Shattered Walls (Seven Archangels Book 3)

by Jane Lebak

  They didn’t point at Zadkiel. They were all of them pointing off to the East. Even Zadkiel had turned her face in that direction.

  Michael tried to speak, but for a moment nothing emerged. Instead he could only imagine Hastle lying on a cell floor in Heaven, completely bereft.

  It should hurt more than it did. Remiel’s body should have been bleeding, shivering, convulsing, something, but human bodies didn’t show pain the same way an angelic one would. She should have been lying in a pool of blood. Satan had left her, clean and unbroken, in a heap on the floor, but it didn’t matter: she didn’t move, and she kept her eyes closed because when she opened them, she could see her human body was intact in a way that belied the pain in her chest, the pain in her throat, the pain in her eyes.

  She hadn’t slept for days in order to avoid this. Satan had done it anyhow in fifteen minutes.

  Her heart hurt too much to pray, but she forced herself to recite something. Was it the morning? Well, somewhere it was morning. So she recited the morning offering in her head, then repeated it. She could do words, even if any feelings were beyond her right now. And then she did the evening prayer too, figuring there was an opposite side of the world too and she could make it work either way. Lay us down, Lord Our God, in peace. Peace. Peace, she kept repeating to herself. Peace, not being in pieces, two pieces, one of which didn’t care what it did to her as long as it could possess her and own her and in the end devour her. It wasn’t just missing Camael that hurt so much. He didn’t care about her anymore, didn’t care about himself, and it didn’t matter if what brought her to him was a lie as long as he could clamp down on her and drag her into the depths like an alligator with a writhing muskrat in its jaws.

  Her body should be hurting, therefore, but it didn’t. Just the headache and the nausea, the renewed chill from being on the rocks in nothing but a chiton. She hardly noticed.

  Satan hadn’t left the cavern. Instead he was working with the Cherubim, and she registered the things he was saying. He’d started off with, “Okay, now that I’ve settled out Remiel, you two are going to work together, and neither of you will be lucky enough to get destroyed.” So either he’d been lying before or he was lying now, and how was that any different from anything else he did? But it made some degree of sense, didn’t it? He’d ‘parked’ the Cherubim until he could try breaking her down. When Camael couldn’t swing her to their side, Satan had moved on to the next part of the plan. And so it would go, round and round.

  While reciting prayers she knew by heart, she listened to Satan questioning the Cherubim and keeping the resulting discussions on point. She progressed to reciting psalms, and Satan had the Cherubim experimenting on each other. Not on her, for some reason. It would be helpful to be able to warn Michael about that, Remiel said to God. It’s probably significant. He wants that stuff inside me for some reason.

  Satan said, “So tell me how this weapon would have worked.” And that was a nice, useless line of conversation for him to explore. Let him become expert in wielding a weapon he’d never have his hands on—what did it matter? He hadn’t extracted it from Belior, and so far he hadn’t even tried with her.

  She closed her eyes. Well, better in me than in his hands.

  She reached for God, and although He felt faint inside her (human body, broken heart, under Guard) she held to the feeling. She couldn’t open up, but she could recite, Holy, holy, holy and know His holiness, and she kept it at that.

  In the next moments, though, she grew restless. She wanted to be moving, and she pushed up onto her palms to look around the room. Satan noticed her, but although he watched, he didn’t move away from the Cherubim. She couldn’t leave, and at any rate, there were enough demon soldiers standing watch that she’d be flattened before she could do anything.

  But still, the restlessness. She sat up on her heels, then stood in one motion, clutching Camael’s sigil in her palm. Once standing, she took a step toward the back wall.

  One of the soldiers shoved a lance in her face. “Get down!”

  Satan called, “Let her move. Are you afraid of a cute little girl?”

  Now that was unexpected. Chagrined, the soldier, stepped back. Remiel glanced at Satan, unsure what was going on, but he’d turned his stare back to whatever Satrinah was diagramming on the table-top in filaments of light.

  Remiel took a step toward the wall, and then another. It felt better here. She had no idea why because the rocks weren’t warmer, and the stones underfoot were rougher, but she preferred the wall. She moved along it a step, then took another.

