“Look,” says Josiah. “I gotta go. Don’t…don’t follow me out, okay? Please. Please. I can’t afford to be seen with…strangers.” He takes a shaky breath and takes a determined step toward the door.
Raffe stops him with a palm on his chest. “We haven’t been strangers since I pulled you out of the slave quarters to train you as a soldier.”
The albino cringes from Raffe’s touch like he’s been burned. “That was another life, another world.” He takes a shaky breath. He lowers his voice to a barely-audible whisper. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s too dangerous for you now.”
“Really?” Raffe sounds bored.
Josiah turns and paces back to the counter. “A lot of things have changed. Things have gotten complicated.” Although his voice is losing its edge, I can’t help but notice that Josiah paces as far away from Raffe as he can get.
“So complicated that my own men have forgotten me?”
Josiah goes into a stall and flushes the toilet. “Oh, no one’s forgotten you.” I can barely catch his words over the roaring water so I’m pretty sure no one outside the bathroom can hear anything. “Just the opposite. You’ve become the talk of the aerie.” He walks into another stall and flushes. “There’s practically an anti-Raphael campaign.”
Raphael? Does he mean Raffe?
“Why? Who would bother?”
The albino shrugs. “I’m just a soldier. The machinations of archangels are beyond me. But if I was forced to guess…now that Gabriel has been shot down....”
“There’s a power vacuum. Who’s the Messenger now?”
Josiah flushes another toilet. “Nobody. There’s a standoff. We’d all agree on Michael, but he doesn’t want it. He likes being the general and won’t give up the military. Uriel, on the other hand, wants it so badly he’s practically combing our feathers with his own hands to get the supermajority support he needs.”
“That explains the non-stop party and the women. That’s a dangerous road he’s walking.”
“In the meantime, none of us know what in God’s name is going on or why the hell we’re here. As usual, Gabriel told us nothing. You know how he liked being dramatic. Everything was need-to-know only, and even then you were lucky if you got anything out of him that wasn’t all cryptic.”
Raffe nods. “So what’s keeping Uri from getting the support he needs?”
The albino flushes another toilet. And even with the thunderous sound of the water, he only points to Raffe and mouths the word “You.”
Raffe arches an eyebrow.
“Sure,” says Josiah. “There are those who don’t like the idea of Uriel becoming Messenger because he has too close of a tie to Hell. He keeps telling us that visiting the Pit is part of his job, but who knows what goes on down there? You know what I mean?”
Josiah paces back to the first stall to fill the bathroom with another thunderous flush. “But the bigger problem for Uriel is your men. Blockheaded, stubborn lot, every one of them. They’re so pissed off at your abandonment of them, they’d tear you to pieces themselves, but they’re not going to let an outsider do it. They’re saying all the surviving archangels should be in the running for Messenger, including you. Uriel hasn’t managed to win them over. Yet.”
“Them?”
Josiah closes his blood-red eyes. “You know I’m not in a position to take a stand, Raphael. I never have been. I never will be. I’ll be lucky if I’m not washing dishes by the end. I’m barely hanging on as part of the group as it is.” He spits this out with bubbling frustration.
“What are they saying about me?”
Josiah’s voice turns gentle as if reluctant to be the bearer of such bad news. “That no angel could withstand being alone for this long. That if you haven’t come back to us by now, it can only mean you’re dead. Or that you’ve joined the other side.”
“That I’ve fallen?” Raffe asks. A muscle in his jaw pulses as he grinds his teeth.
“There are rumors that you committed the same sin as the Watchers. That you haven’t come back because you’re not allowed back. That you cleverly escaped humiliation and eternal torture by concocting a story about sparing your Watchers the pain of hunting their own children. That all the Nephilim running around earth is proof that you never even tried.”
“What Nephilim?”
“Are you serious?” Josiah looks at Raffe as though he’s looking at a madman. “They’re everywhere. The humans are terrified to be out at night. Every one of the servants has stories of seeing half eaten bodies or their group being attacked by the Nephilim.”
Raffe blinks, taking a moment to absorb what Josiah said. “Those aren’t Nephilim. They don’t look anything like Nephilim.”
“They sound like Nephilim. They eat like Nephilim. They terrorize like Nephilim. You and the Watchers are the only ones alive who know what they’re supposed to look like. And you’re not exactly credible witnesses.”
“I’ve seen these things and they aren’t Nephilim.”