Chapter 42 #3
“Yes,” Satan whispered tightly. It was true that Dina was up ahead, but there were bodies here too.
One body in particular, laying limp in the arms of a young woman who was frozen, chest barely rising with gasps.
The corpse must’ve died just hours earlier.
If it weren’t for all the open wounds, the blood on her clothing — Joana could have passed as sleeping.
With her curls, her complexion, Satan saw her so much like Michael, the same as he had when he first noticed her beside the prince.
It’d filled him with scorn then, but now there was a flicker of recognition, of pain.
Above, there was the whip of a breeze, an angel gliding down fast. Michael — he stumbled, lifting his hands to his head, grabbing his helmet, tossing it.
“Joana—” left his mouth. “Joana!” The woman holding the corpse looked up slowly, her eyes distant, mascara forming streaks of black down her face, ash a coat that grayed her skin.
“Joana.” He lifted his hands, as if to grab her, but they froze in the air even when Lupina nudged her body toward the archangel weakly.
“She told me about you,” said Lupina, voice raw and scratched. “Everything. She always used to talk to me about you. I didn’t believe her for a long time—” She laughed, her voice hitching and breaking. “She said that you were an angel. That you tried to save her. She really loved you.”
“No,” Michael whispered in response, shaking his head, a sharp breath pulling into his mouth.
“No, no, no, no—” His chest was rising, falling.
All the weight of time was falling over him now, folding down onto everything he saw.
He reached, touched her face, and a sob wrecked through him.
‘Poor Joana. My poor Joana. My poor child.’ He didn’t care anymore to deny it.
‘God, kill me. Kill me now for what I’ve done.
I didn’t do enough for her. Joana.’ She looked so small dead, so young; she looked like when they’d first met.
A little girl who stared at an angel without fear, who knew things far scarier, who’d reached for him when he tried to walk away for the first time.
“Angels killed her,” Lupina said distantly. “They weren’t armored like you.”
“The Watchers,” came Satan’s voice from behind, and Michael felt his blood run cold.
Slow, he turned his head, saw the devil climbing down Baal’s horse, his expression like stone.
“Azazel wanted revenge.” One step forward, then another, another.
“You killed his child, Michael. You killed all of their children.”
“How did,” fell from Michael’s mouth hoarsely, “they know about her?”
Satan met his eyes. “I told them.”
Chest tight, heart stopped. Michael’s hands trembled, clenched into fists.
Red, like blood, leaking into the edges of his sight.
His whole body — growing a tremor of rage.
He needed, more than anything, to lunge forward, to rip Satan’s throat out.
But he couldn't move. Couldn't even breathe.
He could only stare at the devil who'd killed his daughter.
“What,” Michael whispered, “did you say?”
Dina lifted his head, then climbed onto his feet.
They had been ignoring him, he realized, something he should be used to.
However, when his gaze landed on Satan, anger lashed inside of him.
The fallen rebel angel, still so beautiful, so perfect.
Eyes narrowed, the young angel stepped forward, and he called Satan’s attention.
“You’re looking,” Dina said, “for the anti-Christ. But he’s gone. The Leviathan cast the boy down.”
Hesitating, Satan turned his face away from Michael. He answered in monotone, “You're lying.” Thousands of years, the devil hadn’t failed. He had maintained Babylons, he had killed every anti-Christ. He had rot the world in human evil to maintain it. “Tell me where he is.”
“Look at me,” Michael interjected, rage shaking his voice. “Lucifer.” He screamed “Look at me!”
The devil refused.
“Look at her!” His voice broke, stripped raw and bleeding.
“The Lord rebuke you! You’re responsible for all of this.
For evil, for death, for pain. I will burn you myself for the rest of eternity.
I don't care if I must destroy my own hands to hold you under the flames.
I want every second of the burn to feel like the first. I want you to realize God was right.
He was always right. You're a heartless beast. You're a monster. You deserved everything God ever did to you!”
A rage twisted in deep, so guttural that Satan almost choked.
His entire body twitched hot, and a snarl built in the back of his throat.
But hissing interrupted. He’d thought, initially, it was another angel flying downward, but then he heard Baal shout for him to move, and he felt heat at his back, and he watched his shadow start to trail far from him.
Slow, Satan inhaled, body tensing. Rigid, he turned his face, still hearing Baal’s shouts though he could no longer see him, just sense his movement from the distant thumps of the horse.
A star, right before him, as there was a star right behind Dina.
It was of the same grotesqueness and fire as Apsinthos, and it held hundreds of mouths, but it held no eyes.
“Satan!” Baal, trying to make his way around the star on the horse, then abandoning it, but he wasn’t quick enough.
The light, the star, swallowed him.