Seven Archangels: Annihilation

Jane Lebak

Chapter 10

         Saraquael landed in his home to find Zadkiel playing with a cat while waiting for him. "How is he?"

         Saraquael headed straight to the desk, then took his time selecting the right piece of cotton bond paper and the right fountain pen and the best color ink.

         "That bad?" Zadkiel set the cat to the side, then again as it returned to her lap. After the third time she flashed to a stand, letting an irritated cat drop through where her lap ought to have been.

         She lingered alongside the glass-covered book shelves filled with every sort of book, reference and literature, prose and poetry, ancient and modern, angelic and human. By the bay windows she leaned on the cedar chest and idly rubbed the head of a second cat.

         Saraquael mustered up a "Let's get started," so they prayed over the letter, then armed themselves with a thesaurus and the perfect slice of paper. God's court poet, Saraquael chose to word it as tersely and formally as he could to imply grief through stiltedness. Zadkiel convinced him to omit the thinly veiled threat. The letter stressed that Satan's action had been contrary to the primary law of creation, and he was summarily ordered to desist from that behavior.

         "I still think we should allude to what we'll do if he tries again," Saraquael said.

         "A full-blown attack would be in keeping with grief and rage," Zadkiel said. "Threatening to do it next time is not. Let's keep him wondering."

         "We might as well, since we're wondering ourselves," Saraquael muttered.

         Zadkiel flipped her eraser in the air and snatched it back mid-spin.

         The Lord approved of the letter, so the two Dominions got it sealed with the Divine Seal, and prepared to deliver it.

         Saraquael flicked a speck off the sleeve of his formal uniform.

         Zadkiel, dressed entirely in black despite the pallor it gave her, sighed and nonverbalized, Vanity. Saraquael laughed.

         They donned ceremonial swords and black armbands, then flashed to Hell.

         Music and the tumult of dancing greeted them at the main entrance, along with a choking odor that God warned them they didn't want to identify. Zadkiel's eyes were already scanning the corners for ambushes—and there were many corners—when a low-order demon staggered forward with his sword drawn but wavering.

         "Halt!" Zadkiel shouted.

         The demon stopped, its weapon clanging to the stone.

         Saraquael folded his arms. "I will speak to Satan."

         After a moment, Mephistopheles appeared. "You summoned us?"

         "Bring Satan," Saraquael said. "Immediately."

         "I assure you I have the authority to handle whatever you want."

         Zadkiel rested her hand on her sword. Saraquael didn't do even that much.

         They waited.

         Mephistopheles waited.

         After a full minute, the fallen Cherub said, "Must you really be so stubborn?"

         Saraquael opened his hands. "We have our orders. I'm sure you can understand that."

         Mephistopheles flashed away, reappearing beside Lucifer.

         He stood at the shores of the Lake of Fire, neck craned back to stare at the cliffs surrounding it while keeping his back to the flame-engulfed water. Mephistopheles instinctively pulled his wings closer against the heat. Lucifer didn't bother diverting his attention from wherever he was looking.

         "The enemy has sent emissaries, sir." Mephistopheles wondered if Lucifer would respond. "They requested a conference with you."

         "Mephistopheles," Lucifer said, drawing out the name, "you have the authority to deal with them."

         "I pointed exactly that out to them, but with their typical myopia they want only you." Maybe flattery was necessary. "While you've conferred great authority on me, sir, I'm sure they understand where the real power resides."

         Lucifer grinned. "I'm certain they do. I was hoping you'd completed the work I assigned you."

         Mephistopheles bowed. "Your faith in me is reassuring, but it's going to take a while."

         Lucifer's eyes narrowed. "It's going to take even longer if you keep playing gate-man for the front desk. Shouldn't that be Belior's job?"

         "The duty guard requested me." Mephistopheles forced a smile. "He knew Asmodeus couldn't handle two of them, and Beelzebub would have started a fight. The situation required someone with good judgment, and that meant me." Mephistopheles inclined his head. "I can hold two ideas in my mind simultaneously, so please be assured that I'm working on your challenge."

