Seven Archangels: Annihilation (3 page)

I knew you'd find me first,
Raphael sent.

About to respond with an apology for being distracted before, Gabriel stopped. He looked across the park to a group of kids clustered around a young boy and something he held in his hands. Focusing his hearing on the group, he grinned, then prayed,
God, could you put me in a body for a few minutes?

A moment after that, a slight boy, grey-eyed and blond, slipped off the swing and inserted himself into the gathering.

"Eew!" one kid was saying.

"It's not eew," said the one in the center. "It's my baby tooth."

Gabriel got up close to the kids, shorter by a head than most of them. He studied the white wonder on the boy's palm, then took the boy's hand and drew it closer.

"Don't touch it!" said one of the boys, louder. "It's disgusting—it used to be part of his body."

"No, it's cool," said another.

Gabriel could hear guitar music, which he filed away as out-of-place at the park, but for now he got up close to the boy with the tooth and said, "Life is like a tooth, you know?" He kept his voice soft so the bigger kids turned to look. "Now is this life, and then we go ahead to a bigger and better one after we die, and that one lasts forever." Gabriel looked at the boy with the tooth. "That's like a baby tooth that falls out, and you get a better tooth that's stronger and lasts the rest of your life."

"That's even cooler!" said the kid, and then the other kids all started chattering at the same time about how they wanted to lose their teeth now, and the one boy still calling it disgusting. Gabriel retreated toward the benches, and as he did, he saw the source of the guitar music. Raphael had taken the form of a teenage boy and was strumming. He looked up from his guitar.

"Oh, right," Gabriel whispered. "Tag."

Raphael flashed him an amused look, and Gabriel quirked a smile.

Raphael sent back,
I should know better than to try distracting a Cherub engaged with a problem.

Gabriel came closer, about to share all the things he'd already deduced, but then an older boy started talking to Raphael about his guitar technique,  asked what brand guitar it was (Raphael had his name in Hebrew, "God Heals," where it ought to say "Martin") and within minutes both excitedly compared techniques, discussed different fingerings, and then talked about alternate ways to handle bar chords.

Gabriel waited for a break in the exchange, but it only got faster and more furious. He gave up when the boy's kid sister showed up requesting songs. When Raphael started playing "Shoo Fly, Don't Bother Me," Gabriel turned the rest of his attention toward the field to find Remiel.

He could feel her in a clover patch, and shortly he stood there, staring around his feet.

Two of the other boys approached, one of them the "disgusting" boy. "What are you doing?"

Gabriel didn't look up. "I'm searching for a four-leaf clover."

"How do you do that?" said the smaller of the two, who appeared to be six.

"It's actually not that hard." Gabriel grinned. "You've got to figure that statistically speaking, there would be about one four-leaf clover in a patch this size."

"I'd have estimated two." The smaller boy's eyes peered out curiously from under his curly hair. "I think it's about one in three hundred, although there's obviously some variance due to genetics."

The bigger boy rolled his eyes.

"This species of clover tends to have fewer four-leaf variants," Gabriel said, waving a hand out over the plants, "maybe one in five hundred, and given the square footage of this patch, I estimate we have about five hundred clovers here. Knowing that, you look at the patch and unfocus your eyes and concentrate on the shapes rather than the individual leaves themselves."

"Oh!" The smaller boy seemed to get a bit taller. "You're pattern-matching rather than actually looking."

Gabriel grinned. "It's as simple as picking out a square in a field of triangles."

The boy looked breathless. "Do you find you can train the human eye to register only the squares?"

"Absolutely!" Gabriel turned his attention back to the plants at his feet. "Human vision is very easy to fool because the brain interprets visual patterns the way it expects to and rejects any data it doesn't expect—"

"You don't have to tell me," said the boy. "I take advantage of that all the time."

The bigger boy said, "You'd better quit it. Now."

Immediately the younger boy fell silent.

Gabriel brightened. "Got it!"

As he picked the four-leaf clover that was Remiel, the bigger boy jumped Gabriel. The smaller one throttled him, jamming a cloth against Gabriel's mouth so a sweet chlorine fog flooded his lungs and left him coughing. A stabbing heat scorched up his thigh. Then came a haze over his eyes and a binding around his lungs.

