“Raziel has the Ark of the Covenant. The demons can’t move; I need your help!”
Michael landed beside me. “Quick, show me where it is.”
I led him to the basement. He hacked through Watchers I’d narrowly managed to avoid on my way up.
Raziel had laid the Ark open on the ground. Stone tablets – the Ten Commandments – were on the table. He was dripping a censer of clotted liquid – my blood – onto them, as if baptizing the stones in an unholy faith.
Michael brandished his sword. “You’re honorless. You think you can wield God’s Word? Sinners like you are unworthy to use it, let alone hear it.”
Raziel hung the censer from a chair. “Michael? What a pleasure. To think, we’re about to witness the unmaking of the world. It sends shivers down the spine, doesn’t it?”
Michael gritted his teeth. “Step away from the Ark, and I may yet give you a painless death.”
Samael dragged himself towards me. “Shannon,” he moaned. His guts were caught in his teeth.
“Don’t move, Sam,” Michael said. “This is my score to settle.” He looked to me. “Shannon?”
I nodded in understanding. Only a mortal could kill an immortal.
Michael flooded me, blinding light. The possession was orgasmic, so different from the pain a demon caused. Divine bliss, uncorrupted. Michael’s strength was molten fire - his sword could strike down nations. With him was the wrath of God.
I charged at Raziel. Raziel wove a silvery web and cast it over me. I hacked it to bits as Raziel glided behind the Ark.
“Stop playing,” Michael spoke through me. “Face your fate like a son of God.”
“I stopped being a man of the Lord long ago,” Raziel said, evading my sword.
And so Raziel spun threads like a spider, escaping my attacks. I drew gashes on his limbs and back, but kept missing his vital areas. He was too quick, too clever, too hell-bent. Still, even angels bleed.
I finally weakened him. Raziel began to falter. A misstep to the left, threads thrown too far to the right. Michael calculated in my head, cold as a machine. He was looking for soft spots in Raziel’s strategy.
Raziel kept luring me back to the tablets, like he thought, if I got close enough, he could force me to unleash them.
Samael had dragged himself to the Ark and propped himself up. He looked inside and froze.
“Shannon,” Samael groaned. “Get out of here.”
“I can’t, I almost have him.”
I severed one of Raziel’s wings. Raziel tumbled to the ground below me.
Samael vomited viscera into the Ark. He looked up and his eyes were dead.
“Run.” Samael’s voice was monotone.
“I’m busy!”
Samael fainted.
Blood spurted from Raziel’s wounds. He was too weak to move. Still, he smiled, an expression I wanted to carve from his face.
Raziel spoke his last words: “It seems you’ve won, dear. What a pity. We were going to have so much fun.”
Michael’s sword sunk into his heart with a hiss. I twisted the blade, and Raziel collapsed into dust.
“I did it. Just like that?” I said.
Michael materialized by my side, a soft smile on his face.
The demons were still immobilized. I walked over to the tablets, sword in hand, prepared to destroy them like I had the Holy Grail and put an end to this apocalyptic idiocy-
I looked into the Ark of the Covenant.
There was Mo, covered in Samael’s vomit, frothing at the mouth in a seizure. I dropped Michael’s sword.
“Mo!” I screamed.
I reached into the Ark, trying to free him. Some sort of force field jolted me back. I shrieked and beat at the barrier.
“Michael! My brother’s dying!”
Michael’s face darkened. “So that’s where the Horsemen went.”
I sank to my knees, shellshocked. “What?” I said, voice weak.
Michael put a hand on my shoulder. “Your twin shares your blood. When the Horsemen were expelled from your body, they sought the closest thing to your flesh - your twin.”
“But he’s been completely normal. I don’t understand - we have to save him!”
Michael’s lips drew thin. “They killed your brother when they possessed him. The only thing that’s kept his soul rooted to his body is the Horsemen’s power. You have to let him go.”
My mouth was bitter. All I smelled was brimstone.
“But he’s not dead,” I cried. “He’s alive. We ate breakfast together yesterday. He’s still here, Michael, he is!”
“The only way for him to live would be as the Horsemen’s vessel. Your brother could only survive if the Apocalypse came to pass. Your brother will die a martyr.”
I rocked back and forth. “No.”
“I’m sorry.”
I dove towards the tablets. Michael cried out, but his voice was lost on me.
Many waters could not quench my wrath. Grief-mad, I broke the seal.
The tablets shattered.
God’s Word rang through the building, rising up from the loam. The demons were released from the Commandment’s hold.
Samael’s eyes fluttered open. “No,” he breathed. “Not this. Shannon, we have to go!”
I ran to Mo’s side. Whatever barrier that had kept me from him was gone.
“Mo, Mo!” I held him. Mo’s seizures had stopped, but he was stone cold. “No,” I sobbed. I hung my head, ruined.
Michael’s song rang through the basement. He was a vessel of God’s Word, the Lord’s will given life. I looked up to see him illuminated, like a figure from a monk’s ancient manuscript, haloed and floating high above.
