She scrambled to her feet, now able to get to her clothes and equipment. Unfortunately, she still had him. The two paused, gauging one another. Neither would rush into this fight again.
She seized the long-stemmed torch. It wasn’t lit, but she could still bash him with it. “Back off.”
He didn’t. His feet clattered almost soundlessly on the rocks as he charged uphill. It was like slow motion; legs pumping, arms swinging, face serenely calm. Dani arched back with the torch and swung. He rolled his shoulders under, each muscle snapping out of the way of the blow. He came up and struck to her face, forcing her to drop it.
He seized Dani around the back of the neck with both hands, pulling her down into a knee-strike. Dani brought her hands down, blocking the blow. She shoved into him, pushing him back and brought her heel up. She connected with his chest and knocked him backwards.
Running on exhaustion, she jumped and struck to the knee, trying to collapse it. Her attacker, however, was one step ahead and jumped back out of reach. He swiped with his forward hand, backing her away, keeping her at a distance. Dani kept her hands up, taking the blows across her protective forearms. Round and round they went.
Dani anticipated as much as she delivered. She fought smart. When he gave her an opening, she took it, but she didn’t go overboard. The entire fight, his face remained calm; no anger. He fought as if he were watching himself, not actually participating.
He swung wide and she came to it, stepping into his strike and blocking hard with one arm, delivering a counter blow to the nose. When she hit him, his skin felt like smooth stone. It hurt to hit him. He pushed back, striking across her face and nearly knocking her down. But as much advantage as that gave him, he didn’t seize the opportunity. He stepped back, waiting for her to come again.
It kept going. There were five of these little bouts. Each time they circled one another. Each time she struggled, fought, kicked and punched until she was forced away. She was beyond exhausted. When they parted, she caught her breath before going again.
Circling, Dani spotted a loose stone between them. She didn’t look at it. You never looked where you attacked. It gave your opponent too much of an advantage. Instead, she shook herself loose, appearing to ready for another go.
Dani charged, but instead of going directly at him, she sidestepped. She hooked the stone with her foot and kicked, willing the Aer to shoot the stone at him. He dodged it. A second later she leapt up and struck him across the jaw in flying punch. It was a stupid, desperate move. She knew it was. She even suspected he knew. And he did what she wanted.
His hand, large enough to palm her entire face, wrapped around her neck and caught her. He spun her into a wall. She landed hard against the side of the cave. Her vision exploded with stars. But she had the presence of mind to seize his wrist and elbow, bending them in opposite directions and twisting his joints.
He grunted in pain. His grip loosed. Dani kicked to the inside of his leg and her throat was freed. She spun him down, bending his arm out straight and shoving into the joint to force him to his knees. He screamed. Then the arm flowed up until his wrist trapped behind him between his shoulder blades.
Dani’s free arm flew around his neck, pinning them together painfully.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “Just who the hell are you?”
The moment her battle ended, fatigue set in. She sat, the man kneeling before her, still bound by her arm around his neck and wrist on his back. He continued to struggle, attempting to free himself from something she knew was nearly impossible. Their weight kept him against her. The longer it took, the more his joint locked up.
Minutes turned into hours. Hours turned into eternity. She demanded the same thing over and over:
“Who are you?”
“Who are you?”
“Who are you?”
He didn’t answer. Strong-and-Silent wasn’t speaking.
“Fight all you want,” she said, “but you won’t get out. What do you want from me? Did the Council send you?”
Through the cascades, the light of the water became brighter. Was it already morning? Light poured in through the opening, illuminating the cave. Had she spent all night fighting with this guy?
“I will ask you one more time.” She warned. “Who are you?”
And then, just as she thought it would be another useless question, he spoke. He turned to look at her in the light of dawn.
“Why is it that you ask my name?” His voice was soft, almost child- like.
She blinked away sleep. “Wha…why did you attack me? Why did I have to wrestle you to the ground?”
His startling blue eyes were so unnaturally bright it was hard to look at them. It was like they reflected daylight. They were so calm, so peaceful, she could lose herself in them; not romantic, but dazzling.
“Who are you?” she asked again.
He reached up with his free hand. It wasn’t threatening. He extended his fingers to the arm pinning his throat and touched it.
And then Dani screamed.
Her shoulder separated, pulling from its joint with a thick, painful wrench. She dropped his wrist and collapsed onto the ground, holding her shoulder. The pain was excruciating. She couldn’t think. She wanted to vomit. Her right arm hung uselessly next to her.
Her attacker slowly rose to his feet. As he stood, the rising sun burst through the cascade of waves as it crested the mountains. It folded around him like a halo and the man transformed.
Sunlight hovered to his shoulders. As if molding from the dawn’s rays, the light spread outwards until it formed into a pair of unimaginably bright wings. They stretched out, glimmers becoming crystalline feathers of sun, touching the sides of the cave. The brilliance made it difficult to see.
The pain rolled over her. She backed away as the winged man walked towards her.
