Felonious Faeries & Fallen Angels

6. Wrong Side of Heaven

Bolts of lightning flashed, revealing shadows of God's true form. The wind was a blast of scorching air, like someone's opened an oven next to my face. Every exhalation made me feel as though I was breathing fire.

"Why, Father?" I asked, the words were a bare croak between wheezing breaths.

"Because I said so!" God roared with wrath and night turned to day.

I shook my head. It wasn't a good enough reason. Not for me, yet I was too weak to form a sentence.

My parched throat threatened to crack open at the seams. The chains twisted under my weight. I shivered as gelid fingers sank claws into my bones—Father's eyes blazed. The skin at my wrists broke open, sending pain sparking down my limbs.

What would happen when the last flame inside me flickered out? No archangel had ever died before. Would I spend eons in Hell? Or would I disintegrate unto dust and blown away, forgotten and erased from all history? Did it even matter?

"I cannot repent that which I do not regret," I replied, hating how weak my voice sounded.

"Maybe you need some encouragement, son," God said, his voice almost sing-songy.

I stumbled, my knees giving into an invisible force pulling me down. Behind my eyes, vivid pictures flicked almost too fast for me to understand. A vision.

Amelia was on her knees, half of her face bloody and broken.

She knelt before an altar, praying. The glass of the chapel windows shook, the very air vibrating around her.

I gasped. Instinctively, I knew that it wasn't some illusion concocted from pure imagination. It was real: as real as the guilt that ripped through me like a serrated blade in the wake of dredging it up. The guilt that I had left her, that I had lied to her.

More pictures this time, Amelia was inside a familiar church. The church where I had first fallen in love with Alydia, I realized. Right next to the place where they had killed me. Where my brother had rammed an archangel's blade into my heart.

Teary-eyed Amelia watched the flames of a fire climb into the sky before she whispered, "I need you."

Her fear tugged at my heart. I couldn't give up, I needed to get back to her. My protectiveness still the first instinct even now.

The vision changed and sped up. I didn't recognize Amelia at first with her back to me and short hair flying around her head. I reached out, turning her around towards me, only to stare into her lifeless eyes. Someone had sliced her stomach open, her broken body falling to the ground.

Always blood, so much blood. Was this the future?

I lay in the dirt, watching the images form and fade before my eyes, thinking it all over. I knew this was how Amelia would die.

The warmth of my blood flowed through my fingertips, and my brain mimicked a bass drum inside my skull. More images of her death played before my inner eyes. Then everything slowed down.

Amelia was gone, replaced by... shimmering angel wings. I saw them, so clearly that I could almost touch them. My brothers wearing their golden battle armor, clad in lapis blue silk, descending to earth, blades shining like stars in their hands... And all around me were cities blazing, children screaming.

A silent scream lay on my lips, but before it could leave my mouth, I was catapulted to another location.

I was now far enough away from the blast to recognize that the destruction was especially gruesome. The victims hadn't died instantly here. They had endured long enough to feel and understand what was happening to them. How could Father let this happen? I had seen my fair share of horrors, but nothing had come close to this.