Michael looked at me, his smile beatific. His song was of culling. Of the end.
“Shannon.” Samael scooped me up into his arms, along with the body of my brother. My cold, cold brother. Dead.
“Mo was supposed to wake up,” I pleaded.
Samael carried us into the darkness.
I beat at Samael’s chest. “Make him wake up!”
The Reaper’s eyes flooded with tears. “You’ll have wished he’d stayed dead. What have you done?”
The darkness was endless. It licked at my skin like a snake.
“I had to save him.”
He walked on, into nothing. Mo was limp like a sack.
“I understand what you did - you’re a fool, just like me. You sacrificed the world for love. And now, we have to fix it.”
“Fix it,” I echoed. “But how?”
“I don’t know.”
The void was just that, an emptiness. A space to write feelings upon. I dreamed of my brother’s breath, of a steady pulse under my hands. But Mo’s wrist was silent, his lungs empty. He was dead, so dead, so dead.
My sins stretched before me like shadows.
“Sam, I’m scared.”
“Me too.”
Chapter 28
The Gaia hypothesis states that the Earth functions like a living organism – upset the balance, and everything hangs askew. As a biology major, I was intimately familiar with the theory. Scientists said we had exacerbated the planet, accelerating climate change. Zealots said it was the End Times. For the first time in history, the fanatics were right, and the rationalists wrong.
Natural disasters increased tenfold – each week, a hurricane, a tsunami, an earthquake. The death toll climbed and climbed. Wars broke out over resources. I read the papers, numb.
It had been easy enough to lie to my parents. Samael had bound the horsemen in my twin’s comatose body, but when he had wanted to keep Mo under the archdemons’ watch in Hell, I had exploded. And so we’d staged a car crash, wrecking Mo’s car, with my brother behind the wheel, limp like he’d had a head-on collision with a tree. I had called my family from the passenger seat, faking panic, when all I could feel inside was nothing. Nothing but bitter cold.
The ambulance had arrived, sirens wailing like the cries of a banshee. They had carried Mo out in
a stretcher. He was a prisoner in his own body – brain activity raging, trapped immobile in his own limbs. I could only imagine what war burned on in his undead mind.
I was beside him in the hospital, reading him his favorite author, Stephen King, in the hopes that he might hear.
Mo’s heart rate spiked.
“Mo?”
His eyes shot open. He began to seizure.
“Mo? Mo! Doctor, doctor, he’s awake!”
The hospital staff flooded in. Nurses ushered me out of the room. And so my dead brother rose, soul trapped in his body, Samael’s binding not strong enough to stand up to the horsemen.
“I’m fine, Shannikins. Stop watching me.” Mo tried to move from his bed. He lost his balance and fell onto the mattress, clutching his temple. “Ugh, my head. Man, I feel like I ran skull-first into a tree. Wait – I did.” Mo grinned.
“Don’t joke about that,” I said, secretly relieved he didn’t remember what had really occurred. He was pale, so pale, almost the same shade as Samael. I set a breakfast tray on his nightstand.
Mo’s recovery had thawed my heart. For the first time in weeks, there was a flicker of hope – Samael’s binding had contained the horsemen in my brother, and for all intents and purposes, Mo was alive, with no knowledge that he was a vessel for Pestilence, Famine, and War.
Things weren’t as bright in the celestial realms. Michael, Heaven’s foremost archangel, was possessed by God’s Word, forced to act out his role as Heaven’s general in the final battle between Heaven and Hell. At his side were countless angelic drones, unthinking vessels of God’s wrath.
The other archangels, their free will still intact, had sided with Hell to prevent a premature Apocalypse. Forced out of Heaven by Michael, they had taken refuge in Hell, much to their chagrin. It was an awkward family reunion, especially considering that a third of their siblings had been disowned.
The only angel who seemed happy was Raphael, whose joviality wouldn’t deflate even if he was a balloon with a pin pushed in. He had taken over Samael’s kitchen, treating me daily to a world of cuisine – Creole recipes, Thai curries, Mexican innovations. Tonight was his famous gumbo. Demons and angels lined up with bowls, stretching out into Samael’s parlor, waiting for the archangel to ladle out gumbo by the liter.
I stood between Uriel and Izrail, salivating at the scent of the stew. Uriel’s tattoos shone on her dark skin. Izrail, the angel of souls, was busy studying one of the butterflies that she carried on her shoulders. The subject of Izrail’s fascination was a blue Morpho, just like I had seen on my trip to the Amazon.
“Shannon, hold out your finger,” Izrail said, voice like wind chimes.
I obliged. Izrail coaxed the scintillating blue insect onto my hand.
The butterfly crawled onto my wrist. “It’s beautiful. Like a slice of sky.”
Izrail smiled. “Butterflies are symbols of the soul. Isn’t that right, Beelzebub?”
Beelzebub glanced over his shoulder. “Flies are better,” he grumbled.
