by J. L. Myers
Uriel and Ariel appeared through the twin columns from the corridor that led to the scribe vault. Each had their hands clasped together in wait. Ariel’s black hair and dark golden complexion contrasted to everything Gabriel was, and as she looked at Azrael, he saw a sparkle in his brother’s eyes before it was blinked away.
Lucifer did not bother to greet the arriving angels, but a smile did broaden his lips as he looked back at Michael with his superior glow. The extent of Lucifer’s punishment had come to an end, at least in his own mind. The plan that evolved in his thoughts would not be everlasting, but it would suffice enough to keep her safe while also feeding his need. Now it was time to act.
Brimming with anticipation, Lucifer fought to control himself as the other male angels verbally greeted the newcomers. Watching Michael unlocked the other two angels from their places with a spark of light to release the restraints, his hands and feet tingled with the need to act. He couldn’t stop himself from meeting Michael’s warning gaze as the other angel knelt, ready to release him.
“Whatever it is you are thinking, Lucifer…” Michael sent a sharp look toward the looking glass as if it were an open gate to the below. He zapped a spark at the cuff around Lucifer’s ankle to unlock the restraint. “Do not even—”
The restraint clattered free, and Lucifer drove his knee up. Cracked in the nose, Michael flew back. The angel slid as he landed, protective light making his tense hands glow. “I warned you.”
Lucifer leaped up from the ground, his fist ready as Michael lunged forward—in time to meet his primed knuckle. Blood spurted from Michael’s split lip. Uriel and Ariel gasped, edging back. But Azrael and Remiel were coming at him.
Before they got there, Lucifer screamed and ran at Michael, daring the angel to use his God-gifted power. Fists ready, his next hit failed miserably as Michael darted back.
Exactly as planned.
Red-faced and seething, Michael unleashed a ball of light—right into one side of Lucifer’s chest. Flung back through the air, his wings crunched as he hit a pillar. The resounding boom rattled the realm and the looking glass as he slid to the ground.
Slow to recover as he grasped his aching shoulder, Lucifer stood on shaky legs. His nerve endings burned and his vision was blotchy. His robe hung only from one shoulder, split on his throbbing side from Michael’s blast.
Hands shoved at Lucifer, then gathered the front of his robe into a tight fist. Michael’s silver-smeared face appeared through the haze, his free arm driving back, ready to knock Lucifer’s lights out with his glowing fist.
Lucifer smiled wickedly. His shaky hands came up in surrender as he flashed an impish grin. “Not the face, lest you wish to bruise my pride.”
Michael growled but stopped his ready fist as he shoved Lucifer back into the restraining hands of Remiel and Azrael. He wiped the blood from his healing lip and nodded to the other two angels. “Take him to the vault.”
Azrael tugged Lucifer on, almost pulling his arm out of the socket. “You have a death wish.”
“Are you granting them?” Lucifer shot back while Remiel at his other arm kept his grip as tight as his pinned lips. They were moving through the blanketing light and down the corridor that would lead straight to the scribe vault.
“I may be the Angel of Death, but I do not grant favors, especially not for the likes of you.”
“What about for Ariel?” Lucifer hiked his brow suggestively at the watching females, and Azrael swung his bent elbow up into his jaw. Lucifer’s head kicked back, his neck crying out. He chuckled but said no more. He had seen the way Azrael smiled when the dark-haired angel was around.
“Lucifer, you push too far,” Remiel whispered, shoving him on. Always the voice of reason and understanding but spineless when it came to acting on his own. “When will it stop?”
They reached the entry to the scribe vault, and Lucifer was shoved down onto the log stump. His wings brushed the glowing platform, shooting spears of pain from small broken bones as he spun to face the other two. “When He along with the rest of you see that all that drives me is unstoppable.”
Michael appeared behind them, and the other two frowning angels shrank back out into the corridor to let him through. With his wings expanding to dwarf Lucifer, and his hands glowing in threat, Michael nodded down at Lucifer’s feet. “Now.”
