Chapter 21

Abaddon was weak, almost too weak to fly. Almost. Battling Lucifer had taken it all out of him, and he could barely hold himself aloft. I wasn't exactly built to carry him around, but I didn't have much of a choice. I had to try to keep him upright, to keep him flying, because if we stopped… we were dead.

Once again, I found myself impossibly lost and without direction. I had never needed to wander the Earth, navigating by the stars alone… but it wasn't like the bastion of Helena was pointed out on any maps.

So, we wandered.

Flying day and night and using my Light to keep my own body from giving up on me. Abaddon didn't have the same luxury, though. Only Lightbringers had the ability to regenerate their Light like I could, and I was having to use it to keep him from suffering the effects of extreme dehydration too by giving him a portion of my own power.

Nothing about this was easy, and with no end in sight, I was starting to get desperate… and Abaddon was starting to get heavy.

I could tell he was fading. Whatever Lucifer had done to him was beyond my ability to fix. He needed rest, real food, water, and Light, and we weren't going to get any of those as long as we were in the air hoping against hope that we would find the way to Helena.

Abaddon all but lost the ability to gain altitude, leaving me to have to keep us both in the air somehow. I needed to land, but I knew Helena was in the water somewhere, and so we had made a move towards the water. There was nowhere to go, nothing but a sparkling blue horizon as far as the eye could see and the blazing sun over our heads.

We were going to die out here.

Or, at least, he was going to die out here—and there was nothing I could do about it.

That's when I felt it. A surge, a pulse of power that came from somewhere else. I wasn't sure what it was, or who it was that had caused it. I could feel the ripple all the way across the water, a ripple caused by some kind of shockwave that moved through the air.

Then I saw it.

I saw her. She was dark, little more than a dart zipping through the sky at speed. For a moment, I thought I saw Gadriel—black wings, black hair, pale skin. There was something of her left in the demon who now called herself Hekata, but Gadriel wasn't there anymore. What I was seeing was little more than a mirage, an echo of the angel I remembered.

Then the echo yelled.

"She's over here! Whatever you're going to do, Cherub, do it now!"

"Gad…" I croaked. "Gadriel?"

"Not quite," said Hekata as she flew in close to me. Close enough that I could see her face, her wings, the scales along her arms. "You owe me one now, Lightbringer."

A flash of powerful Light erupted, and the sky behind Hekata tore itself apart. As the portal grew, so did the image I saw on the other side of it. A courtyard, walls, a tower—and Micah. He was standing there, his arms raised, his palms glowing gold and blue.

"What are you waiting for?" Micah asked. "A personal invitation? Get over here, already!"

Hope.

It filled me, surged through me, invigorating my muscles and allowing me to give one final, desperate push to get both Abaddon and me through the portal and to the other side. Though we were in the air, the portal had appeared in front of us and it was anchored to the ground. As soon as I was through, my wings gave way, and gravity did the rest.

We dropped a couple of feet, Abaddon and I thudding to the cold, hard ground. I was panting, gasping for air. Abaddon, however, was unconscious. Instantly we were swarmed by angels, and while at first I was relieved, it wasn't long before I realized they were wielding Light swords and aiming them at me and at Abaddon.

I rolled onto my back and put my hands up. "What is this?" I asked.

"For you, just a precaution," said Azrael, landing not far from where Micah was standing. "For him… an arrest."

"Arrest? He's hurt! He needs healing, and food, and water."

"That monster has killed more angels and humans than…" she stopped herself from finishing that sentence. She lowered her tone; anger stained with disappointment. "He is under arrest," she snarled, "and he can consider himself lucky that we haven't run him through with swords already."

"Micah," I said, "please, stop this."

Micah shook his head. "I'm sorry, Sarakiel. You've been gone a long time, and he has done some terrible things."

"Because Lucifer made him!"

"Maybe so, but this is Azrael's bastion. Her authority and her word are final."

Azrael nodded at some of the angels around her, and together they swarmed Abaddon, picked him up, and carried him away. He was too weak to put up a fight, too weak to resist. The Abaddon I knew would've made short work of these angels. This Abaddon… he couldn't even stand on his own.

I watched them take him, choosing to defer to Azrael's leadership. Micah was right. This was her bastion, and I had no right to make demands. With Abaddon gone I was left with Hekata, Azrael, and Micah, the four of us standing in the courtyard in the shadow of the collapsing portal.

Micah sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I was starting to think we'd lost you for good," he said.

"If you hadn't found me, I would've been," I said. Then I turned my gaze over to Hekata. "You saved my life. Again."

She shrugged. "Having a Lightbringer owe you favors can't be a bad thing."

Azrael didn't enjoy the sentiment, or the implication. "Are you hurt?" she asked me.

"No," I said, shaking my head. "I'm not hurt, but he is—and badly. I don't know what Lucifer did to him, but he's been fading ever since their battle."

"Battle?" she asked, angling her head.

