His hands came over the devil’s upper waist in a vicious grip, struggling not to shatter the ribs all delicately arranged by his Father.“I had you,” he panted.“It was only me that ever had you, no matter how much sin you made with others.It was our sin — first.”
“We never sinned,” Satan hissed, yanked the chain tighter around Michael’s throat.Instantly, the chief prince jolted backwards, rasping with breath, and Satan stumbled onto his feet, climbing the staircase backwards slow, steady.But Michael followed, wheezing out the pain, eyes dark; and just as the devil reached the throne, Michael’s hands returned to Satan’s waist — ‘where they belong.’He was able to lift the devil, who kicked, who glared back wildly.“You never had me.”
Breath hitching, however, Satan felt himself pushed onto his grand chair, his Hell throne on Earth.“You created,” said Michael, “for me.Cock and cunt and fucking.”And the devil, despite himself, shivered.“You warred for love.It was all for me.”‘Sin.’“You created sin to love me.”
“It was never for you,” Satan said before his hands went to grip Michael’s chains again, tighter but not enough to suffocate Michael a second time.“But,” he began to laugh, pitched and weak.“do it.Fuck me.It’s whatyoualways wanted, no matter how many times you prayed for God to make you stopwanting.”‘Michael.You were never going to be able to live without this.Whether it be through love or hatred, you committed yourself to me.It is why we will live forever.I can never kill you; you can never kill me.’Maybe Satan did love Michael, after all; he loved hating him.
‘Are you seeing this, God?’Michael thought as he grabbed at the clothing of the devil, then with a flash of anger, ripped it off.‘Once, I helped Lucifer remove his robe, and he smiled at me, eyes squinting, timid, happy.’Rabid, the prince tore at the material to expose more naked skin — a heaving chest, a pair of kicking legs, a sweet waist.The body that the devil had given the world.And Michael dipped his head, rubbed the mouth still streaked in dried blood up his torso, down again, breathing him in.For a moment, he smelled rot, then it was lavender, spring, life, honey.This was Satan, not Lucifer.He was a fallen Beast, a Beast creator.‘But if it’s like this, my detested devil, then I would create sin with you a thousand times.If only to make something of thishate— I want to beget a new damning, a new sin, a new death.’It wasn’t enough to love; it wasn’t enough to hate; there must be new sin for this, for them.
The pleasure the saint had denied himself, all the need, broke free now; all the wicked, rotten will that God had called evil.He surrendered to it.Michael panted against Satan’s chest, the weight of all his purity on his shoulders, rage churning his stomach.All his goodness was turning throbs of ache and sting; he was a bruise.When Satan touched the saint again, he reached for the plate over his groin, tugged it aside desperately, angrily.
‘You mouth at me like an idolater to his shrine,’ Satan thought, then watched as Michael brought his own hands to his pelvis, removed the armor, threw it aside.The devil ordered him, “Worship.”But he said it hazily, feeling his own arousal as a scalding burn, in between his legs, where he’d been molded for love.Angel of love.“You can’t help it— You were made for it.There is no will, no choice.”Michael moved over him again, took hold of the devil’s legs, pulling them high.Then, the saint brought his mouth to a flower, to a fruit, and he bit down, then plunged in his tongue.It was as he’d done in Heaven but not so afraid.Michael was not afraid of God anymore.
Satan released the chains around the other’s neck, finally, and draped his arms over the rests of the chair, then he let out a long, wanton sound.He used to sing in Heaven.He had wanted to sing for Michael, beneath him — so loud that the Lord would be jealous.‘He was jealous, Michael.He was jealous of this.’But the chief prince soon stood and put himself over the devil.Bringing his eyes as close as possible to Satan’s, Michael said, “I despise you.I hate you,” at the same time he reached to align himself with the wetted entrance, teasing around it.
The devil whispered, “I abhor you and everything you ever did to me.”
Michael said nothing, but when he pressed in, pressure unfolding into tight warmth — the noise he made was strangled.Hundreds of thousands of millions of years, he had denied himself paradise for a promise of paradise.The fallen angel’s divinity beautifully enveloped him, opening just right.And the devil’s body took it beautifully, like he were meant to be impaled to truly bloom beneath his fingertips.Like Satan was hollow, needed to be filled to be whole.“Lord,” Michael said without meaning to.
“Lord,” the devil echoed, breath stuttering out of him, body arching as if in pain.“Say it again.I’m your God now.”But he was breathless.‘I destroyed myself, I destroyed Heaven, for this.To be yours.’But the bliss in his core felt too perfect, too right; he pulsed hot around Michael.‘For a kiss, we destroyed Heaven.And for this, we’ll destroy all that remains.’
“You’re nothing more than a demon,” Michael said, teeth grit, and his hand fell to the armrest, hips shivering.His sin lodged inside a wound of love.He couldn’t move, paralyzed.The devil had to reach for the chain around his neck, pull him down.When Michael put his forehead against Satan’s, he gasped, and they shared breaths.“You’re not God.You’re not God.”And he thrust forward, hard, and made the devil shudder, grunt out between lips pressed tight.“You were just an angel too.An angel I loved.”
“Fuck him harder,” Satan snarled, “and maybe you can bring him back, Michael.”But he cried out again when Michael rolled forward a second time, then a third.“Can you feel it?Everything you could have had?”he taunted, then laughed when the prince moved to hold the devil’s throat.“Don’t be afraid, crush it.Kill me.You said you wanted to.”But the chief prince, even through his anger, refrained.“You can’t, can you?You want to hurt me, but you can’t help but worship me.”Abruptly, Satan cried out when Michael fucked into him the hardest that he’d had.“Oh,” he continued through the pain, the pleasure, “you can’t help yourself.Weak, weak saint.Pathetic little angel.”