         Only then did Mephistopheles realize how he'd bristled. Lucifer looked amused as he said, "Return with me to our guests."

         Again at the entrance, Mephistopheles kept a half-pace back because Lucifer liked it that way. Michael's two standard-bearers stood side-by-side, identical in dress and expression. There was no question this was an emissary mission. Mephistopheles drank in the dark ghosts of their eyes, their instinctive repulsion as Lucifer drew closer.

         Saraquael projected that they had come as ambassadors, then repeated, "We are here as ambassadors to present this document."

         Mephistopheles fought a grin at the subtle insult, but Lucifer failed to react to it. He walked a few steps forward to take the letter but stopped short. Saraquael made the last step and handed off the sealed paper before returning to his partner.

         Lucifer read the document expressionlessly, one finger brushing the seal at the bottom. Mephistopheles extended his senses but couldn't detect any emotions from either the pair of Dominions or from his lord.

         Lucifer had no inflection. "Have you read this?"

         "We have." (Again the double answer as they projected assent.)

         More silence.

         "What are you going to do in the event we refuse to comply?"

         The Dominions remained silent as shadows.

         Lucifer cocked his head. "Make it worth my while."

         Again, no response.

         Lucifer idly waved a hand. "Dismissed."

         The pair vanished.

         Mephistopheles stepped nearer, hungering for a look at the paper that Lucifer had folded back along the creases. He hesitated, inched into Lucifer's line of sight. Five seconds. Ten seconds—

         "Oh, here." Lucifer handed it off, and Mephistopheles snapped it open. "It's a declarative statement that we violated spiritual law, and an order not to do it again. No threat of impending action. A waste both of their paper and my time."

         Mephistopheles gave it a second read-through. "Don't dismiss it so soon. There's no mention of Gabriel. None at all, precisely where you'd expect one."

         Lucifer opened his hands.

         "I'm analyzing for what's not there, and the other element missing is the actual word 'annihilation.' They said we violated spiritual law and then refused to name what we did."

         Lucifer folded his arms. "Just get to the point. I enjoy your conclusions without having to wade through every bit of trivia you compiled to arrive at them."

         "But it cuts down on the questions afterward," Mephistopheles said in a low voice.

         Lucifer looked amused again, and Mephistopheles tried to de-bristle. "My conclusion is that they're in shock and have no idea how to respond. It's hard for us to know what to do next, and we were planning it. Consider them foundering about trying to cope without the input of the one who would have told them how to cope with it in the first place."

         "I believe you anticipated that," Lucifer said, "when you successfully argued we ought to single out the Cherub."

         Mephistopheles' eyes glinted like hematite. "What I want to know is what happened to Raphael."

         Lucifer looked over his shoulder at Mephistopheles. "The next time we take delivery on a written warning, feel free to enquire after his health."

         Mephistopheles continued, "Those two had bonded so closely they were like one soul. Did he lose his mind? Did we destroy part of him too?"

         "Earlier you suggested he might be upset," Lucifer said. "Why does it matter?"

         Mephistopheles' wings opened as he shifted his weight. "If they lost Raphael because of Gabriel, then maybe Raphael's other primary bonds were wiped out as well—"

         Lucifer folded his arms and tilted his head, a tolerant expression in his green eyes.

         "—and we might have set off a chain reaction through the top two choirs. What we did was so unprecedented that we have no means of knowing what we actually accomplished."

         "While this is fascinating," Lucifer said, "I don't care."

         The Cherub stammered, "But—"

         "If I never again see another Seraph or Cherub from that side, I'll ask you why. Until that happens, you're only making noise. Plug your brain into doing what I asked. Find a way to make this easier to do—and do it from a distance."

         Mephistopheles backed one step, still clutching the letter. He vanished to Beelzebub's chamber, shaking, pulse pounding.

         The Seraph focused his attention on Mephistopheles as soon as he arrived, his mouth tight and his eyes narrow. All this Mephistopheles felt nonverbally. He had no other way of knowing in the curtains of lab area darkness.

