel did not die a martyr. He was assaulted by us from the outside and God from within all at once."

"He joined us!" they shouted.

Now the demons were lobbing questions like hand grenades: Did they set him on fire? Did they cut him to pieces? Did they drink his blood?—a refrain so often repeated that Camael had to wonder if it weren't so unusual to this assemblage. Instead he said, "Beelzebub cupped his blood in his hands, and he
baptized
Mephistopheles with it!"