Chapter 1
Gabriel
Gabriel sighed, straightening his perfectly tailored white suit. He had zero desire to meet with the leadership team, but alas, although he was an archangel, he went where he was called. Such was the lot of the messenger of the afterlife.
He made his way into the boardroom, allowing his wings to stretch out behind him.
In the center there was a long wooden table, and on one side, in bright white chairs, sat the angels.
They were all wearing matching white robes, and they almost looked identical.
The very last chairs were empty, probably waiting for new additions.
Gabriel could usually spot them at first—there was often something slightly different about any new additions, like a crooked robe or a slight movement—but before long, they would blend in just like the rest.
On the other side of the table, in black chairs so dark they seemed to consume light, sat androgynous demons wearing all black robes.
Aside from the robes, the chairs, and the wings, Gabriel thought they all looked like clones of one another. He wasn’t sure what the leadership team did to always be in perfect sync, and he certainly wasn’t going to ask.
There were some things an angel was better off not knowing.
All the angels and the demons were staring at him. Gabriel tried not to fidget. He was an archangel. He was a messenger for angels and demons. He would not let the stares of the creepy clones rattle him. He was confident and calm and collected.
He just had to keep telling himself that.
“Do you have a message you would like delivered?” he finally asked politely, because it didn’t seem that anyone was inclined to speak to him. He could see no reason the leadership team would call on him other than to deliver a message.
“Not exactly,” replied one of the angels.
“It has come to our attention,” said one of the demons, “that your message delivery rate has declined by thirteen percent in the last year.”
“Furthermore,” added an angel, “it seems the success of those messages has also declined.”
“At least seven percent of messages have required a follow-up message, which is an increase of over one hundred percent over the last century,” added a demon.
Gabriel knew his mouth was gaping open in astonishment.
“Finally, it has come to our attention that the effectiveness of your messages has fallen quite significantly,” an angel finished. “It appears that your messages are rarely met with the shock and awe required of an afterlife announcement.”
“It has come to your attention?” Gabriel finally managed to bite out. “How has this come to your attention? Because if the heads of the afterlife—” Gabriel began, but a demon cut him off.
“We did not feel it necessary to involve the CEOs of the afterlife,” he commented stiffly.
“So if the Almighty has not complained about my work, how exactly did this come to your attention?” Gabriel asked again.
The archangel was angry. Like it wasn’t hard enough to do his job.
He was competing with social media and the internet and television.
Shock and awe had disappeared with color television, and every new screen had just dropped the impact even further.
Not that he felt the urge to explain himself to these drones.
They had no idea what it was like topside.
“The Director of the DoS noted these alarming statistics,” an angel commented.
The DoS? What the hell was the DoS? They had a Department of Statistics? Since when? Not that Gabriel was going to ask this crew anything. He stood taller, straightening his suit even though he knew he was perfectly put together.
“Why has the leadership team called me forth? You are not authorized to sanction archangels. Do you have a message for me to deliver or not? If the answer is no, then I shall move on to the real work that needs to be completed,” Gabriel said haughtily.
Disdain was the only way to deal with these morons.
The angel at his end of the table produced a rolled parchment from thin air, handing it to Gabriel. “The recipient is listed on the outside. You are to read the parchment only once you are in their presence,” the angel instructed.
Gabriel held back his annoyance. Yes, he had occasionally read from parchments in the distant past, or even delivered messages without reading their contents at all.
Nevertheless, recent experiences where an angel had used him for nefarious purposes had taught him to be wary of messages he didn’t read first.
Yes, he was just the messenger, but that didn’t mean he had to deliver what the humans called “fake news.”
He wasn’t going to debate that with the leadership team, however. He simply gave a nod of his head before he walked out of their boardroom. He found himself in a bar made up of dark, solid wood in Limbo, which was not where he’d entered the boardroom.
That was Limbo for you, though. Nothing ever quite stayed put, and the leadership team did not like to be found.
He wasn’t even sure if they were technically in Limbo, or if they were in some other in-between place.
The angel half of the team couldn’t visit the underworld, and the demon half couldn’t visit upstairs, so they were stuck finding common ground.
They’d gone a little too far with the whole common ground thing, though, in Gabriel’s opinion.
“Stuck up, know-it-all clones,” he muttered.
“Bad meeting, darling? You almost look like you have a hair out of place,” a woman’s voice drawled.
Gabriel couldn’t help running a hand through his hair, although he knew perfectly well there was not a single hair out of place.
He looked over at Pandora, the Queen of Limbo.
He wasn’t sure if she knew she held the title or not, but Gabriel knew everyone’s titles, official and unofficial.
It was part of his job, and he prided himself on his work.
Even if the leadership team thought he wasn’t up to par.
“The leadership team is insufferable,” he muttered.
Pandora laughed. “Of course they are, darling. But Minos and Adam are working on getting them straightened out. Perhaps you should chat with them?”
Gabriel sighed, and a glass with a clear liquid appeared on the bar before him. He took a swig, enjoying the cleansing taste of the holy water.
The problem was… Well, they weren’t wrong, were they? Gabriel knew his messages weren’t as effective. He knew humans were less likely to meet his pronouncements with shock and awe. Gone were the days of shepherds in the field being amazed at his declarations.
It wasn’t that there weren’t still shepherds out there in fields. Of course there were. Only now they had earbuds in and were watching reels on their phones, so they barely looked up when he appeared in a flash of light with a choir of singing angels.
Not that the choir of singing angels was even easy to acquire anymore.
All the forms to fill out, and coordinating with them had gotten much more difficult.
They didn’t want to sing to lone shepherds in a field when they could make appearances in packed stadiums (as long as they took a human form, of course).
“Times have changed, Pandora, and perhaps I have not changed enough along with them. It appears that I am not as useful as I once was,” Gabriel admitted.
She tapped her nails against the bar and huffed. “You are an essential facet of heavenly work.”
“I am Heaven’s Postal Worker,” he replied glumly.
Pandora snapped her fingers in front of his face, and perhaps he almost flinched, but he didn’t.
“You, my dear Gabriel, are the Messenger of the Lord, the Divine Herald, the Angel of Revelation, and the Bringer of Souls,” she snapped.
“Enough of this pity party. It is beneath you. You are unflappable. Do not let the leadership team, of all things, shake your foundation. You are miles above them.”
He looked over at her, but he saw no mockery in her face.
“You know, we would love to have you upstairs. You’re a formidable force,” he told her.
She scoffed. “They wouldn’t be able to handle me upstairs. Besides, I have work to do here. And you, my dear archangel, appear to have your own work.” She motioned her head at the rolled parchment he held.
Yes, he supposed he did have work to do. He rolled it over to look at who he was tasked with delivering a message to.
All that was printed on the scroll was a single name: Leviathan.
“Oh, my. That’s an interesting turn of events,” Pandora commented.
He shuffled through his memories, and though the name sparked some level of recognition, he couldn’t immediately place it, which was odd. Usually one name only meant some type of afterlifer. It didn’t sound like an angelic name, so that meant demon.
He looked at Pandora, waiting for more of an explanation.
“I believe Leviathan is the demon sea monster. He very rarely hangs about in Limbo, so it’s probable that you haven’t met him in the last few centuries.
I know him more by reputation than anything else.
Word is that he spends most of his time topside and not even in hell.
” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m sure you’ll be able to find him easily enough.
You are, after all, exceptional at your job. ”
With that, she winked at him and sauntered off.
He finished his holy water, straightened his already straight pristine white tie, and prepared himself to head topside.
He had a message to deliver, and he would do his job to the best of his ability until the end of eternity, no matter what the leadership team thought of him.