I assumed that Michael knew where he was going, so I hadn’t bothered paying attention to where he drove until I saw the city limits sign pass us. At that sight, I turned on him and tried to protest.
I didn’t even get my mouth open. I just saw the look on his face and wilted in the seat, trying to press against the door so that I looked smaller. Michael never picked on people who looked weak because it was against Father’s rules.
Kind of like dealing with a bear. I had to curl on my side and play dead, except I didn’t have to hope he found something more interesting to play with.
“You’re not some pathetic being, stop that,” he said while keeping his eyes on the road.
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked.
“Well, I’m taking you out of city limits, so it should be obvious.”
“Beat me up for sleeping with Sera,” I said. “That’s not what the lead position is for!”
“I’m not going to beat you up for sleeping with Sera,” he said. “I’m just making certain that we have the space to talk.”
I sat mutely as he continued to drive, uncertain what I could say in my defence. Anything I had to say would just be thrown back in my face or explode into another fight, and I didn’t need the car being damaged in the fight.
Because there was no way I was walking home.
Michael pulled to a stop next to an empty field. I wasn’t sure what the field was for, as the city wasn’t well known for lumber from the surrounding area, but it also wasn’t a farm of some sort.
He glanced at me, then motioned with his chin. Sighing, I climbed out of the car and closed the door, watching him do the same and walk around. The keys went into his right pocket.
That part was important because my plan to get out of the situation mainly involved hitting him over the head, stealing the keys, and getting into the car before he got his feet under him enough to do damage. Michael also wouldn’t damage the car, because he also wouldn’t want to walk back to the city.
We may have gotten a little lazy in our old age. Though it could also have been said that we had to have the car for a quick getaway in case something happened to Sera while we were way out in the middle of nowhere. Or even that we were cautious given the fact that the other option was flying and that would be noticed on human radars.
Unless we shed our flesh, but I wouldn’t make Michael new flesh right away, and he knew that.
“Come on,” Michael said with a motion as he walked into the field. “Keys are right pocket, there aren’t any heavy rocks about, and you can’t take me on the astral plane so let’s get this over with.”
Again, I almost protested, but then I realized if I did protest, I would be proving my guilt. Instead, I looked up and down the road, gritted my teeth, and made an annoyed sound.
“And quit pouting like your daytime operas,” Michael said.
“I’m not pouting like my daytime operas!” I snapped back at him.
“You are, you are pouting like your daytime operas. No normal person sighs and growls and grits their teeth as much as you do in real life Raphael, come on. We haven’t got all day.”
“We’ve got all of fucking eternity, Michael.”
Michael made a growling sound. He turned to me and balled his hands up into fists as he glared at me down his nose.
“She doesn’t. So, get over here or I will kick your ass for sleeping with her and then dangling her as bait.”
That got me moving. I grumbled all the way to the middle of the field, but I still walked. Michael stopped and sighed out.
Overhead the sky was almost clear. No city lights hiding the view way out there, though I could see the orange haze over the trees, where the lights of the city began. I could see the stars. In moments like those, standing on Earth and looking up, I felt so very, very small.
Out there was the entire cosmos. There were galaxies and star systems and plants just like Earth, all living their lives through.
Because humans had been a new creation, but not the first. And of all the planets in all the universe, we had opened the gateway to Hell on that specific one. Demons couldn’t reach other planets. Some hadn’t even been touched by Death yet.
And there I was, basically a mote of dust on a living creature so much larger than myself, staring up at the world beyond me and seeing only pretty, sparkly lights in the sky.
Dear Father, who art in Heaven…
I let out my breath slowly and refused to continue the prayer. I looked at Michael, watching me expectantly, and growled through gritted teeth.
Are you even in Heaven anymore?
Michael made a motion as if encompassing my entire body.
“All right, let’s see them,” he said.
“See what?” I asked.
“Your wings,” he said. “All of them.”
“What? No, you can’t see my wings.”
I took a step back as Michael stood there, hands in his pockets and watching me. He made no move forward, didn’t even seem to twitch.
In reality, that distance that I put between us was only to make me feel better. It wouldn’t change anything. If Michael wanted to lay his hands on me, the extra foot of space wouldn’t stop him. He’d be on me before I could move again.
“Raphael, we’ve been over this. Wings are not Heaven’s equivalent of boobs, dick, or vagina. Even if they were, there’d be no shame showing them out here. There’s no one around but you and me, and you’re a healer.”
I crossed my arms, hugging them to myself as I glared at him and turned my body slightly away.
“No, Michael. You can’t see my wings.”
“Raphael, we don’t have time for this,” he protested.
“Threaten me all you like. You aren’t going to see my wings!”
“I don’t have to threaten you,” Michael said.
