*

the ninth day

*

Sitting here in Avalon, looking at the pouring rain
Summertime has come and gone and everybody's home again
Closing down for the season, I found the last of the souvenirs
I can still taste the wedding cake and it's sweet after all these years

These are the last words I have to say
That's why this took so long to write
There will be other words some other day
But that's the story of my life

-- billy joel, “famous last words”

*

"In our breaking news story of the hour, officials from St. Sebastian's Hospital in London have announced that Matthias Eisenreich, Jr. is clinically brain dead. The Angel of the Covenant has been on life support for the past nine days after a head-on collision, after which extensive brain surgery has failed to stop his condition from deteriorating. We'll actually be getting a statement from Rosalind Naaktgeboren, Angel Orfiel, in a few minutes. Currently, though, we're with Michaela Torres outside St. Sebastian's. Michaela, what seems to be the general atmosphere at the moment?"

Rain. A dark-skinned woman clutching a microphone outside gates, people milling around her, an umbrella to keep off the wet. "John, as you can see, it's unsurprisingly subdued here: the news came through only a little while ago to the mourners keeping vigil, and the grief was very great. There has already been a minute of silence for Matthias, and now the crowd is growing as the news filters through."

"And the family, is the family present - "

"The Countess Eisenreich and Dr. Eisenreich have been sequestered in the building since seven o'clock, and we have it on authority that Angel Azrael and Jibreel Eisenreich are with them, John. It's not obvious yet whether other angels are within, or at what time they'll end life support."

"We'll be back with you in a moment, Michaela, we've just got a clip coming through..."

Orfiel, looking haggard, white-faced, cameras clicking, not quite believing or really caring about what she was saying: obviously through the pain barrier. "This is obviously a tormented time for the family. The Angel Gabriel would like to thank all supporters for their love and well-wishes. The news comes as inevitable but nonetheless incredibly difficult to fathom, for the family and the entire community as a whole... We only ask for understanding at this time, as we undergo the loss of a grandchild, a son, a nephew, and a friend. With respite, we can start the grief process."

He was dead.

It was the first sign, or the second sign, or the last seal. There was a distant rumble like thunder or the tired echo of a tympani drum roll that had started when the universe began: big bang, big crunch.

The last star fell, and so it started.

*

When the news broke, it fractured them all silently, softly, like ice shattering a jar. In the end, they had all known it was coming, had begun expecting it, like slow dread building around the liver like a cancer. In some ways it was relieving. Zadkiel could do the ratio of decay easily enough in his head. It was past time for Buboe to wake up. Now it was as cold and clear as water in December: Buboe was done. He was dead. Now all that was left would be to quietly pull the plugs on all the machines and dim the lights until the last of the artificial sounds died away.

The snow queen had driven a mirror shard deep into his eye, and when everything fell down around them and people understood what had truly happened to his great-grandson-nephew, Zadkiel was relieved that it was his call to sit watch and keep vigil over Buboe's small body and broken mind. These times, these times passing were his times, as strange as that seemed to him on most days. They were their times, and it was his place to stand sentinel in the quiet white room that smelled warm and damp and disinfected – not that that mattered much any more, did it?

It was a time for restraint and dignity. His nephew deserved that. He sat with Samand'riel and prayed the rosary – wine red beads slipping through his fingers, pressed against the side of his face as he thought of times past and the buried dead.

The nurses of the critical care unit would never entirely understand how the window came to be open when it was welded shut, and neither Zadkiel nor Samand'riel offered them any apology or explanation, but when the duty nurse came round to bring in the fresh flowers that had been sent up – peonies from the back garden, that would be their mother then, still minding everything, even when her hands were busy with other spindles – he found the window casing thrown wide, the blinds drawn as high as they would go, and the pale cottony sunlight threading in over the room.

And then there were the doves.

All the animals of the world, Zadkiel had once said, and at times that seemed to be true. Where the doves came from, he could not say, but as soon as the window was wrenched open, the first of them landed on the sill. He had said nothing. It was past time for saying such things, if there had ever been a proper time for the saying of anything.

