"Michael..."
Gabriel's heart sank at the sight of his brother's body, limp and unconscious, crumpled on the floor before him. He had taken comfort in the fact that his brother at least had escaped Julian's clutches, had hoped that Alex – freed thanks to Noma's terrible sacrifice – would find Michael and get him out of the city. Instead, it seemed that Michael would now share in whatever fate Julian had in store for Gabriel.
"Michael!"
He raised his voice, trying to get a response from his brother. But Michael lay still and silent. So still that Gabriel would have worried, if his sensitive hearing had not been able to detect the faint sound of Michael's breathing, the slow, steady beat of his heart.
What had Julian done to him? Michael was a skilled and valiant fighter, deadly with the twin blades Gabriel had given him so many centuries ago. It was surprising that Julian had managed to capture him at all. It was becoming disconcertingly apparent that Julian had been planning this – all of this – for a very long time.
Gabriel couldn't help but wonder what else Julian had been planning for he and his brother. He pulled again at the chains tethering his hands and ankles, knowing it to be futile but unable to contain his frustration at being confined like this.
He desperately wanted to touch his brother, to hold him, to verify for himself the extent of his injuries. For all their differences, they were still brothers, still joined together by a shared soul, a bond born of their twin birth and reinforced by their centuries – millennia – of shared experiences.
"Michael!"
Nothing. He could smell blood but the scent was old, musty. Michael's hands were crusted with dried and flaking blood. His brother had struggled for some time in Julian's barbed net, no doubt the blood was from those injuries. Michael's face was unmarked though so he must have found flame and used a feather to heal himself.
Gabriel knew only too well though the effect that Empyrean steel had on angel physiology. Wounds caused by the celestial metal took longer to heal, took a toll on an angel's strength and vitality. If Michael had still been weakened from his injuries that might explain how Julian had captured him.
There were no signs of major injury that Gabriel could see or sense. Nothing to explain his brother's unconsciousness.
Gabriel jerked his chains in fury and shouted now, "Michael!"
His brother was unchained. Unpinned. He still had the use of his hands and his wings. If Gabriel could just wake him then perhaps...
Even as he thought it, the door opened once more, bright light spilling out across the floor, falling across Michael's unmoving body.
It was not Julian who entered this time but two of his lower angel slaves. With barely a glance at Gabriel, they strode over to Michael, lifting him carelessly by his arms and dragging his dead weight between them. Gabriel saw with dismay that one of them carried a heavy hammer and two familiar thick, sharp-pointed, pins.
"No!"
He struggled in his chains, snarling in helpless fury as they hauled his brother's body up to lay across a bench of sorts and set the first pin in place over his shoulder blade.
"Michael!"
They laughed at his anger, sneering at his impotence, and he could do nothing but watch helplessly as the first hammer blow fell, driving the sharp point into his brother's flesh. With the second blow he heard the shoulder blade crack and now, finally, his brother stirred, a low moan escaping him. The next blow drove the point deep and Michael shuddered, crying out weakly.
A final swing of the hammer seated the pin in place, the tell-tall crunch and grind telling Gabriel that the bones of Michael's wing joint had cracked and shattered, the spur of metal effectively pinning his wing in place. Michael screamed this time, much as Gabriel himself had done, and roused suddenly, almost taking his tormentors by surprise as he lifted his head and began to fight back.
For a moment hope flared in Gabriel as his brother lashed out an arm and sent one lower angel flying. Michael was struggling to his feet, his head still bowed and his breathing ragged, when the second angel tackled him, tumbling them both to the ground. The other angel scrambled to his feet and joined the fray.
Together they struggled to hold Michael down as he roared with pain and anger. For a brief moment Michael seemed to gain the upper hand, breaking free of their grasp and surging to his knees, but they quickly closed in again, landing punches and kicks that made his brother flinch and cry out, before a kick to his head sent him sprawling once more.
All of this Gabriel had to watch helplessly, straining uselessly at his bonds, his heart in his throat. His beautiful, majestic brother, brought low by these dogs and by Julian's machinations. He cried and cursed at them as they rained kicks down on his brother, Michael's body jerking with each blow.
Michael was half senseless – and Gabriel's throat raw from shouting – by the time they shackled his brother's wrists with heavy cuffs of Empyrean steel and used them to drag Michael, his arms stretched out painfully, back over the bench. Even then he tried to struggle, but he was weak and one of the angels held his shackled wrists in place while the other straddled his body to place the second pin.
Steel rang on steel, the sound lost in Michael's cry as the pin pierced his flesh. Two more blows, the ring of the hammer, the crunch of bone, and it was done, Michael left panting for breath, a keening moan of pain still escaping him. His wings were pinned.
"Michael..." Gabriel moaned in despair for his brother.
The angels were laughing and joking now, pleased with themselves, as they dragged Michael over to the wall – the wall to which poor Noma's wings, now withering and molting, were still pinned. Michael's head hung low, his breath a ragged moan, and he hung limply in his captors' grasp, barely conscious now. Hauling him to the base of the wall, they pulled his arms roughly over his head and, with chains and pins, shackled them in place, leaving him slumped against the wall, his weight hanging uncomfortably from his outstretched arms.
"Michael? Can you hear me? Michael!" Gabriel was pleading now, uncaring of what Julian's slaves might think.
Michael's head hung down and he gave no sign of having heard his brother. Julian's angels grinned and sneered at Gabriel. One of them aimed a last kick at Michael, a solid blow that thudded heavily into his side. Michael did not react and Gabriel knew that he was once again unconscious. Perhaps it was a mercy; it was torture enough being chained as Gabriel was, his arms pulled wide, unable to even sit or sleep, but to be shackled so, his own body weight pulling at the fresh agony of his pinned wings, would be intolerable.
The angels paused in the open doorway then, with a mocking, "Sleep well" the door slammed shut behind them, plunging the room back into darkness.
In the gloom Gabriel watched over his unconscious brother and wondered what fresh tortures the morning would bring.