“I… I don’t know.” Buying myself some time, I toss the covers back and crawl out of bed. I’m still wearing my dirty training clothes from yesterday, and I almost feel bad for all the dust I definitely got in his bed. But not bad enough that I don’t take a seat in the armchair across from him.
His eyes don’t leave me, not even for a second.
“So, I um…” Nervously, I run a hand through my ratted hair. I really don’t want to rehash this, but I need to address the elephant in the room. “I said some pretty embarrassing things yesterday.”
“Would you like me to remove it from my memory?” he asks without hesitation.
My face twists into shock. “What? You can do that?”
He readjusts his posture, keeping his hands tightly clasped together. Everything about him looks so rigidly controlled. It’s unnatural, forced, and certainly not helping me feel more comfortable. “It’s uncommon, but yes. An archangel can forfeit their own memories.”
“That seems a bit extreme.”
“It is.”
I stare at him in silence, shocked and appalled.
After a moment, Abaddon seems to realize I’m completely lost for words. He tips his head forward, face deathly serious, and reiterateshimself. “Would you like me to remove the memories or not?”
“No! No, of course not!” I shake my head rapidly. That is the most absurd thing anyone’s ever offered to do for me. What a nuclear solution for a minor problem! “I just… How is that even a thing? Do you seriously have full control over the most minuscule details in your neural synapses?”
I watch him contemplate it for a moment before he says, “It’s less exact than I’d prefer.”
“So you’d just be taking a hatchet to your brain and hoping for the best.” A dry laugh bubbles up in me. Just when I think I’ve heard it all, these angelsalwaysfind a way to surprise me. “And this is something you guys dooften?”
“No. Most do not. I, myself, have never needed to before.”
I can’t stop shaking my head in disbelief. “Nobodyneedsto remove their memories. Humans get along just fine without that ability.”
“Do they?” He tilts his head at a slight angle, looking at me without an unreadable expression. I can’t quite tell if he’s being rhetorical or not. But, then again, I can never really be sure of the meaning of anything he says or does…
“Yes,” I say slowly. “Bad things happen; we grow through it. That’s basically the point of it all, isn’t it? The reason we live just to die?”
“I would not know.” His shoulders droop slightly, wings resting even more on the ground. “My kind isn’t given that luxury. We are made to serve the Creator, not become one with his creations. A shepherd does not become the sheep.”
Well that’s depressing. “We’re not sheep, Abaddon.”
“No, you’re not.Youare an exception.” He rises from his seat and paces to the window, pulling back the curtains to look out at his city. “But you still have so much to learn. Sometimes, circumstance dictates necessity.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I scoff, genuinely insulted. “This isn’t exactly how I wanted to live out the rest of my life, but I’m choosing to be here, anyway.”
“That is simply the arrogance of youth. You have not even begun tounderstand hard choices. You are clever, Kae, but you are not wise. You still know very little of your inner guidance.” His voice remains exceptionally apathetic, grating on my nerves even further.
“And you do? You sound awfully certain for someone who barely knows me.”
“No, I do not. But I do know myself, and I know I am capable of leading you.” He looks back at me, the light from the window illuminating half of his face, casting the other side in shadow. “You did not ask to be in this world, but neither did I. It was forced upon us both. And do you have any idea how much longer I’ve been here than you? Ask me how old I am, Kae.Ask.”
If Dusk is at least a thousand, I can’t imagine Abaddon is any younger. I honestly don’t really want to know, but I have to. If I’m going to start putting any puzzle pieces about Elohim together, I need to learn these hard facts of reality. No matter how uncomfortable it makes me. “…How old are you, Abaddon?”
“I amtimeless.” The way he nearly hisses his answer at me almost causes me to flinch. I think he notices, too, because his expression softens. “True archangels were formed directly by the Creator in Heaven. That is a place that exists outside of time and space. Our original souls are a frequency that does not exist here, a color you cannot comprehend. We are ‘born’ into our physical forms the first time we pass through the Eye of God, yes, but we are not new souls.”
A chill wraps around me, so I pull my knees up into the chair, hugging them. “And when did that happen for you? When were you… born?”
Abaddon takes a few steps towards me, tucking his wings in tightly. If I’m not mistaken, he seems slightly frustrated. His face is pulled taut, though he still looks at me with softness in his eyes. “This is not my first time on this side of reality. It is not even my second. I have been assigned to Earthmanytimes, Kae, and I have never been sent merely as a Messenger. Do you know why they call me the Destroyer? Do you know of Sodom and Gomorrah?”
I refuse to answer, too filled with dread, but I do know. Sodom and Gomorrah were once two corrupt cities, allegedly destroyed by God forbeing irredeemable. It’s one of the most famous stories of the Bible.
Abaddon seems to recognize my answer, because he looks away, fixing his gaze beyond me in a thousand-yard stare. “The destruction and desolation that rained down on the wicked cities became a human legend. It is referenced across multiple established religions, incorporated into languages still used today… That is who I am, Kae. I am an archangel with no specialty, for I am destruction incarnate—a tool for divine wrath. It is whyI, of all the angels, was chosen to raise an army of tormentors for Judgment Day.”