So the doves came, one or two at a time at first, then three, then four, fluttering in to land on the floor, to line themselves up on the chrome foot board, to place themselves like Christmas ornaments all over the tinselly metallic trees of the life support equipment. Their soft, feathery noises drowned the heavy dash of the electronic heartbeat, and their clean birdsmell washed away the bleach-sting. Samand'riel sat with his head bowed, fingers knit together against his forehead and sang gently, his tenor voice thick like cream in milk.

Nec lingua valet dicere, nec littera exprimere: expertus potest credere, quid sit Jesum diligere.

Holy Mary, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death.

A pigeon fluttered in, the one slate bird among dozens of alabaster ones, and it came to sit on Zadkiel's knee. He opened one eye to look at it, and thought of the cows and the ass kneeling down in the straw on Christmas Eve in remembrance of their Christ child and then closed his eyes to pray again.

Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name --

*

By two thirty at the town house, there was a terrible thing to consider: the house could not get cleaner. Anywhere. He'd even laundered Rachel's clothes twice, just to make sure they smelled like lavender Cuddly, and if he scrubbed things any more the matter of the walls would break down and he'd punch out to thin air. There was just the waiting. He was good at waiting. Eden Ardith had been waiting a very long while.

The washrag was thrown down in disgust, eventually, as was the Handy Andy, and the angel of death went to go and give himself a new coat of nail polish. Making effeminate hand movements to dry it took about five minutes, sitting next to Demi, only noticing after - well, a heartbeat - her, of her, her hands clutched quite quietly on crimson worsted, and though he never touched her, he waved his nails in her direction and looked out the window to the lamplit night and cleared his throat. Eden was a smoker. That always took quite a while.

"Demdem," he announced finally, "you're retarded."

Demi was not as quick to recoil and strike as she had been in earlier days, snapping back or walloping with whatever bit of household miscellanea presented itself conveniently. She didn't move with the pain of exhaustion, it was more a slow inevitability as she drew her knees to her chest like a schoolgirl and answered, "Yes, probably. In that way we could be twins."

Eden retrieved her knitting; he took away her needles and put it on the side table, and slithered to the ground at the chair by her feet and pressed his forehead to the arm. Eventually, he looked up at her again. "Y'know, Dems, it's inevitability shit. Should we really be pissin' ourselves? If we're gonna spend our last hours bein' all emo like Az on a bender in a room with Ish covered in sadness, I'll jus' go ask Caine to give me oral, right."

She was not overly moved, "So what would you suggest then, that I arrange an enormous party with -- what are you always saying? Black jack and hookers. Maybe alcohol. Maybe a lot of alcohol," she looked a little forlornly at her knitting and then shrugged, "But it's not inevitable. I'm still hoping. I'm hoping so hard. Someone could talk to Azrael. Jibreel could talk to Azrael. Jibreel should be talking to Azrael -- "

"Kitten, she is. And thas part of the problem, in'it? That's 'cos of all the lovey-dovey bullshit. It's creepy as hell." He took her knitting himself, and very deftly knitted a row of purl. "It's prob'ly gonna be inevitable eventually, Lady Bountiful. Stop bein' so damn deathy with this shit. Az'll push the big red button one of these days, s'just a fuckin' inconvenient time. He's got a fair whack of drama llama in him. From his mum, I think. Wanna make crank calls to Raz's cellphone?"

The corners of her mouth fell and she watched him fiddle with her knitting with half-lidded eyes, "I don't really want to work from the assumption that Azrael is going to stone the world into final quiet. Maybe that's how we're different: glass half full and glass half moron," she rolled her eyes until they came to rest on the empty piano bench and then blinked, "Besides, I'm too old to make prank calls. I think that you're supposed to stop doing that once you pass forty."

"The glass is full. Full to the brim. Know what it's full of? Certain death, Demdems, like shit on rice. Or white on june bugs. Or some of that shit. An' you can never be too old to prank call Raz, s'just one of those things that endures."

