Fall From Grace Read online

  “Heaven or Earth, I’m going to bury you, Michael. That’s my reason.”

  “You can barely walk. How can you expect to win?”

  “Win?” Satan keeled over in a combination of laughter and pain. “Look around. I’ve already won. Your death is my reward.”

  Michael canvassed the area and spotted tribes of humans. But instead of the precursor to civilization he had glimpsed before, the tribes were indiscriminately killing each other with no purpose but for the feel of blood on their hands. The disease of evil had subverted their peace, their love, and was spreading from tribe to tribe. It took hold of their young minds and dug its vile roots deep into their souls.

  “I told you, corruption is their nature. I only had to expose it. They’re my children now, and I’ll lead them to slaughter as Father did to the Host,” Satan said. “If He created our races to be brothers, then we shall be so in damnation.”

  Satan had stolen Mankind’s innocence and shed a piece of his darkness, his sin, upon Earth that infected the purity of its people. If Satan were the initial source of violence that would escalate to claim the species as the Creator foretold, then that source had to be eliminated.

  “I have seen the netherworld of damnation. A bottomless pit of everlasting fire,” Michael replied. “And I will feed your soul to it with my bare hands.”

  Satan and Michael’s personal armageddon butchered all that remained of their angelic features, madcap fists chipping away like axes at desiccated tree trunks. They fought on with ruthless abandon, sustained only by a concoction of competition and jealously slow-brewed over their entire lives. The visceral brawl was a mortar and pestle that crunched bones and rent flesh to punish. To kill. The human tribes observed the brothers, their primitive minds not understanding that Earth’s future was tied to the outcome. Let them watch, Satan thought. Michael’s death will pale in comparison to what awaits them.

  Satan’s rivalry with Michael had transcended the rebellion. Heaven’s fate was secondary. Even if it became an uninhabitable wasteland, if none of his demon sons survived, he would survive. He didn’t need Wormwood; his body was its own weapon.

  I am evil incarnate.

  I am eternal.

  “You hate me because I’m everything that you wish you could be,” Satan said. He dug a knee into Michael’s lower back, straining the vertebrae.

  “I do not hate you. I have never hated you.” Michael flipped Satan over his shoulders and onto a jagged rock. “But you brought us to this.”

  “Because I embraced our intrinsic greatness!” Satan dragged Michael to the ground and grappled the Seraph’s neck with his legs, squeezing to snap it. “I elevated myself from servitude while you wasted away in the cerebral sloth of faith. I’m evolution perfected.”

  “Have you…learned nothing?” Michael stabbed his fingers into Satan’s wing slits, setting the internal nerves aflame. Satan’s legs faltered, and he slid out of the hold. “The perfection you sought through ‘evolution’ has already occurred. It is Mankind. They are the next step.”

  “No! Heaven is destroyed because of them!” Satan shouted at the tribes watching from a distance. “I am its fury. I am its vengeance.” He stiffened his hand into a claw and rushed for the humans to give Michael a taste of their bloody future.

  Michael intercepted Satan, shielding the humans. Swiping fingernails raked across his back and peeled back the skin like a fruit rind. He countered with a battering punch to Satan’s liver that compressed the soft organ. Satan wobbled on limp legs, his body about to crumple into a numb heap, but he remained afoot.

  “You will not lay another hand on them,” Michael said.

  “Do you think that makes you noble? You’re nothing but a custodian for this pest-ridden, fecal cesspool of a planet.”

  Satan clasped his hands and drove them on top of Michael’s head like a hammer. His brain shook and collided against the skull, jarring his senses. Concussed, Michael stumbled about with winging punches but tripped over his own tangled wings. Satan kicked his ribs and cracked them inward. He knelt on Michael’s chest, scraping the split bones against his lungs.

  Can…barely…breathe.

  “I warned you not to face me. I wish we’d been together in this, Michael, as brothers. I’m sorry, I truly am.”

  “So am I.”

