Siren—Friday, 4 p.m. GMT
“I miss you, Mephistopheles,” I slurred.
We had reached the maudlin stage of the evening, also known as the part where I was drunk enough to express remorse. Yes, even I, the spirit of truth incarnate, had to be intoxicated before I could admit my feelings. It wasn’t that I lied at other times. I just left out details.
He smirked. True to his word, he had remained almost sober. I hoped the weight squashed his giant brain into a rubber pancake. Me, I was drunk enough to be swigging the Bacardi straight from the bottle, and it still wasn’t enough to abate the pressure.
“I don’t mean you, like the way you are now, you.” I waved my empty arm at him and nearly toppled off the stool. “You’re a heartless psychopath who tortures innocent people for his own gain.”
He gave an exaggerated sniff, which was enough to show me he was at least a little drunker than he wanted me to know. “If you think there are innocent people out there, Siren, we’ve been spending time on a different Earth.”
“I miss the way things used to be. I miss mattering. I miss being trusted to carry out actual missions for God, instead of just cleaning up Michael’s messes.” I stared at the bottle full of clear liquid. Was rum always that wobbly?
Mephistopheles raised a blurry glass to me in toast. “Well, if you regret the side you picked, I know Lilith is always recruiting self-righteous harpies to do her bidding.”
I snorted then clapped my hand over my mouth. Well, part of my mouth and my nose. “No thanks. Unlike some people, I can tell the difference between right and wrong.”
“Right?” Was he so fuzzy because he was drunk or because I was? “What happened to Sarakiel wasn’t right. I don’t know how, after all that happened, you could think your God righteous.”
“By that logic, you shouldn’t be serving Lucifer, either. After all, he was the one who rendered the judgment.” I took a swig of the vile, beautiful rum. “Maybe you need to take the Bedlam route and strike out on your own.”
Mephistopheles put his glass down with a clank that shouldn’t have seemed as loud as it did. “I rest content that every day, I work in opposition to the forces that ruined my life.”
“Well, that’s true, at least. Since the person you’re hurting most is yourself.” My internal truth scale didn’t know how to respond to that. Mephistopheles hurt an awful lot of people.
Time passed. The Grigori became accustomed to their lives as humans. Mephistopheles left the settlements to help derail Bedlam’s post-Keziel-breakup attempt to destroy the world. I lived in the same tent I always had. In theory I assisted Uriel with the management of human affairs, but in practice, no one trusted me. I started training in martial arts, partly because I had nothing better to do and partly because I wanted to be ready if Michael sent Rachel’s warrior angels after me.
One day, about fifteen years after the judgment, a frightened figure ran out of the forest toward me as I sat meditating outside my tent. As she drew closer, I beheld Sarakiel, red-faced and out of breath. Her blond hair was streaked with grey, and she had developed a few lines on her forehead. But her blue eyes were as fierce and determined as ever, and whatever had brought her to my tent must have been dire enough to override her pride.
“Siren, you have to help me!” She grabbed my wrist and tried to drag me to a standing position. “They’re going to kill Isaac!”
I took a firm hold of the hand she had clasped to my wrist and held her still. “What are you talking about? Who’s Isaac?”
“Isaac is my son.” Her tone chastised me for not knowing. “My nephil son.”
I hadn’t known Sarakiel had a half-angel child. She must have been pregnant with him the day Mephistopheles and I came to visit her.
“They’re going to kill him? What did he do?” Uriel did not approve of the nephilim, but last I checked, he hadn’t been killing them for no reason.
“Nothing! Uriel declared a week ago that all nephilim must die.” Tears began to fall down Sarakiel’s cheeks. “They’ve been trying to hide in the mountains, but Uriel has these invisible magical creatures that can follow them wherever they go.”
As I opened my mouth to respond, Sybil and Somniel emerged from my tent. Some archangel, probably Michael, had sent them to watch me and make sure I didn’t do anything evil. I let them stay because they let me speak for all three of us, and their silent presence gave my voice more weight than it would have on its own, though it would have been better to have vocal cohorts.
“Did you know about this?” I twisted around to look at them. The glances they exchanged spoke volumes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Somniel bit her lip. “You get so defensive about how humans are treated.”
