Sinners & Sorcerers: Four Urban Fantasy Thrillers (68 page)

Whenever he spoke these words, Laila would grumble, glare, and keep evading stones, or parrying his blade, or lifting boulders, or outracing the wind, or performing whatever feat he imagined for that day. She stayed because day after day, despite the bruises and hunger and weariness, she was getting stronger. She could parry more of his blows, even land some of her own. She could lift and toss larger boulders. She could run faster, fly higher.

At nights, she collapsed exhausted and hungry and battered, Volkfair at her side, cuddled against her. Before she fell asleep for those blessed three or four hours a night Michael granted her, she’d whisper, “Soon, Beelzebub. Soon I’ll take your throne.”

Seven weeks after she began her training, Michael met her before dawn in the amphitheatre, and he carried a new blade.

“Throw away your old rusty sword,” he said.

Laila—gaunt, weary, and sunken-eyed after weeks of heavenly boot camp—tossed her blade aside. It hit one of the amphitheatre’s tiers and shattered into bits of rust. “Good riddance,” she said.

Michael handed her the new sword he carried. His small smile was more evident in his eyes than on his lips.

“For you.”

Laila took the sword and unsheathed it. Three feet long, forged of dark steel, the blade glimmered a deep red. When Laila gave it a few swings, it raised tongues of flame.

“I like the fire,” she said. “Nice touch.”

“It suits you,” Michael said. His own sword was bright and glowing, a weapon of Heaven; hers was dark and fiery, half beautiful, half monstrous. The pommel was carved as a black wolf’s head—it looked like Volkfair—and the word “Haloflame” was engraved into the grip.

“Thanks,” Laila said. She gave the blade a few more swings, imagining herself swiping at Zarel. Bullets and grenades, made to kill humans, shattered against the Demon Queen’s scales. This blade, Laila knew, a blade forged in Heaven, would slice Zarel in half.

“You’ve earned it,” Michael said. “Now let’s see how well you use it.”

The new blade took getting used to. It was lighter than her old one, and balanced differently. By the end of the day, however, Haloflame felt like a part of her. Michael let her sleep for ten hours that night—”Because you’ve been such a good girl,” he said—and Laila slept with her new sword cuddled against her chest, dreaming of Hell.

+ + +

Under the cloudy night sky, Michael walked the cobbled streets of Caesarea’s ruins. The walls crowded around him, weedy and crumbly, winking with arrow slits. Columns that had stood for millennia had fallen the day Laila defeated Angor; they now lay shattered across the streets. Bats flew through the night, and the sea whispered, hidden behind the ruins.

Weariness covered Michael like a cloak, but he could not sleep. Training Laila had placed cramps in his muscles, fatigue in his bones, and doubt like sour milk in his stomach.
Laila might hate me for treating her like a recruit, but I bet she’s been getting more sleep than me.
Michael sighed. He was never one for much sleep anyway, preferring the night for contemplation. An owl called somewhere in the distance, and two fireflies hovered over a broken piece of aqueduct, then vanished. A demon hoof stuck out from a pile or rubble, a last vestige of the battle.

Two corporals on patrol came walking around a corner, swords drawn, helmets and breastplates polished. Michael nodded at the angels, whose faces paled at the sight of the archangel. They saluted him, stiff and dumbfounded, and Michael smiled once he had walked by them.
Now if only I could inspire such awe in Laila too.
As the thought of the girl lingered in his mind, his smile soured.

Laila. The girl he had sought all these years. The legendary creature who fled from Heaven and Hell all her life.
I have you now, Laila. After so long, I have you where I want you, and now I fear the outcome of this war more than ever.

Around a pile of rubble, two smashed columns, a weedy wall, and more angel troops, Michael found the tent he sought. It was a simple tent, just white canvas pulled over wooden beams, a soldier’s tent.
Typical,
Michael thought. Raphael, though a great archangel of equal rank to Michael and Gabriel, had always sought the austere life, wearing but homespun robes, carrying a coarse olive-wood staff, living in a simple home even up in Heaven.

