Reaching the home of the anti-Christ first, Dante jumped past a remnant of the fencing, rushing past some of Tadeo’s family lingering in the area, ignoring their questions.The high noises of the drones above answered for them, and the soldier simply shoved aside Tadeo’s cousin, saying, “Run!Hide!”Staggering, he reached a wall, saw a blanket obscuring a lump on the ground that he quickly went for, panting and panting, face hot with exertion.Tugging the covering away, he saw three rifles, one revolver, and hidden beneath, a proper machine gun.Next, he searched for the ammo.Tadeo’s grandfather had come up behind him, trying to demand what was happening, but Dante told him to stay back.
Coldly, Tadeo realized the army was approaching his home, and he shrugged off Joana, too quick, making her skid against the ground, scraping her arms as she yelped.But he took off, heading for where much of his family must be.He moved so fast now that the crowd couldn’t follow and they, too, had just noticed the army, the silver birds.When another strike hit a building some streets away, the people screamed and began hurrying in the opposite direction that the anti-Christ headed.He sprinted, and when he saw Dante outside the home, hauling a large firearm in both hands, Tadeo initially breathed a sigh in relief.‘Dante, you’re safe.’But then the soldier lifted the gun, pointed it squarely at Tadeo’s many-mouthed, many-eyed head.And he pulled the trigger.
Shot after shot —ta, ta, ta, ta, ta— a barrage of bullets tore through Tadeo.He took them each but not without a piercing, stabbing pain for each one of them.And blindly, he stumbled, fell, growled on instinct.But — ‘Dante?Dante, what are you doing?’All the inside of him burned.‘What the fuck are you doing?’A whine, like a dog, spilled out from Tadeo.But he’d never known he could even make such a pathetic noise, not in this body.‘Dante,’ he thought.‘Dante?’His thousand eyes itched, and he recovered slowly, lifted his bulleted head.As the wounds throbbed and stitched together to close, he saw the soldier running at him, shouting back at a tank that’d just turned a corner, saying something had gone wrong, he was wrong.The tank obediently slowed its crawl as Dante stood before it, and he looked perfectly in place there.‘You were nothing more than a soldier all along.’
“Get out of here, Tadeo!”one of Tadeo’s cousins shouted.“Run!”
“Dante,” Tadeo rasped out through his frontmost mouth, but it was so gurgled that he was sure the other hadn’t understood.All Dante did was suddenly jog closer, lift the firearm, then whip Tadeo’s monstrous head with it.It hadn’t been strong enough to actually throw the anti-Christ’s face to any side, but it nonetheless stunned Tadeo another few seconds, made him lower himself a little as he inched backward with such a tearing, ripping sensation of confusion and hurt inside him that he thought he was going to burst open.‘Stop,’ he wanted to say, feeling Dante set a foot on him, then lift himself, as if climbing up Tadeo.‘I trusted you.’He had trusted his mouth, his hands.His smile, his words.Frantically, Tadeo began to growl, throwing his body around to knock Dante off of him.‘I loved you because I trusted you.You used me.You rotten fucking son of a bitch.’
“I’m sorry,” Dante whispered; another three, four tanks were creeping closer.“I’m sorry.”
Tadeo hesitated, confused, breaths erratic even as he continued to thrash how a wild horse would.
“Throw me.High.In the air,” the soldier added shakily.“Please.Tadeo.”
Without thinking, Tadeo grappled Dante with a hand at the end of a wing, then he tossed Dante up high between the fallen stars, and he jumped after him.Dante flailed for a few seconds up until he reached the highest point; he took his gun tight again; he pointed it at the beastly anti-Christ below.‘I still trust you.’Tadeo saw the flickers over his friend’s face of terror.‘I think I still do.’Tadeo waited for the bullets to hit him once more.‘I trust you.’Dante’s aim shifted, pointed at the tanks that were crammed at one end of the road, and then a little higher, right at a low-hanging star.He shot again.
A fire erupted, enormous, impossibly bright — like that in the beginning of time.Flames engulfed each of the tanks and any of the people in proximity.Half of Tadeo’s family — grandfather, cousins, an aunt — standing nearby.The other half were thrown across the street, the boom louder than their second-long shrieks.And the swelling sphere of flame grew and grew.Dante fell toward it, and he looked frightened, then surprised.Lastly, he seemed relieved.The burst star took him, then spat him out, burnt up.Charred remains, then ash.
