Chapter 23
KAE
Iwake to morning light slipping through the cracks in the curtains, the bright rays falling directly into my face.
My eyes are slow to respond, sluggish with sleep.
In an effort to diminish the blinding light, I turn to my side, squinting and blinking.
Truly, it’s a struggle for me to see right now. Why are my eyes so dry and sensitive?
Ah, that’s right. I remember it now.
I crashed out after taking some obscure Abyss drugs yesterday.
Unfortunately, I remember all of it. Every feeling of ecstasy I had, and the ridiculous way I acted. I embarrassed the hell out of myself, but… Was it worth it? The way Abaddon’s hand felt on my back, how he smiled for me, and—where the HELL am I?
“You’re awake,” a dark, blurry figure calls from the corner of the room.
Abaddon.
The last thing I remember is him picking me up.
Is this… am I in his room? It’s exactly his style.
Gothic, regal. The walls are a dark crimson shade, painted with metallic black swirls, much like my own room.
All the accents are black, actually. The furniture, bedding, curtains.
Even the floor is a glossy black marble, broken up only by the red rivers veining through it.
My gaze finally finds him in the shadowed room, where he’s casually placed in a (black) armchair by the (again, still black) fireplace.
His silver hair is unbound and messy, and his wings drape carelessly on the floor.
The only thing he’s wearing is a baggy pair of trousers, making this the second time I’ve seen his powerfully built torso.
I wish I could say it wasn’t enticing, but I am a weak woman, and my eyes linger on his bare skin for an embarrassing amount of time.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine, I guess.” I blink, regaining my senses. “Is this your… bedroom?”
“Yes.” He leans forward in his chair, straightening his posture. “You were quite incoherent yesterday, so I flew you back. I’ve never known someone to overdose on vitas, but I must not understand its effects on humans. For that, I am sorry.”
“Yeah, but why did you take me here? To your room?”
“Because I am personally responsible, and I wanted to ensure your condition didn’t worsen.” His rigid muscles seem to become even more tense, and he clasps his hands together in his lap. “Does that bother you?”
“I… I don’t know.” Buying myself some time, I toss the covers back and crawl out of bed. I’m still wearing my dirty training clothes from yesterday, and I almost feel bad for all the dust I definitely got in his bed. But not bad enough that I don’t take a seat in the armchair across from him.
His eyes don’t leave me, not even for a second.
“So, I um…” Nervously, I run a hand through my ratted hair. I really don’t want to rehash this, but I need to address the elephant in the room. “I said some pretty embarrassing things yesterday.”
“Would you like me to remove it from my memory?” he asks without hesitation.
My face twists into shock. “What? You can do that?”
He readjusts his posture, keeping his hands tightly clasped together. Everything about him looks so rigidly controlled. It’s unnatural, forced, and certainly not helping me feel more comfortable. “It’s uncommon, but yes. An archangel can forfeit their own memories.”
“That seems a bit extreme.”
“It is.”
I stare at him in silence, shocked and appalled.
After a moment, Abaddon seems to realize I’m completely lost for words. He tips his head forward, face deathly serious, and reiterates himself. “Would you like me to remove the memories or not?”
“No! No, of course not!” I shake my head rapidly. That is the most absurd thing anyone’s ever offered to do for me. What a nuclear solution for a minor problem! “I just… How is that even a thing? Do you seriously have full control over the most minuscule details in your neural synapses?”
I watch him contemplate it for a moment before he says, “It’s less exact than I’d prefer.”
“So you’d just be taking a hatchet to your brain and hoping for the best.” A dry laugh bubbles up in me. Just when I think I’ve heard it all, these angels always find a way to surprise me. “And this is something you guys do often?”
“No. Most do not. I, myself, have never needed to before.”
I can’t stop shaking my head in disbelief. “Nobody needs to remove their memories. Humans get along just fine without that ability.”
“Do they?” He tilts his head at a slight angle, looking at me without an unreadable expression. I can’t quite tell if he’s being rhetorical or not. But, then again, I can never really be sure of the meaning of anything he says or does…
“Yes,” I say slowly. “Bad things happen; we grow through it. That’s basically the point of it all, isn’t it? The reason we live just to die?”
“I would not know.” His shoulders droop slightly, wings resting even more on the ground. “My kind isn’t given that luxury. We are made to serve the Creator, not become one with his creations. A shepherd does not become the sheep.”
Well that’s depressing. “We’re not sheep, Abaddon.”
“No, you’re not. You are an exception.” He rises from his seat and paces to the window, pulling back the curtains to look out at his city. “But you still have so much to learn. Sometimes, circumstance dictates necessity.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I scoff, genuinely insulted. “This isn’t exactly how I wanted to live out the rest of my life, but I’m choosing to be here, anyway.”
“That is simply the arrogance of youth. You have not even begun to understand hard choices. You are clever, Kae, but you are not wise. You still know very little of your inner guidance.” His voice remains exceptionally apathetic, grating on my nerves even further.
“And you do? You sound awfully certain for someone who barely knows me.”
“No, I do not. But I do know myself, and I know I am capable of leading you.” He looks back at me, the light from the window illuminating half of his face, casting the other side in shadow.
“You did not ask to be in this world, but neither did I. It was forced upon us both. And do you have any idea how much longer I’ve been here than you? Ask me how old I am, Kae. Ask.”
If Dusk is at least a thousand, I can’t imagine Abaddon is any younger.
I honestly don’t really want to know, but I have to.
If I’m going to start putting any puzzle pieces about Elohim together, I need to learn these hard facts of reality.
No matter how uncomfortable it makes me. “…How old are you, Abaddon?”
