by Lisa Voisin
“I thought these types of things couldn’t get across the halo.”
“My defenses were down.”
The kiss! So it was my fault.
“Can you fight it?” I asked. My throat was so tight I barely made a sound.
“If I move right now, it might come for you.”
I started to back away, but he gripped my arms so I was planted to the spot.
“It hasn’t seen you yet,” he said. “I’ll let you know when to move.”
It? As far as I could see, there were two of them. I stood perfectly still as another creature landed on his wings. My only movement was that of my stomach plummeting to my knees. “Why does it want me?”
“I think it wants me.” Still clasping my arms, he touched his forehead to mine, his body shaking as more of the creatures landed on him—making six by my count. “If anything were to happen to you…” His voice trailed off and I was left to wonder, horrified at what kind of danger he was expecting.
On the path between the water and where we stood, a young couple walked a Dalmatian. Did they notice anything unusual? A chill down their spines perhaps? A pang of fear as they walked through the thick, artificially darkened air? What true horrors had the Grigori held back from us unnoticed, had Michael held back, engaged in a constant battle against darkness?
Michael gasped, steadying himself as another two creatures landed on his wings. That was eight. Just as I was beginning to wonder exactly how much pain he could tolerate, he gave me a slight nod. Instantly, he flared his halo around us and I heard faint shrieking, followed by a sizzling sound. Black smoke emanated from the creatures on his wings. A few of them fell to the ground, writhing and melting like boiled tar.
“This way,” Michael said, ushering me into the bushes.
We stopped near a twisted old tree. Its branches nearly bare for winter, it offered little shelter, but its trunk was thick enough to protect my back. Black forms gathered and surrounded us and an unnatural hissing filled the air.
I knew Michael would do everything in his power to keep me safe. But what about him? The creatures growled and shrieked behind us in a clamoring approach, and Michael was quiet and still, letting them near. Why was he doing this? I began to think he was sacrificing himself to protect me. I wasn’t worth it, no matter how glad I was that he was there.
In the darkness, Michael’s eyes flamed with golden light as they searched mine. “Is there something you love?” he asked, his body vibrating from the creatures attacking his wings.
“You,” I blurted, surprising myself. Heat rushed to my face.
He grinned, despite the obvious pain he was in. “You love me?”
“More than myself sometimes.”
That startled him. “Never more than yourself. I’d never want that.”
“I can’t help it.”
He leaned in and kissed my forehead, his lips cool and smooth against my flushed skin. There was a gentle shift in the air as he shook out his wings. “I need you to feel that love, focus on it right now. Not fear, not worry…no matter what you see. Close your eyes if you have to. This thing will try to horrify and fascinate you, so remember that love, okay? It sours the milk. Can you do that for me?”
With the heat of his arms around me, I could do anything. I nodded and he turned, flaring his halo again and stretching out his wings to their full size as though he were in flight. Only this time, instead of luminescent white they were gold, the color of the fire in his eyes.
The creatures that had clung to him fell off in clumps and skittered away. Reaching over his shoulder, he turned, and from his hand blazed his blue sword. At this close range, it appeared to be made not only of steel but of fire and light as well. He held it up menacingly, with a dangerous smile on his face, challenging them.
The sky blackened and thickened, heavy with dread, as more of the creatures arrived. There must have been a hundred of them. The air smelled foul and close, like the inside of a garbage can only a thousand times worse. There was no breeze to dissipate the stench.
Michael stood his ground as the black shapes roiled and writhed, forming a massive single unit. My chest tightened in horror as it teemed and grew taller, forming into a long-necked multi-headed creature the size of a Mack truck. It must have had over twenty heads, each of them with glowing red eyes fixed on Michael, who stared unflinchingly at the center of this black massive creature, presumably where its heart would be—if it had one.
“Be gone!” Michael commanded, his voice strong, musical. I realized this was how it was with the angelic force upon him—a chord rather than a single note. Angel versus human.