I nodded. "Lucifer was going to kill me. Abaddon stepped in and protected me, took Lucifer on in one-on-one combat. I don't know how he survived."

Her eyes narrowed. "Maybe he didn't."

"Didn't?"

"Maybe they planned this as a way to infiltrate my bastion, and we've just let him in through the back door."

"It's not like that. I know it's not."

"Because you believe in him? Sarakiel, the things he's done—the angels he's killed. Do you have any idea who you're dealing with, here?"

"I know he's done awful things, but Lucifer is?—"

"—your denial will be the death of you," she snapped. "If that's what you want to do with your life, then fine. But don't try to convince me that the things he's done don't matter, or that he's somehow absolved. I don't care who made him do the things that he did. He's dangerous. The sooner you understand that, the better it'll be for all of us."

Micah stepped in between us. "I think that's enough arguing for one day, don't you?" he asked.

Azrael looked ready to go another round, but she backed off. I nodded. "I didn't come here to fight," I said.

"After the portal by the pyramids… what happened to you? Where did he take you?"

"To a temple, I think. It was dark, and there were shades all around me. Abaddon was there, sitting on a throne."

"The Ashen Throne," Azrael put in.

"I didn't know it had a name."

"The name makes sense if you know how it had been built."

I didn't even want to think of it, to be sure. I wanted to forget the throne, the ash, and everything else. It was clear Azrael wasn't going to make that easy.

"You said he and Lucifer fought," said Micah. "What happened?"

"Lucifer wanted Abaddon to kill me, but Abaddon wouldn't—like I said. He refused, and then he attacked Lucifer. There was so much going on, I couldn't help him. Before I knew it, their battle was over, Lucifer was gone, and Abaddon had blood on his hands."

"Blood?"

"Lucifer's blood."

"So, it's true," said Hekata. "He bleeds."

I nodded. "It looks that way."

"Then he's not as powerful as he has everyone believe he is," said Azrael. "He may be the first angel, but after God's death and the Fall… he's just as mortal as the rest of us."

"Let's not underestimate him," Micah put in. "He's still incredibly powerful—we've seen it. But this is certainly an interesting turn of events."

"Why interesting?" I asked.

"Well…" Micah paused. "I think it's pretty clear there have been some changes since you left us. I, personally, have spent a lot of my time trying to regain some of the abilities I lost after I fell from Heaven. It's gone quite well."

"You sell yourself short," Azrael said. "Micah's powers are incredible. If not for him, Lucifer would have destroyed this bastion a long time ago."

"You protected them from him?" I asked.

"I only bolstered the abilities these angels already had. But the point remains, I have regained some of the power I had in Heaven, and given that Lucifer has lost some of his… I don't want to suggest we could be evenly matched, but…"

"Maybe you are," said Hekata. "You have a plan, don't you? Sneaky little cherub."

"Again, only maybe."

"Let's hear it," I said, "at this point, there are probably no bad ideas."

"Well… you know the story of Lucifer's incarceration, right?"

"I do. You told me."

"I also told you it was the cherubs who built his prison and incarcerated him in the first place, remember?"

My eyes narrowed. "You did… what are you saying?"

Micah seemed hesitant to continue, like he was worried about speaking out of turn or saying something incredibly stupid. "If Lucifer has been weakened… if he's lost some of the power he had while he was in Heaven… I may be able to incarcerate him again."

"You what?"

"I still need to figure out how it could all work, and we'd need to trap him first. I'm working on the specifics. But I think there's a way forward, here."

"Don't we need Lucifer, first?" asked Azrael. "We have no idea where he is or where he'll go next."

"She wasn't hard to find," said Hekata, with a shrug. "Lucifer will be even easier to track down. He's not exactly inconspicuous."

I shook my head. "We won't have to do any of that."

"We won't?"

"No… we don't need to go to Lucifer, because Lucifer will come to us."

"You don't know that," Azrael said, stiffening. "You can't know that."

"I do. Just as the portal was closing, after the demons made their way through… here… Lucifer told me it had been his plan all along to let them take refuge here. That way he can come to Helena, destroy this place, and kill anyone who dares stand against him once and for all."

Azrael looked stunned for a moment, but her expression hardened. "Medrion tried to destroy this place and he failed. Lucifer tried once before, and he also failed. He will fail again."

"Maybe…" I said, "But he has something Medrion doesn't."

"What's that?" asked Micah.

"He doesn't care about getting back into Heaven. He doesn't have a cause, or a mission like Medrion did. He only has one goal, and that's to kill all of us for the crime of rebelling against him and his ideas."

Hekata scoffed. "Ironic, isn't it?"

"If he wants to fight until judgement day," said Azrael, "then Helena stands ready. We know that he bleeds… and we're going to make him regret ever coming here."

"I hope you're right," I said. "Because once we're all gone, there will be no one to stop him from taking this universe and doing whatever he wants with it. He will be worse than Medrion ever was."