Annihilation, p.7
Annihilation, page 7
"Why can't you get it into your head that I won't let you?"
Mephistopheles formed his sword (left-handed) and instantly Saraquael with ten Archangels materialized behind Michael, who even then didn't
make a sword of his own. He stil looked like a backpacker. He could alter his clothing to armor in an instant if necessary.
Mephistopheles didn't acknowledge the newcomers. "Are you afraid I'm going to do something to him?"
"Like annihilation?"
Even Michael was surprised when Mephistopheles lowered his blade, and the ice-chiseled etiquette wavered. "I'm not going to gloat." Michael fought the urge to tighten that ring on his hand. "I wouldn't be so uncharitable as to vaunt the annihilation of a Cherub to his closest Seraph. But he was a member of my order, almost my superior, and I said I'd do him a favor."
Other than the out-and-out lie about being Gabriel's superior, the entire sentence didn't ring either true or false to Michael.
"At the end he wanted Raphael to know he loved him, and that he didn't blame him."
Michael's eyes went obsidian.
Mephistopheles whipped his head around. "You disbelieve me?"
Michael gave in just a bit and made the ring hot. "His last words would have been his love of God, which of course you've forgotten."
"I complied with his request." Mephistopheles gave no indication of feeling the metal searing his hand. "You should endeavor to show more appreciation."
"Thank you," Michael said. "Get out."
Mephistopheles flashed away.
Raguel rubbed his chin. "Do you think Mephistopheles was tel ing the truth?"
"I doubt Mephistopheles knows if Mephistopheles was tel ing the truth." Michael's brow furrowed. "Saraquael, choose three Principalities and have them keep tabs on Raphael al the time. This may mean Satan wants Raphael next, and that's unacceptable."
Saraquael nodded. "Should I assign guards to the rest of the Seven?"
"With al due respect," Raguel said, "I don't need that. And I can't imagine Satan being able to lay a hand on Uriel."
"I can't either," Michael said, "but to be frank, I couldn't have imagined having to have this conversation yesterday, so Saraquael, do it. Actual y, make them Angels, and make them unobtrusive. Their first responsibility is to get help, not to get into the line of fire."
Saraquael nodded.
Michael folded his arms. "And although I hate to admit it, it's time for something else too."
~~~
Two hours had passed. Mary returned to Uriel's bungalow, carrying a medium sized basket.
Uriel sent Mary a series of images: the room, the room again, the room yet again, along with a sense of time passing. In Mary's human mind, that
nonverbal communication parsed as "Stil the same."
It wasn't entirely the same. Uriel had replaced the quicksilver droplet of soul in Gabriel's heart, hoping it would migrate to the correct place, and Raphael had fal en asleep, wings overspreading the Cherub, the amber glow pulsing even as both slept.
Mary peered at Gabriel as if looking over the side of a crib, and her heart trembled even as her stomach twisted. You didn't get used to seeing
something like this.
Mary kept her voice low. "I brought you something." She set the basket at the edge of the bed, then unpacked a beige cloth, smoothed the cloth into
a square, and set out cups, a thermos, muffins, butter and knives, another thermos, bowls, and cookies.
"Perhaps you recal ," Uriel said mildly, "that angels don't eat?"
"Joseph and I got tired of praying ceaselessly with words and scriptures, so I prayed with cookies." Mary poured a cup of tea from the first thermos, handed it to a suddenly solid Uriel, then wrapped two cookies in a napkin and passed those over as wel . "Peter has every human he can in prayer right now, and Paul organized folks to visit churches on Earth and get them praying for healing, although clearly we can't specify for whom. But me, I baked cookies."
"It's good to know some things never change," Uriel said.
Mary looked up from pouring herself a cup of tea. "How so?"
"Remember when Elizabeth was giving birth to John? How many loaves of bread did you bake?"
Mary closed the top on the thermos. "It wasn't the bread that was a problem. It was the fish."
Uriel laughed out loud. "I'd total y forgotten the fish!"
"How could you forget the fish? I was stil morning sick al the time, and the fish reeked like crazy."
Uriel chuckled behind one hand. "That's the thing I never expected about being a guardian angel—the way humans push yourselves rather than
admit defeat."
"Someone had to cook the fish." Mary cocked her head. "Wel , fair's fair. I never expected angels to be anything like you are either." When Uriel looked puzzled, Mary continued, "I figured that beings with a perfect understanding of God would never disagree and would live in perfect harmony al the time."
Uriel squinted. "And when you find those creations perfect enough to have a perfect understanding of God, let me know!"
"Of course only God is perfect." Mary fiddled with the handles of the basket. "I knew it said in Job that God finds fault even with his angels. I knew the Yom Kippur liturgy actual y says angels sin. But even hearing in Daniel that the guardian of Persia fought with Gabriel for twenty-one days and had to be cal ed off by Michael didn't prepare me for the idea that angels might disagree with one another."
