“Turn it off! Turn it off! Turn it off!” Aaron demanded, his voice raw and filled with emotion. “I don’t want to see this—I don’t want to see what I can’t ever have. Why are you doing this?”
He stumbled forward to block the set, catching sight of Vilma in a wedding gown as she walked down the aisle of a church. His skin was on fire, the alien symbols appearing upon his flesh, even though the magick within the restraints tried to stop it. The wings beneath the flesh of his back writhed in agitation, gradually moving to the surface, ready to unfurl.
“I have to see if it’s true,” Belphegor said calmly. “I have to see if you are indeed the One.”
Something inside Aaron broke. There was a sound in his head like the scream of high-speed train, and his wings exploded from his back, as the power of an angel suddenly flowed unimpeded from his body. As if suddenly made ancient and brittle, the manacles upon his wrists and the collar about his neck broke, crumbling as dust to the floor. A sword of fire ignited in his hand and, gazing greedily upon its destructive potential, he spun around, bringing the burning blade down upon the wooden cabinet of the television console. The window into a life he would never know exploded in flames and a shower of glass, but not before he glimpsed a very pregnant Vilma, smiling as if she somehow knew he was watching.
The transformed Aaron, his wings of glistening black spread wide, turned back to glare at Belphegor, who still sat quietly in his recliner. Gabriel tentatively peered around the doorway from the kitchen, ears flat against his square head.
“Are…are you all right, Aaron?” the dog asked.
“I’m fine, Gabriel,” Aaron growled in the voice of the Nephilim. He pointed his sword of orange flame at the fallen angel. “You wanted to know if I was the One,” he said, voice booming about the confines of the room. “Well, what do you think?”
“I think that supper’s just about ready,” Belphegor responded with a soothing smile, rising from his chair. “Would you and your friend care to join me?”
Gabriel pushed the plate of mashed potatoes, gravy, and peas farther across the dining room floor with each consecutive lap of his muscular tongue. Before he wound up halfway across the house, Aaron reached down and took the plate away.
“I’m not finished with that,” the dog said, the remains of mashed potatoes decorating the top of his nose.
“Believe me, you’re finished,” Aaron said, setting the spotless plate on the tabletop. The plate is so clean, Belphegor could put it away without washing it, he thought. No one would be the wiser.
“I would like some more,” Gabriel said with a wag of his tail.
“You’ve had enough,” Aaron responded, as he took a hearty bite of his own roast beef and gravy. Then, always the ultimate pushover, he picked up a piece of meat from his plate and fed it to his insatiable companion. “Watch the fingers!” he squealed as the animal snatched away his offering. “I still use those, thank you very much.”
Belphegor walked in from the kitchen with another steaming bowl in his hands. “Here are some fresh green beans,” he said as he placed it on the table. “I grew them myself.”
“Here?” Aaron asked, shaking his head. “No, thank you. I’m not into toxic waste.”
“I like toxic waste,” Gabriel said happily, attempting to lick the remains of potato from his nose.
“It’s perfectly safe,” Belphegor said as he pulled out a chair and sat down across from Aaron. “All the poisons have been removed. They’re quite good.”
Aaron was reaching for the beans when he realized that Belphegor did not have a plate. “Aren’t you eating?”
The angel shook his head. “No, not tonight. I actually prefer preparing meals to eating them.” The fallen angel smiled, watching as Aaron spooned a heaping portion of the rich green vegetable onto his plate.
“You are aware that we—of my kind—do not need to eat.”
“I’ve heard,” Aaron said taking a careful bite of the beans and then eagerly having more. “Except that Camael has a thing for French fries now.”
Belphegor sat back in his chair. “Does he? I would never have imagined that. Perhaps the years upon this world have indeed softened our Powers’ commander.”
“Former commander,” Aaron corrected through a mouthful of food. “Verchiel’s the commander now—and has been for quite some time.”
“Of course,” Belphegor answered, crossing his arms. “How foolish of me to forget.”
His plate nearly as clean as Gabriel’s bowl, Aaron had a drink of water from an old jelly jar, then pushed the utensils away. “That thing with the television,” he asked. “How did you do that?”
Gabriel had finally settled down and lay beside Aaron’s chair. Aaron reached down to pet his friend as he waited for an answer.
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.” Belphegor shook his head, arms still crossed.
“You’d be surprised at the things I believe in now,” Aaron said. Gabriel rolled onto his side to expose his belly, and Aaron obliged the animal. “Were those … images, those scenes … were they from some future or—”
“They were taken from your head and manipulated,” Belphegor answered, tapping a finger against his skull. “Things that you most desire, but will likely never achieve.”
Aaron stopped scratching Gabriel’s belly, earning a disappointed snuff, and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t like to think that way,” he said, eyes focused on his empty plate, but seeing something else—a future that could very well be like the one he’d seen on Belphegor’s television. “I like to think that there’s something more for me, after I find my brother and this whole prophecy thing gets straightened out.”
Belphegor chuckled. “Don’t worry yourself about the prophecy thing,” he said as he stood up from his chair. He started to gather the dirty bowls and plates.
“Why’s that?”
The old fallen angel used a spoon to scrape what remained of the mashed potatoes onto Aaron’s dirty plate. “Because it doesn’t concern you,” he answered.
“Don’t you think I’m the One?” Aaron asked curiously, leaning forward in his seat. “You heard what Camael said, and you saw what I did to your magick handcuffs.”
“All very impressive.” Belphegor nodded as he gave Gabriel a green bean from the plate of refuse. “I can honestly say that I’ve never seen power the likes of yours, and your control over it thus far is admirable, but I do not believe you are the One spoken of in prophecy.”
Aaron was surprised by the disappointment he felt; a day ago he would have traded the whole angelic Chosen One thing for a bag of Doritos. Now… “Are you positive?” he asked. “How do you know? Camael said…”
“Camael has been separated from his kind for a very long time,” the angel explained, pausing in his cleanup to gaze intently at Aaron. “He is desperate to belong again—perhaps too desperate—and he saw something in you that really isn’t there. I’m sorry.”
There was something in Belphegor’s attitude that suddenly annoyed Aaron. It reminded him of his childhood in foster care, before he moved to the Stanleys’ and learned what being part of a family was all about. Before that he was looked on as being less than other kids, perceived as a failure before he even had a chance to try.
“The essence inside you is extremely powerful, and I fear that if a true merger were ever to occur between the angelic nature and your fragile human psyche, you would be driven out of your mind. And we of Aerie would be forced to do something about it.”
Aaron remembered a teacher he’d had in the first grade, Mr. Laidon. The teacher had singled him out, telling the other students that he didn’t have a family and that the state needed to take care of him. At that moment he had felt like a show-and-tell project, something less than the other kids in his class. Aaron’s face flushed hot with the memory.