“Raphael,” he said softly when he reached the tent. “It’s me. Michael. Are you awake?”

Raphael’s voice, gentle and sad as ever, came from inside the tent. “I am. Come in, Michael.”

Folding his wings against him, Michael entered the tent and found his youngest brother sitting cross-legged on the ground, both his prayer book and flask open in his hands. Michael smiled despite himself. Though austere as a monk, Raphael indulged himself when it came to his cups. His flask was unadorned hide, but always contained only the finest spirits.
It was tough growing up with two older brothers like Beelzebub and me,
Michael thought.
Who wouldn’t resort to drinking?

“Open bible, open flask,” Michael said, sitting himself down before the fellow archangel. “The two do go best together, don’t they?”

Raphael passed him the bible, which was open to Ecclesiastes, displaying an underlined verse. “I thought you might visit tonight.”

Michael read aloud the line Raphael had underlined. “‘The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.’ Now there was a morose one, Koheleth.”

Raphael sipped from his flask. “The man knew a thing or two about this world.”

“So I’ve heard. Yet our old friend spoke of humans, not of angels or demons.” Michael shut the bible, a little stronger than he had intended; it slammed shut with a boom and raised dust. He sighed. “Here, brother, the race
will
be to the swift, and the battle to the strong.”

“Hence Laila.”

Michael nodded.

An iron candelabrum stood in the center of the tent, its three candles low. Raphael stood up, rummaged through his chest for more candles, and soon new fire burned, though there was little to see aside from a cot, the chest, and books upon the floor. Though many angels on Earth used crude generators to feed batteries and light bulbs, mimicking the humans, Raphael clung to the old ways, a collector of candles instead of lamps, quills instead of pens, prayers instead of curses. He had woven his robes himself, rough woolen homespun, like some ancient human prophet wandering the hills.

“And is she the swift, Michael?” the great healer asked, turning those eternally sad eyes toward his guest. “Is she the strong in this battle between us and our brother?”

“A battle between Heaven and Hell,” Michael said, watching shadows dance in the candlelight like tiny demons. “That Beelzebub is our brother is coincidental.”

“Be that as it may, the girl has done well.” Raphael sipped his spirits. “She won us this city.”

Michael sighed, shaking his palm to refuse the flask Raphael offered him. “I’ve been training her. It’s been... bothering me. Does that make sense to you?”

Raphael shrugged. “You’ve been working her hard. Boot camp is never easy, especially not for a hotheaded wunderkind. It’s natural that you’d feel guilty for giving her a hard time.”

Michael snorted. “You haven’t spent enough time with her, Raphael. Leave Laila alone, and she mopes, weeps, drinks herself half to death while contemplating suicide. Boredom with our friend Laila leads to melancholy. When I work her like a dog, I don’t give her time to think. I bet these are the only few weeks in her life when she hasn’t cried, prayed to die, or sunken into drunken depression. The training’s good for her, and she knows it. That’s why she stays.”

Raphael placed the bible atop the pile of books on the floor. A wind from outside shook the tent walls. “And yet still you come to me tonight speaking of guilt.”

Michael wondered why he even wore his armor tonight. He was so used to being the soldier, to wearing his things of war, that he could not leave his tent without them, not even within their camp. He watched the candles. “I’m old, Raphael. Immortals we are, and our bodies stay young, but I feel old. Ancient. These past twenty-seven years aged me more than two millennia before them, I think.”

“Earth can do that.”

Michael placed his lance across the floor and gazed at it, its shaft smooth after years of use, its blade polished countless times. “We are soldiers here. Myself, my men, Laila. Killing demons is one thing. Laila doesn’t quite fit into the demon category, though, does she?”

Raphael raised an eyebrow. “You train Laila to fight. You train all your soldiers to fight. That doesn’t mean you are killing them.”

“I send most angels to fight shades, lowly beings of scales and horns. I’m training Laila to face off against the devil and his wife.”

