by J. L. Myers
Her smile made his heart soar. “Until we meet again, my Morningstar.”
Chapter Eleven
Michael stormed through the portal from Gabriel’s secret garden, barely able to catch his breath. Continuing at speed through the blinding corridors, his wings beat to propel his body on faster. Ire swam in his veins, and his whole body shook with the need to take action.
He wanted so badly to rush back in there, to come face to face with Lucifer as he stared down at the unworthy angel. He wanted to lay his strong hands on his brother, to curl his fingers around his neck and squeeze the recklessness right out of him. He wanted to bloody the angel’s face until any thought of whispering seductive and persuasive words were lost to his lips. And he wanted to break every bone in the angel’s hand that Michael knew Lucifer desired to reach out and touch her with.
Everything Lucifer had done and said when it came to Gabriel had been pushing so far beyond the boundaries that they as God’s archangels existed by that he should have been banished from their sanctuary. Even if any of his musings or desires were not against every law that they stood by, Lucifer would be the last of the archangels worthy of one as pure as their Gabriel. His menial obedience to spread the word of God was not enough to overcome or excuse all the wrong he continued to harbor and act out.
Michael stopped suddenly, realizing he was standing outside the opening to the scribe vault. He glanced down at himself, seeing his leather war clothes and the bloody remnants of the war he had fought alongside humans in God’s name while his maker’s power concealed his heavenly wings. The war he had helped win for God’s people.
Of all the angels, if a physical connection was ever allowed, Lucifer was not the one that was worthy of one such as Gabriel. Not now. Not ever. If any angel was to be worthy…
Teeth gnashing, Michael quashed the simmering thought before it could take root inside of him, before it could fester and grow. As the protector of all angels and as the Warrior of God, he had his duties. He had his calling. And now that the flashes from Below had almost ceased to streak around him, it was time to report on all he had witnessed.
Striding into the scribe vault, Michael glared at the mess. Papyrus scrolls lay strewn across the luminous floor, left by other angels who’d rushed in to note their findings before rushing out to behold more from below.
Michael waded through the mess, shoving the rolled paper aside with his bare feet as his draping wings brushed the ground behind him. He sat atop the large log positioned before the horizontal platform that levitated in place and was unmovable because that was how God had created it. Forcing the tight muscles up his arms to release, Michael plucked a feather from his wing—a feather that would make the sender of this report as clear as God’s light. Ignoring the sting as the quill came free, he glanced around the vault. The area was not so wide, but it stretched out for an eternity before him. Beneath the soft glow that radiated from the walls were countless pigeonholes, each identical and perfectly sized to house a stack of tablets or a set of scrolls that had entered the central blue fire for delivery to God, and been returned in historically chronological order of all of existence below. Though the message he was set to deliver—which would not be about his venture below—would not get returned to one of those rectangular homes.
Thinking again as he held the feather up to his tense mouth, rather than inking the tip to press it to paper, the released muscles up his sinewy arms bunched. Heat burned in his heart and spread like wildfire through every inch of him. In sharp words, he detailed all that he had beheld in Gabriel’s garden: their reunion, the way they had touched, the desirous thoughts Lucifer’s eyes had betrayed, and lastly, his words. Michael could see it even if Lucifer had not yet made the realization. He wanted what humans had, the ability to do and feel without restriction.
Lucifer wanted to be free, and he wanted to damn Gabriel with that same freedom.
Michael snarled at the thought of losing his heavenly sister. Of God stripping her light and position from her. She belonged here in the sanctuary of the Realm of Light, beside her brothers and sisters. Beside him.
Snatching up the feather in a tight fist, Michael worried not at the damage caused to the delicate vanes. His report was complete, and no destruction could muddy its message of importance. He stood and was around the platform and yards ahead in a few long strides, kneeling before the round fire well. Feather to lips, his final words left no confusion. “Lucifer and his sinful infatuation must be stopped.” Then he reached out, delivering the crumpled feather toward the licking and hissing flames.
