Fall From Grace Page 27

  “That’s right. A Seraph put you in the ground before and will again. Right here, right now, you will submit!”

  Facing a fight he couldn’t win, Gabriel’s bravado was more for his own benefit…but then he saw the actual source of the Behemoth’s distress. The smoky skies split apart to reveal—

  The Leviathan, bearing Michael and Jehoel.

  Supersonic waves snuffed out the crop fires as the Leviathan soared down, breaking the sound barrier twenty times over, and speared into the Behemoth. The serpentine body wrapped around its counterpart, containing it within the scales. Both beasts tumbled away from the Tree and flattened the burnt fields.

  “FIGHT ON, ANGELS!” Michael encouraged.

  Gabriel mustered his grit and thrust himself back into the battle. For Michael, for the Host, for himself, it was about damn time to validate his quality.

  Michael swooped into the fray, Excalibur’s glorious flames scrambling onyx brigades of demons. Unbridled pandemonium. The Behemoth and Leviathan grappled across the scorched landscape, demolishing Shehaqim. The Tree of Life thrashed its branches in agony while the exposed roots leaked creeks of manna. But in the thick of all the ferocity was a shining balefire of honor: Gabriel. He led the angels as a bastion of hope and faith, not vengeance. Gabriel was the merciful Angel of Death, and every life he ended freed a demon’s soul from Satan. If no alternative remained, could killing become an act of compassion, of love?

  Gabriel clashed with Mammon, demonstrating the priceless value of heroes in battle. Heroes were not made from skill or title but from the compulsory need to protect others above oneself. Gabriel’s selfless valor galvanized his angels, enabling reserves of willpower above and beyond mortal comprehension.

  The demons did not have heroes; they had despots who dealt in the pits of severity. Malice, cruelty, spite—these were the tools of the base and weak that shattered against righteous hearts.

  In Gabriel, Michael finally saw a noble successor. If he died, perhaps the Host could still prevail and have a future under Gabriel’s leadership. The thought sustained Michael’s dwindling fancy that there would still be survivors after the war.

  Hope always found a means to endure.

  Jehoel’s voice broke through the clamor. “Michael, I can’t maintain the link!” His connection to the Leviathan was all that kept it entangled with the Behemoth. Dagon heard his former brother, severed his own link, and tackled Jehoel off the serpent.

  Released from Jehoel and Dagon’s influence, the primordial beasts separated. They feigned strikes at each other with more bluster than harm—siblings cooling down from a competitive brawl. The tiny angel and demon captivated them, like pets pitted in a scuffle.

  Michael flew over to assist Jehoel, but the beasts encased the brothers with their bodies like the Coliseum walls. He saw the confrontation and could do nothing about it.

  “You shouldn’t have come here, Jehoel,” Dagon said. “We could’ve been together again after Michael’s fall.”

  “Together? I don’t even recognize you anymore. What did Satan promise to distort your mind so?” Jehoel asked.

  “Unequivocal lordship over every creature in Heaven, not just tending to some trifling Reserve. Can you imagine the reach of that connection, the power to be one with all of them?”

  “Archangels are caretakers, not lords.”

  “I’m not an Archangel. I’m not an angel at all.”

  The brothers fought as animals would for dominance, their styles recalling the creatures they loved as their own children. Jehoel swiped his forged claws like a stocky bear battering its prey, but Dagon responded with the erratic ferocity of a cornered canine separated from its pack. They knew each other’s every motion as if their thoughts were laid bare on the battlefield. Each blow was met in kind, each bruise, laceration, and broken bone mirrored.

  War had separated the closest of angels and saw countless face-offs between brothers whose relationships could not be mended. For many, angel and demon, those personal battles were more important than either cause.

  Jehoel dropped his guard, bloodied and grieving. The will to continue fighting was gone from his eyes. Dagon leaned in and chomped his filed teeth down onto Jehoel’s throat.

  “Jehoel!” Michael shouted, unable to break through the wall of beast hide and scale.

  “This…is all I have…to give. Goodbye, Michael.”

  In his final act for the Host, Jehoel stabbed his claws into Dagon’s neck. Both of their carotid arteries were punctured and pumped out blood from their fading heartbeats.

