Sacred Cups (Seven Archangels Book 2) Read online

“Just this one more thing,” Gabriel whispered. “After this, we should take a break and think things over.”

  Michael stepped back.

  Gabriel reached through Raphael to his guardian/protégé bond with Jesus, then followed it backward toward herself, then into the fissure. We’ve got it, Israfel.

  Gabriel pressed up against the fissure, following the bond with her mind. It didn’t curl like the other strands. This one flowed straight and strong like a laser, moving through the cracks without regard to the vagaries of the stone. Gabriel could follow its path a distance, but after that she had to guess where the crevices of the fissure would twist in order to stay near it. At one point she got stuck in a place where she couldn’t follow any deeper.

  “I need this open a little bit more,” Gabriel said.

  Israfel put her hands on the wall and focused her power on the fissure. “Does this help?”

  Freed, Gabriel sent her thoughts in deeper. She dissociated her angelic body and extended into the fissure, anchored to Israfel.

  “Pull it,” Mephistopheles said. “Don’t follow it.”

  It’s trapped, Gabriel sent. I can’t pull it if it’s anchored.

  Mephistopheles took to the air and put some energy into the fissure overhead. “Is this what you need?”

  Gabriel assented. A moment after that, Ophaniel was putting energy into the fissure from the bottom, and the path opened further.

  Gabriel worked through the twists, stretching thinner, following the beam from Raphael, wondering how far she’d gotten and how far she had left to travel. The cold stone oppressed her mind, but she continued even as the crag grew narrower.

  Abruptly it opened wider again. Thanks, Gabriel sent to Israfel.

  That’s Mephistopheles. He got the tip of his sword into the fissure. I’m going to do the same.

  Just don’t let go, Gabriel sent. I want to be able to get back once I grab the thing.

  Count on me. I’ll hold on with my life.

  Every so often the fissure dead-ended and Gabriel would backtrack to find a better route. It was like a maze, except she wasn’t sure there was a way out at the end.

  Mephistopheles said to tell you you’re doing well, Israfel sent.

  Gabriel got a sense of the three of them on the outside prying the fissure open, Mephistopheles and Israfel using their swords, Ophaniel bracing it with his hands, Raphael behind Ophaniel empowering him while providing the link for Gabriel. Belior was helping too, she realized, and the dark Seraphim were empowering the dark Cherubim.

  It really is a team effort, Gabriel prayed. It’s kind of neat. I just wish it hadn’t been something like this to bring us together.

  Keep your mind on your work, Raphael sent. You have to get him out of there.

  Gabriel shivered. I am working.

  You’re praying. Keep moving forward. And then, Don’t even consider coming back without him.

  Gabriel went cold.

  Hey, are you okay? sent Israfel.

  No.

  I’m pulling you out.

  Don’t. I’m moving forward.

  Gabriel, don’t be stubborn.

  I can do this. It was snug but not horrendous, although it felt more constricted now than a minute ago. Gabriel tried to concentrate on the thread to follow it further, but this passage wedged so tight. She fed her thoughts through a bit at a time until she was all in one place further on. Then time to find the next narrow passage and the next opening in the stone afterward.

  Then it occurred to her, she didn’t need to navigate blindly. All the other threads were emerging from somewhere, so rather than hunting passages by guesswork, why not follow the threads to wherever they entered the fissure and then find Raphael’s bond to Jesus once she’d popped into the open on the other side?

  Gabriel found a bunch of threads and followed them through, pulling on them to slide herself along the crevasses. Progress grew much quicker.

  Belior says you’re a genius.

  I know I’m a genius, Gabriel sent, fighting a grin.

  A shudder groaned through the fissure.

  Gabriel?

  What was that?

  Israfel sounded scared. It’s slipped. Hurry, please?

  I’m going my fastest.

  Then get out of there. It’s not stable.

  Gabriel continued moving forward. The pressure didn’t seem as great, but the fissure continued shifting around her as she moved. Threads twisted, bent, corkscrewed around channels and moved with purpose, and Gabriel pulled herself along them, sliding when she could, inching when she had to.

  Gabriel, come back. You have to get out now.

