The motel became a game piece on a Monopoly board as Gabriel ascended – faster and easier than usual, he found, without his armour to weigh him down. Bearing Northwest, he headed back towards the diner. From his incredible height, he could see it on the horizon already, marked by a column of billowing, black smoke, like a ladder to Heaven made from his very own plumage.
He followed the road he'd taken the night before, while Audrey had slept soundly in his arms, despite the relentless rain and the deafening cleaves of light that had struck all around them. He'd known her exhaustion would engulf her quickly, but he hadn't expected her to be so quiet. After all she'd endured, to the brink of death and back again, she had simply clung to his breastplate and stared up in silence at her would-be protector. Vermilion blood had seeped down the drenched locks that stuck to her face like the cursed waters of the Nile, and the flashes of lightning lit her enchanting, aquamarine eyes like jewels.
She'd been a little more cautious when she awoke, but once the terrified, residual haze of her nightmare had faded, he'd felt the inexplicable trust she'd invested in him, and it felt like salvation. Somehow, even in the wake of the Apocalypse he'd led in the name of God, and though he'd been the physical cause of what would have been her end had he not intervened, she'd still graciously held him and offered consoling words when his faith in himself, and therefore the Lord, had begun to waver.
As he approached the noxious pillar of fumes, he gathered a light layer of white ash on his contrasting, cotton tunic. It hovered throughout the sooty air, glowing orange until it cooled into delicate flakes of dust. The fire appeared to have receded, he saw as he swept down through the dark veil shrouding the rubble, leaving only a few piles of debris still aflame.
Folding his wings, he dropped the last couple of yards to the arid ground and found himself at the centre of a mass grave. Hordes of charred bodies lay in broken piles surrounding the ruin of Paradise Falls, where they'd been deposited by the force of the explosion. The stench of burnt flesh was unimaginable and Gabriel absorbed the devastation he'd been bid to wreak. Fragment after fragment of terrible human history tugged at his memory as he looked out over the sea of carcasses, awash with guilt. Everything he ever thought he knew lay with them.
He could not call them innocent – since their creation, mankind had attained but a fleeting spell of innocence, only to be corrupted from within – but this was far from a reasonable punishment. Every one of them had the potential to learn the virtues of integrity and kindness, given the right guidance. Michael had recognised that, while Gabriel had deliberately blocked out the ethical quandary in his need to earn the Lord's favour. Now, of all the lives he'd rewritten, only one had been salvaged.
He bent his knees and took off again, in search of food for his hungry, compassionate new friend. It was a long time before he found any, even with the advantage of flight. About fifty miles west, green fields began to appear below, indicating a settlement area nearby. Diving low among the crops, he tried to ignore a flock of vultures and the meal they left behind as they fled. He plucked an armful of corn, and some tomatoes from a vine outside a small farmhouse.
The garden had been carefully looked after. It was surrounded by a dry stone wall, and was filled with desert verbena and hopsage, which seemed all the more colourful against the desolate landscape beyond the fields. Small patches of fruit and vegetables bore ripe produce, some of which had already been pecked away at by the birds in the short time since their cultivator's demise.
Along the length of the path that ran between the house and the gap in the wall that led out to the cornfield, a washing line hung overhead. Frilly nightgowns, jeans, cardigans and long johns adorned it, fluttering slightly in the breeze. On a stool next to the open back door, below a melodic wind chime in the shade of a pomegranate tree, sat an empty wicker basket and a fabric pouch on a coat-hanger, full of wooden pegs. Gabriel placed the corn and tomatoes in the basket and added a few pomegranates from the tree, before ducking in through the little, rustic door, finding himself in the kitchen.
White wood cabinets and granite countertops surrounded the far right corner of the room, stretching all the way across to the refrigerator, which stood next to an archway through to the next room on the left. An assortment of pans and utensils dangled from a rack over the large island in the middle of the room, where a pile of festering tomatoes lay on a chopping board beside a half-eaten loaf of tiger bread enclosed in a polythene bag. Gabriel found it odd that there was no sign of a knife anywhere, despite the incidental state of the room.
He investigated the contents of the useless, tepid fridge, finding jars of homemade jam, a couple of aubergines that were still fairly firm, a selection of furry vegetables, a block of wrapped cheese that didn't look mouldy but had a vaguely pungent odour, and a small tub of butter. He took the jam, aubergines and butter, and laid them on the island with the bread while he inspected the freezer below. A carton of rancid, melted ice-cream greeted him, making his head jerk back in disgust, and he suddenly decided, ramming the drawer shut, that he had enough to last them until morning. He picked up his findings and stashed them in the basket outside with the rest.
As he packed the food in securely, a strange shuffling noise reached his ears. Straightening up, he listened: there were no birds calling, nor leaves rustling, and the wind chimes were completely still. The shuffling stopped, and a low, ancient, instantly recognisable laugh rang out from behind. He knew exactly who stood there, regardless of the fragile form he took, and in one concise, fluid movement he spread his lethal wings and spun, slicing through the old woman's neck like a blade through water. It was a clean cut; there was no mess until her frail body hit the ground, a kitchen knife grasped in her withered, immobile fingers, and the severed head rolled to the foot of the tree. The silvery lengths of her hair drifted, in their own sweet time, to join them.
Gabriel looked up, and everything still rooted in the earth was dead. The vegetables were black with rot; the corn was brown and dry, and the flowers had all wilted. I knew this would happen, he thought sagely.
Picking up the basket, he set off for the motel in haste. Possession, he knew, was a fatiguing exploit, but after such a short stint it would only be half an hour, perhaps, if that, before he would be able to reanimate another poor, departed soul's shell. He needed to get back to Audrey before his fallen brother found her.
The terrain below was a blur of Joshua trees, arms outstretched to the sky as Gabriel darted across it, straight as an arrow. Please, he prayed; protect her. I beg you.
He chided himself for leaving her alone; he'd taken precautions, but it had still been an immensely imprudent risk. She was just barely recovered from the last time she'd come to harm because of him, and now he'd endangered her again. If anything happened to her...
He shook the thought determinedly from his mind and raced on, breathless from his anxious exertion. With the almighty strength of his wings and a fervent sense of urgency, the journey back took half as long. The gleaming blue waves of the pool in the courtyard soon came into view, surrounded by white dots which he knew to be loungers. There was no sign of her.
As he descended, however, he saw that one of the dots had legs, and long, brown hair spread out over the flagstones. She lay on the ground next to the water, and upon realising this, Gabriel's heart stopped cold.