by Erica Crouch
“I wanted a different sort of world than you did,” she says. “A better world.”
“And where do I belong in it?” I ask. Nerves scrape my bones to splinters. “What is someone like me going to do in this new world of yours?”
“They’re going to try their best,” she says.
A laugh bubbles from my gut; it sounds like I’ve been punched, like I’m laughing through a beating.
“They’re going to try. Azael…” She takes another small step away from Michael, toward me, but I back up.
“Stay back,” I say. “You’ve chosen your side. Don’t cross the line now.”
“Everyone has darkness in them,” she goes on, shaking her head. “But there’s also light. You just have to find it.”
Teeth tearing through the flesh of my cheek, I consider what she is saying. Would she really give me the chance at redemption? Would she let me live, help me become something…more than this?
“And if I can’t?” I ask.
My world is slipping out from under my feet. Lilith left me; Lucifer’s dead. Will I even be welcome back in Hell again, or have I been shunned from there, too? What do I have left?
“Then I can help you,” she says, taking another careful step forward. A small flower of hope blooms in her eyes—bright and beautiful.
I pluck it, crush it in my hands. Watch her wilt. “And if I don’t want to find it?”
Her face falls. “Azael.”
The pity’s back. The same look I always see in my dreams. I hate it. I want to shatter her pity, punch it into submission. I don’t want to change for her—I won’t. I don’t need her redemption, either. This is who I am now. This is who I was always meant to be, and I won’t back down. Not after everything I’ve done to get here.
There is no absolution for my sins.
“If I’m happy with who I am, with what I’m doing now, then what? Is there still a place for me then?” I ask, a silent accusation in my voice.
She hesitates and I have my answer: no. There’s no room in her new life—in her new world—for someone like me. After so many years, she’s finally given up on her brother. I guess I’m just surprised it’s taken her this long.
“You could have been great,” she says. “If you had opened your heart up to love, you could have had it all.”
Pen is already thinking of me in the past tense. My fist clenches at my side.
I start to come apart at the seams, realizing the totality of my loss. It sinks in one bit at a time. Lucifer’s gone; I served a dead Lord. Lilith’s betrayed me, turned Gus away from me too. If Pen is right, the soldiers outside have abandoned me as well, retreating from Heaven with their new queen. And my sister… Michael’s taken her from me.
I have nothing now. Nothing.
“You think he loves you?” I ask, tipping my chin up, angry again.
Pen doesn’t respond, and Michael only closes his eyes.
“Truly, you do?” A low laugh tears from the pit of my stomach. It’s dark, menacing. It feels like acid in my mouth, like old bile. I swallow it. “I don’t know why I ever thought I could win you back. You’re obviously more gone than even I realized.”
“Win me back?” Pen says, finally meeting my eyes. “No, Azael. You didn’t stand a chance.”
Her words plow right through me, and I take a step back, my feet knocking the armor piled in front of the throne. The metal rattles loudly, covering the sharp sound of my wounded breath. Just when did Pen decide I wasn’t worth her time anymore? How long ago did she sever our connection?
The pendant I threw across the room at her—the amethyst I had brought her from Eden—glints in the corner. It lies alone on the ground. She doesn’t even glance at it.
“Pick up your sword,” I tell her again.
“No,” she says.
“I want it to be fair,” I say, tipping the vial closer to my lips.
“Azael…”
“When I prove that the love you two believe you share is nothing but a fallacy,” I say, “I think it’s only right you have a chance to correct your mistake. Don’t you?”
“Azael, don’t do this,” she says again, raising her open hands to me.
Michael takes a staggering step back, his knuckles white on his sword.
She goes to him, holds him upright, and yells at me, “Stop, Az! There’s nothing worth fighting for anymore!”
“Exactly.” I spread my arms wide, and his soul sloshes in the vial before it stills again. It won’t escape; it’s waiting for its order. “I have nothing left,” I say. My voice is tight, my composure a thin thread I’m walking, and I’m beginning to lose my balance. “Nothing but you.”
Her pendant catches my eye again—though I doubt she remembers it’s in the room. It just sits on the floor in the corner, forgotten. Not considered for even a second. I take my own onyx amulet off and throw it down with hers.
“Nothing but you!” I scream again. “We are all we have. That is worth fighting for.”
After all of this time, I’m still trying to convince her. Though I see how she shies away from me, leans toward Michael, I won’t let go of the last connection I have of my sister. She’s mine. I will get her back.
I have to. Without her, who am I?
“What are you trying to prove here?” she asks. “You have lost me, Azael. I can’t go back. Not now. I wouldn’t want to, even if I could.”
My ears burn. “He never loved you,” I whisper, but she hears me. “He never will. And I’ll prove it.”
With shaking fingers, I bring the vial of Michael’s pulsing, white soul up to my mouth and speak my command. “Kill her.”
Pen can’t keep him on his feet anymore. Michael’s entire body begins to shudder, and he falls to the ground, collapsing to his knees. He puts his hands on the sides of his head, his forehead to the cold marble. Like he’s praying. But his hands manically tear at his hair like he’s going to explode, like something inside him is trying to rip its way out.
