Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 12:45:06 -0800 (PST)
From: CloseTheCellarDoor <closethecellardoor@yahoo.com>
Subject: Evil is a Man: The Angel Stretched Out His Hand -- chapter 6

I woke up that night because I was shivering.  It was too fucking cold to
sleep.  It quickly dawned on me how ridiculous that sounded.  I was in a
room with no windows and no AC, in the middle of the desert, and it must
have been midday.  Yet, this place was so well insulated that it always
felt like a fucking walk-in freezer in here.

The all too brief time spent at the Ensis in Sam's very comfortable
apartment forced its way into my mind.  When I had been there, all I wanted
was for us to leave.  Now, I was really missing the place.

Sam's designer, black clothing, his posh apartments, the friggin slick-ass
car.  The Ensis.  Somewhere along the way I had gotten the idea that angels
appreciated the fine things in life.  This Seraph Cathedral seemed to have
been erected purely to disprove that assumption.

The guest room we had been given was nothing special, just bare stone.  No
rugs on the floor, no closet, nothing but an old dusty dresser and a
three-post bed (one of the posts had been broken off at some point) with a
mattress that was beyond lumpy.  No attempt at all at any sort of
decoration.

Hey, I'm not prissy.  I can sleep on rocks out in the wild, and I'd be fine
with it.  But still, it seemed like this room was purposefully designed to
be inhospitable.  Didn't they have nicer quarters than this shit?  Wasn't
Sam supposed to be one of the strongest Cherubim, after all?  And anyway, I
was the fuckin Eversor.  I figured they'd want to show me at least some
respect.

The real reason I was cold was because soon after we had hit the hay last
night, I had rolled away from Sam's side of the bed.  He was sleeping on
his side; his head was facing me, his mouth open, not quite snoring but
breathing loudly.  His body wasn't curled up tightly like mine was when I
slept, it was open, welcoming.  Even so, I had pulled away from him today,
not wanting him to touch me.

I was so sick of him touching me, always, constantly touching me.  I wanted
to feel my own body without feeling his as well.

When he touched me, he changed me.  Calmed me down, placated me.  It was as
if he was making me more like himself.

I just wanted to be goddamn ME for a change.

His arm moved to grab for me, to pull me into him.  I quickly scooted away
from him, pushing myself completely against the edge of the bed.  After a
moment of searching, his hand fell down, giving up, dejected.

I turned my cold back to him and slept the rest of the night on my side of
the bed.

*****

"Wait here," said the Cherub who led us into the room.  Like all the others
here, he wore brown monk robes; bland, frumpy linens that seemed more
suitable as window coverings than as clothing for any creature who was as
beautiful as he.  "You will not have to wait long."

He left, shutting the heavy stone door behind him.

Sam and I stood side by side in what the people here called "the reception
room."  Like all the rest of this fortress that I had seen, this room's
walls were made of a dull brown stone.  The stone tiles on the floor were
ornately carved with beautiful patterns, but were worn and dulled by the
heavy travel they must have had on them over the years.  There was no
apparent electricity in this place: golden candleholders set into the wall,
each holding many white candles, were the only source of light in here.  I
had yet to see a window anywhere in the place, and I suspected that there
was none to be found anywhere.

At least in two dimensions, the room we were in was quite small, no larger
than the double that Omar and I had shared in Pendleton.  But its vast
height made the place seem actually quite large; the walls went upwards a
good thirty feet before finding a stone ceiling, black with soot from the
candles.  It was up there that a balcony overlooked us, with a curtained
entrance leading off somewhere unseen.

"He's gonna appear up there?" I asked Sam, nodding up towards the balcony.
"Like royalty looking down on all his lowly subjects?  Great."

"Brad, please," Sam told me.  "There is a time and place for your
flippancy, but certainly this is not it."

Almost immediately the curtains above us parted, and a figure walked into
the room.  Even twenty feet up in the air the man seemed tall and imposing,
taller than Sam anyway, and he was already pretty damn tall.  The man was
wearing a white hooded robe with swirls of red stitched in various
patterns.  Instead of a face looking down at us, there was a white
porcelain mask, so simple and yet very inhuman looking in a really eerie
way.  My eyes automatically sought out the only part of him that was human,
those brown eyes visible through the two holes in the mask....

"My liege," Sam said, deferentially, and kneeled down, bowing, pulling me
down beside him as well.

Right, the eyes.  I can't look at the eyes.

I bowed my head forward as Sam was doing.

"Stand," the Seraph said, his voice deep and commanding, not unlike how I
imagined God's voice would sound.

"Thank you, my liege," Sam said, as he got back to his feet.

I did the same, looking up at the Seraph, but carefully avoiding his eyes.

After an imposing moment of silence, Sam began.  "My liege, I have brought
you my Delector who is--"

"We know what it is you have done," the booming voice cut Sam off.  He had
a very slight accent, one that, like all the other accents I had heard
recently, I couldn't place.  "We know all of it.  We have been waiting for
centuries for one of the Flock to deliver to us an Eversor.  You have
succeeded through wit and persistence where many others, ones who have
employed less agile measures, have failed.  For that you are worthy of at
least our attention, if not yet a greater recompense."

"I seek no reward for my actions, I merely do as--"

The Seraph cut him off.  "There is no need for you to drip obsequious
irrelevancies upon me.  Let your guard down, and let me see you naked."

I looked over at Sam.  He shut his eyes and relaxed his body.

"Yes," the Seraph said.  "Yes.  It would take decades to put into words all
the truths that I have garnered from that brief glimpse into your soul.
And now I know.  Indeed you do not come here looking for any reward for
your actions.  What more reward can you seek beyond serving your Flock,
your Lord?  For an angel who has stripped himself of all human desires,
there is but one prize that you would still covet.  A chance to serve your
Flock and your Lord more wholly.  A chance to earn yourself a place at the
arm of the Throne of God in Heaven.  Yes, you know what I speak of.  We
have known of your strength and your resourcefulness, of your faith and
charity for some time now, Samuel.  You have led the Eversor into our house
not in chains, but by his own will.  If you can procure for us two more
bounties of our choosing, while at the same time ensuring the continued
safety of your strange choice in Delector, then your one wish shall be
granted.  You shall become Seraphim."

Sam nodded stoically, showing very little sign of emotion, though I was
damn sure he must have been thrilled on the inside.  Well, I would have
been anyway.  A chance to be a part of the highest order of angels, the
ones who controlled it all.

"The first bounty will not be excessively trying for one as physically
strong as you," the Seraph resumed.  "We have an unassuming air fleet of
our own here at the Cathedral.  They will escort you where you need to go.
You must unearth our target, appropriately yoke him, and present him to us
alive.  You see, we are in need of an upper-echelon wolf of great stature.
We had hopes that one of the two wolves brought here would have been of
such power.  Neither one was sufficient.  You must find the one wolf we
know to be fit.  And after you have delivered him here, you can be assured
he will promptly be executed.

"We will deliver to Satan this creature who is a king among sinners: this
leader of the wolves," the Seraph's authoritative voice boomed down at us.

*****

"Have you ever flown before?" asked the Delector who had first shown Sam
and I around the Cathedral, whose name I later learned was Hassan.  He had
that same look of total disinterest upon his face.

"Course I have," I said.  "Plane, helicopter, you name it."

"I was not inferring flying through mechanical means.  I meant have you
ever flown with your Domno before."

We were in the entrance hall of the Cathedral.  Sam was crowded around a
group of angels, all of them shirtless and gathering luggage.  Hassan and I
were among a group of Delectors.  All of us were getting ready to leave.

"Only once," I said.  "Well, twice, if you count the time we glided down
into the ravine."

"Did you use the standard rear-mount?"

"Rear-mount?  What the fuck's that?" I asked.  "He just picked me up and
took off, I didn't do shit."

"An amateur," Hassan said in a really snotty way.  "When you fly with an
angel, it's best if you position yourself behind him, with your body
resting between his wings and your arms wrapped around his neck.  If you
need more stability, wrap your legs around his hips.  This leaves your
Domno's hands free during flight."  He paused long enough to look me up and
down.  "Is that what you're going to wear?"

I looked at him.  Hassan and the other Delectors were all wearing heavy
brown robes.  "Yeah, something wrong with that?" I asked.

"Keep in mind," he said, "even on warm nights, the angels fly high and they
fly fast.  You will get cold.  Around here, we wear our robes during flight
to keep us warm.  In colder weather, it is usually recommended that you go
shirtless.  As antithetical as that sounds, the extra skin to skin contact
with an angel keeps you warmer than any amount of clothing."

I nodded, and Hassan went over to "mount his angel from the rear."  God,
that sounded so, so bad.

"Ready for a ride?" Sam asked me with a wide smile, holding our bags in his
hands.

"I have to warn you, I do get airsick," I told him.  "If I puke all over
you, I promise to get your wings shampooed and detailed."

"Lucky for me, you are a bad liar."

"Well, everyone's a bad liar when you can read their minds."

"Very true.  Now hop on, baby, and don't be afraid to hold on tight."

"I will, if you promise to never, ever call me baby again."

"Deal."

Sam winked at me, and pulled his white wings out of his body.  He turned
around, facing away from me.

It was easy.  All I had to do was wrap my arms around his neck and jump on
his back.  Anyone who had ever ridden piggyback could have handled that.

"Good," Sam said as we left the Cathedral with the other angel/Delector
pairs in front of us who were already taking off.  "Now, try to stay calm,
there's no need to get antsy up there.  I would never let you fall."

"Sam, this is me you're talking to.  I had the balls to jump off a Boston
skyscraper, remember?  I'm not gonna get all squishy with a little flight
to the airplane."

"That's what I like to hear," he said.

Swoop, swoop, the wings began to beat on both sides of me.  And then all of
the sudden we were a few feet into the air.

He pulled straight up, higher than the ravine walls, and then tilted his
body forward, more horizontally, and started gliding through the air after
the other angels.  This position was actually easier for me because most of
my weight fell upon his back, but he was still vertical enough so that the
wind was being blocked in front of me by his face and not hitting my own.

I knew I wasn't going to be nervous flying on Sam's back, but what I didn't
anticipate was how much I would enjoy myself.  It was absolutely
exhilarating flying through the air without the encumbrance of an engine,
or any other sort of device.  It was somehow liberating.  The starry sky
all around us, the pale ground rushing by below.  The only thing better
would have been if instead of holding onto Sam, I was the one with wings.
If I could fly like he did on my own.

"Where do they keep this plane?" I asked Sam, yelling through the wind.

"They'll lead us there," Sam said confidently.

"I didn't see a runway in any direction when we climbed that hill."

After a couple minutes of flight, the other angels starting to make a
descent near an outcropping of rocks, the only objects in the middle of a
flat, dusty plain.

"I'm going in for a landing," Sam said.  "Please check to make sure all
chairs and trays are in their upright and locked position."

"Got it," I said as Sam touched down.  There, carved into the rocks, was a
tunnel that was completely hidden from sight.  The angels were pulling back
a curtain that covered the tunnel.  Inside the blackness was a small plane.

The others were already boarding the small aircraft, and Sam and I got in
ourselves.  The plane was similar to the one that had flown us to the
Ensis, only smaller and without any crazy "Ronnie" type attendants.  No, it
was already very clear that these angels and Delectors didn't give a damn
about their new guests, they were just doing their job.

The plane pulled out onto a runway so covered with dust and sand that it
was at first impossible for me to see.

We took off, heading northwest.

*****

I put a sheathed combat knife in my pocket and strapped a handgun to my
waist.  "If we're gonna be fighting wolves," I said to Sam, "this little
gun would do jack squat.  I have enough wolf fighting experience to know
that.  Better if I take along something with more oomph, like a shotgun, or
a missile launcher."

"A nuke, maybe?" Sam joked.

"You Americans and your love for destruction.  We're fresh out of missiles
and nukes, I'm afraid," Hassan said sarcastically, appearing behind me.  It
seemed to be his responsibility to escort us through the plane's armory,
just a small closet, really, but well stocked.  "We do have a shotgun or
two.  Over here on the top shelf."

"You don't need it," Sam told me.  "Werewolves are easy prey for us angels.
This should be a simple extraction, nothing more."

"But this is the motherfucking king of the beasts we're going for.  He must
have some real brawn."

"I have a little brawn of my own," Sam said, playfully flexing a bicep.
"I'm not expecting much of a challenge here.  Pack light."

"Ooo, body armor," I snapped up a black vest from another shelf, started to
strap it on.

"Leave it," Sam said.  "Wolves never use guns."

"But it'll protect me from knife wounds too."

"We'll be flying, and it's London, and it's the dead of winter.  I don't
need my Delector suffering from hypothermia because some body armor was
getting in between our bodies.  Next time we fight in a warm climate, I
promise you can bring some body armor if you still have the urge to."

"Fine," I said, setting the armor back down angrily.

The plane intercom cracked to life.  "We're right over the city now," said
the captain's voice.

"We'd better get going," Sam said, leaving the armory and walking to the
back of the plane.

"You know which airfield to find us?" Hassan asked him.

"I do."

"May God bless you, then."

"Get on," Sam told me.  Although shirtless, he still had not let out his
wings.

I strapped a backpack on and jumped upon Sam's back.  "Tell me again why
we're not just taking a taxi in from the airfield?"

"Because that isn't nearly as fun as jumping out of a moving plane."

"Damn straight," I said, clutching his neck and rubbing my bare chest
against the warm skin of his back.  "Let's rock and roll."

Hassan stepped back into the doorway and held on tight to a steel
handlebar.  "Opening cargo hatch now!" he yelled.

With a whir, the thing opened, and all sound was drowned out by the rush of
the wind.  I shut my eyes against it.

I felt Sam take two running steps towards the hatch, and then my stomach
lurched as we started to fall.  I clutched Sam harder as my body cried out
for any stability it could find in this freefall.

Opening my eyes, the city lights came rushing frighteningly fast towards
us.

With a whoosh, Sam's wings came out, and slowed our descent to a
comfortable level.  I took a deep breath.  "Woo-hoo, that totally just
kicked my ass!" I shouted.  "I loved it!"

Sam's wings changed angles, and our downward velocity suddenly turned into
forward momentum as he shot through the air, coasting over the tops of the
buildings.

He was looking down as we flew at the streets below us as I imagined a hawk
hunts for a mouse.

"What the fuck are you looking for down there?" I asked.

"I'm trying to get a handle on the situation."

"Situation?"

"This city is a battlefield.  None of the people living in it know this,
but under the surface of normalcy two armies are at war."

"The wolves, and?"

"The blooddemons," Sam said.

"Right.  Blooddemons.  Whatever the fuck those are."

"Vampires.  Blood-feeders.  Whatever you want to call them."

"No shit?  There's vampires down there?"

"Vampires everywhere in that city.  And each and every one of them is
terribly dangerous."

"Okay," I said.  "So we got angels, vampires, and werewolves, isn't that
right?  Any other supernatural beings I should be worried about?  Goblins?
Elves?  Zombies?  The fucking Easter Bunny?"

Sam chuckled.  "No.  You've covered it."  He flew towards a more industrial
part of town.  "The demons have the wolves outnumbered here three to one,"
he said.  "And still, they are not winning this fight.  Wolves can sniff
out the demons with their unnatural sense of smell.  They can pick them out
of the masses, get the jump on them, kill them off one at a time.  The
demons have no such sense of smell.  They can only kill those who they've
already identified as wolves.  And so, the wolves here spend most of their
time hiding in their lair.  A lair that the demons have been searching for,
searching for a great deal of time.  Still, they cannot find it.  It's too
well concealed."

He started to swoop downwards.  "If only the demons had the psychic
faculties of an angel," he added.  "The wolves would be long dead by now."

We landed in a black city street along two unremarkable looking warehouses.
Half-melted snow was piled up along the building's edge, and the pavement
was wet and slick as I stepped onto it.

Sam grabbed onto my arm.  "Whatever happens, keep a hold of me," he urged.
"I'm cloaking the both of us."

Regardless, there was fucking snow on the ground here, and I was shirtless.
You can bet I kept Sam close.

We had been alone on that empty street, but then a man in a beanie came
around the corner, walking our way, his breath willowing out into the cold
night air.  I gathered by the way Sam was watching him that he was of some
significance to us.

The man strolled leisurely on the sidewalk, his hands in the front pocket
of his hooded sweatshirt.  Suddenly, he stopped at the front door of the
warehouse that was across the street from us.

He looked up and down the street, just to be sure.

"Nope, nobody's here, dude," I said.  "You're totally alone."

He spun around, entered a code into the keypad, looked nervously around him
again, and then opened the door.

"Let's move!" Sam said, pulling me at a run towards the door.  Sam caught
it before it shut again and pulled it ajar.

As soon as we were in, the man in front of us spun around, looking at the
open door quizzically.  Sam and I jumped to the side as he walked right at
us, grabbing the door, and pulled it firmly shut.

Satisfied, the man walked into the open space of the empty warehouse,
towards an old van.  I thought he was going to get in the car, but instead
he bent down in front of it and scooted himself underneath.

"We're following him," Sam said.  "You first."

I got on my hands and knees and crawled under the vehicle, and I felt Sam's
hand tightly around my wrist as he followed me.

The man had slipped into a manhole.  He was climbing down a ladder into
some dark underground passage.

When he had reached the bottom and walked out of sight, I stepped onto the
rungs of the ladder and climbed down.

We ended up in an underground complex that looked to me like some kind of
old, ruined bomb shelter.  Sam seemed to know his way around the place
intuitively--he was dragging me around, turning here and there in the
passages.

Men were everywhere down here.  Dozens of them walking around, gathering in
dingy little rooms, chatting, laughing.

"The wolves," Sam said.  "Always festering in the dirt and grime.  What a
sad lot they are."

Sam soon caught us up with the wolf who had let us in the door.  He came to
a shut door and knocked.  "Hadrian," he said, in a thick English accent.
"It's Mark.  Open up."

After a moment, the steel door clanked as it presumably was being unlocked,
and then swung open.  A lithe, scruffy middle-aged man with long greasy
grey locks and yellowed teeth appeared from the inside.  "Come on in," he
said, his bug-eyes looking over the other, younger wolf.  "Lemme getcha a
drink."

"That's our man," Sam told me as he pulled me through the door behind this
Mark before it shut again.  "Their leader."

