Chapter 14
The Lord has a sense of humor. It was raining when the angels descended from Heaven on winged horses into a remote, forested area.
Even for those who’d traveled to Earth recently — Michael, Uriel — it was difficult to not immediately recall the brisk, chilled air of the days that the world of early men had flooded.
The waters that had buried the children of the Watchers and their mothers, the women who’d loved angels.
Though there had been men, too, that loved angels.
Michael knew that better than anyone. His sword was always heavy, always seemed to drip blood, as if there was still the body of a winged child skewered through it.
He never forgot. He never forgot the Watchers, and the devil that he’d destroyed them with.
But, right now, Michael held the reins of a pegasus the color of blood beneath its silver armor.
He stared up at a high billboard on the side of the road with a celebrity plastered over it.
Lounging on her side, she wore a short, tight dress, blonde hair curled and half trailing over her body, the other half on the flooring she laid over.
Bright eyes were blue, ruby-red lips parted.
The chief prince couldn’t read in the language, couldn’t decipher ‘The Harlot’ printed across the bottom.
Even still, he furrowed his brows at the celebrity with an inexplicable, sinking feeling in his chest, like one were looking at a butchered corpse, wondering if they were familiar to you and knowing the body was too destroyed to ever be able to tell.
All the other angels were nearby, two hundred — like the Watchers had been — with more instructed to come soon, all over the grass rather mundanely.
Because of the rurality of their landing spot, heavy darkness had masked the army of the apocalypse’s descent into something rather unspectacular.
Such darkness had been unnecessary, however; the angels were hidden to human eyes by the Holy Spirit — a work of God after the great flood — but Michael preferred coming across the least amount humans possible for now.
The angels, on their own winged horses, looked around with juvenile curiosity; very few times had the vast majority of angels seen the Earth after what occurred with the Watchers.
And Michael was already dreading to tell them that they’d really ended the world then, that this was a new Earth with new people, new weapons, new trees.
“Michael,” someone called.
The prince looked over his shoulder, saw the one who’d spoken — Gabriel, who looked ridiculous with his earnest, freckled face and silver armor over a black horse.
At his left, over a white horse, Raphael was similar, though he wore a helmet that obscured his head, and he had his staff strapped to his back in lieu of a sword.
Uriel wore the helmet as well, sitting perfectly still over a horse, similarly pale to the angel of healing’s. “What,” Michael began, “is it?”
“What now?” he asked as Raphael sighed, as if nervous on Gabriel’s behalf. “What do we do now?”
Upon return to the town that bordered Babylon, Satan was met by a truck with tinted windows.
He hadn’t planned to be picked up, not here by the airport, but there was a gun in his cassock.
He hadn’t hid his blonde hair, nor drowned his face in cosmetics yet.
On the jet, he’d begun to powder his face using his small, golden-rimmed vanity mirror before he thought he’d caught someone over his shoulder.
The Watcher Azazel, again — with a bleeding hole in his chest where his heart should be.
They’d spoken recently, not long before Satan had left Hell.
One of the things Azazel had said was: “Your hand shakes when you line your lips.”
The window of the car rolled down, and immediately, the devil scoffed.
“You love to infuriate me, don’t you? You want me to beat you and yell at you.
” Nonetheless, he strode to the truck, pulled the passenger’s seat open, slid onto the chair with his duffel bag, and sighed.
“So long as I touch you, you don’t mind if I slap you. ”
The demon Baal was in the driver’s seat, his horns not as large as they used to be but still thick, still undeniably of a beast. He was dressed entirely in black but in a coat too thick for the weather.
His hair had been cut short, though not to the extent of most human males either; it was still long enough for the devil to braid, as they both liked.
And as for Baal’s eyes, they were red in both the irises and the whites, everywhere — long ago, he’d had his eyes stabbed, and they’d never fully healed.
All over him — there were scars. He was like an old god, a golden calf.
“The gasoline,” Baal began, “you asked the spies for is all in the back. Some men tried to approach me.” Reaching for the gear, Baal yanked it into place to began driving.
“I didn’t kill them, but I was able to scare them off. Should I apologize now for being here?”
