“Armoni!”Moloch continued to laugh.“Baal is satisfied with Asmodeus, Rosier, Gemory, and he thinks they hid the human somewhere else — but I know you’re here.Come with me now or else I’ll take it out on all your friends.You would think I fuck you or something with the way you act.Come home.It needs cleaning, and I would like some dinner.”
Armoni swallowed visibly, then he put a hand over his mouth in Dante’s direction, telling him to be quiet.“Goodbye,” he whispered, then repeated himself for Azazel.“Farewell.”
Dante watched over the shoulder of one of the Watchers he was hiding behind when the same demon who’d interrupted the trial stepped in, axe strapped to his back, chuckling.Behind him, there were three other demons with torches, but they stayed back and eyed the hissing Watchers cautiously.Once Moloch reached Armoni, took him by the hair, then nodded almost politely at Azazel.“Looking beautiful as always, Azazel,” he teased, then yanked his angel slave away, heading back the way he came, until the cave around them rumbled again.And then, the ceiling creaked.Moloch cursed, hurried away from where dust was sprinkling down.When the wall burst open, Moloch and his demons were already running away with a struggling Armoni shouting for his child.
The Leviathan — more precisely, its massive head — broke harshly through the collapsing ceiling, and roared.And then, almost mundanely, another beast fell down into the Watchers’ prison with him — a creature of four arms, four legs, and eight erratic wings attached to a shapeless form made of eyes, mouths.Tadeo, wrestling the serpent still but weakly, twitching, bleeding.He released the Leviathan, tumbled onto the ground not far from Azazel’s feet and wasn’t able to chase after the sea monster when it slithered back into its hole, bulleted in the direction that its parent was being taken in.
“Tadeo,” Dante called, and then got to his feet, moving past the Watchers, toward the writhing beast on the ground.“We need to get fucking out of here and—” He glanced at Azazel, who was staring forward, who hadn’t seemingly reacted to any of the chaos; Dante remembered he couldn’t be understood.“You can’t free the Watchers.You shouldn’t.It’s too dangerous?—”
Tadeo let out a loud groan in pain, lifting himself up to face the soldier.“Dante—” Low, guttural, desperate.“You’re alive— Come with me.I shouldn’t have left you here?—”
“What?”blurted the soldier, but then shook his head.“What the fuck do you mean?Aren’t you here for the Watchers?—?”
“I’m here because I left you behind,” Tadeo said, but then he rolled onto his limbs properly, looking around himself at Azazel and at Samyaza, at all the Watchers, who looked at him wildly, fearfully.Familiarly.
Azazel stared back at the anti-Christ.Once, Lucifer had said, ‘You are blessed to have not seen what’s become of the Earth, dear Azazel.You will not recognize it.You will wish you’d finished them all off with your flood.The hole in you, where you are still bleeding, will dig itself deeper.You will see that they will all burn with us here in Hell.You will wish you killed every last man when you had the chance.’
The anti-Christ hurried over, took Azazel’s chains, first, then broke them apart with his own hands.As soon as he did, he heard the distant shouts of Hell, as he had when he fell into it for the first time, but the howls were hollower, sadder.The souls of martyrs, betrayed and angry.
CHAPTER25
The sun dimmed.
And, in Babylon, the archangels hadn’t saved a single soul yet, their winged horses atop skyscrapers as they had been when Michael had, briefly, come to tell them that the devil had found the anti-Christ.In all his absence, Michael’s fellow princes had been watching the nation of evil.There had been some parades — angry ones.Some were demanding the king to act, some were demanding that he shouldn’t.Few angels understood what this was about, even less thought any of it to matter.There had been a massacre just outside the border of Babylon, of a few innocents, by armed men, and before that — there had been a massacre of armed men.But most of those in Babylon continued with their lives, irritated by the parades getting in the way of their walks.Prince Uriel had gathered that the Babylonian people saw the deaths as indicative of danger to their empire, feared they would somehow become the targets of the barbaric violence of those right outside their walls.
Though Uriel was tempted to speak of this to the other archangels, Gabriel was staring up at the sun — his hair was tied back, and he was the only angel who didn’t wear a helmet — and he whispered, “It’s begun, hasn’t it?”Raphael lifted his chin and looked with him, and so did many of the angel army, but Uriel shut his eyes instead, as if that alone could make the sun’s current state untrue.“The end…”
Raphael spoke with as soft of a voice as Gabriel: “Michael ordered us to find him in that place outside of Babylon when the sun dimmed.”And then he tugged the reins on his horse to walk it away from the northern end of the building.“Come, you two.There is nothing we can do now.Michael was right, and I don’t want either of you burned at the stake as he was.We don’t only answer to God now.We answer to man, to Metatron, and this is the fate of humans that we must hand to them.”
Uriel sighed loud, then opened his eyes, saw some curious humans staring up at the sun they could stare at with their naked eyes for the first time in history.“One might ask what the purpose of all this was — the fall, the flood, and now the end.If we angels and demons were going to suffer the same fates of serving — what was ever the purpose?”He guided his horse, however, to follow Raphael’s, and the youngest prince, and all the army soon followed.
