39
“Think he’s cute?”
Amanda jumped at the sound of Lucifer’s voice beside her. Her heart started pounding in her ears. The plan had been to find Lucifer – not be found by her. She swallowed hard.
“W-what?” Amanda said, staring at the fallen angel.
“Evan will need a girlfriend, and since you’re single now…” Lucifer shrugged.
“He just killed thousands of people...” Amanda whispered.
“I know! And that’s all thanks to you. When you killed the Whore of Babylon, you started an infection of sins that spread through the city. If it weren’t for that, he would’ve saved them all, instead,” Lucifer said excitedly. “It’s almost as if you two were destined to be together.”
“You’re fucking sick. I can’t wait until–” Amanda bit her lip.
“Until what?” Lucifer leaned in closer, her breath tickling Amanda’s ear. “Until the good guys arrive? I’m sorry to say, but they seem to be stuck in a battle on the other side of the planet. Or did you mean your own little fallen angels? See, the thing with trusting them is...”
Lucifer sauntered over to the bearded man, who was still locked in a staring contest with the sea monster.
“You promised Sorath your soul to hunt me down. But I’ve always had a much better offer...” Lucifer said. “Do you know what ‘Sorath’ means in ancient Hebrew?”
Amanda glared at Lucifer but said nothing. The carefree way in which the angel moved set her insides on fire. She wanted nothing more than to wring the smugness out of her face.
“Well, let me quote a verse from the Good Book for you, then,” Lucifer said and cleared her throat. “Woe to you oh earth and sea, for the Devil has come down to you. And with great fury, she sends the Beast because she knows the time is short. Here is a call for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the Beast, for it is a human number. And that number…” She lifted the man’s arm and pulled back his shirt. Three distinct claw marks curled around his wrist. “...is six hundred and sixty-six.”
Lucifer squinted, her smile turning her lips into red knives.
“If you had read your Bible like a good girl, perhaps you would’ve known that the only soul Sorath cares for is this one.” Lucifer patted the head of the bearded man. “Then again, some things aren’t written down, and some are lost to time. Secrets benefit those with a good memory. For example, it takes two halves to make one whole. One is the Child, and the other is the Beast – together they make the Antichrist.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Amanda said. “Haven’t I suffered enough?”
“I enjoy gloating. And you thought that you could outsmart me – beat me at my own game. But you’re just a human girl – an insignificant speck of dust in the hourglass of time.” Lucifer’s face shifted from glee to disgust in an instant. “And to think that my father wanted me to kneel before your kind.” She spat on the ground. “Pathetic.”
At that moment, a beam of light split the dark sky wide open. With golden locks of hair flowing above his massive wings, an angel descended over the park. Even in the seemingly impenetrable dusk, he shone with the light of the sun and carried a flaming sword in his hands.
“Michael!” Amanda cried, waving her arms. “Lucifer is here! Michael!”
“Oh, shut up, you noisy critter,” Lucifer said and backhanded her across the face, sending her to the ground. “Michael is not here to fight me. And besides, I’ve veiled us from his senses.”
Amanda held her aching cheek, blood seeping out of the corner of her mouth. Her eyes black with rage, she stumbled to her feet and charged at Lucifer. Without even looking, the angel spun and clipped Amanda with her wing. Her wrist took the force of the impact.
With a nauseating crack, the bones snapped, and Amanda landed on the ground where she’d started. She sobbed, red stars filling her vision. Something warm dribbled out of her nose.
“Why did you kill Marc?” she said, cradling her broken wrist, tears of pain and anger welling up. “Why?”
“Marc? Oh, right,” Lucifer said, idly looking at Michael hovering above the water. “Apart from the obvious meddling with my affairs, his father and I have often been confused with one another. I take pride in my work, and I don’t want that old goat stealing the credit for the apocalypse.”
“Leviathan!” Michael bellowed. “Your time of reckoning is at hand!”
“One of my absolute favorite things is to have others do the work for me,” Lucifer said, stifling a giggle. “Michael sees the world in black and white. To him, there’s only good and evil. He doesn’t understand that there are shades to every color – that everyone has their own agenda. Leviathan wants nothing more than to devour Evan here, but Michael is blind to that.” She sighed and gazed dreamily up at the pitch-black sky. “Back in Eden, when Leviathan was but a baby serpent, I used him to trick Adam and Eve into eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Ever since then, Michael thinks we’re allies. And now he will kill the Dragon for me, and thus save the Child. It’s one of my longest running cons – I am pleased to finally see it bear fruit.”
***
On another rooftop near Central Park, an angel in a brown cloak watched silently as the crowd drowned below. Dying was part of human nature and had always been. His job wasn’t to save anyone. He was just here to see that their souls passed on to the afterlife, making sure nobody got lost along the way, separating the wheat from the chaff, Heaven from Hell. But with this particular crowd, there wasn’t much sorting to be done. They were all headed straight for Hell, which did seem a bit odd, but not really any of his concern.
The angel’s brothers and sisters worried about the changes that this whole debacle would bring, but it didn’t really matter to him. Death would always be a part of the universe.
A silky tendril of smoke drifted into his view, and the angel turned his head to look at the intruder. “You…”
“Here we are at last,” Abaddon said, sitting on the edge of the roof, cigarette hanging from his lip. “You’re a tough one to isolate, Azrael.”
“I had my suspicions when we met outside that mall, but I never expected you to be this reckless,” the angel in the brown cloak said. “I guess I didn’t peg you as the petty type, Samael.”
Abaddon took another drag and let the smoke bloom out of his nose. “Only when things are stolen from me.”
“Stolen?” Azrael scoffed. “You made your choice during the Fall.”
“I’ll let the philosophers debate that.”
“So, you gave Lucifer exactly what she wanted, just for a chance to duel me?”
“Pretty much.”
“Billions will die.”
“As humans do,” Abaddon said, shrugging.
Azrael folded his arms. “Even if you kill me, they won’t take you back.”
“I’ll just keep killing our kind until I’m the last angel of death left. Then they won’t have a choice.”
“Good idea,” Azrael said, rolling his eyes. “Almost as good as opening the Gates of Hell.”
“Don’t pretend like you wouldn’t have done the same thing if you were in my shoes.”
The angel turned his face toward the sky and sighed. “I suppose you’re right.” He drew his scythe and let his brown cloak slide off his shoulders, spreading his black wings over the rooftops. “I hope you’re ready for this.”
Abaddon let the cigarette drop from his mouth. “I’ve been ready for six thousand years.”