CHAPTER39
Beautiful Dina stood on the roof of a half-collapsed hotel, realizing where the explosion had been — right by the home of the anti-Christ.In it, he had once eaten with Tadeo’s family and softly admitted that he didn’t know which humans went to Heaven, stifled the desire to inform them that there might be none at all.Metatron was no man and Jesus?Jesus was in an empty room, the same one where angels whispered that Mary was, or so it is said.How was Dina to know?He’d hardly ever left Uriel’s library, surrounded himself in fairytales, listening to angel-tales through the open window.‘Uriel.’The last time that Dina had seen him, the archangel’s eyes had been wide, horrified at the sight of a star.‘Uri,’ Kokabiel had called him.‘Uri-Kimah.’And Dina remembered reading of what had happened to the stars from Uriel’s old scrolls, after the prince had commanded Dina to do so.
Where had Uriel run?Dina imagined him back in Heaven, hiding from all that he had caused.‘In your libraries, scolding me for all the children’s tales I liked to read.Forgive me for liking pretty things, I used to tell you.Forgive me for the delicate heart God gave me to carry.I like beauty and love.And I always liked you.I do still like you.Do you realize that I’m doing this for you?As much as me?’
The Earth seemed gutted open, revealing darkened, smoking organs that groaned out in misery, ants — humans — wandering all about it, hungry, begging, looking for their leader.Easily, the angel could see the boy Tadeo.He was half a monster, curled up on the street, and though Dina was much too far to hear it, he could feel the agonized scream ripping out of the anti-Christ’s body, shaking the core of the Earth, the core of Dina.
“He has lost,” the young angel whispered, “so much.”In the pit of his stomach — the weight of despair, churning, revolting but not quite up his throat, to his mouth; instead, it sunk in deeper, as if it’d pull him back down into Hell.And yet, his mouth twitched with the urge to smile.
Behind Dina, Apsinthos hovered as both a divine sphere of flames and a misshapen collection of mouths, dozens of eyes, skin like pulled red linen and wet tissue.“You pity him.There is some of you that so loved him and loved humanity.You are a wonderful angel, Dina.”Again, the angel’s mouth twitched; his eyes squinted; his chest warmed.“But if you want to help him and his people — you must finish this.You must bring about the new Heaven and new Earth.”
“I must finish it,” Dina echoed, staring still at Tadeo in all his agony; he seemed so small from here.He was so small.‘I remember the sweet bread his family had given to me.How kind they had been, how kind they are.There will be sweet bread after this is all over.In the new Heaven, there will be sweet bread.’“But, Apsinthos,” he called.“Tadeo is the anti-Christ.”The star was silent.“Won’t he be destroyed forever and not saved?”‘When Tadeo saw me for the first time, his eyes wondrous, awed, in an abandoned home in his half-abandoned town.An abandoned boy, telling me the world ended long ago.’God will only save some; God has chosen a select.The Lord has favorites; you must pray it's never you.
Apsinthos said: “It is God’s will.Humanity had every chance to love Him, to be good.See how they attack one another now.This world cannot be saved.”Dina knew that; he believed that.“There was no other path for humanity than the apocalypse.It all must end for good to prevail.It all must end.”
Briefly, Dina wondered if any of this would have happened if he hadn’t come down to bring about the revelation.“It will all end.For all this suffering that I see to be done away with forever—” Tadeo would have to be collateral damage.“It will end.”
On the ground, Joana had just hurried through masses of people and stared at the destruction with fear shaking her.Tadeo’s home was utterly obliterated now, whatever weapons she’d stored there gone, many of his family on the ground, groaning, many of them a splatter of red and roasted flesh now.The stench of it lurched her stomach but as she doubled over, Joana caught a tipped-over wheelchair, a woman still slumped over in it with blood splattered all over her top.However, the older woman was shivering, eyes on the mangled body of whoever had been standing before her.Joana felt a stab of pain in her gut and jogged to Tadeo’s mother to take the wheelchair.“Tía,” she said.“I have you.Let me help you up.”One of the wheels was jammed into something on the ground, and as Joana wrenched it up, the wheel tore off with a shrill bang.Cursing, she still set the mother’s chair right, then kneeled beside it, holding onto the armrest, panting far more than appropriate, head aching.
