by Wall, Nathan
“It wasn’t time, you fool!” Michael yelled.
“Did I tell you to stop looking for the key?” Ryan asked Set, snapping his fingers. “Find it, dog.”
“You don’t get it, do you boy?” Set kept stepping back. “You’re done for.”
“So are you,” Michael added.
“There’s no beating him.” Set nodded Michael’s direction. “You’re as good as dead. We’ll wait for the next chance at the prophecy.”
“We’ll see about that,” Ryan growled.
Stop, Jarrod urged. Rethink this.
Ryan lunged for Michael and Set leapt out of the way. Ryan cracked Michael across the face, followed with a blow to the midsection, and finished with a jumping butterfly kick. Michael soared down the end of the street and crushed the side of a car.
Ryan looked at Set, laughing, “You were saying?”
“How stupid you are.” Set pointed behind Ryan.
Ryan spun around and was met by a soaring Michael. In a matter of seconds the Archangel pushed Ryan outside the city limits. Reality seemed to flicker and vibrate. They moved so fast, up and down had no meaning. Their collision created a noise twice as loud as a sonic boom. Ryan came to when Michael—still flying—pushed his head into the ground and repeatedly pummeled his face.
Michael stopped, flew straight up, and slung Ryan back to the ground. Ryan crashed, puncturing a crater into the dirt, creating a rippling wave of earth. He tried pushing up, but Michael was too fast, shoving him back down.
“This was not our time,” Michael said, kicking Ryan onto his back. His blade light sizzled into form. “Father said I would know it when the right one came for me. Yet I look at you and I see it not.”
“More gibberish,” Ryan growled. “I’m going to enjoy draining your aura and ripping your head off.”
Michael sliced and missed. Ryan rolled between his foes legs and swiped his feet out from under him. It was his turn to deliver punishment. He made it count. Blue fames fueled by souls consumed his fists as he tore into Michael. Ryan channeled all his kinetic energy into a rotating jump punch which snapped into Michael’s chest and sent him blowing through an abandoned, medieval stone church. The overgrown wheat fields which surrounded the area bowed to the wind caused by the blow.
Michael steadied himself midflight, flapped his wings and zipped forward. Ryan sprinted with all he could muster into a collision course. His body was consumed with flaring blue light. Their impact rumbled through the earth. What followed was darkness.
Is this it? Jarrod said. The show broadcast to him was gone. There were no sounds, no smells, no tingling sensation where his hands used to be. Just emptiness. Did Michael win?
“Hardly.” Ryan opened his eyes. The show flickered until the signal strength returned. The air around him was cluttered with a dust cloud. A mild breeze blew an opening for him, allowing stray rays of sunlight to penetrate the brown haze.
Ryan stumbled over towards the church. The ground around it had cracked open, rupturing its foundation. The steeple had toppled over in the commotion. He rummaged through the debris as the haze blew away. When everything cleared up, he spotted Michael at a farm across the fields, kneeling over the dead and taking their souls. A pink light popped over Michael and released him to Ryan’s six. Ryan turned and noticed the bruising on Michael’s had face cleared.
“More needlessly killed.” Michael stood completely still. “We’ll have to reset the clock. Precious time has been wasted because of you and Set.”
“I knocked you down.” Ryan shook. Even Jarrod could feel his sense of panic. “No way you got up before me.”
“You’re mistaken.” Michael stepped casually toward Ryan. “I never fell and never will.”
The battle resumed. For every blow Ryan landed, Michael succeeded him by four. Ryan pulled from the memories of other angels, trying to learn Michael’s moves, but his tactics and style were ever flowing, as if he were able to channel himself into someone completely different every fight, sometimes mid-fight.
Ryan went into defensive mode. He pulled his hands up to his face to protect his head at the expense of his torso. It was a swap Michael seemed fine to accept. Cross after hook, followed by palm strikes and elbows. The Archangel leader was a machine. His blows were so hard that Jarrod could feel them. Ryan’s ribs had cracked several punches ago. Now his lungs were punctured.
