FALL FROM PARADISE

by Blair, M. Dylan

  Then I wondered if it even mattered anymore.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Of the three most commonly recognized angels, Michael was the one that most women fawned over and men aspired to be like. He was tall, maybe an inch or two taller than Adam was, with eyes green like the Emerald Isle. The moment he entered a room or opened his mouth, heads turned with eyes rapt in his direction. Widely respected and logical in all matters of import, he lacked one great virtue, patience.

  He seemed indignant. Not in the self-righteous sense as one might expect, but more in an underlying irritation that the Holy Flame, Lamafuere, had been taken from the Hall of Araboth. Taken by the same angel who had insurged a coup in Heaven and was starting an uprising in Hell.

  Adam glanced over at the Seraph hovering next to Raphael. Michael’s arms were folded, his jaw firm, as the Seraph kept his ire in check since his sword had been stolen.

  Everyone understood the severity of such an object being in the wrong hands, especially now that Camael had taken another hundred or so into Gehenna with him.

  Lamafuere had been created back when the elements still swirled around in an incongruous glob of particles and atoms. At the point where the darkness separated from the light, and with it came the universe itself, the All-Father forged the blade out of young molten starlight. One of the few pieces of Heaven awarded to the Elohim, Lamafuere, the blade of fire and stars, was deemed the only thing strong enough to kill their kind.

  But luckily, it only once needed to be used, and the blade quickly found a new home within the Hall of Araboth, the highest realm in Heaven. There it remained for tens of thousands of years, the Great Battle being the only time it had seen use.

  Now, it had been removed again, only this time not by Michael, its wielder, a fact that grated on his nerves constantly. It was evident in every step he took, every order he gave.

  Adam watched as Michael and Raphael stood beside each other and periodically glanced in his direction. Although Michael had been kept out of the loop on purpose, there was the very real possibility of realizing it for himself.

  The fact that Adam was alive and separated from the Grigori said everything he needed to know.

  Michael had been the Holy Commander of the Second Sphere for over ten millennia; it did not take substantial deduction to figure out that yet another one of the Seven had left them.

  And this time with Adam’s other half.

  At least, Adam hoped she was still his other half. Now, he didn’t know what, if anything, they were to each other aside from history. She had fled with Camael to the Underworld, the same place they had all just escaped from.

  If Michael didn’t know Eve was alive, he would realize it any minute.

  The endless wondering each time a spare glance headed his way nearly choked Adam. Raphael looked up at him, his face blank and uninformative. If Michael knew, Raphael wasn’t giving anything away. At least, not out in the open where an entire platoon of angels sparred with weapons and magic, ranging from halberds to shimmering orbs that exploded whatever they touched.

  If there was one thing the Seven were good at, it was logic and order. But then again, so was the entire Celestial Hierarchy. Divided into three groups, or Spheres, the Angelic Realm was broken down to a science. Like an obsessive-compulsive person’s dream, there was a place for everything and everything in its place.

  Each Sphere was then divided into thirds again. The First Sphere was made up of the decision makers, the leaders, the Who’s Who of Heaven: the Seraphim, the Cherubim, and the Thrones. The Second Sphere were the generals and chancellors; they received orders from above and enacted them down below: The Dominions, the Powers, and the Virtues. Last came the messengers of Heaven, the angels human society was so accustomed to: The Principalities, the Archangels, and the Angels. They were the soldiers, the policemen, and the nurses of Heaven. The kind that everyone relied on but never got enough praise and appreciation.

  The Seraphim made decisions that moved mountains and shaped the course of human destiny, while those of the Third Sphere eased broken hearts and healed the sick. With such divine justice came irrefutable order, an order that been disrupted with Camael’s move. Michael now struggled to regain that order as he oversaw morning training.

  Adam stood unmoving, rigid like a statue in a cemetery, and for the first time in the longest while, he felt unsure and half-cocked. Paranoia flooded him like liquid fire. If he didn’t get a handle on his emotions, those feelings would flood out of him like a dam breaking at the mouth of a river. Adam was old and skilled, his time with the Grigori had seen to that, but he didn’t know if he was good enough to shield against the Seraph Michael.

