“Thank you. I thought of you when I carved it.” Raziel gazed at the fountain. “And then the clever little humans obliged me by calling it Uriel’s Fountain.”
Uriel laughed. “Are you sure you didn’t encourage them?”
“Would I do that?”
“Very possibly.” Uriel ran his hand through Raziel’s shoulder length dark hair. “How do you put up with me?” he asked quietly.
“I drink. A lot.” Raziel laughed as he turned his head to kiss Uriel’s palm. “Seriously, Uri, most of the time, you’re not that bad. And when you are the crankiest Archangel who ever was made, well, I know your tells and stay out of your way.”
“Thank you.” Uriel smiled. “I don’t think I say it to you often enough, but I mean it.”
“I know.” Raziel touched Uriel’s cheek then leaned in and kissed his lips, a soft, almost chaste but very loving kiss. “Shall we go to Tzad’s? I think if we stay here any longer, we’ll be composing terrible poetry in black eyeliner on broken mirrors.”
Uriel burst out laughing. “Colorful analogy, Razzy, but yes. Let’s go to Tzad’s.”
Hand in hand, Uriel and Raziel left the city of Eden, making sure that the protections and seals over it were intact as ever.
“I HEARD from Ishtahar and your people,” Tzadkiel said with a nod to Michael.
“Oh?” Michael raised an eyebrow.
“It seems this Bob Taytton is an egomaniac who completely believes in what he says.” Tzadkiel shook his head in bemusement. “Which we knew already, but somehow, having it confirmed by trustworthy sources like Ish make it all the more difficult to swallow.”
“Like what?” Gabriel leaned forward in his seat. Once again, Metatron and Haniel were absent from the meeting of the Brotherhood, but Gabriel wasn’t really surprised by that. Metatron spent most of his time in Heaven as it was, and Michael had informed them all that Haniel had made it clear to him in a short, private meeting that he felt he had nothing to contribute to sessions such as these and had retired to Oregon to start putting the plans for a safe haven into effect.
“Okay, he thinks he’s Sécaire, we know this. He also has a high priestess—our good friend Lia Darguill.” Tzadkiel nodded as Gabriel made a noise of amusement. “Yeah, I wasn’t really surprised, either. So they hold these meetings, which are pseudoreligious, declaring the near-deity status of Taytton and how he’s going to release the, ah, ‘poor, defenseless souls trapped in Hell by the evil machinations of the Archangels’.”
“Pardon?” Michael’s eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline. “Am I to understand that this man is blaming us for trapping innocents in Hell?”
“That’s about the size of it, yep.” Tzadkiel leaned back in his comfortable chair. “We’ve been working on the documents that Markus gave us and the intel we got from Ishtahar and your two humans. We’ve got a pretty clear picture of what we’re up against now.”
“Then let’s hear it.” Gabriel stood up. “We—Mike, Uri, Sammy, and me—are the ones who are going to have to plan the campaign. Give us the intel so we can deploy our troops as necessary.”
“Yes, General.” Tzadkiel seemed not to have noticed that he’d used one of Gabriel’s titles, although Gabriel quirked an eyebrow in mild surprise. “Sophiel? If you’d start the presentation?”
“Of course.” Sophiel gracefully stood up and switched on a laptop, starting up PowerPoint. A few taps on the keys of the laptop and the face of a rather ordinary-looking man appeared on the pristine white wall opposite.
“Meet Bob Taytton,” Tzadkiel began. “Failed theologian, now megalomaniac.”
Gabriel studied the image of the face. The man wore a rather inane smile, his skin was sallow but smooth, and his eyes were hazel. There was intelligence reflected in those eyes, Gabriel thought, and an ego that might even be larger than Gabriel’s own. Bob Taytton’s hair was receding, and it was a dull shade of light, mousy brown. His ears protruded slightly from his head, and he was wearing a pale-gray suit.
“He looks so… unremarkable,” Raziel said.
There was a rumble of agreement at that. Tzadkiel smiled a little sadly.
