Broken Wings: Genesis (30 page)

Now it was time to deal with the
other angelic issue confronting me. Ke had his hand out in front of him, as
though to reach out and touch me. I took a step back, shaking my head.

“What? So now that I have an extra
pair of appendages, you decide it’s all right for you to touch me? Uh-uh. It
doesn’t work that way, angel boy.”

Ke dropped his hand, looking
confused. “No––I––” He stopped, shaking his head. “It is not like that.”

“Oh?” I raised my eyebrows
pointedly. “And how
is
it like? Answer me this––is your eyes, is it now
okay
for us to be together?”

Men were pretty dense sometimes
when it came to women. Angelic males were obviously more so. He didn’t catch
the warning tone in my voice. Not my fault, I was giving him every opportunity.
His own words buried him.

“Of course it would be okay––as
long as you are of the angelic realm again, there is no taboo.”

“Wrong answer, Ke.”

I shook my head, seemingly to
argue his words. For me it was a clearing action, trying to make the hurt go
away. My eyes burned, but it wasn’t from the dust any more. Damn it. I wasn’t
going to cry. This guy certainly wasn’t worth it.

Ke looked confused. He really
didn’t get it.

“Yeshua––”

My eyes closed, to block out the
sight of him. “You have become a lot more human than you realize Ke. And to top
it all off, you managed to latch onto one of the ugliest of human emotions as
far as I’m concerned––prejudice. All of you angels seem to be guilty of it.”

He was frowning. “I am not
prejudiced––”

“Really? You would take me now that
you feel I meet your standards. But you wouldn’t touch me before––I wasn’t
worthy in your eyes.”

“Worthy?” Ke’s voice held a bitter
laugh. “You do not understand at all, do you? Angels may live in the higher
realms away from all the dregs of darkness that humans have to deal with, but
it is not because the
humans
are not worthy. It is because the angels
are less than humanity in many ways.”

Okay. That caught me off guard.
“What do you mean?”

“Humans are the ones with the hard
job, Yeshua. They have to not only deal with the darkness on a continual basis,
they have to fight it and survive amidst overwhelming odds, and they do almost
every time.”

I thought about the people on the
surface, those ones whose strength called to me and gave me the courage to face
my own ordeal.

“Angels are not equipped to deal
with the darkness. That is why Adam and Eve were created. There is always a
balance. Darkness and light. It has to stay in balance, without one side taking
over the other. If either side takes a stronger hold, the pattern begins to
unravel. When Lucifer gave Eve the knowledge, it gave humans the upper hand.
They understood both darkness and light. Angels do not have that
understanding.”

“So you are on the side of Lucien,
then?” I was getting confused.

“No. I am on the side of balance.”
He stopped, shaking his head. “I do not know how to make you understand,
Yeshua. I only do what has to be done.”

Ke turned away from me and started
toward the Obsidian Gate that led to the pit of the Abyss. I was way too
confused to deal with this. But when Ke reached the short set of stairs leading
to the surface of the Gate, I had to do something to buy me more time to sort
through it all. So I did what humans did best in the face of adversity. I
panicked.

“No!” The shout came and I reached
out my hand.

Violet light shot from my fingers
and hit Ke, knocking him away from the Gate. I stared at my hand as though it
were an alien thing. I felt a warming on my chest. It was the amulet Marduk had
activated on my behalf. What had he said–?
This will only help to bring to
the surface that which you need to know
. I guess I’d needed to know that.
There wasn’t going to be any warning with this thing, was there? It was handy,
but I could see it being a dangerous bit of help.

Ke was picking himself up off the
floor. He seemed as surprised as I was. But he also held a look of resolution.
His eyes were dark with warning.

“Do not make me fight you,
Yeshua.”

“Then back off, Ke.”

I didn’t
want
to fight him.
I wasn’t sure if I could pull that trick out of the hat again. Pressing my luck
did not seem to be the best way to proceed. It didn’t seem as though he were
going to give me a choice. He started toward the Gate again.

