Velvet Redemption

I walked along the shore of the Columbia River just outside of The Dales, Oregon. In the flurry of all my training, I hadn’t really had any time to stop and breathe. Lilandra had been asleep for the past three days healing her body from my inflicted injury.

Five years. . . it didn’t feel like five years had gone by. In those years, I did nothing but train. Now that my training was done, at least for now, I wasn’t sure what my next move was going to be. Did I charge straight into Hell and confront Lucifer? Would I even stand a chance of fighting him in direct combat? Would I fight Michael?

The more I thought about this war I was supposed to stop, the more I questioned my ability to successfully do it. I knew that I was stronger, but did strength necessarily stop a war? Then there was the matter of Lisa. I had presumably been doing all of this because I wanted to see her again, and I still wanted to see her, but this morning I awoke with my arms wrapped around Lilandra.

There was only one bed in the room, and we’d been sharing it, but this was the first time I’d realized the possibility of being attracted to Lilandra. It made sense, I mean, she was a very attractive woman- I mean demon.

Was I really attracted to her though? Or was she just manipulating my emotions because she holds my soul? Could she even do that while she was unconscious?

I shrugged off any conspiracy theories about her manipulating my emotions. I’d never sensed any intent to harm me coming from her. Still, I probably needed to try to keep these emotions toward Lilandra in check. And I definitely didn’t plan on telling her about them. . . unless. . . was it possible she could sense what I was thinking and feeling?

Shaking my head, I tried to think more about what life would be like when Lilandra woke up. We obviously weren’t going to hide here forever, and I hoped she had a strategy because I sure as Hell didn’t.

It was dark, and nobody was around, so I decided to go for a swim. Maybe some cold water would clear my thoughts more.

Taking off my long green coat and shirt, I tried to leave Velvet Redemption on the shoreline, but the sword did not want to be that far from me. It shook and rattled as I tried to lay it on the rocky shore.

“What? We’re completely safe here. The demons haven’t sensed us here in five years. I think I’ll be okay in the river for five minutes,” I said. Still, the blade was adamant about being with me or right by my side.

Sighing, I held it over my back, and the sheath strapped itself to my body.

“There better be some underwater demons in this river or I’m letting you float downstream. I know labradoodle puppies that are less clingy than you, Velvet,” I muttered.

Flying just over the water’s edge, I stared down into the dark blue river. I ran my hand along the water for a while just feeling the cold liquid run against my skin. It felt great.

Then, I flew up in the air and pulled up my legs and folding my wings down. It was the weirdest cannonball I’d ever done, but I didn’t care.

When I hit the water, the cold temperature made me smile with a cringe. I didn’t have to worry about this body getting hypothermia or anything, but I could definitely still feel the chilly water. It was odd not having to breathe with this body, and I was still getting used to it. When I was not in water, I still inhaled out of habit, but underwater, it didn’t matter.

So, I sunk slowly on my back until I came to the earth at the bottom of the river. It was so peaceful down here. My long black hair drifted, and I closed my eyes.

Laying there, I thought about the war again. Or at least, I tried to. I guess the trouble came down to the fact that I wasn’t a planner. I had no strategy for life. That was made apparent by my lack of proposal to Lisa before she died. I flew by the seat of my pants in life. I guess I was more reliant on Lilandra than I thought.

Laying there at the bottom of the river, I kind of hoped the war would just stop itself. This was just too peaceful to disturb.

It was at that moment I opened my eyes and saw a familiar redhead swimming down toward me.

She reached down toward me, and I sighed, knowing that she was coming to ruin my moment. I grabbed her hand, and she pulled me up.

Back on the shore, I got dressed again before any random stranger could see my wings.

“Glad to see you back on your feet,” I said.

In truth, I was glad she was okay, though I had no doubt she’d recover. Even though I beat her in my training, I had a suspicion that she wasn’t trying as hard as she could have.