That much was obvious by the luxuriousness of his bedroom.  It was criminal
how much of a difference this room was to the rest of the wolves' lair.  I
wondered how this man had ruled over all these others and not been yet
overthrown.

"Because he's so damn strong," Sam said.

"He doesn't look that strong to me," I said.  "Skinny compared to you."

"Looks mean nothing.  He is a very old wolf, and very old wolves get very
strong.  Physically he is much, much stronger than myself.  And a very
clever man as well, if not at all formally educated.  He is also terribly
cruel.  He's killed many, many innocents."

"Well then, let's get the bastard!"

"Wait."

"How'd you do tonight?" Hadrian asked as he brought Mark a scotch on the
rocks that was mostly all rocks.  The guy was stingy with his liquor.

"Killed three of `em," Mark said.  "I look for the ones who are alone.
Then, I strike."

"They lose their strength when they separate," Hadrian said.  "Four every
one of my boys they get, we nab four of them.  You know what that is
called, Mark?  Attrition.  We chip away at their numbers bit by bit.  Soon
enough, every last vampire will be cleaned out of our city."

"Are you going up tonight?"

"I'll go up later on," he said.  "Can't let you have all the fun.  Now,
leave me be."  Hadrian grabbed the half-drunken glass of scotch from the
other wolf and opened up his door.  Just like that, he was apparently done
with his company.

After Mark left, Hadrian locked the door behind him.  He sniffed at the
scotch and downed the rest of it himself in one large gulp.  "Cheap,
watered down shit," he said before tossing the ice in the sink and filling
himself another glass of a better brand of scotch, straight.

"What are we waiting for, Sam?" I asked.  "It's just him and us.  Let's do
this!"

"No," Sam said.  "Down here we have a disadvantage.  We wait until he goes
up to the surface, then we attack."

The wolf sat down at his couch and started turned on the TV.  Some inane
British show was on.

"How long is that gonna take?" I asked.  "The guy's not even dressed."

"It might take a while.  But he will go outside tonight, there is no doubt
in my mind."

After another few minutes of waiting, I sighed angrily and slumped down
against the wall, making sure to hold onto Sam the whole time.

Time passed, and still no sign that the motherfucker was going anywhere.
He watched TV for an interminable amount of time, picking at the dirt under
his gnarly fingernails.  He went on his computer doing God-knows-what.  He
lit up a cigar, pulled all the darts off of his dartboard, and started to
toss them.  He got bullseye everytime.

"This dude's never leaving this room," I complained.  "I mean, shit, he's
got a kitchen, a huge fucking bathroom, he's got everything.  Why would he
ever leave?"

"He'll leave," Sam assured me.  "It might take all night, but he'll go."

"All night, huh?  Why don't we just pull him outta here ourselves, Sam?"

"He is too strong."

"Too strong?" I asked.  "I thought wolves weren't shit compared to angels?"

"That might be so, but only if the angel has the capability of flight.  In
closed spaces any fight becomes much more difficult."

"But you can still read minds, right?" I asked.  "Know what he's going to
do before he does it?"

"Yes, but he is still much stronger than I am.  One miscalculation on my
part could be the end."

"So, what is the jackass thinking about right now?"

Sam raised an eyebrow and let his eyes pierce the scruffy wolf standing not
six feet from our spot on the wall.  "He's planning ahead for the full
moon."

"What happens then?"

"The feast of the wolves.  They must eat human flesh or perish."

"They have to eat a person?  No shit?"

"A living person.  As this den's leader, it's his responsibility to make
sure that enough poor souls are dragged in here before the moon's full.  He
has a large pack to feed.  He's about to tell his men to start keeping an
eye out on the streets for people who wouldn't be missed.  Whose
disappearances wouldn't be noticed.  These people will be brought here and
eaten alive."

I shook my head.  "That's totally fucked up," I said.  "Those people who
wouldn't be missed--that could have been me.  If you hadn't intervened, I
probably would have been on some street somewhere.  Wolf fodder."

A surge of anger flushed my face as I stared down this ugly son-of-a-bitch
with the permanent smug look on his face.  If he only knew we were in here,
waiting to kill him.  If he only knew I was pointing my loaded gun right at
his face.

"Bradley, what on earth are you doing?"

I lined up my sight and fingered the trigger.  "Better pull that sword out
now," I told Sam.

"Bradley, no!"

I didn't heard him, but I didn't care.  I squeezed my finger.  BANG!

One second he was aiming a dart at the dartboard, the next he's reeling
backwards, screaming in agony, blood pouring down his face.  I had hit him
right in the nose.

"Fuck!  Fuck!" Sam was shouting.  "Jesus, I should have known better than
to trust you with a firearm!"

"What are you waiting for?" I yelled at Sam.  "I've stunned him, but it
won't last long!  Kill him now!"

"We aren't trying to kill him, have you forgotten?  The Seraphim want him
alive!"

"Shit, that's right.  What a stupid request.  The dude's a fucking
werewolf, we should kill him now when we can, not wait until
fuck-knows-when."

The wolf's bloody fingers pulled the bullet out of his face and dropped it
to the floor.  "Who are you?" he screamed, his bloody eyes looking back
between me and Sam.

Obviously, he could see through Sam's cloaking now.  No matter, I was ready
to take him on.

Sam tightened his grip on my arm to a painful level.  "Stay perfectly
still," he said.  "He still might forget that we were here."

"I wouldn't fucking bet on it," the wolf snarled.  Then he started to
transform like the other one had in the Ensis.  His clothes ripped to
shreds as the beast came out to play, hitting his canine head on the top of
the ceiling.

"Nope, looks like he's not gonna forget," Sam said regretfully, letting my
arm go and pulling out his sword.  "You stay back and out of the way."

"But, I can help!"

"Back!" Sam shouted.

I resentfully stepped back against the wall as the furry creature snarled
and lunged his dripping teeth towards Sam's left arm, snapping his jaws
shut with an almost metallic clank.  But the trap had sprung onto nothing
but empty air; Sam had moved his left arm deftly out of the way before the
wolf could strike.

Their fight continued along these lines.  For every offensive move the wolf
made, however powerfully impressive his attacks were, Sam was light on his
feet and always one step ahead of him.  When the wolf swung at Sam's left
side, Sam jumped to the right and stabbed the wolf in the shoulder.  When
the wolf tried to bite Sam's face, Sam ducked and stabbed the creature in
the abdomen.

"I don't know why you were complaining earlier.  This is obviously a
breeze," I said, as Sam again dodged the wolf's moves with dizzying speed
and took more blood with his sword.

The wolf redirected his monstrous, canine eyes at me and growled viciously.

"Brad, watch it!" Sam yelled at me.

The wolf grabbed a dart from a tabletop and slung it my way with a
trajectory that would plunge it right into my throat.  I didn't have enough
time to move out of the way.  All I could do was raise my arm in a
defensive gesture.

Next thing I knew the dart was imbedded an inch deep into my forearm.
"Jesus fuck!" I cried out, shaking my arm instinctively from the pain.

I looked over at Sam.  He was turned towards me, his face twisted with
anxiety.  He was so concerned for me that he had unwittingly let his guard
down, only for a moment.  Only a moment was enough for the wolf to sneak up
behind him.

I didn't even have to shout out a warning to him.  Whether he realized what
was happening from my mind or the wolf's, I never knew, but Sam quickly
spun around to face the beast once more.

Turned around just in time to have a 50-inch television swung right into
his head.

Sam fell backwards onto the floor, the TV falling with him, crushing his
head to the ground.  Panic overtook me; was he dead?  Was that enough to
kill him?

No, he was moving, already pushing the TV off of himself.

In the meantime, the wolf was looking once more at me with those hungry
eyes.  Now there was no one to stop him, he seemed to tell me.

I pulled out my gun and lined his head up in the sight.  The wolf made a
little laughing grunt and backed towards one of his closets.

Sam shakily got back to his feet, wiping the blood and debris off of his
face.  He retrieved his sword from the ground and turned his attention back
towards the monster.

The creature did something then that I certainly could not have
anticipated; he opened the closet and ran inside.

Sam broke out into a sudden sprint towards the closet before I even
understood what his concern was.

I heard the loud clank of a metal door shutting.

"No..."

I followed Sam into the closet.  In the back of the storage space was a
large metal door that led to god-knows-where.  Sam was already trying to
pry it open, with no luck.

"What is that, a panic room or something?" I asked.

"Precisely," Sam replied.  "Damn!"  He gave up on trying to break into it,
grabbed my arm, and pulled me towards the exit.

"What, are we just gonna give up now that he's hiding in his closet?" I
asked.

"He won't come out of there, and there's no way in."

"He has to come out sometime, doesn't he?"

"He has enough food and water in there to last him a couple of days," Sam
told me as he opened the bedroom door and pulled me into the labyrinth of
the wolf den.

With a crackle, Hadrian's gravelly voice chimed through on the den
intercom.  "Wake up boys.  We have two intruders in the den.  A bat and the
new gifted.  Find them and kill them, or let yourself be eviscerated one by
one."

"I think we've worn out our welcome," Sam said, pulling me through the
passages.

A group of wolves came charging around the corner in front of us.  Sam and
I just barely had enough time to plaster ourselves flat against the wall
and out of their way.  One of them brushed by us on his way by, but didn't
seem to notice us.

"Let's depart from here before one of them happens to run into us."

A moment later we were back in the quiet street, back in the snow.  Sam
looked uncharacteristically angry.  "How's your arm?" he said quickly.
"Let me see it."

I looked at the tiny red dot where the dart had pierced my flesh.  It
didn't look anymore serious than a pinprick, even if there was a dull ache
beneath the skin that would not go away.

"It's fine," I said, pulling my arm back away from Sam as he moved to grab
it.

"I can help it.  Stop the pain."

"I don't need it," I said.  "I'm no pussy.  It's no serious wound, just a
dart needle in the arm.  You didn't have to freak out about it back there.
You do get that that's what the wolf was trying to do, distract you by
hurting me so he could make his move.  You played right into his hands,
didn't you?  Otherwise we would have won that fight."

"Forgive me for showing some compassion for a friend in danger," Sam said
sarcastically.  "Only someone as narcissistic as yourself would find a way
to blame what just transpired on me.  I implored you not to shoot your gun
at him.  And yet, you did anyway.  Defied me directly.  Your Domno.  Are
you even able to understand how serious your offense was just then?"

"So I defied one little command of yours.  Big fucking deal."

"A more rigid Domno than myself would kill you for that simple betrayal."

"Is that a threat, Sam?" I challenged.  "You wouldn't kill me over this."

"Of course not," he said.

"Because that Seraph dude said that he wanted me alive."

Suddenly he looked wounded.  "Is that why you think I wouldn't kill you?
Because I fear some retribution from my higher-ups?"  I didn't respond, and
he shook his head sadly.  "You've spent your whole life cocooning yourself
in manipulations and collusions that now everything you see is through that
vile filter.  You cannot believe my actions to be completely selfless only
because your own actions are never this way."

"Fine.  You're mother fucking Theresa.  I'll give you that.  What do you
expect me to do differently?

"I expect you to follow my instructions as any other Delector would gladly
do."

I shook my head.  "I'm sick of doing that.  That's not the way I've lived
my life.  Most of the time there was always somebody following me,
listening to me.  Even when I was alone, I never let myself be nobody's
bitch.  I made my own rules."

"What about when you were in the Marines?" he asked me.  "Didn't you follow
orders then?"

"Yeah, but only because I knew that it was a way to the top.  I figured for
every crappy order I was forced to follow, I'd deal out five of my own when
my time came.  Now, there's no improvement from what I am.  No way to earn
more authority.  I'll always be your little bitch boy, and that's the best
I can fucking attain."

"Nobody has forced this on you.  You begged me to give you what I gave
you!"

"I didn't know that it would mean forever."

"I told you!"

"You told me, but I never really thought about it, okay?"

"Well, I sympathize with your sense of impotence Bradley, really I do.
But, you claim to be a natural leader, a good-decision maker.  Use some
good judgment here.  We are dealing with opponents you have very little
experience with.  I have been fighting these creatures for several of your
lifetimes.  Doesn't it seem reasonable that I would know better what
decisions to make than you?"

I gritted my teeth.  "Yeah, I guess so."

"Then please, follow your vows and listen to me.  Listen to me so that we
may be victorious."

"Alright, fine," I said, shivering.  "I'm listening.  What do we do now?"

Sam grabbed my backpack and fished out one of my jackets, tossing it to me.
"Put that on."

I put on the coat and felt warmer instantly.  Sam put on his black
trenchcoat, left open over his shirtless chest, and his Mr. Cool sunglasses
which he always wore in the middle of the fucking night.  He pulled out a
cigarette and lit it with his Zippo.  "Hadrian won't come out on his own.
Not tonight, anyhow.  Luckily, I always have a plan B.  Follow me."  He
started to walk down the street, into the wind.

I started to follow behind, at first stepping in the footprints he left in
the snow because it was easier to walk that way, then angrily shifting,
defiantly making my own footprints in the snow.  "Where are we going?" I
asked.

"To find the blooddemons."

*****

"There's one, ten o' clock."  Sam nodded in the direction of a devilishly
handsome, clean-cut man in a dark designer suit.  He was standing erect on
the sidewalk in front of the edge of a park, just staring blankly ahead of
him.  "Don't even think about making even the slightest hint of an
aggressive gesture here, Bradley.  These things are tough.  Much more
formidable than any old werewolf.  You start a fight with one of these guys
and both of us will likely end up dead."

"Okay, be a pacifist, got it."

I followed Sam as he walked up to the man with the blank stare.  The dude
must have really been lost in some sort of daydream, cause even as we
walked close up to the guy his eyes just floated out in space, right past
us.

"I know what you are," Sam said to the man.

Finally his eyes refocused on the face of the man standing just a few feet
from him.  He smiled sinisterly.  "Yeah?" he said in a perfect American
accent.  "You wanna take a good whiff of my dick just to be sure, pooch?"

"I'm no wolf."

The man's smile faded briefly as the man looked confusedly up and down
Sam's body.  Then his arrogant self-assuredness returned.  "Ah, an angel.
I should have known, pretty boy.  Why are you talking to me?  Shouldn't you
be running for your life?  Or maybe you have a death wish that needs
fulfilling."

"I'm not here to fight with you," Sam said.

"Clearly."

"I want to make you a deal."

The man raised his eyebrow.  "Oh?  Are angels allowed to make deals with
the devil?  Spill it."

"I know where the wolves live.  I can take you and your brothers right into
it.  I know you've been searching for it for weeks."

The man kept his cool, but I could tell he was interested in the offer.
"And in return?  How about I just let you live beyond this night?"

Sam shook his head.  "Not good enough.  In return I want the wolf's leader.
Alive."

He smiled.  "Oh, well, you see... he is far too dangerous to be left in the
living."

"We angels will kill him, let me assure you," Sam said.

He cocked his head slightly.  "What do you want with him?"

"We want to offer him as a sacrifice to our Heavenly Father."

He looked at Sam in the eye for a good long moment.  "Fine," he said.
"Sounds like a fine trade.  We kill all the other wolves, and you get to
kill their leader as you please."

"And, of course, my friend and I want the assurance of you and your
brothers that we will be safe."

"Done," said the man.  "Killing you, however fun it may be, is of no
strategic importance to me at all."

"Good," Sam said, giving the man his hand.

The demon shook it.  The deal was made.

*****

Back again in the dark passages of the wolf den, only this time we came
with backup.  Three dozen of those demons in black suits descended upon the
place at once, breaking down doors and forcing their way in.  Without even
a word or a gesture to one another, they operating together seamlessly and
efficiently, the kind of collaboration that the Marines only dreamed of.
It made me wonder if, like the angels, these demons were psychically
communicating with each other.  It was the only explanation that made any
sense, as together they cut into the wolf lair with surgical precision.

The demons were of all different ethnic backgrounds, but somehow all looked
vaguely the same.  I thought at first it was because they were all dressed
alike.  But it was more than that.  It was as if they all shared the same
father.

"Yes," Sam said, reading my mind again.  I hated when he did that.  "They
do share the same father.  The Devil."

Whether or not they were the spawn of Satan, they certainly were cool to
watch in action.  All of them had swords, not the large medieval kind that
was sheathed under Sam's black coat, but curved, skinny, Japanese-style
ninja swords.  They swarmed through the catacombs, efficiently dispatching
the shocked wolves in groups; quickly surrounding one at a time, all but
one demon stabbing their torsos with their blades, holding them in place,
impaled, while the last demon quickly lopped off their heads.

Even though they moved quietly, the wolves at some point caught on to the
attack.  Instead of shaggy, dirty men, they started appearing in their
monster forms, which was infinitely more intimidating.  The demons had much
more difficulty defeating the creatures in this form.

A lone scout demon that Sam and I had been following through a yet
unexplored corridor was taken completely by surprise as a werewolf jumped
out of the shadows and pounced upon the poor bastard.  The demon tried to
fight back, but seemed grossly outmatched.

"The demons aren't really that strong, are they?" I asked Sam as the
werewolf chewed out the demon's throat.

"Not in the eyes of the wolves, who can easily dispatch the demons with
just their incredible brute strength.  But don't be foolish enough to
underestimate the demons."

We rejoined the larger group of demons, Sam's hand permanently clamped upon
my wrist, cloaking me, eagerly keeping me safe.  He pulled me back, away
from the carnage.  But I envied these demons.  By this time, all of their
swords were dripping with wolf blood.  And Sam and I were just hiding in
the shadows like cowards.  I wanted so fucking bad to do some damage.  I
tentatively reached for my gun.

"No," Sam chided me.  "Let the demons dirty their hands here.  Don't get
involved."

I pulled my hand away from my gun then, annoyed as fuck at stiff and stodgy
old Sam.

But when a demon practically landed at my feet, one of those wolf
motherfuckers baring its teeth and making for the demon's throat, something
snapped in me.  Maybe it was the fear of the wolves that I had haunted me
ever since that big black one nearly killed me in LA.  Or maybe it was just
that unbearable sense of impotence, that I had been programmed into a
killing machine in the Marines but never once got to taste the blood of
combat.  The frustration that I was nothing more than the bitch of an angel
who would not let me fire my gun, just this once, just for fun, just to
hear the sound of it, to feel it snap in my hands like a beast that was
under my control, to see the bullets tear through the flesh, to see the
blood drip onto the floor.

