I was sitting on the couch after seeing Sera out, watching the news when Gabe sat beside me. The moment he did, our phones went off. It was the second warning in less than twenty-four hours. That also meant it was the second warning we had received in the last six months.
That, in itself, was suspicious, but to also have met Sera and all her oddities awoke a wave of concern as I pulled out my phone and frowned at the screen.
It wasn’t demon sign. The kind of power that was required to do what the notice was trying to tell us wasn’t possible from a demon or even a fallen angel. That sort of explosion needed a white-hot rage and a Heavenly born skill.
I swore and looked up just as Sam walked in, his phone out and a frown creasing his brow.
He looked up at me, then back at the phone, then back and forth in apparent confusion. I would have been confused too, considering that kind of notification was usually followed by a text from me saying I was sorry and didn’t mean to do it.
The alerts were also nearly immediate.
Walking into the living room to find me seated there, and the room not on fire or a gaping hole in the Earth was understandably surprising. The fact that Gabe sat beside me about summed up who had caused the alert.
A random Heavenly Host could not manage that kind of power on Earth. Heaven would never allow it. An angel may have chosen to leave Heaven, ripping out their grace and wings in the process, but if that had been the case that notification would have been followed by about fifty demon activity notices, and probably several Heavenly Host appearing in the living room demanding for help.
Like they had five hundred years before.
“Did you talk to him before he left?” Sam asked.
He meant to ask if I had spoken with Raphael. I hadn’t even realized he was up and about after the drinking. Raphael might have recovered quickly, but that didn’t mean he would get out of bed unless he absolutely had to.
“He left?” I countered.
“He did,” Gabe said. “After Sera arrived. Did he tell either of you where he was going?”
I turned to Sam since I hadn’t been aware of Raphael leaving. Not that I was overly surprised by that, considering I was the one who had upset him to the point of drinking so much. He’d end up calling my face stupid and flinging something at my head before things settled back down again.
We never told Sam about those moments. He would disapprove of them, but it always seemed to make Raphael feel better, and his aim was just terrible.
“The tattoo parlour,” Sam said. “Turn on the local news, would you?”
Gabe reached for the remote and turned on the news. Sam settled on the couch beside me and looked stern. That was his leader look, the one he took on when I was fairly certain he was trying to cover what he was feeling.
What with just being married, and Sera appearing, and Raphael and me fighting again, Sam had a lot on his plate. He didn’t need one of us exploding in public as well.
Until we knew the what, where, and how, there was nothing for us to do but wait. Raphael may have been heading for the tattoo parlour, but that didn’t mean he had made it there. He should have texted us right away, saying that he was alive or something.
We were dealing with dark witches. We couldn’t underestimate them in the slightest. If he had found dark witches there, he should have notified us, so that we could all take them on together.
“There’s nothing yet,” Gabe said.
“There will be,” Sam murmured.
“So, how’d it go with Sera?” Gabe asked, turning to me.
“Gabe!” I snapped.
It was no one’s business what I had done with Sera in the garden. That was between me, her, and the plants.
“What, it’s a good way to pass the time,” he said. “Did your picnic go all right? I saw you brought back most of the food.”
Sam made a face at the screen, then turned to me, his eyebrows drawing down as he seemed to try to eye me critically.
“You brought back most of the food?” Sam asked. “You made that food. You never bring back your own food.”
“Would you two stop parroting one another?” I demanded. “You’re worse than pixies.”
“Little gossip never hurt anyone,” Sam said, draping his arm over the back of the couch. “So, how did it go?”
I blushed, which drew sounds from both of them.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I protested.
“That’s fair enough,” Sam said. “But you’re the one who’s blushing. We were just asking how it went.”
“That’s true,” Gabe said. “Did it go well, or did it go badly?”
“She wants to see both of us,” I said, picking at my pant leg with a nail. “It sounds non-negotiable. Humans don’t think like that.”
“Technically she’s not human,” Gabe said.
I turned to Sam for help. He was rubbing his cheek and over his lips with the back of his hand. When he dropped his hand, there was still the hint of a smile.
The help I wanted was advice, not sly smiles and all too knowing looks shared between the two of them like I’d finally decided to hop into the fray of things.
Like parents when their child announced their first crush.
