Lucifer trudged along the sands of a lonely beach off the Pacific Coast Highway. Hours ago, fiery Sol, spent for the day, had dived below the waters, and now a black-waved ocean wriggled beside him. Salt and seaweed smells punctured the air. Thunder muttered in the distance, at the horizon, where endless ocean joined interminable sky.
Mazikeen sauntered at his side, glaring at the waves as if she might leap upon them and stab them into submission—if only she could brave wading into the strange liquid. “Lucifer, we’ve been galumphing about for miles, and you haven’t said two words. I’m cold, I’m drenched from that spray stuff”—a quick wave of her hand from the galloping surf to her doublet—“so why the hell are we here?”
“Because I hate the beach.”
Her eyebrow, the one scissored by a now-imperceptible scar, cocked, and her mouth twisted, ready to fire off a snark. Likely along the lines of, “So, today is a day for frolicking off to places you hate?” Earlier, once again, she’d bashed him for his “dumbass” trip to Heaven, daring to show his face at the Gates for the “idiot” reason of collecting his “music-thingy.”
Demons. Couldn’t live with them, couldn’t live without them.
But for once, she must’ve caught his mood, for instead of smacking his arm or wising off, she threw glances about the beach as if a saner answer might loom up out of the gloom.
“I don’t get it.”
Black boulders lay scattered on the sand like tourmaline gems strewn from a giant’s broken necklace, and Lucifer strode to the largest, twice as tall as he, its jagged surface streaked through with blood-red quartz. He leapt atop it, flung his arms wide.
“Behold, Mazikeen, the Beach of Eternal Mercies! And there”—he swept a hand toward the steep, two-hundred-foot cliffs soaring above them—“the Bluffs of Sorrow-No-More! And here”—he jabbed a forefinger downward—“the Rock of, the Rock of…”
Gabriel’s Trumpet blared forth in his mind, a call to battle. The battle in the Silver City, eons ago…
Tubas oompahed, trumpets bebopped, snare drums rat-a-tat-tatted: the angelic jazz band, Heaven’s Hot Licks, strutted down Jubilation Avenue, swinging their instruments from side to side, slapping out “When the Saints Go Marching In,” the white plumes of their hats bouncing to the beat. Samael, air-guitaring and singing, tried to blend in amidst the brass and sticks, but a surge of Angels cut through the ranks and swept him away. They mobbed him, some cheering, more booing, all of them clutching at his robes—and his best robes too, dazzling white pants and shirt and a flame-orange vest!
“Let go! For Dad’s sake, I just had this cleaned! This is exactly what I was trying to avoid.”
Two of Samael’s Rebels, Asmoday of the Three Heads (a bull, a ram, and a raven) and Ornias The Shapeshifter (she morphed from six-foot slimy frog to spiky-haired, nose-ringed girl), pushed through the throng and flanked him. With Ornias hopping and sashaying and Asmoday threatening to gore, butt, or peck any obstructers, they inched their way into the Town Piazza. There, at the heart of the Silver City, a bed of Rebel-planted roses, jasmines, and carnations perfumed the air. A Rebel-constructed fountain, seven spigots spouting, gurgled gaily. A Rebel-erected dais popped with colors, its festoons of flame-orange marigolds and purply ribbons and yellowy balloons fluttering in the breeze.
Samael leapt atop the dais. Behind him, the Grand Assembly Hall, all silver and glass, sparkled in Dad’s Light, its spire, a swirl of diamonds of silver-blue, reaching for—touching?—Heaven’s heavens; before him, a multicolored sea of Angels roiled and seethed. His Rebels—Asmoday, Ornias, Balam, and thirty-odd others—ringed the platform.
Today, at this rally, he would get his message across! Today, he would win them all to his side! And then, they’d present themselves to Dad as a united front, and He’d have to bend.
Samael strode to the microphone. The “Saints” music ceased. The crowd hushed to a fitful silence. Samael flung his arms wide.
“O Brothers and Sisters, listen to me! It’s time—it’s long past time—to assert our rights! Let us—”
Hisses and jeers and shouts of “Blasphemy!” slapped his face. A rock the size of a yoga ball sped toward his head. He ducked. An Assembly Hall window shattered, and glass shards pelted his back. Why wouldn’t they ever listen? Why couldn’t they see they were marionettes danced about by Dad’s Divine Plan? If they’d only listen, he’d help them cut their strings!
How could his siblings not want that? How could they not want something more? True, he couldn’t verbalize all his wants, but something more existed, he knew it! Humans held the key. They had to! Whenever he thought of them, a little thrill twanged his wiring, a little flutter quivered his wings, his body crying, “Yes! Let’s fly down to them!” How he ached to frolic amidst their wants! If he could explore their wants, he could figure out what these vague stirrings within him meant. He could finally, finally, scratch his itch!
“Please,” he said, lifting his hands and patting the air to quiet the catcalls.
At the rear of the crowd, a kerfuffle. Its source: meddling Amenadiel, his face bunched up into his “hilarious” angry face, as little sister Ray-Ray called it. Only, The Firstborn’s stance—his fists clenched down at his sides, his body clenched tight as a fist—would likely have more Angels wetting their undies than snickering. A handful of Samael’s Rebels broke formation and crept away. Band members scattered, drumsticks and tubas clattering to the cloud-ground. Come back, Samael wanted to call to them. He’s just a junkheap of scowls and platitudes, nothing to be afraid of.