He did another row of garter. "I mean, maybe I'm biased shit here, just - if it's inevitable, ineffable, incontrovertible, impala, whatever, you know what? I'd like me some hot Final Death. No more awkward conversations with Deev. No more static cling."

She rubbed her forehead with the back of one hand, feeling the grain of the hair that slipped between skin and skin, "If you're so anxious, I'll get the tire iron from the garage and oblige you by bludgeoning you to death now, that way you won't have to wait," her mouth drew into what in easier times might have been a pout, "I enjoy things, Eden. I would rather not suffer an etchasketch crunch. I will certainly not allow one to come to my family. I owe them that much. I owe you all that much."

"Dems, if I go in there an' kill Az'n Jibs and don't get made into mashed potatoes, I'm comin' home and swallowing silver nitrate jus' so I can't get raised as a werewolf."

She curled against the arm of the chair and did not look up, "That's your choice."

"Oh. Oh. Cold. Don't you care even the littlest bit about my mental health? We're sure as shit not havin' sex in the last couple of minutes before Az drops an angelic H-bomb."

This caused her to raise her head and eye him solemnly, "Oh no, now my final wish is surely dashed," she laid her head on the arm of the chair but kept one eye turned to him. "Of course I care about your mental health, you idiot, but if nothing I've done in the last twenty years has convinced you that this life is worth living then I don't think anything I do in the next few minutes or days is going to make much of a difference. And no, I will not show you my breasts, even though I am sure they inspire great meaning and self-understanding."

He put his caramel head on her knee like a particularly loyal dog, albeit one who wore cherry lipgloss and pink eyeshadow. "Of course I think life's bloody worth livin', you stupid little tit princess, but everythin' seems to be goin' down a hole. All those fuckin' hours at Mer San Homofag and Buboe gets hit by Postman Pat. I liked Buboe. I'm never gonna get a better grandson. Especially not if Achi goes an' fucks Caine any more, 'cos you better believe it'd be all Caine and no Chichi."

Then Eden thought about it again. "Sure you don't wanna show me your breasts? It's not like I ain't watched you breastfeed four kids."

"I know just where the tire iron is," she warned tiredly, "I won't even have to look to find it." She closed her eyes and suddenly went limp, "Is this really what we worked so hard to build? Is this what we bled so much to find? It's not fair," she lay there like a little dead thing, "Don't tell anyone, but I hate everything."

The angel of death very carefully put his hand over hers, like it was accidental, just so his inner siren wouldn't be set off and he could pretend it was pure fate that set them skin to skin. "If you didn't hate everything, you wouldn't be my damn stupid Dem-Dem."

She turned her head again so she could study their hands, his perhaps better manicured than her own were, "I wish I had more faith. I should be able to fix this. Why can't I fix this?" She was struggling, struggling with everything, like she might break out into hot, gummy tears, an angry toddler tantrum because things were not right.

Eden squished into the chair with her, which was easy because Demi was approximately two bricks and one button, and sort of mashed her into him in lieu of a comforting cuddle. He smelled heavily like Jeyes fluid and clove cigarettes. "Darlin', just 'cos you doubleclassed mercy and life doesn't mean you're the angel of repairin' brain wounds. There ain't shit we can do 'bout shit."

"But we can't stop trying," she insisted pitifully, "And the world is horrible, but it can be a nice place. I don't want it to end. If I let the world end I'll be like total crap the sorriest angel of life ever."

"But maybe you'll be a better angel of mercy, you sad crappy girly sack," he offered, sage advice from the angel of death.

She elbowed him in his bony ribs affectionately, "Oh hardy-har. You have to be the funniest transvestite death angel who ever lived." She sighed contemplatively, and they both sat still in the chair -- a bundle of arms and legs, slender and spindly, comfortable only out of spite, "I don't think we should give up. Not until the very end. We might get another miracle. If we do, I'm going to say 'I told you so.'"

