Samael (29 page)

A much larger and more powerfully built red dragon swooped down out of the army of flying monsters that had arrived and circled Mimi as if to protectively welcome her to the flying hoard. The larger red dragon was no doubt Calidum, a powerful red who also happened to be Mimi’s personal trainer.

Rhiannon turned her attention away from the dragons, knowing that Mimi would be safe with her own kind. She ducked under the Phantom’s swing, dropped to her stomach, and rolled back in the other direction as the floor again tilted, this time to right itself.

This thing isn’t going to last long
, she thought. It was going to plummet right out from underneath them at any second, and they’d all be riding Disney’s Tower of Terror, except this time for real. They needed a Plan B.

I’ve got wings,
she thought. So did all of the archesses and archangels. All they needed to do was break them out and use them the moment the tree house fell. Juliette, in fact, was already in the air. She and Gabriel passed the time in Scotland by jumping off cliffs overlooking the North Sea and soaring through the night over the cold, white waves. The sky was her second home, and she was comfortable up there, using her telekinesis to aid in the battle however she could.

The others only preferred to leave their wings shelved because for some reason, wings were the first things bad guys went for when trying to disable you. And having your wings sliced up really,
really
hurt.

Rhiannon had learned that the hard way when she’d been in a fight with a boat load of human traffickers shortly after she’d earned her own glorious pair of wings. She’d landed atop the boat in the middle of the night, interrupting nefarious negotiations. Then she’d smiled and transformed into her angel form, hoping the change would shock the boat’s inhabitants enough to make them put down their weapons. They all wore crosses, after all, big gaudy gold and silver things that dangled over hairy chests under open collars. Surely they wouldn’t hurt an angel?

But she’d been wrong. Maybe they weren’t as reverent as they pretended to be, or perhaps they immediately assumed she was a demon instead. Either way, they sprung into action at once and used their guns on her wings. It was exceedingly painful, and she’d quickly forced the appendages back into their magical hiding places before taking care of the bastards without them.

So she’d learned: It was best to fight on the ground, hand-to-hand and in person. But in the end, the wings were always there, and the archesses and their mates would have them when they needed them. In fact, the only one among them who didn’t have wings was….

Max.

Rhiannon frowned. She jumped to her feet and spun, taking in her surroundings with the speed and agility that she’d trained long and hard to develop. The tree house around her was packed so tight with struggling, fighting bodies, they could scarcely move without bumping into one another. She saw Michael going up against a blue dragon, which made Rhiannon nervous. It had been a blue dragon that had nearly killed him weeks ago, when she’d been forced to sacrifice the last of her life’s force to save him. But he seemed to have things well in hand, and Rhiannon knew she had to trust her mate’s abilities. They were
all
fighting demons right now.

She saw Gabriel struggling with a gargoyle. But when the Messenger Angel punched the gargoyle in the face and the rock-hard beast dropped to his knees, rather than cradle what must have been a broken hand, Gabriel grinned like the crazy angel he was, and kicked the stone monster in the throat. The gargoyle toppled backward and crashed to the floor.

Then, coming to no surprise whatsoever to Rhiannon, the Messenger Angel took two steps to the wall closest to him, and pulled a beer from the mantle over a fire place. He’d obviously placed it there before taking on the gargoyle.

He was just lucky the tree house floor had tilted in that direction when it had, or the beer would have been lost. Gabriel took a long swig, replaced the beer, and turned to fight someone else.

Rhiannon shook her head and continued to scan the room She saw Sophie next, who was clearly running healing interference, because she sped past Gabriel, reaching out to touch him gently on the back as she ran by. A quick flash later, Gabriel was flexing his no-longer injured hand and calling after her. “Thanks lass!”

Eleanore and Uriel fought back to back like the team of vengeance they were, and on the floor at their feet were a ring of dead or unconscious bodies. Just beyond that ring was another ring of creatures, this one alive and waiting. Leeches – restlessly anticipating the fall of either the archangel or the archess. Rhiannon knew it wouldn’t happen. They were powerful enough on their own. Together, they were absolutely awesome.

