Right now, the angel Dina was landing behind the slumped anti-Christ, his pale wings open but bent behind him, almost flared.He, abruptly, missed the lace he always hid his hair beneath, he missed his angel robes, he missed Uriel's library house he never stopped wandering, he missed rings on his fingers, he missed Heaven and being an angel and he missed youth.‘I'll have it back.And it will all be better.’He stared at Tadeo, crumbled on the ground, heaving, naked body trembling.‘I will sacrifice you to do it.I must.There is no other choice.’“Ta…de…o,” the angel sounded out as if it was the first time he's said it.His voice was like a siren's hum, and he maintained it even through all the noise of war.“You've lost your friend.”
“Don't… come near me,” Tadeo whispered, shifting away from his mother and her wheelchair.“Don't… you dare come near me.”Turning his head halfway, his only eye was bloodshot and wide, pupil thinned into a pinprick.“This is all because of you.”He exhaled through flared nostrils.“All of this is because of you.”His body was beginning to tremble, and the more he turned, the more he exposed the hole in his head, perpetually bleeding, pulsing.“I'll kill you.I'll tear you to fucking pieces for what you've done.”
‘Tell him that he—’ Apsinthos began, but Dina knew what to say.
“I didn't kill her,” the angel replied, and he recalled Satan emphasizing that he wasn't responsible for Tadeo's rape and murder.“Angels in the sky did.And it wasn't me that killed Dante, or your family.No, that was soldiers.That was Babylon.”
In an angry, bewildered echo, Tadeo said, “Babylon?”
Dina glanced upward, and he listened to the hiss of the silver birds above, the drones, and he allowed the yells and the terror of families huddled to die together, the remnants of colorful town streamers on the ground, the blood, the tears, the begging, the useless fight back, to fill Dina with the most dread he'd ever felt.‘The world is depraved.The world is beyond saving.’“They won't stop.They won't stop killing.Since you were young, all you've known is this.”
“Stop,” Tadeo said, teeth visibly grit.“Stop.”
“They’ve hated you for centuries.Your people were sacrificed to the gods of wealth and the gods of hate.Your land was gutted for a bridge into the mouth of empire.You fought to be free, and the world turned to make ruin of you instead.And they, in Babylon, are rejoicing now — can’t you hear them?— and they, in all the other parts of the world who have even known of this place, rejoice.All the criminals of you, the infestation of you.They pray for all the little children here, who will grow into demons, to die a thousand deaths, mutilated for all the sins of your blood.”
“Stop!”Tadeo shouted, then he twitched and twitched.But he was still covered in his family's blood, in Joana's blood, in Dante's.Joana's family must already be dead.Dante's family must be dead.
“Be angry,” Dina urged him.“Be angry!The world loathes you!You tried to do good, and the world wanted you dead!Even your own family wanted to use you!They would never accept you!You resurrected, you fought for your liberation, and it meant nothing to this cruel world!”The anti-Christ let out a harsh breath of fright, of anger.“Look above you, Tadeo!Look at what this world did to those you love!It's a rotten world!It's a damned world!”
“You,” Tadeo whispered.“This is all because ofyou—” It was becoming a chant.“Because of you.”Beneath the skin of his knuckles, a sudden dull pain called, as if he were bruised, and this sensation balled in his chest, blooming and blooming until it began to squeeze at his lungs, force them empty of air.
Dina thought of his first memories, of dancing, of wanting to be beautiful.“This is because of them.”Babylon.“And even with divinity flowing through your veins, you failed to bring down the empire of evil.All you can do now is destroy it.”
When talons burst out from Tadeo’s knuckles, the tips of his fingers, the sides of his palms, his wrists — sharp pain brought him a taste of relief.He couldn’t resist, then, to dig his talons into his own arms, tear through his own muscle — the skin, the muscles, the pale pink layer, then the sharp red.Only hurting himself could he breathe, only hurting himself could he maintain himself here.There was so much pain inside him, and he wanted to rip it out, brandishing his own suffering like a whip.But he lifted his burning gaze, and he felt more eyeballs bubble open along his body.He saw his mother, breathing carefully in her chair, and he saw Lupina holding the skewered remains of Joana, and he saw tanks, he saw drones, saw every burning, crumbled building, every ball of light.The ground rumbled; was it the war or was it him?Was Tadeo the war?Are we the war?
“Can you feel it,” Dina whispered, “now?”The angel felt it in his own heart — the rage.The rage of being born too late to know what it was all like before the war.He shouted, “End it!End it, Tadeo.”‘Take me back,’ Dina wanted to say.‘I want to know what it was like.I want to know what paradise was.I want to be happy.I don’t want forgiveness; I want to have never done it; I want to go back.I want to be free from sin, not forgiven for it.Take me back.Please let me go back and do it all right this time.It’s not fair.’
‘It’s not fair,’ Tadeo thought, shaking in rage, feeling it in his core, in his very teeth.‘It’s not fair.’Joana.Dante.Dante’s family.Tadeo’s father, the breeze tossing him.The smiles of his father.His mother and his father.But even if they were still here, his parents, they might not have loved him.Why had Tadeo ever wanted to save a world that didn’t want him?“I feel everything,” he breathed.The world had rejected him, even before he tried to save it.‘You have a responsibility,’ Joana had said but to who?And would any of those who Tadeo was trying to save ever think of saving him?No; they had let him die.They had watched him step into the car with soldiers.They had let him die.The world rejected the good, long ago.
