Fic: Rogue (Gabriel/M, Gabriel/F, PG-13) 20/36
For full notes and other chapters, please see the Masterpost.
Notes: This is the third part of the Missing an Angel series. It is recommended that you read the first two before reading this one.
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Chapter word count: 2,657
Chapter Summary: A major player in Gabriel’s life steps forward, and a new chapter begins to unfold.
CHAPTER 20:
Sea Legs and Many Hands
Gabriel carefully stripped away every trace of their conversation from Barachiel’s mind. She made sure there wasn’t a single hint of her current appearance left, not one whisper of her voice or identity or anything that could be used to trace her… and then she inserted new, false memories. A glimpse Barachiel got of an angel wearing a female vessel similar to Issobell in appearance. A whisper to a little white cat in her arms. To the sea, Luna, to the sea. They’ll never look for me on the water. A moment where the false-Gabriel saw Barachiel, and then she was gone.
Naomi would recognize the memories as false instantly. Even though Gabriel was confident in the Seraph’s abilities to see her own inexpert hand at work, she made sure to leave a couple glaring tells that what Barachiel remembered was not what had actually happened. Hopefully, with such an obvious fake, Naomi wouldn’t have to torture Barachiel long for the truth. Nothing Gabriel did would be able to entirely spare him a visit to Naomi’s chair, but maybe this would satisfy her quickly.
Raphael would read Naomi’s report and discount everything Gabriel had said in it as false and search for the opposite. Her brother would be so proud that he saw through Gabriel’s lies. That was why Gabriel left Barachiel in the house and hurried to the docks. Raphael was straight-forward and literal. A bluff would be the height of deception for him. A double-bluff would never cross his mind, and no one would dare suggest to Raphael that he might be wrong.
Gabriel snapped her fingers under the noses of the appropriate guards and ended up a last-minute passenger on the Clarity, a small two-masted schooner from Holland. Another snap of her fingers, and the Clarity left port that very night, much to the consternation of some of her other passengers who had not managed to get onboard.
Gabriel didn’t care about the other passengers. She descended into the bowels of the ship and curled up in the tiny cabin allotted to her (abandoned by one of the abandoned passengers). Thorn nuzzled against her chest, and she wrapped her wings around the dog. Fergus was dead. Cariel was dead. All she had left was a half-angelic monster inside her and an apparently-immortal pet. The hollow ache of a thousand years alone had reopened into a gaping wound, her grace aching to return to Barachiel’s, to be welcomed back into Heaven, to be surrounded by her brothers again, even if it were only to lead to her execution. She grit her teeth and squeezed Thorn tightly, trying to weather the storm within.
In the end, it was a good thing that Thorn would keep on living regardless of his treatment. Whatever Fergus had done to bring his dog back to life also meant that when Gabriel forgot to summon the dog food or water, Thorn did nothing more than whine for a bit before settling down against Gabriel’s side again. He growled at the door whenever someone passed by on the outside, always hovering protectively near the lethargic angel. Thorn had taken her under his wing, even when she neglected him.
Several weeks into the trip, Gabriel sensed another ship not too far away, another cluster of human life on the empty seas. She roused herself just enough to gather Thorn into her arms and slipped outside, invisible. One short flight, a few snaps, and Gabriel was now a passenger on the Amsterdam, a Dutch trading vessel.
For six months, Gabriel lived on ships, never staying on the same one for long, and it was hellish. The constant motion of the water beneath her was agonizing, especially with the lack of fire surrounding her. The little oil lamps or the occasional lighting of the kitchen’s small oven was hardly enough to bolster her sagging energy.
It didn’t help that the Nephilim growing inside her was consuming her grace. It devoured her fire in great hungry gulps, growing fat on the raw power of an Archangel. There were days, weeks at a time, where Gabriel could do little more than clutch her swollen belly and groan as the Nephilim stretched and stirred within her.
Her own body rebelled against the presence of another inside of her. Gabriel spent much of her mental energy keeping it from rejecting the child. This was all that was left of Cariel. As much as Gabriel feared what it would become, she would not be the one to kill it. He’ll always live as long as this one does, Barachiel had said. Gabriel clung to that, clung to her Seraph’s obvious joy that she had created a child with her second. Had her desires been so obvious when she was in Heaven? Had Cariel’s?
