“You don’t answer to Mary,” Michael snapped.“You answer to God, Gabriel.Our Father.The Lord and Creator of everything.”
“I will answer to Him,” said Gabriel, “after I speak with Mary.”
Uriel chuckled and now he was the one stepping between Gabriel and Michael with a twist of amusement on his lips.“Well, you can take Raphael with you to destroy the world of man, but I won’t leave this place, nor will Gabriel.What I saw in those ten years that the Lord had me watch them disgusted me.They starve each other, they harm their oldest and youngest, and they’ve created weapons so destructive that even I can’t comprehend them.Will you teach God’s army about firearms, Michael, or will you allow them to descend to Earth with our ancient swords and spears?Will you tell the angels that the Earth and man we knew are long gone, that the world of prophets and Eden and miracles died long ago?Will you show them how the humans have already surpassed us in their few centuries alive, or will you allow the angels to realize it the moment a nuclear light is pointed in their faces?”
Now, it was Raphael, climbing wobbly to his feet, who snapped, “Uriel, you’re not making any sense.”He took his staff with both hands, and he wavered in place, so much that Gabriel found himself moving toward him quickly so that he could keep the healer angel upright.
“I avoided seeing the Earth since the beginning of their last century,” Uriel elaborated flatly.“Their wars filled me with such rage that I vowed to never look at the humans again, but God commanded it, and now I know that the world has only grown so much more wicked.And I’m certain the Lord knows the trip wasn’t going to convince me of apocalypse but that it would only strengthen my resolve against it — despite that, He sent me.He sent me to learn that, however cleansed they are of sin, I will always remember the destruction the humans have caused, how they’ve created evils even greater than the devil’s.”
“Human weaponry is weak against the will of God,” Michael said.“You’re blinded by spectacle, like a child.”Uriel scoffed, laughed.“And speak all you want.It doesn’t change that you’ve been commanded to do something and you must follow orders or risk being tortured by our Father.”With one step forward, the chief prince brought his face even closer to Uriel’s, and he added, quietly, “And if you’re too rebellious to save yourself, then what about Dina?”At this, the oldest angel tensed.“Will you allow me to find Dina on Earth and have him punished for trying to halt the apocalypse?That’s what you sent him to do, isn’t it, Uriel?”
Gritting his teeth, Uriel managed a strained, “Michael.” Behind the chief prince, a door was opening, and there was an angel there, shaped like an elderly man in a long robe.“You’ve seen that God lies to you, and you choose to ignore it.And you still kill for Him, believing He’ll keep His promise to save you, save you from what you’ve done.”
“All of you,” Metatron barked.“What are you arguing about?The Lord has ordered you to mount the horses of the end.”
Uriel continued: “But there’s a part of me that pities you.I know that hopelessness.Billions of years, I lied to myself and smothered the doubt that there could ever be more than this.I still believe rebellion is death and is worse than death and issuicide,one of God’s most detested sins.But how far can you follow your Lord before seeing He has merely destroyed you and everything you’ve ever loved using your own hands?”
Metatron grunted, then stormed inside, revealing Phanuel close behind, face twisted with curved brows and parted lips, sad and fearful; he must’ve heard Uriel’s words.“Isaid,” the human-angel called, “that the horses are prepared, and there is no time for you four to argue in here.You all see why God prefers man over the bratty children you angels can be?”Though the elder wasn’t armored, Phanuel was and the corridor of angels was as well.
Uriel murmured, “That’s not what you said, Enoch.”Then he stepped away and took some steps toward the door in capitulation while Michael swallowed thick, looking at the ground, his muscles cold, his blood missing, his body empty.
Nearby, Gabriel touched Raphael’s arm and told him quietly, “I want to speak to Mary.”
“Please,” Raphael whispered, “don’t say that to Enoch.Don’t say that to God.Now is not the time to rebel.I implore you, Gabriel.”
Gabriel wanted to say, ‘My heart doubts the end times.Once, God said a flood would kill all of man.Then, He said all of man was saved with the sacrifice of His son, but now He will destroy them all.’His heart ached.‘Mary, can you soothe my doubt?’One day, you begin to doubt in God, and then loving Him is never really the same.Believing in Him, even surrounded by faithful angels, is never the same.The memory of doubt will follow you forever.You will pray, drowned in the memory of just not believing how you used to.And so Gabriel forced himself to stop thinking of God’s Mother, but then he thought of his Father, and he couldn’t help the feeling that — ‘If I ever come to love you again, I will still remember the day that I stopped.I will remember what you did, and what you didn’t do.’
