Becks and the other soldiers open up, taking shots off at men on the walls with their rifles, and the squad’s two machine-gunners open up on the charging advance of knights.
It is like watching wheat being cut with a reaper.
The machine-gunners lay a stream of bullets into the advancing horde, knights fall over each other, blood sprays into the air, and bodies shatter, skulls burst open, and limbs fly. The two men with grenade launchers let tiny packages of exploding death sail through the air, the explosions shattering stone, blowing archers off walls, and sending fireballs sailing up into the rainy sky.
Azrael screams.
There are so many souls crying I can’t count them all. I must join them. I must become one with them.
This is where I belong, in death.
I pick up the sword of a fallen knight, run through the firing squad, put my foot on the railing of the stairwell, and jump off into the hailstorm of death, my sword raised high.
I’m flying, my wings spread wide, a black raven of death sailing above her brood of violence and hatred.
I land in the center of a group of knights, both alive and dying, landing with such force that the bodies of the dead and alive fly away from me, arcing through the air and leaving trails of blood in their wake. Only the strong remain around me, and the knights charge in.
I scream like the blood itself, the unholy strength filling my veins, the power coursing through my muscles like some unearthly force, and I swing this ten-pound sword like it was made of paper.
Everywhere the sword goes, it cuts. Everything it intersects, it slices in half like one of my best kitchen knives. It shocks me to see a man’s arms cut off, the second man’s insides spilling out, and the third man lose his jaw in my one long-bloody, instant sword blow - but it doesn’t shock me.
It pleases me.
Why have middlemen do the killing when I can kill and judge them right here?
I step into the next attacker like a possessed woman, twirling my sword with the practice of a thousand years of war, blocking one blow, and slicing another knight in two.
His soul? Guilty, straight to Hell.
The man I blocked retreats a step, raises his sword, and I shove my blade straight into his gut. I twist the weapon, see his eyes go wide with pain, and I judge him, guilty, to Hell with you, and his flesh shell drops to the ground in a lifeless husk.
An explosion from one of the grenades blows apart one of the castle’s towers as I turn towards the next group of knights between me and Azrael. I step through puddles of blood and rainwater as I advance towards them, wearing the pall of uncaring death on my face like a mask.
A knight runs at me, swinging his sword at my face. I raise my sword, knocking aside his weapon with so much power he loses balance and tumbles to the side of me. Your soul is spared for the next few seconds.
The next man comes at me with a shield. I stab straight through the shield into his face, judge him, to Hell with you, and he falls to the ground.
I remove my weapon and slash at another charging man, breaking his sword in half with mine, my blade going a foot down into the knight’s shoulder, and blood flying everywhere. I judge him quickly as I remove my sword from his body, sending him to Hell, and stepping over him.
It’s like a thousand years of death and judgment all catching up to me in one purifying moment. I narrow my eyes and judge the souls of a dozen men around me in one fell swoop, and I feel their essences fade away.
Go to Hell, my lovely screaming souls, your hateful lives judged in this procession of death.
The ends of your lives am I.
A captain of the knights I recognize from the group that captured me stands on the steps of the torture platform where Azrael is tied. The whip armed torturer stands behind him.
The captain charges me, and he brings his weapon dangerously close to my flesh. My unholy strength sends him spinning away, but the gray-bearded knight recovers and faces me again. He screams something in Latin and charges again, his blow forcing me back.
I hiss like an unholy deviless, and press into him, swinging my sword like a child on a playground flailing and beating another into submission. Each one of my sword blows takes a metal chunk out of his blade, my blows growing stronger with each hit, my rage flowing like tainted blood through my veins.
His soul resists me, it eludes me, and I grow angry he doesn’t yield and submit to my judgment. I beat him harder, and his years of experience predicts my attacks, and he keeps blocking me with his increasingly destroyed and useless blade.
Die old man, die. Give me your soul.
I crave your soul.
I wish to judge it.
