Daystar (12 page)

Dahlia grabbed Raphael by the throat and threw him into the ice.
 
She leapt on him and pinned him down.
 
He did not fight her.
 
Dahlia was unthinking, maddened.
 
She looked beyond him, forgetting his presence already.
 
Her teeth lengthened, her fingernails curved into claws.
 
She could not separate herself from Lucifer’s experience in the prison.

The ice around her cracked and split.
 
The moon took on hues of red and gold.
 
The air warmed, the sky was heavy and humid.
 
Burgundy lightning bolts ripped through the clouds above.
 
Dahlia gnashed her teeth and earthquakes shook the earth.
 

Dahlia lost herself.
 
Half of her had been torn away and her sanity had fled with it.
 
She had nothing left.
 
She reached inside her and called forth the song.
 
Darkness spilled from her lips like ink.
 
The first stirrings of the melody echoed in the air.

Raphael reached up.
 
He put his hands to either side of her face.
 
“No, not this now.”

Dahlia opened her scarlet eyes and stared down at the boy.
 
Her bloody tears hit his cheeks.
 
He smiled at her.
 
Dahlia silenced her song of wrath and despair.
 
The notes hovered in the air.

Raphael gently pushed Dahlia back and rolled to a sitting position.
 
He touched her cheek; his body fluctuated.
 
His hair grew longer, his body curved like a girls.
 
Raphael brushed Dahlia’s hair back.
 
“Not without hope, Dahlia.”
 
Raphael kissed her cheek.
 
“In the darkness it waits even as a glimmer.”

Dahlia blinked and the area around her quieted.
 
Her soul calmed.
 
She took a breath, then another.
 
She stared into the gray eyes of the Archangel and her confusion gave way to recognition.
 
“You speak the words.
 
You know.”

“I know much.”
 
Raphael smiled shyly and cupped her chin.
 
“It is time for you to as well.”

***

Time did not exist in the prison.

Lucifer did not know one second from the next.
 
He experienced existence in the shifting sensations of pain, the waves that emanated from one place to the next.
 
He could do nothing but let it wash over him.
 
Incandescent lights danced behind his eyelids, each a blossom of torture that blinded him.

And for a time he did not notice it.

He grew used to the cycle, the repeating waves.
 

But there was an inconsistency in the madness.
 
His left hand did not ache as badly as the other did; it did not burn, crack, or fall to pieces.
 
It was whole.
 
He focused on the sensation.
 
His hand was warm, soothing, and numb.
 
Something brushed his fingertips.
 
He clenched his hands.

A feather.

Soft like silk, a long feather, hers.
 
He could feel her spark there, Dahlia’s fire.
 
How it remained here he did not know, perhaps a casualty in her escape from the prison.
 
He wrapped his fingers around it tightly and willed his aching hands to hold on to this, this remnant of her.
 
Lucifer touched it and remembered.
 
He drove pain aside and lost himself in the memories.
 
His sanity held together by the gossamer feather in his hands.

***

The Fallen regained their feet and stared on in shock.
 
Raphael and Dahlia hugged.
 
Raphael shifted from male to female and back again as they watched.
 
Each turn of the Archangel’s face gave them a different view.
 
Raphael spoke softly into Dahlia’s ear.
 

Dahlia nodded.

Raphael grabbed Dahlia’s armor and tore, exposing her chest and back.
 
He touched the skin near her spine gently; feeling her out, coaxing what was beneath.

Belial eyed Selaphiel warily and called out to Dahlia, “Dahlia!
 
What are you doing?”

She did not answer.

Raphael lifted Dahlia’s face to his own, his appearance back to that of a boy.
 
He looked on grimly.
 
“You are ready?”

Dahlia nodded.
 
“Do it.”

Raphael let her head drop.
 
He pulled her into a hug.
 
He summoned twin blades of white into his hands.
 
Raphael closed her eyes and drove the knives into Dahlia’s upper back.

Dahlia bit his shoulder to keep from screaming.
 
Blood pumped down her back, thick into the ice.
 
Raphael raised the blades and brought them down a second time tearing through flesh and bone.
 
Dahlia gasped and dry heaved, pain driving her to nausea.

Raphael tossed the blades aside and held her still.
 
He drove his fingers into the wounds and took on the appearance of a girl.
 
She grabbed the dormant muscles and bones.
 
She looked past her shoulder to Selaphiel.
 
“Cover them.”

Selaphiel turned to the Fallen.
 
“Those that can get off the surface do so now.”

Andrealphus snarled.
 
“So you can take her too?”

Selaphiel spoke evenly, “This will be
violent
.”

Raphael found what he was looking for, feathers.
 
Dahlia leaned into him.
 
“Just do it.”

Raphael exposed the joints and base muscles to the open air, the light, and elements.
 
Dahlia’s pupils grew to pinpoints.
 
Energy and mass throbbed around her.
 
Her breaths came in short gasps.
 
The pulse of the universe matched hers.

The sky grew dark.
 
The light from the stars and moon blocked.
 
The Fallen gazed upwards.
 
Gaea grabbed her brothers and sisters.
 
She looked to the Fallen.
 
“We go below.
 
Heed the Archangel and take cover.
 
Something comes.”
 
