~Inheritance~
When the earliest men had seen Samiel and his army, the humans had been so overawed by their physique and beauty that they built statues in reverence. A vestige of their image lingered on in the ancient idols. This was in the days before God commanded all beings of spiritual substance to hide themselves—angel and demon alike—in order to grow that rarest of gems: true faith.
Samiel had enjoyed stranger assignments than his current duties. Once, he’d been tasked to accompany a shaman into the desert to make sure he didn’t kill himself accidentally through over-ingesting fungus. One of his more exciting missions consisted of leading war against the nomadic Mongols in the Battle of Samara Bend. That was hundreds of years ago by human counting, only a blink to Samiel. An errand here, a job there. Heavenly beings never wanted for work. The greater the population, the greater their responsibilities: watch over these diplomats visiting the Soviet Union, ensure this scientist isn’t eaten alive by his sharks, and so on.
But Samiel’s most recent assignment had come at the birth of a little girl. Evelina. Her mother had prayed to God, fiercely and persistently throughout her pregnancy, for Evelina’s protection.
“I want your best. Top of the line stuff. A general. My girl’s going to need it. She’s a fighter,” the mother had said, rubbing her aching belly. So now, here he was on an open-ended assignment. It wasn’t unusual for humans to be given holy shadows, but he was a general. He had commanded armies and would again at The Reconning. In Samiel’s humble opinion, it was like bringing a heavenly sword to a stick fight. Overkill. A waste of divine resources.
Evelina (her friends called her Lina) hadn’t led what other humans would call an exciting life, and yet as she grew up, Samiel found himself strangely fascinated. It was in the way she shopped for ingredients, so carefully because she wanted to cook something for a grieving friend. How she treated her husband with kindness even when he’d been drinking too much. How she prayed for people whom she knew didn’t like her. When Samiel went to help those people, guarding the safety of their small children in rougher neighborhoods, giving comfort at the arrival of a negative diagnosis, he began to see what Lina had seen. Those people were hurting, carrying wounds from their past, or struggling against massive burdens, trapped in the quagmire of their lives.
Samiel had spent most of his career on the global stage, the big picture of history. He’d never really noticed the nuances of the human soul, the unusual arithmetic of cause, effect, emotions, and choices within a context that created villains and victims. Lina’s mother had been right: Lina was a fighter, but it wasn’t the type of warfare Samiel had trained for; against flesh and blood and world powers. He felt himself a novice at her feet, fighting for the souls of her enemies.
Eventually, Lina outlived her husband, and then even her children. Samiel was there during those nights filled with tears, and through it all, she continued to pray the way she always had; for the concerns of her neighbors, for her own spirit that she wouldn’t become bitter or resentful, that God’s will would be done. All in all, it made Samiel very protective of her, this little old woman he had known since birth.
He sometimes felt that she knew he was there watching over her. Such as when he shielded her from a car accident, and she gave fervent thanks under her breath. Another time she was alone in the city and a large man began following her. Samiel had drawn closer to her, readying himself to intervene. She had reached for his hand, though she couldn’t have seen or felt him, almost an unconscious gesture. It pleased Samiel more than it should have. As an angel, he was above such earthly concerns as the favor of mankind. The lives of humans were fleeting as grass. Only the glory and majesty of God lasted, but then, there were so few humans whom he respected. Regardless, he had no interest in swapping with any other angel when more challenging assignments came up.
Lina had a grandnephew, her sister’s daughter’s son, Asher, and they were the only two people left alive on their side of the family. To hear Lina tell it, Asher’s lot in life had been hard. His mother had died young, and his father skipped town when Asher was thirteen. He’d lived with Lina’s sister until he was eighteen when she died. Lina had insisted Asher come live with her, but by then the boy had formed his own family of friends.
In Samiel’s opinion, knowing how the boy spent his time, Asher was an ungrateful lout. Samiel had seen many an orphan taken in by his community and grow to become dedicated members of society. When life threw hardships at the humans, they either crumbled beneath or grew stronger for it. Samiel could tell a mile off: Asher was the crumbling kind.
