by J Moon
When the lights came on and everyone stood to their feet, Gabe spotted Uriel. Uriel was sitting by herself, with a bottle of champagne in front of her, staring at the VIP section with keen interest. She was looking for someone, most likely Owney or Legion.
Their eyes met, across the room and, for the tiniest second, a fragment of eternity, Gabe knew for certain there had been a remarkable change in Uriel. She got up and walked towards the restroom, but quickly Gabe dashed across the room to join her.
He came down on her swiftly, grabbed her by the hand. “I want the staff and I want it now.” He bellowed with his eyes stern and his chest heaving. His grip was iron clad on her wrist, and he was determined to bring both her and the staff back to SMITE kicking and screaming if need be.
Uriel looked at him gravely, considering him. “Gabe stay out of this!” She turned to walk away but Gabe snatched her back.
Uriel dropped her voice to a private, heated murmur, she looked down at the hand that held her. “Let me go Gabriel. You don’t know what you're doing.”
“No you don’t know what you're doing,” Gabe barked back in a low rumble. He set his jaw locked hard before saying, “I should SMITE you right now. End your existence. What would make you do this Uriel? Go rogue and betray your brothers? Disobey the Creator and go against our code of arms?”
Uriel drew in a shuddering breath as her eyes softened. “It’s not what it seems Gabe trust me. If you knew what I knew you would come with me.”
Gabe looked at her sideways; not believing what he was hearing coming from her mouth. “Come with you?” Gabe thought for a moment and in a lethal mutter said, “Don’t make me do this sister. Don’t make me smite you right now. Come peacefully with me back to headquarters. We can take back the staff together and who knows, all may be forgiven.”
Uriel dropped her head. “You know good and damn well what would happen if I go back.” With a powerful tug she released her hand from his grip. “They are not going to send me down to the pit. I am fine right here.” She pressed against Gabriel almost to the bathroom wall. “Legion is going to give me a black rune. No one from either side will be able to track me. You should come with me Gabriel. We are being lied to by the leaders of SMITE. They are no better than the demons that we fight, and don’t get me started on the Creator.”
Gabe’s face was washed with astonishment, “Uriel what is this nonsense you're talking?”
She smiled as she grabbed his forearms. “You don’t feel it? You’ve been on Earth for more than twenty-four hours now.”
“It’s confusion and doubt. You can’t let that get to your head Uriel. All you need to do is go back up and everything will be right.”
Uriel shook her head, “It’s freedom!” She said this and held a silence waiting for him to agree. “I can never go back! Not knowing what I know. The truth. We are not agents. We’re just pieces of chess used to advance an inevitable war that will destroy everything,” She said patiently.
As the two archangels became so entangled in their conversation, they failed to notice Benjamin who had snuck close to them. With their attention being diverted, in a movement almost too fast to see, he swiped the suitcase and bolted towards the door.
“Hey!” Gabe shouted as the strange man from earlier picked up the suitcase.
Owney Madden stood up from his table. “Stop that man!” He commanded to his boys.
Without hesitation, they whipped out their tommy guns and started shooting. A great commotion swept over the room as the Cotton Club filled with screams, and people running towards exits.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Terror swept through the club as gangsters unloaded their guns towards Gabe and the man he pursued.
“Gabe!” Josephine shouted as her fellow dancers practically yanked her off the stage to safety.
Gabe bolted out of the door behind the thief. Questions swirled through the archangel’s head as he followed. Where did he come from? Who sent him? For some reason the archangel believed only the dark side would want the staff, and apparently a new player had emerged. He watched the man climb into a cherry colored Austin Seven.
Immediately he dashed behind the wheel of The Ark. It gave an almighty shudder as Gabe started the engine, and he was slammed back to the seat as he scrambled after the thief.
He was determined to recover the staff.
