Sacred Cups (Seven Archangels Book 2) Read online

  Gabriel could live with the Seraph’s disgust. All it took would be self-control. Bury it alive and eventually it would die underground. Not as effective as burying it dead, but maybe another thousand years could dissolve it.

  Gabriel flashed back to Mary’s house and bowed before her in case demons watched. “My lady.” His voice broke to barely above a whisper. “Barring your objection, I’ve selected a different angel to transport the loaves in my stead.”

  Five

  Over the next three days, Mary noted that Gabriel didn’t leave them at all. “Is the danger high right now?” she asked while Jesus was out with Joseph. “Is that why he’s staying?”

  “It’s normal,” Uriel said, and Mary felt the information blossom inside in a way not at all uncomfortable but which had become common with Uriel. She knew all at once that Seraphim and Cherubim, with their unique capacity to bond, had cycles where they moved apart and came together again.

  “Is bonding like being married?” Mary asked, and immediately felt it wasn’t. The information broke over her like a realization and it kept coming. Bonds were not exclusive like a marriage. Raphael had two other primary bonds; Gabriel had one more primary with Israfel; both had several secondary bonds and hundreds of the low-level tertiaries; there was no physical component.

  Jesus sprinted into the house, followed by Raphael and Gabriel. Mary said, “Gabriel, I have an assignment.”

  He drew up short before her. “Yes, my lady?”

  “Snow.” She handed him a box. “Please fill this with it for Jesus.”

  Gabriel opened his hands, and snow filled the container.

  Jesus spent the next hour in the sunny courtyard playing with snow, scattering it, and building with it while it turned first into dirty snow, then into slush and then into a puddle. Jesus pointed to it. “Like sin. It looks so new at first, but then you find out it’s only water.”

  Gabriel brought new snow in small doses all afternoon until Raphael decided to keep the air around the snow cold. Then the snow just got dirty but didn’t melt. Jesus sculpted it into different shapes, blowing on his hands when the skin began to sting.

  Mary brought out a basket of fleece and set up the fleece comb in the sunlight.

  Gabriel straightened. “Oh! Could I do that?”

  Raphael looked as startled as Mary felt. Inside, she felt Uriel chuckle.

  Mary backed away from the fleece comb. “Sure. If you want to.”

  She couldn’t believe how Gabriel smiled as he combed the wool, aligning the fibers and cleaning off the grass and straw bits. Mary got her spindle and began spinning. Jesus used a step-stool to watch Gabriel, and then he put his own hands into the wool to help.

  Threading more fleece onto the spindle, Mary said, “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course you can.” Gabriel didn’t look up from combing. “But I presume what you intended to ask is whether you can address to me another question other than the one you already did in order to clear the asking of the second question.”

  Raphael hit him in the wing with a snowball.

  Mary shrank on herself. “You can just say no.”

  “He’s trying to say yes,” Raphael said. “There isn’t a Cherub in creation that doesn’t want a question.”

  Gabriel grinned at Raphael, so he must have been right. Mary smiled. “Oh, okay then. For my second question, how did all of you meet?”

  Raphael said, “I’ve always known Gabriel.”

  Gabriel frowned. “You have not. There was a short time immediately after the angels were created where we hadn’t met.”

  Raphael met Mary’s eyes. “So thousands of years, minus a handful of hours, except created time didn’t exist yet, so there was no way to measure. But that’s more accurate than you needed me to be. Effectively, I’ve always known Gabriel.”

  “Those first moments…?” Was it okay to ask this? But if it wasn’t, surely they wouldn’t answer. “What was it like?”

  And there it was again, that information just welling up within her as if it always had been there. This time, though, it came from three directions, and she struggled to keep rooted to here, to now. To a courtyard. To a child. To a spindle.

