by Jane Lebak
Everything hurt already. Zadkiel couldn’t figure out if it hurt more or hurt less, or if she were dying or if she were pinned or just too scared to move. She reached for God, but with a mute shock; she could only pray without words. It was dark again, as if she were once more blind, and the air tasted of dust.
Beneath her, Belior struggled. She couldn’t find the strength to tell him to stay down.
THIRTY
When the cavern caved in, Michael flashed toward Zadkiel, but there was no way to anchor a Guard for protection. He tried to stream the collapsing rubble around them, but then a blow from behind sent him down.
Satan: back for that sword.
Michael flooded his power into the weapon. It wasn’t his own, so he couldn’t just call it back into his soul to keep it safe. The energy making it up was Saraquael’s, but with the Sheol material bonded to it, Saraquael couldn’t call it back into himself either. No matter what Michael did, it wouldn’t go less solid than it was, and it had a slipperiness that made it difficult to grasp.
So for now, Michael had to protect a thing he neither wanted nor would use.
Satan still maintained the larger Guards around the cavern. Michael couldn’t flash away and couldn’t call the reinforcements he knew were trying to blast through from the outside. Saraquael was still groggy. Remiel and Zadkiel were buried, although Remiel at least should have been able to reattain her angelic form. The fact that she hadn’t was more than a little scary.
Satan spread his wings as he grappled for that sword, forcing Michael backward. Michael fought the urge to go desolid—as soon as he did, he’d lose his grasp and Satan would have it. Even in a subtle body he could barely keep a hold on the thing.
Zadkiel!, he sent. Was she still alive under all that rock?
Satan forced Michael down with a knee in his chest and grasped him by the wrist. Satan smashed his hand back against the stone, then did it again, eyes blazing, wings cupped over them both.
Satrinah joined them, wrapping her hands around Michael’s throat. “Take it!”
Satan’s teeth clenched as he fought the weapon free of Michael’s hand bit by bit.
Then up through Michael’s chest shot Saraquael, discharging all his power in Satan’s face. Satan let go in surprise, then slashed at him with one of his wings, but Michael pivoted and curled around the sword as much as he could with Satrinah tightening her grasp.
Satan grabbed Saraquael by one wing and hurled him aside.
On Michael’s other side, a hand reached up through the ground and took the sword from his hand.
Nivalis. She dragged it beneath the ground.
She’d made it desolid, something he hadn’t been able to do—and with his hand now empty, Michael manifested his soul’s own sword.
Satan turned toward him, shedding light like a super nova, and reached for the weapon.
Michael brought up his blade and slashed it right into Satan’s neck.
Light and heat erupted from Satan as Michael hit. Nivalis stabbed upward through the rock at Satrinah, who released Michael and rushed toward Satan, hemorrhaging power.
Michael got to his feet, wings spread and soul vibrating with anger. Nivalis appeared beside him, armored and wielding Belior’s weapon.
“You take Satrinah,” he said, and sprang at Satan.
Nivalis didn’t hesitate even though Satrinah had nearly a hundred times as much power as she did. A moment after, Saraquael pulled himself up and joined her.
Michael squared off against Satan with two objectives: keep that sword from him and bring down the Guard. Satan’s objectives numbered precisely one: get the weapon. With no interest in engaging Michael, he went straight for Nivalis.
Michael got between them and deflected, slashed, parried—because Nivalis was the weakest of them, and yet the bearer of that sword. Saraquael had engaged Satrinah, but there still was no way out of the cavern, and until they got Nivalis out, the weapon wasn’t safe.
Satan never let up for a second, attacking Michael on every front while simultaneously trying to get around him. With Saraquael, Satrinah was attempting to do the same. As for herself, Nivalis had gone for the pile of rubble pinning Zadkiel and Remiel. Semi-solid, she slipped through the stones like a pearl diver seeking treasure.
Saraquael blew back Satrinah, and he projected at Nivalis, Transform it!
Hidden, she projected back a question.
Gabriel said it’s very plastic. Change it!
He didn’t get out anything else because Satrinah blasted him with soul energy, and he threw out a Guard to shield himself.