Every minute and every second that the staff was in the wrong hands, the world was in danger. Benjamin swirled the car onto the main road, sending a couple walking by, leaping out of the way onto the sidewalk. Gabe followed in a tight line. Saturday night in Harlem had the streets swarming with traffic and the thief wove the classic cherry car in and out of the flowing sea of cars with a surprising ease.
Sirens crept up on Gabe’s left. He peered over his shoulder and saw it was a policeman following behind on a motorcycle. Gabe leaned out of the window.
“Pull over you crazy nut!” The Policeman shouted with his fist pounding in the air.
Gabe was annoyed, he had to shake him. While keeping the thief in his laser sight, he drove The Ark straight down the middle lane, pivoting traffic from left to right as each car came his way.
Looking forward he could see the thief around eighty yards ahead, while the cop was drawing closer to his left, the archangel could almost feel a hand reach for the steering wheel.
The archangel looked out at the road ahead of him to assess the situation. A trolley was rushing towards his right a few yards ahead, with that came a chance to gain fifty yards on the thief.
With a tight-lipped smile, he stamped his foot into the floorboard, held the wheel firmly at a quarter to three, and zoomed past the trolley, while the policeman reeled out of control on his motorcycle.
Gabe looked in the rearview mirror and saw the policeman crashing into a hot dog stand on the sidewalk. Looking ahead, he could almost feel the staff within his grasp, his foot pressed ironclad to the floorboard, and The Ark roared as it rammed Benjamin from behind.
The cherry colored car dove in the opposite lane, and still Gabe was on him like a hawk with its talons outstretched for its prey. As The Ark came to the rear bumper of Benjamin’s car again, the thief pivoted to the right, Gabe followed, making a car to his immediate left pull off the road. Gabe shifted the gear, and The Ark roared as he lurched forward.
Significantly and frighteningly The Ark increased in speed, eighty-five, ninety-five, one hundred and ten, and faster.
Most cars on the road could only push seventy mph to the max. Gabe concluded that the car the thief was using couldn’t have come from 1920. Either that or it was supernaturally enhanced.
Finally, the archangel had enough of this cat-and-mouse game. He was going to rip that case from the thief by any means necessary.
Gabe reached forward to the dashboard and flicked up a red switch. The thin high whine of machinery on the brink of torment tore at his eardrums, and The Ark gave an almost perceptible kick forward. Gabe drove like a bat out of hell, but luckily further downtown had very little traffic on the road. He made a sudden swirl onto the street that caused someone to toot their horn.
Up ahead he saw that the cherry colored car had crashed into a water hydrant. Benjamin climbed out of the car and entered the construction site of a nearby towering building.
Gabe pressed a flashing yellow button on the dash of The Ark, and all at once, the car swerved to a stop, the roof opened, and the archangel went flying out. Gabe catapulted up a few hundred feet, and he shed his lone angelic wing propelling him further. He could not maneuver as quickly with one wing and so he felt handicapped. Instead, he used the force he was catapulted with to get as close to the thief as possible. Gabe’s speed was now frightening as he tightened his wing. Cold wind brushed at his face as he tore through the air like an eagle.
“Access,” He called to his SMITE matrix.
His vision changed and he could see through the walls of the construction site, a lone red body ran up through the center. Already he c
ould feel himself losing speed, and such difficulty it came to navigate the wind with one wing. For a sliver of a second, he worried about crashing hard to the ground as the wind pulled him against his own direction.
Gabe narrowed his wing and shot at the site like a torpedo filled with holy fury. Now with his head tucked between his arms, in one blur of motion, he shattered through the wall, descended upon the thief, and sent the case flying out of his hand.
To Gabe’s surprise, the thief rose gingerly to his feet. He wasn’t human, the archangel concluded. For a brief moment, he paused. Gabe sniffed to detect any sign of demonic energy radiating off of the thief but shockingly he detected nothing.
No scent of sulfur.
No sign of possession.
Benjamin was huffing as he stood on his feet. He had seen enough to know Gabriel was not working alongside Uriel. Still he was cautious about trusting an archangel for he knew how dangerous they were, and how cut throat they can be for advancing their mission. “We are not your enemy archangel. We only want to remove this threat from our world.”
