Chapter 22 #3
Foster sighed but did as he asked. Gabe flipped carefully through the loosely bound sheets of papyrus.
He continued arranging the scene, sprinkling the bone powder over the old woman’s frail, sleeping form.
Next, he tossed the oil in sweeping arcs and arranged dried herbs in meticulous shapes—all the while consulted the ancient grimoire dutifully.
A sense of unease crawled over Foster’s skin, and with a sudden dawning he identified the source.
“Gabriel,” he spoke low, and the quiet calm in his voice had the angel pausing in his work. “How do you have the Gospel?”
“What?” He blinked owlishly. “I went back for it, just like I said.”
“How did you get inside?”
“Through the window, of course.”
“My apartment is warded.”
A long pause. “Against… me?”
“Against anyone that isn’t me or Cwall.”
Gabe raised his brows. “I’m very impressed by your forethought, but perhaps next time you should use a ward that’s not tied to physical structure. The fire must have worn it away.”
Foster frowned but let the matter drop for now. “Are you almost ready? I need to do this before I change my mind again.”
“There can be no indecision, Foster,” Gabe chided. “Make your mind up now and keep it decided. Otherwise, this is all for nothing.”
He turned his back on the angel, pressing his palm to the window.
The glass was cool against his skin, which always burned just noticeably warmer than a mortal would, and his reflection gazed back, silently weighing him.
A line from one of his favorite movies haunted him.
You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting.
He heard the words in his mother’s voice, and a shiver rolled down his spine.
Gabriel cleared his throat. “Resolve yourself, Foster Morningstar. We’re beginning.”
A last flare of panic surged and fluttered in his chest. This was wrong, it was so wrong. He couldn’t do this. Once was bad enough, and now—
Gabe laid a hand on his shoulder, squeezing reassuringly. “I have already prepared a place for her, Foster. She will be comfortable and content, happy and untouched by the horror of the world. Horrors like this.”
Foster watched the slow rise and fall of Sra. Delgado’s chest, guided through the motions by a machine, and closed his eyes. Who was he if he did this?
Who was he if he didn’t?
“Begin.” Gabe squeezed him once more, bordering on painful, before he turned back to the hospital bed.
Michael bowed over the bush and continued retching, his stomach heaving and rolling but with nothing left to expel. Lucifer stood awkwardly by, gently patting his shoulder with an absent hand while he looked intently at anything else.
“I’m sorry, it…affects everyone differently,” Luce finally broke the silence, withdrawing his hand as Michael rocked back on his heels and fell to a sitting position.
Michael grunted in response, scrubbing his mouth with the back of his palm.
But it wasn’t the timewalking that had his stomach churning, it was his own grief.
As soon as his past self had charged in, as soon as he saw Lucifer’s face, his stomach lurched at the memory, and he’d shuddered.
Lucifer of the past had looked at him as if looking through him, an expression that shifted rapidly from bemusement to alarm to horror.
There might have been a flash of fear, but only Michael would have known his lover well enough to detect it.
If he had looked this closely that day...but that was the fallacy of hindsight. He remembered the hot tears blurring and streaking his vision, the hurt and rage that propelled his arm to swing. There was no room for observation on that day, only pain and anger.
He had turned and run. Not his past self; he would never have fled any battle in his younger years. Apparently, age brought with it enough sense for cowardice. This was a regret he could no longer bear to face.
“You think me a coward, I’m sure. A hypocrite,” said Michael.
“Occasionally I have thought of you this way, yes, but I wouldn’t say that I feel that way at present.”
“Oh, sure. Spare me the polite lies, Lucifer.”
“Do I strike you as a man who bites his tongue? Running from that scene doesn’t make you a coward, it makes you a man that feels deeply.” He paused. “It shows me that you’ve grown considerably from that young, angry man into someone who can weigh his own sins.”
The silence was a tangible creature between them. Michael’s heart squeezed with something he could only call affection, and he beat that sensation down hard. He had no right to feel anything but apologetic towards Lucifer. Even at surface level, he could see that things didn’t add up.
When would Lucifer have had time to run from him, find Adam, and set up an entire picnic?
It was an established fact that even the most powerful angels couldn’t be in two places at once.
While Lucifer could create portals, that still didn’t explain Adam’s presence or the clear and present surprise at seeing Michael appear.
His anger had clouded his rational thought, and once Gabriel confided Lucifer’s comments about using and manipulating him.
.. Michael had chalked it up to a carefully planned alibi.
But something tickled in the back of his mind, and a new horror emerged.
He hadn’t slowed down to see it before, but it was as glaring to him now as a large sign reading “YOU ARE STUPID”.
If something was clearly wrong, that meant there must be a clear answer. And if that was true, there was evidence to be found somewhere.
“Do you…want to leave?”
“No.” He closed his eyes, steadied himself, and rose to his feet, dusting himself off. “There’s an answer here, and if anyone can find it, it’s me.”
“We don’t have to do this today,” Luce hedged. “We’ve probably wasted too much time on this diversion as it is. There are problems back at home we should be resolving.”
It wasn’t lost on Michael that Lucifer spoke of them as a unit.
He said ‘we’ and not ‘I’, and for a moment the angel wanted to embrace it.
To run from this place and find somewhere dark and quiet to process these revelations, while he let Luce handle things like he used to in the past. But he couldn’t.
“Lucifer…please.” Michael clenched and unclenched his fists, not making eye contact with the other man. “I’m not sure I could force myself to return to this place. And I can be swift about it. Let’s not squander this opportunity.”
“Fair enough.” Luce cocked his head with a small smile. “Lead the way, tracker.”
