A Merciless Year One

by Eva Brandt

  Throughout this time, I kept seeing Ariel. I went to her Nature Bonding class again, but Sariel, Yeqon, and Azazel were conspicuously missing. When I asked her about it, she refused to explain.

  I was beginning to feel increasingly anxious about the whole thing. No matter how I looked at it, Sandalphon had basically arrested Sariel for saying something he shouldn’t have. It scared me. Even when I hadn’t known anything, I’d had a pretty clear image in my head of how things stood. Demons were bad. Angels were good. I was going to become an angel to defeat demons. Simple. Straightforward. Apparently, it didn’t work that way.

  As my anxiety levels spiked, my performance in my individual class with Ariel dropped. I was having doubts and my wing stumps began to hurt very much.

  For the first time in what felt like ages, I fell asleep. When I opened my eyes again, the Grim Reaper was in my bedroom.

  I rubbed my eyes, half-expecting him to be another hallucination. Since he’d left me to my own devices, I’d thought he wouldn’t approach me anytime soon, not until I proved I could fulfill my part of the bargain. It looked like I’d been wrong, and I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or worried.

  “Hello, Delilah,” he greeted me, his eyes glowing underneath his dark hood. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come see you, but I’ve been a bit busy.”

  “It’s all right,” I automatically said, although it sort of wasn’t. “Thank you for coming now.”

  “I had to. You’ve been restless.”

  “I’m just very confused. I don’t really understand what’s going on with those three Watchers.”

  He nodded, obviously aware of the problem. “I thought you might be concerned. You have a good heart, and that incident was upsetting. But they’ll be fine.”

  “Fine? Forgive me if I have trouble believing that.”

  “You’re forgiven.” The Grim Reaper almost sounded amused, and I would have bristled had he not followed the sentence up with a far more serious explanation. “The Celestial Realm has very specific rules. Ironically, it’s not The Supreme Being who enforces them. The truth is he couldn’t care less. Such minutiae are beneath him. But a lot of the archangels are very angry and almost fanatical in their devotion, and unfortunately, they’re in charge of the school.”

  “But that can’t be a good idea, can it?” I asked. “Why give these people authority over the Watchers if they dislike one another so much?”

  “You have to understand, Delilah, that this behavior isn’t simple dislike. Lucifer’s rebellion was very destructive. Once upon a time, the people around you were very close. Some were siblings or maybe even lovers. And then, all of a sudden, they became enemies, fighting each other in a brutal, deadly war. It’s not something that can be easily overcome.

  “The Supreme Being believes that by bringing the archangels and the Watchers together, the armies of Heaven will achieve balance again.”

  That sounded a little unlikely, considering what I’d seen so far. “But you don’t think that?”

  The Grim Reaper sighed. “I think it’s possible. But things like that take time, and I’m concerned that the method we’re trying may not be efficient enough.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Not for now, I’m afraid. There’s time aplenty for you to take on burdens too great for humans to carry. For the moment, I simply wanted to reassure you and ask you if you wanted to see those three Watchers.”

  The reply was on my lips before I could stop it. “Yes. I’d like that.”

  I shouldn’t have cared about them. It was stupid. But maybe if I just saw that they were unharmed, I’d stop fretting over them and would be able to go back to normal. Or what passed for normal here, in The Celestial Realm.

  In the blink of an eye, we were out of my bedroom and hovering in front of one of the levitating buildings. It wasn’t anything like the towers I’d seen before. It was more like a massive, transparent dome and it reminded me alarmingly of an aquarium.

  Inside, three gigantic eyeballs were floating around. I stared at them, then at the Grim Reaper. When he said nothing, I looked back at the eyeballs. They hadn’t noticed me.

  One of the eyeballs was flipping the page of a glowing book with a tentacle. Another seemed to be doing a weird dance through the air. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but whatever it was made the third eyeball slap the second.

  It didn’t take a genius to make the connection. “What the fuck? Is that… them?”