The human Joana, on the other hand, groaned awake.She had just peeled her body off the bed and sat up, turned over, and saw — through a crack in the curly curtain of her hair — a little boy sitting on the floor, against the mattress, her younger brother.It’d been a while since she’d been home so long, but she made a face at him like they still playfully fought, crawled off the bed that she used to share with him, and shoved him aside as he giggled.She went over to the tall drawer by a window, opened the top drawer, pulled out a soccer jersey and jeans, then went to get dressed in the bathroom.It’d been a day or two since she’d seen Michael, and she’d spent most of the time pretending to be ill.Her father hadn’t been happy, had demanded to know the whereabouts of Tadeo, admitting to him that she didn’t know.It’d earned her a slap, but at least only one, and she had needed a moment of peace after having to meet the chief prince again.Then again, spending a day in bed, on her cellphone, reading all about what Babylon was threatening to do hadn’t made her feel any better.
In the kitchen, Joana’s mother told her that it was noon; she was already making lunch —enfrijoladas.Joana told her that she was going out, staring at the black vest draped by a chair against the backdoor; her older brother’s, the one he wore with a mask whenever he followed Joana’s father to the ranches to deal with shipments.Her mother hesitated, then ordered Joana to be careful.“I know,” she told her; it was always awkward between them.“Bye.I love you,ama.”
“Come back for dinner.I love you.”
Only once Joana had stepped outside did she realize that the darkness wasn’t due to the clouds.She walked down the sidewalk, headed for the corner store that was one of the few places still open during this gasoline cutoff, then saw some soldiers on their truck, staring up at the sky.She followed their gaze; then, she saw it — the sun.It was dark, though some light still bled from its circumference like an eclipse did.It wasn’t burning her eyes to stare at, however, nor did it seem to bother the soldiers who squinted, one of whom raised his phone to take a picture.
“Joana.”
The human in question jumped, then jerked her head to the side to see Michael standing right beside her, his winged, armored horse nibbling on a patch of grass behind him.Like the last time she saw him, his helmet was off, tucked under an arm.When their eyes met, she swiftly turned back to facing forward, and she whispered, not looking at him: “What are you doing here?”Before he could answer: “Look— I told you never to talk to me again.And I have a lot to do.They’re gonna tighten the border.They want to airstrike us.Just the bad guys, they say, but I know the truth.I know what they want to do.You should go.”It didn’t matter how nice it’d felt to sit with the prince at a table, or how safe she’d felt in his arms after the night with Lupina.He was not safe, after all.He was not going to save her.The saint Michael, chief prince of Heaven, did not save anyone.
‘You’re not going to help?I asked you that when I told you about all the horrible things that have happened here.You just listened, just stared.You don’t want to help me?You could help my dad, at least.Get us money.You could clean these streets.You could do something.I’ll never forget how you looked at me, saying nothing, then lowering your face.I wish you had done it ashamed.I wish you were ashamed to submit to God and to the world you decided it wasn’t your responsibility to fix.Why ever did I look up to you?Why ever did I get so excited to see you, to talk to you, to try to make you smile?Why did I want to make you proud?You’re not my father.’
Michael said, “The end times are near.I wanted to tell you again that I’ll bring you to Heaven at the proper time.”Not responding, Joana reached into her back pocket for her pack of cigarettes and lighter, but she had forgotten to grab it on the way out, so she frowned.“I can take you somewhere.”The prince’s voice was fragile, almost desperate.“When the other princes arrive, and when the first trumpets of the end sound, I’ll mark you with the blood of the lamb.And you’ll rise with me.You’ll be safe.”
Joana snorted, then turned on her heel, the conversation making her blood run hotter and hotter; she couldn’t be trusted not to raise her voice, and the last thing she wanted was to attract the attention of the soldiers.She began walking, and she mumbled, “Goodbye, Michael.”The prince called after her again, and she could sense him following, along with the heavenly horse.“Leave me alone.I’m not going to tell you again.”‘I sound like my father.’She was headed toward a church, without meaning to, the same one that Tadeo went to often, the one with Father Toño and the new beautiful priest.‘But when I last talked to you, I made my choice too, Michael.Better a cruel father than an absent one.’
Michael continued, “You’ll finally know peace, Joana.”
“Maybe I don’t fucking want peace,” Joana snarled, stomped past a street, onto the green of the plaza before the church, then turned around and faced Michael with all the anger she’d cradled in her chest for years, for years.“I don’t want to go to Heaven, and I don’t wantpeaceanymore.”All the televisions ever spoke about was wanting peace, about how we must pray for it.But peace?Peace is a convenient thing to pray for.Peace doesn’t discriminate.You can end violence by protecting the innocent or killing every last one of them.‘Peace means nothing; peace means anything.’
Michael was quiet for a moment, and he wished he wore his helmet to hide the pain he knew was flickering over his face.When she had come to him once, complaining about her father for hurting her, her brothers, her mother, the more that he spent time with bad men — the prince had asked her to forgive him.That is how Fathers are.They are always right, in the end.It hurts to obey; it hurts more to rebel.“You’ll understand once this is all over.”
“No, Michael,” she said lowly.“I understand it all better than you.”
‘I don’t regret it,’ Michael told himself.‘I don’t regret saying what my Father would.’But he wanted Joana to talk to him now like he hadn’t said it.Was that regret?“When you,” he continued, “hear the first trumpet, look for me.”