Speaking of awesome – Azrael, too, had been surrounded by a mountain of fallen foes. However, when Rhiannon located him again, it was to find him kicking the bodies off the tree house platform and into the forest below.

Making room
, she thought to herself. Or maybe the Angel of Death simply wanted to kick something.

Okay, they were all accounted for. All except for Max. There was no sign of the Guardian.

Rhiannon began to make her way to the platform’s edge on her side so she could peek over and see whether Max was on the ground below. She punched and kicked her way through opponents as she went, but half-way there, the ground tilted once more.
Oh crap, I knew it,
she thought uselessly. The tree house moaned, and a terrible groaning rose up from the floor boards.

This time, it didn’t stop and slant back the other way – it just kept tilting. Rhiannon’s eyes grew wide as she felt the ground disappear beneath her feet. She cried out, grew her wings in a flash, and struck the air with them hard to hold herself aloft.

All around her, bodies began raining down. Rhiannon looked up as the tree house’s west wall rose high above them, and everyone on that end was tossed into nothingness. She saw Gabriel’s beer sail past.

And then something very heavy and very hard struck her shoulders, instantly breaking her left wing. She cried out as she tumbled downward, and the gargoyle that had landed on her dropped past her.

“Rhiannon!”
she heard Michael yell. She knew he would probably be coming after her. But it was too late. The ground was spiraling upward at an impossible rate.
This is going to hurt,
she thought, closing her eyes tight just before she hit the ground.

But it
didn’t
hurt. Because she never hit the ground.

Instead, the terrible groaning of the dying tree house, the screeching death cries of their fallen enemies, the smashing and crashing of things and bodies slamming into the trees and ground below – it all stopped. All sound vanished.

Rhiannon opened her eyes. There was a warm white melting of the world around her. The burned forest ground that had been reaching up to meet her a millisecond before was no longer there. It had been replaced by dandelions.

She was standing on her own two feet, tall and strong, in a field of white dandelions. She looked up to find that she was not alone in that field, which stretched to the horizon and bent slightly with the curvature of the Earth. Michael was there, about ten feet away. He looked as confused as she felt, and when their eyes met, only questions passed between them. No answers.

Sophie was there too. And Azrael. Uriel and Eleanore. Gabriel and Juliette.

And they were not the only ones. The Adarians were there in that dandelion field. Around twenty yards away, the entire group of fallen warriors stood together, their arms at their sides, their expressions puzzled. Their clothing was clean, however, no longer covered in the dried remnants of their victims. Their skin coloring, too, was different. It was no longer gaunt or bloodless. Their eyes were blue or green or brown, not red.

Rhiannon turned slowly in place until she found the final two inhabitants of the endless field.

Samael and Angel stood together behind them, on a small hill overlooking the field.

Chapter Fifty

Michael recognized the Old Man as soon as he saw him. Michael was his favored, his right-hand, his faithful servant until the bitter end. As such, the Warrior Archangel would have recognized him all along, if the Old Man had been himself. If he’d been
whole
. But he hadn’t.

The Old Man had been torn in two long, long ago. Two thousand years ago, to be precise.

And now, reunited with both parts of himself, he stood atop the hill in the field of white flowers and gazed down at them all in silence.

Samael and Angel were the Old Man. Two halves of one very mighty whole, combined in spirit and soul.

All this time, Michael had hated Samael so. How could he? Confusion ran thick through his archangel blood.

“You did so because I told you to,” Samael said, his voice changed. It was the same deep voice in tone and timbre, but different in depth. It echoed now, pure and eternal, like the night. “You believed what I determined you would believe. It was necessary.”

He stopped, and Angel stepped forward. “Long ago,” she said, her voice as powerful as his, like the day to the night, and two sides of the same coin. “I ruled over a world of angels. We were content there.”

