“It’s all you’re good for,” answered the devil.“Angel of weapon.Without anyone to wield you, you're useless.You stand for nothing.”
“I stand against a world that is wicked and corrupt,” Michael replied.“And I know who is responsible, who I must destroy.”
Baal finally spoke again: “Michael, what the fuck is it that you want?”He stepped even closer, grabbed his arm, though the chief prince almost growled in response.“Satan and I both defeated you — him on Earth and me in Heaven.Accept it.Maybe bow down to the only one who can save the world now.”
“If he wanted to save the world,” Michael said, “he’d kill himself.”
Immediately Baal grabbed a fistful of Michael’s hair, yanked hard enough to make the archangel hiss, stumble, before he was shoved down onto his knees.Michael thrashed, growling again, but God’s chains at his wrists were the one thing completely unbreakable to the angel of strength.“Pray to him.Pray for forgiveness and maybe I won't rip off your scalp.”
Satan hummed, then quietly said: “The world is wicked.I know that.And it is by my design.”He tilted his face down at the broken chief prince.“What has bound every anti-Christ together is hate, and always, the Beast chooses the bodies of princes, princesses, of wealth and power.It’s not often that the Beast chooses someone who the world has so rejected.It must’ve thought it would succeed in its apocalyptic plans if it hid in some dark corner that I would never look.At the same time, I know that the Beast is not a being that thinks.It is hardly rational.It is pure emotion, pure rage.”His voice dropped to a murmur, “You’re correct.This world is evil because of me.I rule it.It’s mine.Howeverwickedandevilit is, it’s mine,my world.”Voice rising, he looked out a window into the ruined Earth.“It will do as I say.You will do as I say.”
‘Michael,’ Satan thought.‘I won’t kill you.I won’t kill you.I want to rip you apart limb from limb.I want to dig my teeth into you.’The devil thought of the damn king again; then, he thought of the emperor of Rome who’d fucked him until he lost his mind.‘I can’t let you die.’His jaw was so clenched that he thought it’d begin to crack, and his blood burned until it rose up into his eyes in red flames.‘I abhor you, Michael, so much that I cannever let you die.’
“Go for the king,” Satan commanded Baal.“Order him to come here.Tell him that we have an angel of God for him to listen to.”
“Yes, Satan,” Baal replied slowly, and Michael coughed out some dribbles of blood as the regent of Hell removed his claws from his hair, but then he paused.“But what if he… refuses to come?”
“He will listen to me,” Satan said, words paper thin.“He willobey.”
“The world does not listen to you,” Michael gurgled.“You are not God.”
“There isno God,”the devil seethed.“There is only me.I’m the only thing left, Michael.And it’s true what you say, what you’ve always said.I’m not God.No, no, I’m greater than God.”
Carefully, Baal took a step back, but Michael glanced back at him, and he saw a flicker in his eyes of hesitation once more.And Baal looked back at him; for the first time, there was no great fury between them.“As you wish,” the regent answered before turning on his heel.“I’ll slaughter any of those that deny you.”There was something solemn about it, like he were accepting the same fate he was threatening.At this, Michael felt a bead of cold sweat roll past his brow, toward the pulsing gore of his jaw, as the large demon left the room.He didn’t know why, didn’t know why he had to resist asking Baal not to dare leave him alone with the devil.
As if sensing the nerves of the chief prince, Satan reached out, suddenly, pushed a vase of wilted flowers off a nearby podium.With a sharp clatter, the porcelain shattered, water pooled, and the dried lilies lay still over the pieces and wetness like they’d been put to a lazy grave.The archangel said nothing before he felt the sole of a foot come down over his head to push down.Gritting his teeth, Michael’s face was pressed to where the broken vase was, forced up against it — the dampness and dirt and crisp petals crinkling and clinging to his exposed muscle.It stung.
“Heal,” Satan ordered.“Or will you deny it to yourself just to stand against me?”A second of silence passed, a distant boom of something crashing or imploding — perhaps a star — but then the devil witnessed as trickles of water climbed up Michael’s jawline and began to thread through his very skin, carefully coiling at his gums to create new teeth.“I see.”Blood cleaned itself off Michael’s chin and neck.“I wasn’t sure if you’d still be capable.”‘The demons lost their healing, as did the Watchers, not long after we turned on God.But you can still do it, of course.You’re very special to God, after all.’Slowly, Michael’s enormous wounds began to close.
As they did, Michael coughed out some blood, some water, and muttered his defiance again, “I won’t speak to any man for you, devil.”
“Killing either of us will no longer be enough to stop the apocalypse,” Satan said.“Killing the anti-Christ will also no longer be enough.We’ve reached the point where his death would become a fulfillment of prophecy.”Suddenly, the devil pressed down harder, almost stomping Michael’s head into the ground, and he loomed over him with wide, endless eyes.“To break the prophecy now— We must keep him alive.The nation must stop pursuing him.The wars must end.If you want to save this place, if you want to saveher, then you must obey me, Michael.”The sight of the prince under his foot surged the devil with a contradictory glee, humor, hatred.‘I will command you now.I will wield you now, my sword, whether you want my hands or not.’