He retreats to the steps, his one hand keeping his battered metal blade between us, and me bearing down on him like a rabid feral cat, hissing and striking, demanding he release his life essence to me for judgment.
“Haven’t you lived long enough in this world, old man!”
My final blow snaps his sword in two, and my blade rests on his throat. The fear in his eyes tells me he is not ready. A long time ago his daughter died of sickness in his arms. His wife gave up her will to live. He joined this crusade to fight the forces of Hell, and the crusade itself became the same implement of wickedness and torture through corruption, power, and false men.
Their leader? The Disciple of War himself, the burning man. The one they fear? Now, it’s me. I have changed them, and I have changed myself.
I am death.
I am war.
I am both the false leader and the one who makes it easy to kill.
I have become the Four Horsemen. My prayers are forfeit. My path to Heaven closed. They have won, and I have lost. The world is gone. My family is gone. My children, gone. Any hope of escape or redemption is gone.
All because killing solves everything.
I drop my sword on the old man and step over him, walking up onto the torturer's platform. My eyes rest on the torturer. Guilty. So guilty. He backs up on the platform as I stare him down. His eyes show hatred and fear outside his bloodied leather hood, and he wears the apron of a butcher. My body is bloody, my wings are soaked in guilt, and my heart is too beaten to care.
Though, this man is a torturer. One who inflicts grievous misery on others for the lies of self-righteousness, false judgment, and sadistic punishment. Torturers work the hands of the Devil. Those who forgive them or call it justified heed the Devil’s whispers. Neither shall know peace, and neither shall know redemption.
I look at a knife, and I stare into his eyes.
He slits his throat, and I push his head down as I judge him.
Hell will have a special place for you.
CHAPTER XXVI:
We Are Lost
“Azrael?”
His face is a beautiful black man’s face, unshaven, but with the deepest blue-gray eyes. His head is bald with the smoothest skin. Scars and dried blood cover his body. Ropes bind his arms. Two large scars cross his back.
I feel the pain throb in my wings. His wings.
I take a rag and wipe his face clean, his eyes floating and lost in a sea of pain. I squeeze some water onto his lips, and he moans. “My…”
He tries to smile, but he winces in pain.
Colonel Becks moves up, his men taking up positions on the platform. The two wounded soldiers are well enough to fight, one with his arm wrapped in a bandage, the other with his cheek patched up and his mouth packed with bloody gauze. They take cover around us, take count of ammo, pass clips between themselves, and prepare themselves for a second coming.
“Cut this man down!” Becks moves beside me. “Are you hurt?”
I shake my head, no, and feel the dozens of unreleased souls in the courtyard calling to me. I close my eyes, and begin calmly sending them on their way. Some, some of them do not deserve Hell, so I give them a second chance, sending them back into the world to be reborn. None of them deserve Heaven, but a second chance at earning that right is Heaven enough for them.
Several of them soothe me in their peaceful state, and thank me for the chance to prove themselves. Despite their wickedness, they promise their next lives will be different, that they will make a change, redeem themselves, and leave this world a better place.
All I can do is wish them well. I tell one I will hold him to that promise, and remember his words the next time we meet.
My work done, I open my eyes.
Azrael is being treated by the medic, and he is shooting the fallen angel with morphine, bandaging and disinfecting his wounds, and putting the muscular dark-skinned man on a portable stretcher to transport.
The shots are less frequent now, two of the riflemen keeping the survivors out of the courtyard. The shots don’t make me jump anymore, and I still feel when one of the bullets makes a killing shot. It isn’t like there are many knights left alive here.
Colonel Becks takes me aside. “Want to tell me what that was all about? You going in the middle of them? You could have-”
“We have to find another way to stop this.”
“What do you mean?” He turns towards the carnage of the courtyard, like it was some sort of victory, and then back to me. “We saved Azrael, we need to take him back to the base hospital-”
“I am not your answer anymore,” I say, feeling the tears well up in my eyes, “I have failed. My prayers are worthless now. Ashes upon the wind. I have forfeited my innocence.”
