Seven Archangels: Annihilation (2 page)

All right,
he prayed.
How am I going to do this?

It's your game,
God replied.
We already know
I
know how to find her, Saraqua'li.

Saraquael laughed.

"Need some help?"

Saraquael turned his attention to a square-jawed angel with only two green wings. "Hey, Michael. Remiel's trail leads to here, but I'm stumped."

It had taken ten seconds so far. Michael added his strength to Saraquael's, who used the Archangel's power to enhance his senses. As he opened his heart, Michael served as a lens to focus his thoughts, and in that moment Saraquael felt one star out of place. He targeted it with his will.
Tag!

"You stinker." Remiel appeared before them as the manufactured star system vanished. "You'd never have found me without help."

Michael ran a hand through saffron-toned hair. "It would only have taken him a minute or so."

"Yeah, I'm sure." Remiel smacked him on the shoulder. "You're it!"

Both Remiel and Saraquael vanished, and Michael flashed after in pursuit.

- + -

The Heavenly sunlight streamed through a window in the library of the Cherub Gabriel, lighting the pages of the book holding all his attention. He remained in a hush interrupted only by turning pages.

Some people don't understand why angels might read books. For himself, Gabriel didn't understand how Heaven could be Heaven without them.

Gabriel didn't look up when Raphael entered the room, just continued reading while extending a welcome to the Seraph. His soul flooded into Raphael's, and the two of them mingled for a moment with Gabriel's sedate and logical Cherub nature curling around Raphael's zealous Seraph-soul in a perfect fit, before it withdrew all the stronger.

The nine choirs each embodied a different aspect of God, typifying that characteristic and returning love to God in a way uniquely its own, a diamond with nine facets. As God's light filtered over them all, they lifted and amplified God's infinity in their own ways, Thrones for example by fully engaging in worship, or Dominions by their understanding of systems and strategy. No one angel could perceive all of God simultaneously, of course—but working together, all of them could hope to learn one thing or another about God and over the course of eternity perhaps—perhaps—know him in entirety. At least, so Gabriel hoped.

Raphael's brown eyes gleamed. Gabriel finally looked away from the book.

Concentrating, he reached through their bond to feel Raphael's request: a group of the angels were playing a creation-wide game of hide-and-seek, and Raphael was going too. Would Gabriel like to come?

Gabriel glanced back at his book, at his notes. Michael was concerned about some unusual activity in Hell, and being the investigators of the nine choirs of angels, the Cherubim wanted to figure out what Satan was keeping so shrouded. Generally the demons would brag, but right now the highest-order demons were strutting around creation with only a glint in their eyes, as if they could already taste a victory, and it didn't make sense. No clues. Whatever they'd planned, they'd planned it big.

Then he looked at Raphael, one of the most powerful Seraphim and his fellow angel among the Seven who stood directly before God. The Seraph sparkled at him. He was tall and broad-shouldered even as Gabriel was slight; soft-eyed where Gabriel was angular; chocolate-haired where Gabriel was blond—and yet despite all that, they resembled one another. Gabriel's grey eyes glinted.

Would it be all right if I went?
he prayed.

God told him it would make no difference.

Gabriel closed his book, and then both were gone.

By now the game had picked up a large number of players: six of the Seven, plus the leaders of three of the nine choirs. A "who's who" of the angelic world would have been filled with their identities. They hid as flowers in a field, raindrops in a thunderstorm, a painting in a museum, a new Jovian moon, an electron, and a word in a book.

Gabriel had just been located as the PM dot on a digital clock accidentally set for AM, so he joined Remiel and Raphael in a New England barn. He sprawled on the ground floor looking up at Remiel perched on a bale of hay in the loft. The hay's spicy scent mixed with the horsey odor, and the air carried a harbinger chill. Outside, the leaves had just begun to paint themselves orange and red.

"The game was a good idea." Raphael sat on one of the beams above the loft.

Remiel smiled her thanks.

Raphael nodded. "God told me to come—that we should enjoy this world to the fullest for as long as we have it." He paused. "Although now that I think about it, that was an odd thing to say. We don't have to live like humans do, as if every day might be the last."