“Yeah, I’ve learned a lot about healing in my years of wandering the earth, but the most obvious thing I’ve learned is that you heal fastest while asleep,” she said.

We sat there in silence for a few moments while I thought of what I wanted to say, or rather, what I wanted to ask.

“It’s been a long time,” I said.

“Since what?”

“Since I haven’t had to fight or train or . . . well-”

“I’m sorry I didn’t give you any room to breathe, but we only had so much time. . . .,” Lilandra said.

“I’m not mad. I’m just realizing that. . . . this is the first time that I’ve not been training in. . . five-”

“Actually, with all of the time freezing, we spent closer to 25 years training,” Lilandra said.

My head began to hurt. I guess it felt like 25 years now that I thought about it, but for the first time, I was just resting. Prior to this moment, I was always training or recovering from training by sleeping. I just. . . now that I was finally done. . . it was just like time had suddenly started to flow again. Where do we go from here?”

“I’ve been thinking about that since we started training. We’ve pretty much been secluded from the rest of the world up here training, and we haven’t paid any attention to what has been going on. We need a way to find out what Lucifer and Michael have been up to besides looking for us,” Lilandra said.

I stood up, and the wind from the river blew through my hair. Oddly enough, I was thinking about my buddies from work, Benjamin and Joshua. They thought I was dead, and had been for the past five years. I wondered how they took the news.

“Well, the world seems to still be here. Obviously the war hasn’t started yet. Who do you suspect will make the first move?”

Lilandra thought for a moment and said, “You know, I’m actually kind of surprised I didn’t think of it sooner. What would Michael and Lucifer do to find Velvet. How far would they go. These questions, I never considered while we were training. They clearly weren’t successful in finding us, so I have to wonder, what did Lucifer do in his desperation to obtain Velvet while we were training?”

“I guess we won’t know until we leave this area and they attack us,” I said.

“No, we have the element of surprise right now. Whatever we do, we need to be careful and decisive. We have one shot to strike a real blow at Lucifer,” Lilandra said.

“What about Michael?”

“I suspect he will be the least of our problems, if he is a problem at all. Michael may not be directly on our side, but I don’t think he’d do anything to harm us so long as Lucifer is the one we’re fighting against,” Lilandra said.

I raised an eyebrow and said, “Are you sure? This is the guy who let you become a demon just for trying to fix your past mistake, and you don’t think he has one ounce of ill will toward you?”

She looked away from me and said quietly, “Michael isn’t our enemy, okay? Let’s just leave it at that.”

There was something she wasn’t telling me about Michael, but I didn’t have the slightest clue what she was hiding. In these circumstances, it could be anything.

We decided to sleep that night and finally check out of our hotel room the next morning. The clerk was so used to having us there, that when we said we were checking out, he had to actually hug us goodbye.

Well, that was weird, I thought.

I had asked Lilandra how she had paid for the hotel room, and she surprised me by informing me of the bank accounts she’d set up all over the world through the years. She’d accumulated a small fortune while wandering the earth.

Instead of flying, we decided to keep a low profile. We drove out west to a small beach town on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. The town was called Lincoln City, and though we were still in Oregon, Lilandra said we were beyond the range of the river’s protection.

Lincoln City looked older, and it was a fairly small town. It was definitely a tourist town being located right next to the beach. All of the buildings in town looked worn, and a little dirty. Most of the people we saw around town were elderly.

We stopped and had a meal at a place called The Blackfish Cafe. The tables and chairs followed some beach theme and looked like they were made of driftwood.

There were all sorts of fish nicknacks and old pictures decorating the walls. The place smelled like fried clams among other things, and even though my body wasn’t hungry, I was dying to eat something.

I ate for the first time in five years. I’d forgotten just how good food tasted. In less than ten minutes my burger and fries were completely gone. And Dr. Pepper, oh Lord! I had nearly forgotten how good that tasted.

