Fall From Grace Read online

  Michael retrieved the weapons and pinned Lucifer against a downed tree trunk, the blades pressed to his throat hard enough to draw blood. “Order them to release the Thrones.”

  Lucifer signaled to the demons, relieved. They bemoaned the decision but opened their remaining nets and freed the Thrones not yet whisked away to Limbo.

  “Do it, Michael,” Lucifer said. “Do it! Kill me!”

  There was a sadness and self-hatred in Lucifer’s request that broke Michael’s heart. The former angel was so perverted, his identity so lost, that he saw no future worth living. Raqia was burning to cinders. The corpses were beyond count.

  What would one more death achieve?

  Michael released Lucifer and snapped his daggers. “Tell your ‘Creator’ this has to end.”

  “Why won’t you kill me?” Lucifer begged.

  “Raqia has seen enough death today,” Michael said, but the look on Lucifer’s face spoke that sparing his life was far from mercy.

  Satan would not be pleased.

  After the demons retreated, Michael followed a burnt path out of the forest to find the refugees and Thrones safe, at least more than would have been. Behind them, Raqia, the largest collection of plant life in Heaven, was like a funeral pyre for Mother Nature. Was it victory? Defeat? Michael was not certain that anything about war could be judged in those terms.

  “Raqia is lost.”

  “No. The people are Raqia,” Raphael said. “And we owe you our lives.”

  The native Raqians and refugees surrounded Michael, placing their hands on his body. Their souls connected in an outpouring of pure, rejuvenating love.

  With his act of selfless heroism, risking all to save those who could not fight for themselves, Michael had become more than an angel. More than a Seraph. More than Archon or Logos.

  Michael was a legend.

  Satan had planned to raze Raqia after the war, but Michael’s brazen attempt on his life needed a reply that would eviscerate the Host’s spirit. He felt Heaven’s lamentation suffused in the elements: the wind wailed, the earth moaned, and the ocean wept. The rainforest was an ageless paradigm of the Creator’s skill that enriched Heaven long before the angels. Its trees would’ve never recognized Satan’s authority, and he wouldn’t tolerate defiance in any form.

  Raqia had to be cleansed in fire…and so it was.

  Assuming Lucifer succeeded in acquiring the Thrones, the compounded blow would fling the Host into debilitating misery and choke each angel with the eventuality of their own demise. While Michael’s tongue falsified words of triumph to lick their wounds, Satan saw the opportunity to indulge in a personal errand.

  Coasting over Mathey, Satan enjoyed the placidity of its raw frontier. The bony fingers of war were squeezing the life from Heaven, but Mathey remained unaffected. Satan felt comforted, inspired even, by its endurance and primeval potential. The Forgotten scampered from him like spineless bottom feeders. They knew why Satan had returned and were reporting to their master. Warn Sammael, little ones, he thought, and let him stew in the expectancy of his death.

  Satan landed on the narrow bridge to Sammael’s mountain lair and stalked across it, one foot before the other, ridiculing his foe’s defenses. The viscous layer of Forgotten that coated the mountain’s exterior drained into its tunnels, and the jaws of the main entrance slammed shut. Satan gripped the stone teeth and pried them open, snapping the rusted gears and mechanisms. The distorted remains of the mountain’s carved mouth were an apt statement of his intentions.

  Satan stepped into the mountain and made no attempt to conceal his presence. His feet splashed through puddles of muck on the damp ground, each step deflecting away the Forgotten like he was surrounded by a repellant aura. He pressed on deeper into the passages until he heard a chorus of sour cackles.

  Sammael’s three lesser wives.

  “Satanail…is that you, our love?”

  “We smell your blood. It’s so sweeeeet.”

  “We’ve craved your body. Your touch. Have you missed us?”

  “Dearly,” Satan replied.

  Naamah charged out of the darkness, head tucked and horns thrust forward like a bull. Satan caught her by the horns and dug his feet into the ground, causing her cloven hooves to buck against the stone. Steam snorted from Naamah’s nostrils, and her throat began to glow hot. She opened her mouth to breathe fire, but Satan jerked her head to the side. The flames projected onto the walls and incinerated a cluster of Forgotten.

