Seven Archangels: Annihilation by Jane Lebak Read Free Book Online Page B

conclude too much from their behavior. I want to conduct one more sweep—"
    "We don't need one more sweep!" Beelzebub's energy sliced through the room like a quasar. "We did it!"
    Camael mustered his voice. "What's next?"
    Lucifer said, "I know you want to kill her, but she's last."
    Camael bit his lip. His blood had a sickly taste. Too cold in here. This was Hell—where was the fire? Where the sound? Silent angels. Silent Gabriel, never to sing again.
    I feel nothing.
    Mephistopheles said, "Michael is the next logical choice."
    "It would be to our advantage to take him down," Lucifer said. "When we thought we had only one chance, it had to be Gabriel. With two, though—Michael, or Uriel?"
    "We'd never get near Uriel," Beelzebub said. "Do you think we could do this to one of the monkeys?"
    Mephistopheles murmured, "I told you, they're not put together the same way."
    "It's too bad," Lucifer said, "because I'd love to permanently remove that woman from the picture."
    Beelzebub laughed. "Camael, who's your choice?"
    Camael stayed ducked. Raphael. If you killed Gabriel, it was only a kindness to obliterate his Seraph too and spare him existence as a half-moon and a lifetime of memories no one wanted to mention and a name you never wanted in the first place. To dance and hear only half the music, and to know God loved you but would not give back the only other thing you ever wanted even though you knew it was wrong even to want—
    "Suggestions, Camael?"
    Camael swallowed. "Raphael."
    "Not strategically significant."
    "With all due respect, sir," Camael said, "you don't know how Raphael is going to react. He might make himself important."
    Beelzebub snorted. "You mean like your sister did? Or like you?" He laughed. "I don't think we have anything to worry about."
    I feel nothing. I feel nothing.
    Lucifer was quiet.
    Camael laid his head on his folded arms, again tenting himself within his wings. Gone, going away. I feel nothing. I am nothing.
    Camael uncurled a long thought and snaked it outside the Guards as if they didn't exist, hunting for air, hungering for light and water, for someone's hand and a presence inside that said, you are, you feel, come to me.
    Camael felt thoughts probing over him, so he sent away his mind outside the Guard. Light. Quiet. Oblivion. Gabriel. Gabriel wasn't thinking anything any longer, never again. I feel nothing.
    "Debriefing is over. Dismissed," Lucifer said. Camael ended up free, somewhere else in Hell but carrying the hell of loss deep inside.
     
    - + -
     
    Still in Lucifer's chamber, Mephistopheles found himself not dismissed.
    Lucifer was writing, a light scratch of nib against paper, and then, when Mephistopheles began wondering if he had been forgotten, said, "Camael is getting slippery."
    Mephistopheles said, "He's only a Virtue. That sustained an effort must have exhausted him."
    "He's hard to grip right now. He was probing outside my Guards. Observe him. I don't want him going insane."
    Mephistopheles listened to the pen scratching and tried to deduce the letters he was hearing written, at least the language if not the actual words. "I'll assign someone to assess his movements."
    "You know his value to this process," Lucifer said. "I don't need to tell you how displeased I'd be if we had to revert to our backup plan."
    Mephistopheles was sure the pattern he had just heard could be the letter n, but it might have been a ｶ or a π. "Will that be all, sir?"
    "Not yet." A pause in the writing, and then it resumed; that was almost certainly a ﾐ. "I'm fully aware that the discovery was all yours which enabled today's success."
    Mephistopheles inclined his head, knowing Lucifer would pick up the acknowledgment he projected.
    "I want you to get to work on a way of mass-producing the effect. A technique so any demon can work that way."
    Mephistopheles hummed. "Do you want that technique in everyone's hands?"
    Lucifer chuckled. "I'll make Beelzebub my next victory if he even thinks of