Chapter 20
Gavriel
Three things suddenly became clear as I stared down at the Novice who was blithely cutting away some of the worst soul smut I’d ever seen, without making a sound, other than her usual incessant babbling.
One, she was stronger than should be possible.
Two, she was almost positively mentally unhinged.
And three, she wasn’t a simple Novice.
She couldn’t be. The flesh she revealed—after cutting deeper and faster than I’d imagined was possible—was as brilliant as mine had been when I was first created. Maybe even more so.
It was as beautiful as the rest of her muck-covered tiny form was abhorrent. Would she be that way all over when she finished carving away the sin? Would she be able to hold onto her questionable sanity long enough to purify herself?
I wouldn’t tell her, but there was no chance I’d let Mikhail unmake her now. She was a mystery. For the first time in hundreds of years, I felt a hum in my blood. Not the flat, silent wail of despair, but the soft, steady thrumming of curiosity. And maybe something more.
She could still be a spy. But possibly not a spy for the Abyss. There was the chance that she was a spy from the Celestial Realm. Had they planted her here for some reason, placed her on Earth for me to find? Or had a friend sent her to us?
A missing friend. Rafe. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to remember exactly what he’d said when he left Sanctuary so many thousands of years earlier.
“Mik!” Rafe shouted. “You’re not even going to come out to say goodbye?”
I stood next to my truest, oldest friend, trying to memorize everything about him.
He was an inch taller than me, but his hair was an even brighter gold.
His skin was burnished copper and heavily corded with muscles, even though he was not primarily a warrior.
He was a teacher, a scholar and Sanctuary’s finest musician, even now holding his golden harp loosely in one hand, the other one pushing back his tousled hair.
His wings were folded behind him, but I knew when he extended them, they would brush the ceiling.
He was the eldest in Sanctuary by far; even the Maker who had trained Mikhail had once said she couldn’t remember when Rafe wasn’t the leader of our realm. He was the First of the Celestial Children, and it showed in every exquisitely beautiful sound he made, and in every graceful movement.
“Think he’s going to make me leave Sanctuary without saying a farewell?” Rafe asked, his lips twisting into a wry smile, his dark eyes reflecting his inner turmoil. It settled my own nerves a bit, to know he wasn’t as calm as he’d pretended.
A month before, an ascended High Angelus—what the younger ones called a Great Soul—had come through the Great Gate, returning from the Celestial Realm, the first one to do so in five thousand years.
She had brought a Celestial sword for Rafe, and two even stranger objects with her: knives with blades made of smoke.
They were from the Abyss, she told us, and we would need them here in Sanctuary for a coming battle against evil.
Then she had announced that one Angelus was needed to serve in the Abyss, or to be sacrificed to it. She hadn’t explained, no matter how many questions we’d fired at her. “Serving in the Abyss is a Great Sacrifice,” was all she would say.
After all the others in Sanctuary had finished shouting, Rafe had quietly replied with that strange, knowing tone his voice always carried, that he had been prepared to go for a long while.
“I’ve been expecting something of this nature,” he’d confided in me later.
“I felt it coming. Like a tide, or a storm over a far horizon. I didn’t know the precise nature of where I would be called to go… but I’m ready.”
Mik and I weren’t. The three of us were best friends, even if Rafe was far more powerful. We rarely spent more than a few days apart; when one of us returned from earthly missions, we spent hours retelling the details, sharing our lives. Losing him felt like sacrificing a part of my soul.
“Why do you have to be the one to go?” I asked, for what must have been the hundredth time. “We need you here, Rafe. You’re our leader.”
“No, brother. You are now. I have an adventure, and a task ahead that I’ve been preparing for since my creation.
” He pulled me into an embrace, the trembling in his arms betraying his hidden worries.
“I’m leaving the sword with you,” he told me, once we had both composed ourselves.
“You’re the only one I’d trust to wield it, but train a few others.
We don’t know what skills we’ll need for the battle ahead.
” I nodded. “I also want you to keep this,” Rafe added, handing me his harp.
I’d played it before; I was one of the finest musicians in Sanctuary, though I’d never measure up to Rafe.
“Wait, you’re not taking it—” He waved off my protests.
“I’m not sure it won’t burn up when I pass through the gate. Stars and suns, I’m not sure there’s even music in the Abyss.”