The children disappeared leaving the Fallen, Apple, and Whitney on the ice.

Berith stared into the heavens.
 
“The sky is coming down.”

Dark blotches left the cold of space and soared towards Earth.
 
They entered the atmosphere and burned red with heat.
 
Angels in the highest layers of the sky burst into pieces, torn asunder, their wails cut off.
 
A wall of obliterating silence descended.
 
The anti-sound travelled to the ground as layer upon layer of angels lost their lives.
 

Raphael and Dahlia faced the sky.

Selaphiel illuminated himself and pointed up.
 
“Seek cover.”

Lightning streaked the clouds.
 
The sky was red, shining, shimmering as if snow crystals fell, but what fell was not snow or rain.

A feather struck the ice at Helion’s feet.
 
He picked it up and dropped it, his finger sliced open.
 
The feather was serrated, a fusion of bone and metal.
 
Another stabbed into the ground, then another, they left streaks of blood.
 
Helion spread his wings over Whitney and Paimon, drawing them close.

Selaphiel jumped to Helion’s side.
 
He held a glowing object, a pendant.
 
He broke it open and light spilled out around him covering the group.
 
A feather sailed towards him and sheared off, unable to get through the shield.
 
Selaphiel looked to the rest of the Fallen.
 
“Seek cover.”

Berith dove towards Selaphiel with Apple in his arms.
 
The shield allowed them in.
 
Selaphiel spread his wings, pressing the shield outwards, he beckoned to Belial and Andrealphus.
 
“Both of you.
 
Come.
 
Now.”

A feather sliced through Belial’s cheek.
 
She could not take her eyes off Dahlia.
 
“What of Dahlia?”
 
Andy looked at the blood running down her cheek.
 
He picked her up and carried her into the net.

The patter of feathers turned into a downpour, a slicing torrent.
 
Angels fell all around them already dead.
 
The storm clouds above grew pink then turned the color of wine.
 
Drops of blood fell behind the feathers, painting the ice with gore.

The air whipped into a whirlwind of crimson, bone, and feathers.
 
A funnel descended from the darkness.
 
Out on the open ice, Raphael and Dahlia were vulnerable in their embrace.
 
Their eyes locked.
 
In the onslaught of bloody blades both managed to share a slight smile.
 
Dahlia spoke to Raphael, but her words were blotted out by the cries of the dying.
 
Raphael nodded.

The razor feathers focused on Dahlia.
 
They pierced her back, striking with precision.
 
She closed her eyes.
 
She clutched and scraped at Raphael’s arms.
 

Selaphiel watched tense with worry.

Belial threw herself at the pair, but Andy grabbed her and held her back.
 
“Do not go out there!”

“She will die!”

The feathers stuck into the wounds Raphael had made.
 
The razors sliced Dahlia’s pale skin open.
 
They embedded in her bones and muscle.
 
They fused to each other and with her.
 
Metallic blood spread across her skin, it crawled across her flesh.
 
Lightning struck the pair once, then twice.
 
Electricity illuminated Dahlia’s flesh.
 
The light crept into her hair and face.
 
Her eyes blazed neon.
 
She threw her head back and screamed.

Apple tore at her skin and her hair.
 
She threw herself out of Berith’s embrace and clawed at the snow.
 
It melted beneath her touch.
 
Berith crouched over his beloved, unable to help her.

The feathers poured onto Raphael and Dahlia, whirling around Archangel and Primangel.
 
The air was opaque with gore and they were obscured.
 
The bladed whirlwind built an organic synthesis of unrefined matter.
 
Dahlia’s blood called to it and made it hers.

The feathers shivered and threw sparks, their sound a tinkle of metal, the soft sigh of overlapping blades.
 
The feathers crawled across one another, linking in rattling chains.
 
They settled and stilled.
 

There was not a sound but metal cutting metal, bone grinding upon bone.
 
The wind stopped, the skies emptied.
 
The light of the moon and the stars reached them once more.

The last feathers fell to the ground gently, adding to the mound where Dahlia and Raphael had been.

The Fallen and Selaphiel watched, silent.

The feathers stirred.
 
Raphael crawled out, cut across his arms and face.
 
He stumbled away holding his head.
 
The Archangel looked up at the Fallen, appearing confused and disoriented.
 
His wings of blue fluttered uncontrollably, red razors stuck into his flesh.
 
He turned and fell to the ice, looking back at the feathers.

The mound moved.

A white arm appeared out of the pile, a hand with five slender fingers.
 
The limb stretched towards the sky.
 
A wing opened into the air and flexed steel and obsidian feathers.
 
The hand rolled its wrist; mercury oozed out of pores and ringed the arm in two floating halos, circling in opposite directions.
 
Where they crossed and touched, they made the sound of sharpening knives.
 
A second wing opened, this one matched the first.
 
Jagged and deadly, two blades pointed to the sky.
 

The heap stirred.
 
Feathers fell to the side, dissolving into scarlet blood.
 
A second pair of wings unfurled, blood constrained and shaped around hollow bones.
 
The wings flexed and hardened, then flowed back into liquid as it reformed, moved, shifted.
 
They throbbed and glowed with each pulse of Dahlia’s heart.
 
She pumped her wings and lifted up off the ice.