Blood and Tears

Of Death and Damnation

          Slowly, carefully, the blackness faded from Jericho’s vision and he blinked slowly. The light was dim where he was laying and his head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. He groaned and tried to move. He lifted his arm slowly, though the muscles felt weighted, like they were made of lead. His breath was shallow and ragged and he briefly wondered if his lungs were filled with gravel. He coughed and liquid came from his lungs. Sitting up quickly, his coughing worsened. When it finally stopped, and he removed his hand from his mouth, he saw it was splattered with warm, crimson blood.

          Where was he? His mind was still sluggish and his memory was incomplete. Heat hit him in waves and Jericho felt his skin sweating, desperately trying to cool his body. His eyes were open now, and as he looked around, he almost couldn’t believe where he was. He was sitting on a rocky shore to a large, red lake. Liquid lapped at the shore from a current and Jericho was chilled to the bone. Cautiously, he inched forward, crawling on his hands and knees to the edge of the lake.

          He stopped. Something was very wrong with his legs, but he couldn’t remember for the life of him. He looked down and gasped. Goat legs. His memory flooded back to him, like the pool at the bottom of a waterfall. The impact took his breath away. He could remember everything. Gabriel, the change, the bullet, Clarice… His love’s memory washed back in with the tide of memory and he mentally clung to an image of her.

It was a memory of her as a teenager. He could see her running in the park that had been only a block from her childhood home. Her hair was much longer then, the sandy locks tied back in a braid. Jericho smiled. Yes, he supposed Hell wouldn’t be too bad with all his memories intact. Holding the memory close to his heart, Jericho continued to the shore. He peered into the red liquid, but it was so dark, he couldn’t see past the reflective surface. Tentatively, he dipped a finger in and pulled it out, his fears realized.

It was a lake of blood.

He shivered and wiped the fluid off on his hairy legs. Jericho glanced around him, wary of what he would find. He knew he had been sent to Hell for his crimes, though he still felt justified in killing the man who assaulted Clarice. He knew he had lost his last chance at redemption, and his opportunity to live alongside his beloved. He was still peering into the blood and he saw his new form for the first time.

He did indeed have goat horns that protruded from his skulls and ended in a sharp point. The red ribbons that circled his arms had originated from his eyes and there was still a solid trail from just under them, down his chest, and onto his arms. His eyes had also changed. Yes, this he remembered. He lost his blonde hair when he Fell, and he lost his blue eyes when he descended. They were now a shining red, as red as the blood he was looking at. But he knew this was no trick of the light. He noticed a piece of something sticking out of his back in his reflection and he reached a hand behind him.

His wings. They weren’t complete, now being only a sick reminder of the beauty he once possessed. The bone stuck out, sharp and charred, making Jericho sick to his stomach. Everything about him was a twisted message about who he was and what he had done. He was Jericho. A Rogue angel. Something wicked who had betrayed and offended God beyond redemption. And he would cry for his love. He would cry tears of blood.

He had only heard of a couple Rogue angels before him; one was Zephon. He was an angel centuries before Jericho. He heard stories of him. Apparently he had plotted to set Heaven aflame, but was banished to Hell before succeeding. The only other he could think of was Lucifer himself – the first Rogue angel. And now he was one of them. A traitor to his kind, to the Heavenly Savior. The angel who wasn’t an angel. A living and dead contradiction.

“Jerry?”

Jericho’s head whipped around. His heart pounded in his chest and his breath quickened. It couldn’t be…could it? He almost didn’t want to believe the heavenly vision in front of him, for it was too good to be true. But it must be true, because there she was, standing mere feet away.