The beast recoiled slightly, then let out a ghastly laugh. “Damiel sends his greetings,” it hissed in a wet, glutinous voice.
“You’ll never win, Azazel,” Michael said. “Neither will he.”
One of the demon’s heads nipped at him in defiance. I flinched reflexively, horrified by the damage those teeth could do! Unyielding, he parried with his sword, and the beast rose on its legs, directing its many heads right at him.
Michael dodged and blocked the onslaught of claws and teeth with incredible speed. Caught up in the action, I gasped at the sight of him. He heard it and glanced my way long enough for the creature to land a blow to his back. He flinched, letting out a low, angry sound, almost a growl, and part of me wanted to run to him, to distract the creature, to make it leave him alone. But I stood motionless, frozen in place. I couldn’t look. I couldn’t bear to see him miss, to see the beast hurt him again.
I closed my eyes. Love. Michael had told me to love. I loved him with every cell of my body and every beat of my heart. I knew it as I knew my own name or the color of my own skin. My feelings for him were absolutely true, but I couldn’t feel them. That’s all he’d asked me to do. Feel that love. Just moments ago I had burned with longing, but now I was cold and spent, like steel and ashes. I had failed. What if it were the idea of him that I loved, and not really him? Conjuring images of him would usually make my head spin, but not tonight. Tonight I felt nothing.
Lost in thought, I hadn’t noticed the air getting thicker and heavier around me, or the smell of decay growing in the air until I practically choked on it. The warding necklace Fatima had given me pulsed at my throat. I heard the demon’s menacing laughter but couldn’t see how the fight was going. If Michael was winning or in grave danger, I had no idea, but instinct told me to open my eyes.
Just inches from my face, one of the demon’s heads sniffed me, as if I were food. It smiled a sickening grimace; wet, black flesh hung loosely from its teeth, and its breath was nauseating.
My lungs tightened, making it hard to breathe, and I clenched my hands to keep them from shaking. After distracting Michael the last time, I refused to react audibly and put him at risk. It was going to attack me and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. In a way, it already was. Its presence devoured the love from my heart the way an inferno sucks the air from a building. I’d accept this willingly if it meant Michael would get free. The head of the demon closest to me stuck out a forked tongue, tasting the air around me as a stream of light and energy escaped my chest. Slowly, I backed away, refusing to look directly at the demon. Looking at it only made me feel worse.
Instead, I focused on Michael. Engaged in battle, he was ferocious as a tiger and equally as deadly to this creature. His blue sword slashed and chopped at the demon’s other heads in a whirlwind of light and fire. His shirt, damp with slime, clung to his muscled torso, and I remembered those strong arms encircling me. How safe he had made me feel. How loved. My body burned with the memory of it. A memory that gave me hope…I absolutely did love him! I was wrong to doubt it, to doubt myself. And with this knowledge, I faced the demon, its mouth open, teeth dripping with slime. It was about to sink its jaws into me and it didn’t matter. Everything would be okay.
The creature hesitated, watching me with black steam rising from its mouth. The necklace thrummed at my throat, moving like I’d
never felt before. With a high-pitched hum, it shattered and fell from my neck as though it had overloaded.
Michael thrust the blade through the demon’s neck. Black ooze gushed from its head. I recoiled, refusing to shriek, as the demon’s head fell to the ground. Somersaulting, Michael leapt over the severed neck to tackle another head, which he sliced off in a single blow.
The creature bucked and writhed and its remaining heads turned toward Michael, snapping all at once.
He held his ground and raised his sword above him. “Azazel, firstborn of the demons,” he commanded, his voice echoing a baritone chorus, “as Watcher and protector of this realm, I call upon the law to banish you. Back to Hell!”