"Do you ever not say 'I told you so', you snotty little I-told-you-so? You think I'm gonna give a damn? I'll be havin' a celebratorial ciggie an' payin' for his fuckin' university fee or somethin'. I'm the angel of death, kitten, I wanna be wrong. But I ain't."

"You are," she said stubbornly, balling up, "Because I said so."

His hand was at the very tips of her curling hair. "You think the world still revolves at your say-so, Archangel?"

"Not my say-so," she shook her head and shivered all over, "My shoulder. My dug in feet. You want the world to roll over, you have to knock into it hard. I know that, Sams. But now there's nobody left to kill, nobody to sucker punch and then kick while they're down. There's no way to cheat our way out of this one, except -- "

"Shhh, duck," he said. "Don't say it. It's too close to say it."

She let out a quiet breath and closed her eyes, "I'm glad you're here. You're always here, at the end. It's nice. Nicer than having you in pieces. It was such a little box."

"You'd think you would've gotten me a bigger box or somethin'." It was quiet, for Eden; you couldn't even use 'strident' in conjunction with his voice because it was redundant. Quiet was faintly wrong. "Think it's gonna be much longer?"

"Tomorrow, there -- " she faltered and tried to breathe again, "Tomorrow there'll be a psychological evaluation. I don't think they'll pass it, exactly. Of course," she reflected, uncurling slightly to tug at his brandy colored hair like a tired child, "I don't exactly think we could pass it either."

"This 'royal we', Dem-dem? I don't think I could've ever passed that shit anyway." Another slow quiet. "So what happens, like, when they've failed the little head exam?"

"Formalities," she explained, "Paperwork. Then they'll ask us. If we want to turn him off, I mean."

"An' we say great, yes, do we get a discount?"

"The five finger apocalypse discount, maybe," she kicked at him ineffectually, which was hard, considering they were both still crammed into the same wingchair. There was a small but furious kickfight. Gabriel won because she had smaller legs and could kick quicker, but Samael had knobbly knees so it was a near thing. Eventually, he sighed, so hard that the dust bunnies practically were sucked into his mouth.

"I'm gettin' bored of England," he said unexpectedly. "I want to go away if this sods its shit up, Dems."

"You name the spot and I'll buy you a beach house, if you'll let me live in the basement," she promised tiredly, "Duriel can be your pool boy. He'll love that."

"Alaska!"

She considered this deeply for a moment, then slowly curled her toes and asked, "Do you think it's right not to tell anyone? Of course that's what Duriel thinks, but what do you think, King of Death?"

Eden stretched out for a while, all his long limbs, arms above him until he crossed them behind his head and looked at the ceiling. "I dunno about right. You gotta think about who it's right for, Gabs. Isn't any 'right'. Just different levels of... Uncomf'table."

"Says you," she sighed despairingly, "Different levels of being beaten with a tire iron. You should write a book about what you think about things. You could call it 'Philosophy According to Some Big Dope.' I bet it would sell. People love things like that."

"Or I could write a hot tell-all book about you an' Ol' Paterfamilias doin' it on the back table in the garden -- "

"Then I'll write a tell-all book about why you were watching," she retorted and attempted to smother him with a dainty pillow.

Smothering occurred, but then so did more kicking.

"'Cos I thought there was an elephant dyin' out back," he said eventually, with ultimate dignity. "Turns out it was just what Ol' Yeller sounds like inna moment of passion."

"I'm going to tell him you said that. Then maybe you won't even get to see the end of the world, and won't that be a shame," she warned, wriggling her toes thoughtfully, "If we ever get to the end of the world? I'm totally going to push you off the side to see if you make a plunk."

"Thanks for tellin' me in advance, Demeter Bond, I'll sure as shit be hidin' in the porthole or somethin'. Besides, he won't believe you, he'll shut down the moment you try to tell 'im I saw his bare naked man-arse. Just shut down."

"You sound like you're talking from experience."

"I gotta feeling."