  Satan’s fist came at Michael’s heart like a log—a deathblow to halt its beat—but he caught the punch, mashing the fingers in his grip. Satan hunched back and gawked at his disfigured digits scrunched into a misshapen club of a hand.

  Using the last droplet of his evaporating will, Michael rose like an untouchable colossus.

  A sacred truth rang across Creation and was suffused into the energy flowing through every world in every system in every galaxy: Michael was superior. He was the chosen son in mind, body, and soul. Grace incarnate.

  Michael lifted Satan by the throat and stared into his eyes, searching for any remorse or virtue beneath the hate. There was nothing. Empty, callous sin.

  Forgive me, Father, for what I must do.

  Michael drove his fist into Satan’s face in rapid succession. The knuckles broke his brother’s teeth like clay, pulped his nasal cartilage, and swelled his eyes shut into welts. Avenging Heaven, Michael did not stop punching Satan until the bones in his own hand fractured.

  “That’s…all?” Satan gurgled. The embers of rebellion were still burning.

  “You were everything to me, Brother.”

  Michael brought Satan into a tender embrace. His forearms locked around Satan’s lower back and squeezed inward. The spinal column contorted…then snapped in half, rupturing Satan’s internal stanchion of evil into detached vertebrae. Collapsing in a heap of disabled flesh—

  Satan fell.

  Michael picked up a stone to crush Satan’s skull. “You can still ask for forgiveness.”

  “No, I can’t.” Satan’s morals would not break with his back. “This is my choice. I’ll not repeal. I’ll not repent. You’ll have to kill me…Brother.”

  Michael felt the impressionable eyes of Mankind watching him. What lesson would he teach them? What would be his first act as guardian? He dropped the stone to become a symbol of mercy and love, not vengeance. Even if it proved to be the worst lapse in judgment in Creation’s history, Michael could not kill Satan. The time of taking lives was over.

  Heaven’s war was over.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Satan thought as the downpour dwindled to a sprinkle. He couldn’t feel his legs. The weight of the dead limbs anchored him to the ground in defeat. Defeat! I’ve been struck down. Crippled. Conquered. It was illogical, an anomaly of natural law like a planet suddenly ceasing its rotation. He was convinced that Creation itself had triggered the idea of rebellion within him so that he could arise as its liberator. But he was manipulated, a stringed mannequin dancing the sick jig of its puppeteer. He was the jester in a kingdom of fools, warbling a revolutionary song for the derogatory laughter of Father.

  Nothing. It was all for nothing. How else can you torture me, Father? A familiar silence followed his prayer—He would never contact His fallen son again. Satan was disowned, an orphan of Creation. No being had ever known such loneliness.

  The warring tribes of Mankind consolidated their fury and surrounded Michael. Kill them, Brother, for you too have strummed the tune of beguiled chattel. But Michael knelt among the humans, spreading his arms in peace and forgiveness while their puny hunting tools splintered against his wings.

  “Release your fear, your hate. You do not need it. No angel will ever harm you again.” In Michael’s pacifism, the murderous terror that Satan instilled began to fade. “Pray with me, brothers, and allow Father’s love back into your hearts.”

  Michael wrapped his wings around the humans, his meaning relayed by the benevolent touch of their feathers. They put down their weapons and knelt, not revering Michael but praying to the Creator alongside him. Had Creation ever seen such a fulsome spectacle of willing bonda
ge?

  Ignorant peons.

  The clouds above parted, and sunlight brightened the land.

  “The Host of Heaven believes in you. Live your lives. Thrive. Love each other, and you will do wonders,” Michael continued. “We will always watch over you.”

  Though loath to admit it, Satan saw an authentic divinity in Michael. He had resisted temptation unlike any other—a worthy Word and Hand for Heaven. But Mankind wasn’t like the angelic Host, and Michael couldn’t cleanse their evil with pious praise. Satan knew better than any that once the door to sin was opened, it could never be shut. Evil could never be completely expunged from the soul.

  Be it a hundred years or a thousand, Mankind’s darkness would awaken again.

