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Slowly, carefully, I knelt beside the corpse of the mother, and picked the baby out of her death-grip. It was so small, so light, a weight that barelyregisteredeven as weight. The baby continued to bawl, to scream. I touched his face, running my knuckles across his cheek, his forehead, through his wispy hair.So small. So pure.Though he was being cradled by an archangel, he had not been raptured like his mother. He seemed… immune.
Perhaps he wastoosmall.
Toopure.
“What’s the secret?” I asked the child. “Why do you hide your Light from me?”
But the child could not answer.
I smiled at him.
“Someone will find you soon,” I said, and I set the child back down with the corpse of his mother, where he belonged.
When I was done with this place, I ordered my angels to leave. We gathered on the church’s front steps, and without lingering, took to the skies. We could have raptured anyone, but there was better Light to be found in churches and the people inside them.
And we were going to need all the Light we could get if we wanted to achieve our goals.
Lofty goals, to be sure.
But what is existence without purpose if not damnation itself? And I, the Archangel Medrion, was not about to be damned like the rest of this disgusting planet and all the mortals in it.
CHAPTER THREE
SARAKIEL
Love them, Sarakiel. Above all else, love them, but do not interfere.
I was soaring.
The wind rustled against my wings as they carried me through the air. Earth was beautiful from up here. Majestic. Sunlight beamed down from the heavens, painting the world in new shades of blue I felt like I was always discovering.
As I flew, I allowed my eyes to close and just listened.
I listened to the gust as it rushed past my ears, listened to the sound of my pink hair whipping around behind my back. There was peace, up here. Freedom. This wasn’t my world, but I still felt like I was part of it, and like it was part of me.
But it belonged to them.
Mortals.
The people who lived here weren’t like us.
We were made to serve, to protect, to guide. They were given no such mandate, though. All that was expected of them was that they lived as they pleased. Sometimes, they lived good lives. They helped each other, picked each other up, comforted each other.
Other times… I didn’t like to think about the other times. The capacity mortals had for harm, for brutality, for greed, it weighed as heavily on my heart as I knew it did on the hearts of my companions. It was our task to serve them, to love them, and not to interfere in their lives unless mandated to.
But if you loved someone, how could you stand by and watch them get hurt?
This had been Lucifer’s dilemma.
This had been the reason for his rebellion against God and Her commandments.
Why am I thinking about Lucifer?
Soaring, flying through the air, eyes closed. The sunlight touched my face, and it warmed me. I smiled in response, my cheek tingling from the warmth.
Was he right?
I opened my eyes again. I wasn’t in the air anymore, but on a rooftop perched upon a tall building. A concrete jungle sprawled away from me, as far as they eye could see. It was morning, the sky bathed in pale light. All around me, people were stirring. Cars took to the roads, steam rose from vents, birds chirped as they weaved their way through the air.