  “Release her!” Agrat’s five faces shouted from the ceiling.

  Satan couldn’t see Agrat but heard her claws click out above him, ready to strike. He aimed Naamah’s mouth upward and chopped his hand into her throat. She belched out more flames that ignited Agrat’s mane and scorched her faces. In one motion of cruel efficiency, Satan tore Naamah’s horns from her skull and drove the pointed ends back into the gaping wounds.

  “Sehsters!”

  A crustacean claw swung into Satan’s head and bowled him over. Eisheth pinned him, the orifices on her underbelly spewing acidic mucous onto his chest.

  “My sehsters!”

  “You’ll be with them soon, you disgusting bitch.”

  Satan snagged the dangling flesh of Eisheth’s lower jowl and swung her by it. The jaw shredded from her face as she hurdled across the cavern and was impaled on a stalagmite. Satan let her suffer, claws squirming, then clamped the largest one around her own neck…and snapped it shut.

  Eisheth’s severed head rolled over to Agrat, its loose tongue slapping against the stone.

  “Still alive, Agrat? How would you prefer to die?” Satan asked. Agrat swiped her paws at him, blinded and reeling from her burns. “Very well, I’ll choose for you.”

  Satan seized Agrat’s phallus tail and dragged her screaming through the mountain to the hole above the pit where he was confined. The hook and a chain were intact. He looped the links around each of Agrat’s five faces then kicked her into the pit.

  The chain spooled down and snapped tight, breaking Agrat’s necks. Satan listened and heard a sole groan. One of the faces survived. Scuttling footsteps were drawn to its cries.

  “Forgotten, if you thought my blood was delicious, imagine how one of Sammael’s custom wives will taste,” Satan said into the hole. “Devour her.”

  Agrat’s screams didn’t last long. Her tongue was eaten first.

  Satan relished the killings like a fine, full course dinner. They were personal. Vindictive. Pleasurable. But Sammael’s wives were only the appetizers. The main course was still to come.

  And I’m so very hungry.

  Sammael’s personal chambers were empty. A needle and thread were left on the bed, recently used for one of his macabre projects. The blood on the material was wet. Still warm.

  “Where have you gone, Sammael?” Satan sang with a lyrical whistle. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  Lilith silently slithered out of a tunnel in the wall. She coiled her serpentine tail around Satan, squeezing his limbs together.

  “What’ve you done with my sisters?”

  “Do you really have to ask?”

  Satan braced for a rush of pain. Instead, Lilith pressed her lips to his in a long kiss that filled his body with arousal, even without Sammael’s gift. She ran her fingernails down his cheeks, tracing faint scrapes on the skin.

  “I never liked to share,” Lilith said and released him. “Name your pleasure, Lover.”

  “There are so many, but what I desire above all—” Satan massaged Lilith’s breasts, quickening her breath. He kissed down her chest to the flat stomach and ran his tongue along the scar of where her tail was stitched on. “—Is Sammael. Where is he?”

  “He’s my husband,” she said between moans. “I can’t betray him.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  Satan spiked his rigid fingers into Lilith’s stomach and sawed the serpent tail from her torso. Her spinal cord swung between slats of flesh and entrails like a pendulum.
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br />   “But then, you’re the worst kind of abomination.”

  “At least…I accept…what I am,” Lilith wheezed.

  “So do I.” Satan dropped Lilith and lifted his foot to stomp her face…

  But Sammael burst up from the putrid healing bath.

  “Leave her be, Satanail.”

  “Sammael, you look surprised. Did you believe I’d not return for you?”

  “I hoped.”

  “Ah, hope. I’ve stricken it from much of Heaven, yet I’m not beyond acts of kindness.”

  Satan lowered his foot away from Lilith. Sammael scooped up his wife and placed her in the bath. What were his emotions concerning her? Did he feel what an artist would for one of their pieces, or was she more than that? Did Sammael consider Lilith a lover on equal terms, sharing body and soul? What did it mean to be husband and wife?

  “Allow us to live, and you’ll never see us again,” Sammael said. The desperation in his voice was sweeter than manna sipped straight from the Tree of Life.

  “We could’ve been great allies, Sammael. After all, you were the first rebel.”