Shadows haunted Remiel's sharp eyes. "Maybe an indicator of the end times? I've been uneasy."

Raphael glanced between his knees at Gabriel. "What do you think?"

Gabriel was staring out one smudged window at the cloudless sky. "It can't be a terrorist attack they're plotting, because they'd brag about that, and the guardians in the affected areas would know."

Remiel giggled behind her hand.

"You know how Cherubim get when they're engaged with a problem?" Raphael winked at her. "I figured I'd at least try to draw out our absent-minded professor with a theory question."

Gabriel focused suddenly. "A theory question?"

"Forget it."

Gabriel leaned against a hay bale and stared at the rafters holding up the roof, tracing the lines of force in his mind.

Remiel asked what Raphael had been up to lately, and Raphael said he'd prevented a convenience store robbery by three armed bandits.

"Three armed bandits," Remiel drawled, going semi-solid and plucking a small handful from a hay bale. "How many of them were there?"

Raphael tilted his head. "Three."

"Three three-armed bandits." Remiel's voice distorted as she tried not to giggle. "That's nine arms total."

Raphael's shoulders were shaking, and he looked down with his eyes closed and his lips pursed. "I wonder how they all met up. Maybe some kind of three-armed support group?'

"They have twelve-step programs for that sort of thing?"

"To have that," Raphael said, struggling to keep the laughter from his voice, "they'd need four three-legged bandits, and there weren't any of those."

Gabriel looked away from the wooden beams and directly at them both. "What exactly are you two talking about?"

Remiel sprinkled a few pieces of hay in the air and flashed them over Gabriel so they dropped onto his hair, then passed through his insubstantial form.

Raphael laughed out loud. He swung from the rafter so he hung from his knees, then grasped the wood and flipped to dismount.

"I'm so mean," Remiel said. "It's not fair to do that to the sense-of-humor-impaired."

"He does so have a sense of humor!" Raphael exclaimed.

Remiel hurled a double handful of hay at Raphael.

Even Cherubim can't foretell the future, but sometimes you don't have to be psychic to know what's about to happen. Gabriel sent his awareness out through the entire hay loft and noted the exact position of every bale of hay, every piece of straw, every bit of rope.

The Blizzard of 1888 might have resembled what happened next if only snow were green and gold.

Raphael flashed up into the hay loft, semi-solid and armed with hay. Remiel shrieked as he tackled her. The ensuing furor saw hay tumbling over the side of the loft while twelve flailing wings thumped against the roof, the bales, and the floor boards.

One of the horses looked at Gabriel. "Don't ask me," said the Cherub. "I just followed them here."

Gabriel flashed up onto one of the beams so he didn't become a friendly fire statistic courtesy of the hay shrapnel.

From behind him he heard, "Oh no, you don't," and abruptly he was nabbed between Remiel and Raphael, who catching him off-guard were able to force him solid. They shoved him into the loose piles.

Brilliant with joy, Raphael laughed. Gabriel discharged enough energy to blow them off, then fixed his eyes on the Seraph. He drank in Raphael's soul-fire, empowering himself and at the same time getting giddy. He could feel God smiling on them, laughing along with the game. Grinning, Gabriel tore hay from the closest bale and jumped Raphael, shoving him into the sliding straw and dodging the return volleys.

Raphael struggled away from him. "You lunatic! On the best day of your life I could pummel you into the ground!" And Gabriel, knowing in his heart how much power he really had, replied by tackling and pinning him.

Remiel sang aloud, "She'll be buried deep in hay-seeds when she comes—when she comes!" More angels arrived, more bedlam ensued, and Gabriel ached from the laughing. It was good. He suspected it would take several hours to comb the last straw bits out of his wings and hair, but so far he'd avoided having it stuffed down the back of his shirt, although not for want of Raphael trying.

Raphael whistled, bringing everyone up short. "Someone's coming."

"Tag!" Remiel slapped Gabriel on the shoulder. "You're it! Everybody run!"