“I wish the soul were as unremarkable as the face. After he left the seminary, he set himself up on Wall Street, trading in stocks and bonds in technology markets. He seemed to have quite a talent for it as he managed to acquire a great deal of wealth in a short amount of time. In between making money, he traveled the world, buying rare religious books. About six years ago, he went to France, where he managed to buy a copy of the writings of Saint Sécaire from a monastery in Provence. Apparently the librarian there had no idea they had a copy of the writings, but the money Taytton paid for it made it easy for them to sell it as the monastery was in need of a great deal of work—reroofing, fixing up the road, updating the heating, stuff like that.
“So, with this book, Taytton returned to the US. He bought himself a very expensive house in New York State, a mansion that the Queen of England would probably feel right at home in, and staffed it with specialists in their fields—horticulturalists, chefs, butlers, interior designers, all of that. He married the daughter of a stock broker from Maine, and then he settled back in his mansion with his wife and his books and bought a few businesses to keep a regular income.
“His wife is, from all reports, a timid thing and terrified of him.” Tzadkiel nodded at Sophiel who changed the image on the wall. A woman with dark hair and large, frightened, doe-like eyes appeared on the wall. “Her name is Mary; he seemed to think that was symbolic.”
“Symbolic as in he thinks she’s a manifestation of Mary Magdalene?” Raziel asked.
“Yes. Anyway, he has her locked up in one wing of his estate. He doesn’t want her to run away from him. She’s allowed to send e-mails once a week, and he screens them all. Those e-mails are to her family and childhood friends so they don’t grow suspicious if they don’t hear anything from her. So now he had his wife who would presumably at some point have his heirs, Taytton began to study the rare books he’d collected. After reading through them and performing a ritual in the book by the original Sécaire, he came into contact with a Fallen Angel.”
“Shamshiel,” Gabriel surmised.
“The one and only. They had a little chat and made a deal. Shamshiel would help Taytton with his goal of world domination in exchange for Taytton doing the necessary rituals to open the Gates of Hell. Apparently, these include killing the guardian—that’d be you, Uri—and sacrificing an infant at a crossroads on the last full moon of winter. Markus’s information indicates that while Taytton failed at killing Uri, he succeeded with his infanticide.”
Gabriel gaped, stunned. He looked quickly at Michael, seeing his shock mirrored on Michael’s face. Uriel looked enraged and Raziel disgusted. Raphael, Samael, and Remiel looked horrified and sickened.
“I know,” Tzadkiel said softly. “I was just as horrified. After this ritual, he seems to have lost his hold on reality. He truly believes he’s Sécaire without any shadow of a doubt. His staff have been ordered to call him Lord Sécaire, and his acolytes in his church call him Father Sécaire. Newcomers, like Ish, are told to call him Brother Bob. Ish says that once they’re sure that newcomers are genuine and not trying to get a scoop for a news story, they’re initiated into the church properly and Taytton reveals the ‘truth’ of his identity.
“He has, Ish says, fifty parishioners—mostly the poor, the elderly, the discontent. A large group of young adults who think Satanism is cool and some poseurs who think they’re witches and pretend that their ancestors were involved in the Salem witch trials. They’re all fanatically loyal to him, and they have, in the cellar of the church building, a portal which allows demons to come through to Earth from Hell. These demons work for him, but there’s talk that when the time comes to overthrow the Gate Guardian and us naughty Archangels, they’ll start coming up through the portal to form an army.”
“So, the demons get freedom to move between Earth and Hell,” Michael muse
d. “And he gets the worship he so craves.”
“That’s about it, yeah. Oh, Lia Darguill considers herself to be the one who will bear him a son, the true heir to his legacy, so we might want to take that into consideration.”
“Thank you, Tzadkiel,” Michael said. “We appreciate everything you, Sophiel, Brieus, Ishtahar, and my people have done. Uriel, would you be so good as to remove Ishtahar and my people from the safe house? I feel that it would be better for them to leave that area of the country now.”
Uriel nodded. “On it,” was all he said before he vanished.
Gabriel shook his head. “We’re going to have to take care of those two. Taytton and Lia Darguill,” he elaborated. “And close that portal.”
