Chapter 29 #3
Satan, weakly, snorted. “Did it take that human girl saying it for you to connect everything, Michael?” He grinned, then chuckled. “Who is she? Were you so jealous of me having a child that you couldn’t stop yourself from looking for one of your own?”
Tightly — “She is not my child.”
“She looks at you like a father.”
“Be silent,” Michael snarled. “You are the jealous one. You saw that God had a son, and you could not live knowing He is great and you are not. You bore a monster, devil. Even after seeing what the Watchers had done, you thought yourself different. You thought yourself not an angel.” ‘I remember grabbing Azazel, demanding to know what made him different, why his child was beautiful and why mine would not take.’ “Is this what you wanted? You have your child now, and see how you must kill it to maintain your wicked world? It is because of your vanity, your foolishness.”
“I asked you,” Satan said, humor falling away, tone turning harsh, “where I am.” His eyes had narrowed; his lips had pressed finer.
And the chief prince hesitated, careful, staring.
“You’re in barracks.” Nodding his head at the walls, he added, “Where all the angels’ weaponry is, where the army rests.
It was built for the flood. Do you remember the flood, Satan?
If you do, then why did you do what you did?
Don’t you remember the destruction of the Earth, all the blood on your hands—”
“Our hands,” Satan, sharply, interjected. “Do you remember Azazel and his child, Michael? Do you remember how you skewered it, Michael? It wasn’t me who did. It was you. It was your sword. He was never right after that happened, Michael. You broke him. You break so many angels.”
Michael breathed out slow. “I gave you what you wanted after that, devil. I stood before God and negotiated your Hell, and I showed you mercy. I have shown you mercy since before you became the devil, but you reject salvation, time and time again. And you speak of the death of Azazel’s child to mock me, but I saw the horror in your eyes, Satan.
I know that you are not the stone that you pretend to be.
Every word you say, every face you make, is pure lie.
” He leaned himself closer, and his breath was hot.
“You are not the God that you act like you are. You were an angel, and you are the husk of one now. But the Lord has told me that the apocalypse will bring us restoration, and that to end all wars, we must return to the time before the very first. You will be done away with forever, Satan, as if you never existed. It will all be like before.” Michael thought of Joana, of telling her that they could never return to the time before the war.
Satan was quiet for a second, then he tilted his head, how a predator might examine a frightened rabbit in a trap. “And Lucifer will return, beautiful and worshiping, to be God’s bride.” Michael tensed. “You will watch it happen? You’ll listen to Him fuck me how you listen to Baal do it, too?”
“It is a union,” said Michael, “of the perfect angel to God. Only you would read His prophecies to mean sins of flesh.”
“Tell me then,” answered Satan, “if not listen to your Father fuck him, then what will you do with Lucifer once he’s been resurrected, Michael?
” The devil set his feet more firmly over the ground, tried to push himself forward so that he could spit onto Michael’s face with every word.
“Will you tell him that his beauty is a curse to be ashamed of? Will you never teach him to fight? Will you watch Lucifer remain in Eden with God forever?” Digging his nails into the chains that upheld him, Satan heard the voice of the Lord still echoing in his skull, his taunting that the devil’s rebellion had amounted to nothing.
And he thought of the past thousands of years, all his lives, all his identities, all the worlds he’d ruled in this endless war.
“Bring Lucifer back. Do it a thousand times.” ‘The Lord told me that He made me a hundred million times before my feet touched Heaven. He’s going to do it again.
Was God telling me, in that moment, that He will destroy me and begin again?
Did it all already end? How many times has it all ended?
’ Satan, more hushed now, said: “You can never keep Lucifer from falling.” ‘It will happen, over and over. God and His devil, chasing each other in a tempest.’
Michael, just as quietly, whispered, “I know how to stop him from ever falling again.”
Impatient now, Satan said: “It was your fault.”
“It was my fault.” Michael’s affirmation made the devil freeze, note the archangel’s wide, empty eyes and his own pretty reflection in them. “Once Lucifer is resurrected, he will never meet me.”
“Never,” Satan echoed, thinking of how much of eternity as an angel he’d had without the chief prince in his life, how routine, how mundane all of existence had been.
