Chapter 27 #2
Dante watched Tadeo’s face — earnest, faithful, blinded by devotion.
Tadeo wouldn’t listen, couldn’t listen. His faith was too strong, and it was going to get people killed.
‘Then maybe I’ll be doing the right thing,’ the soldier thought, ‘if I do what they told me to do.’ He recalled falling into Hell with Tadeo, how Tadeo had healed from an uninjured hand he’d protected.
‘I need a phone.’ It was his mother or Tadeo, after all, and Tadeo was a murderer, a torturer. He was Dante’s torturer.
Azazel called out to Dina: “What is happening?” He knew not of the apocalypse. “Who are these men?” Then, he paused, sighed. “Is it… really you, Dina?”
The young angel turned toward the Watchers finally, looking into Azazel’s eyes the color of the Earth’s firmament, and a pang of hurt whipped him.
“Yes,” he said. ‘Dina, don’t stray your attention.
You must lead the anti-Christ home.’ “Yes, it’s me, Azazel.
” He moved to the new leader of the Watchers, inching closer, until he staggered over a rock on the pale sand.
“Old friend.” ‘Dina, stop.’ ‘I’m sorry, Apsinthos. ’
The features on Azazel’s face softened, then he closed the short distance between himself and Dina.
Spreading his arms, he welcomed Dina into them, and he felt the younger angel latch onto his torso in their tight embrace.
‘If nothing else,’ Azazel thought, ‘you still feel as I remembered. Warm. Small, even if you’re about the same size as me.
’ “I see,” he mused. “It is you, my Dina.” ‘I hope.’ With a clinking of the chain, Samyaza took a step closer, yet another noise building in his throat, but Azazel didn’t pay any mind to it, not now.
“I am,” Dina said. “I am. It’s me. Dina.
I have to tell you—” ‘Dina, do not.’ “The boy there… He is a monster, Azazel. He is going to destroy all of this Earth and all of Hell, but I thought to use him to free you before he has done away with all the living here. But I tried to stop him, Azazel. I did.” ‘You’re lying.
’ “And I’ve tried— I am trying… to lead him to good, without him knowing.
It hasn’t been easy, and I see that the stars are screaming.
I fear that I’ve failed. If that’s so, please know that I’ve done all that I could.
” A knot tightened in his chest, and he felt it pull so tight that every hem of his fear, his love, his self, began to tear.
“I never understood what happened to you, Azazel.” His eyes burned, his throat began to narrow in a hot itch. “I’m sorry.”
Azazel’s hand planted itself on Dina’s back, rubbed and rubbed.
For now, he trusted in him. “I,” Azazel started, “can’t begin to explain now, but I can tell you that when we Watchers made lives here on Earth, even if we were punished for it — I learned that there are some things you do not need to apologize for, Dina.
” Delicately, Azazel reached for the youngest angel’s cheek, then guided Dina’s frightened face to meet his patient gaze.
“I’m here now, brother. Let me help. We can all help. ”
‘Beautiful,’ said Apsinthos. ‘You are the greatest angel of them all, Dina.’
Dina sniffed, felt dampness in his eyes, as he smiled at Azazel gently and stepped back, away from him.
“We must go to the place where the boy is from.” ‘No one ever did pay any mind to me because I was created after Lucifer, the most perfect of us. No one knew why God would ever want to create another. I was bound to be thought a derivative, a lesser one. A lesser angel of beauty. A lesser Lucifer.’ Wiping at his face with a sleeve, the angel returned to facing Tadeo and told him, in his language, “We must return to your home, Tadeo.” ‘But maybe it was always I that was destined to be greater.’
The anti-Christ didn’t reply immediately, taking a second to look back at Dante, as if the soldier whom he’d tortured, who had every reason to lie and betray him, would tell him the truth.
But Dante was silent too, lips pressed tightly together.
“Hm.” Wind whistled past his ears, momentarily as loud as the screaming stars.
“Alright.” What other choice did he have?
To stay here? Even if Dina had just revealed himself to be a demon in disguise, Tadeo knew that the first thing he’d do is go home.
‘Probably.’ He didn’t know what he was supposed to make out of the fact that the angels he’d freed from Hell didn’t seem much like angels.
“We’ll go back. But what about them all? ”
“They’ll come with us,” Dina said. “They’ll be able to help.”
“Help with what?” Dante finally spoke again.
A flicker of irritation lit Dina’s eyes, but none of that was evident in his smooth response: “Help with… the situation.”
Kokabiel, suddenly, seizure-d against the ground more violently, and Danel drew a sharp breath, slapped both hands over his ears, and bared his teeth, a long, pitiful cry seeping through.