Raphael patted a fold out of his cloak. “If there wasn’t a chance she could succeed, you wouldn’t be wasting your time with her.”

“A chance, yes. A one in a million shot.” Michael raised his gaze and stared into Raphael’s eyes. “Laila is strong, don’t get me wrong. She’s powerful in ways few are in Heaven and Hell. Can she take over Hell? Can she win this war for us?” Michael sighed and shook his head. “In the forests, in her exile, she might have lived a few years longer, might have even grown old until Beelzebub or I won this war and destroyed the planet for her. Am I training her for an early death, Raphael?”

Raphael stared back levelly. “You might be. That’s what training soldiers is. You know this more than anyone.” The healer leaned forward. “Michael, you’re my older brother. I know you. This is not what’s bothering you. You never had qualms about sending anyone into battle and danger. What’s troubling you?”

Michael looked away, staring at the wall of the tent.
He’s right, of course. That’s not what’s bothering me, is it?
He reached over, took the flask from Raphael, and drank deeply, the spirits hot in his throat and stomach. “You have always been closer to him than I am. Gabriel too, but especially you. When we were kids, Beelzebub and I rarely had the patience to sit and pray, but you... you could always speak with him.”

Raphael shook his head. “God loves us all, Michael, healers as well as soldiers.”

Michael laughed mirthlessly, too loudly, the sound jarring in the tent. “Yet you healers have the easy work, never risking any harm to the soul. It is we, the soldiers, who face trials and tainting every day. I am sending Laila to her death, Raphael, and I’ve sent many to their deaths before her, and I don’t care anymore. It doesn’t bother me, and I feel not an ounce of guilt or pity most times. Someday, Raphael... someday this war will end, and I will return to Heaven, and I worry, Raphael. I worry that when that day comes, those gates will be closed to me.”

Raphael lowered his head. “Earth is a trial, Michael. We made it that way, didn’t we? It has tested mankind for many years.”

Anger suddenly flared in Michael, and he slammed his fist against the ground, surprised at his rage, surprised to find his eyes close to tears. “It was never meant to test angels.”

Raphael raised an eyebrow again. “Was it not? It seemed to test Lucifer and Beelzebub, I recall. Those two left too many Nephilim in the wombs of human women.” The healer smiled softly. “Michael, to feel conflict is to have a soul. Your guilt is a sign of goodness. Don’t worry. God still loves you, Michael.”

Michael fingered the filigrees in his armor. “Sometimes I wonder if God even exists. I know he speaks to you, Raphael. I know he speaks to Gabriel. God never talked to me.”

“God is not an old man with a long white beard, walking in sandals across the clouds, a staff in hand,” Raphael said. “He does not speak in words, but in whispers inside you. The fire in these candles, and the light in the sky, those are God’s voices that speak to us. He talks to you as much as he speaks with me. He is with you, and Heaven’s gates will always be open to you.”

Michael looked at Raphael, the sad archangel, the healer of swan wings and long brown hair, of tragic eyes. “If God speaks to you, Raphael... if you can speak back... then put in a good word for me.”
Without waiting for a response, Michael stood up, lifted his lance, and left the tent. He walked along the aqueduct, gazing at the dark sea, lance in hand, until sunrise glistened in his armor and wings.

Ash covered the stars, and the night was so dark, Laila could see nothing, even as her eyes blazed. The wind whistled through the trees, and as Laila walked through the forest, branches snagged her and smeared her with sap. Pine needles crunched beneath her boots, and roots and rocks tripped her. She was cold, and her cloak could not warm her. Volkfair padded beside her, his breath warm against her left hand. In her right hand, she clutched her new blade, Haloflame.

On this winter night, Michael had sent her into the woods with her blade and her wolf. “I want you to find me something there,” he had said.

“What,” she had asked, knowing his challenges all too well, “a particular twig you dropped there a year ago? Your lucky acorn? Maybe a pebble you carved your initials into back in biblical times?”