“I will never serve you, Satan,” Michael grunted.
“But you will do as I wish,” Satan replied with a great grin, “whether or not you want to.”‘How we always do what God wants, whether or not we want to.’He removed his foot, finally, and took a step back to see Michael thrash against his bindings in fury but hardly raise his head off the ground.“What other choice do you have?”The prince curled into himself in shame, looking so delicate suddenly, so pathetic.“Poor thing.”But Satan’s voice was venomous, coy, laughing.“All you fought against, and here you are.How much you wrestled against me, and here you kneel.Even when you had me captured, you still failed to resist touching me.You havefailedin everything you have ever done?—”
Michael, suddenly, growled like an animal.He said: “Is this what it will be until the end?Humiliation until I accept you as my Lord?”
Satan smiled, soft, serenely.‘It’s what I always wanted.’“No.”‘There will be no end.This apocalypse will stop.I will save Tadeo.Maybe all of his family will be gone, but perhaps I can take their place.I’m his mother, after all, his father.’He remembered the ash he’d left of his infant.‘I can raise you.’He hadn’t the chance with the Beast, nor enough with Cain.“You don’t have to accept me.”
Breathing out harshly, Michael tilted his face up at the devil, bloodied curl falling over his face; he saw Satan with the ruined world displayed past the cracked windows at either side of the throne.‘Lucifer.’He remembered the taste he’d had of him in Heaven, how he’d been desperate to know what it meant to fall into temptation.Michael had wanted the last thing he ever did to be succumbing, submitting.He’d wanted to know, to trade knowledge for death, how Eve had done in Eden.The forbidden fruit, Satan’s perfect body; Michael had tasted it now, only to stir open a deeper hunger in him.“But it’s what you want, isn’t it?It’s what you’ve always wanted.You will never stop until I do it— Until Iworshipyou.”‘Angel Lucifer in the ruins of Heaven, staring at me, his eyes dead, his smile strange; he was not Lucifer any longer.He was something else.He asked me for sin, to give it to him.To create sin together, between us, between these bodies.’
Satan snorted, then stepped to him again.
And Michael’s eyes were furious, brows furrowed.He remembered Satan’s lips, in Heaven.When he’d strung him up with the chains, the devil had seemed so much like the angel of beauty.Phanuel had told Michael that maybe Lucifer had never died, and God had told Michael that Lucifer was devoured by a Beast that the prince’s sin had formed inside of him.‘Beautiful Lucifer would peck my mouth behind trees, in empty rooms, in dark corners.I touched his body like I’d never known another angel body.I’d craved something, for the first time in my life.I had wanted him — like I could ever own an angel.Like I could be God.But I denied it to myself for Him, for my Father.’He had done it all for God, the God that was never going to forgive him, the God who was going to destroy the world of his daughter.Hisdaughter, Michael’s child he’d rejected.For God.It had all been for God.
Another step, and Satan leaned down, opened his lips, surely to tell the saint, again, that he had no choice, he had no will; he was a sword, he was nothing.
Michael said, “As you wish, then.I’ll obey you.”And before he could wait for Satan’s response, he rose to his feet sharply, thrust his armored body forward to push Satan against the stairs, then pressing his weight to him.Michael’s hands remained bound at his back, but he put his face before the devil’s flared eyes.“I’ll do what you want.I’ll do what you’ve wanted all this time.”His knee came in between Satan’s legs, pressed hard enough to hurt.“Everything you begged me for.”
The devil, now, laughed, and he said, “What is this, Michael?You’ve turned on God and decided there’s nothing left but to fall into temptation?”
“I’m taking back what I surrendered to Him,” said Michael sharply.
Satan stared, then his shoulders trembled with another chuckle.“You are just like your Father.”But he reached behind Michael, took the chains at his wrists, pulled until they began to loosen enough that the chief prince tore one hand free, then the other.Before he could place his gauntlets on the devil, however, Satan brought the chain around the back of Michael’s neck, pulled with both hands like a rider to a horse’s rein.He spat onto Michael’s face, then grinned wickedly up against his jaw, threatening a kiss.“Surrendered?Michael, you never had me.”
“You begged for me,” Michael said, feeling the fever and tightness in his body of whenever he dreamt of angel Lucifer, laying on an altar for him — a gift from God — and of when he’d spilled sick seed in the caves with the devil — learned that angels were all corrupted — and of his youth — the novel heat in the center of his body, the tempt on his hips to roll forward against the angel of worship, of beauty.To press deeper, deeper, until he broke through flesh, cut him open with a dagger if he must — anything to be inside of that body.For the first time in his eternal life, Michael allowed himself to feel all of it, the burn and the emptiness.He learned it was like hunger — wanting.It was not tender.It was not shaped of love — desire.