“I can take care of the portal,” Raziel said.
“Then I’ll take care of the demons in the church.” Gabriel thought for a moment, then added, “I’ll send a squadron of my Seraphim to that house of Taytton’s to deal with those sigils and demons. And by deal with, I mean destroy.”
“They may have outflanked us, Gabriel,” Michael said quietly. “They may have hidden elsewhere and opened other portals that we know nothing of.”
“I’d be bloody surprised if they hadn’t.” Gabriel straightened in his seat. “But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Michael, while Raz, Shateiel, an’ myself take care of this situation in New York, I think you, Raph, Uriel, Sammy, Remi, and Tzad better relocate everyone from Venatores to Oregon and raise the barrier to keep demons out of the state entirely.”
“And what would you have us do once that is done?” Samael asked, his deep voice very soft.
“Set up shelters for humans and triage centers. Places for our kind too, ’cause I think we’ll get some injured. Take Agrat and Haniel to help out Remiel with the mercy and compassion. Sammy, I’ve got a very specific task for you.”
Samael raised an eyebrow in eloquent query.
Gabriel took a deep breath. “I need you to salt the earth around the edge of the border. Make it so a demon will die the moment they touch it. Say… twenty feet wide. All around the border of Oregon.”
Samael nodded. “I shall see to it.”
“Thanks.” Gabriel slouched back in his chair, turning things over in his head. “Depending on how many have outflanked us, I’ll turn all the water on the planet to Holy Water. And then I’ll join you all in Oregon.”
“And then?” Tzadkiel asked.
“And then we kill them all,” Gabriel said grimly.
“Amen to that,” Uriel said, returning silently from his errand.
“Is everything all right?” Michael asked.
“Yes.” Uriel nodded once.
“Everything is as secure as it should be,” Raziel added. “Shall we take our leave, gentlemen? Regroup in the morning, an hour before dawn?”
Gabriel quirked an eyebrow in surprise at the youngest Archangel’s assertiveness, but he nodded. “Aye, I’m good with that.”
“Then let us meet in the morning, an hour before dawn. Here?” Michael looked around; seeing no objections on the faces of his companions, he stood, squaring his shoulders. “Until tomorrow, then.”
Gabriel stood, catching Samael’s eye. As the others left Tzadkiel’s home one by one, Gabriel drew Samael aside.
“Could you do something for me?”
“Of course.” Samael canted his head to one side in curiosity. “What?”
“Could you go see my kids? Make sure they’re okay, that they’re happy, safe, that sorta thing? I’ve got something I need to take care of, and I’ll be a while. With all that’s going on, I don’t want them to be wondering all night.”
Samael smiled. “I would be honored, Gabriel.” He clapped a hand to Gabriel’s shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. “Go. Take care of your business. I will go to your children and see you when you return.”
Gabriel smiled gratefully. “Thanks, Sammy.”
Chapter Fourteen
GABRIEL drew his fur-lined cloak tighter around him as he stood at the very northernmost point of the world. Snow flurries blew thick and cold, pellets of ice among the white powder. He shivered, even with the cloak and the layers of clothing he wore. Gabriel preferred warmer climates, close to oceans. This extreme winter was not one of his favorite temperatures, even if it was beautiful.
As he looked up, blinking away the snowflakes, Gabriel let out a slow breath as he watched the beauty of the Northern Lights undulating across the sky, serpentlike. He was reminded of the Australian Aborigines Dreamtime creation story of the Rainbow Serpent as he watched the bright colors travel their unhurried path across the sky.
The falling star he had been tracking had come to land in a snowdrift, and Gabriel lowered his eyes from the colorful display above him, trudging toward the hole it had made. The snow was melting, steam rising from it, and Gabriel crouched down, dug around the hole, and pulled free the blackened lump that was the fallen star.
It steamed in his gloved hand, and Gabriel hummed. It was still warm, although not as hot as it had been when it had come to Earth. The star had been a very old one, Gabriel surmised. The fact the lump he held was not much larger than a grapefruit told him that it had died long ago and the path it had taken as it fell to the Earth had been a slow one, where it had shed most of its matter until only the core, the heart of it, remained.
