by Jane Lebak
It wasn’t a sustained blast. The idea was to hit it once, hard, with all their energy so the shock wave would travel through the structure. The Cherubim had timed the blast, then pumped all their energy into the Seraphim, who sucked it out like a vacuum as they fired everything from their double-store of power.
Gabriel brought up their wings to shield them from the concussion. He wasn’t in a form anymore, just a dissociated soul with no energy to simulate even a subtle body. Unable to sense anything, he waited for any of his power to return, because he’d sent everything into that blast.
God—wow.
Sensation returned with a tingle, and he started pulling himself back together.
At some point he realized Saraquael had collected him and brought him back to the others, thrilled but quiet, supporting him but with his attention riveted elsewhere. As Gabriel forced himself back into a spiritual form, Saraquael said, “Can you see it?”
Gabriel couldn’t negate it, either with words or nonverbally. Saraquael helped him get his wings under control, and a moment later Gabriel focused in the general direction Saraquael was pointing.
He reached for Raphael and Israfel, found them equally spent, and could not feel Ophaniel through them.
“This is awesome.” Mephistopheles hovered on Gabriel’s other side. “Too bad you didn’t witness the initial blast. Hell lit up with it, and the entire cube is resonating like a bell. Try to listen before it dissipates.”
Gabriel extended his soul. All of Sheol pulsed like a wave, a deep drone as the stress passed back and forth, slightly out of tune, a structure leaning one way and then the next. He patched Raphael and Israfel into what he felt, and they reacted with surprise.
“Lucifer’s blast was brighter,” Beelzebub said.
“That doesn’t surprise me.” Gabriel struggled to clear his head. “We needed to hit it just right, not harder.”
“You hit it just right,” Mephistopheles said, “but it’s not going down.”
Gabriel could tell that on his own. While impressive, the structural resonance was diminishing without the walls noticeably weakening.
Satan said, “This is ridiculous. Belior, could I in theory boost it by hitting it at the right frequency?”
“Theoretically,” Belior said. “I’ll help you time it.”
At Satan’s voice, Gabriel tensed and tried to pull together.
Saraquael projected a feeling of safety: he should relax. Besides, Satan had gone now.
Gabriel reached again for Raphael, who checked him over from a distance. You’re spent.
Gabriel tried to move away from Saraquael and then decided he’d better wait.
At that moment, a blast ignited an entire side of Sheol, illuminating the husk of Hell’s outer limits with an orange-white gash. Gabriel shut his eyes and still could see the light rocketing backward from the impact.
Asmodeus and Beelzebub cheered.
“Oh,” Saraquael whispered. “I’d forgotten—”
God, that light… So brilliant, so powerful, and such a loss when it had turned to illuminate only itself. I wish— I just wish he’d stayed.
Gabriel listened for the resonance. The sound was even more chaotic than before, but after a moment it became obvious the walls still weren’t coming down.
Asmodeus huffed. “What did God brace that thing with?”
A second flash blinded them as Satan hit it again (How much energy does he have?) but the resonance didn’t increase.
Satan returned, shaking but able to stand on his own. Chalky white, Belior glowed for both of them.
Gabriel said, “That was amazing.”
Satan smirked at him,. “It was a bit much for Belior.”
“I managed.” Belior pulled his wings tight to his shoulders in an attempt to keep the feathers from trembling. He glanced at Asmodeus, and then he stood a little straighter.
Gabriel wished he had a Seraph to draw power from too, but the only Seraphim available were just as wiped out as he was.
Michael said, “When you four are recovered a bit, we need another plan.”
Gabriel looked around. “Where’s Ophaniel?”
From behind him, Michael said, “I’ve got him.”
Gabriel turned to find Ophaniel in Michael’s arms. The Cherub was still limp.
“He’ll be all right,” Raphael said. “I checked him out. I guess he channeled more into Israfel than you did into me.”
Gabriel didn’t probe further to find out if that was an insult. Sheol’s resonance had dimmed to a buzzing, a bell no longer sounding but not yet still.
Michael said, “I’m up for any other ideas.”
Mephistopheles said, “I’ll check for damage at the impact points,” and he flashed away.
“Only human souls can get in,” Belior said. “So if one of you wants to become human, I’ll kill you.”
“Are you serious?” Israfel said.
“No, I’m not.” From the way Belior deadpanned it, Gabriel could tell he genuinely hadn’t been. “If one of you became human and I killed you, you’d turn back into an angel and not be very happy.”
“Ah. Cherub humor.” Israfel folded her arms. “The first oxymoron.”
Belior glanced at Gabriel with a grin, and Gabriel felt himself smile back.
Mephistopheles returned. “Unchanged.”
Michael folded his arms and his wings, and he bit his lip.
Gabriel straightened suddenly.
Raphael and Israfel looked right at him.
Gabriel turned to Belior. “How do you conjure the spirits of the dead?”
Belior shook his head. “Trade secret.”
Mephistopheles’ eyes sparkled. “We’ll tell you only if you join us.”
Satan said, “You want to try conjuring him out of Sheol?”
“I’m wondering if we can use the same mechanism to extract him.”