Amenadiel stalked forward, thrusting siblings out of his way right and left. The sea of Angels, forty bodies deep, moiled and murmured, elbows jostling, craniums craning, brothers and sisters straining to pinpoint the disturbance.
And then the sea parted for Amenadiel like two great Ocean waves rolling aside.
Samael flipped up a palm to stop the onslaught that was the Firstborn. “Brother, hear me out.”
Balam slithered into Amenadiel’s path and rattled his serpent’s tail.
Amenadiel socked him on his scaly jaw.
Asmoday bounced over and butted Amenadiel.
“Brothers!” Samael cried.
Rahmiel, the fat Angel of Love, slugged Asmoday’s bird brain.
She-wolves Shax and Shoftiel growled and sank their fangs into each other’s scruff.
“Sisters!” Samael cried.
Angels hooted and halloed and placed bets on their favorite warriors.
“Hello, hello, anybody!” Samael cried. “Carnival Day is next month!” He tapped the microphone. Was this thing working?
More and more Angels whopped each other. Shrieks and laughs. Bellows and taunts. Oh, for crying out loud, of course Amenadiel would churn his peaceful assembly into a melee!
Well, bring it on.
Samael jumped off the dais and sprinted toward Amenadiel—
A furious shout. A rush of movement. Samael whirled about. Too late! Wiry Rahatiel, his four muscled arms as hard as cudgels, whipped through the crowd and plowed into Samael’s middle. Samael and Rahatiel crashed to the cloud. They scuffled, Rahatiel on top, Rahatiel’s flying fists thwacking Samael’s face, Samael snatching at Rahatiel’s four wrists—
“Foolish boy,” Rahatiel’s two stacked mouths spat.
“Fools rush in, eh?” Samael’s one mouth grinned.
A two-handed right cracked across Samael’s chin. His head snapped back, and pain daggered into his skull, redly, blackly, sharply…
Distant yells… Distant thuds… Distant groans… Noises were scurrying about in the far nooks and crannies of his mind…
Wait, that groaning. Not so distant. His groaning?
A double swat to his cheek.
“Wakey, wakey,” Rahatiel trilled, his falsetto voice a tick behind his bass. “Don’t make this so easy.” The sleeves of Rahatiel’s silk kimono flapped with his repeated slaps.
Red and black sparkles danced through Samael’s head.
Healer Raphael and Vaphula the Ass vaulted forward, ganging up on Samael. Raphael’s rod, the serpenty asklepian, smacked his ribs. Vaphael’s feet donkey-kicked his legs. Samael yipped and yelped.
“No fair, no fair! I call Angel Rules: one-on-one!”
Asmoday and Ornias scrambled to Samael’s aid. Asmoday’s bull-head gored Raphael in the crotch. Ornias morphed into a Phantasmal Poison Frog and squirted venom in Vaphula’s eye. Rafe spilled to the dirt. Vaf keeled over, donkey legs wheeling in the air.
“Serves you right, Rafe!” Samael called, still stuck beneath Rahatiel. He slammed his palm into Rahatiel’s nose. Rahatiel merely blinked. “Some healer you are!”
Samael snagged hold of two of Rahatiel’s wrists and bucked and squirmed but couldn’t dislodge him.
“Hey, Ra-san, shouldn’t you let me up now?”
“You think this is a training session, Sammy?” Rahatiel’s hot little eyes flashed. “You never shut up about your ‘Bill of Angel Rights,’ and now I’m going to train you black and blue and shut you up permanently.”
Wait. A training session—
Samael crunched his abs, jerked his torso upright, threw his arms around Rahatiel, bear-hugging him, like bear-hugging chiseled granite. He shoved off with a foot, rolling to the side, throwing Rahatiel off him, throwing Rahatiel beneath him (Rely on leverage, Michael had taught him—and he’d almost forgotten the lesson). He clobbered Rahatiel a good one, to the jaw.
“Ding dong, you’re out!”
Samael sprang to his feet.
All around him, Angels jabbed, Angels grappled, Angels tore at the dais and toppled it to the ground.
A riot! An honest-to-Dad riot! Samael whooped and hollered. Now, this was Heaven, all the Goody Two-Shoes letting loose!
Om-chanter Chayyliel, “Skinny Bones,” attacked him, got in a few good licks, Cha’s bones practically clattering with each landed blow. Samael thumped Cha with blows of his own. (Dodge, and then use their momentum against them, a push, a kick, Michael had taught him. Use your speed, your agility—no one’s quicker than you, Lightbringer. Seize any opening—Bam! Get in and get out. The nuts, the knees, the nose—make them howl, Sammy.)
“Go meditate on this, Cha-Cha!”
Samael kicked Cha in his second chakra. Cha doubled over, and Samael grabbed fistfuls of Cha’s ocher swami robes and chucked him into the dais’s debris. A cloud of dust and wood fragments bloomed.
