Chapter Seventeen: I Know I Can’t Refuse and Yet I Wish I Could

"And how is your progress?"

Pagiel knotted her hands into the folds of the silvery angelic robes she was wearing to replace her costume, her eyes downcast, refusing to meet Barachiel’s gaze. He really wasn’t as frightening as he looked, and she knew it, but she couldn’t help but feel nervous. It was just a part of her nature these days.

"It’s a work in progress, really," she shrugged. "These things take time."

"You’ve been at it for four thousand years," Barachiel noted.

A blush crept to Pagiel’s cheeks and she lowered her head further. "These things take a lot of time."

Barachiel took note of this. "You seem awfully close with Descant."

"One has to be close to get to the soul," she recited as if this was something she had learned from memory and not something she truly believed in.

"Oh get on with, Barachiel," a voice that sent chills down Pagiel’s spine suddenly spoke up just before Gabriel, herself, emerged from the shadows, the silver horn about her waist moving in time with her footsteps, a threatening reminder of her power. One blow of that horn and the Apocalypse would begin. It was a sobering, frightening thought. "Hello, Pagiel," she said, feigning sweetness.

Pagiel was smarter than that. Gabriel was anything but sweet. She was a violent force of nature who would kill one of her own kind if they made even the slightest mistake that displeased her or, through proxy, The Creator. "Lord Gabriel," she whispered, her voice almost catching in her throat.

Gabriel moved behind her, her fingers trailing through the Cherub’s blonde hair. She shuddered under her touch, but said nothing, wishing she could control herself in the face of her superiors, but found she was too nervous and her body wouldn’t obey her commands. "Four thousand years is a very long time to be working on one soul, Pagiel."

"I understand, my lord. I’ll try to do better," she whispered.

Gabriel knotted her fist into Pagiel’s hair and she cried out in pain. "Not try!" The Archangel snapped, jerking her head back so that she was now looking up into that cold, dark face with those soulless nearly black eyes boring into the very core of her being. "You will do better. You will not lose that boy’s soul to that demon. Do you understand?"

"Yes! Yes!" Pagiel cried as Gabriel’s grip on her hair intensified. Satisfied, Gabriel freed her and moved to stand beside Barachiel, looking very pleased with herself. Pagiel sniffled. If she could cry, she would have been sobbing, but as she couldn’t, she could only lower her gaze and hold her head in pain while wishing she was anywhere but here and that Gabriel and Barachiel were anyone else. She’d take Mathias and his tricks over this agony any day.

"I have another job for you, Pagiel," Gabriel spoke up after a moment, her voice softer now. It was hard to imagine such softness from someone who had been so rough a moment before. "A very important one. If you do it for me, then I swear you will be rewarded."

She knew she shouldn’t listen to a word that Gabriel said, but the Archangel couldn’t lie to her. It was physically impossible. She suddenly forgot about the harsh words and unnecessary roughness at the possibility of finally obtaining what she so desired- respect from her superiors and a place of honor amongst her fellow angels. "What do you want me to do?" She asked.

Gabriel smiled, a dark twisted smile that suggested so much but Pagiel could see nothing of it, too blinded by the thought of how she might be rewarded to notice. "I want you to kill the demon."

That hit the Cherub like a blow to the chest. She gasped, her hands going to her mouth. There was no love lost between her and Mathias, but even though she threatened to do all matter of unspeakable things to him whenever he made her angry, she’d never dream of really killing him. She had too much respect for Descant to do that... And besides, she didn’t she was physically capable of doing so.

"I... Don’t think I can," she said, nervously.

"Oh I think you can," Gabriel said, soothingly. "Here I’ll even help." She produced a silver dagger out of thin air and passed it to the little blonde angel. It felt heavy in her hands as if the weight of everything that came with this terrible task was weighing down upon it and crushing her in the process. "So what do you say, Pagiel? Are you up to the task."

Pagiel swallowed hard. She didn’t want to do this, but she couldn’t refuse. A refusal would be like signing herself away from earth and all of her happiness, if not signing her life away. Despite the fact that her mind was screaming no in every language she knew (which was all of them), she managed to nod and choke out, "I’ll do it."