by Nana Malone
“What will you do when you are reunited with him?” Azrael asked. “When someday I come for you, you will rejoin Rahim in the place you call paradise.”
“I guess we shall all just have to learn to share,” Kadima said, a smile lighting up her face. “Harold is divorced, not a widower, so I suppose he will have to do the adjusting. I love both of them. Only in different ways.”
“I see,” Azrael said, really not seeing. The relationships Kadima described with both husbands appeared to be more like the close friendships unmated Angelics shared. Not the intensely bonded relationship between those few lucky enough to find a life-mate.
He was beginning to understand why Lucifer’s Fallen had been so quick to abandon the Emperor once they’d discovered humans were capable of forming the Bond of Ki. Rediscovering humans, and then telling hybrids tottering at the brink of extinction they were forbidden to intermarry had been … stupid. The ones who’d chosen to remain behind had done so because separating them from their mates would have killed them.
“What’s it like?” Kadima interrupted his thoughts. “Paradise?”
“I don’t know.” Regret marred his beautiful features. “I’m neither alive nor dead, so I can’t cross over. But I can sense the loved ones of those I guide waiting just on the other side to greet them.”
“How terrible!” Kadima exclaimed. “To spend your days escorting souls to the gates of heaven and never be allowed entry yourself!”
“It’s not that I’m … barred,” Azrael said. “You’re only barred if you’re evil. It’s just … it’s complicated. Let’s just say I can’t go there the same reason I can’t touch you.”
Kadima glanced to where Elisabeth was beginning to stir. She was not sedated. Some of what they were talking about was likely filtering in through the fog.
“I’d better go,” Kadima said. “It was good talking to you. I wish you’d make yourself visible more often.”
“Maybe I will,” Azrael said. “I’m not supposed to converse with the ones I watch. But it gets lonely sometimes.”
“Kadima?” Elisabeth moaned.
Azrael winced as Elisabeth grimaced in pain.
“Elisabeth,” Kadima bent over the bed, taking her hand. “I’m just going to the mess tent for a bite to eat. I’ll be back in a little while. Our friend will watch over you while I’m gone. Okay?”
“Mmmm…” Elisabeth grumbled. “Too much talk.”
“For nine months you’ve complained he never talks to you,” Kadima said. “And now that he’s willing to say hello, you want me to tell him to be quiet?”
“Huh?” Elisabeth's eyes fluttered open.
“He saved your life.” Kadima brushed a long strand of blonde hair out of her eyes. “Don’t bite his head off. Okay? I’ll be back in a little while to make sure you’re all right.”
Kadima glanced at Azrael nervously shifting his weight and adjusting his wings. Who would believe the most feared angel, Death, was afraid of revealing his feelings for a certain grouchy American nurse?
Kadima nodded farewell and stepped out of the tent.
Elisabeth turned her face towards the opposite curtain of the makeshift room. Away from where he stood.
“Hello?” Azrael vainly attempted to prevent his voice from cracking as he formed the words. He hung back, ready to disappear if being there upset her.
“Why are you here?” Elisabeth grimaced as she adjusted her position and registered the bruises left by rocks the Taliban had thrown at her. “Ouch.”
Azrael had a theory. He believed Elisabeth went on the offensive to prevent people from pestering her with questions she didn’t wish to answer. Like why she’d taken the foolish risk of being outside the safety of the gate in an active war zone. He would avoid asking that question. Perhaps it would prevent her from ordering him to leave?
So … how did he answer he’d sensed she was in danger and dropped everything without mentioning the fact she’d been alone at the river when he’d found her? Although Archangels could sense when those they were close to were in danger, the ability usually only extended to immediate family, mates, and those who specifically trained together to foster the ability. Immortality alone did not grant omniscience.
“You don’t talk much,” Elisabeth asked. “Do you?”
“No,” Azrael said softly. “I’m not exactly someone people are dying to talk to.”
Elisabeth stared at him as though he had two heads and then burst out laughing as she got his joke.