Thorn was the best companion Gabriel could have hoped for on this journey, short of Cariel himself. The little dog was always faithfully at her side, keeping curious humans away, and always ready when she needed something to cling to. He managed to coax her onto the deck on good days, where the sun could warm her wings and bolster her rapidly-draining grace. In return, Gabriel summoned up Thorn’s favorite foods: plump sausages, rashers of bacon, and chicken necks. When she couldn’t find the energy to do even that, she sent the cabin boy to find him food. Thorn didn’t need to suffer just because he didn’t need to eat.
Human pregnancies were supposed to grow easier over time, Gabriel knew. The sickness faded as the body accepted the fact that there was a child, and the expectant mother could function relatively normally for the middle months.
Gabriel’s pregnancy was not following that of a standard human woman. Every day was more difficult than the last, and Gabriel battled a constant feeling of nausea that had never once come over her before in all her long life. Even the first time she descended into Hell and felt God’s presence ripped away from her had never felt like this.
She felt like she were dying. Like the child inside was drawing from her very life and would drain her completely in order to be born. “Even as a fetus, you try to murder angels,” Gabriel murmured, wrapping her arms around her belly with a little groan.
The angel was sitting in the bow of the upper deck of a relatively small Indiaman ship, the Albermarle. The air was warm and the sky cloudless, so Gabriel had her wings stretched over the railings on either side, soaking in as much of the sun as she could, but every breeze that ruffled her hair or combed through her feathers made her flinch, fearing Raphael was about to show up. He was unlikely to come-it had been six months without any other angel’s presence, so her trail surely had gone cold-but Gabriel was still wary. If Raphael showed up now, she wouldn’t even be able to run from him. If a Seraph showed up now, a single Seraph, trying to impress his Archangel brothers, Gabriel probably would lose. The combination of the Nephilim and the ocean had sapped so much of her strength already, and she still had months to go.
“I can’t do this.” Gabriel reached out, digging her fingers into Thorn’s fur. The little dog whined, thumping his tail and wriggling closer against her leg. “We have to get off the water, Thorn. I can’t do both. I can’t.”
Thorn licked Gabriel’s fingers and rested his chin on her thigh. She sighed, scratching him behind the ears as she rested her own head against the wooden railing of the ship. “Next time we dock, we get off.”
Next time turned out to be two weeks later, in a city called Bombay. Gabriel swayed as she stepped onto dry land for the first time in months, still feeling the rocking of the sea. Her freckled skin, made even paler by the lack of sun she’d received in the past six months, and her copper hair made her stand out in this crowd of dark-skinned natives, but Gabriel ignored the stares she received as she staggered into town. Fire. There had to be a fire somewhere in this city, a real fire, with a bite and a roar.
“Go back to your ship.” Two men with long, shaggy hair, dressed in similar white clothing to many of the other men Gabriel saw, were watching her intently. They both had an unearthly shimmer to their skin, a glitter that revealed their true identities as pagan gods instead of the mortals they were masquerading as. The shorter man grinned at her, revealing a mouth full of sharpened teeth, but it was the taller one who spoke. “We don’t need more of your kind around here, Westerner.” He spat the direction as if it were an insult, but the reasoning completely escaped Gabriel. She didn’t want to pick a fight right now. She just wanted to get past these two.
Pasting on her most charming smile, Gabriel spread her arms, all feminine innocence and naiveté. “I am simply looking for a place to rest for the night,” she tried, willing herself as harmless-appearing as possible. “I do not intend to intrude upon your lands for long.”
Let me through or I’ll gut you both…
But no, no, drawing her sword here would be rude. Loki was a powerful visiting god, after all, and sometimes local deities could get excessively possessive of their homelands. Not that Gabriel would actively attempt to usurp anything. She had enough trouble on her hands without restarting her worship.
Gabriel also wasn’t entirely sure that she could draw her sword in her current condition. The Nephilim must have grown again last night because her grace was at its lowest ebb since she left Dundee.
The men swaggered closer to Gabriel, cracking their knuckles menacingly as they advanced. “We said,” the taller one drawled, “get back to your ship, bitch.”
“That’s no way to talk to a lady,” Gabriel protested, refusing to give ground to these two. She was an angel of the Lord, and she was going to find fire today!
“You’re no lady.” The shorter man reached out and shoved Gabriel’s shoulder, rocking her slightly, as the taller one shook his head. Thorn snarled at Gabriel’s heels, but she touched her foot gently to his leg to keep him from attacking. She could handle this. “We don’t want you here, and we don’t want your whelp.”