Uriel snorted. “Flies eat crap, Beel. They’re disgusting. I hate bugs. Bugs and worms.”
Samael sidled up to me, glass of absinthe in hand. “Did someone say worms?”
I rolled my eyes, handing the butterfly back to Izrail. “Thanks, Izzy.”
“Someone said worms, right?” Samael repeated, clearly drunk. Alcoholism was his coping mechanism for the Apocalypse.
Uriel ignored him, holding out her bowl for Raphael. Raphael gave her a hearty serving of shrimp-and-sausage gumbo. It was my turn next. Samael hovered beside me.
Raphael grinned. “If it isn’t my favorite human.” He held his hand out for a fist bump. I pounded it.
“Hey Raff,” I said. He filled my bowl to the brim.
Samael reached for my spoon. Raphael swiped his hand away.
“Sam, back of the line,” Raphael chuckled. “You can’t mooch off Shannon.”
Samael narrowed his eyes. “I’m the eldest, Raphael. I should eat first, especially before a mortal.”
“Hey!” I said, punching him in the side.
Samael smirked.
The gumbo was delicious. I ate it in the courtyard, which had been converted into a mess hall. The archdemons’ dwellings, including Samael’s, had become living quarters for the angelic host. Hell’s cramped capital, Pandemonium, already overflowing with immigrants from the otherworlds, had little space for Heaven’s inhabitants. The angels sat with the angels and the demons with the demons, still uncomfortable with their forced closeness.
Samael was a drunken heap at the head of the archdemons’ table. He leered at me as I bit into a sausage chunk.
“What?” I said.
Samael looked at his empty bowl, then back to my half-filled one. He pursed his lips, pleading.
“No! This is my dinner.”
“Stop bothering her,” Beelzebub said. “You’re irritating everyone.”
“Irritating you?” Samael said. “I’m not the one who’s been a pill since two-thirds of our family gate-crashed the underworld.”
Beelzebub narrowed his eyes. “No, you’ve just been an alcohol-ridden slob.”
Samael blew air through his teeth. He surreptitiously reached for my spoon. “Give me a break. It’s called the demon drink, after all. How else am I supposed to blow steam in this hellhole?”
I wrestled my spoon from Samael’s grip.
“Maybe by relying less on absinthe and more on your supposed wits to plan our next attack,” Beelzebub said. “Michael’s forces are making advances into the Sixth Heaven, moving down the celestial ladder rung by rung. We have little time for dinner parties or flirtation.”
“We’re not flirting!” I said, anger red on my cheeks.
Samael laughed. “I am.” He released my spoon without warning and it went flying across the table, into Astaroth’s champagne.
The demoness smiled and delicately removed my spoon. “Remember when we were young, Beel?” Astaroth said to her husband.
Beelzebub grumbled.
“Beel wrote me poetry, Shannon – sonnets, villanelles, ballads,” Astaroth teased, taking Beelzebub’s hand in hers.
Beelzebub adjusted his collar. He said nothing, eyes burning holes in the ground.
“Crappy ones, if I remember,” Samael said. “A Shakespeare Beel is not.”
“I thought they were lovely,” Astaroth said.
Someone cleared their throat. I looked behind me to see Asmodeus, bowl in hand.
“Any room for me?” Asmodeus said.
“Sure.” I slid over on the bench to make space for him.
“How’s your brother?” Asmodeus asked, carefully eating his gumbo.
I sighed. “Mo’s doing better. He doesn’t remember anything. We’re getting ready to go back to college, and he’s pissed he can’t play football. Maybe all this sitting around on his butt will turn him into an intellectual.”
Samael snorted. “That kid has about fifteen brain cells, maggot. Probably less now that he’s the Horsemen’s vessel.”
“Hey!” I said. “Mo’s smart in his own way – a way that doesn’t involve school. He’s people-smart. A lady-killer.” I shook my head. “God, why is he dating my roommate?”
The demons laughed.
“Probably to torment you,” Samael said. “I’ll need you to keep an eye on your twin on campus and make sure he remains stable. The closer Michael’s forces get to Earth, the more likely the horsemen will act up.”
I nodded, nervous. “Okay. And what about Metatron? Where is he?” I asked, referring to the Watcher’s ally, the angel that had made it possible for Raziel to start the Apocalypse.
Samael’s face darkened. “We don’t know, not yet. After the chaos of the Ark of the Covenant’s destruction, the Watchers fled, supposedly to wherever Metatron is hiding. They’re biding their time, waiting for the chaos to begin.”
“We can’t let that happen,” I said.
Asmodeus gave a throaty laugh. “You don’t have to tell
us that.”
Dinner passed and I found myself on the outskirts of Samael’s practice field, in a section that had been converted into a shooting range. Angels and demons ran drills around me. Having already mastered Samael’s scythe and Asmodeus’ swordstick, my training with the shards of the Lapis Exillis had progressed to Beelzebub’s revolver. The compound-eyed demon guided my arm into the right position. I aimed at a target’s bullseye.
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