Moroni’s right eyelid drooped, then fluttered open and shut.
“Gaaah…” he said. “Gaahhhh…”
The angel’s co-opted head began to shake back and forth, up and down, his right eye fluttering faster and faster.
“Gaaaaahhhhhhhh…”
“Moroni? What’s wrong with you?”
But a recollection from my old Life was stabbing through.
“‘All the world’s a stage!’” Moroni blurted. “‘And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts!’ As You Like It! (Act Two, Scene Seven)!”
“Damn.”
Some angels were subject to a condition known as the Slip. It was the heavenly version of Tourette’s Syndrome. In the worst cases, the Slip resulted in the disintegration of their ethereal bodies. In milder and far more irritating cases like Moroni’s it meant that an already infuriating inability to shut up was exacerbated by incessant quotations, inappropriate or misleading information, and random snatches of poetry and/or rhyming verse. Moroni had Slipped into a Shakespeare tangent, complete with footnotes.
“‘The world is grown so bad, that wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch!’ King Richard III (Act One, Scene Three)!”
I stepped out from behind the Customer Service counter, slicing through the cold winds of temporal diversion streaming off Moroni’s aura.
“Moroni! Pull yourself together!”
Joseph Smith’s guardian angel smiled goofily, his eyes rolling in their sockets. I grabbed him by his shoulders and shook him until they rolled toward me.
“‘Through the forest have I come, But Athenian found I none, on whose eyes I might approve this flower’s force…’”
“Here and now, Moroni!”
Moroni clenched his jaws tightly. Whatever was happening must have been of sufficient severity for him to keep his mouth shut even for a moment.
“You mentioned Gabriel. What’s he done?”
“‘The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on. And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood!’ King Henry VI (Act Two, Scene Two)!”
“What does that mean, Moroni?”
“My Lord, even the lowliest creature can become a threat if his existence is threatened.”
“No! I know what it means. I mean what does that have to do with Gabriel?”
“‘For the rain it raineth every day!’ The Taming of the Shrew (Act Five, Scene…)”
“Moroni, you’ve got thirty seconds to tell me what’s happened to Gabriel or I will banish you to the far ends of the continuum. Now pull your head out of whoever’s butt that is and tell me what’s happened.”
“Gabriel! He’s… he hath… he’s Fallen!”
“What?”
Only one major angel had Fallen since the beginning of my Administration. And everyone knew how that worked out. If Gabriel was placing innocents at risk because of me…
“Where?”
“In Africa.”
“When?”
“He has been in Possession of a human soul for nearly three days. But…”
“Take me to him.”
“But Lord, are you not already there?”
“Just do it, Moroni.”
And then I was in Africa.
Moroni was an idiot, but I had to admit, he was much more efficient at flitting than Gabriel. I still threw up, but only a little and it was mostly in my mouth. I swallowed bitterness, shook my head to dispel the negligible nausea that attended even efficient transspatial travel, and took in my surroundings.
I was in a small, hot classroom with dirt floors. Thirteen young African girls, all dressed in black vests, white short-sleeved shirts and gray slacks were staring at me as if I’d just appeared out of thin air. Which of course, I had.
“Well, if it isn’t the Man of the Millennium.”
The speaker was an old man wearing a black, short-sleeved shirt, dusty slacks, and the white collar of a priest. His skin was the color of worn ebony, his hair a salt and pepper cap of curls framing a face that had probably once been kind. But that kindness had been twisted by a hawkish, familiar arrogance.
“Gabriel.”
The old minister laughed. A searing radiance burned in his eyes. Each blink sliced across my vision like the downward stroke of a fresh razor.
“After your demonstration in Rome I decided to follow your example,” Gabriel said, using the minister’s voice. “Why should you have all the fun?”
“Gabriel. Let him go.”
Gabriel laughed. “I’ve considered your command, Lord, and take great pleasure in replying… no.”
