Page 29 of The Morning Star
“Shall we move on to the agenda?” Gabriel thundered. “Or are we going to sit here all day and discuss Raphael and Ahia’s relationship?”
“I’m glad to see you too, brother,” Uriel drawled. “But you’re right. We’ll all catch up later. There are important matters to discuss! For example, why am I not able to get into Aaru? When I returned from my penance, that was where I first went, only to be thrown quite violently down to this world when I attempted to cross the gates.”
Everyone turned to look at me.
I squirmed. “Uh, I accidently banished everyone.”
She blinked. “Everyone?”
“Everyone. But there was some weird shit that happened with a loophole in the previous banishment and now the former Angels of Chaos can get in to Aaru. Not me. Probably not Ahia either, although I don’t know.”
“She’s not going in there,” Raphael declared hotly. “Not alone when the place is crawling with the Fallen.”
“Don’t think I want to go there anyway.” Ahia wrinkled her nose. “Doesn’t sound appealing, to be honest.”
“You banished everyone?” Uriel looked stunned. “And now the Fallen have taken our homeland? Although, to be honest, it is still their homeland as well.”
“Uh, yeah. Sorry about that. I’ve been trying, but I don’t think there’s anything I can do to reverse it. If it makes you feel any better, the Ancients are so devolved that they can’t exist as beings of spirit up there. They’re constantly having to redo their corporeal forms so they don’t die.”
“No, that doesn’t make me feel any better.” Uriel sat back in her chair with a thump, staring blankly at the wall. I didn’t blame her. The others had a few months to come to terms with this, where she’d just found out.
“I guess this is what the humans would call poetic justice.” Her voice was soft and full of sorrow. “Although there was no justice in what we did to the Angels of Chaos. I’m sorry they can’t experience Aaru the way they used to. I’m sorry they can never go home again. And as for us…well, I guess it serves us right, doesn’t it?”
“No, it most certainly does not.” Gabriel glared at her. “They were rebels. There was a war. This recent banishment includes many innocents, who can most likely never see their homeland again.”
Uriel’s eyes met his with a steely gaze. “There were innocents then as well.”
Gregory sighed. “This is not the time to rehash the past and cast blame. We have more pressing matters to discuss right now. Serious matters. As I’m sure you all have noticed, angels have been dying since our expulsion from Aaru. In the last month alone we have lost nearly four thousand.”
“Three thousand, six hundred forty-two,” Gabriel corrected.
Gregory nodded. “And plotted on a chart by date, the deaths are clearly increasing. I’d expect, if these were natural occurrences, the number would decrease as angels become used to being in corporeal form and acclimated to the human world.”
“Maybe they realized we’re not going back to Aaru anytime soon,” Rafi shot me an apologetic glance, “if ever? Maybe they…you know?”
“Or maybe they were assholes and the humans killed them,” Ahia chimed in. “They’re still getting used to being in a physical form. Maybe they walked down the wrong street one night, or tried to pull a vigilante move and got a knife in the chest?”
“The trend warrants study,” Gabriel commented.
“It warrants more than study,” Gregory snapped. “Aside from Ahia and a few newly created, there haven’t been new angels in two-and-a-half-million years. Nearly a third of our population died in the wars. We’ve lost a few here and there since then, but nothing like this. Almost four thousand in a month. That cannot continue or we will be watching our own extinction.”
Gabriel threw up his hands. “Then how do you want us to proceed, brother? If we don’t know the cause of these deaths, we can hardly take steps to prevent further ones.”
Uriel silenced him with a hard look. “We need to find that out, but we don’t have time for studies and focus groups and our usual glacial pace of investigation. We need to know now. It won’t do us any good to be mired in paperwork and presentations. If we cannot stop this within the next six months, we could lose another twenty-four to fifty thousand angels. In a few years, there might be none of us left.”
“Or sooner,” Gregory paused until he had everyone’s attention. “Seven Grigori enforcers were murdered yesterday.”
The room was so silent all I could hear was the air coming from the vents near the ceiling.
“Seven?” Asta bit her lip. “Who? How did this happen? Enforcers are the strongest of the Grigori, the most skilled at taking down demons. Who could kill seven of them?”
Gregory shot me a quick look. “That’s what we need to find out. Someone used mid-level demons to lure enforcers away from the gates into some sort of trap to kill them. One at each gate. Each time, the demon used as the lure was different, but they had the same actions—come through the gateway, kill nearby humans and attack the gate guardian. The gates are on lockdown. Only confirmed household members of the Iblis are allowed through. All others are turned back, or…”
Yeah. Killed. Everyone understood that. Completely unnecessary for him to even say the word. I sat in my chair and fumed, unhappy that this whole thing was derailing the progress to unite us.
“I found the demon who acted as a lure in Seattle, and had been in the middle of interrogating him when he suddenly died,” I announced. Suddenly. Yeah, that. “Apparently there was an Ancient behind that enforcer’s murder, and I’m assuming the others as well. I’m working to find who that is and bring him or her to justice.”
Raphael nodded. “A vengeful Ancient emboldened now that they have Aaru. I’m not surprised. And I have faith in the Iblis’s ability to handle this problem.”
