Shattered Walls (Seven Archangels Book 3) Page 19
Satan looked at Belior. “Aren’t you going to contradict her?” He sounded patiently amused even though Remiel suspected he was anything but. “You’ll tell her it’s not a natural adhesion as much as it’s an inherent quality of attraction, and then debate the difference for twenty minutes?”
Belior said, “We’ve already had that debate. She’s using my vocabulary.”
He was talking? Oh, but of course, he was no longer under John’s authority. He was under a different authority, and that authority demanded he speak.
Satrinah said, “The difficulties here are multiple. First, we have no idea how much of the material destabilized and vanished.”
Satan shook his head. “Material doesn’t just vanish. It goes somewhere.”
Belior said, “When we weaponized the Sheol material, it did become unstable, and it would disappear. We had to keep the setting very carefully Guarded in order to prevent material loss.”
Satrinah said, “Secondly, we have no way of measuring how much is in each of them. We could potentially use the Sheol material in Remiel to withdraw the shrapnel from Belior, but if there’s a higher concentration in him than in her, then it might have the opposite effect and pull it all into him.”
Satan flashed Belior a wicked smile. “I’d come up with a way to get it out of you. Eventually.” He returned his gaze to Satrinah. “And there isn’t any more in creation? Just what’s in these two?”
Satrinah said, “And whatever is in Zadkiel.”
Satan’s brows raised. “You failed to mention there was a third angel involved.”
Remiel straightened. He didn’t have her. Zadkiel was safe.
Satrinah said, “It didn’t seem important at the time. But she may be holding enough of the material that we could use what’s in the pair of them to extract it from Belior.”
“Where is Zadkiel now?”
Satrinah shrugged. “I don’t know. Given that Remiel was with John, Zadkiel may have been in residence too, but I never made a positive identification.”
Remiel checked Belior, but Belior said nothing. Interesting.
Satan drummed his fingers against his thigh. “You,” and he pointed to one of the two healer demons. “I want a search party sent. Locate Zadkiel. No interaction. Just reconnaissance.”
The demon vanished. Remiel closed her eyes tight and huddled around herself. God, please protect her. Alert Michael. Please.
Satan asked Satrinah a few more questions, all of which she answered in that same bloodless Cherubic detachment that Remiel found so incomprehensible right now, while she was shivering in a human body and trying to calm the panic that kept overwhelming her whenever she considered she was trapped underground in an unknown location with enemies who hated every jot of her being. But Satrinah, although she was in just as much trouble as Belior and Asmodeus, answered every question with a thorough attention to detail and as far as Remiel could tell no actual lies. For his own part, whenever Belior got addressed a direct question, he answered the same way.
Satan finally said, “I’m tired of this. You two invented it. You two will un-invent it. Satrinah, I don’t care how you do it, but you will extract the shrapnel from both Belior and the weaker Irin, and when I’ve obtained her, from Zadkiel as well. This is a single-use, weapon, correct? Then once you’ve done so, you get to pick which of your traitor comrades I use it on.”
Belior stiffened.
Satan said, “If you fail to extract the shrapnel, then I’ll handle it myself, and when eventually I get that material free, I’ll use it on you. I’ll give you a few hours. That should be enough. While you’re working, you can figure out whether you want to choose your bonded Seraph who goaded you into treason or the Cherub who would just as soon see you on the other end of that weapon.” He stretched his wings. “Oh, and in case you need some helpers, I’ve got a few dozen assistants for you. Be productive.”
His light flared, and then it winked out as he vanished. Remiel looked around to find the chamber ringed with demons, all of whom watched the trio at the center.
Belior glared at Satrinah. Satrinah ignored him and focused instead on Remiel. “I’m starting with you.”
Of course she was. Remiel rubbed her goose-bumped arms and wished Satan hadn’t so transparently set the two Cherubim against one another, or that the Cherubim, for all their wisdom, hadn’t failed to recognize what he’d done.
TWENTY-FOUR
Michael had two legions of angels posted in Ephesus, and he kept half of them in or around the houses where John’s Christian community had taken shelter for the night. The Romans were still working to extinguish the fires, and several priests and priestesses from the Temple of Artemis were tending to the wounded. John himself was walking the streets with Ignatius, healing whatever of the wounded he could, and Michael made sure he had a strong personal guard.
They’d flushed from the city as many demons as they could, and all of it felt futile because Satan had taken Remiel.
For what might have been the dozenth time tonight, Saraquael appeared before him. “Orders?”
Saraquael wasn’t saying, “Give me permission to find her.” Michael could feel it all around him, though, how he hungered to mount a search, and instead Michael kept dispatching him to different zones or to check on different crews. Make sure the fire hasn’t spread. Encourage the soldiers to create a fire break. Details like that seemed the first order of business: human souls could perish, and Remiel’s couldn’t. Satan would make her uncomfortable, but not eternally uncomfortable. It was a tradeoff all the angels understood.
And still, he couldn’t justify keeping Saraquael here any longer. He was so efficient, so precise, that Michael in some ways owed it to him to let him go.
So Michael said, “Talk to me about mounting a search.”
Saraquael folded his arms and flared his wings. “I want to do it.”
