~~Young~~

Chapter Twenty Three

   Yeah that was a pretty stupid move on Michael’s part, thinking God wouldn’t know he went to Lucifer for help in trying to off Gage.

   “That’s the love he lost wasn’t it, yours?”

   God shook his head to Gage, “he had never lost it, I love him even now, but I was very disappointed in him. He saw that and assumed my refusal to see him was out of anger when it was simply because I could not bear looking at him without my heart breaking over his betrayal.”

   “Why would he even risk it anyway,” Gage thought out loud, “that I just don’t understand.”

   There was no nose farther up God’s ass then Michaels. Of all the beings across the realms Gage would have put him at the very bottom of his list to act maliciously.

   “He was jealous of you,” Josephine chimed in, “you get sent after someone enough times and you start to think they’re more important then you. And century after century God watched for your return to earth, and each and every time he sent Michael to earth immediately upon it. He thought God loved you more and that infuriated him because in Michael’s eyes you should have been the last thing he bestowed his grace upon.”

   “How do you know so much about him?” Sera asked, “If you’ve been…on earth for the last fourteen years how did you know what Michael was doing?”

   Josephine shrugged, “Gabriel and I are pretty close. Michael told Gabriel, Gabriel told me. I knew of it before I came to earth. “

  “It won’t take us long to find him,” Death added as an aside when Sera began to look worried, “It’s not like he has a lot of options of where to go. Here, purgatory or earth. It’ll be a cinch really, he’s been a little too sheltered. The longer it takes the better the chances are that he’ll come crawling home.”

   “But what if he goes to hell instead, like Gage did?”

   “My brother doesn’t want Michael,” God waved that off, “he would not be able to manipulate him the way he had Gage.”

   “Because he still has his memories…” Gage grumbled. Okay, so maybe that was said with just a tad of bitterness.

   “I can admit that was a mistake,” God said as he clasped his hands behind his back, “I should have known that even without your memories your defiance towards me would still linger in your heart…and I should have known my brother would use that seed to make you one of his own. I had handed him the key to heaven and that was why he kept you, because you could do what none of his others servants could, what he himself could not do, travel between all realms. He was going to use you and your abilities to start the war.”

   “The war?” Gage asked, “You say that as if there is already one in the works.”

   God said nothing, Death said nothing, not even Josephine would answer him. They all just stared to where Gage and Sera stood together.

   “What? There is no war brewing. Lucifer’s got a lot of talk but nothing to back it up.”

   “Gage, how…you lived and hell and you didn’t see?” Death shook her head at him.

   “See what? Nothing ever changed in hell. Souls came in, souls were sentenced, souls paid they’re penance.”

   “And how many of them left hell once their penance was paid?” God questioned Gage.

   “Maybe a few thousand, I don’t know but it wasn’t that many. Lucifer didn’t want any soul that was remotely good, he would always bitch it was a waste of his time.”