by Nana Malone
Azrael was used to it by now. People just didn’t understand. Just as his Angelic colleagues…
“Hayyel!” Azrael whispered. He covered the brief distance between where he stood and the smoldering truck. There was little left of it, the five men with guns, or the two men who’d detonated the bomb. Nothing except charred chunks of body parts and the scent of cooked flesh.
“Here!” a familiar voice choked through the smoke. “He’s over here.”
Sam kneeled on the reddened sand, a bloody heap of white feathers in his arms as tears streamed from his gold-green serpentine eyes.
“Is he?” Azrael asked, not daring to touch either of them.
“He was airborne when it exploded,” Sam said. “The explosion blew him back. But he’s badly wounded. I’m barely reading a pulse.”
“I can’t … touch … him,” Azrael cried out. “Please, Sam! You have to do something to save him!”
“I’m just a mortal creature,” Sam said. “I have no ascended powers and my radio is broken. Isn’t there any way for you to help him?”
Azrael listened to the sound of a weakening heart and internal organs failing, the pheromones of death, the subtle dissipation of Hayyel’s consciousness. Something was ‘off’ besides the damage to his physical shell. It felt like there were … two … wounded Angelics?
For over 2,000 years, the Regent had patiently taught Azrael to reshape the facsimile of a mortal shell from the primordial matter he harnessed. She’d taught him to control his abilities so he didn’t inadvertently vaporize matter every time he got upset. But because his mortal shell had been destroyed in the same fires of Gehenna which had stripped Moloch and his Agents of their shells, Azrael couldn’t simply reconstitute it as she did. The Regent had taught him how to use the Song of Creation to do many things Moloch’s Agents could not do.
But he could not heal…
To heal, you had to touch. And to touch, well … Azrael killed everything he touched. No matter how hard he tried to do otherwise.
The sensation of a second wounded Angelic grew stronger. The Song of Creation that Azrael could always hear playing in the background picked up an instrument as though somebody quietly hummed along. Hayyel stirred.
“My mate!” Hayyel grabbed Sam’s arm as he stared at Azrael with terror in his eyes. Blood spewed out of his mouth with each word he spoke. “She’s trying to heal me. Please don’t take me. If I die, she dies, too.”
Azrael’s heart sank. The second wounded he could sense? Hayyel and his mate must have possessed enough Seraphim blood to bond. It was a ‘defect’ Hashem had practically inbred his mortal armies into extinction trying to eradicate because, whenever one half of a mated pair died in battle, the other half died too. Hayyel’s life-mate would pour every ounce of her life energy into her mate's body to keep him alive. If he died, she would cast off her mortal shell to follow him into the Dreamtime.
“I won’t take you unless I have no choice,” Azrael said, appraising Hayyel’s injuries and giving him a slim chance of survival. “Sam … very carefully reach over and get the radio from my pocket. Just because –I- can’t touch the button to call for help doesn’t mean you can’t.”
Azrael froze while Sam nervously unclipped the boxy radio from his cloak. The portable radio was enormous for what it did, little more than a walkie talkie so Azrael could listen in on mortal chatter during missions, but it had to be that large to shield the delicate electronics. Azrael couldn’t touch the thing once it was turned on as he was essentially a walking EM pulse, the power surge released during a nuclear explosion. But Sam could.
“Base … Base … this is Brewer,” Sam called into the radio. “We got wounded!”
Hayyel lost consciousness again. He should be dead already. Azrael had visited enough battlefields and trauma wards to recognize when somebody’s will to live tried to override their injuries, but Hayyel’s injuries were severe. His mate gave him everything she had, but Azrael could feel both of them slip away. The Angelic Major’s consciousness slipped out of his body, precariously tethered by a thread of consciousness.
“Don’t take me,” Hayyel pleaded, this time his consciousness pleading with the Angel of Death, not the broken mortal shell lying upon the ground. “If I die, she dies too!”
“I won’t unless your mortal shell expires,” Azrael said. “But there are worse things than death. The Dreamtime is a pleasant place.”
