Chapter 13
"We should go around," Gabriel stated, surveying the blackened, twisted city which the merciless sun caused to dance before his eyes like a mirage. "The instructions have routed us around populated areas before now."
"The directions point directly at it," Audrey stated, nibbling uncertainly on her lower lip. She looked again at the map.
"You remember what happened the last time we walked into a town," Gabriel said. It was a statement, not a question. The heavenly host had missed a few bad apples when they'd possessed the fallen and the weak. Lots of bad apples. Gabriel was beginning to wonder if perhaps the Father had in fact decided to come only for the good apples, using them to weed out the bad ones.
While Audrey had tended his wounds in their camp at the base of the cliff where he had fallen, the world, it seemed, had descended into anarchy. Although there were still plenty of cars, without anyone to create fuel for those cars, the only source of petroleum was to steal it from somebody else. The worst of the carnage had occurred in the first few months after the heavenly host had receded, while the Prophet had been too busy caring for him to notice. The strong seized what they needed, leaving the weak to fend for themselves. America, a nation who had defined herself by her love for her automobiles, now walked, as they now walked along the vacant highways.
At least the Prophet had found some sensible shoes along the way. The old woman had given her a coat the Prophet had joked made her look like someone from the 1950's and a pair of sensible shoes she referred to as 'dike shoes.' Another household had given her a pair of black leggings that matched the damaged shirt she refused to discard. Defiance. Gabriel had to admit he now found her countenance to be pleasing, if still altogether too provocative for one so young.
"We need to find food," Audrey stated. "Our stores are getting low."
"Looters will have gotten there first," Gabriel stated matter-of-factly. "We will find what sustenance we can elsewhere."
Pickings had been slim upon the road, the households the compass on the Prophets hand led them to barely surviving on what little they had. Mortal food was revolting, but Gabriel had been forced to acknowledge his now-mortal body needed the sustenance and increased his consumption of the vile nourishment in order to stop the degradation of his mortal shell. The rapid decline of his girth had slowed, but it hadn't stopped. Food was scarce in the desert. He only ate what he needed to force the accursed shell to function, saving the rest for the Prophet.
"Maybe it's our destination?" Audrey asked, her voice even more uncertain as she surveyed the ruined city as they drew closer and frowned. Her map identified the city as Las Vegas. A seething cauldron of sin and disobedience wiped from the Earth by the heavenly host like Sodom and Gomorrah.
"If it is the Father's will that we travel there," Gabriel stated, his voice filled with resignation, "than travel there we will."
He expected the Prophet to go off on one of her tirades against his faith in the Father, but she merely pressed her lips tightly together and held her tongue. The Prophet was getting better at containing whatever fire burned within her veins that caused her to rail against Him, to defy Him. The fire the Father found so fascinating. Defiance. Just as the Prophet had railed against the Father to defy him that way in the beginning, now that the Father had marked his prophet with a sign excluding her from the sin of blasphemy, the Prophet still defied Him by frequently denying Him the satisfaction of seeing her blaspheme. She was a lab-rat under a microscope, and she knew it.
As the Prophet learned to control her emotions and channel them into other responses, Gabriel found his own self-control beginning to slip, to whisper doubts, to question the Father and allow tiny lapses in self-control that he had never experienced before in his very long existence. It was as though he and the Prophet were two acrobats balancing on a see-saw. The closer Audrey moved towards the fulcrum, the closer Gabriel was forced to move as well to keep his balance.
"We go together," the Prophet stated, reaching out to take his hand and tugging him towards the city as though he were a dog on a leash. Her hand was warm and small in his, reassuring. It was forbidden to look forward to each small touch, but he cherished it, telling himself that it was all right because it was the Father's Prophet initiating the contact. Audrey showed no prurient interest in him. If anything, he suspected she viewed him as a big dumb animal to be pitied. It was nothow he was accustomed to being perceived, but he was adjusting.
