Uriel dumped the backpack and ascended, landing on the rooftop of a townhome. He took out his spear and prepared to strike. I knocked again. When nobody answered, I stepped back and flicked my wrist. The door flew out and crashed on the street. Inside, a man sat at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor, staring at me down the barrel of a gun.
He fired.
I curved the bullet’s trajectory. He fired again. I did the same, only this time advancing on him. The bullets flew into the windows behind me, shattering them. I picked up the man by his throat, squeezed until his breath whooshed out, and he closed his eyes. Gently, I laid him down on the steps.
The entire house smelled of cinnamon and vanilla. “Uriel,” I called. “See about the mortals upstairs.” I felt three souls, two of them young, gentle, desperate, and I prayed I wouldn’t have to execute them.
Uriel entered and groaned. “There’s blood on the carpet. Hm, nice carpet.” He hopped over the man and climbed the steps.
I examined the carpet, bending to touch the blood. Crusted and old, though not too old. I sniffed. Mortal. The trail led to the fireplace, where more blood pooled. Gauze and bandages on the rug told me someone had received first aid. I sniffed an empty, unwashed cup on the table. It reeked of Lucifer. The implication of what Julia’s backpack outside this home might mean for my mortal, that she was possibly infiltrated and that I would have to execute her in a same cold fashion I’d executed many of her kind, sat like lead over my chest.
“You don’t often tempt me, Father, but when you do…” I closed my eyes and exhaled.
“Got two kids with me,” Uriel said from upstairs.
I picked up the man and hid his body behind the couch. Uriel descended the steps. One child trailed behind him, the other, a little girl, he held. She peeked at me from between locks of her hair.
“Hello, little mortal,” I said with a smile.
“Hi, Michael. I knew you’d come.”
Lucifer couldn’t infiltrate the mind of a child. Gabriel guarded their innocence. It was only later, as they entered adulthood, that they forgot what it was like to be pure of heart.
I stroked her cheek. “How did you know?”
“The dark lord told me.”
I glanced at Uriel, who rolled his eyes. “He’s going by the dark lord now?”
I sighed. “Did the dark lord tell you anything else?”
She nodded.
“What?”
“He said you’d kill my daddy.”
“And your mommy?”
Uriel cleared his throat. “The mother is hanging upstairs.”
“The dark lord also said Julia was lovely. You owe him for saving her life.”
“What’s your name?” I asked, distracting myself with the softness of her skin, her perfect smile with wonky little teeth.
“Miley.”
“Uriel will fly you somewhere where you will meet more children like you.”
“But I want to be with Mommy and Daddy.”
“Not yet.”
Uriel left. The second child, a dark-haired boy, stood midway down the stairs.
The teenager stared at me with defiance in his eyes. “My father attacked my mother and hanged her in front of my baby sister. It’s all your fault,” he said.
“What else do you remember, boy?” I bit out. My power lashed out, nearly crumbling the stairs.
The boy didn’t flinch. “I remember coming home from our winter vacation. We found a girl inside the house. Dad sent us upstairs. I heard them exchange a few words, and Dad threw her out. But he stayed downstairs for a while, didn’t call us to come down too. Mom said we’d stay put and wait for Dad, that everything was fine. It was just a homeless girl who broke into our house seeking shelter from the cold. When Dad came upstairs, he attacked Mother. I tried to…” His chin quivered, and he cleared his throat. “He had a gun, you understand? I couldn’t do anything. After he hanged her, I followed him out, but he sat on the steps, kept chanting in a language I couldn’t understand.”
“How long have you been upstairs?”
“Days, weeks. I don’t know.”
“Thank you.”
“What happens to me now?” he asked.
“After we bury the bodies, you will embark on the ship that sails for Gabriel’s Court. Your sister is there.”
“Why can’t I join a regiment?”
“Too young.”
“I don’t want to leave this Court.”
“Why not?”
He looked away, blushing. “There’s this girl.”
“There always is.”
“I want to marry her.”
“Too young,” I repeated.
“She’s working for you.”
“Unlikely. No kids in the ranks.”
“She’s nineteen.”
“Older than you, then?”
“Yeah.” Tears spilled, and he wiped them with his sleeve as he hung on to sanity and sorrow, distracting himself with stories of a girl. I spread my arms. “You may approach.” And so he came to me, hugged me around the waist, used my shoulder to cry on and release the pressure of having to play the strong grown-up in front of his little sister. I stared at the stairs before me and sent a tendril of calm so that his soul might heal faster.
When he finished crying, I released the boy. One wing out, the other bent oddly, I sat down as comfortably as possible and patted the narrow space next to me. The boy sat and wiped his eyes, then his nose with the bottom of his shirt. He sniffled. “Thank you,” he said. “We used to go to church every Sunday.”
“What church?” There were no churches. My heart would surely bleed in the mortal realm. I threw a hand over the boy’s back, gently grabbing his nape, willing him not to remember so I didn’t have to snap his
