by Erica Crouch
“He’s just a kid,” Michael says to no one in particular.
“I’m not a kid. I’m thirteen.” Asher stills in the snow, sprawled on his back.
I cock my head to the side, not buying it. “Thirteen?”
He nods.
“You don’t look thirteen.”
“Technically, I’m eleven. And a half. I’m practically thirteen though. I’m more mature than other thirteen-year-olds I used to know.”
I take a step closer, and he scrambles to get his feet under him and stand. He checks his back, still paranoid there will be more of us sneaking up from behind.
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing,” I say. “What are you doing here?”
Eli’s dog circles around me, cautious about going any closer to the new stranger.
“Looking for somewhere to stay.”
“And your family?” Michael asks.
“Dead.”
The three of us are quiet. We don’t ask what killed them. We don’t ask how long he’s been alone. Eli whistles to the dog and pulls out the stick he was playing with before. He throws it toward the river and the dog tears off after it.
“The city is that way,” I say, pointing east.
“I know. I don’t like the city.”
“Why not?” Eli asks, pulling the slobbery stick from the dog’s mouth and throwing it again.
“It smells like death. And the soldiers at the shelters have too many guns. They don’t let us do anything. We can’t even go outside.”
“That’s because there are dangerous things outside,” I say. Like us, for example.
“I don’t like being trapped,” Asher says.
“So, where are you going now?” Michael asks. “Do you have anywhere else to stay?”
“I know what I’m doing,” he says defensively. “I’ve survived this long, haven’t I?”
“You have,” Michael says, nodding.
Eli takes the stick and throws it toward the kid. The dog fetches it, pausing next to the boy before running the rest of the way. Eli throws it again in the same direction, and this time, the dog stops next to Asher. He sniffs his leg, circles him a few times, and then rubs up against the boy. He rolls over in the snow, exposing his belly to be scratched.
“He likes you,” Eli says.
Asher pauses a moment before bending down and petting the dog. “Does he have a name?”
“Nope,” Eli says. “I just call him Dog.”
The dog’s tail wags like crazy. His game of fetch is all but forgotten, and he plays with Asher, nipping a little at his fingers and running around him, barking and jumping. Asher laughs, and for some reason, it breaks my heart. A kid and a dog in the middle of the apocalypse. A single moment of joy.
What have we done to this world?
Eli walks forward and joins them. He kneels in the snow, rubs between the ears of the dog. “I can’t watch him any longer,” he says. “Think you could take him off my hands?”
Asher looks between Eli and the dog, unsure. “Why can’t you keep him?”
“Don’t know if you realized this, kid, but we’re in the middle of a war.”
“And you’re the bad guys,” Asher says.
Eli rocks his head, considering. “Hell has accrued a bad rap over the years.”
“The angels, too,” Asher says, sneaking a peek at Michael again. “Back at the shelter, we could see the shadows of wings on the ceiling of the tent they set up. Every time we saw wings, we had to take cover. Didn’t matter what the color was.”
Michael shifts next to me. He’s seen too much of our war, he says sadly.
They all have.
“Can’t argue with you there,” Eli says.
“So, you are the bad guys?” Asher asks.
Eli shakes his head. “We’re trying not to be.”
“Is it working?”
“I’ll let you know.” Eli glances at us and nods.
I never would have guessed he’d be able to talk to an eleven-year-old so well. I don’t know how to talk to the kid. I don’t know what to say.
“So,” Eli says, “will you watch him for me?”
Asher drops to the ground, and the dog climbs into his lap and licks his face. “You’ll come back for him?”
“Maybe. Not for a long time though. And he needs a friend.”
He considers it for a minute and then nods. “Okay. Does he have a leash?”
“Where the Hell would I have gotten a leash from?” Eli asks, laughing.
“There was a lot of looting,” Asher suggests, flipping the dog’s soft ear over.
“Yeah, well, he doesn’t have a leash. But he doesn’t need one because I trained him. He’ll follow you, help you dig up some food.” Eli stands, patting the dog’s head. “He’s a good dog.”
