The Angel Side (3 page)

Lilith, come to me
,
my sweet.
I called out to her. In a blink she appeared
before
me as if I were her servant.

“Still not kneeling to any man?” I jokingly asked
.

Lilith’s cold, dead
,
black eyes stared back at me as she pursed her thin blue lips.

“What do you want, maggot?”

“Wondering when you’re going to lay under me and let me lick your beautiful Nubian skin clean of its filth.
By the way, I love what you’ve done with your hair. The braids really suit you.
”
Loving
her
reaction
toward alpha males, I filled the air with the scent of my testosterone.

Lilith’s nostrils flared as she pulled her scimitar from
its
sheath
and ran it
across my neck until the point came to rest on my jugular notch.

“My dear, you’re so uptight. You know I am simply playing with you. I have a job for you
that will benefit us both equally
.” I swatt
ed
away her blade.

“And what job is that, maggot?” Lilith sneered, revealing her jagged
,
black, rotted
teeth.

“You know I love your pet names for me. Whisper it in my ear.” I said
,
toying with her.

“I haven’t the time for you
r
perverted games. Get on with what you want.”

“All business.
Such a pity.
Oh well. You were once the revered mother of man, wife of Michael, Sister of Abel and Kane, and first daughter of the Almighty. Now you’re some kind of twisted
,
black rat, hybrid that dwells under the landfills of the celestial worlds—”

“I know what I was
,
and I know what I am. I don’t need
an
editorial of my history.”

“If you’d let me finish, love.
What would you say if I told you I have an opportunity for you
to hit Heavenly Father
,
and not just Michael
,
but all the Arch
e
s where it hurts
them
most
…
the
ones they love?”
I leered at Lilith waiting for the reaction I knew would come once my words resonated
within
her.

Lilith’s eyes widened with curiosity. “I’m listening.”

Having just witnessed th
e allegiance and loyalty Etta
had toward ‘family’, I knew it would be ‘family’ that would tear her apart.
With Lilith in my pocket, it had come
t
ime to end the shenanigans once and for all.

“This is taking too long.
We’re going to be late…again.
”
I whispered to Gabriel as we sat in our morning meeting. Gabriel responded with a hard kick to my ankle causing me to groan.

“Something you wish to add
,
my son?” Father
’s voice boomed overhead
,
though he had been standing directly in front of me
. Gazing around the war room to break his eye contact
,
I saw everyone looking at me.

“Uh, no
,
Father.” I sheepishly responded
.

“Somewhere more important you need to be?”

Although I did find this morning’s security meeting redundant
,
I had been unable to bring myself to tell Father I
was
in a hurry to get to Etta’s. I promised her I would
pick her up to go shopping for a wedding present then take her to work
,
and schedule permitting
,
help the Arch
e
s with Gabriel’s surprise bachelor party
.

I
had
already missed
Etta’s college graduation, John’s Marine Corps retirement party
,
and had been more than fashionably late to Gabriel’s wedding rehearsal dinner.
Every time I’d get ready to go, a marauding group of Demons would be on the loose or perhaps some schmuck somewhere in the world would need a healthy dose of reality
,
making juggling the life between Heaven and Earth taxing
.
It might not have been so bad if I
had
n’t had
one wing weaker than the other. After Pyro had cut
out
one of my wings from its base, Amy had been able to give me a new one
.
Since
then it had become the main target on every battlefield
.

Taking more than its share of hits, it had made flashing not only slower but more strenuous
,
to the point of exhausting. Even more tiresome had been trying to hide my handicap from the others
and Etta. If word got out that I
had been unable
kee
p up
with my duties, I would be pulled from the Arch
e
s and given a desk job, halting any and all visits to Etta, period.

“No
,
Father.” I repeated
.

As he continued his speech about being alert, on guard at all times and all that jazz,
in my head
I counted the minutes
until
Etta’s wake up time
.
6:26 a.m.
6:27a.m. 6:28
a.m.
Etta would be awake in two minutes
,
and I would be in a world of trouble.
6:29
a
.
m
.
Father
finally
spoke the most magical words ever.

“Dismissed.”

With
less than a minute
to spare,
I knew
I’d have to push hard in order to
make it to Etta’s before her alarm went off. As I rushed toward the door,
Father calling my name brought me to a screeching halt.
So close.
I stood near the door with my head down as the other Arch
e
s left the war room. I knew all too well what staying behind meant. Though the wrath of Father
was
something to be feared, I feared Etta’s more.

“What is happening to you
,
my son? If you are not falling asleep during the meetings, you are in a rush to get out of them.”
Fathe
r placed a hand on my shoulder.

His palm pressed against a deep wound I had received during an attempt
to
sever
my wing. I had been hiding it from Father and the Arch
e
s, scared the wound alone would put me in the rear with the gear. Holding back the urge to cry out in pain, I grunted instead of daring to open my mouth to give Father a proper answer.

“Look at me when I am speaking to you!
”

Taking a deep breath, I turned to Him keeping my head down
,
so he wouldn’t see my eyes water
.

“Lift your head!” Another boom erupted.

Hearing Him so angry, I snapped my head up
, tears or no tears
.
Seeing me on the verge of balling, Father assumed he had caused it with His tone and relaxed.

