Chapter 21
Gavriel
The skies above Texas were an ominous greenish-gray, the cloudbank looming over the Earth like an avalanche waiting for the lightest touch to begin the devastation.
A feather falling on it would be enough.
Mikhail soared on my left, scanning the ground below visually, while I listened, dipping in and out of mortals’ minds with the ease of long practice.
It was almost the only way to know how to plan a mission; we had to know first who was in danger of falling into shadow, and where to apply the pressure to move the potential future into the light.
Not that I’d been doing a great job of it for the past centuries.
Not since Arabella had… No. I had to stop blaming Arabella’s fall for my own failures.
Mikhail had gone on for centuries in silent sacrifice, literally carving himself into pieces to provide for Earth and Sanctuary alike, with no complaint.
He had never hinted at the pain he must have felt.
Never once mentioned the sealed Well, though I had sensed the resignation in his soul when he’d known he would remain alone forever.
But he hadn’t. I glanced at him, startled at the burnished shine of his wings in a sudden, stray beam of sunlight. He was watching for signs of the demon, but his soul… It was so light, and I had a feeling the energy he released in his joyful state could dissipate the entire storm.
“She’s good for you,” I shouted into the wind, not wanting him to hear the tinge of jealousy I feared I would reveal in my thoughts. “I’ve never seen you this happy.”
“She is the most unexpected gift…” His voice trailed off as he pointed to a plume of deep gray and black smoke. “That fire, Gav. Does it look like…?” We both sniffed.
A waft of sulfur and burning flesh met my nostrils.
“Hellfire,” I agreed, and we both banked sharply down and to the left.
The building wasn’t visibly ablaze, but smoke was pouring out the windows all along one side.
I tried the door, murmuring the angelic word to unlock it.
It slid quietly open, and we stepped inside.
The room smelled of stale urine, feces, and burning hair, an odor that had seeped into the walls.
More than that, it stank of terror, desperation, and pain.
Shouting—desperate screams and cursing—came from a doorway to the left, the same side as the smoke.
As we strode toward that room, a small, muffled whimper sounded from our right.
At the end of the warehouse on the right, there were odd half-walls, like shelving units had been stacked to make cells. I sensed the hum of an electrical current of some sort running along the metal shelving. “Children,” Mikhail said, his voice heavy with rage. “I’ll free them.”
“Mmm,” I agreed. “I’ll go make sure this demon never touches them again.” We separated, and I tore the door off its hinges, incensed. There was nothing so despicable as someone who would hurt the innocent.
Though that’s what you did, isn’t it, Gavriel?
my conscience taunted. Feather was innocent, blameless, and you treated her as trash.
You called her nothing, and convinced her to sacrifice herself.
You fucking tortured her with a soul knife the first time you met her.
Terrified her. Judged her without a second thought.
I blocked out the voice. It was right, but I didn’t have time for self-flagellation. I scanned the room, but heavy, dark smoke shrouded it from floor to ceiling. I sensed four humans inside, dead or close to it, and one… other. A presence that felt familiar, but wrong.
“Show yourself, demon,” I said in angelic. A muffled scream came from one of the people inside. I winced, realizing I had just permanently deafened them. I used my wings to wave most of the smoke out of the room and through a broken window, and saw what it had hidden.
Four human men, their wrists and ankles tied with what looked like long rubber balloons, as well as glittering wire with metallic plastic stars on the sides and pipe cleaners twisted together in long chains, were stacked in the center of the room like firewood.
No, they were firewood. Small, two-inch high flames licked around the edges of the bare, hairy legs of the man closest to the door.
Seeing me, the dying man let out a whimper before his eyes went blank and his breath stopped.
His mouth, like the others, was stuffed full of…
plastic, or cotton? Something that looked like fluffy, glittery white foam, in any case.
The faces of the dead men staring in my direction had been painted with more white stuff to look like sad clowns, and their hair burned off.
They were all naked, and demonic words were written on every bit of their flesh.
I blinked when I read what was there. Seraphiel had taught me to read demonic languages thousands of years before.
