XII

It felt good to be back on Earth. Lucifer never would have expected to be so pleased, as his thoughts of the place had always been stained by dirt and blood, forced to the very bottom of his appreciation due to the fact that the planet was home to such a despicable collection of beings. Yet on its own, and graced with the structures that they had been kind enough to erect across its massive, curving surface... well, it wouldn't make a poor habitation for angels such as himself. Nothing beside Heaven, of course, but Heaven wouldn't exist much longer. The humans would be the first to go, then Michael and the rest of the angels who refused to see the truth—he wouldn't get ahead of himself, though, despite the fact that the mere thought of the impending conflict was enough to stir him into an eager frenzy. He'd been desiring such a fight with his brother for millennia, and here he was now—it would take the demons less than a single year to exterminate the human population, and at some point within that time, Michael would respond—Lucifer would learn, and almost certainly to his advantage, just how powerful the ridiculous, fabled shield really was.

Yet, for now, he had to concentrate on the humans. So it was that he stood at the very top of Gabriel's pathetic Seraphim Monument, gazing down with golden eyes at the people that swarmed below, moving thickly through the weight of their own oblivion. They had no idea what now stood above them, despite the fact that he had been careful to render himself entirely visible. They were naive, and their naïveté was a blessing; with his intentions, however, it would not last for long.

The Tesseract glittered equally bright in Lucifer's hands, his pale skin incapable of being so much as nicked by the hissing burn that it emitted. He had gotten it back from Selvig—luckily the one he had been keeping it with, rather than Uriel, who had been knocked completely from his psychic grasp. Though he was irritated, no great concern sprung from the loss—he knew that, soon enough, the number of angels would be practically irrelevant against the overwhelming mass of the demons that he was to conjure, and that was enough to ease concern.

"Come, now, my twisted children," he whispered. His breath settled in foggy clouds over the surface of the perfect cube, soon fading away, burned into nothing by the stunning glow of the golden surface. He knew how to use it. It was easy—so simple that even a human could manage it. He had already imbued it with the blood of that pathetic man's heart, which it had absorbed as readily as it did the condensation sprung from his lungs. It hummed now, a soft note that pricked at the edges of his consciousness, and it was ready—any sharp movement of it would allow the edges to cut a fissure between dimensions, opening Hell, releasing his demons.

There was no time to waste.

With his widest smile since his landing on Earth, Lucifer thrust his hands up and into the air, and the Tesseract sailed high across the pale arc of the blue sky, slicing a huge gash through the innocent atmosphere and releasing his frothing army.

Gabriel was waiting inside.

He wasn't sure what told him that Lucifer would enter the monument at all—after all, logic said quite clearly that the fallen angel would rather observe his own glory, watch everyone be ripped apart as his demons rained upon them, slaughtering and poisoning and devouring all in their wake. Yet he didn't think that would be the case, at least at the beginning. Lucifer's gloating wasn't limited. Just as surely as he'd want to gaze upon his destruction of the race, he also had a desire to confirm his victory over one of his least favorite brothers, and it was with this in mind that Gabriel made sure to be leaning casually against one of the walls of his hidden home, one hand splayed before him in an utterly relaxed gesture that made him look to be examining his vessel's nails, when Lucifer materialized there.

"Nice to see you, Luce," he greeted in as offhand a manner as possible, forcing himself not to grin at the half-gasp of shock that halted at the Devil's lips. "Lovely portal you've opened up there."

He couldn't see it, of course. But the waves of screams and snarls pounding against his ears were enough to tell him, not to mention the overwhelming psychic energy that strained his mind to the point of agony. There was no question as to whether the portal had been properly opened.

"My armies are here, now, in this very city—in the sky above and the earth around us," Lucifer half-spat, half-purred, his tongue lingering on indecision. Gabriel was practically joyous to see that he had initiated some amount of confusion in the vivid-eyed being—vivid-eyed, for Lucifer was no longer attempting to dim the gleam of his irises. They pierced through the hazy half-darkness that lay across the inside of the monument, shining like twin beacons of spiced irritation.