Our waiter was a Scottish man who we could tell was drinking a little as the day went on. The more he drank, the thicker his accent got. Toward the end of our meal, we just nodded when guttural sounds came from his throat.

We left, looking over our shoulders for fear of any demons being nearby. Strangely enough, everything was. . . normal. We figured as soon as we left the protection of the river, we’d be swarmed, but that clearly wasn’t the case.

Driving out to the ocean, we discussed a little more of Lilandra’s past.

“So, explain why you don’t fight offensively again?”

“When I was the armor bearer for Michael, I had to take a special oath that prevented me from fighting. I was to let Michael do all the fighting for the two of us. I was simply to carry his armor and blade. When an angel makes a promise, they’re bound by it. I can’t fight because of that oath. If I ever fight offensively, it would likely destroy me. . . I’ve only seen one angel fail to keep an oath,” Lilandra said.

“What happened to the angel?”

“His body dissolved before my eyes,” Lilandra said.

We got out and stood on the beach. We walked a little and talked some more of Lilandra’s past. When we’d walked a few miles, we realized we were alone on the beach. We really couldn’t even see hotels anymore, either.

Standing there, I took it all in. The smell of the seaweed, the feel of the sand, the sound of the crashing waves. . . all of it was peaceful, and then a voice spoke up, “We’ve been looking for the two of you for quite a while now.”

Lilandra and I turned, and before us was what appeared to be a man clothed in white. His pants, long-sleeve shirt, long straight hair, and wings were all pure white.

Clearly, Lilandra didn’t expect to see this guy anymore than I did. She asked, “Daniel. . . what are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to collect the blade before it falls into the wrong hands,” he said.

“It isn’t going to fall into the wrong hands, Daniel. We’re going to use it in order to stop the war from starting,” Lilandra said.

“Michael has different plans,” Daniel said.

I felt like an outsider in their conversation, and yet, I was the glue that held the conversation together. . . well, me and Velvet were the glue.

“Uh, my name is Justin Pierce,” I said, awkwardly.

Daniel acted like he could have shit on a biscuit and cared more about eating it than he did meeting me. He just kept talking to Lilandra like I wasn’t even there.

“I have to admit; it’s been awhile since I’ve seen you. You look just as stubborn as when we last met, but you don’t seem to look quite as hopeless,” Daniel said.

The more I heard him talk, the more he pissed me off. I likened him to a writer for a small newspaper who thought that he was good enough to write for The New York Times or the Chicago Tribune. Truth be told, I wasn’t much of a reader, but the kind of person I was likening him to was one who liked to use big words in his news articles. He liked to talk smarter than he was just because it made him feel regal. In other words, I just knew he was an asshole.

“It has been a while. I haven’t seen you since the fall of the holy city,” Lilandra said, quietly.

“Poor Jerusalem. . . fell a little less than 2,000 years ago, temple and all. You and I were there that day, fighting a little battle of our own,” Daniel said.

I looked over at Lilandra and asked, “Battle?”

She didn’t take her eyes off of Daniel for one moment but answered my question, “I thought for quite a while that Michael’s sword, the blade that we now call Velvet Redemption, might have been in Jerusalem. When Rome was in the process of destroying Jerusalem, I grew desperate and got careless. Daniel found me, as he had a few other times in history, and he tried to bring me back. . . by force.”

“Is that why he’s here now? To bring you in?”

“If you two had anything less than a fool’s luck finding the blade five years ago, I would be here for Lilandra; however, since you two do possess one of the most powerful weapons in creation, I am here on behalf of Michael to recapture the weapon and bring you two in before you can cause any more chaos than you already have,” Daniel said.

A silence fell over the three of us.

“I’ve tried to explain this to you before, Daniel. Michael and Lucifer’s war will destroy this planet and wipe out a large portion of the human race,” Lilandra said.