All High Angeli had lessons in it; it was vital to know if the Abyss was making plans, and how to interpret messages they had left for one another.
As leader of Sanctuary, I was expected to be fluent.
But these words… The syntax was wrong, and the grammar.
They made no sense, as if a child had written them.
My lips moved as I sounded out the odd phrases.
“Fucking fuck facers, bad man baby takers? Burn off bad, fire fire fun fun. Run run. Fly!” Then I noticed, written in blood on the concrete next to the burning men was one word: Mama.
Mama? The demonic symbol for mother was almost identical to the angelic sigil, and it gave me a chill to think how closely the two languages were related. Was this demon after a woman, a mother?
I stepped toward the dead men, speaking the word to extinguish fire, though I knew it would most likely be futile.
Sure enough, it had no effect. Angelic and demonic powers canceled each other out on Earth, now that the balance was skewed toward the shadows.
I stepped toward a blanket on one side of the room, prepared to snuff the flames the old-fashioned, human way, when I stopped.
And stared.
Sitting to the side of the piled-up men, so short I hadn’t seen it at all, sat the demon.
It didn’t resemble a possum or raccoon, as Philanthropy had reported.
It was the exact shape and size of a human toddler, not quite two years old.
But it had glittering, dark gray skin, like wet hematite sparkling in bright light.
It was naked, and obviously a female. Her small hands and feet were perfectly formed, and her tummy pooched out like any healthy toddler.
But she had a small, perfect pair of horns at the top of her forehead, and her dark hair—which looked oddly lavender, or possibly blue, in the smoky room—was a tangled mess that ended above her shoulders.
She held something unusual in one of her hands.
Another piece of cotton? I watched, dumbfounded, as she cooed and leaned toward the burning man on her side of the pyre, holding out the small white object.
The unmistakable smell of toasting marshmallow mixed with the other, less pleasant scents.
“Demon?” I called, holding my soul knife ready. The Celestial sword on my back was too large for this task, to vanquish such a small foe. I felt queasy for a moment at the thought of killing her. It.
This form could be some sort of disguise, I supposed, though my powers of perception had never failed me before.
But when the creature looked up at my question, and her round, dark eyes met mine, I saw not shadows in those depths, but glittering starlight, as if every nighttime sky that had ever existed had coalesced inside her gaze.
It had to be a trick. Her physical form was made of shadows…
or coated with them. But her soul, reflecting back out of those eerie eyes, was as innocent as any two-year-old Novice Mikhail had ever formed.
“Mikhail,” I rasped as I stared. I could hear him in the other room, speaking in Mandarin, then Vietnamese, then Spanish. He was releasing imprisoned children, and soothing them. Mik, make them sleep. You need to see this. I felt rather than heard him obeying my request.
In seconds, he was there, stepping through the narrow door. “Gav, what is it? Is that… Is she…?”
“The perfect demon,” I said softly as I watched her gobble down the marshmallow that she had toasted over the man she was burning into cinders.
She licked her tiny, sharp nails clean, then stuffed one entire fist in her mouth, gnawing at it for any remaining sugary goo.
“The glitter baby.” Our eyes met, and I was almost relieved to see he looked as befuddled as I did.
“These men were evil,” Mikhail said, his eyes trained on the entity we’d come to extinguish. “They had stolen these children, purchased them, and… had done great harm to them, Gavriel. I don’t understand.”
I nodded. Leaving these men alive would have caused much more damage to the balance than killing them.
Honestly, if I had come upon them, I would have killed them myself, though not quite as horrifically.
It was almost as if this demon had done a particularly dangerous, angelic mission. And brought marshmallows to celebrate.
“Unless it was planning to kill the children later?” As we watched, the demon squeezed her face up in a grimace, staring slightly cross-eyed at her hand. A tiny puff of smoke appeared, and another marshmallow lay on her open palm.
“Gah!” she said, clearly pleased as she clumsily threaded it on a nail, then held it out to toast it as well.