Michael had no breather with Satan, each keeping the other fully engaged. Satan couldn’t advance toward Nivalis, but neither could Michael break through the Guard to get her away.
And then he realized his senses were contracting. Behind him, Saraquael exclaimed in surprise. Satan was tightening the Guard around the cavern.
He was going to squeeze them closer and closer to one another until there was no room. He would slip himself outside the barrier. He might even let Satrinah go. But he’d keep everything else sealed and crushed together until he was able to extract that weapon.
Nivalis! Do it now! Michael sent.
He couldn’t sense her other than her terror. Beneath the rock, she’d worked her way down to Zadkiel and Remiel, but Satan’s barrage kept him unable to feel anything else. Nivalis!
What do I change it to?
Under a renewed attack by Satan, Michael couldn’t answer.
He felt her running through the possibilities. The shattered walls of Death itself, Sheol, had been transformed into the bricks of the New Jerusalem. But this wasn’t Death. This was weaponized Death.
And what was weaponized Death? It was grief.
Her shock rocketed through Michael, and he used the energy of it to push Satan back momentarily. But the Guard kept shrinking around them, and Satan wore a dazzling smile. All he had to do was keep Michael occupied, and Michael wouldn’t be able to push back on the Guard.
Nivalis was still putting it together: that the weapon had not affected Michael because Michael had no unresolved grief; but Remiel had a very large, very complicated grief that she’d held onto until Satan forced it to the surface; and Zadkiel had a grief she’d never resolved because until now she’d never admitted to it. By its nature, grief wasn’t stable. It had to become something.
But it didn’t have to be a weapon.
The Guard had closed in so much now that Michael and Saraquael fought shoulder-to-shoulder right through the rubble entombing Zadkiel and Remiel. “Nivalis!” Saraquael exclaimed. “For pity’s sake, now!”
Satan’s wings were in flames, giving off a stifling heat. It wasn’t hurting the angels, but what about the humans? Behind him, Saraquael disarmed Satrinah, but she only laughed when he pinned her against the Guard. With her in one place, though, he started applying counterpressure to Satan’s ever-decreasing Guard. At least they wouldn’t be crushed.
Satan aimed his power at the rock behind Michael, but then Nivalis emerged from the rubble.
“You’re hurting the humans.” She stepped forward, her wings pale and her hair bedraggled. “Stop. There’s no need.”
She extended her hands, and in them was a fist-sized lump. The muscles stood out on her arms from the weight of the thing, and with her wings slack she trembled, but she held it at arm’s length toward Satan.
Satrinah screamed. “What have you done?”
Michael couldn’t feel the thing in her hand at all. It must have been Sheol material. Changed. She’d done it.
Satan’s eyes flared. “You little worthless wench!”
He blasted her with white-hot energy before Michael had a chance to move, but the blast parted before her outstretched arms, streaming to either side of that blackened stone.
She didn’t flinch. She just looked at him, eyes liquid and soft.
“That was worth more than fifty of you!” Satan bellowed. “You worthless, weak, stupid Angel!”
He shot at her again, but this time Michael watched only the stone in Nivalis’s hands. She stood tall in the fire, eyes glistening, and the stone took it all.
Satan glared at Satrinah, then flashed her out through his Guard.
Behind him, Saraquael dove for the pile of rubble and dirt, hauling rock out of the way and shoving it against the sides of the Guard. The dust was so thick the humans wouldn’t be able to breathe, so Michael said, “Back away,” and he tried to filter out the air within the confines of the cavern.
It wasn’t working. He turned to the Guard to smash it apart.
The Guard vibrated hot against Michael’s touch, but he pushed his thoughts outward against it. His soldiers would be outside, pushing inward too, and he extended his heart toward the ones he knew must be there. He prayed, and he reached for God because that was the one reach that couldn’t be denied. Not by Satan, not by his angels, not by distance or even death.
Nivalis came up beside him, and she pressed the stone in her hands against the wall of the Guard. It flamed up at its touch.
Michael gave a wry smile. “We beat you. Jerk.”
