The Wrong Enemy Read online

  It was a perfect reproduction of God's voice even though none of the three were present when God spoke to Abraham. The speaker studied the city with simultaneous pity and revulsion flickering over her grey eyes. She ran one hand through blond hair emblazoned by the sunset.

  Momentarily, the Cherub Gabriel continued in a more solid voice, "Abraham has asked for mercy, and God made an agreement. If we find ten righteous people in the city, we're to spare it."

  Michael looked cautious. "That many? All but four were abandoned by their guardian angels."

  Gabriel shook her head. An hour ago, she and Michael had been angels, two of the Seven directly before God. The Lord's touch had transformed them into humans for the day, but some of their origin showed. Gabriel seemed to brush against the ground without actually resting on it.

  The only one not in human form, Raphael said, "You'll go as a woman?"

  "I see no reason to change my apparent gender." Gabriel gave a perfectly balanced smile. "I've remained female since God created me, and I'm comfortable this way."

  "Part of the report to God was that Sodomite men take advantage of women," said Michael.

  "According to the report," replied Gabriel, "they take advantage of men, too. I'll be fine."

  An unease crossed Michael's face as he folded his arms. He and Gabriel were obviously outsiders: with her blond hair, pale eyes and fine features, she looked like a northerner; Michael had a warrior's build and a square jaw, but his auburn hair and blue eyes gave him a striking appearance. God could have put them in Semitic bodies for the mission; Michael wasn't sure why He hadn't.

  Raphael whistled to a bird, which called back from its bush.

  Michael kept his head down. "I know God wants us to do this, but it goes against common sense. The whole city stinks of evil. Why not call Lot and his family away without going inside?"

  Gabriel nodded. "As far as I understand, our presence will evoke their true natures."

  Raphael kept his brown eyes trained on the hawk. "You're their last test."

  Gabriel traced the flight of a honeybee before locating its hive in a tree a mile distant. "It would be unjust to condemn someone based on foreknowledge of events which won't occur. We'll go into the city and offer them a final test, and that will solidify them one way or the other."

  Darkness shrouded Michael's eyes. He might have been a housewife finding bugs in the bread.

  "I'd go instead if God let me," said Raphael.

  "I'll obey," Michael said. "That wasn't an issue."

  Michael and Gabriel proceeded on foot, Raphael on wings behind. "How did it get this bad?" Michael said. "I understood the Flood, but that was everyone. How can only two cities deserve destruction?"

  Gabriel stayed toward the center of the road as they ascended the hill, but despite her silence, the information flowed into Michael as though she had spoken: Sodom started out clannish, and it prospered due to the trade routes. Over time the residents had stratified, either the comfortable rich or else the very, very poor who worked as servants or slaves.

  She stepped around a puddle, paused at a snake sunning himself, and then looked up at Michael. "The economics don't allow for any meeting in the middle. Everyone has gotten so hidebound that they see one another as useful rather than as people. This distortion extends to their interpersonal relationships as well, thus the more sexual particulars of the outcry."

  Michael said, "Is that their big sin?"

  Gabriel's eyes unfocused, and her voice changed in pitch again so she became the mouthpiece of God, pulling words out of time. "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy."

  Michael said, "Oh, there's an idea. If we show up as poor and needy, we can urge them to respond with compassion, and then we won't have to destroy the city after all."

  Gabriel's voice returned to normal. "Your assertion is that it's easy to derail an entrenched self-centered focus. That may not be the case. Even if God causes upheaval in their lives in the form of a war, it may no longer be possible here to raise moral children."

  A bee flew across their path, and Gabriel stopped, then followed it with her gaze. "Oh, there you are," she murmured, walking to the rotten trunk where the bees had made their hive. She pressed her hand against the wood, closing her eyes. "Raphael, feel this. They're marvelous."

  Michael glanced at the city and at the setting sun, but Raphael joined Gabriel in a languid and unhurried scan of the tree. "Hundreds of them," she said in a low voice. Workers buzzed out and landed on her, but she breathed over them and they only crawled on her without stinging. "Are you making honey? Do you have a lot of little ones in your comb?"

  Michael checked the sunset again, the length of the shadows. He projected to Gabriel a sense of the time.

  "God put this here so we can learn." Gabriel focused her soft grey eyes on him. "They don't sting when they're not threatened. The people in Sodom must feel threatened. Did you know that if something devastating happened to this hive, so long as there was one worker and one egg remaining, they could form a new hive? The worker could feed royal jelly to the one egg and raise up a new queen. The new queen would lay unfertilized eggs that became drones. The drone would fertilize the queen, and then she'd produce new workers. All that hope from just one worker and one egg. The goal with our test of Sodom should be to bring them that form of hope."

  Michael looked at Raphael. What?

  Look past what she's saying, Raphael said. It's easier to do all this inductive stuff than to think about how horribly these people have behaved and what you're likely to do to them.

  Michael's eyes widened, and he glanced at Gabriel again. She didn't look nervous or grieved but was talking even faster than before. "Did you know if a beehive starves, they all starve at the same time? Individual bees don't hoard honey, just share and share until there's nothing left for any. Sometimes there's even honey remaining, but their wintering cluster only moves up the comb, not sideways, so if they don't break up the cluster, they never find the other honey. Maybe that's what's happening in Sodom. There wasn't enough love and concern left, and when we come, our test will break up their cluster and get them in touch with their own better natures. Then God can reach them."

  She stroked the wood, her hand still covered with bees. "This tree is dead, but it's serving a purpose. Sodom could do the same. It may never have life again, but it can shelter life."

  Michael said, "Gabriel? We need to get up there before dark."