All the other angels flashed out of the hay-piled barn except for Remiel. "Say," she said, "would you mind…you know, taking care of this?" Then she vanished too.

Gabriel shook his head, considered the piles of loose hay all over the loft and the barn floor (knee-deep in some places) and recalled where all of the baled hay had been at the start. A moment's concentration returned every blade of grass, every piece of hay, every sliver of straw, back into the place it had been when they'd begun.

"Sure," Gabriel said to God, shifting his sight to the Vision of God, breathtaking and even more joyous than Raphael up to his waist in flying hay. "She starts the fight, but whose responsibility is it to make sure everything gets cleaned up again?"

God smiled at him.

He glanced around to make sure everything had its right place, then straightened one string where it looked less tight than it had been when they started. As the farmer opened the door, Gabriel vanished, leaving the man to wonder why the hay scent was so strong this afternoon and why the horses looked vaguely amused.

- + -

Now it was Gabriel's turn to find everyone.

He opened his senses. Immediately Gabriel felt Raphael's presence like a beacon through their bond, but it wasn't fair to single him out first. Raphael's soul was attached to his so tightly that at times they seemed like one angel. Together both were stronger and more balanced than if they'd remained separate and extreme, but at the same time, it meant Raphael couldn't possibly hide.

It wouldn't be sportsmanlike to nab him first.

Avoiding Raphael's presence for now, Gabriel released his senses and picked up echoes of all the angels, though not all of them were easily identifiable. The strongest was a signature of Michael's power, but when he traveled to the location (a dresser drawer in an apartment in Prague) it was only a ring: a sigil. Michael had divested part of his soul into the object, giving it his power even though it wasn't him.

That was a good ruse.
Gabriel pocketed the ring and turned his attention outward again, and again the clearest sense he got was Raphael.

Raphael had taken the form of a chain link on a park swing, and he vibrated with tension as he awaited capture. At least two others were nearby.

Gabriel coalesced at the park, invisible in the October air as he settled to the ground. Children shrieked as they raced through the equipment while in a field alongside, three older boys played Frisbee.

Gabriel's mouth twitched. The others were waiting for him, but really, it was just a game. He would tag Raphael and send him to get the rest of them. No one would object, and there were books in the library, or maybe an afternoon ahead where he could find an unused living room with comfortable chairs.

Raphael zinged him through the bond.
Get your head out of the clouds.

Gabriel clenched his heart back to himself.

It's just a game.
Raphael sounded frustrated.
God can keep the universe running without you for ten minutes.

Gabriel folded his arms, and his grey eyes darkened even as he pulled his six grey wings tighter to his back.

Why bother playing a game if you're going to be thinking about ten other things when you're with us? You might as well not even be here!

Gabriel cut the contact and released himself to find the others.

Once he focused his perception on Remiel, he immediately—and not unexpectedly—found two signatures. He "felt" through both of them, each terribly close, observing rather than probing: one of the two was evil, and Gabriel didn't want to touch it.

Remiel's twin.

God sent him reassurance, and Gabriel briefly shifted to the Vision, brushing God's own sorrow over the fall of Remiel's twin. Two bright lights, so inscrutable that together they formed one angel constantly bi-locating—so united that when one chose a different master, the other nearly lost its mind. Gabriel felt now and always had that one of the greatest tragedies of the winnowing had been the separation of the twins known only as the Irin.

You're doing it again,
God told him.

One moment, two Irin. The next, one demon calling itself Camael and one screaming angel whom God named Remiel and promoted to the Seven.

Gabri'li,
God said gently.

Gabriel couldn't help but smile when God used his nickname; while
Gabriel
meant "God's Strength," by adding 'li instead of 'el, God could turn it into "Strength of Mine."

I know: I'm doing it again.

God chuckled.

I ought to apologize to Raphael. He's right.

Although Remiel's signature came from a field beside the play park, Gabriel moved in the opposite direction. A kid jumped off the swing where Raphael hid, and Gabriel drifted over to sit on it, rocking with the leftover momentum.