Yet, listening to Lina’s ceaseless pleading on Asher’s behalf, Samiel always found his opinion of the boy softened.
“Send him aid, Lord. If he needs to be caught, let him be caught. Give him help, give him encouragement. Put the right people in his way to call him back to the path of life. He’s all alone, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Comfort him in his grief.”
His parents had left years ago, and Asher never had much regard for his deceased grandmother, so was he truly still grieving them? Samiel didn’t think it likely. He’d seen mourning; wailing in sackcloth and ashes for the raising of a city, the failure of crops, or a city-wide plague. This wasn’t that: Asher always sought the easy thrill: the weekend parties, the high, the girls.
Even so, Lina had a sixth sense for exactly who might need a little extra help from him. Samiel did not enjoy these day assignments, constantly worrying for Lina who was now very old and in poor health. The day Asher decided to rob a bank, Samiel took pleasure in alerting the police officer taking her morning coffee across the street. She had given up trying to assert herself in conversation with her colleagues, a clueless tribe of males in a verbal pissing match over the doughnuts. She had instead been enjoying her reflection in the window; the neat cornrow braids and thick aviators. It was a simple matter to direct her attention to the gang of young men entering the town bank. She’d been rather handy with a taser.
Samiel returned to Lina’s hospital room with satisfaction. The smug smile slipped off his lips as he stepped up to her bed. Lina’s skin had been as wrinkled as a paper bag for many years now, but she’d always had the strength and energy of a younger woman. Now, her chest moved up and down only shallowly, her breathing short. Her lips twitched faintly as though she was speaking to someone, and her eyes flickered under their lids back and forth. It wasn’t long now. Azrael would be here any moment.
Samiel stood stock still, an unfamiliar feeling swelling through him. He felt the lines of his body tense as on the verge of battle, but without the same exultant anticipation. Instead, his chest felt hollow and tight, and nausea soured in his gut. There was no one else here, no family to comfort her, but no one had known Lina, truly known her, the way he had. Love was not required in the list of duties, and yet… He sat on the bed and took her hand, though whether it was for her or for himself he wasn’t sure. Lina’s eyes flew open, and she looked straight at Samiel.
“So, you’re the one,” she said, smiling. She coughed dryly.
Samiel was so startled he didn’t know what to do. The only time humans had ever seen him, it was because he chose to remove the curtain, to make a powerful statement. But Lina wasn’t quaking in fear at the magnificence of the otherworldly light surrounding him. Perhaps she was simply delusional, in a waking dream. A nurse came in and gave her a drink of water, checked her vitals, patted her other hand, and left. When Lina set her cup down and cleared her throat, she looked back at Samiel and squeezed his hand with all her weak might.
“It’s almost time for me to go,” she told him.
Was it possible that now, the moment before she left her world and passed into his, the veil had thinned, giving her this glimpse? It was very soon, then. Heavenly beings did not shed tears except at great delight or great pain. Still, Samiel swallowed hard. He’d lent comfort to so many others on Lina’s behalf. Why was it so much harder this time?
“You’ve lived a very full life,” he told her.
“Yes,” she nodded, and Samiel almost laughed. It was the same “yes” she’d given family members when she wanted to communicate “well, obviously.”
“You’re going to like what comes next,” Samiel told her, meaning to be reassuring.
“Watch out for him.” She gripped his hand with more strength than he thought she possessed in her current state. Her watery eyes nailed him dead on. “Stay with him. Watch out for him. Bring him back.” An order.
Samiel opened his mouth in dismay. He didn’t want to look after her delinquent grandnephew. That boy was going nowhere good; a life flaming out. He always walked straight into danger, living for the moment with no higher plan or purpose. For an eternal being that had influenced the rise and fall of empires, it would be dull, discouraging work. Lina was setting him up for failure.
Her eyes fluttered shut. Her chest stopped its shallow struggle. The monitor flatlined, and his brother’s dark shadow descended over the room. Samiel got up and left.