Gabe was baffled. He considered the man for a bit, as he studied him closer, the archangel allowed himself to look past the flesh and into the spirit. “Ahhh,” Gabe said out loud as suddenly it came to him.
The archangel had allowed the chaos in the mission to cloud his perception of the man. There was not evil in him but something else. It was the mark of The Creator. He cracked his head to the side, “Are you one of the Anointed?”
Benjamin nodded as he presented the inside of his left wrist. “Yes I am.” A tattoo of a cross with the bottom fashioned into a sword was etched in black, it was the mark of the Anointed, The Creator’s chosen warriors.
Gabe smiled as he placed his hands on his hips. “Nice. You should see the SMITE sigil on my back.” He took a calming breath before he went into a rant. “I wish you had just said something sooner. Maybe come over to the table and say hey I’m a part of the Anointed can I help or buy you a drink. Either one would’ve been better than just snatching the case, and having me chasing you all over New York. I’ve already got in trouble for blowing up Midtown. Now I’m probably going to hear about this.”
Benjamin exhaled hard. “I didn’t know if I could trust you.”
Gabe looked at him sternly. “Well you can. Now give me the briefcase,” He demanded with his hand outstretched.
Benjamin thought for a moment about Colonel Brown’s orders, and whether or not he could trust the archangel. Oddly there was something very human in Gabe’s behavior, and the resolve in the archangel’s eyes added more to his credibility. All of this made Benjamin believe he could trust him. With hesitation, he held out the briefcase and walked towards Gabriel.
Gabe could see an end to his mission in sight. For a second he sighed out in relief.
And in a second, everything changed.
Just as he could imagine himself getting chewed out again by Evelyn as he debriefed, the archangel’s heart sunk as white light cracked, and three League cyborgs appeared.
A long blade ripped into Benjamin’s back and he died instantly, falling to his knees.
Swiftly the enforcer grabbed the suitcase, pressed his chest and teleported away. In one swift strike, life had gone out of Benjamin so quickly, so utterly, that Gabe had almost seen his soul fly out of his mouth.
Two of the League strikers charged his way with their Katana’s raised. Now after all the setbacks another human emotion flooded his heart, anger.
Gabe pulled Lucy free and brought her up in a bright arc, the blade shimmering through the half-emptied room, the tip positioned to smite.
With a gut wrenching battle cry he lunged at the strikers, deflected each of their blows with his sword as they came. As steel clashed the sound echoed on the walls.
Both strikers dove towards Gabe at once. He caught the both of their blades all at once, and they charged forward, forcing him backward. With a grunt he propelled them off, and released Lucy out of the lock between both blades.
In a smooth motion, he dove low and swiped at the legs of the striker on his right, it buckled low enough that Gabe could drive his elbow into its back. A left foot came at Gabe’s face, and it nearly connected had he not spun to the other side.
Gabe stared into the slits that formed eyes of the striker, they were turning darker red, almost in sinister excitement. “The League has obtained the staff of Moses. Now we will annihilate the archangel,” it said in a robotic gloom of voice, that followed a usual rolling and tick of machinery.
A cocky grit swept across the archangel’s face. “Not today buddy boy. Lucy has a sweet song to sing for you.”
Then he was up in the air with Lucy raised high. He brought the sword hard on the cyborg and it stood its ground.
It was no match for an archangel filled with unholy fury. With this fury as his strength, Gabe overpowered the striker and brought Lucy upward in a swift slice from sternum to neck, that made the striker topple to the ground. He could almost feel the striker coming from behind, and like lightning, he spun, knocked the weapon out of its hand, and skewered the cyborg with his sword.
As the cyborgs disintegrated, a lone thought came to the archangel, he had to get back to Nia. Already he lost the weapon and now he couldn’t them get her too. He had an instinct she was in some danger. Or was it that there was the smell of danger in the air? He didn’t know. He only knew he made a terrible mistake in leaving her alone, particularly now that everyone else had gone.