"Don't God's people disagree with one another?"
"We're not angels," Mary said.
Uriel's hands opened, forming a faceted gem that revolved slowly, splintering the light to scatter tiny rainbow dots over the wal s. "None of us is big enough to contain and understand al of God, even with unclouded reasoning abilities. God designed us al a little differently from one another so
that spread out over the whole of creation, eventual y one of us amplifies each aspect of himself. But given that, doesn't it make sense that the angel of justice might argue with the angel of mercy? Or," Uriel added, winking, "that an angel embodying God's creativity might argue with God over a schedule?"
The Throne made the lighted jewel disappear.
"It makes sense. I just never expected it." Mary handed over a cookie. "Please?"
Uriel tried a bite, then radiated approval.
"Thanks." Mary looked at Raphael. "He pul ed Gabriel out of Hel , and you helped put him back together, and I baked cookies."
Uriel said, "Cookies solve al the world's problems."
Mary paused. "That's not true. Some problems can only be solved with brownies."
"Aren't brownies a type of bar cookie?"
"Oh, dear," Mary said. "Al the world's problems can be solved with cookies." She sipped the tea and finished her cookie. "This is so much like when Jesus was a baby. You guarding me, Raphael guarding him."
Uriel had a wistful smile. "Gestation is a hazy time. I wasn't expecting that either."
"I've gotten to realize we're never real y prepared."
Uriel squinted, projecting assurance that God had prepared them, then added, "We just never realize it until afterward." Setting the empty cup on the bed, Uriel said, "Raphael figured out how to toughen up Gabriel's spirit to survive death. I think he was able to do that because as Jesus's guardian angel he'd witnessed him doing the same thing to himself from the inside. No one else had ever seen it done."
Mary took a deep breath. "But what's next?"
Uriel's fingers knit together. "We have to find the rest of Gabriel. I'm not positive we got everything. Especial y not after you found that residue in the field."
"There wasn't anything else, though." Mary got another cookie. "We checked."
Uriel gestured with one hand. "That can't be al there is of him. If it's not in the field, then it's got to be back in Hel . Or else it's gone forever."
Mary bit her lip. "Can we send in a search party?"
Uriel emitted a smal cloud of frustration, worry for the ones they'd send, fear of a baited trap.
"Have you asked Michael?"
Uriel's eyes lowered again, and another cloud of frustration: no time to have mentioned it already, and uncertainty. Final y words, "I won't be sure until I try putting him back together."
"You could try now," Mary said.
"He's too dehiscent." When Mary squinted, Uriel added, "You know, thin. Ready to pul apart. Imagine trying to cover a pizza pan with only a handful of dough. What would happen when you rol ed it out, and kept rol ing it?"
"How thin can you pul a soul?"
"Not that thin," Uriel said. "I've never done anything like this before, and even so, I know it can't be pul ed that thin."
Raphael stirred. Mary sat back from the edge of the bed to give him room.
As he sat up and checked on Gabriel, Mary felt from him the same shock she'd felt, as if Gabriel's form were an insult; it was bad enough he'd been damaged and mangled, but why did he have to look that way so they remembered it anew every time they looked?
"Cookies," the Seraph said, blinking away the sleep. He wasn't looking at the cookies, though, only at Gabriel. "I stil can't feel him. It's as if he's not there."
Mary clasped her hands. Uriel said, "Give him time."
"Time for what?" Raphael began to vibrate. "He's had time. It's not doing any good."
"We can't say that for certain," Uriel said, "and he's not any worse, so that's something."
Raphael tried to adjust Gabriel on the bed. "He looks so smal ."
Uriel flinched.
Mary moved to the head of the bed. "Here, can I try something?" She grasped the fabric that had been Raphael's wings, adjusted it beneath Gabriel, then tucked him up so he seemed even smal er. She paused. "This isn't hurting you, is it?"
"Not at al ." The Seraph squinted. "What are you doing?"
"Remember how I used to carry Jesus?" She tied a firm knot at the base, then pul ed the ends up tight. "Come closer and bend over him."
It took a lot of adjusting of the fabric (thick, silky, warm on its own) around Gabriel's form, but when Mary was done, Raphael had Gabriel bundled up at chest height, and he had his hands free.
"That way you can carry him easier," Mary said. "It gives you mobility."
Uriel quirked a smile. "Where is he going to go?"
"Wherever he wants," Mary said, "although it might be best if he stays here."
Raphael looked down at Gabriel's featureless face, the limp hair, the way he'd seemed to lose his shape. "I don't want to risk anything."
"But he's with you," Mary said.
Raphael's eyes glistened, and after a hard swal ow, he nodded.