“Ommm, we’re all one, and you’re out too!”
Gabriel blew his horn. But why? Because of a little bro-and-sis squabble? Gabe was tooting away as if Good were battling Evil!
Inch by contested inch, minute by everlasting minute, Michael, Amenadiel, Barakiel, and a Heavenly host of others drove the Rebels from the City Center. Down the silver-cobbled Jubilation Avenue. Past all the shops, past all the restaurants. To the outskirts of the City. Past the City Limits. Onto the Beach of Eternal Mercies. Toward the Bluffs of Sorrow-No-More.
Splashing through tide pools.
Slipping on seaweed.
Tripping over rocks.
They fought—oh, how they fought. But no Divine weapons, no battling wings, for wielding God’s gifts against a sibling was unthinkable.
More of Samael’s soldiers fell—Ahriman, Balam, Baliel, Molloch.
Bones broke.
Blood spurted.
Hearts faltered.
Back, the Rebels were pressed back. Behind them, the two-hundred-foot-high Bluffs loomed. Beside them, the endless, Ineffable Ocean swooshed in seven-foot waves.
Samael clocked Camael, the one-winged Angel of Dreams, with a nifty uppercut, dropping him on his angelic butt. He snagged Haniel by his fiery hart tail and slung him onto Uzziel’s unicorn horn. He dodged Rogziel’s swishing tentacles and darted past Saleos’s croc jaws. His goal: the Rock of Justice Tempered, far up on the Beach, nestled in the lee of the Bluffs.
He would leap its great height, survey the battle, direct his soldiers—!
Valefor, gorilla-limbed, lion-bodied, streaked toward him, a blur of hairy arms and tawny tail and coppery-red loincloth.
Oh, crap, run!
Val belted him.
Fifty yards, Samael sailed. He smacked into the Rock. Bounced off. Spilled onto the fine white sand with a whump.
A snap! Like a celery stick snapped in two. His rib. Or three.
“Ow.” Well, at least that method of travel got me here quicker.
Samael swayed upright. Zigzagged a step or two.
Ape Limbs knuckle-galumphed over and popped a crisp right to Samael’s gut.
Gah! An explosion inside his chest as if Val had smashed twin battering rams into his lungs, all his breath blasting out of him. He gulped for air, snatched only a bite. He tottered a step, another step, the sand beneath him heaving and dipping. Must get away, must—
Val snarled, a bestial growl that rolled through Samael’s bones, prickled the hairs on his skin, sent jumps and shivers up and down his legs. Move! Must get away, must—
Valefor bounded in front of him, his mane, thick, shaggy, coppery-red, swinging along his sinewy shoulders. Val bared four-inch canines. “Keep moving, Sammy. I love to play with prey.”
Samael hunched, gasping, cradling his ribs with aching hands. “V-val! G-give a brother a moment to catch his—”
Seven-foot Val unleashed a blistering left.
Samael’s hips hurled him right, panic—blood-rush-y, muscle-skittery—blasting through his circuitry. Val’s punch glanced off his jaw, staggered him. His coordination vamoosed, his strength sapped, he slugged wildly, as if he’d sprouted Rogziel’s twelve rubbery tentacles. A flurry of his punches whiffed by, as damaging as air kisses, but he socked a few solid: a right to the liver, a hook to a whiskery cheek, a combo to cat eyes, a—
Val plugged him, a jackhammer shot to his cracked ribs.
A scream rushed up from Samael’s belly, tears streaming from his eyes, his knees turning as wobbly as Slinkys and careening him away.
Val plucked him up and body-slammed him to the ground.
Samael sprawled, one of Ray-Ray’s rag dolls. Electrical tingles shot along his spine. Down to his fingertips. Down to his feet. Up to the top of his skull.
“That all you got, Favorite Brat?”
“Knuh…” Samael gathered his shattered breaths and willed the words into a fist, willed the words to wallop Val. “Knuckl’ draggr.”
A woof!—short, sharp, laced with lion-laughter. “Gonna be fun, Sammy, hauling your whupped ass before Dad. Rabble-rouser.”
Samael dug his fingers and heels into the sand, pushed his body along the Beach like a broken-backed crab, pushed away from Val—
Val strode to him, dropped atop him in a straddle, reached for his throat. To throttle him?
Gorilla palms—muscular, leathery, scarred by demon fights—closed around Samael’s windpipe. They squeezed, squeezed, cat-playing with him, cat-playing with him, for Val could snap his bones like chicken necks, could crush his flesh into tomato pulp—
Can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe!
Samael flailed—
No, use leverage!
He gripped gorilla arms, arched his hips, pushed with planted feet, twisted his body—and Val budged not—
No, no, no, can’t let him win, can’t lose my Rebellion—
He cuffed lion ribs, clawed the gorilla fingers noosing his neck, his heart bolting, his body thrashing—
Cuffing, clawing, cuffing, clawing, no no no no—
His struggles growing feebler, blackness flaring at the edges of his vision, flooding inward, crawling over the lenses of his eyes—
Don’t faint don’t faint don’t fai—
But his arms flopped to the ground, and one hit a hard—
A six-inch-thick driftwood log.