I pulled my wrist away from Sam, pulled out my gun, and shot at the wolf in
front of me, once, twice, three times, the gunshots ringing in my ears,
drowning out the sounds of my screaming, not the screams of a victim in
pain, but the primal instinct of a killer bringing down the beast.  I
unloaded that gun, and it was more satisfying than any orgasm could have
ever been, even one heightened by all the magic of an angel.

I didn't kill the wolf, but I stopped it in its tracks, I spilled its blood
all over the floor, the walls.  It was enough to save the life of the
demon, who used the distraction to his advantage, slicing the wolf's head
off and charging forward down the corridor without even a backwards glance
towards me, a nod of thanks, a gesture of gratitude or even
acknowledgement.

And then the orgasm was over, my bullets gone and spent, spilled all over
the floor, my clip empty.  My quickened heart slowed its pace.

"I told you not to bloody your hands," Sam said, his voice cracking through
the ringing in my ears like the voice of my own conscience.

"No," I said.  "This wasn't wrong.  It wasn't bad.  I helped kill a fucking
werewolf, after all.  You've done the same."

"Never have I killed with such gleeful abandon.  An angel does not enjoy
killing.  Not ever, not even to a creature who has caused us great injury.
We do it because it must be done.  Not because they very act gives us a
fucking hardon."

"Well, I'm sorry.  I guess that's why you're the angel, and I'm just your
lowly, fuckup Delector."

"Self-pity is unbecoming on you, my friend.  Come."

With his hand more firmly around my wrist than ever, Sam led me through the
passages littered with bloody corpses until we were back in Hadrian's
quarters, along with all the still living demons left in the den.  They
were working on the door in the closet.  Apparently Hadrian was the only
wolf left alive in the place.

All of them backed away from the closet at once, and one of them hit a
button on a remote detonator.  Inside, where the metal door was, an
explosion lit up the darkness, rendering the door no longer an obstacle.

"They have explosives," I told Sam.  "Why the fuck don't we have any
explosives?"

He didn't answer me, and those sunglasses made it impossible to read his
eyes.  I figured he was still mad at me.

Before the smoke cleared, Hadrian came, still in his werewolf form,
thrashing and ripping at any demon in sight.  In a matter of seconds he had
killed three of them.

"Bring him outside," Sam told the demons.  He pulled me by the arm out of
the room, out of the den, out of the building, until we were back on the
snowy street.  He pulled his jacket off until he was shirtless again, and
told me to do the same.  "Get on my back and get ready," he said as his
wings came out of his back.

Already starting to shiver in the snow, I grabbed onto his back without any
hesitation.  Both of us kept our eyes on the door of that warehouse.

The sounds came first.  Growling and snarling, the sickening crunch of
bones ripping in half.  Then the wolf was pushed out of the door from
inside.  He was still putting up a fight, still disposing of the demons
that attacked him.  He looked completely unhurt and madder than ever.

"They're not strong enough to kill him, are they?"

"Let's show them how to handle a wolf," Sam said, running all of the sudden
towards the beast as I clutched harder onto him, pulling my dragging feet
up.

Sam grabbed the thing from behind, and even though the monster was so much
larger than himself, he easily pulled it into the air as he took flight.

Hadrian growled, snapped, and struggled as we ascended, but Sam's grip was
like steel.  "Calm down," he said to the wolf.

Hadrian responded by biting hard into the arm of his captor.

"Ouch," Sam said in a deadpan tone that showed no sign of actual pain.  His
grip would not falter, even as the beast's teeth tore all the way down to
his bone.  "Stop the biting and the struggling, or I shall let you go, and
you will fall to your death."  We were now at least a hundred feet up.

I thought for sure that would convince the wolf.  Certainly it would have
been enough to stop the other wolf, Cougar, from resisting.  But this wolf
was obviously made of something stronger.  He bit and struggled more than
ever.

"I'm not one to make an empty threat, Sir," Sam said, sighing impatiently.

He let go of the monster.  He tried at first to hold onto Sam's arm with
his teeth, but his weight proved too much for him and he fell quickly down.

He landed with a thud on the snowy street below.  I looked down eagerly.
The monster was no longer moving.

"Nice one," I said.

Sam swooped down to the ground once more.  By the time we got to him, the
monster had already transformed into a man.

"Is he dead?" I asked hopefully.

"Thankfully not," Sam said, checking the naked man for a pulse.  He removed
one of those metal collars from our pack and put it around the man's neck.
He picked up the man again and once more we took off.

"And that is how an angel captures the strongest of all the wolves," Sam
told me.  "If I had wanted to kill him, I would have simply dropped him
from a taller height.  Simple."

He turned in direction towards the airfield, where we knew our plane would
be waiting, along with a metal cage for the filthy animal in Sam's
clutches.

We had accomplished our goal.

*****

"The wolf that you have brought to us is sufficiently strong to meet our
designs," the Seraph said, looking down at Sam from his familiar perch.
"You have performed admirably."

"Thank you, my liege."

"But this is only half of what we must ask of you.  Our second request is
far more difficult to come by: just as you have captured one of the
strongest of all the wolves, still you must bring us one of the strongest
of all the blooddemons."

"The demons, my liege?" Sam asked with notable surprise.

"Yes.  We need to be certain of the creature's strength.  You must not
bring us one of the clouded minds.  We need clarity.  You know what this
means."

"Yes, my liege, but how will I--"

"We will have our Thrones take you to South Africa.  We know there the
location of the demon headquarters.  The center of the hive.  If there is
any place where the clear-minded ones still lurk, it is there.  Find a
sufficiently strong one, defeat it somehow, and deliver it back to us.  May
God be with you.  For this, you will need all of His blessings."

*****

The plane shook back and forth in the night.  I gripped tightly onto one of
the shelves of the armory closet, thanking God that I was never prone to
motion sickness.  It had been a rough ride ever since we got to Africa.

"Twenty minutes or so before we reach the drop off point," Hassan told us,
leaving us alone as soon as the message was delivered, off to do whatever
the hell he does.

"You need to know what we're going up against," Sam told me.

"The demons," I said.

"The blooddemons."

"Right," I said.  "The blooddemons.  The vampires."

"Yes.  They feed on blood to survive.  They have retractable fangs that
they use to bite into their victim's flesh."

"Well, shit," I said, putting down the handgun I had just picked off the
shelf.  "I won't be needing this.  Where's the shelf with the garlic,
crucifixes, and wooden stakes?"

"Believe me, none of those will help us here."

"Fuck.  Fucking vampires.  Dracula spawns.  Un-fucking-believable."

"Believe it.  We absolutely cannot mess this one up."

"I don't like the way you looked at me when you said that!"

"Any misstep on your part and both of us will be dead."

I rolled my eyes.  "I don't know why you think this should be anymore
difficult that fighting the wolves.  The vampires were nowhere near as
strong as the wolves.  It took twice as many vampires to clean out that den
as there were wolves.  And Hadrian wasn't that difficult for you to take
on."

"Just because I had my wings," Sam reminded me.

"Even before that, when you fought him one on one inside the den.  You
would have beat him if you hadn't gone all worried-like when he threw that
dart at me.  The vampires cannot be stronger than the wolves."

He nodded.  "You are right.  They are not stronger, at least physically.
But the only reason I had an advantage over that wolf was because I could
read his mind.  I knew what his next move was going to be a split second
before he himself knew.  With the vampires, that advantage is null.
Vampires have an inherent protection against psychic intrusions.  An angel
can only procure the most basic psychic information from them: that they
are presently nearby, that they are a vampire and not a man, that they are
weak or strong, if they are hurt or healthy.  All else is kept in secrecy
from us."  He paused, seemingly wanting his words to sink in.  "And worse
yet, cloaking does not work against vampires.  It is as useless for me to
cloak from a demon as it would be to try and cloak from you.  They see
right through it.  It is impossible for us to hide from them."

"Shit.  And you said these vampires are everywhere, right?  All over the
world?"

"That's right.  The number of vampires on this planet vastly outnumbers
those of the angel flock."

"So, what happens when you meet one on the street?  Do you two start
brawling?"

"Before, it was always possible to know a vampire was nearby, and move out
of their way.  Now, that is not always so.  Now, when I see one, I try to
blend into the crowd.  They have no extra-sensory abilities.  They can only
guess at who is a man and who is not."

"What do you mean?  What's different about now?"

"Now," he said ominously.  "Now the vampires have begun to change.  They
have become what we angels have called "clouded."  Meaning, they have
become completely immune to psychic detection at all.  We cannot tell the
weak from the strong, or even detect the psychic presence of a vampire at
all.  It is as if they aren't even there, as if they are ghosts moving
among the living."

"The vampires in London.  Were they clouded or not?"

"Clouded.  Only recently did the clouded vampires start appearing, but very
quickly, almost every vampire in existence became this way."

"But then, if those vampires were clouded, how did you know that they were
vampires in the first place?"

"I can detect men and all of men's cousins psychically.  Every man, woman,
and child.  Every wolf.  Every angel and the non-clouded demons.  Even you.
So, if I can see a man, if I can hear a man, and yet I can detect no
psychic signature of this man at all, then there is nothing else he can be
but a clouded demon.  By process of elimination.

"The Seraphim will not accept a clouded demon, because it is impossible for
them to physically sense how strong the demon is.  That's why we are being
sent into their South African base.  Apparently, only here is where we will
find demons whose minds are still clear."

"Okay, so here's the gameplan," I said, holstering a combat knife to my
waist.  "We wait until one of these Dracula boys wanders out into the
open..."

"Well, that's a given."

"...and you swoop down and pick up the guy just like you did the wolf
bastard back in London.  Easy."

"Not easy," Sam said.  "I try that ill-formed strategy and you and I will
end up falling to our deaths.  You do that to a demon and you can count on
them biting you.  And a demon is venomous.  I'd be out cold in a second or
two, and if I'm not conscious, I can't fly so good.  Maybe I would survive
the fall, but there's no way you would.  Splat, you get the picture?"

"Yeah, I get it.  So what's your genius plan?"

"We pull him off the ground without ever getting close enough for him to
bite."  Sam pulled a large harpoon gun that I hadn't noticed before off the
shelf and stuck it into our pack.  "I'll spear him, then pull him into the
air with forty feet of chain between us.  It's the only way to go."

Hassan popped his head into the room.  "We're ready to drop you."

"We're ready to be dropped," Sam said, checking his sword at his hip as I
slung the backpack's straps over my shoulders.

Next thing I knew we were free-falling again into a dark landscape, the
wind coming at me so fast that I had to clamp my eyes shut.  I opened them
again when I heard the heavy beats of Sam's wings, and felt the tug of
motion pulling me against gravity.

Beneath us was a brown, rugged landscape, sporadically covered with dark
trees.  In the distance was the only visible light: a large compound or
estate of some kind, and that was where Sam was gliding to.

As we closed in on it, I realized it was an estate of incredible size and
beauty.  It looked to me like a resort hotel, with its swimming pools,
gardens, and rows of parked cars, but with a protective wall around it that
seemed more appropriate surrounding a prison.

"That's it," Sam said.  "The center of hell.  It looks so benign from
here."  He swooped closer.  "There's guards all over the walls," he said.

"Are they human?"

"No, their minds are clouded.  Demons.  I imagine there are many hundreds
of these demons inside the walls of this palace.  There are men and women
in there as well."  He glided halfway around the perimeter of the place.
"In the whole place there are only two unclouded demon minds that I am
picking up.  One is deep underground, unmoving.  The other is walking
somewhere inside the compound."

"Are they strong?"

"Both of them are physcially strong, yes," Sam said.  "But the one in
motion is the stronger of the two.  Much stronger than any demon I have had
the misfortune of crossing paths with.  He is perfect.  But there is no way
we will ever survive an attempt to breach this fortress.  We must wait for
him to leave on his own."

"Great," I complained as Sam landed in the upper-branches of a distant
tree.  "How long until the dude leaves his home?"

"I have no way of knowing that he ever will," Sam said.  "Remember, I can't
read his thoughts."

"So, we could be sitting here all night basically," I said, pushing away a
treebranch that was scratching the back of my neck.

"Pretty much," Sam said, pulling his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.
As he lit it, his first puff of smoke surrounded my face.

"Jesus, is there anywhere you don't smoke?" I complained.

"Holy Christ," Sam said, putting out his cigarette.  "There's another
unclouded demon out there.  Didn't even register at first.  And, Christ
Brad, he's outside the complex, in the trees over there.  And I think he's
alone."

Sam lifted off out of the tree and started to fly away from the compound,
over the trees.

"Yes, he's alone, I'm quite certain of that.  And he's just as strong as
the one inside.  Stronger perhaps.  It's as if God is delivering him on a
platter.  But don't think there is any chance in hell that this will be an
easy fight."

"I can handle whatever kinda fight we have coming," I assured him.  "Let's
just get the motherfucker."

Sam glided gently towards the ground.  "I can't fly any closer, he'll hear
my wings," Sam said in a hushed voice.  "We'll sneak closer on foot."

His feet touched down, and I jumped off his back quickly.  The heavy metal
weapons inside my pack clanked and clamored as I landed.

"Quietly!" Sam scolded.

I grabbed onto the pack and stilled its insides into silence.

Sam was sneaking through the trees, moving steadily but without the
slightest hint of a sound.  I followed, moving as quietly as I could.

We stalked through the forest for quite some time, moving farther and
farther away from the compound.  I was tired of moving with stealth.  I
wanted to taste blood.

After what seemed like forever, Sam turned around and mouthed, "he's near,"
to me.  He had his hand upon the hilt of his sword.

With a whoosh and a blur, a figure fell down from the tree branches high
above and landed directly upon Sam, knocking him to the ground.

"Well, take a gander at what the lion dragged in."  It was the demon
attacking, I knew.  And as he started to punch Sam in the face, my first
instinct was to run towards him and pull him off my friend.

Sam must have heard my thoughts, because before he even tried to defend
himself, he yelled out to me, "Stay back!"  I knew that it would only take
the demon a second to kill me dead.  I listened, and I stayed back.

The demon continued his assault as Sam struggled underneath him.  "By
golly, has God answered my prayers and sent me an angel to help me?  Huh,
fuckface?"  He hit Sam's face hard with his fist.  "No, I don't think so.
No, I know why you come.  You come to kill me, that's all angels ever do!"
The demon had a down-home Texas accent.  In fact, his whole being suggested
Texan cowboy, a handsome Marlboro man, complete with the boots, the tight
jeans, the western shirt and the cowboy hat.  He seemed completely out of
place in remote Africa, but then again, a cowboy in Africa was certainly
not the strangest thing I had seen in recent weeks.

Over the demon's honky-tonk package was a façade that seemed more fitting
for Rambo.  Several different blades attached with straps to his thighs.
Just as many guns on his upper body.  Fuck, the dude even had grenades at
his hip.  This fucker was more ready for a fight than Sam and I were, that
was for damn sure.

"Why'd ya hafta go and attack me for?" the demon yelled as he hit Sam.
"Outta every vampire you could have gone for round here, you gotta pick me
outta the crowd, huh?  Just my fucking rotten luck."

With a roll, Sam pulled out from under the demon and was back on his feet
in an instant, his sword drawn, his eyes showing no sign of fear or anger,
just a cold resolve.

The demon laughed, pulling out a sword of his own.  "Guess I'll just hafta
kill ya.  Call it practice for the real thing.  One more angel squashed out
of life never did the world no harm, did it?"

Sam wasn't talking back.  The grip around his sword tightened, and he ran
with that incredible angel speed at the demon with the cocky half-smile.
The demon answered by raising his sword, and a swordfight began.

It was hard for me to see most of their fight.  It was dark, with the
tree-branches obstructing the moonlight, they were a good distance away
from me, and they moved at a blurred speed that was hard for me to keep
track of.  But more than occasionally, their blades would clang together in
an eruption of sparks, lighting up their bodies momentarily for me to see.

And it was clear that although Sam seemed incredibly strong and fast to my
eyes, the demon was faster and stronger.  It was a close fight between two
skilled fighters, but the demon had the natural advantage, and Sam was
suffering more and more wounds.

At one point, Sam tried to use his wings to fly backwards and give himself
some room to breathe, and that seemed at first to work.  But soon, I felt
that horrible internal pain, and I knew he felt it as well.  He was going
too far.  He came back down, the pain leaving my body, but the demon once
again on top of Sam.

Shit, the demon was going to win.  All because we had let ourselves be
surprised by him.  If only we had surprised the demon, then Sam could have
taken out the harpoon gun and...

The gun.

I zipped open the pack and pulled out the harpoon gun, the biggest weapon I
had at my disposal, and certainly the only one that I could possibly do any
damage with.

Shit, I had never shot a harpoon gun before, what if I misaimed or
something?  No, I could do this, it was simple, the demon wasn't even that
far away.

I aimed towards the two of them fighting, but they were moving so quickly
that I knew that I could easily hit Sam.

Of course, Sam knew that the second that I did.  He suddenly darted away,
running laterally from the demon.

At first the demon just stood there, pulling his hat tighter to his head.
"Don't tell me you're gonna make me hunt you down like some wild rabbit."

Before the demon could break into a run, I pulled the trigger of the gun.
A loud clank as the harpoon came pummeling forwards, myself falling
backwards on my ass from the force it all.

I heard the demon scream, and looked up with pleasure.  My aim had been
perfect; the harpoon had tore through the demon's torso, soaking his
western button-up with blood, and emerging through the other side of his
body.

"Damnit, boy!" the demon called out angrily as he tried to pull the harpoon
out of his chest.  But it was no use, the more he pulled, the more it
lodged into his flesh.  He yelled out in pain once more, then tugged hard
on the chain that was connected to the gun in my arms.  "Leggo, kid.  Let
the fuck go!"

"Yeah, fat chance, fucko," I said, holding onto the gun with all my
strength, and digging the heels of my shoes into the ground.

The demon yanked at the chain hard, and pulled me up off the ground onto my
feet.  But I still had the gun in my hands.  He pulled again, knocking me
flat against the ground.  But I still held on.