His sword appeared. Behind him, his wings rose up, shadowy beasts of what they had once been. They were still impressive on the astral plane, still well kept, but they could no longer appear on Earth the way they once had. Before we had left Heaven, our wings had been opalescent in nature, sparking in the physical plane like drifting embers.
We had been a sight to behold.
Once.
I had never pulled my wings out around my brothers for a damned good reason.
And it wasn’t just because I was a prude.
Though I was.
I mean in a Heavenly sense. There were things that my brothers had done in Heaven that I had found ghastly, and had never participated in. One minor example would be the taking of the wings of a lesser Heavenly Host because they did something stupid.
For them, it was normal, for me? No.
“You can’t attack me, that’s against the rules,” I said.
“Unless Sam does it to either prove a point or re-settle one of us,” Michael said. “He’s only ever used that against me, but I’m lead now. and I need to see your wings.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“Because you’re hiding something and I need to know what I’m about to walk into with the dark witches,” Michael said.
“I told you, they didn’t get anything,” I said.
“And as much as I want to believe you, I’ve seen that look in your eyes from humans who have been victimized. I’m sorry, but there is too much at stake to take your word for it.”
“I’m not—” I shook my head as I backed up, “—I’m not doing this, I’m not playing this twisted game with your Michael.”
“I wouldn’t have to force them out if you would just bring them out,” he said.
Michael’s wings, Gabriel’s, even Samael’s after claiming Grace, they all looked vaguely similar on the physical plane. Black shadows of ominous origins. They darkened the very sky with their presence, sent humans running if they were nearby.
Their wings did the opposite of what they were supposed to do.
Humans once said that God made the sun out of the wings of the fallen angels. They might not have been far from the truth. There had been a lot of wings littering the grounds of Heaven once the war had been fought and sides taken.
“Why are you resisting?” he asked.
I set my weight.
“Come on,” he said. “Despite all else, I’m not looking forward to beating you into the ground and dragging them out of you.”
“Maybe I have a rape fantasy I’d like to fulfill,” I said in a nasty tone.
It was one Lillith had been teaching me because humans communicated with tones of voice more and more. Lillith referred to it as her pissed-off-woman voice. She also said she liked to pull it out when men had been idiots.
“It’s not rape,” Michael protested. “Not even close. At its worst, it’s like ruffling your hair or giving you a, whatever humans call that, a noogie?”
“Whatever it is, I’m having none of it. I’m done with you ordering me around.”
“You can't take me down. You’re a healer for crying out loud.”
“Try me.”
“Raphael…”
“Try me, Michael. I was built to fight just as much as the rest of you were, I just happened to come with the ability to patch you fucktards up when you got hurt.”
“Hey, that’s not an okay thing to say.”
It almost sounded like he was trying to imitate Sam. Like he was trying to keep doing what Sam would want him to do, but couldn’t remember how Sam would say it.
That wasn’t how the Michael I knew worked at all. The Michael I knew would pick on me, tease me, for saying that I could fight.
“What? That I fight?”
“Fucktard, you can’t say that word. The root words are clearly insulting to people.”
“That’s the point. Fight me, if you think you’re going to win so much.”
“Where’s your weapon?” Michael asked.
“I don’t need a weapon to take you. My hands will do.”
I had been taking every fighting and self-defence class that humans had created or offered. In the modern age, it had been so much easier, and I didn’t even have to tell the others where I was going or what I was doing because we all had separate bank accounts. None of them had known that I spent my time on Earth training. They just thought I had spent it in the gym, keeping fit like they sometimes had to.
“Fine, but if you pull it mid-fight and cut me with it, you’re going to fix it,” Michael said, slipping his blade away.
He set his weigh and raised his hands.
I waited for him to attack, and he did pause for a moment, watching me, judging me. When he finally lashed out, I caught his fist and twisted it to the side.
The fight that ensued was brief and proved that, if anything, we were equals on the physical plane. We ended up on the ground, struggling with one another in a tussle that would not end. He would shove me. I would shove him back. He’d get his fingers into my mouth and yank my head to the side, and I’d grab a handful of hair and yank, pulling hair out as it happened.
And suddenly we spun.
Michael’s power was flowing into the field, picking away from my flesh, eating away at me. He might not have had his grace, but he could still cause damage to a mortal body. Which meant that he could destroy my flesh by burning it away unless I used my power to save my skin.
If my flesh burned away, I would have to make new flesh, take on a new form.
Sera wouldn’t recognize me.
I did the stupid, selfish thing. I saved my pretty boy features a moment before I landed a punch on Michael’s jaw and sent him back a step. His wings seemed to catch him and push him back off the ground. They must have been fueled by his anger.
I had never watched an angel fight before. Participating in one and watching were two different things. Whatever advantages Michael had because of his wings, I didn’t have because my wings were away.
He was trying to drive them out.
The second round went much worse for me.