  But oh, to be soft from forging, freshly stamped by the seal of the Creator, new and crisp and everything a wonder and a revelation. Their first awareness had been of a song, a beauty, realization that the song was about the splendor, and then the awareness of warmth and being loved, then loving in return. Then slowly the awareness that oneself was participating in the song, that there was such a thing as oneself and that this one was loved specially. That there were others alongside and they were singing too. Then joy in meeting those others and recognizing them as selves too, wondering if they felt the same and then recognizing in their eyes, their song, the sensations streaming from them that they recognized and felt the love too.

  Gabriel murmured, almost to himself, “When all the morning stars sang together.”

  Mary blinked back tears. “That must have been incredible.”

  Song after song, but eventually a question of how one had known the song, and after that how one had known the words, how one knew what words were, and what made the music. Gradually attention shifted away from the song and the splendor to those nearby, beings who were beginning to look around just as oneself was. Then questions of how one was producing the song, and how was one perceiving all these things, and then a self-examination and a question of what one was. And with the asking, an answer, a name: You are My Strength, the Strength of God. You are Gabriel.

  Mary looked at Gabriel, who was concentrating on the fleece comb. Gabriel once said he never forgot anything, and he treasured this memory.

  Raphael was sharing a different story, though, about fire and frenzy and joy, not gradual self-discovery so much as hurling all of his heart into the love and into the fire before him, trying to give more and dive back into the oneness of being only to have God hold him at arm’s length and urge him to be himself, to be what he’d been created, Raphael, God’s Healing.

  Gabriel met Raphael’s eyes, and Mary realized just how much joy there was in them.

  Gabriel’s story resumed: the thrill of learning everyone else’s name, everyone else’s role or purpose, comparing notes on exactly how God’s splendor shot through each of them, each one longing to learn about God and who God was and what he wanted from them. Eventually raising one’s head and looking further, seeing the throngs of other angels and with a gasp realizing how different each was from the next, how brilliant and splendid, and then resolving to know each one and see God’s light the way it prismed a little differently through each of them.

  “Then God gave us a command,” Raphael said. “Play!”

  Mary laughed.

  Raphael said, “We shouted for joy, and off we went.”

  All creation then had consisted of Heaven, and the angels explored it. “Picture an onion,” Gabriel said, drawing an image in the air with light. Mary got up so she could touch it, but it felt like nothing. “At the very center imagine the throne of glory, and around that a smaller empty area that served as a spacer. That now is the Ring of Seven, although technically speaking it’s a sphere. Around that is a spherical area for the Seraphim. Surrounding that you have another layer, the Cherubim, followed by the Thrones. That’s the first tier.”

  Mary traced her finger around the image. “Can you see one another?”

  “There aren’t walls or dividers.” Gabriel kept adjusting the image in ways imperceptible to Mary but which apparently made all the difference to him. “The layers of the onion serve as a mental guideline for positioning where everything is relative to everything else. Beyond that are three more choirs, or orders, on their own layers: Dominions, Virtues and Powers. The third tier has another three layers: Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. We explored the nine orders first.”

  “We didn’t really explore,” Raphael said from behind Jesus. “We played.”

  “Yo
u raced through.” Gabriel gave him a narrow look. “I’m surprised you Seraphim learned anything.”

  In her heard, Mary felt Uriel saying the Thrones had stayed put; there was enough joy just in contemplating the Father.

  “We couldn’t see him face to Face yet,” Gabriel said. “But we could perceive enough to be dazzled. He had to tone it down initially in order for us to individuate.”

  Once the angels had learned about one another, God opened the inner layers of Heaven and allowed them access to those, each filled with wonders, all kinds of worlds with all manner of terrain. The angels explored, learned, grew to know God and one another and themselves.

  “It was a shock to realize not everyone cared about the finer points of detail.” Gabriel did look rather shocked. “I’d find something incredible and want to learn everything about it. I’d look up hours later to realize no one else had stuck around to hear what I’d discovered, only some of the others whom it turned out were Cherubim too. Zophiel, Ophaniel, Mistofiel, and I stayed together.”

  Raphael said, “It’s not that we didn’t care, but there was so much to experience. It seemed more important to survey the totality and get a sample of everything first.”

  Gabriel met his eyes with a grin.