  The Grim Reaper nodded. “You see, Delilah, the reason why Lucifer stopped his attacks on The Heavenly Host was because of a terrible battle—the Battle of the Watchers. It has that name because every Watcher died, and Lucifer was only able to bring them back in a cursed, demonic form. They spent centuries trapped in those bodies, tied to The Academy of the Devil. Right now, Sandalphon’s go-to punishment is to undo the power that allows them to remain in their regular form.”

  “But that’s horrible,” I cried.

  The Grim Reaper shrugged. “Not really. Just between you and me, the Watchers don’t hate their cursed bodies. They’ve grown accustomed to them. So this sort of penalty is pretty much empty and meaningless to them.”

  I remembered the day I’d first met the trio. They’d had tentacles then too. It had been deliberate. Clearly, up to a point, they missed their demonic forms. And why wouldn’t they? I still had days when I felt so wrong just for existing as a celestial being. Why would they be any different?

  Still, it couldn’t be easy to have to go through this kind of experience. How could they even know who and what they truly were if they kept getting torn apart by conflicting magic? I thought about the time when they’d displayed such concern about me. “You died, Delilah,” they’d said. “We understand.” Maybe they did understand, at least to a certain extent.

  “Are they going to turn back?”

  “Sure. Eventually. Sandalphon has a temper, but he knows this is impractical. Sariel, Azazel, and Yeqon won’t make any progress in dealing with The Heavenly Host if they’re stuck here in their cursed forms.”

  “Can’t you do something? Can’t anyone do something?”

  “I wish I could, but I’m playing a dangerous game too, Delilah. I have to at least try to stay a neutral party. Death isn’t supposed to take sides. I’m already doing far too much by adding you to the picture.”

  “So what do you want me to do? Should I go speak to them?”

  “That’s up to you. They’d welcome the company, and it’s not technically forbidden. But don’t go unless you feel prepared to deal with them in a mutated form. You might make things more difficult otherwise.”

  Inside the dome, the eyeball I recognized as Sariel had abandoned his book and seemed to be staring straight at me. By now, it was obvious that the surface of the dome was like a one-way mirror, but still, he must have sensed me on some level.

  I wanted to say that I was completely comfortable talking to them in these forms, but the truth was I wasn’t comfortable with them at all. They’d already made it clear that their loyalties and beliefs were still aligned with Lucifer. And no matter what they said about Alyssa Michaelis, about Vessels of Hope and grand kidnapping ploys, the fact remained that my parents were dead.

  I wasn’t selfless enough to forgive that yet. Actually, I didn’t think I ever could.

  “Please take me back to my room,” I told the Grim Reaper.

  He silently agreed. But as he once again left me alone in my living quarters, I couldn’t help but wonder what I was supposed to do next.

  When I fell asleep again, my dreams were haunted by the feeling of being in a body that was not my own.

  Paradox

  After the whole debacle with Sariel, Azazel, and Yeqon turning into giant eyeballs, their return to the classes was strangely anticlimactic. I ran into them again the day Ariel deemed me ready to move to the next level in my education.

  By now, I’d tamed my uncertainty a little and I was no longer struggling so much wit
h being here. I still fell asleep and had nightmares, and I couldn’t fly, but I hadn’t had another panic attack, which was progress in my book.

  Ariel decided to introduce me to one of her closest friends, Archangel Uriel. “He’s in charge of Energy Projection and he’ll be able to encourage the growth of your wings. Don’t worry if you can’t mimic him at first. Just do your best.”

  “I understand, Ariel,” I told her.

  Uriel’s class was held right above The Halls of Truth, in a massive citadel Ariel called the Core. This was apparently where most classes—with minor exceptions—took place.

  The building floated around, invisible if you weren’t close enough. It was shaped like a set of wings, but only the left wing was white. The right side of the citadel was in shadow, pure darkness surrounding every inch of the area.

  “Ariel, what’s up with that?”

  “Well, it’s a training field. Watchers are mostly here to readjust to their place in The Heavenly Host, but that doesn’t mean any of us can forget who we’re fighting against.”