Every time I thought I had the upper hand, he’d slam a fist into me. My face, my stomach, my thigh four times. When I howled at the cringing pain that seemed to burn worse when I moved, he hit me in the face again.
Not easy to beat God’s warrior.
He’s toying with me.
Beating on me but not taking me over the line that might knock me unconscious.
“Fight back!” he shouted at me.
“I’m trying,” I huffed out.
Caught, at that moment, in a headlock, my feet dancing like a man hanging from a noose as I reached above me and tried to find purchase in his face or head. If he had wanted to, really wanted to, he could have ended the fight then and there.
“No, you aren’t,” Michael said.
“I am,” I snapped.
He all but threw me away from him. I forced my feet under me, taking a fighting stance as I panted. He stood as if we had just been out for a lovely stroll in the country somewhere.
“You haven’t even tried,” Michael countered. “You only used your power once to heal yourself. I barely got a flash.”
“Wait, what?”
Michael frowned at me.
“Oh, that’s not you holding back,” he said.
He made a little face and began rolling up his sleeves as he nodded. He seemed to mutter something to himself as he rolled up the other sleeve. I didn’t catch what he mumbled, and I barely saw his lips move. I couldn’t tell what he said, not in the least.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Well, if you knew then it probably wouldn’t work,” Michael said.
“Michael, what are you planning?” I asked. “Why do you have that crazy look in your eyes? There are no demons around here.”
“No, no demons,” Michael said with a shake of his head. “But these hands are going inside of you.”
“I’m not into that kind of stuff,” I got the words out, but it was barely more than a murmur, and was followed by a little whimper.
“I…” he flushed a red of embarrassment. “I didn’t mean it that way. Damn it, Raphael, not everything is a sex joke. Just take your wings out!”
“No!”
“I’m not going into a fight not knowing what they have.”
“They didn’t get anything from me, I told you that already,” I protested.
“If you didn’t lose them, bring them out!”
“You want to see them so badly?”
“Yes!”
“Fine!” I shouted.
I loosed my wings in the physical realm, where they crackled upward into the sky and scorched the earth behind me. The tips of my wings spread out to the edges of the field and slipped through the trees. Unlike Michael’s wings, mine were lit as if from within. The threads of fate spread longer than usual. They danced almost to the edges of my wings because we hadn’t clipped them back in a while.
Michael’s were also there somewhere, dancing in the night sky, but his couldn’t be seen against the dark backdrop.
He watched my wings stretch out, a frown creasing his brow for only a second. Then his features fell as his mouth opened and his eyes went wider. All the blood drained from his face as the wings settled into the fabric of reality and twitched of their own accord. Instinct, and the desire to fly.
How I miss flying.
Brought almost into the physical plane, they took on a shape similar to humans, that which they were named after. Each of us had a certain number of wings. The arcs were blessed with the most, which aided us when we flew to war, making us faster than nearly any other creature in existence.
Michael’s look turned to a deep frown. Perhaps he didn’t know. Maybe he hadn’t looked at anyone else’s wings before. For all they talked about how it was like hair, we only showed off our wings to trim them back, and then only on the astral plane.
He raised a hand and motioned with a finger, counting off the wings he saw.
“Where’s the rest?” he asked. “The ones you always hide, your baby wings.”
“They aren’t baby wings,” I protested.
“No one’s seen them since you shed to ascend into full power,” Michael said. “You always hide them, where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“How could you not know?” Michael asked. “Shouldn’t they be there? Right there, there’s practically a perfectly shaped gap just for them.”
I shrugged and shook my head. “I don’t know. This is all of them.”
“But arcs all have…”
“I have the last set of wings, they just aren’t on me,” I said. When he didn’t seem to understand, I tried another route. “They’re in my other pants, officer.”
Michael’s wings darkened with his mood. His eyebrows drew down over his eyes, creasing his brow so much that I wondered if it would get stuck like that. His hands clenched at his sides as he looked up at the wings again. Something moved over his face.
“Why are your wings so bright?” he asked.
In his voice, I heard the understanding that he knew. He knew why they were so bright despite the fact that everyone else’s wings were almost black when they appeared on the physical plane. Much like the wings of a fallen angel, the others had no light left.
Or, at least, not enough to light up their feathers. They only had enough to keep going and not be dragged into Hell.
The wings of a fallen angel appeared in tatters and cracked skeletal remains.
“You know why,” I said.
“No, no. We were attacked in Prague. If what you imply is true, that wouldn’t have happened.”
“And I dealt with it,” I said with a shrug.
“A knight six hundred years ago.”
“That was not a meteor.”
Michael flushed with rage. “Why are your wings so bright, brother?”
“You know why, Michael,” I said.
“But I want to hear you say it,” he snapped.
