The Prison of Angels

30

Ezekai circled, staring down at the town of Norstrom as the wind blew through his hair. He should land. He knew he should land. Though no scepter had called for his aid, his fine eyes could clearly see the mob gathering below in the square. That they did not call him was unsurprising. Whenever he talked with the rest of his kind, they said the same. The use of the scepters was dwindling, and exclusively for those in need of healing. Ever since that one night they’d given the humans the justice they desired, things had changed. Deep down, Ezekai knew it’d never be the same. He saw the way the people looked at him. There was fear now, just fear. No love to match the love in his own eyes. That Ahaesarus had repealed the decision, and revoked their right as executioners of the guilty, seemed not to matter.

Still, the mob below was growing, and he could not ignore what was happening. Ezekai dipped his wings, and down to the square he flew, landing with a gust of wind and dust. Over a hundred men and women gathered there, and they begrudgingly made room for his landing. To call the reception cold did not give the icy feeling justice. Quickly he took in his surroundings. In the center, still being built, was another pole. The nearby rope showed its eventual purpose. In the arms of two men knelt a woman, her face beaten and her clothes torn.

“What is going on here?” Ezekai asked, trying his hardest to keep his temper in check.

“None of your concern, angel,” said the same man that had denied him before, back when they’d hung Saul.

“And who are you, to challenge me?”

“Name’s David,” he said. “And we don’t want your justice. We’re capable of doing that ourselves. Bella here’s guilty as sin, and we all know it.”

The crowd gave its enthusiastic support to the statement. The bound woman, however, did her best to rise to her feet, though the two men prevented her from going to him.

“Please,” she yelled to Ezekai. “Please, help me!”

“For what crime do you capture and beat this woman?” Ezekai asked.

“Bella poisoned my little girl!” another woman yelled.

She spoke neither truth nor lie, only an accusation she firmly believed. There’d be nothing useful from her, but Ezekai prodded anyway.

“Poisoned? Why?”

“Jealous,” David said. “We all know it, too. Jealous of Mary’s girl. Bella has no girl of her own, and she’s whored herself about this village trying to get one.”

Bella opened her mouth to speak, but one of the men holding her wrapped his arm about her head, shoving his forearm against her mouth to muffle her words. The crowd took up shouting, demanding her life, demanding she hang. Others called out for her to suffer, and the feeling of loathing and hatred made Ezekai physically ill. His wings shook behind him, tiny vibrations he could not stop.

“Let her speak,” he said, hoping to at least make things right. “Let me hear her words and judge the truth of the matter.”

“We don’t need your truth,” David said. “We’ve got people who saw her doing it.”

“That’s right,” another man said, stepping forward. “I saw her putting shit into the girl’s cup.”

“Me too,” said a third, a heavyset man with a beard. “I asked her what, but she said she didn’t do nothing, but I know what I saw.”

Ezekai’s eyes widened, and he felt pain in his chest. They were lying. Both men, lying about what they saw, all to justify the hatred in their heart. What had this woman done? Was it because she was a whore? Or did the love for Mary’s daughter demand a scapegoat for them, someone to blame?

The man gagging Bella yelled and pulled back his arm. Blood was smeared across the woman’s face from biting him.

“I didn’t do it!” she shrieked at the top of her lungs. “They’re liars, all of them, I didn’t do it!”

Her words struck him like a sledge. She spoke truth. Beaten, mocked, hated…and innocent. Yet despite his arrival, men had continued building, frantically setting up the pole with a hook at the top for them to loop the rope about. The other end would be for her neck, to snap her spine and crush her throat.

“She’s innocent,” Ezekai said, first softly, then louder. “Innocent. Don’t you all know what it is you do?”

“Are you calling us liars?” one of the supposed witnesses demanded.

“I am!” Ezekai roared. “I call you fools. I call you bitter and petty. Release that girl, and let those who laid a hand on her in violence step forth.”

“You aren’t in charge here,” David said, and the cries of the crowd affirmed their agreement. “Be gone, angel. We know why the babe died, and we know who did it. Fly away.”

Just a babe, then, not even a child. Fury continued to grow in his breast. Was it an illness? Was it something he could have prevented if only they had swallowed their pride and used their scepter to summon him? How many would die because of their hatred and mistrust?

“Stop it,” Ezekai said as a third man wrapped the end of a rope around Bella’s neck. “I said stop it now. I will not watch an innocent die!”

The crowd yelled louder. The men surrounding Ezekai pulled out whatever weaponry they owned, hatchets and knives and field-worn scythes. They’d been ready for him, the angel realized. They knew he might arrive. For Ashhur’s sake, they probably saw him circling above.

