Page 7 of Good Intentions

But I was no mortal.

She gave a tight nod. I walked into the cavern, sending silent blessings for the deceased I could see. As soon as I was out of Nora’s line of sight, I materialized where I thought the pharmacy would be. Nora had been correct. The room was fortified, and it had held its shape even with the tonnes of rubble above my head. I looked around.

Refrigeration was down, so some would be ruined, but I took what I could. I also restocked bandages, instruments, whatever I could find. No human would make it this far below, and they would need all the supplies they could get in the coming months.

I filled up large trash bags with what was salvageable and then materialized back to the opening cavern.

Nora was still there. She looked at me silently, taking in the two large trash bags in my hands. Without a word, she turned and headed back to the clinic.

Humvees rolled through the streets, and we hid. I wouldn’t risk Nora being discovered by an enemy force. Especially one that would destroy a hospital, a place of healing, with such thoroughness. I would like to say it was the work of the Devil, but not even Lucifer would stand for that. That was purely human-level evilness.

We made it back to the clinic, and she stopped me. She whirled around and stared up into my face, and I felt pinned to the spot.

Reaching up, she wrapped her hands in my hair and yanked me down to her eye level. “Why?” she croaked out. “I know what you are, Angel, and I want to know why? Why would you let this happen? Why would you let them do this–” she choked on the word, and shook her head ferociously.

Sadness, the same one that plagued me for centuries, surged up in my chest. “It is the plan.”

She yanked my head again. “How can this be the plan? The men and women in that hospital wanted to heal. They didn’t–I didn’t deserve…” All the fight left her and she released me, her knees going weak. I wrapped my arms around her waist, holding her up. “They were my coworkers. My friends. Dead, for what? What plan could justify this?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just have to trust.”

“Trust?” She grabbed my face and pulled me down. “Trust?” she repeated, outraged, and kissed me. It was an angry, spiteful kiss, filled with fury and desire and anger and pain and want and so many more emotions I couldn’t name them as they flowed through us.

And my body, it stirred. Deep in my gut, something curled and stretched. Desire. Longing. Lust. I deepened the kiss, unable to pull away, unable to resist the feel of her lips pressed to mine, and when her body bowed toward me, I couldn’t resist holding her tightly to my own. I touched her, not the way a healer touches a patient, but the way a man touches a woman. My cock stirred and I froze, ripping my face away from her.

My eyes were wide, I could feel it in the way my cheeks ached. “I–” I choked on the words. Nothing followed.

Then I disappeared. Dematerialized in front of a human. I went to the only place I knew would accept me now.

I went to the Fallen.

I appeared in the living room of the home the Fallen shared with their consort, Hope. Right in front of the woman herself.

She screamed, and Azriel appeared, his dagger drawn.

Perhaps he should run me through; it would be a mercy.

“Raphael?” Hope said softly. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head repeatedly. I was not okay. I hadn’t been okay in so long. “No.” I lifted my wings, and I knew what I would find, even before I looked. The bottoms of my wings were now dipped in pink. I’d told myself for so long that it was a trick of the light, but it never was. It was the beginning of the Fall. Maybe I was really the first to Fall, and not Lucifer Morningstar after all.

Oh, Raphael. It’s okay. We’ll fix this. I forgot this child of the Fallen could mindspeak. But she was wrong. It wouldn’t be okay. There was no going back now. I had Fallen. To Azriel, she said, “Get Ace and Luc. This is outside my pay-grade.”

Azriel nodded, but not before coming over and resting a hand on my shoulder. It was comforting, not something one would associate with the Angel of Death. We’d always been two sides of the same coin, so the irony that we both ended up Fallen didn’t surprise me. Not really.

Then he disappeared and I slumped down onto the couch behind me. I didn’t see Hope’s other consort, the human one, appear. He was a sinner, that one. Through and through. But he loved his pregnant wife with a fury that was an echo of the love Lucifer had for his consort Acerezeal.

He watched me like he could kill me if I made one wrong move toward Hope.

Instead, Lucifer and Acerezeal appeared in the living room too like I’d summoned them with my thoughts. Lucifer looked at me, his eyes wide. He was surprised.

Ace was not. She walked over to me, pulling me up and hugging me so tightly it felt like she was holding me together. It had been a millennia since I’d held Ace.

“What happened, old friend?” she asked softly. “We won’t let you fall. Not unless it's what you want.”

I did something I wasn’t sure I’d ever done before. I buried my face in the neck of another, and cried. Into the neck of this angel who fell for what she believed was right. Who almost died for love. She stroked my hair and let me cry, and the irony I’d done this very thing with a human so few days ago wasn’t lost on me.

“I don’t think you can stop it, Acerezeal.” The fear that sat heavy in my heart echoed inhumanly loudly around the room.