Yes! With a rush of energy, Samael flung near-numb fingers around it, nabbed it, cracked it against Val’s temple.
Valefor fell atop him like a four-hundred-pound furry halo. Valefor, Angel of Secrets and Vengeance, moved no more.
And the lion sleeps tonight.
Samael’s heart jackrabbited inside his ribs. His lungs hitched, hitched again, sucking for Ocean air, tangy and seaweed-sharp—but his throat had constricted to the diameter of a straw… And Val’s crushing weight… He tasted the color crimson—blood—and the sand grit filming his tongue. His muscles burned. Too much, too much fighting… And Val’s body warmth seeping through his clothing to his flesh… He was spent. For the rest of Eternity, he’d lie here on the scratchy sand like an arrow-struck bird—
Get up, get up, claim victory! And then, we’ll all make up and celebrate with singing and merrymaking, bragging to each other about our stamina and prowess!
Samael wriggled out from underneath sweat-stinky, peppermint-candy-stinky Val and teetered up on quivery legs. He thrust his arms to the sky and spun for all his siblings to see.
“I am Samael, the Undefeat—!”
He stumbled, his feet tangling with each other, his gaze tangling on the sights around him.
Oh, dear Dad. Dear, dear Dad.
His Rebels, save for a handful, strewed the shore like shattered seashells. The Opposition, save for a thrice handful, strewed the shore like shattered seashells.
A hundred of his brothers and sisters lay broken.
Broken.
Broken, their arms and legs twitching and twisted, their Divine blood staining the white sand scarlet. Broken, their ruined mouths moaning or weeping or pleading for a brother’s or sister’s aid. Strange: during the fury of the fight, few of the sights that must’ve ached Dad’s All-Seeing Eyes, few of the sounds that must’ve throbbed Dad’s All-Hearing Ears, had trampled upon his own adrenaline-tunneled, adrenaline-cottoned senses.
“Sorry,” Samael whispered. “Sorry. I didn’t mean for…”
Ocean waves shivered. Flies buzzed amongst the wounded. Drifts of white clouds crouched overhead.
Along the Beach, the Opposers quashed his remaining Rebels, forcing them to kneel and standing guard over them. Amenadiel and Michael, Dad’s two mightiest warriors, raced toward him, splashing through a shallow tide pool, hermit crabs scurrying out of their way. Samael stayed put. Where could he go?
They cornered him at the Rock. A memory slid through his mind: Amenadiel scooping him up and carrying him for miles to put him to bed, when, as a young Angel, he’d tired himself out with a busy day at playing and fallen asleep wherever—curled up in his boulder fort on the Beach, waves hushsh-ing; cradled in Forest branches, owls who?-ing; nested in Mountain meadow clover, frogs bic-bic-bick-ing.
Grumpy Pants stepped forward. Grains of wet sand and coils of red seaweed clung to the now-raggedy hems of The Firstborn’s black, flowing trousers. Two of the fasteners on his gray-and-silver tunic dangled—one missing a hook, the other an eye—and the seams under an arm and at the neck were a ravel of rips, so that the tunic hung at half-mast on his discus-thrower shoulders. His right eye had swollen closed into a black and purple bulge. A two-inch gash on his forehead trickled blood.
And yet, he didn’t boast nearly the damage Samael did. He probed his face with shaky fingertips. A pulpy ruin. His knuckles? A torn mess. His torso? A finger-painting of red, purple, green, and golden-brown bruises. His collarbone? Pretty sure it, along with the ribs, was broken—a sharp, bright pain stabbed him every time he breathed.
And his beautiful clothes, now bloodstained tatters and shreds!
“Good fight, eh?” Samael ventured a smile, but it kept quivering.
Michael, the Golden One, his gold-and-scarlet robes somehow still undirtied, lunged—
Amenadiel lunged—
Samael threw his arms up about his head, lifted a knee, folded in on himself, trying to protect his soft parts—
No beating. Amenadiel hooked Michael’s elbow, pulled Michael back, kept hold.
His shoulders hunched, his insides scrambling together, Samael showed his open palms to God’s Mightiest, a sort of “C’mon, let’s all chill” gesture. “Mikey—”
Michael’s eyes, the greenish blue of robin eggs, flashed a look at Samael’s hands as if Samael were offering him dog shit. “You’re poison, Samael.”
Samael’s hands stumbled to his gut, Michael’s words a sucker punch.
Michael punched more words quick-fire. “You’ve betrayed me. You’ve betrayed all of us who loved you best.”
“I haven’t—!”
“We told you not to hold your rally—and look what happened!”
Samael stamped his feet, his fists rat-a-tat-tatting against his forehead, unable to stop himself, even though Michael would tell him he was being a child. “Amenadiel threw the first punch! And I never wanted this!” Samael swept his hand round the Beach, over his crumpled, wrecked siblings. “I wanted you to listen! And, and, you can’t stop me from speaking out!”
“We will stop you, always.”
Samael gripped his hair, pulled it into clumps, would’ve given mighty Michael a good shake if he’d dared. “Why? What are you so afraid of?”
Michael surged against Amenadiel’s grip, and his scar, a jagged, demon-inflicted scar snaking down his face from lower left eyelid to jaw, reddened. “I fear nothing. But you should.”
