by Jane Lebak
Twelve months of worry that Raphael would be angry melted like snowflakes in the sun. Gabriel closed his eyes and stayed, keeping his inner eyes trained on God but his senses trained on the Seraph.
When he let go, Raphael shifted back a little, and Gabriel scanned the area to find his other bonded Seraphim, plus Michael and Uriel, Raguel and Remiel.
His sight flickered to God, then back to Michael, familiar again with God's power flooding him. Gabriel said, "This shouldn't be. I had another day left."
Michael laughed out loud. "You fraud! I told Saraquael to make sure you hadn't counted the days!"
"You resisted just long enough for Satan to realize what we were doing," Raguel said.
Gabriel slipped backward so he sat with his wings against Raphael's.
"We learned what Satan had planned for the final day," Uriel said. "You'd probably have withstood it, but at great personal cost not only to you, but to Tobias's household as well. Fortunately, you'd written a letter asking for mercy. Using that, we interceded with God to get you reinstated sooner."
Gabriel projected his gratitude. He looked back at God, then at Michael again.
"When you resisted me, that gave Satan a window to attack." Michael sighed. "He seized hold of your senses. You saw me and thought I was him, and heaven only knows what you thought I was saying."
Gabriel turned to Raphael. "That was you?"
"God told me to go to Michael. I had no idea what I'd find." The Seraph still looked stunned. "When you grabbed me, I was just as surprised as everyone else. I thought you wouldn't be able to see me, and I knew I shouldn't be able to see you."
"I thought—" Gabriel shivered. "So the bond— It was really you?"
"Your soul recognized his," Uriel said. "Satan could blind you, but he couldn't numb your heart."
"But Satan attacked full-out because he knew then he'd lost you," Michael said.
"I thought God was punishing you because of it," Raphael said. "But you wouldn't let go, so Michael made me drag you here."
Here, Gabriel realized belatedly, was the Ring. He looked at God, then back at Raphael. "Satan had me thinking you were him. I thought the fire—that I'd been winnowed."
Raphael's heart in Gabriel's acknowledged the fear. Gabriel closed his eyes and looked at the Vision again.
When he looked back up, Michael was talking, but he didn't follow it. He looked back into the Vision, then back at Michael.
"Enough for now." Raphael turned Gabriel back to face the throne. "Do what you need to. We'll be here when you're ready."
Gabriel grasped his hand, took a long gaze at the Seraph's eyes, and then relaxed back into the Vision of the glory of the Father he loved, and who still loved him.
Children In Hell
576 BC
Atop Jerusalem's main gate, Michael screamed at God. With the Babylonians surrounding the city, he begged, he yelled, he insisted, and then no matter how he listened, God didn't reply.
Anything. Just anything, anything that resembled permission and Michael could save them. They'd saved Jerusalem before. He could save them again – but this time God was silent.
Kneeling at Michael's side, Uriel prayed for mercy. Gabriel prayed too. At the other gates, Remiel, Saraquael, Raguel and Raphael stood guard and prayed for reprieve. But after a thirty-month siege, God met their pleas with only silence.
Half of Hell is here, Michael prayed. Please don't let them win. These are your people. They'll give glory to you eventually. Somehow. They've fouled it up, but you've been merciful before. Why not now?
The Babylonians smashed into the gate, then smashed again. Beneath his feet, the structure shuddered. Michael whispered, "Please have mercy."
The gate crumbled. Stone toppled out from beneath Michael's feet, but there he remained in midair, hands clasped at his chest, head bowed.
The Babylonians roared with triumph as the first group of soldiers scaled the fallen stones. Others cleared the rubble to make a faster passage for the rest. Jerusalem's army met them at the gates, but that trickle of soldiers was about to become a tsunami, and Michael could do nothing at all.
Demons crowded the sky. Michael crumbled, and in the next moment Gabriel wrapped him in soft grey wings, pulling him into one of the houses and shielding him from their enemies.