“This isn’t normal, Gav. Is it?” Mikhail asked uncertainly. “I’ll admit, I haven’t been to Earth for a long while, except for Las Vegas. And I did see a similar creature in a Cirque show there. But when you say you’re fighting the forces of evil, this isn’t what you meant—”
“No,” I assured him, not looking away from the demon for an instant. “It’s normally masses of shadows with edges like teeth, or razors, that shred my soul as well as my physical form.”
“I thought so,” he mumbled as we watched the toddler patiently toasting the new marshmallow. Then, not so patiently, she gave up and stuffed the whole thing in her mouth, making disgusting slurping noises as she chewed and drooled.
When she was done, the demon child burped and stood, toddling around the burning child traffickers toward me.
I backed up a step. “Come no closer, demon,” I warned, holding the knife up.
“I am High Angelus Gavriel, and I am here to…” I couldn’t say extinguish, or kill, to a fucking toddler.
Mikhail muffled what might have been a cough.
“I am here to apprehend you,” I finished weakly.
She blinked those miraculous, deep eyes at me, tilted her head and said, “Dada?”
Mikhail’s unrestrained laughter was the last thing I’d ever thought to hear on this trip to Earth. I glared at him. It has to be a trap.
I think you’d better apprehend the wee one before it drools on your robe, he shot back.
I blinked, feeling an unexpected tugging on my trouser leg. “How did you move that fa—?” Before I’d finished my question, she had pulled herself to standing using my leg—yes, wiping marshmallow, gray glitter, and spittle all over the bottom of my trousers—and had unfolded her tiny wings.
Mikhail and I gasped simultaneously. They weren’t made of shadows, like the other beings I’d fought and sent back to the Abyss for so long.
No, hers were feathers, individually perfect, but glossy and shining an almost matte black that seemed to soak in the light around her.
She pumped them a few times and took off awkwardly into the smoke-hazed air.
Her tiny face—which was also a perfect, sweet, normal toddler’s face, only dark gray—screwed up in what looked like the beginnings of a tantrum. “Dada?” she demanded again, wobbling in the air as she pumped her wings.
“No!” I replied, slightly horrified, and stepping back.
And then the damned thing started crying, like I’d struck her.
Great, glittery tears rolled down her squalling face as she wailed…
then began to tumble from the air, forgetting to flap.
She was about to fall onto the pyre! I stepped forward to catch her, the thought that maybe I had been deceived after all flashing through my mind, as those wide, innocent eyes narrowed slightly when I ducked under her.
But before I could rescue her, she was plucked from the air by a massive, scarred hand. I fell on my ass in the middle of the burning pile of now-dead criminals, cursing as I felt overheated organs explode onto my robe.
“There, there, little one,” Mikhail said, pulling her into his arms and patting her hair, neatly avoiding the wickedly sharp horns.
“Don’t let mean old Gavriel scare you. He’s just grumpy.
” The crying stopped abruptly. A soft gurgling sound came from the creature’s mouth, and I stood, cleaning myself off as best I could, as Mikhail played a game of ten little toes on her infernal feet until the sobs had been entirely replaced by sweet giggles.
“Gavriel, come look.” Mikhail’s voice was strangled, but soft, as he held up one little heel.
“What do you see on the bottom of this foot?”
I stepped around the fire, and leaned close enough to see what he meant, the soul knife still in my hand.
Just in case. “What are you looking… Oh.” There, in the fleshy part of the baby’s heel, sat a smudged, filth-encrusted mark.
It wasn’t a demonic letter, or symbol. It was a familiar one, though.
One that I had seen hundreds of times before.
One that Mikhail had impressed upon every single Novice he’d created, before sending them to Earth on their first missions.
“It can’t be.”
“She can. She is,” Mikhail choked out as the toddler squirmed in his hands, twisting around to stare into his incredulous face. A string of drool fell from one side of her mouth to her naked belly, and then she smiled at my best friend, as if she recognized him.
“Dada!” she shouted, and Mikhail fell backward on the filthy floor, holding the creature in front of him, his face frozen in an expression I had never seen before.