Infinite
Page 26
“Vivat mater!”
…glorious.
Why didn’t I claim Lucifer’s throne earlier?
How long does it take to bury the truth? Humans have done it since the beginning. A trauma is quickly stitched, plastered, and disregarded. After a while, even the scars fade away. They pale; they’re forgotten about.
Who can even remember what actually happened to cause the mark?
Did anything happen at all?
Maybe the faint blemish had always been there. Who’s to say?
Lucifer made many mistakes in his reign of Hell, and I won’t let myself forget them. His brazenness—his dramatic style with which he sought out revenge—made him vulnerable. While he was focused on the grand possibilities of the future, he missed the poison in his cup. The dagger held to his back. The present was neglected for what was to come, and that failure to recognize the importance of now dashed all of his dreams.
There would be no retribution for his sentence in Hell. He did not realize what a gift Michael and his Father had given him. A realm to rule with servants salivating for a chance to prove themselves.
Why pull the darkness apart when you can draw it around you like a cloak?
The devil was impatient. Hell’s Dark Mother can wait.
I will bide my time, because patience will mean success. What are a few centuries lost when we are victorious in the end? Time is such a small price to pay.
Gus will read the books. I will rule my children—keep them occupied, keep them busy and happy bathing in the blood of humanity. But they will pace themselves. Imbibe too vigorously and the angels might decide to do something about it.
For now, we can return to the forced truce we held before. We’ll keep to the shadows if they stay in the light. The lines will be redrawn, and business will resume as before. For the most part.
Before I make my move, I will wait for humanity to turn what happened here into myth. The years will slip away, and the stories told by those who bore witness will mean less and less. Their offspring will listen to the tales of the Great Freeze with wide eyes, but their children’s children will hear it as a cautionary tale. Then it becomes a bedtime story, a fairytale of make-believe monsters. Another story tacked on at the end of their religious texts.
In fits of denial, humans always mythologize their history. It’s easier to write off such atrocities—beasts with wings, massive floods and freezes that wipe out generations—as lore. Even angels are best believed as legends.
For, if the angels are real, then isn’t also the devil and her dark things? If the angels watch over them from above, then what’s writhing just under the Earth’s surface? What lurks in the dark corners of their world?
Patience will win this fight, but Hell will not be bored. We will not stop, we will not rest, until we bring Hell back to its former glory.
It’s going to shine. It’s going to be the epitome of all evilness—atrocities the world cannot even fathom tonight. But soon, they will be all too familiar with our new brand of terror. They’ll beg to have Lucifer back.
After a few years, when the population begins to rebuild itself and women pop out fresh little babies ready to drink up the story of their creation, I’ll return to Earth. I’ve always wanted to walk among the children again. Run my fingers across the wooden spindles of their cribs, scoop them up from their plastic mattresses.
All alone in their nurseries, the poor babies. Their parents stick little electronic devices in the room to listen in, but they don’t care enough to watch over them. To protect them. Do they truly think a simple lock on a window would be enough to hold the world’s dangers back?
Those parents don’t deserve their daughters and sons. I’ll make a much better mother. Perhaps, with Gus’s help, I can find a way for the children to survive down in Hell with me. I believe it can be done; Lucifer was just never interested in the research and work it would take.
I do so fancy myself a plump, pink little newborn… One with dark hair and large, intelligent eyes.
Azael
AN IMAGE OF A BOY. Big ears, bigger eyes. He’s knobby and thin, a twist of sticks wrapped in layers and layers of sweatshirts and coats. His hair pokes out in a ridiculous manner under the edge of his hat, and it’s brilliant. It’s just the right mix of everything good—the humor, the stubborn set of his jaw, the careful, clever way he drinks in the world. A knot of black clouds swirls above him, but he doesn’t duck for shelter. He cranes his head back and stares.
When the lightning strikes the ground across the street from him, he goes back inside. He doesn’t bother locking the door before he runs down a hall, vaults over a couch, and lands on a stack of pillows.
Something about him is familiar to me, or me familiar to him.
He knows of us. The shadow of my wings don’t scare him, but the dog at his feet growls at the new chill in their abandoned house.
I am an uninvited guest, but he lets me in. I think I’ll stay.
Pen
LIGHT RETURNS TO ME FIRST. Then the voices. Two voices. They’re arguing, and I want them to stop, but my lips are too heavy to part. It feels like there’s a weight wrapped around my middle, and I’m sinking too deep to surface. Instead of fighting it—of trying to come back to myself, whatever that means—I listen.
“After everything she’s done?”
I’d know that voice anywhere: Michael. He’s angry, a heated edge biting at his words. I bet he’s grinding his teeth. Why is he so angry?
“I would apologize, but I know how little it means after everything you’ve seen. There’s nothing I can do,” comes the second voice. Almost familiar. Almost.
“I find that hard to believe.” Pacing. Feet across marble, impatient. Annoyed.
“She doesn’t belong to us, nor with us. Even now, she belongs to Hell. She always has, from the moment she fell.”
“She belongs with me!” Michael again. “Isn’t that what matters?”