“Yes, I am, in general, against the wholesale slaughter of an entire group of people. Which would be a reason to tell me, not to keep it a secret.”
“Right.” Somniel folded her hands with a calm the situation did not warrant. “Except that there isn’t anything you can do about it, and we didn’t want you to get more upset.”
“Oh, I’m not going to get more upset.” I brushed the dust from my hands and stood up. “I’m going to stop it.”
Sybil stepped forward, but Somniel caught her arm and held her back. “Maybe that’s not such a good idea,” Somniel said.
Had my eyes actually popped out of my skull and rolled around on the dusty ground at that moment, I would not have been surprised. “Not a good idea? How is doing the right thing and protecting the beings of this earth as we were supposed to not a good idea?”
I swore to God that if they gave each other that look one more time, I was going to smack them both.
“Angels talk, Siren. And they think that you’re not really on their side,” said Somniel. “What we’ve heard… Well, we don’t want something like the judgment to happen to you, too.”
“You think I might get turned into a human or have to face some other worse fate because I stand up for truth and justice?” I shook my head hard enough that my hair whipped across my cheek. “Well, believe me when I say that I would rather face a thousand painful deaths than stand by and protect my own interests while innocent people are killed.”
Somniel frowned. “We don’t want it to come to that.”
“Well, ‘it’ can go hang itself. Come on, Sarakiel.” I grabbed her hand and started down the path leading away from my tent.
“Thank you so much,” Sarakiel said as we stumbled across the grass. “I knew you would help.”
“I wouldn’t thank me yet. Sybil and Somniel are probably off telling Uriel where you are right now.” I stopped in my tracks. “Wait, where are we going?”
“This way.” Sarakiel led me in a direction to the north of where we’d been heading, up a rocky, winding road, the whistling of feathered snowcocks sounding in the distance. “When the declaration came down, Isaac tried to escape into the mountains, but one of Uriel’s cherubim attacked him and broke his wing. Abraham and I were able to fight off the angel and run away, but Isaac still can’t fly. We’ve been traveling, trying to hide as best we can. I knew if we could get to you, you would find a way to help us.”
She led me up what humans called Mount Moriah, on a path of red dirt strewn with sharp stones that stung my feet. The soles of my sandals were too thin to take the full brunt of some of the points, but we moved at too quick a pace for me to avoid them. When we had been climbing for about an hour, a scream echoed ahead of us, and we hurried toward the source. Ropes bound a blond boy of no more than fourteen to one of the trees, and the youth’s white feathery wings hung broken behind him. An older man with a snow-white beard stood next to the boy bearing a lit torch.
“Don’t do this, Father.” The boy’s eyes, the same color as the needles of the blue pines his sire had tied him to, and solid jawline looked familiar to me, and I realized that I must be face to face with Sarakiel’s son. Soon, he would stop aging and live as long as an angel, provided his father didn’t succeed in setting him on fire.
“I’m sorry, my beloved son, but I must do as God commands.” I had met Sarakiel’s husband on the day of the judgment, but I’d never been good at keeping humans straight. Still, the man holding the torch could only be he.
“Abraham, what are you doing?” Sarakiel moved in between the flames and Isaac.
Abraham waved the torch at Sarakiel, sending sparks flying into the forest. “I’m sorry, Sara, but our God has demanded that Isaac be killed, and I cannot stand against him.”
“So you decided to set him on fire?” I spread my hands out to the sides. “Was a quick throat slitting not good enough for him?”
Abraham bowed his head. “I must offer him to the Lord in the manner of our sacrifices.”
“I am going to kill Mephistopheles for starting that rumor about God wanting people to burn entrails in his honor,” I muttered under my breath. “It’s wasteful, and apparently leads to the idea that men should burn their children alive.”
Abraham had taken another step toward Isaac. “We must be strong and believe that this is for the best.”
“This is not for the best, and God does not want this! Uriel may think he’s God, but he’s not.” Sarakiel gestured at me. “Siren is as much an agent of the Lord as Uriel, and she says he doesn’t have to die.”
