I apologize for not assuring you last time, but this fic is still season 9 compliant so far! Phew!

HELLO, LILITH

War's brothers, Pestilence and Famine, had been easy to find once Gabriel knew what he was looking for. Stopping time whenever he came across a scene of great trouble made it so easy it felt like cheating. Both anthropomorphic personifications were as happy to receive their rings as War had been, though Famine had made Gabriel's apple rot in his hand. If Gabriel hadn't been on official Messenger business, he might have smote someone for that.

All three rings now delivered, Gabriel was taking time to run through a forest, letting Suros feel his body moving like it had when he had been young: strong and sure, with no creaking joints or mysterious aches. A mischievous tulpa raced alongside him, little more than a few incoherent thoughts presenting itself as a vaguely humanoid collection of mist and sparkles. Gabriel had to laugh. Humanity loved sparkles. They were almost as bad as magpies sometimes.

The tulpa couldn't speak yet, but it whistled like the wind through a canyon, trying to dart in front of Gabriel to trip him up. The angel was more sure-footed than the tulpa liked and always leapt easily over the thought-creature. It was already exceedingly clever for its age. Gabriel suspected it would find enough believers to solidify into something capable of speech and true physical contact. Perhaps it would even ascend to deification and become a pagan god. Those were the kings of tulpas, creatures to be treated with respect and caution. A god (with a lowercase g) wasn't a match for a Seraph, but they could give the lower Angels and Cherubim a real thrashing if they were offended.

The tulpa whistled in sudden distress, pulling up short and whipping its proto-head around. Something was rotten in this forest. It was alive, but sickly and poisoned, reeking of sulfur. The tulpa chirruped again darted away, fleeing back into the depths of the forest, away from the stink. Gabriel stopped running, wrapping his grace around Suros and tucking the human soul deep inside him, where he would be safe. His sword slid into his hand automatically as he crept through the trees.

A little girl sat on a log, swinging her feet through the fallen leaves around her. She looked up as Gabriel approached, her brown eyes filming over into a milky white. The smirk on her face was old, full of malice and intelligence that no child should hold. "Hello there, angel."

God had declared that those Lucifer had created in the Underworld would serve as his guards, so the angels reluctantly left the demons alive as long as they stayed in the Underworld. They were useful as the caretakers of those souls too corrupt to enter Heaven. All of the twisted, evil souls that before had been left to wander the Earth forever were now shuttled downward, and the demons took them in and multiplied. The Archangels frowned at this behavior, but it was better that the Underworld be populated with easily-killed demons than anything more unpleasant and dangerous. As Raphael pointed out from his long experience guarding the Borderlands, empty realms spawned nightmares.

Demons were little threat to any angels, especially solitary ones on their own. Even this one, the first and oldest demon, wasn't strong enough to hurt Gabriel. The Archangel stepped out of the trees, holding his sword loosely in his hand, the tip pointed down. He wouldn't attack first, but if this painfully familiar demon tried to catch him off his guard, she'd dead before she could reach past his grace. "Greetings," he said. "You're a long way from home."

Sorcha's once-beautiful features were ravaged by the fires of the Underworld, originally kindled by Gabriel himself, and shredded by Lucifer's claws, but even condensed beneath the skin of this child, Gabriel recognized the remains of his favorite vessel.

She looked like Sorcha, but this demon was no more Gabriel's beloved vessel than Lucifer had been his beloved brother. What Lucifer had done to her in the underworld had stripped her of her memories and purity. He renamed her Lilith. Gabriel had heard that name whispered among the humans already, slipping into the narrative of Heaven the angels had pushed onto the chosen ones. Lilith, the first wife of Adam, who refused to submit. Lilith, the demon who attacked children. Lilith, the Queen of the Damned, the wife of Lucifer.

Lilith, the one Gabriel had failed.

She couldn't hurt Gabriel physically, but Lilith's presence alone was enough to press a spike of guilt deep into his heart. He as good as created her. He had brought her to Lucifer's attention, and he had upset his brother enough for Lucifer to seek his revenge on her. He feared he would never be able to repent enough to erase this sin from his spirit.