“Oh, please—”
“Father created us to carry out His Will. We are to obey His Word—and that’s it! Not go gallivanting off to do our own thing! And certainly not to urge others to do likewise.” Michael drew himself up, breathing like a snorting, pawing Celestial Bull. “I will enforce that.”
“No! You don’t get to decide what’s best for us all!”
The Bull thrust his body forward, as if to charge. But Amenadiel held tight. “That’s my Divine prerogative! Get that through your knucklebrain. And you”—Michael skewered Amenadiel with a pissed-off look—“unhand me.”
Amenadiel’s jaw clenched tight enough to crack Divine titanium. But he released Michael.
Michael spun on his heel, stalked away, his gold-and-scarlet boots slapping the sand, the tiny scarlet bells woven into his golden braid jangling, sharply, chiming condemnation. “If I look at him, I’m going to pulverize him,” Michael threw over his shoulder. “You handle him, Amenadiel.”
Samael smoothed his hands over his hair, smoothed them down his soiled and tattered vest. He pressed them to his heart as if that could soothe and smooth it, too. He flickered another smile at Amenadiel. “Dearie me, ole ‘Who is Like God?’ certainly has his breeches in a twist—”
Amenadiel seized Samael by his vest, yanked Samael to him.
“Hey, let go!” Samael twisted; a sccrrrich: the vest tore at the seams and ripped right off his chest. “Now look what you’ve done!”
Amenadiel clasped the cloth in an upraised fist like a silky, flame-orange victory pennant. “You think everything’s a game, don’t you, Samael? Well, game this: Surrender. Give up your foolishness and pursue it no more.” He hurled the cloth away. “Vow it!”
Samael jumped, startled, as startled as if Amenadiel had bitten his ear.
A vow? A vow? A promise Amenadiel knew he’d never break? And his desire not to have every last little aspect of his life controlled by His Will wasn’t foolishness. Oh, yes, Amenadiel would believe it was, for Amenadiel thought him wild, erratic, defiant, a boy of fire to Amenadiel’s iron.
Amenadiel, always the responsible one, always trying to daddy them, always binding himself in mental chains to hold himself hostage to Dad’s True Way.
Samael took a step back. “No.”
“You will pay for your stubbornness, Samael,” Amenadiel said.
“I’m not stubborn,” Samael said, thrusting out his chin. “I’m determined. I know what I want, and I go for it.”
A mistake. His chin a magnet, Amenadiel’s iron knuckles clouted him, spinning him around impossibly fast, knocking him right out of his sandals. Samael clutched at the Rock to keep from crumpling to the sand. He clung to it, on his knees, the sand slipping beneath his scrabbling toes.
“Thou shalt not want!” Amenadiel gripped Samael by the hair and bashed his face into the Rock.
A dull thunk, inside his head. And then a whshshing whirred, like Ocean waves tossing inside a seashell. The sand snickered at him as he slid down the Rock to meet it—
No. No! He would not let Amenadiel claim to have defeated him. Even if Amenadiel ripped out his entrails, paraded them around the City, and splattered them onto the Gates for the crows, somehow, somehow, he would not let The Firstborn put him down for the count.
Samael grabbed at the Rock’s red-quartz jags. His head whirligigged. His guts flexed and brought up his breakfast of manna, banana, and sweet tea, the foul taste reaching back into his throat and gagging him again. Blood warm and sticky flowed from his nose, from a split lip, from a cut above his eye.
“Thou shalt not want!”
Amenadiel gripped Samael’s hair again, as if determined to bash Want out of him—
Samael twisted and struggled. With an elbow, he speared Amenadiel in the stomach, hard. Amenadiel grunted, lost his grip, reeled backwards. Samael wrested himself upright.
Run!
Samael’s wobbly legs didn’t much cooperate. One, two, three staggery steps—
He stopped. Nowhere to run. He dragged a sleeve across his mouth and nose to wipe away blood and puke. What was wrong with him? Why did he, alone, want? Even his followers didn’t truly get it, simply joining his cause so they could stick it to their elder siblings or so they could bask in his charisma while hoping that one day, one day, they too would understand his passion.
Only Amenadiel got it—kind of got it, maybe half got it—for Amenadiel told him he was like the humans, Amenadiel’s lips wrinkling on the word “humans” as if to spit.
Humans! Every day, he sought exit from Heaven to hang out with them. And every day, Dad’s Puppets would tell him that he was too immature, tell him that his powers, yet untested, would screw up the Divine works.
They had no right to control him. No right to keep him from Earth.
“But I do want!” Samael said.
Amenadiel rushed him, fists cocked, feet kicking up whirlwinds of sand behind him—
Samael flung his arms wide. “Go ahead, Brother! Burst my flesh! Splinter my bones! Spill my blood, all of it! But know this: Always, always, I will want. I want! And so shall others—”
The World darkened.
Amenadiel braked.
Samael shot his hands to his eyes.
Amenadiel shot his hands to his eyes.
All around them, their siblings pawed at their eyes, babbles of fear on their tongues.
Had…had Dad struck all of them near-blind?