“Dying to talk to?” Elisabeth snorted, and then grimaced in pain as bruised facial muscles protested the sudden movement. “Ouch! Don’t make me laugh!”
Azrael allowed a small smile to soften his otherwise harsh features, giving Elisabeth a glimpse of the shy young man he had once been. She smiled. A small, painful little gesture that disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, but it took his breath away.
His nostrils flared, quivering as he inhaled her scent. Her scent was intoxicating. Enticing him, tempting, taunting him with the promise of something he could never have. Forming a relationship when your touch was death created insurmountable logistical problems.
Who would love a creature of the void?
A small, quiet voice in his heart whispered the hope he’d been carrying since the day she’d touched him and resisted his gift. Maybe if he didn’t blow it? If her pre-ascended abilities continued to develop and grow? Maybe someday she might be able to touch him and survive?
Maybe, someday, she might grow to love him as much as he was hopelessly in love with her?
“Are you just going to stand there?” Elisabeth asked, her brow furrowed in concentration as she studied her tall, silent savior. “Or will you tell me what you find so fascinating that you keep scribbling about in that notebook of yours?”
“Oh?” Azrael suddenly felt embarrassed. “I … um … I hadn’t realized you’d seen my … um … notes. I … um … study things. And draw. I … um … I can’t use a computer because I … um … short it out so I … um … write. To keep track of things. I’m a scientist, you know. Before I … um … became like … um … this.”
The last word was spoken as a whisper. ‘Like this.’ How could he ever explain what ‘this’ was?
“Why did you kill my parents?” The question was a challenge as her soft expression disappeared and her eerie silver eyes hardened to polished steel.
“I … didn’t,” Azrael said. “Your parents and grandparents had already left their bodies and found their own way into the Dreamtime … um … paradise … um … heaven.”
“What about Franz?” Elisabeth winced as she pushed herself up into a sitting position.
“His mortal shell was too badly damaged to stay,” Azrael said. “Not even you could have saved him.”
Elisabeth stared, hostility in her eyes. Azrael knew the foster care authorities had taken great pains to avoid revealing just how gruesome her families’ injuries had been.
“Franz asked me to watch over you until it was time to rejoin your family,” Azrael said. “I expected your soul had become lost. I was surprised when I discovered you were still alive, trapped in the car. The police and firefighters had overlooked you.”
“That I’d heard,” Elisabeth said with a sniffle, tears gathering in the corner of her eyes. “The policewoman who was at the scene recognized my name last year when I was manning the E.R. While you were … gone. She said the guy who pulled me out of the car insisted a black angel told him there was still a little girl in the car.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Azrael said gently. “But I do not cause death unless you are evil … like the men who hurt you. I only help those who suffer or might become lost if I happen upon them during my work.”
“Then what about Nancy!!!” Elisabeth retorted, her anger making her ignore her pain. “Nancy was still alive when you took her from me!”
“You were keeping her alive,” Azrael said. “The bullet lodged in her heart and shattered two of the ch
ambers. The chances of survival were nonexistent without a heart transplant and we both know the chances of that were remote.”
“You don’t know that a heart wouldn’t have been available had you let me keep her alive long enough to go to the hospital!!!” Elisabeth screamed, tears streaming down her battered cheeks. “How dare you interfere???”
“You were keeping her alive,” Azrael said a second time. “She wanted to go and you were the one who interfered. You have a gift. The ability to loan your life energy to those who need it. You can help them hang on long enough to repair the damage so the person has a chance to heal. But you do not have the ability to cause somebody to grow a new heart. Even the Emperor has limits.”
“Why didn’t you let me keep her here?” Elisabeth sobbed. “She was all I had left in this world.”
“I know,” Azrael said. “But she told you she wanted you to let her go. She wasn’t like these soldiers you save who want to fight. Nancy wanted to rejoin her grandmother. You would have drained the life energy from your own body trying to keep her here.”
“I would have succeeded!” Elisabeth said.