Looking up now, Joana saw that the crowds of people were nearly drowning Tadeo nearby, half a beast still, but he was curled up in on himself, massive eyes wide and bloodshot, all of them unseeing.“Tadeo,” Joana called.“Tadeo!Your mother!”But she grimaced immediately, seeing how catatonic her friend was, his silence, his stillness.The anti-Christ could have been a statue of something, a monster, a dragon, clawed at by all the people surrounding him.They called out his name, asking for help, to save them from the soldiers further away but still here, still in the distance, the silver birds still circling.And many of the townsfolk were bleeding, some carrying the most injured, some already dead.
‘They’re still asking a false Messiah to save them.’
Just as some of Tadeo’s relatives came to her side, looking to Tadeo’s mother, Joana stood, and she marched forward, toward a scorched car that had just minutes ago lost its flame.She reached out, asking for the help of one of Tadeo’s cousins to help her onto the trunk.He didn’t hesitate to do it, and Joana took the final step to stand on the top of the car, over all the people.“Everyone!”Joana called.“Everyone!”In the crowd, the first to turn to her was an ashen, beautiful young woman — Lupina, again — and Joana locked eyes with her frightened own for a moment.“E-Everyone listen to me!”she tried again, cupping her hands over her mouth.“Leave Tadeo alone!”Next, Tadeo’s cousins began to shout for silence too.
When even that didn’t prove enough, Lupina started nudging some of the men around her, one of which had been holding Joana in place before she killed her father.He hesitated but then he raised a gun to the air, shot it twice.Two bangs rattled the air before everyone, instantly, ducked, with screams, many about to take off running.But in the opposite direction of where Lupina and her father’s men had been, another two shots boomed in the air, warning the crowd to stay in place, that both directions to run were guarded.And when Joana looked in that direction, she saw her brother, pistol still pointed upward; his face was tight, his eyes were reddened.‘I’m sorry,’ Joana thought, ‘about dad.’
Then, she took a deep breath, began: “Our Messiah is dead!We can’t rely on him.We can’t sit and pray for him to save us!We can’t—” The people roared out in response, arguing.“No hay otra!” Joana yelled back.“He can’t save us!No one is coming to save us!”She almost said, ‘We must save ourselves.’Instead, she said, “We all must save each other.”
Faraway, Michael had just landed heavily, sword in hand, chains diagonal across his armored chest.His helmet hid a face of thinly pressed lips of resolve and tired, driven eyes.Before him — there was the greatest city in Babylon, though the sea had risen to soak the streets, water reddened by decree of Revelation.The sun above was dark, but it did enough to illuminate where the fallen, grumbling stars didn’t.As he’d been told, an impossibly tall tower stood in the chaos like a gravestone, looming over blood-soaked rubble, abandoned homes and vehicles, as well as the diseased dead.
As expected, some demons scouting from balconies on the tower hurried back in, surely to warn their devil, but Michael knew Satan well.He would not hide from a challenge; he would open the doors to it.And, indeed, as the chief prince made his slow approach toward the tower, the armed demons at the double doors, triple his height and made of stone, halted their moves toward him when other demons whispered orders from their king.They, stiffly, watched Michael flare his wings and walk past them.Pointedly, he ignored the pegasi scattered throughout the lower level of Babel, who neighed in desperation at the sight of the archangel.He looked for the throne room of the beauty he’d so adored once, that he had tried to hand over to God to kill, to marry.Christ’s bride, God’s bride.
But Satan waited in the hall of the first floor, and he had just cleared it of all demons save a stone-faced Baal, who was stepping away from the devil, moving toward a wall to watch carefully.Dressed in the red silks of Hell, a layering robe of the same color, in jewels, Satan turned slowly to face Michael, before he smiled, cheerful.“My demons,” Satan cooed, “saw you coming.”Though his crown was missing, his hair fell in wisps that hallowed him.
Joana told the people: “Look for weapons and shoot back!Shoot back!If you can’t find one, then grab a rock and throw it at the soldiers, the tanks, and those fucking drones!Hide the children and elderly!Protect them!”Someone shouted back that fighting was useless.“Who cares!It’s not about winning!Or do you all want to roll over and fucking die like cowards?!”
Michael, to Satan, announced: “I’ve come to kill you.”As the words fell from his mouth, the sounds of demon hissing sounded from everywhere, unseen warnings, and Baal stepped forward.But Satan lifted a hand to stop the regent of Hell from interfering.All the other infernal fallen angels, hidden in the walls, halted, as well.
