Chapter 45
The chief prince fell to his knees. ‘A bed of flowers. Eden. God, our Father.’ Those had been the devil’s thoughts, inside of Michael.
That had been the devil’s pain, lodged deep and gutting him open to spill wickedness out of his own body.
Yet Satan was gone now, dead like Joana, dragged enormous and bright into a wound in the Earth.
With a glance behind him, Michael saw streaks of redness where she’d been, disappearing around a corner of a toppled building.
Where were all the humans? Gone? Had Christ returned and raised them to Heaven?
Had the second coming of the Son come and gone?
Maybe they had all left, and God had chosen for Michael to remain on Earth to rot alone.
But he was not alone; almost, he didn’t hear the steps coming up behind him.
He almost didn’t feel when talons grabbed Michael by the back of his neck, wrenched him onto his armored feet.
Then, with a growl, Baal shoved the prince, spat at his face, “I’ll fucking kill you.
” Throaty, stuttering in all its rage. “I'll fucking kill you.” Over and over.
“Baal,” Michael said, slowly, wondering if he’d ever addressed him like this, “it was Satan who wanted to come here, who thought himself capable of fighting stars and God—”
“Fuck you,” said Baal, then pushed him once more, and the saint took just another step back, taking the blow. “All of this is because of you, because he made the mistake of loving you. And you fucked it all up. You were a coward. You cut his wings off without being asked to. You’re worse than God—”
Immediately, Michael yelled out to cut him off, threw himself forward to shove the other back — but Baal beat his wings to stop the momentum and keep himself from crashing into anything behind him.
Even still, the regent of Hell wheezed, a splatter of blood left his mouth.
Michael’s mere shove had been strong enough to break bones, muscle.
Nearby, Dina lay with his mouth still mangled and, twitching, turned his head slowly to eye Apsinthos, now a dim-star, half-shriveled. ‘Apsinthos,’ he thought desperately. ‘Dear Apsinthos. Forgive me. I love you. Forgive me. This body of yours is hurt. We’re both hurt.’
‘Dina,’ came Apsinthos’ rumbling voice soon after. ‘Don’t listen to them.’ The angel was about to ask who, but it wasn’t long before a choir of beating wings came toward him.
“Dina!” Azazel called a second later. “Stop this. Now.” Arms came around Dina next, around his throat in a headlock. Frantically, he reached to claw at the arms just as Samyaza’s grunt sounded by his ear. “Dina— Look at me!”
But Dina refused, eyes wide, panicked, searching for Apsinthos even when a few other Watchers dropped into the street before him, obstructing his view of the great star.
He tried to speak, but all it did was release a gurgling noise as blood splattered down his mangled mouth.
“Hhgh,” was all he could manage, and so he kicked and continued to scratch.
‘Apsinthos, is it over? Can it be over?’
Armoni stumbled over, coming to stand beside Azazel, and he said, “Dina, you’re being used.”
‘I don’t care,’ Dina was crying out in his head, ‘I want to be used. I want to be manipulated. I would do anything to be wanted enough to hurt and use.’ Azazel and Armoni continued to shout at him to open his eyes, but Dina’s were wide open.
If he could shriek, he’d say: ‘None of you understand, none of you could ever understand.’ He continued to look for him, Apsinthos, in desperation.
It couldn’t have all been for nothing. He had to end all of the world now more than ever.
It was all so terrible. His heart hurt so terribly.
The pit of his stomach twisted so tight he thought he’d rip inside.
On a rooftop, Uriel still stood, watching. Though he maintained his gaze on Dina, thrashing and gurgling on his blood, he heard Baal and Michael’s brawl continue.
“He’s gone!” Baal was snarling, but his voice cracked and broke. “Lucifer is gone now because of you! I don’t care what happens to me. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you over and over for the rest of eternity.”
Michael breathed out, “There’s nothing I could have done—” His sword finally slipped from his hands, clanged to the ground.
“You didn’t even try!” And when Baal tackled Michael, the saint didn’t try to dodge.
