Baal, in the present, whispered, “Wanted by you but never enough for you.When you returned to Nero, again and again, I realized I can’t give you what you want most.”‘Another lost child, then another, before I couldn’t take it any longer, and I grabbed you, and I shook you, and I demanded you to stop this, Satan, my love.God could have a son because He is God!And you screamed in my face that you were God, only you were God.You told me that I must’ve never believed it.I was no better than an angel, no better than Michael.I shoved you away from me, such a tightness in my throat that I thought your hands were tearing into my neck.’
“Why do you speak of this?”said Satan.“I don’t want to remember that time.”‘You fought with me so terribly.I didn’t say it then, but you terrified me.I never thought you would turn away from me.I barely managed to resist wailing for you not to leave me here.My voice hoarse, my eyes drowned by childish tears.I’m so alone, I’m so cold, please, Baal.’
Baal sighed.“Two thousand years, you’ve told me that we shouldn’t speak of this.”‘I almost stopped loving you.The beautiful, wise Satan I’d always loved had revealed himself to be a stubborn, arrogant fool.And yet, here I am.Maybe I would have left if there was another life for me out in the world, but I handed my soul to you in Heaven, and you hold it, and my feet will keep bringing me back to you for the rest of our time before the end.I love you.When all of Heaven loved you, I loved you.When it was easy to love you, I loved you.When it was difficult to love you, I still loved you.’
Satan nuzzled him.“After we leave this place, I promise you — we’ll speak of it.We need to gather our things.Cain’s belongings are under our bed.”‘Because of our sinning, Nero grew too crazed to rule, had just raped and married a little boy.I faked his death, then fled with Nero, but some peasants saw us.For hundreds of years, they’d claim the emperor was in a secret villa of his, waiting to return.But he died.By suicide — only many decades later than they imagined it.He grew so gravely ill in the mind that he was bedridden, hand fed.Even still, he desperately pawed at me like an animal.I should have felt wanted, but I felt like a rag.Azazel had warned me that his husband became cruel from the divinity of their love, but I had been arrogant.It’s always my arrogance in the end.One morning, after I slept with him, he hung himself using his own robes.’
Kissing him one last time, Baal whispered, “As you wish.”‘Months after the death of Nero, I was breathing easier, waiting for it all to be over.But?—’
‘My child,’ thought Satan, unable to hide the pain in his eyes.‘Winged and curly-haired and soft in my arms.I had expected gore spewing itself out of me like I’d been wounded — I had been, I had been wounded, hadn’t I?—but then I heard soft breathing that wasn’t my own, right on the bed with me.Azazel had once whispered, facing a window, refusing to meet my eyes: “My child didn’t scream.And there wasn’t any pain.God never punished us with the pain of creation that humans must suffer.”And I pulled it to me — the half-angel, half-emperor.My face burned, my heart swelled with pain.Curling myself around the infant, choking on what I’d expected to be victory or joy — there was only crushing sadness.I remembered holding Eve in her labor, and I remember the aftermath, how empty and miserable she’d been, and I’d pitied her, but now I understood.And the sight of Azazel’s own child flared in my mind, skewered by Michael’s sword.My stomach turned, over and over, grinding me up inside.My cries threw me forward as if to retch.I saw myself as a child too.I remembered Heaven, I remembered my wings, how it’d felt to fly.All of eternity in my hands, bundled.An infant.I’d wanted to create so terribly once.Azazel used to weep, thinking I couldn’t hear him: My baby, my baby.The baby.’
In the following months, Baal had watched, his chest tight, as Satan carefully climbed out of the abyss of misery, holding his child so close that it was as if he wanted the infant back inside him.They were as brown-skinned as Satan, their hair dark but curled, the wings at their back a muddled white.Babbling, gnawing at Lucifer’s hand — Baal prayed to feel some relief, even joy.Yet —‘we were eating at the dining table once, tended to by humans you said we’d kill before we left, when I couldn’t smother my anger anymore.I saw your child, felt rage rising to my face like fever.I told you, “What about Cain?”You were holding the child to your front, rubbing their back, using your other hand to feed yourself.You told me that he’s gone.I raised my voice: “You’ve forgotten him.”Your hands trembled.“You decided you’d rather fuck an animal for a new child.”You stood up, the infant hiccuping, then crying out, and you told me to leave with a sudden rawness, your face flashing between hot anger and cool terror.Over and over, you told me to leave the villa.How dare I say that?How dare I?But I don’t regret it.I laid awake every night, thinking of Cain, as you played with the child at the other end of the bed.You kissed their hair, preened their wings, hummed for them.I thought of Cain, I thought of Cain, I thought of Cain.Drowned in our arms.’Baal had been sure he’d never forgive Lucifer for this.