“There will be after you get down there and start whistling and stamping and singing at the crack of dawn,” Mik interrupted gruffly. “If they have dawn.” He folded his massive arms over his chest, his jaw tight and his turquoise eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“Walk me to the gate?” Rafe slung his other arm around Mik. No one intercepted us as we went; he’d said his formal goodbyes to the rest of Sanctuary the night before.
“I’ll walk you to the center of the Abyss if you ask,” Mik replied softly. “And stay there, if you need me.”
The way to the Great Gate was too short, and in the blink of an eye, we stood there, three of us in a line, watching the movement in the gold.
Faces flashed past, all of them waving to Rafe.
He waved back as he always did. “You know, every one of the Angeli who sacrificed themselves to form this gate was a friend of mine,” he murmured after a moment.
“I loved them all. That’s why I come down here and sing with them every night. ”
“I know,” I said, my voice rough. “You are a faithful friend.”
“Will you be that for me?” His eyes filled with hope. “I don’t think they’ll be able to hear me singing from the Abyss. Will you sing for them? Not every night, if you can’t manage it, but sometimes? It’s important, Gav. You’ll have to maintain the gates from now on.”
I couldn’t answer, my throat swollen with tears.
“You want Gav to torture the gate for you? That’s cold, Rafe.” Mik’s turquoise eyes flashed with humor and pain as we all laughed. “Will it be cold there? Or hot? We don’t know anything of the Abyss. What if you need to take weapons?”
Rafe smiled again, this time at Mik. “You know the nature of a Great Sacrifice is—”
“One that’s made without question,” Mik finished. “I know. But do they have any idea what we’re sacrificing—what you’re sacrificing? You could be unmade, Rafe. We might not see you again.”
“You will,” he said quietly, his eyes on the gate, his head tilted as if he heard music that we could not. “It may be a very long time. But I imagine it won’t be forev— Wait.” He held still for a long moment, his eyes unfocused.
At last, he blinked. Then, with a curious, bemused smile, he reached out to the belt I wore that held one of the strange knives. Mik had the other one in his workshop. Without a word, I handed it over.
“I want you each to have one of these.” Before I could stop him, Rafe had cut away two feathers from the tip of one wing. His face twisted in pain as he held them out to me and Mik.
“What in all Sanctuary did you do that for, Rafe?” Mik shouted, grabbing hold of the excised feathers as Rafe panted through the pain. “Those won’t grow back!”
Rafe shrugged. “I had a feeling.”
“A feeling?” I knew what he meant. A vision. Rafe’s “feelings” were usually gloomy premonitions. Many of them had been dire warnings of events on Earth. Wars, genocides, terrible natural disasters, and they would plague him for months.
But this time, his expression was almost wistful. “I don’t know precisely what it means. Looking at the gate just now, I had a vision of a feather being sacrificed. So I’m sacrificing one to each of you.”
In a flash, I took back the knife and cut a feather from my own wing, handing it to Rafe while the sharp agony coursed through my entire being. “Just in case it’s my feather that needed sacrificing,” I panted.
“Didn’t know we were doing souvenirs,” Mik grumbled. “I would have brought some fucking gift wrap.” He handed Rafe one of his own bronze feathers. “You need us, you try to send a message through. Get one of these to the gate, and we’ll find a way to help you.”
“We’ll storm the Abyss if you need us,” I agreed, tears coursing down my face now. I didn’t bother to wipe them away as Rafe embraced me.
“Don’t forget.” His eyes met mine with a flash of intensity. A command. “Don’t forget, Gavriel.” Then he pressed his hands to the gate, softly sang his name, and walked into it, his form shimmering into pure soul energy before he vanished.
I’d thought about his final words for a long time. Had he meant don’t forget my promise to storm the Abyss if he needed us, or to sing to the gate? Or his premonition? Or something unspoken? He’d had a vision of a feather being sacrificed. He might have meant this young woman.
My eyes opened when the woman in question screeched like a banshee, making my ears ring.
“Fark! Shizz fark, mother of donkey dung!” Somehow, she had dropped the soul knife onto her lap trying to hand it to Righteous, and it had sliced her leg.
I peered at the spot, but relaxed when I saw the thick coating of smut there had kept it from penetrating too deeply.