Lilith tilted her head to the side, her white eyes horribly out of place in the face of the child she wore. "I recognize that blade," she said, pointing to the sword Gabriel held loosely. "It's quite a bit bigger than your brothers'."

"Quite a bit more powerful too," Gabriel replied. "Which brothers' are you comparing it too?"

Lilith shrugged childishly, kicking a foot and decapitating a mushroom. "I don't know their names. The ones the Nephilim took. They had short swords, more like big daggers, really." She held up her small hands to indicate the size of an Angel's sword to Gabriel.

"They stole those swords from my brothers," Gabriel said. "No Nephilim will steal this sword. I keep it close."

"I know." Lilith grinned and held out her hands, flapping her fingers in a gimme gimme gesture. "May I hold it?"

Gabriel actually laughed at the demon's joke, confident that Lilith didn't actually think he'd hand his sword over. "Absolutely not! Don't think I'll fall for your tricks, demon!"

"Ooh, damn!" Lilith snapped her fingers in frustration. "Thought I had you there! But then again, I should have known better than to try to fool an Archangel."

"Aren't you scared of me?" Gabriel asked, setting his head to the side as he watched the demon. If she knew he was an Archangel, surely she knew he could easily kill her.

"Should I be?" Lilith asked, leaning back on her hands. "You're not my Creator. You're certainly not Michael, the biggest, baddest angel of them all. And if you were Raphael, you would have already had my head severed from my neck. That means you're Gabriel, the Messenger, and you're the most likely to give a girl a chance."

Gabriel shook his head, lifting his sword to gesture to Lilith with the tip. "Don't think this body is what's protecting you."

"I wasn't talking about the body," Lilith cooed, pushing herself off the log and dusting off her dress. "You like to talk first, kill later. Good trait for a Messenger. Even better for me, because I have a message for you."

"A message?"

Lilith nodded. "For all your brothers, actually. Take it to Michael and to Raphael, okay?"

Gabriel was the Messenger, and while his first loyalty was to God, he never turned down a personal request to carry a message. If Lilith wanted him to deliver a message for her, then he would deliver the message. "As you wish. What is the message?"

"Thank you."

"Thank you?" Gabriel raised an eyebrow. "Is that the entire message?"

Lilith's malicious grin was back, and she spread her arms. "Thank you for the children. Their souls are amazing."

Gabriel narrowed his eyes, looking beyond Lilith at the soul of the child she possessed. At first, aside from a coat of tarnish from the presence of the demon and the actions she carried out in the child's body, he didn't see anything out of sorts. "I don't understand…"

"Look closer," Lilith prompted. "Doesn't she look familiar?"

The face wasn't familiar. Gabriel had no little girls in his bloodline of the right age, and neither did Michael or Raphael that he knew of. The patterns in her soul kept catching Gabriel's eye. He had seen those somewhere before…

Abaddon.

One of Lucifer's angels, one of the traitors Michael had purged from Heaven, Abaddon had been a Seraph, fourth-class. She had been easily overlooked as she moved into Raphael's choir after Lucifer's exile, and her vicious swordsmanship had earned her admiration from the more senior Seraphim. She had thrown her allegiance in firmly with Azazel, and Michael had ripped out her grace eight years ago.

This little girl wasn't one of Abaddon's vessels: she was the fallen angel herself. Her human soul bore all the same signatures as Abaddon's angelic spirit, but now it was tainted by Lilith. At eight years old, the little girl's soul was already destined to fall straight to the Underworld upon her death.

A fallen angel would fall again, and in the Underworld, her soul would be attacked by the demons, ripped and burned and mauled until she rose as one of them.

Lilith laughed as the realization broke across Gabriel's face, clapping her hands together. "You see? You see! We have them all, Gabriel! We waited for the falling stars, and we captured them all as soon as their guardian angels cleared out! And now…" Lilith spun in the fallen leaves, her dress twirling out around her skinny legs. "Look at her soul! You can't redeem it! You can't stop it! She dies, and she's ours! They're all ours! And you can't save them!"

Gabriel spread his wings and flew, racing toward his brothers as quickly as he could, Lilith's laughter chasing after him.