"Sure they are. But they haven't won, yet, and if you ask me, well—I don't think they're going to be able to."

"Why ever not?" The Devil's words were now verging on a snarl, his knuckles whitening where he curled them into fists. "They are a thousand times more powerful than your angels—"

"Actually, I'd say you've got the ratio reversed. One angel can probably handle around a thousand demons in combat close as this—"

"Which is of no concern. I have millions."

"Of course, of course. But they can't all tumble out of that portal at once, can they? After all, how big is it? Twenty yards across? So, let's do some high school math—though I suppose you don't know much about high schools, seeing as you've been hanging out under the Earth... in any case, it'll take a good number of minutes for all your cronies to pour out onto the planet. And we'll be against them the whole time. So long as we find a way to seal up the portal before the numbers get too intense—and we will, you can be sure of that—it'll be easy. The only problem will be tolerating your whining afterwards, brother, unless we manage to shove you in there along with the rest of them."

Lucifer' s jaw was stiff, trembling with barely-suppressed fury. It was clear that he had to exercise all matter of energy just to keep himself speaking steadily, and he began to pace forward as he did so, his hands tensing and un-tensing where they rested at his black-clad sides. "My whining," he ground out, "will be nonexistent. Perhaps you are overconfident of your abilities—so sure that you'll be able to stand against my demons, and find a way to close the portal... yet the Tesseract is mine. And you made a... most considerable point, in saying that a single one of you is worth all number of them..."

Gabriel knew what was coming, and so awaited it with a laconic grin. Lucifer, as he had hoped, took his display of understanding to indicate nothing beyond ignorance, and so continued to move closer, till they were scarce a breath away from one another.

"...They, for that reason, are harder to destroy. You must eliminate a thousand of their petty souls to justify a single of your own. Yet I can weaken your forces impossibly by such an action as this."

The staff was in his hands all at once, and Gabriel didn't flinch as its curve-bladed tip arched forth through the air, drawing a thin quicksilver line that settled against his chest, directly over the fragile sternum of his vessel. Energy shot along it, braced against him and every bone within him, yet he felt it as just that: energy. Electrocution. Lucifer, it appeared, had forgotten the fact that Gabriel's very soul was fundamentally different from the others'—he was powered by stars, and stars, though quite nice to look at, had no spirit. There was nothing for his attempted possession to harness.

The light sprouting from the tip of his staff fizzled and snapped in confusion, darting about around Gabriel's ribcage and shoulders, but drawing forth nothing more in its wake than a slight bothersome tickle. He tilted his head to the side, eyes wide and calm as before, placid pools of dark brown into which Lucifer's infuriated scowl was unflatteringly reflected.

"Looks like that's not gonna work for you this time, brother. Pays to keep up with the family, you know—a relation like you ought to know when your little sibling's had a big surgery like this."

"You swine," Lucifer got out, his eyes momentarily flaring with such an intense gold that the back of Gabriel's skull ached. He flashed the staff back and forwards, aiming for the same target once more, but this time with an all too physical goal. Yet before the blade could plunge into his exposed flesh, Gabriel twisted, and was instantaneously away from the monument, Lucifer's scream of spite still ringing in his ears.

He blinked in the sudden bright sunlight, rolling his shoulders a couple of times to extinguish the last traces of the shock that had bounded through him. He was on one of New York's sidewalks, and beside him were the others—Raziel, Uriel, Michael, and even Ramiel, whose eyes were hard with understanding—he didn't need to be filled in, despite his long absence after his fall from the ship; it was far too clear from the state of the streets that he knew just what had taken place.