Michael answered Enoch quietly, “There are some things I must discuss with the army first, but Raphael and Gabriel may go ahead.”He didn’t bother to look at the two angels in question.And when Metatron began to argue, Michael emphasized, “This is imperative, Metatron.And there is more time than you think.I already have eyes on the anti-Christ.”His heart was in his ears, echoing, echoing.‘You think my pride makes me foolish, but it does not,’ Satan had said to Michael once.‘Suicide,’ Uriel had said.
Uriel was silent, Gabriel was silent, and Raphael was too, and Metatron smiled at this, surely feeling like a chief prince as he ordered, “Then let us go with God.”
There were horses waiting for them — armored, winged.The Lord had created them for this, the first animals to appear in Heaven.Four of them for the princes, the horsemen.
CHAPTER12
“Torture him,” said Joana as she tapped her fingers against the wheel.
The gasoline had, suddenly, run dry, but only in some stations.There was no chaos yet, and after Joana had shouted at Tadeo for massacring the soldiers, she’d sighed nervously, then checked her phone, then said that it would take at least a day, maybe a few, before all the stations in town were affected, before the residents realized this was a much graver situation than they currently realized.For now, those people with empty tanks simply traveled further to where the fuel still flowed.They didn’t know that Tadeo was responsible yet, or that they were being collectively punished for not condemning him.So, he had time to act, to get the gasoline back, but how?
Tensely, Tadeo swallowed, sitting in the passenger’s seat, not daring to turn his head and look at Joana.Instead, he listened to the shuffling behind him, then turned his single eye up toward the rearview mirror — which a rosary was hanging from — to see the angel in the backseat.Dina, sitting near the window, watching some boys play soccer and two women selling popsicles.“Can you,” Tadeo whispered to Joana, though he still looked to the angel, “take Dina with you while I do this?”The angel had remained rather quiet, and Tadeo still had yet to know how Dina wanted him to save the world.He’d gotten distracted trying to find a place to put the soldier and ensuring he’d live.
Joana stomped on the brake, tires squealing, but the pedal was weak and needed that level of violence to stop, even slowly.“Why?”she asked as if she didn’t know; she was Tadeo’s mindreader, and he was certain that she asked him to explain sometimes not because she needed the answer but to shame him, to force Tadeo to listen to himself.And as the car, with a huff of its engine, crept to a halt, she visibly chewed on the inside of her cheeks and turned her head to Tadeo, brown eyes half-covered by half-fallen eyelids.On their right, there was a familiar house of boarded up windows and graffiti, some freckles on its walls of bullet holes; the same one that Tadeo had found Dina in.Past its ceiling, the sun was falling, the sky painted in a red sprawl with some hints of playful yellow and pink and pastel blue over the quiet neighborhood.
Tadeo thought again of how many people had abandoned town when the violence began.Much of them had managed to cross the border into the northern nation before it became as militarized as it was now.It was better over there, they said.It was all they said, really.It was not good, but it was better; he supposed that some people learned to be happy with better, rather than good.
“I don’t want him to see,” Tadeo finally said, “or you.”
Joana snorted at that.“You don’t know how to torture.”
“I know enough.”
The angel, slowly, turned toward the two humans at the front seats of the parked car.Today, he was dressed in loose shorts and a baggy t-shirt with an advertisement printed over his chest; over his head, he wore a cap with yet another company name printed across it, but the lettering was so faded by now that he couldn’t read it.His hair was in two dark braids, braids which Tadeo’s grandmother and cousin had happily made for him, speaking of how they missed doing the hair of a girl in the family that must’ve disappeared or died.Just as Dina had begun asking where the granddaughter was, Tadeo hurried him out the door to meet Joana at the car.“Is this,” Dina called, “where you’re keeping the boy you spoke of?”
“He’s not a boy,” Tadeo corrected, though gently, for he was speaking to one of God’s messengers.“He could be my age.”He hesitated; he felt like a boy still.“I need to get some information out of him to fix this gasoline problem.But, I want to do it alone.”
Joana snorted.“You don’t even know the questions to ask.”
“I do,” Tadeo insisted, but his brow was furrowing as he reached for the door, pulled on the handle, then pushed it open roughly.“Stay in the car with Dina.”