I held on as he started to drag me quickly over the ground, my face
scratching against the brush and getting knocked hard by the rocks.  I was
bloodied and bruised, but I still held on.

Finally the dragging stopped, and I looked up at the demon.  He was
mounting a bike of some sort, a dirt bike, the harpoon still lodged in his
body.  I heard the engine start.

I vowed not to let go.  He would likely drag me to my death on that bike,
but I wasn't going to let go.

He hit the bike full throttle, and the chain tightened between us.  I held
it tight against my body, and with a vicious yank that felt like it pulled
my in two, I started to drag.

A split second later, there were arms around my torso, Sam's arms.  He
pulled me off the miserable ground and into the frictionless sky.

"I've got you," he said to me.  "Whatever you do, hold onto the gun."

That I could do.  I locked my arms tighter than ever around the gun as Sam
wrapped both his legs and his arms around me.  We weren't gonna be
separated.

We soared high above the demon on the dirtbike, the chain pulling us along
with him at a speed faster than Sam could easily fly.  His wings weren't
beating, they were stiff, gliding forward as the chain pulled us along.

The demon looked back at us, dismayed at our staying power.  He began
making wild turns and sudden movements, each one causing the pair of us to
spin around violently, but I always held on, and Sam's wings never tired.

He pulled us into the trees, and I thought at first that we would be pulled
right into their branches while he drove by beneath us, but Sam deftly
swooped low off the ground and under the branches, dodging to the left and
right in order to avoid the trunks that the demon was pulling us around.

Then, the trees disappeared and we emerged in a flat clearing.  With the
help of the moonlight, I could see that the demon had made a major mistake.
There was a ravine up ahead, a cliff that led to what was at least a
few-hundred foot drop.  It was a dead end for him.

The demon pulled out a shotgun and aimed it back up at us.  I gasped for a
second as I figured that any bullet would likely hit me before Sam, as I
was in front .

The shotgun blasted, and I survived.  But we lurched downwards violently,
and I realized that Sam must have been hit.

"My wing," he said.  "He got my wing."

It was Sam's left wing, the white feathers red with blood and looking
broken and the right one flapping harder as he tried to compensate.

He was able to slow our descent enough so that we didn't hit the ground
hard enough to kill me, but he certainly could no longer fly with only one
good wing.

The demon stopped the bike.  Damn, we were standing just yards from the
edge of the cliff.  If only we had managed to hold out longer, the bike
would have gone right over, and we would have had our prize.

Now the demon was jumping off the bike and coming at us with a fury that
could only have come from someone who still had a harpoon through the
chest.

He threw me off of Sam and quickly forced the gun out of my hands, knocking
me hard in the throat, causing me to choke and cough.  But he didn't kill
me then, I don't know why he didn't just do it when he had an easy chance.
Instead, he knocked his sword a few times against the harpoon gun, finally
breaking the link between it and the chain.

I knew that was it.  That was the only chance in Hell we had of taking this
guy down, and now it was gone.

The demon looked around his shoulder at his back, his face in anguish, at
the harpoon ripping through the back of his bloody shirt.  He grabbed a
hold of it.

Sam attacked him then, not letting him remove the spearhead.  Sam's left
wing still bloody and useless, keeping him on the ground.  This time, the
demon had a harpoon through the chest, and that clearly handicapped his
every physical effort.  I could only imagine what kind of pain the creature
must have been in.

Even though Sam was fighting the demon hand to hand, he was starting to
win.  It was about fucking time.  I stopped coughing and stood back up to
watch, hoping I would get to see Sam kill the demon in good time.

Instead, I saw the demon do the most cheap, underhanded maneuver I had
seen.  He lashed out with his vampiric fangs and sunk them into the skin of
Sam's hand.  Just that one little move, and even though the demon had
started to be outgunned, the tables instantly turned for him.  Sam's eyes
fluttered for a moment, and then his whole form fell limp on the ground.
As easily as that, he was out.

With a painful grimace overtaking his face, the demon yanked the harpoon
out and away from his bleeding chest, pulling the chain all the way through
his body, one handful at a time, until it was completely out the other
side.  He threw down the chain angrily at Sam's motionless feet.

He looked down at Sam then, who was crumbled and defenseless beneath him.
I knew for certain that the demon wasn't likely to show any mercy for his
fallen foe.

This time, I had nothing up my sleeve.  No way to help.  Would I be forced
to watch him die?

The demon bent down and lifted Sam up into his arms.  He threw him towards
the cliff-edge, Sam's body sliding just feet away from the ravine.

No.

I ran towards them, not having any plan, but knowing I had to fight until
my death for my Domno.

"Birdies don't fly so good with broken wings," the demon was saying.  "I'll
see you in Hell, angel."  He kicked Sam with his cowboy boot, knocking him
off the edge of the cliff.

"No!" I shouted, running towards the cliff.

The demon spun around to face me.  "Boy, I'll let you live if you do
exactly as I say."

But the demon didn't get it.  As Sam began to fall, I could already feel
the pain hitting me on the inside.  Just a moment more and I'd be dead.

So I did the only thing I could.  I jumped off the cliff as well as the
demon shouted, "You crazy bastard!"

My stomach lurched as I started to fall.  But I was used to falling by now.
Sam was beneath me, following slower than normal because his right wing was
fluttering lifelessly in the wind.

I don't know how someone directs his fall, but I did it.  I directed it
towards Sam, and landed upon his back, grabbing onto my lifeless lover.  My
extra weight was enough to negate whatever effect the wing was having on
him before, and we plunged downwards as fast as possible.

"Wake up, Sam!" I shouted, shaking his body as furiously as I could.  The
ground was coming up quick.  "Wake up!"

Nothing.

Wake up!!

I squeezed my eyes shut.  If I was going to explode onto the ground, I
didn't want to look.

A gasp that wasn't my own, and arms squeezing me tight.  The frantic
beating of wings.

We slammed against the ground.  And it hurt like fuck.

But if I was still in pain, it meant I wasn't dead.

I opened my eyes, desperately trying to catch my breath after the wind had
been painfully knocked out of me.

Sam was lying on the ground beside me, looking into my eyes.  "You okay?"
he asked me.  "Nothing broken?"

"I don't think so," I said.  Then I reached over and punched him on the
shoulder.  "Don't ever scare me like that again, you dumb fuck!  I had to
jump off a fucking cliff after your ass!  I thought I was gonna end up a
puddle of flesh down here!  Almost gave me a friggin heart attack, fuck!"

"Alright," he said, pulling his injured wing around him and inspecting the
damage carefully with his fingers.  "Well, I think we may have lost that
fight."

"Yeah, no kidding.  Got our asses handed to us by a white trash cowboy
vampire, no less.  What now?  Back to the Seraphim empty handed?"

"Do you always give up so easily?  We try again, that's what we do."

I laughed.  "You can't be serious.  Dude, you got the shit knocked out of
you.  Look at your fucking wing."

"Give me a moment to recover," he said, sighing and lying back down on the
ground.

"And then what?  We go find Billy Ray Cyrus up there and let him finish the
job?"

"That's right," Sam said.  "Only no, we've lost our harpoon gun."

"Loads of good that did, by the way.  Brilliant fucking plan."

"It could have worked.  Just give my wing a few minutes.  Just a few
minutes and I'll be able to fly again.  We'll go a hunting again for the
cow-demon.  ."  With the blood all over his body, now starting to dry, and
his ripped clothing, it was hard to believe that in a few minutes he could
be good to go, but I knew enough to just trust him.

I took a deep breath and let my body relax as well.  His body, I knew,
would heal from most any injury.  Not me.  I'd be black and blue tomorrow
and sore as fuck.

Beside me, Sam lit up one of his cigarettes.

"I can't imagine any creature more powerful than the one we just fought," I
said.

Sam nodded gravely.  "What else would you expect from the Sons of Lucifer?"

"But Lucifer is just an angel, right?"

"He was once, yes.  No longer."

"If he's so terrible, and if God is all powerful, why doesn't he just kill
Lucifer?" I asked.  "And don't you tell me that it's all part of God's
crazy plan, or some bullshit like that."

"It's not a part of God's plan," Sam said.  "And the answer to your
question isn't easy for men of faith to hear.  The plain truth, and this is
where man has gotten it wrong for so long, the plain truth is that the
Almighty is not really thus.  Not all mighty, omnipotent, all knowing, all
seeing.  He is almost all of these things, but even he has his limits.
Although, don't ever doubt that he is a far greater power than any other in
existence.  And certainly the only all-benevolent, egoless being."

"So Lucifer was God's mistake then?"

"God's mistake was in his absolute trust with his angels.  Because he
himself would never be capable of betrayal, he could not envision that his
creations would be anything less.  Much to his disappointment, we were.

"Lucifer had been growing in arrogance and resentment for eons.  It was
before God made mankind that Lucifer betrayed him.  In the beginning, the
Lord made three planes; Earth, Heaven, and the third."

"Hell?"

"No.  Our God would never have conceived of something so evil.  No, God's
plan was simple for mankind.  All of those who did not commit Unforgivable
Sin would be forgiven of all of their other transgressions and accepted
into the Heavenly Kingdom with open arms."

"And those who did commit Unforgivable Sin?"

Sam blew out a billow of smoke.  "He would have not allowed into Heaven.
But he would have never been so cruel as to condemn them into an eternity
of punishment.  No, the sole purpose of God's punishment is to correct and
instruct, to make the individual stronger and better than before.  His
punishment is not simply to sadistically torture without the possibility of
forgiveness as a part of some sick revenge.  No, God did not create Hell.
Instead, he created the Void, an emptiness where all that he created could
be undone.  It was there he was planning to send those who were
unforgivable.  Their souls would simply cease to exist.  In this way, God
could always undo any of his creations that proved to be mistakes."

"So where the hell did Hell come from?" I asked.

"Patience!  Let me finish and you will know!  When Lucifer planned to
overthrow the Lord, when he started unsuccessfully trying to rally the rest
of the angels, the Lord realized what he was doing and realized, with great
pain, that Lucifer was a lost cause.  A mistake on his part.  So, he did
what he always did with his mistakes.  He erased him.  Lucifer was sent
into the void to be harmlessly undone.

"But something went wrong, probably do to Lucifer's cunning.  Somehow, as
God cast him out of Heaven, Lucifer stole some of the Lord's powers.
Irrevocably so.  When Lucifer was cast into the Void, instead of
disintegrating, he was able to use his powers to change the Void into his
own realm.  His kingdom of pain and evil.  This he called Hell.  And later,
after mankind was created, those guilty of Unforgivable Sin, instead of
disappearing into the Void, were sent to what the Void had become, and
would fall under the power of Satan."

"And then good ol' Satan fathered an army of vampire demons?  Why the hell
would he do that?"

"You have to understand that the more evil souls Satan collects in Hell,
the more his fortitude grows.  His aim is to become more powerful than God,
and then overthrow Heaven, the first Kingdom.  However, to accomplish that,
he must make more and more people commit Unforgivable Sin.  It was God's
practice to send us, the angels, down to earth to help lost souls turn back
to the side of good.  Even now that we are permanently tied to this realm,
our mission has not wavered.  Satan wanted to manipulate the actions of
mankind as well, towards evil of course.  To do so, he sired the demons.  A
demon is brought into this world in the same manner as an angel, only the
act is completely perverse.  After a human male exchanges blood with an
existing demon, a demon's presence is planted into the body of the man,
turning him forever towards Satan's agenda."

"Which is..."

"Mainly, to kill those who would only do good with their lives.  Satan
recognizes the loss of their souls to God, but gains the knowledge that
they won't help others who are less pure find their way into the light.  Us
angels try to protect mankind from the demons as much as we can.  But Satan
was an angel himself once.  He knows our every weakness, and designed his
demons to exploit those weaknesses.  The battle between angels and demons
was an unfair match-up from its very inception.  We angels are losing, and
we have neither the strength nor the numbers to turn things around.  I hate
to be pessimistic, but in all likelihood, the demons will kill the angels
sooner or later.  All of us.  For good."

"Whoa," I said.  "Heavy shit, man."

"Yeah, there are not many topics more serious than the fate of the
existence."

"But, there's still something I don't get."

"Which is?"

"Did Lucifer just create the demons out of nothing like God did the
angels?"

Sam shook his head.  "No.  He fathered them.  Hundreds of thousands of
them.  Yeah, dude's been busy."

"So, who's the mother?  Or maybe there wasn't a mother at all?  Maybe he
just pulled the demons out of his ass, huh?"

"No, there was most certainly a mother.  Lilith is her name.  Perhaps
you've heard of her?"

"Uh, that Lilith Fair chick?"

"No.  Even men know of Lilith.  Moses de Leon wrote about her, as did many
others.  Although her true history is only found within the Angel Bible."

"What kind of bible?"

"The Angel one, recorded by us angels and therefore immaculate and
completely accurate.  I encourage you to read it yourself.  It will open
many new realms of ideas to you.  Anyway, when God created mankind, he
first created two individuals."

"Adam and Eve, I know that much," I said, feeling good about myself.

"No.  Not Adam and Eve.  Adam and Lilith.  Lilith and Adam were made as
equals, with equal power bestowed on both of them.  But Lilith was a
mistake of God's.  She was problematic from the beginning.  Much too
headstrong, she refused to cooperate with Adam, who she looked down upon
for being simple-minded.  She refused to submit to him as her husband.  And
she refused to open herself to him sexually, which was disastrous, as she
was needed to propagate the species.  When she renounced her faith in God,
that was to be her last mistake.  God sent her to the Void, then yet
unaware that Lucifer had changed that realm into Hell, and created a new
wife for Adam.  Eve was made of Adam's flesh, and made to be less arrogant,
less strong, and more simple.  Even this new incarnation of woman managed
to be seduced by the snake, but she was much an improvement over her
predecessor.

"Lilith, meanwhile, instead of disintegrating into the void, became the
first being to be collected by Lucifer into Hell.  Having never encountered
the figure of a woman before, Lucifer was so beguiled by her that he made
her his queen, the Queen of Hell.  It was she who bore all of his hellish
offspring, and Lilith is a much loathed name among my kind, known for
visiting earth and tempting men into committing sin, usually through her
beautiful looks."  He looked down at his pack of cigarettes.  "And now I'm
out of my smokes, which means Sunday school is at an end for tonight."

He looked at his wing, which seemed to have mostly mended on its own.

"How ya feeling?" I asked him.  "Ready to go get another beating?"

He started to get to his feet.  "Still not at my full strength.  I think I
know what I need to revive me."

Smiling lewdly, he unbuckled my pants.  The guy was gonna blow me in the
middle of the African wilderness.  And I wasn't gonna complain.

*****

After he had swallowed another one of my loads, he was obviously completely
revitalized.  I got on his back and we took to the air one more time,
heading back in the direction of the demon fortress we had seen earlier.

"No sign at all of the cowboy demon," Sam told me.  "Must have run off
someplace.  Something tells me he won't be coming back around here.  Not
tonight, anyhow."

"So that's that, then?" I said.  "We're bruised, banged, and missing our
harpoon.  Let's find the plane and try again tomorrow night."

"No," Sam said.  "Look, there."  He pointed towards the fortress.

"Yeah, it's a big friggin building.  I saw it on our way in, remember?"

"No, there!"

I squinted, and could barely make out tiny figures leaving one of the side
doors of the fortress, several tiny dots in the distance, all piling into a
black limo.  A few seconds later the lights came on, and the limo began to
drive.

"Who's that taking a joyride?" I asked.

"A group of four.  Only one is a demon.  And luck be ours, it's the demon.
The other strong one who's mind wasn't clouded.  Look at that, they're
leaving the fortress."  Sam quickly spun around to follow the car as it
passed through the gate of the outer walls.  "There, the vehicle is turning
down onto the road towards Cape Town."

"Oh look," I said as Sam glided us over the road, the limo a few hundred
feet below us.  "It's not just any limo.  It's one of those Hummer stretch
limos.  I bet you could almost stand up in one of those things."

"It's well armored," Sam said.

"How can you tell?" I asked, not noticing anything out of the ordinary.

"Because I'm reading the mind of the driver.  Steel reinforced encasing.
Bullet proof glass."

"Great.  So I guess we won't be breaking in.  Where exactly are they
going?"

"Let me see," Sam said, turning with the car as it banked to the right
around the edge of a steep hill.  "Into the city, to some place of
business.  Where, it seems, there are usually plenty of other demons.  The
driver's a bit nervous about all of `em."

"A human?"

"Yes, a man.  Disposable, not an innocent.  He's knowingly lures victims
into his car and delivers them to the demons, to the slaughter."

"Why does he do it?"

"He is being promised that after a couple years of service, he will be
given the ultimate recompense in his eyes; he'll become one of them."

"So there's a demon in there and his driver.  But you said there were four.
Where are the other two?"

"Riding in back with the demon.  Both women."

"Dudes got two chicks at once, huh?"

"Yes.  Essentially they are prostitutes.  Both of them are being paid
enormously."

"So the demons are down with pussy.  How refreshing."

Sam gave me a sharp backwards glance.

"Both of the prostitutes are evil as well, I'm guessing?"

"One of them is.  She's been with the demons longer, and has taken her part
in several murders."

"And the other?"

"A new recruit.  She has not yet been exposed to the evil nature of the
demons.  Though, when she has been exposed, I'm not entirely convinced she
will stay on God's side.  Still, she is an innocent now, and needs our
protection."  He sighed.  "Too bad she's in there.  Otherwise we could have
conceivably blown up the car and fished the demon out of the wreckage."

"Are angels allowed to blow up cars?  Sounds a bit, I don't know, overly
destructive."

"The wrath of God can be terrible," he said.  "But I haven't brought any
explosives.  And anyway, I cannot permit the life of an innocent to be
taken."

"So what then, we wait until they arrive?  Can you fly all the way from
here to Cape Town?"

"Yes," he said.  "But waiting until they leave the vehicle would be a
mistake.  I am positive they will then be surrounded by other demons.  This
could be our only chance to take action."

"But I thought you said there was no way in."

"I never said anything of the sort."  He swooped down suddenly until we
were hovering over the roof of the car, about ten feet above the long,
tinted sunroof.  "Here's our entry point."

"Whoa, hold on," I said.  "I know how tough that bullet proof glass can be,
man.  It's bad ass.  There's no way we can break through it."