“Thanks,” Asher says, unfolding himself from the snow.
“Eli,” he says, introducing himself and extending his hand.
Asher takes it and shakes it twice. Big, exaggerated pumps.
“And that’s Pen,” Eli says, pointing to me, “and Michael.” He jerks his chin toward him. “They’re trying not to be bad guys, too.”
“Good,” Asher says seriously. “There are too many of them.”
“You’re telling me,” Eli says.
Asher rocks from foot to foot, looking at all of us. “Are there more of you? Trying not to be bad guys, I mean?”
“Thousands,” Eli says.
Asher nods, crosses his arms. “Okay.”
There’s a loud crack of thunder, and the sky darkens. The wind dies down, but it looks like there’s a storm coming.
“You should probably head out, kid,” Eli says.
“My name’s Asher.”
“Right. Asher. You should probably get going if you want to beat that storm.”
Asher turns his face to the sky and squints, frowning. “Okay.”
“And hey.” Eli takes a small hunting knife from his back pocket and hands it to him. “You can have this, too.”
“Eli—” I say, not sure giving an eleven-year-old a weapon is the best idea. But what do I know?
“Now you don’t have to say you’re unarmed,” Eli continues. “Just don’t cut yourself on the thing.”
“Thanks,” Asher says, taking the cover off the blade and inspecting it. He puts it safely in his belt, patting it carefully. “I’ll take good care of your dog.”
“You better. And give him a name. I think he’s tired of being called Dog.” Thunder ripples through the thick clouds above us, and Eli waves him on. “Good luck, kid.”
He starts jogging away, his hand on his new knife. “Asher!” he says again, reminding Eli.
“I know. Good luck, Asher,” Eli says.
I wave as he runs by Michael and me, and he smiles at us. “Good luck,” I say.
“Pen, Michael.” He nods at us with the type of comical formality only an eleven-year-old could conjure up.
We watch him cut a line through the snow. He makes his way south, away from the center of the city, the dog trailing behind him with small yapping noises. I hope he gets far enough fast enough that he won’t be anywhere near here when the fighting breaks out.
The siren pierces the new silence and the gates unlock with a metallic click.
“I think he was the boy who passed by here during the first lockdown,” I say to Michael, looking off after him. I still remember the small figure that walked right up to the gates alone, afraid. I’m glad to see he’s made it this long; it gives me hope he’ll survive this all.
“I like him,” says Eli.
“Me too,” adds Michael.
Eli claps his hands together, breaking their shared moment. “Now, let’s get your soul to Ana so her angel buddies can work their magic.” He squints an eye. “Err, science. Don’t tell her I called it magic.”
Ana’s waiting for us in the courtyard, arms crossed. “You interfered with the human.”
“Um, the human interfered with u
s,” Eli says. “We got locked out. Really wasn’t anywhere to hide.”
“But now he knows where we are,” she says. The angels at her back shift uncomfortably at our chastisement.
“What did you expect us to do, knock him out and move him somewhere miles away before he woke up?” Eli asks, annoyed. “He’s fine. He won’t tell anyone. He has no one to tell.” His voice is low and sharp, like the thought hits too close to home.
Ana’s eyes land on each of us, measuring something. She presses her lips into a line and shakes her head. “It’s over now. No fixing it.”
“There was nothing to fix,” I say. “He thought we were going to kill him. He was a kid. He’s already seen too much. He needed to know that we’re not all bad guys.”
Ana starts walking, forcing us to follow and keep up. The conversation of Asher drops, but the tension in Eli’s shoulders, the knot of stress on Michael’s forehead, remains. I think we’re all going to be worried about that kid. I just pray he survives long enough for his world to start repairing itself.
We’re lead into a room near the dining hall. It’s much smaller, maybe a fourth of the size, and there’s a long metal table running the length of the room. On the table are a few different shaped glasses and a stack of books. I’m tempted to go over and read their spines to see which titles they’ve picked. I wonder if I’ve read any of them.
