In the End (12 page)

“
Two,” said Lucien.

“
They've come,” said someone in the crowd, rapturously. “For us.”

“
Not for me,” someone else growled.

“
Lucien,” Lalael whispered, groping beside and behind him for Lucien's arm; when he found it, he put it in a death-grip, nails biting into Lucien's skin.

Lucien wasn't saying 'three'. He wasn't saying anything. Lalael looked behind at him.  Lucien was... waiting.

“
They've come,” someone said, “They'll kill us all, them and that army. I saw it.”

The crowd's tension mounted, and for a moment, no one moved. Lalael gripped Lucien's wrist tighter, and out of the corner of his eye, saw a man edging his hand beneath his coat.

“
Three,” said Lucien. They turned.

***

For next few moments, they moved too fast for the humans to see anything more than a storm of movement, a tornado of feathers, gray and black and dove-white. Later, some of them would claim that they had seen flickers like electricity dancing over them in veins of fire – seen, but not seen, like the movement of light behind a curtain. A spark through red hair, like it had caught the sunlight (but the clouds were still thick in the sky), a ripple of something almost unseen across the wings of the other one, and for a moment, there were those in the crowd who were stunned with a new conviction that they had just witnessed something important, something dazzling and, perhaps, holy.

Then they launched themselves into the air with a single glorious, beautiful wingbeat, and there
must
have been some kind of light streaming off them, but it was a light that cast no shadows, and not every person there had seen it.

***

They raced into the sky before anyone else could move, and then they were away, straining their speed and agility to levels neither of them knew they'd had. While the first flight had been driven by competition, by exaltation and adrenaline, this was powered by fear.

***

“
We've been found,” Lalael panted, pacing through the apartment while Lucien sat on the couch, thin lipped and clutching Antichrist to his chest, nose buried in the soft black fur once again. “They know about us. They'll find us; they'll kill us.” He swept into the kitchen, took a spatula out of a drawer, and set it on the opposite counter. “They know about us.” Within a few moments, the normally pristine counter was covered with kitchen oddments, and all Lucien's silverware had been squirreled away into the back of the freezer. “They'll kill us. They think we're freaks. They'll kill us and strip our wings and wear our feathers in their hair. Savages.” He turned his attention to the spatulas, threw open the cabinet of canned foodstuffs, and began wedging each utensil between the soups.

“
Lalael, calm down. They don't know where we are.” The angel gripped the counter until his knuckles turned white. “What's wrong with you, anyway?”

“
The humans,” he whispered, pressing his palms into the cool marble.

“
Nothing wrong with them,” Lucien said, sauntering into the kitchen and removing his spoons from behind one of the mysterious foil-wrapped packages that lives in the back of every refrigerator. Lucien could have sworn he'd emptied it when the power went out. Speaking of the power, the freezer seemed cooler than usual. Wishful thinking. “And besides, if they do try to kill us – we're stronger. We're faster. We'll go away, live somewhere else.” He shrugged and took six forks from the puddle of water in the ice tray.

Lalael picked up the spoons again and put them away in a bag of flour in the pantry. “All your things are here.”

“
They're just things. We'll take the things we can't replace – like your armor, my weapons, Antichrist – and leave the rest. They're just things.”

“
And humans are just humans?” Lalael asked. His shoulders hunched forward and he crossed his arms.

“
Nah,” said Lucien. “You can't say humans are 'just' anything.” He filled a kettle with bottled water and set it on the stove. The water was precious, but hot beverages were practically required after brushing up against being murdered, so
as soon as Lucien found enough candles to boil that kettle...

Against all evidence, the steam began to whistle out as it sat there, untouched, on the stove. They stared at it. Lalael dropped the cookbook he was attempting to fit into a pot.

“
Is it...?”

“
Yes.”

“
How?”

“
Possessed?”

Lucien rolled his eyes. “Demons don't possess kitchen appliances – except toasters.” He fetched a mug out of the refrigerator's vegetable drawer and poured the boiling water into it. “Ah. But...” He touched the glass-topped electric burner on the stove gingerly, then placed his hand on it. “Barely warm.”

“
Why did it... do that?”

“
I don't know. I thought I deserved a cup of coffee to calm down, and then it just happened on its own. Want some?”

Lalael shook his head. “I don't like it.”

***

Lucien hadn't dreamed for years, hadn't had a nightmare in, oh, ages.  “A nightmare” was incorrect; a more accurate term would be “The Nightmare” – the terrifying replay of memory that had haunted him for so long.

It always started the same; it always ended the same.

It began on a white-paved street, busy and expansively wide, set on either side with buildings of such architectural grace and elegance that architects of any era would have fallen to their knees in awe and wonder at the sight.

Lucien always knew it was The Nightmare at that point, for as soon as he recognized where he was, someone beside him began speaking.

“ –
Honored Lucifer, don't you think?” When he didn't answer, Lucien strained to hear – what they'd be saying next would be his name, twice, with a pause in the middle, but – he heard it. He could have sworn by the Holy Light itself, but somehow, somehow his mind reached for the name, caught it in a net...

And it slipped through, liquid and lost. His name.

But his dream-self was nodding, agreeing under his breath, and they were murmuring together, he and this other, while the white clouds shifted gently overhead and Shousán, the Light Unwavering, shone its light down over them all.

And then, catastrophe. Someone shrieked, a cry of “Traitor!” ringing through the air, and suddenly there was a guard, then two, at their backs, gripping their elbows with large, fine, strong hands that had been created for this very duty. To capture. To guard. To punish.

They were dragged away, the other angel gasping, struggling, protesting, but Lucien was silent and pale, for at that moment, he knew his destiny and despaired.