“Conjuring is not extraction,” Belior said. “It’s sleight of hand.”
“Go on,” Gabriel said.
Behind him, Ophaniel awoke.
“Explain the process,” Satan said. “We want him out of there, no matter what we have to put on the table.”
Mephistopheles brightened. “There are three fissures in the wall of Sheol—”
“Two,” said Belior.
“—that borders on Hell. They’re hairline cracks, but it’s enough to grab small strands of a person’s soul and amplify whatever they want to say.”
“How do you find the soul?” Gabriel couldn’t picture this at all. “There have to be half a billion people in Sheol already.”
Belior made a light image in his hands, rays streaming from a cube. “Even though the humans are dead, they still carry connections to the people and things they were attached to while alive. If they’ve got unfinished business, they maintain some awareness of that for a while after their death.”
Gabriel remembered Jesus on the hilltop, looking over all humanity, and he nodded.
Belior continued, “So with the more recently dead ones, the ones people would want to summon anyhow, you stand a decent chance of tracing them by finding something they were attached to and following it backward.”
Gabriel’s forehead furrowed. “You’re saying you don’t pull the person himself out of Sheol.”
Belior shook his head. “The fissure is narrow as a thread. Coaxing even the strand out is tricky. Once we have a grasp on the strand, though, we can send and receive, and we amplify it in order to transmit to the living person whatever information we obtain.”
Gabriel folded his arms. “I’m still thinking we can use this somehow. Can I study the fissures?”
Belior flashed himself and Gabriel to a cavern within Hell, shining to illuminate the area. After a moment, the other angels began joining them.
Belior showed Gabriel the one flat wall in the cave, the spot where the expected jagged rocks abruptly transformed into a polished smoothness at a right angle to the rest of the area. “There are two fissures, b
ut this is the one we use. It starts here,” and he touched a spot at about the limits of his reach, “and it runs like this,” he traced raggedly, “until it tapers off here,” at about knee height.
Gabriel touched the wall. “I can’t feel it at all.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.” Belior shrugged. “Do you want to feel one of those strands?”
Gabriel nodded.
Belior pressed his hands to the wall. While he worked, Gabriel checked out the other angels. Raphael and Israfel looked stronger now, much the way he felt. Even Ophaniel seemed more stable. Satan didn’t appear to have been weakened by firing twice, especially now that his wings had stopped shaking.
“Okay, I’ve got one wrapped up.” Belior gestured for Gabriel to come closer. “Try to feel through the wall for the fissure. It’s right here.” He pressed Gabriel’s hand to the wall.
With his hand sandwiched between the stone of death and an angel without grace, ice shot up his arm.
He closed his eyes. At first he sensed nothing, but then he murmured, “Oh!”
“Send your mind into the fissure,” Belior whispered. “Follow the line out from my heart into it.”
A filament tender as cornsilk, curled around the edges of the stone and then up beneath his touch.
“There.” Belior’s voice was barely louder than breathing.
Gabriel shivered.
“Trust me, I’d rather not have you touch it either, but you wanted to learn.” His voice was a little louder.
Israfel-in-Gabriel steadied him. The strand felt far more solid than it looked, like a vein filled with blood. What is it?
It’s an old man I own.
Gabriel jerked back from the wall.
“We had an iron-clad contract. He agreed, and I came out to his farm twice a week for the rest of his life to make it rain.” Belior smiled as if looking at his own offspring. “Make it rain and you’ll never be out of work. He died, and I made sure it didn’t rain for six years until someone remembered Granddad’s weird old practices. Now I own a family.”
Gabriel flinched. “So when you open the fissure, he reaches for you?”
“The connection is there. There’s no volition involved.” Belior shrugged. “Feel it again, but open your senses out wider. Thousands of strands are poking through.”
Now that he knew what he was feeling for, Gabriel could sense them too, but only by the dozens.
“I’ve always loved making it rain,” Beelzebub said from behind them.
Belior said, “And I’ve always resented the fact that you came up with Ba’al worship before I did.”
“You had to love the ceremonies,” Beelzebub said. “Hieros gamos. Anthropomorphic religion at its very best.”
“You’re making me sick,” Gabriel snapped, “and if I’m in the corner retching, we’re not getting into Sheol.”
Beelzebub snickered.
Mephistopheles slipped around Beelzebub, running one wing across him as he passed. “Can you recognize Jesus in the threads?”
Belior projected in the negative.
Gabriel leaned against the wall and folded his arms. “Let me run through the sequence of events again. Someone contacts a witch and asks to contact the dead. The witch contacts you, and you identify the person’s strand, then send the information back to the witch.”
“Essentially,” Mephistopheles said. “The boondoggle is in isolating the thread, since not every soul produces one. There are only about ten thousand penetrating from the fissure, and naturally the odds are against grabbing the one they’re requesting. That’s why we identify something the person was attached to.”
Gabriel frowned as he let off a long breath.
“What was he most attached to?” Satan said.
“People,” Michael said. “Humanity.”
Satan huffed. “I mean what was he really attached to.”
Michael’s eyes narrowed. “And I mean people. Humanity.”
“What else was he attached to?”
“His mother,” Israfel said.
