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“You’re in with Gabriel. How long do you think we’ll be down here?” Emily asked.
“As long as it takes, I guess.”
“It’s not so bad as long as you’re down here,” Emily said, and her friends started giggling again.
Jacks looked at his watch, still a bit thrown by how he responded to Emily’s touch. “I should really go. I have somewhere to be, and I can’t be late,” he said.
The table grew a bit more serious. The girls didn’t ask where he was going. They didn’t have to. They knew he had to go meet Gabriel, and one didn’t really joke about Gabriel. Jackson stood to leave, and Emily didn’t stop him. The True Immortal, founder of the NAS, leader of the Angels, was waiting.
• • •
There was talk that Gabriel was grooming Jackson for something special. A wild rumor had even started that one day in the future, Jackson would be named the first Born Immortal on the Council.
Jacks was aware of the talk floating around the sanctuary, but he didn’t pay too much attention to it. It was true he was now a Battle Angel and had volunteered to lead the Angels against the humans. And he had spent more time with Gabriel these past few days than he ever had before. But really, Jacks just enjoyed hearing him talk about the days before the Great Awakening and tell the ancient tales of the Guardians and of the last Age of Demons, when the Angels had emerged victorious. Gabriel had also known Jacks’s real father pretty well. Sometimes they talked about him, too. A lot of the younger Immortals weren’t so interested in these old stories, but Jacks found them fascinating. And more than anything, he really treasured the anecdotes about his father.
Gabriel was a steady North Star amid so many changes throughout the years. And he was especially dependable now, even though the end of the demon war would bring about a radically different Earth for the Angels. In contrast, Jacks was just a young Guardian, still discovering what kind of life he would live.
Far, far above the Council chambers, skylights rigged with an ingenious system of mirrors and reflections spilled shafts of light from the surface down to the vast rooms underneath. The Council chambers and halls never ceased to impress Jackson. Regular Angels only saw these sacred places maybe once in their lives. Maybe. And Jackson was fortunate to have been invited in several times already.
Gabriel greeted him and they walked from the solarium into the main hall just outside the Council chambers, which were lined with Grecian columns like a beautiful chapel. The main hall itself was an enormous span of arches, with walls adorned with a jaw-dropping marble frieze, which, at its center, depicted the most famous image of Home. In it, Guardian Angels wearing ancient garb stood in a circle around a flame. The rest of the frieze told the story of the Angels in intricate detail, from their very beginnings, through the Demon Struggles for control of Home, and all the way up to the Great Awakening. Gabriel had been a witness to all this history, firsthand, not just through sculpture and song.
“You know, you remind me so much of your father, Jackson,” Gabriel said to Jacks as they strolled along the hallowed halls. He turned to Jackson, his seemingly ageless features warm and kind. He donned a simple white robe, lined with golden handspun embroidery.
“I’m honored to hear you say so, sir,” Jackson said. “From what I understand, he was a tremendous Guardian.”
“Indeed,” Gabriel said.
Jackson knew that Gabriel thought it was important that a warrior and leader have both physical courage and moral courage, and, most essentially, loyalty. Gabriel would often bring these topics up with Jacks, discussing both human philosophers and ancient Angel philosophers like Luxiticus, a brilliant thinker who was totally unknown to the humans.
“Loyalty,” Gabriel said. “It’s something the humans lack. We have been saving them for millennia, and now they turn on us at a moment’s notice with no provocation. Like ungrateful children.” Gabriel shook his head sadly. “Humanity is self-destructive, which is why we first came out of the shadows. I and the others who became the Council were tired of watching mankind kill one another, day after day, year after year. Brothers turning on each other in bloodlust. We tried to save them secretly, and then we tried to save them in public after the Great Awakening. But humanity cannot be saved from itself. We’ve tried for too long. And now it’s our time to stop and let destiny take its course.
“Mankind is perpetually at war. They are as restless as they are violent. We Angels represent their better nature. We are their ideal. We are perfect. Even you, with your new wings, are perfect.”
Jacks felt confused. He couldn’t stop thinking about what he saw on the outside, and he had a hard time reconciling those awful images with the logic of Gabriel’s argument.
“But . . . can we really blame humans for being less than perfect?” Jacks said.
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t call five thousand years of war ‘less than perfect.’ I’d call it something far, far worse. Jackson, I know you must still have sentimental attachments to the human world. But you mustn’t let those get in the way of your duty, which, first
and foremost, is always to the Angels. In my lifetime I’ve had to face difficult decisions, many of which nearly broke my heart. But I’ve always known I was performing my fated duty, not for myself, but for the good of Angels everywhere. And that’s made all the heartbreak worthwhile. You, too, have that opportunity now. We all do.”
Jackson nodded. Gabriel was right.
“They have abandoned you, Jackson.” He paused to study Jackson’s face. “I know it’s hard, but sometimes the truth hurts. She has abandoned you.”
Jacks turned away, his lips curling in bitterness.
“That’s another issue,” Jacks said. “I can’t let things get personal.”
“You’re right, son. It was wrong of me to bring that up,” Gabriel said. “I apologize. I just want to make sure we’re clear. You may face temptations, but you must strike them down.” Gabriel turned and looked to the inscriptions underneath the depictions of ancient battles. “I don’t know how I appear to you, Jackson. But you and I are made of exactly the same thing. I can feel it. And I want to protect you, as if you were a son.”
“I understand,” Jackson said. “And thank you.”
“None of this means we don’t have compassion for the humans. I will always have compassion for them, even though they turned on us. As a young Angel, I, too, once struggled with the love of a human,” Gabriel said.
Jacks’s eyes opened in shock. Gabriel? In love with a human?
“Shocking, I know. This was before our Home had become fully hidden from humanity, when human civilization was just emerging. A young woman, more beautiful than anyone—human or Angel—I had ever seen,” Gabriel said. “She was enchanting. And she enchanted me. I knew there was no way it could work, that we could never really be together. But I trusted her anyway. And in the end, she let me down.”