“You do what you have to do,” Sam said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“Well, there is another way to look at it, I suppose,” Gabe said. He then paused as if in thought, though I think he was only trying to draw it out to tease me. “You and Raphael have bickered for a long time. You can never agree on anything.”
“What? So Father put my grace into a woman but the only way for me to be with her and get my grace back, and to go back to Heaven, is to share with Raphael?”
Gabe hesitated a moment longer then nodded several times. The motion made me swear, though Sam smiled and seemed quite amused by it all.
That did seem like something Father would do. It was well within the bounds of His temperament. He might even find it amusing to watch me struggle with the realization that it had all been planned out just so.
“I shouldn’t have to share my grace with anyone,” I said. “Sam doesn’t have to. You won’t have to.”
“Yes, but, Sam and I haven’t started full-scale wars because Raphael wanted to take up painting and almost outed us to the mortals,” Gabe said.
I hardly thought a war between two city-states would count as ‘full-scale war’ and it wasn’t because Raphael decided to take up painting and got a little too good at it.
The war started because a man stepped on my toes and called me a whore’s son, and I simply wasn’t having it. Back then I could start a war for such a reason, and so I did.
Raphael didn’t play into it at all.
“Nor have we allowed humans to die because we were pouting and refused to come out of the bathroom for three weeks because you called him a fat pansy boy.”
I huffed out a breath.
“He was a fat pansy boy.”
“That also makes you sound like a homophobe, if you’re wondering,” Gabe said.
“He was fat and insisted I grow pansies,” I protested.
“We’ve all been fat at one point or another,” Sam said, running a hand down his slim stomach as if checking his weight. “It’s a part of the job.”
“I am not a homophobe, we’ve also all visited on males before, as males,” I said. “We rarely visit upon males with our own bodies anymore. Sam hasn’t done it in six hundred years. I did fifty years ago, how does that make me a homophobe?”
I was fine with humans loving other humans as they might decide to do. That was their business, not mine. What I didn’t understand was why the others were suddenly insisting that I had such a baseless phobia. What could I be afraid of? That they’d make me fabulous? That they’d distract me from the shallow women I had been caught up with since we entered the city?
That hardly seemed something to worry over at all.
“Sam wasn’t even working the field,” Gabe said. “And demons prefer women.”
“Boobs,” Sam said. “Demons prefer boobs, and I just don’t know why.”
“Boobs, and it’s a lot harder to be led around by your sexual organ if it’s more difficult to orgasm,” Gabe said. “Not to mention how much more difficult it is to expel a demon who resides in a woman. Remember when it first started happening? Demons finally possessed women, and we didn’t know what to do with them, couldn’t get anything to work.”
“Yes, we asked this one for help,” I said with a head motion toward Sam.
“And it was only then that he told us he hadn’t actually slept with Lillith.”
We turned to Sam. I had wondered why he had been so quiet, but when I looked, I found him with his phone up, almost to his nose. He had apparently found something. I made a sound in question, and he glanced over the phone at me.
“It’s on a news site,” Sam said, flicking his finger toward the television screen.
Nothing happened because that wasn’t how that technology worked. It was a newer one, and it always took us a little while to learn the new way of human inventions. With the recent technology surge, we had found ourselves to be in a bit of a bind. We’d just learn to use something when it was no longer relevant, but not learning wasn’t an option.
Gabe grabbed the television remote and did whatever it was that he always did with the television.
I didn’t know why it was so difficult for humans to make that last little leap so that Sam could do that thing with his finger to get the video from his phone, onto the television set. They could send emails through the air and across mountains in seconds, but they couldn’t get a video from a phone and onto a television set.
Gabe had to search the internet through the television, though I wasn’t sure how the television did that when there was no computer connected to the television. I think.
“This just in…”
The camera showed a blackened husk of a building, with a firetruck in front of it, still hosing down the remains.
“Initial reports are claiming that a gas leak and a smoking man on the sidewalk led to an explosion in the tattoo parlour in the basement of this building.”
“Bullshit,” Gabe said. “Look at those marks on the walls.”
There were charred tendrils up the walls of the building. It wasn’t the kind of markings that I expected from a natural fire or a normal one as the case might be. It was a bursting outward that seemed almost familiar, yet not at the same time.
