Satan's Gambit (The Barrier War Book 3) (16 page)

“See what you
can do for him, Perky,” Birch shouted as he spun and dashed outside. Without
even thinking of what he was doing, he leapt skyward, following the shining
blue light from Danner’s wings.

Birch’s gray
cloak whipped in the wind behind him, and he spared a glance over his shoulder
and was shocked to see two glowing-red, leathery wings sprouting from his back
as though his clothing and cloak didn’t exist. The two wings beat furiously,
and Birch felt the wind whistle past his ears even faster. Too stunned to
contemplate the ramifications of this sudden development, he focused instead on
catching up to Danner and his angelic quarry.

After a few
minutes concerted effort, Birch managed to catch up to his nephew, who had
gained considerably on the gray angel. The Gray and Blue paladins were only a
few body lengths behind the Angel of Death.

“Split up and
take him from either side,” Birch shouted over the roaring wind, “but watch
yourself. He’s extremely powerful.”

“So am I,”
Danner said, his face grim. Before Birch could warn his nephew to curb his
anger, Danner banked to the right and pumped his wings to overtake the death
angel. Quickly, Birch followed suit, banking left to approach from the opposite
direction.

Belatedly, Birch
remembered to draw his sword, but the blessed metal seared through the thick
glove on his hand as though he’d picked up a white-hot ember. Birch was unable
to hold on to the blade, and it tumbled down through the night sky into an
unlit portion of the city.

“Damn it to
Hell,” Birch muttered.

Unarmed, Birch
nevertheless approached the Angel of Death from his left side even as Danner
closed in from the right. They were almost on him when, at the last possible
second, the gray angel spun face-up and abruptly veered off straight toward the
ground, then curved to double-back the way they’d come.

Birch wheeled in
the air and plummeted after him a half-second after Danner.

Somewhere inside
Birch, he felt something awaken and he realized it was Kaelus himself. The
encounter with the angel was stirring the demon from his partial confinement
inside Birch, and the Gray paladin couldn’t decide if this would be a good
thing or not. Certainly, Kaelus’s power might be of some help in tracking down
and stopping the angel, but Birch couldn’t afford the distraction of having the
demon’s consciousness competing for his attention.

Abruptly the Angel
of Death shifted direction again and dropped like a stone, vanishing between
two buildings. Danner chased after in mindless pursuit, but Birch wheeled to
the side and approached from another direction, trying to anticipate the gray
angel’s moves.

“Thanatos!”
Danner called in challenge as he turned a corner to where the angel had
disappeared. “Come face me!”

The death angel
didn’t respond. Not that Birch actually thought he would. It was the height of
arrogance and stupidity to respond to taunts and challenges such as that.

Birch turned a
corner and tumbled end-over-end as he twisted desperately to avoid an attack.
An ethereal, crystalline sword slashed out from the shadows and nearly took his
head off; instead, it scored a hit on Birch’s right wing, and he bit back a cry
of pain as the blade struck into the demonic
āyus
growing within
him. He crashed into a nearby building and nearly went through the wall as a
large chunk of stone broke free and shattered on the street beneath him.

“A demon!” the
Angel of Death hissed in sudden hatred, then launched himself after Birch,
sword ready for another attack.

Just then Danner
struck like a bolt of blue lightning. He crashed into the gray angel and the
two careened out of control toward the city streets below. Birch braced himself
on the building and launched himself down after them.

Danner and the
death angel had both lost their weapons and were now lashing out with fists and
feet, heedless of the quickly approaching ground. Birch saw Danner land a few
solid blows, including a head-butt to the other’s chin, but it was clear the
Angel of Death was on the winning end of the aerial battle.

They separated
long enough for Danner to peel off to the side and the Angel of Death to arrest
his break-neck descent, which gave Birch a clear chance to attack.

He struck the
gray-winged Seraph from behind and quickly twisted the other’s arms behind him
before he could react. Birch wrapped his legs forward and locked up the angel’s
legs, immobilizing both of them. The angel threw his head back trying to strike
Birch, but he twisted out of the way. Six angelic gray wings writhed beneath
Birch like a nest of serpents, and his skin burned everywhere he touched the
angel’s flesh, but he held on grimly.