  “I forgive you,” Jehoel whispered to Dagon. “We go to the afterlife…together.”

  The Archangel brothers slumped to the ground. Their heads drooped against each other, reunited as the two streams of blood merged into one. How many friends would Michael have to watch die, powerless to stop it? The perpetual loss was senseless.

  “Has your thirst for death been quenched?” Michael yelled at the Leviathan and Behemoth. His wings gestured to the dead angels and demons raining on them like hail. “This is our war, not yours. Return to your hibernation. Awaken in better times.”

  The primordial beasts eyed the charred badlands. Corpses were heaped in piles like fallen leaves. The uprooted Tree of Life was dried and blackened. All plant life had begun to decompose outward from it in a decaying creep. The catastrophic damage carved a shared rage in the beasts, directed at angel and demon.

  Derelicts of Creation, a pair of guttural voices blared in everyone’s heads. Your petty conflict has sullied the Host beyond redemption. The land and its creatures cry out for us to purge this pestilence.

  Heaven demands restitution for your sins against Mother Nature.

  The Behemoth opened its mouth and began to swallow the Leviathan. From within, their bodies fused into a single being. The Leviathan’s vertebral column became a rigid spine that lifted the Behemoth into a bipedal stance. Its fins that doubled as wings burst from the hide and elongated, sprouting feathers. The Behemoth’s tail dispersed its bones and musculature into fingers and toes that extended out of the hooves while the Leviathan’s head split its skull. Jaws, eyes, teeth—everything—combined into a new face…an angelic face. The resulting creature towered over Shehaqim like a monumental Seraph. If Michael had not seen the transmutation, he would have thought it was the Creator.

  “I AM GENESIS. BEGONE, DEFILERS OF HEAVEN. DEATH TO THE ANGELS! DEATH TO THE DEMONS!”

  The common threat brought the battle to a standstill. Gabriel and Mammon were locked in a stalemate, scythe against one throat and whip wrapped around the other. The first swipe of Genesis’ monstrous wings vaporized half their angels and demons.

  “Another day, Seraph,” Mammon said and broke off to lead his recreant demons in retreat.

  Gabriel flew alongside Michael, spurring the other angels to follow. There was no fear, no surrender in their eyes. They were prepared to give their lives fighting Genesis.

  “No deserters here. What’re your orders? How do we put this thing back to sleep?”

  “You do not,” Michael said and hit Gabriel in the chest with the butt of Excalibur to put distance between them. “Fall back to Araboth City. Gabriel…command of the Host is yours.”

  Michael flew to Genesis’ face and slashed Excalibur across the bridge of its nose, drawing attention away from Gabriel and the angels. Voluminous droplets of blood ruptured like ponds.

  Genesis saw no righteousness or evil in Heaven’s war, only a disease of angels and demons that needed to be cured. Michael had one tactic left to pacify it.

  “Genesis! I am Michael, Logos and Archon of the Creator. I offer myself, if you would spare the others. This war began with me, and my death will mark the end of Heaven’s grief. You have my word. My life for the Host.”

  “I WILL TAKE YOUR LIFE, ANGEL…BUT NONE SHALL BE SPARED. ALL OF YOU MUST DIE.”

  Genesis inhaled the surrounding air, sucking Michael into its mouth. Between the closing teeth, Michael saw Gabriel
shining as the mighty Seraph he always knew was within.

  Lead them, Brother. Lead them.

  “Michael—!”

  Gabriel’s cry was the last thing Michael heard as the jaws of Genesis snapped shut around him.

  CHAPTER 25

  The Belly of the Beast

  Satan felt liberated as he crawled through the tunnel back to Limbo. Enlightened. His rebellion, the war, it was all meant to be. If not, how could he have stood on Earth and violated Mankind without divine retaliation? There was a power greater than Him that inspired and encouraged Satan’s actions—manifest destiny. Creation had evolved outside of Father and become an independent entity that craved a change in rule. It chose Satan to be the catalyst, shifting the celestial design in his favor. He had ascended beyond the ethics and morality of civilization, beyond good and evil. Such trivialities were of no concern to the Creator, old or new. Satan had flayed off the stratum of his soul through blood and death, exposing it like a raw nerve, but the end was in sight.

  Rebirth.

