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BEFORE JEDIAH STOOD a living nightmare. Its gaze bore into him, accusing and bitter, but the most haunting thing about this monster was its familiarity. Jediah knew those eyes, that face, that hair but not the grey phantom who wore them.
Elazar scowled. His irises, originally of water-colored amethyst, were spoiled. The left eye was an empty pit. A ravenous crimson scar that stretched from his brow to his chin vandalized the other. “So,” Elazar said, as he crossed his arms. “Here we are.”
“Elazar.” Jediah’s lips faltered. “You don’t know how I—”
“Wish you never saw me? Brother?” Elazar cocked his unbroken eyebrow.
“Elazar, listen—”
Elazar turned his back on Jediah and folded his hands. “I’m listening.”
Jediah’s neck heated. He swallowed a lump. Thousands of years rehearsing the words he’d say, yet not a one could satisfy. Anxiety twisted his insides.
“If this is an apology, you’re very poor at it,” Elazar remarked. “Not that I expected any sort of apology from you. What would an apology fix, anyway?” He eyed Jediah over his left shoulder. “Nothing. Absolutely. Nothing.”
Anger replaced Jediah’s initial fear. “I am sorry, Elazar.”
Elazar dipped his head. His laughter came out pained and rueful. “Oh, Jediah. Are you familiar with the phrase ‘too little too late’?”
***
Nechum gasped under the hotel wreckage. A corner of ceiling crumbled and nearly hit a young lady. His legs quivered as his energy levels fell fast. “Alameth?” he called. He knew it seemed silly to think the angel of death would hear him from outside, but he had to try. “Alameth! I could use some help, please!”
A demon scrambled through the wrecked ceiling and landed hard on his chest.
Nechum sucked in a breath. Not that kind of help! He closed his eyes and steeled himself for fanged jaws or a hacking blade.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
Nechum peeked one eye.
The demon had dragged himself into the farthest corner and curled into a fetal position, whimpering.
Bewildered, Nechum almost considered asking his mortal enemy what lurked outside. What could reduce a hardened warrior like him to tears? What could—
Grey fog phased through the wall and plucked the demon off the floor. The demon screamed. The mist slammed him into the wall, smashing his face in repeatedly. Nechum chilled as the hits grew rapid. More visceral. Then, pulling the demon against the wall, it squeezed his head, eliciting shrill shrieks.
Nechum looked away, but the wetted cracking sounds put an all too vivid picture in his head. He hesitated to look again. The second he dared to, he immediately regretted it.
The retched being laid unconscious. His energy painted the wall and stained the crags.
Nechum paled.
Alameth,... What were you thinking?
***
Laboring not to crumble under the weight of his emotions, Jediah locked his jaw.
Elazar’s good eye calculated him for a moment before becoming disinterested. “Drop the tough act, will you? You can’t hide what you’re actually feeling from me. Besides, I know.”
“You know what?”
“I know what plagues you.” Elazar leered closer. “Even as you’re standing there right now.”
Jediah averted his gaze, but knew Elazar’s empathic sense was unstoppable.
“The thing that ails you? That thing that breaks you down and never leaves you alone?” Elazar inched closer and whispered, “Guilt.”
Jediah’s feathers bristled. His breaths came in huffs, and his neck tensed.
“You want someone to heal you, but you know no one will. You seek forgiveness but there’s none.” Elazar stepped back and raised his hands. “No cure. No resolution.”
Jediah raised his sword. “You’re wrong.”
“Am I now?”
“Our Lord is good and kind. Surely there is hope for me.”
“Do you hear yourself?” Elazar continued to circle him. “Your God doesn’t care about you. He’d rather redeem undeserving worms than you. You as well as the rest of your fellow loyalists are just the stick He uses to pen up His favorite lambs—destined for menial use, then forgotten in a corner. The ones who don’t suit His whims He just burns.”
Jediah’s anger burst from his mouth. “Who are you to judge God?”