______________________
Fire crackled. Whatever Dani expected to happen, didn’t. Instead of killing her, the man with glowing wings made a fire and food. She sat up against a rock, the dull aching pain in her right shoulder mind-numbing. It was so bad she wished for the salty, disgusting elixir of panacea. Anything to take away the pain.
Her attacker was silent. He knelt on the opposite side of the fire, watching her with the same calm expression. But unlike before, he wasn’t just a man. The sparkling, gossamer-like twin suns hung across his back, translucent as if made of glass. They glowed in the dark, radiating light and warmth. When he moved, they moved.
“Do not be afraid.” It was the first words he spoke in some time. She swallowed hard. “That’ll be kind of difficult.”
Again she couldn’t get over his very un-masculine beauty. His size,
his stature, his muscles all said male, but his face was something like a beautiful painting. It belonged in an art museum.
“I will not harm you.” He told her. He extended bread to her, along with fried vegetables and a piece of meat. The smell was intoxicatingly wonderful. She was starving, but she didn’t take it.
“It is not poisoned.” He promised. “You need to eat. No one can struggle for a night and not be hungry.”
He spoke like her; not the mixtures of old slang and unused expressions like the older Numen. He spoke like an everyday person, but the crystal wings told her he was anything but.
“You eat first.” She said. “Prove it.”
“I do not eat.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“Angels do not eat.”
Angel? “You can’t be an angel. They’re all dead or gone.”
“I am neither, yet I am.”
He kept the food out to her. After a minute, she took it. “You have wings.”
They flared, a mixture of fiery daylight and crystal. They were beautiful, but terrifying. He pulled them around himself, illuminating him like a cloak of sunshine.
“Who are you?” she asked.
He looked away towards the dawn. “It is of no importance.”
“Tr
ust me when I say, it is to me.”
He went silent a moment. Then, very softly, he breathed, “You may call me Gabriel.”
She stared. She couldn’t help it. The food was completely forgotten. “Gabriel? As in Gabriel the Archangel?”
“It is the title I once held.” He acknowledged bitterly.
“You’re the Archangel Gabriel?” She stood, painfully holding her shoulder. “The founder of Empyrean?”
“Yes.”
“If you are who you say you are, then why are you here? No one has seen you in…well, forever. Why are you in a cave in the Dalles and not in Empyrean?”
“I cannot go there.”
“Why not?”
“Because I cannot.”
It was the strangest conversation; too unreal. He looked like any other person, minus the radiant wings. This was an angel? She expected something else; something more.
“Your shoulder must be reset.” He told her. He extended his hand. “Please.”
He touched her. It was just a brush of the fingers. She grunted in pain. Her shoulder shifted into place. She dropped to her knee, groaning.
“I am sorry.” He apologized. “It was not my intention to hurt you further.”
She glared up at him standing in front of her. “Then why the hell did you attack me in the first place?”
“All I encounter must be tested. That is law.”
“Law? What law? What in God’s name is going on?”
Gabriel stood up straighter. His wings flared, fanning outward. He levitated from his feet above the floor. His eyes swirled with the same daylight of his wings. Suddenly, the timid boy was now an angel; a true angel.
He spoke with a deep, serious authority. “If one be worthy, one must be tested. And you, Daniella, have passed the test. So to must you now begin your sacred journey.”
“Sacred journey?”
“Will you, given the holiest of missions, accept and take this mission upon yourself? The Archangel Gabriel, messenger of The Most High, demands it. Will you accept?”
Dani’s spine tingled. Her skin broke out into goosebumps. She slowly rose to her feet. The weight what he said, no matter if she could understand or not, sunk in. A holy mission. Gabriel’s words made her stomach twist. An archangel just asked her a very important question.
And there was only one answer.
“Hell no. What do you think I am? Nuts?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Gabriel’s angelic glory faded. He dropped to his feet. His wings disappeared. “Pardon?”
“Are you insane?” she asked. “You pulled my arm out of its socket, you nearly drowned me in the river and you expect me to join some holy mission? No. Hell no. However you say ‘hell no,’ use that.”
Gabriel stared at her, confused. It was an odd look for him. “You must not understand. I am—.”
“The Archangel Gabriel. Yeah, we covered that.”
“I am the Angel of Truth, Messenger of the Lord God. I am the founder of Empyrean.”
“Uh-huh. We covered that, too.” Apparently, angels weren’t good with cynicism.
“But you passed the test!” His voice sounded like a toddler, not a messenger of God; and one who didn’t get his way. “You stood your ground with me in combat.”
“Which was so much fun.” She said wryly.
“But you earned the right. The law is clear. You are the one I have waited for; the one whose sign I have sought to—.”
“Sucks to be you.”
Sucks to be you? Did she really just say that one of the most powerful things in existence?
“You do not understand.”
“I do not need to.” She imitated. “You attacked me. I don’t care why.” She grabbed her knapsack from the ground.
Gabriel, now less Archangel and more self-obsessed child, tried to stop her. He stepped in her way. “But—But you cannot do this!”
“Why’s that?”
He didn’t answer. Had no one told him no before? Probably not. He looked helpless. To Dani, that was the odd part. Weren’t angels all- powerful? Greatest creations of God?