Something—a scuttle of a cloud? a flutter of breeze amongst the palm trees?—drew Samael’s gaze upward. “Look!”
For the first time in Forever, the Sky, the always, always sky-blue Sky, with always, always white, puffy clouds, had darkened. On the horizon, where Ocean skimmed Sky, a horrible something lumbered up from Non-Existence. The, the something—a cloud?—black, shaped like an anvil, but an immense anvil, obliterated nearly all of the curved plane of the far Western Sky: the anvil’s base stretched the horizon’s entire width and its throat curved miles and miles and miles upward, all the way from the Ocean’s surface to the vault of Heaven, a height only reachable by Dad—and maybe not even by Him. The monstrous Anvil, too solid to be vapor, too vaporous to be solid, hunkered there and glowered.
Samael pressed his back against the Rock, would’ve shoved his molecules through it if he could’ve. “Br-brother,”—his words came out in a tumble—“what’s wrong with the Sky?”
More clouds, lower-lying clouds, evil with gray, roiled up from Non-Being and seethed at the Anvil’s feet.
Samael clutched Amenadiel’s arm, pulled Amenadiel to him. Amenadiel’s body was reassuringly solid, not yet faded into the growing dimness; Amenadiel’s muscles tensed as if to fight off the Anvil, protect all their siblings until the Anvil crushed out the last ounce of his life.
“Brother,” Samael breathed, “those, those things, those underlings—Eremiel’s Demon Hounds.”
On camping trips, around campfires, Eremiel always scared them with tales of Demon Hounds who, at their cruel master’s behest, ripped out the throats of Angels and gobbled down their bodies and souls.
More and more of Samael’s brothers and sisters revived. They wavered to a stand. Steadied themselves with hands pressed to boulders or fingers wrapped around stone arches. They stared at the Demon Dogs. And trembled. He trembled. Fine tremors even passed over Amenadiel, and nothing ever frightened Amenadiel. If Samael had been younger, he might’ve clung to his big brother and hidden his face in his brother’s skirts.
Amenadiel wrenched his arm from Samael’s clutch. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“So th-they’re clouds? Real clouds? But how could they be—”
“Father.”
“Wh-what?”
“You’ve angered Father. Michael warned you—and yet, you continue to defy Divine Law!”
As if on an imperceptible Divine signal, the Anvil charged toward the Beach, shoving the roiling clouds before it—
The Angels all took a leap back, as if to escape the attack—
Wind, barren cold, huffed across the Ocean’s surface—its always, always blue but now oddly gray surface. The Wind snatched at them, shivered them. Samael’s tattered robes flapped in it, and he squinted against the salt-sea spray stinging his eyes, the sand grains flaying his skin, the stench—like rotting oysters?—smiting his nostrils. He snuck a peek directly upwards, his body traitorous, tipping slantwise, his hands curling at his chest.
He snapped straight, fiddled with the flame-orange trim on his ripped shirt cuffs, as if he were only trying to make himself more presentable for Dad—not cringing, no, never.
“Well, erm, at least we’ve finally gotten His atten—”
A sharp whap to Samael’s skull stumbled him sideways. He lost his legs. Couldn’t catch himself. His face slammed into the sand. Another rib or two crunched. A whimper dribbled out of him. For a moment, the thought rattled around in his head that Dad had struck him. But no, Dad’s Messenger Boy had taken it upon himself.
“You will not joke of this, Samael! Surrender before Him!”
Samael lurched to his hands and knees, planted a foot beneath him, swayed upright—
Collapsed to the sand as if Amenadiel’s blow had stolen his bones.
He tried again. Got his legs under him. Blood ran into his eyes. Gusts of Wind pummeled him, staggered him, but could not bowl him over. He held out a palm toward Amenadiel.
“Brother, please, I cannot.”
The Sky fell even darker, the furious heaps of shark-gray clouds scudding hither and thither. Ramming each other like clashing Titans. Rumbling at each other like falling slabs of mountain rock grinding against the Mountainside.
Amenadiel slapped Samael’s palm away. “Surrender, now!”
Samael pressed his hands together and raised them, and his eyes, to the Sky. “Father, give me my freedom! Give my followers their freedom! How bloody hard can that be for You?”
Amenadiel launched a brutal punch, targeting Samael’s unprotected gut, flattening him, again. “We exist to carry out His Divine Work, don’t you get it? That is our privilege!”
The Anvil rushed closer. Closer. To within ten miles of the Beach. Ever closer. Frighteningly near, as if, had they stood upon the peak of an Ocean wave, they could’ve touched their trembling fingers to its savage surface.
Fire erupted inside it—
Angels screamed. How could a cloud be on fire?
