Chapter 43
The screams of the devil were not unlike the howls of agony in Hell.
However long Satan had attempted to differentiate himself from every other angel, demon, living thing — when he burned, he sounded as horrible and bloodcurdling, raw, as everything else.
The perfect favorite of God, humbled by suffering.
His shrieks were tinged with rasps, and through the flames, all those who saw Satan witnessed his skin reddening then growing wet, dark — flogged.
Mere shadow now, the devil sunk into the fire that swelled larger, larger.
Baal hurried to Satan, to the sphere of fire that had just consumed the devil, but Michael watched, his eyes cold.
Then the flames began shaping into something slimmer, taller.
A mouth opened wide in what was becoming a face, a head.
Limbs tore out of its sides, and hair fluttered down like the rays of the sun.
It was only once the screams stopped that the body settled, then turned downward — a giant flaming figure above the buildings, standing among the other stars.
All those there saw that it was Lucifer.
Lucifer, burning as bright as morning, as great as a god.
“Satan,” Michael breathed, lifting his body, reaching for his sword.
The sun-angel lowered the top half of his body slowly, his face the size of two or three angels standing over each other, and his expression was unreadable as great hands of fire curled against the cement of the street.
Ruins surrounded him, demons and angels surrounded him.
‘Like when I first saw you.’ And Michael’s heart clenched, but not with love.
Wrath — to know that even now, transformed into this enormous burning god — Satan still had the gift of beauty.
‘When you’re the most horrible, grotesque thing ever created. ’
In contrast, Baal stared adoringly, compelled to approach and kiss his god. ‘Sweet Satan.’ The one he’d fallen from paradise for. ‘There you are.’
Far away, the prince Uriel startled. Where had he, Uriel, been all this time?
Well, the same place he’d been during the war for Heaven and during the flood — a library.
This time, however, it was in ruins and in a language he didn’t know well.
A few humans had come in and out since he’d made refuge here, but they didn’t bother him, except to ask for reassurances that Uriel was ill-equipped to give.
And he’d been too busy, concerned with trying to decipher as many texts as he could before the world ended.
Really, it was the first time he’d delved so deeply into humanity’s thoughts.
Some were interesting; ‘I’ll only give them that.
’ But he found himself lingering on a few romance novels, then some old folk tale collections.
Staring at the illustration of a princess and her beloved, he’d felt his heart turn.
‘Dina had loved these more than anything.’ And he’d never bothered to ask why, to really understand.
‘But I understand it now, Dina. I do.’ His face had warmed at the poetry.
‘If I’d let myself listen to you, or let myself feel anything for you, maybe none of this would have happened.
And maybe I would have earlier realized what is so obvious now: I haven’t loved.
For billions of years, I haven’t loved. I only thought that I did.
Kimah must have known this, too. One day, I had grown to love grieving him, rather than loving him. ’
Uriel knew now that he deserved all of Kimah’s resentment, and he knew he deserved Dina’s rage.
But when he heard a rumble outside, and screams, Uriel looked across the quiet library with shelves toppled to the ground, flooding the tiles with pages.
Over the heads of huddled humans, he saw a window.
And he breathed out shakily. ‘Kimah,’ Uriel thought, then he hurried to cross the building, toward the exit — every human scattering out of his way.
Uriel peered out to examine what he’d seen through the glass.
Some streets down, a figure of fire loomed over the buildings.
At his head, a star like a halo. The same star that had called itself Kimah before Uriel abandoned the war.
However, lifting his gaze even higher, Uriel noticed a swarm.
Angels, but not armored. The Watchers, hesitating among the clouds.
And in that same tendon of the sky, Kokabiel stopped suddenly, all the Watchers above, not quite to the empty void of space above.
‘Kimah,’ he thought too. Craning his neck back, a thousand voices suddenly rushed at Kokabiel, but they all said the same thing.
‘Kimah.’ He whispered, “Wait,” and when no one heard him, he had to shout, “All of you!” It was so urgent, coherent, that it almost didn’t sound like Kokabiel quite at all.