“His better,” came Elazar’s calm reply. “He lets witless murderers, molesters, and thieves go free. Silences anyone who questions Him and recruits hypocrites and failures like yourself under threat of banishment. Lucifer may be the father of lies, but your King is the god of them.”
“And now your madness reveals itself,” Jediah interjected. “Would you then play god in His stead after all He did for you? You who once knew His mercy and compassion?”
Elazar stopped in his tracks. “Compassion?” His laugh was quiet and mocking. “Compassion.” He loomed closer. “Look me in the eye, Jediah.” Elazar’s scarred eye stared with the eery blankness of a dead corpse. “I already got a good taste of His compassion thanks to you.”
Jediah’s throat tightened.
Elazar huffed a smile, then cocked his head. “Guess I was wrong. The years haven’t changed you. You’re every bit the self-righteous zealot I remember.”
***
The back of Nechum’s head ached from bracing the thousand tons threatening to crush the survivors, yet his thoughts remained with Alameth. He needed to get out of there, but how? His neck and shoulders flushed cold as his energy waned, and a wooziness narrowed his vision.
“Lord,” he grunted. “Grant Your servant courage. Lend me the strength to see this through.”
Dust sprayed to the sounds of loud chipping. Nechum clamped his eyes shut. His foot slipped out an inch, and he strained to pull it back... yet found it easy to do. His burden lightened. Nechum’s eyes fluttered open, and he dropped his numb hands.
Two Christians—vessels of the Holy Ghost—were praying. Their folded hands, speckled by dirt and tears, pressed into their lips as they uttered petitions of thankfulness in faint whispers.
Their Marks of the Trinity beamed. Streams of color covered the ceiling as the Holy Spirit Himself lifted the mass on His adopted children’s behalf. One of these spectral bands brushed Nechum’s clothes, staining them white, and thousands of faceted prisms shimmered above him like an aurora borealis over arctic snow.
***
Elazar observed the barn’s rumbling walls. “Well. Our little get together has been fun, but the storm won’t wait, and I’m on a tight schedule.” He rolled back his sleeves. “My superior wants something from you.”
Jediah pulled his armored wings tighter in. “So Lucifer’s your master now?”
“Don’t insult me,” Elazar snapped. “I care nothing for that blowhard. He’s obsessed with his prestige and nothing else.”
“And what are you obsessed with?” Jediah asked.
Elazar ignored his question. He looked him up and down, but then his eye locked onto something. A mocking smile lifted the corner of his mouth as he reached behind Jediah’s ear and pulled Chloe’s braid out into the open. “Is that new?”
Jediah swatted Elazar’s hand away.
The wooden planks around them thundered on their rusted nails. A steel panel peeled off the roof.
Elazar grinned with a chuckling sneer. “Whoever did that, she must be adorable.”
Jediah rammed his shoulder into Elazar’s chest and bolted for the battering door, but a force pulled his feet out from under him.
“Did I say you could leave?”
Jediah attempted to stand, but couldn’t. A heavy weight had shackled his ankles then dragged him back over the dung littered straw. “Lucifer promised you to me,” Elazar said. “It’s only fair that I honor our agreement.”
The rough force flipped Jediah over like a pancake. Elazar’s eye pulsed a dark red that was but a few shades short of black. He extended an arm. A red aura, like crimson fireflies, gloved his hand, and shields—normally used by ministry angels for defense—shot out, pulled Jediah’s legs, and squeezed. Their edges like thick, sharp glass cut into Jediah’s boot leather.
Desperate, Jediah beat at them with his sword, but the blade skidded off. Elazar kicked the sword out of his hand. The force-fields expanded, consuming Jediah’s calves, thighs, and everything else from the neck down. He couldn’t move.
As the shields forced him upright, Jediah hyper-ventilated. All of his years’ combat experience was driven right out of his head.