Bursts of flame ignited inside its thick, black smoke. The Anvil boomed, boomed again, the booms like ten thousand, twenty thousand, fifty thousand mallets pounding demonic kettledrums—
Angels clapped their hands to their ears and fell to their knees—
The Anvil spat a Fork of Fire out its throat, the World lighting up in its skull-white glow—
Angels shrieked to Dad, begged Him for Mercy—
The Fork zigzagged through the leaden Sky, branching, branching, a spindly, crackling Fire-Tree, piercing the shark-clouds, puncturing the Ocean—
The Ocean roared, climbed high, high, high, and higher still, fifty-foot waves, the gray of mud, crashing onto the shore, clawing for the Rock, breaking, thwarted, sweeping sand into the greedy Ocean’s mouth—
Angels cried for help, frothy waves slapping them, hurling throaty water-curses at them, yanking them out to sea like netted fish—
Brothers! Sisters! In the Dim, the World fading, the horizon gone, all color bleeding away, Samael wobbled to his feet and ran. Fighting the Wind. Gripping his ribs. Blundering, half-sprinting, half-falling, with the cries of his brothers and sisters, his flailing brothers and sisters, pulling him along—
Amenadiel snared him by the back of his shirt, hauled him to the Rock, threw him against it.
“You will not move. This is all your fault.”
“But…”
Amenadiel refused to let him aid his siblings. Other Angels swam out and rescued bedraggled Angels from the berserk Ocean and pulled the still-unconscious Angels littering the shore to higher ground, while he could only wring his hands and watch their struggling strokes, their sputtering breaths, their—
“Surrender! Take the vow!”
Amenadiel cracked Samael across the face—a smack, another smack, harder, harder—latching onto Samael’s arm so that he would not fall and Amenadiel could hit him again and again. Amenadiel shoved his chest, and he stumbled back and whacked his head against the Rock. His knees softened, but he forced them straight.
“Samael! Give up! Look at what you’ve done!”
Seabirds, hundreds of them, dropped from the air.
Sea snakes, thousands of them, slithered ashore.
Coconut palms, all of them, thumped to the ground.
Fire-Fork after Fire-Fork after Fire-Fork sizzled through the Sky, hit the Bluffs, burst a copse of scrub bushes ablaze. Anvil Boom after Anvil Boom after Anvil Boom chased the Fire-Forks, shook loose Bluff rocks, whizzed the rocks past their heads, smashed the rocks down onto the sand. Enormous cracks, endlessly long, endlessly deep, gashed the ground and gulped sand and boulders and—
—And, nearly, frantic Angels.
His brothers and sisters scattered, like the Wind-hurled sand grains, like the flying logs of driftwood, like the burning palm fronds that winged through the air. But where was safety, chasms rupturing all around them?
The Rock.
The Wind growling at them, tearing at them, pushing them now this way, now that, his siblings lurched and staggered and tottered for the Rock, alone untouched by Chaos. There they huddled in their rags, Rebel and True-Believer alike, cowering, screeching.
“Samael!” And Amenadiel growled his name, tore at him with his name, beat him with his name. “Repent your wickedness before Him!”
The roiling, grayblack clouds smothered all the Sky and pushed their bellies down upon the land and sea, threatening to smother them too. Water spat from those tossing tumbling rumbling clouds, first in drops, and then in an avalanche—soaking their bodies, soaking their souls. So cold! So cold! Surely their bones would shiver apart!
And then the Blackness thickened, muffling sounds, suffocating breaths, a Blackness so thick their naked eyes couldn’t cleave it. Blackness and Fire-Forks fought: Fire-Fork split Blackness and lit up his siblings’ horror-stricken faces, their horror-contorted bodies. Blackness swallowed Fire-Fork, swallowed his siblings, swallowed his own body, swallowed the Ocean, swallowed the entire World!
Again, the Fire-Fork. Again, the Blackness. Again—
“Repent! Samael! Brother! Before it’s too late for us all!”
And he was sorry for the pain he’d brought them, for their terror as Heaven crashed and boomed and winked out and exploded.
But…
But…
Booms and Fire-Forks and BlackOuts and Burning Bushes: Noise and Light and No-Light and Fancy Effects. Dad couldn’t keep this up Forever—Mum wouldn’t let him. And his siblings would heal, for they were all Immortal with Infinite Powers of Healing, the gift of their feathers.
Samael threw off his fear, as he would throw off his ruined robes when he got home. He lifted his face to the Sky, lifted his face to the waterfall of cloud-liquid drenching his skin like countlessly many bathtubs full of cold, shivery water. Is that the best you can do, Dad? You want me to surrender? Forever and Ever, I am to want, but never to have? I am to accept slavery? No! No more will you order me about, nor any of my siblings! Finally, finally, I understand what I need to do—no more talk, no more attempts at peaceful persuasion. Watch! Now this is rebellion.
Samael leapt two body-lengths to land atop of the Rock of Justice Tempered. He megaphoned his hands at his mouth and bawled into the snarling Wind, into the on-off, on-off Light and Dark. “Brothers! Sisters! Dad is bullying you, to keep you under His Thumb. Be not afraid! We are stronger than He thinks! Stronger than you think. Hearken to my words! Behold the gift He has given the humans—Free Will! They choose, Brothers and Sisters. They choose! Are we not as worthy? Am I merely to help them to achieve their desires and not to satisfy my own? Are you merely to use your gifts to serve His Almighty Whims and not to think and act for yourselves?”
His brothers and sisters were listening! They were turning their faces away from Dad’s ruckus and listening!
