Still, Asrael had felt the need for penance, and he’d sworn to do better at his regular job as an interrogator, leading to the idiotic decision to increase his empathic ability through a sketchy spell. Gabriel could have told him it would go wrong.
And it had. His ability had increased a thousandfold, making him so sensitive to the emotions of others that it pained him, often leaving him overloaded and incapacitated.
“So, you did something foolish and can’t be around humans or angels anymore.” Gabriel shrugged. “So what? Like I said, you could have isolated yourself in Heaven, too. You’d have been in luxury. So why”—he made a gesture that encompassed all of the barren nothingness—“here?”
“Because the human realm has something Heaven doesn’t.” The light in Asrael’s eyes sparked again. “Demons. I get to kill them here.”
That was exactly what Gabriel had hoped Asrael would say.
Gabriel watched a dull gray lizard skitter across a boulder. In Heaven, reptiles sparkled. The earthly realm was so boring and bland. “What if I told you I know a place where your empathic abilities won’t work, you can have anything you want, and you can punish demons all day long?”
Asrael snorted. “And where is this magical place?”
“It hasn’t been built yet, but it’ll exist as its own realm in the space between the human and demon realms. We’re going to call it Sheoul-gra.”
“I see.” Asrael paused, and Gabriel felt a tingle spread across his skin. Asrael was reaching out with his empathic gift, probably trying to probe for sincerity…or deception. “What is Sheoul-gra’s intended purpose?”
“To contain demon souls.” Tired of squinting in the sunlight, Gabriel poofed a cloud into existence overhead, blocking the direct light and saving himself from a headache later. “Right now, when a demon’s physical body dies, his soul is left wandering. You’ve been in isolation, so you might not have noticed that a growing number of demonic souls are wreaking havoc in human settlements, haunting people. Possessing them. They’re doing the same in Sheoul. We’ve come to an agreement with Satan that will ensure souls are gathered and stored in a secure location presided over by a fallen angel.”
“Intriguing,” Asrael said in a cool, composed voice as if he didn’t want to give away just how interested he was in the concept. “So, why are you telling me this?”
“We want you to run it.”
Asrael might be more enamored with the idea than he was letting on, but he wasn’t a fool, and he eyed Gabriel with a healthy dose of skepticism. “How many have already turned you down?”
“None. You were our first choice.”
Asrael’s mouth quirked in amusement. “You mean no one applied for the task.”
Gabriel shrugged. They’d put out a call for volunteers, but apparently, ruling one’s own hell realm wasn’t appealing to any angels. No sane or qualified angels, anyway.
“No one of your caliber,” Gabriel said truthfully. “We need someone honorable. Someone we can trust. Your history with Satan makes you a valuable asset.”
“My history,” Asrael mused. “I despised the bastard even before I uncovered his crimes, and he hates me for it. So you assume that I would side with Heaven in any future dispute.”
There was no point in denying that the animosity between Satan and Asrael had played a large role in whom the archangels had chosen to rule this new realm, so Gabriel just nodded.
“Is that assumption wrong?”
“Probably not.” Asrael looked up at Gabriel’s personal cloud, and it swelled, growing darker as it filled with rain. “What would the job entail?
“Mainly the reaping of all demon souls, as well as the souls of evil humans. You’ll be bound to the realm, but you’ll create a race of beings who will carry out your grim task on Earth and in Sheoul.”
Rain began to pelt the ground. “You said ‘mainly.’ What else?”
“You’ll mete out punishment, authorize reincarnations, and you’ll have the power to destroy souls. We can discuss the specifics later. And…” Gabriel trailed off, unsure of how to present the next duty.
“And?”
“The human population is growing,” he said, opting to ease the other male into this one. “More and more humans—and even a few demons—are critical to the future of this very planet.”
Asrael nodded. “Primori.”
“Yes. We’ve decided they need specialized guardians. Guardians raised among humans to enhance their understanding of the primitive beings our Creator seems to favor.” Gabriel stopped the rain. “We want you to father these guardians with angels we send to you.”
For a moment, everything went quiet. The rain stopped, and not even the wind stirred. Asrael’s expression stilled, and Gabriel instinctively reached for his power. He wasn’t even sure why. He was far stronger than Asrael. And yet, he sensed something inside the other male, as if a massive untapped well of strength were about to be unleashed. For the first time, he wondered if choosing Asrael for this was a mistake.
“Let me get this straight,” Asrael said quietly. “You want me to fuck an entire race of beings into existence, create another race to collect souls, and torture evil demons?”
Gabriel sighed. Asrael was as blunt and unapologetic as his father had been. “That’s an accurate—if crude—summary.”
Slowly, Asrael’s face turned up to the sky, and his sleek, black wings shot upward. He was the very picture of an angel who felt the call to duty.
Even if it was a shit job. One of isolation and evil and corruption.
But only one person in the universe could do it, and Gabriel suddenly understood that Asrael was that person. He hadn’t made a mistake in choosing him. Any mistakes made from here on out wouldn’t be Gabriel’s.
They’d be Asrael’s.
But that wouldn’t stop Gabriel from keeping an eye on things.
“I accept.” Asrael gave Gabriel a meaningful look. “But I won’t create a bunch of new angels, and I’m sure I’ll want to make changes to the contract.”
Gabriel paused. He’d been sent to get Asrael’s acceptance, but Asrael had only agreed to half of what they needed.
He gave a mental shrug. Heaven would get him to accept the terms of the deal later. “Then it’s done.”
Asrael nodded. “So, what now?”
The cloud above turned black and roiled across the sky, swallowing the blue and the sun. Asrael wasn’t doing it, and neither was Gabriel. The wind gathered, screaming across the dunes and spinning up clouds of sand.
“What’s happening?”
“It’s an omen,” Gabriel shouted over the shrieking wind. It was a sign that, for good or for bad, this was supposed to happen.
Lightning streaked overhead as he willed a scythe into his hand, its rustic handle carved from the trunk of a carnivorous death knell oak by a demon woodworker, its blade crafted by Heaven’s best weapons-master.
He held out the scythe. “With this, you’ll have the power to destroy and create. And your name,” Gabriel called out, “is an angelic word that hearkens back to the negotiations with Satan over the great harvest of souls in the prophesized End of Days.”