I flung out my hand again and the
violet energy surged outward, flying toward Ke. At the last instant, he turned.
Blue energy flared from his hand, hitting my violet ball and ricocheted it back
toward me. It caught me totally by surprise, flinging me back to hit the stone
wall. My eyes widened in a mixture of pain and shock.
That
hurt. It also
meant the kid gloves had come off. The fight had begun.

Another blast of violet energy
headed his way, a line this time instead of a ball. Ke was lifted from the
floor to hang, suspended in the center of the room. Well, that was a new one.
He recovered quicker than I did from the shock.

A blast of blue energy surged like
feedback down the glowing violet line. I saw it coming, but didn’t know how to
stop it. I guess the amulet had a mind of its own as to what I did and did not
need to know. The blue energy contacted my body, breaking the connection and
sending me staggering for balance. Ke dropped to the floor. I saw him wince.
Good. He was feeling a little pain, too.

The battle raged on between
us––attacks, counter-attacks, ball, lines, and explosions of blue and violet
energy all lighting the room like Fourth of July fireworks. I was hurting a
lot, but I was also getting tired. The only redemption I found was that he
seemed worse off than I was. It puzzled me at first, but then I finally understood.

I was used to dealing with this
energy being flung at me from beings that knew how to use it. The creatures I
had fought against over the years dealt me the same hurt. I was used to it. Ke,
new to his human form, was not. I was actually winning the fight.

Once that realization hit me, I
blasted him with everything I could. That was another advantage, perhaps for
me. He was used to wielding the energy. I wasn’t. Instead of draining me, it
was making me as power drunk as I was in the presence of most of the immortals.
I was high on pure energy.

It was a struggle, but I knew that
I would win. It became especially clear to me when Ke dropped one last time to
the foot of the stairs and didn’t get back up. With a ball of energy in my
hand, I advanced on him. My moves were cautious. I didn’t know if he was faking
it, or if he was really in that bad of shape.

I reached the place where he lay
crumpled on the ground, his breathing heavy and ragged. When I stopped, just
out of his reach, he looked up at me. His eyes held pain, but that old look of
longing was still there. It dawned on me that the Thrones had it wrong. I
finally understood what Ke was trying to tell me earlier. His prejudice hadn’t
been against my being a human. He loved me in either form. He kept himself from
me because he hadn’t felt worthy.

The light in my hand flickered and
died out. I was back to being lost again. What was I supposed to do now?

“Why do you not finish it?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to
answer that one. “Why do you feel this is the best solution for humanity, Ke?”

“Because humans are the only ones
with the strength enough to fight against the darkness, Yeshua. If Abaddon is
released, no matter what else happens, it will be humankind that will have to
turn back the tides of darkness. The angels are not prepared.”

I laughed, but the sound was
hollow. “You don’t get it, do you? Have you looked around you lately? There is
darkness all over the world. Humans give in to that darkness
willingly
.
They are more likely to side with Abaddon at this point.”

Ke shook his head. “No. I do not
believe that. They rise up against the darkness. It is what bands them together
against a common enemy. The darkness makes them strong. They have the strength
to fight this battle. It will come to them anyway, no matter what we do here.”

“Isn’t the Crystal City
evidence enough for you that the darkness of humanity is taking over? The
angels are beginning to act like the humans. Their darkness is coming out
because they reflect what happens down here. Humanity isn’t fighting the
darkness any more, Ke, they embrace it.”

“This will happen one way or
another, Yeshua. I am only working to give us a chance in the upcoming battle.
If we can control the breach, then we can mend it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. If Abaddon
and his hordes pop through that Gate right now, who is going to stop them? You?
You can’t even stand on your own two feet. Me? Not likely––I have no clue as to
what I’m doing. It
frees
them, Ke. They will be loose on the earth, and
Armageddon begins. Is that what you want for humanity? It seems to me that
means their destruction, not their salvation.”