Gabe had to get back to Nia. His mission would be a failure if he lost her too.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The scene inside of the Cotton club was one of utter confusion, as people were being bundled forward, trying to find a way out of the gunfire. Uriel cursed as bullets darted her way, then she looked over to Owney and saw that the black rune was still within reach. It was a few feet away from her, and the archangel concluded surely she could take it by force. She hesitated for a moment, and then decided that was her best course of action.
Uriel leaped across the table and dove on the mobster carrying the black rune. To her right a pistol rose to shoot her, in a blur of motion, she snapped the wrist.
Two mobsters wielding Tommy guns, took aim in her direction, swiftly she grabbed the case and flipped out of the way, as they blasted each other.
Case in hand, Uriel started towards the door and stopped as Owney blocked the exit. He put his two fingers in his mouth and whistled. All of a sudden there was a thunderous boom as white light crackled. Standing in the ballroom were eight League strikers who surrounded Owney in an attentive circle. Doors at the end of the hall opened at roughly the same time, and League cyborgs fanned out, creating a barrier at the door sealing off Uriel from leaving.
Uriel reached around her waist and pulled out her weapon, a scythe hook attached to a long chain and fixed to a spiked ball on the opposite end. She slipped the case on the chain, fastened it around her waist, then took her battle stance.
“Get her boys!” Owney commanded.
Uriel looked beyond the circle and spotted the striker leading the attack. He was wielding Katana swords in each hand.
Uriel paced in a tight circle like a lioness backed in a corner. The strikers that surrounded her remained still with their swords held high. All that could be heard in the tense silence was the whooshing of her chain as Uriel whirled the ball over her head, and kept the sickle end pointed at her enemies.
With a high pitched battle cry Uriel swung the ball of her kusarigama, and blundered all in the immediate circle that surrounded her. Two strikers charged at her from each side. In one motion she swung the ball, allowed the weight to flip her sideways, and sliced both enemies. Crumbling to the floor, they all fell instantly.
A Katana blade came dashing at her neck and she bent backwards to avoid it. Instinctively she could anticipate the other striker to attack her from the other side.
In a motion quicker than the eye, she straightened up and rolled over a table
. Now with both strikers opposite of her, she whirled the ball in air, seized the hand of the striker on her left, she yanked and it released the grip on its sword. The other on the right leaned in and Uriel buried the sickle in its left eye socket.
Sparks flew as the cyborg caught in Uriel’s grip flipped onto the table and then kicked at the archangel. Almost automatically, Uriel dodged the blow and countered the attack.
With both hands pulling the chain, she yanked the cyborg down off its feet, pulled it across the table, and across the floor.
As the cyborgs disintegrated into a haze of ash around her, three others charged her way with their swords held high. She shifted her hands down the chain to anchor the weight of the ball, and she tossed the sickle quicker than the lick of a flame, as she spun upwards.
The sound of the blade cutting through the armor was almost ear piercing as it whooshed through the air. More League cyborgs littered the ground. Uriel was preparing to plot her exit when a loud thud dropped through the roof.
In burnished crimson armor, the League centurion grew in a massive size as it shape shifted out of its landing state. Uriel’s eyes watched in horror as the towering cyborg began to shape and arm its weaponry.
She searched the room for a defensive strategy. When her eyes raked across the bar, her heart lurched as she heard the deafening sound of a massive gun taking aim. From the size of both of its arms, she could tell the gun attached to the forearms would be rapid fire like a gatling gun.
It happened all at once, the centurion firing and Uriel leaping behind the bar as bullets littered the ground. Wood and dust rained on the archangel as she hid behind the bar which the heavy rounds of the centurion made light work out of.
It was times like this that Uriel would’ve relied on her faith to pull her through. Now as a fallen archangel she relied on herself, both her skills and abilities. Her access to the SMITE matrix was rescinded, so she had to rely on her own instincts to find a way out of this.