The Rise of the Fallen (The Angelic Wars Book 2) (49 page)

“
Quick,
someone get Tony!” Natalie cried, shaken out of her grief by
Chris' collapse.

“
No
need,” a calm male voice responded. “I'm here.”

Tony pushed
his way through the group and everyone stood back and gave him room
to work. He had a leather medical bag in his hand.

“
Hey
Chris,” he said quietly as he knelt down. “How are you
doing?”

“
Oh,
you know,” Chris replied with a pained grin. “Been
better.”

“
Yeah,
I'll bet you have.”

The medic
carefully lifted Chris' shirt and examined the wounds. They were
still bleeding freely.

“
I
need a couple of you to go to the Infirmary and get the gurney. We'll
need to wheel him back to medical. I don't want to carry him.”

Tony quickly
used some scissors to cut off Chris' shirt. Then he placed a thick,
folded piece of gauze firmly on to the chest wound and taped it into
place. Chris bit back a hiss of pain. The medic did the same for the
wound on Chris' back.

“
Your
heart is beating steadily,” he said reassuringly as he held
Chris' wrist. “It doesn't look like any vital organs were
damaged.”

“
Hooray,
some good news,” Chris cheered weakly and Tony grinned in
appreciation.

“
Good
attitude.” He motioned for Patrick to let Chris lie back and
then looked around. “Where the hell is that gurney?”

There was a
clatter from the direction of the front door and a voice yelled out,
“Coming!”

“
About
bloody time,” Tony muttered. He looked up at someone.

“
Normally,
I'd say he should be taken to the hospital for x-rays, maybe an MRI,
but as it is...”

“
As
it is, the danger would be too great.”

Chris jerked
slightly as he looked toward the speaker and then gasped as a vicious
stab of pain shot through him.

“
Easy,
Christopher,” the speaker said and moved into Chris' line of
sight so that he didn't have to turn his head. It was Judge Hawkes.

“
Hey,
your honor,” Chris said with the ghost of a smile.

“
Hey
yourself, young man. Rest easy and try not to move. Like Tony, I'd
prefer to have you checked by a medical team. However, the Fallen are
going to be on high alert after this morning and we can't take a
chance that they might move against you if you leave the safety of
Valiant.”

“
I
understand, sir. I'd rather stay here anyway. Besides, I trust Tony.”

“
Thanks,”
Tony said with a grim smile. “Let's see if I can actually earn
that trust.”

He stood up
and waved the gurney forward. Then he unlocked and lowered it and
moved to stand at Chris' feet.

“
Okay,
I want one of you at his head and one at his waist,” the medic
said. “He's not exactly a heavyweight.”

Chris saw
George appear above him, but when Chase, the tallest of the teens,
moved to stand at Chris' waist, Patrick rudely shoved him aside.

“
I've
got this,” he said roughly and then stood waiting for Tony's
signal.

Chris looked
at his friend and when Patrick met his gaze he winked slightly,
causing the other boy to grin.

“
All
right, we lift together on three. Only high enough to slide him on to
the gurney, right? Okay. One, two, three.”

As the three
of them bent down and began to lift, a grinding pain made Chris
stiffen and then the light around him seemed to fade.

The last
thing he heard were muffled curses and some shouting and then he lost
consciousness completely.

Chris woke up to find
himself standing in the middle of a barren expanse of ground. Scrub
grass and stunted trees stretched out around him almost to the
horizon and a dry wind, smelling of ashes and soot, wafted lazily
past him. The air was warm.

He looked down at himself
to find that he was wearing his standard white t-shirt and jeans and
a pair of scuffed sneakers. There was no blood, no wounds and no
pain.

“
Where the hell am
I?” he wondered aloud.

“
Well, not there
anyway. At least not yet.”

He spun around, almost
tripping on the tough grass, to find himself facing...himself.

“
Sariel?” he
asked hesitantly.

“
Yes, of course,”
his other self answered. He was dressed as Chris was, but all of his
clothes were gray and his hair was streaked with gold, not white.

Chris felt some relief
mingled with confusion.

“
Um, haven't we been
down this road before?” he asked.

Sariel laughed dryly. “In
a way we have, I suppose.”

Chris stared around again.

“
So, we are in
Purgatory?”

“
Yes, we are. Just
like the first time we met face to face. Although this time, it is a
very different place.”

Chris gave his twin a
puzzled look.

“
Really? It doesn't
look any different. Still barren and depressing. Still with that sad
wind blowing.” Chris looked for any movement, but the only
motion was from the rippling grasses. “And still no one walking
around.”

“
Yes, I know it may
look the same on the surface but...”

Sariel stopped speaking
and tilted his head, obviously listening intently. Chris could hear
nothing but the wind.

Suddenly his twin grabbed
his arm and pointed toward the nearest tree.

“
Quickly, get under
that tree and wrap yourself around its base as tightly as you can.”

When Chris just gaped at
him, Sariel grabbed him and ran toward the tree, pulling Chris along.

When they reached the
shadow of the bare, dead-looking trunk, Sariel wrapped his arms
around the tree as if hugging it. Chris, still totally confused, did
the same.

“
Don't look up,”
Sariel whispered. “They might see the light reflected off of
your face. Stay still and wait for them to pass.”

“
Sariel, what the
hell...?”

“
Damn it. Shut up!”
Sariel hissed and Chris closed his mouth, more from the shock of
hearing the archangel swear than from the order to be quiet.

Then in the distance he
heard something. A rhythmic beat, faint at first and then becoming
progressively louder. Chris realized that it wasn't just one thing
making the sound, but many, dozens if not hundreds. It was the sound
of massive wings, flapping in unison.