With his words, a massive purple and gold light erupted around us, surrounding the demon. In the presence of the light, its body swirled and dissolved into a black, oily liquid. Then a huge rip opened in the grass behind Michael and the beast slithered right into it. When the tear sealed itself, I heard a sound echoing through the trees, like the slamming of an enormous steel gate.
The street light flickered back on. I let myself breathe again and the air around us became light, ebullient, freshened by a crisp sea breeze. Michael retracted his sword. It pulled back into its handle and extinguished before he tucked it somewhere between his shoulder blades.
“Are you okay?”
Shocked by everything I’d seen, I blinked at him a few times before I answered. “Yeah.”
He scanned the horizon once more: the empty trail, the line of trees, the waves crashing from the harbor against the rocky shore. Then he turned to me and asked, “Wanna get a pizza?”
My stomach hardened as though I’d swallowed a lump of concrete that was beginning to set. I stared at him in disbelief. “You’re hungry?” My voice was almost a squeak.
His face broke into a wide, boyish grin. “Starving. Like I haven’t eaten in days.”
He shook out his wings, scrutinizing them for damage. After a fine mist of black liquid sprayed off them, they looked flawless and clean again, undamaged. But there were wounds on his shoulders where the demon had struck, big open gashes from teeth and claws. His shirt was torn and soaked with blood and black slime. His face and hair were also covered, his jeans ripped and spattered, yet he glowed as though his skin were lit from within. His hands radiated light as he waved them over his wounds, and the bleeding stopped. Torn flesh inched its way closed, leaving no sign but the stain of damp blood on his skin.
He looked down at the state of his clothes and let out a grunt of distaste. His expression was almost sheepish. “I guess I should clean up a bit.”
Sheathing his wings, he walked to the beach and took off his shirt, exposing a lean, muscled back, taut golden skin that looked almost bronze in the streetlight. Crouching at the shore, he splashed himself with sea water, then completely immersed his shirt and wrung it out—once white, now it was gray and pink from rinsed slime and blood. He soaked his hair, his skin, and steam rose off of him in the cold night air.
As he approached, I noticed the water trickling down the few hairs of his chest and the tiny goose bumps that formed on his skin. “This is the best I can do for now,” he said lightly. “I’ll need to go home and change. We can pick up something to eat on the way.”
I tried not to stare at his naked chest, the six-pack below it, or the damp line of hair between his navel and the top of his jeans. Flushing, I looked up at his face and caught a smile. With his wet hair pushed back, he was painfully beautiful, and I felt ashamed, somehow, for admiring him.
If he noticed me staring, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he put on his tank top wet and tied his sweatshirt around his waist.
“Are you okay to go back now?” he asked. His voice was smooth, low, and surprisingly human.
“Your shirt is wet and it’s freezing out” was the only thing I could think to say.
He let out a short, surprised laugh. “We were attacked by a demon and you’re worried about a wet shirt?”
“You’re worried about pizza,” I replied defensively.
“Hey, a guy’s gotta eat,” he said, still smiling. Then, serious again, he unsheathed his wings and stepped closer. “Ready?”
Taking a deep breath, I nodded, and he lifted me into the air. I draped an arm around his damp shoulder, and the beach disappeared beneath us. The concrete ball in my stomach rolled a few times but settled quickly as I relaxed in his arms.
Chapter Twenty-One
After stopping to pick up an assortment of pizza slices which I ended up carrying, we landed in the backyard of a large, modern-looking house. It was completely surrounded by evergreens except for the view of Seattle’s harbor peeking through the trees. Michael took me by the hand and led me along a dimly lit path toward the house, then through a glass door to a ground-level studio. As the lights flickered on, I noticed a large, open-concept living room with a tiled kitchenette. A plush off-white sofa faced a huge flat-screen TV over a gas fireplace framed on both sides by built-in bookshelves. On the other side of the sofa, a king-sized Murphy bed lay open, covered by a soft-looking gray duvet.
“Wow, is this your room?” I asked. “Complete with its own entrance?”