She laid her head on his unpleasantly sharp shoulder suddenly, "If you're scared, you can say so. I'll listen. There are lots of things to be scared of now, and even if it's not true, I can promise that it'll be okay in the morning. And maybe you'll believe me because that's what you do, even if you say you don't, or maybe it doesn't matter what you believe about it at all, just that I bothered to say it to you."

"I'm not scared," he said, full of scorn, and then it was much quieter when he added: "I'm not scared for me, I'm scared for bloody you, and King Glycerine, an' my stupid gothic lump of a son, an' Jibs. I'm scared that this'll blow up the family. An' it's my family. I'm scared that it'll blow up a shitload more. I'm friggin' petrified."

"I won't let it happen," she promised.

"If you blow yourself up jus' to stop it I'll murder you - "

She laughed and it was tired and slow and easy. They were staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, but this was something they had done before, together. Staring down death was getting to be old hat for them. It was comfortable. It was something she knew, and although the thought of the whitehot whiteout still turned her sick in the bottom of her stomach, there was also a strange sort of peace that was settling over her. It was the peace of action. It was the peace of decision. It had been the same when she'd been carrying a sheaf of chunnel tickets so many years ago, when they'd all celebrated Christmas together on the broken Normandy coastline while it rained ash and creosote.

"I think we're all through with dying, you goon. I turned in my Martyr's Anonymous card years ago," she briefly touched his arm and her smile was weakly gentle, "Besides, I'm not fool enough to think that that's a solution to anything any more. I'll still fight the good fight, but I won't go out intending to die the good death, mainly because someone important once told me that there wasn't any 'good death,' there was only 'death' and it was pretty much crappy for everyone across the board."

He shrugged and she was silent for a moment, then felt it quite pertinent to add:

"I guess that means that you're pretty much crappy for everyone across the board."

"Hey."

The angel of death's response was immediate and involved a heated pillow exchange and a great many uniquely misused words that were, of course, very appropriate in the parlor of a society matron.

If death was coming, then Demeter Serraffield was prepared. After all, he'd been cleaning her end tables and looking after her children for years.

*

She had bathed in the river.

She had bathed in the river and let go of the heartache and agony that had rubbed her so raw and mortal. She had bathed in the river and now she came, not as the light, but to testify to it. There were seven lamps and seven fires lit, and she was holding one of them, grim and white-fingered, a cup-bearer or a pall-bearer. She had bathed in the river, so now she went to confession.

She had confessed once already, to her Jove-Jehova, and he had heard her confession and he had forgiven her. In many ways, that was the only validation she needed. His hand on her shoulder was not a restraint, but the slow quiet knowledge that things had begun to happen around them, to bind together, carded like wool on a spinning wheel. She had the cool, soft foreknowledge that he had come to his decision -- that she would hold the door for him when he left. Azrael's signature was already at the bottom of their contract, hurried and cramped, the ink splotched and blotted.

It was another mark of his grace that he did not feel slighted. Even after he had released her from her sins she still sought solace at a hand other than his own. She went to confession at the hand of St. John Wilkston, who had christened her twice already in his mortal span. He would not live to christen her again. She felt it was the least she could do.

She did not go seeking forgiveness, for it was not something that was meant to be forgiven. It was the last unavoidable quiet. She could not beg forgiveness for her quantum make up, and she would not beg forgiveness for Azrael's. They could not deny natures. He was Apocalypse and it would rain. She was Mercy and she would carry the handbell and ring the eulogy of the world.

She did not go to ask for absolution. The weight that she carried she did as was primal in her nature. She guarded it fiercely. It was her responsibility, and she would have gutted anyone who dared attempt relieve her of it. It was herself: Jibreel Eisenreich as viewed through a lens Azrael. She wanted to no absolution. It was his right to stand in judgment. It was her right to stand as his seneschal.

She went because she felt he had a right to know what to expect. It was the revelation of John.