It was nearly impossible to miss, after all. Writhing on almost every square centimeter of exposed space, with the notable absence of a five-yard radius around where the angels clustered, there were demons—disgusting things, of all shapes and colors, yet all bearing the same chilling gold eyes, pinpricks of light that glared through flesh, scale, fur, and feather. They were monstrosities, out of their vessels—like half-assembled creatures, most barely capable of physical functioning due to distorted and absent limbs. A few human corpses already lay crushed and smeared across the street where the wicked creatures had reached them, yet the majority of the population, Gabriel was relieved to see, had already barricaded themselves inside the buildings that towered around them—yet a number of the demons were beginning to throw themselves against the doors and windows and even solid bricks, fighting blindly to reach their prey.

"Alright, what are we doing?" Gabriel questioned, finding himself turning instinctively towards Michael. The blonde angel took a deep breath, straightening up, though the feigned calmness could do nothing to hide the clear agony raging behind his clear blue eyes. The human race, though factually inferior, was dear to the elder angel—he would sacrifice one here or there, of course, yet they were God's children, some relation of his own, and to see them be put through such absolute devastation was surely ripping him apart from the inside out. Gabriel, on the other hand, felt little more than anger. He could spare time for regret and mourning later; for now, he had to focus on destroying these awful Hell-creatures, on putting Lucifer back in his rightful place at the base of existence. The rest could come later.

"As much as we can," the archangel decided, glancing between the rest of them. "Ramiel, Raziel. You two will be in charge of defending the humans—nothing against the demons, only protection. We need that. Gabriel and I will take to monitoring the borders so that no great number of them manage to escape the island. And Uriel, you must kill as many of the demons as you can—no matter how many come, keep bringing them down."

Uriel responded with a sharp nod, and Gabriel bit back his own words—there was no reason to let Michael know that it wasn't going to work; the other angel was doubtless already aware. Despite his high talk to Lucifer inside the monument, there simply weren't enough of them.

A flap of wings beside him served as a contradiction.

Breath trapped in his throat, barely allowing himself to believe what a bracing psychic tendril told him to be true, Gabriel turned—and, sure enough, there was Ezekiel, head high, eyes blazing acid green—yet not uncontrollably. There was something in the set of his features that conveyed some amount of possession over his wild attributes, and Gabriel didn't need to ask, didn't need to know what had happened to bring his brother to this. All that mattered was that he had succeeded, and now he was here, and he was exactly what they had needed.

"Welcome back," he greeted.

Ezekiel's teeth glinted in a grin. "Thank you."

"Ezekiel—" Michael's voice cut between them, much more harried than Gabriel's, and his blue eyes were wide as they scanned the green-tense figure before him. "You came to help us? Are you...?"

"Controlled. For the time being. Tell me what to do, brother, and it will be my pleasure."

Gabriel felt the approach of Raziel and Uriel on either side, and Michael's eyes flickered briefly over his five soldiers, before a solid nod brought his thoughts together. "Very well. Everyone else, as I said. Ezekiel—assuming that you have all the strength of your greater form—"

"I do."

"Wonderful. You are... very strong, to have achieved that. It is your job to pursue Lucifer—I know not if any of us are capable of taking him, but you come the closest. Please, though, be careful—I beg you, brother, do not hesitate to save yourself if your life depends on it. You are far too valuable for us to lose."

"Even he will find it nearly impossible to kill me, I'm sure," Ezekiel murmured, then straightened up again, his pupil-less eyes somehow managing to focus on the form of Michael. "Thank you. I will do my best."

"Your best is what we need."

Without another word, Ezekiel allowed his wings to let themselves loose. They snapped out in a whirling explosion of black feathers and green fire, so massive that the demons closest to the angels' vacant circle shrieked and drew back in protest against the tempest of energy that had taken root. Ezekiel spoke no more—and perhaps he was incapable of it, but it hardly mattered, for it was clear that he was still aware of his actions as he turned and beat his wings powerfully, launching himself through the streets and flattening the scores of demons that swelled in his path with verdant blasts that reverberated through the pavement beneath the other angels' feet.