Lucifer complied with a wry smile, holding out one leg. It was time to force the reaction he wanted. “And you, Michael? What hides behind the menacing facade you wear? Do you covet what I have already tasted?”
Michael’s cheeks burned even redder than the anger already staining them. His eyes narrowed with malice, making Lucifer bark out a laugh.
“You do take an awful lot of pleasure in seeing me suffer. Perhaps your true desire is to end me? To commit the sin of murder amongst brothers.”
“I would not stain my soul to give you the satisfaction.” Michael moved swiftly, swooping up the glowing chain that now sided the platform’s base. He locked the manacle around Lucifer’s ankle. Straightening faster than he ever had before, he almost seemed surprised at Lucifer’s lack of continued fight. “You do this to yourself, Lucifer. You wish to be condemned and isolated? You wish to drown in your own lonesome misery? Then fine. Have it your way.”
Michael strode from the scribe vault, the sound of his and the other two angel’s dragging wings fading along with their footfalls.
Lucifer was alone. Exactly as planned.
He opened the fist he had kept tight since Michael blasted him and smiled at the warmed metal pin that lay across his palm. The gold pin no longer held the broken side of his white robe together, now glowing with light and humming with power. “I am coming, Gabriel.”
Chapter Twenty
Lucifer smashed the glowing pin into the cuff around his ankle. There was a pop, and he caught the heated restraint before it could clatter to the ground. Waiting a moment, he listened for Michael’s return. But there was no noise. No one had heard him.
With the manacle placed silently on the floor, Lucifer clicked his fingers—finally able to traverse now that he was unchained. The light of the scribe vault around him glowed brighter for a heartbeat, and then he was out.
His wings flung out wide, catching the rushing wind that greeted his fall and had him soaring. It was glorious: the freedom, the scent of fresh air, the feeling of rushing wind ruffling his wings that had been immobile for too long now. His wings, though they stung while healing their small fractures, made him feel strong again—free again.
While the fall was freeing and exhilarating, it was not what had forced him to defy orders and escape. It was equally not what had him wishing he could traverse lower rather than having to fly out the distance between Heaven and Earth. Gabriel and seeing her in the flesh, watching over her protectively in the shadows, was his only real motivation.
When Lucifer had been falling for what felt like a small eternity and had tightened his freedom into a doomed sense of fading time, he worried that he would be intercepted, that Michael could have returned and discovered him missing. But then, finally, he saw clarity in the world below as it rushed up to greet him.
Finding the place he needed to be below amongst the patches of green and brown and blue, he maneuvered his body, letting his arms fall flatter to his sides. His wings folded in tight against his body, only their outer edges extended a fraction to direct his dive.
Faster and faster the earth rose up, the air batting his face and whipping over and through his damaged robe. The closer he got the more his anticipation heightened. His original plan had been to merely see her, to glimpse her from a distance that was not a world away, to protect her in his disobedience. But as he neared and the teasing tingle of her presence resonated in him, his plans changed. She would sense him, of course she would. And if she failed to take flight to avoid him, he would have no choice. He would have to go to her. The words he hadn’t uttered to her the day they were torn apart were still on his lips, burning with the
refusal to be swallowed down and ignored.
The details of swirling rivers and rocky mountains rose up, and then the leaves in the trees and the blades of golden grasses did too. Right outside a peasant village of huts and man-built dwellings as the sun fell towards the mountains, there she was. In that same grazing field among puffs of fluffy white sheep. The enormous structure was impossible to miss, a towering ark of curved wood now tall enough for the villagers to glimpse that sat upon the land.