Quiet, Satan whispered, “Is a god allowed to ask for forgiveness?”‘A few years, I struggled raising the child.You came back, only a few times.I bit down my pleas for you to stay.With Cain, I’d had you beside me as I held his little body by the hearth, humming like the angel I used to be.And now alone, I sang for my new child, but it didn’t come as easy as before.And this one nipped at my fingers, hungrily, constantly.They dug claws into the ground and the walls.I watched them tear into one of the humans, a woman who’d come to bring me dinner as I rested.Before my eyes, my child morphed into a beast.Wings would sprout from wherever it wished, then other groaning mouths.But I shut my eyes, curled up around my creation like that would be enough to save them.’
Baal grimaced, then he said, “I don’t want apologies, not from God, not from you.”
‘You came back to me again, one day, Baal.A letter was in your hand, addressed to some churches by someone named John of Patmos.Revelation.An anti-Christ who will destroy the Earth and bring about the rule of God.The devil will be thrown into the fire, then destroyed forever.I read this prophecy, and I waved my hand dismissively.At the same time, I watched my child grow from a pretty cherub to a thing of boiled flesh that I realized was much like what I looked like beneath my own beauty.Had Azazel’s been like this?I needed to ask him, but I refused to leave the villa.I held the baby tighter, the words of Revelation echoing in my mind.My heart still beat, I realized; it pulsed right in my ears.One day, I found that the baby had killed another human, then another, and then four more, tearing into its final victim with its mouth.I could only laugh to not weep.It was as I’d been told in Heaven; the Beast had been inside of me all this time.’
“I promise to you,” Satan said, “that I’ll make everything right again, Baal.I will.”Rising slowly to his feet, listening to the rumble of their collapsing Hell, he gazed gently at Baal, who touched the devil’s hip, then gripped it.“Amends are greater than apologies.”
Baal kissed the devil’s waist, and he murmured, “Is worship greater than love?”Satan stared, and then Baal confessed.He said: “I know what God did to you.I’ve known for a long time.”And the devil breathed out heavy, shutting his eyes.“You can’t make things right again, Lucifer; nothing was ever right.”
‘The child fought me as I drove a dagger into its body over and over, and I sobbed so loud, so violent, that any listener would have believed it was me being butchered.I threw my baby into the fire, and I covered my ears with bloodied hands to scream out in agony.My face reddened, my tears dampening my tunic, as I grieved over the floor.My baby, I wailed like I’d heard Azazel do.Forgive me.It was the first time I’d asked for forgiveness since I’d been an angel.Forgive me.Gods cannot have children.We must crucify them.I’m sorry.Forgive me for ever giving you life.’
Some decades after the murder, however, Satan heard of a monster in some other land, and of evil, and he’d realized the flesh of his child had burned, but not the soul of the Beast.The end of the world hadn’t been prevented.It would keep returning, like a tide that draws away only to build itself up again.The Beast would forever find new hosts, false prophets, and the devil would have to hunt his child down each time.The Lord’s final punishment — to allow Satan creation, only for that life to destroy all life.The devil had allowed himself to be tempted.And he had lost the war of good and evil, caught somewhere in between.
CHAPTER35
Six trumpets played high from the clouds, but Gabriel didn’t touch his own.Immediately after Satan had been imprisoned by Michael, he and Raphael received the order from Metatron to descend to the Earth again, continue with the apocalypse.The man-angel, too, had shoved a trumpet into Gabriel’s hands and told him to breathe into it when only a seventh song was left.But he didn’t, riding alongside Raphael, ignoring the music that streamed from Heaven onto scrambling, terrified humanity.All the angels were on rooftops, moving from ceiling to ceiling, watching the humans that pointed at them, recorded them.Angels have always been recorded by man, their every appearance written hastily.When Gabriel had visited Mary, she’d told him that she would remember this, tell her cousins, her husband, and her mother, and he’d smiled.He missed her, wherever it was that she’d gone since the beginning of this apocalypse.
Raphael’s hands, free of the proper gauntlets, were bloody.“We should,” he stammered, then sighed softly.“We should leave Babylon—” They were in the empire of evil, unknowing still of the Watchers climbing up its body.“I think we should try to smear the blood of the Lamb elsewhere, on other people.We still have so much of it, and I don’t believe the demons stole any when they attacked our angels.”He reached for one of the flasks on his armored waist, filled to the brim with crimson of the drained Lamb’s corpse.He tilted it, flooding his palm with blood once more.“When the final trumpet sounds, the marked will rise to Heaven, saved from what continues after.”
Gabriel swallowed.‘But what of all those not marked by us?The blood is endless, but our time is not.Our touch is not.The lake of fire will swallow all those we didn’t reach.’But if he didn’t play the last trumpet, the Lamb’s blood would mean nothing, a prophecy left half-fulfilled.Everyone would burn.What was kinder — saving some or saving no one?Uriel would know — but he had rebelled and run away like the Lucifer he’d hated so terribly once.
