29.2

 

Roisin forces herself to stand still. There is no point in running. She hasn’t even been Justice for an hour and already Heaven sends something to erase her from history. Why? All she wants to do save humanity. Why are they so intent in bringing about the apocalypse? Heaven is supposed to be on the side of mortals; are the angels really just deciding to harvest the souls for themselves? What about God’s will? God’s covenant?

Her knees shake. Her hands tremble. Her heart hammers. But the mantle steadies her. It cannot give her the courage she needs to defend herself from Hasmed, but it can give her clarity. Watching the angel walk toward her with easy, seemingly carefree strides of several metres each, passing between and through the humans listening to the speaker, each one it comes into contact with shivers and coughs, as if Pestilence was passing through them, infecting each with something virulent and deadly.

Looking deeper, through the illusion of his appearance, she can see what guides him – for although seraphim are sexless, like men, the angels are in God’s image – and she can see nothing similar to the patterns that drove Mahaliel. There is no pride within that gaunt frame; no wrath or desire; no cruelty and there is certainly no judgement, for those belong to the world of men. What drives the purposeful figure striding toward her is merely correction. Not even correction from the beginning; it just wants to erase her from existence from now. What about her life until now? Her release of the Nephilim that rides Famine?

Heaven’s correction is only released when something has stepped outside its ordained role. Like the Fifth becoming active for the first time. It doesn’t need to erase the past. History will do the job for it, for the victor in any fight decides what the history was.

Hasmed stops three paces from her; close enough that she can feel the void radiating from him. Close enough that the air around her begins to thin. Close enough that she can smell the silence of resolution. As it lifts his head, she sees the eye sockets are not just devoid of any discernible eyes, but have no depth of them at all, as if someone looked at a drawing of a skull and had no knowledge of the three dimensional quality of the sockets, not what they were supposed to hold.

Roisin’s voice is barely a whisper. “…Hasmed.”

The angel does not react. He stands, immobile as the Colossus of Rhodes, his blank gaze directed in front of himself as if he’s looking at her, or through her, or at the space she once occupied before his arrival. It’s creepy as fuck, to be honest. It would be less so if he turned his head, or spoke, or had chosen a visage that was less skeletally focused. What was even the point of taking the appearance of a skeleton? Anyone who witnessed it was about to be removed from the world and anyway, angels didn’t have skeletons.

In that look, she feels the truth. He does not see a woman. He does not see a mediator. He does not see the Fifth. He does not see Justice. He only sees an anomaly. He is Heaven’s version of her. He is doing exactly as she is doing; spotting a point where the future deviates from the desired outcome and amends the situation to Heaven’s advantage. Just as she is seeking out misalignments from her point of view. She is his opposite, for she works for… not Hell, obviously, she’d never have agreed to work in the service of Hell. No. She’s doing this for the good of Humanity, to stop the world ending.

He just wants to erase her and go back to whatever he was doing before. Watching daytime television, probably, or the angelic equivalent of it.

Roisin stops the sob from escaping. Stiff Upper Lip, and all that. Best not let the buggers know you’re broken. The mantle inside her pulses, and she can feel the energy of all the gathered humans. All the hope. All the despair.

She straightens. “Why should it end so abruptly? Aren’t we destroying the earth fast enough for Heaven? Why must it end now, and not three generations down the line?

Her fear does not vanish. Her hands still shake. Her heart still races. But she stands. Because the Fifth does not run, the fifth does not hide. Justice does not hide from the hard decisions.

Besides. She’s a fucking angel, too.

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