“Almost look like wings,” Sam said.
“Heavenly Host?” Gabe asked.
“As in, you think someone killed a Heavenly Host?” I asked.
If a fallen angel resulted in Heaven raining down on our estate, and demons climbing up to welcome their new brother with open arms, then surely the murder of a host would have resulted in something a little more noticeable than a burnt out building.
“No, only an arc could do that,” Sam said as Raphael walked into the room.
There was the scent of magic around him. It wafted off of him, but also had a putrid edge to it. I sat up as Raphael came to a stop at the edge of the couch. He was paler than usual, and for a moment I swore I saw shadows of ruins down the side of his face.
I stood and walked toward him. He flinched as I reached out a hand. I brushed my fingers over the shadows, and they seemed to flake away, falling to nothing between his skin and his shoulder.
“Where were you?” I asked.
“Dealing with some witches,” Raphael said.
There was a hollowness to his voice. He seemed not to be completely alert. His eyes were empty as he pushed past me and sat on the couch. Sam reached out and set his hand on Raphael’s leg.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Death spell is wrapped around my heart,” Raphael said.
“Can you handle it?” Sam asked.
“It’s a pretty weak spell,” Raphael said slowly. “But it’s also really uncomfortable. Like there’s a fist in my chest. It’ll pass.”
“Good to know,” Sam said. “Now, what did you do?”
“Told you, cleared out some witches,” Raphael said, blinking at the television screen. “Those look like threads of fate burned into the building sides.”
“They do,” Sam growled at Raphael. “But we’ve seen that before, haven’t we?”
Not since we had removed our graces, had I seen such destruction. That was why it had looked familiar yet not at the same time. If Sam or Gabe had seen it more recently, they hadn’t said anything to me.
He’s hiding something.
“Yes, once or twice before,” Gabe said. “It might have been old wiring in the building, I suppose. Newer wiring doesn’t do that. The event was strong enough that our phones went off quite loudly.”
Raphael made a sound but didn’t move.
That sort of explosion could hardly be explained by old wiring. The notices going off were very clear, that was why Sam had walked in the way he had.
The only other possibility was that the dark witches had done something which had caused the alarms to go off. They had done something, made a spell that caused Raphael to do that to a building when he had never shown that sort of aggression before.
I edged a little closer to him, wondering if they had done something foolish. If the witches were running low on that which they needed to be dark witches, they would have set a trap for one of us, knowing we’d show up. The resulting explosion might not have been Raphael going off in a rage, so much as his exploding as his feathers were stolen, and perhaps his grace yanked from Heaven with it.
“Did they get a feather?” I asked as I leaned down.
I hoped that I might be able to tell with a scent or with how he moved. I wanted to know if they had done something to him. If they were preparing for an assault on Heaven while we were still locked on Earth, unable to go home.
“No,” Raphael said.
“If they had gotten a feather, that would explain the marks,” I said. “I made quite a mess too.”
Though, after finding what had happened, I had attempted to find the one responsible and get back what had been stolen. The village and the peoples who had spawned the witches had been almost entirely destroyed in my rage.
A fact that Father never let me forget.
That temper of yours was forged in the explosion of the first stars, but it’s loyalty, boy, that will make or break you.
I’m almost certain he said such things about the others as well, but I had never been privy to those conversations. It was more of a hope and a prayer that kept me going. To tell myself that I’m not the only one who had those conversations.
“They only got part of your grace,” Raphael said in a distant sort of way.
A shudder rolled through him. He gave himself a shake and turned to me. His eyes didn’t entirely focus at first, but when they did, there was that wrathful youth that we saw so very rarely. It was an annoyance, anger that we only ever saw when we did something stupid or suggested something ridiculous like giving human women three breasts,
Considering how much men seemed to like the two of them, you’d think three would be even better.
“It’s your fault they exist,” Raphael snapped.
“You’re right,” I said.
That emotion wasn’t just anger. It was a burning fury. The kind of rage I had seen before in women who had been hurt by men, that I had experienced before when I had tried to help them. It wasn’t their fault they were lashing out.
But why was he that sort of angry?
Raphael might have been missing a feather and didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t blame him for that. It was embarrassing to admit that a mortal had gotten the better of him. I had to know for sure, however, before I did anything because I had to know what sort of fight I was walking into.