The old clergyman grinned, his back ramrod straight, his lips quivering with the same lust I’d only seen on Lucifer’s face: the lethal ecstasy of acute reality intoxication.
“I understand,” Gabriel said. “Only now, as I stand entombed within this decaying flesh, do I begin to grasp the reason for your abandonment. I’m free. Free to decide my fate, instead of languishing in service to a failed god.”
“Gabriel...” I was trying to ignore the sound of the minister’s soul: Gabriel’s possession was stretching it to its limits. “You’ve got to let him go before it’s too late.”
Gabriel laughed. “Let him go? Why would I let him go? Look at what I can do.”
Gabriel gestured. Several students and their desks rose into the air. None of them seemed to comprehend what was happening. They sat, stunned, floating ten feet above the dirt floor.
“Gabriel! Stop!”
“I can feel the world, Lord. I have no intention of stopping.”
Pain exploded in my midsection… a red, stabbing shriek. The flaming blade of an angelic sword burst from my chest, dazzling my eyes with golden fire.
“Gabriel spoke truly. You’ve rejected your function.”
The walls of the little classroom shuddered. Plaster fell from cracks that spread like gangrene across the ceiling. It was another familiar Voice, more powerful even than Gabriel’s. My attacker was one of the Seraphim – the Burning Ones – in the body of a fourteen year-old girl, tall, her hair cornrowed, her eyes blazing.
“Seraphiel.”
“I am.”
Several other girls surrounded me, each of them gripping a shining weapon. They made way for the old priest to approach.
“You think only I discerned your dereliction of duty? You’ve become even less than your enemies imagine. I am not alone.”
The children spoke with many voices. “We are… Legion.”
They were all possessed, burning alive, each small body thrumming with angelic might. Moroni stood behind them, his borrowed face filled with anxiety.
“‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions!’ – The Taming of the Shrew (Act Four, Scene–)”
“Quiet, slave,” Gabriel snapped. “Your betrayal will be rewarded soon enough.
Moroni clapped his hands over his mouth.
As a developing fetus, I had woven enough subtle protections into my DNA to ensure that I was fairly resistant to spiritual attack. But I was physically vulnerable: I could be killed by a fall from a sufficiently lofty curb if I wasn’t careful. I extinguished the flaming blade and let the Aspect that had been champing at the bit of my self-control shoulder its way into reality.
Stormface was wreathed with crawlers of lightning, its face a perpetual snarl, knotted like a bunched fist and partially obscured by blackbellied thunderclouds. It was born from the racial memories of faded stormgods like Shango and Lir. Recognizably “infantile”, Stormface was the Aspect that once terrified superstitious goat herders and genocidal kings alike, a giant floating baby head with nightmare eyes and a sun in its mouth.
“Abomination!”
Light struck the bodies of the possessed children. Every one of them glowed like a newborn star, their skeletons and circulatory systems pulsing visibly through their school uniforms. Then the Fallen angels inhabiting them were violently ejected.
“Fool!” Seraphiel, still in the body of the tall schoolgirl, cried. “You said he was powerless!”
The old priest fell to his hands and knees, his body wracked by shudders. A shimmering distortion rose up from him, drawing back from him like a shadow, dispelled by the light from Stormface’s attack. When he looked up at his students his face was clear, and stained with tears.
“Run, children! Get out!”
The girls ran, some screaming, others laughing, from the classroom. The old man’s shuddering increased, then stopped abruptly as Gabriel’s malice rose up through the floor and entered him again.
“He’s one of them, Seraphiel!” the old man snarled. “He’s mortal. He can’t defeat both of us!”
The face of Seraphiel’s young host remained impassive. It was a measure of Seraphiel’s skill that he still held her despite Stormface’s interdiction. The girl would perceive Seraphiel’s presence as a violation, aware at every moment that her will was not her own. Only one of the Seraphim could so completely dominate a human soul.
“Look at him, Seraphiel,” Gabriel snarled. “He is human. He bends, as a shadow stretches beneath the noonday sun. He will age and fall beneath Death’s driving whip. But an angel soars where he wills. For us there is no Death. And we can use mortal bodies!”