And so Tadeo screamed.He curled into himself and began to yell, every part of him ripping open with pain, with wings, with mouths, with eyes.From a narrowing throat, he wailed out, trying to sink into the pain itself, wanting to be nothing more than a bleeding wound.It burned.‘Burn.’God had made him to burn.His family had used him.Joana had used him.None of it meant anything.The crime.The soldiers.The war.What war?He would show them war.He would show them what he had died feeling.‘The pain, the humiliation, the darkness, the darkness, the misery, the violation.God in my head.In this body.This body that was never mine.That isn’t mine.None of this world is worth saving.Every life, every person.It's their fault.I tried to do what no one else did.’
The ground shook, once more, and Dina stumbled back, watching all the beastly parts of Tadeo burst out of him.Every star in the air brightened to drown them in white.Heart jolting, the young angel’s eyes widened, and Dina really realized then what was happening as the humans around began to scream, as silver birds were struck by sudden winds that flung them far.The few tanks remaining crushed into themselves, and hellfires flared.‘Is this it?’Dina felt no joy.‘Will it be over?’Was paradise here, right within reach?Was this how it would all end?
But it all stopped, and the yelling of the anti-Christ devolved into a spluttering cough.What followed was the lurch forward of his beastly body, shrinking back into its naked human form again, head hanging forward.Though the world around them was still loud with car alarms and screams and rumbles, the ground had halted its jerks even when Tadeo shook with a quiet, sad little sob.“Tadeo?”the angel called, bewildered.“Tadeo.”But he didn't look much like Tadeo, even if that was the same face, same body that the angel had known since he climbed down to Earth.“What are you doing?”He looked like a little boy.
Tadeo sniffled, lifted a hand to rub the back of his hand against his wet eyes, rivulets of tears falling past his chin and to his neck.And he said, “Leave me alone,” like a child.Like a baby, he half-crawled toward his mother.Like a young boy, he gripped one of her legs and laid his head against her lap, the eternal wound dribbling onto her pants.
“What?”Dina was the one staggering now over his feet.“What do you mean?”His voice was high, almost scared.“End the world, Tadeo.You must.Set the behemoth free from you.Kill the world that… despises you…”
Tadeo’s tears streamed down the side of his face, over the bridge of his nose.And he said: “The world already ended.It ended a long time ago.”‘When I died, when my dad was killed, when my mother lost half her mind, when the music stopped being played in the plaza.Before then.’Dante had been right.‘The world ended years ago, hundreds of years ago.’His father had said life was pain, but you have to live it, you have to work, you have to feel the ache in your muscles.Joana had died fighting, Dante had died fighting.It's about the struggle, in the end, the fight for the sake of the fight.‘It's not about winning.It's not about the end.There is no end.’
Dina's face paled.‘End it,’ he wanted to urge.‘This can't all have been for nothing.’But every horrible miserable sound around him began to feel sharp, loud, like nails on a chalkboard.“Tadeo— Please—” His voice was breaking now, high and frightened.“Please?—”
What followed was screeching, but not from Tadeo, who didn't react, nor from the machines of war.Instead, it sang from far above them all.In a sky now desolate of drones, a great head was rising from the smoke, attached to a long, coiling body.From dark scales, it dripped sea water and blood.Atop its head, there was an angel and a demon, holding on.The Leviathan.The angel Dina stumbled back, heart stopping, when the creature crept forward over all the noise of fright that surrounded it, and it lowered its head enough for the riders to crawl down.
“Dina!”shouted an angel.“Is that you?!”Armoni, climbing off hastily and running forward.His eyes were massive and round, and Rosier came up behind him just seconds afterward, reaching, taking Armoni’s arm, stopping him.“What is happening?What is going on?”
Rosier, with his other hand, reached into his sling and intertwined his fingers with Asmodeus’.He swallowed, shakily, his heart heavy in his chest.He looked at a naked boy nearby, and then he looked back at the Leviathan that was staring at the same anti-Christ, curled up against an older woman on a chair, both quiet and still.‘What now?’The Leviathan offered another shriek.
At that, Tadeo looked up, ears ringing, feeling the ground beneath him rumble once more.He swallowed, and he stepped away from his mother, staggering back, staring up at the monster.As he did, he saw into its eyes.‘It’s waiting on me.’He didn’t know how he knew.‘It’s waiting on me to end it.Like Dina, like the angels, like God.’But Tadeo took a few more steps back, and he felt an ache turn over and over in his chest.Tears, blooming at his eyes again.Shame, oddly.Where had this shame come from?“I won’t do it,” he told the Leviathan.“I won’t end this Earth.”
The Leviathan was silent, and when its tail whipped at Tadeo, the boy simply closed his eyes, grit his teeth.He remembered going to Hell.When the Beast flung him down, it was so strong that the ground cracked beneath his body, and he fell through the Earth, deeper and deeper.Tadeo felt heat, and when he opened his eyes, it was to see himself enveloped by flames as he plunged.He screamed, and he screamed.For refusing Revelation, he’d been cast into the lake of fire.
CHAPTER42
“Babylon,” Satan panted, “must not fall.”Violently, he pushed Michael away from him, sharp breath reeling into his open, panting mouth.He settled a foot over the floor but wobbled and gripped at the throne behind him, the one he'd been fucked over, to keep upright.His eyes were wide; his heart was in his throat, beating a bruise.‘No,’ he thought.Before him, Michael was flushed, his face a touch too pale, sweat dribbling down his body.When Michael stepped forward — the devil said, “Stay back.Stay back, you damned Son of God.”‘Son of God?’In the scriptures, angels were sons, boys, for God.‘But why do I think of that now?’
“I am no,” Michael replied, hushed, voice strained, “Son of God.”Finally, his armored hands went to adjust his clothing, his armor, to hide himself, his nakedness, his sin.His gauntlets trembled, his face flickered with a juvenile fear.The sight twitched the ends of Satan’s lips in something like humor but too angry.