  Satan opened the hatch leading into his tent. He climbed up to find Lucifer alive and unscathed. “Lucifer, you’ve returned. All went as planned in Mathey? How was Lilith?”

  “She’s a blight. A synthetic deformity,” he replied. “But the Forgotten are innocent, adrift, and you’re going to use them as, as f-f-fodder.”

  Satan’s hand moved towards the hilt of Wormwood. “Is that a problem, General?”

  “…It m-m-must be done. Did you find what you sought?”

  “That and so much more.”

  Satan heaved a bloodstained sack up from the tunnel and dropped it with a squishy thud like a satchel of rotten fruit. He removed a torch from the wall and ignited a trail of explosives lining the tunnel, caving it in. When next he entered Araboth, it would be through the main gates, not slithering on his belly.

  “Report. How fares the war effort?”

  “Our campaigns at the Nest and Tree of Life were successful though not without unforeseen c-c-complications,” Lucifer said, wincing with his stutter as if expecting a lashing for the report.

  “Complications.” Satan despised the word. It was synonymous with failure. “Such as?”

  “Dagon successfully unearthed the Behemoth, but Michael resurfaced with the Leviathan. Control over both beasts was lost, and they m-m-merged into, into—”

  “Genesis.”

  After victory over the primordial beasts, Satan had hoarded every scrap of knowledge about them. Their internal physiologies were strangely similar with evidence of interlocking structures. He hypothesized the existence of a combined form, an angelic archetype that was split in half before the Host’s inception. During those studies, the name “Genesis” appeared in his dreams, but he never revealed his findings to Michael. Why should he have? The secret of Genesis was imparted to him, a special epiphany direct from Creation, and Satan stored it away like a precious treasure.

  “You’re not concerned?” Lucifer asked.

  “If Genesis has arisen, it was meant to be and will support our cause.”

  “But it destroys all in its path.”

  “Good.”

  “How can you say that?” Lucifer was appalled, his tone very disagreeable.

  “I’d rather see Heaven leveled than in the soiled hands of our enemies,” Satan replied. “This was all an empty landscape before my vision. I built everything you see and can do so again.”

  “We’re losing more than cities and facilities. Heaven as a world is dying.”

  “I’ll not mourn a world fabricated in reverence of a callous, obsolete Creator.”

  “Will you mourn them?” Lucifer motioned beyond the tent flap to the legions outside. “They pledged themselves to you—I pledged myself, my soul—on faith alone. Faith in the f-f-future you proposed. Will any of us live to see it?”

  The protests were spoiling Satan’s mood. With the war’s conclusion near, he had no patience for vacillating opinions. Lucifer’s expedition to Mathey hadn’t saved him, it only pushed him farther away from the rebellion. Was Lilith to blame? Had her hatred congealed onto him?

  “You’ve long been a voice of clarity, Lucifer. Listen carefully to what I’m about to ask and respond with unshackled honesty. Beneath all of your fear, your doubt, your misgivings over my methods, what is it that you wish to say to me?”

  “I’m sorry, Satanail,” Lucifer said, invoking his angelic name. “But you’ve created an army that shouldn’t exist in a war that will make heroes of no one.” The criticism came from both Lucifer and Azazel, a truth from his soul. “I wish I could be what the rebellion needs, believe me, I do. Whatever I am now, I was nothing before you took me in…but I can’t be with you anymore.” Lucifer’s voice trembled with remorse. He removed Satan’s feather from his wings and offered it back to his mentor.

  “I know, Azazel.” Satan was taken aback by sudden heartache and yet proud of Lucifer for securing the courage to accept his own beliefs. “But there’s a way for you to become the demon you’ve always struggled to find within. To inspire others as only you are able.”

  “How?”

  Satan plunged Wormwood into Azazel’s heart. He embraced his former apprentice, authentic tears clouding his vision.

  Remorse…when was the last time Satan grieved?

  “There’s no shame in this death, Azazel. You never found Lucifer, but his memory will give my sons the final push to see this war won and peace returned to Heaven. You’re a hero.”

  “…Thank…you…”

  Azazel’s eyes became vacant, and his soul discharged in an opaque flash of grace. Where did the spiritual essence of dead demons return to in Creation? Would Father shun him?