I groaned. Trust Sarakiel to drag me into all her marital disagreements, no matter who her husband was at the time. “Right. God does not demand Isaac’s death.” The words passed my lips, and I knew them to be true. I breathed a sigh of relief. Standing up against Uriel was one thing, but standing up against the will of God another. I would have defied my Maker if such a rebellion were the only way to stop a human sacrifice, but I would spend the whole insurrection wishing I had decided to stay home in bed. And I didn’t sleep. “There seems to have been some kind of misunderstanding concerning the nephilim, but let’s hold off on the death for a little while and see if we can make some sense of everything.”
Abraham whirled around to look at me as I spoke, and he must have recognized me from the first time we met. He knelt on the ground before me, murmuring something about not being worthy and appreciating God’s infinite mercy.
“Thank you, Siren.”
I tried not to be unsettled by the proud and beautiful Sarakiel looking at me with supplication. “For now, I need the three of you to stay hidden here. Move if you have to, but try not to go too far because I need to be able to locate you again. And be careful that none of you do anything stupid when I am gone.” I gave Sarakiel a pointed look. “That includes standing up to Uriel’s angry thug angels.” I shifted my attention to Abraham. “And trying to kill your own flesh and blood out of idiotic religious zealotry.” For the first time I turned my attention to Isaac. “And you… try to stay out of sight and endeavor not to regret your existence any more than is necessary.”
“Wait, Siren.” Sarakiel stopped me as I prepared to depart. “What are you going to do? You can’t fight Uriel. He has these invisible monsters…”
“I’m not going to fight him; I’m going to reason with him. And when that doesn’t work, I’m going to the archangels. And if that doesn’t work, I’m going to go to God.” Who was almost certain to ignore me, but I didn’t see a reason to let Abraham know that. “But maybe you’d better explain about the invisible monsters.”
“I’ve never seen anything like them.” Sarakiel’s face paled as she relived the events. “And I suppose I still haven’t seen them at all. They came into our village with Uriel and his angels, weaving on the wind, and slaughtered the nephilim, holding them down and suffocating them, or letting the angels gut them. Some of the humans tried to help, but the invisible fiends killed them too. I don’t know what these monsters are, but they can kill the nephilim when nothing else can. I think they can kill anyone. Even the other angels seemed afraid of them.”
I tried not to let the horror show on my face and placed a solid hand on Sarakiel’s arm. “I’ll take care of this.” I kept my face neutral as the discordant tones in my head told me my words were not one hundred percent true.
Sarakiel and Abraham lived in a large human settlement several days’ walk to the west. I teleported there, and the absolute quiet let me know that the angel of death had taken his leave. The last time I had visited Sarakiel, the town had been full of farmers and craftsmen engaging in their daily business. I hadn’t been paying much attention, but I vaguely remembered livestock in the fields, meat roasting on the fire, and people staring in confusion at the angry Mephistopheles stalking through the village. Now, the fire was dead, and the only things that moved were the vultures circling overhead.
The bodies outside each tent told the tales of the last moments of each family who had once lived there. An older man with a wooden spear driven through his heart lay atop a winged daughter, as if he had tried to block the dagger that had slit her throat. A blue-faced nephil huddled on the ground, his nails digging into his throat as though he had tried to pry away the formless being who had strangled him. A woman with a stone knife was stretched out amid more blood than could have come from her wounds, presumably from injuries inflicted on the angels who had come after the half-human man behind her. She must have known she could do no permanent damage to her attackers, and yet she had striven with all her might to save her loved one.
I shifted to spirit form so that I did not have to smell the rot and drifted past the burnt tents and grain-houses, looking for anyone still alive.
I heard voices behind a house and followed them until I found five or so oversized cherubim huddled around a fire, playing some kind of dice game. The angels Uriel had chosen to serve him were little more than thugs, the bulging muscles of their human form far larger than their brains. Nonetheless, the group of them together painted a far more menacing picture than I with my slight stature ever could.
I materialized next to them and cleared my throat to draw their attention. “Where’s Uriel?”
The group looked at each other and, through a series of gestures, appointed one of them to be their spokesperson. A blond cherub stepped forward and met my glare. “We don’t have to tell you anything.”
I put my hands on my hips and tried to puff up my slender chest. “You dare to defy a seraph?”
The cherub in the back with a cleft in his chin let out a snort. “As if you’re really a seraph anymore. No one cares what you think.”