“You think you can just waltz in here and take over?” the shorter one finally spoke for the first time. “You think if you drop your brat in these lands, it gets to take over?”
“I assure you,” Gabriel insisted, holding her hands up, “I don’t mean to usurp your lands. I only wish to rest on dry land and recover my strength.”
“And we assure you-”
“Is there a problem here?” The new speaker was a tall woman with a severe face and a white sari decorated in gold. Her dark eyes glittered dangerously, and she suddenly seemed to have more hands than Gabriel expected as she reached for the two men, yanking them away from Gabriel. She glittered and shone just like the men did, a goddess in her own right, but unlike the men, this was one Gabriel recognized and knew by name.
“Kalika.” Gabriel bowed to the goddess as best she could with her pregnant belly in the way. “Thank you for your assistance.” The Great Destroyer Kali was far stronger than Loki and deserved a show of respect even from the impudent and irreverent Trickster. A failure to do so could mean Loki’s death.
Of course, Kali couldn’t hold a candle to Gabriel at full power, but right now, Gabriel wasn’t interested in testing strength against the goddess of destruction.
Kali narrowed her eyes as she looked Gabriel over. “Who are you supposed to be?” she demanded, folding her arms (one set, at least-if Gabriel squinted and turned her head slightly to the side, she could make out more) across her chest.
Gabriel didn’t want to be perceived as a threat here. She was on her last dregs of energy as it was, and she genuinely needed to rest near a fire, maybe even in one, if she wanted to survive this pregnancy. Loki was considered one of the stronger gods-not Kali’s class, but not someone to underestimate. Using his name might not win her any favors here. “Rosmerta,” she offered, hoping Kali would accept the name of the minor goddess who was already practically obsolete.
“Rosmerta, goddess of…?” Kali folded a second set of arms, a third resting on her hips. She wasn’t happy.
“Fertility.” Gabriel rubbed her hand over her belly and smiled as kindly as she could at the dark goddess.
“Stop that,” Kali snapped. “You’re trying to put me off by being sweet. I hate sweet.”
Gabriel sighed, letting the smile drop. “Kali, please,” she murmured, risking a step closer to Kali and lowering her voice so the two minor male pagans couldn’t overhear. “I need to rest away from the water. Just a few days, and I’ll move on,” if I can. “I won’t cause any trouble while I’m here.”
A fourth right hand of Kali’s reached up and rested across Gabriel’s forehead. Fire! Gabriel made a grab for her grace, but it was too desperate for her to control. It latched on to the heat radiating from the goddess’ hand, inhaling her internal fire just like the Nephilim devoured Gabriel’s.
Kali’s eyes widened fractionally at the feeling, but she didn’t pull away from Gabriel. She let Gabriel’s grace strengthen for several minutes, ignoring the bustle of the city around them, before purposefully withdrawing her hand. “You are not a goddess of fertility. You have fire in your blood, but it is weakened. I do not like liars.”
“How about Tricksters?” Gabriel clasped her hands together to keep from reaching out for Kali again. Now that she knew the goddess was a source of fire, fire greater than anything the humans in this city could kindle, it was taking all of her rejuvenated control not to latch on again. “My name is Loki. I’m… in a spot of trouble, as you can see.” She bumped her hands lightly against her stomach.
“Loki,” Kali repeated. “King of the Tricksters.”
“That’s what they say. I see you’ve heard of me.”
“I understood you to be a god.”
“Yeah, well I…” Gabriel trailed off with a shrug. “Do this sometimes? My followers are…” She sighed again, theatrically this time, catching the thread of a story. “It’s been a while since you’ve only had a handful. Maybe you’ve forgotten how easily they can change your mythos when there aren’t many of them left. My worshippers have been waning over these past few centuries. It only took five of them to think this up.”
“You do have an impressive array of children, if the tales are at all true.”
“When aren’t they?” Gabriel smiled at Kali, not sweet this time, but a clever smile, full of mischief. “C’mon, what do you say? Let me rest here?”
Kali was silent, studying Gabriel as if she could divine the truth of her words just by staring into her eyes. Eventually, the goddess turned, beckoning with one of her hands. “You will stay as my guest for as long as I see fit.”
Gabriel whistled for Thorn to follow her as she trailed after Kali, watching the goddess move. Kali parted the crowd with her very presence, gliding effortlessly through the packed city streets. It was hard to tell if the humans could see her or not, but they all knew to get out of her way. Kali was clearly the queen here. Gabriel would do well to keep her happy.