  With a predatory calm, Satan was studying her again. She hesitated. What was he up to?

  Camael’s sigil felt heavy in her fingers, but she didn’t want to put it down. Now she was actually touching the back wall, and she still felt as if she wanted to move in closer. Restless, she craned her neck to look at the cavern roof where it melted into darkness, then back along the rock.

  Smirking, Satan watched her move, and finally she tucked up her knees and sat as close to the stone barrier as she could. She wanted to back into the wall itself, but that had to be a human feeling: naturally she wanted to escape, although why she wanted to escape in this particular direction made no sense. But whatever: her human body had been through a wringer, and those human hormones and neuroreceptors and such had to all be responding to signals she couldn’t interpret without a lifetime of experience.

  Satrinah followed Satan’s gaze over to her, and Remiel shifted. The restlessness was unbearable, except she had no other choice than to bear it. Maybe restlessness was the after-effect of being split from Camael, as if you could run from something you couldn’t. Human bodies make no sense.

  Satrinah’s eyes narrowed as she stared at her, and when Satan asked her a question, she didn’t respond at all.

  That was no good. Satrinah had a Cherub’s unbreakable focus, and she was diagnosing something. Remiel huddled tighter. God, I’d really like to be able to pass through stone right about now.

  Satrinah said to Satan, “What are you really doing?”

  Belior’s head shot up, and he looked from Satan to Remiel and then back to Satan again. His eyes were wide, white-ringed. Good call. His master’s jerking him around, and by this point even he has to realize he’s created a situation that’s completely out of his control.

  She allowed herself a wry smile. Satan might have her at his whim, but he had Belior under his power. She wasn’t the worst off in this situation.

  The restlessness hit again, much stronger, and she rubbed her arms not so much because of the cold but because she wanted to be moving. She pressed into the cavern wall and closed her eyes. Here it felt best. These tons of stone belonged to some unnamed mountain, but for a moment she imagined someone caring about her on the other side. She thought about God, loving her on the other side of the Guard. Camael, walled away from her by his choices but at least pretending to care about her. And through it all, as if just an arm’s reach away on the other side, someone who would help her carry this internal heaviness.

  Satan folded his arms. “We’re up to the next stage in our process. You two keep working on your assignment.” He strode toward Remiel. “Everyone, on your guard! We’re about to be breached.”

  Breached? As in—?

  Satan’s Guard snapped over her and yanked her backward, and Remiel yelped, then crashed to her knees with her hands against her temples.

  The wall exploded where Remiel had just been, and she huddled around herself to avoid the rock debris. With a roar, the rubble blasted into the clear force of Satan’s Guard, and her head pounded with the noise.

  “Quite a dramatic entrance,” Satan observed from behind her. “He doesn’t realize yet that he can’t leave.”

  Remiel unlaced her fingers from the back of her neck and raised her head. Michael! He’d come for her—and Satan had been prepared for Michael’s entrance—an entrance she had somehow presaged by her restlessness.

  Satan wrenched her upr
ight, holding her by the shoulders. “You can’t leave yet, by the way. You still have my stuff.”

  The sigil? He could have pried that from her hand. Camael could have called it back to himself. Her head throbbed, and she wasn’t thinking clearly, but it had to be the shrapnel. And great, good luck to him getting it out of her after Gabriel, Belior, and Satrinah had failed.

  Forcing herself not to struggle, Remiel hunted for shapes through the dust. In full armor, Satan had her in front of him and his sword before them both (Three guesses what he’ll do to me, God!) with his Guard neatly separating her, the Cherubim, and the demon soldiers from the intruder, of which there was exactly one: Michael.

  Michael slashed at the Guard, and Satan sounded bored. “I’d suggest not doing that. My Guard is holding up the cavern ceiling. Your Owner might not permit Remiel to die, but Belior’s host would perish, and you’ve also got Zadkiel to think about.”

  So Zadkiel was close, truly close. Michael must hidden her, but she’d been on the opposite side of that wall. And Satan had sealed her in too.