"It's going to be dark in approximately two hours," Gabriel stated. "If we go in there, we need to find a defensible position to spend the night."
"We'll find something," the Prophet stated, looking up at him and giving him a weak smile. "That's a pretty big city. There has to be something left standing. Maybe even some survivors?"
"You need a good night's sleep in a real bed," Gabriel said, making his decision as he reached out to touch the dark circles beneath her eyes. He could tell she was exhausted.
Gabriel had heard the Prophet's tirade against the Father that night eight weeks ago in the old woman's kitchen, where she had refused to relegate him to the barn and screamed he was not a dog. Gabriel didn't understand her anger. He had been created to serve. It was the only thing he knew how to do. The Father even referred to his legions of angelic warriors as the 'dogs of heaven.' When angels accomplished whatever task the Father had assigned for them, they removed themselves from his glorious presence so that their ordinariness would not offend him.
Of course he would go to the barn without complaint if it meant the Prophet could sleep in a comfortable bed. The Prophet's decision to forsake the company of her own kind if it meant excluding him was a futile gesture, but it had been strangely comforting. Perhaps it was just another strange manifestation of the defiance she appeared to contain in endless supply? It was not his protection that she desired, but his company. Before Audrey, only his brothers had ever truly desired his company. Especially Michael.
A few of the households the compass on the Prophets hand had led them to were welcoming, but most had heard via radio transmissions or rumor that it had been angels, not demons, who had nearly exterminated mankind. His kind was no longer welcome on Earth. Angels were held in contempt. Something to be shot at on sight. His presence was not a deterrent against harm. It invited it.
"It looks deserted," the Prophet whispered, her touch growing less certain as the highway they followed led them out of the desert and into the first of the suburbs surrounding the city. Many of the houses were burned completely, but of those that remained, the visages of slaughter were still visible after more than six months. The pampered vegetation was all dead, no water left in the city to run the sprinklers which had artificially kept them alive. Most cars had already been looted for parts or gasoline, and then burned. It appeared the first thing the survivors had done after the apocalypse was to get the hell out of dodge.
"This is not a natural location for human habitation," Gabriel stated matter-of-factly. "No water. No arable land for crops. No forage for herds."
"Jerusalem is so," the Prophet pointed out. "I hear it is very dry."
"Not this dry," Gabriel said. "Babylon was once a paradise."
Something clattered off to their right, the sound of a metal trash can rolling on the pavement. The Prophet jumped, instinctively moving in closer to his side. Although she defiantly swore off a need for his protection, he was glad she had grown to trust him enough that she subconsciously did what she consciously adamantly refused. He flared his wings, extending the razor-sharp feathers to provide cover to her back should a threat come at them from the rear. What she did not notice, she would not refuse.
He noticed a bare spot where most of the long steely primary feathers had already molted out, the pin feathers beginning to grow back in to replace them too soft to deflect a bullet. Even his wings had become diminished, no longer a weapon of war without the light of the Father to strengthen them into steel. He adjusted the ones he had left to provide better cover for her.
"What was that?" she asked. "Probably just a cat."
As if in answer to her question, a cat streaked past where they walked, followed almost instants later by a small dog pursing it for a meal. With nobody left alive to care for them, domesticated animals wherever they went had begun to revert to feral creatures and hunt. The Prophet had learned the hard way not to simply walk up to a stray dog.
"Nobody has come back to bury their dead," Gabriel said softly, subtly steering her away from a yard that contained the lingering scent of decomposition. Children. He banked his wings so her view was obscured. The Prophet had stopped crying about the carnage during the third week of their journey, but the deaths of children particularly affected her. There were too many bodies for them to stop and bury.
They walked silently through the suburbs, spending the night in an abandoned home that had been curiously untouched by the destruction around it. The house had been looted and reeked of the smoke from the houses which had burned around it, but they found clean linens for the bed and a few canned vegetables in the basement, along with some candles. There was no water, but they drank the broth from the vegetables as they ate a candlelit dinner at the not-too-badly damaged kitchen table once they had turned it upright.