         Beelzebub probed him, pushed against the Cherub's apparent fear to track it to a source. Mephistopheles shut down as much of his heart as possible, but not before Beelzebub caught a wisp of Lucifer's green eyes in his thoughts, the flatness of an idea shot down.

         Mephistopheles handed him the paper and leaned against one of the walls. Focusing a glow, Beelzebub read the contents, smiled in mockery, and then crumpled the page.

         Mephistopheles called the paper back to himself. "They're in shock."

         Beelzebub radiated approval.

         "I was wondering if maybe Raphael wasn't annihilated as well due to our destruction of Gabriel. If that happened, we could assume the destruction of his other primaries Ophaniel and Sidriel, and the loss of Ophaniel might cause the destruction of Israfel. It could well snowball until it wiped out the top two choirs."

         Beelzebub had returned to whatever he had been doing before in the dark.

         "I can't fathom any other reason for them to be so vague. It's almost as if they think they don't need to tell us what we did, but maybe they don't yet comprehend themselves the full effect, nor how many others will succumb, and you can't plan an invasion if you don't even know how many soldiers you have." He smoothed the paper against his thigh with a light crinkling. "We didn't take into account the ramifications of the bond other than the fact that we were going to make Raphael miserable for a while."

         He realized then that Beelzebub was still ignoring him, so he went behind him and grabbed him by the shoulder. "Will you listen to me?"

         Beelzebub spun with the pull to face him. "You're so far out in left field that you're not even in the same stadium any longer." He pulled Mephistopheles closer to him. "Why do you keep going on about impossibilities?"

         He felt Beelzebub putting fire into the air, but he refused to absorb it. "What do you mean?"

         "I mean that when you told us how it was done, you were the brightest thing ever, just hopping about and so smug that you'd been the one to crack the safe on God's best-kept secret. But you've moped non-stop since we actually did something with it."

         Mephistopheles drew breath, but no words emerged.

         "What did he say to you in there that upset you so much?" Beelzebub brought up his wings so they were touching Mephistopheles', but the Cherub pulled his wings upward away from the Seraph's. "What did he do after I left?"

         "After you tried to use him."

         "We all used him! Or do you forget the new and different pains of Hell in the form of a five-hour planning meeting during which we weighed exactly how much each archangel was worth? And this—" He grabbed Mephistopheles' hand and forced it open, snatching away the letter and instead grasping Michael's sigil ring in two fingers. "You didn't find this on him and take it for your own usefulness?"

         Mephistopheles yanked away his hand.

         "We may be bonded," Beelzebub said, "but I don't need this garbage from you."

         "What do you need me for? To decorate your life?"

         "I don't need you at all. You came to me." Beelzebub released him and turned back to his desk. "Was that pathetic letter the only reason you had?"

         Mephistopheles trembled with irritation.

         "Then you can feel free to go at any time." A moment later, seductive fire spread through the room, curling around Mephistopheles and brushing against his soul with the promise of ready energy and momentary togetherness. "Unless, of course, you'd rather keep decorating my life, as you call it."

         Mephistopheles vanished.

         Beelzebub opened the paper again, reading it more slowly now that he was alone. After a while he frowned and said, "Mephistopheles?" but no one appeared to answer his question.

        

 

         He's an idiot. He's always doing this.

         It was typical, so terribly typical, and Mephistopheles shouldn't have expected any better of him after all this time, but sometimes down went his guard and then he got reminded yet again that Beelzebub wasn't really his equal, and that was all there was to it.

         Mephistopheles had revisited "the scene of the crime," the suffocatingly small chamber in between four other chambers where they'd snuffed out Gabriel's light like a smoldering wick. He approached the wall and hooked his fingers into the rings, leaned his head against the stone so it rested where Gabriel's throat would have been. Gabriel was taller than Mephistopheles, although not as tall as Raphael or Lucifer, but Mephistopheles still noted that the rings were just a bit too high for Gabriel, that he must have been a little stretched as he awaited death. Beelzebub had driven the rings into the wall without regard for height. In fact, one of the arm rings was a little bit higher than the other.