  Jesus looked up from the fleece comb. “Which way is better?”

  “My way,” Gabriel said, and Raphael hit him with another snowball.

  Mary said softly, “There should be room for both styles.”

  “God made a multitude of styles.” Raphael tousled Jesus’s hair. “I think that’s the point.”

  Gabriel winked at Jesus, who giggled. Gabriel corrected Jesus’s hands on the fleece, then returned to the story.

  There was music. There was adoration. There were debates. There was impromptu worship. There was poetry. Eventually there came stories, first true and then fictional. Then games and contests. Finally a developed liturgy.

  “We were still stratified,” Gabriel said. “For a long time, Cherubim associated with Cherubim; Thrones with Thrones. God started giving us assignments, and that mixed things up a bit.”

  “Like what?” Mary said.

  Raphael laughed out loud. “You have to tell her yours.”

  Gabriel rolled his eyes. “I was sent to kill the Leviathan.”

  Mary’s eyes widened. “The Leviathan?”

  “The legendary Leviathan, yes. I’d have preferred to study it.” Gabriel smirked. “We went on a massive angelic hunt for the thing, only we weren’t very organized, and everyone wanted to try it his own way. Most angels who attacked were either driven back or managed to blunt their swords on its scales.” Gabriel added, “Lucifer was in charge of the hunt for the Behemoth, or at least he was on that team and took charge. No one took charge of the Leviathan team.”

  Mary ran her fingers over the yarn on the spindle. “Surely you could have.”

  Gabriel shrugged. “It never even occurred to me.”

  Raphael nodded. “You have to realize about Cherubim, they have no social skills.”

  Gabriel sighed.

  “The social cues you’d read as, ‘This team needs a leader,’ would pass straight over a Cherub’s head.” Raphael laughed. “Although Gabriel could have organized the expedition, Gabriel didn’t, and with Gabriel around, no one else felt worthy of doing it.”

  “At any rate,” Gabriel continued, “when no one managed to do any damage, Leviathan withdrew to the deepest part of an ocean, and God told me to go kill it. I pulled my head out of a book and figured, no problem, I’m a good little girl, I’ll go kill a Leviathan.” Gabriel laughed ruefully. “I went out on a boat armed with a net and a fishing pole and still thinking about my book. Shortly it became obvious this wasn’t the best plan when Leviathan swallowed the boat and I was inside the Leviathan.”

  Raphael was laughing with his head thrown back. Gabriel had forgotten the fleece on the table even as Jesus continued combing it. Mary stared open-mouthed. Gabriel said, “That was about the time our intrepid hero realized that every mission ought to have a planning phase.”

  “I’m on an outcropping on the shore screaming at Gabriel to flash out of there,” Raphael said, “and when she didn’t flash out, Lucifer held me back because I was going to try to cut the thing open, but he said it was Gabriel’s assignment and Gabriel had to do it alone.”

  “I didn’t know you couldn’t flash out of a Leviathan.” Gabriel was laughing too. “Like I said, really poor planning.”

  Raphael said, “I can feel through the bond that Gabriel is about to freak out, and I’m trying to calm her—”

  “—which didn’t help at all.” Gabriel huffed. “Imagine smothering a fire with dry grass and lamp oil.” Mary choked on a giggle. “He pumped fire into me, and that made it harder and harder to reconnoiter, and I was in the dark amidst all this yuck, and my only weapons were a sword I couldn’t swing and a fishing pole I couldn’t reach and a net that was entangled in my wings. The only thing I could think was that I’m an eternal creature and I can’t get out of this monster’s stomach, and I’m going to be here forever—”

  “—and I felt her open this floodgate inside,” Raphael said. “She pulled just about all the energy from me.”

  Gabriel’s shoulders were shaking as he tried not to laugh. “To put it mildly, boom.”

  Raphael added, “Boom.”

  “Leviathan bits flew everywhere,” Gabriel said, “only I was trapped by the remains of the net and all this offal and yuck and other disgusting things.”

  Raphael said, “Lucifer still refused to let me go.”

