Chapter 32
The Watchers waited for Dina to leave, as well.
When Kimah revealed himself, Uriel had stumbled back, then turned and fled like a human with wide-eyed terror over his face; he left his ancient lover in the sky, furious, flaring.
And then Dina had hastily healed many of the Watchers, promising to return soon, saying he had to see someone but flying up toward the other stars.
Azazel, who refused to have his heart wound closed, had watched him warily, carefully.
‘You’re not how I remember,’ he’d thought for what seemed the hundredth time.
‘We don’t age, but you feel larger in my arms, like you’ve grown larger than yourself. ’
When a garbage bin nearby fell on its side, he and the other Watchers jerked their heads in the direction.
Quick, Azazel gripped the chain that held Samyaza’s collar, just managing to keep him from violently lunging at a group of watching teenagers.
They screamed at this and at all the other Watchers who growled and flared their wings, before twisting to scurry away.
After this, Azazel raised his hand, and the Watchers slowly settled, wings folding back, snarls fading, but their eyes still wild, and he realized that they’d have to move somewhere more private before he could deal with the matter at hand.
With Kimah no longer twisting his tongue, Kokabiel giggled, grinning sleazily at the humans, then at the Watchers, then lingering his gleeful gaze on Baraqiel.
Not much of the town had been targeted by strikes, but this hadn’t stopped hundreds, thousands, of people from scrambling out of the area with nothing but what they could carry or fit in their cars.
The neighborhood that Azazel walked them towards seemed particularly empty, and so he saw one larger home, gestured for his followers to come in with him, and brought them into its yard.
Azazel wasn’t able to keep his curiosity at bay, however; he reached to touch every wall, every column, every gate.
When he was on Earth, the humans had primarily lived in huts; he’d quite liked them.
They were warm, simple. His human husband, Eitan, had fucked him on the floor of his hut, and Azazel had enjoyed it until he hadn’t.
Mindlessly, Azazel twirled Samyaza’s chain and stepped into where there was dirt, pepper plants, an orange tree, and stray tile leading into a two-story home with a flat roof.
“Kokabiel,” Azazel called as the others did as he had done — touch everything, tilting their heads at every sound — and filled the yard. “Explain.”
“Ah?” Kokabiel walked with a bit of a sway, like he were moving to a rhythm solely in his head, but went to grab Baraqiel’s arm, “Bara, you’re ignoring me. Why is that?” The fallen angel of light in question tensed and looked away, his jaw set.
“Kokabiel,” Azazel called again, firmer, and the other Watchers inched away to provide Kokabiel some distance from everyone except the Baraqiel he refused to let go of.
“Tell us what that was. What have you been hiding?” When the fallen angel of the stars continued staring at Baraqiel, Azazel furrowed his brow, then said, “Baraqiel, tell him to answer.”
“I thought,” Baraqiel whispered instead, “I could forgive you for what you did.” Like a kitten, Kokabiel tilted his head, blinked wide, innocent eyes.
“But you haven’t changed.” He tore his arm away, breathed unsteady, and then he grunted, “Answer him, Kokabiel.” When Kokabiel began to speak, Baraqiel snapped, “Answer the questions, Kokabiel!”
Staring, then huffing, Kokabiel pursed his lips before turning to Azazel.
“The star Kimah,” he answered, utterly disinterested.
“Kimah! That’s who that was. I speak to stars, Azazel.
Didn’t you know? I’m the angel of the stars.
I’m their angel, and I speak for them. But they all come to me at once.
They all pull my tongue in every direction.
Today, today, all the others let Kimah alone use my mouth.
And that is all. What else do I say? I just do as they tell me.
” He looked at Baraqiel again, then he giggled, “Bara, do you hear that?” The angel of light twitched angrily. “I’m answering. Like you told me.”
Azazel continued: “There’s more.” And he felt Samyaza press up behind him, face coming over Azazel’s shoulder, chin coming to rest there. “All the time we were chained, you wrote riddles on the ground.”
“Riddles!” Kokabiel wheezed at that. “I don’t write riddles!
I just speak! Not all that you don’t understand is a riddle!
I’ve told you of boxes that sing, that speak, and I told you of great silver birds that spit fire.
I told you of history. Man, woman, royalties, killings.
You didn’t understand, but I saw it all.
The stars showed it to me. While all of you rot, I watched how men destroy themselves and each other.