Birch pumped his
wings like mad, trying to single-handedly halt their descent, but he was still
unfamiliar with the nuances of flight, and trying to concentrate on the motions
only made it harder for him to do. Thus far, he’d been relying solely on
instinct.

“Danner, help!”
he shouted.

Immediately, his
nephew was there, but there was little he could do besides hold on to Birch and
try to slow their descent. Too distracted by their flight, Birch took his
attention away from his grip for the barest of seconds to focus on his wings,
but it was enough for the death angel to exploit.

The gray angel
twisted in his grasp, breaking Birch’s hold as he quickly dropped out of sight
below them. Birch and Danner parted and touched down to the ground, only to
have the Angel of Death suddenly appear right behind Danner, sword miraculously
back in-hand and raised to strike. The crystalline blade swept toward Danner’s
unprotected neck.

The demonic
stirring inside Birch intensified, and he felt a burning sensation in his
throat as Kaelus suddenly assumed control of Birch’s body and voice.

“Mikal, no!”
Kaelus-Birch screamed.

The death
angel’s sword stopped a hair’s breadth from Danner’s throat, and he looked at
Birch in shock.

“Who are you?”
the angel asked. “I know that voice.” Danner quickly twisted out of the way and
retreated, watching the interaction in confusion as he stared warily at the
Angel of Death.

“Have the eons
dulled your senses?” Kaelus-Birch asked, and Birch was surprised to hear the
demon laugh. “Or perhaps it’s merely this shell you don’t recognize. Look
within and see the one you once called friend.”

The Angel of
Death looked deep into Birch’s flame-filled eyes, then suddenly he gasped.

“Kaelus!” he
said in surprise. “It can’t be you. You were destroyed eons ago.”

Kaelus-Birch
chuckled.

“I’m not so easy
to destroy as that,” he said. “I wasn’t naive enough to follow in Abdiel’s
footsteps, but neither was I smart enough to get away in time.”

The two
immortals stared at each other for a long moment.

“By the
Almighty, it
is
you, Kaelus!”

“Indeed, it is,
Mikal,” Kaelus-Birch said. With no control over his body, Birch could only
watch passively as the demon within him strode toward the gray angel. Despite
everything that had already happened that night – the revelation of the Angel
of Death among them, Birch’s demonic wings, the harrowing flight through the
city – the greatest shock of all came when the angel and the demon within Birch
embraced.

There was a
sizzling of energy, and they both flinched at the contact but held on anyway.
Kaelus-Birch clapped the Angel of Death soundly on the back one last time, then
held him at arm’s length and grinned at the angel.

“Speaking of the
Almighty, what in name of all that’s holy and damned do you think you’re doing
here? Shouldn’t you be leading the front lines and defending the Throne?”

Faith is not assent to the propositions of a creed,
nor belief in an orthodox opinion. Faith is a leap in the dark toward a reality
based solely on trust.

- Ventuveris,

“Modern Faith” (1027 AM)

- 1 -

The presence of
an honest-to-God angel among them, much less the Angel of Death, left most of
the assembled mortals in a sort of shocked awe. By now, all of Shadow Company
was used to Danner’s immortal heritage and the abilities and appearance it gave
him, but Danner was also one of them. He was their friend, their comrade. This
gray angel was something else entirely.

The six-winged
Seraph had an otherworldly beauty about him, a sort of perfection in his shining
blond hair and finely chiseled features that had the effect of making him look
almost
too
good.

There’s no
such thing as a “perfect” human appearance,
Marc thought to himself.
Interesting
then that his perfection becomes more of a parody.

The gray angel
turned and looked at Marc with a knowing smile, and Marc hurriedly clamped down
on his thoughts.

Can he read
my mind?
Marc wondered in spite of himself.
I know some demons have that
ability, but I don’t know if I’ve ever read anything specifically about angels.