  “Fortunately,” Gabriel added, “that’s when I met Michael for the first time. He’d been on shore with his friends, watching in horror and probably wondering what kind of strategy that was. He flashed into the middle of the explosion and grabbed me, then flashed me back to shore.”

  Mary gasped. “Did he get in trouble for that? I mean, it was your assignment, so—”

  “It was pretty much done at that point.” Raphael folded his arms. “All except the screaming.”

  “And so,” Gabriel intoned, “an ocean became holy after an angel scrubbed in it for three days.”

  Mary covered her mouth with both hands, giggling.

  “It was in my hair, it was in my wings, it was soaked into my clothes…” Gabriel made a sound of disgust. “But the Leviathan was dead, and the assignment was over. And I never had to do it again.”

  Uriel shed sparkles. Mary got the impression Uriel had never heard Gabriel tell this story before.

  Gabriel looked over at the Throne. “You probably hadn’t. It’s not exactly my favorite story. Let’s tally the failure modes: I didn’t plan, I panicked, and then I got covered in ick and had to get rescued by an eighth-order angel.”

  Raphael shook his head. “You wouldn’t trade a minute of it. You learned something.”

  “Leviathan goo is a great incentive to learn strategy.” Gabriel looked at Mary. “If I had to do it again, I would divide everyone into teams. I’d document Leviathan’s eating, sleeping and migrating habits. I would have had a large number of Seraphim boil the sea to drive it into shallow waters, then had teams of Angels keep netting around the area to prevent any of Leviathan’s food from getting in.” He opened his hands. “In retrospect, we had no time limit. If the object was to kill the Leviathan, then death by starvation was just as valid as killing it with a pike.” He looked back at Raphael. “If we did have to fight it, I would have made sure we understood all its armor’s weak points, potentially what kinds of poisons would have disabled it, and knowing how well it functioned in deep water, I might even have had them carry all the water out of the sea basin in order to beach the thing.”

  Mary twisted a bit of fleece in her fingers. “You were young.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “That’s no excuse. But after I got calm and clean again, we hung around talking with Michael.”

  Raphael said, “I remember thinking he had a great sense of humor and was easy
to get along with.”

  Gabriel nodded. “But I didn’t think about him again except for a few times our paths crossed. Like I said, we were all so stratified.”

  Gabriel corrected Jesus’s hands again on the fleece so he was putting a more even pressure.

  Mary said, “Can I ask you another question?”

  Gabriel said, “By which I presume you mean—” and then Raphael pelted him with a third snowball. He regarded the Seraph with an exaggerated patience. “You just don’t get tired of doing that, do you?”

  “Not until you get tired of the over-specific definitions and the corny wordplay, no.” Raphael tossed the next snowball from hand to hand. “I can’t see myself getting tired of it.”

  Mary said, “Then let me just ask it: you were a good little girl?”

  Gabriel chuckled. “Yes, I was.”

  Mary’s cheeks went hot. “I’m sorry. I assumed—”

  “You assumed according to your experience.” Gabriel, at least, didn’t seem mortified. “But angels aren’t in fixed bodies. We change at will.”

  Mary brightened. “Can you show me what you looked like?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “No.”

  All three angels simultaneously looked up and to one side of the courtyard, and a moment after, Jesus did as well.

  “Greetings.” The voice came from a visual distortion, as if from heat shimmering near the house, and then it seemed more solid. Without her being able to say when exactly it happened, there stood a figure with his wings tucked, his arms folded, and his eyes glimmering. He wore armor, and he had his chin down so his blond curls dangled over his eyes.

  Raphael had drawn his sword, but the newcomer didn’t appear to be attacking. “He’s putting your son to work.” The angel regarded Mary with a steadiness bordering on disgust. “You required Gabriel to handle a task, and he foisted it off on your offspring, then entertained you with stories so you wouldn’t notice his trickery.” He cocked his head. “Is that the service an individual of your stature deserves?”

  “Now that you mention it,” Mary said, “it isn’t.”