A dark witch with the remains of my feather was a great deal less of a threat than one with a full feather from Raphael, looking for more. They were almost as bad as drug addicts, except they were cowards at the same time. That cowardly thread that went through all the dark witches had been what kept them from making a real attempt at gaining more grace from an angel.
“How about we go to the remains of the parlour, and you walk me through what happened?” I asked.
Raphael looked away. He wavered as he seemed to stare at the coffee table.
“They’re real wings,” he said finally. “They didn’t say where they got them from, just that they didn’t steal them, that the angel wasn’t going to be coming looking for them. Did they have sex?”
The last was said to Sam, with a finger jabbed at me.
“Whose business is that?” I asked.
Sam looked over Raphael, to me, then sighed. He at least gave it a moment of consideration before he threw me into the fire.
“They did,” he said to Raphael.
“It weaves the wings deeper into her soul,” Raphael said. “If they reach a certain point, they’ll explode outward, into the physical realm. They searched all over for Sera, or one like Sera, to take the wings on because she was the only way to get them into the real world.”
“Except for Grace,” Sam said.
“And the others Father makes for us,” Raphael said. “I don’t think the witches know what they found. They didn’t say anything about that. They just think she’s a special human.”
“Let’s face it, if they knew that Sera was grace reborn, there’s no way they’d be wasting their time with wings,” Sam said. “They’d just tap her, go right for the source.”
“I don’t know,” Gabe said. “Grace walked into the club, and I could hang a flag off my pants. Sera walks in, and I get a confused half-boner.”
I had to agree with Gabe. Upon meeting Sera, there had definitely been a confused half-boner, but when I spotted Grace, I had been willing enough to take her on. That had still been work, and I’d never admitted to Sam that I had wanted to bed his new wife, but it was true.
“You don’t think she’s grace?” Sam asked.
“No,” Gabe said with a shake of his head.
“Of course she is,” I protested. “I know, she’s mine.”
“She was made for you,” Gabe said. “Or, the two of you, no need for that look, Raphael. But we were never promised our graces. We were promised the chance at redemption, but only if we recognize what is before us and pass some trial. I agree that she’s something special, but not that she’s your grace incarnate.”
“Fine,” I said. “We can decide on what she is later. What we know is that she’s in danger because the witches didn’t know that she… if she isn’t grace incarnate, wouldn’t she have exploded from the wings?”
“He has a point,” Raphael croaked.
“Point or not, we can discuss that later,” Sam said. “Let’s not waste time on the maybes and just focus on, as Michael said, what we know. We need to find Sera and get her back here. Where we can wage our war from the estate and keep her safe.”
“If they—that’d make one hell of a mess,” Raphael said, turning to Sam. “The estate would just be exploded, basically. A blackened crater.”
“The Angelica brothers would be no more,” Sam said. “I moved forward the tickets, and Mary agreed to go early. She’s already at the airport. You know how she is. I’m just waiting for Grace to get back from the doctor, to find out what’s going on there.”
“Right,” Gabe said.
“You should have gone with her,” Raphael said. “Why didn’t you?”
“Because she said you told her what was wrong, so she was just going to get the confirmation,” Sam said. “She told me it was nothing to worry about and she’d be fine.”
“No,” Raphael said. “No, that was a stupid thing to do. Just. No.”
“Why no?” Sam asked with a shrug. “She said she’d be fine. I trust her when she says she’ll be fine. What’s the matter with her then? It’s not cancer, is it? No, you can fix cancer. Is it that toxic insides leaking on the outside thing?”
“No, it’s not that,” Raphael said.
Sam lifted his phone. “Oh, she’s home.”
He sent a text off, then held the phone away as he frowned at it. With a shake of his head, he tossed the phone to the side.
“She says we’re not to go anywhere,” Sam said. “You two will wait until after this, then go out to the parlour, see if you can figure out what is going on. I will drive Grace to the airport and come back here.”
“I thought you pushed the tickets forward,” Gabe said.
“I pushed their tickets,” Sam said. “I’ll just book the first ticket once everything is seen to. There’s no point in pushing my ticket forward if the Angelica brothers are going to end up dead. I’d need a new identity, and then Grace and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the honeymoon. Hey, honey.”