  Gabriel's brows furrowed. "Maybe the human soul is in some ways like a honeybee hive."

  Raphael put a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe it is. Ask God."

  She looked at him sidelong with a smile. "You know God teaches the Cherubim by letting us debate each other."

  "So work with other Cherubim." Raphael glanced at Michael. "I'm a Seraph. Seraphim burn with excitement, so bring me the answers when you discern them, and I'll get excited. But sometimes the process gets a little tedious."

  Gabriel sighed. "Truth exists, and by whittling at the argument, we'll reach it. Absolute truth won't contradict itself, and when we reach that nugget at the core of the argument—"

  "Everyone in Sodom will be a thousand years old?" said Raphael.

  Michael laughed aloud as Gabriel bit back whatever she'd been about to say.

  Raphael added, "I know the word Cherub means fullness of knowledge, and I would never want you to change, but sometimes that's just a little too much fullness for the other eight choirs."

  Michael realized Raphael was exerting calming pressure on the Seraph-Cherub bond he shared with Gabriel, and the words were only the surface of the exchange. Of all the choirs, only Seraphim and Cherubim bonded, probably because of their differing intensities and the ways they added to each what the other was lacking.

  Michael said. "Leave the bees. It's too close to sunset."

  Gabriel blew on her hand, and the bees frothed up, then returned to
their hive.

  When they reached the city's unmanned gates, Gabriel's eyes probed the empty nooks that should have had guards.

  "They aren't afraid of intruders." Michael kept his voice low. "Reputation guards them."

  Gabriel turned to Raphael, her eyes wider. "Are you sure you can't come with us?"

  "I'm sorry." The Seraph's visage darkened. "I asked again. God refused."

  Still scanning the city, Michael nodded. "You'd do best to pray for a conversion. We need six."

  "What about Gomorrah?"

  Gabriel shook her head. "If God judges against Sodom, we'll burn Gomorrah too."

  Raphael extended the tips of his wings toward Gabriel and Michael in a blessing, then flashed away, transported like a thought.

  Gabriel watched the place where Raphael had vanished, then sidled closer Michael.

  "I'm with you," Michael said. "What can they do to angels?"

  The Cherub crossed her wrists at chest height and closed her eyes: They can make us witness evil.

  They entered the city and made their way toward the center square. What few people remained entered houses as the streets continued darkening. Reflected light produced horizontal trip-wires between buildings.

  Michael felt Gabriel draw his attention to two men in a doorway.

  "Good work." Michael assessed the threat level but kept walking. "Alert me to anyone else who takes notice of us."

  Gabriel made no assent, but Michael could feel her senses expanding to absorb the entire area. He straightened with the posture of one who once had championed a defense no one thought he could win. Even without his wings, he carried an air that proclaimed his identity: military commander of God's hosts and one of the Seven.

  Gabriel dropped behind Michael, seeming submissive instead of subordinated. She directed his attention to the individuals who watched from windows, all of whom wondered why a foreigner and his wife wandered Sodom at night.

  Gabriel's nose wrinkled. "Three men on a rooftop just noticed us. They're obnoxious."

  Michael led her to a shadowed portion of a mudbrick building and looked about the square where four streets intersected.

  "The men left the building top," Gabriel whispered. "Four men are watching indecently from a ground-floor window."

  "We're almost where I want to be. Hurry."

  "They've left the window. Two boys are watching us all from an alley across the square."

  She froze. "Two in front!"

  The men jumped them before Michael could react.

  Gabriel bolted.

  Michael followed, scanning for a defensible spot. "Head for the corner building!"

  The boys advanced from a side street, holding stones.

  Frightened but fast, Gabriel dodged toward an alley where they might hide or scale the walls. But then a stone cracked into her head, and she dropped.

  Michael hauled her up before running again, but she wasn't weightless, and the pursuers overtook him.

  The three from the roof leered as more boys came with rocks. Four men climbed out a ground story window. Michael looked at the ladder ascending the wall of a building, but he couldn't guess how much two human bodies weighed versus how much that splintered wood could bear. The alley's mud reeked of urine and worse. He turned, but a man holding a club blocked the street.

  The two original attackers approached, and Michael made a dark realization: the city had nowhere to hide because these were people well-practiced in hunting other people.

  Gabriel squirmed to a stand, rubbing her head.

  "Are you all right?"

  Gabriel kept her voice as low as his. "I didn't think they could touch us."

  The pursuers had formed a half-circle as they sized up the two angels. "Visitors?" asked one.

  Her eyes round as saucers, Gabriel slid along the wall. Michael kept himself between her and the men.

  The dusk-darkened mob forced them down the alley until Gabriel stopped retreating. Ten cubits behind them, the passage ended in a twenty-cubit mudbrick wall.

  "Sweetheart," said one, coming too near, "welcome to Sodom."

  Gabriel shoved the man. Michael drew his knife, but the men rushed him.

  At the sounds of a fight, Sodomites poured from their houses. As though the original eleven were not too difficult to handle, now two dozen interested onlookers surrounded the fight, laying odds and placing bets.

  At the far end of the alley, Gabriel screamed. Michael lunged for her, but six attackers pressed him back against the wall, and he took a punch to the gut.

  Four men had Gabriel's arms and legs pinned. Even as they brought her to the ground, she struggled.

  Above the men's laughter sounded Gabriel's calls for help. Michael pushed forward, but the gang shoved him back against the wall. "You're next," the closest man said. "She's just the appetizer."

  An Arrow In Flight, along with the rest of the Seven Archangels saga, is available in print and ebook format.

  Table of Contents

  The Wrong Enemy

  (Untitled)

  Jane Lebak

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Author’s note and acknowledgments

  Heartless City

  1415 BC