  She could see the fissure through Israfel’s mind, opened like a wound. It glowed and tremored. She could feel Israfel half inside and half outside the better to anchor her, Mephistopheles braced just inside in order to anchor Israfel. Belior had Mephistopheles’ sword in his hands to keep the fissure propped, and Ophaniel still secured the lowest segment. But it wasn’t holding. They couldn’t keep it pried open like that.

  Gabriel reached a cluster of thousands of threads. I’m nearly there!

  Israfel yanked her backward, but Gabriel clung to the sides of the fissure.

  I need one minute.

  You don’t have one minute! Back out of there!

  And in her heart, Gabriel felt Raphael pumping her full of angry energy so she could keep moving forward.

  Israfel pulled her again. Gabriel pushed Israfel backward, and the fissure shuddered. As she crossed some invisible summit, Sheol began sucking her downhill, dragging Israfel with her.

  Gabriel, Michael sent, out. Now.

  The fissure rumbled, and for the second time in her life, Gabriel disobeyed a direct order.

  As the stone around her groaned, she gathered all her energy into a blunt-force concussion blast at Israfel. Gabriel broke free, knocking Israfel out of the fissure and at the same time thrusting herself backward with the recoil. The stone walls crashed together.

  Nineteen

  Sheol slammed shut with a clamor that dwarfed Israfel’s screams. Shock ran up her arms as the stone cracked her sword. She dropped the hilt, hurling herself at the sealed wall. “Gabriel! Gabriel! Gabriel! Get out of there! Gabriel!”

  A firm grip on her forearms, and someone hauled her off her feet. She thrashed her wings, but green eyes came into focus inches before her own face. “Israfel, silence!” and she clamped her jaw by reflex in front of the Seraph who used to head her order.

  Satan dropped her. She caught herself before stumbling.

  Michael pushed between them. “Hands off my officers!”

  “Screaming does no good,” Satan said. “We need to get back in there.”

  “You’ll keep your hands off my officers!” He turned to Israfel. “Are you all right?”

  Her sword had been sheared off mid-blade. It lay beside part of the handle of Mephistopheles’ sword and the slivered remnants of yellow-tinged feathers. The soup of emotions from all the angels and demons swirled with horror, confusion, pain, and questions.

  Israfel grabbed Michael’s shoulders. “I couldn’t hang onto her! Sheol started dragging us in, and I tried dragging Gabriel out, and then Gabriel pushed me out of the fissure just before it slammed shut.”

  Michael sounded level, rock-solid. “Can you get any sense through your bond?”

  Israfel shook her head.

  Michael pursed his lips. “We need to open it back up and get her out.”

  Raphael said, “Not yet. Give Gabriel time to find him.”

  Michael glared at him. “We don’t know how time passes in Sheol, and we don’t know how long it will take to re-establish contact. We’re in the position now of needing to pull out Gabriel and then pull out Jesus.”

  “All the more reason to wait.” Raphael folded his arms. “Once they’re together, Gabriel can send him through first.”

  Ophaniel reached into Israfel’s mind, and she sent him a cloud of perplexity. Ophaniel sent back his ow
n bewilderment, then pointed her toward Belior, who was exchanging a knowing look with Asmodeus.

  Are you unhurt? Ophaniel sent.

  Israfel replied in the affirmative.

  Michael shook his head. “I disagree. We need it open now.”

  Raphael huffed even as Ophaniel returned to the wall.

  Satan said, “Belior, you and Mephistopheles get a handhold on it.” He stopped. “Mephistopheles?”

  Gasping and radiating horror, Belior darted away from the other demons, and then Asmodeus jumped back. Israfel bit back another scream.

  Beelzebub crouched on the ground, wings like a tent over Mephistopheles, and he looked up helplessly. The Cherub lay curled like an egg, shaking, completely clenched over himself.

  Two of Mephistopheles’ inner wings had been sheared off just above the joint.

  “Raphael,” Michael shouted, “help him!”

  Raphael was already crouching before Mephistopheles, tracing his fingers over the injured wings. “Look up at me,” he said. “Mephistopheles, look up.”

  Mephistopheles raised his head, his breathing ragged.