It still had to hurt like fire. “Monkey butts and coconuts, that was un-farking-expected!”
I forced myself not to smile as she wriggled around on top of the table, still cursing in that strange way. She couldn’t be from the Celestial Realm. I couldn’t imagine any of the Higher Angeli acting in such an undignified manner.
“What is she doing?” Righteous sneered.
His tone raised my hackles. “She told you. The only way to cleanse an otherwise permanent stain on one’s soul is with that knife.”
“Why… Why have I never heard of this before?” he asked.
I lifted an eyebrow. “Mik and I were planning to talk to you about it soon enough. It’s very much a last resort. In fact, some Protectors choose unmaking and sacrifice rather than suffer the pain of this knife. Are you willing to attempt the feat?”
He scoffed. “Feat? If the filthy little scrap can do it, I’m sure I can.”
“Stop calling me that!” Feather shouted from the table. “And I bet you start crying in less than a minute.”
“A bet?” Righteous retorted. “You’d lose. You’re an insignificant flea in Sanctuary. You need to learn your place.”
I had to force myself not to strike him.
Over the years, Righteous had become cocky and arrogant, like most of the higher-level Protectors I tried my utmost to avoid.
This young rooster had no idea what he had just witnessed, how unique Feather was.
I felt compelled to help him on his spiritual journey by providing a teachable moment in humility.
I cleared my throat. “Let’s not call it a bet, then. Call it a promise. If you begin weeping within one minute, you promise on your wings to do a favor for the Novice. If you can keep from weeping, as Feather did, she will make the same promise.”
“Any favor?” Feather snorted. “He could ask me to kill myself. That would be a favor he’d like.”
“Anything short of unmaking, then.” I tried not to smile as Righteous held his hand out imperiously for the knife.
Feather picked it up and handed it over. “Be careful, Ry. The first time you cut especially, you need to do a small, shallow stroke—”
“I don’t need your help, Scrap.” He lifted one leg, positioning the knife where the oily smut had grown especially thick along his inner ankle. “Start timing, please, High Angelus Gavriel.”
I began counting down while pacing around the table, trying to peek at Feather’s newly exposed skin without being obvious. Was it as soft as it looked? “Sixty seconds, fifty-nine—"
Righteous’s scream interrupted me. “Ah, stars and suns, this can’t be… This can’t be what she just did!”
I faked a look of concern. “Should I start the count over?”
“No,” he gasped. “No. I can do this. If a filthy scrap can do it, I can… Ahh!”
I had turned away in disgust when I heard a soft, silly curse.
Feather had scrambled across the table and was staring in horror at the arrogant Protector’s hunched over form.
Her eyes were almost glowing with a strange light.
.. and with panic. Righteous screamed again, his voice strangled.
I saw a dark gold and gray droplet splash on the pale stone floor.
“Crying already?” I stepped closer, and felt Feather’s hand on my wrist.
A small, infinitely soft, warm hand. And then, a shower of what felt like sparks, like brilliant shooting stars racing from her hand to mine, then up my arm, to my heart, starting something there. A glow, a strange, familiar… I knew that touch.
Shocked, I stared down into the brilliant green eyes that were filled with matching surprise, but also fear. Terror?
“Gavriel!” Feather’s panicky shouts broke through my amazement. “Gavriel, he’s dying.”
In an instant, I broke free of her hold, gently grasped the Protector’s shoulder to turn him toward me, and realized what had happened.
The knife clattered to the floor, where a pool of soul energy was steadily widening, streaming from a deep gash in his thigh.
He’d cut through veins and arteries both with a long sweep of the blade.
Feather scrambled to kneel next to Righteous, who was curled in on himself, his hands desperately moving to staunch the flow. “Can you heal it?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “He may have cut too deep. Move his hands.” She did, and I carefully sent some of my own soul’s energy to heal the wound.
But the wound wouldn’t heal, and I saw why. Some of the oily smut had moved from the outer skin of the Protector’s leg and into his veins. Horrified, I watched as the veins began to thicken and turn gray. He was being infected, corrupted internally.
I raced for the door. “Watch him, keep him still. Mikhail can fix this.” I cast a glance over my shoulder, wondering if I had just lied. Righteous was fading by the second. “I just need to find him in time.”