Part 17 (1/2)

”It was Passover, and though Jews knew it as the saving of the firstborn by the lamb's blood upon the doorfra of a perfectly good ht the God- He broke bread with his followers, saying it was his body, and he gave it to the it was his blood But then he said so that chilled my immortal heart-now mark me well-he said it was spilled for theiveness of sins Do you hear this? Do you understand it?” He leapt to his feet, pacing several steps away and back, not waiting for my answer ”Pardon my human reaction: my skin crawled” Do you hear this? Do you understand it?” He leapt to his feet, pacing several steps away and back, not waiting for my answer ”Pardon ain and leaned over the table, closer to my face than I liked ”We had waited an epoch for El to do aith these people, to, in the very least, give thelorious creatures, had fallen so far froly allow these clay people-these humans humans-to replace us in his affections Never”

The hairs along my neck stood on end

”But those words spoken over the Passover table sounded with the hollow echo of a vault, sealing for eternity As the first words of your creation had been full and pregnant, these rang noith the harsh sentence of exclusion, finality, and daiveness was for you, too”

He laughed, and this ti beyond the horizon

”You are so blind, Clay”

For a long ulf between us as I had never felt it before, as one breed considers the other, and his ownthat he will be surpassed and survived by the other, that the other has unwittingly succeeded him

”With sickened sense I saw it all,” he said softly, his expression expansive, eyes slightly widened ”They were going to kill him It didn't matter that he was innocent It didn't al It was a fiasco, politics and governrounds of Satan It didn't even ht, the created killing the Creator It went against every natural law”

The tinge to his voice was not sye brand of wonder

”But Satan was out of control The danger ran off his back like so much rainwater on slick and well-oiled feathers El would not bend to the temptation of his flesh Well then, let him suffer in it! More, the God-man would suffer by the hands of the people he insisted on sub to, these miserable clay creatures that he loved so dearly-and he would suffer greatly Our prince rose up with a glamour to blot out the sun and roared, Let him see how they love him in return! Let hi you didn't want that, too?”

”Oh, I did But this was error, this was folly I saw too clearly the God-man's refusal of tee of the Passover la, frantic for it to stop I understood as happening, and it had to stop-abruptly, violently, by any means, any force But there was no one to hear elic Lucifer and allminions werethis Jesus to the cross like a child before a runaway train” He rubbed his forehead ”I saw it,” he said faintly ”I saw it co”

”You didn't want to kill hilistened-”a part of me wanted him laid open, flayed apart, rent in ways that humans were not ht of his suffering I wanted it, I lusted for it But even then I knew it for seduction And as I saw the blood running froround”

It was unsettling, seeing hiant ”What? What was it?”

He pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead ”I wished I had no foresight For the first tinorance would have been a ht have enjoyed our triumph, the sweetness of that e of his nose ”But El bore it all As he had borne the ruin of Eden and the faithlessness of the hu hich he had wept down the skies onto the mud race he loved, he bore it It ful to me, the submission of Elohim to the murderous hands of his creatures”

”I don't understand”

”The spilling of blood-it was the spilling of blood” His voice cracked

”Why do you keep saying that? What was it about the blood?”

”Idiot!” He was on his feet, walking away so that I stared after hi up from their co back, shoved his weight into the chair and leaned over the table until it creaked and threatened to tip His hair was disheveled, his skullcapHe wiped a hand over his beard and blurted, ”Passover! The Passover la to say to calm him down The man at the cafe counter was tense, and I kneere on the verge of being told to leave

”Death had co, slave-except in the homes of those Israelites who had painted the blood of perfect lambs on their doors Death passed over passed over those doors Now here it was, running down the legs and arms of that God-man, the blood like that of those perfect lambs, their veins drained into basins, that vital, crimson reparation, the blood of atonement, once smeared on the doorframes of the Passovernow etched on the heart of s and arms of that God-man, the blood like that of those perfect lambs, their veins drained into basins, that vital, crimson reparation, the blood of atonement, once smeared on the doorframes of the Passovernow etched on the heart of man”

I had heard the phrase ”La he died for their sins I had never understood what they meant

Until now

”I howled a banshee cry, but it was too late They did the unspeakable They hauled him off to a public execution In ion And Satan had eyes for nothing but the son-that part of Elohim that had formed the cosmos and reshaped the terra and, most importantly, refused him-broken, as wretched as a human can be before a mortal body cries out, too broken to hold its own spirit”

I reer, cracked beyond life

”'It is done,' he said And I thought, Yes It is Yes It is And the hourglass that had come into existence for naled the measure of time until an unknown and inevitable end, was jolted, a wealth of sand-precious grains of lione forever I felt I could gather the crulass that had come into existence for naled the measure of time until an unknown and inevitable end, was jolted, a wealth of sand-precious grains of lione forever I felt I could gather the crued, multidial watch on his wrist, time in all its measureth Time, owned and on occasion even stopped in the raph

”Yes Now you understand And there it is” The watch was frozen, the second hand in

”As he died, I felt it-his departure, though I had beco about the earth as flesh, and I had become numbed to it, too The effect was that while I did not feel with acute awareness his presence here, I felt acutely the moment he departed Felt it more deeply than the mortals who fell back as the sky went black And when it did, I, without corporeal body, shi+vered, felt ina wasteland of ice

”Aroundon their lips, giving way to a shi+fting, uneasy silence I wanted to strike them all! What did they think think would happen? Had no one listened, no one heard? But they had been caught up in their bloodlust, fueled by the rage and fervor of Lucifer even as Lucifer had surely come to the same realization as I had, too late And now that it was done, as the broken body that barely rese limply upon that tree, all we could do was stand and look on at the wreck of our design would happen? Had no one listened, no one heard? But they had been caught up in their bloodlust, fueled by the rage and fervor of Lucifer even as Lucifer had surely come to the same realization as I had, too late And now that it was done, as the broken body that barely rese limply upon that tree, all we could do was stand and look on at the wreck of our design

”That moment was, in all, the eeriest moment of my life since the day Lucifer's throne careened froht darkness consumed Eden and water sed the earth”

I was silent I had questions But there was a hollowness in his eyes that ht inside the in the little tables, the people hunched over their laptops, their sandwiches and lattes-needing the comfort of their preoccupation, to hear the sound of the coffee ain the present I did it in the way that one coht after a lad for the sun, the sound of the cars on the street But Lucian pulled ht his eyes looked like holes

”This wasof ambition, of any last shred of our hope, however twisted and dark This hat it meant to be damned This hat it felt like to know that one already was-had been for eons-damned Gall rose inside rasping for soed on e, the sound of Lucifer, our prince-theout Anything but this”

”And did he?” My voice sounded too loud, too crude, too human

”Just as he had led us nowhere when Eden went black, he led us nowhere now He did nothing Our general, our prince stared on in silence And what could I do but wonder at this new sense of the inevitable, this dread e my spirit? All was not ith me All was not well”

His head snapped up toward the entrance of the store, and he straightened as though startled

”What? What is it?” I twisted, trying to see what it was, but a thick grocery aisle blocked h to stare straight through it

”We don't have much time”

”You've said that since our first appointaze to ainst the tiles ”It's getting shorter”