"You might as well let them have me," Michael choked. "I can't protect my own people. I failed them."
"You're obeying God," Gabriel murmured, holding him closer. Michael yanked away, but Gabriel added, "You would save the nation if you could."
Michael snapped, "I can't. Maybe back at the beginning of time I should just have shut up and let Satan do whatever he wanted then, too. We'd have survived. And it's not like I stopped him. I'm useless."
"You're not useless." Gabriel took his hand. "If you're up to it, we need to get to work."
Michael opened his hands. "You're going to force God to save them?"
Gabriel said, "We can't save the nation. But the people – those are fair game. The nation came under judgment. God didn't condemn every individual soul."
Michael stared into Gabriel's eyes where they gleamed in the dark. "We can?"
Gabriel said, "I intend to until God tells me no."
And God hadn't told him no yet. That meant—
Michael flashed them to the top of the palace. "I need you to go through the building and tell me how many of the royal family are still in there. The Messiah will come from the House of David, so let's make sure there's still a lineage for him to come from."
Gabriel vanished. Saraquael appeared. "They're marching on the Temple with torches. I think they're going to burn it."
Michael's eyes gleamed. "Good. The Presence of God already vacated the Temple, so let's give them something interesting to do that isn't going to mean anything. Can you slow them down a bit?"
Startled, Saraquael said, "I think I can—"
"Bring Remiel. She can suppress the flames so it burns, but not too quickly."
Gabriel reappeared. "I've marked fifteen people for rescue."
"Raguel!" Michael called, and when the Principality appeared, he pointed to Gabriel. "Work with him. Get the royal family to safety. Even if they're taken prisoner, try to convince the Babylonians to keep them alive."
The palace and the Temple: the two main targets for an army bent on sending up a signal to a conquered people. And in addition to being large targets, they were hard-to-destroy targets. "Make it take a while," Michael kept ordering Archangels. At his side, Raphael helped guardians and other ministering angels hurry people out the holes Babylon had made in the walls while inside, the Babylonians made a god of chaos.
Hours into the battle, long after sunset, Uriel appeared. "Camael is here."
Michael called, "Remiel!" and when she answered, he said, "I need you out at the Babylonian encampment, where they're bringing the prisoners. Make sure they stay calm and don't get slaughtered."
From a distance came her reply: Acknowledged.
Michael turned back to Uriel. "Anything else?"
"Yes. You." Uriel frowned. "Raphael, you're needed."
Before Michael could ask why, Raphael appeared: shaking, pale. Raphael said, "You're worn to the core." He put a hand on Michael's forehead and fed strength into him. "I can't mend you completely, but—"
Michael took a deep breath, feeling strength return. He hadn't realized how tired he'd become with the constant battling, constant delegating and decision-making. "Get Gabriel to strengthen you."
Raphael said, "All my bonded Cherubim have given me everything they have. Gabriel's a curious shade of olive right about now. Get some rest before you do anything else, so the healing will take."
"You rest yourself." Michael listened with surprise to how tinny his own voice sounded, as though he had lost all the bass and tenor and could only rattle his vocal chords. "You've probably been busiest of us all."
"This is a nightmare," Raphael said. "You've been great, though. Thanks."
; Raguel called for help, and both Uriel and Raphael answered. Michael summoned Saraquael. "You're in charge."
Saraquael bowed. "Sure, now that the worst is past, I'll take credit." Michael forced a smile, and Saraquael sent him off with a blessing.
Michael flashed himself someplace quiet, someplace dark where he could take Raphael's advice. He landed in the palace's lightless abandoned basement.
Opening his gaze to include non-visible light, he sat on a wooden box and rested his forehead on his palms and raised his wings like a jade tent. His heart instinctively reached for God's, inviting Him under that canopy, into a Holy of Holies the invasion hadn't destroyed. So tired. God accepted his invitation and remained there with His own wings folded in, making Himself small enough to be contained and large enough to fill that ragged hole. Neither spoke, each included within the other in layers as deep as desert sand.