“I told you this in Jerusalem. We have our orders from Michael. There’s a reason he is in charge and we aren’t. Now I don’t hate the human race, and I will feel bad for them when the war breaks out, but my orders are what they are. Bring in Lilandra, Michael’s old blade, and the one who wields it,” Daniel said.

“We’re not going with you, and you can’t have Velvet,” Lilandra said, firmly.

“Then I’m going to bring you in by force,” Daniel said.

His tone was unchanged, and to be honest, his monotone voice did nothing to lower my anger levels. It wore on my nerves.

“Daniel, do you know why you’ve never been able to best me in combat? It’s because to be the armor bearer for the general of all angels, I had to be the best with a blade. Michael didn’t just want someone to carry his things; he wanted the angel with the best swordsmanship, and that was me. Even if I can no longer fight because of my oath, I can and will defend myself,” Lilandra said.

“It is irrelevant why you were chosen to have such a high honor, because you gave it all up and disgraced yourself to become a demon,” Daniel said.

Daniel raised his fists, and I reached back to grab Velvet’s hilt.

“Don’t do this, Daniel. You and I both know that neither Lucifer nor Michael will make a move to escalate the war without Velvet. It’s the one piece on the board that both sides need to advance,” Lilandra said.

“You foolish demon. Where have you been? Lucifer has already made the next move, and it’s thanks to the two of you upsetting the status quo,” Daniel said.

Lilandra and I exchanged glances.

Lucifer made a move? How, he didn’t find us while we were training, I thought.

“You two really don’t know, do you?”

“No, we clearly don’t Trebek, why don’t you inform us,” I said, frowning.

“I don’t know where you two have been for the past five years, but when Lucifer’s demons couldn’t find you, he resorted to bringing in the four horsemen to do his bidding,” Daniel said.

“There’s no way he’d resort to that! You’ve got to be bluffing!”

Lilandra’s voice was low and carried much excitement. . . . or was it fear? I had no idea what Daniel was talking about, but the four horsemen didn’t exactly sound like friendly folks.

Confused, I looked to Lilandra and asked, “Um, Lilandra? You mind filling me in on what the four horsemen are?”

“If Lucifer has summoned them, they are four beings that represent War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. They’re very powerful, and each one of them terrorizes the world in their own way. They’ve only been summoned separately a couple times throughout the darker parts of history, and I’ve even met Pestilence before, but they’re a force to be reckoned with. Lucifer gives up a considerable amount of power to bring the four of them together under his control. He must really be desperate to find us if he resorted to bringing them all into this together,” Lilandra explained.

It was gibberish to me, really. Horsemen? I always was a pretty simple guy, not stupid, just simple. As a graphic designer, I guess it was ironic that I didn’t really pay attention to the “big picture” stuff, but that was just the way I was. It never took a lot to make me happy or upset.

Now, this Lucifer guy had created four more people I had to fight? I sighed, thinking that this made things more complicated. I had no idea how right I was.

“Come on Justin, we’re leaving. We need to go before one of those four shows up. It’s one thing to fight demons, but I didn’t train you to fight the riders of the fucking apocalypse,” Lilandra said.

She was nervous and scared, which in turn made me nervous and scared. This girl had, quite literally, seen it all, and if she was scared of something in our path, I needed to be as well.

Daniel took a step toward Lilandra.

“I told you that I was bringing you both in. You aren’t going anywhere,” Daniel said.

“You idiot! You wouldn’t stand a chance against one of the four riders. Do you want to

risk one of them showing up and slaughtering you?”

“I will take that risk to follow my orders from Michael,” Daniel said, running at Lilandra. He threw a couple of punches, all of which Lilandra dodged. With the final punch though, he landed a powerful blow, and since he leapt into the air a little for this punch and aimed down, he knocked her down into the ground.

Sand went flying everywhere, and I had to cover my eyes.

I cried out for her, “Lilandra!”

When the sand cleared, I noticed that his fist was shaking. It stopped just short of making contact with her. She had pulled out the same kind of wooden blade she used in our final training session. It looked like a basic wooden training katana, only there were some kind of runes carved into the sword.