Angels, he thought. It had
to be. But why were they hiding from angels?

The sound became louder,
heavier and then it was all around them, making the very air shiver
and ripple as the flapping wings stirred up the dry earth and filled
the air with dust.

Chris resisted a sudden
urge to sneeze as dust filled his nostrils and he pressed his nose
against the rough bark of the long-dead tree, trying not to breathe.

The sound went on for a
long minute and then began to fade. When it was again just a beat in
the distance, he dared to look toward the source of the noise and
gasped.

Was it angels? He only
caught a quick glimpse before the mass of winged bodies faded away in
the distance, but he hadn't seen feathered wings. He'd seen wings of
bare, stretched skin. Bat wings. Demon's wings.

Sariel sighed heavily with
relief and stepped back from the tree, while Chris turned away and
sneezed loudly, twice.

He rubbed his nose and
looked at the archangel.

“
Those were demons,
weren't they?” he asked, already sure of the answer.

“
Yes, Chris. Demons.
Or rather, fallen angels. My former followers, now corrupted by
Lilith and her accursed master.”

Chris looked at him,
wide-eyed.

“
Those...things used
to be the angels that I saw the last time I was here?”

Sariel nodded silently.

“
But, but how...?”

“
How did they become
that? It is their sign of admittance. Their club colors, if you
will.” The archangel's voice was bitter. “Lilith did not
lie when she said she'd done her work here well.”

He began to walk away from
the tree and Chris hurried to catch up.

“
But why are they
patrolling? Does that mean that there are still some angels who
haven't been turned into monsters?”

“
Yes, thank God.
That's exactly what it means, my friend. They are scattered and
hiding, but there are still some of my people who remain loyal.
Perhaps many. I have no way of knowing.”

“
Oh.”

They kept walking.
Sariel's eyes were focused on the ground and he seemed deep in
thought. After a few minutes, Chris broke into his concentration.

“
So, why am I here?
And am I actually here, or is this a dream?”

Sariel looked at him with
the ghost of a smile.

“
Pinch yourself if
you wish, like you did before. But you are here, in the flesh. Your
friends are going to be quite worried when they find you gone, but I
needed you. I needed at least one ally that I could trust.”

“
But won't the
Fallen know about this? I remember the last time you did this. You
said bringing me here would be felt by our enemies.”

“
Yes, but it doesn't
matter now. They know about me. They won't know that I brought you
here, only that I have used my powers. And that will mean nothing to
them.”

“
Oh,” Chris
said again. He was at a loss. Why would Sariel want him here in the
first place? What good would it do? He wasn't at all sure that he
wanted to know, but he had to ask.

“
Sariel,” he
began to ask tentatively, “why...”

“
Why did I bring you
here? Is that what you want to know?”

The archangel continued to
walk steadily, looking down at the ground ahead.

“
Well, now that you
brought it up, yeah. Why did you?”

His twin didn't answer for
a long while. Chris counted over fifty steps before Sariel stopped
abruptly and looked at him.

“
In our battle with
Lilith, you taught me something, my friend. You taught me the level
of my own arrogance.”

Chris stared at him in
confusion.

“
What are you
talking about?”

The archangel ran his
fingers through his hair and shook out the dust. Then he pushed it
impatiently back off of his face.

“
Lilith hurt me,
Chris. She hurt me physically. Except for the fight with my brother
that eventually brought me,” he looked around dejectedly,
“here, I have never felt pain. It is a sensation of the flesh,
not the spirit. Angels don't feel such things. And when it happened,
I was caught by it, enveloped in it. It strangled me to the point
where I gave up.”

He laughed, a harsh sound
in the barren landscape.

“
But you, a boy only
just into his teens, was able to ignore it. No,” he corrected
himself, “not just ignore it. It empowered you, made you
stronger, more determined that I. And for that, I am ashamed.”

Chris shook his head. “I
don't understand.”

Sariel looked at him in
frustration. “I was in Purgatory, yes, but it was my own
choice. I was still a son of God; one of the first three. I did not
look upon Lilith as a serious threat. Far from it. I regarded her as
a mere puppet of my brother. A weak-willed, powerless minion. Nothing
more. And now look.” He waved his hand at the land around them.

“
Lilith planned to
subvert my people from the start. She allowed me to capture her
knowing that in my arrogance, I would let her live and that I would
imprison her in the one place I felt it would be safe to do so. Here,
in my own kingdom.”

“
It was my arrogance
that brought all of this to pass, Chris. And if you hadn't stepped in
when I faltered, she would have killed us and locked our souls in
Hell.”

Sariel reached out and
grasped Chris by the shoulder.

“
And that is why I
need you here with me. I need your human perspective, your innate
toughness. I need to learn guile from you, my friend. I need to learn
to think, not like an archangel with unlimited power, but like a
human, who must acknowledge his limits and rise above them. That is
why you are here.”

He turned to walk on and
then glanced back at Chris.

“
And because, right
now, you are the only person in the universe that I can trust.”

Chris watched the
archangel walk away for a moment, his mouth hanging open. Then he
snapped it shut and jogged after Sariel until he caught up.

He tried to organize his
thoughts and finally spoke.

“
Well, thanks for
the vote of confidence. I appreciate it.” He smiled a bit. “Not
that you have much choice. We are a part of each other after all.”

“
True,” the
other Chris responded with some amusement.

“
But how am I
supposed to teach you to be, I don't know, more human? I just kind of
do it.” He tapped his chest. “Comes with the suit,
basically.”