“All the more reason,” Azazel replied, “to have our revenge.”
Kokabiel hesitated, looked at his beloved, glowering Baraqiel, then at a similarly angry Samyaza.Then he whispered, “The stars have made room for us above.”
For now, Azazel didn't decipher that; instead, he began ordering the Watchers to create spears.
Soon after Tadeo and Dante’s conversation, there was a series of aggressive knocks, and just as the men were jumping away from each other, Joana opened the door.“Tadeo.If you’re done sucking dick, you need to get up.”The anti-Christ spluttered at the same time he was scrambling off the bed, tripping over his discarded jeans on the ground, knocking down half the dominos.Over the low, weak chuckle of Dante, Joana added, “People are still starving out there, and I saw that your old house still has some of the guns I gave you in the rubble, and they should still work.”
“Joana,” Tadeo snapped, pulling up his pants as fast as he could and tightening his belt.“What is even the point?Look outside.You think guns can fix that?”
Grabbing his arm, Joana said, “You do what you can.Don't tell me you're going to surrender now for no damn reason.”
Then, Tadeo noticed that her eyes were wet; she must’ve been crying recently, and he felt his gaze soften.“Okay,” he said gently.“Let me just— Let me speak to my family first.”
“Alright,” Joana murmured as the soldier climbed out of bed.
“I have to go, also.”Dante went for his pair of pants and began to step into them hastily, yanking them up his ankles, his shins, his thighs.
“What?”Tadeo turned over, having been ready to bring Dante with him.“Where?”Pulling on his white tank and his jacket, Dante headed for the door.“Where are you going?”
“Just trust me.”Dante bit his lip, brushed past his new lover, then stressed, “Don’t follow me.Go help people, okay?”Tadeo watched in utter confusion, and Joana was quirking a brow at him, but Dante ignored them, sighing softly.As soon as he stepped out, he deleted all the messages on the phone.‘Fuck,’ he thought.‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’He wanted to punch something, someone, as he shoved the phone into his pocket, took off running out of the house, heading for the border to Babylon as fast as he could.
Meanwhile, Joana advised Tadeo to clean up before she walked back to the streets, as well.Humans were gathered outside, probably found little to do in their homes now that all technology had died and there was little water, little food beyond what Tadeo offered to them.When he was gone, they wandered aimlessly, looking amongst each other, asking where their savior was.One old woman carried a figure of a saint that she'd modified to look more like the anti-Christ.Chewing on the inside of her cheeks, Joana moved down the road, wanting to berate everyone for this, for fulfilling the end of time by worshiping a false idol.But how was it their fault?They were just responding to a world of fallen stars and mass murdering angels.
‘I like all of this better when it was just a fairytale,’ she thought.
Before she could walk any further, a man suddenly grabbed her by the arm, and though she immediately cursed and tried to reach for the gun in her pants, another figure took her other arm.In a panicked blur, she barely noticed when a third figure stepped before her, brought up his knee, slamming it into her gut enough to feel like her intestines had just been crushed and forced out of her gasping mouth.‘Soldiers—’ she thought, hearing some nearby cries of fright, then, ‘Fuck.’She noticed their sneakers, and she recognized some faces.‘Criminals.’But what was the difference?
“I’m sorry,mija,” a familiar voice was saying, and she rasped for breath, looked up.It was Lupina’s father, the kingpin, shaking his head like this really was a shame.“Where is your boy?”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Joana grunted but her stomach pulsed in pain.“The world is ending, and you’re still thinking about trafficking?”
“No,” said the man, “we’re thinking about surviving.”
“We’re all dead!”Joana bellowed.“We’re all dead!”And she laughed in hysterics.“You stupid fucks think there’s going to be people to sell anything to after this?We’re all going to Hell!”She looked at the two men holding her up, wanting to snarl for them to snap out of whatever they’d been promised.Money?There will never be money ever again.
“It’s not about trafficking,” said the kingpin, and soon enough, another man stepped up beside him to finish the statement.
“It’s about,” said Joana’s father, “the men from the other side.”Babylon.
She stared at him, eyes wide.“What do you mean?”Joana's father's face was hardened, violent.“What are they… going to do?”