  Michael’s gaze focused on the Celestials at work, studying their form and abilities as he walked down the rows of angelic soldiers. His wide wingspan hung behind him, tucked backwards like a hawk perched on a branch. Not a boastful man, Michael rarely extended his wings their full twenty-four and a half feet. If he did, it was a bad day.

  Adam watched Michael’s interaction with his men, watching as the Seraph straightened the stances of a few and demonstrated a lunging strike with another. And then, suddenly, he was there, standing beside Adam before he could even speak. The Seraph had moved with such speed that Adam hadn’t even noticed.

  Also a bad sign.

  Adam nodded at the man now beside him, frantically doing whatever he could to turn his mind into a steel cage. Titanium. Adamantium. Anything. “Lord Michael.”

  The lighter haired man half-choked, half-snorted. “Oh, please, Adam. Don’t even try that with me. It just sounds awkward coming from you.”

  He shrugged. “A title’s a title.” He watched Raphael make his way across the open field toward the hall behind them.

  “Yes, a title you rightly would have gotten had you stayed,” he said simply. “You seem ill at ease.”

  “What?”

  Michael’s emerald gaze weighed heavily on Adam, like a presence bordering his mind, letting Adam know that he wouldn’t press unless necessary. “I said, you seem ill. It’s been nearly six thousand years since your last homecoming. I can’t imagine this is easy for you.”

  Not knowing what to say, Adam said nothing.

  A leader among the Seraphim, Michael could have very easily been sent to phish for information.

  “I half thought you were dead until they told me you were at the Gates. You have no brands, so I know you weren’t cursed. So where have you been biding your time, D’Angeline?”

  “The Grigori.” Adam didn’t even look up as he answered but simply watched a sparring match ensue between two masked White Wings.

  One soldier was short and stout, the other lean like a beanstalk. The stout one had weight and strength on his side, choosing to brandish a double-edged axe, though it would likely slow him down. The smaller angel, fully aware of their difference in their girth and speed, instead chose a short spear, one that was only as long as her arm. Just deadly enough that she could lash out like a viper at any time.

  Adam and Michael watched for several minutes as the two lesser angels tested their skills. “I wanted to extend my condolences,” Michael said, not bothering to break his gaze from his men. “I know things kind of got out of hand the last time, but I wanted you to know that I’m always on your side, even if my position on the Council dictates otherwise. It wasn’t my choice.”

  Adam nodded, his eyes still following Raphael as he finally disappeared out of view and back into Araboth. He wanted to tell Michael that it was fine, that what’s done was done, but then it might raise suspicion if his banishment from the Celestial Realm no longer fazed him.

  “You did what you had to do,” he told Michael, shrugging. “Like you said, it wasn’t your choice, but someone had to do it.”

  What Michael didn’t know, and hopefully wouldn’t try to phish out of him, was the fact that he and Raphael had concocted the best way to leave Heaven without arousing suspicion. The Council had believed everything Raphael had
said, after he plead with them for clemency on Adam and Eve’s behalf. But only Raphael knew the real reason for the couple’s abrupt departure.

  Michael was the Holy Commander of the Elohim. He was the Wielder of the Sacred Flame, Lamafuere, and the one person that Adam truly doubted he could shield against. But as Michael had promised, he had upheld his word, not plunging into Adam’s mind even though there was a very real possibility he could.

  Adam stifled a yawn as he watched the formation. “So is it really going to come to this?” Even though he couldn’t freely give, he could still try to obtain what he could. As soon as he left the Seraphim’s presence, he would head straight to Raphael and find out what they had discussed.

  “Come to what?”

  The match had shifted to a nearby copse of trees, the stout fighter yanking the broadaxe from the trunk of an ash tree. The two exchanged blows for several minutes until the axeman took advantage of the nimble one’s continual dodging and slammed the butt-end of the hilt into the woman’s ribcage.