Next...
Notes: This is the third part of the Missing an Angel series. It is recommended that you read the first two before reading this one.
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Chapter word count: 2,657
Chapter Summary: A major player in Gabriel’s life steps forward, and a new chapter begins to unfold.
CHAPTER 20:
Sea Legs and Many Hands
Gabriel carefully stripped away every trace of their conversation from Barachiel’s mind. She made sure there wasn’t a single hint of her current appearance left, not one whisper of her voice or identity or anything that could be used to trace her… and then she inserted new, false memories. A glimpse Barachiel got of an angel wearing a female vessel similar to Issobell in appearance. A whisper to a little white cat in her arms. To the sea, Luna, to the sea. They’ll never look for me on the water. A moment where the false-Gabriel saw Barachiel, and then she was gone.
Naomi would recognize the memories as false instantly. Even though Gabriel was confident in the Seraph’s abilities to see her own inexpert hand at work, she made sure to leave a couple glaring tells that what Barachiel remembered was not what had actually happened. Hopefully, with such an obvious fake, Naomi wouldn’t have to torture Barachiel long for the truth. Nothing Gabriel did would be able to entirely spare him a visit to Naomi’s chair, but maybe this would satisfy her quickly.
Raphael would read Naomi’s report and discount everything Gabriel had said in it as false and search for the opposite. Her brother would be so proud that he saw through Gabriel’s lies. That was why Gabriel left Barachiel in the house and hurried to the docks. Raphael was straight-forward and literal. A bluff would be the height of deception for him. A double-bluff would never cross his mind, and no one would dare suggest to Raphael that he might be wrong.
Gabriel snapped her fingers under the noses of the appropriate guards and ended up a last-minute passenger on the Clarity, a small two-masted schooner from Holland. Another snap of her fingers, and the Clarity left port that very night, much to the consternation of some of her other passengers who had not managed to get onboard.
Gabriel didn’t care about the other passengers. She descended into the bowels of the ship and curled up in the tiny cabin allotted to her (abandoned by one of the abandoned passengers). Thorn nuzzled against her chest, and she wrapped her wings around the dog. Fergus was dead. Cariel was dead. All she had left was a half-angelic monster inside her and an apparently-immortal pet. The hollow ache of a thousand years alone had reopened into a gaping wound, her grace aching to return to Barachiel’s, to be welcomed back into Heaven, to be surrounded by her brothers again, even if it were only to lead to her execution. She grit her teeth and squeezed Thorn tightly, trying to weather the storm within.
In the end, it was a good thing that Thorn would keep on living regardless of his treatment. Whatever Fergus had done to bring his dog back to life also meant that when Gabriel forgot to summon the dog food or water, Thorn did nothing more than whine for a bit before settling down against Gabriel’s side again. He growled at the door whenever someone passed by on the outside, always hovering protectively near the lethargic angel. Thorn had taken her under his wing, even when she neglected him.
Several weeks into the trip, Gabriel sensed another ship not too far away, another cluster of human life on the empty seas. She roused herself just enough to gather Thorn into her arms and slipped outside, invisible. One short flight, a few snaps, and Gabriel was now a passenger on the Amsterdam, a Dutch trading vessel.
For six months, Gabriel lived on ships, never staying on the same one for long, and it was hellish. The constant motion of the water beneath her was agonizing, especially with the lack of fire surrounding her. The little oil lamps or the occasional lighting of the kitchen’s small oven was hardly enough to bolster her sagging energy.
It didn’t help that the Nephilim growing inside her was consuming her grace. It devoured her fire in great hungry gulps, growing fat on the raw power of an Archangel. There were days, weeks at a time, where Gabriel could do little more than clutch her swollen belly and groan as the Nephilim stretched and stirred within her.
Her own body rebelled against the presence of another inside of her. Gabriel spent much of her mental energy keeping it from rejecting the child. This was all that was left of Cariel. As much as Gabriel feared what it would become, she would not be the one to kill it. He’ll always live as long as this one does, Barachiel had said. Gabriel clung to that, clung to her Seraph’s obvious joy that she had created a child with her second. Had her desires been so obvious when she was in Heaven? Had Cariel’s?