Michael kicked his heel into Ryan’s chest, sending him over a mile through the air, crushing his sternum. Ryan crashed, sticking into the rocky ground. Meteors were tossed into the sky by the impact.
Finally, it’s over, Jarrod sighed.
“No,” Ryan sobbed, crawling from the crater. Michael’s shadow slid over him. He pulled his arms over his head and cradled himself in the fetal position.
You’re afraid to die.
“We all are,” Ryan cried, pounding the dirt. “I deserved a life.”
I know.
“You took that from me. From us. What we could’ve been.”
Let it go, Ryan. Death isn’t something to be afraid of.
“You won’t lecture me.” The energy of the lives he’d devoured healed his body. Ryan mustered all the strength he had left and sprinted up the crater. Wings took shape and he flew as fast as he could back towards Paris. He sensed the power of every soul and aura he’d absorbed drain from his body as blood slowly dripped from his mouth.
Where are you going? Anxiety swelled through Jarrod. Leave them alone. Enough have died.
“I need more power. I’ll take Lian first,” Ryan laughed. He landed unceremoniously on his shoulder mere feet from Raphael’s destroyed chariot. “Then I’ll slowly skin Claire alive. I won’t kill her, though.”
“Jarrod, are you OK?” Claire asked, running out into the street with Lian trying to pull her back. “Listen to me, Jarrod. I know you’re in there.”
“Come back, Claire,” Lian implored.
“But I won’t end her there, Jarrod.” Ryan cracked his knuckles and lumbered toward Claire and Lian. “I’ll let her suffer while I absorb the city and kill Michael. Then I’ll make her beg.”
“I can see you’ve exhausted the power inside you.” Michael landed gracefully between Ryan and Claire with his sword of pure light in hand. He walked to Ryan. “It is unfortunate that their souls may not be returned to their resting place, but necessary for your defeat. Though I see there are two within you, at home as they should be, which is curious.”
“That’s Jarrod,” Lian yelled, running to Michael’s side. “He’s in there. He can take control.”
“No matter who lingers inside, they’re too dangerous to live.” Michael reared back and attacked but his blade was stopped by Set’s. “What is this?”
“My last effort.” Set slashed Michael across the ribs. He tossed the key to the Light of Souls over to Ryan. “For both our sakes, I hope this works.” Set dove for cover.
Every soul ever collected flowed into Ryan’s body like a black hole. His wounds healed, his armor glistened, his skin turned blue. The light was blinding. He crumpled to a knee, feeling stronger than ever before. Souls young and old, wise and ambitious, voices all stirring. Ones he recognized, like Austin, his parents, and presidents he’d read about, and families obscure and never known.
What’s going on?
Jarrod could hear Ryan’s voice assimilate among the others. Soon, his own thoughts joined the tide. They all became one. They became something else. They all became Death.
He caught Michael’s light sword and crushed it in his hand. The energy from the Light of Souls formed a protective barrier. He hooked a fist across Michael’s face, shattering the eagle helmet. The Archangel flipped backwards and landed on his stomach.
“I am what you waited for,” he said.
Michael nodded. “Yes.” He knelt, wiping the blood from his lips. “But I must try anyway.”
“Stop, Jarrod.” Claire ran over to him and wrapped her arms around him. “Look at me.” Her hands trembled when taking his. “Remember w
hat we are.”
There were too many voices. It was hard to focus on one that should take control. It was like there wasn’t a Jarrod or a Ryan. They were one again. Memories once erased from his childhood were clear as day. The other voices railed against them.
“Stand away,” Jarrod said, momentarily breaking through the power that was his fate: Death. It was short lived.
Michael reengaged and Death held up a hand. A powerful entity lingered inside the Archangel leader. It wasn’t a soul, nor was it angel. It was both, just like both halves of Ryan and Jarrod were intended to be. A deep understanding formed between the two. The four horsemen referred to the four who needed to perish in order to prepare for the final battle. Michael would be the first.
The power that fueled Michael rushed into Death and his flesh turned to ash, leaving only bone. Michael’s starstone and aurascales fused onto Death. His black exoskeleton armor turned white, but the aurascales remained pale blue.