I assumed that those runes were the Enochian language and gave the wood some kind of extra strength or durability. How many of those wooden blades she had, I did not know. He had her pinned, though.

Throwing off my green coat and releasing my wings, I took to the air and maneuvered into a quick arc to come down on Daniel with some momentum. I reached back to draw Velvet at just the right moment for a quick strike, but something was wrong. The blade wouldn’t come out of the sheath. I pulled as hard as I could, but the sword wouldn’t budge.

Daniel saw me coming, and when I didn’t draw my blade, he used the arm that wasn’t blocked by Lilandra’s sword to whip back. His elbow jabbed straight into my gut as I came within reach. I folded like a house of cards and went flying back several feet bouncing into the sand before I finally rolled to a stop.

Getting up slowly, I tried to pulled out Velvet again. The sword did not communicate any problems with me, rather it was silent.

“Velvet! Why aren’t you helping me?”

Daniel leapt back from Lilandra and chuckled.

“The blade was made by an angel, and it certainly wasn’t made to fight with other angels. Not to mention, the girl that you’ve sold your soul to is a demon! That blade isn’t going to lift a finger to help her. It wants to see her die because of her rebellious sins,” Daniel said, for once with a little excitement in his otherwise monotone voice.

“Get out of here, Justin. I can hold my own against Daniel. You need to leave before one of the riders show up,” Lilandra said, rising to her feet.

“You can’t even attack me, Lilandra. I’m going to crush that toothpick, then I’m going to pummel your new pet and take that sword back to Heaven where it belongs,” Daniel said.

“Why do you bastards even want this sword? Michael has another one, right?”

“Watch your tongue, boy. I may not hate the human race, but you are absolute dogs compared to us angels. It doesn’t matter why Michael wants that sword. If he wants 1,000 just like it, that is what he’ll get. He’s in charge,” Daniel said.

I growled and took my hand off of Velvet’s hilt. I felt the air around me. It was pretty humid, and not only that, I sensed a low pressure system coming down from the north. Smiling, I formed a plan.

Daniel rushed at Lilandra again, his white wings glowing under the moonlight. He was clearly a powerful individual in terms of strength. He was the type of fighter who liked to dominate and crush his opponent quickly with his fists.

He was throwing punches at Lilandra, and she was working hard to dodge or block every last one. Every time his fist made contact with her wooden sword, it sounded like a gunshot went off, and shockwaves blew sand away from them.

Finding a hole in her defenses, he landed a strong punch on her chest. I heard a crack as it sounded like bones shattered. She flew back and landed on her back in the sand.

“What’s the matter, Lilandra? You’re not focussed on your fight. You’re rattled and distracted. You may have been the best at one time, but you’re clearly not the same angel. . . Hell, you’re not even an angel anymore,” Daniel said, walking toward a still-recovering Lilandra.

She had her hand over her chest, and it was glowing green. She was going to need a little bit to heal from that last blow.

“Hey, Daniel!”

My voice stopped Daniel. Lilandra had bought me enough time to take action. The rumble in the sky was evidence of my plan coming to fruition.

Daniel looked my way like I was interrupting him.

“You’ll get your turn in a minute. I’m not quite finished with this traitor over here, but when I get to you, you’ll realize that Michael has plans to punish you as well,” Daniel said.

“You recognize that Lilandra was one of the best fighters with a blade in Heaven. . . well what do you think she’s spent the past 25 years doing?”

Daniel scowled for a moment and muttered, “. . . time stones.”

He looked back at Lilandra and started to move faster toward her.

“Hey, assbutt! She’s spent the last 25 years teaching me everything she knew. You think you’re off the hook because Velvet won’t fight you? I got news for you, teaching me how to use Velvet was just part of Lilandra’s training. She spent a lot of other time teaching me how to fight without the blade,” I said, raising one hand to the sky.