Demons!

Even as Raphael leaped from the bench and Remiel exploded from the clover, the smaller boy raised both hands and threw up a shimmering Guard around them like a bubble.

Gabriel tried to call for God but couldn't think clearly, couldn't find a way to get out of this solid body and back into his angelic form, and in the next instant his vision blackened.

Gabriel fell limp, insubstantial, and before Raphael could get close, they'd flashed him from the field.

Chapter Two

Raphael exploded away from the park in pursuit, Remiel following. Raphael immediately outdistanced her, but she streaked behind, trans-forming her clothing to armor, forming her sword in her hand. The demon pair "bounced" rather than flashing straight to Hell, passing through five locations in an attempt to throw off their hunters. In the time it took to think of their next location, they were already there.

After the third bounce, Raphael tackled the nearer of the demons mid-transfer, and he hurled him to the ground on a snowy field in Antarctica. Remiel rose up behind him, sword aflame, and looked down to find Raphael had captured her twin.

God—
Her heart seized.
What are they doing?

Raphael slammed Camael into the ground by his shoulders. "What did you do with him?"

Camael looked Raphael in the eyes and laughed.

Remiel concentrated so her armor changed into Camael's armor, her sword to his sword, and then her body changed from female to male. Her earrings plinked out of her ears onto the surface of the snow.

Raphael spun to face her. Projecting her determination, Remiel streaked after the other demon.

She followed the traces of his passage, but even that brief hesitation had caused the trail to dissipate. She could feel only hints of Gabriel's power, and she thought his captor was the Cherub Mephistopheles. But it was impossible to verify.

At some point she felt the trail angle into Hell, so she tried to follow, but Hell bounced her back.

Stupid regulations.
Remiel flashed into Hell's lobby. Demons flanked the stone columns as she advanced to the sign-in book, complete with pen on a chain, where demons checked in and out on order of the commanders of the army. Closer inspection revealed that pen was missing and the chain dangled limp. Remiel formed a pen out of her soul material and signed the book, "Camael, Mephistopheles, and Guest."

The demon guarding the entrance huffed. "Guest? You have to specify."

"Bite me." Remiel turned to enter. The stone floor clung to her feet as she moved.

The demon drew his sword. "By Belior's orders, you have to sign in exactly—"

"Are you countermanding Mephistopheles' orders?" Remiel snapped. "You will let me inside now!"

The torches lining the room poured smoke to the ceiling where it gathered, unable to escape. The demon said, "Belior doesn't care about Mephistopheles and his little projects."

"He'll care about this one soon enough," said a silky voice from an alcove. Remiel turned to find Mephistopheles, his wings tucked exquisitely at his back, his armor gleaming, the only part of him not in total control his blond curls. "Kindly admit my officer, and we won't have to escalate the matter."

The demon slid his sword into its scabbard.

Mephistopheles turned to Remiel. "Don't stand on ceremony with these peons. I remember when you stabbed someone through the heart rather than deal with Belior's idiocy." And Mephistopheles flashed them both into central Hell.

They arrived in a chamber utterly lightless. Remiel resisted her urge to glow: they were in the Lab Area where the chief torment was the living darkness. Demons couldn't disperse it with their glow, and although she suspected she could, to do so would immediately give away her deception.

"Is he secured?" Mephistopheles asked.

"I just finished," came a deeper voice which Remiel guessed belonged to Beelzebub, Mephistopheles' bonded Seraph and Satan's other advisor.

She could hear the hiss of feathers against one another, the sliding of fabric against fabric as someone walked, and then the clank of metal against metal. "Insufficient. This much play in the chains allows for too much movement. We need a five-point restraint. Once we begin, you'll have to run a Guard over him in a V from each of his shoulders to between his legs and across his chest."

"Easy enough," Beelzebub said.

Remiel-as-Camael said, "When will we do it?"

"We can't proceed until he regains consciousness," Mephistopheles said. "That could be fifteen minutes. Maybe longer. It's tricky to predict how medications carry over from human bodies to angelic bodies, but Gabriel's notorious for having no tolerance to drugs."