“What are you doing?”
Michael stalled right before the dancing blue and white could kiss his offered feather.
Over his shoulder, he saw an angel entering the vault in black robes with wings that looked like they’d been brushed with ashes. Azrael. With one arm folded across the angel’s abdomen like a platform to prop his other elbow up, his raised hand partially cover his worried face.
“I am reporting of all I beheld between our dearest sister and that snake Lucifer. He shall know about their continued interaction.”
Azrael’s eyes fell at once, his head tilting to one side. His voice broke when he spoke. “Can…can we not confide in Lucifer ourselves? Explain the importance of our duties? Remind him of his stature?”
“Lucifer does not adhere to warnings.” Not even painfully violent ones, Michael mused, remembering the time he had delivered God’s will and struck Lucifer with a blast from their maker. “The past tells us as much.”
“Perhaps if we knew why it is forbidden—”
“Are you switching sides, Azrael?” Michael spun up from his kneeling position, striding right up to the angel so that he was breathing down on him. On occasion, he’d caught the Angel of Death watching his dark-haired sister Ariel across the looking glass. Was the transporting of souls from Below that darkened his wings polluting his purity too? “Is your loyalty in question, brother?”
Azrael refused to shrink back even though Michael was a whole foot taller and towering in his muscled form. He sighed deeply and shook his head. “You know it is not. My loyalty is only to Him. Though that does not diminish my faith in all of our heavenly brothers and sisters, including Lucifer. I only wish to do what is best.”
“Which is why I am the commander of all angels, and you are a transporter.” Michael returned to the fire, giving not a second thought as he lit the edge of the feather. The tip caught alight, sizzling as it curled back on itself, being eaten away like an invisible caterpillar eating a leaf. “You may leave now. Those souls you harbor will stain your very soul if you contain them much longer, brother.”
Michael didn’t look behind himself, but he felt Azrael leave as the sensation of his presence dulled off. Now alone, Michael cupped the feather in his palm, relishing the burn as it smoldered into hungry flames. “Lucifer defies you in his thoughts and in his actions. It is only a matter of time before he ruins her purity, before he betrays you to take what he covets.” The fire died, leaving dust in his palms and scorched flesh surrounding the remnants as he withdrew his hands from the flames. The open welts that oozed blood wept as the skin renewed and replenished, cleaning away the proof of his sent message and leaving his hands unblemished once more.
The light all around him suddenly flared infinitely brighter, stealing Michael’s ability to see. At the same instant, his maker’s almighty presence filled the scribe vault, fluttering the blue flames. Unfiled scrolls skittered outward to hit the side walls and disappeared down the seemingly endless chamber. In Michael’s blindness, the images God delivered to his mind almost floored him. The temptation to question God’s certainty in his plan was strong, but Michael refused to let himself do so. God’s will was God’s will, and he was a devoted soldier who would do as he was commanded. He bowed his head, worry and hope for the right outcome joining his hands in front of his heart. “I will go to her now. It will be as you wish.”
Chapter Twelve
; “Lucifer!” The angel Gabriel sought turned rigid at the sight of her as she rushed through the glittery barrier into his chamber. His widened eyes drank her in as man did with wine on Earth, seeming mesmerized as her billowing hair and robe settled around her. She cleared the steps up to his place of reflection, bringing herself close. Lucifer’s gaze shot up to her warm cheeks, and he vaulted up from the pillows he’d been daydreaming from and stepped back to escape her touch. The excited sparkle in her eyes died a little, and Lucifer stumbled back over the pillows, clutching a fist over his heart as if she’d struck him. Rejection threatened to send her from his chamber at once, but she refused to leave. She refused to let him push her away again.
Looking like he too was thinking of running from here, like he feared her nearness, Lucifer uttered, “What is wrong? Are you—”
“I am well. Wonderful, in truth.” As a bright smile returned to her rosy lips, Lucifer appeared to warm to her, letting his guard down as his lips curved upward. “I am to venture below. There is an important message I must deliver.”