"Just climb up to my shoulders and hold on tight."

"What the hell for?"

"Bradley!" he urged, making it clear that he disapproved of my questions.

"Fine, whatever."  I did as he told me.

His huge wings quickly disappeared into his bare back, startling me.

And then...

It was my sense of touch that picked it up first.  His flesh, always rock
hard muscle against me, suddenly was actual rock.  I was no longer holding
onto the body of a man, I was holding onto a figure of stone.

I looked at the back of his head.  The warmth of his skin had turned into
white marble.  His hair, before soft and moving in the wind, now stayed
completely motionless, as it too had become hard rock.

Of course, with sudden alarm, I knew we were falling, falling fast and
hard, with all the heaviness of a statue.

I heard the dull shattering of the bullet-proof glass collapsing under the
sudden force of our weight.  I shut my eyes to protect them from any
shards, and jolted as we hit the ground.

Screaming.  The shrill shouting of surprised women.

I set my feet down on the floor of the limo and let go of Sam.  Opening my
eyes, I saw Sam's marble skin turn back into flesh as he pulled his
beautiful sword out of its sheath.

I bent down and under the high roof of the limo, trying not to trip over
the leather seats or the minibar.

At the back end of the limo, the three passengers sat, the demon between
the two women.  Both of the girls were fucking hot; young faces, long hair,
and big titties.  One was black and one was a white girl--variety.  Both of
them were in just their underwear, which showed off their bodies so well.
Damn, the females I had been with were nothing compared to these fine
girls.

The lucky demon sitting in between those two hotties was attractive in his
own right.  An Asian cat with stylish sunglasses on and an
expensive-looking suit.

The girls were shouting at our intrusion, clutching the demon between them.
But the demon showed no sign of fear.  He stood up, pushing the girls back,
and silently nodded at Sam.

Sam locked eyes with the man and raised his sword.  "Get the driver under
control!"  Sam ordered me.  "He's about to make a phone call!  Planning to
call for reinforcements."

I pulled out my 9mm and spun around to face the driver, who was visible
through the open space between the cabin and the cockpit of this baby.
Yup, the dude was reaching for his cellphone.

"Drop the phone or I'll shoot you in the head!" I screamed at him, and I
meant it.  This was a bad guy, a villain, and Sam had already told me that
he was disposable.

The guy looked back at me, his eyes growing wide with fear as he saw the
barrel of my gun and where it was aimed.  He set the phone down on the
seat.

"That's right," I said.

Suddenly he took his foot off the gas and we started to slow down.

"Keep it moving!" I ordered.  "Just keep driving."

He put the gas back on as he glanced once more towards me.

Good, the driver was under control.  I looked behind me, where I knew Sam
and the demon were already involved in a rough fight.  The limo was rocking
and shaking as they knocked each other around.  Every few moments one or
both of the girls would let out a little scream.

It was just like before with the cowboy demon.  Sam fought with grace and
speed, but the demon was just overpowering.  I couldn't figure out how Sam
had expected this fight to go any differently then the last one.

The demon kicked Sam's sword out of his hands.  Now he was unarmed, and the
two fought with bare fists.  Weaponless, Sam was even more at a
disadvantage.

My eyes searched everywhere for a weapon that Sam might use.  "Sam, right
beside you there's a mini fire extinguisher!" I offered.

"The driver!" Sam yelled at me.  "He's closing the bulletproof glass
divider!"

I spun around, noticing that the glass divider was rising.  "Stop!" I
yelled, but the man only grabbed for his cellphone again.

With the glass divider about to close permanently, I only had one option.
I stuck my gun into the narrow opening and shot at the driver's head.

Pop.  Blood covered the windshield, the driver's side window.  The man
slumped down onto the steering wheel, his phone still clutched in his
hands.

Then the glass window closed completely.

One of the girls let out a blood-curdling scream of horror as she saw the
bloody mess the driver was now in.

I couldn't believe how easy it was.  Just a push of the trigger and the
villain was dead.  All those months of training in the Corp, and never a
single opportunity to take out a bad guy.  And now, I had done it, I had
made my first kill.  And it felt damn good, especially knowing that the
bastard was on his way straight to hell.

Behind me, Sam and the demon were still fighting, both with blood smeared
all over their faces.

The girl who screamed, the black girl, was in total hysterics, screaming
and whining and crying like a damn idiot.

I spun around and pointed my gun at the crazy woman.  "Shuttup, bitch, or
you'll be next!"

She responded with another hysterical scream as her body shook with fearful
tremors.  She pathetically started moaning pleas that were completely
incomprehensible.

"No," Sam told me.  "You can't kill her."

"Great," I said.  "It would be the fucking annoying one who we can't kill."
I pointed my gun threateningly at the white woman, but she was
comparatively calm.  "Yeah, you'd better keep your mouth shut, bitch," I
said, feeling high and mighty.

I hadn't even noticed that at some point Sam had transformed back into a
statue.  Now, with every blow Sam made seemed to break one of the demon's
bones.  God, he was indestructible in that form, why the hell didn't he
always fight like that?  Every punch the demon made just seemed to fuck up
his own hand.  It made me fucking laugh out loud, watching them go.  At
this rate, Sam couldn't lose.

Too fucking bad Sam had to ignore my earlier advice, cause the demon
actually paid attention.  He grabbed that fucking fire extinguisher and
rammed it right towards Sam's face.

Sam ducked quickly, and the red metal made contact just with Sam's marble
curls.  They shattered on impact, with white dust and chunks of stone
falling to the ground.  Holy shit.

The limo sideswiped a road barrier, and I realized that we were going fast,
really fast.  Which didn't make any sense because the driver was fucking
dead.

"Get control over this car!"  Sam yelled.

I turned back to face the privacy glass.  The driver's body was slumped
forwards on the wheel, keeping it straight.  His foot must have still been
on the gas.

I spun around.  The demon was on the ground, unconscious, as Sam continued
to pound his face in as the black girl shrieked with newfound enthusiasm.

The other girl acted with more guts.  She darted for where Sam's sword had
fallen, picked it up awkwardly, and thrust it down on Sam's back.

Not even a scratch on his stone skin.  What was she thinking?

Before I could even raise my gun, Sam grabbed the sword away from her and
plunged it into her throat.  With a sick gurgle of blood she fell to the
floor, and there was suddenly one less variable to worry about.

Another jolt made me spin back towards the front of the car.  We were going
faster than ever, heading along the straight path, but slamming
occasionally against the guardrails on either side of the road.  All it
would take to crash would be a bend in the road.  We'd be totally fucked.

I pulled raised my 9MM and shot a few times into the glass divider.
Excluding the startled yelps that the black girl made every time I shot a
bullet, that strategy got me nowhere.

"Let me try," Sam said, shifting instantly into stone.  He hit the glass,
but still it held.

"Come on, ya pussy," I complained.  "You can hit harder than that."

"Yeah, and risk shattering my hand.  It would never grow back, you know.
Angels cannot recover whole portions of their bodies.  I'd be handless for
an eternity, is that what you want?"

"I guess that's why you don't normally fight in that form."

"Damn right.  It's the number one mistake angels make."  He looked at the
glass and shook his head.  "No, there's no way were getting in there."

He walked over to the demon, lifted his unconscious form, pushed him
through the broken moon roof, and tossed him onto the side of the road.  I
watched the demon's body spin along the pavement as we passed it by.

"Now," said Sam.  "For the three of us."

"Uh, the faster the better, Sam," I said.  "There's a sharp turn in the
distance, and it looks like somewhat of a drop-off on the other side of
that barrier."

"Bradley, hold onto me."  As I grabbed onto his back, Sam reached his hand
out to the sniveling woman in her underwear.  "Come with me."

She shook her head in terror.  "No, no!  Stay away, don't touch me!"

"Come with me and you'll be safe."

"We'd better hurry, Sam, or else we're gonna crash in this car right along
with the stupid chick.  That curves coming up real fast."

"I'm not going anywhere with you!" the girl screamed.  "Leave me alone.
Alone!"

"Sam, let's go!  Let the crazy bitch burn, man, what's the point?"

"No, we are not leaving without her!  Even if I have to take her by force."

"Shit, Sam, we're almost there..."

Sam grabbed the woman's arms and pulled her forcefully into his bare chest.
She screamed, cried and beat at him with her hands, but soon enough must
have felt the calming effects of his skin, because she mellowed like a wild
animal on tranquilizers.

His wings came out, and we jettisoned up into the sky just moments before
the limo hit the side barrier of the turn, went right through it, and
plummeted down into the dark.

The woman was still relaxed when Sam dropped her off at the side of the
road.  "You're safe now," he told her.  "There are cars coming, I'm sure
someone will stop.  Let this be a warning to you of what this path in life
holds for you.  Leave the demons while you still can and get your old life
back."

She nodded, dazed, her cheeks covered with dried tears.

With that, Sam and I flew back down the road until we came to the demon,
still unconscious on the pavement.  Sam picked him up in his arms and took
off in the direction of the airport.

"What if he wakes up on our way there?" I asked.

"Then I'll just have to knock him around a bit more, won't I?"

*****

"You have accomplished much," the booming voice told us from behind the
porcelain mask of the Seraph.

I smiled with pride beside Sam, careful not to look the mask in the eyes.

"You have proven yourself deserving of joining our ranks," the Seraph
continued from his perch, and I realized that he had never been talking to
me.  He had been speaking exclusively to Sam.

What about MY accomplishment?  Isn't that worth anything?

"It is my charge and my charge alone to fill the voids in our Holy Ranks.
We now are short of our sacred number by one, and I feel you are the one to
encompass it.  Surely it is a just reward."

"My honor is beyond all expression," Sam said, but his tone of voice wasn't
exactly exuberant or rejoiceful.  It was as calm and steady as ever, and so
I wondered just how happy this promotion was making him.

"Of course," the Seraph said, "there will be a ceremony.  Your Divine
Induction into God's Hand.  And then your spirit will have ascended,
transformed into something more pure and more Divine than what it is now."

"Yes, my liege."

"Very soon I shall be such no longer."  He waved a finger in my general
direction.  "And him.  In the Cathedral we do not tether our Delectors to
ourselves like toddlers.  Our duties are often far too perilous to drag
along anything as fragile as men.  First thing tonight our surgeon shall
remove this technology from both of you, permanently."

*****

It was only back in our guest room where Sam finally allowed himself to
show any sign of emotion, as he smiled bigger than I had ever seen him
smile.  "Never dreamed of this," he said.  "Never thought I'd get this far.
Bradley, don't you see?  This is what every angel hopes for."

I nodded as my mind drifted to the idea of going through another
potentially painful surgery.

"Aren't you happy for me, Bradley?" Sam asked me.

I looked over at him and smiled my "couldn't-be-happier" smile.  "Oh yeah,
man, fantastic news."

His smile faded quickly and his whole body noticeably stiffened.  "You're
lying to me," he challenged.

"No I'm not," I said with my best "how could you suggest such a thing"
incredulity.

"Yes, you are!  Even if I couldn't read your mind, it would be so obvious!
You wouldn't be less happy for me if I told you I was about to be
executed!"

"Alright!" I admitted angrily.  "Yes, I'm not so fucking thrilled at your
new promotion or whatever the fuck it is.  Remember when I had begged you
to stay away from all this shit and just let it be you and me, just the two
of us?"

"You knew that was an impossibility.  I never led you astray or gave you
any semblance of false hope."

"I could have learned to like the Ensis.  You and me in a fucking dope-ass
apartment, the two of us going on fun adventures together.  But it plain
sucks here.  Completely, absolutely blows.  Look around?  It's a cathedral,
with all the warmth and comfort of a monastery!  Worse than that, at least
monasteries have windows!  This is more like a crypt."

He motioned to the room around us.  "These are holy grounds, crafted with
beauty and care."

"Well, I'd trade all the fancy pillars and statues in the world for one
fucking TV."

"So, this is all about your comfort, is it?"

"I wish!" I yelled.  "No, that's just the beginning, brother.  You heard
the Seraph.  Once you become one of them, you'll be sent all over the place
on missions, with me staying safely at home like some demure little
housewife.  I'm not even supposed to tag along to assist you anymore, the
one thing I had to look forward to.  There is no way I could possibly be
less consequential here.  Basically, I'm supposed to stay fucking invisible
for the rest of my life, waiting around here for you to come home, until I
fucking die.  What a lousy waste of a life."

He shook his head.  His eyes, once looking pensively away, then suddenly
refocusing on me, challenging.  "You could have told me all of these
thoughts candidly.  You didn't have to lie.  You have sworn not to lie to
me.  A less understanding Domno would have struck you down without
question."

"Yeah, well guess what?  I'm a liar, Sam, through and through.  It's not
just a bad habit, it's who I am.  Duplicitous.  I say one thing and mean
another.  And you know what?  That's how I fucking like it.  I can't
fucking stand having every private thought picked out and analyzed.  You've
taken every other fucking thing from me, why not at least give me my
privacy?"

He looked more hurt than angry, although, like usual, his face betrayed
only the slightest hint of emotion.  "What can I say to comfort you except
that you will eventually adjust to your new surroundings and circumstances,
however terrible they may seem to you now."

I laughed snidely.  "Oh, that's fucking great, so basically you're saying
that I'm absolutely correct about the complete pointlessness of my life."

"To me, your life couldn't be further from meaningless."

"Yeah, but you're the only one who will ever fucking care about me, isn't
that right?"

He clenched his jaw but said nothing.

"Right.  So, since I seem to be tiring of you fast, and you're the only
fucking thing I'll ever have for the rest of my life, I'd say I'm pretty
much up shit-creek."

"Remember when you promised me your life and your soul?  Now you understand
the consequences.  But your word has been given.  There's no going back."

"I gave my word to someone else.  Someone who was fun.  Someone who had a
sense of humor.  But you've changed into someone far more serious."

"Being a Guardian brings with it some levity.  Now, I have far too much
responsibility.  When times are less serious, less urgent, then my good
humor will return.  In the meantime, I have an inkling how to quell your
troubles."  He moved towards me, his hand outstretched.

I snapped away from him.  "No, don't touch me!  I will not be placated by
that touch!  Not when my reasons for anger are as valid as they are right
now!"

"Well, whether you are angry or not, we have an appointment with the
surgeon to keep.  It's time."

I started towards the door.  "Thank God," I said.  "I can't wait to have
this thing removed from my brain.  I hate being so close to you all the
time.  Everywhere I go, there you are.  Every breath I take, you just
exhaled a second ago.  I'm sick of it.  I want my distance, where you won't
be able to hear my every thought.  Where I can finally be myself again
instead of trying to be so much like you."

"Mind your disrespectful thoughts," Sam answered plainly as he followed me
through the door.  "When you're surrounded by angels, a thought can be as
dangerous as an action or a sharp word."

"As soon as I get this fucking chip out of my head, I promise you, I'll go
as far away as I can, where I can think whatever the fuck I want without
any angels chastising me."

"Fine.  You do that."

*****

 God, I was so fucking bored.  But I guess that's to be expected when you
live in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of a-holes who don't give two
shits about you, and the one guy who usually provides you with your only
source of stimulus you're barely speaking to.

In the days following my surgery, I kept a constant pissed off demeanor
towards Sam.  Aside from the routine mutual suck-off, which had become such
a normal part of my day it was almost as effortless as breathing, I didn't
engage him in anymore conversation than absolutely necessary.

When I had complained yesterday about the complete lack of any amusement
and my likely resulting meltdown, Sam told me he would ask around to see if
there were any books I could read or something.  Great.  Books.  I had
always been such a big reader.

All he brought back for me was the angel version of the bible, the one book
he said I really must read.

So, I was sitting on the bed, flipping through the dingy pages of an old
leatherbound bible while Sam was away, getting inducted or ordained or
whatever the hell they called it, into the Seraphim.  Let me tell you, the
angel bible is no more riveting than the normal human version, just longer.
Fifteen minutes and I was out like a light.

"I'm pretty sure it's a sin to drool all over the bible.  If not, it should
be."

I opened my eyes, and pulled my face off the book, wiping the drool from my
chin.  Sam was just coming in.  He had a white robe on and one of those
creepy porcelain masks in his hand.  Ah, the costume of the Seraphim.

"Well, it's done.  I have officially sidled up closer to God."  He set the
mask and the robes down, very carefully.  "Now I'm supposed to wear these
in front of all Cherubim and unsanctified Delectors.  Which, at the moment,
includes you, but they can't expect me to hide my face from my own
Delector, can they?"

"When will I be sanctified?" I asked, trying to sound as uninterested as
possible.

"Soon enough, I expect.  It's a certain ceremony that all of the Seraphim
participate in.  A kind of baptism, if you will."  He turned and smiled at
me.  "And then, we will be permitted to move into the inner circle of the
Cathedral.  There you will be able to interact with the other Seraphim and
their Delectors.  It will alleviate your loneliness, I expect."

I didn't say anything, just went back to reading my stupid bible.

Sam started packing some things into a bag.  "The Seraphim have quite an
interesting structure.  They, or we, rather, are a governing body of seven.
Each Seraph has his own unique assignment and jurisdiction.  We can act
with a certain amount of autonomy.  But larger issues must be decided as a
group, voted upon, in fact.  It's entirely democratic."

I forced a yawn.  "It can't be all that democratic, can it, if we were
talking with the Seraphim's leader and he could alone decide that you would
become one of them."

"Well, the leader's only exceptional power is to choose new Seraphim in the
event that there is an opening.  Otherwise, he is only as powerful as the
rest of us.  Faith is his name, by the way."

"Faith?  Faith is that dudes name?" I asked, laughing.  "Faith is a chick's
name."

"Not just a name, his title as well.  You see, all of the Seraphim are
named after the Seven Heavenly Virtues extolled in our Holy Verse."

I rolled my eyes.  "Seven Heavenly Virtues?"

"Yeah," Sam said.  "You know the Seven Deadly Sins, don't you?"

"I know that Brad Pitt movie where that psycho killer dude Kevin Spacey
kills people who've committed those sins.  That was rad."

"Alright.  Not the traditional way someone becomes informed of Christian
theology but I guess I'll have to be happy for any meager semblance of
knowledge.  The Seven Deadly Sins, not to be confused with the more
clearcut and severe Unforgivable Sins, are sins not of action but of mind.
Character defects that lead men towards the Devil.  Lust, Wrath, Greed,
Gluttony, Pride, Damnation, and Brutality."

