“Welcome brothers and sisters,” Uriel says as everyone quiets down. “We are gathered tonight to unite in a single cause and to celebrate. I have news both appalling and amazing. First, the appalling.” The audience listens with hushed curiosity.
“Until the humans attacked our aerie, we assumed that they’d been behaving as well as could be expected. But now it has come to my attention that they’ve been up to sinister things that we cannot abide.”
Uriel motions for someone to come forward. An angel drags a cowering man onto the stage. He wears faded jeans, a Rolling Stones T-shirt, and glasses. He’s shaking and sweating, clearly terrified. The angel hands over a rolled cloth to Uriel.
He unrolls it, letting its contents fall onto the stage.
“Tell us, Man,” says Uriel. “Tell everyone what you had hidden in this cloth.”
The man starts hyperventilating in loud, raspy breaths, looking wildly at the crowd. When he doesn’t say anything, his guard grabs his hair and yanks his head back.
“Feathers,” the prisoner gasps out. “A… a handful of feathers.”
“And?” asks Uriel.
“Ha… hair. A lock of golden hair.”
“And what else, Man?” asks Uriel in a freezing voice.
The prisoner’s eyes dart around, looking trapped and desperate. His guard yanks back his head again so that his neck looks like it’s about to snap.
“Fingers.” The man sobs. Tears streak down his face, and I wonder what he did for a living before the civilized world came to an end. A doctor? A teacher? A grocery clerk?
“Two… severed… fingers,” he says between gasps. His guard lets him go. He huddles on the stage, shaking.
“What was the source of these feathers, hair, and fingers?”
The guard raises his hand and the man cringes, shielding his face.
“I got them from someone else,” says the man. “I didn’t hurt anybody. I swear. I never hurt anybody.”
“Where did they come from?” asks Uriel.
“I don’t know,” cries the man.
The guard grabs him by the arms, and I can almost hear his bones crunching.
The man cries out in pain. “Angel.” He falls to his knees, crying. His eyes dart around the hostile crowd in terror. “They’re angel parts.” He almost whispers, but the audience is silent and I’m sure they can hear him.
“ANGEL PARTS,” says Uriel in his booming voice. “The monkeys are slicing up our injured brethren before they can recover. They are trading our feathers, fingers, and other parts for currency. And you all know how long and painful it can be to grow back fingers, not to mention the parts we can’t grow back.”
Angels roar, restless with violence.
Uriel lets the righteous anger build with the masses. “For so long we have waited. For so long we have let monkeys infest this beautiful land, letting them believe that they are the most favored species in God’s universe. They still don’t understand why they’ve had unprecedented free reign over Earth for so long. They’re so arrogant and stupid that they don’t even realize that no one else is dumb enough to make a legendary battlefield their home.”
The crowd chuckles and hollers.
Uriel smiles at them. “But I have amazing news, brothers and sisters. News that will put humans like this in their rightful place. News that will allow us to punish them with God’s blessing.”
The crowd quiets.
“You’ve heard the rumors,” says Uriel. “You’ve heard the speculations. I’m here to tell you that they are true. The signs are here. We have definitive proof of the reason why Gabriel the Messenger brought us here to Earth.”
The audience murmurs excitedly.
“We don’t have to wonder anymore, brothers and sisters. We don’t have to argue and debate about whether this is a drill or a skirmish with the Fallen or just another warning to the humans while they peck at us with their pebbles and rocks.” He pauses for dramatic effect.
The crowd quiets.
Uriel sweeps the crowd with his eyes. “Biblical locusts are here.”
A low murmur quickly bursts into an excited roar.
He lets the noise build before putting up his hands to quiet them. “As many of you know, part of my job is to visit the Abyss. Yesterday, I opened the Bottomless Pit. From it, black smoke rose and darkened the sun and the air. Out of the smoke came locusts upon the earth. Just as it was foretold, their faces were the faces of men and they had tails like powerful scorpions. Thousands upon thousands. Pouring into the sky.”
As if on cue, all the angels in the crowd turn the same direction to look up at the sky. I see the dark cloud on the horizon before I hear what they hear.
The cloud explodes, spitting out more darkness, growing ever larger. A low buzzing quickly turns into a thunderous roar.
I’ve heard this before.
The sound of swarming scorpions.
Everyone is silent and still while we all watch the roiling cloud rush toward us.
Uriel raises his arms like he’s ready to hug the crowd. “We have our confirmation, brothers and sisters. What we have been waiting for. What we have been bred for. What we have lived, breathed, and dreamt of is finally here!”
Uriel’s voice feels like a booming command in my head.
“We will be like—”
Gods.
“—Heroes of Old!”
He takes a deep breath. “Finally.” Another breath, his chest swelling with satisfaction. “It’s time for Judgment Day. The legendary apocalypse is HERE!”
AS EVERYONE takes a moment to absorb what he’s saying, the horde of scorpion locusts hurls toward us.
I want to shout that he’s lying. That the scorpions are his creations, not biblical locusts. But I lose my chance because the crowd goes nuts.
Warriors raise their swords and stab the sky. They shout war cries that shatter the twilight.
Their wings flex, bursting out of the sheaths that disguise them.
Madeline’s carefully placed feathers fly everywhere. Glitter and fluff float into the air and drift like a scene in an old-time ticker-tape parade.
I shrink back, wishing I could disappear. Ironically, Andi does too, so that we continue to look like a matching set.
Bloodlust pulses in the air like sprays of pheromone. The air is thick with it and getting thicker.
Then the terrible thing happens.
Beside us on the stage, a warrior grabs the angel-parts dealer and lifts him above his head. The guy squirms like a kid as his glasses fall off. The angel heaves him into the crowd.
A hundred arms grab the poor man and pull him down into the engulfing center of the angelic masses. The man screams and screams.
The multitude shoves each other to try to reach the man. Bloody bits of cloth and bigger, wet chunks I don’t want to think about fly out of the place where he landed.
The warrior angels rage and yell as they restlessly jostle each other, cheering on the ones tearing at the man who is drowning in their violence.