“It worked,” Set whispered, still audible to Death. He sat up straight. “Are you going to kill me?”
Death shook his head. “Only those who are needed to complete what is necessary.” Wings of radiant white spike-like armor expanded and he slowly lifted into the air. Claire took his hand and tried pulling him back to the street. He halted, looking down at her.
“Jarrod?” she whimpered, putting her forehead to his knuckles. “For me, please. We can go home. It can stop when you say it.”
Death yanked his hand back. “The one you seek is no longer present.” He looked away, hearing a faint voice inside his consciousness try and break free from the others. “Let it be consolation enough that he knows you were right.”
Death bolted into the sky and vanished with a crack of pink energy.
Chapter Forty-Eight
The Observer
Set marched somewhat untriumphantly over to Michael’s remains. The Armada cruisers that had previously been suspended in outer space descended over the city. The other angels surrounded him and their dead leader in shock. He knelt by the skeletal remnants and sifted through them, snapping the necklace that Michael used to wear off. At the end of the necklace was a jagged piece of a larger artifact.
“His piece of the Forge.” Set merged the fractured piece with the one he’d taken from Horus, and Gabriel’s which he retrieved from Raphael. He tucked the now larger piece into his aurascales and stepped away from the dead Archangel leader. He looked over to Lian and Claire, nodding at them. His business in their lives was done. There was a sliver of remorse which wiggled its way into his heart for all the pain he’d caused them, but he quelled it just like he did all the others.
“I’m sure we’ll cross paths again.” He nodded.
“Count on it.” Lian squinted at him.
“What happened?” Chamuel asked, alarmed. “Raphael is dead. So many are dead. Is that…”
“Yes, it’s Michael,” Set interrupted him, comforting Chamuel with a warm hug. “We must leave and reorganize.”
Chamuel glared at Lian and Claire. “What of them?” He lunged but Set restrained him.
“They’re not to blame.” Set yanked Chamuel back.
“What do we do now?” Chamuel asked with lost eyes. “Our enemies will find out. We’re weak.”
“We regroup,” Set said. The two angels soared toward the Armada cruiser. “We redefine what an enemy is and prepare for what’s to come.”
“What is to come?” Chamuel asked, clearly lost. “Who will lead us now?”
Set bit back a smile. “I will,” he said, displaying Michael’s piece of the Forge. “Michael wished for us to reassemble the Forge. It’s the only way to defeat what’s been unleashed.”
***
Lian watched the large spacecrafts vanish from the sky. In all the commotion, she hadn’t gotten to truly grieve for Austin. She knelt beside his dead body, crying. She should’ve known Ryan wouldn’t keep his word. Her happy ending had been altered. A new one would need to be forged, but not now. For now, she wished to lament her losses. Tomorrow, she’d do what she’d always done: pick up and start again. It was a cold way of shutting out the pain, but it worked.
Sif and an unfamiliar angel assisted Horus and Athena over to Claire and Lian.
“They’re friends,” Horus reassured them. A cloth wrapped around his eye was soaked through with blood. “You’ve met Sif. This gentleman is Uriel.”
“My deepest condolences for the day’s events.” Uriel bowed. “I bear the shame of Heaven’s failure.”
“We all do,” Lian replied, returning to Austin’s side.
His body was cold. She stepped away, not wanting to remember him like that, but when she closed her eyes his scent and warmth eluded her. Another crippling blow.
She imagined Sanderson’s hand upon her shoulder. For a brief second, she swore he was somehow speaking to her from beyond the grave.
“Are you injured, my friend?” Athena asked Claire, hobbling over to her with Uriel’s assistance. “I’m relieved to see you alive.”
“I don’t feel alive,” Claire replied.
“We must go,” Sif insisted. “Protocol dictates that Heaven organize clean up, but in the wake of Michael’s demise we don’t want to wait around for whatever comes next.”
“Where do we go?” Uriel asked. “Earth has plunged into the start of tribulation. Heaven offers no shelter. The stars even less.”