The angels that were with Ana move about the room, clearing a space and opening a book or two from the pile.
Ana turns to Michael and finally addresses us again. “We thought that, in addition to teaching you control over compulsion—a useful skill to have, in any circumstance—it would be prudent to take measures to prevent anyone from using this bit of your soul against you again. It’s already suggestible, and the more it’s used in compulsion, the harder it will be to fight.”
“How will they protect it?” Michael asks.
“The same way guardian angels protect anything. But under my guidance, I think we can make it stronger. I used to work with souls in Heaven, and I know a trick or two that will strengthen its defenses.” She pauses, considers us. “If it doesn’t work, we can always destroy it. I know how to do it in a way that should not be painful.” Ana puts out her hand. “May I see the vial?”
Michael digs it out of his pocket and hands it to her. She holds it up in the poorly lit room and inspects it for a moment, eyes narrowed. She hums to herself before handing it off to one of the others in the room.
“The plan is that you will bring the soul here every day to we will add a new level of protection. Layer after layer of security. It’s a process, but it’s a process that will allow us to assist in your training to withstand compulsion. As it’s at the early stages of shielding—these first few rounds of treatment, as it were—it can still listen to compulsion. We will be able to use it in your training, to teach you how to ignore it, how to fight back against the orders. Then—”
“Excuse me, Anabiel?” A strong, dark angel dressed in green with surprisingly muscular arms for a guardian steps forward. I recognize him—Lahabiel. He’s grown a lot since I saw him last. Ariel and Sablo, Michael’s guards after his resurrection and two of my biggest fans, served as his tutors when he was in training. He never seemed to like them very much. I don’t think anyone did. I wonder if they’re still alive?
“Yes?” Ana asks, turning to him.
Lahabiel holds the vial in his hand, the stopper out of its place. “This…” He looks at Michael and then at me before continuing. “This isn’t Michael’s soul.”
“What?” Cold dread spills over me.
“It’s not a soul at all, actually.” He motions us over to the table, where he pours out the vial’s contents into a small glass. The other angels step away.
It’s water. There’s absolutely no way for anyone to mistake it as anything close to a soul, not even a dead one. It’s murky, dirty water, not the pure, clean white of a soul. The glass of the vial was thick enough—scuffed up enough—for us not to notice the difference right away.
This isn’t Michael’s soul at all. It isn’t anything.
I should have known. Guilt starts thrumming through my skull like a headache. How did I leave there without bringing back his soul?
Michael is very still at my side. His face is drawn carefully to maintain a blank expression.
“What is it?” Ana asks.
Lahabiel swirls it, and the three other angels with him—a guardian and two angels who are still dressed in blue tunics, denoting their position working with souls—lean in, inspecting the liquid. He brings it to his nose and inhales. “If I had to guess…snow,” he says. “There’s a slight scent of ozone.”
He hands it off to an angel in blue who takes a whiff. “Nitrogen dioxide, nitric acid… Sulphate, dimethyl sulphide. Maybe some formaldehyde. This is snow. Or it was.”
“He tricked me,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. Azael tricked me.
Eli curses. He knocks a set of beakers from the metal table, sending them shattering on the floor, and he leaves the room. I can’t move—I can’t stop staring at the dirty water in the glass, at the scarlet vial with the little rubber stopper settled next to it at the table.
How didn’t I realize? Someone should have been able to sense that what we brought back wasn’t a soul! We were too blind, too tired—too relieved to still be alive. Michael even mentioned that it didn’t feel any different having the piece of his soul back with him. I assumed it was because there was no way to put the piece back inside of him—that that feeling of something missing was because he wasn’t complete, and would never be complete again.
But that wasn’t it. He should have felt some difference being in possession of the missing piece of his soul again, even if we could never reattach it. Yet he said he felt the same. Nothing changed. Of course it didn’t, because we never actually retrieved his soul. We failed. Entirely.