He allowed the demon to ram him into the side of a car, then reach for his helmet and tear it off of him to fling far from them.
Michael even raised his hand to stop any demon or stray angel from intervening, and he looked at Baal’s panting face — shuttering between anger and a childish sadness.
It made the demon hesitate for a second, but his hand still curled into a fist. He punched Michael’s face hard, using his other hand to keep him pressed against the car, then he struck the chief prince again, again.
‘Lucifer.’ Fiery and enormous and brilliant Lucifer, tempting anyone to fall to their knees.
To pray. ‘I spent every day since the fall telling myself I’d killed you.
’ He coughed out blood, his skin swelling and darkening with each punch.
‘God told me that you were dead. I believed Him because I wanted that lie. It was easier to believe you dead than changed.’ There should be rage in Michael, wrath at how he had been misled by the Lord, but his chest ached raw.
Instead, such guilt flooded him that it was as if he’d committed the horrible evil on Lucifer’s body.
‘I am responsible.’ This was his sin, as much as God’s.
Michael had done nothing. ‘I saw the hollowed corpse of the angel I loved, and I kissed his limp, tortured body. I didn’t listen to you.
I didn’t trust you.’ Satan had rebelled, violently, horrifically; Michael had fought him down.
‘I broke you, too. I handed you to Him.’ He’d worshiped God, all that He had done. He’d worshiped a rape.
Baal dropped his fist, and his eyes were reddened, wet beads slipping down his scarred face, but then he threw Michael aside, to the ground by his abandoned sword.
Over the clang of armor, Baal said, “You’ll take his place in Hell.
” Gasping, trembling, eyes wide and frantic.
“I’ll save him, and I’ll have you burn in his place. ”
Michael wanted to beg, ‘Do it, please,’ but he heard the devil in his head, whispering, ‘You God-damned martyr,’ still trying to sacrifice himself instead of facing what he’d done. “Baal—” but he couldn’t force any other words out.
Sighing, Uriel had realized that no one was going to finish the job with Apsinthos, and so he called, ‘Kimah.’ And he met silence.
‘I know that you listen.’ Anxious crinkling in his chest, the prince tilted his face to see a great sphere of a thousand mouths, descending slow to hover beside him.
Kimah, who’d offered some of his fire to Satan before he’d been defeated.
‘You’re beautiful,’ Uriel said, then smiled sadly.
It hurt his cheeks to do it; he’d not smiled for billions of years, except for rare moments with Dina, when he wouldn’t be able to smother his fondness, his pity, in private.
‘I think that I understand now why you’ve come to hate me.
Everything that I thought I did for you, I did for me.
And I bowed to the Lord who did this to you.
’ Swallowing hard. ‘I’m not asking for you to forgive me. ’
‘I cannot,’ said Kimah, ‘absolve you.’
‘I’m not looking for you to absolve me,’ Uriel said, but a softer joy continued tugging at his lips; he’d long become so unfamiliar to happiness. ‘I’m asking for you to help me.’
‘You saw what happened to Kokabiel.’
‘I did.’
‘It won’t kill him. Apsinthos cannot be killed. There are pieces of him scattered across a trillion stars.’
‘I’m doing it for Dina,’ confessed Uriel, turning back to the youngest, most beautiful angel.
‘Look at him. He’s fallen so deep into the lies of that star that he can’t remember who he is.
But I know what that is like, Kimah — to follow hate out of hopelessness.
Even if it’s only temporary, to break him out of the spell — Dina must watch this star die.
’ If Lucifer had killed God during the war for Heaven, even if just for a moment — Uriel might have run away with him.
Maybe that was wishful thinking. Angel of hindsight.
Kimah said: ‘I don’t want to destroy you.’
‘Nothing can ever be destroyed. I won’t really be gone, Kimah. I will be with you, even if you can’t hear me. For an eternity — if you can remember — I couldn’t speak, but I was still with you’
‘I might have grown to despise you,’ Kimah replied, ‘but I never stopped loving you either, Uri.’ Then he approached.