He wandered for a time, not really seeing where he was. After a while, he began to realize that he should have received a new assignment by now. Or at the very least a summons. But no, nothing. Silence. It made him angry. Lina was dead, and all he heard was silence. Then, with slow horror, it dawned on him, and he looked up at the sky.
“No.”
No answer.
If there was ever a time Samiel came close to blaspheming, that was it. Sulking, he made his way to Asher, who was curled up under a felt blanket in a prison cell. Samiel guided a lawyer to Asher’s predicament. The lawyer argued this was his first infraction, that he had been following the lead of another, and that he had not been armed with anything more threatening than a bat. Asher got off with twelve weeks of community service.
That evening Asher went to a party and Samiel had to stand there. Asher got high, and Samiel watched on, anger deep and raw boiling in him.
The day of Lina’s funeral, it reached a tipping point.
Samiel reminded a family friend to call Asher. They left a voice message on his phone and Asher deleted it. Samiel prompted one of Asher’s roommates to go through the mail and find the invitation to the funeral.
“Nah, man, she was my great aunt. I barely knew the old bat,” Asher said.
“What if she, you know, left you something?”
“Yo, then the lawyers will give it to me. But she didn’t have any kind of real money.”
Something snapped in Samiel, and he left Asher.
The service was nearly empty. Lina had outlived all her relatives, but what about all the lives she had touched? Samiel thought of face after face from all of Lina’s prayers, people he had helped at her request. He sat in the rafters and watched. Only a handful of guests arrived, older like Lina had been. Samiel listened to the silly anecdotes of the sweet but senile attendees, and rage fermented inside him. Hers had been a soul unlike others—she deserved better than this—and after Lina, he wanted better than Asher.
He had never cared so much for a human. When he was with her, he had relaxed. She didn’t behave like the others, and without her, the world had taken on a grey hue. To be forced to watch over one who had known her, and did not care at all, was salt in a raw wound. He wanted a war to fight, a villain on which to expend his ire. Even a monk in the desert would have been better than Asher because then at least he would not be forced to remember her over and over again.
When the service ended and her body was laid to rest, it took no effort to track down the nephew. He was deep in the bowels of a house party. Demons walked freely, creatures with long hairy green legs, others with snouts, or wings, or long tails—no two were alike.
Like angels, demons could neither control nor manipulate humans. Even the Most High did not infringe on Free Will; it was a sacrosanct gift He had respected even with His blood. But as angels could suggest thoughts, so too could demons tempt. The human’s willingness to listen and respond was entirely theirs. Anything more, such as Samiel’s ability to protect or influence, was granted by prayer or divine direction. In the same way, when human behavior aligned with the will of demons, the demons received more and more freedom to leverage the circumstances human choice produced.
They had feared him the first time Samiel had arrived, a general in a divine army, but now they only cackled and hooted, knowing he would do nothing to them. Lina had asked that he help Asher, but there was only so much he could do when the boy insisted on putting himself in compromising situations. Whereas Lina spent her life for the good of others, Asher spent it on cheap thrills. The demons should have run from him in terror. Instead, his sword stayed in its scabbard at his side, and the hellish creatures drank in the black bile running off the human spirit.
Samiel walked down the basement stairs, muscles trembling, knowing what he would find. The room was filled with smoke, a reeking bitter smell. Demons with bat wings and the faces of porcelain dolls hung from the ceiling. A great serpent with a smattering of thin hairs instead of scales twined itself around the futon legs, beer cans, and the beanbag chairs where the humans sat, Asher among them.
Samiel listened to their asinine conversation and watched them arrange materials on the table: paper, filter, packer, and buds. Asher was grinding down the weed, laughing at something his friend said. This would be his life; a long, slow decline of stupidity, possibly until Asher overdosed on more serious drugs. Rage rooted Samiel to the spot. Lina was dead, the only human he had truly respected, and he was stuck here, stuck, when he should have had the license to exterminate these demons. He had existed since before matter collapsed in on itself and formed stars and planets, had guided the surges of human history, and now here he was, charged with changing the diapers of a child. No. A familiar heat rose through him, the deadly calm before the battle.
