The Gathering

XVII: Like a Shadow

"Don't we have to worry about them tracking us here?" Jonah asked, the cool morning air making his pale skin slightly red.

"Not with Gadreel around!" Michael replied, dressing himself for the day ahead. "She can cancel out the capabilities of the empaths up in Beulah."

"Where is Gadreel?" asked Jonah, "I'd like to meet her." Michael led Jonah from their small alcove of a room to where Gadreel may be, and she was. A woman faced away from them, a black lace veil covered the gray hair on her head. Her black robes complimented her look.

"Gadreel?" Jonah asked, keeping his distance. No response, but he saw the woman's head move slightly in his direction.

"Hello, Jonah..." A voice – Gadreel's – spoke to Jonah, but not out loud. The voice had been projected directly into his mind. "It is nice to speak with you in person... in safety..." The voice was old. Not old like Raphael, more like Samael: ancient.

Jonah glanced to Michael for reassurance, "Gadreel is an empath." Michael informed, "The firstempath, to be exact. She's the one that found you – that found all of us."

"You're also the one who gave me those dreams..." Jonah wondered aloud, remembering Jo's words: 'yeah, that was us.'

"Yes..." Gadreel's 'voice' bounced around Jonah's head, the feeling of a psychic presence in one's mind was not something you ever really got used to. "I have led many stray angels home over the millennia, son of Sandalphon."

"You knew my father?"

"I've known every angel born of God's will. Your father was an exceptional one." Jonah scoured his cloudy memories for the name 'Gadreel' in relation to his father... nothing. Jonah had seen the name 'Gadreel' in many of Metatron's scrolls. She was always mentioned when it came to sending messages to the mortals of earth, divining the location of a lost angel, or – in the case of the battle of Jericho, being an active militant, waging psychic warfare from a distance. He had never read of her status as the first empath, though.

"Why did you bring me here?" Silence.

"She's very tired," Michael gestured for them to leave Gadreel to sleep, "Divining takes so much out of her... she's almost seven thousand years old." That number was what Jonah had expected, but it was still shocking. That would make her only slightly younger than Samael, the oldest angel.

"How many of you are there?" Jonah asked Michael, now far enough away as not to disturb Gadreel.

"Right now, it's only the four of us – you, me, Jo, and Gadreel." Michael ascended the ladder up to the main hall of the church. "There used to be a lot more of us before I got here... about a month ago, Barachiel ambushed them. They were trying to intercept a gathering, but somehow he was one step ahead of Gadreel. He and his archangels killed at least a dozen, Gadreel and Jo were the only two who made it out together. Gadreel thinks some others may have fled, but she can't sense them anymore. I was recruited later."

"I think I heard about that 'incident' from Metatron." Jonah recalled how Metatron had called the occurrence 'top secret.' "What do you mean 'stop gatherings?"

"Well, that's our goal." The hazy morning sun glinted in Michael's green eyes. "Every ninth hour, Gadreel listens psychically for any signs that a gathering is happening. Unfortunately, Gadreel can only detect the signs if the gathering goes wrong – If humans react psychically to the gatherer's presence."

"That was you!" Jonah suddenly realized, "The shapes in the flames – at the hospital!"

"Yes." Michael exhaled, clearly rueful that he didn't stop Sera then. "We were too late that day, and too many people died because of it." Michael shook off the guilt and his normal demeanor returned, although his eyes still betrayed his regret. "C'mon, we have to collect some supplies today."

...

Jonah and Michael traversed the extraterrestrial landscape of New York City like voyagers to a new continent. They charted their paths, explored every divergence, and eventually made their way to their destination: A burnt out husk of a store nestled in an alleyway off an inconspicuous that looked like every other. It took the pair almost two hours to reach it, despite its rather close proximity. This was not helped by Jonah's frequent sight-seeing detours. Anytime a loud noise or a particularly bright neon display caught his eye, he was transfixed until he had seen what it had to offer. Michael would have complained had he not behaved the same way when Johanna had shown him around New York when he first arrived.

Michael effortlessly pulled a plywood barricade from the doorway of the skeleton of a store. Discarding the makeshift door, he ushered Jonah inside. The light from the exposed doorway shone into the dusty, abandoned interior for the first time in weeks. "What is this place?" Jonah asked, looking around in trepidation at the messy surroundings. The shelves were all but empty, their metal racks dulled black by fire. The floors were once tile, now they were a shattered mess. Jonah looked on the shelves and even inside a warm and barren freezer – nothing. "What is this place?" Jonah asked again, he suddenly noticed why he didn't get an answer previously, Michael was nowhere to be found.

Jonah began to panic slightly, his breath hitching. He was so lost in the city that he feared without Michael he may not find his way back to St. Catherine's. "Michael?" He called out into the desolate store. "I'm back here." Michael softly yelled, his voice echoing from the small room behind the counter. Jonah hopped the ledge and entered.

The room was very different from the main store, it was relatively untouched by the fire, for starters. A large couch was positioned against the far wall, a cot with two ascending bunks against the side. Dead neon lights wrapped around the room's ceiling, posters and take-out menus were taped to the walls like a strange scrapbook. Then Jonah noticed what Michael was looking at. A mural was painted on the wall behind the door, it depicted the bridge – the same one from Jonah's dream...

"That bridge... I've seen it before." Jonah tried to retrieve the foggy memory of the dream from his already overcrowded mind's proverbial filing cabinets.

"I haven't taken you there yet." Michael puzzled, still looking intently at the mural.

"Not in person, in a dream – I think." Michael shifted the small spark of holy fire he was using as illumination into his left hand and held it up higher, allowing Jonah to see the mural more clearly.

"Well, it's called the Williamsburg Bridge." Michael explained. "You can see the entire city from the top on clear nights." He pointed to a high-up spire. The mural was very impressive, the light from the fire unveiled details Jonah hadn't noticed upon first glance. The entire city skyline sat in the background, small dots of yellow and white paint made the city lights look almost real. The bridge's lights reflected on the water of a river below.

"What's that?" Jonah asked, pointing to two silhouettes standing atop the bridge, backlit by the glow of the city. He could see that the question made Michael uncomfortable.

"That was me and Matriel..." he muttered.

'Matriel... why do I know that name?' Jonah thought, wracking his brain for the spark the name ignited deep in his memories... nothing. It was as if the memory was lost to time. "Matriel?" Jonah asked both to Michael and to himself.

"You... don't remember her?" Michael looked saddened, but not surprised. "Of course, you don't, they didn't want you to." Before Jonah could respond, Michael interjected, his voice breaking a little, "I don't want to talk about it right now. Can you grab those swords for me?" Jonah bit his tongue and decided to respect Michael's wishes. He grabbed the swords and left the hollow store with Michael.

Their return voyage was far less cheerful than their original, Michael's emotions were battling in his head as he tuned out the rest of the vibrant world, Jonah included. Jonah was more like a shadow than a companion on the way back, silent and following.