“I apologize for yelling at you
,
but if you wish to act as if you are a child I will treat you as one. You cannot keep going on the way you have been
,
my son. You have been too distracted as of late, putting your brothers at a great risk on the battlefield
,
n
ot
to mention your behavior. I admit I laughed when they told me about your appearance in Alabama
,
but it is not what I would call a proper message delivery. Now, talk to me. What is troubling you?”

I had messed up my mission in Alabama. A religious cult had been running around recruiting teenagers to do their dirty work. In the name of God, they were breaking into homes and robbing them to fund their “church”. After a botched home invasion
,
an innocent family lost their lives. This didn’t detour the group. Instead it fueled them as they spread the message the people had died because “God wanted them to
”
.
I can tell you Father never ‘wanted’ anyone to die. Though it
was
necessary, Father hated every death he watched his children suffer.

But
Father called Uriel and
me
to the war room just as I had returned home from visiting Etta
and had been
preparing to go to sleep for the first time in a week. Father
had
instructed us to go and show the group the path they had chosen
was
one of false prophecy.
I dreaded the trip.
Message deliveries
had the potential to
take anywhere from a few minutes to days.
With
Father want
ing
every member to
receive a personal message
from
Him
and
them being
over ninety members strong
, it would take
too long.

So
,
Uriel and I popped up on the group during one of their evening masses.
Wanting to get it over with so I might catch a few hours of sleep
to help heal my wound
before my tuxedo fitting later in the day, I charged the room swinging my sword, chasing
the cult members
around their church yelling “Thou shalt not steal! Thou shalt not kill! These are the words of God! Repent infidels! Repent!” I broke quite a bit of furniture
, put a few large holes in the walls
,
and made a few men urinate in their pants
,
but no one got hurt. Needless to say Uriel thought I had gone mad and reported my mental break to Father. Though it had been an unorthodox method, from the reports I received afterward,
it had worked and I had been able to get a decent night’s sleep.

But the results weren’t the issue, my performance had been. If I
was
going to get out of this rut, I would have to be honest with Father.

“I don’t know what to do
,
Father. Between my duties here, my job on Earth and trying to keep my commitments to Etta, I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept in days.
I constantly feel weak and can’t seem to concentrate on anything for more than
a
few seconds.
”

“Did I not warn you of this? Was it not you who told me you would be able to handle it?”

I had hoped Father would put his arm around me and tell me ‘there, there
’
but as usual
,
He had done the opposite. Being agents of our own
free will
, any positive
or
negative effects of our actions were solely our own doing. Of course, Father would always help us when needed but with so many to help, sometimes he would
skip over a few,
lea
ving
us to figure it out for ourselves. But right now if He
had any intention of stonewalling
my promise to Etta, I needed Him to give me a little more than
an
‘I told you so
’
.
I needed definitive reasoning as to why.

“Yes
,
Father, but you don’t understand. I’m scared if I don’t keep going I’ll lose her again.
Why would
you ask me to do that when it is all I have ever fought for?
”
I withheld my concerns about my title as Arch and the ongoing issues with my wings.

Had I said
the slightest
word
hinting
about
my injuries
, Father would have poked and
prodded
until I would be left with no choice but to show
him how badly I had been hurt
. Simply unfurling my right wing
felt
as though it
was
tearing the skin from my back.

“I don’t understand? Every second that passes I watch hundreds of my children walk out of those gates either to their life on Earth or in Hell
,
not knowing if I will ever see them again.”
Father lowered his head as he rubbed his brow.

“It’s not the same. You can’t control what we do. I can
control this. All I have to do is keep going. You don’t know what it’s like to lose so much, to get it back only to risk losing it every time you turn around. I’m walking on eggshells here
and with every step I hear them cracking more and more, Father
.”

Father’s body stiffened as he leveled a cold, hard glare on me. With a dark plume of fiery vapor, Father burst from his
angelic
form. Cowering from his violent rage, I
stumbled
backward until a marble column in the middle of
the
war room prevented me from retreating any
farther
. Black smoke encircled
me and
the pillar as lightning
strikes cracked through the sooty cyclone.

“How dare you try to compare scars with
me!
You have no clue what I go through. I have gained and los
t more than you can ever fathom!
If you think you can control how Etta or anyone else feels you are sorely mistaken
,
my son. Do you believe I am so helpless that if I wanted to I would be unable to keep you all here under my thumb? Oh trust in the fact
,
Rahovart, had I seen eye to eye with Lucifer I would have done more than take away free will. But the risk is worth the reward. I know when my children return home it is because they chose to. It is because they do love me
and their life here
. If Etta feels true love for you, than being late to a few dinners and parties isn’t going to change it. If you’d quit looking at the time, you would see that. Now go, before I get really upset.”
A tremendous surge of air ripped open the gold and iron gate of the war room.

Not only had I questioned
Father
but
I had
made
it
out as
though my problems were larger than H
is.
In my self-loathing pity party it had
never crossed my mind what life must
be like
for Father.
The hurt and loss he must
go
through
on a daily basis. Though only a handful of us were actually created by his hand, the rest of our population
came
to be from sanctioned unions
;
we were all His children.