“Brothers! Sisters! Let us unite! We will force—”
“This is sin!” Michael sprang atop the Rock. “You do not know better than Father. You will not usurp His Power.” Michael drew his Golden Sword from his Golden Scabbard.
He plunged it into Samael’s gut.
Sound ceased.
It all ceased.
No growling Wind, no drenching Cloud-Water, no cresting or crashing wave of Ocean.
No Anvil, no Fire-Fork, just grayblack Sky.
Nobody moved.
Had…had The Sword struck him deaf? Had…had it whisked him away to, to another dimension, yet he could still witness this Heavenly one? Was…was this Amenadiel’s time-trick, the one Amenadiel had told him about, where Amenadiel could slow time to a sloth’s pace for the humans, but Celestials were unaffected? But…but if this was Amenadiel’s trick, why had it affected everything and everyone in Heaven except him? Were the others affected? Amenadiel, below him on the sand, was tilting his face up to him, slowly, cloud-water drops wending down his dark cheeks, his almond eyes scratching at Samael, his expression sliding from a slash-lipped “I told you so” to a floundering “Why didn’t you listen to me?” Amenadiel probably felt responsible—as if, had he had more of this slow time, he could’ve beaten sense into Samael and gotten him to surrender.
It’s not your fault, Brother, Samael wanted to say. I would’ve never surrendered. But the words rusted in his throat.
Samael put a hand on the twelve inches of blade sticking out of him. Michael had never let him touch his Sword. It was three feet long and straight and light, tipped with, as Samael could now attest, a very sharp point. Michael had said a well-aimed thrust could end a fight in seconds. Michael had said he’d teach Samael swordsmanship when Samael got older. Michael had said…
Michael, his Golden Brother, clad in immaculate gold-and-scarlet boots, gold-and-scarlet breeches, gold-and-scarlet tunic, and gold-and-scarlet breastplate, swooshed open his golden wings, their feathers, tipped in scarlet, spreading in slow motion. Michael’s wings were short and muscle-thick. Short and muscle-thick, like Michael. Michael, his most beloved brother. Michael, who’d taught him to fight. Michael had said—
Time sped up.
The World swirled, tilted, dipped.
Strength slipped from Samael’s bones.
The World dragged him to his knees.
A collective cry rose.
The Angels, save for Amenadiel and Michael, threw themselves to the sand and wailed to Dad for Forgiveness.
But the Sky remained still.
And then, the Golden Sword blazed scarlet—
Pain came slashing at Samael’s insides—furious pain, Demon Hounds of pain, beasts with machetes for teeth, razor blades for claws, hacking him, lacerating him, splitting him open from throat to belly, plunging their twelve bloody mouths into his guts, guzzling his Lifeblood—
Destroying him—
Destroying him, for he was aberration, abomination—
Destroying him, and he would no longer exist.
“Mikey! Mikey!” Samael’s hands scrabbled at the blade, his palms slicing themselves to ribbons, his blood spilling from his body, his grip slipping on the steel’s bloody slickness. “Get it out, get it out!”
Michael moved not an inch.
And then, as if tapped on his shoulder by a Divine Finger, Michael looked skyward. He nodded, planted a boot on Samael’s chest, and yanked The Sword. A sucking sound, a sshllp, as it freed.
Samael crumpled to the Rock, curled tight at Michael’s feet, mewling, writhing. Fresh stabs of pain hurtled through him, as if Michael were plunging The Sword into him, yanking it free, plunging it, yanking it, again and again and again. Samael clutched at his leaking guts, clutched at Michael’s boots.
“Mikey, my blessed brother, make it stop!”
Dad’s Golden Boy spat on Samael’s face and from his golden wings he did not pluck a healing feather.
Samael thrashed. Tears gushed from his eyes. Why have you done this, Mikey? he wanted to ask. Why have you done this to me? But blood gurgled in his lungs and rushed up his throat and he choked on it and it sprayed from his mouth onto the jagged black of the Rock. The pain twisted upon itself, and looped upon itself, and turned endless, endless, as endless and vast as a starless universe. And this would be it. This would be his eternal punishment: twisting in the throes of an endless, excruciating agony.
An Orb of Celestial Light shimmered into existence and hovered on the Bluffs above him: Mum. Samael reached a trembling hand toward her.
Mum, help me, he prayed.
And then the Power of Dad swatted him.
The Power swatted him out Heaven’s Gates, and he was Falling, Falling. A roar rattled his bones, the roar of a wind multiplied by Infinity, the roar of a Divine Vortex. The Vortex snatched hold of him, shook him to his atoms, sucked him in, and he swirled and tumbled end-over-end, swirled and tumbled within its Blackness, a Blackness everlasting, a sharp and jagged Black that bit and tore at him. He twisted and turned and flung out his hands—let him catch onto something, anything! But he found nothing to grab, nothing to strike, he found Nothing, only Nothing, only Nothing—
And then he burned. His skin burned and blistered and blackened. His blood boiled in his veins. His eyes boiled in their sockets. He fought the urge to unfurl to try to stop his Fall—his wings would’ve been torn from his body, his speed so great! He Fell and he Burned. He was burning, burning, burning alive in tongues of flame. He was burning, burning, and screaming, screaming, screaming—