“I have siblings and a mother,” she said.“Them too?”
He couldn’t answer that.All the archangel knew was that she was kind-hearted, even if she didn’t see it.Even if she had hurt people.Michael would ask forgiveness on her behalf.He would even pay the price of penance for her.“I’m sorry,” he said.Joana thought Michael was a ghost, but it was her that had been a ghost of him since he met her.Her ambition, her anger.It was familiar.
“Michael,” someone called, not Joana, voice too beautiful.As the prince and the girl turned around, they saw that the plaza was unnaturally desolate, no food carts in sight, no families.Only one bench, the one ahead of them, was occupied by a beautiful priest with a wide grin.
Instantly, Joana tore a pistol out of her waistband with the force of pulling a rib out from her body, lifted, then aimed it right at the face of the devil.“What—?”she barked.“Where is everyone?”She’d nearly never seen this park like this, especially not since the gasoline had been cut off, and no one in her entire life had ever acknowledged Michael in front of her.
Satan met the weapon without a flicker of emotion, and instead he turned halfway, took a few steps with his hands behind his back, fiddling with some rings, whereas Michael’s own hands had turned fists.He hurried toward Joana, wanting to grab and throw her behind himself, but then the devil spoke, and Michael’s muscles all shuddered and froze.“The people here,” Satan was saying in Joana’s language, “are hiding.I told them to.There’s going to be an attack soon.Listen — there are silver birds in the sky, but they may have gone to the outskirts by now.”Joana’s aim followed him until he, abruptly, stopped, and she had to take a moment to inch her gun’s end back to hit right at his golden head.“There are still so many… trucks passing through.They never run out of gasoline.”
Michael, this time, stepped forward, moving past Joana but not before her like a shield as much as he wanted to.“The sun has darkened, Satan.”He lifted a hand, set it over the girl’s, gently tugging it downward, guiding it down.Joana resisted the first tug, but then she breathed out shakily, inched it lower, lower.
“And the moon,” the devil mused back, “will tint red.”
Joana refused to take her eyes off Satan, to shift her aim for even a fraction of a second.“You’re—” He caught the outfit, the face.“You’re the priest, the new one.”
“I could have been,” Satan continued in that distant, soft voice, “the first priest.I might have been the first to lead worship and tell others to celebrate for that great Beast above is our God, and He is Good, and He is great.”A smile bloomed over his mouth, then he turned to the girl and said, “Michael.She looks just like you.”
Immediately, Michael’s lip curled back and he barked: “Leave us.It is too late.The end has begun, and you will burn soon.The boy will return any moment now— The anti-Christ, the Beast—” He was trying to speak in the angelic tongue, but the devil refused to respond in it.
“My child,” finished Satan, but then his face twitched, a flame igniting over golden eyes, before he reached into his pocket, drew out his revolver, lifted it at Joana before she could raise her weapon again.But Michael swerved his body and moved before her in time to catch the bullet properly in his face this time, felt it spear between his eyes, shatter out through the back to splatter Joana in angelic red.Through her shout, the prince steadied his foot, cried out in pain, in fury.“Fuck you,” the devil seethed, still in Joana’s language, wanting her to hear.Michael couldn’t see it, his vision overwhelmed with the blindness of pain, his body still recoiling, all his blood hot and thick as it began to dribble down the front of his armor.
Panting, panting, Michael had expected the gun to hit his chest, his armor.After all, Satan had aimed for the low-statured Joana, and yet, the archangel’s face was burst open, his heart pounding in his ears, water out of reach, God not healing him.The bullet had been perfectly aimed for him.‘You knew,’ Michael thought, ‘that I’d jump in front of her.’
“Fuck you,” Satan snarled, before another bang struck at Michael’s knee, made it jerk even if it didn’t cut through the armor.“You damn dog!”Another shot, this one hitting his chest, and Michael felt a thud so hard on his sternum that it was as if the bruise had come before the bullet.“You couldn’t live knowing I had a world of my own.You couldn’t imagine not listening to your Father.”Shot, after shot, after shot, and Michael took each one painfully, even if he couldn’t see, even if they didn’t tear.“And now everyone will die because of you!A world that didn’t need to end!An apocalypse that never had to come!”
‘An apocalypse that never had to come?’It hadn’t fully occurred to Joana that the apocalypse really could have been prevented, nor that the devil wouldn’t have wanted it.Even still, she raised her gun again only for Michael to reach behind himself blindly, grab her wrist, then stumble when she accidentally shot it against his armor.