Chapter 6
Stil in the form of Camael, Remiel lay with her legs draped across the arm of a chair in the great hal at Hel 's entrance. While dark, it wasn't the lab area, and while hot it wasn't the Lake of Fire. It didn't have the preternatural cold of the ice fields. It was just an annoying place to be—noisy, crowded, smel y, and prickly with the presence of souls who al wished the rest would just leave already.
So why am I stil here?
Because she'd failed. Returning to the surface meant seeing the hol ow affect on the faces of the angels working throughout Creation, hearing
angels crying, seeing the blank empty of Raphael's heart when she so wel remembered the same feeling immediately after the winnowing.
Al the demons were chattering like seventh graders on amphetamines washed down with espresso. Tel ing about angels dressed in black, angels
without songs, angels constantly armored—and angels grim, so terribly grim.
Around her, demons laughed and pretended to be Gabriel being ripped limb from torso until Remiel wanted nothing more than to rise from her chair
and start stuffing parts of them down one another's throats.
But the disguise had to hold, particularly now, so Remiel put on Camael as best she could and scowled, keeping her eyes closed.
A demon bumped Camael's head as he passed, and Camael growled so the interloper skittered away.
The air had a fug Camael detested—give him the open air of Creation any day, the freedom of wide spaces; even the darkest al ey in Sodom
seemed preferable now. The continuous noise—less sound than static feedback—could drive anyone to frenzy with its whine. From the pits and the
ice fields it was possible to hear the tumult of the human damned. At least this room had only a few columns to support the weight of everything
above—a weight anyone could feel just waiting; the deeper levels had more columns, smal er chambers, no room even to open your wings.
Another pair of demons launched into an Amos-and-Andy style production of "How I Kil ed Gabriel" when Camael decided he'd had enough.
Looking off to the western side of the room he saw it vanish into the thick air of the lab area. He pushed aside a demon and started walking. That
was the place to go to be alone, but being there, near where it happened… Even if the real Camael did have chambers there—and who would want
to see the contents of a demon's privacy?—being there would only bring it back, the memory of standing with Beelzebub and Satan in a darkness
hungry to devour any light they shed. Neither had tried. Gabriel alone had shone there, and Camael could have given away the game by doing the
same. For al the good his presence had done, he might as wel have.
Camael stopped in mid-stride. No, don't go there. Don't go in and remember how he'd been so weakened that Satan had helped him to stand, that
he'd leaned on God's enemy and his friend's murderer.
Murderer. A murderer from the beginning, Jesus had said. Jesus had known Gabriel would— That this would happen.
"I hear you were around when they got him?"
Camael faced the demon with a growl. A low-ordered one, but the demon stood its ground.
"Did the poor freak scream?" it said. "Did it renounce God? Mephistopheles said it did. Beelzebub said Satan drank his blood, too."
"Get out of my sight," Camael said, but an audience had been drawn, clustering around him like maggots, and they al expected him to say
something, a victory speech with an account more amazing than the ones before. He'd be the star for a moment, and then they'd move on, trying to
coax a story out of Satan.
That opened up some possibilities. What couldn’t Satan top?
"Fine," Camael said, "but I'm only tel ing this once."
He walked into the center of the throng, reminding himself that the lower demons lived for the higher orders to condescend to them. They might as
wel get someone's approval and guidance, having spurned God's.
Almost at the center, Camael looked into the eyes of an Archangel that once had been a friend, and he looked at another, and then a third, and he
remembered al their names, remembered happier days when they al had loved God together. Camael had to grip himself not to scream, not to cry at the stupid loss of so many bright lights, so many individuals who had played the same songs, read the same books, fought with the same
weapons, and then drowned for a different god.
As the shock rippled through Camael, he realized he couldn't fol ow through on his original plan to play Henry V, to be one with the troops and
pretend to be their friend. He had been their friend once, and what remained, these husks of spirit, repulsed him. He dreaded contact.
The low-order demons fil ed this whole corner of the great hal . Camael sat on a table, wings raised and feet dangling, resting his toes on a bench.
He was a head higher than the hive, and that made it easier not to meet anyone's eyes. Not to see them.
What couldn't Satan top?
This was going to transgress some kind of unspoken demonic etiquette because he would include details that would prove embarrassing if Satan
didn't change them and unbelievable if he did. As long as Camael could concoct it wel enough.
The groupies were cal ing over more of their ilk and repeating Mephistopheles' and Beelzebub's stories. More time.
But was it wrong to lie? Gabriel would have objected. He'd refused to play the role of Hamlet once because he said acting was a lie, albeit smal ,
"to purport to emotions never felt." Or whatever a Cherub said when he wanted to sound persuasive and ended up sounding confusing and geeky.
Maybe you never felt this. Remiel had lied that she was Camael in order to come down here at al , and to no avail. Why further betray Gabriel?
Camael wished he'd escaped, but probably the Guards had kept him pinned until he had dissolved in agony.