“Tell me why you came first,” said Satan, twisting to fold his arms over the center console and lean toward Baal.
“I missed you.” Baal hesitated, then he added, “And Moloch is causing trouble.”
“Ugh,” said Satan, and then, “You missed me,” to which Baal chuckled; it was warm, deep. “But what about Moloch? I’ve told you what to do about him and his followers. If you can’t manage these things, I’ll have Gemory take care of Hell for me instead. Do you want that?”
“The demons all miss you too,” replied Baal, glanced at Satan, and tilted his head.
“And they’re asking a lot of questions.” At that, the devil let out another frustrated breath.
“I just wanted to come warn you and to see you.” He returned his attention to the road as one of his hands reached over, claws gently tracing Satan’s cheekbone, down to his chin, grazing his mouth.
The same mouth he’d failed to nicely trace with a lipliner on the plane, before Azazel’s voice had echoed in his head.
“You will return soon,” ordered Satan but didn’t fight Baal’s touch. “And you’ll take care of Moloch and reassure all the demons that I’ll be back within a month.”
“As you wish,” said Baal, obedient, proper, earnest.
Michael finally answered Gabriel: “We must do what the prophecy says.”
Uriel said: “That’s impossible. There are names and places all over that story that aren’t true of any existing things in the present we’re in.
Are we supposed to take it all as metaphor?
” He barked out a laugh. “If it’s all metaphor, then whatever fulfills each seal of the apocalypse can be utterly arbitrary. How convenient.”
Before Michael could snap back, Raphael interjected, “The Earth is enormous. Maybe we should all head in different directions. We must find those who will be saved by God first, shouldn’t we?” To him, that was what mattered most. “We should avoid the bloodshed for now.”
Michael shook his head. “I’ll head south to where the anti-Christ is, and you all should remain in Babylon.
I’ll ensure he doesn’t interfere with the rest of you finding the good humans, and you three should take the army with you.
” He faced the other angels, then he said, “The Holy Spirit will cloak you from human eyes until you reveal yourself willingly,” before returning his gaze to the princes.
Raphael nodded, Gabriel looked away, and Uriel didn’t react at all.
“And,” Michael added more unsurely, “there is also the devil to take care of.”
“To return to God?” asked Uriel, but Michael didn’t answer before he made to leave.
Far away, Baal and the devil fucked in the car.
They lowered the front seats; Satan laid back; he allowed the demon duke, the regent of Hell, to kiss him all over.
He wondered briefly what any passerby who managed to peer through the tint and fog of the windows would see.
A beautiful priest with hair too long being devoured by a monster.
Baal held the devil’s thighs as he drank, as if it were wine or as if it were blood, from between the beautiful one’s legs.
Encouraging purrs slipped from between Satan’s lips, and he brought a hand to Baal’s curls to tenderly scratch at his scalp.
He held him just as tenderly as Baal went to move over him, mount him.
He kissed Satan, mouth still damp, and kissed deeper, and kissed softer.
The demon prayed to Satan, for mercy and for love.
And like God, the devil returned love as meager scraps off his dinner table.
Claws hugging Satan’s upper waist, prickling at his ribs.
His hold was overly delicate, like the demon was the priest and it was Eucharist in his hands.
Like fucking was sacrament. Rubbing his face against the devil’s neck, his face, pressing his mouth on his, parting it, asking for a tongue to snake inside.
It was fucking, rough yet slow. Satan grunted, then cried out breathlessly at the burning in his core struck again and again, rocking his hips back against Baal. They kissed, once more.
“I love you,” Baal whispered as he always did, “Lucifer.” He still called him that, at times.
Sometimes, when Baal said that he loved him, Satan’s lips parted, quite prepared to say something back.
It could have been that he’d developed the urge to say ‘I love you,’ recently, but why would that be?
It was too late for love. It may be the end of the world, and all would be destroyed soon, including love.
Yet, he kissed Baal slowly, like he really did enjoy kissing him.
Maybe he did. At the end of the world, maybe he did.
Satan said, “You know that Lucifer’s dead, don’t you?” But maybe Baal was well aware, and it was just a ghost he loved.