Getting to his feet, Gabriel moved to one of the oldest forests on the planet, where eons ago he had forged his own sword and dagger out of other fallen stars. The anvil and tongs he had created out of his thought and his power were still there, mossy and looking like nothing more remarkable than odd-shaped hunks in the middle of dense greenery. Gabriel knew exactly what they were as he used his power to pull a large, empty, barrel to him from a nearby winery and fill it with water with a thought.
Starting a fire, Gabriel turned to the anvil, passing his hand over it. In the wake of his touch, the moss disappeared, and Gabriel set the heart of the fallen star down on it and got down to work.
Making weapons out of such dense materials was one thing, Gabriel thought, several hours later, drenched with sweat as he concentrated on refining down the heart of the fallen star to sculpt it into a ring. Working on such a small object was quite a bit harder and required quite a lot more concentration. Finally, satisfied with the plain band he’d made, Gabriel put it into the hottest part of his fire and leaned back against the anvil, using his power to steal a tankard of ale from a nearby tavern. As he took a long drink, he reflected that the last time he’d done anything like this, he hadn’t had to steal a barrel or beer by stealth; he had simply willed the barrel into existence, not caring who saw him.
That had been before Eden, before humanity, before anything except angels, demons, and monsters. The world had been younger then, and the forests had been saplings.
Finishing the beer, Gabriel set the tankard aside and pulled the ring from the fire with the tongs. He dropped it into the barrel and a great cloud of hissing steam gushed forth. He had to refill the barrel with his power twice before he had quenched the ring and it was cool enough to touch. Fishing it out of the water, Gabriel inspected it critically, then used his power to polish it.
The finished product was a simple band that seemed made out of white gold. It was heavy, for the density of the heart of the star weighed more than any Earth mineral. Yet it shone with a brightness that was as clear and pure as the stars still lighting the sky. Gabriel smiled to himself and pocketed the ring. He tipped the barrel out over the fire, and returned it to the winery he’d stolen it from. He used his hands to shovel dirt over the smoldering, wet remains of his fire, then brushed off his hands on the back of his jeans. Satisfied, Gabriel left the spot and went to Michael’s.
He didn’t bother to knock, he simply appeared at Michael’s bedside. Michael was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, and he turned onto his side, looking surprised to find Gabriel there.
“Da bao? Are you all right?” Michael sat up, reaching out to touch
Gabriel’s face.
“Aye. I’m good.” Gabriel kissed his palm and sat down on the edge of the bed beside him. “I wanted to give you something before everything starts to happen in the morning.”
“Oh?”
Gabriel fished the ring out of his pocket and silently held it out.
Michael blinked several times, staring at the ring. In the dim light of his apartment, the ring shone bright, casting its own illumination.
“It’s beautiful, Gabriel.”
“I made it for you.” Gabriel took Michael’s left hand in his. “Out of the heart of a fallen star.”
Michael made a soft noise of surprise, taking the ring and looking closely at it. “Gabriel.”
“Would you wear it?”
“I would be honored.” Michael slipped it onto his ring finger, gazing at it and blinking rapidly. When he looked at Gabriel, his eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “I love you very much, da bao. More than you know.”
Gabriel kissed him. “I love you too, solnyshko. You made me a ring, a token of your love an’ our relationship. I wanted to make you one too.”
“You are very kind.” Michael wrapped his arms around Gabriel’s neck and pulled him down against him.
“I’m very in love is what I am.”
“As am I.” There was a moment’s hesitation, and then Michael asked, “Can you stay a little while?”
“Aye. An hour or so.”
“Thank you.” Michael deepened the kiss, rolling them and pinning Gabriel to the bed. “I believe that in human terms this means we are married, correct?”
“Minus the ceremony and stuff, yeah, I guess it does, in a way.”
“Then this will tide us through the trouble that lies ahead until we can take the time that is necessary to bond to one another.”
“I was hoping you’d see it that way.”
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