by Aya DeAniege
It removed the magic which would have held me, resulting in an ineffective spell that I could walk through. Stepping over wards, and some snare spell meant to capture me, I drew closer to my targets.
They were so wrapped up with collecting an angel specifically, they hadn’t bothered with regular magic to capture a physical being. Across the spells, I headed straight for the witches. They were almost all involved with the spell involving Sera.
It was obviously more complicated magic than I thought.
They should have just opened a gateway to the astral plane, then reached through and taken what they wanted. Instead, they were bringing the wings into the real world through Sera’s back. It was a longer and more complicated process because the wings had to take on a physical form without the portal to the astral plane.
The witches were creating something out of nothing. Of course, that would take more magic than just opening a portal.
When had witches gotten so stupid?
I was embarrassed for them.
That didn’t stop me from cutting through them. Without all their members, their chanting stopped. It meant Sera was safe.
For the moment.
The witches turned on me. The older ones began weaving spells in the air, their hands in little claws as they chanted. The younger ones physically threw themselves at me. Mobbing me.
Angel or not, I was in a physical body. I couldn’t slip into the astral plane with so much distraction around me. If I had had my grace, I would have been able to scoot over, taking the women with me. They would die, I would live, and I could just pop back and grab a few more.
Instead, I struggled with six women who were hanging off of me. When I hit one, she was replaced with another.
A wall of blue hit me.
Which I assume was supposed to be magic meant to stop me. The wave rolled over me instead. It didn’t even tickle, just rolled right over me. Not even through me. I didn’t even feel it. It was just a show of light. Pretty light, but still useless.
And to think, I had been worried about confronting them.
Dark witches had once been a thing to be feared. Whenever they got too close to something, I would sweep through and kill all the masters and apprentices I could find. I would burn their spell books and erase anything of them that I could, but they always came back. Like some kind of bug infestation.
They had lost their connections with real magic. They had little more than parlour tricks and a few dark magic spells.
They were nothing more than bitter Wiccans.
But even Wiccans were more effective against us than witches. They at least learned to defend themselves physically and didn’t just rely on their off-brand, watered down magic the few times in history they had caused problems.
“You look like you could use some help,” Raphael called from a distance away.
I growled in response and flung one of the women off of me. I turned and glared at Raphael as he stood there, the smug bastard. His arms were crossed, and he was smiling like it was a good old time.
“Sera?” I snapped.
Raphael shrugged. He made a vague motion as a witch jumped on my back.
He meant that Sera had run off. He likely knew where she was going but wasn’t saying anything in case the witches got the upper hand.
And he was just standing there, letting me handle it because he had already done the hero thing and rescued her. I swung my arm and caught one of the women upside the head.
“Help!” I shouted.
He made a face.
“But I’m just a healer.”
“Raphael!” I bellowed as another witch jumped on my back.
My knees went out from under me. I hit the ground as yet another leaped onto me. They were winning through sheer numbers, and I didn’t like it one bit.
When Sam had gone to save Grace, Heaven had intervened. He had been able to tap into her for a few moments to move the world itself and effect a change. But there was just me, no blinding lights overhead, no saving at the last minute.
Just Raphael standing there smugly, watching me get beat on by a bunch of women.
“Please?”
He sighed heavily like it was an imposition.
“I suppose since you asked politely,” he said as if he had no interest in doing that whatsoever.
I’m going to kill him.
Raphael grabbed the nearest witch and vanished. I continued struggling with the witches that were on me as Raphael popped in and out of the physical plane as if it was no big deal. As I threw the last witch off of me, he reached out, caught her, and tossed her through to the astral plane.
She screamed as she went, echoing across the universe and reverberating with something inside of me.
“I don’t think I like you doing that,” I said.
“I threw her directly into Hell,” Raphael said. “Would you prefer they possibly pollute the astral plane?”
“You took them all to Hell?” I shouted.
“I didn’t go in, just threw them through the gate,” he said, motioning off to the side with a thumb. “You want that one?”
“No, you seem to be enjoying this,” I growled back.
He smiled. “It is pretty fun. Feels good.”
Raphael turned toward the witch off to the side, who was kneeling and dabbling with something on the ground. He just lifted his hand and pop. Her head disappeared.
I miss that.
Humans typically thought we were the type of angels who sat on clouds and strummed on lyres, but that was the Heavenly Choir. The arc angels were built to attack and bring forth Father’s almighty vengeance.
Sometimes a head going pop was funny to us.
I glanced around us, then strolled toward Raphael. He had his phone out and was doing that video chat thing with Gabe, showing him what was on the ground. Gabe took pictures of it, and the call ended as I peered over Raphael’s shoulder.
There were a bunch of symbols and nonsense inside a circle. There were also little bones that were older looking and a bit charred, what I prayed to Father wasn’t virgin’s blood, and in the middle of it, all was a little glowing tube. I reached out and took the tube from its spot, then scuffed my foot around, breaking the circle and destroying as many of the symbols as I could with a smudge of my foot.