  “This doesn’t hurt,” Raphael said. “Listen to me: you’re not hurting.”

  Mephistopheles let out a long gasp, then tried to clench up tight again.

  “Easy.” Raphael breathed over the wing edges. Mephistopheles tried to recoil, but Beelzebub held him. An amber glow suffused them all. “Relax.”

  Satan said, “Report?”

  Beelzebub looked pale. “He pivoted when he pulled out of the fissure. When it slammed—”

  “Easy,” Raphael murmured as Mephistopheles flinched.

  Beelzebub yanked the Cherub back and closed his wings. “Don’t you dare hurt him!”

  “I can leave him in agony to regenerate over a couple of days if he prefers.” Sitting back, Raphael opened his hands. “He knows it should hurt, and he’s a Cherub so it’s hard for him to get past what he thinks he knows, so he keeps preparing for it, but I’m blocking the pain.”

  Satan said, “Let him work.”

  “Yes, sir.” Beelzebub made assent sound hateful. He opened his wings, and Raphael laid his hands on Mephistopheles. The wings had begun to reform, hazy through the amber light.

  “I shouldn’t even ask this,” Michael said.

  Satan said, “What are the odds Gabriel got crushed?”

  Israfel’s vision went white.

  Ophaniel said from behind Israfel, “I can’t tell. The fissure’s gone.”

  Belior shoved Ophaniel out of the way. He pressed his cheek to the wall and then spread his wings against it. He shifted position, then moved again, then tried in a different place.

  Israfel caught the terror on Belior’s face just before he turned toward Satan, but when he met his commander’s eyes, he was impassive. “It’s sealed. The fissure is gone.”

  Satan’s eyes iced over. “It’s just gone?”

  Belior nodded. “It’s sealed itself.”

  Israfel said, “How are we going to get Gabriel out?”

  Ophaniel said, “You said there’s another fissure.”

  “Yes, but smaller.” Belior inched backward as Satan stepped toward him. “This happened once before, when we summoned Samuel to speak to Saul. He didn’t want to come, and we had to widen the fissure in order to get a grip. If you remember, sir, Mephistopheles was hauling him from the main one while I was pushing through this, and we had someone guiding from the third fissure as well. When he went back in, the main one sealed, and we only had the two.”

  Satan had quite a bit of height on Belior. “Locate the third and use that.”

  Belior was shoulder-to-shoulder with Israfel at this point, Ophaniel right at his back. “I know its location. The difficulty will be, it’s smaller and more twisted. We never used it because it was so complicated to get a line out.”

  Fear frothed off the Cherub. Israfel spread her wings behind Belior and brushed Ophaniel’s wingtips with her own. She said, “Let’s see what we can do.”

  Belior couldn’t take his eyes off Satan.

  Satan sounded dangerous. “Why hadn’t you taken steps to make the other fissure accessible?”

  “We never needed it!” Belior said. “If I’d predicted we were going to have to pull the Second Person of the Trinity out through it, I’d have come here every morning for the past five hundred years and widened it just a little bit while having coffee. But given the way the first destabilized, we left well enough alone so as not to jostle the single fissure we had in working order.”

  Israfel checked on Raphael. “Are they itchy?” he asked Mephistopheles. When Mephistopheles nodded, he grinned. “Believe it or not, that’s a good thing. Try not to rub them.”

  Beelzebub said, “Have you ever done this before?”

  “It’s my vocation,” Raphael said. “I don’t need to have done it before in order to know how to do it now.”

  Through the amber glow, Mephistopheles’ wings had returned to their full length, though filmy and still without feathers. His face had relaxed, with color again in his cheeks.

  Raphael looked right into Mephistopheles’ eyes. “I know he doesn’t like to hear screaming,” he murmured with a nod toward Satan, “but the next time something like this happens, you have my permission to yell your fool head off, that way we’ll know to help.”

  Ignoring the medical drama, Belior glanced at Asmodeus, then back at Satan. “I can’t make promises, but I’ll maneuver a line through the third fissure.”

  Ophaniel said, “I’ll help.”