He gave one more blast with his sword, and Satan’s Guard shattered.
A squadron of Archangels flooded into the cavern, and Michael brought up a wind, calling, “Raphael! To me, now!”
He turned to find Saraquael grasping a pale, dust-coated hand jutting out from the rubble. “Clear them!” Michael shouted to the newcomers. “Get them out of there.”
Within seconds, the rocks had been desolidified and moved away. Saraquael hauled out a limp Zadkiel, and then out climbed a pale Remiel. At the bottom was Belior, still stuck in the body of the magician.
Saraquael knelt beside Zadkiel. “Come on,” he whispered, rubbing her arms. “Be okay. I really don’t want to find out what happens if you die in human form.”
Remiel was rubbing her face and coughing up blood, but Nivalis sat at her side, wings around her. Belior, or the magician, just stayed waist-deep in rock dust, stunned.
And Zadkiel still lay there without moving.
“I tried to protect her,” Remiel was saying, her voice urgent.
Beside Michael, Raphael appeared. He rushed to Zadkiel and pressed his hands into her flank, then her head, then crouched beside her in the dust with his forehead against hers.
Michael lowered his sword, shoulders slumped, then called the blade back into his soul. He approached Zadkiel where her human body lay, ashy pale wherever it wasn’t covered in dirt.
Wrapped in prayer, Raphael glowed with a creamy light, and he crouched over her, focusing the light here and there but mostly keeping it trained on her chest and her left arm. Michael couldn’t feel a signature from her.
“Don’t quit on me,” Raphael whispered, straddling her waist in order to get a better reach on her. He arched all six wings over her and breathed into her face, then repeated, “Please, don’t quit on me.”
Michael felt warmth at his side: Danel. Also praying. So Michael reached for his hand and closed his eyes, and they prayed together.
“There!” Raphael sounded urgent. “Come on! You’ve got it—just a bit more.”
Zadkiel coughed, and Michael’s eyes flew open at the best sound in the world.
Saraquael scooped Zadkiel into his arms, and she groaned, then flinched. “Hey, she’s got to stay still,” Raphael said. “I’m not done yet. She’s still stuck in that body, and she battered it up pretty good.”
Remiel dropped to the rocks at Zadkiel’s side. “Battered makes her sound like a piece of fish.”
“Beaten?” Raphael was still staring right through Zadkiel’s ribs to where he must have been mending internal injuries. “No, that’s more like an egg. Ask Saraquael. He’s the poet.”
Saraquael didn’t respond, just kept his face pressed into Zadkiel’s hair.
Zadkiel extended a hand, and Remiel caught it, saying. “He’s fixing you. You’re going to be okay.”
She breathed, almost inaudible, “The weapon?”
“It’s done,” Saraquael said. “We’re safe.”
Zadkiel closed her eyes, then lay against him to let Raphael finish working.
“So you might not have known this,” Raphael said, “but if your rib cage gets crushed, you can’t actually breathe. It’s known as a blunt force chest injury, and I’d prefer if you avoid those in the future.”
Zadkiel squinted at Remiel. “Why…?”
“Why’d I get back in a body and then jump in overtop of you trying to keep you from getting killed by tons of stone?” Remiel chuckled. “It’s a mystery.”
Zadkiel forced a smile. “You could have gotten hurt.”
“Doesn’t mean it didn’t work.” Remiel stretched, and then she returned to her angelic form. “Raphael, I distinctly recall saying I needed to take you to task for saying I was cute.”
“Well you’re not cute anymore, so it’s all good.” Raphael stood. “Zadkiel, I think you’re all patched up now.”
“You knocked out the headache, too, thanks.” She started to rise, but Saraquael helped her up to her feet.
Danel went to Zadkiel and took her hands. “I apologize for interrupting, but Zadkiel, you need to come with me. You’ve been summoned.”
Zadkiel went paler than before, and she swallowed hard. “Before the Throne?”
“Into the Temple,” Danel said. “I’ll bring you to the Sanctuary, but you’ll go in alone.”
Saraquael closed his wings around her. “Can I go with her? She still can’t transcend.”