Beelzebub said, "I'll stay here. You can tell Lucifer we've got him."

"I'll stay," Remiel said. "It doesn't make sense for you to stand watch over a sleeping prisoner."

Beelzebub's sense of annoyance crawled over Remiel, who cringed.

"Accompany me," Mephistopheles said, sounding as if he were standing close to Beelzebub. "He's bound to be pleased that we captured Gabriel so easily."

"You got him at all because of Camael," Beelzebub said. "Camael could use the political capital."

Mephistopheles sounded irritated. "Since when have you concerned yourself about anyone else's political capital?"

Remiel opened her hands and created a paper cup of coffee and a donut, which she handed to Beelzebub. "I didn't realize we paid you to be a rent-a-cop."

Even in the darkness, he was able to recognize what she'd done. "Good one! And it's chocolate frosted, too."

Remiel bit her lip. "Really, I can stay. Sa—Lucifer won't speak to me anyhow."

How am I going to get Gabriel out of here if he doesn't leave?
she prayed, but God didn't answer. They were in Hell. The room was Guarded, preventing unwanted people from entering or communicating. Because God adhered to His own rules, she wouldn't get a clear response.

Well, the insane could get through Guards. But God would remain stubbornly sane, and so would Gabriel.

Mephistopheles and Beelzebub weren't projecting at each other, so Remiel knew they must be trading thoughts and energy through their Seraph-Cherub bond. Finally Mephistopheles said, "Stay if you wish. Let me know the instant he awakens."

In the next moment, Remiel found herself out of the lightless cell and in an equally lightless corridor with Mephistopheles.

"He's more useful elsewhere," Remiel said.

"Don't try to talk sense to a Seraph," Mephistopheles said. "But you're right that Lucifer won't bother speaking to you."

"Wait!" Remiel's heart raced. "I'm important to this. You'd better bring me inside when you do it."

"Oh." The blandest sense of laughter laced his voice. "Is that the case?"

Remiel's heart faltered. "I deserve to be there!"

Mephistopheles still sounded as if he were smirking. "I'll recommend you to him, but don't count on it. I don't care if you serve as the focus. Anyone would do." And away he flashed.

Alone in the corridor, Remiel slammed her fist into the wall, then kicked it, then stood with her hands clenched, struggling to get a grip on herself.

She was just on the outside of that little room where they had Gabriel. This much was something, at least. She formed a sigil of her power and placed it against the wall, then flashed to the top of the room (having to desolidify herself through meters of stone) and placed another one there. Then a third on the opposite side of the first. That would at least enable Michael to find the room.

Remiel sat in the corridor and folded her arms. She couldn't slip here. One mistake and she'd be chained alongside Gabriel and probably get the same treatment—whatever it was that required they keep him still and use someone as a power-focus.

If they used her as the focus, she'd get back inside. But then she'd find herself face to face with Satan, and while it had been easy to fool Mephistopheles (let's face it—most Cherubim had the social skills of a smart brick) she'd never be able to fool Satan.

I'm not leaving Gabriel
.
Not when I'm this close. Ten more minutes.

She sat in the corridor, concentrating on her own heart. Camael. Twins. Irin. She and her brother had been indistinguishable before the winnowing, and so far she'd been able to pretend to be him, but if she wanted to fool Satan, she couldn't pretend. She had to become Camael. More than just his gender, more than just his clothing. She had to put on his thoughts, put on his perceptions, and try to layer all that over a soul that still refused to reject God.

Help me.

She hoped that was God's assent in her heart.

The first way to be Camael was to hate Remiel—it was something easy enough to do, to loathe that ineffective slave of their Creator, the one God had bought off with status in exchange for rejecting the other half of herself. And once Camael hated Remiel, the rest flowed easily: to hate the things Remiel loved, to hate the things that reminded him of her, and then the logical next step, which was to despise himself because it was one of the things she had loved and because Camael himself reminded himself of Remiel.

Stupid Cherub,
Camael thought to Gabriel.
Why did you have to get yourself captured and put me in this position to begin with?