Camael opened his eyes to look upon the image painted on the wall before him: the strange trinity that would herald the end of so much pain and suffering. He remembered when he had first heard the prophecy told by a human seer. He desperately wanted it to be true, for God’s forgiveness to be bestowed upon those who had fallen, by a being that was an amalgam of His most precious creations.
From that moment, Camael had looked upon these creatures—these Nephilim—as conduits of God’s mercy, and he did everything in his power to keep them safe. These times had been long and filled with violence, but also salvation. He had taken it upon himself to find the Nephilim of prophecy, to help bring about the redemption of his fallen brethren, and at last it had brought him here.
To Aerie.
The angel looked around at the sparse environment in which he sat, and was overcome with feelings of disappointment. Is this to be where the Lord’s mercy is finally realized? A human neighborhood built upon a burial ground of toxic waste. Camael was loath to admit it, but he was expecting more.
Even though lost in thought, he sensed their presence and rose from his seat to see that he was no longer alone. The Nephilim that had fled the church when he’d first arrived had returned, and brought others with him. They streamed into the place of worship, male and female of various ages—all of them the result of the joining of human and angel. They whispered and muttered among themselves as they stared at Camael.
He had no idea what they wanted of him and on reflex tried to conjure a sword of fire. But the magick that infused the manacles encircling his wrists and throat immediately kicked in. The angel shrieked in pain as daggers of ice plunged through his body. He fell to his knees, cursing his stupidity, and struggled to stay conscious as the waves of discomfort gradually abated.
The throng of Nephilim came at him then, and there was nothing he could do to stop them. They formed a circle around him, their buzzing whispers adding to the tension of the situation.
“What do you want?” he asked them. His voice sounded strained, tired.
An older woman, with eyes as green and deep as the Mediterranean, was the first to step forward, and reached a hand out to the angel warrior. He could see that there were tears in her eyes.
“We want to thank you,” she said as she lay a cool palm against the side of his face, “for saving our lives.”
He looked at her quizzically, her gentle touch soothing his pain.
“It was one of the fiercest blizzards I can remember,” she whispered, tears streaming down her aged face, “and they had come to kill me, their swords of fire sizzling and hissing as the snow fell upon them. As long as I live I’ll never forget that sound—or the sound of your voice as you ordered them away from me.”
The woman’s words gradually sank in. “I… I saved you,” Camael said, gazing into her bottomless eyes, awash in a sea of emotion.
The woman nodded, a sad smile upon her trembling lips. “Me and so many more,” she said, turning to look at the others that crowded behind her.
They all came forward then, hands touching him, the unbridled emotion of their thanks almost intoxicating. How many times had he wondered what became of them; of those half-breeds he had saved from the murderous Powers? How often had he questioned the validity of his mission?
The Nephilim survivors surged around him, the warmth of their gratitude enveloping him in a cocoon of fulfillment.
It wasn’t for naught, he thought as he welcomed each word of thanks, every loving touch. Camael, former leader of the Powers host, had at last found his peace, not only in place, but in spirit.
The prisoner curled himself tighter into a ball upon the floor of his cage, his body wracked with painful spasms brought about by the process of healing.
“It’s kind of funny,” he whispered to the mouse nestled in the crook of his neck, its gentle exhalations soothing in his ear. “Healing hurts almost as much as the injury itself.” And again his body twitched and writhed in the throes of repairing itself. He waited for the agony to pass before continuing with his story.
“Sorry about the interruption,” he said, trying to focus on something other than the sloughing of his old, dead flesh and the tenderness of the new pink skin beneath. “Where was I?”
The mouse snuffled gently.
“That’s right,” he answered. “My relationship with the Lord.” Another wave of pain swept through his body, and he gritted his teeth and bore the bulk of it before he continued. “I was pretty high on His list of favorites; the mightiest and most beloved of all the angels in Heaven. He called me His Morningstar, and He loved me as much as I loved Him—or so I believed.”
And though it was as torturous—even more so than having his burned flesh fall from his body—the prisoner remembered how beautiful it had been. “You should have seen it,” he said dreamily, his memories transporting him back to his place of creation, back to Heaven. “It was everything you could possibly dream of—and more. It was Paradise.”
He saw again the golden spires of Heaven’s celestial mansions, reaching upward into infinity, culminating in the final, seventh Heaven, the place of the highest spiritual perfection. “And that was where He sat, on His throne of light, with me often by His side.” The prisoner sighed, pain pulling his thoughts back to reality in his hanging prison.
The mouse was sleeping, but still he heard its voice, its questions about the past and his eventual downfall.
“Do you know I was by His side when He created humanity? The attention He languished on what appeared to us in the heavenly choirs as just another animal!” He remembered his anger, the uncontrollable emotion at the root of his fall so long ago. “He gave them their own paradise, a garden of incredible beauty and bounty. And He gave them something that we did not have. The Creator gave them a piece of Himself, a spark of His divinity—a soul.”
The agony of his healing mixed with the recollection of his indignation caused the prisoner to sit bolt upright within the confines of his cage. His hand moved quickly to his bare shoulder, preventing the sleeping rodent from falling. “After all this time it can still get a rise out of me,” he said, his voice less raspy, on the mend.
The mouse was in a panic, startled awake by the sudden movement. He could feel the racing beat of its tiny heart against the palm of his hand, the bars of the cage cold against the new flesh of his back.
“I was shocked and horrified, as were others of the various hosts. Why would He give such a priceless gift to a lowly animal? It was an insult to what we were.”
The prisoner cupped the fragile creature in the palm of his hand and calmed its jangled nerves with the gentle attentions of his finger.
“Jealousy,” he said, a deep sadness permeating the sound of his voice. “Every horrible act that followed was all because of jealousy.” In his mind he saw them in the Garden of Eden, man and woman, basking in the light of His glory. “What fragile things they were. And how He loved them—which just made matters all the worse.”
The mouse still trembled in his grasp, and the prisoner wondered if it was cold. He held it closer.
“As if things weren’t bad enough, it wasn’t long before He gathered us together and proclaimed that from that moment forth, we would bow to humanity, we would serve them as we served He who was the Creator of us all.”
His scalp began to tingle unpleasantly and he suspected that his hair had begun to grow back.
“Needless to say, several of us were less than thrilled with this new spin on things.” He remembered their angry faces again, their indignant fury, but none could match his own. His Lord and Creator had abandoned him, cast him aside for the love of something inferior, and he would not stand for it. “I was so blinded by jealousy and my wounded pride that I gathered an army of those who felt as I did, a third of Heaven’s angels they say, and waged war against my heavenly father, my creator, and all those who defended His edict.”