Daniel looked confused, but I had succeeded in stopping him in his tracks once more.

Lightning flew down from the dark clouds above and stopped in the palm of my hand. Veins started to show on my right arm as I began to form the lightning. It formed a bright orb in my hand and then, slowly, it changed into the exact shape of Velvet.

Pulling it down and gripping the blade with both hands, I smirked, “You’re going down.”

“Arrogance at its greatest-” was all Daniel had time to mutter before I was upon him.

I came down out of the sky again and he raised both arms in the shape of an “X” to shield himself from my slash.

My swipe sent him flying backward a few feet, and I could smell the burning flesh from where my lightning blade had met his arms.

“That couldn’t have felt good,” I said.

His focus was entirely on me now. I noticed Lilandra had stopped healing herself and was doing something else. He apparently did not notice.

We continued to fight in close combat for several seconds. We were both dodging and landing blows on one another. When he hit, it hurt, but my slices were becoming a more common appearance on his body. I was definitely starting to draw blood from him.

Neither one of us seemed to make much headway with the fight until he got a good strike on my arm, sending the lightning blade flying. As soon as it left my hands and got a few feet away, it exploded in a dazzling show of lights and sparks.

Now he was upon me, and I had no weapon, no time to summon another blade. We were close enough that I decided to take a risk. When he took another swing at me, I ducked and slipped behind him. I held his neck with one elbow and had my other arm around his left arm.

“You think a choke hold is enough to bring down an angel? What are you going to do, make me tap out?”

“No, I’m just going to put you down,” I said.

Using my aura, I electrocuted both of us. My body had a better resistance to electricity than his did, but I was still getting burned pretty badly. He tried to keep from screaming for the first few moments, but eventually he let out a roar of pain. I couldn’t keep this up for long, it was eating too much energy, and I was going to burn out.

Giving it as much juice as I could, I stopped and threw his body to the ground. We both had black burns on our bodies, but his were worse. He was breathing heavily, and I was too.

“Justin! Get behind me,” came Lilandra’s voice.

She was about ten feet away, so I flew over behind her quickly, and she placed two hands down into the sand as a ring of red light grew around Daniel.

“A spell of some kind?”

“It’s a ring of reverse angelic protection. It’ll keep him trapped for a couple hours at best,” she said.

“You sure do have access to a bunch of a magic,” I said.

“When you walk the earth for thousands of years without the ability to fight, you have to get creative with your magic,” Lilandra said.

Daniel got up slowly and limped over to the edge of the ring.

“Next time we meet, I’m going to crush you. This isn’t nearly over. Now that you’re out of hiding, your lives are constantly going to be in Michael’s crosshairs, if not Lucifer’s. You don’t have any idea what kind of torturous path you’ve signed up for,” he muttered.

I walked over to the outer edge of the ring and looked him straight in the eyes.

“I’m going to stop this war. So go home and tell Michael to go fuck himself. I have a bargain to uphold,” I said.

“We’ll see if you still feel that confident after meeting some of the horsemen. And tell me, how many stories have you heard of where someone makes a deal with a demon and they have a happy ending,” Daniel said.

“Lilandra is only a demon because of your boss and his stupid rules. And also tell him to stay out of my way. I’d hate to have to put down the strongest angel in Heaven like I did you,” I said.

“Keep thinking that way. Tell me again next time we meet if you still feel the same way, assuming you live that long,” Daniel said.

Lilandra put a hand on my shoulder.

“Come on, Justin. We got the information we need to make our next move,” Lilandra said.

I walked over and grabbed my long green coat. Then, the two of us flew off to the south, trying to put as much distance between us and Daniel as we could.

We flew on for about an hour before Lilandra said, “Honestly, I guess we’re lucky you couldn’t draw Velvet. That probably would have attracted the attention of the horsemen even faster. We need to find a good hiding spot for a little while and plan out our next strategy. Having the four horsemen involved changes everything,”