Unbeknownst to her, Michael the archangel was in the sky a street down.Though a few humans had noticed him, the prince had reached for the sword from his back to silence them.He watched — Joana and her father.‘I told you to listen to him once, to be obedient, that the only thing more painful than following orders was rebelling.’
Before Joana could receive her answer, the thumping sounds of what she first thought to be a horse sounded behind her, but far too fast, far too many.She turned back at the same time that the men grabbing her let go, and she breathed in seconds before she saw the beastly Tadeo barreling toward them.One of his claws reached out, grabbed her, threw her on top of his body like he were a horse.Without thinking, however, she reached into her pocket again with one hand, using the other to grip one of the wings that she was shoved in between of.She yanked out her gun, pointed it right at her father’s head and, when he raised his own, she shot, shot first.
‘Were you ever good?I clung to the memory of your kindness tighter than anything else in my life, but how much of it was true?Did I ever love you, or did I love the person I wished you were?’
Her father —in his second-long fright, he looked young again, looked just like the man who’d hugged her tight in the first memory she ever had.He looked like the man her mother fell in love with — soft-spoken, easily flustered, reckless, boyish — for a second only.He unfurled into his skull, red, pink, top lip pulling up, eyes pulling downward.Definitely, he'd been lifting his head, and the shot had gone through his nose, splintering it open.Numbly, Joana felt Tadeo lift up the front of his body, as if a horse on its hind legs, and her aim remained on her falling father.
Joana could hardly feel the feathers she held onto as the beastly Tadeo galloped beneath her; Joana could hardly hear the hums above of a drone.Her eyes burned, her throat dried and grew sore.Crying, she held on tighter.‘I did it.’Laughing, sobbing.
And Michael had lost all his breath, even God's breath, inside of him.It’d all happened so quickly that he’d almost not registered it, hadn't comprehended it at all.Turning his head, Michael followed Tadeo and Joana with his eyes and a shuddering crack inside of him.But it didn’t ache.It should ache.He should be feeling all the dread of sin from watching Joana commit patricide.But instead, awakening from a slumber of hundreds of millions of years, of his time as an angel — pride.Pride and joy for Joana.‘You did it.’He hadn’t known he wanted her to do it.
He realized what he must do, and the chief prince struck his wings against the sky and left for Babylon as fast as he could.
Meanwhile, Dante reached the border, and his heart sunk into his cold, cold body.Great tanks were crawling out from Babylon, and a dozen silver bird drones swept in between the low stars above.“Stop,” he whispered in vain.Then, Dante hurried to one of the tanks breaching this side of the river, raising his hands wildly, pleading for them to stop.The military were coming from multiple bridges, impossible to stop.“Wait!”But the tank wouldn’t stop.‘It’s too late,’ he thought desperately.‘It’s too late.’They were going to bomb Tadeo to death, and they wouldn't care if their informant was having regrets.Perhaps, they had even anticipated it.What could he do, then?Dante bit his lip, and he stumbled backward, and he heard as a few civilians nearby made noises of surprise.How to make the invading army hesitate?‘Make them think I was wrong, that they’re about to make a mistake.’His heart beat on his tongue, so fast and heavy that he wanted to, almost tried, to take it between his teeth and crush.Soon, he turned on his heel, then he began to run again, headed for the weapons that Joana had mentioned earlier.
At the same time, Tadeo was headed to the ruins of his home with Joana on his back as crowds swarmed to see him, not unlike when he’d arrived on horseback from Hell.Some shouted for food, for water, for more healing.If he could speak, he’d tell them to please be patient.Something was wrong.He didn’t know what, but why had the criminals suddenly tried to hurt Joana?It was the end of the world.Surely they didn’t believe that there was still profit to be made in extortion or trafficking or in anything at all.But then, Joana gasped and said, “Tadeo!”And the anti-Christ stumbled to a stop, trying to avoid trampling over the humans only to trip over his own tangle of legs.Tadeo crashed onto the ground but managed to turn his head toward whatever Joana must’ve seen.Silver birds, hissing through the air, and down the first boom of an airstrike somewhere, and then the particular creaks of a tank turning.Panicked, Tadeo’s pupils thinned, serpentine.