This part of the Nightmare was never the same. Sometimes they were thrown before an immense throne of light and mist and golden bliss, while the other angel cried and begged, pleading his innocence, pleading for mercy and forgiveness; sometimes they were taken directly to the Brink – those were the worst. In those dreams, the other angel fought instead of cried, screamed abuse at his captors; he resisted the Fall, and thus...

The dream never showed it, just blurred it over with tears that weren't wet on his cheeks, and then the other angel was gone, the ground pooled with blood that trickled slowly over the Edge.

And then in either version, he too was shoved close to the Brink, the vast abyss, with the dark echoing back up from the depths, and a deathly silence. His wings and arms were bound; the ropes bit into his flesh and scratched his skin. He was turned, made to walk closer, closer, closer: He balanced, toes scratching over the edge.

For a moment, he stood by himself, untouched and still. He turned his face to the sky, took a deep breath of the cool, sharp air that he knew now was the last he would ever taste of Paradise, and raised his eyes to the Light, to the blue-silk sky, to the feathery clouds. The void seemed to reach for him, and suddenly, through his own volition or from a final shove from a guard, he...

...Fell. Plummeted.

The ropes cut into his flesh, scoured his skin, bound his chest like a hundred tons of weight; he couldn't breathe, couldn't gasp for the breath that was being pushed out of him as he fell and Fell. Somehow, he turned his head, watched the round circle of blue sky die away, smaller and smaller, until finally it disappeared. The fall tore him apart, and he couldn't breathe; the dark was suffocating him, and the walls were closing in. Even as he struggled, he couldn't escape from the bindings, from the ropes that slashed into his flesh, that abraded his skin. And he fell. And Fell. And fell.

He landed in an unknown body of water like a meteor, but like his tears, it did not wet his skin, nor did it soothe his wounds. It enveloped him like a blanket, warm and stifling, and he still couldn't breathe. He was going to drown, he knew it – both he and his dream-self, and as they both panicked, fought, and struggled, a single strand of the vicious rope broke.

He was free yet tangled, but he still couldn't breathe – the water had closed over him and his cramping wings weighed him down. Then Lucien, real-Lucien, the one who was dreaming, took hold of the dream and
wrenched
it.

He forced himself to the surface, and as his head broke the filmy boundary of water and air, as he looked around at the place he'd landed, as he clambered up the steep bank of the murky, fetid water, and looked out over the barren, wind-swept plain, and the dry, crumbling-powder earth that burned his hands and feet
– he awoke, gasping, the sheets wrapped around him too tightly and the sweat just drying on his skin.

He loosened the sheets, wiped his face in them. The room was too dark, he thought, shrinking into the pillows. Too dark, and there could be... Things, like there'd been in the dark corners of Rielat, but he was thirsty, and his mouth was bitter, and everything was too quiet. Lucien shoved the fear away – it was only his own mind's inventions, after all – and forced himself to get out of bed, to pad as silently as he could through the apartment.

He was so busy listening to the silence that he didn't hear the sounds until he was standing in the pitch-dark kitchen, filling his head with light and sunshine to keep the darkness at bay. But he did hear it: A faint crackling, the sound of hushed voices, a distant roar of... fire? There had been rushing sounds like that all through Rielat, for something was always, always burning.

Was one of the neighboring buildings on fire? He wondered, frozen with the cup at his lips, the wine (easier to find than water) lapping into his mouth. Would it leap to this building? The cup's clatter when he set it on the counter seemed too loud. Lucien ghosted back into his room, slid the balcony door open.

Smoke. Not enough to cloud the air, which meant the fire was either small or further above him. In a moment, he was airborne; the night winds billowed under his wings as he circled around the building, rising and rising.

It wasn't a neighboring building that was aflame, but their own. A sudden wall of searing heat broke upon him, raking down his bare back and along his feathers. With a flip of his wings, he flung himself backwards, away from the heat. The upper ten floors were already ablaze, and as he watched, flickering light began in the floor beneath, and then the one below that.

He dropped, whirling through the air and bursting back into the apartment. He called to Lalael, strode into his room and tumbled the angel out of bed with a command to pack, and quickly. Lalael growled and grumbled at him, blearily querying Lucien's sanity, but the Fallen only flung a bag at his feet, ordered him to put his pants on and fill his pockets with valuables, and was gone.

“
What's going on?” Lalael called as he stuffed clothing into the bag.

“
Oh, nothing,” replied Lucien from the next room. “It's only the building on fire.”

Lalael swore.

“
Oh yes,” came the answer, still in a light, casual tone. “Fifteen stories or so, from the top down. Should be getting down to us any minute now. Building will start collapsing pretty soon.”

Lalael wriggled into a pair of jeans just as Lucien reentered the room, tossing a handful of assorted exorcism-payments to the angel. “Where's Antichrist?”

“
Sitting by the door, being impatient at me, like any sane person.”

“
Shouldn't we go out the window instead?” Lalael swept the payments into his pockets and slung the bag over his back as he followed Lucien to the door.

“
Too much flight too soon--are you sure you won't injure your wings again?”

“
No,” Lalael grumbled, but then, just as Lucien was turning the doorknob, they heard it. Voices. It was too late; Lucien was already pulling the door open, looking out into the hallway.

It was filled with firelight, not from the building itself, but from torches, held by... by people. They were grubby and frightened, and everyone froze.

Lalael swore again at the same time that the humans screamed and shrieked and someone shouted, “It's them!”

Lucien flung the door closed, slammed his shoulder against it, and threw the locks. “It's us,” said Lalael, stunned. “They want to burn US.” His voice began to break.  The voices from behind the door rose in a crescendo, then fell.