Thorn was the best companion Gabriel could have hoped for on this journey, short of Cariel himself. The little dog was always faithfully at her side, keeping curious humans away, and always ready when she needed something to cling to. He managed to coax her onto the deck on good days, where the sun could warm her wings and bolster her rapidly-draining grace. In return, Gabriel summoned up Thorn’s favorite foods: plump sausages, rashers of bacon, and chicken necks. When she couldn’t find the energy to do even that, she sent the cabin boy to find him food. Thorn didn’t need to suffer just because he didn’t need to eat.
Human pregnancies were supposed to grow easier over time, Gabriel knew. The sickness faded as the body accepted the fact that there was a child, and the expectant mother could function relatively normally for the middle months.
Gabriel’s pregnancy was not following that of a standard human woman. Every day was more difficult than the last, and Gabriel battled a constant feeling of nausea that had never once come over her before in all her long life. Even the first time she descended into Hell and felt God’s presence ripped away from her had never felt like this.
She felt like she were dying. Like the child inside was drawing from her very life and would drain her completely in order to be born. “Even as a fetus, you try to murder angels,” Gabriel murmured, wrapping her arms around her belly with a little groan.
The angel was sitting in the bow of the upper deck of a relatively small Indiaman ship, the Albermarle. The air was warm and the sky cloudless, so Gabriel had her wings stretched over the railings on either side, soaking in as much of the sun as she could, but every breeze that ruffled her hair or combed through her feathers made her flinch, fearing Raphael was about to show up. He was unlikely to come-it had been six months without any other angel’s presence, so her trail surely had gone cold-but Gabriel was still wary. If Raphael showed up now, she wouldn’t even be able to run from him. If a Seraph showed up now, a single Seraph, trying to impress his Archangel brothers, Gabriel probably would lose. The combination of the Nephilim and the ocean had sapped so much of her strength already, and she still had months to go.
“I can’t do this.” Gabriel reached out, digging her fingers into Thorn’s fur. The little dog whined, thumping his tail and wriggling closer against her leg. “We have to get off the water, Thorn. I can’t do both. I can’t.”
Thorn licked Gabriel’s fingers and rested his chin on her thigh. She sighed, scratching him behind the ears as she rested her own head against the wooden railing of the ship. “Next time we dock, we get off.”
Next time turned out to be two weeks later, in a city called Bombay. Gabriel swayed as she stepped onto dry land for the first time in months, still feeling the rocking of the sea. Her freckled skin, made even paler by the lack of sun she’d received in the past six months, and her copper hair made her stand out in this crowd of dark-skinned natives, but Gabriel ignored the stares she received as she staggered into town. Fire. There had to be a fire somewhere in this city, a real fire, with a bite and a roar.
“Go back to your ship.” Two men with long, shaggy hair, dressed in similar white clothing to many of the other men Gabriel saw, were watching her intently. They both had an unearthly shimmer to their skin, a glitter that revealed their true identities as pagan gods instead of the mortals they were masquerading as. The shorter man grinned at her, revealing a mouth full of sharpened teeth, but it was the taller one who spoke. “We don’t need more of your kind around here, Westerner.” He spat the direction as if it were an insult, but the reasoning completely escaped Gabriel. She didn’t want to pick a fight right now. She just wanted to get past these two.
Pasting on her most charming smile, Gabriel spread her arms, all feminine innocence and naiveté. “I am simply looking for a place to rest for the night,” she tried, willing herself as harmless-appearing as possible. “I do not intend to intrude upon your lands for long.”
Let me through or I’ll gut you both…
But no, no, drawing her sword here would be rude. Loki was a powerful visiting god, after all, and sometimes local deities could get excessively possessive of their homelands. Not that Gabriel would actively attempt to usurp anything. She had enough trouble on her hands without restarting her worship.
Gabriel also wasn’t entirely sure that she could draw her sword in her current condition. The Nephilim must have grown again last night because her grace was at its lowest ebb since she left Dundee.
The men swaggered closer to Gabriel, cracking their knuckles menacingly as they advanced. “We said,” the taller one drawled, “get back to your ship, bitch.”
“That’s no way to talk to a lady,” Gabriel protested, refusing to give ground to these two. She was an angel of the Lord, and she was going to find fire today!
“You’re no lady.” The shorter man reached out and shoved Gabriel’s shoulder, rocking her slightly, as the taller one shook his head. Thorn snarled at Gabriel’s heels, but she touched her foot gently to his leg to keep him from attacking. She could handle this. “We don’t want you here, and we don’t want your whelp.”
“You think you can just waltz in here and take over?” the shorter one finally spoke for the first time. “You think if you drop your brat in these lands, it gets to take over?”