They went late, after compline had been said. It was not a common time for confession, but then, these were uncommon times. Azrael sat on the pitted stone steps outside and smoked four cigarettes. When St. John finally left the confessional he looked papery, drawn and tired, twenty years older than he had at the earlier mass. She could not pity him because she had given him a gift.

Blessed is He who has sent down the Word to His servant that she may be a Warner to all the peoples.

Such was the weight of knowing.

She pulled her coat a little closer around her and then went into the little graveyard, where, between marble tombs and sepulchers, she found a simple stone with a lamb sitting vigil against its side. The moon was heavy and white, but she did not need to read the inscription. She had never needed to read this inscription. This was the place her mother had tried so desperately to keep her from, worried of past ghosts haunting the present lives of grey-eyed marias. This was her earth.

She sat against the stone and reflected on times past and a hundred unmarked graves. Her son would not have a gravestone, or he would have the last stone: the husky dead rock of the third planet they'd once called Tellus.

I am the last of Prophets. There is no prophet after me.

After a time, she found Azrael standing before her quietly: first his scuffed leather shoes, the heels worn down from too long walking, and then the drip of his heavy leather coat. He offered her his hand and she took it, rising to stand before him, her head bowed.

He blessed her and it was a string of beads falling together.

He took her home.

She had finished the last of her prayers.

*

Four cups of the swamp water that passed for coffee in St. Sebastian's hospital was Rachel's limit. Shaktiel was sleeping kicked back in her chair, her trainers off and her feet on Buboe's bed, tucked into the knit covers and the quilt that his mother had thoughtfully left draped over the foot, where it couldn't get in the way of tubes in and out. She had his eaten up and beaten up copy of Black Beauty against her chest and seemed to be holding onto it like it was a talisman. Key item: Black Beauty - cannot gain entrance to end of the world without.

End of the world. Shit.

He ran his hand through his hair and scratched the back of his head hard so that his fingers needled against his skull. His hair fell back into his eyes. It was on top of them. He could feel it, could feel it creeping in and peering at the windows like a horde of the fresh dead old dead, walking meat smelling life; wanting to gut and kill not to eat but to massacre. Misery loved company. Misery was his sister and Azrael. Azrael was the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse loved company.

He'd never been good at math.

They didn't let him into the hospital with his gun, even if it wasn't loaded, and he had enough respect for the place, for the dead kid, so as not to force it into his self just to fiddle with it emptily, eyes dark and staring, as he sat at the no-coffin wake. Shaktiel had had a long day. He could see that, read the shadows on her face and the dark circles under her eyes. Sometimes she'd go away into the bathroom and dry sob, and come back all teeth, daring him to say anything about it. He didn't. Now she was strung and slumped, moppy messy hair in her face, her mouth open slightly as she snored.

She needed the rest, so he let her sleep. It was his watch anyway. He almost wondered how it was that they'd gotten Azrael and Jibreel to leave. Then he thought about it a little and he didn't wonder so much any more.

He'd sung all the massacre songs he knew, sung them until he didn't feel like singing them anymore. This late it might have woken someone anyway -- not that it was going to matter soon enough. Whatever happened was going to happen right here, in this room, in this ward. The other patients of critical care were bound to end up witness to the apocalypse, one way or another. He didn't care much for one way, and he couldn't have it the other. He wanted a third choice, like flipping a coin and having it land on its edge.

He'd never been good at math, but he didn't think that had a high probability. Maybe Jibreel could have told him the odds. Maybe she'd already thought of it. When he thought about it slowly, he knew instinctually that a coin would land on its edge sooner than the kid would wake up. Rachel had been to a lot of graves, and he'd never seen a Lazarus.

Only the shambling dead..

When it got quiet at the hospital, it also got cold, and Rachel threw his coat over Shaktiel's bare arms as his breath misted out in front of his face and they all came to sit around him.