Ke was still shaking his head.
“No. I do not believe that. They can win this battle–”

He was fading. I could see it. It
hurt me to do so, but I turned my back on him. He had a lot more faith in
humanity than I did. But he hadn’t lived among them. I had. Oh, there was
strength to be found, he was right about that. But there was also weakness,
corruption, and darkness. This could not possibly be won. Maybe Abaddon would
break free from the pit some day. When he did, humanity would have to deal with
it then. I was just buying them a little more time.

I started walking away. “It is
finished for now, Ke. There will come another time to deal with all of this. For
now, the battle is over.”

I should have been paying
attention, but I wasn’t. Through the silence, as I crossed the floor, Ke’s
voice was clear.

“This battle is over, Yeshua Star,
but the war only now begins.”

I froze in place, turning slowly
back to look at him. Ke had crawled up the stairs to the surface of the Gate.
He gave me a silent look of pride, and sadness. I think it was his way of
saying goodbye.

I started to move again, but it
seemed as though time had slowed to a crawl. I watched in horror as Ke lifted
his hand to the surface of the Obsidian Gate. Blue energy built at the center
and spread outward from where his hand rested. I lifted my hand to stop him,
but nothing came out. I shook it, trying to get the damn thing to work. Nothing
happened.

The blue energy had barely reached
the edges of the Gate, covering it in a pulsating glow when the whole surface
bulged outward, and then erupted. For a moment, the room was still and quiet.
Then a humming filled the air, growing in intensity to a throbbing, beating
headache of a noise coming from the shattered surface of the Gate. My mind idly
found the biblical passage,
and the sound of their wings was as the sound of
chariots of many horses running to battle
.

My eyes found Ke’s and stared at
him in disbelief. He had better be right in all of his assumptions. Abaddon was
headed our way and he was not alone.

Ke stumbled down the stairs,
backing away from the oncoming hordes. Without taking his eyes from the Gate,
he kept scrambling backward, propelling himself on his hands and feet until he
backed up against a wall and couldn’t go any further. The noise grew to
deafening levels. I wanted to put my hands over my ears to shut it out, but I
couldn’t afford the distraction of tying up my hands.

Then it stopped. Silence blanketed
the air in place of the noise. Nothing happened. I raised an eyebrow to Ke, who
continued to watch the Gate. But it wasn’t the kind of quiet that said
“everything’s over here, folks, move it along”. It was the calm before the
storm when even time seemed to hold its breath in anticipation of what was
coming.

Black, oily smoke exploded from
the Gate, pushing away any pieces left of the surface. The Gate was fully
opened, with nothing to block the way of what had been held back inside for so
many millennia. I recognized the blackness, if that made any sense. It wasn’t
the recognition of sight, even though I had seen it so many times before in my
dreams in front of a different Gate. It was more of a feeling––a feeling of
something very, very wrong. The essence of wrongness flooded the room with
tangibility.

In this lifetime, I have
encountered dark forces. Hey––I had even come face to face with Lucifer
himself. He was supposed to be the big bad and yet he hadn’t felt that
different from any of the other Angels I had dealt with at that point. In fact,
in some ways he had even been more pleasant, part of his overall mojo as the
Great Tempter was my guess. But this
thing
called Abaddon? There were
not even words to describe what the heart of true evil feels like. It was oily
and dry at the same time. The dryness chafed at your very core, rubbing it raw,
while the oily slickness filled up every part of you, encasing it in a
suffocating feeling of malevolence, bringing every dark emotion attributed to
the nature of humanity to the surface.

Abaddon was quick to assess the
situation. I guess you have a lot of time for figuring out all the angles of a
great escape when you’ve been locked away with nothing to do but think for
thousands of years. He probed me for only a fraction of a second, before
dismissing me as an unimportant first step. It was obvious that he perceived Ke
as the greater threat. Maybe my first clue was when he lunged directly at the
Angel bound in human form.

To give Ke some credit in all of
this, he didn’t panic. He didn’t even flinch. His head came up with pride and
he gave me a quick, parting glance that said
goodbye
from the depth of
emotion in his eyes. It pissed me off. He had gone through all of the trouble
to unleash this thing for the
benefit
of humanity’s survival, knowing he
probably wouldn’t be around to deal with the fallout.