Seraphiel hummed, a judge considering a complex argument.
“We can create our own pantheon, Seraphiel: a new generation of Gods striking terror and devotion into mortal hearts and minds. We can rule the world.”
“Seraphiel’s right,” I said. “You stand there in the body of a mortal, arguing how great it is to be immortal. You are a fool.”
Gabriel’s face convulsed with rage, his eyes burning so brightly I could smell the brimstone emanating from the old minister’s pores. Thirty or so ejected angels flitted around him like luminous moths, egging him on.
Stormface unleashed a roar that cracked the school’s foundations. The shimmering cloud of exorcized angels fled, screaming as they streamed out windows or through cracks in the ceiling. Vulnerable to Stormface’s wrath, they were suddenly eager to be anywhere else.
“He rebukes us!” Gabriel cried. “His adoration of mortals has made him weak! If we choose to enslave them who can stand against us? We can create a new Heaven on Earth… in our image.”
The old priest moved closer to the tall schoolgirl, one hand reaching up to rest on her shoulder.
“In your image, Seraphiel. We can stride like titans across the material realms. We can become…”
“You can become real,” I said. “You’re jealous of mortals.”
Gabriel whirled toward me. “You’re not real! Your Aspect only reveals the depth of your perversity. You wear their semblance, but wield the Power of Creation!”
“Yet you once commanded that power,” Seraphiel hummed. “Are you not its source?”
I was fading. Maintaining Stormface required gigawatts of mental energy. The priest was little more than a walking corpse: his death would eject Gabriel soon enough. Seraphiel was a different story. The girl he’d stolen was young, newly possessed and bright with lifeforce.
“You’ve changed,” Seraphiel said. “You are… limited.”
“I’m becoming human.”
“Human,” Seraphiel said.
“Inferior,” Gabriel cried. “Out of his own mouth he condemns himself! He is unfit to rule Creation!”
“Creation doesn’t need a ruler, Gabriel. It needs a mirror.”
My head was pounding, the connection to Stormface filling my mind with bright shards of white noise; mile long fingernails scratching down a moonsized blackboard.
Seraphiel’s hum deepened. Around him, the fabric of reality was beginning to warp, bending in accordance with his song. Even I marveled at his skill. The power at his command was terrifying.
“If your assertion is true… many things must be considered. Many things.”
“No,” Gabriel snarled. “He has proven his unworthiness. Destroy him and this world can be ours!”
“Let her go, Seraphiel. She can still be saved.”
Seraphiel’s song grew restive, primed for fire. “Human,” he chimed in the deep tolling intonation befitting his rank. “This leaves a vacuum at the pinnacle of the celestial power structure.”
Something was wrong. I could barely hold Stormface together. Seraphiel seemed to waver as bright red spots burst like fireworks in my eyes.
“Seraphiel… if I believed humans needed the ‘celestial power structure’ I would never have abandoned my old function!”
Objects in the classroom began to vibrate as the Burning One’s song climbed an octave. Every window in the building blew inward, driven by a hot wind that melted the shattered glass shards before they touched the floor.
“I will learn the truth of your assertions,” Seraphiel sang, his voice rising like the scream of a ballistic missile. The possessed girl’s eyes drove the shadows from the room. “In this way I may judge your worthiness.”
The girl becomes white fire.
When human outrage compelled me to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, I sent Seraphiel and Metatron to do the heavy lifting. Imagine two shining, six-winged angels folding the space between themselves and a nearby asteroid belt to rain fire down upon a screaming mortal city. A simple task for the Seraphim: open a pathway between the target city and a few megatons of space debris and step out of the way. When I sent the Angel of Death to smite the Egyptians, she simply enclosed the heads of Egypt’s firstborn within airless bubbles of concentrated dark matter: two hundred thousand carbon monoxide asphyxiations later and you’ve got the beginnings of a new world religion.