  CHAPTER 35

  A New World

  A fresh day commenced in Heaven, its third since the climactic battle began on the plains of Araboth. The long-awaited return of peace had not yet settled among the Host. There was no celebration to mark the conflict’s end, only a resigned dispassion and the waste of war that clung to everything like a hardened fungus. Heaven could never be restored, not as it was. The holocaust of Araboth City was the end of a civilization that felt like a different life for the Host, a womb of innocence to which they could not return. The war had permanently soiled the memories of millions and would be revived every day forward in their nightmares like a penitent phoenix.

  Uriel had the surviving demons restrained on the plains. They were nearly catatonic and did not oppose the arrest. Stripped of Satan’s idealism, an extreme sense of loss shackled their tainted souls more than any chains. No home, no people, no Father, and no future remained for Satan’s rebels. They had relinquished their grace and gained nothing for it, a truth so bleak that their minds all but shut down. Raphael and the Thrones, in their infinite empathy, attempted to alleviate the demons’ guilt, but the healing was subconsciously rejected.

  Angels cleared the mountain rubble and searched for survivors, but few were found alive. Their hearts bled with pity for the miserable Forgotten made extinct in the blast, a race reduced to wailing shadows on stone. Not once had the Host tried to accept the Forgotten, to love them, and now any chance to repent for their bigotry had passed.

  Michael bored his way to the surface, stone by stone, with Satan strapped to his back. His brother had not spoken since departing Earth—a name Michael decided to keep for the planet and wash of its disrespect. Their travels back to Heaven were a fog, as if the Creator had imbued Michael’s riven body with the strength to automatically carry them home. The white flames of Excalibur ignited within the crushed ruins to guide him onward. When Michael reclaimed the sword and finally broke free, the air felt like Heaven’s breath sanctioning his return.

  The sight of Michael and Satan’s emergence elicited hushed whispers from the angels, like the pair was a nostalgic flash of dementia. A mirage. He walked towards the plains where Satan’s legions were spread in rows, each prostrate demon a marker of defeat. Their eyes turned to Satan in unison, black pools of abject sorrow, but he lowered his head from their stare.

  “Do not turn from them.” Michael reached back and forced Satan’s head up by the hair. “You owe them that much.”

  “Michael?” Gabriel landed next to them, his voice making their return a reality. “I knew it. I knew you’d come back to us.”

  Michael dropped Satan and gripped Gabriel’s wrist, thanking the Creator for allowing their reunion. Many others were not so blessed.

  “I prayed that I would see your face again.”

  “And I prayed to see his head separated from body,” Gabriel said and aimed his scythes at Satan’s neck, but Michael halted the execution. “Why do you stay my hand?”

  The angels banding around them shared the same question.

  “Enough blood has stained our home.”

  “A thousand deaths wouldn’t amount to half of what Satan deserves,” Gabriel argued. “If you can’t finish him, I will.”

  “You will not,” Michael replied then turned to the crowd. “Everyone, understand this: I am expelling all violence and death from Heaven. As we begin anew, that is our law.”

  Gabriel stabbed his scythes into the ground, splattering mud on Satan’s face. “Why should Satan be given mercy when our brothers received none?”

  “It is not mercy that I give. The loss of life is a fleeting pain.” Michael knelt and spoke to Satan. “But your punishment shall be eternal.”

  “What about us?” Gabriel asked, speaking on behalf of the Host. “What now?”

  “Now, brothers…we heal.”

  Michael’s home region of Machonon was a corpse picked clean of the beauty in his memories, a defunct land aching to discover its purpose in a post-war Heaven. The bountiful flower fields and gardens were now coarse sand flaked with decomposed greenery. Michael found a chunk of bark with carved tallies from Satanail’s race victories. No trees remained, so he used Excalibur to trace his first tally in the sand, flames heating the grains into glass. The gesture was a tribute to their cherished tradition, not a mark of victory.

  The Wildlife Reserve was a burial ground for the innumerable species that had perished with the Behemoth and Leviathan. Archangels became somber grave keepers instead of caretakers, gathering the skeletons of all Heaven’s creatures, great and small. Their remains were deposited underground to be fossilized over time like a geologic record of the Creator’s inspired organisms.