"Damnation and Brutality?  I never heard of those," I said.  "What about
envy, isn't envy a sin?"

"According to man it is, yes.  But man once again is erroneous.  Envy is
not a sin of its own, it just another expression of Pride.  Damnation is
the worship of the Devil and the blasphemy of the true Lord.  And Brutality
is the use of power against the weak and the righteous.  It says all of
this in your book."  He pointed to the bible in my lap.

"Okay," I said.  "I know the Seven Sins.  What does that have to do with
the Seraphim?"

"The Seraphim are chosen and named for each of the Seven Virtues, the
opposites of the Seven Sins and the qualities in man which will lead him
through the gates of Heaven.  The qualities that God personifies entirely."

"Which are?"

"Chastity to counteract Lust, Justice to counteract Wrath, Charity against
Greed, Temperance against Gluttony, Humility against Pride, Faith for
Damnation, and Fortitude for Brutality."

"That's a lot of big words there."

"So, Faith's name may be girly, but his responsibility is nothing to make
light of.  He is charged with the spirituality not only of the angels but
with the entirety of mankind as well.  To foster spiritual enlightenment
and devotion to the Almighty throughout the world."

"Heavy," I said.  "So what's your bag, then?"

He smiled, and if I was in a better mood, I would have playfully accused
him of pride.  "Justice.  My predecessor stepped down or was killed, by
what means I have not yet been able to ascertain.  Faith has chosen me as
his replacement because of my intense devotion for doing what is right and
smiting those who would work for the Devil.  It is my duty to oversee the
continuing battle between angels and all evil doers."

"Wow," I said, unenthusiastically.  "That's great, Sam."

"No, not Sam anymore.  I've been rechristened as `Justice.'  That is what I
will be called until my death."

"Justice, huh?  That's great."

"Not such a girly name, is it?" Sam asked with a smirk.

"Nah, but it sounds like a third-rate superhero's name."

He frowned, his pride quickly deflating, and returned to his packing.

"What are you packing for, by the way?" I asked.

"Just an overnight bag.  The Circle, the Seraphim, have asked me to
personally fly to the Ensis tonight and alert them in the flesh of my more
recent calling.  It's just an overnight journey, we should be back by
tomorrow night."

"We?" I asked.

"Yeah, I figured you would like to get out.  Maybe tomorrow we could
revisit the Crystal Baths," he smiled devilishly.  I might have accused him
of lust.

"But, if you're just leaving overnight," I said, "then I guess I don't
really have to go.  I mean, you can feed me tomorrow night when you return,
right?"

"You want to stay here, alone?" he asked, obviously miffed.

"Yeah," I said.  "Honestly, I just want to be alone.  Away from you, I
mean.  And not just in a different room.  I want there to be as many miles
between us as possible.  That is the only way I'll be happy."

"Bradley, please.  Put this foolishness away, it's entirely beneath you.
Stop sulking and come with me.  Without you at my side I'll fear for your
safety."

"No need, I'll stay right here in the Cathedral.  And that's what I want to
do.  So you can either force me to tag along, or let me stay."

"Alright," Sam said, in a sad, resigned tone of voice.  "If you are
unbendable, then I will have to leave you."

"Completely rigid."

He finished packing.  "See you when I return."

"Yup, whatever, dude," I said, my eyes again glued to the book.

He left, finally.  I shut the bible and threw it against the wall.

*****

The next night, after going stir crazy cooped up alone in my bedroom, I put
on a pair of work-out shorts, a wife-beater, and slung a towel around my
neck, on the search for the Cathedral gym.

After searching through the many caverns that were "permissible" to me, the
only thing I had found was a whole lot of brown stone blocks and my dear
old friend Hassan.  Or rather, I suppose he found me, as he strode towards
me with in quick annoyance.

"Oh good, Hassan," I said to him.  "Where the hell is the gym in this
place?"

"The gym?  As in, gymnasium?"

"Yeah, that's what `gym' is short for, ain't it?"

He frowned in insolence.  "The Cathedral does NOT have a gym.  The angels
do not need to work-out."

"Well, what about the Delectors?"

He shrugged, as if to say that the Delectors were of no particular
importance.  I knew the feeling.

"Well, that may be just dandy for skinny guys like you, but I got me some
muscles.  I worked hard for my muscles.  I love my muscles.  How am I
supposed to keep my muscles if there's no gym here?"

He shrugged again.  "Perhaps you can lift stone blocks.  There's plenty of
those around.  But at the moment, you need to come with me."

"To where?"

"You are being summoned by the Seraphim."

Huh.  What did they want with Sam's Delector when Sam was away?  The only
logical answer was that I was being summoned so they could perform my
baptism or whatever they called it so that I could move into their inner
circle.  Maybe their inner circle had a gym.  "Okay, lead the way."

"They've asked that you be properly bathed beforehand."

I snickered.  "Dude, I'm clean... took a shower just a bit ago.  Good think
you caught me before I worked out.  Why the hell do they want me to be
clean, anyway?"

"They're business in not my concern," he said as he led the way through the
caverns with his nose up in the air.

After it seemed we had walked for ages, we finally stopped at a small door
capping a long hallway.

"This is where I stop.  Going further would be impermissible to me.  You
must go through these doors.  In the next hallway, go only in the door in
the far wall.  Go down the stairs and into the next room, and wait there."

"Okay man.  I'm about to leave our second rate existence as Cherubim
Delectors and become one of the lucky seven Seraphim Delectors. You gonna
wish me luck?"

He raised a conceited eyebrow and turned on his heel, prancing off down the
hall.

"Must be jealous of me!" I yelled back at him.

When he was gone, I opened the door in front of me.  The next hall was just
like the last, with doors on both sides of its long walls.  I walked
through to the far end, where there was another door.  I opened it, and saw
a descending stone staircase, lit up by torches on the wall.  I went down
the steep, well-worn steps until I reached the landing with a door on the
other side of the wall.  I pushed that door open.

I wasn't prepared for the grand size of the room I had just stepped into, a
huge circular room with a grand dome ceiling.  The whole place was built
with dilapidated stone bricks, looking beautiful but incredibly old and
ready to collapse at any moment.  Instead of torches, the room was lit by
white candles on gold candlesticks, hundreds of little lights around the
perimeter of the circle, lighting all but the top of the dome ceiling,
which faded into blackness.

Most remarkable was not the room itself, but what was carved into the
floor.  A great circle, sixty feet or so across, carved in beautiful gold
and silver and stone, seemed to be what the rest of the room was built
around.  A deeply carved groove spiraled around the circle, starting at a
pit in the center and spinning around many times to end at another pit
close to the exterior.  Where the grove wasn't, designs and shapes and even
some writing were carved into the metals.  It was a beautiful piece of
shimmering artwork.

"We call it God's Seal," said a familiar deep voice from behind me.

I spun around.  One of the Seraphim had come in through the door behind me,
and I knew by his huge height and deep voice that this was the one Seraph I
had met, the one Sam called Justice, their leader, even though he was
clothed in the indistinguishable white robe/white mask combo.  I quickly
avoided looking directly into his eyes.

He floated over to the Seal and traced a white-gloved finger along some of
the etched lettering.  "It's in Ancient Greek.  It reads that when God's
Seal is broken, so will be Heaven's forbidding walls.  Do you know what
that means?"

I shook my head.

"It means that when the Seal is broken, us angels, the outcasts, will be
welcomed back into God's waiting arms.  This Seal has been here for a
millennia and a half, this whole Cathedral was built around this very spot.
I have poured over the Seal for hundreds of years, trying vainly to break
it, then realizing what the text means.  And then waiting, and waiting,
praying every hour of every night that God would deliver us the instruments
we needed to break the seal ourselves."

He walked over to another inscription and pointed it out.  "The words are
quite clear.  One specimen of greatness from each of the species of non-man
must be offered to God.  Their `life liquid,' their blood, must be spilt in
the proper order.  And the Seal will be broken."  He turned his mask
towards me, the shiny porcelain reflecting the yellow candlelight.  "In all
the centuries of my life we have never obtained one of your kind.  Without
the Eversor, breaking the Seal would have been unfeasible.  Now, at last,
my kind will leave this wretched land."

Sacrifice?  Spilt blood?  What exactly went on in this ritual anyway?

Faith reached up and slowly pulled the mask from his face, exposing himself
for the first time.  Underneath was the most handsome black man I had ever
seen, a wise, noble beauty that seemed almost royal in origin.  His skin a
beautiful shade of milk chocolate, his eyes so black the irises bled into
the pupils and contrasted starkly with the whites of his eyes.  His face
was long and slender, with beautiful bone structure and high cheekbones.
His lips closed and serious, completely devoid of any sign of friendliness.
He had a smooth, shaved head, but a very close-cropped goatee.  His face
and skin were young, but his eyes, like Sam's were ancient.  He was as
beautiful as any angel I had yet seen.

"And so you can see the gravitas of the sacrifice you are about to make,"
he said, pulling the white hood back from his head.

There was that word again, Sacrifice.  I was NOT down with any kind of
sacrifice, especially if it meant any sort of bleeding on my behalf.

"It took much meditation and prayer for us to know whether using you in
this manner was acceptable or not," Faith went on, and I realized that his
accent must have been African in origin.  Whatever it was, it only made him
sound more wise and more royal.  "And then, like everything else, it came
down to a simple vote.  A close vote, in fact.  I thought it would be only
proper for you to meet the Seraphim who are putting you in the situation."
He shut his eyes for a moment in concentration.

The door opened and six solemn men came in the room.  As they drew close, I
could not possibly keep my eyes from their features, their beauty was so
great.

"I present, the Seraphim," Faith said, and I thought it was about fucking
time that I was introduced.  And their presence here, unrobed, seemed to
suggest that we were, in fact, here to initiate me into their circle.  "All
of them owe you great gratitude," Faith went on.  "From the left, starting
with the ones who voted not to involve you at all: Charity."

The Seraph on the left side of the line raised his hand in a slight wave to
me and smiled.  My knees almost buckled in response he was so gorgeous.  An
inch shy of six feet, tan, muscular, and blonde like Sam.  But instead of
Sam's curls this man's hair was straight and short.  Instead of Sam's kind
and compassionate eyes, this man's were steely grey, intensely confident.
Overall, his face was completely butch handsome, an all-American type with
a strong stubbly chin, sturdy nose, and cut jawline.  He had a thick, 70's
porn star moustache and dressed like Steve McQueen, definitely
anachronistic but wicked cool nonetheless.  "I'm sorry, Bradley," he said,
flashing white teeth through a big smile even though his eyes looked
entirely sad.

"Sorry?  Why?" I asked, but he didn't answer me.

"Temperance."

I looked at the next Seraph, another white guy, only this one was shorter,
about 5'9," and leaner than Charity.  His look suggested that he was
younger as well, dressed in torn black jeans, a studded leather bracelet,
and a black concert T with the sleeves ripped off, this guy was definitely
a punk, only a better looking punk than any that I had ever known.  Light
brown hair, in a short (inch tall), wide (two-inch strip), un-gelled mohawk
of sorts with the rest of his head totally shaved.  A devilish moustache
and goatee, very handsome, jagged, angular face, with a more delicate bone
structure.  A mischievous smile that he was flashing my way, and Richard
Gere-like, thoughtful brown eyes that give his face it's only balance.  He
said nothing to me.

"Humility."

The third Seraph in the line smiled at me, a 5'10"-ish Hispanic guy wearing
just a ragged pair of drawstring khakis, no shirt, no shoes.  His skin was
deep brown and he was built with solid muscle and big bones, though not
exactly well defined, like a football player might be.  He had very sweet
red lips, open in a friendly smile, and short curly black hair.  The oddest
thing, however, was the tied white blindfold around his eyes.  I wondered
if he was blind.  Was it even possible for an angel to be blind?

"And now, for those Seraphim who agreed with me in their voting.
Chastity."

A skinny Asian guy, the shortest and skinniest of the group, looked my way.
He looked like the youngest of the group, just a teenager perhaps.  He was
naked except for what seemed to be just a ragged loincloth of sorts.  His
soft, beautiful features were obscured by the strangest body accessories I
had ever seen.  Nails, thick, long, metal nails, had been hammered into his
body.  All over his arms, his chest, legs, even his face, all covered with
nails.  The guy looked scarier than pinhead, I shuddered as his eyes looked
at me from behind the nails in his face.  If it was possible, this skinny
kid was even more menacing to me than the giant standing beside him.  I
quickly averted my eyes.

"Fortitude."

The giant whose dark features suggested that he was eastern European or
Middle eastern looked at me.  He was the tallest in the group, 6'5" or so,
and built wide and solid, the guy was huge and hugely intimidating.  He
wore jeans and a black leather jacket, and stood straight up with this
thick arms crossed in front of him.  His face, although handsome, looked
older, with subtle lines around his eyes giving him a harsh, seen-it-all
look, and his squinty, hard eyes made me recoil slightly as he looked at me
as if he could break me in half with just a glance.  I understood perfectly
the name "Fortitude," the guy looked completely unbreakable.

"And finally, Justice."

A very tall, muscular Asian man with a shaved head gave me a half smile as
I looked his way.  He was wearing one of the white robes that Faith had on.

"But I thought Sam was Justice," I said, looking at Faith.

"He is, now," Faith said, nodding his head slightly.  "But only because
Justice volunteered to step down, a completely noble gesture."  Faith
nodded to Justice.  "Are you set?"

Justice looked at him.  "My Delector."

"Yes, bring him in."

Justice walked solemnly towards the door, disappeared for a moment, and
reappeared behind a skinny black boy around my age who he was leading into
the room with a hand on his shoulder.  The boy, who, quite oddly, was
buck-ass naked, seemed more than a little frightened.

Justice removed his robe then, letting it fall around his ankles, leaving
his taut muscles, smooth skin, and angel dick naked for all to see.  His
Delector started to cry a little, and Justice started speaking in a
language I didn't recognize, whispering consolations as he took the boy in
his arms.  It was as Sam had done many times before to me, pressing as much
of his skin against mine as possible.  The boy seemed to melt in the arms
of his Delector, and Justice gently lowered him onto the ground, lying on
top of him, as he stroked the boy's face and continued to whisper to him.

I felt a tinge in my heart then, a wish that Sam was here with me, holding
me like that boy was being held, reassuring me and allaying my fears.
Maybe I was softer than I believed.

Faith, in a very sly manner, walked over to the pair of them and put
something into the hands of Justice without the boy ever noticing the
handoff.  As Faith backed away, I saw what it was Justice was holding, and
I gasped.

Justice kissed the boy beneath him, sweetly, softly, and then raised the
dagger in his hands to the boy's throat.  A quick movement and the boy's
black skin was turning red with blood, with a pool of blood starting to
form on the floor.  All the while, the angel kissed the boy, and the boy
never showed any sign of pain or even realization at what was happening.

All too quickly, it was over.  The boy stopped moving entirely, and Justice
broke the kiss, rubbing the blood gently off the boy's face.  When Justice
finally got up and let the boy go, there were tears on his face and blood
all over his chest.

"The blood," Faith said.  "We don't want it to taint anything."

Nodding, Justice grabbed his discarded robe and wiped the blood clean from
his body.

"Why'd you kill him?" I demanded, feeling so badly for the boy, feeling as
though it was me that had just been betrayed by my Domno, killed for
absolutely no reason.  "What did he do?  Commit some sin?"

Justice didn't answer, but Faith did.  "No, no sin.  He was completely
loyal."

Humility turned his blindfolded head towards me.  "As hard as it is to
watch, my son," the man said, with a wise voice seemingly much older than
the body that owned it, and just a hint of a Latin accent.  "It was the
right thing to do.  Justice is leaving us.  And without his Domno, the boy
would have suffered a long and painful death.  There would have been
nothing any of us could have done for him.  Better to let him die softly,
with the last image in his eyes being the face of his Domno."

"He is already in God's arms, do not worry," Faith said in his deep,
commanding tone.  He spun his robed arm towards me and pointed a gloved
finger at me.  "Take him," he said.

"What?" I asked, taking a defensive step back.  "Take me where?"

Silently, Fortitude glided towards me and locked me in a full nelson from
behind.  I struggled against him, but he was like rock.  "What the fuck,
man?"

>From his robe Faith extracted another long dagger and held it down in my
direction.

I struggled harder than ever.  "No way, you're not gonna cut me, are you?
You're not gonna do me like that black kid?  No fucking way!"

"Hold still," Faith commanded, but I never stopped squirming.

"If Sam was here--"

"He's not here, is he?  And if he was, he would have little power to
intervene.  Now HOLD STILL!"

Faith pushed the knife towards my throat, but instead of cutting through my
skin, he merely cut through one of the straps of my wife-beater.  A moment
later he had cut the other strap, then down the front, until the garment
fell from my body.

"Jeez, man, you could have just taken it off," I said, sighing with relief
as I realized he was only trying to cut my clothes off with the knife, not
cut me.  "I don't got too many clothes with me here, and I'm guessing we're
a long way from the nearest shopping mall."

Not listening to me, Faith went on cutting, freeing me from my gym shorts
and my underwear in a couple swipes.

Now I was naked.  Embarrassed, I looked at all the spectators in the room.
Five angels all standing there with their eyes upon my naked form.

Fuck them, I wasn't ashamed.

Suddenly Fortitude was dragging me towards the center of the Seal, where
the spiral groove ended in a deep, round depression carved in gold.  He
pushed me into the dark hole, which was so deep the edge came up to my
neck.  What the hell where they gonna do to me?

Faith and Fortitude each pulled one of my arms and locked my wrists in
metal cuffs attached to the side of the depression, until my arms were
pulled tight.  I struggled against the cuffs, but could not make them
budge.

Above the hole I was standing in, there was a lever and a crank nearby,
both of which I hadn't the slightest clue what their purpose could be.  I
found out quickly, however, as Faith slowly pulled the lever.  At the top
of the hole, at the height of my neck, two sides to a silver door emerged
out of a before unseen grove around the perimeter of the hole.  At first I
thought it would shut, closing the hole off and decapitating me in the
process.  Then I realized there was a carved half-circle on each side of
the door, so when the door sides closed, my neck was safely through the
hole in the door.