  “War?” Adam said as the female staggered away from the other angel. “Do you really think there are no other options?”

  And then Michael turned to face Adam, his face void of emotion. “You tell me, Adam. Your girlfriend is the one shacking up with El Shaitan. You tell me how necessary you think this is.”

  The corner of Adam’s mouth twitched.

  The cat, it would seem, was out of the bag.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Now, the thing you need to realize, Princess,” the one they had called Mammon said as he stood across the empty stone platform from me, twisting a dagger calmly around in his palm, “is that, unlike your feathered friends, we aren’t going to protect you like some cossetted prize beef. You stand beside us—you fight beside us. And fighting entails not running around like some barnyard animal about to meet its maker.”

  Camael had entrusted Mammon, the weapons master, to train me in hand-to-hand combat along with the first Seal of Solomon. Each time he looked at me, it was a cross between sex and dinner, a concept that unnerved me greatly and forced laughter from his throat every time he noticed my unease.

  In the few times that I had seen him since first arriving here, not once had I seen him in something other than his black leather jacket and matching pants. A stained t-shirt that had once been white, now streaked with my blood, lurked underneath his greasy appearance.

  Camael had said to trust him for what it was worth. A notion that did me little good when the entire Tribunal wanted to dissect me and find out what made me tick. They wanted to know how I could teleport in and out of the realms as easily as I walked from one room to another.

  I told them I didn’t know. They obviously didn’t believe me, otherwise we would not have been standing here in the middle of the night.

  I had barely said anything since being dragged from my chambers at two in the morning. Not that it mattered. Time had truly lost its relevance to me anymore. Night. Day. It all looped into one like a Mobius strip.

  “I never once said I need protecting.” I did my best to keep the uneasiness out of my voice, but my teeth chattered from the faint chill in the room.

  Hell was surprisingly not as hot as one would expect. It seemed more compact, as if all of the seasons and changes in daylight occurred depending on the region one was in. Almost like continents.

  I didn’t know if that meant Hell really was beneath the Earth’s surface, or if it was a parallel dimension after all. I tried not to think about it as it only ended up making my head hurt. I never had considered myself unintelligent until I had to break down the quantum physics involving multiple realms and the ability to travel between them at random. A part of me wished that someone would one day explain the mechanics of it, while another part of me breathed in relief that no one had.

  “They’re not going to hurt me,” I growled and pulled my robe tighter around me.

  Mammon snorted as he threw the dagger into the stone precipice at the far end of the chamber. “Would you be willing to bet your life on that?”

  His certainty unnerved me. “No, but—”

  “But nothing,” he said matter-of-factly as he spun on his heel and flung a ball of flames into the wall where his dagger was, leaving only the scorched hilt, which clanged to the ground. “You’re going to see very quickly that being ‘demonized’ is simply a matter of sides. To us, we are liberators, idealists, warriors for a cause we would die to serve, but to them we are demons, devils even. We are the most unholy and for that you need protection.

  “Whether it be from a comrade or your own abilities, be it physical or magic; you need to prepare yourself, and that is why we are here,” he mused as he scooped the ruined hilt from the ground and handed it to me. “To train you so that you can hold your own.”

  Ω

  “This tribunal has been called to discuss Araboth’s judgment upon Adam D’Angeline du Vilon; Nephilim, Grigori, and Watcher of Assiyah,” a deep voice boomed across the levels of the coliseum.

  All eyes were glued to the angel standing at the center podium, a feat not lessened by his imposing stature. He could have been shorter, less attractive perhaps, blind even; but none of that would have mattered about the head angel whom Michael stood beside.

  His long, blond hair cascaded around his shoulders like a halo that framed his muscular form perfectly. This angel dwarfed Michael in comparison.

  Adam had only seen Lord Enoch once, at his previous hearing that had taken his rank from Archangel to Grigori in a matter of minutes. The leader of the Seraphim, Enoch was one of the few to ever see the Creator and thus rightly able to lead the Council.