Raphael said, “That’s not right. You should be able to,” and put his hands back on her head.
Michael turned to find Nivalis at his side, staring at the ground. He said, “Go to her.”
Nivalis stepped up to Zadkiel, then closer. Zadkiel’s cheeks went pink, and Nivalis whispered, “I’m sorry.” She moved closer, then said, “But thank you. Thank you for trusting me.”
Zadkiel reached out from Saraquael’s wings and touched the stone in Nivalis’s hands. Nivalis reached for her and embraced her, surrounding her in pearly wings.
An instant later, Zadkiel’s coat dropped to the ground, sending up a shower of dust. She laughed, spreading her wings. “I’m free! Thank you!”
“Hey, be careful with that coat.” Remiel’s eyes flashed. “Oh, and I’ve waited a while to do this”
She hauled the magician to a stand. “You. Out of him. Now.”
The magician groaned, snarled, then shouted, and a moment after, the air felt lighter: Belior had gone.
The man collapsed, and the soldier behind him caught him under the shoulders. “Take this guy back to Ephesus.” Remiel flexed her wings. “They said he has a house just outside the city walls, near the temple of Artemis.”
The soldier flashed him away.
Finally, Michael turned to Nivalis. She had wrapped her wings around herself, the stone cuddled against her chest, and she looked stunned.
“I didn’t realize what it was,” she whispered. “Not right until the end.”
He held out a hand, and she laid the stone in his palm. The weight of the thing was unbelievable, but as Michael traced it, he recognized the shape. Four chambers. Muscle tissue. She’d turned the weapon into a human heart.
“I was scared. I couldn’t think of a shape for compassion.” She swallowed hard. “This was the best I could do, but it’s useless now.”
Michael shook his head. “It’s not useless at all. This was what it should have become all along.”
THIRTY-ONE
“He doesn’t want to leave.”
Michael folded his arms and frowned at Hastle’s interrogation team where they stood arrayed before him in his office. “He doesn’t have a choice. We’re not running an inn for demons. Kick him out.”
The Principality said, “He keeps insisting you owe him a favor. I agreed to ask you if that was true before ejecting him out into Hell.”
Michael glared out the window. “I never promised him anything.
”
Across the room, Saraquael said, “What kind of favor is he asking for?”
Michael stared in shock at Saraquael, who shrugged. “I’m not saying we’re going to give it to him. I just want to know what he wants.”
The Principality opened his hands. “It’s going to be a fight to get him to leave. The other demon blazed out of here the instant we opened the Guard, but Hastle only Guarded the place again on his own and demanded that you repay him a favor.”
Saraquael squared his shoulders. “I’ll go with you.”
Startled, Michael said “Really?”
Saraquael nodded. “Normally I’d tell you not to talk to him. But at this point, let’s just do whatever gets him out of here soonest. Hear him out, tell him no, and then we throw him out.”
“Well, then.” Michael huffed. “You realize I’d rather do anything else, right?”
Saraquael grinned. “That’s why you’re in a good state of mind to talk to him.”
They flashed to the cell. Michael suspected he’d have been able to get through on his own if he’d transported directly inside, but the Guard would have stripped off Saraquael. So instead he called through. “Take this thing down and I’ll come in.”
Hastle replied, “You can come inside.”
Michael said, “I have no reason to come alone. Take down the Guard within ten seconds or on the eleventh I’ll have a legion of Archangels take it down and hand you over to Satan like a trussed boar.”
Five seconds later, after Hastle must have run through all his options, the Guard flickered and then vanished. Michael and Saraquael entered.
Hastle huddled in the corner, disgusted. “You can’t send me back. You have no idea what they’re going to do to me. Asmodeus is going to beat me mercilessly, and then Belior and Satrinah are going to come up with something even worse. You stole my safety net. You owe me now.”
Michael said, “Your bad decisions are hardly my debt to repay.”
Saraquael sent, Impressive line.
I rehearsed it.
Behind him, Saraquael snickered.
Hastle snapped, “You think it’s funny? They’re going to torture me.”