“Efficacy?” Michael said.
Saraquael’s eyes dimmed. “I doubt we’ll find any trace of her, given who took her. He won’t have gotten authority to take her life, but wherever he brought her in Creation, she’ll be under an impenetrable Guard. And that’s assuming he kept her on the plane of Creation. If she’s being detained in Hell, the degree of difficulty rises exponentially.” He shifted his weight. “I want to search, but I have another suggestion.”
Michael blinked. “Okay, then. Talk to me.”
Saraquael said, “After consideration, I agree with you that Hastle was siphoning the Sheol matter for his own use. The excess material wasn’t still on Hastle when Gabriel drew off what he’d taken from you, so we have to assume he’s stashed it somewhere.”
Michael shook his head. “He’s not going to tell us where he hid it. I doubt we could get him to admit he stole it in the first place.”
“No, but we’ve got two reasons we need to track down his stash. Primarily, we can’t leave any of it where the demons can make another weapon or figure out how to clone the material from other resources.”
Michael nodded.
Saraquael’s color had picked up. “Secondly, Gabriel said the Sheol material attracts itself. That means if we gather enough of it, we might be able to draw it out of everyone who’s been affected already.” His wings had gone a brilliant teal by now, and he was glowing. Giving him free rein had definitely been the right call. “I agree Hastle’s never going to tell us how to find it no matter what we do, but it can’t be that hard to track it down.”
No, of course not. A microscopic amount of a material you couldn’t detect, hidden by a demon who was trying to evade the notice of a pair of Cherubim who had spent twenty years working with the material already…that would be child’s play to find.
Instead of saying that, Michael chose a milder, “How would you suggest we start?”
Saraquael’s hands clenched. “Wherever he was keeping it, it had to be someplace he could get to on a regular basis, somewhere Asmodeus and Belior wouldn’t think it unusual for him to visit, and someplace where
he wouldn’t be stopped and questioned by other demons. That cuts down our options considerably.”
That would eliminate Satan’s private work station and the Holy Temple at Jerusalem. That was a start.
Saraquael said, “Gabriel already dismantled the whole lab and set that back up again in Heaven, but it may be hidden in part of that.”
Michael said, “I’ll instruct his team to search the whole thing all over again.”
Beaming, Saraquael nodded. “Meanwhile, you and I have our own places to search.”
They couldn’t sneak back into Hell to comb the area where Belior’s lab had been. Satan had upped security to levels Michael hadn’t seen since the Crucifixion, and the very slim chance the two of them could evade the guards only convinced Michael they’d have even less chance getting out again.
Undeterred, Saraquael brought Michael back to the place they’d popped out of Belior’s secret tunnel, and it had no especial demonic presence about it. “We can’t assume it’s safe,” Michael said. “By now Satan will have ferreted out and interrogated every demon who collaborated with them.”
“And probably several who haven’t.” Saraquael sat in the field and made himself quiet. “Suppress your signature. I want to get a feel for the place.”
It made sense to Michael at least that Hastle would have carried the Sheol material through the tunnel and stashed it on the other end. It would have to be someplace safe, someplace he could secure with a Guard but not someplace where his presence would garner questions. And he’d have to be able to do it quickly.
Michael tamped down his power and prayed. Please let this work. I don’t know if we need this or not to free Remiel, but it seems like the right direction. Please bless our work. Please reveal what is hidden.
Saraquael finally said, “I can’t detect anything.”
Michael said, “That doesn’t mean it’s not here.”
Saraquael projected discouragement.
“The tunnel branched,” Michael said. “Let’s get back into it and check out where it went.”
Saraquael moved around until he found the opening, and the “opening” was nothing at all, just an undetectable slit in the fabric of Creation. Undetectable to Michael, that was. “Follow me,” Saraquael said, as though everyone found invisible pock marks in reality all the time, and he slipped through.
You couldn’t defend in here: that much Michael knew for certain, but he hoped that also meant you couldn’t ambush. There was no room to do much except push forward or backward. He tried not to think about how easy it would be for Satrinah to follow them up this slender tube so they couldn’t reverse course, then have Asmodeus bottle them up at the far end.
Fully dissociated, they slipped through as pure spirits, moving closer to Hell and further from Earth, and then Saraquael stopped, re-oriented, and branched off to the side. This route felt marginally easier, with less resistance than before, and Saraquael slipped through at a much faster rate. Fine—if it got them out of there faster, Michael wasn’t about to object, but he also wondered where it was going to shoot them out, and what would be waiting for them when it did.
Like a bubble bursting on the surface of a pond, they popped back into existence, and Michael solidified into a subtle body to identify where they were.
“Oh, wow.” Saraquael sighed, then flexed all six wings and spread his arms. It was cold. It was dark. Reality was thin: they were on the edge of the Void.
Michael said, “This is where Hastle was collecting the Sheol material.”
“This makes sense. They needed two tunnels: one to get him here undetected, and then one to get out to Creation.” Saraquael turned to Michael, his eyes gleaming like gems in the near-nothingness. “I bet they made this one first, and they formed up the other channel later, once they knew they had enough material to go ahead with their weapon.”
