CHAPTER26
‘I,’ thought Lucifer, ‘remember.’
‘The day I heard of Christ, I said that he was no son of God.I insisted it.If he performed miracles, they were not very impressive; they were mere illusions like those of water for the dying parched.The healing — I only saw it once or twice for myself.Like the humans, I simply heard of a man of Nazareth who could be the son of God, then I was asked to have faith — but there are countless sons of God.Kings, prophets, they’ve called sons of God.Once, they called the angels the sons of God.So who is this Nazarene man to believe himself so special?There have been many before him that have thought themselves angels and flung themselves off high mountains.A star shone over his head in Bethlehem, as his mother birthed him into a manger, but stars shine over every child every night.As a boy, he preached to his rabbis, but I met him in the desert, and I left him because if he were a son of God, if he were God — he would have taken the world back when I offered it.’
‘When he was put to death, and his body was the last one of three still rotting on crossed wood — I told him, “Free yourself.Son of God.If you are the Son of God, then take out the nails from your palms and your feet.The men crucified with you are already dead, and I have led away your guards.No one will see you leave this place.Or do you want this death for yourself?Is your heart broken by the betrayal of your own people and your most beloved disciple?Let me tell you, son of man, that he never did think you could die.He lied to himself as much as he did to you.He swore he didn’t believe in you, and now he will kill himself.You were always his Messiah; you were always his Son of God.He realized it when he kissed you, once it was too late.”The Nazarene man answered me with a groan in agony; blood spewed from his mouth, and the birds on the arms of the cross sang.“Or will you save him?Are you the Son of God and can you remove the nails from your palms and heal yourself like you healed so many others?You say you are here to save every soul, but you cannot even save one?Are you the Son of God?Are you the Son of God?”He was silent.’
Lowering his face from the screaming stars, the devil heard the thumps of hooves stuttering to a stop all around him, then he heard the quiet voice of a messenger angel say, “Lucifer—” Satan’s gaze flashed to the east, where an armored figure was perched on a midnight-dark horse.‘Gabriel.’There was another call to his attention, and the devil turned west to see a figure on a white horse with a staff on his back, the top of it visible over a shoulder — as if that were his sword.‘Raphael.’In between the princes, there were several others on horseback — faces all shielded by the same type of helmet that Michael had worn since the war for Heaven.Wings of every color were exposed but folded close to their angel backs.No man in sight, no man of Nazareth.
Revelation proclaimed that the Son of God should be among them with a sword of wrath, but if he were here — the devil couldn’t find him.
“Satan,” came the voice of Uriel once more.“You’ve done enough meddling in human affairs and in the apocalypse.You’re to be brought to God, where you will be judged, then you will be cast back into the lake of fire, as was promised.”He had to shout over the yells of the stars, but his words trembled.
‘As was promised in what was meant to be the Last Judgment of the angels,’ thought the devil.‘God will try to beckon me to Him one last time.He does not want me to burn.He would miss me.’Satan met Uriel’s scorching gaze — almost entirely hidden by the helmet where slits in the metal hung over where eyeballs should be — with an uninterested, steady expression.Without a word, he looked to Michael again, the saint with a deep, wide wound in his face, where Satan had shot him.‘All the hate that every living thing harbors for me — and yet, all of you will yearn for me forever.’What was life without a reason to live it?What was good without evil?
“My demons,” said Satan finally, “will come looking for me.”He didn’t bother to raise his voice much, even as the sky’s hum grew louder — the shrieking stars and a distant rumble above.“They have orders to.”
“Your demons will not reach Heaven,” Uriel said.
“None of us will reach Heaven,” said Satan, staring still at Michael, at the chief prince leaning on a girl, who stared at the devil warily.‘She could be his daughter.’He inhaled through his nose, then expelled the last of his earlier panic through his mouth.It would do no good to shoot at Michael again, and his revolver was out of bullets — but it’d felt good.Michael deserved to be put down like an animal; Satan was sure that he, secretly, craved it.However, the devil was not the one who decided what souls deserved.He did not pass judgment.He did not choose which of the dead went to Hell, nor did he choose how they suffered.The devil was just a witness; that was the privileged position that the Lord offered to him.The Lord, our God, sat with the devil and showed him that He was cruel, so that one creation, above all the others, would really know Him, know God as He cruelly was.