A door banged and a child shrieked.
Five children pelted down the steps and right through Michael, unable to see him. A sixth doubled back to hide beneath the staircase.
A Babylonian charged in pursuit, a sword in one hand and a torch in the other. He barked a laugh that smelled suspiciously of alcohol before stalking into the darkness.
Halfway down, the hidden boy stuck a wooden bar through the steps and tripped the soldier across his ankles. The soldier tumbled, and as he went down, the torch landed on the steps.
Michael gasped. The child streaked from beneath the stairs and disappeared into the dark, the soldier lunging for him. He left the torch on the dry wood, instead picking up his sword. His anger blew through Michael like a flame-thrower.
Michael looked for another way out, but there wasn't one. God, he'll let himself burn with them!
The steps ignited. Michael tried to draw the soldier's attention to the only way out, but the man hunted for the children. He swung his sword into the darkness, shouting, threatening. He hit a support, grazed the wall, but never turned back toward the staircase. A palpable evil clung to him, a smoky aftertaste surrounding a hardened heart.
One of the children ran for the staircase, but it was already burning. The child stood, wide-eyed, then darted back into the darkness.
They can't hide forever, Michael prayed. Please. Please give me permission. So many people died today. Please don't start the new day with new deaths.
Michael paced the basement, feeling his way through the walls, the beams, the boxes. Behind him, the stairway crackled as it was consumed, but Michael opened his ears to hear everything else. Two children crouched very close to him. One child whispered, "There's a window. We'll stand on the boxes."
Even Michael had to look upward at that window. They'd need at least four boxes.
The boy and girl slid over a box, but the soldier heard the scraping and ran to them. They scattered.
Okay. At least now the kids had hope. Michael tried to distract the soldier, drawing him away from the window to the far side of the basement.
The boy and the girl found their friends where they hid and told them their plan. When the Babylonian heard their whispers and came after them, two ran noisily to the other side and three went to work stacking boxes, the last beating out any flames that came close.
By now the basement had filled with smoke. Shadows flashed one way and the other, revealing the children's profiles as the little ones moved. The Babylonian shouted as he charged after the children. Michael stood in a veritable hell.
The children stacked four boxes but then scattered as the soldier returned and knocked them over again.
Michael drew his sword. "Stop!" he shouted in Akkadian. "Why are you doing this? Leave these children alone!"
The Babylonian could not see what had called him, but he struck at Michael anyway. Parrying the blow, Michael felt the Lord making him more solid than before, the sword more dense, his body flesh-and-blood. He retained his wings, and their added balance gave him an advantage.
The children gasped at seeing a bonafide angel come to their rescue, but immediately resumed making a stack of boxes.
Swordplay had earned Michael his position, a sword forged from a will Lucifer himself had not shattered even after he'd shattered the sword. Michael checked out the children. Four boxes, and they worked on another. They had moved crates to either side to form a pyramid.
Michael disarmed the Babylonian; while the soldier groped for his weapon, Michael looked at the children—the last box was the most difficult. He wondered if he ought to help them, but then the soldier retrieved his sword, and Michael knew that if he helped them stack boxes he would be as much good as just another child. They needed him for his specialty, for his sword and his skill, and whatever remained of his strength.
Michael turned on the Babylonian in one strong swing that knocked the soldier into the far wall. The children stacked the last box and reached the ground floor. One by one they slipped upstairs.
The Babylonian regained his feet and attacked Michael with full force, not letting the barrage ease at all. His heart raced, and every muscle strained as he tried to stave off an attack driven by utter frenzy, by an unreasonable lust to kill Israelites: this Babylonian hated these children because of their birthplace, but Michael defended them for their faith. The soldier swung and swung and struck in a definite rhythm, and Michael concentrated his fatigued senses on the battle.
Then one blow came that surprised him, and it knocked him to the floor.
The last child to climb lost his balance, disloding the top box as he fell. He gasped as the Babylonian caught sight of him. Disregarding Michael, he closed in for the child.