The effect was that my head was stuck above ground while my body was
somewhere beneath it, unseen under the top of the hole.

"What the hell is the point of this?" I asked, still wondering if this was
all part of my initiation, but fearing that it was far worse.

Nobody answered me.

"Start with the demon," Faith told Fortitude.

The giant with a black leather jacket disappeared through the door.  A
couple minutes later, he came back, only different than before.  At first I
thought he had gone and covered himself with costume make-up while he had
been absent, but I quickly realized the truth: the guy had turned into
metal.  Just like Sam could turn into marble, this guy could actually turn
into metal.  Silver, perhaps, or more likely steel from the color of it.
His shiny, polished skin reflected the candlelight in the room, and the
only human features left were his dark eyes and the clothes he still wore.

Fuck, the guy was literally the man of steel.  Unbelievable.

Not hard to believe, the angel who could turn to steel had no trouble
holding onto the captive he was pulling into the room, the same Asian
vampire that Sam and I had captured in Africa, only now he too was naked.
The vampire fought and hissed against his aggressor, but couldn't do a
thing.  Fuck, that guy had seemed so strong when Sam fought him in the
limo, and now he was reduced to nothing.

Fortitude dragged the guy over to the first hole in the Seal, at the
beginning of the spiral, the complete opposite side that I was on and in
the direction I was facing.  When the vampire was lowered into that hole,
it only came up to about his waist, being much shallower than the one I was
unfortunate enough to be stuck in.  Three metal poles stuck up from the
ground, each one holding a metal cuff.  Two to lock his wrists in place,
and one to lock his neck in place.

After struggling for a moment, the vampire became completely still, either
resigned to his fate or trying to think a way out of his predicament.

"The wolf," Faith said, and Fortitude went out of the room again.

He returned dragging the naked wolf Sam and I had caught in London, who was
fighting and snarling angrily, but also getting nowhere.

"Get your filthy hands off me!" he shouted.  "It's only a matter of time
before the other wolves find out where I am and come here to find me.  None
of you will survive the ensuing attack."

None of the Seraphim even flinched at his threat.

"Spill the evil one's blood, spill his blood!" Chastity yelled from the
sidelines with a nasal voice thick with an Asian accent, bouncing up and
down excitedly.  The guy was beyond freaky!

Fortitude and Faith pulled the wolf over to a device that crossed over the
groove about a third through the spiral.  They were behind me and to the
right, so I had to bend my neck around to see them.  Right above the
groove, they stuck him in a huge vice of sorts that seemed to be controlled
by a nearby crank.  As Faith turned the crank, the vice closed, trapping
both sides of the wolf between it.

"Get me outta this bloody thing!" the wolf yelled, obviously in pain as
Faith kept on turning the crack, clamping down the man inside.

Fuck, were they going to crush him completely?  Smash his skull flat?

"Okay, okay, you've made your point," the wolf said.  "Let me live and I'll
tell you anything you want to know.  I know where the leader of the wolves
is!  I'll help you get to him."

"Your information couldn't be less of a concern for us," Faith said, still
turning the crank.

I averted my eyes, not wanting to see the guy's body explode into a bloody
mess, and only listened to the sounds of ripping flesh and bone.

Then there came a whimper from behind me, a definite canine whine.  I
turned around.

Instead of a man behind me, there was a dog in the vice, held perfectly
tight over the groove.  Ah, so the vice must have been to force the man
into a wolf, as changing into that form was the only way to avoid getting
crushed.  It wasn't to kill the wolf.

The beast snarled and whimpered loudly, completely unable to move its furry
body.

"Put the bit in," Faith told Fortitude.  "That should silence him."

Fortitude pulled up another part of the vice that I hadn't seen before, a
metal bit, like a horse's but smaller, which he slipped over the wolf's
snout and into his mouth.

The noises stopped as the wolf tried unsuccessfully to rid himself of the
bit, getting dog drool all over the groove beneath him in the process.

"Finally," Faith said.  "We are ready to commence.  Justice, ready
yourself."

Justice nodded desolately, and walked onto the Seal to a position about
two-thirds of the way through the spiral and to my back and left.  At first
I didn't see anything unusual about the spot he had chosen to stand upon,
until the angel fell upon his knees, and I saw little knee-shaped carving
into the stone of the Seal, seemingly designed to be knelt upon, the groove
splitting his legs in half, moving under him as it went.

Faith floated towards the vampire in front of me.  "We need to do this in
order.  Fortitude, if you would."

The angel, who had by now turned back into his flesh form, pulled a large
knife from out of his pants and walked over the wolf.

Faith looked at him, then at Justice, and both nodded.  "Then it begins!"
he cried, raising his dagger above him.

The vampire looked towards Faith, pure malice settling onto his face.  "I
am the only one our leader cares about.  If you kill me, he will never
relent."

Faith didn't discuss it, he answered the vampire by stabbing him hard in
the throat.  He pulled the dagger down, splitting him open all the way down
to his balls.  Dark blood poured everywhere as Faith reached in a pulled
the flesh apart, keeping it from mending.  The demon died then as his blood
drained into the hole he was in.

And then I saw, the blood was moving.  Coming down in the groove, spiraling
in my direction.

When the blood reached the wolf, Fortitude began to cut, adding the wolf's
blood to the aqueduct and killing him in the process as the wolf turned
back into a mutilated man.

I spun around to my left.  Justice's eyes were on the stream of blood
spinning around and around towards his very spot.  "Just a blink of an eye,
and I'll be with our Maker once more.  I truly am the lucky one."

He stabbed his dagger into his throat, cutting himself down the length of
his body.  He fell forward, on top of the groove, as his blood poured into
it.  His eyes stayed shut, and although I had seen Sam magically recover
from wounds, Justice seemed to be choosing to let himself bleed.  And then,
he slumped down completely, obviously gone.

My heart pounded and I started to cry out as the blood spiraled towards me.
Faith hurried over to the crank above me, and although I had no idea what
it did, I was positive it wouldn't be pleasant.  I pulled against my
bindings, but with absolutely no luck.

"Let me out of here!" I shouted, and then looked angrily at Faith.  "You'd
better not hurt me!"

The blood finally completed the spiral, and I could feel its wet warmth
pouring all over my naked lower body, oozing down my legs, and draining out
of a grate beneath my bare feet.

I heard Faith turn the crank, and I reflexively shut my eyes, wincing and
preparing for the worst.

The worst came.  Spears of some sort shot out of the sides of the hole,
piercing my skin from all directions until my whole upper body was impaled.
It was some ancient torture device, a killing machine, and it hurt more
than anything in my life.

I shouted bloody murder from the pain, and utter despair sunk in as I
realized that there was likely no recovery from wounds like these.  I was
going to die here, not even in battle, but as some sacrifice for some cause
that I didn't give the slightest damn about.

Faith stopped turning the crank when the spears had cut through my skin and
muscle, holding me as trapped as a pig on a roasting skewer.  My own blood
gushed out of me, joining the other blood which was still pouring all over
my lower body.

"Uh," said the punk Seraph, the Temperance guy.  "So, how do we know if
it's working?"

"There's supposed to be some sort of clear sign," hissed Chastity, the
pinhead, speaking loud and fast.

"A signal from God?" Temperance continued, his gruff voice loud with a punk
German accent.  "The holy green light?  Maybe the old man Himself will come
down to tell us bygones are bygones?"

"Something should have happened by now!" Chastity yelled.  "Why has nothing
happened?"

"Calm yourself!" Faith ordered.  "Clearly it's because the boy yet lives.
The Seal may be killing him, but it is doing so much too slowly."

"Fuck you," I mumbled, rolling my head around, dizzy with the pain.

Faith put his hand on the crank.  "Perhaps I can expedite these
proceedings."

"At least we owe him a painless death," a voice that I recognized as
belonging to Charity said.  "We have given that to even our sworn enemies."

"Yes," Faith said, starting to turn the crank.  "I'll make this quick.
Goodbye, boy."

I started to scream violently as the spikes drove further into my body.

"Stop this, please!" a voice boomed as the door was slammed open.

I rolled my head around, forcing my eyes to focus.  It was Sam, rushing
into the room.  Sam!

Help me, Sam, please!

"Justice, returning earlier than planned from his trip," Faith said,
without a trace of shame in his voice.  "You must be curious what you've
interrupted."

"Not at all," Sam said.  "I've been reading his mind since I arrived here.
I know what you're trying to do, and I think it's completely outlandish.
How could you kill my Delector like this, behind my back?  He's an
innocent, free of Unforgivable Sin!  How would you dare kill an innocent?
How would you dare expect God to ever forgive you for killing one of His?"

Faith responded quickly.  "I wouldn't expect God to forgive me for the
death of an innocent, if I ever was responsible for such an atrocity.  But
that boy has sworn himself as a Delector, and in so doing, has waived the
right God grants every man to live freely on this Earth as long as that man
is free of sin.  A Delector's life is forfeit not only if he betrays God
through sin, but if he betrays the angels as well.  His own Domno."

"Bradley has never betrayed me."

"Not so," Faith said with confidence.  "He has lied to you.  He has refused
your orders multiple times.  His guilt is as obvious as his mind is open."

I was too weak, too much in pain, to argue.

"But who are you to decide if my Delector should pay for his mistakes
against me with his life?"

"We, the Seraphim, the highest order of angels," Faith said.  "We have
decided by vote many days prior what the proper fate of your consistently
rebellious and irreverent Delector should be.  We have decided, without
question, that he should die for his brazenness.  It is not up for
deliberation."

"I will not accept that," Sam said.  "Vote again."

"The vote has already taken place."

"Vote again!  I am a part of this circle now.  The Order has changed its
form, and the Order should vote again."

"This is outside your jurisdiction," Faith said.

"Not at all," Sam argued.  "This is exactly my jurisdiction.  As Justice, I
should decide the fate of this boy.  If you have a disagreement with my
decision, then it is in your power to challenge me with a vote."

"He's right," Humility said.  "A vote seems to be called for in this
circumstance."

"Fine," Faith said, with venom in his voice.  "A vote it shall be.  I say
that we let our longstanding rules govern this boy's path as they have been
governing the path of our Delectors for centuries.  This is truly God's
way.  If Justice cannot be blind, then he cannot be fair and objective.  He
has let his personal attachments rule his capacity to reason.  I vote to do
him a favor and sever this cancer from his life."

"And I," said Sam, stepping forward to face the other angels.  "I vote to
let him live.  He has done nothing more terrible than tell white lies and
ignore certain commands.  Mistakes, certainly, but he is a flawed creature
and must be expected to error occasionally.  That is why I chose him as my
Delector, because he would truly benefit from my influence.  He would truly
need me.  Unless he commits some greater crime, I vote to let me, as
Justice, decide the fate of my own Delector with my own discretion."

There was a silence then, as the other five Seraphs thought it over.
Weaker than ever, my vision starting to tunnel, I just wished that the
talking would end and some decision would be made as quickly as possible.
Let me live, or kill me, but don't let me die slowly in such terrible pain.

"I vote with Justice," Charity said then, breaking the silence.  "It is in
my nature to find understanding and offer a pardon."  Sam smiled at him and
the angel smiled back.

"Fortitude votes with me," Faith said, and the silent giant nodded in
agreement.

"Me as well," Chastity said.  "Kill him now, and kill him quickly!  Let
this be done!"

"I disagree," Humility said.  "Some of us, I believe, would let what is to
be gained by his death filter our vision of what is morally right.  Let us
not be ruled by our egos!  Letting the boy live is the proper path."

"Temperance, then," Faith said.  "It comes down to you."

"Hmm," he said.  "Really I could go either way."

"You're indecisiveness could be the boy's death sentence," Sam urged.  "In
that way, the issue would be decided for you."

"Alright then, if I must rush rashly into a decision, then I will vote this
way: let the guy live, if only because, in spite of his rashness, I kinda
dig the guy, and would like to get to know him better before he is sent up
to meet our maker."

"Then it's decided," Sam said, rushing over to me.  He put a warm hand on
my face and the pain instantly abated.

"Sam," I muttered, barely able to keep my eyes open, slipping into
unconsciousness.  "Sam, thank you."

He looked, found the lever, and pulled it, opening the covering of the hole
I was standing in.

"Oh my God," Sam said in horror, looking down at me.  "What have they done
to you?"

He turned and reached for the crank, slowly turning it as the spears pulled
out of my body.  As soon as they were gone, I fell to the ground, much too
weak to stand on my own.

It was only a split second before Sam lifted me into his arms, pulled me
out of that goddamned hole and carried me towards the door.

"Without his death, none of this meant anything," Faith was yelling,
angrily.  "All of this was for naught.  Our brother's death was
meaningless!"

"Sam, I think..." I started, and then I was out.

SLAP.

"Bradley, wake up, please."

"Hmm?"

"If you sleep, you die.  You will never wake up again.  You understand?"

I opened my eyes enough to see that he had laid my body on the ground on
the floor of some hallway.  He had stopped touching me, and without his
touch the pain of my torn and shredded flesh came creeping rushing back to
me.

But I could feel the blood trickle out of me from every wound, and I knew
that as it did, the pain would follow, leaving me numb.  Yes, painless.

"No, Bradley!  Eyes open!"

He was slapping me on the cheek again, and I forced them open enough to see
him standing above me, naked now for some reason.  In his hand was a large
dagger, like the one Justice had used to kill his Delector painlessly.

And Sam lowered his naked body onto mine, and it felt so deliriously good,
having his warm skin against me.  The ultimate anesthetic, both physically
and mentally.

And Sam put his free hand on my face, so gentle.  And he kissed me, and it
felt so good.

And he raised the knife in his hand, put the blade between us now, put it
to my throat.

And this was Justice now, I realized.  Sam was Justice and my death was
justice and it would be easy that was his last gift to me.

I never felt the pain of the knife slicing my throat open, and I shut my
eyes, wanting to be unaware, it was my right to be blissfully unaware.

But moments passed, and still I was alive.  My clouded thoughts seemed to
refocus slightly, and the numbness in my flesh returned to a pleasant
tingling.

Warmth was all over me.  Wet, wonderful warmth.

I opened my eyes, and realized.  Sam's knife had not cut me, it had cut
himself.  Cut all over his body until he was as wounded as me.  And he
gripped me tight as the blood poured out of him and onto me.  That healing
blood that mended all my skin and made me whole again.

I knew I would live.

"Thank you, Sam," I said, holding onto him as tightly as he held onto me.
"Thank you.  I should have listened to you and gone with you to the Ensis.
I should have listened to you from the very beginning.  I'm sorry."

"I love you, Bradley," he said softly.

"I will never forgive myself for my mistake," I gushed on.  "Fuck, not
`mistake.'  Mistakes.  Plural.  ODing on angel dust.  Taking my vulnerable
cousins for a hike.  Going downstairs in the Ensis to fight that wolf on my
own.  All of them bad decisions that would have ended up resulting in my
death if it hadn't been for the intervention of others, you, mostly.

"And what about when my idiotic mistakes ended up endangering others?  I
was responsible for my cousin's paralysis.  I've hurt many others before
him.  Shannon, Omar, Casey.  Most of all, you.  Almost got you killed when
I got you lost in the desert, and again when I disobeyed you in London.

"I won't let my stupidity hurt you again.  Everything good I've done is
because you led me there by the hand.  My own mind is incapable of making
good decisions for myself.  I don't know why I continuously listen to it
when I should just shut it off completely.

"So, I swear to you Sam, I will let you guide me completely, make all my
important decisions for me.  I will not argue or disobey or lie to you ever
again.  I am yours to control."

"Right now, Bradley, I am just happy that you're alive."  He kissed me
again, and I knew everything was right between us.

Our relationship had mended along with our wounds.

I passed out finally, letting the blood loss finally take hold.

*****

When I woke up I was naked in bed, with no sign of blood on my body, my own
or anyone else's.

Sam lay beside me, his arms wrapped around me.  He too was naked.  I could
tell by the heaviness of his breathing that it was in the middle of the day
sometime.

We were still in our old room, in spite of Sam's newfound accessibility
into the Inner Circle of the Cathedral.  He could have left me alone and
gone to his new quarters, but he chose to sleep with me.

I was so hungry.  Not hungry for food, hungry for Sam's cum.  A whole night
had gone by without him giving it to me, after all.

I put my arms around his thick torso, pushing my naked body into his.  Here
we were, arm in arm, two halves of the same being.  Only, he was much
bigger than I was, so I guess that made me less than a half.  It was more
like I was a part of Sam, a limb perhaps.  Without him I would shrivel up
and die.  Without me, he would be lame, but he would live on.  And that was
okay with me.  All that mattered was that I was part of him, an extension
of his marvelous body that he could do as he pleased with.

Ever since I first saw Sam's dick, he had stopped being so modest around
me, and had started going to bed with me naked.  Which was really, really
nice, to be able to hold him like this, my dick pressed against his soft
pubes, without the constraint of boxers or anything else to get in the way
of me touching him.

There was one problem, though, and that was that even while he slept, even
though his cock was totally soft, still the guy leaked.  Warm, sticky
wetness covered his dick, his balls, his thighs totally, and as I touched
him, the sliminess got all over me, too.  Right now it was covering my
dick.

I guess that's not so bad, though.  I reached down, rubbed my fingers
around his foreskin covered head, squeezing out a fresh squirt, and
bringing the prize back up to my lips.

Pure delight.  My dick sprang up.  I wanted a full load, right now.  He
usually fed me twice a night, once after we woke up, and once before bed.
But last night, given that I had been unconscious, Sam hadn't given me the
usual before bedtime meal that I had from him upon his return from the
Ensis.

Now my stomach was twisted around, painfully empty.  I didn't care how hard
Sam was sleeping; if I could have, I would have woken him up.  But I knew
that was an impossibility.

Still, I wanted his load, that feeling wasn't gonna go away.  I pushed him
carefully onto his back.  I pulled the sheet that covered us to the level
of his waist and rested my head against his pecs, looking down his body.  I
reached my right hand past the sheet, rubbing through his furry pubes and
onto the base of his warm tool.  I followed the flaccid snake down to its
head before grabbing on and pulling up.  I lay his dick across his abs and
chest, pushing the head against my waiting mouth.  I licked up the slime
that covered it in a translucent sheen.  I popped the soft head into my
mouth, clamping down with my teeth, and sucking with all my energy.

