Seven Archangels: Annihilation (6 page)

The room sparkled now even though it was the lab area: the Guard flickering, the eerie energy of Lucifer coursing through Camael and out his eyes, Gabriel's soul leaking light it never had before. Michael's sigil glowed white-hot with its owner outside the room.

The outer Guard shattered, but the stronger one remained.

Camael missed a notch, and Lucifer cuffed him, but the reprieve was only momentary.

"We're holding," said Mephistopheles-Beelzebub.

The clamor of Michael battering their Guard filled all the room as he forced the living web with the point of his sword. Gabriel called for him, tried to reach upward with his soul but then recoiled because the effort left him exposed. Parts of himself slid away like a cliff-face during a landslide.

Raphael and Israfel were ready to flash him outside the room if given a chance, and Gabriel thought they might be encouraging him:
Not far now.
But maybe that was only his yearning.

It had grown difficult to think. He ached to tell God he loved him one last time, but the words wouldn't form. He had grown so cold. Dull ringing swelled to absorb every sound while queer patches of grayness soaked the fabric of reality. He tasted metal. Then nothing.

The ring on Mephistopheles' hand gave one spangled burst of light that rippled the entire fabric of the Guard. Lucifer channeled a last burst through Camael. Light exploded through the entire cell, and then it was finished.

The chains dangled empty.

Camael collapsed.

They stood silently, the four in the room. The walls glowed as if with phosphorescent lichen, uneven but able to shine: Gabriel's spiritual residue.

"Oh, God," Mephistopheles whispered. "We did it."

"Michael's still on the ceiling," said Beelzebub.

Lucifer didn't spare him a glance. "Are you strong?"

"We're holding."

"Good." Lucifer stepped forward to where Gabriel had been. "There's nothing left at all. It worked just as you predicted."

Mephistopheles sounded shocked. "Annihilated."

Shuddering, Camael tried to stagger to his feet, and Lucifer took his hand and pulled him upright, then let him lean with his arms wrapped around his stomach until he could support himself.

"Do you suppose he's aware right now," Beelzebub said, "listening?"

"There's nothing after this," Lucifer said. "He's non-existent, not aware at all. It's as though he never was."

Mephistopheles fingered the sigil on his hand. "Other than the memories."

Lucifer said, "I want to scan the room for anything that might remain. Destroy whatever you find. Figure out how to burn the glow off the walls." He bent and lifted a four-leaf clover off the floor. "Well, what do you know? It's our lucky day."

He incinerated the clover on his palm.

They scanned the room for residue. Beelzebub seared every inch of the walls, floor and ceiling. When they were done, Lucifer declared the job finished.

Chapter Four

Lucifer flashed Camael, along with Mephistopheles and Beelzebub, into another lab area chamber, an easy feat of translocation for someone with enough willpower to lasso three souls and carry them away regardless of—or despite—their own intentions.

Unable to be seen, still Camael tried to contain his gag on breathing an antiseptic odor covering a musty scent and the hint of smoke. Lucifer was pacing the room. As he moved, the chemical burn smell faded and intensified.

This must be Lucifer's own chamber, his office, a place so secret that even Michael had never located it, let alone broken in—and yet here was Camael, carried inside like the closest of friends. For one mad moment Camael dreamed of exploding the place, shining light over all the dark corners, maybe for the first time since Hell's creation. He didn't.

The scrape of a chair and a rustle of feathers. "I want a full account from all of you."

The next scrape sounded different, wooden, a tall bench at a work station: Mephistopheles' slighter form on a stool. Beelzebub's deep voice came from Camael's other side, at a height that meant he remained standing. "Why do you need an account? You were there."

Camael slid down the wall and drew his ankles close.

"It's an analysis," Mephistopheles said. "We have to ensure we did it right."

"He's not there anymore. Of course we did it right!"

For two hours, Lucifer debriefed Camael and the other two, one hundred twenty minutes of pure fright having seen one angel dead and knowing that if he wasn't fully, totally Camael, the next moment would see the death of a second. So many questions, so many different ways of asking the same thing. And every time, the same answers. Lucifer wanted to be sure.
You had your hands in him. Did he die?