         No care for detail whatsoever. Typical.

         Raphael in shock, maybe hemorrhaging from his heart, maybe dead. Certainly grieving. This shouldn't have happened in the natural law.

         But really, if God hadn't allowed for something like this to happen, wouldn't he have put the knowledge under better lock-and-key? There were two possibilities: one that God had wanted him to do this, and the other that God hadn't but simply wasn't capable of safeguarding the knowledge enough to keep out Mephistopheles.

         But why hadn't Gabriel discovered it? Every Cherub carried around the raw material for testing any hypotheses as to the formulation of a soul—and for that matter, so did every other angel. During a bored moment it was so easy just to turn to the microworkings of a soul to figure out how it functioned, to half-destroy one of the lower order demons and take notes on the way it reconstituted. The answers hadn't come easily, but with persistence and numerous bursts of inspiration, they were attainable.

         And oh, the thrill when he had that breakthrough, the moment he realized, the first instant he reached inside a minor demon and felt those beads, pinched them apart and felt the string vibrant and hard beneath his spiritual hands— The thrill that had wracked his mind as he'd realized what he'd done, what it meant, how everything would change. He'd burst in on Beelzebub while he was issuing orders to one of their underlings, preened the Seraph's outer feathers until Beelzebub had turned on him, at which point Mephistopheles had flooded his heart with anticipation he couldn't contain any longer. Beelzebub had dismissed their minion, and then Mephistopheles had Guarded the office to disclose everything.

         They'd planned for over an hour—was there any way they could use the technique on Lucifer himself? It was unfortunate, but there was no way. Not even if they could guarantee Asmodeus and Belior's cooperation could they be assured of keeping Lucifer still long enough to reach inside him and destroy all those delicious beads. They pondered soliciting help from Gabriel or Michael. They ran through fifty scenarios before they decided to bring the technique to Lucifer as an offering instead—but oh, the political capital that would be theirs! They'd spent another couple of hours in quiet celebration before they'd approached Lucifer together and presented the discovery.

         And Lucifer had been pleased—no, he'd been ecstatic, and all of Hell walked around in relief for days while the master planned a way to unload his new weapon, lost in his own thoughts and at times even bouncing ideas off Mephistopheles as if they were bonded themselves, although of course they weren't and never would be. Asmodeus was forgotten in that week, and Beelzebub had consolidated a long roster of allies for them, especially including Camael once Mephistopheles had the flash of insight that isolated his unique contribution.

         So maybe it was just the disbelief that God had allowed them to do it after all, only one which kept feeling like a weight on his wings, like something half-forgotten struggling to be recalled at all hours. Lucifer had given him a new assignment, which Mephistopheles knew if completed could make him indispensable to his lord, only he hadn't even started.

         Moping, Beelzebub called it. No, he was just regrouping, nothing more. This life of the mind was hard to sustain. It needed nurturing in quiet, in isolation, if only because silence made it simpler to hear that small whisper inside. But sometimes, like now, Mephistopheles felt no inclination to listen to whispering voices.

         A second presence entered the chamber, quickly identifiable as Camael.

         "Why are you here?"

         Camael huffed. "I should ask that of you. Or are you worried you insufficiently annihilated him?"

         "I'm sure of my work," Mephistopheles said. "It's this room that's lacking. The first set of Guards is so shoddy that two first-graders and a hamster could snap it."

         Camael laughed.

         Mephistopheles jerked his head toward Camael, trying to contain a burst of surprise.

         Cautiously he spoke. "And you?"

         "I have my own orders."

         Unseeable, Mephistopheles summoned his sword to his hands. Camael couldn't feel the weapon, wouldn't hear it. "I'm sure you do." He threaded a Guard of his own through the walls, allowing it to expand like oil soaking through linen. "Don't let me stop you."

         Camael didn't move. "I need you out of here."

         "Then you'll have to wait. What I'm doing may take days."