“I am timeless.” The way he nearly hisses his answer at me almost causes me to flinch.
I think he notices, too, because his expression softens.
“True archangels were formed directly by the Creator in Heaven. That is a place that exists outside of time and space. Our original souls are a frequency that does not exist here, a color you cannot comprehend. We are ‘born’ into our physical forms the first time we pass through the Eye of God, yes, but we are not new souls.”
A chill wraps around me, so I pull my knees up into the chair, hugging them. “And when did that happen for you? When were you… born?”
Abaddon takes a few steps towards me, tucking his wings in tightly.
If I’m not mistaken, he seems slightly frustrated.
His face is pulled taut, though he still looks at me with softness in his eyes.
“This is not my first time on this side of reality. It is not even my second. I have been assigned to Earth many times, Kae, and I have never been sent merely as a Messenger. Do you know why they call me the Destroyer? Do you know of Sodom and Gomorrah?”
I refuse to answer, too filled with dread, but I do know. Sodom and Gomorrah were once two corrupt cities, allegedly destroyed by God for being irredeemable. It’s one of the most famous stories of the Bible.
Abaddon seems to recognize my answer, because he looks away, fixing his gaze beyond me in a thousand-yard stare.
“The destruction and desolation that rained down on the wicked cities became a human legend. It is referenced across multiple established religions, incorporated into languages still used today… That is who I am, Kae. I am an archangel with no specialty, for I am destruction incarnate—a tool for divine wrath. It is why I, of all the angels, was chosen to raise an army of tormentors for Judgment Day.”
He starts walking towards the door.
“Abaddon! Where are you going?” I call after him, turning in my chair.
“Away.”
I sit, dumbfounded by his sudden departure, for a long moment. Eventually, it becomes apparent that he has no intention of coming back to finish our conversation.
I’m almost tempted to take the opportunity to rifle through his things for whatever secrets they may hold, but the moment I start to walk towards his drawers, guilt grips me in an iron fist. I can’t bring myself to invade his privacy.
Not after that moment of vulnerability he just showed—no matter how poorly he dealt with the intensity of his feelings in the end.
Instead, I see myself out, heading back to my room.
After I’m done freshening up, I stare at the wall for a long time, trying to process whatever is going on with Abaddon and me.
I can’t. I just keep coming up to dead ends. He’s a complete puzzle, full of enough conflicting emotions to give me whiplash.
I hate him, I want to fuck him. He’s cold, he’s caring. We fight, we bond.
“Heaven help me,” I mutter, looking up at the ceiling in exasperation—as if anyone up there is actually listening, and I’m not just ranting to myself as I slowly become more mentally unstable.
“Can’t a girl just catch a fucking break already?
The world is literally ending. Did I not have enough challenges down here as it is?
You just had to add in a hot, moody angel king? ”
The best coping mechanism that I can come up with is to head to the training yard, where I can at least release my frustrations on something.
I find an empty station in the courtyard and pick up the first weapon I come across, which happens to be a wooden bo staff. Then, I walk over to the nearest practice target—a meat sack dummy vaguely shaped like a human.
That’ll do.
I proceed to violently beat it with my stick.
Shwack. Shwack. Shwack.
I can’t hit a moving target, I can’t fight back when I’m afraid, and I can’t control my biblical parasite. I’m still not convinced the damn thing wasn’t aiming for Jackie and got me by mistake. At least she would have the arrogance to try to put an immortal being on their back.
Shwack.
I’ve had it with this place! These angels only give me more questions than answers. I’m sick and tired of feeling like I’m being dragged from one impossible problem to the next. And Abaddon… I swear, that fucking angel…
Shwack. Shwack.
The fake head snaps from the practice target and flies off.
“Oh, that was a good one,” I mutter to myself, watching the head roll away. It looked like nothing more than a melon when it was on top of the dummy, but now it bleeds like flesh. “Disgusting, though.”
What am I supposed to do about him? Abaddon? The fact that he brought me to his room feels just… off. Wrong. I mean, I hardly know the guy! Not on any emotional level, at least. He’s consistently been near-emotionless for the majority of my time here, and—
Well, no. That’s not true.
There was that one night in my bedroom when he accidentally slipped me all of his hidden emotions, which happened to include enough sexual desire to drive me to masturbate to dirty thoughts about him once he left… so… I’m still pretty ashamed about that, actually.
Suddenly, I don’t have the urge to hit anything anymore.
I drop my wooden sword and slink past the stone pillars of the center building, finding a private spot underneath the shaded awning. With a ragged breath, I allow myself to slide down against the stone wall, sitting on the ground with my head to my knees.
If he knew what I did to myself that night, I’d be so beyond humiliated. I try not to even think about it. Abaddon and I have subsisted just fine in this apathetic, busy relationship for many weeks now. It’s better than being completely and totally alone here.
Until yesterday.
Oh, God. What if he read my emotions then?
After I had taken the fruit? It might be a bit of a blur in my memory, but I do remember how I was so fucking horny for him.
I would have done unspeakably kinky things to the…
incredibly hot, tall, muscular… yet infuriating bastard of an angel.
It was all I could think about. If he had only—
Strange shadows suddenly cast across the ground, snatching my attention.
Within seconds, I’m on my feet. I run back out to the courtyard, pulling my dagger from my waistband as I look towards the false sky, searching for danger.
Angels!
There’s a whole group of them, soaring high above the city, headed in the direction of the castle… but none of the locusts are mobilizing.
“Hey!” I call towards the nearest general, who swivels his head around towards me in that unnatural, boneless way they do. “Do you see that? Are you guys expecting visitors?”
The locust nods. “The Council arrives.”