Michael coughed out red, and Joana put an arm on his torso, before he hissed, “You made the covenant.The Lord offered you control of Hell, and in return — you would come before God so that the angel Lucifer can be resurrected.”
Satan said, “You are like a child.”Michael could not really conceive of death, could he?He must think all things can be brought back, that all can be put back together again.
“You will be taken to Heaven,” the saint said harsher, “devil.”
As he said this, the rider on the white horse, with the staff on his back, guided his steed toward Michael.With a vial that was hooked to a sash across his waist, Raphael dribbled water over the head of the prince.The angel of healing, the prince of medicine, needed no more than a few droplets to have the fragments of the chief’s upper skull shift into place, for the muscles beneath the bone to bubble and grow back as skin.With a blink, his eyes, emerald and earthy brown, returned, as did his strong nose, with the hill on its bridge, and his thick brows.His dark hair streamed down in loose curls that nestled at his nape, a few strands coming to fall over his face.Joana loosened her hold on his torso, and Satan noticed again how similar they seemed at a glance.Certainly, the saint and the girl appeared more blood-related than the devil and the anti-Christ.
‘Tadeo.’Satan clenched his jaw.‘I can still feel, in my arms, the weight of a baby, its shape not much different than a human infant’s, except for the folded, pale wings, nuzzling dark hair tumbling down to a soft throat.Angels don’t have wings at birth; they gain them, gorily, when they first fly, but the child of an angel is born with wings without having suffered their first blood like we have.’Satan could still remember beady eyes looking up at him.‘I wanted to be angry that you didn’t look like me, but my first child had dark hair too.His name was Cain.One night, I sat by the fire, holding you in my lap, telling you every detail of the first human boy.I took care of him, and I will take care of you too.If he were still here, here with us, then I would tell you to call him brother.Little thing, I will not lose you too.’
‘I hope that it burns,’ Azazel had said during one of Satan’s visits to Hell to ask, too prideful to beg, for help rearing.‘I hope it burns with you as Hell grows hotter.’
‘We are all going to burn,’ Satan had told him.‘At least, in the fire, I’ll be holding my child.Love is all you were able to offer yours too as it lay dying; isn’t that right, Azazel?’
For as cruel as his words had been, the Watcher had simply stared at Satan warily, for the devil’s voice was not as angry or as taunting as it always was.It was almost soft, fragile.Oh, Azazel must’ve been so sure that the devil had just stumbled, allowed his cold demeanor to slip — but the angel couldn’t know how great of a liar that Satan was, how he could mimic even the most instinctive wobbles of a broken voice.He was such a great liar, in fact, that Satan no longer knew when he lied.Was there any truth to him now?He didn’t know.Sometimes, his reflection sang to him, like an angel or like a singer on a stage or like a choirboy of a bygone time.Lie after lie, until they made him up.
Satan stepped away as one of Michael’s hands went for the chain links across his torso.‘You’ll bring me to God, then try to cast me down again, chief prince?’There were times that surrender sounded so sweet.Lucifer was dead, and Satan was elderly.He was tired.‘I’ll take you down with me this time, Michael; and you’d let me.’Even still, Satan tried to shift back, away, until he heard the thumps of Uriel’s horse approach.All the angels had surrounded him — Satan could see it from the corners of both eyes.He could not run, and the demons could not come save him either, not yet.‘Baal, Baal, Baal,’ he wanted to grunt.‘Do not fail me.’In the distance, the sound of shouts and some cars screeching, and then the padding of feet.Humans must’ve heard the stars too, must be looking up at them in confusion, many in terror, a horrible few with vindication.
And then, suddenly, Joana turned her face to Michael and said, “Don’t do this.”