“Make sure he doesn’t send that to the witches,” I said as I brought the tube closer to my eyes. “That look like the end of a feather to you?”
“It does,” Raphael said, squinting at the little thing in my hand. “All the trouble they caused and… that was literally one feather? I thought you were joking or, I don’t know, trying not to make it seem like such a big deal.”
“No, one feather. It hurt when they plucked this one. Which reminds me. Where’d she go?”
“That way,” Raphael said with a vague motion. “The wings were beginning to emerge into the real world, but once I broke the circle, they started to slip back inside of her. I told her to run, and she ran.”
“What are we going with?” I asked. “Crazy people? Cultists? Government experimentation, haven’t used that one in a while.”
“How about the truth?” Raphael asked.
We watched each other for a long moment. I wondered if he was serious. He was probably wondering what my reaction would be to the whole thing.
Drawing in a slow, steady breath, I looked around again, then nodded once.
“Okay,” I said. “But you go first because I feel like she’s going to try to club one of us with a rock. Oh, and the whole bleeding.”
“Bleeding?”
“There’s literal… Raphael!”
He looked down and paled in the light of the moon. Immediately he headed off in a sprint, headed for the other side of the field. As he ran, he called our Sera’s name. I did the same. We searched for a good ten minutes before Raphael came to a complete standstill.
He turned and headed off in another direction. All of a sudden his back was stiff, and he was marching instea
d sprinting. I followed after him, having seen that walk before. He knew where she was.
As he pulled to a stop, I reached for my phone. I turned on the flashlight in the phone and lit up the area in front of me. Raphael knelt at Sera’s side.
She had dropped to the ground. She was face down, fingers working on the earth as if trying to drag herself away. Raphael settled a hand on her shoulder and began talking to her in Enochian. That always seemed to calm people down.
Sera’s back was ripped open. Two parallel lines down either side of her spine. Torn and bloody, but I swore I saw a feather in there twitch as she whimpered. Blood coated her back, covering the marks of the ink that had woven the wings into her soul.
Raphael made a hissing sound at me. I backed up but kept my light somewhere near Sera’s feet.
He did his work on her. Which was to say, Raphael knit back the flesh and fixed all the damage caused by the witches as they tried to pull the wings into existence. His kind of healing wasn’t just physical. It would have reached into Sera’s soul and begun removing the ink that had attempted to stitch Raphael’s wings into my grace.
When he was done, he knelt back and sighed.
“Okay, I’m not a hundred percent,” he said, sounding strange.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He turned to the side and vomited. There wasn’t much more than stomach acid coming up. When he did that, we always looked away because he insisted it was the polite thing to do.
I stiffened, looked up and then down and around.
Darkness surrounded us. Moon overhead, of course, I knew that already, but something wasn’t right. Something we had missed.
Something big.
“It was day when we left the estate,” I said before it had fully dawned on me.
Raphael wiped at his lips, spitting to the side and wiping again before he turned back toward me. He seemed to struggle, a finger motioned around, and he frowned.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Sam was yelling at us this morning about the fight last night,” I said. “How did it become night while we drove and we didn’t realize?”
“City limits,” Raphael said. “I think it happened at city limits.”
“What the fuck?” I asked. “Can you time travel?”
“I can, but not with you in the vehicle,” Raphael said slowly, the words drawn out as he seemed to grasp what I had been trying to say. “That’s… if Heaven interfered why couldn’t we have arrived early? Saved all this trouble?”
“The dark magic?” I asked. “If it were angel warding, it would have stopped me but not you, but we were in the vehicle together, so time just got all wavy?”
Raphael was quiet a moment.
“I do recall a Heavenly Host who got stuck on a boat with a human and time changed pace when the angel tried to leave but was being held captive. I think. Or was that a story?”
“Which means we barely made it in time.”
“Or Heaven did intercede,” Raphael muttered. “Could you be useful and pick her up?”
“I can’t carry you both. The last time you puked after healing was when Samael was dragged back from Hell. You passed out for a decade.”
“I can make it to the car,” Raphael said. “And if I pass out for a decade, I fully expect some oral when I wake up.”
“Get her for a decade, give you a little oral, I can agree to that,” I said.
I knelt and pulled Sera’s limp form off the ground. It was as I was adjusting her weight that I looked down and saw Raphael staring up at me with his mouth hanging open.
“Are you going to pass out on the field?” I asked as I began walking away, taking Sera with me.
Behind me, I heard him coming, but I also heard the uncertain footfall. At the car, I stopped and turned, watching Raphael stand in the field, hands on his hips, glaring at me.
“Well,” I said. “Come on! You have the keys, you ninny.”
“I’m not a ninny,” he called from where he stood.
“Then why are you over there?”