Now the Burning One has my destruction foremost in his mind.
Seraphiel raises his song, and a ringing cry tears the air inside that tiny classroom. Air rushes past me with hurricane force, pushing me toward a shining rip in space. Beyond the rip I can see blackness, and the twinkling of ten million stars, strange constellations: Seraphiel is opening a doorway into deep space.
Stormface takes over. The lights of its mouth burn a path through Seraphiel’s song, eating its notes like a starving kid gobbling peanut M&Ms. The notes of his song rise higher, and lava flows out of a portal that opens to the right of me. A searing river of molten rock pours across the wooden floor of the classroom, burning it away as efficiently as Stormface absorbed Seraphiel’s musical attack. The walls of the classroom burst into flames and the ceiling catches fire. Stormface lifts me above the burning lava, wrapping me within a sheath of cooler air while blowing away the toxic fumes.
“Seraphiel! You don’t have to do this!”
Shadows play across the possessed girl’s face.
“What else remains for me? You were All, Yahweh. We Seraphim sang of your Glory as eternal, but now you are mortal, less than nothing. A fate you chose willingly. What lessons am I to learn from your example?”
Seraphiel sings louder, his song slashing the air with celestial violence. Then a wall of water smashes into me.
Darkness and cold crush down upon me, even through Stormface’s defenses. A few yards away, the possessed schoolgirl floats at the center of a shining bubble of chaos, her eyes piercing the darkness. Seraphiel has transported us into the ocean depths, far from light and safety. But there she hovers, alive in all that darkness.
But the cold and pressure are getting to me. Although Stormface is shielding me from the worst of Seraphiel’s attack its protection will only last as long as I remain conscious. I reach out with the greatest power I still possess, my other mind’s eye scanning and discarding divergent timelines until…
There.
Then I grip Seraphiel’s place in spacetime in one mental hand...
Reset.
We were back inside the classroom.
There was no fire, no lava, no crushing black water to drown the world. Not yet.
“I will learn the truth of your assertions,” Seraphiel sang, his voice rising like the scream of a ballistic missil
e. The possessed girl’s eyes drove the shadows from the room. “In this way I may… judge…”
The girl looked around, taking in our surroundings.
“You translated us backward in time,” Seraphiel said. “But this changes nothing. I am immortal; tireless. I can open a multiplicity of portals too rapidly for you to apprehend.”
“Human continuity will go on, Seraphiel. The possessed girls will forget your friends. Once I told them the punchline they were able to conduct the exorcisms themselves. Everything you’ve done has been erased, shuffled into a dead-end reality where it can play itself out for the rest of eternity. It can’t hurt anyone. None of it happened.”
Seraphiel’s scorn echoed from the rafters of the schoolhouse.
“But you failed. I remember it all. You left me unaltered. I am still a part of that other continuity.”
That’s when I saw it: the shift from angelic to demonic shadowing Seraphiel’s face. The arrogance, the anticipation of glories that could never be his. He was feasting on the girl’s energies, reveling in his defiance so thoroughly that he couldn’t hear the fat lady singing.
“You’re right, Seraphiel. You will continue. When I repaired the damage your uprising caused, I left a loophole of chaos open just for you. That loophole is closing right now.”
The shift from angelic to demonic happened instantly, hate and terror contorting the girl’s face as what I had done dawned on Seraphiel like the first light of a summer day: bright and inescapable.
“No…”
Truly hideous forces are required to kill the unkillable, and I had released unspeakably hideous forces in that little classroom. Seraphiel was torn out of the girl, his immortal essence stretched like taffy, twisting, contorting as the continuity to which he now belonged reached back and snagged him. But Seraphiel was too strong: he resisted, clinging to this continuity even as those hideous forces threatened to tear him apart. The girl screamed.
I abandoned Stormface and summoned the Aspect that engraved the Ten Commandments across the retinas of a terrified Moses. Riding the Moving Finger, I dove into the maelstrom, tearing through the Eshuum, arrowing directly into her mind.
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