In one smooth motion, a small dagger slipped into his hand and he severed three hairs from the snake slithering on the floor. The demons screamed and all jerked away (too slow if he’d intended to end them). Samiel ignored them and sprinkled the hairs into the weed Asher rolled for himself. The thin white threads floated down, turning faintly blue as they curled into the crumbled bits of grass.
For a moment, the room was silent of supernatural sounds; the demons watched Samiel in shock, and Samiel watched as his assignment lit up and inhale one long pull. Heaven’s hands on hell’s tools. Then, the demons hooted and screamed with approval as Asher’s eyes rolled back into his head and he sank into the high.
Eventually, one of Asher’s friends noticed he wasn’t behaving as he should have and called nine-one-one. The paramedics arrived and brought Asher to the hospital. They restrained him to the bed when he started writhing. He sweat and puked, and Samiel watched with the unwavering attention of a predator. The sun rose and set on the hospital room, and well into the night, around 3:00 in the morning, Asher’s labored breathing stopped.
Samiel did not move, though every quarter of his body was tense, posed on the edge. The room darkened, and an otherworldly breeze washed over the back of his neck and cooled his face.
“Brother.”
“Azrael,” Samiel returned the greeting.
The angel of death strode towards the hospital bed where Asher’s body lay. A faint blue echo of the soul hummed just above the surface of the skin, separating from its host ever so slowly.
“Their lives on this plane are short,” Azrael said, his back to Samiel. Artists had imagined his brother as a dark creature, clothed in black raiment with wings like an aging crow. They could not have been more wrong. Azrael carried the souls to their final resting place, soaking in heaven’s light. Samiel felt the vibration of its rays radiating off his brother even now.
“Still, this one’s life was not meant to be this short,” Azrael turned and crossed his arms.
“I wanted to talk,” Samiel said.
Azrael took the chair next to him. The blue hum of Asher’s soul eased slowly from its shell, rising gently like the moon between the two angels.
“Talk.”
“It’s time for a new assignment. I stayed with Evelina the length of her life, and it is done.”
“You have a new assignment.” Azrael gestured to the dead boy. “Had.”
“Come now, don’t you think it’s a waste of resources? Put one of the younger ones on it. I was made to protect nations.”
“And yet you cannot protect one child,” Azrael said.
It was not an accusation, just an observation, but it cut like a knife to the gut.
“I protected a child,” Samiel said. Even he could hear the bitterness in his voice. “I protected her, and she died anyway.”
Azrael considered him, his eyes green like moss mottled with turquoise, azure blue at the edges.
“So, protecting her was a waste then.”
“Don’t you say that,” Samiel bit out.
“But you thought so when you were first summoned to protect a baby.”
“I was wrong.”
Azrael lifted a brow at him and inclined his head to the dead boy before them.
“Anyone else can do this. It doesn’t have to be me, and I don’t want to do it. It’s a waste of resources,” he said again.
“That is true,” Azrael said, startling Samiel into silence. “You have ever served at the fronts of armies, meting out judgment and consequence. Often you and I have ridden together on these appointments.”
Samiel relaxed. It was why he had wanted to talk with Azrael. Of anyone, this brother could understand. They had led and waged war together.
“I always wondered, as we carried out His will, if you understood His heart. You only saw the justice in it, not His pain at the consequences. I did, with each soul I carried beyond or below.”
Asher’s soul continued to rise, a silken blue echo, reflected on Azrael’s ancient eyes.
“Is it a waste of resources, Samiel? Or a promotion from ‘Consequence’ to ‘Cure’. You have the chance to influence lives from the inside. A higher task if you ask me, requiring more finesse, and greater heart. It takes more strength to endure pain and strive for good than to punish for it.”
He had seen Lina do this again and again and never understood it. He watched her nephew grow cool, Asher’s soul now fully separated. Though the flesh lay motionless, the eyelids of the soul-shape fluttered like he was sleeping, back and forth, waiting to wake in his new home. Samiel thought it would fill him with relief to be done with this child, but now all he could see was the last piece of Lina drifting away. Might he have made a difference in the boy’s life?