Lucifer banked right, taking a wider birth around concealing clouds as he plunged down the remaining distance. He hoped she would not see him, that he would not disturb her task as he aimed for a thick, sheltering tree, and though his landing was perfect in its silence, his legs falling down and forward and wings opening up wide to slow his body before impact, Lucifer knew she had sensed him. Not because she turned and glimpsed his arrival as he re-pinned his robe, but because of the subtle tightening of her own pure white wings at her back.
She knew he was there.
Yet she did not deviate from what she was doing. Instead, she rolled her shoulders back and gathered her windswept hair in front of her. Keeping herself facing that man, Noah, she worried at the length as she spoke to him. “Yes, two of each and every animal and enough supplies to last forty days and nights. The time is drawing nearer, and as you and your own have done your duty, your sons and their wives may leave this land with you.”
Noah clapped his hands together and knelt before her, bowing his head between his raised arms. “All that you ask I shall deliver.” He stood tall, still holding his praying hands palm to palm. “Bless you. Bless thy God for choosing me.”
With a silent nod from the angel, the man turned and scurried through the tall grass. He picked up a brown woven bag that was lumpy with whatever produce lay inside and disappeared up the ramp into the ark.
Lucifer glanced from the man back to where Gabriel had stood. His mouth opened and his brow creased. The tall grasses rustled in the wind. Sheep moved slowly and contentedly, baaing intermittently. But Gabriel was gone. Expecting to find her escaping up through the sunset colored clouds into the deepening blue sky, his head craned up.
“You should not be here, Lucifer.”
Struck by Gabriel’s voice, he gasped and whirled, finding her standing right behind him under the shade of the quivering tree. Every nerve ending in his body came alive at the sight of her twisting her hair in front of her. She was still the same, perfect in her grace and form, gentle in her entirety. Her body, curves, face, lips, the way her heart raced now that she was standing before him, each of them flooded his sight and hearing and overloaded his senses. He took a quick step forward without meaning to, then froze, seeing the wide Os her eyes had become. “Gabriel. I—”
“You were not granted permission to be here…” Though she had to know the answer, she seemed to expect a response. When Lucifer shook his head, her caution turned into distress. She turned her back to him, hiding behind the height of her delicate wings as she braced a hand against the tree. “You must leave.”
“Gabriel, please. I never intended for any of this to happen. You being hurt. Your garden. And…I miss you. I miss you so much I can barely stand it. Though I felt like I was dying, I tried to stay away. I tried to honor you, but I guess I failed again. I…” Lucifer reached out, tracing the soft feathers at her back. Gabriel shuddered. “I had to see you. I had to. You are everything to me—”
Lucifer gasped as she spun around to face him, the feather he’d been stroking flying out of his grasp as her hair sailed behind her back. The old understanding he had always evoked in her expression was gone. Something harder, something pained, now replaced it. “Therein lies the reason we cannot see each other. Why we must remain separated. We are poison to each other. We cannot be.”
Lucifer didn’t know what he had expected, but it had not been this, this certainty toward him that felt like she had cut him open to let his innards fall from his gut. He had never intended to beg for her, to appeal to her. He had merely wanted to see her. Despite his intent, the words formed on his tongue as his voice shook. “You cannot mean that. You cannot want that.”
“What I want is to do my duty. To be worthy of the position I am granted as one of God’s archangels.” Seeing the wetness he could feel glazing his sight, Gabriel reached up, that hardness faltering for only a moment in time as her hand cupped his jaw. With a shuddering sigh, a single tear escaped her eye in a shimmering trail. She turned her head to the side, casting her face in shadow. “I want you to leave, Lucifer. Leave me be.”
Lucifer stared in dumb shock. His heart turned cold, pounding like it was trying to thaw the ice that was fast growing around it. When her hand fell from his face, he staggered back, crunching grass under his feet. With any and all words lost to him, all he could manage was a nod. He had vowed to himself from the beginning, promised that if she ever asked him to leave her be that he would abide her decision…even if the pain killed him.