Gasping at each whip of pleasure that skinned up his body, Michael couldn’t speak anymore, the sweet clench the further he pushed making all the apocalypse outside the windows look almost pretty with all its despair and horror.Bliss demented him.Adoring deranged him.His body seized, twisted inside.Michael’s sensations, Satan’s sensations melted until the prince didn’t know who he was.The devil’s body was his now, too; he felt every invading thrust.He was the devil.He was sin; he was death.And apocalypse was beautiful.
“Succumb,” Satan whispered, “to it.”His moans were rhythmic now, one after the other.“This was always meant to happen.I’m your God.”He threw his head back when the prince buried in deep again, and he bit his lip not to cry out when Michael’s gauntlets returned to his waist, his ribs.‘But I feel the inside of me, too.Horrible and crushing.Like I’m you.Like I’m an angel, a prince.’“Worship, and give yourself to me how you should have done in Heaven.”‘Spill until I leak of you.Make me yours, how you should have done in Heaven.Make me your God, make me create for you, for us.’Create what?Satan didn’t know anymore.New sins.The end of all things.
Michael grimaced, but he couldn’t stop, still couldn’t answer.When he kissed the devil, it was desperate, with too much teeth.There was still blood on his mouth, and Satan licked at it with delight.
For them — fucking was not enough.Nothing would ever be enough.‘Let me bleed into your wounds,’ Michael thought in his madness.‘Carry me inside you forever as you burn in Hell.’His gasps had grown quicker, angrier, and the devil’s entrance fluttered like a happy heartbeat around him.And Michael could fight no more when the coiling in his lower belly snapped.Collapsing over him, groaning.Distantly, the devil heard Michael whisper that he hated him again, he would always hate him.Death would not be enough to do to him, nor torture.There needed to be new sins for their hate.They must create it.From their bodies, the most forbidden love.It came in spurts, then a spill as warm as the sun, heavy as the weight of purity maintained for lifetimes — the seed of the chief prince into the bearer of the apocalypse.
At last, over a throne on Earth, at last.
CHAPTER41
From the head of the Leviathan, Rosier and Armoni saw the state of the Earth.The sea serpent traveled Babylon — eerie, calm, crushing everything beneath its slithering body of coils and tough scales.Gripping at some of the horned skin at the top of the Leviathan’s skull, the demon and the angel noticed buildings sunk into themselves, the fires of Hell breaching through cracks in the Earth to swarm at all the people, the good and wicked alike, if such a division existed.Abandoned children, elders, the weaker — and he remembered Asmodeus once saying, ‘Haven’t you seen enough to know that humanity is a lost cause?We demons made war, but it’s men that created atrocity.The things they’ve done to one another, Rosier — you’ve seen it.How can you forgive it?How can you keep believing in their goodness?’‘I don’t know,’ Rosier had whispered as he leaned against him.‘But I keep believing, despite myself, despite them.Their evil wouldn’t hurt so terribly, Asmodeus, unless they were kind.It’s because we know they’re good that their wickedness is so painful.’
In the distance, bullets battered against something, and a sharp cry was cut off, a whining animal somewhere.Dark birds flew about aimlessly, all of them like vultures, eyeing the dead.
But Rosier’s own eyes were empty now, and he continued to play with the fingers of Asmodeus’s corpse arm, resting in a sling across his torso.Long ago, Rosier would carry Asmodeus’ head this way.After they had fallen from Heaven, after Rosier had decapitated him — he had pieced Asmodeus together again.His friend, his husband, his demon.
“Rosier,” Armoni called for what must’ve been the hundredth time.“Rosier, please listen to me.”But the demon of fruit continued his silence.“What now?Where are we going?”Armoni’s voice was forcibly raised by the clamor of death that they drowned in.“Rosier.”Rosier didn't turn, and yet he felt the gaze of his friend land on Asmodeus’ hand, like how one might feel eyes on the back of their own neck.‘It’s the same,’ Rosier thought, ‘because Asmodeus is my body.We were one.We were one body.’Armoni said: “I fear the Leviathan is taking us to the Beast.”He remembered the soldier, Dante, who’d spoken to Asmodeus in their cage about the boy-turned-monster he’d fought before falling into Hell.“We’re heading toward… a border.”
Rosier almost had to ask what border, where to.He wished he could stand at the border of death and see his husband on the horizon.“There is nowhere to turn back to,” he whispered.
“We shouldn’t involve ourselves, Rosier, in this apocalypse.”
‘But we’re damned,’ Rosier thought, ‘and fire and darkness awaits us.I would like to be dead.To be with him, I’m not afraid of death now.’
Above — the sound of feathers, and both Armoni and Rosier lifted their heads to see a couple angels, but they were fleeing upward, returning home.At the head, two horsemen led the way, one over a white horse and one over a black horse.
“They’re abandoning the Earth now,” Armoni whispered.
Rosier didn’t reply again.He could understand them.He’d done the same — fled Satan’s tower, fled the war, fled everything.He watched the angels run away quietly, almost peacefully, though he recalled how he'd pressed to Asmodeus as the demons attacked God's city.
When those fleeing ones far above reach Heaven, they'd find devastation, as there was below.But not yet.Gabriel and Raphael would, will, lead the army past the gates.Gabriel will realize he never did blow the seventh trumpet.He hadn't done it before or after the spread of sickness had finally turned Raphael against the apocalypse.The two princes will plead with God.But not yet.