A new voice comes next, so light and beautiful. It almost rocks me to sleep again. There’s a laugh. It sounds like Kala, I think.
“She sure as shit doesn’t belong to Hell.” Definitely Kala. “She belongs to Heaven, here, with us, with the others she saved! At least extend the damn courtesy of giving her choice. Or have you missed everything we’ve been talking about? This is what we were fighting for, and you’re going to just, what, send her back? Against her will?”
“We do not know that it will be against her will.”
“Sure you don’t.” Kala laughs again, darker this time. It’s silent for another beat before she starts up again. “She gave up everything—fought against Hell, against her own freaking brother. Hasn’t she proven enough? She gave her life, for fuck’s sake!”
“Like so many others,” says the familiar voice. It comes closer. “Again, though I know it means little…I am sorry for your loss, Kalaziel.”
“Yeah, well.” It sounds like she has trouble getting the words out. Her voice shakes a little, like she’s fighting tears. “Don’t let it be for nothing.”
“We can’t lose her,” Michael says.
“You haven’t. But I’ve done all I can.”
The weight that was dragging me down seems to lessen, and I’m able to move. Tilt my face just a little to the side, my cheek landing on the cold marble. A headache flashes fiercely across the backs of my eyes. Fighting through the feeling of sick, I roll over and the arguing stops.
Everything hurts. Moving, not moving. My bones feel like glass. I’m insubstantial. I’m somewhere in between, but I don’t know where. I don’t know what.
“Pen?”
I open my eyes and Michael’s kneeling next to me, his eyes bright. My mouth is too dry to answer him.
He’s careful when he touches me, like he knows how fragile I am. Like he can feel the heat that works its way through my veins, burning away…something. I can feel whatever it is disintegrating. It makes me lighter. I could float away.
“You’re okay,” he says,
running his eyes down me, checking to make sure he’s telling the truth. “You’re all right.”
“What…” My head throbs, and I want to close my eyes again. The throne room is blazingly bright—white and gold and no darkness. It’s too harsh. “What happened?”
He pauses, looks over his shoulder at Kala, who peeks at me from behind him, standing on her tiptoes. She smiles when she sees me, but there are tears smeared across her face. Her eyes are red. What happened?
The owner of the third voice comes forward. At first, they’re just a shadow, a blurry figure behind Kala that my eyes are too tired to make sense of. They rise from the throne with a grace I’ve never known before and come forward. They look as insubstantial as I feel, the edges of their silhouette flickering a little. The messy image of the figure starts to work itself out in my brain and a face begins to form.
“Azael?” I ask, my voice a harsh whisper. I’m crying again, but I don’t understand why. I can’t stop it.
Azael’s never looked so…peaceful. Happy. The sharp planes of his face are smooth and soft. His skin isn’t pallid and sickly anymore, but warm, milky. His hair is combed, and his smile is not the least bit biting or sarcastic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so content.
Michael jumps to his feet. “What have you done to her?”
Azael doesn’t flinch at Michael’s tone. He just watches me and smiles. It’s gentle, loving, and so unfamiliar to me. My skin crawls as he says, “Nothing, Michael. She’s perfectly fine.”
“Hate to fucking disagree, but she’s seeing her dead brother!” Kala says.
The tears suddenly make sense. I remember—just before the nothingness. Before I fell asleep. But it wasn’t sleep…
I was dead.
I hugged Azael goodbye, and I was dead.
Michael’s archangel sword ran us both through. It burned us up.
“How am I still alive?” I ask anyone. I need an explanation. “Or am I alive at all?” Maybe I’m still dead?
“You, Pen, are a curiosity. A beautiful abnormality, and proof that some rumors and legends become real,” Azael says. His voice is loud enough for me to hear but so soft that it feels like a whisper. “You had more good in you than you ever believed. Archangel swords burn through sins. It seems that—”
Michael bends down next to me again. “Your soul saved you.” He reaches out and touches my cheek, so gentle. So careful. “I told you I saw you.”
He rests his hand against my stomach, right above where my soul once lived. The spot he stared at what seems like so long ago, up in a tree under the rain. When he kissed me. When he said that I had lightness alive within me.
Now, there’s a warmth blossoming under my ribs. A heat that comes from within me. He saw me…
“You just had to step through the shadows.” Michael’s beaming, bright as the sun. There is so much light waiting for you, he says.
“Sometimes,” the person who looks like Azael—but I’m piecing together is not him at all—says, “when we wake up, we can’t be put back to sleep.”
“You’re not my brother,” I say, sitting up and narrowing my eyes.
Kala and Michael don’t seem to be worried about this stranger, though, so I doubt it’s a threat. But I can’t hold back my suspicion, my paranoia. There’ve been too many others trying to hurt us for me to just trust…whoever this is.
Michael takes my hand in his, and I feel something rattle in my chest.
“No,” Azael—not Azael—says.
“Why is she seeing him?” Michael asks.
“I’m whatever people need me to be,” He says.
Kala looks away from Him and closes her eyes.