And how it’d felt like fate, like the very first prophecy, for them to meet, in a garden, how Lucifer always met God in a garden.
There is no eternity where they don’t meet — Michael and Lucifer.
“You,” the devil said more carefully. “You cannot kill yourself, Michael.”
“After the flood, after the covenant of Hell that I made with God for you — He burned me for seven days, Satan.” Michael’s gaze flared, as if the fires would burst out from his memory.
“And the Lord and I made the promise. He would do it Himself — kill me after Lucifer is returned.” In Satan’s heart, something shifted out of place, and a breath fell out of his mouth, heavy.
A sudden coldness trickled along his stomach, his limbs, and a tightness.
Instinctive — the shock of confusion, of anger. “We will both be dead, Satan.”
‘It’s you who is arrogant, who is so self-obsessed.
’ Satan dug his nails into the chains again.
‘You think it’s all because of you. You think everything is about you.
You think you caused Lucifer to fall. He fell because he wanted to.
He fell because of who he was and who God was.
It had nothing to do with a weak archangel. ’
“You slept for days,” Michael finally answered the original question, voice unsteady, almost trembling.
“Gabriel and Raphael said not to bind you, but they answer to me. And the two of them have already returned to the Earth with the rest of God’s army, to anoint all the ones that will be saved.
I will join them, soon, to end all things.
” He, suddenly, took the devil’s chin with one hand.
“Does the devil still eat?” Satan let out a baffled, mocking laugh.
“Can he eat something that isn’t the beating heart of a man?
” His other hand lifted the apple that Satan had forgotten Michael held and, seconds later, the skin of it was pressing to his soft, pink lips. “Eat this.”
Satan stared at Michael, his eyelids half-fallen. “No.”
“You won’t have anything else to eat. You’ll grow weaker.”
But the devil was still mulling over the revelation — Michael’s final deed, his sacrifice. ‘You can’t imagine a life in which you resist me, resist having me bear sin for you. You think the only way to save Lucifer is to die. You think this can only end if you kill us both.’
The chains rattled as Satan dragged his tongue along the skin, then he sunk in his teeth.
‘You know you have lost. You have failed your Father. You couldn’t live for Him, so now you will die for Him.
But, even now, you can’t kill the desire in you for me eating out of your hand.
’ Satan chewed, smacking his lips as he did, staring up at the prince’s darkened eyes.
‘I used to dream of this too, Michael.’ He took another bite, crunched the fruit to squelch between his teeth, and swallowed, as dribbles of juice spilled down Michael’s armored fingers.
Tilting closer, Satan brought his tongue there, tapped the angel’s cold gauntlet, then traced up to the tip.
‘When I was young, I’d dream of kneeling in the flowers and sucking the nectar out of a flower you’d hold to my lips. ’
“It must hurt,” Satan said, “for the Beast to carry your Lucifer’s face.” Michael’s brow twitched, and his hand beneath Satan’s chin went to grip at his blonde locks. “You have such a hurt look in your eyes, angel.”
“He can be saved.”
“What if I told you I can feel him, Michael? I can feel what’s left of Lucifer?
He told me all about you. You were so proud once, and you were so kind.
You fought the other angels, and they cheered for you.
” Michael’s cheeks warmed in a soft red; ‘Oh, how easy you are.’ “How couldn’t I fall in love with you too? ”
“Stop talking, devil,” said Michael, pressing the apple deeper like he could make Satan choke on it. Indeed, a part of it forced its way into the devil’s mouth, brushing against the roof of his mouth, making him gag, lurch forward. The muffled moan made the saint, again, twitch.
“He doesn’t,” Satan managed, hoarse through the choking, “want you dead.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“But you like to hear it, don’t you? You like to hear that he loves you, Michael.
He loves you more than anything, and you’re breaking his heart.
He misses your kisses. He misses your touch.
He misses dreaming of sinning with you—” Satan cut himself off with a hitch of his breath when Michael dropped the fruit, surged forward, took Satan’s face in his cold hands, tilted his face up to his, and breathed a finger-width from the devil’s mouth.
His armor pressed against Satan’s tunic, and his knee had come in between the devil’s legs.