Tadeo waved the boy over, and when he noticed a few other children scattered about, he gestured for them too.
“Come, come,” he said.“Let’s all do it together.”Within a minute, eleven children had all scurried over, including some that had been hiding behind rubble and cars, simply watching; two of them being a young girl with her toddler brother.They organized themselves around Tadeo patiently, excitedly.“Show your hands like me.”And they did, planting them before themselves at a patch of grass with some stray, surviving flowers, and a half-collapsed prickly pear cactus without fruits or flowers.“Imagine it, want it.Imagine you’re a saint, and you’re making miracles.”
Slow, the ground before them sprouting greener, rising higher.The cactus’ damaged side bloomed anew, flowers unfurling from its head, then curling apart to reveal fruits.But the miracle continued as the children awed.More cacti grew beside the original, and some flowers, some trees, the kind that Tadeo had known all his life.And breathing out slow, Tadeo shut his eyes, his heart settling in his chest.Life gasped awake all around him and fought through concrete and rocks and underground infrastructure to grow.All the older humans, and nearby Dina, watched all of it return to the surface of Earth after bombardment and razing and death.And they watched it begin to overrun every building.Green and green, swallowing them in a flood.When it began to climb up their bodies — they allowed it.Dina did as well, wondering if Apsinthos was still calling him.He was no longer listening.Flowers grew by his bare feet, roped around his legs, and Dina watched it happen with burning eyes.Joana’s brother reached for the fruits of the cacti, first.
Satan felt the burn of God tearing apart but knew better.The Lord was not a creature on a chair, and He was not in the sky, and He was not below.Inside every angel, demon, human.He had been in Christ; He had been in Judas; He had been on the crucifix and nailing Himself to it.God, killing Himself.Torturing Himself.God, on Earth, as Christ.Christ, without a memory of His life as God, only knowing the Lord is His Father and that he can feel Him in a way that no one can.Christ, a man of Nazareth, born on Earth; a God without the memory of being God, trying to find meaning through being small, mortal.Where had God found meaning — in love or in suicide?Had it been suffering that had taught God meaning?Or had it been love?Another man, a betrayer?A human mother?A human father?
The light would burn them all, would kill them all, but Lucifer persisted.The demons and the angels and the Watchers were all burning, and they seemed to understand what was about to happen.But they told Satan, “Kill God!”
Baal called out: “End it, Lucifer!”‘My love, Lucifer.I told you that it wouldn’t all be for nothing.’
Michael called out: “Kill God!”‘Forgive me.Beloved Lucifer.’
Azazel tried to shield himself from the blast with his arms, but what he saw in between was Samyaza, grabbing him, trying to save him the pain.“No— Samyaza—” The light swallowed him, and Azazel begged Satan, “Kill Him, Lucifer!Please!”
God shattered into three, and the burst of light, like at the beginning of time, swallowed them all.
On Earth, the end was gentler.Dark green, quiet in between the sound of children rustling the leaves.
CHAPTER48
In Heaven, an angel sat at a riverbank, and he ran his fingers through his golden hair, though his skin was warmly dark.Over a great stone, he laid on his belly, staring down at his reflection in the crystalline waters, devoid of fish.His eyelashes cradled dual stars, and his lips were wonderfully plump, and his figure held softness and toughness in all the proper places.From his mouth, a wordless song seeped.No clothes hid him, for he had no shame, but chains of gold and gem were strung all over his sweet throat, his limbs, his waist, hips.In paradise, there were no laws, for all the living are kind and do not ever harm without permission.And the angel of beauty is proud, but it isn’t pride without kindness, empathy.
“Beloved Lucifer,” called a lover, and the most beautiful angel in paradise sighed dramatically, setting his hands on the damp rock, arching his back as he lifted himself.A tough angel of a different kind of beauty — broadness, strength — with dark curls approached, then settled beside Lucifer, strong hand coming over the beautiful one’s fingers.“Why have you hid from me?Don't you know that I spend every second apart from you in grief?”His other hand came to rest on the lean back of the blonde to tease jewelry into chiming, but Lucifer looked away and turned up his nose with a huff.“Oh, tell me what is the matter.”
“I,” began the grievances of angel Lucifer, “don’t like how you parade me around to the others.I'm the most beautiful angel that has ever been born of this paradise, but, Michael, I don't belong to you.”Even still, Lucifer tilted his face, then lifted a hand to plant over the chest of the angel of strength, soft in its ease and lovely.“Kiss me.”