They no longer bothered with the illusion of making up a separate bed for him. He required far less sleep than she did, preferring to stand sentinel for as long as possible, and by the time his weak mortal body began to demand it's nightly allotment of sleep, her nightmares would have begun.
"Et venis," the Prophet murmured in the language of the Father in her sleep, a language she swore when awake she did not speak. "Grigori in. Effugisse!"
They're coming. The Watchers. They've escaped. It was always the same dream. In attempting to destroy mankind, the Father had strengthened his enemies, making them bold. Mankind no longer walked with the Father. He had lost their trust. They were a force up for grabs. The Prophet foresaw a time when those enemies would make a play for her home.
"Gigantes venit!" she cried out, instinctively raising her hands in front of her face although she was sound asleep and starting to thrash. "Salvator. Luvandi eum. Gabriel! Gabriel fidius!"
The Nephilim come. The Savior. We need to help him. Gabriel! Gabriel, help me!
It was the last desperate cry which always compelled him to her side, forbidden or not, and caused him to wrap her in his wings and hold her until the vision ran its course and her body stopped shuddering from the vision which never caused her to awaken, but which left her sweaty and weak every morning. He was unable to awaken her during her visions. Only comfort her as best he could. She called to him, and he had been charged with protecting her. His need to obey the compulsion in her voice when she called his name overrode the law of the Father.
"Shhhh…" Gabriel whispered, nestling in alongside her back and gently gathering her in his arms, dodging the stray elbow that threatened to take out his nose. "I am here, little Prophet. Whoever shalt molesteth the Prophet of the Lord shall invoke the wrath of the Left Hand of God."
"Primus discipulushicin hac civitate," the Prophet said, her voice calmer as soon as he enclosed her in the protective steel cage of his wings. "Illemutavithabituminfalsoidolo. Oportetadtemplumvenireadituquaestum."
The first disciple is here in this city. He has disguised himself in the garb of a false idol. We must go to his temple and implore him to join our quest.
Instructions. He would inform her of her vision in the morning and they would begin their search.
Nestling into her, he lay there as he did every night, wrestling with his competing duty to obey the law of the Father versus the duty his father had given him to protect the Prophet. A pattern was beginning to emerge from their journey. The places they were drawn to had ears which were receptive to the news of the birth of the Savior. The Father, it seemed, no longer worried about whether or not humans were obedient. In their disobedience, they had defied his enemies every bit as much as they had defied him, stabilizing the stalemate which had existed since the dawn of time between the Father and his enemies. By attempting to exterminate them, the Father had upset that stalemate and lost the humans trust. His enemies were trying to turn the survivors to their purposes.
The Savior, however, had also defied the Father. The Savior was someone humans felt they could trust … if they could be made to still believe in him. It would be many years before the Savior's fragile mortal shell became mature enough to assume the mantle of leadership. In the meantime, the Prophet was creating support for the leader that was soon to follow.
The Prophet had turned eighteen during their journey, informing him with a smile one day that she was now a woman. Gabriel did not understand how the magical achievement of a milestone of one's birth transformed one from one state to another. The Prophet still seemed as she had the day before, although now that he looked back, he could see how rapidly she had matured in just the short time he had known her.
He had rationalized when he'd first realized a female was stretching out alongside of him to share her warmth that she was still a child, and that it was okay because he was injured. When the nightmares had started, he had rationalized that he was only giving comfort to a child. But once she had announced she was now a woman, Gabriel had been forced to acknowledge the secret he had been keeping hidden in his heart. He liked the feel of her asleep in his arms. He liked it when she tugged him along by the hand or lay her mortal hand upon his quivering now-mortal flesh. It was forbidden, but he did not wish for it to stop.
When the Father finally welcomed him home, Gabriel knew he was going to miss her terribly. Inhaling her scent, he wondered what else the Prophet had to teach him as he drifted off to sleep.