  Belior flashed both of them to a spot a short distance along the wall, and Ophaniel’s interest prickled in Israfel’s mind as Belior traced the edges of the smaller fissure.

  Raphael pulled back from Mephistopheles, who was sitting up on Beelzebub’s lap. “You’re going to be downy for a little while. There’s nothing I can do about that.”

  Mephistopheles flexed his wings. “They’re fine!” Tiny feathers curled up between the flight feathers, waving in even the gentlest motion. Israfel fought a smile. “They don’t even itch any longer.”

  Beelzebub pushed him off, and Mephistopheles staggered to his feet.

  Satan said, “Go help them at the third fissure. Figure out a way to get it open and keep it stable. Gabriel’s technique doesn’t require a female, so we’re sending you next.”

  Mephistopheles flashed to the other two Cherubim.

  “Is that our best bet?” Israfel asked. “I’d rather run a line from me to Gabriel and have Gabriel use our bond as a means of climbing out.”

  Michael nodded. “Forcing Mephistopheles inside might destabilize the last remaining fissure. It might be dangerous for him.”

  Satan said, “He’ll go in if I order him.”

  “I’m not sure it’s necessary,” Michael said. “We might be able to come up with another way.” He turned and started to say, “Gabri—” Then he shook his head. “Good one, Michael.”

  Satan snickered.

  Israfel brushed a wing past him. “We’ll think of something. Gabriel will be waiting with Jesus on the other side. All we’ll have to do is work it open enough that Gabriel has a primary bond to follow, and they’ll be back out together in no time.”

  Michael studied her curiously. “Do you believe that?”

  Israfel glanced at Raphael, standing with his wings tight and his arms folded while he glared at the working Cherubim. “I have to believe it. We don’t have another option.”

  Twenty

  Gabriel tumbled in unbroken darkness until she spread her wings and stalled herself. With no sense of equilibrium, she couldn’t figure out if she was up or down or sideways, so she shone.

  Faces, hands, bodies, right in front of her.

  Gabriel swept her wings forward to fire herself backward, even at that moment retreating into a masculine body. Sodom and an alley and grasping—

  Gabriel blasted out light like a star, and when he looked again he could see he’d had nothing to fear. He
hovered in a cavern miles wide and far longer, the walls and floors and even the ceiling lined with sleepers. No grabby hands and no crowd stinking of sweat and sex. All of Sheol lay spread before him like a geode with human jewels sleeping as they glistened around the inside of the cavern.

  It was all right. He was safe, and for once the only thoughts in his head were his own.

  He reached for the Vision and found it unseeable. Not taken from him—there was no sense of loss the way there had been during the punishment. Just an absence. Strange. He should have been grief-stricken, but instead, nothing. Just peace.

  Sheol. A natural happiness.

  Of course. How many times had he explained to angels, to people, that Sheol was pleasant and once each soul had settled down to wait, no one would be unhappy while they waited for the redeemer and judgment?

  Gabriel pumped out more light, illuminating Sheol lengthwise and scanning to find the ends of the cavern. Sleeping souls mumbled in protest, and he toned down the brightness, but he had visualized the ends of the structure.

  He looked up and around but couldn’t locate the fissure he’d used as an entrance. Distressing on an intellectual level, to say the least, but Gabriel found he didn’t mind. This place was pleasant, like the memories of drifting back to sleep just before sunrise, stealing an extra few minutes of slumber back when he still lived in Tobias’s household.

  Tobias was here, somewhere. As were Raguel, Rafaela, Angela, Gabelus…

  Gabriel shook his head. The first task had to be finding Jesus among the estimated half-billion sleeping souls. Then, after finding him, he would have to re-locate the fissure and open it from the inside.

  Gabriel spread his hands and focused his power until he’d created a sphere the size of a pomegranate. He left it glowing in place as a marker so he would have an idea of where to begin searching for the fissure once he’d found Jesus.

  No thread of energy led from Raphael to Jesus any longer. When Sheol had closed, all of Raphael had been shut on the other side. It wasn’t going to be as easy as following a thread back to the spool, but it had to be possible. He had eternity, and he was a Cherub. It stood to reason that eventually he’d find his target.