He grabs me by my shoulders to yell at me, but he can’t. I see the confusion and hopelessness in his eyes, just like Brad’s. There’s nothing there to understand this all, no reason, no logical connection between one piece and another. If we knew a way towards victory, we would each say something, but nobody does.
His voice is slow, deliberate. “Do you know where we are? Do you know what this place is? Do you know what year this is?”
I shake my head, no. “These places just are what they are to me.”
He grips me tighter. “You say you can go back in time. You can teleport us around. You told me you went back to try to save your family. Do you think if I told you where to go, you could take me there?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “I have to picture these places in my head, to feel them, I have been there. But-”
He shakes me after I fail to say anything for a minute. “But what?”
“I’m the one who caused this by trying to go back in time in the first place. It was selfish of me to try and save my family. I can’t go back again, I’ll just make things worse.”
“Who told you what?”
“King Tanas-” I stop and look into the sky, the rain hitting my face. Everything I was told about him. The false prophet, the deceitful king. What if everything the Four Horsemen have been telling me were lies? I feel the rage well within me.
I look at Becks. “I’ll do everything I can.”
One link in the chain connects to the next.
In moments, we are back in the real world, covered in ash and death, standing next to the diner, now empty and devoid of life. We sent the survivors away when we got here, though I can still see them walking away in the darkness. Beck’s has his men place Azrael in the armored car, and I sit beside the fallen angel. Azrael is hooked to all sorts of tubes and IVs, and they are still attaching sensors to his chest and treating his hundreds of wounds.
Becks sits in the front of the armored car, talking on the radio furiously. It’s all a blur to me as I stroke Azrael’s cheek, and try to fit my large black wings in this small enclosed space. We are driving so fast and I don’t have any idea of where we’re going.
My hands are shaking. I still can’t believe what I did in the castle to those me, what the soldiers did. Judging souls. Sending them on. The power of the Angel of Death. I can’t stop myself from shaking, and my teeth begin to chatter. A soldier gives me a blanket, and I wrap up in it for the rest of the ride. I surround myself in feathers and try to forget.
This must be the power Azrael wields, the power to judge souls. It’s too much for me. I can’t stand hearing the cries of the dead, judging them, sending them on their way. Feeling it as it happened, feeling them fade away from the bonds of life, touching them, sending them along, it’s all a mess in my head and it’s spinning right now.
I want to curl up in a ball and cry. I’m silent, biting the blanket, curled up in the corner of the armored vehicle, my head spinning like I’m in the mad throes of a fever. Never, never have I felt this confused and alone.
We end up at a school taken over by the military, with giant lights illuminating the football field, tents placed around a command center, and the pop of gunfire echoing out in the distance. Snowplows clear ash constantly, and everyone outside wears a mask to breathe.
Three helicopters are waiting for us.
They put Azrael on a medical helicopter, and me in the lead aircraft with Colonel Becks. It’s hard for me to even get in the machine, as wind from the rotor blades catches my wings and pushes me back. Three men end up having to help me get in, and when I sit down I’m crying from all the ash blown in my eyes. Colonel Becks hands me a fistful of baby-wipes to clean my face with, and we are off in the air before I realize it.
I have the back half of the chopper to myself, and my sore and cramped wings have a little more room to spread out in the aircraft. There’s another man in the chopper I don’t know, and he wears an ash-dusted black suit with sunglasses. He reaches over to shake my hand. “Special Agent Carson, FBI.”
I shake his hand and sit back. “I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?”
“You tell me.” He sits back with a file on his lap and flips through it. “But I can’t say you have from what I have here. Jessica White, age 34, married, two children-”
“They’re dead.”
“Understood, my condolences, I’ll update your file.” Brown nods and scribbles with a pen. “Though I think there’s another problem, you look like the girl in your yearbook, not like the pictures we pulled off social media.”
“I’m seventeen.” I look out the window as we clear the tops of the ash clouds, and I can see the stars again. “Update your damn file.”