Fallen

Chapter 19

"Your brother!" Eliza shouted, completely taken aback by the revelation. I could only nod numbly. The simple fact still had me reeling too. Nathan, however, still had a skeptical look on his face.

"Aren't all angels related?" he asked. "I mean, in everything I've studied, all angels refer to each other as sister or brother."

"A lot Christians do the same thing," I pointed out. Nathan shook his head.

"That's different," he said firmly. Now it was my turn to shake my head.

"Not really. We are brothers and sisters in the fact that we fight together, and see the one you know as God as our father, but in truth that's only true of the Archangels and a small number of seraphs. In reality, most of us are descended from those first few angels, and are no more brother and sister than you and Eliza are because you share descent from Adam and Eve."

"Okay, that's a cringe worthy thought," Eliza said, then quickly looking at Nathan. "No offense."

"I know what you were thinking about, and no offense is taken," Nathan replied, an equally disturbed look on his face. "So when you say this demon is your brother, you mean..."

"That we were both born from the same two angels, though who our father was we never knew. We were raised as children by our mother, Mariah, and then sent to what I guess you'd call an academy of sorts where we were taught to fight. Even before demons were around, there were threats to Creation. God may have created all things, but remember that there was darkness before he created the light."

"Putting that aside for a later date," Nathan said in a tone that told me that there were hours of theological debate ahead of my in the future. "How was it that your brother became a demon, and how do you know that it is him that we are dealing with?"

"I was going to get to that," I said, a little ticked about being interrupted. "When an angel is deemed worthy, his power is tested and he is assigned a title based on that, Garrison, Power, Virtue, or Seraph, with only the the strongest of the Virtues and the Seraph being assigned officer ranks. After that has been done, he or she awaits to be chosen by an Archangel to serve in their choir. Like myself, my brother was a Seraph, so he was automatically given the officer rank. He graduated sometime after me and was chosen to serve in one of the two most illustrious and respected of the choirs. The second choir, led by one of the eldest archangels, the one who was once called Lucifer."

"The Devil?" Eliza asked, her breath catching.

"I see you did at least get to a few Sunday sermons,' I said dryly. Eliza ignored my wit and stayed stuck on repeat.

"The Devil? Your brother was chosen by the freaking Devil himself?" she kept asking as if she couldn't get past it. At this point, I was becoming a bit defensive at this point. Gaius may have become a demon, but he had once been my baby brother. There was a limit to how much I could take.

"This was long before the Division occurred, so he was still only known as Lucifer, The Radiant One, The Beloved, and The Protector of the Throne. There wasn't an angel in all of heaven that thought ill of Lucifer at the time. Many would have killed to have been chosen for his choir," I said, looking so far back to memories that were still as clear as they had been on the day they were made. "When he chose Gaius to serve as one of his officers, it was a time of celebration for us. My brother was going to serve under the most loved archangel in all of heaven, why wouldn't we celebrate? After all, we didn't have a clue of what was going to happen in the future. By the time he'd completed his training, we had defeated the enemies of God's creations. We were in a time of peace and everything seemed calm, perfect."