Yes, I told you, I think he did.

You think, or you know?

I couldn't find anything else. He was there and then he burst into nothing when you moved through me and made that last pull.

Not mentioning—not even remembering the moment Camael decided there was no choice but to resist, but then not enough time, that moment when it felt as if Gabriel were vacuumed backward, but then there was nothing at all and hope turned into emptiness when Camael realized it wasn't the arms of rescue but the suction of nothingness and the Abyss.

Lucifer, all excited: had they really done it? And Camael, ripped in half again and again: yes, we did it. Mephistopheles: the evidence indicates that we succeeded, just as I hypothesized. Beelzebub: this is awesome, everything we've ever wanted.

No, no, Lucifer would say at that point, let's go over it one more time. Just in case we missed something.

After that excited roundabout, Lucifer and Beelzebub all the more fervent with every exchange and Mephistopheles more analytical and less certain (what if in theory—what if we allow for this differential) Lucifer received a message from Asmodeus, chief of Hell's army.

Beelzebub let off an irritated sigh.

"Come in," Lucifer said, but Camael felt that Lucifer actually looped him into the room. These must be unique Guards. You couldn't be let inside; you had to actually be drawn in like a fly on a frog's tongue. Camael wondered if the reverse were true and tried to send out a tendril of thought—but back it bounced. Interesting. In by pull, out by shove.

Asmodeus bowed. "We've positioned sentries in defense formation as you ordered. No attacks so far." Again the irritated sigh from Beelzebub—Asmodeus had disrupted their meeting to report nothing? Asmodeus continued in his even bass, "I wanted to note something interesting."

"Asmodeus," and the firmness conveyed that Lucifer's next words, however phrased, were to be considered a threat, "interest me."

"The angels stationed in Creation are silent," Asmodeus said. "All of them. The tourists are gone, but the angels with assignments are paired up."

Lucifer's chair creaked. "But silent?"

"They're doubled up," Asmodeus repeated, "but nobody is singing."

Camael recoiled. Beelzebub gasped.

"That's what they did when
he
died," Mephistopheles whispered, his voice abruptly coming from the same corner as Beelzebub's.

No one spoke.

"We did it!" Beelzebub said. "I told you, we did it!"

"We had sentries surrounding the Guarded dome over the field where you abducted him," Asmodeus said. "That dome remained in place and we were unable to break it, not even enough to see through, but—" and here they felt his excitement surge, "we were able to hear Raphael scream 'No!'"

Camael felt both Beelzebub and Mephistopheles cringe simultaneously.

Lucifer and the captain of the army pinpointed the moment the scream happened, about half a second before the annihilation finished. "That corresponds to when I broke their bond," Lucifer added.

Mephistopheles sounded hollow. "You could find that?"

"I saved it for last," Lucifer said, "in case Gabriel was in pain."

Camael stared toward his hands, only he couldn't see them.
I feel nothing. I feel nothing.

"Are they in attack formation?" Lucifer asked.

"They're not staging anything we can determine," Asmodeus said.

"Excellent work." Lucifer cracked his knuckles. "Alert me if you think you can interest me again." And Asmodeus was gone.

Camael's head dropped onto his folded arms, and all three pairs of wings came up over his head.

Silent angels. A buddy system. No invasion. Gabriel dead.

Gabriel.

Dead.

No—stop feeling. Feel nothing.

Mephistopheles said, "We shouldn’t conclude too much from their behavior. I want to conduct one more sweep—"

"We don't need one more sweep!" Beelzebub's energy sliced through the room like a quasar. "We did it!"

Camael mustered his voice. "What's next?"

Lucifer said, "I know you want to kill her, but she's last."

Camael bit his lip. His blood had a sickly taste. Too cold in here. This was Hell—where was the fire? Where the sound? Silent angels. Silent Gabriel, never to sing again.

I feel nothing.

Mephistopheles said, "Michael is the next logical choice."

"It would be to our advantage to take him down," Lucifer said. "When we thought we had only one chance, it had to be Gabriel. With two, though—Michael, or Uriel?"

"We'd never get near Uriel," Beelzebub said. "Do you think we could do this to one of the monkeys?"