“I assure you,” Gabriel insisted, holding her hands up, “I don’t mean to usurp your lands. I only wish to rest on dry land and recover my strength.”
“And we assure you-”
“Is there a problem here?” The new speaker was a tall woman with a severe face and a white sari decorated in gold. Her dark eyes glittered dangerously, and she suddenly seemed to have more hands than Gabriel expected as she reached for the two men, yanking them away from Gabriel. She glittered and shone just like the men did, a goddess in her own right, but unlike the men, this was one Gabriel recognized and knew by name.
“Kalika.” Gabriel bowed to the goddess as best she could with her pregnant belly in the way. “Thank you for your assistance.” The Great Destroyer Kali was far stronger than Loki and deserved a show of respect even from the impudent and irreverent Trickster. A failure to do so could mean Loki’s death.
Of course, Kali couldn’t hold a candle to Gabriel at full power, but right now, Gabriel wasn’t interested in testing strength against the goddess of destruction.
Kali narrowed her eyes as she looked Gabriel over. “Who are you supposed to be?” she demanded, folding her arms (one set, at least-if Gabriel squinted and turned her head slightly to the side, she could make out more) across her chest.
Gabriel didn’t want to be perceived as a threat here. She was on her last dregs of energy as it was, and she genuinely needed to rest near a fire, maybe even in one, if she wanted to survive this pregnancy. Loki was considered one of the stronger gods-not Kali’s class, but not someone to underestimate. Using his name might not win her any favors here. “Rosmerta,” she offered, hoping Kali would accept the name of the minor goddess who was already practically obsolete.
“Rosmerta, goddess of…?” Kali folded a second set of arms, a third resting on her hips. She wasn’t happy.
“Fertility.” Gabriel rubbed her hand over her belly and smiled as kindly as she could at the dark goddess.
“Stop that,” Kali snapped. “You’re trying to put me off by being sweet. I hate sweet.”
Gabriel sighed, letting the smile drop. “Kali, please,” she murmured, risking a step closer to Kali and lowering her voice so the two minor male pagans couldn’t overhear. “I need to rest away from the water. Just a few days, and I’ll move on,” if I can. “I won’t cause any trouble while I’m here.”
A fourth right hand of Kali’s reached up and rested across Gabriel’s forehead. Fire! Gabriel made a grab for her grace, but it was too desperate for her to control. It latched on to the heat radiating from the goddess’ hand, inhaling her internal fire just like the Nephilim devoured Gabriel’s.
Kali’s eyes widened fractionally at the feeling, but she didn’t pull away from Gabriel. She let Gabriel’s grace strengthen for several minutes, ignoring the bustle of the city around them, before purposefully withdrawing her hand. “You are not a goddess of fertility. You have fire in your blood, but it is weakened. I do not like liars.”
“How about Tricksters?” Gabriel clasped her hands together to keep from reaching out for Kali again. Now that she knew the goddess was a source of fire, fire greater than anything the humans in this city could kindle, it was taking all of her rejuvenated control not to latch on again. “My name is Loki. I’m… in a spot of trouble, as you can see.” She bumped her hands lightly against her stomach.
“Loki,” Kali repeated. “King of the Tricksters.”
“That’s what they say. I see you’ve heard of me.”
“I understood you to be a god.”
“Yeah, well I…” Gabriel trailed off with a shrug. “Do this sometimes? My followers are…” She sighed again, theatrically this time, catching the thread of a story. “It’s been a while since you’ve only had a handful. Maybe you’ve forgotten how easily they can change your mythos when there aren’t many of them left. My worshippers have been waning over these past few centuries. It only took five of them to think this up.”
“You do have an impressive array of children, if the tales are at all true.”
“When aren’t they?” Gabriel smiled at Kali, not sweet this time, but a clever smile, full of mischief. “C’mon, what do you say? Let me rest here?”
Kali was silent, studying Gabriel as if she could divine the truth of her words just by staring into her eyes. Eventually, the goddess turned, beckoning with one of her hands. “You will stay as my guest for as long as I see fit.”
Gabriel whistled for Thorn to follow her as she trailed after Kali, watching the goddess move. Kali parted the crowd with her very presence, gliding effortlessly through the packed city streets. It was hard to tell if the humans could see her or not, but they all knew to get out of her way. Kali was clearly the queen here. Gabriel would do well to keep her happy.
Next...