“I said stop,” Ezekai insisted. “Don’t do this. All of you, you’re sick, you’re caught up in this ugliness, this hatred. I won’t allow it. I can’t allow it!”

They flung the other end of the rope around the hook, grabbed it as it fell back down. Such insolence. Such blatant insult, to continue on before him. His law meant nothing to them, he saw it so clearly now. The men stared, weapons ready, there to defy him in saving an innocent life. Bella continued sobbing, her voice strained by the tightness of the rope.

Slowly Ezekai drew his sword. An emotion bubbled in him, one he couldn’t quite place. He looked to these people he loved, these sinful creatures, and realized he didn’t love them anymore.

“If this is how it must be,” he whispered.

He flapped his wings, lunging forward as three men grabbed the rope in preparation to pull. David was the first to step in his way, but with a single, powerful cut Ezekai sliced his body in twain. A step, a spin, and his sword arced out, cutting down three more men before they could bring their weapons to bear against him. Panicked screams echoed from the crowd. Half the mob turned to flee, the other half rushing the angel. Ezekai cut again and again, keeping them at bay so they could not overwhelm him. Meanwhile the three men pulled on the rope, lifting Bella into the air. She clutched at her neck, gasping silently as her face began to turn red.

“Damn you all!” Ezekai roared, taking to the air. His sword sliced through the rope, and before she could fall he caught her in one arm. When he landed he pulled at the noose around her neck, trying to loosen it so she might breathe. Before he could, he felt something sharp pierce his side, and he let out a cry of pain. Spinning about, he cut the head off the man who’d stabbed him, then tried to turn back to Bella. Men leapt atop him, pulling at the tender bones of his wings, wrapping their arms about his neck. He yelled for them to stop, pleaded as he flung them aside. The rope, it wasn’t loose yet, it wasn’t…

Another stabbing pain, and he had no choice but to turn. His sword did its work, their pathetic instruments nothing compared to his blade. Still they rushed him, and still he couldn’t understand why. Why this anger? Why such hatred and loathing? Even their fear was obvious, yet they wouldn’t flee. Like dogs they died, rabid dogs, and he put them down. Words flashed in his mind, thoughts he didn’t want to think. Killer. Reaper. Demon. Was it their thoughts or his? Could he even know?

The bodies around him grew in number, until at last none stood to face him, the rest fleeing back to their homes or the fields beyond. Bleeding from a multitude of wounds, Ezekai turned around. He still had healing magic in him, knew there was always hope if the woman lived, but kneeling before Bella he found her an empty shell. Her soul had moved on, and he prayed it went to a far better place than this miserable world.

“Innocent,” he whispered, touching her cooling face with his bloodied palm. “An innocent, murdered…and why?”

He stood, flared his wings and lifted his sword as he cast his judging eyes upon the village.

“Why!” he screamed.

He took to the air, flying faster than an arrow. Like a ram he blasted into the nearest home. Sword drawn, he looked upon the family within. People who had shouted out their anger. People who had done nothing to stop the bloodshed. He judged them, as he did to those the next home, and the people who fled down the streets. Looping into the sky, he found those in the fields, those who knelt begging and pleading as if it might mean something anymore. He judged them all, until his armor was soaked with blood and his sword felt heavy with the weight of a hundred souls.

Judged until there were none left to judge.

Outside their village he landed, nearly crashing to the ground in delirium. He crawled to a nearby stone, pulled himself atop it, and sobbed. He slammed his sword into the dirt, he beat his chest, and he let his tears flow. Why had they done it? What monstrosity filled their souls that they would let such a thing happen? He was supposed to protect them. Was that not why Ashhur had sent him to this world? To chase off the demons and safeguard the populace before it was all lost to darkness? But the darkness was already there. It’d already won, long before he and his ilk had arrived. In every heart he’d felt their sin, felt their anger, jealousy, lust, and fear.

He didn’t know how long he knelt there. It might have been minutes, might have been hours. Slowly he felt himself returning to some shred of sanity. There, before that forest, he realized that it was quiet. He no longer felt their presence like a thorn in his mind. He no longer heard their cries of anger. There were none left to sin. None left to spit in the face of their god and deny the gifts freely given to them. There was nothing. No weight on his shoulders. Just…emptiness. Absolute, blessed emptiness.

A shadow crossed over Ezekai, marking someone’s arrival. He looked up, the blood fresh on him, his actions clearly revealed. The words of the newcomer broke the silence, and they were so sincere, so seductive.

“I understand.”