         Mephistopheles filled the room with his senses, taking in every aspect of Camael other than sight, repeatedly probing. The twin had a slippery feel, but nothing so off as to confirm—

         Mephistopheles made a show of testing the rings he'd just checked, and as he did so, Camael inspected the corners of the room, focused singularly, concentrating on the edges one spot at a time. Interesting. Mephistopheles felt his Guard finally meet itself so it covered the entire chamber, and then he said, "You know why we can't kill Remiel."

         Camael said, "The wench deserves it."

         Good. "She's too valuable to us as she is."

         That drew Camael up short. Mephistopheles could feel that focused attention waver. No questions followed, so Mephistopheles crouched, checked the leg shackles with a deep clanking sound. "What could make you want her dead," he said, "that overrides her contribution to this venture?"

         Camael's voice betrayed none of the tension Mephistopheles could drink out of the air. This was perfect, perfect. "There's just something wrong with her. Her very existence is an insult."

         "What makes you say that?"

         "If there weren't something wrong with her," Camael said, "she and I would be together right now."

         There was no way to alert Beelzebub or Lucifer without simultaneously alerting the twin, so Mephistopheles would have to act alone.

         He raised his sword and bound Remiel with his will.

         Her shriek reached no further than the Guards. Mephistopheles concentrated to keep her pinned, thrashing against his patient hold until she would expend her strength.

         A strobe of light from Remiel blinded Mephistopheles, but he was used to not being able to see here. He hurled her toward the wall and then wrestled her arms into the chains emptied the last time by an annihilation. They gripped her, laughing, as Mephistopheles forced her back.

         "Satan will have your head if you destroy me!" Remiel screamed. "I'm too valuable to your operation, remember?"

         Mephistopheles huffed. "We'll find another way to lure angels to their deaths."

         She stopped struggling. 

         Bad misjudgment there—time to redirect. "Tell me, are they going to hold a funeral for Gabriel?"

         Her voice sounded stunned. "I'm wondering that myself."

         Mephistopheles reached inside for her heartstrings…and missed.

         Remiel's glow didn't return, keeping them entombed in sightlessness, but he could see her with his heart, feel as that slipperiness intensified, almost detect what she was telling herself: I feel nothing. Rushed, he made another grab, and this time he had her heartstrings in hand just long enough to realize he wouldn’t be able to grip them long enough to unlace any part of her: in denying so much she was in the process of denying herself. Hadn't Lucifer said Camael was going mad after the annihilation?

         He tried to unhook the first part of her, but in fear she lashed out, and her heart slipped away.

         "I'll destroy you," he said.

         She had tears on her cheeks—he could smell them—but more than that, he could hear them in the way she said, "You should. I deserve it. There must be something wrong with me."

         "Don't expect me to pity you." He tried for the third time, and finally he had a solid grasp on the insubstantial. She wasn't fighting. If anything, she was struggling to stay sane, giving his spiritual fingers a full purchase on her interior building blocks. He had her. Now—

         Now—

         These were the pieces touched by God Himself when they all came forth new and soft, made as individuals even though he didn't respect the things he'd made, made all at one time in a gush of wonderment—

         And he, Mephistopheles, the only one who'd figured out how—

         Do it.

         Just pull. Get it started. It will be easier once it's started.

         I'm responsible for this. The only one here.

         Her heartstrings slipped away once again, him feeling at once her own denial, the skewed unreality of the moment, her own questions as to who she was and where she could go from here, and he knew he couldn't lay a hand on her again.

         He'd call Lucifer. Let him do it again; let his hands be the ones for the second time.

         Illuminating the room, Remiel looked about as if stunned by her surroundings. She pulled her wrist out of the chain and stepped forward.

         Mephistopheles retreated: it was too late even to call for a backup. She pulled free her other hand. He couldn't grab her will because her will wasn't in command right now. Crazed like this, nothing could hold her, no Guard keep her in or out.

         He said to her, "Do you know how I recognized you? Because even Camael isn't that twisted inside."

         Looking at him over her shoulder, she bit her lip. Then as though they didn't exist, she stepped through his Guards and vanished.