“Then, I have failed.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Azrael said. “So much rage, Samiel, so much rage directed at one human. Not a warlord or a dictator; a directionless young man. Why?”
“He didn’t care,” Samiel said, the words spilling out of him before he knew what he was saying. “She was everything, that rare true goodness, right there. She cared for him, he could talk to her whenever he wanted—he wouldn’t even go to her funeral—”
“So, you’re angry at him. Why?”
“Because she deserved better,” Samiel roared. He didn’t remember rising to his feet. He seethed. So long he had traveled across this earth, and Azrael was right, he had spent so much of his time helping to fashion the big picture that he only saw the weak that needed protecting, and the evil that needed punishing. He’d never really seen the human, those worth loving. He had loved her, and she was gone.
“You’re angry because she’s dead.”
“Yes,” Samiel snapped.
“Then you have something in common with that boy.”
Samiel felt the sneer on his face. He couldn’t help it. “Excuse me?”
“You too have lost the person in this world that makes you feel safe, challenges you to see the good in others, and be the best version of yourself. One who always loves and forgives. The person who makes this life feel like home.”
Grief. Azrael was saying he was grieving. Impossible, angels didn’t grieve. And particularly not Samiel; he knew the eventual end of all things. Lina’s body may be rotting, but her soul was tucked safely away. She was not gone forever, simply, absent.
Then why did it feel like there was a whole inside him, festering outward?
“I think your time with the humans has changed you more than you thought,” Azrael said. He rose and strode past Samiel toward the bed.
“Wait,” Samiel said. He didn’t know what he wanted anymore. He just knew that he had made a mistake. Azrael smiled and put a hand on his shoulder.
“This was nice. We should catch up more often.”
The next moment, he was gone. Samiel stepped up to Asher’s soul. Like this, he was fragile, defenseless. Samiel sighed. He lifted hands more suited to spears and swords, and positioned them over Asher’s soul. Gently he guided it down until it settled back into the body.
Asher’s eyes flew open. He looked frantically around the room and then stared straight at Samiel.
“Who are you?” Asher asked.
Samiel considered him. It must have been the demon hairs still in his system that allowed this sight.
“I’m a friend of your Aunt Lina’s.”
“Oh my God, are you the angel of death? Am I dying?”
His eyes were bloodshot. His lips were pale, but the color was slowly returning. Samiel laid a hand on his chest. That too was cold, his heart pumping in rapid time to maintain life so recently lost. Samiel pressed his hand into the boy’s chest. Asher yelled. He thrashed, shaking and flailing. Samiel found them, threads from the inhaled demon hairs, and tugged them loose from where they twined around one of his lung valves. Asher coughed and gasped.
“What is that?” he asked.
Interesting. Asher should have lost his supernatural sight with the hairs out of him. Samiel half smiled, realizing his unique opportunity.
“Don’t do drugs,” he said, and set fire to the fibers in his hand.
Asher screamed, this time not with pain but horror at the angelic face smiling at him through holy flames. A nurse ran into the room, soon joined by others, and they sedated him.
The next morning Asher’s friend visited him.
“Hey man, glad you’re OK. Docs said it was a close call.”
Asher blinked at him, bleary. The friend leaned in conspiratorially.
“Bad batch, I don’t know what was in the shit, but we ain’t never buying from Serina again. Don’t worry, next hit will be worth it. Clean and mean.”
“No!” Asher yelled. He snapped a look at the chair next to the window, which Samiel knew would appear empty. His breathing had gone ragged. “No man, I’m done.”
The friend laughed, glancing at the open chair. “What, you think you’re being watched or something? All hallucinations man. Was a bad trip is all.”
Asher sat up shivering, eyes darting nervously around the room and back to the chair. “I’m done, I’m done. She was right, the crazy old bat was right. I mean, Aunty Lina!” Asher gasped, raising his arms defensively and quaking with fear.
“Yo, come on man. Calm down.”
“No, I don’t want to die. I’m done,” he said, and turned away from the window, curling up into a ball like a small child and pulling the covers tight around him.
Samiel raised a brow, a slow smile spreading across his ageless face.
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