On the street, Dina was still writhing, refusing every word that all those around him tried to offer.
It wasn’t until he was suddenly punched hard against his stomach that he jolted, looked up.
Azazel and Armoni were still standing before him, but it was Baraqiel who’d just driven his fist into Dina’s abdomen, then another time.
Dina spluttered out more blood before Azazel quickly put a hand on Baraqiel, telling him to stop.
But the mournful angel of light struck harder before other Watchers had to grapple and pull him back.
It hadn’t helped; Dina just continued kicking, banging both his arms against Samyaza’s hold in hysteria.
In every direction, he whipped his head around, only incidentally catching a figure in a nearby roof walking toward a star.
First, he believed it was just one of the demons, but when he looked back, he noticed their stern gaze. Familiar. ‘Uriel?’
Michael watched brightness bloom over the ground he was thrown over, and he lifted his chin at the same time that Baal did.
In the dark, reddened sky, there was a star, and just as it began to swell, a few ripples across its fiery body opened.
A thousand eyes of every size revealed themselves all over its shape, and a hundred mouths parted to pant like an animal and bear an infinite amount of teeth.
An angel must’ve thrown themself into the sun, how Kokabiel had, but who? Who?
Breath hitching, Dina saw how the enormous star above had a few eyes on him, and he shook his body against the Watchers some more.
‘Uriel.’ He had seen that gaze in all those thousands of years that he’d run into the prince in his own home, in the libraries, in the kitchen, in the bathing area, in the dark, by candlelight, reading.
‘I convinced myself that you liked me, secretly, that you didn’t mind me.
And then I realized that your affection was another mere story of mine, one of my fairy tales.
What are you doing now, Uriel?’ Dina shook his head.
‘Don’t do it.’ He wanted to scream. ‘Don’t do it!
Don’t do it!’ Kicking, thrashing, sobbing.
‘Don’t hurt him, Uriel!’ Then, he turned to Apsinthos. ‘Devour me! Please! Kill me for you!’
Apsinthos inched back, but like all stars, he was slow. ‘Kimah,’ he called. ‘What are you doing? It’s all almost over. And this won’t stop me.’
‘This has never been about you,’ said Uri-Kimah before rushing forward, mouths opening wide.
Apsinthos revolted the second that Uri-Kimah reached him with his teeth, and Apsinthos flared erratically and threw his body back, then forward, then away.
But Uri-Kimah was relentless and fast, tearing into Apsinthos’ body with bite after bite, chasing wherever Apsinthos tried to nudge himself to safety.
The wicked star’s glow grew even darker than it had been, and when it was like candlelight, Dina broke through all the broken bones in his jaw to scream at the clash incoherently.
It did nothing. It wasn’t long before Apsinthos began to die out, graying as he disappeared into the mouth of Uri-Kimah.
But the last of Uriel was soon to follow.
Each eye rippled over the great star began to shut, slow, sleepily, and the size of Kimah shrunk in a soft, calm decrescendo along with his brightness.
Kimah’s weakened body fell to hover close to the center of the street.
Michael and Baal both hurried away in the same direction.
At the other side, the Watchers, too, scrambled to get far from the remains of half a lover, burning quietly still.
As this occurred, Samyaza lost his grip, and Dina broke away.
‘Uriel.’ He tore his wings out from his back, beat them, threw into the disarray to disappear into it.
‘Uriel.’ Uriel had always glared at him when Apsinthos had bombarded Dina with affection.
He should hate Uriel, now more than ever, but he didn’t, couldn’t.
‘No book I ever read had the words for how I felt about you. And there are no words now for what I’ve done.
’ The new Heaven after the apocalypse was supposed to be worth all the suffering.
Worth all the blood of children on his hands.
Worth murdering his own friends, loved ones.
Uriel, angel of wisdom, had just looked Dina in the eyes and burnt up.
‘Why didn’t you help me? Why didn’t you want to return to paradise? Why?’