Hesitating, then Raphael finally looked at his friend, then at the crowd of other angels on horseback behind them.The dim sun beamed down at them, and the blaze of the several low-hanging stars chased away any shadows that might have hung over them.“Gabriel.After we mark a few more, outside of Babylon, you must?—”
“I know,” Gabriel interjected, his heart dull, quickening.It was difficult to know which humans below were marked in the Lamb’s blood or in their own — which were touched by angels and which were clawed at by their fellow humans as they tried to approach the angels.That was why they were all on high ground now — the rioting at the angels’ feet had turned into shoves and kicks, and then turned bloody.
“Are you,” Raphael suddenly asked, careful, “going to play it?”The trumpets above still rang.
Gripping the reins on his horse tightly, the messenger angel whispered, “When the great flood happened, we saved a few, just a family.Do you remember, Raphael?Noah, his wife, and his children, and now we must cull all of their descendants except for a chosen few.Will this continue forever, Raphael?Save a few, over and over.”Then, he said, lower, “The Lord said I was responsible, for believing in the Watchers, for believing in saving what couldn’t be.He does not make us all to be saved.But it was… your Samyaza who led those angels to Earth, who did it all for love.Your Samyaza?—”
“Gabriel,” Raphael, suddenly, sharply, replied.“What are you saying?The Watchers aren’t… relevant to this.”As they spoke, one by one, towns and cities burned under Azazel’s direction — pieces of stars falling to the Earth, boiling the humans caught beneath.“Don’t speak of then.”For the first time, Gabriel saw a flare of anger in Raphael’s eyes, the color of the sea.“Once we leave,” he said, firmer, “and mark a few more humans — play the trumpet, Gabriel.You don’t want to be blamed for destruction again, do you?”
But before Gabriel could speak a word of the trickle in his heart — a dust of fright, sadness, and an indignation that matched the healer’s — a swiveling, metallic sound interjected, then the bang of a door hitting the wall adjacent to it.Immediately, all the angels turned to see a woman.She looked back — hunched, eyes wide, a trickle of flaking, dried red streaming from a nostril to her top lip.Abruptly, she set a foot before her, then another.She panted, “Help me?—”
Raphael hastily took the reins of his horse and guided himself closer, saying, “Human, you shouldn’t be here.”But he spoke in his angel language, and Gabriel didn’t open his mouth to translate.“You’re hurt?”Fear wobbled her bottom lip, but she shuffled closer to the angel of healing and his bloodied hand.“Here, let me mark you.Then, I will heal you if there is anything wrong.”She reached him, and he reached her.Bloodied hand fell over her head.
A scream followed, not long after.And Raphael jerked away, staggering his horse back.Before him, bubbles of paleness bloated out of her face, then scabs of red on her arms, her neck.Boils, rash.As a sudden coolness crushed at his chest, Raphael saw sickness.At his own hand.Pestilence.His mouth opened, as if to scream too, but the stranger stumbled away, hands rising to her face in horror.‘No,’ he thought, and he heard Gabriel call his name again, watched the woman begin to run, but half his mind was recalling the flood now in regret and guilt.And the other part of him was tearing out of his body, broken by the sight.Pain.Disease.From his own hand.
Meanwhile, Dina was above the town by Babylon, wings beating slow, maintaining his place over the smoke and amid several stars, each pulsing like they were giant, grotesque hearts.‘Dina.’Several buildings below smoked — but which were a result of Babylon and which were a result of the Watchers?It didn’t matter now.‘Pestilence,’ said Apsinthos, ‘and the trumpets.Do you hear them?’He did — six songs from above, echoing in his ears.‘It’s almost over.’The Watchers had long disappeared into the horizon.‘You’ve done well.My dear Dina, you’ve done well.’The last of remorse, fading into the setting red sun.‘My sweet angel.It’s almost over, and it’ll all begin again.’The wind tossed Dina’s braids.
‘You want to feel guilty still, but paradise’s reach grows nearer.You can see the horizon of beauty.We’ve spent long enough dreaming of the past, dreaming of love,’ Apsinthos said, or perhaps it was Dina, perhaps it was Dina.‘If I must kill us all to be loved by you, then watch me bloody my mouth.I’d end the world a thousand times to be loved by you.My star.If you can be a sun, I’ll be an earth of life.Let’s begin again.You and me.’
From where Dina was, he could see a plaza overbrimming with humans, and he saw the anti-Christ just recently gone to walk some streets alone, in the vague direction of his ruined home.And so the greater angel of beauty descended slow, toward his victim.Pulling his wings into himself, he allowed himself to fall.Some bulging eyes of a looming star followed Dina as air rushed past him.The trumpets still sounded as he beat his wings a handful of times, tilted himself into a glide between homes.‘The homes of this town.This town that welcomed me.’Careful, he dragged a foot against the ground he flew over, then he landed in a crouch.When Dina lifted his body up again, he stood before a young man with a hole through his head, an eternal wound over his right eye.
Dina, eyes in a happy daze, smiled widely.“Tadeo.”