In the distance hung the heavy mass of Hell, encased in itself and dull outside but hot within. Sheol would have been attached to Hell between its nearest wall and where they hovered now, assuming directions and distances even made any sense this close to the Void.
Michael spread his wings and glided away from Saraquael. What had Hastle said about his work collecting raw material? I want that. This, this emptiness and solitude. The chill, the nearly motionless atoms, the thinning reality that grew harder to move through until it ended and there was nothingness you couldn’t reach into because nothing made sense beyond it.
Closing his eyes, Michael listened. Silence. Absolute. Brilliant.
Saraquael said, “Nice as this is, though, it’s not what we wanted. He wouldn’t have hidden it here.”
Michael projected his agreement, then folded his arms. Oh, God, why Hastiel…? Because Hastiel had chosen this, of course. There wasn’t another answer that worked, but Michael wondered not for the first time if there were something he could have done, could have said, long before the Winnowing that would have redirected Hastiel away from rejecting God. Maybe he could have been out on the verge of the Void with Hastiel instead of Saraquael, picking apart the drifting atoms of the fading universe and joking about whatever prank they’d recently played on Danel. Instead he was with his lieutenant retracing the steps of a demon and trying to think the way a demon might, and the fit was tighter than the inside of that tube they’d traveled.
He glided at the very edge of Creation’s fabric, probing through reality as though he were Hastle trying to round up the last lone gem of Sheol’s shattered walls amidst the dross. Pretend you found one; call it to you by whatever means Hastle had devised for collecting the things. He’d never been clear about how he did it, but it hardly mattered. Pretend he was using a tiny scoop and pulling it toward him, a tidbit at a time. From there he’d carry his treasure back to Belior and Satrinah, who would turn it into a weapon.
So pretend you’re back in the lab now. You’re standing guard, calling the weaponized bits back to yourself in undetectable amounts, maybe two or three atoms at a time. You stash them on your person, and then you’re sent back out on another mission. On the way out, you pass by your hiding spot and quickly place the stolen material, then continue on.
Michael said, “Are there other tunnel branches?”
Saraquael said, “There were a couple of places where it felt as if there might be, but nothing that opened up.”
They had no idea which of the demons had formed this tunnel. It might have been one of the Cherubim, but if they’d set Hastle himself to the task, he might have been able to make an area Guarded off from the others. The whole interior seemed to be sustained by multiple Guards woven around one another. Hastle could have opened a branch in a location only he knew and then Guarded it off.
Michael said, “So in theory, the remaining material could be hidden in the wall of the tunnel.
Saraquael said, “That’s extremely dangerous. If Belior and Asmodeus ever decided to collapse that passage, it would have destroyed his stash with the tunnel, and he wasn’t taking any chances with whatever he was planning.”
True. Michael said, “He’s also unlikely to have stashed it in Hell, so we’re back to assuming it’s somewhere in Creation.”
Saraquael said, “And given the very small footprint of the tunnel exit I did find, there’s no reasonable way we could search out exits over the whole Earth, let alone if he put it on the moon or in the heart of a star.”
Michael tightened his wings around himself. Hastiel, why did you have to be so thorough? But of course he had to be: a wolf working among wolves, he needed to protect himself and cover all his tracks at every moment.
Michael lifted his head and studied the Void. No, not at every moment. Out here, on the edge of everything, maybe he hadn’t. And maybe for Hastle, that had been a relief.
TWENTY-FIVE
Zadkiel lay in her bed listening to the other women getting up and ready for the day. Remiel didn’t come help her. Remiel was gone. Zadkiel didn’t know the layout and couldn’t navigate. So she lay as if asleep.
Remiel had gotten her out of the house, and then she’d gone back in. Because Remiel could see.
It all came down to that: down to one misguided desire twenty years ago. Zadkiel could taste wine right now if she wanted. Perfect wine. Wine as it became when her Lord said, “Wine.”
Some consolation. Remiel had been taken, and Zadkiel could have wine.
“Key?” Mary’s hand touched her arm. “Are you all right?”
Zadkiel sat up, fighting hunger and the urge to cry. “I’m fine. I don’t think I can navigate.”
“Here. Count the steps and I’ll let you know when you’re at the door.”
Without protesting, Zadkiel let Mary lead her. It just wasn’t worth explaining that she’d caused all these problems and should be left to rot. Instead Mary escorted her to the table, guided her into a seat, then made sure she knew where all the food and drink was before her. The other women helped her, and under their attention she forced down some bites of bread. It tasted like nothing, but somewhere her brain registered that the body needed to eat, and it wouldn’t be right to waste food the same way she’d wasted everything else.
The woman of the house came by several times, sounding delighted to be bombarded all at once with so many unexpected guests. What had her husband thought of her spontaneous generosity? But then again, the little girl Mary had prayed over was his daughter too, so maybe the couple were in agreement. Still, it would be a surprise for any family to awaken to dozens of invaders.
And the little girl herself? Her voice came to Zadkiel several times, a high-pitched chatter distinct from the young voices she’d become accustomed to. The girl was thrilled to have so many in her house, especially the other children. After a while they went outside to splash in the fountain before the day became too hot.