  So, the dark side of the Core was a practical magic course. That was interesting and it even excited me a little bit.

  But it was not yet time for me to tackle the complicated subject. Uriel received me with a neutral, meaningless smile, one that vanished as soon as he caught a glimpse of my back.

  “I see what you meant, Ariel,” he mused. “Delilah, you’ve been making progress in your work to become a guardian angel, but there are things holding you back. I’m going to help you have a better understanding of energy manipulation and projection. Be advised that it may be uncomfortable at times.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, but I didn’t have much of a choice. And so, I followed Uriel into his spacious classroom.

  Actually, more than a classroom, the place looked a little like an amphitheatre. Benches were set up in a circle, with the lecturer having a dais in the center of the room. There was a separate enclosure surrounded by a glowing light, and although I couldn’t identify its purpose, I highly suspected it was dangerous.

  Sariel, Azazel, and Yeqon were seated at the very back of the room, alone. They waved me over when I entered the amphitheatre. Since I didn’t want to make a scene, I went along with it.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” Yeqon greeted me. “Thanks for coming to see us when we were indisposed. That meant a lot.”

  He sounded honest, and I didn’t have the heart to lie about it. “I was a little worried after that whole thing with Sandalphon. You didn’t deserve to be punished for a little conversation.”

  Sariel shrugged. “To be fair, I was kind of asking for it. And I’ve never been one to censor myself just because someone doesn’t like what I have to say.”

  Yeqon let out a small snort. “And they call me the temperamental one.”

  “You’re not temperamental,” Azazel answered. “You’re crazy. There’s a difference.”

  “Oh, stop complaining. You know you love me.”

  The good natured bickering eased my mind, dissipating the last remnants of the uncertainty I’d refused to acknowledge. Just in time too, because Uriel was starting the class.

  Sariel elbowed Yeqon and he dramatically flashed away from his friend, ending up on the staircase, on my other side. Azazel arched a brow at him, but Yeqon just winked and wriggled on the bench, this time positioning himself next to me.

  And so it was that once again, I ended up sandwiched between two Watchers, with Yeqon to my left and Azazel to my right. Sariel watched us with a tiny, but mildly alarming smile.

  Why did I get the feeling that I’d just ended up in a problematic situation?

  As it turned out, the three pests didn’t do anything special. They seemed intent on concentrating on the lecture—or at least allowing me to concentrate on it, because they weren’t that interested.

  The material the class was going over was far too advanced for me to completely understand, and Uriel wasn’t Professor Grim. He didn’t bother providing additional explanations for the out of place human and focused on the Watchers.

  “Third Tier astral projection deals with manipulation of energy and matter at a cellular level. The psionic and kinetic discharge of each step of the process triggers a closed circuit flow that contains divine energy and rejects infernal power.

  “In The Celestial Realm, Third Tier astral projection is the preferred method of transportation. Due to the lingering remnants of demonic energy in your systems, it is a difficult technique, but it is one you must master.”

  Was this astral projection thing what Sariel and the others had been doing before, or was it something else? Uriel made it sound like Watchers had trouble moving around like regular angels did, but it had never seemed that way to me.

  Confused, I watched Uriel introduce a meditation process that reminded me a little of Ariel’s instructions. He picked a student from the front of the class and extended his hand. “Shamsiel, come here.”

  “I hate this part,” Yeqon muttered, slumping down on the bench, as if trying to make himself smaller.

  “Don’t worry,” Azazel reassured him. “He knows better than to ask us to volunteer. Besides, he likes targeting Shamsiel too much.”

  The other Watcher, Shamsiel, extracted a feather from his wings. The appendages flickered slightly as he did so and I felt a mild, echoing tightness in my back.

  “That looked unpleasant,” I whispered.

  “It is,” Sariel said. “But archangels don’t really care about that.”

  Uriel extracted one of his own feathers. He displayed no discomfort, not like the Watcher had, but even when he did it, I sensed an echo of pain.