The lucidity turned Baraqiel’s head first, of course, and it was only through seeing him that Kokabiel was able to grit out —“The stars— Wait—”
Holding Samyaza’s hand, Azazel stopped as well, turned his head, fluttered his wings to remain in place.
“You told us that the stars made room for us, and the Earth is a wasteland.” He nodded his head at Rosier, on Danel’s back, and Armoni, fluttering clipped wings and latching onto Samyaza.
“We shouldn’t put ourselves in the Leviathan’s way. ”
“Then don’t,” Kokabiel suddenly giggled, “but I think I will.”
Meanwhile, Dina was staring up at the beast of Lucifer, eyes wide, breath harshly coming in and out of his mouth. He stepped back just as Apsinthos hissed, ‘Kimah has given his body to Satan—’ Then, Apsinthos addressed him: ‘Kimah! It’s too late to intervene with the end times.’
‘It’s not my body,’ Kimah replied. ‘I’m split among trillions of stars. Like you, Apsinthos. I have no single body left. All I’ve given him is fire.’ And from fire, came flesh.
For Satan: it was liberation. Liberation — at last — from a body.
How long had it been since the devil had felt this?
Lifetimes. His eyes saw God, though he’d refused to see Him at the Throne.
He saw Him now, better than he ever had.
And when he saw Him, a slow, churning wrath began to build within.
Satan grunted, and when he turned to Apsinthos, the anger only swelled until all the fire that composed him scorched his vision.
But the screech of the Leviathan was near. The end was near.
Michael only watched, then reached to touch Lupina’s arm, trying to urge her to take a step back, silently asking her to take Joana’s body somewhere, too.
‘Everything is going to end now.’ Joana’s love should spend her last seconds not knowing that, in a safer place, away from this.
Lupina nodded, then went to wheel Tadeo's mother away with them, and Michael shakily stood.
His armor might protect him from the flames, but his sword would be useless against it, against him, Satan. ‘How to kill a star?’ Michael wondered.
“I know,” Kokabiel whispered now to Baraqiel, “how to kill a star.” In response, Baraqiel furrowed his brow, almost in irritation, and the angel of the star’s mouth twitched.
‘You are never going to forgive me?’ he thought.
‘You are never going to forgive me.’ All he’d done was force Baraqiel to sleep with a woman; all he’d done was sleep with several humans right in front of him.
“Aha,” he laughed breathlessly. “I still love you,” he said plainly, “Bara.” ‘The last thing I’ll love,’ he promised.
‘First thing I loved.’ “Don’t stop me,” Kokabiel said next, and the fallen angel of light tilted his head.
“I know it’s against your nature, but you must let me burn out. ”
Dina stumbled backward, heart a hammer against his ribs, then told Apsinthos, ‘We’re done here, aren’t we? We need to leave. They want to destroy you. I love you. I don’t want you to be hurt.’
‘This is just one body of many,’ Apsinthos reassured, ‘though one of the few I have complete control over. Even if they destroy me, it will change nothing.’ Even still, the star obeyed, creeping backward and higher.
Satan had just lowered himself onto the ground, on his hands and feet like an animal.
Then, his crawl began fast; he plunged through everything on the road — the toppled vehicles, the debris.
Closer and closer, he sped toward Apsinthos, but before he could reach him, the Leviathan’s shrieks sounded again.
Turning his head, eyes wide and burning like dual suns, Satan caught the sea serpent just as it bulleted in his direction from its hiding place behind houses on another street.
It threw itself against the devil, and together, they crashed into a building and an abandoned tank.
Satan raised a blazing arm, scratched it against the head of the Leviathan, and his mouth went ajar with light and a shout of fury.
Unlike Satan’s body, a sword, Michael knew, could cut through the sea monster.
But, again, he didn’t move. Even after Lupina had made it elsewhere, the weight of Joana’s corpse lingered.
‘I did this for you.’ But she was dead. And God had said it would all be over after the apocalypse; Michael would be dead, free from every painful second of living.
He could see, from the corner of his eye, angels.
But all of the world was muffled. He was hearing Joana still.
His legs were rooted to the Earth she loved so much, that she would have rejected Heaven a thousand times for.