He mumbled something at his feet. That was his childishness coming out, something that Samael thought was endearing but always came out at the wrong time.
“Get over here,” I said sternly.
Raphael grumbled something and came toward me. The car’s headlights flashed, indicating that the doors had unlocked. He reached around me and opened the back door for me. I slipped Sera into the back seat, laying her down.
We both looked Sera, then at one another.
He took the door gently from me and closed it quietly. Peering into the back seat, he frowned.
“Are you wondering what I’m wondering?”
“If it’s fun to wake up as you get thrown off a back seat of a car because someone stopped too quickly?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s about it,” he said.
Then he turned back to the field. He frowned again. The quiet of the night encroached on us. Balance returning to the world slowly but surely. It would be at least a week until the physical plane recovered from what the witches had tried to do, and they hadn’t even begun to succeed.
But at least it would recover.
“Michael.”
“Yes, Raphael?”
“Humans don’t like it when you kill a bunch of humans and then act like it’s no big deal,” he said.
“But it’s not a—shit.”
“Call Lillith?” he asked.
“You do it. I don’t need her trying to slap me through the phone.”
We called Lillith while standing outside the car because we wanted to know how to approach the topic of what had happened. Of course, then Lillith asked what happened. I explained it to her and the different spells and bits that I recalled the witches saying, then how they all disappeared.
She just told us to treat it like we had killed a bunch of angels. The notion made me uncomfortable, but I do believe that was the point of telling us that.
Michael, on the other hand, just shrugged.
He had killed angels before, and I think it bothered him more than he let on. Execution was also a part of his duty in Heaven at the beginning of time, however. The Heavenly Host expected that of him, so he never talked about it or how uncomfortable the notion made him feel.
After the call, we drove very, very carefully. Every time I had to apply the brakes, I was afraid Sera would fall off the seat and end up wedged between it and the front seats. Or wake up to her nose breaking because she went face first into the front seats.
At the estate, we stopped. I looked at the time and sighed.
“What?” Michael asked.
“It’s now two in the morning,” I said. “We’ve lost an entire day, basically.”
“Does that mean the spell is still active?” he asked.
We shared a look. I motioned with my chin, and Michael pulled out his phone. He looked through the call log, for the one we had placed to Lillith.
“Forty-five minutes ago,” he said. “No, dark witches have this weird thing with midnight. It just took time there to clean up, and to drive back.”
“Thank goodness,” I said. “Can you imagine losing days every time we try to leave the city?”
He glanced back at Sera.
“How do we decide who gets to carry her in?” he asked, then looked at me.
“This time, it’s you. If I pick up any weight, I will be sick. Next time is me because that’s two lifts for you.”
“And then?” he asked, lowering his voice with another glance to the back.
“Michael, the and then is really up to all three of us, not us alone, and not her alone. Relationships with humans are about compromise and talking it out. You can’t just join together and then separate and just know it all.”
He was quiet a moment, then he nodded. He at least understood that the way angels came together in Heaven wasn’t how humans came together. Angels shared memories and thoughts and feelings during pleasure. Humans did not.
“I don’t know how to talk to humans.”
“You also don’t know how to communicate without the meshing in Heaven,” I said. “You never compromise.”
“Says the guy that Sam has described as ‘the only one more stubborn than Michael,’” he countered.
“Just get out of the car,” I said.
I climbed out and closed the door without being quiet about it. I was hoping that the sound of it would wake Sera up.
Michael opened the back door and leaned in, setting a hand on her. He gave her a little shake, which was relatively gentle for Michael. He usually shook a body so hard that they ended up falling off whatever they had been sleeping on.
Through the window, I watched Sera stir, a frown creasing her brow as she shifted in the backseat. I walked around the car as Michael shook her again, then pulled her up. He helped her out of the car.
Sera was looking around, confusion plain on her features as her head moved this way and that, trying to piece together what she remembered, and where she was. What I had don’t to her hadn’t affected her memory at all, but the trauma of what the witches had tried to do could cause all sorts of lasting damage.
Michael kept a firm grip on Sera’s hand as she stiffened. He kept that grip because we had saved more than one person in the past, only to have them bolt when they woke in an unfamiliar place and hurt themselves by running headlong into something they didn’t see was there.
“We didn’t drug you,” I said carefully.
“I take Judo,” she said. “If I thought you did, you’d be on the ground begging for your mommy. What happened?”
“What do you remember?” Michael asked.
“Weird Wiccan bitches,” Sera said. “They showed up at my door. And a field. They monologued a bunch. Are you two actually angels? Like real angels? I thought you were joking.”
“Yes,” I said.
“As in archangels,” Sera said slowly. Like she could believe we were angels, but being arcs would cross a line or something.
“Yes,” I said. “And it’s arc, not arch. We are not doorways into buildings, or other planes of existence, though we can pop between them when we have our graces.”