At that, Kokabiel sighed dramatically, kicked the ground childishly, and said: “God put His seed in a girl!Hypocrite God!Who told us not to ever have children.But He had His own, His very own.And so that girl bore Him a man!And then he died strung up on slabs of wood!What else is there to say?The devil was there.He met the Son of God.What else is there to say?”The Watchers, however, stared with such shock that they were silent, paralyzed down to their very blood; their sin, that they had suffered more than anything for, had been committed by the God that’d ordered their imprisonment.
And, Azazel knew, the devil had committed it as well — God and Lucifer, the torturers of the Watchers, the greatest hypocrites of all.“It was… not only the Lord who had a child.”He’d always wondered why Satan had grown desperate one day, grabbing Azazel, commanding him in a frantic whisper to tell him how to do it, how to have a winged child, how to not bear an abomination.“The devil.”Pleading, panicking, all of Satan’s perfect poise falling apart between Azazel’s fingertips — all for a child, any child.‘I’ll do whatever I must do,’ Satan had whispered hoarsely.‘I’ll have Samyaza whipped again if you don’t tell me.If I don’t succeed, you and your Watchers will suffer.’Azazel’s voice came hollow: “And I told him.I told Satan how to have a child, a beautiful one, a winged one like an angel.”Samyaza touched Azazel’s hand, a moment of lucidity.“I told him because it happened to me.I had a child that wasn’t monstrous like all of yours.”
Elsewhere, Dina landed.His feet fell into a river that seemed a touch too red, and he walked beneath a bridge.At one side of him, there wasn’t a soul except for a few stray pieces of garbage; on his other side, there were troops, tanks, smaller armored vehicles.He ignored it all, walking slow toward a sphere that was much lower than the rest of the stars, but it was dribbling its blood of fire, boiling the river water below.“Apsinthos,” the angel whispered in wonder.A smile trickled along his mouth, and his eyes squinted in joy, and his body seized with love and warmth.
The golden sphere before him wasn’t perfect, hardly heavenly, gurgling and churning its own body.‘Dina.’He dwarfed the little angel, about half the length of the bridge but with tendrils of fire curling out from him like wind-blown hair.
Stopping, the angel looked up at Apsinthos with wide eyes that reflected all the light before him.‘You’ve come to Earth.’But then he remembered Uriel, of course, and grimaced.‘Apsinthos, Kokabiel began speaking in the voice of a star, and then the star revealed itself.His name, I think, was Kimah.Who was that?’The name had been in Uriel’s writings, but sparsely; Dina remembered that he’d been blind, that he had spoke to God on behalf of all the other angels.Somewhere, he had read the name ‘Uri-Kimah.’
‘It’s good to see you close to me once more, Dina,’ replied Apsinthos, ‘but you shouldn’t have left the Watchers.You’re meant to encourage them to destroy the world.They already hold the desire, my angel.You must only guide them to Babylon, Satan’s beloved empire of transgressions and sickness.’When the young angel frowned, the star finally said, ‘As for Uri, I cannot tell you, but you know of his obsession with us stars.He may be able to tell you if you ask, but it’s not of great importance.Uriel knows little.Angel of wisdom without wisdom.Return to Azazel, my dear Dina.’
Dina couldn’t quell the cold flames in his heart.‘I think that— I think that I’ll look for Uri after I speak to the Watchers.’
Firmer — ‘You must know your duty, Dina.’
And the angel swallowed thickly, flinching, before he said, ‘I will end the world, Apsinthos.I promised it, and I know that I want it.But I will look for Uri.And he will understand once I tell him.He is wise.He is.’
‘Remember why we’re doing this.For the good of God and for love.I’ve come to this wretched Earth to be with you before and after the end.’
Dina hesitated, then, before he nodded.‘I remember, Apsinthos.Beloved Apsinthos.’When the soldiers on Babylon’s side of the river began pointing, shouting, Dina unfolded his wings and lifted himself into the sky to find the Watchers he’d left behind.
But after the Watchers had the discussion in the yard, many of them had gone off to rest, though all in the same house.One might’ve thought they’d run away from one another, tired of the presence of these same 199 Watchers for thousands of years — but quite the opposite occurred.Azazel was sure that many of them didn’t know how to breathe without counting the sighs of their brothers in between, and so they huddled close, for the most part.They slept, against one another, within the walls of a home riddled with objects they couldn’t make any sense of.Baraqiel, oddly, had chased after a skipping Kokabiel, and from the yard — where Azazel remained, now sitting with his hands on his lap — he listened to them argue.
Baraqiel was saying: “For you, I descended to the Earth.For you, I took a wife.I had children, for you.”Kokabiel was giggling in response.“But all this time imprisoned, I lost all the love I carried for you.”
“I don’t need love from you,” Kokabiel laughed, “I just need you with me, Bara.”
