31 • DiViNE iNTERVENTiON

MOTES OF TWINKLING dust flitted playfully in the artificial sunbeams streaming through the stained-glass windows. The heady, honey-sweet scent of ambrosia filled the spacious cathedral.

A luminous white marble table stood in the middle of the meeting chamber, standing atop ornately carved legs some twenty feet tall. Surrounding the table were seven sleek chairs of equal height. Here, perched atop their towering thrones, the seven archangels held their quarterly meeting.

“Let us tarry not and partake in this most holy of meetings,” Michael said imperiously, flexing his majestic wings just a little farther than any other creature could. “As you all know, the Big Guy Upstairs has been, shall we say, distracted as of late, and the bulk of His duties has fallen on our wings….”

“I’m up to my halo with governing paradise as it is,” Zadkiel interjected, sipping from his Heaven’s Best Angel, MDCXII mug.

Raguel scratched beneath the white Nehru collar of his immaculate vestments.

“What I wouldn’t give to govern paradise,” he grumbled while rubbing his molting wings on the back of his chair. “Try being the archangel to the infirm and woebegone. I just came back from consoling a pediatric head lice ward. You’ve got paradise, Zadkiel, and I’ve got parasites.”

“Oh, wherever did I leave my tiny violin?” Zadkiel mocked as he and the other archangels subtly scooted their chairs farther away from Raguel.

Rafael raised his hand.

Michael smiled. “Yes, brother Rafael?”

“Firstly, while the Big Guy Upstairs has his existential crisis or whatever,” Rafael said, “what are we supposed to be doing?”

“Doing?” repeated Michael as he swatted away a playful cloud of motes. “What we always do, only more so: show humanity that our gates are always open. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

“Metaphorically?” Sariel asked, removing one of his earbuds. Harp-driven dance music squawked from the dangling earpiece.

“Yes,” Gabriel answered sarcastically in his crisp British accent. “It’s a big word that means not really.”

“Technically the gates are locked,” Michael explained. “We sure as heck can’t just let anyone in, or it would cease to be exclusive. Speaking of Heck …”

Gabriel and Uriel stiffened as Michael reviewed the bottom of his parchment. Uriel’s forehead beaded with holy perspiration.

“Apparently,” Michael continued, “there has been a series of disturbances that have caught the Galactic Order Department by surprise. And, as an organization that strictly adheres to a Divine Plan, we do not tolerate ‘surprises.’”

Uriel began to twitch. Gabriel glared at him, silently entreating the nervous angel to keep it together.

“A boy named … Milton Fauster,” Michael went on, “was darned for all eternity despite a lack of compelling transgressions to justify such a judgment. Shortly thereafter, said boy escaped from Limbo.”

The archangels surrounding the table gasped, save for Gabriel and Uriel, who gaped in feigned surprise.

“But that’s impossible,” Rafael remarked.

“And that’s not all,” Michael went on. “The Fauster boy used lost souls to make good his escape. The Prime Defective is very clear about the reintroduction of unprocessed souls to the Surface. To say that it is frowned upon is to say that the Great Flood was a bit of a drizzle. Then the boy had the audacity to return, aiding and abetting his sister in the disruption of a ceremony in Mallvana….”

“Ooh,” Sariel cooed. “Mallvana. There’s a place I’d like to warm my Sacredit Card!”

“The girl is now undergoing an Infernship down under,” Michael continued, “while the boy is still at large.”

Gabriel straightened his white silk tie.

“A fascinating story, Michael, but what does this have to do with us? Surely this is a matter for the Powers That Be Evil….”

“This has everything to do with us,” countered Michael.

The archangel polished his gold Galactic Order Department (GOD) badge—a pair of wings sprouting from a glowing pyramid with a little eye perched at the tip—unconsciously with his thumb.

“I’ve got a feeling that this goes deeper than down there,” Michael continued. “It upsets the whole scheme of things. On its own, this Heck business is inconsequential. But if it set some kind of precedent, it could unravel the very fabric of creation!”

“The Academy Award for Best Actor goes to …,” Sariel scoffed.

“Listen here, you cupid fool …”

As the two archangels argued, Gabriel scribbled a quick note on the torn corner of his parchment, plucked out one of his feathers, attached the note with a dab of saliva, then put it in his palm and blew it surreptitiously over to Uriel.

The feather floated gently into Uriel’s coffee mug. The angel fished the small note out with his fingers.

CALL ME. NOW. THEN HANG UP.

Uriel shot Gabriel a sideways glance before scratching behind his ear, causing the gleaming gold band crowning his head to hum ever so slightly. Immediately, Gabriel’s halo began to ring and hover. The other archangels frowned at him.

“Whoops,” Gabriel apologized. “I must have accidentally left it on.”

He tilted the rim of his halo down to his ear.

“Hello, this is … oh … sir … yes, of course!”

Gabriel mouthed “It’s Him” to his fellow seraphs. The angels’ eyes widened. Michael’s perfect features soured with jealousy.

“Immediately, sir. We’re just wrapping up … Uriel, too? Yes, we’ll tend to it. Godspeed.”

Gabriel fingered his headpiece, causing it to settle back onto his salt-and-pepper hair.

“Well, apparently He is planning an act of Himself and wants me and Uriel to chip in on some of the details….”

Gabriel nodded to Uriel and the two scooted back their chairs.

“Michael, I’d like to say it’s been lovely,” Gabriel said with a smile. “But I, in good conscience, can’t. So, until next quarter, fare thee well … Come on, Uriel.”

The two angels fluttered down to the white marble floor. Gabriel led Uriel across the basilica to the relative privacy of an ornately carved marble column.

Uriel nervously chewed his nails, which, with each nibble, grew back to their original length.

“I can’t take much more of this,” Uriel whined.

“It’s not up to us,” Gabriel asserted. “It’s what the Big Guy Upstairs wants. He believes in us. That’s why he picked you and me specifically to head His most righteous covert operation.”

Uriel leaned against the column and sighed.

“I don’t know …”

“We can’t just clasp our hands together and pray that this will all go away,” Gabriel replied.

Uriel looked up with a hopeful smile.

“Well, if you think about it, we could—”

Gabriel shook his head.

“He’s testing our faith. And, by the looks of it, this isn’t some open-book pop quiz. He’s getting ready for the final exam.”

Uriel stared back at the imposing table of bickering angels.

“Everything is moving so fast,” he said nervously. “Why start with Heck?”

Gabriel shrugged his wings.

“GOD works in mysterious, patent-pending ways,” he replied. “Until He contacts us, we simply need to shut our angel-food-cake holes and take everything on faith value.”

Up above, Michael eyed Gabriel and Uriel with suspicion. He leaned close to his remaining archangels.

“I’d like to propose an emergency measure,” Michael whispered.

Raguel scratched his feather-bare wing.

“But we need all seven present to—”

“Drastic times call for drastic measures,” Michael muttered spookily. “And this is one drastic measure.”

Zadkiel wrinkled his perfect nose.

“Does this come from upstairs?” he asked.

Michael smiled. His brilliant white teeth were so blinding that they obscured both his face and his motives.

“We are His instruments, tasked with acting on His behalf, which is what I intend to do,” Michael replied coolly. “Act upon His implied meaning, the Good Word unuttered. See, sometimes you have to engineer something really, really bad for the greater good. Something so bad it could—and will, if all goes according to plan—give even the devil nightmares.”