“Yeah. My parents had this place built with the idea of housing me through college.”
“It’s fabulous.”
He shrugged. “I like it.”
My legs were a little wobbly, so I placed the pizza on a side table and perched on the couch. “Do your parents know what you are?”
“No. It’s safer that way, for all of us,” he answered and walked to his bedroom. “I’m going to shower.” He pulled open a dresser drawer and grabbed some clothes and a towel. “Help yourself to a slice. I won’t be long.”
I couldn’t eat. My stomach was queasy from flying and other things, like being attacked by a demon. “What do your parents think?”
“Nothing’s changed. They think I’m the son they’ve always had.” Holding his clean clothes in one hand, he grabbed a slice of pizza with the other, raising it in a toast. “Cheers.” He put it in his mouth, swallowed a large bite, and left the room.
While I waited, I wandered over to a bookshelf. Unlike his music collection, his books were more what I’d expect from an angel. There were copies of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Milton’s Paradise Lost—which we’d be covering in English later this year—several versions of the Bible, the Talmud, and the Qu’ran. I also saw an old leather-bound book on demonology, and one called Demon Lore.
On the table was a smaller book called The Book of Enoch. Curious, I opened it and noticed that one of the pages had been folded down. I read:
1. And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters.
2. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: ‘Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.’
It was the story of the Watchers and how they fell, which was what happened to Michael. The book went on about the children of the Grigori and human women. It explained that they were giants, called Nephilim, and they were led by a demon called Azazel.
Azazel! My mind darted back to the horrific creature we had seen earlier that night. This demon was a leader of giants? What about the half-human, half-angelic beings? What did they look like?
Images flickered in my mind, dark images where I was screaming, sweat pouring down my face, my hand gripping Michael’s with waning strength. The shards of memory were hazy and weak, but I could tell I was giving birth. I was in a dark, cavernous room with stone walls lit only by firelight. I had an old woman helping me. Her eyes were blue and cloudy with cataracts but her hands were deft, experienced. She touched my forehead with a cool cloth, encouraged me to breathe.
I was halfway out of the memory when Michael came into the room. His feet were bare, his hair wet, and his gray T-shirt was slightly damp at the hollow of his chest. The smell of st
eam and soap wafted behind him.
“We had a child?” I asked. I had no breath. The recollection came upon me fast, too, like vertigo. My stomach lurched, and I was suddenly glad I hadn’t eaten. “A giant. Like Azazel.”
Michael removed the book from my shaking hand and placed it on the table. “We did.”
“I gave birth to a demon!” I all but shrieked.
“We didn’t know what it would be,” he said.
My legs wouldn’t support me anymore, so I collapsed on the couch. “W–what was Azazel doing here? Was he—it—my…” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word “son.”
Michael shook his head, his face blanching. “That creature was destroyed a long time ago.”
“What happened?”
“It developed a taste for human flesh,” he said. “I couldn’t let it loose on the world. Not after what it did to you.” Then, as though the horror of what had happened had resurfaced, he raked both his hands through his wet hair. “I killed it. I had to.”
I couldn’t remember the pain, but the memory of it showed on his face. I didn’t have to ask what it had done to me. He had been there the whole time, watching, and in spite of all the power he’d once had, he could do nothing to stop it. I saw him holding my hand, his tortured expression, his helplessness. I remembered a heat ripping through me, as though the baby would tear itself out with its claws if it had to. Apparently it did, and Michael had killed his own son because it was a monster.
As if we were both seeing the same memory, he added, “What we did. What I did. It killed you.”
The memory was painful, but it wasn’t his fault. Women had died in childbirth throughout history. Granted, these were different circumstances and it was me he was talking about, but it was a long, long time ago.
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” I said. “We don’t have to have…offspring.”
“It’s not that simple,” he snapped. “I broke laws of a very high order, and that was an abomination in itself. My offspring, as you put it, was simply its manifestation.”