“The Regent once did that,” Azrael said. “Kept the General alive when he should have died. He survived, but it nearly killed the both of them. He wanted to live so he wouldn’t leave her behind. Nancy … Nancy wanted to leave. The last thing she did as she rejoined her grandmother was ask me to continue watching over you.”
Elisabeth put her face into her hands, sobbing. Azrael ached to take her into his arms and soothe her pain, the way he’d done when his little sister or Elissar wept, but he couldn’t. Touch. Azrael couldn’t even give the simplest, most basic comfort. All he could do was stand there like a stupid, tall tent-post and watch her cry.
“I’m sorry,” Azrael whispered. Words. All he had to offer the woman he loved was hollow words as her frail human body shuddered with emotion.
The hiss of dissolving matter caused her to look up and see the next black tear hit the table he’d placed between them. Tears expressed what Azrael had never been able to convey via words or actions. That he truly was sorry he’d watched her lose everyone she ever loved.
“You’re not what I expected,” Elisabeth wiped her eyes and frowned at the IV poked into her hand. She reached down and began to pull off the tape.
“Please … don’t.” Azrael stepped forward then realized he’d come within reach. He stepped back. “It’s … um … they’re worried about hypothermia. You were in the river for almost 25 minutes.”
Elisabeth stared at him, as though putting together a puzzle in her mind.
“I won't hurt you,” Elisabeth said. “Why do you always step back whenever I get within arm's reach?” She glanced down at the small hospital table beside her bed, which now had tiny holes eaten through the surface.
“My touch is death.” Regret tinged his voice.
“So I’ve heard,” Elisabeth said. “So … just don’t zap me with your mojo and we’ll get along just fine.”
“You don’t understand," Azrael pointed to the holes in the table. "I have no control over my power. It’s taken me thousands of years to learn to touch objects that aren’t alive. Even an inadvertent brush of a single feather kills whoever I brush against. It’s why I wear this terrible cloak.”
“-I- touched you once,” Elisabeth reached for his hand. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“I know,” Azrael stared at his own hand, the one that sometimes felt real. “But there’s no guarantee you’ll be so lucky a second time.”
“What if I’m willing to take the risk?” Elisabeth kept her hand still held out. “It’s not like I have anything to lose.”
“I can encourage a consciousness that hasn’t become severed from its mortal shell to settle back in if it isn’t too badly damaged,” Azrael crossed his arms against his chest to prevent them from obeying the irrational impulse to take her hand. “But once I touch living tissue, it’s dead. I’ve never been able to un-kill somebody I touched. Even the other Archangels fear me, although they don’t stay dead because they know how to recreate new bodies from what’s left of the old one.”
“Chicken,” Elisabeth said.
“Eagle, actually,” Azrael ruffled his ebony feathers. “If the Emperor had used chickens when he engineered our DNA, we wouldn’t be able to fly.”
Elisabeth blinked in confusion before she realized he’d just made a very lame joke. Azrael would never be the life of any party, but thousands of years of observing humans had taught him humor.
Outside the infirmary, the sound of revelers pouring out of the mess tent singing Christmas carols at the top of their lungs could be heard. Half the base, by the sound of it, and largely out of tune as they split into sections singing Jingle Bells. It was obvious they were headed this way to give Elisabeth a little Christmas cheer, whether she wished to be cheered or not.
“I have to go,” Azrael looked into her beautiful, silver eyes. The eyes of a pre-ascended being?
“Yes,” Elisabeth said. “They wouldn’t understand.”
Azrael paused, inhaling her scent. It had changed. The way she viewed him, with hostility, had changed. It was an improvement. He would take it.
“You’ll come back again,” Elisabeth asked. “Won’t you?”
“Yes,” Azrael said. “I’ll even talk to you again if you wish.”
Before she could say no, Azrael disappeared back to the fight his Archangel brethren were still mopping up. It would take Lucifer’s agents several days to lead a Coalition regiment into the caves under the guise of being a local informant to find the bodies Azrael had reaped earlier.