Letting out a tired sigh, Azazel had been about to close his eyes, to think, to pretend revealing his greatest secret, something both blessing and sin, hadn’t ached the way it did.‘My winged infant.’With a face like his man’s, with a gaze like an angel’s.‘The world that I descended to with the Watchers is long gone.Lucifer said it to me, and it was the truth.’Even the air seemed different, thicker, hotter.‘But all that happened here, all the blood we Watchers spilled — I feel like it occurred yesterday.’The years that they had spent on this Earth, with all the great animals, the humans, the marriages, the families.How far the world had moved away from it, from all of their lives — but Azazel had spent every waking moment in prison and in Satan’s tower telling himself that the humans he’d loved were still out there, waiting for him on a coast that survived the flood.‘Naamah.’A child who hated angels, who hated God.‘Eitan.’My man.
At the sound of a grunt, Azazel glanced down, then smiled fondly, sadly.“Samyaza.”He was on his knees before Azazel, wrapping his arms around his waist, pressing his face into his stomach.‘Dear Samyaza.’The angel who’d led them in wedding humans, who’d loved a woman named Idith, who’d loved him as well.Azazel reached to run his fingers through the dark hair of the old leader, and he heard some distant chirps, some faint birds in the middle of apocalypse.“Beautiful Samyaza,” he teased, and the angel lifted a gaze to him, wide and sweet.“Pretty Samyaza,” he said next, taking cheeks that flushed under his fingertips.Tilting Samyaza’s face up, lowering his own face — their lips pressed together, soft, molding.
Azazel had been so eager to be alone with Samyaza again.
Deepening the kiss into each other’s mouths, Samyaza grunted, then moaned highly, beastly, but with a sweet undercurrent, and his body rose higher, higher.His hands landed on Azazel’s legs, and Azazel wondered if he ever thought of his human wife when he had him.The ghost of their old humans remained on their skin, between them.But they gasped against each other anyway.Samyaza’s hand found the wound in Azazel's chest and pressed his fingers in gently, as if trying to fill it with himself, to be his new heart.Like they could be one, this way.The first angel to sire, the first angel to bear.
But the noise of wings soon reached them, then the thump of someone landing nearby, before Dina’s voice came — “Azazel…?”
Samyaza jerked away, looked wildly at Dina, but he didn’t attack, hovering over Azazel protectively.
“Dina,” Azazel called softly in response, noting the disheveled hair on his old friend, his human clothes, the fire in his gaze that had burned away all the innocence that Azazel remembered being there.“You’re back.”He swallowed, and then he said, “I have a lot of questions for you.”
Flush over his brown-skinned face, Dina panted slow, trying to catch his breath; certainly, he’d been flying above in endless circling, looking for the Watchers he’d just freed.“Forgive me— I went to pray.The anti-Christ has begun to heal all those who haven’t left this place, and I believe this to be a part of the apocalyptic prophecy — for the one destined to destroy this Earth to act as a Messiah.And you must forgive me for not being able to stop him.I fear the end is soon.I’m certain of it.”
As Azazel mulled over a response, he heard the familiar hacking of Kokabiel nearby, and he sensed as many of the Watchers followed the fallen angel of the stars out into the yard they’d all earlier been in.“Dina!”Kokabiel called, almost like a friend might.“Dina!Dina?You’re lying.You didn’t go to pray!”Dina, instantly, tensed, as he stared past Azazel to Kokabiel, who strolled along, but before he could reply — “You were talking to a star.”
“No, I—” Dina’s face paled a shade, then he shook his head.“I… Well, I approached a star, Kokabiel.”
“Liar!You’re a liar!”Kokabiel sang right back at him.
But Azazel tried to keep the conversation steady; he said.“You said that the boy who broke our chains is healing those in this… tribe of people?Why is that?”He couldn’t resist the tilt of his head.“We don’t know the prophecies of the end that you speak of, Dina.”
“They’re in a holy book,” Dina answered quickly, “one of many— But this is the right one, according to God.All of the wickedness of the world will culminate in a Final Judgment.Satan will be defeated and cast into a lake of fire.Goodness will prevail, but only through the destruction of everything that is, that has ever been.”His eyes ignited with the flame that Azazel had earlier noted, and his body straightened, like new life had been breathed into him by his words.Religious fervor.“The Lord will be pleased when there is a new Heaven, new Hell.”
Careful, Azazel replied, “If this end of all things is so great, then why did you tell us, at the sea, that you were trying to prevent it?”This time, caught in his lie, Dina simply froze.“Did you think we didn’t hear Uriel’s words?”Azazel remembered them, carefully: ‘Do you realize that you’ve reared the apocalypse?’“We rose from our bindings to chaos, and you left Uriel believing you did all of this unintentionally.”Delicately, Azazel rose from his chair, and he said, “But you’re not the Dina that I remember.”
And, abruptly, this made the young angel’s gaze darken.Dina thought, ‘You too.Like Uriel, calling me vain — thinking me so single-minded, so innocent.So pitiful.Do you miss the Dina that cried over penances?The one who allowed himself to be beaten in the streets, time and time again?’“What does it matter what I want?”His tongue twisted in his mouth; he remembered Apsinthos’ guidance, and he remembered how he’d stood on the coast with the Watchers and thought that he could be greater than any of the others.‘Tell me what it is you want, Azazel.Is it apocalypse?Is it revenge?’
Kokabiel’s hums interjected: “Liar, liar.You lie to us.You lied to the anti-Christ!”He stepped and leaned down, as if he were standing right before Dina but remained still too many steps away.“You say you do this for God!For Heaven?—”
