Raziel

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I AM RAZIEL, ONE OF THE TWENTY fallen angels spoken of by Enoch in the old books. I live in the hidden world of Sheol, with the other Fallen, where no one knows of our existence, and we have lived that way since the fall, millennia ago. I should have known there would be trouble on the horizon. I could feel it in my blood, and there is nothing more powerful than blood. I had taught myself to ignore those feelings, just as I had taught myself to ignore everything that conspired to betray me. Had I listened, things might have been different.

I rose that day, in the beginning, stretching out my wings to the feeble light of early morning. A storm was coming; I felt it throbbing in my veins, in my bones. For now the healing ocean was calm, the tide coming in, and the mist was thick and warm, an enveloping embrace, but the violence of nature hung heavy in the air.

Nature? Or Uriel?

I had slept outside again. Fallen asleep in one of the wooden chairs, nursing a Jack Daniel’s, one of the many pleasures of this last century or so. Too many Jacks, if truth be told. I hadn’t wanted this morning to come, but then, I was not a fan of mornings. Just one more day in exile, with no hope of . . .what? Escape? Return? I could never return. I had seen too much, done too much.

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