There was no thought, nor time for it anyway; she'd seen Elliot in danger, seen Michael's hand around Elliot's throat, and reacted on instinct. Elliot was hers, her love, had always been her love, and she had watched him die too many times before in too many other lifetimes, and would not be parted from him again. She threw herself around him, wrapped him in her wings and bowed her head, and waited for the end to come. This would be the end, she knew; they'd fired every bullet in both their guns, and the knife had tumbled from her grip and landed God only knew where, and the defensive position she'd taken up on the floor left her vulnerable. Michael bore a power no nephilim could match, and she was tired, and her ears were ringing from the terrible blow he'd dealt her. All she could do was kneel, holding Elliot tight; all she could do was shield him, and wait for death. She did not know what waited for her on the other side of the veil, what fate lay in store for a creature who should never have been born, but she would face it, for Elliot's sake. Maybe Michael would focus on her; maybe she could give Elliot one last chance to run.

At least, she thought, at least she got to hold him before she died. Nestled in the darkness beneath her folded wings she held him tight, so tight, just like she'd always wanted to do.

"Foolish girl!" Michael spat. Probably he was advancing on her, but Olivia did not watch; she kept her head bowed low over Elliot's body. She closed her eyes, and held on.

"He's only a man! You could have been like unto a god, and you throw it all away for what? For him?"

"For love," she said, refusing to look up. "He is mine, and I love him, and I won't let you hurt him, not while I'm still breathing."

"I'll deal with him after you're dead, then," Michael told her grimly.

Even as she braced herself for Michael's attack, even as she tensed her muscles and listened hard and prepared to throw herself between Michael and Elliot, she felt that strange tingling sensation again, that build up of something like electricity crackling through the air that she'd felt before Michael's last blast, the one that made the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

This is it, she thought, and then the bed, maybe I can roll him under it, maybe -

She did not, in the end, have time to push Elliot's heavy body beneath the bed, or even to make the attempt; in the fragile, hopeless instant between one heartbeat and the next there came an an almighty crack! from somewhere above her head, and she curled herself still further over Elliot, still deeper within the shelter of her wings, and would be glad of it, later, because as she did the ceiling above her shattered into a torrential downpour of dust and splinters and fragments of pipe and wire, and a glow bright as the sun itself filled the room.

Michael was cursing, and she could hear the flapping of wings, and she dared to look up, and found herself staring in slack-jawed confusion at a most unexpected sight.

It was a cohort of angels. Angels, six of them, each surrounded by a nimbus of glowing light, led by Gabriel himself, descending on Michael. He tried to flee, but there was nowhere for him to turn; they surrounded him in an instant, blocked him from every direction, and closed in around him in a swirl of light, a swirl of white, like the radar images of hurricanes she'd sometimes seen on the weather reports.

"This ends now, Michael," Gabriel said.

"You can't take me!" Michael shrieked, flailing desperately, striking out with hands and wings and feet, a maelstrom of violence, though the angels were undeterred.

"No," Gabriel agreed. "We won't be taking you anywhere."

That made Michael pause, and Olivia watched, kneeling on the floor with her arms wrapped around Elliot, feeling somehow numb. Her mind, her spirit, seemed to have shrouded itself as if in a layer of wool, dulling the edges of her terror, her confusion, protecting her from a moment that was so overwhelming she'd never be able to understand it, not really. In the circle of angels Michael froze, and he was awful to behold, with his shredded wing, the blood that seemed to drip from every part of him, his eyes wild with fear.

"No," he said, as if he knew what Olivia did not, as if he knew what fate the angels intended for him. "No, please."

"The time for mercy has passed," Gabriel told him, and sounded almost mournful about it. "The time for justice has come."

He drew in a deep breath.

Olivia blinked.

Michael began to weep.

"Be not," Gabriel said in a deep and powerful voice that seemed to echo, as if in the moment he spoke a thousand other voices joined themselves to his, and Michael screamed, once, and Olivia watched as he crumbled into dust before her very eyes.

Silence fell, as the clothes he'd been wearing wafted gently to the floor, no piece of skin nor hair nor feather to mark where a living creature once had been.

Holy shit, Olivia thought faintly.

Their work down now, the five angels spread their wings and departed the same way they had come, but Gabriel lingered, crossed the room and sat himself down on the edge of the bed near the place where Olivia knelt, smiling gently, looking as calm as if he'd only stopped by for a chat, as if he had not just disintegrated one of his fellow angels with nothing more than the power of his voice.

"Hello, little one," he said cheerfully.

"What the fuck?" Olivia asked him.

That made him laugh.

"You're safe now," he said. "It is finished. He is pleased."