“Something is happening,” Danel gasped. “The stars are falling. They’re falling.
” And beside him, Kokabiel jammed his index into the sand, sharply drew lines into a pair of glyphs in an archaic angelic script.
“Trumpets soon,” Baraqiel read, hardly above a whisper.
The Watchers’ disarray turned Tadeo back to them, and he winced anxiously for what could be coming and for what he’d done.
He tried: “Angels!” The anti-Christ knew that they couldn’t understand him, but some Watchers — among them, Azazel, Samyaza, Baraqiel — nonetheless looked to him.
“We will go to my town, where all my people are. It may not be safe there, but I believe in my angel that it’s the proper place for us both.
He’s asked me to have faith, and I hope that you can all have faith in me, as well.
” Helplessly, he tried to look at Dina, but his eyes landed on Dante’s, which were oddly stern, almost disappointed.
In Tadeo’s chest, a rib might’ve unsettled, enough to jab at his heart in a way he didn’t quite understand.
Without the cue, however, Dina still translated, or at least Tadeo believed so.
The angel said: “The boy says that we must return to his home now. It is better to do as he says. You saw what he can turn into.” Then, Dina noticed Kokabiel and the markings that warned of the rapidly approaching apocalypse.
‘The revelation,’ thought Dina, ‘already here.’
Tadeo adjusted himself, then began climbing further onto the shore, ignoring his own nakedness, wondering where Dina had left his clothing.
“Let’s leave,” he called to all those Watchers he walked past, hearing the splashes behind him of the others beginning to move again.
There was one series of splashes much more frantic than the others, but Tadeo didn’t turn before the distinctive sound of Dante’s huffs sounded behind him.
Heavily, the camouflage green jacket, the one the soldier had worn on the day they met, that he had continued wearing despite his half-defection from the military, fell onto Tadeo’s shoulders.
Dante grumbled, “For fuck’s sake, you’re naked.”
Azazel was staring at the two men again as he told the Watchers: “Let us do as Dina recommends. Let us go to this boy’s home, and then I’ll see about us all escaping to be elsewhere.
” But he couldn’t help but feel that Dina hadn’t told them everything.
Memories of a naive, innocent Dina, with tears in his eyes and a veil over his hair, were engraved into the back of Azazel’s eyelids, and on the surface, they mirrored the angel that he saw, but a deep, unreasonable feeling screamed at him.
Azazel glanced at Samyaza, read the distrust in his eyes.
At times, Samyaza’s mental destruction, that had turned him into nothing more than instinct, was helpful; Samyaza no longer thought, just felt, just knew.
And he knew something now that Azazel was still turning over in his head.
Gently, he tugged on Samyaza’s leash, leading him to follow the two human men.
The other Watchers were quick to do so, as well, though Baraqiel had to reach for Kokabiel, who was growing limper, stiller, to carry.
Kokabiel could have been a dead angel, waiting to be set down in a grave.
Tadeo clutched at the jacket that really didn’t do enough to cover his groin, and he felt some warmth in his chest, confusingly so, and he coughed to let out the awkward tangle in his throat. “My clothes should be nearby, maybe with my horse.”
“We’re going to take that horse again?” Dante asked. “Can’t we just steal a motorcycle or something? A car?”
Snorting, Tadeo jabbed, “All your soldiers are a bunch of criminals.”
Dante laughed a bit at that. “Well, we need clothes for all the angels with us also.” Their rags were, indeed, rather revealing, but in comparison to Tadeo, they seemed modest. “We might as well rob a clothing store too.” Then, he nudged him.
“By the way, why did you come back for me? Genuinely, why?”
Tadeo glared, starting to annoy with this subject. “I told you that it was just the right thing to do.”
“Hmm.”
Tadeo felt his nose crinkle. “What is it? Why do you keep bringing this up?”
“No reason,” Dante answered before he decided to ask his own question. “How… long was I there, in Hell?”
Tadeo paused, as well. “Just a few days. Why? You don’t know?”
“Hm,” the soldier said again. “Didn’t feel that way. Do you have a phone? I need to call my mother.”
“Yes, but it’s my aunt’s and hardly works. Don’t lose it.” But just before Tadeo could try to remember if he’d left it with the horse, he murmured, “And be careful. If the soldiers find out you're alive, they’ll probably kill you for trying to help me, for defecting.”
‘I never defected.’ “Thanks.”
Azazel interlocked a hand with Samyaza’s, and then he whispered to him, “That boy up there must be the son of Satan.”