“Back up,” he tells Pen. “Run.”
“We’ve been here before,” she says. “Together or not at all.”
“Pen.” Her name is a growl in the back of his throat.
She takes a tentative step backward. Her foot hits her sword, and it scratches across the marble. Suddenly, Michael stands up again, and even at the distance I keep from the two, I see the change. The compulsion takes hold of him, his eyes swallowed in blackness, glazed over by my command. His face is both slack and tight at the same time. Out of his control and in mine.
“Azael, what did you do?” Pen asks, staring at Michael. The veins in his face ripple black for an instant, poison slipping through him.
Michael narrows his eyes, raises his sword, and attacks. Pen responds just in time, bending down to pick up her new sword. She blocks his first hit, the dangerous edge of his archangel sword missing her by inches. A single breath of air separated her from life and death. One second later and she would be ashes on the ground.
She grunts and pushes his sword back.
“Be careful, Pen,” I say under my breath. “Hit him with your sword, you steal what’s left of his grace.”
Even if she delivers a blow that doesn’t kill him, she’ll take everything pure from him. His light would drain out of the wound with his blood. He wouldn’t belong to Heaven anymore. He’d be like us. Dark. Damaged. Damned.
As close to dead as the living can get.
Pen’s defensive strike falters at my words, and she retreats from Michael, backing up toward the throne. She looks at the black sword in her hand and considers dropping it, but when Michael presses forward again, she has no choice but to use it to fight him back.
“A dangerous game,” I say, leaning against a pillar. “Archangel sword and a demon sword. One burns away sin, one tears away innocence. Which would hurt more?” I tip my head, close my eyes for a second. “Is either survivable?”
She turns and takes a hit from the broadside of Michael’s sword, a hiss of pain esca
ping her angry mouth. “Michael,” she says. She repeats his name a dozen times until I nearly scream. “You can control this. You know how to control this.”
He brings his sword down, but she stops it with her own. He bears down on her and he’s gaining space. But then his eyes clear, his pupils constrict, and his mouth opens wide, gasping for air.
I smile to myself. He’s trying to resist the order, my control. How eternally optimistic these two are. I have a sizable piece of his soul though; he won’t be able to fight me. It’s impossible.
“Help,” is all he can say before the compulsion drags him back under.
Black eyes, black soul. Pen pushes him off her and she’s running, putting as much space between them as she can before he attacks again. Michael stalks toward her, his sword held out and ready.
“You’ve done this before, Michael,” she says, desperation leeching through her voice. “You can control it. I believe in you. Listen. Find the voice that isn’t yours and fight back.”
A second strike, a third, a fourth. Their swords ring out loudly, and I laugh. I laugh at the musicality of it all. At the poetry of their motion. Two fighters who once stood side by side—I saw the way they moved together, so in sync, so perfect—facing off against one another.
Together, they’re a brilliant juxtaposition. Night fighting day. Dark surging toward light, light pushing back against the shadows. I don’t care who dies now. Either way, the other will be destroyed. I couldn’t have lured them into this fight any better. They’re all too easy to manipulate, to control.
And now, I get what Lucifer meant for me to do. “Kill them or have them kill each other.” Because one death would equal two.
I send another order into Michael and his soul glows, impatiently waiting for the next command.
Michael trips over his feet, returns to himself long enough to beg Pen to run again, but she refuses to leave him.
Love is stupid; I cannot believe that my sister has fallen prey to something so detrimental to her intelligence.
When he steadies himself, Michael’s posture changes. His hesitancy is ironed out, his spine straightening with purpose. He strikes low, the one weak spot I know Pen has. I’ve fought her enough times to remember where she forgets to block, what she neglects to pay attention to. Michael must now know the same from all the times he’s watched her fight.
The blade of his sword slides through the muscle of her calf and Pen lets out a terrible, delightful scream. It makes me laugh and shake, every atom in my body tense and vibrating. I wipe at the dampness on my cheeks.
Michael pauses, another shudder racking his body. I stand up, leaning closer to the fight.
“Kill him,” I tell her. “Save yourself.”
“Michael,” she says, and he hesitates again. “Please. Fight back.”
His grip is so loose that he almost drops his sword, but then he clenches his fist. “I can’t,” he says. “I can’t.”
And he doesn’t.
Pen
MICHAEL WILL BE ABLE TO shut it down like he did with Eiael. He’ll find the voice, and he’ll shove it out of his mind. This wouldn’t be the first time; he’s done it more than once, even managed to stop it when Eiael planted the smallest suggestion. The hardest to find. Azael’s not nearly as subtle.
He’ll fight back. He has to, because I can’t—I can’t—
There’s nothing left of him in his eyes. They are pure onyx, a mockery of the pendant Azael tore off his neck and threw across the room to join my own on the floor. Utter blackness, with not even a sliver of blue. The veins in his neck, at his temple, are thick under his skin. He’s fighting back, isn’t he?
Or is he gone?
No. Michael has managed to come out of a compulsion worse than this. When Eiael was practicing with him, she put him through the wringer—she didn’t go easy on him. She said that he had it, and she was right. He did it nearly every time.
Nearly.
I know he can do it again now, if he can only focus enough. He has to fight this. He has to.