Olivia's knees were hurting and some of the numbness was fading from her mind, and anger was rushing in to take its place. Gently she laid Elliot down on the floor; he'd passed out, whether from Michael's attack or from something the angels had done she could not say, but he was breathing, still and peaceful as if in sleep, and she had questions for the angel, and she needed, desperately, to vent the frustration, the rage, the remains of the fear that were threatening to choke her. As soon as she was certain Elliot was safe she rose to her feet, and only then recalled that her shirt had been shredded as she spread her wings earlier in the fight. It tumbled away from her, and she crossed her arms over her chest, and glowered at Gabriel. If he had been anyone - anything - else, she'd have hit him, but she knew better, and could only assault him with words, and not fists.

"No, seriously, what the fuck?" she demanded. "You knew you could do that all along! Why didn't you stop him! Why did you let him hurt those women? He killed McKenna's mother, the children - "

With each word she spoke her voice rose higher and higher, her entire body trembling from adrenaline, from fury. Her anger had no effect on Gabriel; he only sat, calm and cool, watching her with something like fondness in his expression.

"The lord moves in mysterious ways -"

"I swear to God, I will -"

"Listen to me," Gabriel said seriously. "No creature, man nor angel, is beyond redemption. When Michael first strayed, he was given a chance to repent. Many chances, as it happens. And the children…do you think the world would be a better place without them? Or do you think, perhaps, there may still be some purpose for the nephilim?"

"Are you suggesting He wanted Michael to attack those women?" The very idea of it was vile.

"No," Gabriel said. "He doesn't want suffering. But the suffering happened, Olivia. And now the new generation of nephilim have been made, and there may yet be some good to come from them. And some good was done in this room tonight, I think."

There was blood at her temples, and Elliot was unconscious, and McKenna was still hiding in the closet probably scared out of her mind, and Michael had just been, not just killed but unmade, and Gabriel wanted her to believe that this was good?

"Think, Olivia," Gabriel said. "Think. Ask yourself: why do you think we appeared when we did? What do you think called us to this place?"

"I hate riddles," she ground out from behind clenched teeth.

"No, you don't. You love riddles, and puzzles, and you know the answer."

What had precipitated the angels' appearance? They had come, she thought, when all hope was lost. When she was defeated, in the very instant before her ruin. If they had waited another heartbeat longer, she might have been dead already. Was that what brought them down? Had they only wanted to wait to test the strength of her resolve? What had been said, she asked herself, in the seconds before the angels' arrival?

They had come, she realized, only after she admitted, out loud, that she loved Elliot. It was love that brought the angels to her. It was love that saved her, in the end.

"You have known the truth all your long life, and you have fought it," Gabriel said. "It is not your purpose to be alone. You were meant for more, little one."

"Who does He think He is?" she demanded. Gabriel's revelation had not brought her peace; it had only made her angrier. "He's playing games with people's lives! People are dead because He let Michael go free! These children…all these children are in danger! Because of Him!"

"He is the God of Abraham," Gabriel said. "It is not for us to know his will."

The God of Abraham; God had demanded that his servant Abraham sacrifice his son Isaac, and only relented and spared the boy's life when Abraham proved his willingness to remain obedient to God, no matter what it cost him. Had all this just been a test for her, a test to prove her commitment to McKenna, to Elliot, to make her acknowledge the purpose God had laid out for her?

"This is wrong," she said, shaking her head. That sweet little girl was orphaned, now, and the other nephilim children Michael had made, what would become of them? And what would become of her; what fate lay in store for Olivia now? She'd admitted that she loved Elliot, but their circumstances had not changed; she would only lose him again, maybe forever, and all she felt, in this moment, was misery.

"You've had a hard day," Michael said gently, rising slowly to his feet. "So I'll forgive your blasphemy. You still have a long road ahead of you, little one. There is much still for you to learn. For now, though, the ones you love have need of you. Go to them, and comfort them, and look to your future with joy."

"Fuck you," Olivia said, and found to her horror that tears had begun to gather in the corners of her eyes.

"I really do like you, you know," Gabriel told her. "I wish you well."

And then he spread his vast wings, and with one powerful stroke launched himself up into the air, disappeared into the night through the gaping hole he and his friends had left in the ceiling. Behind her Olivia heard Elliot groan, as if on cue, as if it were only Gabriel's presence keeping him down and now that the angel had gone he could rise, and she swallowed her own frustration, her own grief, and went to kneel beside him.

"What happened?" Elliot asked groggily as he struggled to pull himself upright.

"That…is a long story," Olivia said. "I'll tell you later. Are you ok?"

He was sitting up now, swaying just a little, but his blue eyes were clear, and he smiled when he saw her, and that smile was warm, and soft, and beautiful, and for a moment all she could do was stare at him. He was hers, and he was safe, and they were, still, doomed.