Belior rubbed his chin. “He handed her off to one of those guys. There won’t be a strand for her.”
Gabriel said, “But Raphael had a bond with him, and as he pointed out before, that bond wasn’t destroyed by death.”
Everyone fell silent.
Then Mephistopheles whispered, “The connection doesn’t have to have originated within Sheol. One originating from the outside is just as valid and might be easier to follow.”
Belior brightened. “We never had the person’s guardian helping us before.”
Gabriel stepped toward Raphael. “So let’s try with that.”
“Well, there are two other conditions,” Belior said. “Without meeting them it doesn’t work.”
Mephistopheles said, “The request has to be made at night. And it has to be made by a female.”
“It’s still nighttime in Jerusalem,” Beelzebub said, “so you’re one down.”
“Ask his mother,” said Asmodeus.
The angels all choked on either objections or laughter.
“What they’re trying to say,” Michael said, “is that she won’t have anything to do with this.”
“It’s her son.”
“There’s no way she would get involved.” Michael turned to Israfel. “We’re going to have to ask you to do the honors.”
Israfel said, “But Belior could touch the strands before.”
Belior nodded. “Males can touch them. You can’t pull on them unless you’re female.”
Mephistopheles said, “You can pull them, to be technical, but then they snap back like harp strings and make an interesting vibration. You could play music on them if you wanted.”
Belior laughed. “You can’t put pressure on them to tighten them, so it’d be a matter of remembering which of ten thousand strands plays a B-flat and which one is the G, and so on.”
“What would you play?” Mephistopheles said, and Belior answered automatically, “From Out of the Depths.”
Satan said, “Belior—”
“I’m joking!” said the Cherub, turning toward him with glinting eyes even as Asmodeus laughed.
Israfel approached the wall. “Show me how to find the strands.”
While Mephistopheles demonstrated, Gabriel turned toward Raphael. Are you all right with this?
Just get him out of there.
I’m doing my best.
Keep doing it, then. We haven’t made any progress.
Gabriel realized his wings were half-spread as if he were preparing for an attack. I’m going to need to ride through your mind to follow that connection and guide Israfel to pull it out.
Raphael shrugged. You’ve picked through my mind before. You do what you have to.
Sick at heart, Gabriel turned back to Ophaniel. “Can you find any major flaws in the plan?”
“Do you know what you’re going to do once you’ve established contact?”
“If I knew what I was doing, this wouldn’t be experimental.” Gabriel rubbed his chin. “He’s not without power of his own. Once we draw him up close, he might be able to do something from the other side.”
Ophaniel sent, I don’t like this.
Gabriel shrugged. We haven’t got a better option.
Israfel said, “Gabriel, we’ve got a problem. I can’t find the strands.”
Belior glanced over from where he was talking with Asmodeus. “Seraphim sometimes have trouble listening for them. If you get really quiet, you should be able to find them.”
Mephistopheles said, “Beelzebub never found one. Come to think of it, neither did Asmodeus.”
Belior bristled. “It’s not his fault. It’s just a Seraph thing.”
“But she’s a Seraph.”
Michael said, “One of you two should change, then.”
“Oh, gee, I never thought of that before in four thousand years.” Belior folded his arms and cocked his head. “Don’t I feel stupid?”
Mephistopheles sai
d, “It has to have been created female.”
Israfel said, “Maybe if we call Zadkiel?”
Gabriel felt Raphael’s attention boring into him.
He took a deep breath, tried to quell the momentary fear of being in such a close space with so many male angels and five male demons, and letting out that breath, Gabriel had become female. “I’ll do it.”
She ignored whether any of the others were staring the way Israfel was. Gabriel had been created female. It was this body’s normal form, and because gender was as easily changeable to an angel as a suit of clothes—speaking of clothes, she mentally adjusted her armor—being female was fine; it was just more comfortable to stay the other way. She’d been male ever since Sodom because — well, because, but it would be okay for now.
Gabriel sidled around contact with any of the others as she approached the fissure. “I’ll still need you bracing me, Israfel. Once I’ve got it, you should be able to follow my lead and grab hold as well. I don’t know how hard it will be to pull.”
Satan moved in close. “Do you realize your power is marginally greater in this form?”
Gabriel took an involuntary step backward and felt herself right up against the wall. “Do you realize how little I care about that?” Evil was in her face and death at her spine. “Israfel, are you ready? Raphael, let me in.”
Raphael didn’t move closer, but Michael had, and his hand was on his sword. “Don’t touch Gabriel. Let Gabriel work alone.”
The demons backed off, but not before Gabriel caught Beelzebub’s glance at Asmodeus.
Michael brought up his wings, and Gabriel met them, forming something of a tent.
You’re still weak, Michael sent.
I’m doing all right, Gabriel replied. It’s not hard to recover from a deep discharge.
Do you think this has any chance of working?
We have to try.
You don’t have to try. Michael’s eyes glinted. Moreover, you don’t have to try right now. I’ll send you out of here in a heartbeat.
Raphael blazed inside her heart, and she closed her eyes.
Michael urged, Raphael’s furious, but that’s no reason to push yourself to the brink. You’ve done enough.