Mephistopheles murmured, "I told you, they're not put together the same way."

"It's too bad," Lucifer said, "because I'd love to permanently remove that woman from the picture."

Beelzebub laughed. "Camael, who's your choice?"

Camael stayed ducked. Raphael. If you killed Gabriel, it was only a kindness to obliterate his Seraph too and spare him existence as a half-moon and a lifetime of memories no one wanted to mention and a name you never wanted in the first place. To dance and hear only half the music, and to know God loved you but would not give back the only other thing you ever wanted even though you knew it was wrong even to want—

"Suggestions, Camael?"

Camael swallowed. "Raphael."

"Not strategically significant."

"With all due respect, sir," Camael said, "you don't know how Raphael is going to react. He might make himself important."

Beelzebub snorted. "You mean like your sister did? Or like you?" He laughed. "I don't think we have anything to worry about."

I feel nothing. I feel nothing.

Lucifer was quiet.

Camael laid his head on his folded arms, again tenting himself within his wings. Gone, going away. I feel nothing. I am nothing.

Camael uncurled a long thought and snaked it outside the Guards as if they didn't exist, hunting for air, hungering for light and water, for someone's hand and a presence inside that said, you are, you feel, come to me.

Camael felt thoughts probing over him, so he sent away his mind outside the Guard. Light. Quiet. Oblivion. Gabriel. Gabriel wasn't thinking anything any longer, never again. I feel nothing.

"Debriefing is over. Dismissed," Lucifer said. Camael ended up free, somewhere else in Hell but carrying the hell of loss deep inside.

- + -

Still in Lucifer's chamber, Mephistopheles found himself not dismissed.

Lucifer was writing, a light scratch of nib against paper, and then, when Mephistopheles began wondering if he had been forgotten, said, "Camael is getting slippery."

Mephistopheles said, "He's only a Virtue. That sustained an effort must have exhausted him."

"He's hard to grip right now. He was probing outside my Guards. Observe him. I don't want him going insane."

Mephistopheles listened to the pen scratching and tried to deduce the letters he was hearing written, at least the language if not the actual words. "I'll assign someone to assess his movements."

"You know his value to this process," Lucifer said. "I don't need to tell you how displeased I'd be if we had to revert to our backup plan."

Mephistopheles was sure the pattern he had just heard could be the letter n, but it might have been a ｶ or a π. "Will that be all, sir?"

"Not yet." A pause in the writing, and then it resumed; that was almost certainly a ﾐ. "I'm fully aware that the discovery was all yours which enabled today's success."

Mephistopheles inclined his head, knowing Lucifer would pick up the acknowledgment he projected.

"I want you to get to work on a way of mass-producing the effect. A technique so any demon can work that way."

Mephistopheles hummed. "Do you want that technique in everyone's hands?"

Lucifer chuckled. "I'll make Beelzebub my next victory if he even thinks of trying it on me. And you can feel free to repeat that."

"I didn't mean—"

"Naturally you didn't." Lucifer continued writing. "Tell me, do you think it hurt Raphael when I broke their bond?"

Shaking, Mephistopheles clenched his fists. "I can't say."

"But surely you suspect. I've never seen fit to permanently fetter myself with such an anchor, but you and Beelzebub use the bond to your mutual advantage enough that I consider you an expert."

Mephistopheles bit his lip. Lucifer was definitely writing in hiragana, but it might have been anything at all. A report, a poem, even the crossword puzzle.
"I just violated God's sovereignty in a permanent way"
ten thousand times.

"If it didn't hurt at the moment," Mephistopheles said, "then I'm certain it hurts now."

"Very well." Lucifer set down his pen. "Let me know if you ever want all your bonds broken. Dismissed."

Mephistopheles found himself in his own chamber, pushed back through his own Guards. He sat on his desk with his head in his hands.

- + -

They'd prayed. The group of angels and humans at the playground had prayed. Everyone in Heaven had prayed, once word went out. But Michael's sword was his prayer, and Raphael's deep injection of power toward Gabriel's soul was his. Uriel and Mary stood, hands clasped, tears over-shining both their faces as they united in prayer for one thing, one thing only.