Michael relaxed and tried to think back.
Even as they had chased after the flickering image of his past self, Michael of the present had been subconsciously noticing everything around them.
It was part of who he was now, a sense he had developed over time and honing his tracking abilities.
All he had to do was tap into that power, dig a little deeper into his core… And there it was.
His echo had swerved left, following the sound of taunting laughter, but there was second path trampled through the undergrowth, curving away from the noise.
“I know where we need to go.”
“After you.”
He retraced their path to the spot he remembered and knelt to examine a flower that had been snapped at the stem by careless, hurried footfalls.
“Two paths,” Luce murmured, pausing the world again and crouching beside him, using Michael’s shoulder to steady himself. “I assume this is new information for you?”
“I was so angry,” Michael said softly, but it was laced with frustration. “I was so blinded by my rage, I overlooked it.”
“I expect someone was counting on that.” They rose in unison, and Luce’s hand lingered for a shadow longer than maybe necessary. “So, I suppose we must decide if we wish to know the truth.”
“How do you mean?”
“’I sat alone with my conscience, in a place where time had ceased’,” Luce recited the words as if quoting another. At Michael’s confused look, he elaborated, “I said something like that to a poet, once. How badly do you seek your answers, Mikha’el?”
“Why would I turn away from the truth? After everything that’s happened?”
Luce gave him a pointed look. “Exactly. After all the havoc it wrought on our lives, how badly will it hurt you now if our betrayer wears the face of a friend?”
It was a fair question. Michael tried to imagine how he would feel if it was revealed to be Raphael or Uriel who had done this to them. The idea alone sent a pang through his gut. But deeper was the sense that he already knew who was behind this.
In the countless decades since he had been here in this moment, Michael had developed a fairly reliable intuition. There was only one person who could craft such compelling illusions, let alone know Luce well enough to impersonate him so thoroughly and convincingly.
But he had to make sure. He had to know.
“It will eat us alive if we don’t face this,” he said, fixing Luce with a determined look, and the Devil inclined his head in a nod.
“Lead the way then.”
Foster stared resolutely out the window as Gabe recited the ceremonial chants from the Gospel of Lazarus in an archaic language that seemed more hybrid than any one thing.
Foster picked up on some Aramaic, a little bit of Hebrew, a phrase in old Enochian that roughly translated to “release the spirit of this body”.
The already dim lights flickered, one of the old fluorescent strips dying completely after a brief surge.
A soft tremor ran through the floor, and Foster subconsciously shifted away from it.
Gabe continued chanting, but extended one hand silently toward Foster, who eyed it with concern.
The angel crooked a finger, beckoning, and Foster reached out tentatively to take his hand.
Gabe squeezed twice and drew him closer to the bed.
Still he chanted, though this seemed to be a repetition of an earlier passage. Foster caught the words “divine sacrifice” and “blood oath”, but not much else. A breeze swept the room, brushing Foster’s hair so it tickled at his collar. Gabe’s coat fluttered, and he closed his eyes.
Foster watched him, quietly, as the chanting became more rapid and Gabe's lips moved in frantic shapes.
A crack like thunder had Foster looking out the window, only to be met with a clear afternoon.
The wind kicked up, rushing around their feet and winding up his body like a living entity.
The candles flickered but remained lit, and the sacred bone powder was swept up in the coils of air.
Gabe inhaled sharply, eyes flying open and wild as he gripped Foster’s hand so hard bones shifted. “Get ready,” he said, voice hoarse from chanting.
“For what?” Foster was surprised to find his own voice was taut and ragged.
“It must be you, Foster, I’ve done all I can. Prepare the final strike.”
They walked casually along the second path, pausing every so often for Michael to observe a crushed flower, a snapped twig, or a trampled patch of weeds that would guide them on.
Lucifer hummed a lilting tune, and Michael fought the urge to ask him to stop, even as it grated on his frazzled nerves.
This was the most casual interaction they’d had in centuries; he didn’t want to ruin it by being petty.
As if reading his mind, Luce stopped humming abruptly. Michael looked to the side and saw him staring straight ahead, eyes round with surprise.
“How sharp the tack that pricks the unprotected side,” he mumbled, sounding stricken.
Michael followed his gaze, between two ancient oaks to a small clearing, and felt his stomach twist.
Standing mere feet from them was the imposter.
He was shucking his clothes, tossing them haphazardly into the bushes, and doing a sort of strange shimmy. With growing horror, Michael realized the unusual movement served a perverse purpose.
Lucifer was blessed with perfect skin; a fact he happily lorded over everyone as he tanned beautifully and never suffered a blemish. That deep tan was now splitting, wrinkling, and folding as it was shed and discarded like an old, worn garment.
Skin pale as moonlight was revealed in its wake, and the head of tousled chocolate waves fell like forgotten petals to be replaced with curls of deepest black. The impostor stretched and groaned, shaking out his wings as they molted from purest gold to ebony.
Standing naked as a babe in the early twilight, Gabriel laughed.
Foster swallowed against the threat of bile and found his throat scratching like sandpaper.
His hand ached where he held the athame in an iron grip, his knuckles blanched white by the tension.
The jeweled inlay on its hilt cut into his palm, drawing the silvery ichor of demigods from shallow, crescent wounds.
His free hand reached to stroke Sra. Delgado’s bandaged face with trembling fingers. I can’t do this.
He drew a breath to say what his heart was screaming, and Gabriel gripped his shoulder hard. “Now, Foster!”
Closing his eyes against the flood of hot tears, Foster plunged the dagger deep into her heart with both hands and a guttural, broken shout.