  Uriel held both feathers in his hands and crushed them in his fist. Light exploded at his fingertips, striking both him and Shamsiel.

  “Oh, boy, this isn’t going to end well,” Azazel muttered. “It looks like today is going to be one of those days.”

  As he spoke, his wings started to glow. Bright red energy enveloped us, mingling with Sariel’s silver power and entangling with the rainbow-colored threads coming from Yeqon.

  The recoil from whatever Uriel was doing swept through the room like a hurricane. Several Watchers started screaming, shadows dancing under their skin.

  My breath caught and I clutched the edge of my desk in a tight grip. “What’s happening to them?”

  “Uriel wasn’t wrong,” Sariel offered. “Most of us here aren’t really compatible with true celestial power, not anymore.

  “Our existence is a paradox. We live with divine and infernal magic inside us, at all times. But it’s next to impossible to achieve a balance, and whenever we lean too much in one direction, something bad tends to happen.”

  That was the understatement of the century. Shamsiel had dropped to the floor and was convulsing so badly I could barely stand looking at him. I could have sworn he contorted his body in a way that shouldn’t have been possible. His skin was cracking in places, exposing flashes of darkness and light hidden beneath.

  “Someone do something!” I shouted. “He’s going to die.”

  “He’s not,” Yeqon replied. “We’re not so easy to kill, remember? Although sometimes we may wish it.”

  He sounded upset about the whole thing, but he wasn’t trying to stop Uriel. By now, I’d had quite enough of this nonsense.

  Yeqon was blocking my way, but he didn’t expect me to intervene, so he wasn’t watching me as closely as he should have. I shoved him back, wriggling past him, onto the stairs.

  “Stop it right now!” I shouted at Uriel. “This isn’t an appropriate teaching method.”

  Uriel tilted his head at me like a curious bird. “Are you trying to tell me how to do my job, human?”

  “And what if I am?” It was a horrible idea to challenge him, but I couldn’t just stay quiet. “This isn’t teaching. It’s torture.”

  Uriel didn’t look upset. He smiled, and somehow, that just made the whole thing worse. “Ariel was right. You are interesting.”<
br />
  “I suppose I wouldn’t have been brought here otherwise.”

  By now, I was more or less speaking on automatic pilot, out of panic and spite. If I stopped, I didn’t know what would happen. I felt like a puzzle with the pieces forced together in the wrong place, clinging to my current self through some kind of miraculous glue that would easily dissolve if something went wrong.

  “Very well,” Uriel said. “I’ll accept I was being unnecessarily hard on Shamsiel if you come here and show me how you think we should deal with the situation.”

  At that, some of the wind went out of my sails. “Err… What?”

  “You’re claiming that I’m not fit to be the teacher of these fallen angels. You can’t do that without having real knowledge about the rehabilitation process of the Watchers. It would be irresponsible, foolish, and definitely not something a guardian angel should do. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  I didn’t have glands in this form, but it still felt like I broke out in cold sweat. He knew very well that I had no idea how to teach classes. Half the stuff he’d mentioned in the lesson had gone completely over my head. And truly, I’d been disrespectful when I’d talked to him that way. But even so, I still believed I’d done the right thing in speaking out.

  Maybe it was dumb. I didn’t owe these people anything. They were Lucifer’s minions and by extension, guilty of my parents’ deaths.

  But that didn’t mean I could just sit here and watch as some righteous asshole tortured them because he had a grudge.

  Still, I didn’t know what to do now that he’d confronted me about it. Thankfully, Azazel jumped to my aid.

  “Oh, don’t be like that, Uriel,” he said. “You know as well as everyone here that your ‘teaching methods’ are experimental at best. She’s not wrong to be upset.”

  Sariel nodded. “Also, don’t be a hypocrite. She’s human and she hates us. If she hadn’t said something, you’d have claimed that she’s incapable of surpassing her limitations and not fit for The Celestial Realm.”