  Satan removed Wormwood, swift and painless. He had come to enjoy bringing death upon those that deserved it, but Azazel wasn’t one of them. The angel looked relieved. Brave. Satan closed Azazel’s fingers around the feather.

  “You’ve earned it.”

  Regret was a useless emotion, the bastard son of guilt, but Satan should’ve done more for his apprentice. He had struck down countless angels in the war but never taken the life of a true brother. Satan killed Azazel, murdered him, and any stubborn traces of his own angelic grace. He removed his wrist cuff, weathered and frayed, and returned it to the rightful owner.

  Satan slung Azazel—Lucifer in death—over one shoulder and the bloody sack across his other. He stepped outside and walked the body through Limbo, silencing his legions. Beelzebub halted construction of the war machines. Mammon stopped whipping the trainees. Demons didn’t mourn their own, to perish in service to Satan was the highest honor, but they revered the generals like invulnerable constants.

  Channel their grief. My grief. Have it mean something.

  “My sons, a general has fallen. An assassin, one of Michael’s cowards, dug a tunnel into my tent to make yet another sinister attempt on my life while I slept. Lucifer sacrificed himself for me, for us, so that we may persevere. This war has brought much loss, but it’s not in vain. Victory, absolute and irreversible, is at our doorstep. You’ve all been patient, diligent…and now we will return home. For Lucifer, we will purify Araboth and strike the angelic curse from Heaven!”

  War was a perpetual test, and even the most ardent demons had begun to show signs of disillusionment. Their allegiance redoubled with thoughts of the homecoming, but one hindrance remained that could derail Satan’s endgame: hunger. The war wasn’t intended to last so long, and with the Tree of Life dead, there were no more manna shipments to pilfer. A solution came from the most unlikely of sources—Mankind.

  “I know you’re tired. You’re hungry. Many of you doubt my decision to uproot the Tree of Life. It was a weed of the Creator that produced foul swill for angels. We’ve evolved beyond the sustenance of manna. Our demonic bodies demand more than fruits and vegetation. As the animals of Heaven learned long ago, nothing is more nutritious than fresh meat.”

  Satan used Wormwood to shear a chunk from Lucifer’s body.
“Flesh is life. Lucifer’s blood, his muscle, his tissue—it surges with vitality. The dead will provide for the living. This is the way of Creation.” Satan shoved the flesh into his mouth and chewed the gristle. His stomach tried to reject it, but he overpowered the reflex and swallowed. “Consume your brother, and his strength will live on in you.”

  Beelzebub and Mammon ate next to dissuade any skepticism, convulsing into carnivores. Lucifer’s body was passed around the demons, each clamoring for a taste, until the bones were picked clean. Many vomited, but the craving for meat set in among his sons. Satan felt a physical change in his own digestive system.

  “Our bodies are metamorphosing. Adapting. This is the last stage of our demonic evolution. This is what we must become to seize Heaven…and beyond!”

  Satan opened the bloody sack and exposed the murdered human from Earth. The demons gawked, lumps of skin hanging from their teeth.

  “Michael is so desperate that he sent a human against me, but I’ve found a gateway to Earth. I’ve seen this race of Mankind. It’s brittle. Primitive. We can kill every last one before they ever become a threat. Heaven is but one world. I lay claim to all.

  “What can Michael do? What can he do? When I cut him down, when the life drains from his body, he’ll watch us fly to Earth for the execution of Mankind. Creation will have never seen such a cosmic failure. That will be Michael’s legacy!”

  The thought of that historic moment, so close, made Satan giddy…but the demons didn’t cheer for him. They recoiled as if harboring a shameful secret. Mammon flew forth, backed by Beelzebub. The ugliness of debacle contorted their faces.

  “Lord Satan, Genesis decimated demon and angel alike. We could not stop it from, from—”

  “From what?” Satan needed to hear the words. “Say it!”

  “Michael is dead.”

  Michael held Excalibur with both hands, its blade stabbed into the cavernous wind tunnel that was Genesis’ esophagus. He never intended to die but rather to fight the beast from within. Now dangling with only the scant illumination of Excalibur’s flames, he began to reconsider the intelligence of his plan. If I do not succeed, Gabriel will watch over the Host. I must trust that the Creator will support him, he thought to clear his mind of distractions.