“Oh…” Lucifer’s smile dropped faster than an angel struck from Above. He turned away from her, facing the back wall of luminescent drapes. “I wish you well…”
Gabriel reached out to touch him. The hard muscles of his sinewy shoulder bunched at her connection. “Then wish us well,” she said quietly, refusing to relinquish her hold on him. “You are to shadow me.”
Lucifer spun so fast, Gabriel’s hand flung back at her and she gasped. His eyes were the most intense thing she had ever seen, a raging storm over a sea, his stare drilling into her in a way that was full of fear and want. “Gabriel, I would do anything to guard you in any place. Though we both know He will never allow such—”
“It is by His command that I deliver this task unto you.” Gabriel’s smile returned. Delivering this command felt like a gift somehow, like God had chosen to believe in Lucifer, to see the shining goodness in him, the way she always had. “Now we must depart.” She held out her hand. “Please, Lucifer, will you fly with me?”
Lucifer stared at her hand like it was something that could mortally wound him. Gabriel felt that rejection claw at her soul again, but before she could snatch her offering away, a passing soul flared the light around them. Lucifer struck out, taking hold and curling his strong fingers around her much smaller hand. Her palm tingled to be touching him, the sensation traveling up her arm and into her heart. She felt it every time she touched him, a sort of humming that resonated beneath her skin and spoke to all that encompassed her being. Lucifer spoke not a single word as his jaw clenched, the glow that haloed his body growing brighter in a show of accepting his task. Gabriel’s essence responded, beaming around her as if encouraged by his own. With their free hands at their sides, they each clicked their fingers—and exploded in a rain of shimmering light.
Below the barrier of the Realm of Light, Gabriel and Lucifer took form hand in hand, plummeting head first toward the earth. The feel of the wind rushing past her face and through her hair was exhilarating, and the fact that Lucifer was there beside her made this venture her most memorable to date. She had always yearned to have him at her side in her heavenly tasks, and until Michael’s confrontation, she had never understood why it had never come to be. But now they were here, free-falling together from Above to Below. The experience was heavenly, and though the fall was long, their smiles at each other while they pointed out life and curiosities below passed oh so swiftly.
Before too long, the marbled green and brown landscape was rushing up to greet them. Gabriel held back from extending her great, white wings, desperate for another fleeting moment of heavenly peace. Looking to Lucifer, he waited for her to react, to stop their fall. His smile, the one she had so rarely seen across his tan face, kept her from taking action. One moment longer. One more…
Gabriel’s wings flung out a second before Lucifer’s followed, and the wind hit them both like it was an invisible mountain, throwing them up as the vast resistance of their expansive wings was met. The ground rose up again as they both fluttered down, landing outside a small village where sheep grazed the land. The animals startled, dodging about and “baaing,” but as the angelic intruders remained still, they calmed and resumed their grazing.
With the commotion over, Lucifer released her hand fast as if her touch had burned him. He busied himself by refolding his wings to his back. The sun was low in the sky over undulating terrain, and long shadows grew by the second, blanketing his troubled expression and bringing a chill to her skin.
And then Gabriel saw a man in brown rags—the charge set to receive God’s word—as he waded through the sheep, coming out to see what the disturbance had been. She nodded at Lucifer and he nodded back, taking her wordless direction to take cover behind one of the many surrounding trees.
With her protector watching from the shadows, the man named Noah stalled suddenly, seeing her standing amongst his herding animals. “By all that is holy.” He fell to his knees with a squelch of mud, bringing his hands together at once.