  “Rebel? No. I was a…conscientious objector to the system. I saw its flaws, its cracks, but not the need to rip it all down.”

  “I do, and there’s no place for you in my Heaven,” Satan said. “You’re worse than Mankind.”

  “Maybe.” Sammael released his gnarled wings, reviving an ancient strength within. “But I’m still a Seraph.”

  “A title that’s not what it once was.”

  The Seraphim locked their wings in a volatile duel across the bedchamber. Sammael fought like a foaming lunatic, biting and clawing without technique. It was like wrestling a wild animal, one had to remain calm and allow fear to reveal its flaws.

  Satan detected a spasmodic timing and pattern to Sammael’s barrage. He caught an arm mid-strike and snapped the bone. It dangled, useless, and the second arm soon followed. Then a heel to the side of Sammael’s leg blew out his knee. Just as Sammael had once carved into Satan, he now operated on his former captor with anatomical precision.

  Satan tossed Sammael’s flaccid body into the membranous hammocks. The sacks adhered to his moist skin and wrapped around him. Sammael looked like a malformed insect in a cocoon that had been slit open before its time.

  “Wait, Satanail! I can give you—”

  Satan’s hands choked away the whimpering voice.

  “You’ve nothing to give that I can’t take. If you see Father, tell Him the same.”

  With those parting words, Satan slowly plucked Sammael’s head like a grape from its vine, feeling the pressure build then release in arterial fountains.

  Remember my face in death, Satan thought while staring into Sammael’s eyes until the pupils dilated.

  A lucid relief entered Satan’s soul, alleviating all stress and worry. Even Lilith’s shrill sobs couldn’t flatten his spiritual harmony. Had anyone in Creation ever felt so tranquil?

  “I assume you’re apprenticed in Sammael’s methods,” Satan said and threw the body in the bath as parts for Lilith to mine. If she survived, perhaps there was more he could learn about their secrets. “Consider this a gift towards our future partnership. Die here, and no one will care that you ever existed. But survive, stand with me, and you’ll be worshipped among the demonic ranks…as my wife.”

  “You’re a monster,” Lilith said. “I’ll never stand with you.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  Satan exited the mountain, relaxed by the sweet balm of his revenge. He flew above the bridge and thrust Sammael’s head high for all to see.

  “FORGOTTEN!” he shouted to coax them out. “Sammael is dead! I claimed his life, and with it, your allegiance.

  “Since you came into being, you’ve been shunned: by your brothers, by your Creator, and by Heaven itself. I understand the darkness that festers inside of you, the need for vengeance against those that condemned you to this servile existence. Call me Father, bow to me, and you’ll bathe in the blood of angels.”

  Satan witnessed how Sammael and his wives had treated the Forgotten and was confident that they’d welcome a change in regime. He was right. The Forgotten processed his offer with throaty clicks, fear trickling away into resounding acceptance.

  Mathey and all of its terrors now belonged to Satan.

  The Forgotten crawled up the bridge and bowed before their new Father. Satan hurled Sammael’s head into the masses, giving their first taste of revenge. Violence for the sake of violence was a pointless addiction, a fleeting satisfaction. Sammael’s death was desirable, but as in Raqia, revenge wasn’t Satan’s purpose. The Forgotten were thought to be mindless. Uncontrollable.

  No one would see them coming.

  CHAPTER 22

  Destiny Forged

  The chaste topography of the Council Room’s map had been vandalized by Michael’s war effort. Still stained with Uriel’s blood, the table was lost under a slough of battle strategies, notations about controlled territory, and ledgers tracking the fluctuating number of faithful angels. The blight was entrenched in Heaven’s core like a leech growing fat on its lifeblood.

  There was no escape from the epidemic of war.

  Michael conjured images of Araboth City’s bygone beauty. He recalled the crowded bohemian streets of the bizarre, the exhibitionism of the Princedom’s performances in the Coliseum, and the Sanctuary’s daily worship that consolidated the Choirs. Araboth was no longer a city of wonders—it was a stronghold. Would it ever recover from such an insufferable mutation?