“Who are you?”Gabriel called quietly; in all his time on that horse, right nearby, he hadn’t said a word, but when he finally did, Joana’s head jerked upward.She’d understood that.It wasn’t quite in her own language, but the divine messenger’s question was so comprehensible that it felt as if she, suddenly, knew a single phrase from his own tongue.Except, Gabriel directed his next words to the chief prince — “Michael.Who is this girl?”— and, to Joana, he’d become incomprehensible again.A tonal language, only capable of brokenness in its pidgin, perfect nature; a mass of consonants with the occasional high vowel.
Michael didn’t reply, tearing the chain off his body, reeling them behind, twirling his wrist.
‘I can remember how it hurt still.’Satan wanted to say that he remembered having his wings cut off more than he remembered what loving Michael had been like.‘I don’t think we ever did love each other.If I were not the devil, I’d say God was right all along.We knew not what we did.’He turned, slowly, to face the saint, lifted his chin elegantly, silently telling him to do it, then, to bring him back to his Father, to see Him tear Satan to pieces, then set a broken, remade angel before His prince.‘To teach Michael that what is dead is dead.There is nowhere to go, no return, no Heaven, no Hell.Lucifer is dead, and he cannot be brought back, and you have killed Satan in the fix.How many times will you kill that body you’d once kissed all over?How many times will you kill him before you can make yourself stop loving him?’
The chief prince met his gaze sternly, twitchingly, saying nothing to his faux daughter or to the other archangels, before he flung out his chain, and the devil grit his teeth as it snaked around his body to make every part of it feel the hard whip, to crack each bone beneath, then scald his skin.He staggered, without meaning to, felt the top of him hunch forward blindly.‘The day we demons stepped into Hell, it met us with flames.I told them, “Do not put them out.Control them, as I have nurtured you despite how you are as destructive and wild.Do not be afraid of the lake of fire.”There are worse ways to suffer, God, than a lake of fire.We have created it together, on Earth — you and I.’God’s guiding hand over his, telling Satan where to cut, where to bleed.
A growl and a gasp shot out of Satan’s mouth as the chain continued to burn at him, and then Uriel said, “You will come quietly.”
There were many humans now — in their pants, their shirts, in uniforms for work or for school, looking utterly mundane in the face of divinity.Satan could hardly see them, but they had wormed their way through the crowding of angels and their steeds, and then many more were steps further back, trying to peer in between with their own eyes or with cameras.Man, woman, child, elder stared with hitched breaths, and a few spoke, but the screams of the stars drowned them out, and their hushed words were not ones of rejoice.Joana, like them, didn’t feel like any of this was victory.Tadeo had read the Book of Revelation to her, even when she had grumbled at him to shut his delusional mouth because she had no interest in prophecies, but she’d note the hopeful note in Tadeo’s voice.It was, ultimately, a story about good defeating evil, and so why didn’t it feel that way?Why was Joana feeling her heart shrink in a cold terror and gripping at her shirt with a sudden childish want for someone to tell her what to do right now when all she wanted was to cry.“Michael,” she tried again.‘Stop,’ she wanted to snarl at him.‘You stupid idiot.You coward.This is all wrong.You know it.You can feel it too, can’t you?You don’t want this either.Don’t do any of this.’“Michael.”
The prince stepped forward, and the stars were still screaming, and when Joana glanced up to look for them, she saw silver birds, drones, parodies of angels in armor.Somewhere, Joana could hear it barely, barely — there was aboomlike fireworks for the new year.But Michael continued, moved to loom over Satan just as he’d fallen onto his knees but continued to stare back, eyes determined, hot with anger.Slow, Michael reached for him, using the hand that didn’t hold the other end of the chain, and gripped Satan’s cassock by the throat to raise him slowly, back to his feet.“Joana,” he addressed.“Go and hide for now.I will come back for you.”
“Don’t do this,” Joana now freely said, though her heart hammered in her ears.“Fuck, don’tkill Tadeo.”
“I have no choice,” Michael said.