"Good... he will serve us well," Michael noted. "Now, the rest—off, swiftly; we have no time to lose!"

Raziel was the first to respond, for she was the tensest with the heat of the battle. She wasn't used to working in environments such of this, though, of course, she was completely capable of handling them when forced into their midst—her proficiency was in the silent arts, and the rage of battle that surrounded them now set her itching, desperate to set off on her own.

Of course, that solitude wasn't complete—she had the company of Ramiel, one of the brothers whom she was most unfamiliar with, though she trusted him nonetheless. He was wordless as well as they set off from the knot, his hammer clutched in his heavy fist, with eyes for nothing but the demons and the people trapped behind the nearest building, a supermarket.

"You go on and get them," Raziel suggested. "I can take care of the apartments over there."

"Very well."

He gave her nothing more, but she didn't need it—in a flash that she couldn't help but sigh in relief at, her thin, dark wings thrust out from between her shoulder blades, and she was above the ground in instants, beating her way up through the air. It brushed cool against her cheeks and down her throat, soothing the anxious burn that had built there, and, above the writhing demon-choked streets, she was able to think better, form a proper plan as she observed the wide glass-and-metal building that she had told Ramiel she would be defending.

The easiest method would be, of course, to take the people from the top, since barely any of the deformed monsters were capable of proper flight, and she would have no problem with dispatching those that were. Yet there would be nowhere to take them—she could allow at least some amount to remain on the roof, but it wouldn't approach the whole of the building's shrieking contents, and the demons were probably soon to bring the whole structure down, anyways. It was already quavering, rocking back in forth in such immense movements that they churned in her own stomach, but she allowed herself to pay that no heed. She couldn't afford to be afraid, herself, or the humans were doomed. She was their savior now. Her job was courage, confidence, and she had no choice of turning it down.

Courage. That was what she had to do—encourage the humans, imbue them with the warm strength that would serve as a drive towards defense of their own, if she was lucky. They had to see that they had a chance—and for her, of course, that meant fighting.

A rakish grin nudged at the edge of her lips. Raziel was good at fighting.

No time to waste. Heartbeats after the thought first crossed her mind, she was curling in the air, then shooting herself down, mustering as much pure power in her core as she could. A few of the demons whipped around to face her, their unblinking and discolored eyes straining with the force of their own shrieks, and she spared none—in a single whip of light, she summoned a bolt of energy and drew it across the space before her, instantly vaporizing a good thirty of the creatures and leaving nothing but a tar-colored smear on the pavement, though it was almost immediately overtaken by more. The power was immense, and it ached against her muscles, yet she couldn't stop—the people inside were just beginning to cease their howls of fear and instead allow soft noises of wonder and disbelief, of hope, to escape their trembling lips.

They trusted her. Good.

She managed to summon two more mighty bolts of power before it truly began to tax on her, the strain taking form in a paling of her wings against the wide, demon-dashed skies behind her. She forced herself to stay afloat, knowing that she couldn't display a hint of the weakness that was beginning to rear up inside of her. She could keep fighting—she'd have to summon a different sort of strength, that was all; that of her vessel would serve her at least as well as that given to her by her father.

"Alright, you scum," she ground out through her teeth, the sound buzzing against her eardrums. "Final prayers?"

She waited for no response, but instead dived forth, her own arm extended this time. The first thing her fist collided with was the encrusted skull of a mostly formless muddy creature, and she hooked her heel under the jaw of a tiger-headed beast at the same time, kicking up and ripping the whole of its lower face off with the force. A new swell of wails from the demons wreathed around her, but, as one after another peeled into nonexistence underneath her punches and slashes, she could only smile.

Her brother, meanwhile, was not being nearly so efficient. Ramiel had managed to clear a few of the demons away from the glass-fronted supermarket, though there were still waves pouring upon it. Still, he couldn't bring himself to focus properly—his attention, despite his better attention, kept obsessively wandering towards his brother, the treasured sibling who had tried to kill him.