“I can see my ancestors waiting for me,” Hayyel said. “But I do not wish to go. We have three children who will lose both parents if I die. One is too young to be on her own.”
Mated pairs. The reason Hashem had forbidden his armies to marry or rear their own children until extinction had reared its ugly head. The reason Lucifer’s Fallen had rebelled in the first place; to gain the same right to marry and rear a family that every other Alliance citizen possessed. A right which bore the consequences Azrael had standing before him now.
The crackle of static meant help was on the way, but the Armistice mandated they be discreet. They couldn’t simply send in a medevac shuttle. The delay caused by the need to remain hidden often resulted in more deaths than had they simply been able to take their chances in a human trauma unit.
Sam began tearing chunks off his overdrovers coat to stem the bleeding. His tail twitched nervously behind him as he made a futile attempt to administer first aid.
“Twenty minutes,” Sam tore at the fabric with his slightly-pointed teeth. “Shit! I don’t even know where to begin with this guy!”
Hayyel’s pulse grew weaker as his life’s blood poured out of his body. The life force trying to fortify his was strong, but whoever his mate was, she was only mortal. She had tasted the Song, but she could not wield it. She was not an Archangel. She was not a healer. Azrael could feel the second consciousness weaken as the Major lost the battle to live.
“She won’t let go,” the floating Hayyel wept. “I begged her to let me go, but she does not wish to part from me.”
Black tears streamed down Azrael’s cheeks as he realized his choice to protect the children instead of his team-member would cost two lives today, not just the one he’d weighed when he’d made his decision. Azrael had forgotten Hashem chose mated pairs to act as observers so the humans wouldn’t tempt them to ‘go native’ as the Fallen had done. Had Azrael chosen the children because … well … they were children? Or because Hayyel was an arrogant jerk? Had it been Sam about to get blown to smithereens, would he have made the same choice?
“I’m sorry,” Azrael whispered. His choice would have been the same. But he was still sorry.
Hayyel’s heart stopped. Sam began CPR. Azrael could hear the sound of a truck racing towards them. Help was here. Two Sata’an-human agents leaped out of a box truck carrying a first responder kit and began to work on the injured Angelic.
It was too late. The slender thread of consciousness keeping Hayyel tethered to his mortal shell snapped. Azrael felt a second ‘snap.’ The Song ceased as the consciousness of a second Angelic materialized next to her mate.
“Why did you follow me?” Hayyel cried out. “Who will care for our offspring?”
“We always knew this might happen,” the female took her mates hand and pressed it to her heart. “Our youngest will be entering the military academy in the fall. We have made provisions with our family. They will survive.”
Hayyel wept, pulling his now-deceased mate's hand up for a kiss. It was ironic that, in attempting to breed the ‘defect’ out of his armies, the Eternal Emperor had only retarded his Angelic's ability to evolve and weakened their ability to heal. He’d never fully been able to eradicate the instinct to bond.
“Will you guide us into the Dreamtime?” Hayyel asked. He turned his mate to face Azrael. “Perpetiel … this is Azrael. An Archangel. He will honor us by guiding our spirits into the Dreamtime. Together. As one soul.”
Tears streamed down Azrael’s cheeks, dissolving the ground where they fell. Perpetiel had drained the life fr
om her own body in a futile attempt to save her mate.
“Don’t be sad,” Perpetiel reached up to touch Azrael’s cheek. “The cruelest fate I can imagine is to be separated from my mate. You have no idea how badly I have missed him since the Emperor assigned him to this sector.”
Her touch was like the soft whisper of wind across his flesh. Insubstantial. She no longer had a physical form.
“I can see our ancestors waiting for us just but on the other side,” Hayyel said to her. “We’ll wait there for our children to join us.”
“Yes,” Perpetiel said. “I can see my grandmother waiting for me. And your great-grandfather.”
“I will guide you,” Azrael said. He took their hands even though they didn’t need his help. Hayyel allowed him to do it simply to alleviate his guilt.