He tucked an ace of spades into the pocket of each one he’d been responsible for taking. The ones possessed by Agents. The worst of the worst. Since the World Trade Center genocide, the two emperors had stopped bickering long enough to work together and eradicate Moloch’s latest threat.
Azrael wanted the evil bastard to know he was still here…
* * * * *
Chapter 35
And they built in the high places of Ba’al…
To cause their sons and their daughters
To pass through the fire unto Moloch;
Which I commanded them not,
Neither came it into my mind,
That they should do this abomination.
Jeremiah 32:35
Earth - AD January 27, 2003
Royal Palace - Tikrit, Iraq
“You were right,” Chemosh examined the coding sequence of the strand of DNA displayed on the computer monitor. “She is one of Lucifer’s offspring. Not merely a descendent. How in Hades did you discover her?”
“Her brother suffers from kidney failure,” Saddam Hussein spoke with that almost robotic stiffness that most western media outlets ridiculed him for. “When the doctors tested the siblings for a donor, they discovered the husband had been cuckolded.”
“Hmmmm…” Chemosh said. “The third strand of TNA is less complete than the sire's. I’d like to test the girl's mother to find out if it’s a defect passed down from the mother, or a genetic mutation. Her DNA should be more complete than this.”
“You can’t.” Saddam Hussein's brusque movement betrayed his incomplete control over his mortal host. “The moment the husband found out his wife had been unfaithful, he poured gasoline on her and burned her alive in front of his entire village.”
“Pity,” Chemosh gave his subordinate Agent a fish-eyed stare. “It wasn’t like she had any choice resisting Lucifer’s power of persuasion. I taught that boy myself how to manipulate others to do his bidding. It’ll set back Moloch’s plans by months, possibly years, while we unravel this mystery.”
“There’s always a choice,” Saddam Hussein's eyes hardened in hatred at Chemosh’s reappearance from Gehenna. “You’ve gotten soft.” As a mid-level Agent who’d had free reign since the Nazi’s had helped him escape Gehenna during World War II, Saddam was resentful at suddenly being a small fish in a large pond.
Chemosh had run into many Agents such as Saddam Hussein, ascended beings who purportedly served their god, but who’d grown a little too eager to seize power at Moloch’s expense. Not that it hadn’t happened countless times before. Agents served two masters, Moloch, and themselves. It was why he often languished for thousands of years between escapes each time Ki defeated him. But things always changed once Chemosh escaped. Chemosh was loyal, and Moloch rewarded him accordingly.
Chemosh gave the usurper an indulgent smile. His demeanor changed as he transformed himself into an obsequious, ass-kissing clerk. The one fools always underestimated.
“We’ll fix this problem,” Chemosh projected images of Moloch rewarding the upstart god for loyalty and giving him even more power than he had now. “It’s not your fault a mortal took it upon himself to destroy the evidence. Perhaps you might be kind enough to direct your minions to exhume the mother's body so we can figure out why, in over 5,500 years, Lucifer has never sired a single pre-ascended being?”
A confused expression crossed Saddam Hussein’s face, then disappeared as a shit-eating grin appeared.
“Yes, of course,” Saddam Hussein said. “Of course we’ll exhume the body. Moloch’s wish is my command!” Saddam Hussein hurried out of the throne room of his royal palace built along the Tigris River and began barking commands at his minions to get the job done.
Chemosh turned from the computer monitor to the terrified girl shackled to an examination table in the makeshift laboratory. Because her third strand of TNA was incomplete, Moloch could not possess her as a host. And she was far too young to impregnate …. yet. However, the girl was a start. Now he just had to experiment with which male's seed would produce the desired genetic traits.
Males. Males were much more useful. They could impregnate dozens of test subjects a day, as Lucifer had kindly been doing for the past five thousand years. Unfortunately, possession by Moloch had damaged Lucifer’s third strand of TNA. Perhaps it was an intentional defect engineered into all sentient life by She-who-is to prevent her malignant father-god from escaping more often? But life always found a way.