  Satan looked around. “Did someone send you in here with a message or something? Where’s your manager?”

  “I have only one message.” Michael’s eyes glinted. “You can keep Belior. I want Remiel.”

  “Of course you want Remiel. Unfortunately, I want something Remiel has, and I haven’t convinced her yet to be parted from it.” Satan tightened his grip, and Remiel kept her body relaxed so he didn’t break her shoulder. “You also have no currency with which to bargain. It’s annoying when you write me off as stupid, but I have no qualms using your blind spots against you.”

  For the first time, Michael looked worried, and Remiel reached her heart for God. Those soldiers were going to find Zadkiel, and doubtless Michael had left someone (Saraquael?) with her for protection. Saraquael couldn’t hide Zadkiel forever. She was in a human body, and he might be able to keep her screened for a little while, but Satan’s forces only had to flush all the oxygen out of the Guarded area, or lower the temperature by fifty degrees and hunt for her body heat.

  Satan nodded to his soldiers, and they flooded out of the cavern.

  Michael flared with power, and Remiel recoiled against her own will as the stone walls rumbled. He might well bring the whole thing down on them all, Belior’s host or not. Stones dropped, and Remiel cringed, but again they crashed off Satan’s Guard. Across the cavern, Satrinah had cast a Guard over Belior, and Michael was blasting at demon soldiers in enough fury to keep them from escaping the stones.

  Somewhere, Saraquael had to be protecting Zadkiel too. Please. Please, Father, this is my fault. Don’t let her get hurt.

  Satan wasn’t defending. He just allowed the chaos to continue, and Remiel closed her eyes because he obviously had a plan, something he’d come up with in only a few hours and yet was undoing them all because Michael hadn’t realized his movements were so carefully predicted. Michael had sent in a small force to scout when he could have sent an army, and Satan was ready.

  Remiel kept her eyes closed. You had Israel defeat large forces with small ones. Please, Father. Please help him.

  Satan pried Camael’s sigil from her fingers. “Oh, and this?” He held it in front of Remiel’s eyes: a flat metal circle with no identifying marks, like a coin struck in the image of an emperor only without an emperor’s face to proclaim. “You don’t get to keep this. Twin.”

  His fingers flamed, and the sigil burst apart. The last of Camael’s energy vanished.

  Her knees weakened, but she tried not to crumple.

  There was so much dust and rock by now that Remiel wouldn’t be able to breathe if Satan lowered the Guard. Every time Michael flashed with light, or one of the demons, even with her eyes closed, Remiel’s head pounded. She might vomit all over Satan after all, small victory. But then the chaos intensified, and in the din, she heard shouting and demons laughing, and then another human body crashed into her, and Satan flung her to the cavern floor.

  Remiel grabbed the other person, and it was Zadkiel, shaking violently in that thick northern coat. Remiel pulled her close. “It’s me. I’m here.”

  Her heart sang out inside her as she got her arms around Zadkiel, and in a rush her body tingled from head to toe. She gasped, and she buried her face in Zadkiel’s neck with tears streaming down her cheeks. The loss of Camael’s sigil burned in her mind, and her heart hemorrhaged with sadness, and behind her, Satan said, “Perfect. Thank you.”

  He grabbed Remiel by the shoulders and hurled her out through the Guard.

  The instant she passed through, debris choked her, and she coughed, doubled over. But her head didn’t hurt, and her eyes weren’t stinging, and abruptly she registered how much angelic power she could feel. She spread her hands, then reached out with her heart and felt herself extending her wings, shedding her body, stretching out and becoming fully an angel.

  She shrieked as power flooded her, and her hands clenched around a pair of swords she formed up out of her own soul material. “Michael, give me some orders!”

  She slashed at the nearest demons, and then having won room for herself, she looked back for Zadkiel, crumpled at Satan’s feet.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Michael had barely registered that Remiel was herself again before Satan lifted Zadkiel and transported her across the room to Belior.

  Saraquael tried to flash to her, but the Guard bounced him back.