“Or so it would seem,” said Samael. “I’m afraid I made some mistakes.” He smiled sheepishly, and it was an expression Michael had never before seen on his face. It was bizarrely endearing. Gazing up at that self-ashamed smile, Michael felt he could forgive the Old Man for anything. Anything at all.

“Every leader makes mistakes at one point or another,” Sam went on. “Unfortunately, the more powerful the leader, the grander the mistakes.”

“In an attempt to form the perfect realm around me, I created life and, when it did not suit my ideals of perfection, I tossed it away,” said Angel. “Here. To the planet you’ve called home for two thousand years.”

“I sent the imperfect here to fend for itself and never gave it another thought. Why should I? Does an artist consider the repercussions of a torn up canvas? Does a sculptor think twice about the clay he throws away?” asked Sam.

Angel shook her head. “In my eyes, it was waste and nothing more.”

“A few among you questioned my actions,” said Samael. His expression became serious now, and Michael felt his stomach turning to lead. Sam waited a good long time before he continued. At last, he said, “You were right to do so.”

“But at the time, I thought you were wrong,” said Angel. Now it was her turn to smile, and it was as self-deprecating and beautiful as Sam’s had been a moment earlier.

“A challenge was given to me,” said Sam. He met Michael’s gaze now, and Michael… began to
remember
. “It was
you
who challenged me, Michael. My favored, my faithful.” He smiled. “It was you who told me I was wrong to do what I had done. Not Samael.”

Because Samael had not existed. Samael had
never
existed.

There was only the Old Man, Michael, and the archangels.

“When a leader’s wise counsel tells him he’s wrong, the leader can do one of two things. He can ignore the counsel. Or he can find out whether it is true,” said Angel.

“We chose the latter,” said Sam.

“And it was perhaps the one thing we’d done right in a very long time,” said Angel.

“I thought long and hard about what I could possibly do to prove you wrong, Michael,” said Sam. “In the end, I gathered together the Four Favored.
You
four. I pointed to four stars in the sky that shined brighter than the others. I told you, my archangels, that I wished to reward you for your loyalty, and that I had created for you soul mates.”

“Four perfect female beings,” said Angel. “Archesses.”

Sam said, “I told you that these female beings encompassed the empathy you accused me of being without. And I told you that you had a choice. You could remain with me in the angel realm as incomplete as you claimed the angels were, or you could journey to the mortal realm and seek your soul mates out.”

Angel smiled softly. “You chose to hunt for your mates. And who can blame you?”

“Once you’d decided to go, I put my plan into action,” said Sam, grinning. “I needed to find out whether I was truly as heartless as you said I was. So, I laid the groundwork for a vacation of sorts.”

Angel continued. “I needed to leave the angel realm and join the mortals on Earth. There is no better way to understand something than to become a part of it.”

“But to do this,” said Sam, “I had to make certain you would not return to the angel realm any time soon. If you did, you would find me gone.”

“And though I was in essence willing to
learn
,” said Angel, “I was not yet willing to admit I was so wrong that I would question myself. So it was imperative that you not know I had ever left.”

“I created the story that you would believe. I wove a tale,” said Sam. “And what a tale it was.”

“Within your hearts and minds, I placed false knowledge,” continued Angel. “You would now believe that an angel named Samael had caused trouble in the angel realm. You would believe he had followed you to Earth to claim your archesses. You would believe that should you all find your mates and join with them, a Culmination would arise.”

“And I made certain you did not know what that Culmination was,” said Sam.

“As I said, I needed time,” shrugged Angel. “So it was merely important that you be hesitant.”

“Not that the warning did any good at all.” Samael chuckled.

And he was right. As soon as the archangels had found their mates, they’d consummated their relationships with them. A randy lot, angels.

“Once I laid this groundwork,” said Angel, “I then proceeded to do something that no leader of the angel realms had ever done. I tore myself in two. Into Sam’s half, I placed the tenacity, strength, and power that had always made me what I was.”

Sam continued, “And into Angel’s half, I placed the rest. The emptiness that you told me should have encompassed compassion, Michael. That part of me that as of yet, possessed nothing.”