         Mephistopheles dropped against the wall, one of the ankle rings jutting into his back. He didn't shift. He maintained the Guard and sat for ten minutes.

         Lucifer ought to know about this, but then again, Mephistopheles could fully predict the kind of response he'd get, the subsequent loss of status, the sneers, the interesting nicknames unforgotten for an eternity or until someone else fell from favor.

         What was Remiel looking for, anyhow? Such a dangerous mission couldn't be for no reason, surely. Knowing she might be killed if captured, yet heading in alone and disguised as her brother (something Camael had never been able to stand doing—something she'd never done before) bespoke a desperation Mephistopheles didn't understand.

         The options were, either she was crazy before she'd started and wanted to visit this room as a shrine, or else they thought something had been left behind, or they wanted reassurance that Gabriel was really destroyed and not just trapped.

         The letter never mentioned annihilation.

         Maybe they weren't convinced.

         But what evidence could she be seeking? There wouldn't be blast marks on the stones, and no trace signature remained of Gabriel's energies. Therefore, spiritual residue.

         That was an interesting prospect, that they might be trying to collect bits of Gabriel, maybe not for reassembly, but for a memorial, or—no, they'd never be able to clone an angel, would they?

         Without wanting to, for the hundred-and-eighth time, Mephistopheles relived the scene. Their Guard, unbreeched. The way the Cherub had screamed for God. Camael's energy drilling into Gabriel. The Cherub unable to move, unable even to cry out by the end as they disconnected one piece from the next from the next from the next. That flash of raw light as Lucifer finished.

         Mephistopheles sat on the floor and closed his eyes.

         I made that possible.

         Remiel insane. Angels not singing. Raphael crippled.

         I did that.

         A great victory. Everyone said so. A crowd of revelers chanted so. Even the minions of Heaven seemed to think so. Victory.

         Oh, Gabriel.

         Mephistopheles' eyes flew open.

         He gripped his Guard and drew it down on itself, rendering it ever smaller until it hit the chain anchors for the arm braces and he had to give those permission to permeate; then further down, slowly, until he had to give permission to pass himself through, and still smaller until the Guard was the size of a grapefruit and fit on his palm, and finally so small there rested on his palm only a tiny bead.

         It rolled a little, trembling from the contact. Mephistopheles probed the contents of his Guard the way he'd probed Remiel.

         It felt like Gabriel, only it wasn't Gabriel any more than the letter 'b' spelled Gabriel or a picture of Gabriel would have been Gabriel. It was only a part of a part of one of the beads that made up a soul riding the heartstrings.

         The question remained: what would Remiel have done if she'd found this? There certainly wasn't enough to make an angel. Three could fit on the head of a pin. Most likely he hadn't found it in the post-annihilation sweep because it was so small. Yet Remiel had anticipated its presence and come searching.

         She had sounded pained regarding the funeral. Maybe they required something of Gabriel to dispose of properly. But surely symbolic laying to rest wasn't worth risking Remiel's life and sanity. The only way to make her potential sacrifice worthwhile was if they believed they could resurrect Gabriel.

         Admittedly you never knew what God was going to do after you won a hand. A notorious sore loser, God would change the rules of the game midstream if things hadn't gone the way he liked. Lucifer and he had acknowledged that basic unfairness during the planning stages. Still, making God change the rules meant they'd won inasmuch as they'd done something so unexpected that he couldn't have won by ordinary means.

         Keeping a hand cradled beneath the bead, Mephistopheles sent a summons to Lucifer.

         "I trust you've been working on your assignment."

         "You needed to see this." Mephistopheles handed over the bead wrapped in his Guard.

         Lucifer flashed out of the chamber into his office minus Mephistopheles. A moment later, Lucifer pulled him inside.

         Stark anger. "Explain this."

         "It's spiritual residue from—"

         "Explain how you think it survived."

