Blood of the Lion, Sins of the Lamb

Something roused me at midnight on the veranda. I rose to the call of a loon as Samael snored tenderly, murmuring as the furskin blanket fell away from him. "Shannon…" he whispered, then soothed and fell deeper asleep, his hair gently curling with a black opal sheen, coalescing on my wrist. He smiled as I petted his cheek. I leaned down and kissed his cool, sweaty brow, and he curled in on himself like a beggar at the door of my love.

Something glowed like the Gnostic angel of starlight and the churning luminaries of the outer boundaries, Eleleth, drawing me in a pillar of light to the veranda. On tiptoes in my nightgown from Samael's palace, a frilled pink, ruffled and ribboned Victorian finery, I slightly, ever so quietly, opened the door.

Only to find Michael, the Lion of Judah, transformed like Ron Perlman's 1980's Beast from George RR Martin's cult TV urban fantasy set in the underground of NYC, "Beauty and the Beast", with a lion's face, long curling blonde hair, golden wings, and a human, maned body, dressed in a blue Rococo suit with coattails, ruffled white shirt, and he was crying, burnt molten gold pouring forth from his breast. He heaved, sniffled, crumpling in on himself like damp gift wrap. When he looked at me, with cerulean eyes, he recoiled as if I was the Whore of Babylon come to feast upon his heart.

Chains decorated his flesh, shaped like red and white tefillin. I bit my lip, holding back a scream, and rushed to tend to him.

"Michael!"

He looked at me with smoldering eyes, flames deep within their amber blue depths. "Save me, Chavah. I was the chaff, after all. Oh Mother Asherah, please, have mercy on my soul, oh my qadesh."

I fell to my knees, strange fire burning in me. "Michael, I'm not Asherah. How can I help?"

He drifted into my arms, sobbing and staining my nightgown with hot gold ichor. "Woman was tree, and tree is the menorah, and Chavah is the Mother of Life. Oh, how we have killed you, Asherah, wife of El. We are not so different – broken pieces of God, strayed so far from the throne. I don't have much time, not before the curse you unleashed transforms me back into the winged Beast, and I must slaughter the hordes. The infidels. The heathens. In the name of Father, I do will of an Absent God. Chavah, I trust in you alone." He shuddered, hugging me hard, and was wracked with sobs.

"Michael, were you poisoned? Has the harvest curse driven you mad? Why are you a monster?"

He coughed up gold blood, then looked at me with eyes of lambent azure. His mane and head of full hair like a golden idol shuddered in the midnight dwarven wind. "I cannot speak lies, Asherah. Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel, Izrael – I miss my family so. But thou shalt not speak of this to the others. I spit poison in your mouth and curse you, I Apollo, you Cassandra. Eve was the altar girl, after all. I die each night for you on the seraphic cross of Saint Francis."

"What? Michael, you're like a brother to me, how can I help you!"

"Lucifer lays beyond the Northern Star. Save the world from Abraxas before it is too late. If Metatron and – hack! – Lucifer cast their lots together, the world shall be sinful Sodom and Gomorrah, turned to ash."

I began to cry. "The Northern Star? Lucifer lays beyond the Northern Star? Michael, you're bleeding, let me take you inside so Samael-"

"DAMN SAMAEL. I deserve you, not him. I am the right hand of Christ, the right hand of the Father. What is Asherah doing with Satan? The Exile of the Shekinah, and soon, Lilith shall bed the Sun. Oh, what a mess of the world Samael and I have made."

All the blood drained from my face and my blood froze cold as a morgue. "I – you? You???"

He gave a sorrowful laugh, clutching me as if I was a cliff he was strangling, desperate, to hold on to. "Wasn't I obvious. I pined for you since you were born. Fuck Adam and Sam. Fuck Christ. Fuck all the whorish men who have sought your arms. I am my Father's Pride. I can save your soul."

His fur bristled, and his blood soiled my sex, stirring strange fire in my loins. I thought of Samael, sleeping peacefully inside. "I can't Michael, I'm so sorry, I'm in love with Sam. It may be complicated, but it's what I need… not you. How can I help you!!!"

"Kiss me."

"No!"

"I didn't ask permission, Shekinah."

He pinned me, growling, and the scream died in my throat as he pressed his paw against my windpipe, his muzzle nuzzling my lips, then his catsrough tongue speared my mouth. I struggled, choking, then, like the wind, he was gone.

I reeled, bespelled, the angel gore gone from my dress… and enchanted, I forgot it… who was I? Oh, Shannon. Lucifer. The North Star.

Samael and I had to follow the North Star?

Traumatized by… the darkness? A wet dream? The tentacle sex? It was, quite literally, too much to handle, so I resigned myself to sleep, and when we awoke at 8 AM, hit the road with a groggy Arietta and Jesus slingbacking mimosas from the tiki bar, and Samael drove off well rested, bid Dvalin goodbye, and set out with my Mark of Cain pointing us in the direction of Bella, the Ghent Altarpiece, I startled.

"The North Star! Lucifer lays beyond the North Star!"

Jesus perked up. He sniffed the air like a husky, sunglasses, sandals, and Pentecostal white robes riding on the beard, and he smiled.

"What are you going on about?" Samael asked, perplexed. "I have Brussels in our GPS right here."

"If I use my keyblade, can't we just go to Brussels?"

"Keyblade ain't safe anymore, not with Michael, Lucifer, and Metatron on the loose. We'll only use it when desperate. Now, Lucifer?"

"It, it came to me… it tickled my tongue. I think I had… the strangest vision… a lion, Aslan, and the North Star."

"That is Lucifer's abode," Jesus sighed. "What has that bastard gotten himself into, conniving Satan."

"Wait, isn't Lucifer from Venus?" Arietta asked, her penciled in thick eyebrows raised in suspicion. "Shannon, since when do you have visions? That's like something my nonna would go on about: Arietta, I dreamed you wore green! You're going to have a baby girl! Like shit nonna, I'm a sacred vestal virgin of Lupin, screw guys!" Her temple throbbed.

"Look, don't ask me…" I said, flustered. Samael swerved the car, his Peter Steele form like Pete Mothafuckin Greenman drunk at a concert, smashing his guitar on a bottle of wine. "It's just this thing I apparently do now."

Samael cursed. "We'll deal with this after we see this Bella necromancer chick, and figure out what the fuck our bastard of a son meant by the Ghent Altarpiece."

"That's my favorite depiction of me," Jesus opined, then ate an elven Big Mac.

"Fuck you, sheep furry," Samael growled.

"Hey, at least I don't assume the form of the Nachash snake and impregnate underage girls. Remember, I only have mind sex-

"I can't deal with your bullshit, Holy Boy! Paying for our motel rooms with silver nails? Oh come on, that's pastiche! All the homoerotic subtension in Christianity leaves my balls deflated and my dick limp."

"But tentacles are okay," I muttered.

Jesus busted his ass laughing.

Samael blushed radish. "Shannon, shut the fuck UP!"

We drove on in silence through a tunnel under the mountains of Jotunheim. Samael turned on his high beams.

I napped, thinking, for some reason, of a bloody

Mane.