“Grandmamma!” Perpetiel cried out with joy as she stepped across the threshold into the Dreamtime, a realm Azrael could not enter because he was neither dead … nor alive.
“You made the right choice,” Hayyel paused as he was about to step across as though he were listening to another voice. “Three children. And a teacher. It was the right decision.”
“Thank you,” Azrael released his hand. Hayyel stepped across the threshold and was gone.
Azrael sank back to where Samuel Adams, the demon named after an American patriot, kneeled weeping over the body of the dead Angelic. His comrades solemnly placed Hayyel’s body onto the stretcher, covered it with a sheet, and carried him away before the humans found it. It wouldn’t do to leave proof of angels in the form of a dead one in this era of autopsies and modern communication.
News of two identical car bombs simultaneously taking out the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people and injuring 4,500, hit Lucifer’s news feed while Azrael helped the Sata’anic descendants prepare the body for transport back to Ceres Station. They’d only intercepted one bomb in a coordinated attack and missed two others.
The hunger ate at him like some rabid animal gnawing on his intestines. Elisabeth. He needed to go see Elisabeth. At times like this, he needed to remind himself that some people had things even worse than he did. He needed to feel … connected … to something. Anything! Why not the only other person on the planet who was as alone and miserable as he was?
Azrael spent the next few weeks shadowing his favorite test subject, distracting himself from his sorrow by tracking data on how she entertained herself reading Nancy’s nursing manuals. She was so smart! Only Elisabeth had no mother urging her to let her intellect guide her. How he wished it wasn’t forbidden to make his presence known so he could cheer her on…
If he could, he would encourage her…
Actually … he could.
He began to leave books with the pages left open wherever he thought she might stumble across them. Her room. The bathroom. The chair by the window where she liked to sit and read. It was interference. But it was so subtle … what could it hurt?
* * * * *
Chapter 19
The hunger for love
Is much more difficult to remove
Than the hunger for bread.
Mother Theresa
Haven-2: Cherubim Monastery
Azrael focused on today's lesson: ‘How to Pretend You’re Alive When You’re Really Not.’ That wasn’t what she called it, of course. The Regent preferred more innocuous sounding names for the lessons which had started with ‘How NOT to Destroy a Solar System Every Time You Get Upset.’ As he’d gained control of his power, the lessons had been fine-tuned into things like ‘Holding a Shape that Isn’t so Repulsive People Run Screaming’ and ‘How to Sit on a Chair Without Dissipating It and Landing Flat on Your Back.’
It was only the past few decades he’d begun to master reshaping matter. Controlled destruction, she called it. A lesson the Regent knew well, but which her brother He-who’s-not had never been able to master. The Regent was determined that he, Azrael, would never be as block-headed and dependent upon the whims of a creation goddess or the genetic quirks of mortals as her older brother.
“Have you been experiencing the hunger?” the Regent asked.
Wing-spikes scraped across the floor as she settled her leathery black wings into a more comfortable position. Azrael watched her demonstrate, for the umpteenth time, how to re-form molecules out of matter she had, only moments before, dissipated into primordial soup. A delicate, crystalline structure began to take shape beneath her touch.
“It’s not as you describe,” Azrael said. “I feel … something. Off. Like a discordant note in that song Ki lets me hear. I’ve always thought of it more as loneliness than hunger.”
“Loneliness?” The Regent's bottomless black eyes took on a far-away appearance. “Yes. I remember a period when I mistook the hunger for loneliness, although, at the time, I was still mortal. Mostly mortal. I suspect I was what Hashem likes to call a pre-ascended being. The General felt it too, although his ability to harness void-matter is not as evolved as mine.”
The work beneath her fingers transformed into an image of the General. There was a vulnerability she captured in her sculpture of her husband; a deep, abiding sense of compassion rarely displayed in the countless Alliance sculptures of the stoic Archangel crushing Moloch beneath his boot, but which Azrael had seen in Earth depictions of the Angel of Mercy. Humans, it seemed, had been privileged to see a side of the General which the larger Alliance had never gotten to know.