Living amongst
mind-readers had taught all the non-denarae in Shadow Company to guard their
thoughts closely and even to shield them somewhat from casual mental probes. A
denarae with any ability and an ounce of determination could punch through
their mental barriers easily, but practice had at least enabled them to keep
their thoughts from screaming out constantly as most other humans’ thoughts
did.

Just in case,
Marc ran himself through a series of mental exercises designed to help reduce
the “mental noise” – as Brican put it – emanating from his thoughts.

“Never in my
entire life,” Michael whispered distractedly in Marc’s general direction
without taking his eyes off of the Seraph, “did I imagine I would meet my
namesake. My family has a tradition of naming sons after angels. My father was
Gabriel, and his father was Raphelus, after the Seraph Raphael. I was named
after… him.”

 “An ill
omen, to name your children after the slain,” Mikal said, and even his voice
sounded perfect: rich in timbre, a deep baritone, and a sense of lingering
power under every syllable.

“The what?”
Michael asked, surprised the Seraph had heard him.

“My brother and
sister angels, Gabriel and Raphael – both Seraphim – fell during the Great
Schism,” the death angel replied. “Raphael fell during the war to a demonic
ambush. And Gabriel… Gabriel was by far the most powerful of all the immortals,
and it was his influence that kept hostilities to a minimum for eons. Gabriel
was the first to fall, and it was his death that touched off the war in
Pleroma. They were both…” Mikal hesitated, “
friends
of mine.”

“We were close,
the six of us,” Birch said, his voice husky and filled with hidden power. Marc
now knew this signified that Kaelus was speaking through Birch, shunting the
Gray paladin’s awareness to the side.

“Mikal…”

“Huh?” the
Yellow paladin said, shaking his head slightly as he shifted his attention from
the Seraph to Birch.

“Not you, that
one,” Kaelus-Birch said, pointing to the gray angel.

“Oh.”

“Mikal, Gabriel,
Raphael, Uriel, Abdiel, and I were all close friends in Pleroma,” Kaelus-Birch
said, lingering over the final word as though tasting it.

“What is
Pleroma?” Flasch asked. The Violet paladin was reclining against the wall near
the fireplace, a mug of steaming cahve in hand.

“Pleroma is…
was
the name of the immortal plane before it was sundered during the Great Schism,”
Kaelus-Birch said. “Originally, we all lived in the same plane of existence,
more or less peacefully. Good and Evil were mere abstracts then, not the
earth-shattering moral imperatives they have since become. To us, who had and
still have no true free will of our own, they were a curiosity almost, concepts
we discussed in our free time the way poets discuss love and war.”

“They were a
sort of political distinction to us,” Mikal added in his rich voice. “The way
you mortals call yourselves subject to this king or that. Our kings were the
Almighty God and the Dark One, Shaitan.
[14]
For a time, it didn’t seem to matter which you followed.”

“What happened?”
Garnet asked softly. His legs were stretched out in front of him on a bench
turned perpendicular from the table he was leaning against. Perklet had gotten to
him in time to heal all of the physical damage he’d suffered, but Garnet was
still weak from his brush with Death.

“No one really
knows,” the gray angel replied, shaking his head.

“God and Shaitan
looked into the future and saw the possibilities of what would happen if the
two actually came in conflict,” Kaelus-Birch said, and the gray angel looked at
him sharply in surprise. “They saw the life, the
sentient
life that
would result from the recombination of the two and agreed to allow the Great
Schism.” He frowned. “Perhaps
agreed
is not the right word. There was no
conversation, no accord between them, they simply reached the same conclusion
and willed the enmity to build, independent of any input from their
counterpart, but still knowing the other was doing the same.”

“How do you know
this, Kaelus?” the Seraph asked.

“I spent eons
trapped in Hell, old friend,” Kaelus-Birch replied with a fierce sort of smile.
The smile showed more teeth than Birch’s usual, more-reserved expression, and
it looked odd on the paladin’s face. “For centuries at a time, I was trapped in
isolation. Every so often, though, I’d have a visitor.”

“Who?” Danner
asked. He leaned against a support pillar near the door, the same pillar where
he’d earlier seen the Angel of Death standing. Alicia was at his side, an arm
encircling his waist as he draped one over her shoulder.