  While assisting the Archangels in their sullen labor, Michael thought on the properties of Excalibur. Its flames were kindred to the Fires of Creation, and while he used them to take life during the war, what if their nature was to grant it?

  Though the coastline was still coated in a reeking slurry of the ocean’s dead, the waters had ceased battering its sands. Michael hovered above the waves and sliced open his palm with Excalibur. He held the handle upside down so that his blood streamed into the flames and then thrust the blade into the ocean. It was an action of faith with no scientific precedence, but perhaps the grace contained in his angelic blood mixed with Excalibur’s fire could ignite the spark of life.

  Father, what grace remains in me, I commit to the cause of life. Bless this blood and see the wild of Heaven repopulated.

  It would take eons of evolution, but if Michael had learned anything about Creation, it was that the Cosmos adored life. If the genetic soup in the ocean produced microorganisms, if they evolved into an ecosystem and bred creatures that could step out of its waters, the Host would be waiting for them.

  Michael’s dwelling was intact when he finally returned, a guilty stroke of luck since countless other angels were displaced with nowhere left to call home. It felt familiar but distant, like the space belonged to another version of him from a different time. He dipped his hands in the river running through the floor, a pleasure he used to enjoy after attending to his duties. The waters rinsed his skin but did nothing to decontaminate the deeper filth calcified within.

  The weight of Excalibur had become unbearable since the war ended as if it wanted to be retired. Michael wrapped it in the same cloth Uriel had used to present the blade and buried it deep under his bed. He hoped never to hold the weapon—or any other—again in his lifetime.

  With renewed peace of mind, Michael slept…until a knock reverberated in his dreams. He awoke to find an odd creature at his doorstep, not angel, demon, Forgotten, or even human, but something in between. He was immediately wary yet recognized the lines of remorse and guilt on its feminine face. It was the same strain he saw whenever he looked in a mirror.

  “You’re Michael?”

  “I am, and you are…?”

  “Lilith, or at least I was called as such when I belonged to Sammael. But a name doesn’t tell you who you are, does it?” Lilith’s sadness and alienation came off her in waves, but a seething hatred remained beneath. She was dangerous.

  Michael did not invite her in. “What do you want from me?”

  “Nothing. I’ve come here to give you
something. Consider it a token of thanks for ending Satan’s reign.”

  Lilith moved aside to present Metatron, unconscious but alive. His body was smattered with evidence of severe injury, the arms even appearing as if they were severed and reattached.

  “Metatron…I thought him lost in the war.”

  Michael lifted Metatron and placed him on the bed. Bless you, Father. It was a miracle of charity.

  “His recovery will be long, mental more than physical.”

  “Please, come in. Allow me to thank you properly,” Michael said. “I still have a small reserve of manna and wish to hear of your encounter.”

  “Believe me, you don’t,” Lilith replied and began to leave.

  “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know. Mathey is deserted. There’s nothing for me there. I’m alone.”

  Michael offered Lilith his hand. “You do not have to be.”

  “Yes, I do. We’re not kin. We can’t be. What I’ve done, what my people have done…I only ask that you forget about me. Let me be forgotten. Will you grant that one kindness?”

  “I will. You are in my prayers, Lilith.”

  “Save them for someone else.”

  Lilith turned and walked into the open land—the last legacy of the Forgotten. Her plans, her loyalties, remained an enigma that could resurface to bite Michael, but he gave his word. Heaven was not a place of persecution. Lilith had more than earned a new beginning.

  Volunteers cleared the parched fields of Shehaqim, but there was no fertile dirt to till or new seeds to plant. Gabriel wandered through the dust and soot, his scythes again fused into one. But with no crops to reap, the tool that was a crucial part of his identity now felt hollow in his hands, worthless, much like himself. Shehaqim used to be a land of nourishment, and Gabriel was a provider of it. No more. Everything he once was had been altered for warfare and death. What was Gabriel now but a warrior without a cause?