I sighed. He called me dramatic and then did that. He’d keep doing it until I gave in, I knew that. He could be petty when he wanted to be, which was why Sam had told us that we were no longer allowed to do that.
“Because I still have my grace.”
“Because you still have your grace,” he roared at me.
“I’ve never actually said that I didn’t have it.”
Which was true. We hadn’t sat down when it all began and had some club meeting where we did role call and checked the inventory of one another. I had been the last to leave Heaven, and for that reason, my brothers made an assumption.
It wasn’t like they could have asked for a report from Heaven. They were still grounded, so to speak.
“It was a sign of solidarity,” Michael snapped. “That’s why we did it.”
“Please. Sam pulled his out, you lost yours, and Gabriel, he was the one who pulled his grace out so that he could go to Hell and save Sam, forcing you to go with him. When you went down to drag him back, you realized that you couldn’t pull them through the spells he created while you were still touched by Heaven. It had nothing to do with solidarity. You only tried to get Sam back because you fucked up and lost a feather to a mortal, and he was the only one who knew anything about the dark arts.”
“This whole time, you could have gone to Heaven, and you just let it all go wrong? You could have brought Sam’s weapon to him.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
“We could have closed the gates of Hell a lot sooner if we had the fires from the lamps of Heaven. If we had all been armed.”
“But I can’t go back to Heaven.”
“Why not?” Michael demanded. “Because you’ve been sullied? Please. If fucking every whore between here and the beginning of time had sullied you, you would have had your grace ripped out of you a long time ago. Damn it, that means I could have been having sex all this time? Doing drugs? Drinking?”
Father had never said those things were wrong. He had said hurt against another was wrong. He had said denying oneself was wrong. He had even told a group in Heaven that I was privileged to be a part of, that denying another of that which they love for selfish or petty reasons was wrong.
He never meant for alcohol not to be enjoyed, with some moderation. Drugs existed because they were fun. Even these things humans created which hurt them, they existed because they would result in something better. Murder was wrong, but the owning of an object that could be used as a weapon was not. Prostituting one’s daughter for meth was wrong, but smoking the meth and keeping to oneself was not.
We’d always think humans who did that were kind of stupid to piss away their lives, but, hey, it takes all kinds.
But at some point, for some stupid reason, Michael had started talking about how everything was sinful.
“You’re the only one who thought those things.”
“You could have ended all my questions!”
“If you couldn’t follow your own heart to Father, that’s your problem, not mine,” I said.
“Then why can’t you go back to Heaven?” he demanded. “What imaginary slight did you do that might keep you from re-entering Heaven?”
“I…”
“And where are your wings?”
“They’re in Heaven,” I said.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Michael said. “Even if you did rip off your own wings, because no one else did it for you, and even if you—somehow—didn’t pass out from the pain and wake to the guardians stitching them back onto you and slapping you in manacles to keep you from hurting yourself. And, I don’t know, by a miracle, you made it dripping blood through Heaven… how did you make it past the guardians of the gates? Just as one cannot enter with your wings, you cannot leave with another’s.”
“You can,” I said. “And yes, it hurts to rip them off, but if you set off a bomb of glitter and giggles in the cherub territory, then everyone goes there to watch them play, and their mirth keeps everyone else from feeling your pain. And yes, there was a great deal of blood, and at first, they wanted to come down and blame you, you three, but then they found me, on Earth, bleeding and I told them what I did.”
“Why? You could have been blessed among the angels, among all angels. Above even Samael.”
I had never wished to covet the position of my brother. Samael had shared that place with Father. Their relationship was not one that could be slipped into easily. Samael was the eldest son. I was but the youngest and weakest. One the leader, one the baby. We were not interchangeable.
“I didn’t want that. I wanted to be here, on Earth, helping you three fix what you broke.”
“It’s not your thing to fix.”
“Just because you broke it, doesn’t mean that you have to carry that burden alone.”
Overhead there was the beating of a helicopter’s blades. We both removed our wings immediately and looked up as a helicopter moved up over the trees.
Michael looked around, as did I. We both swore at once.
The car was little more than a husk. Burned out and melted from the inside. Likely it had gone up when I had let my wings loose in the physical realm.
“Car blew up,” he muttered. “Humans in the air. Burned ground all around. How do we get out of this?”
“Don’t tell the others.”
“What?” he asked.
“Don’t tell the others.”
“Fine, I won’t tell the others, now what?”
I scratched the back of my neck and glanced around us.
“All right, I haven’t tried this with anyone who didn’t have grace.”
In the blink of an eye, we were in the gardens of the estate. Michael stood still for a moment, then bent over and was thoroughly and violently ill.
“An amusing side effect,” I said as I slipped my hands into my pockets. “Don’t tell the others. You can win physically, but I can do that at the drop of a hat and don’t have to hide it anymore. Even with a full set of wings, you cannot outfly me.”