Lucifer was here somewhere—close, perhaps. The thought was enough to create a nervous stir in Ramiel's stomach. It was Ezekiel's job to kill or at least incapacitate the Devil, yet Ramiel couldn't help but he had at least some right to it, and so it was that his wide blue eyes scraped across the sky above him rather than the army around him, tracing the clouds of screaming black back to their source—there. A clear fissure in the sky, parted above the top of what was unmistakably Gabriel's monument.

Gabriel's monument... that was it. That was where Lucifer was.

Before he knew what he was doing, air was flashing past Ramiel's pearl-white wings, colorless fury flaring behind his eyes. Damned if Ezekiel was assigned the role by Michael. He had the right to this—only he did. He had grown closer to and fallen farther from Lucifer than any of the rest, not to mention came the nearest to being killed by him. His passions would do nothing but fuel him, and he knew now, beyond all else, that the Devil had to be erased from the Earth.

It was only seconds before he was beside the monument—not on top, for Lucifer wouldn't want to be so close to the demons that he despised; they were his soldiers, but nothing that he personally cared for. On the contrary, he regarded them with at least as much disgust as the humans and angels did—for he was, after all, an angel himself. Even now, as Ramiel landed before the shadowed figure with his wings splayed far behind him and his face drawn into a perfectly composed expression, as he regarded the brother he had loved and lost, as he braced his hammer-bearing hand to strike—even now, he could not allow himself to forget that Lucifer was just as much of an angel as he was, as any of the rest of them were.

"You truly have fallen," were the rusty words that emerged from his lips.

Lucifer's grin was piercing. "Oh, yes," he acknowledged easily. "I know that, dear brother. Now you do, too. You were truly idiotic, to stay loyal to me... haven't you learned that they don't care? They don't care that you care. They only want to adhere to their own narrow definition of good. They don't understand. You came near understanding... but you're with them, now. You're... with them."

The plain repetition was uncharacteristic, and, there, Ramiel saw it—amidst the hurricane of demons, with a massive, thick shadow sheathing the whole of the city, with battle heat rearing in his stomach, he felt everything freeze. For it was there, much as he tried to pretend otherwise. Rippling across Lucifer's still maniacally grinning cheek was a single tear. Perfectly clear, with no trace of the gold that poisoned his eyes—Ramiel felt himself sinking even as his external posture remained perfectly arranged.

"Brother," Ramiel managed to get out.

"Not anymore," Lucifer spat, and was gone.

He was not alone when he reached the roof.

Heavy breaths were coursing through him, and a potent fury swelled under his skin, stirring at his veins—not at the people or the demons or even the angels, but at himself, at his own absurd weakness, for he had allowed himself to shed a tear—and even that single indicator of vulnerability was too much, far more than the King of Hell—than the King of All—deserved to be able to release.

So absorbed was he in this pressing aggravation that he didn't notice the other occupant of the rooftop till he turned to regard him.

And, this time, it wasn't Gabriel—instead, he was staring into the pure green eyes of his most volatile brother, whose wings rose behind him in a chilling arch of ebony and acid, sizzling and sparking, building with pure power.

Cold wind snapped across the roof. There were perhaps three yards of burnished metal between them—Lucifer could try to escape, yet something held him frozen, frozen as Ezekiel's wings beat against the wind and against his ears. Suddenly, it seemed as if all the other noise was drowned out, leaving nothing but the pound and thrust of those long raven feathers, scraping through the mist-infused, smoke-stained New York sky.

"You are nothing," Lucifer was saying, though even he didn't believe it—he had intended, before, to turn Ezekiel against the angels, and with good reason.

He was powerful.

Immensely.

More powerful than Lucifer.

"You do not stand a chance against—"

He wasn't given a chance to finish before the green-eyed beast threw himself forth with a massive, blood-icing howl, and everything exploded into a raging ocean of green and black.