I watched prophecies of the end seep from the lips of ancients.
I watched a Nazarene man who said he was the Son of God gurgle on his own blood to death. ”
“Son… of God?” Azazel whispered.
“What do you mean by that?” Danel demanded. He stood onto his feet, moved toward Azazel’s side, the one not populated by Samyaza, like a guard. “What do you mean son?”
But Kokabiel was nudging Baraqiel again, saying, “Bara, Bara, are you listening? You won’t even look at me. Should I grovel? I can get on my knees, Bara. Is that what you want?”
Danel barked: “Kokabiel, for fuck’s sake! Answer the damn questions!”
At that, Kokabiel sighed dramatically, kicked the ground childishly, and said: “God put His seed in a girl! Hypocrite God! Who told us not to ever have children. But He had His own, His very own. And so that girl bore Him a man! And then he died strung up on slabs of wood! What else is there to say? The devil was there. He met the Son of God. What else is there to say?” The Watchers, however, stared with such shock that they were silent, paralyzed down to their very blood; their sin, that they had suffered more than anything for, had been committed by the God that’d ordered their imprisonment.
And, Azazel knew, the devil had committed it as well — God and Lucifer, the torturers of the Watchers, the greatest hypocrites of all.
“It was… not only the Lord who had a child.” He’d always wondered why Satan had grown desperate one day, grabbing Azazel, commanding him in a frantic whisper to tell him how to do it, how to have a winged child, how to not bear an abomination.
“The devil.” Pleading, panicking, all of Satan’s perfect poise falling apart between Azazel’s fingertips — all for a child, any child.
‘I’ll do whatever I must do,’ Satan had whispered hoarsely.
‘I’ll have Samyaza whipped again if you don’t tell me.
If I don’t succeed, you and your Watchers will suffer.
’ Azazel’s voice came hollow: “And I told him. I told Satan how to have a child, a beautiful one, a winged one like an angel.” Samyaza touched Azazel’s hand, a moment of lucidity.
“I told him because it happened to me. I had a child that wasn’t monstrous like all of yours. ”
Elsewhere, Dina landed. His feet fell into a river that seemed a touch too red, and he walked beneath a bridge.
At one side of him, there wasn’t a soul except for a few stray pieces of garbage; on his other side, there were troops, tanks, smaller armored vehicles.
He ignored it all, walking slow toward a sphere that was much lower than the rest of the stars, but it was dribbling its blood of fire, boiling the river water below.
“Apsinthos,” the angel whispered in wonder.
A smile trickled along his mouth, and his eyes squinted in joy, and his body seized with love and warmth.
The golden sphere before him wasn’t perfect, hardly heavenly, gurgling and churning its own body. ‘Dina.’ He dwarfed the little angel, about half the length of the bridge but with tendrils of fire curling out from him like wind-blown hair.
Stopping, the angel looked up at Apsinthos with wide eyes that reflected all the light before him.
‘You’ve come to Earth.’ But then he remembered Uriel, of course, and grimaced.
‘Apsinthos, Kokabiel began speaking in the voice of a star, and then the star revealed itself. His name, I think, was Kimah. Who was that?’ The name had been in Uriel’s writings, but sparsely; Dina remembered that he’d been blind, that he had spoke to God on behalf of all the other angels.
Somewhere, he had read the name ‘Uri-Kimah.’
‘It’s good to see you close to me once more, Dina,’ replied Apsinthos, ‘but you shouldn’t have left the Watchers.
You’re meant to encourage them to destroy the world.
They already hold the desire, my angel. You must only guide them to Babylon, Satan’s beloved empire of transgressions and sickness.
’ When the young angel frowned, the star finally said, ‘As for Uri, I cannot tell you, but you know of his obsession with us stars. He may be able to tell you if you ask, but it’s not of great importance.
Uriel knows little. Angel of wisdom without wisdom. Return to Azazel, my dear Dina.’
Dina couldn’t quell the cold flames in his heart. ‘I think that— I think that I’ll look for Uri after I speak to the Watchers.’
Firmer — ‘You must know your duty, Dina.’
And the angel swallowed thickly, flinching, before he said, ‘I will end the world, Apsinthos. I promised it, and I know that I want it. But I will look for Uri. And he will understand once I tell him. He is wise. He is.’
‘Remember why we’re doing this. For the good of God and for love. I’ve come to this wretched Earth to be with you before and after the end.’