“Their brother, sister, father, mother, best friend, second-grade teacher… And sometimes, I’m nothing at all. Kalaziel sees Anabiel. Penemuel sees Azael. It’s meant to be reassuring to see lost loved ones whole again. Makes it easier to earn trust or to hear the truth.”
“Then what am I seeing?” Michael studies His face.
“You see me as I truly am. You are my son.”
God. So He decided to show up after all. A bit late.
“So that means Azael…” I don’t finish the thought.
No one looks at me but Michael. “He’s gone, Pen. The archangel sword… He didn’t survive it. I-I killed him. I nearly killed both of you. You are the first to ever survive the flames.” He clenches his jaw and looks down at our hands, and I know the guilt he’s piling on himself.
I shake my head and hold my grief back. I’ll open that wound later, when I’m alone. When I’m not so confused. When I have time and can cry without so many people watching me.
My chest tightens and expands again, an odd pressure behind my ribs. I double over, my fist pressing hard under my collarbone. Michael wraps his hands around my shoulders.
“It hurts,” I say.
He opens my clenched fist and puts his hand over mine. The pain is not at my stomach, between my ribs—not where I was pierced by the sword. It’s higher up, more to the left.
Michael leans his cheek against my hair and waits. I can feel his smile spread across my skin. “Your heart,” he whispers against me.
Goose bumps rise on my arms.
“What?” Kala steps forward.
He pushes our hands harder against my chest, and then it happens again. A single beat. And then another, and another, until I have a pulse of my own.
“Your heart,” he says again, his words warm and excited.
“My heart…”
It does’t make sense. I need to get to my feet. I don’t want to lie on the marble anymore. I want to stand. I want to feel my heart in my chest and hug Michael to me and stand on my own. Alive.
He leans back and places his hands on my face like a silent prayer. His bright eyes search mine desperately.
“Your hour is not up yet, you understand?”
I nod, laugh a little, and wipe my tears away.
Azael—not Azael; I have to keep reminding myself—steps forward. “You can’t stay here much longer.”
I look at Michael, at Kala, and their twinning indignation at the injustice. “What?”
Kala crosses her arms over her chest. “This guy”—she jerks her chin at him—“says that Heaven can’t keep you. A bunch of bull—”
“The darkness was burned out of you,” Michael says, “but it wasn’t enough. Even absolved of your sins…” A quick shake of his head, and he lowers his eyes again. Michael’s practically vibrating with anger. “He says you don’t belong here.”
“This is not where your soul feels at home,” He says. “Heaven is not your resting place.”
“Where do I go?” I ask, suddenly nervous. Self-conscious.
I have nowhere else to go.
How many times will I feel lost and alone?
“She can’t go back to Hell,” Kala says, stepping forward. She doesn’t even try for politeness, even with God Himself. It makes me smile, despite everything else.
I also notice that Kala avoids looking directly at Him, and I remember what He said. She’s seeing Ana. “Sorry for your loss,” he had said. Which means…
No.
My head spins, trying to make sense of everything. I try to catch up to the facts that seem to be slipping past me unnoticed.
“Ana?” I ask Kala.
She jumps a little. Like the name hurts her. I don’t have to ask the full question for her to know what I mean. The agony in my voice says enough.
She watches me for a few seconds before shaking her head no. Ana didn’t make it. “She went out fighting. Saved Eli’s life, actually. He’s not doing well, but he’ll make it. Don’t know where he’ll be,” she says, looking pointedly at God, “but you know Eli. He’ll be fine.”
Eli’s okay. And Kala’s okay. And Michael.
We didn’t lose everyone.
“The fighting stopped soon after Lilith retreated,” Michael says. “She took the demons back to Hell with her. Well, most of them.”
“Everything we did… Did we make a difference?” I look at Azael. At my fake brother. The imposter who I wish so desperately was real. “Will anything change?”
He considers me for a moment before answering. “The angels are learning. But there will always be a Heaven, and there will always be a Hell. There cannot be goodness without evil, and there cannot be evil without goodness. The world requires balance. But yes. You all made a difference. New Genesis”—he smiles at the name—“has shown the angels the gray in-between. I expect there will be more leniency and understanding in the future. More forgiveness.”
“And me?” I itch at having to ask the question, as if all that matters now is what will happen to me. I move a little away from Michael. He’s reluctant to drop my hand. “Where do I go?”
“Where do you wish to go?”
I turn to Michael. I wish to go wherever he goes. I love him, and I want the life I imagined we could have together. But I know I can’t have that. For once, I can’t allow myself to be so selfish.
Michael’s back in Heaven, where he belongs; his memories have returned, and he’s so much better than he was before. The angels are learning. Someone has to teach them. Who better than he?
“I don’t know,” I finally say.
Michael’s face drops and I shake my head. No, it’s not that. It’s not that I don’t want to be with him; it’s that I know I can’t. Not right now, at least. There are things bigger than us. It was always going to come to this in the end.
“He’s right,” I say to Michael.
Taking a step toward me, he tries to put his hands back on my face, but I reach up and take them away, tuck them between mine.
“Michael, I can’t stay here. I haven’t belonged here in a very long time.”