Dani flung her knapsack over her shoulder and stepped around him. She could barely believe she was doing it. Angels. The one thing she wanted to know the most about and she walked away from one.
Before she reached the mouth of the cave, he called out behind her. “Wait!”
She stopped. Something in his voice made her pause. Gabriel stood with his hand out, his face all grief and pain. If Dani didn’t know any better, she would have thought he was on the verge of tears.
“Give me a reason.” She told him.
And he did; the last thing she expected him to say, “Please.”
Something like shining, liquid glass leaked from the edges of his eyes, glittering brilliantly in the darkness of the cave. Crystal-like tears streamed down his cheeks.
“Please.” He begged. “I need your help.”
“To do what?”
“To save my city. To save my brothers and sisters. To—To—,” he sobbed, “To save the world from our mistake.”
______________________
She stayed. After Gabriel’s begging, even the coldest, m ost savage person would have. But she wanted something first.
“I need to know why you attacked me.” Dani insisted, sitting crosslegged in front of him. She wasn’t above giving demands, even to an Archangel.
And Gabriel’s proud demeanor, his fierceness; all of it was gone.
“Why?” she demanded again. “Why attack me?”
“To test you.”
“Test me? What for? How am I supposed to save anything?”
“Only the strongest have ever had the will to survive. Only they can save others. Only you can do what must be done.”
“I’m supposed to be some kind of savior?”
He nodded. “Even at their weakest, the strongest will rise. I had to see if you were as strong as I believed you to be.”
“For Freaks’ and Geeks’ sake, what was the point of that?”
“Our existence,” he explained, “from insects to humanity, is defined by suffering. Everything suffers. Not one creature from birth to death is ever truly handed anything.”
“Tell that to politicians’ and corporate CEOs’ kids.”
Gabriel’s expression, if only for a moment, softened. “Suffering is universal. It speaks to the very heart of the human soul. When someone suffers, it reveals who they are.”
“And what does that have to do with me?”
“There is that part of the human soul that some cannot tap into fully.” He straightened a little, becoming more of the angel she met. “It resides in all humanity, but it is not something all humanity can use; an implacable power. The unconquerable spirit. Whoever was chosen would need it.”
“You do not see it Daniella del Lucio,” he continued, “but you have the unconquered spirit. Your spirit—your will to overcome—is strong. I saw it when we fought. You would not give in, no matter how many times we struggled. That makes you chosen.”
“Chosen? Jeez, what is it with you people and destiny?” It was partly a joke, but partly not. “Why are you up here hiding in the Dalles? You’re the Archangel of this city.”
He bowed his head. “I am unfit to walk its streets. Just as with you, something drove me here: failure.”
“Failure?”
“You have read it, have you not? The Song of Sacrifice? Our last lament to the world?”
She nodded. “It’s the story of how you fell. Lucifer attacked and you fought him. You lost almost everyone.”
He frowned. “You do not understand fully, then.”
She was getting tired of the word games. “Then enlighten me.”
“And how should I do that? How do I tell you about the loss of my entire species? How do I tell you what it means to watch your civilization perish by your own hand?” He took a calming breath. “I must show you.”
“Show me?”
He he
ld out his hands. “Let me show you what happened to my people; allow you to feel what true failure led to.”
She hesitated. “What? Like we Vulcan mind-meld?”
Gabriel’s expression was dark. “It is the only way.”
She sighed. “Fine.”
“I will warn you, the images will be overwhelming.”
“Sure.” She joked. “That’s what all the boys say.”
But the moment Dani took Gabriel’s hands, the world took on a whole new meaning. Sarcasm turned to dust. Her body disappeared. Gabriel’s life exploded through her eyes.
“We were once God’s crowning glory.” His voice was distant. The world around Dani melted away. Images of brilliance and light, and yet more chaotic and dark before light existed, formed in flashes of unimaginable intensity. “The universe was formless. What existed before my Father’s arrival was nothing more than void and disorder. We called it the waters of creation. Chaos. Darkness.”
“Then God spoke being into the world. We were created. The universe was made.” Dani could see everything. Literally. Indescribably, she saw atoms form; not out of nothing, for it was already there, and yet it was not there. Subatomic particles and the beginnings of Creation exploded into existence. It was more than sight or understanding. It was everything. “We, His angels, took Creation and made it in His image.”
Beings of pure sun rays moved through the universe; traversing from one side to the next in seconds. Their eyelashes were like fire and their voices were like thunder. She knew every one by name, because Gabriel knew them. She could not see God, but she knew He was there. It was a closeness she couldn’t understand, but did at the same time.
“We were at peace. But as you know, one among us was not. He was Lucifer.” A bright spot, brighter than all the others, bloomed before her eyes. “He was my eldest kin; my brother, our strongest in the face of the Darkness. None other shone as brilliant as he.”
Dani snapped back into herself. She was crying. It was if he showed her the most beautiful thing in existence, and then forced her to live in a dark closet for the rest of her life.
Gabriel bowed his head. “I am sorry. It is difficult for someone to see and then return.”
Empyreal (The Earthborn Series Book 1) Page 34