  Back to back with Remiel, Michael couldn’t concentrate both on the fighting and the conundrum of whatever it was Satan had done that none of them had been able to, and he lashed out at the nearest demon. They’d halved the number of their opponents, but that meant nothing with Zadkiel held by Satan and all of them trapped within his Guard.

  “How did he do that?” Saraquael shouted at Remiel.

  “How should I know?” Remiel exclaimed. “I didn’t even realize it was happening!”

  Michael hurled himself at the Guard, but although Belior jumped back, Satan acted as if he didn’t notice. Instead he opened Zadkiel’s cloak and found, still in her hand, that sphere of Sheol material.

  He grinned. He reached for it.

  Michael did the only thing he could think of: he took down the Guard on the sphere.

  Saraquael yelled, and Satan yanked back, but it didn’t matter. Like a flight of arrows loosed, the bits all flew as one into Belior’s heart.

  “What?” Saraquael exclaimed. “Why?”

  Because Satan would have had them if Michael hadn’t let them free. It had been the better of two lousy choices, the chance that maybe because the bits were aligned with what was still in Zadkiel’s heart, maybe they’d have gone back into her. But instead they’d gone straight toward the only ones of their kind still parted from them.

  Satan looked surprised. “Now that’s a surprise.” He turned to Belior. “Convenient that she’d already expelled the stuff. Since you’ve got it all in yourself, and you’ll be pleased to know you’ll make a marvelous weapon.”

  Bloodless, Belior stared at Satan with inadequately-concealed terror.

  Saraquael sent, Is Nivalis still with her?

  Michael’s last orders to Nivalis had been to protect Zadkiel. He hadn’t seen or felt her since Satan had seized Zadkiel. Maybe his forces had taken her down.

  Remiel sent, Update me, guys.

  Michael felt Saraquael instill all the information into her, and Remiel received it with no ill effects: she was back. Whatever the Sheol material had done to her, Satan had reversed the effects by pulling it out.

  And why would he do that, except if he intended to accomplish something worse?

  Satan grabbed Belior by the throat and held him upright. “Remember when you told me all those things you wanted that weapon to do? You’re going to get control of all those bits, right now.”

  Belior nodded. Satan pivoted him so he was facing Michael. “And…now.”

  Satan’s wings burst into flame, and as Belior shuddered in his hands, darkness swirl
ed around them both. Michael had no chance to react: the darkness shot from Belior like a whip and encircled Michael, lashing around his hands, his ankles, and his throat.

  Remiel dove at the whip with her sword, but her blade bounced off it without doing more than denting the blade. Saraquael grabbed at Michael, but he couldn’t free him.

  The glop spread up his arms and legs, down over his trunk, and it began to squeeze Michael down inside itself. He couldn’t feel anything out beyond it. Like Sheol itself, it was creating a barrier his senses couldn’t penetrate.

  Remiel flung herself at the Guard surrounding Satan, but it held.

  Satan frowned at her. “You’re trouble. Next.”

  He shifted Belior to face Remiel, his feet knocking into the unconscious Zadkiel. Satan pointed at her, and a second stream of light shot from Belior, grabbing Remiel’s hands and wrists.

  “You shouldn’t be surprised. I’m not stupid, you know.” Satan sounded almost stung. “I didn’t bond a Cherub because I didn’t need to—I figured out what these two wouldn’t have done in a hundred years.”

  Saraquael blasted at the bonds holding Remiel, but the energy ricocheted off uselessly.

  “Don’t you get it? You can’t fight this,” Satan said. “They ended up stuck in human bodies because my subordinates weaponized death. Death. And our kind weren’t made for death.”

  But neither were they. Michael’s world was fading out, and he could no longer speak. Humans weren’t made to die either.

  Michael tried to thrash, but the darkness held him immobile, and as the murk closed over his face like a visor, the last thing he was able to see or feel was Saraquael getting snared in the same ink.

  You need to wake up.

  Zadkiel’s head rang with pain, but she tried to focus on the voice. It had been speaking for a while, and every time it talked, the words smothered her with nausea, so she tried to ask it to stop. But instead it repeated, You need to wake up.