“Hi,” Grace said with a little wave at Gabe.
“What did you need us for?” Sam asked.
“Uhhh,” Grace said.
She looked around the room with wide eyes as we stood waiting for her to tell us what the news was. She went bright red and lowered her eyes, staring at the floor.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “You look happy but scared at the same time, which is weird for you. The last time you looked like that, you punched me.”
It had been a one time thing, and I think she was more startled that it had happened than I had been.
“I’m pregnant,” Grace said.
The deathly silence that followed filled the room with a burdened, unspoken accusation. Raphael sat up, sighed, and looked at Sam.
“Really?” he asked.
“Really what?” Sam asked.
“You are really going to imply that she cheated on you?”
“What?” Sam all but shouted. “No! I would never think that Grace cheated on me!”
I was thinking that.
But I liked Grace. I did, so I didn’t say that out loud. I wanted to believe that she was better than other women.
“Then why didn’t you say something?” I asked. “Because to the rest of us, it seems like that would be the obvious conclusion.”
“We helped create sixteen virgin births,” Sam said sternly. “My wife getting pregnant does not mean that she cheated on me. I’m angry because that means Father interfered with all this.”
“Oh,” Gabe said, looked Grace up and down. “So, it’s going to be a hellspawn that challenges you your entire life and probably pisses in your mouth. Tit for tat.”
“Damn,” Sam said.
“Well, once it's born we can just get a paternity test,” Grace said. “Because the doctor said I’m about six weeks along and six weeks ago we were still heavy into the pre-wedding sex. I’m pretty certain I know the date of conception and the, well, you know, what was going on.”
“Grace, we went over this,” Sam said very gently. “Angel and human can’t make a baby.”
“I know, but you guys have been telling me for four years that I’m only human in flesh, just like you guys are just human in flesh.”
There was another moment of silence as we all looked at one another. Sam, in the end, focused on Raphael.
“Is that possible?” Sam asked.
Raphael looked at Sam, then leaned in. He reached out and touched the side of Sam’s head. He stroked Sam’s hair several times before he grabbed something and yanked it. Sam cried out in protest, reaching for his hair as Raphael pulled the hair toward himself and examined it.
“What’d you do that for?” Sam demanded.
Raphael held the hair out to Sam. Who glared at him for a long couple of seconds. It was the kind of look I had seen before, that Sam showed right before he throat punched someone.
“It’s grey,” Raphael said.
“What?” Sam asked, frowning as he leaned in.
“It’s grey,” Raphael repeated. “You have grey hair, crow’s-feet starting in the corners of your eyes, and your wife is pregnant. When was the last time you were in the astral plane?”
Sam swore.
Grey hair, a little rounder, wrinkles around the eyes, and a pregnant wife? Even I wasn’t so dense that I couldn’t put it all together.
Sam was human. Or… at least as human as one of us could be. He was ageing and stuck in his flesh. If he was killed, it was possible that he would die, be removed from the physical plane until Grace passed away. And if anything, anything at all happened to Grace to end her life early, he’d have it in for us, come down all arc angel and hell hath no fury.
I didn’t want that responsibility, so I said the smart thing.
“Yeah, you need to call the airport and move your ticket forward,” I said. “If there’s a chance you might be mortal, you can’t be here for this. We can figure out if you’re mortal enough to die later. Right now, it’s just what’s going on.”
“We don’t have the time to play around and figure things out,” Sam muttered, reaching for his phone. “Okay, if you guys die I will mourn you publicly for a week or so, then I’ll pretend to forget who you are.”
Sam meant that if we ‘died’ then he would return as the last remaining Angelica brother and then immediately ‘adopt’ three random strangers as his new family. Probably all the while going on about how the entire human race was one big family.
“Fair enough,” I said. “Uh, after you… who has lead?”
“You do,” Sam said. “Did you forget?”
“It might have been Gabe,” I said with a motion to him.
“Why not me?” Raphael asked.
“If it was you, you’ve got one fight under your belt, and you aren’t recovered yet,” I said. “I recuperate faster than you do from a fight. This is also what I’ve been made for, so, yes, I am lead before you. You want to lead. We can discuss that later. For now, I lead. Gabe, get Sam, Mary, and Grace on a plane. Raphael and I are going to take a ride.”