“I’m not lonely anymore,” the Regent gave him a rare smile. She manipulated the statute of her husband to include their offspring, thousands of Archangels, every one of them capable of balancing darkness with light. “The General gave me what my brother lacked, which is why HE placed me in charge while he searches for it for himself.”
“Will I ever get to meet him?” Azrael asked. “Your brother? He-who’s-not?” He suppressed the instinctual shudder of fear at the mere mention of the Dark Lord’s name. Even Moloch feared the true Guardian of the Universe.
The Regent sighed and set aside the sculpture. She rubbed her abdomen, swollen with her latest offspring even though she’d long ago become capable of simply creating them by an act of will.
“HE is not as we are,” the Regent said. “We were born mortal and evolved to harness the power of the void, but He-who’s-not –is- the void. It's like the difference between a house cat and a lion. I’m just lucky I was already mated with the General when I came into my power or I’m not sure I would have been able to control it.”
“What will you do?” Azrael asked. “When HE comes back? You’ll be out of a job.”
The Regent laughed.
“I’ll heave a huge sigh of relief!” She picked up another block of wood and plopped it down upon the table. “I don’t like it when I'm forced to wield my brother’s power. The hunger is too difficult to control!”
There were legends about the last time the Regent had staved off an escape attempt by Moloch. The Dark Mother. Kalika. The Destroyer. Azrael didn’t dare ask her if it was true.
“I’m glad Ki sent you to help.” The Regent shaped the block into a creature not very different than herself. “It’s a lot of responsibility safeguarding the universe. Few creatures understand the need to control growth or recycle your spent matter.”
“Isn’t HE afraid you’ll grow more powerful than him?”
Azrael watched every nuance of the matter taking shape beneath the Regent's touch. It was rare for a creature of the void to be able to both create and destroy. Or so he’d been told. He'd only ever met one other void creature, too immature to think above the level of a five-year-old even though, technically, it was older than him. That void creature was happily paired with a creation goddess to act as its surrogate mother in the Dark Lord’s absence, who was both its father and mother.
Azrael glanced at his benefactress and mentor. It was kind of what the Regent was doing for him. Babysit the young void creature and keep him out of mischief so he didn’t accidentally wipe out any mo
re solar systems.
The Regent gave him an indulgent smile. Belatedly, Azrael remembered the Regent could pick up on his thoughts unless he made an effort to cloak them. Another lesson she’d been trying to teach him.
“Our kind is so few and far between,” the Regent focused her attention back onto her block of matter. “Nobody wants to feel the emptiness which causes the hunger; to feel so utterly alone, misunderstood, unloved. My brother was overjoyed to discover he had a sister.”
A stern, muscular male with the Regent’s leathery spiked wings, horns and tail stared out of the sculpture, every bit as ebony-black as Azrael. Some might mistake the Dark Lord for the devil, but Azrael knew they were different creatures. Shay’tan was simply Hashem’s ideological opposite, the thorn-in-his-side who forced him to constantly re-evaluate everything he did. He-who’s-not was the flip side of creation. The cosmic compost pit where all She-who-is cast off was recycled into new matter for her to create. It was the lesson the Regent was attempting to teach Azrael right now … to dissipate matter and free up its essence to create something new.
Only Moloch was truly evil…
“Whenever I start to feel the emptiness,” Azrael stared at the image of the Guardian, “I focus on my connection to the three people Ki encouraged me to cherish. Mama. Gazardiel. And Elissar. And the loneliness just goes away.”
“I envy you.” The Regent gave Azrael a wistful smile. “Perhaps if I’d been born into a family who loved me as much as yours loved you, it would have made the transition easier? It took every ounce of strength the General had those early years to help me subdue my brother's power.”
“They have this movie,” Azrael gave her a grin. “On Earth. About a scientist who turns into an angry green giant whenever he gets upset.”
“I have watched this movie,” the Regent said. “The General brings home souvenirs whenever he visits Earth. Yes. I know how this green man feels when he warns people they wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.”