With her robe staining as it brushed over the damp grass and dirt, Gabriel eased closer, careful not to startle the mere human. “Rise, child of God.” Her single finger under his chin brought him up to his feet as if he weighed no more than a feather. With Noah’s eyes set unwaveringly on her, she remembered the message she had been sent here to deliver. The one that being so close to Lucifer had almost made her forget. The one she did not truly wish to deliver. “A great rain is coming, one that will last forty days and forty nights. The Earth will flood with God’s tears, washing away the sins of the world, cleansing it for a new day. You, Noah, a true man of faith, will be spared. Gather your sons and build an ark of gopher wood. Build it fifty cubits by thirty cubits and divide it into many rooms. Gather two of each animal upon the earth, one of male and one of female creation. Do this, and you and your family shall survive in this new world, a world that will be cleansed of sin.” She nodded past the man to his village where burning firelight blinked into existence to combat the invading darkness. “Now go. And tell no others of what is to come. Sleep tonight, for tomorrow you will need your strength.”
Unable to speak a word, the man nodded, kissing the tips of his prayer-joined fingers. Then he zigzagged away through the sheep, leaving Gabriel alone with her thoughts. Thoughts she could no longer bury inside. Gabriel had pleaded for God to do something about the bloodshed on Earth after that terrible battle. And now he was. All but a few of mankind and the animals that walked the below would be wiped out. A clean slate. She could not help but feel responsible for the lives that would be lost, so many that were true to her master, so many that were innocent of sin. The cold penetrated her flesh suddenly, seeping down to her bones as she sniffed.
“You are sad. Why do you cry?”
Lucifer’s warm hand touched Gabriel’s cheek, sending a wave of heat through her as she turned to face him. Instead of moving away as he had above, he let his hand fall against her neck below her thick hair. His breath was faster as he stared at her, speeding up as her own did. Sensation flooded her like God’s rains one day soon would, and she struggled to speak past the knot wedged in her throat. “I feel so…deeply. I weep for all that will die, for being the one to beg Him to deliver the world from sin.”
Lucifer stepped closer, his hand on her neck curling further around her nape. “His machinations are his own. Nothing you ever say or did say has changed His plan. You know we do not have that power. We never have and we never will. What we want is not part of His plan.”
“Lucifer…” As Gabriel stared into the deep pools of his silvery eyes, she knew there was so much he was holding back, that he was holding deep down inside. His grip on her neck had tightened too, and his body had started to quiver. The sharpness of his voice scared her, but it was also a clue. Despite the flutter of fearful anticipation that swirled through her belly, she needed to know… “What is it that you want?”
Lucifer’s gaze fell to her l
ips, and she gasped at the warmth that suddenly swelled inside of her. He was beautiful, stunning in every way inside and out. He could not possibly want what Michael had claimed, what Lucifer had all but confessed to. Not after all this time. Not from her. But Gabriel was lying to herself. The truth was as clear as the strengthening moon as he kept staring, licking his lips as if starved.
Gabriel knew she should pull away or take a step back from him. She had seen that look on Lucifer’s face before when she had not known the cause—the wanting, the heated yearning. The time they had stared through that tranquil pool to the Garden of Eden and witnessed the mortal love between a man and a woman. Lucifer wanted her. He craved her. Michael had claimed as much. And now she saw the proof in his eyes and the way they drank her in. In the way his breath quickened as she bit her bottom lip, pumping his chest beneath his robe. In the tensing of his sculpted arms and the way his free hand curled then uncurled over and over.
Did she want him too?
Without thinking, without giving herself permission, Gabriel leaned closer. Now she felt his warm breath across her face and tasted the masculine scent of him on her tongue.
At her hitched breath, Lucifer hissed, gnashing his teeth together as if trying to distract himself. As he went to pull away, a pang of unexpected loss cut through her. “Gabriel, we should…leave.”
As Lucifer’s possessive grip on her neck relinquished, one rough finger wiping her drying tears as he turned away, she could not stop the words. “Lucifer, stay—”
A flare of light brightened the darkening sky, and Lucifer spun back, reclaiming the back of her neck. The look in his eyes was so intense she could almost imagine they were on fire. Lips a hair’s breadth away, she didn’t pull back as he froze before her. He seemed to be waiting for her to move, to push him away, to tell him to stop. But she didn’t. She couldn't speak. And more than that? She didn’t want to. Instead, she tilted her head gently to one side, letting her lips part with a shaky inhale.