I wound my arm and threw a burst of power at him. The jolt hit his stomach, and he doubled over in pain.
“Is this how we’re going to play it?” I looked each standing cherub in the eyes, one by one. “Do we need to prove which of us is stronger? Because, Light help me, I’m willing.”
“No.” The leader looked back at his cleft-chinned cohort who still clutched his belly and moaned. “Uriel left a few days ago, heading west. Any humans or nephilim that were here either died or fled.”
I inclined my head in the manner of a monarch considering forgiveness. “Now tell me about these mysterious powers he has.”
The shudder started at the base of the cherub’s spine and exploded up his torso. “He calls them wraiths. They’re invisible, like the wind, but they have the power to incapacitate anyone. They can kill nephilim and humans. They paralyze angels.”
“Some of us tried to stop the slaughter,” said a brown-haired angel. “He sent the wraiths after us and fixed us in place until we obeyed him. You can’t stop him, not with that power on his side. And he says they will remain at his command until every nephil is dead.”
I wanted to seek Uriel and try to reason with him, but I couldn’t risk being disabled. I needed intervention from a higher source. I was reluctant to go to the archangels after what they had done to the rest of the Grigori, but I didn’t see that I had much choice.
I ascended into Heaven and the familiar film of gold surrounded me. I intended to approach the archangels in supplication and beg them to aid the humans and the nephilim. But when their serene faces bore not a trace of grief at the slaughter going on below, I lost my temper.
“Which one of you authorized this?” I tried to stare down each of the archangels, but they were more powerful than me. They did not cower like the cherubim. “Uriel wouldn’t have created those monsters without the say-so from at least one of you, so who was it?”
I swore to God, if any more people did that Siren’s so unreasonable glance exchange, I would rip their eyes out of their angelic skulls.
I whipped my head around to face the least of the archangels, and somehow the eternal glow that surrounded him seemed more like a haze designed to cover his inefficacy. “It wouldn’t be you. You’re the nice archangel. Which makes you absolutely useless, since you wouldn’t gainsay an order of the other two.” I disregarded Gabriel and turned my attention to the other two. “So which one of you was it? Did the nephilim threaten the order of the universe or the glory of the Lord?”
Michael’s upper lip curled. “We do not need to justify ourselves to you. You should consider yourself fortunate to have escaped the judgment.”
I put my hands on my hips and met his glare. “I’m not asking you to justify yourself to me. I’m telling you that you are way out of line and that you need to put an end to this immediately.”
“You have no right to talk to us that way.” Michael’s form trembled with fury as he stalked toward me like a leopard facing its prey. “The Lord has placed us in charge of angels and men, and it is not your place to question us.”
I resisted the urge to stamp my foot. I sounded enough like a petulant child. “It is my place. It is my place to bring the truth to all who refuse to see it, and the truth is that for every day you allow this to continue, the blood of more innocent people is on your hands.”
“Innocent?” Michael gave a short, humorless laugh. “The nephilim are not innocent. They were born with the sin of their parents on their souls, and we must rid humanity of their corruption.”
“And what of the humans that stand to protect their children? Do they deserve to die too?” Michael flinched. I had hit a nerve. “Uriel has created monsters that destroy any who stand against him, and even angels fear their power.”
But if I had expected Michael to back down, I was disappointed. “We all make sacrifices for the greater good.”
“Oh, that is the biggest load of—”
“Enough!” Lucifer stepped in between us. He focused his attention on me. “You would do well to show us some respect.”
“I will show you exactly as much respect as you deserve.” I had not intended my words to be so harsh, but as they escaped my mouth, they rang with more truth than I expected. I had gotten into the habit of blaming myself for what happened to the Grigori. But on some level, all the mistakes in the creation of humanity—Keziel, Bedlam, Sarakiel, Uriel—started with their poor choices and lack of leadership.
Lucifer closed his eyes, and then opened them again. “The nephilim are a problem that needs to be dealt with.” His voice sounded as if he had participated in this argument many times before. “Do you have a better means of solving it?”
“Give them a chance,” I said. “Let the nephilim prove they can peacefully coexist with humans.”
Lucifer raised his eyebrows. “And if they cannot?”