“Shit,” she said.“Michael!Let go of me!What the fuck are you doing?!”Joana yanked at his hold frantic, panicking.“That’s the fucking devil—” ‘The devil who doesn’t want the world to end.’Just like her.
“You will burn, Michael!”Satan hissed.“You will allow God to rule over my sin because you arecowardly!God will not save you from Hell!You will burn?—!”
“I havealreadyburned!”Michael screamed back, the upper half of his face still torn apart.“Because of you!Because of what you did to me!You corrupted me in those caves!”And he swung his free hand behind himself, grappled the sword there, then flung it forward at the sound of Satan’s voice.A hiss sounded, then a clang of the weapon hitting the ground.It must’ve scratched at Satan’s skin, at least — that was all the chief prince wanted, to tear open that perfect bronze skin, to make the devil bleed.To hurt him, to make Satan hurt how he had hurt as his body burned at the Fountain of Life in Heaven.
Instead, he listened as the sword scraped against the ground, someone picking it up.
Michael, once, had taught a young Lucifer how to hold the sword.They'd been on Earth.Beautiful, smiling, the angel of worship had looked up at the chief prince with such utter sweetness that his heart had melted.He’d really loved Lucifer.He’d really liked him.He missed his mouth, his kisses, how they’d laid tangled over the grass of paradise.
Joana’s scratchy, damaged voice: “Michael!Move!”At some point, the archangel had removed his grip from her wrist.And she watched as the devil reeled Michael's sword with hands on the hilt, then stepped toward, tried to raise it before the girl had realized she was free now to lift her gun and shoot it.Desperate, she stepped back, tried to move to lift it, but her back sneaker stumbled onto a pebble and, for the first time in years, her hands were nervously, suddenly unfamiliar with what part of a gun did what.She could only watch as the devil swung Michael’s sword, surely to try and cut through the armor of God.Instead, the beautiful, perfect wrist of Satan was grabbed in the air, twisted enough to make him drop the blade back to the ground with a thud.
Behind the devil — a figure like a horseman in silver armor, atop a pale steed.One gauntlet had its fingers curled tight by Satan’s palm, and when he spoke, it was with a deep, rumbling voice: “Satan.Stop this.”Instantly, however, the damned one tore away his arm, stumbling backward, eyes wide, back hunching like an animal that knew itself prey or was feigning to be.Nearby, there was the sound of gallops — the other angels, other archangels.
“Uriel,” Michael managed through the blood in mouth, feeling two hands come across his torso, like they could hold them up.Small, delicate, yet strong grip — Joana.
Far above, there were shrill cries.Stars were speckling through the sky, and the blue was bleeding dark.All the constellations were shifting as every speck of light grew wider and wider.The stars were each letting out cries, songs, of their torture.God’s first victims, startling awake from nightmares.All this at the same instant that a silver eagle dropped its first strike on a road south of the town.
Far away, the Watchers had come out from the ocean and reached the shore, breathing in air that seemed too dense, listening to the same screams of the stars as all those on Earth did.Drenched in water, Azazel was the first to step onto the sand with bare feet, lifting his face to meet a night sky that was nothing how he remembered it to be.Samyaza was close behind, hunched with a collar and chain connecting him to Azazel’s hand.
Tadeo was panting for breath, a half of him still a Beast, the other half of him holding Dante’s arm as they stood, almost doubled-over, in the shallows.“It’s—” He looked straight at the wine-red, full moon.“It’s the seventh seal.It’s?—”
On the shore, Dina looked up at the screaming stars with wide eyes.
And Michael put a hand on Joana as well, holding her against him, trying to steady them both as the screams continued and continued.He, alone, didn’t look up in horror.He couldn’t see.He could only imagine.Long ago, he’d told the story of how the Lord had made his first angels into stars, and the sweet Lucifer he spoke to had smiled, had really believed in God’s mercy.He'd had so much faith once.Michael had too.He did have faith still.In what?In the end.Maybe his own end now.There are those who have faith in God’s love, those who have faith in God’s wrath.
Lucifer and Michael on Earth.That was lovely to remember.Michael almost wanted to say, ‘Do you remember when all of us were angels,’ and it was only our tears that fell, some for joy and some for any crack in the stones without a flower blooming in between?Even in paradise, we found things to grieve.Maybe there was never any eternal happiness, but there was infancy.And now Heaven is a fairytale of nostalgia.It was all better before.Take me out of this world I never asked to come to.Bring me to the gentle Heaven where this all began.This became too frightening for me, too true.Let’s return.Let’s return to angels before man.
PARTII
NEW EARTH