In a slow sweep, he allowed himself one last moment to take in everything about her: her beauty, her determination, the hope that he would listen and obey. And the true reason behind her demand. Not to save herself from shame, but to save him—from himself. He dared a step closer, sliding his hand beneath her wing and around her back. Her chest moved with shortening breaths of self-control. But Gabriel didn’t protest. He brought his lips to her forehead, breathing in her scent of spring blossoms for the last time. “As you wish.”
He let her go, his wings flinging out startling the sheep as his powerful legs rocketed him up into the sky. The last thing he saw as she shrank with speed below him was the trail of tears that streamed down her face.
Chapter Twenty-One
Gabriel stared up into the sky, taming the ends of her wind-blown hair as Lucifer’s great white wings delivered him higher at unimaginable speed. The fading sun had dipped over the mountains in the distance. Darkness and a chill that prickled her skin rose as if a direct result of her distance from him. Tears continued to form trails down her cheeks, and she made no effort to wipe them away, frozen in her grief as time forged on and darkness prevailed. Struck by the separation of him, she paid no mind to the distant sounds that normally would have alerted her. The louder brush of movement through long grass she assumed were sheep, to the crackling of flames that she guessed were fires being lit to warm the rising chill of oncoming night.
What she had said, all of it had been true. She felt responsible for the feelings she stirred in Lucifer, felt responsible for his reactions to her. Even now she remembered that early day by the looking glass when she had placed her hand over his heart. When she had urged him to feel some of the emotion that had flooded her body from the first day their light was borrowed and dulled. The first day they’d become flesh and bone. She had taught him to feel, and now…
Gabriel tore her gaze away long after the sight of Lucifer vanished through the appearing sparkle of stars above. That sound, it was closer now, moving at speed. Human speed.
Footsteps, countless pairs.
She whirled with a gasp. Advancing through the bordering trees from the village over the ridge was a band of men. All of them were looking at her. They had seen her, an angel who was only to be sighted by those she delivered her messages to.
Gabriel’s worry for divine punishment paled as she beheld the faces of each of the men. Faces lined and eyes narrowed into angry stares. The objects they carried proved their meeting was not to be one of kind or Godly exchanges. Weapons. Each of them held one. Long wooden sticks with sharpened stones attached to the ends, or blazing fire torches with cloth-wrapped ends that sent gusts of glowing embers in her direction.
Flinging her wings out, an enormous flap lifted her from the ground. The resulting wave of air flattened the tall grass and made the front line of men stumble. Through the chorus of startled sheep, there was a sudden grunt. Her ascent up into the stars stalled, leaving her hovering mere feet off the ground.
“Leave
, winged creature, and your disciple dies,” a burly man heading the group declared.
Noah struggled as two men dragged him from his ark. The rusted blade at his throat kept him from breaking free. Other men stood back alongside the wooden ship, holding their flaming torches out in readiness to set the vessel alight. To burn God’s plans to cleanse the world of human sin, while saving only enough to continue mankind.
Struck by the fear of failure, of disgracing God once more, Gabriel hovered without ascending higher.
The man with a dark beard had loops of rope hanging from one shoulder across his chest. “We shall burn this land boat to cinders too.”
Gabriel plummeted back down, landing with bent knees and sweeping wings before she straightened. She did not know what these gathered village men wanted, but she refused to let God’s plans for Noah and the ark go thwarted because of her carelessness. She addressed the only man who had spoken. “Here I stand, as you order. What is it you want?”
The man came closer, showing no fear at the heavenly creature he stood before. He held a torch to her face, forcing her to jerk back out of its blistering heat. “We demand the truth, winged creature. Why is it you visit Noah and whisper in his ear? Why order him to build this massive land boat when waters are lands away?”
Gabriel’s throat went dry as she swallowed. She was not permitted to reveal her mission that influenced Noah. And more importantly, doing so would expose the purpose of the ark and the fate of all who were not invited therein. With her lips parting on a lie, she could not make the words form on her tongue.