Thomas Sniegoski - In the House of the Wicked

Armaros remembered that the party had gone on for days.

Even though they were sorry for all the sins that the Grigori had committed in embracing the ways of humanity, it did not stop them from committing more.

It was like a sickness. The more they tried to distance themselves from the decadent ways of the human animals, the more they were drawn to them, eager to participate.

Armaros had tried to be good, but it never seemed to be enough. The longer they were here in exile, the harder it was to remain pure.

The party at one of the isolated French villas that the Grigori had acquired throughout the centuries was moving into its third day; every conceivable vice concocted by mortal man and woman was on display, and the fallen angels were more than happy to indulge.

Armaros, high on multiple drugs and alcohol, had become lucid enough to realize that Sariel was nowhere to be found; in fact, Armaros could not remember the last time that he had seen his leader. Shaking off the effects of the party, he had gone in search of Sariel, curious if perhaps their leader had found a vice so special that he did not wish to share.

He’d left the party, descending into the deeper levels of the villa, toward where he remembered seeing an ancient, secret chapel. As he had journeyed deeper into the winding stone passages tunneling beneath the estate, he’d heard the sound of a plaintive voice. At first he did not recognize it, but as he stepped from the passage into the chapel, he found Sariel slumped upon the altar before a great stone cross.

And the leader of the Grigori was crying.

Armaros was stunned, any residual effects of the party’s concoctions now completely gone from his body as he stood there watching.

His leader continued to kneel, raising his head to speak aloud in the tongue of the messenger-the language of the angels.

Sariel was praying, begging God to listen to him.

“Sariel?” Armaros had called out, moving farther into the church.

The leader of the Grigori had risen suddenly, an expression of surprise on his tear-streaked face.

“What are you doing here?” Armaros had asked as he approached him, placing a gentle hand on his cheek. “Alone.”

Sariel moved his face from the comforting hand, turning his gaze to the cross. “Sometimes I come down here to listen.”

Armaros did not understand. “Listen?” he asked.

Sariel looked at him again. “The prayers of the faithful and those who have lost their way and have nowhere else to turn.”

Armaros was quiet for a moment, listening, but heard nothing.

“I don’t…”

“Listen,” Sariel commanded forcefully.

Armaros tried again, this time his acute senses reaching out beyond the confines of the underground church to the festivities above. He was about to confess that he still did not hear them when he heard the first fragment of prayer.

“I hear them,” he had told his master, focusing on the prayer and hearing all the more in a cacophony of sound. “I hear them all.”

“No matter the time, there is always someone calling out to Him, begging for His help…for His guidance.”

Sariel looked back to the cross.

“When I entered the church…it sounded as though you were praying,” Armaros said to his leader, a part of him hoping he had been mistaken.

It looked as though Sariel was about to object. “I was listening to the prayers of the faithful and those who had lost their way with nowhere else to turn,” he began, then paused. “Listening, but also praying, hoping that maybe if He was listening to them, He might be listening to me,” he finished.

Armaros could hear the pain in his leader’s voice-see it in his eyes.

“We’re lost, Armaros,” Sariel told him. “For what we have done to this world, we are damned…no matter how much penance we do or how loudly we beg-”

There was a quiver in Sariel’s voice, a moment of weakness that Armaros had never seen. And it chilled him.

“We are lost,” Sariel finished, the sadness in his tone suddenly replaced with anger.

And with those words, the fallen angel sprang atop the stone altar, grabbing hold of the cross, and with a show of inhuman strength, tore it from its perch, allowing it to tumble forward and smash upon the ground.

Sariel and Armaros stood together, staring at the rubble that had once been humanity’s symbol of their faith.

Of their God.

And then, after some time, Sariel spoke.

“Do you still hear it, Armaros?” the leader of the Grigori asked, brushing the dust of many years past from his silk shirt.

“The prayers?”

“Oh, dear no,” Sariel scoffed. “Upstairs…in the villa.”

And Sariel put his arm lovingly around Armaros, leading him from the church and into the labyrinth.

“We’re missing the party.”

Was that when our leader truly died? Armaros mused, leaving the memory of that day in the hidden church.

His eyes focused out the window again, but instead of the same Boston he and his brethren had pondered over for years, he saw something entirely new.

Armaros saw a world on the cusp of change.

He closed his eyes, reaching out with his mind, searching for the ones he was sure would come; the fallen Guardian and the Seraphim who wished so much to be human. The Guardian he had sensed earlier, sniffing around what was to be ground zero.

It was the sign he had been waiting for.

Now was the time to begin things anew, to awaken the world and show God that they were still here.

The Almighty may have turned a deaf ear to Sariel’s prayers, but that would no longer be the case once their message was broadcast through the golem child.

As the Grigori and all angels had the power to hear the world’s prayers, so did they have the ability to respond.

And that was what the Grigori intended to do.

When the time was right, the child would speak to the faithful, and she would deliver a message.

Their message.

That the Lord of lords was unhappy with humanity and was about to show His displeasure.

And those who heard would be struck down by death, but their passing would not be in vain, for it would show the unbelievers-the sinners-that the divine did exist.

And was watching.

The sacrifice of the faithful would lead to the conversion of an even greater number. Like a prescribed fire in a forest, the burning of trees and vegetation so that it may grow back all the stronger.

He thought about his love again-the leader no longer beside him-and felt his anger grow. Sariel should have been here. But, then, would they have gone this far if he had still been alive?

Sariel’s death had been the fire that burned what they used to be away, allowing what they were now to grow.

Making them stronger, as the human species would soon be.

For they would need to be strong… They would all need to be strong.

Armaros remembered the figure sitting in the shadows, the promises that he made.

He said that God would hear them but that there would also be a war.

Armaros pondered if what they were about to do might be an aspect of the coming conflict. That the potential death of millions could be the catalyst that triggered the start of war.

If that was what it would take to again gain the attention of their Creator, then so be it. He was willing to take that chance.

He reached out with his mind to his brethren, stirring them to attention. The Grigori turned from their view of the world to stare at him.

Armaros clutched the wooden box that contained the ashes of his leader and lover to his chest. Their eyes bored into his, and he felt himself touched by their familiar stares. He knew each and every one, for they had endured this world, its pleasures and its torments, together.