Is he listening to me? “If they cannot, we will be having a different conversation.”
“Very well. Follow me.”
Lucifer led us to Earth, to a flat plain high in the mountains. As I watched, he used his unequaled powers to move the very rock that surrounded us. The ground shook so hard and so long that I thought perhaps the Earth would crumble to dust beneath our feet. Huge spikes of craggy red stone, a quarter the size of the mountains that surrounded us, jettisoned from the ground and formed themselves into an enclosed dome with a single opening where we stood, barely the width of both of our bodies.
Lucifer gestured to the space he had made. “I create this place as a haven for the nephilim. So long as they remain within these walls, they will be safe and no wraith may touch them. But as long as there are nephilim, so too will there be wraiths. And on the day when the last of the nephilim dies, the wraiths will return from where they came.” He glanced at me. “Does this meet with your approval?”
“Not hardly!” I flung my hand to indicate the same area he had. “They have to stay in this tiny place for all eternity? They’re immortal, you know. How are they going to find food and shelter? Will they have to force others to cart everything up the mountain to them? They have done nothing wrong. They deserve to be free.”
Lucifer cocked his head to the side and gazed at me as if I held the secrets to the universe, but he couldn’t quite crack my code. “Your passion does you credit, little one, but you step beyond yourself. Dare any further and I shall rescind the mercy I have offered.”
A dangerous glint shone in his eye, and my mouth went dry. I took an involuntary step back and realized should he choose to harm me here, in his newly-formed sanctuary, I could do nothing to challenge him. If I saw something in him I didn’t think I liked, I could only keep my peace.
So I bit down on my tongue, content that I could at least tell Sarakiel her child would live.
Lucifer smiled upon the circle of stone. “Let this place be known as the Morningstar Haven, and let it stand so long as those who seek refuge require it.”
So many thousands of years later I sat in the same Haven. I had led Sarakiel, Abraham, and Isaac to the place in the mountains, and I had used my angel gifts to seek out the remaining nephilim and bring them to the Haven. The humans and nephilim created a town here that grew up separate from the rest of mankind, and the people there always remembered that their lives were at the mercy of the angels.
Occasionally through the years, a nephil would leave the sanctuary, and the wraiths that guarded the gates would bring him down. But at least one nephil had to remain because the wraiths kept their constant vigil even to this day, or so Uriel claimed. No one else could see them.
I only ever visited the Haven on this accursed anniversary, and I found myself grateful that I had reached the point of “drunk enough to miss Mephistopheles” because it meant that “drunk enough to pass out” was just around the corner.
I expected Mephistopheles to be angry with me for once again implying that the judgment was his fault; instead, he laughed. He got to his feet and took a few steps toward me. He wobbled a little bit, but not nearly as much as I would have if I had stood at that moment. Damn him if he hadn’t kept his word and stayed sober enough to walk in a straight line. My one consolation was that he had to be hurting a hell of a lot more than I was.
“Ordinarily I would be angry with you, Siren, for once again blaming me for something that you know is at least as much your fault as mine.” Mephistopheles gave me a grin I could only describe as diabolical. “But I confess that I am too tickled about a plan a few other demons and I have in the making to get angry with you.”
I knew this one. Something important was going on. Something to do with... “The Spear of Destiny. You know what Bedlam wants with it.”
“Indeed I do.” Mephistopheles moved toward me until the sour whisky stench of his breath threatened to knock me off my stool. “And ordinarily, knowing a secret is enough for me, but I do believe I need to share this.” He leaned forward and whispered in my ear the entirety of the plan he had laid out.
My mouth fell open. “That’s… You can’t…”
Mephistopheles laughed, and the cruel sound crept along my nerves. “Oh, I can. And I do.” He straightened up and took an unsteady step back. “Try to stop me. If you can.” He turned on his heel and sauntered out of the bar.
A thousand thoughts fluttered through my murky brain. I have to do something, warn someone. But who? Gabriel? He would care, but I don’t… Michael. I have to tell Michael. He has that… sword thingy. He can take care of it.
I rose to my feet, or at least, that was what I intended to do. Instead, my feet tangled in the legs of the barstool. I barely had time to realize I was falling before the bottom of my chin slammed against the wooden floor, and everything went black.