         Mephistopheles stood ramrod straight before his blistering attention. "It survived because at the last when you disconnected his heartstrings, you blew apart what remained, and this bit must have gotten trapped in a corner." Mephistopheles tried to calm his own heart. "You can see from its size it's almost nothing, and without a Guard around it, I doubt you could handle it. If you'd like me to further study it—"

         Lucifer crushed down on the Guard with two fingers, smashing apart the bead and causing a pain to shoot through Mephistopheles' head. He felt the bead go, felt whatever had been inside the Guard absorbed into Lucifer's hungry spirit.

         "You will track down any more of these."

         "Sir, I can say with complete confidence—"

         "You were completely confident before that we'd found and annihilated all of him, everything except the memories. Your confidence means nothing to me. I want assurance that nothing more survived."

         Mephistopheles bowed his head, an obeisance Lucifer would feel even in the dark. "I apologize. I should have taken it on myself earlier to squeeze the room, but at the time our search seemed thorough enough."

         "I don't keep you around to seem thorough, Mephistopheles." And with that, Lucifer pushed him back out into the cell.

         Yeah, maybe he would just neglect to mention Remiel.

         Mephistopheles reset his Guard on the room and repeated the squeeze, bringing the Guard tighter and closer until it collapsed on itself without entrapping anything inside. In order to make sure the room contained nothing further, though, Mephistopheles would need to devise a new kind of technique. They'd never had to filter out something so slippery and small.

         Lucifer appeared at his side. Mephistopheles didn't react, just endured a moment's humiliation as his master set a Guard on the room and squeezed it again.

         Embarrassment yielded momentarily to awe. A Guard's strength is directly proportional to one's willpower, and Mephistopheles had never encountered a Guard anywhere near this tight. It had to be three times stronger than the one he'd just used, and Lucifer beside him vibrated with the tension of the San Andreas Fault.

         The next feeling was panic as Lucifer's Guard hit the edges of Mephistopheles and contained him within the squeeze. He moved toward the center, but he could feel Lucifer's amusement as the Guard tightened around him, forcing him closer on himself. Just when he wondered if he were supposed to beg for mercy, Lucifer allowed him to permeate the Guard, and it continued shrinking to a singularity.

         "If I may," Mephistopheles said, "don't dissolve your Guard yet. Start expanding it slowly again." He threw a Guard on the room, attempting to make it as iron-tight as the one Lucifer had just done. Mephistopheles made a note to practice Guarding. Tight enough and maybe you could keep out the Almighty.

         Lucifer said, "This is new."

         "Between the two of them, we should be able to determine if anything remains."

         Lucifer's Guard contacted Mephistopheles' and pushed outward while Mephistopheles concentrated to hold the shape of his own, the crushing pressure between the two always in his thoughts, and from what he could tell, perfectly even. Nothing blemished the seal of one against the other, but was it ever hard to maintain concentration against that kind of pressure—

         Mephistopheles' Guard shattered, leaving him seeing arcing lights that couldn't be there. His head pounded. He tried to ask if this was a sufficient degree of certitude, but the words wouldn't form.

         "Very well, then." The rustle of folding wings. "Now get back to my assignment." And he flashed away.

         Mephistopheles dropped to the floor, unable to stop shaking.

 

Copyright 2008, Jane Lebak

Cover

Copyright 2008, E. J. Mickels

E.J.Mickels II—aka 'Hisart'— a multi talented artist, has a BFAA in Drawing with Minors in Illustration and Graphic Design from the University of Akron. A veteran of the USAF, he has traveled through Europe and most of the USA.

E.J. ventured out as an Illustrator and has appeared in The Sword Review as well as Ray Gun Revival and in Dragons, Knights and Angels. He also wrote and keeps his own web-site-< www.Hisart.us >—which contains a small fraction of the art he has produced. He works in any medium and is just as comfortable setting at a PC with pen and tablet as he is with a chainsaw, airbrush or welder. He has done custom motorcycle and helmet work, as well as in the distant pas,t worked as a tattooist. He is also a writer, he participated in NaNoWriMo 2005, and maintains his own blog 'Sword and Pen' at < www.hisart777.blogspot.com >.

E.J. is currently the ArtWrangler at Double-Edged Publishing's Fear and Trembling magazine: < www.fearandtremblingmag.com >.