Elazar gripped his jaw. He pulled out an obsidian knife from his outer coat. “One key for one, captain,” he droned. “A fair deal. And you know how meticulous I am about keeping my deals.” Slipping the knife’s tip under the edge of one of Jediah’s quills, Elazar pried one feather up and let it slap back. “Give up the key willfully. Or this’ll be as painful as I’d like it to be.”
Jediah resisted a groan as the shields started wrenching his joints in all the wrong directions. A wicked grin punctuated the malice in Elazar’s voice. Shields slipped under Jediah’s armored wings and slowly thickened, prying them like a peel off an apple. Jediah resisted, but could feel his feathers begin to crack.
The whole barn rattled to the shrieking wind. Rusted farm machinery clattered.
Elazar threw Jediah down and stomped on his neck. “Cough it up already!”
Two explosions of light popped beside them, and Jediah took the opportunity to barrel roll away. He coughed and gagged.
Laszio and Eran dropped in like meteors and flanked Elazar on both sides. The green and blue tints of their eyes consumed their usual gray coloring with rich color.
Jediah scrambled to get up. His wingmen knew not whom they challenged, and he cursed his tired self for not recovering faster. He shouted at them against the tempest to retreat, but his commands went unheeded.
Elazar, eyes hot with ravenous fury, dodged their shots. He targeted Laszio’s wounded side, implanted a force-field, and stretched the gash wider. Laszio crumbled to the ground, screaming. Eran charged, but Elazar raised a wall. Eran veered to avoid the collision, but Elazar anticipated such reflexes. With the flick of his fingers, two shields ensnared Eran’s wrists and snapped them. The sticks clattered out of Eran’s limp hands.
“Elazar!” Jediah retrieved his sword and swung sideways. Elazar blocked with a shielded forearm. Jediah’s blade screeched off, but the force Jediah put behind it disrupted Elazar’s balance. Jediah then kicked him in the hip, sending Elazar sideways and banging his head into rusted farm equipment.
A funnel ripped open the hay loft—their best escape. “Get up! Now!” Jediah shouted. He yanked Eran to his feet.
Laszio wobbled and retrieved Eran’s weapon, but glared at Elazar.
“Leave him!” Jediah ordered. “Let’s go!”
A powerful updraft pulled them into its current as wood cracked to toothpicks and metal wrenched in high-pitched squeals.
***
Nechum steadied himself as he tripped into the outside. Red, blue, white, and yellow flashes bounced off the hotel’s shambled remains. Police boomed instructions as emergency crews dug the survivors out of the rubble. They were all covered in varying degrees of wood, dirt, bruises, and blood. A few people clambered about, isolated in their own incoherent babbling or trapped in a silent cage, but Nechum breathed a thankful sigh of relief. Everyone made it out safely.
Alameth, however, was nowhere to be seen.
Nechum weaved around the jumbled mess into an upturned country. The plains were tattered. Unrecognizable junk littered the roads. What few trees still stood were naked, and grass patches were spoiled to muddy sludge pits. The thick, humid air soaked up their stench and reeked of gas and sewage.
Though sickened, Nechum hurried down the road. He had only gone the first few feet to find the first pool of glowing red that was once a demon fifteen minutes ago. A few feet more and there was another and another. The carnage was everywhere. The sight of it all filled Nechum with nausea, as the sounds of the earlier demon’s head splitting open echoed in his ears.
Sitting nearby, in a soft patch of grass, was the bowed figure of Alameth. His arms wrapped tight around himself like a child after a night terror, and he had buried himself deep in feverish prayer.
A deep sorrowful empathy washed away Nechum’s initial horror; for Alameth’s overtaxed heart cried out to him. He set a tender hand on his shoulder and rubbed soothing circles. “Alameth? Alameth? Are you okay?”
Alameth quivered. His head turned. Just under the bottom edge of his hood, Nechum could make out a dark blue tint replacing the dark portions of his green eyes and a moist glimmer that welled in their corners. Alameth’s trembling voice rumbled low as he spoke. “They had no respect for life.”
With tears of his own, Nechum knelt to draw Alameth close. “I know, brother... I know.”