Michael launched himself. In heat thicker than blood, he might have been a demon, and his wings scissored as he thrust his sword. Like blue needles through the smoke, his eyes pierced the power-madness of the Babylonian and forced him away from the child.
That's when the solider realized he was fighting an angel.
With his wings pressed against the basement ceiling, Michael made one blow that took the soldier's life.
The child huddled on the floor, hiding from whichever soldier had won. Michael left his sword sheathed in the body and replaced the top crate, then helped the child to a stand. The last child was about to crawl outside when he turned around.
"Thank you," he said.
His friends pulled him out, and the six children fled.
Michael felt God call him back to angelic form, and he yielded. He sat in the basement flames with his sword encased in a dead body, and he cried for Jerusalem.
An hour before sunrise, the soldiers had calmed down, but the air stayed smoky. Remiel reported King Zedekiah in flight to the plains of Jericho, but Babylon had many of the upper class and priests in chains, readied for a trip to another land.
Where the Temple used to be, Michael stood in the soot and closed his eyes. He remembered the altar, remembered the tapestry and the ornaments and the incense. Remembered the prayers and the people and the mercy.
Gabriel shuffled through the charred remains, focused into the ground. He paced, then paced back, and finally he plunged down one hand and came up with a burnt stone carved in the shape of a pomegranate. His focus altered, and Michael felt him asking a question, felt him receive an answer. Head bowed, Gabriel cradled the stone in both hands. "Thank you," he murmured.
Michael said, "Why are you keeping that?"
"I paid too much learning this lesson to chance forgetting it. Stone pomegranates have no taste." Gabriel turned. "How are you holding up? You did so well. You helped everyone."
Michael opened his hands and took in the city. "Everyone." He scanned the horizon: the smoke, the rubble, the dead in the streets. "Why?" His voice broke, and then he had his face in his hands and his wings all around himself, and he dropped to his knees in the Temple's cremains. "Why did it come to this?"
Gabriel wrapped around him, and Michael braced for a Cherub's onslaught of answers: the Will of God and the future and the coming Messiah and God's Plan…only Gabriel said non
e of that. Michael relaxed, and Gabriel rested his head against his.
Gabriel sang, "By the rivers of Babylon, the rivers, we sat and wept, remembering Zion. We hung up our harps on the willows."
Michael fought tears.
Gabriel sang, "For there our tormenters demanded a melody, a song of Zion."
Michael swallowed hard, then sang in a lower register, a different song, a psalm from a better time: "Our feet are standing in your gates, Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the city, so close and tight, where the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, to praise the name of the Lord."
Gabriel continued, "How can we sing of the Lord in a foreign land?"
When he faltered, Michael took the counter point to Gabriel's tune: "There stand the thrones of Judgment, the thrones of the house of David."
Gabriel went on: "If I forget you, Jerusalem, let me forget my right hand."
Michael couldn't sing aloud. He just projected it: Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May those who love you be secure.
"Let my tongue stick to my mouth if I don't remember you, if I don't treasure Jerusalem as my joy."
May there be peace within your walls and security in your citadel.
"Remember, Lord, remember the day of Jerusalem, those who said 'Raze it! Raze it to its foundation."
For my friends and family, to them all, I say peace be with you.
Gabriel stopped singing. He looked stricken.
Michael whispered, "It's just a city. We helped the people."
Gabriel shook his head. "It was a city. A city is made of people."
The moon set. Michael intoned the morning prayer while Gabriel listened. And then, as Michael readied himself to check on Remiel and a fleeing Zedekiah, Gabriel spoke, his voice a mix of tenor and soprano. "There will be a new Ark and a new Covenant."
Michael's wings flared. "What?"
Gabriel gave a little shake of his head. "What?"
"What did you just say?"
"I…" He sat up, focused, then exclaimed, "A new Ark and a new Covenant?" He looked at Michael, then held the stone pomegranate to his lips. "Thank you."