Jonathan. Susan. Ramon. Elizabeth. Stewart. Nadia. Some of them were so old they'd forgotten their names. There never seemed to be an end to the white, silent little children who were always padding around behind him in this hospital. They were his father's work, all of them, numbering into hundreds: little children who'd come to the hospital hoping for a cure and who had suffered and been tormented until they were of no more use, then were kicked down the deepslide into death, stretched and thrown away. Of course, he'd taken their souls a long time ago, but their shadows would stalk the hospital, packs of dead, angry miserable children, gaunt and twisted, until they were laid to rest. He had been stilling them since a little before his fourth birthday, when he'd finally understood what they needed, and there were still more of them than he could count. They had become a familiar accompaniment in this place. They were all ways following him, in his periphery, waiting their turn to demand what was their due, but it wasn't until it was still and quiet that he would actually read them plainly.

Strangely, now they didn't seem to want anything, as if they sensed that there was something heavier than their own grief and rage present in this place, at this time. They just clustered silently around his chair, dark-eyed and staring, with slightly opened mouths that showed no teeth -- only the blackness of their empty, tumored insides.

Idly, Rachel wondered where the ghost lived in a little boy who was brain dead but whose soul was still intact. He wondered if he was bound to see the hollow-eyed shade of his nephew, mouth open, needy, the same way he'd seen his wispy grandmother. He wasn't sure he'd be able to help the kid. He hadn't been able to help her, that was for damn sure.

His eyes ached, and he balled up his fists and rubbed his eyes with them, forcing himself awake, grinding in a little hurt because if he had one truth, it was that pain kept him alive.

He'd ground his knuckles so hard against his eyes that when he finally opened them at first he only saw stars and lights dancing around the swimming darkness of the room. He shook his head and blinked hard, and slowly the room began to mist into focus.

He almost didn't catch it, thought it was something else: another blur, another star, another fairy light dancing around his over-tired head -- but then it didn't clear away as fast as the other lights had, stayed burned into his vision like he'd stared too long at the sun or an overhead light, burned so hot and hard that he could see it even when he closed his eyes, although it was gone when he opened them again. He shook his head hard and then slapped himself, and as his ears rang and his eyes crossed he caught it again.

Slim like a filament of spider line was a bright thread that ran from the hospital bed off into nowhere, farther than Rachel could see or trace.

He had never seen anything like it, so he stared at it for a long time, then he slowly took a coin out of his pocket and flipped it off his thumb. It landed somewhere lost in the folds of Buboe's quilt, and he didn't have the nerve to look for it.

*

At twelve forty-seven Thomas Albert Kincaide climbed on top of his cot and with some difficulty hung himself from the light fixture. The weight of his body snapped his own neck with a clean sort of precision that the coroner would later marvel at. It was a textbook case of mental breakdown and suicide.

It was a textbook case of Isabella Montgomery, but of course, that's something the history books won't tell you.

*

After a long time she and Eden finally wore out their threadbare conversation as they passed the knitting back and forth between them and remembered the lean years aloud like old veterans whose Dunkirks and Gazalas were fought in narrow alleys and forgotten tubelines, in the trash and filth of a city that had been dying around them until they'd cut out the cancer with butcher knives and stamped it dead. They'd carved out breathing room and had almost come back to their Rome as Ceasars in bodybags. It was their blood that had watered this earth. It was a city that they'd built themselves -- for each other, for their families, for the once-upon-a-time families that had come again in the peace.

But even war horses tire of yarn spinning when Armageddon hangs heavy and sharp, coppery and bitter and too close. Eventually they ran out of things to say, and they sat for a while, staring, and finally Eden got up to put away the teacups. As he left, she rose and tugged on his shaggy cottonfluff hair so that he was forced to bend and she could plant a faint kiss on his forehead. He elbowed her in the ribs, but there wasn't much bite in it. It was as if everything was coming too quickly and too slowly all at once, the sand bottoming out of an hourglass.

Gabriel went to see her husband.

-- but he was not in their bedroom.

He was not in their bedroom, and he was not in the downstairs sitting room, or pacing quietly beside the piano, or in the wine cellar, or the kitchen, or even in the attic among the boxes and crates of old remembrances.