Ever obedient, Michael leaned closer to the brilliant face of Lucifer as the younger one rearranged himself to sit with his stretched legs pressed together and to the side, toes dipping into the river current that went nowhere.Michael found Lucifer’s soft mouth and claimed it, soft yet earnest.Their lips pressed and dragged, beginning to move in hunger.Within the most beautiful angel’s core, he felt the familiar twist of love tangling his stomach and heart together, as if to build a knot that only this lover could reach inside to disentangle.But Michael’s hands went for Lucifer’s waist instead, gripped him securely.Careful, Michael set a foot down, then lifted his body and Lucifer’s.His kisses didn’t dare falter, not even when he raised the beautiful one high enough that his feet dangled above the ground.As if Lucifer were flying.Or as if they were falling, mouths interlocked.Michael and Lucifer kissing, falling together, never sparing a glance away from each other to watch Heaven fade into the horizon.
‘If we could fall together, I want you to land over me.Break me, my bones.Love begs for pain.To be held too tight, to cry out as if hurting, to bruise beneath puckered lips.Love demands a grave; come lie in it with me.Angel, choose death over eternal life.Turn away from creating and kill us both.’
“Mm,” Michael said against Lucifer.
And Lucifer tilted his face away now, though not struggling in Michael’s grasp, and said, “Do you see now?You kiss me like my mouth is only yours.”
“Forgive me,” pleaded Michael.“But I can’t bring myself to let you go.You were the one that taught me.This, this love.Or should I call it worship?Be it either, I’d leave my Father’s house with nothing but desire for you on my back to come to know more.I carry you already on my shoulders even when you’re not with me.How can I offer myself to you?”His breath lapped warm against Lucifer’s mouth; their fronts pressed flush together, warm, naked.“How can I be yours, if you will not be mine?”
At that, Lucifer’s lips twisted into a scheming smile, then he heard leaves shake and footsteps crunching.
Swiveling his gaze over Lucifer’s shoulder, Michael grunted, “Baal,” to the golden-haired one’s laughing delight.
As Baal approached, his robes dragged along the ground, and he tilted his head to peck a kiss at Lucifer’s jaw, utterly ignoring Michael.“Lucifer, my love, you didn’t say you’d bring Michael.”His wings were already revealed, in their great darkness — folding, unfolding anxiously.When Baal brushed his lips toward Lucifer’s upper cheek, Michael’s grip squeezed the angel of beauty’s body in a flame of jealousy, but Lucifer smiled brighter.
“He hunted me, Baal,” said Lucifer.“And now he’s caught me.What could I do?”
Michael, delicately, set the most beautiful one down, then he murmured, “Lucifer, I’ve told you about Baal.”
“Hm, you see, you see?”Lucifer elegantly stepped away but not without tapping the angel of strength’s mouth with an index.“You always tell me what I can or cannot do.Why should I listen?I like you better when you’re the one listening, and when you win me new jewels to wear.Won’t you win me some more?Don’t I deserve it?”Michael made yet another noise of disapproval just as Baal wrapped both arms around Lucifer’s hips from behind then brought his face to Lucifer’s neck, kissing and nuzzling.“Baal seems to think so.”
“Leave, Michael,” Baal said, trailing up his mouth and nibbling on Lucifer’s ear to spur out a sharp breath.
“Now, now,” Lucifer chided, “Michael doesn’t have to leave.”He took one of Baal’s hands, then guided it to trail down his body, to the area between his legs.“He likes to watch.Don’t you, Michael?”A soft cry slipped from his mouth as Baal began to work his fingers — slow, then firmer.Warming with each flick of Baal’s wrist, Lucifer body bloomed with arousal.And he shivered as Michael’s gaze trailed up and down his body.“You can touch too, Michael.”When the angel of strength glowered, Lucifer chuckled.“Come.Kiss me again.”
Michael hesitated but not long; he stepped forward and, though Baal tensed, he leaned in to take Lucifer’s mouth again.One of Michael’s hands, too, touched the beautiful angel’s stomach, lightly ran his fingers up to his chest, then gripped the back of Lucifer’s throat.
The angel of beauty’s voice broke with a cry into Michael’s rough, scraping kiss as Baal adjusted to press two fingers into Lucifer’s heat.Crushed between the two, Lucifer couldn’t be happier, and he teased, “You see, Michael, I’m meant to be shared.”And when Michael’s irritation pressed further into his mouth, Lucifer moaned, languid and high, again for them, the both of them.“Lay me down,” he breathed between his pleasure.“On the flowers.”Nearby, a crowd of them formed a petal bed of blues, whites, yellows, pinks.“Lay me there.”
Soon, he thrashed against the larger angels, and so they relented.Michael and Baal brought Lucifer to his bed of flowers, watched as his hair sprawled over the leaves, and he hummed, calling them down to devour him in kisses, in bites.Encouragingly, Lucifer ran his hand through their curls and stroked their bodies, and when he shivered, he realized the pit of his stomach was terribly empty.