Michael has me pinned on the floor. His blade is so close to my face that I could kiss it. I could stretch my lips and slice them open.
“Help,” he begs me. And his eyes shift in and out of focus, the blackness receding only to have his pupils dilating again until the blue doesn’t just disappear from his eyes, but the white, too.
Pure blackness stares back at me. A starless sky. A bottomless pit. It’s swallowed him whole.
The moment of doubt in his soul, that split second of control he regained, is enough for me to get away. I push him off me, get to my feet, and sprint across the room.
Space. I need to keep away from him so he can listen. So we don’t fight. So neither of us accidentally kills the other with our swords that were forged for the pure purpose of destroying each other.
And in this moment, I am reminded that we are supposed to be enemies. We are meant to kill one another. How quickly I’ve forgotten the threat we pose to one another.
“You’ve done this before, Michael,” I say. “You can control it. I believe in you. Listen. Find the voice that isn’t yours and fight back.”
It’s useless; he doesn’t hear me. Azael looses a breath that held the last of his doubt. He grins, now entirely unconcerned that Michael might be able to break the compulsion.
I can’t help but marvel at the dexterity Michael is now fighting with. I don’t know if it’s his memories that have improved his fighting so significantly or the practice of being on the run for so long. But he’s holding his body just the way I taught him when I first instructed him on how to hold his sword. I taught him to fight, and he’s perfect. Michael’s even better than I could have guessed, his body angled to me, his feet sliding across the smooth floor.
He’s fast, he’s precise, and he is strong. So very strong. Every swing of his sword shakes me to the bone; the impact of the block rattles my teeth. I’m surprised his sword hasn’t cut through mine already.
Azael laughs, and I get away from Michael again. He stumbles after me, and when I look back, I see his eyes again. Blue, not black. Clear. Terrified.
You’re still here, I tell him. You can fight this. I love you. Remember that.
Azael cannot wipe him away so easily. After everything Michael and I have been through, everything we’ve shared, I know I can reach him. He will hear me. He will break out of this.
We will survive.
But then Azael lifts his lips back to the vial and whispers something else and Michael is gone. He winks out of existence as the compulsion takes hold of him again. The light in him goes dark.
Michael stops, straightens up, and the malevolence returns to his features in full. I swear a tiny smile even quirks the corner his lips. He makes to strike high, but he feigns the hit and goes low, the hot blade slicing my through my pants.
It’s a quick hit, and then he draws back, but I can still feel the sting of the blade pulling across my muscle. The way my flesh was cut open and, with it, a rush of agony I’ve never known before. I’ve been whipped, beaten, stabbed, tortured. I’ve had my nails torn from my fingers, my hair ripped out, and my bones broken. So many teeth have bitten through my flesh, but never—never, in all my years—have I ever felt something quite as acutely painful as this. The blazing heat of the gash in my leg mixes with the cool wetness of my blood puddling at my feet, and it consumes me.
So this is what it feels like to have the fires of Heaven surge through the veins of the fallen. This is what all of those demons and fallen angels have felt when faced against Michael. The flames that once lived in me, back when I had grace—when I was an angel with pure wings and green eyes—turned against me, just as I turned against Heaven. The pain is so severe that the room tilts and starts to fade away, but I manage to hang on to consciousness. Just barely.
I don’t hear myself scream, but I feel the noise rip my throat apart.
“Kill him,” Azael taunts. “Save yourself.”
No. I grit
my teeth and bury the rest of my scream. Now is not the time to register the pain. I’ll save it for later—I’m sure it will still be there when we’re done. But when will we be done? And just what will that mean?
Azael wants me to kill Michael. To save myself. But killing Michael would be the furthest thing from saving myself. I will not kill the one person who believed in me, even after everything I’ve done. All the mistakes, all the death…
He is my second chance, and I won’t let that go. I would rather turn my sword on myself than run it through him.
Michael is still here. The compulsion is clouding everything over, but he’s inside his head, trapped. I have to help him; I have to remind him.
Last night, I say in his mind. We circle one another, a small, controlled dance. Remember last night?
His face goes blank, and he’s panting. Fighting himself. One of his eyes flicks back to blue.
I love you, I say. Nothing Azael does can ever change that.
Run, he pleads with me again.
But I won’t. He knows I won’t, and it breaks him. I once asked him to run when I told him that I had to kill him. That I was returning to Hell. That seems like forever ago now.
That day, by the pond and our secret cave, Michael knew that, if he did not go, he was going to die. But instead of running—like I’d told him to, like I’d begged him to—he handed me his sword. He even smiled as he did so, told me that he understood. He had no idea I wouldn’t be able to do it or that that one act of defiance was the first step we took together that would lead to this entire rebellion.
There’s nothing—in Heaven, in Hell, or on Earth—that would make me leave him. Not now, not ever. I’ve already come to terms with my death. It’s his I couldn’t bear.
“Michael,” I say, out loud this time. He has to hear it out loud for it to be more real. For the urgency to come across. “Fight back.”
“I can’t,” he says. His voice is ragged, a low and desperate roar. He closes his eyes, and I lose him. “I can’t.”