She did not really have to check all of those places to know he was not in the house, but she did, on the off chance that he had lingered in some less-trafficked area, among dusty wine bottles or boxes of worm-eaten books, remembering the time that had passed, the sun casting shadows as civilizations had risen and set in the beaten down footsteps of one Duriel, Lord of Pain.

But he was not in the house, and she found that she did not expect him to be. Duriel was past sulking in old memories and drowning in ancient merlots. The time was passing, and they all knew the time was passing. She knew where he would be.

In a way, it was like times past, when they had met often in the tired hours of the night on the still roof of St. Sebastian's Hospital, by accident, or by design, or through sheer obsession. She did not need to take the elevator.

It was lonely, although she imagined this was only because Duriel had sent the helicopter crew down from the roof with an eloquently dismissive stare. This was his tower, and when he demanded solitude, thus it was granted. Matthias Eisenreich sat on the Board of Directors, but this ground was Duriel's, and that was something that no one dared to question, even in these wan and halcyon days past Normandy.

He was standing on the heavy grated covering of a ventilation unit, the updraft flaring his coat around his calves. There were low yellow lights around the perimeter of the roof, and they split their glow into patterns over the fractured fractal glass of his wings that were still painted in streaks of his own flaking blood. His back was to her, and he gave all his attention to the city that spread below and around them like a great sleeping hive, a thousand colored lights in a jar.

Her bare feet made no sound on the metal, but he turned and gave her one eye without a word. It was wordless and simple. He offered her his arm and she went to stand beside him and look at the city, the wind carrying her hair in a stream over her shoulder like a dark flag in the dead glow of the new moon. On another night, in another time, they might have stood on another tower and waited for a different apocalypse, his hand in her hair and a little bell at her throat.

He was the hundred year thorn-thicket and she was his rose, and together, they would stand and wait for the dawn.

*

He slept, he ate, he drank, purely out of habit; his mortality was one of the things he carried like a jacket, and he was shedding it, and sometimes Azrael walked out of the door and forgot that he had to live life and address the people of the world as if he was still a normal person. He was getting distracted; he would stare out the window, he would watch the day tick past like a cheap watch, he could feel time drip past and leave a bad taste on his mouth. For the angel of the apocalypse, there was only his caller, there was only his child; and then there would be little blue-eyed Tadhiel, only a handful of years older than Buboe, and there would be Caine, because you could never rid yourself of Caine. And that would be the reckoning.

He'd found it hard to be the final God when drinking hospital coffee, before. Now it wasn't hard at all, coffee or no coffee.

Because being the Apocalypse, he thought, was the last selfishness; the claiming of the world, the marrying and pillaging, the final full decision of yes. Ownership. The full finality. He would call it and he would sing it and order it; master it; and - and now he knew - because Buboe was his world, and only he could take the thread away. Not Gabriel. Not his father, not Duriel. Apocalypse was the last love of the world, ferocious and fierce, and maybe Acheliah being his twin wasn't such an incongruity after all.

Jibreel was giving him silence. Or maybe they were both giving each other silence, they did not need to talk in words, they sat on the sofa with the blinds pulled open to watch every new nighttime fall over London. It was a slow grey drawing-down all thick with lights like needles; eventually, he could not bear the lights any more, and she would draw the curtains. He had lost all ability to count time. There was no more counting time. Maybe he'd needed to be a father, to have the ability;

- and there is a white house, and there are dogs -

The world was his child, and he had lost it. - and there was a white house, and the back door was off its hinges, and dogs were devouring his corpse as he watched - and he walked into the house, he walked into the house, he walked up the stairs. Jibreel followed with a candle; maybe she'd needed to be a mother, to have the ability, and then they set the house on fire and then -

- and there is a white house -

Azrael buried his face in Jibreel's small hand, and found that he was unafraid.

*

Seven lamps.

Seven stars.

Seven angels before the Lord.

*