A fresh glob of precum leaked into my mouth, which I swallowed immediately.

But that was it.  Just a fucking stream of precum.  He wasn't even getting
hard.  Was it even possible for an angel to get a hardon during the day?

I didn't know.

I closed my eyes then, my head still on his chest, and my mouth still
around his dickhead, I fell asleep, my mouth still sucking away on
autopilot, swallowing every drop of precum that he had to give.  That's how
I stayed until night fell.

*****

I was alone in our room, on the bed, reading the angel bible again; only
this time, I was doing as Sam had suggested and really studied it
carefully, accepting its truth and letting the knowledge soak into me.  It
was long and difficult to read, but I had many empty days ahead of me, and
I wanted to be as knowledgeable about this stuff as all the others were.

Sam had left me alone here for hours, telling me at the beginning of the
night that tonight would be my induction, my baptism, into the inner
circle.  He and the other Seraphim had preparations to make before the
ceremony, he said, and after kissing me on the forehead, he happily took
off and left me alone.

A knock on the door, and Hassan entered the room.  "The Seraphim have
requested your company.  Are you clean?"

"You certainly have an interest in my hygiene.  I showered just an hour
ago, bro."

"Good.  Come with me."

I followed Hassan down the hall, thankfully not in the direction of the
Seal, but somewhere else, somewhere I'd never been before.  Eventually he
pointed to a door.  "I am permitted no further.  Walk through this door,
follow the next hallway to its end, and go through the next door."

"Last time you led me to a room like this, I barely survived," I said.
"Maybe tonight will finally be my end."

Hassan turned and started back the way we had come.  "I can only pray it
will be so," he said snidely.

I laughed, turned towards the door, and made my way.

When I had proceeded through the next hallway and the next door, I found
myself in a small, torchlit room with large double doors on the wall
opposite the one I came in on.  A couple sparse chairs and a table seemed
to indicate that this was a waiting room of some sort.  I almost took a
seat before I noticed a small, handwritten note on the table sitting under
a large white, unlit candle in a silver candleholder.

"Undress, light the candle, and bring it into the next room," was all the
note said, in handwriting that was much too bold and loopy to be Sam's.

Curious what lay in store for me, but knowing that if Sam was involved I
had absolutely nothing to fear, I took all my clothes off, leaving myself
once again in my full glory.  I picked up the candle, lit it in one of the
wall-torches, and faced the double doors.

When I pushed them open slightly, I was met with blackness.  The next room
was completely dark.  I pushed the double doors wide open as I stepped
through them, hoping the light from the waiting room would cut through this
room's darkness.

"Shut the doors," came a deep, booming voice, a voice I knew to be Faith's,
a voice that I had learned to fear after the pain he had inflicted on me so
mercilessly.

You can bet I listened; I turned around and shut the doors behind me,
leaving me alone in the darkness with just a lone candle, hardly enough to
light anything but the immediate space around me, which was empty.

"Follow the stone path forward," the same voice commanded, seeming both
omnidirectional and inescapable.

I lowered the candle down, and saw that there was a stone pathway forward
into the room, about four feet wide, and beyond that there was a dropoff on
each side.  Perhaps it was only a couple feet high, but I wasn't about to
go walking off into the darkness; I would follow the command and stick to
the pathway in front of me.

As I walked forward, I began to notice something odd.  The stone in the
first part of the room, as well as the stone in the last room, had been
cold against my bare feet.  This stone path seemed to warm up as I walked.
In got warm enough so that I was absolutely sure that the stone was being
heated somehow from underneath.

The stone path ended as I reached what seem to be the rim of a pool of some
kind.  The rim, meant to be a path around the pool, curved off in both
directions, and I automatically turned to my right and started to walk in
that direction.

"Halt," said the voice.  "Do not turn.  Go straight ahead, into the pool."

I turned towards the basin filled with water.  I could not see how deep it
was, and that worried me.  The water shimmered so brightly in the
candlelight that it was impossible to see beneath the surface.  I
hesitantly stuck a foot down into the water.

It was warm, which was not surprising, as all of this stone had been
heated, and it was shallow, only coming up to my ankle.

What DID surprise me was the realization that this was not water at all.
Much thicker, and slimier, and it just felt so good around my foot,
touching my skin.

I put my other foot in, reached down with my free hand, and touched the
liquid with my finger.  Yes, I was certain what it was now, and the
candlelight up against the surface proved it to me.  This was not a
translucent liquid at all, it was white.

It was cum.  A pool full of warm angel cum.

My dick shot to life, erect in seconds.  I sniffed the air... I could
actually smell the saltiness of this, my favorite liquid.  It seemed to be
steaming, the hot, wet air floating up from it and sticking to my skin.

I could already feel it surrounding the skin of my feet, delightfully
tingly, already working some secret magic on me.

"Come forward," the voice said.

With the candle in my hand, I walked forward further into the pool.  The
floor sloped down as I went, rendering me further and further immersed in
the cum.  Soon it was past my knees.

When I got so deep that the liquid traveled up my thighs and touched the
bottom of my balls, tickling them so sweetly, I laughed a little,
completely unable to hold in my pleasure.  I stepped forward again, and it
surrounded my dick, enveloping my most sensitive part in its magic wetness,
sending sexual pleasure up through my piss-slit and into my body.  Walking
around in this stuff would be enough to make me blow without so much as
touching my dick.

After I had gone ten feet or so, the voice said, "Stop there."

I was standing in the deepest part of the pool, the cum now up to my waist.
I stood there, my dick throbbing in its pleasure bath, not being able to
see anything around me, but able to hear, just slightly, the sound of skin
rubbing on skin.  Feeling forward, I realized there were stone platforms in
the water here, a group of them surrounding me, and if I had stepped upon
one I would have again been only ankle deep in the semen.  But why would I
want to leave the comfort of the warm cum for shallower water?  I wouldn't
unless commanded.

"Shut your eyes and spin around," Faith's voice said to me.

I did, and when I stopped and opened my eyes, I had no idea which way I was
facing or which way I had come from.  Every direction looked exactly the
same.

"Come forward."

With the candle still in my hand, I sloshed forward through the slime,
delighting in the feeling of the liquid rubbing past my dick and the rest
of my lower body as I walked.  The pool shallowed as I walked to it's rim,
and my dick soon left the warm pool, cum sticking all over it, great lobs
of the nectar dripping from my dick back into the pool.

I soon found an edge of the pool, the raised rim, and a pair of feet on
that rim in front of me, about level with my waist, the toes handing off
the edge of the pool.  The light brown skin attracted me, but as I moved my
candle forward, I noticed that these were no ordinary pair of feet.
Nailheads appeared every couple of square inches of the skin.

Raising the candle let me see more of the man in front of me, hairless,
flawless skin and a defined, lean body attracted me, but everywhere on his
body were nails.  On his calves, on his thighs, in his abs and chest, even
a nail pounded into the center of each dark red nipple.  Above me, the
man's face was covered with one of those white masks, which was completely
pointless because the nails made it impossible to mistake that this was
Chastity in front of me.

Quite ironically, Chastity's cut, angel dick, which was not as large as
Sam's but still much larger than any man could hope to attain, was hard and
excited and was being worked over in quick, uneven thrusts by both of
Chastity's graceful hands.  His dick was right at face level for me, so it
was impossible to miss.

What else was impossible to miss was how difficult it was for Chastity to
stroke himself.  You see, his hands had many nails hammered through the
backside of it, the sharp ends of the nails reappearing through his palms.
So, he was stroking his dick with nails, essentially. I cringed at the
thought of it.

But that was not the least bit cringe-inducing compared to the fact that
Chastity also had many nails hammered directly through his dick.  Now that
was hardcore.  How he kept on stroking that sucker I'll never know.

I looked down, wondering, and was confirmed that yes, his scrotum had nails
in it too.

Thinking about the nails and the possibility of them going through my flesh
was starting to make me soft, but before I could deflate completely,
Chastity started to speak through his mask.

"Do you pledge yourself to me as the Lord's servant?" he asked quickly and
sharply.

I didn't know how to answer at first.  Was I supposed to be this guy's
servant?  Didn't I belong exclusively to Sam?  What did this new promise
mean, and would it ever involve me hammering nails through my dick?

I didn't know, but intuition told me to just agree with guy.

"I do," I told him.

"Then let yourself be anointed into the Lord's bind with my holy seed," he
said.

As he finished his statement, he stopped stroking his dick, and hid dick
caught me offguard, erupting and shooting its juice all over my head and
face.  A bit of it shot into my mouth, electrifying me and making my dick
rockhard again.

I shut my mouth instinctively.  This was not Sam's cum.  Could another
angel's cum hurt me?

"It will not hurt you," Faith's voice said from nowhere.  "Just this once,
it is permissible."

With that approval, I opened my mouth and let more of Chastity's cum drip
into my mouth.

"Walk on," Chastity told me as his dick started to soften.

I turned to my right and walked along the inside rim of the pool, loving
the feel of this fresh load of angel cum dripping down my body.  Soon I
came to another pair of feet.

The tan, white skin of this pair of large feet gave me a clue as to who it
was standing here, and the guy's toes curled over the rim of the pool as I
approached him.

This tall man in front of me, solid, cut muscle, light layer of blonde fur
on his chest, his defined six-pack.

His lean, long fingers of his right hand stroking that perfect looking,
perfectly huge cock of his, uncut; his massive balls as tight to his body
as I knew they would get.  He stroked his dick gently and slowly, with
long, even strokes.  It didn't matter that the face above had a mask on, I
knew who this was.

I reach out to touch him, my Sam, to wrap my hands around his dick.

"Do not touch!" Faith's voice boomed, louder and more commanding than ever.

I recoiled my hand, afraid of that voice.

"Do you pledge yourself to me as the Lord's servant?" Sam asked then, just
like Chastity had.  Although the words were the same, Sam's calm, soothing
voice held with it a special message to me, to not be afraid, that
everything was fine and to just enjoy the moment.

"I do," I said, certain of it this time.

"Then let yourself be anointed into the Lord's bind with my holy seed," Sam
said.

This time, I was ready, my mouth open in expectation.  Sam's dick pulsed as
his white cream poured all over my face.  I let it coat me, completely
loving it, loving it most of all because it was from Sam, it was a part of
Sam and it was his loving gift to me.

"Walk on," Sam said gently, and I did, although I was sad to leave him
behind.

The next pair of feet I came to weren't as long as Sam's, but thicker, with
meaty toes, and darker brown in skin tone.  His calves and thighs, thick
with meat, were coated with black hair.  His dick was uncut, darker than
Sam's as well as shorter, but thicker in girth, with a real thick, almost
leather-like foreskin.  He stroked himself with one hand, evenly and
smoothly.

I looked up at his meaty upper body, his pecs large, his nipples dark, and
his chunky abs large but not really defined.  The curly black hair on his
chest was enough to let me guess who this man was: Humility, the Hispanic
Seraph with the blindfold who had voted to save my life and argued for me
with eloquence.  I liked him already.

"Do you pledge yourself to me as the Lord's servant?" came his voice,
gravelly and rough as an old wise man's.

"I do," I said.

"Then let yourself be anointed into the Lord's bind with my holy seed."

As he blew his load all over my face, I noticed that his load was more
plentiful than Sam or Chastity's had been, and his seed thicker somehow.
It even tasted different than Sam's, less sweet, but still amazingly
delicious.

"Walk on," he said, and as I moved, I realized how absolutely coated I was
by that point in cum.  All over my hair, all over my face and shoulders,
and it was running down my chest, back, and both arms.

After passing the point in which I had first entered the pool, I came to
another man's feet.  Massive brown feet covered it black fur.  The body
these feet belonged to towered so far above me that his dick was actually a
good bit above my head.

He was wide and thick with muscles, so meaty that he didn't have enough
definition for a sic-pack of abs.  His brown skin was thick with black
hair, mostly around his chest, where it was quite thick, but trailing down
to his pubes and covering his legs and arms as well.

His dick humbled Sam's in comparison, it was so large, though I guess it
fit his extra large body.  His huge hands were stroking the uncut meat with
tight grips, it took both hands to hold the damn thing.  Amazing.

Of course, this was the man who could turn to steel, the one who had
followed Faith's every instruction so precisely.  Fortitude.

"Do you pledge yourself to him as the Lord's servant?" came not a voice
from Fortitude's mask, but Faith's voice from somewhere else.  It reminded
me that I had never heard this guy speak.  Did he ever speak?

"I do."

"Then let yourself be anointed into the Lord's bind with his holy seed."

And the guy unloaded on me, covering me with a fresh volley of cum that was
so thick and so salty it dried my mouth out, but I loved it all the same.

"Walk on," said Faith's voice again, and I did.

The next pair of feet I came to had white skin, and by process of
elimination I had it down to two possible suspects.  His muscled legs were
lightly, evenly covered in blond hair.  His dick, pointing directly at my
face, was about the size of Sam's, only this angel was cut, with a dickhead
shiny with precum, and his shaft was veinier than Sam's was.  His rough
left hand held onto the bottom of his dick while his right one gently
stroked it up and down.

Looking up, his muscles were perhaps the same size as Sam's, only covered
with more hair, straight hair unlike Sam's soft curls.  And his nipples
were smaller and tighter than Sam's.

"Do you pledge yourself to him as the Lord's servant?" he asked, and I knew
by his slightly southern American accent and calm, pleasant tone who he
was.  The very handsome Charity.

"I do," I told him.

"Then let yourself be anointed into the Lord's bind with his holy seed."

I opened my mouth wide and took as much of this man's cum into my mouth as
I could get as the stuff splashed all over me.  It was sweeter than I had
ever tasted, sweeter than Sam's, even, and even though there was so much of
it, he left my mouth dripping, eager for more.

"Walk on."

The next pair of feet I came to were long, slender and dark in color, and
my heart chilled some as I realized they must belong to Faith, though my
dick remained throbbing and leaking with excitement regardless.

He was tall, almost as tall as Fortitude, though leaner, more with Sam's
build.  He was completely hairless except for a tiny patch of pubes.  His
pecs were especially round and pronounced, his dark nipples looking so
inviting atop their muscled mounds.  The definition of his abs seemed
inhuman, and the V grove that led down to his crotch was especially cut.

His dick and balls were darker than the rest of his in color, his
statuesque dick uncut, long, and lean in shape.  He stroked them with his
long fingers, gripping tight.

"Do you pledge yourself to him as the Lord's servant?" he asked, and for
once that strong voice came from a real point, right above me from his
mask.

"I do."

"Then let yourself be anointed into the Lord's bind with his holy seed."

As his cum poured all over my head, I shut my mouth, not wanting his seed
to enter my body after he had done what he had done to me.  I may have had
to pledge myself to him, but I didn't have to enjoy the process.

"Walk on," he growled, and I did.

The last feet I came to were white-skinned and smaller than many of the
other pair I had already passed.  In front of me was a body more like my
own, that is to say, muscled but not hugely buff, although this body had a
good fifteen pounds on me.  No body hair except a patch of short, brown
pubes, and tats on his stomach, round pecs, and defined arms.  Although his
body was smaller than many of the others, his dick was just as big as most
of them, cut and totally beautiful, complete with a very large dick
piercing, a silver barbell.

"Uh.." came his German accented voice from behind the mask.  "So, do you
pledge yourself to him as the Lord's servant, bro?"

"I do, Temperance."

"Then let yourself be anointed into the Lord's bind with his holy seed.
Fuck!" he exclaimed as he began to shoot, covering me with more cum, with
me loving it but knowing this would sadly be my last serving.

"Walk back to the center," Faith said.

I turned and headed back to the center of the pool, loving once again being
waist deep in the angels' warm seed.

Before long, they all walked towards me, all seven of them at once, cutting
through the pool of their own semen.  They each climbed up on one of the
blocks around me, surrounding me, cum dripping off their dicks and their
legs as they lifted mostly out of the pool.

"Now," said Faith.  "You must show us to which one of us you belong."

I turned around, knowing instantly who it was of course.  I pointed towards
the Seraph with the billion nails hammered into his body.  "Here he is," I
said.  "Only kidding!"  I spun towards Sam.  "This one."

"Yes," said Sam happily, and then, quite unexpectedly, he turned his body
into stone.  Marble, to be exact, and every part of him became as white as
a statue.  His dick was hard again, only now there was a hard, marble dick
right in front of my face.

He put his stone fingertips in my hair, very gently, but the hardness of
those digits against my skull felt so strange.  With his stone hands he
pulled my head gently forward towards his waiting dick.  I licked the tip
of it, still covered with the slime from the pool, which I licked off and
swallowed quickly, and felt the warm hardness of the stone underneath.
With his urging, I took the huge, hard tip into my mouth.  It was like
sucking off the statue David.

I reached my slimy hands around and grabbed both of his literally rock-hard
ass cheeks, holding him as I eagerly sucked his dick, feeling them flex as
he thrust gently back and forth into me.  I wanted another one of his
loads, and I knew he was ready to give it.

Around me, all of the other Seraphim began to furiously stroke their cocks.

I kept sucking on Sam's dick, and he moaned softly as his fingers stroked
my scalp.

Just as Sam's semen exploded into my mouth, all the other six came as well,
all on cue with a seemingly psychic precision.  Jizz exploded onto me from
every side, covering my face from every angle as I gulped down every drop
of Sam's pleasure juice.

Suddenly all of them jumped in the pool, surrounding me.  They pushed me
backwards off my feet until I was floating face up in the cum, partially
emerged.

Sam, back to flesh and bone, lowered his face between my legs and swallowed
my erection whole, working it hard with his tongue.

"Let this liquid wash you of all sins," Faith was saying, "so that you may
become one of ours."

And then he pushed me down into the cum, Sam's mouth still on my dick.  I
coughed, not expecting being thrust underwater, and choked on the cum as it
filled my lungs.  But, surprisingly, the effect was pure pleasure as the
liquid worked its magic from the inside out.

While the other angels held me underwater, Sam's mouth finally did the
trick, and I came into his warm mouth, knowing that orgasm I had crossed
over some barrier that I would never be able to go back on.

I couldn't have been more pleased.


TO BE CONTINUED