Page 115 of All's Hell That Ends Well

Shekinah regarded me with unnerving intensity, her white eyes boring into me. “You used to be human.”

I twitched before I could catch myself.

“Curious,” she said and hummed. “A Queen of Hell with a human heart, still dusted with a touch of divine grace.”

Metatron now studied me with new interest, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.

Azazel flared his wings before settling them again. “You can’t expect us to accept your refusal to let Lucifer live on Earth without an explanation as to why.”

Metatron shook his head. “The knowledge is too dangerous to?—”

“He is Death,” Shekinah murmured, her gaze unfocused.

“What?” The question was out of my mouth before I could help it.

“Kinah,” Metatron ground out, somewhere between flabbergasted and piqued.

“Incarnate,” she added, closing her eyes and tilting her head as if listening to some inaudible melody.

Metatron turned away and rubbed a hand over his face, the most human gesture he’d shown so far.

“Figuratively, right?” I looked between her and Metatron. “As in, he’s been coined the opposing force of God, and everybody hates death and sees it as evil, so that was attributed to him?”

“No,” Shekinah said with a beatific smile, her eyes still closed. “He is the true opposing force. God is Life. Lucifer is Death. And he chose to manifest for her sake.”

“Shekinah,” Metatron hissed and gently grasped her arm to turn her toward him and away from us. Staring at her for an intense moment, his hands holding her by the shoulders, he then asked quietly, “Why now?”

The faraway look in her eyes cleared for a second, and she whispered, “It is written.”

A crackling beat of silence. “He approves?”

Shekinah smiled again. “It is written.”

Metatron closed his eyes and hung his head, his hands on Shekinah’s shoulders still.

“Excuse me,” I said with my index finger raised. “You seem to be having a moment, and I respect that, but can you please elaborate on that bombshell you just dropped? I mean, I like cryptic lines as much as the next girl—I’ve grown up analyzing Tori Amos songs, okay?—but I need more context here. Whenyou say he’s Death incarnate, and that he manifested for her sake, what do you mean?”

Metatron straightened, took a deep breath that seemed to pull him together, and then faced me. “Lucifer is the identity Death took to be able to approach Lilith. He saw her when he was an essence without a corporeal form, and he felt great desire for her. But he could not interact with her as he wanted to, not without a body.”

“So, he thought one into being,” Shekinah said, “and the power of death coalesced into physical form. All so he could speak to her. Touch her. Love her.”

“Wait.” I held up both hands. “Back up a second. If Lucifer is Death, then why is there also an Angel of Death? Isn’t that the same?”

Metatron shook his head. “The Angel of Death does not wield thepowerof death. He does not decide when it is someone’s time to die. He has no dominion over that. His task is to sense and find the souls of those that have recently passed and mark them for either Hell or Heaven, and then help along those who are granted entry into God’s realm. He is a psychopomp, nothing more. The force that incarnated itself in Lucifer is the true Death, the one who has dominion over the end of any creature’s life.”

“Okay.” I massaged my temples and closed my eyes briefly. “So, just to recap, Death was just incorporeally swirling around and then decided to build himself a body, and God was…doing what, exactly? Watching while eating popcorn? Why would he let that happen?”

Metatron sighed. “What you must understand is that Life—God—and Death are true equals. One is not stronger than the other. What one does, the other cannot simply undo. And for all their might, they are not able to foresee each other’s moves. They have been at odds since the inception of all that is, caught ina dance of give-and-take. For in the beginning, there were only these two forces, Life and Death. Life spawned…life, and Death took it. It is the balance. When God created angels with their immortality, Death’s force made sure there was violence and murder to end it.”

“Cain and Abel,” Shekinah muttered.

I frowned. “Weren’t they supposed to be human, though?”

It was Azazel who answered. “They were angels. Another one of those instances where human lore warped the truth.”

Metatron nodded. “Cain was the first of us to kill, thus discovering that even our lives can be ended. He quarreled with Abel, becoming so enraged that he ripped off his head. The story later found its way into human mythology and was changed to what is now known.”

I gulped at the realization that the first death to ever have happened had indeed been a violent one. That, apparently, Death had seen no other way to get his due—in the face of immortality and lack of disease and aging—than to force an eruption of brutality and murder.

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