  The longer the war persisted, the more clouded its origins became. The Host’s frenetic emotions ran rampant from its onset, like a mental dam that restricted their basest impulses had ruptured. What if Mankind was only a catalyst, the last crack in Heaven’s flimsy bedrock? Was their peace a façade destined to fail? Had the Creator foreseen the war? Had He encouraged it?

  Do not fall into the trappings of suspicion, Michael told himself. Whatever the cause of this war, your only concern is to bring about its end. Push forward. Always forward.

  Michael’s head suddenly began to pound like sharp prongs were dissecting the strained bowels of his mind…

  Blackout.

  Michael could not see. Could not hear. Could not breathe. He was buried under a stifling pile of noxious, rubbery matter that compacted him like a cold, fleshy clamp. His hands wriggled loose, scratching and tugging until he broke free of the tomb. Michael’s lungs filled with the putrid stench of decay, and he knew what surrounded him—

  Corpses.

  The rotting remains of demons and angels were slumped in mounds, their glassy eyes staring at Michael. The Seraphim arose from the bodies, hands and feet pegged to wooden crosses. Insects crawled up their nostrils and into their ears to feast on their pureed insides.

  “Brothers, who did this to you?” Michael asked. Their lips moved in silent condemnation, and he felt a sticky fluid drip from his fingers. Blood. “I had to fight. Raqia was under siege!”

  The corpses began to bloat with gas from within like bulbous sacks. Their tongues wagged and eyes bulged from the internal pressure. A plethora of hands reached out for Michael.

  “What more do you want from me? What else can I give?”

  The corpses burst and sloshed ventral chunks over Michael. He wiped the coating of innards from his face and was suddenly standing before the Sanctuary. Blood pooled under his feet and splashed onto the steps. The current wove down the hill like a river, boiling in the streets.

  Araboth was in flames. Dead angels draped off the buildings like decorative valances.

  “Satanail will fall before the Host burns!” Michael shouted and released his wings, but they were black. An inverted, red pentagram burned on his chest. “I will kill them all.”

  “You’re beginning to accept the truth,” Satan’s reflection spoke from the blood. His voice carried up in bubbles that popped with choler. “But to kill me, you’ll have to kill yourself.”

  “No.
I walk a divine path of virtue and honor—”

  “Honor? This is what your honor will achieve.”

  Satan’s arms reached out of the reflective sheen and pulled Michael into the blood. It saturated his body, funneling into every orifice as if to evict his grace. Heaven turned upside down, and the blood rained from his pores like a crimson storm onto the remnants of Earth—a name that Satan had spread to ridicule the Creator’s celestial achievement.

  Mankind’s home was scorched, corrupted, and Satan lorded over it from a throne of bones. Michael’s wings were preserved and mounted above him. Across the planet, the humans waged meaningless war against each other for the amusement of his demons.

  “I will prevent this, Father. Neither the Host nor Mankind will ever bow to Satanail. You can doubt me. You can show me visions of every possible apocalypse, but they are not our future. Heaven will be restored!”

  The vision dissipated and became an alluvium of raw matter as Michael’s will conquered his fears. The matter coalesced into the shape of a key that hummed with knowledge. Michael touched it, and his mind opened a repository of creativity.

  Divine inspiration.

  Michael awoke in the Council Room, bent over a design sketched by his hand. It felt powerful yet comforting, like a vehicle of sublime protection. Satanail had claimed to receive divine inspiration when he drafted Araboth City, but Michael was never its recipient. Had the Creator reached out to him, or had his subconscious entered a heightened state of ingenuity?

  Whatever its origin, the design’s purpose was stamped onto Michael’s soul. It was an anchor to secure the Host when the tumultuous waves of war sought to capsize them—a Merkabah.

  Michael dove through the archway and flew to the Coliseum rubble. The refugees and Thrones from Raqia occupied vacant residential towers, their forest now one of lifeless metal and stone. Yet even with the crushing loss of Raqia, the Host seemed different. Stories of Michael’s battle in the blaze spread like myth and elevated him to a near-deific state. The boost in confidence came with more pressure, and Michael was not infallible. Unlike Satan, he could not assume the blasphemous role of perfect Father, only brother and mentor. Idolatry was false hope.