I think of those we lost during the battle, of Zophiel who wouldn’t have been anywhere near Azael if Ana hadn’t asked her to scope out the area for us. It was all for nothing. I tried so hard to make their deaths matter, and I disappointed them. I let them all down. We’re back to where we started. What a waste.
“Now what?” Michael asks. His voice sounds dead and very, very far away. It’s amazing how quickly happiness evaporates.
Ana paces next to the table, thinking. She pulls her hair up and pins it to the top of her head. Kala walks in, probably sent by Eli, and doesn’t bother taking the temperature of the room before she starts chattering away.
“Heard you guys showed yourselves to a human! Déjà vu, right Ana?” She laughs, but Ana doesn’t look at her. Her smile drops. “Bad news, then?” she asks, bouncing over to us. She jumps up on the table in front of where Ana paces and swings her legs, watching her. “Well?”
“We don’t have Michael’s soul,” Lahabiel answers when no one else speaks.
“Shitsticks,” Kala says. She looks at Michael. “Sorry about that.”
Michael shrugs and I shake out of my stupor. “What do we do? We can’t go back…”
“Azael could decide to destroy it,” Kala says. “That isn’t always a terrible thing. We were keeping that as an option. I mean, I’m sure he won’t make it pain-free, so you’d feel it, but…” She looks at Ana for a brief second. “Obviously you’d be missing a part of yourself,” she says to Michael, “but it’s better than him using it against you.”
“I don’t think so. Azael wouldn’t be so wasteful,” I say. “He knows what kind of power he has with him, and after…” I glance at Ana. She continues to pace, not paying any attention to us. “After what I said to him, what he said to me, I don’t think he’s going to use it for anything benign.”
Ana stops, turns to the others in the room who are standing quietly as they watch us scramble for a solution. “We cannot let this get out, do you understand?” She meets everyone’s eyes and waits for them to agree. “If the rest of the compound find out that we failed�
�that Azael maintains the potential to use Michael as a weapon—everything will collapse. Our revolution will fall to pieces.”
There's a beat of heavy silence. The weight of this secret hangs in the room, makes the pause in conversation thick and tense. I ball my hands into fists and hope that the others in this room trust us. That their word means something, and that they’ll keep our secret. Michael’s secret. If word gets out that we still don’t have the piece of Michael’s soul back—that he is still a potential threat—Ana won’t be able to stop them from pushing us out. She’s already put herself on the line for us once. We can’t ask her to do it again.
“We understand,” Lahabiel says. “This information doesn’t leave the room.”
I relax a little—just enough to not feel like I’m going to get sick or catch fire. The last thing we need is a mob calling for Michael to be removed again.
“Other than that,” Ana says, “we proceed as planned. But now, the importance of learning how to control a compulsion is even more significant. It’s all we have to combat whatever Azael has planned.”
“See?” Kala asks. “Not too big of a setback.”
Everyone in the room stares at her in disbelief and she jumps off the table.
“You guys need to lighten the fuck up and look at the bright side of things! At least now we know what we’re working against. He could have separated his soul, and only given us back half of what he had, and then we’d think we’re safe, but he could still,”—she points her finger in a gun motion—“pull the trigger on whatever he wanted to do. But since we are absolutely positive that he still has it, we’re able to arm ourselves. Right? Isn’t that what you’re always saying, Ana?” She wraps her arm around Ana’s side and pulls her close. Ana is stiff with worry. “Arm yourself with knowledge. It’ll do you more good than any other weapon.”
“When can I start training?” Michael asks. “I don’t want to…I want to make sure that I know how to stop the compulsion, if Azael uses it soon. I don’t want to slip again.”
I grab his hand under the table and he squeezes mine back.
“Immediately,” Ana says. “I will meet you in the training room after I get everything back in order here. I have to make sure the supply runners are ready for their trip this afternoon, and I need to have people start practicing drills.” She puts her hand to her forehead. “I have to send out word to the others not staying in the compound. We need them here, now. There’s so much to do, and with Azael on the loose, it’s only a matter of time before there’s another battle, and I have little doubt it will be a great, violent one…”