“I know of a place,” Sif assured them. “If only you’d all trust me.”
“I do,” Horus said.
Athena, Claire, and Uriel added affirmations of their own. They waited for Lian. But what was trust, anymore? Maybe Jarrod was right, and the only way to stop the wheel from turning was to jump from it. Then again, the fact that one’s end was always altered by someone else’s means meant that she’d never really be off the wheel. What mattered now, what Austin would want, was for her to find her new end, her new goal, her new home, and fight for it.
She stood, placing a hand into Claire’s. “I trust you.”
***
The city slept well at night, for it knew not what was to come with sunrise. The wind howled like all the voices of oblivion inside his mind. It was like omnipotent power replaced his blood. An instantaneous link with those recently expired. They sought him out, drawn to what he possessed: answers.
They weren’t good answers. Downright horrible, but anything was better than aimlessly venturing across earth without form. Death was a welcome change of scenery.
As if plucked from the aether, or vibrations through space-time, a subconscious urge alerted him to when tragedy loomed. Tomorrow, this city would tear itself to shreds as a disease rampaged through it and those with means procured cures, stomping on those less fortunate. The desperate would sink into the depths of depravity to escape Death’s awaiting fingers. Like the ten plagues of Egypt, a massacre on the scale of what awaited tomorrow transcended reality and beckoned him.
“We can change it.” A voice railed against the others, like it didn’t want to belong.
There would be no changing it. This was what needed to be. To feast and grow stronger, allow fate and time to perform their duties, until the time came to defeat one of the others, just as he’d done with Michael.
Who was Claire and why did Death hzold affections for her over the many awaiting his embrace?
“There’s always a way. Different paths can lead to where we need to go.”
Maybe so. But tomorrow, this city dies.
Epilogue
The radio hummed an old-timey, banjo led composition. The speakers on the passenger side of the cobalt blue pickup were completely shot and only emitted a static clicking sound—on beat, no less. Mrs. Rigby adjusted her silver-dollar-sized bifocals and immediately placed her lace covered palms back to the ten-and-two position. She hunched forward, able to see the full gauntlet of stars because the lights of Polokwane, South Africa, had long since faded from the rear-view mirror. Even though her truck puttered along a dirt road in
the middle of nowhere, twenty miles under the speed limit, she was well aware of events elsewhere in the world.
The past year and a half had been a trying time on her faith, and her church. Friends and kids she’d seen grow up, worshiping the Lord in their small, close knit community, had suddenly abandoned the word. Some of them turned into radical militants, preparing for a ‘war of the worlds’. Others started their own fanatical religion, coordinating mass suicides, self-mutilating protests, and worst of all, in her opinion, human sacrifices to the new gods. Mrs. Rigby, however, remained steadfast, holding closely to the promise her God provided of a life ever after. It’d be a time when she could reunite with her late husband, gone ten years the coming June.
She tapped the brakes and pulled the truck into her bumpy driveway. The house sat about a football pitch’s length off the road. The brakes squealed as the car stuttered to a stop. Her white border collie greeted her with a sniff of the hands and a wag of the tail. Mrs. Rigby snapped off a piece of jerky, which her parish priest made himself, and tossed it to the dog, Parker. She grabbed the paper bag of leftovers from her church dinner—barely a handful had attended the gathering—and headed up the steps of her front porch while Parker danced around at her feet.
“Old boy, you’re going to make me fall,” she said in a shaky voice. Parker sat, looked up at her, and tilted his head to the right. She put the sack down on the kitchen counter and acknowledged him. “It’s too late for that. It’s almost bedtime.”
Parker swatted his paw at her hand.
“I said no. I’m tired and it’s late.”
Parker groaned and laid flat, resting the underside of his head on his front paws. His eyes remained fixed upon Mrs. Rigby.
She spent the next half hour catching up on the housework she’d neglected all weekend. The dishes were washed, the floors were swept, and Parker’s nap mat was scrubbed clean. Soon, she found herself with her feet up, dressed in a nightgown, reading a book about strengthening one’s faith, while the TV created some ambient noise.