  A good man surely. Adam had not wanted to lie to him, or any of the rest of the Realm, but he had done it to save Eve. To save them both. He just hoped no one else would be blamed for his follies.

  “Adam,” the head angel called, his blue eyes aglow like a lighthouse in the darkness. Everything about him seemed piercing and ominous.

  The Grigori raised his head, his hands clasped behind his back as he stood before the Council. He glanced about the Coliseum; those standing here had been his friends and his colleagues.

  Those of the Seven sat in a semicircle before him in the row of seats behind Enoch. With Camael gone, it left only six on the Council. Michael nodded to Adam. Gabriel and Uriel, two angels who had never been ones to sway in the face of danger, sat at the other end of the semicircle, while Samael, otherwise known as the Angel of Death, and Barachiel, Adam’s superior over the Grigori, sat on either side of Enoch’s podium. As the Chief of Medicine for Araboth, Raphael took his honorary seat in Lucifer's former chair, while the Hosts of Heaven filed into the gallery to watch the proceedings.

  “Mal’akh ha Elohim,” Enoch began, his hands outstretched toward his brethren. “This Tribunal has been entrusted once again with weighing the actions of Adam D’Angeline, whose measure will dictate his judgment. It has come to our attention that were we misled at the time of his exile, not only about him but also about Eve D’Angeline. Unbeknownst to the Council for all these years, Eve D’Angeline, whom we had previously sentenced to exile, is alive and has been living amongst the humans as one of them.”

  Murmurs once again racked the coliseum, like a rolling tide that waxed and waned around them. Angels were social creatures by nature and hard pressed to keep their opinions to themselves.

  Adam had convinced them once for clemency; this time would not go so well.

  “More importantly, one of our own has left us and with him has taken our most Holy artifact, Lamafuere.”

  Gasps and muffled cries rang out with Enoch raising a steady hand to calm their fears. “Easy now, friends. The situation we find ourselves in is indeed grave. This human, the current living incarnate of Eve, has joined forces with the traitor and gone to the Dark One’s Hell.”

  Like a gaggle of geese, voices rose up around Adam, each one louder than the next.

  “Adam D’Angeline, you have mislead the Counc
il and sought clemency for the Nephilim that you were tied to. Not only has this Nephilim been found conspiring and aiding the traitor, but there are rumors that some on this Council may have had forewarning of this. As such, having already rescinded your titles, duties, and status as a Mal’akh, there is very little that can be done to punish you further.

  “You’re obviously resilient and resourceful. I doubt there’s anything we could do to you that would benefit us in any way.”

  Adam stifled a sigh. It wasn’t over yet.

  “It will, however, do us great good to learn of how not only you ended up in Gehenna, but also how you arrived here. You presence confirms that someone, or ones, is indeed aiding you in your travels. Exile from Araboth is not something easily overcome. What say you to these accusations?”

  Adam swallowed the lump in his throat. He had not wanted it to come to this. He glanced up at those on the Council, each of them staring at him in their own way.

  His superior Barachiel, a man of few but gentle words, watched him, his mouth drawn into a tight grimace. Like several of the others, he did not rightly want to condemn Adam a second time. “Lord Enoch, perhaps there was just cause for Adam’s actions.”

  “Lord Barachiel,” Enoch hissed, “I should hope you would stay out of this, lest I think you had something to do with it.”

  The anxiety in Adam’s chest was not relieved by the deep breath he took. In fact, it only worsened. There was no way to lessen the terror he felt when waiting for such a judgment. Would they try and strip his wings? Camael had already seen to that.

  Although Adam had healed in the months since returning to Araboth, his wings had not even come close to the power they once boasted. Once, long ago, he could have rivaled even Michael; his wings had spanned over seventeen feet, a dark brown plume very similar to the unyielding power of a hawk.

  But Adam had become one of the Grigori, and with it came the darkening of his wings. Much like the branding of cattle. He had lost a part of himself that day, but this was different.